audience , it becomes a live moment , you know . We had a track called Cry , which we released about three years ago , couldn ’ t give it away , no one was interested , didn ’ t get much play on the radio , it was a wholehearted distant memory , that one was . We put it on stage , it went down the best in the show and even now , it ’ ll always be in the set list , that song , because it just works so well live , so I don ’ t know , I don ’ t know what makes these things into anthems , I don ’ t know whether it ’ s hearing them too much or , I don ’ t know what it is but we ' ve been lucky to have a few of those .
With the new album out , ahead of the UK tour , are you still writing or are you taking a break from that ? I am . I ' m doing , I can ' t tell you , sadly , what they are , but I ' ve done two films actually recently , not whole scores but , like , two songs for one and one song for another one , I ' ve always wanted to work with Hans Zimmer and he ' s done all the main compositional work , but I ' ve worked with him on the song and it ’ s been so much fun , that has , I thought I was a hard worker and he ' s put me to shame . So , yeah , I ' ve got a few things sort of that way and then I ' ve got this long term movie which I ' m doing all the music for …
You met Prince once and actually got into a conversation with him ? If you ' re Prince fans , you ' re going to absolutely love this . I think it was one of the best nights of my life actually . So , I did this event in Los Angeles and it was one of those nights where I knew it was going to be , like , a tough room , so I invited some mates along and said , ‘ please , just come along and if no one claps , clap for us , will you ’. It was a bit of a Hollywood room . So , anyway , Nicole Scherzinger came along , I was doing X Factor with her at the time and she said , ‘ can I bring a friend ’ and I said , ‘ yeah , course ’, you know . She turns up with Prince !!!! So I said , ‘ oh my , do you need , like , a security guard or someone stood near you ?’.
Anyway , they weren ' t having any of it , so there was a little after show party afterwards and she turns up and there he is , alright and they ' d made this little room for him to go into , to sort of be private for him , because everyone was trying to annoy him , including me , but there was just this moment before he went into this room where we were kind of stood face to face and he had nowhere to go , and I ' d read an interview in Sound on Sound with him in the eighties about him kicking everyone out the studio and you know , engineering himself and playing the drums and all this stuff , so I just hit him with the question , I said , ‘ so just tell me , you know , in this modern day , how do you feel about being a producer ?’
Well , once I hit on gear , that was the end , no one could get a word in edgeways . I was , like , ‘ do you still use the Eventide spreader on your vocals ’, he was , like , ‘ oh no , I ' ve moved on from that now ’ and it was properly going beyond the geek stage , he was almost slathering round , like , he could not get enough of this conversation . He ' d got all these mikes from Germany and after the wall came down , he went to these companies , got all these mikes , I mean , it was absolute gold for people like us , but for everyone else who was listening , boring .
That ’ s amazing . Oh , it was brilliant and you know , the one thing that I ' m sorry , I ' m going to stop now , ' cause I ' m a real waffler , but it was interesting to see someone so talented , who ’ d achieved so much , get excited about the stuff that I get excited about .
Gary ’ s 2021 tour hits the M & S Bank Arena Liverpool on December 13th 2021 .