Baxter Dury on Prince of Tears and new project B.E.D

The Baxter Dury we’re perhaps most familiar with is that of Prince of Tears fame: the surly, cocksure character who inhabits his breakthrough album of last year. Equally funny, revolting and pitiable, it sees Dury enacting a monstrous middle-aged geezer who, on the superb opening track Miami, informs us 'I don't think you realise how successful I am'. He goes on to declare himself as, among other things, 'the sausage man', 'Mister Maserati', 'the urban goose' and 'a shipping tycoon / Full of promise and cum'.

By contrast, the Baxter Dury who greets us on the phone from his flat in London seems far removed from the midlife crisis mindset of his Prince of Tears alter-ego. It’s early evening and he’s just finished cooking – "I made my son dinner, but he looks very disappointed by it," he says in his distinctive timbre. Released this time last year, Prince of Tears was Dury’s fifth studio album and the one that found him mainstream success; he has spent the better part of this year on tour.

"I’m alright now, because I’m back home," he responds when we ask him about life on the road. "There is a point where I’m like, 'Thank god for that.' I like touring some of the time. Most of the time. Strange enough, considering I can’t cook, I find the culinary aspects of travelling quite difficult," he laughs. Dury is funny – the wry, sharp humour that permeates Prince of Tears also comes naturally in conversation.

"You know, I want someone to sort of deliver some Parma ham on silk," he continues, "and everyone else is willing to accept a much lower level. I try to put it on the rider but it’s been ignored. Rose water, Parma ham… but to answer your question simply, yeah I’m happy that I’m home actually. It’s autumn and I’m readjusting, I’ve got lots of things to do."

One of these things – which ostensibly is the reason why we have Dury on the phone – is promoting his new project, B.E.D. A collaboration between Dury, French electronic pioneer Étienne de Crécy and Delilah Holliday of London punk outfit Skinny Girl Diet, the self-titled B.E.D record melds vintage electronica with Dury’s trademark sing-speak and Holliday’s nonchalant, husky vocals.

"It was pretty much straight after I wrote the last album," he explains. "I was orbiting around, I was in Paris a bit and we just sort of teamed up without much of an agenda. He’s got a studio there, Étienne, and we just sort of piffled around really.

"We kind of made a plan based on not much happening. A sort of plan about making music without a lot in it, and without a lot of effort put into it. In a way it becomes a kind of innocent thing if you don’t try and overcomplicate it. It was a bit of a non-unionised experience," he says dryly. "We didn’t have to worry about the people, and the things, or the ramifications. I didn’t even know if it was ever going to come out or not, really. It seems to have found its legs, you know."

Though Dury downplays the work that went into the new album, he is vocal about the challenges that arose from the collaborative process. "It was good doing the album. I’m quite bossy, but whether I really compromised that much I’m not sure.

"It’s been a little bit tense afterwards, because everyone has an agenda and a perspective. That was quite strange. There were different views of what was going on, I think that’s probably what’s destabilised bands for centuries, and I’ve never known that experience because I’ve always been on my own and had the final say. So it was quite interesting really, having to be responsible for other people. I wouldn’t say it was easy, actually. It made me think twice about doing it again."

Previously, Dury’s solo albums have made him more famous in France than he was in the UK. The opening track on B.E.D, Tais Toi means ‘shut up’ in French. On the song Eurostars, Dury ruminates on a maudlin morning-after. The press release describes the record as "a concept album about a short and bittersweet affair in Paris." Despite not speaking the language ("Not a thing. Stone cold ignorant. But I quite like it, it makes it more fun," Dury chuckles) his laconic vocal delivery and generally mysterious air have drawn comparisons to Serge Gainsbourg, with some even labelling him the 'English Serge'.

Dury seems sceptical of such flattery. "I made [Prince of Tears] without knowing how successful the album would be. Especially with my own albums, you know, quality control is always there… maybe there’s an attention on me now, so… I think you should always make good things. Maybe you just progressively do until you’re bad again! I think it comes in cycles, doesn’t it?

"You think you’re on top of your game, then you start wearing bad clothes and making terrible choices. I don’t think I’m quite there, but I’m probably quite close. You have to have enough success to alleviate your perspective, that’s what happens, doesn’t it? When you start wearing white plimsoles, your perspective’s been robbed somehow… it happens to every single one of them."

He pauses. "Not so much with Bowie or someone… although it did happen to him, I mean he was pretty massive and did an enormous amount of coke. I’m not surprised. He definitely came back! With a control of what sounds good. That’s such a rarity."

One of Dury’s hallmarks is his language (both the poetic and the profane). When asked whether he spends time crafting his lyrics, or whether he delivers them off the cuff, he says: "I write a lot of off-the-cuff stuff, Burroughs stream of consciousness style stuff. It’s quite a painful process. The process of writing lyrics is very quick, but the editing takes a long time. And I have to have a sort of narrative thread that’s justified to me, so that’s quite hard. The art of it is only brilliantly achieved when you don’t have to think about it so much. Like most things, whether you’re a potter or a golfer, or whatever."

Along with Dury’s distinctive turn of phrase, another similarity between Prince of Tears and B.E.D is the emotive undercurrent, a mood of slight melancholy and dissatisfaction. "I think I literally just print my mood as I’m experiencing it without any real filter," Dury muses. "When I made Prince of Tears, I was in total meltdown. Absolute pain. And I was a bit more… 'skippy' by the time we made this album. But yeah, it was another tier, another stage of complication."

He continues: "I think that’s why maybe things like that album work, because there’s a real person opening themselves up. Only when you put a bit of yourself in there does it feel like it means anything. And I think that’s across the board with all music, even genres that I wouldn’t appreciate. Ed Sheeran. That’s not for me, but he probably means it, you know what I mean?"

The more you converse with Baxter Dury, the more obviously removed he seems from the Prince of Tears character. Did he ever consider using a stage name, in part to discourage comparisons to his father, the late Ian Dury of The Blockheads fame? He chuckles. "You know what, when I signed to Rough Trade, quite a long time ago, I remember when they signed me I went 'Yeah, I’ve had a brilliant idea, I want to call myself BAXTA,'" he says, drawing out the 'A'. "BAXTA with an A, like a sort of rapper. I was quickly told that was fucking ridiculous," he laughs.

On Prince of Tears, and again – though perhaps to a lesser extent – on B.E.D, Dury crafts a character who is at once both funny and fragile, weighed down by bravado and broken dreams. Does he ever worry that the line between his self and stage persona will become too blurred? "Oh totally, and I get confused by them as well. Some of these things are created to launder what you feel anyway, some extreme character, you know, and these things are vehicles that say angry or bitter or unacceptable things – it all gets confused, definitely.

"I’m not trying to head a movement. I’ve only done it because it’s the nearest thing that kind of stimulates my interest. I’m a bloke who found himself on his own, and I was never really on my own that much, so that’s really why I was drawn to this subject matter. There’s a sort of egocentric vaccuum about it. I’m protective of not being some arsehole, I don’t want to be that, but I also want to talk about the fact that, you know, all men are."

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B.E.D is out now via Heavenly Recordings
Baxter Dury plays SWG3 TV Studio, Glasgow, 7 Nov