They were the nearly-men of the early 1990s, a Lancashire band tipped for stardom, courted by the majors and hailed as “ones to watch” alongside The Sundays and The Stone Roses. Their debut album Slinky earned five stars in Q magazine, they shared bills with Nirvana and Oasis, and for a moment it seemed the milltown brothers might ride the wave of Madchester and Britpop into the mainstream. But fate and industry machinations had other ideas.
Three decades on, their story of rise and stumble is told in Nigel Wood’s new biography And Jesus Danced (Twice), a book as much about resilience, loyalty and luck as it is about jangling guitars. At the same time, the band have regrouped to record Boogie Woogie, their sixth album, infused with reflection and hard-won optimism.
Here, guitarist Simon Nelson speaks about the highs, the heartbreaks and the curious privilege of still playing together.
Nigel Wood’s new book is gloriously titled And Jesus Danced (Twice). What did you think when you first heard that title? Were you surprised by the idea of your story being turned into a biography?
Nigel told us about using Jesus (aka William Jellett) as a reference in the title and it brought back some pretty good memories of gigs in the early days around central London: The Marquee, The Borderline etc. I suppose we had a few niggles of reservation that some people might misconstrue the reference as some kind of religious message, which it is not, but after a while we grew to like it. Having a biography written about the band seemed a bit weird at first: would anyone be interested in this obscure Lancastrian band from the late eighties and early nineties? However, like the title, after a while we got to quite like the idea… in fact, we got quite excited.
You’ve described the book as more than just a band biography: almost a reflection on life itself, touching on resilience and the strange role luck plays in our lives. How conscious were you of those bigger themes at the time, and how clearly do they come into focus now?
We’ve been recording and doing some gigs recently: with the original five and it has all fallen into place. I guess we are like a gang, a band of brothers with quite specific and unusual shared experiences which could easily and lazily be described as the highs and lows of the music business. But via that emotional rollercoaster, the group is exposed to a set of very unpredictable circumstances that require a very demanding management system for expectations; which in our case started out very high and ended up underground. Throw into this mix the input of others over whom the group of five have no control (press, record companies, public taste etc.), luck and pressure on our own judgement and decision-making then you have a heady mix of challenges and yes, when it all goes wrong it can test you, it can break you but it can make you resilient. We’re still playing together, better than ever in some ways, so you could say that we have been resilient as a collective. At the time though, especially when things go well, you just think you’re going to go from strength to strength.
What does Boogie Woogie represent for the band at this point in your journey? Did the process for supporting Nigel for the book influence the album?
The creative process which has resulted in Boogie Woogie was born out of a period of absence and an almost magnetic and predestined need to play together again – this actually started out in June 2023. We hadn’t really played together since the final sessions from the previous album, Stockholm, which dropped just before Covid. With Boogie Woogie, James our bass player who had produced Stockholm, had a vision of transforming our rehearsal space into a recording studio to engender the maximum effect of comfort and familiarity for us to perform what would largely be a live album with as few overdubs as possible. We used Groove Studios in Burnley, our normal rehearsal space, and asked owner Chris Lewis to engineer the sessions in August 2024. We’re really pleased with the results and feel that the recordings have captured the live spirit of the band. Clearly, with Nigel in the process of writing a book about the band at the same time, the prospect of being able to release a book and an album simultaneously became an attractive goal for us both. Nigel attended a number of the sessions.
The singles ‘Grab the Sun’ and ‘Bring It On’ seem to be underscored by a sense of reflection. How has your songwriting evolved over time, especially with the perspective of experience?
Although there are a couple of songs on Boogie Woogie where James and me have chipped in with the songwriting, Matthew continues to be the main contributor; certainly, from a lyric perspective. He responded in the following way to this question: ‘When I first started to think about themes I imagined an album written about one man’s journey through the open spaces of some country and he’s trying to figure out where he belongs. Particularly at our stage in life, he’s asking “are we comfortable where we are or are we still searching?” I guess we don’t and never should stop being inquisitive about life’s journey and its destination. So yes, the themes are reflective but also forward-looking: someone told me that the fifties are like entering ‘sniper’s alley’… you could be picked off at any point: as the body’s and mind’s defence systems, which hitherto have seemed impregnable, now suddenly become vulnerable… definitely a corner turned on our individual powers and faculties. However, there’s still much to learn and achieve and the glue that holds you together is family and friends… this is where the milltown brothers come in: we’re still the same five playing again and still a tight group of friends.’
Steve Lamacq spotted you at your fifth gig. Were you that tight already or did Lamacq have beer goggles on that night?
I think we were pretty tight as a live band from the start. Matthew, Nian and James had been in their school band The Spire for a number of years, I’d been playing with the Word Association in London (Matthew had also played with us in the South of France) and Barney has always the most talented and adaptable musician of all of us – so the ingredients were good from the beginning. On that particular night, I do remember us channelling the frustration of hiring a van, driving down from Manchester and playing in front of only one man and his dog into what was a pretty fierce performance… that man just so happened to be Steve, thankfully.
Do you remember the moment when the rollercoaster first tipped, when Slinky hit and it felt like you were flying? Or were you always half-waiting for the brakes to fail?
I think Matthew and the other lads felt pretty confident that it was going to happen: particularly when we started playing in London in late 1988; culminating with us being signed by EMI Music in December. Even back then we were being tipped in some press circles as ‘next big things’ and ‘ones to watch’, along with the likes of The Sundays. Personally, I was always very hopeful but worried that it all might just fall apart… my band the Word Association had based itself in London for a year (86/87) and gigged hard in an attempt to get a record deal but had faced rejection and disappointment (must say though that experiences with that band in other locations namely playing in Paris and the Languedoc coastal resorts were very different). Even me the pessimist never saw coming the crushing debacle around ‘Here I Stand’ … that was bad.
Yes, ‘Here I Stand’ being knocked off a potential Top of the Pops slot due to Gallup’s “regional weighting” reads now like a cruel twist of fate. How did it feel at the time? Was it a galvanising injustice or just another gut punch?
It was a cruel twist of fate and one which may have changed the career trajectory of the band. We mid-weeked in a decent top forty spot and were going to do Top of Pops; an appearance on which back then pretty much guaranteed a chart boost of 15-20 places. That accompanied by us being on tour, having A-list rotation on Radio One and a major record company behind us could have really propelled us forward. As it was, we were weighted back to 48 (having sold proportionally too many in the North West) and never managed to regain ground with the song finally peaking at the hangman’s number: 41. Matthew added here that he was listening to the Top 40 run down in the car and it got to number 5 before he realised that ‘Here I Stand’ was not going to appear… no safety net: brutal.
There was a sense of injustice and it did spark a sense of ‘fuck em all, we’re going to be who we are whatever happens’ but it was a massive blow. The day after the 48-chart position was announced I remember having to drive up to Manchester airport for a press shoot… we should dig out the photos and see how much our faces betray our sense of concern and disappointment.
In the early ‘90s, the term “baggy” was being flung around like confetti. You never quite fitted that label, did you? Did that miscategorisation help or hinder?
That’s a really good question. I think it helped and hindered. Helped insofar as the focus of London-based major record labels fell upon Manchester and the North West and being from that area obviously we could have benefitted. Hindered also because our music never really totally sat comfortably with that baggy break-beat style… granted our 1990 ‘Seems to Me’ does harness some of the Madchester zeitgeist and Barney’s Hammond and my jingle-jangle were very much cousins of that sixties inspired psychedelia but the songwriting and kernel of the band’s sound was more grounded in The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Dylan, The Byrds, Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, REM and not just a smidge of late 1970s New Wave.
Do you ever reflect on the bizarre twist of fate that had you on the bill with Nirvana the night before Nevermind dropped? Was there a sense of something seismic on the horizon or just another American gig?
We’d just performed probably our best ever gig, certainly in the US, as part of the WFNX 8th Birthday party festival. After the gig or next day, can’t remember, somebody said you have to watch a band playing at the Axis Nightclub. So, a few of the band, I think it was me, Nian and Barney (I also remember The Smiths’ Mike Joyce being with us, which for me, was very cool) went along. Personally, I didn’t really get Nirvana based on that particular performance, in that club, on that night. It was hot, very loud and there was great energy – for me it was like a cross between Black Sabbath and the Sex Pistols but not in the way I’d have wanted… however, you could not deny that the audience loved them and that there was something bigger than the gig itself – this was particularly noticeable as we waited for the others outside the venue after the show and you listened to and watched the excitement of the fans who, by the way just started to look different – like heavy metallers and stoners from the seventies – something was definitely changing and it had passed us by. When I heard Nevermind I instantly understood what all the fuss was about and that fairy dust of melodic Beatlesque songwriting which, for me hadn’t been apparent in the live set, was very much in evidence and I loved it.
Oasis supported you less than a year before Definitely Maybe came out. At the time, did you have a sense of the juggernaut they were about to become, and was there any part of you that thought, “That should’ve been us”?
Yes, at Manchester University sometime in October 1993. On the night, again like my experience of watching Nirvana, I didn’t get it. The band seemed to be going back, at least in its presentation, to a Stone Roses pre-Madchester mix of Beatles and Stones melody/vibes and menace and for me their best song was a cover of ‘I Am the Walrus.’ I remember briefly chatting to Noel but Liam seemed a bit aloof. Jonathan Bibby who looks after our socials was at the gig. He has subsequently said that after he’d watched Oasis support us he’d reflected on our future career path and succinctly concluded: ‘Game Over’.
In that autumn 1993 to summer 1994, Oasis seemed to be among a bunch of bands that were gaining attention or rediscovering success while our career was floundering: Ocean Colour Scene, Blur, Oasis, The Verve, Pulp… I think we’d played with most of them and they were exploding. I didn’t sense Oasis as a coming juggernaut just part of a scene that we were evidently not part of: we would miss out on BritPop by 12 months… nasty for us. It was a difficult time; must be like being let go from a football club as a player with no safety net. We got over it… eventually; although there are inevitable and constant reminders of what our peers enjoyed and we did not… I was on the train yesterday and the carriage was full of punters top to toe in Oasis merch. That being said, I respect and admire any guitar band that commands that kind of success because we know how hard it is the break through and maintain any meaningfulness.
A&M shelved you for two years at the exact moment you were ready to sprint. Looking back, was that the moment the spell was broken?
Yes, I think our relationship with A&M’s A&R and corporate management was disintegrating in the period between the albums. For us, constantly experiencing rejection of our demos, we did lose confidence, direction and a sense of creativity and freedom in the songwriting and the mish-mash of Valve (our second album) is the unfortunate result… that having been said, ‘Cool Breeze’ is ace and is still a mainstay of the set.
When the band walked away from A&M, what was that period like? Did you step away from music completely, or did it linger in the background, waiting for the right time to resurface?
We lingered painfully on until about late 1995 in various line-ups, name changes and guises but the nadir must have been a performance under the name of the Milltown Brothers at Canterbury University with a father and son combo on bass and drums, me and Matthew… dreadful, I was driving and had to endure the humiliation but Matthew got pissed and probably remembers the night a bit differently.
You have a deft ear for melody and structure. Were there particular artists, albums, or scenes growing up in Colne that gave you your musical compass?
Me and Matthew are 5 years apart and as such I think some of the early influences on our musical tastes may have been different. I was very much into New Wave and loved The Undertones, The Stranglers, Television, The Clash and The Pretenders among others whereas there might have been a bit of Heavy Metal in Matthew’s early musical armoury – I know he really liked The Scorpions. I think we both really found common ground in the mid-eighties when I was playing with The Word Association and Matthew was starting with James and Nian in The Spire. I was at Nottingham University in my final year in late 1985 and Matthew came down to stay – we went to Rock City and saw REM and the Waterboys in the same week – I think this kind of happenstance was pivotal in guiding the pathway for the songwriting. Added to this, Matthew’s longstanding love of Dylan and Neil Young and my admiration of the Smiths (mainly Johnny Marr, if I’m honest) and the Pretenders.
You’re part of that great northern lineage of indie outsiders. Do you feel a kinship with bands like The Chameleons and James, or were you always a band apart?
I like and admire both bands but wouldn’t say we have a particular kinship. We played a couple of times with James (Manchester and Lausanne) – and who doesn’t like Sit Down? Maybe coming from the Burnley area and Lancaster – collectively, there may be a sense of being outsiders, outliers and of being slightly uprooted (always having to travel to Manchester or London to get heard). Like Burnley FC in the Premier League… small town… pitted against the giants… plucky and all the rest of it. Maybe.
And finally, if you had two minutes to tell the world why the milltown brothers still matter, what would you say?
Well, the Milltown Brothers matter to us and if anyone else appreciates our music too then we are delighted and grateful but we enjoy doing it anyway. I guess it matters because among our small but dedicated fanbase, watching the band and listening to our music revives memories, it can perhaps feed into a comforting remembrance of youthfulness and better times and what’s wrong with that? I was watching an interview with Damon Albarn on the BBC about the new tour and album by Gorillaz the other day. The interviewer was gently turning his questions towards Oasis’s current mega successful comeback and Damon commented that ‘nostalgia is a powerful drug’. He’s right but maybe he should have added that some drugs are really good for you and maybe the likes of Blur and Oasis are not the only pharmacists still around… they may well be the Boots while us and others are the local independent corner store.
Also, this time around, Boogie Woogie was recorded with relatively few overdubs and we’re pleased that it gives a pretty authentic representation of how the band plays live.
Further information
milltown brothers – Boogie Woogie
AND JESUS DANCED (TWICE): The true story of the Milltown Brothers by Nigel Wood
