Bobby Gillespie names the greatest album of all time: “It’s a great mix of stuff”
When Bobby Gillespie first formed Primal Scream in 1982, it looked like a much different outfit from what they ended up becoming. While they started life as an indie rock outfit, their biggest album, Screamadelica, combined elements of rock, psychedelia, and dance to create one of the trippy, most unique, and most exciting albums of its time. The record is a testament to Gillespie’s innovative approach to music.
To this day, the band is renowned for its pioneering approach to music. What are sonic boundaries? They never mattered to Primal Scream, who were always excited about embracing different styles of music, no matter how unconventional they might appear at first. In doing so, they created indie dance and music that kept an independent spirit but gave people something to move to.
Songs like ‘Movin on Up’ and ‘Loaded’ have completely stood the test of time and have proven themselves to be timeless. Hearing the words, “Just what is it you want to do?” at a festival is enough to get punters running as close to the speakers as possible and moving their feet. It’s a true testament to the bands and Gillespie’s musical ability.
It’s always interesting to see musicians’ influences, as they often give us a better understanding of how they arrived at the sound that they did. In Bobby Gillespie’s case, it’s less that his favourite album represented the sound that he would go on to make but the mindset he adopted when creating that sound.
When asked what he thought was the greatest album of all time, his mind immediately went to one of Thin Lizzy’s most loved records. “Jailbreak by Thin Lizzy. It’s half hard rock and half ballads. Then you’ve got ‘The Cowboy Son’ which is half ballad, half rock,” he said, “It’s a great mix of stuff.”
The album clearly showed Gillespie what could be achieved when musicians were open to not being one-dimensional with their music. Thin Lizzy could have easily gone down the ballad or hard rock route and still found success, but they were keen on merging the two to create something unique. Gillespie also realised how hard it can be to integrate different ideas if you’ve already done it.
He said, “Phil Lynott tried to replicate that on every Lizzy album after and it was really hard, because it’d come so naturally. Phil brought a poetic, romantic sensibility to rock. That’s why people loved and still love him.”
While Primal Scream was happy to merge music styles, they never tried the same idea twice, and this is likely something else that Gillespie learned from listening to Thin Lizzy. Finally, and most importantly, he will have learnt that before any other aspect of music, people should be able to have fun when listening to what you make.
“That record hit me at just the right time,” Gillespie recalled, “I was fifteen and The Boys Are Back In Town was fucking everywhere.”
