You first came to my attention several years ago when I found your song on a Q magazine summer compilation CD of the country’s most promising talent. The track was Hope, Faith & You which I found to be one of the most moving and beautiful songs I’d ever heard. The critics liked you a lot and HMV pushed you like crazy. I then acquired your debut album FRESH NEW LIFE which confirmed to me that you had a very special song writing and performance talent. This album remains one of my favourites of all time. So what the hell happened?

There is no easy or quick way to answer this question. It’s a long story. Some of the songs on FRESH NEW LIFE were written before I moved to London. Hope, Faith & You, Love Me Tonight, Keep It Calm and Let Me Inside were written as far back as 1995, when I was living in Glasgow. I was in another band at the time. We had signed to WEA on a development deal. We did a lot of demos in Glasgow and London and played mainly around Glasgow. We were a kind of pop/rock four-piece, not dissimilar to Toploader. To cut a long story short, I got restless. After a year nothing seemed to be happening, so I left the group and moved to London to go solo. It was a cold and heartless thing to do and I felt pretty awful about it because the guys in that band were my only real friends and we were all very close. I was ambitious and greedy, and like a blinkered horse; I pissed off to London chasing the big time. The guy who originally signed me moved to EMI and I went with him. He became managing director of the company, so basically I had a ‘licence to kill’ in terms of recording. There seemed to be no limit in how much time or money was spent. It was all a bit vague, and I was very naive with no idea what was expected of me. I had the top man on my side and nothing else seemed to matter.

Work on the album began almost immediately. Hope, Faith & You was a demo which was done in January 1996. I didn’t ever imagine it would end up on the album. I was working with Dave Meegan, whom I loved and trusted from the first minute I met him. He encouraged me to do whatever I wanted. He always left tapes running, and I was always writing something. Working in this way was great, but also had its disadvantages. FRESH NEW LIFE is very diverse in style because I did whatever came into my head. There was never any proper structure to it. I wasn’t experienced enough for that. At that time, I was only really playing acoustic guitar and piano and this accounts for the very mellow sound of the album. I also experimented a little bit with loops and techno stuff on songs like Comfort and Freefall. I wouldn’t do that now, but it was a learning experience.

I met Evan Jenkin and Matt Round through and audition process after placing an advert in Melody Maker. It was only then that the record started to take shape. I reckon Evan is one of the best drummers in the world. I played drums myself a bit on the album, but could not do what he could do. He can do the technical stuff, but chooses rather to play really cool grooves in songs instead of showing off. To this day, I’ve never played with anyone who hits the snare drum harder than he does. Matt could play anything you asked him to and he would give it style and depth. He could also read upside down what my left hand was doing on the piano and I was dead impressed by that! Recording that album through Spring and Summer of ‘96 was one of the greatest experiences of my life and I know the guys would agree. We all had such fond memories of that time. It was a dream coming true. The first sign of pressure from EMI came with the suggestion of a 5-track EP or sampler to introduce ‘Phil Campbell’ onto the market. I didn’t much like the decision because it felt a bit hasty but, as I came to discover, it didn’t matter what I thought. It was promoted through HMV and we did a tour, playing two HMV stores a day in different towns and then playing a gig at night. Basically, ‘my man’ at the company, although in a top position, was still under pressure to become successful. This put me under pressure too. I’m not afraid to say it but I was really stupid back then (I’m still a little slow on the uptake). I wish someone could have grabbed me by the shoulders and shook and said ‘Wake up!’ I had no idea what was going on and was afraid to show it. Everyone in London was so hard and I got into this thing of hiding my feelings because I reckoned that to show any emotion made me weak. I started taking drugs and drinking more. It helped me escape, but it never lasted long. I was chain-smoking cigarettes and not eating properly and was pale and generally unhealthy. I had this big voice beyond my years, but inside I was just a daft boy.