The album was taking ages, and I couldn’t deal with it. Impatience and frustration were eating away at me. The drugs dredged up all these horrible feelings of guilt and remorse over leaving my friends in Glasgow. I was out of touch with my family and was involved in an intense and tempestuous relationship. I was paranoid all the time and when the main bulk of the recording work was done, I was left with too much time on my hands, and money. Cocaine, weed, ecstasy, acid, speed, booze - anything I could get…I would devour drugs like I wanted to die. It’s a miracle that I didn’t. EMI made an EPK video package for promotional purposes. I hated every minute of it. It was a lonely and humiliating experience. Without my consent, some tracks were stripped down to just piano-vocal or guitar-vocal, to give an ‘organic’ feel, and I was filmed singing them. The band weren’t allowed to come to these things, so I felt like I was on my own. I had stupidly asked my A&R guy’s brother to manage me and I never felt at ease around him. The point is that I couldn’t trust him or anyone else. The good thing that the EPK did achieve was a support tour with Reef. I had played with them a couple of times before at a venue called The Fixx in Glasgow with my old band and I reckon that’s why I got the tour. I couldn’t believe it! It was the best thing that could have happened. Me and the guys thought they were the coolest band on Earth. Every night they would open with Place Your Hands and the crowd would go nuts. It was an education watching them and I learned so much about what it takes to be a great rock band. They also had this electricity on stage that was almost magical. I was attracted to this and wanted it for our group.

I was sick of being a solo artist. I couldn’t justify it in my head, because so much of what I enjoyed about what I did was dependent on Matt and Evan. We were slightly wary of each other. There was a bit of paranoia due to drugs and a shared sense of bemusement about the pace at which things were going. On the first night of the tour at Exeter University, I declared from the stage that we were called White Buffalo. It was a great gig, as I recall. However, as noble idea as this was, it was completely unrealistic. EMI had spent thousands of pounds promoting me as a solo artist; a kind of male version of Alanis Morissette; which was all very well, but I didn’t want that. The depressing thing was that now I had actually figured out what I did want, there was no chance of it happening. I had absolutely no control over my own career. By Spring ‘97, the album was still not ready.

With hindsight, I can see that there wasn’t a hit single on the album, nor was I willing to play the part of a ‘Star’. So EMI were faced with the dilemma of what to do. Nobody at the company was particularly forthcoming with good creative ideas. I hated everything that they suggested and I didn’t even know what I wanted myself. The company was also going through massive internal restructuring and nobody’s job was safe. They were restyling themselves as a ‘Pop’ label and were getting rid of ‘dead wood’. I hated going to the EMI offices at this stage. I began to feel like I was a liability - that all this money had been spent and there was nothing to show for it. After a couple of months, things changed drastically. Suddenly, the guy who signed me said he was leaving and asked me to go with him.

By this time things in my personal life had changed also. I had a vivid experience of God, and knew that I had to change things in my life. After many years of doubting, I just had complete and utter faith in Jesus Christ. For the first time in my life, I just knew he was ‘The Man’, and I had to follow his example for my life. I felt like I had an inner strength which helped to deal with everything in a way I found completely impossible before. When asked to go with my A&R man to a new company, I said no. I saw it as a chance to get away from him. He was a Svengali figure and had very definite ideas about my career and by now we weren’t seeing eye-to-eye. I sacked my manager on the same day. I knew I was doing the right thing, but I didn’t really have any idea how to deal with EMI on my own. The new head of A&R came in and dropped loads of bands. To his credit, he said he liked what I was doing, but hated the whole White Buffalo idea. I stupidly pressed the point but he said that the album would not be released under that name. It was Phil Campbell or nothing. I had to concede.

They released Keep It Calm and put the band out on tour with Mike Scott. We did a few more promotional activities, but it definitely felt like things were winding down at EMI. Hardly anyone at the company came to see us play. The album was released some time in the autumn, and we did The Jools Holland Show. That felt good, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy our new ‘friend’ at EMI. A couple of months after the album’s release in December’97, just two weeks before Christmas, I was dropped from the EMI roster. The company was only exercising its contractual obligation to release one single and one album. They did not have to do any promotion. It sucks, but that’s what happened.