Some moments in life are so wonderfully off kilter and off the cuff that you cannot help but smile at the situation they surround. Tea in hand at the Everyman Theatre, tape recorder ready and a barrage of thoughts on how to talk to a man who has made the art of the interview a joy to behold in modern times, Peter Gabriel’s seminal solo song Games Without Frontiers comes over the building’s P.A. Knowing that Mike Neary is a huge fan of early Genesis and knowing that he is listening to the intelligently written lyrics with the same appreciation and thought that he prides himself upon when listening to any of the major interviews he conducts for Gemma Aldcroft’s and Karen Podesta’s hugely well produced Little Atoms company in St. George’s Hall, puts me at ease. After all it can be a daunting task interviewing somebody who in a media driven society stands aloft and above 99 percent of interviewers concerned.
Mike Neary can not only cause Lord Heseltine to pause and reflect but he plays piano for Ian Prowse’s Amsterdam and is a genuine raconteur with many a genuine story to impart. Catching up with Mr. Neary before he takes to the piano stool again accompanying the returning talent of Jamie Hampson at Palm Sugar in Liverpool, you cannot help be struck by the Everyman Theatre and the man’s own contribution to the theatre’s triumphant return as a 21st Century icon but to theatre and music in Liverpool. Quite a feat for the Bootle born man.
We’re here sat in the Everyman Theatre, which you always seem to enjoy coming to.
Mike: “I love it and it’s to me, it’s the people you can’t replace not the bricks and mortar. I’m completely behind the place, it’s very different to the old building but then it would be; you’d want it to be, you’d expect it to be. The stage and the auditorium were just about o.k., it was an old building and it was crumbling. So as far as I’m concerned it’s people you can’t replace, not bricks and mortar. It was a lovely building, full of character but it was an old building, it was faltering just technically, some of the resources did not work backstage it was crumbling. Now here we have a brilliant, new modern theatre but the same people come to it and do the same things and we’re still on the same ground.”
I know you love the theatre but reading through your biography, I can’t believe that you have done so much; I know you have but you have got to be one of those people who just can’t sit still.
Mike: “Unfortunately I do! When I was very young, a guy ran a band that I was in and he said I should specialise as you’ll just look like someone who doesn’t know what to do – a Jack of all trades. There was a play on at the Chester Gateway which was my first big Equity contract which I really wanted to be in. The person who wrote and directed it Jeremy Raison, who at the time, was the Artistic Director of the theatre and brilliant – was one of the hottest directors in the country and I really wanted to work with him and the involved playing bass, why should I do myself out of a job by saying I’m just a piano player when I could play the songs and speak the lines – you have to be able to do more these days because there’s less work around. So all the things I do, I do less of but fortunately I’m able to do all three of them.”
Which do you prefer?
Mike: “All of them – depends on what I’m doing at the time! Honestly, I’m doing the last day of the festival on keyboards with Amsterdam, I know in that moment, that will be the thing that I’ll love most in the world but give me a little role in King Lear then that will be it. It’s whatever I’m doing at the time.”
You bring such a different dynamic to each different thing, I think that’s what interests me about you as a person, as a performer and who does, if I’m honest, one of the finest interviewers around. Your knowledge and research that I know you have to work upon is astounding.
Mike: “One of the best periods of my life was when I went to college for three years I was at what is now Liverpool Hope University and I did English and Drama and I lived on site even though I’m from Liverpool. I used to live on Taggart Avenue in Childwall and I was just so happy immersing myself in research. I think where a live interview is concerned, mentioning no names but some people at the top of the business, you still see them with clipboard files next to them. If people are going to pay good money to go to an interview, they need to see something that is live and happening in the moment in the same way that a play would happen on stage or the same dynamic you would get from a live band. To be constantly glancing down at notes that you’ve prepared, then it’s not a spontaneous conversation so the thing that I do which is the only way to do it really, I have about six times more material than I can possibly use and then you know wherever the guest goes, you can go with them and also if they feel that you have really – you remember Lynda La Plante’s remark – if they know that you have spent months and months checking the facts and really trying to get inside their head but inside their body of work then that ultimately frees them up and the audience gets a better experience, the interviewee performs better as they feel happy and secure.”
The Lynda La Plante interview – if you look back at some of the old television interviews they are almost sycophantic in a way, no disrespect to them, they were almost too chummy. Your style – there was a fine line between admiration and wanting to get to the point.
Mike: “With Lynda, of course I watched her in other interviews and she’s amazingly flamboyant and highly amusing. All I could think of though was that this woman has sat in a cell with a man who had decapitated his own wife – what is in her, her spirit or her mind, what is that person and how do you unlock that person? I’m not prone to bigging myself up but she did say I was the finest interviewer she’d ever met in her entire career! That is one of the most wonderful things that’s ever been said to me in my entire life. As far as I’m concerned she’s the crown queen of research. That was such a motivational factor, how can you possibly sit next to someone who has won international awards for their research and not then do the research yourself?”
It was a joy to watch because unlike some interviewers you do get beneath their skin, you really did know about Lynda La Plant. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone prise out so much information about the Prison Service or anything like that without actually speaking to a serving prison officer.
Mike: “All the knowledge was within her, she’s a fiercely intelligent woman, you have to be, to have done the amount of acting that she’s done, she was regular member of the Playhouse Company in the 1960s, she’s also worked at the R.S.C. and at the National Theatre, she must have some brains to cut it at that level. I think it’s no understatement that she changed the face of British television, so if anything it was an advantage for me as she had this huge wealth of knowledge which I just had to unlock. I had to make her feel that she didn’t have to be private or secretive which is what she does in her television plays; it’s all about unlocking a particular character.”
I found the Lynda La Plante absolutely fascinating I really did because I’m the son of a prison officer. You’ve done ten of these Little Atoms interviews now and I’m not going to ask who’s your favourite but there must be a particular stand-out moment out of them?
Peter Serasinowicz throwing his lips on me in front of 500 people would be one and I also played piano with him which was lovely because I’m a big fan of his. You can contain that professionally but to actually perform with him, I got a big buzz out of that and also Paul McGann talking about Withnail and I for more than 20 minutes, I’d never seen him do that before. I admired Paul Du Nouyer hugely and he’s another person that you know through his writings but to have that unlocked in front of an audience was a big one. Big stand-out moments, certainly Lynda La Plante but also Steven Graham with his level of emotion. At one point he was in tears and then he had everyone laughing hysterically and that for the audience in those two and a half hours, they probably did get to see the whole kaleidoscope of his emotions that night. So I’m proud to have done what I did to bring all that out of him for the audience. I have to add reading a letter by Martin Scorcese was a real career high, that coming through my mailbox and bringing on the European Champions League cup with Jamie Carragher on stage at St. George’s Hall with Brendan Rodgers sat in the front row!”
Martin Scorcese! That’s really cool, that’s an I’m not worthy moment! If Little Atoms fantastic producers who do a very superb job, Gemma and Karen could arrange it, who would you like to interview?
Mike: Who would be my ideal guest – Elvis Costello or Paul McCartney. Costello because I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone interviewed who has ever used so much interesting language. We all know him through his music and obviously 50% of that is his music but that man’s command of the English language is up there with any novelist or poet he speaks in such rich metaphors that I think just to put that in front of an audience for a few hours would be intriguing. You could ask him about an Easter egg and he’d make it sound like the most incredible thing ever. McCartney – he is just the biggest and greatest there is and this is his home town. I think the problem with McCartney is that people think he says the same things over and over again but he gets asked the same questions over and over again. I’d like to do an interview with him where you take it as red that you know all the big stories and all the big myths and without being intrusive and you are never going to penetrate his privacy but you just get him to talk in a way that audiences might not have heard him speak before. I’ve met him and he’s a very interesting person to speak to and don’t forget, Mike his brother was one of our guests as well and again I’d have to say that Mike has like Costello, a wonderful grasp of language. He’s got a really surreal brain and he’s a witty man but he’s also a very passionate man and I could listen to him for hours and he’s such a gentleman to talk to and an extremely talented individual in his own right. Anyone who thinks his fame was a spin-off from his brother is rubbish.”
Funny you should say that, a few weeks ago I saw a programme with him on and it just after his band The Scaffold split up and he’d recorded a solo album and I thought he was an exceptionally handsome man, why didn’t he go into the world of acting or something more?
Mike: “I know what you mean, he had a Christmas number one but a lot of those people from the 1960s – Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller – all of whom were in his circle of friends, I think he was a part of that movement but the media being what it was and is, people were too quick to make the sibling connection, he’s an artist in his own right.”
I know that I’ve been thrilled watching you play piano with Ian Prowse and Amsterdam but this Sunday, you’re playing with Jamie Hampson as part of Little Atoms presents… down at Palm Sugar in Liverpool One.
Mike: “Jamie and I go back a long way because I was Musical Director on a hugely successful show at the Liverpool Empire called Twopence Across The Mersey. I didn’t produce it so I’m not taking the credit for it! I was the M.D. and Jamie was the lead. We were talking about Peter Cook and Mike McCartney before, Jamie played a younger version of a character, the older version was played by Eleanor Bron who is absolutely one of my heroes. If I could pick five people who I admire the most in the world then Eleanor Bron would be in there so to work with her was just incredible to me. I used to drive her back to her digs every night and so I got to know her well really. Jamie did that show four times, I did it five times so we know each other very, very well and when we were doing the show together, we started gigging together. She’s been away for a number of years now but she’s back absolutely and she’s one to watch, she’s one of the most talented individuals you’ll ever meet and again she’s a fabulous vocalist and a great actress as well. She did Macbeth at the Royal Court; she was the best thing in it. I did a previous version of that the Cathedral and played Ross for a company five years earlier.”
We’re sat here on the anniversary of Liverpool being given the rights to the Capital of Culture. How do you think that Liverpool has changed in that time?
Mike: “It’s an ironic thing to say but there’s a completely new confidence. If we could have anymore! It’s a different type of confidence artistically; I think people take an interest in us, perhaps they knew us for a certain set of things that we did well and that we continue to do well for other strands of the arts and artistic outputs and that can only bode well.”
Would you like to recapture that moment of 2008 again?
Mike: “Well I wasn’t here I was working away! I was working at the Stafford Gatehouse and I missed the beginning with Ringo at St. George’s Hall. I was getting a live report down the ‘phone at midnight on New Year’s Eve. The other cities who have hosted it have never looked back. I think our duty now is to help Hull out in whatever way we can. I’ve not got time for those who are sneering and saying Hull is too tiny and whatever else.”
Hull deserves it, I’ve been there and it seems to be very much like Newcastle and Liverpool, it’s a seaport. Anywhere like that you can go and it has a vibrancy.”
Mike: “If it’s good enough for Philip Larkin so why not?”
Ian D. Hall