OVER 40 YEARS SINCE HAIRCUT 100’S DEBUT SINGLE, FAVOURITE SHIRTS (BOY MEETS GIRL), HELPED MAKE HIM A STAR, THE PERENNIALLY YOUNG SINGER-SONGWRITER GEARS UP TO HIT THE ROAD ONCE MORE
WYNDHAM WALLACE
These are particularly busy times for Nick Heyward, one of the Nicest Men In Pop™. Last year, after the 40th anniversary reissue of Haircut 100’s debut album Pelican West, the band undertook a UK tour – something he’d never have predicted after their painful separation – and he’s currently writing new songs for both them and a set of solo English dates, beginning mid-October. He’s in good spirits, too, sprightly as ever in scholarly spectacles, his hair as immaculate as the smile frequently playing across his lips.
He’s come a long way, of course, since his days as a teenage pin-up. Nowadays, the man who provoked some of the filthiest fan mail documented in Judy and Fred Vermorel’s notorious oral history Starlust – though he was once described disparagingly by Echo And The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch as “the bloke they’d take home to mum” – is considered alongside the likes of Terry Hall, Edwyn Collins, Paddy McAloon and Roddy Frame, as one of Britain’s finest songwriters. Nonetheless, he is still receiving saucy messages. “I had someone on Patreon,” Nick grins awkwardly, “who said, ‘I’m sorry about this, but I’m a perv.’ There’s a level of self awareness going on there. I said, ‘Well, I appreciate that.’”
Pelican West was a fantastic debut but, despite its recent reissue, it feels like it’s still not given its due. Do you feel it’s an underrated album?
Erm, maybe. I only talk to people that rate it, really, so I don’t know, but it definitely underachieved. I mean, it still sounds fresh. That was why when we got back together a few years ago and when the reissue... Wait. Was it a few years ago or last year? [It was February 2023 – Reissues Ed] Wow. Anyway, it’s a good body of work. Does it get underrated? Yes, but thankfully it’s not overrated, which is a godsend. People that discover the album go, ‘Well, I never thought it was like this!’
The band first reunited in 2004, with another show in 2011, but even in 2017 you told Classic Pop, “When we get together now it works onstage absolutely brilliantly, but the personalities offstage – nobody gets on. A very odd bunch of chaps.” Why was the time at last right for a tour?
Because it happened organically. The people that were up for doing it just so happened to be Les [Nemes], G
