MOJO WORKING
OBSERVERS OF Buzzcocks coiffures took note in February: singer and guitarist Steve Diggle had re-thought his rug with a number one crop. “I had a bit of a scooter accident in Highgate,” he tells MOJO, “I scraped my head and I had to have a bit shaved, so I said, Shave it all off!” Aware of the visual metaphor, he goes on: “It symbolises a new start, a new way of looking at things.”
The fresh start, he says, will pertain to the as-yet un-recorded eleventh Buzzcocks LP, his second since he took sole charge of the venerable Manc-punk institution after Pete Shelley’s death in December 2018. “The record’s written and rehearsed,” he goes on. “We want to record it for about June or July.”
The group – Diggle, bassist Chris Remmington and drummer Danny Farrant – learned the songs at Storm rehearsal rooms on London’s Holloway Road. Plans are afoot to decamp to producer Laurence Loveless’s studio in the north of the capital. “It’s on an industrial estate in Tottenham,” says Diggle. “There’s a realism to it, you feel like The Velvet Underground in New York!”
The studio also boasts a desk built by German production legend Conny Plank which, says Diggle, was used by Eno, Bowie and Bob Marley. Guitarist Mani Perazzoli may also join for the sessions. “I think [2022 LP] Sonics In The Soul was like a bridge album,” says Diggle, “where we had all the ingredients you know about Buzzcocks, but it moved on with little twists and turns. Hopefully with his one, we can turn it upside down. You can’t recreate the past, but you can create the future.”
Songs will include Heavy Street, which Diggle calls “a great heavy funk dub track… about having your phone nicked and being stabbed in the street,” while Queen Of The Scene concerns the personality-disordering effects of modern celebrity and media overload. “There’s a big power ballad as well,” says Diggle, ”a story about a girl called The Greatest Of Them All. Imagine if the Small Faces had a st
