Marty Willson-Piper

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The Rickenbacker Gallery

Hey Everyone!

We’ve opened a Rickenbacker gallery where Rickenbacker lovers can post pictures of their guitars. The iconic design and unique sounds make this one of the most fascinating electric guitars ever made. It that has been immortalized in the sixties by The Beatles, The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn, The Who’s Pete Townshend, Creedence Clearwater’s John Fogerty and Paul Kantner from Jefferson Airplane. In the seventies, prog met punk and it was common to see Bruce Foxton of The Jam and Mike Rutherford of Genesis making sense of the Rickenbacker bass although I can’t imagine seeing Paul Weller with a Rickenbacker double neck. There was also Geddy Lee from Rush, Chris Squire from Yes and in early incarnations of the band Peter Banks, later of Flash, played a Rickenbacker. In the eighties, we had three members of The Smithereens and Peter Buck of REM, Susannah Hoffs from The Bangles and of course Lemmy. I could probably just continue with a very long list of important Rickenbacker players but the idea is to set up a gallery for you to post your proud Rickenbacker pictures. Send your pics to olivia@martywillson-piper.com and we will post them here:

May News

We are in Cornwall as May arrives and another large-numbered birthday looms (May 7th). We are working on the instrumental Atlantium album’s release and considering the financing for the second MOAT album’s recording (all songs written). In the wake of the ongoing PledgeMusic scenario and the attempts to recover and honour the outstanding monies owed to all the artists and the music that the pledgers contributed to, we are left patiently wondering what the outcome will be as we hope for a sign that this can be resolved positively so we can move on.

Although the MOAT album wouldn’t be released until next year, at some point we have to decide on a crowdfunding platform but recording has to commence so at the end of a campaign, it’s ready to go. These days records are often recorded over longer periods as you try to raise money, try to match up schedules with your collaborators and try to survive in a world where the price of two coffees, a muffin and a croissant would buy you an artist’s latest CD but the value of one seems to seriously outweigh the value of the other. As Mark and the Chameleons said, Strange Times.

Also trying to figure out how Olivia and I can play more shows in the world as we enjoy the synergy of violin and 12 string and the reinterpretation of songs from all the albums that I have been involved in. There is of course the album version of us that Olivia and I need to make together – old songs, new songs and songs yet unrealized.

One wonders if time itself needs to stand still in order to complete all these projects, plus, there’s more collaborations on the horizon that I will share with you as they become real.

In the meantime another amazing review came through, this time for the RSD release of Hanging Out In Heaven.

There are still some copies available at Schoolkids Records online store – if you’re quick.

Marty Willson-Piper Hanging Out In Heaven 2019

Record Store Day 2019: HANGING OUT IN HEAVEN

Marty Willson-Piper Hanging Out In Heaven Record Store Day 2019

Hey All,

I’m very happy to announce that on Record Store Day 2019 and after nearly two decades of floating in digital space, I finally see the vinyl release of Hanging Out In Heaven. It will be a blue-tinged double record, set with two extra tracks – Queen In Her Jeans and Dressed Up As You. These additional songs were recorded in London around the same time and were always intended for the vinyl version.

Hanging Out In Heaven began in LA with Shep Lonsdale, engineer on Starfish and GAF, helping me record some songs at his home studio. Shep was also a drummer and played on half the record. I’d written some songs since the release of Spirit Level in 1992 but I’d become very busy in the period between Spirit Level and Hanging Out In Heaven, touring and making records with All About Eve in England. The Priest=Aura US tour had been cancelled due to disappointing sales in relation to the previous two releases so I had plenty of time for All About Eve.

Marty Willson-PiperI was living in Sweden at the time and during a break recording for HOIH continued in the town of Gävle with Andreas Ahlenius (After Everything Now This and A Box Of Birds were recorded at Andreas’ Blue Room studios). HOIH was somehow suspended in mid-air after leaving LA and I had some new songs that I wanted to add to the album. I had worked with Andreas as my engineer when I had produced an album for Swedish artist Håkan Ahlström in 1997. Christer Björklund from the Håkan Ahlström project stepped in for the remaining drum tracks for the new songs. I must add that encouragement to finish the project came from Robert Rankin Walker at Heyday Records. After hearing the LA sessions he supported me in adding the new tracks and mixing the record to completion.

Marty Willson-PiperThe album opened with fan fave Forget The Radio and featured many songs that have appeared in the live set over the years – the lilting You Bring Your Love To Me and an early version of I Don’t Think So, recorded live in the studio. It also contains Sanctuary, a song that everyone likes but is hard to play live without a band plus playfully suicidal After Eight. Wreck has featured live as an a capella sea shanty, more often played in seaside towns and Wondering featured desert dweller Patti Hood on her century-old harp. Then there’s Andreas’ creaking foot pedals on the piano for All That Remains. The song was written singing into a cassette recorder whilst on holiday in Fiji as a stopover from Australia to Europe. It also includes What Is Her Name, written for, wait for it, Charlie Cox age 12, who is now Daredevil on Netflix! Whilst on holiday with his family in Queensland, he asked me could I write a song where you saw a girl that you liked and you didn’t know but wondered what was her name? This was the result.

Marty Willson-PiperThere’s an interesting fact about Wondering and I Don’t Think So. Both were written as jams to tape and rerecorded later as they went down on the day they were conceived – the lyrics, the melody, the chords, the arrangements, were all realised on the spur of the moment. Swan featured me playing friend Keith Joyner’s black Gretsch duo jet guitar. It was Keith that replaced Johnny Marr when he left The The. He also played guitar on Goodbye.

I hope you enjoy the album, I always wanted to see it out on vinyl. I will also add that we had to cut the vinyl from the CD copy as the original master tapes are long gone. One track, Waves Towards The Moon, has some distortion that is also on the CD and we weren’t able to do anything about it in the transfer. Overall the record sounds fine to me. One thing we were able to fix was the readability of the lyrics. On the original CD version the lyrics were so small you could barely read them, plus they were written like handwriting which made it extra hard.

Last but not least, the artwork has been changed for this release, despite Anthony Collins’ pic of me floating in a sea of blue being used for the original album, the effect used has also been lost to the analogue robots of yesteryear, so we decided to go with my Swedish friend Jan Uddenfeldt’s classic pics of me as a young lad, exploring the archipelago North of Stockholm, sometime in the eighties – we think (Jan has also taken the photo for the new MOAT record Poison Stream). Back cover is from the same day. Some of Anthony’s black and white live photos from the period feature on the inner sleeves.

Thank you to Olivia for art direction, Jan and Anthony for the pics, Lizzie for joining the dots. Shauna for the promo, all the musicians and Stephen Judge at Schoolkids Records for making this happen with Robert at Heyday who also managed to find the one copy of Queen In Her Jeans that was thought stolen by the corgis.

Marty for RSD 2019

Noctorum’s THE AFTERLIFE makes four (!) BILLBOARD CHARTS

Heatseekers Albums Charts
If someone had told me that Noctorum’s latest album The Afterlife would make four Billboard charts in the first week of release I would have said there’s more chance of me growing old. But the facts speak for themselves. Still, somehow Billboard have deemed it unnecessary to place the album cover in its appropriate box next to its chart position? Am I going mad or would that not be an essential and important thing to do for the sake of the magazine’s presentation and the artist’s profile? Next, you will be telling me that most people will be listening to a small inferior device of lesser quality for the sake of convenience. As if?
Independent Albums Charts
Thank you to everyone for supporting us on the album through the PledgeMusic campaign (we are still waiting to be paid in full) and also to those that supported us in the latter stages making sure that this actually happened. Thanks to everybody that has helped Dare and I finally get some notice for our Noctorum project on this, our fourth album, but also on the previous three. All records are a labour of love for me but we couldn’t make them without you, the musicians and all the people that work with and work at the label. Honourable mentions to Stephen Judge at Schoolkids Record and previously Robert Rankin Walker at Heyday. Rachel and Lizzy for helping with artwork past and present. Also Shauna has been doing some great work in the promo department and Daniel a fine job of getting you your album undamaged with the shrink rap neatly folded inside for collectors like me – then there’s Olivia whose unending work, creativity and dedication saves us all!
Alternative Albums Charts
With thoughtful planning, Olivia and I will be starting a British tour in London on March 14th, playing an eclectic mix from various creative incarnations in celebration of Noctorum’s US success. Legend has it that The Zombies had broken up in celebration of their US No.1 single – for detail nerds that was Cashbox No.1, Billboard was No.2. I’m not sure how long The Afterlife will stay on these charts with Beyoncé and Rihanna nudging us from behind but let’s enjoy it while it lasts. For the future I hope that one thing leads to another and each creative journey we go on will help the next one and inspire us to never stop what we do. I’d also like to say that rather than creating confusion I’d like to think that the eclectic nature of this creative journey is what keeps everything interesting and sharing new ideas with collaborators is exciting to say the least. I’ve just spent a month here in Stockholm with Swedish Progressives Anekdoten, will be working on the instrumental Atlantium project in April in Penzance, followed by a continuation of the second MOAT album and then various other projects are in the building stages – I hope the idea of working with many different people continues to be an interesting musical approach rather than a confusing one for the audience.
Rock Albums Charts
I love The Beatles for their fearlessness. Love from all of us to all of you. Marty  

Billboard Charts and Positions:

Heatseekers #16 Alternative Albums #24 Independent Albums #39 Rock Albums #47