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Badly Drawn Boy

Damon Gough, a Bolton songwriter in a woolly hat whose early EPs became The Hour of Bewilderbeast, the 2000 Mercury Prize winner, and whose next job was scoring About a Boy.

Origin
Bolton, Greater Manchester, England
Years active
1997-present
Genres
indie rock, indie folk, chamber pop
Labels
Twisted Nerve, XL Recordings, EMI, One Last Fruit
Also known as
Damon Gough, Damon Michael Gough

Twisted Nerve

Damon Gough was born in Dunstable in 1969 and grew up in the Breightmet area of Bolton. He took the name Badly Drawn Boy from a character in a television show called The Magic Ball, which he saw at a party in 1995. In Manchester he met Andy Votel, who was DJing at the Generation X bar. Votel heard his demos, told him he could sing, and suggested a label. They named it Twisted Nerve, after a Hayley Mills horror film, and it ran from 1997 to 2012. Alfie, a Manchester band on the label, became Gough's live backing band.

His first record, EP1, appeared in September 1997: five tracks on vinyl, passed around friends and family. EP2 followed in April 1998 with twice as many copies pressed. EP3, in November 1998, was his first release with XL Recordings, and the same year he worked with Unkle on their album Psyence Fiction. Two more EPs came in 1999, It Came from the Ground in March and Once Around the Block in August. Gough signed to XL that year, unsure he wanted to make an album, and began recording songs in several Manchester studios with different producers.

Bewilderbeast

The Hour of Bewilderbeast came out on 26 June 2000. Gough wrote it, produced it and played several instruments across its eighteen tracks, with members of Alfie and Doves helping out. The Guardian described a mix of folk songs, experimental passages and piano ballads, some recorded in bedrooms and some in studios. The title came on a Japanese tour with Alfie: Gough, hungover at a soundcheck, said he felt bewildered, one of the band answered that he felt like a bewilderbeast, and Votel later said it was Gough's hour.

Four singles were taken from it, among them Once Around the Block and Pissing in the Wind, and the album opens with The Shining. It reached number 13 in Britain and was certified platinum. It won the 2000 Mercury Prize, beating Doves, and Gough tossed the prize money on the ground when he collected it. Pitchfork's Brent DiCrescenzo called it a concise tour through the gentler side of British songwriting history. The Guardian later ranked it tenth among Mercury winners.

A film and a fish

Gough scored About a Boy, directed by Paul and Chris Weitz, alone, helped by the producer Steve McLaughlin, and About a Boy (2002) charted at number 6. It produced the singles Silent Sigh and Something to Talk About. Hornby later listed one of its tracks, A Minor Incident, among the songs that had affected his life.

Have You Fed the Fish? arrived in November 2002, named for a question Gough asks his daughter every day. It brought more guitars and a more mainstream pop sound, which not every critic welcomed. Its first single, You Were Right, reached number 9 and remains his only British top ten hit. In 2002 Q magazine had put him in a list of fifty bands to see before you die, with the warning that he often talked at length on stage rather than play songs.

Later years

After a long stay in America Gough felt homesick and recorded One Plus One Is One (2004) at Moolah Rouge studios in Stockport. It sold modestly, and he left XL after one single and signed to EMI. Born in the U.K. (2006), co-produced by Nick Franglen of Lemon Jelly, was his reflection on growing up in Britain, and its title nodded to Bruce Springsteen, the musician he names as his hero. Profits from the small UK tour went to Oxfam. In 2009 he released Is There Nothing We Could Do?, with music from and inspired by the film The Fattest Man in Britain, followed in October 2010 by It's What I'm Thinking Pt.1 - Photographing Snowflakes, the first of a planned trilogy, and in 2012 by the soundtrack to Being Flynn.

In July 2015 he toured Bewilderbeast in full for its fifteenth anniversary. Reviewing the Gateshead show, the Guardian's Dave Simpson praised the superb band behind him. Gough opened by saying he hated the album, which turned out to be the first of several jokes, and finished alone with Springsteen's Thunder Road. Banana Skin Shoes, his first studio album in ten years, followed in May 2020. A documentary about him and his debut, About A Badly Drawn Boy, was released in 2018, and in 2015 he chose Springsteen as his specialist subject on celebrity Mastermind.

Members

Records

Songs

Doves, Alfie, Andy Votel, Bruce Springsteen, Elliott Smith

Where to go next

Reference

Discography and data

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Live performance archives

Sources

  1. Badly Drawn Boy, Wikipedia
  2. Badly Drawn Boy discography, Wikipedia
  3. Badly Drawn Boy: The Hour of Bewilderbeast, Pitchfork (2000-09-30)
  4. Badly Drawn Boy: Music has saved me in a lot of ways, The Guardian (2015-07-12)
  5. Badly Drawn Boy review: returning hero welcomed with kisses, The Guardian (2015-07-30)
  6. Banana Skin Shoes, Wikipedia