“I’M THE MASTER OF MY OWN DECISIONS NOW” | KYLE FALCONER ON ‘THE ONE I LOVE THE MOST’

INTERVIEW w/ KYLE FALCONER by Anne Kelly

It’s been four years since Kyle Falconer released his last solo effort (No Love Songs For Laura) and in the years which have succeeded the the album, the iconic front man of The View hasn’t been far from a stage near you. Reuniting with his View band mates for the reunion of the year in 2022, recording a new album (Exorcism Of Youth) at Space Mountain Studios in Spain to producing a musical with his now wife Laura Wilde (No Love Songs); the resurgence to the spotlight was almost cut short when an onstage bust up with band mate Kieran Webster revealed the cracks to the world. Regardless, they plodded along and following the release of their UK top 10 album Exorcism of Youth in 2023, The View have continued to tour extensively, making festival appearance up and down the country, even playing main support to Liam Gallagher on his Definitely Maybe tour in 2024. Yet, despite the high wave the band have found themselves riding, the cracks have been spotted by eagle eyed fans for some time. So it comes as no massive surprise when Donny Fest announced The View would no longer to playing their summer festival, citing a 2 year hiatus of the band as the excuse. With no official announcement made available and the impending release of Kyle’s latest solo effort The One I Love The Most for release this week, I spoke to Kyle via a video call from his current residence in sunny Spain.

“I’m in the middle of moving house and the wife is due our fourth in like 6 weeks” shares Kyle shares before the interview officially begins. “I’m coming back to Scotland on the 6th (February), then we’re doing up to 5 in stores in one day, up and down the country”. He might not always look like he’s loving the promo side of rock star life, however, he is probably one of the most genuine and endearing personalities I have encountered on this scene. But as much as I could quiz him on his relatable chaotic work/family life, we’re here to talk about the new album. So wasting no time, Kyle shares the timeline that has led to the release of 13 acoustically reimagined tracks from his across his discography. The theme? Girls names.

“So when we first got the place in Spain me and [Michael] Ward – we’re business partners – about 3 years ago, it was something we always wanted to do. We done a sort of mini festival to like 70 – 100 folk and I was playing it. I had Neeve Zahra, who’s one of my good pals, and Drew who plays guitar in the band. They were playing with me and we’d done songs like ‘Laura’ and ‘Mother’ and I thought it would be good to do all the girls [name] songs. I thought it would be dead easy and we’d just run through them live. I expected them to know all the bits and they were like: ‘we don’t know the songs’.” Kyle laughs.

Angelina

Re-recording songs from the discography of The View and Kyle’s solo albums, the brief was limited to songs where the track title had a girl’s name in it. 12/13 of these are well known to fans, however, one addition was previously unreleased, ‘Angelina’.

“Back in the day, like 2012 I was writing some stuff when I was in a quite dark period. It was when I wrote the song ‘Happy’ [Bread and Circuses] and I was playing lots of this minor E stuff. I remember I was playing that on the guitar and the tour bus was waiting to go to Italy from London and I made the bus a day late so they were all pissed off at me. I came on the bus and I had this new CD with me and it had a song called ‘Where Do We Stand’ on it. I played it back to the band and I remember looking at them and they were just staring like, ‘and?’ So I thought, well fuck you.“

“But I remember loving that tune and even when we got it all demoed up the band were still just not into it and the label were like, it’s one of your theatrical things and it’s not really working for The View at the minute. I felt quite offended by it and I was raging because I loved that song. I’m sure it appeared on a demo or a compilation thing in Japan years ago, but we never released it. So when I had all these songs, I thought, what would be good for ‘Where Do We Stand’? It was my daughter actually who kept singing a song about Angelina, I think it was Winnie. I thought that would be good so I rewrote the lyrics around it, throwing a couple of lines around to make it fit.“

Grace

Probably the most well known song on this acoustic album is The View’s ‘Grace’ – but who is Grace?

So Pete bought this flat in Dundee and the woman who lived underneath him didn’t like us. I was living in London but every time I came back to Dundee we’d go to Pete’s. I wrote the song and originally the chorus was “We need treatment, we need help”; it was like a double entendre because it was making fun of us. Like in a sort of Officer Krupke from West Side Story manner but we showed it to the label and it went right over their head so we needed a chorus. And then I did another chorus, “I’m a sober boy, you’re a lonely girl” and I sent it in and I remember like straight away getting an email saying “fucking hell this is a single”. At the time we were on Columbia, now people don’t really care about that shit. But back then it was like “you got it, this is the single guys, we got got an album” – said in best American accent – “but it was class, good times.“

Penny

Were there any particular songs on this album which were difficult to revisit?

“Yeah, so there’s a song called ‘Penny’ on Ropewalk by The View which was recorded in Germany with Albert Hammond Jr in 2015. It was a weird time as nobody was really getting on and I remember it was physically dark all the time with no sunlight in this studio in Reeperbahn; that’s where we got the idea of the title of Ropewalk because that’s what ropewalk means in German. We were writing that song and it was sort of gobbledygook, but I wanted it to be like one of those Jack White songs when he just goes on rapping, connected to the music. It’s not necessarily something to sing along to and it doesn’t really mean anything but going back to that song was difficult. There were all these different pitches and time signatures happening, there were like 3 different songs in there, so I was thinking, how am I going to do this?

With just me and an engineer we had to work it out. Eventually we just started playing it from start. Playing it to the tempo and the break time, then putt the bass on and then the piano etc. but I found it really hard to do without a band. Going back through the lyrics was hard because I just wrote them on the spot. It was a lot of alliteration from the tongue, so anything that started with a P was going on it and anything that started with a Qu was going on the next verse. It was more of an erratic crazy song at the time – all my writings were erratic at that time so revisiting that it made more sense than it did and thinking, oh actually that’s pretty cool.“

Was Penny a real woman?

“Yes, Penny was a real woman that I knew. So our old drummer Mo’s (Stephen Morrison) girlfriend’s sister was Penny and she used to come to all the gigs. She was quite pally with us all. That was the only Penny that I knew…oh and Penny Morris, who was Owen Morris’ wife, a record producer, who was a good pal – so maybe there’s two Penny’s.”

Lily Anne

My next question was going to be if all the songs are about real women, however, I now know that Lily Ann isn’t a woman at all?

“No, so that’s about Los Angeles and about me getting back into America. I had brought my eight track over there in about 2012/13 which and I just sat on a Santa Monica beach and wrote it in about 10 minutes. It was like a love letter to Los Angeles. So I’m sitting in the cutest place, I’m still glad to be here but I’m peering through palm tree’s I never thought I’d see over a mishap when I was 18 years old and it screwed me and screwed my career.”

In 2007, Kyle was charged with cocaine possession which subsequently led to The View’s American tour being cancelled. Despite a number of attempts to re-enter the states, the singer was refused a Visa on many occasions.

How long were you not allowed in America?

“6 years. It fucked us right up there. I mean, like at the time we had tours playing 3,000 cap, 2 nights in each venue every night for like 3 months. But then I wouldn’t have met my wife and had my kids. Yet at the time I was absolutely stumped, like how could you do this to us. I tried to get back in a couple of times but they wouldn’t let me.“

Madonna

I’m going to share my favourite track on the new album in a moment, but what would you say is yours? Are there any which you think have improved from the original?

“So there’s a song called ‘Madonna’s Make Up’ which I wrote about my Mum and Dad being up in heaven, but when I recorded it I thought it was a bit straight forward. It was the first album that I ever produced on my own (No Thank You). We only really had our engineers and I remember just using what I had but I didn’t really know much about different sounds. It was sort of 60’s, old school sound but I kept thinking that track could have been a bit more meaningful. So when I recorded it on this, I just slowed it right down and I think it’s more effective; there’s a lot more meaning behind the song.”

Gem

Featuring the melting harmonies of rising Scottish singer Neeve Zahra, my personal favourite from this record is ‘Gem Of A Bird’ from 2009’s Which Bitch?. Sharing with Kyle that I feel this one stands above the rest in terms of comparison with the original, he agrees and goes on to reflect on the state of the band at that time.

“The thing with that song was that it was on the recording of ‘Which Bitch?’ and we were all out our fucking nut then. We could have made that record so much fucking better. I mean, that record means a lot to people and it means a lot to us but we had that ‘train wreck’ sound. After that album, we became a tighter band.

With Bread and Circuses [2011] and Cheeky For A Reason [2012] we became a tighter band who really cared about our jobs. That album (Which Bitch?) we were fucked up in the head and the last thing we wanted to do was record, so that song was a throwaway. I can’t even listen to it because of my vocal in it; I’m just smashed. I remember recording that thinking what am I doing here, even the label were like, you need to make it better. I was phoning [Owen] Morris and he was like, ‘this is how the band should sound’. Thinking back, we were mistreated by a lot of people around us and that song was thrown away so it was good to go back to it and sing it the way I could actually sing it.“

Do find when you look back at The View over the years that that you guys didn’t really get much choice in direction?

“We were junkie party animals. By the time Bread and The Circuses came about there were bands like The Vaccines coming through and everybody was getting clean, surrounding them with laptops and things. Yet we were still just wee guys from Dundee who were a bit scummy compared to these posh London guys. But we always sort of done our own sound and it was hard to get away from being tarred with that same brush.“

What’s next?

Last month, Doncaster’s ‘Donny Fest’ shared the news that The View would no longer be appearing at their summer show, announcing the band were taking a ‘two year hiatus’. With no official word from the band’s camp, I wanted to clarify the future of The View.

So what’s happening with The View then? Are you on a hiatus?

“I don’t know, who put that up? Was it The View? I mean, it might be, I’m not sure. Somebody has to call it.”

I tell Kyle that it wasn’t from the band, it was via Donny Fest only. But trying to gain any real clarity from Kyle didn’t seem to be on the agenda today. Whether or not that was through a genuine lack of information on his side, or that he was apprehensive to put anything to press without consultation, so I wasn’t prepared to push much more. So just to confirm, it is not an official hiatus of The View then?

“I don’t think so. We’re just doing our own thing.”

What are you looking to do next, creatively?

“So our musical, me and my wife’s musical (No Love Songs For Laura) is touring the states starting in New York next month. There’s a lot of promotion around that, so we’re basically doing that for a year. But I’m working on a new album as well that’s pretty special so it’s all systems go all the time (laughs). I’m kinda the master of my own decisions now. I’m kinda doing everything myself and making my own decisions. So it’s a lot and I’m not really giving myself a break but I’ve got 4 kids now so I can’t really get away.“

I always love chatting with people like Kyle in the industry, his genuine and hardworking nature is reflected well in whatever he does. But conscious that there are 13 women (well, at least their names) are on this new album and that we had only got as far as chatting about 6 of those in just over half an hour, that I decided it was time to wrap things up a bit with a final couple of thoughts.

Your voice works really well in harmony with a female vocalist, who would be your dream female collaborator?

“Shania Twain, she’s one of my favourite artists in the world. I mean I’m not so keen on what she’s doing now but I’d still love to share a stage with her and look over and smile at her.”

Finally, you can only save one song from The One I Love The Most, who are you saving?

“Grace. Because I changed key on it and I never meant to. I sang it in a tone up and never even noticed it and my voice sounds extra special on it. Because back in the day I was always drinking and smoking so I was always like I can’t do Grace it’s too high but now I do that with my eyes closed so now that I’ve done it in an even higher key.”

The One I Love The Most by Kyle Falconer will be released on Friday 7th February 2025 with a variety of different variants available HERE. You can also catch Kyle in the wild up and down the country with many intimate instore signings/performances with support from Ben Walker starting in Dundee on Friday before returning to tour in March – all the dates can be found HERE.

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