Primal Scream will be in Europe in this summer performing classic songs and newer material from 2008’s album ‘Beautiful Future’. The band recently completed a US tour which included a headline set at the Scottish showcase at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Also on the bill that night were Glasvegas, Camera Obscura, Dananananaykroyd and The Proclaimers. The band now turn to Europe and will play festivals in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Finland and more.

Gillespie has largely made a success of leading his hedonistic band-as-gang. At 41, he’s stayed thin and he’s made the most of his somewhat limited vocal technique. More than that, he and his band-mates wrote 1991’s Screamadelica, the pioneering rock and acid house-infused album that perfectly mirrored the clubbing culture that inspired it.

With other tracks such as “Movin’ On Up” and “I’m Comin’ Down” mapping a raver’s trajectory in some style, Screamadelica was a worthy winner of the inaugural Mercury Music Prize. But Gillespie walked out of the awards ceremony. “I couldn’t be bothered,” he says today. “I went to visit a junkie friend of mine and got completely wasted.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he continues. “I’m happy that people still talk about Screamadelica. Not so long ago I stayed up all night with Liam Gallagher, and he was telling me how much he liked that record. He said: ‘XTRMNTR and Evil Heat are all hate, Bob, but Screamadelica – there’s a lot of love on that record.’ I thought about it and I realised he was right. There’s a lot of love on our new record, too, and Liam definitely influenced that.”

As the interview winds down, I ask Gillespie about his unfulfilled ambitions, He says he’d like to write a classic love song; something as good as Dan Penn and Chips Moman’s “Dark End of the Street”. “A heartbreaking, cheatin’ thing,” he says. “Something with some guilt in it.” And a little bit of redemption perhaps? “Maybe. But I don’t know if there’s any real redemption once you’re guilty.”

The Independent, 2006

Full tour details below.

www.myspace.com/primalscream

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbGeUczSbf4&feature=related

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