A Handstamp interview with Mathew Baynton: performing live, The Lemonheads, live recordings and Elliott Smith
The third Handstamp instalment features a discussion with the much-loved British polymath
Handstamp is rolling, in the sense that I’m posting regularly to a non-optional lack of fanfare. Thanks to those who read the interviews with Cassandra Jenkins and Pond, it’s much appreciated.
I’m going back into the HS vault just one more time on this one, as we set the base for what’s to come. Four years ago, coming out of ‘you know what’, I connected with actor, musician, writer and gentleman Mathew Baynton from his home, with a laundry-laden clotheshorse providing the backdrop.
Mat had just wrapped on series two of Ghosts – the highly popular BBC sitcom that helped propel him to a subsequent role in a major Chalamet blockbuster. After a brief chat about Neil Hannon, record shopping and comedy, I dove head-first into his earlier memories of music discovery.
Mathew Baynton: “I have two older brothers, my eldest brother is four years older than me and I guess when I was 11 or 12, when he started playing bass for a band, they practiced in my mum and dad’s garage. To his annoyance, I walked into the garage when they were mid-practice and watched them practice. It was a hallelujah moment, where I thought ‘they’re just dudes who live round here and they’re a band. That means I could be.’
“The guitarist in that band was wearing a (The) Lemonheads t-shirt and I’d never heard of that band. He had a Gibson copy, cool hair and his Lemonheads t-shirt. The first album I bought with my own pocket money was ‘Come on Feel the Lemonheads’, purely because he looked so cool wearing that t-shirt. That was probably the moment I opened the door into a lifelong obsession and passion for music, both discovering and making it myself. I spent my whole teenage life, with my friend Ed, sat in our bedrooms with a four-track tape recorder, imitating Blur or The Charlatans, even pretending to be a radio DJ, interviewing ourselves.”
Handstamp: I can certainly relate to that. Growing up in Southend-on-Sea, what were your options when you eventually wanted to go out and see live shows?”
MB: “I was pretty lucky actually. It felt like I was growing up in a small town, because you’re so close to London in comparison. But a bit later in life, I realised it’s actually a massive town, big enough to have it’s own counter-culture and it’s own music scene. There was a venue called Chinnerys, which Pearl Jam came to play. Then there was the Cliffs Pavillion, where Blur came to play.’
“But crucially, when I started a band, it didn’t feel unrealistic that I could be part of a scene. Whereas in London, you sort of have to have a bit more swagger about you to think you can be in a band, because London is full of brilliant, successful people. In Southend it felt like there weren’t as many people doing it, so you could at least try to make a bit of an impact.”
Handstamp: Can you recall the first show you ever attended?
MB: “Again, it was The Lemonheads. It’s becoming a Lemonheads interview. My brother had gone to Bristol for Uni at this point, he was 18 or 19, I was 14 or 15. I guess it would have been when ‘Car Button Cloth’ came out. He said I could bring my then-girlfriend and friend with me, sleep on the floor in his student accommodation, then go to the show at the student union. We got the train and it all felt like such an adventure.’
“We had that sort of adrenaline of trying to get served, or at least trying to get my brother to get us beer. Then we were worried about being let into the gig by the bouncers. I don’t remember all that much of the show, except that Evan Dando had a whole bottle of whisky on stage, then plugged his guitar into a Casio keyboard and spent far too long making feedback loops.”
Handstamp: With music being your first love and continuing to play music, how did your career move toward acting as the focus?
MB: “Partly it’s because music felt completely self-taught and a hobby. I didn’t even do it at GCSE and I can’t read notation. I never had a feeling that I needed to study it, so I went to Drama school because it was something else I enjoyed and could pursue in higher education. But I was still playing in my band and hoping that things would happen.’
“I guess it was when I actually started to have a career as a performer that any sense of choice came into it, because before then I just did both. There are only a few super human artists like Donald Glover who can do both.”
Handstamp: So there weren’t any major watershed moments?
MB: “I’d been playing on and off with my friend Rob Smoughton, who plays in Hot Chip and had his own act called Grovesner. I played in his live band and we toured supporting Hot Chip, when I was well into my TV career. It was a lovely gift to get to experience the original dream I had.’
“To be able to enjoy it with no pressure or worry about it being my income made me realise that I got a good deal in the end. The album and tour cycle at this point of my life would feel absolutely punishing and really high pressure.’
“Rob started another project – Black Peaches. He asked if I wanted to be part of it, I attended a few sessions but realised that I was never going to be able to fully commit. I guess if there was ever a moment that I had to make a choice, it was that. Other than that, the choice was sort of made for me, in that my music wasn’t successful and the comedy was…”
Handstamp: What are some of the shows that standout as most special to you?
MB: “There are just so many. Going to see gigs is the most regular aspect of my social life. I met my girlfriend when I was 19 and we’ve been together ever since. The first thing we bonded over was live music and we just went to gigs all the time.’
“We moved to London together and I didn’t really spend much time with people from Drama school, because they were all singing show tunes around the piano and that wasn’t really my scene. So because of that, we became this sort of anti-social couple who went to gigs all the time.”
Handstamp: But are there any nights in particular that spring to mind as being on another level?
MB: “I’ll just list some. Kate Bush, when she did her run was extraordinary. Joanna Newsom at the Barbican was mind-blowing and she’s just limitless in her brilliance. Neutral Milk Hotel playing ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’, because that is such a cult album and it almost felt like the people behind that album didn’t exist, so when they played that album, I kind of couldn’t even believe that they were real.
“I love seeing somebody before they get really big and I have a few of those. We saw Bright Eyes in 2000 in a pub in Kings Cross. ‘Fevers and Mirrors’ had come out and we were intensely in love with it. Everybody there felt like we’d discovered an incredible secret. Another one was Bill Callahan, who we saw play solo with an acoustic guitar, playing songs from ‘A River Ain’t Too Much to Love’. It really felt like we were hearing a masterpiece before it came out.”
Handstamp: Are there any live recordings you’ve gone back to consistently?
MB: “There definitely are. Bill Withers’ ‘Live at Carnegie Hall’ is amazing, partly because of him talking between songs, because you get a sense of him as a person and a real sense of intimacy. ‘Live at Sin- é’ by Jeff Buckley is a rare example of a ‘one-off’ performance and we are lucky it was captured. Another one is Bjork at the Royal Opera House, which is – of all the shows that I missed – my greatest regret.”
Handstamp: We all have a few of those. I actively decided not to watch Brian Wilson play the entirety of ‘Pet Sounds’ once. Too scared of being let down.
MB: “Ooh, that’s another contender for my favourite shows actually. Not ‘Pet Sounds’, but I saw him play ‘Smile’ with my dad and it was just amazing.”
Handstamp: Well, that doesn’t make me feel better.
MB: “Sorry. Actually, another contender is Elliott Smith at either Queen Elizabeth Hall or Royal Festival Hall. Incredible show. By the end of it, everybody had gotten out of their seat and gone down to the front. That was when he was touring Figure 8.
Handstamp: More and more artists are wearing Elliott Smith’s influence on their sleeve, aren’t they?
MB: “They are. I get it. I remember hearing the news that he died. I was doing my first professional gig, as an actor. It was my first paid job at the Derby Playhouse. I cried, it was deeply upsetting and I felt ridiculous. I felt I couldn’t say to any of the cast that I was crying because a singer died, because they would have probably said ‘who is Elliott Smith?’ But you have that relationship with certain songwriters, where it feels really personal when you lose them.”
In an unhinged left turn, I then curried favour in my household by doing the unthinkable and asking Mat to drop some bars from a much-loved rap from ‘Horrible Histories’. He was an incredibly good sport.
Since our chat, Mat has made another two series of ‘Ghosts’, turned up in ‘Wonka’ and worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company on a revival of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. The guy is ripping it up. Subscribe to Handstamp Substack for future interviews, follow @itshandstamp on social media and listen to Chief Springs on your chosen platform. Illustrations by the excellent Alice Bowsher.