GREAT SCOTT?
NEW YORK—Mike Scott, the 25-year-old Scottish singer/ songwriter/guitarist/producer who leads the Waterboys, balks at the suggestion that his band has anything in common with such Celtic bootstompers as Big Country and the Alarm. “We’re definitely not another Big-Guitar band,” he disclaims.
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GREAT SCOTT?
NEW YORK—Mike Scott, the 25-year-old Scottish singer/ songwriter/guitarist/producer who leads the Waterboys, balks at the suggestion that his band has anything in common with such Celtic bootstompers as Big Country and the Alarm. “We’re definitely not another Big-Guitar band,” he disclaims.
Indeed, the Waterboys’ debut LP, A Pagan Place, resonates with a subtlety and charity of spirit that’s increasingly rare in bigleague pop these days. Balancing rock electricity and songwriterly moodiness, Scott juggles spiritual and secular concerns in a manner that frequently echoes the best work of Van Morrison (a comparison which Scott finds flattering). In person, he projects an air of incorruptible integrity and seems genuinely unconcerned with details like fame or money: “I just want to get on with it.”
The latest Waterboys lineup, which recently made its Stateside debut touring with U2, consists of Scott plus Anthony Thistlethwaite (sax and guitar), Karl Waliinger (keys), Mark Swain (bass), Chris Whitten (drums) and Roddy Lorimer (trumpet). Regarding the band’s frequent changes in personnel, Scott explains. “It’s my songs and my group, basically. It’s my vision of things that gets followed, and I've got control over everything. But Anthony and Karl have been around for a while, and we work quite well together.”
Though he’s wary of discussing the specifics of his lyrics, Scott is forthright about his interest in philosophical matters. “I’m quite interested in what the Earth is, what Man is, what’s in the sky, things like that.” Without sounding the slightest bit pretentious, he confirms my oh-wow hypothesis about A Pagan Place representing some sort of spiritual quest, with a progression from the first song to the last. But he adds that it doesn’t end there. “By the last track, I've been up in the elevator,
but I’m still only on the third floor and there’s another 47 stories."
Third floor or not, A Pagan Place has attracted lavish praise from the critics, a few of whom are touting Scott as a potential genius. Well, Mike? “I don’t think there’s any such thing as a genius. Genius is something that comes from somewhere else, and a human being is like an instrument for genius to speak. I'm not a genius, but I could maybe be quite a good instrument.”
Scott acknowledges the irony inherent in trying to sell intimate music through the medium of the statistics-mad pop industry, and admits that he sometimes finds it tough to look objectively at his place in the world. "It freaks me out sometimes, that I’m on stage and it’s a rock gig. Everybody fits in somewhere and everybody has a role to play, but I don’t really know what mine is yet.
“All I want is to be as good as I can be and fulfill my potential, whatever that is. If I’m a failure, it’s because I haven't lived up to my potential as a musician or an artist. And if I’m a success, it’s because I have. I don't think that record sales or money have anything to do with it." Jeez, Mike—you’re never gonna make it with an attitude like that.
Harold DeMuir
