Ocean Colour Scene frontman Simon Fowler chats to Lauren Foster ahead of the band’s headline performance at new Birmingham festival Beyond The Tracks...

Ocean Colour Scene are headlining brand new festival Beyond The Tracks next month. What can your audience expect from your Saturday evening performance? 
We’ll be doing all the songs that people hopefully know. It’s the audience’s day out, isn’t it? It’s the audience’s gig, so we’ll oblige.

You’ll be sharing the stage with the likes of Maximo Park, The Coral and The Twang. Who are you most looking forward to seeing?
Carl Barât is there, isn’t he? I’ve never met Carl, so I’m looking forward to meeting him. Steve knows him a bit. I know that he and Pete (Doherty) grew up listening to us, which is quite amusing! So yeah, I’ll go and give him some tips on taking drugs - like, “don’t take them, young Carl.” 

The band are well known on the festival circuit. Do you have a favourite festival?
Oh blimey! I quite like the one at Punchestown in Ireland - it used to be called Oxegen. That’s really nice - it’s at a racecourse and it’s got the poshest facilities of any festival I’ve ever been to. Glastonbury I always used to find terrifying, just because it’s Glastonbury. It’s a bit like playing the Albert Hall - it’s the Albert Hall, however hard you try to pretend it isn’t! I like festivals; I think there’s a lot less pressure. We played at a castle up near Chepstow last weekend, which was nice.

Last year you played a series of special gigs around the UK to celebrate the 20th anniversary of your hit 1996 album, Moseley Shoals. The tour included dates at Moseley Park and Birmingham’s Irish Centre. What’s it like playing to a home crowd? Do the shows feel more special? 
They’ve always been lovely to us, Birmingham. There’s always a word around that Birmingham is a dull audience, but I’ve never found that - ever. I think that comes from people who’re in dull bands. We’ve always gone down great in Birmingham. This was our launch pad. The Jug of Ale, as it was, in Moseley was our HQ, and the first time I met Liam was down there. It’s always been special to us. Even before that, in my bands before that, the Irish Centre was always a great place, and before that, the Barrel Organ. When you were in a local band, you knew that once you arrived at the Barrel Organ, you’d made it! Next stop, the NEC! Birmingham’s always been special to us. We’re all from the area, so there’s a hell of a lot of people we know in the city, and we have the Birmingham sensibility, I think. Not too much of a show-off.

You took the anniversary tour to Australia, too. What was it like playing there for the first time?
We’re actually going back there at the end of the year. We’re doing Australia and New Zealand this time. We’ve been together for 28 years, and how the hell we’d never played in Australia before, I just don’t know. They were really, really welcoming, so basically we’re going back and playing much bigger venues because those gigs were only 800-capacity venues and they sold out literally within an hour. We had no idea that was going to happen!

Why do you think Ocean Colour Scene have managed to survive for so long?
The crowd - our crowd. Also, we’ve never been fashionable. If you’re fashionable, by the very nature of that statement, you’re going to not be fashionable in a year, or maybe even six months. We’ve never been fashionable, we’ve always been a traditional rock, blues, folk band who you either like or you don’t. People have stuck with us, and it’s our crowd who’ve kept us together. We’re not going to make an album that’s going into the top 10 anymore, but we go and play to 12,500 people, and I think we treasure that more now than chasing the charts. I don’t even know how they work now! I don’t know how you can have nine singles in the top 10! It’s just nonsense. That means nothing to me at all. So we’ll play to our crowds and Ed Sheeran can have 10 songs in the top five. 

If you could go back in time to Ocean Colour Scene’s inception, is there anything you would do differently? 
I’d write more, that’s all. I wouldn’t change anything, really. There are probably arguments that we could’ve avoided, but that’s the way life is. I wouldn’t change the fact that we struggled for seven years because that’s when we learned to do what we do, and that’s when we learned to be a band. It does you good being punched in the face once or twice, so long as you don’t lose your teeth. 

What’s your first musical memory?
A load of old singles my older brother used to listen to that were like family heirlooms - things like Speedy Gonzales by Pat Boone. My favourite early song was called Seven Little Girls (Sitting In The Back Seat). Google it - it was probably dreadful. It was by a band called The Avons, and that was about 1960. It was my favourite record, and my brother and I had an argument. I’d have been about five and he’d have been seven, and he threw the single across our lounge. It hit a chair leg and shattered. That’s my earliest musical memory. 

What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in the music industry over the years?
The way that records are now almost a by-product that allows you to tour. You used to make an album - looking back at it, at ridiculous costs - and then you would tour to promote that album. It’s the other way round now. Unless you’re a mega-selling, streaming person, I wouldn’t like to start a band now and have to work out what to do. Having said that, I've never used a computer, I’ve never streamed - I don’t even know what that really means - so if I was a young person now, I’d have grown up with a different mentality. Album art, album covers, who gives a toss about them anymore, but that used to be one of the things that made an album so special. Opening it up on the bus home, reading the credits. There’s none of that now. Christ, I’m sounding old, aren’t I?! 

What’s the most memorable performance of your career?
Obviously supporting Oasis at Knebworth was pretty special - and petrifying! One of my proudest moments was when we played the Albert Hall in February ’97. There it was, our name, up in lights at the Albert Hall, and I walked in and thought, ‘Jesus Christ, we’ve done it!’ Another memorable moment was the first time we played the NEC. That was pretty remarkable. 

What does the future hold for Ocean Colour Scene?
I need to write and we need to record an album!

Ocean Colour Scene play the Saturday headline slot at Beyond The Tracks, which takes place from Friday 15 to Sunday 17 September at Eastside City Park, Digbeth, Birmingham.

Interview by Lauren Foster