The story of a musician who once conquered the world with Talk Talk. Paul Webb aka Rustin Man then took a lot of time for his solo career. Now he inspires as a singer-songwriter.
A xylophone is not just a xylophone. At least not in a Paul Webb recording. With a blissful look, the perfectionist tells how he tried out ten different microphones in different positions until he found the right timbre.
Paul Webb lives with his family in a secluded country house in Essex. He also records his music there. “The whole house is often laid out with cables and blocked with instruments,” he grins. «But every evening when a session is over, I pack everything up nicely. And even this work makes me happy.”
The Times of Talk Talk
Meticulousness and passion take time. Seventeen years elapsed between the album Webb aka Rustin Man released with Portishead singer Beth Gibbons in 2002 and his debut solo album, Drift Code, which was released last year. Now comes the next beat with «Clockdust». Webb says he knew early on that his song ideas would last for two albums. He worked on all of them at the same time in order to bring them into a coherent sequence at the end.
Paul Webb’s career began in distant times. And it’s also an example of how badly artistic integrity and originality align with the market analysis of record majors. Webb and his pal Lee Harris are from Southend. Webb initially played bass, Harris drums. The guidance counselor said Webb had “zero talent for anything.” But he ended up at art school, where he met Depeche Mode singers Dave Gahan and Alison Moyet in the same class.
In the summer of 1980, Webb, now eighteen, drove to London with Harris to audition for singer-songwriter Mark Hollis. Hollis was a few years older and needed a band to make his ideas sonically palatable to the record companies. He liked the enthusiasm of the two younger musicians so much that he formed the Talk Talk trio with them.
“I left home with a promise to be back for dinner. But I never came back.” Soon Talk Talk was under contract with EMI and celebrated their first hits. “It was incredible,” Webb is still amazed. Then, of all people, the career counselor in question got in touch to hire Talk Talk for a benefit concert. But the band was already commuting between London and New York by Concorde. “With the best will in the world, we didn’t have time for the careers adviser. I hung up the phone and yelled, ‘Hallelujah! Life is sweet!’»
In 1988 Talk Talk had produced their fourth album: «Spirit of Eden». The recordings lasted a year. The sound should sound like “a night in 1967”, wrote producer Phill Brown in his memoirs. Only instruments and equipment that had existed in 1967 were used, the lighting in the studio was psychedelic, the atmosphere euphoric. In the end, everyone involved was convinced that they had created a masterpiece.
With their sound, to which the Chelmsford Cathedral Choir contributed in addition to oboe, violin and harmonium, the six songs of “Spirit of Eden” tended towards contemporary orchestral music. On the other hand, they are reminiscent of the romantic-melancholic tradition of John Martyn or Nick Drake.
The list of musicians who cite the album as a source of inspiration today ranges from Radiohead to Placebo and Steven Wilson to Divine Comedy and Ghostpoet. “But when we played the album to our manager,” Webb recalls, “he shook his head and complained: What have you done! He knew that the music would hardly please the EMI bosses.” In fact, EMI even took the band to court for not delivering “a commercially satisfactory product” with the album. After all, the verdict was in favor of Talk Talk.
The death of Mark Hollis in February 2019 brought back old memories. Webb, who was no longer in contact with Hollis, didn’t bother too long: “I’m not a nostalgic person. What counts for me is the now and the future.” After Talk Talk, Webb, Harris and Phill Brown formed the trio O’Rang. Brown soon got out again, the work process was too tedious for him. Webb, on the other hand, remembers spontaneous improvisations “and a lot of fun”.
Your own voice
For the last few years, Webb has apparently been working on his own music without any financial pressure. At eight o’clock he took the children to school, then they played music, at 12 o’clock the late riser Lee Harris showed up in the studio, they worked until four o’clock when the children were picked up from school. During this time he not only developed his own style, but also his voice. Today, Paul Webb’s singing is remarkably similar to that of Mark Hollis, although his voice is reminiscent of Robert Wyatt here and there. As with Talk Talk, the instrumental arrangements range from autumnal brass parts to swinging jazz rhythms and shimmering guitars to spooky marimbas.
Thirty years after “Spirit of Eden”, Paul Webb has emerged from the shadow of that epochal work, but at the same time created an album that sounds a bit like a somewhat sunnier counterpart to it. “My record company never gave me any rules,” says Webb. “I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Mark Hollis had been allowed to work under similar circumstances.”