As he releases his ‘melancholic’ second album, the actor looks back on his youth in a struggling art-punk band – and explains how he took inspiration from putting the bins out
One of my first musical memories is of being given a Beatles wig. They sold them in Woolworths but it wasn’t a normal wig with individual strands of hair – it was vacuum-formed plastic and felt like wearing a crash helmet. When it was on you looked like you had Paul’s hair, but when you took it off you were left with what looked like a scar on your forehead.
The Beatles were big in my house but it was the lovable moptop Beatles, the London Palladium Beatles. Once they’d grown their hair and become hippie-ish, my family were always a bit down on them. I remember taking a shoebox and transforming it into a miniature replica of the set of Ready, Steady, Go, the television music show that was like a precursor to Top of the Pops. I cut off the front, drew little exit signs and cut out little Beatles. Looking back, that was when I started using music to create these little worlds.
