Liam Bailey

Photo: Louise Clutterbuck

“It’s been long,” Liam said with frustrated resignation, supping a can of Polish lager at a friend’s house in Carrington. “I’ve not enjoyed waiting all this time, but I decided about a year ago to stop giving myself a headache about it. There’s a process you have to go through – packaging and marketing – but that stuff just does my head in. I get stuck if I have too many choices.”

I’ve known Liam for almost a decade now, from his early Nottingham gigs with 1st Blood and Bosco, to the kid who ran away to London and got signed by Amy Winehouse. Since then, he’s flown to festivals in helicopters, had a number five UK chart hit with Chase and Status, given Nottingham shout-outs from the main stage at Glastonbury and made friends with Zane Lowe and Paloma Faith.

Four years ago we spoke in these pages about Out of the Shadows, the debut solo album that was set to be released by Universal in the autumn of 2011. But, despite a few EPs preceding it, it never saw the light of day. What happened? “The album was finished, but I was only 75% happy with it. There were three songs I wouldn’t have chosen to put in a set and I was told they were going to be my singles. The label wanted simple, radio-friendly hits. I could write them, but that wasn’t the stuff I enjoyed playing. I’m lucky that both myself and my manager had the balls to tell them I wanted out of my contract. No one wants to get messy in the music industry unless there’s lots of money involved. I wasn’t at that stage, so they just let me go.”

So while many musicians dream of signing a major record deal, Liam opted out of his. He then spent time writing new songs, making guest appearances with Chase and Status and Shy FX, and getting new stuff together with longtime producer Salaam Remi, known for his association with Nas, Fergie, Estelle and Amy. “Salaam is like a producer, an uncle and a friend all rolled into one. At first it was a bit intimidating, because I’d go in the vocal booth and know Lauryn Hill, Nas, Amy and some of the Marleys had been in there and dropped serious stuff. But after a while that all goes away and he just manages to get the best out of you.”

Remi also strong-armed Liam into producing some of the tracks on his own album: “I didn’t want to at first because I’ll never do it as well as him. But he thought it was an important step for me as an artist. He likes to push me, so it’s good working with him.”

The record title, Definitely Now, is a response to the many times Liam has been asked, “When’s the album coming out?” There’s also a nod to Oasis, “I wouldn’t be into rock ‘n’ roll without that album. I was a soul boy and it got me into something new. After them, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix started to make sense. They were like a gateway band. A lot of people might not think it’s cool to rep Noel and Liam, but I don’t care.”

There’s some crossover between Out of the Shadows and Definitely Now, but not as much as you may expect. Only four out of fifteen original album tracks made the cut (Fool Boy, On My Mind, Crazy Situation and Summer Rain). The rest are completely new material, including the recent single Villain (ft. A$AP Ferg) and Walking Out, produced by former Radio 1 favourite Zane Lowe. “He’s always backed me and he pretty much flipped out when he heard the new stuff, so last minute we put another track on there that we worked on together.”

There’s a track called Battle Hymn of Central London which hints at homesickness. “It’s about trying to find peace in a mad place. Paloma Faith keeps asking me why I gave it such a pretentious title when it should just be called Save Me Tonight. But I couldn’t call it that – it would sound like I was trying to be Eagle-Eye Cherry.”

Liam has recently become friends with Paloma Faith, duetting on stage with her. By the time you read this, they’ll be touring together. It’s reminiscent of the working relationship he struck up with another great London-born female singer. Rewind back to 2007 and Amy Winehouse had the musical world at her feet, looking to sign acts to her Lioness label. A mutual friend passed her a demo by Liam, who’d been steadily gigging every venue in Stoke Newington for the previous year. She signed him up and they became friends, partying together, including an infamous moment at The Libertines’ reformation gig at The Forum in Kentish Town where Liam found himself in the tabloids under ‘Who is Amy’s new man?’ headlines. Four years after her death, and at the dawn of a biopic about her life, how does Liam feel? Does time heal wounds?

“The film is a deep one. I chatted to the guys behind it for a couple of hours but I asked them not to use any of it. I was invited to go to the premiere in London, but I didn’t want to be there, so I spent the weekend in Nottingham instead. Before I met Amy, I had a different opinion of her. You look at her from the outside with the media circus and you think to yourself, ‘She’s not going to live long.’ But then we became friends. She was one of the funniest, wittiest, most charming and talented people I’ve ever met. You think she’s strong enough to last like that forever.

“On the week she died, we’d both been up to no good. We were both supposed to be at a friend’s wedding that weekend. It was horrible. I’ve had family members that died young too, but her death hit me harder than any. I treasure the nuggets of time I had with her. Music should not be a destructive influence, it should enrich your soul. Sadly her story, like the film, has no happy ending.”

I didn’t want to end the interview on a downer, so I finished by asking Liam about something I know he loves – the Nottingham music scene.

“I was at a gig recently at Stuck on A Name. The music here is still so eclectic – one of the city’s major strengths. At one point I’m watching a girl do visuals and beats on her laptop, then this band I’ve never heard of, Mammothwing, come on and play this heavy, dirty, bluesy metal. I loved it. Then I head over to The Lofthouse and watch this band that my mate’s in, Sunset Nebula. I think people are realising you don’t have to stick to a genre or traditional venues to cause a scene. The music here just gets better and better. Let’s hope that continues.”

Liam Bailey’s new album, Definitely Now, is out on Friday 10 July.

Liam Bailey website