In his acting career, he’s sworn at politicians and saved the universe multiple occasions, and as a director, he’s won an Oscar, but now Peter Capaldi is turning his skills to another love – music.
St Christopher is a debut collection of songs by the Glaswegian star, produced by Dr Robert and is released on the Monks Road Records label on November 19.
Peter, probably best known as the acid-tongued Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It and the beloved twelfth incarnation of Doctor Who, also won an Academy Award in 1993 for his short film Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life.
But what’s less well known is that he started his performing career in music. As a graduate of Glasgow School of Art, he inevitably put together an art school band, and joined the thriving music scene of 1980s Glasgow.
The fervour of youth was not quite enough, however, and the band went the way of countless others. But Peter never lost his love of music – and played his guitar on Doctor Who on several occasions, including playing although with the famous theme tune on one occasion.
In 2019 Dr Robert of the Blow Monkeys invited Peter to a recording session for the Monks Road Album ‘Humanism’.
Peter said: ‘Watching the musicians work, something drove me to scribble out a song, just for the chance of having them play it, and when they did I knew immediately this was something I wanted to do again. So, I set about it.
‘Robert patiently endured these efforts, encouraging some, letting others slip quietly away, until eventually we felt we had enough ideas to go into the studio… And then it was March 2020 and
everything stopped.’
When lockdown forced a rethink, Peter said: ‘We had demos, computers, Robert’s address book, and a very clear diary so, through the magic of modern technology, we sent the tracks back and forth until finally, with the help of some brilliant musicians, we found ourselves with something that very much appeared to be an album.’
These songs are the result of Peter’s re-connection with a simple desire to make music again, songs that don’t stray too far from his art school roots. The lure of electric guitars and synthesisers is a hard one to shake.
Keenly aware of his musical gaps, Peter set out to make something honest, using his experience as a writer and director to forge the ideas, and brought to life by the veteran skills of Dr Robert and a group of highly talented musicians.
Written largely in the US and recorded in lockdown the album is an opportunity to explore the atmospheric musical ideas that drove him to perform in the first place.
Listening to the album, there’s obvious influences in the form of David Bowie and Bob Dylan, but there’s flashes of the everyman talking eschewed by Jarvis Cocker, with touches of Glasgow rock as embodied by Simple Minds.
Peter concludes: ‘Whether in the end these songs work is for others to judge. But the chance to try them out, with such skilled musical support, has been a wonderful experience. In some ways absolutely new, but in others… well in a way I feel I’m just picking up where I left off.’
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