The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon looks back on everything from his early days to his new album and everything in-between.
During our tender years, the bursting of sacred bubbles can be devastating, especially when it comes to our heroes, who rarely live up to expectations any better than we do. Yet life’s hard truths can deliver wistful amusement with age, rather than disappointment. Discovering that the suave, debonair, 1990s playboy-about-London Neil Hannon – man and mind behind flamboyant popsters the Divine Comedy – was nothing of the sort, thus brings a knowing smile. Seriously, the darn sweetheart fooled us all.
“Definitely not a playboy. Just playing up the image,” says Hannon today. “I floated around those fancy London clubs in the 1990s, but just felt silly in them. All these irritating people, thinking they were more important than others. Awful specimens of humanity.”
Thirty years ago, with the Divine Comedy‘s brash and strikingly forward Casanova CD on endless repeat, this would have shocked our tight group of Stateside fans. The elements featured on the cover are timeless: sunglasses, a printed scarf, a fresh-lit cigarette, all while dangling off a tony British yacht. Not to mention all those forthright lyrical references to women, sex, flirting, more women, and more flirting. “My own mother told me the album was very blue,” he confesses. Blue as in ‘sexy/dirty,’ not sad. And it certainly was.
Three decades later, Hannon offers a new release this September, Rainy Sunday Afternoon, featuring fresh remasters of his early records, as well as a hit film soundtrack with 2023’s Wonka, which definitely paid the bills. In deference to this stylish, baroque musician who was always more popular in the UK than America, we couldn’t be happier.
Hannon sank his hook into yours truly the same way he did many others, thanks to London DJ Chris Evans (no, not that one), who regularly closed his radio show with the Divine Comedy’s gothic, tables-turning mousetrap “Something for the Weekend” off Casanova. The track spread organically to US college stations back when college radio still held significance, and it’s even better live. Which early music influences led to such intricate, mind-whirling compositions as “Weekend”?
“I was raised on Top of the Pops,” he recalls, echoing many Britons. “ELO’s Out of the Blue was probably the first album I actually heard start-to-finish.” Then came an intense synthpop/New Wave phase, featuring the Human League, OMD, Soft Cell, and especially Gary Numan. Indeed, Numan’s 1979 single “Cars” sounded so far ahead of its time that it still does.
“Nothing else ever sounded like Tubeway Army,” concurs Hannon. Artists like Nik Kershaw and Howard Jones gave way to the twin mid-1980s releases that sent him on his way: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love and Peter Gabriel’s So.
From there, Ireland-based Hannon moved to London, if one can call it “moving.” Instead, he crashed the town, breaking into an abandoned flat and squatting there. “It was very hard going in 1990. My two mates and I were terrified, living in fear of being caught. Eventually, they both bailed for university,” he recalls.
Hannon drifted back to Mum’s attic in Northern Ireland, where he recorded his debut album Fanfare for the Comic Muse on four-track. Then comes one of those electrifying throwaway remarks we music geeks live for. “Ian Broudie offered to produce my first record, but he was too busy with the Lightning Seeds. So I went back to London and recorded Liberation.“
Fast forward to 1996’s Casanova, which remains in my regular rotation 30 years later. More like a pre-war Paris time-warp than a pop album, Hannon delivers grandiose romanticism, comic observations on courtship, and the Quixotic pursuit of female companionship at all costs. If precious dispatches on life and love with a bottle of wine at a French sidewalk café are your speed (or even if not), cue up Casanova posthaste.
Looking back, Hannon still appreciates the record. “Other bands have to compromise with fellow members,” he notes. “I played most of the instruments and produced most of the album myself. Funny thing is, I simply cannot sing those lyrics at 55 anymore!” He refers to lines like “Something in his jeans / Told him to pretend / ‘Twas something for the weekend!”, which sure sounds a lot cooler coming from a 24-year-old.
Too many of us also endured our own gut-wrenching “Frog Princess”, that low-roller from the opposite sex we simply could not cleanse from our brains, but she’s long gone, and so are we. “Age brings a change in style and voice, which you have to accept,” he says. “I cannot make perky indie pop like when I was 24, because it would sound ridiculous. Instead, I try to write honestly about who I am and where I am.”
Early Casanova adopters also got a special bonus CD (now part of the deluxe remaster series). Among several must-haves is an indelible live cover of American Music Club’s “Johnny Mathis’ Feet”. Hannon transforms Mark Eitzel’s ambitious yet partially realized studio composition into a sprawling rock and roll waltz – a Vegas anthem of stardom and aspiration, made all the more immediate by being performed live onstage. Had our conversation merely consisted of Neil belting all three-and-a-half minutes of “Johnny Mathis’ Feet”, I would have hung up the phone a happy man.
“Thanks to a friend, I was a big AMC fan from the late 1980s,” Hannon says today. “Suddenly, I was playing these big tours, and Mark Eitzel toured with me. He’s one of the most truthful songwriters out there – never sugarcoats anything. I decided ‘Johnny Mathis’ Feet’ deserved the full orchestral setting.” The Shepherd’s Bush concert, recorded in West London, was released on DVD along with the 2020 remasters. It also directly influenced the Divine Comedy’s next record. “Overflowing with ego, I hired a full orchestra for [1997’s] A Short Album About Love.“
Discussing the tear-jerking, achingly romantic Short Album, Hannon delves into the rigors of remastering his own catalog. “It’s terrifying to remaster an oldie – very difficult to hear the difference if you’re not an audiophile. Which I definitely am not,” he admits. “But I gave it my all. It took some detective work to find the original masters, hidden away in one place or another.” Fans of King Crimson or Jethro Tull‘s Aqualung will certainly understand, considering those hallowed original tapes also remained ‘hidden’ for decades.
Here we arrive at a personal family favorite, 2006’s Victory for the Comic Muse. Victory was my youngest daughter’s “baby-jail” album played beside her crib every morning for the first eight months. “Lady of a Certain Age” has become her most listened-to song on Spotify. “I got a call to write a song for Jane Birkin,” says Hannon, speaking of the 1960s French actress and famed Hermés ‘Birkin Bag’ namesake.
“Her generation inspired me, as an amalgam of various ladies of a certain age. I was also reading Noël Coward’s diaries at the time, with lots of Lady Guinness floating around. I decided I had to finish the song, and wound up singing it myself.” “Diva Lady” is another treasure, shouting out loud what we mere mortals only think to ourselves. “She needs extra makeup / For her extra face”? Delectable.
The Divine Comedy’s 13th proper album, Rainy Sunday Afternoon, will soon be dawning. “It’s heavily influenced by lockdown. A more somber, melancholy tone,” says Hannon. “My dad died, my favorite dog died. Really crummy couple of years.” He eventually realized he wasn’t depressed, just working through middle age like the rest of us.
“The 1960s orchestral pop route has always been like coming home – strings, brass, piano, very organic. I got the late 1970s/early 1980s stuff out of my system on [2019’s] Office Politics. Wish I could do lovely synthpop, but I can’t sing like that anymore. Fortunately, I enjoy baritone.” Hannon ranks Afternoon up there with his best work. “I don’t always say that, though I do try to make records as if I’ll be hit by a bus next week. I also dread people saying ‘Oh, he’s tailed off’.” A piercing example is “The Man Who Turned into a Chair”, about growing old and out of shape. C’est la vie.
As the conversation winds down, we touch upon his musical partnership with Pugwash’s Thomas Walsh, whose buoyant solo masterpiece Silverlake nearly stole 2017. “Duckworth Lewis Method is the sound of two guys having the best fun ever,” says Hannon. “Thomas lives north of Dublin, while I’m west, so I don’t see him very often. Our music is happy and summery, no cricket knowledge needed. We’re also a good influence on each other’s writing: I fly in all directions, he can get too staid. So we meet in the middle, Spinal Tap style.” Any chance of another Duckworth-Lewis collaboration? “Thomas wants to make Number Three, so we’ll see.”
Final lingering surprise from our discussion? Hannon’s roving creative eclecticism. “I’m a big jazz and classical music fan. I tried a half-hour opera, but did not particularly succeed,” he says. “Overall, my ‘theory’ isn’t very good, so I get other people to take those projects that last mile.” Pop albums, plays, film scores, operas – he’s written them all.
“Music is definitely my happy place,” he winks in conclusion. “But if people are stupid enough to ask me for something else, I give it a go.”