Waterboys boss Mike Scott is what you call a real type: an indestructible loner, idealist, romantic and do-gooder. One who doesn't care about commercial success, who does everything to be unpredictable. But also one who possesses great entertainer qualities and enjoys a high reputation among his colleagues. Now he presents his 13th band album - and enthuses about Bootlegs, Burg Herzberg and The Clash.
Mike Scott doesn't always make it easy for his fans, very consciously. On his last album "Out Of All This Blue" the Scot experimented with loops, beats and samples. With this he met with great incomprehension and earned devastating criticism. "I may have exaggerated a little," he laughs at the eclipsed interview in his adopted country of Dublin. "But that was completely new territory for me, and I had so much fun with it that I didn't even notice that there were hardly any uptempo tracks at the start, and certainly not enough rock'n'roll. I should have worked with a drummer, and I've done that now. The new songs were created on the computer just like the last ones. But this time I've integrated the technology better."
Say it and grin like a honey pie horse. Knowing that he once again hit a creative hook, gave the whole thing an ironic title ("Where The Action Is" - after Robert Parker's R&B anthem "Let's Go Baby [Where The Action Is]") and (successfully) played with false expectations. As he has been doing for four decades now, sometimes on bombastpop ("The Big Music"), sometimes on traditional folk, sometimes more or less successful, but always serving a loyal audience.
His fans are as cosmopolitan and yet old-fashioned as he is: The 60-year-old lives with his Japanese wife and baby in a distinguished quarter of the Irish capital, swears by Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, the Stones and Patti Smith, deals with literature, comments on the sociopolitical zeitgeist, the Brexit and the Trump administration with dripping cynicism, but tries to come to terms with social media and modern studio technology. "For someone who went through the late '60s - the civil rights movement and the student protests - the present must be like the end of the world," he ponders over a cup of Earl Grey. "Except we can't let the momentary attitude to life pull us down. We must tackle it with optimism and passion."
