Stephen graced us with his presence on December 14, 2003 at a duffylovers hosted chat. The chat lasted about 2 hours, from 8 PM to 10 PM GMT, in which Stephen fielded questions in a non-moderated format. Because Yahoo! chat is not configured for cutting and pasting, I couldn't just cut and paste the chat as I thought I would. Instead, I jotted down anything interesting, thinking that most folks would not want to wade through the entire chat transcript (which includes a bunch of questions which were never addressed at all by Stephen. You can, if you like, read the transcript uploaded to the file section of duffylovers, but that is incomplete. I say "incomplete" because I saw that the bit I replied to him about the Traveling Wilburys, strangely, isn't there. Unfortunately, due to the timing of the chat, I didn't get to remind him to read his email and reply to your questions because my mother would have had my head on a platter (it was nearly 5 PM Eastern time and she had "volunteered" me to help with dinner).

I hope you all appreciate this as the time it took me to HTML and prep this page, Wordpad decided to hang on me and I had to start entirely from scratch! Yes, such a self-sacrificing soul I am :)

Mary

The anxiously awaited Stephen Duffy and the Lilac Time EP will arrive next year, with "Keep Going" as title track. He didn't think a song called "Don't Feed the Rats" would do well as a title single for the EP. Several of us proffered our own picks for this. I would have preferred "Don't Feed the Rats" myself.

Stephen was asked when we might hear some of the stuff that he has been working on with Robbie Williams. He says he'll be working more with Robbie next year, but right now, Robbie doesn't have the time to put out anything with both of them on it.

Stephen says currently, the plans to put all the film stuff (including the last couple gigs, which have been filmed with as little as one camera) will be put out as a Lilac DVD. The Devils DVD is slated to be released sometime in 2004.

Stephen was asked which was his favorite George Harrison album - he said the one he made with Bob Dylan and Tom Petty (which I replied to say that he must have meant the Traveling Wilburys).

Melvin Duffy (who has appeared on the last several Lilac Time albums) was suggested via Andy Strange, who said he would be perfect for LFADITN.

When asked as to Sagat Guirey's whereabouts after the late '80s era, he said "Sagat Guirey was descended from Genghis Khan," and as such, "was not Lilac enough" for future TLT albums.

Stephen thinks and hopes all previous albums will be eventually rereleased except for the Swordfish ones, which appear to be wiped. He later mentioned that he was unsure on the status of the Polygram recordings.

When asked about Nick Laird-Clowes - he says that Nick recently got recently married and has a new studio down the road. Stephen expects Nick won't put out an album until 2010.

Paradise Circus had the best sales of all the albums, he thinks.

He used to smoke and said his voice on Paradise Circus sounded like crap, and that it's taken years to make it SOUND like he smokes when he doesn't. I asked why he felt this way and he never answered my question.

Polygram didn't hold them in high regard, and wiped their tapes to make more room in the tape library. But Polygram had the gall to phone Stephen up and ask for a rarities album.

Stephen is waiting on Melvin and Claire for doing Keep Going songs live. Claire is touring with Robbie Williams in Australia (and thus was unable to attend and play at the December 6 gig).

Stephen's fave albums of 2003 - Belle and Sebastian, and Alasdair Roberts (Stephen did his sound at his Cecil Sharpe gig)

page last modified 20.12.03
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