Peel Slowly And See

As The Wedding Present release a complete John Peel sessions box set, singer David Gedge talks Simon Goddard through the key tracks in a 20 year career indebted to the late DJ

Hollywood, USA. Entertainment capital of the world. Home to the world’s showbiz elite, the glitziest names, the hottest stars and… er, David Gedge? “It’s a funny old world, innit?” laughs The Wedding Present frontman from his new Tinsel Town apartment.

At 47, David Lewis Gedge seems an unlikely convert to the Californian dream. He first appeared in 1985, the archetypal pasty English sun-dodger singing songs of student heartbreak in his inimitable Leeds drawl to a jangling guitar cascade. The Wedding Present were one of the leading lights of the C86 indie scene and one of the few to achieve mainstream success, peaking with 1992’s daring Hit Parade scam which saw them issue a single every month that year, notching up a dozen consecutive hits and a place in the Guinness Book Of Records.

Then again, as Gedge points out, American culture has never been far away in his writing (Shatner, Kennedy, California) while both 1991’s Seamonsters and 1994’s Watusi were recorded in the US with respective producers Steve Albini (Pixies, Nirvana) and Steve Fisk (Screaming Trees, Soundgarden). Also bearing in mind that 2004’s Take Fountain – The Wedding Present’s first album after Gedge’s eight …

by Simon Goddard
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