Pete Cunnah and Al McKenzie of D:Ream told David Hennessy about their new album, reuniting with well known former keyboard player Brian Cox for Glastonbury and learning their lesson about letting their well known Things Can Only Get Better be politicised.
Everyone knows Things Can Only Get Better by D:Ream. The dance track was a UK No. 1 hit in 1994 and later adopted as a political anthem for Tony Blair’s successful Prime Ministerial campaign of 1997.
The uplifting tune returned to the public consciousness during the pandemic when it became an anthem for Nottingham’s residents as they clapped for key workers.
However more recently it has become political again.
When Rishi Sunak announced his (ultimately unsuccessful) re-election campaign in the pouring rain outside 10 Downing Street, D:ream’s classic was blasted out by a protestor. A song that ushered in New Labour in 1997 was now showing the Tories the door.
The song would then be the unexpected hit of Glastonbury when the band headlined last year.
He may now be a well known television physicist but Brian Cox was first seen on television playing keyboards with D:Ream. Glastonbury would also reunite the band with its famous former member.
The band have just released their new and fifth album, Do It Anyway.
Although they don’t describe themselves as a political band, they are one with a social conscience so there is social commentary in songs such as Anthem for Change and The Geek Who Rules The World.
The Irish World caught up with D:Ream frontman Pete Cunnah, from Derry, and his bandmate Al McKenzie.
On this new album you have returned to some old tracks, unfinished from years ago, isn’t that right?
Peter: “I keep everything. I keep a record of everything.
“I’m able to tell people, for example, I wrote 300 songs before I wrote Things Can Only Get Better.
“I played Alan a backing track for a song I’d written called Night Vision.
“But he heard the track and thought, ‘That’s got that sort of Human League-y vibe or something’.
“He had the line ‘smoke filled rooms..’, and it sort of locked us into this completely new angle for it.
“That’s how it (title track Do It Anyway) was born basically.”
There’s another track that started as one you were pitching for Kyle to sing..
Peter: “That’s the one.
“These things are always floating around in your head and you’ve got them sort of internalised but they don’t often go from like zero to hero in seconds flat, they can be in the vat maturing for a while before they get open and tasted.”
With tracks like Anthem for Change and The Geek Who Rule the World, there are some political statements in there as well. They both say something about the way things are going..
Peter: “Ultimately, the power of the people is greater than the people in power.
“I don’t know where I heard that expression but I thought it just lent itself to one of those kind of Martin Luther King speeches.
“We had our own version here, John Hume.
“And there’s good people with good intentions who’ve helped us in the past through these things.
“But it just seems to me that the human greed and corporates are driving a lot of what’s going on at the minute and we’re not aware of that.
“We’re told to fight amongst each other over details but the big picture, the guiding force that’s driving all of this division: It’s not us, people get on.
“I can’t remember who said it but in World War Two, some of those fellas would have been sitting down having a pint together but it’s the older men who send the young men out to fight these battles, send boys fighting against each other.
“There’s so much corruption, there’s so much greed going on. It’s driving a lot of this stuff and we’re sitting there arguing over details when really the guys who are pulling the strings are the guys who are doing all the damage.
“We both have a social conscience.
“Alan and I can disagree on the actual details but it doesn’t mean that we can’t be in a band together and explore these ideas.”
Al: “We just write things that are in our heads and I don’t think there’s any limits to what you write.
“We’re not a political band.
“That’s not us, we never have been.
“You just write what’s there.”
Peter: “It’s called social conscience. That’s ultimately what we’re having.
“We’re both agreed on things like that.”
There is also a track somewhat inspired by Johnson’s Partygate..
Peter: “Anthem for Change talks about ‘the cabal of crooks and thieves that line their pockets easily. They walk away from justice as long as we are silent’.
“And I think what happened was, it’s one rule for thee but not for me.
“We all saw that.
“I had family who were in care homes, we couldn’t go and see them while these buggers were out filling suitcases full of wine.
“That’s unacceptable.
“We’re all in this together or we’re not, and that was not together.”
You speak about young lads being pit against each other in war time, the same thing was also going on in the Northern Ireland that you grew up in, wasn’t it?
Peter: “Absolutely.
“Did you know even the Palestinians and the Israelis were brought over by the Northern Irish to try and understand what the peace process was here? Because after 40 years of what we called The Troubles, they were given a template for how to coexist and that was ignored by various vested interests, as we can see.
“If you’re Northrop Grumman (arms suppliers), the last thing you want is peace because it’s bad for business, right?
“I grew up in that.
“I remember ringing a friend the day I saw Paisley sitting down with Martin McGuinness.
“I went, ‘I’ve just looked outside my window and I think it’s just all frozen over’.
“You know when they say, ‘Hell has frozen over’? ‘It’s all frozen over’.
“I never thought I’d see McGuinness sit down with Paisley but there it was, and that’s what has to happen.
“One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist today and they all end up having to sit down. It’s just a fact.
“We can hint at that in our music.
“That’s not a problem.
“It’s not that we’re going to tell people, ‘Listen to us. We know what’s going on’.
“We’re asking as many questions as we are- we’re not even providing solutions. We’re just asking questions.”
Was it the case that you had to get out of Northern before you could do anything in music and deal with the effects of growing up in such conflict?
Peter: “Ultimately it wasn’t going to happen to me like it happened for The Undertones or Ash or Snow Patrol, they just made the leap across the pond. And someone heard them and worked with them.
“But my band Tie the Boy were really stuck.
“The scene was being killed.
“We tried to play the Castle bar in 1985/86 and the IRA blew it up.
“I can’t tell you how annoyed.. It’s not that they closed it down, they just blew it up.
“’What’s happened to the gig, guys?’
“’Well, let me tell you, there’s nothing there’.
“So you kind of get to that stage and you think, ‘Well, look, I’m going to try my luck elsewhere’.
“We were actually going to move to London anyway because we were signing to Mother Records, U2’s label.
“It got us to London.
“The band didn’t work out but I found myself not wanting to run home with my tail between my legs and within a couple of years of just working in studios and backrooms, that’s when I started going clubbing.
“That’s when I met Alan and it wasn’t by design per se.”
Let’s talk about Glastonbury last year? Was it magic? What did it feel like?
Peter: “It was a pinnacle thing in my career.
“We’d been asked before but this time, we could actually make it.
“And the word got out that we were playing after the Rishi Sunak thing and I think Brian Cox get hold of that and he called us-”
Al: “No.”
Peter: “No?”
Al: “No, I’d arranged for Brian to do it way, way before if we were doing it.
“I’d spoken with him.”
Peter: “Alan, Alan, never let the truth get in the way of a good story, never.
“That’s nowhere near as sexy.”
Al: “It’s much sexier.”
Peter: “Anyway I’ll go back to my story because it’s the one I like.
“Brian got wind of this and he got hold of us and said he wanted to come and play.
“And that’s not what happened but I’m sticking to it.”
Al: “Brian had actually said he would drop anything to play with us at Glastonbury which is quite cool.
“I told him there was a potential of it happening.
“And then, contrary to proper belief, we were booked for ages before the Rishi Sunak thing happened.
“I’ve had to correct a few news readers that say, ‘Well, you only got the gig because of that’. We were booked for ages.
“Brian was moving heaven and earth because he was on a tour at the time to actually do the gig.
“To be fair to the guy, he really pulled the stops out to do it, but we kept it quiet.”
Peter: “It was difficult for me to keep quiet. I’ve got such a big mouth.
“But the thing is, he did show up to rehearsals, we could feel something was building up and we leaked it a little bit.
“So by the time we hit the Glade tent the next night, it just got really, really full in there.
“I’ve never experienced that kind of power of a football match when someone scores a goal, especially when it’s directed at you so we were just beaming from ear to ear with it.
“It was a great moment.”
What was it like to have Brian back in the fold?
Peter: “Look, he only comes anywhere near us when we’re doing something worthy of him being Mr. Massive, but that’s fine.
“When I first met Brian, he was our tour manager which meant he had to navigate with the maps, organise the car, the petrol, the equipment, get to the gigs.
“We used to have a joke in the car because this is before the internet and before satnav.
“We used to have a joke at a roundabout and say, ‘Oh Christ, Brian’s driving. Let’s pick a number…’
“Because we’d hit the roundabout, we had no idea where we were going to go so half the times we got to the shows so this got to a stage where it was not good for business.
“But because he was so good looking, fitted in with the band and could play piano like a demon, we roped him into the band and he ended up hanging out with us for a couple of years just doing all the live shows.
“He was great.
“He was a perfect fit.
“But his hero was Carl Sagan so he went off to kind of become the poster boy for science.
“But I mentioned to him, ‘I think you really benefited from being in the tour coach with us because you were explaining really complicated ideas to stupid people like me’.
“And he went, ‘Yeah, I’ll give you that’.”
Really, he didn’t disagree with any part of what you said?
Peter: “Yeah, he was meant to argue and he didn’t.”
You said earlier Al that you’ve never been a political band, however the music has been (famously) used for political purposes. How do you look back on that now? Is it a sense of regret?
Al: “I’d sort of moved on from the band by then.
“I was a big fan of the Labor Party at the time so if it had been me that had been approached, I probably would have done the same thing to be honest.
“Because at the time in the UK, we had certainly had enough of Thatcher and the Tories, in general a sea change was happening and it was a good thing.
“You can’t predict what’s going to happen in the future.
“You don’t know where these things are going to go, do you?
“That’s the thing.
“At the time, it seems like a good idea and then obviously what happens later on.
“People forget.
“People remember the bad things and forget the good things.
“So when all these things happen with Iraq and that song gets a bit sort of linked with that, not with the fact that it was part of ousting the Tories which essentially was what it was about.”
Peter: “Blair cashed in on it, ‘I got the Good Friday Agreement across the line..’ but he did that based on what John Major had done.
“The guy I was managed by at the time was a fella called Jazz Summers from Big Life and I had no idea that his agenda was to get the ear of Tony Blair which he did by bringing me in.
“I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m doing this’.
“But Jazz, for a living, persuades people and whatever magic he wove, he got me up to the thing, we went to see Prescott at the Houses of Parliament.
“I was properly schmoozed and groomed for this thing that happened and by the time I got my head around it I was going, ‘You know what? I’ll jump in here’.
“Because I wanted to see change as well.
“The fact that we went to war in Iraq, I stood in front of the the mirror and the sun and said, ‘Not in my name’.
“That’s all we could do but we were ignored.
“And they’re doing exactly the same thing now.
“They’re ignoring people now about what’s happening in the Middle East.
“We wrote a song about it called Drop Beats, Not Bombs.
“It asks the question, ‘Why is it always business as usual?’
“And that’s as political as we get.
“We’re not a party.
“We’re not looking for your vote, we’re looking for your feet.”
And you have shut down any further attempts to politicise it, isn’t that right?
Peter: “This is actually what happened.
“When Rishi was being rained on, Steve Bray had some genius moment of playing Things Can Only Get Better.
“The next thing I knew we had managers ringing us up going, ‘Listen lads, if you do this and get behind Labor, x, y, z, is going to happen’.
“It was all this lovely jangle of the pot of money.
“And we immediately went, ‘No, we’re not getting involved’.”
Al: “I agree with Peter. I don’t think it should be political.”
Peter: “I don’t think we should get in there again.
“We’ve learned our lesson.
“We’re moving on.
“We just want to get up and have fun.
“But it’s interesting that that song now has been a political song to help Labour back in the day, now it’s a protest song.
“And then it was for clap for carers.
“It just has a life of its own.
“The funniest one, from my point of view, is the one where they used it in The Crown in a surreal scene where the Queen is having a nightmare about Tony Blair being crowned king of England and not her son.
“And then the commentator from America says, ‘And now the national anthem of England..’ and a choir boy starts singing Things Can Only Get Better.
“It’s just so surreal. It is so surreal.”
What is your take on the recent furore about Bob Vylan at Glastonbury?
Peter: “Look, you’re either all in on free speech or you’re not.
“Mouthy bands exist.
“They always have existed.
“They’ve always pissed people off.
“It’s a festival setting.
“They’re full of adrenaline.
“They’re just doing the right thing as far as they’re concerned but shutting down free speech, that’s the danger.
“That’s the danger.”
Al: “It’s a distraction from what’s actually happening.
“It’s easier for our Prime Minister to turn around and say, ‘This is disgusting, what he said’ and ‘we’re going to do charges’ than admit that they’ve been ignoring exactly what’s going on, the fact that the IDF is murdering innocent Palestinians.
“It’s easier to have a go at Bob Vylan for basically calling out the IDF than it is to actually do anything about it.
“And it’s disgusting in my opinion.
“But as Peter says, since time immemorial, that’s always happened.
“John Lydon did it back in the 70s, it’s always been a thing.
“And now Kneecap, all charges were dropped anyway which shows how ludicrous the whole thing was trying to silence them when all they’re saying is, stop killing people.
“How bad is that?”
Peter: “Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with saying that.”
The single Do It Anyway is out now.
The album Do It Anyway is out now
D:Ream play The Summer Festival in Framlingham on 23 and 24 August. They also play the Concorde in Eastleigh on 26 September.
For more information, click here.
