He was the burned-out bigwig who moved to a very big house. Now back with his first music for decades, he talks about signing the Proclaimers, being punched by Julian Cope – and his Scott Walker-inspired trio
D
avid Balfe has had quite a life. In the Teardrop Explodes, he took amyl nitrate on The Old Grey Whistle Test and acid on Top of the Pops. As a music publisher he’s been involved with a multitude of bands from the KLF to the Proclaimers, and his record label signed Blur when they were called Seymour. However, he’ll probably be most remembered as the man immortalised in their 1995 smash Country House. “Balfey” actually lived “in a house, a very big house in the country.”
“That’s going to be the first thing mentioned in my Guardian obituary,” he chuckles. “I’m aware that the song isn’t exactly a paean to my greatness, but I’m genuinely proud about it. It’s the one thing you can casually drop into a dinner party and everybody goes, ‘What the fuck?!’”
Flattering or not, Balfe admits that the song’s description of a “professional cynic, and my heart’s not in it” is a “very accurate portrayal” of his situation at the time. By the mid-90s, after two decades in music, he was depressed and disillusioned, so he sold up and bought the “very big house” (in rural Bedfordshire) to raise a family. Now, though, he’s back, with Late Transmissions, a new collaboration with former Dalek I Love You bandmate-turned-film score composer Dave Hughes and glamorous Liverpool-based singer Eve Quartermain. The trio’s vibrant mix of 60s pop, film music and orchestral trip-hop is his first venture in music for over 25 years and his first as an artist in over 40. “But if you think about how difficult something is you’ll never do anything,” he says in a quiet pub in the ’pool. “I’ve always tried not to let anything stop me.”
