Pete Murphy

Pete is a singer and guitarist who has been around the Liverpool music scene for many years. Hailing from Tue Brook in Liverpool he has played in local groups over the years such as Stray grey sock and Million pound giveway but currently he’s a singer / guitarist with rockers Fidel Afro. He’s also the first person to be roped in to having a chat about the music that inspired him to pick up that guitar many years ago and start creating and sharing music with the city of Liverpool. I met up with Pete at the band’s studio / recording space, a chilled out room a stones throw from the old Queens Hall venue in Widnes. (A historic music hall type venue that once played host to The Beatles. All that is now left of it is the neighbouring smaller Queen’s hall studio venue.) After some umming and ahhing Pete settled on the three tracks to talk about from The Doors, REM and Gomez, as he put it, a mainstream end of some principally none mainstream music.

The Doors - Light my fire

Does the doors count as mainstream music? I guess it probably does, when a track is covered by someone who found fame on TV show Popstars it’s hard not to consider it at least a little mainstream.

“It’s a song that stands out from my childhood, the first song that as a kid I heard and struck me as something different.” says Pete. “I remember, about age 12 in the late 80s, sneaking the radio on before I went to bed without my mum knowing. There was a late night radio show on Radio city and in amongst all the pop shit there were what seemed like a few more random selections. These boots were made for walking was one that I remember, and the other was this. Listening to it amongst all that stuff going out in the 80s you’d be like ‘What the fuck is this?’”

“As I heard it on the radio it was the radio edit I grew up with, I’ve listened to the 7 minute album version of course. There’s just something great about it. It was the first song I heard that felt different, that made me sit up and take notice. This was before I was playing anything, before I’d picked up a guitar. This song has stuck with me amongst other Doors stuff. I listened to some others, in fact most of The Doors music, but I guess it’s like anything, the first thing that hits you hits hardest.

“We messed around with a song with me playing keyboards, we never finished it properly, it got a bit borderline close to this. It does go on a bit, there’s so much in there you could tighten up and parts of it feel unnecessary, even in the radio edit, there’s stuff you could cut out but they’ve not done. I always admire that, when someone can say ‘you know what, no, this is how we want it.’ ”

The Doors
Gomez
R.E.M.
Date:

July 5, 2022