FabricationsHQ - Putting the Words to the Music
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    • Gary Moat (March 2020)
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    • Jon Anderson (May 2012)
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    • Amy Schugar (Feb. 2012)
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  • Author Bio & Site Info
  • Contact FabricationsHQ
When hearts and musically creative minds unite 
Muirsical Conversation with Suzy Starlite & Simon Campbell
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As the title of husband and wife duo Starlite & Campbell’s third and latest album suggests, Starlite.One is a forward thinking musical adventure high on concept (the world we live in, living every day to the utmost, shared humanity & shared experiences are all keystones).

While blues was an original Starlite & Campbell ingredient, heard to fine effect on debut album Blueberry Pie,  rock, pop, new wave, electronica and a touch of prog all fuel Starlite.One.
 
The results are a new wave meets art rock album where Simon Campbell has eschewed his six-string arsenal (although still present, but in cleverly treated forms) for a host of analogue synths and various other instrumentation.
Similarly, Suzy Starlite, who has added a plethora of instrumentation to her considered bass lines.
(The pair are joined on the album by noted top-notch drummer, Hugo Danin; everything else is played by Starlite & Campbell).

Suzy Starlite and Simon Campbell took a deep dive into the making of the album with FabricationsHQ; the conversation was then extended to look at both Suzy and Simon’s lives before Starlite & Campbell, which are chock-full of interesting twists, turns and musical adventures.

Mentored by the late and great Big Jim Sullivan… the all-too-common 'almost made it but didn’t' scenario… taking 10 years out through musical disillusionment… the folk scene… setting records on a motorcycle on both The Isle of Man and the Bonneville Salt Flats…  
All aboard Starlite.One for the full story.  

Ross Muir: As mentioned in the intro and as stated in FabricationsHQ’s review of Starlite.One, this is a highly creative album that doesn’t follow a singular path; there’s no one dimensional template or mould set for easy lowest common denominator gain, something that’s all too prevalent in social media musical marketing and, sadly, sections of the blues rock scene.
Indeed I get the impression that while you obviously hope for success and recognition every time you release an album, you care not a jot about the level of that success – with Starlite.One it’s clearly about the musical creativity and the pair of you, as songwriters and musicians, making the best art, through music, you can.

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Simon Campbell: You’re absolutely spot on. You know us and you know we’re always honest, and we are pissed off with the whole blues rock scene, really.
It’s not that we’re jealous, or upset, it’s just the fact that everything seems to have… stopped.
If I hear another guitar solo that sounds like B.B. King or Elmore James I just want to scream; it’s too much.
When we did our first album, Blueberry Pie, we didn’t really think it was going to do anything; we had no idea! We recorded it because I thought well, I’ve never done a blues album before and Suzy had never done a blues album, so let’s do one!
But what happened then of course was we got type-cast as a blues band with comments like "a revelation in British Blues" and then got award nominated; that sort of thing.
We thought OK that’s great, but, as you have just quite rightly said, we are not those sort of musicians 
– Suzy had never played the blues before we got together and had never really heard much blues.

Suzy Starlite: That’s true. Don’t get me wrong, I like playing the blues, but I was a folk artist originally; I was singing and playing a bit of mandolin, and very much part of that intimate folk club thing.
But what has been really interesting, is with the Starlite & Campbell stuff I’ve been singing to serve the songs.
Simon’s voice suits their style so he has been doing most of the lead vocals 
– and I don’t mind that at all, because sometimes it’s easy for me to just step back and just play.
​
But what I really like about Starlite.One is that we have songs that really suit me; we try out the songs and will say "right, who does that fit, me or you?"
I feel like I can breathe a lot more now, vocally; my singing wings can come out! [laughs]
It's almost like coming back to my past self, but in the future.

SC: I think too this album has been more us. Our last album, The Language of Curiosity, was stuck together during the pandemic and over a long period of time.
I enjoyed recording the album and we still love it, but it’s pieces of things glued together.
Starlite.One has been a lot more considered and we knew we were going to do something a little bit different. In fact, it started with a dream Suzy had!

SS: That’s right! I had this dream where there were six friendly chimpanzees living under the stairs, but then this alien frond came through a hole in the back of the wall and tried to eat them. The monkeys didn’t know, but I did, so I had to rescue them. That created this whole backstory, and travelling on Starlite.One.

SC: And I have to live with this woman! [laughter]

SS: I hadn’t been drinking either! [laughs]. At the same time, we were putting together a very diverse playlist, soaking ourselves in the musical inspiration of Scott Walker’s later work, musique concrète artists, some Latin stuff…

SC: …and electronica, and electronic rock, like Silver Apples; just loads of stuff that we had collected and put into this playlist. But we didn’t tell each other what we had put in – we just started to play it, and the more we played it the more we realised that we wanted to do something completely different for the next album.
And then we realised that we would have to get lots of different synthesizers; fortunately, we are sponsored by quiet a few synthesizer manufacturers so we managed to get some stuff that way, which was great.
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But then I had to learn how to play them, because I had never played keyboards before 
– as you know, we play everything ourselves on the album, except the drums.
That said if you hear anything with more than three notes, it’s Suzy [laughs].
If it’s a [mimics] woo-ooh-ooh sound or something like that, it’s me; if it’s more complicated, it's Suzy!

RM: Joking aside, that leads to another strength of Starlite.One, the sound.
The quality of the songs and their arrangements is vitally important of course, but the sound – in terms of recording, production and mix, is equally important.
Starlite.One has a lovely warm analogue sound, which enhances the songs and the instrumentation used.

SC: We do go to a lot of trouble to get a great sound. In our studio in Portugal, we have our 48-channel analogue mixing console, called Betty, and she’s a monster!
We don’t spend money on anything except gear, stage clothes and vinyl records; that’s our life – if we’re not recording we’re writing, marketing or promoting, or doing our podcast show.

SS: Mind you we have also decided that we are going to go out one night a week, because we had gotten so absorbed in the music that we’ve only been to the beach three times in the last two-and-a-half years!

RM: Music becomes the bubble; probably initiated, to some extent, by the pandemic lockdowns.

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​SS: Yes, exactly. We do go out, because we are very much part of the community where we live, but we do just feel like the music, and each other, is our heartbeat.
It's like when you say life is short – we missed each other for forty-odd years, so we really want to pack in a lifetime in half a lifetime, as it were.
We’ve only been apart once in ten years, for a single night, so we really do try to live each day to its fullest, because things can change in an instant.

RM: In the great scheme of things life is blink of an eye stuff, so, yes, I’d second and champion your comments. Live each day to its fullest indeed.
There’s a little of that on the song A Part Of Me is Broken; your monologue towards song’s end, Suzy, is part philosophical, part reflective, part future-questioning, while the song itself is a six-and-a-half minute cry for humanity that echoes some of the bluesier soundscapes of your earlier work.
Here, however, you go much further in musical exploration, sound, and style. It’s akin to the Moody Blues meeting stoner blues space-rock.

SC: It’s interesting you say that because we love the Moodies, those first few albums in particular.
And, yes, if you listen to that last track, and Suzy’s monologue, it could be from On the Threshold of a Dream or a companion piece to Dear Diary, anything like that.
In fact we’ve been getting some really good feedback for this album from people in art rock and prog-rock, including Progzilla Radio, who went mad over it.
They plugged the single Saving Me and promoted the album.

SS: Actually, we’ve had some great reviews from very different places 
– yours, Music News UK,  Photogroupie, Planet Mosh, among others. In fact, Dennis Jarman of Planet Mosh wrote "Hallelujah! Praise be! Starlite & Campbell return to save us from musical mediocrity!"
That’s the very epitome of [sings] Saving Me!

RM: That all leads perfectly to that very song. What I really love about Saving Me is you wait until the end of the song before introducing the "Saving Me, Saving You, Saving Everyone" tag line, which makes that statement even more impacting.

RM: Even if people don’t read into what you are singing about on Saving Me, it’s still a great song; but if you do realise what you are lyrically driving at, the Saving Me, You, Everyone finale become an even more powerful tag-line.

SC: When we were writing that song we wrote the majority of it without that part; then later, one night, we wrote and recorded that Saving Me section.
The next day I said to Suzy "let’s play that part we wrote last night because I think it’s a bit Chic/ Nile Rodgers, the way we did it."
So we played it again, stuck it in at the end with me adding a bit of heavy guitar, and we thought "wow, that really works!"   

SS: Yes, there’s a certain serendipity about all of this because the one thing we did was to agree that the only limits would be our imaginations, because we’re not playing to the gallery, we’re going to do whatever comes into our heart.
We went into our musical bubble, just the two of us putting our musical intellect into our hearts then back out again, in song. That’s what we feel very refreshed by Starlite.One, because it’s like, [exhales deeply] ah!
We want to write honest music that’s not about people pleasing or sounds like everyone else
– sometimes that hurts because you know you’re not going to get as much radio play, because you don’t sound like everybody else but, we’re not like everybody else; we’re just not.

And as we discussed earlier we’ve only got one life – why would you want that life to be like someone else’s?
In that case you might as well be an actor speaking other people’s lines or have your thoughts written for you.
That’s actually the reason I didn’t go into acting – why would I spend my life trying to be someone else when I don’t even know who I am yet [laughs]
Life should be about being asked the question "who are you?" then spending your life trying to find out.
And, hopefully, also finding what love and connections truly are, and sharing those view with someone; being able to look to your left or right with someone and saying "look at that, this is my, and our, life!"

RM: On the other side of life with loved ones is of course, the passing of loved ones, something you beautifully and poignantly deliver on The Coat, which is about your mum’s battle with the horrible and torturous Alzheimer’s disease. You’ve performed the song live but I’m so pleased you decided to record it.
Additionally, on the intro, where those little synth remarks and your voice come in, I immediately thought of Sinead O’Connor in her better, less troubled days. Lovely song, subtly phrased, beautifully delivered.  

SS: Thank you. It never felt right before to record or release it. I didn’t really know why that was other than I felt like I was waiting for the right time, and this was the right time, although I knew it needed starting again.
I needed to get the feel of it again, the intimacy, the heartbeat of the song… [pauses]… I’m getting emotional now just thinking about it, because it means so much, although it’s really for you, for the listener, for everybody, who has gone through that.

I can’t quite put it into words but I hope the song can hold you, can help you, because you can’t speak about that when it happens. I’m hoping the song will connect with people who have had to deal with that and not have them feel so alone – that they know there’s someone there that’s been through it, too.

RM: Again, just a beautiful sentiment, and another aspect of the life, love and loss experience.

SC: Also, that little synth part at the beginning is actually a Vocoder, and it’s all played live; the repeating arpeggio line is sequenced, but other than that everything else is played in.
And the beginning, where Suzy is going "ah, ah ah…" that is not easy, even with a click track – in fact if you listen to it closely, you’ll hear it’s not exactly perfect, buy that what makes it perfect!

RM: Exactly that; the humanity, the vulnerability. That’s what makes it so honest.

SC: Originally, we were going to record the song with a grand piano 
– as you mentioned, Suzy has played it live quite a few times, on piano.
But we thought everybody does that, so let’s do something different. That’s when the arrangement changed.

RM: Before moving on from Starlite.One, I want to mention, and feature, the song Shine The Light On Me, because that's the album's deeper cut, in more ways than one.
On first playthrough, on a surface lyric level, it sounds like a sincere little love song – and it is, but with a deeper, and clever, A.I. twist…
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RM: Having talked about Starlite.One and you, collectively, as Starlite & Campbell, I’d like to roll way back to life before Starlite & Campbell, because you both have interesting and fascinating back stories.
For example Simon I know from previous chat with you that the late and great Big Jim Sullivan was an important factor in your earlier career…

SC: Yeah, that‘s right. I started playing session guitar when I was very young and managed to get into the scene very quickly, with my own band. But, for years, I struggled to get a deal, and then punk came along!
We should have stuck to our guns though, because on the back of punk and new wave came the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal with Saxon and all the rest; we missed out on the NWOBHM wave because by then we had gone fast R&B, almost punk R&B in fact, but with really good playing.
We were still trying to get a deal a few years later when Tim Wright, the singer, and I branched off from the original band and started writing more pop orientated music.

Then, later, our manager at the time, Chris Francis, mentioned Big Jim Sullivan and Derek Lawrence – Derek was the guy that produced the first three Deep Purple albums as well as the first three Wishbone Ash albums.
I thought that was great because Andy Powell was a guitar hero to me, and still is
– I’m a real fanboy! [laughs]
Now, unbeknown to us at the time, Jim and Derek travelled up one night to see Tim and I play a gig in Oldham; I remember looking out at a packed audience thinking "I could swear that’s Big Jim Sullivan." 
And of course it was! Jim and Derek came up to see us afterwards and said "we’ve been speaking to Chris and we’d like to offer you a recording contract." Tim and I virtually fell over!

So we started recording with them in a studio down Billinghurst in West Sussex, but that was terrifying for me because I’m playing guitar while Derek Lawrence, who produced Pilgrimage and Argus, and guitarist’s guitarist Big Jim Sullivan, who taught just about everybody including Ritchie Blackmore, sit right behind me, watching and listening!
I always remember doing a solo and Jim would say "nah, you can do it better than that", or playing a guitar section and hearing "no, you’re not thinking about the chords."
He was constantly pushing me, which was great of course, but I was shitting myself! [laughs]

I wrote a little piece on my Blog a couple of years ago about Big Jim and our time together, which is still available if anyone would like to check it out [click here for the article].
Anyway, we recorded the album, got it out and then, for one reason or another Tim left and the band, which was called Little Brother, pretty much collapsed before we really got going – the classic rock and roll story!

RM: Fabulous education and experience though. So, you played for Big Jim, but did you ever play with him?

SC: Yes, I did some pub gigs with him during that same time. Some nights, after working in the studio, we’d go out and just have a bit of a jam – but it’s a jam with Big Jim Sullivan!
My confidence just grew from those experiences but, also, I was very hurt from the band just collapsing; in fact, it hurt me for years.
This was in the early nineties and for the next few years I had a new band or two; I was really going for it with a band called The Disciples, who almost got a deal, when in 2000, I realised I had had enough.
I thought "Right, no more of the music business for me; I’m just going to stop."
And I did, I basically took ten years off
– although not fully, as a musician you can’t ever completely switch off; I was still writing but did loads of other things including getting into scuba diving and becoming a qualified instructor.

From that, or because of that, I moved to the Isle of Man, principally because it’s a great place for scuba diving.
Then one day, on the beach at Port Erin, I met this guy called Dave who looked like rock star – turns out he wasn’t [laughs] but he was a musician, and on the island for a gig, playing in an AC/DC tribute band.

We got talking and he happened to ask if I played. I told him I had, a bit, in the past, but as I started talking about it in more detail the enthusiasm just came back!
I thought "right, I’ve got to do a new record."
All that last ten years I had still been writing and playing, so had loads of songs; that became my first solo album ThirtySix, put together while still on the Isle of Man.

​This is also when I met a promoter on the island called Lenny Conroy. I was talking to him one day and he said "you really need to go and meet this woman on the island; she's an events manager and writes great songs; she’s really alternative, and her name is Suzy Starlite."
I said "Starlite?" and he said "yes, that’s her real name." I though "Right, I definitely have to go and meet this woman!"

RM: Aha, the first meet-up…

SC: Yes, it was, and it was chaotic! [laughs].
I had agreed to meet Suzy at her home, which was near the beach in Laxey. I drove over with my black Labrador Beavis, who is sadly no longer with us; we get out the car, I rock up, see Suzy, sit on this outside wooden bench – and the whole fucking thing collapsed! [loud laughter]. Wood and splinters everywhere!

SS: I had painted it up, because it was slightly rotten, but that didn’t help much [laughs].
Can you imagine – I’m meeting up with someone I’ve never met to say hello and show him some songs I’ve written, and the furniture collapses underneath him!

RM: Quite the first impression…        

SS: I know! I was mortified!

SC: However, once we got past all that Suzy played me her songs, which were fantastic.
I said we need to form a band but first of all, being an event manager, I asked Suzy if she would organise the launch gig for ThirtySix.

SS: That’s right. It took me weeks to decide about the band thing, I didn’t get back to Simon on that for ages, but I said yes to running his launch night.
I also worked as a presenter as well as stage managing stuff, so I also announced the band.
At that time his band were called Simon Campbell and The Very Very Bad Men. I went on after the opening act to a packed out theatre and said "Simon Campbell…" and the whole crowd went "…is a very very bad man!"
The love in that room that night was just fantastic; the whole island community really got behind it and towards the end the whole front row put on Simon Campbell masks!
It was such a great night, with a great party afterwards.

SC: It was a great night but, to cut to the chase, although we had now met, nothing was going on
– but I did finally convince Suzy to put a band together with me, which we called Starlite.

SS: Yes, it was my songs with Simon as my guitar player!

SC: And that was great because I loved her stuff – we’ve still got some demos and stuff from back then that we may actually release at some stage.

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​RM: You mentioned presenting, songwriting, stage and event managing Suzy, but let’s not forget that radio broadcaster and, right up my two-wheeled street, motorcycles are also part of the Starlite career experience…

SS: [laughs] That was actually a bit of a weird one. It all started back when I was living in Manchester and I decided, for my fortieth Birthday, that I wanted to learn how to ride a motorbike!
So, I bought a Honda 125 off eBay and within three and a half months had passed my test and was riding it. And then my friend Woody – John Wood – restored a classic 1957 Ariel Colt for me; we actually did it together, it was a Wednesday Workshop, where people went down to his place in Mossley in Manchester.

When I moved to the Isle of Man, I took the Ariel Colt down the TT Ramsey Sprint, where I got an award for entertainment value 
– she only had a top speed of forty-eight miles an hour and I used to whip her like a jockey shouting "c’mon!" [laughter]. But then it’s a Colt – she was my horse and I was her jockey!
But I love that bike, and I’ve still got it.

RM: Fabulous. But it wasn’t just the Ramsey Sprint – you were at the famous Bonneville Salt Flats too, I believe?

SS: Yes! I was working with some Isle of Man motorcyclists who wanted to go to Bonneville to challenge a land speed record; they were building this amazing bike, the Manxman, in the back of one of their garages. The rider was Richard Barks, who is the father of Samantha Barks, who played Elsa in Frozen The Musical in the West End in London.
They asked me if I would be their crew chief, sort it all out, and get everyone over to America.
We did that, got over there, and ended up breaking not one but two world land speed records, became the most successful rookie team in the history of the Speed Week event and the first team to represent the Isle of Man.

RM: Fantastic; what a feather – actually a few feathers 
– in the cap.

SS: Yes, it was a momentous occasion. I also got to ride a pucka Sprint bike at the TT Ramsey Sprint I mentioned earlier. The guys said "Hey, Starlite, do you fancy a spin on the Sprint bike?"
Now at that point I had never ridden more than a 250 on the road and a 350 in a field, which I fell off [laughs], but when they pulled this bike out the back of the van – a 650 Ducati Sprint Racer 
– it just kept on coming… [laughter]. I thought to myself bloody hell, what am I supposed to do on this? I’m, a complete novice, and I’ve only been riding a couple of years!

Anyway, long story short, I started by doing a run about as fast as the Ben-my-Chree ferry while going "oh shiiit!" [laughter] and the next time I stalled it as I got into second gear. I spent all day trying to master this bike, then five minutes before the end the battery died!
They pulled me back from the line while a bloke came running through the crowd shouting "I’ve got you a battery!"
At that point I thought "I’m Guy Martin, it’s now or never!" Barksy said to me "wring its neck so it’s screaming, don’t treat it well – just kill it, and don’t throttle off until the chequered flag is way back behind you."
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So I did the run, came back around and the whole paddock was jumping for joy. I thought it was because I hadn’t stalled it [laughs] but they said "you won, you did the run in 7.8 seconds!" I won fastest woman and fastest in my class that day.

RM: Fabulous. How long did this exhilarating, alternative career last?

SS: Well the next weekend it was a race at the Jurby Airfield circuit on the island, which I won; then I retired!

RM: Perfect timing – retire at the top!

SS: [laughs] Also, I didn’t want to get sucked into that world; I’m happier pottering around in my little bike and I was writing my music at the time, so saving my hands, as a musician, was important – because with the racing it would have been a case of not if, but when.
It was a bit of a whirlwind, but I’m so glad I did it; it was a beautiful and great experience.
I’m also glad we had that little bubble of magic on the island.

RM: Yes, 
as you mentioned earlier you were clearly both part of the larger Isle of Man community, especially in terms of the music scene, entertainment and events.

SS: I did love it. It was like a whole different world and culture, on the island, with a separate lifestyle.
We also went to see one of the governing ministers on the island and managed to get an artist scheme together, where any artist from the island who wanted to work in the mainland would get a discount on the ferry, because even that could be cost prohibitive.
We tried to do as much as we could to support everyone; Simon was really good at uniting all the musicians, because there were so many types on the island.

We organised an event called One Night Stand, which was a charity event for the MacMillan Cancer Support.
We got all the musicians and singers on the island together – some of whom probably hadn’t played or sung together in years, if ever – and Simon got the backing band together for the event.
We rehearsed with all the different artists at different times and the event was just incredible; I’m going all goose bumpy now thinking about it and remembering just how special that night was.
But Simon did most of that because he was so great in the community.

SC: That’s because I played with virtually every musician on the island at some point! [laughs].
We also did a three day festival which featured Starlite, but I was in about six different bands that weekend!

RM: I love the Isle of Man, and not just because of the TT, so it's great to hear stories like this. 
How long were you on the island together?

SS: I was on the island a good year before Simon arrived, and you were there a couple of years before we met?

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SC: Yeah, I moved over in 2007. Sadly though, that’s when my wife and I got divorced; this was also around the time of my first solo album and doing the Starlite thing with Suzy.
And then we ran away together, to France – because the only problem with the Isle of Man is that it is such a close community.
My ex wife was very popular on the island and once we had split up, and with me working with Suzy, who was also known through the motorcycles, all that sort of thing, it just wasn’t a good place to be. 

SS: We didn’t actually want to be together but, you know when you’ve just met the one, you can only say no for so long. Simon used to say we were great on stage together but I just saw him as my mate, like the mate I lived with in Manchester for fifteen years – there wasn’t anything of a romantic nature there at all.
​
I’m used to having male friends, and it’s always been platonic; that’s especially important when it comes to working in bands 
– the last thing you want to do is fall in love with the guitar player [laughs].
So, we accidentally fell in love but, once we realised that, I also realised that I’d never felt about anyone else like this before 
– that’s when we both knew that if we were going to do this we would have to start a brand new life together somewhere else.
And for our first six months together, every other day at lunch, we would play each other records from our collections and say "what do you think to this, then?" and just get to know each other, tell stories, hang out and write music together.     

RM: When it’s meant to be it’s meant to be.
We talked earlier about you event managing Simon’s first solo album, Suzy, but of course by the time of Simon’s second solo release, The Knife, you were together – and indeed you have co-writing and appearance credits.

SS: Yeah. Originally, I came along to those album recording sessions just to do some backing vocals, but we had also, as just mentioned, been writing together. We wrote and sang did Do You Want Me together, which was a quite a moving song, written about Castleford.
You can feel the history, and the sadness, of growing up there with the dreams you could have had, but you end up going down the colliery mines, or working in the factories.


It almost reminds me of my own childhood too – what do I want be? When you say I want to be an artist they laugh at you or say "get a job." It didn’t matter that you might feel very creative. I got no support or encouragement from any of my family, really, it all came from me; I felt it was my calling.

RM: What’s also interesting about Do You Want Me is it beautifully illustrates Simon’s love of Americana, blues and contemporary folk while also reflecting on your own folk beginnings, Suzy.
We touched on that at the top of this conversation but it would be nice to conclude with you expanding a little on your folk background.

SS: That all started when I went to Salford when I was twenty-four. I went to Salford University to do an HND in Media and Performance, which was the first course of its kind.
The course included musical theatre, acting and a bit of radio – but we also had these lunchtime concerts, as well as having proper, pucka recording studios down in the basement.
I used to spend a lot of my time down there, hanging in the studios and getting to know a couple of mates.
Anyway I ended up being the first non-musician – in that I wasn’t doing the Music Degree, which was also the first of its kind in the country – to perform a lunchtime concert, which I called I Never Used To Like Brussel Sprouts [laughter]. But it was great, and I just felt that I had to play, and sing.

From there we ended up putting a folk band together called Megiddo with Tim Allen and John Smith, 
who won the John Lennon Writing Award from Salford Uni, on acoustic guitars, and Alan Lowles on fretless bass.
I also played some mandolin.
This was the days when you send out tapes, and I was sending ours out everywhere, and that got us a gig at the Mean Fiddler. At that gig was Chris Cowey, who produced the Channel 4 music show The White Room and went on to produce Top Of The Pops; he had left the Apollo to jump in his limo and come down to see us!

RM: Great stuff. And you had some success?

SS: Yeah, we recorded an EP, supported Show of Hands and played a number of festivals; we also played the more intimate folk clubs, with me in my Maid Marion dress, singing in the middle of the audience.
We also opened for Iona at Band On The Wall in Manchester. That came from one of the tapes I had sent out, to Dave Bainbridge of Iona, who I had previously interviewed on radio.
I sent him the tape and said "Come on Dave, let us open for you!" And he did!

So that was how the whole folk thing came about but it was all, really, for me, about being able to tell you something I couldn’t tell you over a pint – I needed to tell you stuff that I knew ony music could do.
And that, to this day, is still the case. There are certain things, like The Coat, and pretty much everything off the album – again my skin is going goose bumpy thinking about it
– where I don’t know how you say that outside of a song; I don’t know how you could condense it.
But that’s also part of being a musician, and being part of that community, and the live performance.
We just love to hang out with people in that live environment; I get so excited about all of that.

RM: But that’s the best of music in a nutshell – the art of expression, the shared experience; it’s just such a powerful medium.

SS: It is powerful, and just such a great way of bringing people together, who have the same passion for it.

RM: And also a great note to end this chat on. Thank you both for spending time with FabricationsHQ; your conversation, openness and honesty serves you as well as your music does the rest of us.

SC: Thank you so much Ross, and thank you for all the support you have given us both and our music – it’s really appreciated.

Ross Muir
Muirsical Conversation with Suzy Starlite & Simon Campbell
September 2023
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​Find out more about Starlie & Campbell at: https://starlite-campbell.com/

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Entire Starlite & Campbell catalogue at: https://starlite-campbell.bandcamp.com/

Simon Campbell solo albums: https://simoncampbell.bandcamp.com/

Suzy Starlite & Simon Campbell live images in above article by Tony Cole
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