Rock band Elbow on their new beer and love of pubs

The old man down the pub isn’t happy. For him, it’s that moment when you realise your gaff, your boozer, has been taken over by a younger generation who you didn’t see coming. And the words of the song say it all:

“Glory be, these f***ers are ignoring me/I’m from another century.”​

By definition, that means you’re now the older generation. And the worst thing about getting older is not the aches and pains or the dawning realisation of your mortality. Not here in the pub. It’s that you become invisible to the people around you.

“Hey, I am the beau who loved her so in every song. And I designed that little mystery on your tongue. I’ve broken jaws protecting laws to keep you free. I made your day, so take a seat by me.”​

Charge, the song, is looped and groovy, almost reggae-like. Guy Garvey, who wrote the lyrics, was inspired by his own rapidly approaching (now here) 40th birthday, transplanting his concerns into someone a little older still, to the generation who fought wars, and the generation after that who invented the music that made Garvey a megastar, the music the ‘Millennials’ take for granted and expect for free.

Reflection​

It’s a perfect, if slightly melancholy, song to name a beer after. Charge, the beer, is a session pint, darker and maltier than Build a Rocket Boys! — the beer Garvey’s band Elbow made to promote their last album of the same name. It slips down with no fuss.

“Your palate changes as you get older, doesn’t it,” says Garvey, as he and guitarist Mark Potter chink pint glasses over a table in Elbow’s local. “The last beer was a good balance of what we all liked back then, but since then Pete [Turner, bassist] and Mark have become bitter drinkers. It’s a reflection of what we’re all into now.”

It’s a beer the old man in the song would enjoy, and should go down well with the younger generation of emerging cask-ale drinkers too. But hoppy, zingy craft beer it isn’t. It’s more suited to afternoons in old boozers like the one we’re in, the Eagle in Salford (Gtr Manchester).

If Garvey has experienced the rejection of the song’s character in the city’s rock ’n’ roll bars, then pubs like the Eagle are the consolations of middle age. It’s so close to the band’s rehearsal studio I hear them practising as I arrive.

Inside, the sun shafts in through the windows. It’s cathedral quiet, an oasis. At first glance the yellowed press cuttings and old pictures on the wall make you think that nothing has changed since the 1970s. Then you notice that the seat upholstery is fresh, and that a great deal of care, attention and love has gone into creating this space.

Engaging​

Like all great pubs, it’s an extension of the gaffer’s (Esther Maylor’s) personality. She is much younger than I expected, and friendly, engaging and enthusiastic, greeting each of the regulars by name as they walk in.

If you’re a fan of Elbow, like I am, and adore what one Guardian re-viewer describes as the band’s ‘northern snug-philosopher wisdom’, like I do, this is exactly the kind of pub you’d imagine them drinking in. When I suggest this to “the gaffer”, she looks guilty as charged.

“That was kind of the idea,” she says quietly. “I used to be in a band myself. I knew Elbow rehearsed here. I was the general manager of a pub
in the city centre and I wanted my own place. As soon as I saw this pub I wanted it. This area is on the up, and there are lots of bands around. We turned a derelict cottage next door into a music venue.”

It’s the kind of pub that would have disappeared had Maylor not found it. The kind of place that pubcos would declare unviable. But now it’s reinvented itself as far more than Guy Garvey’s perfect pub. “The other night we had Elbow’s new string section in one corner, the Salford Beekeepers’ Club, and the local CAMRA [Campaign for Real Ale] branch next to them,” she says proudly.

Community​

“She looks after the regulars,” says Garvey as Maylor leaves to attend to deliveries, or bands arriving to rehearse. “Dave over there, I’ve never been in here when he’s not here. He brought a brilliant pork pie in last week. Hey Dave, where was that pork pie from?”

The interview pauses while this important matter is settled, and then resumes. “It’s not about them spending money, it’s about looking after people. Esther’s dad is a minister. She’s doing as good community-based work here as her dad is.”

Garvey’s love of pubs runs deep. What does he think makes them so special? “Look at these beautiful windows that catch the sun. These lovely old doors, the design of the place. It’s like the difference between Blackpool Empress Ballroom and any one of the computer-designed arenas.

“As soon as you walk into a room like this, before anything has happened, you immediately feel aggrandised and ennobled, because they’ve taken the time to make it comfortable and ornate, something you don’t get in a clinical marble-top bar with generic dance music on.”

Playbacks​

So it was inspired when the band’s management decided to launch the album with a series of ‘playbacks’ across 250 Marston’s and Nicholson’s pubs. These are often dull affairs for music journalists. “You’re expected to sit in silence. With the best will in the world, an hour and 10 minutes of brand new music on anyone’s ears, it’s just not all going to go in,” says Garvey.

This is a very different, very Elbow way of doing playbacks.

“Doing it in a pub made a lot more sense. Everyone listens to music on headphones mainly these days, it’s a very private, intimate thing.

“I like the idea of a record going on loop for three or four plays while people are going about socialising, eating or drinking. Those points you hope people will catch. In fact it would be better if they didn’t know it was a playback at all, if something just caught their attention.”

Beautiful​

Six days later I’m in a Nicholson’s pub at noon. Charge is on the bar, and branded beer mats are on every table. The playback is due to start at noon, by which time the pub is filling up with suited City workers, some of whom have taken their ties off for their brief hour’s freedom.

The music is on low, and it takes me a while to realise I’m hearing Garvey’s voice. There’s no announcement, no point of sale. I’m obviously the only person here who knows we’re hearing an exclusive airing of an album a week before its release.

It’s just how Garvey would have wanted it. Occasionally, his voice rises above the hubbub, grainy and mournful and utterly beautiful.

It does the same thing to the pub that an over-saturated, slow-motion camera pan would, a soundtrack that illuminates the detail of the place and reminds you of the continuity, the different generations that have drunk here, and the ones to come.

And then the forced laughter of the City boys drowns him out again, and Garvey is the invisible man in Charge, ignored. Pub life goes on. As it always will do.