Filming in Ukraine at Chernobyl and using Cult Leader Tactics - former Mansun frontman Paul Draper is back and coming to The Wedgewood Rooms | Big Interview

And so they went to Pripyat, the Ukrainian city where the workers for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power plant lived. Since the nuclear disaster in 1986 it has been a ghost town.

Of course, given the events of the past three weeks and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the video has taken on an even more eerie tone.

But when The Guide spoke with Paul several weeks ago, a potential war was barely even on the horizon for those of us back here in the UK.

Talk with the former Mansun frontman, now solo artist was predictably more oriented around Covid – Paul had recently been laid now by the virus, and how the aforementioned Omega Man was influenced by life in lockdown. The song’s title is borrowed from the 1973 film adaptation of the dystopian novel I Am Legend, which stars Charlton Heston as the survivor of a global pandemic.

The song features Paul’s friend, solo musician and Porcupine Tree frontman Steven Wilson. As Paul explains: ‘I've been mates with him for many years. I called him up and asked what's it (lockdown) been like for you? And he goes: “It's mad, it's like that film, The Omega Man.”’

The song grew from there. While the song came together easily Paul wanted to film the video somewhere that ‘looked like a place where nobody existed.’

Pripyat, in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, was top of the list. Bear in mind our conversation happened pre-Russian invasion.

‘It's easier than you think to go there,’ says Paul. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is huge – it's 30km in radius, and then you get right to the centre and Pripyat's just like a mile or so from the sarcophagus of the reactor. It's where all of the workers lived.

‘We did a lot of the filming there, and it was scary. It's a frightening place, but people have filmed there before, and there are tourist trips, but we hired a private guide to take us around and we had to get clearance to film there.

‘Then when you come out you go through radiation detectors and all of that – they say don't go in for more than three hours.

‘The radiation is all in the dust and all of the roads have been cleared, so it's basically keep out of the woods, keep out of the buildings. There's only a couple of times I went through buildings, but you can see in the video that I'm wearing gloves. I dumped all my clothes when I came out – except my Nike Air Max trainers – I couldn't get rid of them. I should be able to wear them again in about 150,000 years.’

The track comes from Paul’s second solo album, Cult Leader Tactics.

In the ‘90s Paul was frontman of the Britpop-era band Mansun, who scored chart hits with the likes of Wide Open Space, She Makes My Nose Bleed and I Can Only Disappoint You. After the band dissolved in acrimony in 2003 Paul went into producing.

His solo debut solo album Spooky Action had actually been recorded in the aftermath of the band’s split, but wasn’t put out until 2017 after fans petitioned for its release.

‘It sat on the shelf for about a decade, so I dug it out, pieced it all together, tarted it up and made it a bit "modern" and released it. But I never thought I would do a gig with it. It was something I had worked on a long time ago, and I was putting it out in my capacity as a producer.

‘But it went in the top 20, so we put a tour on which sold out.

‘Then Steven Wilson was touring the states and he said you've got loads of fans out there, and asked me to join him.’

From there tours of China, Japan, Europe and of course the UK, followed.

‘Off the back of that, then there was this pressure: right, now you've got to do another album, a proper new one. And that's where I'm at now.

‘I got here by accident, I never meant to be here at my ripe old age, out on the road as a solo artist.

‘But the music industry has changed that much that you don't need to be part of the publicity machine in London, shmoozing and going on radio and TV shows, left, right and centre, you can communicate direct with your fans.’

And so we come to the new album: Cult Leader Tactics, a satire on the genre of self-help manuals as filtered through Paul’s experiences in the music industry.

It details how to get to the top of your chosen profession, or how to get on in life in general and in affairs of the heart, by acting in a Machiavellian manner and employing dirty tricks or ‘Cult Leader Tactics’ to achieve your life goals.

Paul also wrote a book of the same name to accompany the album.

‘All of the records I've made, bar one I think, have just been reflections of where my life was at. My last record was quite an emotional record about the split of my band, Mansun. So I got that out of my system, and then it was, right, what am I going to make a record about now?

‘I'm going to make a record about my life experience going through the Machiavellian behaviour of the music industry, but make it into a dark satire, sort of a Monty Python, or Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sort of look at making it into a fictitious self-help manual about how to get on in life by being, as what everyone says, a massive cult.

‘It's a joke, it's a dark satire, but the publishers and the record company called me up and said you have to put a disclaimer at the start of the book – so it does say “please don't take anything in this book seriously.”’

‘It's the era of fake news, isn't it? You just have to be really careful to sift through and find out what the truth is.

‘There's elements in the book where I'm talking about fake news and I talk about how to go about doing it, but it's wrapped up in a way, as if you want to get on in life by using these tactics, this is how you do it.’

He claims everything he’s writing about is based on fact, and personal experience.

‘It's all things I've seen in the music industry – the way people operate, the way people will act in devious, manipulative ways to get on in the business.

‘I thought I'd write it all down – and it was easy for me to plough through it, because I'd seen it all, I'd been on the sharp end of it.’

So, is he about to set up his own cult then?

‘I was worried about that when I put the first single out, Cult Leader Tactics, people might think it was me speaking directly. But I'm playing a part, a character, with a massive devious personality who's a mover and shaker in the music industry.

‘I'm not that – I just do my work as an independent artist, send it my label in London and they put it out.

‘For the latter part of my career, and I signed at 24, so 28 years, I've been a professional musician now, I've just learnt to avoid everyone like the plague!’

While most of the album was recorded late 2019, Paul went and recorded some more songs at home after the lockdown bit.

‘I was stuck at home and recorded three tracks electronically and did them remotely with friends and collaborators. That's why the album sounds a bit electronic-y and a bit band-y. So we're going to bring some of the electronic sounds out with us on a laptop and a computer and get a bit of that going at the gigs as well.’

The album's release date was put back from autumn 2020 to January this year, and the tour has been rescheduled three times.

‘The tour and album are all products of their time,’ Paul adds. ‘I've called it a Covid-rock record, but it will be my post-Covid tour really as well.’

Paul Draper is at The Wedgewood Rooms, Southsea, on Monday, March 21. Go to wedgewood-rooms.co.uk.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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