Ocean Colour Scene's Simon and Oscar to play at Portsmouth's New Theatre Royal | Interview

’That was a Sunday night, too!’ Simon says now in disbelief. ‘I don't know what happened, somebody spilt somebody's bird or looked at someone's pint. We had to go off stage and we couldn't do the encore.’

The ruckus made the local news. ‘It's a magnificent venue – it's not the sort of a place for a fight in,’ he chuckles.

Coming out of Solihull in the West Midlands, Ocean Colour Scene were one of the key bands of the Britpop era – their Moseley Shoals album went triple platinum spawned huge hits like The Riverboat Song and The Day We Caught the Train. And while the band are still going, Simon and Oscar have been performing shows as a duo now for 20 years.

While Fowler is OCS’s frontman anyway, Oscar is the band’s drummer, but in the duo he plays keys and piano – with the occasional bit of percussion.

‘We started doing them as a duo, mainly to give us something to do while Steve was away with Paul.’

Steve is Steve Cradock, their guitarist who has also been part of Paul Weller’s band since 1992’s Wildwood.

‘Folk strummer’

But the format suits Simon: ‘That's more naturally me, really. That's how I started off – the way we present the songs is much closer to the way I wrote the songs, because I write on my own on the whole with an acoustic guitar and an old-fashioned tape player – the type you get for Christmas in 1972. I can't use any modern technology, so I find that really easy.

‘It shows the audience another side of us, because I think people think of us as Mods or Britpop or acolytes of that era, whereas I've always thought of myself as a folk strummer!’

He also mentions that ‘you can sit down, which is nice. And I tell a lot of stories, I'm a born show-off really. I'm quite a good raconteur…

God knows how many tours we've done like this. It started off with an LP we recorded live in Glasgow 20 years ago called Live on The Riverboat, which was reissued last year. That gave it momentum again.

‘We've added some songs now which we haven't played in ages, some which the audience may have never even heard.’

And he admits that those glory days might have caught up with him.

‘I might even cheat and have a music stand with the words surreptitiously on there. The thing is we destroyed our memories in the ’90s – we had far too much fun. That's what happens when you stay up too much with those naughty scallies from up north!’ The band were good friends with Oasis – supporting them at one of the legendary 1996 Knebworth concerts.

However, times have changed, and as for their rider? ‘It’s a few cans and a sandwich from M&S,’ he laughs. ‘We're pretty low maintenance these days – there's no pink crystal chandeliers, nothing "Maria".’

Diana Ross

This sets him off, recalling one of the times they appeared on the BBC’s flagship music chart show, Top of The Pops.

‘Maria Carey was on and so was Diana Ross. There were their people in a tug of war over who got the top changing room. Well I tell you what, at Top of The Pops there was no "top" changing room – it was all very BBC and highly disappointing.

‘I do remember that we did meet Diana and we tried to get her to smoke a spliff with us and she said,’ he adopts an iffy American accent, ‘"No guys, I don't do that.” But not many people can say they've tried to do that!’

Unlike some acts who distance themselves from the Britpop days, Simon has no problem with it.

‘It was fantastic! I look back on it with great fondness, met lots of lovely people there. Let's not beat around the bush, it was everybody pretending they were back in ’66 and the press loved it because they had their Beatles and their Stones, and it was all very plum.

‘I really don't keep up with modern day music,’ he admits. ‘There were so many guitar bands then, and now there aren't. I went to our local music shop in Stratford-upon-Avon to get one or two things for the tour, and found it had shut in February! I wonder if basically people are doing it all on laptops. It had been there for as long as I can remember, but now, oh my god! Perhaps people just aren't buying guitars.

‘To be honest, it's not for me to be part of the current crop – it's for them – they don't want me shuffling around with an arthritic hip!

New box set and next album

An exhaustive 15 CD-plus glossy book box set, Yesterday Today 1992–2018, was released in February this year. The band had little to do with putting it together, but did get to see it before it was released.

‘I was with Oscar at our manager's house and we were just like: “Wow!” We were genuinely impressed. ‘What happened to those people? What happened to me? I think I ate him,’ he gives a booming laugh. ‘How young we look! But some of those photographs are 30 years old.’

This reminds Simon: And I've got a book out by the way... I wrote it with my friend Daniel Rachel who's written a number of books about that era. It's called One For The Road, it's about my life before and with the band, and it goes through song by song, and then spins off into stories about staying up all night and jumping out of windows with Weller. I've talked far too much in it – don't do interviews in the afternoon in the pub! The stories got better and better, and I kept thinking: "oh no..."

It’s been 10 years since OCS’s last album, Painting, and things are starting to move towards a new album again.

‘I was down with Steve last week, at his home in Devon. He's got a studio down there, so I spent a few days there putting down about five new tracks.’

They also have a new manager – Creation Records founder and ‘the man who signed Oasis’, Alan McGee.

‘He's been onboard for about a year, and that's given us a lot of new impetus,’ says Simon. ‘We've known him on and off for years, but I didn't know him well. He phoned up Steve and said: “Do you fancy me managing you?” So Steve calls me up and says: “You'll never guess what...”

‘So we went to meet him in Bristol and thought, let's give it a go...’

Whatever happens though, hopefully it will be less trouble than a Sunday night at Birmngham Symphony Hall.

Oscar and Simon are at New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth on Saturday, May 6. Tickets £34. Go to newtheatreroyal.com.