The
Lightning Seeds. Who are they? Well, initially it was "who was he?"
The Lightning Seeds was the brainwave of the scouse producer and guitarist
Ian Broudie.
Ian Broudie had been in bands before. In the seventies, he was in the semi-legendary punk outfit Big In Japan, whose line up also included Holly Johnson and Bill Drummond. Broudie explains: "Big In Japan were arty, very Velvet Underground-like. One song, Reading the Charts, was loads of feedback with Jayne [Casey] reading that week's top 40. Somehow we made Granada TV's Whats On, which was my first time on British television." Big In Japan spilt after the single Big In Japan and a demo EP "From Y to Z and Never Again".
In 1983, Broudie teamed up with ex-Wild Swans singer Paul Simpson to form the duo Care. Care signed to the Arista label and released three singles, My Boyish Days, Flaming Sword and Whatever Possessed You. Ian still likes to perform Flaming Sword live, and it is also available as a b-side on the Sense single. Success did not amount to much. They spilt for a few reasons.
Broudie
explains the split of Care: "Paul and myself had very different tastes.
At the time, everything was synthesized but I was listening to a lot of 60s
stuff and thought it would be a good to have flutes, bassoons and piccolos
in our songs. Paul wrote me a letter saying he wasn't into the 60s stuff.
He just dismissed me really."
Ian went back to dabble in more production work for bands such as the Icicle Works and Frazier Chorus. In 1989, though, Ian turned to writing songs. Still signed to Ghetto, he recorded Cloudcuckooland and chose the name Lightning Seeds, hoping that one day this little side project would become a band. In 1989, the single Upside Down was due to be released. This was cancelled and Pure was released, making # 16 in the UK Top 40 charts. In the same year, Joy was released, which failed to break the top 100. In April 1990, Ian was back in the studio recording a new version of All I Want, which had a slightly different arrangement and better production. It also failed to break the top 100.
In the same year, Broudie teamed up with Paul Simpson once again and joined the Wild Swans to record the album "Spaceflower". Ian played guitar and organ and did the production work.
In
1991, Ian returned began to return his focus to the Lightning Seeds. Many songs
were recorded for a new album, but a few, such as 15 Reasons and It's Better
This Way were never released. The former is avaialble on a Melody Maker compilation
disc entitled "Gigantic 2". The latter made an appearance on pre-release
acetates, but was pulled from the album at the 11th hour for reasons unknown.
1991 also saw Broudie's first song-writing collaboration with Terry Hall. Terry had been one of Ian's favourite lyricists and wanted to work with him again (they met before and worked on some material from The Colourfield). The first song to come from this was "Sense". This would also be the year that Ian would pen one of his most recognised tunes - "The Life of Riley". About his son, Riley, he wrote half of it waiting for him to be born, and half of it afterwards.
Ian set about recording this album in a different manner. For one, it was recorded in his brothers' front room after splitting up with a girlfriend, and for another, it was recorded with percussion loops.
However, Rough Trade, the distributor for Ghetto collapsed. Dick Leahy sold the Lightning Seeds to Virgin. In March 1992, Virgin released "The Life of Riley" as the first single from the album. Despite not setting the charts alight, it did give Broudie a top 30 hit after the failiures of Joy and All I Want. The record company quickly lost interest, though, as the album stalled at 53 in the UK album charts. In May, the final single - the title track from the album - "Sense" was released and managed to climb only to 31. With poor sales of the album and singles, Virgin dropped them from the label.
Not everything was doom and gloom, as in the tail end of 1992 and throughout 1993, Epic became increasingly interested in them. In fact, they signed them up on a condition that Ian changes attitude towards Lightning Seeds. Previous it was a low-key affair so he could dabble in production work and work with other bands. Epic wanted Ian to concentrate full time on the Lightning Seeds when promoting. They wanted him to tour the Lightning Seeds which would give Ian a chance to get to play live again - something he hadn't done since the Original Mirrors days except for the odd stint as rhythm guitarist for the Bunneymen. As Ian explains "I'd been wanting to perform live again for some time and this was the first time I found myself talking to somebody at a record company who believed in Lightning Seeds."
However,
the album was recorded in much the same way as Sense, except in a studio and
it was taken more seriously. Most of the same cast were enlisted too, such as
Simon Rogers for co-production work, Clive Layton for organ, Terry Hall made
his appearances by co-writing and singing backing vocals, as did Ian McNabb.
Much of the album was finished by the end of 1993.
In 1994, before the release of the album, later to be titled "Jollification", Ian took a break and worked on Alison Moyet's album "Essex", and more importantly the album "Home" by Terry Hall. Ian would play guitar on the album and produce it, as well as co-penning the track "You". The album also featured Terry's version of the track "Sense", which was released as a single.
As August 1994 approached, Ian was getting ready to start rehearsing to play live. He enlisted Chris Sharrock (ex The La's, World Party) as drummer, who Ian had previously worked with when Chris was a member of the Icicle Works, and Martyn Campbell (ex Rain) who was a friend of a friend.
But with September in full swing and October approaching, an extra guitarist was recruited in the form of Paul Hemmings (ex-The La's) and keyboardist Ali Kane joined the live lineup. As the new year started, things looked good with an acclaimed tour and a new single. The song Change, a live favourite, gave the Lightning Seeds their second top 20 hit - it went straight in at number 13.
With tours over the UK and Europe, festival appearances and the singles that followed Change (Marvellous, Perfect and a re-release of Lucky You, all with imaginative and quirky packaging), helped Jollification to clock up well over 600,000 sales quite quickly. The Lightning Seeds now had a taste of the success they quite rightly deserved.
Ian now had a studio on a barge he bought from Pete Townshend from the Who, who Ian did some production work with. Eel Pie studios was, and still is, located in Twickenham. After the success of Jollification, Ian Broudie set about writing and playing songs to go on a new album. A stop-gap single was released - Ready Or Not, the first new song to feature the live band on the record. A whole host of songs were recorded, but the album was halted midway through.
During
this period, and while Three Lions was still a twinkle in the FA's eyes, Virgin
thought they could capitilise on Broudie's success with the Lightning Seeds.
A compilation entitled "Pure Lightning Seeds" was released, featuring
most of the songs from the first two albums without much thought going into
it. (They even spell Ian's name wrong in the booklet)
Well, this was the year of Euro '96, and this was the event of the year. The FA contacted Ian, as "The Life of Riley" had been used on Grandstand's Goal of the Month competition. He was asked to do a song for the England team. His immediate reaction was no, but later on that evening, Ian would find himself sitting in front of the television watching Frank Skinner and David Baddiel on Fantsay Football. He then telephoned the FA and told them he would do the song if Skinner and Baddiel would write the lyrics. The song would become "Three Lions". It scored them a number 1 hit, and became the 'nation's new national anthem'. "It's weird that song, it's got a life of its own."
But Southgate missed, and the madness passed so Broudie and co. were off to the barge to re-think the album. Some songs were left with the same arrangement with extras added, some songs discarded completely and a whole set of new ones recorded.
The band line up changed in 1996 and 1997. In '96, Angie Pollock (sung on Terry Hall's album "Home", worked with Shakespeare's Sister) joined the group replacing Ali Kane. She also appeared on the album singing backing vocals. Chris Sharrock left to work with World Party on the album "Egyptology" in 1997, with Mat Priest from Dodgy taking over the drum stool.
As the end of 1997 neared, the Lightning Seeds embarked on a UK tour... and, um, a series of Pop Quizes! . This was promotion for their new compilation album "Like You Do... Best of the Lightning Seeds". The compilation took its name from a song on Dizzy Heights, and is a favourite saying of Ian's, "It's kind of sarcastic. It's Like you do, because you don't. Like the cover... I don't surf up the Mersey".
1998 was rather a quiet year for Lightning Seeds. Nothing new out except 3 Lions '98. It was a re-recorded version with new lyrics. They also headlined at Glastonbury and V98.
At the end of 1999, the Lightning Seeds made a burst back on to the scene with a new single, new album and kind of a new sound, and missing one band member - Paul Hemmings had now left. The brand new single - Life's Too Short - released back in the beginning of November, hinted at the Lightning Seeds new more dance-orientated sound. The album, Tilt, features Ian collaborating with a few of his old mates (namely Terry Hall and Steven Jones from Babybird) plus some new friends to work with. Tim Simenon helped with the beats and co-produced / mixed a track called "Get It Right" on the new LP and a few songs were co-written by Mark Cullen of Fixed Stars. You may never heard of Fixed Stars, but they have an album out produced by Ian Broudie, and they supported the Lightning Seeds on their December 1999 UK Tilt tour.
The year, century and indeed Millenium, (dare I mention that word??), ended in style, as Mr Broudie and his Seeds played at the Cream Bash in Liverpool on New Years Eve which proved a great end to the year.
But 1998 / 1999 has not all been a bed of roses for Ian Broudie. Rumours went round that he had split from Becky Broudie - his wife for nine years - during the recording of Tilt. He told a tabloid that they had "got it together" but remained tight lipped on the subject. Whether or not the split was true, is another matter as he was seen with Becky and Riley at Liverpool L2 this year.
The Lightning Seeds entered the new millenium by playing at Liverpool at the Cream 2000 festival along with the likes of Space and Stereophonics. February, they released the single "Sweetest Soul Sensations". It peaked very low down in the charts - number 67. There were many reasons for this. Radio 1, the UK national radio station (or shite for short) did not play list the track. Also, big music store chains like Virgin music and other chains such as Woolworths and WH Smith did not stock the single. The final factor is that it was backed by remixes of very, very poor quality and a mediocre b-side.
During this period, Ian made his TV debut by co-presenting the sports and entertainment programme "The Sin Bin" which could be viewed on Digital channel BBC Choice. Otherwise, 2000 and 2001 have been relatively quiet on the Lightning Seeds front. Along with Mark Cullen, Broudie cut some music for the soundtrack to Purely Belter.
2000 so far was also the year of the rumours. The first
one was that they were supposedly dropped from their record company, Epic.
This rumour was completely unfounded and Epic were denying these rumours.
Then, they were supposed to be back in the studio demoing new material when
the most shocking rumour hit us all - the Seeds were going to split up. Ian
confirmed in newspaper the Liverpool Echo, that the Lightning Seeds would
be taking an elongated break. They would return in the future 
sometime.
He annouced that they would play a final gig at Liverpool to mark this, and
so they played at Liverpool's L2, plus a small series of university graduation
balls. Terry Hall joined them at the end of the L2 concert by singing a song
called Our Lips are Sealed, originally written for Fun Boy Three.
Truth was, in fact Broudie had disbanded the Lightning Seed. Cheif Seed was on his own again. In the years that followed Ian hadn't been idle though. Much in demand for production work, he worked with The Coral, The Zutons and I Am Kloot to mention but a few. But it wouldn't be until 2004 when we would see or hear Broudie once more. He returned in style with a fantastic solo album, Tales Told, which received much acclaim from the critics. This was Broudie going back to basics recording stuff on his own or with whoever happened to be in the studio with him at the time. An EP, Smoke Rings, was released, and a promo video shot for Song For No One. Ian did some promo work for radio stations and did a couple of gigs in London and Manchester. Broudie was to support The Beautiful South on a tour of Ireland. A tour of Europe was arranged, but later cancelled. And silence followed yet again...
Until now, where the Lightning Seeds are reforming for some summer festival dates and a summer tour with a Best Of (Yes, another one!) album to be released.