While he may be renowned for his role as Malcolm Tucker in the political satire, The Thick Of It, and the 12th incarnation of time lord, Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi has now spoken about his love for music and his favourite acts.
Capaldi, who is touring the UK next month in support of his new solo album, Sweet Illusions, has revealed his favourite albums of all time, including Television and the Sex Pistols, as well as Robert Donat and Frank Sinatra.
In a recent interview, Capaldi shared his fondness for Kate Bush's Hounds of Love, and the Sex Pistols' Never Mind The Bollocks.
"I was once in a room with Kate Bush", Capaldi said. "I was too frightened to say anything. It was at an exhibition of the wonderful painter John Byrne’s work. I’m not the kind of person to have regrets in my life, but I wish I’d said hello to her".
He continued: "when this album came out, I just loved it – there was so much invention in it, sound-wise, and it was really at the cutting edge of what you could do technically. I couldn’t understand how she was writing songs like Hello Earth, with the astronaut guy and all the bleeps, and Waking The Witch, with all those hellos, and how she was somehow able to make them out of collaging sounds, and using samples of voices.. And in tracks like And Dream Of Sheep, she can delve into the subconscious and touch it very deeply".
Speaking on Never Mind The Bollocks, Capaldi added: "This was inevitable, really, wasn’t it?".
"I was there when it came out, and I just thought it was incredible," he explained. "The whole brouhaha about the Sex Pistols in the newspapers took over the whole culture before we’d even heard a note, so it was hard to grasp their musical identity, other than the fact that everyone said that they were terrible, they couldn’t play, all that stuff. Finally, Virgin signed them, and they brought this out, and it’s just stunning."
"The idea that you could make such powerful music so simply was so exciting," he adds, "especially after there’d been such a dominance of musical sophistication with Yes and Genesis and the supergroups, which all demanded a kind of musical bravado and technical skill that was way beyond the limit of any of us. The fact that this was available to us, and driven by a kind of youthful anger, was so exciting. It still is!".
Speaking of Kate Bush, the singer's streaming figures received a huge spike in figures following the premiere of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things.
More on this story for Nova here.
