There’s a particular kind of full-circle moment that makes being a student music journalist feel almost too good to be true: interviewing someone whose music has soundtracked so much of your life.
For me, that moment came last Sunday, sitting in the smoking area of Edinburgh’s Liquid Room, chatting with Mark Morriss — frontman of The Bluetones — ahead of their 30th-anniversary gig that evening.
Since its release in 1996, Expecting to Fly has been a constant presence in my life and countless others’. The aptly named record flew straight to number one, but its legacy extends far beyond the chart success that first made it a household name. Morriss revisits not just the songs that launched the band, but the younger self who helped create them.
The Bluetones have grown as musicians, Morriss explains, yet he believes they have retained the same underlying swing. Preparing for the tour has meant picking apart arrangements they hadn’t played in years.“Scott and I were discussing it last night — climbing back inside our 24-year-old heads and dissecting these songs,” he says. “We’re kind of impressed with our younger selves.”
A surprising reflection for an album that sounds so assured. But while the band spent years playing and honing their material before release, Morriss remembers satisfaction rather than any grand sense of destiny. They liked what they had made, he assures, but had no idea it would achieve the success it did.
Three decades later, that success is only part of the story. What makes an album endure is a harder question to answer, particularly as the artist. Morriss struggles to recognise those qualities in his own work, though he’s certain that nostalgia alone cannot explain why certain music stays with us. “Who’s to say music has a shelf life?” he asks. “You change, the art stays the same.”
Either way, Expecting to Fly has found listeners well beyond the generation that first took it to number one. Like most teenagers discovering albums long after their chart-topping days, I had my dad to thank for introducing me to Expecting to Fly. It was wisdom I took for granted then, but now as a 20-year-old who ranks the album high in my favourites, I’m curious about what it means to see younger audiences at these anniversary shows. Morriss’ response is characteristically sincere, with a cheeky aside: “It warms me. I feel very lucky, and it’s also reassuring to know that there are young people out there with good taste!”
The comment carries humour, but beneath it I find something more significant. The album no longer needs to belong to a generation or remain frozen in its original moment to survive. Its legacy depends on people discovering and connecting with something in it for themselves, regardless of whether they were around for Britpop the first time.
That label, however, is one Morriss is wary of. The Bluetones are frequently grouped into the Britpop movement, but Mark would rather the band be considered independently. “I think everyone wants individual consideration, don’t they, rather than being lumped in?” he says.
Perhaps that independent streak is part of why the band have continued beyond the period with which they are most readily associated. Asked what The Bluetones mean to him now, Morriss returns not to critical recognition, but the relationships that have endured alongside the music. “We’re family now,” he says. “There’s a trust.” It’s a simple answer, but one that’s particularly telling in an industry where bands can struggle to survive the success that first brings them together.
And would he change anything about making Expecting to Fly? Morriss doesn’t hesitate: “No, I wouldn’t. I think we did it just right.” 30 years on, the album is both a record of who The Bluetones were and a living part of who they are. Its songs have outlasted the moment that produced them, the labels attached to them, and the generation that first embraced them.
For Mark Morriss, that is the real achievement Expecting to Fly has found a life beyond its creators. If the album now belongs to its audience, The Bluetones’ task is simply to do it justice. And after seeing them live, I’m confident they’re doing just that.
