‘Wet Wet Wet’s Marti Pellow came over my home – and didn’t depart | Music | Entertainment | EUROtoday

When Chris Difford prolonged a pleasant invitation to a fellow musician after an awards ceremony, he possible didn’t count on to be sharing his residence – and life – with him for the subsequent two years.

But that’s precisely what occurred when Wet Wet Wet’s Marti Pellow turned up at Difford’s East Sussex farmhouse and, fairly merely, did not actually depart for some time.

Writing in his 2014 memoir Some Fantastic Place, Difford – founding member and lyricist of Squeeze – particulars a very surreal chapter of his life, one which started on a sunny afternoon with tea on the garden and ended almost 24 months later with slippers, temper swings, and a Ferrari within the driveway.

The pair first met on the Ivor Novello Awards, an annual occasion recognising excellence in songwriting. At the time, each males have been battling dependancy – a topic that had performed out publicly for them in newspapers and interviews.

Difford remembers inviting Pellow to an dependancy assembly. Weeks later, the Wet Wet Wet singer obtained in contact, and Difford invited him to his countryside retreat, Old House Farm.

“He called a few weeks later and I arranged for him to come to Old House Farm,” Difford writes. “He arrived in his car and we sat on the lawn. It was a hot summer’s day and we talked about writing songs on recovery and about him leaving his band.”

Pellow had left Wet Wet Wet in 1999, strolling away from a gaggle that had achieved phenomenal chart success all through the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties. The Scottish quartet had secured three UK primary singles, together with their record-breaking 15-week run on the high with ‘Love Is All Around’ in 1994.

But amid the celebrity, Pellow struggled with heroin dependancy, which finally prompted his departure from the band he had fronted because the age of 17.

After that first go to, issues moved quick. “After a few cups of tea and some cake we looked around my (recording) studio and he met the girls, Grace and Cissy,” writes Difford. “Then we had a takeaway curry from Rye and he moved in.”

Pellow’s keep at Old House Farm stretched on – not for a weekend or just a few weeks, however for almost two years: “Slippers and pipe, Ferrari and a sense of humour”, Difford quips. “He was a funny and delicate soul. A funny sod and really good company… Marti paid rent and mucked in sometimes. He was generous and kind.”

But it wasn’t all laughs and countryside walks. Difford makes clear that living with Pellow meant navigating unpredictable emotional terrain: “We had to live with his mood swings and eternal disappointment that he was not number one in the charts”, he admits.

That drive to return to the top of the charts defined much of Pellow’s time in East Sussex. Difford recalls how the singer’s ambitions were hardly modest. “He had his sights on being the next Robbie Williams and wanted to be on film and stage”, he writes. “He wanted nothing less than James Bond as his first role.”

Still, there was a inventive spark to the set-up. Difford launched Pellow to fellow songwriters and even turned his supervisor as Pellow plotted the subsequent chapter of his profession. Though his solo work didn’t fairly match the business highs of Wet Wet Wet, Pellow would finally set up himself in musical theatre, starring in productions akin to Chicago and Evita on the West End and touring throughout the UK.

While their home {and professional} partnership had its highs and lows, the friendship didn’t endure. “Sadly, Marti and I have not kept in touch”, Difford writes. “He called me a few times for directions to London theatres and then nothing.”