Duke Special

Saturday, 7 April 2007

Mood:

lyrical

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Duke Special - The Man

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How did the Duke get his name?

Where is he from?

What was his early involvement in music?

What artists influence him?

His thought - comparisons with other artists?

His thoughts on his music.

Why he burned his sister's satanic records.

His opinion of Damien Rice and James Blunt.

His early appearances in Belfast.

His views on eating meat.

His views on God.

His proudest achievement.

His views on Northern Ireland and The Troubles

Duke Special Videos and Performances

Sources and acknowledgements

The Name Duke Special

He didn't think his given name, Peter Wilson was very stage friendly and he was looking for something that sounded old. "I was aware of the Bordwell's Theatre, so I started Googling it and found this old book of 'Things to Know When You Do Your Bordwell Tour', from the beginning of the Nineteen-hundreds that was full of 'what to expect from your promotors', for people like Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy who were doing these tours throughout the UK and America. It would have been like a variety bill, which would have had everything from dancing bears, which is not so good nowadays obviously, to maybe a band of Gypsys and whatever. But you would have had a lot of people called 'The Amazing...', or the 'Incredible Shrinking...', but also a lot of them were called 'Duke...' So I thought that it sounded good, so I became Duke Special." Top

Early Life

"I grew up in Coleraine and Downpatrick before moving to Holywood, Co. Down when I was 15. I lived at the edge of the country in Downpatrick from the age of seven, and wrote my first song up a tree there."

His first musical stirrings had come in church as a young boy. "I grew up going to Presbyterian churches and singing harmonies. That had a huge impact. I'd be in the congregation listening to these amazing baritone voices. I'd try to copy them and sing from down in my boots before my voice broke." Top

Early Involvements in Music

"My most favourite thing was to sit in the dark, playing the piano. Music was all I wanted to do." Peter grew up with his mother, father and three sisters. "My sisters and I all learnt piano. It wasn't an optional activity." When they were young, Peter and his sisters would sing traditional Irish songs in churches and community centres. "That's probably where my sense of melody comes from, from folk music, church music - music for people to sing together."/

His own early attempts at song-writing, he admits, weren't up to much. This changed when he heard Canadian folkie Bruce Cockburn. "He had this thing that you could sing songs about the light or you could sing songs about things the light enabled you to see. That was a big turning point in my writing because I realised I was much more interested and comfortable with writing about what was going on inside me as opposed to me singing about other people." As he got older, he began to listen to people such as Tom Waits and Johnny Cash, Van Morrison and Elvis Costello. "You realise that things are a lot less black and white. There's a lot of grey and that produces some fascinating songs." Top

Comparisons with other artists.

"People always ask who my influences are and I decided it's everyone from those people to Tom Waits, Magnetic Fields and all those sort of things, but I think people always have their own reference points depending on what they actually listen to. So some people compare mea?|well one person said I sound like Alice Cooper meets Burt Bacharach, whereas someone else said I sound like an early Elton John, but then others say Rufus Wainwright or Badly Drawn Boy. I think it's interesting, I think it says a lot about what other people listen to as well." Top

Influences.

On his myspace page he lists his influences as Elliott Smith, The Magnetic Fields, Dresden Dolls, Early Van Morrison, Vaudeville Theatre, 78 RPMs, Andy Kauffman, Tom Waits, Rufus Wainwright, Aimee Mann, The Divine Comedy, Ben Folds.

At an earlier age he mentions other influences, "My first song was influenced by Jilted John. Early influences were Ian Dury & The Blockheads, The Beatles, traditional Irish music, hymns and singing with my sisters." Top

His thoughts on his music.

Soon he began writing his own compositions: "People always used to say that my songs sounded like something from a musical," says the Duke. "For a long time that horrified me." As a reaction, he started playing in a succession of questionable rock bands with little success. "Finally I realised that I had to do what came naturally to me. But I wanted to find a way to play the piano and sing that didn't make me sound like Elton John or Billy Joel." The concept of musicals led him to consider a more theatrical approach. "I got really interested in vaudeville and music hall. I loved the idea of all these strange Victorian entertainments with their crazy descriptions. I recognised that spirit in what I was doing. I wanted everything to sound 'old'. But most of all I want to be entertaining?. Top

Burning his sisters records.

When I was 14 years of age, my parents gave me this tape about the satanic influences in popular music. After I listened to that, I arrogantly went off and burned all my elder sister's records while she was away at university." Wilson laughs about it now. "It was a real fit of self-righteousness. To save my sister from evil, I burned her Eagles and Led Zeppelin records. Some of them, like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, were spared the fire." His sister was not pleased. "She thumped me when she came home. I'm still buying her records now to pay her back. I got Hotel California last Christmas." Top

His opinion of modern singer-writers.

"For me, singer-songwriters like James Blunt and David Gray are operating in an entirely different milieu. You might say the same for Damien Rice. What I'm doing is very different from that. Solo singers tend to be very worthy, whereas I am, I hope, bringing some showmanship back." Top

The hard slog.

Peter did it the hard way working in rough Belfast working's mens clubs where fights would sometimes break out. "Playing piano in all those Belfast bars down the years has undoubtedly stood to me. I've developed a real work ethic. I've slogged around Ireland incessantly, and that's certainly gone some way towards spreading the word."

"I would survive on whatever CDs I could sell at the end of the night." Some nights, he'd bed down in the dressing room before hitting the road the following morning. To make ends meet, he sang and played in a Belfast piano bar. "Five hours a night of old country songs - Dylan, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, you name it. I wouldn't play Piano Man, though. Top

Eating Meat

"I am a vegetarian because of the conditions that animals are subjected to. In principle I am okay with the idea of others eating animals. It's not for me though." Top

On God

Religious music was all Peter listened to for a couple of years. "People like Randy Stonehill, Larry Norman and Keith Green were recording artists who also had this faith aspect to their music. It was expressing something I agreed with. I wanted to explore my relationship with God and here was this music which was doing that." When asked if there is a God, Peter replies, ?Yes but I suspect very different than the way many of us imagine. We are good at creating God in our own image aren't we?? Top

Proudest Achievement

Peter is first and foremost a family man. He is married to Heather and has three children. He states that his kids are his proudest achievement. He would like to be remembered by people close to him that he loved them. He would like others to remember him as someone who contributed to art and music and did something fun. Top

The Troubles

When he was growing up, Peter hated Northern Ireland. "I was absolutely sick of the place, I couldn't wait to get away. I come from a Protestant background, but what the hell does that mean? It didn't make sense that just because you were born into a certain place that you had to have certain loyalties. I didn't feel any connection at all to the strong feelings so many people had about the place."

George Best's funeral provided him with a sight of the Northern Ireland and Belfast he loves. "There was this pride that he came from here," he remembers. "It was something you could genuinely be proud of for the right reasons. It wasn't about lording it over people about some battle from a couple of hundred years ago or some other political thing." Top

Sources and Acknowledgements

The information I used in this blog was obtained from Duke Special's myspace page and from the press section of the Deep Forest area on his website.

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