He might have officially reached retirement age and moved to the coast, but Luke Morley is far from done. While Thunder are on an enforced hiatus due to singer Danny Bowes recovering from a stroke, the guitarist has completed his third solo album, Walking On Water.
Less Americana-like than his acclaimed previous release Tales From The Blue Room, it even includes one or two songs that wouldn’t sound out of place if they were played by his regular band. That’s if his Thunder gig becomes an option again.
As well as being an accomplished songwriter and producer, Luke Morley also proved himself as something of a singer on his latest album. Just don’t get him started on the silver suit he’s wearing on the cover, though.
I recall you feeling quite reticent to put your previous solo album out. How much did its success feed into the making of this one?
Quite a bit. The last one was really well received. More than I thought it would be, to be honest. I was expecting people to be saying: “You’re a guitar player, should you really be singing?” I expected a lot more of that than I got.
Why Walking On Water? Has going solo given you a God complex?
Ha. It was a bit of the tail wagging the dog. The album photographer, Jason Joyce, said: “I’ve got this brilliant idea for a location for the next album. This platform on top of a mountain in Spain with this shallow body of water across it, and it casts this amazing reflection even though it’s only about five millimetres deep.” So I could walk across it and give the illusion that I was walking on water. I didn’t have a title for the record, either, so I thought: “I wonder if I can write a song called Walking On Water.”
You’re in the blazing heat, up a mountain in Spain, wearing a silver suit that even Elvis might have passed on. How was that?
We wanted something that would reflect the water and the blue sky, but what I didn’t think about at the time was the fact that it was eight hundred degrees up a Spanish hill in the dry heat. At one point I took my shirt off and literally wrung the sweat out.
You wrote and recorded the album in three months. Was there a moment where you knew you’d captured lightning in a bottle?
Yes, the song Breathe. Even in the process of writing it I thought: “Well, this is good.” And I think all writers get that, a little kind of frisson of something, and it surprises even you. It makes you feel confident about what you’re doing.
When I first heard it, I thought: “This is a classic Thunder ballad.”
It’s that kind of song, Love Walked In, you know. I think it’s just part of what I do, it’s who I am.
I can imagine hearing Danny Bowes singing Natural High, the album’s opener, too. This record feels a little more like Thunder than the previous one.
I think that’s fair. It’s certainly rockier. I think that may subconsciously be that I haven’t written a Thunder album for four years. So maybe I needed to scratch that itch.
Talking of bandmates, you’re on the latest Quireboys album, and are playing with them live. Is this some sort of mid-life crisis?
I’m too old to have one of those! I’d been speaking to [Quireboys frontman] Spike, and he’d been working with [guitarist] Guy Bailey writing songs together again. Then, of course, Guy died, and they asked me if I’d fill in some parts on the album, and it sounded like the Quireboys should sound to me. Long story short, I end up going from co-writing on the record to producing it, then they asked me to play with them. It’s on an easy come, easy go basis, because I don’t know what’s happening with Thunder, and they’re fine with that.
One of my favourite songs on your album is In Your Light, which marks the passing of time and how that shapes our relationships and love. It’s a great song. So is She’s So Fine, which comes at love in quite a different way. Same songwriter though.
Ah, fair point. That getting old together, all the things that you find at this time of your life. That’s a really intimate song. I’m quite proud of that. It’s very, very simple, but it means a massive amount to me. She’s So Fine, well, I was 28 when I wrote that, and yes, my motivations were a little different. You’re full of energy at that age, it’s all vim and vigour.
You’ve described quite the arc as a songwriter. You write much less about cars and girls these days.
Some 70-year-old geezer letching over a young girl, that’s wrong anyway. But to write a song about it or just keep repeating yourself when you have a lifetime of things to write about, that’s very peculiar. And I think it’s also a mixture of: “I’d better not change anything, because the fans might not like it”. That’s not me.
We know that Ben (Matthews, Thunder guitarist) has struggled with cancer, and Danny is still recovering from his stroke. What happens if circumstances dictate that you’re a solo artist now and Thunder won’t be coming back?
That’s a very good question, and I don’t know the answer to it. I think while there’s still a possibility of Thunder coming back, I will keep the door open mentally. If Danny calls me to say I’m not going to get any better, then I’d have to get myself into a slightly different place about it in my head. That said, I’m quite enjoying the fact that I’m doing a few different things and I think I’ll just kind of continue to do that.
If we have sort of seen the last of Thunder it’s obviously a big deal as it’s such a part of my life, but by the same token, you have to be realistic. I still see music as a challenge, and a part of who I am and as long as that part of my brain is still feeling that way, and I feel like I’m moving forward then, then, you know, I’ll be fine.
Walking On Water is out now via Left Hook Records/ Townsend Music.
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