I work in a pub on Byres Road in the West End of Glasgow: it’s considered to be an up-market, Bohemian kind of street, full of restaurants, Italian take-aways, second-hand record stores and coffee shops. I’d heard from various friends that Paul Buchanan had been spotted in various coffee houses recently, so for the past month I’ve been keeping half an eye open for him as I walk to and from work.

I was just heading up the road at 5.30 this evening, after finishing my day-shift, and feeling slightly buzzed after a quick pint of beer. And glancing into one of these smaller coffee places, there was Paul, sitting on a window stool, on his own in an otherwise empty shop, gazing out onto the West End traffic. So of course I stopped in my tracks and went in to say hello, offering to buy him a coffee (which he politely refused), just saying I was a huge fan of the band and could I bug him with a couple of questions. Aye, no problem . . . 

There’s a couple more weeks of recording to be done on the new album (over at Calum Malcolm’s studio in Edinburgh), and then mixing, so he reckoned it might be around February next year before it’s released. He said he was pissed off having to commute through to Edinburgh for the recordings (an hour’s drive away), and would prefer to be recording here in Glasgow. It soon became apparent that I would have difficulty getting a word in edge-ways, since he blethered away at a fair old rate! Maybe the two empty espresso cups by his elbow had something to do with it...

Familiar-looking Paul: black nondescript jacket, white jeans, his blue eyes blinking in that slightly nervous way, but still coming across as a very open, approachable guy.

The major piece of news is that the band are no longer with Warner Brothers, and are currently without a record deal! The two guys they had a ‘relationship’ with at WB left last year to join David Geffen’s DreamWorks label, and a couple of other guys they knew had been fired, so there was no point staying with a label who knew virtually nothing about the band and who weren’t really motivated to promote them. Paul said he was considering a couple of offers (I think) . . . but his primary concern was to sign for a new label without having to let them hear the new album first! In other words, they would have to take it on trust or not at all. He said it was nice being in the position of recording an album purely for their own satisfaction, as an un-signed band again, just as they were when they were writing the first album 15 years ago.

My first concern was whether this split from WB would result in more legal wrangles, possibly holding up the release of any new material; but Paul said no, it was an amicable split. The irony was, he pointed out, that it took them two whole years to extricate themselves from their first record contract in order to sign with WB, which is why ‘Peace At Last’ was so long in coming.

Next, I asked him to clarify a couple of lyrics that I’ve never been sure of. The line in ‘Saturday Night’ is, after all, "Meet me outside the Cherry Light." It does sound like that, but I’ve always wanted to check. Paul said it was the name of a club he saw in America (New Orleans, as far as he could recall), and just liked the name enough to remember it and add it to the song. 

The other lyric was from ‘Happiness’ . . . I told him I’d been having an Internet debate as to whether he was singing "The cigarettes and the moonlight" or "The cigarettes and the morning light." I was convinced it was the former . . . but no! It’s "morning light" after all (although he said he might use "cigarettes and moonlight" in a future song!). He then told me the story behind this line: he was staying with someone a few years back (I assumed it was a relationship of some sort, from the tone of the story . . . could be wrong), and he wasn’t allowed to smoke in the flat. So, first thing in the morning, he would have to step outside and stand under a vehicle-shelter for his first coffee and cigarette of the day, watching the sun come up. It was after one of these dawn-smokes that he returned indoors, sat at the kitchen table, and started to write ‘Happiness’. And he joked, with a big smile creasing across his face, that he seems to write most of his songs in kitchens! 

Being a smoker myself, I could relate to this scene. Early morning or late at night, there’s a strange self-reflective calm that comes over you when you’re out on someone’s back step having a smoke. So this wee story added an extra something to my feelings about the song, and the mood it was written in.

What else? The band have just finished re-mastering the first two albums as well. Again, he reckoned a February release was likely (with some ‘extra tracks’ included on each one) to tie-in with the new album. Due to the fact that they didn’t use any compression on the first two albums (in order to maintain the natural dynamics of the sound), the volume levels were subsequently rather low. So the re-masters will rectify this, as well as cleaning up the tapes in general (although he did say that the master tapes for those two albums were still in pristine condition).

We talked for a while about Dublin, since he was based there for a while during the recording of ‘Peace At Last’, and I lived there myself for a couple of years at around the same time. I told him the story of how a good friend of mine (also a huge Blue Nile fan) was out delivering Domino Pizzas on his scooter one night, and, ringing this Dublin doorbell, with a pizza in one hand and his crash-helmet on, suddenly found himself standing in front of Paul! Needless to say, my friend was so stunned at the time he didn’t think to take his helmet off and say hello, but could only hand over the pizza and scoot off. When I mentioned this, Paul actually remembered the incident! Maybe he doesn’t order pizza too often . . .

He asked which Blue Nile web-sites I was visiting, and of course I told him about Mike Garoghan’s page, saying there were guitar tabs included . . . he joked that he should maybe check it out in order to learn how to play the old stuff properly before they tour again: "Otherwise I’ll just have to play those, you know, power chords!" I also mentioned Thierry’s French web-site, and he seemed keen to check out the Internet more often, just to see what Blue Nile stuff was out there.

Apparently Paul had been having a pint in my pub (Tennent’s) on Sunday there, watching the Man United v. Everton game on the telly, but I was off-duty that day. He said he might pop in for a drink sometime, and of course I said I’d buy him a pint. And that was it: we shook hands, he said thanks for offering to buy him a coffee, and I sat on the bus home . . . looking out at those familiar red-stone buildings of Glasgow, and with a smile on my face you couldn’t have removed with an industrial sander.

Guess it was my lucky day . . .