Lightning seeds hometown gig Liverpool 02 Academy Sat 12 Feb
Door time: 7.00pm
£22.50 advance Ticketweb/ www.o2academyliverpool.co.uk
The Lightning Seeds were formed by Ian Broudie in 1989. After being involved with numerous bands in post-punk Liverpool, including Big in Japan with, amongst others, Budgie and Holly Johnson, and a collaboration with Paul Simpson called Care which resulted in an album and several singles, he decided to go it alone.
The Lightning Seeds have been entertaining audiences for over 20 years, and it’s easy to see why when witnessing their unmissable live performance. Ian Broudie conceived the band and penned the majority of the critically acclaimed debut album Cloudcuckooland, featuring the hit single Pure. The band’s 1994 album, Jollification, saw the Lightning Seeds garner the attention they rightly deserved, spawning the hit singles Lucky You, Change, Perfect and Marvellous. In 2006 they released of The Very Best of the Lightning Seeds and in 2010 the band returned to the live arena with a full UK tour and studio album ‘Four Winds’, the first crop of Lightning Seeds songs in 10 years.
“Growing up in Liverpool in the Sixties was like being in the centre of the earth. I was going to the football and the Kop would be singing ‘She Loves You’.” Says Ian “ Both my brothers had a lot of records: Dylan, Cream, bluesy guitar players. Plus I had a little transistor radio and got Radio Caroline, from when pop music was very free. Then it was the Seventies and Bowie played The Liverpool Empire and it was as if everybody who was going to go on and make music in Liverpool was at this gig. For me it was about Roxy Music, Frank Zappa, and, like everyone in Liverpool then and now, Captain Beefheart, Pink Floyd, Love and the Velvet Underground.”
Ian Broudie is part of the fabric of British pop culture. Born in the Fifties, child of the Sixties, crucial player in Liverpool punk in the Seventies, alternative rock production genius in the Eighties, pop star in the Nineties and Godfather figure to some of Liverpool’s new leading lights of the Noughties. He was the studio magician behind the legendary Echo And The Bunnymen and has lately sprinkled stardust over The Coral and Zutons. And mingling in the midst of all of this music and creativity came The Lightning Seeds, with a string of classic hit singles, and a little football song (‘Three Lions’) still bellowed out from the terraces at England matches.
