Gav King details being the inspiration for Simon Pegg's most iconic movie character in 'Profiled' taken from debut solo album 'Skeletons'
Gav King - Profiled
Heartbeat Records / Bristol Archive Records
The old punk adage was to live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse - and while Gavin King gave the first one his best shot, he got sidetracked and skipped the next step. Now, almost 50 years after burning brightly on Bristol’s burgeoning punk scene of the late seventies with his band Private Dicks, he finds himself having a late surge of creativity, and is pleased to reveal that his debut solo album ‘Skeletons’ will be released on March 29th 2024 via Heartbeat Records.
With Private Dicks, the band that first threw Gavin into the spotlight, having just released a live album, and while he waits for his bandmates to finally finish off what will be the Bristol legends’ second album, he has turned his attention to his first, fully-fledged, solo effort. With help from Dicks’ guitarist and life-long friend Paul Guiver and long-time Tears For Fears and Robbie Williams guitarist Neil Taylor, Skeletons is eight tracks of dark, catchy, post-punk angst, the work of a man who has taken another look at his life and at the state of the world and had a few thoughts…
“Everything that’s released now is viewed through the prism of the pandemic, Gavin reflects from his apartment in Bristol. “And in many ways, this is no different. Like everyone else I had been indoors for ages, but once I completed Netflix and finished arguing with the cat, I began to look at the state of the world today. And once I started doing that, I started looking back at my own life. Then before you know it a bunch of songs are sitting on my hard drive.”
Once the songs had started to take shape, Gavin drafted in old friends Guiver and Taylor to add the flourishes and finishing touches, with Taylor taking on production duties. The result is something even the usually self-deprecating King is happy with.
“Neil’s production is just superb,” says Gavin. “He’s added a depth to these songs and taken them in directions I really was not expecting – but it really works. I’d almost go as far as to say I’m proud of this record.”
Blending seething vocals with sweeping, majestic arrangements, Skeletons is a dark, mature record littered with the infectious choruses that made Private Dicks the band they were back in the day. It’s fair to say making a solo album was not something Gavin saw himself doing, even as he was making it, but life has a funny way of putting you where you’re meant to be.
After stepping back from the music business in the mid-nineties, he crossed paths with a band called River Street who happened to be looking for a singer and once again Gavin found himself dragged back to the stage. Fast forward a few years, and a few solo dabblings never meant for public display, and Gavin finds that Private Dicks are having something of a resurgence - in Japan; which lead to four old friends meeting up again for a drink or two.
“Suddenly this analogue punk band is getting a new lease of life in the digital age, and we are playing shows in Berlin, and we’re getting booked for festivals. So while I was waiting around for the guys to sort their schedules out, I decided to be productive. And I’m really pleased with the results!”
Ahead of the release of the album comes its leading single ‘Profiled’ on March 22nd 2024, a song written about Gavin’s incredible discovery that he was used as inspiration for movie character Gary King, the main protagonist in Simon Pegg’s 2013 film The World’s End.
Discussing the inspiration behind the track Gavin says: “Each song on Skeletons is about significant moments that have impacted significantly upon my life. Profiled tries to reflect not only the shock I felt upon being told to go and see The World's End, Simon Pegg's final part of the Cornetto Trilogy; on one hand feeling used but on the other, flattered, enough to also write a song about it in response. The story itself is worth hearing.”
LISTEN:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6IJibmiOfpVlhE2Lg14ggY
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/gav-king/1712736328
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/artists/B0CLF4KGY4/gav-king
