“I WATCH people on the way back home,” sings Sam Fender on the soul-bearing title track of his new album.
With its widescreen ambition, driving intensity and visceral lyrics, People Watching can’t fail to draw familiar comparisons to Fender’s “biggest hero”, Bruce Springsteen.
6
6
A few years ago, he noted that Springsteen had “never stopped writing about people” and had “never stopped writing about home”.
The same thing applies to the refreshingly candid, fiercely committed Geordie.
In the case of The Boss, he wrote about his New Jersey stomping ground with its hard-up inhabitants in dead-end jobs who dreamed of better lives (usually involving desperate lovers escaping in fast cars down endless highways.)
On Fender’s radar are the people like him who grew up in terraced houses on the banks of the River Tyne.
People from the old fishing port of North Shields where he was born and people from nearby Newcastle where his beloved Magpies play in the Premier League.
So, in People Watching, he’s “back in the gasworks” and witnessing “everybody on the treadmill running under the billboards out of the heat”.
I contend that this song, and the rest of his dazzling third album, marks Fender’s coming of age as a major artist in his own right.
‘Surrogate mother’
“It’s just a collection of songs about the human experience,” he says with self-deprecating charm in the illuminating album biography.
Clearly the product of a musician on a creative roll, it is the distillation of 70 tracks, of which 50 were recorded to some degree, before Fender selected his best eleven.
And let’s face it, his high, free-flowing tenor bears little resemblance to what he calls Springsteen’s “growl”.
When Fender burst on to the scene in 2019 with his debut album Hypersonic Missiles, he told SFTW: “If anything, I am the s**t version of Bruce.
“I will never be him. I will always be Sam Fender. But I will always nod to my heroes.”
Factor in that People Watching was co-produced in Los Angeles by another Bruce superfan, Adam Granduciel of The War On Drugs, and you’ll understand why that “nod” is present and correct here.
“Not only are The War On Drugs one of my favourite bands but it turned out we love the same stuff,” says Fender.
“You can hear Adam’s touch on everything, particularly the synths, all these layers and little melodies.”
But now just consider the heart-rending narrative that comes with the People Watching song. It is 100 per cent Fender.
In the biog, he opens up about his visit to a palliative care home “understaffed and overruled by callous hands” as his dear friend and mentor, Annie Orwin, passed away.
“She was like a surrogate mother to me,” he says. “She ran a drama group on Saturdays for kids in the community centre and was the first person who ever really believed in me.
“As I grew up, we became friends. We’d share a bottle of wine and just bitch about the world. She was larger than life and I loved her to pieces.
I’ll always end up writing about Newcastle.
“When music started kicking off for me, she’d always be like: ‘Why haven’t you mentioned me in interviews?
“When are you going to thank me in an acceptance speech when you’re winning those awards?!’”
In the song, Fender speaks directly to Annie when he intones, “I stayed all night till you left this life” and later sums up his feelings with “and I hold you in my heart till the day I die”.
It’s personal, devastating but also life-affirming with its reflection on a loved one who had his back long before a successful music career beckoned.
After shooting the video for People Watching, Irish actor Andrew Scott (Ripley, Fleabag, All Of Us Strangers) talked of the song’s profound effect on him.
“Sam’s masterpiece of a song has become a true friend to me,” he admitted.
‘They’re still lunatics’
“Working on it was truly cathartic and I’ll always be grateful to Sam for his extraordinary talent, and for the other artists who made this film, and of course to my mum who I will hold in my heart till the day I die.”
For Fender, who hit 30 last April, the past six years since Hypersonic Missiles have been a one-way trip to rock’s top table.
He’s supported Springsteen and the Stones but now strides stadium stages as a worthy headliner.
In June, he’ll play three nights at Newcastle United’s ground, St James’s Park — which as his website tells us, in his Geordie accent of course, have all “sold oot”.
Fender will come armed with a collection of vibrant new songs to comfortably slot in among favourites from his first two albums.
He’s already been performing People Watching’s four singles — the title track, Wild Long Lie, Arm’s Length and Remember My Name.
Though he divides his time between London and Newcastle, there’s no doubt where inspiration for his latest compositions comes from.
“I’ll always end up writing about Newcastle,” says Fender. “Even though I’ve effectively moved out, I still spend so much time there seeing my mates.
6
6
“We’ve all grown up together. They’re at the point where they’re starting to play house — kids and mortgages, getting their own gaffs and getting married.
“They’re still f***ing lunatics, but we’re at this transitional period.”
Fender says he’ll “always be a part” of that Newcastle scene “because it’s where I’m from but obviously my life has become very different at the same time.”
Second track Nostalgia’s Lie, which starts out with jangly Byrds-like guitar, provides telling insights into Fender’s past and the characters who populated it.
It shows the singer to be conflicted about his pop star status when ranged against harsh realities faced by his old mates.
Homelessness in Newcastle is ten times worse than it was ten years ago, it does make you think — if I hadn’t had the luck I had and been discovered, what would I be doing?
He recalls “the times where we all had nothing”, then admits that “most my friends are still against it” before deciding that “for all I’ve gained, there’s something lost”.
Next song Chin Up deals with those friends having to cope with poverty, unemployment and, as the line “God I hate cocaine” suggests, drug addiction.
Fender says: “It got me thinking about my mate who has really struggled and all these people in the country who have had no support for decades.”
That theme continues on Crumbling Empire, which was inspired by a visit while on tour to America’s Motor City where Fender saw “a Detroit neighbourhood left to ruin”.
That, in turn, got him thinking about his home town. “Homelessness in Newcastle is ten times worse than it was ten years ago,” he affirms.
“It does make you think — if I hadn’t had the luck I had and been discovered, what would I be doing?
“Me and me mam were really skint at that time. It was scary. It only takes a few daft missteps, and you can be out on the streets.”
Fender describes his rapid upward trajectory as “mad”.
“It was too much, too fast,” he muses. “But this is obviously what I signed up for.
“When I was working in a call centre eating Pot Noodle, this is what I would be dreaming of all day long, but sometimes you don’t know what you’re saying yes to.”
After huge acclaim and sales for second album Seventeen Going Under (2021), he decided to put things on pause and recharge the batteries, only to discover that songwriting was the thing he needed to do most.
Fender says: “I thought I needed time off because I was burnt out, but in reality I just needed some time off touring. And too much time off can be dangerous.
“The last time I had any time off I didn’t have any money. If you give me seven months off now with disposable income, I will spend it on nonsense.
“Stopping made me realise stopping wasn’t actually what I needed. I realised that what I need is to be creative.”
Though the People Watching album bears discernible themes, there’s also an unbridled spirit at play — sonically and lyrically.
Fender says: “This time I just went in free as a bird and wrote whatever the f***. It’s much more varied because of that.”
So let’s have a quick trawl through some other songs. The withering TV Dinner takes aim at “toxic” celebrity culture and is described by Fender as “his chip on the shoulder tune”.
Of Arm’s Length, already a fan favourite with its Fleetwood Mac– inspired riff, he says: “It originally came from one of those magic moments where you’re just messing around, and a song literally falls out of the sky in ten minutes.
“It’s about being avoidant and flighty. But also, just a simple pop song, which I love.”
Another song to lighten the load is, despite its title, the airy Something Heavy, which has been likened to Tom Petty meets The Waterboys.
“That’s probably my favourite song right now,” reveals Fender. “It’s about accepting that everyone’s f***ed up and we’re all dealing with something. It’s a plea to look after each other — a pisshead’s anthem for togetherness.”
The final song, Remember My Name, provides the album’s most tender moment. Fender’s soaring vocals have never sounded more pure and effective than here, backed by a colliery brass band.
Of the song about his late grandparents and their lives together, he says: “My mam’s side of the family were all down the pits so I wanted to have a miners’ brass band.
“I went through all these bands and I chose Easington Colliery Band because they were the best ones I’d heard and winners of competitions.
“We recorded them — and f***ing serendipity — there’s a high likelihood some of the maternal side of my family worked in Easington as they were in mines all over County Durham.
“I didn’t know it until me mam told me. That’s the universe at work, right there.”
It’s a moving and mature way to sign off a richly textured album which cuts to the heart of the wildly impressive Sam Fender.
On a personal note, two things about him have struck a chord with me in recent times.
In 2021, he made a heartfelt BBC documentary about another of his heroes and one of the North East’s favourite musical sons — the late great Alan Hull of Lindisfarne, who wrote Fog On The Tyne, Lady Eleanor and Run For Home.
6
As I watched Fender talk to bandmates, family and friends of “Hully” as well as admirers such as another Geordie, Sting, I could tell that he was authentic, knowledgeable and respectful — in other words, the real deal.
Then I attended the Springsteen shindig at London’s Hyde Park in the summer of 2023.
The loudest cheers came early in the evening from a boisterous group of fans just behind the fence separating the main crowd from the privileged few in the “golden circle”.
They were there to see — you guessed it — Sam Fender. Who is the hero now?
6