‘I’m still here, ready for the fight’: Miles Kane on One Man Band, childhood and Baggio

On August 4, Miles Kane releases his fifth solo record One Man Band. Headliner joined him for a chat about what’s been fuelling the fighting spirit behind his latest outing, childhood, and his emotional encounter with a certain Roberto Baggio…

“I’m not really a Zoom guy to be honest,” Miles Kane half laughs as he joins Headliner over the platform, settling into a chair in his East London home. Initially we were expecting to conduct the interview over the phone, but as we’re also recording our chat for a podcast Kane has agreed to speak with us via video call. For a split second there is a crackle of tension as he shifts and shuffles in his seat, smiling yet bristling slightly in anticipation of our conversation.

You can listen to this interview here or read in full below.

Thankfully that crackle quickly dissipates, as he spends the next hour letting his guard down and opening up on the cathartic experience of making his latest album One Man Band. Though stacked to the rafters with towering riffs and oozing Kane’s signature swagger, it’s an album shaped by introspection and reflections on childhood and family. The track Baggio is a case in point, detailing an obsession with the iconic Italian striker that began as an eight-year-old transfixed by World Cup ’94 and culminated in being invited to meet that man himself at his home in Italy.

The encounter was captured in the short film Searching For Baggio, which details how Kane came to be so enamoured by the star and the impact he would have not only on his love of football but also Italian fashion, culture, and music. Its conclusion reveals a vulnerability that has seldom been glimpsed up until now, and it’s a side we see plenty of during our time together. There’s still plenty of sweary ready-to-take-on-the-world confidence, but it’s underpinned with an honesty and openness that’s pleasantly disarming. But to Robert Baggio we will return later, as we focus our attention on the origins story of One Man Band.

“If I’m being honest, I was feeling frustrated after the last album,” he says. “I have very high expectations and I felt like I didn’t quite reach where I wanted to be, so I’ve got a bit of fire in my belly again, and a bit of anger and frustration, which prompted the energy behind this album. The first song I wrote for the album was One Man Band and it felt like it was the ultimate me. Almost back to basics. What am I good at and how honest can I be? So I wanted this big surf guitar and anthemic vocals. Then I thought, imagine a whole fucking album of songs like this. It just kickstarted me and that song is about knocking on the door saying I’m still here and I’m still ready for the fight and I’m gonna rock it like no one else.”

While the creative process that has spawned most of Kane’s work to date is still largely the same – “sat on the sofa with an acoustic guitar” – this time out he called upon the services of Blossoms singer Tom Ogden to lend a songwriting hand, with his cousin James Skelly of The Coral recruited for production duties.

“I can’t even use GarageBand,” he laughs. “Me and Tom from Blossoms wrote a few tunes for this album and he’s like me. We like that thing of sitting on your own or with a mate and a guitar you go back and forth. And if you have an engineer that can put a little loop together for you that’s great. But I like to get the basics together and get the song good before we start adding any sprinkles to it.

“I’ve known him for years, and our James produced this record and has produced Blossoms, so it’s like this little Northern orgy,” he laughs. “He got up on stage with me a while back to sing one of my old tunes, and after that gig we were pissed up and we said we should try writing together at some point, and we did. We click musically and personally, and it really flowed working with him.”

Despite having always had a close relationship with his cousin Skelly and seeing first-hand how his career took off with The Coral when Kane was still in his mid-teens, the pair had never worked professionally together before.

“It was fucking great,” he states when asked how he found their collaboration. “Amazing. I’m 37, he’s early 40s, and we’re cousins, but he was like a brother to me growing up, and seeing them do their thing when I was 14, watching their gigs spurred me on. We did try writing some tunes a while ago but it sounded a bit like Katy Perry, it was a bit too pop for me [laughs]. But this was the first proper time we worked together, and it was so enjoyable.

“He doesn’t sit on the fence, he says it how it is and I love that,” he continues. “The last few years we got really close again as a family, and his little brother Alfie is releasing it on his label (Modern Sky Records), so we’ve done this as a family. In my head it’s like a Rocky film, this album. Back to the good people around you, back to the family. It was just nice to feel that support and have no bullshit. So many people just sit on the fence around you and it was just doing my head in.”

That closeness and absence of filter that only working with family can bring certainly seems to have manifested itself in the music. The subject matter of songs like Baggio and working with family for the first time undoubtedly create a sense of One Man Band drawing a line of sorts under his career so far.

“There is a feeling this record gives me that no other has,” he says, deep in thought. “I love writing honest lyrics and you always have to go as deep as you can go. The journey of this record is the perfect chapter of my life as a 37-year-old man, with my fucking troubles, my fucking mistakes, my fucking anger, all that shit. It captures it. It starts with Troubled Son and ends with Scared Of Love, I don’t think I could say it any more honestly. It’s a beautiful thing and I feel that emotion when I listen to it, and it’s definitely because of having my family involved. I felt like I could be open and honest as much as I wanted to be. It’s real. It don’t get any more real. And that’s all that matters.”

The journey that he speaks of can be traced back to a certain Italian footballer. In 1994, with England absent from the USA World Cup, an eight-year-old Kane found himself drawn to the legendary Italian team of the time, with centre forward Roberto Baggio very much the star not just of that team but arguably the entire tournament. The way the team played and, indeed, the way they looked was a far cry from anything Kane had seen before.

“There was a lot of iconic fellas at that World Cup and the kits were amazing,” he recalls with a smile. “That was the start of me getting obsessed with anything Italian. And I was hooked on Roberto Baggio. It was the first time I’d seen… you know, men that looked like him. Where I’m from, the Wirral, men didn’t really have long hair. And those Italian players looked cool as fuck. Then I became obsessed with anything Italian.

“As kid we’d meet our James in the park and they’d have Liverpool kits on and I’d be in my full Italian kit. But I loved Baggio. We wrote that song about me as a child and those first things that open your mind and make you wear what you wear or have your hair however you have it. That was what got me into music, fashion, hairstyles and all that.

“Then we go on this journey,” he continues, explaining how he entered Baggio’s orbit. “He heard the song and invited us to his house, so we made that little film Searching For Baggio. It was one of the most amazing days and I was on a spiritual high afterwards. Maybe I still am. He was such a lovely fella. And when we got into his house, what I loved was that it reminded me of my mum’s – obviously his house is not like me mum’s [laughs] – but we went he had a table set up with all snacks out and crisps in a big bowl and it made me really relaxed. It’s weird what crisps in a bowl can do for you! It was like, he’s just a normal geezer.”

Almost 20 years on from joining his first band at the age of 17, Kane appears as comfortable in his own skin as he has ever been. The fire and swagger that infuses everything he puts his hand to will always be bubbling away beneath the surface just waiting to be summoned out, but there is a self-awareness in his manner that two decades in music will bring to any artist. For the first time in years, he says he has no side projects on the go and is excited by the focus he feels for this record and beyond.

“This album means the world to me,” he says with genuine feeling. “It’s super special to me and I love it so much. It’s given me a feeling I’ve been searching for for a long time. I feel calmer, more comfy in who I am. I’m grateful I’m still here I’m clinging on by fingertips, don’t get me wrong [laughs]. I’ve been at a few crossroads and there’s been some fucking Oblivion and Nemesis rollercoaster moments, believe you me, but right now I feel good, I feel re-energised, and I’m feeling that fire more than ever.”

Photos by Charlie Salt