“I’ve always found it impossible to function in any kind of society,” says Eric Goulden. “I feel like something that’s come here from outer space and got sucked in.”
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Now 51, Goulden will be in Chicago this weekend for an afternoon gig at the Hideout, his first appearance here since 1980. These days he’s playing solo, switching between acoustic and electric guitars and mixing songs from throughout his career with salty stories from his 2003 autobiography. But his performances are hardly hushed, intimate affairs–he clangs at his guitar, storms around the stage, and throws himself into the tunes with disarming zeal.
Goulden’s autobiography, A Dysfunctional Success: The Wreckless Eric Manual, jump-started his current renaissance when it clicked with critics for high-profile English outlets like Mojo and Uncut. He launched his own label, Southern Domestic, to coincide with the book’s release, and in 2004 he put out Bungalow Hi, his first new album in nearly seven years. He’s also ramped up his touring schedule, but a good bit of his energy still goes into his writing, much of which he posts at wrecklesseric.com.
Eventually he left England, but not music–by the early 90s he was living in the French countryside, where he continued to make albums, including 1993’s The Donovan of Trash on Sympathy for the Record Industry. “I was in France for nine years and lived in bohemian squalor,” he says. “Toward the end it was getting very difficult to keep earning a living. I missed my friends, my dad was very ill, and for one reason or another I came back.” Goulden settled in Norwich and began working on sound tracks for small experimental films and writing his autobiography.
“Ian Dury once said to me, ‘Anybody can have a good idea. People have a hundred good ideas a day. But the thing that singles someone out is when they can take one of those ideas and turn it into something.’ It’s always hard work, like 3 percent inspiration and 97 percent perspiration,” he says. “Although I prefer to keep the percentage of inspiration a bit higher. I don’t know that I really want to work that hard.” v
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