Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie talks politics, Glasgow, and new album 'Come Ahead' • Interview • DIY Magazine

“We’re a hard bunch to put down, we’re always up for the fight,” declares an energised Bobby Gillespie as he picks up the phone to DIY from his North London home. It’s rather fitting then, that the unmistakable Primal Scream frontman has decided to title the band’s soaring twelfth studio album ‘Come Ahead’: an ominous term for squaring up used in his native Glasgow. “This record is a complete statement,” he muses. “We’ll take on all comers, you know?”

Primal Scream aren’t just survivors of their generation-defining rise, they’re a band continuing to shape the cultural landscape. You don’t have to look much further than Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage over the last decade to see their influence looming large over a new generation. Whether it was HAIM offering backing vocals for a flurry of ‘Screamadelica’ classics during the band’s opening slot before The Rolling Stones in 2013 or, more recently, Dua Lipa re-sampling ‘Loaded’ to get the party started at her own hedonistic headline this summer, Primal Scream have remained something of a fixture on the music world’s most hallowed triangle.

Gillespie is clearly warmed as he pauses to consider that undeniable influence. “It’s lovely that younger artists – especially female artists – like Primal Scream; it’s a really special thing,” he says. “Dua did an interview leading up to her album [‘Radical Optimism’] discussing ‘Screamadelica’, so if a handful of her fans have discovered us through that, then that’s cool. When you’re a young person getting into music you need some guidance, and more often than not that comes from the stars whose records you buy.”

His mind trails back to his own formative teenage years in Glasgow, where he got his political and musical education on the football terraces at Celtic Park and via the prism of watching the punk explosion roll through the moody city. “Growing up in that city shaped my outlook on life,” he says. “You need to learn a lot of things really quickly to live there. My education came from bands like The Jam and The Sex Pistols, but also progressive bands like Can. I learnt through reading interviews with my favourite bands and I’m sure Dua Lipa’s fans are no different today.”

The inspiration isn’t only a one-way street for Gillespie, either. With the indie landscape in rude health as bands like Fontaines DC and English Teacher continue to thrive, the frontman says he takes excitement from a new generation of artists with ideas of their own. “I’m a fan of Fontaines,” he says. “I’ve seen them twice and I’m friends with Carlos the guitar player. I think Grian is brilliant; they’re a great band. It’s very much their time and they’re seizing it with both hands, you know.”

“The whole idea that you can make it really big in this society and that it’s a level playing field is a lie.” — Bobby Gillespie

There’s a timeless grandeur to ‘Come Ahead’ – an album that flickers between beautiful gospel refrains and disco-infused grooves as Gillespie’s vocals float triumphantly throughout. It’s a continued departure from some of the gritty rock and roll thrills the band delivered through the mid-’00s on the likes of 2006’s ‘Riot City Blues’ and 2008’s ‘Beautiful Future’, but that sonic shift doesn’t mean that Primal Scream have lost their political edge thematically.

Just take the jangly ballad of ‘Love Insurrection’, where Gillespie quietly dispatches some of his most potent lyricism to date over swirling strings; “You punish the poor for being poor and celebrate greed,” he sings. Elsewhere on the groove-heavy ‘Innocent Money’, which is written from the perspective of a rough sleeper, backing vocalists drop profound lines on the state of the world: “The system is rigged like a Vegas casino.”

“I’m saying that generally people who make money come from money,” Gillespie says with a new flicker of anger in his Glaswegian accent. “The whole idea that you can make it really big in this society and that it’s a level playing field is a lie. People who have inherited wealth run the country, that’s why the British state exists. Parliamentary democracy is set up in such a way that the state is immovable. If you’re born into the lower orders of the working class, generally that’s where you stay. You’re sold this lie that it’s a meritocracy and it’s not.”

On the subject of the wealth divide and greed, what did he make of the dynamic ticket pricing debacle that circled around Oasis’ reunion shows earlier this summer? “The music business is no different from any other corporate business in the world,” Gillespie says. “Everything is about gaining maximum profit for the shareholders at the top. I don’t know why people in the music industry are so surprised at this. It’s like, ‘For fuck sake’ [but] that is the business model and these are the rules.

“It doesn’t have to be though,” he continues. “The Cure are very vociferous about it and they do things in a different way, and more power to Robert Smith for that. The dynamic ticket pricing model was brought in by the American ticket corporations and the promoters. It’s weird because I had a friend who was a ticket tout for many years and he was getting arrested for this kind of thing, but it’s all fucking legal now.”

It’s unsurprising that a question regarding the recently proposed £1 ticket levy on stadium and arena shows to support grassroots venues sparks an impassioned dialogue on the importance of protecting such cultural institutions. “The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Primal Scream, The Stone Roses, we all started playing little clubs and venues, so of course you want to support the grassroots,” says the frontman. “Making music is a democratic artform; especially now, you can make music in your fucking bedroom and play gigs on your laptop. I’m always going to support that kind of thing.

“None of us can escape the financial system we live in though,” he notes. “It’s not about putting money into venues or helping local communities, far from it, it’s a vampire fucking system. Corporate behavior impacts everything. Predatory capitalists take as much money out of the pot as possible to go to the shareholders. The same people who govern the music business are the people who work in the banking system, the oil business, it’s the same corporate mindset. It’s a dog eat dog situation and the strongest survives.”

“I’ve got a lot more clarity now, I’m stronger in knowing who I am.” — Bobby Gillespie

When it comes to attacking such themes through Primal Scream’s music, Gillespie prefers a lighter approach these days as opposed to the more intense, claustrophobic sonic palette they used to lean towards on brooding and starker classic tracks like ‘Kowalski’ or ‘Swastika Eyes’. It’s something he attributes to a renewed mindset at the age of 63.

“We’ve always liked the idea of having this duality in music. You can have this really beautiful sound that can be gentle or pretty, but then you’re singing about this hard subject matter. I always thought that was a more subversive way of getting your point across,” he suggests. “If people are dancing and they’re happy, their defences are down and that way you can plant seeds. People are more open than when you’re hitting them with a barrage of fucking noise. I’m more interested in trying to whisper in people’s ears and seduce them with poetry.”

Moments on ‘Come Ahead’ like ‘Heal Yourself’ show an openness that we perhaps haven’t heard from the band before. Gillespie dreamily unpicks pulling through the turmoil of darker chapters and finding clarity through love and family: “Only weak men run away / You have to face yourself someday.” “I think when you’re younger the noise can serve as a metaphor for what’s going on in your head or your soul or your life,” he considers. “That’s the attraction I think for young people towards industrial music, it just pummels your senses and you can lose yourself in it. There’s a safety there; it chimes with the rage and the uncertainty in a young person.

“But I’ve got a lot more clarity now at my age, I’m a lot stronger in terms of knowing who I am. I’m a lot more relaxed and I can express myself on direct terms more than I could before. Back in the day, I might have hidden behind metaphor and imagery as a way of [hiding] myself. Now I feel like I don’t need that protection.”

With this newfound sense of direction, the way Bobby Gillespie speaks about Primal Scream’s 12th album is as though it’s their first. “We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved,” he affirms. “I’ve given a good account of myself and how I feel about things and my life at this point in time. It feels really exciting and fresh, like we’re doing something new. Let’s fucking have it.”

‘Come Ahead’ is out now via BMG.

#AD

Records, etc at

Find ‘Come Ahead’ at Rough Trade

Buy Now

Tags: Features, Interviews, From The Magazine, November 2024, Primal Scream

More like this

On sale soon

Primal Scream to play ‘XTRMNTR’ in full on 2026 UK tour

The album turned 25 last year.

14th April 2026

Booking now

Primal Scream, Paul Weller, Inhaler & more to play second Gig For Gaza

The show — once again curated by Paul Weller — will take place in October and aims to raise urgent funds to aid those affected by the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

29th July 2025