Born in Penny Lane, Liverpool in 1958, Ian Broudie attended his first gig, the Beatles at the Liverpool Empire, when he was six. A member of punk band Big In Japan in his teens with Holly Johnson and the KLF’s Bill Drummond, he went on to produce records by Echo and the Bunnymen, the Fall, Alison Moyet, Texas and the Coral. Recording as the Lightning Seeds from 1989, he has released seven albums, and his 1996 song for that year’s UEFA European Championship, Three Lions, has been No 1 three times. He has just published his memoir, Tomorrow’s Here Today, and the Lightning Seeds’ 35th anniversary tour starts next summer.
Your songs are often tender, melancholic and heartfelt, but your roots are in the flamboyant post-punk scene in Liverpool. How did you fit in?
I was the kid in the jumper and NHS glasses around all these bursts of colour. There was a feral quality, a wildness to that world around Mathew Street in Liverpool, which was a really derelict place. You had [theatre director] Ken Campbell’s Illuminatus! trilogy opening there in 1976 – so much music, theatre, art, I felt like I was Alice in Wonderland. Having always felt like a bit of a misfit, suddenly I was surrounded by other misfits, and even though some of them were larger-than-life characters like Holly, Bill and Pete Burns, I weirdly fitted in.
What were the Beatles like in 1964?
All I remember is the sound of the screaming girls, me crying, sticking fingers in my ears.
After the Lightning Seeds’ first single, Pure, became a US Top 30 hit, you were asked to set up a US record label and suggested (in vain) that they sign Pulp and Oasis. How do you look back at Britpop now?
I’ve realised that the music press created this idea of a world that people really wanted to be in, which was exciting. It was like that with Britpop, as it was for punk rock – when I saw the Sex Pistols, they were good but they were nothing like they were written about. But that’s OK. It’s a bit like when you’re watching a Marvel film and you suspend belief. You know those people can’t really fly, but you enjoy the spectacle anyway.
How was Britpop for you?
Odd. I liken it to when I’m on the train from Liverpool to London and there’s part of the journey when you’re running alongside the motorway watching the cars speed along. I felt I was moving alongside Britpop, not within it. The other bands were on a completely different track.
Your paternal grandfather was a Latvian Jew who fled Cossack violence and ended up in Liverpool by accident, thinking he’d been dropped off in New York. You received antisemitic abuse in the punk years. With your book published during the current Israel-Hamas war, how does it feel to think about that personal history?
I don’t feel connected to the current situation personally because I identify as a scouser, but of course I identify with how awful the situation is the same as everyone else. It’s very upsetting to see the pictures. Like a lot of things in recent years, including the impact of Brexit, I feel like we’re in an era where people can’t control anything, which I’ve never felt in my life before. I feel very lucky to be Liverpudlian within that, though, where the huge Chinese community feel like scousers, the Ukrainian taxi drivers feel like scousers. It’s such a proudly multicultural, welcoming place.
Historians have written about Three Lions crystallising a moment when England regained a sense of its own identity. What are your feelings about English nationalism?
The FA never liked Three Lions because it was about England losing. It was about the masochism of losing being part of the journey of being a fan. It was also completely against lad culture, which was everywhere at the time – the “football’s coming home” line was a reference to the Euros slogan, about football coming back to where it was invented, rather than any trophy returning. I’ve had a tricky relationship with it, but I’m at peace with it. The FA still don’t like the song. They’re trying to make Sweet Caroline England’s song instead.
The England football team didn’t like the song either …
No, but it was about how they never won! It was a bit awkward playing it back to them – we hadn’t thought that through [laughs]. But Terry Venables liked it. I remember him jangling his keys along to it, smiling: “It’s a proper key-tapper, Ian.”
Do you have any surprising heroes?
Orson Welles. I love watching his interviews on YouTube. In one, he was asked if he’d been in a situation where a friend wanted a part in one of his films, and he’d given it to them, and if that had ever worked out well. “Never,” he replied. But he’d done it lots, so was asked why. “Because I value people and friendship above art,” he said. That’s something to live by.
You went through a very tough time in the 2000s – a divorce and four family deaths, including your parents, your sister, who had a brain tumour, and your brother, who killed himself. Did anything help you?
For a long time I thought I’d wasted my life doing music. I’d sat worrying about a drum sound when I should have been out there, living. It took me a long time to realise that music is where I’m happy living my life, like it or hate it – collaborating, playing with friends, sharing my songs. And I realised why I loved doing gigs – because you have different connections to different sets of people in different places every night. Your songs become alive again in lots of different ways.
Your son, Riley, for whom you wrote your 1992 hit, The Life Of Riley, when he was a toddler, is now your manager and bandmate. That must be special.
It is. When I’m singing that song, and he’s next to me on the stage, it’s just something else. Every time.
• Tomorrow’s Here Today by Ian Broudie is published by Nine Eight Books (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
