“There’s a ghost in the Tanglewood that offered light in the black separation.”
– Phantom Memories by Ginger Wildheart

“Get a move on, Stockford!”

Yes – tonight, Matthew, I am that guy, the bloke who spends an age at the front of a queue, holding everyone up. I don’t mean to be, but the prize now that I’ve reached pole position is a chat with Ginger Wildheart – someone I’ve not spoken to, in person, for… ooh, it must be about 16 years.

Back then, my wife Tara and I ran his website SilverGinger.com, as well as the discussion group The Wildhearts Mailing List. It was the days before Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – heck, even MySpace was a glint in its daddy’s eye – and a lot has happened since. I’ve gone bald, for starters.

Read more →

The last train home would be leaving at 11.37pm. Pretty good. The gig, at Brighton’s Engine Room on the seafront, was bound to be over by 11pm, so I should have had plenty of time for a leisurely stroll back to the station. And I probably would have if Ginger’s car hadn’t broken down en route to the venue (the word ‘diesel’ was tossed about), leaving a roomful of fans anxiously eyeing their watches.

One guy in a Fishing For Luckies T-shirt started asking around for floor space. He had the same problem as me and Matt, one of my two gigging partners this evening: a last train back to London was unlikely to be caught. Matt started fiddling with his swanky internet-enabled phone (’tis pure witchcraft, I tell thee), searching for train times from other stations that we might be able to get a late-night cab to. I called my wife Tara to ask her to double-check the times on the (proper) web. Alas, it looked like we were stuffed – unless we fancied hanging around platforms until 3am.

Read more →

Down the decades, entire libraries’ worth of words have been written about rock ‘n’ roll’s life-affirming properties.

I’ve read some of it. I’ve enjoyed some of it. But I’ve also yet to read a single line that sums it up better than the closing line of Valor Del Corazón, the first fully-fledged solo album from Ginger, creator and creative of The Wildhearts, whose last proper long player, 2003’s The Wildhearts Must Be Destroyed!, sounded like the work of a band who’d found something approaching contentment for the first time in their 14-year history.

Unfortunately, the following year Ginger watched his life fall apart around him. An open letter to fans on The Wildhearts’ website detailed the horrors he’d been through. It was a messy, tragic story, at the root of which was a failed relationship. It appeared that everything that followed was an attempt to escape the sadness he felt, and nothing worked – until he hooked up with producer and friend Ralph Jezzard to begin work on what was to become Valor Del Corazón.

Read more →