ndy Partridge knew that he would never perform live again as he lay on a stretcher in a Los Angeles emergency room between two gunshot victims. His banddid not know it, but they had just played their final show. “My dream had died,” says Partridge, his voice cracking at the memory 40 years on.
The occasion for the interview is My Failed Christmas Career: the latest in a series of archival releases, it documents festive songs that Partridge wrote with the intention of selling to other artists. Other than two songs recorded by the Monkees, the rest never found buyers. Does he enjoy Christmas? “Oh, it’s fabulous,” he says in his lusty West Country burr. “It all comes from paganism.”
Despite their similarity to those metropolitan new wave greats – and approval from their US peers –Partridge thinks their small-town origins made British listeners think of them as parochial. “One of the reasons we never clicked in England is because Swindon is the joke town,” says Partridge, who remembers being advised by Virgin to lose his accent. “We said: ‘No, we’re from the West Country, we talk like this, we think like this.
Though XTC’s 1990s began triumphantly with the autumnal, slow-burning Nonsuch album, it would be the most punishing decade of Partridge’s life. When Virgin cancelled the single release of Wrapped in Grey – heavily inspired by the Beach Boys and one of Partridge’s most life-affirming songs – he called his band out on strike.