Charlie Drinkwater is breaking the mould of what it means to be a rockstar. He speaks to Shaikha Rahimi about his grandfather’s influence on his music and his love for psychogeography
Charlie Drinkwater’s relationship with his art extends beyond just making music. The graphic designer, singer-songwriter, art director, and TV Priest frontman embraces a transparent, hands-on approach to his craft with every release, meticulously creating a visceral and enticing experience in which his art and music find a home in.
He’s not your typical rockstar. With all his creativity and knowledge, you’d think he gives it all to you on a silver platter. Well, he doesn’t. He’s very conscious of not telling people how they should or shouldn’t live and how they should or shouldn’t interpret his art. He doesn’t believe it’s his job as an artist.
“Being an artist puts me in a rare position of being able to ask more questions that provide an answer, which is nice in a world where everyone is like ‘I know the best way,’” he says.
Lots of his art is influenced by his surroundings. He is a psychogeography enthusiast and did not shy away from leaving traces of that in TV Priest’s second studio album My Other People.
“I left the city about three years ago. I now live in a little village in the countryside, partly because of some mental health issues I’ve been through, but also for my love of nature and the reckoning of loving places and their history. Although those places sometimes make it difficult to love it,” he says with a dry laugh. “But nature has been very important to me as a person and artist.
“Walking therapy in nature is one of the things, outside of music, where I can fully disassociate from having an overactive brain. Well, you could do that in the city too, but there’s something quite special about being isolated but never really truly isolated. I suppose the beauty in it is feeling connected and bigger than yourself,” he says with caution of not sounding too pretentious. “I’d hate to sound like one of those flat earthers.”
He’s not. Charlie’s outlook on his surroundings is interesting, to say the least. He already has his opinions on the current political climate, but the added layer of his grandfather’s influence, who was a journalist and photographer in the 1950s, makes it truly compelling.
“It’s difficult. It’s hard to live in a place you love very deeply but you don’t agree with by the nature of the politicians we elect and the system we uphold. My music is a reflection of that. It’s me trying to find a way to articulate myself in the face of not knowing how to, but it’s also a quest to connect with other people, have those conversations, and find a community.”
In conversations with him, one can’t help but be struck by his intelligence and his ability to see things from multiple perspectives. It’s no wonder his music is so powerful and moving - it comes from a place of deep compassion for the world.
“Living in late-capitalist Britain means people are continuously trying to destroy our sense of community, and for me it’s sort of like ‘how do I find that lost community? How do I get to that through a creative way of coping?,’ ” says Charlie.
“And,” he continues, “then add being in a rock band in the current climate of things. It’s hard work. Obviously, there are socioeconomic problems that we face on an everyday level - all of us in the band have jobs that we still work, and we must make being creative fit around that.”
But he is hopeful. His grandfather passed away when Charlie was in his early 20s, yet he still carries his wisdom with him and translates it into his sublime artistry and persona.
“My grandad always pushed me to be creative. He was different to me in lots of ways, but it was that difference that I found so inspirational,” says Charlie.
He left school at 12, grew up in post-war London and was incredibly poor. He somehow managed to wangle an apprenticeship as a messenger boy in Fleet Street in the late 1940s. It was like winning the lottery to him.”
Charlie’s grandfather had a front row seat to 20th century history, “and that’s incredibly strange and rare for an oik from a working-class family in South London,” chuckles Charlie. “It just doesn’t happen to people but somehow it did.
“He was there during the Vietnam War, when the Berlin Wall went up, and during most of the Israeli-Arab conflict. His upbringing and how he existed as a young man is incredible,” he says.
Press Gang, the lead single of TV Priest’s debut album Uppers, is about Charlie’s grandfather. He says he wrote it while thinking about how his grandfather would react to the post-truth world and the democratisation of the news and internet.
“Growing up, my grandad’s world views rubbed off on me. His pursuit of information and ‘scoops’ became inherited, which is a special thing to root around for. Read every newspaper. Listen to every radio bulletin. Find the truth,” says Charlie.
“Although the ‘post-truth world’ isn’t something I believe in, I thought it would be an interesting take for Press Gang. I think we’ve always been post-truth.”
Charlie’s grandfather didn’t live to see the rise of open-source journalism in all its splendour and horror. He’s not sure his grandfather would have understood the polyphony voices competing so unrelentingly for attention anyway.
“What he taught me is that there is such a thing as truth. The who, the what, the when, and the why, as he always used to say,” says Charlie. “I think open-source journalism is amazing, but by the nature of Press Gang, it’s also saying with those positives come all these negatives. Press Gang is a reaction to the post-truth.”
It’s easy to assume Charlie’s dogmatic sense of self is a result of the wisdom that naturally comes with age, but it may have always been innate.
Charlie’s music often strikes a chord with his poignant lyrics. Limehouse Cuts from TV Priest’s My Other People is about Charlie’s love for landscapes and nature. He values the subtlety and nuance of imagery in his songwriting, using figurative language to hint at deeper themes and inviting the listener to reflect.
“I like art that makes me think and feel,” says Charlie. “I want to be surprised and challenged by the art I consume, and I find that people resonate with stuff that makes them work a little. But I do have my moments of thinking twice about doing that in my art. I sometimes struggle with a sense of ‘maybe I should be a little more direct sometimes’,” says Charlie.
Direct or not, Charlie’s artistry is electrifying. He carries a plethora of creativity and wisdom but never puts on airs. He is humble and grounded despite his growing success.
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