Boon army keeps on growing

MODERN line-up: Clint is second from the left

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MARTYN MEETS...Oldham rock legend and DJ CLint Boon

Clint Boon is as Oldham as fish and chips after a Saturday night on the razz.

Born in Woodfield Nursing Home, Werneth, raised in a corner shop on Higginshaw Lane, educated at St Joseph’s RC School in Shaw, worked in Heyside. How Oldham do you want him to be?

Quite how this misconception has grown about Clint - keyboard player in what is arguably Oldham’s best-known and most successful rock band, Inspiral Carpets, is hard to discern.

He and his fellow band members have always proclaimed their collective pride for their Oldham heritage and remain committed Oldhamers - even if Clint, 55 going on 30, now lives in Stockport with his second wife Charley and their children, Oscar (10), Hector (7) and four-year-old Cassius.

All three were at home the day I visited their splendid Victorian house - but then again they always are. Clint and Charley took the brave decision to educate their boys at home.

The Boons employ specialist maths and English tutors for their boys who, on the evidence of my visit, are wonderfully rounded, polite and bright.

Quite like their famous father Clint, currently enjoying a Carpets renaissance with the newly-released album and tour. They have played gigs in Barcelona and Rome, and the Carpets’ original frontman Steve Holt - who left in 1990 before the boys made in big - is back.

Clint is relishing every moment of his second coming with the Carpets; he’s a bundle of energy, enthusiasm and ideas.

I suspect this article will not do justice to this remarkable man, who continues to enthral audiences with his daily radio show on Manchester’s XFM. His three-hour weekday spot is the most popular of the station’s output according to Ofcom official ratings.

How else could it be for a man who recalls, with instant and total clarity, living with his parents Marie and Cyril and brother and sister Craig and Lynda over the corner shop in Higginshaw Lane?

Delving into his past opened a box of unexpected revelations. But once I learned that his dad was a shopkeeper, sandwich maker, poultry breeder, part-time window cleaner — “and I remember he once borrowed a shotgun to shoot rats on his allotment in Heyside” — it is little wonder that chip-off-the-old block Clint is also multi-faceted.

His rise to rock stardom was not so much complex as complicated by the fact he had to work, for many years, initially on a guillotine at a fabrication shop in Heyside and then at a furniture manufacturing business in Ashton. It was at Guide Mill in Audenshaw that he first met the Carpets.

Clint’s love of music was inspired by listening to his parents’ vinyl LPs — still lovingly preserved - ranging from Diana Ross and the Supremes to the Beatles, Burt Bacharach to Shirley Bassey operas Carmen to Porgy and Bess.

After passing a few undistinguished GCEs at Cardinal Langley school in Middleton, he told his careers office he wanted to be a rock star. He settled for a spell at Rochdale College of Art.

“At school I was always in trouble for being the class loon, always chattering and being up to mischief. When I got to art college, this side of my personality was encouraged, so I was in my element.”

A college student, Phil Diggle — whose brother Steve was a guitarist with the Buzzcocks — took the impressionable Clint to a rock concert and, wide-eyed at the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Johnny Thunder’s Heartbreakers and the Buzzcocks — Clint quit college and earned some money to set himself up as rock star. After all, if a rock star like Steve Diggle could live in Chadderton, whey couldn’t a lad from Higginshaw do likewise?

After a few months of manual jobs, one of his father’s customers, Mike Milner, offered Clint a post with Solar Furniture in Guide Bridge.

Clint started buying musical gear but continued to work at Solar: in 1980, with a loan from his parents and the bank, he bought into the business and became a director.

With a little more time on his hands and space in the mill, Clint put together a small musical studio and rehearsal space. Fate took a big hand in Clint’s life and helped to fashion a future his talent and commitment certainly deserved.

Clive Epstein - brother of late Beatles manager Brian - also bought into Solar Design.

“It was a remarkable period,” recalls still-starstruck Clint. “I would answer the phone at Solar and a voice would ask for ‘Clive: tell him it’s Gerry Marsden’. Then Cilla Black would call, and Paul McCartney. Clive Epstein encouraged Clint to follow his musical dream, and then came the big breakthrough.

“Inspiral Carpets turned up to use my studio in the mill to make a demo disc. I listened to them and they were obviously a talented group, with Graham Lambert on guitar, Craig Gill on drums, Mark Hughes on base and Steve Holt as the lead vocalist. I suggested their sound needed a keyboard player - and that’s how I joined the Carpets.”

They went on to play lots of gigs around Greater Manchester without ever making it big or making that vital breakthrough.

When frontman Steve announced he was leaving the band as he was getting married and needed to earn some proper money, auditions for a new lead singer took place.


Next week in part two: find out what happened when Noel Gallagher (yes, the Noel Gallagher) turned up and sang for the Oldham lads. And what’s world-famous opera singer Alfie Boe’s connection to the Carpets?

IF any Oldham music fans were unsure whether the Inspiral Carpets were truly back in business, rest assured they are, writes Simon Smedley.

There have been splits and regatherings, tours and the odd release since the mid-90s but now, with original frontman Stephen Holt back in the fold, the Tom Hingley-less band has unveiled its first new album in 20 years.

Entitled simply “Inspiral Carpets”, the eagerly-anticipated new album is out on October 20. An advance copy of the album reveals it to be pure class. Aside from one or two unfamiliar slower tracks, this is the Inspiral Carpets — now older and clearly much wiser — at their barnstorming best.

Fans can catch the band in the flesh on a nationwide tour that takes up pretty much the whole of December, including December 19’s show at the Ritz in Manchester. Info: www.gigsandtours.com.