Mike + The Mechanics Are Back!
Mike + The Mechanics are back! With a Top 10 album Let Me Fly, their last single Don’t Know What Came Over Me A-Listed at BBC Radio 2 (who also made Let Me Fly their Album Of The Week), and a sold-out UK tour including London’s Royal Albert Hall, the band have now announced The Best Is Yet To Come as the next album single. The official music video is available now and the song will impact at radio June 9 in advance of their June 30 performance at Hyde Park.
Taken from Let Me Fly, The Best Is Yet To Come is classic Mechanics. With big melodies and irresistibly catchy anthems, the new single showcases the soaring vocals of Tim Howar.
About The Best Is Yet To Come, Mike Rutherford says: “Sometimes you finish an album & without realizing it, there is a slight theme to it and ‘The Best Is Yet To Come’ has that…a positive note. Tim sings with a great energy on it. It’s nice having songs that are positive rather than doom, gloom & melancholy.”
2017 sees Mike + The Mechanics toast 32 years in business, and alongside their eighth album and major UK tour, they will be special guests this summer at Phil Collins’ massive June Hyde Park gig as part of the British Summer Time Festival.
Let Me Fly began to take off as the band toured 2011’s The Road, the first album featuring the current line-up: Rutherford himself (guitar/bass), Luke Juby (keyboards), Gary Wallis (drums), Anthony Drennan (guitar), plus vocalists Andrew Roachford and Tim Howar.
“The Mechanics hadn’t played live much, so we started to do what I’d done 40 years ago and build a name. We did Euro festivals, UK tours and small places and, yes, I really did wonder at my age if it was OK to be at Portsmouth Guildhall, but we got to be a great live band. The chemistry works because we’re all very different people, who’re fun and quirky – if there were any personality problems I couldn’t deal with that, I really couldn’t. We needed new songs though.”
Mike’s friend Brian Rawling, producer of David Bowie, Tina Turner, Cher’s “Believe” and the Mike + The Mechanics’ hit Now That You’ve Gone played the role of Let Me Fly’s sounding board. Rawling introduced Mike to former Johnny Hates Jazz singer Clark Datchler and, in December 2015 a new song writing partnership was born.
“We sat down together and from day one it worked. Clark’s a proper writer and he brought something new. I’d send him lines and he’d bring them to life. We never had a slow day.”
Along the way, Mike also collaborated with old friend Fraser T. Smith (Kano, Kaiser Chiefs, Adele, Sam Smith) and Ed Drewett (One Direction, Professor Green), while both Mechanics singers collaborated too. Big studios were out. Instead, Mike and one of the singers would make a demo which would be passed around for the others to embellish and layer by layer, the songs evolved into something special. “You don’t go into studios any more: doing it this way feels like you’re working on the good bits all the time, but the songs really have to deliver.”
The results pleased even the chief Mechanic himself. “The Road didn’t move anyone’s world as we made it just after we’d met. We’ve learned to play together now. For me, it’s about proving I can write a good song, but the older you get, the less you let yourself off with ’it’s not bad’, the less you pretend and the tougher you are on yourself. The hardest part of the whole process is staying relevant, but anyone who says success doesn’t matter is a liar: what you really want is people to like it. Then you feel it’s all been worth it. It’s as simple as that. Oh and my wife loves it, more than she’s loved an album of mine for a while! Trust me, that’s a really good sign.”
The Best Is Yet To Come is out now…