Micko Westmoreland Interview: Part 2 - Sooty, Essence of Innocence

Part 2 of Interview with Micko Westmoreland of Micko & The Mellotronics (June 2026)

Sooty,  a glove puppet, star of  children's television show that ran from 1955 on the UK's national TV channel BBC TV until 1967 and then on the commercial-funded channel ITV until 1992, is an unlikely cover star for Micko & The Mellotronics third album, Trinity.  The glove puppet, with its (her?) permanent expression of a naïf surprised by life, features on front and back of the new CD cover.  Micko explains that the pictures, painted by his first teacher, Jacob Cramer at Leeds College of Art, feature Sooty because the puppet's character is "in some ways, the essence of innocence.

Art Work Garry Barker

"On the front cover Sooty is accompanied by two other more ethereal glove puppets, two mashed deities.  A weird threesome, reflecting the album title, Trinity. The reverse cover shows Sooty being raised in two hands above the head of a sort of revivalist figure, as if Sooty is being returned back to life by some spiritual energy."

I am a little puzzled by what Micko is alluding to here. The image of Sooty has seemingly appeared from nowhere in our conversation about, Micko Westmoreland's third album, his second with The Mellotronics. Micko continues, 

"When you experience dying, it does make you think about the purpose of life and what we have been put here for and the need for meaningful activity."

Certainly the reality of mortality is something that has struck hard in Micko's consciousness.

Photo credit Peter Tainsh
 

"The album contains some quite dark themes." he continues. "There are three songs about people dying and another where someone is left for dead." 

This is hardly children's glove puppet territory. Micko's art teacher had painted the surreal Sooty images while recovering from injuries sustained in a motor accident, when life was in the balance. When Micko saw them he drew his own meaning from the images. 

As I listened again to the new songs, it dawned on me that Trinity is an album about growing up, losing childhood innocence and accepting "This is real life", (as Howard Devoto sang in 'Definitive Gaze').  Trinity closes with Mystery of The Night, a song drawn from Micko Westmoreland's daily meditation practise. 

"I am a meditator. I practise twice a day, as a way of preparation for death. It is an act of letting go, not an act of doing, but placing some trust in the system and be able to see, or understand things that are playing out around me.  

'Mystery of the NIght' is all about transcendence, going into another state, not just going back to sleep.  It is about accessing and expanding that space without doing something harmful to your body, as some might do, through drink and drugs."

"Keep it noir." Micko told his friend Arnulf Lindner, who provided the strings on Now I'm Dead, "It's about someone dying." 

Despite the acknowledgement that life inevitably will end, our conversation is not maudlin in anyway. We   opened some doors and peeked into some very dark rooms, but like his new album, Micko is seriously entertaining. Even when meeting via a video link, the artist is energetic, enthusiastic and engaging.  He is not trying to preach, he just wants to share some of the things life has shown him.  At one point during our chat, Micko leans close to the camera as if he wants to shake me enthusiastically by the shoulders during his exposition of one particularly vital point. It was a completely natural and spontaneous movement, the gesture of a man who is keen to keep a firm grasp on life, with all its challenges and joys.  

In the first part of our conversation, Micko and I covered a lot of ground around his music and the people who influenced, encouraged and supported him in his progress in this field.  As the discussion moved onto the new album itself and its songs, Micko reiterated the importance of lyrics to him.  Some people do say the words in any song mean nothing to them, they just enjoy the sounds of the words with the music. Others think they know the lyrics of songs, but draw meaning from misconstrued lines and misheard words. How important are the words really? (My favourite personal blooper is me thinking Michael Jackson sang Don't stop 'til the post-office).

Micko made an excellent point about Lennon's I am the Walrus, (much admired by the brothers, Gallagher).  It was a nonsense song, in the vein of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, or possibly The Walrus and The Carpenter.   Lennon wrote his walrus song as an exercise in nonsense, then having completed the job admirably, never wrote another nonsense number, despite the wishes of fans. Of course, in that era, with an economically liberated youth generation seeking purpose in the emerging post-World War consumer economy, the lyrics of many songwriters were analysed to death. Interpretations were drawn out of context and some song writers, like Lennon and Dylan were deified.  As Bob Dylan reminded his global audience on more than one occasion, his job was to entertain, he described himself as a troubadour, not a messiah. Given his relentless touring schedule to this very day, the life of a travelling minstrel is the life Bob Dylan has increasingly led. However, this does not mean every recording artist is simply trying to entertain.

Micko Westmoreland very much wants to entertain, but he is no clown and he has experienced life moments in ways that he wants to share, without preaching.  His song writing comes from a poetic story-telling tradition, in which gaps are left for the listener to fill with their own meaning.

Hence the songs on this album are firmly based in lived experience. Micko expands on this, 

"I always start an album with a couple of singles so the listener can get comfortable with the sound of the album. I want to introduce them to a key concept and here, 'Shadow' is about being a kid and growing up and reflecting, as you begin to age, on what happened when you were young.  'Proper Job' comes a little later in life, when you have parents on your case telling you to "Stop mucking about and get a proper job."

Art Work Garry Barker

Is this a concept album? I ask. 

No. That would have forced me to write songs to meet the brief and that would mean that some of them  would have been contrived to fit the formula, but there are songs here which relate to how children and parents interact and how that changes as one gets older, which is something that becomes very clear when you have to look after your parents in later life. 

'Would you believe it' came from visiting my father in hospital when he was dying and quite delusional at that point. He came out with this expression and his face really lit up. I knew then it was a basis for a song, but I had to wait a couple of years for it to finally turn up.  My partner said, "Mick no one listening will have a clue what you're going on about." It is a bit depressing singing about watching your dad dying. She said, "Why don't you try to dovetail it with your son being born?" which is the joyous car crash of being present when your child is born.  It worked, I think and Neil Innes approved, saying to me, about the ending of  'Would you Believe It'  that first moments clarify what we are put here for." 

The album moves through life's moments of revelation at a cracking pace. That's What It's All About addresses the moment in adolescent development when sexual awakening develops and becomes a primary, the primal, driving motivator in so much behaviour. In this song, Micko is partly reminiscing, telling a story as he goes, while also trying to share some of his insights on life, which is the way with all these songs.

The importance of letting go and respecting the life choices of the people you love pops up here and there across this collection and is something we keep returning to in our conversation.  There is a lot here to consider and it is Micko who points out that a lot could revolve around the insoluble argument of "Free Will versus Determinism."

The track Misery Guts, "is about a couple tied to each other, gradually tearing each other apart. They are making up exquisite types of torture that couples do get to inflict on each other when they are unhappy together. Why do people do this? As we get older we galvanise preferences, likes and dislikes, become a lot less flexible, when being more flexible based on experience and reflection, would be healthier. This song shows me how important it is to let go in life.

This links with the song 'Parked Car' from when people did not get divorced, and if they married young became trapped in a marriage, they had to seek love elsewhere, where they could and when they could, I imagine, in places like lay-bys and parked cars."

Micko hits his stride at this point in the interview, explains that Guilty is about Ruth Ellis, the last woman hung by the British judicial system, after which the law changed around how women could be punished by the judiciary.   

"Ruth Ellis was hung just down the road from where I live in north London, She was someone who people would have bitched about. She was a beautiful, young, working class woman, trying to use her resources as a single mother to try and make a better life.  There  was so much misogyny  around her.  My song tries to show how this might have been as her world was dragged into the open in the court. 

All at Sea follows.  Micko explains,

It was originally called a Voyage at Sea - but I prefer to write in common speech, so it became 'All At Sea.'  I wrote it using a voice to text app, while lying on the floor feeling totally overwhelmed by events. I imagined being adrift at sea and what it might be like when you first wake up not realising quite where you are for the first few seconds of the morning.  You might feel you are in quite a pleasant place, before you remember where you really are.  I like what Jacques Brel did with his songs, so in this one I end it with an image about a piece of driftwood and the concluding crash of a huge wave.

Viva La Underdog is written from a much older person's perspectove and it is about the legacy one would leave, such as the  film I was in, Velvet Underground. This film will continue to be shown when I am very old, possibly when I am dead.  So I imagined being in a care home and watching the film on TV and thinking about my legacy and what worth I have brought to my life. The song is also a nod to Neil Innes and his songs for The Rutles, who gave me support and great advice about song writing. It is one of the later songs on the album. 

I have mixed things up with a few jaunty ones and some fun songs. I suppose, now I am a dad myself, I am looking back on my younger life and seeing things differently, now I have that responsibility.  But I am an actor and musician. I am an entertainer and I want my songs to be enjoyed. 

Thin Line is the first of these songs I wrote. It is about a bit of a chancer who was woken one morning by three visitors who threatened to frogmarch him off to Epping Forest were debts not settled in twenty-four hours.  I wondered what that might feel like." 

Micko tells me,

"The album came together from songs mastered at at different times, so it took some work to ensure it  gelled sonically as well as fitting the songs together coherently.

In our ninety minute conversation, Micko has taken me through some lively anecdotes and a few of life's lessons. He is great company and has produced an album which may seem an 'old school' sound, as my mate Seán said. What Seán meant by that was that these songs are about real people and things that happen to them. It is a very English album, one that sits well alongside the work of Ray Davies, London's master songsmith.

I asked Micko if there was something he wanted to conclude the interview with and he wanted me to be aware how much he is grateful to the people who he worked with on Trinity.  Musicians Budge McGraw and Jan Noble.  Paul Cuddiford was the man who arranged the songs Micko had roughed out. Micko very much enjoyed working with Chris Kimsey too and he found working with him inspirational.

Moving from solo recordings made in the backroom under the name (The) Bowling Green, to a band leader has been a huge step for Micko. He has learned so much from the process and is very much enjoying this aspect of his creative life.

Photo credit Peter Tainsh

Micko and The Mellotronics have a London gig to launch the album Triinity with more dates to follow before too long. The album is released on CD and digitally on Friday 12th June, 2026.

17th July 2026:    Aces and Eights, Tufnell Park - tickets here.

~

Spencer Ide

7th June 2026