News and Interviews

Manchester band A Boy Called Doris’ Star Crossed Lovers has just come out on Regal. Its tale begins, as songs do, with the writer, Tony Bolton, who first came up with the tune a while back and recorded the original demo at home on equipment funded by a tax rebate.

"I wrote Star Crossed at work one day, and I came home and thought, why not test out the equipment? It took hours and hours. Just as I was going to go to bed, I saw the keyboard and thought ‘I have to try that too’. A melody just popped into my head and that was it. I accidentally wrote the main hook of the song through blurry eyes.

A Boy Called Doris

"I listened to it again and again and thought this is pretty good. I made a couple of copies and passed one onto Salford University’s Adelphi Records. They liked it and no-one was more shocked about that than me!"

On the dotted line

What happened next is best explained by Jimmy Smith, the A&R at the band’s label, Regal. He says their signing was all about the limited nature of the original release.

"I signed A Boy Called Doris to Regal as I thought that Star Crossed Lovers needed a real opportunity to get some more exposure. It wasn’t given a real push first time around.

"The band were signed to Regal as the label is a forward thinking, alternative record label which I think suits what A Boy Called Doris is trying to achieve musically."

Tony playing live

But it’s a long road between a limited release on a university label and putting a song out on a subsidiary of Parlophone. That’s the real story of this single and it revolves around Tony, Jimmy and two more people - Simon Ashby, the band’s manager, and their lawyer, Eleanor Brody. Tony says A Boy Called Doris are indebted to both.

"Without Simon, I don’t think we’d be in this position. He’s taken the business side off us and allowed us to concentrate on the music. I would recommend getting a manager to any band because of that exact point.

"The lawyer thing is much the same. I knew of Eleanor before I met her, but the first contact I actually had with her was sitting in the boardroom of her offices, signing contracts. That was a brilliant day, though she wouldn’t let us sign them in crayon, like we wanted to.

"The bottom line though is just knowing that there’s someone out there looking after your interests, thinking about things that you never conceive, is great."

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