It’s punk doc! Doctor Who star Peter Capaldi, 63, goes back in time to rock again like his student days… and releases his debut album
As befits a former time-travelling Doctor Who, it seems Peter Capaldi has been revisiting the days when he was a punk frontman.
Forty years after he rocked out on stage as a student, the actor has released his debut solo album.
The 63-year-old, who famously played an electric guitar as the Doctor in the Tardis, returned to the studio to record St Christopher after being encouraged by his friend Dr Robert from the Blow Monkeys.
Peter Capaldi cajoled Doctor Who writers into allowing him to show off his guitar playing skills on the BBC series’ episode The Magician’s Apprentice
Black and white photographs from the early 1980s show the star performing at the Glasgow School of Art as part of the DreamBoys – screaming into a microphone with a slicked back quiff and wearing a knitted tank top.
He played the guitar alongside fellow students Temple Clark, Roderick Murray and Craig Ferguson, who went on to host the Late Late Show in America, with the quartet gigging in Glasgow’s thriving music scene.
They may have released music and been played by the late John Peel, but Capaldi said they had the ‘worst possible name’.
‘We were trying for a nightmarish Kafkaesque or Dr Caligari feel, not a troupe of Chippendales-type male strippers,’ he told the Observer.
‘We did OK, got our record played by John Peel and were part of a thriving scene.
‘But after a while, we were banging our heads against a brick wall.’
Peter Capaldi (centre) in the band The Dreamboys at the Third Eye Centre in Glasgow in 1979
Capaldi then pursued a career in acting, playing the foul-mouthed Malcolm Tucker in The Thick Of It and the Twelfth Doctor in Doctor Who, as well as enjoying film roles in The Personal History Of David Copperfield and Paddington.
But at 63 he is belatedly releasing his debut solo album after buying ‘a cheap electric guitar’ and making demos while shooting The Suicide Squad in Atlanta.
‘I was in a band at art school and our obsessions back then were melancholia, punk, synthesisers, power chords, rain and being pale and interesting,’ he said.
‘I fell back into that studenty groove. Although when you’re making your first record at 63, some of rock ’n’ roll’s traditional subject matter is closed to you. Don’t worry, I don’t suddenly think I’m a rock star. It was just some friends doing stuff they enjoy that got a bit … elaborate.’
Peter Capaldi recorded his new album, titled St Christopher, after being encouraged by his friend Dr Robert from the Blow Monkeys
Capaldi’s cousin, Lewis Capaldi, is also a musician with his debut album, Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent, the best selling album of 2019 and 2020.
Peter Capaldi cajoled Doctor Who writers into allowing him to show off his guitar playing skills on the BBC series.
He played Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in the Tardis and strummed an electric guitar on board a tank too.
Source: Read Full Article
