Marti Pellow looks forward to Rock With Laughter

Marti Pellow is in a contemplative mood as he considers the changing nature of the music industry amd prepares to sing in the annual Rock With Laughter show at the LG Arena, Birmingham, tonight and tomorrow.

"Youngsters today don't believe we used to just sit in a room, listening to music," he says in his thick Glaswegian brogue.

"They think it's a bit weird. Now they've got a Nintendo in their hand playing games, there's more choice in the world, there's so much more entertainment."

But in a world of internet downloads, gaming consoles and satellite television, the Wet Wet Wet frontman believes the people of the Midlands have lost none of their appetite for live entertainment.

Pellow will be performing live in front of around 10,000 people for this year's Rock With Laughter show in Birmingham, appearing alongside fellow pop acts 10cc and Gabrielle, as well as comedians Jimmy Carr, Dara O'Briain and Sarah Millican.

He says he didn't need to be asked twice.

"It's an area that has been very good to me over the years, and is very supportive of the arts," he says.

"Over the last 25 years I have played just about every venue in Birmingham, and a couple of years ago I was in the Witches of Eastwick at the Grand Theatre in Wolverhampton, it was a beautiful wee theatre and the audience was lovely."

The word "laid-back" could almost have been invented for Pellow, who at 46 seems to be enjoying his music as much as at anytime in his career.

"They asked me to do some singing, so that's what I'll do," he says. "I don't know what I'll be doing yet, but I'll think of something, I'll be singing some No 1 songs. I'm lucky enough to have a back catalogue going back some 20-odd years."

No doubt most of his fans will be expecting him to perform the classic Wet Wet Wet song Love Is All Around, which formed the soundtrack of the film Four Weddings and a Funeral. The song, a cover of a Troggs original from 1967, spent 15 weeks at No 1 in 1994, before Pellow insisted it was removed from sale, saying he was bored with hearing it.

"I loved that song, I truly did, but I was hearing it all the time, I think it had served its purpose," he says.

This was the high point for Wet Wet Wet, a band Pellow and his school friends Tommy Cunningham, Graeme Clark and Neil Mitchell had formed when they were 12 years old.

At a time when most male pop groups – they weren't called boy bands then – would join the Stock Aitken Waterman production line, Pellow and his friends wanted to draw on their diverse musical tastes, and they took the bold step of travelling to Memphis to meet producer Willie Mitchell.

Pellow was keen to make his mark as a songwriter as well as a performer, and he says Mitchell helped him understand how music worked.

The passion in his voice becomes more intense as he tries to explain the influence the sounds of Rachmaninov have had on pop music, and the subtleties of the orchestration in some of Elton John's works.

"To me music is all about the melody, and if it's got that it doesn't matter what it is. My tastes are quite eclectic. I listen to everything from classical music to reggae."

Although he admits his tastes do not stretch to today's X Factor starlets, Pellow insists music has to move with the times.

"Thirty years ago we would have stood in a queue at the record shop, talking about music while we waited to get the latest Clash record.

"We used to get our music from a television programme called Top of the Pops. Now people source their music on the web, they don't need to leave their homes, and there's so much of it.

"People talk about vinyl, but that's like saying those quills we used to write with were good. But then along came the typewriter, and the word processor. It's called progress, and now there's more music out there than there's every been.

"I think the internet is still in its infancy, and it's going to get better and better."

* Rock With Laughter is on at the LG Arena, Birmingham, tonight and tomorrow.

Mark Andrews