My Firsts: Baxter Dury | Underneath the Radar

September 15, 2025

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My Firsts: Baxter Dury

In Pursuit of One thing Naughty

Sep 15, 2025
Net Unique

By Mark Redfern
Images by Tom Beard

My Firsts is our e mail interview sequence the place we ask musicians to inform us about their first life experiences, be it early childhood ones (first phrase, first live performance, and many others.) or their first tastes of being a musician (first band, first tour, and many others.). For this My Firsts we discuss to Baxter Dury.

The British musician launched a brand new album, Allbarone, final week through Heavenly. Paul Epworth (Adele, Florence + The Machine) produced Allbarone, which was recorded at his Church Studios in London. It follows Dury’s 2023 album, I Thought I Was Higher Than You, in addition to 2020’s The Evening Chancers and 2017’s Prince of Tears.

Dury is the son of Ian Dury, the punk icon who fronted Ian Dury and the Blockheads (fashioned in 1977). That’s a younger Baxter subsequent to his dad in entrance of a lingerie store on the duvet of Ian’s 1977 solo album, New Boots and Panties!!. Ian Dury died in 2000, when Baxter was 28, and Baxter launched his debut album, Len Parrot’s Memorial Elevate, two years later.

Allbarone is Dury’s ninth album. The album’s fourth single, “Mockingjay,” was partially impressed by The Starvation Video games. “I used to be watching a type of Jennifer Lawrence Starvation Video games movies. It’s referred to as Mockingjay, and it’s a couple of insurgent, a romantic revolutionary kind,” Dury explains in a press launch, referring to the two-part finale of the movie sequence, launched in 2014 and 2015. “And the tune is making use of that character-type to on a regular basis individuals now. Instagram individuals who submit their revolutionary intentions on Instagram tales, figuring out that’s so far as it goes. I’m not saying individuals shouldn’t try this, however I can inhabit that pathetic romantic character in a tune. Perhaps that stops me being the particular person in actual life.”

Allbarone options loads of biting lyrics and pointed character research. On “Schadenfreude,” which includes a backing observe loop that performed in Epworth’s studio on “these large bespoke audio system that seemed like Cocaine Daleks,” Dury sings about being in a lodge in Stockholm, ready for somebody who was laughing at him behind his again. “Then I learn a bitter overview / A couple of band you’re in,” he sings. “To be sincere I bought schadenfreude.”

“It’s very crucial of individuals, this album, whoever they’re, possibly some bloke with a moustache and sockless loafers in Shoreditch or a fats previous Chiswick gangster lording it up in a extremely comfy center class a part of London,” says Dury.

With Allbarone Dury was going for a contemporary sound, which was one of many causes he wished to work with Epworth. “I don’t need to say it’s up to date,” he says. “As a result of I sound like a cunt utilizing that phrase. But it surely does sound actually up to date. It doesn’t sound like a Harrods hamper band made it. It doesn’t sound like a band made all of it. Which is what I wished most of all. It’s simply one thing that’s model new for me. It’s fairly thrilling, actually.”

Learn on as Dury discusses his stunning first phrases, the film that made a long-lasting impression on him, and his disastrous first job.

First phrase?

My first two connecting phrases or possibly it was my sister’s, as the parable has grow to be diluted by time, had been “cow shit.” Apparently my mother and father sat on a prepare on the way in which to my Aunt Moll’s home in a rural nook of Buckinghamshire repeating the phrase till it was repeated again. My aunt was not amused but in addition not stunned.

First finest pal?

Amjul Sadiq was my finest pal once I was six years previous. He was tall, sturdy, sensible, calm, and stuffed with prophetic insights about find out how to not let the world grind you down.

First pet?

Humphrey the hamster was my first pet however he tunnelled his means out of his enclosure and into the bowels of a carcinogenic Nineteen Seventies couch that quickly completed him off.

First damaged bone?

I’ve had too many to be clear which was the primary. I broke my hand, my leg, my foot. I dislocated my knee. I used to be a eager rugby participant which didn’t assist but in addition I used to be all the time in pursuit of one thing naughty. My nickname in school was Baxident and Emergency.

First film you noticed within the movie show?

Star Wars was presumably the primary movie I noticed and possibly nonetheless has had the largest impression. I nonetheless really feel like I’m all the time chasing that overwhelming feeling of being so engrossed. Irrespective of how a lot fashionable know-how makes an attempt to enhance our expertise watching a movie, it’s solely nice storytelling that’s really immersive.

First TV present you had been obsessive about?

Diff’lease Strokes I used to be totally obsessive about, which now feels very outdated in each sense. There’s additionally a tragic again story to Gary Coleman’s subsequent life—he ended up changing into a safety guard in a shopping center.

First music competition you went to?

I went to Glastonbury once I was 13 in 1985. I used to be wearing a black dustbin bag to guard from the rain. Dad performed on the Pyramid Stage to an unsettled crowd who began throwing mud so he walked off. Because the coach drove down a tiny lane a person jumped in entrance to say, “Ian hearken to the individuals.” They had been chanting his title. Dad and his band returned to the stage to a triumphant end. Fuck is aware of how a lot of that is true as I used to be so younger and there’s nobody left to confirm the story.

First time you bought fired?

I labored in a watch store within the west finish of London referred to as AM/PM, I used to be 16 and had simply left house and wanted the job to reside. The stress was loads then and I did my finest to be punctual. Then in a momentary lapse of focus I smoked a cigarette within the retailer room which set off all the fireplace alarms after which the sprinkler system which was defective and triggered a lot of different sprinkler techniques within the surrounding outlets. The harm was incalculable.

First laptop?

My first laptop was referred to as a ZX81. It solely had 1KB of ram and had no objective in any respect however I nonetheless thought it was fully magical and otherworldly.

First time you carried out in public?

I sang a tune my dad had written about his dad at my dad’s funeral referred to as “My Previous Man” on the Discussion board in London in entrance of some thousand individuals. It was intensely scary however I ruined all of it by demanding to do it once more an hour later, hooked on the eye.