In 2009, Matt Aston was watching the Wedding Present frontman David Gedge perform a “bizarre and brilliant” gig with the BBC Big Band when he was struck by a notion: that the combination of the singer’s conversational lyrics and brassy, orchestrated new arrangements felt a bit like, well, watching a musical.
“I parked the idea,” says Aston, a theatre director and writer. “Then some time later, I saw David’s other band Cinerama with a 16-piece orchestra and thought, ‘This could be musical theatre!’” Aston had had a few drinks and remembers sitting afterwards, trying to convince his mate – screenwriter and playwright William Ivory, who hadn’t been drinking – that this wasn’t the daftest idea ever. “Billy said, ‘You can’t make a musical out of Wedding Present lyrics. It’s not that kind of music.’” Aston laughs, aware that pop musicals tend to be vehicles for colourful, uber-mainstream acts such as Queen or Abba, not veteran indie rock bands. “But I said, ‘Oh yes you can.’”
And oh yes he has. Reception: A New Musical is about to premiere in the band’s home town of Leeds. Various Covid-related delays mean its appearance now serendipitously coincides with the band’s 40th anniversary and new retrospective collection, 40. Aston, more usually associated with theatrical productions such as Ivory’s RAF play Bomber’s Moon, insists he would never have done it without Gedge, the show’s creative consultant. However, the singer says that when Aston first approached him in 2020, he was “astounded”.
Gedge, speaking by video call from his Brighton home, says: “I told him, ‘I don’t know anything about musicals – and I’m not even sure I like them!’ But he explained that my lyrics are like dialogue, which he could link together in a storyline. Then the pandemic happened and I was half expecting to never hear from him again. A year ago, he called and said, ‘I’ve written it. I’m starting auditioning and then rehearsals. Can you come along?’”
Reception isn’t a biographical musical. It’s an emotionally charged story about friends who meet at the University of Leeds and subsequently go through ups, downs and breakups. When I sit in on rehearsals, I instantly pick up on Gedge’s impassioned lyrics. Lines such as “I just decided I don’t trust you any more”, from the 1990 hit Brassneck, are delivered by characters in emotionally appropriate situations, experiencing love, betrayal, loss, you name it. Meanwhile, actor-musicians nail that head-rushing Wedding Present sound, something the singer sums up as “the Velvet Underground – but faster”.
The Wedding Present have been York-based Aston’s favourite band ever since he saw them at Confettis nightclub in Derby on 20 October 1988. They were one of the foremost British indie rock bands of the late 80s and 90s, successors to the Smiths. “I was 15 and really small,” he grins during a lunchbreak. “Everyone had to huddle around me to sneak me in. But the noise, the lights, the surge forward, beer going everywhere, balloons coming down from the ceiling … I got a nosebleed within minutes, but I was blown away.” Since that day, he has seen the Wedding Present and Cinerama “60 or 70” times.
Like the characters in Reception, the band came together in and around Leeds uni. Born in the town’s Bramley area, maths student Gedge was the first of his extended working-class family to go into higher education. “So,” he says, “when I packed it in and said, ‘I’m gonna be famous’, they were appalled. I stopped going home because we’d have arguments all the time. But they had instilled a work ethic. I was very driven.”
Gedge describes how the band sat individually cutting and glueing the sleeves for 500 copies of their first single, Go Out and Get ’Em Boy!, released on their Reception label for £500. When John Peel played it on Radio 1, the singer was so excited he ran all the way to bassist Keith Gregory’s house to shout: “Have you got the radio on?” As Gedge recalls: “Peel played it 10 times. At that point, my life changed.”
Although 1987 debut album George Best and 1989’s Bizarro exemplify the band’s inimitable, classic sound, Gedge insists the musical fits in with “the Wedding Present tradition of going off at weird tangents”. Indeed. George Best was an indie No 1, making them such hot property that they signed to major label RCA for “the sort of deal normally given to people like Annie Lennox”. And then their next release for their new label was an album of Ukrainian folk songs, instigated by guitarist Peter Solowka (who later formed the Ukrainians).
In 1991, as the music world went baggy, the “Weddoes” listened to US alt-rock and made the slower, darker album Seamonsters with “a maverick engineer no one had heard of”. This was Steve Albini, who subsequently produced Nirvana. “We literally lost half our fans,” Gedge admits. “But now they all think it’s one of our best albums.”
In 1992, they released a single every month. “That was such a great idea that we had it all planned within 15 minutes,” the singer laughs. “All seven-inch singles, cover versions on the B-side, matching sleeves. To RCA’s credit, they said OK.” All of which paid off when the band equalled Elvis Presley’s record of 12 UK Top 40 hits in one year.
There have also been some lyrical curveballs: 1987’s All About Eve reflected on the year Gedge spent in apartheid South Africa as a child, while 1989’s Kennedy dwelt on conspiracy theories. But Gedge insists that the overwhelming majority of his 300-plus songs are about relationships, meaning they’re well-suited for drama.
His early lyrics are particularly raw. The 2018 documentary Something Left Behind suggested they were all triggered by being dumped by his first love, but Gedge says otherwise. “Jaz was my first proper girlfriend. She chucked me and went off with someone else, but after her there was Alexandra, then Sally.” He says a lot of the lyrics – such as those to My Favourite Dress (“a drunken kiss, a stranger’s hand on my favourite dress”) – were drawn from real life. “But that wasn’t Jaz, that was Alexandra.”
For Aston, such songs capture “those moments we all have where someone is the centre of your world, then your world ends and that kind of defines you”. To this day, Wedding Present gigs are full of men (and some women) of a certain age, singing Gedge’s words, occasionally tearfully. “A psychologist once explained that men of my generation didn’t talk about emotions,” says the singer, “so they come up and thank me for getting them through their divorce or whatever with the songs. It’s flattering – but I just write songs. I’m not a doctor who saved their life.”
One fan is Keir Starmer. In 2023, the PM – who studied law in Leeds – revealed that My Favourite Dress, which is beautifully reimagined in Reception as a piano ballad, is one of his favourite songs. “David,” Starmer explained, “managed to perfectly distil the tortuous agonising feelings of jealousy into three minutes of angst.”
“He came to a lot of our early gigs,” Gedge reveals. “I don’t remember him because there were loads of lads and girls, but he was a mate of a mate of Keith’s and I’m told I have hung out with him.” The singer smiles broadly. “But I’m still waiting for my invitation to Downing Street, like Noel Gallagher got from Tony Blair.”
Now 65, Gedge carries his “indie rock god” status lightly. When Aston first met him properly, after years of “mumbled hellos at the merchandise stall”, he found someone he could work with – and whose presence looms over Reception. “There are many not-so-subtle references in the script,” the writer-director laughs. “All the character names are from the songs. The lead character spends a year in Seattle, which David did, although we moved the couple in My Favourite Dress from Manchester to Brighton. So there’s a bit of me in there and a lot of him.”
For Gedge, Reception is “a fictional story but it kind of features me without me. Which is clever, really.” Aston knows the project is quite a departure but says: “I wouldn’t take the risk for myself or David if I thought it wouldn’t work. It’s a love letter to the band – a thank you for the last 40 years.”
