Ian Salmon is the author of ‘Girls Don’t Play Guitars’, ‘Those Two Weeks’, ‘Venus Rising’, ‘The Comeback Special’ and ‘A Brief Conversation about the Inevitability of Love’.

NSG’s David Lancaster caught up with Ian to talk about his early life, writing a play about a long forgotten Merseybeat band, being influenced by Bruce Springsteen, and driving McFly’s tour bus around Liverpool.

DL: Hey mate, thanks again for the interview. You grew up here on Merseyside, whereabouts exactly, and how did it all start for you? We’re you into writing from a young age, staying late at drama class?

IS: I never attended a drama class in my whole life. I was born in Bootle and lived there until I was seven, then I moved to Fazakerley. I always wanted to be a writer and the first thing I wrote was something for a Star Wars comic, so that was 1976 and I wrote a few things for that, they never saw publication to my knowledge, but I was a comics geek and I grew up on Marvel comics, I bought all that stuff off the newsstand, X-Men and stuff like that and I always thought that’s what I would do, write for comics, but I had no idea about how to break into that kind of thing as it was all based in America, so I didn’t write really until I was in my mid 20’s. I went to a comics book signing on London Road and from that, I made some contacts and started attending some scriptwriting meetings down in London and over the three or four meetings I went to, I met a lot of big figures, I then managed to get something accepted by a fanzine called Revolver and the most fan mail the magazine ever received was for my story, so that was one hell of a start. I sent them some more things and then, in the ’90’s I’d just started a family and I was trying to break into writing but I felt like I was on my own and I felt that living in the part of Liverpool that I was from, it was easier to be in a band or get into music, I felt that “Theatre” seemed to be more south Liverpool, that those people lived down on Penny Lane or Lark Lane, that they wrote “Theatre”, of course, I was completely wrong, but that was the mindset I had at the time. So I got to the point where I just carried on with life, I had a well paid job at HMV, but I could see what was coming with that and you could see there was going to be some kind of end there. As I turned 50, I started an online blog just writing about something everyday, I did that for a year and then joined a natural writers group where I discovered playwriting which I’d never even considered.  I entered a competition where I wrote a monologue and they accepted that for a festival and then I saw an advert in The Echo and I wrote something for that and I won a prize, that was a play about two scallies and the ghost of Elvis, called ‘The Comeback Special‘. There’s no better feeling on earth than being in a room with actors, watching them bring your work to life. So, that’s the point where I became a playwright.

DL: So, as you just mentioned Ian, eventually you do become a prolific playwright and you’ve had multiple plays running concurrently at different theatres here in Liverpool. You seem to be very good at spinning lots of different plates all over the place at the same time. Do you thrive on that kind of chaos?

IS: I wouldn’t consider it as chaos, to be honest, but I do thrive on having a lot happening. I don’t really like it when nothing’s happening so the festival that I was first in, I had to be my own producer and I didn’t really know what a producer did, but I worked out that what a producer actually does is makes things happen, and as I’d been a manager for twenty-odd years, I knew that I could make stuff happen. I do prefer having other people doing it and having stuff on at the Royal Court, for example, that’s a whole other level but in terms of getting my work on at other places, I can do it easily and it’s just organising where things need to be at the right time. Coming up with work is one thing, but then when you get into a room with directors, it’s important that I like their vision of how they want it to go out on stage. I do tend to be “hands on” and tend to be in the room a lot with the directors, as long as they’re okay about it. I love the involvement, there’s nothing I enjoy more than being on my feet in amongst the actors, even though I wouldn’t consider myself a director, I do know how to get the emotions moving but there are people who can do that much better than I can. I didn’t start writing until I was 50 so there is so much that I want to get out there. The plays I do, I don’t want them to just exist once and never be seen again, I want them to have a life, so pretty much everything has been done twice now.

DL: Covid and lockdowns must have been a real gear change for you mate, did you manage to stay creative during the last 18 months?

IS: Yes I did, we had ‘Girls Don’t Play Guitars‘ lined up for its second run and we lost that and we realised covid was going to last a lot longer than we first thought. So, I had a choice of getting down about stuff not happening or trying to be positive.  Having an 18-month break in my career and a break in my personal development is one thing, but people have died, so I can’t complain when people have lost people. There was a lot of interest in that play from outside parties further afield, and we probably would have been on some kind of tour with that around now.  So my attitude wasn’t to be pissed off and I just started writing film scripts, stuff that I’ve never really had time to do, so the first thing I did is now with a producer, so there is a potential movement for that and I’m waiting on a meeting and that’s been interrupted by covid too as nothing can be made yet really. During the lockdown, I’ve actually written four film scripts and I’m working on a TV script, that’s something that I want to move into. I’ve kept going and I’ve been having some meetings recently about some theatre things but everywhere has a huge backlogue of stuff at the minute that is waiting to go on before anything new gets commissioned. So, yer, I just got my head down and worked really.

Girls Don’t Play Guitars poster

DL: ‘A Brief Conversation About The Inevitability Of Love‘, one of your most recent plays, was just performed at an iconic venue here in Liverpool, St Luke’s, Bombed Out Church. Can you tell us a bit about the story and how did the production at that venue come about?

IS: It’s a bit hard to tell you about the story as there is a large twist at the end, as you might have noticed in the reviews, but it’s about two people who were always destined to meet, but life kept getting in the way. They’d be in the same place at the same time but other people would be there or one wouldn’t notice the other and they’d never really connect but they’ve always known that they’re meant for each other. The play is about how they meet. That got short-listed for a prize in Manchester, it didn’t win but there were about 60 plays listed, so it did well to get short-listed. So that went on at the festival here in Liverpool and it’s a lovely festival and the audience responses and the reviews were really good and the Bombed out Church is a fantastic place to play.

DL: Another of your plays, ‘Those Two Weeks’ tells us another story which is unique to this city. What inspired you to write that play, Ian?

IS: I’d had a couple of plays on and I had ‘The Comeback Special’ about to run and I went for a coffee with my wife Jeanette, one Christmas-eve and Jeanette was talking about a Robert Pattison film that she’s seen called ‘Remember Me’ about a young man who is at odds with his father and he meets a girl falls in love, reconciles his relationship with his father but from his father’s office window, he witnesses the first plane flying into the world trade centre. So that film is a 9/11 film without talking about 9/11. We spoke about the idea of a story where you don’t realise what the point is until you get to the end and I thought I could do something like that, and the big thing that hangs over our entire generation is Hillsborough. There is before Hillsborough, and after Hillsborough, and how you are never the same again after Hillsborough. We were lucky, we didn’t lose anybody directly, my two brothers were in Leppings Lane but they were in the end pen so they were able to get out and my dad was in the stands watching it all happen. So I couldn’t, and I didn’t want to write the Hillsborough story, obviously, Jimmy McGovern has already done that brilliantly well. I didn’t want to write a survivor’s story as I wasn’t there, but I could write about what working class life was like before Hillsborough and what life was like in the mid ’80’s and late ’80’s. It’s easy to think of the 97 as a block of people, but what came through after the inquests was that each person was an individual and that they all had their own aspirations or their own careers, and I wanted to show what working class life was like at that time. I wanted to just show the life of a family through those two weeks leading up to Hillsborough and it would go all the way up to midnight on the 14th April. I wanted the family to go to the game and come back and I wanted to tell that story of how so many people were lucky to come back from that game and I know that it could have been any one of us not coming back. It could have been my brothers. So, I wanted to talk about Hillsborough without talking about Hillsborough. We did that at The Unity theatre and we did an invite only show for any of the family members who wanted to come and see it or any survivors groups that wanted to be there so that they could see it before hearing about it.

Ian Salmon Credit: Billy Vitch

DL: You’ve mentioned that Willy Russell, Alan Bleasdale, and Jimmy McGovern have been big influences on yourself,  Is there anybody else who you’d like to mention as an influence.

IS: I’ve never studied English apart from at A Level, never been to university, so Willy, Alan, and Jimmy are the holy trinity for me along with Frank Cottrell-Boyce who is also absolutely brilliant. Outside of that, there arn’t any playwrights who are an influence, as I never did a degree or anything. I’m completely self taught and fell into it by accident. So in terms of influencers, it’s more stuff like The Sopranos and Mad Men where nothing can happen for 90 minutes but then it’ll happen brilliantly. Tarantino obviously and another big one for me is Bruce Springsteen, when he did the River tour, he said he wanted to “put life onstage”, and that’s what I’ve always wanted to do really. I want to write theatre for people who think they would never go to the theatre, and that’s what people say about the Royal Court, it’s a theatre for people who don’t like going to the theatre. There is a bit of a ghettoisation from the media about working class theatre, and it’s just telly really that is happening right in front of you. So, I want my stuff to be for people who would watch a drama on TV, as that’s where I’m coming from. I don’t know anything about Beckett or Pinter and I’ve hardly watched any Shakespeare, he uses too many words, that might make me sound like a Luddite.

DL: Fun question then Ian, If you can imagine that you have a dream/unlimited budget, you get asked to write a huge blockbuster “Hollywood style” movie, who do get to direct, and who are your lead actors?

IS: Spielberg, as he does blockbusters and I want to do my super hero story and it’s an epic. Lead actors would be Christian Bale and Alex Lather from The End of the F***ing World.

DL: Who would you rather have a bevvy with Batman or Spiderman?

IS: Spiderman, he was my hero when I was growing up. He was just a normal kid aged 14 or so, so I could identify with that. I think he’d be a better laugh than Batman too.

A Brief Conversation About The Inevitability Of Love

DL: As we touched on earlier, you worked in HMV for many years and music is a great love of yours, Ian. What was the first ever album you bought and what’s your favourite album? Any funny stories from the HMV store, did you have any famous customers??

IS: Certain stories I couldn’t possibly talk about, I drove McFly’s tour bus once as they were doing a P.A. and they needed someone to park it for them. I was driving around Liverpool’s one way system trying to find a parking spot. We had Julian Cope do a P.A. and he was perfect and he had loads of questions about how people buy the records and stuff. Pete Wylie too, I was blown away as my heroes are Wylie, McCulloch, and Cope, so I had to look after Wylie and spend an afternoon with him and he had loads of stories and he didn’t stop. The first album I ever bought was That’ll Be the Day by Buddy Holly and I’m old enough to have bought Elvis’s greatest hits too while Elvis was still alive.First single I ever bought was Keep Rocking by Generation X. My favourite album is Revolver by The Beatles.

DL: First gig, favourite gig?

IS: Rick Wakeman at The Empire in 1976 or ’77, bit proggy, but a great night out. Springsteen on Broadway in New York has to be my favourite gig, nothing will ever beat that.

DL: Another great passion of yours is Liverpool FC, who was your first hero and whats your favourite Anfield moment

IS: Phil Thompson. I loved that era where he played with Tommy Smith and Kevin Keegan, he was just a lad from Liverpool who wasn’t your typical athlete and he was probably as skinny as I am now. 

He was my first hero and then after that Dalglish, Kenny will always be my hero, We’ve been blessed with so many great moments and I never thought it would get better than the Chelsea semi in ’05, then we had that Dortmund game and then obviously, the best night at Anfield ever is the Barcelona 4-0 game. It was impossible, but we did it. We were missing Mo, missing Bobby, Robbo got injured during the game and we still came back from 3 nil down.

Ian Salmon Credit:Billy Vitch

DL: You regularly contribute to The Anfield Wrap, how did you get “wrapped up” in all that?

IS: I was writing a blog and I wrote a piece about Joe Cole leaving the club and I wrote some other bits here and there and one day Robbo from the Wrap put an ad out asking for ideas for articles and I did a piece about living with an Evertonian on derby day and they ran that, then I wrote another couple of things for their website and I went to Tony Evan’s book signing and I met everyone from The Wrap and they asked me if I fancied doing a show, so I’ve been doing that for seven years now and it’s great, it’s an absolute pleasure to just go in and talk about football.

DL: What’s your plans for the next twelve months. What can we look forward to? 

IS: I genuinely don’t know. I’m not sure how much you’re going to see. Maybe something up in Edinburgh, and I’m having some meetings about getting some stuff on here and I’m talking to someone about a possible film opportunity

We’re hoping to do ‘A Brief Conversation again and hoping to do ‘Comeback Special’ again but that all depends on covid, so it’s hard to guess when it will all be, and ‘Girls Don’t Play Guitars’ will happen again at some point. I’m very impatient about getting stuff up and I love being in the middle of it all. I like to be involved, I can’t stop moving basically.