Why Peter Capaldi's next album has found a home in Glasgow

But Capaldi is also a musician of long standing - and now an enterprising Glasgow-based record label is to release his new album.

Last Night from Glasgow, which is based in the Hidden Lane, off Argyle Street in Finnieston, was launched in 2016 and has found success as a not-for-profit independent label. The numerous records released via its Last Night from Glasgow (LNFG) imprint includes The Bathers' superb new album, Sirenesque, as well as Returning Home, the forthcoming project by another excellent Glasgow band, Starless.

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Its Past Night from Glasgow imprint, meantime, focuses on re-issuing older albums that are not currently available, including Cake, by the Trashcan Sinatras; Sisters, by The Bluebells; Bis's Return to Central; Cosmic Rough Riders' Enjoy the Melodic Sunshine; Eugene Kelly's Man Alive; and - coming shortly - a 35th Anniversary repress of His Latest Flame's highly-praised debut album, In The Neighbourhood, which first saw the light of day in 1989, via London Records.

LNFG also runs a record shop in its Hidden Lane base, which attracts discriminating music fans. As one of them recently posted on Twitter/X: "Popped into what I thought was a record shop in Glasgow. Turns out it was a record label @LNFGlasgow.  Lovely chap Ian recommended a Tom Waits-esque album by @thebathersoffi1. Blown away by the album, utterly sublime. Thanks Ian".

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To which Ian Smith, managing director of, and the guiding force behind, LNFG, could only respond: "One of the genuine true pleasure of running a label / shop is the chance to chat to music lovers willing to hear new things. Delighted it's hit the mark".

Peter Capaldi and Jenny Seagrove in Local Hero (Image: PR)As for Peter Capaldi, he briefly recalled his musician past  in an interview last week with The Observer, saying that after leaving school "I tried to be an actor, but I didn't get into drama school, so I went to art school. When I was at art school, I joined a band".

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He was in his twenties when he was the singer with a punk rock group, The Dreamboys, with, on drums, Craig Ferguson, who would go on to find fame as host of the US TV late-night talkshow, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and they released a single, Béla Lugosi's Birthdáy.

In a previous interview with The Observer Capaldi said of the band's name: "We were trying for a nightmarish Kafkaesque or Dr Caligari feel, not a troupe of Chippendales-type male strippers. 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 with Jenna Coleman in Doctor Who (Image: BBC/Ray Burmiston)

In a 1988 interview with the Glasgow Herald Capaldi said he was pleased that his acting career had "gone backwards" after Local Hero. His most recent TV role had been in an Alasdair Gray adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's unfinished novel, The Story of a Recluse, screened on BBC2 over Christmas 1987.

On the subject of his career going backwards, he said: "This was opposed to other people working away for years in the theatre and then doing movies.

"Because I knew that I didn't know anything about acting I got into the theatre in London at a very low level, just playing little parts and gradually, over the past five years, building up. Now, I hope the experience is showing".

Capaldi needn't have worried, given the success he has achieved as an actor. In late 2021 he released his debut solo album. Now, in the pipeline at LNFG, comes its follow-up.

"The story of how it came about is a slightly convoluted one", says Ian Smith. "For all the years that we have been doing re-issues I have sat with dream projects in my head - people that I would like to work with. One of those people is Dr Robert, of The Blow Monkeys.

"I'd been trying to work out how to advance that conversation. This is going to sound spectacularly name-dropping, but it is the truth.

"Just over a year ago I was travelling to Saltcoats, where I'm from, to visit my parents and I was on the phone to Richard Jobson about a Skids project when a message pinged up on my phone. The message read, 'Pete Paphides says I should talk to you' [Paphides is a prominent writer and author]

"I got off the phone and opened the message and saw it was from Robert Howard of the Blow Monkeys. He wanted to talk to me about a solo project and Pete had said, 'the guy you want to talk to is Ian, from Last Night from Glasgow'. Pete and I have become good friends over the years.

Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker, in the BBC's The Thick of It (Image: BBC)"I started speaking to Robert. That leads to our releasing a Blow Monkeys album, and to a solo album by Dr Robert and a new Blow Monkeys album, both of which we're releasing this year.

"Robert wrote to me one day saying, 'There's somebody I'd like you to talk to. Would you mind meeting with him when he's in Glasgow next? I said, 'Of course, no problem at all. And that someone was Peter Capaldi".

Capaldi, who lives in London, met LNFG last summer.

"We have a strange mind-set when it comes to new music that we release", Smith says, "and that is, we judge the merits of whether we should release something on our view of the person, not our view of the music.

"We have a mind-set that it we are going to back people we should be backing their creative vision, not backing our creative vision, and therefore the judgement call of whether or not we should do something is whether we get on with the person - do we value them, do we think they have something to say, and do we respect the way they are doing that? Rather than, do we think it will be commercially viable, and will people buy it? That's not what we are about.

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"Peter was charming beyond belief. A nicer human being I don't think I have met. I'm not saying that I get starstruck by anyone at all but he was absolutely delightful, charming, appreciative - everything you want from someone you are going to work with creatively.

"It was a pretty straightforward process. He said, 'I'm recording a new album with Robert, and I'd like a home for it'. He was very conscious that he wanted that home to be a musical one.

Ian Smith, managing director of Last Night from Glasgow (Image: Ian Smith)"He said he didn't want to be appearing on The One Show, talking about why he was doing a sideways move into music, because from his perspective, he was always a musician. He moved sideways from music to acting, I guess.

'No matter what happens, people want to listen to new music' – Ian Smith of Last Night From Glasgow

"So it was that strange thing of Pete to Robert to me, then. We really had no part in it at all. It was one person I respect encouraging another person I respect to speak to them, and that person I respect encouraging me to speak to someone else.

"So when you have that chain of Paphides to Howard to Capaldi ... you don't really need to work out whether you like the person".

LNFG has firm principles when it comes to working with artists. As it states on Facebook: "We are a recording company founded on the principle of putting artists and their music first, we are run entirely not for profit and managed by volunteers.

"We are committed", it adds, "to ensuring artists receive remuneration for their works and their efforts without having to meet unrealistic demands and we are determined to provide a viable alternative for both recording artists and consumers".

LNFG expects to be promoting some of the new Peter Capaldi tracks this summer and autumn, with a possible release date of early 2025.

* https://shop.lastnightfromglasgow.com/. Twitter/x @LNFGlasgow