If Nick Heyward has swapped his Gretsch for a Strat and adopted a penchant for Jazz, what on earth will his new album sound like?

Ken Heyward has got the Jazz. That's the selfsame Jazz that Digby Fairweather and Peter Ind have got and this is the first of two confessions of faith from Ken Heyward Jnr.

"My Dad? He's got it alright. He's got the denims, the little Jazz beard, the streaks of grey hair. I bought him a sax last Christmas but he never took it up, he leaves it indoors and wears the strap down to the pub or if he goes up the Bull or the Pizza Express."

This is the first time Nick Heyward has talked about Jazz after having hinted at it on North of a Miracle. Similarly his Dad's name hasn't seen print too many times but you get the impression he's a pretty hip Dad.

The second confession of faith is that Nick Heyward is a very lucky boy and he almost takes it for granted. He is now in a position where he can choose the finest musicians to breathe life into his ideas, he can record at any studio he pleases and he has a lucrative publishing deal and an immensely understanding record company that waited patiently last year while their child-star released two singles. This is because they know that whether he gets your goat or your vote, Nick Heyward can harmonically and melodically write a stonking tune. The mere fact that you can still hum Fantastic Day, Love Plus One and Whistle Down the Wind bears witness to that. But two singles in a year? Did it ever cross your mind that your luck might run out with your inspiration?

"I know it's disgusting. I know. What's worse, at the end of the year I was knackered. I'd worked my arse off and came up with two singles. Things like the rhythm parts took me ages. I searched around for absolutely ages trying to get the right drum sound and the right feel, that shuffling sound on Warning Sign. I went to great lengths to make that song swing. The other thing that took so long is that you get more complex as a songwriter and simple things don't sound good to you any more. I don't think you can sing along to the stuff I'm writing now as easily as songs I've written in the past. I've been stretching myself and making things more interesting melodically. Not clever stuff that's clever for the sake of itself but songs that have more than just obvious verse/chorus melodies."

This latest spate of writing will eventually result in Nick's second solo LP recorded at Maison Rouge, Sarm and a host of other cosy and costly platterhausens. Co-production credits for the record will be shared by Nick and Danny Schogger, a keyboard player and arranger.

"Danny studied at the Royal College of Music and he's been a session player since day one. He's played all the keyboards on the album and he's programmed all the synths and drum machines. This is the first time I've ever used synths. We've used a DX7 a lot and an Oberheim. The drum machine is one of those RX11 Yamaha ones; the sounds on that are great and we've used that little CS01 for the sequencing on some of the tracks.

"It's good with Dan because I can sing a melody to him and he'll sit there at the piano and find the chord I want. It's like those old songwriting partners in the smoking jackets. Then we'll try to join the chords and Dan'll go clunk, 'Shall we have a bit of Stevie here,' and I have to say, 'no, that's a bit too much like Jazz. We have to make a living, know what I mean'. He's always saying that the chords I use are really basic and they are basic chords in themselves but the way I play them is really odd. I'll play a chord right up the dusty end of the guitar and another one on the ninth fret that spans six frets and a little one on the fifth fret that's right out of order, a really odd shape, and Dan will say, 'yeah, that's E, A and D major' and I'm thinking that I've come up with all these amazing chords that no-one has ever played before. But if I didn't play those chords like that they wouldn't inspire the melodies that they do. You can very easily get stuck in the rut of always singing a certain tune around G and C."

Does having an arbitrator/arranger help as far as composing is concerned?

"Yeah, because when I started songs I had a real job writing anything longer than two minutes. I used to think, 'well there's a verse and a chorus what more do you need?' Did you know that Tie A Yellow Ribbon has got about 45 chords in it and Denis by Blondie has got about four. So what's best, lots of chords or only a few chords? There's no rules. Is Bohemian Rhapsody better arranged than something like Favourite Shirts? But there again a song could have two chords in it and be arranged so it sounded like it had 97 chords in it."

What does that mean? Pop is about melody?

"I dunno. You have to listen to all the available harmonics and use those as well so not to get stuck in that chord and melody rut."

%%What's your favourite chord?

"Well, I've always thought it was F Maj 7th. I've been writing a lot in F because that's best for my pitch but it's such a sod to play in. The band hate it."

What's the best instrument to write on?

"Pianos are great for writing choruses on. The business for choruses, pianos. But I find it hard to transfer ideas from guitar to piano. I have to do it string by string, note by note. I normally end up with chords that span three octaves. It'd be good to write the verses on guitar and the choruses on piano. It's very different having a piano actually in the band and not just coming in at a late stage for some overdubs. The piano alters the whole feel of the tracks and the whole angle of the song."

Can you play the black notes?

"Yeah, both."

You share a common talent with Paul Young for picking excellent, virtually unknown musicians.

"This sounds really glib. But I've always known very good young musicians. I've never known bad musicians. The Haircuts were all brilliant musicians. I mean we just got up at the Albert Hall and played together for the first time in two years. Three songs. It was like a Jazz thing, I didn't even tell Blair (Cunningham) — we just did it. But it's never been a problem getting a band together. And the band have always formed the sound as well. Like in the Haircuts the sound actually evolved through the people in the band. It's the same in this band but the Haircuts had a blatant Funker, a Salsa maniac, Graham who loved Kung Fu records and Blair who played like the Memphis Stabber and just laid it down whatever happened. All those various influences and my sort of Talking Heads guitar all added up to Funk."

Was splitting up a great pity as far as you were concerned?

"We became a caricature of ourselves. The image just got bigger than the people and we got lost inside it. Funny thing was that we were fun blokes who liked a laugh but we weren't Monkee-type cartoons. I mean you've known me for a while now and this is what I'm like. You know we wanted to wear the same jumpers..."

And it meant you could leave those Gretsches in their cases.

"Yeah, I've still got the collection at home. They look really nice but they've only got one sound and you can get that plus loads of others off a Telecaster. A lot of them are virtually unplayable. The only one I liked was the one I did Pelican West on. That was great, it sounded Funky which is odd for a Gretsch. But some bastard nicked that in America. I tried and tried to get another one like it. I got a Country Club, a Nashville, a bloody Country Gentleman, a bleedin' Streamliner — loads of them, but they all sounded awful. Then I lost interest in them and now they're ornaments. That's pissed me off now, I wish you hadn't brought that up.

"At this point I'd like to say that Alan Murphy, the guitarist in the band at the moment, is the best setter upper of guitars in the world. I'm using his Strat that he's set up and it's brilliant. It plays fantastically. He gets such a good variety of sounds out of Strats. I don't need anything else because he's studied guitars for years and he can get exactly the right rhythm or lead sound straight away so there's no changing about guitars and amps in the studio. So what's the use of playing a big, boring 335 that needs setting up and messing about with when we can get the sound we want straight away. The one I'm using at the moment is one of those very classic Strats, but it's got a lock on the bridge to stop it going out of tune. It plays really well and it's free."

What strings do you use?

"Alan's."

Would you like to be a great Soul singer?

"I would but I don't think I could be. I always saw myself as a songwriter and I had to sing because of that, but I never really looked up to a particular singer because I always liked instrumentalists or bands like Talking Heads where it wasn't so much singing as words over the music. You can hear those very obvious influences all over the charts with Nik Kershaw and Stevie Wonder and Paul Young and Marvin Gaye. It's not a bad thing at all. I tried halfway through my career to listen to particular people but no matter who I listened to this same sound kept coming out my mouth.

"You know, I'd love to write a song for Paul Young. Just to hear him sing it. It wouldn't matter if it was released or anything but it would be great to write one for him."

Can you write to order?

"I can write for the occasion, yeah. I could write a song for the Eurovision, Bananarama. Anyone really. To order, to take away."

Have you stagnated as a guitarist?

"I think my playing has stagnated to an extent. I'm still just playing rhythm guitar. If there's anything I need done up the old dusty end I ask Alan to do it. The more I get into songwriting the less I want to learn about a particular instrument. It's a different kind of hunger for knowledge. I just piss about on guitar and piano and use them as writing tools. My guitar technique has got to the point where it actually lends itself to the writing which is good, so maybe I don't want to improve. Strumming is a very good way of coming up with unusual rhythms. It's very versatile as a method and it can be better than the rhythms that a drummer or a drum machine would come up with. I don't play any piano either. I could probably struggle with a few of the parts but I hate this snobbish attitude that I wrote it so I have to play on it. If someone can play it better than me, and most people can, then they're welcome to play it. Just because I bluffed my way through on a demo doesn't mean the playing is album standard."

"I still really like doing that. Just banging out an eight track demo and playing everything myself; bass, drums, guitar. It's good fun when you go into a studio rather than recording at home because there's a bit of adrenalin there and sometimes you can go in and although you're not exactly working against the clock, you can draw a blank and not come up with a single idea.

"It gets harder and harder trying to find the time to do things like that. People are always telling me to go back to writing on acoustic guitar and demoing on my own in eight tracks. It's easy to lose your perspective and I've made a definite decision to go and record on my own again."

Do session players lose the initial feel of songs?

"You probably lose something but they do it better than me thrashing about. I quite like the way people interpret ideas sometimes. You have to strike compromises in songwriting. It doesn't work if you become too precious about a song.

"Session players can be a bit indifferent. We had a brass section for some of the tracks on the album and I'd tell them the lines and they'd say, 'no we can't play that,' but they do it eventually. What really annoys them is if you call it a good take and use it when they've made a mistake on it. If the feel's right you don't care about a couple of bum notes but they really hate it. Suppose it reflects badly on them as players."

Can you see yourself moving away from the singles market?

"I did. Last year. Then I realised that I had to buy a fridge."

Will we ever hear Ken Heyward on record?

"It'd be great to get him to do a session. Maybe we could sample him and play it out a Fairlight or something. Ha, sampling your Dad. He lent me this record recently and told me that it was by a new, young Jazz band and it was Eden by Everything But The Girl. And I hadn't heard it. Great isn't it? Your Dad keeping you in touch."

Have you any great longing to become an old Jazzer?

"Not at the moment. It's funny though. You meet these people playing the clubs. I met Solomon Burke out in Canada and he's doing the circuit, two sets a night, house band and he hates it. All he wants to do is make a video for MTV and play bigger venues. He wanted to be me. He just didn't want to play tiny clubs or be a great Soul singer. He wanted to catch up and get on and make money. Anyway, what's the point of that... becoming a legend in a wine bar?"