From punk rock to computer pop, Pete Shelley went the full distance but now he's back with his guitar and he's still waiting for love.

When you're lonely, feeling small. When tears are in your eyes I recommend you listen to any one of a number of songs by the Buzzcocks and you'll realise that a) you're not the only one and b) there's still hope for your aching soul.

The man responsible for this emotional rescue, the mind behind such classics as Ever Fallen In Love With Someone You Shouldn't've, What Do I Get and Promises was Pete Shelley. But that was years ago.

The Buzzcocks split up and Shelley entered the realms of computer music. Looking back now he feels that he and Buzzcocks producer Martin Rushent were pioneers in their field as they worked on the first solo album, Homosapien.

"Well it wasn't booming at the time and we started working on Homosapien before Martin started with the Human League so it was hard work getting different machines to run together and we were finding out things about the equipment far faster than anybody else. It's almost like being on a frontier, you know, like a mad scientist, but in those days during the recording I remember thinking that it was a different way of approaching it; you could have time and step back whereas towards the end of the Buzzcocks it was all happening. I mean I'd write the songs and everybody would join in and play them, and it was a change to be able to step back and just see how it was going."

Now there's a third solo album, Heaven And The Sea and the style has returned to something nearer the Buzzcocks' guitar pop. Martin Rushent is no longer producing and the technology has taken a back seat. Having taken it almost to the limit on Homosapien, Shelley now regards technology as just a means to an end.

"It's a way of getting things done which should never be taken seriously on its own. It's just like a car. I'm not too keen on people who appreciate cars as just collectors items with no practical use.

"With this album it was a different set of circumstances and different people and out of that comes the sort of change in direction. It's not a production thing."

Any change in direction he puts down to the circumstances at the time and not to conscious decisions on his part. This also applies to the change of producer, Steve Hague for Martin Rushent.

"I used to be on genetic records which was Martin's label and he was involved with projects so we never got together to do things. Then the record company folded. I was a bit dubious about changing producers because I'd worked with him for so long, since 1977.

"I tried for a while producing myself which was OK but sometimes I lack the patience for the finer details and also it's always good to have somebody's opinion you can trust when it comes to making a decision about whether this part is working and that's something which Steven Hague is really good at."

Why did you choose to work with him in the first place?

"It was a suggestion. He'd just done the OMD album and so someone said,'get Steven Hague,' so I said, 'well anyone,' because one producer's just as good as another."

Do you really believe that?

"Um... I suppose in some ways yes. It depends how much you know what you want to do in the first place. There are bad producers but when you get round to people who are actually qualified it's like musicians, they only have different temperaments.

"So his name was put forward and we had a meeting and we got on OK and he knew about the Buzzcocks and he knew about my solo work so he understood the things which had gone before, therefore it was easier when we got into the studio to effect the compromise of actually working together because he used his knowlege and technique in order to get the best out of what was there rather than having an idea about how it should be."

Waiting For Love was graced with some good reviews in the press and his recent spate of live shows has also been received with great enthusiasm. Which, then, does he prefer; playing live or in the studio?

"Each one has its different set of constraints and also rewards and pitfalls. In the studio, if you're lucky you can get away with just singing a song once but it never works out like that. But it's good because you can take the time to get it just so, you know, to create an effect.

"I enjoy that but also playing live I enjoy the fact that I can sing a selection of songs which I like, which are fun to sing because songs aren't just something which are good to listen to, they should be good to sing as well. It's a physical thing like playing football, say. It can look great and make lots of people happy but also for the players themselves the actual movements are enjoyable because there's a high out of actually using your body to do certain things.

"There's one song I always think of as an example; David Bowie's Blue Jeans. In the second verse it says,'one day I'm going to get that faculty together.' Now it's a bit of a tongue-twister that but when you sing it you can feel your tongue going to all the different parts of your mouth. So I enjoy singing along with records because as well as the aesthetic of hearing something there's also the physical sensations that singing brings about."

One thing I came to realise during the course of this discourse was that it's very difficult to get Pete Shelley to give a definite opinion on anything, even his own guitar playing.

Are you still learning with the guitar or are you just using the resources you've built up?

"I suppose it's half and half. I always find myself surprising myself."

In what way?

"That certain techniques and knacks just come."

After using all that technology do you find the guitar a versatile instrument?

"I suppose if you're only allowed to use one thing it's best to have a good selection. It's like an artist having a nice box of paints so you've always got the different textures and different tones to play around with but the guitar is a highly versatile instrument."

If you listened to the new album without listening to the previous solo albums you would probably say that he hasn't changed much. The voice is still the same, the face is the same but what about the inspiration? After ten years success in the music world is he still influenced by other artists?

"I suppose so. There's two quotes that I read. One is 'the immature artist borrows and the mature artist steals' and the other one is, 'originality is the knack of concealing your sources.' In some ways I hold to both of those. If I find that somebody else has come across a musical idea that inspires me. Sometimes when I'm listening to a song which somebody else has done there'll be a really great bit and I'll think, 'yeah, it should be that note there' and they don't do it. So occasionally I actually do the complete version of how it should have been. And I tend to do that with the musicians I work with as well. It's always interesting to hear what they have in mind and then when I know what they have in mind I can refine it."

So what's the secret? What are the fundamentals of great entertainment?

Long Pause...

"I don't know, for every essential element you have you can also have its exact opposite. Like novelty, the newness of something is entertaining in the way like somebody telling a joke you haven't heard before but also familiarity; actually knowing something is entertaining as well. I don't know, it's a very tricky one that.

Well when YOU play live what do you try to put into a show to make it as entertaining as possible?

"I always find it hard to treat an audience as an audience. As soon as I get on stage and do the first number I scan as far as I can see because you can see a fair way back and I spot the people who are actually taking an interest that I'm up there because you get some people who are just like (disinterested look at the ceiling) and they're everywhere but sometimes you get people who you can actually have eyeball to eyeball contact with and I notice where they are and they become my positional markers.

"I hate it when I'm having to sing a song just into thin air. If I have follow spots on and I can't see the audience I find it very hard to feel relaxed because for one I don't know what they're doing. I suppose it's part of the punk thing in that I feel at ease knowing that there's no missiles coming my way, but also it gives me a purpose for singing the songs as well and suppose it becomes entertaining for them and I think the thing of being up there and playing and being the centre of attention isn't really something I feel comfortable with. So I get away from that by reacting with individual members of the audience."

What sort of things are you writing about now? Has it changed much over the years?

"In some ways yes and in some ways no. I mean I suppose if I said that it had changed people would say,'oh no it hasn't really,' you know, the change has been so slight and if I was to say there's been no change people would say there's been a vast change."

What changes can YOU see? Have you made any conscious changes?

"Well I think I did about five years ago because after we did the last Buzzcocks album with three singles, at the end of it I got one thing - a sort of existential dilemma - out of my system. And so having done that I thought well what can I do. It was almost like I'd painted myself into a corner. In the demos I was doing for the fourth Buzzcocks album which ended up as the Homosapien album I was dusting off some old songs which I had along with a few new ones so I was being less ideologically correct and straight upon myself. I've just been reading the reviews of the new album and in some ways some of the things which have been seen as being bad about it, I think is good because at least people have understood the songs, they've actually conveyed that feeling, the sense of loss, because those songs were written over two years and over those two years you see personal changes in myself and the outlook which I have on events and relationships. So in some ways it's like two years of a diary which have been published. Looking back I suppose they are songs of resignation of a kind but with a bright hope at the end."

Does this reflect your character? Are your lyrics true to your personality or are they descriptive of something that you want to be?

"Sometimes if I find myself getting into the doldrums then I'll go and play it and I'll realise that I've actually left a bit of hope for myself in the songs so it helps me as well. But actually I'm... I suppose selfish is the wrong word but I'm selfish in so far as I write the songs for myself. I write it for myself knowing that other people are going to hear it.

"It's almost like how an author when he's writing a character will have the character thinking or a playwright may write the character walking round and talking to himself in order to give you a view on the inside although at the same time knowing that other people are going to be listening in the real world. But in the mythical way, in the world of the song it's merely personal but it's known by me that other people are going to be listening, that other people are acting like voyeurs on the situation."

Do you want sympathy then?

"In some ways I think it's more than sympathy because I have the belief, though it's been stated otherwise as most beliefs are, that the things which I sing about with feeling are also the things which other people feel and that's the way that a song can actually work; that people have an empathy with that and project their own situation onto this one but the song is always a set of tricks in a framework. Play minor chords and it's tinged with sadness. Play a seventh then people know that you're going into the blues. Play major chords and it's nice and happy and uplifting. So use of the actual chord structure and the melodic structure actually takes you up and brings you down again. It takes you on a journey.

"At the moment what I'm doing is making a certain set of noises which you've been trained to associate with feelings and ideas which you yourself have had and that's language so when you come to music it's just that but there's not many people talk about it, you know, like why should things make you feel sad, you know all those records you play when you feel a little bit sad, and in order for it to work it has to be a whole system.

"That's why the music from other cultures is strange because you're not used to what the words mean, just like foreign language is strange so it's usually the music that gets finished first. It isn't necessarily the music which starts first but in some ways it's the things that the music does to me and the words are the ones which fit in with that rise or fall of emotions."

When it comes to getting those emotions across, what lyrical style do you favour?

"It depends on the song. One of the products of me painting myself into a corner is being non-specific on gender. There's very few references, you know, I don't write songs like, 'ooh I wanna hold you, girl,' because I think that actually cuts people off from being able to project themselves onto it. In lots of songs the gender references are just fillers."

Like the word 'now'.

"Yeah, and 'oh yeah'. I think I'm more economical than most on things like that. I have as few of those as possible. There's a thing about lyrics that a good lyric doesn't make any sense at all when it's written down because it's not supposed to be poetry. It works because it works with the music, that's the real acid test of a song. The two exist together."

So the words are like the skeleton of the song and the music is the flesh and blood.

"Yeah, and the words are the part of the song which the people learn last. Sometimes you get people going round and they think they know the words but they've misinterpreted it. Some people say,'what is that line there?' and I always ask them what they think it is because sometimes it's more interesting than I intended. A good example of that is, when a record gets released in Japan they do this lyric sheet and, because I very rarely write the words down and almost never let the publishers have a copy, when it comes to these Japanese ones they have someone who listens to the record a few times and writes down what they think makes sense and I remember in What Do I Get, the line that I wrote was,'for you things seem to turn out right,' and in theirs it said, 'the entrance of the tender bride,' which I think is far more poetic than anything I could ever come out with. So in some ways I'm half dreading if I ever get to Japan because I'm sure there'll be people who say,'you write very surrealist lyrics.' On Fiction Romance there's a line which goes,'if I was a little bit stronger', and on the Japanese copy it's written down,'if I was a liquorice drummer.' There's been a few times when I've threatened to sing the Japanese version."

A mischievous grin crosses his face and the conversation drifts away into irrelevance. It's almost time to go. The heat and traffic noise wafting in through the window have taken their toll and anyway, the tape stopped fifteen minutes ago.