IT WAS just over 25 years ago that singer, guitarist and songwriter Ian Broudie finally bit the bullet and performed his first ever live shows as The Lightning Seeds, the name under which he'd already released two acclaimed albums, Cloudcuckooland (1990) and Sense (1992), without ever setting foot on a stage.
In 1994, Broudie's new record label Epic were enthused by the quality of the third and as yet unreleased Lightning Seeds LP, Jollification, encouraging the Liverpool-born musician and producer to embark on his first proper run of live shows since his 1980s cameos as second guitarist with his Scouse mates Echo & The Bunnymen, with whom he'd recorded two albums under the pseudonym Kingbird.
"They were the first gigs I had ever done as a singer and as The Lightning Seeds," recalls Broudie of the short August 1994 tour for which he shared a backing band with his friend and collaborator Terry Hall.
Broudie had been producing Hall's 1994 solo effort Home and The Specials man had already co-written three songs on Sense as well as the first single from Jollification, Lucky You, for which he also supplied backing vocals.
"I was very nervous about playing live," Broudie tells me.
"I think we played the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London, which is quite hard to get up and sing in for your first couple of gigs."
Happily, the Lightning Seeds mainman's personal and professional bond with Terry Hall helped make the band's live birth a much less painful process, as he explains.
"Terry said to me 'listen, why don't we do some gigs together and that way it'll make it easier: I'm your friend and I'll be getting up and singing, so it shouldn't be such a leap for you to get up and sing'.
"So it was really nice of him, we did four shows where it was pretty much the same musicians: we started off with my songs and then he came on stage and it morphed into his songs. It was quite a good way for me to dip my toe in."
While The Lightning Seeds might have existed as very much a studio-based solo endeavour for its first couple of years – a period during which they/he scored Top 40 hits with debut single Pure and 1992's The Life of Riley (inspired by Broudie's newborn son, Riley, now "a great guitar player" who features in the current Lightning Seeds line-up) – it seems Broudie, himself a veteran of late-70s Liverpool post-punks Big In Japan (alongside KLF man Bill Drummond and Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes To Hollywood), always intended the project to become a fully fledged group.
"I'd always wanted it to be a band," he explains. "I thought if I just used my name there would always be a division there, but if I called it 'The Lightning Seeds' it might grow into something. But I never really saw myself as the frontperson, really. I always saw myself as the Richards rather than the Jagger. I ended up being the singer by default, because no-one else would do it.
"And to then sing live... I was quite tense about it. It took me a long time to get comfortable. It was very much like growing up in public, really, as I was trying to get the hang of it – I think it's probably taken until now for me to feel properly comfortable."
Fans will be glad to hear that, especially as The Lightning Seeds have recently returned to the road to celebrate Jollification's 25th anniversary. The LP was reissued last year in deluxe form (on strawberry scented vinyl, no less) and the live shows have seen Broudie reunited with original bassist Martyn Campbell to play the record in full for the first time ever, aided by Riley on rhythm guitar, drummer Jim Sharrock (son of original drummer Chris Sharrock) and former Zutons saxophonist Abi Harding.
"People kind of just remember the singles [which included three Top 20 hits; Change, Perfect and a re-released Lucky You]," says Broudie, "but going back and listening to the album, I found that there's a lot of stuff that isn't quite what you expect.
"It isn't like all up-tempo jolly songs – there's a lot of introspective songs like Tales Told and Open Goals, so it was really nice for me rediscovering them and relearning them."
He adds: "I've always wanted to make records that people would like straight away but I also try and build into it so they wouldn't be 'here today, gone tomorrow'. The ambition is for them to still be around in 25 years, so for me it's fantastic to still hear some of these songs on the radio and to know that people still really want to come and see them live.
"It's a bit of a tricky old thing doing shows like this, there's obviously a large element of nostalgia, because it's a 25-year-old album. But I don't want us to be like an nostalgia act. I want [the shows] to have some sort of vibrancy and an energy to them where it feels more like if you went to see Radiohead or U2, where there's old songs in there but it still has the feel of a band pushing forward.
"The shows before Christmas did feel like that, which really pleased me – and that's why I wanted to do more. But I think after these we'll draw a line under it [Jollification] because I really want to focus on our new album."
While the Irish shows will feature Jollification along with a smattering of The Lightning Seeds' other hits, one song which is unlikely to make an appearance in the set is Broudie's irrepressible England football-themed collaboration with Frank Skinner and David Baddiel, Three Lions.
"Sometimes we do it and sometimes we don't, it just depends really," he says. "In fact, we've very rarely played it, though since it was number one a couple of years ago I do feel a bit more comfortable doing it.
"Really, it was written as a song about what it feels like to be a football fan: losing games, your team not being very good and that kind of disappointment. I really like the fact that they sing it in a lot of different countries like Japan and Germany, and you even hear it at the rugby. It's become just a song about football again, rather than a song about England. I like that.
"But I'm not sure how people would react in Belfast – and we certainly won't do it in Dublin."
:: The Lightning Seeds, March 14, The Limelight, Belfast / March 15, The Academy, Dublin. Tickets via Lightningseeds.co.uk/live
