FORTY years ago this August, Eric Goulden AKA Wreckless Eric released his debut single on Stiff Records.
Whole Wide World's incredibly catchy garage pop anthem was an instant classic which confirmed the Newhaven native as one of the brightest new talents of the punk era, despite being poles apart from the three chord ramalama of The Clash, the Pistols, The Damned et al.
In fact, the song used only two chords and has since been covered by artists as diverse as The Monkees, Mental as Anything, Replacements man Paul Westerberg and The Proclaimers. Eric even covered it himself, recording a football-centric version, Whole Wide World 4 England, for World Cup 2006.
Perhaps most significantly, he also met his wife, US singer-songwriter Amy Rigby, because she was regularly performing a version of his best known tune in her live set.
Annoyingly for Eric (62), Whole Wide World was not actually a hit single, though it did at least help propel his eponymous debut LP into "the lower reaches of the hit parade" (number 46, pop trivia fans) in 1978.
That's how the up-state New York-based artist refers to the chaotic early chapter of his long and varied musical career on Several Shades of Green, one of the stand-out songs from current album, AmERICa, which finds Eric taking a nostalgic yet self-deprecating musical trip through his rock 'n' roll journey to date.
As hinted at by its title, the Fire Records-released platter also offers insight into Eric's six years as an Englishman living in the US on tunes like White Bread – "gun control means both hands on the rifle, I’ll keep my guns and money you can keep the change" and Life Eternal – "protect the unborn children until they're born to a life of s***".
"If you're any kind of an artist, you study the world a bit," explains Eric.
"I like to think of it as like anthropology or something. I like to watch what's going on. I might read some dreadful right-wing newspaper, not because I want to but because I want to know how people are thinking.
"Where we live is like the grooviest place in America in some respects – but you drive 10 miles out into the mountains and its another story completely. It's all the Trump people and they're 'draining the swamp, man'."
Incredibly, tomorrow's gig at The Black Box will only be Eric's third time playing in Belfast. He was most recently here in 2010 with Amy on the tour for their second rather good collaborative record Two-Way Family Favourites.
"That was fairly nightmarish, because I was catastrophically ill at the time," he reveals.
"I had burned my leg on a heater and it went septic. I had food poisoning before that and then I had a really heavy cold as well, so the mixture of all those things really brought me down to the floor. I'd never felt so f***ing ill!
"But before that I hadn't been to Belfast since 1978 on the second Stiff tour. The Troubles were still really bad and there was loads of barbed wire and security checkpoints, but now people are telling me it's like the grooviest place in the UK."
Fans will be excited to learn that Eric has recently completed recording on the follow-up to AmERICa – "a whole record has come crawling out of the swamp they wanna drain," he chuckles – at Alabama Shakes producer Andrija Tokic's home studio in Nashville, The Bomb Shelter.
I mention that Eric is almost competing against himself at this point, particularly in the wake of his well received last record and that this is surely "a pretty good place to be."
He disagrees.
"That's kind of a really awful place to be because you start thinking, 'Will people like this as much as the last one? Will it get as much radio play?'" says Eric.
"You don't want to be thinking like that. The best way you can be is to get it firmly fixed in your head that no-one gives a damn whether you make another record again, so you can just do what you like – whatever seems right to you.
"That's part of the reason I wanted to finish up the record in Nashville. Andrija and his gang at The Bomb Shelter were great and incredibly supportive.
"I'd start almost apologising for some 'stupid idea' I wanted to try but he'd be like 'great, let's do it – and if it doesn't work it doesn't matter!' Whereas last time I was in a studio to make one of my records, the word I heard most was 'no'."
"It's not a jolly a record but it's groovy in a way. It's dirty and quite punk, in a way. Not '1-2-3-4!' punk, but in its attitude. And it sounds good."
Eric says he might play a new song or two in Belfast for us – appropriately enough, since we're twinned with Nashville – at the start of a tour which will also find him playing in Brighton just around the corner from his old hometown of Newhaven.
"Just like the queen has her real birthday and her official birthday, my official hometown might be Hull, because that's where I started really playing in bands," says Eric, who also plays two Hull gigs next month.
"But just this week there was a BBC Radio 4 programme where the writer Ian Marchant said I was the most famous person ever to come out of Newhaven.
"It's funny, Newhaven has never ever recognised me before this week."
Well, better late than never: could it finally be time for them to erect a blue plaque in Eric's honour?
"Yes, on the house I was born in, 22 Railway Road," enthuses Eric, with a chuckle.
"I'm sort of designing the plaque even as we speak. I'm thinking, 'if they won't do it – I'll do it.'"
Now that's punk rock.
[ Wreckless Eric, Saturday April 29, The Black Box, Belfast, 2pm.Opens in new window ]
