As Wreckless Eric he needs little introduction — he wrote and recorded the classic Whole Wide World and had a hit with it back in 1977. Since then it's been a hit for countless other artists including The Monkees, Cage The Elephant and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day. Eric’s version featured in the 2022 Expedia / Superbowl / Ewan MacGregor travel ad, and the Cage The Elephant version is the new theme tune for the podcast Smartless. As Eric Goulden it's a little more complicated - a musician, artist, writer, recording engineer and producer, he didn’t like either the music business, the mechanics of fame, or the name he’d been given to hide behind, so he crawled out of the spotlight and disappeared into the underground. He went on to release twenty something albums in forty something years under various names - The Len Bright Combo, Le Beat Group Electrique, The Donovan Of Trash, The Hitsville House Band, and with his wife as one half of Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby, finally realising he was stuck with the name Wreckless Eric.
This new album, Leisureland, marks a return to his more ramshackle world of recording - guitars and temperamentally unpredictable analogue keyboards, beatboxes and loops in conjunction with a real drummer, Sam Shepherd, who he met in a local coffee shop in Catskill, New York. He was delighted to find that Sam lived around the corner and could easily drop by to put drums on newly recorded tracks. The recording methodology may have been Contemporary American but the subject matter is almost entirely British. It also contains more instrumentals than any of his previous albums.
In our conversation, Eric talks about the process of making Leisureland, which came about during the Covid lockdown and his near death experience. In his dead-pan, yet jocular way, Eric recounts how he wasn’t aware of his critical state, laying in a hospital bed while everyone around him thought he was about to die. When asked how he is doing, Eric’sretort is, “It’s great to be alive!” You can hear his verve, his reflection on still being here in Leisureland. This is Wreckless Eric recognizing who he is, sharing a lifetime of ideas and observations. Wreckless Eric Is Wreckless Eric, Again.