P Paul Fenech: Dancing At The End Of The World

P Paul Fenech: Dancing At The End Of The World

Mutant Rock Records

LP | DL

Out on 27th July 2026

Steve ‘Spike’ Sommer gets the lowdown on P Paul Fenech’s 14th solo album: Dancing At The Edge Of The World – “I never thought I’d get this far, but I’m still here y’know…”

I first met P Paul Fenech in 1983 when I interviewed him for the weekly UK music paper Sounds. The Meteors had just released their third studio album, Stampede, and, being a fan of the band since 1979, it was something that I both looked forward to and felt apprehensive about. The apprehension was mainly due to the band’s reputation. They were seen as dangerous outsiders, and fellow scribes had warned me that they wouldn’t be easy to get on with.

However, words are words, and I found Paul to be an affable, interesting and intelligent guy as he mused over all things Meteors and didn’t show any of the difficulty I’d been warned about. Suffice to say it was the start of a friendship, and over the years we’ve met many many  times, doing several interviews, including a fabulous one about record collecting for an art project. Paul’s always been accommodating and open. He does have a cynical distrust for much of the media and these days rarely agrees to interviews but, with his 14^th solo album on the horizon, he agreed to meet up on a Zoom call from his home in the middle of nowhere in Oregon.

The album’s possibly his most adventurous to date, with the tracks coursing through many territories, from unnerving instrumentals to rough folk and demonic blues, ’60s punk, and his more familiar soundscape of tortured rockin’ tunes.

The opening track, Mother Of Death (My Simple Devotion), is a stark haunting windswept instrumental. The measured space of an eerie filmic theme track sets an alluring scene before the charged race of the title track cuts in. The raw delivery of the verses in Dancing At The Edge Of The World contrasts sharply with the ghostly, almost folk-like melody of the chorus, with Fenech inviting listeners to join him doing just what the title says.

Next up it’s Flower Of The Night, which is as close as you get to Fenech’s previous offerings; a hard hitting deathly rockin’ anthem, no surprises but very likeable just the same. Hot on the heels of Flower Of The Night is Boo Hag, an awesome adventure in sound which straddles subtle rock ‘n’ roll, raw feedback-encased solos and a vocal track fitting the other-worldy nature of the Appalachian floklore myth which forms the song’s basis.

Dust is a straight up goth ‘n’ roll track driving straight into Highway Demon, a remix of the flipside of the Crazy Alice 45. It’s a rockin’ biker number which delivers all the demonic revs you could ask for. Following on, it’s Death Kiss Of A Siren, a gorgeous spaghetti western instrumental full of bandito twists and turns, before we get to The Wave That Swallowed The Earth, sci-fi horror killer thriller of a tune.

Keeping up the pace is Crazy Alice, the rough punky beat-up blues lead-off single which appeared on 7” last year, re-mixed here and sounding as gloriously raw as it possibly could. Next up it’s You’re Dead, a simply stunning version of the Norma Tanega’s song, an unexpected choice but, approached with Fenech’s mindset, he’s given it more than a dash of originality to make it his own. Deacon Jim (Dark Soul Rider)’s a quality wild west instrumental which rides on darkly up to the album’s closer, the majestic Funeral For A Saint, a quite stunning Spanish style twanging instrumental with all the hallmarks of Fenech at his best.

Fenech’s solo material has always been a clash of styles and sounds and the soundscape across Dancing At The End Of The World is another move in an eclectic direction. Like the previous thirteen solo albums it’s got a space of its own but there’s a maturity on the new one which sets it apart. Maybe it’s because it’s the first one which features Paul playing and producing everything himself, and maybe that makes it the first 100% pure P Paul Fenech album.

Best to let Paul do the talking and so….

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LTW: As a solo artist, working outside The Meteors, you didn’t start releasing albums until 1992 with the Rocking Dead. What prompted you put out some solo material?

PPF: Basically, I had a lot of songs written that I wasn’t using for The Meteors because they didn’t  fit in with what The Meteors do. It also coincided with the fact I’d just built my own first studio. I thought it would be a good project to start the studio with, because I wanted to do something to get to grips with the way all the equipment in the studio worked.

At the time I never really thought about it becoming an ongoing solo project. I just put songs down, and every now and then I have a look through what I’ve got and see what the songs might fit into. That’s the way it works with the solo stuff and The Meteors. When I’ve got enough, then that’s the next album. The new solo one is a little bit different. It’s a bit, I’m not sure if it’s the right word, but I think it’s kind of eclectic. There’s a lot of different stuff on it.

As far as songwriting goes, the only thing I ever write to order is really the Raw Deal stuff. That’s because I have to write rockabilly for that, which means that I have to sit down and think about it to keep it different and make sure it fits that project. I’m pretty limited with Raw Deal with what I can do production-wise, and the song structures, just to keep it within the Raw Deal format.

Generally though, as I go about my day, if I get ideas or song titles I just write them on whatever I can find, any bit of paper or I just talk it into the phone. I did use a dictaphone, but I kept losing it. Mostly now, though, I just use my phone. It depends how it happens really and I just try to get the ideas down when they come to me. I know that they’re not all good though, but normally they’re passable and from all the ideas good things come. I store the ideas on the mainframe in the studio and take it from there. When I’m in the studio I can dig through my mainframe and hard drive and see what’s knocking about there if I need something. That helps because I can forget what I’ve actually got there sometimes, even though I’ve written them.

I never sit down and try to write ’cause then it just blocks my head up. I’ve had periods where I can’t write anything for months and it does get to me, not to be cliched, it’s like writer’s block, I’ve found that to be a real thing. If that happens I’ve learnt not to try, I just get on with my life and the ideas will come in the end. I do have more fruitful periods where I write a lot. It depends on my mood and generally what’s going on in my life.

Does it help having your own studio, not working to the clock and avoiding red light syndrome, not having to rush anything, allowing you to invest more time in your work, expanding ideas and experimenting?

Yes, it is like that. The current studio is the fourth one I’ve built. Previously, when I had the studios in England, Italy and Germany there were times when I couldn’t get in, because there were always bands in there recording. So now I’ve stopped recording bands. If any want me to work with them I get them to record their stuff and send it to me and I’ll just do the production and mixing from what they send at a time that suits me. That way I can get on with what I’m doing whenever I want to.

The new album features you playing everything. Was that a decision made by the remoteness of where you live and record songs because it’s a pretty difficult place for other people to get to? Or was it just how it happened?

I think this album is a little bit more personal. Bringing any other people in wouldn’t have enhanced it and, I suppose, I am antisocial. I don’t even like my band really. No, I do like them, for sure I do, but I don’t like to be held up when I’m working, like I’ve got to wait for a fuckin’ drummer to come. So, for the solo stuff I’ve learnt to play the drums because I want to get it down before I forget about it. It’s different if I’m working with The Meteors, I’ll send the guide track to them to work on. To get to where I’m living it’s a hell of a trek to where I’m working, halfway up a mountain, miles from anywhere in Oregon. I think the band are a bit too urbanised and working where I do might be a bit of a culture shock for them. It is a bit of an expedition to travel right up here just for a drum track or bass track when we can do it over the internet.

I don’t tell them what to do though, I just give them the format and hope they can do their part and add to it. It’s always been democratic in The Meteors. I’ve never wanted anybody to be anything but themselves and to have ideas. If I don’t think it’s working I will have a word with them but I make sure that The Meteors remains a proper band. I know we’ve had a lot of members, but I don’t treat the newer ones like new boys. It’s important to respect them and I do want them to do what they’re doing. That way I can end up with better songs. Sometimes, on my own I can make it too complicated. The rest of the band can help stop the format of the song being too clever.

At the moment, I’m enjoying it more now than I ever did. I do tell them not to be afraid to give me their ideas, I’m only going to tell them to fuck off if I don’t like it. That situation hasn’t happened for quite a few years. I learned to avoid the pitfalls of letting band members do whatever they wanted when Axe Attack and Phantom of the Opera ended up on the Wreckin’ Crew album. Quite clearly I’d taken my eye off the ball there.

Talking about the album specifically, the title, you could probably take it in a few ways. In one way you could say it’s an observation of the threat of an apocalyptic end of the world or maybe we’re just getting to the edge of the world as we know it.

It can be both of those. I didn’t think too hard about it. The song came before the title, which is quite normal for me and the world is fucked up but I’m still dancing. Even though there’s not much to dance about at the moment, but I do dance, and maybe it is the end of the world as we know it?

How come there was a long gap between the lead off single, Crazy Alice, and the album coming out?

That was because I hadn’t finished the album. I’d spent so long recording and producing Crazy Alice track that I just lost the will to record anything else once I’d finished it. I’m very happy with that song, it’s very different from anything else I’ve done. Even the lyrics are something different. It’s not actually about a specific woman, it’s specifically about all women, really, all the ones I’ve been fortunate to meet through my life. It sounds to me to be almost 60s in style. In my mind, I can see a band like the Troggs or somebody similar having a go at that kind of thing.

One of the main things about the solo albums is that they’re often more like a release valve than a joy, if you know what I mean? Crazy Alice wouldn’t fit in anywhere else. There are times when I will use something that would work with The Meteors on my solo albums, but I wouldn’t call the solo stuff Psychobilly. I just do what I want anyway, I’m lucky that I’ve got the opportunity to be able to do that now.

Take the cover of Norma Taniga’s You’re Dead; it might seem an unusual choice for me, but I heard it and really loved that song. Okay. I never knew it was about the struggle she had to be accepted by the New York folk scene in the ’60s. I’d picked it up from a TV series called What Do We Do In The Shadows, which was a mockumentary about vampires and was very funny. I just like the song, and the video I found of her doing it inspired me to ;do a version. I did record it originally for the new album but I used an earlier mix on one of the Halloween releases I do every year first. The same thing happened with Funeral For A Saint I’d recorded that one for the Dancing album as well but used an earlier mix for a Halloween release.

They’re both really good tracks and I didn’t have time to write anything else because I was preparing for another tour with The Meteors. To be honest, I didn’t think I was going to do any more Halloween releases, and then the record company said, they needed 2 Halloween songs and gave me two weeks to do it. I do try to accommodate them, but I was out of ideas so gave them early mixes of You’re Dead and Funeral For A Saint.

Funeral For A Saint was something I had in my head when I was at a funeral. The main theme came to me at the service and I remembered it. The guy whose funeral it was wasn’t a saint at all, so there’s a bit of humour behind it. It was about three years ago, it was a sad occasion and that just stuck in my head as a main theme so I made an instrumental out of it with his memory in my mind.

This album flows very well despite the mixture of styles. How important is it when you arrange the track list?

The order really matters, I think. You have to put an album together so that it plays well right through. I know, nowadays, you’ve got to contend with Spotify or whatever though because people don’t always listen to things right the way through, or they just play random tracks now. That’s a shame when you’ve put it together to be played in a certain order. There’s a lot of thought goes into that and that often determines whether the tracks do get included. Sometimes I’ll miss out a track which can be a a good track but if it doesn’t fit the album then it could spoil the feeling.

What about the track Dust?

I wrote that back in the early ’80s. It’s been knocking about in my unused ideas since then and every now and then I’d give it a listen. I thought, fuck it, I can use that this time, added stuff and mixed it. That originally came from when we used to go to the Batcave and places like that, which has made it have a kind of gothic feel.

The Batcave and goth wasn’t really my kind of thing, we just went there to get fucked up and cause a bit of trouble. It was all right at the time, I suppose, but I can’t remember most of it to be honest. That was a heavy drugs part of my life, but we went quite regularly, and, in the end it became a bit of a depressing place and we stopped going after we became bored with it.

The opening track on the new album is Mother Of Death – what’s the inspiration there?

That’s a religious thing really. It’s an instrumental but I used the title because it fitted the music and I like the idea of dealing with the Saint of Death. You know, the Mexican imagery where they depict the Virgin Mary as a skeleton and the beliefs that go with that. There are some very unsettling ideas in that.

What about Boo Hag?

That’s from an old Appalachian legend about this never-dying woman who stays young by taking the skin off other people. She creeps into your bed at night and steals your skin. Appalachian myths and legends are really interesting, there are some really strange stories in there and the Boo Hag is quite unique.

What about Highway Demon? It’s a highwayman song, but it’s a recurrent thing you do. What’s the fascination with the Dick Turpin story?

I spend a lot of time on the road, and, I like the thought of being a highwayman way back in time. I’m English so I can’t think of myself as a bandito or some kind of Western outlaw like that. I’d like to, but I like a lot of English folk music and doing a fucked up folk song seems to work okay for me. I think of it as “fulkabilly” – fucked up folk.

Death Kiss From A Siren is like The Shadows doing surf…

Yeah, that’s my thing. I could do that kind of thing all day. Sometimes I wish I’d found a better singer so that I could just play the guitar. I don’t really consider myself to be a singer. I tried The Meteors as a four-piece when we were doing Wreckin’ Crew and it just didn’t work. Maybe the singer was just wrong but, with all due respect, I can’t do the monotone Nigel Lewis thing. I’ve tried but I can’t do that. I can sing a little bit, but I’m not a singer. But I do think that a three-piece is the classic line up and, there’s nobody else so I’ll keep on doing it that way.

The Wave that Swallowed the Earth has .wav after the title on the pre-release promo, any reason?

That’s just the file format. I mean, it is funny, but that’s the title because the record company didn’t clip .wav from the title. I wish I had done it deliberately, but no, I didn’t do it on purpose. It works and if they leave that on as a misprint, I’ll just say it was deliberate.

The track itself is just a good instrumental. It’s not one of my best, but it’s a good one. It was written for The Meteors, but it didn’t work for me that way. It was too good to lose and I think the title fits in with the album.

What about Deacon Jim (Dark Soul Rider)?

That started off as a song for the Raw Deal project, but it became too dense. It needed a Morricone type of feel to it. It’s about a real person, I can’t remember his actual second name, but yeah, he was like a satanic cowboy, a real cowboy, an outlaw. He used to dress as a priest. I think the track came out all right, like a Spaghetti Western kind of thing, which was the aim once I’d got the ideas for the title and lyrics.

The cover art, is that supposed to be you pulling the strings? Or are you having your strings pulled?

I don’t know. I didn’t do it and the artwork wasn’t my idea. The title was my idea and I think it looks good the way it’s come out. It looks like I’m operating the devil and I’m quite happy with the way that looks, but, I guess I’m not actually dancing and it’s the devil dancing. If you look closely you can see it’s actually a painting; when you see it up close you can see the brush strokes in it.

You’ve released 14 solo albums, 26 studio albums as the Meteors, two as the Surfin’ Dead, one as The Murder Brothers, four as The Legendary Raw Deal plus countless Meteors Live albums and singles. That’s a fair sized back catalogue. Does it get more difficult to come up with new ideas every time?

I think, having the ability to venture off to the side projects makes it a lot easier. That helps the quality of my work get better because I’m free to change direction. If something’s not going the way I want, then I can shuffle it about to fit something else.

There’s always the opportunity to start another project to accommodate new material if it doesn’t fit in with what I’m doing. I’ve been working on another instrumental band which I was thinking of calling The Batsquitos – half bat, half mosquito – but I’m not sure whether that will happen. Maybe that’s what can happen when I’ve been up here on my own for too long; it gets a bit like cabin fever.

You released Psycho Down in 2001 – 25 years ago – announcing it was going to be the last Meteors album, with the solo stuff being thought of as the future. What changed your mind?

I thought I’d had enough. It could have been that I was going through a depression of some sort. We did that Final Conflict gig which was meant to be the last Meteors gig. I don’t know why, but, when I got home, in the cold light of day, I changed my mind. I just didn’t want to give that up, I still wanted to do it. It was as if I knew I would be lost without it.
Anyway, I gave myself a kick up the arse. I don’t know if it was depression but I’m not fuckin’ Leonardo da Vinci, I’ve got no agony or ecstasy about my work. I love what I do and I love being on the road with The Meteors. On the rare occasions where I’ve done the solo stuff live, I don’t enjoy it as much. I like it, but I live to be in The Meteors really. Much as I like all the other things I do, if I could have only one outlet for my stuff then it’s The Meteors.

Do you ever think about how you started out with the Southern Boys and Raw Deal and wonder how it got to this stage?

Yeah, sometimes. I think once I really got into being in a band I started to really love the life. Even the crappy parts of it: the tiredness, the driving, miles and miles on the road. I never really thought about how long it would last, but I was pushing for it to keep on going. I wasn’t going to be beaten when anyone left the band. It’s funny, because the things that seemed hard at first, being on the road for months, have become a sort of lifestyle in the end and, the live work is something I really enjoy and look forward to.

There are stories that you’ve had offers to reform the In Heaven line up before, have you ever considered it or is it just a no?

I’ve been offered a lot of money to do that, just to do the songs from In Heaven and the early singles but it’s always no. Nigel and Mark made their choice when they left. I remember thinking that I would love to have that money in my pocket from one gig, but I do have that kind of money in my pocket every now and then so it’s not about that. Reforming that line-up, it’d be like shitting on all the people that supported me and followed me after Nigel and Mark left, and I wouldn’t do that. There’s all the band members as well, even the ones I didn’t like, all the work that they did, it’s like shitting on that. So no, I won’t be doing that.

What do you think you’d have done if it hadn’t taken off the way it did?

I don’t know because I never knew that I could play the guitar when I started. It came from nowhere, if you know what I mean. It’s like a hidden room in Super Mario. If I hadn’t gone into it, I would never have known that possibility was there. Does that make any sense? If that hadn’t happened I guess I could have gone into my dad’s business, but that’s a lifestyle I’m not sure I’d have wanted.

I’ve landed here. I love rock ‘n’ roll. I love doing what I’m doing, man. I love doing it in front of 20,000 people and I love doing it in front of 20. I love driving and being on the road. I love feeling like shit in the morning, knackered but getting on with it. I love wearing my leather jacket. Just the whole thing, being in The Meteors and doing what I do.

Do you prefer working in the studio or do you prefer the live work?

A couple of weeks ago I’d have said the studio, but now I want to get back out on the road. And then once I’ve gone 30 days on the road I think, fuck it, I want to get back in the studio. They’re intertwined. But mostly I prefer live work.

Over the years, you’ve had a strange relationship with the music press.

Yeah, I don’t do interviews, I’ve stopped doing them. The problem is that, most of the time, I don’t think the writers really understand what The Meteors are doing, or what I’m doing. They try to  present a view which I think is sometimes unfair because they seem fixated with presenting me in a certain way rather than taking time to take what we do seriously. We’ve made some great rock ‘n’ roll albums that speak for themselves, whatever the themes are, but that gets overlooked trying to zone in on me being this scary guy who’ll put a hex on them – which I might do, you never know.

This is the first interview I’ve done in six years and I’ve got a lot of respect for you because of what you’ve written about the band over the years and because you actually understand what we’re doing. I mean, it’s even in my contract with the record company that they don’t ask me about interviews because I don’t do them unless I want to, which isn’t very often. There’s a lot of idiots in your trade, like there is in mine, and I’ve been misrepresented a few times too many. Finding a writer who understands what I’m doing is quite rare.

Do you feel restricted by how far you can go musically because your audience expects a certain type of thing from you?

I always treat the audience as being intelligent. Some people like the gang things, the motorbike things, the horror themes or whatever. Some people like the solo things. There are people who like the solo things but aren’t so keen on The Meteors. I don’t know, I think we’ve hit a formula that picks up the right amount of monsters who’ll listen. We are antisocial and we are not supposed to be heroes. We are an anti-hero band and none of that is manufactured. I think that the people that like us are of the same ilk.

What about the way the psychobilly genre is now perceived – there’s a kind of omnipresent horror type kitsch fashion image which seems to have taken over from the ideas that first started it?

It’s terrible, isn’t it? That’s reason I split from it. I don’t do those so called psychobilly festival gigs anymore, and I show them no respect. It’s just turned into a circus. We’ve got our fuckin’ audience and that’s who I’m working for. That stuff they’re calling psychobilly isn’t psychobilly at all, it’s all kitsch, dressing up like they’re at some retro ’50s Halloween party. It’s not what I’ve ever thought about as psychobilly, and if anyone knows what psychobilly is then it’s me. I was there when we started it, and I don’t know what the fuck it is now if that’s where they’re taking it. It’s all the look – and really it’s not about that at all, it’s an attitude.

When we started we were a reaction against The Polecats, and bands liken that, and the way rockabilly was at that time; all about the look, the pink peg slacks, the quiff and the retro high school party, and we took it somewhere else which was basically Rockabilly Psychosis. A lot of the bands now are trying to usurp The Meteors but they can’t and I won’t let that happen, so we don’t have anything to do with them.

I don’t give a shit really though. I’m doing what I’m doing and it works for me and it works for the band and it works for the right amount of people. I’ve set my mind on the fact that I’m never going to make millions doing it. I do have other jobs on the dark side of life that keep me well fed.

Are there any musical areas you’d like to go in that you just haven’t touched yet?

I don’t know, I just go where it’s going. At the moment I’m really into flamenco, I studied that over a few years when I’d been in Spain, so I fully get that. It comes out every now and then in what I’m doing, but I manage to hold it down to small doses in the songs. If I’m sat up here in the mountain playing the guitar, I can play a lot of that shit. I’m happy with that, but I never thought that I’d be doing a Batcave song or something like that, so you never know.

I doubt anyone could see you’d be covering a Judas Priest track, an AC/DC track or a Traveling Wilburys track.

They’re good songs. I like to keep dancing, man. And you don’t get hit if you keep moving.

Like dancing at the end of the world?

Yeah. Let it end. I’m sure I’ll get out of it. That’s something I’m sure I’m positive about. People mistake my confidence for arrogance, but I’m pretty confident I’ll be able to find a way to entertain mutants or zombies when the time comes. You know what I mean? I’ve got a battery driven electric guitar now as well, just in case. I’m ready for it. Let it come. I don’t think bombs can do all the damage but I’m sure the radiation will.

You’ve lived in many places, churches, towers, remote farmlands, forests, now the Wild West. Do you think you’ve found, for want of a better word, your spiritual home now?

No, I do like living here but I’m thinking of buying a boat and living by the ocean. That’s where I want to die, by the sea. I’m English. I come from an island. I want to be by the ocean, man. I sometimes think of moving back to England, but I’m not too pleased with the way the country seems to be. There are nice places but every time I go to London, it kills me to tell the truth. Not the geopolitical part of it. But the fact is, it’s fucked, it’s lost its magic.

One of your mantras been Fuck Politics, Fuck Religion, Fuck The World. Do you still feel the same now?

More than ever. Obviously I’ve got ideals and beliefs and I’ve managed to keep them out of my music. I’ve been fucking the world a long time before the current situation. Maybe somebody is doing it bigger and better than me, but you know I’ve been making the point for years now.

Last question, how long do you think you can keep dancing?

As long as I enjoy what I’m doing, I’ll carry on doing it till I don’t enjoy it. Even on the odd days when I question whether I’m enjoying it or not, the next morning I wake up and think I can’t stop, I’m enjoying it and I don’t want to stop.

Over here I can shoot guns, start fires, do whatever I want to do. And, of course I make music, which is there all the time. I do shoot a lot here though, I enter a lot of competitions. I’m living in the last part of the Wild West, but ultimately I want to live like a fuckin’ pirate, so the sea’s got that attraction

Out of ten, at the moment, I’d say my life’s at about eight and a half. I’ve never had ten in my life, not without chemicals, anyway. And, if I could go back and do it all again, would I do it differently? I don’t know. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t have worked with a few people, but maybe that needed to happen. I’ve lived it full on but, no, I wouldn’t do it differently. I think if I knew what was going to happen at the end, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it as well as it’s turned out.  You’ve got to go through the problems, the trying, the struggles and battles. When you’re not hungry, you don’t know how to fight, if you know what I mean.

If I’d had a number one record, then The Meteors would’ve fallen to pieces. If I had the money then I wouldn’t be bothered anymore because, underneath it allm I’m basically a lazy soul. As it’s gone, I’ve lost some things I wish I hadn’t, but I’ve gained some things I never knew I wanted. I never thought I’d get this far, but I’m still here y’know, dancing, ready to go.

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All words by Steve ‘Spike’ Sommer.