It wouldn’t be hard to turn Dave McCabe’s life into a misery memoir – expelled from school, found guilty of assault, years wasted on drink and drugs… But marriage and fatherhood gave the Zutons frontman the motivation to beat the bottle. McCabe’s face lights up when he talks about his three-year-old son, Louie. “He grounds me,” Dave tells me. “He makes me laugh. He stops me from thinking I’m Elvis. If you’ve got kids, you’ve got to be the anchor. That’s what keeps me from going off the rails.” Finding love and having Louie were “the best things that ever happened to me,” he says. He married wife Paula just over a year ago. “If it wasn’t for this woman, I’d be a lot worse off, maybe not even here.” Dave’s unbridled joy informed the Liverpool band’s last album, 2024’s The Big Decider, which exploded with renewed zest and lust for life. “It still speaks to the people but with optimism,” he tells me. “It’s good to get away from reality, we’re not the Sleaford Mods.”
Born in Knowsley on Merseyside, the son of a plasterer and a Makro supermarket worker, McCabe. 44, is brutally honest about his flaws. “I’m a narky bastard,” he confesses. “And certain people know how to push your buttons. They see you doing better than they are, or having a strong opinion, putting your arse on the line when you write a song…But you’ve got to take the punches.” He will always be remembered for co-writing the Zutons’ biggest hit Valerie – a bona fide 21st century pop classic, regularly rated in the UK’s Top Ten karaoke songs. Dave pinches himself every time he hears it blaring out of a bar. The gloriously catchy 2006 single – “a gift from God” – was the band’s second Top Ten smash. Then Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson covered it… Dave told them he didn’t think it’d do well “as we’d had a big hit with it and lightning doesn’t strike twice!” But it did. Ronson’s faster, more soulful, and even more exhilarating version propelled by a Motown backbeat peaked at No 2 in 2007 becoming Amy’s all-time biggest hit, outselling even Rehab.
Valerie started as a riff in a band rehearsal. McCabe then turned into a song in his head on a 15-minute taxi ride home to his mum’s. “I grabbed the guitar, sat in my bedroom, and wrote the rest out, and it all came together in about five minutes. It was pretty spontaneous.” Makeup artist Valerie Star, who Dave had befriended on a US tour supporting The Killers, inspired the lyrics – she’d been caught driving under the influence. Hence the line: ‘Did you have to go to jail? Put your house up for sale?’ Other Zutons’ memorable hits include Why Don’t You Give Me Your Love? and Don’t Ever Think (Too Much). They had four Top Ten albums, two of them platinum-sellers, but it was Valerie that kept their name alive after they split in 2009. They didn’t reform properly until 2018. A long gap. “It was the most massive gap in history,” Dave laughs. “We got sick of each other at one point. I just wish I’d got my s*** together sooner. It’s a nice ending now.”
Dave’s life changed when, aged 11, he saw alt-rockers The Verve live supporting the Smashing Pumpkins. “I was dead little and they came on with long hair and played Slide Away. It was my introduction to that whole scene. I asked me mum if I could buy the album, A Storm In Heaven. I was heavily into heavy rock and didn’t get it at first but later I played it again and it made sense.” Growing up his house was full of music. “Mum and dad loved Talking Heads, Buddy Holly, and Queen. My brother was into Depeche Mode, Erasure and Kraftwerk. The reason I got into Guns N’ Roses and Metallica is because I was rebelling against what I’d heard at home. Then grunge hit and that was completely my thing.”
Expelled for cutting off another classmate’s hair, Dave resurfaced in a “bad school” where his mates knew him as “Mad Dog” – also the name of his first band. Life only made sense when he got his first guitar. At 19, he joined rock band Tramp Attack, co-founded by the late Brookside actor Kristian Ealey, but quit in 2001 to form the Zutons, taking their name from Zoot Horn Rollo, the guitarist in Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band. They released their debut single, urgent indie-rocking foot-tapper Devil’s Deal, in 2002, then signed to Liverpool label Deltasonic and followed it with the critically acclaimed Creepin’ An’ A Crawling. “The Strokes opened the door for everyone who played guitar,” he says.
Initially their music confused critics who likened it variously to ‘zombie soul’, ‘cosmic Scouse’, ‘psychedelic cartoon punk’ and ‘The Who jamming with The Rapture in a wind tunnel’. Touring in the early days wasn’t always pleasant. “Our label put us on tour with a band called The Basement,” he recalls. “They weren’t bad, but they were getting good press and were full of themselves. We would go head-to-head on the bus every night. It got intense sometimes. With two bands who think they’re the business, you’re going to end up fighting. Larrikin Love couldn’t stand me.” Why? He shrugs. “Maybe they thought I was an arsehole,” he says with a shrug.
Their debut album changed everything. Who Killed…The Zutons? went Top Ten in 2004, selling more than 1.2million copies, and spawning two Top 20 singles – Pressure Point and Don’t Ever Think (Too Much). 2006’s other platinum album Tired Of Hanging Around produced the Top Tens, and their weaker third album, 2008’s You Can Do Anything, went silver, begetting Top 30 hit, Always Right Behind You. The Zutons quietly disbanded in 2009. Dave made the papers for the wrong reasons in 2010 for breaking a student’s nose after his friends mocked McCabe’s then-girlfriend. The following year, he co-wrote Mark Ronson’s Top 20 hit The Bike Song and sang as part of The Justice Collective’s Hillsborough charity single, He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother along with Paul McCartney and Robbie Williams. In 2015, McCabe released his synth-poppy debut solo album Church Of Miami and later played bass with psychedelic funk-pop band SILENT-K. Dave acknowledges that Amy Winehouse’s cover of Valerie kept the Zutons name in the frame during their long absence but doesn’t resent it, saying, “She immortalised it, she took it to a new level.”
In 2018, the Zutons reformed to mark the 15th anniversary of their debut album with a tour – “It made us realise we really enjoyed being in this band”. But after holidaying together in America, Dave realised his drink and drug problems were out of hand. I went to rehab and came out clean and we started writing – then the lockdown kicked in.” Staying in their own bubble, they carried on writing, but McCabe started drinking and taking mushrooms again. Falling for Paula changed that. “I knew I had to stop or I’d be a s*** dad with no band. Since she arrived things have only got better for me and the people around me.”
Their hit come-back album, The Big Decider – co-produced by Ian Broudie and Chic co-founder Nile Rodgers – came loaded with danceable optimism. “It was like working with two uncles,” he laughs. “Ian makes you sound amazing and Nile is so smart and funny.” Sober for more than three years, McCabe enjoys performing better now – “I can sing all the notes, I’m focused, I’m not just in my own world anymore.” The Zutons play Nocturne later this month, headlined by his teenage idol The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft. “I’m looking forward to seeing Richard,” he says. “The last time I saw him he was really inspiring. He had a message of positivity. I can’t wait to experience that atmosphere again.”
*The Zutons perform alongside Richard Ashcroft and Lightning Seeds at the Nocturne Live concert series at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire on June 19th 2025. Tickets nocturnelive.com.