Where were you when you first heard Wild Thing? David Spiller was watching Top of the Pops, with The Troggs singing it, not Jimi Hendrix, though he does like the Hendrix version. The Troggs version was really commercial. But he enjoyed it more. Everybody sneered at them, but they were great. Or so he thought as he laid stomach-side-down in front of the television, romanced equally by the words as the poppy beat. “Wild Thing” one of his new canvases for exhibition Tryin’ to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door, says. “Wild thing” and then, “I think I love you.” Blurry technicolour circles, Hirst-esque, in differing sizes, float past the words. “Wild Thing, I think I love you.” He still remembers hearing it for the first time.

 

Spiller’s studio is usually filled with music. Bob Dylan, a lot of the time. Or Van Morrison. He probably listens to these two every day. “They’re kind of mood-setting for me,” he says to Ponystep, whilst prepping for his new show. At certain times he’ll play Dean Martin, Johnny Cash… but he always goes back to Dylan. Any fan of his paintings will note the dedicated referencing. The studio itself... “It gets really messy,” Spiller says by his own admission – an open plan stretched floor scattered with life-size canvases and stencils of Hanna Barbara’s finest – though at the moment they’re mostly held at Beaux Arts. “It’s almost daunting,” Spiller says of the never-empty, now-empty space as he prepares for the show.

 

HK: What music did you listen to as you created the new pieces?

 

DS: I don’t listen to anything specific. The phrases that pop up in my work are somehow lodged in my head. Sometimes I’ll be working in the studio and hear a song and rush upstairs to type it into Google so I can get the lyrics. It’s brilliant, up it comes. But then I’ll do my own thing anyway. I’m always changing lyrics. ‘I found my thrill when I found you’ – that’s a bit of me and a bit of Fats Waller; that’s because my memory’s so bad!

 

HK: The songs you use lyrics from – what memories do they hold for you?

 

DS: All sorts. ‘Red sails in the sunset’ is a song my mother used to sing. And ‘See the pyramids across the Nile’ is an old Alma Cogan song. It’s a particular period of singing that we’ve lost now. I use Bob Dylan, of course, a lot. By the time he went electric I was teaching – there was a lot of controversy at the time but I think it was the best thing he did. One of the best records he ever made was ‘Time Out of Mind’, where he deals with what it means to be old, of trying to sort out what life amounts to, ‘Tryin’ to get to heaven before they close the door’.

 

HK: Is working to music more productive than working in silence?

 

DS: No, sometimes it’s a hindrance. I need not to have all these things going on in my head, particularly when I’m starting a new batch of work.

 

HK: Do you start with the lyrics first, or the concept of the typography, the placement, the colour...?

 

DS: Coming here on the bus today through London, my head was alive with things I wish I’d said to people, like ‘Call me’ or ‘Don’t cry’. [Pointing to some of his new small paintings which are just words and swatches of colour] I really like those new ones; it’s like if you stripped it all of the ‘art’ what have you got to say?

 

HK: What’s the general rule of thumb with using lyrics? Have you ever stumbled across infringement or copyright problems? What’s the usual protocol?

 

DS: No, no problem. If it’s in my head I just use it. And if I can’t spell it I make it up.

 

HK: What is your favourite lyric?

 

DS: I can’t choose, there’s too many. Perhaps ‘Dry your tears, babe’ from The Pogues. Because if you saw a small child crying, what would you do? You’d comfort them.

 

HK: I want to ask your opinion on Pop Art. Unlike classic Pop Art, you don’t treat your images as icons, and they don’t appear to be social critique. But Pop Art seems to be the popular tag for what you do

 

DS: I don’t think it’s Pop Art. I think it’s just art. I want it to be as good as Rembrandt and Goya. I don’t really like Pop Art – it’s just not tough enough.

 

HK: You mix lyrics with your own words. Is it not daunting when they have to compete with the likes of The Beatles and Bob Dylan, some of the great lyricists who are used on your other canvases?

 

DS: The words just come. And sometimes they’re pure Bob Dylan, and then a bit of me. But that’s just because I’ve got a bad memory, as I’ve already said. If you can think of a way of saying ‘I love you’ that hasn’t already been said in a song by Dylan or the Beatles… well, I’m not sure you can really improve on it - there’s very little left to say.

 

HK: You studied at the Slade School during the heyday of British Pop. Was pop art and pop culture the life you led growing up?

 

DS: Not really. We used to listen on Sundays to Radio Luxembourg to get the Top 20. But movies were my real love – I remember seeing Elvis Presley’s first film when he came out of the army. At home I was surrounded by Rock n’ Roll and one of my brothers had a fantastic collection of jazz, trad, New Orleans and Miles Davis. I remember as a student being asked to do a still life, but I thought it was better to bring in a motorbike and paint that. Not a vase of flowers. Imagery was changing, and I was a big fan of Marshall McLuhan – you know, ‘The medium is the message’ and all that.

 

HK: The problem with quoting song lyrics is that they are often victim to emotional cliché

 

DS: There are going to be people who look at my work and think ‘sentimental tosh’. Yes, my words are full of sentiment, but the words are there just as a pointer to the emotion. What’s interesting is that if you took a phrase from an opera you wouldn’t say the same at all. I can listen to opera and it can move me to tears but if you translate a line it’s rubbish!

 

HK: Like James Cauty’s new work, and the myriad street graffiti art around East London, you seem to be part of this team of modern conceptual artists whose art is brimming with cartoon pop iconography

 

DS: I guess cartoons lend themselves to that kind of immediate work. They’re easy to make stencils of. It’s also the recognition factor, too. Everyone knows Popeye or whoever - Goya had King Philip to paint. It’s the same. It gets you an audience.

 

HK: And looking at your work, you seem enamoured by love. Many of the song lyrics you use are those concerned with matters of the heart. All My Love (1998) with Deputy Dawg, the multi-coloured canvas The Power of Love (1997), one of your new canvases professing, “I’ll walk with you in the garden where love began”

 

DS: I wonder if I just love the drama of it. I don’t think when I was growing up in the 1950s that people talked enough about love. They were tough times. I remember going to a Saturday movie once as a boy – the movies were all about love – and seeing this film about a boy’s mother dying. And I suddenly realised it could happen to me… maybe that’s where it comes from?

 

HK: What is your favourite love song?

 

DS: ‘Love is all there is’ by John Lennon. My mother died recently and I realised at her funeral there were so many people who loved her. I know there’s brutality, starvation and poverty in the world, but ultimately love is all there is.

 

David Spiller: Tryin’ to get To Heaven Before They Close the Door exhibits at Beaux Arts London until October 3.