Mick Hucknall's latest album with Simply Red, Big Love, is the band's first offering in eight years. Photo / NZME.
Mention the name Mick Hucknall and it's not conversation about the hits of Simply Red that ensues, but ginga jokes and snide remarks about his reputation as a bed-hopping lothario of epic proportions.
None of this has been helped by the many headlines about his sexual conquests or the apology he issued by way of an article in the Guardian back in 2010, directed at "some really good girls" he'd hurt in his philandering past.
Five years ago when Hucknall gave that apologetic interview, it seemed a rather pathetic and sad end to a band, and its frontman, who had brought us Money's Too Tight To Mention, Holding Back The Years and If You Don't Know Me By Now.
Now, Hucknall's back. And so is Simply Red with a new album, Big Love. But will the band's first offering in eight years be enough to stop the world counting the notches on the singer's bedpost? Hucknall hopes so.
In 2010, when the 54-year-old announced Simply Red was disbanding, he married Gabriella Wesberry and went about making a life for himself out of the spotlight, popping back briefly in 2012 to release his solo album, American Soul.
For the most part, Hucknall was happy. He loved being at home in Surrey, UK, with his wife and daughter Romy. He also delved into winemaking, having bought a vineyard on the slopes of Mt Etna in Sicily and continued to indulge his passion for football. He admitted in an interview with the Daily Mail that he'd once spent around $42,000 outbidding Jamie Oliver for a pair of boots autographed by David Beckham.
Hucknall says if it wasn't for a visit from his manager, he would not have known that this year marked a significant milestone in the band's history. "Last summer, he came by the house and reminded me that 2015 would be Simply Red's 30th anniversary and he asked me what I was going to do about it."
The singer finally agreed they should reform to do a tour. "I'm a Celt and we don't need much of a reason to celebrate, so I said 'Yes'."
But that one word opened a floodgate of excitement and soon the tour had ballooned into new music. "I started to reflect, 'Wow, Simply Red, 30 years', you know. And then I started to imagine what Simply Red would sound like in 2015. So I wrote Big Love," he says of the album's title track.
From there Hucknall set himself a challenge to write another and, before he knew it, he had the material for the band's first album of entirely original compositions since 1995.
Big Love opens with the groove-laden Shine On and sticks largely with a bouncy feel-good vibe, with glimpses of Simply Red's early days of blue-eyed soul. But for Hucknall, this album was about something far greater than just sound. It was about its common thread - family.
He talks at length about his childhood in working-class Manchester, where his father raised him after his mother walked out when he was 3. "We had babysitters, because he wouldn't go on welfare and insisted on working all throughout my childhood. He did all the washing, all the laundry. He looked after me."
It was an upbringing that Hucknall says left him with significant holes to fill. "I never had a family. I didn't even know the concept of family. I had no social skills. Going through puberty, I didn't have a mum to explain things to me, and your dad didn't talk about that kind of stuff."
It's a concept he says he's only learned through being a father and a husband. And for him, it was only natural that these experiences should influence his new music.
"The subject matter was very relevant. I'm happily married, I've got a 7-year-old daughter and I lead a very home-based, domestic life. It's kind of been a revelation for me, these last seven years."
Hucknall is mindful that his upcoming world tour, of which New Zealand dates are yet to be confirmed, means temporarily leaving behind his life of semi-retirement in which making breakfast for his daughter and walking the dog are the highlights of his day. But taking his family with him on the road will go someway to make up for that.
"My daughter is coming up to 8, so I'm planning to ship the family over to Australia and New Zealand," he says.
It's polar opposites to the rock star life he once led. But if the sentiment behind this new album is to be believed, no amount of booze and women could ever come close to this life of domestic bliss Hucknall now lives.
"One of the reasons I ended Simply Red was to bring up my daughter on a daily basis. What my father did for me was pretty epic stuff for 1963. Even when his friends suggested he put me in a home, he didn't. And that's rubbed off on me. I wanted to be there for my daughter. And that's what walking away from Simply Red allowed me to do," he says.
It's also what's allowed him to return. But it is debatable whether Hucknall has answered that question he first posed to himself when he sat down to write this new record - what does Simply Red sound like in 2015?
There are touches of the magic he gave us in those late 1980s albums Picture Book and A New Flame, as there are soul-searching moments reminiscent of 1991's Stars. And he's lost none of that stunning vocal ability. So it's likely to please those fans who have stuck by Hucknall for all these years. But with so much other music out there competing for space, it may not set the airwaves alight.
For Hucknall, however, you get the feeling it was never about charting, trying to find a new style or recreating the past. This album was simply about capturing his life 30 years on and Big Love is the sound of his contentment.