On the Turntable: Brian Protheroe | Musician of the Month | July
The Songwriter Who Wrote Pinball in 1974 and Released 4 Albums in His 80s
A song released in 1974 is finding a whole new audience in 2026 after being covered by Paul Weller. Along the way it also caught the attention of Morrissey and Noel Gallagher, not bad for a song that began life as a deeply personal diary entry.
But that’s not really why we invited Brian Protheroe onto The Third Half. He’s our Musician of the Month for July because, more than fifty years after Pinball, he’s still doing what great artists do: staying curious, still questioning, still writing, still recording, still creating.
His latest album, Still Walking, is his fourth release in as many years, and it’s anything but a nostalgic look backwards. It explores ageing, belonging, politics, memory, music and the simple determination to keep moving forward, which feels like a very Third Half record to make in your eighties.
Our conversation wandered from Shakespeare to Sergeant Pepper, from songwriting to acting, from Donald Trump to Paul Weller, with plenty of humour along the way. Brian reflected on why his wife asks him not to write another death song, why creativity becomes even more important as we get older, and the difference between acting and songwriting with one memorably simple observation: “Music is to do with my inside, and acting is to do with someone else’s inside, which I try and put inside me.”
As always with On the Turntable, we’ve selected four tracks that tell the story behind the conversation.
- ‘Pinball’ is the song that refuses to fade away, still connecting generations of listeners more than half a century after it was written.
- ’Still Walking’ captures the spirit of the album and, in many ways, Brian himself.
- ’Mad Dog’ reminds us that he’s still writing about the world as it is, not simply the world as it was.
- And ‘Belong’ became an even more powerful song after hearing Brian explain what belonging really means to him.
Whether you’ve followed Brian Protheroe since the 1970s as an actor or singer, or only recently discovered him through Paul Weller’s cover of Pinball, I think you’ll enjoy this conversation.
At the very end of our interview I asked Brian what he hoped people would take away from Still Walking.
His answer:
“The urge to play it again.”
Watch on YouTube | Listen on your favourite audio streaming platform:
https://player.captivate.fm/episode/c43ed0ca-a2bc-4468-a2ec-fe14188fb491/
People. Planet. Progress.