‘Strangely amazing’ aneurysm ‘has made me better’ Karl Wallinger shares his thoughts ahead of Leamington gig

Eleven years after suffering a brain aneurysm - “a hell of a thing” - the 54-year-old is starting a three-date come-back tour at Leamington’s Assembly next weekend, before playing the Royal Albert Hall in London and the Academy in Oxford.

“It’s been 12 years since we played in the UK - that’s two Beatles careers,” he quips.

“It’s great to be playing here again. It’s like picking up from where I left off - except everybody I know these days charges more for their services.”

Formed in 1986 as Wallinger’s solo project, World Party was prized by fans for their intelligent pop and outstanding live musicianship.

The group amassed five critically-acclaimed albums, including the Grammy-nominated Goodbye Jumbo, and a series of hit singles, most notably She’s The One, written after the death of Wallinger’s mother - and subsequently recorded by Robbie Williams, earning Williams a number one and Brit Award.

But in 2001 Karl was struck by “the incident”, as he terms it - and a long five-year road to recovery ensued before he got back to performing in the United States.

He says: “It was a hell of a thing. You could not just walk away from it.

“I had very strange goings on when I was in hospital. I would be walking down the ward with a drip going down my sholder, then I would suddenly come to and realise I was walking. A few moments before that, I had thought I was in a white room setting up keyboards.

“Maybe it was little bits of memory clicking together in my brain. It was strangely amazing.”

Describing the experience of having a camera inserted into an artery in his groin which took pictures inside his head as “truly fascinating”, Karl recalls being more amazed by what he went through more than anything else.

“The memory loss thing was as if someone had picked up your brain as if it was a bag full of items and shaken it so that all the contents had got muddled up,” he says.

Just two months after coming out of hospital, Karl did have a go at a small gig at an event run by a mental health charity - which was, bizarrely, also supported by Edwyn Collins, who, four years later, suffered his own, more severe brain hemorrhage.

Although he didn’t perform properly for another five years, music never stopped being a part of Karl’s life.

He says: “It’s a permanent thing for me to use music as an enhancing activity, so it was normal for me to use it while recovering.

“At first, I played a lot of jazz - chords that were a semi-tone higher than they should have been. You just handle what you have got and work it out.

“I am probably playing the piano and singing better than I was before. Once you get over the fact that something big has happened, you realise the irrelevance of certain anxieties of the past.

“I am not bothered about what people thing - I just to do it.”

Now operating with Wallinger’s own label Seaview, World Party’s new album Arkeology includes both songs finished as recently as 2011 and an unreleased, unheard history of studio tracks, live sessions, concert recordings, radio interviews, covers, demos and B-sides.

Karl says: “From 2006 onwards I have been playing in the United States.

“I don’t know whether I thought I’d be doing it here again. We have only got three dates to say, hi, we’re back! but we will keep it going. I enjoy it immensely.”

World Party are playing at the Assembly in Spencer Street on Sunday October 28. For tickets, call 0844 854 1358 or go online.