There can be no greater validation for a songwriter than knowing that Bob Dylan likes your work. It’s a little like Shakespeare approving of your latest sonnet.
For Imelda May, whose admirers and musical associates have included Bono, David Bowie, Smokey Robinson and Jeff Beck, Dylan’s endorsement was as good as it gets.
‘I started to scream,’ the petite Irish singer admits. ‘I was in hysterics when I heard about it. I went in the bathroom and it was echoing everywhere. I was going, “Oh, my God, yes! Yes!”
For Imelda May, whose admirers and musical associates have included Bono, David Bowie, Smokey Robinson and Jeff Beck, Bob Dylan’s endorsement was as good as it gets
‘When I calmed down, I sent him a little present with a note afterwards. I didn’t know what to write. So in the end I put, “I like you too.” ’
May’s distinctive south Dublin brogue reverberates around the genteel members’ club in central London. In August, her voice rang out at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas as she performed the national anthem of Ireland, in Irish, before Conor MacGregor’s clash with Floyd Mayweather.
During the fight May shocked herself with the ‘terrible profanities coming out of me’ as she cheered her countryman on.
Her embarrassment was complete upon realising that she had been sitting beside Hollywood heart-throb Leonardo DiCaprio, who politely ignored her ‘madwoman banshee wailing’.
‘He was just across from me,’ May chuckles. ‘Everybody from Hollywood seemed to be there. Somebody told me that the parking at the airport for the private jets was chaos.’
Life Love Flesh Blood trades the rockabilly sound that made May’s name for gentler jazz, blues and western swing
May’s own life has been hectic recently and her latest album, Life Love Flesh Blood, could almost double as a diary: in 2015 she got divorced from rockabilly guitarist Darrel Higham, her husband and bandmate of 13 years, fell in love with a mystery man, rumoured to be French, then had her heart broken.
It has been emotional and she doesn’t spare us the mascara-stained details.
May’s naked, often downright raunchy, honesty has proved popular: her album is in the top five selling albums by female artists in 2017.
Life Love Flesh Blood trades the rockabilly sound that made May’s name for gentler jazz, blues and western swing. ‘I found rockabilly to be suffocating after a while,’ she explains. ‘I became known as Imelda May who does rockabilly and I found that very limiting.’
This musical exploration has been reflected in a shift in image: the fitted Fifties evening frocks have been replaced by shirts and skinny jeans; the Mallen-streaked quiff is gone in favour of a more mature long bob and fringe.
As peppermint tea arrives, I ask if May is single at the moment. ‘I don’t know what I am,’ she confesses. ‘There’s been a kind of rebirth mentally, physically, emotionally and sexually too. There’s a freedom, it’s fabulous.’
Her friend Bono, who is credited on her album for his ‘advice and guidance’, was initially drawn to May’s lyrical depiction of female lust. ‘We were at a dinner and I recited the words of my song How Bad Can A Good Girl Be to Bono,’ May recalls. ‘He said he wished he’d written it, which was a great compliment.’
Has she been subjected to Bono’s fondness for a lengthy late-night phone call? ‘We text,’ she hoots. ‘We’re like teenage texters.’
Before consorting with rock royalty, May sensationally snubbed the Queen, when the singer opted to honour a pre-booked gig at Sunderland FC rather than perform at Her Majesty’s state visit to Ireland in 2011. ‘I’ve met her since and we were fine,’ she jokes. ‘We shared canapés, so we must be OK.’
May has lived in England for the past 20 years, currently residing in semi-rural Hampshire with daughter Violet, five. Ex-husband Higham lives nearby in order to be a hands-on dad.
While she will support her ‘very musical’ child ‘in whatever she chooses to do’, May doesn’t plan on introducing her to Simon Cowell any time soon.
Having served a long apprenticeship on the rockabilly circuit, May blames TV shows such as The X Factor for fuelling the fantasy that fame can be attained without serious effort.
‘It’s desperate,’ she sighs. ‘People have been force-fed on a weekly basis the idea that you have to get into the music business by being on a TV show where somebody has to judge you, and either tell you to go home or say that you’ve won.
‘They think, “If I go on that, I’ll win that show and all my dreams will come true.” But that isn’t the reality.’
Although she is now dealing with a serious level of celebrity herself, May has long been exposed to superstardom at nerve-rackingly close quarters.
When she sang with legendary guitarist Jeff Beck at New York’s intimate Iridium Jazz Club in 2010, she peered into the crowd and saw a familiar pair of mismatched eyes looking back at her. ‘David Bowie was in the audience, staring at me,’ she marvels. ‘I met him afterwards and he was lovely, extremely funny. We had a great night. I ended up doing the conga all around the club with Meat Loaf.’
May is wary of super-fame and claims she couldn’t exist in the rarefied orbit that Adele has entered. ‘She must be under tremendous pressure,’ the Dubliner grimaces. ‘It’s a hell of a lot of focus for just one woman, one person, to deal with.
‘But Adele doesn’t mince her words and I admire her for that.’ A last uninhibited laugh ricochets around the tasteful wood panelling. ‘She says it like it is,’ May grins. ‘So at least we have that in common.’
Imelda May is on tour next month, including the Royal Albert Hall on Nov 22, imeldamay.co.uk. The album ‘Life Love Flesh Blood’ is on Decca Records