The Guardian, februari 3rd 2026
When Milton then picked up a saxophone a few years later and formed Blurt,
Wilson made them one of the first bands from outside Manchester to feature
on his Factory Records label, and Wire invited them on to their bills. Milton’s
subversive art had found a new home in the post-punk era.
Milton is a born performer, and Wire’s Lewis was immediately hooked: “Blurt were totally captivating,” he enthuses (the two would later go on to form the trio Elegiac in 2007). A 1984 solo Milton track, Love Is Like a Violence, would even become an unlikely floor-filler at Glasgow’s hip Optimo club night in the 2000s. Although Blurt bounced between many record labels over the decades, Milton always made his way back to the spotlight eventually.
He’s very much front and centre of The Last Puppet Show: the film is a reckoning with the man Milton used to be, which for his associates was a driven artist, and for his family a sometimes wayward father. A chunk of the budget is intended for creating a new set of puppets to dramatise its scenes; Milton says the old ones were either sent to Alaska, or symbolically burned. “I don’t suppose I made any attempt to make any concessions to anybody anywhere along the line,” he admits, looking back on his wilder days. “One person beat me up.” I ask who it was, and it turns out to be one of his own bandmates.
While Milton’s anti-authoritarian streak remains as strong as ever, age has now forced him to start making compromises. “The last couple of shows I’ve had to do sitting down, which I really dreaded. But actually it kind of opens up a different dynamic,” he says, looking forward as ever to the next gig. “It seems to make things more concentrated somehow.” ‘
I ask what he thinks it was about his performances that gripped Eric Clapton all those years ago, and whether he’s the same person now. “I think we’re talking about charisma. And charisma is a form of psychosis, to my mind.” He cites Alice Miller’s book The Drama of the Gifted Child, whose thesis holds that children are often forced to suppress their authentic selves, to support his point..
“This kind of intense self-consciousness has abated, mercifully,” he reflects, with a more easy-going perspective brought by age. “One person described it as feeling like you’re walking about on stilts all the time, and that’s it – every movement it’s like someone looking at you.” In other words, you felt like a performer all of the time? “Yeah. I’m not like that any more. Hahaha!”.