Stewart Lee loves the Nightingales so much he’s made a film about them, but the band remain unfairly unknown. Frontman Robert Lloyd charts how he went from Frank Skinner’s replacement to food writer, postie and back again
“I’m not antisocial but I draw the line with pop groups,” says Robert Lloyd of the Nightingales. “People in bands aren’t generally my kind of people.” Pre-lockdown, Lloyd could instead be found at the pub or horse-racing track, but, despite his aversion to the fickle world of music, he’s been a fringe figure in it for more than 40 years. The band he fronts, the Nightingales, are a perpetual outsider outfit, deeply loved and revered by a cult following, but an unknown entity to most. Lloyd is also the subject of a new documentary, King Rocker, made by comedian Stewart Lee and director Michael Cumming.
Lloyd began his musical life in the Prefects, a Birmingham punk band that comedian Frank Skinner briefly fronted before Lloyd took his place. Skinner auditioned outside a pub by singing the Ramones’ Blitzkrieg Bop but Lloyd had done one better and actually been to see and meet the band. Plus, Skinner’s hair was apparently too long.
