Their music was a wailing wall of buzzsaw guitars while the pristine emotional lyrics found a man constantly stalking the twilight zone between certainty and doubt and articulating the confusion into classic combinations of verse and chorus.

The Buzzcocks went on Top Of The Pops and had hits. The cream has been duly collected for posterity on the 'Singles Going Steady' compilation of GREATS!

But time eroded the thrill. The polish became chipped and dulled. Their last two years proved frustrating and futile. The foursome were enmeshed in the trappings of their own talent, not that they ever played the STAR but as far as beat groups go they were reaching the waist spreading period of middle-age.

Locked into a regular touring (they placed my old home town every November, following Doctor Feelgood who appeared every October, a gruesome comparison) schedule and recording (an album a year) routine. The humdrum rock and roll way of growing old.

I felt more relieved than surprised when Peter Shelley handed in his notice last March and, as they used to say in pop circles, went solo.

"I left the Buzzcocks because I found a way of doing what I wanted which short circuited all the problems I'd had in the past. It was hard to get the ides that I had across. I'm not very good at communicating ideas, all the ones I have I tend to put into music.

"I don't have the vocabulary to put ideas across to individual people at individual times. There was no way that I knew off to change the Buzzcocks so my ideas could get over. I managed to display my finest feelings in almost avant-garde form and no one, well, a few people, understood. Towards the end I wasn't doing myself any good. I was just wringing out my soul to get songs done."

As the whole world and her sister already knows Peter teamed up with producer Martin Rushent at the latter's rural studio ("I'm glad we're doing the interview here (at Island Records HO) and not at Martin's. At least it will stop the 'Pete Shelley as a country squire', bit"), just the pair of them with time and a selection of sound making machines. The album they created is called 'Homosapien'.

The single of the song of the same name was issued last August. A stirring thick mixture of acoustic guitars mated with a state-of-the-art electro dance beat. The subject matter is another story.

The new Shelley lyrical tidings had every hearer leaping to their own definition of the intent. The BBC declared it a gay song. Betty Page considered it "risqué".

"That the BBC thought it was a gay song is great, fantastic. I'm a sexual person, I don't bother delineating myself into homo, hetero or bi, it just depends on the person, the situation and what happens.

"In some ways it can be interpreted as being homosexual but it's basically about being a human being and having got over your bestial impulses and fallen in love with someone who's a homosapien rather than a canine or something.

"You'll probably interpret that as though I've just had a long affair with an alsatian dog. It's just really good that I fell in love with someone of my own species. I don't take a copyright out on the ideas. I haven't got a monopoly on them. If a song throws up ideas for people then I'd rather they'd discussed it amongst themselves. Not discuss each line with me like I'm a dead poet.

"The world is not one thing or another. The world is all the things that go to make it. I write about things which experience as a citizen of the world. Music can mean two things at once. I can find musical sequences that explain things, that have a state of being: Sometimes my music can actually generate a feeling to other people. People have told me they've found something there which I could never have expressed to them in words.

"The way I see the world is through the songs. I'm probably the world's worst interviewee. Not because I'm uninteresting but because you can't look here (he points to himself) for my inner feelings.

"The songs explain different facets of me. They are ambiguous because I don't believe there are yes and no answers. A lot depends on the mood I'm in. In the future somebody will write a book and say 'this is what Pete Shelley really meant'."

The remainder of the long player proves equally as brain cell stimulating and aural cavity delighting as the title track. But there are a couple of peculiarities. 'Pusher Man' appears to be a re-write of the Steppenwolf drug-song of far distant yore and the following 'Just One Of Those Affairs' is a veritable cornucopia of vociferous sexual activity detailed over a roll-out the-barrel pub boogie backing.

"'Pusher Man' was written as a tongue-in-cheek Steppenwolf song in 1974. 'Affair' was a tongue-in-cheek boogie number also written that year. I never felt I could play these songs with the Buzzcocks. I believed in certain aspects of pop and rock music and I would have destroyed my credibility if we'd done them."

One assumes, therefore that there are stacks more items of interest gathering dust in the Shelley vaults?

"There are no more at all. All the songs I've ever done are out now. If a big double decker bus skidded in the snow and killed this five-foot six-inch waif tomorrow, all my work would be out.

"I write in bursts, when I'm under pressure. I've got a load of different ideas that need weaving together. There are always themes and values going around inside my head. I enjoy creating up until the point where it is on the quarter inch master tape, that is my deadline. I'm lucky to have great flexibility in the way I do music.

"That's why I'm not as arrogant as some people seem to be when they put themselves across in interviews. The usual interview has someone spouting on about how young people should be living their lives. Then they go on to talk about their tour dates. I don't think I should do that. I am a young person living his life."

Shelley was late for our rendezvous. Two and a half hours late to be exact. When he did finally arrive my first glimpse of him was a shoddy blur racing to the toilet. He'd been visiting his West End accountants and had become party to a seasonal bout of strong spirit imbibement. He babbles at great length.

He explains how hard it is for him to explain things. I can't decide whether it's the alcohol talking or the man inside struggling and stumbling to verbally reveal something of himself. Either way he reminds me of a Jehovahs Witness.

His constant bewildering flow of badinage is delivered with a zeal and righteous conviction. It's not easy to fault his arguments, simply because the argument defies any logical reasoning rationale outside of itself.

"I don't think clear statements work in this world. The world is too screwed up. Take the race issue for example, just because you may believe in equality it is a grave mistake to assume everybody else has seen the light as well.

"Things still go on which are distasteful to people who hold the middle ground and I hold the middle ground. I don't stand on a soap box and start yelling out.

"I don't see as these things matter at the moment. Let other people stand on their soap boxes and direct people like traffic. I've got the view from the middle. The grass verge between left and right."

But isn't this a cop out? A disregarding of the important and crucial political issues in the world on which he must have a view?

"No, it's a political. I'm walking where there's no path. I'm walking just where I want.

The going gets mystical: "in one view of things me, you and the photographer are all the centre of the universe, the universe revolves around us. The reason you're talking to me is because I've touched someone else's universe.

"Everything is relative to what everybody else is going through. I'm talking like Einstein. I'm extremely bad at explaining concepts like this. I'm not trying to be a one dimensional character. I'm trying to be me and all the different facets of me. Each of my songs opens up like a lotus flower and casts a thousand petals, all reaching a certain point in the scheme of things."

Cosmic.