WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 528 - Robyn Hitchcock

Episode Date: August 27, 2014

When singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock looks back at the roots of his prolific career, he sees a little Bob Dylan, a little Syd Barrett and a little Doctor Who, to name a few influences. Robyn talks with Marc about his first band The Soft Boys, his mixed feelings about reunions, the fears and compulsions that keep him going, and the elusive nature of originality. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We can wait for clean water solutions, or we can engineer access to clean water. We can acknowledge indigenous cultures, or we can learn from indigenous voices. We can demand more from the earth, or we can demand more from ourselves. At York University, we work together to create positive change for a better tomorrow. Join us at yorku.ca slash write the future. Calgary is a city built by innovators. Innovation is in the city's DNA. And it's with this pedigree that bright minds and future thinking problem solvers are tackling some of the world's greatest challenges from right here in Calgary.

From cleaner energy, safe and secure food, efficient movement of goods and people, and better health solutions, Calgary's visionaries are turning heads around the globe, across all sectors, each and every day. Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look how at calgaryeconomicdevelopment.com. Lock the gates! All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuck sticks what the fucksters what the fuckadelics i am mark maron this is wtf thank you for stopping by our guest today is uh robin hitchcock who uh is one of those guys that a lot of people know and the people that know him and love him know all about him

and love him and have all his records. He's been around a long time. My experience with him, I remember when someone, I don't even remember who turned me on to the Soft Boys record, Underwater Moonlight. I think it might have been Jay Dobis, Jonathan Richman's friend in Boston, Massachusetts. Maybe.

But I'd never heard of the Soft Boys, and I got this record and the cover. I didn't love the cover, the Soft Boys, Underwater Moonlight. And I'm not even sure when it came out, but I'm sure I got it after the fact. And I played that record to fucking death. I was like, what the hell? Who's this deep, angry dude writing these psychedelic lyrics? What is with the sound of this thing? And I love that record.

And then I grew to know that Robin Hitchcock was the sound of this thing and i love that record and then i i grew to you know know that robin hitchcock was the driver of the soft boys and then uh later robin hitchcock and the egyptians globe of frogs came out and i was like this is great globe of frogs just the lyrics are awesome it sounds like the beatles and pink floyd fucked each other i like it and then you know they did some solo stuff here and there he's done a lot of stuff and i was thrilled to talk to him robin hitchcock is a force to be reckoned with he's a hell of a songwriter and uh i was thrilled to have him in here i'm not sure he knew where he was going or what exactly it was but and he was a bit tired from the road but uh but he did he did hang out

and we did get to know each other. And we have common friends, too. Eugene Merman is a champion of the Hitchcockian. Also, Robin's got a new record out called The Man Upstairs, which is available now. And I think once you get the hang of Robin, you're going to fucking want it all. They just reissued Softboy's record. I think the first Softboy's record. I don't remember who did it, but I have it on vinyl. And, yeah. Yeah, get Underwater Moonlight, though. That's where I entered. Why not enter there? record i don't remember who did it but i have it on vinyl and uh yeah yeah get get underwater

moonlight though that's where i entered why not enter there uh i want to destroy you insanely jealous are two uh two two songs that really resonated with me at the time i listened to them of course i'm beyond that now but uh but yeah so that's coming up in a second, me and Robin chatting. On and off, I've been talking about the patent troll, Personal Audio, who came after podcasters. It was and is a frightening prospect that they claimed that they had a patent that covered some of the technology involved in podcasting. And oddly, none of us had that technology. But by utilizing or using the technology, they decided that we were infringing on their patent and that we required to license it from them. And they tried to extort money from many of us, most of us just by threatening letters,

mildly threatening letters. But OK, so whether or not you understand the full scope of what was going on there, it was basically a shakedown racket trying to get podcasters to cough up money of an undisclosed amount based on a conversation that we would have with them if we had that conversation, which I didn't. They would determine the amount, how much money it would take to protect ourselves from them again what you get how it works extortion is extortion a shakedown is a shakedown but as many of you do know or maybe not adam carolla was actually sued by personal audio

now this look this this whole situation it was it was going on for a while and it was horribly aggravating and scary. And, you know, we can finally feel some relief here. And let me just you know, I'll just try to parse it out for you. The way they're spinning it, personal audio. They said that they settled their lawsuit with Adam. OK, now they like using the word settled because it makes it sound like money was paid out. That is not true. In fact, a more accurate word would be dismissed because the lawsuit against Corolla is dead.

Personal audio also put into writing, folks, that they will not go after podcasters anymore now obviously they didn't list all podcasters but they did list you know the core group of us that was sort of you know sounding off about the issue uh me uh nerdist the earwolf podcast jay moore um joe rogan so they they put that in writing is it legally legally binding? I don't think so. So there's no reason we should really take them at their word because they haven't been honest brokers from the get-go. But for the time being, we know this. Everyone who fought back against the extortion racket brought attention to the issue of patent trolling and patent abuse, you know, and help put it on the radar. They came after regular guys like me and Adam, Joe, my friend Sam Cedar.

And we reacted as regular guys who were being, you know, shook down. You know, we we have microphones and we're going to talk about it. Now, I need you to know that Adam can't talk about this for about a month and a half because it's part of the deal. Okay. But in so doing what we did, you know, speaking out, we protected the medium of podcasting and prevented anyone from having to pay these guys anything. Okay. This is a concerted group effort on behalf of those guys and women who chose to speak up about this publicly. Adam Carolla deserves a lot of fucking credit, folks folks for putting it all on the line all right this he went to batman he fought back at

great expense to himself knowing that the alternative would be to pay personal audio a settlement which they would then use against all of us as a precedent you know to shake down all of us and they would have legal precedent to do that. And yes, he raised a lot of funds to help pay his legal bills. But the bottom line is he's still in the hole to the tune of about 200K. You know, even with all the money you gave him in support. You know, he was in, I think he went in, you know, close to like $600,000, $700,000. And he was going to fight it all the way through.

But the bottom line is they dismissed it why wouldn't he take that deal but i guess most importantly this fight isn't over thanks to the attention we all brought to this situation the eff the electronic frontier foundation has a pending review of this garbage patent that personal audio is using and the review is real and solid and could invalidate this patent forever that means they'll never be able to sue anyone with it ever again that's a big deal and it might not have happened if we didn't get loud about this in the first place okay and for now personal audio is going to go after big dogs like abc and mbc and cbs and they say they're going to leave us

you know all of us podcasters, hopefully the way we fought back against them will make the big networks realize that they shouldn't just settle with these guys, that they can fight back against these trolls and call their bluff. I still hope that this patent will be invalidated, and I still am excited that people know that this happens because it's a real thing.

And, you know, if there's any criticism about, why didn't Adam fight all the way through? Why didn't he take him to the mat? Why didn't he counter sue? I'll tell you why. He didn't have the fucking money. And some people who are involved with the broader issue of patent trolls and patent reform,

think they're like, well, this is what always happens. No, it isn't what always happens. We raised awareness of the reality of it. We all fought back. We spoke our minds and we made an impact. And for now, podcasting is protected. And the issue of patent trolling is now relevant and out in the world much more than it would have been. And hopefully ABC, NBC and CBS will just fight this guy.

And yeah, definitely the patent system needs some help. Okay, look, Robin Hitchcock, he's here. Let's talk. Calgary is an opportunity-rich city home to innovators, dreamers, disruptors, and problem solvers. The city's visionaries are turning heads around the globe across all sectors each and every day. They embody Calgary's DNA. A city that's innovative, inclusive, and creative. And they're helping put Calgary and our innovation ecosystem on the map as a place where people come to solve some of the world's greatest challenges.

Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look out at calgaryeconomicdevelopment.com. It's a night for the whole family. Be part of kids night when the toronto rock take on the colorado mammoth at a special 5 p.m start time on saturday march 9th at first ontario center in hamilton the first 5 000 fans in attendance will get a dan dawson bobblehead courtesy of backley construction punch your ticket to kids night on saturday march 9th at 5 p.m in rock city at torontorock.com. movie.

Sure. So if I want to get more coffee, you'll go to the bathroom. I think we can. Yeah, sure. I can, I can arrange for that. I can arrange to,

uh, to walk you back into my house. Okay. That's good to have that happen. I think I saw you actually. When did you guys, I was a huge soft boys fan. Is that okay?

Yeah. I mean, no, that's fine. The soft boy. I mean, right. That was a long time ago.

I know that. I know, but I, I saw you at Irving Plaza fine. The soft point. I mean, right. That was a long time ago. I know that. I know. But I saw you at Irving Plaza when you guys got back together. Oh, right. That was 2001, probably. Yeah. Yeah. That was good.

Was it? Yeah. Were you happy about it? Does it all just fade away eventually? No, I think I liked liked i think it was good i think that i think i don't know about the reunions you know the resurrections that they're kind of there's a little bit of the a bit of the undead a bit of the zombie about it uh there's something slightly unnatural about right reconvening a group of men who've been together uh in an earlier existence but so that was like but you're talking like 25 years ago

right or more oh well it god it had been 20 years since we'd been a band yeah and it's now that it's oh god i mean this is 13 years ago i just i i just felt like i thought musically it was really good yeah but i just thought psychologically it was a bit strange and it was strange to be in a group as opposed to just operating under my own name right um and having to sort of pretend that i was part of a band rather than I was the guy who was the central figure and called all the shots. Right. You know, that it was basically the Soft Boys was a brand

that I operated under. Well, how long were you guys a band, though, actually? Well, we were only a band for four, pretty much four years, you know, early 77 to early 81. And in that time, the drummer, Morris and I, were the only constant members. But Morris Windsor and Andy Metcalf, who'd been in the Soft Boys,

also comprised the bulk of Robinin hitchcock and the egyptians which lasted from 80 84 to 93 and so we kind of had uh the soft boys had a lot of aftershocks yeah we although we weren't very long together we had had a bunch of reunions and we had me and the Egyptians. And then we had, I toured with Kimberly Rue. It was, was it in my, in my band in the late nineties.

And then we reconvened as the soft boys. And then after the soft boys, I had Morris and Kimberly in my British band for a few years. So you guys all remain friends. So we, um, well, I don't know and some of us are in touch you know like i've said as i say you know we will all go to each other's funerals you will that's that's how out of politeness that's how bands operate yeah exactly so where

did you where'd you grow up how was uh because i mean you have a unique vision about everything where did that come from where did you grow up? How was, because, I mean, you have a unique vision about everything. Where did that come from? Where did you grow up? What was the environment like? The environment was Britain in the early and mid-1950s. You know, I was born in 1953. So I was born to a father who had been wounded in Normandy in 1944,

and his right leg didn't bend, so he had a sort of strange kind of slightly peg-legged gait. You could hear the money jingling in his trousers as he went up and down the stairs. You could hear his walk. Was he hit with shrapnel? He was hit when the knee was shrapnel. He was lucky in that he didn't have to have his leg amputated yeah and i was always very grateful that my father

wasn't an amputee yeah um that would have made you more morbid probably i don't think that would have been possible but i would have and i'm sure i'd have i'd have dealt with it but yeah but uh it did mean my father was what used to be called a cripple. And I think my dad used to run. You know, he'd been a quite athletic boy. But, you know, 22, he was hit for life. And he was in hospital in Newcastle for nine months after he was taken out of Normandy. His mother went to visit him and said,

Oh, I don't know. No one's going to want to dance with you, Raymond. I don't know who's going to want to marry you. So I think he was very grateful when my mother took an interest. It's so amazing that generation, because growing up in the States, but the idea that London was leveled in recent know, like in recent history is kind of profound. A lot of it was.

I think that was part of the shock of 9-11 because there's been so little warfare on American soil. I mean, you could argue, you know, obviously apart from the Civil War, you could argue that America is in a constant state of warfare. Everywhere else. But, you know, same else but yeah but you know it it seems in australia you know i've just been in australia there's lots of art deco buildings in sydney that we britain had just got to art deco in the 30s and that whole thing was was stymied by the war all the buildings stopped and a lot of buildings were demolished so our there's this whole sort of might have been

chapter that just didn't take place and yeah australia sort of shows where it might have gone right um yeah london was you know a lot of it wasn't totaled like berlin was right there were a lot of bomb sites there were a lot of um gun emacements around. You know, the cricket, we lived English style, actually opposite of Village Green with a cricket, you know, where they played cricket and stuff. And in the corner was an old gun emplacement. Oh, really? That as kids we'd sort of run into.

You know, there'd be... Were they like the slots? They were the slots, you know, and you could pretend to get people in the sights. And meanwhile, there was always some horrible kind of fetid thing in the corner, you know, and you could pretend to get people in the sights. And meanwhile, there was always some horrible kind of fetid thing in the corner, you know, some bundle of rags or newspapers or fecal matter that, you know. Someone was living there. And then they've been living there. I think they've just gone in there and used it as either a toilet or as a place to copulate.

Yeah. Both, you know. But some place to have bodily functions out of the prying eye of their neighbors and the children and the children but of course the children anyway you know there were the children and which is one of which i was uh you know were scampering around the old brickworks and gun emplacements so yeah there was a lot of the ghost of World War II was around. You know, the people who were, well, like my dad. I mean, he was in his 30s. A whole generation of people.

A whole generation of people were recovering from World War II. What did your dad end up doing? He trained as an engineer, sort of like a scientific engineer. And what was it? Well, he worked for Mercury Communications, partly to do with the post office. It was sort of like a satellite communications. And what did he end up doing for a living? Well, he did that for a while.

And then he did cartoons and paintings. And then he wrote a movie. He wrote a book which got made into a movie which made him a lot of money which was uh it's about a guy who has a penis transplant seriously called percy yeah when was that ray davis did the music for it oh really it came out in 1970 it's a sort of british it's um like me it's a minor british cult that Right. It's kind of, it's one of those, it's one of those things that's sort of seen as what used to be saucy or smutty. Right. It wasn't smutty, but because it was about sex, there was an attitude to sex, certainly in Britain in the sort of 30s, 40s and 50s. You ever heard of George Formby?

Uh-uh. Do you know Andy Preboy? Yeah. Well, Andy Preboy knows a lot of that stuff. Right. British, arcane British comedy from that era. And it was that, a whole world of, do you know about the carry-on movies? No.

It was a whole world of innuendo british classic seaside um postcards you know little drawing of a um of a tiny figure playing the piano and a man standing by wishing well with a red face going you ruddy idiot i didn't ask for a 12 inch pianist yeah and it's all that that whole world of uh you know of kind of yeah which which which has gone now because everything became much more open about sex in the 60s and 70s right around the time yeah see what it comes out yeah exactly and so you can't you can't all that stuff is now very of its time, but you can't make a movie like those movies anymore because people don't care. Oh, no, everyone's been so thoroughly fucked in the head,

nothing matters. Literally. That was the idea, yes. Yeah, sure. So, you know, although Percy wasn't exactly, it was produced by one of the companies that did that sort of stuff. Like the Peter Sowers movies? Yeah, I think Brit Eklund was in Percy, actually.

Who played the lead? A guy called Howell Bennett. Denham Elliott's in it. I don't know. It's real, especially because Ray Davis did the music. And you were already a musician at that time. I mean, if it came out in 1970, you were on your way. No, I was 17.

I was playing the guitar, but I didn't meet Ray Davis until about four or five years ago. Oh, really? Are you guys friends now? No, I just met him a couple of times. Did you bring up the fact that your dad did it? Was it a connection? He knew about it. Yeah, he was a bit sniffy about the movie. i mean the movie isn't it's not great art my mother was sniffy

about it i think she was hoping that that my dad was going to be uh you know produce some some highbrow yeah exactly you know so a piece of you know, William Faulkner or something like that, you know. And but no, no, no. We got the old penis transplant. As for his mother, the lady who visited him in hospital and said, no one's ever going to want to dance with you. I think she had a copy, but she never opened it. Right. So, but, you know, it was there. So there was my dad, because he painted and drew and wrote books, and he then went on and wrote plays and had stuff on television and things like that.

You know, the short answer to your question is I come from an arts background. And your mom, did she do it as well or no? she was the daughter of some uh industrialists some some wealthy south wales uh-huh welsh border industrialists oh really and uh so but she went to she went to university she was the fast one of the first generation of women to graduate uh-huh so they some they have a parade sometimes now these old graduands who are all just about to pop off but then in their late 80s but women were allowed I don't know

but women weren't allowed eventually they got to university in about the 20s but they weren't even acknowledged as eligible to graduate until the 40s which was my so they could do it as a hobby or yeah they could do the hobby waiting in between wait you know waiting to have children yes right and when my parents met there in the late 40s my wounded dad and my um

my sort of you know wealthy country mother and um you know it was a marriage made in cambridge yeah ah they went to cambridge they were at they met at cambridge university um but and i lived in cambridge in the late 70s and very early 80s that's where the soft boys incubated so i kind of went back up there to look for musicians in my, well, whatever it was. When did you start playing? How old were you? Well, I started playing the guitar when I was 14, but I didn't learn to tune it for the first six months. That's not important.

I used to play along to my, you're too kind. I played along to my Bob Dylan kind i i played along to my um you know bob dylan and donovan records were those were those the first thing i learned was the attitude yeah you know that you the way the fingers hit the strings and the way you felt the way you moved your show the show i didn't i didn't do in front of a mirror but i did it i i was just so pleased to have my my fingers around the guitar and then i think i realized when the record stopped that i i don't know some somewhere i realized that i had to tune it and then i got lessons from a guitar teacher who he had three of his fingers have been damaged in an industrial accident so it was an odd thing to have because they were classical but he could only get two

fingers onto the onto the you know of the um of the right hand that the plucking yeah yes so you learned to pluck first well i learned to pluck but all i really wanted to do was be bob dylan like most of my generation you know that was who you gravitated towards it wasn't towards uh i mean the beatles were too poppy at that time? What were the choices? I loved the Beatles. Well, the Beatles, you know, if you're there, whatever you grow up with as a kid is what you take for granted. So I was living in the, you know, 1963, 64,

basically kind of in this village green place. And there was up the road, it was a town, what's called a dormitory town. It's about 25 miles out of Greater London or whatever. And people could get trains from there into London in 40 minutes, you know know like a weapon of mass destruction from iraq to the center of london allegedly uh my father of limited destruction could get in to london and back at time to um you know paint or draw when he got home in the evening and uh so uh but when the beetles became successful they moved south and three of them all bought houses in this sort of rather naff Beverly Hills area. Are sort of basically people with money, but no taste.

Right. Paul McCartney wisely got a place in, you know, Cavendish, whatever it is, near somewhere nice in St. John's's Wood which would obviously last him for life but the other three with their blonde wives just went oh right I have one of them you know there you are give us a million mate done so John George and Ringo all got places in in um this place called St George's Hill which was the posh bit of ofybridge. So, you know, by the time I was 11, I knew I was just a mile down the road from the fabs. Yeah. But at that age, you just take it for granted. I never saw them or anything. Right.

But meanwhile, the soundtrack to my adolescence from Please Please Me at 10 to Abbey Road when I was 16 was the beatles always exactly you know so but i never thought i could do anything like that because i didn't have any musical ability and because pop music was um i think you know my background was quite i think you know my background was quite it was quite snobbish it was sort of highbrow you know we weren't i think it was we would sort of kind of middle class people who wouldn't have gone into pop music right you know was your mother did they like classical music or my dad liked a good tune my dad was much more mass market than my mother and

my mother's tastes i think were pretty highbrow yeah so um something like the beatles it just didn't occur to me to to you know that being a pop singer wasn't on the radar i wanted to be dr who you know i wanted to be something esoteric right um you knew that early on that you yeah i knew i wanted to be some kind of character that um and you know doctor who was mass market that was on tv as well but it's very specific but it was specific you know i want and um and then i discovered dylan and bob dylan was very he was compelling but he was also enigmatic right and you know the Beatles were much more kind of four square and obvious right I love the Beatles but but but things like Doctor

Who and Bob Dylan made a lot more sense to me as a 12 13 year old and if you look at what I've done I mean I'm yeah I obviously you know firmly on the fringe of things. Sure. And also, that seems to be ideologically and aesthetically makes sense, that Doctor Who and Bob Dylan, certainly now, as a solo artist, that seems to make a lot of sense. Oh, yeah. That was that. And then throw in a bit of P.G. Woodhouse, if you know about him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, Bertie Worcester, the sort of, you know, stammering upper class twit. So I basically cobbled myself together from a mixture of Bertie Worcester, Doctor Who and Bob Dylan.

And they were all, you know, they were all on the TV or in the radio. They weren't hard to find, but they were a little bit more specific than the Beatles. But as a songwriter, it seems that, you know, it makes sense to me, though you choose more abstract things, but, you know, in terms of Dylan's ability to turn a phrase and create an image, I mean, that must have pounded that into your head, that, you know, his songwriting capability. Oh, totally. And also he has a great ability to flip from being arcane and abstract and abstruse to being really specific and putting things in very, very simple terms.

You know, and his music that if you listen to the way the songs are put together, they're pretty simple. they're pretty simple. You know, when I learned to tune my guitar and I forsook my old teacher with the three broken fingers, I just got hold of a Bob Dylan songbook. And within 10 minutes, I could play Mr. Tambourine Man and Blowing in the Wind and Visions of Johanna because they were all on three chords. Oh, Visions of Johanna.

God damn that song. Exactly. Oh my God. The Ghost of Electricity Howls in the Bone of His Overface. Yeah, of his yeah yeah that's it right that's a gateway well what is that that's i mean that i was 13 when i heard that oh my god that pretty much tipped me over i just thought okay this is where i want to go right um in divisions of joanna yeah because because and i Yeah, because, I mean, you know, I think nearly 50 years later, why? I think Visions of Johanna manages to go in two opposite emotional directions at once or more. It's very sad, but it's also really funny and it's quite cruel and it's quite philosophical and it's all these moods and feelings are

kind of just compressed there into six minutes you know condensed right that song to me to this day you know because you know you look at a catalog like that and the fact that you and I share that song is interesting because he's got a huge catalog but for some reason that song even to me today if I listen to it it's just as powerful as any time I you to me today if i listen to it it's just as powerful as any time i you know the first time i listen to it like you sit there and it's almost like your heart and your mind is is searching for meaning in in lines that necessarily aren't going to provide that or explain themselves but they'll take you someplace every one of them like i it's

one it's not unlike uh it's all right mom only i'm only dying like i'm like it seems like all the answers are in this song. I don't know what they are. I'm not even sure what the questions are. But they're all there. Well, that was part of the attraction with Dylan and also probably a burden that he didn't really want to have to shoulder after a while. He seemed to be the man with the answers.

At least no one could quite understand and well he'd say you know no no i'm i'm uh he later said something like well you know i'm the first to put the question to you and the last to answer it but he maybe because of the nature of the questions he asked it seemed like he might have the answer okay well what is it bob you know i mean it it the thing is he had wisdom all the others you and prior to that, entertainers in popular music had been sexy and they'd been fun. And, you know, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley and the Beatles, they could all do comedy. They could act. Yeah.

And they were great singers. But you didn't go to them for enlightenment. You know, you went to them because they were sexy and you or they made you cry or they were emotional conductors but they didn't they weren't it wasn't wisdom it wasn't like dylan was like going to a rabbi or listening to a poet it was suddenly like it was another level yeah it was a different look in the eyes. There was at least, you know, there were to us at that age. And so, in a way, that's been his curse. He's had to live with seeming to be the guy who knew something.

And people have tried to, I think, almost cut him open for years. What is it? What's in there? Bob, what is it? That great documentary, the Don't Look Back documentary. Yeah. What is it? What's in there?

Bob, what is it? That great documentary, the Don't Look Back documentary. Yeah. It's amazing with him and Donovan, that discomfort and the weird people asking him questions. It just completely destroys that one reporter. He's like, you want to be my friend? Why do you want to be my friend? Do you remember that scene in that movie?

Yeah, yeah. It's just like, it's so cutting and so brutal. But I wonder how conscious he is at this point of being Bob Dylan and just work doing the job of Bob Dylan. Well, I don't know. I mean, it's up to him to define what the job of Bob Dylan is. Yeah. I think he seems to be someone who doesn't like being defined. Are you the same way probably i mean but i would if i

to say that would be to define myself wouldn't it you know it i mean there's that there's that bit in magnum force where they keep you know the second dirty harry movie and they have this line that goes through all the all through the movie you know um you're a good man briggs and a good man knows his limitations and when briggs finally explodes in the car that you know clint's put the bomb in the trunk and and uh he clint turns to the camera and says a man's gotta know his limitations briggs you know and but i don't know whether that's true. You know, I suppose there's difference between limitations and definitions. But if you're too aware of what you're capable of or how you want to be seen, I mean, it's probably better to market yourself that way.

Things are easier to sell if you know what they do. And I've never really defined what it is I do. do and i've never really defined what it is i do well i think that people that know that are probably uh in in my mind as an artist they're they're a little too conscious of selling well you know you can see why people would want to sell especially over here because there's no safety net right you know establish your brand and sell it yeah and dylan did establish a brand but he was you know he was so intense he always worked against it just likes to yeah he likes to move i was just listening to some old um uh acetates that a friend of mine got hold of of dylan from sort of 1969 70 or whatever in it it just seems like he'll do something once and as soon as he

starts to mess around with it he loses it and a lot of the original versions of things were better than the ones with overdubs and stuff he fussed over and he i think bob d Dylan's got an instinct for getting it right immediately. I think he hasn't got a great instinct for editing. And if I know, but I noticed that live he trims all the verses out of, you know, the songs. But when you've got that gift for expression, maybe you can't have that gift for editing. He's sure he's not inhibited but he i just think that the instant snapshot the first brush of you know the paint on the canvas the the first exhalation of breath the first thing that pops into your mind is likely to be the most honest and and the most difficult to recapture yes

and i've noticed that that when i've recorded demos or i've done a take or something people the engineer or the producer will say okay can you get it like you did on the first one and in the end we'll just use the first one or or that that's what i call the honesty of the unconscious that actually the first thing you say is what you really mean and then you start thinking about it hmm i don't want to be seen to say that yeah uh you know and sometimes in terms of human interaction you can't you can't say the first thing you said even if you meant it because it's too upsetting to and especially as you get older you sort of try and yeah censor you become more aware restraint and restraint and exactly you know.

Yeah, don't want to cause any trouble. Exactly, don't want to cause any trouble. But, you know, one of the things about being under 30 is that's the time to cause trouble. Yeah, fuck it. But I think Dylan still has that instinctive gift. I don't think of him as a craftsman. He's not like, say, Nick Lowe,

who Nick is very good at working on songs and honing them down. And, you know, he's still able to write great songs in under three minutes. But he's also a pop songwriter. I mean, you know, he's very conscious of pop structure. You know, he sort of, he respects it. And like, when I look at Dylan,

it seems that Dylan was literally working out this wisdom, or whatever it is, I think that a lot of Dylan happened on the page. That when he had the pen, it almost becomes like an equation. Those words become an equation. Like the geometry of innocence, flesh on the bone. Where the fuck does that come from? You're not really thinking that, well, this is going to be a great refrain, or this is going to be, it seemed like the urgency was in the words.

Yes, the urgency. I'm sure it just struck him as right. But when you write, too, like, I mean, though you, I guess people think you're a psychedelic or a surrealist thinker, but it seems that some of this stuff that you work out, and I'm only going to go back to the soft voice for my own, and then we can go, because, I mean, Globe of Frogs was another manifestation of you

that like i listened to compulsively for about a month all right yeah and because the production was so like amazing it was mind-blowing and the harmonies and the lyrics but it seemed like talking where we're talking now that if i listen underwater moonlight or the or the album before that you only did a few with the soft voice I Underwater Moonlight resonated with me because it seemed to have a lot of venom in it and I don't know if it was there but insanely jealous you know I listened to that song over and over again and there was a and then also the album before that the intensity of how you were playing there was a fucking edge to it yes you seem to mean business now was that just a younger man execute you know having that freedom to sort of push that out there and provoke i don't think it was just freedom i

think it's just part of the condition of being younger yeah i mean i was what 25 26 27 when i made those records so um same age as john lennon when he was doing your blues and, you know. Yeah, yeah. Or Dylan, I think, had actually already peaked. You know, he'd fallen off the bike at 25. But essentially you're talking about a young guy in his 20s. And at that point you're still, all your frustration, your venom, your testosterone, all that, you know, you're still all your frustration, your venom, your, um,

testosterone, all that, you know, you're aggressive. You're, you're still only, you know, the best time to recruit boys as soldiers is when they're 13,

14, you know, they've, they've reached puberty, but they're not having sex yet. And so they think they're indestructible and they're going to kill anything. You know, um,

I, so sure. I was, I was full of piss and vinegar at that stage. And when did you start, like, because obviously, like, it seems like now you're more closer to the folk music that resonated with you at 17, but it seemed like at some point

something else filled your head. You know, you put a band together. You know, you chose a style of music that was not necessarily hugely um it wasn't it was definitely not the beatles it was more like you know some i i don't know i mean a lot of people talk about sid barrett when they talk about you yeah and a lot of people talk about that type of psychedelic sound but you're also in those early records it was definitely there was more poppy to this to it how much who influenced you later i mean maybe dylan put the drive shaft in but when did you start to to realize that you know

you're gonna rock uh well i think dylan putting it really crudely dylan and and dr who and bertie was to show me what i could be right um i think sid barrett showed me how i could be it you know i wasn't a curly-haired jewish kid from minnesota i was a mother's boy from the home counties of southern england yeah um in the course of all that though i started um getting to know other musicians and also um i was listening you, gradually absorbing stuff. But it sort of kept coming back to the Beatles. I mean, I remember somebody playing the first Soft Boys EP, which is what I would now call art rock. You know, you can see little bits of Captain Beefheart and little bits of Sid Barrett in it.

And plus the stuff the other guys were listening to, you know, the Beach Boys and Steely Dan. But what we all had in common was the Beatles. I remember somebody saying, oh, I think it sounds like the Beatles really. And, you know, nobody else did. But I think the common thread, certainly every time I've recorded with that template,

whether it was with the soft boys or with Egyptians or with the Venus 3 you know the later one with the REM guys yeah and it all it's always a version of Beatle music whenever I have two guitars bass drums and harmonies what I invariably do is Beatle music and it doesn't really matter who I'm working with. I don't mean they're insignificant, but I always find people that want to make Beatle music. Statistically, about 75% of them are also into Steely Dan, which I'm not. I'm not either.

But we can then both un-listen to the same records. Well, what is it about Steely Dan that everybody likes so fucking much? I mean, I get it. You know, it's sweet music in a way, but it doesn't ever feel... It always feels like it's almost satisfying. It's never satisfying. Okay, I get the production. It's great.

I think it depends what flavor you like. I mean, do you like Tom Waits? Sure. Because I don't... I just don't... I'm not drawn to Tom Waits. I don't think he's bad or anything i just there's something about the sound of his voice that doesn't do it for me right like this

the sound of bob dylan's voice will turn people off you know i kind of and i think it's just a flavor thing some people get they just get a certain right and i think some people whatever it you know it could be like what blood group you are so you put on steely dan and it's donald fagan singing or something and just the tone of that voice it's like for your cats if you scratch their back or give them catnip they go right you know whereas if you're not if the dan doesn't resonate with you it doesn't go into your bloodstream right you just You just go, ooh, you know. To me, Steely Dan seems, my problem with him is it's airtight.

It's sterile. It's completely, well, it's crafted. It's like a nightclub in the days before the smoking ban where you couldn't open the window. And so it would just fill up with, you know, it just makes you want to go and clear your nostrils. Take a walk on the Welsh hills, you know. Yeah makes you want to go and clear your nostrils take a walk on the welsh hills you know yeah yeah listen to listen to an underproduced nick drake record or something right right what was the first sid barrett thing that you came in contact with um the first well it was the arnold lane the first um 45 which was produced by joe boyd who has coincidentally produced my new record

was the first time you worked with him? No, I've worked with him quite a lot on a number of things. So eventually we actually did this record. But it's beautifully recorded. It's recorded by the engineers John Wood, who did Buena Vista Social Club. And he did the rock people that Joe worked with in the 80s, like R.E.M. and Billy Bragg and 10,000 Maniacs. But since Buenavista Social Club,

Jerry has become highly rated as a world music. I love that as a recorder. You know, the idea of what's not world music? Where does not world music come from? World music always seems to involve African rhythms african rhythms in my mind well i think that's the idea it's like okay well if it's not from uh if if it's not done by middle class white people from world britain america it must be world music it's done by the africans right um but yeah no the record's very um simple and very uh you know it is the product of a of a 60 year old man i don't know what the

23 year old me would have thought of it they'd have been the 15 year old me would have been thrilled that i was finally you know had a record with produced by joe boyd on it but they'd probably find it disgustingly mellow you know there's nothing but it's like but that's the evolution of the artist right i mean what are you going to do i mean i mean i think that like going back to your feelings about you know reuniting the soft boys and that weirdness is that you can't you can't really go back no you can't and that's again i mean actually one of the great things about nick lowe is that he um he's embraced his age. You know, he makes records that sound like the guy he is.

He's not trying to squeeze himself into a younger person's clothes or hair or anything. And the same with Dylan. Dylan almost relishes the ravages that time have made on him. Yeah. Whereas there's people like McCartney who fight it, you know, who still want to look and sound like beetle paul well you know i suppose if you're selling out 50 000 seat stadiums people who want to hear yeah um we can work it out you know that then look there's one of them here i am you know well they're the beatles there's only two left exactly

you know so paul paul wants to keep the brand going and that involves looking that way. But but I it's on the whole better if you can if you can go with time. But I don't know. You know, you don't have to accelerate it. I'm lucky my my voice is held up yeah and um i've learned quite a lot but i'm still i don't know my stuff doesn't sound that old um i don't think so so i don't know really but it anyway we were somewhere we must have been sid barrett the first oh yeah yeah that's right i heard that uh and then piper at the gates of dawn and it was out there man like so like it would i mean when you say that the the first uh soft boy zps were were art rock now i mean did sid barrett represent some sort of idea that like holy shit you can really push it no i don't think i thought of pushing anything i i you know having gone from you know if i was if i was dr who bertie worcester and bob dylan yeah you know if i was if i was doctor who bertie wooster and bob dylan yeah you know there was

sort of uh i i suppose there was a degree of science fiction and a sense of possibility it was all about anything might happen i suppose that was the the best thing i liked about those characters and the kind of music they produced and one of the best things about the 60s and the psychedelic era and the whole social revolution if you like you know I remember the world going into color on January the 1st 1965 and and because I was a bit too young to get fucked up on drugs at the time, I was really aware of everything moving. Yeah. And, you know, modern by the end of 1968, modern life as we know it was kind of there, you know. And if you go back to 1963, it was the old days.

It was essentially, although rock and roll had happened, it was the old days yeah it was essentially although rock and roll had happened it was still like 1945 people were still dressed in that way men wore caps and men wore head scarves and by the end of the 60s they were kind of beginning to look like they do now you know whatever it was and it's quite hard to define what it was happened in that period. And the music went with it. But I started making music 10 years or releasing records 10 years later when the was the sense of progress and momentum had stopped. You know, the pendulum had swung that far and it was beginning to go back. And so by the time we did underwater moonlight, you know, the Russians had invaded Afghanistan. They'd been the Iran hostage situation here you know i would meet i'm meeting a bunch of u.s servicemen who turned up at one of our gigs in scotland and said yeah kata's a pussy man we should nuke iran you know and we were

thinking what the fuck you know it was it was real so if you think i was sounding venomous and things that it was it was a lot of paranoia around a lot you could really see that everything you'd hoped for in the 60s was not happening right i mean you know there had been a lot of progress but the mood had just changed and then the capital off john lennon was shot you know so we were really tipped into the beginning of the 80s with it i was with a sort of complete sense of despair and um did that affect you like deeply well i've always been fairly morose but i just listened to a lot of brian ferry and i just drank heavily and i probably i dare say the edge went off my music and i just started to become a bit dreamier you know i Yeah, well, I think I was always detached, but I think I became even more so.

And, but, you know, what I liked about Sid Barrett wasn't so much the sense of experiment. There was just, again, there's something in somebody's voice. Yeah. There's something in Bob Dylan's voice. Right. Up till the bike crash, and then it gradually evapor evaporated and there's things still in it there's soul and depth and timing and humor but there's some essence left him he didn't die but a little bit of him went you know barrett had something for two or three intense years and then it all

went so completely he wasn't even sid anymore he was Roger. He was a bald guy who wandered around and painted and was stalked by his fans, and he effectively got rid of himself. Did you try to find him? No, I didn't try to find him, but I knew what was going on, you know. What was it exactly? I don't know what happened to him, which again increased the the enigma, you know, and ironically, the same with Dylan.

You know, Dylan attracted all this attention and then tried to shrug his shoulders and go, oh, me, man, nothing. You know, Barrett had this phenomenal talent he was a beautiful looking guy he there was something in his voice something in the songs he sang that was um again you know it's the honesty of the unconscious yeah i've said this before but I think both of them had it. I think Captain Beefheart had it for a while. It's something that I've tried to allow. You don't pursue it. You have to allow it to happen. Something has to get out and you let it.

Well, yes, but you also exactly. But you have to also encourage it to before it can get out of you. You have to let it ferment inside you. You have to be open to these things. Right. It's like being prepared to sing your dreams. get out of you you have to let it ferment inside you you have to be open to these things right it's like being prepared to sing your dreams you know i don't know if my dreams are any more exotic than my accountant's dreams but i do know is that you know he'd just go i have a funny dream or something but it wouldn't it wouldn't it's not important to him whereas to me that's how my mind

works do you actually use your dream no i don't but i i i think it's the same mechanism that's what i think i yeah i think that yeah and again you know we don't know what it is right it's just there's some something goes on inside us some fermentation some chemical adaptations right chemical reaction of the different of us reacting to the way our lives are settling in on us every day like a i don't know like a telephone wire telegraph wire vibrating when the birds land on it or something you know there's just we're just reacting to our lives and that becomes our dreams but it also becomes our the the creations i think i just think it's probably all the same part of you and right and that's extremely important to me and so and probably because i come from an art background you know my dad was an artist and my mother

encouraged the arts you know so i was brought up to think this sort of thing was important and and i could see it in those guys particularly and that stage they all they tended to be men i mean joni mitchell was probably the first female to really unleash herself that way but um did she blow your mind no but she's very good but you know but i this is really me at a kind of certain stage when those things hit me what about bowie bowie is really good but he's he's later on bowie is a 70 he had the momentum in the 70s that dylan had in the 60s and listening to heroes um you know i think it's a work of genius up there with um piper at the gates of dawn it is it's pushing things yeah the mixture of pop music and avant-garde and it's also very visual there's an awful lot of crops up in your mind or my mind it's a great record to move into or draw yeah yeah i see a lot when i listen to heroes it's just you know it all like a you know barrett stuff i love painting or

drawing to you know he was a visual artist and i i see a lot and beefheart another artist and i know bowie paints and you know there's some like i said it's really it's very linked up to me the visual and the and the um what you hear and what's your favorite beefheart album? The most listenable one is Clear Spot, which is the one that should have been a big hit. I got all of them. I really try to fill my head with them. What's your favorite one? I like the weird old noisy ones.

I mean, I like Trout Mask Replica, and I like Safe as Milk. I just recently got into them. So I haven't plowed it, you know, into my head thoroughly. It's pretty dense stuff. Well, it is, because a lot of it, it's sort of, you know, it sneaks up on you, because some of it is just, it's pretty garagey and pretty bluesy. And then all of a sudden everything breaks apart

and you're like, where are we now? Well, he definitely had those three phases. He had the sort of bluesy garage that raikuda yeah are very testosterone um right pushing you know a little little bit druggy probably but but essentially you know white guys doing black music right but but but really forceful and then a few years later you got trout mask replica which is everything kind of um refracted through an unlikely prism and and put together pretty much using the magic band as slave labor but the result is that they produced a piece of music that no one had done before or since.

You can't rip that stuff off. You know, you and no one would want to put themselves in the situation to make it. And even if they did, they wouldn't come up with that. You couldn't do a cover of that record. Well, you could do a cover, but you couldn't do you couldn't. You couldn't do, you couldn't, if you or I took, you know, five young recruits and went and starved them and lived in a house in Encino. Right. The cops would come round now.

The guys would be tweeting and saying, get me out of here, you know. But it couldn't be, it can't be repeated, you know and then and then you got the the sort of funk phase clear spot a few years later which was delicious and enjoyable and would have been a big hit but beef heart being beef heart uh couldn't stabilize enough to sell it and i think also he already had a reputation as being something that wasn't listening it wasn't something everybody could this is not for everybody it's like some sort of desert wizard yeah you know this is this you you have to be a certain kind of person to get beef same with that don't worry about that zapper managed to be more mass market but again i i never developed a taste for him and i was i love beef heart but but you know those it's he had quite a he had those three phases and he was it seems like you do too don't you i mean like

you i mean like as a solo artist i mean you put out a record almost every year yeah i my records tend to be i always think of them as reactions to each other like a windscreen wiper going from one side to the other so you try to cancel yourself out pretty much well no no i try to achieve balance so i probably make a record with a band, you know, and basically yet another one of my Beatles records. And then I go, okay, I'll make a quiet one. So I've just done it. I did a produced sounding one last year, Love From London.

Although it wasn't with a band, but it sounds like it. Yeah. For me, it's the very very produced arranged end of my spectrum oddly enough done in a smoky bedroom in clark and well by my friend paul noble uh and then the complete opposite is the one i've just done with joe boyd which is um you know very organic and simple and no overdubs and no edits and all that kind of stuff so i imagine you know i don't know if i'll then do another my next one will be very produced sound i mean i just go back and forth well when i when when global frogs came out for some reason in my mind

that felt like uh this was a like um a big record in my mind was it a big record for you big in what way what did it sell better than the other ones do i mean i wasn't there there was sort of a some radio play involved in that one it sold more relatively but you know that probably just meant it sold another 30 40 000 copies than i normally did and um and then after a while, that just evaporated, you know, and I sell whatever I used to sell, except that now people don't buy records. I sell less of it. So you give away songs now. I mean, I went to your website to catch up.

They're taken, you know, you can download for free the 45s that you're the Phantom 45. Yeah, we do. There's an honesty box. You can pay for them if you want to. You can download them i don't know i mean i have those but i also have uh other records i'm quite prolific so i'm quite happy to give a bit of away well it seems like that's the thing you just keep working and you record as much as possible well i do because one day i won't be here to record it. And unless I can get or somebody can get a computer with a Robin Hitchcock app, which produces, you know, what I might have been doing.

And I think that's quite possible that they will come up with it. And I wouldn't feel sad if they did, because, you know, I'd love to feel I was still there in some way. But until that, you know, once I'm gone, I'm going to leave a finite body of work. But it's a big one. Well, you know, so be it. You know, if anyone wants to listen, I really would like to keep producing stuff up until and maybe beyond my exit from this world.

I just, you know, it's what I'm for. I produce these things. And I also now record quite a lot of other people's songs. I'm in late in life, late in my career, sort of becoming more of an interpreter. Half the records on the songs on my new record are covers. Who? Who have I got? Brian Ferry.

Which song? It's called To Turn You On. You know, the last Roxy album. Yeah. That song of the psychedelic To Turn You On, you know, the last Roxy album. Yeah. That song of the psychedelic furs, the ghost in you. Uh-huh. What's the other one? A Grant Lee Phillips song, Don't Look Down, off his first solo record.

He's a good guy. He's a brilliant guy and a beautiful singer. Yeah. Grant, I've got that. I've got a Doors song, The Crystal and the crystal ship oh really and oh yeah yeah and um i've got uh oh anna lisa frickdahl the norwegian chanteurs who um sings with me on the record there's a song that she co-wrote called ferries uh which i'm also singing so there's five covers and five originals and i'm i'm now just you know how do you pick those man i mean how do you pick that crystal ships oh because

i've been singing it for years and i love it i mean i pick songs because i like them yeah but i'm already thinking again if you know i like that format of doing um mixing up my songs with other peoples and seeing if i can make them work together so it doesn't there's not a big chasm between mine and and others and i can you know they're all my performances really um i mean it's this whole thing of originality the people we've been talking about d Dylan and Barrett and Beefheart, my prime influences, they were all people who did something that had never happened before,

which was one of the hallmarks of the 60s. It's much harder to produce a piece of music now that just couldn't have happened in the past. I mean, harder certainly for someone of my age and you know newer minds right will blend influences in in a way that that i can't because i just don't come from that world i couldn't make a boards of canada record or something you know i mean i could possibly make a record that sounds like cas mccombs or something but you know there's a lot of stuff that I just I'm not equipped.

And it would sound tragic, you know, as me as an old chap puffing up the hill, trying to catch up with what's already long gone, you know, chasing the train as it leaves the station. Yeah, you might as well. Well, but, you know, but it is interesting that that moment when people pick stuff, they're going for things that haven't happened before. And that's what those those guys did. They were they were original in a way. But, you know, what what it's also how you how you mix things up. You know, Bob Dylan was basically kind of mixing up T.S. Elliott with Bo Diddley.

Sure. kind of mixing up T.S. Eliot with Bo Diddley. Sure. But also, you know, T.S. Eliot himself was a magpie, a jackdaw. He was somebody who threw lots of old quotes in and then grafted new stuff around it. Everything appropriate. Yeah, all I mean is I think that in a way, I don't know how much one can originate anything.

Maybe it's just a matter of how you blend existing things together. Well, I think what we talked about before, the weird thing about being original, that moment of unconscious, that first moment. Yeah, yeah. That's the one. So, you know, that's the original. Well, there's the point when the original thought occurs. Yeah. Maybe it's just the style.

Well, their style you have to hold on to after a certain point because you do have a certain you have people that like you. You have a fan base and you have a point of view and you have a sound. And, you know, it would be a bold move, as you said, to huff up the hill and change it all around. I mean, if this is, you know know this is the world you've created you know oh yeah no i wouldn't i mean i think you need to just sort of let a bit of fresh water in sometimes otherwise it you can see what happens when people just churn around going around the same old stuff they refine it but they become sterile you know because they're basically working on things they've been working on forever and you you just need to let some air and water into it.

The writing is essential to that. I mean, if the lyrics at the core of it, which is your lyrics are great and always evolving and always interesting. So, I mean, if you keep writing those things down, you keep moving, you keep growing. Well, I keep writing because I keep living. It's a reaction. moving you keep growing well i keep writing because i keep living but how does more reaction as a morbid person as a as a poet and and and a former somewhat uh i don't know if anger is the

right word but i mean what part is as you get older does mortality play in your thinking other than i gotta leave some stuff i i think it's the part it's always played actually i gotta leave some stuff i know i'm not going to be here very long um and i suppose there's a bit less time to drum your fingers a bit less time to you know we just need to idle we We're built to, we're restless, but we're also designed to be unconscious and inert for about 30% of our lives. I think how long we have to spend just, you know, you go crazy if you don't sleep. So we need to have, lining up paperclips. Things that appear to not be getting you anywhere are in some way doing that.

And you think, God, I'd just like to cut through all this dead time. If I didn't sleep, I could write another 400 songs, you know. But unfortunately, it's not like that. We don't really know. We don't know who we are yet, and we don't know what we're doing. You know, we have not yet got into the bank vault that has our instructions that explain why we're here. We're still wandering around with just, you know, we've got a couple of old crumpled up Post-its notes in the pockets. I think they said, you know, we just do not know.

We're still trying to figure it out what's sort of funny how dylan in these last records you know certainly when time out of mind came out you definitely got the feeling just from i think lenoir produced that i think that that you you got the idea of a guy you know sort of you know the the something was dimming something got simple something became more stripped down with him later in life. Do you find that happening to you? Are your lyrics changing? Are they becoming more reflective and simpler?

Oh, I wish. I think things are actually, the longer I live, the more complicated things seem. the more complicated things seem. I am maybe writing stuff that is, or I'm trying to, but I don't know how much control I have over this. So I've got, yeah, I mean, I've got some new songs people say are pretty direct, but my stuff goes in spirals you know i mean not only am i doing the windscreen wiper in terms of style in terms of this is a full record and this is an

empty record but the other one is being a kind of uh they go from being kind of rather daft and inane to being rather morose. And then they go quite, they get sort of poignant. And then they cross the date line and they become silly. And I just know that it's not a mood swing, but it's a mood cycle. Yeah. So my songs just spiral around from sort of being a bit jolly and inane to being just rather rather bleak

or morose or whatever you know that's that's that's the way that's the way it is i think that's more honest than trying to get it all in one song you might as well just be uh you know straightforward with uh you know the feelings of of life in general you know that like some days are better than others and then things get dark yeah and things get oh well that's sweet and i'm gonna have a tear here and then back to the beginning but you never i mean you you don't know what you're gonna do do you so it's like you know someone came up to you and said what are you gonna say at 3 45 tomorrow afternoon you say well am i giving a speech and you know no you, I just wonder what you might say. Well, that depends what's been happening.

But, you know, you must have this as well as an artist, as a creative individual, that you live in hope that you're going to produce something, that you're going to get something great, you're going to catch the big fish. Well, sometimes it's just for me, like if I perform, if I do stand-up, I know the thing that's never going to happen again is the thing i'm looking for

that you know that moment that you were talking about before where where something just comes together on stage it's different with music because i think you have a better shot at at recreating a moment especially if it's attached to music but if if something happens improvisationally on a stage that never happened before and that probably i could not recreate sadly those are the moments that i live for well that's understood that's good to know i mean i don't think you can recreate it you you can record it yeah so if you happen to be someone's recording your act you know then they'll say okay this is the moment he came up with you know they listen to this but um but to be in that room oh yeah arguably you can't you can't recreate it but it's still worth doing oh absolutely yeah i mean that's what that's what in that moment that's what it feels

the most alive yeah because it's something you had not anticipated. Exactly. But what you can do is you can create the conditions in which it's most likely to happen. That's right. You know, it's like trying to create a situation in which lightning will strike. Yeah. And then you just hope for it. You hope for it. You can cover yourself in gasoline and run naked out into the lightning and say, take me, take me.

You want to play a song? I can certainly try. Okay. Are you in town for a while? No, I have to go tomorrow. Where to? Just going up to,

well, I'm going up to Seattle. Oh yeah. And, uh, uh, do you know Eugene Merman? Yeah.

Um, Eugene's just done a... Talking of recording live comedy, he's just done three nights at this place I'm going to play, the Columbia Theatre. Oh, really? I've never been there before. I play the Neptune up there. Oh, I know the Neptune.

Yeah, I played that last year. Yeah. That's a good venue. Yeah. Yeah, Huge and I, I know Huge. He's been on the show a few times. Oh, has he? We have the same manager.

Do you? Olivia Wingate. She's British. Oh, I think I might have met her. Probably. Eugene and I have had some mammoth grooves. Oh, yeah. Mmm.

Do you smoke? Well, I only smoke when I drink, but I think I stopped everything for I remember I hadn't had a cigarette or a drink since Christmas and then I ran across Eugene

in February well I knew it was coming but you know I thought well I'm going to have six weeks off because I'm going to see Eugene in early February blow it all out. Yeah, no, we had some major grooves. Major grooves. You got a heart Full of soul

And a mind Beyond control The mind beyond control And the way you look down Leaves to the sea To the sea You got a dark Look in your eyes You don't ever compromise And the way that you feel Is turning your soul into steel

You got trouble in your blood And a world in your eyes. But you don't know what you do to me no more. You got a well Constructed shell Deep inside You're deep in hell. And you can't be satisfied. God knows how much you just try You got trouble in your blood

and your road is full of mud and you can't be satisfied And you can't be satisfied You don't know what you do to me no more Trouble in your blood goes on Trouble in your blood which is on the new one. Great.

Thank you. That sounded great. Thanks so much for playing it. Okay, great. Thanks a lot, man. Thanks for talking to me. It's a pleasure. All right, that's it.

That sounded great. He's great. He's a singular talent, that that guy and i'm glad robin hitchcock stopped by go to wtfpod.com for all your wtf pod needs for you know you can uh you can look at the episode guide and for god's sakes get the app if you're new to the thing get the free app and upgrade to premium and you can stream like 500 so on however many episodes as you know the most recent 50, always free. So everything's free for six months.

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It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com.