WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 654 - Elvis Costello

Episode Date: November 12, 2015

Fresh off writing his memoir and primed by a high octane espresso from Marc’s kitchen, Elvis Costello is ready to dive into his past and connect the dots on his prolific career. Elvis talks with Marc about forming The Attractions, producing for The Specials, working with Nick Lowe, collaborating with Burt Bacharach, and writing dozens of indelible hit songs. 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.

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Lock the gate! All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters what the fucking ears what's going on i'm mark maron this is wtf this is my podcast welcome i want a special shout out because occasionally you know i say hello to people on their bikes or in their cubicles or on the treadmill or at the gym or cleaning up or painting, or perhaps you're, uh, you're, uh, finishing that sculpture or maybe, maybe you're, you're, you're just, uh, putting the, uh, the final touches on that bunker, stocking up those shelves with canned goods and jerky. I don't know. I don't necessarily think that's my audience, but it's possible. possible but somebody said how about those of us who are working in the lab well how are you welcome to

the show those of you who are busy at work in the lab doing things with microscopes or vials i see smoking blue liquid and test tubes. Perhaps dissecting things. Maybe just moving highly dangerous things from one place to another. Wearing a suit of some kind. Welcome to you. I'm glad you have headsets in that hazmat suit. Welcome. Welcome, military people.

Yesterday was Veterans Day. I got a few emails emails some tweets from uh from uh people in the military saying thank you well thank you a lot of nice feedback for the lauren michaels episode some of you were saying well what do you what happens now man you got obama you got keith you got lauren michaels in in one year what happens happens now, man? Well, I'll tell you what happens. I keep doing the show. I've got Elvis Costello on the show today. There's a lot of people that I admire and respect, and I'm curious about their work, who they are. I don't feel like I'm running out of people. So we keep doing the show. Okay? Did I mention Elvis Costello? I did. Elvis Costello. So anyways, a little squirrely.

I'll be honest with you. Driving around in my car, and I'm feeling relaxed because I enjoy driving. But okay, I'm going to cop to it. I'm thinking like maybe a little weed would be nice. How about a little weed? I used to smoke weed every morning. I used to carry around a little one-hitter wooden pipe back before vapes and prescribed pot. I used to have a little wooden box with a sliding top and a little wooden pipe that only fit one hit or so in there.

And I'd tuck into phone booths. or so in there and i tuck into phone booths that's the last time i smoked weed is where you can still walk down the street and tuck into phone booths to load up your little one hit pipe and do a a little a little pull a little hit so i'm driving around thinking i made a little weed and when you're a sober person you're like shit man i shouldn't be thinking about weed where's that coming from i better get to a secret society, get together and get straight with my program. But I couldn't figure it out, man. I was feeling pretty good. Yeah, I'm still thinking about smoking weed.

And then I put it together. This is what happened. I know why I wanted to smoke some weed. I know what reawakened that urge in my mind and in my heart. Because, you know, weed's pretty good. So here's what happened. I got a new car, right? I got that Camry, the hybrid Camry. Comes with Sirius Radio, which was on trial basis.

Then my buddy Dean Del Rey goes, oh, you listen to Grateful Dead channel? Now, I don't know, some of you know this about me, but I got a deadhead in me. I wear patchouli to this day, not because of the Grateful Dead, but because a witchy woman that I've dated many years ago turned me on to the patchouli and I've worn it ever since. Been wearing patchouli about 20 years, so it's not necessarily associated with the hippie thing. But I've been listening to the goddamn Grateful Dead channel on Sirius Radio almost nonstop every time I'm in the car. So of course I want to smoke weed.

Wow. It wasn't an immediate trigger. It took about two weeks of listening to the same 14 songs in many different live versions over many different eras for me to start getting squirrely around the weed. I blame Sirius.

I blame the Grateful Dead station for my relapse-y driven mind around the weed. I got a handle on it, though. I do like listening to Grateful Dead sometimes, and I'm going to admit that.

That's a secret between us. And I was reading Elvis Costello's book. He enjoys Grateful Dead, too. I wish I would have got more time with him, but I was tight on the time. I was tight on the time with that one. I got another thing I want to tell you but i'm a little i'm nervous about talking about it because uh it's it but you asked for it and i'll tell you about it

let me catch you up let me catch you up on some stuff there's been a few people that have been thinking like well marin's not as candid as he used to be, or he's not talking about his life, or he's gotten too big. I don't know what you think I'm doing. I don't know what life you think I have. You know, I wake up. I've been interviewing people a lot. And then I go right, or I go to Whole Foods and I get aggravated. I go to Trader Joe's and I get aggravated.

Maybe you're wondering why I'm still aggravated. I don't fucking know, man. Things are good, but are they great? Yeah, they're pretty great. Is it a day-to-day struggle for me to keep my shit together mentally and emotionally? Yes. Am I still a little emotionally fucked up? Yes, I am. Is that what you want to hear? Will this make you feel better? Am I seething with anger for no reason and no place to put it? A lot of times. Would meditation help that? Maybe. I haven't tried it yet.

Have not tried it yet. Why am I holding out? Good question. Maybe because I'm attached to my discomfort. Is that what you want to hear? But also, I know there's some things going on with me. Okay, I'll be honest with you i've been a little squirrely doing a lot of sets at the comedy store uh because that's what i do i'm a stand-up comic and um i i lost my shit not on stage i lost my shit it's

been a long time since i lost my shit it's been a long time since i felt the heat of rage gurgle up from my stomach up through my chest into my arms and my eyes just go fucking red with fire intensity and i can't i feel my whole body gets enveloped in something that needs resolution what happened was a guy i know hangs around the store, comic, haven't seen him in a while. He was around a lot. I don't need to mention names because I don't want to. But I hadn't seen him, and I was walking out of the original room

into the back hallway. He walked by me. I go, hey, what's up? And he just ices me, puts his hand up. He goes, eh. And I'm like, what? And he just kind of walks by. I'm like, what's the matter man he goes

and and i'm just like i'm like what the fuck and i just walked up to him i said what is your fucking problem what's going on he's like and i'm like what are you fucking doing he's like and i'm like what the fuck is your problem man it's like and i go i don't get what you're doing i don't get it you got a problem let's talk about it he goes no why don't you just why don't you just go back up the hall i didn't ask to talk to you i said don't you fucking tell me where to walk or what to do bitch i said that in a louder tone so now let me set the scene with you there are other comics in the hallway and there was a woman this woman molly an agent from uh i don't know icm who i talked to earlier in a very nice charming tone and she thought we were just kidding until she realized oh no marin's fucking

losing it and i don't even know her so she scrambles off and he says why don't you scroll back through your twitter feed and find out and i'm like what the fuck are you talking about what are you talking about and he says you couldn't you couldn't just leave it you couldn't just leave it you had to show that you had more power than me you just said and i'm like i do not know what the fuck you're talking about i don't know i didn't know it was you or whatever and i'm just and i'm screaming he's like do you think this looks good you're yelling at a young comic and i'm like i don't give a fuck what the fuck is your problem why you treat me like a fucking asshole and he goes to walk off and i said um let me see if I can be honest with you

because some of you feel like you're not getting honesty from me. As he walked off, leaving me in a rage with no resolution, I said, you're a fucking cunt and you're not funny. And I walked back down the hall. And everyone in the hallway was like, don't don't look in his eyes like oh shit mommy and daddy just lost it just don't look in his you know like and i felt the rage kind of easing and and then it sort of dissipated but like i felt bad because i didn't want to lose my shit but i also thought i was being you know provoked and he's treating me

like an asshole and i lost my shit and i had no recollection of what the hell he was talking about but i felt shitty because i don't want to lose my shit like that then i go back to talk to you like i was going back into the original room to do my set and i see that woman molly and i'm like hey what's going on yeah that got a little out of hand. And she's looking at me like, I don't know you and you're scary. And I'm like, oh my God, I know that face. I've seen that face. But here's the fucked up thing about rage is that you're in it and there's people around.

And what does that look like? How fucking like crazy and scary is that shit? And I felt fucking embarrassed because like, you know, now i'm a crazy man it was just embarrassing and that you know and that's what happens when you build it up you don't meditate you drink too much coffee you hold your feelings in whatever the fuck it is it happened i felt bad about it and then you know i did my set and i said look man you know i'm sorry i don't remember what you're talking about he goes okay I believe you and you know I'm sorry too it got out of hand I'm like

I'm sorry all right I walked away it was like a very reluctant but genuine apology and then I went back home and I looked on my Twitter feed and you know somebody had said you know something he was added in this request someone asked me to have him on the show and i said eh like i did know what what i was doing and i was being a dick but i didn't really think it would like cause that much trouble i should just get off twitter altogether because like i'm i'm no different i'm the same way if somebody says something dismissive or shitty to me you know i i get fucking worked up and you know this guy knows me and i know him and i said a shitty thing and i felt shitty about it and he you know he was right but nonetheless

there's a little personal story about mark losing his shit uh in um in this great and prosperous time where everything should be going his way. Busy, drained, working hard, overwhelmed. Shit builds up. I lose my mind on some dude. We made up, but it's a little clouded by the fact that I was a dick. And I guess I'm just wanting to tell you guys I'm still capable of that. And I'm sorry.

So, that being said, we have Elvis Costello on the show today. And I read a little bit of his new book, which is Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink. It's out now. It's great. And I was excited to talk to him, but nervous because when I got to talk to people that have done a lot of work, you know, it's like, how are we going to get it in? Well, he was running a little late. And he got here and we had literally an hour. He got here.

He came with a guy I know, Eddie Gordetsky, comedy writer, and another guy. And they come in and I'm like, you need water? You need tea you know i always have tea on hand for my british friends and then he sees my espresso machine and sitting on the uh on the counter he goes what's that and i go i can make you an espresso he said yeah yeah yeah so i make him a double shot of espresso which eats into the hour he shoots it back like a goddamn shot of jameson's and we come out here and he just right out of the gate we're fucking going we're we're up and running man so this is a very packed and

engaged hour with the maestro that is uh that is elvis costello and i would like to mention that you know we i talked with elvis this actually took place a couple weeks ago. And we talked about blues legend, New Orleans artist, Alan Toussaint, who passed away this week. R.I.P. And I thought I should mention that because it had not happened when I talked to Elvis. So this is my conversation with Elvis Custard. and we deliver that too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly.

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how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Stella. Well, what do you think? Well, Peter Green plays big in your childhood, right? Yeah, but you know, I didn't even even register until he was in Fleetwood Mac.

I didn't know anything about it. I'm a little bit too young for the blues boom. Right, yeah, yeah. I was a kid, and where we lived was, you know, across the bridge from the Station Hotel. Right. We lived just 150 yards from the Thames and uh it was all happening around there right you know if i'd just been like a teenager i would have had a ball because it was you know over the bridge was the station hotel where the stone started sure there was a dirty old van that

used to be parked in the next street yeah that i never did find out because you never see them in the hours of daylight but they said it was thebirds, or it just could have been their road crew. Right. But as kids, we said, the Yardbirds live in the next street. And, you know, this van would have I Love Jeff or I Love Eric. I don't know whether...

Painted on there? Written in the dust. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Written in the dust or a bit of lipstick or something. Because they were just breaking out of blues into being a pop group. Yeah, yeah. And there was Eel Pie Island

that's just around the bend in the river. Yeah. So there's this hotbed of, you know, sort of blues into being a pop group yeah yeah and there was ill pie island that's just around the bend in the river yeah so this is a hotbed of you know sort of blues into psychedelic music going on all around me and i'm just you know i was 10 and 64 so you're just starting to see the hippies going and the long hair is going like that looks interesting yeah but i know and i was even like this is even earlier it's like 65 66 so people are only just getting long hair right right and sort of long hair like the rolling stars not long hair like you know woodstock you know well it's sort of interesting though because i read i've read about 170 pages yeah i'm in i'm in you're in you're not cutting back and i think it's great unless something happens at page 200 and it just

falls to shit i think it's a great book thank you yeah i figured I'd hook him in early and get him in. And as you can tell, I had no intention of going, I was born, I did this, my drug hell, my conversion. No,

you go back and forth. It's interesting. I didn't, because you can read the other stuff, all the, you know, I wrote 60,000 words of liner notes. Yeah,

of liner notes. Of liner notes, yeah. For various reissues. Is that another book? It's like episodic, kind of telling of how we made the record. So this that another book it's like episodic yeah and a telling of how we made the record so this is more like how how i heard music the way i did because i traced

it back to to the seeing my dad when i was a little lad sure i was well i think what was interesting is you're saying that you missed that that first wave the british blues boom but because you grew up when you grew up you sort of have access to your father's music yeah and then you know if you want to go back to the blues you can but the music that was happening i was very surprised to see you know what was influencing you well it was you know it's my parents met in a record shop i mean that's you know if you're your mom worked there yeah she she but this i'm talking about like 19 you know 49 50 my mother worked in a record shop from 1943 she left school at 14 that's the first job she got

it's the only job she knew of course you had to learn the catalogue inside out then you had to be able

to recommend which is the version of this song was it classical or jazz popular songs of the day

and they did have to learn even a shop girl had to know they used to send her up to the philharmonic hall and you had to

learn about classical music so she knew that and she just had an interest in dance band music, which was the pop music of the day, you know, through the late 40s and jazz. And my dad was among the musicians coming in, trying to play this crazy new music out of America, which was bebop. Right. You know, my dad, you know, has to his name that he was birkenhead that's the little town opposite liverpool birkenhead's leading and probably only bebop trumpet player you know there wasn't like a big jazz scene but you grew up with a musician father yeah and you knew that as you got older you knew

the pitfalls of that well definitely and and uh but do you find, have you somehow broken the mold? Do you feel like it? Well, not in certain ways, no. I mean, you know, my dad was, he quickly found like a lot of jazz musicians that he could make. He happened to have a talent to be able to sing. Yeah. So, you know, he wasn't, he tried to go to London. Yeah. You know, with a cat under his arm like Dick Whittington, you know. And my mother got a job.

Actually, my mother did better than my dad. My mother got a job in Selfridge's department store, big, you know, really fancy department store, and sold records there. My dad sort of struggled to get into jazz, so he took a job with a dance band, just playing in the section. So that's how he ended up with,

what was the name of that guy? Joe Loss Orchestra. Yeah, and then they discovered he could sing, and then they pushed him forward, here, I'll give you a couple of numbers as a vocalist and next thing he was appearing on the you know annual polls of vocalists and he got headhunted by the one of the top bands of the day and they were a band like based on you know glenn miller that's the kind of but did he ever feel like a regret that he didn't pursue the i talked about it with him when he was a lot older you know and

because he knew all the names of all these great jazz musicians, the English ones, some of whom became world famous. And, you know, they were his sort of pals when he first came to London. But, you know, he had a great, he had a really great career as a singer on the radio. He didn't record very much, so I don't have a lot of examples of him singing. He sang on the radio every week. And the way radio was set up in england then was very different than america you know we didn't have 12 you know 12 or 24 hours of pop continuous pop radio and lots of different stations with different call signs we just had the bbc right and they had all these

funny regulations funny agreements that had been made between the musicians union and the performing they could only play five hours of music a day that's all because they had live programming because the rest of it had to be live to keep the musicians in work. Right. Of which, of course, my dad benefited from that. And so the BBC had a lot of BBC orchestra, BBC this, BBC that. But they didn't record it. No, it went out live.

Right. And it was just gone. Yeah, yeah. So they were sort of like, acted like a filter. Right. And of course the groups, you know, of the day, the recording artists, were also obliged to go onto those shows and play live performances of the hits. That's how they got exposure, you know of the day the the recording artists were also obliged to go on to those shows and play live performances of the hits how they got exposure you know right yeah so when i was a you know young lad and i'd be off school i'd go with my dad yeah that was the thrill you know

because i thought was going you know it's like take it today yeah yeah take your kid to work day um and you're in show business it was show yeah well i've been to the dance hall with them on the right and seeing how it worked. Then to get to go to the broadcast, the real hook for me to go there, as much as I'd like to see my dad work, was that there'd be a group of the day on who were more the music that I actually wanted to listen to. Who'd you see? Mersey Beats, the Hollies. Oh, you saw the Hollies. Yeah, I mean, I saw the Hollies come in.

I mean, the guys who were in the band with my dad was about 37 then. Sure. It was all timey in a way. Some of the men in the band were maybe as much as 50. Yeah, yeah. But they all seemed like, you know, old, when you're 10, you can't tell how old they've been.

And then suddenly these scruffy guys come in, carrying their own equipment. And I've written in the book, like, I really remember Tony Hicks, the guitar player. He just had a sweater on. He didn't have a jacket on with a hole in the elbow yeah i don't know why it's stuck in my head all these years because i just went oh he's like a kid like me you know and it was like a thing where just the light went on it could be i could be like that you know because i think he was only 18 how much when you're writing the book how much did you learn about yourself in the process of digging out like because like for me to see that you know that you were compulsively playing neil young music

at the beginning i mean did is that something you've always carried with you and talked about or did you realize things about yourself the fact that you were excited to see little feet i i found yeah not jarring but just sort of like really well it's not really what the people you know people get you a little if they just know you a little bit. Right. Then they just know that one type of music you play. They don't ever think about what other music you might know or like. Well, no, I can see it. I mean, I can see, like, it seems to me that, you know, you mentioned Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Neil Young, Little Feet.

And then you mentioned some country music. I mean, it all seems to inform what you ended up doing your entire life. Van Morrison. It's just the way you hear it. I just think some of it, some of the music i was in the house when i was just a little kid that's playing your parents are choosing the that's why i never heard rock and roll because my parents were tuned into they were tuned into frank sinatra and bebop but they didn't strike me as conservative they weren't conservative just wasn't interesting to them i didn't think it was

bad music right this was the other music they were more concerned. And then my dad was obliged to learn whatever was in the hip parade, whether it was It's Not Unusual by Tom Jones or Like a Rolling Stone. I mean, really, I know it's hard to imagine that they process these songs through these swing bands. Did you ever cover It's Not Unusual? I never did. It just struck me. What's New Pussycat would be more my speed, I think.

So all the way through the 60s, I was hearing music two ways. I'm hearing it on the radio like all my friends, and I'm hearing it in the front room, my dad learning it off these same records, many of them A-labels, advance releases. Would you have heard Burt Bacharach then? Yeah, oh, definitely, yeah.

In your parents' collection? No, no, no, that would be something my dad would have brought home to learn. I mean, the songs that, I don't know who, would have brought home to learn. I mean, the songs, I don't know who, sung by who, Billy Jay Kramer, you know,

singing Trains and Boats and Planes, you know. Yeah. Of course, all those songs were hits maybe once or twice over because we get the English version and then we get

the American original come out. Sure. That's why all that music went in so deep because we had English beat groups, as they were called, which were sort of

the second generation rock and roll band, English ones. The Beatles they were called, which were sort of the second-generation rock and roll band, English ones. The Beatles, you know, they got hold of Chuck Berry songs and Miracle songs. But if you were a 10-year-old Beatles fan, you thought they wrote those songs. I didn't, until I checked the credits,

I didn't know who wrote them. I just knew they wrote songs. I thought they wrote everything, you know. But it seems to me that when, not unlike, I guess, a lot of people, that when you heard the Beatles, you knew that something, you know, was magical going on well it hit me that was the that was the first record the first record i ever asked my dad for from the ones he would bring home to learn right to sing on the radio he was learning please please me in the front room in 60 and what was it was it just i don't know i think

it was the harmony i think it was the harmony i think it was the vocal harmony the way you know it's a it's a peculiar sort of little vocal trick where there's just one note being stated all the time and and it just it just did something to me and uh i suppose then you you discover that you have certain dispositions and yeah you don't you know at 10 you don't analyze any of that stuff i don't know the names for music right musical terms and you spent a lot of you spend time in the book and it seems to be recurring through the book about the death of a friend of yours when you were a kid. Well, that was a lot later on. You know, that was what really...

How old were you? 17. And you saw that happen? Yeah. What happened? You know, we were just in a school annex, 300 yards, and he was just jokingly saying, give us a lift to one of the teachers.

He ran out on the road. It was the sort of thing that you wouldn't expect to happen to a 17-year-old. He just didn't see the car. And, you know, it was very shocking to one of the teachers ran out in the road it was sort of thing that you wouldn't expect to happen to a 17 year old he just didn't see the car and you know it was very shocking to all of us and you know i think now when i look at it um he was a you know a good friend and he was a photographer as well and he you know he took there's a picture in the book that he took of his in the class and i'm in the middle of this bunch of school boys playing the guitar and you know he he was sort of um you know, he was always getting at me, you've got to sing Working Class Hero.

And I said, I can't sing that. It's like, I'm not working class. My family came from working class. So this is like 69, 70, 71? It's 71. Yeah. And he was on at me about singing that song. And he was like, it's really good because it says fucking in it.

Yeah, yeah. And he'd like that, you know. Yeah. And he would get up and sing it in front of people and horrify them. Right. And I'd learned it, but, I mean, I never felt convinced in singing it. I said, John Lennon, he wasn't really working class either. He was like, come, sort of like, I suppose the definitions are all different in England.

Yeah. I mean, nobody really had a very different kind of life. And then, you know, after he died, I think I sort of, it just woke me up to the fact that you should do the thing you really love most of all, you know.

So you felt his... Because life was a little bit, you know, more fragile than you think because when you're 17 you think you're immortal. Yeah. And just to see that happen

in front of you. It was a really, really, and, you know, it was only very recently his sister got back in touch with me and gave me the picture that's in the book. And she had heard that I was working on a book. And that was really beautiful because, you know, she gave me this picture

and I had no memory that he'd taken it. I remember that he took photographs, but I never remembered that he took a picture of me. And it just, you know, it was a nice connection to the way I was thinking about it. And you hadn't seen her in 30, 40 years? No, I still haven't seen her. She just sent her? We corresponded with one another, yeah. It was his only sister?

You know, I don't even, you know, at that age, you don't talk about your families very much. You just run into people at school, yeah. Well, I think we didn't talk about our feelings and all that sort of stuff. It just wasn't what you did. Maybe we're English, you know. We don't really do that sort of thing.

And, you know, he was like me. I he was anglo-irish you know so there's a little bit of a different sort of combination cocktail of emotions and and do you do you think that in retrospect outside of just learning the existential realities of life is short that the the grief of that or the shock of that sort of stayed with you no no i i think it just i thought i'm not going to go to college and learn to do something i don't really want to do the grief of that or the shock of that sort of stayed with you? No, no. I think it just, I thought, I'm not going to go to college and learn to do something I don't really want to do. I'm going to, you know. Yeah.

My dad was a musician. There'd been a guitar in the corner of my room since I was nine. What kind? Spanish guitar. My parents and I went. Nylon string? It was originally, and then I fucked it up by putting steel strings on it.

And when I was about, I don't know, whatever year, what, 19, I was 14. Yeah. You know, Man of the World came out with Fleetwood Mac. Yeah. The real Fleetwood Mac. Oh, my God. And that was this, you know, this, you mentioned a while ago Peter Green.

Yeah. And Peter Green was somebody that I saw him once in our local record shop he was like this hippie Jesus you know he had this amazing look with a rugby shirt

and this long hair and he sang in this really soulful way and I didn't know until later that he played in a legit blues band you know

playing I just knew these records that suddenly hit and it was like he'd got hold of something from the blues and really made

some original I guess we'd call it rock music now it's heavy though nobody really called it rock music then I remember it was sort of like

progressive I think there's something about the tone of his voice though right yeah and it was really you know he sang what I later realized was a little

Willie John song I Need Your Love So Bad that was the one that's the only guitar solo I've ever learned how to play and I never could play it well

that was from like one of the first two of the Fleetwood Mac albums there's only like three and that was after That's the only guitar solo I've ever learned how to play. And I never could play it well. That was from one of the first two of the Fleetwood Mac albums. There's only like three. And that was after I've heard the song Man of the World. And I suppose it appealed to a romantic 14-year-old. And let me tell you about my life. They say I'm a man of the world. It was a totally improbable song. Yeah.

And somebody at my school, an older kid, I think, had the chord changes written out in chord symbols. Yeah. And I was so obsessed with this song that I sat down and took my guitar out, which I'd never bothered with, never learned to play one chord on, and taught myself to play that one song. At 17 or how old?

14. 14. Yeah. Well, I think the power of Peter Green's voice was, it's almost heartbreaking somehow yeah and he's still one of my very

favorite singers I mean very underrated yeah and he just wrote the most original almost like another version

of rock music that never really got picked up by anybody did you ever meet him no I didn't ever meet him to talk to

because he's still around yeah he's I saw a picture of him recently looking well because he had a period where he was not well. And that's when I saw him. I mean, he would appear standing kind of like rather an apparition and not looking very well.

Right. And that was kind of heartbreaking, because I'd seen him this one time looking really heroic. Yeah. And then just moved to pick up the guitar just because of what he played. Because of Peter. I love hearing that. And then I saw him later, you know, just standing in the street looking kind of almost like he was in a trance and not looking in very good shape at all.

And I think he had some problems that they eventually, you know. There's a BBC documentary called Man of the World. Yeah. About his sort of guy finding him. Yeah. And so I think it was one of those things of people misdiagnosing him and having him on the wrong medications. You know that I...

People were quick to say, oh, it was excessive, and it may have been something, but I don't know anything about that, so I can't say what the truth is. I heard, someone told me, and I don't know if it's true, that B.B. King said that Peter Green was the only guitar player that ever made him cry. Well, that's, you know, that's...

That's great. You know, it's, for me, all the other, you know, guys who are sort of, you know, English blues guitar players, I, they are all, there's many admirable musicians among them, but the only one that really moves me, and I, you know, I've ever really spent any time listening to... Is Peter? Is Peter Green.

I'm with you on that. Yeah, yeah. And he actually was the guy that inspired you to play guitar. Yeah, even though I never wanted to play solo lines. I mean, that was the other thing. It was like he was a songwriter. Yeah. And he had this sort of strange, fatalistic, romantic sound,

which appealed to me at that age. And I still love the song. And it has a little suspension in it and these little tricks. So once I'd learned all the chords, I mean, there might be nine chords in that song, far more than you would ever have to learn from the average campfire song. Sure, or a blues song even.

Yeah, I never ever wanted to play blues in that way. Yeah. So I then found I could tear through all these songs which up until then had just been on records. Like I could play Beatles songs. Oh, these are actually a lot simpler than I thought. You know, they seem beyond me because when you're a kid, I think

you just accept everything all at once. You don't pick it apart. So you're self-taught by chord charts? Yeah, and then I bought these songbooks, which had simplified changes because they were cheaper. And they just were beginner's books. And then my ear told me the chords were wrong. And then I'd sneak

into the shop and look at where the diminished chords were and all these major sevenths and you know learned gradually about harmony and also you learned how to play lead somewhere no i never did really you can play lead i just put my fingers anywhere and hope for the rest i mean no it's true so you're always just a melody i really yeah in my head i can hear complicated harmony yeah and i still have deliberately not learned the the guitar and i never played scales yeah or certainly never blue scales i just play instinctively what i hear and i think it's good having like a complicated head for the accompanying harmony but there are some leads on your records yeah but they're all just sort of luck. My old musical partner

from Liverpool when I was 17 said every solo I launched into, I'd say I had a rabbit's foot in my jacket pocket to get me through it. And I really,

it's all, I never thought of myself as a guitar player. I couldn't get a job in anybody else's band. Yeah. But just some things I hear. That's a gift.

And then I work out where they are on the guitar and I left it, I left the idiot part of the guitar playing yeah b because it's important i mean that that's that's the noble tradition well you find your feel through what you do yeah well you know that's like the the big stupid riff is the thing i like yeah and that just works for certain kinds of song and then i can hear all the other stuff and arrange all the parts you know and tell people what to play or even i've learned to write it down but with the guitar you want to really just keep that keep that keep alive the inner link ray you know when you look at yourself in in in retrospect of your entire career do you see yourself as a band leader to some degree songwriter

songwriter that's what you call it maybe secondanger. I guess that's what it's called. I didn't think of that. Because I was looking at some stuff and I was trying to figure out, you didn't do a lot of producing on your own, right? No. It was not a thing you wanted to do. I only ever wanted to stop other people fucking up the groups and I liked the specials particularly that.

Yeah. I really loved them. Yeah. And I was between, it was like the three or four weeks between albums or tours you know right we can pretty consistently then and and i just wanted to make sure that nobody polished them up beyond what i loved about them when i heard them live and and i just turned up the faders and they did it and you did the first record for the specials and the first pogue's record same sort of thing it was like there were some parts I had to play, you know,

because there were some players that could play really well and some players that couldn't play at all. Right. But it kind of worked, you know, and it had this, both those records was very similar, and they were just like electric. Yeah. Even though there were actually in some cases no electric instruments on it. They had a...

Well, the Pogues, a lot of acoustic stuff on that first record. But it was, like, driven by the incredible words. Yeah, it was a hell of a record. So you were in a duo for a while with that guy you just mentioned. Yeah. What was his name? Alan Mays. Where did he end up?

He ended up in Moston, Texas. We reformed our group last night. Oh, you did? I was on this book tour, and, yeah, and I rang him up and said you know i've been showing pictures from trying to locate the you know the the apprenticeship of music and i said i've got a picture of us playing to a bunch of totally bewildered looking middle-aged people at a poetry society in liverpool yeah 71 and i've got like a stripy sweater on, like a member of the Standells.

And he's like much more, he was always a more confident, more polished player. And I said, I've got, and he gave me a demo tape that he had kept. Just the other day? No, he gave it to me ages ago. And it was, and it's, you know,

I never, I didn't know anything about recording. It was like a tape recorder I got from my dad. I didn't know you were supposed to clean the heads. Right. So even though the thing is recorded in 1971, it sounds like it was recorded in 1935. You know, it's like, it's all muffly. What was the experience of listening to that?

Well, you know, I could hear who we liked. Could you hear yourself, though? On certain notes. Right. Just on certain kind of phrases. And there's something in that you've, that's just you're born with. And then.

And when did you get back together with him? Yesterday? Yeah. And I said, you know, I've got, I'm telling the story. There's a bit in the book where I'm saying, you know, the, some of the comical things that happened in your apprenticeship. And I thought, wouldn't it, you know,

be great if we, when I say this story, if I just pull, pull the curtain back and then we do it right now. And it was a joyful thing to sing again. You know, we just sang this song I wrote when I was 17. Really? And then we sang a Van Morrison song that we used to do. Which Van Morrison song?

Domino. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I know you're a big Astral Weeks fan. Yeah, but you could never play that music. You couldn't cover that music. Whereas the ones from, truthfully, the Bound in the Street Choir record was Where I Stole All the Rhythms from My Aim is True.

But nobody kind of caught that because they were convinced I was something to do with the London thing. Well, you said something very interesting in the book about when you try to sound like somebody else, that's where you might sort of happen upon your own sound because you're doing it badly. That's almost certainly it. Yeah. I mean, I would hear like You Ain't Livin' Until You're Lovin' by Marvin Gaye and

James Earl. I didn't even know how many instruments were on that record. I would hear like You Ain't Livin' Until You're Lovin' by Marvin Gaye and Timmy Terrell. I didn't even know how many instruments were on that record. Even when I was a professional musician, I thought it was an orchestra. Right.

When I went to Hitsville to visit in the early 80s and I found the room was only the same size as the studios that I'd recorded, I was astounded. I thought,

it must be a big cathedral of a place. Because it just, in my imagination, it always sounded so huge. Well, so when you were a kid, you were listening to that, or as you're becoming a more proficient musician, you're listening to the Motown stuff, and you're listening to- We never called it Motown.

I know. What'd you call it? We called it Tamla. Why? I don't know. It was just, it was a convention. But it had nothing to do with anything? You can't trace that word?

It was Tamla Motown. Tamla Motown. That was the name. And they said Tamla on the label. On the label. So there was a label thing. Yeah. When they were imported, they said Tamla.

Yeah. There's Tamla. It was like, you got any Tamla on the label. On the label. So there was a label thing. Yeah. When they were imported, they said Tamla. Yeah, there's Tamla. It was like, you got any Tamla records? I never heard Motown until much later. Where did the love for, how did you get to country? That was a little bit later. It was really through, I really loved the Byrds. Okay. Like the Byrds.

Graham Parsons. I liked all those groups, you know, through the 60s, the English ones. Obviously the Beatles. Yeah. The Stones more, the English ones, and obviously the Beatles. The Stones more, the later records, like Aftermath, not so much the real blues records. Even before that, Aftermath, Between the Buttons, those I definitely, you know, took them apart and put them back together in my own way.

But the Small Faces, not the Faces, the Small Faces. Sure, with Steve Marriott yeah the kinks because they tell stories you know and then the American group

who really spoke to me first of really all the 60s groups were the Byrds and I liked everything they did you know when they were

folk rock and then they were raga rock and then there was space rock and then every record had another name

and I suppose now I realize that was probably as silly as people when people i put my records out this is new wave right we never said that that was made up by an r man or something yeah but you never sought out to work with mcguin i did work you did one which record plays on the first track on spike oh he did it's the three max yeah yeah yeah it's mccartney mcguin, and me. Oh. Yeah. Was that a big day? They weren't in the room together,

but they recorded their parts separately. But it was, yeah, I was, you know, I was, I said in the book, I said, we're jumping ahead, but, you know, after I made all the records for the attractions, which were, for the main part, combo records, where we just played in the room. What do you consider the last attractions record?

Imperial Bedroom. Oh, what a great one. I mean, we all played together on the records. That do you consider the last Attractions record? Imperial Bedroom. Oh, what a great album. I mean, we all played together on the records. That's really the last one. Well, I suppose Blood and Chocolate is an Attractions record, but we're working

kind of against ourselves there. That's how it kind of sounds tense and good like it is. Right. So because you're at odds? Well, they weren't very happy about me working with T-Bone Burnett the year before.

They didn't, you know, that sort of blew. We had already kind of run out of the formula of working together and yet we couldn't break the habit. It was the truth of it, you know. So what did, because I know, like I had Nick Lowe in here and like it's very hard for me to manage musical history, especially, you know, someone who's been at it as long as you. And I talked to Nick, but I i didn't where did that whole what facilitated the change that enabled

you to to to sort of be so defined in the moment that you were defined because there was a it seemed like the sound of england was changing all the music that was coming out of there the pop music that they were calling away but you the squeeze and a few other bands were honoring some very sophisticated pop music. Well, the way I see it is that we had the 60s and all these very tight, short records, like The Small Faces and The Kinks and obviously the primary, The Beatles. And then there was psychedelic music and then progressive and prog rock and all these. Was that ever your thing? Never. Couldn't see it. music and then progressive and prog rock and all these was that ever your thing never yeah and couldn't see and so the r b thing really kind of carried me through and and what they called

wooden music you know west coast american folk music laurel canyon stuff yeah yeah more introspective so those two things for me were running along parallel right you know i told i moved to liverpool to finish my schooling in 1970. Yeah. And discovered that nobody in the school would admit to liking Tamla or Stax. That was kind of, people would say, that's music for divvies. What's a divvy? Sort of like leery, kind of stupid.

And I went, because I guess, you know. They were all into it. Like hooligans liked it, you know. And I went, no, that's what we've been, you know. At different parts of the country you have different tastes yeah

and you know I listened to a lot of rocksteady and early reggae before the rasta reggae kind of

that was much more popular early on it was like the second string music really it was almost like another

kind of R&B right it was like the underlying music we didn't get that here until much

later it never really caught on that's why Americans can't play it right and the so we had't get that here until much later it never really caught on that's why Americans can't play it right

and the so we had all that music that's the sort of dance teenage dance music sure like dub music too what you call Motown no long before dub

yeah you know and all these like records on the Trojan label long before we even heard of the Wailers yeah and then

then I went to Liverpool and everybody was listened to psychedelic music they listen to whole sides of Pink Floyd I could never I was bewildered me that right I liked did you think it was a waste of time or it took a long time I knew that you know I like see Emily play I love see Emily play and I'll lane and after that I just glazed over you know and Led Zeppelin I couldn't under I thought if you wouldn't listen to that, why don't you just listen to Howlin' Wolf? Right.

Okay, yeah. The first two records. Yeah. I just couldn't get it. So I went the other way. I went super quiet. And I liked all, you know. Well, you know what's interesting about that?

Yeah, Joni Mitchell. You know who else was like that? Who? I had Huey Lewis in here. And Huey grew up in the hippie zone. He grew up in like. In Marin. Yeah. And he was an R&B guy. He grew up in the hippie zone he grew up in like in Marin yeah

and he was an R&B guy he didn't like the hippie shit and it turns out that like the band he was with backed you on the first record yeah he was down at the pub

chasing girls probably I don't know what he was up to him and the two singers from Clover I mean they were this band was a sort of a cult band

that had had a couple of records they were persuaded by my first manager Jake Riviera to come and seek their fortune in London at probably the worst time that an accomplished... The end of the pub rock business? Yeah, the pub rock, as it was called. I don't ever, again, I don't remember anybody ever calling it that. What was that, though? I don't even know what it was.

I mean, to you all in America, you know, it's a very... I know that the... I came to understand that music was played in bars and so I have bars sounded kind of cooler yeah then but like who were the bands well they were bands like the one Nick Lowe was in Clover yeah well Brinsley Schwartz and then you like them though right oh yeah yeah they were the band that I really you know that was Nick Lowe's man right well he was the main songwriter yeah and the and then you then Clover were this band that people whispered about. Have you heard Clover?

Your record was really hard to get. It was an American band. American band. And really after the moment that they should have come to London, they were persuaded to come to London. They were signed to a major record label. So they were doing better than me. Right.

I was still working in an office. And I was making demos, really, for Stiff Records. You i was making demos really for stiff records you didn't have a band no i didn't have a band so they said well you can use the drummer and john mcfee the guitar player and nick lowell play bass and he's going to produce these two songs and they saw something in that and then i'd turn up at the office with a tape with another five songs on it and then we'll record these four so now you've got to go we learned the first two just in the studio what was the first song you wrote uh well the first one i recorded was uh radio sweetheart which wasn't on an album it was just on a b-side and uh and mystery dance oh yeah yeah which was on my mr eventually that's it like that's actually the first song of

yours that like because i got your first record in a box of records that was given to me by i worked at a restaurant and the record store next door catered primarily to disco and dance music and r&b and that all these rock records are like we don't know what to do with them and i took them and that was the year your first record came out and i put it on i was like what the fuck is this who's this guy this is amazing that's what we thought but you know it was but i'm a chuck berryhead so mystery dance i was like it was a rock and roll model you know and I had the oldest crazy ideas that and you it was to me It was a novelty song right and I couldn't like a play on an old song

It was sort of a play on an old song so I wanted to make it sound as modern as possible So I played it all down strokes. I didn't want it to swing I mean all create all things that are completely wrong about rock yeah Nick just didn't know me and had the band play it the way he heard it and it came out sounding great. Well, he comes from that. Him and Dave Edmonds, they bounce like that. It was really a demo for Dave Edmonds.

It was originally a demo. You had it in mind for him? Well, I didn't. They did. Oh, really? They didn't really see how I fitted in because I didn't look like I should be in a group. Yeah, yeah.

So anyway, they would then send me to the country to this house where clover had been because some of the guys in clover had families yeah so they were living in the getting it together in the country style out of this place called headley grange uh-huh which had previously been used by by led zeppelin and bad company and these groups to yeah get it together you know i think yeah i think stairway to heaven was written there the words you know the ghost of robert plant would lurk in the west wing you know and he's still alive that's what's weird yeah that was strange so i'd go down there and i'd have to spend the night and we'd rehearse the

song and you're this little kid in a way well i wasn't really i was working in an office i was 20 uh 21 22. was that when you were working for the cologne company for the i was working for elizabeth arden yeah And I was, you know, in the day I was in an air-conditioned cubicle with a little computer which is way, you know, it couldn't do anything

your phone can do. Yeah, right, sure. It was a very primitive computer. Took up the whole room. The whole room, chatter away. And I could bullshit like crazy about the computer.

It's not ready. It's in a bad mood. I'd make up all the, leave me alone, I'm writing these songs. And then I'd written all these tunes. I'd take up all the yeah leave me alone I'm writing the race and then I'd written all these tunes or take him down show them to the these guys who were way more accomplished than anybody I played with

and they would you know play it back to me sort of a little bit different than I heard it in my head truthfully a little bit slicker a little bit slower as well it's more swinging and the common ground I found was like the guitar player John McPhee it actually I knew he'd played on a van Morrison record so that was swinging and the common ground i found was like the the guitar player john mcfeard actually i knew he'd played on a van morrison record so that was exciting to me you know sure and i and their own records the clover records i really dug them but they weren't the kind of music i was trying to write you know which was a little bit faster and so then we'd go up to this tiny little studio pathway and it was like really this room would was generous in space yeah if you imagine a whole band

in a room of this size right so of course everything went every instrument went on to every other instrument and that's usually a bad thing right but for some reason in this little space the the fact that the drums could be heard on my vocal might create some sort of weird excitement and actually when you go back and look at most of the historic recording studios, that sort of has some freak thing, like Sun is like that. So you played all that live to tape? Yeah, pretty much live. I mean, I think the only thing I dubbed on, say,

Mystery Dance was the piano, because we didn't have a piano player, so I could just about play the part. Right. But I couldn't do the sweep down the keys like Jerry Lee, so Nick Lowe had to stand there with the drumstick, and I said, now! And he's like, he'd run it down the keys like jerry lee so so nick lowe had to stand there with the drumstick and i said now and he's like he'd run it down the keys you know i mean just totally like held together with pieces of sticky tape but clearly the energy you brought to it and the menace of everyone on top of each other made it it sort of made the electric it was it you know when it's

played loud to you and you've not been in a studio with competent musicians before, it's very thrilling. Sure. Then you take it home and I played it on my little same tape recorder I was telling you about where I hadn't cleaned the heads for 20 years. And I goes, oh, it sounds a bit muted, you know. And I was, I remember coming home and thinking,

oh, it doesn't sound quite as good because it's not coming through these giant speakers. In a studio, a studio monitor. And with Nick Lowe shouting, you know, it's great, you know, because that was his style of producing. How did you build that relationship with him? Like, he saw you or what? Well, I had been this kid that was sort of hanging around his group

from, say, 73 to 76. Right, that's what he said. For those three years. You were just hanging around. I was just an annoying guy. That's that guy again. He's going to start asking me questions about songwriting. And little by little, I kind of got, I've got something here that's okay.

Yeah. And they would, the group he was in, they dug out a lot of old songs. I had this mixture of lots of old songs going around in my head and the new ones I was trying to write. And I beat somebody different every week. Right. I thought it was going to be John Prine. Then I thought it was going to be Randy Newman. Then I thought it was going to be Lowell George.

Then I thought it was going to be. You kind of hear that on that first record a little. Well, I mean, you did a reggae bit, you did sort of a country bit, right? Allison is relatively country, right? Well, to me, it was based on... Do you want to know what it was based on? Sure. It was based on Ghetto Child by the...

what you call the Spinners, what we call the Detroit Spinners. Okay. And then you had Mystery Dance, and then... That was really only... there were only some rock and roll songs. Yeah, yeah. I could tell you who I thought we were sounding like. But of course, filtered through this American band, it came out sounding kind of different. And then when they eventually decided I was a recording artist and not just a backroom songwriter,

they said, you've got to quit your job, and we've got to form a band. We're going to put this album out. Can you go professional? Right. But you couldn't take that band. Well, I couldn't take that band. Had already a tour planned, and they had their own album coming out. Right.

I had a family, so I couldn't just- You had one child then? Yeah, and I couldn't just quit and just do what I wanted. I had to say, well, can you pay me enough money, the same money as I'm earning? I wasn't earning a lot of money. And they said, yes, we can. And they gave me, I think they gave me 100 pounds

and a battery-powered amplifier. That was my, you know, and I went and bought back with the money that they gave me. I went back and bought all the records I'd had to sell to pay the bills, you know. Just to get it back in your head? Yeah, just to get a few records I'd had to part with. Like what?

Well, I think I'd had a couple of Beatles records that I'd had to get rid of. I kept my With the Beatles and I kept my Revolver, but maybe I'd let Beatles for Sale go. Right. So now, how much do you think you were driven? Do you think that if you didn't have the family, it would have been a completely different life for you i mean were you like because i talked to guys there's a difference between someone who knows they have to provide certainly and somebody who's

just sort of like nah i can do whatever i want i just it's in there's one side of my family that's kind of a dreamy kind of doesn't have any sense of responsibility my dad actually yeah then my grandfather before him it was he traveled as well he was also a musician he was a ship's musician yeah and but my other grandfather was like a guy who came out of you know the first world war and then never was out of work until he died right and uh i'm a bit like him i've worked every day my life since it was so lucky you got that yeah i've got that protestant work, yeah. So to put together the attractions, what became the attractions, how did that happen?

Advert and the musical papers, you know. Oh, then that's worth... A rocking combo or something, I don't know. No time wastes. They would have all these sayings, you know. Sure. And you auditioned people? We did, we auditioned.

You know, Pete Thomas was always going to be the drummer. Yeah, I see him around. He'd been living in... He's still playing with you now, isn't he? Oh, yeah. He'd been living in California for a couple of years. He'd been playing with Jon Stewart. Not the satirical Jon Stewart,

the daydream believer. Right, right, right. So he'd had an experience of living in Topanga and living in Marin. And he'd been persuaded to come back to London, really, to be in my band. And the other two guys we found just out of the want ads you know and Steve like it seems like your relationship with this band you know really sort of

collaboratively built the sound that you become known for right I yeah well I mean Steve was a very accomplished musician even though it's very young it was much younger than us he was yeah I think he was 18 so he was like the wizard everyone was like oh my. I didn't have to really play anything. That's why you say about guitar playing, when you've got a guy,

you know, to your right who's playing all these incredible things, I'd let him take it. And the bass player, Bruce, was also very active. He didn't hardly play the bass really.

He just sort of played like, it was like playing cello or something. He was always playing melodies, which were great. Right. And between us, we sort of, you know, a lot of great, particularly English rock and roll bands don't take the that like it was like playing cello or something always playing melodies which were great right and between us we sort of you know a lot of great and particularly english rock and roll bands don't

take the conventional roles think about the who yeah what kind of thing is that you know you've got a guy soloing the whole time and another drummer big chords on the bass and then you know this completely shouldn't make sense and we sort of took that the confidence to go that way we didn't feel like we had to be like any other group. So when it seems that you're, I mean, you're, you are capable of very elaborate melodies. Is that something that you did on your own or did you kind of pick up stuff from the band? Like, no, no, no. I wrote all the songs.

I mean, nobody else could write the songs. Well, no, not write the actual lyrics. All the music. Oh, really? No, they couldn't. None of them really. Steve can write. Yeah. But they were not songwriters and they could they could sometimes conceive parts but they had

to have the chord structure to do that so once in a while i'd give them a riff and they would syncopate it in some way you know like there would be a little way to deliver it that became distinctive but the the number of records in which they did that were much smaller than the ones in which i dictated all the parts sure so you are so do Miami's True, this year's Model Armed Forces, Get Happy, and that's like an arc of the attractions. And then what makes you do a country record in the middle of all that, of covers? A heartbreak, really. I mean, it was like I'd made a lot of stupid mistakes on the road

and got myself in a lot of trouble. Like your dad? I suppose it was. I never ever thought, oh, thanks, Dad, you made me do this. Believe me, I never ever thought, oh, you know, thanks, Dad. You made me do this. Believe me, I never ever thought, you know, never blamed him. No, no, no. But I mean, like, isn't it interesting to you in some way? Well, when they're writing it down, obviously it was.

Because, you know, I later learned that perhaps it was something in him that we both had. And I knew it was there. Yeah. And I could see it in some of the songs. And it kind of pissed me off that I wrote these things which were predictions of the mistakes I made in Alison and Stretching the House and these early songs. I wrote them almost to scare away the ghosts.

So you had a sensitivity to it, to your own... I wouldn't call it sensitivity. But in order to sort of know that you had that in your heart before it happened... Well, that's something that maybe songwriters can have. It's not a very necessary and admirable quality, but it's, you know, I can see it now with the benefit of hindsight. And then, you know, then you try to work out in the best way you can. If you can't explain yourself and you can't be forgiven.

Right. you can if you can't explain yourself and you can't be forgiven right then i suppose you work some some of the ideas out and the complexity of it in lyrics hoping that other people maybe get something from it i mean the reason to sing about stuff out loud is not just to indulge yourself or to write your diary because you're taking feelings or experiences you had and probably sometimes displacing them a little bit putting them in a voice of a character, changing whether you're saying it in first person or third person. Well, that's what always blew me away. When I had Nick in here and he played the beast in me, sitting right there on an acoustic,

I always assumed, man, this guy's lived it. But did he tell you the story? Did he tell you the story about writing it? For Johnny Cash, right? In the middle of the night. And he tells a story about, you know, in the middle of the night, he tells a story about you know in the middle of the night he was johnny cash oh you know in sort of you know sort of in in sort of emboldened by maybe a few days yeah he he thought himself into the character that he was trying to create that's the first time i ever learned that that songwriters write in character

like i never thought of that i always thought that everybody was a first person guy well there's a difference isn't it i mean i the first music that i was aware of i didn't know who'd written it it was like frankston archer was singing right under my skin right but later on when i got curious as to who wrote those songs and i wanted to write in that way yeah uh you know that that with that little bit of romantic distance. Sure. You discover that those songwriters put a lot of heart and soul and if you really get down deep

into the biographies of Lorenz Hart and Johnny Mercy, you'll find all these really heartbreaking stories about what lies behind songs we take for granted that don't seem that personal

because we've heard them so many times. And their skill was to put everything they knew and felt into songs that could be universally understood. When you get into the 1960s, you've got

Smokey Robinson singing, I second that emotion, which is a catchphrase that summons up a load of ideas that you feel when you hear it. And you've got Joni Mitchell singing, The Last Time I Saw Richard, which is describing something that's obviously a very literal scene that you can't actually say, I've lived that. It's not like you're singing, it's not an everyman kind of subject. And I learned from both things. I learned from,

well, all of those things. I learned from Lorenz Hart. I learned from Lennon and McCartney. I learned from Smokey Robinson. But when the door opens in the 60s to very different ways to write, Smokey Robinson, but when the door opens in the 60s to very different ways to write, the possibility of writing very specific experiences, you then have to judge how well you can do that. And obviously, Joni Mitchell did it incredibly well. What does that depend on? What's the balance? It depends on being a genius, I guess, which I'm not.

I don't know if that's true. I have to work at seeing whether I can render the scene sufficiently emotionally recognizable to somebody else. She actually wrote what one assumes are very literal representations of certain exchanges. They're too specific, the songs. Right. You know, Bob Dylan went from writing things that people stood and linked arms to sing, you know, like in the manner of Times are Changing or Blowing in the Wind, to writing a year later, Mr. Tambourine Man and It's All Right Ma. The possibilities of song completely change in just two years.

Visions of Joanna. Yeah, and all these things. If you're a kid growing up In the era of I want to hold your hand It's a little bit different When the same singers Suddenly sing in a song That goes

Was she told when she was young That pain would lead to pleasure Yeah I mean What the hell does that mean You know I mean it's I had no idea

You know It kind of made me feel I was attracted to it Yeah But I was going Oh I don't know about that You know Like It's kind of Sounds kind of sexy But kind of made me feel I was attracted to it. Yeah. But I was going, oh, I don't know about that. You know, like, it sounds kind of sexy, but kind of in a, you know, when you're 14. And you say you're not sensitive.

You're very sensitive to the power of these lyrics. You don't think it's odd to kind of go to grow up at the same pace as the, just like that five or six years that separate you from being able to live that experience, from being able to hear it and recognize it, you know, going from childhood to teenage. Sure,

well, you don't understand it, but you feel it. Yeah, I knew it in, oddly enough, I knew it in sort of Burt Bacharach songs

because people think of those as being very, you know, restrained and they talk about easy listening and all this nonsense. It's very sad,

some of it. Very tragic and kind of, you know, carnal. Yeah. Carnal, some of it. Very tragic and kind of carnal. Yeah. Carnal, but it's not in the words, it's in the music. Oh, yeah. It's the music that's working on you. What is that?

Because he does a thing, and you would know, but there seems to be a progression that he does that involves chords that deliver something. Well, he knows about tension and drama. Yeah. And he also, you know, he wrote famously this song, Anyone Who Had a Heart, and people are supposed to have rebelled when he put the music down. Because it's actually, when you look at it written down, it's lots of odd bars. It's not in 4-4.

Right. There's funny bars, and musicians would say, this is too difficult to play. And his direction was, feel it, don't count it. Right. And if you sing it to yourself without thinking about where the bar lines yeah it makes complete sense and he straightened it out it wouldn't be it wouldn't be as a fact it wouldn't be tense right and it wouldn't represent that desperation right and that's what I learned from listening to my course when I first heard the song it just had

a strange unsettling effect it took me years to write to understand what it was. To unpack it. And then, you know, trying my pathetic way to kind of, you know, get that effect into any of my songs. When did you start doing that? Accidents Will Happen. Mm-hmm. That was sort of a feeling that I was like, if I could just get that tension where you just got to announce things just before they happen, not just like strum through. Right, right. You know. And when you did it, like, so if uh so you had a country music producer produce

um almost blue yeah so you could so you work through a certain amount of emotions through that and then imperial bedroom is just this this mind-blowing combination of a lot of things it's completely it's it seems very different than the other four attractions record well maybe maybe because we'd gone and i'd worked out, you know, the things that, you know, the heartbreak side I found represented in these songs I'd chosen that nobody expected us to record also gave me a break from writing. I wasn't writing any songs for maybe three months, you know. Like I can't, I'd listened to Beyond Belief like hundreds of times. Yeah, well, then I'd worked out what I wanted to put on the next record and that was a much you know and we also gave ourselves the liberty of this using it was the first time i used the studio like an instrument you know like and you had what jeff is jeff

emmerich the guy who did uh the beatles stuff which beatles albums did you do revolver sergeant pepper most famously yeah a lot of things but i mean he had also worked at abbey road and worked with every kind of conceivable musician. He'd worked with Judy Garland. He'd worked with orchestras. So he knew everything about mic placement and drama. And he was a musician. Did you learn from him?

You did. But it never felt like learning. We were just doing it. And we were kind of on a voyage to try anything. You know, let's hire a harpsichord. Let's, you know, let Steve write for an orchestra. And it was, you know, we thought we harpsichord let's you know get let's steve write for an orchestra and it was you know we we thought we were doing our sort of moment where you go in and you just let everything

happen yeah that you can imagine and so and then we're and jeff was the one i had to make so after imperial bedroom do you do you separate your your your sort of your catalog of work into into into sections like a period no i mean what happens i I don't really think in terms of albums so much. I mean, I'm aware that, you know, like, for instance, in America, people say, oh, that great track from Miami's True, watching the Detectives, it's not on the album. It was a single that came out between. But because the record came out later, it was added.

And Radio Radio is not on this year's model either. And what's so funny about Peace, Love, and Understanding is not on Armed Forces, not as we conceived them. The records had different endings. We were one of the last kind of periods of groups that actually released singles that weren't supposed to be on albums. Was there a point where you started to honor

your own vision in light of the fact that... Was there a point where you said, I don't know if I want to chase making hit records? No, I mean, quite the opposite. I think after the freedom of Imperial Bedroom and imagining all these different types of songs from something like Beyond Belief, which is sort of a different blueprint for rock and roll,

and something which had an obvious model, like Almost Blue, which was written as if it were a standard. I was trying to do all these different forms of songs that i heard in my head and i was letting particularly steve and my own vocal arranging you know take it and then we you know we it still seemed to matter that we had something on the radio so we went to work with with you know a producer that could sort of tailor our record to get over to a broader audience. Which producer?

Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley. And they made Every Day I Write the Book, which was a hit. Huge. But we also made Shipbuilding on the same record, which was a very serious song. And it came out of recent events. And it was written with Clive, his music, my words. What was the relationship with T-Bone like?

I mean, why did you seek each other out? Well, I think then we made one more record with Clive and Alan, which was not so successful creatively. And I just sort of wanted to go back to how I did it, which was just to write the songs on the guitar and just play them. So I went out and did that,

and sort of, oh, this feels right, you know. And he was there, and that led to, you know, maybe arranging the songs differently with the voice to the fore and making King of America. And then, like, when you started to do some of the ensemble pieces, the classical, with the Brodsky Quartet.

Because I remember that came out, and in my mind, I was sort of like, what's he doing? Well, I think people are going to say that. What were you exploring, though? It was sort of out of your comfort zone, wasn't it? Exactly. Well, that's good. Yeah, sure, of course. Each of these things I've described,

Imperial Bedroom, some people were horrified by it because, what's this? It's got an orchestra on it. And then they've gone country. I mean, to me, it was like well the birds did this they went through all these things as they were following their feelings the beatles every record i remember as a beatles fan thinking oh they've lost it now this sergeant pepper what a load of rubbish and then i couldn't live without it you know it would be right every record would come out and it would be such a shock because of the difference i i didn't think you were actually

thought maybe yeah educated by the the records I'd loved. I felt like the next record you made should be utterly different, not the same as the one you made before. No, that's absolutely true. So even when it came to form, you know, by that point I started to listen to the songs that came out of classical music. And I had friends, these young friends who, you know, they played as vibrantly to me, in my mind. They played with the immediacy that I didn't hear in some rock and roll music at that time. Right.

So I just wanted to make some music with them. And it's driven me to have to learn certain communicative skills, like the codes of music, to literally be able to write it down. Not sort of like so I can go on and put a professor's hat on. You know, it's like, it's still to just sing stories. But was there a point where you were getting pressure go on put a professor's hat on you know it's like right it's still to just sing stories but was there a point where you were getting pressure to to recapture whatever your your last hit was you never had that pressure from a record company or anybody you kind of tried it a few times

what more could they do to me you know i mean it's never really been very successful i just i've been using their money to do what I wanted until the basics of the record business dissolved. I mean, I worked at it until it... Isn't it gone now? I think so. I mean, we can still get music, apparently. Apparently, yeah. But, you know, I honestly...

I mean, I have to give credit to the people who did give me the money to do all these different experiments. And some of it was... There were people that understood I was not going to keep to my side of the bargain if my side of the bargain meant making the same record I already made. Sure. And some people were horrified when we had it in King of America. They took it and buried it in the desert, you know.

Yeah. And Blood and Chocolate, it's too distorted. Yeah. What about Spike? It's too distorted. Spike was great. This, Blood and Chocolate comes out in 86. Yeah.

Nirvana turned up in, what, 92? Yeah. Which is distorted. Which is too distorted like this yeah it comes out in 86 yeah nirvana turned up in what 92 yeah which is distorted which is too distorted you know i mean it was just such an idiotic thing it's just a it's just music you know yeah there's nothing to fear you know so let's talk like the collaboration with burt baccarat it was a i imagine amazing experience for you well in a in a way i'd learn all these things about the, you know, I get to kind of look over his shoulder and go, oh, that's how you do it. But, you know,

the more amazing thing to me was the openness he had to writing music with another songwriter. He must have loved it. He'd never done that before. He'd never done it. Once before with Neil Diamond.

And other than that, he'd never written this volume of songs with anybody else because we ended up having a musical dialogue people always assumed i would just be the lyricist yeah but our first song was really quite uh evenly proportioned contribution music oh that must have been exciting and you know instead of like being affronted by the fact that i was writing music he you know that's the great thing about him. The story isn't finished. And I learned something from him in that way that you shouldn't think that you know how it goes

because you might be surprised by the next thing you do. You must have got through to him. If you were the first real collaborator, you must have saw something. But then equally he would get inside the phrases I'd written and go, you need to move that note there and stretch the music. I mean, it was really getting within the very fabric of it. That's beautiful.

And what about what did you learn from Alan Toussaint? I didn't learn, but I observed tremendous grace, you know, in the face of what? I mean, our collaboration began somewhat bizarrely in the early 80s where I was asked to record a Yoko Ono song and he ended up producing it that was our first recording then he then he was one of the many people on spike a record I made with me T-Bone Burnett where we described it in the book as being like Lawrence of Arabia only with less camels you know it's like everything that I could ever drive I'd

tried to do it all at once you know and, sort of like a heaven's gate of music. But there's many songs I love on the record. I mean, it was just, we went very widescreen. Right. And probably one of the last records on that scale that any record company would bankroll, you know. And then when I came back to work with Alan Tussauds, you know, it was right after Katrina,

so it was very different circumstances. I didn't feel like I had possession of those songs. I just had a really great opportunity to see that he went back to work very fast. And even if it meant me singing lead on that record, we just went and recorded his catalog and a few songs that I'd written, a few songs that we'd written together.

It was a unique thing to go back to New Orleans and see him go back into a studio when things were barely open. There was one hotel open, one studio open. It was curfew at night. You'd drive through blocks and it would all be blacked out. It was very harrowing to see some of the scenes. Devastating.

And this is all the music that we'd ever loved, you know. Sure. And all the music was all joyful as well. And you couldn't really imagine how that could happen. Sure. That's what music's supposed to do in the face of that tragedy. And the roots, what drove you to that collaboration? Well, I made all these records, you know, and I worked with T-Bone Burnett and again and you know in recent times and we when I came to about 2010 like you could sense it was like

the options were narrowing for making records and that being the you can make them but you couldn't delude yourself it was going to be the thing that made your work in life go around like it had been I mean that was the way it was uh for so many years and then it changes but hey before there were recorded records people played music yeah you know when when i started out it was only 10 or 15 years after people would buy your songs for 50 dollars right outright you know and then there's a little bit of time where it was a sort of viable business and then now it's supposed to be free. And so I changed my mind

about where the... I had my responsibility to my young boys and my wife that I would make best use of my time. And I decided that would be best on the stage. Yeah. Because by this point, I got more songs than I could play in one evening.

Sure. And I could sort of tell a story out of those songs however I did that. You had a choice. Yeah, I had one show where I used a big game show wheel. I had another show where I just told a story and took the component parts of the story from songs from my songbook. I didn't imagine I would record again. And the next thing I find myself in, I'm in a little airless box in NBCbc making wise up goes with quest love and they kind of tricked me in there really you know but it was it was good because then you have to you have to again you have to trust to the people that you're in the

room with um the way quest plays the drums is utterly different to the way pete thomas is not superior or in you know there's not a competition It's a different kind of groove. And it made me hear the way I place my words against it differently. And it made me think, well, I can sing these outward-looking songs. I don't have to be singing the deepest, darkest things about my own feelings. I'm looking out at the world. This is a bulletin.

This is a bulletin, what we're seeing all together. What we're moving through. That kind of record. I hadn't made consistently one record like that. And by the end of it I I sort of ended up writing one of the most personal songs I wrote as literal you know which one count of it's called the puppet as cut strings it was unlike they sent me you know the way we worked was like here's some music okay and I would write you know here's a beat and I would lay the parts down and then the roots would come in and they would substitute their their plan for my

plan you know I'd lay the bass down and then Mark would play it or the sousaphone would play it and it was all arranged by a dub style really like a dub record but on the very last days of recording quest and Ray angry plays piano with them sent me this beautiful melody very slow beat and it didn't feel like really the record we'd made but it was something else again and I don't know why but I sat in my kitchen and wrote this very sad

song about my dad's last you know, my dad had passed like a couple of years before and I thought I'll never write about that, it's too harrowing you know, and it sort of was a wonderful thing, really, because it must have been in there waiting to get out. And I'd never had any reluctance to write about

when things were painful or when things moved me that I'd seen, songs like Shipbuilding. I'd never felt any inhibition. But this, I thought, well, that's just beyond me to put that into a song. Before I knew what I'd done, I'd written it. felt any inhibition but this i thought that's just beyond me to put that into a song before i knew what i'd done i'd written it and because i've got a computer with you know a microphone and i'd sung it and then i hit then i found myself oh i'll hit send and send it to them and then i went to the

studio next day so that's the record oh my god that's so the recording is just the little mic a little tiny little voice so maybe if i'd gone into the studio i would i would have been i would have overthought it i would have gone oh no i can't do it no it's too i went in the next day i said no we're not touching it that's it oh wow you know because it was you could tell that it was a um you know and it was a very i in the end i only mentioned the track because you don't then have to it doesn't have to then be a hit record sure it's the fact that it came into existence yeah when we sequenced the album wise up coast we talked about opening the record sure it's the fact that it came into existence yeah when we sequenced the album wise up coast we talked about opening the record with it yeah i said no i don't want to hear that

every i don't want to hear about my father's death every time for that record on yeah i'm not even sure i want to put it on the record i'm just glad we've made the track because now that's out of my head it's out of my heart did you feel relief i did i did because i knew sooner or later i'd write about it in some way. And obviously, when I wrote this book, I wrote about things I wasn't proud of that I'd done publicly and privately. And I wrote about stupid things that happened to me, you know, in the process of an apprenticeship of learning how to be in music. Yeah. being seen being blown off in a in a club by desmond decker the reggae star got up on my break and and lip sync five times to hit the israelites and i learned from that you know you can steal the show even when you're not actually singing you know and yet when i and when i went into you know

making records when i was writing this book out i realized that the first time my voice was heard on the bbc was live on the BBC was Live Aid. I was just asked to lip sync up until then. Even though we were out every night killing and we could sing all our songs really well, they never trusted you to sing on the BBC because it was just too difficult to set the band. That was some bullshit excuse.

So there was always this artificial thing that was part of being in pop music and show business, starting with the name, the silly way I looked but you when you get all the way through all this time I've sung 400 songs I've written so something like that yeah some of them are some of them are just songs for occasions sure their social music yeah like every day write the book yeah ten minute job to write a song like that right some of them are like very harrowing to listen to

whether they be about carnal stuff or heartbreak yeah and some of them are life and death you know some of them

whether it's shipbuilding or whether it's this puppet song they're about somebody's end yeah and you can't shy away from those things because that's what it's given you

to write about these things you know yeah I've been fortunate it's just that's what I've well it's a beautiful's given you to write about these things. You know, I've been fortunate. It's just that's what I've... Well, it's a beautiful job, and you're a... It is actually a beautiful job. And the fact that you sort of embrace and accept the responsibility

of being a troubadour, you know, and being out there and delivering, you know, all of your work at whatever pace or however you want to do it for people is a beautiful thing. And the recordings are something that some people really, and of course, I wouldn't be here without. But if your parents meet across a record shop counter, records are going to be important objects to you. We can't pretend that they motivate the business of playing music live the same way as they did. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't exist or we shouldn't create them. Sure.

Just for them to be as literally a record. That's where the word came from. And also the joy of the account, you know. Look, for me to be able to sit with, and I'm into vinyl again, for me to be able to sit and listen to, you know, Imperial Bedroom yesterday. Yeah. It's beautiful. And I can do that anytime. You're not going to come play it for me in my house no no i might go and play in your local theater you know if you go if you go you know and and that's probably why i love you know 78 records sure you know because they're even a closer step back into the past time travel they're playing into a horn yeah and if you

just think it in your head, they were just in that room and there's no mixing or anything. You had to make those choices. Yeah. And Little Richard records are the same. Yeah. If you play a Little Richard record

off a 78 to a bunch of kids, they'll go crazy. And it's really like, this is music we had better ban. All right, we got to go. You got to go do a gig. I got to go do a gig. It's nice to speak with you.

It was great. got to go do a gig i got to go do a gig so let's just speak with it was great so that was that was information power pack conversation with the uh the amazing elvis costello i hope you enjoyed that you can also go over to wtfpod.com see what's up get a poster get on the mailing. Not much on my schedule because I'm working. I'm trying to keep my shit together. I'm all right. Incoming! Thank you. Boomer lives! Boomer lives! or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those. Goal tenders, no. But chicken tenders, yes. Because those are groceries, and we deliver those too.

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