Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome, welcome back to the Bob Left That podcast.
Speaker 1: My yesterday is fall care full. Good to happen here, Huck?
Speaker 1: How good? So you have a new album one on one.
Speaker 1: What inspires you to continue to write and record new
Speaker 1: music in this crazy musical era? I'm not sure. I
Speaker 1: do ask myself that same question every now and again.
Speaker 1: I think there's a couple of things. Um A, I've
Speaker 1: on a bit of a mission to have my own
Speaker 1: body of work. Um you know, I've been in a
Speaker 1: several bends, as you probably know, and I've had the
Speaker 1: great pleasure and honor to play with some fantastic people
Speaker 1: over the years, even song you know, lead vocal on
Speaker 1: some you know, quite well known song and everything. But
Speaker 1: I realized I came to the conclusion that I didn't
Speaker 1: have um any rights to a lot of these things.
Speaker 1: And also I just wanted to have my own, my
Speaker 1: own body of work, my own catalog. Yeah, that's one reason.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about body work. Especially about eighteen months ago,
Speaker 1: you put out five live albums simultaneously. Tell me the
Speaker 1: back story there. Well, the backstory is that for I
Speaker 1: guess for the last twenty years of a of a
Speaker 1: very long career. I started to release my solo stuff
Speaker 1: on my own label. It's a very small time thing. Um.
Speaker 1: But we also started to record um our live shows.
Speaker 1: I mean I've done. I started touring constantly to established
Speaker 1: myself because even back then, nobody knew to who the
Speaker 1: hell Paul Carrot was. They may have known the songs
Speaker 1: or the voice or what have you been, I didn't
Speaker 1: know the name. So we started to record all the shows.
Speaker 1: And my good friend, a guy called Peter Van Hook
Speaker 1: is kind of I guess you would call him a manager. Um,
Speaker 1: he's my mate basically of thirty odd years. Okay, now,
Speaker 1: he ultimately was a musician. Then he produced records with
Speaker 1: Rod Origin. How do you know Peter van Hook? Well,
Speaker 1: I first met Peter when at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: Mike and the Mechanics project. Peter was the drummer, original
Speaker 1: drummer in Mike and the Mechanics. He was a very
Speaker 1: kind of busy session guys back in those days when
Speaker 1: sessions were the thing, and he played I think for
Speaker 1: about ten years with Van Morrison and I met him
Speaker 1: at the photo session for the Mike and the Mechanics
Speaker 1: album and I took an instant disliked okay, because he
Speaker 1: was talking away in this he was talking to the
Speaker 1: keyboard player Adrian Lee in this language. I didn't understand.
Speaker 1: It was all about Middy and all that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: and I had not yet been introduced to Middy. I
Speaker 1: was still very low tech. But anyway, that's when I
Speaker 1: met Pete and but I got to know him and
Speaker 1: really love him on as I got to know him,
Speaker 1: and he's my biggest fan, is my biggest supporter. He
Speaker 1: had the unenviable task of sifting through all these recordings
Speaker 1: and and and put together this sort of compilation of
Speaker 1: life stuff. I be honest with you, I've not heard
Speaker 1: a lot of it because I understand that you understand good.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I write something, I don't reread it.
Speaker 1: It's too crazy, exactly exactly, okay, But I five albums simultaneously,
Speaker 1: and what has been the reception there too, We had
Speaker 1: a pretty good response to it. Actually, Um, why five albums?
Speaker 1: I don't know, You'll have to ask him. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've been, as I said, on a mission to establish
Speaker 1: myself as a singer songwriter independently, and it's involved a
Speaker 1: lot of gigs. So we've we've recorded a lot of shows.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of songs. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Somebody told me it's something like seventeen or eighteen albums
Speaker 1: we've released on my own label, so we have a
Speaker 1: lot of songs. Well, I will say, on those five
Speaker 1: live albums and I'm talking to I'm talking to you,
Speaker 1: do sound like kype like I'm blowing smoke up your
Speaker 1: rear around. They're phenomenal. I mean really the only problem
Speaker 1: with those albums is people haven't heard of because I'm
Speaker 1: surprised at the quality of the live performance, almost like
Speaker 1: a studio performance. Well I'm surprised. Um, that's that's good
Speaker 1: to know. Maybe I should give them a listen. But
Speaker 1: as I say, we've made quite a few albums in
Speaker 1: the in the studio. But as you say, they're not
Speaker 1: really that well known in the States, which is to
Speaker 1: my great regrets. Okay, let's go back to go twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, going independent. Tell me that story. Well, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I I just meandered along there for many years.
Speaker 1: As I said, got to play with a lot of
Speaker 1: great people. I'd made one or two albums for several
Speaker 1: record companies, and the case would usually be that would
Speaker 1: make an album. They'd released a couple of singles and
Speaker 1: then I'd move on or they dropped me. It's probably
Speaker 1: the way it really was. And I got to the
Speaker 1: point where I thought that I made it. I started
Speaker 1: to make an album here at home. It's called Satisfy
Speaker 1: My Soul. And I liked the way it sounded. I
Speaker 1: just and I didn't like the thought of having to
Speaker 1: go around to record companies trying to hawk it because
Speaker 1: I knew what they would say, Well, it's fine, but
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you need to do this, or maybe
Speaker 1: you need to that or the other. And I liked
Speaker 1: it the way it was. And this guy, Peter van Hook,
Speaker 1: he said he had some experience, he had had a
Speaker 1: little jazz label, and he said, well, why don't you
Speaker 1: just do it yourself, just release it yourself. And at
Speaker 1: the time it was a bit scary because people weren't
Speaker 1: really doing that and I had no idea how you
Speaker 1: released a record. Um, but we did it. We we
Speaker 1: just started. It was, as I say, very small time.
Speaker 1: We just got it an independent radio plugger to take
Speaker 1: the record around and we got a a great airplay
Speaker 1: on the mainstream radio here in the UK, and things
Speaker 1: sort of you know grew from that. Okay, let's go
Speaker 1: back to something you said earlier, the body of work.
Speaker 1: I understand, But what was your motivation at this point
Speaker 1: in your life to want to create a body of work? Well,
Speaker 1: there were several things. I mean, as I said, I
Speaker 1: realized that I had contributed to a lot of other
Speaker 1: projects and other people's careers, and I was happy to
Speaker 1: do that. I was just happy to be involved in
Speaker 1: music and I loved it, every minute of it. Um.
Speaker 1: But when I started this little label of mine, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to release a compilation of stuff that I've
Speaker 1: done over the years, and I was happy to license
Speaker 1: it from and pay the royalties to the to the majors.
Speaker 1: But then a couple of things happened. And when that
Speaker 1: I wanted that there were a couple of tracks, significant
Speaker 1: tracks that I've been involved with, and I wasn't allowed
Speaker 1: to license them and put them on my And that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of when the penny really dropped and I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I need to have my own stuff that
Speaker 1: I control and then and that's mine. Okay, so twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, you start your own label. Traditionally, musicians are
Speaker 1: good musicians. They're not good business people. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of business involved in running your own label. Who does
Speaker 1: that business? Well? As I said, it's it started on
Speaker 1: a very small time level. Um, I didn't really have
Speaker 1: a clue how it worked, how they're not some bolts
Speaker 1: of it worked, but it was quite simple. We uh
Speaker 1: just got a distribution kind of deal, you know, somebody
Speaker 1: who was prepared to put this stuff out. And we
Speaker 1: employ Lloyd, a couple of independent radio pluggers that we
Speaker 1: had worked with in the in the other bands and
Speaker 1: that we knew well. And we started from there. And
Speaker 1: I'm was quite prepared to get my hands dirty. I'm
Speaker 1: from a very kind of working class northern upbringing. My
Speaker 1: folks actually were kind of independent inasmuch as my father
Speaker 1: was what you call a painter and decorator, you know,
Speaker 1: you would paint people's houses. And my mom ran a
Speaker 1: small store where we sold paint and wallpaper. And we
Speaker 1: lived in the back of the store in a in
Speaker 1: a one room at the back with two bedrooms in
Speaker 1: an attic at the outside, toilet and no bathroom and
Speaker 1: all that sort of stuff. And I saw my folks,
Speaker 1: you know, after kind of what they'd gone through, who
Speaker 1: they've gone through, the Depression and then World War two,
Speaker 1: and and they work their backsides off just to make things.
Speaker 1: So I definitely saw how hard they worked, and and
Speaker 1: it's kind of in my genes too. I was prepared to,
Speaker 1: as I say, get my hands dirty and and and
Speaker 1: and try and build something. Okay, So your first experience
Speaker 1: with the first independent label, do you feel, in terms
Speaker 1: of the effect of the independent as you put its
Speaker 1: song pluggers, etcetera, that you got as good as shot
Speaker 1: as you got when you were a label. Um, probably
Speaker 1: got as good as shot as I did as a
Speaker 1: solo artist, but I'm not as as with the bands.
Speaker 1: I mean, for example, Mike and the Mechanics. Of course,
Speaker 1: Mike is the guitar player in Genesis, and so they
Speaker 1: had a lot of help from record companies. You know,
Speaker 1: we had TV spots and the record were given a
Speaker 1: real good chance, and we had great airplace. So no,
Speaker 1: I wasn't getting that. I didn't have that kind of clout,
Speaker 1: but I had a little bit of momentum from involvement
Speaker 1: with this such as them, and and it grew, it
Speaker 1: really grew. I mean it wasn't my intention to Um,
Speaker 1: I've never chased I never wanted to be famous or
Speaker 1: anything like that. But I just wanted to uh survive
Speaker 1: and make music and have a good band and do
Speaker 1: my shows and make my albums, as simple as that. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're making your albums, you're paying for the whole thing.
Speaker 1: So what kind of budget for one of these albums
Speaker 1: is there? Well, um, for example, with the first one,
Speaker 1: UH Satisfy my Soul, I made it here at home,
Speaker 1: and I played more or less everything on the record,
Speaker 1: and I engineered it myself. So it didn't cost a
Speaker 1: whole lot to make the record, but as it doesn't
Speaker 1: these days, if you kind of know what you're doing,
Speaker 1: but you know, the problem is, or the difficulty is
Speaker 1: to get it hurt. And so as an independent in
Speaker 1: the UK, it wasn't too difficult because I had a
Speaker 1: little bit of history and the UK is a small place,
Speaker 1: so you know, we we had good support from the
Speaker 1: mainstream radio, the BBC radio too, that's the big kind
Speaker 1: of mainstream radio, and they liked what I did. It
Speaker 1: worked for them, and subsequent albums also it really worked
Speaker 1: very well for them. So but to try to expand
Speaker 1: and internationally and and it's much more difficult. But I
Speaker 1: had a thing going, you know, and now I was
Speaker 1: getting support. I had a band that we're really into it.
Speaker 1: We we love going to work. We toured up and
Speaker 1: down the country, and I was I am happy. Okay,
Speaker 1: a couple of things. You essentially put out an album
Speaker 1: every other year. Most artists of the of your vintage
Speaker 1: they don't put out new music at all. So what
Speaker 1: keeps you writing and recording? Well, as I said, I'm
Speaker 1: not exactly sure, but I think it's the fact that
Speaker 1: although I've had, you know, little bits of success here
Speaker 1: and there and a look inside the window, Um, I
Speaker 1: never felt that I had that body of work that
Speaker 1: I could point to, or that album that I could
Speaker 1: say that is the quintessential album. So I think it's
Speaker 1: it's purely just to keep self satisfaction. I still keep
Speaker 1: thinking I could do better, you know. Okay, so this
Speaker 1: lightest album, tell me about the making of that. First,
Speaker 1: When do you decide you have a target when you
Speaker 1: want to make a record, or you said or you
Speaker 1: all probably write it off songs and saying it's time
Speaker 1: to make a record. No, I just in this particular case,
Speaker 1: I had no plan whatsoever to record last year. I mean,
Speaker 1: I had a whole diary of life stuff. UM. I
Speaker 1: had a UK too with my band. I was going
Speaker 1: to go to Australia, Japan, Europe, and I also have
Speaker 1: been involved quite a bit in the last nine years
Speaker 1: or so playing keyboards and Eric Clapton's band and touring
Speaker 1: around with him. So we had a whole year, um,
Speaker 1: but thirty odd shows into the year. In the middle
Speaker 1: of March, of course, the pandemic hit and venues were
Speaker 1: closed down, and initially everybody thought, well, well, we'll be
Speaker 1: back up there in a month or two, but that
Speaker 1: pretty soon became obvious that that wasn't going to be
Speaker 1: the case. And so having this little facility here I
Speaker 1: have at home, which is fantastic, and I just started
Speaker 1: coming in and playing with my toys and recording stuff
Speaker 1: and it evolved into an album. Okay, So on these
Speaker 1: albums to this day, you're the producer, you're the engineer.
Speaker 1: To what degree are there outside musicians and what degree
Speaker 1: you do everything yourself? On this particular album, it was
Speaker 1: almost totally myself engineering, um, playing all the instruments, UM.
Speaker 1: But towards the and and end of the thing. For
Speaker 1: an example, I had written and recorded some horn parts,
Speaker 1: but using samples in et cetera and didn't sound too
Speaker 1: bad actually, But um, when it became possible to get
Speaker 1: people in, I got in a horn section that i'd
Speaker 1: worked before, include in the fantastic pee Wee Ellis, which
Speaker 1: we can talk about at some point if you like.
Speaker 1: And and I had one track that needed a real
Speaker 1: good guitar solo solo on it, and I'm not a
Speaker 1: great soloist. I got my friend Robbie macintosh to remotely
Speaker 1: play a great solo on the guitar. But other than that,
Speaker 1: it's pretty much me. Robbie McIntyre, average white beard right.
Speaker 1: Uh No, Um, you're thinking of the drummer. His name
Speaker 1: escapes me. But Robbie McIntosh. No, he was in the Pretenders,
Speaker 1: he was with Paul McCartney and play people like Nora
Speaker 1: Jones and Dire Straits. And he's a fabulous musician. Okay,
Speaker 1: So tell me about pee Wee Ellis. Well, pee Wee
Speaker 1: I got to know through Peter Van Hook and because
Speaker 1: they worked together with Van Morrison for many years. Pee
Speaker 1: Wee of course as a legend. He worked with James
Speaker 1: Brown and did some of those incredible horn arrangements, and
Speaker 1: Peter introduced me to Pee Wee on my previous album,
Speaker 1: which is called These Days. It's about three years ago,
Speaker 1: and Pee Wee wrote some great authentic horn arrangements for that,
Speaker 1: and he did one horn arrangement on this new record,
Speaker 1: on a track called Lighten Up Your Mood. But it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful guy. Unfortunately he passed away in September at
Speaker 1: the age of eighty. Um. But he was a real
Speaker 1: he was a proper legend, and he was a authentic,
Speaker 1: real deal and he lived it large. Just talking about
Speaker 1: this album obviously class for low. You finished the record,
Speaker 1: you eque it yourself and you go to an outside
Speaker 1: mastering house. Well, for the first time ever. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'd never even mixed my own albums before because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not a technical guy either as a musician or
Speaker 1: an engineer. I kind of know how to work pro
Speaker 1: tools in my own cack handed way, but I never
Speaker 1: trusted myself two mix. To me, it was a you know,
Speaker 1: a oh that's real. That's a technical person. He's got
Speaker 1: to be somebody who knows what they're doing. And in
Speaker 1: the past I've gotten things to the mixed stage and
Speaker 1: then handed it over to a proper, proper mixing engineer,
Speaker 1: and they then bring the whole thing back to scratch
Speaker 1: and build it back up again, and it never hangs
Speaker 1: together in the way that I've heard it. So this
Speaker 1: time again, this guy Peter van Hook said, I mean, no,
Speaker 1: you have to mix this record, and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh no, I can't me I don't know what I'm doing,
Speaker 1: And but I did. I we went with my mixes
Speaker 1: that I've worked with as we went along, and then
Speaker 1: there's this other age called the mastering situation, which is
Speaker 1: like I never understood. It's like, you get your mixes,
Speaker 1: they sound great, and then they go to this other
Speaker 1: stage mastering, and then they do another process, which is
Speaker 1: they add EQ and compression and again it changes the thing.
Speaker 1: So to be honest, we did hand it over to
Speaker 1: a couple of mastering guys who had a shot at it,
Speaker 1: and when it came back I didn't like it because
Speaker 1: it didn't sound how I wanted it to sound. I
Speaker 1: like the way it sounds. It's engaging, it doesn't hit
Speaker 1: you in the face. But of course a lot of
Speaker 1: these mastering guys now are trying to get it on
Speaker 1: the radio and make it a kind of more aggressive
Speaker 1: and hi fi in order to get the radio attention.
Speaker 1: But I didn't like it. I liked it the way
Speaker 1: it was, and that's what we went with. Okay, there's
Speaker 1: one thing to balance all the instruments, another thing to delay, echo, reverb, etcetera.
Speaker 1: You just figured that out all by yourself. In the
Speaker 1: mixing stage. Well, it's not like you record it and
Speaker 1: then you mix it it. It's you're mixing it as
Speaker 1: you go along, and that's what happens. You get used
Speaker 1: to that. I'm not an expert, as I say, but
Speaker 1: I have he is, and I know the kind of
Speaker 1: reverbs and echoes and things I like to hear. I mean,
Speaker 1: they might not be the ultimate, but when they are working,
Speaker 1: you have to go with them, because then that's when
Speaker 1: you start changing that stuff. The whole balance changes. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, we went with my my ideas. What kind
Speaker 1: of equipment do you have in your studio? Well, I
Speaker 1: have a pro tools rig, right, and what kind of board.
Speaker 1: It's just a control surface, really, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: control twenty four. It's just a it's not a big
Speaker 1: fancy knive or anything like that. I have some nice
Speaker 1: pre amps, uh, some Nive pre amps and and the
Speaker 1: like and the stuff is pretty much recorded organically, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just I just plug it in and when it
Speaker 1: sounds okay, that's when that's what I go with. You
Speaker 1: record in the same room that the equipment is in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: by and large, Yes. And what speakers do you listen to? Now?
Speaker 1: What are these things called? They sound great PCMs? I
Speaker 1: think they're called they're real nice speakers. But they're not flattering,
Speaker 1: but they're not tiring. It just sound good. Okay. How
Speaker 1: do you end up working with clapped? Well? I think
Speaker 1: years ago, it must over ten years. I think I
Speaker 1: played a few sort of charity type gigs where Gary,
Speaker 1: you know from prop Gary it's very good at putting
Speaker 1: these things together. He would put that together a house
Speaker 1: band kind of thing too, and he would get in
Speaker 1: some real stars like Eric Clapton, Roger Waters, people like that,
Speaker 1: and for various charity events. And then I played on
Speaker 1: a few of Eric's albums, things like Pilgrim Um Reptile
Speaker 1: and a few other albums, just a few tracks. And
Speaker 1: then one day, as I say, eight nine years ago,
Speaker 1: he called me up and asked if I could come
Speaker 1: on the road with him. And I was delighted to
Speaker 1: say that. Yeah, dovetail beautifully into the what I had
Speaker 1: going with my own band, and I guess I did
Speaker 1: what was pretty much probably the last world tour inasmuch
Speaker 1: as we did. We played in the States, we went
Speaker 1: to Far East, we played it in Europe, Japan, and
Speaker 1: it was just a marvelous experience. Well, he's on the
Speaker 1: road now, needless to say, you're not in the band. No,
Speaker 1: that's not true. We we I was in the Bend
Speaker 1: the whole of September when we just did some shows.
Speaker 1: Oh oh I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: those goods. So they those dates were done. We we
Speaker 1: did eight nine shows I think in the Southern States. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know you were in the band on those. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1: One has to ask what do you think of his
Speaker 1: viewpoints of vaccines for COVID. Well, I don't think I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be drawn into that too much because I don't
Speaker 1: even know exactly where he stands on what he said
Speaker 1: about it. But I know all I do know, and
Speaker 1: I think I'm at liberty to say that, is that
Speaker 1: he had the vaccine twice and he had a very
Speaker 1: bad reaction, and he spoken about that personally. I've also
Speaker 1: had the vaccine, and so I don't precisely no or
Speaker 1: agree or uh about where he stands on where where
Speaker 1: he stands at the moment, but I must admit I
Speaker 1: have my skeptical thoughts about what it's all about. And
Speaker 1: it's a little skeptical about mandating people who don't wish
Speaker 1: to for whatever reason, have the vaccine. As I say, personally,
Speaker 1: myself and my family we have had the vaccine, and
Speaker 1: I don't think we've had a bad response to it.
Speaker 1: But I think I think people are entitled to their
Speaker 1: own opinion. Okay, so you go on on the road
Speaker 1: with Eric. How much rehearsal is there if you're gonna
Speaker 1: do nine dates? Well there was a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: But bear in mind most of the musicians, in fact,
Speaker 1: all of the musicians involved played with Eric b Floor before,
Speaker 1: and so when you rehearse with Eric, it's not so
Speaker 1: much about you're not learning parts. You know, you're not
Speaker 1: getting the parts tight and accurate and all that. It's
Speaker 1: more about it it's more like getting to know everybody again.
Speaker 1: And because you never play this stuff the same twice,
Speaker 1: it's all on instinct and vibe, you know, so that
Speaker 1: the I can't say that the rehearsals are that intense.
Speaker 1: You know, we play some music, we chat, we chat,
Speaker 1: we have a cup of tea, we play a bit more,
Speaker 1: we have lunch, we play a bit more, and then
Speaker 1: that's it. So and it comes together. Okay, you're on
Speaker 1: the road to what degree are the settlers and the
Speaker 1: parts setting stone into what degree does that change every
Speaker 1: night and improvisation changing? Oh well, it's totally improvisation. I
Speaker 1: mean we're not totally. I mean, there's a framework, there's
Speaker 1: a set. It changes only a little predominantly. On this
Speaker 1: last thing. The changes were in the acoustic section in
Speaker 1: the middle, and he did some new things there, and
Speaker 1: he also only used he used microphones on the acoustic thing,
Speaker 1: like on the guitars and stuff like that. And he
Speaker 1: didn't use pickups because I understand why, because the pickups,
Speaker 1: even great as they're getting, they don't really sound like
Speaker 1: an acoustic guitar sounds when it's played in the room.
Speaker 1: And he was very much trying to get you know,
Speaker 1: that real sound of the acoustic guitars. So we had
Speaker 1: to play very very quietly in the acoustic section, and
Speaker 1: that changed a little bit. But the set pretty much
Speaker 1: stayed the same. Okay, So you have these endeavors, you're
Speaker 1: making records, you're going on the road, going on the
Speaker 1: road by yourself with Eric Clapton. Let's just say you
Speaker 1: never worked another day in your life. Have you made
Speaker 1: enough money in the music business to get to the
Speaker 1: end where you gotta work for a living? M depends
Speaker 1: what you mean. I think I probably I would probably
Speaker 1: be okay. I'm trying to help my kids. I have
Speaker 1: four grown up kids. They're all basically have regular salaried
Speaker 1: kind of jobs, which I'm quite happy about, or not jobs,
Speaker 1: but careers. And I have one son who's a chip
Speaker 1: off the old block who plays in my band. Um,
Speaker 1: and the cost of living and the cost of you know,
Speaker 1: real estate has just gone crazy, and they have small
Speaker 1: apartments and stuff. I'm trying to help them as much
Speaker 1: as I possibly can while I'm still here. We have
Speaker 1: a nice life. We're okay, We're I think we're what
Speaker 1: they called the comfortable poor. We're do we're do okay okay.
Speaker 1: And then so forgetting COVID. Before COVID, how many dates
Speaker 1: a year were you on on the road? Uh, who's counting?
Speaker 1: I mean, we would definitely with my own band. We
Speaker 1: would play January February, March into April. We would play
Speaker 1: three to four nights a week in theaters up and
Speaker 1: down the UK, and then we would generally at that
Speaker 1: point do some shows maybe in the Netherlands that's Holland, Germany,
Speaker 1: and then I would uh if I you know, probably
Speaker 1: play with Eric as I said, going to Japan or
Speaker 1: US shows. I don't know. I'm not not counting, but
Speaker 1: I'm busy. I've been very, very busy. It's crazy. Last
Speaker 1: ten twenty years, when you know you should be winded down,
Speaker 1: have been the busiest of my career. Now an email,
Speaker 1: you say you're going to go work in Spain momentarily.
Speaker 1: So I'm going on vacation. Oh yeah, I thought you
Speaker 1: were playing gigs. No, we're doing I'm going away for
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks vacation with my wife to Spain.
Speaker 1: We have a small apartment over there. Oh you know,
Speaker 1: I don't need the address, but we're in Spain, his
Speaker 1: son in the south on the costadel Soul. Okay, you
Speaker 1: know that's big. You know Brits are really into that.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the beginning. You're from Sheffield, what
Speaker 1: was What was it like growing up in Sheffield. I
Speaker 1: think it was pretty good. It was pretty good. It
Speaker 1: was very by today standard. It was extremely austere, but
Speaker 1: so is everywhere up in the north of England. You know,
Speaker 1: I've come from a pretty poor, basic working class family.
Speaker 1: My dad's family they were they went too bad. But
Speaker 1: my my mom's family was very poor. Um my grand
Speaker 1: and I never met either of my grandfather's They were
Speaker 1: both deceased by the time I came along. But my
Speaker 1: maternal grandfather was died around thirty six, left six kids.
Speaker 1: He was from Ireland and he left six kids, so
Speaker 1: they were very, very poor. Even when we grow grew
Speaker 1: up as kids, we were We didn't think we were,
Speaker 1: but we were poor. We didn't have a We had
Speaker 1: a tin bath in the front of the fire once
Speaker 1: a week. We had an outside toilet, but most people
Speaker 1: did around where we lived, and but we had we
Speaker 1: could go out and play. We could playing the open
Speaker 1: air all day long. We're no worries, so I think
Speaker 1: actually it was great. It was great way to live. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: we know about Sheffield in America and we don't know much.
Speaker 1: We know there was still there and Joe Cocker was
Speaker 1: from there. Were you aware of Joke Parker? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: he was about two streets away from me, really, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: But he was a bit older. He was a bit older,
Speaker 1: and he was he was a man. I was a
Speaker 1: boy and he I was a little bit Oh this guy,
Speaker 1: he's a bit little bit scary, this guy, you know.
Speaker 1: But he was a legend in England, of course, in
Speaker 1: Sheffield and he was playing. He could play any night
Speaker 1: of the week in a pub or a club. And
Speaker 1: I eventually got to see. I mean I was about
Speaker 1: fifteen something like that and I snuck into a pub
Speaker 1: and I saw Joe playing and it was amazing, absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1: And Chris Stainton, who's plays in the in the Clapton band,
Speaker 1: was playing with him back in those days as well.
Speaker 1: So I've been having hitting Chris for all the old
Speaker 1: Cocker stories. Fantastic. Any other musicians who came from Sheffield
Speaker 1: but back then, no, not really. There was a guy
Speaker 1: called Dave Berry. He had a little bit of success,
Speaker 1: but Joe really, honestly was the first one to to
Speaker 1: come through and we were all so delighted, and little
Speaker 1: help from my friends. It was so exciting because it's
Speaker 1: such a great record, and then when he finally sort
Speaker 1: of broke through, it was just great. Well, everybody loved it.
Speaker 1: So you're growing up. How many kids in the family,
Speaker 1: and it was just me and my brother, older brother. Okay,
Speaker 1: you go to school, you good student, bad student? I
Speaker 1: was just I was a good boy. I did what
Speaker 1: I was told when I wasn't very academic at all. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, unfortunately, my father had a fatal accident. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I if you knew that, but he
Speaker 1: had a fatal accident when I was eleven, my brother
Speaker 1: was fifteen, and that that was pretty uh profound experience.
Speaker 1: But my brother grew up overnight. He he took charge
Speaker 1: of the shop where we lift the store, and while
Speaker 1: my mom tried to recover from this incredible blow. And
Speaker 1: I just kind of as long as I was going
Speaker 1: to school and not being any trouble, it was fine.
Speaker 1: But I had no interest in school at all. I
Speaker 1: didn't like it at all. I I like sports and
Speaker 1: I like music. That was it. And were you an outsider?
Speaker 1: We were a member of a a group, a lot of friends.
Speaker 1: No friends, Oh no, I had a lot. I know,
Speaker 1: I was I think I was a pretty popular kid.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, as I said, it wasn't academic.
Speaker 1: I was. Probably I was a bit of a clown,
Speaker 1: you know, if we had a soft teacher, I would
Speaker 1: be a clown. And no, I think I was pretty popular.
Speaker 1: I think so. I had plenty of friends here. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you talk about the outdoor toilet, you talk about
Speaker 1: the tin tub. At what point does that change? M Well,
Speaker 1: it got worse actually because I left home the comforts. Okay,
Speaker 1: when you left, when you left comforts, when you left
Speaker 1: home there you were still using an outdoor toilet. No,
Speaker 1: we had at that point, not long after my father died.
Speaker 1: Maybe he had an insurance policy. I don't know what,
Speaker 1: but we we actually moved from living behind the shop
Speaker 1: to a little semi detached a couple of streets away.
Speaker 1: Still kept the shop, but we had a little semi
Speaker 1: detached house which had a bathroom, which was luxury. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what was your introduction in music? Your parents playing
Speaker 1: a lot of music. My father's side were musical, definitely.
Speaker 1: My grandmother and my aunt both played the piano um,
Speaker 1: and my father dabbled in the drums. I think so.
Speaker 1: But even prior to his untimely death. But even most
Speaker 1: so after we didn't have much contact with his side
Speaker 1: of the family, but we had a lot of contact
Speaker 1: with my mother's side of the family, who were very
Speaker 1: you know, lovely people. You know, it's tough and common,
Speaker 1: you know, poor but great. They were such great support
Speaker 1: for us in in emotionally after my father's passing. It
Speaker 1: was unbelievable. Yeah. So, you know, from the East Coast,
Speaker 1: I mean from the United States viewpoint, we had the
Speaker 1: Beach Boys, we had the Four Seasons, we had a
Speaker 1: lot of crap, and then all of a sudden the
Speaker 1: Beatles hip. But the Beatles hitting sixty four in America
Speaker 1: being sixty four where they actually hitting sixty two in
Speaker 1: the UK. So what point did you become into popular music? Well,
Speaker 1: I was into it. I was into it already. I
Speaker 1: liked all those bands, you know, I like the Ventures
Speaker 1: and people like that. And as I say, my brother,
Speaker 1: my older brother, he but then and there was an
Speaker 1: instrumental band called the Shadows in the UK. They were
Speaker 1: the backing band for a guy called Cliff Richard. But
Speaker 1: I love the But when the Beatles came, that was it.
Speaker 1: You know. In all the Liverpool bands and all that,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. I saw the Beatles a couple of
Speaker 1: times Sheffield City Hall. Everybody came through there, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody came through town. And you saw him at the
Speaker 1: city Hall. So the Stones, Roy Orbison, Dylan, chuck Berry,
Speaker 1: you name it. So how what was it? Like? How
Speaker 1: good were they? I don't know. I couldn't hear him,
Speaker 1: but it was just electric, you know. And and to
Speaker 1: see them, and I saw, you know, see ringo Lane.
Speaker 1: I was playing drums by this time in a little
Speaker 1: band at school and when I saw a ringoing, you know,
Speaker 1: the high hacks going like this like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you know I've been tickling these drums. I need to
Speaker 1: give him some stick, you know. So you know, I
Speaker 1: only know the American experience where we all had transistor radios,
Speaker 1: but we also had uh commercial radio. So did you
Speaker 1: have transistor radios? And was it just the BBC or
Speaker 1: radio Caroline pop radio? When? When? What was the listening experience?
Speaker 1: Did you buy records? Did you have money to do that?
Speaker 1: There us hardly anything on the radio back in those days.
Speaker 1: There's so little I'm not like today where you can't
Speaker 1: get away from it. But yeah, we had the little
Speaker 1: transistor radio my brother under the bedclothes and we would
Speaker 1: try and tune into Radio Caroline and it would come
Speaker 1: and go Radio Luxembourg. And but um, we didn't even
Speaker 1: have a proper record player. We had we had a
Speaker 1: wind up record I'm not kidding, I am. I find
Speaker 1: it hard to believe myself, but we did. But the
Speaker 1: girl at the end of our yard where we lived, um,
Speaker 1: she had one. And then when she got a new model,
Speaker 1: she gave us her old electric record player and a
Speaker 1: lot of records like um Everly Brothers and Ricky Nelson
Speaker 1: and Dwayne Eddie and things like this. And it was like, wow,
Speaker 1: this was great. Why did she give you her records?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess they got maybe they got
Speaker 1: tired of him, you know that back then, and it
Speaker 1: was onto the next thing and the next thing, you know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we weren't asking. We weren't asking questions. How
Speaker 1: did you playing drobs? Well, as I said, we had
Speaker 1: an attic at this shop where we lived, and there
Speaker 1: were a couple of bits up there. There was a
Speaker 1: snare drum. There was a thing it was like almost
Speaker 1: like a toy based drum, And I said about playing
Speaker 1: this kit I would play along to two records. And
Speaker 1: one year my father he one Christmas he got this thing.
Speaker 1: It was like the old you know when the like
Speaker 1: from the twenties, this kit with like the wooden blocks,
Speaker 1: the skulls about five skulls and and I used to
Speaker 1: mess around on that, and I was in. I was
Speaker 1: into it. But the year my when my my father
Speaker 1: passed away, and the Christmas after that, my mother bought
Speaker 1: with what the thing called hy purchase where you pay
Speaker 1: you know, installments very much. They actually bought me a
Speaker 1: proper kit of drums. I mean it was way too
Speaker 1: good for what was but I mean it was just
Speaker 1: spectacular kit of drums and tell tricks and tell star
Speaker 1: remember it well. And so that's when I really started
Speaker 1: getting into it. And then tell me about forming bands.
Speaker 1: We had a little band at school played the school
Speaker 1: concert when I was twelve thirteen. It was fantastic. We
Speaker 1: did four Beatles songs and the girls through jelly Babies
Speaker 1: and asked and asked for my autograph, you know, the
Speaker 1: same girls in in the in the class, you know.
Speaker 1: So that was fantastic. And I think just before I
Speaker 1: left school at fifteen or sixteen, I started to play
Speaker 1: in the local soul band. I sold those drums that
Speaker 1: my mother works so hard to buy and put down
Speaker 1: payments on an organ and started playing in this solan.
Speaker 1: How did you get involved in the Oregon? Yeah, good question,
Speaker 1: because they needed one, They needed an organist. And I
Speaker 1: had had a go on a on a Hammond organ
Speaker 1: that was in a recording studio that my friend had
Speaker 1: a session there and great, and he sold me a
Speaker 1: couple of chords, and as I say, then I wanted
Speaker 1: to join this, this band, and I just started to
Speaker 1: teach myself, learned some cords and stood at the back
Speaker 1: and played quietly. Then what kind of Oregon did you buy? Well?
Speaker 1: I wanted to buy the Vox Continental, which you probably
Speaker 1: remember with the of course the back to front black
Speaker 1: and white keys. But I couldn't stretch to that, so
Speaker 1: I bought this other thing. It was awful. Actually, it
Speaker 1: was made by Selma Selma Capri, and it was it
Speaker 1: was rubbish. But many years later again I got my
Speaker 1: mom to sign papers again and we bought the low,
Speaker 1: the low version of a Hammond organ. And then you
Speaker 1: were always buying the equipment. It's hard to slap you know.
Speaker 1: You got the drums you got them and to work again.
Speaker 1: I mean, get into the gig is a big deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a good point, one of my favorite things
Speaker 1: about But when I did the tour with the Ringo
Speaker 1: Star All Star Band, and he would he told a
Speaker 1: story about getting to the gigs. He said, it was
Speaker 1: always easy to get to the gig on the bus,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody give your hand, but getting home you'd
Speaker 1: have to do it yourself, and you have to walk
Speaker 1: down the street five yards with two cases, then go
Speaker 1: back for the other two and walk down. Fortunately I
Speaker 1: had my uncle, and you know I mentioned my mother's
Speaker 1: family and how supportive they was. My my uncle used
Speaker 1: to used to take me in his car. That's right,
Speaker 1: I remember now my uncle Percy. Bless him. So he
Speaker 1: finished with school. So how does your musical career unfold? Well,
Speaker 1: as I said, I was already playing in kind of
Speaker 1: semipro bands and I left school with no qualifications and
Speaker 1: I just wanted to gig with Abandon. That's what we did.
Speaker 1: I think. The next step was when I was about seventeen,
Speaker 1: we did the thing where you go to Germany and
Speaker 1: play the clubs over there. Of course, that was the
Speaker 1: way that the Beatles have done it years a few
Speaker 1: years before. So we went over there. I played for
Speaker 1: a month at the Top ten club in Hamburg, for example,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and it was great. We loved it.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're we were we were very thin back
Speaker 1: in those days, but we were just having a great time.
Speaker 1: So you come back from Germany and um, well I
Speaker 1: remember now on this because we were playing covers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we We were playing with the two bands would alternate.
Speaker 1: You play forty fifty minutes, the turnaround, the other band
Speaker 1: would play fifty minutes, and that went on through the night.
Speaker 1: And we met up with these other guys who were
Speaker 1: doing you know, on with us, and we we started
Speaker 1: to get into music and we were listening to music
Speaker 1: and smoking pot and listening to the stuff that was
Speaker 1: happening in the sixties, and wow, this is happening. And
Speaker 1: we decided we were going to go progressive. So we
Speaker 1: we formed this band. I'm trying to keep it a secret,
Speaker 1: but it seems to be coming out of it's pretty dreadful.
Speaker 1: Um we were. Our big heroes was Frank Zappa and
Speaker 1: the Mothers of Invention exact. Yeah, good heroes, but hard,
Speaker 1: hard act to follow. So yeah, we went through that
Speaker 1: sort of phase and you know, live in hand to mouth,
Speaker 1: but you know, and then it was playing in Germany
Speaker 1: and the college circuit and everybody wanted free music. And
Speaker 1: that was that when you had the kids storm in
Speaker 1: the place, they wouldn't pay to come in and stuff,
Speaker 1: and it all got a bit political and serious and crazy,
Speaker 1: and then everybody went, hang on a minute, now, this
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. And that's when we started to go back
Speaker 1: to rock and roll, playing in pubs around London and
Speaker 1: this is called pub rock. Very original idea. But and
Speaker 1: that's when we formed ACE, playing around the pubs in London.
Speaker 1: And so what point do you become a songwriter about? Then?
Speaker 1: Prior to that, with this um sort of mothers of
Speaker 1: invention type band, we used to write these long pieces
Speaker 1: and that went on for twenty minutes or whatever, and
Speaker 1: then and then would go free form. But then we started.
Speaker 1: I start when with ACE, I started to write songs
Speaker 1: and one of the first songs I wrote was how long? Okay,
Speaker 1: how could you write such a good song right at
Speaker 1: the beginning of your career? I don't know it. I
Speaker 1: often think it's great that people say it's a great song.
Speaker 1: It's a very simple song. Don't tell anybody, but I
Speaker 1: mean it's nothing much too. It's got a big old
Speaker 1: hook and a verse that repeats itself. Um. But I
Speaker 1: think back then I was naive enough to think, you know,
Speaker 1: that I was inventing this stuff. I'd learn a new
Speaker 1: chord and it'll be like, oh, I'd like the sound
Speaker 1: of that and make a song from it. So I
Speaker 1: didn't have any trouble writing songs. Then, Okay, who owns
Speaker 1: that song today? God knows. It's changed hands a number
Speaker 1: of times. I think it's partly owned by Universal in
Speaker 1: America and in some of territories it's owned now by BMG,
Speaker 1: a couple of people who've had it along the way
Speaker 1: of rich iired and living in living in on a
Speaker 1: desert island. But no, it was a pretty crappy deal.
Speaker 1: Then do you still get songwriter royalties? We get some,
Speaker 1: I get some, yeah, but nothing like I've tried to
Speaker 1: shame them. I've tried to shame them into, you know,
Speaker 1: making it more civilized kind of deal, but they won't
Speaker 1: have it. And how about public performance? You know here
Speaker 1: it's called Aska b M. I yeah, yeah, thank goodness,
Speaker 1: that that was the only money I saw for a while,
Speaker 1: to be honest, from them, from that song. But I
Speaker 1: do it does trickle through. It's still been good, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong. I mean if I get a half
Speaker 1: or a quarter of what I should have a song
Speaker 1: like that that hangs around for all those years, it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty incredible really. So it goes on for a
Speaker 1: couple of years with Ace. How did that end? Uh?
Speaker 1: Not very dramatically. It fizzled out, really, is the truth.
Speaker 1: We had that one big hit and it was the
Speaker 1: only song like that on the record. To be honest, um,
Speaker 1: the two of the other main writers, because I was
Speaker 1: the last one to join and to come in and
Speaker 1: write stuff that it was formed by two other writists,
Speaker 1: Phil Harris and Bam King, and their stuff was a
Speaker 1: little more guitar blues country kind of stuff, and there
Speaker 1: was nothing else that really caught the eye. Caught a
Speaker 1: year and we made another album that didn't really happen.
Speaker 1: So it kind of fizzled out, is what happened. How
Speaker 1: do you get hooked up with Jake Rivieria? Well I
Speaker 1: knew Jake back in those days, but he was a
Speaker 1: roadie for a band called Chili Willie and the Red
Speaker 1: Hot Peppers, not obviously not to be confused used with
Speaker 1: a band of a similar name. But so, while I
Speaker 1: was in in Ace and we lived for about a
Speaker 1: year in the mid seventies nineties six, while I was
Speaker 1: living over there doing the Being all Californian and everything,
Speaker 1: how does the Being relocate to the United States? It
Speaker 1: was our manager's idea. He thought that we, you know,
Speaker 1: we'd had this huge radio hit in in the States
Speaker 1: and that we should try and make a go of
Speaker 1: it in the States, which is what we did. So
Speaker 1: what was it like, boy from Sheffield is living in
Speaker 1: sunny southern California. Well, it was a bit unreal really
Speaker 1: because it was beautiful, it was fantastic, but we didn't
Speaker 1: get any work done. You know, we were messing around
Speaker 1: and going to the beach and playing soccer and all
Speaker 1: the rest of it, but and not writing any good songs.
Speaker 1: So but meanwhile in the UK things had gone changed
Speaker 1: completely and Jake, Jake Riveria had helped to found Stiff Records,
Speaker 1: which was, you know, at the forefront of all the
Speaker 1: punk and new wave stuff. They found Elvis Costello and
Speaker 1: in fact, our good friend when we were living in California.
Speaker 1: Down the road was our friend Pete Thomas, who had
Speaker 1: played in this band Chili Willie and the Red Hot Peppers,
Speaker 1: and he was living over in the States and playing
Speaker 1: with some people like John Stewart and the Country People,
Speaker 1: and he got the call from Jake to go and
Speaker 1: play with this guy, Elvis Costello. So Pete went back
Speaker 1: to UK and six months or sold later we went
Speaker 1: back and it was like, oh my goodness, it's all changed,
Speaker 1: you know, it's all it's over. You know, we've got
Speaker 1: beards and long hair and everything. They hate us so
Speaker 1: but anyway, so I just started to work around London
Speaker 1: doing sessions. I worked with with Roxy Music, helped made
Speaker 1: a couple of records with them and toured with them.
Speaker 1: And then Jake had taken on Squeeze. He started to
Speaker 1: manage Squeeze and the keyboard player Jules Holland had left
Speaker 1: the band. They auditioned tons of people and Jake said, well,
Speaker 1: why don't he try Paul Carrot. He's back in town.
Speaker 1: He's been playing with Roxy Music. He shaved his beard off.
Speaker 1: You're getting me and I went down an audition with
Speaker 1: them about a week before the recording of east Side
Speaker 1: Story album and and the next thing I know, I
Speaker 1: was in the studio with him. Okay, how did you
Speaker 1: end up playing You're a guy with one hit from
Speaker 1: a failed band, how do you end up working with
Speaker 1: Roxy Music? Well, um, I don't know how interesting this is,
Speaker 1: but now it's interesting to Okay, Well this is what happened.
Speaker 1: Is that, Yes, I said, I went back to UK.
Speaker 1: I thought I figured it was kind of over, but
Speaker 1: I started to play a few sessions. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to all the what I thought were the best players
Speaker 1: in London that that's what they did. And I used
Speaker 1: to hang out with this group of players who I
Speaker 1: really admired, and they had played on the Brian Ferry
Speaker 1: solo records. And when Roxy reformed to make an album
Speaker 1: called Manifesto and then Flesh and Blood, they got Brian
Speaker 1: insisted on having these guys play on the records and
Speaker 1: they said, well we got this other guy now and
Speaker 1: he plays keyboards, let's bring him along. And that was me. Okay,
Speaker 1: so good experience, bad experience. Oh yeah, good experience, Yeah,
Speaker 1: good experience. I mean it wasn't what I'm a bit
Speaker 1: of a soul guy, you know, I wasn't at all
Speaker 1: glam rock, you know, as the exact opposite, boring denim
Speaker 1: plaid bloke. Um. But to go out on the road
Speaker 1: with rock Shore. You know this was fun. You know
Speaker 1: it's great. I enjoyed it. Yeah, there's a song on
Speaker 1: Flesh and Blood. Oh yeah, I might well be playing
Speaker 1: on it. How's it go? I just handed my mind
Speaker 1: the song playing on there. I'm playing on that. I'm
Speaker 1: playing on that. Yet there's this song playing on the radio.
Speaker 1: I'm playing the strings in there. Okay, But you know
Speaker 1: what made that record was the bass player, because that
Speaker 1: song was not happening. It was like a do walk song.
Speaker 1: And then we went down the pub, came back Alan Spinner,
Speaker 1: great bass player, and he starts playing that Basseline doo
Speaker 1: doo doo doo doo doo make actually made it? Yeah? Anyway,
Speaker 1: going you're playing sessions. I know in Los Angeles, you know,
Speaker 1: people call their friends in, but usually if they don't
Speaker 1: read music, they're squeezed out. Did you re music? And
Speaker 1: how extensive was your session career and how did that work?
Speaker 1: Not reading music? No, I didn't read music. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think many of them in London did actually,
Speaker 1: But no, I was always pretty scared that I'd get
Speaker 1: found out. You know that. You know that I couldn't
Speaker 1: really play that well, but you know, my musical instincts
Speaker 1: got me through. My ear and the musical instincts got
Speaker 1: me through, and I just saw it all as a
Speaker 1: learning experience. But I was always terrified for the first
Speaker 1: half an hour or an hour that I get found out.
Speaker 1: You know, it's very insecure about that. So how did
Speaker 1: it end with Roxy? I think it was just that
Speaker 1: I did a couple of tours of them and made
Speaker 1: a couple of albums, and then the opportunity to do
Speaker 1: the Squeeze the thing came up, and I just remember
Speaker 1: calling up Roxy and they said they kind of done
Speaker 1: what they were going to do, and they said, no,
Speaker 1: go for it. And that's when I kind of got
Speaker 1: involved with Squeeze. I didn't realize I was joining Squeeze.
Speaker 1: I thought I was just playing some sessions. But anyway,
Speaker 1: when did you realize you joined? I think when I
Speaker 1: was on the plane going over to the States to
Speaker 1: to do the first tour with them, UM, which was
Speaker 1: a duel billing of Squeeze and Elvis Costello and the Attractions,
Speaker 1: two bands on the same bush sixteen people. I think
Speaker 1: they were on that bus. There were two bands. There
Speaker 1: was a security guy because Elvis had caused some controversy
Speaker 1: to a manager. Sixteen people. Can you imagine? So how
Speaker 1: did you end up singing Tempted? Okay? Well, as I said,
Speaker 1: I was there to play keys, really, and we had
Speaker 1: recorded pretty much the album. They had already recorded a
Speaker 1: version of this song Tempted, which is completely different different
Speaker 1: how it was just I've always think I only heard
Speaker 1: it once or twice. It was produced by Dave Edmonds,
Speaker 1: and it was more sort of almost like super Tramp
Speaker 1: or something and a bad fruit of na um. And
Speaker 1: then this one day we started messing around in the studio.
Speaker 1: I'm playing Hammond organ and they're doing it in that
Speaker 1: kind of soul vibe, and Elvis Costello was producing the record.
Speaker 1: He came running in and said like, let's put this down.
Speaker 1: Let's put this down and put the track down. Or
Speaker 1: everybody's like, ah, this is great, this is great. He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, Paul, you should sing it. So I
Speaker 1: went in, why you You must have had a reason.
Speaker 1: Perhaps he was just being nice. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was kind of thought of as a little bit
Speaker 1: of you know, the blue eyed soul singer even you know,
Speaker 1: and it was his his idea. And how did he
Speaker 1: end up playing his response line there? I think he
Speaker 1: was just very keen to get in on it because
Speaker 1: it was a great song. And yeah, I don't blame him,
Speaker 1: it's a great song. So at what point do you
Speaker 1: realize you have this great unique voice? Well, I'm I
Speaker 1: always fancied myself as a singer. You know, I'd sung
Speaker 1: how long, and I'd sung all a lot of songs.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking about before that or before that. Well,
Speaker 1: as a kid, people remarked and they said, always got
Speaker 1: a lovely voice, you know, at school and things like
Speaker 1: that when I was little, little, you know. And but
Speaker 1: other than that, um, I didn't really do anything else.
Speaker 1: Even when I was in bands in the beginning, I
Speaker 1: was only doing big backgrounds because usually there was a
Speaker 1: one guy, a designated bloke at the front. And so
Speaker 1: it wasn't until we we formed Ace and I started
Speaker 1: singing lead. That's when I got the hang of it.
Speaker 1: I started to get the hang of it. Well, from
Speaker 1: an outside perspective, your voice has not changed as good
Speaker 1: as it ever was. I mean he's just you know,
Speaker 1: freak of DNA or there are certain things you do
Speaker 1: to make sure you protect your vocal chords or what's
Speaker 1: going on there. Yeah, I think it has changed a
Speaker 1: little bit. I think, I like to think in in
Speaker 1: a lot of in a lot of ways, it's got better,
Speaker 1: it's stronger, it's got a bit more tumbra to it.
Speaker 1: And I just try to stay healthy. I don't do
Speaker 1: anything stupid like smoke or during hard liquor. Um, did
Speaker 1: you used to smoke and drink hard liquor? I've done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: obviously it's expected of you, you know, but I like
Speaker 1: a glass of wine. But no, as I say, try
Speaker 1: and stay healthy. I see all this stuff now and
Speaker 1: YouTube and stuff like that. You can, you know, improve
Speaker 1: your um, your voice and things like that. But blessed
Speaker 1: with decent chords, you know, and and and the musicality.
Speaker 1: And I've developed it and used it, you know, keep
Speaker 1: using it. That's the thing. Okay, Then you make a
Speaker 1: solo album good Experience not so good Experience? Which one
Speaker 1: was that? Well, let's go back one chapter. How do
Speaker 1: you end up leaving Squeeze? Well, I was there for
Speaker 1: about a year and I loved it. I was happy
Speaker 1: playing keys, to be honest, because they didn't need a singer.
Speaker 1: They already had two singers. They didn't need a songwriter,
Speaker 1: particularly someone like me that wrote three or four chord
Speaker 1: lovey dovey stuff. They had a thing now, had an identity.
Speaker 1: It was the songs. It was the sound of Glenn
Speaker 1: and Chris singing, and they didn't really need it. So
Speaker 1: I was having a good time. But it was obvious that,
Speaker 1: you know, if I was to develop as a singer
Speaker 1: and a songwriter, I couldn't really do it within the
Speaker 1: framework of that band, you know. And I wasn't going
Speaker 1: to try and impose my style on on them. They
Speaker 1: didn't need it. So that's kind of why I left. Well,
Speaker 1: you're walking from a good gig into the wilderness. It
Speaker 1: was a good gig and it was fun. Yeah it
Speaker 1: was great. But yeah, I made a lot of strange
Speaker 1: decision and in my career, you know, they're not not
Speaker 1: always been career moves, but it I'm not in a
Speaker 1: bad place now. I love where I am now, you know.
Speaker 1: So if you have to do it all over again,
Speaker 1: what would you have done differently? Mm hmmm. Probably had
Speaker 1: a bit more faith in my own self and my
Speaker 1: own ability. But that's easier said than done. You know,
Speaker 1: it's tough to to make your way in in in
Speaker 1: in in this music. It is tough. So and I've
Speaker 1: also had to have a family, you know, to bear
Speaker 1: in mind, and I wasn't prepared for them to suffer
Speaker 1: for my art, you know, so I I probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: change anything. I'll tell you why, because you know, people
Speaker 1: will say, oh, you could have done this, you could
Speaker 1: have done more. I could have done a whole lot less.
Speaker 1: I have had a great, very career, made some great people.
Speaker 1: I never expected to do this and get this far.
Speaker 1: And my career is actually not in a bad place
Speaker 1: at the moment. I haven't a lot of people like
Speaker 1: what I do. I have a great band who you know,
Speaker 1: support me, and I have a great family. I really
Speaker 1: don't think I should ask for more. At what point
Speaker 1: do you meet your wife in this journey? Well, a
Speaker 1: long time ago pre Ace pre Ace nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: I think, and I just I just met her. We've
Speaker 1: we've been together since that day Clider met her and
Speaker 1: she came her friend had designs on one of the
Speaker 1: other guys in the band, and she came along to
Speaker 1: a support and I met her. I'm I'm afraid it
Speaker 1: was like that, and at what point to get married?
Speaker 1: Where we were together for seven years and then we
Speaker 1: got married and not long before our first son was
Speaker 1: born and we have had four great kids and we
Speaker 1: now have two and a half grandchildren one on the way.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and she's been She is great. She's a
Speaker 1: great person. She's honest. Being on the road good or
Speaker 1: bad for the relationship, Well, it doesn't make life easy.
Speaker 1: I mean, goodness knows how she got on with four
Speaker 1: young kids, um while I was away, But you know, yes, so,
Speaker 1: and she never gave me any grief about that. You know,
Speaker 1: it was accepted. This was the only way I knew
Speaker 1: to make a living and this is the way he's
Speaker 1: going to have to be. And it's it's great now
Speaker 1: that I've you know, had a little bit of success
Speaker 1: here along the way and I can help them. But
Speaker 1: it was tough, you know, being away for and that
Speaker 1: was a sacrifice sometimes, you know, to be away with
Speaker 1: a band that you're not fully part of, and yet
Speaker 1: you I'm a team player. I am a team player,
Speaker 1: and I would always do my best whatever the situation,
Speaker 1: and feel obliged sometimes, but you know, my wife, God
Speaker 1: bless her, gosh, I don't actually did it. So prior
Speaker 1: to meeting your wife or maybe after, to what degree
Speaker 1: were you enamored of the sex, drugs, and rock and
Speaker 1: roll lifestyle. Well, I think I took my share. I
Speaker 1: don't like to talk about it. I don't like to
Speaker 1: talk about it with my kids, um because three of them,
Speaker 1: for sure never really never to my knowledge, we're interested
Speaker 1: in that one who's the chip of the old block.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure dabbled in various things. I'm hoping they're
Speaker 1: not going to hear this, but I think that you're okay.
Speaker 1: But no, I mean, you know I was expected of
Speaker 1: you and and and no, I'm guilty has charged, but
Speaker 1: not for a long time, not what not. As soon
Speaker 1: as the family started coming along, it was obvious that
Speaker 1: they didn't mix and I didn't. I didn't have a
Speaker 1: rock and roll family. I didn't have rock and roll kids.
Speaker 1: You know. I wanted a stable I didn't want any
Speaker 1: of that in their life. So when we were talking
Speaker 1: about the Doover thing, you were saying, if you had
Speaker 1: more confidence in yourself and your talents, I mean, the
Speaker 1: fear is just totally exterior. They don't really see what
Speaker 1: goes on in the mind. Are you telling us that
Speaker 1: you really didn't have enough confidence both to go out
Speaker 1: on a business level and artistic level? You just saw
Speaker 1: yourself as a band member. Yeah, I think I was
Speaker 1: happy being in a banned environment, playing with people having
Speaker 1: fun out. Just thought maybe it wasn't for me, you know,
Speaker 1: to to have that. I didn't want it. I know.
Speaker 1: I know the people that want that, you know, they
Speaker 1: have to they have to want it. And I was
Speaker 1: never that pushy, you know. I'm, as I say, more
Speaker 1: of a team player. But I love singing, and so
Speaker 1: I've had to some extent make myself do that, you know,
Speaker 1: have a bit more confidence, and and I have, I have,
Speaker 1: I have now, But um, I just don't think you can.
Speaker 1: You can. You can't really say would I do it
Speaker 1: all again? Because you know, you've got to have the
Speaker 1: guts to do it, And maybe I didn't have the guts,
Speaker 1: you know or whatever. I don't know. We're where where
Speaker 1: we are now. What would the guts have looked like?
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means to be honest. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean you made it from Sheffield with the outdoor, toilet,
Speaker 1: to to you know, to the hit parade? What what?
Speaker 1: What kind of characteristic would it have taken? They let me.
Speaker 1: But is it such that this is your personality or
Speaker 1: the boy from Sheffield? He can't take the boy out
Speaker 1: of Sheffield? Or can people change or not change? It
Speaker 1: could be I mean Sheffield people generally speaking, they are
Speaker 1: kind of self effacing. They do get their self deprivation.
Speaker 1: What's the word um in? They don't like people that
Speaker 1: get to big for their boots. As I say, I'm
Speaker 1: a team player. I could make all the excuses in
Speaker 1: the world, but it boils down to the fact that
Speaker 1: you know, you've got to want want it, and you've
Speaker 1: got to be self orientated. I was. As I say,
Speaker 1: I'm not complaining. I think things are gone pretty good.
Speaker 1: So ultimately, you have a solo record, you have a
Speaker 1: hit in the United States, So do you think you're
Speaker 1: on your way? Then? What's going through your mind? Are
Speaker 1: we talking about don't shed a tear? Yeah no, no,
Speaker 1: we're talking about I need you, I need you before
Speaker 1: I need you? Yeah, I need you was just kind
Speaker 1: of top thirty. Yeah, that was stripped step in the
Speaker 1: right direction. Yeah, I thought things were moving. Well, there,
Speaker 1: I was in working a lot with Nick Lowe um
Speaker 1: back in those days, and yeah, I was and a
Speaker 1: bit more confident and cocky then. Um, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think chronologically how things happened. I know that after Mike
Speaker 1: and the Mechanics, I got a solo contract and I
Speaker 1: had my first top ten hit, which is the song
Speaker 1: Don't Shed a Tear, and that was pretty exciting. Sadly,
Speaker 1: my wife got ill at this at this time, and
Speaker 1: we I was on tour in the States and I
Speaker 1: had to go home and we had to um, you know,
Speaker 1: take care of her for for for a little while.
Speaker 1: So we lost a little bit of momentum there. But
Speaker 1: as I say, I'm where I am now, I think
Speaker 1: is a pretty good place. So how do you end
Speaker 1: up working with Mike and the Mechanics? Um? Do you
Speaker 1: want the long story? Give us a lot? Sorry, okay, Um, well,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think now. Okay, So I had a
Speaker 1: band with Nick low for several years, which, okay, let's
Speaker 1: start there. How do you end up thou falling in
Speaker 1: with Nickolo? You must have known him from the stiff years,
Speaker 1: but how do you reconnect? No, I knew him before
Speaker 1: then I knew him before the stiff years. How did
Speaker 1: you know? How did you know him? Well? Because we
Speaker 1: were on this pub rock circuit. I was in Ace.
Speaker 1: He had a band called Brinsley Sports, and they were
Speaker 1: probably the best band on that circuit, but we were
Speaker 1: the ones that had the lucky hit anyway, so we
Speaker 1: I didn't then see much of Nick for many years
Speaker 1: until he became this record new wave record producer, producing
Speaker 1: The Damned and Elvis Costello and these people, and and
Speaker 1: then we all ended up under the same roof, under
Speaker 1: the Jake Rivereia stable because Nick was always with Jake
Speaker 1: and he'd taken on Squeeze and Nick produced my first album,
Speaker 1: which is called Suburban Voodoo, which is a very fueled
Speaker 1: kind of record. Um, what does that mean? We were
Speaker 1: loaded basically, you know. It sounds like it though, but
Speaker 1: I bought it. I was happy, did you well? It
Speaker 1: was very exciting. Where did this start? Now? Mechanics? Okay,
Speaker 1: So one of the reasons I had left Squeeze actually
Speaker 1: was because I loved Nick and I wanted to work
Speaker 1: with him. Um. He but unfortunately at the time he
Speaker 1: wasn't having a great time. He was having a divorce
Speaker 1: and all this stuff was going on, so he wasn't
Speaker 1: a lot of fun a lot of the time. But
Speaker 1: we had this band, and if if I had a
Speaker 1: record out, we went out as Paul Carrott, and if
Speaker 1: Nick had a record out, it was Nick Lowe and
Speaker 1: the Cowboy Outfit or Noise to Go or what have you.
Speaker 1: And so that was great. We had it. We we
Speaker 1: were playing up and down the states, either playing in
Speaker 1: little dives or opening up for people like Tom Petty
Speaker 1: on these long tours, opening up in the arenas and
Speaker 1: what have you. Had a lot of fun. But then
Speaker 1: it started to get a bit old, and we we've
Speaker 1: all decided really that it's it's it's run its course.
Speaker 1: And coincidentally, I get a call from a guy called b. A. Robertson,
Speaker 1: who is um calls me up about the blue I
Speaker 1: don't know him from Adam and he he's written this
Speaker 1: song that he wants to pitch to a movie and
Speaker 1: he says, Um, we should get that guy who sang
Speaker 1: that song. How long? So he called me up and said,
Speaker 1: you're that guy that's saying that. Would you come and
Speaker 1: sing this demo for me? Because I'm pitching this. I said, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: because you never know. So I just went and did it.
Speaker 1: I didn't get paid or anything like that. Sang this
Speaker 1: song for him and he said, oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm writing songs with Mike Rutherford from Genesis. He's making
Speaker 1: a solo record and would you think you'd be interested
Speaker 1: in coming down and singing a couple of songs on that?
Speaker 1: And I said, sure, yeah, why not? And so I
Speaker 1: went down. I met Mike, went down to the Genesis
Speaker 1: studio there and they said, just going. You've got this
Speaker 1: little song. Here's just three chords, just going there, blues
Speaker 1: away and it was this song Silent Running or can
Speaker 1: you hear Me? So they only had the can you
Speaker 1: hear Me a bit at this point and then and
Speaker 1: I'm just riffing away and they said, oh, that sounds great,
Speaker 1: and b A went away and wrote this weird lyric
Speaker 1: and I sang a couple of songs, a couple of
Speaker 1: three songs on that first album, and then thought no
Speaker 1: more about it. And then the record came out and
Speaker 1: it was well received, and Mike was in a position
Speaker 1: to assemble this kind of studio band into a touring band,
Speaker 1: and we became Mike and the Mechanics. Okay, then there's
Speaker 1: the second album with Living Years. Yes, so how is
Speaker 1: that album, ma, because you're a member of the group
Speaker 1: now the Mechanics and one of the Mechanics. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: not Mike though, as my news agent used to think.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well I was. I was really happy to
Speaker 1: get to sing that song. Um. Obviously I kind of
Speaker 1: felt it was a bit of a tribute to my dad,
Speaker 1: but it was. The song really was about BEA's relationship
Speaker 1: with his father and all the rest of it. But
Speaker 1: so that's a kind of a feather in the cap.
Speaker 1: We were nominated for Grammy Awards and all sorts. We
Speaker 1: didn't get it, but nevertheless we had some good success
Speaker 1: m for for a few albums, and it was good fun.
Speaker 1: But it was it was Mike's project, you know. So
Speaker 1: how does it feel when you're not writing the songs? Well,
Speaker 1: originally I didn't mind because it was it was different
Speaker 1: to anything I would have been involved with. You know,
Speaker 1: it still had that sort of genesis kind of connection.
Speaker 1: I was felt I was more of a root Sie
Speaker 1: kind of guy, but it was something different. But I
Speaker 1: was happy to be involved. And but then I started
Speaker 1: to think, well, you know, it's the songwriters back in
Speaker 1: those days that were making any of the money. So
Speaker 1: and I also felt that I could contribute to the songwriting,
Speaker 1: and fortunately Mike had already had this thought and started
Speaker 1: to include me more in the songwriting. And how did
Speaker 1: you write Over my Shoulder? Very quickly? Pretty quickly anyway,
Speaker 1: I mean I went down to Mike's house and he said, okay, well,
Speaker 1: I've got this little idea, and he started strumming the
Speaker 1: open chords as you're probably familiar with, and I started,
Speaker 1: and we put the cassette player on and I started
Speaker 1: to riff away. And after twenty minutes of riffing on
Speaker 1: this on these chords, the tape ran out. And I
Speaker 1: had been thinking, I don't think he's digging this because
Speaker 1: it's it's too pop for him. You know, he's not
Speaker 1: gonna like this anyway, and then he said, actually, you
Speaker 1: did something at the very beginning of the thing. And
Speaker 1: we were around the tape right to the top and
Speaker 1: there I'm singing for whatever and it reason looking back
Speaker 1: over my Shoulder Lady ballad, and he he loved it.
Speaker 1: So I was great. It was a whole shape was
Speaker 1: there from the get go. And then I took it
Speaker 1: away and wrote some lyrics to it and that was it.
Speaker 1: But that was a big song in Europe and the UK.
Speaker 1: But I don't think it ever took off in the
Speaker 1: of that album though. And I certainly know that song.
Speaker 1: That was my favorite song on the record. Uh, but
Speaker 1: how do you normally write a song? I don't know, Bob.
Speaker 1: I was hoping you weren't gonna ask me that one.
Speaker 1: You know, some people sit down there with a pad
Speaker 1: of paper and they write and they scratch. Other people
Speaker 1: are taking a shower. They get an idea. Some people
Speaker 1: all comes all together, some people working for a year.
Speaker 1: Usually it's it's a musical idea that would just come
Speaker 1: from jamming away and a phrase. You take that phrase
Speaker 1: and doing and then and you add to it. I
Speaker 1: very rarely have a plan. I very rarely have an
Speaker 1: idea of a concept or even a title. Um that
Speaker 1: all seems to come later. If if I'm lucky, something
Speaker 1: comes off the top of my head that sings good
Speaker 1: and that I can do velop and make into something.
Speaker 1: Once I get a start on it, I now have
Speaker 1: the confidence that I can make reasonably decent lyric. It's
Speaker 1: not going to be that original I'm not intellectual, as
Speaker 1: you probably guess by now, I should think. But and
Speaker 1: I'm not a reader. I'm not. I don't read books
Speaker 1: so much. I read news and articles and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But I like to think I can make something it
Speaker 1: it's probably borderline cliche, but I can make it sound
Speaker 1: not too cliche, and it can sound good. It will
Speaker 1: sing good, because that's important as well. So the kids
Speaker 1: are out of the house, you can't play music seven,
Speaker 1: you're not reading books? What do you what takes your
Speaker 1: time up all day? What do you do? I don't
Speaker 1: have any problem filling in my time. I've got this
Speaker 1: little studio at home, and if I'm not on the road,
Speaker 1: I'm in here messing about um. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: where most of my time goes. I still like soccer,
Speaker 1: but my team is really awful and terrible. But what's
Speaker 1: your team? My team Sheffield Wednesday. We're now in the
Speaker 1: third division. They've been in the Premier League and back
Speaker 1: in how long ago were they in the Premier League?
Speaker 1: About twenty years guys? Sorry, when I was growing up,
Speaker 1: they were real good. Who owns it now? Oh, it's
Speaker 1: owned by a Taiwanese Is there any is there any hope. No,
Speaker 1: there's hope that we will survive, which was looking a
Speaker 1: bit scary at the beginning of this year because this
Speaker 1: guy spent a whole lot of money, which are not
Speaker 1: allowed to do in the lower divisions, and we were
Speaker 1: in all kinds of trouble and we're getting points deducted
Speaker 1: for the financial stuff, and he'd blown a load of
Speaker 1: money on the wrong players and he didn't know what
Speaker 1: he was doing, but he insisted he did. So I
Speaker 1: thought we were going out of business completely. But there's
Speaker 1: hope they will survive. But to be back in the
Speaker 1: Premier League, it's a different planet now. The money up
Speaker 1: there is just crazy. And then you work with Elton
Speaker 1: John as a keyboard player himself. How do you end
Speaker 1: up working with Elton John. Yeah, he's a great piano player,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't play organ, and organ is different thing.
Speaker 1: It's just different. I mean, he probably could if he
Speaker 1: could be bothered to figure it out. But actually I'm
Speaker 1: a better organ player than piano player. It's just because
Speaker 1: you can get away with murder on the on the
Speaker 1: organ if you know how to coax the sound out
Speaker 1: of it. And I seemed to have a reputation for
Speaker 1: playing the Hammond organ. So he actually he here's a
Speaker 1: story for you. Are you're not getting fed up with
Speaker 1: these stories for the best parts. So Elton was friendly
Speaker 1: with Chris, different from Squeeze. I think it was to
Speaker 1: do with the the program, you know, And I think
Speaker 1: Elton was at one time sponsoring Chris. And one night
Speaker 1: Elton turned up at a Squeeze show in a concert
Speaker 1: in the in the UK and got up and sang
Speaker 1: a couple of songs and the place just went crazy.
Speaker 1: And of course I've been playing organ that night, and
Speaker 1: he must have thought, oh, well, we'll get him in.
Speaker 1: And I played on a couple of tracks, one of
Speaker 1: which was apparently the B side or the extra track
Speaker 1: on the famous Candle in the Wind, which at one
Speaker 1: point was the best selling record of all times. So
Speaker 1: my tenuous link to that is that I played on
Speaker 1: the other track, which is called something in the Way
Speaker 1: You Look Tonight. Yeah, that that track is a known
Speaker 1: track to Okay, so you play the keyboard, you also
Speaker 1: play the guitar. Can you just basically play anything you
Speaker 1: have that facility? Yeah. I don't play any of the
Speaker 1: wind instruments, but yeah, I'm not great, you know. But
Speaker 1: I it's I've got the musical instincts and I have
Speaker 1: a feel a natural field. You know, it's leaving. My
Speaker 1: son is the same. You know, he picks up, he
Speaker 1: picks up the guitar. He doesn't know what he's doing,
Speaker 1: but he looks like he's played it all his life. Um.
Speaker 1: So I have a feel, I have a groove, and
Speaker 1: that gets me a long way. Okay, So at this
Speaker 1: point you have a desire to leave a body of work.
Speaker 1: Isn't that sort of equivalent to having the hunger that
Speaker 1: we spoke of earlier? Possibly? Possibly? I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I it's tempting to say I've given
Speaker 1: it a good shot. I've had a great time. We
Speaker 1: could probably I could take it easy. Um, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's in the genes or what
Speaker 1: it is, or I just think I could have done
Speaker 1: so much better. Not commercially, but you know, musically I
Speaker 1: could have done better things. And maybe I had a
Speaker 1: bit of recognition. Um that don't worried me too much.
Speaker 1: Probably scares me more than anything. But why does it scary? Well,
Speaker 1: only because I don't like attention. Really, you know, if
Speaker 1: I go to the soccer game. I don't want people
Speaker 1: looking at me Paul character. I don't want that. I
Speaker 1: don't I just like to live normal life, albeit you know, comfortably.
Speaker 1: Are you ever recognized? Occasionally? But not much? Okay, So
Speaker 1: we go through this history. Unlike someone who starts in
Speaker 1: the band stays in that band their whole career, you're
Speaker 1: constantly making new connections. Now people say, oh, it just happened.
Speaker 1: I've been around too long to know it doesn't happen
Speaker 1: that way. What was that. I'm not a networker, so
Speaker 1: how did it happen? I'm not a networker, and I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't hang out with Eric you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you know you're established. But over forty or fifty years,
Speaker 1: opportunities have come up. Yeah, well they have just happened.
Speaker 1: They have just happened. I haven't been out there beating
Speaker 1: the bushes looking for this stuff. It has just happened. Okay.
Speaker 1: But you know, there were no times to talk about
Speaker 1: be getting married, having kids, or no times you're sitting
Speaker 1: at home saying, man, I need a gig. I gotta
Speaker 1: start calling people up. See what's going on. No, well, fortunately,
Speaker 1: there for for whatever reason, um, I things have come
Speaker 1: up at the right time when I mean, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong, I was when I'm when when I'm in
Speaker 1: my mid thirties and my early forties and I've got
Speaker 1: no hair and I've got four kids. Yeah, I was thinking,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what am I gonna do? But thinks
Speaker 1: always something always turned up. But I wasn't out there
Speaker 1: on the phone hustling. Honestly, I'm not like that. So
Speaker 1: you do a couple of songs. You write a couple
Speaker 1: songs that end up being done by the Eagles, one
Speaker 1: on their Health Reasons Over album, another one I'm a
Speaker 1: long run out of Eden album? How did that happen? Again?
Speaker 1: With the long sto Worice, It's a long story. I
Speaker 1: want a long story. That's the best I've been going
Speaker 1: to an hour and a half already. Um Well. I
Speaker 1: first met Timothy B. Schmidt on our first tour, ass
Speaker 1: first tour of America, when we were riding high with
Speaker 1: our big radio hit and Timothy is in the band
Speaker 1: called Pocole. We're both on the same record label. I
Speaker 1: met him, seemed like a real nice guy, and I
Speaker 1: didn't really meet him again until later when I think
Speaker 1: I was probably on either doing my gigs with Nick
Speaker 1: or in Nick's band, Nick Lowell's band, and Timothy came
Speaker 1: down a few times with Don Henley, and I found
Speaker 1: out that Don like what I did. He like that
Speaker 1: Suburban Voodoo album, and um, so he came down to
Speaker 1: a few gigs. And then must be skipping a good
Speaker 1: few years here. But about in the mid nineties, when
Speaker 1: the Eagles hadn't weren't together, you know, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I have no idea, none of my business. Um but
Speaker 1: I got a call from Don Felder who was keen
Speaker 1: to do something that he and Timothy and at that point,
Speaker 1: I believe Joe Walsh also they would wanted to do. So,
Speaker 1: they wanted to work, They wanted to do a project,
Speaker 1: make a record, maybe do some gigs. And they called
Speaker 1: me up out of the blue and said, do you
Speaker 1: fancy coming over to California? And you know, see what happens?
Speaker 1: And I did just like that, just got on a
Speaker 1: plane and went over there, stayed at Don's place, and
Speaker 1: I think it Joe at this point that bailed and
Speaker 1: he'd gone to get himself sorted out. And so there
Speaker 1: was done. There was Timothy and another guy called Max Carl,
Speaker 1: a great guy. He was in a band called thirty
Speaker 1: eight Special, great singer, very funny guy, and we spent
Speaker 1: some time writing songs, making some recordings, and everybody was
Speaker 1: getting out, oh this is interesting, this could be good,
Speaker 1: you know, blah blah blah. And one of the songs
Speaker 1: I took over there was this song level Keepers Alive,
Speaker 1: which was i'd co written with Peter Vale Jim Capaldi
Speaker 1: and with a view to taking it over for this project.
Speaker 1: And so we took it over there. I was singing
Speaker 1: it and we were making these recordings, everybody getting cited.
Speaker 1: But obviously, to cut this long story short, now the
Speaker 1: Eagles this I had to get back together. So that
Speaker 1: was the end of that project. It never it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: But a few weeks later, um, I got a call
Speaker 1: from Timothy and said, look, I need a song to
Speaker 1: do on the Eagles album. How about I do love
Speaker 1: Will Keepers Alive? And of course we said, well, big, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: So he did that one and it was a big
Speaker 1: radio record. It was part of the Unplugged thing and
Speaker 1: all that. And likewise on the Health Freezers over Sorry
Speaker 1: Long Road Out of Eden album, Timothy rang me up
Speaker 1: and there's a there's another long story here, but basically
Speaker 1: I wrote the song no No No, No, no No. I
Speaker 1: want to hear that story. Just telling that story. Timothy
Speaker 1: called me up and said, I need a song. We're
Speaker 1: making an album. I need a song. Nothing that he'd
Speaker 1: you know, presented to the band had been accept it.
Speaker 1: And I put the phone. He said, have you got anything?
Speaker 1: I said, well, I don't, but I'll try and write something,
Speaker 1: which I don't usually do. I'm not one of those
Speaker 1: guys that does that. But I put the phone down
Speaker 1: and literally came up with the chorus for the song
Speaker 1: as I could hear the Eagles singing in three part
Speaker 1: harmony sort of thing. And I made a little demo
Speaker 1: and I sent it to Timothy and I didn't hear
Speaker 1: much from him. But then he said, oh, we're coming
Speaker 1: over to England. We're going to play in London. You
Speaker 1: come on down, come to the show. And I did,
Speaker 1: and he said by when I went to the show,
Speaker 1: he said, have you got anything? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: there was that song I sent you. He said, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: send me that again. So I said, I sent it again.
Speaker 1: And then there were weeks and months probably went by
Speaker 1: and I didn't I wasn't hearing anything, and I sort
Speaker 1: of got in touch with him and I said, oh,
Speaker 1: that song, I don't want to hear anymore. I said,
Speaker 1: if you if you're not going to do it, you
Speaker 1: know I'm going to do it. So I think he's
Speaker 1: he said, no, we were, Actually, I just you know,
Speaker 1: they he put it to the bend and they were
Speaker 1: interested in doing it, and and they and the and
Speaker 1: they recorded it and it went on a long road
Speaker 1: out of it. I think it's a good song. Actually,
Speaker 1: I don't want to hear anymore. How do you know
Speaker 1: wading with Jim Capaldi, I didn't really know Jim. I
Speaker 1: think at one point he was possibly going to be
Speaker 1: part of this project. To be honest with you, I
Speaker 1: think they changed their mind about that, but at that
Speaker 1: early stage it was possible he might be involved in this,
Speaker 1: in this Eagles offshoot thing. And so I met him
Speaker 1: and we got together with this guy Pete Vail, who
Speaker 1: there's a good song writer. Yeah, and that's what we
Speaker 1: got together and wrote that song. Okay, So how many
Speaker 1: people went today? When you go out on the road,
Speaker 1: how many people do you take? How many people are
Speaker 1: in your band? There's there are there six or seven.
Speaker 1: We are We're seven. We have two drummers, one of
Speaker 1: which is my son Jack. He's been with us about
Speaker 1: ten years. They are bass, guitar, keyboards, sacks, and myself
Speaker 1: playing keys and guitar alternating. How many is that that?
Speaker 1: Six or seven? I wasn't. Okay Um, yes, so it's
Speaker 1: it's it's quite a big bend, but it's great. The
Speaker 1: guys have been with me for twenty odd years. They're
Speaker 1: all from Sheffield, so they're all they're all proper, down
Speaker 1: to earth guys than none of these hustling kind of
Speaker 1: I know that's I don't want to disrespect anybody here,
Speaker 1: but you know they're not hustling for gigs like you
Speaker 1: have to do in London or l A or New York.
Speaker 1: You've got to be busy. They're not. They're up in
Speaker 1: in Sheffield and they're not working with me. They play
Speaker 1: with their other things. There are other little projects and
Speaker 1: it's like a proper band, except I'm the boss. And
Speaker 1: how did you meet the guys from Sheffield? Okay? Um,
Speaker 1: when I started doing this solo thing, nobody knew really
Speaker 1: the name Paul Carrock. It's probably like it is in
Speaker 1: the States. You go how long? Oh yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: how long? Live here? I love that song. It's all
Speaker 1: that Paul character. I've never heard of him. So I
Speaker 1: started doing these small gigs and I was using guys
Speaker 1: from London who were, you know, proper session guys used
Speaker 1: to a high standard of not just wages but all
Speaker 1: the rest of it, the nice hotels, the nice travel
Speaker 1: and I couldn't give it to them. But they were
Speaker 1: trying to help me. But I felt it was a
Speaker 1: burden because I felt I'm not giving them what they
Speaker 1: do and what they used to. Anyway, I met I
Speaker 1: met this guy at the football but the Sheffield Wednesday game,
Speaker 1: and he was like this small time agent up in Sheffield,
Speaker 1: and I tried to explain to him, oh, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: doing some gigs, but I no, I don't make any money.
Speaker 1: No I don't mean yeah, I'm driving the van. And
Speaker 1: he couldn't get his head around this anyway. Eventually he
Speaker 1: said to me, well, listen, I've got this band. They're
Speaker 1: really good. Um they got a lead singer but where
Speaker 1: he can play the keyboards and he could they could
Speaker 1: do your gigs. And I went and I went and
Speaker 1: met these guys and they were like oh yeah, great.
Speaker 1: So they I bolted myself onto this northern club bend
Speaker 1: and it was initially a lot of people thought, what's
Speaker 1: Paul doing. He's playing with these guys up north, and
Speaker 1: but it was worked great because these were these are
Speaker 1: great guys. They loved the opportunity to play with me,
Speaker 1: and they could all play good. But they didn't have
Speaker 1: reputations or big names or anything like that. So and
Speaker 1: that's it. And from twenty years we've grown to a
Speaker 1: really good a really good band. Many people on the
Speaker 1: business side would say, you take it out seven people.
Speaker 1: Are you supposed to make any money? Well, I don't
Speaker 1: pay him much, you know, Well that's that we are.
Speaker 1: We are doing okay, because we know what we're doing.
Speaker 1: It's easy to waste money. It's easy to waste money
Speaker 1: making a record or going out on the road if
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're doing. But if you do
Speaker 1: know what you're doing, and you you spend the money
Speaker 1: in the right places, but you don't waste money, then
Speaker 1: you know you can make it workinly Okay. We know
Speaker 1: there's studio side, What are the dig a little bit
Speaker 1: deeper on the road side, what are the key things
Speaker 1: you must do or not doo. Um, you must be
Speaker 1: good every night. You must be good every night. It's
Speaker 1: not good being on fire for three nights and then
Speaker 1: burnt out for the rest of the tour. You know
Speaker 1: you that's one thing, um or are you talking sort
Speaker 1: of financially again? I like both of them. It wasn't
Speaker 1: asked the other question. Yeah. Well, initially we weren't making
Speaker 1: any money, um, but I didn't have to lose money
Speaker 1: because they took reasonable wages. We didn't over extend ourselves.
Speaker 1: We did things very basically, and we've built up a
Speaker 1: following from digging and gigging and gigging, and each year
Speaker 1: our standard has gone up. A standard of sound system,
Speaker 1: I standard of production, lighting venues, it goes up each year.
Speaker 1: So now we play nice theaters here in the in
Speaker 1: the UK and people keep coming back, you know. So
Speaker 1: it's I think that's how you do it, and how
Speaker 1: do you grow the audience you're talking about you have
Speaker 1: to be good every night? What are the other keys? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know the secrets to uh, you know, social
Speaker 1: media and all that. I'm not a very not really
Speaker 1: a social media animal, but I guess you can make
Speaker 1: that work for you. But in our case, it's been
Speaker 1: a case of you know, winning people over. We're we
Speaker 1: we we we we take them. We take it seriously,
Speaker 1: our responsibility to two people. You might think that people
Speaker 1: that's obvious, but it isn't. In a lot of cases.
Speaker 1: You know, some people kind of take their audience for
Speaker 1: granted a little bit. I don't know. I shouldn't be
Speaker 1: saying that, but we don't. I know that. So to
Speaker 1: what degree does the audience know the material? You're putting
Speaker 1: out new records constantly, So when the audience comes, do
Speaker 1: they know this music? How much of it can you play? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: it's a mixture because obviously we always include six or
Speaker 1: seven songs there that are pretty substantial hits, Living Years,
Speaker 1: how long Tempted? Uh, you know, Love will Keepers Alive.
Speaker 1: These these are pretty big songs. So we're always going
Speaker 1: to do them. We love doing them, we love the response.
Speaker 1: So we've got people who know everything we've done, and
Speaker 1: there's other people who may have heard a couple of things,
Speaker 1: and then they're often surprised, Oh I know, right, you know,
Speaker 1: they know that they don't realize until they get there
Speaker 1: that they know more of the material than they thought.
Speaker 1: But we've got some pretty pretty uh great fans. And
Speaker 1: do you personally go out to the merch table and
Speaker 1: sign and meet people? Actually, you know, I used to.
Speaker 1: I used to do that just to prove what a
Speaker 1: nice guy I am. But I did I realized we're
Speaker 1: touring in the middle of winter. People are coming up
Speaker 1: to you, going nice to meet your paul. Um. So
Speaker 1: we stopped doing that for hygiene reasons. And you say,
Speaker 1: you you play the first couple of months in the year,
Speaker 1: can you go back to the same markets every year?
Speaker 1: It seems so wow, that's really great. Okay, So if
Speaker 1: you're looking at what we are always changing, we all
Speaker 1: we usually have a new album out and we include
Speaker 1: new new stuff from that. Look, you're on stage the legends,
Speaker 1: they play new music. It's a cliche. Everybody goes to
Speaker 1: the bathroom. Yeah, how do you decide how much new
Speaker 1: music to play and how do you keep the audience interested?
Speaker 1: That's a good point. I mean, well, we're not we're
Speaker 1: not a greatest hits act. Um. I don't think the
Speaker 1: music is the music is not inaccessible, if that's a word. Um,
Speaker 1: you know you usually get this music or you don't,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not that demanding in that sense, I
Speaker 1: don't think, um, but I don't know. Obviously, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's something we have to think about. But I think
Speaker 1: generally speaking, they like the need, they like to hear
Speaker 1: new stuff. Okay, if you look back at the landscape,
Speaker 1: what are a couple of records not your own, not
Speaker 1: once you've worked on that are important to you, that
Speaker 1: really motivated you or stick with you or you still play.
Speaker 1: I love Talking Book, Oh yeah, especially at the time.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a groundbreaking, revolutionary and it was
Speaker 1: one guy as well, a lot of it, you know,
Speaker 1: playing the stuff, and it had this own personality and
Speaker 1: it wasn't even quantire back in those early days. It
Speaker 1: would just hung together beautifully. And I love Moon Dance
Speaker 1: Van Morrison two great records. Just think it's a beautiful
Speaker 1: organic record. I love the sound of it, I love
Speaker 1: the band on it, and of course Vans great. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it's a very honest album. I love that album. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: what else is there an Aretha record? I play a lot,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a compilation. I guess. I think it's
Speaker 1: the greatest hits type thing. But again, it has that
Speaker 1: great band feel to it. Life feel to it. I've
Speaker 1: got a pretty mixed mixed taste in music. And are
Speaker 1: you generally just playing your own music or are you
Speaker 1: listening to other people's music. Do you keep up on
Speaker 1: new music? Where do you fall on that to continue?
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't really keep up with what's going on.
Speaker 1: I haven't a clue what's going on. Um, I don't
Speaker 1: listen to my own stuff other than when I'm working
Speaker 1: at it, which I mean on the last year it's
Speaker 1: been a lot because I've been doing it by herself.
Speaker 1: It does mean you're playing it a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: because you're getting the parts right and all the rest
Speaker 1: of it. But no, I don't listen to much new stuff. UM.
Speaker 1: I listened to a lot of old stuff. I listened
Speaker 1: to like Amos Milbourne and Little Junior Parker and Mose
Speaker 1: Allison and Donnie Hathaway, things like that. Some classical, some
Speaker 1: English classical music which I find quite relaxing. And yeah, okay, Paul,
Speaker 1: thanks for filling us in all this. Why you have
Speaker 1: good vacation down there on the coast of Spain. Thank you, Bob,
Speaker 1: so thanks so much for with this. You're very welcome,
Speaker 1: and thank you for your patience listening to us, no listen,
Speaker 1: is a little deep that it's good until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob left six h