Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the barber of Certified That.
Speaker 1: My guest today is David Great. David, you have a
Speaker 1: new album. Tell me about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's called Dear Life. It's been in the pipeline,
Speaker 2: the creative pipeline, quite a while. It's it's it's birth
Speaker 2: process has been somewhat dislocated by the complications of COVID
Speaker 2: and all the sort of touring backlog and life backlog
Speaker 2: that happened. So it's it's it's a massive work because
Speaker 2: I think I'm trying to sort of clear the decks.
Speaker 2: So this is sort of chapter one of the stuff
Speaker 2: that I've been doing for the last few years. It's
Speaker 2: a record that, I mean, I don't know why some
Speaker 2: records come out more sort of energized, or I say
Speaker 2: about these songs that they were born standing up. They've
Speaker 2: seemed very direct, melodic and and moving out to the listener.
Speaker 2: So some of my stuff maybe a little bit more
Speaker 2: introspective or oblique or just slightly more abstracted. This record
Speaker 2: is not suffering depth wise for its immediacy, but I
Speaker 2: feel it has this kind of melodic principle and a
Speaker 2: very direct engagement. It's straight to camera as I would
Speaker 2: say as well. So I use the kind of short
Speaker 2: story writer's imaginative trick of using other voices, not just
Speaker 2: a straight autio but altobiographical approach. I kind of use
Speaker 2: lots of different angles to get different views of the
Speaker 2: same mountain. Twenty views of Mount Fuji by Hockasei's it's
Speaker 2: it's lots of different views of life. Maybe as life
Speaker 2: starts to progress, as the view begins to change. So that,
Speaker 2: in an that's what it's all about.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. You say it was long time
Speaker 1: in the development. Is that because of COVID? Be a
Speaker 1: little more specific, please, yeah.
Speaker 2: No. I started the process in twenty nineteen in full
Speaker 2: knowledge that in March of twenty twenty I was going
Speaker 2: to be embarking on the White Ladder Anniversary Tour, which
Speaker 2: was going to take most of twenty twenty out of
Speaker 2: the equation, So I knew I would be sort of
Speaker 2: rejoining the album at the end of that, But of
Speaker 2: course life had other ideas, and we did all the
Speaker 2: prep and we rehearsals and the production rehearsals, and then
Speaker 2: the day just before the first show, we locked down
Speaker 2: and it was a long time before the tour was viable.
Speaker 2: So it then changed everything and the real star burst
Speaker 2: of song writing I had written a few songs at
Speaker 2: the end of twenty nineteen happened at the end of
Speaker 2: COVID when I've had a zoom call with my managers
Speaker 2: and agents and we decided that the tour was going
Speaker 2: to have to go ahead in early twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: Because you could no longer hold other dates. It wasn't
Speaker 2: possible to sort of hedge your bets. You had to
Speaker 2: either do it or not do it and wait another
Speaker 2: eighteen months if you weren't going to go. Then there
Speaker 2: were so many tours in a holding pattern, and that
Speaker 2: kind of gave me this kind of clarity that I
Speaker 2: had five months before rehearsal started. During COVID, I, like
Speaker 2: many creative people, thought I'll go down to my studio
Speaker 2: in the basement and I'm going to start making music
Speaker 2: while everyone else is wondering what to do with themselves.
Speaker 2: But eventually the pressure and the strangeness of this experience
Speaker 2: bore down on me and it became sort of ridiculously
Speaker 2: unhealthy actually to indulge my creative principles when there was
Speaker 2: something much bigger to address, which was life itself. Finally,
Speaker 2: the horizon had been canceled. What we just had was
Speaker 2: the day, the time, and the people, and I'd luckily
Speaker 2: had my family around me. So after a couple of
Speaker 2: months of writing songs and trying to press record and
Speaker 2: run in and record things, I just took the pressure
Speaker 2: off and decided to just exist with my family and
Speaker 2: partly that fund of experience and actually letting the field
Speaker 2: go fallow I think had a huge effect, positive effect
Speaker 2: in terms of the writing and the emotional coherence of
Speaker 2: what then happened. So some of the lyrics and some
Speaker 2: of the songs relate directly to that experience, but I
Speaker 2: think just as a whole. Anyway, I got to the
Speaker 2: end of twenty one, as I say, and we had
Speaker 2: this Zoom meeting and it was clear that the tour
Speaker 2: was going ahead in May or not or not at all.
Speaker 2: So with this clarity in mind, I just began to work,
Speaker 2: and I worked in a way I've never worked before.
Speaker 2: It wasn't that new songs came, which is always something
Speaker 2: that will happen if you put yourself at the cold
Speaker 2: face and keep turning up. It was that the song
Speaker 2: the Half Finished things which I've always got hundreds of
Speaker 2: the ones I was just picking up, I was just
Speaker 2: finishing them, and it was an extraordinary experience. I've completed
Speaker 2: thirty or forty things in the space of a few months,
Speaker 2: and that's a hell of a pace for me. So
Speaker 2: it was informed by this whole relationship to not doing
Speaker 2: it so that the making of this record. So sometimes
Speaker 2: time can be a collaborator. Putting records out always takes
Speaker 2: longer than you wanted to. In this case, there was
Speaker 2: a great, big two year hole in the middle. But
Speaker 2: in the end it's all been in favor of the music.
Speaker 2: It's all worked out well.
Speaker 1: Okay, So since you decided that working in the studio
Speaker 1: was counter productive, how did you cope with COVID.
Speaker 2: Well, I just I tried to just be I mean,
Speaker 2: I've been telling myself perhaps somewhat dishonestly. Or did I
Speaker 2: have the courage to just stop be with my family?
Speaker 2: The elephant in the room is that I love these
Speaker 2: guys very much, but it's always work that comes first,
Speaker 2: and there's always something burning in my imagination that I've
Speaker 2: got to get to, or there's an event or a
Speaker 2: tour or a deadline that I'm working towards so they're
Speaker 2: just accommodated really a lot of the time in my head. Anyway,
Speaker 2: in amongst all that stuff that I chose, they were
Speaker 2: getting into their late teens. It was a chance to
Speaker 2: sort of be together with my wife and my children.
Speaker 2: I've been saying for years, Jesus, I need to stop
Speaker 2: touring and just be for a while, And finally I
Speaker 2: was being made to do it. And of course the
Speaker 2: first thing I wanted to do was find something else
Speaker 2: to do, so I kind of it took a while
Speaker 2: to to see the elephant in the room, which was
Speaker 2: that God, this stuff really matters. And I think there
Speaker 2: was something that happened in COVID that was there was
Speaker 2: many things that happened that were extraordinary. I know it
Speaker 2: was a horrendous experience on so many levels for so
Speaker 2: many people. But death in our culture is absent or
Speaker 2: at least postponed as a reality in most kind of
Speaker 2: conversations and dialogue. And here we were looking at daily
Speaker 2: stats and hearing stories and suddenly it was the center
Speaker 2: of attention. Not only that, but we were robbed of
Speaker 2: this kind of must do something, the constellations of action.
Speaker 2: We had to just contemplate the bare realities of changing
Speaker 2: seasons and the tick of the clock and people being
Speaker 2: in life and death situations. And it was a very
Speaker 2: contemplative experience. But anyway, I felt personally very enriched by
Speaker 2: spending time with my family. We watched films, we played games,
Speaker 2: we did stuff. It was like a long Christmas holiday
Speaker 2: for a while.
Speaker 1: And have you gotten COVID?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I got it in twenty one, and actually I
Speaker 2: got it in twenty two, just before the tours, so
Speaker 2: luckily I was nicely immunized before it all kicked off.
Speaker 1: And when you actually went on the tour in twenty two,
Speaker 1: to what degree did you have COVID precautions so that
Speaker 1: the band or you didn't get sick and you didn't
Speaker 1: have to cancel deats?
Speaker 2: We didn't have any, to be honest, Bob, there was
Speaker 2: by that point. I mean you were standing in a
Speaker 2: room of however many thousand people bellowing at you. I
Speaker 2: don't think on a sort of virus prevention level there
Speaker 2: was much chance of avoiding things. What happened was that
Speaker 2: one of the band got COVID during the tour, and
Speaker 2: it was then passed on to all the other members.
Speaker 2: Of the band apart from me. So one particular show
Speaker 2: we had to do with everybody being isolated from everybody
Speaker 2: else crew band. It was quite crazy, and I was
Speaker 2: the only person who was actually healthy. So it affected
Speaker 2: the tour in that way. But in terms of the
Speaker 2: precautions when you're living on a tour bus together and
Speaker 2: I mean you're constantly just in these situations, it was
Speaker 2: it was very difficult. Like a lot of COVID it
Speaker 2: was good in theory that you can do things, but
Speaker 2: separation wasn't really possible. So we obviously we did We
Speaker 2: didn't throw caution to the wind. We were kind of
Speaker 2: mindful of what the dangers were, but I think at
Speaker 2: that point people were restless anyway to reconnect. It gave
Speaker 2: it provided the tour with an incredible burst of energy
Speaker 2: for us who'd been denied the thing that we do,
Speaker 2: but also for the crowds to do a feel good
Speaker 2: thing like that as well. I mean to be gratifying
Speaker 2: everyone in that fashion. It was just what they wanted
Speaker 2: and what they needed probably, so it gave this electric
Speaker 2: electricity to everything, a sort of extra charge. So that
Speaker 2: was quite remarkable to be a part of.
Speaker 1: Let's Go Back you say your work is always number
Speaker 1: one in your family. We can talk about that generally,
Speaker 1: like hey, I have to go on the road, But
Speaker 1: as a practical matter, how does that manifest itself. It's
Speaker 1: like all of a sudden, you get an idea and
Speaker 1: you go, I gotta go into my room. I gotta
Speaker 1: cut it. Or your wife says, hey, you've been working
Speaker 1: for twenty days straight. You got to stay at dinner.
Speaker 1: Tell me what it's actually like.
Speaker 2: Well, the way I deal with it, Bob, is that
Speaker 2: I compartmentalize. So I do either of those things. Most
Speaker 2: of my life is organizational. It's not creative at all.
Speaker 2: It's very hard to find the time for pure creativity.
Speaker 2: But when I get into a writing mode and I
Speaker 2: say to everyone, right, stop emailing me, stop bothering me.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be writing a record. Now, I'm recording,
Speaker 2: leave me alone. And then if I get three clear
Speaker 2: days a week, I think I'm doing well. For it's
Speaker 2: superb There's so many other things to attend to. So
Speaker 2: I would normally work like a working day, get up early,
Speaker 2: get into the studio early. I like the fresh mind
Speaker 2: of the morning, and I would work through till seven o'clock.
Speaker 2: Maybe and stop, and that would be my working day.
Speaker 2: And as I say, Monday to Thursday if I can
Speaker 2: get that, if I can't, and Tuesday to Thursday, you know,
Speaker 2: making this record. Sometimes I went away and that was
Speaker 2: another part of it, to the countryside and would work
Speaker 2: longer hours. I'd work into the night, and that was
Speaker 2: actually very beautiful, so still so quiet. Some extraordinary things
Speaker 2: happened in those spaces. But no, basically I try and
Speaker 2: just be quite disciplined. So if I have an idea,
Speaker 2: it generally just has to wait until I have the
Speaker 2: time to explore it. I mean, now, I've just been
Speaker 2: writing lyric notes down this afternoon. A few things came
Speaker 2: into my mind, and then a musical idea came to
Speaker 2: me while I was practicing. Because I got the tour
Speaker 2: obviously starting for this new record, I've got to get
Speaker 2: myself up to speed. So as accidents still happened on
Speaker 2: the peyboard or on the guitar, and oh, that's interesting,
Speaker 2: I must remember this. And then a little melody came
Speaker 2: and I thought, actually that works with this lyric, and
Speaker 2: blah blah blah, I just have to make a little
Speaker 2: note of it and come back to it. So it's
Speaker 2: it's it's it's not possible. It's like I work a
Speaker 2: sort of milk round and I can get to be
Speaker 2: a musician, you know when I've finished.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's say it's Monday to Thursday and you're working.
Speaker 1: Can your family interrupt you? Or do you turn off
Speaker 1: all your devices? And everybody knows David's working, leave them alone?
Speaker 2: Now that kids will just interrupt you. They say things
Speaker 2: like world shattering importance, Like Dad, the Wi Fi isn't working,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean the world, the world's come to
Speaker 2: an end. Life being what it is, there's sort of
Speaker 2: digital hell. We've all been plunged into that. There's enough.
Speaker 2: There's always something going wrong, So no, there's there's if
Speaker 2: Amazon aren't tapping on your door or something, there's always
Speaker 2: some bloody interruption. So no, I think, as I say,
Speaker 2: broadly speaking, yes, if I said no, I'm in this mode,
Speaker 2: that they wouldn't come down. I'd be left to my
Speaker 2: own devices during the day. Now, I don't have a
Speaker 2: studio at home because I've moved house. So I've got
Speaker 2: a studio just up the road, a few miles up
Speaker 2: the road in West London. So when I'm there, I'm there,
Speaker 2: so that in a way, that's a lot more straightforward.
Speaker 2: When my studio was in the house, it was deeply problematic,
Speaker 2: so children would have parties in there and all kinds
Speaker 2: of things, you know, So it was it was, it was.
Speaker 2: It was a complex. Having my life squashed together with
Speaker 2: the house above the studio sounds ideal, but actually it
Speaker 2: was problematic. So I'm happier with this separation that I
Speaker 2: have now in some ways.
Speaker 1: So why did you move house?
Speaker 2: Because kids are sort of getting older and leaving home.
Speaker 2: And we lived in a nice leafy part of London
Speaker 2: called Hampstead, and it's all very nice, got lovely schools
Speaker 2: and beautiful. The heath is what it's famous for, where
Speaker 2: Keats and Coleridge used to wander and compose their rhymes.
Speaker 2: But it's really a bit boring. So we've decided to
Speaker 2: move right into the center of town. So we've kind
Speaker 2: of we've moved into w one, trying to make our
Speaker 2: lives a bit more interesting and a bit more cultural cultural,
Speaker 2: I suppose, like, so you can just walk out and
Speaker 2: do stuff, go to the shops, restaurants, theaters, galleries. Not
Speaker 2: that I'm spending all my time doing that, but you
Speaker 2: certainly can. And I like being just walking distance to everything,
Speaker 2: whether it's Selfridges or the Tait. I can kind of
Speaker 2: just basically just wander to it. So that's been the change.
Speaker 2: I think I wouldn't have enacted that change if we
Speaker 2: didn't have a second home. We're lucky enough to have
Speaker 2: the ultimate luxury, which is a country place. I've got
Speaker 2: a little house up on the coast in Norfolk, right
Speaker 2: by the beach, so I get all the fresh air
Speaker 2: and wilderness I can deal with when I'm up there,
Speaker 2: and then I come back to London and I can
Speaker 2: live in a different way.
Speaker 1: How many kids do you have?
Speaker 2: Two? I got two.
Speaker 1: Girls in their presently what age.
Speaker 2: Twenty two and twenty and are.
Speaker 1: They still live in their house? Are they out? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Exactly. Well, one of them's kind of half living here,
Speaker 2: half not living here. But I think it's a lot
Speaker 2: nicer to live here than it is in her crappy
Speaker 2: student flat. So the other ones just gone back to
Speaker 2: university this morning. She's gone back to Glasgow, so she's
Speaker 2: there during the terms and she comes back for holidays,
Speaker 2: so they're kind of here some of the time. It's
Speaker 2: a lot nicer being at home than it is in
Speaker 2: your little flat, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's a TV show in America that
Speaker 1: you may or may not be familiar with call Family
Speaker 1: Ties from the eighties nineties where the parents are hippies
Speaker 1: and Michael J. Fox is very conservative. What are your
Speaker 1: kids like relative to you and your wife?
Speaker 2: Well, I think just the way that they are as
Speaker 2: they've always been very conversational children, So they're highly articulate
Speaker 2: and sociable and not intimidated by adults or other people.
Speaker 2: They will be very chatty people, good, able to speak
Speaker 2: much better than I am, certainly, So that's sort of
Speaker 2: what they're like. What are they like politically culturally? Well
Speaker 2: that they've they're in this touch of a finger generation
Speaker 2: for everything they want, so they have a different relationship
Speaker 2: to things. It's interesting. I mean I haven't protected them
Speaker 2: from what was basically, you know, the open sewer of
Speaker 2: the internet and social media. They've been a how to
Speaker 2: ramble because I guess I feel that they need to
Speaker 2: know how to survive this this world. So they've been left,
Speaker 2: they've had phones, they've had all this stuff. They've been
Speaker 2: exposed to god knows what. So but they have this
Speaker 2: different relationship to music and culture, and obviously there's different
Speaker 2: political opinions. So identity politics has become such a huge thing.
Speaker 2: It's something we all disagree about in our family.
Speaker 1: So they're there.
Speaker 2: They're My youngest is very political. Ye, this not as much,
Speaker 2: although recent events have made her more so. So it's
Speaker 2: that they're they're not dissimilar to us. They're just have
Speaker 2: a different generation and they view certain things very differently.
Speaker 2: I think when I was growing up, music was it
Speaker 2: was more than what you listen to, what kind of
Speaker 2: reflected on you. It was it was actually your identity
Speaker 2: because choosing what you didn't like was just as profound
Speaker 2: as what you did. So if you were a mode
Speaker 2: or a rocker, or if you were a punk, or
Speaker 2: you were this, if you're you know, if you like
Speaker 2: talking heads and this and that, but you don't like
Speaker 2: Joranne Joanna, you were you positioned yourself, glued yourself together.
Speaker 2: If you discovered Leonard coh and John Martin, Nick Drake,
Speaker 2: these are the things that became what you were not
Speaker 2: internally and also sort of your character sort of thing.
Speaker 2: I think it was more tribal, it was rara, and
Speaker 2: now it's like everything's available all the time. It's it's
Speaker 2: not quite the same.
Speaker 1: So if your kids turned you on to music or
Speaker 1: turned you off to music.
Speaker 2: Well, of course they listened to all They listened to
Speaker 2: all kinds of stuff, which to me is it's just
Speaker 2: lays it on too thick, maybe you know, moaning about this,
Speaker 2: that or the rest. So but yeah, they've they've turned
Speaker 2: me on to quite a few things because they have
Speaker 2: very diverse listening. It they're being they're connecting through I
Speaker 2: don't know if it's algorithmic, but they're certainly accelerating their
Speaker 2: their knowledge and contact with music through TV through sort
Speaker 2: of applied versions of the music. They find it in
Speaker 2: places and then they pass it around like so they
Speaker 2: have quite a kind of quite catholic taste in some ways.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I've picked up on a few tracks which
Speaker 2: I really really like. So but generally one of the
Speaker 2: problems is we don't share our listening. In the old days,
Speaker 2: the parents used to have to watch Top of the
Speaker 2: Pops with the kids and go, what's this rubbish? You know,
Speaker 2: the crazy world of Arthur Brown fire. You know, he
Speaker 2: should he should get a job, you know, like they
Speaker 2: used to say things like that, and you know, these days,
Speaker 2: we don't have that common experience. There isn't a thing
Speaker 2: that everyone does to listen to music, So you get
Speaker 2: to hear what they're listening to. You just occasionally hear
Speaker 2: it blasting out of the shower or something, or they've
Speaker 2: stolen your bow speaker and they've taken over the living
Speaker 2: room and you get to hear something. But you know,
Speaker 2: I think I heard they were the other days that
Speaker 2: they were playing some Velvet Morning by what you McCall
Speaker 2: it and Nancy Sinatra and what's his name? I thought, well,
Speaker 2: I said, this is a great track. I said, have
Speaker 2: you listened to this record? This is a great record.
Speaker 2: They were like, no, we just know this track. I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: when you listen to the whole thing?
Speaker 1: Okay, To what degree are you a student of the game?
Speaker 1: To what degree do you know what the ticket prices are?
Speaker 1: To what degree are you concerned with praises? To what
Speaker 1: degree do you know the gross? Do you know the cross? Well?
Speaker 2: I have I have to. I've been an independent artist
Speaker 2: for a long time now, so it's touring has become
Speaker 2: much more expensive and it's very high risk. I mean,
Speaker 2: you you you spend a lot of money to put
Speaker 2: a tour on, and this tour I'm about to do
Speaker 2: for dear Life, it's called the Past and Present Tour.
Speaker 2: This will be the culmination of many years work. So
Speaker 2: we're not going to sell a load of vinyl. It's
Speaker 2: not like the coffers will be full. We've got to
Speaker 2: go out and talk do these shows for our fans,
Speaker 2: So it's very important. You know, people will push the
Speaker 2: ticket price up, push to cover all these cost but
Speaker 2: that just goes on to the consumer, and I feel
Speaker 2: very strongly that there's only so far you can take that.
Speaker 2: So I think for these reasons, if you choose to
Speaker 2: wash your hands of the sort of the dirty business
Speaker 2: of selling tickets in the market, then you're in danger
Speaker 2: of distancing people who haven't got as much money but
Speaker 2: a big passion for music, and the very people that
Speaker 2: probably prop you up. So for those reasons, I take
Speaker 2: all that stuff quite seriously. I'm not sitting in meetings going, hey,
Speaker 2: we should charge this, but I am paying attention. But yeah,
Speaker 2: one of the great problems is the sort of the
Speaker 2: profitability of things. It's become very expensive to tour, and
Speaker 2: everyone's wages want to go up, and all the rest
Speaker 2: of it, You've got things like environmental concerns and trying
Speaker 2: to do things in a different way, which may be
Speaker 2: more awkward, more expensive, more time consuming. So there's lots
Speaker 2: of pressures to do things differently, but not much slack
Speaker 2: in the line financially. So yes, I pay attention. I
Speaker 2: have my own record label. I notice things, and I've
Speaker 2: been involved in putting my own music out. Not I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm not hands on deck or I'm not part of that,
Speaker 2: but I'll be a part of the conversations. I'll meet
Speaker 2: the people, and I'll take good note of what happens
Speaker 2: and what doesn't happen, what gets spent, what doesn't get spent.
Speaker 2: Of course, because at the moment, I'm spending my own money.
Speaker 2: I'm spending my own money set up a new record company,
Speaker 2: and I'm spending my own money making the record and
Speaker 2: putting it out. So it's a lot of money that this.
Speaker 2: So this, all of this has an effect on how
Speaker 2: you think about your ticket prices and everything else. It's
Speaker 2: it's it's all interconnected, and it's no doubt a more
Speaker 2: abundant creative space to ignore the whole damn lot and
Speaker 2: just and live in your own little world, your little
Speaker 2: creative bubble. But I find that I can't do that really,
Speaker 2: I'm just drawn to the detail of what's actually happening.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if you stop being a musician today, do
Speaker 1: you have enough money that you could get to the
Speaker 1: end or is it album to album?
Speaker 2: No, I'm comfortably off. I could stop now.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you're making this record, you know, the record
Speaker 1: you made independently, but you've licensed it to other people
Speaker 1: in different territories.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, well this time that's what we've licensed it
Speaker 2: to secretly distribution this time. So that's that's that's a
Speaker 2: worldwide deal as far as I'm aware. And was there
Speaker 2: an advance with that, No, I don't take advances. It's
Speaker 2: it's just to do with how much, what the marketing
Speaker 2: spend will be and all those kind of things, and
Speaker 2: you know, some of the other detail and how long
Speaker 2: the deal's going to be. So it's a one album deal.
Speaker 2: That's that's what we've been doing for the last little while.
Speaker 1: So do you have a view on streaming?
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, you know, yes, yes, very much so.
Speaker 2: I I think that the way that our industry works
Speaker 2: is to hell with it. That's the way. That's the
Speaker 2: way it goes. With the tech and the power that
Speaker 2: they you know, they don't worry too much about the
Speaker 2: people who making the music. That don't worry all. I
Speaker 2: wouldn't say, really, they've just got to float their brand
Speaker 2: and get to so and of course it's ended up
Speaker 2: being a hugely profitable thing for major labels who've stripped
Speaker 2: out staff and costs and amalgamated and joined and all
Speaker 2: this enormous back catalog that's just probably playing the minimum,
Speaker 2: bare minimum to some of these people, and they're getting
Speaker 2: phenomenal figures streaming all these old songs, so they're not
Speaker 2: having to do anything, not spending anything, shipping a load
Speaker 2: of vinyl to Canada. They're just you know, basically just
Speaker 2: sitting there and this stuff's just pouring in. So it's
Speaker 2: not recognizing songwriters, producers.
Speaker 1: There's just not.
Speaker 2: Enough in there. So I think that what we thought
Speaker 2: in the eighties was that you know, sound was going
Speaker 2: to get higher and higher quality, and the tech would
Speaker 2: get higher and higher quality, and you know, but actually
Speaker 2: what's happened is it went the other way. And hell
Speaker 2: with quality, it's just about immediacy, which is an interesting thing.
Speaker 2: So you know if there were higher quality brands, none
Speaker 2: of them have really succeeded that you could have a
Speaker 2: really incredible listening experience and maybe spend a bit more money.
Speaker 2: There might be a little bit more money there for
Speaker 2: the artists. But and again that would take a load
Speaker 2: of money to float it, and there's been various people
Speaker 2: trying to launch various things. So yes, streaming is a
Speaker 2: wonderful resource for the listener, it's not so rewarding for
Speaker 2: the struggling artist.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me about the difference between quality and immediacly.
Speaker 2: Well as in the actual quality of the audio is
Speaker 2: very very limited on your basic streaming platform on an
Speaker 2: MP three, as opposed to listen to a beautiful piece
Speaker 2: of finyl from an amazing record player and lovely speakers,
Speaker 2: or then you had the CD and you take it
Speaker 2: to the next musical clarity level. But what you get
Speaker 2: is you get to listen to something immediately. Now, just
Speaker 2: just touch it. It's there, it's yours. You don't have
Speaker 2: to wait, you don't have to go to the shops.
Speaker 2: I used to have to save up my dinner money
Speaker 2: for two weeks if I wanted to buy an album,
Speaker 2: Basically half to starve meself at school and then get
Speaker 2: the bus into town fifteen miles and buy the record
Speaker 2: I wanted, and come back again. And I would on
Speaker 2: the bus that I would have read the inside cover,
Speaker 2: the outside cover. I've looked at all the photos. I'd
Speaker 2: even have taken the vinyl out and looked inside there
Speaker 2: and read what was scratched onto the center of that.
Speaker 2: You had a level of sort of involvement that was very,
Speaker 2: very different.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have certain songs on Spotify with triple digit millions.
Speaker 1: Are you making any money from streaming? Of course there
Speaker 1: are songs with billions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course I'm making I'm making good money. I
Speaker 2: own the Masters, though I'm not in a I'm not
Speaker 2: in the position that someone else would be, you know,
Speaker 2: at a major would be in. I own, well, at
Speaker 2: least I used to own the Masters until I sold them.
Speaker 2: So I own some of my I own my current music,
Speaker 2: and the last record I put out is called Skelleig.
Speaker 1: I own.
Speaker 2: I own that record and this record. That's all part
Speaker 2: of my new record company, so that those things, when
Speaker 2: we put them out, the streaming will be it's not
Speaker 2: getting taken by a record company. And I get my
Speaker 2: whatever percent. At the end of it, I get whatever
Speaker 2: that the majority of the money from the streaming. My
Speaker 2: partners will receive a certain amount of that. So it's
Speaker 2: it's it. Yes, when you start getting big numbers, it
Speaker 2: starts to add up, and it's it's a significant thing and.
Speaker 1: You're a new work. Will the numbers be significant enough
Speaker 1: to cover your costs?
Speaker 2: HI? Hopefully over time. You know, I have no idea, Bob.
Speaker 2: And we've spent a bloody arm and a leg making
Speaker 2: this record. We've got orchestra's horn sections, We've spent bloody
Speaker 2: months on it, the damn thing, you know, years even so,
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's going to take a while. It's
Speaker 2: not just the spend of making the record, as I say,
Speaker 2: marketing it and all the people I pay who work
Speaker 2: for me, who run the record label, I mean all
Speaker 2: their wages, all their salaries. If I take that whole
Speaker 2: chunk of time, it's going to take a long time.
Speaker 2: I'd say, be lucky if in ten years I've made
Speaker 2: a penny out of the damn thing. But you just
Speaker 2: never know what's going to happen. If you stay in
Speaker 2: the boat long enough, you might just catch a fish.
Speaker 2: I maybe some mad TV producers going to go, you
Speaker 2: know what this new David Gray song? This is it
Speaker 2: sopranos too, We need this as the title music. It's
Speaker 2: like you might get a break that you hadn't dreamed
Speaker 2: of that could transform your fortunes, and suddenly you've got
Speaker 2: gazillions of streams going on. No, the streaming numbers are
Speaker 2: utterly unspectacular because in the world of finger touch immediacy,
Speaker 2: the old are much much slower than the young, and
Speaker 2: obviously Maya fans are by and large older than some,
Speaker 2: so you're not dealing with this thing. I'm doing the
Speaker 2: best I can to notify anyone who might be interested,
Speaker 2: but it's going to be hard work. I put a
Speaker 2: record out a couple of years ago called Skellig. This
Speaker 2: was a very uncommercial record. It's very very personal, very
Speaker 2: low tempo. But we also because it was COVID, there
Speaker 2: was no real marketing spend on. Very low amount of
Speaker 2: money was spent. We could only do so much because
Speaker 2: we couldn't physically do anything. So we spent a few
Speaker 2: mony a bit of money and actually it's sort of recouped,
Speaker 2: so within three years I'm now getting a very small
Speaker 2: amount of money every month from that record, so it
Speaker 2: shows that it is possible. The difference there is that
Speaker 2: the spend wasn't anything like as great either on making
Speaker 2: or releasing the record. So this time around it will
Speaker 2: I'd say it's going to take a lot longer. I'd
Speaker 2: like to think with the kind of immediacy of this music,
Speaker 2: that it may strike a chord and we get some
Speaker 2: kind of fire under the whole thing and it starts
Speaker 2: to move a little bit. But I'm just not in
Speaker 2: control of all that. All I can do is make
Speaker 2: it as good as I can make it and put
Speaker 2: it out there and sing my heart out.
Speaker 1: You've worked both in the old era and the transition
Speaker 1: in the new era. Not that many people have, but
Speaker 1: they used to say the tour was the advertisement for
Speaker 1: the album, and now the album is the advertisement for
Speaker 1: the tour. Today's scattered landscape and different remuneration periodigm does
Speaker 1: that affect the inspiration and desire to make new records?
Speaker 2: No, you know, making records is where it's at. I mean,
Speaker 2: playing live is where it's at. The two things are
Speaker 2: to a record as a world, I mean, anyone who's
Speaker 2: experienced a record as a world gone to the planet
Speaker 2: Pink Moon, or gone to the planet astral Weeks or Nebraska,
Speaker 2: you know, free wheeling. Anyone who's been to any of
Speaker 2: these places and been consumed by the spirit of Eden
Speaker 2: by Talk Talk kind of Blue by Miles Davis. It
Speaker 2: doesn't matter. When you've been there, you know what's going on,
Speaker 2: Marvin Gay. Once you've gone to a planet and like
Speaker 2: being completely obsessed and absorbed by it, how can you
Speaker 2: not want to make a record? I mean, a record
Speaker 2: isn't a song. It's you hang the pictures in the
Speaker 2: gallery and you take people through, and there's the cadence
Speaker 2: of each song leads to a kind of cascade of
Speaker 2: emotion that flows from one to the other and creates
Speaker 2: an overall effect. So that's still what I believe in.
Speaker 2: I still believe in the novel. Even though everyone's writing.
Speaker 2: They're not even writing short stories, they're writing sentence.
Speaker 1: Okay, you mentioned a little bit earlier you sold your masters.
Speaker 1: Traditionally in the music business, people didn't even own their masters.
Speaker 1: We live in an era where many people are selling
Speaker 1: their publishing, selling their masters. Let's start with the masters.
Speaker 1: Did you sell them outright such that you'll never get royalties,
Speaker 1: or did you sell the ownership and you still have royalties.
Speaker 2: It's a complicated question to answer. I didn't sell them
Speaker 2: through choice. But first of all, I sold my recording
Speaker 2: masters from White Ladder until Golden the brass Age, so
Speaker 2: eight albums up until the one before Skelg. So it
Speaker 2: was because I was at the end of a relationship
Speaker 2: that had lasted through my entire career, and the only
Speaker 2: way to get out of it was we owned a
Speaker 2: record company together, was to sell the record company. Essentially,
Speaker 2: it's sell the Masters. So that's that was the only
Speaker 2: way to really make a break. So uh yeah, well,
Speaker 2: I've maintained a stake in the Masters. I didn't sell
Speaker 2: it all. I kept a bit, so I still have
Speaker 2: a vested interest. I got skin in the game, underwhelming
Speaker 2: skin in the game so far.
Speaker 1: So while we're on this tip, did you sell the
Speaker 1: publishing too?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I haven't sold that. So for the
Speaker 2: very first time in my life, all my publishing has
Speaker 2: come back to me and it's now all housed with
Speaker 2: Chrystalis on a sort of rolling deal, so it's all
Speaker 2: in the same place for the very first time ever.
Speaker 2: In fact, so they're sort of administering my publishing for me. No,
Speaker 2: I haven't sold any publisher.
Speaker 1: Without any dire circumstances coming up. Would you ever sell
Speaker 1: the publishing?
Speaker 2: We never say never, but it's unlikely. For one thing.
Speaker 2: Money is completely overrated, you know, as some kind of
Speaker 2: great aid in your life towards greater meaning and enjoyments.
Speaker 2: It can be incredibly helpful when you haven't got enough
Speaker 2: of it, but that's not the position I'm in. I'm
Speaker 2: doing perfectly okay, thanks very much. So why would I
Speaker 2: want to a pay shitloads of tax? By result, it's
Speaker 2: getting a fuckload of money that I wouldn't know what
Speaker 2: to do with anyway, And why would I want to
Speaker 2: fuckload of money that I have no idea what to
Speaker 2: do with. It's I don't want for anything, I don't
Speaker 2: need anything. It'd be totally stupid. So those are the
Speaker 2: reasons that I when money first broke in my life,
Speaker 2: when things were going well, it was a really complicated
Speaker 2: thing to negotiate because we started when it just coming
Speaker 2: in and it didn't stop. After a while, you start just
Speaker 2: making really bad decisions because nothing has as much meaning,
Speaker 2: so you can just replace things you don't like or
Speaker 2: buy something you decide you don't want it, and it's
Speaker 2: like you're suddenly living an episode of the Real Housewives
Speaker 2: of Beverly Hills. So that's something I've been exposed to
Speaker 2: by my children. It's not one of my personal viewing choices.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think that, you know, getting a routload
Speaker 2: of money is great, but it's just it just ends
Speaker 2: in a sort of disassociative, disassociative state where you're it
Speaker 2: distances you from life and meaning and what I'm needing
Speaker 2: to do things. So in a way, I'm kind of
Speaker 2: I'm not falsely pressurizing. I'm choosing to be in a
Speaker 2: more pressurized situation in terms of putting money out and
Speaker 2: investing in it and having to make a success of things,
Speaker 2: because it's a more relatable thing and it makes for
Speaker 2: more sensible views and ideas about what you're doing. So
Speaker 2: that's the way I choose to do it. As I
Speaker 2: said that, the classic artist pose would have been, we've
Speaker 2: received so much money, we don't have to worry about anything.
Speaker 2: Now we can just dream our dreams. But to me,
Speaker 2: the dreams are part of this fabric. There's so many
Speaker 2: compromises making music in a commercial world. Where do you
Speaker 2: even start it's very, very elaborate, complex, full of compromise.
Speaker 2: So you I think it's important to understand what it's
Speaker 2: like for someone spending money to get to your show
Speaker 2: or to get your CD, just what that means. So
Speaker 2: I think, because it's still a relatable thing for me
Speaker 2: putting music out, I consider myself to be more in
Speaker 2: relation to the listener because I'm in a more reasonable position.
Speaker 2: So you know, God knows. As I said, I wish
Speaker 2: something wonderful happened and my fucking songs would go crazy
Speaker 2: and I can just relax. You know, Wow, this is amazing.
Speaker 2: It'd be more amazing because the energy it would give everything.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't be the money. It would be the way
Speaker 2: the show's go with this crazy energy because people are
Speaker 2: a new wave of fans would be getting a hold
Speaker 2: of this stuff. That would be incredible. So it's those
Speaker 2: are the things that you lost for and being taken seriously,
Speaker 2: so you know that those are my sort of preoccupations.
Speaker 1: Just to go back a point, so how many times
Speaker 1: have you been married? Just once and you got divorced
Speaker 1: and that's why you had to sell the catalog?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it was my business partner, not my wife.
Speaker 2: She's still involved.
Speaker 1: So you had when you've been independent in this independent
Speaker 1: record company, you had a financial partner, Yeah.
Speaker 2: My manager, my old manager and I. When White Ladder
Speaker 2: came along, no one wanted to put it out, so
Speaker 2: we put it out ourselves. We created a record company
Speaker 2: and we put it out ourselves, and that's how that
Speaker 2: that began. That record began in that way. We put
Speaker 2: it out in Ireland, the only place where we could
Speaker 2: sell anywhere records to the only place I had a
Speaker 2: sort of beginning of a sort of commercial viability, sort
Speaker 2: of cult following. So we put it out there and
Speaker 2: it just began to sell and then began to sell
Speaker 2: more and then like hotcakes, and that funded we signed
Speaker 2: with Ato Dave Matthew's label in the States, and we
Speaker 2: signed we licensed to Warners in the for the UK
Speaker 2: and the rest of the world, but we kept Ireland
Speaker 2: as our own independent thing, and that's how it began.
Speaker 2: So this relationship was very complex. And then for the
Speaker 2: next however many albums it followed that we just put
Speaker 2: them out through this record company and we licensed them
Speaker 2: to various partners. So yeah, So when that relationship came
Speaker 2: to an end after thirty years, the easiest thing to do,
Speaker 2: the only thing to do, was to sell the company
Speaker 2: in order that everyone could take a little bit away
Speaker 2: with them.
Speaker 1: And why did the relationship come to an end?
Speaker 2: Well, look, I don't want to get into all that.
Speaker 2: That's that's personal.
Speaker 1: Okay, So.
Speaker 2: These things happen, you know, it's a long time. We've
Speaker 2: been through an awful lot together. And furthermore, this is
Speaker 2: someone who without who's belief in me, I would not
Speaker 2: be sitting in front of you now. The people who
Speaker 2: invest in you, like emotionally and musically and in other
Speaker 2: ways when you don't mean anything, those are the people
Speaker 2: that you value, you know, really ultimately. So when someone
Speaker 2: makes a choice not based on their own on the
Speaker 2: profitability of something or whatever or the look that it
Speaker 2: gives them, then that means a lot. So it's still
Speaker 2: a very intense relationship, but albeit from a distance at
Speaker 2: the moment. But yeah, it had run its course and
Speaker 2: now I'm in a new phase of my life.
Speaker 1: Okay. Why was the record company called IHD?
Speaker 2: He rob as Robert wanted to call it Hit Records,
Speaker 2: but when we applied to company's house, they said that's
Speaker 2: already taken. So he couldn't be bothered to do it.
Speaker 2: He's just turned changed the letters round, and it was
Speaker 2: I h T. So that that was the story of
Speaker 2: why it was I HD.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the present album. You started
Speaker 1: recording before COVID. Generally speaking, are you always recording or
Speaker 1: did you say I want to make an album?
Speaker 2: No, this was definitely I'm ready to make an album,
Speaker 2: so i'd I had some ideas live from the whole
Speaker 2: COVID period, but even before that, I had I had
Speaker 2: this spark of what the new music might feel like.
Speaker 2: I'd started to write a couple of songs. So no,
Speaker 2: I was ready. I mean I was. I was more
Speaker 2: than ready to make a record. I had no idea
Speaker 2: how long it was going to take, so no, it
Speaker 2: was definitely. It wasn't playing around. I mean, at the
Speaker 2: end of this album cycle, I'll be finishing of this
Speaker 2: touring cycle, I'll be finishing the rest of the music
Speaker 2: from the same period off and that will come out
Speaker 2: as a separate album. But when that is done, I'll
Speaker 2: be pretty I'll pretty much have cleared the decks. Never entirely,
Speaker 2: there's always lots of loose ends, songs that I haven't
Speaker 2: found a place.
Speaker 1: For I thought you said it to trilogy.
Speaker 2: No, No, it's I'd say this album is a double
Speaker 2: album in itself, Dear Life. I think if you time it,
Speaker 2: it's like it's like four sides of vinyl for sure.
Speaker 2: So it's yeah, so this is a double Then there's
Speaker 2: another album that's going to come out, which would just
Speaker 2: be a single album a bit further down the line.
Speaker 2: So no, I'm always writing, making, thinking, storing as I say,
Speaker 2: that's the way it works. Now. I have to just
Speaker 2: make notes and then finally I'll come to a point
Speaker 2: where I'll start going through some of the most of
Speaker 2: them will be lost, but I believe this it like
Speaker 2: you know, it all goes into the earth and comes
Speaker 2: back out as new plants. I don't think you lose
Speaker 2: this stuff entirely. I think if there was something good there,
Speaker 2: you would remember it. So there's always lots of different ideas, lyrics,
Speaker 2: stories that notes. I mean, the phone is a highly
Speaker 2: annoying thing to have on you, but also highly convenient.
Speaker 2: It's got a camera, it's got a recording device, and
Speaker 2: it's got a little notebook, so it just fits in
Speaker 2: your pocket and you can do all these things. So
Speaker 2: I'm constantly notekeeping. Not only that, I mean the inside
Speaker 2: of my mind is like a giant sort of car,
Speaker 2: like a giant warehouse full of car parts. I'm always
Speaker 2: trying to fit something together. Oh, I could use that
Speaker 2: that wheel would fit on here, or this axle would
Speaker 2: work there, or you know, that steering wheel would look
Speaker 2: good in this car. I'm always using one bit and
Speaker 2: wondering whether I can finish another song with it, or
Speaker 2: there's just unfinished bits everywhere. So that's just a normal
Speaker 2: state of things that's constantly ongoing. But when I get
Speaker 2: into writing, it becomes a little bit more focused and
Speaker 2: the time opens out and I start to expand these ideas.
Speaker 2: The difficulty is that when you first have a mood,
Speaker 2: the mood that envelops you when you come up with
Speaker 2: a tune and you start to write, you're in a
Speaker 2: there's a great suggestibility about your state of being at
Speaker 2: that moment. You're sort of you're under hypnosis in a way.
Speaker 2: The music starts to hypnotize you. It's very hard to
Speaker 2: pick up that thread at a later date. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's what I Yeah, So it's that's what was
Speaker 2: unusual about this particular sort of starburst of song writing.
Speaker 2: At the end of COVID, I was writing new music
Speaker 2: but also just picking other things up off the shelf
Speaker 2: and just finishing the songs, but not in a way
Speaker 2: that you can see the join. It was just oh right, okay,
Speaker 2: here we go. It was I was like, what was
Speaker 2: going on?
Speaker 1: Okay? So you have these periods where you were saying,
Speaker 1: I'm writing the album. In between these periods, thoughts are
Speaker 1: just going through your brain the car parts' occasionally making
Speaker 1: notes or are you ever writing a complete song just
Speaker 1: because something comes to you? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean those are the best days. Yeah, those
Speaker 2: are the days you pray for and if you keep
Speaker 2: working hard enough, it will happen. So yes, occasionally there's
Speaker 2: a song on this new record called that day must
Speaker 2: surely come. And I was working on something completely different,
Speaker 2: and I just made an A chord on the second
Speaker 2: I had the capo to a chord or B, and
Speaker 2: I just I made this extension with my pinky that
Speaker 2: I'd never done before, and I went up, I went
Speaker 2: under the A two four and then all the way
Speaker 2: to five, very long extension, and then I moved the
Speaker 2: bass note with my thumb, and I thought, oh, that's
Speaker 2: a really nice run of chords. I've never played that before.
Speaker 2: And then I just began to pick it. And as
Speaker 2: I picked it, I just read, I sang the first line,
Speaker 2: and I just stopped what I was doing and I
Speaker 2: just wrote the song. And in a couple of hours
Speaker 2: later it was written, and it was in Those experiences
Speaker 2: are have a mysticism about them, because you become both
Speaker 2: more entirely yourself, the sort of fertile vistas of experience,
Speaker 2: and all the loged emotion that you've held is waited
Speaker 2: to be born into this song. At moments like that,
Speaker 2: you could just they feel that they've been waiting a
Speaker 2: long time to be born. This thing begins to emerge,
Speaker 2: and at the same time, your brain is sending up
Speaker 2: the sort of editorial drone. You're going up to the
Speaker 2: top office on the top floor, and you're just making
Speaker 2: very cool and clear decisions about what you're doing. So
Speaker 2: you become more objective and more subjective simultaneously, and you
Speaker 2: begin to work in a very unfussy, un self conscious way.
Speaker 2: And those are the best songs. Please forgive me that
Speaker 2: they must surely come from here. You can almost see
Speaker 2: the sea. These are the ones that just poured out
Speaker 2: of me in like moments. So that's what that's what
Speaker 2: I hope for.
Speaker 1: Okay, as a writer, but not a writer of songs.
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about. And sometimes when
Speaker 1: it's really working, I might become self conscious and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it veers off. Is that something
Speaker 1: that resonates? Oh yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: As I say, self consciousness is the enemy in life,
Speaker 2: in music, in making. You know, it's it's it's totally
Speaker 2: the enemy, very hard to avoid. And you know, I
Speaker 2: use all kinds of tricks to trick myself out of
Speaker 2: thinking too much. So for example, when I haven't been
Speaker 2: making music, writing music, it's it's pressing. I'll be it's
Speaker 2: pressing on me now because it's been a while since
Speaker 2: I've been in that position, when I've been exploring and making.
Speaker 2: So when I get back to it, it'll have been
Speaker 2: so long it'll be like getting into a cold bath,
Speaker 2: not just a cold bath, ice cold. I'll be scared
Speaker 2: of like what it all means. It will all start
Speaker 2: meaning too much. So these days i'd use little tricks like,
Speaker 2: for example, rather than I usually work from chords, the
Speaker 2: rhythm of the cause, the chords, the rhythm of the chords,
Speaker 2: a sequence of chords, and then the melody that associates.
Speaker 2: But if I find I work the other way round,
Speaker 2: and I take a lyric and I try and fit it,
Speaker 2: fit some music to the lyric, so I feel backwards,
Speaker 2: or from a poem which I leave taking on this
Speaker 2: record was a good example of that. I took someone
Speaker 2: else's words and I sensed there was music in them,
Speaker 2: and I felt like a water diviner with a stick.
Speaker 2: I felt blind across the ground, just looking for where
Speaker 2: it could take me, and I began to make, like
Speaker 2: a child in a sandpit. I just shaped things, and
Speaker 2: I didn't get my head up until i'd sort of
Speaker 2: made something. And when I had made something, I had
Speaker 2: no idea. I couldn't do like a quality assessment of
Speaker 2: it because my melodic instincts were disabled, and my sense
Speaker 2: of meaning and value was also not engaged. So I
Speaker 2: didn't have that sort of white writer's block preoccupation, this
Speaker 2: is a piece of shit, Why should it matter? The
Speaker 2: sort of doubting voices. I try and cheat those doubting voices,
Speaker 2: and I find that once if I can manage to
Speaker 2: find a way past them, the guards on the gate.
Speaker 2: Then once I'm in, I'm in the room of making,
Speaker 2: and I get back into it. I stopped thinking about
Speaker 2: it all so much, and it becomes much faster and
Speaker 2: more immediate. That's not to say everything's great, it's just
Speaker 2: I find that we've all got that writer's block, that
Speaker 2: doubting voice, the negative voice that's waiting, and particularly I
Speaker 2: find after an absence. So I mean, my ultimate existence
Speaker 2: would be that I would never lose the fluency that
Speaker 2: I have when I'm in these deep writing sessions. But
Speaker 2: it's a bit like losing the fluency and my calluses
Speaker 2: on my fingers from playing on the road. And as
Speaker 2: a musician, when I'm playing every night, I'll reach I'll
Speaker 2: attain a physical level of ability and emotional and mental
Speaker 2: connection that I wouldn't be able to sustain on an
Speaker 2: average day because I'll be doing two, three, four hours
Speaker 2: of music every day. So you know, it's different. It's
Speaker 2: like that with the writing too. You sort of lose
Speaker 2: your confidence and you start to think about it far
Speaker 2: too much.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you had this time you're with the family
Speaker 1: with COVID, then you go back to writing. Are you
Speaker 1: literally saying, okay, I'm sitting here. It's Monday to Thursday.
Speaker 1: I have to write songs. I'm going to sit here
Speaker 1: until I finished the songs. Or do you wait for
Speaker 1: inspiration or do you have tricks to trick yourself into inspiration?
Speaker 2: Yeah, as I say, it's like self hypnosis. So I
Speaker 2: don't sit there waiting for inspiration. I just get on
Speaker 2: with it. As I say, I've always got a million
Speaker 2: unfinished things, so I'll just pick one of them up
Speaker 2: and start working on it. Or I'll think of a
Speaker 2: little simple idea and I think that could be a
Speaker 2: simple little song. Maybe I'll just start with that, something achievable,
Speaker 2: something small, not too demanding, not too ambitious, something intriguing
Speaker 2: and small. So I'll start humble. And then, as I say,
Speaker 2: once I've achieved a few things, it's a little easier
Speaker 2: to get into rhythm. So I mean, those those are
Speaker 2: my tricks. I mean, I don't think there's any escaping effect.
Speaker 2: It's it's difficult. Yeah, it's some days you just don't
Speaker 2: get anywhere. I mean, it's just the way it is.
Speaker 2: So but I think you just turn up and you
Speaker 2: start working, and sound can be a great unlocker as well.
Speaker 2: It's like that you know, there's there's the same old
Speaker 2: six strings on the same old guitar, but put it
Speaker 2: through a sort of effect. It's like a Leslie effect
Speaker 2: or chorus or you know, a new am or you
Speaker 2: put a capo up high to change the tuning and
Speaker 2: open tuning. Suddenly, ah, the same old motes remake. They
Speaker 2: invert chords, and it inverts chords. It changes your relation
Speaker 2: to the things you already know and charms you back
Speaker 2: into that sense of mystery that you need to be in.
Speaker 2: So it's just important to well, anyway, these are the
Speaker 2: ways I choose to do it. I mean, some people
Speaker 2: work completely the opposite way. They wait until they're in
Speaker 2: the mood and then they make music and they don't
Speaker 2: stop until it's done. Maybe that's the best way to
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: This is the way that my life is involved because
Speaker 2: I wanted to be a dad and I wanted to
Speaker 2: be a husband, and I've got all this music I've
Speaker 2: already created, and I need to deal with curate my
Speaker 2: own life to a certain extent, and my own businesses
Speaker 2: demand a lot of my attention, so I need to
Speaker 2: be I need to sort of compartmentalize a lot of
Speaker 2: the time in order to get the space to work
Speaker 2: properly and over long period. So this is just my
Speaker 2: means of doing it.
Speaker 1: Okay, is your process that you write all the songs
Speaker 1: and then you record, or do you write and record,
Speaker 1: write and record.
Speaker 2: I just write and record, and in fact, the recording
Speaker 2: process is the writing process. I have a wonderful producer.
Speaker 2: We have a very strong relationship and it's very very complimentary.
Speaker 2: So I'm totally disinhibited these days in terms of writing lyrics,
Speaker 2: trying things. I don't care. I'm not waiting till I
Speaker 2: look good and then you can come into the room.
Speaker 2: It's like you just see it all like I'll pour
Speaker 2: it all out. Oh that's fucking terrible, like delete, you know.
Speaker 2: So we we just we work, so I'll stay. I've
Speaker 2: got this idea. So like on this record, Eyes Made
Speaker 2: Rain would be a good example, a very simple song.
Speaker 2: I said, it's like a mantra, eyes Made Rain, My
Speaker 2: eyes made Rain, My eyes made Rain. And I have
Speaker 2: this chord sequence, had all the chords worked out, I
Speaker 2: didn't really have a lyric, and he was like, oh
Speaker 2: I love this, I love this, let's start putting it down.
Speaker 2: So I hadn't even started to write the lyric. I
Speaker 2: had like maybe one or two lines that are going
Speaker 2: to ghosting in here and there, and so we said, Okay,
Speaker 2: what's the tempo going to be. Let's decide on a tempo. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's take a little rhythm so I can play along
Speaker 2: with it, so we don't want it just to click.
Speaker 2: Let's get a little rythm. He came up with this
Speaker 2: really odd rhythm, and actually the arpedu I was playing
Speaker 2: was the vital link. So I thought, oh, this actually
Speaker 2: really works. It's like very jazzy, very odd anyway, So
Speaker 2: then we began to work, and as we shaped the
Speaker 2: sound of the song and we put these kind of
Speaker 2: little sample drum parts in and other little sounds that
Speaker 2: came into it, it began to speak as a piece
Speaker 2: of music, and I wanted to inhabit the space in
Speaker 2: a way that would have been perhaps different than what
Speaker 2: I might have come to as a lyricist if you'd
Speaker 2: just been and the acoustic guitar and I just toughed
Speaker 2: it out and finished the lyric on my own. The
Speaker 2: song became something I was getting inside of as a
Speaker 2: piece of music. All the different elements, the bass we
Speaker 2: added the drums, we added the little sounds and subtleties,
Speaker 2: and the space we put it in. The short reverbs
Speaker 2: and the different things began to sort of make me
Speaker 2: feel like I was in a different country. So the
Speaker 2: lyric became much more impressionistic in a way. I didn't
Speaker 2: worry too much because I was kind of slotting into
Speaker 2: us what was basically the finished song. So I hadn't
Speaker 2: recorded a vocal on it yet. And we got to
Speaker 2: the end of this few hours of making this track,
Speaker 2: and I said, right, I guess you know, I need
Speaker 2: to put some kind of performance on top of this.
Speaker 2: So if you leave something without a lyric or anything
Speaker 2: on it, a voice on it, it's less hard to
Speaker 2: relate to, it's much harder to relate to other So
Speaker 2: I basically just I sat down and until I had
Speaker 2: like three verses and a middle section to some kind
Speaker 2: of degree working, you know, no one could leave. So
Speaker 2: I just sat there and he just had to wait,
Speaker 2: and I was just writing and writing and writing and
Speaker 2: writing until I had something. I was happy enough to
Speaker 2: go in there and go behind the mic and try
Speaker 2: and put down so that we had something to relate to.
Speaker 2: And in fact, what happened was I remember thinking, God,
Speaker 2: what is this? What I'm even saying? This is all
Speaker 2: rather vague, but it's sort of It's just remained a
Speaker 2: bit like that. So I did change a few lines,
Speaker 2: but essentially I stuck with what I came up with,
Speaker 2: and that was just we recorded it as I was
Speaker 2: making it, so and that's pretty much true for I'd
Speaker 2: say probably most of the tracks on the record have
Speaker 2: been a bit like that.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated you worked with Marius Defrees, who's a friend
Speaker 1: of mine, and then you work with his son. How
Speaker 1: does that happen?
Speaker 2: It's such a lovely thing. And I'll tell you what's
Speaker 2: absolutely beautiful about it is they both have this There's
Speaker 2: talk about the genes of taste and subtlety. They both
Speaker 2: have this incredible musicality, this rich and very subtle bordering
Speaker 2: on classical understanding of music and voicings and orchestration. And
Speaker 2: Marius is a very different personality to Ben. But yeah,
Speaker 2: working with Marius was lovely, so much more pressurized situation.
Speaker 2: He came into a thing where everyone wanted a record
Speaker 2: with a hit. I've had a couple of big hit
Speaker 2: records and this was going to be life in slow motion.
Speaker 2: This was going to be a big deal basically. So
Speaker 2: working with Ben has been very different, and we've over
Speaker 2: the course of now three records and a few other
Speaker 2: side projects, we've developed a wonderful relationship. But they they're
Speaker 2: both old school. They don't flinch, they don't mess, they
Speaker 2: don't mess. They there until the until the projects finished.
Speaker 2: They give you everything that they should give you. There's
Speaker 2: no none of this kind of you know, I'm tired
Speaker 2: kind of bollocks you get from some people.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back though to what you were saying
Speaker 1: before that you're in your writing phase. At what point
Speaker 1: do you bring in the producer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do need some time to myself two to
Speaker 2: sketch the ideas, to begin to just so early on, though,
Speaker 2: because I have the sense of trust with Ben that
Speaker 2: I don't need a finished thing, although it's much nicer
Speaker 2: to have. I've written the song, come on, let's work
Speaker 2: on it. I'd normally be more in its infancy. I've
Speaker 2: got this idea. What do you think of the idea?
Speaker 2: Let's let's work on it. So very early on these
Speaker 2: days the producer would come in because, as I said,
Speaker 2: I've seen many good examples now of how we've got
Speaker 2: a long way with the song without me having finished
Speaker 2: the lyric. The lyric writing is what takes time. So
Speaker 2: but yeah, but when this album and this tour slows down,
Speaker 2: as I said, I want to finish this other record.
Speaker 2: But after that, I'll be trying to sort of locate myself,
Speaker 2: feel where I am, get a sense of the topography,
Speaker 2: geography of my heart, what's going on inside me, the
Speaker 2: bedrock of what this music is going to be springing from,
Speaker 2: what's going to be built upon this next wave of stuff.
Speaker 2: I've got dreams and ideas already for what that will be.
Speaker 2: I've already started making notes, but it may be that
Speaker 2: they never see the light of day. They don't. There's
Speaker 2: no fruition for all that stuff. It's just a dream.
Speaker 2: When I actually get there, something might happen and my
Speaker 2: life might be quite different, and the record might take
Speaker 2: on a different feel or tone. So but yes, when
Speaker 2: when I've finished and things slow down and I get
Speaker 2: some time to myself, I'll get my little studio set
Speaker 2: up out in the countryside, and I'll spend some time
Speaker 2: just working on things on my own and and feeling
Speaker 2: for things Before I involve anybody, but it won't be
Speaker 2: long before I do.
Speaker 1: So. Earlier you also said on this album you have
Speaker 1: horns and strings. How did you decide to employ those?
Speaker 2: Well, just where the music told me they needed to go.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's it's not a given that adding
Speaker 2: orchestration or horns takes you any further down the track
Speaker 2: in terms of realizing what a song must be. Quite
Speaker 2: the contrary. I mean, sometimes some songs sound better just
Speaker 2: on your own, sometimes better with a drum player, drum drummer,
Speaker 2: some with a bass player on to some without. So
Speaker 2: with orchestration, there was a as I say, a melodic strength.
Speaker 2: There was just some of these songs we're just asking
Speaker 2: for orchestration there there there they were big melodies. So
Speaker 2: it's different every time. So and as I say, Ben
Speaker 2: like his dad, is very very talented at voicings. So
Speaker 2: for example, using leave taking user bass clarinet introduces the
Speaker 2: the sort of the horn section. You don't go straight
Speaker 2: in with a saxophone or a trombone or a trumpet.
Speaker 2: You you use a bass clarinet to play. I mean,
Speaker 2: who think of using a bass clarinet. It's a beautiful,
Speaker 2: beautiful sound, and there's a these little touches of class.
Speaker 2: We're using obo here and this there, and there's little
Speaker 2: bits of knowledge and and and they to a much
Speaker 2: more satisfying end result. So yeah, it's just it's different
Speaker 2: every record. This time it wanted these. I don't think
Speaker 2: the next record will probably have an orchestra or horns
Speaker 2: or anything. I think we might get my friend Caroline
Speaker 2: to come around with her cello and do a little
Speaker 2: bit of playing on a couple of things, but it
Speaker 2: will be more layering some strings into the odd song maybe,
Speaker 2: But I don't see that the next chapter will have
Speaker 2: any of that stuff. This time around, it was. It
Speaker 2: definitely felt right and it sounds wonderful that the session
Speaker 2: we did for the orchestra was absolutely out of this world.
Speaker 1: It's phenomenal forgetting orchestra and other big productions. Your studio
Speaker 1: in the old home, your studio up the street. Now,
Speaker 1: can you make the records in these studios or do
Speaker 1: you have to go to another room to make the records?
Speaker 2: No, I can make all the record that. If we
Speaker 2: wanted a big drum sound, or we want to record
Speaker 2: horns or strings, we go somewhere else because I haven't
Speaker 2: got the mics, and I haven't got the mic stands,
Speaker 2: and I haven't got the space.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go to the previous album you mentioned. It
Speaker 1: was very made during COVID scaleg I think, and in
Speaker 1: the old days let's just call it pre internet, last century.
Speaker 1: If you made an album that was not as successful
Speaker 1: commercially or critically, he could really negatively impact your career.
Speaker 1: To what degree is that a factor or is that
Speaker 1: even not a factor in today's world.
Speaker 2: It depends how you set your stall out. I mean,
Speaker 2: I've seen it have that very negative effect on my
Speaker 2: own career more than once. So God knows, I've seen
Speaker 2: this every which way. I've been nowhere, somewhere, somewhere in between,
Speaker 2: and I've done things I love that didn't really get
Speaker 2: anywhere with the radio, and then everyone turns around and goes, well,
Speaker 2: he's only worth this now, so dismiss It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you've got to be very careful. I think. Ultimately, though,
Speaker 2: you've got to make yourself happy. You've got to do
Speaker 2: what you want to do. If you want to be
Speaker 2: in music, if it's your life, then you're going to
Speaker 2: be there with a passion and a zeal to see
Speaker 2: it through till the end. Then you've got to set
Speaker 2: your stall out accordingly. I mean, do you care about
Speaker 2: the fucking numbers or what? Of course you do. Everyone
Speaker 2: wants to connect to the listener who doesn't want listeners,
Speaker 2: But there's more to it than that. It's like what
Speaker 2: kind of listener and how do they listen and all
Speaker 2: the rest of it. So there are this Because I've
Speaker 2: got my own label, I can I guess, to a
Speaker 2: certain extent, do what I want to do. And this
Speaker 2: record was a labor of love. And I think this
Speaker 2: record will still be being listened to when I'm dead.
Speaker 2: It was a magic experience. But it's never going to
Speaker 2: unless it gets some kind of sink or film placement
Speaker 2: that suddenly makes everyone aware of it. It's going to
Speaker 2: be a very slow word of mouth or word of
Speaker 2: finger movement that it makes through people's consciousness. It's going
Speaker 2: to be the sort of thing that's passed around. So
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know. I did the White Ladder
Speaker 2: to all. That meant all the promoters and venues suddenly
Speaker 2: went well, look he sold all these tickets. So now
Speaker 2: I'm being treated slightly differently because I can prove I
Speaker 2: can still sell some tickets, So all the things you
Speaker 2: say about the industry are absolutely true and they haven't changed.
Speaker 2: I think that when you've made as many records and
Speaker 2: you've carried on as long as I have, it obviously
Speaker 2: becomes maybe slightly less significant. If I just followed White
Speaker 2: Ladder with, you know, some obscure electronic project that was
Speaker 2: never going to flow anyone's boat, it would have been
Speaker 2: maybe a really stupid dumb thing to do from a
Speaker 2: commercial point of view. But if that's what I really felt,
Speaker 2: I wanted to do it just anyway. It's all down
Speaker 2: to the individual, and I don't think there's a right
Speaker 2: and wrong way of doing it. If what you're trying
Speaker 2: to say is has it changed? Does the industry more
Speaker 2: forgiving now? I don't think it really is. But I
Speaker 2: think that it's so much easier to put music out.
Speaker 2: There's so much going out that it's not such a big, big,
Speaker 2: big deal. There's a lot of covering fire as people
Speaker 2: putting shit out all the time, So it's it's it's
Speaker 2: it's completely naturally saturated in new music, So maybe it's
Speaker 2: it's just less prominent and less obvious now.
Speaker 1: In today's world. I mean you literally have your own label.
Speaker 1: You're involved. You know, we have a distributor does marketing
Speaker 1: to what degree? Or you or your team involved in
Speaker 1: social media direct access to your fans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I try and keep the tone. I do
Speaker 2: all the writing of the copy when it's in first person,
Speaker 2: they're my posts. And I don't use social media in
Speaker 2: my life too. I don't use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, I
Speaker 2: don't use any of it. I don't have person not accounts,
Speaker 2: I don't communicate with anyone through those things. But it's
Speaker 2: as a means of letting my fans know. Writing something
Speaker 2: on the blackboard is sort of how I see it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't follow anyone. I don't engage. It
Speaker 2: just gobbles up your time, mind, everything else. I can't
Speaker 2: be bothered with any of it. But I see it
Speaker 2: as a vital tool these days for letting people know
Speaker 2: what's happening. So, of course the gatekeepers are very much
Speaker 2: in control of how it all works. That there was
Speaker 2: a certain innocent period when it sort of went out
Speaker 2: to everyone. Apparently it doesn't work like that anymore. So
Speaker 2: you know that it's very carefully managed, in choreographed so yes,
Speaker 2: but it's a personal things, and it needs to feel authentic.
Speaker 2: So when I speak one of the things I find
Speaker 2: rather dull as these things become more important, which is
Speaker 2: what's happened with Instagram, for example, something I quite liked
Speaker 2: because you When I started, I was just doing weird photos,
Speaker 2: which I enjoyed, and writing because there was no limit
Speaker 2: on the characters, writing a few words or a lot
Speaker 2: of words about what I was doing or what I
Speaker 2: was seeing. But of course it becomes like the only
Speaker 2: show in town in terms of letting everybody know you've
Speaker 2: got to tour an album of this. So everything now
Speaker 2: is just basically much more related to your job. So
Speaker 2: when it started, it was a bit more innocent and fun,
Speaker 2: and that's not really true anymore. But it's still a
Speaker 2: vital tool. So I try and make the best of
Speaker 2: it that I can and give an authentic view into
Speaker 2: my life, my thoughts and feelings. I don't share photos
Speaker 2: of food, holidays, children, or opinions on current political situations
Speaker 2: or war or anything. I keep that to myself. It's
Speaker 2: not that I'm afraid of voicing those opinions, but I
Speaker 2: don't foist them on my listeners.
Speaker 1: To what degree online are you two way interacting with europeand.
Speaker 2: Not at all. I don't follow anyone or any other artists.
Speaker 2: I don't engage in that way. I just put things
Speaker 2: on my thing. If I was going to if I
Speaker 2: was going to interact with a fellow artist, I would
Speaker 2: send them an email.
Speaker 1: Okay, So where did you grow up?
Speaker 2: I grew up in Manchester until I was eight, in
Speaker 2: the North of England, and then my parents moved to
Speaker 2: a tiny fishing village in the Very West Wales called Solver.
Speaker 2: So if you've ever read Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood,
Speaker 2: then it was something like that, a sort of enchanted
Speaker 2: realm of sea and sand and woodland and cliff that
Speaker 2: I was suddenly thrust into and being a sort of
Speaker 2: avid nature lover, it was just the most incredible adventure.
Speaker 2: It sort of seeded my imagination with imagery and thoughts
Speaker 2: and beauty and I still draw on that fund now.
Speaker 1: And what kind of kid? Were you?
Speaker 2: Very interested in stuff? Very sporty, loved all sport, loved,
Speaker 2: playing out, was just out all the time, kind of shy.
Speaker 2: So when I discovered going on stage, that was like
Speaker 2: a big moment. I had to be a stand in
Speaker 2: for the main part in the primary school production Christmas
Speaker 2: play the main Wizard, the Wizard and the Wizard the Witch.
Speaker 2: The Wizard was taken ill on day of show, and
Speaker 2: I had a very good memory. I had a very
Speaker 2: good memory, so they said they plumped on me, even
Speaker 2: though I was a year younger than lots of the
Speaker 2: other children, to be the main part because I'm the
Speaker 2: only person who might remember all the the different lines.
Speaker 2: So I learned the Wizard's part, but they didn't have
Speaker 2: time before we got to the performance to teach me
Speaker 2: the dances, so I had to improvise my song and
Speaker 2: dance routine. And let's just say, Bob that I was
Speaker 2: a big hit with the audience. I was a big
Speaker 2: hit with the audience. The audience loved me. And as
Speaker 2: I stood there doing my crazy wizard dancing, singing these
Speaker 2: little songs, and they gave me rapturous applause. And I
Speaker 2: remember looking out at them from this stage, which was
Speaker 2: probably only about six inches high, into the dark all
Speaker 2: that what felt like a sea of faces, which was
Speaker 2: probably about sixty people, and thinking, yeah, I get this.
Speaker 2: I get I'm in a magic world of mate believe,
Speaker 2: and I'm what I'm giving them. They loved me because
Speaker 2: I'm doing something freely and giving it to them, and
Speaker 2: their their joy is in my giving and where some
Speaker 2: people would have just been inhibited. And I was shy,
Speaker 2: but I love this and that stayed with me, and
Speaker 2: I then sort of pursued sort of amateur dramatics. We
Speaker 2: are probably grand term, but I was in school plays
Speaker 2: from then on and I got some big roles and
Speaker 2: I started my own band. So I loved it on
Speaker 2: the stage. So choosing to do music over art was
Speaker 2: probably because I liked the fact it brought me into
Speaker 2: the world and you've got this instant reaction. So I
Speaker 2: was when I was a teenager. I just became your
Speaker 2: classic teenager, smoking, drinking and wanting to kiss girls and
Speaker 2: you know, then wanting to be in a band. And
Speaker 2: I stopped studying. I stopped paying any attention apart from
Speaker 2: art and reading a few of the English texts. And
Speaker 2: they all sort of were tearing their hair out. Probably
Speaker 2: I can't imagine what it's like for my mum, but
Speaker 2: she showed incredible patience. So I kind of disconnected from
Speaker 2: my studies somewhat, and it made a bit of a
Speaker 2: mockery of my exams at various points, but I kind
Speaker 2: of got through. I chose the path of least resistance,
Speaker 2: which was art school.
Speaker 1: What did your parents do for a living, Well.
Speaker 2: My dad had been a baker in Manchester, in the
Speaker 2: family in firm, and when they didn't know what they
Speaker 2: were going to do when they went to well, so
Speaker 2: my mum was making these quilted clothes using Liberty fabrics
Speaker 2: and they started a little cottage industry selling these, and
Speaker 2: then it became successful and they were Liberty in London's
Speaker 2: biggest sellers. They were for a while, and then they
Speaker 2: started their own little shop to sell their own clothes,
Speaker 2: which developed into a craft shop, and then eventually they
Speaker 2: folded the clothing business and they just had a craft
Speaker 2: shop and the restaurant down the street where I worked
Speaker 2: as a washer up for many years made it to waiter.
Speaker 1: And do you have any siblings?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got two sisters. I'm the eldest. I got
Speaker 2: two younger sisters.
Speaker 1: So how did you get into music? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I always loved it. I mean, my mum was a
Speaker 2: very good singer. She used to sing in the choir.
Speaker 2: And I didn't have any elder brothers and sisters to
Speaker 2: kind of guide me. Into what was cool, just reacted
Speaker 2: to things. So saw music on the Telly and fell
Speaker 2: in love with Madness the Specials, sort of whole two
Speaker 2: tone thing that was nineteen seventy nine, and I was
Speaker 2: obsessed with that for several years and then became more
Speaker 2: like an indie thing. And while I was getting into
Speaker 2: indie music, I kind of got into other things that
Speaker 2: was something we'd all talk about. You'd watch Telly Don't
Speaker 2: Look Back was on, like the Da Pennybecker film. I
Speaker 2: watched that fucking in hell. I already loved Bob Dylan.
Speaker 2: I discovered him, I thought, well, I started buying Dealing
Speaker 2: Records and Leonard Cohen Records, Jny Mitchell Records, John Martin Records,
Speaker 2: and I started to explore Tom Waite's all these things
Speaker 2: at the same time as listening to the cool pop
Speaker 2: music of the sort of early to mid eighties. So
Speaker 2: that's kind of what happened. I just got into it.
Speaker 2: My dad had an acoustic guitar which he didn't know
Speaker 2: how to play. I just started using it, and my
Speaker 2: friend wrote down some chords for me and I started
Speaker 2: from there.
Speaker 1: So how did you decide this is going to be
Speaker 1: a career? And how did you end up becoming a professional.
Speaker 2: Well, I was very lucky. I'm very fortunate. I've always
Speaker 2: very driven, very self confident, very determined. So I went
Speaker 2: to art school, I formed a band, made demos and
Speaker 2: already at that point decided this is the way I'm
Speaker 2: going to go. And so I was painting and stuff
Speaker 2: for my degree, but really most of my energy and
Speaker 2: money as well, I was buying equipment and stuff was
Speaker 2: going into playing with my band, and we were playing
Speaker 2: shows in Glasgow, tried Manchester, didn't go so well there
Speaker 2: Liverpool where I went to art school, so I was
Speaker 2: gigging and we made a demo at the end of
Speaker 2: my last year and sent it into the Manchester Evening News.
Speaker 2: John Slater was an A and R man in Manchester
Speaker 2: who do a demo review. So he really liked the
Speaker 2: demo and sent an A and R man like a
Speaker 2: scout to see us in Liverpool to check us out.
Speaker 2: He gave us a good review, and he sent a
Speaker 2: scout and the scout was working for the person who
Speaker 2: would become my manager, who was just taken on a
Speaker 2: job at Pollardor to sort of pay a few bills with.
Speaker 2: So he was working for Polydor and also sort of
Speaker 2: scouting out talent at the same time time from his
Speaker 2: own POV and he was given this demo and so
Speaker 2: my very first demo ended up in the hands of
Speaker 2: the person who would be my manager. And then Pollodor
Speaker 2: commissioned a second demo and things began to move forward,
Speaker 2: and they got a publishing deal with Warner Chapel the
Speaker 2: following year. Then I moved to London and got a
Speaker 2: record deal with Virgin So that's sort of how it started.
Speaker 2: It all happened very quickly. I mean I finished my
Speaker 2: college and within a year I was in London with
Speaker 2: a record deal.
Speaker 1: So the first three records were let's just say they
Speaker 1: weren't hit. What was your experience, Yeah, it was well.
Speaker 2: I was, first of all, super exciting. I didn't ever
Speaker 2: have a kind of overview or a plan of how
Speaker 2: I was going to crack the music industry. I didn't
Speaker 2: have some hey press guy, this is my take on things.
Speaker 2: I didn't have any of that shite. I just I
Speaker 2: just had myself, my heart, my songs. I just wanted
Speaker 2: to do it. So the whole thing was a crazy
Speaker 2: learning experience, character building, as they say. So the first
Speaker 2: album new record label, got to go to America, tour
Speaker 2: America a couple of times as a support act, play
Speaker 2: shows of my own in New York and LA and
Speaker 2: you know, a super super exciting but by record too
Speaker 2: because I hadn't sold any records, you know, they were
Speaker 2: And also the guy who signed me, the classic music
Speaker 2: business thing, he was sacked before the record. He was
Speaker 2: sacked before the record had even come out, so my
Speaker 2: champion was gone, and they kind of let me make
Speaker 2: another record then said your recording budgets over. You just
Speaker 2: have to put this out as it is, put it
Speaker 2: out and then drop me. And then I was picked
Speaker 2: up by a label in America very fortunately about six
Speaker 2: months later. So this was the story of the first
Speaker 2: three albums. But the only really significant thing that happened,
Speaker 2: apart from me learning the hard way, playing fucking horrible
Speaker 2: shows in all over the fucking world as well as
Speaker 2: some good ones, was the connection I made with the Irish.
Speaker 2: They loved my first album, and I got some really
Speaker 2: good press, and I got some cool radio going on,
Speaker 2: like late night radio stuff. And when I played my
Speaker 2: first gig in Ireland at the beginning of nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 2: it was a sellout and second gig, and I thought, God,
Speaker 2: I love it here and I just kept going back
Speaker 2: and I built up this following so they kind of
Speaker 2: got it. The Irish got it. They got the lyricism,
Speaker 2: they got the sort of earthiness, the rawness, the simplicity,
Speaker 2: the singer songwriter in us of what I was doing,
Speaker 2: which was like not a very cool look at the time,
Speaker 2: So particularly in the UK, which is the hardest place
Speaker 2: to break in the world, the most cynical, sort of
Speaker 2: hard edged place I've ever been to anyway, putting new
Speaker 2: music out and everything. So that that was the story.
Speaker 2: That that that that's that's That's pretty much how it went.
Speaker 2: So it was hard work. I think. By the third
Speaker 2: record coming out on EMI America, it was a total
Speaker 2: not a disaster, and they didn't even put it out properly.
Speaker 2: The whole thing was a joke. They were imploding, They
Speaker 2: weren't even there was they were they were non functioning
Speaker 2: as a record company. We went on an absolutely soul
Speaker 2: destroying tour of the Midwest and that was that, and
Speaker 2: we had an option to have a second album with them.
Speaker 2: We chose not to take the advance and just end it.
Speaker 2: Such was the pitiful state of things. So eventually that
Speaker 2: led to me making a record in my own bedroom,
Speaker 2: which was white ladder. But it didn't happen straight away.
Speaker 1: Well, well, before you go to the record your own bedroom,
Speaker 1: you know, you make the first record, you have all
Speaker 1: the hopes, you have the second record, you know your
Speaker 1: ain R guy goes. But then you sign with a
Speaker 1: major label and that implodes. What does this do for
Speaker 1: your confidence?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I was doubtful about whether I wanted
Speaker 2: to continue, if it was going to continue in this vein.
Speaker 2: I think it makes you think everyone's good when not
Speaker 2: when it's not working out. Everyone's got ideas about what
Speaker 2: you need to do and what you're not doing. So
Speaker 2: I actually took a beat. It obviously does hurt. I mean, Jesus,
Speaker 2: my music is made of emotion. Music is made of emotion.
Speaker 1: This is.
Speaker 2: The deepest part of me. I'm showing everyone there's nowhere
Speaker 2: to hide. And it was grim. So I thought, christ,
Speaker 2: I can't do this for a living. I need to
Speaker 2: find something else to do. If if this is the
Speaker 2: way it's just going to go. So yeah, it had
Speaker 2: a huge effect and I wanted to pause from being
Speaker 2: with my manager. I wanted to pause from everything. I
Speaker 2: took some time out after the year Ideal, just to
Speaker 2: reconfigure myself and work out what it was I was
Speaker 2: doing and why, because it seemed like I didn't know anymore.
Speaker 2: I'd lost all that youthful momentum and now I was
Speaker 2: in a completely different reality.
Speaker 1: Okay, and what was the next step forward?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well it was this record we made at Homes.
Speaker 1: A little bit slower, just just to start. The manager
Speaker 1: who you had ight with, was that the same manager
Speaker 1: from day one?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so Rob, Rob Holden, we kind
Speaker 2: of got back together. I had to say. I took
Speaker 2: a little hiatus from everything and kind of got back
Speaker 2: to Oh okay.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait you're you You're on your hiatus? What do
Speaker 1: you living on?
Speaker 2: Just very Fortunately, an Irish singer called Mary Black covered
Speaker 2: some of my songs, albeit without my consent, for her album,
Speaker 2: some of my new songs. A demo I'd made while
Speaker 2: I was on EMI had got into the hands of
Speaker 2: a producer who was a big fan of my music,
Speaker 2: and she covered a whole load of my stuff. So
Speaker 2: I had this Suddenly at the MCPS came through from
Speaker 2: her album being pressed up, and I had a little
Speaker 2: bit of money to live on. My wife at this
Speaker 2: point had started working as a solicitor. She was actually
Speaker 2: the main breadwinner. So that was the reality at the time.
Speaker 2: It was kind of we were making it up as well.
Speaker 1: Go along. How did you meet your wife?
Speaker 2: I met her when I moved to London. I got
Speaker 2: a room in the squat that was her best friend's
Speaker 2: squat in South London, in the Elephant and Castle, and
Speaker 2: I then met her. I met her on the day
Speaker 2: of the general election April the ninth, nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 2: I called it the death of the British imagination. I
Speaker 2: stayed up all night to watch the horrifying reality of
Speaker 2: the Tories getting in yet another time. So and I
Speaker 2: called it the death of the British imagination. So we
Speaker 2: had a common ground and that we were utterly disgusted
Speaker 2: with our conservative country. Little did we know how worse
Speaker 2: it was going to get. So yeah, we's that was
Speaker 2: a sort of early bonding thing. So that's when I
Speaker 2: met a day of the election April the ninth, nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is when your career is on the up,
Speaker 1: When your career is on the down, is she supportive?
Speaker 1: Or is she saying, maybe you need to get a
Speaker 1: day job. What is her reaction to you, and what's
Speaker 1: your relationship like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at what stage, like when things weren't going well
Speaker 2: in my early career.
Speaker 1: No, no, after it ended with them, I.
Speaker 2: Oh well, I mean it was just.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 2: She was supportive. Yeah, sure, if she could see when
Speaker 2: she met me, I was this. I was a person.
Speaker 2: I have a I have a mission. It's not I
Speaker 2: need to be doing something. It's sort of non negotiable.
Speaker 2: It's a giant coping strategy. It's not something I have
Speaker 2: a choice over. I have to make things. So maybe
Speaker 2: I don't have to make music. Maybe I could make art,
Speaker 2: but I need to make something. I don't think I'm employable.
Speaker 2: So so she was supportive. Yeah, Well we didn't get
Speaker 2: to the point of total meltdown because life rode into
Speaker 2: the rescue or on a white steed. So a fairy
Speaker 2: tale ensued, whereby I made a record in my bedroom
Speaker 2: and okay, we're gonna get anyway.
Speaker 1: We're going to get there right now. So you have
Speaker 1: the money from the Mary Black covers, you say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you were disconnected from the manager and then the manager reconnected.
Speaker 1: What happened there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I just said I need a break because
Speaker 2: I can't listen to your thoughts about what I need
Speaker 2: to do. I need to work out for myself what
Speaker 2: it is I'm doing. I don't need extra advice. I
Speaker 2: need to just everyone to shut up. I need to
Speaker 2: go away and do this. I don't know if I
Speaker 2: want to do it anymore. Let's just take a break.
Speaker 2: When he said, very reluctantly, he said, okay. So after
Speaker 2: a break, I sort of fooled around, looked for a
Speaker 2: few different ways of doing it, scouted about, and then
Speaker 2: I began to make White Ladder. And once I was
Speaker 2: making that, it was he that introduced Yestin Poulsen, who
Speaker 2: was the guy who would become the producer of that record.
Speaker 2: It was co produced with me and the drama Clune.
Speaker 2: But yes, it made the massive difference to the sound
Speaker 2: of it all. He knew what he was doing. So
Speaker 2: we made this kind of bedroom recording together. So and
Speaker 2: that was us coming back online. And then, as I say,
Speaker 2: no one wanted to put the record out. We couldn't
Speaker 2: get any takers, so we put it out ourselves and
Speaker 2: is history.
Speaker 1: Okay, bye, by way, you're making the record. To what
Speaker 1: degree is this record informed by your previous three records?
Speaker 1: And to what degree is this a clean sleep? You
Speaker 1: know you took some time off. You don't need any
Speaker 1: more business advice when you start to write and make
Speaker 1: this record. What is the inspiration and what is different
Speaker 1: or the same from what you've done previously.
Speaker 2: Well, there's so much that was different because it was
Speaker 2: made in my bedroom, so we didn't have any equipment.
Speaker 2: We're using a computer and a drum machine and a
Speaker 2: little you know, zip drive or hard drive or jazz
Speaker 2: drive and an ADAP to record the actual physical sound
Speaker 2: if you like. So what it gave me working over
Speaker 2: sort of drum machine rhythms that was programming in because
Speaker 2: it gave me a freedom to perform over them. I'd
Speaker 2: never really used clicks or anything like that. I'd always
Speaker 2: just wanted to go free, but it actually freed me up.
Speaker 2: So that was an important creative development. And there was
Speaker 2: also the sort of intimacy of your own personal space
Speaker 2: and the times of day when you can just work
Speaker 2: when there's no one around and there's no sound, and
Speaker 2: it led to a more intimate relationship with the vocal
Speaker 2: mic and the guitar mic it just brought me in
Speaker 2: as opposed to being a sort of arm's length kind
Speaker 2: of style recording in a big POSH studio which could
Speaker 2: be a car showroom or something, this was like my
Speaker 2: own little space. So I think those were important things
Speaker 2: that that definitely was a significant change. What was in
Speaker 2: terms of what the record was based on. I have
Speaker 2: to say bother and I've talked about this ad infinitum,
Speaker 2: ad nauseum over many many years. I can give you
Speaker 2: in a nutshell, I think it was definitely a back
Speaker 2: against the wall. That the principles of how I wrote
Speaker 2: a song remained the same, but this was a back
Speaker 2: against the war moment. I'd been through this thing. One thing.
Speaker 2: I was determined I was going to make a record
Speaker 2: that from start to finish would be identifiable, coherent, interrelated,
Speaker 2: and flowing from the first note to the last. That
Speaker 2: was the objective. We started to use electronic sound. I
Speaker 2: was itching to get sound into the music, and so
Speaker 2: it was going to be this kind of hybrid form.
Speaker 2: And I was also determined to not just give up
Speaker 2: with everything and blame the music industry, blame journalists, blame
Speaker 2: whatever the hell I wanted to. I thought, I can
Speaker 2: do a better record. I haven't made the record I
Speaker 2: could make. I need to make the best possible record
Speaker 2: I can. So it's a kind of heart on sleeve
Speaker 2: record it had. I wasn't shy of melody. I never
Speaker 2: shy away from melody, but I didn't shy away from
Speaker 2: melody or open hearted sentiment. So I didn't. I'd recovered
Speaker 2: enough that I didn't retract into sort of bitterness or
Speaker 2: hide myself behind some sort of opaque shell. I let
Speaker 2: everything show. It was a greater act of vulnerability and share,
Speaker 2: and that was what the record's power was ultimately. But
Speaker 2: the process, the principle of how I wrote and how
Speaker 2: I did things, was largely the same as the way
Speaker 2: I'd always done it. I just did it under different
Speaker 2: conditions and definitely with a different mindset. And I also
Speaker 2: involved other people in a way that I never had
Speaker 2: up until then. I just wrote songs and other people
Speaker 2: played on them or helped press record while we did that.
Speaker 2: This was like involving people from the ground up and
Speaker 2: how it sounded, what it might sound like, how we
Speaker 2: might make a record, and far from actually diluting the
Speaker 2: effect of what my music might be, how personal it was,
Speaker 2: how its identity might be it actually strengthened it because
Speaker 2: they brought their strengths and wisdom and energy and sense
Speaker 2: of fun, and it lightened the music and it made
Speaker 2: it much more effective.
Speaker 1: Okay, in the US, living in the West Coast, you know,
Speaker 1: public radio started to blow Babylon. It looked like an
Speaker 1: instant's success. But the record had been out for over
Speaker 1: a year in the UK. Yeah, so you put out
Speaker 1: the record, you have the best perspective. Was it a
Speaker 1: constant uphill trend or what was it like when the
Speaker 1: record came out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a lot of hard work, but I
Speaker 2: mean it was absolutely amazing in Ireland by the end
Speaker 2: of nineteen nineteen, and we released it in nineteen November
Speaker 2: ninety eight, was actually released in Ireland on our own label.
Speaker 2: By the end of December nineteen ninety nine, it was
Speaker 2: seven times platinum, so we'd also released it in the
Speaker 2: UK at that stage, but on our own label. So
Speaker 2: by the time Warners got involved at the beginning of
Speaker 2: two thousand, I think we made this maybe sold twenty
Speaker 2: five thousand copies in the UK. In America and ato
Speaker 2: the record came out, we signed the contract at a
Speaker 2: big concert in Ireland at the end of nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: nine and the record came out in early two thousand,
Speaker 2: so by that point we were almost i'd say, eighteen
Speaker 2: months into working the record. But what was amazing was
Speaker 2: it just the record had a magic charm. It just
Speaker 2: connected connected and people would pass it around and every
Speaker 2: show we could feel the vibes that we could feel
Speaker 2: them in Ireland, and by this point we felt we've
Speaker 2: got something. This record has a magic. We just need
Speaker 2: to get out behind it and it's going to translate.
Speaker 2: So that's what it felt.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: The whole ascent to the top was absolutely incredible. It
Speaker 2: was a thrilling, thrilling two years once we got to
Speaker 2: the top. So by the sort of towards the end
Speaker 2: of two thousand, when it had been a you know,
Speaker 2: a hit in America, hit in the UK, hit in Australia,
Speaker 2: New Zealand and everything became a bit of a blur.
Speaker 2: But the climb up was absolutely incredible and the view
Speaker 2: from the top was unforgettable. From that point it becomes
Speaker 2: a bit of a blur. The shows get bigger, they're
Speaker 2: always old out, everyone's your friend, you're having the best
Speaker 2: time you've ever had. And there you go.
Speaker 1: Why ATO as opposed to another label in America? Were
Speaker 1: there even any other authors?
Speaker 2: But we didn't even ask around. I mean it felt
Speaker 2: like a perfect fit. We already believed in that you
Speaker 2: didn't need a load of people or a load of money,
Speaker 2: You just needed the right people working in the right way.
Speaker 2: So Michael McDonald and Chris Tetseli that was ATO Records.
Speaker 2: We had no one IHT Records was me and my manager.
Speaker 2: So it was like, so what Obviously Dave Matthews was
Speaker 2: a big influential character, a great supporter to have, and
Speaker 2: not only that, he had fans and people's street teams,
Speaker 2: people who'd leaflet for you, put the word out for you.
Speaker 2: We had something concrete. Well, they basically said to me
Speaker 2: was we'll work your airstaff. And they were good to that.
Speaker 2: They fucking crucified me. I did six tours on record,
Speaker 2: so you know, they said, we'll send you out and
Speaker 2: will they do it the old way? They were old school,
Speaker 2: but I like the lack of bullshit, so yeah, that's
Speaker 2: the way it's going to be. So we signed up
Speaker 2: for that. Years of suffering.
Speaker 1: So at this point, twenty five years later, are you sick
Speaker 1: of White Ladder.
Speaker 2: No, but there's certainly been points where I have been No.
Speaker 2: I think it's great. I mean playing the anniversary tour
Speaker 2: was an unexpected thrill. I think, coming as it did
Speaker 2: after the COVID shut down, it gave it this kind
Speaker 2: of crazy energy. It was a record that really connected
Speaker 2: with people. People love that record. They feel so strong.
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it too, but I wanted
Speaker 2: to distance myself from it when it was all I
Speaker 2: was was the White Ladder guy, because it becomes suffocating.
Speaker 2: I'm not I'm an artist. If you listen to my
Speaker 2: new record, it's as good as White Ladder. I'm not
Speaker 2: saying it's as perfect as a commercial form, or that
Speaker 2: it's ever going to get the breaks got That was
Speaker 2: the right record at the right time, But it's the
Speaker 2: dip in quality hasn't happened. I'm still going. I'm still pushing, experimenting,
Speaker 2: reaching out, branching out. So I'm looking for new ground,
Speaker 2: new ways of saying things, freshening things up. So so
Speaker 2: it's it's It's a record I'm hugely proud of. I
Speaker 2: think it's great. I love its economy of means. We
Speaker 2: didn't have any stuff. So we just it's just very
Speaker 2: simple really. But what we did, we did well. So
Speaker 2: you know, if we bring the claps in and please
Speaker 2: forgive me. You know, I remember the Chemical brother saying
Speaker 2: to me, yeah, it's amazing you kept the claps back
Speaker 2: right to the end. I'm like, yeah, because we haven't
Speaker 2: got it an we haven't gotten it enough to bring
Speaker 2: in put the claps in. It's like so it was.
Speaker 2: It was an exercise in minimalism, which to a certain
Speaker 2: extent is still the way that I think about making music.
Speaker 2: If the vocal or the main rhythm instrument and the
Speaker 2: rhythm or if that can uphold the song for a
Speaker 2: long period of time, then you can bring other things
Speaker 2: in and really make an effect.
Speaker 1: Okay, forgetting the anniversary tour, to what degree are you
Speaker 1: feeling an obligation to play songs from White Ladder on
Speaker 1: a tour?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean the way I have subdivided my touring
Speaker 2: now is that like on this tour, I've told people
Speaker 2: you can expect to hear the songs you love to hear.
Speaker 2: They'll be mixed in with new songs, and not just
Speaker 2: songs from White Ladder, but songs from all those old albums.
Speaker 2: This is going to be a really, really deep dive,
Speaker 2: and you also hear a few unexpected cover versions. It's
Speaker 2: going to be a highly energized tapestry of stuff. But
Speaker 2: you'll definitely hear sail Away Babylon, Please Forgive Me, etc.
Speaker 2: The one I Love You Know, Blah blah blah. You'll
Speaker 2: hear these songs. I'm not pretending. But on other when
Speaker 2: I toured Skeleg, I said to the audience, you're only
Speaker 2: gonna hear Skeleg. If you buy tickets for this concert,
Speaker 2: you're not going to hear anything except this. And when
Speaker 2: I did the Century Ends tour, the tour of my
Speaker 2: first album first two albums earlier last year, I said
Speaker 2: the same thing, that I'm just going to play the
Speaker 2: two first albums and that's all I'm playing. And it's very,
Speaker 2: very liberating, and I enjoyed them absolutely enormously those tours
Speaker 2: because I was not obliged to play anything, and I
Speaker 2: think it's a much more simple way of dividing Otherwise. Basically,
Speaker 2: every tour is a negotiation with the audience to get
Speaker 2: them to listen to something they're not maybe as familiar with,
Speaker 2: and that's if you cut your cloth too much in
Speaker 2: their favor. Excuse me, cut the cloth too much in
Speaker 2: their favor. You'll end up resenting them and not wanting
Speaker 2: to do it. I think I'd just be bored if
Speaker 2: I just felt I had to play those songs all
Speaker 2: the time. So for me, it's it's it's it's a
Speaker 2: constant negotiation. But I love those songs, so in this context,
Speaker 2: I'm going to enjoy playing them. They're going to be
Speaker 2: part of a much beer a picture.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you did Skellig and you did the first
Speaker 1: two albums live, Todd Rungren has gone out many iterations
Speaker 1: and he's done the same things and I'm gonna play X.
Speaker 1: But there's still people who come thinking they're gonna hear
Speaker 1: the so called hits. When you said, because you know,
Speaker 1: we live in a world it's hard to get the
Speaker 1: message out and people are fit when you said I'm
Speaker 1: only going to do this stuff, did you find that
Speaker 1: that was the audience you got or do you still
Speaker 1: get people saying I want to hear White Ladder.
Speaker 2: There was a few heckles. What you're really dealing with
Speaker 2: there is secondary ticketing, so people reselling their tickets and
Speaker 2: they'll just say David Gray tickets tonight, you know, and
Speaker 2: that they won't have all the info in it, that
Speaker 2: of what it is, and that's what happens. None of
Speaker 2: the fans who bought tickets will be in any doubt
Speaker 2: as to what's about to happen. But you get the
Speaker 2: odd person who's out with their girlfriend or you know,
Speaker 2: their mates, and they say, oh, let's go and see
Speaker 2: Davi Grant and then they want to hear Babylon. It's
Speaker 2: like you know with Babylon, So that happens every now
Speaker 2: and again. Yeah, you can't stamp that, but it actually
Speaker 2: worked for the rest of the time. The skellic thing
Speaker 2: that that happened didn't happen at all. I mean people
Speaker 2: were completely in on it. I didn't get any heckles.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have this huge success with White Ladder, you
Speaker 1: go to pick another record. To what degree do you
Speaker 1: feel the pressure and to what degree do you say
Speaker 1: I should replicate the previous formula, make it in my
Speaker 1: bedroom of this stripe, although now I have all the
Speaker 1: money to do it the old way. What was it like.
Speaker 2: Or just to return to the theme of self consciousness,
Speaker 2: we'd gone from very innocently making something for nothing, having
Speaker 2: no idea that it was going to succeed whatsoever. That
Speaker 2: would have been a preposterous thought to suddenly being in
Speaker 2: the reverse. You know, we were underdogs. We became fain it,
Speaker 2: and we had a huge budget and a load of
Speaker 2: people chomping at the bit to sell millions of these things.
Speaker 2: Not only that, I you know, we just had a
Speaker 2: child and that was a kind of traumatic experience that
Speaker 2: went horribly wrong. My father had just died, So I
Speaker 2: came back from tour. I had a dead father and
Speaker 2: a new baby and wife who'd been very ill, and
Speaker 2: that was my reality. I was also suddenly famous. I
Speaker 2: had money starting to come into my whole life felt
Speaker 2: like it belonged to somebody else. So it was. It was.
Speaker 2: It was tricky, you know, to find a way to
Speaker 2: connect to the music without thinking about it too much.
Speaker 2: So certainly for at least one record a new day
Speaker 2: at midnight, I think it was impossible to feel normal
Speaker 2: about anything or find a comfortable way of doing things.
Speaker 2: Everything was odd. So and I'm not the kind of
Speaker 2: guy who like, you know, hey, yeah, check out my
Speaker 2: new ferrari and my girlfriend. You know, I'm drinking the
Speaker 2: best tequila man can buy you know, whatever, you know,
Speaker 2: Let's have fun, Let's make a record, Let's go to
Speaker 2: the Bahamas. I'm not that person. I take it all
Speaker 2: very seriously and too seriously sometimes maybe so I was
Speaker 2: wearing it and trying to wear it in a way. Anyway.
Speaker 2: It was surrendous. I didn't enjoy that period. I was suffering.
Speaker 2: It was a bit like being John Malkovich. I was
Speaker 2: sort of looking at someone else's eyes, so but trying
Speaker 2: my best to connect and do the things. And there
Speaker 2: was a lot of pain in there, and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of weirdness because I just suddenly was in this
Speaker 2: other reality. But I think by the time of life
Speaker 2: in slow Motion the next record, I took some time
Speaker 2: to rEFInd my way into music and that rescued me.
Speaker 2: So we made a huge amount of music. I bought
Speaker 2: a studio and we just basically embedded ourselves there. The
Speaker 2: band are on retainers at this point, and we just
Speaker 2: recorded and recorded and recorded and had a way of
Speaker 2: a time just coming up with things and using a
Speaker 2: big studio. So that's basically, in a nutshell, how it
Speaker 2: sort of evolved from that white ladder moment of innocence
Speaker 2: through the sort of completely debilitating fame and oddness and
Speaker 2: self consciousness to refinding my way back to music and
Speaker 2: honesty and naturalness. It took a few years, to say
Speaker 2: the least, and I think it took a lot longer
Speaker 2: than that for me to come to terms with what
Speaker 2: had happened.
Speaker 1: If I said to you, I want you to write
Speaker 1: a hit song, would you say, I don't know what
Speaker 1: a hit song is. I don't want to write a
Speaker 1: hit song. I could write what I think is a hit,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure. Or do you just say I
Speaker 1: just do what I do? Who the hell knows?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't genuinely don't really know what a hit
Speaker 2: song is, and I don't even know what a hit
Speaker 2: looks like anymore from my point of view. So you know,
Speaker 2: I've got probably the most commercial song I've written in
Speaker 2: many years, in plus and minus on the new record,
Speaker 2: which has received a certain amount of airplay over here.
Speaker 2: I have no idea how it's doing in America, but
Speaker 2: that's as close as I'm going to get to a single.
Speaker 2: I don't go seeking them. But if something comes along
Speaker 2: and I think, oh this, you know, this is like
Speaker 2: a three minute pop song, It's not that I throw
Speaker 2: it out. I won't neglect it. I'll try and make
Speaker 2: it work. I love three minute pop songs, so you know,
Speaker 2: the point is having some depth to everything. It's just
Speaker 2: it's not enough just to satisfy. I don't know. Commercial
Speaker 2: lusts for success and numbers. That's not what motivates me.
Speaker 2: But when we were making White Ladder, I was also
Speaker 2: involved in a movie called This Year's Love and the
Speaker 2: director was a big fan, and he said, Dave, you know,
Speaker 2: i'd like you to write the title song of the film.
Speaker 2: And I said, but that's not really what I do.
Speaker 2: I mean, I said, if I just write what occurs
Speaker 2: to me, I don't look for a project or like.
Speaker 2: But then I went away and I thought, Jesus, I'm
Speaker 2: in the complete commercial wilderness. This is a guy who's
Speaker 2: making a movie. He's a big fan. He's asked me
Speaker 2: to write, so why don't I at least try? And
Speaker 2: I went home and I literally wrote This Year's Love
Speaker 2: that afternoon, and I sent him a cassette of it
Speaker 2: and said, this is what I've written. What do you think?
Speaker 2: He said, I love it. In the end, the movie
Speaker 2: came out. V two bought the movie rights and the
Speaker 2: song was removed from the movie. It was only played
Speaker 2: on a transistor radio in the back of a scene.
Speaker 2: But that's another story. But you know, and that's ended
Speaker 2: up being my most streamed song, So it's it's I
Speaker 2: don't necessarily fear doing something with a commercial sort of
Speaker 2: reason behind it. If only life was so predictable that
Speaker 2: there was sort of some kind of integrity ometer that
Speaker 2: you could apply to things. I don't believe in that
Speaker 2: fantasy stuff. I think that life's generally are compromise and
Speaker 2: lots of different things. But I think it's more the
Speaker 2: way that you make something and what you give to it,
Speaker 2: how you bring this brushstrokes to life that really matters.
Speaker 2: So yes, if you asked me to write a song,
Speaker 2: it'd have to depend who you were and what the
Speaker 2: context was. I'd probably ignore you, but it's possible I
Speaker 2: would take you seriously.
Speaker 1: At this point in time, you have the best viewpoint.
Speaker 1: You know, Where can you tour? Where are you successful?
Speaker 1: Obviously Ireland is a hotbed to what do we the UK,
Speaker 1: the US, the continent, anywhere else where are your fans?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're all over the place, and obviously mainly English
Speaker 2: speaking countries, Ireland, UK, Canada, America, North America, you know, Australia,
Speaker 2: New Zealand, South Africa. But you know, there were certain
Speaker 2: points where I did have fans. I can see on
Speaker 2: the streaming numbers when streaming started that, Wow, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of people listening in Santiago, Chile, and there's quite
Speaker 2: a lot of people listening in Mexico City, and there's
Speaker 2: people listening here and there and everywhere. And I've obviously
Speaker 2: got fans in Germany. The problem is when you engineer
Speaker 2: a tour, you're looking at your best markets and do
Speaker 2: the best show for those markets. And then if you
Speaker 2: basically go and tour around Southern Europe, as much as
Speaker 2: it will be beautiful and the food will be great,
Speaker 2: you know, you canie a shitload of money because you're
Speaker 2: not selling enough tickets there to sustain the crew, the
Speaker 2: band and all the stuff you've got with you. So
Speaker 2: it's like you just need to cut your class accordingly.
Speaker 2: So I think if I do another acoustic tour, I'm
Speaker 2: going to try and get to some of the places
Speaker 2: I've never been, you know, like South America and Central
Speaker 2: America and the places I haven't been for a long time,
Speaker 2: like the southern Europe, Italy, Spain, et cetera. Paris, places
Speaker 2: like that will playing smaller venues and it won't be
Speaker 2: such a big deal. So you know, that's that's what
Speaker 2: my fan base looks like. It's all over the world,
Speaker 2: but it's mainly in those English speaking countries.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about playing some covers on this tour.
Speaker 1: You know you have a White Ladder live album where
Speaker 1: you cover some Bowie songs Tainted Love. You know, how
Speaker 1: did you choose those and what kind of covers might
Speaker 1: someone expect.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to talk about it because it's going
Speaker 2: to be a surprise so in terms of what we're
Speaker 2: going to do next, but it was a huge pleasure
Speaker 2: to play the well. Obviously, say Hello Wave Goodbye is
Speaker 2: a soft cell song. So on the White Ladder tour,
Speaker 2: I got Mark Alman to come out and sing with me,
Speaker 2: and we surprised him by having prepared a version of
Speaker 2: Tainted Love. I think it was absolutely horrified, to be honest,
Speaker 2: but he's a good sport and he stepped up and
Speaker 2: he did it and the crowd went absolutely crazy. So
Speaker 2: we kind of fired off the back of that. Say
Speaker 2: Hello Wave Goodbye would end the White Ladder set, we'd
Speaker 2: come back out and do Tainted Love, another Soft Cell
Speaker 2: song or famous made famous by soft Cell. It's not
Speaker 2: written by them, of course. And then the Bowie story
Speaker 2: was part of the history of White Ladder and the
Speaker 2: very this big long story about my dad being sick
Speaker 2: and us playing at Glastonbury and meeting Bowie, and I
Speaker 2: tell the story, and then we play life on Mars
Speaker 2: into Oh you pretty things. I mean, those songs were amazing.
Speaker 2: Just getting to play those songs was so exciting. People
Speaker 2: were just blown away by that, you know, to hear
Speaker 2: someone really do a good version of that. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that's in terms of if I was going to record
Speaker 2: a cover and use it on a record, that would
Speaker 2: be a much more delicate matter. But live, I'm just
Speaker 2: what I want to do on this tour is use
Speaker 2: covers to bring the energy up without having to play
Speaker 2: a Babylon card or a big song card, so to
Speaker 2: unexpectedly surprise people and just suddenly disarm them. So that
Speaker 2: I'm buying space really for the intimacy I need for
Speaker 2: some of the more low key stuff. So I'm going
Speaker 2: to use short bursts of very famous songs to energize
Speaker 2: people and hopefully thought provoked them a little bit.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned the Chemical Brothers, you mentioned Mark Alman.
Speaker 1: Are you someone who knows everybody in the rock and
Speaker 1: roll high school or use somebody as more isolated.
Speaker 2: Totally isolated? Yeah, totally said. I don't know anyone.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: The celebrity village was a mystery to me. I couldn't
Speaker 2: really make head nor tail of what the ground rules
Speaker 2: were supposed to be. So whatever it is the gift
Speaker 2: of getting to, you know, make making people feel at ease,
Speaker 2: I don't seem to have it in that capacity. So
Speaker 2: my friendship group is basically the people I make music with,
Speaker 2: put music out with, and the people I knew before
Speaker 2: I became famous. It's my wife's friends who are very
Speaker 2: dear friends of mine. That's those are the people I see.
Speaker 2: I don't have famous friends, per se. I know a
Speaker 2: few people, of course, you know, Jesus, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of nice people out there that I've met and sort
Speaker 2: of become friendly with, But that's not my gig. Now
Speaker 2: I'm much more isolated, I think, unhealthily so. In some
Speaker 2: ways I feel that that the artists need the community
Speaker 2: of artists to support them and with whatever it is.
Speaker 2: I don't know why I've evolved a certain ways. It's
Speaker 2: complicated without getting to some kind of deep Freudian shit.
Speaker 2: I think that that's just the way I am.
Speaker 1: And you know there's that blind in the Joe Walls song.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody's so different and I haven't changed. To
Speaker 1: what degree do people treat you differently now that you're
Speaker 1: famous or you know, your recognizable character? To what degree
Speaker 1: is that inhibiting?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think it's died down to such an extent
Speaker 2: that it's not really a big deal. Two things have happened.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I've got used to it. And
Speaker 2: also people don't give a shit about me anymore, you know,
Speaker 2: So it's it's might I live a completely pretty normal life.
Speaker 2: I don't I go out, I wander around. I can
Speaker 2: go to a restaurant without everyone standing and looking at me.
Speaker 2: You know. I was in a I know Ricky Gervais
Speaker 2: from he's a fellow resident in Hampstead where I used
Speaker 2: to live. I used to see him out and about,
Speaker 2: and of course he's always got the shades on. And
Speaker 2: I remember being in the pub and we were just
Speaker 2: sitting there as a family having lunch and he came
Speaker 2: in with his wife. It was obviously an impromptu thing.
Speaker 2: Place was packed, and they kind of went, oh my god,
Speaker 2: we better sort Ricky at, We better sort Ricky at.
Speaker 2: And they gave him this. It was like right in
Speaker 2: the middle, and everyone was just looking at him, and
Speaker 2: I just felt so uncomfortable for him, and he just
Speaker 2: got up and left. After a certain amount of time,
Speaker 2: they started placing an order and he went and they
Speaker 2: just went. And I thought, yeah, my god, you know,
Speaker 2: what's it like being whatever you think of these people,
Speaker 2: Harry and Megan or Brad Pitt or something. You walk
Speaker 2: into a room and everybody it's like it's all about you. Jesus.
Speaker 2: Sounds horrendous. So yeah, I don't have to deal with
Speaker 2: any of that stuff. I don't got no high grade
Speaker 2: sort of scrutiny going on. Of course, I live a
Speaker 2: life that's in the public eye. Occasionally get stupid stories
Speaker 2: in the press or whatever. It's the usual carry on,
Speaker 2: but it's not something that inhibits my life. I do
Speaker 2: exactly what I want to go to the beach when
Speaker 2: I'm up in Norfolk, I go for swear, I do
Speaker 2: whatever I want to go to the pub for a pint.
Speaker 2: I don't give a shit. I just do what I
Speaker 2: want to do. I go to you know, it doesn't
Speaker 2: there's there's nothing happening. I don't see what's happening behind me.
Speaker 2: I might be walking down the high street and they go, oh,
Speaker 2: I was David gra Occasionally someone will bellow, some drunk
Speaker 2: will bellow out to me, but you know, it's pretty
Speaker 2: low key.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I'm not very I'm not really very famous anymore.
Speaker 1: Well, that may be your perspective that a lot of
Speaker 1: us feel differently. In any event, David, I want to
Speaker 1: thank you for taking the time to speak with me
Speaker 1: in my audience. You've made a lot of very perceptive,
Speaker 1: insightful comments certainly rooted me. So I want to thank
Speaker 1: you again and wish you luck with a new album.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Bob. And this is maybe the
Speaker 2: longest interview I've ever done. I had no idea it
Speaker 2: was going to be so epic. If Concord was still running,
Speaker 2: someone could have flown to New York in the time
Speaker 2: we've had this. Yeah, I wish you all the best,
Speaker 2: happy and healthy New Year, Bobs. And if you're in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, Yeah, I hope that the fire the fire
Speaker 2: has died down real soon, so I'm sorry for you
Speaker 2: all the suffering that's over there, and let's talk.
Speaker 1: The winds died down in any event. Next time, this
Speaker 1: is Bob left Sex