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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bible Left Sex Podcast.

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Speaker 1: I guess today this musician and director Kevin Gardley. Kevin,

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Speaker 1: good to have you on the program. Good to be here, Bob,

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Speaker 1: Nice to see you. Happy New Year. So where exactly

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Speaker 1: are you right now? I am in a little town

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Speaker 1: about forty minutes outside Dublin, in a conservatory which is

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Speaker 1: my office and my studio. So what is a nice

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Speaker 1: boy from the middle end of England doing in Dublin.

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Speaker 1: That's a good question. I I did quite a lot

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Speaker 1: of video work here in the late nineties. Earlier in

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Speaker 1: late nineties with you too, and I was going backwards

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Speaker 1: and forwards and backwards and forwards a lot with my wife,

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Speaker 1: and we fell in love with the place it is,

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Speaker 1: at least back then. It was so radically different to

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Speaker 1: living outside London that we fell in love with it.

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Speaker 1: Everything is quiet here, you can get to meet interesting

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Speaker 1: people in the art world much easier than you could

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Speaker 1: in London. Um, and we were looking to move house anyway,

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Speaker 1: and we thought, why not, let's give it a shot.

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Speaker 1: So here we are and we haven't regretted it for

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Speaker 1: one second. And how long have you been there? And

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Speaker 1: you can go a little bit deeper into the differences. Gosh,

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Speaker 1: I think we've been here for about fourteen years. The difference,

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Speaker 1: I guess is London is a very busy city, always

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Speaker 1: has been, and if you want to make a meeting

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Speaker 1: with somebody, you call up their pa and they say, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, someone star has a window for twenty minutes

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Speaker 1: next Thursday. Here you're bumping to someone who knows his

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Speaker 1: uncle and you can meet him in the pub next

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Speaker 1: Saturday night. It's it's much more. It's much less formal here.

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Speaker 1: Everybody is so much more accessible here. And is there

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Speaker 1: work there like there is in London? There is For me,

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Speaker 1: it's no different. I mean that the main difference between

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Speaker 1: working here and in London has changed so vastly over

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Speaker 1: the years because a lot of what a lot of

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Speaker 1: what I can do is done remotely anyway. If there's

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Speaker 1: a shoot to be done in London, for instance, then

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Speaker 1: I travel to London and I have a production team

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Speaker 1: there that I use. Obviously I haven't been able to

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Speaker 1: do that for a little while, but I also have

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Speaker 1: a production team here, and if I'm lucky enough, the

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Speaker 1: artist will come here and we can shoot here. So

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Speaker 1: it's it's been really been really good. In other words,

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Speaker 1: I have a lovely, gentle and quiet lifestyle, but I

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Speaker 1: can move to wherever is appropriate for when I have

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Speaker 1: to be somewhere. What's been keeping you busy recently, Kevin? Recently?

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Speaker 1: Oh gosh, you've been in the last two or three

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Speaker 1: years or so, Yes, because you know and how you've

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Speaker 1: been affected by COVID. Well, I haven't really been affected

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Speaker 1: by COVID, which is the strangest to say. I mean,

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Speaker 1: both myself and my wife haven't had COVID. We know

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Speaker 1: a few people who have, but we live a very

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Speaker 1: quiet life and I do most of my work from

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Speaker 1: home anyway. UM but probably one of the main things

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Speaker 1: that I did in twenty twenty, I released my first

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Speaker 1: solo album, which was recorded here, called Muscle Memory, which

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Speaker 1: was an exciting thing for me to do. I never

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Speaker 1: made a solo album before UM and that was that

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Speaker 1: was a big thrill. That was a big thrill. I

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Speaker 1: got extremely well reviewed, which was which was a buzz.

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Speaker 1: I also co wrote and directed a pilot episode for

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Speaker 1: a historical drama podcast about Irish music. UM. I started

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Speaker 1: experimenting with a system I called corrupted files, which is

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Speaker 1: for want of a better term, accidental artwork that's derived

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Speaker 1: from my video work, and started exploring n f T

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Speaker 1: and physical options for both UM. Also in one I

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Speaker 1: joined a new games company called Athena Athena Worlds, which

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Speaker 1: is led by UM extremely well known gaming programmer called

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Speaker 1: Jane Whittaker who did Alien Versus Predator, and also a

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Speaker 1: senior producer from Candy Crush called Emily Amslet anyone in

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Speaker 1: the gaming industry will know who they are immusically, and

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Speaker 1: they're driven by UM new revolutionary tech which hopefully will

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Speaker 1: revolutionize the games industry. And I'm a non exact director

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Speaker 1: and creative consultant for a Sena. I've also recently joined

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Speaker 1: a fascinating company called Group of Few Moans, which is

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Speaker 1: very very contemporary company. They are a community of industry

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Speaker 1: leading strategists, filmmakers, musicians, designers, writers, creative directors, researchers, accession.

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Speaker 1: We're like a herd of cattle, although we're not cattle.

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Speaker 1: We're all very very clever and very smart. But the

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Speaker 1: idea is that any any group of these people can

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Speaker 1: be selected for any particular project that comes in UM

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Speaker 1: to create the perfect group to deliver high quality outcomes

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Speaker 1: from different for a range of different kind of clients.

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Speaker 1: We work remotely, and I've never been involved in anything

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Speaker 1: like this before I am. Towards the end of last year,

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Speaker 1: I was I was frustrated in that there are so

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Speaker 1: many things that I do and I have a finger

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Speaker 1: in so many different creative pies. I was looking for

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Speaker 1: either a person or an organization to kind of represent

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Speaker 1: all the different aspects of my career. And this group

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Speaker 1: of people got in touch with me via a guy

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Speaker 1: who I've met before a number of years ago. Love

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Speaker 1: the guy called Rob Noble who invited me to become

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Speaker 1: part of group of humans. And it is. It is

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Speaker 1: a great It's a great bunch of people, a great

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Speaker 1: bunch of people. I can't tell you what we're doing

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Speaker 1: because we're all under N D A S. But it's

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Speaker 1: it's a real buzz. It's it allows me to explore

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Speaker 1: the more commercial side of what I'm capable of doing. Okay,

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Speaker 1: before we leave Dublin, I have to address the situation

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Speaker 1: with Ironland, which is divided in Brexit. What's your whole

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Speaker 1: take on Brexit and how it should work out? Fucking nightmare.

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Speaker 1: I never understood the point of it. Ever. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, it's crazy. I'm not a very politically

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Speaker 1: minded person, but I kind of don't see the wind

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Speaker 1: of it. It's it's divisive on a very day to

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Speaker 1: day level. If you order anything online. Um, we used

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Speaker 1: to be able to get loads of stuff that we

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Speaker 1: can no longer get now from from the UK. Um,

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Speaker 1: and you have to pay extra tax when it comes

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Speaker 1: into the country. It takes twice as long. I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's the immediate effect of it, and it's just boring.

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Speaker 1: I don't get it. Okay, let's go back a few years.

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Speaker 1: How did you ultimately get into video directing? Sort of

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Speaker 1: by accident, like most things in my life. Um, as

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Speaker 1: you know, we were we were in a band, quite

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Speaker 1: successful band, and when lor Creom and I left the band,

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Speaker 1: we were still making records, but we weren't a touring band,

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Speaker 1: so we never appeared anywhere live. We never did any shows.

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Speaker 1: But we had a record coming out on a single

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Speaker 1: that was called an Englishman in New York, not to

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Speaker 1: be confused with the song of the same name by Sting,

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Speaker 1: and we kind of figured that the only way we

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Speaker 1: could promote it would be to make a little film

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Speaker 1: of us performing it in some way. And we didn't

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Speaker 1: think for one minute that the record company would go

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Speaker 1: for the idea, because back then there was no video

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Speaker 1: industry as such, there was no MTV. But we came

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Speaker 1: up with a sort of cock eyed storyboard and went

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Speaker 1: to meet somebody at the label and lo and behold.

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Speaker 1: I said, yes, you can make it, but you can't

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Speaker 1: direct it because you you don't know a camera from

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Speaker 1: a camel. So we'll have to get a proper guy

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Speaker 1: into do that, which which they did, and joined the

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Speaker 1: process of making the film. A couple of lightbulbs went

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Speaker 1: off over our heads. It was an extraordinary experience. We

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Speaker 1: were ex art students, as you probably, and suddenly we

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Speaker 1: were involved in something that we instinctively felt we could

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Speaker 1: contribute to. We could do this, we thought, and much

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Speaker 1: to the director's annoyance, through the editing process, we started

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Speaker 1: to stick our oar in and suggest things and and

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Speaker 1: and say, well, what happens if you press this button

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Speaker 1: and you go no, no, And we pressed a button

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Speaker 1: and something interesting would happen that nobody expected. In other words,

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Speaker 1: we kind of took over, which must have been a

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Speaker 1: pain for the director. For the proper director, but we

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Speaker 1: knew that this was a very exciting thing to be

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Speaker 1: involved with. So we put we were performing, which took

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Speaker 1: up most of the day, and we were listening and

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Speaker 1: we were watching and we were learning, and that was

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Speaker 1: the first thing we kind of did um and we

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Speaker 1: got a lot of credit for it because the finished

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Speaker 1: result made the hit, made the record a hit, not

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Speaker 1: in the UK, but all over Europe. Would you remember

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Speaker 1: the budget and you remember where it was exhibited and

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Speaker 1: people became aware of it. It was shown a lot

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Speaker 1: in Europe, all over Europe and it was a hit

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Speaker 1: record in Europe. I can't remember the budget, but it

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Speaker 1: can't have been a lot of money. There wasn't a

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Speaker 1: lot of money around in those days for these things.

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Speaker 1: So what I actually happened from there is a guy

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Speaker 1: called Steve Strange who was just signed to our label

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Speaker 1: Polydor with his band called Visage. Is the same Steve

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Speaker 1: Strange who recently passed Yes unfortunately, Yes. We used to

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Speaker 1: from the clubs in London and he wanted us to

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Speaker 1: direct his first video for his first single for Visage,

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Speaker 1: which was called Fay to Grow and which is a

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Speaker 1: lovely compliment. I think you have to argue the point

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Speaker 1: somewhat with the low but we got to do it.

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Speaker 1: The budget for that I distinctly remember as being five

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Speaker 1: thousand pounds two and a half thousand, of which went

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Speaker 1: to the makeup artist. But that was our first professional

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Speaker 1: gigs as as video directors. And the rest is this history. Okay, Well,

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Speaker 1: as I say, you're let's go a little slower into

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Speaker 1: the rest. So you make that video. You did one

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Speaker 1: for your own act. It was very successful. What happened

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Speaker 1: with this video, Well, it did the trick um. It

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Speaker 1: proved the point that a good film or a good

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Speaker 1: video or whatever they used to call it in those days,

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Speaker 1: could make a difference. And it was a hit in Norway, Sweden,

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Speaker 1: Denmark and Scandinavia and France, in Germany, but didn't do

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Speaker 1: a damn thing in England, which was such a shame.

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Speaker 1: But it taught us a hell of a lot. It's

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Speaker 1: it flipped the switch for us because we'd left the

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Speaker 1: band and we were making records and I think subconsciously

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Speaker 1: we were looking for something else that we could get

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Speaker 1: our teeth into and this came along. It's just the

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Speaker 1: right time. Now we're in the history of MTV. Does

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Speaker 1: this happen quite early We're talking the early eighties. Um,

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Speaker 1: And I think we made an Englishman in New York

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Speaker 1: before MTV became a reality anywhere. Um. I think MTV launched.

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Speaker 1: Was it in nineteen August? First one? Okay, so we

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Speaker 1: were relatively close. We were relatively close, I thinking Englishmen

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Speaker 1: in New York those towards the end of the seventies.

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Speaker 1: But visage. I guess what I'm asking here is, did

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Speaker 1: you see MTV on the horizon when it happened? Did

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Speaker 1: it change your vision? Did it queed a lot of opportunity? Totally?

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Speaker 1: We didn't see it coming, and then we heard about it.

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Speaker 1: We heard about it launching in America first, which it did,

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Speaker 1: of course, and we started to get some interesting commissions

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Speaker 1: um from America. Probably the most significant one was for

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Speaker 1: Herbie Hancock Rocket UM. And things began to change radically

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Speaker 1: from that point, not just for us, but for the

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Speaker 1: whole music industry. From our perspective and from all the

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Speaker 1: other directors and producers that were working in this new medium,

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Speaker 1: it suddenly meant that there was a global art gallery

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Speaker 1: where all their work could be seen. There had been

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Speaker 1: nothing like this before ever. So the other thing that

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Speaker 1: I think was hugely influential. Was that a lot of

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Speaker 1: the more christially acclaimed and influential films on MTV We're

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Speaker 1: coming out of the UK and the stylistic elements of

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Speaker 1: those films made an impact on everything that was made

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Speaker 1: from that point on. And a lot of a lot

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Speaker 1: of bands, a lot of American bands particularly, were a

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Speaker 1: little bit uncomfortable with this. They were purists, they were musicians. Man,

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Speaker 1: we don't want to make films, We don't want to

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Speaker 1: tell stories, we just want to play. There was there

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Speaker 1: was a little bit of resistance to that initially, uh,

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Speaker 1: but things gradually began to change. They began to accept

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Speaker 1: it and take it on board and really use it well.

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Speaker 1: It took a little time though for it to sink in.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about Rocket, So how did you that's a

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Speaker 1: legendary video. How did you come up with the concept?

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Speaker 1: And ultimately this became your main work? So at what

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Speaker 1: point did it become luquidi? What were the budget? Rocket

226
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Speaker 1: was an interesting one again, just a series of lucky accidents.

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Speaker 1: I was watching a TV news program, local TV news

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Speaker 1: program UM and they were showing a piece about a

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Speaker 1: sculptor and artist called Jim whit Ing. And his work,

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Speaker 1: which were these strange hydraulic robots, and it was probably

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Speaker 1: about a five minute piece. And as soon as it

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Speaker 1: started on the TV, I I dived at the video

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Speaker 1: recorder and taped what I could of it because I

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Speaker 1: found it absolutely fascinating and something was it was wonderful

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Speaker 1: about it, incredible um. But before then the rocket track

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Speaker 1: had landed on our desk asking us to come up

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Speaker 1: with an idea for it. So when I saw this

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Speaker 1: and took the video tape over to Lowell's place, we

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Speaker 1: we realized that rocket sounded like this looked okay. There

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Speaker 1: was there was no doubt in our minds about that.

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Speaker 1: And and back then things were relatively free. There was

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Speaker 1: no marketing department, there was no there was no real

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Speaker 1: awareness of the power of video. These were just films

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Speaker 1: that were made and nobody really knew if it hadn't

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Speaker 1: make any difference or not to the success of a record.

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Speaker 1: So how it worked was you sent a track to

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Speaker 1: a director whose work you liked and asked them to

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Speaker 1: make a film and gave them a little bit of

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Speaker 1: money to do it. You were never asked to compete

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Speaker 1: with other directors or sending a written treatment. You maybe

251
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Speaker 1: have a conversation or two, but we were allowed to

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Speaker 1: do pretty much what the hell we liked, and we

253
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Speaker 1: had enough faith in the idea to actually set it

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Speaker 1: up and go for it. We had Herbie fly over

255
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Speaker 1: a day and we filmed him separately because we knew

256
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Speaker 1: we'd be putting him into the finished film in a

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Speaker 1: TV monitor. But nobody, including us to a degree, understood

258
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Speaker 1: at that stage what the Finnish film would look like.

259
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Speaker 1: We were we were just busking, but we were busking

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Speaker 1: with confidence. It was really only when we hit the

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Speaker 1: edit suite with all this vast amount of material, and

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Speaker 1: I'd say vast because back then you couldn't play the

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Speaker 1: material backwards. You had to you had to retransfer all

264
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Speaker 1: the films of video backwards, all the footage. You couldn't

265
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Speaker 1: hit a button and it would go backwards. So we

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Speaker 1: had an enormous amount of footage and I think the

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Speaker 1: edit was probably about an eighteen to twenty edit, solid

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Speaker 1: in an edit suite, very smoky edit suite um And

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Speaker 1: when we finished it, we looked at it and we

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Speaker 1: looked at each other and we said, they're gonna fucking

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Speaker 1: kill us, because I mean, from our perspective, it was extraordinary. Um,

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Speaker 1: but there's been nothing like that shown anywhere before. And

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Speaker 1: so we we were, you know, we thought, you know,

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Speaker 1: fuck it, let's send it to them and and and

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Speaker 1: and see what happens. And predictably, it was like, don't

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Speaker 1: they They didn't quite understand what they were watching, if

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Speaker 1: that makes any sense. UM, But they didn't know they

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Speaker 1: had something. What they didn't know and what we didn't

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Speaker 1: know is that that's something I was going to turn

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Speaker 1: out to be something significant in kicking the medium forward.

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Speaker 1: And we want a lot of awards at the first

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Speaker 1: MTV show for that one particular video. It was and

283
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Speaker 1: it taught us that you know, believe in your instincts.

284
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Speaker 1: You know what you're doing. Even though you don't know

285
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Speaker 1: that you know what you're doing, you do know something

286
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Speaker 1: that they don't know. So just keep doing this because

287
00:19:27,840 --> 00:19:37,800
Speaker 1: you're good at it. Let's go back a couple of years.

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Speaker 1: Tell me the story of the making of the video

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Speaker 1: for Duran Duran's Girls and Film. They're they're a very

290
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Speaker 1: clove a bunch of guys still are and as is

291
00:19:47,840 --> 00:19:53,520
Speaker 1: their management. They were very savvy and um in wanting

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Speaker 1: to break America. They we're keeping an eye on what

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Speaker 1: was going on in the clubs as well as what

294
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Speaker 1: was going on in TV. And what was going on

295
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Speaker 1: in the clubs was that they were playing these new

296
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Speaker 1: fangled video things in the clubs, and some of them

297
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Speaker 1: were kind of uncensored because there were no there's no

298
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Speaker 1: censorship in the clubs. The rauncher they was, the more

299
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Speaker 1: daring they were, the weirder they were, the more they

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Speaker 1: get played. And so as part of the brief for

301
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Speaker 1: Girls on Film, we were told to create a version

302
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Speaker 1: that was to be played in clubs, primarily in clubs,

303
00:20:34,680 --> 00:20:38,400
Speaker 1: so they were kind of kind of coming out America

304
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Speaker 1: from underneath, not from in front. So that's what we did.

305
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Speaker 1: It just so happened that that and and and the

306
00:20:48,119 --> 00:20:52,760
Speaker 1: TV Cup was a little time, as you know, but

307
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Speaker 1: the full version was kind of probably wouldn't get made today.

308
00:20:58,119 --> 00:21:01,320
Speaker 1: There's very sexy, very raunchy, very daring for its time,

309
00:21:02,200 --> 00:21:05,800
Speaker 1: and the words started to spread, as that sometimes happens,

310
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Speaker 1: and it was all part of this this growth, this

311
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Speaker 1: strange upheaval that was going on in the music business.

312
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Speaker 1: People were getting excited about the power of the music

313
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Speaker 1: video and it became a thing. Had you end up

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Speaker 1: working with the Police. Um. We we used to record

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Speaker 1: in the same studio, strangely enough, near Well where Luell

316
00:21:30,160 --> 00:21:32,600
Speaker 1: lived at the time, in a place called Leatherhead, which

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00:21:32,640 --> 00:21:36,280
Speaker 1: sounds like a heavy metal man. UM a little studio

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Speaker 1: UM called Sorry Sound, which was run by a guy

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Speaker 1: who was producing the Police at the time, and they

320
00:21:47,320 --> 00:21:53,000
Speaker 1: were working there and we just kind of meat every

321
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Speaker 1: now and again we finished a session, they start a session.

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Speaker 1: And when we came into our first album as Godly

323
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Speaker 1: and Cream, Nigel Nigel Grave was the guy I'm talking about.

324
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Speaker 1: He played us the stuff he'd been recording with the

325
00:22:09,600 --> 00:22:14,360
Speaker 1: Police and it kind of made our hair sound upon

326
00:22:14,359 --> 00:22:17,399
Speaker 1: it and just three people playing and singing, whereas we

327
00:22:17,400 --> 00:22:20,880
Speaker 1: were messing around with all sorts of peculiar sounds and

328
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Speaker 1: and since and goodness what Um, there were these three

329
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Speaker 1: guys that were that were that had it that magic

330
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Speaker 1: stuff that everybody wants to find. And that's kind of

331
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Speaker 1: where we met them. And at this point we we

332
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Speaker 1: this was prior to us getting into music video really um.

333
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Speaker 1: But when they when they had made it big and

334
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Speaker 1: they wanted to change their style on film, they called us. UM.

335
00:22:53,040 --> 00:22:56,119
Speaker 1: They were doing hugely well all over the world and

336
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Speaker 1: in America, and the album that Every Breath You Take

337
00:23:01,040 --> 00:23:03,080
Speaker 1: was on. They wanted to present it in a more

338
00:23:03,080 --> 00:23:08,119
Speaker 1: sophisticated way, more interesting way, and they asked us if

339
00:23:08,160 --> 00:23:09,800
Speaker 1: we'd be interested in making a film for it, and

340
00:23:09,880 --> 00:23:13,479
Speaker 1: of course we were. The interesting thing is that we

341
00:23:13,480 --> 00:23:17,240
Speaker 1: were all They were thinking along a certain line and

342
00:23:17,280 --> 00:23:20,960
Speaker 1: we were thinking along certain lines, but we never really

343
00:23:21,000 --> 00:23:26,480
Speaker 1: got together to talk about it until we flew over

344
00:23:26,520 --> 00:23:30,600
Speaker 1: to la to meet them at the record label, and

345
00:23:31,560 --> 00:23:35,840
Speaker 1: all our ideas kind of coalesced. The idea of doing

346
00:23:35,840 --> 00:23:38,280
Speaker 1: it in black and white, the idea of holding on

347
00:23:38,359 --> 00:23:42,600
Speaker 1: things for an enormous amount of time as opposed to

348
00:23:42,600 --> 00:23:45,800
Speaker 1: cutting every second, which most videos did at the time,

349
00:23:46,600 --> 00:23:49,600
Speaker 1: was exactly where they wanted to go. Something that was subtle,

350
00:23:49,760 --> 00:23:55,800
Speaker 1: something that was delicate, something that was powerful. Um. It

351
00:23:55,920 --> 00:24:01,399
Speaker 1: was an extraordinary, uplifting experience for us, a huge kick

352
00:24:01,480 --> 00:24:05,199
Speaker 1: up the ladder. There were a number of of shoots

353
00:24:05,240 --> 00:24:07,560
Speaker 1: around about that time, and there was Herbie, there was

354
00:24:07,600 --> 00:24:10,520
Speaker 1: Every Breath You Take. In fact, we did two more

355
00:24:10,800 --> 00:24:13,439
Speaker 1: for the Police on the same album. But that was

356
00:24:13,480 --> 00:24:16,040
Speaker 1: a big kick in the bomb for us up the ladder.

357
00:24:16,560 --> 00:24:19,720
Speaker 1: That made us, for want of a badder description video

358
00:24:19,840 --> 00:24:23,280
Speaker 1: starts not something we were aiming to be, but it

359
00:24:23,359 --> 00:24:26,399
Speaker 1: made us significant in the medium, and how did the

360
00:24:26,600 --> 00:24:32,000
Speaker 1: change your life and career made us feel good? The

361
00:24:32,080 --> 00:24:36,040
Speaker 1: budgets got a little bit bigger, and it gave us

362
00:24:36,040 --> 00:24:42,160
Speaker 1: a little bit more wait in terms of presenting ideas

363
00:24:42,200 --> 00:24:48,320
Speaker 1: to people. I think the industry was starting to understand,

364
00:24:50,080 --> 00:24:54,080
Speaker 1: at least the marketing people within the industry, We're beginning

365
00:24:54,080 --> 00:24:56,640
Speaker 1: to understand the power of a music video and how

366
00:24:56,640 --> 00:25:03,720
Speaker 1: it could actually help a single become a hit. And therefore,

367
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:06,760
Speaker 1: when they came to us that they knew if they

368
00:25:06,800 --> 00:25:09,480
Speaker 1: were coming to us, we weren't going to do what

369
00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:13,359
Speaker 1: they told us to do, and we were trusted to

370
00:25:13,480 --> 00:25:16,399
Speaker 1: a degree to deliver them something that was original, that

371
00:25:16,520 --> 00:25:20,320
Speaker 1: was different, but had a quality that was going to

372
00:25:20,400 --> 00:25:23,720
Speaker 1: help the record be a success. And we used to

373
00:25:23,800 --> 00:25:26,480
Speaker 1: push that home. That was that was the buzz for us.

374
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:31,280
Speaker 1: In a sense, it wasn't It wasn't about the success.

375
00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:35,639
Speaker 1: It was about being allowed to try something that we

376
00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:39,399
Speaker 1: would dearly like to see on the screen and sort of,

377
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:42,080
Speaker 1: shall we say, eight times out of ten it did

378
00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:44,600
Speaker 1: the job. How did you feel when you'd make a

379
00:25:44,640 --> 00:25:49,200
Speaker 1: successful video? Frodact and then they would end up working

380
00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 1: with somebody else for the next video. It didn't happen

381
00:25:53,280 --> 00:25:56,920
Speaker 1: that often, at least not initially, particularly in the police's case.

382
00:25:57,040 --> 00:25:59,800
Speaker 1: We we did every breath and we did the following

383
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:04,320
Speaker 1: to videos. But I think what was happening the industry

384
00:26:04,320 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 1: as an industry was was maturing and more people we're

385
00:26:09,320 --> 00:26:13,960
Speaker 1: coming into the industry. More directors were realizing that you know,

386
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:15,960
Speaker 1: as well as the commercials that they did, as well

387
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:18,200
Speaker 1: as the films that they did, this was an area

388
00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:21,360
Speaker 1: where they could be free or a little freer than

389
00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:24,200
Speaker 1: everything else, and they could try some bizarre ideas out

390
00:26:24,240 --> 00:26:26,760
Speaker 1: that they may not be able to try in some

391
00:26:26,920 --> 00:26:30,399
Speaker 1: of the other area areas of their work. So I

392
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:33,400
Speaker 1: wouldn't say it was becoming crowded, but it was becoming

393
00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:37,359
Speaker 1: populated with a lot of different kinds of directors and

394
00:26:37,400 --> 00:26:40,720
Speaker 1: so there was more choice for people. And also, don't

395
00:26:40,720 --> 00:26:44,880
Speaker 1: forget at the time, because labels and management people were

396
00:26:44,960 --> 00:26:49,639
Speaker 1: now understanding the power of the music video. They were thinking, Okay,

397
00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:52,399
Speaker 1: well this is a great song. Who can we go to?

398
00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:56,760
Speaker 1: Does this guy that does this team? There's godling cream,

399
00:26:56,920 --> 00:26:59,639
Speaker 1: there's so and so on the so and so and

400
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:01,640
Speaker 1: they had a number of show reels to look at,

401
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:05,959
Speaker 1: and they could then choose who they would like to

402
00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:08,760
Speaker 1: make their film. And they could also go to more

403
00:27:08,800 --> 00:27:15,280
Speaker 1: than one set of individuals and say, listen, guys, this

404
00:27:15,359 --> 00:27:17,640
Speaker 1: is how much money. We have come up with an

405
00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:21,760
Speaker 1: idea for this, and we will choose the winner to

406
00:27:21,800 --> 00:27:25,320
Speaker 1: make the film. It was becoming exactly what you would

407
00:27:25,400 --> 00:27:31,200
Speaker 1: expect a successful industry to become. So you made these

408
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:36,120
Speaker 1: videos with law How do you split up the responsibilities?

409
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:38,360
Speaker 1: What did he do? What did you do? We kind

410
00:27:38,359 --> 00:27:41,280
Speaker 1: of both did everything, which was kind of messy sometimes,

411
00:27:42,240 --> 00:27:47,119
Speaker 1: but it was I think everything we did in music

412
00:27:47,240 --> 00:27:51,480
Speaker 1: video we approached pretty much the same way as we

413
00:27:51,520 --> 00:27:53,760
Speaker 1: would if we were making a record or if we

414
00:27:53,760 --> 00:27:57,760
Speaker 1: were writing a song. There was no the lines were

415
00:27:57,800 --> 00:28:04,119
Speaker 1: blurred between the two of us um and it worked

416
00:28:04,119 --> 00:28:08,480
Speaker 1: for a time, it worked really, really well. Um. It

417
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:11,760
Speaker 1: was only later towards the end of our relationship where

418
00:28:11,760 --> 00:28:15,480
Speaker 1: we we both had different kinds of ideas that we

419
00:28:15,560 --> 00:28:17,480
Speaker 1: wanted to do that it became a little bit of

420
00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:22,560
Speaker 1: a problem. But the initial push, the initial few years

421
00:28:22,640 --> 00:28:28,600
Speaker 1: during THEES was was extremely productive and extremely joyful. It

422
00:28:28,680 --> 00:28:31,840
Speaker 1: was we had a blast. I have to tell you

423
00:28:32,119 --> 00:28:35,440
Speaker 1: it was an absolute blast. When it ended with Lal

424
00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:38,320
Speaker 1: was an un bad terms. Do you have any contact

425
00:28:38,360 --> 00:28:40,960
Speaker 1: with him today? Not really. We've we've kind of we've

426
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 1: grown apart, you know. It's it's I think I've been

427
00:28:45,040 --> 00:28:48,760
Speaker 1: working longer without Lal than I was working with Law.

428
00:28:49,840 --> 00:28:54,880
Speaker 1: It's so long ago. Um, we've drawn apart. I mean,

429
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:57,560
Speaker 1: all the members of the original band have kind of

430
00:28:57,600 --> 00:29:01,080
Speaker 1: grown apart. It's funny, I think. You know, when you're

431
00:29:01,120 --> 00:29:04,360
Speaker 1: young and you're a band and you're starting off together,

432
00:29:04,440 --> 00:29:08,640
Speaker 1: there's a gang mentality. It's it's it's you against the world,

433
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:12,360
Speaker 1: and the most important thing in your lives is the band,

434
00:29:12,560 --> 00:29:14,600
Speaker 1: the success of the band, and the quality of the

435
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:17,640
Speaker 1: music that you make, and that's all. That's all that counts.

436
00:29:17,680 --> 00:29:21,120
Speaker 1: But gradually, as you grow into yourself, as you cannot

437
00:29:21,160 --> 00:29:23,240
Speaker 1: come older, and you make new friends and you have

438
00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:28,280
Speaker 1: new experiences, you developer, you develop as a person. And

439
00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:31,760
Speaker 1: you know, that's what happened between me and Law. We

440
00:29:31,880 --> 00:29:38,080
Speaker 1: became different people with different tastes, and it happens. Okay,

441
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:40,959
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. Where did you grow up?

442
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:48,880
Speaker 1: I grew up in Manchester, outside Manchester, Um, I was

443
00:29:48,960 --> 00:29:54,520
Speaker 1: a quiet lonely kid, didn't have many friends. The only

444
00:29:54,840 --> 00:29:59,640
Speaker 1: thing that I could do well and enjoy doing was

445
00:29:59,800 --> 00:30:05,640
Speaker 1: was drawing pencil sketching, and I used to do that

446
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:09,120
Speaker 1: whenever I could. I used to take a sketchbook, compencil

447
00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:12,280
Speaker 1: and jump over the wall into Heaton Park, which was

448
00:30:12,360 --> 00:30:16,560
Speaker 1: directly opposite to where we lived, and spend an afternoon

449
00:30:16,640 --> 00:30:20,920
Speaker 1: sitting on a bench drawing um. And I think it

450
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:25,160
Speaker 1: was it was during that period that occasionally people would

451
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:28,200
Speaker 1: would wander over and have a look at what I

452
00:30:28,280 --> 00:30:32,920
Speaker 1: was doing and say, that's really good, that's really really good,

453
00:30:32,960 --> 00:30:38,360
Speaker 1: well done, congratulations, that's fantastic work. And in a bizarre way,

454
00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:42,680
Speaker 1: that was my first audience. I suddenly I understood that

455
00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:47,320
Speaker 1: people liked something that I was doing, and although they

456
00:30:47,320 --> 00:30:50,080
Speaker 1: weren't applauding, they were saying nice things. So that was

457
00:30:50,440 --> 00:30:54,360
Speaker 1: that was hugely significant to me. And what did your

458
00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:56,160
Speaker 1: parents do for a living? And how many kids in

459
00:30:56,160 --> 00:31:01,840
Speaker 1: the family just me um. My father had a number

460
00:31:01,880 --> 00:31:05,280
Speaker 1: of shops in the center of Manchester. He was a

461
00:31:05,320 --> 00:31:12,960
Speaker 1: shopkeeper and he sold He sold radios, tape recorders, records,

462
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:20,200
Speaker 1: camera equipment. He also sold telescopes and he also sold

463
00:31:20,560 --> 00:31:25,560
Speaker 1: musical instruments all in different shops and camping equipment. Strangely enough,

464
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:29,880
Speaker 1: um so that the weird thing is, you know, he

465
00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:32,280
Speaker 1: wanted me to go into the family business, of course,

466
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:35,640
Speaker 1: and I hated it. I used to help out at

467
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 1: the shops on a Saturday behind the till, you know,

468
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:42,680
Speaker 1: try and demonstrate things. I was hopeless at that and

469
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:51,080
Speaker 1: you know, but looking back was really strange to me

470
00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:53,600
Speaker 1: is even though I didn't want to go into the

471
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:57,280
Speaker 1: family business, all the things that he sold other than

472
00:31:57,320 --> 00:32:01,600
Speaker 1: camping equipment areas that I ended up investigating and became

473
00:32:01,680 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: becoming part of in my growd up careers, cameras, tape recorders, television,

474
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:13,080
Speaker 1: musical instruments. It's the strangest thing. What was it like

475
00:32:13,280 --> 00:32:17,240
Speaker 1: being in the UK when the Beatles hit and all

476
00:32:17,280 --> 00:32:19,520
Speaker 1: those means, and some of them were from Liverpool, not

477
00:32:19,600 --> 00:32:22,440
Speaker 1: that far from me and Chester. What was the experience

478
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:26,640
Speaker 1: through your eyes? It was it was like being part

479
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:31,120
Speaker 1: of something important. I think that if you were a

480
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:35,480
Speaker 1: teenager before the Beatles came along, that I you were

481
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:39,360
Speaker 1: sort of playing a musical instrument or in any kind

482
00:32:39,360 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 1: of band, nobody really took you very seriously. Um It

483
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:48,720
Speaker 1: only seemed to become significant once the Beatles have made

484
00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:51,880
Speaker 1: an impact, and it then it was there was some

485
00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:57,880
Speaker 1: strange cultural upheaval that took place. I remember leaping, you know,

486
00:32:57,960 --> 00:33:03,200
Speaker 1: leaping a good few years forward. I remember I've been

487
00:33:03,240 --> 00:33:07,120
Speaker 1: home for a weekend and I got a train back

488
00:33:07,160 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 1: to to our college and Sergeant Pepper had just come out.

489
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:16,840
Speaker 1: And I walked into the Art College and every single

490
00:33:16,960 --> 00:33:22,000
Speaker 1: department of the Art College had stopped work, and each

491
00:33:22,040 --> 00:33:25,239
Speaker 1: department was playing a different track from the album, and

492
00:33:25,280 --> 00:33:30,800
Speaker 1: the tutors weren't teaching anybody. They were pouring over the

493
00:33:30,840 --> 00:33:36,120
Speaker 1: gayfold album sleeve. Everybody was marveling at this wonder that

494
00:33:36,200 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 1: had come out of nowhere, and that was huge for me.

495
00:33:41,040 --> 00:33:47,480
Speaker 1: It just changed everything. Um. You can imagine walking into

496
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:49,760
Speaker 1: this building and hearing all these tracks at the same time.

497
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:54,400
Speaker 1: It's like Revolution number nine coming out of the windows. Um.

498
00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:56,960
Speaker 1: But that made a huge difference. And I was in

499
00:33:57,000 --> 00:33:59,000
Speaker 1: the band while I was Art college, and we were

500
00:33:59,040 --> 00:34:03,280
Speaker 1: doing gigs pretty much every every old turn at night.

501
00:34:03,480 --> 00:34:05,680
Speaker 1: I get picked up at the end of a working

502
00:34:05,760 --> 00:34:07,440
Speaker 1: day at college and go off in a van and

503
00:34:07,520 --> 00:34:10,040
Speaker 1: do a gig, come back late at night, and then

504
00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:12,600
Speaker 1: go to college the next day. So suddenly it's just

505
00:34:12,680 --> 00:34:15,799
Speaker 1: being in a band. Wasn't just a buzz. It was

506
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:20,839
Speaker 1: a possible thing that could become something significant should you

507
00:34:20,880 --> 00:34:23,440
Speaker 1: want it to be. So, so, how did you start

508
00:34:23,560 --> 00:34:29,400
Speaker 1: playing musical instrument? Like many kids that era, people wanted

509
00:34:29,440 --> 00:34:33,560
Speaker 1: to play music. Music was a big outlet then, before

510
00:34:33,600 --> 00:34:37,600
Speaker 1: the Beatles, before anything, every wanted to play. Everybody wanted

511
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:39,960
Speaker 1: to play a guitar or something or other. I think

512
00:34:40,000 --> 00:34:42,520
Speaker 1: it was like skateboards or video games or now. It

513
00:34:42,600 --> 00:34:47,960
Speaker 1: was the thing. And it wasn't necessarily because you could

514
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:50,080
Speaker 1: make a career out of it. It was, you know,

515
00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:52,719
Speaker 1: because it made you feel, made you look cool, you

516
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:57,040
Speaker 1: could meet girls, made you feel something, and it made

517
00:34:57,080 --> 00:34:59,759
Speaker 1: you feel like you were doing something that was about you,

518
00:35:00,160 --> 00:35:03,840
Speaker 1: and it was about your generation. Where it would go

519
00:35:03,920 --> 00:35:06,280
Speaker 1: nobody really knew, but it was a way of stamping

520
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:13,520
Speaker 1: your identity on something. And I took up a guitar first.

521
00:35:13,680 --> 00:35:18,560
Speaker 1: I had a half in the club fifty six dring

522
00:35:18,600 --> 00:35:22,120
Speaker 1: guitar sy semi solid body, and I was terrible. I

523
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:27,799
Speaker 1: joined a group called Groups seventeen and played bass on

524
00:35:27,840 --> 00:35:31,600
Speaker 1: a six string guitar very badly, and we used to

525
00:35:31,600 --> 00:35:35,120
Speaker 1: do covers of a bank called the shadows who have

526
00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 1: used to back Cliff Richard in the UK. And we

527
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:42,440
Speaker 1: used to play things like old people's homes and private

528
00:35:42,520 --> 00:35:48,200
Speaker 1: parties and whatever we could get. But there was we

529
00:35:48,280 --> 00:35:51,760
Speaker 1: were terrible, but there was something amazing about the experience.

530
00:35:52,080 --> 00:35:59,919
Speaker 1: And I I shifted to drums because um, my next

531
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:04,320
Speaker 1: door neighbor, my next door neighbors family were quite wealthy,

532
00:36:04,360 --> 00:36:06,960
Speaker 1: had bought his name was Jeff, had brought him a

533
00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:13,000
Speaker 1: drum set and sorry Jeff, but but he couldn't play it.

534
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:19,440
Speaker 1: And um, and I just I wanted to try playing

535
00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:22,399
Speaker 1: his drums. And it took me ages to get him

536
00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 1: to allow me to sit down behind the kid. And

537
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:31,279
Speaker 1: I I had that sort of independent suspension thing that

538
00:36:31,320 --> 00:36:34,880
Speaker 1: you need to play drums, you know. And I could

539
00:36:34,960 --> 00:36:37,880
Speaker 1: sort of do the simple and do this now and

540
00:36:38,160 --> 00:36:41,160
Speaker 1: the base drum and the high heart and hit things

541
00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:48,000
Speaker 1: and reasonable ways. And that was incredible. It's something clicked

542
00:36:48,040 --> 00:36:50,799
Speaker 1: and said, Wow, you didn't have to pose dancing and

543
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:52,680
Speaker 1: trying to play a guitar at the front of the band.

544
00:36:52,719 --> 00:36:57,080
Speaker 1: You can sit back and be the engine room. And

545
00:36:57,080 --> 00:36:59,600
Speaker 1: and then I remembered something that happened when I was

546
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:04,480
Speaker 1: a child, probably about nine or ten years old. We

547
00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 1: used to have music lessons at school, and a music

548
00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:11,960
Speaker 1: lesson consisted of a teacher coming in and putting a

549
00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:15,720
Speaker 1: record on a record deck and asking you to listen

550
00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:18,719
Speaker 1: to it, and they disappear for half an hour and

551
00:37:18,760 --> 00:37:20,680
Speaker 1: you should come back and you'd have to talk about

552
00:37:20,719 --> 00:37:23,160
Speaker 1: it and so whether you thought it was only good

553
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:25,680
Speaker 1: or not. And there were you know, a little oper

554
00:37:25,719 --> 00:37:28,640
Speaker 1: writers in classical music, and you know, to a kid

555
00:37:28,600 --> 00:37:32,080
Speaker 1: who's nine, in turns a bit boring. But one day

556
00:37:32,719 --> 00:37:37,560
Speaker 1: she put on an Elvis track and I started hammering

557
00:37:37,600 --> 00:37:41,040
Speaker 1: away on the school desk. And I have no idea why,

558
00:37:41,160 --> 00:37:43,239
Speaker 1: and I have no idea where the hell that came from.

559
00:37:43,280 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 1: But I was banging the school. That's like I would

560
00:37:45,600 --> 00:37:48,880
Speaker 1: have drunk it. And I was thrown out the class

561
00:37:49,840 --> 00:37:53,040
Speaker 1: and made to stand in the corridor for about half

562
00:37:53,080 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 1: an hour. It was a punishment for the thing that

563
00:37:55,800 --> 00:38:01,720
Speaker 1: i'd eventually did through me um. But I love playing

564
00:38:01,719 --> 00:38:06,840
Speaker 1: the drums. That's how it began. Now you're in a

565
00:38:06,920 --> 00:38:09,760
Speaker 1: band in art school, how do you end up becoming

566
00:38:09,840 --> 00:38:14,080
Speaker 1: professional and starting to make records? Well that the band

567
00:38:14,120 --> 00:38:16,520
Speaker 1: I was in our college was called the mocking Birds,

568
00:38:16,560 --> 00:38:21,280
Speaker 1: and the mocking Birds had Graham Goldman as their leader.

569
00:38:21,640 --> 00:38:25,759
Speaker 1: Graham was already rosively successful as a songwriter about that,

570
00:38:25,920 --> 00:38:27,719
Speaker 1: and I was the drawer of the mocking Birds, and

571
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:32,200
Speaker 1: we actually recorded some of the tracks that went on

572
00:38:32,320 --> 00:38:35,279
Speaker 1: to be big hits with other bands. We never had

573
00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:39,000
Speaker 1: a hit. It was. It was really very, very strange.

574
00:38:39,160 --> 00:38:44,840
Speaker 1: But it wasn't like I'd set out to be a

575
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:49,880
Speaker 1: professional musician. It was always something that was traveling parallel

576
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:54,280
Speaker 1: through what I was doing in order to become something professionally,

577
00:38:54,280 --> 00:38:57,440
Speaker 1: and that at the time was being a graphic designer

578
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:01,080
Speaker 1: at our college. I was studying to be a professional

579
00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:03,960
Speaker 1: graphic designer, but it was not in any way, shape

580
00:39:04,040 --> 00:39:06,279
Speaker 1: or form as much upon as traveling around in the

581
00:39:06,320 --> 00:39:10,759
Speaker 1: vam playing drums and bat and we'd spend when I

582
00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:13,440
Speaker 1: say we asked myself in long Cream, we'd spend our

583
00:39:13,480 --> 00:39:17,640
Speaker 1: weekends writing songs, recording them on to track tape recorder

584
00:39:19,080 --> 00:39:24,239
Speaker 1: and dreaming about becoming a band. And I guess it

585
00:39:24,400 --> 00:39:30,640
Speaker 1: kind of matured when Eric Stewart, who had now become

586
00:39:30,680 --> 00:39:35,200
Speaker 1: the leader of a band called the mind Lenders, decided

587
00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:39,920
Speaker 1: he wanted to set up a professional recording studio in Manchester,

588
00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:42,880
Speaker 1: which at the time and looking back, was a ludicrous

589
00:39:42,920 --> 00:39:46,480
Speaker 1: idea because the center of the recording industry in the

590
00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:49,880
Speaker 1: UK is in London, but he wanted to do this

591
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:54,359
Speaker 1: in Manchester. He raises the money, found the building and

592
00:39:54,520 --> 00:39:59,279
Speaker 1: they built a recording studio, small place, but with a

593
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:03,200
Speaker 1: good room, good control room. And because we moved into

594
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:07,000
Speaker 1: similar circles, we were asked to be myself in law.

595
00:40:07,080 --> 00:40:08,919
Speaker 1: We were asked to be the two guys who came

596
00:40:08,960 --> 00:40:14,240
Speaker 1: in that would allow him to test the equipment. And

597
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:16,839
Speaker 1: you know, I would sit there and hammer and wait

598
00:40:16,840 --> 00:40:20,960
Speaker 1: at the drums. They multitracked the drums and I was

599
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:23,440
Speaker 1: sort of sit opposite me on the floor strumming away

600
00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:29,120
Speaker 1: on something. And before we knew it, you know, during

601
00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:35,480
Speaker 1: this testing period we've recorded something that sounded quite interesting.

602
00:40:36,600 --> 00:40:39,040
Speaker 1: It turned out to be this thing called neanderthal Man

603
00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:44,040
Speaker 1: um that we had to record again because once we've

604
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:47,600
Speaker 1: gone home during one of the test dates, someone white

605
00:40:47,680 --> 00:40:50,920
Speaker 1: the date that we've been recording up and we had

606
00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:56,839
Speaker 1: to start from scratch. But we learned something and we

607
00:40:56,920 --> 00:40:59,520
Speaker 1: recorded this thing called Neanderthal Man that was a number

608
00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:03,480
Speaker 1: two hit record in the UK. And it was like,

609
00:41:03,560 --> 00:41:07,000
Speaker 1: you know, it just came out of just doing it

610
00:41:07,040 --> 00:41:11,560
Speaker 1: as opposed to planning to do it, and usually that's

611
00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:15,560
Speaker 1: the best way. And so how did it ultimately become tense?

612
00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:19,440
Speaker 1: To you see, Hot Lights didn't last very long. We

613
00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:24,359
Speaker 1: made an album, We did it all, but we made

614
00:41:24,360 --> 00:41:29,640
Speaker 1: the fatal arab of not understanding how the business works.

615
00:41:30,040 --> 00:41:32,960
Speaker 1: Nean litle Man was a very strange piece of music,

616
00:41:33,560 --> 00:41:35,960
Speaker 1: if it even qualifies for being a piece of music.

617
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:40,400
Speaker 1: But the album, and it's interesting this because the album

618
00:41:40,480 --> 00:41:42,279
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, we're going to make an album, and

619
00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:44,760
Speaker 1: this is going to be real music. But of course,

620
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:50,120
Speaker 1: if if you're young and you're starting and you're making music,

621
00:41:50,239 --> 00:41:54,080
Speaker 1: it's it's almost inevitable that you're going to be trying

622
00:41:54,160 --> 00:41:58,600
Speaker 1: to sound like the people that you admire. And we

623
00:41:58,640 --> 00:42:03,480
Speaker 1: would be subconsciously or consciously to a degree, trying to

624
00:42:03,600 --> 00:42:07,800
Speaker 1: sound like the Beatles, or the Beach Boys, or Simon

625
00:42:07,800 --> 00:42:12,840
Speaker 1: and Garfuncle, all the people that we admired. And it

626
00:42:12,960 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 1: had nothing whatsoever to do with neanderthal Man. And so

627
00:42:16,320 --> 00:42:21,239
Speaker 1: the album, although it was quite interesting, failed miserably. So

628
00:42:22,640 --> 00:42:28,360
Speaker 1: we stopped and essentially Graham joined us at that point,

629
00:42:29,800 --> 00:42:35,000
Speaker 1: as I recall, and we became producers and we became

630
00:42:35,600 --> 00:42:39,960
Speaker 1: the house band at Strawberry Studios. We kind of forgot

631
00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:44,120
Speaker 1: about being a group and we became the people who

632
00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:49,680
Speaker 1: produced other people um and played as a band for

633
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:52,120
Speaker 1: other people. And we did that for a few years,

634
00:42:52,160 --> 00:42:55,839
Speaker 1: doing a lot of interesting and mad stuff, anything from

635
00:42:55,960 --> 00:43:03,600
Speaker 1: football clubs too football teams to ventraliquus and and god

636
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:05,960
Speaker 1: knows what. I think the best thing we did was

637
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:09,920
Speaker 1: an album by a strange couple called Rama Sys that

638
00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:13,680
Speaker 1: was called Space Hymns. It's it's a cult album, and

639
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:17,799
Speaker 1: that taught taught us the hell of a lot. And

640
00:43:17,840 --> 00:43:21,640
Speaker 1: then we did we produced and became the house bound

641
00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:26,319
Speaker 1: for two albums by Neil Sadaka that were recorded at

642
00:43:26,360 --> 00:43:31,320
Speaker 1: Strawberry Studios. And it was joined those sessions that Neil

643
00:43:31,360 --> 00:43:33,319
Speaker 1: said to us, you know, you guys are great. You

644
00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:38,759
Speaker 1: should form a group. We've been, you know, we've been

645
00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:41,160
Speaker 1: sort of lost in production runser so long that the

646
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:46,799
Speaker 1: idea had not appealed, and suddenly it became obvious that

647
00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:50,799
Speaker 1: perhaps we should, and so we did. And so then

648
00:43:50,840 --> 00:43:53,040
Speaker 1: how did you record the songs on the first album?

649
00:43:53,040 --> 00:43:55,600
Speaker 1: And where those the only songs who record a hundred

650
00:43:55,600 --> 00:43:57,719
Speaker 1: and end up with those? No, we never worked like

651
00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:01,000
Speaker 1: that at all. We worked. I don't know. I think

652
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:03,000
Speaker 1: a lot of bands at the time worked in a

653
00:44:03,120 --> 00:44:07,200
Speaker 1: very sort of practical way, but a very linear way.

654
00:44:07,239 --> 00:44:10,880
Speaker 1: They would they'd write a bunch of songs, and they

655
00:44:10,920 --> 00:44:13,560
Speaker 1: would lay the backing tracks down for all the songs,

656
00:44:14,200 --> 00:44:16,640
Speaker 1: and then they would do the vocals for all the songs,

657
00:44:17,040 --> 00:44:19,600
Speaker 1: and then they would do the overdubs for all the songs,

658
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:21,719
Speaker 1: and then they would start playing with it, mixing it

659
00:44:21,840 --> 00:44:24,960
Speaker 1: the song and so forth. We didn't work like that.

660
00:44:25,080 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 1: We we we started a song and we would finish it,

661
00:44:30,920 --> 00:44:33,720
Speaker 1: and during the making of the track recording, we would

662
00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:38,160
Speaker 1: make decisions about how the finished thing should sound, and

663
00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:40,719
Speaker 1: we would finish that track, and then we would move

664
00:44:40,760 --> 00:44:43,680
Speaker 1: on to the next track and again take it from

665
00:44:43,800 --> 00:44:46,680
Speaker 1: A to Z and the next one from A to Z.

666
00:44:47,760 --> 00:44:50,920
Speaker 1: I don't think many people weren't like that back in

667
00:44:50,960 --> 00:44:55,960
Speaker 1: those days. But the first tense C album was done

668
00:44:56,040 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 1: very very quickly. We had a couple of hits I

669
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:04,840
Speaker 1: think at that point at least one Donna, and we

670
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:07,720
Speaker 1: were being pressured to come up with something relatively quickly,

671
00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:12,960
Speaker 1: and we had I think we had about three weeks

672
00:45:14,120 --> 00:45:20,279
Speaker 1: to record, to write and record everything, so we just

673
00:45:20,360 --> 00:45:22,640
Speaker 1: went in the studio and just did it without a

674
00:45:22,719 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 1: great deal of planning and without a great deal of thought,

675
00:45:25,840 --> 00:45:29,840
Speaker 1: and thank goodness, we did it that way because everything

676
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:34,239
Speaker 1: was Everything was done instinctively, intuitively. There was no none

677
00:45:34,280 --> 00:45:37,360
Speaker 1: of this, well, we want this to sound like the Beatles,

678
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:40,319
Speaker 1: we want this to sound like this. We just did it.

679
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:43,279
Speaker 1: We wrote it, we recorded it. We didn't even think

680
00:45:43,320 --> 00:45:47,040
Speaker 1: about it. And what occurred during the making of that

681
00:45:47,200 --> 00:45:52,360
Speaker 1: album was a sudden realization that we don't sound like

682
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:56,640
Speaker 1: anybody else. We did have an individuality and an approach

683
00:45:57,400 --> 00:45:59,839
Speaker 1: that didn't seem to be like anybody else at all,

684
00:46:00,640 --> 00:46:05,279
Speaker 1: and that was because we were free enough to to

685
00:46:05,400 --> 00:46:09,719
Speaker 1: do the whole goal, through the whole process, without referencing anybody.

686
00:46:10,120 --> 00:46:13,439
Speaker 1: Do you remember what songs were cut first for that album? Well,

687
00:46:13,480 --> 00:46:14,759
Speaker 1: I think the one that was a hit. I don't

688
00:46:14,760 --> 00:46:17,080
Speaker 1: know if it was out yet. It was probably Rubber Bullets,

689
00:46:17,800 --> 00:46:28,720
Speaker 1: which was quite an uptem person Okay, So rubber Bullets,

690
00:46:29,160 --> 00:46:32,480
Speaker 1: you know, sounded almost like a Parity Beach Boys song.

691
00:46:32,600 --> 00:46:34,680
Speaker 1: How did you guys come up with that sound in

692
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:36,960
Speaker 1: that song? Well, it's a lot of strange things going

693
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:38,840
Speaker 1: on in there. I mean that there's a lot of

694
00:46:38,960 --> 00:46:44,680
Speaker 1: guitar work is is recorded with the tape being played

695
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:49,280
Speaker 1: the half speed, so it finishes up being double speed,

696
00:46:50,560 --> 00:46:52,840
Speaker 1: and lots of things like that. You know, it's crazy,

697
00:46:52,960 --> 00:46:58,840
Speaker 1: did it's insane, And so at that particular time, we

698
00:46:58,840 --> 00:47:02,560
Speaker 1: we we had nothing to lose, We'd had a hit,

699
00:47:02,600 --> 00:47:04,279
Speaker 1: We had nothing to do is we didn't know that

700
00:47:04,280 --> 00:47:07,760
Speaker 1: that was going to be another record, another track, another single,

701
00:47:08,760 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 1: So we were just trying stuff that sounded interesting because

702
00:47:14,239 --> 00:47:16,839
Speaker 1: we could. If you remember, we're not down south in

703
00:47:16,880 --> 00:47:19,920
Speaker 1: the middle of London where the label can pop by

704
00:47:19,480 --> 00:47:23,440
Speaker 1: in ten minutes and check everything is sort of going smoothly.

705
00:47:24,280 --> 00:47:26,960
Speaker 1: We were up north, you know, a couple of hundred

706
00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:29,400
Speaker 1: miles away, so no one was going to drop into check.

707
00:47:29,800 --> 00:47:32,799
Speaker 1: So we were pretty much our own man. So we

708
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 1: were experimenting to which agree with everything, and the stuff

709
00:47:35,719 --> 00:47:41,120
Speaker 1: we were writing was kind of bizarre. But the way

710
00:47:41,239 --> 00:47:45,759
Speaker 1: each of us worked, our taste buds seemed to balance

711
00:47:46,040 --> 00:47:51,120
Speaker 1: each other extremely well. Long and I were the art experimenters,

712
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:56,560
Speaker 1: and Graham and Eric with the classic songwriters for one

713
00:47:56,560 --> 00:47:59,640
Speaker 1: of a better description of the two teams, and the

714
00:47:59,680 --> 00:48:03,279
Speaker 1: two balanced extremely well. And that's I don't know, that

715
00:48:03,360 --> 00:48:05,440
Speaker 1: was the sound that was the approach that we had

716
00:48:05,440 --> 00:48:08,240
Speaker 1: a we had a great time doing. It was very horrid,

717
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:12,480
Speaker 1: but the album was really interesting. The album is great,

718
00:48:12,520 --> 00:48:15,959
Speaker 1: but it has a very distinct sense of humor. Where

719
00:48:15,960 --> 00:48:17,600
Speaker 1: do you think that came from. You think that came

720
00:48:17,640 --> 00:48:21,560
Speaker 1: from everybody being Jewish or you know, and having that irreverence. Well,

721
00:48:21,600 --> 00:48:25,120
Speaker 1: we weren't Jewish. We were Jewish, you know, we were

722
00:48:25,239 --> 00:48:29,080
Speaker 1: kind of okay, like everybody from our generator jewish raised

723
00:48:29,120 --> 00:48:31,560
Speaker 1: that way. As far as a little guy in the sky,

724
00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:35,400
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Well, we were, I mean three of

725
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:39,040
Speaker 1: us were. Um, I think it was because it was

726
00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:42,480
Speaker 1: just naturally who we were, and we kind of we

727
00:48:42,480 --> 00:48:47,480
Speaker 1: weren't really we didn't buy into that thing where you know,

728
00:48:47,520 --> 00:48:50,279
Speaker 1: you can't have humor recourse. That's just not cool man.

729
00:48:51,360 --> 00:48:54,400
Speaker 1: You know, we kind of didn't buy into that. But

730
00:48:54,520 --> 00:48:57,040
Speaker 1: we were more it was more than humor. It was satire.

731
00:48:57,160 --> 00:48:58,960
Speaker 1: I think to a degree we were We were more

732
00:48:59,000 --> 00:49:04,880
Speaker 1: like journalists some satirists. So we were straightforward songwriters. I

733
00:49:04,920 --> 00:49:07,880
Speaker 1: think everything that we wrote that had an element of

734
00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:10,759
Speaker 1: humor about it was kind of poking fun at something

735
00:49:10,800 --> 00:49:15,759
Speaker 1: that was going on at the time. I think, Um, now,

736
00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:18,040
Speaker 1: we didn't we weren't embarrassed about it at all. And

737
00:49:18,120 --> 00:49:21,120
Speaker 1: how did you decide who's saying which song? We didn't

738
00:49:21,239 --> 00:49:26,799
Speaker 1: we we we had a bizarre audition system. Once the

739
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:31,080
Speaker 1: backing track had been recorded, each one of us were

740
00:49:31,160 --> 00:49:33,640
Speaker 1: going through the live room, stand in front of the

741
00:49:33,719 --> 00:49:38,440
Speaker 1: mic an attempt to sing the song, and the others

742
00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:43,120
Speaker 1: would hold up score cards, you know, and if you

743
00:49:43,200 --> 00:49:45,160
Speaker 1: did it well, you could carry on, and if you

744
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:47,960
Speaker 1: failed miserably, they'd hold up a sign that said next,

745
00:49:48,800 --> 00:49:50,919
Speaker 1: and then you'd come and the next guy, we're going,

746
00:49:50,960 --> 00:49:53,279
Speaker 1: Graham would try it and if he was good, you know,

747
00:49:53,360 --> 00:49:55,239
Speaker 1: he got a few minutes to try it. If he wasn't,

748
00:49:55,480 --> 00:49:58,239
Speaker 1: next and so on and so forth. And it was

749
00:49:58,320 --> 00:50:01,799
Speaker 1: very democratic. Really meant that the person who sang the

750
00:50:01,840 --> 00:50:05,600
Speaker 1: song was the person who could sing the song the best. Okay.

751
00:50:05,600 --> 00:50:07,760
Speaker 1: But even so, if you go back to that first album,

752
00:50:07,880 --> 00:50:10,920
Speaker 1: you know it starts with a fan fear and it

753
00:50:11,040 --> 00:50:14,320
Speaker 1: has ell this type stuff and do up type stuff.

754
00:50:14,600 --> 00:50:17,560
Speaker 1: I mean, it was really wild retro with a wink.

755
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:22,120
Speaker 1: And was that very conscious? I guess it must have been,

756
00:50:22,160 --> 00:50:23,959
Speaker 1: because you know, if your form us into a track

757
00:50:24,040 --> 00:50:26,560
Speaker 1: and you know what you're doing, if you're embarrassed by

758
00:50:26,680 --> 00:50:32,000
Speaker 1: you start again. So I think, you know, like any

759
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:35,600
Speaker 1: any situation like that, you each member of the band

760
00:50:35,680 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 1: is trying to impress all the other members of the band,

761
00:50:38,400 --> 00:50:41,840
Speaker 1: and we're all trying to have a good time making

762
00:50:41,880 --> 00:50:45,879
Speaker 1: this stuff, and we were trying to get an album done,

763
00:50:45,960 --> 00:50:51,920
Speaker 1: so anything that we came up with we committed to tape. Luckily,

764
00:50:52,120 --> 00:50:54,319
Speaker 1: most of the stuff that we committed to tape turned

765
00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:57,520
Speaker 1: out quite well. We never did that thing where we'd

766
00:50:57,520 --> 00:51:00,680
Speaker 1: write a hundred songs and record fifty arms and then

767
00:51:00,760 --> 00:51:05,200
Speaker 1: choose the best twelve. We just wrote until we felt

768
00:51:05,239 --> 00:51:07,680
Speaker 1: we had something interesting and recorded it. So there wasn't

769
00:51:07,680 --> 00:51:10,960
Speaker 1: any There was never any fat. It was all. It

770
00:51:11,080 --> 00:51:14,279
Speaker 1: was all slim down and it was all sinews, and

771
00:51:14,320 --> 00:51:16,160
Speaker 1: it was all the stuff that we ended up with

772
00:51:16,200 --> 00:51:19,000
Speaker 1: on the finished albums. And what was your role in

773
00:51:19,040 --> 00:51:23,360
Speaker 1: the songwriting? I was a songwriter. I didn't I didn't

774
00:51:23,360 --> 00:51:25,360
Speaker 1: have a role, even though I don't play an instrument.

775
00:51:26,640 --> 00:51:29,520
Speaker 1: You know that the traditional way of writing in those

776
00:51:29,600 --> 00:51:33,440
Speaker 1: days is you sit with somebody. In my case, mostly

777
00:51:33,520 --> 00:51:37,719
Speaker 1: long he would be playing the guitar or a keyboard

778
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:42,000
Speaker 1: and we'd play and I'd sing, and at some point

779
00:51:43,160 --> 00:51:46,880
Speaker 1: something would happen, a certain phrase would match with a

780
00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:52,480
Speaker 1: certain set of chords that that felt like something, and

781
00:51:52,520 --> 00:51:54,920
Speaker 1: then you would take that a bit further, and you

782
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:56,960
Speaker 1: play around, and then you go now, and then you

783
00:51:57,000 --> 00:52:00,279
Speaker 1: start again. You did you kind of developed develop an

784
00:51:59,800 --> 00:52:05,919
Speaker 1: instinct as to what what serves the song best. There's

785
00:52:05,920 --> 00:52:09,319
Speaker 1: the point in any song if it's good, and you're

786
00:52:09,320 --> 00:52:13,400
Speaker 1: always looking for the key. The key could be anything.

787
00:52:13,480 --> 00:52:16,880
Speaker 1: It could be a hook, it could be a phrase,

788
00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:19,799
Speaker 1: it could be the way a certain melody fits with

789
00:52:19,840 --> 00:52:23,239
Speaker 1: a cord. It could even be a pause. But it

790
00:52:23,800 --> 00:52:27,120
Speaker 1: tells you something about where that song has to go.

791
00:52:27,239 --> 00:52:29,640
Speaker 1: And we're always looking for that. I think every songwriter

792
00:52:29,840 --> 00:52:33,560
Speaker 1: is always looking for that. And it just you know,

793
00:52:33,680 --> 00:52:36,279
Speaker 1: it was none of it felt precious to us. There

794
00:52:36,320 --> 00:52:40,080
Speaker 1: was no sense of, oh, we better get this right.

795
00:52:41,080 --> 00:52:44,640
Speaker 1: There was none of that because it was all such such,

796
00:52:44,920 --> 00:52:48,880
Speaker 1: such a great time and such. We could have been Postman,

797
00:52:49,800 --> 00:52:51,560
Speaker 1: but we weren't. We were lucky enough to be in

798
00:52:51,560 --> 00:52:55,759
Speaker 1: a band. Okay, so you work with law on videos,

799
00:52:55,880 --> 00:52:58,640
Speaker 1: you work with the three others intense se C and

800
00:52:58,760 --> 00:53:01,319
Speaker 1: now you're working along own. What is the difference between

801
00:53:01,480 --> 00:53:06,720
Speaker 1: working in collaboration and working alone? Um, well, there's nobody

802
00:53:06,719 --> 00:53:11,839
Speaker 1: else there to start with. Obviously you or should I say,

803
00:53:11,920 --> 00:53:19,120
Speaker 1: I have found it. Well, probably the best example of

804
00:53:19,160 --> 00:53:25,520
Speaker 1: working alone for me, and probably the most fundamentally satisfying

805
00:53:26,239 --> 00:53:29,719
Speaker 1: saying I've done on my own was the project that

806
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:35,080
Speaker 1: I did for the BBC um and this was in gosh,

807
00:53:35,160 --> 00:53:40,040
Speaker 1: this sign this, this was rather about that, or maybe

808
00:53:40,040 --> 00:53:43,680
Speaker 1: a little bit later maybe I was asked by the

809
00:53:43,719 --> 00:53:50,920
Speaker 1: BBC to come up with an idea four to celebrate

810
00:53:50,960 --> 00:53:56,880
Speaker 1: two weeks of environmental concerned broadcasting on BBC two, and

811
00:53:57,360 --> 00:53:59,160
Speaker 1: I have no idea where they came to me, but

812
00:53:59,160 --> 00:54:05,080
Speaker 1: but but um. They originally wanted to put on a

813
00:54:05,200 --> 00:54:11,400
Speaker 1: kind of live aid concert, and I I thought that

814
00:54:11,440 --> 00:54:14,040
Speaker 1: was a terrible idea because live aide was such a

815
00:54:14,160 --> 00:54:19,399
Speaker 1: huge phenomenon and so hugely successful. There was no way

816
00:54:19,400 --> 00:54:21,440
Speaker 1: you could better that. There was no way you could

817
00:54:21,520 --> 00:54:26,279
Speaker 1: duplicate that. So I had an alternative idea which I

818
00:54:26,360 --> 00:54:29,920
Speaker 1: presented to them, which was which was called One World,

819
00:54:29,960 --> 00:54:34,480
Speaker 1: One Voice. And the idea was, instead of having all

820
00:54:34,560 --> 00:54:38,280
Speaker 1: these musicians in one place and filming them, we would

821
00:54:38,320 --> 00:54:41,959
Speaker 1: start to assemble a piece of music in a part

822
00:54:42,000 --> 00:54:46,000
Speaker 1: of the world, film it being made and take an

823
00:54:46,040 --> 00:54:49,520
Speaker 1: audio and sound crew around the world to different cities,

824
00:54:50,560 --> 00:54:55,320
Speaker 1: adding different musicians in those cities to this piece of music,

825
00:54:55,440 --> 00:54:58,960
Speaker 1: so that piece of music would grow in scale and

826
00:54:59,040 --> 00:55:04,759
Speaker 1: in length as we traveled. And I presented this to

827
00:55:05,000 --> 00:55:10,600
Speaker 1: a group of broadcasters in Europe and they thought it

828
00:55:10,680 --> 00:55:15,200
Speaker 1: was great. So we then had to make it happen.

829
00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:21,040
Speaker 1: And if you consider the things that could possibly go

830
00:55:21,120 --> 00:55:23,880
Speaker 1: around and the lack of technology that would allow us

831
00:55:23,920 --> 00:55:26,360
Speaker 1: to do that the way we would do it today

832
00:55:26,600 --> 00:55:31,120
Speaker 1: in the late nineties eighties, it's astonishing that we actually

833
00:55:31,120 --> 00:55:34,879
Speaker 1: got it done. But we did. The music producer who

834
00:55:34,960 --> 00:55:41,240
Speaker 1: was who was key to this working at all, um

835
00:55:41,320 --> 00:55:47,440
Speaker 1: Oh rupert Heim, who I'm sad to say past a

836
00:55:47,480 --> 00:55:52,600
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. Um, but but what amne? What

837
00:55:52,440 --> 00:55:58,840
Speaker 1: a what a great sense of enabling all these musicians

838
00:55:58,880 --> 00:56:04,120
Speaker 1: to colless, to coalescing to one incredible piece of music. Um.

839
00:56:04,120 --> 00:56:06,160
Speaker 1: And it was my job to filming taking place and

840
00:56:06,239 --> 00:56:09,400
Speaker 1: my job to edit it. And that you know, I

841
00:56:09,440 --> 00:56:12,120
Speaker 1: look back on a lot of the stuff I've done,

842
00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:17,000
Speaker 1: and so much of it as used effects and techniques

843
00:56:17,160 --> 00:56:19,719
Speaker 1: and this that mean that was pure, That was us

844
00:56:19,760 --> 00:56:24,440
Speaker 1: filming stuff and using our imaginations with very little equipment.

845
00:56:25,680 --> 00:56:30,040
Speaker 1: You know, minimal stuff, traveling, grabbing stuff while it was happening,

846
00:56:30,040 --> 00:56:34,239
Speaker 1: and I look back as that being one of the

847
00:56:34,320 --> 00:56:37,719
Speaker 1: things I'm most proud of. Another thing that I did

848
00:56:37,920 --> 00:56:43,200
Speaker 1: was I was involved in UM the formation of an

849
00:56:43,320 --> 00:56:48,640
Speaker 1: environmental pressure group called ARC, and I was involved, Chrissy

850
00:56:48,719 --> 00:56:52,360
Speaker 1: High and Matthew Freud McCartney's were involved to a degree.

851
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:56,319
Speaker 1: A lot of interesting people were involved. And I made

852
00:56:56,320 --> 00:57:00,919
Speaker 1: a film of a wonderful lady called French the UK

853
00:57:01,040 --> 00:57:05,200
Speaker 1: Communion playing the part of Mother Earth. And again that

854
00:57:05,320 --> 00:57:07,800
Speaker 1: was something that was done for love, it wasn't done

855
00:57:07,880 --> 00:57:11,800
Speaker 1: for money. UM. So there's a lot of stuff that

856
00:57:12,200 --> 00:57:15,640
Speaker 1: I was kind of doing around about this period that

857
00:57:17,040 --> 00:57:20,000
Speaker 1: brought things out of me that I didn't know that

858
00:57:20,080 --> 00:57:24,560
Speaker 1: I could do, and began to form my own set

859
00:57:24,600 --> 00:57:28,480
Speaker 1: of taste pots and musically, I guess that really started

860
00:57:28,520 --> 00:57:33,600
Speaker 1: to come out when I recorded my solo album Muscle Memory. Uh.

861
00:57:33,640 --> 00:57:39,480
Speaker 1: The interesting thing being about that album in terms of collaboration, UM,

862
00:57:39,640 --> 00:57:45,240
Speaker 1: I put an as scout Um on a channel called

863
00:57:47,320 --> 00:57:53,000
Speaker 1: Pledge Music, asking people to send me pieces of music

864
00:57:53,840 --> 00:57:57,960
Speaker 1: that they thought that I could turn into songs. Okay,

865
00:57:58,800 --> 00:58:01,120
Speaker 1: and I thought maybe I get a out twenty fifty

866
00:58:01,320 --> 00:58:03,880
Speaker 1: or something. I got two d and eighty six pieces

867
00:58:03,880 --> 00:58:10,360
Speaker 1: of music to choose from, which staggered me and it

868
00:58:10,440 --> 00:58:12,760
Speaker 1: took a long time to go through them. But I

869
00:58:12,840 --> 00:58:15,760
Speaker 1: ended up choosing twelve of these pieces of music and

870
00:58:15,800 --> 00:58:20,560
Speaker 1: then writing melodies and lyrics for and once again that

871
00:58:20,680 --> 00:58:25,000
Speaker 1: was that was a huge change for me. Again, it

872
00:58:25,160 --> 00:58:27,680
Speaker 1: told me that I could do something that up to

873
00:58:27,720 --> 00:58:32,680
Speaker 1: that point I never knew that I could because I

874
00:58:32,720 --> 00:58:35,320
Speaker 1: was collaborating with people. It's just that they weren't there

875
00:58:35,360 --> 00:58:38,600
Speaker 1: in the room and asking me to make them coffee. Right,

876
00:58:38,680 --> 00:58:41,360
Speaker 1: So you work with Jonathan King. What's your experience with

877
00:58:41,440 --> 00:58:44,360
Speaker 1: Jonathan King. Jonathan King was amazing. He was that. He

878
00:58:44,480 --> 00:58:48,800
Speaker 1: was the guy that signed Fancy six. He was great.

879
00:58:48,840 --> 00:58:51,920
Speaker 1: I mean he put our first two albums and allowed

880
00:58:52,000 --> 00:58:53,959
Speaker 1: us to do what the hell we like pretty much.

881
00:58:54,280 --> 00:58:59,640
Speaker 1: He had a very very very very succinct and commercial brain.

882
00:58:59,720 --> 00:59:02,280
Speaker 1: He knew wish with the singles and he was great.

883
00:59:02,360 --> 00:59:06,040
Speaker 1: He came up with the name of the band Um.

884
00:59:06,240 --> 00:59:11,080
Speaker 1: He came down to hear I think must have been Donna,

885
00:59:11,640 --> 00:59:17,480
Speaker 1: the first recording UM from London, and he told us

886
00:59:17,560 --> 00:59:20,080
Speaker 1: that he had a dream the night before where he

887
00:59:20,160 --> 00:59:25,880
Speaker 1: was standing outside the Hammersmith Audion and up in lights

888
00:59:25,920 --> 00:59:29,200
Speaker 1: above the venue, it's appearing tonight for one night only,

889
00:59:29,320 --> 00:59:36,840
Speaker 1: tensee C. And he said, that's that's who you guys are.

890
00:59:36,880 --> 00:59:38,760
Speaker 1: We didn't have a name, you know, we were just

891
00:59:39,200 --> 00:59:44,200
Speaker 1: still these production guys, and that's where that's where the

892
00:59:44,280 --> 00:59:47,840
Speaker 1: name came from. Not that other story, which you probably know.

893
00:59:48,240 --> 00:59:50,680
Speaker 1: So that other story has no truth to it whatsoever,

894
00:59:50,880 --> 00:59:56,280
Speaker 1: none whatsoever. It's probably better after dinner conversation. I'm supposed

895
00:59:56,320 --> 00:59:59,880
Speaker 1: to before dinner conversation. But but it's simply not true.

896
01:00:00,440 --> 01:00:02,520
Speaker 1: And even if it was, it's pretty bad show for

897
01:00:02,600 --> 01:00:06,800
Speaker 1: four guys. So literally, the dream just said tense C. Yeah,

898
01:00:07,080 --> 01:00:11,160
Speaker 1: appearing for one night only tonight, Tennessee C. It's interesting

899
01:00:11,240 --> 01:00:13,880
Speaker 1: that when we started to talk tour, when we started

900
01:00:13,920 --> 01:00:18,600
Speaker 1: to tour America, we taured in the South and nobody

901
01:00:18,680 --> 01:00:21,800
Speaker 1: understood what it meant, and we ended up in some

902
01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:27,280
Speaker 1: venues being billed as the Tennessee Boys. Okay, I'm the

903
01:00:27,400 --> 01:00:31,320
Speaker 1: second album. My favorite song is one that you're heavily

904
01:00:31,400 --> 01:00:35,080
Speaker 1: involved with somewhere in Hollywood. Can you tell me about

905
01:00:35,120 --> 01:00:37,880
Speaker 1: the com position and recording of that track. We were

906
01:00:37,880 --> 01:00:41,080
Speaker 1: getting a bit more ambitious than the kind of songs

907
01:00:41,120 --> 01:00:45,120
Speaker 1: that we like to write, and we wanted to write

908
01:00:45,200 --> 01:00:48,000
Speaker 1: something that was longer, and we wanted to write something

909
01:00:48,080 --> 01:00:52,640
Speaker 1: that didn't stick to the verse chorus, first chorus, middle

910
01:00:52,680 --> 01:01:00,680
Speaker 1: eight fade um format, and we loll had the piano

911
01:01:00,800 --> 01:01:03,000
Speaker 1: part and I started singing, and it took a while

912
01:01:03,040 --> 01:01:09,520
Speaker 1: to write um and it felt like we'd moved forward

913
01:01:09,560 --> 01:01:14,560
Speaker 1: to notch with that particular song. I'm I re recorded

914
01:01:14,600 --> 01:01:18,080
Speaker 1: it recently, well, not that recently, probably about five or

915
01:01:18,120 --> 01:01:23,720
Speaker 1: six years ago. I made a film of it for

916
01:01:23,960 --> 01:01:26,760
Speaker 1: Graham Goldman and too, who tours his version of TENSC.

917
01:01:27,400 --> 01:01:29,480
Speaker 1: But it's one of my favorite songs, one of the

918
01:01:29,520 --> 01:01:32,440
Speaker 1: best songs I think we ever wrote for Tennessee C.

919
01:01:33,600 --> 01:01:38,480
Speaker 1: I don't know. It just felt like something a great

920
01:01:38,560 --> 01:01:42,320
Speaker 1: lead forward, if you like, in terms of our songwriting skills. Well,

921
01:01:42,360 --> 01:01:45,120
Speaker 1: it was epic and it had a heaviness, but it

922
01:01:45,200 --> 01:01:48,680
Speaker 1: also had humorous lyrics, like a dog up in Beverly Hills.

923
01:01:49,520 --> 01:01:52,920
Speaker 1: It's crazy, yeah, and there's a sort there is a

924
01:01:52,920 --> 01:01:55,800
Speaker 1: tap dancing section in the middle which is me banging

925
01:01:55,840 --> 01:01:59,160
Speaker 1: shoes on the floor and all sorts of things like that. Yeah,

926
01:01:59,560 --> 01:02:02,160
Speaker 1: Well it was but it was a joy. It was

927
01:02:02,320 --> 01:02:06,840
Speaker 1: a difficult song to sing live, I should say. Now,

928
01:02:06,880 --> 01:02:09,240
Speaker 1: supposedly on the next album you switched to Mercury and

929
01:02:09,240 --> 01:02:13,400
Speaker 1: the original soundtrack I'm Not in Love. Supposedly you we

930
01:02:13,480 --> 01:02:16,360
Speaker 1: had a lot of influence in the sound and the

931
01:02:16,400 --> 01:02:19,720
Speaker 1: recording of that. Can you give me your perspective? Yeah,

932
01:02:19,920 --> 01:02:25,040
Speaker 1: interestingly I'm Not in Love. We'd already recorded that song

933
01:02:26,640 --> 01:02:31,600
Speaker 1: towards the beginning of the whole recording, the whole group

934
01:02:31,640 --> 01:02:36,680
Speaker 1: of recording sessions for the album, and we've recorded it

935
01:02:36,720 --> 01:02:40,360
Speaker 1: as a kind of cheesy Boston over and it just

936
01:02:40,400 --> 01:02:42,760
Speaker 1: didn't work. It was like it was it was crap,

937
01:02:43,240 --> 01:02:45,640
Speaker 1: and we knew it was crap, but we knew that

938
01:02:45,680 --> 01:02:49,520
Speaker 1: the song had something, but we did not know how

939
01:02:49,560 --> 01:02:51,280
Speaker 1: it should be done. So we kind of parked it.

940
01:02:51,360 --> 01:02:53,560
Speaker 1: We put it on a shelf and carried on recording

941
01:02:54,400 --> 01:02:58,320
Speaker 1: the other songs, and eventually we came back to it,

942
01:03:00,040 --> 01:03:03,120
Speaker 1: and you know, we were sat around discussing how we

943
01:03:03,160 --> 01:03:07,880
Speaker 1: should approach it, and I said, excuse me, out of desperation,

944
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:10,760
Speaker 1: probably more than anything else, why don't we do it

945
01:03:10,800 --> 01:03:13,800
Speaker 1: all in voices? The whole thing in voices, like a

946
01:03:13,840 --> 01:03:17,800
Speaker 1: tsunami of voices, A little bit like the sound that

947
01:03:17,960 --> 01:03:22,040
Speaker 1: was in a lot of two thousand and one splace obviously,

948
01:03:22,080 --> 01:03:27,720
Speaker 1: that kind of haunting, haunting vocus you know. Word, is

949
01:03:27,760 --> 01:03:31,840
Speaker 1: that that was your idea? Is that true? Yeah? The

950
01:03:31,880 --> 01:03:36,160
Speaker 1: technique wasn't necessarily my idea, but that the vision for it,

951
01:03:36,920 --> 01:03:40,959
Speaker 1: the audio vision for it, was my idea. We don't

952
01:03:40,960 --> 01:03:44,840
Speaker 1: have to figure out how we would do it, um.

953
01:03:44,880 --> 01:03:48,040
Speaker 1: And what we were after was this sound that you know,

954
01:03:48,360 --> 01:03:50,600
Speaker 1: if you're sing a note, you have to stop and breathe,

955
01:03:51,400 --> 01:03:54,120
Speaker 1: and you don't want to hear that. So Loll came

956
01:03:54,200 --> 01:03:56,040
Speaker 1: up with the idea of doing it as a set

957
01:03:56,160 --> 01:04:00,960
Speaker 1: of complex loops um. And so we start to work

958
01:04:01,040 --> 01:04:03,800
Speaker 1: doing this, and it took quite a while. We had

959
01:04:03,840 --> 01:04:07,600
Speaker 1: to make a loop with all of us singing, multi tracked,

960
01:04:07,720 --> 01:04:10,960
Speaker 1: mix it down, create a loop for every note of

961
01:04:11,000 --> 01:04:15,200
Speaker 1: every recording the song, and then we had to transfer

962
01:04:15,440 --> 01:04:20,080
Speaker 1: this onto the multi track tape record and then we

963
01:04:20,120 --> 01:04:26,280
Speaker 1: would play the loops back using the faders on the

964
01:04:26,320 --> 01:04:29,280
Speaker 1: recording console the way you would use the keys on

965
01:04:29,320 --> 01:04:33,320
Speaker 1: a keyboard. And that was that was the technique. No

966
01:04:33,360 --> 01:04:35,680
Speaker 1: one had done that before, and we'd already recorded a

967
01:04:35,760 --> 01:04:39,400
Speaker 1: backing track for it, so and we never thought we'd

968
01:04:39,480 --> 01:04:41,840
Speaker 1: end up using the backing track, but it all just

969
01:04:42,600 --> 01:04:46,920
Speaker 1: began to fall together the way things do sometimes if

970
01:04:46,920 --> 01:04:50,920
Speaker 1: you're lucky in a series of recording sessions, everything you

971
01:04:51,000 --> 01:04:58,760
Speaker 1: had makes everything better, and this was just that. And again,

972
01:04:59,000 --> 01:05:04,360
Speaker 1: like when we are um Rocket for Herbie Hancock, were

973
01:05:04,400 --> 01:05:07,280
Speaker 1: listened back to what we've done, we thought. We didn't

974
01:05:07,320 --> 01:05:11,480
Speaker 1: think they're going to fucking kill this time. We thought

975
01:05:11,720 --> 01:05:15,040
Speaker 1: this is this is, this is very very good. But

976
01:05:15,200 --> 01:05:18,360
Speaker 1: it's six minutes long. They're never going to play it.

977
01:05:20,400 --> 01:05:24,160
Speaker 1: And so when we presented it to the label Low

978
01:05:24,200 --> 01:05:26,120
Speaker 1: and Behold, they said, yeah, it's fabulous, but we're going

979
01:05:26,160 --> 01:05:30,760
Speaker 1: to release Life as a Ministroli instead. And to this

980
01:05:30,840 --> 01:05:35,120
Speaker 1: day I'm piste off because they released Bohemian Rhapsody. I

981
01:05:35,120 --> 01:05:38,400
Speaker 1: don't think it was the same label, but whoever queen

982
01:05:38,480 --> 01:05:41,640
Speaker 1: were Weirds had the balls to release something as daring

983
01:05:41,720 --> 01:05:45,520
Speaker 1: as Bohemian Rhapsody, which again was the landmark in recording

984
01:05:46,120 --> 01:05:49,560
Speaker 1: and stayed a number one for god knows how many millennia.

985
01:05:51,000 --> 01:05:53,360
Speaker 1: So they should have had the balls to put this

986
01:05:53,440 --> 01:05:57,280
Speaker 1: out first, but they didn't. But nevertheless, one it did

987
01:05:57,320 --> 01:06:01,760
Speaker 1: come out, it was huge. What exactly was the gizmo?

988
01:06:02,120 --> 01:06:09,960
Speaker 1: The gizmo. That's going back in time, um before tense

989
01:06:10,120 --> 01:06:14,040
Speaker 1: Se existed, probably around about Hot Legs Beonderful man time.

990
01:06:14,600 --> 01:06:19,760
Speaker 1: While we were doing the album, we wanted some string

991
01:06:19,840 --> 01:06:22,680
Speaker 1: parts and some more chestral parts on some of the songs.

992
01:06:23,960 --> 01:06:28,080
Speaker 1: And you know, there weren't money string players in Manchester

993
01:06:28,400 --> 01:06:31,440
Speaker 1: at the time. There was the Halle Orchestra, who were

994
01:06:31,520 --> 01:06:34,760
Speaker 1: very grand and very you know, sort of pop songs.

995
01:06:35,320 --> 01:06:38,160
Speaker 1: We don't do that sort of thing, and they were

996
01:06:38,160 --> 01:06:43,840
Speaker 1: expensive and they worked very strange hours. And therefore, and

997
01:06:43,880 --> 01:06:47,440
Speaker 1: we didn't particularly like the sound of the malatrum. We

998
01:06:47,480 --> 01:06:52,800
Speaker 1: wanted proper string sounds. So we thought, okay, a guitar

999
01:06:52,960 --> 01:06:57,440
Speaker 1: is a string instrument. Is there a way of playing

1000
01:06:57,600 --> 01:07:02,040
Speaker 1: strings to get a sustain a bowing sound, to sustain

1001
01:07:02,160 --> 01:07:07,280
Speaker 1: bowing sound from this instrument instead of hiring a bunch

1002
01:07:07,320 --> 01:07:10,160
Speaker 1: of string players in an arranger, And so we messed around.

1003
01:07:10,160 --> 01:07:14,720
Speaker 1: We remember it was Lowe's fendless transit Custer and the

1004
01:07:14,800 --> 01:07:18,920
Speaker 1: first experiment was to to get an electric drill and

1005
01:07:19,040 --> 01:07:21,760
Speaker 1: put a robot eraser on the end of the drill

1006
01:07:22,800 --> 01:07:27,520
Speaker 1: and hold it against the strings. And it made an

1007
01:07:27,560 --> 01:07:33,040
Speaker 1: infernal racket. But for maybe about two seconds it said

1008
01:07:33,080 --> 01:07:36,200
Speaker 1: to us that this this might work. It sort of

1009
01:07:36,280 --> 01:07:40,600
Speaker 1: weren't you know it was going to be and there

1010
01:07:40,680 --> 01:07:43,160
Speaker 1: was something that that that that told us that this

1011
01:07:43,240 --> 01:07:48,000
Speaker 1: would work. We found our way to the engineering department

1012
01:07:48,360 --> 01:07:54,200
Speaker 1: of the College Courage of Science and Technology, I think,

1013
01:07:54,360 --> 01:07:59,160
Speaker 1: and a couple of guys who were prepared to build

1014
01:07:59,320 --> 01:08:06,240
Speaker 1: us a prototype based on this idea that might actually work. UM.

1015
01:08:07,280 --> 01:08:11,240
Speaker 1: Guy's name was John McConnell, lovely guy, and I forget

1016
01:08:11,320 --> 01:08:14,760
Speaker 1: the other guys now, I'm sorry about that. And they did.

1017
01:08:14,920 --> 01:08:19,160
Speaker 1: They built as the prototype that was used on any

1018
01:08:19,240 --> 01:08:24,600
Speaker 1: recordings that the gizmo featured on UM, including all of

1019
01:08:24,680 --> 01:08:31,559
Speaker 1: consequences UM. But at a certain point we were told

1020
01:08:31,600 --> 01:08:33,840
Speaker 1: that or he was. It was suggested to us that

1021
01:08:33,960 --> 01:08:36,800
Speaker 1: this becose it could become a commercial item. It could

1022
01:08:36,840 --> 01:08:40,920
Speaker 1: become an effect like an effects pedal that one could

1023
01:08:40,960 --> 01:08:45,280
Speaker 1: sell on the open market. So we went to America

1024
01:08:45,479 --> 01:08:50,160
Speaker 1: to meet somebody at a company called Music Tronics who

1025
01:08:50,280 --> 01:08:58,160
Speaker 1: actually produced the gizmo. Unfortunately, it the materials that were

1026
01:08:58,280 --> 01:09:03,680
Speaker 1: used to create the constant bowing sound weren't good enough

1027
01:09:05,000 --> 01:09:08,600
Speaker 1: UM for it to work consistently, and it would It

1028
01:09:08,760 --> 01:09:14,320
Speaker 1: was affected by waz by by temperature, by how it

1029
01:09:14,479 --> 01:09:17,240
Speaker 1: had been transported from one place to the other, and

1030
01:09:17,360 --> 01:09:21,000
Speaker 1: also not insignificantly by the fact you have to screw

1031
01:09:21,120 --> 01:09:24,840
Speaker 1: it to your guitar body. And it came out on

1032
01:09:24,880 --> 01:09:29,439
Speaker 1: the market just at the time when chute synthesizers were

1033
01:09:29,479 --> 01:09:33,280
Speaker 1: also coming out on the market and they were much

1034
01:09:33,360 --> 01:09:37,240
Speaker 1: more alloy. So the gizmo was The gizmo was like

1035
01:09:37,439 --> 01:09:43,920
Speaker 1: something Da Vinci might have actually created um and it

1036
01:09:44,040 --> 01:09:46,360
Speaker 1: didn't actually sell. It's become a bit of a cult.

1037
01:09:46,960 --> 01:09:50,560
Speaker 1: A number of different artists used it on their recordings,

1038
01:09:50,600 --> 01:09:55,240
Speaker 1: including Paul McCartney, including Susie and the Bandshoes, numerous people,

1039
01:09:55,800 --> 01:10:00,519
Speaker 1: but it never became a commercially successful device. Over the

1040
01:10:00,640 --> 01:10:04,040
Speaker 1: last maybe five years, a company in the States that

1041
01:10:04,120 --> 01:10:08,280
Speaker 1: started to produce them again in small quantities, so it

1042
01:10:08,439 --> 01:10:18,559
Speaker 1: might have its day again at some point that from

1043
01:10:18,600 --> 01:10:21,559
Speaker 1: the next year year it was said that you left

1044
01:10:21,640 --> 01:10:26,000
Speaker 1: Tennessee c To make an album with the gizmo. What

1045
01:10:26,320 --> 01:10:29,360
Speaker 1: really happened there and why did you leave Tennsee C.

1046
01:10:29,560 --> 01:10:32,160
Speaker 1: And had you end up making a triple album? Well,

1047
01:10:32,200 --> 01:10:36,120
Speaker 1: it wasn't initially, it wasn't meant to be a triple album. Initially.

1048
01:10:37,479 --> 01:10:40,960
Speaker 1: Initially the idea was we we'd invented this thing, and

1049
01:10:41,120 --> 01:10:44,960
Speaker 1: we didn't really get to use it an experiment with

1050
01:10:45,120 --> 01:10:49,240
Speaker 1: it and test its potential within the context of tennessee Ce.

1051
01:10:50,439 --> 01:10:52,000
Speaker 1: So we thought, you know, I think we know, we

1052
01:10:52,080 --> 01:10:54,599
Speaker 1: had a break from recording and touring, and we thought, well,

1053
01:10:54,640 --> 01:10:58,080
Speaker 1: let's book some time at Strawberry. Let's book ourselves enough

1054
01:10:58,120 --> 01:10:59,760
Speaker 1: for three weeks and see what we think and do,

1055
01:11:01,120 --> 01:11:03,760
Speaker 1: which is exactly what we did. And we had such

1056
01:11:03,800 --> 01:11:08,320
Speaker 1: a a great time doing that and making the kind

1057
01:11:08,400 --> 01:11:11,000
Speaker 1: of music that we hadn't even attempted to make before

1058
01:11:11,960 --> 01:11:16,160
Speaker 1: that we wanted to continue to do that. So the

1059
01:11:16,320 --> 01:11:20,040
Speaker 1: idea was our initial idea was okay, guys, that we're

1060
01:11:20,080 --> 01:11:23,400
Speaker 1: doing something that you know, we really think it's interesting

1061
01:11:23,479 --> 01:11:26,720
Speaker 1: and worthwhile. Just give us a little bit more time

1062
01:11:26,760 --> 01:11:31,040
Speaker 1: and we'll make our single album um and we'll put

1063
01:11:31,080 --> 01:11:32,920
Speaker 1: it out and then we'll come back, you know, to

1064
01:11:33,000 --> 01:11:36,000
Speaker 1: the group, and we'll carry on. But that we we

1065
01:11:36,080 --> 01:11:38,240
Speaker 1: were on a roll by the Intensity she was on

1066
01:11:38,320 --> 01:11:41,439
Speaker 1: a roll. And there, you know, we had a road crew,

1067
01:11:41,600 --> 01:11:45,799
Speaker 1: we had responsibilities. We we had to put a intensity

1068
01:11:45,840 --> 01:11:51,760
Speaker 1: c album out and and unfortunately it was one of

1069
01:11:51,800 --> 01:11:54,880
Speaker 1: those situations where it was we had to do one

1070
01:11:54,960 --> 01:11:58,760
Speaker 1: thing or the other We weren't really given a choice. Two,

1071
01:11:59,120 --> 01:12:02,919
Speaker 1: we weren't allowed to do it. Essentially, we weren't mature

1072
01:12:03,080 --> 01:12:07,960
Speaker 1: enough as a group of people to understand that, you know,

1073
01:12:08,040 --> 01:12:11,519
Speaker 1: in order to to grow as individuals as well as

1074
01:12:11,600 --> 01:12:15,599
Speaker 1: as a unit, we had to grow individually as well

1075
01:12:15,800 --> 01:12:19,479
Speaker 1: musically and then bring that back to the table for

1076
01:12:19,600 --> 01:12:25,400
Speaker 1: the bigger picture. That wasn't going to happen in this context. So,

1077
01:12:25,640 --> 01:12:28,320
Speaker 1: you know, we we we have numerous meetings about it,

1078
01:12:28,439 --> 01:12:33,160
Speaker 1: and we we were given an ultimatum, you know, we

1079
01:12:33,680 --> 01:12:36,000
Speaker 1: we have to do a tense C album instead, let's

1080
01:12:36,040 --> 01:12:42,559
Speaker 1: do let's let's do that. And uh so we paused

1081
01:12:42,720 --> 01:12:47,240
Speaker 1: and Eric and Graham had written a particular song. I

1082
01:12:47,360 --> 01:12:50,680
Speaker 1: forget which song it was. I don't know if it

1083
01:12:50,760 --> 01:12:52,240
Speaker 1: was The Things We Do for Love, but it was.

1084
01:12:52,400 --> 01:12:56,920
Speaker 1: It was a ballad like that, and we all sampled

1085
01:12:56,960 --> 01:12:59,759
Speaker 1: in studio and you know, with a view to listening

1086
01:12:59,800 --> 01:13:04,000
Speaker 1: to to what was what have been written and to

1087
01:13:04,320 --> 01:13:09,000
Speaker 1: think about starting a Tennesseec album. They played as a

1088
01:13:09,120 --> 01:13:13,160
Speaker 1: song and Lol and I looked at each other and

1089
01:13:13,320 --> 01:13:17,080
Speaker 1: we thought, oh god, we don't want to do this anymore.

1090
01:13:18,720 --> 01:13:22,080
Speaker 1: And and that was it. It was as simple as that.

1091
01:13:22,360 --> 01:13:28,759
Speaker 1: We just we found access to a way of working.

1092
01:13:29,920 --> 01:13:35,000
Speaker 1: There was thrilling us and really that's what TENSEEC we're

1093
01:13:35,040 --> 01:13:37,080
Speaker 1: all about. For the first three years or so, it

1094
01:13:37,200 --> 01:13:40,440
Speaker 1: was all about the thrill of doing it, not the success.

1095
01:13:40,520 --> 01:13:42,320
Speaker 1: The thrill of the four of us in the studio

1096
01:13:42,479 --> 01:13:46,200
Speaker 1: making music was what it was about, and that somehow

1097
01:13:47,040 --> 01:13:51,439
Speaker 1: got diluted. But we found it again and we wanted

1098
01:13:51,479 --> 01:13:56,559
Speaker 1: to continue doing that. Yes, and then Tennessee c which

1099
01:13:56,640 --> 01:13:59,120
Speaker 1: sounds different now. You can definitely hear the difference between

1100
01:13:59,160 --> 01:14:04,800
Speaker 1: the post You and Law albums sound different, and one

1101
01:14:04,840 --> 01:14:06,840
Speaker 1: can argue the albums are not as good, but their

1102
01:14:06,880 --> 01:14:09,759
Speaker 1: gigantic kits on that record. So how did you feel

1103
01:14:09,880 --> 01:14:13,000
Speaker 1: being on the outside of that. We didn't have a problem.

1104
01:14:13,080 --> 01:14:18,519
Speaker 1: Not we was thinking that ceased to become about hits. Um.

1105
01:14:19,240 --> 01:14:21,320
Speaker 1: It was never really about hits. I think the fact

1106
01:14:21,400 --> 01:14:25,280
Speaker 1: that Tennessee See had hits was a bonus. You know,

1107
01:14:25,439 --> 01:14:27,920
Speaker 1: we made stuff that we wanted to make and a

1108
01:14:28,080 --> 01:14:30,680
Speaker 1: hell of a lot of people like them. Wow, you

1109
01:14:30,760 --> 01:14:34,360
Speaker 1: know it's not the like um. But now we were

1110
01:14:34,439 --> 01:14:37,560
Speaker 1: were in a different frame of mind. We were we

1111
01:14:37,680 --> 01:14:42,639
Speaker 1: were artists. If you go back to that era, royalty

1112
01:14:42,800 --> 01:14:45,799
Speaker 1: rates were low, there were four people in the band.

1113
01:14:46,720 --> 01:14:49,200
Speaker 1: But the money can be in publishing. But there were

1114
01:14:49,280 --> 01:14:53,240
Speaker 1: multiple writers. Do you get any money from those songs?

1115
01:14:53,640 --> 01:14:56,080
Speaker 1: Have you sold the rights? What's the status of that?

1116
01:14:56,880 --> 01:14:59,639
Speaker 1: You're going You're going back a long way. We didn't

1117
01:14:59,640 --> 01:15:01,200
Speaker 1: even say think about money in those Well you know

1118
01:15:01,280 --> 01:15:03,080
Speaker 1: whether the money is coming into your account or not.

1119
01:15:03,360 --> 01:15:05,360
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the money was coming into our account. But

1120
01:15:05,600 --> 01:15:10,000
Speaker 1: usually a song was written by two people, three people

1121
01:15:10,040 --> 01:15:12,880
Speaker 1: at most. There were never any songs tends to see

1122
01:15:12,960 --> 01:15:16,080
Speaker 1: songs particularly that we're written by four as far as

1123
01:15:16,120 --> 01:15:19,400
Speaker 1: I recall. So even though the royalty rate was small,

1124
01:15:20,840 --> 01:15:24,320
Speaker 1: it was you know, it kept us alive. I don't

1125
01:15:24,360 --> 01:15:26,400
Speaker 1: think we ever got really rich of it, but it

1126
01:15:26,520 --> 01:15:29,800
Speaker 1: kept us alive. Yeah, but how about today in are

1127
01:15:29,840 --> 01:15:33,320
Speaker 1: you still getting royalties? But there's a whole new element

1128
01:15:33,400 --> 01:15:36,760
Speaker 1: of the music business, as we well know, with people

1129
01:15:36,760 --> 01:15:41,840
Speaker 1: are Hypnosis and Sony and goodness who else who have

1130
01:15:42,040 --> 01:15:45,920
Speaker 1: created a new system whereby us, shall we say more

1131
01:15:46,040 --> 01:15:51,560
Speaker 1: mature artists can earn money sooner rather than later in

1132
01:15:51,680 --> 01:15:56,679
Speaker 1: drives and drabs. So yeah, that is that is very helpful.

1133
01:15:56,960 --> 01:15:59,439
Speaker 1: So did you make a deal with Hypnosis or one

1134
01:15:59,479 --> 01:16:02,920
Speaker 1: of it? To compare address I did, and did you

1135
01:16:02,960 --> 01:16:06,960
Speaker 1: go with hypnosis? Yeah? So hypnosis. So essentially they say

1136
01:16:07,000 --> 01:16:08,479
Speaker 1: you get it. I know, Mark said, you get a

1137
01:16:08,520 --> 01:16:10,760
Speaker 1: teen percent pay out whatever. So the money you got

1138
01:16:11,520 --> 01:16:15,760
Speaker 1: from Merk you live another twenty years, well invested. That

1139
01:16:15,880 --> 01:16:18,120
Speaker 1: money can cure you, or you gotta work for a living.

1140
01:16:18,360 --> 01:16:20,679
Speaker 1: I gotta work for them. And Jesus, I'm not Neil Young,

1141
01:16:20,720 --> 01:16:25,000
Speaker 1: I'm not Bob Dylan. I you know, let's just say

1142
01:16:25,040 --> 01:16:27,760
Speaker 1: it took the edge of and so it this lay date.

1143
01:16:27,960 --> 01:16:31,320
Speaker 1: What keeps you creating? I love it. That's what I do.

1144
01:16:31,840 --> 01:16:36,479
Speaker 1: I I wake up in the mornings and if I'm lucky,

1145
01:16:36,680 --> 01:16:39,080
Speaker 1: I've got an idea in my heading and it could

1146
01:16:39,120 --> 01:16:43,320
Speaker 1: be for a film. I've written two films to screenplays

1147
01:16:43,680 --> 01:16:46,160
Speaker 1: over the last few years, one with another guy. I'm

1148
01:16:46,200 --> 01:16:49,240
Speaker 1: one on my own, and one of my big things

1149
01:16:49,360 --> 01:16:52,280
Speaker 1: is to make these these two movies. Direct these two movies.

1150
01:16:53,280 --> 01:16:57,920
Speaker 1: I've also joined a group of humans. As I said,

1151
01:16:58,040 --> 01:17:02,120
Speaker 1: I've also joined the scene of the game company. I'm constantly,

1152
01:17:03,000 --> 01:17:08,519
Speaker 1: excuse me, pushing myself to keep working, not just to

1153
01:17:08,680 --> 01:17:15,599
Speaker 1: earn money, but because I love pushing myself into areas

1154
01:17:15,680 --> 01:17:18,000
Speaker 1: where I think I can do good work. I enjoy

1155
01:17:18,120 --> 01:17:22,360
Speaker 1: doing good work. Um. So there are a number of

1156
01:17:22,479 --> 01:17:27,760
Speaker 1: projects on the horizon, on number of self initiated projects

1157
01:17:27,840 --> 01:17:32,120
Speaker 1: that things that I would really like to do, um,

1158
01:17:32,520 --> 01:17:34,720
Speaker 1: that I'm pushing to get done. Two of which of

1159
01:17:34,800 --> 01:17:39,240
Speaker 1: these two film scripts, so unfortunately we were we were

1160
01:17:39,360 --> 01:17:44,320
Speaker 1: really close to going into pre production before COVID hit

1161
01:17:45,160 --> 01:17:49,160
Speaker 1: for one of the films, and that's sort of been

1162
01:17:49,200 --> 01:17:51,800
Speaker 1: on the back back burnus and I'm I'm sort of

1163
01:17:51,920 --> 01:17:55,760
Speaker 1: pushing to try and get that to the fore again. Um.

1164
01:17:56,560 --> 01:18:00,519
Speaker 1: The other is a low budget film about media in

1165
01:18:00,560 --> 01:18:03,400
Speaker 1: the twenty one century, which is a bit hardcore. So

1166
01:18:03,560 --> 01:18:07,120
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get that off the ground. But it's

1167
01:18:07,200 --> 01:18:10,320
Speaker 1: up here. It's up here that counts. It's it's keeping

1168
01:18:10,439 --> 01:18:15,479
Speaker 1: busy up there. You know, it's so easy not to

1169
01:18:16,200 --> 01:18:18,559
Speaker 1: let me just ask. You make an album like Muscle Memory,

1170
01:18:18,560 --> 01:18:20,759
Speaker 1: you put a lot of time, but the music business

1171
01:18:20,800 --> 01:18:24,000
Speaker 1: has changed and it's much harder to be heard than

1172
01:18:24,080 --> 01:18:26,880
Speaker 1: it was before. Does that make it harder to do it?

1173
01:18:27,080 --> 01:18:29,120
Speaker 1: Or just as long as you can get your idea down,

1174
01:18:29,240 --> 01:18:33,880
Speaker 1: you're happy. Yes. The latter. For me, it was about

1175
01:18:34,000 --> 01:18:36,559
Speaker 1: just getting the idea. It was about proving it, proving

1176
01:18:36,640 --> 01:18:39,320
Speaker 1: it to myself proving that I could actually do it

1177
01:18:40,280 --> 01:18:45,599
Speaker 1: and actually do something that wasn't just twenty minutes of fluff.

1178
01:18:45,960 --> 01:18:47,640
Speaker 1: It was you know, it had a little bit of

1179
01:18:47,720 --> 01:18:50,760
Speaker 1: weight to it. The lyrics were good, the tunes were good,

1180
01:18:50,880 --> 01:18:55,480
Speaker 1: the exercise was good. The whole process was was elevating

1181
01:18:55,760 --> 01:19:01,360
Speaker 1: for me. Um. I still had the mystery the match. Okay,

1182
01:19:01,439 --> 01:19:04,280
Speaker 1: so you still have things in the pipeline. But at

1183
01:19:04,320 --> 01:19:06,280
Speaker 1: this point, if you look back, what are you most

1184
01:19:06,320 --> 01:19:12,639
Speaker 1: proud of across the whole lifetime? Absolutely give me too,

1185
01:19:12,920 --> 01:19:17,320
Speaker 1: to Jesus, well, the album is one. Most of the

1186
01:19:17,360 --> 01:19:24,880
Speaker 1: memories one one world, One Voice is another that's too. Um,

1187
01:19:27,280 --> 01:19:34,760
Speaker 1: the first tand CC album maybe a three, and a

1188
01:19:34,880 --> 01:19:39,040
Speaker 1: number of different music videos if I can have a four,

1189
01:19:39,160 --> 01:19:42,280
Speaker 1: which is you know, I did a number of videos

1190
01:19:42,400 --> 01:19:47,920
Speaker 1: for you too, which I am very proud of. But

1191
01:19:48,320 --> 01:19:51,880
Speaker 1: possibly Rocket is the one that stands out head and

1192
01:19:51,960 --> 01:19:56,200
Speaker 1: shoulders above the other because of what I was saying before,

1193
01:19:56,280 --> 01:19:59,800
Speaker 1: because it was so bizarre and nobody knew what the

1194
01:20:00,080 --> 01:20:05,439
Speaker 1: it was and it did a huge amount a number

1195
01:20:05,479 --> 01:20:08,720
Speaker 1: of different levels. Okay, you mentioned that you that you

1196
01:20:08,720 --> 01:20:12,240
Speaker 1: would like to do a movie about media. So you

1197
01:20:12,320 --> 01:20:14,400
Speaker 1: grew up in an analyze world. We live in a

1198
01:20:14,520 --> 01:20:17,960
Speaker 1: digital internet world. You've seen both. What do you think

1199
01:20:18,040 --> 01:20:23,760
Speaker 1: about where we are today? It's complex, it's fascinating. Um,

1200
01:20:26,200 --> 01:20:29,720
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've had I disliked the idea of

1201
01:20:29,840 --> 01:20:36,360
Speaker 1: technology for technology's sake, and the thing I accepted and

1202
01:20:36,479 --> 01:20:40,759
Speaker 1: I use it um because it can give me things

1203
01:20:40,920 --> 01:20:44,920
Speaker 1: that analog could never give me. But then again there's

1204
01:20:44,960 --> 01:20:49,479
Speaker 1: a certain foolishness to it. And probably the best example

1205
01:20:49,600 --> 01:20:54,360
Speaker 1: of that is the original version of the video that

1206
01:20:54,479 --> 01:20:58,040
Speaker 1: we did for our Godlian Crimson Crime, for instance, was

1207
01:20:58,400 --> 01:21:05,080
Speaker 1: was edited in an analog function and the mixes going

1208
01:21:05,200 --> 01:21:08,240
Speaker 1: from one face to the other took place using what

1209
01:21:08,320 --> 01:21:12,600
Speaker 1: they used to call paddles, which was handheld stick that

1210
01:21:12,760 --> 01:21:14,920
Speaker 1: you moved from the top to the bottom and you

1211
01:21:15,000 --> 01:21:22,439
Speaker 1: could actually feel physically the mix taking place. That doesn't

1212
01:21:22,479 --> 01:21:25,439
Speaker 1: happen anymore. It's done by a lot of number crunching

1213
01:21:25,680 --> 01:21:28,920
Speaker 1: and you watch if it's not right, the numbers are

1214
01:21:28,960 --> 01:21:33,879
Speaker 1: crunched again. But there is now two things that has happened,

1215
01:21:35,240 --> 01:21:40,799
Speaker 1: one being the fact that one can lose a physical

1216
01:21:40,920 --> 01:21:45,320
Speaker 1: contact with the material you're playing with, and that applies

1217
01:21:45,360 --> 01:21:48,200
Speaker 1: to music as well. You know, you could be using

1218
01:21:48,240 --> 01:21:50,880
Speaker 1: the drum sample instead of playing the drums, which is fine,

1219
01:21:51,479 --> 01:21:56,519
Speaker 1: but there's a gap appearing between the result and the

1220
01:21:56,640 --> 01:22:01,400
Speaker 1: performance and the actual process of making something it um

1221
01:22:04,439 --> 01:22:08,599
Speaker 1: and the time it takes. I mean to use video

1222
01:22:08,760 --> 01:22:11,040
Speaker 1: editing as an example. The time it takes to do

1223
01:22:12,880 --> 01:22:17,080
Speaker 1: an edit of a music video has expanded. It usually

1224
01:22:17,200 --> 01:22:22,559
Speaker 1: takes me, say, at least three days to do something

1225
01:22:22,640 --> 01:22:25,240
Speaker 1: in digital mode that I used to be able to

1226
01:22:25,320 --> 01:22:30,320
Speaker 1: do in one. And that is because if you're editing

1227
01:22:30,400 --> 01:22:35,040
Speaker 1: digitally you can defer making final decisions for a long time.

1228
01:22:35,120 --> 01:22:37,920
Speaker 1: You can try a shot here, you can extend it,

1229
01:22:38,080 --> 01:22:40,840
Speaker 1: you can move it backwards, forward, slow it down, speed

1230
01:22:40,920 --> 01:22:44,320
Speaker 1: it up at color, remove color. You don't have to

1231
01:22:44,400 --> 01:22:48,519
Speaker 1: make a decision, whereas in the analog world a video,

1232
01:22:48,600 --> 01:22:52,160
Speaker 1: a video editing, you had to decide where you want

1233
01:22:52,240 --> 01:22:55,000
Speaker 1: things to be. You have to think, you have to

1234
01:22:55,320 --> 01:22:57,639
Speaker 1: use your instincts and you have to use your mind.

1235
01:22:58,600 --> 01:23:04,400
Speaker 1: Um And you did, and it still worked. What you've

1236
01:23:04,439 --> 01:23:09,520
Speaker 1: gained digitalist quality and the potential for trying lots of alternatives.

1237
01:23:09,840 --> 01:23:13,000
Speaker 1: But it does take longer, so you win and you lose.

1238
01:23:13,439 --> 01:23:15,439
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is this is the world that

1239
01:23:15,520 --> 01:23:19,280
Speaker 1: we live in. So I have chosen too to use

1240
01:23:19,280 --> 01:23:23,880
Speaker 1: an American expression, to embrace it and take it as

1241
01:23:23,920 --> 01:23:27,559
Speaker 1: far as I can and use it to its best advantage. Well, Kevin,

1242
01:23:28,360 --> 01:23:30,639
Speaker 1: thanks so much for spending your time with us today

1243
01:23:30,680 --> 01:23:34,960
Speaker 1: and giving us insight into your long career. Really interesting,

1244
01:23:35,080 --> 01:23:39,280
Speaker 1: so thanks so much, pleasure and enjoyed it. Until next time.

1245
01:23:39,760 --> 01:23:41,080
Speaker 1: This is Barbie Offsets