Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bible Left Sex Podcast.
Speaker 1: I guess today this musician and director Kevin Gardley. Kevin,
Speaker 1: good to have you on the program. Good to be here, Bob,
Speaker 1: Nice to see you. Happy New Year. So where exactly
Speaker 1: are you right now? I am in a little town
Speaker 1: about forty minutes outside Dublin, in a conservatory which is
Speaker 1: my office and my studio. So what is a nice
Speaker 1: boy from the middle end of England doing in Dublin.
Speaker 1: That's a good question. I I did quite a lot
Speaker 1: of video work here in the late nineties. Earlier in
Speaker 1: late nineties with you too, and I was going backwards
Speaker 1: and forwards and backwards and forwards a lot with my wife,
Speaker 1: and we fell in love with the place it is,
Speaker 1: at least back then. It was so radically different to
Speaker 1: living outside London that we fell in love with it.
Speaker 1: Everything is quiet here, you can get to meet interesting
Speaker 1: people in the art world much easier than you could
Speaker 1: in London. Um, and we were looking to move house anyway,
Speaker 1: and we thought, why not, let's give it a shot.
Speaker 1: So here we are and we haven't regretted it for
Speaker 1: one second. And how long have you been there? And
Speaker 1: you can go a little bit deeper into the differences. Gosh,
Speaker 1: I think we've been here for about fourteen years. The difference,
Speaker 1: I guess is London is a very busy city, always
Speaker 1: has been, and if you want to make a meeting
Speaker 1: with somebody, you call up their pa and they say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, someone star has a window for twenty minutes
Speaker 1: next Thursday. Here you're bumping to someone who knows his
Speaker 1: uncle and you can meet him in the pub next
Speaker 1: Saturday night. It's it's much more. It's much less formal here.
Speaker 1: Everybody is so much more accessible here. And is there
Speaker 1: work there like there is in London? There is For me,
Speaker 1: it's no different. I mean that the main difference between
Speaker 1: working here and in London has changed so vastly over
Speaker 1: the years because a lot of what a lot of
Speaker 1: what I can do is done remotely anyway. If there's
Speaker 1: a shoot to be done in London, for instance, then
Speaker 1: I travel to London and I have a production team
Speaker 1: there that I use. Obviously I haven't been able to
Speaker 1: do that for a little while, but I also have
Speaker 1: a production team here, and if I'm lucky enough, the
Speaker 1: artist will come here and we can shoot here. So
Speaker 1: it's it's been really been really good. In other words,
Speaker 1: I have a lovely, gentle and quiet lifestyle, but I
Speaker 1: can move to wherever is appropriate for when I have
Speaker 1: to be somewhere. What's been keeping you busy recently, Kevin? Recently?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, you've been in the last two or three
Speaker 1: years or so, Yes, because you know and how you've
Speaker 1: been affected by COVID. Well, I haven't really been affected
Speaker 1: by COVID, which is the strangest to say. I mean,
Speaker 1: both myself and my wife haven't had COVID. We know
Speaker 1: a few people who have, but we live a very
Speaker 1: quiet life and I do most of my work from
Speaker 1: home anyway. UM but probably one of the main things
Speaker 1: that I did in twenty twenty, I released my first
Speaker 1: solo album, which was recorded here, called Muscle Memory, which
Speaker 1: was an exciting thing for me to do. I never
Speaker 1: made a solo album before UM and that was that
Speaker 1: was a big thrill. That was a big thrill. I
Speaker 1: got extremely well reviewed, which was which was a buzz.
Speaker 1: I also co wrote and directed a pilot episode for
Speaker 1: a historical drama podcast about Irish music. UM. I started
Speaker 1: experimenting with a system I called corrupted files, which is
Speaker 1: for want of a better term, accidental artwork that's derived
Speaker 1: from my video work, and started exploring n f T
Speaker 1: and physical options for both UM. Also in one I
Speaker 1: joined a new games company called Athena Athena Worlds, which
Speaker 1: is led by UM extremely well known gaming programmer called
Speaker 1: Jane Whittaker who did Alien Versus Predator, and also a
Speaker 1: senior producer from Candy Crush called Emily Amslet anyone in
Speaker 1: the gaming industry will know who they are immusically, and
Speaker 1: they're driven by UM new revolutionary tech which hopefully will
Speaker 1: revolutionize the games industry. And I'm a non exact director
Speaker 1: and creative consultant for a Sena. I've also recently joined
Speaker 1: a fascinating company called Group of Few Moans, which is
Speaker 1: very very contemporary company. They are a community of industry
Speaker 1: leading strategists, filmmakers, musicians, designers, writers, creative directors, researchers, accession.
Speaker 1: We're like a herd of cattle, although we're not cattle.
Speaker 1: We're all very very clever and very smart. But the
Speaker 1: idea is that any any group of these people can
Speaker 1: be selected for any particular project that comes in UM
Speaker 1: to create the perfect group to deliver high quality outcomes
Speaker 1: from different for a range of different kind of clients.
Speaker 1: We work remotely, and I've never been involved in anything
Speaker 1: like this before I am. Towards the end of last year,
Speaker 1: I was I was frustrated in that there are so
Speaker 1: many things that I do and I have a finger
Speaker 1: in so many different creative pies. I was looking for
Speaker 1: either a person or an organization to kind of represent
Speaker 1: all the different aspects of my career. And this group
Speaker 1: of people got in touch with me via a guy
Speaker 1: who I've met before a number of years ago. Love
Speaker 1: the guy called Rob Noble who invited me to become
Speaker 1: part of group of humans. And it is. It is
Speaker 1: a great It's a great bunch of people, a great
Speaker 1: bunch of people. I can't tell you what we're doing
Speaker 1: because we're all under N D A S. But it's
Speaker 1: it's a real buzz. It's it allows me to explore
Speaker 1: the more commercial side of what I'm capable of doing. Okay,
Speaker 1: before we leave Dublin, I have to address the situation
Speaker 1: with Ironland, which is divided in Brexit. What's your whole
Speaker 1: take on Brexit and how it should work out? Fucking nightmare.
Speaker 1: I never understood the point of it. Ever. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's crazy. I'm not a very politically
Speaker 1: minded person, but I kind of don't see the wind
Speaker 1: of it. It's it's divisive on a very day to
Speaker 1: day level. If you order anything online. Um, we used
Speaker 1: to be able to get loads of stuff that we
Speaker 1: can no longer get now from from the UK. Um,
Speaker 1: and you have to pay extra tax when it comes
Speaker 1: into the country. It takes twice as long. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the immediate effect of it, and it's just boring.
Speaker 1: I don't get it. Okay, let's go back a few years.
Speaker 1: How did you ultimately get into video directing? Sort of
Speaker 1: by accident, like most things in my life. Um, as
Speaker 1: you know, we were we were in a band, quite
Speaker 1: successful band, and when lor Creom and I left the band,
Speaker 1: we were still making records, but we weren't a touring band,
Speaker 1: so we never appeared anywhere live. We never did any shows.
Speaker 1: But we had a record coming out on a single
Speaker 1: that was called an Englishman in New York, not to
Speaker 1: be confused with the song of the same name by Sting,
Speaker 1: and we kind of figured that the only way we
Speaker 1: could promote it would be to make a little film
Speaker 1: of us performing it in some way. And we didn't
Speaker 1: think for one minute that the record company would go
Speaker 1: for the idea, because back then there was no video
Speaker 1: industry as such, there was no MTV. But we came
Speaker 1: up with a sort of cock eyed storyboard and went
Speaker 1: to meet somebody at the label and lo and behold.
Speaker 1: I said, yes, you can make it, but you can't
Speaker 1: direct it because you you don't know a camera from
Speaker 1: a camel. So we'll have to get a proper guy
Speaker 1: into do that, which which they did, and joined the
Speaker 1: process of making the film. A couple of lightbulbs went
Speaker 1: off over our heads. It was an extraordinary experience. We
Speaker 1: were ex art students, as you probably, and suddenly we
Speaker 1: were involved in something that we instinctively felt we could
Speaker 1: contribute to. We could do this, we thought, and much
Speaker 1: to the director's annoyance, through the editing process, we started
Speaker 1: to stick our oar in and suggest things and and
Speaker 1: and say, well, what happens if you press this button
Speaker 1: and you go no, no, And we pressed a button
Speaker 1: and something interesting would happen that nobody expected. In other words,
Speaker 1: we kind of took over, which must have been a
Speaker 1: pain for the director. For the proper director, but we
Speaker 1: knew that this was a very exciting thing to be
Speaker 1: involved with. So we put we were performing, which took
Speaker 1: up most of the day, and we were listening and
Speaker 1: we were watching and we were learning, and that was
Speaker 1: the first thing we kind of did um and we
Speaker 1: got a lot of credit for it because the finished
Speaker 1: result made the hit, made the record a hit, not
Speaker 1: in the UK, but all over Europe. Would you remember
Speaker 1: the budget and you remember where it was exhibited and
Speaker 1: people became aware of it. It was shown a lot
Speaker 1: in Europe, all over Europe and it was a hit
Speaker 1: record in Europe. I can't remember the budget, but it
Speaker 1: can't have been a lot of money. There wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot of money around in those days for these things.
Speaker 1: So what I actually happened from there is a guy
Speaker 1: called Steve Strange who was just signed to our label
Speaker 1: Polydor with his band called Visage. Is the same Steve
Speaker 1: Strange who recently passed Yes unfortunately, Yes. We used to
Speaker 1: from the clubs in London and he wanted us to
Speaker 1: direct his first video for his first single for Visage,
Speaker 1: which was called Fay to Grow and which is a
Speaker 1: lovely compliment. I think you have to argue the point
Speaker 1: somewhat with the low but we got to do it.
Speaker 1: The budget for that I distinctly remember as being five
Speaker 1: thousand pounds two and a half thousand, of which went
Speaker 1: to the makeup artist. But that was our first professional
Speaker 1: gigs as as video directors. And the rest is this history. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: as I say, you're let's go a little slower into
Speaker 1: the rest. So you make that video. You did one
Speaker 1: for your own act. It was very successful. What happened
Speaker 1: with this video, Well, it did the trick um. It
Speaker 1: proved the point that a good film or a good
Speaker 1: video or whatever they used to call it in those days,
Speaker 1: could make a difference. And it was a hit in Norway, Sweden,
Speaker 1: Denmark and Scandinavia and France, in Germany, but didn't do
Speaker 1: a damn thing in England, which was such a shame.
Speaker 1: But it taught us a hell of a lot. It's
Speaker 1: it flipped the switch for us because we'd left the
Speaker 1: band and we were making records and I think subconsciously
Speaker 1: we were looking for something else that we could get
Speaker 1: our teeth into and this came along. It's just the
Speaker 1: right time. Now we're in the history of MTV. Does
Speaker 1: this happen quite early We're talking the early eighties. Um,
Speaker 1: And I think we made an Englishman in New York
Speaker 1: before MTV became a reality anywhere. Um. I think MTV launched.
Speaker 1: Was it in nineteen August? First one? Okay, so we
Speaker 1: were relatively close. We were relatively close, I thinking Englishmen
Speaker 1: in New York those towards the end of the seventies.
Speaker 1: But visage. I guess what I'm asking here is, did
Speaker 1: you see MTV on the horizon when it happened? Did
Speaker 1: it change your vision? Did it queed a lot of opportunity? Totally?
Speaker 1: We didn't see it coming, and then we heard about it.
Speaker 1: We heard about it launching in America first, which it did,
Speaker 1: of course, and we started to get some interesting commissions
Speaker 1: um from America. Probably the most significant one was for
Speaker 1: Herbie Hancock Rocket UM. And things began to change radically
Speaker 1: from that point, not just for us, but for the
Speaker 1: whole music industry. From our perspective and from all the
Speaker 1: other directors and producers that were working in this new medium,
Speaker 1: it suddenly meant that there was a global art gallery
Speaker 1: where all their work could be seen. There had been
Speaker 1: nothing like this before ever. So the other thing that
Speaker 1: I think was hugely influential. Was that a lot of
Speaker 1: the more christially acclaimed and influential films on MTV We're
Speaker 1: coming out of the UK and the stylistic elements of
Speaker 1: those films made an impact on everything that was made
Speaker 1: from that point on. And a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of bands, a lot of American bands particularly, were a
Speaker 1: little bit uncomfortable with this. They were purists, they were musicians. Man,
Speaker 1: we don't want to make films, We don't want to
Speaker 1: tell stories, we just want to play. There was there
Speaker 1: was a little bit of resistance to that initially, uh,
Speaker 1: but things gradually began to change. They began to accept
Speaker 1: it and take it on board and really use it well.
Speaker 1: It took a little time though for it to sink in.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Rocket, So how did you that's a
Speaker 1: legendary video. How did you come up with the concept?
Speaker 1: And ultimately this became your main work? So at what
Speaker 1: point did it become luquidi? What were the budget? Rocket
Speaker 1: was an interesting one again, just a series of lucky accidents.
Speaker 1: I was watching a TV news program, local TV news
Speaker 1: program UM and they were showing a piece about a
Speaker 1: sculptor and artist called Jim whit Ing. And his work,
Speaker 1: which were these strange hydraulic robots, and it was probably
Speaker 1: about a five minute piece. And as soon as it
Speaker 1: started on the TV, I I dived at the video
Speaker 1: recorder and taped what I could of it because I
Speaker 1: found it absolutely fascinating and something was it was wonderful
Speaker 1: about it, incredible um. But before then the rocket track
Speaker 1: had landed on our desk asking us to come up
Speaker 1: with an idea for it. So when I saw this
Speaker 1: and took the video tape over to Lowell's place, we
Speaker 1: we realized that rocket sounded like this looked okay. There
Speaker 1: was there was no doubt in our minds about that.
Speaker 1: And and back then things were relatively free. There was
Speaker 1: no marketing department, there was no there was no real
Speaker 1: awareness of the power of video. These were just films
Speaker 1: that were made and nobody really knew if it hadn't
Speaker 1: make any difference or not to the success of a record.
Speaker 1: So how it worked was you sent a track to
Speaker 1: a director whose work you liked and asked them to
Speaker 1: make a film and gave them a little bit of
Speaker 1: money to do it. You were never asked to compete
Speaker 1: with other directors or sending a written treatment. You maybe
Speaker 1: have a conversation or two, but we were allowed to
Speaker 1: do pretty much what the hell we liked, and we
Speaker 1: had enough faith in the idea to actually set it
Speaker 1: up and go for it. We had Herbie fly over
Speaker 1: a day and we filmed him separately because we knew
Speaker 1: we'd be putting him into the finished film in a
Speaker 1: TV monitor. But nobody, including us to a degree, understood
Speaker 1: at that stage what the Finnish film would look like.
Speaker 1: We were we were just busking, but we were busking
Speaker 1: with confidence. It was really only when we hit the
Speaker 1: edit suite with all this vast amount of material, and
Speaker 1: I'd say vast because back then you couldn't play the
Speaker 1: material backwards. You had to you had to retransfer all
Speaker 1: the films of video backwards, all the footage. You couldn't
Speaker 1: hit a button and it would go backwards. So we
Speaker 1: had an enormous amount of footage and I think the
Speaker 1: edit was probably about an eighteen to twenty edit, solid
Speaker 1: in an edit suite, very smoky edit suite um And
Speaker 1: when we finished it, we looked at it and we
Speaker 1: looked at each other and we said, they're gonna fucking
Speaker 1: kill us, because I mean, from our perspective, it was extraordinary. Um,
Speaker 1: but there's been nothing like that shown anywhere before. And
Speaker 1: so we we were, you know, we thought, you know,
Speaker 1: fuck it, let's send it to them and and and
Speaker 1: and see what happens. And predictably, it was like, don't
Speaker 1: they They didn't quite understand what they were watching, if
Speaker 1: that makes any sense. UM, But they didn't know they
Speaker 1: had something. What they didn't know and what we didn't
Speaker 1: know is that that's something I was going to turn
Speaker 1: out to be something significant in kicking the medium forward.
Speaker 1: And we want a lot of awards at the first
Speaker 1: MTV show for that one particular video. It was and
Speaker 1: it taught us that you know, believe in your instincts.
Speaker 1: You know what you're doing. Even though you don't know
Speaker 1: that you know what you're doing, you do know something
Speaker 1: that they don't know. So just keep doing this because
Speaker 1: you're good at it. Let's go back a couple of years.
Speaker 1: Tell me the story of the making of the video
Speaker 1: for Duran Duran's Girls and Film. They're they're a very
Speaker 1: clove a bunch of guys still are and as is
Speaker 1: their management. They were very savvy and um in wanting
Speaker 1: to break America. They we're keeping an eye on what
Speaker 1: was going on in the clubs as well as what
Speaker 1: was going on in TV. And what was going on
Speaker 1: in the clubs was that they were playing these new
Speaker 1: fangled video things in the clubs, and some of them
Speaker 1: were kind of uncensored because there were no there's no
Speaker 1: censorship in the clubs. The rauncher they was, the more
Speaker 1: daring they were, the weirder they were, the more they
Speaker 1: get played. And so as part of the brief for
Speaker 1: Girls on Film, we were told to create a version
Speaker 1: that was to be played in clubs, primarily in clubs,
Speaker 1: so they were kind of kind of coming out America
Speaker 1: from underneath, not from in front. So that's what we did.
Speaker 1: It just so happened that that and and and the
Speaker 1: TV Cup was a little time, as you know, but
Speaker 1: the full version was kind of probably wouldn't get made today.
Speaker 1: There's very sexy, very raunchy, very daring for its time,
Speaker 1: and the words started to spread, as that sometimes happens,
Speaker 1: and it was all part of this this growth, this
Speaker 1: strange upheaval that was going on in the music business.
Speaker 1: People were getting excited about the power of the music
Speaker 1: video and it became a thing. Had you end up
Speaker 1: working with the Police. Um. We we used to record
Speaker 1: in the same studio, strangely enough, near Well where Luell
Speaker 1: lived at the time, in a place called Leatherhead, which
Speaker 1: sounds like a heavy metal man. UM a little studio
Speaker 1: UM called Sorry Sound, which was run by a guy
Speaker 1: who was producing the Police at the time, and they
Speaker 1: were working there and we just kind of meat every
Speaker 1: now and again we finished a session, they start a session.
Speaker 1: And when we came into our first album as Godly
Speaker 1: and Cream, Nigel Nigel Grave was the guy I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: He played us the stuff he'd been recording with the
Speaker 1: Police and it kind of made our hair sound upon
Speaker 1: it and just three people playing and singing, whereas we
Speaker 1: were messing around with all sorts of peculiar sounds and
Speaker 1: and since and goodness what Um, there were these three
Speaker 1: guys that were that were that had it that magic
Speaker 1: stuff that everybody wants to find. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: where we met them. And at this point we we
Speaker 1: this was prior to us getting into music video really um.
Speaker 1: But when they when they had made it big and
Speaker 1: they wanted to change their style on film, they called us. UM.
Speaker 1: They were doing hugely well all over the world and
Speaker 1: in America, and the album that Every Breath You Take
Speaker 1: was on. They wanted to present it in a more
Speaker 1: sophisticated way, more interesting way, and they asked us if
Speaker 1: we'd be interested in making a film for it, and
Speaker 1: of course we were. The interesting thing is that we
Speaker 1: were all They were thinking along a certain line and
Speaker 1: we were thinking along certain lines, but we never really
Speaker 1: got together to talk about it until we flew over
Speaker 1: to la to meet them at the record label, and
Speaker 1: all our ideas kind of coalesced. The idea of doing
Speaker 1: it in black and white, the idea of holding on
Speaker 1: things for an enormous amount of time as opposed to
Speaker 1: cutting every second, which most videos did at the time,
Speaker 1: was exactly where they wanted to go. Something that was subtle,
Speaker 1: something that was delicate, something that was powerful. Um. It
Speaker 1: was an extraordinary, uplifting experience for us, a huge kick
Speaker 1: up the ladder. There were a number of of shoots
Speaker 1: around about that time, and there was Herbie, there was
Speaker 1: Every Breath You Take. In fact, we did two more
Speaker 1: for the Police on the same album. But that was
Speaker 1: a big kick in the bomb for us up the ladder.
Speaker 1: That made us, for want of a badder description video
Speaker 1: starts not something we were aiming to be, but it
Speaker 1: made us significant in the medium, and how did the
Speaker 1: change your life and career made us feel good? The
Speaker 1: budgets got a little bit bigger, and it gave us
Speaker 1: a little bit more wait in terms of presenting ideas
Speaker 1: to people. I think the industry was starting to understand,
Speaker 1: at least the marketing people within the industry, We're beginning
Speaker 1: to understand the power of a music video and how
Speaker 1: it could actually help a single become a hit. And therefore,
Speaker 1: when they came to us that they knew if they
Speaker 1: were coming to us, we weren't going to do what
Speaker 1: they told us to do, and we were trusted to
Speaker 1: a degree to deliver them something that was original, that
Speaker 1: was different, but had a quality that was going to
Speaker 1: help the record be a success. And we used to
Speaker 1: push that home. That was that was the buzz for us.
Speaker 1: In a sense, it wasn't It wasn't about the success.
Speaker 1: It was about being allowed to try something that we
Speaker 1: would dearly like to see on the screen and sort of,
Speaker 1: shall we say, eight times out of ten it did
Speaker 1: the job. How did you feel when you'd make a
Speaker 1: successful video? Frodact and then they would end up working
Speaker 1: with somebody else for the next video. It didn't happen
Speaker 1: that often, at least not initially, particularly in the police's case.
Speaker 1: We we did every breath and we did the following
Speaker 1: to videos. But I think what was happening the industry
Speaker 1: as an industry was was maturing and more people we're
Speaker 1: coming into the industry. More directors were realizing that you know,
Speaker 1: as well as the commercials that they did, as well
Speaker 1: as the films that they did, this was an area
Speaker 1: where they could be free or a little freer than
Speaker 1: everything else, and they could try some bizarre ideas out
Speaker 1: that they may not be able to try in some
Speaker 1: of the other area areas of their work. So I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say it was becoming crowded, but it was becoming
Speaker 1: populated with a lot of different kinds of directors and
Speaker 1: so there was more choice for people. And also, don't
Speaker 1: forget at the time, because labels and management people were
Speaker 1: now understanding the power of the music video. They were thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: well this is a great song. Who can we go to?
Speaker 1: Does this guy that does this team? There's godling cream,
Speaker 1: there's so and so on the so and so and
Speaker 1: they had a number of show reels to look at,
Speaker 1: and they could then choose who they would like to
Speaker 1: make their film. And they could also go to more
Speaker 1: than one set of individuals and say, listen, guys, this
Speaker 1: is how much money. We have come up with an
Speaker 1: idea for this, and we will choose the winner to
Speaker 1: make the film. It was becoming exactly what you would
Speaker 1: expect a successful industry to become. So you made these
Speaker 1: videos with law How do you split up the responsibilities?
Speaker 1: What did he do? What did you do? We kind
Speaker 1: of both did everything, which was kind of messy sometimes,
Speaker 1: but it was I think everything we did in music
Speaker 1: video we approached pretty much the same way as we
Speaker 1: would if we were making a record or if we
Speaker 1: were writing a song. There was no the lines were
Speaker 1: blurred between the two of us um and it worked
Speaker 1: for a time, it worked really, really well. Um. It
Speaker 1: was only later towards the end of our relationship where
Speaker 1: we we both had different kinds of ideas that we
Speaker 1: wanted to do that it became a little bit of
Speaker 1: a problem. But the initial push, the initial few years
Speaker 1: during THEES was was extremely productive and extremely joyful. It
Speaker 1: was we had a blast. I have to tell you
Speaker 1: it was an absolute blast. When it ended with Lal
Speaker 1: was an un bad terms. Do you have any contact
Speaker 1: with him today? Not really. We've we've kind of we've
Speaker 1: grown apart, you know. It's it's I think I've been
Speaker 1: working longer without Lal than I was working with Law.
Speaker 1: It's so long ago. Um, we've drawn apart. I mean,
Speaker 1: all the members of the original band have kind of
Speaker 1: grown apart. It's funny, I think. You know, when you're
Speaker 1: young and you're a band and you're starting off together,
Speaker 1: there's a gang mentality. It's it's it's you against the world,
Speaker 1: and the most important thing in your lives is the band,
Speaker 1: the success of the band, and the quality of the
Speaker 1: music that you make, and that's all. That's all that counts.
Speaker 1: But gradually, as you grow into yourself, as you cannot
Speaker 1: come older, and you make new friends and you have
Speaker 1: new experiences, you developer, you develop as a person. And
Speaker 1: you know, that's what happened between me and Law. We
Speaker 1: became different people with different tastes, and it happens. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. Where did you grow up?
Speaker 1: I grew up in Manchester, outside Manchester, Um, I was
Speaker 1: a quiet lonely kid, didn't have many friends. The only
Speaker 1: thing that I could do well and enjoy doing was
Speaker 1: was drawing pencil sketching, and I used to do that
Speaker 1: whenever I could. I used to take a sketchbook, compencil
Speaker 1: and jump over the wall into Heaton Park, which was
Speaker 1: directly opposite to where we lived, and spend an afternoon
Speaker 1: sitting on a bench drawing um. And I think it
Speaker 1: was it was during that period that occasionally people would
Speaker 1: would wander over and have a look at what I
Speaker 1: was doing and say, that's really good, that's really really good,
Speaker 1: well done, congratulations, that's fantastic work. And in a bizarre way,
Speaker 1: that was my first audience. I suddenly I understood that
Speaker 1: people liked something that I was doing, and although they
Speaker 1: weren't applauding, they were saying nice things. So that was
Speaker 1: that was hugely significant to me. And what did your
Speaker 1: parents do for a living? And how many kids in
Speaker 1: the family just me um. My father had a number
Speaker 1: of shops in the center of Manchester. He was a
Speaker 1: shopkeeper and he sold He sold radios, tape recorders, records,
Speaker 1: camera equipment. He also sold telescopes and he also sold
Speaker 1: musical instruments all in different shops and camping equipment. Strangely enough,
Speaker 1: um so that the weird thing is, you know, he
Speaker 1: wanted me to go into the family business, of course,
Speaker 1: and I hated it. I used to help out at
Speaker 1: the shops on a Saturday behind the till, you know,
Speaker 1: try and demonstrate things. I was hopeless at that and
Speaker 1: you know, but looking back was really strange to me
Speaker 1: is even though I didn't want to go into the
Speaker 1: family business, all the things that he sold other than
Speaker 1: camping equipment areas that I ended up investigating and became
Speaker 1: becoming part of in my growd up careers, cameras, tape recorders, television,
Speaker 1: musical instruments. It's the strangest thing. What was it like
Speaker 1: being in the UK when the Beatles hit and all
Speaker 1: those means, and some of them were from Liverpool, not
Speaker 1: that far from me and Chester. What was the experience
Speaker 1: through your eyes? It was it was like being part
Speaker 1: of something important. I think that if you were a
Speaker 1: teenager before the Beatles came along, that I you were
Speaker 1: sort of playing a musical instrument or in any kind
Speaker 1: of band, nobody really took you very seriously. Um It
Speaker 1: only seemed to become significant once the Beatles have made
Speaker 1: an impact, and it then it was there was some
Speaker 1: strange cultural upheaval that took place. I remember leaping, you know,
Speaker 1: leaping a good few years forward. I remember I've been
Speaker 1: home for a weekend and I got a train back
Speaker 1: to to our college and Sergeant Pepper had just come out.
Speaker 1: And I walked into the Art College and every single
Speaker 1: department of the Art College had stopped work, and each
Speaker 1: department was playing a different track from the album, and
Speaker 1: the tutors weren't teaching anybody. They were pouring over the
Speaker 1: gayfold album sleeve. Everybody was marveling at this wonder that
Speaker 1: had come out of nowhere, and that was huge for me.
Speaker 1: It just changed everything. Um. You can imagine walking into
Speaker 1: this building and hearing all these tracks at the same time.
Speaker 1: It's like Revolution number nine coming out of the windows. Um.
Speaker 1: But that made a huge difference. And I was in
Speaker 1: the band while I was Art college, and we were
Speaker 1: doing gigs pretty much every every old turn at night.
Speaker 1: I get picked up at the end of a working
Speaker 1: day at college and go off in a van and
Speaker 1: do a gig, come back late at night, and then
Speaker 1: go to college the next day. So suddenly it's just
Speaker 1: being in a band. Wasn't just a buzz. It was
Speaker 1: a possible thing that could become something significant should you
Speaker 1: want it to be. So, so, how did you start
Speaker 1: playing musical instrument? Like many kids that era, people wanted
Speaker 1: to play music. Music was a big outlet then, before
Speaker 1: the Beatles, before anything, every wanted to play. Everybody wanted
Speaker 1: to play a guitar or something or other. I think
Speaker 1: it was like skateboards or video games or now. It
Speaker 1: was the thing. And it wasn't necessarily because you could
Speaker 1: make a career out of it. It was, you know,
Speaker 1: because it made you feel, made you look cool, you
Speaker 1: could meet girls, made you feel something, and it made
Speaker 1: you feel like you were doing something that was about you,
Speaker 1: and it was about your generation. Where it would go
Speaker 1: nobody really knew, but it was a way of stamping
Speaker 1: your identity on something. And I took up a guitar first.
Speaker 1: I had a half in the club fifty six dring
Speaker 1: guitar sy semi solid body, and I was terrible. I
Speaker 1: joined a group called Groups seventeen and played bass on
Speaker 1: a six string guitar very badly, and we used to
Speaker 1: do covers of a bank called the shadows who have
Speaker 1: used to back Cliff Richard in the UK. And we
Speaker 1: used to play things like old people's homes and private
Speaker 1: parties and whatever we could get. But there was we
Speaker 1: were terrible, but there was something amazing about the experience.
Speaker 1: And I I shifted to drums because um, my next
Speaker 1: door neighbor, my next door neighbors family were quite wealthy,
Speaker 1: had bought his name was Jeff, had brought him a
Speaker 1: drum set and sorry Jeff, but but he couldn't play it.
Speaker 1: And um, and I just I wanted to try playing
Speaker 1: his drums. And it took me ages to get him
Speaker 1: to allow me to sit down behind the kid. And
Speaker 1: I I had that sort of independent suspension thing that
Speaker 1: you need to play drums, you know. And I could
Speaker 1: sort of do the simple and do this now and
Speaker 1: the base drum and the high heart and hit things
Speaker 1: and reasonable ways. And that was incredible. It's something clicked
Speaker 1: and said, Wow, you didn't have to pose dancing and
Speaker 1: trying to play a guitar at the front of the band.
Speaker 1: You can sit back and be the engine room. And
Speaker 1: and then I remembered something that happened when I was
Speaker 1: a child, probably about nine or ten years old. We
Speaker 1: used to have music lessons at school, and a music
Speaker 1: lesson consisted of a teacher coming in and putting a
Speaker 1: record on a record deck and asking you to listen
Speaker 1: to it, and they disappear for half an hour and
Speaker 1: you should come back and you'd have to talk about
Speaker 1: it and so whether you thought it was only good
Speaker 1: or not. And there were you know, a little oper
Speaker 1: writers in classical music, and you know, to a kid
Speaker 1: who's nine, in turns a bit boring. But one day
Speaker 1: she put on an Elvis track and I started hammering
Speaker 1: away on the school desk. And I have no idea why,
Speaker 1: and I have no idea where the hell that came from.
Speaker 1: But I was banging the school. That's like I would
Speaker 1: have drunk it. And I was thrown out the class
Speaker 1: and made to stand in the corridor for about half
Speaker 1: an hour. It was a punishment for the thing that
Speaker 1: i'd eventually did through me um. But I love playing
Speaker 1: the drums. That's how it began. Now you're in a
Speaker 1: band in art school, how do you end up becoming
Speaker 1: professional and starting to make records? Well that the band
Speaker 1: I was in our college was called the mocking Birds,
Speaker 1: and the mocking Birds had Graham Goldman as their leader.
Speaker 1: Graham was already rosively successful as a songwriter about that,
Speaker 1: and I was the drawer of the mocking Birds, and
Speaker 1: we actually recorded some of the tracks that went on
Speaker 1: to be big hits with other bands. We never had
Speaker 1: a hit. It was. It was really very, very strange.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't like I'd set out to be a
Speaker 1: professional musician. It was always something that was traveling parallel
Speaker 1: through what I was doing in order to become something professionally,
Speaker 1: and that at the time was being a graphic designer
Speaker 1: at our college. I was studying to be a professional
Speaker 1: graphic designer, but it was not in any way, shape
Speaker 1: or form as much upon as traveling around in the
Speaker 1: vam playing drums and bat and we'd spend when I
Speaker 1: say we asked myself in long Cream, we'd spend our
Speaker 1: weekends writing songs, recording them on to track tape recorder
Speaker 1: and dreaming about becoming a band. And I guess it
Speaker 1: kind of matured when Eric Stewart, who had now become
Speaker 1: the leader of a band called the mind Lenders, decided
Speaker 1: he wanted to set up a professional recording studio in Manchester,
Speaker 1: which at the time and looking back, was a ludicrous
Speaker 1: idea because the center of the recording industry in the
Speaker 1: UK is in London, but he wanted to do this
Speaker 1: in Manchester. He raises the money, found the building and
Speaker 1: they built a recording studio, small place, but with a
Speaker 1: good room, good control room. And because we moved into
Speaker 1: similar circles, we were asked to be myself in law.
Speaker 1: We were asked to be the two guys who came
Speaker 1: in that would allow him to test the equipment. And
Speaker 1: you know, I would sit there and hammer and wait
Speaker 1: at the drums. They multitracked the drums and I was
Speaker 1: sort of sit opposite me on the floor strumming away
Speaker 1: on something. And before we knew it, you know, during
Speaker 1: this testing period we've recorded something that sounded quite interesting.
Speaker 1: It turned out to be this thing called neanderthal Man
Speaker 1: um that we had to record again because once we've
Speaker 1: gone home during one of the test dates, someone white
Speaker 1: the date that we've been recording up and we had
Speaker 1: to start from scratch. But we learned something and we
Speaker 1: recorded this thing called Neanderthal Man that was a number
Speaker 1: two hit record in the UK. And it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, it just came out of just doing it
Speaker 1: as opposed to planning to do it, and usually that's
Speaker 1: the best way. And so how did it ultimately become tense?
Speaker 1: To you see, Hot Lights didn't last very long. We
Speaker 1: made an album, We did it all, but we made
Speaker 1: the fatal arab of not understanding how the business works.
Speaker 1: Nean litle Man was a very strange piece of music,
Speaker 1: if it even qualifies for being a piece of music.
Speaker 1: But the album, and it's interesting this because the album
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, we're going to make an album, and
Speaker 1: this is going to be real music. But of course,
Speaker 1: if if you're young and you're starting and you're making music,
Speaker 1: it's it's almost inevitable that you're going to be trying
Speaker 1: to sound like the people that you admire. And we
Speaker 1: would be subconsciously or consciously to a degree, trying to
Speaker 1: sound like the Beatles, or the Beach Boys, or Simon
Speaker 1: and Garfuncle, all the people that we admired. And it
Speaker 1: had nothing whatsoever to do with neanderthal Man. And so
Speaker 1: the album, although it was quite interesting, failed miserably. So
Speaker 1: we stopped and essentially Graham joined us at that point,
Speaker 1: as I recall, and we became producers and we became
Speaker 1: the house band at Strawberry Studios. We kind of forgot
Speaker 1: about being a group and we became the people who
Speaker 1: produced other people um and played as a band for
Speaker 1: other people. And we did that for a few years,
Speaker 1: doing a lot of interesting and mad stuff, anything from
Speaker 1: football clubs too football teams to ventraliquus and and god
Speaker 1: knows what. I think the best thing we did was
Speaker 1: an album by a strange couple called Rama Sys that
Speaker 1: was called Space Hymns. It's it's a cult album, and
Speaker 1: that taught taught us the hell of a lot. And
Speaker 1: then we did we produced and became the house bound
Speaker 1: for two albums by Neil Sadaka that were recorded at
Speaker 1: Strawberry Studios. And it was joined those sessions that Neil
Speaker 1: said to us, you know, you guys are great. You
Speaker 1: should form a group. We've been, you know, we've been
Speaker 1: sort of lost in production runser so long that the
Speaker 1: idea had not appealed, and suddenly it became obvious that
Speaker 1: perhaps we should, and so we did. And so then
Speaker 1: how did you record the songs on the first album?
Speaker 1: And where those the only songs who record a hundred
Speaker 1: and end up with those? No, we never worked like
Speaker 1: that at all. We worked. I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of bands at the time worked in a
Speaker 1: very sort of practical way, but a very linear way.
Speaker 1: They would they'd write a bunch of songs, and they
Speaker 1: would lay the backing tracks down for all the songs,
Speaker 1: and then they would do the vocals for all the songs,
Speaker 1: and then they would do the overdubs for all the songs,
Speaker 1: and then they would start playing with it, mixing it
Speaker 1: the song and so forth. We didn't work like that.
Speaker 1: We we we started a song and we would finish it,
Speaker 1: and during the making of the track recording, we would
Speaker 1: make decisions about how the finished thing should sound, and
Speaker 1: we would finish that track, and then we would move
Speaker 1: on to the next track and again take it from
Speaker 1: A to Z and the next one from A to Z.
Speaker 1: I don't think many people weren't like that back in
Speaker 1: those days. But the first tense C album was done
Speaker 1: very very quickly. We had a couple of hits I
Speaker 1: think at that point at least one Donna, and we
Speaker 1: were being pressured to come up with something relatively quickly,
Speaker 1: and we had I think we had about three weeks
Speaker 1: to record, to write and record everything, so we just
Speaker 1: went in the studio and just did it without a
Speaker 1: great deal of planning and without a great deal of thought,
Speaker 1: and thank goodness, we did it that way because everything
Speaker 1: was Everything was done instinctively, intuitively. There was no none
Speaker 1: of this, well, we want this to sound like the Beatles,
Speaker 1: we want this to sound like this. We just did it.
Speaker 1: We wrote it, we recorded it. We didn't even think
Speaker 1: about it. And what occurred during the making of that
Speaker 1: album was a sudden realization that we don't sound like
Speaker 1: anybody else. We did have an individuality and an approach
Speaker 1: that didn't seem to be like anybody else at all,
Speaker 1: and that was because we were free enough to to
Speaker 1: do the whole goal, through the whole process, without referencing anybody.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what songs were cut first for that album? Well,
Speaker 1: I think the one that was a hit. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it was out yet. It was probably Rubber Bullets,
Speaker 1: which was quite an uptem person Okay, So rubber Bullets,
Speaker 1: you know, sounded almost like a Parity Beach Boys song.
Speaker 1: How did you guys come up with that sound in
Speaker 1: that song? Well, it's a lot of strange things going
Speaker 1: on in there. I mean that there's a lot of
Speaker 1: guitar work is is recorded with the tape being played
Speaker 1: the half speed, so it finishes up being double speed,
Speaker 1: and lots of things like that. You know, it's crazy,
Speaker 1: did it's insane, And so at that particular time, we
Speaker 1: we we had nothing to lose, We'd had a hit,
Speaker 1: We had nothing to do is we didn't know that
Speaker 1: that was going to be another record, another track, another single,
Speaker 1: So we were just trying stuff that sounded interesting because
Speaker 1: we could. If you remember, we're not down south in
Speaker 1: the middle of London where the label can pop by
Speaker 1: in ten minutes and check everything is sort of going smoothly.
Speaker 1: We were up north, you know, a couple of hundred
Speaker 1: miles away, so no one was going to drop into check.
Speaker 1: So we were pretty much our own man. So we
Speaker 1: were experimenting to which agree with everything, and the stuff
Speaker 1: we were writing was kind of bizarre. But the way
Speaker 1: each of us worked, our taste buds seemed to balance
Speaker 1: each other extremely well. Long and I were the art experimenters,
Speaker 1: and Graham and Eric with the classic songwriters for one
Speaker 1: of a better description of the two teams, and the
Speaker 1: two balanced extremely well. And that's I don't know, that
Speaker 1: was the sound that was the approach that we had
Speaker 1: a we had a great time doing. It was very horrid,
Speaker 1: but the album was really interesting. The album is great,
Speaker 1: but it has a very distinct sense of humor. Where
Speaker 1: do you think that came from. You think that came
Speaker 1: from everybody being Jewish or you know, and having that irreverence. Well,
Speaker 1: we weren't Jewish. We were Jewish, you know, we were
Speaker 1: kind of okay, like everybody from our generator jewish raised
Speaker 1: that way. As far as a little guy in the sky,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Well, we were, I mean three of
Speaker 1: us were. Um, I think it was because it was
Speaker 1: just naturally who we were, and we kind of we
Speaker 1: weren't really we didn't buy into that thing where you know,
Speaker 1: you can't have humor recourse. That's just not cool man.
Speaker 1: You know, we kind of didn't buy into that. But
Speaker 1: we were more it was more than humor. It was satire.
Speaker 1: I think to a degree we were We were more
Speaker 1: like journalists some satirists. So we were straightforward songwriters. I
Speaker 1: think everything that we wrote that had an element of
Speaker 1: humor about it was kind of poking fun at something
Speaker 1: that was going on at the time. I think, Um, now,
Speaker 1: we didn't we weren't embarrassed about it at all. And
Speaker 1: how did you decide who's saying which song? We didn't
Speaker 1: we we we had a bizarre audition system. Once the
Speaker 1: backing track had been recorded, each one of us were
Speaker 1: going through the live room, stand in front of the
Speaker 1: mic an attempt to sing the song, and the others
Speaker 1: would hold up score cards, you know, and if you
Speaker 1: did it well, you could carry on, and if you
Speaker 1: failed miserably, they'd hold up a sign that said next,
Speaker 1: and then you'd come and the next guy, we're going,
Speaker 1: Graham would try it and if he was good, you know,
Speaker 1: he got a few minutes to try it. If he wasn't,
Speaker 1: next and so on and so forth. And it was
Speaker 1: very democratic. Really meant that the person who sang the
Speaker 1: song was the person who could sing the song the best. Okay.
Speaker 1: But even so, if you go back to that first album,
Speaker 1: you know it starts with a fan fear and it
Speaker 1: has ell this type stuff and do up type stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was really wild retro with a wink.
Speaker 1: And was that very conscious? I guess it must have been,
Speaker 1: because you know, if your form us into a track
Speaker 1: and you know what you're doing, if you're embarrassed by
Speaker 1: you start again. So I think, you know, like any
Speaker 1: any situation like that, you each member of the band
Speaker 1: is trying to impress all the other members of the band,
Speaker 1: and we're all trying to have a good time making
Speaker 1: this stuff, and we were trying to get an album done,
Speaker 1: so anything that we came up with we committed to tape. Luckily,
Speaker 1: most of the stuff that we committed to tape turned
Speaker 1: out quite well. We never did that thing where we'd
Speaker 1: write a hundred songs and record fifty arms and then
Speaker 1: choose the best twelve. We just wrote until we felt
Speaker 1: we had something interesting and recorded it. So there wasn't
Speaker 1: any There was never any fat. It was all. It
Speaker 1: was all slim down and it was all sinews, and
Speaker 1: it was all the stuff that we ended up with
Speaker 1: on the finished albums. And what was your role in
Speaker 1: the songwriting? I was a songwriter. I didn't I didn't
Speaker 1: have a role, even though I don't play an instrument.
Speaker 1: You know that the traditional way of writing in those
Speaker 1: days is you sit with somebody. In my case, mostly
Speaker 1: long he would be playing the guitar or a keyboard
Speaker 1: and we'd play and I'd sing, and at some point
Speaker 1: something would happen, a certain phrase would match with a
Speaker 1: certain set of chords that that felt like something, and
Speaker 1: then you would take that a bit further, and you
Speaker 1: play around, and then you go now, and then you
Speaker 1: start again. You did you kind of developed develop an
Speaker 1: instinct as to what what serves the song best. There's
Speaker 1: the point in any song if it's good, and you're
Speaker 1: always looking for the key. The key could be anything.
Speaker 1: It could be a hook, it could be a phrase,
Speaker 1: it could be the way a certain melody fits with
Speaker 1: a cord. It could even be a pause. But it
Speaker 1: tells you something about where that song has to go.
Speaker 1: And we're always looking for that. I think every songwriter
Speaker 1: is always looking for that. And it just you know,
Speaker 1: it was none of it felt precious to us. There
Speaker 1: was no sense of, oh, we better get this right.
Speaker 1: There was none of that because it was all such such,
Speaker 1: such a great time and such. We could have been Postman,
Speaker 1: but we weren't. We were lucky enough to be in
Speaker 1: a band. Okay, so you work with law on videos,
Speaker 1: you work with the three others intense se C and
Speaker 1: now you're working along own. What is the difference between
Speaker 1: working in collaboration and working alone? Um, well, there's nobody
Speaker 1: else there to start with. Obviously you or should I say,
Speaker 1: I have found it. Well, probably the best example of
Speaker 1: working alone for me, and probably the most fundamentally satisfying
Speaker 1: saying I've done on my own was the project that
Speaker 1: I did for the BBC um and this was in gosh,
Speaker 1: this sign this, this was rather about that, or maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit later maybe I was asked by the
Speaker 1: BBC to come up with an idea four to celebrate
Speaker 1: two weeks of environmental concerned broadcasting on BBC two, and
Speaker 1: I have no idea where they came to me, but
Speaker 1: but but um. They originally wanted to put on a
Speaker 1: kind of live aid concert, and I I thought that
Speaker 1: was a terrible idea because live aide was such a
Speaker 1: huge phenomenon and so hugely successful. There was no way
Speaker 1: you could better that. There was no way you could
Speaker 1: duplicate that. So I had an alternative idea which I
Speaker 1: presented to them, which was which was called One World,
Speaker 1: One Voice. And the idea was, instead of having all
Speaker 1: these musicians in one place and filming them, we would
Speaker 1: start to assemble a piece of music in a part
Speaker 1: of the world, film it being made and take an
Speaker 1: audio and sound crew around the world to different cities,
Speaker 1: adding different musicians in those cities to this piece of music,
Speaker 1: so that piece of music would grow in scale and
Speaker 1: in length as we traveled. And I presented this to
Speaker 1: a group of broadcasters in Europe and they thought it
Speaker 1: was great. So we then had to make it happen.
Speaker 1: And if you consider the things that could possibly go
Speaker 1: around and the lack of technology that would allow us
Speaker 1: to do that the way we would do it today
Speaker 1: in the late nineties eighties, it's astonishing that we actually
Speaker 1: got it done. But we did. The music producer who
Speaker 1: was who was key to this working at all, um
Speaker 1: Oh rupert Heim, who I'm sad to say past a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. Um, but but what amne? What
Speaker 1: a what a great sense of enabling all these musicians
Speaker 1: to colless, to coalescing to one incredible piece of music. Um.
Speaker 1: And it was my job to filming taking place and
Speaker 1: my job to edit it. And that you know, I
Speaker 1: look back on a lot of the stuff I've done,
Speaker 1: and so much of it as used effects and techniques
Speaker 1: and this that mean that was pure, That was us
Speaker 1: filming stuff and using our imaginations with very little equipment.
Speaker 1: You know, minimal stuff, traveling, grabbing stuff while it was happening,
Speaker 1: and I look back as that being one of the
Speaker 1: things I'm most proud of. Another thing that I did
Speaker 1: was I was involved in UM the formation of an
Speaker 1: environmental pressure group called ARC, and I was involved, Chrissy
Speaker 1: High and Matthew Freud McCartney's were involved to a degree.
Speaker 1: A lot of interesting people were involved. And I made
Speaker 1: a film of a wonderful lady called French the UK
Speaker 1: Communion playing the part of Mother Earth. And again that
Speaker 1: was something that was done for love, it wasn't done
Speaker 1: for money. UM. So there's a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: I was kind of doing around about this period that
Speaker 1: brought things out of me that I didn't know that
Speaker 1: I could do, and began to form my own set
Speaker 1: of taste pots and musically, I guess that really started
Speaker 1: to come out when I recorded my solo album Muscle Memory. Uh.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing being about that album in terms of collaboration, UM,
Speaker 1: I put an as scout Um on a channel called
Speaker 1: Pledge Music, asking people to send me pieces of music
Speaker 1: that they thought that I could turn into songs. Okay,
Speaker 1: and I thought maybe I get a out twenty fifty
Speaker 1: or something. I got two d and eighty six pieces
Speaker 1: of music to choose from, which staggered me and it
Speaker 1: took a long time to go through them. But I
Speaker 1: ended up choosing twelve of these pieces of music and
Speaker 1: then writing melodies and lyrics for and once again that
Speaker 1: was that was a huge change for me. Again, it
Speaker 1: told me that I could do something that up to
Speaker 1: that point I never knew that I could because I
Speaker 1: was collaborating with people. It's just that they weren't there
Speaker 1: in the room and asking me to make them coffee. Right,
Speaker 1: So you work with Jonathan King. What's your experience with
Speaker 1: Jonathan King. Jonathan King was amazing. He was that. He
Speaker 1: was the guy that signed Fancy six. He was great.
Speaker 1: I mean he put our first two albums and allowed
Speaker 1: us to do what the hell we like pretty much.
Speaker 1: He had a very very very very succinct and commercial brain.
Speaker 1: He knew wish with the singles and he was great.
Speaker 1: He came up with the name of the band Um.
Speaker 1: He came down to hear I think must have been Donna,
Speaker 1: the first recording UM from London, and he told us
Speaker 1: that he had a dream the night before where he
Speaker 1: was standing outside the Hammersmith Audion and up in lights
Speaker 1: above the venue, it's appearing tonight for one night only,
Speaker 1: tensee C. And he said, that's that's who you guys are.
Speaker 1: We didn't have a name, you know, we were just
Speaker 1: still these production guys, and that's where that's where the
Speaker 1: name came from. Not that other story, which you probably know.
Speaker 1: So that other story has no truth to it whatsoever,
Speaker 1: none whatsoever. It's probably better after dinner conversation. I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to before dinner conversation. But but it's simply not true.
Speaker 1: And even if it was, it's pretty bad show for
Speaker 1: four guys. So literally, the dream just said tense C. Yeah,
Speaker 1: appearing for one night only tonight, Tennessee C. It's interesting
Speaker 1: that when we started to talk tour, when we started
Speaker 1: to tour America, we taured in the South and nobody
Speaker 1: understood what it meant, and we ended up in some
Speaker 1: venues being billed as the Tennessee Boys. Okay, I'm the
Speaker 1: second album. My favorite song is one that you're heavily
Speaker 1: involved with somewhere in Hollywood. Can you tell me about
Speaker 1: the com position and recording of that track. We were
Speaker 1: getting a bit more ambitious than the kind of songs
Speaker 1: that we like to write, and we wanted to write
Speaker 1: something that was longer, and we wanted to write something
Speaker 1: that didn't stick to the verse chorus, first chorus, middle
Speaker 1: eight fade um format, and we loll had the piano
Speaker 1: part and I started singing, and it took a while
Speaker 1: to write um and it felt like we'd moved forward
Speaker 1: to notch with that particular song. I'm I re recorded
Speaker 1: it recently, well, not that recently, probably about five or
Speaker 1: six years ago. I made a film of it for
Speaker 1: Graham Goldman and too, who tours his version of TENSC.
Speaker 1: But it's one of my favorite songs, one of the
Speaker 1: best songs I think we ever wrote for Tennessee C.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It just felt like something a great
Speaker 1: lead forward, if you like, in terms of our songwriting skills. Well,
Speaker 1: it was epic and it had a heaviness, but it
Speaker 1: also had humorous lyrics, like a dog up in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 1: It's crazy, yeah, and there's a sort there is a
Speaker 1: tap dancing section in the middle which is me banging
Speaker 1: shoes on the floor and all sorts of things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well it was but it was a joy. It was
Speaker 1: a difficult song to sing live, I should say. Now,
Speaker 1: supposedly on the next album you switched to Mercury and
Speaker 1: the original soundtrack I'm Not in Love. Supposedly you we
Speaker 1: had a lot of influence in the sound and the
Speaker 1: recording of that. Can you give me your perspective? Yeah,
Speaker 1: interestingly I'm Not in Love. We'd already recorded that song
Speaker 1: towards the beginning of the whole recording, the whole group
Speaker 1: of recording sessions for the album, and we've recorded it
Speaker 1: as a kind of cheesy Boston over and it just
Speaker 1: didn't work. It was like it was it was crap,
Speaker 1: and we knew it was crap, but we knew that
Speaker 1: the song had something, but we did not know how
Speaker 1: it should be done. So we kind of parked it.
Speaker 1: We put it on a shelf and carried on recording
Speaker 1: the other songs, and eventually we came back to it,
Speaker 1: and you know, we were sat around discussing how we
Speaker 1: should approach it, and I said, excuse me, out of desperation,
Speaker 1: probably more than anything else, why don't we do it
Speaker 1: all in voices? The whole thing in voices, like a
Speaker 1: tsunami of voices, A little bit like the sound that
Speaker 1: was in a lot of two thousand and one splace obviously,
Speaker 1: that kind of haunting, haunting vocus you know. Word, is
Speaker 1: that that was your idea? Is that true? Yeah? The
Speaker 1: technique wasn't necessarily my idea, but that the vision for it,
Speaker 1: the audio vision for it, was my idea. We don't
Speaker 1: have to figure out how we would do it, um.
Speaker 1: And what we were after was this sound that you know,
Speaker 1: if you're sing a note, you have to stop and breathe,
Speaker 1: and you don't want to hear that. So Loll came
Speaker 1: up with the idea of doing it as a set
Speaker 1: of complex loops um. And so we start to work
Speaker 1: doing this, and it took quite a while. We had
Speaker 1: to make a loop with all of us singing, multi tracked,
Speaker 1: mix it down, create a loop for every note of
Speaker 1: every recording the song, and then we had to transfer
Speaker 1: this onto the multi track tape record and then we
Speaker 1: would play the loops back using the faders on the
Speaker 1: recording console the way you would use the keys on
Speaker 1: a keyboard. And that was that was the technique. No
Speaker 1: one had done that before, and we'd already recorded a
Speaker 1: backing track for it, so and we never thought we'd
Speaker 1: end up using the backing track, but it all just
Speaker 1: began to fall together the way things do sometimes if
Speaker 1: you're lucky in a series of recording sessions, everything you
Speaker 1: had makes everything better, and this was just that. And again,
Speaker 1: like when we are um Rocket for Herbie Hancock, were
Speaker 1: listened back to what we've done, we thought. We didn't
Speaker 1: think they're going to fucking kill this time. We thought
Speaker 1: this is this is, this is very very good. But
Speaker 1: it's six minutes long. They're never going to play it.
Speaker 1: And so when we presented it to the label Low
Speaker 1: and Behold, they said, yeah, it's fabulous, but we're going
Speaker 1: to release Life as a Ministroli instead. And to this
Speaker 1: day I'm piste off because they released Bohemian Rhapsody. I
Speaker 1: don't think it was the same label, but whoever queen
Speaker 1: were Weirds had the balls to release something as daring
Speaker 1: as Bohemian Rhapsody, which again was the landmark in recording
Speaker 1: and stayed a number one for god knows how many millennia.
Speaker 1: So they should have had the balls to put this
Speaker 1: out first, but they didn't. But nevertheless, one it did
Speaker 1: come out, it was huge. What exactly was the gizmo?
Speaker 1: The gizmo. That's going back in time, um before tense
Speaker 1: Se existed, probably around about Hot Legs Beonderful man time.
Speaker 1: While we were doing the album, we wanted some string
Speaker 1: parts and some more chestral parts on some of the songs.
Speaker 1: And you know, there weren't money string players in Manchester
Speaker 1: at the time. There was the Halle Orchestra, who were
Speaker 1: very grand and very you know, sort of pop songs.
Speaker 1: We don't do that sort of thing, and they were
Speaker 1: expensive and they worked very strange hours. And therefore, and
Speaker 1: we didn't particularly like the sound of the malatrum. We
Speaker 1: wanted proper string sounds. So we thought, okay, a guitar
Speaker 1: is a string instrument. Is there a way of playing
Speaker 1: strings to get a sustain a bowing sound, to sustain
Speaker 1: bowing sound from this instrument instead of hiring a bunch
Speaker 1: of string players in an arranger, And so we messed around.
Speaker 1: We remember it was Lowe's fendless transit Custer and the
Speaker 1: first experiment was to to get an electric drill and
Speaker 1: put a robot eraser on the end of the drill
Speaker 1: and hold it against the strings. And it made an
Speaker 1: infernal racket. But for maybe about two seconds it said
Speaker 1: to us that this this might work. It sort of
Speaker 1: weren't you know it was going to be and there
Speaker 1: was something that that that that told us that this
Speaker 1: would work. We found our way to the engineering department
Speaker 1: of the College Courage of Science and Technology, I think,
Speaker 1: and a couple of guys who were prepared to build
Speaker 1: us a prototype based on this idea that might actually work. UM.
Speaker 1: Guy's name was John McConnell, lovely guy, and I forget
Speaker 1: the other guys now, I'm sorry about that. And they did.
Speaker 1: They built as the prototype that was used on any
Speaker 1: recordings that the gizmo featured on UM, including all of
Speaker 1: consequences UM. But at a certain point we were told
Speaker 1: that or he was. It was suggested to us that
Speaker 1: this becose it could become a commercial item. It could
Speaker 1: become an effect like an effects pedal that one could
Speaker 1: sell on the open market. So we went to America
Speaker 1: to meet somebody at a company called Music Tronics who
Speaker 1: actually produced the gizmo. Unfortunately, it the materials that were
Speaker 1: used to create the constant bowing sound weren't good enough
Speaker 1: UM for it to work consistently, and it would It
Speaker 1: was affected by waz by by temperature, by how it
Speaker 1: had been transported from one place to the other, and
Speaker 1: also not insignificantly by the fact you have to screw
Speaker 1: it to your guitar body. And it came out on
Speaker 1: the market just at the time when chute synthesizers were
Speaker 1: also coming out on the market and they were much
Speaker 1: more alloy. So the gizmo was The gizmo was like
Speaker 1: something Da Vinci might have actually created um and it
Speaker 1: didn't actually sell. It's become a bit of a cult.
Speaker 1: A number of different artists used it on their recordings,
Speaker 1: including Paul McCartney, including Susie and the Bandshoes, numerous people,
Speaker 1: but it never became a commercially successful device. Over the
Speaker 1: last maybe five years, a company in the States that
Speaker 1: started to produce them again in small quantities, so it
Speaker 1: might have its day again at some point that from
Speaker 1: the next year year it was said that you left
Speaker 1: Tennessee c To make an album with the gizmo. What
Speaker 1: really happened there and why did you leave Tennsee C.
Speaker 1: And had you end up making a triple album? Well,
Speaker 1: it wasn't initially, it wasn't meant to be a triple album. Initially.
Speaker 1: Initially the idea was we we'd invented this thing, and
Speaker 1: we didn't really get to use it an experiment with
Speaker 1: it and test its potential within the context of tennessee Ce.
Speaker 1: So we thought, you know, I think we know, we
Speaker 1: had a break from recording and touring, and we thought, well,
Speaker 1: let's book some time at Strawberry. Let's book ourselves enough
Speaker 1: for three weeks and see what we think and do,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what we did. And we had such
Speaker 1: a a great time doing that and making the kind
Speaker 1: of music that we hadn't even attempted to make before
Speaker 1: that we wanted to continue to do that. So the
Speaker 1: idea was our initial idea was okay, guys, that we're
Speaker 1: doing something that you know, we really think it's interesting
Speaker 1: and worthwhile. Just give us a little bit more time
Speaker 1: and we'll make our single album um and we'll put
Speaker 1: it out and then we'll come back, you know, to
Speaker 1: the group, and we'll carry on. But that we we
Speaker 1: were on a roll by the Intensity she was on
Speaker 1: a roll. And there, you know, we had a road crew,
Speaker 1: we had responsibilities. We we had to put a intensity
Speaker 1: c album out and and unfortunately it was one of
Speaker 1: those situations where it was we had to do one
Speaker 1: thing or the other We weren't really given a choice. Two,
Speaker 1: we weren't allowed to do it. Essentially, we weren't mature
Speaker 1: enough as a group of people to understand that, you know,
Speaker 1: in order to to grow as individuals as well as
Speaker 1: as a unit, we had to grow individually as well
Speaker 1: musically and then bring that back to the table for
Speaker 1: the bigger picture. That wasn't going to happen in this context. So,
Speaker 1: you know, we we we have numerous meetings about it,
Speaker 1: and we we were given an ultimatum, you know, we
Speaker 1: we have to do a tense C album instead, let's
Speaker 1: do let's let's do that. And uh so we paused
Speaker 1: and Eric and Graham had written a particular song. I
Speaker 1: forget which song it was. I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was The Things We Do for Love, but it was.
Speaker 1: It was a ballad like that, and we all sampled
Speaker 1: in studio and you know, with a view to listening
Speaker 1: to to what was what have been written and to
Speaker 1: think about starting a Tennesseec album. They played as a
Speaker 1: song and Lol and I looked at each other and
Speaker 1: we thought, oh god, we don't want to do this anymore.
Speaker 1: And and that was it. It was as simple as that.
Speaker 1: We just we found access to a way of working.
Speaker 1: There was thrilling us and really that's what TENSEEC we're
Speaker 1: all about. For the first three years or so, it
Speaker 1: was all about the thrill of doing it, not the success.
Speaker 1: The thrill of the four of us in the studio
Speaker 1: making music was what it was about, and that somehow
Speaker 1: got diluted. But we found it again and we wanted
Speaker 1: to continue doing that. Yes, and then Tennessee c which
Speaker 1: sounds different now. You can definitely hear the difference between
Speaker 1: the post You and Law albums sound different, and one
Speaker 1: can argue the albums are not as good, but their
Speaker 1: gigantic kits on that record. So how did you feel
Speaker 1: being on the outside of that. We didn't have a problem.
Speaker 1: Not we was thinking that ceased to become about hits. Um.
Speaker 1: It was never really about hits. I think the fact
Speaker 1: that Tennessee See had hits was a bonus. You know,
Speaker 1: we made stuff that we wanted to make and a
Speaker 1: hell of a lot of people like them. Wow, you
Speaker 1: know it's not the like um. But now we were
Speaker 1: were in a different frame of mind. We were we
Speaker 1: were artists. If you go back to that era, royalty
Speaker 1: rates were low, there were four people in the band.
Speaker 1: But the money can be in publishing. But there were
Speaker 1: multiple writers. Do you get any money from those songs?
Speaker 1: Have you sold the rights? What's the status of that?
Speaker 1: You're going You're going back a long way. We didn't
Speaker 1: even say think about money in those Well you know
Speaker 1: whether the money is coming into your account or not.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the money was coming into our account. But
Speaker 1: usually a song was written by two people, three people
Speaker 1: at most. There were never any songs tends to see
Speaker 1: songs particularly that we're written by four as far as
Speaker 1: I recall. So even though the royalty rate was small,
Speaker 1: it was you know, it kept us alive. I don't
Speaker 1: think we ever got really rich of it, but it
Speaker 1: kept us alive. Yeah, but how about today in are
Speaker 1: you still getting royalties? But there's a whole new element
Speaker 1: of the music business, as we well know, with people
Speaker 1: are Hypnosis and Sony and goodness who else who have
Speaker 1: created a new system whereby us, shall we say more
Speaker 1: mature artists can earn money sooner rather than later in
Speaker 1: drives and drabs. So yeah, that is that is very helpful.
Speaker 1: So did you make a deal with Hypnosis or one
Speaker 1: of it? To compare address I did, and did you
Speaker 1: go with hypnosis? Yeah? So hypnosis. So essentially they say
Speaker 1: you get it. I know, Mark said, you get a
Speaker 1: teen percent pay out whatever. So the money you got
Speaker 1: from Merk you live another twenty years, well invested. That
Speaker 1: money can cure you, or you gotta work for a living.
Speaker 1: I gotta work for them. And Jesus, I'm not Neil Young,
Speaker 1: I'm not Bob Dylan. I you know, let's just say
Speaker 1: it took the edge of and so it this lay date.
Speaker 1: What keeps you creating? I love it. That's what I do.
Speaker 1: I I wake up in the mornings and if I'm lucky,
Speaker 1: I've got an idea in my heading and it could
Speaker 1: be for a film. I've written two films to screenplays
Speaker 1: over the last few years, one with another guy. I'm
Speaker 1: one on my own, and one of my big things
Speaker 1: is to make these these two movies. Direct these two movies.
Speaker 1: I've also joined a group of humans. As I said,
Speaker 1: I've also joined the scene of the game company. I'm constantly,
Speaker 1: excuse me, pushing myself to keep working, not just to
Speaker 1: earn money, but because I love pushing myself into areas
Speaker 1: where I think I can do good work. I enjoy
Speaker 1: doing good work. Um. So there are a number of
Speaker 1: projects on the horizon, on number of self initiated projects
Speaker 1: that things that I would really like to do, um,
Speaker 1: that I'm pushing to get done. Two of which of
Speaker 1: these two film scripts, so unfortunately we were we were
Speaker 1: really close to going into pre production before COVID hit
Speaker 1: for one of the films, and that's sort of been
Speaker 1: on the back back burnus and I'm I'm sort of
Speaker 1: pushing to try and get that to the fore again. Um.
Speaker 1: The other is a low budget film about media in
Speaker 1: the twenty one century, which is a bit hardcore. So
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get that off the ground. But it's
Speaker 1: up here. It's up here that counts. It's it's keeping
Speaker 1: busy up there. You know, it's so easy not to
Speaker 1: let me just ask. You make an album like Muscle Memory,
Speaker 1: you put a lot of time, but the music business
Speaker 1: has changed and it's much harder to be heard than
Speaker 1: it was before. Does that make it harder to do it?
Speaker 1: Or just as long as you can get your idea down,
Speaker 1: you're happy. Yes. The latter. For me, it was about
Speaker 1: just getting the idea. It was about proving it, proving
Speaker 1: it to myself proving that I could actually do it
Speaker 1: and actually do something that wasn't just twenty minutes of fluff.
Speaker 1: It was you know, it had a little bit of
Speaker 1: weight to it. The lyrics were good, the tunes were good,
Speaker 1: the exercise was good. The whole process was was elevating
Speaker 1: for me. Um. I still had the mystery the match. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you still have things in the pipeline. But at
Speaker 1: this point, if you look back, what are you most
Speaker 1: proud of across the whole lifetime? Absolutely give me too,
Speaker 1: to Jesus, well, the album is one. Most of the
Speaker 1: memories one one world, One Voice is another that's too. Um,
Speaker 1: the first tand CC album maybe a three, and a
Speaker 1: number of different music videos if I can have a four,
Speaker 1: which is you know, I did a number of videos
Speaker 1: for you too, which I am very proud of. But
Speaker 1: possibly Rocket is the one that stands out head and
Speaker 1: shoulders above the other because of what I was saying before,
Speaker 1: because it was so bizarre and nobody knew what the
Speaker 1: it was and it did a huge amount a number
Speaker 1: of different levels. Okay, you mentioned that you that you
Speaker 1: would like to do a movie about media. So you
Speaker 1: grew up in an analyze world. We live in a
Speaker 1: digital internet world. You've seen both. What do you think
Speaker 1: about where we are today? It's complex, it's fascinating. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've had I disliked the idea of
Speaker 1: technology for technology's sake, and the thing I accepted and
Speaker 1: I use it um because it can give me things
Speaker 1: that analog could never give me. But then again there's
Speaker 1: a certain foolishness to it. And probably the best example
Speaker 1: of that is the original version of the video that
Speaker 1: we did for our Godlian Crimson Crime, for instance, was
Speaker 1: was edited in an analog function and the mixes going
Speaker 1: from one face to the other took place using what
Speaker 1: they used to call paddles, which was handheld stick that
Speaker 1: you moved from the top to the bottom and you
Speaker 1: could actually feel physically the mix taking place. That doesn't
Speaker 1: happen anymore. It's done by a lot of number crunching
Speaker 1: and you watch if it's not right, the numbers are
Speaker 1: crunched again. But there is now two things that has happened,
Speaker 1: one being the fact that one can lose a physical
Speaker 1: contact with the material you're playing with, and that applies
Speaker 1: to music as well. You know, you could be using
Speaker 1: the drum sample instead of playing the drums, which is fine,
Speaker 1: but there's a gap appearing between the result and the
Speaker 1: performance and the actual process of making something it um
Speaker 1: and the time it takes. I mean to use video
Speaker 1: editing as an example. The time it takes to do
Speaker 1: an edit of a music video has expanded. It usually
Speaker 1: takes me, say, at least three days to do something
Speaker 1: in digital mode that I used to be able to
Speaker 1: do in one. And that is because if you're editing
Speaker 1: digitally you can defer making final decisions for a long time.
Speaker 1: You can try a shot here, you can extend it,
Speaker 1: you can move it backwards, forward, slow it down, speed
Speaker 1: it up at color, remove color. You don't have to
Speaker 1: make a decision, whereas in the analog world a video,
Speaker 1: a video editing, you had to decide where you want
Speaker 1: things to be. You have to think, you have to
Speaker 1: use your instincts and you have to use your mind.
Speaker 1: Um And you did, and it still worked. What you've
Speaker 1: gained digitalist quality and the potential for trying lots of alternatives.
Speaker 1: But it does take longer, so you win and you lose.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is this is the world that
Speaker 1: we live in. So I have chosen too to use
Speaker 1: an American expression, to embrace it and take it as
Speaker 1: far as I can and use it to its best advantage. Well, Kevin,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for spending your time with us today
Speaker 1: and giving us insight into your long career. Really interesting,
Speaker 1: so thanks so much, pleasure and enjoyed it. Until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Barbie Offsets