Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, y'all, it's justin Richmond. Today on the show,
Speaker 1: we're talking to Stuart Murdoch and Stevie Jackson from the
Speaker 1: Scottish folk pop band Belle and Sebastian. The band formed
Speaker 1: in ninety six after meeting through a government funded class
Speaker 1: for unemployed musicians. It soon became a showcase for Stuart
Speaker 1: Murdoch's catchy melodies and witty stories about the everyday lives
Speaker 1: of Scottish bohemians. Inspired by the sounds of the sixties
Speaker 1: like the Beatles, Paul Simon, Burt Back Iraq. Their music
Speaker 1: has been described as perfect chamber pop music. On today's episode,
Speaker 1: Bruce Helm talks to Stewart and Stevie about writing and
Speaker 1: recording their latest and tenth album, A Bit of Previous.
Speaker 1: Stewart also talks about how getting sick at twenty one
Speaker 1: was a critical moment in the start of his music career.
Speaker 1: This is broken record Liner notes for the digital age.
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce album with Stuart and Stevie.
Speaker 1: You've got a new album coming out. Can you tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit about the making of this album?
Speaker 1: Because it was done during the pandemic. How did that
Speaker 1: affect how you did the album, Where you did the album,
Speaker 1: How did all that shake out. We had our bags
Speaker 1: packed for Los Angeles. We were ready to go, and
Speaker 1: this was back in the spring of twenty twenty. Of course,
Speaker 1: the pandemic happened. We were locked down. So for the
Speaker 1: first six months or so, we didn't do anything. Everybody
Speaker 1: was locked in, you know what it was like. By
Speaker 1: that time, we decided, you know what, this is going
Speaker 1: to take a while, So we gave up the idea
Speaker 1: of going to Lae. Chris the band, and also Brian,
Speaker 1: who's our engineer upstairs. We all decided to renovate the studio,
Speaker 1: turn the studio into a proper recording studio rather than
Speaker 1: just a rehearsal place, and we made extra rooms. We
Speaker 1: made little booths so that it could be safe, so
Speaker 1: that we could work safely in pandemic. Time to go
Speaker 1: a whole year for us to start recording with a Vengeance,
Speaker 1: because it was another surge in the pandemic. By that time.
Speaker 1: The song line up had changed, but that was quite nice.
Speaker 1: I'd written quite a few new songs and so we
Speaker 1: brought them in really in a raw state. The beauty
Speaker 1: part of that was that instead of preparing to go
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles and having everything written, we had more
Speaker 1: time and we could make it up as we went along.
Speaker 1: So how many songs did you have written for LA?
Speaker 1: It's kind of hard to say, Stevie. Do you remember
Speaker 1: the pool of songs we had for LA? No, it's
Speaker 1: too long ago. There's probably maybe a nebulous pool of
Speaker 1: about fifteen or twenty, but I think maybe probably ten
Speaker 1: of those got ditched along the way somewhere. Is that
Speaker 1: typical for you to go into an album with sort
Speaker 1: of that many songs ready to go? I think yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I think that's probably about the top number. And
Speaker 1: actually we've done records in Atlanta, we've done two in LA.
Speaker 1: We us try to record about seventeen or eighteen because
Speaker 1: they usually needed it, but also it makes a better
Speaker 1: album if you've got songs to choose from. You know,
Speaker 1: things ended up very differently. Like I said, we kind
Speaker 1: of left a lot of songs. A lot of the
Speaker 1: songs went off the boil and didn't seem to appealing anymore,
Speaker 1: and then new ideas sprang up, and because we were
Speaker 1: hands on, between the band and Brian, we were producing
Speaker 1: ourselves we could invent new techniques and new ways of
Speaker 1: working and go back to our roots all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. So I'm interested. Tell me which songs on
Speaker 1: the album now are the new songs the songs you
Speaker 1: developed after you initially thought you were going to be
Speaker 1: recording in La Sure, so the first song young and Stupid,
Speaker 1: and then I think if they're shooting at you might
Speaker 1: have been a German, but the words came along later on,
Speaker 1: and then certainly profits on Hold that just came up
Speaker 1: on a day in the studio and was talked to
Speaker 1: me quite a late one as well, Stevie. Can you
Speaker 1: remember I can't remember? That was a tune that Sarah
Speaker 1: and and what about your own tune? That was quite
Speaker 1: a late edition as well. Yes, yes, yes, which was
Speaker 1: called Deathbed of My Dreams. That's a beautiful song, by
Speaker 1: the way, Oh thank you. That was doing the process
Speaker 1: of being here. I think it end up being different
Speaker 1: than a traditional balance of Bastian album that Moore was
Speaker 1: worked out in the studio, as opposed to you coming
Speaker 1: and the writers saying here are the songs and choosing
Speaker 1: from those. I think we've been loosening up for a
Speaker 1: few years now. We recorded a bunch of EPs in
Speaker 1: Glasgow previous to this, and on that occasion that was
Speaker 1: almost like a dress rehearsal for this record. We were
Speaker 1: trying different approaches building songs up from scratch. We were
Speaker 1: meant to be working with Sean Everett in California, and
Speaker 1: we were very prepared to meet him halfway, and I
Speaker 1: think it would have been such a different record. We
Speaker 1: might have ended up writing to order. There's a songwriter,
Speaker 1: I'm affected by the environment find yourself in. I think
Speaker 1: we would have ended up writing songs, especially for his production.
Speaker 1: You were such a prolific songwriter and the band is
Speaker 1: so productive. Was this the longest hiatus you'd had away
Speaker 1: from songwriting during your career. I wouldn't say it was
Speaker 1: a hiatus away from songwriting at all, as far as
Speaker 1: I'm concerned. The longest gap that we had was around
Speaker 1: about two thousand and six to two thousand and ten
Speaker 1: or something like that. I went away to make a movie,
Speaker 1: but I was working on music and Stevie was working
Speaker 1: on music. He did a solo WELP, so everybody was
Speaker 1: still working. You know, A song I was interested in
Speaker 1: a lot was profits on hold and Nactually when I
Speaker 1: saw the title, I thought, well, is this pandemic related?
Speaker 1: Because of course everybody was on hold. That's an angle
Speaker 1: that I never thought about. It was just a song
Speaker 1: that popped up in the studio. But then again, you're
Speaker 1: taking everything, everything that's going on, and it percolates. Songs
Speaker 1: just come out, so it seems to be unre related
Speaker 1: to what is actually going on outside. Maybe in fact,
Speaker 1: the experience of Lockdown did infect affect this song the
Speaker 1: way it came out, But I'd never thought about that.
Speaker 1: And you play a few bars of it, Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a slight caveat here. What happens with my songs is
Speaker 1: that we construct the songs in the studio and the
Speaker 1: band comes in and colors in once we get into
Speaker 1: the production and we get into the song making I forget.
Speaker 1: I never have it under my fingers. I've never played
Speaker 1: this song from start to finish, you know, especially this one,
Speaker 1: So obviously we have to learn to play this song
Speaker 1: when we come to the concert. What I'm basically saying
Speaker 1: is that me and Stevie are just trying to learn
Speaker 1: how to play a few bars for you just today,
Speaker 1: so we don't actually know it, but well, we'll have
Speaker 1: a goal. Can I call you sometimes talk get out
Speaker 1: on the phone. We don't have to be loved first,
Speaker 1: We could be less alone. It's a rough, rocky road
Speaker 1: and it's gonna get steep. I just wanted your soft
Speaker 1: tone to allow me to sleep. And I sometimes confuse
Speaker 1: you fuck God or angel yo, just a person sometimes confused.
Speaker 1: I Gocklorian my mind a soft song once. Well, you
Speaker 1: guys are quick learners. That was terrific. We were kind
Speaker 1: of like, I'm looking at the chord sheets and for
Speaker 1: the listeners, that probably kind of replicates the idea of
Speaker 1: what happened when we brought the song in at first
Speaker 1: and we were just feeling the chords. Was that purely
Speaker 1: a musical idea you had and then added the lyrics
Speaker 1: or did the lyric come at the same time. More
Speaker 1: regularly for me, the words and the lyrics will come
Speaker 1: at the same time. It's sometimes it's not a strong
Speaker 1: urge to say something lyrically at first. It's more likely
Speaker 1: to be a musical idea, you know, and then immediately
Speaker 1: I'll try and cannot call you sometime. And you might
Speaker 1: even think that that would start off as a scratch
Speaker 1: lyric that you would replace later talk it out on
Speaker 1: the phone, but a bit quite often your first lyrics
Speaker 1: end up as the actual song itself. It's got a
Speaker 1: great rhythm on the record. It's got the same kind
Speaker 1: of bounce as the sound of Breaking Glass by Nick Lowe.
Speaker 1: If you know that song, Oh yeah, that's a great one.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, how does that one go? Stepe? I love
Speaker 1: the sound of Breaking Glass. You can learn his songs
Speaker 1: even faster. That's amazing. And because I love the title
Speaker 1: so much, Profits on Hold. I mean, are you sitting
Speaker 1: around somewhere you've got a notebook and you think of
Speaker 1: the phrase profits on hold? Or are you on the
Speaker 1: phone and you just write it down thinking I'm going
Speaker 1: to use that at some point? When did that occur?
Speaker 1: I take note of titles and then sometimes they lie
Speaker 1: for years and then they become songs later on. That
Speaker 1: was a case of that came out in the lyric
Speaker 1: that day, just as I was writing underneath your Thin Skin,
Speaker 1: we are profits and Hold, that occurred to me that
Speaker 1: that could be the title. I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: the source of the songwriting in the group. You know,
Speaker 1: you are one of the those bands that's not afraid
Speaker 1: to be witty. I don't mean sort of modern lee witty,
Speaker 1: but there is that kind of tradition in English Scottish,
Speaker 1: you know, songwriting. Morrissey is a good example, and I
Speaker 1: think he was an influence on you, almost that kind
Speaker 1: of nol Coward school of being kind of funny. Where
Speaker 1: does that come from in your background? It's sort of
Speaker 1: hard to say. I mean, I'm not sure it's a
Speaker 1: gift that we have for wet Maybe it's a gift
Speaker 1: that we have for honesty and not being afraid to
Speaker 1: leave it all out there. That is a progression from say,
Speaker 1: for instance, you know, the Beatles through the Smiths to
Speaker 1: us and to other bands that if you draw a line,
Speaker 1: I think the people, you know, songwriters are more inclined
Speaker 1: to be very honest and talk about their feelings, talk
Speaker 1: about what's on their mind, very conversational. Whereas you know,
Speaker 1: if you go back a little ways, songwriting was more
Speaker 1: rigorous and there was rules, and there was things that
Speaker 1: it would be cringy to say. At the time, when
Speaker 1: I started songwriting, I didn't have anything to lose and
Speaker 1: I wanted to tell the world how I felt from
Speaker 1: my position of pain and anguish. But sometimes the humor
Speaker 1: or being able to have a joke about it, and
Speaker 1: even if the joke is on yourself, can be refreshing,
Speaker 1: it can be liberating. But you're known for that level
Speaker 1: of kind of wit. You know, if you're feeling sinister,
Speaker 1: go and see a minister. There are a million examples
Speaker 1: in your music. Were you a particularly literary kid. Was
Speaker 1: there a lot of reading in your background. I did
Speaker 1: quite a lot of reading as a later youth. I
Speaker 1: did everything at the wrong time. When I was at
Speaker 1: university doing science, all I would be doing was reading
Speaker 1: English literature to the extent where the way that you
Speaker 1: speak actually changes. I don't know if Stevie ever felt
Speaker 1: that phenomenon, or yourself felt that phenomenon. I did go
Speaker 1: through a couple of years where I was reading Jane
Speaker 1: Austen and French authors, and the way that you actually
Speaker 1: talk you could tell that it was changing because you
Speaker 1: would be composing sentences the same way as these Victorian
Speaker 1: all arts. And so that that was a period a
Speaker 1: couple of years, and then I actually dropped out of university.
Speaker 1: I didn't do signs anymore. I got more interested in
Speaker 1: the art side. We're going to take a quick break here,
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back with more from Stuart and
Speaker 1: Stevie from balan Sebashtan. We're back with Bruce Adam's conversation
Speaker 1: with Stevie and Stuart. There's a couple of songs I
Speaker 1: want to ask about and then we'll dive into some background.
Speaker 1: If they're shooting at you, tell me a bit about
Speaker 1: the genesis of that song. I'm glad that you've asked
Speaker 1: me about this one. Let me just try and get
Speaker 1: the words of the song in front of me, and
Speaker 1: I hope you don't feel that's too feeble, not at all.
Speaker 1: So the funny thing about if they're shooting at you,
Speaker 1: although I said it before, it was a new song
Speaker 1: coming into this. I'd had the idea for the tune
Speaker 1: for a couple of years and I brought it into
Speaker 1: the studio pretty much the same day as Bob and
Speaker 1: the band. He brought in an idea, and this was
Speaker 1: during the time we were doing the EPs a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. So he played me this idea and said,
Speaker 1: could you come up with words for this? And I
Speaker 1: realized it had the same rhythm and vibe as the
Speaker 1: thing I was writing, and I thought, well, this is good.
Speaker 1: I like that that's interesting when that happens, because you
Speaker 1: can combine the two in such a way that sometimes
Speaker 1: something interesting comes from it. I find that the easiest
Speaker 1: way to combine two ideas they probably need to have
Speaker 1: the same rhythmic feel. You can always go from chord
Speaker 1: to chord and figure out a way. I ended up
Speaker 1: lending Bob's song a section of this song, and we
Speaker 1: wrote words and became a song called Poor Boy and
Speaker 1: as You was a single. But as we approached this LP,
Speaker 1: I had the idea for this song in my head.
Speaker 1: I still had the tune in my head. I felt
Speaker 1: it hadn't been fully exploited, so I wrote discreet words.
Speaker 1: I wrote separate words. I actually said to the and
Speaker 1: beforehand it if you don't think this is too lazy
Speaker 1: of me? Could this be a song? Could we try
Speaker 1: this song? So maybe, like if if there's Belcabacitian fan,
Speaker 1: you know, listening just now, they might be able to
Speaker 1: reference part of the song. Will we play you a
Speaker 1: verse or something from the would be great? One? Two?
Speaker 1: So huh said, do you? I'm not free? I got
Speaker 1: a mountain falling down on me, I got say the
Speaker 1: san I've got down all the beeple one, a scream
Speaker 1: and shout. I'm so tired. I'm always on money and
Speaker 1: I'm called it's always januine worry in this huh and
Speaker 1: on this streets. It's so great. I can't take it.
Speaker 1: What happened to like fun? You sweat to? What did
Speaker 1: you go okay? What would just think would just give
Speaker 1: you a little taste lovely? What was behind the feeling
Speaker 1: of that song, the lyrics of that song. It started
Speaker 1: off very personal and became more general. It was me
Speaker 1: looking out there at stories that were in the news.
Speaker 1: If you look at the news any day, there's stories
Speaker 1: about violent oppression, you know. Like I said, I started
Speaker 1: singing from my own the way that I was feeling,
Speaker 1: and then I started writing from the perspective of the
Speaker 1: things that were happening that I could see happening to
Speaker 1: other people. And sometimes things that are happening to you
Speaker 1: they're quite small compared to the things that are happening
Speaker 1: to other people. People are dying, people are being tortured,
Speaker 1: people are in prison. This is terrible, terrible things happening,
Speaker 1: And what do you do. I can't imagine facing those things,
Speaker 1: but I know and I've seen it. People have faith
Speaker 1: sometimes that's the only thing that can get them through it.
Speaker 1: I know faith isn't for everybody, but I've experienced faith.
Speaker 1: But also I've seen faith at work in other people,
Speaker 1: and I know that at that point of disaster, upon it,
Speaker 1: even death, that sometimes faith is the only thing that's
Speaker 1: going to do it. So that's the second half of
Speaker 1: the song. Really. Now, when you talk about faith, because
Speaker 1: you're a practicing Buddhist, you're also a Christian, do you
Speaker 1: mean religious faith in that sense or another kind of
Speaker 1: faith in the sense it's a religious faith. And although
Speaker 1: I am a Christian and would say not so much
Speaker 1: a practicing Buddhist, but obviously very interested in Buddhism. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't mean to be badantic. If you're practicing Buddhists,
Speaker 1: you go for refuge to Buddha. But I'm a Christians,
Speaker 1: I go for refuge to God. And so that's who
Speaker 1: I feel that I'm talking about in this that God
Speaker 1: is actually a voice in the song. Oh see, like
Speaker 1: many of your songs, it starts as a conversation. Something
Speaker 1: you're you announce, you're saying to another person. Is that
Speaker 1: what the two voices are in the song? What happens.
Speaker 1: It becomes the person that I was thinking about, the
Speaker 1: oppressed person and God, and God is saying, they might
Speaker 1: do terrible things to you, but I've got your back.
Speaker 1: This might mean that this experience goes beyond this life.
Speaker 1: And I know that that's maybe hard for some people
Speaker 1: to imagine or some people to take, but I feel
Speaker 1: like we have to look beyond, and you know in
Speaker 1: the song, God is getting this person's back. You talked
Speaker 1: about sort of seeing things in the world, particularly with
Speaker 1: this song that you know we're terrible things. It doesn't
Speaker 1: strike me as an angry song though. Malcolm and I
Speaker 1: just did a big project with Paul Simon, and I
Speaker 1: don't think it made the final cut of the project.
Speaker 1: But I do remember asking him if he ever wrote
Speaker 1: out of anger, and he said he did, but he
Speaker 1: works on the song until all the anger is gone.
Speaker 1: How do you see sort of anger in your songs?
Speaker 1: Do you see anger underlying this song? No, not so
Speaker 1: much this song, and it certainly, I mean to be
Speaker 1: honest with you, I've had to work on anger issues
Speaker 1: in my life. I think we all have. I think
Speaker 1: perhaps many of us mellow as we get older. We're
Speaker 1: constantly trying to become more patient, especially I've had kids,
Speaker 1: and having a kid or kids is a lesson in
Speaker 1: patient acceptance. You're working on your anger constantly when you
Speaker 1: have kids. So I had more issues and I was younger.
Speaker 1: Stevie would probably a test, and you know, things you
Speaker 1: get quite spiky in the band and an everyday life,
Speaker 1: and sometimes that would leak into some songs that I
Speaker 1: could think about. But in this case, I think the
Speaker 1: song is looking for a different solution. Even though terrible
Speaker 1: things are happening to people and anger seems to be
Speaker 1: sometimes seemed to be an appropriate response, I think I'm
Speaker 1: suggesting in the song there's another way. I do want
Speaker 1: to shift to Stevie, and I did want to ask
Speaker 1: you about Deathbed of My Dreams. It's got a lovely
Speaker 1: kind of country feel to it. Almost sounds like one
Speaker 1: of those old kind of Nashville kind of dreamy slide
Speaker 1: guitar songs. Can you tell me about that song? Well, sure,
Speaker 1: without getting sued. That's the first time I wrote a
Speaker 1: song in a specific way. There was a song in
Speaker 1: my head which already existed. I basically wrote my own
Speaker 1: words to someone else's song, and I've never done that
Speaker 1: before got the folk tradition or something, and then I
Speaker 1: changed the chords under it so that the melody changed.
Speaker 1: And now you can't tell that you know that it
Speaker 1: started off as another tune and I just changed it.
Speaker 1: But this way, it's like a sort of an a
Speaker 1: moral dilemma because I actually deliberately used another tune to
Speaker 1: express myself and then changed it. But maybe you could
Speaker 1: argue that's a kind of folk process. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: very common in folk and country music. I'm interested. It's
Speaker 1: got a beautiful, very distinctive sound on the record. Now,
Speaker 1: your albums are always full of different sounds. The song
Speaker 1: we just talked about, if They're Shooting at You, which
Speaker 1: we made sound fairly grim, actually sounds like it's like
Speaker 1: a great bird backrack song. Yeah, Deathbed of My Dreams
Speaker 1: has a very particular sound. Was it the sound of
Speaker 1: this other song that attracted you? A Stuart and his
Speaker 1: Songs and our producer Brian, you know, the aforementioned song
Speaker 1: If They're Shooting at You. I think they took a
Speaker 1: long time to get the rhythm of it, or you know,
Speaker 1: like they spend a lot of time in the studio
Speaker 1: getting it right. And I just don't have the patience
Speaker 1: for that kind of thing. I my kind of way
Speaker 1: of working is is that kind of audio verity thing.
Speaker 1: I just assemble the musicians, play them the song, and
Speaker 1: whatever will be will be, or would try and capture something,
Speaker 1: or you know, usually try and capture it fast. I
Speaker 1: think like with this song, I think it was in
Speaker 1: c and and I just said, look, just play whatever
Speaker 1: you want. I gave a couple of counters and didn't
Speaker 1: quite happen. Then we had a coffee break and as
Speaker 1: it us to it in the A and then it
Speaker 1: just kind of came together quite nicely and we got
Speaker 1: it in a few takes. That's certainly my memory of it.
Speaker 1: And then Brian and I overdubbed a steel guitar which
Speaker 1: they have played. The way it kind of came out,
Speaker 1: it did sound like that kind of Nashville nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: one kind of sound, so we kind of pushed it
Speaker 1: that way a little bit like a day or bass
Speaker 1: player he'd done that classic Nashville thing of he doubled
Speaker 1: his part with a Fender six guitar along with a
Speaker 1: kind of upright bass kind of feel. So has that
Speaker 1: kind of two basses playing which is about in Nashville
Speaker 1: kind of sound. It's a beautiful song. There are a
Speaker 1: couple of songs on this album. I think, maybe particularly
Speaker 1: the performance of Unnecessary Drama, that it felt like you
Speaker 1: were a band that was desperate to play live again.
Speaker 1: It just kind of had more aggression, more kind of
Speaker 1: a live kind of feel. Were you itching to get
Speaker 1: back out in front of a live audience when you
Speaker 1: were recording these I would say no, personally, no, no. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The key thing about this song is that this song
Speaker 1: is Bob's song. You know, Bob isn't here to tell
Speaker 1: his side of things, but Bob is. You know, he's
Speaker 1: very organized and he had a plan for this song.
Speaker 1: He had a sound. He has everything meticulously planned out.
Speaker 1: So this is very much his sound. When I I'm
Speaker 1: in the studio, I don't care whether I'm in Atlanta
Speaker 1: or Ellie or London. You're sort of in a womb.
Speaker 1: You're in a very safe place, and that's why it's
Speaker 1: a It's a wonderful place for songs to be born.
Speaker 1: I like studio stuff. I like a studio sound. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lushnessism. I like middle of the road sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies records. For me, it's complete yean and yang.
Speaker 1: But of course, as members of the band, we're all
Speaker 1: ready to support the person whose idea and whose song
Speaker 1: it is, so we're really happy to I mean, Stevie,
Speaker 1: did you suggest that harmonic or did Bob suggest that harmonica? No,
Speaker 1: it was Bob, yeah, and it was actually an overdub.
Speaker 1: I didn't record it with the band. Bob did all
Speaker 1: the guitars on it because he's you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: it's not like an add to It's like it's like
Speaker 1: a military campaign when he does one of these songs. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it's like it's also a thought out and you know,
Speaker 1: as a guitar player or nothing that I can add
Speaker 1: to us. I just leave him to it. But on
Speaker 1: the day, you know, as we'll come and play harmonica
Speaker 1: on it. And that's just what came out, which you
Speaker 1: said about the studio being a womb and not thinking
Speaker 1: about playing live. So I have to ask you if
Speaker 1: you watched the Beatles documentary Get Back. Oh sure, I did.
Speaker 1: I mean, like a had a three D party at
Speaker 1: my house. I had food and invited interested friends. One
Speaker 1: of the things that fascinated me about it was that
Speaker 1: they had been in the womb of the studio so long,
Speaker 1: and they sort of announced their intention to go play,
Speaker 1: and there was that just stress between just playing for
Speaker 1: themselves and making things up and knowing they had to
Speaker 1: get in front of an audience. Did that trigger any
Speaker 1: memories or any studio trauma of your own going through
Speaker 1: that stress? Now? Yeah, the transition from studio to live
Speaker 1: is so different. You have to relearn all the songs,
Speaker 1: you have to be prepared to get up there and
Speaker 1: face the music, face the audience, and it's such a
Speaker 1: different thing. And even today, I mean, you've kind of
Speaker 1: inspired us to get our finger out and get moving
Speaker 1: a little bit. And even having a rough play through
Speaker 1: some of these songs is built a bit of confidence
Speaker 1: for me because I'm thinking, no, that that tunes Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a tune that that we don't need to you
Speaker 1: don't need to hide behind studio trickery. It'll be okay.
Speaker 1: Could we maybe play a verse of unnecessary drama for you? Sure?
Speaker 1: Even though it's a hard hitting song, I think it's
Speaker 1: a nice pop song, you know, even when you strip
Speaker 1: it down. So so I've just added something that cursed
Speaker 1: to me that I like this one, because it's when
Speaker 1: someone else writes music for stuarts, it maybe puts them
Speaker 1: in a position which he would normally wouldn't find himselves in,
Speaker 1: you know, if he was, you know, writing for himself,
Speaker 1: which he does, instead of just having a feeling. I thought,
Speaker 1: where the word's going to be about. I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to tell a story. I'm gonna have to ride on
Speaker 1: the song. And I ended up kind of telling a
Speaker 1: story about my friend. Yeah, and I didn't play guitar
Speaker 1: on the record. I've played a monicas. I think I've
Speaker 1: just learned it. So here it goes okay, So one,
Speaker 1: two three, I read your letter from before. You've been
Speaker 1: having so much fun, and is it possiful? You're just
Speaker 1: telling me to drum me in. There's an array of
Speaker 1: douche bags landing up to play the stupid it pots.
Speaker 1: And did you ever pass before you gave your loveful way?
Speaker 1: This is my life, This is my soul cold life,
Speaker 1: this is my life, This is my owly life. And
Speaker 1: when you came to me that summer, you were just
Speaker 1: a shell and you were holding close to mother. She
Speaker 1: was ashing with the strange, and there was Master go
Speaker 1: yet Master built that sister loving bund and then I
Speaker 1: figured that the music set your soul place and us
Speaker 1: probably not surprising that ju funing through the day. And
Speaker 1: if I had a second uncoke, I would probably do
Speaker 1: the same. And if the intimacy I but stopped. So
Speaker 1: miss your stories, miss y'all. Let us every awkward fumble
Speaker 1: should be prayed. Okay, they're gonna be holding up their
Speaker 1: lighters for that one. That's gonna be a big, big
Speaker 1: concert pleasure. That was wonderful. Thank God, you're instilling us
Speaker 1: with confidence. I feel that's my job now. I didn't
Speaker 1: think it was going to be my job. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back with more from Bell and Sebastian. After a
Speaker 1: quick break, we're back with the rest of Bruce's conversation
Speaker 1: with Bell and Sebashtan. Here's the performance of their song
Speaker 1: Young and Stupid. Oh one, two, three four. I was
Speaker 1: yelling in my seat. I was crying, feeling weak. Do
Speaker 1: we have to feel this way? It wasn't like this yesterday.
Speaker 1: Everything it's behind when you're young and stupid. Everything's did
Speaker 1: behind when you're young and stupid. There's an easy start
Speaker 1: two things. There's a thrill that beauty bring two together
Speaker 1: at the hips, start together at the lips. Nature was
Speaker 1: the lea heat when you're young and stupid, nurture will
Speaker 1: and phat when you're young and stupid. I thought you
Speaker 1: could talk over this book. Let's just go into the
Speaker 1: last verse two three four. Now we're old with creaking bones,
Speaker 1: some with partner, some alone, some with kids, and some
Speaker 1: with dogs. Getting through the nightly slug flashes in the behind.
Speaker 1: We were young and stupid keeps us warm and nahi
Speaker 1: all a Young and stupid makes us feel de la high.
Speaker 1: We were young and stupid makes you feel with grayhead
Speaker 1: when you're young and stupid. That was fabulous. Well let
Speaker 1: me ask you now about the origins of that song.
Speaker 1: How did that come about? This was like prophets and hold.
Speaker 1: This was like a walk up song where it was
Speaker 1: kind of walking into the studio and I might have
Speaker 1: actually walken up with a tune of this and then
Speaker 1: sort of just tumbled out of Ben walked into the
Speaker 1: studio thinking about the tune, coming to the piano and
Speaker 1: just writing down the words. It was the quickest is
Speaker 1: definitely the quickest of all the of all the songs.
Speaker 1: Something that's to be noted about the session was because
Speaker 1: we were still in a form of lockdown. The band
Speaker 1: members with kids were on duty, you know, they couldn't
Speaker 1: do full days and they had to work around families.
Speaker 1: We were so lucky. We actually had a friend staying
Speaker 1: who was our pair, and so I got to come
Speaker 1: in every day because I've got kids. And so there
Speaker 1: was a couple of songs that we actually built up
Speaker 1: with drum machines, and young and Stupid was one of them.
Speaker 1: Profits on hold and mostly the first out of the record,
Speaker 1: but then Rachel would come and play over later and
Speaker 1: he would add his own inimitable groove to it. The
Speaker 1: lyrical idea for the song, you know, because you've written
Speaker 1: so many great songs about being young and being in
Speaker 1: school and being in those strange kind of in between
Speaker 1: times in your life, it's just kind of looking back
Speaker 1: now and thinking I was stupid the whole time, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of a good thing. I think it's a
Speaker 1: classic glory days song, and the song very much exists
Speaker 1: and was written from the present. I e I'm in
Speaker 1: this position now, I'm I'm in a dark spot and
Speaker 1: I'm looking back on glory days. Most of your glory days,
Speaker 1: you probably wouldn't really want to go back. But it's
Speaker 1: rose tinted spectacles, isn't it. And I had a cutoff point,
Speaker 1: which was probably about nineteen ninety when I started to
Speaker 1: wise up a little bit. But my glory days were
Speaker 1: from eighty five to ninety because I had these you
Speaker 1: know that, I was just you're running wild. It's so
Speaker 1: much energy, so much energy, but not having the wisdom
Speaker 1: really to know how to use that energy wisely. Most people,
Speaker 1: if they are in a hugely successful pop band, would
Speaker 1: say that their early days in the band were their
Speaker 1: glory days. Your glory days pre date being in a band. Well,
Speaker 1: I had a specific thing that happened to me was
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine ninety I got sick. Before that time,
Speaker 1: I was I had boundless energy, and then I got
Speaker 1: this thing called emmy chronic fatigue syndrome where my energy
Speaker 1: went off at cliff and it changed my life radically
Speaker 1: and forever. So it's easier to look beyond that point
Speaker 1: now when I when I think of just having that
Speaker 1: great energy. And you were how old when that struck you? So?
Speaker 1: So nine about twenty one, and so you dropped out
Speaker 1: of college at that point, dropped out of everything. I mean,
Speaker 1: I ended up in hospital. I ended up living back
Speaker 1: with my parents, which was, you know, talk about stepping
Speaker 1: back into the womb. Almost the first part of that
Speaker 1: was a lot of that just searching for the diagnosis,
Speaker 1: trying to find out what happened. I had a good
Speaker 1: year and a half when I was going downhill and
Speaker 1: I'd be seeing doctors and they already It was actually
Speaker 1: my mum that said, oh God, I hope it's not
Speaker 1: that Emmy, because she was a nurse and she knew
Speaker 1: people with emmy, and so she was the first person
Speaker 1: really to diagnose me. And so it turned out that
Speaker 1: that's what it was. And they didn't know much. They
Speaker 1: couldn't really help me. There wasn't There wasn't much they
Speaker 1: could do. Maybe the next six or seven years there
Speaker 1: was where I would call my wilderness years. I was
Speaker 1: splitting life up into and what were those years, like,
Speaker 1: what was your day? You know? When I was back
Speaker 1: staying with my folks. Do you know what a greenhouses?
Speaker 1: Do you call it a greenhouse in America? It's like
Speaker 1: a glass house. They had a glasshouse and that my
Speaker 1: dad had built, and for most of the year it
Speaker 1: was definitely the warmest place. So I used to go
Speaker 1: in there and sit with the you know, the tomato
Speaker 1: plants that he was growing, and try and just grow.
Speaker 1: I just I would sit in an old picture with
Speaker 1: my you know, with my reading for the week, and
Speaker 1: you know, I would vegetate in the morning and try
Speaker 1: and grow, grow like a baby tomato plant. And then
Speaker 1: in the afternoon. Man, this has taken me back, you know.
Speaker 1: It just shows you that the day was like cut
Speaker 1: into portions because you and I had so much energy.
Speaker 1: So in the afternoon I had a friend Michael, now
Speaker 1: Michael and had the same thing that I did. We
Speaker 1: became friends and we would just you know, we'd meet
Speaker 1: up and we'd play scrabble, or we'd we'd driver in
Speaker 1: the countryside. We'd try and get some nature, and later
Speaker 1: on we try to play tennis, you know, so we'd
Speaker 1: try to build up our energy. Did you despair that
Speaker 1: you would never recover? I think in the first couple
Speaker 1: of years there was a shock, and then there was
Speaker 1: a getting used to it. But what happened was that
Speaker 1: maybe about three years in I had been sort of
Speaker 1: going along the bottom. Nothing much has improved. I paid
Speaker 1: a lot to see a doctor and he just he
Speaker 1: said he was going to move you better. And he
Speaker 1: took me for six months and he was giving me
Speaker 1: all sorts of alternative therapies and medicines, and at the
Speaker 1: end of the six months he told me he couldn't
Speaker 1: help me anymore, and that was harsh. That was the
Speaker 1: point where I actually, you know, I had a bit
Speaker 1: of a breakdown. So things got pretty dark for a while.
Speaker 1: But actually, in a sense, it sort of shook me up.
Speaker 1: Something happened that I became almost like so desperate that
Speaker 1: I tried to change things. I really tried to see
Speaker 1: more people, to get out, to make more of a connection.
Speaker 1: Michael and I moved back to Glasgow. We were determined
Speaker 1: from that point onwards, we forced ourselves to do more.
Speaker 1: Was that coincidental with recovery or do you think that helped?
Speaker 1: That helped your recovery along. Another catalyst to that was
Speaker 1: around that time I was seeing I went to see
Speaker 1: a Christian healer and she was the opposite of the
Speaker 1: other medical person that I told you about. She promised
Speaker 1: nothing thing but actually gave a lot, and she charged
Speaker 1: nothing but gave a lot. She's amazing. It's just a
Speaker 1: woman who did it like an amateur in our own house.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have to describe myself fully as a Christian
Speaker 1: at that point. But she said, look, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: This is going to help you. So you know, she
Speaker 1: did her energy stuff. Can I ask you what was
Speaker 1: that that she did? Almost at hands on healing, except
Speaker 1: she to have her hands above me, and it would
Speaker 1: the whole thing would take about an hour of where
Speaker 1: she would just be going around and just she was
Speaker 1: obviously praying or focusing, and I would be thinking the
Speaker 1: same thing, and I it was a powerful experience, almost
Speaker 1: like the time went by really quickly, even though I
Speaker 1: was there for over an hour. And it wasn't until
Speaker 1: a few weeks afterwards that something broke and I felt
Speaker 1: that the healer had been part of the catalyst. Now,
Speaker 1: even if all this stuff was only going on in
Speaker 1: my mind, you can see how something like that could
Speaker 1: be a catalyst. You hadn't written songs before you were ill,
Speaker 1: is that right? That's right? Lit a bit of piano
Speaker 1: when you were young. I think you had piano lessons.
Speaker 1: How did the song start? By the time I'd gone
Speaker 1: to the heelert, I had actually started writing songs. So
Speaker 1: the songs started from this is me back at my parents' house,
Speaker 1: having got to the bottom of my health, just sitting
Speaker 1: at the piano. I remember very clearly writing what was
Speaker 1: to become my first song. I met a girl called
Speaker 1: Kira who was to become my best friend, and she
Speaker 1: also had Emmy, and I was thinking about her, and
Speaker 1: I just I felt like expressing something about her and
Speaker 1: to her, and I just I put my hands on
Speaker 1: the piano and started singing. And that was it. Could
Speaker 1: you play a few of those chords? Now? Do you
Speaker 1: remember what you played? Do you know? I never never
Speaker 1: imagined that we'd be and you don't have to tour
Speaker 1: with this song? Sure? And the song that the song
Speaker 1: has never been recorded, and the she's so young Da
Speaker 1: da da da da da da da da. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't remember the words. I might have them written
Speaker 1: down somewhere. There's a long time ago. That's all. Like,
Speaker 1: that's all I can remember. But kind of like that,
Speaker 1: that was that was enough, you know, to get going. Okay,
Speaker 1: how long was it before you wrote a song that
Speaker 1: became a recorded song. Yeah, that's a good question. When
Speaker 1: I realized that this was the thing, that maybe I
Speaker 1: could do this, that even as a hobby, I should
Speaker 1: try to. It made me feel good every song that
Speaker 1: I did. It took me a month. It was took
Speaker 1: me a month and a half. It took me a
Speaker 1: long time just to try and wrestle this. So I
Speaker 1: would say after maybe three years of that, the pace
Speaker 1: picked up, and I think it helped that I picked
Speaker 1: up a guitar as well, because it was easier. I
Speaker 1: would say it was maybe another three years before there
Speaker 1: was a song that appeared on a B and S record.
Speaker 1: It does sound a little almost miraculous, like the famous
Speaker 1: Oliver Sacks story about his patient who had a stroke
Speaker 1: and then woke up and just started composing music almost incessantly.
Speaker 1: Do you have this incredible gift for melody? You write
Speaker 1: melodies that sound like they should have been written hundreds
Speaker 1: of years ago, but you just thought of them for
Speaker 1: the first time, and they're very sophisticated. How do you
Speaker 1: account for that? That's an extremely nice way to put it.
Speaker 1: Another way to put it in Stevie, he quite often says,
Speaker 1: all your songs sound like something you know. That's the
Speaker 1: other side of the coin that even though they're coming
Speaker 1: out of you, that it's quite possibly you are bouncing
Speaker 1: around melodies that are deep down, you know inside you
Speaker 1: they've gone in when you were very young, and that
Speaker 1: you're you're borrowing little bits of pieces of those Though music,
Speaker 1: to generalize is miraculous, I think it is miraculous. I
Speaker 1: used to think so when I was young and I
Speaker 1: couldn't write a song, and I still I still think
Speaker 1: so today. It's the most abstract form of art. It's pulling,
Speaker 1: it's pulling magic out of thin air. What were you
Speaker 1: listening to at the time, What were their singers or
Speaker 1: were there songs that were inspiring what you were doing?
Speaker 1: Kind of Obviously that seven year period was a long period,
Speaker 1: and up to that point I was very current. I
Speaker 1: used to DJ a lot, so I'd be playing current records,
Speaker 1: and then, you know, once I got sick, I tended
Speaker 1: to fall back on older records and also explore the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies more, and also just be more honest
Speaker 1: about what I loved rather than you know, trying to
Speaker 1: be hip and cool. Just I'm what I love. Often
Speaker 1: was quite middle of the road pop music from my youth.
Speaker 1: Can you give me an example? Songs like you know
Speaker 1: the one that goes you walked into my life. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the next chord is, and now you're
Speaker 1: taken over and it's beautiful. Oh no, it's beautiful. I
Speaker 1: remember hearing that song on the radio around about that time,
Speaker 1: not having heard it for years and years, and just
Speaker 1: being a ghast, thinking, I know that song is wonderful,
Speaker 1: and I know maybe the guy next to me is
Speaker 1: ignoring it, or this guy thinks it's chewing gum. For
Speaker 1: the years, I think it's wonderful. You know. So you
Speaker 1: have kids, your fans have kids. Some of those kids
Speaker 1: have become fans. Where do you sort of place your
Speaker 1: own music in the in the kind of firmament that's
Speaker 1: an interesting question. Do you simply produce music because you
Speaker 1: have to him, because you love doing it and you're
Speaker 1: you're happy with just that process, or do you still ache,
Speaker 1: you know, to be a pop star, to be you know,
Speaker 1: every generation throws a you know, a singer up the
Speaker 1: pop chat, as Paul Simon wrote, because I think there
Speaker 1: is always that thing you forget that we're all ambitious
Speaker 1: little buggers. And all these people that you mentioned, and
Speaker 1: all your peers and the people, all the greats that
Speaker 1: came before you, most of them would be nothing if
Speaker 1: they didn't have a relationship with the public. Partly the
Speaker 1: reason we haven't made an album for so long. Quite frankly,
Speaker 1: it's because after we did the last one, it didn't
Speaker 1: feel worth it anymore. It didn't feel like anybody's listening,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe like some of our hardcore audience. So
Speaker 1: that's mean, being pretty honest with you, maybe that's not
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that folk want to hear. But
Speaker 1: if the music isn't connecting with people anymore, I would
Speaker 1: rather do something that really gets me going, you know.
Speaker 1: I'd rather go back and make another film, write a book,
Speaker 1: try something new. I'm a creative person. In the band
Speaker 1: is full of creative people. There's no there's no law
Speaker 1: that says band must do album tour album tour until death? Right?
Speaker 1: Was it just sales or downloads or you just didn't
Speaker 1: feel it was connecting somehow. I think maybe the last
Speaker 1: record connects so well, and that maybe it's just a
Speaker 1: general feeling. I mean, the band's been going for you know,
Speaker 1: at that point, the band had been going for some time.
Speaker 1: You know, people want the new thing. We'll see what
Speaker 1: happens with this record, Okay, Well, I hope great things
Speaker 1: happened with this record, because it's a great record and
Speaker 1: everybody should listen to it, and everybody should go out
Speaker 1: and clap along. When you play Unnecessary Drama live, you
Speaker 1: definitely delve down there. There's some things that I haven't
Speaker 1: thought about for years and years, So as therapists say,
Speaker 1: we'll pick that up again next time. Okay, thank you
Speaker 1: so much, Thanks Birth, Thanks the Bonds, the Bashion for
Speaker 1: talking to us about their latest album and about their career.
Speaker 1: You're more our favorite bones of Bashtian songs. Check out
Speaker 1: the playlist at Broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure
Speaker 1: to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com
Speaker 1: slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of
Speaker 1: our episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Records.
Speaker 1: Broken Record is produced a helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel,
Speaker 1: vent Holiday, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help
Speaker 1: from Nick chaff Our. Executive producer is Mia Lobell. Broken
Speaker 1: Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like
Speaker 1: this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus.
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content,
Speaker 1: an uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a month.
Speaker 1: Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts, subscriptions, and if
Speaker 1: you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and
Speaker 1: review us on your podcast app our, theme music, spect
Speaker 1: any beats. I'm justin Richmond.