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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.

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Speaker 1: My guest today is the one and only Richard Thompson. Richard,

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Speaker 1: you have a new album shipped to short Why that title?

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Speaker 2: Well, it seemed appropriate at the time. Let me think, Well,

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Speaker 2: I think in a sense, we're all a bit out

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Speaker 2: to see you know, you know, like musicians, songwriters and

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Speaker 2: and uh, we're kind of sending messages to land, like

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Speaker 2: a song as it is a kind of a little

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Speaker 2: a little message from far far out at sea. Uh.

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Speaker 2: I think as an artist, I think you always feel

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Speaker 2: like like you're on the edge of society. You you're not,

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Speaker 2: you're not kind of part of it, you're not in it.

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Speaker 2: So I suppose that's what that really means to me. Anyway, Well,

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Speaker 2: well tell me about feeling like you're on the edge

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Speaker 2: of society about it. I think if you're slightly removed,

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Speaker 2: if you're one of those people, you know, you go

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Speaker 2: to a party and and you spend more time watching

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Speaker 2: everybody else that than actually engaging that, then I think

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Speaker 2: you're kind of on the edge. But when you're on

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Speaker 2: the edge, you get the best of you, You get

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Speaker 2: a clearer view of everything. Just being that little bit.

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Speaker 1: Okay, So let's say I call you up and I say, Richard,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to a party. Are you going to say, okay,

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Speaker 1: pick me up. Are you going to say not interested?

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Speaker 2: I used to go to parties to pick up girls

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Speaker 2: and get drunk. Now I'm happily married and I don't drink.

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Speaker 2: Parties become more, you know, like dinner parties. I think

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Speaker 2: I love parties where you go and you sit around

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Speaker 2: and you have some dinner or something, and you have

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Speaker 2: really good intellectual conversations. I love intellectual conversation. That's my

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Speaker 2: favorite thing.

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Speaker 1: Well, let me just say that I invited you to

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Speaker 1: a dinner party and you don't know anybody. Is that

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Speaker 1: exciting or depressing?

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Speaker 2: It depends who it is, depends who's sitting at the table.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I've done that many times, and sometimes you

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Speaker 2: make friends for life, and sometimes you meet really interesting people. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: if it's a table containing you know, uh, you know

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Speaker 2: William Blake and Stevie Smith and Dmitriy Shostakovich and you know,

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Speaker 2: Michael Angelo, then I think that that could be an

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Speaker 2: interesting party, you know. And I wouldn't mind if I

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Speaker 2: didn't know anybody beforehand. I could find lots to talk about.

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Speaker 1: Well, I don't think we're going to be going to

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Speaker 1: that dinner party soon, but.

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Speaker 2: Perhaps in heaven, you know. See.

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Speaker 1: So just to be clear, you feel like you're on

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Speaker 1: the outside, but you don't have any social anxiety.

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Speaker 2: Social anxiety and not really No, I used to, but

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Speaker 2: I think I think I think I'm over it now. Actually, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: I think I'm fine.

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Speaker 1: Did you always feel like an outsider your whole life?

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Speaker 2: Most of my life? Yeah, an outside yeah, in some ways,

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Speaker 2: a bit of a stranger in some ways. You know,

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Speaker 2: I was a bit of a solitary kid, I suppose,

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Speaker 2: and I still enjoy my own company. I need some

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Speaker 2: alone time generally speaking. So yeah, I mean I think

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Speaker 2: I engage were well with people when I engage. But

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Speaker 2: there is always that the artist thing where you're always

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Speaker 2: thinking in terms of reflecting, in terms of reflecting reality,

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Speaker 2: reflecting society, and I think to do that you just

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Speaker 2: have to be that that little one degree removed, just

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Speaker 2: to give yourself some perspective.

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Speaker 1: So you need your alone time. What do you do

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Speaker 1: in your alone time?

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Speaker 2: What do I do?

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Speaker 1: Well?

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Speaker 2: I get creative whatever that means, you know, you know,

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Speaker 2: I play music. I think about music. I compose music,

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Speaker 2: I compose lyrics and I watched the football.

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Speaker 1: Well, is your alone time because you want to create

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Speaker 1: or you're sick of hanging with people?

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Speaker 2: No, I'm not sick of hanging with people. It just

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Speaker 2: feels like a need. If it's not daily, then it's

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Speaker 2: certainly weekly that I just have to get away and

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Speaker 2: create something. And that's an old human it's not a

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Speaker 2: human traits. Isn't it like a creativity? I think we

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Speaker 2: love to create something where we look for inspiration, you know,

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Speaker 2: So I'm just looking for inspiration, Okay.

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Speaker 1: I find my best inspiration comes when I'm not looking

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Speaker 1: for it, primarily in the shower. Is there a moment

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Speaker 1: or a place where you find that you tend to

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Speaker 1: get the best ideas well?

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Speaker 2: The shower is very good, so is the bath, you know,

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Speaker 2: the Turkish bath very good. That work for Rumy gelidin Rumy.

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Speaker 1: I think.

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Speaker 2: But as Picasso said, you know, the music will find you,

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Speaker 2: but but it wants to find you working. And I

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Speaker 2: think sometimes you kind of have to meet creativity halfway.

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Speaker 2: You can't just kind of let it come, or you

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Speaker 2: can wait for a long time and get very frustrated.

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Speaker 2: So I tend to kind of, you know, noodle at projects,

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Speaker 2: and then I find and at some point I get

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Speaker 2: in the right mental state to allow creativity in.

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Speaker 1: Okay, So this last album came, you know, essentially half

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Speaker 1: a decade after the previous album. You talked about working

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Speaker 1: to let the inspiration in. Was it that you decided

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Speaker 1: you were going to make another record or what is

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Speaker 1: that interim about.

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Speaker 2: I think the album process, unless you've got a deadline

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Speaker 2: that you have to, you know, grab, I think things

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Speaker 2: just accumulate. I think you accumulate enough material, and you think, well,

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Speaker 2: I've got I've got sixteen songs here. Surely out of

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Speaker 2: those sixteen, i've got twelve twelve good ones I can

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Speaker 2: put on a record, So let's book some studio time,

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Speaker 2: you know. I think it works like that. Really, COVID

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Speaker 2: gave me a lot more time to write, but obviously

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Speaker 2: I couldn't tour, So that was two and a half

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Speaker 2: years of not touring. But you know, I wrote a

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Speaker 2: couple of EPs. I wrote this album, I wrote the

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Speaker 2: next album. I wrote a musical play, I'm one way ahead,

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Speaker 2: I'm so far ahead, I can't believe it.

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Speaker 1: Okay. The last song on the album talks about needing

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Speaker 1: to go on the road to make the money to

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Speaker 1: make that whole work. So it didn't work for a

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Speaker 1: couple of years with COVID. Was that tough financially, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: really tough. You think, like a lot of musicians. I

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Speaker 1: had to had to dig into my pension. So many

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Speaker 1: people I knew did the same thing.

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Speaker 2: It was. It was tough, you know, on top of

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Speaker 2: an expensive divorce. But that was really tough. And I'm

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Speaker 2: still catching.

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Speaker 1: Up, okay. You know, you talk about an expensive divorce.

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Speaker 1: You get into the lyrics on this record and it

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Speaker 1: seems to be a divorce record, and then finding love

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Speaker 1: and it seems that, you know, you talk a lot.

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Speaker 1: The best song on me I'm for Me is trust,

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Speaker 1: and you talk about trust. How much is this reflective

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Speaker 1: of the relationship you were with and then you got divorced?

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Speaker 2: Probably nothing to do with that, really. I wrote the

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Speaker 2: song really about my wife, who's an adoptee, and adoptees

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Speaker 2: sometimes have a hard time trusting anybody, so so I

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Speaker 2: really write write it for her. I'm putting words in

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Speaker 2: her mouth. Frankly, It's an old trick, but I'll resort

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Speaker 2: to it if I have to and you know, she

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Speaker 2: has a hard time trusting people. She kind of trusts

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Speaker 2: me now after seven years fifty so that's an achievement.

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Speaker 1: So how'd you meet her?

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Speaker 2: I mean it backstage, classic friend of a friend, and

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Speaker 2: we're both from North London, both come from the same town,

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Speaker 2: you know, both come from the same background, share similar values,

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Speaker 2: and you know, just someone I have my I think

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Speaker 2: she's a wonderful person and she does do a lot

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Speaker 2: of work in the adopted your world, does a lot

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Speaker 2: of important work in that world, and I'm filled with admiration.

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Speaker 1: Did the new relationship have anything to do with the divorce?

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Speaker 2: You could say that I suppose. I think, you know,

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Speaker 2: I was married to my previous wife for you know,

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Speaker 2: thirty plus years, and I think at some point you

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Speaker 2: realize that that there's there's no life there. It's it's

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Speaker 2: a kind of a lifeless relationship and you're kind of

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Speaker 2: going through the motions. So yeah, well, without being too

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Speaker 2: specific about it, I should say that's true.

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Speaker 1: And your present wife has children. Are they still in

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Speaker 1: the home or are they outside the home?

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Speaker 2: Her children are now just about left that they were

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Speaker 2: in their twenties, so they're now independent. Yeah, my kids

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Speaker 2: are much older. I got five kids. My youngest is thirty,

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Speaker 2: so my oldest is fifty something, so might have long

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Speaker 2: flown the coop.

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Speaker 1: When you got involved with your present wife, you were

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Speaker 1: living with her. Were the kids still in the.

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Speaker 2: Home, Yeah, some so, some were somewhat.

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Speaker 1: So what was it like starting all over with the

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Speaker 1: kids in your home? I mean that must have been

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Speaker 1: you know, some people say they don't want to do

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Speaker 1: that anymore. Been there done that?

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Speaker 2: You know, I'm I think it was unfortunate that the

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Speaker 2: wee all got on very well. I mean I really

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Speaker 2: like us that Zarah's kids, so that they're great kids.

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Speaker 2: And you know, it wasn't like we were there all

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Speaker 2: the time. You know, sometimes I'm working. I was in

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Speaker 2: England some some of the time. She was in the States.

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Speaker 2: The kids went off to college at some point, so

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Speaker 2: it wasn't like we were, you know, under each other's

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Speaker 2: feet or anything. So just a nice relationships all round.

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Speaker 1: So you have five kids, A couple of them are

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Speaker 1: well known from your first wife. What are the other

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Speaker 1: three kids up do?

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Speaker 2: Let's see what my daughter came He is a musician,

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Speaker 2: My son Teddy's a musician, my son Jack's a musician

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Speaker 2: slash interior designer. My daughter Moona's basically a mother, she's

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Speaker 2: got five kids, and my son Jesse's kind of does

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Speaker 2: it stuff that I don't understand.

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Speaker 1: And are they all off the payroll?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? Pretty much? Yeah, thank thank God that they'll start

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Speaker 2: paying me at some point. I don't perhaps they'll support

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Speaker 2: me in the assisted living home.

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Speaker 1: And how much contact do you have with them?

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Speaker 2: My kids? Yeah, I'm pretty good, fairy frequent. I probably

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Speaker 2: see Teddy the most because when I'm in New Jersey,

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Speaker 2: he's in New York, so we're fairly close together. My

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Speaker 2: mother kids are all kind of around, you know, Southeast England,

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Speaker 2: so I'll see them all in the next couple of

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Speaker 2: weeks probably.

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Speaker 1: So how most of the time you're in New Jersey now.

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Speaker 2: It's about fifty to fifty I should say, yeah, between

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Speaker 2: London and New Jersey.

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Speaker 1: And with your previous wife, where were the locations.

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Speaker 2: Between London and Los Angeles?

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Speaker 1: And was it still fifty to fifty?

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Speaker 2: I say pretty much?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So you have a place in London.

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Speaker 2: I have a place in London from which I'm speaking

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Speaker 2: to you right now.

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Speaker 1: And how long have you had that place?

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Speaker 2: Oh golly, at least thirty years, probably thirty five years.

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Speaker 1: And when you're not there, is there somebody stays for you?

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Speaker 2: Well, where we have people look after it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So what's the difference to you living in

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Speaker 1: Los Angeles is supposed to living in New Jersey.

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Speaker 2: I love Los Angeles. I love California as a state.

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Speaker 2: It's a beautiful state and it's full of variety, and

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Speaker 2: in many ways it's easy living. I mean it's expensive living,

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Speaker 2: but it's kind of easy in so many ways. Compared

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Speaker 2: to Britain anyway, New Jersey for me is a lot

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Speaker 2: more convenient. I'm much closer for doing you know, Atlantic

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Speaker 2: backwards and forwards stuff. I'm twenty minutes from the airport

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Speaker 2: and yeah, it's it's a handy place to be. I know,

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Speaker 2: just in New Jersey. I just live it. Live at

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Speaker 2: a condo and I've got a studio in the basement

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Speaker 2: which is great, and some good friends and that's all

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Speaker 2: I need.

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Speaker 1: And what's the difference between living in the US and

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Speaker 1: living in the UK? I think.

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Speaker 2: What's the truth that I think? You know, Europe's older,

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Speaker 2: that's the main thing. The The socialist historian Eric Hobsbaum

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Speaker 2: said late in life he said that the best place

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Speaker 2: is to live a constitutional monarchies because they give you

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Speaker 2: the greatest chance of freedom. And I feel that really

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Speaker 2: about Britain's a kind of stability to bring and you know,

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Speaker 2: there's a security so that people there's a lot of

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Speaker 2: things people don't worry about. That the kind of accept

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Speaker 2: a certain continuum that Britain's been around for a couple

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Speaker 2: of thousand years and it will continue to be around

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Speaker 2: in the future. Well, with America, it feels much more unstable,

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Speaker 2: and it feels like so much more like it like

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Speaker 2: a new country and has all the insecurities of a

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Speaker 2: new country. And you know, right now politically America is

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Speaker 2: very divided. Although politics in Britain is pretty bad, it's

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Speaker 2: never at that level. So I'm concerned about about America,

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Speaker 2: about how divisive it's become, and it seems to be

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Speaker 2: really tearing itself apart, and perhaps it'll end up as

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Speaker 2: being a bit more fragmented than it is now.

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Speaker 1: When you say there's more freedom in a constitutional monarchy,

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Speaker 1: can you amplify that?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you think of the British royal family and you think,

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Speaker 2: you know that these are over privileged people. You know

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Speaker 2: that I mean, my god, you know what, we pay

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Speaker 2: them all this money and they dressed up in these

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Speaker 2: uniforms and they do these ceremonies, and is it all

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Speaker 2: really necessary? You know? I think, particularly if you're an American,

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Speaker 2: you could look at that and think it's ridiculous. But

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Speaker 2: I think in Britain, you think, you know, the Queen,

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Speaker 2: the King, you know, it is a kind of kind

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Speaker 2: of a continuity, and politicians come and go, and their

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Speaker 2: egos come and go, and their incompetence comes and goes.

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Speaker 2: But there's a kind of stability about the fact that

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Speaker 2: the Queen was there for like seventy years and you know,

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Speaker 2: went through god knows how many prime ministers. You know,

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Speaker 2: you have a fair price. The first prime Minister is

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Speaker 2: Winston Churchill. So you know, there's there's this very very accomplished,

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Speaker 2: very knowledgeable figurehead in the Queen for seventy years, and Charles,

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Speaker 2: I think also fills the same role. It's just a

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Speaker 2: sense of inheritance and continuity, and it means that there's

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Speaker 2: less emphasis on the politicians. I think in America sometimes

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Speaker 2: the politicians get treated almost like royalty. But you know,

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Speaker 2: mister President's you know, people kind of genuflector a bit

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Speaker 2: to just the office of president.

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Speaker 1: Okay, wait a second, we're in the US, so we're

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Speaker 1: one step removed. And we read about modern European history

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Speaker 1: when the kings and queens had all this power. But

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Speaker 1: to us the queen feels like a figurehead with no

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Speaker 1: political power. How do the people in the UK view

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Speaker 1: her or here now it's a king.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, the view is a good idea. The

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Speaker 2: kings and queens of Britain I have have not had

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Speaker 2: constitutional power for a long time, so that they've always

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Speaker 2: been figureheads. As I said, they say the Queen reigne,

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Speaker 2: she does not rule, but I should say now the

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Speaker 2: king reigns, he does not rule. So it's it's a

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Speaker 2: symbolic can continue them if you like, in theory that

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Speaker 2: the king can can dissolve parliament. He can say that's it,

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Speaker 2: you know, you're out, but he'll never do it. Like

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Speaker 2: a lot of things about British politics, a lot isn't

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Speaker 2: written down. It's just kind of tradition and and you

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Speaker 2: know a previous experience really so yeah, it's it's a

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Speaker 2: totally symbolic continuity. But but but it does take the

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Speaker 2: emphasis away from the politicians as themselves. And what about Brexit?

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Speaker 2: What about Brexit? Absolute mess, absolute mess. I'm a stupidity incompetence.

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Speaker 2: If you were going to leave the European Union, at

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Speaker 2: least have a plan, at least look at it thoroughly

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Speaker 2: and figure out what you're actually going to do. This was,

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Speaker 2: you know, the Conservative Party of Britain basically in fighting

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Speaker 2: and mister Cameron thinking well that the way I'll unite

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Speaker 2: the party is to have a referendum over Europe, which

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Speaker 2: is absolutely stupid. No one expected people to vote for

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Speaker 2: outs anyway, but they did. I had to. I had

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Speaker 2: to hold to that and it's a disaster. There's a

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Speaker 2: movement to rejoin the EU and I might be a

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Speaker 2: fan of that actually.

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Speaker 1: And we hear, you know, labor just got in. But

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Speaker 1: we hear that the NHS is underfunded. We hear that

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Speaker 1: immigration did not decrease, which was one of the big

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Speaker 1: points of Brexit. What's the status of the country today.

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Speaker 2: I think you just hit hit upon the two big

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Speaker 2: issues right now, which is immigration. But Britain does not

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Speaker 2: have a successful immigration policy and that they're gonna have

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Speaker 2: to deal with that. It's serious stuff. And the NHS

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Speaker 2: has been underfunded for years and years and years. The

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Speaker 2: problem is the medicine keyps becoming more and more expensive.

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Speaker 2: You know, to treat certain patients you need big expensive machines.

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Speaker 2: It costs a fortune and the NHS has not been

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Speaker 2: able to keep up. It's a brilliant idea, but it

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Speaker 2: just needs more funding.

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Speaker 1: And if you become ill, do you go to a

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Speaker 1: private doctor or the NHS?

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Speaker 2: What if I can afford, I'll go you a private doctor, okay,

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Speaker 2: or I'll get ill in America? Where where where I'm

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Speaker 2: on medicare?

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Speaker 1: So you grew up in notting Hill.

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Speaker 2: Briefly. Yeah, when we were five we moved to Highgate.

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Speaker 1: And for those of us you know geography challenge, where

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Speaker 1: is there?

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Speaker 2: Well, notting Hill is a few miles west of central London.

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Speaker 2: Highgate is about five miles north of central London and

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Speaker 2: it's kind of a leafy suburb or on the edge

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Speaker 2: of a leafy suburb. There's a big park called Hampster's Heath,

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Speaker 2: which is yeah, you can't build on it. It's like

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Speaker 2: too sandy to build on. So it survived in close

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Speaker 2: proximities London. And that's where I live now in London.

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Speaker 1: And what do your parents do for a living.

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Speaker 2: My mum was a housewife, my dad was a policeman.

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Speaker 1: So when marijuana and other things became a big deal,

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Speaker 1: and your father was a policeman, how did you square that?

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Speaker 2: Well, he said, probably in the seventies, you know, he

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Speaker 2: said to me. Oh yeah, people talking about marijuana all

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Speaker 2: the time. He said, Well, we used to call it

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Speaker 2: Indian hemp back in the day, and it's pretty talking

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Speaker 2: about the nineteen sixties or even the fifties, he said, yeah,

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Speaker 2: you know, well we used to confiscate some sometimes from

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Speaker 2: the West Indian immigrants, you know, and we'd have a

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Speaker 2: little smoke at the police station. And he said, it

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Speaker 2: didn't do much for me, he said.

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Speaker 1: And so how many kids in the family.

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Speaker 2: In Oh, my siblings just a sister. I have an

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Speaker 2: older sister.

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Speaker 1: And okay, you were born in forty nine. Did you

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Speaker 1: still feel the after effects of the war.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, London was pretty bombed, you know, during the war.

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Speaker 2: So as kids were we play on these bomb sites.

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Speaker 2: I mean, it's really dangerous and our parents didn't know

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Speaker 2: necessarily what we were doing, but you know, we play

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Speaker 2: in the broken glass and you know, thank thank god,

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Speaker 2: we never encountered an unexploded bomber or an incendiary or anything.

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Speaker 2: But you know what, we just you know what, it's

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Speaker 2: your childhood. You've got nothing else to compare it to.

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Speaker 2: So it just seemed fine, you know. And the street

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Speaker 2: we lived on was like all shrad or damage on

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Speaker 2: the buildings, and at the end of the street was

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Speaker 2: actually a bomb site. But that was just our child well,

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Speaker 2: we just had fun. We enjoyed it.

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Speaker 1: And when did the fog live? When did it go

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Speaker 1: from black and white to color? I think.

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Speaker 2: It probably took till sixty seven. I'm thinking, you know,

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Speaker 2: sixty three when the Beatles, Mary Korn's, you know, the

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Speaker 2: whole fashion and music thing. London became the center of

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Speaker 2: that whole world. I think it was still black and

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Speaker 2: white then, and I think sixty seven with sort of

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Speaker 2: psychedelia flower power, I think then suddenly it turned it

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Speaker 2: turned to color far as I remember, and you know,

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Speaker 2: the fifties was very gray as far as I remember

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Speaker 2: as a kid, that just seemed like the weather was great.

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Speaker 2: It's just seemed like the people's energy was kind of down.

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Speaker 2: But as kids were we just enjoyed it anyway. But

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Speaker 2: looking back, it did seem basically kind of post war

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Speaker 2: you know, poversy really And what was it like when

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Speaker 2: the Beatles hit exciting? Exciting? I think, well, you know,

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Speaker 2: even when I was I was like thirteen, fourteen years old,

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Speaker 2: it was very easy to get caught up in pop

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Speaker 2: culture because you had the radio, you had music on

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Speaker 2: the radio, you had some very good TV shows for teenagers.

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Speaker 2: And by the time I was fifteen, I was going

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Speaker 2: out to hear bands, going out to clubs, folk clubs,

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Speaker 2: rock clubs. I knew you had a lot of choice

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Speaker 2: in London. You had a huge variety of things that

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Speaker 2: you could go and see, so you kind of felt

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Speaker 2: you were at the epicenter really.

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Speaker 1: So from your house you could get the tube or

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Speaker 1: how would you actually get to these clubs? And how

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Speaker 1: long would it take?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you could take the tube or the bus. The

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Speaker 2: tube is very quick. I mean from my from our

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Speaker 2: house at that point, we could you could be in

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Speaker 2: town in like fifteen minutes, twenty minutes from the kind

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Speaker 2: of inner suburbs. Well, when my parents moved us to

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Speaker 2: the outer suburbs, it took it took about you know,

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Speaker 2: half an hour thirty five minutes.

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Speaker 1: So did your parents ever care that you went alone,

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Speaker 1: or they say, hey, go be your own person. I'd

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Speaker 1: always I'd always.

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Speaker 2: Deceived my parents really about what I was doing and

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Speaker 2: where I was going. So sometimes I missed the last

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Speaker 2: train home, so I'd have to walk home, which made

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Speaker 2: I'll be getting in at like one o'clock two in

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Speaker 2: the morning, and thank god, my parents were heavy sleepers,

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Speaker 2: and I kind of sneak in and they say, what

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Speaker 2: time did you get in last night? I said, oh,

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Speaker 2: you know, eleven, eleven thirty. I said, oh, okay, so

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Speaker 2: I did that for years. Okay, how good a.

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Speaker 1: Student were you?

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Speaker 2: Not very good?

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Speaker 1: And was there always music in the house?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, my parents were musical, you know, they weren't professional,

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Speaker 2: but my mom was a good singer and my father

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Speaker 2: was an amateur guitar player. So we have Let's Pool records,

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Speaker 2: Jago Reinhart records, lot Lonnie Johnson records from my father's

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Speaker 2: collection and from my sister's collection, who was five years

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Speaker 2: older than me. We had all the good rock and roll.

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Speaker 2: But so we had Buddy Holly, Elvis, Jean Vincent, Jerry Lee,

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Speaker 2: all the good rock and roll as well. So always

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Speaker 2: music in the house.

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Speaker 1: And when did you start to play an instrument.

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Speaker 2: My father brought home a guitar that was damaged when

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Speaker 2: I was ten, and he kind of glued it back

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Speaker 2: together again, and then I just picked it up and

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Speaker 2: started playing because it was something I wanted to do

427
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Speaker 2: for a long time. I've been asking my parents for

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Speaker 2: a guitar since I was five, So at ten, I

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Speaker 2: finally got one.

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Speaker 1: Why were you asking them at age five?

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Speaker 2: Rock and roll? You know? You know Elvis had a guitar,

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Speaker 2: but Buddy Holly had a guitar, and so, you know,

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Speaker 2: posing with a tennis racket in the in front of

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Speaker 2: the mirror. I had to suffice for a while, but

435
00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 2: then I was very glad to get my hands on

436
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 2: a real one.

437
00:28:18,320 --> 00:28:20,800
Speaker 1: So your father glued the guitar back together. Did you

438
00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:23,160
Speaker 1: ever take lessons? I did?

439
00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:25,399
Speaker 2: Yeah, I took classical lessons for a couple of years,

440
00:28:27,080 --> 00:28:30,200
Speaker 2: which was great. That really got my fingers working properly.

441
00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:33,359
Speaker 2: I'm very glad to this day, I'm very glad that

442
00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:33,760
Speaker 2: I did that.

443
00:28:34,840 --> 00:28:37,320
Speaker 1: And can you read music to this day?

444
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:42,640
Speaker 2: I can't. I can, Yeah, I'm not particularly good read.

445
00:28:42,680 --> 00:28:45,560
Speaker 2: I can write it fast than I can read it.

446
00:28:46,920 --> 00:28:49,200
Speaker 1: Okay, So if you're making a record, you ever write

447
00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:51,640
Speaker 1: down charts.

448
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:55,920
Speaker 2: Not usually, I mean sometimes we write you know, like

449
00:28:55,920 --> 00:29:00,000
Speaker 2: like you know, a Nashville style chart, you know where

450
00:29:00,360 --> 00:29:03,280
Speaker 2: you just you know, you have the bars and you

451
00:29:03,320 --> 00:29:05,080
Speaker 2: have the you know the one called the four called

452
00:29:05,120 --> 00:29:10,520
Speaker 2: the five chord get kind of shorthand charts. Really, if

453
00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:12,840
Speaker 2: I'm bringing musicians in like a string quartel or something

454
00:29:12,840 --> 00:29:16,320
Speaker 2: there that then I'll notate that properly.

455
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:20,600
Speaker 1: Okay, So you're playing in the guitar, At what point

456
00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:22,320
Speaker 1: do you start playing with other people?

457
00:29:24,320 --> 00:29:28,240
Speaker 2: Pretty quickly, as soon as I started, my friend who

458
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:33,120
Speaker 2: live around the corner started as well, so we took

459
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:35,480
Speaker 2: lessons together and I was like a week ahead of him,

460
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:38,400
Speaker 2: so I got to play lead and he played rhythm.

461
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:43,000
Speaker 1: And when did you start forming a band or start

462
00:29:43,080 --> 00:29:43,720
Speaker 1: playing out?

463
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:47,959
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, well, I think when I was twelve.

464
00:29:48,160 --> 00:29:52,479
Speaker 2: I think I was in a band, like an instrumental band.

465
00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:55,840
Speaker 2: And I think when I was thirteen or we did

466
00:29:55,880 --> 00:29:58,320
Speaker 2: our first show and that was also our last show

467
00:29:58,400 --> 00:30:03,480
Speaker 2: because it was it was so bad experience traumatic that

468
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:07,400
Speaker 2: we basically broke up at that point. And then I

469
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:10,640
Speaker 2: played with other kids at my school. I was in

470
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:12,800
Speaker 2: a band with Hugh Cornwell, who was in the Stranglers

471
00:30:15,240 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 2: that lasted a couple of years, and then I met

472
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:21,040
Speaker 2: the Fairport guys, probably when I was sixteen, started playing

473
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:22,040
Speaker 2: with them.

474
00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:25,520
Speaker 1: At what point in this story do you say this

475
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:27,440
Speaker 1: is going to be what I do for a living.

476
00:30:32,320 --> 00:30:35,880
Speaker 2: Almost at no point, really, you know, it wasn't a

477
00:30:35,920 --> 00:30:41,680
Speaker 2: career choice. If you see interviews with the Beatles in

478
00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:44,960
Speaker 2: ninely sixty four sixty five that they say, well, we'll

479
00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:47,680
Speaker 2: do this another couple of years and then we'll move over.

480
00:30:47,800 --> 00:30:51,200
Speaker 2: We'll just write for other people, you know, it wasn't

481
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:53,880
Speaker 2: a career choice. That there was no sense of longevity

482
00:30:54,920 --> 00:31:00,920
Speaker 2: being in popular music. So I think we thought we'd

483
00:31:00,960 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 2: do it for a couple of years. Really, I'm eighteen,

484
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:08,640
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty. At some point, I'm like twenty two, and

485
00:31:08,680 --> 00:31:11,360
Speaker 2: I'm still going. Twenty five, I'm still going, but I'm

486
00:31:11,360 --> 00:31:13,360
Speaker 2: still looking over my shoulder, and I'm still thinking that,

487
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 2: you know, this cannot last. And I'm thirty thirty five,

488
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:20,120
Speaker 2: you know, but I think I was forty when my

489
00:31:20,160 --> 00:31:22,680
Speaker 2: mother said, no, when are you going to get When

490
00:31:22,680 --> 00:31:24,440
Speaker 2: are you going to get a real job? You haven't really,

491
00:31:24,920 --> 00:31:26,760
Speaker 2: you know, what are you going to settle down and

492
00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:29,920
Speaker 2: stop this music nonsense? You know, this is this is

493
00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:31,600
Speaker 2: when she came to see me at the Royal Festival

494
00:31:31,640 --> 00:31:39,560
Speaker 2: Hall in London. So so I think in my nightmare,

495
00:31:39,560 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 2: so I'm still kind of looking over my shoulder thinking

496
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:45,320
Speaker 2: that this isn't a real job. What am I doing?

497
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:48,400
Speaker 2: At some point I've got to go back to university

498
00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 2: or something, you know, and do more study. I don't know.

499
00:31:52,720 --> 00:31:54,720
Speaker 1: Did things ever get tough in you how to get

500
00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:55,400
Speaker 1: a day job?

501
00:31:57,080 --> 00:32:01,920
Speaker 2: Not quite? Somehow I always managed to survive when I

502
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:08,200
Speaker 2: left school. I was a stained glass stained glass artist

503
00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:18,440
Speaker 2: for a year. What we did graphic design and stained glass,

504
00:32:19,320 --> 00:32:21,959
Speaker 2: and I worked at the Zoo for a while. But mostly,

505
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:25,120
Speaker 2: you know, I survived on music, and when I wasn't

506
00:32:25,120 --> 00:32:29,800
Speaker 2: in a band, I could survive on playing sessions, studio sessions.

507
00:32:30,560 --> 00:32:35,200
Speaker 1: Okay, So, for lack of a better term, Fairport and

508
00:32:35,280 --> 00:32:39,840
Speaker 1: those other racks were folk oriented. When you started in bands,

509
00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:41,920
Speaker 1: were you playing that music or were you playing more

510
00:32:42,080 --> 00:32:45,920
Speaker 1: rock and roll type stuff. I think.

511
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:50,520
Speaker 2: Growing up in London listening to a wide range of

512
00:32:50,640 --> 00:32:53,520
Speaker 2: music meant that I could play a wide range of music.

513
00:32:53,560 --> 00:32:55,720
Speaker 2: I could play folk music, I could play rock and roll,

514
00:32:55,720 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 2: I could play a bit of jazz, I could play classical,

515
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:02,880
Speaker 2: so I was kind of ready for anything, really, and

516
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:06,360
Speaker 2: when Fairport started, we really were a folk rock band

517
00:33:07,360 --> 00:33:11,120
Speaker 2: and I was happy to play that. That seemed to

518
00:33:11,280 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 2: me a great choice of music. And we love lyrics.

519
00:33:14,600 --> 00:33:16,640
Speaker 2: We were a real lyric band, so we would be

520
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:21,320
Speaker 2: covering you know, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, Jonny Mitchell.

521
00:33:22,120 --> 00:33:25,560
Speaker 2: We'd be covering songs by the great singer songwriters.

522
00:33:32,800 --> 00:33:36,160
Speaker 1: Okay, something that always fascinated me. We had a big

523
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:42,280
Speaker 1: folk movement late fifties early sixties in US, completely wiped

524
00:33:42,320 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 1: off the map by the Beatles, and then in the

525
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:50,880
Speaker 1: late sixties there was the folk era from England, Fairport Convention, Steele, iye,

526
00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:54,240
Speaker 1: span all these other acts. What caused that.

527
00:33:55,680 --> 00:34:04,400
Speaker 2: Becaused it? I think, well, you know, since the grammar phone,

528
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:07,480
Speaker 2: or maybe since like Stephen Foster, you know, a lot

529
00:34:07,480 --> 00:34:13,120
Speaker 2: of UK music has been imported, and you know, songs

530
00:34:13,120 --> 00:34:15,320
Speaker 2: like you know, Carolina Moon Keeps Shining that that you

531
00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:18,320
Speaker 2: know that these songs were kind of romantic and almost

532
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:22,040
Speaker 2: mythological to the Brits. It was like somewhere somewhere else

533
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:24,800
Speaker 2: you could go that in your mind at least, that

534
00:34:25,200 --> 00:34:30,120
Speaker 2: was a better place somehow, and you know, all through

535
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:36,240
Speaker 2: the jazz era, the swing era, music was more popular

536
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:38,719
Speaker 2: from the other side of the Atlantic, and I think

537
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:41,080
Speaker 2: when you have rock and roll that the same thing happened.

538
00:34:42,680 --> 00:34:45,799
Speaker 2: And I think even the British folk revival of the

539
00:34:45,840 --> 00:34:51,440
Speaker 2: fifties was sparked by people like Pete Seeger and the Weavers,

540
00:34:52,080 --> 00:34:56,040
Speaker 2: and it took till the fifties for people like you

541
00:34:56,080 --> 00:34:58,560
Speaker 2: and mccol and A. L. Lloyd to say, okay, well

542
00:34:58,600 --> 00:35:01,440
Speaker 2: we're gonna start out of folk club and you have

543
00:35:01,480 --> 00:35:04,440
Speaker 2: to sing songs from where you come from. You've got

544
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:06,480
Speaker 2: to sing British songs. If you're Scottish, you've got to

545
00:35:06,480 --> 00:35:13,360
Speaker 2: sing Scottish songs. If you're English, English songs. And that

546
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:19,279
Speaker 2: was a big change, you know, And for Fairport it

547
00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:21,160
Speaker 2: seemed to us a logical thing to do in the

548
00:35:21,200 --> 00:35:27,279
Speaker 2: sixties was to contemporize folk music, was to bring it

549
00:35:27,320 --> 00:35:32,280
Speaker 2: into the twentieth century by playing it on amplified instruments

550
00:35:32,280 --> 00:35:36,480
Speaker 2: and drums. So really that was that that revival which

551
00:35:36,480 --> 00:35:39,520
Speaker 2: started sort of sixty eight sixty nine fair Butt start

552
00:35:39,520 --> 00:35:45,160
Speaker 2: started playing traditional music as a rock band and still

553
00:35:45,200 --> 00:35:49,719
Speaker 2: I spam followed, other bands followed, but it took us

554
00:35:49,719 --> 00:35:52,040
Speaker 2: that long, I think to really shake off the American

555
00:35:52,080 --> 00:35:53,560
Speaker 2: shackles in some ways.

556
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:59,319
Speaker 1: Well there's also Britange and Pentangle. To what degree were

557
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:03,080
Speaker 1: you out in the forest alone or were there other

558
00:36:03,239 --> 00:36:06,440
Speaker 1: English bands pushing you forward and leading the way in

559
00:36:06,520 --> 00:36:07,520
Speaker 1: this type of music?

560
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 2: Not really, no, I mean I think we thought Pentangle

561
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:18,120
Speaker 2: were more of a kind of folk slash jazz fusion band,

562
00:36:18,280 --> 00:36:20,360
Speaker 2: if you like that, And we thought they were a

563
00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:23,360
Speaker 2: bit wimpy, you know that they didn't play particularly loud,

564
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:27,960
Speaker 2: so we weren't influenced by by them. I mean, I

565
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:30,839
Speaker 2: love but yanch as a player, and I've seen him

566
00:36:30,880 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 2: for years in folk clubs, and I love Danny Thompson,

567
00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:39,319
Speaker 2: but we didn't really pay much attention to Pentangle. You know,

568
00:36:39,640 --> 00:36:43,560
Speaker 2: all those guitar players David Graham, John Rambourn, Bert Yan

569
00:36:43,800 --> 00:36:47,880
Speaker 2: Martin Carthy. I saw a lot of in folk clubs

570
00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:52,000
Speaker 2: when I was a teenager, so I was strongly influenced

571
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:54,560
Speaker 2: by them at the time. And it was part of

572
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:58,080
Speaker 2: that mix, that that London mix of you know, being

573
00:36:58,120 --> 00:37:00,520
Speaker 2: able to hear all these different different things. You know,

574
00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:03,840
Speaker 2: they went in there with the Who and the Yardbirds

575
00:37:02,960 --> 00:37:06,680
Speaker 2: and anything else you could see in London at the time,

576
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:12,040
Speaker 2: you know, so it was really fair boss idea. It's

577
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:18,280
Speaker 2: idea to amplify and play traditional ballads.

578
00:37:18,880 --> 00:37:22,520
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. You're going to clubs. What acts

579
00:37:22,520 --> 00:37:28,080
Speaker 1: did you see rock clubs?

580
00:37:29,080 --> 00:37:31,120
Speaker 2: There was a great club called the Marquee Club, of course,

581
00:37:32,200 --> 00:37:35,720
Speaker 2: in Soho, which started out as a jazz club, started

582
00:37:35,719 --> 00:37:38,880
Speaker 2: by a guy called Chris Barber, and by about nineteen

583
00:37:38,960 --> 00:37:43,319
Speaker 2: sixty five you had The Who playing there as in

584
00:37:43,320 --> 00:37:45,880
Speaker 2: a residency, a little club like three hundred, three hundred

585
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:50,279
Speaker 2: people standing. Maybe you had the Yard Buds on Fridays

586
00:37:50,360 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 2: were there at Clapton then with Jeff Beck, then with

587
00:37:52,600 --> 00:37:55,920
Speaker 2: Jimmy Page lost the guitar players to go and watch

588
00:37:55,960 --> 00:38:01,120
Speaker 2: their Spencer Davis group with Steve Winwood would play there.

589
00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:06,719
Speaker 2: The Nice Who, kind of the the the precursor to

590
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:11,759
Speaker 2: Emerson Lincoln Palmer, lots of good music. I saw a

591
00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:16,239
Speaker 2: billboard for one particular week of nineteen sixty five, and

592
00:38:16,280 --> 00:38:19,600
Speaker 2: I realized that I'd seen three shows that week. And

593
00:38:19,680 --> 00:38:21,520
Speaker 2: I saw The Who on Tuesday, I saw the Yarbas

594
00:38:21,560 --> 00:38:25,320
Speaker 2: on Friday, I saw the Bill Evans Trio on Thursday.

595
00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:27,400
Speaker 2: I mean, well, what a week that was. That was

596
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:29,440
Speaker 2: just fantastic education.

597
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 1: Okay, when you saw these bands, all these bands went

598
00:38:32,680 --> 00:38:36,080
Speaker 1: on to be household names, and certainly and who live

599
00:38:36,120 --> 00:38:39,239
Speaker 1: at Leads they had the poster from the Marque when

600
00:38:39,239 --> 00:38:41,960
Speaker 1: you saw them at the Marquis. Did you think they

601
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:45,560
Speaker 1: would be as big as they would become? Were they

602
00:38:45,800 --> 00:38:47,200
Speaker 1: as good as they became?

603
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:53,640
Speaker 2: In some ways? I think when the who were writing

604
00:38:53,840 --> 00:39:00,759
Speaker 2: really great three minute pop songs before they became you know,

605
00:39:00,840 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 2: you know, like an arena band or a stadium band.

606
00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:05,840
Speaker 2: I think that they were just a great club band.

607
00:39:06,160 --> 00:39:08,399
Speaker 2: And you know that they had a lot of visual

608
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:12,440
Speaker 2: stuff that they had all that great pop art ideas

609
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:16,640
Speaker 2: you know from people like Peter Blake. So that was

610
00:39:16,760 --> 00:39:19,759
Speaker 2: very very exciting. And they played very loud and they

611
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:22,759
Speaker 2: would destroy their instruments on a regular basis, which is

612
00:39:22,840 --> 00:39:26,640
Speaker 2: quite exciting too. So you know, a very anarchic, very

613
00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:31,399
Speaker 2: very visual and as a fifteen sixteen year old, I mean,

614
00:39:31,640 --> 00:39:33,320
Speaker 2: just what you wanted to see really, you know, it

615
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:36,200
Speaker 2: was that kind of thing, you know, you know, the

616
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:39,080
Speaker 2: yard Bers were just a pretty good R and B band.

617
00:39:40,840 --> 00:39:44,280
Speaker 2: I think when we heard the real stuff from Chicago,

618
00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:48,239
Speaker 2: when we actually heard Howling Wolf Records, we raised that

619
00:39:48,320 --> 00:39:50,840
Speaker 2: Yelberds were actually a bit kind of wimpy, you know,

620
00:39:51,200 --> 00:39:55,560
Speaker 2: they didn't have that kind of testosterone, you know, the

621
00:39:55,640 --> 00:39:58,520
Speaker 2: running through the music that you heard on Muddy Waters

622
00:39:58,560 --> 00:40:03,640
Speaker 2: and records. But yeah, exciting stuff. And you can see

623
00:40:03,640 --> 00:40:05,920
Speaker 2: great jazz as well. In London, all the good jazz

624
00:40:05,960 --> 00:40:08,879
Speaker 2: came through and you can see great classical concerts as well.

625
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:13,879
Speaker 2: So it was a real small gas board of excitement there.

626
00:40:14,280 --> 00:40:15,839
Speaker 1: Did you ever see the Beatles live?

627
00:40:17,160 --> 00:40:21,080
Speaker 2: No? I never did. I probably wouldn't have been able

628
00:40:21,080 --> 00:40:23,920
Speaker 2: to hear them anyway. Reports say that you just couldn't

629
00:40:23,960 --> 00:40:26,880
Speaker 2: hear a thing, but it sure was exciting.

630
00:40:27,040 --> 00:40:28,080
Speaker 1: And what about the Stones?

631
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:32,640
Speaker 2: I saw the Stones quite early on. I didn't think

632
00:40:32,640 --> 00:40:35,520
Speaker 2: they were very good. Actually I still don't think they're

633
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:40,160
Speaker 2: very good, but I think live that they're not that interesting.

634
00:40:40,160 --> 00:40:43,360
Speaker 2: But they've made some great records. There's some absolutely definitive,

635
00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:48,240
Speaker 2: wonderful rock records that that you know, pretty much set

636
00:40:48,239 --> 00:40:54,480
Speaker 2: the standard for decades for other bands, which records what

637
00:40:54,600 --> 00:41:02,200
Speaker 2: the things least like you know, Street Fighting Man, Brown Sugar,

638
00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:06,560
Speaker 2: you know that generation of Stones records I think are

639
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:11,120
Speaker 2: really really great, fantastic records. They've got great grooves, great sounds,

640
00:41:12,239 --> 00:41:16,799
Speaker 2: and they just does everything that a rock band should do.

641
00:41:16,960 --> 00:41:20,880
Speaker 2: And you know the bands that followed, like Pearl Jamer

642
00:41:21,040 --> 00:41:23,640
Speaker 2: kind of in the shadow of what the Stones could

643
00:41:23,640 --> 00:41:25,000
Speaker 2: achieve in the seventies, I think.

644
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:30,239
Speaker 1: So in America started with the Beatles, and although the

645
00:41:30,400 --> 00:41:33,839
Speaker 1: Stones were an element, we got all what was called

646
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:37,440
Speaker 1: the British invasion, everything from Herman's Hermits to Freddie and

647
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:41,480
Speaker 1: the Dreamers. What degree did they have impact? Were you

648
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:43,320
Speaker 1: paying attention to them in the UK?

649
00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:47,759
Speaker 2: Well, in the UK it was just like saturation, you know,

650
00:41:49,040 --> 00:41:51,320
Speaker 2: especially the bands from the North, the bands from Liverpool

651
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:55,400
Speaker 2: and Manchester pretty much saturated that the charts for a

652
00:41:55,440 --> 00:41:57,960
Speaker 2: long time. You know. All we could offer from the

653
00:41:57,960 --> 00:42:02,080
Speaker 2: South was the Dave Clark five, which there made some

654
00:42:02,120 --> 00:42:04,200
Speaker 2: good records, but they were not a good band at all.

655
00:42:05,520 --> 00:42:10,040
Speaker 2: So you know, the Beatles, the Holly's, you know, the

656
00:42:10,120 --> 00:42:14,120
Speaker 2: Mersey Beats, the Big Three, the Escorts, you know, all

657
00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:19,560
Speaker 2: these Liverpool bands. We're actually pretty good and what we

658
00:42:19,719 --> 00:42:25,200
Speaker 2: really enjoyed them and tried to learn stuff from them,

659
00:42:25,200 --> 00:42:25,400
Speaker 2: you know.

660
00:42:26,040 --> 00:42:28,480
Speaker 1: So why did the innovation come from the North as

661
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:29,520
Speaker 1: opposed to the South?

662
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:35,640
Speaker 2: Good question, I think because Liverpool is a seaport, you

663
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:45,319
Speaker 2: had sailors, American sailors bringing over records and perhaps you know,

664
00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:49,320
Speaker 2: trading them in in in you know, in pawn shops

665
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:54,880
Speaker 2: and junk shops. So in Liverpool you could buy Motown

666
00:42:54,960 --> 00:42:58,040
Speaker 2: records at a time when when they were harder to

667
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:02,640
Speaker 2: find in London. And obviously you know that the Beatles,

668
00:43:02,640 --> 00:43:06,640
Speaker 2: for instance, started off doing some great covers. You know,

669
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:08,600
Speaker 2: you've got a hold on me things things like that,

670
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:13,080
Speaker 2: All these these great Motown and R and B records,

671
00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:16,360
Speaker 2: the well, we never heard in the South. You know,

672
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:19,080
Speaker 2: where we heard we heard chuck Berry and bow Didley,

673
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:21,080
Speaker 2: where we heard that kind of R and B stuff

674
00:43:21,080 --> 00:43:24,800
Speaker 2: from Chicago, but where we never heard we never heard Motown,

675
00:43:24,840 --> 00:43:27,399
Speaker 2: particularly until they started to tour in the UK.

676
00:43:28,280 --> 00:43:30,400
Speaker 1: And I have to ask before we move forward, what

677
00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:31,360
Speaker 1: about skiffle?

678
00:43:33,120 --> 00:43:41,480
Speaker 2: Skiffle? My god, yeah, interesting UK phenomenon. Why I asked myself,

679
00:43:41,520 --> 00:43:43,920
Speaker 2: why was this skiffle? Very strange thing?

680
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:45,040
Speaker 1: So?

681
00:43:45,400 --> 00:43:50,239
Speaker 2: I think because after World War Two kids didn't have

682
00:43:50,239 --> 00:43:52,239
Speaker 2: any money, you know that there was there were these

683
00:43:52,280 --> 00:43:57,000
Speaker 2: teenagers who were just impoverished. Things are still unrational, you know,

684
00:43:57,400 --> 00:43:59,360
Speaker 2: through the fifties, you know, you like couldn't get sweets,

685
00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:04,040
Speaker 2: you couldn't get butter. You know, it's crazy, and no

686
00:44:04,080 --> 00:44:06,680
Speaker 2: one could afford a real instruments and so people would

687
00:44:06,719 --> 00:44:08,920
Speaker 2: make homemade instruments there that they'd make, you know, the

688
00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:15,480
Speaker 2: washtub bass, sorry, the wash the washboard rhythm and then

689
00:44:15,520 --> 00:44:19,280
Speaker 2: the washtub bass, and if you can afford a guitar

690
00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:21,759
Speaker 2: or two that that would be good as well. And

691
00:44:22,960 --> 00:44:31,880
Speaker 2: they just played like led Belly songs, Wouldy Guthrie songs. Uh.

692
00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 2: There was a famous skiffle band run by Lonnie Donegan

693
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:39,840
Speaker 2: and he he had major hits in the UK. I

694
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:42,399
Speaker 2: think he recorded That's the Right Mama, like a week

695
00:44:42,480 --> 00:44:45,839
Speaker 2: after Elvis Presley or a week before Elvis Presley. So

696
00:44:45,840 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 2: so he nearly invented rock and roll, but not quite.

697
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:51,480
Speaker 2: But he was kind of the beginning of the skiffle

698
00:44:51,520 --> 00:44:56,240
Speaker 2: movement and and it just spread like wildfire through Britain.

699
00:44:56,239 --> 00:44:58,719
Speaker 2: But because it was homemade music, you could make the

700
00:44:58,719 --> 00:45:02,960
Speaker 2: instruments yourself, you know, the Beatles filmed the Quarrymen, you know,

701
00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:09,719
Speaker 2: John and Paul. Anyway, and I don't know how long

702
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:12,480
Speaker 2: it lasted a couple of years. Maybe it was just

703
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:15,759
Speaker 2: a strange British phenomenon. And then after that you had

704
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:19,760
Speaker 2: a traditional jazz boom in Britain as well. You're concurrent

705
00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:23,120
Speaker 2: with rock and roll. You had this revival of New

706
00:45:23,200 --> 00:45:27,279
Speaker 2: Orleans traditional jazz basically in the nineteen twenties. So you

707
00:45:27,320 --> 00:45:30,280
Speaker 2: had all these bands like like I could Builk playing

708
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:34,200
Speaker 2: trad jazz. And my sister, you know, used to used

709
00:45:34,200 --> 00:45:37,839
Speaker 2: to go and dance to traditional jazz. That was one

710
00:45:37,880 --> 00:45:41,960
Speaker 2: of her things. Concurrent with rock and roll. Very strange.

711
00:45:42,200 --> 00:45:44,400
Speaker 1: And let's go back to the clubs. You know, you

712
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:48,160
Speaker 1: talk about the yard Birds. They have clapped in, they

713
00:45:48,239 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 1: have Page, they have Beck. Of course, you have John Mayle,

714
00:45:52,880 --> 00:45:58,279
Speaker 1: you have Peter Green, Fleetwood Mac. To what degree did

715
00:45:58,320 --> 00:46:01,239
Speaker 1: not only you go to see these these guitarists, were

716
00:46:01,239 --> 00:46:02,719
Speaker 1: they influential to you?

717
00:46:07,200 --> 00:46:09,480
Speaker 2: Well, I learned how to copy those guys, and then

718
00:46:09,480 --> 00:46:11,440
Speaker 2: I kind of rejected it, and I thought that this

719
00:46:11,560 --> 00:46:15,400
Speaker 2: is an overcrowded world, the world of the the British

720
00:46:15,480 --> 00:46:18,440
Speaker 2: blues man, you know, the Peter Greens and the Eric Clapton's,

721
00:46:18,440 --> 00:46:21,120
Speaker 2: you know, and the Mick Taylor's, et cetera, et cetera,

722
00:46:21,160 --> 00:46:25,160
Speaker 2: et cetera. I just said, well, I'm going to play

723
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:27,360
Speaker 2: something different, you know, I'm not going to be like

724
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:32,040
Speaker 2: these guys. So when we started playing the traditional music,

725
00:46:32,280 --> 00:46:35,160
Speaker 2: that was much more of an influence for me, so

726
00:46:35,200 --> 00:46:37,920
Speaker 2: that I have more of a Celtic influence on on

727
00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:38,800
Speaker 2: my guitar playing.

728
00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:51,680
Speaker 1: Okay, you form Fairboard Convention. How long do you play

729
00:46:51,920 --> 00:46:54,400
Speaker 1: before you get hooked up with Joe Boyd?

730
00:46:56,600 --> 00:47:01,120
Speaker 2: Not very long, I think. I think I left school

731
00:47:01,160 --> 00:47:05,240
Speaker 2: in May sixty seven. We were playing around the clubs

732
00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:09,160
Speaker 2: that summer. I think it was something like September when

733
00:47:09,200 --> 00:47:13,080
Speaker 2: we hooked up with Joe. Joe discovered us, Haha, as

734
00:47:13,120 --> 00:47:17,400
Speaker 2: they say, so just a few months really, which is

735
00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:19,960
Speaker 2: extraordinary in so many ways.

736
00:47:20,640 --> 00:47:22,880
Speaker 1: Well, you know a lot of bands in the US

737
00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:24,799
Speaker 1: they formed and they said, oh, we got to get

738
00:47:24,840 --> 00:47:29,040
Speaker 1: a record deal. Was that in Fairport Convention's mind? Or

739
00:47:29,080 --> 00:47:31,160
Speaker 1: did Joe Boyd find you and then you got a

740
00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:31,759
Speaker 1: record deal.

741
00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:36,920
Speaker 2: We weren't thinking about a record deal at all. We

742
00:47:37,000 --> 00:47:40,640
Speaker 2: just thought we're thrilled to be playing anywhere, to be

743
00:47:40,640 --> 00:47:44,239
Speaker 2: playing music, and to actually be an opening act for

744
00:47:44,640 --> 00:47:46,360
Speaker 2: people like the Pink Floyd. I mean that was just

745
00:47:46,640 --> 00:47:50,840
Speaker 2: staggering to us. They're just amazing. So Joe offering to

746
00:47:50,880 --> 00:47:58,440
Speaker 2: record us felt amazing and we were very very excited.

747
00:47:59,280 --> 00:48:03,680
Speaker 2: So how did Joe actually find you. Joe ran a

748
00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:08,000
Speaker 2: club called the UFO Club in London. I think it

749
00:48:08,040 --> 00:48:10,360
Speaker 2: was only one day a week. It was most of

750
00:48:10,360 --> 00:48:13,480
Speaker 2: the time it was an Irish club, and on the

751
00:48:13,520 --> 00:48:18,759
Speaker 2: weekends it suddenly became uh, you know, light shows and

752
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:22,239
Speaker 2: hippies and all that stuff. And we were opening for

753
00:48:22,280 --> 00:48:24,600
Speaker 2: the Pink Floyd and Joe came to the dressing room

754
00:48:24,600 --> 00:48:29,200
Speaker 2: and said, I really enjoyed what you guys played. Let's

755
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:32,520
Speaker 2: make a record. It was it was some cliched you know,

756
00:48:33,320 --> 00:48:33,839
Speaker 2: and we did.

757
00:48:33,960 --> 00:48:36,480
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, you know, you make a record, you have

758
00:48:36,560 --> 00:48:39,720
Speaker 1: to sign a deal. It involves money. To what degree

759
00:48:39,719 --> 00:48:40,799
Speaker 1: were you conscious of that?

760
00:48:42,080 --> 00:48:46,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, Joe had a relationship at that point with

761
00:48:51,239 --> 00:48:57,240
Speaker 2: the Who's managers kittlee em Bird and Yeah, Lamberton Stanley, Yeah,

762
00:48:57,280 --> 00:49:03,600
Speaker 2: and they had all so Joe just said, let's do

763
00:49:03,680 --> 00:49:07,480
Speaker 2: a record for those guys, and we did. We just

764
00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:10,920
Speaker 2: did a single for those guys, and then after the single,

765
00:49:11,000 --> 00:49:13,800
Speaker 2: what we kind of looked around a bit wider and

766
00:49:15,320 --> 00:49:19,320
Speaker 2: we did the next record on PolyGram and then really

767
00:49:19,920 --> 00:49:24,759
Speaker 2: we jumped to the label everybody really wanted to be on,

768
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:28,319
Speaker 2: which was Island Records at that time, which was you know,

769
00:49:28,440 --> 00:49:30,680
Speaker 2: the label that that was the place to be, a

770
00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:34,720
Speaker 2: really good, well run independent record label.

771
00:49:35,120 --> 00:49:39,680
Speaker 1: And in retrospect, how good a producer was Joe Boyd.

772
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:45,399
Speaker 2: I think he was a very good producer. I would

773
00:49:45,440 --> 00:49:47,680
Speaker 2: have to put him in the context of working with

774
00:49:47,760 --> 00:49:50,719
Speaker 2: John Wood as an engineer. John Wood was a great engineer,

775
00:49:51,520 --> 00:49:53,439
Speaker 2: and the combination of the two of them I think

776
00:49:53,920 --> 00:49:59,880
Speaker 2: was excellent and led to great results. And Fairport Records act.

777
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:01,880
Speaker 2: I think the first record doesn't sound particularly good, but

778
00:50:02,120 --> 00:50:06,600
Speaker 2: from the second record onwards, the records sound really good.

779
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:09,319
Speaker 2: You know, Sandy Denny records sound really good. Nick drect

780
00:50:09,400 --> 00:50:14,040
Speaker 2: records sound really good. So whatever that was, whatever that

781
00:50:14,040 --> 00:50:19,880
Speaker 2: that team produced in that particular room, the soundt ning

782
00:50:19,960 --> 00:50:23,200
Speaker 2: studio was a great studio. The mixing desk was a

783
00:50:23,200 --> 00:50:25,880
Speaker 2: great mixing desk. You know, all these things contribute to

784
00:50:25,880 --> 00:50:28,640
Speaker 2: to the to the sound of those records, and it's

785
00:50:28,680 --> 00:50:31,839
Speaker 2: all analog, and that that stuff sounds absolutely great. Still

786
00:50:31,880 --> 00:50:34,600
Speaker 2: sounds great, and I think it sounds good because Joe's

787
00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:39,600
Speaker 2: approach was really not to be too fiddly about special effects,

788
00:50:40,160 --> 00:50:43,319
Speaker 2: about hyping that the sound too much. He would kind

789
00:50:43,360 --> 00:50:48,400
Speaker 2: of try to get a naturalistic sound on records, and

790
00:50:48,600 --> 00:50:53,560
Speaker 2: I think that gives you a certain longevity, so that

791
00:50:53,600 --> 00:50:57,240
Speaker 2: stuff doesn't sound dated. I can listen to an incredible

792
00:50:57,280 --> 00:51:00,240
Speaker 2: string band record and it just sounds fresh as a day.

793
00:51:00,360 --> 00:51:01,520
Speaker 2: I mean, it just sounds wonderful.

794
00:51:02,400 --> 00:51:07,200
Speaker 1: Interesting act, Go back one step. How did the band

795
00:51:07,360 --> 00:51:10,200
Speaker 1: actually come together? The first iteration of the band.

796
00:51:11,480 --> 00:51:16,640
Speaker 2: Yeah. I had a school friend who lived next door

797
00:51:16,680 --> 00:51:20,680
Speaker 2: to Ashley Hutchings and the bass player in Fairport. And

798
00:51:20,840 --> 00:51:25,680
Speaker 2: at some point Ashley's blue blues band, the guitar player

799
00:51:25,680 --> 00:51:27,439
Speaker 2: was sick or something like it couldn't make a show.

800
00:51:27,640 --> 00:51:31,520
Speaker 2: That's so I filled in for him. I filled in

801
00:51:31,600 --> 00:51:33,799
Speaker 2: for another actually's bands. He had a jug band going

802
00:51:33,840 --> 00:51:35,360
Speaker 2: as well, so I think I filled in for that

803
00:51:35,440 --> 00:51:40,080
Speaker 2: as well. And at a certain point he and Simon Nicol,

804
00:51:40,440 --> 00:51:44,400
Speaker 2: who is also a neighbor of Ashley's, and I, the

805
00:51:44,440 --> 00:51:47,080
Speaker 2: three of us said well, let's put a band together.

806
00:51:47,320 --> 00:51:49,360
Speaker 2: Let's let's put together a folk rock band. You know,

807
00:51:49,400 --> 00:51:51,560
Speaker 2: we all love that kind of music. We love the birds,

808
00:51:52,239 --> 00:51:55,560
Speaker 2: we love the loving Spoonful, you know what, we love

809
00:51:56,040 --> 00:51:59,600
Speaker 2: all those great lyric writers. Let's do something along those lines.

810
00:52:00,040 --> 00:52:01,799
Speaker 2: So that was really the beginning. So three of us

811
00:52:03,160 --> 00:52:06,759
Speaker 2: we had a drama temporarily called Sean Fraser. He didn't

812
00:52:06,800 --> 00:52:11,319
Speaker 2: last very long. Martin lamble that the drummer who joined

813
00:52:11,400 --> 00:52:14,040
Speaker 2: us came to see us at the show and said

814
00:52:14,400 --> 00:52:18,440
Speaker 2: I can do a better job, and he fit in very,

815
00:52:18,520 --> 00:52:22,480
Speaker 2: very very quickly. So really four of us. Judy Diable

816
00:52:22,960 --> 00:52:27,400
Speaker 2: was a singer who was again local to another neighbor

817
00:52:27,440 --> 00:52:32,280
Speaker 2: of Ashley's. And so it's a five piece to begin with. Yeah, okay,

818
00:52:32,280 --> 00:52:36,600
Speaker 2: and how about Ian Matthews. Yeah, In Matthews joined because

819
00:52:37,320 --> 00:52:41,080
Speaker 2: we felt we were a bit vocal light. Judy was

820
00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:44,880
Speaker 2: really our only singer and she's more of a folks

821
00:52:44,880 --> 00:52:47,480
Speaker 2: singer than a rock singer. So Ian added a bit

822
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:49,759
Speaker 2: more spine to the vocal department.

823
00:52:50,160 --> 00:52:51,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did you find Ian?

824
00:52:54,480 --> 00:52:57,160
Speaker 2: He was recommended me. He was in a bank called Pyramid.

825
00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:01,040
Speaker 2: When Pyramid broke up, he was at a loose end

826
00:53:01,200 --> 00:53:03,920
Speaker 2: and someone said, oh, that there's a band auditioning. You

827
00:53:03,960 --> 00:53:06,680
Speaker 2: should go down, and I just came down to the studio.

828
00:53:06,760 --> 00:53:10,160
Speaker 2: It wasn't really like an audition. Well, we were working

829
00:53:10,160 --> 00:53:12,480
Speaker 2: on a song and he said, we just said, oh,

830
00:53:12,800 --> 00:53:16,279
Speaker 2: sing some harmony on that song. So so he just

831
00:53:16,360 --> 00:53:18,759
Speaker 2: kind of started working with us and that was it.

832
00:53:18,800 --> 00:53:22,680
Speaker 2: Really that there wasn't any sense of audition or or

833
00:53:24,120 --> 00:53:27,279
Speaker 2: you're in the band or anything. He just he was

834
00:53:27,600 --> 00:53:28,560
Speaker 2: instantly in it.

835
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:33,760
Speaker 1: And how did Judy Devil get replaced by Sandy Danny?

836
00:53:34,560 --> 00:53:39,160
Speaker 2: Well, Judy, as I said, was really a focusinger who

837
00:53:39,200 --> 00:53:42,239
Speaker 2: did better with a lighter accompaniment. She had a hard

838
00:53:42,239 --> 00:53:47,040
Speaker 2: time singing over the volume of a band. So we

839
00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:49,799
Speaker 2: asked Judy to leave. We auditioned for Sandy.

840
00:53:50,200 --> 00:53:53,279
Speaker 1: A little bit slow. How do you tell her she's

841
00:53:53,320 --> 00:53:56,240
Speaker 1: out of the bit? Well, how does she react?

842
00:53:57,360 --> 00:54:03,120
Speaker 2: How does she react? She reacted? You know, how can

843
00:54:03,160 --> 00:54:05,319
Speaker 2: you react that? You know, you've been playing with your

844
00:54:05,320 --> 00:54:08,240
Speaker 2: friends for for a year or so and then suddenly

845
00:54:08,880 --> 00:54:12,080
Speaker 2: they asked you to leave. It's it's a tough one,

846
00:54:12,719 --> 00:54:14,239
Speaker 2: but we had to be realistic. We had to say,

847
00:54:14,200 --> 00:54:15,920
Speaker 2: you know, your Judy, you know you're yeah, you're you're

848
00:54:15,960 --> 00:54:18,359
Speaker 2: not singing in tune. You know, you're pushing too much

849
00:54:18,719 --> 00:54:22,680
Speaker 2: to sing over over the band. And I think actually

850
00:54:22,960 --> 00:54:25,680
Speaker 2: who was kind of the it was kind of actually

851
00:54:25,760 --> 00:54:29,040
Speaker 2: his band really at that point, and actually we would

852
00:54:29,080 --> 00:54:31,320
Speaker 2: do the hiring and firing as so he took it

853
00:54:31,400 --> 00:54:35,359
Speaker 2: on one side and went for a walk and broke

854
00:54:35,400 --> 00:54:37,680
Speaker 2: the news to her. But it's it's a tough it's

855
00:54:37,680 --> 00:54:40,680
Speaker 2: it's the worst thing to do in a band, and

856
00:54:40,719 --> 00:54:44,120
Speaker 2: the second worst thing to do it is auditioning. So

857
00:54:44,320 --> 00:54:47,279
Speaker 2: we were very glad that after probably only two or

858
00:54:47,280 --> 00:54:51,680
Speaker 2: three singers, Sandy came in and was just like on

859
00:54:51,760 --> 00:54:55,719
Speaker 2: another level. Actually, she was absolutely wonderful stella and so

860
00:54:56,320 --> 00:54:57,560
Speaker 2: she was hired instantly.

861
00:54:58,320 --> 00:55:01,280
Speaker 1: Did she have any status or she just some girl

862
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:03,560
Speaker 1: came in and sang. Were you aware of who she

863
00:55:03,760 --> 00:55:05,759
Speaker 1: was prior to auditioning her.

864
00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:08,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we were aware of who she was. I'm

865
00:55:08,719 --> 00:55:11,440
Speaker 2: not sure i'd ever seen her. She was singing mostly

866
00:55:11,440 --> 00:55:14,719
Speaker 2: in folk clubs, but had a very good reputation in

867
00:55:14,719 --> 00:55:18,400
Speaker 2: folk clubs, and you know, it was a friend of

868
00:55:18,440 --> 00:55:20,080
Speaker 2: a friend of a friend and all that kind of stuff.

869
00:55:20,120 --> 00:55:26,600
Speaker 2: You know, lots of social connections, but really, you know,

870
00:55:26,960 --> 00:55:28,640
Speaker 2: it was a leap for Sandy, I think, and a

871
00:55:28,719 --> 00:55:33,279
Speaker 2: leap for us as well. But it was something that

872
00:55:33,360 --> 00:55:36,520
Speaker 2: just worked really well. From the beginning. She was so good,

873
00:55:36,760 --> 00:55:38,719
Speaker 2: and I think she was looking for a new challenge

874
00:55:39,239 --> 00:55:42,040
Speaker 2: and I think she was really happy to be in

875
00:55:42,040 --> 00:55:43,800
Speaker 2: that environment at that time.

876
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:47,880
Speaker 1: And at some point there's a car accident where our

877
00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:52,960
Speaker 1: van accident where the drummer and your girlfriend are killed.

878
00:55:53,080 --> 00:55:54,239
Speaker 1: Can you tell me about that?

879
00:55:56,080 --> 00:56:01,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was sixteen nine. So we were traveling

880
00:56:01,360 --> 00:56:03,880
Speaker 2: back from Birmingham to London, which about one hundred and

881
00:56:03,880 --> 00:56:07,360
Speaker 2: twenty miles, something we did all the time. But we

882
00:56:07,400 --> 00:56:09,839
Speaker 2: didn't stay in a hotel when we played Birmingam. We

883
00:56:09,920 --> 00:56:13,680
Speaker 2: just drive back and our driver had been ill. He

884
00:56:14,120 --> 00:56:17,280
Speaker 2: had an ulcer, so he hadn't been sleeping very well.

885
00:56:19,960 --> 00:56:23,480
Speaker 2: Sandy traveled separately. She was traveling with her boyfriend. So

886
00:56:26,239 --> 00:56:31,759
Speaker 2: you know, the van went off the road, somersaulted. It

887
00:56:31,840 --> 00:56:34,200
Speaker 2: killed Jenny Franklin, who was my girlfriend at the time.

888
00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:38,200
Speaker 2: It killed our druma, Martin Lamble. Very very traumatic for

889
00:56:38,239 --> 00:56:40,280
Speaker 2: the band, as you can imagine.

890
00:56:40,880 --> 00:56:46,480
Speaker 1: Well, how was it for you with your girlfriend passing away?

891
00:56:47,160 --> 00:56:49,600
Speaker 2: Well, it seemed unreal, you know in some ways, being

892
00:56:49,600 --> 00:56:52,600
Speaker 2: twenty years old, it was my first experience of somebody

893
00:56:53,440 --> 00:56:58,000
Speaker 2: dying and actually watching somebody die, So it was very

894
00:56:58,040 --> 00:56:59,960
Speaker 2: tough and it took me a long time to get

895
00:57:00,160 --> 00:57:04,359
Speaker 2: a real perspective on it. Were very, very difficult, and

896
00:57:04,480 --> 00:57:09,520
Speaker 2: I think you know, in those days, you didn't necessarily

897
00:57:09,520 --> 00:57:13,319
Speaker 2: have counseling, you didn't have therapy, You just kind of

898
00:57:13,719 --> 00:57:15,359
Speaker 2: I think it was close enough to World War Two

899
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:18,480
Speaker 2: that the people said, Okay, well, you know, put yourselves together,

900
00:57:18,560 --> 00:57:20,640
Speaker 2: you know, just get on with it, come on, you know,

901
00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:26,240
Speaker 2: move on to the next thing. So we'd have aggrieved properly,

902
00:57:28,240 --> 00:57:31,080
Speaker 2: it just wasn't on the agenda in those days, so

903
00:57:31,280 --> 00:57:34,320
Speaker 2: we just kind of dealt with it or didn't deal

904
00:57:34,360 --> 00:57:37,480
Speaker 2: with it. And I think we made bad decisions for

905
00:57:37,520 --> 00:57:40,560
Speaker 2: the next couple of years in many ways. I think

906
00:57:40,560 --> 00:57:43,480
Speaker 2: I think a lot of stuff was kind of crazy.

907
00:57:44,240 --> 00:57:46,840
Speaker 2: You know. I actually had a nervous breakdown at some point.

908
00:57:48,480 --> 00:57:51,600
Speaker 2: Rest of us we're not in a good mental state

909
00:57:51,920 --> 00:57:53,160
Speaker 2: for a couple of years.

910
00:57:53,880 --> 00:57:55,560
Speaker 1: And what were some of those bad decisions?

911
00:57:57,400 --> 00:58:00,560
Speaker 2: Bad decisions that people leaving the band actually actually left

912
00:58:00,560 --> 00:58:04,680
Speaker 2: the band. Sandy left the band. I left the band,

913
00:58:06,040 --> 00:58:10,320
Speaker 2: and I think given a different set of circumstances, it

914
00:58:10,360 --> 00:58:14,480
Speaker 2: would have stayed together much longer. But it was all

915
00:58:14,840 --> 00:58:16,760
Speaker 2: it's all a little upside down at that point.

916
00:58:17,320 --> 00:58:19,080
Speaker 1: And so was I in the first one to leave.

917
00:58:21,400 --> 00:58:25,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ian left, Yeah, it was the first one to leave.

918
00:58:27,040 --> 00:58:30,840
Speaker 2: He was really into a different kind of repertoire, I

919
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:33,840
Speaker 2: should say. You know, he loved country rock, and when

920
00:58:33,840 --> 00:58:36,400
Speaker 2: he left Fairport, he formed a band called.

921
00:58:37,640 --> 00:58:38,440
Speaker 1: Southern Comfort.

922
00:58:38,520 --> 00:58:42,760
Speaker 2: Southern Comfort, Yeah, and that was much more Ian's thing,

923
00:58:43,040 --> 00:58:45,080
Speaker 2: and he kind of stayed in that style really for

924
00:58:45,120 --> 00:58:49,000
Speaker 2: the rest of his career. And yeah, Ian's a great

925
00:58:49,000 --> 00:58:51,640
Speaker 2: thing and he's still a great singer, and he's made

926
00:58:52,120 --> 00:58:55,080
Speaker 2: some wonderful music over the years.

927
00:58:54,280 --> 00:58:58,840
Speaker 1: Ok Ian has a hit international hit with a cover

928
00:58:58,960 --> 00:59:03,200
Speaker 1: of Woodstock Fairboard does not have a hit. Are you

929
00:59:03,480 --> 00:59:06,920
Speaker 1: jealous or what do you think about that?

930
00:59:11,080 --> 00:59:15,200
Speaker 2: We didn't think hits were important at that time. It

931
00:59:15,240 --> 00:59:18,120
Speaker 2: was really about albums in sort of nineteen sixty nine

932
00:59:18,200 --> 00:59:20,920
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy to have a hit album would have been

933
00:59:20,920 --> 00:59:24,720
Speaker 2: our ambition. And I think we had a couple that

934
00:59:24,920 --> 00:59:29,880
Speaker 2: scraped the top ten in the UK. But you know,

935
00:59:30,000 --> 00:59:34,720
Speaker 2: singles that was really for pop bands. You know what,

936
00:59:34,760 --> 00:59:38,440
Speaker 2: We weren't paying attention at all to singles. Maybe a

937
00:59:38,480 --> 00:59:41,520
Speaker 2: single would help you to sell an album. That was

938
00:59:41,560 --> 00:59:42,120
Speaker 2: the virtue.

939
00:59:42,320 --> 00:59:46,600
Speaker 1: Okay, you're making album after album. Our finance is tight

940
00:59:46,760 --> 00:59:48,200
Speaker 1: or is there enough to live and be?

941
00:59:48,320 --> 00:59:58,200
Speaker 2: Okay, we made cheap records back in those days. You know,

942
00:59:58,560 --> 01:00:00,720
Speaker 2: a record wouldn't cost you that that much or you know,

943
01:00:00,720 --> 01:00:05,240
Speaker 2: ten fifteen thousan pounds wasn't really a lot of money

944
01:00:05,520 --> 01:00:13,000
Speaker 2: even then, so we were always in the studio and

945
01:00:13,120 --> 01:00:17,760
Speaker 2: Joe would bankroll us anyway. If we needed funds to record,

946
01:00:17,960 --> 01:00:21,040
Speaker 2: he kind of find money from somewhere and just stick

947
01:00:21,080 --> 01:00:25,360
Speaker 2: it on our never ending bill. But we were always

948
01:00:25,360 --> 01:00:29,560
Speaker 2: in the studio. We'd sometimes after shows, we'd drive back

949
01:00:29,600 --> 01:00:32,720
Speaker 2: to London and go in the studio and just record

950
01:00:32,760 --> 01:00:33,160
Speaker 2: all night.

951
01:00:33,840 --> 01:00:38,240
Speaker 1: And at what point did you start writing songs?

952
01:00:39,280 --> 01:00:41,840
Speaker 2: Well, I started co writing for the first Fairpoor album

953
01:00:41,880 --> 01:00:45,200
Speaker 2: in sixty seven, and I think I co wrote because

954
01:00:45,200 --> 01:00:47,680
Speaker 2: I didn't have the confidence to write something on my own.

955
01:00:48,200 --> 01:00:49,760
Speaker 2: And I think in sixty eight I wrote a song

956
01:00:49,800 --> 01:00:54,480
Speaker 2: called Meat on the Ledge, which was my first solo effort.

957
01:00:55,720 --> 01:00:58,720
Speaker 2: And having done it, I kind of got comfortable with

958
01:00:58,760 --> 01:01:01,080
Speaker 2: the idea. I thought, I, Okay, I can write lyrics.

959
01:01:01,120 --> 01:01:03,600
Speaker 2: I can write the melody as well. This is fun.

960
01:01:03,680 --> 01:01:08,800
Speaker 2: I love doing this. I'll do it some more, but

961
01:01:08,880 --> 01:01:09,680
Speaker 2: I'm still doing it.

962
01:01:09,760 --> 01:01:13,400
Speaker 1: And at this late date, what's your process.

963
01:01:15,080 --> 01:01:15,800
Speaker 2: At the early day?

964
01:01:16,000 --> 01:01:18,760
Speaker 1: No, now today or you know, listen, you know you

965
01:01:18,800 --> 01:01:21,440
Speaker 1: have all a billion things. People you know, write the music,

966
01:01:21,520 --> 01:01:24,040
Speaker 1: then write the lyrics. Some people write it all at

967
01:01:24,040 --> 01:01:27,320
Speaker 1: the same time. Some people go back the snippets they've

968
01:01:27,320 --> 01:01:30,920
Speaker 1: recorded previously. Build a song brick by brick? How do

969
01:01:31,040 --> 01:01:32,760
Speaker 1: you do it? Oh?

970
01:01:32,800 --> 01:01:33,880
Speaker 2: I do it? I do all of those.

971
01:01:36,840 --> 01:01:37,040
Speaker 1: Yeah.

972
01:01:37,080 --> 01:01:40,080
Speaker 2: Sometimes I write lyrics first, sometimes I write melody first.

973
01:01:41,480 --> 01:01:43,400
Speaker 2: Sometimes it comes all at once. That that that's like

974
01:01:44,080 --> 01:01:51,040
Speaker 2: a gift from God. That's wonderful. Uh. Yeah. I don't

975
01:01:51,120 --> 01:01:54,000
Speaker 2: like to limit the possibilities. I like to give as

976
01:01:54,080 --> 01:02:00,360
Speaker 2: many doors open to the creative process as possible. And

977
01:02:00,440 --> 01:02:03,480
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's hard to define what the process is.

978
01:02:04,080 --> 01:02:07,000
Speaker 2: Many have tried and most have failed.

979
01:02:14,600 --> 01:02:17,400
Speaker 1: So did you have any advanced morning that Sandy was

980
01:02:17,440 --> 01:02:19,520
Speaker 1: going to leave the band? Or was that a shock?

981
01:02:25,840 --> 01:02:27,880
Speaker 2: I think Sandy was just in a bit of a state,

982
01:02:27,960 --> 01:02:31,480
Speaker 2: you know, I think we all were. We weren't thinking

983
01:02:31,560 --> 01:02:37,720
Speaker 2: rationally necessarily. Sandy could be fairly, you know, up and

984
01:02:37,760 --> 01:02:43,800
Speaker 2: down in terms of mood. So and she hated flying.

985
01:02:44,800 --> 01:02:47,520
Speaker 2: And we were on our way to some shows in

986
01:02:47,600 --> 01:02:50,160
Speaker 2: Denmark which we had to fly to, and she wasn't

987
01:02:50,200 --> 01:02:57,360
Speaker 2: on the plane. And I suppose she missed a few

988
01:02:57,400 --> 01:02:59,640
Speaker 2: other shows before that. So so I think we thought

989
01:02:59,640 --> 01:03:03,040
Speaker 2: that was the our straw, and wonderful though she was,

990
01:03:03,960 --> 01:03:05,720
Speaker 2: maybe we could live without her.

991
01:03:06,320 --> 01:03:09,120
Speaker 1: Well. It certainly changed the character of the band. I mean,

992
01:03:09,120 --> 01:03:11,560
Speaker 1: that was the first album. First time I saw the

993
01:03:11,640 --> 01:03:16,200
Speaker 1: band with full house. Was there any thought that while

994
01:03:16,280 --> 01:03:17,560
Speaker 1: we need to replace.

995
01:03:17,200 --> 01:03:22,120
Speaker 2: Her, Yeah, there were thoughts that we should replace her,

996
01:03:22,120 --> 01:03:28,800
Speaker 2: but nobody really sprang to mind. So in a spirit

997
01:03:28,840 --> 01:03:33,280
Speaker 2: of camaraderie, I think we just said, oh, we'll split

998
01:03:33,320 --> 01:03:36,200
Speaker 2: the vocals between us, which especially what we did. So

999
01:03:36,560 --> 01:03:38,360
Speaker 2: none of us felt we were the greatest singer in

1000
01:03:38,400 --> 01:03:41,720
Speaker 2: the world at that point, but well, we just divided

1001
01:03:41,760 --> 01:03:45,160
Speaker 2: it up. You know. We'd split songs sometimes into different singers,

1002
01:03:46,400 --> 01:03:49,720
Speaker 2: we'd harmonize songs. I think we felt a little exposed,

1003
01:03:49,800 --> 01:03:52,800
Speaker 2: but I think we also thought that we were a

1004
01:03:52,880 --> 01:03:56,000
Speaker 2: very good instrumental band at that point and that was exciting,

1005
01:03:56,400 --> 01:04:01,680
Speaker 2: and that if we were a little over balance, if

1006
01:04:01,680 --> 01:04:04,120
Speaker 2: we're little under balanced on vocals, then we were over

1007
01:04:04,160 --> 01:04:06,640
Speaker 2: balanced instrumentally. That would make up for it.

1008
01:04:07,640 --> 01:04:08,960
Speaker 1: So how did you decide to leave?

1009
01:04:14,120 --> 01:04:18,760
Speaker 2: I mean, again, I think still some trauma from the accident.

1010
01:04:19,400 --> 01:04:22,200
Speaker 2: I wasn't thinking clear. It's like a gut reaction. I thought, well,

1011
01:04:22,320 --> 01:04:24,280
Speaker 2: I've been in band since I was twelve, you know,

1012
01:04:25,680 --> 01:04:28,280
Speaker 2: I want to do something on my own for a while. Really,

1013
01:04:28,320 --> 01:04:31,560
Speaker 2: that was all it was, you know, these people were

1014
01:04:31,640 --> 01:04:35,720
Speaker 2: my best friends. But I literally just couldn't go on.

1015
01:04:36,000 --> 01:04:38,720
Speaker 2: I just hit a wall. I'd had it, so I

1016
01:04:38,760 --> 01:04:39,440
Speaker 2: had to get out.

1017
01:04:39,880 --> 01:04:43,440
Speaker 1: And at that point was it about playing sessions or

1018
01:04:43,480 --> 01:04:44,600
Speaker 1: cutting your own record.

1019
01:04:47,360 --> 01:04:51,280
Speaker 2: I had ambitions to make my own record, but I

1020
01:04:51,320 --> 01:04:53,160
Speaker 2: survived on session work. I did a lot of session

1021
01:04:53,200 --> 01:04:57,040
Speaker 2: work for the next two years, which was great. I

1022
01:04:57,080 --> 01:04:59,040
Speaker 2: didn't even go looking for it. Just the phone started

1023
01:04:59,120 --> 01:05:03,760
Speaker 2: ringing a wonderful thing, and my diary started filling up,

1024
01:05:03,760 --> 01:05:08,400
Speaker 2: and that was great that that kept me going. Yeah,

1025
01:05:08,400 --> 01:05:12,680
Speaker 2: for a couple of years. But I've been accumulating songs

1026
01:05:14,400 --> 01:05:15,880
Speaker 2: and I thought I'd really like to put these songs

1027
01:05:15,880 --> 01:05:18,800
Speaker 2: on a record. So at some point, I, you know,

1028
01:05:19,000 --> 01:05:22,600
Speaker 2: I went into the studio with John Wood and I

1029
01:05:22,680 --> 01:05:26,720
Speaker 2: recorded them and that was the first solo album.

1030
01:05:27,920 --> 01:05:29,640
Speaker 1: Can you tell us what it was like being a

1031
01:05:29,680 --> 01:05:32,320
Speaker 1: session musician in a couple of sessions you played.

1032
01:05:32,000 --> 01:05:39,440
Speaker 2: On session musician? Well, first of all, it was nice

1033
01:05:39,480 --> 01:05:43,680
Speaker 2: because I was working with people mostly that I knew

1034
01:05:43,960 --> 01:05:46,560
Speaker 2: and producers that I knew. So, you know, I play

1035
01:05:46,600 --> 01:05:50,200
Speaker 2: on Ian Matthew's record, I planned Sandy Denny's record, and

1036
01:05:50,240 --> 01:05:54,600
Speaker 2: then I play on that kind of the folk rock records,

1037
01:05:57,400 --> 01:05:59,760
Speaker 2: singers and names I can't even remember. But you know,

1038
01:05:59,840 --> 01:06:03,760
Speaker 2: you get to know a producer and he'd say, can

1039
01:06:03,800 --> 01:06:05,400
Speaker 2: you come and do this session? And you say, okay,

1040
01:06:05,440 --> 01:06:08,080
Speaker 2: can you You know, that was great? Can you now

1041
01:06:08,160 --> 01:06:10,640
Speaker 2: do some of my other artists? So you get to

1042
01:06:10,640 --> 01:06:13,280
Speaker 2: do a roster, You get book for a whole roster

1043
01:06:13,320 --> 01:06:17,040
Speaker 2: of artists, and you know, occasionally I'd step out of

1044
01:06:17,080 --> 01:06:20,200
Speaker 2: that kind of comfort area into like a real pop

1045
01:06:20,240 --> 01:06:26,680
Speaker 2: session where you're playing with you know, seasoned, hardened, first

1046
01:06:26,760 --> 01:06:31,080
Speaker 2: call session musicians, and that was fun. Sometimes too, that

1047
01:06:31,480 --> 01:06:38,120
Speaker 2: could be great. But yeah, and a lot sometimes you

1048
01:06:38,120 --> 01:06:41,640
Speaker 2: didn't know who the artist was. That was true. Maybe

1049
01:06:41,680 --> 01:06:43,360
Speaker 2: a third of the time. Yeah, you didn't know who

1050
01:06:43,360 --> 01:06:46,040
Speaker 2: the artist was. You just turn up and do it.

1051
01:06:46,760 --> 01:06:49,919
Speaker 1: Okay, you make the first solo album, it certainly gets

1052
01:06:49,960 --> 01:06:53,959
Speaker 1: good distribution in the US. It's PND it first, then

1053
01:06:54,520 --> 01:06:58,280
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom changes. What was your experience of Henry the

1054
01:06:58,360 --> 01:06:58,920
Speaker 1: Human Flyer.

1055
01:07:00,640 --> 01:07:05,200
Speaker 2: My experience, well, you know, I thought it was an

1056
01:07:05,240 --> 01:07:08,200
Speaker 2: okay record, and I was kind of alarmed at the

1057
01:07:08,760 --> 01:07:16,560
Speaker 2: reviews that it got, which were very negative, and at

1058
01:07:16,560 --> 01:07:18,960
Speaker 2: a certain point that they were so negative that I thought, well,

1059
01:07:19,080 --> 01:07:22,080
Speaker 2: I'm going to treat this as a positive. I'm going

1060
01:07:22,160 --> 01:07:25,480
Speaker 2: to think I've gone somewhere that people aren't ready for.

1061
01:07:27,760 --> 01:07:30,560
Speaker 2: I must be ahead of the game. How can people

1062
01:07:30,600 --> 01:07:36,200
Speaker 2: not understand this record? Yeah, the arrogance of youth. So

1063
01:07:36,400 --> 01:07:39,760
Speaker 2: I just thought, well, I shall persevere. You know, this

1064
01:07:40,080 --> 01:07:43,280
Speaker 2: is one thing. I'll make another record and I'll see

1065
01:07:43,280 --> 01:07:46,080
Speaker 2: how they like that one. But it was a notoriously

1066
01:07:46,080 --> 01:07:49,360
Speaker 2: bad selling record. According to Warner Brothers, it was their

1067
01:07:49,360 --> 01:07:55,520
Speaker 2: worst selling record ever, which I I'm quite proud of.

1068
01:07:57,160 --> 01:07:59,640
Speaker 1: How do you meet Linda? When does it become a

1069
01:07:59,720 --> 01:08:03,320
Speaker 1: rong antique relationship? And when do you start making music together?

1070
01:08:04,680 --> 01:08:07,640
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I think I met Lenda in sixty nine

1071
01:08:08,520 --> 01:08:10,640
Speaker 2: when we were making a Fairport record call Leigion Leave,

1072
01:08:12,760 --> 01:08:18,200
Speaker 2: and she was a friend of Sandy's, and we have

1073
01:08:18,240 --> 01:08:22,160
Speaker 2: Sundy's best friends really, and at a certain point we

1074
01:08:22,280 --> 01:08:28,000
Speaker 2: became romantically involved. And for about six months there or

1075
01:08:28,040 --> 01:08:31,200
Speaker 2: maybe longer, maybe it was a year, we didn't see

1076
01:08:31,280 --> 01:08:34,160
Speaker 2: much of each other. But because she was working on

1077
01:08:34,280 --> 01:08:36,840
Speaker 2: various projects and I was playing with Sandy, I was

1078
01:08:36,840 --> 01:08:39,320
Speaker 2: playing with Ian, I was on the road, I was

1079
01:08:39,360 --> 01:08:45,640
Speaker 2: doing us tours, and we said, well, you know, if

1080
01:08:45,640 --> 01:08:48,200
Speaker 2: we work together, well why don't we just work together

1081
01:08:48,520 --> 01:08:51,080
Speaker 2: and we'll be a duo and at least we can

1082
01:08:51,120 --> 01:08:54,880
Speaker 2: travel together, we'll spend some time together. So that's really

1083
01:08:54,920 --> 01:08:57,040
Speaker 2: what we did. And we went back to the folk

1084
01:08:57,080 --> 01:08:59,720
Speaker 2: club So that seemed, you know, a way to earn

1085
01:08:59,760 --> 01:09:02,760
Speaker 2: a living at that point, not having a manager all

1086
01:09:02,800 --> 01:09:05,320
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff, where we just what is the

1087
01:09:05,360 --> 01:09:11,240
Speaker 2: folk clubs got paid in cash, you know, gas was

1088
01:09:11,320 --> 01:09:14,320
Speaker 2: you know, twenty five cents a gallon or something. Everything

1089
01:09:14,360 --> 01:09:17,559
Speaker 2: was very cheap. Never stayed in hotels, stayed in the

1090
01:09:17,600 --> 01:09:24,760
Speaker 2: promoter's house, spare bedroom, and we were comparatively well off.

1091
01:09:25,720 --> 01:09:27,479
Speaker 2: And we did that for you know, like a year,

1092
01:09:27,760 --> 01:09:29,640
Speaker 2: and then at a certain point where we thought, well,

1093
01:09:29,640 --> 01:09:32,160
Speaker 2: we're going around in circles here, you know, the folk clubs,

1094
01:09:32,160 --> 01:09:34,640
Speaker 2: at the folk clubs, but that they don't translate to

1095
01:09:34,720 --> 01:09:38,240
Speaker 2: something else, that there's no progress. You have to kind

1096
01:09:38,280 --> 01:09:40,400
Speaker 2: of jump out of there. So we took on a

1097
01:09:40,439 --> 01:09:46,240
Speaker 2: manager and then we started playing concerts and sometimes where

1098
01:09:46,240 --> 01:09:49,000
Speaker 2: we hired a band, where we had a band sometimes

1099
01:09:50,800 --> 01:09:55,360
Speaker 2: and we started to tour more and you know, we

1100
01:09:55,400 --> 01:09:56,800
Speaker 2: have a bit more of a career there.

1101
01:09:58,120 --> 01:10:01,559
Speaker 1: Okay, you made a number of albums with her, and

1102
01:10:01,640 --> 01:10:04,519
Speaker 1: the first one that really got noticed in the US

1103
01:10:04,680 --> 01:10:09,280
Speaker 1: was poured down like silver in seventy five, and then

1104
01:10:09,920 --> 01:10:13,799
Speaker 1: four albums after that, in eighty two, Shootout the Lights

1105
01:10:13,840 --> 01:10:19,040
Speaker 1: gets phenomenal reviews, and then the duo was over. So

1106
01:10:19,720 --> 01:10:24,320
Speaker 1: the period of time that you're with Linda, what was

1107
01:10:24,320 --> 01:10:27,840
Speaker 1: it like on the inside.

1108
01:10:27,520 --> 01:10:34,320
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we're raising a family and trying to

1109
01:10:34,320 --> 01:10:37,320
Speaker 2: work at the same time, so we're always compromised to

1110
01:10:37,360 --> 01:10:40,840
Speaker 2: some extent, and we were never really able to do

1111
01:10:40,880 --> 01:10:46,120
Speaker 2: a US tour. We could never quite bring the whole

1112
01:10:46,120 --> 01:10:50,400
Speaker 2: family over or whatever, you know, travel with a nanny. Well,

1113
01:10:50,400 --> 01:10:54,120
Speaker 2: we didn't quite have the budget or the the inclination

1114
01:10:54,240 --> 01:10:58,080
Speaker 2: really at that point to tour America. So you know,

1115
01:10:58,160 --> 01:11:02,160
Speaker 2: touring was bits and pieces. Recording was bits and pieces

1116
01:11:02,160 --> 01:11:04,559
Speaker 2: where we're kind of throwing it together as we could

1117
01:11:04,640 --> 01:11:09,720
Speaker 2: when we could. But it wasn't like Light. We were

1118
01:11:09,760 --> 01:11:13,200
Speaker 2: full on trying to promote ourselves at that point.

1119
01:11:14,560 --> 01:11:20,200
Speaker 1: Okay, but when you know, the band breaks up or

1120
01:11:20,280 --> 01:11:23,040
Speaker 1: the act breaks up at the height of it's both

1121
01:11:23,080 --> 01:11:27,519
Speaker 1: commercial and critical success. I mean, all of a sudden

1122
01:11:27,520 --> 01:11:31,759
Speaker 1: you get these phenomenal reviews. It's the opposite of Henry

1123
01:11:31,800 --> 01:11:35,160
Speaker 1: the Human Fly. You know, is there anything well, I'm

1124
01:11:35,160 --> 01:11:37,080
Speaker 1: onto something. How do we maximize this?

1125
01:11:41,479 --> 01:11:43,439
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. I think you know, it was

1126
01:11:43,439 --> 01:11:46,519
Speaker 2: the end of our relationship. But yeah, we were married

1127
01:11:46,520 --> 01:11:48,479
Speaker 2: for ten years. We were in a musical relationship for

1128
01:11:48,520 --> 01:11:53,240
Speaker 2: ten years, and it was kind of you know, I

1129
01:11:53,280 --> 01:11:57,040
Speaker 2: think we've grown a part enough. You know that it

1130
01:11:56,240 --> 01:12:01,400
Speaker 2: was it showed, you know, it was significant enough to

1131
01:12:01,720 --> 01:12:07,840
Speaker 2: uh to break up. You know. Yeah, musical partnerships can

1132
01:12:07,880 --> 01:12:13,880
Speaker 2: be pretty finite as well, So it was just time,

1133
01:12:14,000 --> 01:12:17,559
Speaker 2: what can I say. And the lights were successful, I mean,

1134
01:12:19,439 --> 01:12:22,360
Speaker 2: there wasn't really a way to capitalize on that. I

1135
01:12:22,360 --> 01:12:24,120
Speaker 2: think we tried to do a US tour at that point,

1136
01:12:24,160 --> 01:12:27,040
Speaker 2: but it was a bit of a disaster on the whole.

1137
01:12:27,479 --> 01:12:32,000
Speaker 2: And you know, I went off and pursued a solo career.

1138
01:12:32,800 --> 01:12:36,360
Speaker 1: Now, at some point you get involved in Eastern religion here.

1139
01:12:38,040 --> 01:12:47,080
Speaker 2: Sufiism, yeah, well a Sufism yeah yeah. Another band I knew,

1140
01:12:47,240 --> 01:12:51,400
Speaker 2: a band called Mighty Baby, who were good friends who

1141
01:12:51,400 --> 01:12:55,080
Speaker 2: actually I did a lot of session work with. Uh.

1142
01:12:56,439 --> 01:13:00,800
Speaker 2: It embraced Sufism. That that went to North Africa and

1143
01:13:00,800 --> 01:13:03,080
Speaker 2: they met a teacher there and they came back and

1144
01:13:04,680 --> 01:13:07,280
Speaker 2: I thought, oh that these guys are different. Well, what's

1145
01:13:07,320 --> 01:13:10,760
Speaker 2: going on? You know? So I kind of hung out

1146
01:13:10,800 --> 01:13:13,680
Speaker 2: with them and I thought, well, this is for me

1147
01:13:13,760 --> 01:13:14,160
Speaker 2: as well.

1148
01:13:15,439 --> 01:13:18,760
Speaker 1: And at that point, is there a point where you

1149
01:13:18,840 --> 01:13:20,679
Speaker 1: stop your musical career.

1150
01:13:24,240 --> 01:13:26,080
Speaker 2: There was a point where when I just felt like

1151
01:13:26,400 --> 01:13:31,439
Speaker 2: absolutely drained musically speaking, I had nothing left to offer.

1152
01:13:31,640 --> 01:13:34,400
Speaker 2: I was like empty on the inside, and I thought, well,

1153
01:13:35,080 --> 01:13:36,640
Speaker 2: I've got to stop for a while. I think it

1154
01:13:36,680 --> 01:13:41,400
Speaker 2: was at seventy six seventy seven, And you know, I

1155
01:13:42,439 --> 01:13:43,960
Speaker 2: ran an antique shop for a while. I had a

1156
01:13:43,960 --> 01:13:50,960
Speaker 2: little antique business which was moderately successful. But after a

1157
01:13:51,040 --> 01:13:55,160
Speaker 2: year I kind of got reinspired, you know. That's that.

1158
01:13:55,240 --> 01:13:58,000
Speaker 2: Then punk came along, you know that, the Sex Pistols,

1159
01:13:58,520 --> 01:14:01,120
Speaker 2: and I thought, well, this is it. This is the

1160
01:14:01,240 --> 01:14:04,320
Speaker 2: energy that you need to play music. This is this

1161
01:14:04,360 --> 01:14:09,960
Speaker 2: is going back to like Elvis the Sun Sessions. It's

1162
01:14:09,960 --> 01:14:13,280
Speaker 2: got the same kind of energy to it. Really, so

1163
01:14:13,400 --> 01:14:16,800
Speaker 2: this should be inspiring me. And it did, and I

1164
01:14:16,840 --> 01:14:18,000
Speaker 2: wanted to get back into music.

1165
01:14:18,520 --> 01:14:20,960
Speaker 1: So you make a couple of records with Joe Boyd.

1166
01:14:21,720 --> 01:14:23,120
Speaker 1: What's that experience like?

1167
01:14:25,960 --> 01:14:30,439
Speaker 2: Really good? Well, Joe and I've always been friends and

1168
01:14:30,479 --> 01:14:39,560
Speaker 2: I've always admired Joe's uh, Joe's musical intelligence and ability

1169
01:14:39,640 --> 01:14:42,960
Speaker 2: to spot talent, all that kind of stuff, all the

1170
01:14:43,000 --> 01:14:46,360
Speaker 2: stuff you know you expect from people like you know,

1171
01:14:46,439 --> 01:14:50,840
Speaker 2: John Hammond Senior. Joe's a bit like that. You know,

1172
01:14:51,320 --> 01:14:57,639
Speaker 2: he could spot potential and I think he made such

1173
01:14:57,680 --> 01:15:05,559
Speaker 2: a difference to the British music scene in the sixties

1174
01:15:05,560 --> 01:15:09,439
Speaker 2: and seventies. No one else had the ears, I don't

1175
01:15:09,479 --> 01:15:13,759
Speaker 2: think to sign the incredible string band Fairbaal Convention, Sandy Denny,

1176
01:15:14,439 --> 01:15:22,320
Speaker 2: John Martin, Dudu Paquana, Nick Drake. No one else could

1177
01:15:22,360 --> 01:15:25,880
Speaker 2: see that stuff in the right perspective. And that's why

1178
01:15:25,880 --> 01:15:27,760
Speaker 2: we love Joe because he seemed like he was on

1179
01:15:27,800 --> 01:15:29,639
Speaker 2: the same wavelength as us.

1180
01:15:30,439 --> 01:15:32,559
Speaker 1: And how did you end up working with Mitchell Frum

1181
01:15:32,640 --> 01:15:34,439
Speaker 1: after a couple of albums with Joe?

1182
01:15:36,600 --> 01:15:42,240
Speaker 2: Well, at that point I was signed to Capitol Records.

1183
01:15:42,760 --> 01:15:44,960
Speaker 2: We had the same management, the same record label as

1184
01:15:45,000 --> 01:15:48,880
Speaker 2: Credit House, and my manager said, oh, you should hear

1185
01:15:48,880 --> 01:15:52,080
Speaker 2: this Credit House record. Mitchell Froom's has such a great

1186
01:15:52,160 --> 01:15:54,559
Speaker 2: job on it. You should have them on your record.

1187
01:15:55,720 --> 01:15:57,880
Speaker 2: And I love the Credit House record. I though it's fantastic,

1188
01:15:58,240 --> 01:15:59,960
Speaker 2: and I thought, well, if I can get you know,

1189
01:16:00,680 --> 01:16:03,720
Speaker 2: ten percent of that spirit on my record, that would

1190
01:16:03,760 --> 01:16:07,720
Speaker 2: be great, and I'm not sure that ever happened, but

1191
01:16:07,720 --> 01:16:11,200
Speaker 2: but Mitchell was great fun to work with. I really

1192
01:16:11,280 --> 01:16:13,360
Speaker 2: enjoyed working with Mitchell. Well. I think we did like

1193
01:16:13,400 --> 01:16:16,640
Speaker 2: four records or something together. It was just fun. We

1194
01:16:16,640 --> 01:16:19,400
Speaker 2: were just enjoying ourselves, which is what you're supposed to

1195
01:16:19,439 --> 01:16:21,719
Speaker 2: do in the studio. Really great fun.

1196
01:16:22,160 --> 01:16:28,840
Speaker 1: Well, what was different working with Mitchell's supposed to Joe.

1197
01:16:29,040 --> 01:16:31,400
Speaker 2: More quirky about sound. I think in a sense, you know,

1198
01:16:32,160 --> 01:16:34,280
Speaker 2: Joe was more naturalistic and he just kind of let

1199
01:16:34,360 --> 01:16:41,000
Speaker 2: things happen. He basically sit reading the baseball scores in

1200
01:16:41,040 --> 01:16:44,280
Speaker 2: the in the in the Herald Tribune and let things happen.

1201
01:16:45,360 --> 01:16:46,880
Speaker 2: Mitchell was a bit more hands on than that. And

1202
01:16:47,120 --> 01:16:53,439
Speaker 2: also between Mitchell and engineer Chair Blake, there was this

1203
01:16:53,600 --> 01:17:00,559
Speaker 2: idea of kind of garage to garage excuse me, that's

1204
01:17:02,320 --> 01:17:05,080
Speaker 2: you know, the stuff that sounds like it's been recorded

1205
01:17:05,320 --> 01:17:09,439
Speaker 2: low fi. And I think we we went in for

1206
01:17:09,520 --> 01:17:14,040
Speaker 2: a lot of that. That that kind of idea that

1207
01:17:15,520 --> 01:17:17,960
Speaker 2: you make it sound you know, funky again, you make

1208
01:17:18,000 --> 01:17:20,160
Speaker 2: it sound like it was recorded at Sun Studios. I

1209
01:17:20,160 --> 01:17:21,880
Speaker 2: mean it kind of all goes back to that again,

1210
01:17:23,120 --> 01:17:28,000
Speaker 2: so kind of funky drum sounds, funky room sounds, and

1211
01:17:28,400 --> 01:17:32,040
Speaker 2: you know, kind of purposefully downgrading the high five if

1212
01:17:32,040 --> 01:17:34,600
Speaker 2: you like. You know, So I think we did a

1213
01:17:34,600 --> 01:17:37,120
Speaker 2: lot of that, and I think that's the difference.

1214
01:17:37,880 --> 01:17:42,240
Speaker 1: And then the rumor INSI album happens and there's a

1215
01:17:42,280 --> 01:17:47,240
Speaker 1: burst of energy in terms of acceptance on the exterior.

1216
01:17:47,280 --> 01:17:49,360
Speaker 1: What did it feel like on the interior?

1217
01:17:51,240 --> 01:17:54,600
Speaker 2: Uh, it felt different. Well, you know, I was on

1218
01:17:54,680 --> 01:17:57,880
Speaker 2: Capitol Records, you know, for for a few albums, and

1219
01:17:57,920 --> 01:18:05,599
Speaker 2: then uh, there's a new head of the company comes

1220
01:18:05,600 --> 01:18:11,519
Speaker 2: in and the company kind of transforms and I actually

1221
01:18:11,600 --> 01:18:15,920
Speaker 2: get my records promoted, uh, which I can't say really

1222
01:18:15,920 --> 01:18:20,439
Speaker 2: happened much before that. But suddenly I have that the

1223
01:18:20,520 --> 01:18:25,360
Speaker 2: Capitol Records machine is working on my behalf as opposed

1224
01:18:25,400 --> 01:18:30,240
Speaker 2: to you know, everybody else's behalf. So that was the difference. Really.

1225
01:18:31,320 --> 01:18:33,960
Speaker 2: Hail Milgram, who became the head of the company and

1226
01:18:34,720 --> 01:18:37,400
Speaker 2: just a great guy and a great friend to this day,

1227
01:18:37,560 --> 01:18:43,800
Speaker 2: just a wonderful music person. You know, sometimes you think,

1228
01:18:44,080 --> 01:18:48,680
Speaker 2: you know, record executives forget the reason that they were

1229
01:18:48,720 --> 01:18:52,280
Speaker 2: They went into the record business, and they get caught

1230
01:18:52,400 --> 01:18:57,960
Speaker 2: up in numbers and percentages and you know, chart positions

1231
01:18:58,000 --> 01:19:02,719
Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff. It's always refreshing when

1232
01:19:03,920 --> 01:19:08,519
Speaker 2: record executives really care about music, and it just doesn't

1233
01:19:08,520 --> 01:19:09,040
Speaker 2: always happen.

1234
01:19:10,120 --> 01:19:12,759
Speaker 1: So who signed you with Capitol Records? Originally?

1235
01:19:13,920 --> 01:19:18,519
Speaker 2: Uh, good question. I can't remember.

1236
01:19:18,960 --> 01:19:21,360
Speaker 1: Okay, but this was before hal.

1237
01:19:23,680 --> 01:19:24,639
Speaker 2: Again, I can't remember.

1238
01:19:24,840 --> 01:19:28,040
Speaker 1: Okay, how does it end with Capitol Records? For you?

1239
01:19:29,320 --> 01:19:35,600
Speaker 2: There it ends, my contract ran out, hailed left by

1240
01:19:35,680 --> 01:19:39,800
Speaker 2: that time, my contract ran out, and basically they said,

1241
01:19:40,360 --> 01:19:44,719
Speaker 2: let's do a compilation album and goodbye. And that was fine.

1242
01:19:44,760 --> 01:19:48,680
Speaker 2: I was glad at that point because a lot of

1243
01:19:48,680 --> 01:19:51,639
Speaker 2: people were beginning to question the role of the major

1244
01:19:51,720 --> 01:20:00,439
Speaker 2: labels because you never seem to earn any money. And

1245
01:20:01,479 --> 01:20:03,840
Speaker 2: I think people thought, well, maybe, you know, if I

1246
01:20:03,920 --> 01:20:06,920
Speaker 2: work with an independent label or if I put out

1247
01:20:06,920 --> 01:20:10,960
Speaker 2: my own records, I'll see some return. And that did

1248
01:20:10,960 --> 01:20:11,920
Speaker 2: turn out to be the case.

1249
01:20:19,400 --> 01:20:24,280
Speaker 1: Okay, do you receive any royalties from all the records

1250
01:20:24,320 --> 01:20:25,640
Speaker 1: you've done?

1251
01:20:27,200 --> 01:20:38,479
Speaker 2: A streaming has basically killed royalties. Roches used to be

1252
01:20:38,520 --> 01:20:44,040
Speaker 2: half my income, half my income. That's recording rotter's and

1253
01:20:44,120 --> 01:20:47,479
Speaker 2: songwriting and royalties. It was about fifty percent of my income.

1254
01:20:47,680 --> 01:20:52,760
Speaker 2: It's now about two percent of my income. And that's

1255
01:20:52,840 --> 01:20:59,759
Speaker 2: down to you know, Spotify and or these companies paying

1256
01:20:59,800 --> 01:21:05,519
Speaker 2: you virtually nothing for putting your intellectual property out there,

1257
01:21:05,760 --> 01:21:09,640
Speaker 2: and people being able to do hundreds of thousands, but

1258
01:21:09,720 --> 01:21:12,320
Speaker 2: somehow it's millions of streams of your music and paying

1259
01:21:12,320 --> 01:21:16,720
Speaker 2: you ten bucks. Is it a moral? Yes, it is

1260
01:21:16,760 --> 01:21:18,679
Speaker 2: a moral. What can you do about it? I don't

1261
01:21:18,680 --> 01:21:24,360
Speaker 2: know what you do about it. Sustainable model, No, it

1262
01:21:24,439 --> 01:21:29,000
Speaker 2: isn't a a styinable model. Musicians deserve better.

1263
01:21:29,360 --> 01:21:34,400
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back, because you know the usual model

1264
01:21:34,400 --> 01:21:37,760
Speaker 1: of a record deal is they advance you money. They

1265
01:21:37,800 --> 01:21:41,480
Speaker 1: do or do not sell records, forget the creative accounting.

1266
01:21:41,960 --> 01:21:45,040
Speaker 1: But you're earning back at a very low rate. So

1267
01:21:45,160 --> 01:21:47,439
Speaker 1: there's some household named bands that are still in the red.

1268
01:21:48,479 --> 01:21:51,880
Speaker 1: So where did the royalties come from? The royalties come

1269
01:21:51,920 --> 01:21:56,559
Speaker 1: from the Fairport records, from the Richard and Linda records,

1270
01:21:56,600 --> 01:22:00,720
Speaker 1: from the solo records? What generated money forgetting the songwriting?

1271
01:22:00,800 --> 01:22:00,920
Speaker 2: Just?

1272
01:22:01,080 --> 01:22:03,600
Speaker 1: Were there ever any recording royalties?

1273
01:22:04,920 --> 01:22:09,439
Speaker 2: Actually recording anti is? I probably make a bit from

1274
01:22:09,479 --> 01:22:13,360
Speaker 2: the really early stuff, from the Fairport stuff a bit,

1275
01:22:13,400 --> 01:22:15,599
Speaker 2: But I mean that these records that they turn over,

1276
01:22:15,680 --> 01:22:22,439
Speaker 2: but they don't they don't sell a lot, particularly you know,

1277
01:22:23,560 --> 01:22:26,960
Speaker 2: on a label like Capital. I enjoyed my time at Capital.

1278
01:22:27,120 --> 01:22:31,559
Speaker 2: But you get an advance from which you would make

1279
01:22:31,600 --> 01:22:37,759
Speaker 2: the record, and you pay your your manager fifteen percent,

1280
01:22:38,000 --> 01:22:40,559
Speaker 2: and you pay the lawyer probably ten percent for making

1281
01:22:40,600 --> 01:22:43,840
Speaker 2: the deal, and and and and you wouldn't end up

1282
01:22:43,840 --> 01:22:48,000
Speaker 2: with anything. You'd also, yeah, you'd make a video in

1283
01:22:48,000 --> 01:22:51,960
Speaker 2: those days, and the video budget could be like seventy

1284
01:22:52,000 --> 01:22:56,160
Speaker 2: five thousand dollars, which you didn't necessarily want to spend,

1285
01:22:56,200 --> 01:22:59,600
Speaker 2: but the video department wanted to spend that money just

1286
01:22:59,840 --> 01:23:01,840
Speaker 2: so that that it didn't go down. That they went

1287
01:23:01,880 --> 01:23:04,760
Speaker 2: to every artist to spend the maximum, so that the

1288
01:23:04,840 --> 01:23:14,799
Speaker 2: video department could keeping being funded to the max. Someone

1289
01:23:15,840 --> 01:23:18,880
Speaker 2: a Capital told me, at some point, you know, just

1290
01:23:18,880 --> 01:23:21,479
Speaker 2: before I left, I think that I had never made

1291
01:23:21,479 --> 01:23:27,479
Speaker 2: a record that lost money, and yet I still appear

1292
01:23:27,560 --> 01:23:30,880
Speaker 2: to capitally. Am I about you know, four hundred thousand

1293
01:23:31,439 --> 01:23:36,799
Speaker 2: dollars which I'll never recoup. It's like the film industry.

1294
01:23:36,840 --> 01:23:39,280
Speaker 2: You know, you have all these write offs, yet you

1295
01:23:39,960 --> 01:23:43,080
Speaker 2: try to never show a profit. Like you try to

1296
01:23:43,080 --> 01:23:46,280
Speaker 2: never show a profit on a film, you try to

1297
01:23:46,280 --> 01:23:48,719
Speaker 2: never show up a profit on a record. Is it corrupt? Yes,

1298
01:23:49,000 --> 01:23:52,479
Speaker 2: you know it wouldn't happen in other industries. It only

1299
01:23:52,479 --> 01:23:53,759
Speaker 2: happens in creative industries.

1300
01:23:55,400 --> 01:24:03,480
Speaker 1: Okay, prior to streaming, literally, what was generating the royalty income? Sales?

1301
01:24:03,840 --> 01:24:04,479
Speaker 1: What was it?

1302
01:24:05,600 --> 01:24:09,120
Speaker 2: Well, you know, records on independent labels. You know, I

1303
01:24:09,160 --> 01:24:11,439
Speaker 2: was on Joe Boyd's label for a while, Hannibal Records,

1304
01:24:11,439 --> 01:24:15,160
Speaker 2: and that I actually actually got paid for records, so

1305
01:24:15,200 --> 01:24:21,559
Speaker 2: that would be good. But mostly I'd be earning rossies

1306
01:24:21,600 --> 01:24:26,080
Speaker 2: from songwriting rather than performance, not that much from performance

1307
01:24:26,080 --> 01:24:26,400
Speaker 2: at all.

1308
01:24:28,400 --> 01:24:33,639
Speaker 1: And the songwriting royalties that you were getting were from covers.

1309
01:24:33,680 --> 01:24:35,200
Speaker 1: Where was the money coming from?

1310
01:24:36,680 --> 01:24:40,280
Speaker 2: From your own records and from covers, A mixture of things.

1311
01:24:40,800 --> 01:24:43,040
Speaker 2: And that's still the case, except the numbers are now

1312
01:24:43,120 --> 01:24:44,559
Speaker 2: are now tiny.

1313
01:24:45,360 --> 01:24:47,760
Speaker 1: So when they were at their max, how much money

1314
01:24:47,800 --> 01:24:51,400
Speaker 1: were we talking about?

1315
01:24:53,479 --> 01:24:56,559
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I should say, really was it six figures?

1316
01:24:58,200 --> 01:25:02,800
Speaker 2: Six figures could be okay a good year.

1317
01:25:03,439 --> 01:25:07,240
Speaker 1: Okay, So now we're in this, you know, all these

1318
01:25:07,320 --> 01:25:10,160
Speaker 1: years later, a couple of decades on, we're in this

1319
01:25:10,479 --> 01:25:14,759
Speaker 1: internet streaming era. Needless to say, is you just said

1320
01:25:15,200 --> 01:25:21,720
Speaker 1: your royalties are down? Has streaming has the Internet benefited

1321
01:25:21,760 --> 01:25:23,759
Speaker 1: you at all? Or has it only been a negative?

1322
01:25:26,680 --> 01:25:32,080
Speaker 2: Hard to quantify, but probably if people can stream your music,

1323
01:25:32,120 --> 01:25:36,000
Speaker 2: they might come and see you live, and live is

1324
01:25:36,000 --> 01:25:38,439
Speaker 2: the place you own money these days, and that's why

1325
01:25:38,479 --> 01:25:45,400
Speaker 2: everybody is out there playing live. Apart from that, it's

1326
01:25:45,439 --> 01:25:49,719
Speaker 2: a big negative. If I owned more of my own music,

1327
01:25:50,040 --> 01:25:51,840
Speaker 2: I would not put it on streaming services.

1328
01:25:54,000 --> 01:25:57,479
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this. Let's say you own the

1329
01:25:57,640 --> 01:26:01,880
Speaker 1: music and you license it directly to the streaming company,

1330
01:26:01,920 --> 01:26:06,840
Speaker 1: which means you would get sixty odd sense okay, especially

1331
01:26:06,920 --> 01:26:13,080
Speaker 1: with songwriting, and you could sell physical copies, there would

1332
01:26:13,120 --> 01:26:14,240
Speaker 1: be some money there.

1333
01:26:14,080 --> 01:26:20,439
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, you might be overwriting what an artist actually

1334
01:26:20,479 --> 01:26:25,840
Speaker 2: gets from a streaming services. I get points zero zero

1335
01:26:26,920 --> 01:26:30,759
Speaker 2: zero six of a dollar.

1336
01:26:32,680 --> 01:26:34,560
Speaker 1: I don't want to get into a long discussion of

1337
01:26:34,720 --> 01:26:40,080
Speaker 1: stream streaming royalties on demand pace different from radio streaming,

1338
01:26:40,280 --> 01:26:42,120
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. All I know is people who are

1339
01:26:42,120 --> 01:26:45,400
Speaker 1: a lot less famous than you, who are earning just

1340
01:26:45,479 --> 01:26:51,000
Speaker 1: because they own everything, are doing earning six figures from

1341
01:26:51,040 --> 01:26:55,439
Speaker 1: streaming companies. But let's forget that for now. So you

1342
01:26:55,600 --> 01:26:59,360
Speaker 1: made records that were independent, Now the new record is

1343
01:26:59,400 --> 01:27:02,960
Speaker 1: with new asked, do you have a feeling about making

1344
01:27:03,000 --> 01:27:07,439
Speaker 1: a record independently or as opposed to a company.

1345
01:27:08,080 --> 01:27:11,920
Speaker 2: Well, I consider news to be like a bigger independent label,

1346
01:27:12,200 --> 01:27:16,679
Speaker 2: and they've been great for me. I did another record

1347
01:27:16,680 --> 01:27:20,519
Speaker 2: in New West. They've been great, They've been absolutely great.

1348
01:27:20,960 --> 01:27:23,120
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a different question. You put out

1349
01:27:23,120 --> 01:27:26,760
Speaker 1: a couple of records on your own label. Yeah, what

1350
01:27:26,840 --> 01:27:27,960
Speaker 1: was that experience? Like?

1351
01:27:32,240 --> 01:27:35,240
Speaker 2: It's good? I mean, it's that there's a lot to cover.

1352
01:27:35,360 --> 01:27:40,080
Speaker 2: It's hard work. You really do have to work at it.

1353
01:27:40,080 --> 01:27:42,479
Speaker 2: It's easy to put stuff up on bank camp, for instance,

1354
01:27:43,200 --> 01:27:45,400
Speaker 2: and then you do get a good return on it,

1355
01:27:45,439 --> 01:27:49,000
Speaker 2: but people have to find it, like most things on

1356
01:27:49,040 --> 01:27:53,559
Speaker 2: the internet that people have to actually find you. So

1357
01:27:53,680 --> 01:27:56,960
Speaker 2: a little promotion doesn't hurt. You can hire own publicists,

1358
01:27:56,960 --> 01:28:02,040
Speaker 2: I suppose sometimes that's not switch about it. I did

1359
01:28:02,080 --> 01:28:07,080
Speaker 2: an instrumental record back in the seventies which I made

1360
01:28:07,120 --> 01:28:13,320
Speaker 2: for six hundred pounds and I basically delivered it myself

1361
01:28:14,360 --> 01:28:18,639
Speaker 2: to the to the record stores. That was quite interesting.

1362
01:28:18,840 --> 01:28:22,439
Speaker 2: That was an interesting exercise in being the hands on

1363
01:28:22,640 --> 01:28:23,400
Speaker 2: label manager.

1364
01:28:25,000 --> 01:28:27,360
Speaker 1: Okay, when you made independent records though in the last

1365
01:28:27,400 --> 01:28:31,840
Speaker 1: couple of decades, by time the cycle was done, were

1366
01:28:31,840 --> 01:28:33,160
Speaker 1: you in the black or the red?

1367
01:28:35,040 --> 01:28:37,599
Speaker 2: I'd be in the black. I'd be in the black.

1368
01:28:38,080 --> 01:28:41,280
Speaker 1: So why did you decide to go back just because

1369
01:28:41,280 --> 01:28:43,519
Speaker 1: it was so much work to do it yourself.

1370
01:28:48,960 --> 01:28:54,440
Speaker 2: I don't know. Sometimes it's a matter of coordinating, coordinating,

1371
01:28:54,479 --> 01:28:57,280
Speaker 2: work with with your management, coordinate with your agent, can

1372
01:28:57,280 --> 01:29:02,839
Speaker 2: augizing work with the record company, and doing something that

1373
01:29:02,840 --> 01:29:09,040
Speaker 2: that can work, you know, give it given a balance

1374
01:29:09,200 --> 01:29:14,519
Speaker 2: of those elements. So sometimes you want something that has

1375
01:29:14,520 --> 01:29:18,839
Speaker 2: a bit more cloud to it to push a record,

1376
01:29:19,840 --> 01:29:20,960
Speaker 2: let people know it's there.

1377
01:29:21,280 --> 01:29:24,840
Speaker 1: Okay, So this record that came out, did you cut

1378
01:29:24,880 --> 01:29:27,760
Speaker 1: it independently and then make a deal with New West

1379
01:29:27,880 --> 01:29:29,320
Speaker 1: or do you make a deal with New West and

1380
01:29:29,360 --> 01:29:30,640
Speaker 1: then make the record.

1381
01:29:31,240 --> 01:29:35,600
Speaker 2: I made the record independently and then went to the

1382
01:29:35,600 --> 01:29:36,320
Speaker 2: record companies.

1383
01:29:37,280 --> 01:29:41,360
Speaker 1: So you had enough cash in your coffers to do

1384
01:29:41,400 --> 01:29:42,040
Speaker 1: it yourself.

1385
01:29:42,880 --> 01:29:46,559
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it's a cheap record. So tell me

1386
01:29:46,680 --> 01:29:47,880
Speaker 2: cheap in quality of course, ye?

1387
01:29:48,040 --> 01:29:51,880
Speaker 1: Right right? Tell me how you did it, right, tell

1388
01:29:51,920 --> 01:29:54,240
Speaker 1: me how you did it, How I did it?

1389
01:29:55,479 --> 01:29:58,559
Speaker 2: How amde it went into a studio.

1390
01:30:00,080 --> 01:30:04,000
Speaker 1: Well let's go back. Okay, wait, wait, you get divorced,

1391
01:30:04,040 --> 01:30:08,200
Speaker 1: you get remarried, you have COVID, I mean the COVID period.

1392
01:30:08,280 --> 01:30:12,200
Speaker 1: Did you ever get COVID? Oh? Yeah, a couple of times. Yeah, okay,

1393
01:30:12,720 --> 01:30:16,920
Speaker 1: so serious, So when do you decide you're going to

1394
01:30:17,040 --> 01:30:19,800
Speaker 1: make another record, because no one, you don't have a contract,

1395
01:30:19,840 --> 01:30:22,679
Speaker 1: No one's breathing down your throat. When do you decide

1396
01:30:23,040 --> 01:30:23,880
Speaker 1: I want to do it?

1397
01:30:25,840 --> 01:30:30,320
Speaker 2: Well, we figured that we couldn't really go into the

1398
01:30:30,320 --> 01:30:33,040
Speaker 2: studio during COVID, so we had to wait that out.

1399
01:30:33,680 --> 01:30:36,800
Speaker 2: So I made a couple of things at home in

1400
01:30:36,880 --> 01:30:41,200
Speaker 2: my home studio. But then I had a lot of

1401
01:30:41,240 --> 01:30:43,640
Speaker 2: material that I really wanted to get out there, you know,

1402
01:30:44,080 --> 01:30:48,120
Speaker 2: get it off my chest. So I discussed that with

1403
01:30:48,200 --> 01:30:52,960
Speaker 2: my management and I said, you know, I was living

1404
01:30:53,000 --> 01:30:54,479
Speaker 2: in Woodstock at the times, and so I said that

1405
01:30:54,479 --> 01:30:57,200
Speaker 2: there's this really good studio in Woodstock I'd like to use.

1406
01:30:58,400 --> 01:31:01,360
Speaker 2: So we arranged for the musicians to fly in from

1407
01:31:01,560 --> 01:31:09,679
Speaker 2: lah and book studio time. Made the record in a week.

1408
01:31:10,080 --> 01:31:21,839
Speaker 2: Basically sounds really good. Ah, does it have a Woodstock

1409
01:31:21,880 --> 01:31:23,960
Speaker 2: sound to it? I don't know. Maybe there's a Woodstock

1410
01:31:24,040 --> 01:31:25,080
Speaker 2: vibe there somewhere.

1411
01:31:26,080 --> 01:31:29,000
Speaker 1: So when it's all said and done, how much did

1412
01:31:29,040 --> 01:31:29,519
Speaker 1: it cost you?

1413
01:31:31,880 --> 01:31:38,640
Speaker 2: I'm not sure? I actually don't know. Okay, not a

1414
01:31:38,680 --> 01:31:39,360
Speaker 2: lot cheap.

1415
01:31:39,640 --> 01:31:45,960
Speaker 1: Okay. So the manager you presently have he is or

1416
01:31:46,000 --> 01:31:46,479
Speaker 1: she is.

1417
01:31:51,200 --> 01:31:54,680
Speaker 2: Well, I'm with a company called Vector Management and My

1418
01:31:54,760 --> 01:31:56,000
Speaker 2: manager is Brad.

1419
01:31:56,760 --> 01:32:00,519
Speaker 1: Okay, how long have you been with Vector Effect?

1420
01:32:00,520 --> 01:32:02,519
Speaker 2: For about ten years?

1421
01:32:03,000 --> 01:32:05,160
Speaker 1: So what can you tell us about managers?

1422
01:32:06,800 --> 01:32:14,479
Speaker 2: Let's say about managers. There's almost as many kinds of

1423
01:32:14,520 --> 01:32:17,800
Speaker 2: managers as there are human beings. I mean, there's a

1424
01:32:17,840 --> 01:32:26,200
Speaker 2: huge range there. I've had managers who were kind of

1425
01:32:26,360 --> 01:32:31,200
Speaker 2: screamed down the phone style, you know, old school, old school.

1426
01:32:31,600 --> 01:32:36,120
Speaker 2: I've had managers who take far too high a percentage.

1427
01:32:36,720 --> 01:32:39,519
Speaker 2: The nice thing about Vector is they're a big enough

1428
01:32:39,520 --> 01:32:43,880
Speaker 2: company that if you do want to do something like

1429
01:32:43,960 --> 01:32:46,639
Speaker 2: get on TV, they could probably do it for you.

1430
01:32:46,720 --> 01:32:48,800
Speaker 2: That they could probably get you on the late night

1431
01:32:48,880 --> 01:32:52,960
Speaker 2: chat shows. So that's nice.

1432
01:32:53,840 --> 01:32:54,720
Speaker 1: That they are.

1433
01:32:54,760 --> 01:32:57,640
Speaker 2: So you know, there are reasonable human beings. That they

1434
01:32:57,760 --> 01:33:04,400
Speaker 2: like music that's important, and that they look out for

1435
01:33:04,439 --> 01:33:08,320
Speaker 2: my interests, which is what I need from my management,

1436
01:33:08,439 --> 01:33:10,639
Speaker 2: is you know, people who care about you and look

1437
01:33:10,680 --> 01:33:11,120
Speaker 2: out for you.

1438
01:33:11,840 --> 01:33:13,799
Speaker 1: And what about agents.

1439
01:33:14,640 --> 01:33:17,559
Speaker 2: I have a wonderful agent in the States, Frank Riley,

1440
01:33:17,600 --> 01:33:24,040
Speaker 2: who's been major now for like like twenty years, who again,

1441
01:33:24,920 --> 01:33:27,880
Speaker 2: you know, things career. He doesn't just just book me

1442
01:33:27,920 --> 01:33:31,759
Speaker 2: because the money is there. He'll think, Okay, you shouldn't

1443
01:33:31,760 --> 01:33:35,000
Speaker 2: play this market too often, you know, let's go back

1444
01:33:35,040 --> 01:33:39,400
Speaker 2: in another year or two. Just you know, a smart guy,

1445
01:33:39,560 --> 01:33:42,840
Speaker 2: a very respected agent, and he's been wonderful. We have

1446
01:33:42,880 --> 01:33:43,720
Speaker 2: a great relationship.

1447
01:33:45,720 --> 01:33:49,679
Speaker 1: Okay. Needless to say, the business has changed radically from

1448
01:33:49,680 --> 01:33:53,880
Speaker 1: when you first started. Okay, when you first started, there

1449
01:33:53,880 --> 01:33:56,800
Speaker 1: were a limited number of albums released a year. I

1450
01:33:56,840 --> 01:33:59,000
Speaker 1: remember in the early seventies when I went from twenty

1451
01:33:59,040 --> 01:34:02,320
Speaker 1: five hundred to five thousand albums, people say, oh, that's

1452
01:34:02,360 --> 01:34:06,200
Speaker 1: way too many. Now i'm streaming services, they'll get sixty

1453
01:34:06,240 --> 01:34:12,080
Speaker 1: thousand tracks a day. So from making the music, A

1454
01:34:12,120 --> 01:34:16,000
Speaker 1: lot of your contemporaries don't make any new music. A

1455
01:34:16,000 --> 01:34:18,920
Speaker 1: lot of them had vast success. They say, I'm going

1456
01:34:19,000 --> 01:34:22,080
Speaker 1: to spend all the time and effort and it's going

1457
01:34:22,160 --> 01:34:26,080
Speaker 1: to make a very little dent in the universe.

1458
01:34:27,080 --> 01:34:27,320
Speaker 2: True?

1459
01:34:27,479 --> 01:34:32,920
Speaker 1: Does it the landscape affect you mentally and creatively? Knowing

1460
01:34:32,960 --> 01:34:37,120
Speaker 1: no matter what you do, because nobody reaches everybody anymore,

1461
01:34:37,160 --> 01:34:39,400
Speaker 1: it's not like the sixties or seventies. How does that

1462
01:34:39,439 --> 01:34:44,360
Speaker 1: affect your motivation? I can't help doing what I do.

1463
01:34:44,840 --> 01:34:47,919
Speaker 1: I can't help writing songs. I can't help being creative.

1464
01:34:48,240 --> 01:34:50,920
Speaker 1: I can't help it. I'm driven by something. God knows

1465
01:34:50,960 --> 01:34:54,439
Speaker 1: what it is, but I have to do it. I'm

1466
01:34:54,479 --> 01:34:56,200
Speaker 1: not a happy human being if I don't do it.

1467
01:34:57,000 --> 01:34:58,680
Speaker 1: People can't live with me if I don't do it,

1468
01:35:00,120 --> 01:35:03,639
Speaker 1: family get upset with me if I'm not being creative.

1469
01:35:04,479 --> 01:35:07,280
Speaker 1: So I'm always going to do it. And whether the

1470
01:35:07,360 --> 01:35:09,960
Speaker 1: m is it gets out there or not, it doesn't matter.

1471
01:35:10,439 --> 01:35:12,920
Speaker 1: I'd rather it did get out there. But if it doesn't,

1472
01:35:12,960 --> 01:35:15,240
Speaker 1: well that's too bad. But I'm still going to do it.

1473
01:35:16,439 --> 01:35:18,960
Speaker 2: And I've had this conversation with with other singer songwriters

1474
01:35:19,040 --> 01:35:22,680
Speaker 2: of my age, who say, what's the point. What's the

1475
01:35:22,720 --> 01:35:24,680
Speaker 2: point of me making music? What's the point of me

1476
01:35:24,680 --> 01:35:28,280
Speaker 2: putting out records? Nothing ever happens? You know, my audience

1477
01:35:28,320 --> 01:35:31,400
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to get any bigger, you know, I you know,

1478
01:35:31,479 --> 01:35:39,479
Speaker 2: I break even, you know what, what's the point? And

1479
01:35:39,479 --> 01:35:41,720
Speaker 2: and I kind of agree with them, except for that

1480
01:35:41,880 --> 01:35:44,640
Speaker 2: fact that I can't stop doing it. I have to

1481
01:35:44,680 --> 01:35:49,840
Speaker 2: do it, uh, you know. And my audience it doesn't

1482
01:35:49,840 --> 01:35:53,960
Speaker 2: get smaller. I think it gets bigger actually slowly, slowly, slowly,

1483
01:35:55,080 --> 01:35:58,320
Speaker 2: maybe through word of mouth. More people come to shows,

1484
01:35:58,560 --> 01:36:02,080
Speaker 2: and as my old fai and move on to another

1485
01:36:02,120 --> 01:36:06,360
Speaker 2: plane of existence. Younger people seem to fill up those slots,

1486
01:36:06,439 --> 01:36:10,640
Speaker 2: so I just keep doing it. I can't help it.

1487
01:36:11,520 --> 01:36:16,160
Speaker 1: Okay, are you doing anything actively you as an individual

1488
01:36:16,640 --> 01:36:20,240
Speaker 1: to promote or grow the audience? Are you on social media?

1489
01:36:20,320 --> 01:36:22,920
Speaker 1: Are you doing anything else? Or are you doing it

1490
01:36:23,000 --> 01:36:24,960
Speaker 1: essentially the same way you've always done it.

1491
01:36:25,200 --> 01:36:26,599
Speaker 2: I'm talking to you right now.

1492
01:36:28,720 --> 01:36:32,120
Speaker 1: Well, okay, and other people.

1493
01:36:33,600 --> 01:36:38,360
Speaker 2: I do promotion. I go on you know, podcasts, and

1494
01:36:38,920 --> 01:36:43,479
Speaker 2: I go on websites, and I physically turn up at

1495
01:36:43,520 --> 01:36:50,679
Speaker 2: radio stations and I do all that stuff. Besides playing shows,

1496
01:36:51,400 --> 01:36:55,640
Speaker 2: I do promote. And I suppose that after COVID, in

1497
01:36:55,640 --> 01:36:58,040
Speaker 2: some ways it's easier because in the old days, I

1498
01:36:58,080 --> 01:36:59,679
Speaker 2: used to expect you to to get on a plane

1499
01:36:59,840 --> 01:37:03,360
Speaker 2: and visit two or three cities a day, you know,

1500
01:37:03,479 --> 01:37:06,720
Speaker 2: to promote yourself and visit all these radio stations. Now

1501
01:37:06,840 --> 01:37:08,840
Speaker 2: I can do it from home. I just could be

1502
01:37:08,840 --> 01:37:10,880
Speaker 2: at one place and I can talk to a lot

1503
01:37:10,880 --> 01:37:13,360
Speaker 2: of people from that one place. So in that sense,

1504
01:37:13,400 --> 01:37:17,639
Speaker 2: it's easier. But I do it. Yes, I promote myself.

1505
01:37:18,560 --> 01:37:22,200
Speaker 1: So you know, you make records. Everybody who's creative. You

1506
01:37:22,240 --> 01:37:24,320
Speaker 1: know you're never going to do something bad. You've had

1507
01:37:24,320 --> 01:37:26,800
Speaker 1: your chops. You've been doing it for so long. But

1508
01:37:26,840 --> 01:37:30,240
Speaker 1: when you do something that's great, and artists know when

1509
01:37:30,280 --> 01:37:33,160
Speaker 1: they do something that it's great, can't have an eleven

1510
01:37:33,360 --> 01:37:38,000
Speaker 1: with every attempt. But when you do something great and

1511
01:37:38,760 --> 01:37:42,520
Speaker 1: not much happens in the marketplace, is that disillusioning?

1512
01:37:44,200 --> 01:37:47,720
Speaker 2: Not at this point, No, it doesn't accept it. I

1513
01:37:47,720 --> 01:37:51,320
Speaker 2: accept it. I'm a seventy five year old artist and

1514
01:37:53,120 --> 01:37:58,920
Speaker 2: I'm not catered for by popular media anymore. So I

1515
01:37:59,040 --> 01:38:02,680
Speaker 2: do what I do. If I end up playing, you know,

1516
01:38:02,840 --> 01:38:08,439
Speaker 2: in you know, assisted living facilities, you know, to fifteen people,

1517
01:38:09,479 --> 01:38:12,240
Speaker 2: I'm still going to do it because I love to

1518
01:38:12,280 --> 01:38:14,720
Speaker 2: do it. I love to perform. I love to communicate

1519
01:38:14,800 --> 01:38:18,479
Speaker 2: music to people. This is stuff I love doing, and

1520
01:38:19,200 --> 01:38:21,799
Speaker 2: it's not going badly for me. It's actually it's actually

1521
01:38:22,320 --> 01:38:28,439
Speaker 2: going very well. You know. If I gets frustrated, it's

1522
01:38:28,560 --> 01:38:31,719
Speaker 2: more with things like streaming that that kind of kill

1523
01:38:32,800 --> 01:38:35,639
Speaker 2: so many people's ambitions and careers.

1524
01:38:37,040 --> 01:38:42,680
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're telling me your audience is replenishing and

1525
01:38:43,680 --> 01:38:47,400
Speaker 1: it's growing, but you really don't know what's causing.

1526
01:38:47,000 --> 01:38:52,200
Speaker 2: The No, I don't know. I do what I do.

1527
01:38:52,240 --> 01:38:54,320
Speaker 2: I put the energy out there, and I figure if

1528
01:38:54,320 --> 01:38:56,639
Speaker 2: you do that, then it comes back in some form

1529
01:38:57,360 --> 01:38:59,200
Speaker 2: and maybe it's not the form you're expecting that, but

1530
01:38:59,240 --> 01:39:00,519
Speaker 2: it does come back eventually.

1531
01:39:02,000 --> 01:39:03,599
Speaker 1: And how many gigs do you do a year?

1532
01:39:04,479 --> 01:39:07,640
Speaker 2: A year? One hundred?

1533
01:39:08,320 --> 01:39:10,200
Speaker 1: And is that the right number? Would you like to

1534
01:39:10,240 --> 01:39:11,360
Speaker 1: do more or fewer?

1535
01:39:12,360 --> 01:39:15,920
Speaker 2: I might have to do less, I'm funny. It harder

1536
01:39:16,000 --> 01:39:20,880
Speaker 2: to travel, so I might cut down to seventy five

1537
01:39:22,120 --> 01:39:24,160
Speaker 2: or even fifty. I mean, I mean I've done that.

1538
01:39:24,320 --> 01:39:26,599
Speaker 2: You know how many things I've done in my life,

1539
01:39:26,600 --> 01:39:30,760
Speaker 2: like five thousand or something. It's a it's a lot

1540
01:39:30,760 --> 01:39:33,400
Speaker 2: of shows, but I love it. I love it.

1541
01:39:33,960 --> 01:39:37,040
Speaker 1: Okay, So do you love every gig? Or you playing

1542
01:39:37,160 --> 01:39:39,439
Speaker 1: some of the songs thinking about are you going to

1543
01:39:39,479 --> 01:39:42,240
Speaker 1: be late for the plane? This is a shitty hotel?

1544
01:39:43,560 --> 01:39:47,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, you just deal with that stuff. You know,

1545
01:39:47,160 --> 01:39:50,320
Speaker 2: shitty hotel, You think, well, tomorrow will be a better hotel.

1546
01:39:50,520 --> 01:39:53,320
Speaker 2: You know, a bad sound system, You think, well, you know,

1547
01:39:53,439 --> 01:39:56,000
Speaker 2: what can you do? You know, if the audience can

1548
01:39:56,040 --> 01:39:59,320
Speaker 2: hear you that, then you know tomorrow's another day. You

1549
01:39:59,320 --> 01:40:02,519
Speaker 2: know you're something better. But there's always stuff on the road.

1550
01:40:02,520 --> 01:40:08,000
Speaker 2: There's always you know, flight delays and you know snowstorms

1551
01:40:08,160 --> 01:40:11,360
Speaker 2: and god knows what. But you just deal with that stuff.

1552
01:40:11,520 --> 01:40:13,760
Speaker 2: You know, bad food, No food, you know, I mean

1553
01:40:13,920 --> 01:40:16,160
Speaker 2: you just get on with it. You get on with it.

1554
01:40:16,880 --> 01:40:19,639
Speaker 1: Well, I'm actually going about the gig itself, the hour

1555
01:40:19,760 --> 01:40:20,719
Speaker 1: you're on stage.

1556
01:40:20,960 --> 01:40:21,400
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1557
01:40:21,600 --> 01:40:26,280
Speaker 1: Is it always rewarding? Sometimes not as rewarding? Does it

1558
01:40:26,320 --> 01:40:27,520
Speaker 1: depend on the audience?

1559
01:40:29,080 --> 01:40:33,519
Speaker 2: Uh? The audience is usually good. There's there's really a

1560
01:40:33,520 --> 01:40:39,800
Speaker 2: bad audience. Rarely a bad audience, and maybe one gig

1561
01:40:39,840 --> 01:40:46,960
Speaker 2: in four you're thinking. This is a struggle. And it's

1562
01:40:47,000 --> 01:40:49,160
Speaker 2: usually done to the sound more than anything else here.

1563
01:40:49,160 --> 01:40:51,920
Speaker 2: You know, you can't hear yourself on the stage. There's

1564
01:40:51,920 --> 01:40:53,840
Speaker 2: too much blowback come from the back of the pa

1565
01:40:53,960 --> 01:40:56,720
Speaker 2: or something. So everything just sounds a little like it's underwater.

1566
01:40:57,680 --> 01:41:01,000
Speaker 2: You know that there are shows like that some nights

1567
01:41:01,080 --> 01:41:03,599
Speaker 2: late this stuff sounds so great. You know that you've

1568
01:41:03,640 --> 01:41:09,080
Speaker 2: got such a great sound on stage. Uh, you know,

1569
01:41:09,760 --> 01:41:13,400
Speaker 2: most nights, I'm really enjoying myself and I'm really enjoying

1570
01:41:14,320 --> 01:41:17,360
Speaker 2: the interaction with the audience. Most nights. I love it.

1571
01:41:18,439 --> 01:41:19,040
Speaker 2: Nothing better.

1572
01:41:19,240 --> 01:41:22,160
Speaker 1: And are you concerned at all about legacy?

1573
01:41:23,280 --> 01:41:24,800
Speaker 2: Legacy? No, it couldn't go less.

1574
01:41:26,439 --> 01:41:30,280
Speaker 1: So if you walk off this mortal coil and no

1575
01:41:30,320 --> 01:41:33,000
Speaker 1: one remembers you, whether than the people from your generation,

1576
01:41:33,560 --> 01:41:35,839
Speaker 1: that's totally fine with That's okay.

1577
01:41:37,560 --> 01:41:40,760
Speaker 2: My legacy are my kids who play music, and they

1578
01:41:40,760 --> 01:41:43,920
Speaker 2: play music very well, and I'm happy to pass the

1579
01:41:43,960 --> 01:41:46,320
Speaker 2: baton to my children.

1580
01:41:48,680 --> 01:41:50,720
Speaker 1: And how often do you play the guitar.

1581
01:41:54,120 --> 01:41:58,519
Speaker 2: Every day? Some days I'm Some days I'm traveling all

1582
01:41:58,600 --> 01:42:02,280
Speaker 2: day and I can't play the guitar. Sometimes I just

1583
01:42:02,320 --> 01:42:05,200
Speaker 2: can't find the time to physically get my hands on it.

1584
01:42:05,240 --> 01:42:09,559
Speaker 2: But most days I play something. Some days I play

1585
01:42:09,640 --> 01:42:11,680
Speaker 2: like eight hours, you know, other days I play half

1586
01:42:11,720 --> 01:42:12,040
Speaker 2: an hour.

1587
01:42:13,240 --> 01:42:16,160
Speaker 1: And when you're doing that, you're noodling or you're rehearsing.

1588
01:42:16,200 --> 01:42:17,519
Speaker 1: What are you doing whole stuff?

1589
01:42:17,560 --> 01:42:20,799
Speaker 2: I mean, sometimes I'm just keeping my fingers working, pressing scales,

1590
01:42:20,880 --> 01:42:24,479
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. Sometimes I'm working ideas for songs.

1591
01:42:26,120 --> 01:42:28,519
Speaker 2: That's usually what I'm doing, working on ideas for songs,

1592
01:42:29,200 --> 01:42:32,840
Speaker 2: how to come up with the best accompaniment for a song,

1593
01:42:34,680 --> 01:42:37,639
Speaker 2: or finding a melody for a song.

1594
01:42:39,439 --> 01:42:42,920
Speaker 1: And you have it as dollar reputation as a guitarist,

1595
01:42:43,320 --> 01:42:46,000
Speaker 1: to what degree do people track you down and say, hey,

1596
01:42:46,040 --> 01:42:54,960
Speaker 1: I want to work with you, work with me not interesting? Well,

1597
01:42:55,000 --> 01:42:56,519
Speaker 1: I mean, at the end of what I'm I'm saying,

1598
01:42:56,800 --> 01:42:58,760
Speaker 1: come play on my record something like that.

1599
01:42:58,920 --> 01:43:02,600
Speaker 2: Come play my record if I got time, Yeah, sure, absolutely.

1600
01:43:03,120 --> 01:43:07,960
Speaker 2: Mostly I play on you know, people, whether it's some connection,

1601
01:43:08,160 --> 01:43:11,799
Speaker 2: whether it's a friend of a friend or an actual

1602
01:43:11,840 --> 01:43:16,679
Speaker 2: friend making a record. You know, my son just asked

1603
01:43:16,680 --> 01:43:19,320
Speaker 2: me to plan his record. That's great. I'll do that one.

1604
01:43:22,439 --> 01:43:24,720
Speaker 2: Sometimes I get too many offers to do that.

1605
01:43:24,920 --> 01:43:31,519
Speaker 1: Actually, Okay, all these years later, your ex wife Linda

1606
01:43:31,560 --> 01:43:36,200
Speaker 1: put out a record you're involved with that Fairport does

1607
01:43:36,400 --> 01:43:42,200
Speaker 1: these annual celebrations you've appeared there? Does time heal all

1608
01:43:42,320 --> 01:43:50,519
Speaker 1: wounds or were relationships pretty much steady the whole time? Well?

1609
01:43:50,520 --> 01:43:55,080
Speaker 2: I get on fine with Linda. That's nice. I'm happy

1610
01:43:55,120 --> 01:43:58,120
Speaker 2: to contribute it to her record. I think it's done very well.

1611
01:43:58,120 --> 01:44:02,120
Speaker 2: It's a good record. Actually, lots of great contributors to

1612
01:44:02,120 --> 01:44:08,120
Speaker 2: that record, Fairpol. They're like brothers. You know. Maybe you

1613
01:44:08,120 --> 01:44:10,639
Speaker 2: don't see them every day, but when you do see them,

1614
01:44:10,960 --> 01:44:13,599
Speaker 2: you get that old connection comes back. It's lovely. I'll

1615
01:44:13,600 --> 01:44:16,920
Speaker 2: see them next weekend. I'm going to play at the

1616
01:44:17,000 --> 01:44:22,160
Speaker 2: Properly Festival Forwood's Festival, and that'll be great to see everybody.

1617
01:44:22,760 --> 01:44:23,679
Speaker 2: Be absolute blast.

1618
01:44:24,800 --> 01:44:26,240
Speaker 1: And how many guitars do you own?

1619
01:44:30,040 --> 01:44:32,200
Speaker 2: I try not to own too many, but I probably

1620
01:44:32,200 --> 01:44:37,000
Speaker 2: owned twenty maybe thirty. I don't know. I like to

1621
01:44:37,000 --> 01:44:40,320
Speaker 2: play them. I don't know to sit in the cupboard neglected.

1622
01:44:40,560 --> 01:44:42,479
Speaker 2: So if I don't play a guitar, I'll try and

1623
01:44:42,520 --> 01:44:46,360
Speaker 2: get rid of it. But yeah, not too many. I'm

1624
01:44:46,360 --> 01:44:48,640
Speaker 2: not in the Keith Richard class.

1625
01:44:49,160 --> 01:44:50,639
Speaker 1: And what are a couple of your favorites.

1626
01:44:55,200 --> 01:44:57,760
Speaker 2: Well, I kind of like fenders. I suppose electric guitars.

1627
01:44:58,240 --> 01:45:02,080
Speaker 2: I've got a bunch of Fenders, probably my oldest is

1628
01:45:02,080 --> 01:45:08,680
Speaker 2: about fifty nine. Acoustics. I play Loudons that made in

1629
01:45:08,720 --> 01:45:11,519
Speaker 2: Northern Ireland, wonderful guitars. I've probably got half a dozen

1630
01:45:11,560 --> 01:45:19,400
Speaker 2: of those. But you know, they're all wonderful tools. You know,

1631
01:45:20,080 --> 01:45:22,599
Speaker 2: I don't treat them too reverentially, but that they are

1632
01:45:23,720 --> 01:45:25,160
Speaker 2: essential tools of the trade.

1633
01:45:25,200 --> 01:45:26,880
Speaker 1: And if you go on the road, will you take

1634
01:45:27,040 --> 01:45:29,320
Speaker 1: your favorites with you or say they're too valuable?

1635
01:45:32,479 --> 01:45:37,280
Speaker 2: Favorites too valuable? I'll take my really good road guitars,

1636
01:45:37,640 --> 01:45:40,439
Speaker 2: which are excellent. I'm very happy with.

1637
01:45:40,960 --> 01:45:45,719
Speaker 1: And how about the amps amps?

1638
01:45:49,120 --> 01:45:51,000
Speaker 2: I have a variety of As you know, I play

1639
01:45:51,000 --> 01:45:54,439
Speaker 2: a lot of Fender amps, and if I don't take

1640
01:45:54,479 --> 01:45:57,040
Speaker 2: my own, I'll hire Fender amps. I'm happy with Vox

1641
01:45:57,040 --> 01:46:02,320
Speaker 2: as well. Fox. I see fifteen's and stuff I've got

1642
01:46:02,400 --> 01:46:05,639
Speaker 2: nam called Divided by thirteen, which I use mostly on stage.

1643
01:46:05,880 --> 01:46:08,360
Speaker 2: It's kind of weird. It's got hybrid amp, which is

1644
01:46:08,400 --> 01:46:14,360
Speaker 2: absolutely wonderful. You know, But again, tours of the trade.

1645
01:46:13,920 --> 01:46:16,439
Speaker 1: And you play solo, at least when I've seen you

1646
01:46:16,600 --> 01:46:20,400
Speaker 1: in the past years. Is that just economically the only

1647
01:46:20,439 --> 01:46:22,360
Speaker 1: way you could do it? Would you rather play with

1648
01:46:22,439 --> 01:46:26,240
Speaker 1: the band or you like doing it solo?

1649
01:46:28,200 --> 01:46:33,639
Speaker 2: Playing with a band is expensive and if I break even,

1650
01:46:33,840 --> 01:46:37,640
Speaker 2: I'm doing well. So that doesn't happen all the time. Well,

1651
01:46:37,640 --> 01:46:40,240
Speaker 2: we're going out in October November this year with the

1652
01:46:40,240 --> 01:46:44,559
Speaker 2: band in the States. Solo, I can earn a living,

1653
01:46:44,960 --> 01:46:48,439
Speaker 2: and so probably two thirds of what I do is solo.

1654
01:46:49,760 --> 01:46:53,000
Speaker 1: And then you were coming up in a very vibrant

1655
01:46:53,120 --> 01:46:57,200
Speaker 1: scene in terms of music today. Is there anything happening

1656
01:46:57,439 --> 01:47:00,519
Speaker 1: for either all players or young players that you find

1657
01:47:00,600 --> 01:47:02,080
Speaker 1: interesting and stimulating.

1658
01:47:03,520 --> 01:47:10,759
Speaker 2: There's always good players. I'm not sure that that always

1659
01:47:10,760 --> 01:47:15,120
Speaker 2: get recognized. I'm not sure the industry is geared to

1660
01:47:15,840 --> 01:47:22,519
Speaker 2: innovation or originality. I think you know, people tend to

1661
01:47:22,520 --> 01:47:25,519
Speaker 2: get signed if they sound like everything else. That that's

1662
01:47:25,560 --> 01:47:29,160
Speaker 2: the sad truth of it. Madison Cunningham I like a lot.

1663
01:47:29,360 --> 01:47:31,280
Speaker 2: I think she's a really good guitar player. She's got

1664
01:47:31,320 --> 01:47:37,640
Speaker 2: a great band, nice arrangement ideas, not nice quirky songs.

1665
01:47:37,479 --> 01:47:43,200
Speaker 2: That's someone I like. You know, there's wonderful kind of

1666
01:47:43,200 --> 01:47:49,240
Speaker 2: singer songwriters around and they're always happening, but you know

1667
01:47:49,280 --> 01:47:53,760
Speaker 2: what actually sells records? Sometimes that to me is of

1668
01:47:53,800 --> 01:47:54,759
Speaker 2: no interest whatsoever.

1669
01:47:56,680 --> 01:47:58,800
Speaker 1: And these new artists that you do find that you

1670
01:47:58,840 --> 01:48:02,760
Speaker 1: do like, but you actively searching for them, or do

1671
01:48:02,840 --> 01:48:05,920
Speaker 1: people say, hey, you got to hear this? Oh?

1672
01:48:05,960 --> 01:48:08,040
Speaker 2: I think a combination of both. Yeah. I think I

1673
01:48:08,080 --> 01:48:12,360
Speaker 2: often recommendations because there's so much out there that you

1674
01:48:12,640 --> 01:48:15,360
Speaker 2: kind always find the stuff you know you would like,

1675
01:48:15,479 --> 01:48:18,480
Speaker 2: So recommendations are very important.

1676
01:48:19,240 --> 01:48:24,439
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's go back. You're the observer. You're one

1677
01:48:24,520 --> 01:48:29,439
Speaker 1: step removed. Do you think that makes you different or

1678
01:48:29,520 --> 01:48:32,800
Speaker 1: are we all one step removed whether we recognize it

1679
01:48:32,920 --> 01:48:33,120
Speaker 1: or not.

1680
01:48:42,080 --> 01:48:43,800
Speaker 2: Is it a good thing to be able once? I

1681
01:48:43,800 --> 01:48:45,680
Speaker 2: don't know if it's a good thing. I think as

1682
01:48:45,720 --> 01:48:48,600
Speaker 2: an artist you can't help it. You have to be

1683
01:48:48,680 --> 01:48:53,720
Speaker 2: that little bit away. Sometimes you can't help it. That

1684
01:48:53,880 --> 01:48:56,680
Speaker 2: doesn't mean you can't be a social human being. You

1685
01:48:56,760 --> 01:49:03,320
Speaker 2: can't feel an integral part of the human right. But

1686
01:49:04,000 --> 01:49:07,800
Speaker 2: I think sometimes you do feel like a bit of

1687
01:49:07,800 --> 01:49:09,400
Speaker 2: an alien somehow.

1688
01:49:10,360 --> 01:49:13,640
Speaker 1: So you're in the city, you may not even be

1689
01:49:13,760 --> 01:49:17,360
Speaker 1: talking to anybody, you're walking down the street. Do you

1690
01:49:17,439 --> 01:49:20,200
Speaker 1: feel different from everybody else? Or you feel like you're

1691
01:49:20,280 --> 01:49:21,400
Speaker 1: just like everybody else.

1692
01:49:24,840 --> 01:49:27,120
Speaker 2: I don't know. I feel that like a you know,

1693
01:49:27,320 --> 01:49:32,680
Speaker 2: like like a I feel like an individual. I think

1694
01:49:32,720 --> 01:49:36,720
Speaker 2: most people do feel like individuals. But I think I

1695
01:49:37,280 --> 01:49:41,240
Speaker 2: interact well with other people. When I'm walking down the street.

1696
01:49:41,520 --> 01:49:43,600
Speaker 2: Sometimes I'm just in my own space that I'm in

1697
01:49:43,640 --> 01:49:48,759
Speaker 2: my own world, which is usually musical walking on the streets,

1698
01:49:48,800 --> 01:49:53,200
Speaker 2: sometimes I just you know, I hear melodies and you know,

1699
01:49:53,520 --> 01:49:56,960
Speaker 2: lyrics and stuff invading me.

1700
01:49:59,120 --> 01:50:03,680
Speaker 1: It's it's so, if I put you down with a

1701
01:50:03,720 --> 01:50:07,120
Speaker 1: group of musicians, are you going to find commonality or

1702
01:50:07,120 --> 01:50:09,160
Speaker 1: are you going to feel separate in that environment?

1703
01:50:10,439 --> 01:50:12,639
Speaker 2: If you spend long enough, that's it. I think you're

1704
01:50:12,640 --> 01:50:15,880
Speaker 2: always going to find commonality, but it could take a while.

1705
01:50:17,240 --> 01:50:18,040
Speaker 2: It could take a while.

1706
01:50:18,080 --> 01:50:20,160
Speaker 1: And what about if I take you for a meeting

1707
01:50:20,200 --> 01:50:23,960
Speaker 1: with business people, are you always going to feel these

1708
01:50:23,960 --> 01:50:25,000
Speaker 1: are not my people?

1709
01:50:26,080 --> 01:50:31,360
Speaker 2: Probably? Yeah, yeah, But people in suits kind of worry me.

1710
01:50:31,560 --> 01:50:35,720
Speaker 2: I must say I've always had that attitude. I wear

1711
01:50:35,720 --> 01:50:37,040
Speaker 2: a suit as little as possible.

1712
01:50:39,600 --> 01:50:42,800
Speaker 1: And you know, in the sixties they said music could

1713
01:50:43,280 --> 01:50:47,679
Speaker 1: save the world. What's your viewpoint on music in general today?

1714
01:50:47,960 --> 01:50:52,080
Speaker 2: Well, it did save the world. It happened already to

1715
01:50:52,280 --> 01:50:56,840
Speaker 2: save the world. Music today, Well, I'd like to think

1716
01:50:56,840 --> 01:50:58,320
Speaker 2: it can save the world. I'd like to think that

1717
01:50:58,439 --> 01:51:01,920
Speaker 2: my music could change something. Who knows. But I'm not

1718
01:51:01,960 --> 01:51:05,040
Speaker 2: going to write an overt political song at this point.

1719
01:51:05,120 --> 01:51:11,840
Speaker 2: But but you know, music changes people. Listening to music

1720
01:51:11,920 --> 01:51:15,840
Speaker 2: changes people. It changes people's hearts. It softens people's hearts,

1721
01:51:15,880 --> 01:51:21,320
Speaker 2: it hardens people's hearts, it opens people's hearts. Music is

1722
01:51:21,520 --> 01:51:25,479
Speaker 2: a wonderful thing. It aspires to the spiritual, so it

1723
01:51:25,520 --> 01:51:27,439
Speaker 2: can do all kinds of wonderful things to people.

1724
01:51:29,680 --> 01:51:31,200
Speaker 1: How did it save the world once?

1725
01:51:31,760 --> 01:51:33,080
Speaker 2: How did you change the world?

1726
01:51:33,760 --> 01:51:36,160
Speaker 1: How did you said that music did save the world? Well,

1727
01:51:36,280 --> 01:51:36,960
Speaker 1: I can experiment.

1728
01:51:37,040 --> 01:51:39,000
Speaker 2: I think in the sixties it did. Did it did

1729
01:51:39,040 --> 01:51:44,040
Speaker 2: for me anyway? Yeah, it was a whole revolution in

1730
01:51:44,080 --> 01:51:48,840
Speaker 2: the sixties, really a social revolution. I means it was

1731
01:51:48,880 --> 01:51:53,559
Speaker 2: a huge component of that. But you know, it didn't

1732
01:51:53,560 --> 01:52:01,600
Speaker 2: necessarily last, and it was necessarily lays sincere, but it

1733
01:52:02,960 --> 01:52:03,840
Speaker 2: did change the world.

1734
01:52:06,200 --> 01:52:09,040
Speaker 1: Okay, most people who this deep into the podcast are

1735
01:52:09,160 --> 01:52:12,920
Speaker 1: very familiar with you and your music. But for those

1736
01:52:12,960 --> 01:52:15,880
Speaker 1: who are not, something most artists don't like to do

1737
01:52:16,280 --> 01:52:20,080
Speaker 1: is sell themselves. But if you were going to explain

1738
01:52:20,240 --> 01:52:26,000
Speaker 1: yourself and your music to someone completely unfamiliar, what would

1739
01:52:26,080 --> 01:52:26,559
Speaker 1: you say?

1740
01:52:26,920 --> 01:52:35,639
Speaker 2: Ooh yeah, tough question. What would I say? Well, I'd

1741
01:52:35,640 --> 01:52:39,400
Speaker 2: probably be self deprecating and mumble and basically say nothing

1742
01:52:39,600 --> 01:52:42,720
Speaker 2: about myself. But if I had to, I'd say I

1743
01:52:42,920 --> 01:52:53,519
Speaker 2: was a singer, songwriter, guitarist somewhere between Celtic and rock,

1744
01:52:55,360 --> 01:52:58,920
Speaker 2: and I've been doing it for the last fifty five years.

1745
01:52:59,560 --> 01:52:59,960
Speaker 2: That's it.

1746
01:53:01,479 --> 01:53:04,240
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a raw description. And then I might ask

1747
01:53:04,280 --> 01:53:08,760
Speaker 1: the question what makes you different? Are you special from

1748
01:53:08,800 --> 01:53:11,480
Speaker 1: other people in that category?

1749
01:53:12,040 --> 01:53:14,519
Speaker 2: I honestly don't know. I don't know what makes me different.

1750
01:53:17,760 --> 01:53:23,680
Speaker 2: I think everybody has a different accumulation of music that

1751
01:53:23,720 --> 01:53:26,880
Speaker 2: they've listened to in their lives, and in that sense,

1752
01:53:26,920 --> 01:53:30,120
Speaker 2: everyone is different. Everyone expresses different things when when they

1753
01:53:30,160 --> 01:53:33,720
Speaker 2: express music. You know, someone who only listen to you know,

1754
01:53:33,840 --> 01:53:39,280
Speaker 2: A C. D. C. And Beethoven and Charlie Parker is

1755
01:53:39,320 --> 01:53:41,880
Speaker 2: going to express things very differently from someone who's only

1756
01:53:41,920 --> 01:53:46,960
Speaker 2: listened to you know, the birds and Stravinsky and uh

1757
01:53:48,000 --> 01:53:51,880
Speaker 2: and Louis Armstrong. You know you hear, you hear music

1758
01:53:51,960 --> 01:53:53,960
Speaker 2: or your whole life, and some you you take to

1759
01:53:54,040 --> 01:53:57,439
Speaker 2: heart and some you reject. But everyone has it has

1760
01:53:57,479 --> 01:54:06,040
Speaker 2: a different formula of acceptance and rejection. So we're all different.

1761
01:54:06,880 --> 01:54:07,719
Speaker 2: We're very different.

1762
01:54:09,320 --> 01:54:11,559
Speaker 1: Okay, Richard, I want to thank you for taking this

1763
01:54:11,680 --> 01:54:14,160
Speaker 1: time with this audience. I would like to go deeper

1764
01:54:14,200 --> 01:54:17,680
Speaker 1: into your earlier points about the dinner table and who

1765
01:54:17,680 --> 01:54:19,519
Speaker 1: would you want to have dinner table. That will be

1766
01:54:19,560 --> 01:54:23,200
Speaker 1: another time, but thanks a lot for taking the time.

1767
01:54:23,320 --> 01:54:25,920
Speaker 2: Thank you well, thank you so much for your time.

1768
01:54:26,000 --> 01:54:29,800
Speaker 1: I do appreciate until next time. This is Bob left

1769
01:54:29,840 --> 01:54:30,360
Speaker 1: sets