WEBVTT - QLS Classic: Elvis Costello Part 2 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:05.200 Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:09.000 --> 0:00:12.760 It's okay to meet your heroes, It's okay to dream, 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:15.720 It's ok to let life float you to where you 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:18.840 should be. In twenty twenty one, Quest Love asked me 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:21.239 to do a one on one interview with Elvis Costello 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:25.360 at electric Lyad Studios for Questlove Supreme. At first I 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:30.120 said no, just kidding. I jumped at the opportunity. In 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:32.519 this part too, you'll hear Elvis and I dissect the 0:00:32.560 --> 0:00:35.760 contents of wise up Ghost and go down rabbit holes 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:39.480 so deep where even rabbits are afraid to go. Yes, 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:42.159 I had to doggy paddle through this to survive Elvis 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:45.040 and his title wave of Knowledge. But I'm so grateful 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:48.400 and pleased that this document exists for the future. This 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:52.239 was originally aired in April twenty twenty two. Wow, I 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:56.280 can't even believe this happened. Enjoy and thank you Questlove. 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:15.959 All right, put us all one, Uh huh, Sugar Steve, 0:01:18.480 --> 0:01:21.200 And I'm a legend in my whole time, Sugar Steve, 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:22.840 just a legend that it is all fine. 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:26.960 I've been doing a lot of interviews, have you It's getting. 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:31.000 Sick of it, not this one, This is even. 0:01:32.720 --> 0:01:35.000 I had no sooner resolve to stop recording and just 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:37.399 play shows than I found myself in a three way 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:42.440 conversation with engineer and mixer Stephen Mandel and Questlove making 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:46.840 Wise up Ghost. These began as new bulletins collaged out 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:49.280 of my old papers, but ended up in the company 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:53.720 of brand new verses, all jammed together. Quest speets gave 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:56.440 the words different air to breathe and allowed me to 0:01:56.760 --> 0:02:00.360 place fresh emphasis. The words of Bedlin became the of 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:02.960 the dead pan groove of wake Me Up, with a 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:06.680 quotation from the River and reverse as its hook. She's 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:10.160 pulling out the pin from the Mississippi sessions became she 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:14.200 Might be a grenade. The tracks began with drums alone, 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:17.400 over which I sketched out guitar or bass lines. The 0:02:17.480 --> 0:02:20.400 other members of the Roots entered as the music demanded, 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:24.560 Captain Kirk Douglas adding his guitar or my bass sketches 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:28.200 being replaced by a sousapharm or the Roots bassis. Mark Kelly, 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:33.280 a Philadelphia horn section, reworked motifs from my records, a 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:37.080 guitar riff becoming a horn line of ice versa. In 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:40.280 the final days, of the recording quest Summer Brent Fisher 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:40.920 add the. 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:43.960 Beautiful orchestrations that pulled all these threads together. 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:47.920 Each mixed of Stephen Mandel sent me got closer to 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:52.160 the final picture. A beat dropped out here, sunds distorted 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:55.760 out of all recognition. There, voices sent out into dub orbit, 0:02:56.280 --> 0:03:00.920 new ideas appearing where others vanished. The only precedent for 0:03:00.960 --> 0:03:03.720 this kind of recording in my catalog had been Pills 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:07.440 and Soap, just some verses chanted over a spare beat 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:12.920 with occasional musical punctuations. The original Pills and Soap lyrics 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:15.880 were now reset in a dialog with verses and lines 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:19.400 from Invasion, Hip Parade and National Ransom to become stick 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:22.400 out your tongue. Like four or five of the songs 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:25.440 on Wise up Ghast, this number delayed, leaving the first 0:03:25.520 --> 0:03:30.880 chord until absolutely necessary. The one chord song was something 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:33.280 that I'd been working towards since writing Big Boys for 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:37.520 Armed Forces, and this was almost it. I had sampled 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:43.600 the Italian singer Mena's nineteen sixties recording of Unbacho Eetropopoco 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:45.760 as the foundation. 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:46.880 For when I was Cruel number two. 0:03:47.680 --> 0:03:50.520 But can you hear me, took a two bar bass 0:03:50.520 --> 0:03:53.840 figure from radio silence and told the same story on 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:58.160 a six minute canvas. I almost persuaded Graham Nash and 0:03:58.240 --> 0:04:01.560 David Crosby to sing on that one. Graham really wanted 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:03.760 to do it, but when I sent it to Crosbie, 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:06.880 he didn't quite hear himself in that kind of mayhow 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:10.280 I ended up tracking my own voice on the paths, 0:04:10.720 --> 0:04:13.520 and in the closing bars of the track quoted one 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:18.520 phrase from the melody of Crosbie's song Draft Mourning clips 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:21.920 from our rehearsal Jambs, recorded while preparing for my appearances 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:24.280 on the Jimmy Fallon Show on m b C. They 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:28.600 came the foundation of new tracks, high fidelity, yielding Sinko 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:32.080 Minuto's convos, four bars from the Stations of the Cross 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:36.000 under pinning Viceroy's Row, and quest rendition of the intro 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:40.800 of Chelsea anchoring my new haunt. It was strange to 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:43.640 walk past the Dame Judy Dench, Lindsay Lohan or the 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:47.360 other studio guests in the studio hallway and then disappeared 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:50.320 through a door into the Root's own personal tardis a 0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:54.080 converted technical cupboard that served as the rehearsal in the studio, 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:59.000 Wise Up Ghost looked out from that Windowlas's room at 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:02.800 a world where one woman's freedom was another man's blasphemy, 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:08.560 where one man's wealth was another man's bankruptcy, where security 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:13.479 can only be preserved by unaccountable means, from eavesdropping to 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:17.200 air strikes. If peace and order are now like the 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:21.120 law and too complex to trust to any one but professionals, 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:24.280 I suppose love and understanding will just. 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:25.760 Have to wait out the imminent threat. 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:29.599 How could any father not fear the world his sons 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:33.920 will Inherit could her muster any hope at all? While 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:36.719 the record does close with the song, if I could 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:41.200 believe Mandel had looped my own string orchestrations for can 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:44.200 You Be True? From North and I wrote the lyrical 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:47.839 and vocal arrangement that wise Up Ghost over it. Stephen 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:50.200 and Questlot then went to work scoring it as if 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:52.880 it were a movie, with the horns that were doubling 0:05:52.960 --> 0:05:57.360 Kirk's guitar eventually obliterating the string loop, and questioned frank 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:01.520 knuckles laying in waves of drums and percussion. It seemed 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:03.400 at first like a piece that could only dwell in 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:06.680 the studio, but when we performed the song on television 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:09.440 and later in a bowling alley in Brooklyn, he really 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:10.719 took on a life of its own. 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:14.480 For that Brooklyn Bowl show, Quest only. 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:17.000 Called a handful of songs from the record and let 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:20.000 the roots take possession of some of my numbers, from 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:24.240 Spooky Girlfriend to a nine minute Captain kerk guitar Wigout 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:28.280 and I Want You. In the summer of twenty fourteen, 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:32.559 Steve Naive, Dennis crouched, Kareem Riggins and I played Wise 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:35.279 Up Ghost with the La Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:39.279 When Kareem kicked into a take on his friend Quest's 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:42.400 groove at the half way point of the song, I 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:44.919 felt as if we might end up hovering above the 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:49.640 Griffith Observative walkers. Uptown and Wise Up Ghosts were never 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:51.440 intended to be defeated songs. 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:54.560 The album unavoidably. 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:58.599 Contemplated the unthinkable, the despair at every news bulletin. But 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:02.680 the most surprising moment came not in a cupboard contemplating oblivion, 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:06.760 but sitting at my own kitchen table thinking about my father. 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:10.680 It was close to midnight when a repetitive sequence of 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:14.840 unusually harmonized music that Quest and keyboardist Ray Angry had 0:07:14.880 --> 0:07:17.160 laid down arrived over the wire. 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:19.400 It was clearly a ballad. 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:23.520 We had got into this thing without any rules or consultation. 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:26.480 Little more than a word or two had passed between 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:30.880 Question and me. While the dialogue had been musical, Mandell 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:34.320 had been tireless in making his own editorial decisions and 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:37.840 trying to satisfy those that we had independently suggested or 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:42.679 even demanded. We had never discussed any of the lyrical content, 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:45.640 but it had turned out to consist mostly of outward 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:48.840 looking commentary. I suppose we had just come to trust 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:53.080 each other, as working musicians usually do. I now found 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:57.280 myself writing a very detailed account of my father's last 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:01.120 days and hours, something that I had told myself would 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:02.680 be too hard to visit in a song. 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:05.920 It did no good to push those images down if 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:07.120 they arrived unbidden. 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:11.040 So I sat at the kitchen table, singing into the 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:15.600 recording function of my computer. The breath is slow and 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:21.480 shallow too. The sky is bright Venetian blue. The cardboard 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:27.960 sun is all ablaze. The air is painted Clifford brown caressing. 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:34.000 Yesterday I wrote and sang down the entire song in 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:37.520 one pass, mixed it down as such, and hit send 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:40.880 before I had time to take it back. The next day, 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:43.440 I went to NBC to re record the vocal properly. 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:48.040 When I walked in, quest was adamant that was the vocal. 0:08:48.520 --> 0:09:02.040 He would not let me touch it. All right, It's 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:03.880 funny this list. I just looked at it. I had 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:10.960 to look it up. This the five hundred list. I 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:13.559 haven't looked at it for years. I pick a lot 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:16.360 of the same records today, but but some I come 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:19.400 around to again, Like. 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:21.640 Like when I saw Black Messiah and it opens with rass. 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:23.720 That's what I wanted to ask you about get on 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:24.160 the make there. 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:27.040 Nobody's put found a weight of context to put that 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:30.920 that piece of music. Anything that's so so powerful is 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:32.920 that you know that nobody's put that in the context 0:09:32.960 --> 0:09:33.960 of a movie before that. 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:36.840 I ever remember which piece of music the Russ and 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:40.760 Roland Kirk inflated to you, it's the opening music of 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:41.320 that movie. 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:43.439 Wow, how do you kind of go, well, that's kind 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:46.160 of right, you know, that's that's kind of what I thought. 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:47.600 That's what that music feels like to me. 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:55.319 G'angela's influences are are vast. So yeah, like I was saying, 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:59.800 wise up Ghosts ends up becoming the ultimate flip album, 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:03.160 you know, flipping the music, flipping the lyrics, sampling from 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:05.120 the sampling from that, well, sampling. 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:09.880 From our own brief kind of live library. So that's 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:14.880 ingenious in itself. And then you know, in myself, like 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:19.160 starting off with two ideas. One one is to write 0:10:19.200 --> 0:10:23.120 completely new words and others to kind of do a 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:28.000 kind of sort of cut up collage of ideas that 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:31.760 were related. Part of it is I thought of it 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:36.080 being in the tradition of bulletins, you know, lyrics, the 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:37.200 lyrical side of it. 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:40.520 There's not many songs in the in the group that 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:42.959 we recorded that are to do. 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:47.360 With matters of the heart. They're mostly outward looking. So 0:10:47.440 --> 0:10:51.520 it seemed to me that then it gave me the 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:55.680 opportunity to think about things i'd seen or things i'd 0:10:55.679 --> 0:10:58.679 written because of the way I fell about something I 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:01.920 saw in the world, or something happened and you'd write 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:06.160 something and then that thing would happen again. 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:10.400 Like you know, history repeating history repeating. 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:12.520 Yourself, or war breaks out and then another war that 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:15.480 seems to be the same kind of mistake. So then 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:18.080 you stated again, but you have the other this that 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:20.160 came from another time, and they kind of talked to 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:22.480 one another a little bit. Now, some people that were 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:25.320 skeptical about the whole endeavor just thought, well, maybe you 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:26.800 couldn't be bothered to write new words. 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:28.040 But to me, you did. 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:30.280 You hear oh, I wrote a lot of new words. 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:33.880 But but even those ones that some of those became 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:38.040 to me like the version of that lyric because I 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.120 got a chance to lay it down a different against 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:44.360 a different foundation, you know. I mean, if you recall 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:48.800 the way we began the recording was with a handful 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:51.160 of the beats that the Quest had put down, and 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:53.680 I and were we in Were we in Vancouver? 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:56.320 Well, yeah, we didn't want The very first thing was 0:11:56.360 --> 0:11:57.480 pills and soap. 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:00.160 Cutting up pills and soap. Yeah, that was that. 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:03.360 But then when it came to the newly recorded the 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:06.760 things that weren't sampled from the catalog, and it weren't 0:12:06.800 --> 0:12:10.280 sampled from this this bed of of loops that you 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:14.160 created from the live performances. Then it was like Quests 0:12:14.240 --> 0:12:18.439 laying down those beats and me improvising song structure over them, 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:23.440 so I was playing like electric piano and bass. There's 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:26.280 quite a lot of bass in the original draft where 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:28.080 I'm playing the bass sort of so that there's a 0:12:28.120 --> 0:12:32.160 foundation structure. And that's as far as I recall. I 0:12:32.200 --> 0:12:34.640 did wise up ghost pretty much to the drums and 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:35.400 maybe some. 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:39.160 I don't know, some chords on the piano not very 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:41.000 much full. So why is it? 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:43.840 Because it's just really the sample from the from the 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:45.840 sample is really giving the tonality. 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:47.240 So the sample is from North. 0:12:47.679 --> 0:12:50.560 Yeah, it's the opening of the It's what Vince mean 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:53.960 Doza said to me when he conducted it when I 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:58.000 did it live, the same song, Can He be True? Live? 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:00.160 He said, I'm going to take your human records away 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:02.960 from you because he thought it was so sort of Germanic. Well, 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:07.360 I was. I had written that opening, like you know, 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:10.960 it was very that's a lot of drama. 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:12.480 And I heard just right for that, and I heard 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:15.160 hip hop in that, you know, in that intro, and 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:15.760 that's why. 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:16.520 I hear that a lot. 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:20.000 I hear a lot of Triikowskian in the synth and 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:23.760 sometimes real string, you know, the synth strings that that 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:26.760 that became like I hear it a lot. I hear 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:28.680 a lot of Triikowski and a lot of borrowed in. 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:30.520 I don't know where it's conscious. So whether it's just 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:34.160 the tendency to be in a minor so I hear 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:36.640 a lot of classical things. I don't know whether people 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:38.920 are actually drawing out or it's just a coincidence. You 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:41.480 end up with a few chords in a certain kind 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:44.160 of ominous rhythm, you know, and then you get that right. 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:49.800 So that was that was a pretty free piece, and 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:51.360 it built as you record. 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:55.360 You built it really all of those layers, when you know, 0:13:55.480 --> 0:14:00.000 with Kirk playing those sustained guitars and everything. 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:02.800 That was really Are you a Queen fan? 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:03.400 No? 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:05.800 You don't like any prog rock? I put them in 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:07.840 pro Do you like Jeff Toll? 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:09.680 No, I really don't like Jeff. 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:12.280 How about yes, they're the best at it all right, 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:13.200 Well if you don't like, yes. 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:16.120 Like I really don't like prog rock, but I did, 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:20.160 and I sort of hear, I suppose it is King 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:23.160 Crimson prog rock? Yes, yeah, But I mean I never 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:24.960 listened to any of their records, but I was aware 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:28.760 of one record of theirs which I liked, which was 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:33.600 a later one called Red that had Adrian Bello on it, 0:14:33.680 --> 0:14:36.080 and because I liked him because he played with Bowie 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:39.680 and and of course Fripp played with Bowrie as well, 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:44.200 So I liked that kind of thing when I could 0:14:44.240 --> 0:14:46.560 hear it like an orchestral instrument. And that's what I 0:14:46.600 --> 0:14:51.160 heard when when, when when Kirk was playing those that's 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:54.640 those sustained guitars, sounded like a Fripp part to me, 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:56.760 you know, it's like, that's what it sounds like, one 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:58.200 of his sustained guitar things. 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:00.840 I guess someone's still a little surprised because in my opinion, 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:04.760 prog rock is there's a lot of classical influence and 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:06.360 there's a lot of English folk. 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:09.400 Oh yeah, and that jaffre Tell for sure. But there 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:12.720 were groups i'd like that did that better, who were different, 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:16.480 like Febal Convention and you know, Richard Thompson is a 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:19.440 guitar player I really love who came out of that group, 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:24.360 But not so much the Emson like em Palmer kind 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:25.080 of stuff or. 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:26.760 The you just like shorter songs. 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:30.360 I just like shorter songs, and I just like, you know, 0:15:30.800 --> 0:15:33.520 I like Jack McDuff. I don't really need to hear 0:15:33.600 --> 0:15:36.600 Kenith Emerson. You know, he's great. I'm sure, but it's 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:38.400 not really my thing. And you know what, I bet 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:40.280 Keith Emerson loves Jack McDuff as well. 0:15:40.400 --> 0:15:44.920 You know, jazz is a lot more blues and less classical. 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:46.600 Prog rock has all that classical in. 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:49.520 Yeah, I mean, I love classical music, but I like 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:54.360 actual classical music, and I like Leonard Bernstein. But you see, 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:57.480 to me, like West Side Story Score, the original West 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:00.720 Side Stories Score, you don't. It didn't make it cooler 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:03.960 to hear it played on the organ, but maybe somebody had. 0:16:04.120 --> 0:16:07.520 Maybe it's somebody that had never heard, never really thought about, 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:11.440 well that song was about heard that tune, that America 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:15.040 tune played by Keith Emerson a nice and thought, hey, 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:17.520 that's great, and that's kind of a subversive idea to 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:19.000 do that in a wild way. 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:21.840 But I think it's already wild. I think that original 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:22.760 versions wilder. 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:26.760 So as you were sampling your own lyrics and ready 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:29.560 new lyrics on Wise Up Ghost, we were busy doing 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:33.160 our version of sampling, actual sampling, including come in the 0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:39.680 Meantimes with the backing sample from a Glasshouse, Glasshouse. 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:43.520 Victius Holland does a Holland label after Motown. 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:47.280 Yeah, so that beat that is come in the meantime, 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:50.240 is meaning the sample and the drums, yeah plays on it. 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:52.960 That was five years old or something like that. He 0:16:53.000 --> 0:16:55.400 had made that five years prior to Whup Ghost and 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:57.640 it just always was on the drive. He never used 0:16:57.680 --> 0:16:59.440 it for anything, and I was like, that's something. 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:02.200 But you see, that's that's no different to me than 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:06.960 if we had gone into the deepest kind of library 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:11.040 of of like we were talking before about the you know, 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:16.080 the sort of kitchier versions of covers of records, and 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:18.400 then you might find some quirk to the way that 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:22.080 drum drum sounded or something about or hearing even that. 0:17:22.119 --> 0:17:23.280 But it was just badass. 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:26.840 Yeah, it's badass, and that's all that matters when you're 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:29.000 looking for that, you know. So it didn't really matter 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:31.479 to me what the source was, whether it was a 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:33.840 new beat that that that Crest had laid down, or 0:17:33.840 --> 0:17:36.280 whether you were taking it something that you would n't 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:39.119 because I mean I didn't see I mean, I was 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:44.080 taking lyrics from there are some lyrics from from the 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:47.840 River Reverse, which you know, was only four years old. 0:17:48.320 --> 0:17:51.119 There's others that are that are from nineteen ninety you know, 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:53.920 from from songs from Invasion, Hipparay, which is from der 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:57.000 Like was that's nineteen ninety. The pills and solf is 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:01.760 from eighty three that you know, yeah, the bills and 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:04.359 so sort of like you know and fills and so 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:11.720 was some kind of realization of you know, my my, 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:16.879 you know, like Magnificent seven was the Clash's response to. 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:18.639 To hip to early hip hop. Pills and Soap was mine. 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:22.360 So the Clash did it first that I'd say I 0:18:22.400 --> 0:18:24.879 was using like more authentic tools. I mean, I really 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:27.840 only had a piano and a drum machine. I didn't 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:30.680 have a band playing on it. There's nobody else. It's 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:34.560 just it's just me and Steve. You know, it's me 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:36.160 Stephen Alndrum, you know. 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:38.680 And not only were we sampling sampling, but we were 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:43.439 flipping melodies and horn lines from your past into changing 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:45.560 them into guitar lines and horn It's. 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:47.920 An orchestrated record in that sense and a way. 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:51.760 And it's orchestrated and and you know that there's some 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:53.960 of the way that it sounds is because of the 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:57.960 way the processing in the mixing as well and the 0:18:58.080 --> 0:18:59.600 changing of texture of things. 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:01.119 Things getting much. 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:03.320 Smaller than they actually would be if they were played 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:06.000 in the room together, Like guitar sounds squeeze right down. 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:11.160 This is kind of like coming out of balance, you know, drums, 0:19:11.200 --> 0:19:14.960 particular drum beats, you know, one beat in a phrase 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:17.919 being kind of process in some way one you know. 0:19:17.960 --> 0:19:20.480 Well, yes, you came to me at a very strange 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:22.400 time in my life, as they say. 0:19:22.720 --> 0:19:25.320 But all of this, all of this is attractive to 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:28.760 me because it's sort of like literally getting It's not 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:33.760 so much like trying to the mistake it seemed to 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:36.399 me from the get go with using machines is to 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:38.840 get the machines to try and imitate. 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:42.959 Real musicians. I want the other way around. I want 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:44.440 musicians that imitate machines. 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:47.159 Well that's exactly what the roots did you know. 0:19:47.400 --> 0:19:48.960 That's always seemed to be the best thing. 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:51.840 Yeah, it never seemed to me to make sense. When 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:57.240 when I was about thirteen or fourteen, a man tried 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:00.760 to sell my father a melotron. He took him into 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:02.960 this This guy lived in a house next to the 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:04.240 church where he used to go to me, and he 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:04.919 took us into. 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:06.600 The front room and he had this melotron in his 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:07.360 front room. 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:09.280 And he put it on and he tried to persuade 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:11.320 my father it was going to put all the musicians 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:14.840 in the band out of work, you know, and he's 0:20:14.840 --> 0:20:16.560 still playing in the dance band, and he said, this 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:19.680 will replace them, because there was absolutely no way. 0:20:19.760 --> 0:20:21.440 You couldn't play with any feel. 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:24.320 On a melotron because they hadn't yet got the action 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:26.800 so that you could really play with any kind of 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:29.080 swing or anything on it. Everything was, you know, there 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:31.680 was always a delay, and of course the way people 0:20:31.800 --> 0:20:34.960 use melotrons was much more to sound like a process 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:37.679 version of a flute into the most famous use of it, 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:40.359 as like the beginning of Strawberry Feels Forever, you know, 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:43.080 where I think, I don't even know whether the cello 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:45.560 is a real cello that's been phased or it's a 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:51.120 melotron cello, but you know, flute sound, and you would 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:53.920 never group real flutes playing like that in that. 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:54.840 Kind of harmony. 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:56.720 You just would never play them. He would never voice 0:20:56.800 --> 0:20:58.440 him like that. In the real orchestra. You wouldn't have 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:01.600 a flute section play like that. So, I mean, that's 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:04.760 unique to that instrument, and that's what that instruments ended 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:07.840 up being. If you hear one on a radio head 0:21:07.840 --> 0:21:09.639 record or you hear one on any cud of record, 0:21:10.440 --> 0:21:14.359 it's the sound of that instrument's quirks, right, just like 0:21:14.400 --> 0:21:17.560 the Hammond organ was never really going to replace a 0:21:17.600 --> 0:21:20.520 horn section, was it. You know, it's it's a different instrument, 0:21:20.600 --> 0:21:24.119 you know, So we I think we kind of like 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:28.399 drew on that thing, or you did in the in 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:31.359 the processing and the mixing and the cutting up and 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:34.160 the slight kind of disconnect that you get rhythmically. 0:21:34.200 --> 0:21:41.159 Then you know, I grew up on your music in 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:43.480 the way that that music was made. In fact, when 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:46.320 I was coming up as an engineer here, we were 0:21:46.359 --> 0:21:50.120 still using tape. This was in the mid nineties, and 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:53.800