QLS Classic: Elvis Costello Part 1

Team Supreme’s Suga Steve, a lifelong Elvis Costello fan, sits and talks with Elvis in Electric Lady Studio A, to be aired as two episodes. Spurred on by a clearly amused Questlove, this is the deepest dive possible into The Roots’ and Elvis’ Wise Up Ghost album and the 50-year career of an enduring music superstar.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's okay to meet your heroes, It's okay to dream,
It's okay to let life float you to where you
should be. In twenty twenty one, Quest Love asked me
to do a one on one interview with Elvis Costello
at Electric Lady Studios for Questlove Supreme. At first I
said no, just kidding. I jumped at the opportunity, but

(00:29):
I wanted Questlove there for part of it, just to
see what two of the greatest musicologists and music historians
of our time would discuss. I wasn't disappointed, and you
won't be either. It's hard to keep up, but it's
worth it, and it's hilarious listening to me try to.
They're both legends, they're both brilliant. Enjoy Part one this

(00:49):
week and Part two next week. This was originally aired
in April twenty twenty two. Whew, I can't believe this happened.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
That's all rights alone, and he can give you tonight.

Speaker 4 (01:11):
By you know, I don't even know the bloody words
in direction like it was trying to lift this person up.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
So maybe it's a little gramatic guy.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
I just wanted to get your attention.

Speaker 4 (01:22):
It looks like you're no good.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
The reason I mentioned Elvis Hostels because the record I
just called that because I can't call it from jackfre
New City.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
The reason I mentioned el this Hostel.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
Everyday book the way it was written, which is kind
of much more so a strummy already down with all this.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
What a great first line in the history of first
lines of rock and roll songs.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
I used to be disgusted, but now I try to
be amused. Sometimes you can't read the newspaper without keeping
that in mind.

Speaker 4 (01:45):
But he says, well, that's fine, but you never said
what the pad's poison closed means. So that's what you
have to say. I mean in this hang Out with
Elvis educational part of Right with Bae McCarty incident hang
Out with Elvis, he's very logical, so.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
He goes, you know, this is.

Speaker 4 (01:59):
What you gotta do that with Elvis.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
There's gonna be music in it, and I'm gonna cut
it in.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
El got everything everything everything, Yeah, you know, various album throughout.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
The interesting things that they probably want clear like the
roots running over a high fidelity by themselves at thirty rock.
You know, before that first performance.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
Oh, let's have that. Yeah, that'd be good. Can we
get that?

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (02:26):
Yeah, sure, do we do that? And did we do that?
And we did that on the show? Yet we did
that on the show?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Happy Yeah? It was the first first song I know?

Speaker 4 (02:37):
Is that the same one with the Chelsea? And then
the second time it was like Stations of the.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Cross and someone else?

Speaker 4 (02:42):
Yeah, and John exactly hey man belated Happy Birthday. I
try to play a happy birthright. I couldn't play for ship.
Don't know if I don't know how to play the piano.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Still feel h m hmm, I still feel good? H No,
I said, they said the song. Mm hm, that's great.

Speaker 4 (03:21):
M hm.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
Hm is that the easy Yeah? I'm a I'm a
mm hmmmmm m h. I'm gonna do a slight preface.

(03:47):
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first quest Love Supreme
that has been done in person since the March sixteenth,
twenty twenty pandemic. How strange that we don't have a
supreme vow call Candy home. It should also be noted

(04:12):
that this was recorded on January It's to Day's day,
twenty fifth. Okay, so the day of this recording is
January twenty fifth, and the reason why I feel compelled
to acknowledge the date is because we are also recording
inside of Electric Lady Studios on this the twenty second

(04:35):
anniversary of the seminal album that kind of you know,
brought me to the studio in the first place.

Speaker 4 (04:42):
Which is Voodoo by DiAngelo.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
So I was rather apropos that Sugar Steve and I, oh,
by the way, Boston.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Edited, I'm editing this, so don't worry about anything. I'm
gonna chop it up, not shopping, sit up.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, unpaid, Bill Fontigelo and Laia are not with us
right now, so it's right now, it's just me and Steve.
The last time we did this was with with Herb
Alpert right at this very studio. So for me, what's
very important about this particular episode, and this is again

(05:21):
me trying to improve as a human. This is all
about going out of your comfort zone. So I'm here
as a third will, or as a referee, or as
training wills, because I really it's my dream for Sugars
Steve to really bring out his voice and quest of

(05:45):
supreme episodes because you know, half the time we hog
up all the the moments and he only gets like
one comet in and you know that, like Steve really
has in my opinion, Like I mean, he's like all
he has so much music knowledge that he has yet
to share with you people, unless you follow the Sugar
network like of all of us. He has his own

(06:08):
fan clubs simply for his music knowledge. So that should
tell you something. But for me, I thought, what what's
the best way to throw Sugar Steve in the and
the long away to jump into the river. And he's
really uncomfortable right now, is I mean? Long guard?

Speaker 2 (06:26):
I told you I'm editing.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
You're not editing at all. Yo, I'm sorry you're not.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
I'm like you. I'm a little uncomfortable with compliments. But
and and and see we're at a crossroads here. We're not, Yes,
we are.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
This is the fact. Look, Steve, we this is the
very this is where we are.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
We're literally at the cross We're in the we're in
the center of studio A. Yes, I get it, at
like the X the middle of the X point.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
Similar to Samuel Jackson and Paul Fixon. You're not talking
yourself out of this ship. I'm not trying to all
I'm saying is that you know, there comes a time
where we have to.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Like, how long do you have to stay tonight? Because
I'm here.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
All listen, listen. My whole point is this, My whole
point is this. The way that you're acting right now
is exactly how I was acting when David Dinerstein and
Robert Fevalent had told me that it's my destiny to
direct the documentary. And I'm like, dude, I'm a first
time driver, Like.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
All right, I got it. I gotta just jump in here.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
No, no, this is this is a special quest love Supreme. Yes,
it's my dream to watch Steve talk to his musical hero.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
I've thought about this. This is essentially as if you
got to interview Prince. I know, you know, like that's
essentially where that makes sense to people.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
I feel like I'm the guy in the threesome that
isn't needed.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
So wow, no, well see here's the that's the relief,
here's here's the problem. And you say you're trying to
become a better person, So just accept accept this. As
much as I'm thrilled to be interviewing you know, my
number one musical hero here, Yes, you're very much a
part of the story that I want to tell tonight. Yeah,

(08:12):
I'll be here, but and I need you here to
tell the story. Not just the story of the last
ten years since we've met him, let's say, but a
certain theme that I want to get to that you
both have in comments. So it's like you're trying to
like say, you're training wheels, but you're you're the musical encyclopedia.
I'm here with two of the acknowledged global music encyclopedias,

(08:33):
and you're telling and you're telling people that I have
musical knowledge about something.

Speaker 3 (08:37):
Let's just do this. This is three friends talking. But
eventually I'm gonna get up from the seat and go
to Studio B. It's going to be just like two thousands.
It's voodoo all over again. It's voodoo all over again.
I got kimber waiting next door. Kimber Lee's is next door.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
So okay, you got two rooms tonight.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
Yeah, I got two rooms. However, it's my dream to
see you top the Jimmy Jam episode. So, ladies and gentlemen,
this is a very special in person live at Electric
Lady Studios. You're just cracking up over here with our
good friend Elvis Costello. Thank you all right, so and
now for the intro.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Right now, now, the now, the real intro, because like
whatever that was, okay.

Speaker 4 (09:21):
Did I mention that I have day hell for later on?

Speaker 2 (09:24):
I mean I really would love to just continue with
what he was saying, because like this, dude, right here, wait, look,
this is not okay. Well no, I think people need
to hear this, okay, just like you thought they needed
to hear what you just said.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Yes, okay.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
One of the reasons why he agreed to do Wise
Up Ghosts he wanted to give me this gift of
doing an album with you. Isn't that crazy?

Speaker 4 (09:51):
Well, I'm saying him give you gifts like that before
I was there. I was there on your birthday.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Though, right, and you've given me gifts to you anyway,
Let's let's start. Welcome to Quest Love Supreme. My name
is Sugar Steve.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
I swear to God, Steve. If you cut out what
just started the show your fire, fire, fire fire.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
I'm gonna put an echo on that fire.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
Go ahead.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
So with thirty something studio albums, dozens of other compilations
and live releases, box sets and EPs, endless singles and
B sides, with a substantial autobiography and a forty five
year career, playing countless live concerts and appearing in media

(10:37):
as diverse as singing on a commercial jingle with his father,
guest hosting that David Letterman show, Austin Powers movies, and
his own influential interview show Spectacle. If you haven't been
properly introduced to him by now, I certainly can't do
it in a mere few minutes get it. But because

(11:03):
Elvis's career has had such a deep connection in the
lives of his fans, there is a kind of magic
to it all, and with any kind of magic, one
of the main attractions is to try to figure out
how the magician is doing it. So here is a
very brief look at his background story and a quick
summation of his discography. Born Declan mcmanuson London to a

(11:27):
musical family, his dad was a professional trumpet player and singer,
first in popular big bands and then on his own.
His mom worked in a record shop whose customers relied
on her to have the coolest singles and albums from
the United States. Elvis moved from London to Liverpool and
then back again before launching his career in London. From

(11:49):
an early age, Elvis played guitar and by the early
seventies formed a guitar duo with one of his friends.

Speaker 4 (11:56):
Alan Mays.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Thank You I knew that He.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Worked a few non music related jobs, and then in
nineteen seventy six was signed to Stiff Records, an independent
record label in London. At the time, Elvis was performing
as DP Costello. Stiff founder and Elvis manager at the time,
Jake Riviera, suggested using the name Elvis. His first four albums,
nineteen seventy seven's Miam Is True, nineteen seventy Eights, This

(12:23):
Year's Model, nineteen seventy nine's Armed Forces, and nineteen eighties
Get Happy came with such a variety of intense pleasures,
the poetic and existential lyrics, the melodies which made you
play the records over and over, a lot of energy,
a lot of sound. And that's something else that only
musicians who inspire the most fanatic audiences have the ability

(12:46):
to turn all their fans into advocates of the artist,
ready to lecture you about meanings and understandings only they
and the artist may explain to you. After his debut,
the attraction became his recording and touring band for almost
ten years, and each player in that band, Steve Naive,

(13:07):
Pete Thomas, and Bruce Thomas, had a skill set which
elevated the whole until they sounded like an unstoppable machine
cranking out literate pop which was both political and romantic.
As he broadened the sounds and styles of the music
he used on his second great group of records, nineteen

(13:28):
eighty one's Trust, nineteen eighty one's Almost Blue, and his
Jeff Emerick produced Imperial Bedroom from nineteen eighty two, Elvis
displayed a degree of growth that didn't seem possible because
the first few albums were already so advanced. With nineteen
eighty three's Punched the Clock. In nineteen eighty four's Goodbye

(13:48):
Cruel World, Elvis switched producers, if not sounds and styles
from his earlier albums. Although critiqued harshly by some, including
Elvis himself, these albums and certainly the songs not only
hold up today mostly.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
But wait from what it's in. How uncomfortable are you
right now? But he knows, he knows.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
It's a regurgitation of facts, but it's got some heart.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
Yeah, it has hard Okay, you're boy like man.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
I know you're so poetic, But those albums Punch Clock
and Goodbye Cruel World can now be seen to have
charted a course for the rest of his career, a
willful musical curiosity and ambition which sees him changing genres
and collaborators with an energy and facility that can inspire
all who witness it, Like Live Aid nineteen eighty five,

(14:42):
All You Need Is Love, King of America and Blood
and Chocolate, both albums from nineteen eighty six hold a
popular place in the hearts of diehard Elvis fans, not
only because they are incredible sets of song cycles telling
compelling stories, but because they mark the point most of
us who love Elvis gave up trying to figure him out.
That freed us up for the guilt free enjoyment of

(15:05):
Elvis's next pop breakthrough, the single Veronica and the album
Spike Is nineteen eighty nine, which marked a change in
record companies and a high profile deal with Warner Brothers.
Spike encompassed still greater musical territory and in general and inclusiveness,
which made room for contributors as varied as James Burton,

(15:26):
Mark Reebot, Paul McCartney and Alan Toussant, to name just
a few, all in service of an album which hooked
a new generation of fans. Mighty Like a Rose nineteen
ninety one continued where Spike left off with even more
sophisticated arrangements and production, and from nineteen ninety one on,
Elvis's discography has been a hopscotch game of going wherever

(15:48):
his fans think he won't be spiking his catalog with
classics of what can only be called the genre of
Elvis Costello writing for string quartets The Juliet Letters in
nineteen ninety three. Numerous quote unquote returned to form albums
over the years, like nineteen ninety four's Brutal Youth, then

(16:10):
nineteen ninety six is All This Useless Beauty and Kojack
Variety and album of covers in nineteen ninety five, the
stunning collaboration with Burt Backrack from nineteen ninety eight title
Painted from Memory two thousand and twos, When I Was
Cruel for the Stars, an album with opera singer and
Sophie von Hotter two thousand threes, Marvelous Piano vocal Album

(16:35):
North two thousand four as the delivery Man with the Impostors,
Shout out to David Farreger and oh yeah. Elvis released
a symphony that year as well, il sogno Al Music.
It went to number one on the classical charts. Humanitarian

(16:56):
and artistic efforts came together on the River in Reverse,
a full LP from two thousand and six with Alan
Tussana to bring attention to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina,
an overlooked gem called Momofuku in two thousand and eight
with the Impostors two thousand and nine and ten bring
two more t Bone Burnette productions, Secret Profane and Sugarcane

(17:20):
and National Ransom. Well, that's a lot of albums.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
I'm lying down though.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
And was it over at that point? Perhaps until and
I was told this by Diana Crawl, until Elvis Costello's
creative fire and undernourished musical life force was reignited. Oh

(17:53):
we had come on when he met Sugar. Steve Man questlove.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
With that silence. That's a direct quote from Diana Hau. No.
Oh wow, God bless Diana Crawl. Can we start out, No,
it's almost, it's almost.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
This is where wise up Ghost happens. Recorded in twenty
twelve and released in twenty thirteen. Elvis in Quest along
with the Roots got together to create Wise Up Ghosts,
and we'll obviously spend some time talking about that tonight.
But to get current with Elvis's discography after Wise Up
Ghosts came Grammy Award winning Look Now from twenty eighteen,

(18:35):
the first of four albums co produced with the most
wonderful producer and engineer Sebastian Chris. So that's look Now, Hey, Clockface,
Spanish Model, and the album that just came out. Yet
another great Elvis album here in twenty twenty two, the
boy named if is What just dropped QS listeners from

(18:55):
Electric Lady along with Questlove. As he said, this is
a very special pisode of Questions of Supreme. Please welcome
music Icon Elvis Costello.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
This is the longest, like that was seventeen minutes. That's awesome.
I'm really proud of you, Steve that I'm beaming like
I'm your dad or.

Speaker 4 (19:13):
Something, and I am too.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
Now this is really Steve is wait, I don't even
want to say that, like Steve only likes the background
because I don't know. To me, like Steve and I
would always talk about like having our own radio show
when we were like working back in Philly, And this,
to me sounds this is like the equivalent of his
radio shows that he used to he used to host

(19:39):
on his own cassettes when he was like twelve and
thirteen years.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
I've interviewed you before, way back.

Speaker 3 (19:43):
When I was Yes, so to see this moment happen.
How are you today?

Speaker 4 (19:48):
I'm doing great. This is exactly what I knew what
happened here.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
Sorry, No, I love it. Are you kidding?

Speaker 4 (19:55):
You're just I just I mean when you dubbed the
little little bit Talian organ behind as well, it's kind
of just sounded like my obituy, like you just have
to have the boys, and then when you got to
bring the choir in right you know. No, I appreciate it, no,
because it's a lot. It's a lot of stuff. When
I said, it makes me go like did I do that?

Speaker 3 (20:16):
You did a lot?

Speaker 2 (20:17):
It's too damn much.

Speaker 3 (20:19):
Yes, you did.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
That's why I tried to just sum up the past.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
Yeah, well let's start or whatever you want to talk
about it. Yeah, I know we're going to nerd out
on your career, but I just want to ask one
question that's sort of out of the realm of anything
that was just said in the last eighteen minutes. What
did you do today? What did I do today? Yeah?
What times you wake up?

Speaker 4 (20:39):
Turn to six?

Speaker 3 (20:41):
How is it like? How does your day start?

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Like?

Speaker 3 (20:42):
What do you do?

Speaker 4 (20:43):
It's mostly shaken, like a couple of fifteen year olds
out of bed, different amounts of persuasion.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
So usually still dead.

Speaker 4 (20:51):
Oh yeah, yeah, they got to get on the school bus,
so five to seven, so that's you know, so you
take a kid school, No, I take them down of
the door and they get on the bus.

Speaker 3 (21:03):
Oh okay, yeah. Do you do your kids know you're
Elvis Costella? Like, do they get it or you're just
more dead? Oh?

Speaker 4 (21:11):
No, they get that something that's been happening because they
came and watched the TV show the other night and
they know what I'm doing.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
Okay, so they hear me.

Speaker 4 (21:19):
I mean, the thing is, the last two years, nobody's
been able to get away from anybody, you know. I mean,
even if they know they've been on the road with
both of us since they were six months old, they
remember it from when they were four. But when I said, hey,
this summer we might go on the road with mom.
That'd be great. You know, they're good at traveling.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
And they're fifteen. They were born in.

Speaker 4 (21:39):
Two thousand and six, Yeah, December two thousand and six,
so they are you know, they'd be sixteen extra samber,
so they not long had a birthday.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
And they're great lads.

Speaker 4 (21:49):
And you know, I have in the amount I've traveled
in my life, and we all have traveled, I wouldn't
have I wouldn't have traded anything about these last two
years except the fear of friends and my family and yeah,
you know far away either you're concerned about them and
you responding to an emergency or something. But in terms
of the time we had the four of us, that's unbeatable,

(22:11):
you know. And they got used to like, why is
Dad out in the garden shouting into that microphone? That's
because I was making a record.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
You know.

Speaker 4 (22:18):
I worked out how to do it, and we all
had to work out how to do it. I learned
to play the electric violin. That was a worrying sound.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
You know, are they musically inclined? Like? Are they that
they got music within them?

Speaker 4 (22:31):
And one of them is you know, one of them
told me that, you know, he said I'm I'm piano
this year. And I said, well, do you already read
music right now? Because you played trombone for a year
in jazz band. He said, I wasn't reading. I had
memorized it, so you know, oh okay. So there's there's
some of mom and the summer Dad and it. You know,

(22:53):
I can't read by a can. I can write it
now and I can, you know, but I can't read
it back.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
So what's their epic to nes? Like where your dad
is Elvis Costill in your mom's.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Dying and crawl like, I don't know. My dad's a dentist.

Speaker 4 (23:09):
Listen, if you got to school, if you got to
if you told my sisters like I was, they just
had such a complete conviction that I could sing when
I was a little boy because my dad was on
the radio every week.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
They were convinced.

Speaker 4 (23:21):
And that was fine when it was fine, the drumming
out of class, maybe sing for who were the priest
or whoever came to the school. But when you're ten,
you hate that. You know, that's the worst. So my
parents never maybe do it. So my dad being so
never occurred to me. I was going to do it
until I was I was, I don't know, seventeen.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
So can you sing though, because there was singing around
you and you sang from an early age.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
Or why that?

Speaker 4 (23:46):
I don't know. I really don't know. I mean I
can only remember music playing. I mean I can remember
I can remember being idle wi with this. This is
Recopli called a decad Kali, and I had this big
red on on on light on the front of it,
like one of those ones with a grill, you know,
like a honeycomb on the front, with a record player,
like with a lid on it.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
And I just.

Speaker 4 (24:09):
Remember that looking at that, like looking at any toy
on the ground, you know. So I must have only
been crawling around and I can remember it.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
I'm not imagining it.

Speaker 4 (24:17):
I've got pictures, you know, where it was in the
place we lived. So I guess my mother must have
been playing that a lot back then.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
Let's say, when your father was in his prime, singers
had to Actually.

Speaker 4 (24:32):
Yeah, he's a way better singer than I. I mean,
he had what really good voice, but he was also
good mimic. So the funny thing about my dad was
he sang in a kind of The band was modeled
on Glenn Miller. It was the same kind of music
sweet Bound. Really it wasn't a jazz group. He'd been
a bebop trumpet player in bulking Head at the time where.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
He was born.

Speaker 4 (24:54):
Came to London to try and make a living in jazz,
like a lot of jazz musicians, found that difficult. When
my mother and him got married and then I came along,
he took a job that was better paying, which was singing,
because he could sing, and so he had to sing
whatever was in the hip raide. You didn't get to
choose and to sing whatever was in the charts. Now,
that was fine in the fifties for somebody just singing

(25:16):
a ballad. I got pictures of my dad are as
big bow ties like Frank sin Archie used to wear
in the forties.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
You know.

Speaker 4 (25:22):
Everybody just followed the trends, and he wanted to play
like different people. When he was playing, he wanted to
play like Dizzy. Then he want to play like Clifford Brown.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
You know.

Speaker 4 (25:30):
And then then he got in this dance band that
used to just play what was in the charts. Well,
what was in the charts by nineteen sixty three sixty
four was a huge range of music that wasn't really
designed for a sixteen piece sweet man to play, but
they did it nonetheless because that was how music filtered
through to us. We didn't have twelve hour day, let

(25:53):
alone twenty four hour day pop radio. Just that's why
we had pirate radio because that was a revolution that
brought like the continuous pop music to English listeners. My
dad was part of a process that preceded that, which
was interpreting those songs. So he would have to sing
a song like it wouldn't matter whether it was the
latest song by Tom Jones or the latest song by

(26:14):
the Who, or the latest song by the four Tops
or the Searchers. You know, he had to do all
those songs so crazy, I know, but I mean they
didn't get he didn't get any choice. It's whatever was
in it.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
Break. So you're saying that there was somewhat a big
band scene over there, but was there really a jazz
like a hard bop jazz scene over there.

Speaker 4 (26:32):
Yeah, I mean there's musicians that he that he wanted
to were some of his friends when they first came
from Liverpool, were the people that founded the modern jazz scene.
You know, he tried to get the gig with Ronnie Scott.
Everybody wanted that gig. Ronnie formed the club. The other
musicians of that Joe.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
Ronnie Scott was an actual person because.

Speaker 4 (26:53):
Yeah know, Ronie Scott was a tennis saxophone player then
founded the club and he was like one of the
people that led the way. And there's one or two musicians.
Another great Tanner play called Tubby Hayes came to New
York and was accepted.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
Obviously, some English.

Speaker 4 (27:08):
Musicians made it into the American scene, but there were
so many great musicians here. Marrimount Partland that the piano players,
She's from England, so you know there's people like that
that came over, that came and they wanted to play
with the great people on fifty second Street. But that
was it was difficult enough to get in the door
in London because this music wasn't that popular and popular

(27:31):
music was. You could turn the radio on when I
was a kid and it sounded like it was nineteen
thirty five. I mean the music was still like little
kind of string group playing the melody of something, but
it wouldn't be anything like the record. So there was
a there was so little music.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
And that was known as mainstream radio then that.

Speaker 4 (27:50):
Yeah, we only had one channel playing music on the BBC.
We just had the light program.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
So what I know is Northern Soul, like when did
that breakout?

Speaker 4 (28:03):
Norton Soul was kind of like that was really a
club thing that happened late sixties, I think through mid
to late sixties. The thing that happened all simultaneously was
the Pirate Radio happened, and that changed the fact that
we could get the pop music played by the original
artists not interpreted in these slightly square ways, and the

(28:26):
TV shows that played pop music got hippa. Like one week,
Ready Steadygo, the Friday Night for show just had the
Motown review on, and like just blew everybody's minds because
suddenly all these people with like style and you know,
coordinated moves and everything. You've got to think before that.
It's four lumpy lads in beetlesuits and their hair brush

(28:48):
forward for twenty minutes before the show. You know, they
just thought to do that, and they're doing I don't know,
Fortune Teller or something by Aunt Hussan. Next thing, you've
got David ruffin Oh Love and Gay.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
You know, it was a bit of a mind blower.

Speaker 4 (29:03):
Obviously you could hear the bands, you can hear the
musicians who they were listening to. They copied everything off
records and records. Took about six weeks to get to England.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
I just met this weekend. I was in LA and
one of the main cameramen from Ready Steady Go oh Yeah,
happened to come to an event of mine. So it's
kind of where in the last month and a half, well,
I've been talking to the Shindig people air quotes talking

(29:35):
That's all I can see now. I can't tell you
the context, but I've been learning a lot about how
the pop scene got developed over in the UK. And
you know, I'm learning these things.

Speaker 4 (29:49):
Totally different, totally different timeline, totally different availability. It wasn't
commercial for one thing, so they didn't have that driving it.
You know, it didn't have the same thing driving it.
We had commercial television. We had two only two channels.
When I when say, at the time the Beatles started,
there were only two TV channels BBC one BBC two

(30:09):
hel BBC and ITV so BBC and one commercial channel. Okay,
so they both had pop shows, but they were kind
of square and they were based on different things. And
then then they started BBC two and they would have
jazz programs and that was kind of amazing actually, because
they'd get really good people on them. You'd see Errol
Gahan or he'd see Escapedis and there's a lot of

(30:31):
footage and the BBC went very good at keeping it,
so I don't know how much they they went over
a lot of things. So things I saw as a
kidnapped memories.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
Of I learned that they would they were they would.

Speaker 4 (30:41):
Wipe the tapes, you know. But I mean, you know,
if you saw something like Hendrix when he he was
on the Lulu Show and he and the Weak Cream
broke up and he just played at Sun Sorrow of
Your Love. He said, we're going to stop playing this rubbish,
which was Hey Joe, which was his hit, and that
was I saw that love and it just blew my mind,
and it was like, hey, television just went out of control,

(31:04):
you know, because you remember this is at a time
when when on the radio, when I was a kid,
they used to make the news reader put on a
dinner jacket to read the news on the radio. They
had to wait, they had to be formally dressed to
read the news. I don't ask me why. Maybe it

(31:25):
made of them.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
To think that I was saying this, this is the
BB Yeah they were.

Speaker 4 (31:30):
Yeah, So it was a whole completely different world. And
when you know, you can imagine Hard Day's Night was
a film where the group talking in their ordinary voices,
not like they were in show business, but they seemed
like they just were lads from Liverpool. And the American
hop movies were mostly Elvis Presley and they were just

(31:50):
involving Elvis as a truck driver, Elvis as a racing driver,
Elvis as a helicopter pilot, what Elvis on a surfboard,
you know, Like I.

Speaker 3 (31:59):
Gotta tell you, I saw Jailhouse Rock for the first
time this Sunday. That's a good movie. Well they okay.
So in context, Quentin Tarantino has a what we would
call a grindhouse in la It's called the New Beverly
and basically, Quentin Tarantino purchased this place because he wanted

(32:20):
to recreate what movie theaters were like back in the
seventies when he was a kid. So it's only thirty
five millimeter or sixteen millimeter print, and it's weird things
like you know, a kung fu flick, science fiction film,
an old Western or an old classic or Italian new
or whatever, and he graciously transferred my movie Summer of

(32:42):
Soul to thirty five millimeter and was done in double features.
So on Sunday, the double feature was Elvis's Jailhouse Rock
in Summer of Soul. So I saw Jailhouse. I've seen
that scene before, but I've never watched Jailhouse Rock, and
it just hit me that I I think, with the
exception of is there a film called Blue Hawaii or

(33:03):
Blue Yeah, I think that's the only Elvis film that
I've seen, and now I want to watch them all
because well, just for the format, the format of this
film is like, there's any excuse two make what videos
basically like to you know? All right, Well, we're also

(33:24):
going to rabbit holes out of it, So let's go
back to you were taking us to. This is your beginning.

Speaker 4 (33:29):
It's nearly impossible for me to stay to pick up
the guitar when I was thirteen without referring to the
fact that I know because I've read you know, your book,
so I know that we have this one and we
talked about it before we have this one.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
You know.

Speaker 4 (33:45):
So key similarity despite all the different experiences is the
example of your father playing music weekend.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
We got whatever it.

Speaker 4 (33:52):
Is is very different and it gives you the sense
of it being both magical and you get an idea
of the Monday. And remember really going in with my
dad to the radio studio when they were on, when
I was on the school holiday, I'd go with him
in the morning and to be a bunch of people
reading the paper and I think still smoking in the theater.
I remember them as having cigarettes. Maybe they didn't, but

(34:14):
they were definitely just reading the paper. And then the
conductor would come, the band leader and then bring it
to attention.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
They rehearse. Then a group would come in and rehearse,
and that group would.

Speaker 4 (34:23):
Be somebody from the charts, so it'd be the Hollies
or Engelbern, Humperdink or whoever was on the show singing
a couple of songs. Inevitably, if that's your perspective of it,
it changes. It just me and a kid waiting for
your favorite record to come on the radio, or your
favorite record to come on. The couple of TV shows
a week that played the music. You liked the fact
that my dad was in the front room learning the

(34:44):
songs that I loved, Like the first record I ever
owned was Please Please Meet. He gave it to me
because I asked him for it, but it was advanced
copy that he was learning off a piece of sheet
music so he could sing it on the radio that
week the Beatles, so he was second hit.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
Okay, I see.

Speaker 4 (35:03):
So he's singing please Please Me in the front room.
And then my folks split up not long after that,
so then he would just give me the records. He'd
come around and give me a stack of singles.

Speaker 3 (35:12):
I was going to ask, what was the first record
that you remember buying with your own money.

Speaker 4 (35:19):
Fame at Last was an e ep by Georgie Fame
and it was pretty cool because it had one song
by Lambert Andricks and ross one by mos Awson, but
it was a it was a Willie Dixon song, one
song that was by Lou Jordan and one song by
Ray Charles that there was that's who he was covering.

(35:40):
So that was a pretty good education for four songs.
A twenty one year old organ player from Lancashire. They
were napped for a nine year old kid. That was
a lot of information to get all on one record
because he was he was no no, no was way
after that was a later one. It was a point
in no return. It was a it was a golflin

(36:01):
king song. It was it was sixties like wow, it
was later later, Yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
And Georgie did.

Speaker 4 (36:08):
G McDaniels and like a Sander Maria, and he had
like he was Hippie. Knew Eddie Jefferson, and he knew
a lot of music that the other organ players didn't know,
like Stevie Winwood, the New R and B R, all
those guys all knew all the great R and B singers.

Speaker 3 (36:26):
But Georgie was unusual and did he He.

Speaker 4 (36:28):
Sang like like mosaices and he sang like a cross
between John Hendricks and Moses, and he saying, you know,
you see me, welcome to this man. He had that
kind of dead panwez you know, goddamn Like he could
sing like he could sing John Hendrick's music just great. Yeah,
he could sing like things like he could sing like
down for the Count and Little Darling and those things,

(36:51):
the Neil Hefty things. He could sing, the basy things
he sang with a big band. He was a really
great musician.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
Fort For our listeners out there, if you can peep,
it's a later John Hendrick song, but there's a okay,
So if you're familiar with I've talked about this on
the show before. The idea of vocal lise, vocal ease
is where jazz lyricists would put words to jazz songs

(37:18):
that never had lyrics before. And so John Hendrix does
this really amazing version of Miles Davis's Freddy Freeloader, and
he does it with al Jio, George Benson, and Bobby mcfaerrin,
and basically the four of them, with their very unusual
jazzy voices, verbatim recreate all the solos or Miles's original

(37:43):
Freddy freeload with the lyrics, which is the hardest thing
to do. I mean, they notated each like I've played
the original and their version simultaneously, and they followed every
lick of those solos and put lyrics to it and
a narrative to a story about a guy loves alcohol.

(38:04):
But anyway, I digress. If you're into John Hendricks, that
is definitely.

Speaker 4 (38:09):
Well that That was the song on not EPI that
they did, which was lined by Hendricks and Ross. Course,
Sonny Ross also another Scottish import to the jaz saying,
you know.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
Whoa I did not know that? Yeh she thought she
was American.

Speaker 4 (38:23):
No, she won Americans, she was I think Scottish.

Speaker 5 (38:25):
Yeah, fuck this, yeah, I mean seriously, like you just
invented your a new podcast. Like the two of you
fucks could talk the fucking ever and it's all great.
But the problems there's like ten references every five seconds.
So it's like for people trying to figure out what
the heck what we're talking about, they have to you know,

(38:48):
you can turn a podcast down to to like half
speed or like.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
You know, I do that. Actually, I mean, all right,
you guys are ridiculous. Honestly, it's ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (38:56):
No take over, Steve, forgive me.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
I know that Elvis wants to talk a little bit
about Summer of Saw.

Speaker 4 (39:03):
I do I know that you that you saw Smer soldiers.
I mean, I have to thank you for morelos that
you know some of us al had to come out
when it came, when when it was shot, it would
have had a corrective I think for the way people
sort of regarded is it. And I mean I remember

(39:24):
going to see Woodstock, and that was our first glimpse
of a festival.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
You know, I was living in the north of England.

Speaker 4 (39:29):
You know, it rains all the time, like constantly, it
seems like for years, it seemed in those days. And
we just thought, Wow, that's gonna be great. One of
these days, We'll have one of these festivals and everybody,
all the girls that take the clothes off and were
all slide around the mudin and all the great you see,
summer sold. It was kind of for one thing, it
was in the city, right so right right there, you
kind of had whole families. You didn't have this one

(39:51):
generation of people working.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
Wait time out, I got to ask you a question.
So you're telling me that in nineteen sixty nine, yeah,
reading aston Bery, they hadn't happened. Oh wait, So I'm
under the impression that America was lead to the table. No, no,
and that Europe had been throwing festivals all day.

Speaker 4 (40:10):
They were showing festivals where they used to kind of
like hit each other on the head with a bladder
on a stick, you know, or like jump around the
maypole and stuff back in the medieval times. But they
didn't have like rock festivals. No, they didn't. I mean
they had gatherings.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
So when did festival cultures start?

Speaker 4 (40:27):
And I think Glastonbury is the first one? Is seventy
or seventy one? Wait what yeah, I mean one of
the big festivals that every remembers was Bath in seventy. Yeah,
but it was a pretty small festival. And then we
didn't really have any big gathering, like, like nothing on
the scale of Woodstock. I mean maybe in Europe they

(40:48):
had them. I don't remember hearing about them though. I
didn't wasn't paying that much attention. But we saw so
we saw the film Woodstock, right, And then I was
talking to some people the other day about I went
to the biggest festival in seventy two. I was already
playing then in Liverpool and I remember did a gig
on the Friday night and I came out and it
was raining, like they said, cats and dogs, you know,

(41:10):
just like looks like a load of needles dancing on
the on the on the pavement. And it never occurred
to me that would be slightly damp in the field.
I was going to outside thirty miles away and then
got on a train the next morning with just a
blanket and boots, no sleeping bag, no tent, and I
didn't even think about it. I just I'll just sleep
under the stars, like and it was like, you know,

(41:34):
it was like a way back from the lines in
the First World War. When I got there, it was
like you had to wade through feet of mud and
it was miserable and cold, and I and they were
selling these giant like messenger bags, human sized messenger bags,
and that's the only thing that stopped us from all
getting hypothermia. And then listened to Captain beef Hard at about
three o'clock in the morning and the next day The

(41:56):
Grateful Dead played for four hours. You know, it was
like and that was glamour, you know, that was the
baddest glamoro. And I had trench foot when I came home.
You know, it was like it was it was nothing
like we imagined. So seeing summer soul and seeing a
festival happening inner city, right, Okay, it's over weekends, so
it's like it's a collection of festivals really, but with
the whole thousand. Yeah, But I mean, the thing that's

(42:18):
so great is the fact that you've got those interviews
with the little kids that were there, that were witnesses
to this stuff, and there's a whole corrective to like
what that all of those people meant a part from
the fact that they had the jazz and the gospel people,
and then you know, all the little vignettes like Mehalea
Jackson handing the mic to mad this, you know, I

(42:42):
mean parts of it that just I don't know whether
I'm reading into this, but like having said sixty five
or something when the Motown review came over, and the
fact that you were, you know, in the same way
as people say are you beatles or stones? Are you
as we said, Temmy's or tops? You know, you can't
like them both, you know, right, really because I like

(43:04):
them both.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
You know that.

Speaker 4 (43:06):
So David Ruffin when he comes out and he's he's
like the kind of returning prints, you know, and then
he's sort of fragile. You know, it was a curious
look because when he comes out and then his act
kind of looks slightly stiff because he's used to playing
much more he's not. He's also used to four people

(43:28):
being yeah because it's right after he left, right, so
it's like yeah, yeah. And then guess what, you know,
the band that everybody's shocked by is fift to mention
to completely kill, and they're kind of seen as kind
of square, and then when you see him, they're not
square at all. They're looking great, but everything's great. And
then you get the Vinish vision from the future. You
get like the visitation from the future with Sly, and

(43:51):
I mean we just if that at all. I mean
Sly at Woodstock, it's so far an advance of everything
else on the bill. I mean, it's so far the
best thing on It's the best music, even Jimmy. It's
like by the end of it, it's like there's nobody
there watching him. The big moment is Sly. But if
people had seen that in the context of all of it,

(44:13):
can you imagine how different things would have been the
Stevie wanted to right before he makes talking book, you know,
like that's exactly what the hell it's all these things,
you know.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
That's literally like that's why I made it, because I
meant the time when it was offered to me, Prince's
autobiography was out and he was talking about like being
an eleven year old watching Santana do this guitar solo
and he's like, that's what I want to do when
I get older, and like I'm really he was discouraged
from doing music because his dad was like, he'll never

(44:41):
be as good as me. So already that chip on
the shoulder, I got to be better than my dad.
Thing happened, and his dad wasn't the nurturing type. But
his dad takes him to the seawoodstock and through Santana's set,
Prince is like, that's what I want to do. And
so for me, you know, luckily I got there because

(45:02):
well again epigenetics, like my parents, coming into that situation
in the world where your parents are musically inclined, you
can't help but reach this destination. But I just wondered
the hundreds of millions of people that who could have
been affected by this, And again to hear you say it,
because in my mind, I'm thinking that America got a

(45:23):
festival idea from over in Europe. But I don't think so.

Speaker 4 (45:28):
No, I think it was a spontaneous I mean, there's
you know, when you will look at jazzon the summer's day,
you know, and you see that and you see Chuck
Berry come out and you watch the band behind him
like it's an all star band behind him, and they're
really a band that designed to back Little Armstrong, you
know they and they're just looking is Jack t God?

(45:48):
And they played trombone with Little som Strong just looking
at Chuck Berry like what thing is he doing here?
Because I guess that guitar sounds like twelve times louder
than anything, and really it's not that loud. But but
the difference is in the music is so great and
that's but that looks pretty, that's pretty kind of still
like an it's not really like a festival. It's like

(46:08):
an open air show. It's still like a garden part.
It's a bunch of people up in Newport, like, looking
at this, it's great that we got it. Newport Folk
vessels the same. You get a bunch of bohemians and
then you get Bob Dylan comes out and it's totally
like a revolution. But I don't think there's anything in
England that's there's a Cambridge Folk Festival and things like that.

(46:30):
I don't remember there being anything that we could go
to like that.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
Well, this shows me that Woodstock the movie is the
legend that's set people's thoughts about festivals and people's thoughts
about hippies and people's tharts about America and people's thoughts
about those acts that plead.

Speaker 4 (46:47):
So, yeah, we saw all those movies, you know, we
saw an Easy Rider with all that, with all the music,
with Hendrix in and Steppenwolf, you know, and that seemed
like whatever the movie was about, whatever it represented, those
movies were things that people or have you seen that
because it was it was an X because there was
naked people in it and drugs, so those things don't

(47:08):
The country was pretty buttoned up. People think it's like, oh,
it's all happening, that's swinging sixties and all that, But
that's all just happening on the films that the that
they made pop films in the fifties, like on the
Elvis Model. They put the star of the day in
the movie, made up some daft thing. What's this one about? Oh,
he's he's got a race horse? Okay, well, this one's

(47:29):
about a race horse, this guy's got a chip shop,
whatever it is. You know, they make up some story
right and stick a couple of songs in it. Then
then it all changes again. So the idea of a
bunch of people getting together and putting music on and
I mean, I mean, what's the name of the guys
that the mc gar Yeah, God is like you could
make a whole you know. I said to Jeff Jones that,

(47:53):
you know, I went to the Get Back premiere in
London and I sat next one away from Glen Johns.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
Well you went to the Get Back premiere? How long
was the movie?

Speaker 4 (48:01):
It was like one hundred minute cut with a with
an introduction Peter Jackson on one of the days of
the eighteenth day.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Have you seen us yet?

Speaker 2 (48:08):
This is where I got to cut you guys off.
There's no and you talk about that documentary the next hour.
Let me, I've decided this ship.

Speaker 4 (48:15):
Let me just say this one thing though, because it
attains the quest. I mean, I think there was an
actual article in the New York Times about Glenn john
Sen that he was kind of like had it with
people ringing him up, going what about your clothes and
get back? Because Glen is wearing like the greatest outfits.
He's the most stylish man in the movie. Likewise, you
could have had a Summer of Soul line of clothing

(48:36):
from the.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
MC's got the greatest cussion.

Speaker 4 (48:39):
No matter who's on the stage, He's He's like he's
got an outfit almost as good and nearly always like
right for their style too. It's like he dressed he knew, Okay,
I'm going to come out and I'm going to introduce
I'm going to be right for that, you know. It's
like he's given a lot of thought to it. One no,
he changed for every act. Was that was fantastic?

Speaker 3 (49:00):
So do you want to ask your first question?

Speaker 2 (49:03):
So that was the introduction his first hour of whatever.
But I did see Get Back. It's freaking mesmerizing. Obviously,
if you're a Beatles fan, there's so much and.

Speaker 4 (49:14):
Even if you're not, actually I think if it, I think, yeah, sir,
if you just like people, you know, if you just
like people.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Yeah, But if you're a Beatles fan, it's like.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
All right.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
For me, I think this is where the story begins
with regards to the two of you. It's the year
two thousand, and it's right after Voodoo had come out
in nineteen ninety nine. But for me, the story starts
with a Vanity Fair article more of a list addictionary
that came out that Elvis put out in Vanity Fair

(49:45):
in the year two thousand. It was essentially his five
hundred favorite albums or most recommended album something along those lines,
and five hundred.

Speaker 4 (49:52):
Records ant to haven if you died.

Speaker 3 (49:54):
I think, yeah, like that. It was very ominous that article.
That article started my friendship with Lisa Robbins because I
was like, I want to do that. I could do that,
you know, so we sort of Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
I don't know how I came across it, but my
first subscribe.

Speaker 3 (50:09):
I'm going to I'm gonna tell you how he came across. No. Literally,
it was a big deal that Vanity Fair did a
music issue was just unheard of at the time, and
I remember I think I brought ten copies of that. Okay,
I'm gonna tell you how how that article and that
specific issue saved Annie Leebwoitz's life. Are you ready for this?

(50:35):
And it's a voodoo connection. So my publicist gives me
a call. We get the roots, get word that we're
going to be one of the subjects in the music
issue and at Annie Leewoods is going to shoot us,
which is the highest honor at the time, Like there's
a photographer that's going to shoot you, has to be Annie.
So of course I'm I'm the point person for the

(50:57):
Roots or whatever. And you know, I talked to her
on the phone and she's in Paris right now and
she's shooting maybe three or four artists that like she's
traveling Europe like getting them and whatnot. So this is
mid two thousand. We're on tour with DeAngelo. I also
think that the first leg of the Voodoo Tour is done.
We're about to start rehearsals for the second leg of

(51:19):
the Voodoo Tour. And all I remember was okay, So
we had maybe two or three weeks off of which
I scheduled time with Anny Leewoods to do this shot
with the Roots, and something happens on DiAngelo's end. Could
be anything, right, No, no, but yeah, it was you know,

(51:39):
like we missed the deadline or missed whatever it was,
whatever the set date was supposed to be. We had
to kick the can to the next week, and then
the next week and then and then when we kicked
it the third time, I told Alan Leeds and the
guys like, look, I got a photo shoot with Anny
Leewoods in Philadelphia. I can't do that day. But it

(51:59):
was like our only date to rehearse, like, you know,
it was one of the things where D'Angelo happened. So
what winds up happening is I don't want to lose
this shot, and I hit my publisher something. We hit
her up and we're just apologizing profusely, and she's like, look,
look it's cool, we can handle it. Matter of fact.

(52:21):
I'll tell you what this This will give me a
week to I think Most Death was coming to Paris.
She's like, it gives me a chance to shoot him
and do other two other artists, and then I'll hop
on the plane and come back, and then we could
do you on this particular day, which was great. So
we have that settled turns out and this and this
is where D'Angelo isms saved her life. Had we kept

(52:44):
that original arrangement, any Leewards would have been on that
last Concord flight that crashed and killed all the passengers. Wow.
So in the week that she decided to stay for
Most Death, she avoided being on that flight. You know,

(53:05):
Thank God for that. So yeah, it's crazy. And the
epilogue is that I told di'angelo what happened and he says,
who's Anny Leewood? And I was like, dude, she's the
most epic photographer of all time. Dude like, and he's like,

(53:27):
and he pulls out a Jet magazine that he's on
the front cover of. Right, this is what I'm about.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
Right, Well, now I know how I found the article
because it was you.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
Yeah, I was on that tour. I had ten of those.
But yeah, I think, yeah, I had ten of those
issues because it was a big deal.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
I still have it because I used to use it.
I was like, this is the ultimate record store tool
to have.

Speaker 3 (53:52):
Absolutely, I purchased many an album off that list.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
So on that list was Voodoo. That's the first time
that I knew that you, Elvis, knew about him quest
and about t'angelo and I'd heard that record. So how
did that? How did Voodoo get on your radar? How
did you get your hands on it?

Speaker 4 (54:17):
I have no idea. I don't remember anybody.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
I think.

Speaker 4 (54:21):
I just you know, like anything, you something filled us
through and then you listen to it and it's great.
Maybe I read about it somewhere.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Well, maybe the video.

Speaker 4 (54:35):
I lived up on hill in Ireland and still in
those days, I didn't see any I didn't have any
cable television.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
The story that I've always gotten from people, there's always
a younger person, someone's life. That's sort of like, I
think this is an album that's going to resonate with you,
because this feels like an era that you loved, And
if you're if you're a fan of Stevie Wonder, if
you're a fan of if you're a fan of that
sort of pure soul, then there's no way this record

(55:05):
didn't hit your radar.

Speaker 4 (55:06):
I think it's probably that recognition, but that's kind of
also common to a bunch of other records that are
probably for one thing, I had no idea you were
going to ask me. I would probably be surprised by
some of the records that are and aren't on that list,
because you could have asked me.

Speaker 3 (55:21):
Three days later and I would have got a different
five hundred. Do you know so?

Speaker 4 (55:24):
I mean I remember thinking that almost The only thing
I really calculated was I didn't feel obliged to put
records on that I knew a lot of other people
really held in high regard, Like there's no records by
the Doors because I can't stand the doors.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
Why can't you Door?

Speaker 2 (55:41):
I know I knew that about him, but I don't
I can't figure out why.

Speaker 4 (55:46):
I just never spoke to me. It just never did.
I don't know why I can. I like a lot
of them. I don't like it.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
It's sort of like it's kind of cool that you
don't like to do it.

Speaker 3 (55:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (55:59):
No, And people always think I would because of the
organ and you know and everything. But I just and
I think they're all sure. They're all refined players in
their own way. And when I break on through to
the other side. I like that one record that's the
only record by the Doors. I like the Fame. No,
my friend played on it. It's like, you know, Jerry

(56:20):
Chef played on that. He was in my band. But no, no,
at led Zeppelin, there's no led Zeppelin records on that.
I literally never owned one. Really, there's no Pink Floyd
records because I only to own two Pink Floyd discs
and they're both singles, c Emily Play and Arma Lane.
I've never even listened to Dark side of the Word.

(56:42):
I have no idea what the Wall sounds like.

Speaker 3 (56:46):
Is there any homegrown act that you dug homegrown? Well,
I mean just from I mean from England?

Speaker 4 (56:55):
Yeah, who the peoples? So you forgot the Kinks, the
Small Faces, the Small Faces for me was the next
group after the Beatles. It was like, not the Stones,
it was the Small Faces, really, Tin Soldier, you know,
all or nothing, all of those records. Yeah, but the Kinks,
the Kinks, absolutely, the Kinks only.

Speaker 3 (57:18):
Up to a certain period.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
Tell this man please.

Speaker 4 (57:20):
In the same thing. It's really selective. It's anything about
musical choices. Like I say, it would have been a
different five hundred of been You could probably pull one
up there. What's with that record? I go, I don't
even remember saying that should have been on the list.
I would still put Voodoo on there now, but I
don't know what else is on there that was surprise
and I don't.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
Know that was such a relation.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
I think what I said is right.

Speaker 4 (57:39):
Though I think it's right, I think it speaks to
some continuity. And you see, this is the part of
the thing that comes from our inability to hear everything.
Is the things that we did hear in England really
went deep. So nobody said have you when you asked
me about Northern Soul like two hours ago. You know,

(58:01):
that's an organic kind of movement to kind of dance
to records that nobody else had. Like there's a particular
kind of beat. A lot of the Northern Soul records
are not from Detroit, they're from Chicago. There are a
lot of Chicago things, so because they I don't know
why it was, but maybe that slightly different sound motown

(58:24):
or as we didn't even call it motown.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
We called it Tamla.

Speaker 4 (58:28):
You say you've got the new if you got the
new Tamla record, right, we said, what do you listen to?
I listened to Tamla and it's Tamla. And all we
had were these singles, or we had compilations Motown Chartbusters
compilations Volume three particular is a particularly good one, you know,
and What is Soul which was was an Atlantic Records

(58:50):
compilation of it, and Tighten Up two which is which
is a regular rosteatic compilation. Those you can have a
party with those. And we didn't have a lot of
other records because the radio. Yeah, but that was pretty good.
You could play those round and round, and I think
that's it made you really kind of like go behind

(59:10):
a painted smile.

Speaker 3 (59:12):
You know. This whole herd of mine heard.

Speaker 4 (59:15):
It through the great those records, but we didn't know
the gladys Knight version who heard it through the Great Vine.
Necessarily we knew the Marvin version, so all these records
there were, and then people got into the more esoteric thing,
and then they started dancing at the week and Casino
and this kind of slightly looser beat that they had
on those Chicago records, Major Lance and these kind of

(59:36):
Curse Mayfield produced records. They're not like the Curtis seventies records.
These are things that sound like they're imitating Motown, are
not quite getting it right even yeah, they're not on
the same level of musicianship as the Motown rhythm section.
But people, for whatever reason, it was a particular kind
of bpm. It was a particular kind of rhythm way faster, faster,

(59:57):
and it and this crazy dancing, the and the crazy clothes.
You've seen the you've surely seen the documentary about Lord
and Sold. You know, it's a whole thing, and it's
totally based in the North and it's nothing to do
and the suburbs where I lived, we were rock steady,
motown or tabla you know these that. And then I
went to Liverpool in nineteen seventy and they asked me

(01:00:20):
what kind of music you like? I said, I like
Otis Renning and Lee Dorsey and you like soul music,
I said, yeah, and tabla that's for that's for Divvis.
They would say Divvy's means like yes, it's like like
idiots like that music really like because it was I.

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
Don't know why they.

Speaker 4 (01:00:40):
Were into kind of pink Floyd and and like all
this prog rock and heavy rock. And so I ended
up liking The Grateful Dead because nobody would nobody to
go with me on that because so, well.

Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
What's it. You don't you're not a big prog rock guy,
but you like the Dead.

Speaker 4 (01:00:54):
The Dead are not a prog rock Well, in nineteen
seventy seventy, wait.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
We're gonna go down a whole other Robberts. I honestly
thought I was just going to say one thing and
the ease out of here, But now you stuck me.
And I do this with almost every guest. Guest the
house with your entire record collection is on fire. Yeah,
you can only say five records, and they can't be
greatest hits or box sets? All right?

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
Can they be forty fives or LPs LP?

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
I mean more records?

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
He might want is please please meet forty five?

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
You know well, I don't mean the sentimental saving but
what five albums, non greatest hits, non live unless it's
a special live record like Volume three of James Brown
at the can't.

Speaker 4 (01:01:45):
Be a compilation record, though, can't be a compilation record.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
It can't be a compilation That's not fair though, Okay,
go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
No, I'm just saying some artists like you don't know
their albums because I'm just trying.

Speaker 3 (01:01:55):
To figure out, like, what what is the what is
the canon of original albums? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:01:59):
But you I think if you really had a chance
and you knew where they lived.

Speaker 3 (01:02:03):
How could you ask him this question?

Speaker 4 (01:02:04):
If you knew though, if you knew that your house
was on fine, you're going to lose everything. You'd you'd
pull the rarest records that you knew you couldn't replace.
You wouldn't Like it's a difficult question because I would definitely.
I still have my original Mono Revolver two part of
all right, I picked that one rare.

Speaker 3 (01:02:21):
Five the rarest albums that you own? Yeah, and five
of the seminal okay, Mono Revolver No, okay, but all right,
what five of the rarest albums you own? What are they?

Speaker 4 (01:02:34):
I don't know that. I don't really know that I
have rare records in the same way as you do.
I mean I think at this time, Revolver a mono
Revolver definitely Okay, sound Venture sound Venture by Georgie means
a lot to me. Okay, not so easy to get
uh from later on?

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):
I what's the most expensive record you shelled out for?

Speaker 4 (01:02:56):
I actually probably a seventy eight You know some of
the D eight's come in like four or five hundred.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Are you you have a seventy eighths collection? Because that's
a whole rabbit hole.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
That's a whole rabbit hole. Yeah, So should I accept
those because people all the time, well no, not real
records don't go into that world, dude. I mean, I'm
not really interested in seventy eighths, But you know, like
old great grandmothers are passing away, the nieces and nephews
are like your quest. I don't know what to do this,
but it's an endless way, know you, I should take it.

(01:03:27):
I'll tell you why.

Speaker 4 (01:03:28):
Because acoustic records acoustic records before there was electrical recording.
Think about it, You're like literally staring into the horn
of the Victrola and you're you can go right through
that little hole into the room they're playing.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
It's coming.

Speaker 4 (01:03:42):
It's one generation away, isn't it. It's one generation closer
than electrical recording.

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:03:49):
All right, so the answers, yes, I should accept it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:52):
I'm strong on an electrical recording, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
But his collections are pretty He's got a collection of collections,
are right.

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
I'm sure.

Speaker 4 (01:03:58):
I know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
I've seen that he's got a storage room for his
storage rooms.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
Yes, yeah, So what you don't know the most expensive.

Speaker 4 (01:04:05):
I never in a way of collecting records. It's always
been about what's in the groove. It's never been about
the catalog number, or the funny label, or this is
a different sleeve. I never cared about any of that stuff.
The other reason is because when I first came to
America after the first trip, I you know, the handle
fell off my suitcase on the way home because it
was so full of records I'd bought in second hand stores.

(01:04:27):
I used to come with an empty suitcase, no one,
I'd fill it up. And the whole joy of it
was like, Oh, here's a whole album by Bobby blue Blant,
here's a whole album by the Luvin Brothers. You know,
I had maybe one track on a compilation all those
here's a whole team one Walker record.

Speaker 3 (01:04:43):
You know you were a complition guy.

Speaker 4 (01:04:46):
Well, no, that's what we That's how we got to
know about stuff because of getting the Motown records or
stacks and Atlantic collections. I didn't have a whole record
of William Bell until it came to America. Then you
could you could find them everywhere. You could find like
Great records, whatever it was. You know, it's weird Detroit

(01:05:06):
Spinners as we called them, you know, right, you could.
I had singles on the Spinners, but then you could
just go buy.

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):
Albums of them, you know, So you know it's weird now,
Philip Wynd, you know, yes, you know it's weird. Now.
I am collecting and paying top dollar for UK acts
that would cover American stuff. Like I'm going through a
kitchen phage now where I'm big into cover songs. So

(01:05:36):
there will be again like party records, the idea of
doing a compilation with just straight up hits that you
could put on at a party and let play all
the way through, and then put on side to and
let play all the way. So there would be these
bands from like from Liverpool, pans from Brighton, especially in
Brighton there's one group with the name Brighton in it

(01:05:56):
but they're not known, but it's like they're cheap imitation
of James Brown's I got the feeling or whatever was
hitting at that time, like science will delivery.

Speaker 4 (01:06:07):
And what what what kind of period of time is
this sixty.

Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
Six to seventy six? It would be like the k
Tell of whatever, shout out to k Tel where did
they come from? Hey? Before? I mean, this is this
is the thing. I know.

Speaker 4 (01:06:20):
This sounds like I'm bringing my dad in this all
the time, but this is what he did.

Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
That's what I'm saying. He did it in the early sixties.

Speaker 4 (01:06:25):
I mean you, I don't know whether you know this,
but the beginning of pirate radio, there was the guy
Ryan O'Reilly. Everybody knows about that name is Irish guy
who's found of Radio Caroline. His partner was an Australian
guy who had the other pirate radio ship was which
was anchored in the in the estuary of the Thames,
broadcast into London. Now, this guy had a crazy scheme

(01:06:47):
and this is true. He thought that he could cover
records make him cheaply at nine in the morning in downtime,
and the record the song was because he'd come out
of publishing. He believed that he could have those records
taught the original versions, so those are the super kitch

(01:07:08):
versions because they are no phino copies, and he thought
he could get away without paying anything but publishing.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
I guarantee he's saying this is genius.

Speaker 4 (01:07:16):
It was like, okay, of course it failed, and that
the plan failed, you know, because people so through it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:21):
Okay, So in Portland, Oregon, Yeah, there's a writer who
wrote the Encyclopedia of Kitsch Records or whatever. He sold me.
It's like the most I've ever paid for a record collection.
But even the stories like wait, you guys, you know
this not the original stuff, right, these like cheap imitations
or whatever. But for me, the same drum break intro

(01:07:44):
for Superstition of Stevie, it's just as valuable if another
drummer did it, like it's still a drum break is
a drummer.

Speaker 4 (01:07:51):
Plus, there warn't that many musicians in England plan on
these records. So when my dad would go and sing
on these records, it was the guitar player would be
Vic Flick, the same guy that played the James Bond thing.
It would be that it would it would be the
same guy that would be playing on the legit session. Anyway,
they did these things and they paid them cash and
they sold them at the supermarket. They sold them at

(01:08:12):
the gas station or the petrol stations, we called them,
and they were they were forty five EPs. These were
before the albums that you'd probably know from the you know,
they were later called Top of the Pops because that
was the name of the BBC weekly show. This a
whole subculture of music. We used to get them even
when we were on the road. First we'd get our
records done in Sweden where they wouldn't know any of

(01:08:33):
the words. They just make up a bunch of nonsense
words to my lyrics. It's half Swedish, half English.

Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
Wait for the record.

Speaker 4 (01:08:41):
What is your dad's name, Ross McManus, And that's the
that's his. He had a bunch of names because he
was a different person on every track. Dude, Okay, you'd
never find him.

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
So I have seven thousand pieces of just a bunch
of bands from Europe covering American funk songs and American
soul songs and rock songs or whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:09:01):
But also the other thing quess is that there was
five There was five or six weeks between an American release.
So no matter how fast they got that the publisher
got that song over. What was going to happen first
was sheet music travel faster than records.

Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
So if you had Billy J.

Speaker 4 (01:09:18):
Kramer or somebody, some good looking guy out of Liverpool,
he could get a cover of a but new Bert
backrack song before the American version could come out. Quite
often you'd see two songs on the charts, the same
song done by you know, the the English cover version,
which and then there'd be a ghost record, as you
might say that the ones we're talking about, So there'd

(01:09:40):
be that version playing on a pirate radio station. There'd
be the local English group like Silla Black singing anyone
who had a heart and Warwick hates her for having
done that, really still was going on about it. Now
after next time you see the on Silla Black and
see what, No, she's still matter. So and then of

(01:10:03):
course what would happen was the version would come out,
the American version. People would notice it was a little
slick or maybe the broc list was better. Certainly the
standard of production I think generally was better. It's sound
of arrangement. There's a big difference in the sound of
an English horn section of American horn section, different tombra.
I could tell you two bars whether it's an American

(01:10:24):
or English record from if there's brass on it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:25):
You know, well, I'm gonna blow your mind now because
now the inferior covers is what would attract a hip
hop producer today, like the trash here and the more
off notes they play.

Speaker 4 (01:10:41):
Yeah, this is right over all, I've got one for
you right before we go back to Steve's agenda here because.

Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
You got to go.

Speaker 4 (01:10:50):
Do you know the label Habibi Funk I've heard of it, Yes, Yeah,
it's they do all they do companies get the compilation. Yeah,
Number seven in the series cast a Blanker's Shuffle. Okay,
it's a note for note cover of Bob and Nol
Harlem shovel. Yeah, and the guy goes to the first
phrase of it, you know, the lid, except he goes

(01:11:13):
up past the note down under the note because he's
hearing microtones, you know, he's hearing like like Arabic music. Inflection.

Speaker 3 (01:11:20):
You got to hear it.

Speaker 4 (01:11:21):
It's it's crazy. First time you hear it, you think, oh,
that's just out of tune. Then he does it the
second time he realized that's the way he sings. He's
and other than that, sounds like they got a you know,
a real to real tape recorder and put the microphone
against the wall of an apartment that was playing the
record next door. That's what the fidelity sounds like. But
it's killer, damn ya, you really know your music, That's

(01:11:45):
what it sounds like. My memory of the Harlem Shoffle
is going to a works dance at a chocolate factory
when I was about fifteen, and all the girls lining up,
all the girls. It was somebody a cousin of some
word there and I got to go to this works
dance and they all lined up, all these all these

(01:12:05):
girls at work there and did the dance that they thought.

Speaker 3 (01:12:08):
Was the whole no idea what it was.

Speaker 4 (01:12:10):
It was like, you know, they just gone it there
when that record came on, and that record didn't sound
in that place reverberating. It wasn't played through a very
good system. It sounded no more you know, polished than
that right exactly, but the spirit of it and all
of all of these records, because half of them are
like mishearings of records that you know, they sound like

(01:12:31):
dyking the Blazers is what this sounds like.

Speaker 3 (01:12:33):
You know. Oh Jesus Christ, don't even give me to
start there. All right, I'll be right there. But Steve,
this is now officially your show.

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
Okay's He brings up a topic that I that I
wanted to bring up anyway about what's now become known.
I think in general as flipping something. Somebody will hear
a song in old songs, a producer, let's say, and

(01:13:01):
we'll say I'm gonna flip that, which means essentially, I'm
going to take that, chop it up, sample it, or
even not sample it physically, but take the idea or
the vibe by energy.

Speaker 4 (01:13:13):
I mean, you know, obviously when we started is like
we had about three I don't think there was any
ability to sample it. There was, I wasn't aware of it,
and music didn't take the same advantage of it. People
might have copied choruses, I guess they would have had
to lose a generation to do that. An analog.

Speaker 3 (01:13:32):
No, No, I'm not.

Speaker 4 (01:13:33):
No, no, I'm talking about we would in terms of
hearing figures within songs, you know, Like that's why I
never had to write anything down early on because you're going,
it's the rhythm from this song with the guitar part
from that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:47):
We want no change.

Speaker 2 (01:13:48):
So you get what I'm saying now.

Speaker 4 (01:13:49):
It's not different to sampling, except we were just playing it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:52):
It's not different, and that's kind of what.

Speaker 4 (01:13:54):
I'm That's why when Somon begame dominant, it didn't necessarily
sort of seem to me like some people had their
instruments reacted to it like it was some kind of cheating.
I said, this is everything we've been doing all along.
It's the degree of imagination that you bring to the
to the new version of it, the flipped version, as
you say, is whether it's.

Speaker 3 (01:14:14):
Any good at all.

Speaker 4 (01:14:15):
I mean, that's the difference between being Jeff Lynn and
somebody you know, like from Manchester. Like I won't to
say the name you know, but you know what I'm talking.

Speaker 2 (01:14:23):
About, and you sometimes, I believe, reveal these types of
things your inspirations for certain songs in concert in the
middle of you might.

Speaker 4 (01:14:31):
Quote something you know that's obviously underneath the song that
you play it, or I think it's also the way
you get the particular notes in a vocal. If you're not,
like you alluded to, the kind of not having a
melodious or particularly beautiful voice, it helps to think like
another sing of phrases, so that you know you do

(01:14:51):
something with your own.

Speaker 3 (01:14:53):
Are you still doing that these days?

Speaker 4 (01:14:55):
Oh yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (01:14:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:14:56):
Sometimes odd words will come out of my mouth actually
sound mom entirely like somebody else for one word, but
it's not really important to the understanding of the song,
so I never underline it. If somebody comments on it,
then if they notice it, then it was because it
was there. But it's not important to the telling of
the story that people reckon. I'm not doing it to

(01:15:19):
be recognized. It might have been like, how would such
and such a single approach that line?

Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
Well, there's a I guess, innumerable ways of approaching what
we're talking about. You hear a baseline that you admire
and so you inverted or you use well, but didn't.

Speaker 3 (01:15:35):
We get into this when we did?

Speaker 4 (01:15:36):
When we when we first started, when I first came
on the show, and we were I was playing with
the roots, and you know, when we listen back now
to the sample that you made, and we're getting a
little ahead of ourselves into wise up ghosts. But say,
the sample for my new haunt is Quest Play, and
it is derived from Quest Play and Chelsea, which is

(01:16:00):
Pete Thomas playing fire by Mitch Mitchell, well by Hendrix,
but it's specifically the firepart that he's referencing. So that's
like a that's like, you know, a flip of a
flip of a flip correct four times.

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
And I don't know if you're counting this as one
of your flips. But the sound is actually a sample
of you and the Roots playing live on the stage. Yeah,
so it's a sample of you guys.

Speaker 4 (01:16:26):
Yeah, that's what I mean. No, I mean, but but
it's being quoted twice over, you know, because Quest is
rationalizing it to his style of play based on Pete's part,
which is based on Mitch's part. So that's that's that's why,
you know, people are a surprise that I didn't take
exception about, you know, the pump it up quote on

(01:16:46):
the Olivia Rodriga record. But that would be just ludicrous
because it's like it's common language really, you know, if
it had been a whole melody or a whole lyric
that was just stolen. That that would be obvious and
you would take exception. But I think it's amount of
language in songs and beads particularly, that's that's common.

Speaker 2 (01:17:05):
That's folk music, right, I mean, that's that's how it happens.
I'm certainly not trying to get into that discussion of
whether this is right to do or to do or
anything like that, but just to acknowledge that, you know,
motes are probably sampled from chopin or whatever. Okay, that
figures you fing out, But anyway, the real comparison I

(01:17:25):
want to get you guys to talk about is how
you've been doing that since the beginning, you know, and
he's been doing that, and you're both doing essentially the
same thing but with different techniques and different technologies.

Speaker 4 (01:17:36):
Definitely, Yeah, I mean one of the things that I
think that we've talked about, you and I have talked
about and we experienced over the you know, I was
still making the previous record I've made before we worked
together was recorded analog and and edited digitally.

Speaker 3 (01:17:51):
Most of the records part of that were recorded analogue.

Speaker 4 (01:17:55):
Since then, the distance between the two mediums is closed
because nearly all of the outboard plugins that people designed
to work in digital recording today are in it. Our
imitations of analog, the warmth of analog equipment, valve equipment,

(01:18:15):
and and you know, sort of very carefully modulated recreations
of spaces and all of these things. All these libraries
of plates you can download in an attempt to bring
something less brittle to this very facile way of recording
of digital, which of course is amazing if you don't

(01:18:38):
want to bother to play more than two bars and
music in succession, because you could go on forever, you know,
you could, you could have every two bars have a
slightly different sort of resonance. If you could be bothered
to do it, you could. You could, you could process.
You could just play a two bar loop and and
and you know, paste it sequentially and make it sound

(01:19:01):
like the most incredibly.

Speaker 3 (01:19:03):
Organic sounding track.

Speaker 4 (01:19:04):
Now if you wanted to do that, or you could
just fucking play it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
You know, digital is like a photograph of something where
you like sort of immediately lose a generation just right
off the bat.

Speaker 4 (01:19:13):
There is something to that, for sure, but I actually
come into piece with it because it is much more
and I certainly couldn't have made the latest record unless
we had.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):
Or wise Up Ghosts for that matter.

Speaker 4 (01:19:24):
Wise Up Ghosts and as we you know, from the
one first time we played the music in the room,
the music changed shape the minute. Even though you know,
we were all the same people that had played those
parts for the most part. The minute we actually just
played those numbers in a room, the music completely changed shape.

Speaker 3 (01:19:44):
It stopped being quite as.

Speaker 4 (01:19:45):
Angular and became greasier and like you know, flowed in
a different, totally different way, just because it was happening simultaneously.

Speaker 3 (01:19:54):
It's a totally different.

Speaker 4 (01:19:55):
Not a collage, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:19:56):
Yeah, And I wasn't involved at that point.

Speaker 4 (01:20:00):
I didn't want to say.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
But before we get to wise Up goes more in depth.
You know, you're on Quest of Supreme and the audience
here are as fanatic about Quest as I am about you.
So can you tell the audience what it was like
the first time you played live with Quest and the
Roots when you came onto Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

(01:20:24):
in December of two thousand and nine and you did
high Fidelity and Chelsea.

Speaker 4 (01:20:30):
Well, I think the high Fidelity was a particularly interesting
thing because it was the decision, which I don't think
was mine, was it?

Speaker 2 (01:20:41):
No, it was mine.

Speaker 3 (01:20:42):
That was your idea.

Speaker 4 (01:20:44):
You you had heard the which was then a bootleg.
You'd heard the bootleg. We were since legitimized it and
released it in the Aufuls's box set, But it was
an arrangement that we had not issued. I don't think
was it available.

Speaker 3 (01:20:57):
That it was available for Rhino.

Speaker 4 (01:21:00):
Well maybe we hadn't released it, but we hadn't remixed
it as well. We hadn't done We hadn't because we
hadn't gone back to the So what you you were
referencing was a board tape, and so we put the
board tape on that Rhino thing, and then in twenty
twenty we actually went back to the multi tracks. We
got the multi track and remixed the whole Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:21:19):
That's sebass ended that wow.

Speaker 4 (01:21:20):
So that's why the version that's in Unfuls is a
little bit more kind of bodied to it. But that
was that was this. I mean, when we did that
record in Hillsham Wistloud Studios in nineteen eighty, it was
supposed to be some sort of take on all the
music that we were talking about earlier, the stuff that

(01:21:42):
was kind of like that wasn't made in England. It
was all the stuff that filtered through. There's much about
R and B as we kind of knew as we
call it R and B and soul, that's the words
we use for it. Those words have different meanings now
they have different associations. But when I said, you know,
you know, like nowadays and say you're talking about fifties
R and B, you're talking about early sixties like Halean

(01:22:05):
Woolf or Slim Harper, you're talking about you know, these
these different kind of feels. And then the music that
we identified we saw as distinct. It was a sudden
soul or soul that was on the Atlantic label. We
saw something different than Tamla, which was obviously had a
more poppy The way the voices were and the way

(01:22:27):
things were arranged, and the way that, you know, the
the orchestration, the different kind of other instruments that would
pop up in them, they seem to have more in
common with a lot of pop records that were being
made by the mid sixties. And you know, in these
definitions of what we heard, it was the just just
the fact that the Atlantic records, for the most part,

(01:22:48):
had horns and a rhythm section with maybe piano and organ,
whereas the Motown or Tamela records from the mid sixties
had a lot of vocal group like often the Temptations,
even the six and on other people's records, but really
kind of like very very well arranged vocal parts and strings,

(01:23:08):
and they were played by jazz musicians. You can tell
they're played by jazz musicians. They're kind of light, feel incredible,
you know, James jameson to hold that whole kind of
funk brother's band. It's a very different sound to something
like Musclesholls or the you know stuff made up on
forty eighth Street Atlantic, you know, and they're all the
bands in England that copied the cues from these records

(01:23:30):
were trying very hard to play that. So we grew
up hearing, as I said, twice over those things and
sometimes then turned up a little bit like the small Faces.
Gradually brought volume to bear on that picture. You know,
you could tell which records different English singers were listening to,
but they didn't necessarily sound like Faithful Colors. I gradually

(01:23:52):
got looser and then by the time we got making records,
it was completely different. We had a lot of stuff
to draw from when we went to do that record
in Holland that we had already had pretty much all
the hit records that we were likely to have in England.
We'd had from Get Happy, you mean well up to

(01:24:14):
Get Happy, we had a couple of hits off that
everything we made was a hit. From late seventy seven
to eighty there was everything was a top thirty to
top five record, every single So that was a good run,
you know. That was like what established us in England.
At the same time we were barely getting on the
radio in America, so the things are kind of out

(01:24:36):
of joint, you know. So when we got in to
do that record, we had arrangements that were still carried
some of our ideas from the previous year. And the
big influence on the Armed Forces record were European signing
records like ABBA and funnily enough, the Bowie records, you know,
specifically low in Heroes, but also stationed the station and

(01:24:59):
station the station was what we were aiming at when
we did the slow, high fidelity that's brain you know stuff. No,
that's before Brian, you know, that's the I don't know
who produced that record, I don't know, I don't know.
I never really checked who produced it, but it was,
you know it it had a sort of a funk bass,
you know, it had a funk bassis to it. But

(01:25:19):
then David Bower's kind of vocal and it had like
the Nina Simone the song associated with Nina Simone, Wild
is the wind on that record and at TVC one
five and the beginning of that kind of you know,
European influenced funk that it didn't. So we were trying
to we were enamored of that, all that music, and
we're trying to play.

Speaker 3 (01:25:40):
Like a machine.

Speaker 4 (01:25:41):
But we didn't have the guitars, we didn't have the
sustained guitars, we didn't have the layers of synth, we
didn't have the layers of production that he did. You know,
we were just a four piece band. So the live
arrangement of that was a sort of feeble attempt to
play like station to station. And all that happened was
when we got in the studio, I said we better
pick up the tempo because the song is getting away,

(01:26:02):
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:26:02):
So the live recording was prior to the recording the.

Speaker 3 (01:26:06):
Studio that was in the summer.

Speaker 4 (01:26:07):
That was in the summer of seventy nine, so we
were yeah, well a strange.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):
I mean, maybe you weren't satisfied with with that arrangement,
but that arrangement does have so much hard to it.

Speaker 4 (01:26:19):
It has a lot of freedom to the to the
where the vocal lies. Yeah, because you can dance around
the beat a lot more because it's much slower, and
you can sing the melody. I mean, if you here's
the thing is that high fidelity song at that tempo
is similar territory to You'll Never Be a Man. It's
both influenced by the Spinners. You know, they're like the
Spinner's tunes, you know some things, you know. You know,

(01:26:45):
so Philip Winn was like one of my you know,
the people the voices in the head kind of thing
I could never sing, like wow, but it shapes the
way you phrase melody. Allison is based on Philip Winn,
you know. So it's based on Ghetto Child, you know that.
I know it sounds crazy to say that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:06):
It doesn't tracks my tears or tears of clown or
something like that.

Speaker 4 (01:27:10):
Well I would quote those on the end of it,
but but it's it's really laughing just a little. And
the spinners that are much more the the staccato way
that the figure, that part of the Allison, you know,
comes from the spinners, or the Detroit Spinners as we

(01:27:31):
knew them, right.

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
I guess my point and we got to it, which
was that this this arrangement had some real funk to it,
some hump to it. It sounded to me like questlove.

Speaker 4 (01:27:41):
That's why that was exactly I mean, when he dropped
into it, it was like, oh, now it's home because
now he understands that thing and that and it's more resolute,
and we've got like a bigger band, you know. It's
it's got the sounds and had horns, got horns, and
you've got Coke who can has got you know, I
I just had i'd have any effects in those days,

(01:28:02):
I'm like God, instead of effects was travelop I don't
think I had even a distortion that might have had
a distortion pedal by the time we got to seventy
nine or some sort of lyft because I never played solos,
so it was like the guitar straight in and maybe
just a tramlo pedal. Later on, I used to play
with a rolling space Echo, you know, and then later

(01:28:26):
on an Ecoplex an Acoplex so what Watkins copycat? You know.
But I didn't really get into processing pedals so much
later twenty years ago. Really, I didn't play with any
really until then.

Speaker 2 (01:28:39):
So so you come onto the show apparently not to
promote anything at that appearance, because there's no even that way.

Speaker 3 (01:28:47):
Yeah, I don't know how that even came about.

Speaker 4 (01:28:48):
It was it?

Speaker 3 (01:28:49):
It could have had.

Speaker 2 (01:28:51):
I think you were either supporting Fallon or you want
to play with the roots or something.

Speaker 4 (01:28:55):
I think it was just that, or it's what year
is it again?

Speaker 2 (01:28:58):
This was end of two thousand and nine, December of
two thousand and nine.

Speaker 4 (01:29:02):
It could have been something. Do it spectful? That's around
then as well. Yeah, give maybe you were a couch
guest too. I can't remember.

Speaker 3 (01:29:09):
I can't remember now, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:29:10):
I just remember two thousand and nine is around the
time of that Secret Friends Sugarcane and being in Nashville
and Momofuku. I was making those records all at the
same time, you know. If it had been in the
days of Twitter and I remember when we were making
What Was Up Ghost? I remember one time we were

(01:29:30):
waiting for Quest to come from something that he was
at and we were checking his feed to find out
where he was. So, you know, and if that had
been the case, it would have been like that. There
was a period where I was doing like a lot
of different things. When we did the Spectacle show. That
required a lot of balancing of getting all these people,
you know, like anything like any television show, getting the

(01:29:52):
guests to be there, and then rehearsing for it and
the different musicians that played on each one. But I
could be coming from Nash having made Zigrafine was made
in three days, so you know, we just went It
was a three day session. It wasn't an album. There
were three record dates as in the old Star because
it was acoustic music. You know, I'd been in.

Speaker 2 (01:30:13):
So were you thinking EP or something for that now?

Speaker 4 (01:30:15):
I was thinking I was thinking something. But I was thinking,
we'll get these songs in the time, because look who
is playing on it.

Speaker 3 (01:30:21):
Wow, I got the beggest greatest.

Speaker 4 (01:30:22):
You know, that's like an all star band to beat
the band, you know that those players. I had nothing
at all to do it with Bluegrass. I mean half the
songs we recorded there I wrote for an opera, you know,
half the songs we can't on that record were written
for an opera that I wrote that I did for
Copenhagen about Hans Chris and Anderson. So it was a
kind of wild lot of harmony for players who played

(01:30:44):
a mandolin to play, you know, they all were like
they never had anything to do with bluegrass, so it
was just acoustic acoustically rendered.

Speaker 3 (01:30:53):
It was like chamber of music, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:30:55):
So all those different experiences there, I think playing with
the band again in this in a studio on television
was pretty much unprecedented. The previous band I'd played with
on television that wasn't my own group in some.

Speaker 3 (01:31:11):
One way or another.

Speaker 2 (01:31:13):
Would it be in Letterman's band or something.

Speaker 4 (01:31:16):
I never played with Lettermans band ever. No, No, never
played with them. I always played with on my own.

Speaker 2 (01:31:23):
Well, on Spectacle you must have played with I.

Speaker 4 (01:31:25):
Played with other mans on that. But prior to that,
the other experiences for the return to SNL. When I
went back, I played with the house ban of SNL,
and Paul may have been in that band then. I
don't think you think he'd already left and the Beasties.
But when the beastis backed me and whenever he did
on the twenty fifth anniversary show.

Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
But the Roots known as one of the greatest live
acts that there is on the planet for the last
thirty years something like that, and so you know, to
feel that energy behind you on that version of high fidelity, yeah,
I guess you felt like you made the right decision
to come on the show hopefully totally.

Speaker 3 (01:32:03):
Yeah, totally. I mean it's like it.

Speaker 4 (01:32:05):
Was like a realization and we would have never gone
back to that version in that arrangement.

Speaker 3 (01:32:09):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:32:11):
I did it occasionally after that, and I think the
band Impostus did learn it and we did it occasionally
that way or started like that and then cut into tempo.

Speaker 2 (01:32:20):
That version is what's known as a banger, yeah, because
it bangs, yeah, like you know, no question.

Speaker 4 (01:32:26):
And then here in Chelsea that's a different thing again,
you know, because that's.

Speaker 2 (01:32:31):
That was I think a mistake on my why. I mean,
obviously we got a whole new song out of it,
and you know, we were referencing not only the original,
but there's a like a there's another demo version of
it with a like a distorted organ.

Speaker 3 (01:32:44):
Oh yeah, that's the earlier version. Yeah, slightly slow.

Speaker 4 (01:32:47):
Slower and bit reggae and you know, like and we
used to come in. You know, bear in mind they
used to make us re record for television, so when
the record was a hit in England, you would get
you would get these three hour sessions and most bands
couldn't play their records, so they were glad to just
switch the tape while they weren't looking. They'd switch it

(01:33:10):
for a copy of the record and give the BBC
essentially just a dove at the record and then say
they'd cut it.

Speaker 3 (01:33:18):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:33:19):
So there was this whole subterfuge where you had to
go into the studio for three hours.

Speaker 3 (01:33:24):
It was intended to protect the.

Speaker 4 (01:33:26):
Jobs and the union members that had played on records
in the sixties, and by the time we got to
everybody playing on their own records, which was most everybody
that was on these shows, there was a whole game
going on where all the studio time went to waste.
So of course, because we could play, we would come
in and play the live arrangement, which maybe faster or

(01:33:47):
had a different break, and then get pissed off with
us because we they got their camera cues from the record,
and then it would be different when we turned up
at the studio. We just used to fuck with them,
you know, Ray, But it was just something to keep
it from getting stale, because the.

Speaker 3 (01:34:01):
Whole thing is like.

Speaker 4 (01:34:04):
The one thing about American television from the get go.
And the very first time I was ever on TV
in Americas, he did play live. I was never heard
on the BBC until Live eight. Every single performance on
the BBC I was lip syncing. So my first ever
performance is in front of seventy thousand people.

Speaker 3 (01:34:22):
With one guitar.

Speaker 4 (01:34:23):
Good chart on the BBC, I did okay, but I
played on the other side, on the commercial side. My
debut was on was just with one guitar as well,
on a sort of early evening, Sharon Manchester and I
did one or two performances with the band and then the.

Speaker 6 (01:34:38):
Shout out to wave away flag while we're here sorry
and the attractions played only one time a session where
we played more than one song on the BBC in
eighty six when Blood and.

Speaker 4 (01:34:48):
Chocolate was out, and then we didn't play again until
the nineties. There was no live at all, and even
now you don't. The other night I was on TV
in England, I sang up a track which is just
carry out it's not real because the music doesn't go
with you anyway. You have to kind of just sing
over it. It doesn't sound very good.

Speaker 2 (01:35:07):
No, I'm not a fan of that.

Speaker 4 (01:35:09):
No, it doesn't feel very alive.

Speaker 2 (01:35:11):
And Aretha Franklin came on The Tonight Show or Leaking
Now with Jimmy Fallon a long time ago. She sang
to a track and I was like, come on, you know,
you got the roots here and for one and even
you know.

Speaker 4 (01:35:24):
Just that does seem like a missed opportunity, but a
little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:35:28):
She was great obviously, but you know.

Speaker 4 (01:35:30):
Yeah, no, but you still want to you know, And
I mean by the same token, there's a clip of
her like dragging a BBC band through Don't play that
song from about sixty eight where she's just killing on
the piano. She's playing piano and you hear like how
one player that really knows how it goes can influence
even a band of musicians that probably wouldn't ever have

(01:35:51):
played anything like that before. So well, sometimes that was
a really great thing when you have that.

Speaker 2 (01:35:56):
Sure. Yeah, with regards to Chelsea, the reason why, I
just I thought it was going to be perfect for
the Roots, and they played it just too similar, I think,
to the original, and it didn't. I was trying to
get the reggae aspect into I was trying to mash
those two versions up the original, and they.

Speaker 4 (01:36:12):
Should have played it even a little slower.

Speaker 3 (01:36:13):
It would have been interesting, because then that would have been.

Speaker 4 (01:36:15):
A different field.

Speaker 2 (01:36:16):
So the second time you came on, you were promoting
National Ransom.

Speaker 4 (01:36:21):
Oh yeah, that's the one I really have a clear
memory of. Really right, the other one, I think it's
also intimidating when you go in and it's a whole
bunch of new guys and you don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:36:30):
What they made of it.

Speaker 4 (01:36:32):
And I'm not bringing in a hit song or a
song that's even on the radio or anything I'm playing.
But even the first time, I'm bringing in like a
here's a version.

Speaker 3 (01:36:43):
That we didn't record in the studio.

Speaker 4 (01:36:44):
This is something I just did in a field in Holland,
well twenty five years ago. This is a good idea,
I fellas you know, I think we know. But I
think I knew right away that the curiosity coming from
you and coming from everything that I knew about the
band and than you'd already done, was this was this
was okay, This was really good. In fact, it was

(01:37:06):
actually what it's about. And I think a little bit
like you're talking about the festival band. You know, they
used to put festival bands together that have like all
stars played together on jazz festivals. Particularly harder to do
with rock and roll bands or any other kind of
music because they're not equipped to do it, you know,
to get off their own script.

Speaker 3 (01:37:25):
But they but they but to do this.

Speaker 4 (01:37:28):
It seems like really in the spirit of being on
TV where you'd get like really unusual combinations like being
Crosby House. Here Feliciano and the Supremes. Now check that
one out on YouTube. You know, there is actually a
clip of them going through about ninety not ninety, about
twenty five songs in about four minutes medley on those

(01:37:51):
crazy Medalis. It changes every three lines, you know. I
know they make you nervous, but it's in the same
spirit of the way they used to jam people together
that should have never been seen and occasion that there'd
be magic, there would be on TV there would be
some risk involved as well.

Speaker 2 (01:38:11):
So on November fifth, twenty ten, promoting National Ransom, playing
Stations of the Cross and Black and White World with
the Roots tell us.

Speaker 3 (01:38:21):
What happened that day?

Speaker 4 (01:38:23):
Well, first thing, the first thing I remember is that
I was playing World as I don't usually play piano
for one thing, not leading the band, but I really
wanted to play.

Speaker 3 (01:38:35):
I wanted to play the.

Speaker 4 (01:38:36):
Field of that song simply on the World's that sort
of get it locked in From where I was sitting.

Speaker 3 (01:38:42):
I knew the rhythm would be great.

Speaker 4 (01:38:44):
I felt like there was something going on with the
bassline that had been played on a double bass by
Dennis Crouch, so I was really interested.

Speaker 3 (01:38:53):
To hear I play it.

Speaker 2 (01:38:55):
Shout out to Mark Kelley, who specifically asked me to
mention his name on this pot bet.

Speaker 4 (01:39:00):
And then it's it's kind of like it was always
supposed to be a really ominous song. It was a
very dark song. It is a very dark song. Then
I remember we were walking I don't know, in the
hallway and quest said this thing about I think you've
been in here right with with D'Angelo and it had
gone really late, that's what he told me. Or it'd

(01:39:21):
been working or something, you'd been on a session anyway,
you know, this was for some other thing.

Speaker 3 (01:39:27):
I don't know what it was.

Speaker 4 (01:39:28):
And then he said, and now we're learning these inner
Mountain Flame songs and what the hell for me? You know,
that's so difficult, it said because John mcgoughlin is here
as I was sitting in with us, so I said, well,
can he play on my song?

Speaker 3 (01:39:41):
And the next thing we're in what I think of?

Speaker 4 (01:39:43):
I mean, I am always I don't know where are
you still in that little room or you've got bigger
since COVID never had to give you a bigger rule?

Speaker 3 (01:39:50):
Where do you think we are?

Speaker 4 (01:39:51):
I imagine you're still in that little room. The tartis
so the tartist I'm sure has been described at length
on this show, but I mean, from my perspective, it
is incredible that I'm sure it was just the tech
covered where they used to keep like spanners and whatever
it was before it was your studio. It is amazing
that so many people can function and breathe in there.

Speaker 2 (01:40:11):
You know, we can't function or breathe, but go ahead.

Speaker 4 (01:40:13):
Yeah, But so that I think is part of the
magic of playing. In preparation for playing on the show
is to be in that room in close proximity, because
you there's no avoiding it. Even though Cress has got
his booth horn sections in the back lounge. The rest
of the mad is in this narrow thing behind your board.
I mean, it is an amazing And then you add

(01:40:34):
John mcgoughlin playing five hundred thousand notes.

Speaker 3 (01:40:38):
You know, every time I pointed.

Speaker 4 (01:40:39):
At him because it was simply a vamp on one
chord in between the verses, so we just let him
fly and as everybody knows, and he was so good
natured about it. I mean, I have no idea whether
he had ever heard my name before that day, but
he went into it so openly right, and it was
it created a different kind of tension, if any. It

(01:41:00):
was like a moment of lightness him playing all those
crazy But.

Speaker 2 (01:41:04):
You've played a lot of those tribute shows and fundraising
shows where everybody comes on that end of.

Speaker 4 (01:41:09):
This, Yeah, but they not always that well, you know,
it's rare.

Speaker 3 (01:41:14):
I've been in a number of very old bands over
the years. You know.

Speaker 4 (01:41:18):
I was once on the stage in a club for
a birthday show. I was cut through where I ended
up on stage with James Burton and Jerry Garcia playing
behind me. You know, that was pretty weird, wonderful, you know,
and all playing the wrong guitar. But but for to
have that kind of lock on that on this ominous
groove and this kind of hump that that that Quest

(01:41:40):
found in it in the in the beat, which ended
up being like another piece for us. That was great.
I mean that John was playing on it too, was wonderful.
And Black and White World was a song that wanted
to go like that. Now that's a song that Quest
have played with us on me already. Had he had
he played it with us then there or did he
play No.

Speaker 2 (01:42:00):
Shortly after this appearance he came and played with us.
He came to the Beacon or something and played Black
and White World on stage with you.

Speaker 3 (01:42:07):
Part of the wheel show, Yeah, part of the spinning song.

Speaker 2 (01:42:09):
Right, right, but you just called it it wasn't chosen
on the wheel.

Speaker 3 (01:42:14):
Yeah, yeah he did.

Speaker 4 (01:42:16):
We often cheated in that way when we got in
the later and we want some song we wanted to play,
you know.

Speaker 3 (01:42:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:42:22):
He actually ends up singing that night because he was
pushed off the drums store, right.

Speaker 3 (01:42:26):
It wasn't best pleased.

Speaker 2 (01:42:27):
I was like, why isn't Pete Thomas universally known as
one of the greatest British or whatever drummers.

Speaker 4 (01:42:33):
Met Any drummers from have you met any other drummers. Yeah,
there's a lot of really maniacal like.

Speaker 2 (01:42:39):
Really that's one in particular, But.

Speaker 4 (01:42:41):
I mean there are there are some that really are
going to tell you all about their own brilliance. There's
a lot of them that are not as good as
they that.

Speaker 2 (01:42:49):
He doesn't need to speak about himself.

Speaker 3 (01:42:50):
But why is it?

Speaker 4 (01:42:51):
Why hasn't I think it's been part of that that
he hasn't been broadcasting it, and partly, you know, big mouth,
he has been kind of taking up all the airspace
up in front of him for forty five years. I
absolutely say straight out now I just have I'll tell
anybody that wants to listen, now, Charlie Wats has gone.
He's number one. He's the number one rock and roll
drummer playing today. Wow, I'll say that right out. That's

(01:43:14):
all kinds of other kind of music. But as a
rock and roll drummer, there's nobody close.

Speaker 2 (01:43:18):
And be honest, he's playing now as good as he
played then.

Speaker 4 (01:43:22):
I think he might actually be playing better now than that.
And he would say, I think he would admit the fact.
Like the one thing about going a Spanish model, you
know the record we did where we re recorded all
the vocals in Spanish with guest artists to over the
attraction's original parts. A lot of those artists are very
much used to the you know, the conveniences of modern

(01:43:43):
recording technique. Two of them, in particular, click track, an
auto tune. There's none other on that. Obviously we didn't
have access to that. Neither of those things were really
part of our scene. So that was a lot for
some of those younger artists who used to knowing what
the tempo was and they've always got that click going
keeping them in time, and they said, well, what's the

(01:44:06):
tempo and we're going well in the first vers is
that people want me to say this, but our records
do speed up a lot, and well they slow down
sometimes and as they're supposed to, and then certainly there's
no autitude on them, you know, so thank god.

Speaker 2 (01:44:19):
Yeah, Yeah, the Roots and Elvis Costello with John McLachlin.
You can look it up. Yeah, November fifth, twenty ten
on Fallon and Black and White World, which again had
that high fidelity arrangement hump that I'm talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:44:32):
Yeah, that was that.

Speaker 4 (01:44:35):
Always had it, that was always had it that when
we arrange it like that it went a different way
originally that song, Yeah, it was completely different song. It
was an acoustic folk song. Sounded like a Gray Davis song.

Speaker 2 (01:44:46):
Which version you like better.

Speaker 4 (01:44:48):
As a story piece of storytelling? The first version is
is that's called number two, right, that's a better. That's
a better for telling the story of the song. That's
better as a piece of music. I liked the version
that we played that night, but that was sort of
like I remember as being in you know, that was
a lot of drinking involved in that happy record. So

(01:45:09):
there were these episodes where we just get frustrated and
all be sort of squabbling and there saying, oh fuck it,
let's just do that. Play it like Little Feet. That
was actually what it was like. That was us trying
to play like Little Feet. And if you sort of
can hear some of their wilder stuff, not particularly sailing
Shoes kind of record, you can sort of get that
that that Pete is kind of referencing Richie Heywood. It

(01:45:32):
was this great drummer that played with that group. People
don't much know that their their music now so much,
but then there were they were a band that you know,
we all admired, and so that was in our references
along with all the other things.

Speaker 2 (01:45:45):
You know, we're talking about drummers, but but let's get
back to guitarists like John McLaughlin And you mentioned Jerry Garcia.
So can you just tell us what it was like
to know him and to play with him on stage
a couple of times.

Speaker 4 (01:45:58):
I only played with him one time. I spent a
little time with them. I did an interview for a
magazine about.

Speaker 2 (01:46:06):
I'm only asked because I know you're a fan as well.

Speaker 4 (01:46:08):
Yeah, well, I just think it was there was a
period where I really did really love the records really
from I never really did like the long improvisational things
as much. That didn't fascinate me as much. I liked
the sound of some of their records that are kind
of strange, kind of folk baroque, kind of psychedelic stuff.
And I really love the stuff that's very you can

(01:46:29):
hear in so called Americana records. Now all these things
that echo the Dead from seventy to about seventy four,
but specifically American Beauty and the record that preceded it,
wor Commen's Dead. They just have really good songs. They
did this really good good like maybe twenty songs that
were really unbeatable, and I saw them play a couple

(01:46:52):
of times at that time and they were terrific, and
I just didn't when they went off into the other thing.
I could think of other music that extend I did
like that that held my interest Moble, but I could
see why people liked it, it just wasn't my thing.

Speaker 2 (01:47:07):
I guess the next thing chronologically as far as leading
up to Wysup Ghost is when you graciously cut vocals
for the Swindles project. For the Squeeze Covers record, you
and the Roots did a version of someone Else's Heart,
and that was certainly fun and the first time I
got to do that, but I felt it more like
that record was a bit of a proving ground for
a larger project with the Roots, Like.

Speaker 4 (01:47:30):
I didn't know that was in your mind at the time,
but for me it was like.

Speaker 2 (01:47:34):
It's more looking back on it, it was really like
I loved.

Speaker 4 (01:47:36):
It because I produced the original version obviously in East
Side Story, and I quit when I was ahead as
a producer, right, So I mean I had three hit
albums and succession as a producer of other people's records,
and I wasn't credited as a co producer on my
early records. I mean, Nick would say from Enforces onwards,
I had a fairly strong input on the way things

(01:47:59):
went and sounded and final mixes, but I was never credited.
I deliberately didn't credit myself on Imperial Bedroom, even though
I was the co producer effectively of that record, because
I gave so much of the responsibility for the way
the record actually sounded to Jeff Emory. But the music,
the musical input, and the musical arrangement of the record,
everything that you would call production now was my idea.

(01:48:21):
You know, weeks in the studio on my own, just
me and Jeff. Half of the Recession was just me
and him. So when I got to do some of
my own production eighty eighty one and eighty five, it
was only usually with either with friends or bands that
I thought somebody else would fuck up. So that's how

(01:48:43):
I came to do The Specials, which was a band
that had a very vivid sound live and a genius
kind of arranger, Jerry Dammers, and I just needed to
protect his vision, as I understood it, from any frailties
that I could detect in the actual playing and they

(01:49:05):
didn't have many because they were really very balanced in
most cases, and the same was true of The Poes,
which was the last record I produced. The band obviously
a genius songwriter and a mixed bag of instrumentalists, so
sometimes I'd have to step in and maybe bring a
kind of steadying thing somewhere in the instrumental you know, ensemble,

(01:49:27):
But the rest of the time I just tried to
catch it while it was going on. Squeeze is entirely
different because you've got like incredible facile in the American sense,
in the sense that Glenn has tremendous musical facility. Glenn
Hilborough as a composer, as a singer, as a very
very underrated guitar player, but he's like the Pete Thomas

(01:49:49):
of the guitar you know, you really you never see
his name quoted as great guitar players. Glenn should easily
be in that bag. Great melodic you know, the signatures
melodies of his solos, it's like George Harrison, they're like
like hooks and themselves. He's not just string bending kind
of fancy, you know, dazzling kind of playing the other

(01:50:09):
way can do that too, and incredible lyricist in Christofford
and the two voices in this octave kind of relationship,
and in that bad of course they had they had
Paul character as well. He'd replaced Charles Hallan, the original
keyboard player. And then I knew that was the secret weapon.
So that's how we made Tempted, which was the big hit.

(01:50:30):
And that was my ideas to do it like that,
to sort of take it and like as if it
were an Algreen song and put the kind of like
little single line kind of clickerty click clin of rhythm
guitar that runs through it. It's not playing a backbeat,
don't that's me playing that, you know, not singing background vocals,

(01:50:50):
singing background vocals. I mean I listened to background vocals
another kind of ludicrous. And I was kind of doing
all of the Temptations parts.

Speaker 3 (01:50:58):
You know, I'm doing but coffee in bed too.

Speaker 4 (01:51:01):
Yeah, I'm doing the bass voice as well as the
false htto. But but but we didn't know anybody we
could get to do that, so we're just doing it
in imitation of records that we loved, you know, and
they and it seemed to just work to break it
up like that. To divide it up, make it more
of a group composition.

Speaker 2 (01:51:16):
You know, is the reason you haven't self produced more
of your records because getting a producer is it's just
another opportunity to collaborate with another great music mind. Well
I haven't, or do you have some like disaffinity for
it or no?

Speaker 4 (01:51:32):
I mean, I think there's a couple of records that
are definitely I have to take more responsibility for than others.
I mean, but I mean, you co produce a lot
of record I co produced, you know. I mean, there's
no doubt I didn't have anything to do with the
sound of King of America, but that's I'm credited as

(01:51:53):
a co producer on that because I had, you know,
this sort of like brotherlike partnership with Temabnett from the
MINUTEIME met him, and there was a lot of things
that I wanted to try and do on that record,
which changed because we were going to acoustic instruments for
the most part. In the first part of it. It
was supposed to be half acoustic half electric, and really

(01:52:14):
because the success rate at the first sessions, which were
with the Hollywood based musicians, you know, the many of
whom had played that they mean ex Wrecking Crew kind
of and seventies here of Jim Caltoner and people like that.
When the attractions arrived at the sessions, was nothing for
them to play. There was nothing, don't know songs left
Sude Lights, which was a really great one, but there

(01:52:36):
was a tense session. It was a tense session that
added to go down ver well because they still saw
it as a as a you know, unified band.

Speaker 3 (01:52:43):
I'd want to be on that record too.

Speaker 4 (01:52:45):
I don't know that they particularly wanted to play the
other songs. I don't think there was much feeling for
those other songs where.

Speaker 3 (01:52:51):
I was headed.

Speaker 4 (01:52:53):
But we did make one more record, which again was
where we gave it the control to Nick Lowe. I
had a little bit more put in terms of processing
things that I maybe had done earlier. But it was
Nick's decision to say that's an old Bird, which is
a pretty great record. That's a Nick low idea to
cut between the two keys and have this sort of

(01:53:13):
Strawberry Feels Forever incident where it just sort of goes
into phasing and comes out in another key. These are
things you'd assume I had kind of picked up from
Jeff Emertt, but that was all next idea. So it
was like, so you know, he was capable of getting
into there wasn't always in the bash it down kind
of thing. He could also hone ideas. I also produced

(01:53:34):
him around that time as well, which was the only
time I ever produced Nick.

Speaker 2 (01:53:38):
A lot of artists may not want some other fucking
genius in the room and keep their album. I wanted
to be the way that I have it in my
mind and somebody.

Speaker 4 (01:53:46):
Else I think you I mean certainly with Debon, I
think it was the It was his advocacy for the
simple storytelling.

Speaker 3 (01:53:55):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:53:55):
I had this idea that you that I wanted to
write with the that I liked about Hank Williams songs.
Even though I was never going to be a country singer.
I think had already proved that by going to Nashville
and cutting.

Speaker 3 (01:54:07):
A whole record.

Speaker 2 (01:54:08):
It's a great record.

Speaker 4 (01:54:09):
No I liked that record, but I mean it was
I had to accept that that Billy Cheryl didn't really
know why it was those singing those songs, and he
just brought where he could recognize the ability to try
and make a hit. He did what he did, which
was put the you know, make those sweetening devices which
he developed over the hits with George Shows and Charlie

(01:54:29):
Rich which was the whole reason I wanted to work
with him. With the benefit of hindsight, I can think
of maybe three or four other producers. I might have
got to the heart of what I liked about those
songs a little easier, but I wasn't that my most
kind of reasonable or disciplined at that time. There was
a lot of drinking going on on that record, as

(01:54:50):
well as Nine Day, But you know, like tear really
that we were on in Nashville. You know that that
was a miracle that any record.

Speaker 3 (01:54:57):
Came out of it.

Speaker 2 (01:54:58):
Frankly, there's some video of that, right, Yeah, there is
a documentary, but it's pretty it's pretty sodden at.

Speaker 4 (01:55:03):
Times, you know. Yeah, and kind of modeling.

Speaker 2 (01:55:07):
So just to continue on the timeline, someone Else's Heart
is where we left off. And then you came on
for what we were calling Springsteen Week on the fount
That's where.

Speaker 4 (01:55:17):
I'm thinking about fire, That's right, that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:55:20):
Brilliant diskies just with Quest and James poyser as an arrangement,
just a drums, piano, vocal thing.

Speaker 4 (01:55:26):
Yeah, because I had done it as a pretty much
I'd done it as a solo, and I cut it
with just a rhythm section with Pete or Well.

Speaker 3 (01:55:35):
It was on the extra extras.

Speaker 4 (01:55:36):
Yeah, it was actually was a demo I cut for
for George Jones. I had done it a really weird
assignment where I'd been asked to interview him for Interview magazine,
which is even stranger. George Jones an interview magazine doesn't
really go. You know, we were on either end of
a line from wherever he lived outside of Nashville. I
think I had some villa somewhere he lived, and I

(01:55:59):
don't know where he lived in any way, he was
in America, and I was kind of talking to him
from Dublin, and it was I was asking him why
he had never looked like Willie Nelson had done to
kind of a broader world of songs, because I really
had these same songwriters that gave him tunes over the years,
and truthfully, many of them were unworthy of his voice.

(01:56:19):
And so I started naming songs that I thought he
could sing, and he had not heard of any of them.
I mean, there were songs by songwriters he'd never considered
and sort of I said, well, maybe you know, I
could send you some of those. And I was trying
to basically get a gig producing him, and.

Speaker 3 (01:56:36):
He didn't quite take the bait, so I thought, well
he didn't.

Speaker 4 (01:56:40):
He didn't ask me to do this, but I'm going
to go in on my own dime.

Speaker 2 (01:56:43):
And you had worked with him long before.

Speaker 4 (01:56:45):
I had recorded with him in nineteen seventy nine on Try,
and have been on TV with him Stranger interim and
sung with him on a television show a couple of times.
So I didn't know him, and I just went for
my own amusement as much as anything to go in.
And I did, I think ten songs in one day,
just recorded them like me, Pete Thomas, and the bass

(01:57:08):
player that Pete used to play with before the Attractions,
a guy called Paul Riley, who'd been the engineer at
Nicklaus Studio Amperor and had been my first choice for
the attractions. He'd been he'd turned me down, a guy
called Paul Riley, and I had actually asked him to
be in a band before we had the Attractions. What
did he play bass?

Speaker 3 (01:57:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:57:29):
And he didn't want to do it. So now Paul
is a great bass pay and he played in a
group called Rugulator, which was a great group.

Speaker 3 (01:57:38):
And he ended up being a valuable.

Speaker 4 (01:57:40):
Engineer at Nicklas Studio, which was a little home studio
which had been own by Tony Vasconti. Tony Vasconti had
downed that building and had a little studio where he'd
mixed a bunch of things, sparks and diamond dogs and things,
and then Nick did a bunch of things in there.

Speaker 3 (01:57:54):
I cut with Johnny Cash.

Speaker 4 (01:57:55):
There, So there was like it was a tiny.

Speaker 3 (01:58:00):
You wouldn't even know it was there. It was a
little bit like the Tardis, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:58:03):
It was like you'd be walking along you would never
guess it was a studio inside that building, you know,
it didn't look like it looked like a house.

Speaker 2 (01:58:10):
So is like the whole bonus disc of Kojak Variety,
like all those demos, like you're going to make ever lunch?

Speaker 4 (01:58:15):
Yeah, yeah, You're gonna make me lonesome. I don't know
what I put out in the end. How long has
this been going on? George Gershman song. I always heard
that as a country song. I thought that could be done.
Drig shows could sing the hell out of that.

Speaker 2 (01:58:28):
So on March first, twenty twelve, you came on and
played brilliant disguise in this totally weird arrangement. I guess
it's a very spare, very sparse yes, yeah and also
fire Bruce Springsteen's song as made famous by the Pointer
Sisters and yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:58:44):
And that's where you added two yeah too hot.

Speaker 4 (01:58:48):
Which I'd cut with the specials, which was righttles.

Speaker 3 (01:58:53):
He said again.

Speaker 4 (01:58:54):
You see, that's the thing is so we that I
don't know that so much that people I don't know
whether they realized that the kind of second kind of
like the way a lot of musicians really know a
lot of R and B references. You had all these
kind of bands that were really kind of blues fanatics

(01:59:14):
in the early sixties. By the late sixties, you had
people who like that are my age and a little
bit older younger than me, who had totally heard reggae
in a way that I just don't think it was
part of American music in quite the same way.

Speaker 3 (01:59:29):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:59:29):
It's just like Jimmy Cliff and then Bob Marley and
a few other one off hits. But we had a
lot of it, you know, we had a lot of records,
sort of blue beat records, and if they weren't actually
in the charts, they were like the sort of secret
music like that we were talking about Northern soul, that
kind of reggae that from scad through rockstady through reggae

(01:59:51):
before Male and Whalers. It was like we all knew
these vocal groups that sounded sort of like the impressions
that were all sort of like influenced by that close
harmony groups sometimes doing covers. You know, people, I think
the question and I had this talk about this before.
Don't don't dun, Dun dum, don't.

Speaker 3 (02:00:12):
Don't go don't dun.

Speaker 4 (02:00:14):
Everybody says that's I'll take you there, but it's not.
It's from a reggae record that they were covering, you know.
So it's like this cross talk between all these musics,
you know.

Speaker 2 (02:00:23):
So I think this is kind of that point where
you said that famous line standing in the Tartist, which
was like, hey, uh, we've recorded half of Get Happy already,
you know, uh, or remixed or whatever recorded Get Happy,
Maybe we should make a record. And that's when me
and Quest looked at each other, you know, and.

Speaker 4 (02:00:42):
I see that's not you see that's you. That's the victors.
The victors get to write the history.

Speaker 3 (02:00:47):
Now.

Speaker 4 (02:00:48):
My memory is as I was walking off from the
set that that second or third time, I don't know
which time it was, and Quest saying to me, you
know you we're going to.

Speaker 3 (02:00:58):
Make a record.

Speaker 4 (02:01:00):
So I don't know which which of those remarks happened first.
Both things could have happened. Maybe I said that because
he said that. It's true the other way around. Why's
up Ghosts?

Speaker 2 (02:01:09):
Which you know connects with this conversation that I want
to have if if he ever comes back, is you
know the ultimate example, do you have to pee? Tune
in next week to see if Elvis needs to pee.
This has been part one of our Questlove Supreme interview
with Elvis Costello. Check out part two when I squirmed
some more as this music monster lets loose and jumps

(02:01:31):
the skinny on wise up ghost his collab with the Roots.

Speaker 1 (02:01:34):
My name is Sugar Steve, I Love my job. Questlove
Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from
iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.