QLS Classic: Elvis Costello Part 2

Back in 2022, Team Supreme’s Suga Steve concluded his far-ranging interview with Elvis Costello. This is Part 2 of the first edition of QLS Solo Sessions. This show was recorded at legendary Electric Lady Studio A and finds Suga and Elvis continuing to explore all aspects of Elvis’ career and how it relates to his work with the Roots and his place in music history. 

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Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:09):
It's okay to meet your heroes, It's okay to dream,
It's ok 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 Lyad Studios for Questlove Supreme. At first I
said no, just kidding. I jumped at the opportunity. In

(00:30):
this part too, you'll hear Elvis and I dissect the
contents of wise up Ghost and go down rabbit holes
so deep where even rabbits are afraid to go. Yes,
I had to doggy paddle through this to survive Elvis
and his title wave of Knowledge. But I'm so grateful
and pleased that this document exists for the future. This
was originally aired in April twenty twenty two. Wow, I

(00:52):
can't even believe this happened. Enjoy and thank you Questlove.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
All right, put us all one, Uh huh, Sugar Steve,
And I'm a legend in my whole time, Sugar Steve,
just a legend that it is all fine.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
I've been doing a lot of interviews, have you It's getting.

Speaker 4 (01:26):
Sick of it, not this one, This is even.

Speaker 5 (01:32):
I had no sooner resolve to stop recording and just
play shows than I found myself in a three way
conversation with engineer and mixer Stephen Mandel and Questlove making
Wise up Ghost. These began as new bulletins collaged out
of my old papers, but ended up in the company
of brand new verses, all jammed together. Quest speets gave

(01:53):
the words different air to breathe and allowed me to
place fresh emphasis. The words of Bedlin became the of
the dead pan groove of wake Me Up, with a
quotation from the River and reverse as its hook. She's
pulling out the pin from the Mississippi sessions became she
Might be a grenade. The tracks began with drums alone,

(02:14):
over which I sketched out guitar or bass lines. The
other members of the Roots entered as the music demanded,
Captain Kirk Douglas adding his guitar or my bass sketches
being replaced by a sousapharm or the Roots bassis. Mark Kelly,
a Philadelphia horn section, reworked motifs from my records, a
guitar riff becoming a horn line of ice versa. In

(02:37):
the final days, of the recording quest Summer Brent Fisher
add the.

Speaker 4 (02:40):
Beautiful orchestrations that pulled all these threads together.

Speaker 5 (02:45):
Each mixed of Stephen Mandel sent me got closer to
the final picture. A beat dropped out here, sunds distorted
out of all recognition. There, voices sent out into dub orbit,
new ideas appearing where others vanished. The only precedent for
this kind of recording in my catalog had been Pills
and Soap, just some verses chanted over a spare beat

(03:07):
with occasional musical punctuations. The original Pills and Soap lyrics
were now reset in a dialog with verses and lines
from Invasion, Hip Parade and National Ransom to become stick
out your tongue. Like four or five of the songs
on Wise up Ghast, this number delayed, leaving the first
chord until absolutely necessary. The one chord song was something

(03:30):
that I'd been working towards since writing Big Boys for
Armed Forces, and this was almost it. I had sampled
the Italian singer Mena's nineteen sixties recording of Unbacho Eetropopoco
as the foundation.

Speaker 4 (03:45):
For when I was Cruel number two.

Speaker 5 (03:47):
But can you hear me, took a two bar bass
figure from radio silence and told the same story on
a six minute canvas. I almost persuaded Graham Nash and
David Crosby to sing on that one. Graham really wanted
to do it, but when I sent it to Crosbie,
he didn't quite hear himself in that kind of mayhow

(04:07):
I ended up tracking my own voice on the paths,
and in the closing bars of the track quoted one
phrase from the melody of Crosbie's song Draft Mourning clips
from our rehearsal Jambs, recorded while preparing for my appearances
on the Jimmy Fallon Show on m b C. They
came the foundation of new tracks, high fidelity, yielding Sinko

(04:28):
Minuto's convos, four bars from the Stations of the Cross
under pinning Viceroy's Row, and quest rendition of the intro
of Chelsea anchoring my new haunt. It was strange to
walk past the Dame Judy Dench, Lindsay Lohan or the
other studio guests in the studio hallway and then disappeared
through a door into the Root's own personal tardis a

(04:50):
converted technical cupboard that served as the rehearsal in the studio,
Wise Up Ghost looked out from that Windowlas's room at
a world where one woman's freedom was another man's blasphemy,
where one man's wealth was another man's bankruptcy, where security
can only be preserved by unaccountable means, from eavesdropping to

(05:13):
air strikes. If peace and order are now like the
law and too complex to trust to any one but professionals,
I suppose love and understanding will just.

Speaker 4 (05:24):
Have to wait out the imminent threat.

Speaker 5 (05:27):
How could any father not fear the world his sons
will Inherit could her muster any hope at all? While
the record does close with the song, if I could
believe Mandel had looped my own string orchestrations for can
You Be True? From North and I wrote the lyrical
and vocal arrangement that wise Up Ghost over it. Stephen

(05:47):
and Questlot then went to work scoring it as if
it were a movie, with the horns that were doubling
Kirk's guitar eventually obliterating the string loop, and questioned frank
knuckles laying in waves of drums and percussion. It seemed
at first like a piece that could only dwell in
the studio, but when we performed the song on television
and later in a bowling alley in Brooklyn, he really

(06:09):
took on a life of its own.

Speaker 4 (06:11):
For that Brooklyn Bowl show, Quest only.

Speaker 5 (06:14):
Called a handful of songs from the record and let
the roots take possession of some of my numbers, from
Spooky Girlfriend to a nine minute Captain kerk guitar Wigout
and I Want You. In the summer of twenty fourteen,
Steve Naive, Dennis crouched, Kareem Riggins and I played Wise
Up Ghost with the La Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.

(06:36):
When Kareem kicked into a take on his friend Quest's
groove at the half way point of the song, I
felt as if we might end up hovering above the
Griffith Observative walkers. Uptown and Wise Up Ghosts were never
intended to be defeated songs.

Speaker 4 (06:52):
The album unavoidably.

Speaker 5 (06:53):
Contemplated the unthinkable, the despair at every news bulletin. But
the most surprising moment came not in a cupboard contemplating oblivion,
but sitting at my own kitchen table thinking about my father.
It was close to midnight when a repetitive sequence of
unusually harmonized music that Quest and keyboardist Ray Angry had

(07:14):
laid down arrived over the wire.

Speaker 4 (07:18):
It was clearly a ballad.

Speaker 5 (07:20):
We had got into this thing without any rules or consultation.
Little more than a word or two had passed between
Question and me. While the dialogue had been musical, Mandell
had been tireless in making his own editorial decisions and
trying to satisfy those that we had independently suggested or
even demanded. We had never discussed any of the lyrical content,

(07:43):
but it had turned out to consist mostly of outward
looking commentary. I suppose we had just come to trust
each other, as working musicians usually do. I now found
myself writing a very detailed account of my father's last
days and hours, something that I had told myself would
be too hard to visit in a song.

Speaker 4 (08:03):
It did no good to push those images down if
they arrived unbidden.

Speaker 5 (08:08):
So I sat at the kitchen table, singing into the
recording function of my computer. The breath is slow and
shallow too. The sky is bright Venetian blue. The cardboard
sun is all ablaze. The air is painted Clifford brown caressing.

(08:28):
Yesterday I wrote and sang down the entire song in
one pass, mixed it down as such, and hit send
before I had time to take it back. The next day,
I went to NBC to re record the vocal properly.
When I walked in, quest was adamant that was the vocal.

(08:48):
He would not let me touch it. All right, It's
funny this list. I just looked at it. I had
to look it up. This the five hundred list. I

(09:10):
haven't looked at it for years. I pick a lot
of the same records today, but but some I come
around to again, Like.

Speaker 4 (09:18):
Like when I saw Black Messiah and it opens with rass.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
That's what I wanted to ask you about get on
the make there.

Speaker 5 (09:24):
Nobody's put found a weight of context to put that
that piece of music. Anything that's so so powerful is
that you know that nobody's put that in the context
of a movie before that.

Speaker 4 (09:34):
I ever remember which piece of music the Russ and
Roland Kirk inflated to you, it's the opening music of
that movie.

Speaker 5 (09:41):
Wow, how do you kind of go, well, that's kind
of right, you know, that's that's kind of what I thought.

Speaker 4 (09:46):
That's what that music feels like to me.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
G'angela's influences are are vast. So yeah, like I was saying,
wise up Ghosts ends up becoming the ultimate flip album,
you know, flipping the music, flipping the lyrics, sampling from
the sampling from that, well, sampling.

Speaker 5 (10:04):
From our own brief kind of live library. So that's
ingenious in itself. And then you know, in myself, like
starting off with two ideas. One one is to write
completely new words and others to kind of do a
kind of sort of cut up collage of ideas that

(10:28):
were related. Part of it is I thought of it
being in the tradition of bulletins, you know, lyrics, the
lyrical side of it.

Speaker 4 (10:37):
There's not many songs in the in the group that
we recorded that are to do.

Speaker 5 (10:42):
With matters of the heart. They're mostly outward looking. So
it seemed to me that then it gave me the
opportunity to think about things i'd seen or things i'd
written because of the way I fell about something I
saw in the world, or something happened and you'd write
something and then that thing would happen again.

Speaker 4 (11:06):
Like you know, history repeating history repeating.

Speaker 5 (11:10):
Yourself, or war breaks out and then another war that
seems to be the same kind of mistake. So then
you stated again, but you have the other this that
came from another time, and they kind of talked to
one another a little bit. Now, some people that were
skeptical about the whole endeavor just thought, well, maybe you
couldn't be bothered to write new words.

Speaker 4 (11:26):
But to me, you did.

Speaker 5 (11:28):
You hear oh, I wrote a lot of new words.
But but even those ones that some of those became
to me like the version of that lyric because I
got a chance to lay it down a different against
a different foundation, you know. I mean, if you recall
the way we began the recording was with a handful

(11:48):
of the beats that the Quest had put down, and
I and were we in Were we in Vancouver?

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Well, yeah, we didn't want The very first thing was
pills and soap.

Speaker 4 (11:58):
Cutting up pills and soap. Yeah, that was that.

Speaker 5 (12:00):
But then when it came to the newly recorded the
things that weren't sampled from the catalog, and it weren't
sampled from this this bed of of loops that you
created from the live performances. Then it was like Quests
laying down those beats and me improvising song structure over them,
so I was playing like electric piano and bass. There's

(12:23):
quite a lot of bass in the original draft where
I'm playing the bass sort of so that there's a
foundation structure. And that's as far as I recall. I
did wise up ghost pretty much to the drums and
maybe some.

Speaker 4 (12:36):
I don't know, some chords on the piano not very
much full. So why is it?

Speaker 5 (12:41):
Because it's just really the sample from the from the
sample is really giving the tonality.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
So the sample is from North.

Speaker 4 (12:47):
Yeah, it's the opening of the It's what Vince mean
Doza said to me when he conducted it when I
did it live, the same song, Can He be True? Live?
He said, I'm going to take your human records away
from you because he thought it was so sort of Germanic. Well,
I was. I had written that opening, like you know,
it was very that's a lot of drama.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
And I heard just right for that, and I heard
hip hop in that, you know, in that intro, and
that's why.

Speaker 4 (13:15):
I hear that a lot.

Speaker 5 (13:16):
I hear a lot of Triikowskian in the synth and
sometimes real string, you know, the synth strings that that
that became like I hear it a lot. I hear
a lot of Triikowski and a lot of borrowed in.
I don't know where it's conscious. So whether it's just
the tendency to be in a minor so I hear
a lot of classical things. I don't know whether people

(13:36):
are actually drawing out or it's just a coincidence. You
end up with a few chords in a certain kind
of ominous rhythm, you know, and then you get that right.

Speaker 4 (13:44):
So that was that was a pretty free piece, and
it built as you record.

Speaker 5 (13:51):
You built it really all of those layers, when you know,
with Kirk playing those sustained guitars and everything.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
That was really Are you a Queen fan?

Speaker 4 (14:03):
No?

Speaker 2 (14:04):
You don't like any prog rock? I put them in
pro Do you like Jeff Toll?

Speaker 4 (14:08):
No, I really don't like Jeff.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
How about yes, they're the best at it all right,
Well if you don't like, yes.

Speaker 5 (14:13):
Like I really don't like prog rock, but I did,
and I sort of hear, I suppose it is King
Crimson prog rock? Yes, yeah, But I mean I never
listened to any of their records, but I was aware
of one record of theirs which I liked, which was
a later one called Red that had Adrian Bello on it,

(14:33):
and because I liked him because he played with Bowie
and and of course Fripp played with Bowrie as well,
So I liked that kind of thing when I could
hear it like an orchestral instrument. And that's what I
heard when when, when when Kirk was playing those that's
those sustained guitars, sounded like a Fripp part to me,

(14:54):
you know, it's like, that's what it sounds like, one
of his sustained guitar things.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
I guess someone's still a little surprised because in my opinion,
prog rock is there's a lot of classical influence and
there's a lot of English folk.

Speaker 5 (15:06):
Oh yeah, and that jaffre Tell for sure. But there
were groups i'd like that did that better, who were different,
like Febal Convention and you know, Richard Thompson is a
guitar player I really love who came out of that group,
But not so much the Emson like em Palmer kind
of stuff or.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
The you just like shorter songs.

Speaker 5 (15:26):
I just like shorter songs, and I just like, you know,
I like Jack McDuff. I don't really need to hear
Kenith Emerson. You know, he's great. I'm sure, but it's
not really my thing. And you know what, I bet
Keith Emerson loves Jack McDuff as well.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
You know, jazz is a lot more blues and less classical.
Prog rock has all that classical in.

Speaker 5 (15:46):
Yeah, I mean, I love classical music, but I like
actual classical music, and I like Leonard Bernstein. But you see,
to me, like West Side Story Score, the original West
Side Stories Score, you don't. It didn't make it cooler
to hear it played on the organ, but maybe somebody had.
Maybe it's somebody that had never heard, never really thought about,

(16:07):
well that song was about heard that tune, that America
tune played by Keith Emerson a nice and thought, hey,
that's great, and that's kind of a subversive idea to
do that in a wild way.

Speaker 4 (16:19):
But I think it's already wild. I think that original
versions wilder.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
So as you were sampling your own lyrics and ready
new lyrics on Wise Up Ghost, we were busy doing
our version of sampling, actual sampling, including come in the
Meantimes with the backing sample from a Glasshouse, Glasshouse.

Speaker 4 (16:40):
Victius Holland does a Holland label after Motown.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
Yeah, so that beat that is come in the meantime,
is meaning the sample and the drums, yeah plays on it.
That was five years old or something like that. He
had made that five years prior to Whup Ghost and
it just always was on the drive. He never used
it for anything, and I was like, that's something.

Speaker 5 (16:59):
But you see, that's that's no different to me than
if we had gone into the deepest kind of library
of of like we were talking before about the you know,
the sort of kitchier versions of covers of records, and
then you might find some quirk to the way that
drum drum sounded or something about or hearing even that.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
But it was just badass.

Speaker 5 (17:23):
Yeah, it's badass, and that's all that matters when you're
looking for that, you know. So it didn't really matter
to me what the source was, whether it was a
new beat that that that Crest had laid down, or
whether you were taking it something that you would n't
because I mean I didn't see I mean, I was
taking lyrics from there are some lyrics from from the

(17:44):
River Reverse, which you know, was only four years old.
There's others that are that are from nineteen ninety you know,
from from songs from Invasion, Hipparay, which is from der
Like was that's nineteen ninety. The pills and solf is
from eighty three that you know, yeah, the bills and
so sort of like you know and fills and so

(18:05):
was some kind of realization of you know, my my,
you know, like Magnificent seven was the Clash's response to.

Speaker 4 (18:16):
To hip to early hip hop. Pills and Soap was mine.

Speaker 5 (18:19):
So the Clash did it first that I'd say I
was using like more authentic tools. I mean, I really
only had a piano and a drum machine. I didn't
have a band playing on it. There's nobody else. It's
just it's just me and Steve. You know, it's me
Stephen Alndrum, you know.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
And not only were we sampling sampling, but we were
flipping melodies and horn lines from your past into changing
them into guitar lines and horn It's.

Speaker 4 (18:45):
An orchestrated record in that sense and a way.

Speaker 5 (18:48):
And it's orchestrated and and you know that there's some
of the way that it sounds is because of the
way the processing in the mixing as well and the
changing of texture of things.

Speaker 4 (19:00):
Things getting much.

Speaker 5 (19:01):
Smaller than they actually would be if they were played
in the room together, Like guitar sounds squeeze right down.
This is kind of like coming out of balance, you know, drums,
particular drum beats, you know, one beat in a phrase
being kind of process in some way one you know.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
Well, yes, you came to me at a very strange
time in my life, as they say.

Speaker 5 (19:22):
But all of this, all of this is attractive to
me because it's sort of like literally getting It's not
so much like trying to the mistake it seemed to
me from the get go with using machines is to
get the machines to try and imitate.

Speaker 4 (19:40):
Real musicians. I want the other way around. I want
musicians that imitate machines.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Well that's exactly what the roots did you know.

Speaker 4 (19:47):
That's always seemed to be the best thing.

Speaker 5 (19:49):
Yeah, it never seemed to me to make sense. When
when I was about thirteen or fourteen, a man tried
to sell my father a melotron. He took him into
this This guy lived in a house next to the
church where he used to go to me, and he
took us into.

Speaker 4 (20:04):
The front room and he had this melotron in his
front room.

Speaker 5 (20:07):
And he put it on and he tried to persuade
my father it was going to put all the musicians
in the band out of work, you know, and he's
still playing in the dance band, and he said, this
will replace them, because there was absolutely no way.

Speaker 4 (20:19):
You couldn't play with any feel.

Speaker 5 (20:21):
On a melotron because they hadn't yet got the action
so that you could really play with any kind of
swing or anything on it. Everything was, you know, there
was always a delay, and of course the way people
use melotrons was much more to sound like a process
version of a flute into the most famous use of it,
as like the beginning of Strawberry Feels Forever, you know,
where I think, I don't even know whether the cello

(20:43):
is a real cello that's been phased or it's a
melotron cello, but you know, flute sound, and you would
never group real flutes playing like that in that.

Speaker 4 (20:53):
Kind of harmony.

Speaker 5 (20:54):
You just would never play them. He would never voice
him like that. In the real orchestra. You wouldn't have
a flute section play like that. So, I mean, that's
unique to that instrument, and that's what that instruments ended
up being. If you hear one on a radio head
record or you hear one on any cud of record,
it's the sound of that instrument's quirks, right, just like
the Hammond organ was never really going to replace a

(21:17):
horn section, was it. You know, it's it's a different instrument,
you know, So we I think we kind of like
drew on that thing, or you did in the in
the processing and the mixing and the cutting up and
the slight kind of disconnect that you get rhythmically.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
Then you know, I grew up on your music in
the way that that music was made. In fact, when
I was coming up as an engineer here, we were
still using tape. This was in the mid nineties, and
I got to witness the turn from analog to digital firsthand,

(21:54):
and I became a very digital oriented working in hip hop.
It's a very digital for the most.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
Facility of it as well.

Speaker 5 (22:01):
It's very good and the speed with which you can
edit is like tape phasing and things. I remember being
in the time of all the Sis is Beauty their
last racket any with the attractions, like some of the
tracks had had loops. It was the first time I
ever persuaded the band to play with a loop since
green shirt. Pete would never do it. He thought it

(22:25):
was like cheating. I said, no, this is what I want.
I want the relationship of drums made small against the loop.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
That's big, or something quantized or something unquantized.

Speaker 5 (22:36):
Yeah, but I want this tension. And I'd written this
song called Little Atoms, which was really just a folk song.
You could play it on acoustic guitar, sound perfectly nice.
But the minute that you did this thing, it had
a tension between this repetitive loop that we constructed. Jeff Emeric,
of course, is from an analogue ear or his Abbey
Road train, you know who was there when the Beatles

(22:58):
kind of introg used these things that they've absorbed from
the avant garde tape loops, particularly McCartney. You know, they
got enamored of these tape loop electronic composers. They all
sort of fed into that desire to process sounds to
a much greater degree that they spent the first part
of the group being told not to touch the faders,

(23:20):
you know, and they've gradually taken over the studio. We
get the benefit of that revolution, of them being able
to experiment, because everything that we've got now in a
box is something that's most of it that somebody actually
physically made an analog version of and now we've got
a plug in rendition of it.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
But you can still experiment with that stuff. Of course,
you can create new stuff.

Speaker 5 (23:42):
But you know, you know that the kind of edits
that were possible to do it with tape if you yet,
if you were skilled at it, though, you could do
it really impossible edits, but.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
The sheer number of edits like on Wise Up Ghost would.

Speaker 4 (23:55):
Never be able to do it.

Speaker 5 (23:57):
No, you would never The tape would never hold together.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
No, not every song on Wise Up Ghost is created
that way.

Speaker 4 (24:05):
Though.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
There were a couple of sessions of live sessions right
with Pino Paladin.

Speaker 4 (24:09):
Right at the end.

Speaker 5 (24:10):
I mean, that's the weirdest thing I've ever done, is
I played that record is Quest.

Speaker 4 (24:15):
It's live, isn't it? The back in two songs are live.

Speaker 5 (24:19):
Sugar Want Work is interesting because it's a rhythmic song
and the band is Quest very angry, and Pino and
me playing bass at the same time. So I'm playing
up with the octave and playing really a six string
guitar part against Pino's bass, So I'm playing just figures,
and you know, like guitar figures and he's doing all
the bass playing.

Speaker 4 (24:41):
There's a weird choice and instruments.

Speaker 5 (24:42):
But I had that k that sounds like, you know,
sounds like a six string six string guitar, that's what
it sounds like. A barattar guitar doesn't really have the
residence of a true bass, right.

Speaker 4 (24:54):
But that was a good track to cut.

Speaker 5 (24:56):
I liked that one, and if I could believe which
was you know, it was obvious, an obvious ending song.
If it was going to be a kind of something
that was more melodic after all of this recitative stuff.
What would you call the vocal I don't even know
there's a word for the thing I'm doing vocally on
Wise Up ghost I mean.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
It's on the song wise declamatory.

Speaker 5 (25:20):
Restive of which I can never say, which they call
when you speak in opera, you know, sprechstimo, as the
Germans call it. You know, it's a version of rhythmic talking.
But it's not versifying in the hip hop sense. It's
but it's not singing either.

Speaker 4 (25:36):
Most of the time.

Speaker 5 (25:37):
There's not a lot of pitch involved in many.

Speaker 4 (25:39):
Of the songs in Wise Up Ghosts.

Speaker 5 (25:40):
There's not a lot of melodic information that where the
singing comes in is in the background vocals, which are
mostly falsetto you know. So it's again that's all inherited
from my teenage memory of like not so much like
American records as Jamaican records. It's that soft vocal group

(26:03):
singing up there, you know, like that's soft, very soft,
not like anything like really virtuosic. It's just the soft
three part group thing that you know that but a
lot of a lot of rock bands imitated, like think
of the band that backed Joe Cocker. What do they
do with a little help from my friends? It sounds

(26:25):
like they're sounding trying to sound like girls singing, but
they don't really.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Sound those aren't girls, No, it's just guys singing like that. Yeah,
I thought it was.

Speaker 4 (26:38):
Are's some great there's a great there's some great background
singers that but on the original record though.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
It's guys speaking of great singers and still were on
wise up Ghost Lamarasol and Diane Birch and Brent Fisher
contributing strings.

Speaker 4 (26:53):
Well, let's go back.

Speaker 5 (26:53):
Marisol was a really great thing because I knew were
already and that was Sebastian who's ended up being like
really a great pal and that cohort on these last
four records and EPs in between those and beyond those.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
You guys been tearing it up for.

Speaker 4 (27:09):
He is really you know, but he comes out of Miami,
so he has done a lot of work, and.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
He has that eighteen Latin Grammys, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (27:19):
Producer of the Year twice, So I mean he's really
got the you know it and it goes right across
the whole you know, range of everything that's in Latin music.
I mean, there's at least as much variety in Southern
Hemisphere music as there is Northern Hemisphere music, maybe more,
you know, justin making Spanish model, that's become apparent to

(27:41):
me all the more because some of those things I
knew Marisolo had sung with in the studio before and
had done.

Speaker 4 (27:47):
A track with her, and she had sung live with us.

Speaker 5 (27:51):
So when I wanted to put that verse in Spanish
and sincamnutas, which was again goes back to the very
first high fidelity, it's that same hit, isn't it isn't that?
Isn't that what we're using there is the high fidelity.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
Groove for Sinko. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 (28:09):
So we're back in that and now we've got it
really to sound like Stations stage.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
I always forget what you forget, which one.

Speaker 4 (28:15):
You don't even remember you're not even covering your own tracks.

Speaker 5 (28:18):
But I think that that one there, You know, it
really was funny how it came. I said, we realized
this attempt to imitate Barwie's kind of you know, he
had a funk mat basically for a lot of the seventies,
he had a funk rhythm section, killer rhythm section, And
so when we were trying to play like that in
seventy nine, we didn't really know how to get there,

(28:41):
not so much rhythmic textually with the other instruments that
you had to have if you were going to play
the song that slowly. Now we're playing a song that's
supposed to go that slowly. That new text is supposed
to be over that groove. I'd written just this melody
that that there was a little more melody to that.
Even though this song never varies from two chords, it

(29:02):
doesn't ever really get off those two chords. There's no release,
there's no four chord. In most of these songs, it's
all on the one, you know, so harmonically it's really
tricky to sustain the tension. So what halfway through as
the story was the kind of answer song the ship
building was. It takes place in the in the conflict

(29:23):
in the early eighties between England and Argentina, and the
second verse needs to be in it in Spanish, but
it didn't need to be in Spanish Spanish.

Speaker 4 (29:31):
It needs to be in Argentine Spanish.

Speaker 5 (29:33):
So Sebastian and another friend of mine his family also
left Argentina in those years, wrote the adaptation for marisolt
to sing Barsola is Mexican Americans, so she would know
the different words that are in Argentine Spanish.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
Hence its sincamental was convose, not sincamon contu.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
Couldn't we get a real Argentinian I mean, was it
not in the budget?

Speaker 4 (29:55):
Not at that time. That would came later. That that's
you know, that's one of my favorites, and it's also
one of the really beautiful songs.

Speaker 5 (30:04):
I mean, do you remember I thought we were done,
I thought the record was done. I thought, you know,
there's a mix of this record that is barer than
the final one. And then you told me that Quest
was saying, now we're going to get bread to do that,
and I like from where, like how we gonna well
it is, how are we going to pay for that?

Speaker 4 (30:25):
It was the first thing. Yeah, but that was a genius.

Speaker 5 (30:28):
Call and that call alone transformed the cohesion of it.
As each track would have worked if we had never
thought of put.

Speaker 4 (30:37):
The strings on.

Speaker 5 (30:38):
Each track would have been interesting enough because of the
relationship between what's going on in the rhythm and the
and the accumulated instrumental parts of the root, the members
of the roots added and what I was doing with
the combination of new texts and you know, these collages

(30:59):
of lyrics bring a new meaning against this other rhythmic flow.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
What was interesting to me was the songs that Quest
chose to put strings on. It was the ones I
wouldn't I wouldn't have chosen, you know. It was like
these ones that I thought were fused.

Speaker 5 (31:14):
Was refused to be said, was it was? But it's
but it but you can't I caught it without it, right.
I think the the and the things like having the
introduction to sugar won't work integrated that song, which was lighter,
lighter lyrically than some of the others into the body
of these kind of much more grievous sounding lyrics.

Speaker 4 (31:37):
You know.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
So my joint is grenade. Okay, of all the of
all the songs, I know you love Sinco, I know
you love Meantimes and other songs. For me, what I
was going for was grenade. Like we're talking about the flip,
I was trying to essentially flip one mogain from Voodoo

(31:58):
song on Voodoo that has a similar vibe, a similar
amount of space and within the song, you know air.
That was where I was like, Okay, this is making
sense to me because I'm covering both my quest I'm
covering my elvis and I'm hearkening back to this soul
that we're all looking to have in this kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 (32:18):
So I think everything that reference it doesn't have to
be said out loud. One of the strengths of it.

Speaker 5 (32:22):
People have asked me about the record, and I said,
I think we you know that one of the reasons
that it was that it ended up being the record.
It is whatever people expected it to be, or whatever
they thought when they even heard about it.

Speaker 4 (32:37):
My name and the roots in one sentence.

Speaker 5 (32:40):
Would just put a question mark over some people's heads,
whatever they thought it was. I think the strength of
the record is that we didn't do a lot of
theorizing about what it was going to be. And sometimes
when an idea like you just expressed there, you didn't
tell me that at the time, so I couldn't have
reacted in a way that adjusted my performance to take
that further towards what you were trying to achieve. I mean,

(33:03):
the records that I heard in my head were not
reference points that I even thought were were pertinent to it,
you know, I mean, I know I'm not going to
sound like any of the people as ever said from
the get go.

Speaker 4 (33:13):
Makes no difference who's.

Speaker 5 (33:15):
Playing in the studio, which musicians are playing, whether it's
a collaborative record or essentially one that I'm driving the
whole train. I'm not going to tell people where I
get every cue that I've written, because that's then they're
going to react to that, right, They're gonna they're gonna
if I say, well this is such and such, that's

(33:35):
just gonna they said, Well, they'd either laugh at you
and well that's ridiculous, that's you're never gonna sound like that,
or they're going to try and adjust to what they
think you want them to play right, and then you're
losing the whole point of making that that reference point.
If you keep it to yourself, it's like a card
you can lay down.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
I don't know if you remember me falling to the
floor in that studio in Vancouver, A shout out to
Cruise Studio. It's a great little studio out there. We
made this beat out of some of the drums that
Quest sent, and you added keyboards and bass, and you
went in the vocal booth and you sang over it
in a way that I was like, I got this
like it was. It was that moment where I was like, okay,

(34:16):
I kind of achieved at this moment, like what I
was maybe thinking about this could sound like where I'm
creating something that's going to please everybody, and that's going
to please me and you in Quest and whoever needs
to be pleased, especially even if they don't get it
at the beginning. Because in September of twenty thirteen, Wyse
Up Ghost was released and nobody really cared, did they?

(34:36):
I don't know about that, so I'm just kidding nobody.
But such a different record, Which.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
Song was it?

Speaker 5 (34:43):
Do you think that we were doing that, that you
had that strong fail and it was it one particular
song what.

Speaker 4 (34:48):
That nobody cared no, no, but the one that you
said we were in crew, which one was the one
that grenade grenade? You felt that grenade that was to me, that's.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
The nobody knows that take the centerpiece.

Speaker 4 (35:01):
That's a set apiece for you.

Speaker 5 (35:02):
Yeah, I guess, I guess, you know, we would have
different ones.

Speaker 4 (35:07):
I think that that in.

Speaker 5 (35:09):
Some ways, there's so many different things that were hit
on this.

Speaker 4 (35:15):
I can see grenade. I remember thinking late on.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
It's got the It's hard part from Doom's Day.

Speaker 5 (35:22):
Yeah, and I think that that also, you know, because
it was a song that was not very widely heard originally,
and again we were re interpreting that very soon after
its original release because it's only five years earlier. It's
from the delivery Man sessions, but it wasn't on the album,
so that's why you hadn't heard it.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
I have that EP.

Speaker 5 (35:43):
But yeah, yeah, but it was a fairly you know,
it was elusive song and I just had all the
more feeling that that thing that that mixed between the
girl dancing around the pole and the and the woman
walking through the market with the with the you know,
the hidden divine that juxtaposician was was becoming more that

(36:04):
was becoming more frequent and more in conflict. And that's
part of the reason why I say, the part of
the lyrical you know, imperative is this kind of just
join up experiences that you feel. Otherwise, what the hell,
what's the point of doing anything if you don't feel
something for it. Now, that probably leads to the most

(36:29):
unexpected thing.

Speaker 4 (36:31):
I mean, we worked very long.

Speaker 5 (36:32):
I think we worked as long you and I in
the room, worked as long on two songs.

Speaker 4 (36:37):
That were not on the finished record. I mean, we
worked a lot of time on can You Hear Me?

Speaker 5 (36:43):
Which is and of course we had that incredible sort
of attempt to get David Crosby to sing on it,
you know, because.

Speaker 4 (36:51):
Because I had quoted the birds.

Speaker 5 (36:52):
In one of the background vocals, and I wanted him
to sing in the background group with me.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yeah, but you got Graham Nash to say yes. Crosby
said no, why didn't we just take Graham Nash on
his own?

Speaker 5 (37:02):
Well, I thought it would have been I just wanted
to just perverse, I mean, but it was. It was anyway,
that was that was I got to do the parts. Anyway,
in the end, I ended up doing the parts. And
then we worked on another song that kind of had
a which was the one that had the Chelsea from
from Loop My New Haunt, Yeah, my New Haunt, which

(37:24):
it was a favorite of mine because it was I
liked that lyric a lot, and that was an entirely
new lyric. And then the one that really was the
shock to me was was that I didn't expect to write.
And I suppose this is what happens when you get
over a period of time, the fact that we'd not
spoken about anything, and we didn't all have this all

(37:46):
the shared experience on the road or playing live, or
we hadn't known each other for a hundred years. But
there was that final group of pieces that were put together,
and one of them was that was the piano piece
with ray and Quest and you sent that to me

(38:11):
and I wrote the words and sang it at my
kitchen counter, just on my on my laptop without a
microphone even, you know, just so it's just it's just
the vocal that's the internal microphone.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Over the track, which had the sound of like distortion.

Speaker 5 (38:31):
Like yeah, but sometimes it's like when you used to
record on you know, eight or four track cassette. You
would spend a million years in the studio trying to
get the same distortion as the casseet naturally gave you,
and you couldn't understand why you couldn't get it to
sound as kind of crushed and exciting for everything, fighting
for space.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
You know.

Speaker 5 (38:50):
It's like, really, somebody should have could have come in
with a graph and just explained it to you, you know.
So that was the same sort of thing. It was
a total fluke. And I came to the studio the
next day very much the intention of re recording the
vocal with proper fidelity, and you played it to Quest
and he said, that's it. And that's as much direct

(39:11):
intervention as I think that we ever had about any song.
Everything else was like, okay, you go this, I'll do this,
and then this added here, and then in the mix
you're making it agree. But that I only mentioned because
what was unusual about it is everything else was outward
looking in the whole record, except that one song, I suppose,

(39:34):
if I could believe, was a statement. But after everything
that are being observed in the other songs. You could
have a song called ever could believe if you just
only say the title, you know what it's about, you
know the disillusionment that you would arrive at after all
the other miserable observations and the rest of the record,
you get to that one. But Poppett was a minute

(39:56):
to minute description of my father's death. Song one I
would have ever imagined I would write two that I
would record. I'd written two songs about my grandmother's pass
and that I felt were One of them was quite
joyful fornica, and the other was quite a celebratory in
its own It was emotional song that there's done both
wrote with for McCartney. That this one. You know, it

(40:20):
wasn't like I had written it with Steve Naive. Somebody
had known my dad, you know. It was raised cyclic
kind of chord sequence over that meat that West was
laying down. It was just all there and I didn't
have to do very much, and I just had to
sing the words, and of course I just thought the
fidelity would never hold up.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
Did you write the words while listening to the beat
or did you have those words?

Speaker 4 (40:46):
I don't even remember.

Speaker 5 (40:48):
I think I think I just started writing, and yeah,
probably stream of car.

Speaker 4 (40:51):
Yeah, it was really stream.

Speaker 5 (40:53):
Because it was like obviously something that I had been ready,
I'd been ready to set talk about. Well, he had
just passed away recently, fairly fairly well, he passed in
twenty eleven, so it was pretty soon, and I'd spent
you know, I'd been writing a book, and I'd written
a lot, and it was really about my grandfather and
my father, both being by musicians before me, and it

(41:13):
was a slightly romantic fantasy, and I really probably kept
him in the room with me writing it.

Speaker 4 (41:18):
You know.

Speaker 5 (41:18):
That was the way I dealt with it, and the
only song I've ever written about it. I've written several
songs about my father, but always transposed into some other character,
but not this one, which was literally describing you know,
they're giving them these pills and he's now he's leaving,
and the coffins is closing the whole bit. You know,
he's gone in the grave. That's all in the song.

(41:40):
And if you had listened to it, you know.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
I remember you told me that you didn't want that
on the vinyl edition because you didn't want to hear
that song.

Speaker 4 (41:48):
I didn't want to hear it every time.

Speaker 5 (41:49):
But I didn't I thought that in any way. I
thought it was kind of selfish as part of me. Well,
it was because it was wasn't. It wasn't a collaborative experience.
It was maybe something that some of us had gone through,
but it was the other things we had all contributed
to the setting of the resetting of the words or
the new words had been found in this home in rhythm,

(42:11):
and the members of the Roots had come in and
played their parts, the horns had played the parts, written
his strings, and you had pulled it all together and
it was such a ensemble piece in that way. It
was a collaborative piece, collage like anyway, because it wasn't
played by a group in the room kind of. And

(42:32):
then when we did play it, it changed shape again
and became a lot you know, freer. And then when
Tarik came and played, that added another dimension because then
you know, in the end it was worked out great
because he did that amazing Kareem Rigginson, that amazing remix
of thinking.

Speaker 4 (42:51):
Why thought, Why is up? Thought?

Speaker 5 (42:52):
With black thought on it, and those shows when he
came up and we did you know, ghost Town and
we did these other songs from our repertoire adapted and
Kirk played like a huge long solo and I Want You,
and we did John.

Speaker 4 (43:05):
Lennons I found Out and.

Speaker 5 (43:08):
All these other songs that sort of all kind of
sort of it was like going back to what we
started at when we did the appearances on the show,
because we were suddenly doing songs for my Reportie and
Spooky Girlfriend, which was one of the other records that
I made with machines. But I just started out with
just a really cheap sample, a really cheap drum machine

(43:30):
and a Dan electro and no band, and that was
like just before the Impostor started playing together.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
So the interesting thing about Puppet and the fact that
it's about your dad. Recently, listening to it, I'm like, wait,
this is mother from Plastic Goono Band and song of
his father. I mean, we were referencing Plastic Ono Band
in a couple of different ways on that record, I think,
and it came out and then it came out with
I got a great mix of that going by the
way rehearsal session Dangerous Amusements. There's a podcast now about you.

(44:07):
Have you been listening to that at all?

Speaker 5 (44:09):
I'm aware that Mark billingh that the crime writer because
I did a because I just saw that he wrote
something to us and he was doing it, he told us.
But I can't listen to stuff about yeah's hard.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
But I was listening today and I heard an interesting
point by one of the guests. And because you were
talking about these headlines on wise up ghosts and these
outward looking things about society and so forth, it's almost
as if you're Nostradamis predicting things that are going to
be happening in society. They were talking about Trump, they
were talking about brilliant mistake I did.

Speaker 4 (44:44):
I used to make a joke when things seem funnier,
you know, when it seemed to all be like a
horrible kind of delusion of a different kind that all
of this. You know, when people were complaining about songs
being played at political rallies, I could say, they could
go on forever with my songs waiting.

Speaker 5 (45:01):
For the end of the world. You know, so beyond belief.
You know, brilliant mistake accidents will happen. We've got a
million of them.

Speaker 4 (45:08):
You know.

Speaker 5 (45:09):
The point is, when I was working for five years
on this version of Bud Schulberg's play Facing the Crowd,
which was set in the fifties. When there was about
hillbilly singer who comes up into prominence and then wants
to become a man of political influence.

Speaker 4 (45:26):
People said, oh, that's just like the president, you know.

Speaker 5 (45:28):
And yeah, but you've got to remember the guy that
wrote that story didn't know anything about Richard Nixon, didn't
know anything about Ron Reagan. How can you see the
few He wasn't Austrodamus. And the truth of it is,
they'll always be another monster. I'll have a different face,
they'll love a different set of clothes. You know, there's
been you look back in history, it just gets repeated.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
Great history. So getting back to what happened after we
released the record, Jimmy was nice enough to give us
two nights on the show Very End of the Know
with Jimmy found before we turned over to The Tonight Show.
Gave us two nights where we not only played two
songs a night as the music guest, but we ended
up playing everything from the album over those two nights,
and then and.

Speaker 4 (46:11):
With the set with the with the string section and every.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
String absolutely fleshing out some things that would later be
in the Only four concerts. Yeah, that happens. That happened,
so I don't know. You went on tour solo after that, But.

Speaker 4 (46:26):
It was just as hard to pen down.

Speaker 5 (46:28):
I mean it's like it's a I think I would
have done it, no problem. I think it was just
always so difficult. Everybody's got their world, and you know
it wasn't I suppose the greatest news for the impostors.
I remember being in Australia after we'd made I think
we only had the rough mixes and taking the band

(46:50):
out of the there and oh, by the way, I've
made a record with the roots. You know, that didn't
go down ter really well. That was not quite as
bad as to have the attractions. There was nothing to
play on King of America, but you know, it was close.
And then I rode around in a car and played
Pete the roughs, you know, and they kind of got
the idea of it. And then, of course the other
thing is that since then we've we've adapted several of

(47:12):
the songs into the Imboss's repertoire. You know, Men Times
was in there for a while. Secs made an appearance,
you know, some of the others not so much.

Speaker 4 (47:22):
But trip wise been in there now and again.

Speaker 5 (47:24):
You know, But those four concerts, that's not what we
should be talking about.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
Those three of them were great. Brooklyn Ball the first
show obviously, the energy there was great. The Cap Theater
in Portchester, they were reopening. I don't think they had
the sound quite right yet, and it was a little weird.
You and the roots were very much separated on the stage.

Speaker 5 (47:44):
I don't remember that one being as as electric as
the It wasn't. Yeah, I remember the very opening was
really great at the Ball. I remember being backstage and
Quest laying it down and I'm coming out and I thought,
this is the way to do this is now. Now
we're into a different thing. Now, we're into kind of performing,
not making records. Are into performing. So we've got to
involve stagecraft. We've got to have other repertoire. People don't

(48:07):
know this record yet. That's the point of his being here.
I would say that with you know, you have to
give Don Whil's credit. He's here with us, with me
in Quest, and we did a presentation in this exact
room where I was sitting, exactly where Don was. Was
Don's idea to make the cover look like a City
Lights cover. He wanted it to look like the cover
of how by Allen Ginsburg, which was a sort of

(48:29):
visual quote in graphic design. That he wanted it to
give it the sense that these words were consequential because
it was a famous book of poetry. You know, I
thought that was a compliment he paid me. Whether or
not it's deserved, I don't know, but I appreciated that
he wanted to say this was consequential in some visual way.

(48:52):
And the only mistake the record label could be said
to have made was perhaps not seeing it through to
immediately follow the remix record with the live record. But
the trouble is I didn't have a long term contract
with Blue Not I was only on Blue Note because
they took this record.

Speaker 4 (49:10):
We all just took it.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Kind of fun to have an album on Blue Note, though.

Speaker 5 (49:13):
Yeah, there isn't hardly a label in the universal group
that have been and I you know, people say, oh,
he started out on Stiff Records.

Speaker 4 (49:19):
Yeah. I also made four records.

Speaker 5 (49:21):
Of Deutsche Grammarphone, which is which is three more than
I made for Stiff. So you never know when you're
going to get to do things in music, you know,
or what the label and the labels all change around,
and they changed I was on Island def Jam, you know,
different times. They saw something in the record I was
making then and that was where to put it.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
You know.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
There were those two shows in Brooklyn and Portchester, and
then there were two shows in Vegas at the Brooklyn
Bawl Grand opening. Yes, there's a Brooklyn ball in Vegas Nashville.
And to me that was, like you said, the shows
because Tarik was there, Marisol was there, and you guys
had played through this set a couple of times, and
we had we.

Speaker 5 (50:00):
Had we had those other things as well, we had
those other numbers down.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
Yeah, those shows were really great.

Speaker 4 (50:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
Also in twenty thirteen, you played with the Roots again
at a Prince tribute concert. Moonbeam Levels was the song
you played.

Speaker 4 (50:16):
I just knew that I was going to get put
through it, you know, I knew that I knew what
I agreed to do it. I'd be given the most
obscure like the one that's only that's only known. The
print song was only known on a on a cassette
that somebody found in a drawer, you know. But it's
a great song. It's a great song, it is, and
we did it. We did it, didn't we do it

(50:38):
a warm up show at the winery.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
At the winery, Yeah, that the show is at Carnegie
on Yeah.

Speaker 5 (50:44):
And then we moved and I remember I got to
Carnegieall and I had the I had to conduct the
dressing room and it sat on the piece of paper
on the on the on the door that had the axe.
It said I was gonna start on Prince sharing ad
dressing room were supposed to be showing a dresser, which
I somehow could not imagine actually happening. And I guess
there was some I don't know whether that was just

(51:05):
being nice everybody. Was Prince ever going to be there?

Speaker 4 (51:08):
No?

Speaker 2 (51:08):
But did you ever meet Prince?

Speaker 4 (51:10):
I met him just once. I Yeah.

Speaker 5 (51:15):
I was introduced to him at an event. My wife
had played a piano number. It was the Music Cares
tribute to Barbas streissand and Prince was sitting a few
tables away.

Speaker 4 (51:36):
From us. And when I came.

Speaker 5 (51:38):
Back out to my table after dinner played Down with Love,
he kind of just looked at me and did a
kind of silent movie take. He just did like a
little mime of the piano oh okay, and did a
little like one of his looks with his eyes where
he just went, you know, like he didn't need to
say it was like he that was good. You know,

(52:00):
he knew he was saying that was He just went
like this little mime of the piano and like did
a little like double take kind of thing with his eyes.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
That's your only experienced meeting.

Speaker 5 (52:09):
And then and then when Diana came back to the table,
then suddenly we had a couple of visitors came over
to compliment her on her performance, and it was Tavis
Smiley and doctor Cornell West. And doctor Cornell said, have
you ever met Prince? I said no, I said, we're

(52:29):
going to meet him now. And he took us over
and really there was Prince didn't have any choice but
to meet us, and he was very gracious and he
complimented Diana, you know, and that was the only time
we ever met. And then funnily enough, at the end
of the night, he got up and everybody was watching like.

Speaker 4 (52:47):
Is he going to play What's he going to sing?
You know? Is he going to sing Don't rain on
My Parade, you know?

Speaker 5 (52:53):
Or is he going to sing one of the Bible
strike sound songs? And in the end, when the lights
came up at the very end of the evening.

Speaker 4 (53:01):
He was there at the microphone and he was in
the musicres recipient for whatever year it was, is Barbos
Rise and he introduced him. That was it.

Speaker 5 (53:11):
So that was that was truly surreal evening. But I
got to say thanks to the doctor for taking us
over there, because you know, it's one of those situations
if you see somebody across the room, are you going
to walk over and run the risk of them being
discomforted by you making that overture?

Speaker 4 (53:31):
You know.

Speaker 5 (53:32):
But when I had a little bit of dealing with
his publishing people about trying to quote one of his
songs once, as you know, he wasn't always kind of
very comfortable with that. I'd quote a pop life on
one of my recordings and he wouldn't clear it, and
or they wouldn't clear it the lyrics.

Speaker 4 (53:47):
Or the music I quoted.

Speaker 5 (53:48):
It was incorporated into a song called The Bridge I Burned,
which is the last thing I ever cut from Warner Brothers,
and I figured he's got it. He wasn't any happier
with Warner Brothers than I was by that point, so I.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
Was thinking it would have appealed to a sense of humor.

Speaker 5 (54:03):
But I guess it didn't feel right, So I played
pop life in the mid eighties. Is in the show
the first time the spinning wheel was their pop Life
was on the wheel. Then I incorporated it, and when
I quoted it, it wasn't so comfortable, or somebody who
was in charge of publisher wasn't comfortable with the quotation.
So I adapted it into a different thing and it

(54:25):
never came out in that film.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
A couple of very current things, and now I feel
like a real journalist. As a current is today's headlines.
You signed a new publishing deal with BMG. That's right
for your entire catalog. What does that mean exactly?

Speaker 5 (54:41):
It means they administer my compositions for the next you know,
for the duration of the.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
Contract, but you own them and they administer them. Yeah,
that's the idea.

Speaker 4 (54:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (54:50):
I mean there's a big season in people selling their rights,
both in publishing and masters right now.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Right, So how does this differ from Masters?

Speaker 5 (55:00):
Are the recordings which I also owned except for the
for the for the six records I made for Warner Brothers,
which they own, and they don't revert, you know, they
don't they know they don't come back to the artists
that they're in theirs in perpetuity as far as I understand, really,
what does it mean? The difference is when you control

(55:22):
the composition. Say, if somebody came and wanted to include
one of my songs in a movie and they wanted
to re record it, they would only have to pay
me for the for the composition. But if they wanted
to use my recording, theyd need the master as well,
So that way you would benefit on two sides of
the deal. So there is money as a as a

(55:45):
both a recording artists and published.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
But you didn't sell your songs like Dylan or Springsteen.

Speaker 5 (55:50):
Did because those those calculations are based on very, very
much more successful songs than mine.

Speaker 4 (55:56):
Those things are not done.

Speaker 5 (55:58):
They make a lot of speeches about about how culturally
important those artists are, but in reality they have generated
tremendous revenue for the people for you know, over years
and those established. So if you see as somebody like
a Stevie Nicks or something like that, those are monster,
multimillion selling records.

Speaker 4 (56:16):
I've never I've never had. I've never had a million
selling record in my entire career. And you know, in
the initial period of release, some of my albums.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
Might have I've bought a million records of you.

Speaker 5 (56:29):
This is by part not you know, I mean, as
I see it, my job, although I've been for more
of my career now with a major record label. My
relationship with major record corporations is pretty much like that
of an independent filmmaker is with a studio. You know,

(56:49):
independent filmmakers are not under contract to a studio. They
make a production for a studio and then they might
take themselves somewhere else and get the finance for a
different film elsewhere, sometimes to get independent finance. And that's
the model of Stiff Records, which borrows a thousand pounds
to form a record label. And that's the beginning of

(57:11):
my career. By the time I've gotten signed to Columbia
and America and then later and Warner Brothers for the
World and then on to what became Universal. As I said,
I've been on all these imprints. But in terms of
this issue, particularly of publishing, you would have to have
had like the kind of major, major, multi selling for

(57:34):
that for it to be in your interest to sell
your rights. It just isn't doesn't make sense because you
know why because I'm holding six hundred lottery tickets, you know, right,
But that's I mean, any one of those songs could
be I can imagine if you sold the rights having
not had any of them be. You know, I'm not

(57:56):
covered very often, but that could happen any day, wouldn't it.
You know, all I'm trying to do is get the
money to make another record.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
Because you're a freaking artist and you don't care more
about money than you do about I.

Speaker 5 (58:08):
Want to get paid. I want to get paid for
what I do. But I'm not trying to accrue so
much wealth and I can stop working because what would
I do with myself?

Speaker 4 (58:15):
What would be the point?

Speaker 5 (58:17):
I wanted to do this for as long as I
can physically do it.

Speaker 4 (58:20):
I want to do it now. May not be that
much time ahead, Let's be truthful. I mean, I don't
know that.

Speaker 5 (58:27):
I look at people who are playing in the late
seventies eighties and think, wow, there's a few people that
are really exceptional that are still doing incredible work when
you get up there, and a lot of our really
most precious artists in the whole history of recording, when
you look at when they passed they were only like

(58:47):
three or four years old than I am.

Speaker 4 (58:49):
Now. You know, it's quite shocked.

Speaker 5 (58:52):
Right now when you look at the people that we
really are offer all time, the greatest that are not
with us. I mean there's not just the ones that
died like at thirty. I'm talking about people that died
at seventy three but still have more music than most
people would ever make if they live to be one
hundred and seventy three.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
You know, So, are you in a mindset at this
point in your career where like, like you literally just
put out four albums in the last three years. I
know you're probably conscious of a legacy, but are you
content on leaving us more and more gifts for the
next hundred years as many gifts as you can? I
should say.

Speaker 5 (59:29):
I'm not much concerned about legacy, because that's really only
something that's probably considered after you're gone. Well, I care,
I won't be here. I just think it's like, do
the thing that you feel.

Speaker 4 (59:41):
Everything that I've done.

Speaker 5 (59:43):
That hasn't been what I was known for when I
started or what made my name at the start, has
caused some kind of horrified reaction when I first did it,
and that ranges from what from almost Blue the country record,
Native One all the way to wise up Ghost. Some
people can't understand it, then penny drops like five years,
twenty years, thirty years sometimes later. The records that seem

(01:00:07):
to be the most challenging for some people to absorb
also have their own audiences, like there are people specifically
that like the Juliet Letters that didn't buy minam is
True or weren't around when I made these records, are
supposed to feel sentimental about when I made the record
with back rack, so they got every chance just to

(01:00:28):
come in the door any time you make anything good.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
This is kind of an Arvi's question, But you look
up to a guy like Dylan for continuing to tour
and make records at this point.

Speaker 4 (01:00:37):
I mean, I saw Dylan play in.

Speaker 5 (01:00:40):
Philadelphia actually just before Christmas, and it was almostly the
best show I've ever seen him give.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
I mean, the shows now are the best shows.

Speaker 4 (01:00:49):
It was completely astonishing.

Speaker 5 (01:00:52):
I mean, is the clarity of his vocal is focus
on the words his voice and his story his voice
as I I've got theories about why it is. I
think it's because of the the singing of other people's
songs seem to kind of like put him in touch
with something that he can do with his voice. Does
his voice sound older, Yes, of course, because he's eighty.

(01:01:15):
Does it sound Is it musical?

Speaker 4 (01:01:18):
Yes? If you know anything? Was it ever like?

Speaker 5 (01:01:24):
Was it ever like Andy Williams? Did he ever sound
like Andy Williams? Did he ever sound like Eddie Kendricks No?
Did he sound like Enrico Caruso?

Speaker 4 (01:01:31):
No?

Speaker 5 (01:01:32):
But he said in you know, I can sing just
as good as those people, because in his own way
he can. And what he's doing, you can't learn what
it is he knows. You can't learn. You can't go
where he is. That's like listening to Sonny Rollins or something.
You can't go where he is.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
He's forgotten more than.

Speaker 5 (01:01:50):
Hell, you know, he has, really has the David Sister said,
I've forgotten more than you'll ever.

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
Know, speaking of Dylan type gigantic music. For years. We
did a Johnny Cash remix shortly.

Speaker 4 (01:02:03):
I love that record, do you now? I do? I do?
I love that record? You know that record.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
I'm happy we did it, and it's pretty darn cool,
But I don't think it makes sense in my head.

Speaker 4 (01:02:14):
I don't know Johnny.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
I mean, this song makes sense in my head. I
love the song, but the way we did it was really,
I mean slightly bizarre but fun.

Speaker 5 (01:02:22):
But I mean I think that hey, John was john
was a you know, rebellious kind of you know, he
didn't have any He wasn't trying to sound like other people.

Speaker 4 (01:02:33):
When he started out.

Speaker 5 (01:02:35):
He had two guys that really couldn't play that they
just had feel I mean, they weren't like virtuos and musicians,
but they played exactly what he needed. When he had
the Tennessee too, you know, it was just like it's
not I'm gonna say they couldn't play the course it
could play, but they couldn't play like you know, it
couldn't play like Ray Brown or Charles Mingus or something.

(01:02:58):
On the double bassist the rhythm down and the guy
playing the guitar, Luther Perkins just doing perfect stuff for
Johnny and the rhythm of those early records. And then
right at the end of his life he made those
records and I mean a couple of those records are
really great. I think it got to be a bit
of a riff at the end, you know, Like I

(01:03:19):
don't think the song choices were was imaginative after the
first one.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
But the when did the term Americana appear?

Speaker 5 (01:03:26):
Well, it goes way back, but I mean I think
when it started to become like people with waxed mustaches
and itchy waistcoats and everything. I think that's about twenty
years ago. Isn't there something I don't think that's Americana?
You see, I think that it's Johnny Cash music wherever
he's recording. That's why I think if Johnny Cash would
you know, I mean, I bear in mind I worked
with the guy who produced the original record that we remixed.

(01:03:51):
That's a Billy Cheryl, and Billy Cheryl had no business
ever been in the studio with Johnny Cash at that
point in their respective careers. I think that Johnny was
not valued by Columbia the way he should have been,
given that he was. It was the founding country music
artist on that record label. You know, if Columbia had

(01:04:15):
dropped Bob Dylan in the same year as they dropped
both Miles Davis and Johnny Cash, I think people would
have had something to say about it.

Speaker 4 (01:04:24):
But that didn't happen.

Speaker 5 (01:04:26):
You know, it was a completely un inexplicable thing given.
That's the changing value of companies relating to the founding artists.
If you think that everything Johnny Cash did for Columbia
that they could let him go, that's inconceivable in the
same way as it's inconceivable that they didn't want to

(01:04:46):
keep Miles Davis.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
It's about loyalty Columbia comm on.

Speaker 4 (01:04:51):
No, it was just nonsense.

Speaker 5 (01:04:52):
But I mean so I benefited from that in the
sense that john recorded two of my songs on his
first two records for Mercury after he left, after all
those records he made for Columbia, but the record that
we remix was on from one of the last sessions
that he did, and there was a disconnect obviously between
where Johnny could go and the kind of way they

(01:05:13):
made records.

Speaker 4 (01:05:14):
You heard the parts. The musicians sounded like they were asleep.

Speaker 5 (01:05:18):
When they were recording. I mean, it was very, very flat.
They're all great musicians, but there was no inspiration to
the arrangement.

Speaker 4 (01:05:26):
So all we did was replace a bunch of.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
Things and took the song to outer space. In outer
space because that's where it belongs.

Speaker 5 (01:05:33):
Yeah, I actually think it it Actually it's like the
missing song on song Machine to my ears, it sounds
kind of like what would happen to the Good, the
Bad and the Queen kind of back Johnny Cash.

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
Right, let me run through these last couple of things
just in case the world blows up. I can get
to the end of this list. The Hollywood Bowl in
twenty fourteen on my birthday, you were playing with some
symphony and Kareem Riggins.

Speaker 4 (01:06:03):
The Crouch that Steve Naive, Yeah, yeah, no, that was
that was with the It is actually the it's the
La fil or the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and I think
it's there filmonic, Yeah, but it's sort of summer La filmonic.

Speaker 5 (01:06:17):
It's not the it's not the full La Filmonic. It's
like it's not you know. That's a good orchestra, yeah, and.

Speaker 4 (01:06:24):
Really great conductor.

Speaker 5 (01:06:25):
And we did a whole bunch of I mean, I
worked on a I'd learned to how to write that
stuff now when I worked in the nineties, when I
worked with the Broski Quartet, I you know, because they
only talked to one another in written notation. They didn't
improvise in that sense. I had to learn to be
coherent and be a good partner in our collaboration. I

(01:06:48):
had to learn how to write music down. I had
no need of it before then. Now everything that I
had written that was a larger group, I had kind
of played it to somebody who had then written it
down for me, and that was a bit laborious and
things would get twisted, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:07:01):
So and then of course got curious what.

Speaker 5 (01:07:03):
Would happen if I wrote bigger, for more bigger than
a string or wrote for champion group, and then gradually
for a big band and for a symphony orchestra, and
wrote some of those things you mentioned earlier, like wrote
ballet music for a company in Italy and another one
for the Miami c Ballet. And I learned how to

(01:07:23):
orchestrate to my own satisfaction. It's not, certainly not textbook orchestration.

Speaker 2 (01:07:28):
But orchestration is the same as arranging.

Speaker 4 (01:07:31):
Well, it's the.

Speaker 5 (01:07:32):
Actual right in each individual part, you know, like you
would write for the horn section, but it's for the
whole orchestra, so you've got to imagine everything, including the
percussion parts and everything.

Speaker 4 (01:07:41):
So you're writing.

Speaker 5 (01:07:43):
There's not often time written for an orchestra, but sometimes
I'd have the right time. But you're just writing punctuations,
you know, and timpanies or snare drums and you know
some little thing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
Well, the reason I brought up that specific concert.

Speaker 5 (01:07:57):
Well because we played, We played wise and played it
was an extraordinary to play it with Steve, you know,
playing the piano introduction and then you know, with the
strings and Kareem and Kareem and then Kareem just playing
a sort of rendition because Kareem understanding very much what

(01:08:17):
Quest was playing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
On the studio recording the album version of Wyse Up Ghost,
there are two Quest loves, Yeah, yeah, one in the
left speaker and one in the right hardpand totally different
drum takes, playing slightly different things.

Speaker 4 (01:08:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:08:31):
I remember when you first played that to me, I
thought that was that was the making of it, you know,
it was the scale of it.

Speaker 4 (01:08:36):
But I mean Kareem played a pracie of that.

Speaker 5 (01:08:40):
I suppose you would call it like a distillation of
all of that. And Dennis, of course, is coming out
of like he played on the records I made in
Nashville with Timom was really different bluegrass, which records he
played on Sycapofore, Andy Sugarcane and National Ransom. He played
the bassline that is in stations across that. And he

(01:09:03):
is like he could play in any group, Dennis Crouch.
You could put him in a Taylica.

Speaker 4 (01:09:08):
He could.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
He could hold his own Kareem.

Speaker 5 (01:09:11):
Yeah, I mean he's got the sort of like emphatic
way though he plays. I've never I don't think he
plays electric bass. I've never seen him hold an electric basse.
He plays, he's a double bass player. But he played
in Dinah's band for a while with Kareem, so that
rhythm section became Dina's rhythm section for a while, you know,
and she had she had an also Stuart Duncan, the

(01:09:31):
fiddle player, along with Mark Rebo.

Speaker 4 (01:09:33):
Different times. It's good to change it, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
So yeah, yeah, and so after that American Tune kind
of the only bonus track from Wise Up Ghost sort.

Speaker 5 (01:09:43):
Of yeah, and really really kind of the only other
song from outside, you know, other than live We only
other things since the Squeeze song that we had done
to play.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
Somebody Else by Paul Simon. American Tune, Everybody. The drums
are from your performance with Quest and James of Brilliant Disguise.

Speaker 4 (01:10:01):
That's right, Yeah, that's where.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
The drums come from and then the roots played.

Speaker 4 (01:10:04):
There's a lot more on it though. There's some great
stuff from ray On there and Mark Yeah, there's really
good lock together.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:10:12):
And that's another one of those ones where you know
it's singing it and then there's sort of like vocal
group stuff that I was doing as well, like vocal
group stuff. Yes, I got into that kind of soft
falsetto kind of vocal group stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:10:25):
It's like there's stuff like that on Hay clockfaces. Like
that kind of music is always it's always somewhere.

Speaker 5 (01:10:31):
When I harmonized myself, it's a different thing because you
get you get what happens when it's the same voice
in different registers it it you know, it's different than
a blend of three different timbres.

Speaker 4 (01:10:44):
It's the same voice, but it's doing.

Speaker 5 (01:10:46):
This sort of sort of chorusing effect and it kind
of creates a siren like effect, you know. Sure in
mind that, As I said, when we did Imperial Bedroom
for the stage with the songs from that record and
the other songs that I felt belong with it, which
some before, some after, a lot of those songs were
ones that had vocal group arrangements and.

Speaker 4 (01:11:06):
It led to look now, which.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
You never played the song Imperial Bedroom.

Speaker 4 (01:11:11):
No, I never did.

Speaker 5 (01:11:12):
That's not a great song, but the but it was
written after the album, so it didn't feel like part
of the album to me. But when we did those arrangements,
there was four voices on stage, and you see there
was at least four voices on the Imperial Bedroom record.
Sometimes it would be much more than that. I'd be
tracking and tracking, so you know, having the four parts

(01:11:33):
covered at least between Kitten and Brianna and David Farraka.
That's one thing for sure that the Attractions ever had
was vocal harmony.

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
Well, but you were able to do that stuff in
the studio.

Speaker 5 (01:11:44):
In the studio, I love doing it, but that would
sometimes be the difference to him were a song became
a big part of the show, and that's a big
part because when you get it and do it on stage,
you'd really miss those vocal parts.

Speaker 4 (01:11:54):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
One last thing, the final thing I could remember is
you were nice enough to record one of my songs
in this very room as well, right in this space,
wishing we could as yet unreleased.

Speaker 4 (01:12:06):
Unbelievable that that is unreleased. I've listened to it again.

Speaker 5 (01:12:09):
The other day, not just because we were going to
be here, but I just happened to play it. Both
versions are beautiful, but I mean the band version is
particularly I mean they're both great. I don't know which
I like better. It depends on which day I play
them on. It's like asking me about that five hundred
songs list, you know. Yeah, No, it's a really beautiful

(01:12:30):
record and we must see it come out. Yes, maybe,
you know, maybe you should play a little bit of
it here on this and that, just just enough to
tease somebody to put it in a movie.

Speaker 4 (01:12:42):
I always thought it should have been in a movie.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
Yeah, well, hopefully this year, 't's see that come out.

Speaker 4 (01:12:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):
You and I have known each other for at least
twelve years now, and I've asked you a lot of
questions like who the fuck is Joe Borderhouse and what
was going on in that house in.

Speaker 4 (01:12:56):
Bat at all?

Speaker 2 (01:12:57):
But I think overall, how do you continue to stay
properly inspired or inspired enough to do another great album
like The Boy named If with a book and the
artwork and everything else where. It's like, you know, you've
done so many records, You've been added for so long,
and there are so many other things that inspire you

(01:13:19):
besides music.

Speaker 5 (01:13:20):
Well, I mean the other things that you get to do,
particularly like daft things like you know, walking on in
a film, like wearing glasses and a hat like I
might be wearing. That's kind of a bit of fun
to do one day, but it's only one day and
then people see it and they think that's you might
be your career. But playing writing songs is what I've

(01:13:41):
been doing since I was I mean it's fifty years
and writing songs around that time. I was writing songs
right away when I was said. It wasn't playing other
people's songs. When I first played in public, I was
playing my own song. So it's I don't even know
how many songs I've written in total. There's lots of
un published songs. I don't suppose any of them are
any good, and many of them I've got the words

(01:14:02):
in an old book, but I can't remember at the tune,
you know, So does that really matter?

Speaker 4 (01:14:06):
Now? It's not.

Speaker 5 (01:14:07):
You know that the opportunities have all come along and
I didn't go to college. I left school at seventeen,
so I feel as if I got that education that
I might have got in other ways from traveling, from listening,
and of course from the collaborative experiences, including with the
original band and this band, and including growing up to

(01:14:31):
some degree or sharing a lot of your life with
two guys that are in the current band. Steve though
I've barely barely not a boy.

Speaker 4 (01:14:38):
You know, he was eighteen when he joined the Attractions.
He's sixty two now.

Speaker 5 (01:14:42):
So you've seen things happen in all our lives, you know,
getting married, get divorced, children born, grandchildren born, even those
are things that have an impact and feed into the
writing of songs.

Speaker 4 (01:14:54):
So what else are you doing but living?

Speaker 5 (01:14:56):
I mean, you're living if you're trying to do it
to just become You know why when I get asked,
as you will do as you're traveling, you know, my
son of the daughter wants to be in music, what
would you say to them, I'd say, do you want
to be in it for music or do you want
to be famous? Because certainly, if you want to be famous,
there's easier ways to do that. You could become a
bank robber or a venture capitalist or something, or bitcoin entrepreneur.

(01:15:20):
But if you were doing it through music, you might
really want to have that as a vocation. And I
got to make my vocation occupation. So that's the best
deal you can get.

Speaker 2 (01:15:31):
So you just look at it as a job.

Speaker 4 (01:15:32):
It's a job.

Speaker 2 (01:15:33):
Keep writing and keep it.

Speaker 4 (01:15:34):
It's a job. But it's got it.

Speaker 5 (01:15:36):
But in order to make it alive, like every show
you go into, you've got to think why he is
singing that song, particularly the older ones.

Speaker 4 (01:15:44):
You better have a reason for singing it.

Speaker 5 (01:15:45):
Because if you don't have a reason for singing it,
like you've got something that you feel about it, still,
you better leave it alone because otherwise you just they're
going to applaud the first date bars, but they're not
going to applaud the last date bars because people can
see that or hear it at the centre. Everything else
is just luck, isn't it? That what you comes to
you And the collaborations are so sort of mind begging

(01:16:09):
to me that they ever happened. You know, the big
ones are the big names like Paul McCartney, but backrack,
how could I've ever imagined that when there was a
little kid listening to their songs on the radio, Yeah,
or Alan song the same. But you know the fact
that we got to do that record with alt some
when he was, you know, his life was being turned

(01:16:31):
upside down like so many people in New Orleans. I
went went to see him at Joe's Pub and he's
playing his songs on stage. It wasn't something he commonly
did outside of New Orleans. You never used to see
him performance. You went there for jazz Fest very occasionally.
He'd only been on the road twice in his whole life.
He'd been in New Orleans making records all his life.
So to get to share the beginning of what became

(01:16:53):
the last ten years of his life and career, some
of it with him, seeing him actually get that reaction
on stage, the things that I'd loved since I was,
you know, teenager, and hear him sing those songs and
take the mic sometimes from me was unbelievable, you know.
And that all of the things that he did in

(01:17:14):
the studio, you know, he'd say if he had some
doubt about something that had been played or song, he'd say, well,
what do you think about that? And you knew the
minute you said that you were completely fucked, you know,
like you knew you hadn't got it right. He was
so gentlemanly, but he always allowed you to arrive at

(01:17:34):
the decision.

Speaker 4 (01:17:35):
It wasn't good enough. You know, he didn't dictate.

Speaker 5 (01:17:38):
So all of that is why there's still another one, hopefully.
I don't know whether there's another one. I make everyone
as if it's the last one.

Speaker 4 (01:17:47):
I think it's.

Speaker 5 (01:17:48):
Since we've been able to make records song it's why
some of the records classically speaking, are too long. Some
of the records have sixteen songs on him or something
like that, because I just think I better record these.
They're going to find me out in a minute, stop
me from doing this.

Speaker 2 (01:18:01):
Right. Well, you have had this thing from the very
beginning of recording a lot of songs and putting out
almost everything that you can in one way or another.

Speaker 5 (01:18:10):
We grew up with the idea of singles not necessarily
being tracks off albums. Yeah, they you know, we that
the sixties there were a lot of records that just
you know, they might have you might be just singles.
Artists they never made albums, or the Beatles had a
lot of songs that weren't on albums. They were put
on the albums in America, So the idea that a

(01:18:30):
song just existed as a single was really made. It
really exciting. So we held to that even into basically
until we signed it an American record label for the
whole world, right, our releases were all out of sync
with American releases.

Speaker 2 (01:18:44):
Yeah, I'll never truly understand why Strawberry Fields and Penny
Lean is that Sergeant peppernink.

Speaker 5 (01:18:50):
They seem to be long, but the record album would
be better with them on.

Speaker 4 (01:18:53):
It would just be longer.

Speaker 5 (01:18:55):
You know, those two songs were supposed to be heard
that they were either side of a seven inch.

Speaker 2 (01:18:59):
How do you have the guts to stand up on
stage at the White House in front of Paul McCartney
and Obama and built out Penny Lean a performance that's
going to continue to get all kinds of crazy accolades.
Also thanks to the trumpeterer.

Speaker 5 (01:19:15):
Oh, the marine trumpet. Yeah, I played that high trumpetar
was incredible. I mean, you know, that's very tricky, that's
out of the register of that instrument. But he's you know,
you do a lot of things one off things TV.
That's one of the joyful things I think, not a
sentence because I'm here, but one of the things about
our work together. You know, I did a lot of

(01:19:38):
performances on the other channel. You know, as you mentioned
at the beginning. I hosted the Lessonman Show one time
when Dave Brazil and I played thirty two appearances on
that show in many, many different configurations. There's some of
them where I look at them and it goes something
makes you tighten up.

Speaker 4 (01:19:58):
When you got to do one song. Quite often you
don't get it right, when it's.

Speaker 5 (01:20:03):
Just from a standing start and you've got to hit
it because you're overthinking or trying too hard or something,
you know. And the two occasions that are sort of
funny enough they Lennon and McCartney. One is Live eight
because I had nothing to lose. I was on my own.
I was an intermission act. You know what that is,
you know, the sick one while they make putting the

(01:20:25):
other man up. I mean that's the third really bad
piece of news for the attractions was like when Geldoff
called me in Australia and said, I want you to
do Live Aid.

Speaker 4 (01:20:36):
I said, I'm sure we'll do.

Speaker 5 (01:20:37):
It, and he said, the bad news is the band
can't come.

Speaker 2 (01:20:41):
It's just you because of money or whatever.

Speaker 5 (01:20:44):
No, not money, because they didn't they they didn't think
we were successful enough. And he was having me on
for sentiment and he needed he needed to have the
time to.

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
Set up like I love the boomtown Rats.

Speaker 5 (01:20:56):
No, but it was between Spander Balley and Nick Kersher
or something. You know, they were like couple of bands
that were really in the charts. But you know, when
you're trying to raise money for people and a family
and you don't need some guy that nobody remembers.

Speaker 2 (01:21:07):
Was it really that long of a time period.

Speaker 4 (01:21:10):
Is in England? Yeah, it was like five minutes and
they've forgotten you, you know, so, I mean it was
like it was it was like, oh, who's that guy?
It was like it looks a bit weird.

Speaker 5 (01:21:19):
And then I started singing the song everybody knew and
everybody sang along, so it was fine. And the same
is true when Paul got their Gershwin thing, because he
you know, to be honest, everybody there that day had
been very nervous, and the producer said to me, have
you got anything to say because nobody's saying anything. And
I did have this thing to say because my mother

(01:21:41):
does come from just a mile from Penny Lane, or
less than my mile from Penny Lane. So I made
this thing up about how we heard it on the
radio and everybody in the family listened. It was just
sort of true because my parents did listen to the
Beatles and appreciate them, and the fact that there were
local lads, made good people that didn't really like that
kind of music, liked the idea of their success. It

(01:22:03):
was a very different world, very class beyond world then,
you know. So there was a pride in them coming
from Liverpool, even though they quickly moved out of Liverpool,
and I just the fucking I'm just going to enjoy myself.

Speaker 4 (01:22:15):
I mean, this won't come again. To do this. I'll
never be in the White House again. You know. Turned
out to be a good choice, actually didn't it really
really think about it in a good choice of song
and good choice, but I mean a good choice of
like I'll just be here this one time.

Speaker 5 (01:22:30):
I've been there once since with my wife and she
played the Christmas party. But I mean, it was it
was it was really threwnant.

Speaker 4 (01:22:37):
It was looked down and there's Paul and there's the President,
and it was it was really incredible, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:22:44):
Okay, Well, I've asked you this question before, and the
question is why were you not on? Do they know
it's Christmas, you responded, because I was dreadfully unpopular at
the time and wasn't called I'd find that story simply
not believable.

Speaker 4 (01:22:58):
No it is. It is believable.

Speaker 5 (01:22:59):
It is believab It's the pop success in England was
seventy seven to eighty and then this fluke hit with
Goodie for the Roses, and by the time we got
to the time of eighty five.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
We were but you had every day I read the book.

Speaker 5 (01:23:15):
Wasn't a hitt ing, not really just scrape the charts,
but it was very much like that guy again, no
done things. So you know shipbuilding was a bigger hit
than ship Building, but not my version, Robert Ware's version.
You know what they needed they needed everybody who was
in the charts that week because it was about recognition
and those sort of things.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):
Bro, you would have killed that. You would have killed that.

Speaker 5 (01:23:39):
And also it was a gang of people that wrote together.
I didn't know any of those people, you know, It's
like I didn't know Midge and these people.

Speaker 4 (01:23:45):
And you Bob Geldof.

Speaker 5 (01:23:47):
He was the kind of guy that would come backstage
and tell you were shite, you know. After he could
always be first in the dressing room when he came
off and be with phill Line from Tinderzy and drink
all your beer and everything. But he was mouth eat dub,
you know, and he's a good fellow. But it was
it was just different churches. That's the only way I

(01:24:08):
can describe it. We weren't in the eighties and England.
We were going at the time that that was all happening.
We were playing to like ten thousand people, you know,
places in Chicago and things like that. We were playing
to big audiences at that time because of every day
I write the book built everybody that has sort of

(01:24:28):
vaguely heard of us in the late seventies and then
woke up to our existence. The broader audience that didn't
follow us from day one. That one little minor hit
and we've got on like what was it, solid gold,
that kind of thing. That's the only time we were
ever on mainstream kind of music television other than SNL,

(01:24:48):
and at that time we began the Card of Run
from about eighty two onwards of being appearing on late
night television, and that was nearly all on the Lessonans Show.
I did the Tonight Show once what with Carson or
it was during the Carson era, but it was John
Rivers and then I did you know Jay a couple

(01:25:09):
of times, but twice or three times when you were
compared with with stuff in New York, nothing so much,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:25:16):
Yeah, I guess I just I was in America during
the eighties, so I guess I had a different experience.

Speaker 5 (01:25:21):
Totally different timelines. And it's something you come to terms with,
and it's like it's something that's pointed out when I
do a record like this one, where it sort of
seems to have caught people's noses in a few different places.
And I've been doing interviews with all sorts of European countries.
They all have a different song.

Speaker 4 (01:25:38):
I mean, there's countries in the world where the only
song they'd ever mine is She because it was in
a big movie. But in Holland it's I Want You,
so that would have never gotten the radio in America.
It's too long. You know, I was.

Speaker 2 (01:25:51):
Rocking Good Bride, Cruel World, Windows Down, You're the only one,
You're the only one.

Speaker 5 (01:25:58):
But then you know, I'm not making it sound like
a sad story, but that's really what it is. And
it was like these big you know, sorts of flagwave
and numbers with all this stuff in the mid eighties,
I mean, you should have the people that get the
money over the counter. That's what you needed to do,
was raise the money. So get all the people they
recognize on the pop magazine last week, not somebody from

(01:26:23):
five years before.

Speaker 2 (01:26:24):
You know, Screw everybody who doesn't like Goodbye Cruel World.
I hate you. You're wrong, you suck. You have no
idea what you're talking about.

Speaker 4 (01:26:33):
My favorite one is I Didn't right. My favorite one
is I Want to Be Loved. Yeah, that's a good record.

Speaker 2 (01:26:38):
So teacher's addition is that the Namer's Edition.

Speaker 4 (01:26:41):
Yeah, it's on high it's a Willie Metro production. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:26:43):
Did you feel abandoned at that point by your fan.

Speaker 4 (01:26:46):
Base or by no?

Speaker 5 (01:26:47):
No, I mean I think those people that that we,
you know, the band wasn't really you know, we went
we went in to make that first record with Clive Langer,
and you know, out of that there are two really
great records, you know that have nothing to do with
the main thrust of those records. That are Pills and Soap,

(01:27:10):
which was recorded before it, which I produced, and Shipbuilding,
which Clive and I wrote for Robert Wyatt, but I
wanted it more people in the world to hear it,
and Robert's version didn't seem to travel outside of England,
so we cut it and we got Chet Baker and
that was amazing.

Speaker 4 (01:27:27):
You know. The rest of it was, you know, a
really you know, sort of determined.

Speaker 5 (01:27:34):
Mission on Clive's part to make a hit record, you know,
I mean, and when you chase a hit record like that,
and maybe that's why I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:27:41):
Hit single or hit record well both, because you end
up when you're trying to have a hit single, you
end up screwing up the album as a whole.

Speaker 4 (01:27:49):
I guess every day.

Speaker 5 (01:27:49):
Right, The book wasn't terribly representative of the rest of
the record, which was mostly Hauned driven, but it wasn't
he had so many hits at that time. Clive and
Element Stanley with Madness, really great records of Madness, and
there's I can't find any fault with either of those
records from anything they did. I think it's all in
the in the in the lack of cohesion and the

(01:28:11):
band by the second record, because we were falling apart,
you know, we were all playing singing a different tune.

Speaker 2 (01:28:17):
Right, But if you look at those two records and
hold on, I'm making a cass because the thing that
ultimately holds them together is what ultimately holds a lot
of songs and music and albums together. Despite all the
pop production, you still included an acoustic guitar on a
lot of those songs, which is what connects the listener
directly to the song, despite the production, the element within her.

(01:28:42):
Oh that's a good song, charm School.

Speaker 4 (01:28:45):
That's two songs going on at the same time. That's
the one I wrote and the one we're playing. You know.

Speaker 5 (01:28:49):
I mean, it's like, but I think they're both attractive,
but they're not always cohesive when I listen to them. Now,
you could play it the acoustic guitar way and it
would be a different It's like a but they're guitar,
I know, but it's still that it's fighting the base
and keep.

Speaker 2 (01:29:04):
Right right, well, you know, live and learn right.

Speaker 4 (01:29:07):
I know. That's why you get to make a second
another record.

Speaker 2 (01:29:10):
But you didn't name it Goodbye crul World, thinking this
is the end. Oh yeah you did.

Speaker 4 (01:29:15):
Oh yeah, yeah. I was definitely out at that point. Yeah,
I was out.

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
That by the time you titled the album you felt
you were already I was.

Speaker 4 (01:29:24):
I didn't even want the record to come out.

Speaker 5 (01:29:25):
It's like I went on the road as solo before
the record even came out. I already knew it was
it was a dud, but we were already committed to
the release by then.

Speaker 2 (01:29:34):
So but there were hits, only Flaming Town here a
little bit.

Speaker 4 (01:29:39):
Yeah, Darrell's hang On it was Yeah, that was fun.
That was that. That video was fun to do.

Speaker 2 (01:29:46):
Yeah, win a date?

Speaker 4 (01:29:49):
Yeah? Yeah, Well, you know, if you're in a video
with him, it's pretty hard. You know, like he's so handsome,
you know, it's like he's You're not gonna look that
great standing next to Daryl.

Speaker 2 (01:29:57):
You know, you want to go watch and play drums.

Speaker 4 (01:30:00):
I gotta go. I'm gonna get up. And what time
is it? I don't know, about one o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 2 (01:30:05):
Punch the clock, bro, is it?

Speaker 4 (01:30:07):
I better go home?

Speaker 2 (01:30:08):
All right, Well, let me do a fancy ending. Yeah,
QLs listeners, this has been an incredible night. I'm sure
we'll make two episodes out of this. Thank you to
Questlove wherever you.

Speaker 4 (01:30:20):
Are, a couple of questions down on the mooove now,
okay to be thank you for your time and thank
you for your music.

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
Thank you for everything.

Speaker 4 (01:30:30):
Thank you for fun. I didn't I didn't I knew
we'd have fun doing this, but this has been we'll.

Speaker 2 (01:30:36):
Do it again. Yeah, you two can talk for twenty hours,
so we'll set up very funny, set up a marathon
talkathon for you guys. But thank you for including me
in your catalog. And you know this is great.

Speaker 4 (01:30:50):
You know there's almost another thing down the road. That's
the way to look at it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:53):
Well, let's come in here and do uh yeah, I
love this Roe mutually. You've never done a full record
here right, No, no.

Speaker 5 (01:31:00):
We did a little bit of the work on look
now and here right, a couple of things, and.

Speaker 4 (01:31:05):
We've got to get electric in here now I'll be yeah,
we've never done that.

Speaker 2 (01:31:09):
All right, all right man, thank you, Elvis, thank you,
thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:31:15):
That's fucking wild. It's probably two o'clock in the morning.
Love it. We'll work on the fact that that's a
fade out. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:31:23):
Well, we have sad news.

Speaker 4 (01:31:24):
We've been fighting a long legal battle. End we've lost
and we're going to be taken over. Oh whoa, this
is my radio station. Now, someone at the door let
me now, we're gonna have twenty four hours to Elvis
Costello absute format. The end, I mean, that's the weirdest
thing I've ever done. The end. I mean that's the

(01:31:45):
weirdest thing I've ever done. The end. I mean that's
the weirdest thing I've ever done. The end. I mean
that's the weirdest thing I've ever done. The end. I
mean that's the weirdest thing I've ever done. The end.
I mean that's the weirdest thing I've ever done. The end.
I mean that's the weirdest thing I've ever done. The end.
I mean that's the weirdest thing I've ever done.

Speaker 1 (01:32:01):
One I What's Love Supreme is a reduction of iHeartRadio.

(01:33:24):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.