Dave Stewart

Musician, writer, producer...listen to hear stories of Dave's upbringing in Sunderland, his band Longdancer's tenure with Elton John and Rocket Records, how he met Annie Lennox and how they borrowed money to make the first Eurythmics album, how he wrote the chorus of Tom Petty's "Don't Come Around Here No More" and how Dylan called him and they made movies together and...

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is a true legend, Dave Stewart. You
know him as Half the Rhythmics, you know him as
a songwriter, you know him as a producer. Day great
to have you here, Thanks very much. I'm glad we're
here and inside and not outside. It's pouring with rain
right now, right. You know, it's funny because when I

(00:31):
used to hear that song, it never rains in southern California.
I said, well, you know what, really, you know, I
thought it was like a joke, but it really never rains.
But when it rains, it does pour. It's funny watching
everybody panic here in Los Angeles when it rains, because
where I'm from it's so sort of rainy and cold.
But the rain is different. See, the incomes sideways with

(00:52):
a wind with it. Right. So, when I was little
walking to school and you have to wear short pants,
you know, when I got to school, one side of
my I was always covered in little dots where the
rain was like, Okay, where exactly did you grow up?
I grew up in northeast of England, in a place
called Sunderland, which is was looked at as the poor

(01:12):
cousin to Newcastle, you know, because for instance, Newcastle was
you know, a bit of a bigger and named a city,
and Sundland was a town when I was growing up,
and you know, we got all so second sort of
handoff things. So if you went to the vegetable shop,
the vegetables were all the sort of monkey vegetables are

(01:34):
a bit bruised because the rest went to London, you know,
everything was And when I was growing up, of course,
it was a period when they closed the railways and
they closed the coal mines so and shipbuilding, which was
the biggest thing in the town. They closed the shipyards.
So I don't know if you've seen a thing called

(01:56):
Billy Elliott. So that's a little bit so about twelve
miles from where I was. But you know, it's all
about the minor's strikes and that's all a similar sort
of scenario or where you've got, I think in my
town of something like unemployment with men who were used

(02:16):
to working in the shipyards, in the coal mines or
whatever and at least bringing home something for their family
and now they've got all usunemployment and strange tactics you know,
to calm people down. So a brewery came out with
a beer that's a penny a pints kind of thing,
and of course then everybody gets so completely addicted to drinking,

(02:39):
and then fights and brawls start up. And so when
I was sort of about thirteen or fourteen, um, it
was a weird sort of the duality of things happening,
because you could get the enemy or the melody maker
from one little newsagent shot up and you're kind of

(03:01):
reading about some kind of hippie psychedelic movement. Meanwhile Europe
in the northeast of England, where people are rolling around
on the ground fighting, you know, just generally miserable and
like no future. A bit like later on that happened,
you know, when the sex Pistons came out with pretty

(03:22):
Vacant and all that stuff. But it was already happening,
you know. Okay, you know a lot of my listeners
are American. Not that we don't reach the world. We're
ignorant in America. We don't know England. How far is
Sunderland from London? Were roughly really far and how it's
near the border of Scotland. That was my question. How
far from Scotland about sixty five miles very close. So

(03:47):
you would, you know, for those of us who are unfamiliar,
would you go to Scotland. Oh, yeah, Scotland's a very
beautiful place, and so is the northeast of England, you know, Northumbria.
American might have seen it if they watched the History
Channel where the Vikings came over and slaughtered most of
the population of my hometown. They started with the monks

(04:11):
and they landed on Linda's farn, remember remember the yeah
I knew them, actually a great man, but Linda's fan
where the monks made very peaceful and the Vikings landed
there and couldn't understand why they weren't fighting back, so
they were just chopping everybody up. And so that's the

(04:32):
first sort of Biking invasion to Britain. Then they realized, oh,
this is going to be easier. Nobody fights back. Of
course they didn't realize that we had castles and stuff
further inland. Um so, but I think, you know, I've
got Viking blood most people from the northeast, you know,
where they were just raped and pillage going back. So

(04:55):
if you do a DNA tests, lots of us have
like Norwegian, Danish or scan an Avian in the DNA.
You know, have you done the DNA test? Well, I
don't want to because I personally think that it's going
to be used. It could be used later on in
a very sort of scary way, just the same way
as everybody's selling data and information about everything your DNA.

(05:19):
I'm sure they could do the same thing. And also
when things right rise up, you know, fascist movements, so whatever. Um,
I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't want to people
to know their exact genetic history, you know, well I
don't want to know. I don't want to, you know,

(05:40):
to find out all these people in my history and
come tracking me down and there's a lot of stories.
Unless you do it at a really high level, you
get inaccurate results anyway. So what did your parents do
for a living in Sunderland? Well, my father when he
was his dad was working in the shipyard just for

(06:02):
the how far asunderland from the water, our Sundland's on
the water on the Yeah, you see we have the
river where which has had a large you know, it
was a large river in the mouth, so they could
build as big ships as only Japanese and Sunderland that
were the biggest ship building towns in the world. And

(06:24):
obviously when something closes down then you don't really hear
of it. But if you read in the history of it, Okay,
just to be very clear, Sunderlands, how far from Newcastle
are about fourteen miles? And why was the ship building
in Sunderland as opposed to New Newcastle. I think it
was just the narrowness of the river in Newcastle and
the width of the river in Sundland. So when they

(06:46):
launched these giant ships so which were enormous. I remember
once as a school kid, we got taken to the
side of the launch, you know, and it was like,
you know, as a kid, it was just like, well,
it's like three streets of houses, you know. Um. In fact,

(07:07):
there's a there was a Japanese chap who worked out
when they got lost inside a ship that big, big
wan they're trying to build it, they had to have
a method of to work out where they were. Oh really, yeah,
So I can't remember his name, it's thing us Away
Ketami or something like that. He Um, he worked out

(07:28):
a thing and now they call it the fishbone method,
which is still used in many other. Well, yeah, yeah,
I went out a really large ship for this event.
And the little fish in the row and the carpets
you know which direction you were going exactly. Yeah, But
he divided it up into bones on a fish so
that you knew you were in section you know, three B,

(07:49):
and that's where this rivet had to go into this thing.
And my dad's father worked in the shipyard and a
lot of men would go deaf because they had to
hold the giants or washer and rivet on one side,
where another guy sort of bashed on the boat on
the other. So there's ringing in the ears and and

(08:10):
so my dad didn't really have any shoes until he
was about nine or ten. He used to play football
soccer in the street with the pigs bladder from the
butcher's so they would blow up the pigs bladder and
then let it dry and then that would become their football.
And so when he was sixteen, his dad saved for

(08:33):
about ten years and bought my dad a bicycle, you know,
on his sixteenth birthday, so he could go and into
the town and get a job as somebody who delivers
things on a bicycle. On a first day, he came
out of this office where he was delivering something. Somebody
had stolen it. He had to walk all the way

(08:57):
home in tears. So so my dad then, you know,
about a year and a half later, was told, well,
now you have to go and be in the army
or the air force or whatever, because war broke out
and he he wanted to be in the air force.
And then the most bizarre thing happened. A lot of

(09:19):
these guys said, okay, we are you going to get
on this ship? And the ship ended up in India, right,
And it was in India for like four and a
half years. And what they had they had sort of
planes there that were sort of hidden as reconnaissance planes, um,
because the Japanese had started to sort of come into

(09:41):
the war. And he was so confused because he'd never
been out of Sunderland and it was suddenly boiling hot
in Calcutta. And but then years later, there's a lot
a lot happens when men are grouped together into a
situation like that. He always flex on it like it
was the best time with you know, all these guys

(10:05):
from his hometown mixed with guys from other places. I
think the ship on the way there held about or
something that we're all throwing up all over the place
because it was never been on a ship, and it
was miles when they got I think when they got
to Glasgow to chain ships, they thought they were there.

(10:26):
They'd never been anywhere. Yeah, and so then they were
really confused when they got put on another ship, and
then they were like days and days and days and days.
So yeah, and my mom, she her mother um, brought
up four girls on her own, running a pub, you know,

(10:47):
like a bar in the coal mining area of Sunderland
where all the coal miners would come covered in coal
and stuff to drink. Yeah, after they came out of
the mine. But her father, remember this father died when
she was nine of consumption, which is a little bit
like I suppose you get with the coronavirus, speeded up

(11:11):
your long sort of you can't breathe anymore. Basically, was
he a coal miner, Uh no, I think you might
have worked at the pit, but I don't think he
was in mind that I went down. Obviously I never
got to meet him. But so what happened was, and
this happened probably in America too, is my mom was

(11:34):
working as office girl runner kind of person in the town,
and the guy who ran that company said, all the
girls here, here's a soldier and an address. You must
write to them while they're away. Yeah, and be a
pen pal. So my dad would get a letter like

(11:56):
once a month in India somehow from this, and he
called Sadie and of course they fell in love over
the letters. Right, So immediately he returned and her twin
sister had been right into another guy, so they had
a double marriage twins with two soldiers returning. And I

(12:18):
have to since your mother is a twin, I my
girlfriend's a twin, right. How close was she with her sister?
Are ridiculous because they were identical twins, and strange things
would happen, like evidently when me and my brother came,
the twin sister would ring up my mom, who was asleep,

(12:38):
to tell her the milk was boiling over wow, and
stuff like that. You know, my my girlfriend talked about
that kind of stuff too. They say, they sure a brain,
they'll show up wearing the same clothes, and so so
much so that when I was that was pretty sort
of kind of a rough place when I was growing up,

(12:59):
So a number of sort of run ins or sort
of running away really from kids rough you know, kids
or wanted to have fights and stuff. At one time,
this score here on my wrist. Those these kids caught
hold of me in a field and they were trying
to sort of cut me up with something. They couldn't

(13:20):
find anything, and they got a rusty old tiner peas
and they started like rubbing the lid on my arm
till it sort of slipped my wrist. Well. Of course,
I ran into the shop where my mom was working,
a little newsagent that sold newspapers and snuff and tobacco.
And the blood was just spurting up all over the

(13:41):
black and white newspapers, and I thought it was my mom,
but it was my mom's twin sister, and she she
was obviously screaming like but they immediately did the right
thing and tied a sort of teetowl around my arm
and held it up in the air, and then I
had to walk down the hill to her children's hospital.

(14:01):
The way I think guys titched it up with no
anesthetic or anything. It was just like, oh, come here, son,
like you. But so yeah, maybe we would often confuse
my mom and to insist it was bizarre. Okay, So
they stayed married. They stayed married till my mom, who

(14:27):
had to work in the pub with her mother from
the age of eleven, so never really went to school,
and so she didn't really understand her intelligence to My
brother went to the grammar school, and he was bringing
home books and talking to his friends about their homework,

(14:50):
and she was really interested in this stuff they were
talking about, and so she saw that they ever seen
Julia of the Spirits. I haven't seen her, Bama aware
of it. I've seen a woman under the influence, of course. Okay,
so can you imagine that sort of housewife in the house.
My dad's now at work every day and doing night

(15:10):
schools to try and you know, get a better position,
and she's starting to lose her mind because so boring
and everybody is talking about, you know, the price of
fish and this, and she's kind of got like in
her head some philosophy and a bit of Shakespeare whatever
my brother's been studying. And so she thought she was

(15:33):
going crazy, and so much so that my mom actually
went to a mental hospital, and I remember cycling to
see her visit her. It's very distressing because they immediately
put you on some kind of drug and then they
started giving her a series of electric shock treatments, which

(15:54):
lou Reid taught to me about. You know, he had
electric shock treatments. His parents sort of and sisted he
get them. Thought he was mad and so um. But
one day a miraculous thing happened, which is some people
are just stunning, right. So a guy comes to the hospital,

(16:15):
a new younger guy to be ahead of it instead,
I want to see every patient. Taught them for a
while and listening and at the end of talking to
my mom and this he said, uh said he, I
really don't think there's much wrong with you. I think
you really are really intelligent. And you need to go
to a night school or something and study and and

(16:38):
I personally will take you and drive you there twice
a week. Yeah, and he did, and she then immediately
started to sort of feel better and absorbed in what
when this was happening, Well, I was about ten eleven twelve,
and she went to college past a lot of exams

(17:01):
and matriculated into Durham University, which is very difficult university
to get in, and got an honors degree and went
to London, left my dad and became a teacher. Then
a headmistress of a school for children with special needs.
So um, my dad though, he got really depressed and

(17:22):
he didn't want to leave. But she used to say
something really great. It was like I didn't have the
the strength to stay or something like that. It was
like it was so difficult for her to now not
continue the journey, you know. And then she met a

(17:42):
zen Buddhist guy called Julian. It's incredible story and I
thought would be a brilliant opening to her re sort
of beautiful story of a love um in a you know,
some low budget film, but they cically, she met this
woman that when she arrived in London who was going

(18:05):
to the same sort of the next step you have
to take to become teaching at special school. And this
lady was called Begonia and she had a husband called Julian,
but they were kind of sleeping in separate bedrooms. But
she'd heard her talk about this amazing woman called Sadia
is coming for tea. So Julia he got sort of

(18:29):
one of those boards that you wear around your neck
and wrote on it, the ice caps are slowly melting.
Everybody is in great danger. For more information, ring this
number just back in like nine eight or something like that,
and because he read a book by Fred Hoyle called Ice,
which was predicted exactly what's happening. And so my mom

(18:50):
was coming down a street in Roustall and Hill in
Hampstead out of the tube station or what you call
the subway, and there's this guy with a long, funny
gray beard and hair sticking out everywhere, ringing a bell
with his sign. And the reason he was doing that
is because he had to d visions, so he couldn't

(19:11):
you know, he had to be make sure that Sadie
saw the sign. And she stopped him and she said, hey,
excuse me, there's some mistake here. That's my telephone. And
he said, Sadie, I've been dying to meet you, right,
And they basically fell madly in love and ended up
getting married. And my dad did the most amazing thing.

(19:33):
He came to London and gave her away like a father,
would you know? Yeah, So did he ever find somebody new?
He did later on, but it took him almost to
that point to so of let go. And so it
was amazing. And Julian became a very large influence on me,

(19:55):
being a Sain Buddhist and funny enough when Bob Dylan
used to come around my house in London Tour East.
Then I bought my mom a little flat round the
corner before we would go somewhere else. You go, hey,
how about we go and see that Julian guy again,
And we would go there and Julian had no idea

(20:17):
who he was. And you know, Julian wrote haiku poetry
that was translated back into Japanese, which is, you know,
pretty tricky thing to do when you're from Brittany and
you're writing in English. So you're from France writing in
English and it's translated into Japanese. But my favorite one

(20:37):
that he wrote because he never used any food, you know,
that was brought to that my mom made. He lived
completely from stuff you found on the street. You know,
you lived by his words. So he knew the baker's shop.
He wasn't stupid, so that would put out the bent classant,
you know, on the morning and night, but it was
still nice and warm. Then he would see the guy

(21:00):
who always went to work and put his Sunday and
the Times newspaper in the bin. They just pulled that
out and eat the cross on. And he just lived
like that for it. You know, even when she met him,
he was doing that, so she was used to it.
But he wrote this great hyper hiker, was this dunk
to biscuit? Will it won't it reach my mouth? That's

(21:22):
how much she was into, like just you know the
moment when he wrote other great ones like between the
Slabs of Gone Civilizations the grass grows right. So, but
yet every now and he would write a fun one.
You know, did he have a paying job. No, he didn't,
you know, any paying job. But he didn't actually have

(21:43):
any money or spend any money. And he didn't you know,
he he would find everything. I would come around. He
always called my mom poppet. Right, He's French, and if
I were, oh, David, David, He's found an electronic chest
set somebody had thrown away and plugged it in. It's
having having a wonderful day playing against you know. He

(22:06):
always had something going on. Okay, and your father did
what for a living? Well, my father worked for the
same firm that my mother wrote to him from. So
this guy was a lovely guy called Allan J. Gray.
And it was like a firm of accountants that would
when I say accountants, they would do go into a

(22:27):
little shop that sold everything from rubber bands to comics,
and they had to take stock of the whole thing
and help them work out their tacks and everything, and
things like guys who would back their lorry into the
sea and get coal out of the sea. So it
was nobody's and then but it was covered in salt,
just all sorts of mad stuff, right, So he worked

(22:50):
his way up from being the tea boy there because
when my mom married him, of course, the same guy,
Allen J. Gray, who owned it, said, well, then we
come and work in here a bit, and then you
realize you're smart, so you kind of went up the ladder,
said night school. A lot of people used to help
each other outs, just had the war, you know, it

(23:12):
was like they'd all come back, these soldiers, no jobs, nothing.
And he worked his way all the way up to
becoming a partner. Yeah, but a tiny little it wasn't
even it was in seam Harbor, which is and even smaller,
tiny little town, not even town or village, just outside

(23:33):
of Sunderland. But it was a big thing for the
family because we lived in a house like you know
when you watch Beatles help you know, the houses are
just a Coronation Street. Well, that's exactly where we lived,
and to tell you through it, it was very happy
little row of streets because the neighbors all had the

(23:54):
doors open. It didn't matter if I I'd be like
six or seven, I'd run into a neighbor three up
for jam and bread. You know, just everybody just was helped.
You know. The big thing my dad had an allotment
where he had would grow new potatoes and then once
every four months or something, the neighbors would all come

(24:15):
around the house and eat new potatoes with butter and
mint salt, and that was the big thing of the
of the week, you know. Okay, so you grew up
your other brother. Your brother is older. Yeah, my brother's
five years older than me. And what is he doing
right now? Well he's retired now. But before that, he

(24:37):
started off with a bumpy start. He went to Liverpool
University where he wanted to study law, but he wasn't
sure what he wanted to do when he chose that.
The first week there, he was in a fish and
chip shop where a fight broke out and somebody was
stabbed and murdered. So because it was a gang, he

(25:00):
was then told we had to go back to Sundland
and and he would have protection when he had appear
in court as a witness. But he couldn't be in
Liverpool anymore basically, so he was really depressed and he
went on a job picking tomatoes in Guernsey and things
like that, and then he eventually ended up going to

(25:22):
a college in London and studying to be a teacher.
But he didn't like that either. He was just always
obsessed with film. I remember even when I was a kid,
he was like I had acted in his film, you know,
And there's some funny films my dad has. When my
brother's got the camera and like my brother's given me

(25:44):
like a toy cowboy gun. I'm about nine or something
and he's like giving me my lines and everything, but
I'm really annoyed. I'm gonna just see me run at
the camera with the back of hit him on the
head and the cameras falls over. So okay, so you're
in Sunderland, you're growing up. Are you the type of
kid who's popular? Do you have friends? How do you

(26:06):
do in school? Um? Now I was when I to
what's called the eleven plus they have a different name
for here, you know, it's but it's basically when you're
eleven and you do this exam and it decides where
you go to and the same as when you would

(26:30):
do it here for college. However, but you're only eleven
years old, and my brother had already got into what
was called Bead Grammar School for boys. Now Bead was
named after the Venerable Bead, which even though I'm from
the northeast of you know, Sunderland, like the churches and
things or a thousand years old, you know, it's like

(26:54):
so Bead was the first person to sort of like
right down the official English language, you know. So if
you go to Durham Cathedral which near there, he can
see Venerable Beads writings and stuff. So he got into
this school and it was a grammar school. Now grammar

(27:14):
school that means your parents pay for it. No, No,
grammar school is when you've got very good marks on
your eleven plus so nobody pays for it. That's like
a private schools. Just and when the Labor government came in,
they scrapped grammar schools because I said it was unfair

(27:36):
that you would have some people in a secondary school.
But the grammar school had the better teachers or whatever. Well,
what happened when I took my MN plus, I actually,
even though I actually didn't know what I was doing,
somehow I got very good marks. That was only about
three kids chosen to go into a special school in

(27:59):
durham Um that had you know, kids with you know,
gifts in certain areas. And but I can't complained like
mad for my parents to let me go to the
same school as my brother. So they eventually gave in.
And because my dad had now become a bit higher

(28:21):
up in the accountancy firm, he thought, okay, I'll get
a house where the fence joins that school, and then
he usually clearly cut the sort of cut secretly on
a Saturday, this kind of hole in the fence and
put hinges on it that you couldn't see. So I
didn't have to go all the way around all the streets.
I could go out the back garden open the hole

(28:43):
in the fence. You wanted to go to the grammar
schools opposed to other school because because my brother went
there and I was scared to go to Diramote was
like ten miles away something. And well I made a

(29:03):
bit of a mistake because like. Then a year later
they changed the law and there was no grammar schools.
Everything was called a comprehensive school. And so where we
lived was right next to a very rough housing estate,
like a project. And of course so all the kids
who were that the grammar school just they weren't liked

(29:25):
by their kids from the projects. And I was particularly
not like because I was a bit sort of I
don't know, probably eccentric or whatever. And I would do
all sorts of things that I thought they might like,
but there was always the wrong thing, you know what,
I mean to try and befriend them. And then when
I look back, and I actually wrote a book called

(29:47):
The Business Playground where I put one of the things
I were doing it as kind of the wrong thing
to do. And I managed to make a sort of
trick shop machine right that if you had both hands
held of these two things, I would like wind the

(30:07):
handle and it it would give them electric shop. Well, obviously
that's not going to go down well. In my mind,
I thought they'd enjoy it, but I must go back
to my mom getting electric shot. I don't know. But
so I got into you know, very sort of lonely
kind of position there and The only thing I thought

(30:29):
I could do is I joined all the sports teams.
You know, I want to play everything, And so I
was played soccer like three times on a Saturday for
three different teams. I did pole vaulting. Sounds odd, but
I did it and highest you clear, I don't know, Um,

(30:53):
I'm not sure. Actually it's about sort of probably twice
the height of me at the time. But the worst
part about it was this wasn't like poll vaulting you've
seen in the Olympics. You know where the pool bends.
This is like the poll doesn't hardly budge, and it's
like metal and it hits in the teeth, you know.

(31:14):
So anyway, you know, during that soccer sort of I
suppose obsession. I actually had my knee broken really badly,
has put in hospital, and when surgeon spoke to me

(31:35):
after the operation, he was really chirpy and he was going, yeah,
let's be great. You know, you'll be up and walking
in six months and probably playing football in a year.
And I was like what And honestly, I I was
so depressed. I had no idea. Um. I had to
get my head around that, like what to do for

(31:57):
six months? Can't walk? And my brother brought in and
all you know when you go around some of his house,
and I've got a Spanish guitar, dusty with castanets, and
nobody's ever played it. My grandma had one of those,
my grandmother, and he brought it in with about three
strings on it, and I was like, what am I

(32:17):
going to do with this? I wasn't even interested in music,
even though my brother had come home once and seen
seen the Beatles play at the sound An Empire and
was trying to explain it. I was just saying, so,
and did your parents play music in the house. Nope?

(32:37):
My mom when she ran about this time, my mom,
you know, had come back from the mental hospital and
being gone, and she had discovered Ray Charles. But now
I realized why she kept playing take these Chains from
my Heart, Set Me Free right, which she played over

(32:58):
and over again till I was give us a break.
But but what happened was in the hospital I realized
I could pick out a chun on one string really easy,
like a workout at tune. So when I got home,
my brother had another guitar, but he'd gone off to
pick tomatoes and then was going to college, and so

(33:22):
I picked up this other guitar, and the guy around
the corner to me, his father was in a Japanese
prison of war camp and he stayed alive by he
made a guitar out of the floorboards or some wood
and wires and things to entertain his you know, other guys.
But I think most of them were tortured to death, right,

(33:46):
so he was one of the few survivors. And funnily enough,
his son just told me today's dad was just a
hundred and one, was still talking and doing talks actually,
and things like that. But he I realized he played
this guitar. So I went round his house and he

(34:06):
was really pleased, like, oh, good, well done. Ka, Yeah,
I'll show you how you do a few things. But
I didn't realize he didn't really play the guitar in
normal way. He just invented a tuning and was just
putting his finger across it and growing up and down,
and he kind of tried to invent quasi Japanese English
things so the guards wouldn't sort, you know, be too

(34:29):
tough on him. And so I went away from that thinking, okay,
I'll try and play that. And then my brother and
my cousin simultaneously. My brother was now eighteen and he'd
got into blues music, and my cousin, who I know,
it sounds like it was our family. But at the

(34:51):
age of about thirteen, this is in Sunland, where I'm
trying to talk in a much more sort of like
an accent that's not too strong, say my normal accent.
You wouldn't really understand. Can you do it for the
last a little bit? Sure? What do you want me
to say? Continue the story with your normal accent? All right?

(35:12):
Well me cousin Ian who lived in South Sas Okay, Okay,
back to English. Okay, I didn't even actually lived in Southwick,
but my cousin who lived in a littlaria called Southwick
with my mom's you know, the son of my mom's
non twin sister. And she also had a tiny little

(35:33):
shop that's sold newspapers and the stuff called snuff that
you put up your nose a bit like coke, money
legal and and so I don't know why, but about
the age of twelve thirty and he started speaking with
a heavy Memphis twang. Right now. He used to get
beaten up every day for this because in Sunderland, if

(35:57):
he suddenly got to school and you go, how y'all
do and the like shut the funk up, like bum
bum bum, you know. And he he just wouldn't stop,
like you, just wouldn't stop all the time until he
got to about seventeen and eighteen and he went to
Memphis and he lives there still. I hope he's listening, yeah,

(36:20):
and he actually when I made the film Deep Blues
in one, you know, I went out filmed R. L.
Burn Side and all Jessim a Hemphill and all these
amazing players, um with Robert Palmer doing the narration, who
wrote the book Deep Blues. And Ian was really helpful
because most of these people obviously didn't have a telephone,

(36:43):
well none of them out a telephone, and nobody had
a particularly easy way to get to their place, which
was up a dirt track somewhere. And then it was like, yeah,
when you can meet like the oil man, who was
this other blues player at this post office at so
and so, you know, it was like so complicated. Anyway,
so Ian sent me and my brother a box from Memphis,

(37:05):
and honestly, when it arrived, it was the first thing
we really seen from America. It was just an American stamp,
you know what about six stamps on it, and it
was so exotic. So we just looked at the box
for about an hour and then we opened it and
it was covered in um right very I can't even

(37:28):
explain because when you're from Sunday and everything is so rough.
So I had this kind of soft tissue paper. So
we sort of we're touching that for a bit, and
then we owned it and there was these Levi corduroy
jeans in it, and who was like, oh my god, like,
so I've got these jeans out. But then under that
he had put Mississippi John Hurt, Robert Johnson King the

(37:50):
Delta Blues scene like these albums. So I put them
on and when nobody was in, you know, my leg
up and I was like it sounded like something from
out of space, like, but I also sounded like my
neighbor two doors down who was singing half in Japanese

(38:10):
and half in English with his guitar to into a
weird chord. So I started to sort of like play
blue stuff in this called you know tune, and they
really I mean our old burnside if he plays jumper
on the line he's literally just playing e ju Jun
chunk junk junk Jun didn't play, you know. And and

(38:36):
even the early blues you know, where they're just a
one string pulled across and they hit it and barron
out and then they started using a slide. So I
got a wine bottle or a beer bottle, and there
was this guy called stuff and Grossman had a book
about how to play the bottleneck guitar, which was in

(38:58):
this music shop in Sunderlin, and you said, okay, you
put your wine bottle under the tap, you pull a
string around the neck like so it gets hot, and
then put under the cool tap, hit it and it
fell off. You stick it on your finger. My share,
I wish I brought my guitar and a slide with

(39:18):
me actually, and you then can actually play this bluesy slide.
So once I got that going on, I was that
was it. It was the same obsession as soccer. I
just wanted to learn every way of playing blues music.
And then my brother brought the first Bob Dylan album

(39:41):
and the second Bob Dylan album and then I was
like reading the words of it. I was like fucking
he hang on a minute. And then I realized he
was playing some kind of weird blues stuff, quasi blues,
with like these amazing lyrics that were dealing with stuff,

(40:02):
you know, in a different way, because a lot of
blues music, as you know, was just trying to cope
with the pain of being in the garden fields and
slavery and and and then drinking sort of like neat
alcohol and white lightning and all this kind of stuff.
So that got me really interested in songs. And I

(40:23):
know it as a whole because I was delayed in
being interested because I was in the soccer. I kind
of got into the Beatles when they had already started
to sort of listen to Bob Dylan themselves, and then
the Beach Boys are listened to the Beatles and vice first.
So and I was like suddenly in a an amazing
library wealth of stuff. I could hardly take it all in,

(40:47):
so I was trying to learn it all at once.
And that's why I became, I suppose, so eclectic in
my musical taste, which I brought into your rhythmics, was
you know, he suddenly electronic, it's R and B and
then it's and Annie also who has trained to be
a classical flute player and harpsichord at the Royal Academy Music.

(41:09):
Hated it because it was so it was like going
to school and competitive about you know, how ready is
your neck from playing the violin, how much to practice
all stuff. But she had really been obsessed with hearing
Tamla motown. When you're in Scotland or Sunderland, are saying
on a Friday night, there might be one place all

(41:31):
the girls put the handbags in the middle and dance
around a bit like Northern soul knights, and they play
Tamla motown music. So our sort of fusion of the
different worlds that we've learned meant and it could suddenly
play classical keyboard. Oh, she could sing like a sort

(41:52):
of Tamla motown soul singer. But I also need then
had to make that sound, you know. And so and
of course her stories not too dissimilar to mine. You know.
In Aberdeen, you know, it was also very tough, hard
working people who had had a lot taken away from them. So, okay,

(42:16):
so do you graduate from school? Oh? No, I mean
I ran away from school in this incredible mad thing happened.
There was these guys called the furies from Ireland, a
family of gypsies or of folks singing. And I started
to go to folk clubs and I'd learned some Bob

(42:39):
Dylan songs and some blues songs. And I would stand
there outside and ask if I could play in the
girl nor Son you know, you kind of come in,
you know, because I looked about twelve and I was
about fifteen. And then one guy says, you can come in,
but you can only play two songs. That's understandable, right, okay,

(43:01):
So I mean in English, and so I sang, um,
it's all right, mom, why bleed or something my favorite
and some blues song and with a bottle, which was
people were like, I don't think they've seen it right,

(43:21):
So it was that was kind of my trick to
get in, and then I became regular at playing there.
Then I got to see these other people coming through
and they were like amazing, Bert Yea and David John
like all these John Fay like okay, the actual people.
They were the actual people. And then because there was

(43:44):
folk clubs in London and then he wanted to do
a tour, you know, and so and so I just
got completely bonkers about playing the guitar and getting better
at it. And so once I played at these folk clubs,
um I started to understand like, Okay, there's the Kinks,

(44:06):
and he's written a song Walter Loose Sunset, and there's
this kind of writing in this kind of writing, and
I just I just was so obsessed with learning everything
that I would literally my fingers would be almost bleeding
in the house. I used to put them in there
vinegar at the end of the night to sort of

(44:27):
get them tougher so that I could play all day.
My dad once took me to the doctor because he
thought one side of my chest was getting sort of
concave from pressing the guitar against her all the time, right,
And I just wouldn't be seeing without a guitar around town.
So I was getting a bit older, I'd run away
from dropped out of school. I would just go and

(44:48):
hang out in the guys shop, the one boutique in
Sunderland called West One, and they would let me sort
of hide in the back or and I just played
a guitar and now eventually hitch to London, and you know,
it was the sort of gradual escape. Okay, then you
end up making a deal with Rocket Records. What happens

(45:09):
between running away from home and ending up with Alton
John's company, right, Well, because I'd start playing guitar and
got the folk clubs, there was a sort of supply teacher,
like a temporary teacher, had been to our school just
before I left, and he played the guitar and so

(45:30):
he started to show me some real folk like Pentangle
and that kind of stuff um Fairport convention. So we
started playing together. Then we met two other kids from
Sunderland and we started to play the four of us
for acoustic guitars and was like Crosby Steels, Nation and
young kind of thing. And we sent a tape to

(45:53):
London and to Lionel Conway, who was stired from the
other day he was he was running Ireland music for
Chris Blackwell and he thought was really interesting. And then
he realized that one of the kids brothers played drums
for Elton John, and he gave it to him and

(46:14):
I don't think he could believe it was his really
younger brother, right, So anyway, this is very funny. Him
and Mickey grab him from coaches, came around our by
now we were in a squat in Sunderland. They came
around to see if we really did could play, and

(46:34):
so they brought with them from London this weed that
was like really strong like and we'd all been able
to buy like pound deals of Moroccan Harsh or something
like spread amongst like twenty joints for fifty people, and
they rolled them just straight like that and said, hey,

(46:55):
I try some of this. So we did, and all
that happened was we tuned up for two hours in
front of them, all right, that's all we could do.
But they didn't seem the mind. They were just like
smiling and listening and they must have went back and
said they're good, but I think they don't remember anything
about it. So we all went out of London and

(47:18):
the next thing we knew we were signed by Chris
Blackwell Island Music. And then suddenly about honestly, about three
weeks later, we were signed to Rocket Records and we
were told we're going to get this what's called an advance,
and we're going to go on to studio and make
an album. And when we went into Rocket Records, it
was like walking into a very expensive perfumer. You know,

(47:41):
Elton had now been quite successful and everything was you know,
he was just giving everybody present. So the little kids
working on receptions smelt fantastic and everybody had all the
sofas were like luxurious velvet sofas, and we're from Sundland
and went, fuck, you know, we've landed in like sort

(48:03):
of like it's like Pinocchio in the Bad Boys Land,
you know. So they gave us this money and of
course we didn't understand anything. We've never had a manager.
We didn't understand anything at all. So I bought four
acoustic guitars on Denmark Street in a day, and one
thousand capsules of mescaline and I think half a pound

(48:25):
in wake. This is of hash like what you would
call hasher but yeah, like solid that's in a day, right.
So we had this rented house in Tottenham and we
invited our friends down from some of them like hey,
you know this is happening, you know. So they came

(48:46):
down and everybody was like hallucinating, and I think I
brought my girlfriend down, you know, she was only seventeen,
was a nurse that had had been working at the
same mental hospital that my mom was, and how we
ended up getting married and eighteen who whoaa. And so

(49:12):
when Rocket Records sent somebody around, I think it was
Stuart Epps or Swepts. He used to call just knocking
our daughter to see how we were doing with our
demos for the record. I think he reported back like that,
you know, we better help do something because there was
just people lying around or reading the carpet, you know,

(49:35):
like everything was just nuts. And so they went, oh God,
if we'd better put some order into this. So they
got a guy called Ian Matthews for me and Matthew's
second comfort to go on the studio with us. But
that day, for some reason, I decided and this is
because honestly, well I'm talking about going really out there

(49:57):
on hallucinogenics, not like today is awful mixed up terrible
drugs that I would advise nobody to take. This was
like pure you know, ousley lsd on blotting paper and
stuff like that. That. Um. I don't even know how
we got to the studio, but I had somehow had
an upside down paintbrush on and a kilt so it

(50:20):
looked like a sporn, you know, that paintbrush, and and
a tamas shanty like a hat, and a whole robe
with like things and I couldn't play, you know, probably
or anything. And there was the teacher who was a
bit older than us. He was the only one that

(50:40):
could drive and was saying I think he was pulling
his hair out, and this guy Ian Matthews gave up
after a day. He's just gonna no chance, right. But
eventually I think it took us about a year and
we ended up with Dave Mattis from fair Pubvention drumming.
In a few we managed to a record, which was

(51:00):
a miracle, but it it It didn't really, I don't
think we actually understood that we've made a record or anything.
And then we went on tour with Dalton supporting him,
you know, in huge places. Now we've only played in
a folk club now. The band was called Long Dancer.
And the reason we were called Long Dancer was a

(51:21):
mistake anyway, because Ian Hunter from What the Hoople, we
were all sitting on the floor getting stoned in Ireland
music because when you went to get your weekly wage
from this lovely guy I want to say his name,
had long blonde hair down to halfway down his before
his waist. He always would ask us to go in

(51:42):
one by one and then he he would put the
money there and then there was grass there and like
Speeder coake there and something else, and like you would say, like,
so what do you want, Like you want like a
hundred pounds, so you want fifty pound and some of
and I remember my and now then wife at the

(52:04):
time was like, now don't get this, get the h Yeah.
But anyway, so we would go in this little room
in Ireland music. Everybody went in there, Ian Hunter, everybody,
you know, John Martin, click the money. Of course, We're
going this little room and get completely stoned. And then

(52:25):
we were trying to think of a band name and
we were passing a joint around and there was Ian
Hunter said that was a long dancer, meaning it made
your lungs burn, and we all went, oh my god,
that's such a great name. That's it, that's it, and
he just looked confused. And the next thing when we
saw him, we had the album and he was falling

(52:46):
around laughing because we go long dancing anyway. Yeah, okay,
So you went on the road with yeah, and we
ended up, you know, in in playing large places in
England and then cycle stadium things in Italy. Now this

(53:07):
was very overwhelming for us. I don't remember much about
it until mostly after the gigs. I remember we had
to stay in our dress room for ages while the
mob counted the money out with John John Reid before
were lawd out. So it was like really annoying because

(53:29):
like Nigel used to go mad because he was dripping
in sweat and all this kind of stuff. Anyway, we're
all on the bus with Elton, you see, it's just
one bus, and then towards the end of the tour,
it's a funny thing happened that Now I was in
Elton's room and there was about thirty people in there,
all different kinds. Some people looked like there were ballet dancers,

(53:52):
guys and different characters. It looked like it was like
a sort of weird movie. And I was just reading
American comics that Elton had got me because my grandmother
used to sell them. And he's very sort of generous,
so like, oh yeah, you let these things here you go,

(54:13):
And I think it was his favorite thing to do,
was like give gifts away. So I eventually the party,
I don't know if it was a party of whatever.
It was the top of the Hilton Hotel in Rome,
at the time, it looked like it was just sort
of very strange. So I went in the bathroom when
I came out with a kind of a towel on

(54:35):
my head and a towel robe, and I did this
kind of pirouetting kind of dance. And then I sat
down again to reading my comics, and this guy said
to me, Hey, kids, come over here. And he had
a very strong Italian accent, and he had two of
the most beautiful girls sitting with him, and and he goes, hey,
I'm making a movie and that thing you just did

(54:58):
that it was really interesting. I was wondering if you
want to be in it, And he told me the
name of the movie. And so I rang my then
wife because about nineteen and she's had to answered the
phone in the hallway of a house, you know, there's
one phone, and I explained to her, look, I might

(55:19):
have to stay on a bit longer to be in
this movie. Called her, and she didn't say anything for
a while, and then she just said get home anyway.
Years later was my wife and Nuska i'm married to now.
When we were first going out, I took her to
a meal in Hotel cost in Paris, right, But sitting there,

(55:40):
this guy kept staring at us and and then he
came over and he said, hey, hey, aren't you that
kid that was in the room without this and that?
And I was like, I didn't really remember much about it.
And my wife when he went away, said, she went
blind me. You know Roman Polanski, And it was Roman

(56:04):
Polanski who was in the room at the time, But
I had no idea. So basically I'm describing a story
of naivety and it's just like not knowing anything that
was going to what are you star struck? I wasn't
struck at all. I was just completely so you're fine,
and this is Alton, you know, no big deal. I
was just just I was completely unaware of what was

(56:26):
going on. The only time I got a shot that's
when we walked out on the stage at the Cycle Stadium.
But for some reason, I've ould always been I don't know,
interested in what's going on. And there was a lot
going on basically that was interesting. And also you know,

(56:48):
it was like really stoned and like it was all
it was all very exciting the time, you know, like
in music, and but then after that obviously was like
HiT's sort of harsh reality, completely broke. I didn't know
how to get a job or do anything apart from

(57:08):
play the guitar. So this thing had started, and this
guy up the road told me about it called Camden
Lock Market, and so I don't know how I managed
to do this, but I decided I would have sell records,
vinyl records, because I knew about that. I can unlock market,

(57:29):
but I didn't know how to get the records to sell.
Then I met this other guy said well, somebody you'll
give your records to sell, sailor return and I went
down there and it was Trojan Records, right old amazing
reggae records. And so I had all these Trojan records

(57:50):
and I had a market. Of course, my my stall
bit came surrounded by huge clouds of smoke. In course,
Rastafarian London kind of immigrants too. I made great friends
with and that led me on another musical trail where
this guy came to the store and he was in

(58:12):
a bank called Asabisa. And as I always had a
little guitar behind my store, is that you said you
should come around my apartment and I went there was
all Africa and made amazing African food and they were
playing these rhythms and I was trying to play, and
then this guy showed me something, so I learned to
play a little bit this criss cross rhythms on guitar,

(58:36):
and I was just I was always on this sort
of musical exploration journey. And and I went from there
two somehow getting asked if i'd meet this girl who
had formed a sort of feminist um kind of political

(58:57):
activist group, theater group, and wanted somebody to work on
with music, And so I went there and I just
went bang the day, walked in, fell in love with
the lead girl called Judith Alderson, and just to start
for a second part, did it in with lawn Dancer.

(59:25):
It's sort of imploded because one of the members, I think,
had a bit of a nervous breakdown when we were
in Germany and we were meant to launch the record
and he was we although he's going to jump off
the roof of the hotel, and it all became very

(59:46):
traumatic and there was obviously we couldn't really carry on,
and then we tried to do another album with it.
A couple of other guys joined the band, but it
wasn't the same thing. We went all from Sunderer anymore,
and it was nobody had any sort of heart in it,
and it's sort of just fizzled out. Okay, Rocket Record said, fine,

(01:00:08):
you're done, We're moving on. I don't remember even talking
about Rocket Records. I just remember the band actually breaking up. Okay,
So now you go to this theater group, you fall
in love with this woman. Yeah, And she was an
extraordinary character and still is actually just still taught by
her email and she had been through a lot of stuff,

(01:00:34):
but basically, to cut a long story short, she had
formed this theater group and she had a little girl
as well, and I moved in with her and I
had to tell my of course Sunderland, which didn't go
down well. But I still taught to her as always
still friends. So um. Then we went to WOD and

(01:01:01):
I realized this was just a very unusual outfit and
what she was saying and what they were putting across
the music was it was kind of pre punk, but
it was kind of punky cabaret, weird theater. And but
then we had a massive car crash. A friend of
mine had brought over to help drive a car, and Judith,

(01:01:26):
her name was and the little girl was Amy was
in the seat behind. I was in the front. I
drove all the way from the sort of docking I
think in Amsterdam or Rotterdam. We rented a car and
then we drove all the way to a part of Germany.
Then my friend took over from Sunderland. He'd never driven

(01:01:48):
in Europe, and just pulled the wrong way somehow onto
the order Barn at night. So those cars coming towards
us about eighty and I just took a huge line
of speed when we in the bathroom. So when we
pulled out the wrong way, I think it was the
only person for a split millisecond realized, yeah, we've turned

(01:02:14):
the wrong way, right. I think I said it out loud,
But did you know something? Yeah, I is so full
of amazing sort of connections to your brain and neurons
or that if your I sees that something terrible is
going to happen, like an accident, it's immediately shuts down

(01:02:34):
loads of the part of the brain, so you don't
remember it. That's why most people come out of a
car accident and I don't remember what happened. I just
remember waking up in hospital. So I have a bit
of that, but I do remember a few flashes of things.
But um, yeah, it was a terrible accident. It was
on the front page of the German newspaper, you know,

(01:02:57):
and you uh, I mean, honestly, some of the things
that sort of happened in your life that sort of
come around again, like the one I said about Roman
Polanski years later. Incredible because I didn't see the little
girl Amy for years. You know, she was only about
three until I was going to the little opening of

(01:03:20):
my friends, tiny little restaurant in Camden Town and this
girl came up with some canopies and she said, oh, listen,
you won't remember me, but I remember you. And I said,
oh no, I don't remember by now. I was like
very lovely nineteen year old girls twenty one or something.
Said I'm Amy. Remember I went flying out the car

(01:03:41):
window in Germany. It's like fuck but m yeah, so
so Jude and I. We sort of didn't break up.
Was more was smashed up, you know, the car accident.
Her leg was, her knee was broken, and like all
these things happened, and I ended up in crouch End,

(01:04:05):
and I used to live in crouch And before with
my wife. But I've given now given that flat to
my mother, and um. I was sort of sleeping on
the floor of my mother's place, and I didn't realize
I had punctured my lung. I thought I had terrible
sort of like something wrong when I breathed in, and

(01:04:27):
so I was a bit messed up. I went to
the hospital and they did that awful thing when you
lung collapses, where you have to be awake while the
doctor pokes a needle into your chest well, but stops
before it puncts us the lung and then sucks the
air at so your lung can reinflate. Not the nicest
of feelings, but so that sort of temporarily fixed it.

(01:04:52):
And one day I was just walking up the road
and crouching and the guy who used to be in
the stall next to me at the mark Kid sort
of knocked on the window of the inside of a
shop and he was decorating it and he said, hey, hey,
come in. So I went in. He said, nobody knows this,
but I'm squatting in this shop and I've got the

(01:05:15):
house upstairs, and he's calling the shop Spanish Moon after
a little foot so and he said, hey, you know
let's celebrate or something. So we had a bottle of
Jack Daniels and we had a little glass, and he
was sitting in the shop window talking about everything that
had happened to him and to me, and he said,

(01:05:37):
you never guess what. I met this girl the other
day and she is working in this sort of like
health food restaurant, and but she plays this weird old
harmonium and sings a kind of a bit like Joni
Mitchell kind of songs. Do you want to meet it?

(01:05:58):
I think you would get away with I said, yeah,
why not? So we drove up in his car, and
at the time I think I had sort of like
spiky turquoise hair and sort of you know, just look
generally not right for the restaurant. So the manager wouldn't

(01:06:20):
let us in. But so I kept sort of breathing
on the window, and every time I saw the girl
who I was right now, I love you backwards in
the steam and all that stuff. And then the manager
was going up to her obviously like like do you
know these people? And so when she came out, it
was Annie. Of course, when she came back, said what

(01:06:40):
the hell are you doing? And I'm nearly getting the
sack here and Paul says, oh, no, you should meet
my friend Davey plays music too and everything, and we
started talking. We actually moved in together that day. That
day that day, yeah, we sort of, well you moved
into her apartment. This is about six o'clock and he
and well, she had a tiny room slight of this really,

(01:07:02):
with a harmonium in it, in a single bed, and
we moved in there. And then the next day we
are she was she ors was a bit a little anxious,
kind of panic attack, and I said, well, let's go
and see my mom, right, So we went in a
double decker bus to Crouch End and my mom was

(01:07:26):
torn to her and she's feeling a bit better. And
then my mom says, but actually I'm going somewhere else
for a week where you can stay here. So we
stayed there in my mom's flat, which is in Creach End,
And then we realized Paul had got all the house
above the record store. So we went to see Paul

(01:07:48):
and said he it's all right if we like live
upstairs there. He says, well, I'm going to live upstairs
there as well, but it's got three floors. So we did,
and this became like a landmark in creat end. We
just an odd place. It's full of musicians and artists,
and it was journalists they you know, Julie Burchill and
all these people. All she would actually come in and

(01:08:09):
sell all the records being given to review, and like
it was just you know, Adamant was at art college
up the road in Genesis pr Age and Chris and
so the first track with Annie and I released was
actually me and her and Chrissie Cozy Fanny t d
from Robbing Gristle. So we became in world and all

(01:08:29):
this I kind of art cred there and we were
really happy because it was like but we didn't write
any songs together or separately for the whole time we
lived there. We just were in another band with Pete
Combs called the Tourists, and we played all his songs. Okay,

(01:08:50):
Pete Tourists had a deal with Virgin Did they have
that deal before you got in the beginning around? It
wasn't with Virtune. Maybe it came out through that later
here or something, but Tourists, we haven't. We signed with
a tiny label which was a folk label called Transatlantic,
which was Fairport, conventional and then it was called Logo,

(01:09:13):
changed its name and then they sold themselves to our Cia.
So we ended up being you know, inherited twice and
we had some kind of success, but it was really
not from what we wanted. We just lacking about in
the studio and did a version of I Only Want
to be with You only speeded up with like ricking

(01:09:35):
back a twelve string and you know, the birds meats
punk kind of thing, and that was a huge hit
in Britain and Australia and some places. Did you make
any money? Well, we sold a lot of albums and
but you know that didn't mean to say you made
any money. Still, I'm asking you what are you living on?

(01:09:56):
We we well we lived together, which saved a lot
of money when we were on tour and everything. And
you know we had a little wage through the management
company who got the money and which is years later
my dad, you see, who trained to be an accountant.
They did the best advice ever when Annie and I
got a contract as rhythmics, and he said that I've

(01:10:20):
read the whole bloody thing. He said, it's all gibberish
and I can't make head and the tail of any
of it. Apart from I advise you one thing, like
they give you the money and then you pay the managers. Really, yeah,
that's pretty smart. Yeah, and so we did. So we
formed a company called d n A Limited David Annie,

(01:10:44):
and the money went there and then we paid people
from there. Okay, so you're on the road with tours,
you go through multiple ownerships of the label, but you're
not doing your original material. Now. We we weren't playing
me and Annie's songs. We were doing Peter songs. He
was a great songwriter and we we felt actually that
we couldn't even try to compete with His songwriting was

(01:11:06):
very good. But Pete was you know, very addictive personality
in every way, and it became worse and worse, you know,
to heroin and he couldn't get hero and he had
to drink a bottle of like jin sing whiskey or something.
It was like really sad seeing it go down, but
we realized just couldn't carry on. We're in Australia. Pete

(01:11:28):
had got lost and you know, you kind of went
somewhere looking for heroin and oh deed and that to
manager had to find him and and it was it
was just obvious that we couldn't carry on. So on
the way back from Australia on a plane, Annie and
I was sitting next to each other, and we've been

(01:11:50):
through all of this stuff, and on the plane we
said maybe we should sort of live separately, right, And
we both just decided it and sort of went to sleep.
And then when we got there, we think, well, to
know how we do this because we haven't got any money.
The reason you want to live separately is, well, we've

(01:12:11):
been like three or four years not only living together,
but being going around and round in the van like
it was just seven. We thought we'd caught court Nutcle
had something called folly at which is like when two
people are together all the time constantly. And when we
went with the bandit se would just be us two

(01:12:32):
was nobody else's company because we liked it. But you
can become sort of a little bit sort of on
the outside of society or reality or whatever. You're in
your own world, right, So we decided to live separately,
but the romance was going to continue. Well, this is

(01:12:53):
when it gets complicated because and he's separately but and
he then just moved upstairs, right, so they and she
was upstairs and then that didn't really work, so she said,
moved to the end of the street. And then this
went on throughout the eighties. I bought a house when
we got some money. She bought a house in the
next street. Because we became rhythmics. See, so we would together,

(01:13:17):
stuck together like glue. So even if we were separate,
as you know, a couple, we were every day together,
like working on our staff and touring. And how long
did it maintain a romance? Well, you know, like all
of those complicated breaking up on and it just sort

(01:13:41):
of it was like a sort of slow motion car crash,
but at the same time, unlike a lot of people
might have experienced, it was a fast motion rocket taking
off because as we were slow motion car crash in
the relationship, we were sort of becoming really successful in factually,

(01:14:01):
in fact because of a number of reasons. Some guy
playing our imported record in Cleveland on the radio, playing
Sweet Dreams, and because MTV had just started, and I'd
always been obsessed with filming stuff, and we've made this

(01:14:22):
very strange Sweet Dreams video that the record company couldn't understand,
which i'd, like, you know, obviously took lots of influence
from French French filmmakers and surrealism and stuff like that.
We had one up our sleeve, and then we had
another one up our sleeve and another one up our sleeve.
So when in the garden, which was an amazing experience

(01:14:44):
with Connie Plank, you know, he taught me how to
ignore everything about recording because I didn't like the sound
of the other records. Because those days you weren't allowed
to go to the mixing desk. It was the produce
of the engineer. You sit at the back and if
you go near any of the knobs like no, no,
don't touch that, you know, And Connie Plank taught me

(01:15:06):
you are you can do whatever you want, like turn
that up and make the whole base drum distorted, and
see what that sounds like, put the microphone down this well,
and all this kind of stuff. And so that would
have led me to want to have to record ourselves.
And when I just made your operation because my lung

(01:15:27):
kept collapsing. And he went to Scotland and while she
was away, I bought first little drum machine, tiny little thing.
You know, you couldn't actually doing much, You couldn't tell
it to do certain things that would just if you
press that button and that button it did that. And
and a little synthesietic called the Wasp. It was plastic thing.

(01:15:52):
And I had a thing called the Porter Studio was
like a cassette with four tracks, and I I started
making these tracks that are some of them are half
of the Sweet Dreams album that we just transferred to
an eight track and I played some of them down
the phone to Annie at her parents house and she

(01:16:13):
was like, woh god, that's really interesting. And I was
talking about like we'd make this like electronic music, but
Annie sang soulfully on top of it as a juxtaposition.
So we started doing these experiments. But in the in
the middle of Sweet Dreams, how Money would get so
depressed or see we are a couple that had broken up,

(01:16:34):
but like we're making this music, but what are we doing?
Had nothing to do with any music that was going on.
We're all going to die kind of, you know. Unfortunately
I've been there, yeah and so, and people would come
and visit us, like I'd become really good friends with

(01:16:56):
Claim Burke from Blondie and we were in a picture
framing factor, which was the top of these stairs, but
underneath that, we're making that noise like and claim we'd
come and see us. So Frank confront from Blondie and
what are you guys doing. We're making a record on
this like eight rap tape recorder and the eaves of

(01:17:18):
the pit you had to bend down the whole time
because it was just like the very eaves of it
and an old building that had probably been there three
hundred years or something. And tell me if I'm wandering
into sunderland speak, you know, because I'm trying to keep
a grip on it. But so we explained, you know,

(01:17:41):
this is the record. We're making a record, And and
then when we delivered the record one, how did you
get a deal? We were we were already signed, you see,
because when the tourists broke up, we had been signed
individually as well. But then it was like, but we're

(01:18:04):
going to be a duo called Rhythmics, And they thought
about it for ages and said, okay, well you can
do an album this very low budget. So we went
to Connie Plank in Germany and that wasn't very successful.
So at that point I think they're thinking about dropping us.
But there was a lovely guy young junior an arsenal

(01:18:27):
called Jack Stevens, and he would visit that sneath. That
was amazing what we're doing. And of course, just before
we get there, why was it the rhythmics, teld us
the story rhythmics was because, um, the thing is how
I explained it to the record company is quite funny.

(01:18:49):
But basically we liked the word that EU are at
the beginning for Europe and rhythm. But there's another thing
called rhythmic, created Emil Jack del Crows, which is about
the study of rhythm and music and thought patterns to help.
It's used often in schools at Rudolph Steiner schools and whatever.

(01:19:13):
It just is a way of like understanding, um, your
body and you know, and so well it's more than actually,
but we spent another three hours talking about it. But
I had to go in and tell the record label
we were going to be called rhythmics, which was a
difficult tongue twister, and when you looked at it written down,

(01:19:35):
it was like, yeah, So I always like to do, like,
you know, if it's going to be something I'm going
to explain when I'm pitching a TV company whatever. It's
always the element of surprise, right, So I remember just
jumping from a standing position which I practiced onto a desk, right,

(01:19:58):
so like just doing one jump and then I said Eurythmics,
all the one go and it was complete silences. About
three of the record label left and they said well,
and one guy said, isn't that like something you have
to get treated for? And it was like nonspecific eurothritis

(01:20:19):
or something and I was like now, and I explained,
and then we don't know about this, but anyway, we
got away with it. A Sweet Dreams album came out,
and then yeah, Sweet Dreams, what's the development story there? Well,
we were making an album that's quite quirky, using limited,

(01:20:45):
very limited equipment. Because I went to the bank manager
who had been the bank all during the tourists and
and he was really nervous about this, but I was
convinced again with my surprise actions using my I ked
and Haiku mixed together or whatever, that I would be

(01:21:06):
able to get him to lend us some money to
buy the exact amount of equipment that this guy we
knew called Adam Williams has sort of written out and
we've got pictures cut out of catalogs. If we needed
this desk, secondhand, this secondhand Clark Technique reverb, this bell

(01:21:27):
noise reduction system, and this one really important thing a
space echo. Right for the space echo, because we wanted
to make like dub sounds and all that stuff. We
had everything written out and the wires came when it
came the fourth thousand and eight hunderd pounds or something,
and we could make a record on it. So we
went there and he sat silent in the bank manager's

(01:21:48):
office and I explained, and I put all the pictures
out and I said, you're seen in the past. We've
made an album and we had to pay all these people,
and we couldn't recoup really because the studio was this
and producing the engineer. But now I'm going to make
the record. We have the equipment, and if the record

(01:22:09):
only sells this amount, we can make another record on it.
And now it doesn't cost us anything. And he was
listening the whole time and then he and he says,
you know what, that's a very good idea, and he
gave us five thousand pounds. The only problem was when
we stepped outside the bank, this friend of mine who

(01:22:32):
was called Ashley Cohen, who was a situationalist artist, and
unfortunately his situations art at that moment was he had
a mini full of cats and he would stop it
and hand people cats and then take polaroids. Right. He
had another terrible one needs to do is to pick

(01:22:53):
people up at a bus stop and say, oh, I'm
going your way, and then so I'm just could have
stopped at my friend's house and then he would take
them in. Then he would sneak out and leave them there,
and that was his art form. Well, there's a picture
of the bank manager with like a cat on his
head and me and Annie with cats, and I can
see it about manager's face is like, what did I

(01:23:15):
do right? Right? But then afterwards we gave him all
these gold albums and platinum albums and but yeah, so
in the picture faming factory. But then we couldn't afford
the rent anymore. So, um, the guy who owned it

(01:23:35):
said you can't be here anymore. And we were sneakily
borrowing his synthesizers sometimes because he would go up there
to practice. So then I was, you know, we just
didn't know what to do. We were about halfway through
making a record in inverted Commas, and I was walking
up the street and crow chain and there was a

(01:23:56):
huge church and this guy opened the door with gray
hair and a weird beard. He looked like a wizard
and he said he you like. He said, are you
looking for somewhere? I was like yeah, I said, I'm
looking for somewhere to make a record. He says, come

(01:24:17):
in here, and he showed me this sort of room.
There was the vestry of a church. He said, well,
what about this room? I said, well, yeah, that would
be great. I said how much is it? Says no, no, no,
you can have it. And I was like, this is
So I went and told Danny and she was like,
this sounds really weird. So we went there and the

(01:24:43):
guy and his partner we're really sweet, but really odd couple.
I think obviously a gay couple that they've had to hide,
you know, for years. They were in by then sixties
or whatever. And in the end they helped Bill there's
another studio for us upstairs when we got successful, you know,

(01:25:04):
by night with their lights that they used to do
their animated feature films. And then the end he said, look,
we want to move now to Florida somewhere to retire.
Do you want to buy office, and in the end
we bought that church and then had then I bought
it off any later, and then I had it for years,
and then I sold it to David Gray, and then

(01:25:26):
when he was going to make it possibly flats the
whole of cretch and was up in arms. But Paul
Etwith came to the rescue and Paul up within great
producer has it and been there a few games with
Paul and it's still the church there where we made
so much stuff. Okay, so Sweet Dreams, how do you

(01:25:48):
write it? This is like me being an interviewed is
like one of them stories where the narrative gets so
lost in so many different I'm totally a control of
the narrative. Are good, okay, but I'm ultimately going here, Okay,
do it? Yeah, I'm just don't know what. I don't
know when Sweet Dreams is complete, because I know you've

(01:26:10):
probably told the story of how you wrote or whatever.
Do you know it's going to be a monster here now?
We have no idea. In fact, the record label in
um London released I think two or three singles from
the album before that because they had In fact, they
said to me at one point, look because I had inkling.

(01:26:31):
Annie and I were very excited when we first recorded it,
and then we were you know, deflated when nobody seemed
to have ary with us. But I had inkling it
was something special. But I actually remember being told, look,
this song has no beginning, middle chorus and whatever. It's
just and I was kind of thing yourself, well, that's

(01:26:53):
kind of what's good, that's exactly. But but it was
this guy in a radio station in Cleveland got an import.
He kept playing that there was no action in the UK.
No action in the UK. I love as the Stranger,
like barely graced the top seventy five or something. This

(01:27:14):
guy kept ringing up our c in New York and saying, look,
you've got this band called the earth Mix And every
time I'm playing this song sweet Dreams on this important,
it's just going bonkers. All the phones are ringing. And
they kept saying that we don't have a band called
the Earthquakes, so we don't know what you're talking about.

(01:27:36):
And eventually somebody realized he meant Rhythmics, which was signed
in England, and they hurriedly got that out and sort
of managed to service radio stations, and so it was
a very quick rise from that guy playing it to
sort of going. And at the same time, Sweet Dreams

(01:27:59):
was on a video so you could actually deliver a
video to MTV immediately. And we went to America to
play live. And by the time I saw you at
the Palace all right, well, by the time we got
from New York to l A, it was already gigantic.
And then we were in a Japanese hotel room. It's

(01:28:22):
like a Japanese hotel in San Francisco. I can't remember
what it was cool anyway, um, I might have imagined
it's a Japanese hotel. It had a Japanese restaurant in it.
But somebody the two manager said Annie, you and Dave
have got to go into one room because the Rector
label the phone you up. And we sat there and

(01:28:45):
the phone rang, and somebody from the label said, I
just want to let you know you're going to be
number one right in a minute or something right, And
we were like jumping around going away, and then we
looked out the window and where were they were. Everything
just looked exactly the same. God a great story, and

(01:29:06):
we like, what do we do? We just weren't quite
sure what to do, you know, because we talked about
a couple that it's not a couple. But now we've
been through all this stuff and when number one in America,
we just didn't understand what that meant. We didn't understand
the normally the size of America. All we knew is
when we got to the gig right then it had

(01:29:29):
come out. There was lines around the block. Was the
great San Francisco Famous ball Room whatever it's called the
film more film or yeah, the film are East right
now the East is in New York, the West. But
then it was closed and then it was winter something else. Yeah,
winter Land was there. Now it's the film war again,

(01:29:52):
and there's a great American music hall that's there. It
was a film or and it was one of the
unbelievable shows. And then we were invited to this club afterwards.
And it was one of those moments, the first time
we realized that gay community or the LGBTQ community, or

(01:30:16):
the alphabet community or whatever you want to call it
now had embraced us massively, and that Annie was perceived
as um as some kind of heroine or hero or
heroine in this world, which we loved, you know, and

(01:30:40):
you know, we started off making the first thing over
recorded was with christ and Cozy Fanny two t from
so we're quite aware of this world. A lot of
our friends were in this world. But we didn't realize
that in America this has been building up through the radio,
that the song had been adopted and interpreted in many ways. Anyway,

(01:31:03):
we had amazing time at this club till god knows
when six o'clock in the morning or something, and and
that was the end of the tour. So it was
like we ended on this completely massive high. And and
so you know, I mean from then on it was

(01:31:25):
literally six or I think seven or eight albums in
a row, all in eight years. As you've had the
massive hit, to what degree do you feel the pressure?
Internal pressure? How are you going to have a mass
if you had on the follow up? Well, what happened
in England was when Sweet James was number one in America,

(01:31:50):
it immediately went to number two in Britain because there
was a record that was stuck at number one, and
of course the record the least before the single before
that was a Stranger, came back in the Child at
number six, and and we had also had that thing
of touring a lot in the tourists and in touring

(01:32:12):
the rhythmics, so we had a show. We weren't just like, oh,
how we how are we going to do it, which
happened to a lot of bands at a time, like
heck at one hundred or all these bands came out
and got to America and we're like, oh, there was
no shot, there's no show, right, So when we played
in England, of course it was like blimy, rhythmics are
real sort of happening, and there was the Tube and

(01:32:34):
all these different TV shows, and so we went in
the studio. Well to put it, really, we never went
in a studio. We and it was usually my fault.
I was like, well, now let's record in a hotel room.
Now let's record in a sort of youth club in

(01:32:55):
the outskirts of Paris, which we did. You know, it
was always something different because I'm a great believe as
a producer like Brian Bryan, you know in a way
that like it's not just to do with like sitting
there with the engineer in a gray room in a basement,
you know, it's to do with everything. You know. So
the same as the thought process, you're writing, or well,

(01:33:19):
it might be good to go on the rowing boat,
or it might be good. You've got to allow the
stuff in rather than just trying to chase it. So
your best creative thoughts always happened when you're doing something else. Yes, classically,
when you're in the shower, or it's the end of
the night, you watch a little TV read all of
a sudden SUPs as fire. Yeah, I mean, you know,
for me and Annie, we then had endless amounts of

(01:33:46):
you know, unrequated love songs kind of because we lived
together and now we were forced to get together. But
we couldn't be together. I mean even the last songs
we wrote together seventeen again, you know, it says who
couldn't be together, but couldn't be a part? It's like,
so that was easy. Um so then we came up

(01:34:07):
with here Comes the Rain Again. To what degree did
you feel internal pressure? Did you feel when you went
back to record again each time that you could make
something that the audience in the business would accept? And
I never personally thought like that because I've always been

(01:34:29):
so stupidly positive and confident that things will work at
so I personally didn't feel that pressure. I was more
in it in my you know, okay, but then you
know Tompenny wrote a whole song about it. You know, Uh,
the record company doesn't hear a single, so would you
consciously think, you know, I have to create a single. Well,

(01:34:52):
you know what happened was, um, I think the record.
And it was so so shocked and amazing how big
our record was around the world that they didn't really
bother us. And because I consciously said, let's record in
a youth club on the outskirts of Paris, we didn't

(01:35:14):
really have many visitors. You know, it was in the
Russian Quarter and so it wasn't like they were checking
honest to anything. And we would just say this is
the single and this is the video that goes with it.
And we made video albums ages before people made video albums.
And they just thought we were this eccentric duo that

(01:35:35):
they didn't know what was going to happen. But it's
probably going to be all right. And I remember John Preston,
who became head of the label one time, and he
was chairman of the British phonographic industry. He came, you know,
to meet us and he said, oh, I'm so excited
to work with you guys. So when are you going
to do your next album? I said, well, we're going

(01:35:57):
to deliver it on me the first and he said,
oh great, Can I ask some demos? I said, don't
make demos. I think we're only going in there in
the studio on April the seventh, and he was like what.
So we would actually write and record the whole record
in three weeks from scratch. Um. I think it was

(01:36:20):
because I enforced it, because I had in the back
of my head like necessity as the mother of invention.
So I'd seen these other bands being mons and months
in the studio and remixing and adding more things. And
I limited it to an eight track when one track
was used for what's called a SINC code. And so

(01:36:43):
when I had seven tracks, and I was thinking that
the early records that the Beatles did on Motown on
four tracks and two tracks, and so you would make
bounces right there and then you couldn't go back. So
and he would do some harmonies we have, you know,
like four hands on deck or whatever, have them mixed,

(01:37:06):
and okay, you move it there at this point and
bound some all to this one track over here. Hey,
we've got four more tracks now, and we just made
our records like that. And then I would sit in
the mixing room with the engineer who had been working
with it, and and just get to the end of

(01:37:26):
a mix that was it. Hooray. You know, we always
stopped at seven thirty and drank. We just never went
past that start. Let's start about noon, okay. So when
you were still through every album, we did that. Okay,
April seven, you have any musical ideas before you show up.

(01:37:51):
We had the untouched It was the only time we
had a song. We started looking out of the Grammars
the what are called the Mayfile Hotel overlooking Central Park.
We sort of started a tiny tinkly bit of here
comes the rain again. Okay. And this works for you
because of the pressure, because now you know, I gotta

(01:38:14):
come up with it. It's got to be delivered. The
internal pressure, well, I think. Okay. So that's a big
question because it's a lot of things in life. When
it can be in sport, it can be in music,
and be anything. Is having a kind of confidence about

(01:38:37):
what you're about to do now, in fighting or anything.
If you if you're slightly doubting it as you're going
in you kind of going inside ways, you know what
I mean? So h m, we both had a different
kind of confidence, if you know what I mean. I

(01:38:59):
don't think I never recorded nanny vocal ever where she
ever sang one now attitude. And she never showed me
a lyric that she was writing in her journal but
or anything that was ever trite or you know, did
she write those before the April sev to speak? You know?
What happened was what would happen was she would have

(01:39:22):
bits of words in a journal and I would But
how we liked to work, which she liked to sit
behind while I was fiddling about making tracks, you know,
playing something on the airplanes, and then you jump up
and go, I want to play on that bit and
play that bit, and then she said keep playing up

(01:39:43):
bit over and over again. And she would get bits
of the lines in her journal. And then sometimes you said,
I don't know, I don't think this is any good?
What do you think? And then I would go, I
peraeply moved that bit there, that line, and then that
would fit over this bit here was like a jigsaw puddle.
And but somehows she'd write like a whole load of

(01:40:04):
words that just were like, for instance, sisters are doing
it for themselves. We'd finished the record and Annie, what then,
so I've written a poem like a you know, sort
of a female empowerment home and it was sisters are
doing it for themselves and didn't change one word. And
I was like, when we should do like an R

(01:40:24):
and B so or in a tiny little room trying
to not hear the music I was going on in
the other room, and I just did a little loom
do do do do do do do a little loom
do do, And I said, I'll put this track down
like an old record. Now. I was doing everything that.

(01:40:44):
I was picking up boxes and making jam jars with
pencils and razor blades and shaking them like and at
the time, I was working with Tom a lot, so
I was friends with Ben Mont and Mike Campbell and
I've got to play on it. I don't know where
Annie went at this point, but we made because I

(01:41:05):
remember we're doing an interview two years ago and she
didn't realized they were playing on it. But that's on
a record just sounded like this monster track, right, And
then it was like somebody said, I can't remember, and
he said it, or somebody in about says, hey, why
don't you do this as a duet were talking about sisters,

(01:41:28):
and I was like, oh, who could that be with
Tina Turner this one right one? And I think it
was Clives might have said, hey, why don't you do
with a wreath? And Nanny was like and so. But
we were excited about it. And Tom Petty's engineer, great guy,

(01:41:51):
but like we flew with him with the tapes. But
we got to Detroit and he left him on the plane, right, okay,
then what so we're sitting waiting for a Wreatha who
was late anyway, then he was I could see him
looking all nervously about and he went flying back to
the airport and a taxi because there were huge, heavy

(01:42:14):
tapes or something come often said this must be something.
We got them back and nothing was said to a
Wreatha because she arrived and I've made chicken for y'all,
you know, but at the time an Krishna, so it
was all like I was like sort of trying to
sort of delay time while he arrived out with the tapes.

(01:42:37):
But one of the most amazing experiences I had in
a musical sort of emotional sense with somebody else. I
had hundreds with Annie. But Aretha told me to come
in this room and it was about the size of
this which is a very tiny room by the way listeners.
And it was a piano, right, piano, and she was

(01:43:01):
playing about on it, and I think she was trying
to get to the point of asking me, what's this
song really about, like, because she saw Annie with a
cropped hair and the whole thing. She was wondering if
she was singing a gay anther and but she started
off just playing a piano and she started singing, and
she sang the whole of the way we were really,

(01:43:22):
you know, the gladdest night and I'm just so funny,
can't believe it, little boyfriend. Suddenly I'm leaning on the
piano like, you know, as if normal, and her she
started crying as she's singing and playing it, and I'm like,
BLI me. I was just like stunned, you know. And

(01:43:43):
she didn't say anything about it's just like wiped a
tear away and she was like started chatting. And then
I noticed she had lots of people with her in
the other room, right. I think she might have been
singing it to them, and it was onto people. I
was asking for something here and something there and like anyway,

(01:44:05):
then she got round to say and so like this song,
like she had the lyrics and she said, so, you know,
ringing on their own bell. So I just what's the
actually mean? They're like I was saying, no, no, I'm
making you know, she's She's probably thinking she means like
you know, and then yeah and uh and I'm completely convinced.

(01:44:30):
And then she was looking at Annie and she's probably thinking,
I'm going to sing a duet with this skinny white
girl from Scotland. Does she have any idea who? No
idea who? She's just been said, Clive, this is going
to be a good idea. And I've got this great
bat film on VHS shot through the window of them.

(01:44:51):
So they're around like Mike, facing each other like this,
right and aretheis got like her sort of denim jacket
with studs in it, and she out of a cigarette
and I didn't smoke or anything. It's like smoke going everywhere,
and and the song starts, you know, and immediately Annie
starts singing, searing the pull a jacket and put a cigarette.

(01:45:15):
She realized she gained sing right, and she's got raised
loud voice and he as well, so so then it
became almost like a dueling competition, right, And then as
it went all the way through at the end you
can hear it, you know, the badly blinds equal pay,
that's what we say, and Annie's answering, and it was

(01:45:37):
all just like done in a take like that, and
no overdubs, nothing, no fixing. Wait, how many takes did
you do? Mm hmm maybe two? Maybe he kept the
first one and we did a wreath to say a
Wreatha said, oh, you got it enough. She was in

(01:45:57):
such a good mood afterwards with all these thoughts, were
laughing and playing it back, and I remember George Clinton
coming down from somewhere into the room when the rumors
filling up with people all listening to it, going fucking hell,
this is like, you know, this is serious, like because
any track you pushed up of their vocal was amazing.

(01:46:18):
But then I push it up, what the hell's that sound?
And it's like a box full of like razor blades
and pencils, and and then that goes with the waa
over he had and all this stuff, and it didn't
matter what you pushed up, which way you left the faders,
it still sounded great. Did you ever have any interaction
with a week after was successful? Yeah, well I didn't

(01:46:42):
actually go to the video shoot, and it was shot
in Detroit, you know, because the wreath it wasn't flying
back and on. He flew there. But it's quite funny.
I watch it looks like they're not in the same
place and that it was put in afterwards. But they
were actually on the same stage. But like I don't
know why they did it, like eight ft apart and so.

(01:47:06):
But after a giant or had a few things like
Clive Davis things, she was always very very nice to me.
And I think I think that actually funny enough got
a wreathing into a different mode of earning because then
she made her obum Freeway of Love and a pink

(01:47:27):
Cadillac by the way, which goes sisters are doing a
free day of Loving. It's almost the same backing track,
you know. And I got into a a different mode
for a wrethis, so I think she was happy about that. Okay,
so this is all happening. You make it money? Oh yeah, well,
any and I made money from the Sweet Dreams album onwards,

(01:47:53):
because he because of what my dad said, be we
formed a company called in a limited and we've learned
from all the tourists and all the stuff before how
to have a limited company and how to be able
to pay our tax taxes correctly. Would also be able

(01:48:15):
to claim a lot of the things that we cost
us money, you know. And so we were now a legit,
you know company, and we had a proper accountants in
it and everything. And so the money would arrive in
our Barclay's bank account at the time in the local crush,

(01:48:38):
and the guy who lent us to five thousand was
now seeing five hundred thousand the account and more and
more and more and more. So um, and we weren't.
Actually people are running around going crazy. So I remember
when we had quite a lot of money, I rang
up my account. I said, you know, do you think
I could like buy a car? And he said very

(01:49:03):
typical English legal type of he said, Stewart, I think
you have a reason for cautious celebration. I was, I
hung up, and I was like trying to think how
you celebrate cautious? So you were not proflab good with
the money. You you were not blowing it now, but
later on I did. I'm I'm the worst person in

(01:49:24):
the world. I had buy a property when it's really
high and sell it when the markets crashed. Every time.
I just just hopeless at keeping it. I'm quite good
at making it. We can't. Okay, how does it end
with the rhythmics? Well, I don't know. I mean, I've
had dinner in the last two weeks about three times

(01:49:46):
with any here, and we don't really talk much about you.
It makes I mean, we played in December at this
rainforest fund with Springsteen and Sting and some other people,
and we kind of went on stage and we kind

(01:50:08):
of nailed it, you know, so we hadn't played for
ages and we sort of and then we never talked
about it afterwardside that we just but you know, I'm
personally I love touring and playing live. And Annie always
wasn't that keen on it, partly because the two hours

(01:50:28):
of singing those kind of songs pitch perfect and actually
running around the stage and doing all that. And also
she know, she's like I am, I'm sixty seven, so
she's a bit older now. Doesn't really want to go
flying around changing airports especially nowadays. Um but I actually,

(01:50:51):
I mean, of course, everybody now just has a residency
in Vegas and everybody comes to you nothing. You need
to do that. But that's what we don't really want,
the residency in Vegas, don't really. We never made decisions
about that way, like, well, that's where we'll make loads
of money, because I think we both like things about life,
you know, like how we want to live our life.
And that's why I Alwa was so terribly when the

(01:51:14):
markets crashed. I think, I think I'll live in France now,
you know. But I'm never sort of really worried about,
oh my god, how am I going to make some money?
Because I would just easily adapt to not having as
much money. Okay, you're right, let's go back. How do
you get involved with Tom Petty? Well? God, how did

(01:51:38):
I get involved with Tom Pei? Oh? I remember, I
don't even know if this is how it started. Ah.
I can't remember if I was involved with Bob Dylan
before Tom Petty or I introduced Dylan to the idea
of having the Heartbreakers as a band, because I think

(01:51:59):
that I think I did a conversation with Diller once
he was saying I never really had a band like
the band since the band, but I said, there's only one.
I could think it would be the Heartbreakers, right. But yeah,
Tom Well say, I'm almost having these crazy ideas about, um,
it's a film or TV shows whatever, and I've invented

(01:52:21):
this thing called Beyond the Groove for British television. Where
the idea was I'd have all these artists on it,
but they all had to be live or acting, you know,
acting parts, right, and it had like a little narrative
and it was really to show you know, Cadine Lange
and Tom Pettey and and they're all in and it

(01:52:43):
was shown on Channel four. I think it was six
one hour episodes or something. And I think that was
might have been the first time I approached him, and
maybe that was late and know when was don't come around?
Oh I know why it was, Yeah, because Jimmy Ivan
rang up while I was in the studio. I'd written
a song all right, this all goes back to the

(01:53:06):
San Francisco and the number one hit like stuff. So
in l A before that we'd played and Stevin Nicks
asked me afterwards we sort of hanging around in the
backstage area and said, hey, I'm having a party at
my house. Would you like to come. I didn't actually
notice Stevie Nicks, and I didn't know much about Fleetwood

(01:53:29):
Matt because while they were sort of peeking, we were
like it was like the Clash and the such bistols.
So I said, okay, why not? So she said, well,
I've got a car right here, and in the car
was her two backing singers. And I went off with
her and we got to this house in and it

(01:53:51):
must have been in Beverly Hills. Maybe I didn't know
where I was. Now, back in that time, you got imagining,
like no cell phones. I'd left my two itinery and
dressing room. I just gone off with these people. We
got to the house and go in. It's like this
massive sort of Gothic type mansion. And in my eyes anyway,

(01:54:13):
and then I'm sitting down, it was like no party,
not even any music on, and I can't find them,
the three of them, And so they've gone in a
bathroom cocaine. Well probably yeah, doing what I would call
marching pad. So so I was really naked. You know,

(01:54:34):
we'd flown from somewhere to l a play the show.
I would like still in the clothes, like you know,
and I was like this huge place. I went along
and I found a bedroom that was obviously nobody's, you know,
it was like a spare room. I just thought, I've
got a crash out. And in the morning at least

(01:54:57):
I had memorized our manager in New York's number office,
right and I could ring them and ask them where
are the bands and like. And so I went and
just crashed out and that. And then at about six
or just as the light was coming up, I heard
some noises and it was Stevie as if it was

(01:55:20):
like the middle of the day. So of opening these
different cupboards and going and trying on all these different
Victorian nightclothes or lacey kind of things, and I was like, okay,
so anyway, I don't I don't want to go on
too much about the rest, but basically we became friends.

(01:55:42):
And then I'll cut to the next bit. I wrote
this song in hotel room, and it was don't come
around here no more. The chorus, you know, saying don't
come around here, and when I'm playing a coral sitar guitar, yeah,
not the verses cora and I had played the whole

(01:56:02):
back and chat and the sit our guitar and everything.
And when I came back to l A had befriended
Jimmy Ivan and he said, hey, you should live with
me on the top of Mullholland so I did. And
then I didn't realize that he was trying to produce
a Stevie Nick's album. But I also didn't know that

(01:56:22):
they've been living together, but now they didn't. So this
was just learning the sort of the complicated where but
stuff that was going on. So anyway, I played it
at Jimmy went, oh god, this is doing a smash
for Stevie. Um come to the studio. So he gets
Steve with the studio. She comes, you know, about four

(01:56:45):
in the afternoon, and Jimmy goes, this is a smash DV.
She said, well, she already knew that I had kind
of written this song for her, but she wasn't saying anything.
And then we're around she started reciting sort of Shakespeare
in the mic on the verses. You know, well, it

(01:57:08):
might not have been Shakespeare, was Shakespearean language. Jamie keeps saying, Stephen, like, listen,
it's just just right. You know. The chorus comes in
and when she sang her voice on the chorus, it
sounded killer. But the verses will are thou and THEE
and all this stuff. And so we got around a
little piano and Jimmy started saying to Stevie, look, can

(01:57:32):
you stop doing that in front of my friend David,
you know, because it's embarrassing. You don't even know. She says,
what the fun we slept together the other night. That's
the only bit of that story. And Jimmy was like,
what he's like looking at me because I hadn't said anything,
but I didn't know that they had been living. It
was all just and then I was like, oh my god,

(01:57:56):
this is terrible, and she went marching off to the
bathroom him. And then Jimmy sort of calmed down and said,
I know I'm gonna do. I'm gonna ring up Tom Petty.
And so Tom Petty arrived at about an hour and
he introduced me and I said, hey, how are you doing?
Really did he knew I was? He says in a

(01:58:18):
book somewhere that he had said to Jimmy already I
want to do something different, well about this guy, But
I don't think you would have, you know, just such
an obscure choice of person I would be with anyway.
So he Jimmy plays the song to him and it's
like always a confusing song for him and the harbor,

(01:58:41):
as would Sita, but he had some Jack Daniels and
I don't think what else we had, But anyway, we
got on like a house on fire. He said, oh,
why don't you come back to my garage under the house,
I've got a studio. So we go there and then
Jimmy sees what's happening, so his tags along. He goes.

(01:59:03):
We all go at the garage and we decided to
play it with his band. But the band are looking
a bit sort of annoyed because this is nothing like
you know, the album, which is about Southern accidents and
and I you know, I'm from the northeast of English.
What do I know? All I knew is that I

(01:59:25):
love the song Refugee because it was the only song
that's slightly fitted in the punk era where I'd come
from in England. You know that he was the only
band that could play at a festival with the clash
on it, you know, so um he started to sort
of you know, you know, calm the band down, like

(01:59:47):
you know, and I said, listen, I've got an idea,
like obviously I've made this on this little fourth track
port to studio, I carried around with a drum machine
and a sit on. This doesn't sound anything like you guys,
I can tell it, but why not at the end
you come in right as the band, And then I said,
I had a whole idea about, Hey, it could be
like the Mad Hat's Tea Party and then you know

(02:00:09):
the whole madness of end up being the video. Yeah,
it would end up being a video. And so the
band came in and then Mike comes into this great
wah wild guitar solo, and Tom got sort of it
kind of broke a kind of spell because he had
gotten really sort of down in the middle of this
album and it was all getting it was taking a

(02:00:31):
long time, and and this all of a sudden, it
was just this is just not like anything on Earth, right,
and to this that I'd still be weird, like there's
this someone a Mad Hat's Tea Party video and drum
machine and it's the interesting thing was he was cold. Yeah,
you know, we'd done the album with Jimmy and they
did long after dark. This didn't sound like this and

(02:00:53):
this is what reinvigorated his career. Yeah, but you know
I understood for the Heartbreakers, they were like, what on
earth is this alien from out of space? But then
they started playing it live and it started to change
the whole show. And then Tom started coming out with
the top hat live and then it started to be

(02:01:15):
a different show. And then when they played the end bit,
they extended it and it became this amazing solo with mine.
Did you cut the final version his garage that day? Yeah? Okay,
since you keep bringing them up, how did you be dealing?
I was in a studio right in Los Angeles and

(02:01:38):
there was this Irish kid called Fergil Sharky from the Undertones,
and the lady receptions at the studio rang through and said,
Bob Dylan's on the line for Dave Stuart and I
just went, oh, this is Fergil because we were we're
always lacking about with each other, and I paid, I
went yeah, and this voice started speaking and I was like,

(02:02:03):
it's definitely not this is definitely Bob Jel and nobody
can imitate that voice, you know, And he he said,
you know, I can't really do his Swiss good. I
was just wondering, like you like movies and I was
like yeah, she says, yeah, yeah, I like movies. Do
you want to go get bite to eat? And I

(02:02:24):
was like okay. I went to meet him and he said,
you choose the place. So I was thinking, um, so
I knew these Thai people who had a restaurant sunset
called the Tali Side, and I said to them, look,
you know, can you just get me a look like
a tiny bit of it to the side, not in

(02:02:47):
the window or anything else. So they didn't built the
whole hedge kind of and they kept bringing out all
of the dishes instead of one, like you know, four
different tom car guys and stuff. But he didn't anything
about that. But we ordered some drinks and all that stuff.
And then he said and that's was my girlfriend at

(02:03:10):
the time. And after that he said, hey, do you
want to come with me to During the meal, he
was asking what kind of movies I liked? And you
know what, you know, what kind of music I listened
to and all the stuff we've done. Let's go back
a chapter. You're in Sunderland playing It's all Right by
your folk guitar. Yeah, you're out to dinner with Bob Dylan,

(02:03:31):
what's going through your mind? Well, I think it's a
bit like the thing when you know, I was explaining
your eyes realized you're gonna have a car crash, right,
So I think at the time you don't panic, it's
just afterwards you go fucking what happened. In fact, you
might find this funny, but there's a a TV series

(02:03:54):
started in Britain and the first episode it's called um
It's something. It's like something like about a rumor or something,
but it's basically an actor playing Bob Dylan coming to
visit me in England. And I won't tell you anymore.
I'll send you the link. It's very it's hilariously funny

(02:04:17):
and brilliantly done, brilliantly acted. But basically, yeah, it's kind
of odd because you know, he was very much It
wasn't really an interrogation. It was more like almost like
an interview. You wanted to know, like all this stuff.
But when I started talking about like, you know, blues

(02:04:37):
players that I liked and this and that and ones
that were quite obscure, and he was like, oh, they
really sort of livened up and he was talking about
all this stuff and and and then I talked about
you know, French filmmakers and all sorts of different Italian
filmmakers and and it's like, yeah, right, well you want

(02:04:58):
to come to this place with me? And I said okay,
So I followed. It was like going miles easterly somewhere
I don't know where I was, And we pulled up
at the back of this sort of bumpy car park
and there's a door and we get to the door
and he does like knock on the door and I'm thinking,

(02:05:22):
where are we and the door arms and this is
God's own us truth. It's just so like a Bob
Dylan's song. It's the door ups as as a very
small person in a wedding dress, Mexican lady, and she
goes Bobby and I'm like okay. And as we were

(02:05:44):
walking and he says, drink out of the bottle, so
I said okay. So we're going there and we're drinking
bottles of beer and then it's quite a beautiful other
woman comes and sits next to us talking and he goes,
how about we start shooting tomorrow? And I'm like it's

(02:06:05):
like two in the morning. I'm like, you mean today?
He goes, yeah, today this this girl's going to be
in it, and I'm like, okay, so what's it about?
And then so we just well, like I was like
scrambling the next morning and I found okay and shoot

(02:06:27):
something in a church right on the corner of like Highland, right,
and he said, oh yeah, I want to do this
song called no it's not called tight Connection to My Heart,
it's called when the Night Comes Falling from the sky, right.
And then I want to do the snow one called

(02:06:49):
Emotionally Yours all in the same day, and I'm like,
the one's a ballad and ones like this, and so
I'm thinking he means a video. He keeps calling them
phil for it because and then they only said I
hate making videos. So on the one when the Night
Comes Falling from the skies, literally me and him, and

(02:07:10):
I got Clembert on drums and Fergel who was in
the studio playing tambourine, and the girl who he said,
we'll be in it like miming you know, when the
Night comes falling, right, So and just filmed it like
a performance, but we start off in a bus. I
made it like how mad it was that nobody knows

(02:07:32):
what was happening. I had Steve from Talk and Heads,
the percussion player, and we go on the bus and
we go there in emotionally years. He says, now I
want a girl to play Elizabeth Taylor in this one.
This is like three in the afternoon, like ah okay.

(02:07:52):
So so then he said, yeah, I want to I
want to have an argument with it in the song
so you can see it online and it's like, so
there's just a piano in the middle of the room
like coming through the window and he sings, you know,
emotionally ours and then it goes to a bridge section

(02:08:16):
and it's outside not far from the church. We walked
across from around the corner and I just got the
girls just swinging on a rope like Rember right, and
he's just sitting at the tree like and they're sort
of having an argument without speaking, and then she storms
off down the street. This is all done in like

(02:08:39):
like zero time to get ready for it. And so
after that we became friends and he came to England
and he messed around in the church. We never Everybody
kept saying you produced, some ve done and I said no,
we never did anything apart from just jamming making up
stuff and being sort of friends really, and then when

(02:09:00):
he came to England another time, he said, hey, why
don't we make another one their films like Tomorrow and okay,
So I hired a top hat from the BBC. So
when he came around at twelve o'clock, all I had
was to eight million meter Sindy cameras and I saw
a pat so he put the top hat on. We

(02:09:20):
went down Camden Lock Market because I knew the area
and on a house boat and I just decided to
film see what would happen if I had a long
lens across the other side of the road and Dylan
just walked around with the top hat on. And of
course what happened was Peter looked like the scene it goes.
It was like whoa, or they would start following and

(02:09:43):
it became like the pie Piper. And then I lay
on the ground and filmed them walking over me like
the pie Piper. And this we didn't even know we're
going to do this till he pulled out a trap
that it recorded. This is the weird thing he had
forgotten that I got a studio putting his garage from
up at on the top of you know where he

(02:10:06):
lives on just past Blabu. I got a friend of
mine and I got some equipment and just sort of
put a studio there for him, which he never ever
used it, but it was, you know, a multi track
track soundcraft studio. He could record there, and because he
was saying he hated the recording process too, as well

(02:10:27):
as making videos, and so then he said, ha, I
used that studio, And I said, and he'd used just
two tracks on it to record acoustic guitar and voice.
And there was that whole album Blood in My Eyes,
and we did that video to Blood in my Eyes,
just shot on eight millie sydy camera. I had too,

(02:10:50):
but like I was trying to get a shot to
cut away and this my brother in law went past
for a second. I said, quick shoot with this camera
out and he goes, why, I said, that's Bob done
over there. He goes, fuck. He said, okay, so he
should say, and I'm filming, and then he says, hey,
I have to give you a camera back because I'm
getting the tiles from my mom's kitchen. And I'm like, sucking,

(02:11:15):
I know, but that's very sort of english. Singly, well,
I have to go because I'm doing this. But I
love that video. It turned out great. Um, but yeah,
do you maintain contact with him? Well, yeah, so sometimes
my past messages back because you never know where he is.

(02:11:37):
But jeff Rozen, you know, we passed messages back and
forth fire jeff Rozen. Yeah, and he's always been great
and like obviously the messages are the things that I
passed to him. The fact he said, actually the funniest thing,
the fastest Bob has ever replied to anything. Well, when

(02:12:00):
I asked him if you could make some wrought iron
gates for my house in Jamaica, you know, just like it,
just like yeah, like you could probably turn down, you know,
would you like to accept the sortle Nobel prize but
it'll make the gates? Well I engage. Yeah, okay, because

(02:12:24):
I understand why you say, because like him, you know,
you're doing a lot of metal work, and love's getting
all broken up old stuff and turning them into things
and all that stuff. So I understand. But yeah, okay,
why is it that you are become friendly with all
these people? Why do you think that is? Um mm hmm,

(02:12:52):
I don't know. I don't know. It's hard to answer
that question. I mean, they could be varying things. One
you could say someone so talented, they're tracking them down
for the out. But even when you listen to you,
you're a good time. Even when I met you, like
a year ago, you're very friendly. You you you treat
everybody like an equal, etcetera. But you know, it's a
little bit like the movie's like you talk about that

(02:13:13):
you fit in anywhere. Do you think it's something about
your personality or people respect your work or what do
you think that? I think, probably now that I'm older,
it's because I'm very enthusiastic about stuff and that's very infectious.
So um, and that I don't particularly want anything from

(02:13:37):
the person and love. Successful people are often approached because
somebody wants something, right, So I'm just really enthusiastic. And
I suppose having worked with lots of different people and
it being such a small industry, um, so well would

(02:14:00):
get around, Oh this is this kind of personal This
is an enthusiastic person. You might probably have a you know,
good session or but I don't even do session. I say,
I never approach anybody to try and write with anybody.
I've never said to my publisher, well, why aren't I
writing a song with them, or I've never said a
record company, hey, I want to produce this band, not one,

(02:14:24):
So it's um that probably two people seems odd because
I've never thought of anything as a career, like, oh,
I'll be a record producer. Now what the record producers do?
When you make records and then once they're write, you
look for the next band you're going to make a

(02:14:44):
record with and you're being a producer. And I've never thought, oh,
I'm just a songwriter, so right, I must find somebody
that writes songs with or write songs. I just actually,
I'm just doing whatever I want to do. Okay, let's
switch to yours you deuced? Or we're one of the
producers on the last Stevie Nicks record, which is on

(02:15:05):
the one I produced, the one before and then the
last one. Yeah, okay, but the last one with secret
Love and all that other stuff, that's the best album
since the first one. Okay, especially that title track. I've
listened to that dozens of times. It's not enough. How
did you come to work with her again? All right?

(02:15:25):
So what happened to us having you know, known Stevie
jo in the eighties and then lost touch a bit
and then sometime I can't remember. It might have been
in the nineties. UM Jimmy said they're going to do
an HBO. It might have been two thousands, even early

(02:15:49):
two thousand's. They want to do a TV show UM
in partnership with HBO, and would I be the per
us and that interviews various people for it. So HBO
made UM a pilot. They want to make a pilot,

(02:16:09):
and Jimmy said, oh, why don't we do the pilot
with Stevie. I said, okay, she wants to do it,
so then we spoke on the phone. Then we were
laughing and talking on the phone, and she says, yeah, yeah,
this will be great. I love to do it. So
we made that pilot with Stevie, which nobody's ever seen,
and then we made a real one with you two

(02:16:31):
with one oh and edge where actually, if you could
see it uncut, it's funny because we get absolutely plastered
because somebody had the bright idea of halfway through the
interview with an audience in the break, they bring us
jokes of Margarita. This is like three or four in
the afternoon, and of course after that the interview goes

(02:16:56):
Haywire and lots of things that are probably off, you know,
like we're cut out, We're really interesting that Bono and
Edge were talking about. But I think that aired, and
then I did a one with Ringo where he shows
how he plays left handed and why you did that

(02:17:16):
drum feel like this and all that stuff and and
so that's how connected. Okay, So what do you think
about the music business in the Internet age, because certainly
radically different from it was in the pre Internet era. Well,
I think what's happened is the barbel is slid completely,

(02:17:38):
almost vertically up and down. So the middle class of
the music business, meaning all the bands that could get
by by just telling you know a number of albums
that allowed them to go and play live, I mean
that kind of disappeared. And all of the artists who

(02:17:58):
became enormously successful very quickly, like you know, well quickly comparatively,
but like the Taylor Swift State hearings and people are
that are earning as much as the Beatles did in
their whole career in a very short space of time
because of all the ways in which they can perform
now and all of the ways they can put stuffat

(02:18:20):
and the brands and everything, so you know all of
the brand attachments and stuff. So then you've got the
ones even below the middle class that slid down to
the young starting out who are getting advised. Like I
read something the other day, I think it was a
CD baby put something saying, oh, if you're an independent

(02:18:44):
artist wanting to release a single in here's a few
suggestions of what to do. And it was about nine
pages long, and I was thinking, like, even for myself,
who understands just about most things about you know, marketing, Internet, everything,
I would just be bored after about the third line
of it and just give up and say, you know them,

(02:19:06):
I might as well go back and just start working
at the shipyards, you know. So um, I think it's
an absolutely absolute nightmare crisis for artists that's been going
on for quite a while in certain areas of the
art form, you know, and not in music definitely, because

(02:19:28):
we were the first to go cosse MP three's were
so smaller download but generally UM writers and journalism and
in many areas it's just become the barbell is right
turned vertically instead of horizontally. And I think if I

(02:19:50):
was a new artist then starting out now I'd be
so lost as to where to start. The noise that's
been generated through all of the people you know, eating
raw chili and getting millions of views on YouTube and like,
you know, just all of the things that's happening that people.

(02:20:11):
I suppose I would call it like the meat. When
it changed to being me, we kind of like, hang on,
I think I could do something and you know, go
on YouTube and do a makeup tutorial or do this
or do that. Um, it's confused with the people who

(02:20:35):
are actually I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that,
and there's some great people on their helping addiction and
all sorts of stuff, but it's jumbled up with people
who are trying to put out art or music and
there's no sort of division. So if there was a division,
they tried to make one, like you know, YouTube for
artists or Spotify for artists. But all of these things

(02:20:59):
they don't realize is because look, when the mob was
running things, to tell you the truth, it was a
lot easier because like, at least they like music would
come down the studio and give you drugs and money.
But you know you don't get that from Google, right,
the Google's like not going to pop in the studio,
go hey, you'll do. And by the way, he's some coke.
It's like now, it's just like when your money is

(02:21:23):
disappearing into you know, some vacuous space and then they
give in their annual returns of billions and schoollions and
the tax was all avoided by all these schemes through
Ireland and or whatever. And I'm just looking at it
all and you know, um from a perspective of like

(02:21:47):
a nineteen year old kid or whatever who's written a
great song and he lives in Nebraska, and and I'm
thinking it must just look like sort of like insanity.
So I my suggestion to any of these kind of
kids starting at is, look, I think the same thing

(02:22:08):
might work is when I was a kid in the
folk club. As you go and try and find somewhere
to play, and you sing your songs to that small
audience of ten, and then maybe he's twenty, and then
maybe he's fifty. And forget about thinking that you've got
like ninety six friends on Instagram or whatever. Just like

(02:22:30):
go in your local town and then go to the
town next door and the town next door. Somehow, Now
that I'm creating some things that I think might help
because there's so many ridiculous problems to play. You know,
you used to actually get even when I played in
a folk club, they would give me fifty pence some
free beer. Now they're so, yeah, you can play here. No, no,

(02:22:55):
we don't pay you, you can just you're allowed to
play here. And so every we're all on the line. Musicians,
young upcoming musicians and guys have been doing it for ages,
but now they can't sell any records and the streaming
is very low income. All of those people, all of

(02:23:17):
the the ways in which they would make a living
has been kind of stripped away now with the we're
talking here while there's been the outbreak of coronavirus. So
some people are going, well, we don't sell records, but
we can play live now all the concerts are council. Now.
I was meant to be playing from today actually at

(02:23:40):
the Grammy Museum, just to talk in a performance and
like so I had my drama fly from Philadelphia, not
from Cleveland. Surrey and Judith Hill who was going to
we all rehearsed yesterday and there was guitar tics and
roadies and you know the amount of people you have
to do something and then we're not doing it. Now

(02:24:03):
put that on a scale times a million all around
the world, whether you're a group in India or Thailand,
or France or Italy or it's just that's been stripped
away too, so nobody knows. When you know, the world's
given the all clear, which I don't imagine a siren

(02:24:24):
going off soon going everybody can come. So but I mean,
you know this, the same problem has happened to car
workers in the car industry or stuff all over the world.
I think the one thing that people as a misconception
about artists is I'm talking about you know, musical artists,

(02:24:49):
is that soon as they put a single out or
an EP or a video, people think they're making an income.
Now they're not. It probably borrowed the money off their
anti or their dad and they're probably isn't their dad's
car and like to try and get to a gig,
and if the dad has a car, I mean it's
like it's it's just not easy and it's getting more

(02:25:12):
and more tangled and complicating that it's just because all
the corporations gobbled each other up. It started I'll tell
you the beginning for me when I realized this is
the beginning at the end. And it was the middle
of the eighties and the head of the record label
changed and a guy came in from Hurts rent a
car to run our c A Records, and my manager

(02:25:36):
was Gary Kerr first, who managed to talking B fifty two.
You know it was, yeah, it was like kind of
semi gangster, but but it great taste in music, the
B fifty twos, talking heads, the Rabones, rhythmics. And he
just said, I just can't talk to him. You're just

(02:25:57):
like freaking out there. Just can't talk to the guy
about music because he didn't understand and know anything. And
I was going in to deliver an album called Be
Yourself Tonight and he didn't want to go in there.
Gary was like, I just give up, and so I said,
I want to go and meet him and give the album.
So he was a huge Colombian guy, and he and

(02:26:21):
shook my hand nearly broke my fingers and he said
Stewart loved the album, just like Ghostbusters, and I was like,
like Ghostbusters, it's like what anyway? I thought, Okay, this
is just the weirdest thing. And then you know, the
whole murder case where his son's murder him and his wife.

(02:26:44):
And then I'll find out through various people who been
involved in all of those stories, like, oh, yeah, that's why.
Because Tom Petty was confused why we were selling massive
amount of albums around the world and the medium amount
in America, but selling out everywhere, cover of rollings to
everything you can imagined. And it was because he was

(02:27:06):
printing them in Colombia and selling them through the Peacher's
chain or something and putting it in the soft porn
industry and laundering it through a talcompared to company and like,
and I was kind of right when I walked in
and thought this is the beginning of the end. It
was actually when he said he had an idea, and
it was we were going to be the CD was

(02:27:29):
going to be on the top of a giant sized
drink from a Hamburger chain, like pressed into the top,
and I was like, I'm not sure about that. Yeah,
And so it's just went pretty much downhill from there.
When the Internet happened among these people that sort of

(02:27:51):
early on kind of new things were coming, and I
had friends who were like Internet sort of obsessed geeks
in the the nineties, you know, and so when it
was by the time it was two thousand and two
thousand and one, and I could see what was going
to happen. I actually I organized a meeting. This is crazy,

(02:28:15):
but I think a quote in my book by the chairman, know,
the board of Deutsche Bank, a guy called Michael Philip,
who said, you know, I organized a meeting, and at
that meeting turned up was like, you know, lou Reid
Stevie Wonder, Dr Dre's guy. I can't remember anyway, you know,

(02:28:42):
George Olivia Harrison, I can imagine all around one table
and I did as this talk about the internet and
how we have to sort of somehow take control over something.
And he put a quote in my book he said,
there's two talk for hours about the future of digital

(02:29:02):
digitalization and the incident he says at a banker. I
didn't know what the hell he was talking about. He said.
Five years later we all found out. But it was
like I could just see what was going to happen.
And I had created this thing called fab you know,
the first startist bank. Like this has to be some
kind of bank vault, not literally for money for stuff,

(02:29:26):
otherwise it's just going to be all over the place, right,
and and you have no control over any taste. Right.
So we make a video of sweet Dreams, and that's
a video that was on the TV and you could
see it, and we had control over the look and
feel of it. Now you can type sweet dreams in

(02:29:47):
Google and there will be hundreds of videos come up,
and it's be anything from the dance girls dancing in
a Betha to it to all sorts of of unimaginable things,
you know, and it's like you have to almost just
go well, okay, Like but imagine if you're a painter

(02:30:10):
and just allowed like a hundred people coming out. I
think I'll change that paint over that and that should
be dark brand, you know, not red. What the hell
are you doing? Like Picasso? You know? Okay, So today
Spotify Top fifty is mostly hip hop. What's your view
on hip hop? Uh? Well, funny enough, I love loads

(02:30:31):
of I've always been very eclectic, so I love loads
of hip hop music. I love lots of rap music,
but obviously I'm drawn towards the ones that have kind
of interesting lyrics to me, because I I do like
loads of the beats that they create in hip hop
music and all the all the transitional beats. I mean,

(02:30:55):
I always was crazy about reggae music from the beginning,
and I love lots of different Afro rhythms and King
Sunnia Day and so when hip hop started experimenting and
now you know trip hop and you know, all the
different kinds of beats, I like it, but I'm not

(02:31:16):
too keen on. You know, the tracks that just keep
repeating the same misogynistic stuff are more keen on. Um.
You know when they're saying something you know and which
you know. There was some great n w A and

(02:31:36):
when all that first came out, it was a very
exciting moment in time, a bit like punk music coming out. Um.
But again, what's happened is there's such an easy way
to upload everything. So there's an avalanche of people making
stuff in their bedroom on their laptop and then just

(02:32:00):
putting it out everywhere YouTube, saying claud wherever you want,
there's this stuff. So it's it's a labyrinth. You know.
I've got four kids, all mad about music. Three of
them are musicians, and you know they they have been
basically exposed to this since they were bought right, so

(02:32:24):
they can like with through all sorts of stuff and
eliminate all this stuff. And but they still are overwhelmed.
They'll say they're overwhelmed by everything. They're overwhelmed by the news,
by the amount of bombardment of things coming at them
in music, and and they actually struggle, like now what

(02:32:45):
to do? They just want to do the real thing
and be the real thing. Listen, as bad as it
is for them, it's for the customer. You're completely overwhelmed,
and uh, let's go. So in the time you have
left here on the plane, what's the dream? Well, everything
I'm doing really music is the intel inside of it.

(02:33:09):
So I'm actually trying to create stuff with other people
that helps the balance of that. Barbella was talking about
tips lightly that way again, Um, I don't want to
give away too much of the stuff I'm doing, but
like it's to do with them ideas that changed the way.

(02:33:36):
Oh just get to be able to play live. That
doesn't cost them so much to do it, but they
can still travel around, although that just changed in the
last the last three days, you know. But it's usually
to do with songs and what songs, the power of songs,

(02:33:57):
what songs can do, how songs can help our music
and help in various situations and things to do with
um political social, political situations. But I only like to
use things that I understand, which goes back to music
as the intel inside. So you know, Um, for instance,

(02:34:26):
not long ago, there was a film called A Private
War and about Marie Colvin and you know journalists in France,
and and a friend of mine and Just Stones actually
is portrayed in the film. He was the guy who
was with her and worked with her and everything. And
he wrote the words to a song called take Good

(02:34:46):
Care and we recorded and we gave it to Amnesty.
And then it's just doing stuff in music all the time.
Like I used to work with anit Erotic in trying
to get Herman Wallace freed from the Angle of three
in prison, which eventually he did get freed, but he'd
already had cancer at that point. But you've been thirty

(02:35:08):
years in solitary confinement. Um the stuff I did, you know,
years ago, creating Nelson Mandela's four six four, and then
he used music as the way to get it a
bit of attention. But I like doing this stuff beforehand.

(02:35:29):
That's preparing it so that it doesn't fizzle out like
a firework, you know. Um, And I just continue doing
that stuff. I mean, I love writing songs, I must admit,
and I actually have gone back to I didn't tell
you one bit at the beginning. But like my dad's

(02:35:51):
I give him a lot of credit from blowing my
mind with music when I was about four or five,
because he had a tiny little workshop and in it
he built these little wooden speakers. He got to speak
assent from Germany, Grundy, he must have written away to them,
and he built these lovely oak cabinets, and then he

(02:36:13):
had made it himself, like all this record deck and
put it inside this wooden thing. I didn't know what
the hell it was. He just wouldn't let me in
the workshow because the last time I was in there,
I put the drill on the cat by the stake,
and the cat was spinning around and round when he
came in but not knowing what I was doing. But

(02:36:33):
about eight o'clock in the morning one morning, when I
was about five, this whole little Coronation Street type house
just exploded with music. Because my dad had bought every
Rogers and Hammerstein album and then he just put it on,
and I think it was the King and I or
something like that. And I'd never heard music loud and

(02:36:59):
with such amazing quality, and so I had forgotten this
for years, and then it I remembered why am I
was singing like bits of flower drums, song and sounds
specific and the King and I, And then I remember
that's what it was. Every morning you would sing along
with him and put them on. You know, we all

(02:37:19):
that's our error. We all grew up with it. James
Taylor has a new album. The last track is you
know Sorry with a fringe on top. It's like our roots. Meanwhile,
this has been wonderful, Dave. You know you're loquacious and
very insightful. We could talk forever, but we're gonna go
back into the rain. Great to have you here, Thanks
for doing it. I just stole the title. If you're

(02:37:41):
right there, Back into the rain absolutely till next time.
This is Bob left set