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January 23, 2025 114 mins

He just released a new album, "Dear Life."

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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the barber of Certified That.
My guest today is David Great. David, you have a
new album. Tell me about it.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yeah, it's called Dear Life. It's been in the pipeline,
the creative pipeline, quite a while. It's it's it's birth
process has been somewhat dislocated by the complications of COVID
and all the sort of touring backlog and life backlog
that happened. So it's it's it's a massive work because

(00:44):
I think I'm trying to sort of clear the decks.
So this is sort of chapter one of the stuff
that I've been doing for the last few years. It's
a record that, I mean, I don't know why some
records come out more sort of energized, or I say
about these songs that they were born standing up. They've
seemed very direct, melodic and and moving out to the listener.

(01:08):
So some of my stuff maybe a little bit more
introspective or oblique or just slightly more abstracted. This record
is not suffering depth wise for its immediacy, but I
feel it has this kind of melodic principle and a
very direct engagement. It's straight to camera as I would

(01:30):
say as well. So I use the kind of short
story writer's imaginative trick of using other voices, not just
a straight autio but altobiographical approach. I kind of use
lots of different angles to get different views of the
same mountain. Twenty views of Mount Fuji by Hockasei's it's

(01:51):
it's lots of different views of life. Maybe as life
starts to progress, as the view begins to change. So that,
in an that's what it's all about.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Okay, let's go back. You say it was long time
in the development. Is that because of COVID? Be a
little more specific, please, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
No. I started the process in twenty nineteen in full
knowledge that in March of twenty twenty I was going
to be embarking on the White Ladder Anniversary Tour, which
was going to take most of twenty twenty out of
the equation, So I knew I would be sort of
rejoining the album at the end of that, But of
course life had other ideas, and we did all the

(02:32):
prep and we rehearsals and the production rehearsals, and then
the day just before the first show, we locked down
and it was a long time before the tour was viable.
So it then changed everything and the real star burst
of song writing I had written a few songs at

(02:53):
the end of twenty nineteen happened at the end of
COVID when I've had a zoom call with my managers
and agents and we decided that the tour was going
to have to go ahead in early twenty twenty two.
Because you could no longer hold other dates. It wasn't
possible to sort of hedge your bets. You had to

(03:14):
either do it or not do it and wait another
eighteen months if you weren't going to go. Then there
were so many tours in a holding pattern, and that
kind of gave me this kind of clarity that I
had five months before rehearsal started. During COVID, I, like
many creative people, thought I'll go down to my studio
in the basement and I'm going to start making music

(03:35):
while everyone else is wondering what to do with themselves.
But eventually the pressure and the strangeness of this experience
bore down on me and it became sort of ridiculously
unhealthy actually to indulge my creative principles when there was
something much bigger to address, which was life itself. Finally,

(03:56):
the horizon had been canceled. What we just had was
the day, the time, and the people, and I'd luckily
had my family around me. So after a couple of
months of writing songs and trying to press record and
run in and record things, I just took the pressure
off and decided to just exist with my family and
partly that fund of experience and actually letting the field

(04:20):
go fallow I think had a huge effect, positive effect
in terms of the writing and the emotional coherence of
what then happened. So some of the lyrics and some
of the songs relate directly to that experience, but I
think just as a whole. Anyway, I got to the
end of twenty one, as I say, and we had
this Zoom meeting and it was clear that the tour

(04:41):
was going ahead in May or not or not at all.
So with this clarity in mind, I just began to work,
and I worked in a way I've never worked before.
It wasn't that new songs came, which is always something
that will happen if you put yourself at the cold
face and keep turning up. It was that the song
the Half Finished things which I've always got hundreds of

(05:02):
the ones I was just picking up, I was just
finishing them, and it was an extraordinary experience. I've completed
thirty or forty things in the space of a few months,
and that's a hell of a pace for me. So
it was informed by this whole relationship to not doing
it so that the making of this record. So sometimes

(05:26):
time can be a collaborator. Putting records out always takes
longer than you wanted to. In this case, there was
a great, big two year hole in the middle. But
in the end it's all been in favor of the music.
It's all worked out well.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Okay, So since you decided that working in the studio
was counter productive, how did you cope with COVID.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Well, I just I tried to just be I mean,
I've been telling myself perhaps somewhat dishonestly. Or did I
have the courage to just stop be with my family?
The elephant in the room is that I love these
guys very much, but it's always work that comes first,
and there's always something burning in my imagination that I've

(06:09):
got to get to, or there's an event or a
tour or a deadline that I'm working towards so they're
just accommodated really a lot of the time in my head. Anyway,
in amongst all that stuff that I chose, they were
getting into their late teens. It was a chance to
sort of be together with my wife and my children.
I've been saying for years, Jesus, I need to stop

(06:31):
touring and just be for a while, And finally I
was being made to do it. And of course the
first thing I wanted to do was find something else
to do, so I kind of it took a while
to to see the elephant in the room, which was
that God, this stuff really matters. And I think there
was something that happened in COVID that was there was

(06:53):
many things that happened that were extraordinary. I know it
was a horrendous experience on so many levels for so
many people. But death in our culture is absent or
at least postponed as a reality in most kind of
conversations and dialogue. And here we were looking at daily
stats and hearing stories and suddenly it was the center

(07:15):
of attention. Not only that, but we were robbed of
this kind of must do something, the constellations of action.
We had to just contemplate the bare realities of changing
seasons and the tick of the clock and people being
in life and death situations. And it was a very
contemplative experience. But anyway, I felt personally very enriched by

(07:36):
spending time with my family. We watched films, we played games,
we did stuff. It was like a long Christmas holiday
for a while.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
And have you gotten COVID?

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah? I got it in twenty one, and actually I
got it in twenty two, just before the tours, so
luckily I was nicely immunized before it all kicked off.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
And when you actually went on the tour in twenty two,
to what degree did you have COVID precautions so that
the band or you didn't get sick and you didn't
have to cancel deats?

Speaker 2 (08:16):
We didn't have any, to be honest, Bob, there was
by that point. I mean you were standing in a
room of however many thousand people bellowing at you. I
don't think on a sort of virus prevention level there
was much chance of avoiding things. What happened was that

(08:37):
one of the band got COVID during the tour, and
it was then passed on to all the other members.
Of the band apart from me. So one particular show
we had to do with everybody being isolated from everybody
else crew band. It was quite crazy, and I was
the only person who was actually healthy. So it affected

(08:58):
the tour in that way. But in terms of the
precautions when you're living on a tour bus together and
I mean you're constantly just in these situations, it was
it was very difficult. Like a lot of COVID it
was good in theory that you can do things, but
separation wasn't really possible. So we obviously we did We
didn't throw caution to the wind. We were kind of
mindful of what the dangers were, but I think at

(09:23):
that point people were restless anyway to reconnect. It gave
it provided the tour with an incredible burst of energy
for us who'd been denied the thing that we do,
but also for the crowds to do a feel good
thing like that as well. I mean to be gratifying
everyone in that fashion. It was just what they wanted
and what they needed probably, so it gave this electric

(09:45):
electricity to everything, a sort of extra charge. So that
was quite remarkable to be a part of.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Let's Go Back you say your work is always number
one in your family. We can talk about that generally,
like hey, I have to go on the road, But
as a practical matter, how does that manifest itself. It's
like all of a sudden, you get an idea and
you go, I gotta go into my room. I gotta
cut it. Or your wife says, hey, you've been working

(10:16):
for twenty days straight. You got to stay at dinner.
Tell me what it's actually like.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
Well, the way I deal with it, Bob, is that
I compartmentalize. So I do either of those things. Most
of my life is organizational. It's not creative at all.
It's very hard to find the time for pure creativity.
But when I get into a writing mode and I
say to everyone, right, stop emailing me, stop bothering me.

(10:44):
I'm going to be writing a record. Now, I'm recording,
leave me alone. And then if I get three clear
days a week, I think I'm doing well. For it's
superb There's so many other things to attend to. So
I would normally work like a working day, get up early,
get into the studio early. I like the fresh mind
of the morning, and I would work through till seven o'clock.

(11:06):
Maybe and stop, and that would be my working day.
And as I say, Monday to Thursday if I can
get that, if I can't, and Tuesday to Thursday, you know,
making this record. Sometimes I went away and that was
another part of it, to the countryside and would work
longer hours. I'd work into the night, and that was

(11:28):
actually very beautiful, so still so quiet. Some extraordinary things
happened in those spaces. But no, basically I try and
just be quite disciplined. So if I have an idea,
it generally just has to wait until I have the
time to explore it. I mean, now, I've just been
writing lyric notes down this afternoon. A few things came
into my mind, and then a musical idea came to

(11:49):
me while I was practicing. Because I got the tour
obviously starting for this new record, I've got to get
myself up to speed. So as accidents still happened on
the peyboard or on the guitar, and oh, that's interesting,
I must remember this. And then a little melody came
and I thought, actually that works with this lyric, and
blah blah blah, I just have to make a little
note of it and come back to it. So it's

(12:09):
it's it's it's not possible. It's like I work a
sort of milk round and I can get to be
a musician, you know when I've finished.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
Okay, let's say it's Monday to Thursday and you're working.
Can your family interrupt you? Or do you turn off
all your devices? And everybody knows David's working, leave them alone?

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Now that kids will just interrupt you. They say things
like world shattering importance, Like Dad, the Wi Fi isn't working,
you know, I mean the world, the world's come to
an end. Life being what it is, there's sort of
digital hell. We've all been plunged into that. There's enough.
There's always something going wrong, So no, there's there's if

(12:55):
Amazon aren't tapping on your door or something, there's always
some bloody interruption. So no, I think, as I say,
broadly speaking, yes, if I said no, I'm in this mode,
that they wouldn't come down. I'd be left to my
own devices during the day. Now, I don't have a
studio at home because I've moved house. So I've got
a studio just up the road, a few miles up

(13:16):
the road in West London. So when I'm there, I'm there,
so that in a way, that's a lot more straightforward.
When my studio was in the house, it was deeply problematic,
so children would have parties in there and all kinds
of things, you know, So it was it was, it was.
It was a complex. Having my life squashed together with

(13:36):
the house above the studio sounds ideal, but actually it
was problematic. So I'm happier with this separation that I
have now in some ways.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
So why did you move house?

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Because kids are sort of getting older and leaving home.
And we lived in a nice leafy part of London
called Hampstead, and it's all very nice, got lovely schools
and beautiful. The heath is what it's famous for, where
Keats and Coleridge used to wander and compose their rhymes.
But it's really a bit boring. So we've decided to

(14:10):
move right into the center of town. So we've kind
of we've moved into w one, trying to make our
lives a bit more interesting and a bit more cultural cultural,
I suppose, like, so you can just walk out and
do stuff, go to the shops, restaurants, theaters, galleries. Not
that I'm spending all my time doing that, but you
certainly can. And I like being just walking distance to everything,

(14:31):
whether it's Selfridges or the Tait. I can kind of
just basically just wander to it. So that's been the change.
I think I wouldn't have enacted that change if we
didn't have a second home. We're lucky enough to have
the ultimate luxury, which is a country place. I've got
a little house up on the coast in Norfolk, right
by the beach, so I get all the fresh air
and wilderness I can deal with when I'm up there,

(14:54):
and then I come back to London and I can
live in a different way.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
How many kids do you have?

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Two? I got two.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
Girls in their presently what age.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
Twenty two and twenty and are.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
They still live in their house? Are they out? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Exactly. Well, one of them's kind of half living here,
half not living here. But I think it's a lot
nicer to live here than it is in her crappy
student flat. So the other ones just gone back to
university this morning. She's gone back to Glasgow, so she's
there during the terms and she comes back for holidays,

(15:42):
so they're kind of here some of the time. It's
a lot nicer being at home than it is in
your little flat, that's for sure.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
And you know, there's a TV show in America that
you may or may not be familiar with call Family
Ties from the eighties nineties where the parents are hippies
and Michael J. Fox is very conservative. What are your
kids like relative to you and your wife?

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Well, I think just the way that they are as
they've always been very conversational children, So they're highly articulate
and sociable and not intimidated by adults or other people.
They will be very chatty people, good, able to speak
much better than I am, certainly, So that's sort of

(16:36):
what they're like. What are they like politically culturally? Well
that they've they're in this touch of a finger generation
for everything they want, so they have a different relationship
to things. It's interesting. I mean I haven't protected them
from what was basically, you know, the open sewer of

(16:56):
the internet and social media. They've been a how to
ramble because I guess I feel that they need to
know how to survive this this world. So they've been left,
they've had phones, they've had all this stuff. They've been
exposed to god knows what. So but they have this
different relationship to music and culture, and obviously there's different

(17:20):
political opinions. So identity politics has become such a huge thing.
It's something we all disagree about in our family.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
So they're there.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
They're My youngest is very political. Ye, this not as much,
although recent events have made her more so. So it's
that they're they're not dissimilar to us. They're just have
a different generation and they view certain things very differently.
I think when I was growing up, music was it
was more than what you listen to, what kind of

(17:51):
reflected on you. It was it was actually your identity
because choosing what you didn't like was just as profound
as what you did. So if you were a mode
or a rocker, or if you were a punk, or
you were this, if you're you know, if you like
talking heads and this and that, but you don't like
Joranne Joanna, you were you positioned yourself, glued yourself together.

(18:12):
If you discovered Leonard coh and John Martin, Nick Drake,
these are the things that became what you were not
internally and also sort of your character sort of thing.
I think it was more tribal, it was rara, and
now it's like everything's available all the time. It's it's
not quite the same.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
So if your kids turned you on to music or
turned you off to music.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Well, of course they listened to all They listened to
all kinds of stuff, which to me is it's just
lays it on too thick, maybe you know, moaning about this,
that or the rest. So but yeah, they've they've turned
me on to quite a few things because they have

(19:02):
very diverse listening. It they're being they're connecting through I
don't know if it's algorithmic, but they're certainly accelerating their
their knowledge and contact with music through TV through sort
of applied versions of the music. They find it in
places and then they pass it around like so they
have quite a kind of quite catholic taste in some ways.

(19:25):
So yeah, I've picked up on a few tracks which
I really really like. So but generally one of the
problems is we don't share our listening. In the old days,
the parents used to have to watch Top of the
Pops with the kids and go, what's this rubbish? You know,
the crazy world of Arthur Brown fire. You know, he

(19:47):
should he should get a job, you know, like they
used to say things like that, and you know, these days,
we don't have that common experience. There isn't a thing
that everyone does to listen to music, So you get
to hear what they're listening to. You just occasionally hear
it blasting out of the shower or something, or they've
stolen your bow speaker and they've taken over the living

(20:08):
room and you get to hear something. But you know,
I think I heard they were the other days that
they were playing some Velvet Morning by what you McCall
it and Nancy Sinatra and what's his name? I thought, well,
I said, this is a great track. I said, have
you listened to this record? This is a great record.
They were like, no, we just know this track. I'm like, well,

(20:29):
when you listen to the whole thing?

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Okay, To what degree are you a student of the game?
To what degree do you know what the ticket prices are?
To what degree are you concerned with praises? To what
degree do you know the gross? Do you know the cross? Well?

Speaker 2 (20:48):
I have I have to. I've been an independent artist
for a long time now, so it's touring has become
much more expensive and it's very high risk. I mean,
you you you spend a lot of money to put
a tour on, and this tour I'm about to do
for dear Life, it's called the Past and Present Tour.
This will be the culmination of many years work. So

(21:09):
we're not going to sell a load of vinyl. It's
not like the coffers will be full. We've got to
go out and talk do these shows for our fans,
So it's very important. You know, people will push the
ticket price up, push to cover all these cost but
that just goes on to the consumer, and I feel
very strongly that there's only so far you can take that.

(21:32):
So I think for these reasons, if you choose to
wash your hands of the sort of the dirty business
of selling tickets in the market, then you're in danger
of distancing people who haven't got as much money but
a big passion for music, and the very people that
probably prop you up. So for those reasons, I take
all that stuff quite seriously. I'm not sitting in meetings going, hey,

(21:55):
we should charge this, but I am paying attention. But yeah,
one of the great problems is the sort of the
profitability of things. It's become very expensive to tour, and
everyone's wages want to go up, and all the rest
of it, You've got things like environmental concerns and trying

(22:15):
to do things in a different way, which may be
more awkward, more expensive, more time consuming. So there's lots
of pressures to do things differently, but not much slack
in the line financially. So yes, I pay attention. I
have my own record label. I notice things, and I've
been involved in putting my own music out. Not I mean,

(22:38):
I'm not hands on deck or I'm not part of that,
but I'll be a part of the conversations. I'll meet
the people, and I'll take good note of what happens
and what doesn't happen, what gets spent, what doesn't get spent.
Of course, because at the moment, I'm spending my own money.
I'm spending my own money set up a new record company,
and I'm spending my own money making the record and
putting it out. So it's a lot of money that this.

(23:01):
So this, all of this has an effect on how
you think about your ticket prices and everything else. It's
it's it's all interconnected, and it's no doubt a more
abundant creative space to ignore the whole damn lot and
just and live in your own little world, your little
creative bubble. But I find that I can't do that really,

(23:24):
I'm just drawn to the detail of what's actually happening.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Okay, So if you stop being a musician today, do
you have enough money that you could get to the
end or is it album to album?

Speaker 2 (23:43):
No, I'm comfortably off. I could stop now.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
Okay, So you're making this record, you know, the record
you made independently, but you've licensed it to other people
in different territories.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Correct, Yeah, well this time that's what we've licensed it
to secretly distribution this time. So that's that's that's a
worldwide deal as far as I'm aware. And was there
an advance with that, No, I don't take advances. It's
it's just to do with how much, what the marketing
spend will be and all those kind of things, and

(24:21):
you know, some of the other detail and how long
the deal's going to be. So it's a one album deal.
That's that's what we've been doing for the last little while.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
So do you have a view on streaming?

Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah, of course, you know, yes, yes, very much so.
I I think that the way that our industry works
is to hell with it. That's the way. That's the
way it goes. With the tech and the power that
they you know, they don't worry too much about the

(24:58):
people who making the music. That don't worry all. I
wouldn't say, really, they've just got to float their brand
and get to so and of course it's ended up
being a hugely profitable thing for major labels who've stripped
out staff and costs and amalgamated and joined and all

(25:19):
this enormous back catalog that's just probably playing the minimum,
bare minimum to some of these people, and they're getting
phenomenal figures streaming all these old songs, so they're not
having to do anything, not spending anything, shipping a load
of vinyl to Canada. They're just you know, basically just
sitting there and this stuff's just pouring in. So it's
not recognizing songwriters, producers.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
There's just not.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
Enough in there. So I think that what we thought
in the eighties was that you know, sound was going
to get higher and higher quality, and the tech would
get higher and higher quality, and you know, but actually
what's happened is it went the other way. And hell
with quality, it's just about immediacy, which is an interesting thing.

(26:05):
So you know if there were higher quality brands, none
of them have really succeeded that you could have a
really incredible listening experience and maybe spend a bit more money.
There might be a little bit more money there for
the artists. But and again that would take a load
of money to float it, and there's been various people
trying to launch various things. So yes, streaming is a

(26:28):
wonderful resource for the listener, it's not so rewarding for
the struggling artist.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
Okay, tell me about the difference between quality and immediacly.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
Well as in the actual quality of the audio is
very very limited on your basic streaming platform on an
MP three, as opposed to listen to a beautiful piece
of finyl from an amazing record player and lovely speakers,
or then you had the CD and you take it
to the next musical clarity level. But what you get

(27:01):
is you get to listen to something immediately. Now, just
just touch it. It's there, it's yours. You don't have
to wait, you don't have to go to the shops.
I used to have to save up my dinner money
for two weeks if I wanted to buy an album,
Basically half to starve meself at school and then get
the bus into town fifteen miles and buy the record
I wanted, and come back again. And I would on

(27:23):
the bus that I would have read the inside cover,
the outside cover. I've looked at all the photos. I'd
even have taken the vinyl out and looked inside there
and read what was scratched onto the center of that.
You had a level of sort of involvement that was very,
very different.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
Okay, you have certain songs on Spotify with triple digit millions.
Are you making any money from streaming? Of course there
are songs with billions.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
Yeah, of course I'm making I'm making good money. I
own the Masters, though I'm not in a I'm not
in the position that someone else would be, you know,
at a major would be in. I own, well, at
least I used to own the Masters until I sold them.
So I own some of my I own my current music,

(28:14):
and the last record I put out is called Skelleig.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
I own.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
I own that record and this record. That's all part
of my new record company, so that those things, when
we put them out, the streaming will be it's not
getting taken by a record company. And I get my
whatever percent. At the end of it, I get whatever
that the majority of the money from the streaming. My
partners will receive a certain amount of that. So it's

(28:41):
it's it. Yes, when you start getting big numbers, it
starts to add up, and it's it's a significant thing and.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
You're a new work. Will the numbers be significant enough
to cover your costs?

Speaker 2 (28:56):
HI? Hopefully over time. You know, I have no idea, Bob.
And we've spent a bloody arm and a leg making
this record. We've got orchestra's horn sections, We've spent bloody
months on it, the damn thing, you know, years even so,
I don't know. It's going to take a while. It's

(29:17):
not just the spend of making the record, as I say,
marketing it and all the people I pay who work
for me, who run the record label, I mean all
their wages, all their salaries. If I take that whole
chunk of time, it's going to take a long time.
I'd say, be lucky if in ten years I've made
a penny out of the damn thing. But you just
never know what's going to happen. If you stay in

(29:38):
the boat long enough, you might just catch a fish.
I maybe some mad TV producers going to go, you
know what this new David Gray song? This is it
sopranos too, We need this as the title music. It's
like you might get a break that you hadn't dreamed
of that could transform your fortunes, and suddenly you've got
gazillions of streams going on. No, the streaming numbers are

(30:01):
utterly unspectacular because in the world of finger touch immediacy,
the old are much much slower than the young, and
obviously Maya fans are by and large older than some,
so you're not dealing with this thing. I'm doing the
best I can to notify anyone who might be interested,
but it's going to be hard work. I put a

(30:21):
record out a couple of years ago called Skellig. This
was a very uncommercial record. It's very very personal, very
low tempo. But we also because it was COVID, there
was no real marketing spend on. Very low amount of
money was spent. We could only do so much because
we couldn't physically do anything. So we spent a few
mony a bit of money and actually it's sort of recouped,

(30:44):
so within three years I'm now getting a very small
amount of money every month from that record, so it
shows that it is possible. The difference there is that
the spend wasn't anything like as great either on making
or releasing the record. So this time around it will
I'd say it's going to take a lot longer. I'd
like to think with the kind of immediacy of this music,

(31:06):
that it may strike a chord and we get some
kind of fire under the whole thing and it starts
to move a little bit. But I'm just not in
control of all that. All I can do is make
it as good as I can make it and put
it out there and sing my heart out.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
You've worked both in the old era and the transition
in the new era. Not that many people have, but
they used to say the tour was the advertisement for
the album, and now the album is the advertisement for
the tour. Today's scattered landscape and different remuneration periodigm does
that affect the inspiration and desire to make new records?

Speaker 2 (31:54):
No, you know, making records is where it's at. I mean,
playing live is where it's at. The two things are
to a record as a world, I mean, anyone who's
experienced a record as a world gone to the planet
Pink Moon, or gone to the planet astral Weeks or Nebraska,

(32:16):
you know, free wheeling. Anyone who's been to any of
these places and been consumed by the spirit of Eden
by Talk Talk kind of Blue by Miles Davis. It
doesn't matter. When you've been there, you know what's going on,
Marvin Gay. Once you've gone to a planet and like
being completely obsessed and absorbed by it, how can you

(32:37):
not want to make a record? I mean, a record
isn't a song. It's you hang the pictures in the
gallery and you take people through, and there's the cadence
of each song leads to a kind of cascade of
emotion that flows from one to the other and creates
an overall effect. So that's still what I believe in.
I still believe in the novel. Even though everyone's writing.

(32:57):
They're not even writing short stories, they're writing sentence.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Okay, you mentioned a little bit earlier you sold your masters.
Traditionally in the music business, people didn't even own their masters.
We live in an era where many people are selling
their publishing, selling their masters. Let's start with the masters.
Did you sell them outright such that you'll never get royalties,

(33:22):
or did you sell the ownership and you still have royalties.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
It's a complicated question to answer. I didn't sell them
through choice. But first of all, I sold my recording
masters from White Ladder until Golden the brass Age, so
eight albums up until the one before Skelg. So it

(33:49):
was because I was at the end of a relationship
that had lasted through my entire career, and the only
way to get out of it was we owned a
record company together, was to sell the record company. Essentially,
it's sell the Masters. So that's that was the only
way to really make a break. So uh yeah, well,

(34:13):
I've maintained a stake in the Masters. I didn't sell
it all. I kept a bit, so I still have
a vested interest. I got skin in the game, underwhelming
skin in the game so far.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
So while we're on this tip, did you sell the
publishing too?

Speaker 2 (34:31):
No, no, no, I haven't sold that. So for the
very first time in my life, all my publishing has
come back to me and it's now all housed with
Chrystalis on a sort of rolling deal, so it's all
in the same place for the very first time ever.
In fact, so they're sort of administering my publishing for me. No,
I haven't sold any publisher.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
Without any dire circumstances coming up. Would you ever sell
the publishing?

Speaker 2 (35:00):
We never say never, but it's unlikely. For one thing.
Money is completely overrated, you know, as some kind of
great aid in your life towards greater meaning and enjoyments.
It can be incredibly helpful when you haven't got enough

(35:20):
of it, but that's not the position I'm in. I'm
doing perfectly okay, thanks very much. So why would I
want to a pay shitloads of tax? By result, it's
getting a fuckload of money that I wouldn't know what
to do with anyway, And why would I want to
fuckload of money that I have no idea what to
do with. It's I don't want for anything, I don't
need anything. It'd be totally stupid. So those are the

(35:43):
reasons that I when money first broke in my life,
when things were going well, it was a really complicated
thing to negotiate because we started when it just coming
in and it didn't stop. After a while, you start just
making really bad decisions because nothing has as much meaning,
so you can just replace things you don't like or
buy something you decide you don't want it, and it's

(36:06):
like you're suddenly living an episode of the Real Housewives
of Beverly Hills. So that's something I've been exposed to
by my children. It's not one of my personal viewing choices.
So yeah, I think that, you know, getting a routload
of money is great, but it's just it just ends

(36:28):
in a sort of disassociative, disassociative state where you're it
distances you from life and meaning and what I'm needing
to do things. So in a way, I'm kind of
I'm not falsely pressurizing. I'm choosing to be in a
more pressurized situation in terms of putting money out and
investing in it and having to make a success of things,

(36:50):
because it's a more relatable thing and it makes for
more sensible views and ideas about what you're doing. So
that's the way I choose to do it. As I
said that, the classic artist pose would have been, we've
received so much money, we don't have to worry about anything.
Now we can just dream our dreams. But to me,
the dreams are part of this fabric. There's so many

(37:13):
compromises making music in a commercial world. Where do you
even start it's very, very elaborate, complex, full of compromise.
So you I think it's important to understand what it's
like for someone spending money to get to your show

(37:34):
or to get your CD, just what that means. So
I think, because it's still a relatable thing for me
putting music out, I consider myself to be more in
relation to the listener because I'm in a more reasonable position.
So you know, God knows. As I said, I wish
something wonderful happened and my fucking songs would go crazy

(37:55):
and I can just relax. You know, Wow, this is amazing.
It'd be more amazing because the energy it would give everything.
It wouldn't be the money. It would be the way
the show's go with this crazy energy because people are
a new wave of fans would be getting a hold
of this stuff. That would be incredible. So it's those
are the things that you lost for and being taken seriously,

(38:18):
so you know that those are my sort of preoccupations.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
Just to go back a point, so how many times
have you been married? Just once and you got divorced
and that's why you had to sell the catalog?

Speaker 2 (38:34):
No, no, no, it was my business partner, not my wife.
She's still involved.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
So you had when you've been independent in this independent
record company, you had a financial partner, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
My manager, my old manager and I. When White Ladder
came along, no one wanted to put it out, so
we put it out ourselves. We created a record company
and we put it out ourselves, and that's how that
that began. That record began in that way. We put
it out in Ireland, the only place where we could
sell anywhere records to the only place I had a
sort of beginning of a sort of commercial viability, sort

(39:11):
of cult following. So we put it out there and
it just began to sell and then began to sell
more and then like hotcakes, and that funded we signed
with Ato Dave Matthew's label in the States, and we
signed we licensed to Warners in the for the UK
and the rest of the world, but we kept Ireland
as our own independent thing, and that's how it began.

(39:32):
So this relationship was very complex. And then for the
next however many albums it followed that we just put
them out through this record company and we licensed them
to various partners. So yeah, So when that relationship came
to an end after thirty years, the easiest thing to do,
the only thing to do, was to sell the company
in order that everyone could take a little bit away

(39:55):
with them.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
And why did the relationship come to an end?

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Well, look, I don't want to get into all that.
That's that's personal.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
Okay, So.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
These things happen, you know, it's a long time. We've
been through an awful lot together. And furthermore, this is
someone who without who's belief in me, I would not
be sitting in front of you now. The people who
invest in you, like emotionally and musically and in other
ways when you don't mean anything, those are the people

(40:28):
that you value, you know, really ultimately. So when someone
makes a choice not based on their own on the
profitability of something or whatever or the look that it
gives them, then that means a lot. So it's still
a very intense relationship, but albeit from a distance at
the moment. But yeah, it had run its course and

(40:49):
now I'm in a new phase of my life.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Okay. Why was the record company called IHD?

Speaker 2 (40:58):
He rob as Robert wanted to call it Hit Records,
but when we applied to company's house, they said that's
already taken. So he couldn't be bothered to do it.
He's just turned changed the letters round, and it was
I h T. So that that was the story of
why it was I HD.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
Okay, let's go back to the present album. You started
recording before COVID. Generally speaking, are you always recording or
did you say I want to make an album?

Speaker 2 (41:34):
No, this was definitely I'm ready to make an album,
so i'd I had some ideas live from the whole
COVID period, but even before that, I had I had
this spark of what the new music might feel like.
I'd started to write a couple of songs. So no,
I was ready. I mean I was. I was more

(41:55):
than ready to make a record. I had no idea
how long it was going to take, so no, it
was definitely. It wasn't playing around. I mean, at the
end of this album cycle, I'll be finishing of this
touring cycle, I'll be finishing the rest of the music
from the same period off and that will come out
as a separate album. But when that is done, I'll

(42:16):
be pretty I'll pretty much have cleared the decks. Never entirely,
there's always lots of loose ends, songs that I haven't
found a place.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
For I thought you said it to trilogy.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
No, No, it's I'd say this album is a double
album in itself, Dear Life. I think if you time it,
it's like it's like four sides of vinyl for sure.
So it's yeah, so this is a double Then there's
another album that's going to come out, which would just
be a single album a bit further down the line.
So no, I'm always writing, making, thinking, storing as I say,

(42:52):
that's the way it works. Now. I have to just
make notes and then finally I'll come to a point
where I'll start going through some of the most of
them will be lost, but I believe this it like
you know, it all goes into the earth and comes
back out as new plants. I don't think you lose
this stuff entirely. I think if there was something good there,

(43:15):
you would remember it. So there's always lots of different ideas, lyrics,
stories that notes. I mean, the phone is a highly
annoying thing to have on you, but also highly convenient.
It's got a camera, it's got a recording device, and
it's got a little notebook, so it just fits in
your pocket and you can do all these things. So

(43:36):
I'm constantly notekeeping. Not only that, I mean the inside
of my mind is like a giant sort of car,
like a giant warehouse full of car parts. I'm always
trying to fit something together. Oh, I could use that
that wheel would fit on here, or this axle would
work there, or you know, that steering wheel would look
good in this car. I'm always using one bit and

(43:57):
wondering whether I can finish another song with it, or
there's just unfinished bits everywhere. So that's just a normal
state of things that's constantly ongoing. But when I get
into writing, it becomes a little bit more focused and
the time opens out and I start to expand these ideas.
The difficulty is that when you first have a mood,
the mood that envelops you when you come up with

(44:19):
a tune and you start to write, you're in a
there's a great suggestibility about your state of being at
that moment. You're sort of you're under hypnosis in a way.
The music starts to hypnotize you. It's very hard to
pick up that thread at a later date. Oh yeah,
and that's what I Yeah, So it's that's what was

(44:42):
unusual about this particular sort of starburst of song writing.
At the end of COVID, I was writing new music
but also just picking other things up off the shelf
and just finishing the songs, but not in a way
that you can see the join. It was just oh right, okay,
here we go. It was I was like, what was
going on?

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Okay? So you have these periods where you were saying,
I'm writing the album. In between these periods, thoughts are
just going through your brain the car parts' occasionally making
notes or are you ever writing a complete song just
because something comes to you? Oh?

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Yeah, I mean those are the best days. Yeah, those
are the days you pray for and if you keep
working hard enough, it will happen. So yes, occasionally there's
a song on this new record called that day must
surely come. And I was working on something completely different,
and I just made an A chord on the second
I had the capo to a chord or B, and

(45:53):
I just I made this extension with my pinky that
I'd never done before, and I went up, I went
under the A two four and then all the way
to five, very long extension, and then I moved the
bass note with my thumb, and I thought, oh, that's
a really nice run of chords. I've never played that before.

(46:13):
And then I just began to pick it. And as
I picked it, I just read, I sang the first line,
and I just stopped what I was doing and I
just wrote the song. And in a couple of hours
later it was written, and it was in Those experiences
are have a mysticism about them, because you become both
more entirely yourself, the sort of fertile vistas of experience,

(46:40):
and all the loged emotion that you've held is waited
to be born into this song. At moments like that,
you could just they feel that they've been waiting a
long time to be born. This thing begins to emerge,
and at the same time, your brain is sending up
the sort of editorial drone. You're going up to the
top office on the top floor, and you're just making
very cool and clear decisions about what you're doing. So

(47:02):
you become more objective and more subjective simultaneously, and you
begin to work in a very unfussy, un self conscious way.
And those are the best songs. Please forgive me that
they must surely come from here. You can almost see
the sea. These are the ones that just poured out
of me in like moments. So that's what that's what
I hope for.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Okay, as a writer, but not a writer of songs.
I know exactly what you're talking about. And sometimes when
it's really working, I might become self conscious and then
all of a sudden it veers off. Is that something
that resonates? Oh yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
As I say, self consciousness is the enemy in life,
in music, in making. You know, it's it's it's totally
the enemy, very hard to avoid. And you know, I
use all kinds of tricks to trick myself out of
thinking too much. So for example, when I haven't been

(47:59):
making music, writing music, it's it's pressing. I'll be it's
pressing on me now because it's been a while since
I've been in that position, when I've been exploring and making.
So when I get back to it, it'll have been
so long it'll be like getting into a cold bath,
not just a cold bath, ice cold. I'll be scared

(48:20):
of like what it all means. It will all start
meaning too much. So these days i'd use little tricks like,
for example, rather than I usually work from chords, the
rhythm of the cause, the chords, the rhythm of the chords,
a sequence of chords, and then the melody that associates.
But if I find I work the other way round,
and I take a lyric and I try and fit it,

(48:41):
fit some music to the lyric, so I feel backwards,
or from a poem which I leave taking on this
record was a good example of that. I took someone
else's words and I sensed there was music in them,
and I felt like a water diviner with a stick.
I felt blind across the ground, just looking for where
it could take me, and I began to make, like
a child in a sandpit. I just shaped things, and

(49:03):
I didn't get my head up until i'd sort of
made something. And when I had made something, I had
no idea. I couldn't do like a quality assessment of
it because my melodic instincts were disabled, and my sense
of meaning and value was also not engaged. So I
didn't have that sort of white writer's block preoccupation, this
is a piece of shit, Why should it matter? The
sort of doubting voices. I try and cheat those doubting voices,

(49:25):
and I find that once if I can manage to
find a way past them, the guards on the gate.
Then once I'm in, I'm in the room of making,
and I get back into it. I stopped thinking about
it all so much, and it becomes much faster and
more immediate. That's not to say everything's great, it's just
I find that we've all got that writer's block, that
doubting voice, the negative voice that's waiting, and particularly I

(49:49):
find after an absence. So I mean, my ultimate existence
would be that I would never lose the fluency that
I have when I'm in these deep writing sessions. But
it's a bit like losing the fluency and my calluses
on my fingers from playing on the road. And as
a musician, when I'm playing every night, I'll reach I'll
attain a physical level of ability and emotional and mental

(50:09):
connection that I wouldn't be able to sustain on an
average day because I'll be doing two, three, four hours
of music every day. So you know, it's different. It's
like that with the writing too. You sort of lose
your confidence and you start to think about it far
too much.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Okay, so you had this time you're with the family
with COVID, then you go back to writing. Are you
literally saying, okay, I'm sitting here. It's Monday to Thursday.
I have to write songs. I'm going to sit here
until I finished the songs. Or do you wait for

(50:51):
inspiration or do you have tricks to trick yourself into inspiration?

Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yeah, as I say, it's like self hypnosis. So I
don't sit there waiting for inspiration. I just get on
with it. As I say, I've always got a million
unfinished things, so I'll just pick one of them up
and start working on it. Or I'll think of a
little simple idea and I think that could be a
simple little song. Maybe I'll just start with that, something achievable,
something small, not too demanding, not too ambitious, something intriguing

(51:20):
and small. So I'll start humble. And then, as I say,
once I've achieved a few things, it's a little easier
to get into rhythm. So I mean, those those are
my tricks. I mean, I don't think there's any escaping effect.
It's it's difficult. Yeah, it's some days you just don't
get anywhere. I mean, it's just the way it is.

(51:41):
So but I think you just turn up and you
start working, and sound can be a great unlocker as well.
It's like that you know, there's there's the same old
six strings on the same old guitar, but put it
through a sort of effect. It's like a Leslie effect
or chorus or you know, a new am or you

(52:02):
put a capo up high to change the tuning and
open tuning. Suddenly, ah, the same old motes remake. They
invert chords, and it inverts chords. It changes your relation
to the things you already know and charms you back
into that sense of mystery that you need to be in.
So it's just important to well, anyway, these are the

(52:27):
ways I choose to do it. I mean, some people
work completely the opposite way. They wait until they're in
the mood and then they make music and they don't
stop until it's done. Maybe that's the best way to
do it.

Speaker 1 (52:36):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
This is the way that my life is involved because
I wanted to be a dad and I wanted to
be a husband, and I've got all this music I've
already created, and I need to deal with curate my
own life to a certain extent, and my own businesses
demand a lot of my attention, so I need to
be I need to sort of compartmentalize a lot of
the time in order to get the space to work

(52:59):
properly and over long period. So this is just my
means of doing it.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
Okay, is your process that you write all the songs
and then you record, or do you write and record,
write and record.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
I just write and record, and in fact, the recording
process is the writing process. I have a wonderful producer.
We have a very strong relationship and it's very very complimentary.
So I'm totally disinhibited these days in terms of writing lyrics,
trying things. I don't care. I'm not waiting till I

(53:35):
look good and then you can come into the room.
It's like you just see it all like I'll pour
it all out. Oh that's fucking terrible, like delete, you know.
So we we just we work, so I'll stay. I've
got this idea. So like on this record, Eyes Made
Rain would be a good example, a very simple song.
I said, it's like a mantra, eyes Made Rain, My

(53:56):
eyes made Rain, My eyes made Rain. And I have
this chord sequence, had all the chords worked out, I
didn't really have a lyric, and he was like, oh
I love this, I love this, let's start putting it down.
So I hadn't even started to write the lyric. I
had like maybe one or two lines that are going
to ghosting in here and there, and so we said, Okay,
what's the tempo going to be. Let's decide on a tempo. Okay,

(54:18):
let's take a little rhythm so I can play along
with it, so we don't want it just to click.
Let's get a little rythm. He came up with this
really odd rhythm, and actually the arpedu I was playing
was the vital link. So I thought, oh, this actually
really works. It's like very jazzy, very odd anyway, So
then we began to work, and as we shaped the
sound of the song and we put these kind of

(54:41):
little sample drum parts in and other little sounds that
came into it, it began to speak as a piece
of music, and I wanted to inhabit the space in
a way that would have been perhaps different than what
I might have come to as a lyricist if you'd
just been and the acoustic guitar and I just toughed

(55:02):
it out and finished the lyric on my own. The
song became something I was getting inside of as a
piece of music. All the different elements, the bass we
added the drums, we added the little sounds and subtleties,
and the space we put it in. The short reverbs
and the different things began to sort of make me
feel like I was in a different country. So the

(55:25):
lyric became much more impressionistic in a way. I didn't
worry too much because I was kind of slotting into
us what was basically the finished song. So I hadn't
recorded a vocal on it yet. And we got to
the end of this few hours of making this track,
and I said, right, I guess you know, I need
to put some kind of performance on top of this.

(55:48):
So if you leave something without a lyric or anything
on it, a voice on it, it's less hard to
relate to, it's much harder to relate to other So
I basically just I sat down and until I had
like three verses and a middle section to some kind
of degree working, you know, no one could leave. So

(56:11):
I just sat there and he just had to wait,
and I was just writing and writing and writing and
writing until I had something. I was happy enough to
go in there and go behind the mic and try
and put down so that we had something to relate to.
And in fact, what happened was I remember thinking, God,
what is this? What I'm even saying? This is all
rather vague, but it's sort of It's just remained a

(56:32):
bit like that. So I did change a few lines,
but essentially I stuck with what I came up with,
and that was just we recorded it as I was
making it, so and that's pretty much true for I'd
say probably most of the tracks on the record have
been a bit like that.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
I'm fascinated you worked with Marius Defrees, who's a friend
of mine, and then you work with his son. How
does that happen?

Speaker 2 (57:00):
It's such a lovely thing. And I'll tell you what's
absolutely beautiful about it is they both have this There's
talk about the genes of taste and subtlety. They both
have this incredible musicality, this rich and very subtle bordering
on classical understanding of music and voicings and orchestration. And

(57:25):
Marius is a very different personality to Ben. But yeah,
working with Marius was lovely, so much more pressurized situation.
He came into a thing where everyone wanted a record
with a hit. I've had a couple of big hit
records and this was going to be life in slow motion.
This was going to be a big deal basically. So

(57:46):
working with Ben has been very different, and we've over
the course of now three records and a few other
side projects, we've developed a wonderful relationship. But they they're
both old school. They don't flinch, they don't mess, they
don't mess. They there until the until the projects finished.
They give you everything that they should give you. There's
no none of this kind of you know, I'm tired

(58:08):
kind of bollocks you get from some people.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
Okay, let's go back though to what you were saying
before that you're in your writing phase. At what point
do you bring in the producer.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
Yeah, I do need some time to myself two to
sketch the ideas, to begin to just so early on, though,
because I have the sense of trust with Ben that
I don't need a finished thing, although it's much nicer
to have. I've written the song, come on, let's work

(58:46):
on it. I'd normally be more in its infancy. I've
got this idea. What do you think of the idea?
Let's let's work on it. So very early on these
days the producer would come in because, as I said,
I've seen many good examples now of how we've got

(59:07):
a long way with the song without me having finished
the lyric. The lyric writing is what takes time. So
but yeah, but when this album and this tour slows down,
as I said, I want to finish this other record.
But after that, I'll be trying to sort of locate myself,
feel where I am, get a sense of the topography,

(59:30):
geography of my heart, what's going on inside me, the
bedrock of what this music is going to be springing from,
what's going to be built upon this next wave of stuff.
I've got dreams and ideas already for what that will be.
I've already started making notes, but it may be that
they never see the light of day. They don't. There's

(59:52):
no fruition for all that stuff. It's just a dream.
When I actually get there, something might happen and my
life might be quite different, and the record might take
on a different feel or tone. So but yes, when
when I've finished and things slow down and I get
some time to myself, I'll get my little studio set
up out in the countryside, and I'll spend some time
just working on things on my own and and feeling

(01:00:14):
for things Before I involve anybody, but it won't be
long before I do.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
So. Earlier you also said on this album you have
horns and strings. How did you decide to employ those?

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Well, just where the music told me they needed to go.
I mean, it's it's it's not a given that adding
orchestration or horns takes you any further down the track
in terms of realizing what a song must be. Quite
the contrary. I mean, sometimes some songs sound better just
on your own, sometimes better with a drum player, drum drummer,

(01:00:58):
some with a bass player on to some without. So
with orchestration, there was a as I say, a melodic strength.
There was just some of these songs we're just asking
for orchestration there there there they were big melodies. So
it's different every time. So and as I say, Ben

(01:01:22):
like his dad, is very very talented at voicings. So
for example, using leave taking user bass clarinet introduces the
the sort of the horn section. You don't go straight
in with a saxophone or a trombone or a trumpet.
You you use a bass clarinet to play. I mean,

(01:01:46):
who think of using a bass clarinet. It's a beautiful,
beautiful sound, and there's a these little touches of class.
We're using obo here and this there, and there's little
bits of knowledge and and and they to a much
more satisfying end result. So yeah, it's just it's different
every record. This time it wanted these. I don't think

(01:02:07):
the next record will probably have an orchestra or horns
or anything. I think we might get my friend Caroline
to come around with her cello and do a little
bit of playing on a couple of things, but it
will be more layering some strings into the odd song maybe,
But I don't see that the next chapter will have

(01:02:27):
any of that stuff. This time around, it was. It
definitely felt right and it sounds wonderful that the session
we did for the orchestra was absolutely out of this world.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
It's phenomenal forgetting orchestra and other big productions. Your studio
in the old home, your studio up the street. Now,
can you make the records in these studios or do
you have to go to another room to make the records?

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
No, I can make all the record that. If we
wanted a big drum sound, or we want to record
horns or strings, we go somewhere else because I haven't
got the mics, and I haven't got the mic stands,
and I haven't got the space.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
Okay, let's go to the previous album you mentioned. It
was very made during COVID scaleg I think, and in
the old days let's just call it pre internet, last century.
If you made an album that was not as successful
commercially or critically, he could really negatively impact your career.

(01:03:26):
To what degree is that a factor or is that
even not a factor in today's world.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
It depends how you set your stall out. I mean,
I've seen it have that very negative effect on my
own career more than once. So God knows, I've seen
this every which way. I've been nowhere, somewhere, somewhere in between,
and I've done things I love that didn't really get
anywhere with the radio, and then everyone turns around and goes, well,

(01:03:56):
he's only worth this now, so dismiss It's like, yeah,
you've got to be very careful. I think. Ultimately, though,
you've got to make yourself happy. You've got to do
what you want to do. If you want to be
in music, if it's your life, then you're going to
be there with a passion and a zeal to see
it through till the end. Then you've got to set
your stall out accordingly. I mean, do you care about

(01:04:19):
the fucking numbers or what? Of course you do. Everyone
wants to connect to the listener who doesn't want listeners,
But there's more to it than that. It's like what
kind of listener and how do they listen and all
the rest of it. So there are this Because I've
got my own label, I can I guess, to a
certain extent, do what I want to do. And this
record was a labor of love. And I think this

(01:04:42):
record will still be being listened to when I'm dead.
It was a magic experience. But it's never going to
unless it gets some kind of sink or film placement
that suddenly makes everyone aware of it. It's going to
be a very slow word of mouth or word of
finger movement that it makes through people's consciousness. It's going

(01:05:04):
to be the sort of thing that's passed around. So
you know, I don't know. I did the White Ladder
to all. That meant all the promoters and venues suddenly
went well, look he sold all these tickets. So now
I'm being treated slightly differently because I can prove I
can still sell some tickets, So all the things you
say about the industry are absolutely true and they haven't changed.

(01:05:25):
I think that when you've made as many records and
you've carried on as long as I have, it obviously
becomes maybe slightly less significant. If I just followed White
Ladder with, you know, some obscure electronic project that was
never going to flow anyone's boat, it would have been
maybe a really stupid dumb thing to do from a

(01:05:47):
commercial point of view. But if that's what I really felt,
I wanted to do it just anyway. It's all down
to the individual, and I don't think there's a right
and wrong way of doing it. If what you're trying
to say is has it changed? Does the industry more
forgiving now? I don't think it really is. But I
think that it's so much easier to put music out.
There's so much going out that it's not such a big, big,

(01:06:09):
big deal. There's a lot of covering fire as people
putting shit out all the time, So it's it's it's
it's completely naturally saturated in new music, So maybe it's
it's just less prominent and less obvious now.

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
In today's world. I mean you literally have your own label.
You're involved. You know, we have a distributor does marketing
to what degree? Or you or your team involved in
social media direct access to your fans.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Yeah, well, I try and keep the tone. I do
all the writing of the copy when it's in first person,
they're my posts. And I don't use social media in
my life too. I don't use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, I
don't use any of it. I don't have person not accounts,
I don't communicate with anyone through those things. But it's

(01:07:04):
as a means of letting my fans know. Writing something
on the blackboard is sort of how I see it.
I mean, I don't follow anyone. I don't engage. It
just gobbles up your time, mind, everything else. I can't
be bothered with any of it. But I see it
as a vital tool these days for letting people know
what's happening. So, of course the gatekeepers are very much

(01:07:25):
in control of how it all works. That there was
a certain innocent period when it sort of went out
to everyone. Apparently it doesn't work like that anymore. So
you know that it's very carefully managed, in choreographed so yes,
but it's a personal things, and it needs to feel authentic.

(01:07:48):
So when I speak one of the things I find
rather dull as these things become more important, which is
what's happened with Instagram, for example, something I quite liked
because you When I started, I was just doing weird photos,
which I enjoyed, and writing because there was no limit
on the characters, writing a few words or a lot
of words about what I was doing or what I

(01:08:08):
was seeing. But of course it becomes like the only
show in town in terms of letting everybody know you've
got to tour an album of this. So everything now
is just basically much more related to your job. So
when it started, it was a bit more innocent and fun,
and that's not really true anymore. But it's still a

(01:08:30):
vital tool. So I try and make the best of
it that I can and give an authentic view into
my life, my thoughts and feelings. I don't share photos
of food, holidays, children, or opinions on current political situations
or war or anything. I keep that to myself. It's

(01:08:51):
not that I'm afraid of voicing those opinions, but I
don't foist them on my listeners.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
To what degree online are you two way interacting with europeand.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
Not at all. I don't follow anyone or any other artists.
I don't engage in that way. I just put things
on my thing. If I was going to if I
was going to interact with a fellow artist, I would
send them an email.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
Okay, So where did you grow up?

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
I grew up in Manchester until I was eight, in
the North of England, and then my parents moved to
a tiny fishing village in the Very West Wales called Solver.
So if you've ever read Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood,
then it was something like that, a sort of enchanted
realm of sea and sand and woodland and cliff that

(01:09:47):
I was suddenly thrust into and being a sort of
avid nature lover, it was just the most incredible adventure.
It sort of seeded my imagination with imagery and thoughts
and beauty and I still draw on that fund now.

Speaker 1 (01:10:03):
And what kind of kid? Were you?

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
Very interested in stuff? Very sporty, loved all sport, loved,
playing out, was just out all the time, kind of shy.
So when I discovered going on stage, that was like

(01:10:30):
a big moment. I had to be a stand in
for the main part in the primary school production Christmas
play the main Wizard, the Wizard and the Wizard the Witch.
The Wizard was taken ill on day of show, and
I had a very good memory. I had a very
good memory, so they said they plumped on me, even

(01:10:52):
though I was a year younger than lots of the
other children, to be the main part because I'm the
only person who might remember all the the different lines.
So I learned the Wizard's part, but they didn't have
time before we got to the performance to teach me
the dances, so I had to improvise my song and

(01:11:12):
dance routine. And let's just say, Bob that I was
a big hit with the audience. I was a big
hit with the audience. The audience loved me. And as
I stood there doing my crazy wizard dancing, singing these
little songs, and they gave me rapturous applause. And I
remember looking out at them from this stage, which was

(01:11:35):
probably only about six inches high, into the dark all
that what felt like a sea of faces, which was
probably about sixty people, and thinking, yeah, I get this.
I get I'm in a magic world of mate believe,
and I'm what I'm giving them. They loved me because
I'm doing something freely and giving it to them, and

(01:11:57):
their their joy is in my giving and where some
people would have just been inhibited. And I was shy,
but I love this and that stayed with me, and
I then sort of pursued sort of amateur dramatics. We
are probably grand term, but I was in school plays
from then on and I got some big roles and

(01:12:21):
I started my own band. So I loved it on
the stage. So choosing to do music over art was
probably because I liked the fact it brought me into
the world and you've got this instant reaction. So I
was when I was a teenager. I just became your
classic teenager, smoking, drinking and wanting to kiss girls and

(01:12:44):
you know, then wanting to be in a band. And
I stopped studying. I stopped paying any attention apart from
art and reading a few of the English texts. And
they all sort of were tearing their hair out. Probably
I can't imagine what it's like for my mum, but
she showed incredible patience. So I kind of disconnected from
my studies somewhat, and it made a bit of a

(01:13:06):
mockery of my exams at various points, but I kind
of got through. I chose the path of least resistance,
which was art school.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
What did your parents do for a living, Well.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
My dad had been a baker in Manchester, in the
family in firm, and when they didn't know what they
were going to do when they went to well, so
my mum was making these quilted clothes using Liberty fabrics
and they started a little cottage industry selling these, and
then it became successful and they were Liberty in London's

(01:13:40):
biggest sellers. They were for a while, and then they
started their own little shop to sell their own clothes,
which developed into a craft shop, and then eventually they
folded the clothing business and they just had a craft
shop and the restaurant down the street where I worked
as a washer up for many years made it to waiter.

Speaker 1 (01:14:02):
And do you have any siblings?

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
Yeah, I got two sisters. I'm the eldest. I got
two younger sisters.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
So how did you get into music? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):
I always loved it. I mean, my mum was a
very good singer. She used to sing in the choir.
And I didn't have any elder brothers and sisters to
kind of guide me. Into what was cool, just reacted
to things. So saw music on the Telly and fell
in love with Madness the Specials, sort of whole two
tone thing that was nineteen seventy nine, and I was

(01:14:38):
obsessed with that for several years and then became more
like an indie thing. And while I was getting into
indie music, I kind of got into other things that
was something we'd all talk about. You'd watch Telly Don't
Look Back was on, like the Da Pennybecker film. I
watched that fucking in hell. I already loved Bob Dylan.
I discovered him, I thought, well, I started buying Dealing

(01:15:00):
Records and Leonard Cohen Records, Jny Mitchell Records, John Martin Records,
and I started to explore Tom Waite's all these things
at the same time as listening to the cool pop
music of the sort of early to mid eighties. So
that's kind of what happened. I just got into it.
My dad had an acoustic guitar which he didn't know
how to play. I just started using it, and my

(01:15:22):
friend wrote down some chords for me and I started
from there.

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
So how did you decide this is going to be
a career? And how did you end up becoming a professional.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
Well, I was very lucky. I'm very fortunate. I've always
very driven, very self confident, very determined. So I went
to art school, I formed a band, made demos and
already at that point decided this is the way I'm
going to go. And so I was painting and stuff

(01:16:03):
for my degree, but really most of my energy and
money as well, I was buying equipment and stuff was
going into playing with my band, and we were playing
shows in Glasgow, tried Manchester, didn't go so well there
Liverpool where I went to art school, so I was
gigging and we made a demo at the end of
my last year and sent it into the Manchester Evening News.

(01:16:28):
John Slater was an A and R man in Manchester
who do a demo review. So he really liked the
demo and sent an A and R man like a
scout to see us in Liverpool to check us out.
He gave us a good review, and he sent a
scout and the scout was working for the person who
would become my manager, who was just taken on a

(01:16:51):
job at Pollardor to sort of pay a few bills with.
So he was working for Polydor and also sort of
scouting out talent at the same time time from his
own POV and he was given this demo and so
my very first demo ended up in the hands of
the person who would be my manager. And then Pollodor

(01:17:13):
commissioned a second demo and things began to move forward,
and they got a publishing deal with Warner Chapel the
following year. Then I moved to London and got a
record deal with Virgin So that's sort of how it started.
It all happened very quickly. I mean I finished my
college and within a year I was in London with
a record deal.

Speaker 1 (01:17:34):
So the first three records were let's just say they
weren't hit. What was your experience, Yeah, it was well.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
I was, first of all, super exciting. I didn't ever
have a kind of overview or a plan of how
I was going to crack the music industry. I didn't
have some hey press guy, this is my take on things.
I didn't have any of that shite. I just I
just had myself, my heart, my songs. I just wanted

(01:18:07):
to do it. So the whole thing was a crazy
learning experience, character building, as they say. So the first
album new record label, got to go to America, tour
America a couple of times as a support act, play
shows of my own in New York and LA and

(01:18:28):
you know, a super super exciting but by record too
because I hadn't sold any records, you know, they were
And also the guy who signed me, the classic music
business thing, he was sacked before the record. He was
sacked before the record had even come out, so my
champion was gone, and they kind of let me make

(01:18:50):
another record then said your recording budgets over. You just
have to put this out as it is, put it
out and then drop me. And then I was picked
up by a label in America very fortunately about six
months later. So this was the story of the first
three albums. But the only really significant thing that happened,
apart from me learning the hard way, playing fucking horrible

(01:19:12):
shows in all over the fucking world as well as
some good ones, was the connection I made with the Irish.
They loved my first album, and I got some really
good press, and I got some cool radio going on,
like late night radio stuff. And when I played my
first gig in Ireland at the beginning of nineteen ninety four,

(01:19:33):
it was a sellout and second gig, and I thought, God,
I love it here and I just kept going back
and I built up this following so they kind of
got it. The Irish got it. They got the lyricism,
they got the sort of earthiness, the rawness, the simplicity,
the singer songwriter in us of what I was doing,
which was like not a very cool look at the time,

(01:19:54):
So particularly in the UK, which is the hardest place
to break in the world, the most cynical, sort of
hard edged place I've ever been to anyway, putting new
music out and everything. So that that was the story.
That that that that's that's That's pretty much how it went.

(01:20:14):
So it was hard work. I think. By the third
record coming out on EMI America, it was a total
not a disaster, and they didn't even put it out properly.
The whole thing was a joke. They were imploding, They
weren't even there was they were they were non functioning
as a record company. We went on an absolutely soul
destroying tour of the Midwest and that was that, and

(01:20:36):
we had an option to have a second album with them.
We chose not to take the advance and just end it.
Such was the pitiful state of things. So eventually that
led to me making a record in my own bedroom,
which was white ladder. But it didn't happen straight away.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
Well, well, before you go to the record your own bedroom,
you know, you make the first record, you have all
the hopes, you have the second record, you know your
ain R guy goes. But then you sign with a
major label and that implodes. What does this do for
your confidence?

Speaker 2 (01:21:08):
Yeah, I mean I was doubtful about whether I wanted
to continue, if it was going to continue in this vein.
I think it makes you think everyone's good when not
when it's not working out. Everyone's got ideas about what
you need to do and what you're not doing. So
I actually took a beat. It obviously does hurt. I mean, Jesus,

(01:21:30):
my music is made of emotion. Music is made of emotion.

Speaker 1 (01:21:33):
This is.

Speaker 2 (01:21:36):
The deepest part of me. I'm showing everyone there's nowhere
to hide. And it was grim. So I thought, christ,
I can't do this for a living. I need to
find something else to do. If if this is the
way it's just going to go. So yeah, it had
a huge effect and I wanted to pause from being

(01:21:59):
with my manager. I wanted to pause from everything. I
took some time out after the year Ideal, just to
reconfigure myself and work out what it was I was
doing and why, because it seemed like I didn't know anymore.
I'd lost all that youthful momentum and now I was
in a completely different reality.

Speaker 1 (01:22:18):
Okay, and what was the next step forward?

Speaker 2 (01:22:24):
Yeah? Well it was this record we made at Homes.

Speaker 1 (01:22:27):
A little bit slower, just just to start. The manager
who you had ight with, was that the same manager
from day one?

Speaker 2 (01:22:37):
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so Rob, Rob Holden, we kind
of got back together. I had to say. I took
a little hiatus from everything and kind of got back
to Oh okay.

Speaker 1 (01:22:47):
Wait, wait you're you You're on your hiatus? What do
you living on?

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
Just very Fortunately, an Irish singer called Mary Black covered
some of my songs, albeit without my consent, for her album,
some of my new songs. A demo I'd made while
I was on EMI had got into the hands of
a producer who was a big fan of my music,
and she covered a whole load of my stuff. So
I had this Suddenly at the MCPS came through from

(01:23:15):
her album being pressed up, and I had a little
bit of money to live on. My wife at this
point had started working as a solicitor. She was actually
the main breadwinner. So that was the reality at the time.
It was kind of we were making it up as well.

Speaker 1 (01:23:29):
Go along. How did you meet your wife?

Speaker 2 (01:23:33):
I met her when I moved to London. I got
a room in the squat that was her best friend's
squat in South London, in the Elephant and Castle, and
I then met her. I met her on the day
of the general election April the ninth, nineteen ninety two.

(01:23:54):
I called it the death of the British imagination. I
stayed up all night to watch the horrifying reality of
the Tories getting in yet another time. So and I
called it the death of the British imagination. So we
had a common ground and that we were utterly disgusted
with our conservative country. Little did we know how worse

(01:24:18):
it was going to get. So yeah, we's that was
a sort of early bonding thing. So that's when I
met a day of the election April the ninth, nineteen
ninety two.

Speaker 1 (01:24:30):
Okay, this is when your career is on the up,
When your career is on the down, is she supportive?
Or is she saying, maybe you need to get a
day job. What is her reaction to you, and what's
your relationship like.

Speaker 2 (01:24:47):
Yeah, at what stage, like when things weren't going well
in my early career.

Speaker 1 (01:24:52):
No, no, after it ended with them, I.

Speaker 2 (01:24:57):
Oh well, I mean it was just.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
It.

Speaker 2 (01:25:02):
She was supportive. Yeah, sure, if she could see when
she met me, I was this. I was a person.
I have a I have a mission. It's not I
need to be doing something. It's sort of non negotiable.
It's a giant coping strategy. It's not something I have
a choice over. I have to make things. So maybe
I don't have to make music. Maybe I could make art,

(01:25:23):
but I need to make something. I don't think I'm employable.
So so she was supportive. Yeah, Well we didn't get
to the point of total meltdown because life rode into
the rescue or on a white steed. So a fairy
tale ensued, whereby I made a record in my bedroom

(01:25:45):
and okay, we're gonna get anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:25:47):
We're going to get there right now. So you have
the money from the Mary Black covers, you say, yeah,
you were disconnected from the manager and then the manager reconnected.
What happened there.

Speaker 2 (01:26:00):
Yeah, yeah, I just said I need a break because
I can't listen to your thoughts about what I need
to do. I need to work out for myself what
it is I'm doing. I don't need extra advice. I
need to just everyone to shut up. I need to
go away and do this. I don't know if I
want to do it anymore. Let's just take a break.
When he said, very reluctantly, he said, okay. So after

(01:26:23):
a break, I sort of fooled around, looked for a
few different ways of doing it, scouted about, and then
I began to make White Ladder. And once I was
making that, it was he that introduced Yestin Poulsen, who
was the guy who would become the producer of that record.
It was co produced with me and the drama Clune.

(01:26:44):
But yes, it made the massive difference to the sound
of it all. He knew what he was doing. So
we made this kind of bedroom recording together. So and
that was us coming back online. And then, as I say,
no one wanted to put the record out. We couldn't
get any takers, so we put it out ourselves and
is history.

Speaker 1 (01:27:01):
Okay, bye, by way, you're making the record. To what
degree is this record informed by your previous three records?
And to what degree is this a clean sleep? You
know you took some time off. You don't need any
more business advice when you start to write and make
this record. What is the inspiration and what is different

(01:27:25):
or the same from what you've done previously.

Speaker 2 (01:27:30):
Well, there's so much that was different because it was
made in my bedroom, so we didn't have any equipment.
We're using a computer and a drum machine and a
little you know, zip drive or hard drive or jazz
drive and an ADAP to record the actual physical sound
if you like. So what it gave me working over

(01:27:52):
sort of drum machine rhythms that was programming in because
it gave me a freedom to perform over them. I'd
never really used clicks or anything like that. I'd always
just wanted to go free, but it actually freed me up.
So that was an important creative development. And there was
also the sort of intimacy of your own personal space
and the times of day when you can just work

(01:28:13):
when there's no one around and there's no sound, and
it led to a more intimate relationship with the vocal
mic and the guitar mic it just brought me in
as opposed to being a sort of arm's length kind
of style recording in a big POSH studio which could
be a car showroom or something, this was like my
own little space. So I think those were important things

(01:28:36):
that that definitely was a significant change. What was in
terms of what the record was based on. I have
to say bother and I've talked about this ad infinitum,
ad nauseum over many many years. I can give you
in a nutshell, I think it was definitely a back
against the wall. That the principles of how I wrote
a song remained the same, but this was a back

(01:28:57):
against the war moment. I'd been through this thing. One thing.
I was determined I was going to make a record
that from start to finish would be identifiable, coherent, interrelated,
and flowing from the first note to the last. That
was the objective. We started to use electronic sound. I
was itching to get sound into the music, and so

(01:29:18):
it was going to be this kind of hybrid form.
And I was also determined to not just give up
with everything and blame the music industry, blame journalists, blame
whatever the hell I wanted to. I thought, I can
do a better record. I haven't made the record I
could make. I need to make the best possible record
I can. So it's a kind of heart on sleeve
record it had. I wasn't shy of melody. I never

(01:29:41):
shy away from melody, but I didn't shy away from
melody or open hearted sentiment. So I didn't. I'd recovered
enough that I didn't retract into sort of bitterness or
hide myself behind some sort of opaque shell. I let
everything show. It was a greater act of vulnerability and share,
and that was what the record's power was ultimately. But

(01:30:03):
the process, the principle of how I wrote and how
I did things, was largely the same as the way
I'd always done it. I just did it under different
conditions and definitely with a different mindset. And I also
involved other people in a way that I never had
up until then. I just wrote songs and other people
played on them or helped press record while we did that.
This was like involving people from the ground up and

(01:30:25):
how it sounded, what it might sound like, how we
might make a record, and far from actually diluting the
effect of what my music might be, how personal it was,
how its identity might be it actually strengthened it because
they brought their strengths and wisdom and energy and sense
of fun, and it lightened the music and it made

(01:30:46):
it much more effective.

Speaker 1 (01:30:55):
Okay, in the US, living in the West Coast, you know,
public radio started to blow Babylon. It looked like an
instant's success. But the record had been out for over
a year in the UK. Yeah, so you put out
the record, you have the best perspective. Was it a

(01:31:15):
constant uphill trend or what was it like when the
record came out.

Speaker 2 (01:31:22):
Yeah, it was a lot of hard work, but I
mean it was absolutely amazing in Ireland by the end
of nineteen nineteen, and we released it in nineteen November
ninety eight, was actually released in Ireland on our own label.
By the end of December nineteen ninety nine, it was
seven times platinum, so we'd also released it in the
UK at that stage, but on our own label. So

(01:31:43):
by the time Warners got involved at the beginning of
two thousand, I think we made this maybe sold twenty
five thousand copies in the UK. In America and ato
the record came out, we signed the contract at a
big concert in Ireland at the end of nineteen ninety
nine and the record came out in early two thousand,
so by that point we were almost i'd say, eighteen

(01:32:06):
months into working the record. But what was amazing was
it just the record had a magic charm. It just
connected connected and people would pass it around and every
show we could feel the vibes that we could feel
them in Ireland, and by this point we felt we've
got something. This record has a magic. We just need
to get out behind it and it's going to translate.

(01:32:27):
So that's what it felt.

Speaker 1 (01:32:28):
It was.

Speaker 2 (01:32:29):
The whole ascent to the top was absolutely incredible. It
was a thrilling, thrilling two years once we got to
the top. So by the sort of towards the end
of two thousand, when it had been a you know,
a hit in America, hit in the UK, hit in Australia,
New Zealand and everything became a bit of a blur.

(01:32:49):
But the climb up was absolutely incredible and the view
from the top was unforgettable. From that point it becomes
a bit of a blur. The shows get bigger, they're
always old out, everyone's your friend, you're having the best
time you've ever had. And there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:33:07):
Why ATO as opposed to another label in America? Were
there even any other authors?

Speaker 2 (01:33:15):
But we didn't even ask around. I mean it felt
like a perfect fit. We already believed in that you
didn't need a load of people or a load of money,
You just needed the right people working in the right way.
So Michael McDonald and Chris Tetseli that was ATO Records.
We had no one IHT Records was me and my manager.

(01:33:36):
So it was like, so what Obviously Dave Matthews was
a big influential character, a great supporter to have, and
not only that, he had fans and people's street teams,
people who'd leaflet for you, put the word out for you.
We had something concrete. Well, they basically said to me
was we'll work your airstaff. And they were good to that.
They fucking crucified me. I did six tours on record,

(01:34:00):
so you know, they said, we'll send you out and
will they do it the old way? They were old school,
but I like the lack of bullshit, so yeah, that's
the way it's going to be. So we signed up
for that. Years of suffering.

Speaker 1 (01:34:14):
So at this point, twenty five years later, are you sick
of White Ladder.

Speaker 2 (01:34:22):
No, but there's certainly been points where I have been No.
I think it's great. I mean playing the anniversary tour
was an unexpected thrill. I think, coming as it did
after the COVID shut down, it gave it this kind
of crazy energy. It was a record that really connected
with people. People love that record. They feel so strong.

(01:34:42):
I love it. I love it too, but I wanted
to distance myself from it when it was all I
was was the White Ladder guy, because it becomes suffocating.
I'm not I'm an artist. If you listen to my
new record, it's as good as White Ladder. I'm not
saying it's as perfect as a commercial form, or that
it's ever going to get the breaks got That was
the right record at the right time, But it's the

(01:35:05):
dip in quality hasn't happened. I'm still going. I'm still pushing, experimenting,
reaching out, branching out. So I'm looking for new ground,
new ways of saying things, freshening things up. So so
it's it's It's a record I'm hugely proud of. I
think it's great. I love its economy of means. We
didn't have any stuff. So we just it's just very

(01:35:27):
simple really. But what we did, we did well. So
you know, if we bring the claps in and please
forgive me. You know, I remember the Chemical brother saying
to me, yeah, it's amazing you kept the claps back
right to the end. I'm like, yeah, because we haven't
got it an we haven't gotten it enough to bring
in put the claps in. It's like so it was.

(01:35:50):
It was an exercise in minimalism, which to a certain
extent is still the way that I think about making music.
If the vocal or the main rhythm instrument and the
rhythm or if that can uphold the song for a
long period of time, then you can bring other things
in and really make an effect.

Speaker 1 (01:36:06):
Okay, forgetting the anniversary tour, to what degree are you
feeling an obligation to play songs from White Ladder on
a tour?

Speaker 2 (01:36:19):
Well, I mean the way I have subdivided my touring
now is that like on this tour, I've told people
you can expect to hear the songs you love to hear.
They'll be mixed in with new songs, and not just
songs from White Ladder, but songs from all those old albums.
This is going to be a really, really deep dive,
and you also hear a few unexpected cover versions. It's

(01:36:41):
going to be a highly energized tapestry of stuff. But
you'll definitely hear sail Away Babylon, Please Forgive Me, etc.
The one I Love You Know, Blah blah blah. You'll
hear these songs. I'm not pretending. But on other when
I toured Skeleg, I said to the audience, you're only
gonna hear Skeleg. If you buy tickets for this concert,
you're not going to hear anything except this. And when

(01:37:05):
I did the Century Ends tour, the tour of my
first album first two albums earlier last year, I said
the same thing, that I'm just going to play the
two first albums and that's all I'm playing. And it's very,
very liberating, and I enjoyed them absolutely enormously those tours
because I was not obliged to play anything, and I
think it's a much more simple way of dividing Otherwise. Basically,

(01:37:28):
every tour is a negotiation with the audience to get
them to listen to something they're not maybe as familiar with,
and that's if you cut your cloth too much in
their favor. Excuse me, cut the cloth too much in
their favor. You'll end up resenting them and not wanting
to do it. I think I'd just be bored if
I just felt I had to play those songs all

(01:37:49):
the time. So for me, it's it's it's it's a
constant negotiation. But I love those songs, so in this context,
I'm going to enjoy playing them. They're going to be
part of a much beer a picture.

Speaker 1 (01:38:01):
Okay, when you did Skellig and you did the first
two albums live, Todd Rungren has gone out many iterations
and he's done the same things and I'm gonna play X.
But there's still people who come thinking they're gonna hear
the so called hits. When you said, because you know,
we live in a world it's hard to get the
message out and people are fit when you said I'm

(01:38:22):
only going to do this stuff, did you find that
that was the audience you got or do you still
get people saying I want to hear White Ladder.

Speaker 2 (01:38:33):
There was a few heckles. What you're really dealing with
there is secondary ticketing, so people reselling their tickets and
they'll just say David Gray tickets tonight, you know, and
that they won't have all the info in it, that
of what it is, and that's what happens. None of
the fans who bought tickets will be in any doubt

(01:38:55):
as to what's about to happen. But you get the
odd person who's out with their girlfriend or you know,
their mates, and they say, oh, let's go and see
Davi Grant and then they want to hear Babylon. It's
like you know with Babylon, So that happens every now
and again. Yeah, you can't stamp that, but it actually
worked for the rest of the time. The skellic thing
that that happened didn't happen at all. I mean people

(01:39:15):
were completely in on it. I didn't get any heckles.

Speaker 1 (01:39:19):
Okay, you have this huge success with White Ladder, you
go to pick another record. To what degree do you
feel the pressure and to what degree do you say
I should replicate the previous formula, make it in my
bedroom of this stripe, although now I have all the
money to do it the old way. What was it like.

Speaker 2 (01:39:43):
Or just to return to the theme of self consciousness,
we'd gone from very innocently making something for nothing, having
no idea that it was going to succeed whatsoever. That
would have been a preposterous thought to suddenly being in
the reverse. You know, we were underdogs. We became fain it,
and we had a huge budget and a load of
people chomping at the bit to sell millions of these things.

(01:40:06):
Not only that, I you know, we just had a
child and that was a kind of traumatic experience that
went horribly wrong. My father had just died, So I
came back from tour. I had a dead father and
a new baby and wife who'd been very ill, and
that was my reality. I was also suddenly famous. I
had money starting to come into my whole life felt
like it belonged to somebody else. So it was. It was.

(01:40:34):
It was tricky, you know, to find a way to
connect to the music without thinking about it too much.
So certainly for at least one record a new day
at midnight, I think it was impossible to feel normal
about anything or find a comfortable way of doing things.

(01:40:54):
Everything was odd. So and I'm not the kind of
guy who like, you know, hey, yeah, check out my
new ferrari and my girlfriend. You know, I'm drinking the
best tequila man can buy you know, whatever, you know,
Let's have fun, Let's make a record, Let's go to
the Bahamas. I'm not that person. I take it all

(01:41:15):
very seriously and too seriously sometimes maybe so I was
wearing it and trying to wear it in a way. Anyway.
It was surrendous. I didn't enjoy that period. I was suffering.
It was a bit like being John Malkovich. I was
sort of looking at someone else's eyes, so but trying
my best to connect and do the things. And there

(01:41:35):
was a lot of pain in there, and there's a
lot of weirdness because I just suddenly was in this
other reality. But I think by the time of life
in slow Motion the next record, I took some time
to rEFInd my way into music and that rescued me.
So we made a huge amount of music. I bought
a studio and we just basically embedded ourselves there. The

(01:41:57):
band are on retainers at this point, and we just
recorded and recorded and recorded and had a way of
a time just coming up with things and using a
big studio. So that's basically, in a nutshell, how it
sort of evolved from that white ladder moment of innocence
through the sort of completely debilitating fame and oddness and

(01:42:20):
self consciousness to refinding my way back to music and
honesty and naturalness. It took a few years, to say
the least, and I think it took a lot longer
than that for me to come to terms with what
had happened.

Speaker 1 (01:42:33):
If I said to you, I want you to write
a hit song, would you say, I don't know what
a hit song is. I don't want to write a
hit song. I could write what I think is a hit,
but I'm not sure. Or do you just say I
just do what I do? Who the hell knows?

Speaker 2 (01:42:51):
Yeah, I don't genuinely don't really know what a hit
song is, and I don't even know what a hit
looks like anymore from my point of view. So you know,
I've got probably the most commercial song I've written in
many years, in plus and minus on the new record,
which has received a certain amount of airplay over here.

(01:43:14):
I have no idea how it's doing in America, but
that's as close as I'm going to get to a single.
I don't go seeking them. But if something comes along
and I think, oh this, you know, this is like
a three minute pop song, It's not that I throw
it out. I won't neglect it. I'll try and make
it work. I love three minute pop songs, so you know,

(01:43:39):
the point is having some depth to everything. It's just
it's not enough just to satisfy. I don't know. Commercial
lusts for success and numbers. That's not what motivates me.
But when we were making White Ladder, I was also
involved in a movie called This Year's Love and the

(01:44:00):
director was a big fan, and he said, Dave, you know,
i'd like you to write the title song of the film.
And I said, but that's not really what I do.
I mean, I said, if I just write what occurs
to me, I don't look for a project or like.
But then I went away and I thought, Jesus, I'm

(01:44:22):
in the complete commercial wilderness. This is a guy who's
making a movie. He's a big fan. He's asked me
to write, so why don't I at least try? And
I went home and I literally wrote This Year's Love
that afternoon, and I sent him a cassette of it
and said, this is what I've written. What do you think?
He said, I love it. In the end, the movie
came out. V two bought the movie rights and the

(01:44:42):
song was removed from the movie. It was only played
on a transistor radio in the back of a scene.
But that's another story. But you know, and that's ended
up being my most streamed song, So it's it's I
don't necessarily fear doing something with a commercial sort of
reason behind it. If only life was so predictable that

(01:45:05):
there was sort of some kind of integrity ometer that
you could apply to things. I don't believe in that
fantasy stuff. I think that life's generally are compromise and
lots of different things. But I think it's more the
way that you make something and what you give to it,
how you bring this brushstrokes to life that really matters.
So yes, if you asked me to write a song,

(01:45:26):
it'd have to depend who you were and what the
context was. I'd probably ignore you, but it's possible I
would take you seriously.

Speaker 1 (01:45:34):
At this point in time, you have the best viewpoint.
You know, Where can you tour? Where are you successful?
Obviously Ireland is a hotbed to what do we the UK,
the US, the continent, anywhere else where are your fans?

Speaker 2 (01:45:52):
Yeah, they're all over the place, and obviously mainly English
speaking countries, Ireland, UK, Canada, America, North America, you know, Australia,
New Zealand, South Africa. But you know, there were certain
points where I did have fans. I can see on
the streaming numbers when streaming started that, Wow, there's a

(01:46:13):
lot of people listening in Santiago, Chile, and there's quite
a lot of people listening in Mexico City, and there's
people listening here and there and everywhere. And I've obviously
got fans in Germany. The problem is when you engineer
a tour, you're looking at your best markets and do
the best show for those markets. And then if you
basically go and tour around Southern Europe, as much as
it will be beautiful and the food will be great,

(01:46:34):
you know, you canie a shitload of money because you're
not selling enough tickets there to sustain the crew, the
band and all the stuff you've got with you. So
it's like you just need to cut your class accordingly.
So I think if I do another acoustic tour, I'm
going to try and get to some of the places
I've never been, you know, like South America and Central
America and the places I haven't been for a long time,

(01:46:55):
like the southern Europe, Italy, Spain, et cetera. Paris, places
like that will playing smaller venues and it won't be
such a big deal. So you know, that's that's what
my fan base looks like. It's all over the world,
but it's mainly in those English speaking countries.

Speaker 1 (01:47:12):
Okay, you talk about playing some covers on this tour.
You know you have a White Ladder live album where
you cover some Bowie songs Tainted Love. You know, how
did you choose those and what kind of covers might
someone expect.

Speaker 2 (01:47:31):
I wouldn't want to talk about it because it's going
to be a surprise so in terms of what we're
going to do next, but it was a huge pleasure
to play the well. Obviously, say Hello Wave Goodbye is
a soft cell song. So on the White Ladder tour,
I got Mark Alman to come out and sing with me,

(01:47:52):
and we surprised him by having prepared a version of
Tainted Love. I think it was absolutely horrified, to be honest,
but he's a good sport and he stepped up and
he did it and the crowd went absolutely crazy. So
we kind of fired off the back of that. Say
Hello Wave Goodbye would end the White Ladder set, we'd

(01:48:14):
come back out and do Tainted Love, another Soft Cell
song or famous made famous by soft Cell. It's not
written by them, of course. And then the Bowie story
was part of the history of White Ladder and the
very this big long story about my dad being sick
and us playing at Glastonbury and meeting Bowie, and I
tell the story, and then we play life on Mars
into Oh you pretty things. I mean, those songs were amazing.

(01:48:37):
Just getting to play those songs was so exciting. People
were just blown away by that, you know, to hear
someone really do a good version of that. So yeah,
that's in terms of if I was going to record
a cover and use it on a record, that would
be a much more delicate matter. But live, I'm just

(01:48:57):
what I want to do on this tour is use
covers to bring the energy up without having to play
a Babylon card or a big song card, so to
unexpectedly surprise people and just suddenly disarm them. So that
I'm buying space really for the intimacy I need for
some of the more low key stuff. So I'm going

(01:49:19):
to use short bursts of very famous songs to energize
people and hopefully thought provoked them a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:49:27):
Now you mentioned the Chemical Brothers, you mentioned Mark Alman.
Are you someone who knows everybody in the rock and
roll high school or use somebody as more isolated.

Speaker 2 (01:49:41):
Totally isolated? Yeah, totally said. I don't know anyone.

Speaker 1 (01:49:45):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:49:46):
The celebrity village was a mystery to me. I couldn't
really make head nor tail of what the ground rules
were supposed to be. So whatever it is the gift
of getting to, you know, make making people feel at ease,
I don't seem to have it in that capacity. So
my friendship group is basically the people I make music with,

(01:50:08):
put music out with, and the people I knew before
I became famous. It's my wife's friends who are very
dear friends of mine. That's those are the people I see.
I don't have famous friends, per se. I know a
few people, of course, you know, Jesus, there's a lot
of nice people out there that I've met and sort
of become friendly with, But that's not my gig. Now

(01:50:31):
I'm much more isolated, I think, unhealthily so. In some
ways I feel that that the artists need the community
of artists to support them and with whatever it is.
I don't know why I've evolved a certain ways. It's
complicated without getting to some kind of deep Freudian shit.
I think that that's just the way I am.

Speaker 1 (01:50:53):
And you know there's that blind in the Joe Walls song.
You know, everybody's so different and I haven't changed. To
what degree do people treat you differently now that you're
famous or you know, your recognizable character? To what degree
is that inhibiting?

Speaker 2 (01:51:13):
Yeah? I think it's died down to such an extent
that it's not really a big deal. Two things have happened.
I mean, you know, I've got used to it. And
also people don't give a shit about me anymore, you know,
So it's it's might I live a completely pretty normal life.
I don't I go out, I wander around. I can
go to a restaurant without everyone standing and looking at me.

(01:51:34):
You know. I was in a I know Ricky Gervais
from he's a fellow resident in Hampstead where I used
to live. I used to see him out and about,
and of course he's always got the shades on. And
I remember being in the pub and we were just
sitting there as a family having lunch and he came
in with his wife. It was obviously an impromptu thing.
Place was packed, and they kind of went, oh my god,

(01:51:56):
we better sort Ricky at, We better sort Ricky at.
And they gave him this. It was like right in
the middle, and everyone was just looking at him, and
I just felt so uncomfortable for him, and he just
got up and left. After a certain amount of time,
they started placing an order and he went and they
just went. And I thought, yeah, my god, you know,
what's it like being whatever you think of these people,

(01:52:17):
Harry and Megan or Brad Pitt or something. You walk
into a room and everybody it's like it's all about you. Jesus.
Sounds horrendous. So yeah, I don't have to deal with
any of that stuff. I don't got no high grade
sort of scrutiny going on. Of course, I live a
life that's in the public eye. Occasionally get stupid stories
in the press or whatever. It's the usual carry on,

(01:52:39):
but it's not something that inhibits my life. I do
exactly what I want to go to the beach when
I'm up in Norfolk, I go for swear, I do
whatever I want to go to the pub for a pint.
I don't give a shit. I just do what I
want to do. I go to you know, it doesn't
there's there's nothing happening. I don't see what's happening behind me.
I might be walking down the high street and they go, oh,
I was David gra Occasionally someone will bellow, some drunk

(01:53:00):
will bellow out to me, but you know, it's pretty
low key.

Speaker 1 (01:53:03):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:53:04):
I'm not very I'm not really very famous anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:53:06):
Well, that may be your perspective that a lot of
us feel differently. In any event, David, I want to
thank you for taking the time to speak with me
in my audience. You've made a lot of very perceptive,
insightful comments certainly rooted me. So I want to thank
you again and wish you luck with a new album.

Speaker 2 (01:53:27):
Thank you very much, Bob. And this is maybe the
longest interview I've ever done. I had no idea it
was going to be so epic. If Concord was still running,
someone could have flown to New York in the time
we've had this. Yeah, I wish you all the best,
happy and healthy New Year, Bobs. And if you're in
Los Angeles, Yeah, I hope that the fire the fire

(01:53:51):
has died down real soon, so I'm sorry for you
all the suffering that's over there, and let's talk.

Speaker 1 (01:53:57):
The winds died down in any event. Next time, this
is Bob left Sex
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Bob Lefsetz

Bob Lefsetz

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