All Episodes

October 3, 2024 114 mins

The one and only.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is the one and only Richard Thompson. Richard,
you have a new album shipped to short Why that title?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Well, it seemed appropriate at the time. Let me think, Well,
I think in a sense, we're all a bit out
to see you know, you know, like musicians, songwriters and
and uh, we're kind of sending messages to land, like
a song as it is a kind of a little
a little message from far far out at sea. Uh.

(00:46):
I think as an artist, I think you always feel
like like you're on the edge of society. You you're not,
you're not kind of part of it, you're not in it.
So I suppose that's what that really means to me. Anyway, Well,
well tell me about feeling like you're on the edge
of society about it. I think if you're slightly removed,

(01:08):
if you're one of those people, you know, you go
to a party and and you spend more time watching
everybody else that than actually engaging that, then I think
you're kind of on the edge. But when you're on
the edge, you get the best of you, You get
a clearer view of everything. Just being that little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Okay, So let's say I call you up and I say, Richard,
I'm going to a party. Are you going to say, okay,
pick me up. Are you going to say not interested?

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I used to go to parties to pick up girls
and get drunk. Now I'm happily married and I don't drink.
Parties become more, you know, like dinner parties. I think
I love parties where you go and you sit around
and you have some dinner or something, and you have
really good intellectual conversations. I love intellectual conversation. That's my

(02:01):
favorite thing.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Well, let me just say that I invited you to
a dinner party and you don't know anybody. Is that
exciting or depressing?

Speaker 2 (02:12):
It depends who it is, depends who's sitting at the table.
I mean, I've done that many times, and sometimes you
make friends for life, and sometimes you meet really interesting people. Yeah,
if it's a table containing you know, uh, you know
William Blake and Stevie Smith and Dmitriy Shostakovich and you know,

(02:38):
Michael Angelo, then I think that that could be an
interesting party, you know. And I wouldn't mind if I
didn't know anybody beforehand. I could find lots to talk about.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Well, I don't think we're going to be going to
that dinner party soon, but.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Perhaps in heaven, you know. See.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
So just to be clear, you feel like you're on
the outside, but you don't have any social anxiety.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Social anxiety and not really No, I used to, but
I think I think I think I'm over it now. Actually, yeah, yeah,
I think I'm fine.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Did you always feel like an outsider your whole life?

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Most of my life? Yeah, an outside yeah, in some ways,
a bit of a stranger in some ways. You know,
I was a bit of a solitary kid, I suppose,
and I still enjoy my own company. I need some
alone time generally speaking. So yeah, I mean I think

(03:43):
I engage were well with people when I engage. But
there is always that the artist thing where you're always
thinking in terms of reflecting, in terms of reflecting reality,
reflecting society, and I think to do that you just

(04:03):
have to be that that little one degree removed, just
to give yourself some perspective.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
So you need your alone time. What do you do
in your alone time?

Speaker 2 (04:16):
What do I do?

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Well?

Speaker 2 (04:21):
I get creative whatever that means, you know, you know,
I play music. I think about music. I compose music,
I compose lyrics and I watched the football.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Well, is your alone time because you want to create
or you're sick of hanging with people?

Speaker 2 (04:44):
No, I'm not sick of hanging with people. It just
feels like a need. If it's not daily, then it's
certainly weekly that I just have to get away and
create something. And that's an old human it's not a
human traits. Isn't it like a creativity? I think we

(05:04):
love to create something where we look for inspiration, you know,
So I'm just looking for inspiration, Okay.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
I find my best inspiration comes when I'm not looking
for it, primarily in the shower. Is there a moment
or a place where you find that you tend to
get the best ideas well?

Speaker 2 (05:24):
The shower is very good, so is the bath, you know,
the Turkish bath very good. That work for Rumy gelidin Rumy.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
I think.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
But as Picasso said, you know, the music will find you,
but but it wants to find you working. And I
think sometimes you kind of have to meet creativity halfway.
You can't just kind of let it come, or you
can wait for a long time and get very frustrated.
So I tend to kind of, you know, noodle at projects,
and then I find and at some point I get

(06:02):
in the right mental state to allow creativity in.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
Okay, So this last album came, you know, essentially half
a decade after the previous album. You talked about working
to let the inspiration in. Was it that you decided
you were going to make another record or what is
that interim about.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
I think the album process, unless you've got a deadline
that you have to, you know, grab, I think things
just accumulate. I think you accumulate enough material, and you think, well,
I've got I've got sixteen songs here. Surely out of
those sixteen, i've got twelve twelve good ones I can

(06:47):
put on a record, So let's book some studio time,
you know. I think it works like that. Really, COVID
gave me a lot more time to write, but obviously
I couldn't tour, So that was two and a half
years of not touring. But you know, I wrote a
couple of EPs. I wrote this album, I wrote the
next album. I wrote a musical play, I'm one way ahead,

(07:10):
I'm so far ahead, I can't believe it.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Okay. The last song on the album talks about needing
to go on the road to make the money to
make that whole work. So it didn't work for a
couple of years with COVID. Was that tough financially, Yeah,
really tough. You think, like a lot of musicians. I
had to had to dig into my pension. So many
people I knew did the same thing.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
It was. It was tough, you know, on top of
an expensive divorce. But that was really tough. And I'm
still catching.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Up, okay. You know, you talk about an expensive divorce.
You get into the lyrics on this record and it
seems to be a divorce record, and then finding love
and it seems that, you know, you talk a lot.
The best song on me I'm for Me is trust,

(08:05):
and you talk about trust. How much is this reflective
of the relationship you were with and then you got divorced?

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Probably nothing to do with that, really. I wrote the
song really about my wife, who's an adoptee, and adoptees
sometimes have a hard time trusting anybody, so so I
really write write it for her. I'm putting words in
her mouth. Frankly, It's an old trick, but I'll resort

(08:35):
to it if I have to and you know, she
has a hard time trusting people. She kind of trusts
me now after seven years fifty so that's an achievement.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
So how'd you meet her?

Speaker 2 (08:54):
I mean it backstage, classic friend of a friend, and
we're both from North London, both come from the same town,
you know, both come from the same background, share similar values,
and you know, just someone I have my I think
she's a wonderful person and she does do a lot

(09:16):
of work in the adopted your world, does a lot
of important work in that world, and I'm filled with admiration.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
Did the new relationship have anything to do with the divorce?

Speaker 2 (09:37):
You could say that I suppose. I think, you know,
I was married to my previous wife for you know,
thirty plus years, and I think at some point you
realize that that there's there's no life there. It's it's
a kind of a lifeless relationship and you're kind of

(09:58):
going through the motions. So yeah, well, without being too
specific about it, I should say that's true.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
And your present wife has children. Are they still in
the home or are they outside the home?

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Her children are now just about left that they were
in their twenties, so they're now independent. Yeah, my kids
are much older. I got five kids. My youngest is thirty,
so my oldest is fifty something, so might have long
flown the coop.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
When you got involved with your present wife, you were
living with her. Were the kids still in the.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Home, Yeah, some so, some were somewhat.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
So what was it like starting all over with the
kids in your home? I mean that must have been
you know, some people say they don't want to do
that anymore. Been there done that?

Speaker 2 (10:56):
You know, I'm I think it was unfortunate that the
wee all got on very well. I mean I really
like us that Zarah's kids, so that they're great kids.
And you know, it wasn't like we were there all
the time. You know, sometimes I'm working. I was in
England some some of the time. She was in the States.

(11:17):
The kids went off to college at some point, so
it wasn't like we were, you know, under each other's
feet or anything. So just a nice relationships all round.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
So you have five kids, A couple of them are
well known from your first wife. What are the other
three kids up do?

Speaker 2 (11:38):
Let's see what my daughter came He is a musician,
My son Teddy's a musician, my son Jack's a musician
slash interior designer. My daughter Moona's basically a mother, she's
got five kids, and my son Jesse's kind of does
it stuff that I don't understand.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
And are they all off the payroll?

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah? Pretty much? Yeah, thank thank God that they'll start
paying me at some point. I don't perhaps they'll support
me in the assisted living home.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
And how much contact do you have with them?

Speaker 2 (12:20):
My kids? Yeah, I'm pretty good, fairy frequent. I probably
see Teddy the most because when I'm in New Jersey,
he's in New York, so we're fairly close together. My
mother kids are all kind of around, you know, Southeast England,
so I'll see them all in the next couple of
weeks probably.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
So how most of the time you're in New Jersey now.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
It's about fifty to fifty I should say, yeah, between
London and New Jersey.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
And with your previous wife, where were the locations.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Between London and Los Angeles?

Speaker 1 (13:00):
And was it still fifty to fifty?

Speaker 2 (13:03):
I say pretty much?

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Yeah, So you have a place in London.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
I have a place in London from which I'm speaking
to you right now.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
And how long have you had that place?

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Oh golly, at least thirty years, probably thirty five years.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
And when you're not there, is there somebody stays for you?

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Well, where we have people look after it.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
Yeah, okay, So what's the difference to you living in
Los Angeles is supposed to living in New Jersey.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
I love Los Angeles. I love California as a state.
It's a beautiful state and it's full of variety, and
in many ways it's easy living. I mean it's expensive living,
but it's kind of easy in so many ways. Compared
to Britain anyway, New Jersey for me is a lot
more convenient. I'm much closer for doing you know, Atlantic

(13:58):
backwards and forwards stuff. I'm twenty minutes from the airport
and yeah, it's it's a handy place to be. I know,
just in New Jersey. I just live it. Live at
a condo and I've got a studio in the basement
which is great, and some good friends and that's all

(14:21):
I need.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
And what's the difference between living in the US and
living in the UK? I think.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
What's the truth that I think? You know, Europe's older,
that's the main thing. The The socialist historian Eric Hobsbaum
said late in life he said that the best place
is to live a constitutional monarchies because they give you

(14:53):
the greatest chance of freedom. And I feel that really
about Britain's a kind of stability to bring and you know,
there's a security so that people there's a lot of
things people don't worry about. That the kind of accept
a certain continuum that Britain's been around for a couple

(15:17):
of thousand years and it will continue to be around
in the future. Well, with America, it feels much more unstable,
and it feels like so much more like it like
a new country and has all the insecurities of a
new country. And you know, right now politically America is
very divided. Although politics in Britain is pretty bad, it's

(15:40):
never at that level. So I'm concerned about about America,
about how divisive it's become, and it seems to be
really tearing itself apart, and perhaps it'll end up as
being a bit more fragmented than it is now.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
When you say there's more freedom in a constitutional monarchy,
can you amplify that?

Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, you think of the British royal family and you think,
you know that these are over privileged people. You know
that I mean, my god, you know what, we pay
them all this money and they dressed up in these
uniforms and they do these ceremonies, and is it all
really necessary? You know? I think, particularly if you're an American,

(16:31):
you could look at that and think it's ridiculous. But
I think in Britain, you think, you know, the Queen,
the King, you know, it is a kind of kind
of a continuity, and politicians come and go, and their
egos come and go, and their incompetence comes and goes.
But there's a kind of stability about the fact that
the Queen was there for like seventy years and you know,

(16:56):
went through god knows how many prime ministers. You know,
you have a fair price. The first prime Minister is
Winston Churchill. So you know, there's there's this very very accomplished,
very knowledgeable figurehead in the Queen for seventy years, and Charles,
I think also fills the same role. It's just a

(17:19):
sense of inheritance and continuity, and it means that there's
less emphasis on the politicians. I think in America sometimes
the politicians get treated almost like royalty. But you know,
mister President's you know, people kind of genuflector a bit
to just the office of president.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Okay, wait a second, we're in the US, so we're
one step removed. And we read about modern European history
when the kings and queens had all this power. But
to us the queen feels like a figurehead with no
political power. How do the people in the UK view
her or here now it's a king.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
But yeah, yeah, the view is a good idea. The
kings and queens of Britain I have have not had
constitutional power for a long time, so that they've always
been figureheads. As I said, they say the Queen reigne,
she does not rule, but I should say now the

(18:24):
king reigns, he does not rule. So it's it's a
symbolic can continue them if you like, in theory that
the king can can dissolve parliament. He can say that's it,
you know, you're out, but he'll never do it. Like
a lot of things about British politics, a lot isn't
written down. It's just kind of tradition and and you

(18:47):
know a previous experience really so yeah, it's it's a
totally symbolic continuity. But but but it does take the
emphasis away from the politicians as themselves. And what about Brexit?
What about Brexit? Absolute mess, absolute mess. I'm a stupidity incompetence.

(19:14):
If you were going to leave the European Union, at
least have a plan, at least look at it thoroughly
and figure out what you're actually going to do. This was,
you know, the Conservative Party of Britain basically in fighting
and mister Cameron thinking well that the way I'll unite
the party is to have a referendum over Europe, which
is absolutely stupid. No one expected people to vote for

(19:37):
outs anyway, but they did. I had to. I had
to hold to that and it's a disaster. There's a
movement to rejoin the EU and I might be a
fan of that actually.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
And we hear, you know, labor just got in. But
we hear that the NHS is underfunded. We hear that
immigration did not decrease, which was one of the big
points of Brexit. What's the status of the country today.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
I think you just hit hit upon the two big
issues right now, which is immigration. But Britain does not
have a successful immigration policy and that they're gonna have
to deal with that. It's serious stuff. And the NHS
has been underfunded for years and years and years. The
problem is the medicine keyps becoming more and more expensive.

(20:36):
You know, to treat certain patients you need big expensive machines.
It costs a fortune and the NHS has not been
able to keep up. It's a brilliant idea, but it
just needs more funding.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
And if you become ill, do you go to a
private doctor or the NHS?

Speaker 2 (20:59):
What if I can afford, I'll go you a private doctor, okay,
or I'll get ill in America? Where where where I'm
on medicare?

Speaker 1 (21:10):
So you grew up in notting Hill.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
Briefly. Yeah, when we were five we moved to Highgate.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
And for those of us you know geography challenge, where
is there?

Speaker 2 (21:25):
Well, notting Hill is a few miles west of central London.
Highgate is about five miles north of central London and
it's kind of a leafy suburb or on the edge
of a leafy suburb. There's a big park called Hampster's Heath,
which is yeah, you can't build on it. It's like
too sandy to build on. So it survived in close

(21:47):
proximities London. And that's where I live now in London.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
And what do your parents do for a living.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
My mum was a housewife, my dad was a policeman.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
So when marijuana and other things became a big deal,
and your father was a policeman, how did you square that?

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Well, he said, probably in the seventies, you know, he
said to me. Oh yeah, people talking about marijuana all
the time. He said, Well, we used to call it
Indian hemp back in the day, and it's pretty talking
about the nineteen sixties or even the fifties, he said, yeah,
you know, well we used to confiscate some sometimes from

(22:32):
the West Indian immigrants, you know, and we'd have a
little smoke at the police station. And he said, it
didn't do much for me, he said.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
And so how many kids in the family.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
In Oh, my siblings just a sister. I have an
older sister.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
And okay, you were born in forty nine. Did you
still feel the after effects of the war.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Yeah, well, London was pretty bombed, you know, during the war.
So as kids were we play on these bomb sites.
I mean, it's really dangerous and our parents didn't know
necessarily what we were doing, but you know, we play
in the broken glass and you know, thank thank god,

(23:17):
we never encountered an unexploded bomber or an incendiary or anything.
But you know what, we just you know what, it's
your childhood. You've got nothing else to compare it to.
So it just seemed fine, you know. And the street
we lived on was like all shrad or damage on
the buildings, and at the end of the street was

(23:38):
actually a bomb site. But that was just our child well,
we just had fun. We enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
And when did the fog live? When did it go
from black and white to color? I think.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
It probably took till sixty seven. I'm thinking, you know,
sixty three when the Beatles, Mary Korn's, you know, the
whole fashion and music thing. London became the center of
that whole world. I think it was still black and
white then, and I think sixty seven with sort of
psychedelia flower power, I think then suddenly it turned it

(24:17):
turned to color far as I remember, and you know,
the fifties was very gray as far as I remember
as a kid, that just seemed like the weather was great.
It's just seemed like the people's energy was kind of down.
But as kids were we just enjoyed it anyway. But
looking back, it did seem basically kind of post war

(24:41):
you know, poversy really And what was it like when
the Beatles hit exciting? Exciting? I think, well, you know,
even when I was I was like thirteen, fourteen years old,
it was very easy to get caught up in pop

(25:05):
culture because you had the radio, you had music on
the radio, you had some very good TV shows for teenagers.
And by the time I was fifteen, I was going
out to hear bands, going out to clubs, folk clubs,
rock clubs. I knew you had a lot of choice

(25:26):
in London. You had a huge variety of things that
you could go and see, so you kind of felt
you were at the epicenter really.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
So from your house you could get the tube or
how would you actually get to these clubs? And how
long would it take?

Speaker 2 (25:42):
Yeah, you could take the tube or the bus. The
tube is very quick. I mean from my from our
house at that point, we could you could be in
town in like fifteen minutes, twenty minutes from the kind
of inner suburbs. Well, when my parents moved us to
the outer suburbs, it took it took about you know,
half an hour thirty five minutes.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
So did your parents ever care that you went alone,
or they say, hey, go be your own person. I'd
always I'd always.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
Deceived my parents really about what I was doing and
where I was going. So sometimes I missed the last
train home, so I'd have to walk home, which made
I'll be getting in at like one o'clock two in
the morning, and thank god, my parents were heavy sleepers,
and I kind of sneak in and they say, what
time did you get in last night? I said, oh,

(26:33):
you know, eleven, eleven thirty. I said, oh, okay, so
I did that for years. Okay, how good a.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
Student were you?

Speaker 2 (26:43):
Not very good?

Speaker 1 (26:45):
And was there always music in the house?

Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yeah, my parents were musical, you know, they weren't professional,
but my mom was a good singer and my father
was an amateur guitar player. So we have Let's Pool records,
Jago Reinhart records, lot Lonnie Johnson records from my father's
collection and from my sister's collection, who was five years

(27:10):
older than me. We had all the good rock and roll.
But so we had Buddy Holly, Elvis, Jean Vincent, Jerry Lee,
all the good rock and roll as well. So always
music in the house.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
And when did you start to play an instrument.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
My father brought home a guitar that was damaged when
I was ten, and he kind of glued it back
together again, and then I just picked it up and
started playing because it was something I wanted to do
for a long time. I've been asking my parents for
a guitar since I was five, So at ten, I

(27:50):
finally got one.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Why were you asking them at age five?

Speaker 2 (27:57):
Rock and roll? You know? You know Elvis had a guitar,
but Buddy Holly had a guitar, and so, you know,
posing with a tennis racket in the in front of
the mirror. I had to suffice for a while, but
then I was very glad to get my hands on
a real one.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
So your father glued the guitar back together. Did you
ever take lessons? I did?

Speaker 2 (28:23):
Yeah, I took classical lessons for a couple of years,
which was great. That really got my fingers working properly.
I'm very glad to this day, I'm very glad that
I did that.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
And can you read music to this day?

Speaker 2 (28:37):
I can't. I can, Yeah, I'm not particularly good read.
I can write it fast than I can read it.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
Okay, So if you're making a record, you ever write
down charts.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
Not usually, I mean sometimes we write you know, like
like you know, a Nashville style chart, you know where
you just you know, you have the bars and you
have the you know the one called the four called
the five chord get kind of shorthand charts. Really, if
I'm bringing musicians in like a string quartel or something

(29:12):
there that then I'll notate that properly.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Okay, So you're playing in the guitar, At what point
do you start playing with other people?

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Pretty quickly, as soon as I started, my friend who
live around the corner started as well, so we took
lessons together and I was like a week ahead of him,
so I got to play lead and he played rhythm.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
And when did you start forming a band or start
playing out?

Speaker 2 (29:45):
I think, yeah, well, I think when I was twelve.
I think I was in a band, like an instrumental band.
And I think when I was thirteen or we did
our first show and that was also our last show
because it was it was so bad experience traumatic that
we basically broke up at that point. And then I

(30:07):
played with other kids at my school. I was in
a band with Hugh Cornwell, who was in the Stranglers
that lasted a couple of years, and then I met
the Fairport guys, probably when I was sixteen, started playing
with them.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
At what point in this story do you say this
is going to be what I do for a living.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Almost at no point, really, you know, it wasn't a
career choice. If you see interviews with the Beatles in
ninely sixty four sixty five that they say, well, we'll
do this another couple of years and then we'll move over.
We'll just write for other people, you know, it wasn't
a career choice. That there was no sense of longevity

(30:54):
being in popular music. So I think we thought we'd
do it for a couple of years. Really, I'm eighteen,
nineteen twenty. At some point, I'm like twenty two, and
I'm still going. Twenty five, I'm still going, but I'm
still looking over my shoulder, and I'm still thinking that,
you know, this cannot last. And I'm thirty thirty five,

(31:17):
you know, but I think I was forty when my
mother said, no, when are you going to get When
are you going to get a real job? You haven't really,
you know, what are you going to settle down and
stop this music nonsense? You know, this is this is
when she came to see me at the Royal Festival
Hall in London. So so I think in my nightmare,

(31:39):
so I'm still kind of looking over my shoulder thinking
that this isn't a real job. What am I doing?
At some point I've got to go back to university
or something, you know, and do more study. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
Did things ever get tough in you how to get
a day job?

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Not quite? Somehow I always managed to survive when I
left school. I was a stained glass stained glass artist
for a year. What we did graphic design and stained glass,

(32:19):
and I worked at the Zoo for a while. But mostly,
you know, I survived on music, and when I wasn't
in a band, I could survive on playing sessions, studio sessions.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Okay, So, for lack of a better term, Fairport and
those other racks were folk oriented. When you started in bands,
were you playing that music or were you playing more
rock and roll type stuff. I think.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
Growing up in London listening to a wide range of
music meant that I could play a wide range of music.
I could play folk music, I could play rock and roll,
I could play a bit of jazz, I could play classical,
so I was kind of ready for anything, really, and
when Fairport started, we really were a folk rock band
and I was happy to play that. That seemed to

(33:11):
me a great choice of music. And we love lyrics.
We were a real lyric band, so we would be
covering you know, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, Jonny Mitchell.
We'd be covering songs by the great singer songwriters.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Okay, something that always fascinated me. We had a big
folk movement late fifties early sixties in US, completely wiped
off the map by the Beatles, and then in the
late sixties there was the folk era from England, Fairport Convention, Steele, iye,
span all these other acts. What caused that.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
Becaused it? I think, well, you know, since the grammar phone,
or maybe since like Stephen Foster, you know, a lot
of UK music has been imported, and you know, songs
like you know, Carolina Moon Keeps Shining that that you
know that these songs were kind of romantic and almost

(34:18):
mythological to the Brits. It was like somewhere somewhere else
you could go that in your mind at least, that
was a better place somehow, and you know, all through
the jazz era, the swing era, music was more popular
from the other side of the Atlantic, and I think

(34:38):
when you have rock and roll that the same thing happened.
And I think even the British folk revival of the
fifties was sparked by people like Pete Seeger and the Weavers,
and it took till the fifties for people like you
and mccol and A. L. Lloyd to say, okay, well
we're gonna start out of folk club and you have

(35:01):
to sing songs from where you come from. You've got
to sing British songs. If you're Scottish, you've got to
sing Scottish songs. If you're English, English songs. And that
was a big change, you know, And for Fairport it
seemed to us a logical thing to do in the
sixties was to contemporize folk music, was to bring it

(35:27):
into the twentieth century by playing it on amplified instruments
and drums. So really that was that that revival which
started sort of sixty eight sixty nine fair Butt start
started playing traditional music as a rock band and still
I spam followed, other bands followed, but it took us

(35:49):
that long, I think to really shake off the American
shackles in some ways.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
Well there's also Britange and Pentangle. To what degree were
you out in the forest alone or were there other
English bands pushing you forward and leading the way in
this type of music?

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Not really, no, I mean I think we thought Pentangle
were more of a kind of folk slash jazz fusion band,
if you like that, And we thought they were a
bit wimpy, you know that they didn't play particularly loud,
so we weren't influenced by by them. I mean, I
love but yanch as a player, and I've seen him

(36:30):
for years in folk clubs, and I love Danny Thompson,
but we didn't really pay much attention to Pentangle. You know,
all those guitar players David Graham, John Rambourn, Bert Yan
Martin Carthy. I saw a lot of in folk clubs
when I was a teenager, so I was strongly influenced

(36:52):
by them at the time. And it was part of
that mix, that that London mix of you know, being
able to hear all these different different things. You know,
they went in there with the Who and the Yardbirds
and anything else you could see in London at the time,
you know, so it was really fair boss idea. It's

(37:12):
idea to amplify and play traditional ballads.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
Okay, let's go back. You're going to clubs. What acts
did you see rock clubs?

Speaker 2 (37:29):
There was a great club called the Marquee Club, of course,
in Soho, which started out as a jazz club, started
by a guy called Chris Barber, and by about nineteen
sixty five you had The Who playing there as in
a residency, a little club like three hundred, three hundred
people standing. Maybe you had the Yard Buds on Fridays

(37:50):
were there at Clapton then with Jeff Beck, then with
Jimmy Page lost the guitar players to go and watch
their Spencer Davis group with Steve Winwood would play there.
The Nice Who, kind of the the the precursor to
Emerson Lincoln Palmer, lots of good music. I saw a

(38:11):
billboard for one particular week of nineteen sixty five, and
I realized that I'd seen three shows that week. And
I saw The Who on Tuesday, I saw the Yarbas
on Friday, I saw the Bill Evans Trio on Thursday.
I mean, well, what a week that was. That was
just fantastic education.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Okay, when you saw these bands, all these bands went
on to be household names, and certainly and who live
at Leads they had the poster from the Marque when
you saw them at the Marquis. Did you think they
would be as big as they would become? Were they
as good as they became?

Speaker 2 (38:51):
In some ways? I think when the who were writing
really great three minute pop songs before they became you know,
you know, like an arena band or a stadium band.
I think that they were just a great club band.
And you know that they had a lot of visual
stuff that they had all that great pop art ideas

(39:12):
you know from people like Peter Blake. So that was
very very exciting. And they played very loud and they
would destroy their instruments on a regular basis, which is
quite exciting too. So you know, a very anarchic, very
very visual and as a fifteen sixteen year old, I mean,
just what you wanted to see really, you know, it

(39:33):
was that kind of thing, you know, you know, the
yard Bers were just a pretty good R and B band.
I think when we heard the real stuff from Chicago,
when we actually heard Howling Wolf Records, we raised that
Yelberds were actually a bit kind of wimpy, you know,
they didn't have that kind of testosterone, you know, the

(39:55):
running through the music that you heard on Muddy Waters
and records. But yeah, exciting stuff. And you can see
great jazz as well. In London, all the good jazz
came through and you can see great classical concerts as well.
So it was a real small gas board of excitement there.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
Did you ever see the Beatles live?

Speaker 2 (40:17):
No? I never did. I probably wouldn't have been able
to hear them anyway. Reports say that you just couldn't
hear a thing, but it sure was exciting.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
And what about the Stones?

Speaker 2 (40:29):
I saw the Stones quite early on. I didn't think
they were very good. Actually I still don't think they're
very good, but I think live that they're not that interesting.
But they've made some great records. There's some absolutely definitive,
wonderful rock records that that you know, pretty much set
the standard for decades for other bands, which records what

(40:54):
the things least like you know, Street Fighting Man, Brown Sugar,
you know that generation of Stones records I think are
really really great, fantastic records. They've got great grooves, great sounds,
and they just does everything that a rock band should do.

(41:16):
And you know the bands that followed, like Pearl Jamer
kind of in the shadow of what the Stones could
achieve in the seventies, I think.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
So in America started with the Beatles, and although the
Stones were an element, we got all what was called
the British invasion, everything from Herman's Hermits to Freddie and
the Dreamers. What degree did they have impact? Were you
paying attention to them in the UK?

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Well, in the UK it was just like saturation, you know,
especially the bands from the North, the bands from Liverpool
and Manchester pretty much saturated that the charts for a
long time. You know. All we could offer from the
South was the Dave Clark five, which there made some
good records, but they were not a good band at all.

(42:05):
So you know, the Beatles, the Holly's, you know, the
Mersey Beats, the Big Three, the Escorts, you know, all
these Liverpool bands. We're actually pretty good and what we
really enjoyed them and tried to learn stuff from them,
you know.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
So why did the innovation come from the North as
opposed to the South?

Speaker 2 (42:30):
Good question, I think because Liverpool is a seaport, you
had sailors, American sailors bringing over records and perhaps you know,
trading them in in in you know, in pawn shops
and junk shops. So in Liverpool you could buy Motown

(42:54):
records at a time when when they were harder to
find in London. And obviously you know that the Beatles,
for instance, started off doing some great covers. You know,
you've got a hold on me things things like that,
All these these great Motown and R and B records,
the well, we never heard in the South. You know,

(43:16):
where we heard we heard chuck Berry and bow Didley,
where we heard that kind of R and B stuff
from Chicago, but where we never heard we never heard Motown,
particularly until they started to tour in the UK.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
And I have to ask before we move forward, what
about skiffle?

Speaker 2 (43:33):
Skiffle? My god, yeah, interesting UK phenomenon. Why I asked myself,
why was this skiffle? Very strange thing?

Speaker 1 (43:44):
So?

Speaker 2 (43:45):
I think because after World War Two kids didn't have
any money, you know that there was there were these
teenagers who were just impoverished. Things are still unrational, you know,
through the fifties, you know, you like couldn't get sweets,
you couldn't get butter. You know, it's crazy, and no
one could afford a real instruments and so people would

(44:06):
make homemade instruments there that they'd make, you know, the
washtub bass, sorry, the wash the washboard rhythm and then
the washtub bass, and if you can afford a guitar
or two that that would be good as well. And
they just played like led Belly songs, Wouldy Guthrie songs. Uh.

(44:31):
There was a famous skiffle band run by Lonnie Donegan
and he he had major hits in the UK. I
think he recorded That's the Right Mama, like a week
after Elvis Presley or a week before Elvis Presley. So
so he nearly invented rock and roll, but not quite.
But he was kind of the beginning of the skiffle
movement and and it just spread like wildfire through Britain.

(44:56):
But because it was homemade music, you could make the
instruments yourself, you know, the Beatles filmed the Quarrymen, you know,
John and Paul. Anyway, and I don't know how long
it lasted a couple of years. Maybe it was just
a strange British phenomenon. And then after that you had

(45:16):
a traditional jazz boom in Britain as well. You're concurrent
with rock and roll. You had this revival of New
Orleans traditional jazz basically in the nineteen twenties. So you
had all these bands like like I could Builk playing
trad jazz. And my sister, you know, used to used
to go and dance to traditional jazz. That was one

(45:37):
of her things. Concurrent with rock and roll. Very strange.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
And let's go back to the clubs. You know, you
talk about the yard Birds. They have clapped in, they
have Page, they have Beck. Of course, you have John Mayle,
you have Peter Green, Fleetwood Mac. To what degree did
not only you go to see these these guitarists, were
they influential to you?

Speaker 2 (46:07):
Well, I learned how to copy those guys, and then
I kind of rejected it, and I thought that this
is an overcrowded world, the world of the the British
blues man, you know, the Peter Greens and the Eric Clapton's,
you know, and the Mick Taylor's, et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. I just said, well, I'm going to play
something different, you know, I'm not going to be like

(46:27):
these guys. So when we started playing the traditional music,
that was much more of an influence for me, so
that I have more of a Celtic influence on on
my guitar playing.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Okay, you form Fairboard Convention. How long do you play
before you get hooked up with Joe Boyd?

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Not very long, I think. I think I left school
in May sixty seven. We were playing around the clubs
that summer. I think it was something like September when
we hooked up with Joe. Joe discovered us, Haha, as
they say, so just a few months really, which is

(47:17):
extraordinary in so many ways.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
Well, you know a lot of bands in the US
they formed and they said, oh, we got to get
a record deal. Was that in Fairport Convention's mind? Or
did Joe Boyd find you and then you got a
record deal.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
We weren't thinking about a record deal at all. We
just thought we're thrilled to be playing anywhere, to be
playing music, and to actually be an opening act for
people like the Pink Floyd. I mean that was just
staggering to us. They're just amazing. So Joe offering to
record us felt amazing and we were very very excited.

(47:59):
So how did Joe actually find you. Joe ran a
club called the UFO Club in London. I think it
was only one day a week. It was most of
the time it was an Irish club, and on the
weekends it suddenly became uh, you know, light shows and
hippies and all that stuff. And we were opening for

(48:22):
the Pink Floyd and Joe came to the dressing room
and said, I really enjoyed what you guys played. Let's
make a record. It was it was some cliched you know,
and we did.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
Okay, Well, you know, you make a record, you have
to sign a deal. It involves money. To what degree
were you conscious of that?

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Yeah, Well, Joe had a relationship at that point with
the Who's managers kittlee em Bird and Yeah, Lamberton Stanley, Yeah,
and they had all so Joe just said, let's do

(49:03):
a record for those guys, and we did. We just
did a single for those guys, and then after the single,
what we kind of looked around a bit wider and
we did the next record on PolyGram and then really
we jumped to the label everybody really wanted to be on,

(49:24):
which was Island Records at that time, which was you know,
the label that that was the place to be, a
really good, well run independent record label.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
And in retrospect, how good a producer was Joe Boyd.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
I think he was a very good producer. I would
have to put him in the context of working with
John Wood as an engineer. John Wood was a great engineer,
and the combination of the two of them I think
was excellent and led to great results. And Fairport Records act.
I think the first record doesn't sound particularly good, but

(50:02):
from the second record onwards, the records sound really good.
You know, Sandy Denny records sound really good. Nick drect
records sound really good. So whatever that was, whatever that
that team produced in that particular room, the soundt ning
studio was a great studio. The mixing desk was a

(50:23):
great mixing desk. You know, all these things contribute to
to the to the sound of those records, and it's
all analog, and that that stuff sounds absolutely great. Still
sounds great, and I think it sounds good because Joe's
approach was really not to be too fiddly about special effects,
about hyping that the sound too much. He would kind

(50:43):
of try to get a naturalistic sound on records, and
I think that gives you a certain longevity, so that
stuff doesn't sound dated. I can listen to an incredible
string band record and it just sounds fresh as a day.
I mean, it just sounds wonderful.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Interesting act, Go back one step. How did the band
actually come together? The first iteration of the band.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Yeah. I had a school friend who lived next door
to Ashley Hutchings and the bass player in Fairport. And
at some point Ashley's blue blues band, the guitar player
was sick or something like it couldn't make a show.
That's so I filled in for him. I filled in

(51:31):
for another actually's bands. He had a jug band going
as well, so I think I filled in for that
as well. And at a certain point he and Simon Nicol,
who is also a neighbor of Ashley's, and I, the
three of us said well, let's put a band together.
Let's let's put together a folk rock band. You know,
we all love that kind of music. We love the birds,

(51:52):
we love the loving Spoonful, you know what, we love
all those great lyric writers. Let's do something along those lines.
So that was really the beginning. So three of us
we had a drama temporarily called Sean Fraser. He didn't
last very long. Martin lamble that the drummer who joined
us came to see us at the show and said

(52:14):
I can do a better job, and he fit in very,
very very quickly. So really four of us. Judy Diable
was a singer who was again local to another neighbor
of Ashley's. And so it's a five piece to begin with. Yeah, okay,
and how about Ian Matthews. Yeah, In Matthews joined because

(52:37):
we felt we were a bit vocal light. Judy was
really our only singer and she's more of a folks
singer than a rock singer. So Ian added a bit
more spine to the vocal department.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
Yeah, how did you find Ian?

Speaker 2 (52:54):
He was recommended me. He was in a bank called Pyramid.
When Pyramid broke up, he was at a loose end
and someone said, oh, that there's a band auditioning. You
should go down, and I just came down to the studio.
It wasn't really like an audition. Well, we were working
on a song and he said, we just said, oh,
sing some harmony on that song. So so he just

(53:16):
kind of started working with us and that was it.
Really that there wasn't any sense of audition or or
you're in the band or anything. He just he was
instantly in it.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
And how did Judy Devil get replaced by Sandy Danny?

Speaker 2 (53:34):
Well, Judy, as I said, was really a focusinger who
did better with a lighter accompaniment. She had a hard
time singing over the volume of a band. So we
asked Judy to leave. We auditioned for Sandy.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
A little bit slow. How do you tell her she's
out of the bit? Well, how does she react?

Speaker 2 (53:57):
How does she react? She reacted? You know, how can
you react that? You know, you've been playing with your
friends for for a year or so and then suddenly
they asked you to leave. It's it's a tough one,
but we had to be realistic. We had to say,
you know, your Judy, you know you're yeah, you're you're
not singing in tune. You know, you're pushing too much

(54:18):
to sing over over the band. And I think actually
who was kind of the it was kind of actually
his band really at that point, and actually we would
do the hiring and firing as so he took it
on one side and went for a walk and broke
the news to her. But it's it's a tough it's
it's the worst thing to do in a band, and

(54:40):
the second worst thing to do it is auditioning. So
we were very glad that after probably only two or
three singers, Sandy came in and was just like on
another level. Actually, she was absolutely wonderful stella and so
she was hired instantly.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Did she have any status or she just some girl
came in and sang. Were you aware of who she
was prior to auditioning her.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Yeah, well we were aware of who she was. I'm
not sure i'd ever seen her. She was singing mostly
in folk clubs, but had a very good reputation in
folk clubs, and you know, it was a friend of
a friend of a friend and all that kind of stuff.
You know, lots of social connections, but really, you know,

(55:26):
it was a leap for Sandy, I think, and a
leap for us as well. But it was something that
just worked really well. From the beginning. She was so good,
and I think she was looking for a new challenge
and I think she was really happy to be in
that environment at that time.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
And at some point there's a car accident where our
van accident where the drummer and your girlfriend are killed.
Can you tell me about that?

Speaker 2 (55:56):
Yeah, so that was sixteen nine. So we were traveling
back from Birmingham to London, which about one hundred and
twenty miles, something we did all the time. But we
didn't stay in a hotel when we played Birmingam. We
just drive back and our driver had been ill. He
had an ulcer, so he hadn't been sleeping very well.

(56:19):
Sandy traveled separately. She was traveling with her boyfriend. So
you know, the van went off the road, somersaulted. It
killed Jenny Franklin, who was my girlfriend at the time.
It killed our druma, Martin Lamble. Very very traumatic for
the band, as you can imagine.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Well, how was it for you with your girlfriend passing away?

Speaker 2 (56:47):
Well, it seemed unreal, you know in some ways, being
twenty years old, it was my first experience of somebody
dying and actually watching somebody die, So it was very
tough and it took me a long time to get
a real perspective on it. Were very, very difficult, and
I think you know, in those days, you didn't necessarily

(57:09):
have counseling, you didn't have therapy, You just kind of
I think it was close enough to World War Two
that the people said, Okay, well, you know, put yourselves together,
you know, just get on with it, come on, you know,
move on to the next thing. So we'd have aggrieved properly,
it just wasn't on the agenda in those days, so

(57:31):
we just kind of dealt with it or didn't deal
with it. And I think we made bad decisions for
the next couple of years in many ways. I think
I think a lot of stuff was kind of crazy.
You know. I actually had a nervous breakdown at some point.
Rest of us we're not in a good mental state

(57:51):
for a couple of years.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
And what were some of those bad decisions?

Speaker 2 (57:57):
Bad decisions that people leaving the band actually actually left
the band. Sandy left the band. I left the band,
and I think given a different set of circumstances, it
would have stayed together much longer. But it was all
it's all a little upside down at that point.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
And so was I in the first one to leave.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
Yeah, Ian left, Yeah, it was the first one to leave.
He was really into a different kind of repertoire, I
should say. You know, he loved country rock, and when
he left Fairport, he formed a band called.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
Southern Comfort.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Southern Comfort, Yeah, and that was much more Ian's thing,
and he kind of stayed in that style really for
the rest of his career. And yeah, Ian's a great
thing and he's still a great singer, and he's made
some wonderful music over the years.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Ok Ian has a hit international hit with a cover
of Woodstock Fairboard does not have a hit. Are you
jealous or what do you think about that?

Speaker 2 (59:11):
We didn't think hits were important at that time. It
was really about albums in sort of nineteen sixty nine
nineteen seventy to have a hit album would have been
our ambition. And I think we had a couple that
scraped the top ten in the UK. But you know,
singles that was really for pop bands. You know what,

(59:34):
We weren't paying attention at all to singles. Maybe a
single would help you to sell an album. That was
the virtue.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
Okay, you're making album after album. Our finance is tight
or is there enough to live and be?

Speaker 2 (59:48):
Okay, we made cheap records back in those days. You know,
a record wouldn't cost you that that much or you know,
ten fifteen thousan pounds wasn't really a lot of money
even then, so we were always in the studio and

(01:00:13):
Joe would bankroll us anyway. If we needed funds to record,
he kind of find money from somewhere and just stick
it on our never ending bill. But we were always
in the studio. We'd sometimes after shows, we'd drive back
to London and go in the studio and just record
all night.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
And at what point did you start writing songs?

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
Well, I started co writing for the first Fairpoor album
in sixty seven, and I think I co wrote because
I didn't have the confidence to write something on my own.
And I think in sixty eight I wrote a song
called Meat on the Ledge, which was my first solo effort.
And having done it, I kind of got comfortable with
the idea. I thought, I, Okay, I can write lyrics.

(01:01:01):
I can write the melody as well. This is fun.
I love doing this. I'll do it some more, but
I'm still doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
And at this late date, what's your process.

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
At the early day?

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
No, now today or you know, listen, you know you
have all a billion things. People you know, write the music,
then write the lyrics. Some people write it all at
the same time. Some people go back the snippets they've
recorded previously. Build a song brick by brick? How do
you do it? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
I do it? I do all of those.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
Sometimes I write lyrics first, sometimes I write melody first.
Sometimes it comes all at once. That that that's like
a gift from God. That's wonderful. Uh. Yeah. I don't
like to limit the possibilities. I like to give as
many doors open to the creative process as possible. And

(01:02:00):
you know, it's it's hard to define what the process is.
Many have tried and most have failed.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
So did you have any advanced morning that Sandy was
going to leave the band? Or was that a shock?

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
I think Sandy was just in a bit of a state,
you know, I think we all were. We weren't thinking
rationally necessarily. Sandy could be fairly, you know, up and
down in terms of mood. So and she hated flying.
And we were on our way to some shows in

(01:02:47):
Denmark which we had to fly to, and she wasn't
on the plane. And I suppose she missed a few
other shows before that. So so I think we thought
that was the our straw, and wonderful though she was,
maybe we could live without her.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
Well. It certainly changed the character of the band. I mean,
that was the first album. First time I saw the
band with full house. Was there any thought that while
we need to replace.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
Her, Yeah, there were thoughts that we should replace her,
but nobody really sprang to mind. So in a spirit
of camaraderie, I think we just said, oh, we'll split
the vocals between us, which especially what we did. So
none of us felt we were the greatest singer in

(01:03:38):
the world at that point, but well, we just divided
it up. You know. We'd split songs sometimes into different singers,
we'd harmonize songs. I think we felt a little exposed,
but I think we also thought that we were a
very good instrumental band at that point and that was exciting,
and that if we were a little over balance, if

(01:04:01):
we're little under balanced on vocals, then we were over
balanced instrumentally. That would make up for it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
So how did you decide to leave?

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
I mean, again, I think still some trauma from the accident.
I wasn't thinking clear. It's like a gut reaction. I thought, well,
I've been in band since I was twelve, you know,
I want to do something on my own for a while. Really,
that was all it was, you know, these people were
my best friends. But I literally just couldn't go on.

(01:04:36):
I just hit a wall. I'd had it, so I
had to get out.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
And at that point was it about playing sessions or
cutting your own record.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
I had ambitions to make my own record, but I
survived on session work. I did a lot of session
work for the next two years, which was great. I
didn't even go looking for it. Just the phone started
ringing a wonderful thing, and my diary started filling up,
and that was great that that kept me going. Yeah,

(01:05:08):
for a couple of years. But I've been accumulating songs
and I thought I'd really like to put these songs
on a record. So at some point, I, you know,
I went into the studio with John Wood and I
recorded them and that was the first solo album.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
Can you tell us what it was like being a
session musician in a couple of sessions you played.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
On session musician? Well, first of all, it was nice
because I was working with people mostly that I knew
and producers that I knew. So, you know, I play
on Ian Matthew's record, I planned Sandy Denny's record, and
then I play on that kind of the folk rock records,

(01:05:57):
singers and names I can't even remember. But you know,
you get to know a producer and he'd say, can
you come and do this session? And you say, okay,
can you You know, that was great? Can you now
do some of my other artists? So you get to
do a roster, You get book for a whole roster
of artists, and you know, occasionally I'd step out of
that kind of comfort area into like a real pop

(01:06:20):
session where you're playing with you know, seasoned, hardened, first
call session musicians, and that was fun. Sometimes too, that
could be great. But yeah, and a lot sometimes you
didn't know who the artist was. That was true. Maybe

(01:06:41):
a third of the time. Yeah, you didn't know who
the artist was. You just turn up and do it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
Okay, you make the first solo album, it certainly gets
good distribution in the US. It's PND it first, then
conventional wisdom changes. What was your experience of Henry the
Human Flyer.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
My experience, well, you know, I thought it was an
okay record, and I was kind of alarmed at the
reviews that it got, which were very negative, and at
a certain point that they were so negative that I thought, well,
I'm going to treat this as a positive. I'm going

(01:07:22):
to think I've gone somewhere that people aren't ready for.
I must be ahead of the game. How can people
not understand this record? Yeah, the arrogance of youth. So
I just thought, well, I shall persevere. You know, this
is one thing. I'll make another record and I'll see

(01:07:43):
how they like that one. But it was a notoriously
bad selling record. According to Warner Brothers, it was their
worst selling record ever, which I I'm quite proud of.

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
How do you meet Linda? When does it become a
rong antique relationship? And when do you start making music together?

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Okay, well, I think I met Lenda in sixty nine
when we were making a Fairport record call Leigion Leave,
and she was a friend of Sandy's, and we have
Sundy's best friends really, and at a certain point we
became romantically involved. And for about six months there or

(01:08:28):
maybe longer, maybe it was a year, we didn't see
much of each other. But because she was working on
various projects and I was playing with Sandy, I was
playing with Ian, I was on the road, I was
doing us tours, and we said, well, you know, if
we work together, well why don't we just work together

(01:08:48):
and we'll be a duo and at least we can
travel together, we'll spend some time together. So that's really
what we did. And we went back to the folk
club So that seemed, you know, a way to earn
a living at that point, not having a manager all
that kind of stuff, where we just what is the
folk clubs got paid in cash, you know, gas was

(01:09:11):
you know, twenty five cents a gallon or something. Everything
was very cheap. Never stayed in hotels, stayed in the
promoter's house, spare bedroom, and we were comparatively well off.
And we did that for you know, like a year,
and then at a certain point where we thought, well,
we're going around in circles here, you know, the folk clubs,

(01:09:32):
at the folk clubs, but that they don't translate to
something else, that there's no progress. You have to kind
of jump out of there. So we took on a
manager and then we started playing concerts and sometimes where
we hired a band, where we had a band sometimes
and we started to tour more and you know, we

(01:09:55):
have a bit more of a career there.

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
Okay, you made a number of albums with her, and
the first one that really got noticed in the US
was poured down like silver in seventy five, and then
four albums after that, in eighty two, Shootout the Lights
gets phenomenal reviews, and then the duo was over. So

(01:10:19):
the period of time that you're with Linda, what was
it like on the inside.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
Well, you know, we're raising a family and trying to
work at the same time, so we're always compromised to
some extent, and we were never really able to do
a US tour. We could never quite bring the whole
family over or whatever, you know, travel with a nanny. Well,

(01:10:50):
we didn't quite have the budget or the the inclination
really at that point to tour America. So you know,
touring was bits and pieces. Recording was bits and pieces
where we're kind of throwing it together as we could
when we could. But it wasn't like Light. We were
full on trying to promote ourselves at that point.

Speaker 1 (01:11:14):
Okay, but when you know, the band breaks up or
the act breaks up at the height of it's both
commercial and critical success. I mean, all of a sudden
you get these phenomenal reviews. It's the opposite of Henry
the Human Fly. You know, is there anything well, I'm

(01:11:35):
onto something. How do we maximize this?

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
Well, I don't know. I think you know, it was
the end of our relationship. But yeah, we were married
for ten years. We were in a musical relationship for
ten years, and it was kind of you know, I
think we've grown a part enough. You know that it
was it showed, you know, it was significant enough to

(01:12:01):
uh to break up. You know. Yeah, musical partnerships can
be pretty finite as well, So it was just time,
what can I say. And the lights were successful, I mean,
there wasn't really a way to capitalize on that. I

(01:12:22):
think we tried to do a US tour at that point,
but it was a bit of a disaster on the whole.
And you know, I went off and pursued a solo career.

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
Now, at some point you get involved in Eastern religion here.

Speaker 2 (01:12:38):
Sufiism, yeah, well a Sufism yeah yeah. Another band I knew,
a band called Mighty Baby, who were good friends who
actually I did a lot of session work with. Uh.
It embraced Sufism. That that went to North Africa and

(01:13:00):
they met a teacher there and they came back and
I thought, oh that these guys are different. Well, what's
going on? You know? So I kind of hung out
with them and I thought, well, this is for me
as well.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
And at that point, is there a point where you
stop your musical career.

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
There was a point where when I just felt like
absolutely drained musically speaking, I had nothing left to offer.
I was like empty on the inside, and I thought, well,
I've got to stop for a while. I think it
was at seventy six seventy seven, And you know, I
ran an antique shop for a while. I had a
little antique business which was moderately successful. But after a

(01:13:51):
year I kind of got reinspired, you know. That's that.
Then punk came along, you know that, the Sex Pistols,
and I thought, well, this is it. This is the
energy that you need to play music. This is this
is going back to like Elvis the Sun Sessions. It's
got the same kind of energy to it. Really, so

(01:14:13):
this should be inspiring me. And it did, and I
wanted to get back into music.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
So you make a couple of records with Joe Boyd.
What's that experience like?

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
Really good? Well, Joe and I've always been friends and
I've always admired Joe's uh, Joe's musical intelligence and ability
to spot talent, all that kind of stuff, all the
stuff you know you expect from people like you know,

(01:14:46):
John Hammond Senior. Joe's a bit like that. You know,
he could spot potential and I think he made such
a difference to the British music scene in the sixties
and seventies. No one else had the ears, I don't

(01:15:09):
think to sign the incredible string band Fairbaal Convention, Sandy Denny,
John Martin, Dudu Paquana, Nick Drake. No one else could
see that stuff in the right perspective. And that's why
we love Joe because he seemed like he was on
the same wavelength as us.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
And how did you end up working with Mitchell Frum
after a couple of albums with Joe?

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
Well, at that point I was signed to Capitol Records.
We had the same management, the same record label as
Credit House, and my manager said, oh, you should hear
this Credit House record. Mitchell Froom's has such a great
job on it. You should have them on your record.
And I love the Credit House record. I though it's fantastic,

(01:15:58):
and I thought, well, if I can get you know,
ten percent of that spirit on my record, that would
be great, and I'm not sure that ever happened, but
but Mitchell was great fun to work with. I really
enjoyed working with Mitchell. Well. I think we did like
four records or something together. It was just fun. We
were just enjoying ourselves, which is what you're supposed to

(01:16:19):
do in the studio. Really great fun.

Speaker 1 (01:16:22):
Well, what was different working with Mitchell's supposed to Joe.

Speaker 2 (01:16:29):
More quirky about sound. I think in a sense, you know,
Joe was more naturalistic and he just kind of let
things happen. He basically sit reading the baseball scores in
the in the in the Herald Tribune and let things happen.
Mitchell was a bit more hands on than that. And
also between Mitchell and engineer Chair Blake, there was this

(01:16:53):
idea of kind of garage to garage excuse me, that's
you know, the stuff that sounds like it's been recorded
low fi. And I think we we went in for
a lot of that. That that kind of idea that

(01:17:15):
you make it sound you know, funky again, you make
it sound like it was recorded at Sun Studios. I
mean it kind of all goes back to that again,
so kind of funky drum sounds, funky room sounds, and
you know, kind of purposefully downgrading the high five if
you like. You know, So I think we did a
lot of that, and I think that's the difference.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
And then the rumor INSI album happens and there's a
burst of energy in terms of acceptance on the exterior.
What did it feel like on the interior?

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
Uh, it felt different. Well, you know, I was on
Capitol Records, you know, for for a few albums, and
then uh, there's a new head of the company comes
in and the company kind of transforms and I actually

(01:18:11):
get my records promoted, uh, which I can't say really
happened much before that. But suddenly I have that the
Capitol Records machine is working on my behalf as opposed
to you know, everybody else's behalf. So that was the difference. Really.
Hail Milgram, who became the head of the company and

(01:18:34):
just a great guy and a great friend to this day,
just a wonderful music person. You know, sometimes you think,
you know, record executives forget the reason that they were
They went into the record business, and they get caught
up in numbers and percentages and you know, chart positions

(01:18:58):
and all that kind of stuff. It's always refreshing when
record executives really care about music, and it just doesn't
always happen.

Speaker 1 (01:19:10):
So who signed you with Capitol Records? Originally?

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
Uh, good question. I can't remember.

Speaker 1 (01:19:18):
Okay, but this was before hal.

Speaker 2 (01:19:23):
Again, I can't remember.

Speaker 1 (01:19:24):
Okay, how does it end with Capitol Records? For you?

Speaker 2 (01:19:29):
There it ends, my contract ran out, hailed left by
that time, my contract ran out, and basically they said,
let's do a compilation album and goodbye. And that was fine.
I was glad at that point because a lot of
people were beginning to question the role of the major

(01:19:51):
labels because you never seem to earn any money. And
I think people thought, well, maybe, you know, if I
work with an independent label or if I put out
my own records, I'll see some return. And that did
turn out to be the case.

Speaker 1 (01:20:19):
Okay, do you receive any royalties from all the records
you've done?

Speaker 2 (01:20:27):
A streaming has basically killed royalties. Roches used to be
half my income, half my income. That's recording rotter's and
songwriting and royalties. It was about fifty percent of my income.

(01:20:47):
It's now about two percent of my income. And that's
down to you know, Spotify and or these companies paying
you virtually nothing for putting your intellectual property out there,
and people being able to do hundreds of thousands, but

(01:21:09):
somehow it's millions of streams of your music and paying
you ten bucks. Is it a moral? Yes, it is
a moral. What can you do about it? I don't
know what you do about it. Sustainable model, No, it
isn't a a styinable model. Musicians deserve better.

Speaker 1 (01:21:29):
Okay, let's go back, because you know the usual model
of a record deal is they advance you money. They
do or do not sell records, forget the creative accounting.
But you're earning back at a very low rate. So
there's some household named bands that are still in the red.
So where did the royalties come from? The royalties come

(01:21:51):
from the Fairport records, from the Richard and Linda records,
from the solo records? What generated money forgetting the songwriting?

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
Just?

Speaker 1 (01:22:01):
Were there ever any recording royalties?

Speaker 2 (01:22:04):
Actually recording anti is? I probably make a bit from
the really early stuff, from the Fairport stuff a bit,
But I mean that these records that they turn over,
but they don't they don't sell a lot, particularly you know,
on a label like Capital. I enjoyed my time at Capital.

(01:22:27):
But you get an advance from which you would make
the record, and you pay your your manager fifteen percent,
and you pay the lawyer probably ten percent for making
the deal, and and and and you wouldn't end up
with anything. You'd also, yeah, you'd make a video in

(01:22:48):
those days, and the video budget could be like seventy
five thousand dollars, which you didn't necessarily want to spend,
but the video department wanted to spend that money just
so that that it didn't go down. That they went
to every artist to spend the maximum, so that the
video department could keeping being funded to the max. Someone

(01:23:15):
a Capital told me, at some point, you know, just
before I left, I think that I had never made
a record that lost money, and yet I still appear
to capitally. Am I about you know, four hundred thousand
dollars which I'll never recoup. It's like the film industry.

(01:23:36):
You know, you have all these write offs, yet you
try to never show a profit. Like you try to
never show a profit on a film, you try to
never show up a profit on a record. Is it corrupt? Yes,
you know it wouldn't happen in other industries. It only
happens in creative industries.

Speaker 1 (01:23:55):
Okay, prior to streaming, literally, what was generating the royalty income? Sales?
What was it?

Speaker 2 (01:24:05):
Well, you know, records on independent labels. You know, I
was on Joe Boyd's label for a while, Hannibal Records,
and that I actually actually got paid for records, so
that would be good. But mostly I'd be earning rossies
from songwriting rather than performance, not that much from performance

(01:24:26):
at all.

Speaker 1 (01:24:28):
And the songwriting royalties that you were getting were from covers.
Where was the money coming from?

Speaker 2 (01:24:36):
From your own records and from covers, A mixture of things.
And that's still the case, except the numbers are now
are now tiny.

Speaker 1 (01:24:45):
So when they were at their max, how much money
were we talking about?

Speaker 2 (01:24:53):
I'm not sure I should say, really was it six figures?
Six figures could be okay a good year.

Speaker 1 (01:25:03):
Okay, So now we're in this, you know, all these
years later, a couple of decades on, we're in this
internet streaming era. Needless to say, is you just said
your royalties are down? Has streaming has the Internet benefited
you at all? Or has it only been a negative?

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):
Hard to quantify, but probably if people can stream your music,
they might come and see you live, and live is
the place you own money these days, and that's why
everybody is out there playing live. Apart from that, it's
a big negative. If I owned more of my own music,

(01:25:50):
I would not put it on streaming services.

Speaker 1 (01:25:54):
Let me ask you this. Let's say you own the
music and you license it directly to the streaming company,
which means you would get sixty odd sense okay, especially
with songwriting, and you could sell physical copies, there would
be some money there.

Speaker 2 (01:26:14):
Right, Yeah, you might be overwriting what an artist actually
gets from a streaming services. I get points zero zero
zero six of a dollar.

Speaker 1 (01:26:32):
I don't want to get into a long discussion of
stream streaming royalties on demand pace different from radio streaming,
blah blah blah. All I know is people who are
a lot less famous than you, who are earning just
because they own everything, are doing earning six figures from
streaming companies. But let's forget that for now. So you

(01:26:55):
made records that were independent, Now the new record is
with new asked, do you have a feeling about making
a record independently or as opposed to a company.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
Well, I consider news to be like a bigger independent label,
and they've been great for me. I did another record
in New West. They've been great, They've been absolutely great.

Speaker 1 (01:27:20):
Let me ask you a different question. You put out
a couple of records on your own label. Yeah, what
was that experience? Like?

Speaker 2 (01:27:32):
It's good? I mean, it's that there's a lot to cover.
It's hard work. You really do have to work at it.
It's easy to put stuff up on bank camp, for instance,
and then you do get a good return on it,
but people have to find it, like most things on
the internet that people have to actually find you. So

(01:27:53):
a little promotion doesn't hurt. You can hire own publicists,
I suppose sometimes that's not switch about it. I did
an instrumental record back in the seventies which I made
for six hundred pounds and I basically delivered it myself

(01:28:14):
to the to the record stores. That was quite interesting.
That was an interesting exercise in being the hands on
label manager.

Speaker 1 (01:28:25):
Okay, when you made independent records though in the last
couple of decades, by time the cycle was done, were
you in the black or the red?

Speaker 2 (01:28:35):
I'd be in the black. I'd be in the black.

Speaker 1 (01:28:38):
So why did you decide to go back just because
it was so much work to do it yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:28:48):
I don't know. Sometimes it's a matter of coordinating, coordinating,
work with with your management, coordinate with your agent, can
augizing work with the record company, and doing something that
that can work, you know, give it given a balance

(01:29:09):
of those elements. So sometimes you want something that has
a bit more cloud to it to push a record,
let people know it's there.

Speaker 1 (01:29:21):
Okay, So this record that came out, did you cut
it independently and then make a deal with New West
or do you make a deal with New West and
then make the record.

Speaker 2 (01:29:31):
I made the record independently and then went to the
record companies.

Speaker 1 (01:29:37):
So you had enough cash in your coffers to do
it yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:29:42):
Yeah. I mean it's a cheap record. So tell me
cheap in quality of course, ye?

Speaker 1 (01:29:48):
Right right? Tell me how you did it, right, tell
me how you did it, How I did it?

Speaker 2 (01:29:55):
How amde it went into a studio.

Speaker 1 (01:30:00):
Well let's go back. Okay, wait, wait, you get divorced,
you get remarried, you have COVID, I mean the COVID period.
Did you ever get COVID? Oh? Yeah, a couple of times. Yeah, okay,
so serious, So when do you decide you're going to
make another record, because no one, you don't have a contract,
No one's breathing down your throat. When do you decide

(01:30:23):
I want to do it?

Speaker 2 (01:30:25):
Well, we figured that we couldn't really go into the
studio during COVID, so we had to wait that out.
So I made a couple of things at home in
my home studio. But then I had a lot of
material that I really wanted to get out there, you know,
get it off my chest. So I discussed that with

(01:30:48):
my management and I said, you know, I was living
in Woodstock at the times, and so I said that
there's this really good studio in Woodstock I'd like to use.
So we arranged for the musicians to fly in from
lah and book studio time. Made the record in a week.

(01:31:10):
Basically sounds really good. Ah, does it have a Woodstock
sound to it? I don't know. Maybe there's a Woodstock
vibe there somewhere.

Speaker 1 (01:31:26):
So when it's all said and done, how much did
it cost you?

Speaker 2 (01:31:31):
I'm not sure? I actually don't know. Okay, not a
lot cheap.

Speaker 1 (01:31:39):
Okay. So the manager you presently have he is or
she is.

Speaker 2 (01:31:51):
Well, I'm with a company called Vector Management and My
manager is Brad.

Speaker 1 (01:31:56):
Okay, how long have you been with Vector Effect?

Speaker 2 (01:32:00):
For about ten years?

Speaker 1 (01:32:03):
So what can you tell us about managers?

Speaker 2 (01:32:06):
Let's say about managers. There's almost as many kinds of
managers as there are human beings. I mean, there's a
huge range there. I've had managers who were kind of
screamed down the phone style, you know, old school, old school.

(01:32:31):
I've had managers who take far too high a percentage.
The nice thing about Vector is they're a big enough
company that if you do want to do something like
get on TV, they could probably do it for you.
That they could probably get you on the late night
chat shows. So that's nice.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):
That they are.

Speaker 2 (01:32:54):
So you know, there are reasonable human beings. That they
like music that's important, and that they look out for
my interests, which is what I need from my management,
is you know, people who care about you and look
out for you.

Speaker 1 (01:33:11):
And what about agents.

Speaker 2 (01:33:14):
I have a wonderful agent in the States, Frank Riley,
who's been major now for like like twenty years, who again,
you know, things career. He doesn't just just book me
because the money is there. He'll think, Okay, you shouldn't
play this market too often, you know, let's go back

(01:33:35):
in another year or two. Just you know, a smart guy,
a very respected agent, and he's been wonderful. We have
a great relationship.

Speaker 1 (01:33:45):
Okay. Needless to say, the business has changed radically from
when you first started. Okay, when you first started, there
were a limited number of albums released a year. I
remember in the early seventies when I went from twenty
five hundred to five thousand albums, people say, oh, that's
way too many. Now i'm streaming services, they'll get sixty

(01:34:06):
thousand tracks a day. So from making the music, A
lot of your contemporaries don't make any new music. A
lot of them had vast success. They say, I'm going
to spend all the time and effort and it's going
to make a very little dent in the universe.

Speaker 2 (01:34:27):
True?

Speaker 1 (01:34:27):
Does it the landscape affect you mentally and creatively? Knowing
no matter what you do, because nobody reaches everybody anymore,
it's not like the sixties or seventies. How does that
affect your motivation? I can't help doing what I do.
I can't help writing songs. I can't help being creative.

(01:34:48):
I can't help it. I'm driven by something. God knows
what it is, but I have to do it. I'm
not a happy human being if I don't do it.
People can't live with me if I don't do it,
family get upset with me if I'm not being creative.
So I'm always going to do it. And whether the
m is it gets out there or not, it doesn't matter.

(01:35:10):
I'd rather it did get out there. But if it doesn't,
well that's too bad. But I'm still going to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:35:16):
And I've had this conversation with with other singer songwriters
of my age, who say, what's the point. What's the
point of me making music? What's the point of me
putting out records? Nothing ever happens? You know, my audience
doesn't seem to get any bigger, you know, I you know,
I break even, you know what, what's the point? And

(01:35:39):
and I kind of agree with them, except for that
fact that I can't stop doing it. I have to
do it, uh, you know. And my audience it doesn't
get smaller. I think it gets bigger actually slowly, slowly, slowly,
maybe through word of mouth. More people come to shows,
and as my old fai and move on to another

(01:36:02):
plane of existence. Younger people seem to fill up those slots,
so I just keep doing it. I can't help it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:11):
Okay, are you doing anything actively you as an individual
to promote or grow the audience? Are you on social media?
Are you doing anything else? Or are you doing it
essentially the same way you've always done it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:25):
I'm talking to you right now.

Speaker 1 (01:36:28):
Well, okay, and other people.

Speaker 2 (01:36:33):
I do promotion. I go on you know, podcasts, and
I go on websites, and I physically turn up at
radio stations and I do all that stuff. Besides playing shows,
I do promote. And I suppose that after COVID, in

(01:36:55):
some ways it's easier because in the old days, I
used to expect you to to get on a plane
and visit two or three cities a day, you know,
to promote yourself and visit all these radio stations. Now
I can do it from home. I just could be
at one place and I can talk to a lot
of people from that one place. So in that sense,
it's easier. But I do it. Yes, I promote myself.

Speaker 1 (01:37:18):
So you know, you make records. Everybody who's creative. You
know you're never going to do something bad. You've had
your chops. You've been doing it for so long. But
when you do something that's great, and artists know when
they do something that it's great, can't have an eleven
with every attempt. But when you do something great and

(01:37:38):
not much happens in the marketplace, is that disillusioning?

Speaker 2 (01:37:44):
Not at this point, No, it doesn't accept it. I
accept it. I'm a seventy five year old artist and
I'm not catered for by popular media anymore. So I
do what I do. If I end up playing, you know,
in you know, assisted living facilities, you know, to fifteen people,

(01:38:09):
I'm still going to do it because I love to
do it. I love to perform. I love to communicate
music to people. This is stuff I love doing, and
it's not going badly for me. It's actually it's actually
going very well. You know. If I gets frustrated, it's
more with things like streaming that that kind of kill

(01:38:32):
so many people's ambitions and careers.

Speaker 1 (01:38:37):
Okay, so you're telling me your audience is replenishing and
it's growing, but you really don't know what's causing.

Speaker 2 (01:38:47):
The No, I don't know. I do what I do.
I put the energy out there, and I figure if
you do that, then it comes back in some form
and maybe it's not the form you're expecting that, but
it does come back eventually.

Speaker 1 (01:39:02):
And how many gigs do you do a year?

Speaker 2 (01:39:04):
A year? One hundred?

Speaker 1 (01:39:08):
And is that the right number? Would you like to
do more or fewer?

Speaker 2 (01:39:12):
I might have to do less, I'm funny. It harder
to travel, so I might cut down to seventy five
or even fifty. I mean, I mean I've done that.
You know how many things I've done in my life,
like five thousand or something. It's a it's a lot
of shows, but I love it. I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:39:33):
Okay, So do you love every gig? Or you playing
some of the songs thinking about are you going to
be late for the plane? This is a shitty hotel?

Speaker 2 (01:39:43):
Yeah, oh, you just deal with that stuff. You know,
shitty hotel, You think, well, tomorrow will be a better hotel.
You know, a bad sound system, You think, well, you know,
what can you do? You know, if the audience can
hear you that, then you know tomorrow's another day. You
know you're something better. But there's always stuff on the road.
There's always you know, flight delays and you know snowstorms

(01:40:08):
and god knows what. But you just deal with that stuff.
You know, bad food, No food, you know, I mean
you just get on with it. You get on with it.

Speaker 1 (01:40:16):
Well, I'm actually going about the gig itself, the hour
you're on stage.

Speaker 2 (01:40:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:40:21):
Is it always rewarding? Sometimes not as rewarding? Does it
depend on the audience?

Speaker 2 (01:40:29):
Uh? The audience is usually good. There's there's really a
bad audience. Rarely a bad audience, and maybe one gig
in four you're thinking. This is a struggle. And it's
usually done to the sound more than anything else here.

(01:40:49):
You know, you can't hear yourself on the stage. There's
too much blowback come from the back of the pa
or something. So everything just sounds a little like it's underwater.
You know that there are shows like that some nights
late this stuff sounds so great. You know that you've
got such a great sound on stage. Uh, you know,

(01:41:09):
most nights, I'm really enjoying myself and I'm really enjoying
the interaction with the audience. Most nights. I love it.
Nothing better.

Speaker 1 (01:41:19):
And are you concerned at all about legacy?

Speaker 2 (01:41:23):
Legacy? No, it couldn't go less.

Speaker 1 (01:41:26):
So if you walk off this mortal coil and no
one remembers you, whether than the people from your generation,
that's totally fine with That's okay.

Speaker 2 (01:41:37):
My legacy are my kids who play music, and they
play music very well, and I'm happy to pass the
baton to my children.

Speaker 1 (01:41:48):
And how often do you play the guitar.

Speaker 2 (01:41:54):
Every day? Some days I'm Some days I'm traveling all
day and I can't play the guitar. Sometimes I just
can't find the time to physically get my hands on it.
But most days I play something. Some days I play
like eight hours, you know, other days I play half
an hour.

Speaker 1 (01:42:13):
And when you're doing that, you're noodling or you're rehearsing.
What are you doing whole stuff?

Speaker 2 (01:42:17):
I mean, sometimes I'm just keeping my fingers working, pressing scales,
that kind of stuff. Sometimes I'm working ideas for songs.
That's usually what I'm doing, working on ideas for songs,
how to come up with the best accompaniment for a song,
or finding a melody for a song.

Speaker 1 (01:42:39):
And you have it as dollar reputation as a guitarist,
to what degree do people track you down and say, hey,
I want to work with you, work with me not interesting? Well,
I mean, at the end of what I'm I'm saying,
come play on my record something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:42:58):
Come play my record if I got time, Yeah, sure, absolutely.
Mostly I play on you know, people, whether it's some connection,
whether it's a friend of a friend or an actual
friend making a record. You know, my son just asked
me to plan his record. That's great. I'll do that one.

(01:43:22):
Sometimes I get too many offers to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:43:24):
Actually, Okay, all these years later, your ex wife Linda
put out a record you're involved with that Fairport does
these annual celebrations you've appeared there? Does time heal all
wounds or were relationships pretty much steady the whole time? Well?

Speaker 2 (01:43:50):
I get on fine with Linda. That's nice. I'm happy
to contribute it to her record. I think it's done very well.
It's a good record. Actually, lots of great contributors to
that record, Fairpol. They're like brothers. You know. Maybe you
don't see them every day, but when you do see them,

(01:44:10):
you get that old connection comes back. It's lovely. I'll
see them next weekend. I'm going to play at the
Properly Festival Forwood's Festival, and that'll be great to see everybody.
Be absolute blast.

Speaker 1 (01:44:24):
And how many guitars do you own?

Speaker 2 (01:44:30):
I try not to own too many, but I probably
owned twenty maybe thirty. I don't know. I like to
play them. I don't know to sit in the cupboard neglected.
So if I don't play a guitar, I'll try and
get rid of it. But yeah, not too many. I'm
not in the Keith Richard class.

Speaker 1 (01:44:49):
And what are a couple of your favorites.

Speaker 2 (01:44:55):
Well, I kind of like fenders. I suppose electric guitars.
I've got a bunch of Fenders, probably my oldest is
about fifty nine. Acoustics. I play Loudons that made in
Northern Ireland, wonderful guitars. I've probably got half a dozen
of those. But you know, they're all wonderful tools. You know,

(01:45:20):
I don't treat them too reverentially, but that they are
essential tools of the trade.

Speaker 1 (01:45:25):
And if you go on the road, will you take
your favorites with you or say they're too valuable?

Speaker 2 (01:45:32):
Favorites too valuable? I'll take my really good road guitars,
which are excellent. I'm very happy with.

Speaker 1 (01:45:40):
And how about the amps amps?

Speaker 2 (01:45:49):
I have a variety of As you know, I play
a lot of Fender amps, and if I don't take
my own, I'll hire Fender amps. I'm happy with Vox
as well. Fox. I see fifteen's and stuff I've got
nam called Divided by thirteen, which I use mostly on stage.
It's kind of weird. It's got hybrid amp, which is
absolutely wonderful. You know, But again, tours of the trade.

Speaker 1 (01:46:13):
And you play solo, at least when I've seen you
in the past years. Is that just economically the only
way you could do it? Would you rather play with
the band or you like doing it solo?

Speaker 2 (01:46:28):
Playing with a band is expensive and if I break even,
I'm doing well. So that doesn't happen all the time. Well,
we're going out in October November this year with the
band in the States. Solo, I can earn a living,
and so probably two thirds of what I do is solo.

Speaker 1 (01:46:49):
And then you were coming up in a very vibrant
scene in terms of music today. Is there anything happening
for either all players or young players that you find
interesting and stimulating.

Speaker 2 (01:47:03):
There's always good players. I'm not sure that that always
get recognized. I'm not sure the industry is geared to
innovation or originality. I think you know, people tend to
get signed if they sound like everything else. That that's

(01:47:25):
the sad truth of it. Madison Cunningham I like a lot.
I think she's a really good guitar player. She's got
a great band, nice arrangement ideas, not nice quirky songs.
That's someone I like. You know, there's wonderful kind of
singer songwriters around and they're always happening, but you know

(01:47:49):
what actually sells records? Sometimes that to me is of
no interest whatsoever.

Speaker 1 (01:47:56):
And these new artists that you do find that you
do like, but you actively searching for them, or do
people say, hey, you got to hear this? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:48:05):
I think a combination of both. Yeah. I think I
often recommendations because there's so much out there that you
kind always find the stuff you know you would like,
So recommendations are very important.

Speaker 1 (01:48:19):
Okay, so let's go back. You're the observer. You're one
step removed. Do you think that makes you different or
are we all one step removed whether we recognize it
or not.

Speaker 2 (01:48:42):
Is it a good thing to be able once? I
don't know if it's a good thing. I think as
an artist you can't help it. You have to be
that little bit away. Sometimes you can't help it. That
doesn't mean you can't be a social human being. You
can't feel an integral part of the human right. But

(01:49:04):
I think sometimes you do feel like a bit of
an alien somehow.

Speaker 1 (01:49:10):
So you're in the city, you may not even be
talking to anybody, you're walking down the street. Do you
feel different from everybody else? Or you feel like you're
just like everybody else.

Speaker 2 (01:49:24):
I don't know. I feel that like a you know,
like like a I feel like an individual. I think
most people do feel like individuals. But I think I
interact well with other people. When I'm walking down the street.
Sometimes I'm just in my own space that I'm in
my own world, which is usually musical walking on the streets,

(01:49:48):
sometimes I just you know, I hear melodies and you know,
lyrics and stuff invading me.

Speaker 1 (01:49:59):
It's it's so, if I put you down with a
group of musicians, are you going to find commonality or
are you going to feel separate in that environment?

Speaker 2 (01:50:10):
If you spend long enough, that's it. I think you're
always going to find commonality, but it could take a while.
It could take a while.

Speaker 1 (01:50:18):
And what about if I take you for a meeting
with business people, are you always going to feel these
are not my people?

Speaker 2 (01:50:26):
Probably? Yeah, yeah, But people in suits kind of worry me.
I must say I've always had that attitude. I wear
a suit as little as possible.

Speaker 1 (01:50:39):
And you know, in the sixties they said music could
save the world. What's your viewpoint on music in general today?

Speaker 2 (01:50:47):
Well, it did save the world. It happened already to
save the world. Music today, Well, I'd like to think
it can save the world. I'd like to think that
my music could change something. Who knows. But I'm not
going to write an overt political song at this point.
But but you know, music changes people. Listening to music

(01:51:11):
changes people. It changes people's hearts. It softens people's hearts,
it hardens people's hearts, it opens people's hearts. Music is
a wonderful thing. It aspires to the spiritual, so it
can do all kinds of wonderful things to people.

Speaker 1 (01:51:29):
How did it save the world once?

Speaker 2 (01:51:31):
How did you change the world?

Speaker 1 (01:51:33):
How did you said that music did save the world? Well,
I can experiment.

Speaker 2 (01:51:37):
I think in the sixties it did. Did it did
for me anyway? Yeah, it was a whole revolution in
the sixties, really a social revolution. I means it was
a huge component of that. But you know, it didn't
necessarily last, and it was necessarily lays sincere, but it

(01:52:02):
did change the world.

Speaker 1 (01:52:06):
Okay, most people who this deep into the podcast are
very familiar with you and your music. But for those
who are not, something most artists don't like to do
is sell themselves. But if you were going to explain
yourself and your music to someone completely unfamiliar, what would
you say?

Speaker 2 (01:52:26):
Ooh yeah, tough question. What would I say? Well, I'd
probably be self deprecating and mumble and basically say nothing
about myself. But if I had to, I'd say I
was a singer, songwriter, guitarist somewhere between Celtic and rock,

(01:52:55):
and I've been doing it for the last fifty five years.
That's it.

Speaker 1 (01:53:01):
Okay, that's a raw description. And then I might ask
the question what makes you different? Are you special from
other people in that category?

Speaker 2 (01:53:12):
I honestly don't know. I don't know what makes me different.
I think everybody has a different accumulation of music that
they've listened to in their lives, and in that sense,
everyone is different. Everyone expresses different things when when they
express music. You know, someone who only listen to you know,

(01:53:33):
A C. D. C. And Beethoven and Charlie Parker is
going to express things very differently from someone who's only
listened to you know, the birds and Stravinsky and uh
and Louis Armstrong. You know you hear, you hear music
or your whole life, and some you you take to

(01:53:54):
heart and some you reject. But everyone has it has
a different formula of acceptance and rejection. So we're all different.
We're very different.

Speaker 1 (01:54:09):
Okay, Richard, I want to thank you for taking this
time with this audience. I would like to go deeper
into your earlier points about the dinner table and who
would you want to have dinner table. That will be
another time, but thanks a lot for taking the time.

Speaker 2 (01:54:23):
Thank you well, thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 1 (01:54:26):
I do appreciate until next time. This is Bob left
sets
Advertise With Us

Host

Bob Lefsetz

Bob Lefsetz

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.

Super Bowl LIX Podcasts

Super Bowl LIX Podcasts

Don't miss out on the NFL Podcast Network and iHeartPodcasts' exclusive week of episodes recorded in New Orleans!

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.