My Bloody Valentine: A Historical Dive into Dream Pop's Pioneers [Episode 327]

An in-depth look into the Irish-English alternative rock band My Bloody Valentine with author Andrew Perer as he unravels the mystery of their unique sound created by the band's mastermind Kevin Shields.

Purchase a copy of Turn My Head Into Sound: A History Of Kevin Shields And My Bloody Valentine

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Just three albums released in forty years, yet each has
had a seismic impact, one heralded as a masterpiece, possibly
the greatest album of the nineties. This is the story
of My Bloody Valentine and the mastermind behind the music,
Kevin Shields. That's coming up next. I'm booked on Rock.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Oh, we're totally bummed rock and roll. I mean, I'll
leave you. You're reading. Little Hands says it's time to
rock and roll. Roll up, I totally booked.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Welcome back to Booked on Rock, the podcast for those
about to read and rock. We've got a first time
guest on the podcast. It is Andrew Pearre. His brand
new book is titled Turned My Head Into Sound, A
History of Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine. Andrew, Welcome
to the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Thanks Lon, appreciate edding.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
My Bloody Valentine released just three albums, yet each has
made such an impact. Their nineteen ninety one album Loveless
considered by so to be the best album of the nineties.
When did you first hear of My Bloody Valentine? When
did you become a home?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
I heard them when they put out their first important
record when I was sixteen, So it hit right at
that key moment in your life when music's kind of important.
So I was there from the beginning and simon folling
them since I'm about fifty two now, so I was
following them this full time pretty closely.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
You provide a history of shoegaze music in the book,
so they are under that category of shoegaze music. So
I'm sure there's somebody listening now saying, what is shoegaze music?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah, it's really funny. It's they kind of inspired these
other bands to take up the guitar and get excited,
and yet what they were doing has nothing in common
with these bands. So they kind of got grouped together,
lumped together, and this category was made, and I can't

(01:58):
there was some there was something to these the initial
bands that they were inspired in my body Valentine. But
they did the exact opposite things that my buddy Valentine
did in the studio, truly the opposite, and so it
was this strange thing to him that they were being
compared to them.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
That name shoegaze. These bands. Oftentimes when you'd see him
in concerts, they're staring down at maybe.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Like the the pedals they're looking at. They're not dynamic
band necessarily, so they're looking away and yeah, my buddy
Valentine and Kevin Schiel is not a real dynamic character
on stage, yes, and Nora Is some other bands and
it was first meant as a derogatory thing, but it
took off for some reason instead of like dream pop

(02:41):
or something else there whatever became shoegaze and it comes
to define It's really a strange category because it's so
broad they people put anything into it almost. But there
was an initial group of bands right after on their
first album, the first major album came out. Isn't anything
or inspired by them, like two years later that was

(03:03):
like that was considered. That was the first generation of
shoe ga is like a slow Die and Rush, I
mean Bride and Lush and some of these other bands
around that. And then they went off into their own things,
but they were seen as you know, a lot of
people got excited about the guitar again because of him,

(03:24):
and a whole bunch of British bands came about British
guitar bands a new generation and.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Kevin Shields is the main guy and that that Shoegaz's
label never sat well with him.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
No, I mean it's just nothing. You know, they're using
stuff from the seventies that hasn't changed, like except the
Beatles and Hendricks pioneered like echo, flanging, phasing, reverb. He
doesn't use that. That's stuffing but modulation typically and hasn't
really changed since nineteen seventy, So he doesn't use that.

(04:01):
He has a totally different and it's kind of very
top down. I mean top down. You can't you can't,
can't interact with it. Really, it's so it's not that
emotive or anything. And what he does is totally a
different thing. He doesn't do any one thing now. But
for a while he played this thing called live guitar.

(04:22):
They kind of called it. There was this a way
you used the tremblo arm with some different effects and
the very emotive and Johnny Marv the Smith was a fan,
and Brian Eno and Pattie Smith and anyone you want
a name is that you know, it was like a
that from Garbage. You produced an Ivana's album. Never mind.

(04:44):
Billy Corgan is a huge fan, you know, and so
they often you know, he's like the most interesting guitar player.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Well that's interesting that you mentioned Billy Corgan. That's interesting
that you mentioned that because I hear the influence. I
hear the my bloody Valentine influence in the Smashing Pumpkins,
particularly Simeon's dream.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, there's a quote and he's like, don't ask me
about this stuff. The only person doing anything original is
Kevin Shields. You know, I got I took this stuff
from Kevin Shields something like that. And uh, you know
another bend bu Radley's they're big at England and uh
so and uh, what's the best thing from garbage the

(05:25):
drummer uh the produced a never mind? Uh he was
saying out there. They're hallucinatory, the the uh, the the
tones and textures and everything. And there's some videos on
there's four pretty good videos on YouTube. But it'll give
you some idea. They're kind of analogus to the songs,

(05:46):
but you can't hear them properly on on a computer
or anything. It's best he's doing. He really cares about
the fidelity and stuff, so you want to hear on
a proper stereo of some way if you can. But
they're to give you some idea of what is going
on that it's not it's a it's pretty psychedelic and

(06:06):
out there.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah, is weird right right? Yeah? Yeah. But Kevin Shields,
he's an indie rock icon, but he's relatively obscure among
the mainstream music fans.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, I mean all the people in the bands know him,
all the engineers, all the critics, all the other people
know him. When there was a poll in Ireland for
like the best Irish album the last fifty years, hundred years, whatever,
or of all time, maybe Loveless one easily batting out

(06:41):
everything by YouTube, by the Cranberries, by Enya, by Snead
O'Connor easily won the contest. Like the best album from
nineteen ninety one, Loveless, which is like his is everything
came together perfectly. It's there is a revolver album if
you want to call it that, you know, analogy or something,

(07:02):
and I think it beat like Autung Baby two to
one and Acting Baby was inspired a lot by their
previous album, but this one was more with this more
expensive sounding Loveless. So I mean that was a poem
among people who are publicist, critics, journalists, all industry people
so in Ireland, so they and it's not particularly Irish

(07:25):
sounding he grew up in He spent ten years in America,
ten years in Ireland, in ten years in London. By
the time by the time he'd.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Done that album, Yeah, let's talk it. He's so he's
of Irish descent, but he was born and raised in Queens,
New York.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, the first and years. So there was a there
was a big unemployment problem in the fifties in Ireland,
so a bunch of them left the country and his
parents came here a bunch of other Irish emmigrats, and
so he was raised here in the first ten years.
Then he has four brothers and sisters who are all
distinguished themselves in other ways, and they knew back when

(08:06):
he was ten, but he picked up on all the
American stuff, like he saw the Jackson's cartoons and the
Parkridge family and the Beatles cartoons and all the music stuff,
and he was he was doing musical experiments even at
a really young age. And and then when he got
to Dublin, he got you know, when by the time
he's fifteen or sixteen, at his first guitar, I was

(08:28):
playing in bands and stuff and then they you know,
then there's by the time he was like twenty. I
guess they left Ireland to find their way.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
But as far back as you said when he was
a kid, he was eleven years old when he did
something with the sound of a vacuum cleaner.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
He was like taping. He was doing these experiments with
like his like eleven, I think, get right, And he
was taking a sound and putting on a you know,
one team recorder and rerecording out another tape recorder and
going back and forth and doing the kind of experiments
you see people doing at universities and stuff like that. Uh,

(09:10):
with learning about how it sounds, decay and all that
kind of.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Stuff and the warbly sound of the television.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
Oh yeah, the clip there's a clip of Hendrix playing
at Woodstock. He liked playing. Uh maybe it was the
national anthem and it was really warped and he really
liked that. And then we heard the actual thing. It
wasn't as warped, but this copy he had and some

(09:39):
of the tape copies are really warped. And he likes
the idea of like this is an Eastern idea of
music too, you know, not exact tones everywhere, going in
between blue notes and stuff like that, and uh, you
know that's in his guitar playing. He goes out of
tone tune a lot, sort of the back in so

(10:00):
it's not not it's disorienting a little bit, but it
always comes back, so you're back, you're oriented again. But
he blurs all these things together to make the really
neat composite sound.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, blurs it and Ben sounds and we're talking about
again eleven years old. I mean, you hate to throw
the word genius around, but I don't know, man, eleven
years old, you're starting to think about those things.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, gets thrown around. And if you hear about the
experiments he did and in the studio and just you
know Alan McGee who started creating records which which the
label Wastis was on, for example, and primal screamings from
other British bands. You know, he just said straight up

(10:44):
he was a genius. He thought he was. He was
like one of the best an ar men of his generation.
And he's just straight up as the guy's a genius.
But he's maddening and difficult because he's you know, he
doesn't have that much control over himself. He doesn't mean
to be, but he's he's not the most productive guy.
In some ways. He's had some issues, as we all do.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
Sure, you know, how does the band form My Bloody Valentine.
This is when he goes when he moves back to
Ireland that eventually leads to the formation of My Bloody Valentine.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, it was the first iteration with a different singer
named Dave Conway and so okay, So he first ends
up with the drummer who's been in the band the
whole time and as his partner in crime called a
quasac I guess a kuzak or something. And so they
meet at like sixteen or seventeen, and he's been in

(11:39):
two of them have been together the whole time pretty much,
and they get a singer named Dave Conway. And in
about eighty four they get advice from this other band
they really respect to leave Dublin and they felt like
it didn't fit in there. Anyone who does anything too different,

(12:01):
it's like you're shunned. You know, you can't do anything
too radical there. And this was a different time in place.
This is the you know, the late seventies, early this
is the early eighties really, and you know the world
was much more confined and not nothing like today with
the Internet and the world all around us so easily available.

(12:24):
So he told him go He told him go get
away from Dublin, from Ireland. I don't go to London though.
So they went to the Netherlands first. It was him
Calm the drummer who's his good friend, Dave Conway the singer,
and Dave's girlfriend played a keyboard and based kind of
on keyboards, and so the four of them went to

(12:48):
the Netherlands first for about four months, and then Germany
and they were really they had a good they had
a good time. They hadn't they they were it's just
after the birthday hard to get left. I don't know
many Americans know that. Well, it's Nick Cavee's original band,
and Germans are very open to everything. And he saw

(13:10):
these bands doing radical things, but like taking pop songs
and doing crazy things with them, and it was an
inspiring time. And then they eventually end up in London
after another after about a year in the Mitherlins in Germany,
and he next gets affected by uh. Up to this
point he been to the Ramones and the birthday party

(13:32):
and what else. Some of the some some stuff like
t rex and stuff like that. Yeah, probably the probably
the birthday party and the Cramps, kind of the rockabilly
kind of stuff and Gothic kind of rockabilly stuff. And

(13:54):
then he hears the Jesus and Mary Jane in eighty
four eighty five, and they moved to London and Jesus
and Mary Jane take these It takes like almost a
Phil Spector tite melody and simple beat and put noise
on top of it. I mean it really sounds like
be My Baby or something, but done with like harsh guitars.

(14:20):
And he was kind of that really blew his mind,
and they had a couple of years where they couldn't
figure things out. They didn't know we're directing. And then
Dave Conway left, they got a proper bass player, and
Dave Conway left and his girlfriend left also, and Debbie
Googe joined on bass. First in eighty five and then

(14:42):
eighty seven Blinda Butcher joins and everything changes, things fall
into place. That's the band of now, Blenda Butcher, Kevin
Shields Comb and Debbie.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Let's talk about the phase where they're making these mini
out this before the lineup that became what we know
in those two albums in ninety one, there's some there
were some mini albums recorded and released. Shields has tried
to warn fans away from listening to anything he made
prior to nineteen eighty seven. He says there's he regarded

(15:17):
as it's a little more than juvenilia. I think was
the word. Yeah, I mean, what are we hearing on those?
How different is it from.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
I mean year, the very first mini album I did,
that actually did in the professional studio and it actually
got some good write ups and that one works. And
then after that that album was done in Germany and
it's a totally different sound, but it still works. It's okay,

(15:45):
got good write, a good writer work here, which I
put in the book. And then they did like three
or four EPs in London and there you could it's
just very stilted and it doesn't work, and I'm not
happy with it. And they're still learning the studio, and
there's a good reason he warns people away from them.
They just they're kind of like they're in transition from

(16:06):
the rockabill They like Jesus and Mary Jane, and they're
trying to be original and they are too conceptual and uh,
you know, they had like matching haircuts for a while,
a' llah there, Ramones and some other bands like that,
and uh, you know, they're just feeling their way out.

(16:27):
And then Dave Conway leaves just oh, he just left,
just because he wasn't he the dretching the band was
going and was a little bit more melodic, and he
had thought they'd done everything they were going to do
and he wanted to write and he wasn't. He wasn't
pushed out or anything. He chose on his own to leave.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
He went on to become a pretty successful writer.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
I don't I'm not sure how big he is or anything.
His books. I think they're good, but I don't know.
I think he does comics and books, and yeah, I
mean it's competitive.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
But he stirred away from a music career.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
Yeah, yeah, he has nothing to do with music anymore.
And and and I got to talk to him, and
you know, he right away he felt the outsider. He
felt he had a lot of common with him as
an outsider in Dublin. And so they you know, they
were a real unit before them the first iteration. But

(17:30):
then eventually he leaves. In eighty when they first moved
to London, his girlfriend leaves the band she's just done
it to go along. Her name is Tina Durkin. And
then he leaves in the early eighty seven, and then
they get another lead singer for a minute, and Belinda
Butcher comes on too to sing back up. And Shield

(17:51):
doesn't want to be the lead singer. He doesn't want
the attention or have to deal with that.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
But and he also they mentioned the Smiths in their
ad for a new singer, and that.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
He likes Johnny Mah, which I'm a huge fan of.
But and Morrissey's talented too. But all these Morrissey wantabes
came in.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
Yeah, more poor Morrissey imitations.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah, that was like a disaster, he calls them. Almost
of fruit ball showed up, you said, so that was
that was not good. So they ended up just getting
to to came down to two people to two women
who they knew his friends through friends. And this guy
was the lead singer for a minute too, started another
ban called Gallon Drunk years later, and so he left

(18:33):
after one show, and then Belinda Butcher was chosen and
she stuck around if she could sing and key perfectly,
and she just natural ability to tell.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Right away, and that radically changed the band's sound.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah, and there was just like from that moment on,
everything starts on the place, even the stuff that isn't
even the stuff they do before the main body of
their work really starts an eighty eight. There's releases in
eighty seven that are they kind of don't like to
talk about that much, but they're not they're not their

(19:09):
truest sound. They're a little more tweet, a little more
like a little more pop than they would be there.
They're not as true to their own sound, and but
there's still some moments on there where you hear them
it's better than some of its parts. Finally, with Belinda

(19:31):
and they start, it just works, you can tell. But
then after so they brought these two things of Strawberry
Wine single and Ecstasy EP I'm Lazy, and they leave,
and they finally got an invitation to get on Creation Records,
which Jesus and Mary Jane originally were on, and they
were a very small label, but they went in there

(19:52):
just with they were on the verge of breaking up
for a while and they just because they weren't having
any success and u they finally just went in there
and just let all their therefore, don't their influences show
in a way because they were afraid it would be
too it would look like a copycat or something. But
they finally let their influences show and it became something original.

(20:15):
You know. They let the Sonic Youth and Dinazard Junior
and the Public Enemy and all these things go in.
And that EP is just is their breakthrough port because
you made me realize. And then from there on that
it's just been successful. Except all their releases, even though
they've had personal problems, the records have never let them down.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
What they put out isn't anything. That's the first full
length studio album. Let's get into this. There's some amazing
stories in the book on this. He told the engineer
Dave Anderson at one point to erase all the dry
elements of the guitars to leave only the processed reverse
reverb signal on the tapes.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Yeah. So he figures out through the slowly, through a
couple of steps. What he does on up to the
album Loveless anyways is his main thing is the thing
he uses. He uses the jazz Master, which has a
very unique tremolosystem, and uh, he doesn't put it in
all the way, puts a piece of tape on the

(21:21):
end and he puts it in kind of loosely and uh,
so he can play with it whoever he wants. And
it's not like a typical anyone you've seen play a
tremolo arm before, and like he strums with it and
instead of like you know, people usually bend notes with it,
he's like chord bending. And all their songs have like

(21:42):
one main just one guitar typically, even though it sounds
like like a guitar army, he has one main guitar
most songs. And he used reverse reverb an iteration of it.
There's different meanings for that. That's uh. And you have
the initial dry attack that's recorded and and then you

(22:06):
have the reverse reaver and then the part that's made
by the digital machine. And he heard just the digital
part coming out of the speakers and he came into
the room. He's like, what the hell is that. He's
like on the engine embers like, oh, that's just that's
just the digital element of it. It'll sound different when

(22:27):
we when we put back the original dry attack. You know,
that's nothing. And he's like, no, that's my sound. He's like,
that's it. That's what I want. And uh and uh,
it's very disembodied and very strange. But he used in
such a way that uh mystified these other bands to

(22:47):
cause Red to copy him. And he's using the so
he's using the tremble orm in a different way. He's
using this reverse reaver, which is a digital effect. But
he he tapes it through speakers, analog speakers, so you
get all kinds of breakup and phasing and weird things

(23:07):
because the analog world is better for distortion and breakup
and all kinds of things there's not digital. Distortion doesn't
great or break Digital things don't distort it and break
up well. And so so he taped everything through Mike's
you know, it doesn't go right into the desk or anything.
And the whole album is really diverse, isn't anything. It

(23:30):
was done for like no money. There's an EP that
they recorded their second epeak on the album at the
same time, so about twenty tracks over like five weeks
and and for almost nothing. And he was just really
creative because he found this a new way to play
guitar that no one had used before. And it just sounds.

(23:55):
The sounds are so different on the album and every
song but it's kind of the same setup. And everyone
thought it was like ten guitars on some songs, but
it's just one. But you have you have each string
gives off its own harmonic resonance and bending, and there's
a certain kind of tremulous system on the jazz Master

(24:18):
and Jaguar guitars that's unique to them, different from a
stratocaster or whatever. So I mean like the fact that
he figured this out and knew to turn the tone
down and to get the right sound, and he took
a couple of steps and just figured this out, and

(24:38):
it's just the most it's really evocative and emotive and different.
And so you know, all these people are fans of him.
And then he's a great songwriter too. You know, he's
a sophisticated songwriter, and you know, I talked to my
friends who know about songwriting, and he starts all songs
on just an acoustic guitar and use some weird tune

(25:00):
you kind of like joining Mitchell h So he starts
off with that as his basis, and you can see
jazz chords like Bacharac or Brian Wilson or Anteno Carlos,
Joe Beem, Tom Joe Beam really sophisticated chords. So you
start with that. Then you have he really understands the

(25:23):
studio and can use it like no one else, and
you get these recordings that are just are you know, otherworldly?

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah, I want to share This is a funny story
from the book. Another memorable moment from that album. It's
when they're tracking the bass guitar for feed Me with
Your Kiss Shields. He made the bass so heavy that
the speaker popped off the wall. Instinctively, the engineer put
his foot out to break its fall, breaking his ankle
in the process. It's a dangerous profession working with Kevin,

(25:55):
and he.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
Wears the engineers out and uh and uh Calm was
his friend. Drummer Colm was the mainly the engineer he
worked with the you know, was the one he wanted
to work with. And the engineers who came with the studio,
he'd say, you can leave, it's okay, we don't need
you and uh. They would try to tell him how
to record and they sin, you can't, you can't do that.

(26:16):
You can't go both for hurtz or whatever, and you know,
and sometimes the person who owned the studio was also
the engineer, so they try to cover up things that
weren't working right and all kinds of problems, and he
just knew what he was doing. By eighty eight, he
really owners to the studio. So he really has a

(26:38):
good sense of rhythm. It's very American compared to like
the bridge bands around that time. Uh, it's much more American,
much more like Sonic Youth, Our Donna's or Junior. Really dynamic.
So he he's a really good bass player. He plays bass,
even though they have different sound. They have a great

(26:58):
sound live and Debut plays bass live and there and
Calm plays drums live and they have a great sound.
But he plays the bass in the studios because it's
faster and he's a great player, and he just wants
to play take forever to teach her the lines and
have a different feel. So he plays the bass and
he's really good, and uh, all these songs, you know,

(27:20):
he's thinking about the rhythm and then he's thinking about,
you know, not only what you hear, but what you
want to feel in your body. So you know, it's
very like, Uh, he's very in tune with dance music
and hip hop and all that stuff. So so he
really influenced all his bands, the much more bass and
drum presence. He never neglected that. So there's always something

(27:42):
funky going on or something heavy, or you know, some
of the stuff he went there kissing. It's like almost
like a hardcore variation of some sort from some American band,
like a Keith Moons thing, these abrupt cyclonic drums films
and it just stops and starts, and.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
It what about the way the way he was he
still does blurs boundaries with music male female, loud, soft
East West mind body talk about some of the ways
he did that, both lyrically and sonically, Like with the
combination of voices too, You're not sure if it's his, Belinda's.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
Both, Yeah, I mean the voices are. You know, instead
of using like artificial double tracking, which a lot of
people do, it creates it creates a second vocal for
you that's slightly off, so it sounds like a second vocal.
For the Loveless album, they laid down like twelve to
twenty vocals and it has a weird phasing effect. And

(28:43):
so that was like another thing he just did that
was just different and sounds interesting and utterly unique, you know,
And he just thought of that on his own, and
you know, it just doesn't do anything. He does everything
for a reason, exploits the studio and he's just exploring
it as if like the Beatles would or Pink Floyd

(29:05):
or Hendrix. I mean, those are really the people he's
looking at for like, I'm gonna look down each avenue
and figure out what I can do here, and he's not.
You know, but the one thing is he won't. He
takes a long He takes a long time because everything
has to be set upright and he has to be
in the right state of mind. So there was a
lot of stress and a lot of problems because it

(29:27):
took long to complete the second album. Loveless and Creation
was not a secure company, a very small indie company.
They would later sell to Sony for millions of dollars,
but they would get an input from Sony and cell
half in like a ninety two. But this was before

(29:47):
that and then and so they had the struggle making
this finish in their second album. It took like two
years or something. He said it was two months to
work over two years. He just wouldn't feel like recording,
but the studio was books. I would go there and
hang out, and it was such a different world there.

(30:08):
There was a whole squatting scene and they lived on
the dole and it's just a totally different world. All
of these bands blurbed. Just to Mary Jane Pulp, they
lived on the dole and squatted and did their art
and developed, and we have nothing like that in America.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
No.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
You know, Kirk Obain had a hat with his girlfriend
working for him while working at a job supporting him
while he was developing that band.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
You know, let's get into Loveless a little bit more.
Andrew Parr, he's the author of Turned My Head into Sound,
A History of Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine nineteen
ninety one's Loveless. It's we mentioned, it's herald it is
maybe the greatest album of the nineties. It's a masterpiece.
He had nobody, nobody was having a good time making it.
Talk about the problems within the band and then the

(31:00):
professional and the personal obstacles they had to overcome.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
But at this point when they were starting to record it, okay,
before they even said before this team started recorded Creation,
which is a pretty small label, change distributors, and that
put them in the red all of a sudden. I
don't know how that works exactly, but they changed from
Rough Trade to Pinnacle, and so they were already the

(31:23):
company was already they're red and so they're trying to
make this great album and they're real ambitious and they're
deciding they're not just gonna settle anymore, and they're gonna is.
He wants to make a great album, and he's gonna
make it sound it sounds like an expensive album, and
it took a long time because he's not gonna he
wants everything to work right, even though they're going into
these mid range studios. So uh so they get to

(31:48):
a studio and when he ended up using nineteen studios
to record this album over to over two years too.
If you count everything all the time from after their
last album till the second album, it's almost like three
years or something. They had to abandoned EPs because they

(32:09):
weren't they didn't fel through making progress. So nineteen eighty
nine they weren't feel the advancing. Nineteen eighty nine they
released nothing, but they experimented with sampling and he turned
to play the They sampled guitar a lot, and he
came back with this the EP next came out with
Glider and I had a big hit icle Soon. It

(32:31):
was a dance song and it wasn't like a dance
song you'd heard before. It's very vague and uh, it's
ambient kind of Brian, you know, was a huge fan
of it and that that. So these two EPs are
like the singles for the album Loveless, but their proper EPs.

(32:51):
They are four song EP's that are you know, they're
they're not just random b size, they're thought out EPs
or four songs each. Actually one one has interstitial tracks,
so one it's called Glider, and that was that was
like there the EPs tell their story how they changed,
and then they kind of consolidate on the album. So

(33:13):
so they're making while they're making Loveless, they stop and
make these two EPs and uh the kind of I
don't know, experiment and side things and and Glider comes
out and that's probably the best time ever. But Soon
was a It was a really big hit and was

(33:34):
really celebrated, and they had a video for it that
was really good and distinguished them. No one had laid
guitars over drums over a beat like this, and it's
just an utterly unique track. Uh, it doesn't sound like
anything else. And Uh. Then they they did the tremblo EP,

(33:56):
which is really it's hard to set here for And
this is kind of interesting, is that shields up. He
went and listened to every tape they sent out promotional
tape for the tremblo Ep, because you want to make
sure they were they were done correctly, and because people
did call on and said, my tape is warped and

(34:19):
they couldn't. They couldn't it would it was mixed differently
what they were used to. And even the head of
the the UH the labels like Kevin, my tape is
a warp saying wrong with it, and he's like, no,
it's fine. He's like, no, I'm sure it's warped. He's
like no, no, He's like Kevin's like I can't deal
with this. And so they he took every single tape.

(34:41):
He said, that's promotional and that's where the videos come in.
They're kind of give you visual cues as to what's
going on. They made some videos in ninety and ninety
one for two of the songs I'm Loveless and Uh,
two songs from the Peas and UH, and they're important

(35:04):
visual cues for for a lot of for needed to
follow the sounds kind of, I'm not mixed, and he
doesn't just put the vocal out in front of the
guitar front. It makes you taking the full track, So
he's not going to make things simple for you in
a way. But it's it's it's it's much more of
a blended like a painting or something. He's not separating

(35:27):
everything out.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
Well, it's interesting you said that because when I listened
to the music, especially on Loveless, I'm thinking maybe there's
something wrong with the person who uploaded it to YouTube,
because it's like, I think it's all in mono. You know,
that's right, that's what he wanted. He wanted most most
of it to be a mono. What did he say
about that?

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah, he likes very Uh he's kind of he doesn't
really think of stereo much. He thinks we have we
have two mono ears. That's one of his quotes. And uh,
he doesn't. He think it's really weak to pan the guitars,
and almost every track of Levels is just one guitar.

(36:08):
Even though it's a massive sound, it's done really dry upfront.
There's a couple so there's one song with seven acoustic
guitars panned across, but other than that, most every song
is one main guitar sound, and then there's maybe a
second guitar to fill in a little filling all the things.
But like there's one guitar that's really crazy or something.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
He's using two different amps facing each other with a
mic between.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
One of the songs. The only shallow what he did
was he dropped a mic in between two amps. And
there's a video for this that that works really well
for only shallow. It's worth seeing because it helps you
follow along. And it has two different tremolo rates on

(36:54):
the on the speakers for the mic, so you're getting
the strange sound for the chorus, and then you put
it into a sampler and he flips it over and
he does there's some other things with it, and then
the the verses are more straightforward and that's just kind
of a thing. And then when you're the chorus, it

(37:16):
just goes into this. It's the really crazy sounds.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
Yeah, I can't I can't decipher what where's the guitar
and what's is there some keys in there? Since I'm
not sure there's no there's no that's all guitar, all guitar.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
That's all guitar. Yeah, yeah, that's all guitar. And when
they play it live they might use a couple of
sequence parts, but that's that's all one guitar part. I
mean he might have like double he might have done
it twice, like you know, like used it twice or something,
but it's fundamentally one guitar performance. He played the guitar

(37:56):
one time, and he might over four you might down
four amps, and so you get weird phasing stuff. And
then he has the tremble alarm in his hand and
all the strings going slightly differently the way they change,
and it's making a physical motion, so you're getting the

(38:18):
strange warped sounds instead of warping you know things like
I said, like individual strings, he's using the thing to
warp chords, and the whole song is warped. And so
and same with the other one of the other videos,
the YEARNS one which was the leadoff truck on tremolo,
and the whole thing just sounds. So people thought my

(38:41):
tape is messed up. It just sounds warped the whole thing.
It's hard to get to find your way it's on
the first he doesn't mix the way you're used to.
But once you get your bearings, he knows exactly what
he's doing. And once you get the melody, hear the

(39:01):
melody and you're properly you know, is the reason he
has the test of following and all these other all
these engineers, and you know, all these people think he's,
you know, so talented because they hear what he's doing.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
I would love to hear the isolated tracks. Then again, yeah,
how much of this is just him recording all on
one track at the same time or is it several
several tracks separately put together.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
I mean there's uh, you know, to hear those when
has a lot of synths in it and stuff little
synth parts, but the guitar is one part, and you
can't tell where it's a point of origin is.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
So you can't split it up. You can't find the.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
You can't find the point of attack or anything. It's
very strange, and but it's.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
A guitar and I love this stuff. This stuff is fascinating.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
So the videos are help of that, But you want
to also hear it on a proper stereo two. But
it'll help lead you in and You'll find your a
melody and everything, and just the year A couple of
times they had oriented with this later stuff from like
nineteen ninety on.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
And then uh.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
So the album came out, that Loveless album finally came
out the same week as Nirvana's never Mind, and uh
they had put out let's say four repe and two
albums and Creation and they had taken so long and
they weren't worth the hassle to the to them anymore.
They weren't going to make back their money, they weren't

(40:38):
gonna right away, and it was just it was just
a headache for the people at the label, Alan McGee
in particular, and uh, I mean and Dick. There's two
main people at the small label Creation that would become huge.
They signed Oasis eventually, and because because Alan McGee is
a great a and r man, I mean, the reason

(40:59):
he found my buddy Valanceig and Jess and Mary Jane
and uh who else a couple other well in British bands.
I don't know if American bands are so familiar with
Oasis never broke that big here, but they're they're, you know,
until millions and millions of records in the UK and

(41:21):
decent amount here, so uh Sony eventually bought the company
for thirty three million dollars or something in the end.
But so they they were dropped by Creation after Levels
was finished. But you know, they they could have dropped
them before that, not let them finish the album. The

(41:42):
two owners and mortgage their house houses that to keep
the La label afloat for a while. And there's a
there's a movie about by the same people that made
Train Spotting about called Creation Stories about the about the
the journey of the label, and they were at some

(42:03):
point they were thinking of just stopping Kevin, just dropping
him and cutting him off, and Love Us wouldn't have
been finished, but they saw it through because the label
started to make good music. But they dropped him after
it was done, and then the band went on tour
and then well actually after they got dropped. When Kevin

(42:23):
Shield woke up the next day, ten labels called wanted
to sign him. And by the end of ninety ninety
two the same yea got dropt. He had a huge
deal with Ireland.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
We were thinking we're going to get another album quickly,
but not the case right What led to their breakup?

Speaker 2 (42:39):
No one knew the contours of this part. What happened
to Ireland until now, I don't think because I did
an interview with the people at Ireland. Mark Moreau was
hand picked. Chris Blackwell found an Island. You know, he's
the one who made reggae music what we know it today.
He signed Bob Marley. He this very interesting background Chris

(43:02):
Blackwell and ude biography. Island started from nothing and more
of the you know, huge labels like Warner or Atlantic
or whatever. And you know, he did Bob Marley and
U two and a million other bands, you know, and
Chris Blackwell personally as it became less personal the music.

(43:23):
In nineteen ninety Chris Blackwell chose Mark Moreau, who had
a great ten year run. He signed PG, Harvey, Tricky,
Let's Seytereum CS, the Cranberry's people know in America. He
had a great run. The only thing it didn't work

(43:44):
out so well was Kevin Shields, and they gave him
a lot of time, a lot of money, and they
eventually cut him off. He signed from ninety two to
ninety seven and they cut him off in ninety seven money,
but he was still under contract till the end of
two thousand and one. I think they finally let him go,
you know, they didn't have to, and then he uh,

(44:06):
he was kind of in a bad place for a
lot of reasons.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
Yeah, there were stories that he had become a recluse,
that he had a meltdown. What did happen to him
after he parted ways with Island Records? And then how
was he able to get back on his feet thanks
to Is it a book called hypnagogia hypnagosia?

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Yeah, he is a it's a really hypnogosia. Yeah, he
has a it's a it's it's a state we go
through when we go from being awake to going to sleep.
We all go through it. And so there's one book
in English about it, and he found that and helped
him with a sanity. And if you go on the
internet right now, the look of hypnagogic or hypnagosia or whatever,

(44:47):
let's see a million studies on it, I T or anywhere.
It's a very creative state. When you're aroused from that state,
people make different connections and you're not thinking linearly. And
it goes back to like the writer Coleridge or a
Kouba Khan Tesla Edison. All these people knew how to

(45:09):
harness this, and they would wake themselves up as they
were falling asleep. They all different techniques for rousing themselves
while they're falling asleep. And to Dolly is another one.
So this is a known technique for being being creative
and shields when you were.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
So you'll find a way to do that. And then
once you're up, there's a short period of time where
you want to make sure.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
You it's more he's a little different. That's that's the
history of it. He kind of can kind of like
I think he can kind of just bring it on.
Like first they would just stay up for they would
stay up for twenty three hours and wait till they
got to that state. They would kind of get into

(45:54):
that a few weird state by just staying up for
a really long time. And then they would sleep for
an hour and then keep recording and another day and
then sleep for an hour or two, and so they
would stay in this fugue state, weird state. And that's
so they would do a lot of stuff and what
comes out, Yeah, and uh, I mean it's it's there

(46:20):
were shorter periods early on, and then you know it's
there's no one thing exactly at one time, but he
definitely could bring it on to some degree. And if
you hear music in that state, it's a very different
than hearing it like on marijuana. It's even more immersive
and interesting, and it really it's a very h You

(46:45):
really hear the whole thing, the whole sound of music
beautifully if you if you if you're in the right
state and you listen stuff as you're falling asleep, you
can catch yourself at the right moment and stay awake.
You'll you'll hear things differently without you'll take everything in
without drugs or anything. So he compares with the pot,

(47:06):
but he says he likes this better. But it kind
of got away from him because he could kind of
induce it well, and he was smoking a lot of pot.
And I think he went to a bad place.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
Was he a recluse? Did he have a meltdown? What
happened to him?

Speaker 2 (47:23):
So, like two of the band members left in ninety
five because they had been signed to Island for like
since the end of ninety two and tried to build
their own studio and that had taken a long time.
They lost momentum and they weren't really good. You wanted
to do this drum and bassed project, layering guitars over

(47:47):
drum and bass. But it's more oblique than that. He
doesn't just layer things over. It has to be, you know,
something sophisticated and inspired. The song Soon is a good
example of how he did a house rhythm sort of
with guitars, but it's inspired and unique. And so they

(48:08):
were trying to do this project with drum and bass,
and they had all these problems with the studio and
then his mental health and two of the members left
in ninety five. In ninety seven, he still hadn't given
them anything, even though he'd recorded maybe a couple albums.
He wasn't sure about if it was good or not,
or if he liked it, and he didn't think it
was hold up, and they cut him off in ninety

(48:30):
seven and he was still under contract and he made
and then the final member, Belinda, left and he thinks
of her.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
As like they were a couple, right.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
Yeah, And there were a couple of this whole ten
years from from like late eighty seven to ninety seven,
and he considers her and it attracts the relationship with
these albums which makes them really interesting too. There was
really a lot of intimacy and emotions and loveless about
you know, things you can't really express, different feelings you

(49:01):
have that you you can't say in words, and you
know about you know, regrets and incriminations and love and
just all different human expressions that you can't just say
in simple words. So music is a good place for them,
you know, And and it charged their relationship. These everything

(49:21):
from like eighty eighty eight to ninety seven, and they
were so in ninety seven Island cuts them off. They
do do some other recording in ninety seven, but that
doesn't come out until twenty thirteen, but that does end
that ten year period, so nothing comes out in ninety seven.

(49:42):
It doesn't give it was iling two songs. They give
him about a million dollars maybe in today's money over
those over the four or five years. DA I'm signed
and because they really understood how talented he was, but
it was just just it's just the worst time it
is life. So he got vibe doing remixes and and

(50:04):
he joined another band, Primal Scream, as a kind of member,
and you know, he got money from publishing, and so
he didn't have trouble getting by or anything. But he
wasn't making his own music and he started to get rehabilitated.
Around two people came into his life. One guy's Brian Reitzel,

(50:25):
who did Sofia Coppele's soundtracks, and he was brought in
early for the movie Lost in Translation, which she got
an Academy Award for that for the screenplay. He was
brought in before they shot anything to get ideas and
to you know, they usually don't bring in the soundtrack
people until after the movie was shot. You know, see

(50:48):
much budgets left over. He was brought on before anything
was shot. And so he played a significant role in
that movie. And it's a vibe and he has four
original things on that at four original new songs on soundtrack.
And Brian Ritesill had all his patients to make three
trips to England to hang out in the studio with him.

(51:10):
Nothing happened. So like the third trip, one night, Kevin
Chill spent eight hours equalizing his guitar when one day
he gives Brian rightail gives an example eight hours and
and like you know, and he'd have to go there
for a week at a time, and Kevin shield hadn't

(51:32):
poke pots, they'd be in the same place. And Kevin
hill'smoking a lot of pot.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
Then and.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
And uh so they start the night usually and then
they've finished in the morning. But nothing eve Ben done
in the first two or three visits. And one of
the last visits that like, it's it's in the early
in the morning and the day is supposed to be over,
and she was like, okay, Brian, get behind the drums,
I'm ready. He just starts playing the song and burn

(52:00):
rightail play, you know, plays along and that that first
take is what is on is on the soundtrack called
City Girl, and that's played at the end of the
movie and and the three other really delicate pieces are
part of that. But you know, it just all of
a sudden came together. That's what happens with him. You know,
everything has to a line, right, and so Rightel was

(52:23):
just shocked, just all of a sudden, he's just like
he says, you know, she'll just tells him get by
on the drump thing and he just has to start playing.
And this whole time is not pressuring Kevin. He's you know,
it's you don't have the guilt of anyone but me
and Sofia Coppola, you know, we'll just see what happens,
because they really respect him and just want them they
want they want to both rehabilitate him, and it would

(52:46):
like some music for the movie. But Brine Rachel is
a personal stake in this. And and you know, I
told people, told him, you're not going to get any
music out of him. You know, it's been since like
ninety two, and he put on any music. But he
ends up getting like five it's four News and there's
three other recorded that haven't been released, so that's helped.
That helped get back on track. And then he does

(53:08):
another project with Patty Smith, who never meets him but
just talks to him once and she heard the album
Loveless and she just thought, I have something in common
with this guy. And he they do these shows. It's
her reading her poem about her friend and photographer, uh,
what's his name, Maplethorpe. That was Robert Maplethorpe was a

(53:31):
good friend of hers, and she wrote a poem about
him and shields his life. It's just her and Shields
and he's on a sofa in the back of her
playing the guitar, doing improvising behind her, and that was
recorded twice and that helped inspire him. And then that
was in two thousand and five. In twousand and six,
he was also playing with the Dam Primal Scream. He

(53:53):
stops everything else and he turns his attention back to
my buddy Valentine. I was also going to getting offers
now like two thousand and seven to play live because
the albums are reverberated throughout the community, and they get
a million dollar offer to play Cicello two thousand and eight.
But they're not ready, but these people are ready to

(54:14):
give them money to buy equipment. The guy who runs
this festival called All Tomorrow's Parties, which was a really
good festival. It was really curiated really well, like a
mixtape or something of like just the best band you
could want. It wasn't completely sustainable because it wasn't always
the most popular bands. It was really good bands. And

(54:38):
this guy who started All Tomorrow's Parties, he invests he
has healed about six hundred thousand dollars. It's only that
to get all the equipment they need to really pull
off the songs correctly. He wasn't always happy with the
last tour ninety two wasn't They didn't have the right
equipment to do everything right. So now they do a

(54:58):
reunion tour eighty nine. They remaster everything for CD and
do a really good job of that, and they finally
he puts some stuff they recorded, all this stuff they
recorded in ninety six, ninety seven he puts. He finally
breaks he had recorded bits and pieces and he puts

(55:21):
that together and puts out a new album twenty thirteen.
It's been twenty one years since their last album, so
people waiting. He kept saying, oh yeah, album's coming. He's
saying this ninety six, ninety seven, ninety eight, ninety nine,
twenty thirteen. He finally releases it, and people are pissed
off and just like, you know, why are we taking
some punk? But he had gone through real problems and

(55:43):
you know, nothing like this ever happened again.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
Hey, guys, thanks so much for checking out the book
Down Rock podcast. If you've just found the podcast, welcome.
If you've been listening, thank you so much for your support,
and make sure you tell a friend, a family member,
share on social media and let people know about Booked
on Rock. And if you do like the podcast, make
sure you subscribe, give a five star review. Wherever you
listen to the Booked on Rock podcast, We're on Amazon, Apple, iHeart, Spotify, Spreaker,

(56:13):
tune in in on YouTube music. You can check out
the full episodes on video, along with video highlights from
episodes on the Booked on Rock YouTube channel. Find it
at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back
to the show. He said that the book Hit Negosia
helped him get back on his feet. So was that
just like it helped him to understand he.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Had to go through this process to understand what was
how what his reality was. And he talks about you
know who to have these strange experiences and they couldn't
tell they seemed so real but they weren't, and he
couldn't always tell them. The book kind of talks about

(56:54):
different kinds of sleep and different states and.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
Give him a better understanding of himself, get some control
over what he's thinking.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
And I think he had to go through a certain
process of like you know, like Leonard Kong went and
lived on a Buddhist monastery for like four or five years,
and uh, he had to go through something like that
to like understand his reality and and figure things out.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
And you know, they've been pretty busy ever since. He
and the band right everything.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
Then instance he got these two people did play a
key role. I think Brian Reitzel takes take the most credit,
and Patty Smith also. They both got him back on
track and I think gave him confidence. And I don't
think it was an I think it's really bad place.
I mean for a couple of years there. I mean,
even though he wasn't broke or anything, he wasn't making

(57:51):
his music. He did a lot of red. He did
did end up doing interesting stuff. The remixes he did
are and you got. He did work for a much
different people in different collaborations, and that makes up a
bunch of You can make a bunch of CDs out
of that, which I I adopted in the book, and
everything on my website and all more stuff up soon

(58:14):
and just stuff. Only he could have done remixes of
Yo La Tengo or Curve who else. It's all this
interesting stuff. But lost translation stuff is really beautiful. He's
just it just doesn't sound like anything else. But he
wants to make his personal music, my bloody balance and music.

(58:36):
So they toured to two thousand and eight two thousand
and nine, they're totally independent. Now they pay back the
money it was loan to them, and twenty thirteen they
released the album themselves, their third album, and they're good monetarily.

(58:58):
Then he spends a bunch of money remastering the first
two albums to make them sure analog because he didn't
know enough about the process. And it's not just analog
like you see from some of these record companies like Oh,
I don't know sell these expensive remasters acoustic sounds maybe

(59:19):
as one of them. They say they think the analog tape,
but it's not the same because they use digital equipment
to master it. He made the albums as if it
were nineteen seventy five. Here you mastered them, so you
get these transients on your body and they just have
a different feel to them, and you can get them
directly from the band. The cheapest one to get that

(59:41):
the band cells or domino cells is the best one
to get because it's fully analog, not AAA, which is
the thing you used to see on things or you
know ada that code used to see. It's like fully analog,
as in like as if it before digital existed, and
they sound they sound beautiful and he did that. By

(01:00:05):
twenty eighteen that came out, and then since then he's
just saying, I'm gonna put out I have to proba
these final albums to kind of you know CLR thing,
and so he says he's gonna PUTU at least two albums,
and so may Peas and he was making it grow
and grow, and so they just they've they've put some
they've put the six shows they have and then that

(01:00:28):
are at the end of this year, and then there's
one show now at the end of twenty twenty six,
and I'm thinking they're going to fill in that all
those dates over this next year touring the world.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Wow, Okay, because yeah, I'm looking at the website here. Yeah,
they got the Dublin. Well, here's here's what they have.
November twenty second, Dublin that sold out, November twenty fourth,
Manchester sold out, November twenty fifth, Oval Arena and Wembley, London.
November twenty seventh, Oval Hydro, Glasgow. February third, they're in Osaka,

(01:01:06):
so they're gonna do some shows in Japan. February third, fourth, sixth,
and ninth, all in Tokyo or No I'm sorry in
Osaka and Tokyo, but they don't have another show listed there.
But you said there's another one they do, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
They do. I definitely have one more. It's in Spain
maybe or something I can't remember. I'm positive there's another
show now at the end of twenty twenty six. It's
not a rumors, it's listed, okay, and I'm sorry I
can't remember it. Just it happened a couple of weeks ago.

(01:01:39):
So the idea is, and they have a really great show.
Now everything's dialed in on a light show, and it
sounds amazing. You saw them in ninety two, it's it's
nothing like that. It's much more. There's so much more
control and they need that and they make a you
know you think so sound in this profound way. And

(01:01:59):
so the shows are this unique thing to him. And
he used to end it with a song that was
like forty minutes long in nineteen ninety two, in two
thousand and eight, and they would do this one song
for forty minutes of this noise thing and get people

(01:02:20):
to kind of understand music and sound better. And I
don't know if they do that as long now, but
he really takes it seriously, the live show and the sound.
He really wants to present it the sounds well, and
he can because there they come from his playing guitar,
probably physically plays the guitar through. You know, there's nothing.

(01:02:43):
It's a lot of most of the stuff can be
reproduced live, the vast majority of the stuff. So not
exactly the same, but pretty similar.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Yeah, if somebody wants to listen to their music, and
particularly Loveless in the album that came before Loveless, Isn't Anything,
Isn't Anything? They are not on streaming services. And I'm
just looking here because I was telling you this just
before we started recording, and it appears as if there's
some kind of an issue that the band pulled it

(01:03:15):
or Kevin himself.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
Do you see there? Do you see the twenty thirteen
MBV album. It's a blue album?

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
It is the blue album? Is there? And you can
stream that?

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
Okay, that's a that's a really mellow album. A good
way to get into them, to hear them. Actually, you could.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
Get Isn't Anything and Loveless around YouTube if you need.
You could obviously, you know, support the band and go
out and buy the album the CD. What have you
but yeah, there seems to be some kind of contractual
issue going on right now.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
I wonder if they Yeah, I wonder if that's about.

Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
It's too bad. Hopefully it'll go back up there, because
Loveless is just an absolutely phenomenal piece of work and
I can't see.

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
Yeah, you really can get I mean, if you end
up liking the blue album, uh it it's just called MBV.
If you like the first eight songs are really pretty,
and then he gets into some more dynamics stuff the
last two songs, and the more you learn about them,

(01:04:19):
the more interesting they are, and the more you can
under the more you read about them can have some
context on them. Even I had trouble with the very
last song until my friend explained it to me a
little more and showed me where the melody was and
what they were doing, and was a musician friend of mine.
He showed me where the melody was and everything and

(01:04:42):
oriented me and and so I like that song now
a lot. But the first eight songs are really great
on that really pretty stuff, and and that's a as
good way as anything to hear about them, some of
them from the subtle things they're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
We'll get back to the show, but first I want
to tell you about an exclusive deal for Booked on Rock.
Listeners get fifteen percent off any purchase at old glory
dot com over three hundred thousand officially licensed items covering music, sports, entertainment,
and pop culture. Merchandise featuring legendary music artists like Bob Marley,
The Beatles, Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, led Zeppelin, and many

(01:05:21):
many more. Go to old glory dot com. Make sure
to use the promo code Booked on Rock. Also find
a link in this episode show notes, or just go
to Booked on Rock dot com and click on my Deals. Well,
you did a fantastic job with the book, Andrew talking
to somebody who was not familiar with the band, so
being able to read the book help me understand Kevin

(01:05:41):
Shields the band, and then listening to the music after
reading the book, it really gave it a whole new perspective.
So when I'm listening to it, I'm thinking about all
these stories from the book and his approach and just
the way his mind works. It's to me, it's just
an absolutely fascinating story. Turn my head into sound. A
history of Kevin Shields and my bloody Valentine and it

(01:06:01):
is out now, right, people can get the book in
the UK.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
It's out now. I think the electronic version is out
in sixteenth, let's see, and December second the physical book
will be in America. But on the sixteenth this month
October it'll be uh in the UK. And some reason
they had to put a December second the physical book

(01:06:26):
in America.

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
So did the electronic version in a couple of days in.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
Sixteenth through job on Press, Yeah, okay, good good press. Okay,
So look for it. You can check online, but you
can also know you mentioned your website, so where can
people go to see check out more about you Andrew
and the band.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
There's going a lot more stuff on. There's some there's
some there's some history and stuff online and just describe
the book that it's a narrative book, is not a
collection of quotes or anything. There'll be more for my website.
It's called turn my Head into sound dot com. Okay,
and uh, And that there's a discography and a chronological

(01:07:09):
chronological thing there that will give you some context for
the band and when things came out, and that helps
explain what's going on and when things came out. That'll
give you an outline of things both for albums of
all their releases and what happened a timeline, So that's
up now and more stuff up now up later within

(01:07:31):
a couple of days hopefully, so that that's a good
way to see what came out.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
When turn my head into sound dot com, I'll put
the link up in the show notes. People can just
click on the link and go right there. So, Andrew Pair,
thanks so much, man. This was great. This is one
of the one of the most fascinating stories. Did I've read.
I've read a lot of books, so this was a great.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
Yeah, thanks a lot. I had two brilliant editors, so
I was lucky. And uh yeah, I like you saw.
I'm glad you cover these all these books. I'm the artists.
I'm listening to the len Thing woman with the really
intend Lenden books, and yeah, why do you think deep
dives on stuff? It's really cool, really.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
Great got to do the deep dive, especially with these
types of books. Thanks so much, man, I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:15):
Thank you. That's it. It's in the books.