May 17, 2022 • 44 mins
Today we’re talking to Stuart Murdoch and Stevie Jackson from the Scottish folk-pop band, Belle & Sebastian. After seven years, the indie pop band is releasing their ninth studio album, their first in seven years – A Bit of Previous. The album was recorded in Belle & Sebastian’s hometown of Glasgow, after plans to record in LA fell through because of the pandemic.
Bruce Headlam talks to Stuart and Stevie about their new album and the band plays songs live from the new project. Stuart also talks about how getting sick at 21 was a critical moment in his music career, and how he is not personally itching to get back out in front of a live audience.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hey, y'all, it's justin Richmond. Today on the show,
we're talking to Stuart Murdoch and Stevie Jackson from the
Scottish folk pop band Belle and Sebastian. The band formed
in ninety six after meeting through a government funded class
for unemployed musicians. It soon became a showcase for Stuart
(00:36):
Murdoch's catchy melodies and witty stories about the everyday lives
of Scottish bohemians. Inspired by the sounds of the sixties
like the Beatles, Paul Simon, Burt Back Iraq. Their music
has been described as perfect chamber pop music. On today's episode,
Bruce Helm talks to Stewart and Stevie about writing and
recording their latest and tenth album, A Bit of Previous.
(00:58):
Stewart also talks about how getting sick at twenty one
was a critical moment in the start of his music career.
This is broken record Liner notes for the digital age.
I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce album with Stuart and Stevie.
You've got a new album coming out. Can you tell
me a little bit about the making of this album?
(01:20):
Because it was done during the pandemic. How did that
affect how you did the album, Where you did the album,
How did all that shake out. We had our bags
packed for Los Angeles. We were ready to go, and
this was back in the spring of twenty twenty. Of course,
the pandemic happened. We were locked down. So for the
first six months or so, we didn't do anything. Everybody
(01:42):
was locked in, you know what it was like. By
that time, we decided, you know what, this is going
to take a while, So we gave up the idea
of going to Lae. Chris the band, and also Brian,
who's our engineer upstairs. We all decided to renovate the studio,
turn the studio into a proper recording studio rather than
just a rehearsal place, and we made extra rooms. We
(02:07):
made little booths so that it could be safe, so
that we could work safely in pandemic. Time to go
a whole year for us to start recording with a Vengeance,
because it was another surge in the pandemic. By that time.
The song line up had changed, but that was quite nice.
I'd written quite a few new songs and so we
brought them in really in a raw state. The beauty
(02:29):
part of that was that instead of preparing to go
to Los Angeles and having everything written, we had more
time and we could make it up as we went along.
So how many songs did you have written for LA?
It's kind of hard to say, Stevie. Do you remember
the pool of songs we had for LA? No, it's
too long ago. There's probably maybe a nebulous pool of
about fifteen or twenty, but I think maybe probably ten
(02:52):
of those got ditched along the way somewhere. Is that
typical for you to go into an album with sort
of that many songs ready to go? I think yeah,
it's I think that's probably about the top number. And
actually we've done records in Atlanta, we've done two in LA.
We us try to record about seventeen or eighteen because
(03:12):
they usually needed it, but also it makes a better
album if you've got songs to choose from. You know,
things ended up very differently. Like I said, we kind
of left a lot of songs. A lot of the
songs went off the boil and didn't seem to appealing anymore,
and then new ideas sprang up, and because we were
hands on, between the band and Brian, we were producing
(03:34):
ourselves we could invent new techniques and new ways of
working and go back to our roots all that kind
of stuff. So I'm interested. Tell me which songs on
the album now are the new songs the songs you
developed after you initially thought you were going to be
recording in La Sure, so the first song young and Stupid,
and then I think if they're shooting at you might
have been a German, but the words came along later on,
(03:57):
and then certainly profits on Hold that just came up
on a day in the studio and was talked to
me quite a late one as well, Stevie. Can you
remember I can't remember? That was a tune that Sarah
and and what about your own tune? That was quite
a late edition as well. Yes, yes, yes, which was
called Deathbed of My Dreams. That's a beautiful song, by
(04:18):
the way, Oh thank you. That was doing the process
of being here. I think it end up being different
than a traditional balance of Bastian album that Moore was
worked out in the studio, as opposed to you coming
and the writers saying here are the songs and choosing
from those. I think we've been loosening up for a
few years now. We recorded a bunch of EPs in
(04:41):
Glasgow previous to this, and on that occasion that was
almost like a dress rehearsal for this record. We were
trying different approaches building songs up from scratch. We were
meant to be working with Sean Everett in California, and
we were very prepared to meet him halfway, and I
think it would have been such a different record. We
(05:02):
might have ended up writing to order. There's a songwriter,
I'm affected by the environment find yourself in. I think
we would have ended up writing songs, especially for his production.
You were such a prolific songwriter and the band is
so productive. Was this the longest hiatus you'd had away
(05:24):
from songwriting during your career. I wouldn't say it was
a hiatus away from songwriting at all, as far as
I'm concerned. The longest gap that we had was around
about two thousand and six to two thousand and ten
or something like that. I went away to make a movie,
but I was working on music and Stevie was working
on music. He did a solo WELP, so everybody was
still working. You know, A song I was interested in
(05:46):
a lot was profits on hold and Nactually when I
saw the title, I thought, well, is this pandemic related?
Because of course everybody was on hold. That's an angle
that I never thought about. It was just a song
that popped up in the studio. But then again, you're
taking everything, everything that's going on, and it percolates. Songs
(06:07):
just come out, so it seems to be unre related
to what is actually going on outside. Maybe in fact,
the experience of Lockdown did infect affect this song the
way it came out, But I'd never thought about that.
And you play a few bars of it, Yeah, there's
a slight caveat here. What happens with my songs is
that we construct the songs in the studio and the
(06:29):
band comes in and colors in once we get into
the production and we get into the song making I forget.
I never have it under my fingers. I've never played
this song from start to finish, you know, especially this one,
So obviously we have to learn to play this song
when we come to the concert. What I'm basically saying
(06:50):
is that me and Stevie are just trying to learn
how to play a few bars for you just today,
so we don't actually know it, but well, we'll have
a goal. Can I call you sometimes talk get out
on the phone. We don't have to be loved first,
(07:13):
We could be less alone. It's a rough, rocky road
and it's gonna get steep. I just wanted your soft
tone to allow me to sleep. And I sometimes confuse
(07:41):
you fuck God or angel yo, just a person sometimes confused.
I Gocklorian my mind a soft song once. Well, you
(08:15):
guys are quick learners. That was terrific. We were kind
of like, I'm looking at the chord sheets and for
the listeners, that probably kind of replicates the idea of
what happened when we brought the song in at first
and we were just feeling the chords. Was that purely
a musical idea you had and then added the lyrics
or did the lyric come at the same time. More
(08:38):
regularly for me, the words and the lyrics will come
at the same time. It's sometimes it's not a strong
urge to say something lyrically at first. It's more likely
to be a musical idea, you know, and then immediately
I'll try and cannot call you sometime. And you might
even think that that would start off as a scratch
(09:00):
lyric that you would replace later talk it out on
the phone, but a bit quite often your first lyrics
end up as the actual song itself. It's got a
great rhythm on the record. It's got the same kind
of bounce as the sound of Breaking Glass by Nick Lowe.
If you know that song, Oh yeah, that's a great one.
(09:20):
Yeah yeah, how does that one go? Stepe? I love
the sound of Breaking Glass. You can learn his songs
even faster. That's amazing. And because I love the title
so much, Profits on Hold. I mean, are you sitting
around somewhere you've got a notebook and you think of
the phrase profits on hold? Or are you on the
(09:42):
phone and you just write it down thinking I'm going
to use that at some point? When did that occur?
I take note of titles and then sometimes they lie
for years and then they become songs later on. That
was a case of that came out in the lyric
that day, just as I was writing underneath your Thin Skin,
we are profits and Hold, that occurred to me that
(10:03):
that could be the title. I'm going to talk about
the source of the songwriting in the group. You know,
you are one of the those bands that's not afraid
to be witty. I don't mean sort of modern lee witty,
but there is that kind of tradition in English Scottish,
you know, songwriting. Morrissey is a good example, and I
(10:23):
think he was an influence on you, almost that kind
of nol Coward school of being kind of funny. Where
does that come from in your background? It's sort of
hard to say. I mean, I'm not sure it's a
gift that we have for wet Maybe it's a gift
that we have for honesty and not being afraid to
leave it all out there. That is a progression from say,
(10:43):
for instance, you know, the Beatles through the Smiths to
us and to other bands that if you draw a line,
I think the people, you know, songwriters are more inclined
to be very honest and talk about their feelings, talk
about what's on their mind, very conversational. Whereas you know,
if you go back a little ways, songwriting was more
(11:04):
rigorous and there was rules, and there was things that
it would be cringy to say. At the time, when
I started songwriting, I didn't have anything to lose and
I wanted to tell the world how I felt from
my position of pain and anguish. But sometimes the humor
or being able to have a joke about it, and
even if the joke is on yourself, can be refreshing,
(11:26):
it can be liberating. But you're known for that level
of kind of wit. You know, if you're feeling sinister,
go and see a minister. There are a million examples
in your music. Were you a particularly literary kid. Was
there a lot of reading in your background. I did
quite a lot of reading as a later youth. I
did everything at the wrong time. When I was at
(11:47):
university doing science, all I would be doing was reading
English literature to the extent where the way that you
speak actually changes. I don't know if Stevie ever felt
that phenomenon, or yourself felt that phenomenon. I did go
through a couple of years where I was reading Jane
Austen and French authors, and the way that you actually
(12:09):
talk you could tell that it was changing because you
would be composing sentences the same way as these Victorian
all arts. And so that that was a period a
couple of years, and then I actually dropped out of university.
I didn't do signs anymore. I got more interested in
the art side. We're going to take a quick break here,
(12:30):
but we'll be right back with more from Stuart and
Stevie from balan Sebashtan. We're back with Bruce Adam's conversation
with Stevie and Stuart. There's a couple of songs I
want to ask about and then we'll dive into some background.
If they're shooting at you, tell me a bit about
the genesis of that song. I'm glad that you've asked
(12:52):
me about this one. Let me just try and get
the words of the song in front of me, and
I hope you don't feel that's too feeble, not at all.
So the funny thing about if they're shooting at you,
although I said it before, it was a new song
coming into this. I'd had the idea for the tune
for a couple of years and I brought it into
(13:12):
the studio pretty much the same day as Bob and
the band. He brought in an idea, and this was
during the time we were doing the EPs a couple
of years ago. So he played me this idea and said,
could you come up with words for this? And I
realized it had the same rhythm and vibe as the
thing I was writing, and I thought, well, this is good.
I like that that's interesting when that happens, because you
(13:33):
can combine the two in such a way that sometimes
something interesting comes from it. I find that the easiest
way to combine two ideas they probably need to have
the same rhythmic feel. You can always go from chord
to chord and figure out a way. I ended up
lending Bob's song a section of this song, and we
wrote words and became a song called Poor Boy and
(13:55):
as You was a single. But as we approached this LP,
I had the idea for this song in my head.
I still had the tune in my head. I felt
it hadn't been fully exploited, so I wrote discreet words.
I wrote separate words. I actually said to the and
beforehand it if you don't think this is too lazy
of me? Could this be a song? Could we try
(14:16):
this song? So maybe, like if if there's Belcabacitian fan,
you know, listening just now, they might be able to
reference part of the song. Will we play you a
verse or something from the would be great? One? Two?
So huh said, do you? I'm not free? I got
(14:36):
a mountain falling down on me, I got say the
san I've got down all the beeple one, a scream
and shout. I'm so tired. I'm always on money and
(14:58):
I'm called it's always januine worry in this huh and
on this streets. It's so great. I can't take it.
What happened to like fun? You sweat to? What did
(15:25):
you go okay? What would just think would just give
you a little taste lovely? What was behind the feeling
of that song, the lyrics of that song. It started
off very personal and became more general. It was me
(15:45):
looking out there at stories that were in the news.
If you look at the news any day, there's stories
about violent oppression, you know. Like I said, I started
singing from my own the way that I was feeling,
and then I started writing from the perspective of the
things that were happening that I could see happening to
other people. And sometimes things that are happening to you
(16:08):
they're quite small compared to the things that are happening
to other people. People are dying, people are being tortured,
people are in prison. This is terrible, terrible things happening,
And what do you do. I can't imagine facing those things,
but I know and I've seen it. People have faith
sometimes that's the only thing that can get them through it.
(16:30):
I know faith isn't for everybody, but I've experienced faith.
But also I've seen faith at work in other people,
and I know that at that point of disaster, upon it,
even death, that sometimes faith is the only thing that's
going to do it. So that's the second half of
the song. Really. Now, when you talk about faith, because
(16:53):
you're a practicing Buddhist, you're also a Christian, do you
mean religious faith in that sense or another kind of
faith in the sense it's a religious faith. And although
I am a Christian and would say not so much
a practicing Buddhist, but obviously very interested in Buddhism. You know,
I don't mean to be badantic. If you're practicing Buddhists,
(17:14):
you go for refuge to Buddha. But I'm a Christians,
I go for refuge to God. And so that's who
I feel that I'm talking about in this that God
is actually a voice in the song. Oh see, like
many of your songs, it starts as a conversation. Something
(17:34):
you're you announce, you're saying to another person. Is that
what the two voices are in the song? What happens.
It becomes the person that I was thinking about, the
oppressed person and God, and God is saying, they might
do terrible things to you, but I've got your back.
This might mean that this experience goes beyond this life.
(17:56):
And I know that that's maybe hard for some people
to imagine or some people to take, but I feel
like we have to look beyond, and you know in
the song, God is getting this person's back. You talked
about sort of seeing things in the world, particularly with
this song that you know we're terrible things. It doesn't
(18:16):
strike me as an angry song though. Malcolm and I
just did a big project with Paul Simon, and I
don't think it made the final cut of the project.
But I do remember asking him if he ever wrote
out of anger, and he said he did, but he
works on the song until all the anger is gone.
(18:37):
How do you see sort of anger in your songs?
Do you see anger underlying this song? No, not so
much this song, and it certainly, I mean to be
honest with you, I've had to work on anger issues
in my life. I think we all have. I think
perhaps many of us mellow as we get older. We're
constantly trying to become more patient, especially I've had kids,
(18:59):
and having a kid or kids is a lesson in
patient acceptance. You're working on your anger constantly when you
have kids. So I had more issues and I was younger.
Stevie would probably a test, and you know, things you
get quite spiky in the band and an everyday life,
and sometimes that would leak into some songs that I
(19:19):
could think about. But in this case, I think the
song is looking for a different solution. Even though terrible
things are happening to people and anger seems to be
sometimes seemed to be an appropriate response, I think I'm
suggesting in the song there's another way. I do want
to shift to Stevie, and I did want to ask
(19:40):
you about Deathbed of My Dreams. It's got a lovely
kind of country feel to it. Almost sounds like one
of those old kind of Nashville kind of dreamy slide
guitar songs. Can you tell me about that song? Well, sure,
without getting sued. That's the first time I wrote a
song in a specific way. There was a song in
(20:01):
my head which already existed. I basically wrote my own
words to someone else's song, and I've never done that
before got the folk tradition or something, and then I
changed the chords under it so that the melody changed.
And now you can't tell that you know that it
started off as another tune and I just changed it.
But this way, it's like a sort of an a
(20:21):
moral dilemma because I actually deliberately used another tune to
express myself and then changed it. But maybe you could
argue that's a kind of folk process. Yeah, it's it's
very common in folk and country music. I'm interested. It's
got a beautiful, very distinctive sound on the record. Now,
(20:42):
your albums are always full of different sounds. The song
we just talked about, if They're Shooting at You, which
we made sound fairly grim, actually sounds like it's like
a great bird backrack song. Yeah, Deathbed of My Dreams
has a very particular sound. Was it the sound of
this other song that attracted you? A Stuart and his
Songs and our producer Brian, you know, the aforementioned song
(21:03):
If They're Shooting at You. I think they took a
long time to get the rhythm of it, or you know,
like they spend a lot of time in the studio
getting it right. And I just don't have the patience
for that kind of thing. I my kind of way
of working is is that kind of audio verity thing.
I just assemble the musicians, play them the song, and
whatever will be will be, or would try and capture something,
(21:25):
or you know, usually try and capture it fast. I
think like with this song, I think it was in
c and and I just said, look, just play whatever
you want. I gave a couple of counters and didn't
quite happen. Then we had a coffee break and as
it us to it in the A and then it
just kind of came together quite nicely and we got
it in a few takes. That's certainly my memory of it.
(21:47):
And then Brian and I overdubbed a steel guitar which
they have played. The way it kind of came out,
it did sound like that kind of Nashville nineteen sixty
one kind of sound, so we kind of pushed it
that way a little bit like a day or bass
player he'd done that classic Nashville thing of he doubled
his part with a Fender six guitar along with a
(22:09):
kind of upright bass kind of feel. So has that
kind of two basses playing which is about in Nashville
kind of sound. It's a beautiful song. There are a
couple of songs on this album. I think, maybe particularly
the performance of Unnecessary Drama, that it felt like you
were a band that was desperate to play live again.
(22:30):
It just kind of had more aggression, more kind of
a live kind of feel. Were you itching to get
back out in front of a live audience when you
were recording these I would say no, personally, no, no. Yeah.
The key thing about this song is that this song
is Bob's song. You know, Bob isn't here to tell
his side of things, but Bob is. You know, he's
(22:53):
very organized and he had a plan for this song.
He had a sound. He has everything meticulously planned out.
So this is very much his sound. When I I'm
in the studio, I don't care whether I'm in Atlanta
or Ellie or London. You're sort of in a womb.
You're in a very safe place, and that's why it's
a It's a wonderful place for songs to be born.
(23:15):
I like studio stuff. I like a studio sound. You know,
there's a lushnessism. I like middle of the road sixties
and seventies records. For me, it's complete yean and yang.
But of course, as members of the band, we're all
ready to support the person whose idea and whose song
(23:35):
it is, so we're really happy to I mean, Stevie,
did you suggest that harmonic or did Bob suggest that harmonica? No,
it was Bob, yeah, and it was actually an overdub.
I didn't record it with the band. Bob did all
the guitars on it because he's you know, like I said,
it's not like an add to It's like it's like
a military campaign when he does one of these songs. Honestly,
it's like it's also a thought out and you know,
(23:57):
as a guitar player or nothing that I can add
to us. I just leave him to it. But on
the day, you know, as we'll come and play harmonica
on it. And that's just what came out, which you
said about the studio being a womb and not thinking
about playing live. So I have to ask you if
you watched the Beatles documentary Get Back. Oh sure, I did.
I mean, like a had a three D party at
my house. I had food and invited interested friends. One
(24:23):
of the things that fascinated me about it was that
they had been in the womb of the studio so long,
and they sort of announced their intention to go play,
and there was that just stress between just playing for
themselves and making things up and knowing they had to
get in front of an audience. Did that trigger any
memories or any studio trauma of your own going through
(24:46):
that stress? Now? Yeah, the transition from studio to live
is so different. You have to relearn all the songs,
you have to be prepared to get up there and
face the music, face the audience, and it's such a
different thing. And even today, I mean, you've kind of
inspired us to get our finger out and get moving
a little bit. And even having a rough play through
(25:08):
some of these songs is built a bit of confidence
for me because I'm thinking, no, that that tunes Okay,
that's a tune that that we don't need to you
don't need to hide behind studio trickery. It'll be okay.
Could we maybe play a verse of unnecessary drama for you? Sure?
Even though it's a hard hitting song, I think it's
a nice pop song, you know, even when you strip
(25:28):
it down. So so I've just added something that cursed
to me that I like this one, because it's when
someone else writes music for stuarts, it maybe puts them
in a position which he would normally wouldn't find himselves in,
you know, if he was, you know, writing for himself,
which he does, instead of just having a feeling. I thought,
where the word's going to be about. I'm gonna have
to tell a story. I'm gonna have to ride on
(25:50):
the song. And I ended up kind of telling a
story about my friend. Yeah, and I didn't play guitar
on the record. I've played a monicas. I think I've
just learned it. So here it goes okay, So one,
two three, I read your letter from before. You've been
having so much fun, and is it possiful? You're just
(26:12):
telling me to drum me in. There's an array of
douche bags landing up to play the stupid it pots.
And did you ever pass before you gave your loveful way?
This is my life, This is my soul cold life,
(26:36):
this is my life, This is my owly life. And
when you came to me that summer, you were just
a shell and you were holding close to mother. She
was ashing with the strange, and there was Master go
(26:59):
yet Master built that sister loving bund and then I
figured that the music set your soul place and us
probably not surprising that ju funing through the day. And
if I had a second uncoke, I would probably do
(27:23):
the same. And if the intimacy I but stopped. So
miss your stories, miss y'all. Let us every awkward fumble
should be prayed. Okay, they're gonna be holding up their
lighters for that one. That's gonna be a big, big
(27:45):
concert pleasure. That was wonderful. Thank God, you're instilling us
with confidence. I feel that's my job now. I didn't
think it was going to be my job. We'll be
right back with more from Bell and Sebastian. After a
quick break, we're back with the rest of Bruce's conversation
with Bell and Sebashtan. Here's the performance of their song
(28:06):
Young and Stupid. Oh one, two, three four. I was
yelling in my seat. I was crying, feeling weak. Do
we have to feel this way? It wasn't like this yesterday.
Everything it's behind when you're young and stupid. Everything's did
(28:31):
behind when you're young and stupid. There's an easy start
two things. There's a thrill that beauty bring two together
at the hips, start together at the lips. Nature was
the lea heat when you're young and stupid, nurture will
(28:56):
and phat when you're young and stupid. I thought you
could talk over this book. Let's just go into the
last verse two three four. Now we're old with creaking bones,
(29:18):
some with partner, some alone, some with kids, and some
with dogs. Getting through the nightly slug flashes in the behind.
We were young and stupid keeps us warm and nahi
all a Young and stupid makes us feel de la high.
(29:43):
We were young and stupid makes you feel with grayhead
when you're young and stupid. That was fabulous. Well let
me ask you now about the origins of that song.
How did that come about? This was like prophets and hold.
This was like a walk up song where it was
(30:04):
kind of walking into the studio and I might have
actually walken up with a tune of this and then
sort of just tumbled out of Ben walked into the
studio thinking about the tune, coming to the piano and
just writing down the words. It was the quickest is
definitely the quickest of all the of all the songs.
Something that's to be noted about the session was because
(30:25):
we were still in a form of lockdown. The band
members with kids were on duty, you know, they couldn't
do full days and they had to work around families.
We were so lucky. We actually had a friend staying
who was our pair, and so I got to come
in every day because I've got kids. And so there
was a couple of songs that we actually built up
(30:46):
with drum machines, and young and Stupid was one of them.
Profits on hold and mostly the first out of the record,
but then Rachel would come and play over later and
he would add his own inimitable groove to it. The
lyrical idea for the song, you know, because you've written
so many great songs about being young and being in
(31:10):
school and being in those strange kind of in between
times in your life, it's just kind of looking back
now and thinking I was stupid the whole time, and
that's kind of a good thing. I think it's a
classic glory days song, and the song very much exists
and was written from the present. I e I'm in
(31:30):
this position now, I'm I'm in a dark spot and
I'm looking back on glory days. Most of your glory days,
you probably wouldn't really want to go back. But it's
rose tinted spectacles, isn't it. And I had a cutoff point,
which was probably about nineteen ninety when I started to
wise up a little bit. But my glory days were
(31:51):
from eighty five to ninety because I had these you
know that, I was just you're running wild. It's so
much energy, so much energy, but not having the wisdom
really to know how to use that energy wisely. Most people,
if they are in a hugely successful pop band, would
say that their early days in the band were their
glory days. Your glory days pre date being in a band. Well,
(32:14):
I had a specific thing that happened to me was
in nineteen eighty nine ninety I got sick. Before that time,
I was I had boundless energy, and then I got
this thing called emmy chronic fatigue syndrome where my energy
went off at cliff and it changed my life radically
and forever. So it's easier to look beyond that point
(32:39):
now when I when I think of just having that
great energy. And you were how old when that struck you? So?
So nine about twenty one, and so you dropped out
of college at that point, dropped out of everything. I mean,
I ended up in hospital. I ended up living back
with my parents, which was, you know, talk about stepping
(32:59):
back into the womb. Almost the first part of that
was a lot of that just searching for the diagnosis,
trying to find out what happened. I had a good
year and a half when I was going downhill and
I'd be seeing doctors and they already It was actually
my mum that said, oh God, I hope it's not
that Emmy, because she was a nurse and she knew
(33:22):
people with emmy, and so she was the first person
really to diagnose me. And so it turned out that
that's what it was. And they didn't know much. They
couldn't really help me. There wasn't There wasn't much they
could do. Maybe the next six or seven years there
was where I would call my wilderness years. I was
splitting life up into and what were those years, like,
(33:43):
what was your day? You know? When I was back
staying with my folks. Do you know what a greenhouses?
Do you call it a greenhouse in America? It's like
a glass house. They had a glasshouse and that my
dad had built, and for most of the year it
was definitely the warmest place. So I used to go
in there and sit with the you know, the tomato
plants that he was growing, and try and just grow.
(34:06):
I just I would sit in an old picture with
my you know, with my reading for the week, and
you know, I would vegetate in the morning and try
and grow, grow like a baby tomato plant. And then
in the afternoon. Man, this has taken me back, you know.
It just shows you that the day was like cut
(34:27):
into portions because you and I had so much energy.
So in the afternoon I had a friend Michael, now
Michael and had the same thing that I did. We
became friends and we would just you know, we'd meet
up and we'd play scrabble, or we'd we'd driver in
the countryside. We'd try and get some nature, and later
on we try to play tennis, you know, so we'd
(34:48):
try to build up our energy. Did you despair that
you would never recover? I think in the first couple
of years there was a shock, and then there was
a getting used to it. But what happened was that
maybe about three years in I had been sort of
going along the bottom. Nothing much has improved. I paid
a lot to see a doctor and he just he
(35:09):
said he was going to move you better. And he
took me for six months and he was giving me
all sorts of alternative therapies and medicines, and at the
end of the six months he told me he couldn't
help me anymore, and that was harsh. That was the
point where I actually, you know, I had a bit
of a breakdown. So things got pretty dark for a while.
But actually, in a sense, it sort of shook me up.
(35:33):
Something happened that I became almost like so desperate that
I tried to change things. I really tried to see
more people, to get out, to make more of a connection.
Michael and I moved back to Glasgow. We were determined
from that point onwards, we forced ourselves to do more.
Was that coincidental with recovery or do you think that helped?
(35:56):
That helped your recovery along. Another catalyst to that was
around that time I was seeing I went to see
a Christian healer and she was the opposite of the
other medical person that I told you about. She promised
nothing thing but actually gave a lot, and she charged
nothing but gave a lot. She's amazing. It's just a
woman who did it like an amateur in our own house.
(36:20):
I wouldn't have to describe myself fully as a Christian
at that point. But she said, look, it doesn't matter.
This is going to help you. So you know, she
did her energy stuff. Can I ask you what was
that that she did? Almost at hands on healing, except
she to have her hands above me, and it would
the whole thing would take about an hour of where
she would just be going around and just she was
obviously praying or focusing, and I would be thinking the
(36:42):
same thing, and I it was a powerful experience, almost
like the time went by really quickly, even though I
was there for over an hour. And it wasn't until
a few weeks afterwards that something broke and I felt
that the healer had been part of the catalyst. Now,
even if all this stuff was only going on in
my mind, you can see how something like that could
(37:03):
be a catalyst. You hadn't written songs before you were ill,
is that right? That's right? Lit a bit of piano
when you were young. I think you had piano lessons.
How did the song start? By the time I'd gone
to the heelert, I had actually started writing songs. So
the songs started from this is me back at my parents' house,
having got to the bottom of my health, just sitting
(37:26):
at the piano. I remember very clearly writing what was
to become my first song. I met a girl called
Kira who was to become my best friend, and she
also had Emmy, and I was thinking about her, and
I just I felt like expressing something about her and
to her, and I just I put my hands on
(37:46):
the piano and started singing. And that was it. Could
you play a few of those chords? Now? Do you
remember what you played? Do you know? I never never
imagined that we'd be and you don't have to tour
with this song? Sure? And the song that the song
has never been recorded, and the she's so young Da
(38:16):
da da da da da da da da. I mean,
I can't remember the words. I might have them written
down somewhere. There's a long time ago. That's all. Like,
(38:38):
that's all I can remember. But kind of like that,
that was that was enough, you know, to get going. Okay,
how long was it before you wrote a song that
became a recorded song. Yeah, that's a good question. When
I realized that this was the thing, that maybe I
could do this, that even as a hobby, I should
try to. It made me feel good every song that
(39:00):
I did. It took me a month. It was took
me a month and a half. It took me a
long time just to try and wrestle this. So I
would say after maybe three years of that, the pace
picked up, and I think it helped that I picked
up a guitar as well, because it was easier. I
would say it was maybe another three years before there
was a song that appeared on a B and S record.
(39:24):
It does sound a little almost miraculous, like the famous
Oliver Sacks story about his patient who had a stroke
and then woke up and just started composing music almost incessantly.
Do you have this incredible gift for melody? You write
melodies that sound like they should have been written hundreds
(39:45):
of years ago, but you just thought of them for
the first time, and they're very sophisticated. How do you
account for that? That's an extremely nice way to put it.
Another way to put it in Stevie, he quite often says,
all your songs sound like something you know. That's the
other side of the coin that even though they're coming
(40:05):
out of you, that it's quite possibly you are bouncing
around melodies that are deep down, you know inside you
they've gone in when you were very young, and that
you're you're borrowing little bits of pieces of those Though music,
to generalize is miraculous, I think it is miraculous. I
used to think so when I was young and I
couldn't write a song, and I still I still think
(40:27):
so today. It's the most abstract form of art. It's pulling,
it's pulling magic out of thin air. What were you
listening to at the time, What were their singers or
were there songs that were inspiring what you were doing?
Kind of Obviously that seven year period was a long period,
and up to that point I was very current. I
(40:49):
used to DJ a lot, so I'd be playing current records,
and then, you know, once I got sick, I tended
to fall back on older records and also explore the
sixties and seventies more, and also just be more honest
about what I loved rather than you know, trying to
be hip and cool. Just I'm what I love. Often
(41:09):
was quite middle of the road pop music from my youth.
Can you give me an example? Songs like you know
the one that goes you walked into my life. I
don't know what the next chord is, and now you're
taken over and it's beautiful. Oh no, it's beautiful. I
(41:31):
remember hearing that song on the radio around about that time,
not having heard it for years and years, and just
being a ghast, thinking, I know that song is wonderful,
and I know maybe the guy next to me is
ignoring it, or this guy thinks it's chewing gum. For
the years, I think it's wonderful. You know. So you
have kids, your fans have kids. Some of those kids
(41:52):
have become fans. Where do you sort of place your
own music in the in the kind of firmament that's
an interesting question. Do you simply produce music because you
have to him, because you love doing it and you're
you're happy with just that process, or do you still ache,
you know, to be a pop star, to be you know,
(42:13):
every generation throws a you know, a singer up the
pop chat, as Paul Simon wrote, because I think there
is always that thing you forget that we're all ambitious
little buggers. And all these people that you mentioned, and
all your peers and the people, all the greats that
came before you, most of them would be nothing if
they didn't have a relationship with the public. Partly the
(42:35):
reason we haven't made an album for so long. Quite frankly,
it's because after we did the last one, it didn't
feel worth it anymore. It didn't feel like anybody's listening,
you know, maybe like some of our hardcore audience. So
that's mean, being pretty honest with you, maybe that's not
the kind of thing that folk want to hear. But
if the music isn't connecting with people anymore, I would
(42:58):
rather do something that really gets me going, you know.
I'd rather go back and make another film, write a book,
try something new. I'm a creative person. In the band
is full of creative people. There's no there's no law
that says band must do album tour album tour until death? Right?
(43:19):
Was it just sales or downloads or you just didn't
feel it was connecting somehow. I think maybe the last
record connects so well, and that maybe it's just a
general feeling. I mean, the band's been going for you know,
at that point, the band had been going for some time.
You know, people want the new thing. We'll see what
happens with this record, Okay, Well, I hope great things
(43:40):
happened with this record, because it's a great record and
everybody should listen to it, and everybody should go out
and clap along. When you play Unnecessary Drama live, you
definitely delve down there. There's some things that I haven't
thought about for years and years, So as therapists say,
we'll pick that up again next time. Okay, thank you
so much, Thanks Birth, Thanks the Bonds, the Bashion for
(44:05):
talking to us about their latest album and about their career.
You're more our favorite bones of Bashtian songs. Check out
the playlist at Broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure
to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com
slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of
our episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Records.
Broken Record is produced a helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel,
(44:27):
vent Holiday, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help
from Nick chaff Our. Executive producer is Mia Lobell. Broken
Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like
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(44:50):
Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts, subscriptions, and if
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review us on your podcast app our, theme music, spect
any beats. I'm justin Richmond.
Pushkin. Hey, y'all, it's justin Richmond. Today on the show,
we're talking to Stuart Murdoch and Stevie Jackson from the
Scottish folk pop band Belle and Sebastian. The band formed
in ninety six after meeting through a government funded class
for unemployed musicians. It soon became a showcase for Stuart
(00:36):
Murdoch's catchy melodies and witty stories about the everyday lives
of Scottish bohemians. Inspired by the sounds of the sixties
like the Beatles, Paul Simon, Burt Back Iraq. Their music
has been described as perfect chamber pop music. On today's episode,
Bruce Helm talks to Stewart and Stevie about writing and
recording their latest and tenth album, A Bit of Previous.
(00:58):
Stewart also talks about how getting sick at twenty one
was a critical moment in the start of his music career.
This is broken record Liner notes for the digital age.
I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce album with Stuart and Stevie.
You've got a new album coming out. Can you tell
me a little bit about the making of this album?
(01:20):
Because it was done during the pandemic. How did that
affect how you did the album, Where you did the album,
How did all that shake out. We had our bags
packed for Los Angeles. We were ready to go, and
this was back in the spring of twenty twenty. Of course,
the pandemic happened. We were locked down. So for the
first six months or so, we didn't do anything. Everybody
(01:42):
was locked in, you know what it was like. By
that time, we decided, you know what, this is going
to take a while, So we gave up the idea
of going to Lae. Chris the band, and also Brian,
who's our engineer upstairs. We all decided to renovate the studio,
turn the studio into a proper recording studio rather than
just a rehearsal place, and we made extra rooms. We
(02:07):
made little booths so that it could be safe, so
that we could work safely in pandemic. Time to go
a whole year for us to start recording with a Vengeance,
because it was another surge in the pandemic. By that time.
The song line up had changed, but that was quite nice.
I'd written quite a few new songs and so we
brought them in really in a raw state. The beauty
(02:29):
part of that was that instead of preparing to go
to Los Angeles and having everything written, we had more
time and we could make it up as we went along.
So how many songs did you have written for LA?
It's kind of hard to say, Stevie. Do you remember
the pool of songs we had for LA? No, it's
too long ago. There's probably maybe a nebulous pool of
about fifteen or twenty, but I think maybe probably ten
(02:52):
of those got ditched along the way somewhere. Is that
typical for you to go into an album with sort
of that many songs ready to go? I think yeah,
it's I think that's probably about the top number. And
actually we've done records in Atlanta, we've done two in LA.
We us try to record about seventeen or eighteen because
(03:12):
they usually needed it, but also it makes a better
album if you've got songs to choose from. You know,
things ended up very differently. Like I said, we kind
of left a lot of songs. A lot of the
songs went off the boil and didn't seem to appealing anymore,
and then new ideas sprang up, and because we were
hands on, between the band and Brian, we were producing
(03:34):
ourselves we could invent new techniques and new ways of
working and go back to our roots all that kind
of stuff. So I'm interested. Tell me which songs on
the album now are the new songs the songs you
developed after you initially thought you were going to be
recording in La Sure, so the first song young and Stupid,
and then I think if they're shooting at you might
have been a German, but the words came along later on,
(03:57):
and then certainly profits on Hold that just came up
on a day in the studio and was talked to
me quite a late one as well, Stevie. Can you
remember I can't remember? That was a tune that Sarah
and and what about your own tune? That was quite
a late edition as well. Yes, yes, yes, which was
called Deathbed of My Dreams. That's a beautiful song, by
(04:18):
the way, Oh thank you. That was doing the process
of being here. I think it end up being different
than a traditional balance of Bastian album that Moore was
worked out in the studio, as opposed to you coming
and the writers saying here are the songs and choosing
from those. I think we've been loosening up for a
few years now. We recorded a bunch of EPs in
(04:41):
Glasgow previous to this, and on that occasion that was
almost like a dress rehearsal for this record. We were
trying different approaches building songs up from scratch. We were
meant to be working with Sean Everett in California, and
we were very prepared to meet him halfway, and I
think it would have been such a different record. We
(05:02):
might have ended up writing to order. There's a songwriter,
I'm affected by the environment find yourself in. I think
we would have ended up writing songs, especially for his production.
You were such a prolific songwriter and the band is
so productive. Was this the longest hiatus you'd had away
(05:24):
from songwriting during your career. I wouldn't say it was
a hiatus away from songwriting at all, as far as
I'm concerned. The longest gap that we had was around
about two thousand and six to two thousand and ten
or something like that. I went away to make a movie,
but I was working on music and Stevie was working
on music. He did a solo WELP, so everybody was
still working. You know, A song I was interested in
(05:46):
a lot was profits on hold and Nactually when I
saw the title, I thought, well, is this pandemic related?
Because of course everybody was on hold. That's an angle
that I never thought about. It was just a song
that popped up in the studio. But then again, you're
taking everything, everything that's going on, and it percolates. Songs
(06:07):
just come out, so it seems to be unre related
to what is actually going on outside. Maybe in fact,
the experience of Lockdown did infect affect this song the
way it came out, But I'd never thought about that.
And you play a few bars of it, Yeah, there's
a slight caveat here. What happens with my songs is
that we construct the songs in the studio and the
(06:29):
band comes in and colors in once we get into
the production and we get into the song making I forget.
I never have it under my fingers. I've never played
this song from start to finish, you know, especially this one,
So obviously we have to learn to play this song
when we come to the concert. What I'm basically saying
(06:50):
is that me and Stevie are just trying to learn
how to play a few bars for you just today,
so we don't actually know it, but well, we'll have
a goal. Can I call you sometimes talk get out
on the phone. We don't have to be loved first,
(07:13):
We could be less alone. It's a rough, rocky road
and it's gonna get steep. I just wanted your soft
tone to allow me to sleep. And I sometimes confuse
(07:41):
you fuck God or angel yo, just a person sometimes confused.
I Gocklorian my mind a soft song once. Well, you
(08:15):
guys are quick learners. That was terrific. We were kind
of like, I'm looking at the chord sheets and for
the listeners, that probably kind of replicates the idea of
what happened when we brought the song in at first
and we were just feeling the chords. Was that purely
a musical idea you had and then added the lyrics
or did the lyric come at the same time. More
(08:38):
regularly for me, the words and the lyrics will come
at the same time. It's sometimes it's not a strong
urge to say something lyrically at first. It's more likely
to be a musical idea, you know, and then immediately
I'll try and cannot call you sometime. And you might
even think that that would start off as a scratch
(09:00):
lyric that you would replace later talk it out on
the phone, but a bit quite often your first lyrics
end up as the actual song itself. It's got a
great rhythm on the record. It's got the same kind
of bounce as the sound of Breaking Glass by Nick Lowe.
If you know that song, Oh yeah, that's a great one.
(09:20):
Yeah yeah, how does that one go? Stepe? I love
the sound of Breaking Glass. You can learn his songs
even faster. That's amazing. And because I love the title
so much, Profits on Hold. I mean, are you sitting
around somewhere you've got a notebook and you think of
the phrase profits on hold? Or are you on the
(09:42):
phone and you just write it down thinking I'm going
to use that at some point? When did that occur?
I take note of titles and then sometimes they lie
for years and then they become songs later on. That
was a case of that came out in the lyric
that day, just as I was writing underneath your Thin Skin,
we are profits and Hold, that occurred to me that
(10:03):
that could be the title. I'm going to talk about
the source of the songwriting in the group. You know,
you are one of the those bands that's not afraid
to be witty. I don't mean sort of modern lee witty,
but there is that kind of tradition in English Scottish,
you know, songwriting. Morrissey is a good example, and I
(10:23):
think he was an influence on you, almost that kind
of nol Coward school of being kind of funny. Where
does that come from in your background? It's sort of
hard to say. I mean, I'm not sure it's a
gift that we have for wet Maybe it's a gift
that we have for honesty and not being afraid to
leave it all out there. That is a progression from say,
(10:43):
for instance, you know, the Beatles through the Smiths to
us and to other bands that if you draw a line,
I think the people, you know, songwriters are more inclined
to be very honest and talk about their feelings, talk
about what's on their mind, very conversational. Whereas you know,
if you go back a little ways, songwriting was more
(11:04):
rigorous and there was rules, and there was things that
it would be cringy to say. At the time, when
I started songwriting, I didn't have anything to lose and
I wanted to tell the world how I felt from
my position of pain and anguish. But sometimes the humor
or being able to have a joke about it, and
even if the joke is on yourself, can be refreshing,
(11:26):
it can be liberating. But you're known for that level
of kind of wit. You know, if you're feeling sinister,
go and see a minister. There are a million examples
in your music. Were you a particularly literary kid. Was
there a lot of reading in your background. I did
quite a lot of reading as a later youth. I
did everything at the wrong time. When I was at
(11:47):
university doing science, all I would be doing was reading
English literature to the extent where the way that you
speak actually changes. I don't know if Stevie ever felt
that phenomenon, or yourself felt that phenomenon. I did go
through a couple of years where I was reading Jane
Austen and French authors, and the way that you actually
(12:09):
talk you could tell that it was changing because you
would be composing sentences the same way as these Victorian
all arts. And so that that was a period a
couple of years, and then I actually dropped out of university.
I didn't do signs anymore. I got more interested in
the art side. We're going to take a quick break here,
(12:30):
but we'll be right back with more from Stuart and
Stevie from balan Sebashtan. We're back with Bruce Adam's conversation
with Stevie and Stuart. There's a couple of songs I
want to ask about and then we'll dive into some background.
If they're shooting at you, tell me a bit about
the genesis of that song. I'm glad that you've asked
(12:52):
me about this one. Let me just try and get
the words of the song in front of me, and
I hope you don't feel that's too feeble, not at all.
So the funny thing about if they're shooting at you,
although I said it before, it was a new song
coming into this. I'd had the idea for the tune
for a couple of years and I brought it into
(13:12):
the studio pretty much the same day as Bob and
the band. He brought in an idea, and this was
during the time we were doing the EPs a couple
of years ago. So he played me this idea and said,
could you come up with words for this? And I
realized it had the same rhythm and vibe as the
thing I was writing, and I thought, well, this is good.
I like that that's interesting when that happens, because you
(13:33):
can combine the two in such a way that sometimes
something interesting comes from it. I find that the easiest
way to combine two ideas they probably need to have
the same rhythmic feel. You can always go from chord
to chord and figure out a way. I ended up
lending Bob's song a section of this song, and we
wrote words and became a song called Poor Boy and
(13:55):
as You was a single. But as we approached this LP,
I had the idea for this song in my head.
I still had the tune in my head. I felt
it hadn't been fully exploited, so I wrote discreet words.
I wrote separate words. I actually said to the and
beforehand it if you don't think this is too lazy
of me? Could this be a song? Could we try
(14:16):
this song? So maybe, like if if there's Belcabacitian fan,
you know, listening just now, they might be able to
reference part of the song. Will we play you a
verse or something from the would be great? One? Two?
So huh said, do you? I'm not free? I got
(14:36):
a mountain falling down on me, I got say the
san I've got down all the beeple one, a scream
and shout. I'm so tired. I'm always on money and
(14:58):
I'm called it's always januine worry in this huh and
on this streets. It's so great. I can't take it.
What happened to like fun? You sweat to? What did
(15:25):
you go okay? What would just think would just give
you a little taste lovely? What was behind the feeling
of that song, the lyrics of that song. It started
off very personal and became more general. It was me
(15:45):
looking out there at stories that were in the news.
If you look at the news any day, there's stories
about violent oppression, you know. Like I said, I started
singing from my own the way that I was feeling,
and then I started writing from the perspective of the
things that were happening that I could see happening to
other people. And sometimes things that are happening to you
(16:08):
they're quite small compared to the things that are happening
to other people. People are dying, people are being tortured,
people are in prison. This is terrible, terrible things happening,
And what do you do. I can't imagine facing those things,
but I know and I've seen it. People have faith
sometimes that's the only thing that can get them through it.
(16:30):
I know faith isn't for everybody, but I've experienced faith.
But also I've seen faith at work in other people,
and I know that at that point of disaster, upon it,
even death, that sometimes faith is the only thing that's
going to do it. So that's the second half of
the song. Really. Now, when you talk about faith, because
(16:53):
you're a practicing Buddhist, you're also a Christian, do you
mean religious faith in that sense or another kind of
faith in the sense it's a religious faith. And although
I am a Christian and would say not so much
a practicing Buddhist, but obviously very interested in Buddhism. You know,
I don't mean to be badantic. If you're practicing Buddhists,
(17:14):
you go for refuge to Buddha. But I'm a Christians,
I go for refuge to God. And so that's who
I feel that I'm talking about in this that God
is actually a voice in the song. Oh see, like
many of your songs, it starts as a conversation. Something
(17:34):
you're you announce, you're saying to another person. Is that
what the two voices are in the song? What happens.
It becomes the person that I was thinking about, the
oppressed person and God, and God is saying, they might
do terrible things to you, but I've got your back.
This might mean that this experience goes beyond this life.
(17:56):
And I know that that's maybe hard for some people
to imagine or some people to take, but I feel
like we have to look beyond, and you know in
the song, God is getting this person's back. You talked
about sort of seeing things in the world, particularly with
this song that you know we're terrible things. It doesn't
(18:16):
strike me as an angry song though. Malcolm and I
just did a big project with Paul Simon, and I
don't think it made the final cut of the project.
But I do remember asking him if he ever wrote
out of anger, and he said he did, but he
works on the song until all the anger is gone.
(18:37):
How do you see sort of anger in your songs?
Do you see anger underlying this song? No, not so
much this song, and it certainly, I mean to be
honest with you, I've had to work on anger issues
in my life. I think we all have. I think
perhaps many of us mellow as we get older. We're
constantly trying to become more patient, especially I've had kids,
(18:59):
and having a kid or kids is a lesson in
patient acceptance. You're working on your anger constantly when you
have kids. So I had more issues and I was younger.
Stevie would probably a test, and you know, things you
get quite spiky in the band and an everyday life,
and sometimes that would leak into some songs that I
(19:19):
could think about. But in this case, I think the
song is looking for a different solution. Even though terrible
things are happening to people and anger seems to be
sometimes seemed to be an appropriate response, I think I'm
suggesting in the song there's another way. I do want
to shift to Stevie, and I did want to ask
(19:40):
you about Deathbed of My Dreams. It's got a lovely
kind of country feel to it. Almost sounds like one
of those old kind of Nashville kind of dreamy slide
guitar songs. Can you tell me about that song? Well, sure,
without getting sued. That's the first time I wrote a
song in a specific way. There was a song in
(20:01):
my head which already existed. I basically wrote my own
words to someone else's song, and I've never done that
before got the folk tradition or something, and then I
changed the chords under it so that the melody changed.
And now you can't tell that you know that it
started off as another tune and I just changed it.
But this way, it's like a sort of an a
(20:21):
moral dilemma because I actually deliberately used another tune to
express myself and then changed it. But maybe you could
argue that's a kind of folk process. Yeah, it's it's
very common in folk and country music. I'm interested. It's
got a beautiful, very distinctive sound on the record. Now,
(20:42):
your albums are always full of different sounds. The song
we just talked about, if They're Shooting at You, which
we made sound fairly grim, actually sounds like it's like
a great bird backrack song. Yeah, Deathbed of My Dreams
has a very particular sound. Was it the sound of
this other song that attracted you? A Stuart and his
Songs and our producer Brian, you know, the aforementioned song
(21:03):
If They're Shooting at You. I think they took a
long time to get the rhythm of it, or you know,
like they spend a lot of time in the studio
getting it right. And I just don't have the patience
for that kind of thing. I my kind of way
of working is is that kind of audio verity thing.
I just assemble the musicians, play them the song, and
whatever will be will be, or would try and capture something,
(21:25):
or you know, usually try and capture it fast. I
think like with this song, I think it was in
c and and I just said, look, just play whatever
you want. I gave a couple of counters and didn't
quite happen. Then we had a coffee break and as
it us to it in the A and then it
just kind of came together quite nicely and we got
it in a few takes. That's certainly my memory of it.
(21:47):
And then Brian and I overdubbed a steel guitar which
they have played. The way it kind of came out,
it did sound like that kind of Nashville nineteen sixty
one kind of sound, so we kind of pushed it
that way a little bit like a day or bass
player he'd done that classic Nashville thing of he doubled
his part with a Fender six guitar along with a
(22:09):
kind of upright bass kind of feel. So has that
kind of two basses playing which is about in Nashville
kind of sound. It's a beautiful song. There are a
couple of songs on this album. I think, maybe particularly
the performance of Unnecessary Drama, that it felt like you
were a band that was desperate to play live again.
(22:30):
It just kind of had more aggression, more kind of
a live kind of feel. Were you itching to get
back out in front of a live audience when you
were recording these I would say no, personally, no, no. Yeah.
The key thing about this song is that this song
is Bob's song. You know, Bob isn't here to tell
his side of things, but Bob is. You know, he's
(22:53):
very organized and he had a plan for this song.
He had a sound. He has everything meticulously planned out.
So this is very much his sound. When I I'm
in the studio, I don't care whether I'm in Atlanta
or Ellie or London. You're sort of in a womb.
You're in a very safe place, and that's why it's
a It's a wonderful place for songs to be born.
(23:15):
I like studio stuff. I like a studio sound. You know,
there's a lushnessism. I like middle of the road sixties
and seventies records. For me, it's complete yean and yang.
But of course, as members of the band, we're all
ready to support the person whose idea and whose song
(23:35):
it is, so we're really happy to I mean, Stevie,
did you suggest that harmonic or did Bob suggest that harmonica? No,
it was Bob, yeah, and it was actually an overdub.
I didn't record it with the band. Bob did all
the guitars on it because he's you know, like I said,
it's not like an add to It's like it's like
a military campaign when he does one of these songs. Honestly,
it's like it's also a thought out and you know,
(23:57):
as a guitar player or nothing that I can add
to us. I just leave him to it. But on
the day, you know, as we'll come and play harmonica
on it. And that's just what came out, which you
said about the studio being a womb and not thinking
about playing live. So I have to ask you if
you watched the Beatles documentary Get Back. Oh sure, I did.
I mean, like a had a three D party at
my house. I had food and invited interested friends. One
(24:23):
of the things that fascinated me about it was that
they had been in the womb of the studio so long,
and they sort of announced their intention to go play,
and there was that just stress between just playing for
themselves and making things up and knowing they had to
get in front of an audience. Did that trigger any
memories or any studio trauma of your own going through
(24:46):
that stress? Now? Yeah, the transition from studio to live
is so different. You have to relearn all the songs,
you have to be prepared to get up there and
face the music, face the audience, and it's such a
different thing. And even today, I mean, you've kind of
inspired us to get our finger out and get moving
a little bit. And even having a rough play through
(25:08):
some of these songs is built a bit of confidence
for me because I'm thinking, no, that that tunes Okay,
that's a tune that that we don't need to you
don't need to hide behind studio trickery. It'll be okay.
Could we maybe play a verse of unnecessary drama for you? Sure?
Even though it's a hard hitting song, I think it's
a nice pop song, you know, even when you strip
(25:28):
it down. So so I've just added something that cursed
to me that I like this one, because it's when
someone else writes music for stuarts, it maybe puts them
in a position which he would normally wouldn't find himselves in,
you know, if he was, you know, writing for himself,
which he does, instead of just having a feeling. I thought,
where the word's going to be about. I'm gonna have
to tell a story. I'm gonna have to ride on
(25:50):
the song. And I ended up kind of telling a
story about my friend. Yeah, and I didn't play guitar
on the record. I've played a monicas. I think I've
just learned it. So here it goes okay, So one,
two three, I read your letter from before. You've been
having so much fun, and is it possiful? You're just
(26:12):
telling me to drum me in. There's an array of
douche bags landing up to play the stupid it pots.
And did you ever pass before you gave your loveful way?
This is my life, This is my soul cold life,
(26:36):
this is my life, This is my owly life. And
when you came to me that summer, you were just
a shell and you were holding close to mother. She
was ashing with the strange, and there was Master go
(26:59):
yet Master built that sister loving bund and then I
figured that the music set your soul place and us
probably not surprising that ju funing through the day. And
if I had a second uncoke, I would probably do
(27:23):
the same. And if the intimacy I but stopped. So
miss your stories, miss y'all. Let us every awkward fumble
should be prayed. Okay, they're gonna be holding up their
lighters for that one. That's gonna be a big, big
(27:45):
concert pleasure. That was wonderful. Thank God, you're instilling us
with confidence. I feel that's my job now. I didn't
think it was going to be my job. We'll be
right back with more from Bell and Sebastian. After a
quick break, we're back with the rest of Bruce's conversation
with Bell and Sebashtan. Here's the performance of their song
(28:06):
Young and Stupid. Oh one, two, three four. I was
yelling in my seat. I was crying, feeling weak. Do
we have to feel this way? It wasn't like this yesterday.
Everything it's behind when you're young and stupid. Everything's did
(28:31):
behind when you're young and stupid. There's an easy start
two things. There's a thrill that beauty bring two together
at the hips, start together at the lips. Nature was
the lea heat when you're young and stupid, nurture will
(28:56):
and phat when you're young and stupid. I thought you
could talk over this book. Let's just go into the
last verse two three four. Now we're old with creaking bones,
(29:18):
some with partner, some alone, some with kids, and some
with dogs. Getting through the nightly slug flashes in the behind.
We were young and stupid keeps us warm and nahi
all a Young and stupid makes us feel de la high.
(29:43):
We were young and stupid makes you feel with grayhead
when you're young and stupid. That was fabulous. Well let
me ask you now about the origins of that song.
How did that come about? This was like prophets and hold.
This was like a walk up song where it was
(30:04):
kind of walking into the studio and I might have
actually walken up with a tune of this and then
sort of just tumbled out of Ben walked into the
studio thinking about the tune, coming to the piano and
just writing down the words. It was the quickest is
definitely the quickest of all the of all the songs.
Something that's to be noted about the session was because
(30:25):
we were still in a form of lockdown. The band
members with kids were on duty, you know, they couldn't
do full days and they had to work around families.
We were so lucky. We actually had a friend staying
who was our pair, and so I got to come
in every day because I've got kids. And so there
was a couple of songs that we actually built up
(30:46):
with drum machines, and young and Stupid was one of them.
Profits on hold and mostly the first out of the record,
but then Rachel would come and play over later and
he would add his own inimitable groove to it. The
lyrical idea for the song, you know, because you've written
so many great songs about being young and being in
(31:10):
school and being in those strange kind of in between
times in your life, it's just kind of looking back
now and thinking I was stupid the whole time, and
that's kind of a good thing. I think it's a
classic glory days song, and the song very much exists
and was written from the present. I e I'm in
(31:30):
this position now, I'm I'm in a dark spot and
I'm looking back on glory days. Most of your glory days,
you probably wouldn't really want to go back. But it's
rose tinted spectacles, isn't it. And I had a cutoff point,
which was probably about nineteen ninety when I started to
wise up a little bit. But my glory days were
(31:51):
from eighty five to ninety because I had these you
know that, I was just you're running wild. It's so
much energy, so much energy, but not having the wisdom
really to know how to use that energy wisely. Most people,
if they are in a hugely successful pop band, would
say that their early days in the band were their
glory days. Your glory days pre date being in a band. Well,
(32:14):
I had a specific thing that happened to me was
in nineteen eighty nine ninety I got sick. Before that time,
I was I had boundless energy, and then I got
this thing called emmy chronic fatigue syndrome where my energy
went off at cliff and it changed my life radically
and forever. So it's easier to look beyond that point
(32:39):
now when I when I think of just having that
great energy. And you were how old when that struck you? So?
So nine about twenty one, and so you dropped out
of college at that point, dropped out of everything. I mean,
I ended up in hospital. I ended up living back
with my parents, which was, you know, talk about stepping
(32:59):
back into the womb. Almost the first part of that
was a lot of that just searching for the diagnosis,
trying to find out what happened. I had a good
year and a half when I was going downhill and
I'd be seeing doctors and they already It was actually
my mum that said, oh God, I hope it's not
that Emmy, because she was a nurse and she knew
(33:22):
people with emmy, and so she was the first person
really to diagnose me. And so it turned out that
that's what it was. And they didn't know much. They
couldn't really help me. There wasn't There wasn't much they
could do. Maybe the next six or seven years there
was where I would call my wilderness years. I was
splitting life up into and what were those years, like,
(33:43):
what was your day? You know? When I was back
staying with my folks. Do you know what a greenhouses?
Do you call it a greenhouse in America? It's like
a glass house. They had a glasshouse and that my
dad had built, and for most of the year it
was definitely the warmest place. So I used to go
in there and sit with the you know, the tomato
plants that he was growing, and try and just grow.
(34:06):
I just I would sit in an old picture with
my you know, with my reading for the week, and
you know, I would vegetate in the morning and try
and grow, grow like a baby tomato plant. And then
in the afternoon. Man, this has taken me back, you know.
It just shows you that the day was like cut
(34:27):
into portions because you and I had so much energy.
So in the afternoon I had a friend Michael, now
Michael and had the same thing that I did. We
became friends and we would just you know, we'd meet
up and we'd play scrabble, or we'd we'd driver in
the countryside. We'd try and get some nature, and later
on we try to play tennis, you know, so we'd
(34:48):
try to build up our energy. Did you despair that
you would never recover? I think in the first couple
of years there was a shock, and then there was
a getting used to it. But what happened was that
maybe about three years in I had been sort of
going along the bottom. Nothing much has improved. I paid
a lot to see a doctor and he just he
(35:09):
said he was going to move you better. And he
took me for six months and he was giving me
all sorts of alternative therapies and medicines, and at the
end of the six months he told me he couldn't
help me anymore, and that was harsh. That was the
point where I actually, you know, I had a bit
of a breakdown. So things got pretty dark for a while.
But actually, in a sense, it sort of shook me up.
(35:33):
Something happened that I became almost like so desperate that
I tried to change things. I really tried to see
more people, to get out, to make more of a connection.
Michael and I moved back to Glasgow. We were determined
from that point onwards, we forced ourselves to do more.
Was that coincidental with recovery or do you think that helped?
(35:56):
That helped your recovery along. Another catalyst to that was
around that time I was seeing I went to see
a Christian healer and she was the opposite of the
other medical person that I told you about. She promised
nothing thing but actually gave a lot, and she charged
nothing but gave a lot. She's amazing. It's just a
woman who did it like an amateur in our own house.
(36:20):
I wouldn't have to describe myself fully as a Christian
at that point. But she said, look, it doesn't matter.
This is going to help you. So you know, she
did her energy stuff. Can I ask you what was
that that she did? Almost at hands on healing, except
she to have her hands above me, and it would
the whole thing would take about an hour of where
she would just be going around and just she was
obviously praying or focusing, and I would be thinking the
(36:42):
same thing, and I it was a powerful experience, almost
like the time went by really quickly, even though I
was there for over an hour. And it wasn't until
a few weeks afterwards that something broke and I felt
that the healer had been part of the catalyst. Now,
even if all this stuff was only going on in
my mind, you can see how something like that could
(37:03):
be a catalyst. You hadn't written songs before you were ill,
is that right? That's right? Lit a bit of piano
when you were young. I think you had piano lessons.
How did the song start? By the time I'd gone
to the heelert, I had actually started writing songs. So
the songs started from this is me back at my parents' house,
having got to the bottom of my health, just sitting
(37:26):
at the piano. I remember very clearly writing what was
to become my first song. I met a girl called
Kira who was to become my best friend, and she
also had Emmy, and I was thinking about her, and
I just I felt like expressing something about her and
to her, and I just I put my hands on
(37:46):
the piano and started singing. And that was it. Could
you play a few of those chords? Now? Do you
remember what you played? Do you know? I never never
imagined that we'd be and you don't have to tour
with this song? Sure? And the song that the song
has never been recorded, and the she's so young Da
(38:16):
da da da da da da da da. I mean,
I can't remember the words. I might have them written
down somewhere. There's a long time ago. That's all. Like,
(38:38):
that's all I can remember. But kind of like that,
that was that was enough, you know, to get going. Okay,
how long was it before you wrote a song that
became a recorded song. Yeah, that's a good question. When
I realized that this was the thing, that maybe I
could do this, that even as a hobby, I should
try to. It made me feel good every song that
(39:00):
I did. It took me a month. It was took
me a month and a half. It took me a
long time just to try and wrestle this. So I
would say after maybe three years of that, the pace
picked up, and I think it helped that I picked
up a guitar as well, because it was easier. I
would say it was maybe another three years before there
was a song that appeared on a B and S record.
(39:24):
It does sound a little almost miraculous, like the famous
Oliver Sacks story about his patient who had a stroke
and then woke up and just started composing music almost incessantly.
Do you have this incredible gift for melody? You write
melodies that sound like they should have been written hundreds
(39:45):
of years ago, but you just thought of them for
the first time, and they're very sophisticated. How do you
account for that? That's an extremely nice way to put it.
Another way to put it in Stevie, he quite often says,
all your songs sound like something you know. That's the
other side of the coin that even though they're coming
(40:05):
out of you, that it's quite possibly you are bouncing
around melodies that are deep down, you know inside you
they've gone in when you were very young, and that
you're you're borrowing little bits of pieces of those Though music,
to generalize is miraculous, I think it is miraculous. I
used to think so when I was young and I
couldn't write a song, and I still I still think
(40:27):
so today. It's the most abstract form of art. It's pulling,
it's pulling magic out of thin air. What were you
listening to at the time, What were their singers or
were there songs that were inspiring what you were doing?
Kind of Obviously that seven year period was a long period,
and up to that point I was very current. I
(40:49):
used to DJ a lot, so I'd be playing current records,
and then, you know, once I got sick, I tended
to fall back on older records and also explore the
sixties and seventies more, and also just be more honest
about what I loved rather than you know, trying to
be hip and cool. Just I'm what I love. Often
(41:09):
was quite middle of the road pop music from my youth.
Can you give me an example? Songs like you know
the one that goes you walked into my life. I
don't know what the next chord is, and now you're
taken over and it's beautiful. Oh no, it's beautiful. I
(41:31):
remember hearing that song on the radio around about that time,
not having heard it for years and years, and just
being a ghast, thinking, I know that song is wonderful,
and I know maybe the guy next to me is
ignoring it, or this guy thinks it's chewing gum. For
the years, I think it's wonderful. You know. So you
have kids, your fans have kids. Some of those kids
(41:52):
have become fans. Where do you sort of place your
own music in the in the kind of firmament that's
an interesting question. Do you simply produce music because you
have to him, because you love doing it and you're
you're happy with just that process, or do you still ache,
you know, to be a pop star, to be you know,
(42:13):
every generation throws a you know, a singer up the
pop chat, as Paul Simon wrote, because I think there
is always that thing you forget that we're all ambitious
little buggers. And all these people that you mentioned, and
all your peers and the people, all the greats that
came before you, most of them would be nothing if
they didn't have a relationship with the public. Partly the
(42:35):
reason we haven't made an album for so long. Quite frankly,
it's because after we did the last one, it didn't
feel worth it anymore. It didn't feel like anybody's listening,
you know, maybe like some of our hardcore audience. So
that's mean, being pretty honest with you, maybe that's not
the kind of thing that folk want to hear. But
if the music isn't connecting with people anymore, I would
(42:58):
rather do something that really gets me going, you know.
I'd rather go back and make another film, write a book,
try something new. I'm a creative person. In the band
is full of creative people. There's no there's no law
that says band must do album tour album tour until death? Right?
(43:19):
Was it just sales or downloads or you just didn't
feel it was connecting somehow. I think maybe the last
record connects so well, and that maybe it's just a
general feeling. I mean, the band's been going for you know,
at that point, the band had been going for some time.
You know, people want the new thing. We'll see what
happens with this record, Okay, Well, I hope great things
(43:40):
happened with this record, because it's a great record and
everybody should listen to it, and everybody should go out
and clap along. When you play Unnecessary Drama live, you
definitely delve down there. There's some things that I haven't
thought about for years and years, So as therapists say,
we'll pick that up again next time. Okay, thank you
so much, Thanks Birth, Thanks the Bonds, the Bashion for
(44:05):
talking to us about their latest album and about their career.
You're more our favorite bones of Bashtian songs. Check out
the playlist at Broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure
to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com
slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of
our episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Records.
Broken Record is produced a helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel,
(44:27):
vent Holiday, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help
from Nick chaff Our. Executive producer is Mia Lobell. Broken
Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like
this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus.
Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content,
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(44:50):
Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts, subscriptions, and if
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any beats. I'm justin Richmond.
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