Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Joe Boyd

Transcript

Joe Boyd · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Joe Boyd spent more than six decades as a producer,
0:22
Speaker 1: label executive and writer whose influence extents far beyond the studio.
0:27
Speaker 1: From producing Nick Drake's luminous folk albums to working with
0:30
Speaker 1: Fairport Convention, Pink Floyd, and Ram, Boyd has shaped some
0:34
Speaker 1: of the most enduring recordings in modern music history. But
0:38
Speaker 1: Joe Boyd isn't just a behind the scenes architect of sound.
0:40
Speaker 1: He's also a chronicler of the music he loves. In
0:43
Speaker 1: a two thousand and seven memoir, White Bicycles Making Music
0:46
Speaker 1: in the nineteen Sixties, he offered an insider's perspective on
0:49
Speaker 1: that transformative era of nineteen sixties British music that was
0:53
Speaker 1: so well received readers were clamoring for him to write
0:56
Speaker 1: a follow up about the nineteen seventies. He wrestled with
0:59
Speaker 1: that idea for a little bit, and then pivoted to
1:01
Speaker 1: the voluminous new book and The Roots of Rhythm Remain,
1:04
Speaker 1: a journey through global music, published just last year. This
1:08
Speaker 1: tom takes across continents in search of the traditions that
1:11
Speaker 1: continue to shape contemporary sound. From Cuba Tomali, from Brazil
1:16
Speaker 1: to Bulgaria, Boyd traces the connections that bind global music
1:20
Speaker 1: together and celebrates the artists who keep these traditions alive.
1:24
Speaker 1: On today's episode, I talked to Joe Boyd about working
1:27
Speaker 1: with famed Warner Brothers CEO Moostin in the sixties. He
1:30
Speaker 1: also talks about the exhaustive research he did in writing
1:32
Speaker 1: his latest book and why he decided to pinpoint three
1:35
Speaker 1: specific global regions as the genesis for all popular music,
1:39
Speaker 1: and Joe recalls how he came to produce the Seminole
1:42
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three documentary on Jimi Hendrix, one of my
1:45
Speaker 1: personal favorite films of all time. This is broken record,
1:52
Speaker 1: real musicians, real conversations. Here's my conversation with Joe Boyd.
2:03
Speaker 1: There were a number of Americans to get out to
2:06
Speaker 1: London in the sixties that you weren't alone in that,
2:09
Speaker 1: but it does seem to one of the rare ones
2:11
Speaker 1: that stayed as long as he did not seem to
2:15
Speaker 1: come back. Did you ever move back to the States?
2:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I lived in la for a few years
2:20
Speaker 2: in the early seventies. I was back and forth La
2:23
Speaker 2: to London for another few years, and then I was
2:27
Speaker 2: back and forth to New York for a bit In
2:30
Speaker 2: the nineties and the noughties. But I've always I mean,
2:35
Speaker 2: basically except for a couple of years when I was
2:38
Speaker 2: working for Warner Brothers in la in the early seventies.
2:41
Speaker 2: I've always had a flat in London since nineteen sixty five.
2:46
Speaker 1: I want to kind of toggle between your career, not
2:51
Speaker 1: as a writer, not as part of the book, also
2:53
Speaker 1: the book. So the theme of the book, because you mentioned
2:55
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers, can you tell me about that mo austin
2:59
Speaker 1: early seventies, Warner Brothers culture and how you got involved.
3:03
Speaker 2: One day in nineteen sixty eight, I guess it was
3:08
Speaker 2: early sixth on a kind of willful impulse, I called
3:15
Speaker 2: up Bill Graham and I said I wanted to come
3:17
Speaker 2: see him, and he said okay, and gave me a
3:21
Speaker 2: time and a date, and I jumped on a plane,
3:23
Speaker 2: went to San Francisco and booked the Incredible String Band
3:27
Speaker 2: to open for the Jefferson Airplane because I thought they
3:29
Speaker 2: shouldn't be in folk clubs, they should be opening for
3:32
Speaker 2: the Jefferson Airplane. And while I was there, I met
3:37
Speaker 2: a guy called Andy Wickham. And Andy Wickham was an
3:40
Speaker 2: Englishman who had once worked for Andrew Luke Oldham I think,
3:47
Speaker 2: and he'd somehow migrated to California around the time of
3:51
Speaker 2: the Monterey Pop Festival, and he was now working at
3:56
Speaker 2: Warner Brothers. And we hung out and we spent some
4:01
Speaker 2: time together in San Francisco, and he said, you got
4:04
Speaker 2: to come to Burbank and meet Moe. And so I
4:07
Speaker 2: flew down to burber Bank. I met Mo and we
4:13
Speaker 2: just got along great. And Joe Smith and and Andy Wickham,
4:17
Speaker 2: who passed away recently, ended up being a questionable guy.
4:26
Speaker 2: I mean, he was one of those people who revealed
4:28
Speaker 2: him his sort of slightly racist and slightly aristocratic and
4:34
Speaker 2: snobbish sides as he grew older. But at that time
4:40
Speaker 2: he was the one who introduced Moe. And Moe and Joe,
4:45
Speaker 2: you know, came from Sinatra, from Top forty Radio, from
4:51
Speaker 2: these other worlds. And Andy introduced them to the Grateful Dead,
4:55
Speaker 2: He introduced them to Joni Mitchell, he introduced them to
4:58
Speaker 2: Van Morrison, and he opened those doors for them somehow.
5:04
Speaker 2: Moe just, you know, the same charm that worked with
5:09
Speaker 2: Natra's wise guys, worked with the Laurel Canyon guys. And
5:15
Speaker 2: Moe was just a sweet guy. I mean, he was
5:18
Speaker 2: tough and He didn't always reveal how tough he was
5:24
Speaker 2: unless he was pushed. But his charm was such and
5:28
Speaker 2: he had that wisdom to let you know. He surrounded
5:31
Speaker 2: himself with Lenny Warrenker and Russ Titlement and you know,
5:37
Speaker 2: all this this kind of a and R team Van
5:40
Speaker 2: Dyke Parks, and he let them be the ones who
5:44
Speaker 2: judged the music. The record company existed in a kind
5:49
Speaker 2: of old warehouse across the street from the studio, and
5:54
Speaker 2: they kept adding people and adding offices, and so it
5:58
Speaker 2: was completely crowded. It was like you had three feet
6:02
Speaker 2: and then there was the next office with a little
6:04
Speaker 2: divider and you went to go have a pee, and
6:08
Speaker 2: you're standing next to Moe or Joe or the head
6:10
Speaker 2: of sales or the head of you know. And so
6:12
Speaker 2: there was there was so much communication. Everybody talked to
6:16
Speaker 2: everybody else all the time. And then of course, you know,
6:20
Speaker 2: they ended up selling ten million Neil Young records and
6:24
Speaker 2: ten million Joni Mitchell records and got so much money
6:30
Speaker 2: that they said, oh, let's build a new headquarters. And
6:33
Speaker 2: I think by seventy seven or seventy six or something
6:36
Speaker 2: like that, they built that new building down the street
6:41
Speaker 2: and everybody was like thirty yards from each other, with
6:45
Speaker 2: padded carpets, deep pile carpets in between, and the atmosphere
6:50
Speaker 2: was never the same, and the record company I don't
6:52
Speaker 2: think was ever the same again. You know, I got
6:55
Speaker 2: I started doing some stuff. I produced a Jeff and
6:58
Speaker 2: Maria Muldor record I produced. I sold them of John
7:02
Speaker 2: and Beverly Martin record, neither of which sold. But for
7:06
Speaker 2: some reason they liked me, and I think there was
7:09
Speaker 2: also it's a complicated story, but they didn't have a
7:13
Speaker 2: European operation, and so they decided the way that they
7:16
Speaker 2: would enter Europe was by buying Island Records. And I
7:21
Speaker 2: helped introduce them to Chris Blackwell because I was working
7:25
Speaker 2: with Chris in London, and Chris, in his inimitable casual
7:31
Speaker 2: Caribbean way, kind of fucked them around. I mean, he
7:37
Speaker 2: just didn't take it all very seriously, and they did,
7:42
Speaker 2: and they went out on a limb to make him
7:44
Speaker 2: a very serious offer, and he never really responded, and
7:49
Speaker 2: so they got furious and they offered Chrysalis, who was
7:57
Speaker 2: making records for Ireland. They offered them a label deal
8:00
Speaker 2: to move to Warner Brothers, and they went out to
8:03
Speaker 2: get revenge. This was most tough side and he went
8:07
Speaker 2: out to get revenge to take stuff away from Blackwell
8:11
Speaker 2: from Ireland, and later they became great friends again. So
8:17
Speaker 2: this was a brief period of vengefulness and part of
8:21
Speaker 2: that was to steal me. And so they offered me
8:26
Speaker 2: the job of music director for the film company. And
8:32
Speaker 2: I was burnt out, you know. I had been struggling
8:35
Speaker 2: so much to keep Witch Season afloat, and we never
8:39
Speaker 2: sold enough records, and I was just getting more and
8:41
Speaker 2: more in debt. And they offered me a big salary.
8:45
Speaker 2: And Chris may have sensed the edge in this offer,
8:51
Speaker 2: but he couldn't have been nicer. He said, it's a
8:53
Speaker 2: great opportunity. You'll kick yourself if you don't take it.
8:58
Speaker 2: I'll pay off your debts and look after your artists
9:02
Speaker 2: and all that, and so go with my blessings. And
9:06
Speaker 2: so I went to California in nineteen sid one and
9:10
Speaker 2: became the so called director of music services for Warner
9:15
Speaker 2: Brothers Films.
9:17
Speaker 1: And so you was sort of in that role the
9:20
Speaker 1: liaise between the music and the film, so Warner Brothers
9:24
Speaker 1: music would end up in Warner Brothers films.
9:27
Speaker 2: That was one of the jobs. I discovered that my
9:30
Speaker 2: main job, as far as most of the directors and
9:33
Speaker 2: producers were concerned, they'd call me up and say get
9:36
Speaker 2: me John Williams, and you know, so it got kind
9:41
Speaker 2: of tedious, but I had some fun, you know, Stanley Kubrick.
9:46
Speaker 2: I'd worked on Clockwork Orange, I worked on Deliverance, the
9:51
Speaker 2: banjo saying with dueling banjo's that was me? And who
9:57
Speaker 2: played that again?
9:58
Speaker 1: Who played that banjo part?
9:59
Speaker 2: Eric Weisberg, because it should have been Bill Keith. Bill
10:05
Speaker 2: Keith was the guy. He was the city billy guy
10:09
Speaker 2: who'd played with Bill Monroe. I knew him from Harvard
10:13
Speaker 2: Square the best. And what John Boorman wanted was doling banjos,
10:20
Speaker 2: but he wanted it slow, fast, minor key, major key
10:25
Speaker 2: as a soundtrack, as a score, and Bill Keith would
10:29
Speaker 2: have been perfect. But Keith was on tour. He'd met
10:32
Speaker 2: a girl. He wanted to go hang out with her
10:35
Speaker 2: in Ireland. He said, how much are you paying? I
10:38
Speaker 2: said two thousand bucks. He said, get Weisberg, and so
10:42
Speaker 2: I got Weisburg and Weisberg made a fortune, you know, basically,
10:47
Speaker 2: and then But what happened then was that I sort
10:50
Speaker 2: of maneuvered my way into producing a Jimmy Hendrix documentary
10:55
Speaker 2: called Jimmy Hendrix, who came out in seventy three, And
10:58
Speaker 2: when that began to be really a full time thing,
11:03
Speaker 2: I said to Warner Brothers, I said, listen, let me
11:05
Speaker 2: find you a successor. And I went on. I thought
11:10
Speaker 2: that making the Jimi Hendrix film made me a film producer,
11:13
Speaker 2: but that was delusional.
11:16
Speaker 1: I think any Hendrix fan, that's the thing that they
11:19
Speaker 1: need to see. If there's anything that they need to see,
11:21
Speaker 1: that is the thing that they should see.
11:24
Speaker 2: You know, it's not available online. You can't stream it.
11:28
Speaker 2: I think there's secondhand DVDs available on Amazon, but nothing else.
11:33
Speaker 2: And I've screened it during my last trip to America
11:37
Speaker 2: to promote the book and the Roots of Them Remain,
11:41
Speaker 2: I did an event up the Hudson River Valley and
11:44
Speaker 2: Sagerates and the local cinema. The night before my event,
11:50
Speaker 2: they showed the Jimi Hendrix film and it got me
11:53
Speaker 2: to introduce it and that was great.
11:56
Speaker 1: It's amazing, by the way, how Fay I can't remember
11:59
Speaker 1: her last name, but his friend face. She's like completely
12:02
Speaker 1: just the same Faine prigeon Faine prigein Thank You she
12:06
Speaker 1: passed recently.
12:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, she passed recently. She was fantastic.
12:10
Speaker 1: She is just so vibranting in that thing. It's it's unbelievable.
12:14
Speaker 1: She's almost as charismatic as Jimmy in the movie, you know.
12:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and you know she had I don't know enough.
12:21
Speaker 2: I mean, somebody, it's really a shame. I don't know
12:24
Speaker 2: what's happened to it, but somebody I heard of somebody
12:27
Speaker 2: doing interviews with her to do a kind of biography.
12:32
Speaker 2: And evidently she was, you know, a friend or a
12:36
Speaker 2: girlfriend of like ten of the top musicians of the
12:41
Speaker 2: seventies and eighties. You know, she knew everybody, and everybody
12:47
Speaker 2: adored her because she never and she never jibed anybody.
12:51
Speaker 2: She told it like it was she was. And no,
12:56
Speaker 2: I mean, there's so much in her interview. There was
12:59
Speaker 2: a moment, my fa One of my favorite moments in
13:01
Speaker 2: the movie was her describing when she and Jimmy were
13:05
Speaker 2: living in a cold water flat like fifth floor and
13:08
Speaker 2: Harlem fit for a walk up and she gives him
13:12
Speaker 2: some money to go out and get some groceries or something,
13:15
Speaker 2: and he disappears and he comes back and he hadn't
13:18
Speaker 2: got any groceries, he's got an LP and she tries
13:22
Speaker 2: to get the LP and finally she grabs it and says,
13:26
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan, Who the fuck is Bob Vilan?
13:32
Speaker 1: So good? What was the process of making that?
13:36
Speaker 2: It was so weird because basically, all during Jimmy's life,
13:42
Speaker 2: over the last few years of his life when he
13:44
Speaker 2: was famous, everybody wanted to film him, and people were
13:48
Speaker 2: constantly coming up and wanting to film him. And Mike Jeffries,
13:51
Speaker 2: who was his manager, who was kind of thuggish guy
13:55
Speaker 2: from Newcastle, former club owner in Newcastle, he would say, yeah, sure,
14:00
Speaker 2: here he wants some lights. Here's where you plug in
14:03
Speaker 2: the sound. Here's you want an electrical extension corved you
14:06
Speaker 2: know you want if all areas pass here work out.
14:10
Speaker 2: And then they kept saying, well, you know, we have
14:12
Speaker 2: this release form that we need you to sign. Oh,
14:14
Speaker 2: we'll talk about that later. And then when they'd filmed Jimmy,
14:18
Speaker 2: they would come to him and try to get him
14:20
Speaker 2: to sign the release and he said, now I've got
14:22
Speaker 2: my own form, and he would give him give them
14:26
Speaker 2: the form which gave him fifty one percent ownership of
14:29
Speaker 2: the film, and so nobody would sign it, and so
14:33
Speaker 2: all this footage never got released during Jimmy's lifetime. After
14:39
Speaker 2: his father appointed this wonderful guy called Leo Branton, who
14:45
Speaker 2: was an attorney, LA attorney who represented Miles Davis, nat
14:51
Speaker 2: Cole Dorothy Dandridge. You know, he was an African American,
14:55
Speaker 2: but he was also civil rights attorney. He defended Angela Davis.
15:00
Speaker 2: And in fact, we were making the film during the
15:05
Speaker 2: trial of Angela Davis up in the Bay Area, and
15:09
Speaker 2: they had every Friday off at the trial. The trial
15:13
Speaker 2: would go Monday, Tuesday, munch a Thursday, and Leo would
15:17
Speaker 2: fly back from Oakland to Burbank and would come straight
15:23
Speaker 2: to Warner Brothers to see what we had done in
15:27
Speaker 2: the previous seven days with the film, and we'd show
15:30
Speaker 2: him a new scene or whatever, and he would he
15:33
Speaker 2: wasn't that interested in Jimmy's music. He was a Miles
15:36
Speaker 2: Davis guy. And he would then do his imitation of
15:42
Speaker 2: the judge, the prosecutor Angela Davis in the trial. And
15:48
Speaker 2: we spent the whole time just sitting there listening to
15:51
Speaker 2: him to tell us the inside story of the trial.
15:56
Speaker 2: And I went to Thanksgiving dinner at his house and
16:00
Speaker 2: sat next to Angela Davis, and you know, that was
16:05
Speaker 2: what was going on sort of the background, because because
16:09
Speaker 2: what happened was that when he got the job to
16:12
Speaker 2: represent the estate, he discovered there was all this footage
16:16
Speaker 2: that had never been seen. And Jefferies was now powerless
16:20
Speaker 2: because he'd represented Jimmy, who was deceased. Now was a
16:26
Speaker 2: family the heirs could appoint wherever they wanted, and they
16:29
Speaker 2: appointed Leo, and he came to see Mo because Jimmy
16:35
Speaker 2: was signed to Warner Prize at the time in America.
16:39
Speaker 2: And then Mo took and walked him across the street
16:41
Speaker 2: to see me and Ted Ashley, who was the head
16:43
Speaker 2: of the film company. And out of that meeting came
16:48
Speaker 2: the idea, well, at the first originally, just Joe, why
16:52
Speaker 2: don't you have a look at all this footage and
16:57
Speaker 2: see what you think of it and see if you
16:58
Speaker 2: think there's a film there?
17:00
Speaker 1: So he's asking you.
17:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he asked me. That was my job, you know,
17:03
Speaker 2: I was the liaison between the two sides of the street.
17:07
Speaker 2: And so I said, yeah, and we could film interviews
17:11
Speaker 2: with this and this and this, and we could put
17:12
Speaker 2: this together, and they okay, you do it.
17:14
Speaker 1: Joe. Did Moe have much of a relationship with Hendrix.
17:20
Speaker 1: I mean did I mean, I know they met backstage
17:21
Speaker 1: at Monterey I believe right when.
17:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think there was much Jimmy, you know,
17:28
Speaker 2: his relationship. I think Mike Jeffries worked very hard to
17:33
Speaker 2: keep Jimmy away from MO. You know, he wanted everything
17:37
Speaker 2: to go through him. And also initially the deal was
17:43
Speaker 2: through Track Records in England, and so it was like
17:49
Speaker 2: he signed to Track for the world and then Track
17:52
Speaker 2: licensed it to and then at a certain point they paid
17:55
Speaker 2: some money to get Track out of the middle.
17:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the roots of Rhythm remain is It's an
18:02
Speaker 1: astounding book. I have to imagine this idea came to
18:07
Speaker 1: you many decades ago.
18:11
Speaker 2: You know, I always liked to write. I mean I
18:14
Speaker 2: always wrote the press releases for Hannibal Records, and I
18:19
Speaker 2: wrote some articles, and then I started doing some book
18:23
Speaker 2: reviews in the early two thousands, and I just thought, yeah,
18:28
Speaker 2: I'll write a book. I started writing a biography, and
18:34
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, like when I was born and
18:37
Speaker 2: please stop. Oh no, no, that's not right. It can't
18:42
Speaker 2: be about me. It's got to be about the sixties.
18:45
Speaker 2: And so I wrote My Bicycles. You know, focused on
18:51
Speaker 2: this decade because I felt I had something to say
18:54
Speaker 2: about the decade. And you know, I've been around for
18:57
Speaker 2: a lot of important moments in the decade, and I
19:00
Speaker 2: enjoyed doing it a lot. And then, you know, I
19:03
Speaker 2: started going out and doing interviews and book readings and stuff,
19:08
Speaker 2: and people will come up to me and say, so,
19:11
Speaker 2: when are you going to do the book about the seventies,
19:13
Speaker 2: And I said, you must be joking. You know, the
19:17
Speaker 2: seventies was not fun for me. I didn't have a
19:21
Speaker 2: good seventies. I don't have anything interesting to say about it.
19:25
Speaker 2: But I liked riding my bicycles, and I liked I
19:30
Speaker 2: liked the fact that I was no longer was I
19:32
Speaker 2: looking after the career of musicians who rarely did what
19:35
Speaker 2: I wanted them to. But I was looking after somebody
19:39
Speaker 2: who did everything I wanted him to me, you know.
19:43
Speaker 2: And I thought, yeah, I'll write another book. That's what
19:45
Speaker 2: I'll do. I'll write another book. And very quickly it
19:50
Speaker 2: came to me what I would do. I guess there
19:53
Speaker 2: were a couple of kernels of ideas that had been
19:59
Speaker 2: festering in my brain a little bit, and I would say,
20:03
Speaker 2: there's three that really pushed me off the edge of
20:06
Speaker 2: that ski jump so that I had no choice but
20:10
Speaker 2: to keep going. One was what I put in the
20:14
Speaker 2: preface to the book, which is the realization of how
20:19
Speaker 2: different Cuban and American rhythmic sensibilities are and try to
20:27
Speaker 2: get to the bottom of that, because I knew enough
20:31
Speaker 2: to know that it had something to do with history
20:34
Speaker 2: and with slavery, but it was worth digging into. And
20:38
Speaker 2: I had also read Ned Sublett's book by that time,
20:42
Speaker 2: Cuba and Its Music, which is a great book, and
20:45
Speaker 2: it really kind of opened my eyes to the depth
20:51
Speaker 2: of what you could discover when you dug into a
20:54
Speaker 2: musical culture like Cuba. And then also at the time,
20:59
Speaker 2: I'm way back in the late eighties when Graceland was
21:03
Speaker 2: so popular, everybody thought there was a controversy about Paul Simon,
21:10
Speaker 2: you know, not respecting the boycott. And I know a
21:13
Speaker 2: lot about South Africa. I've been there a couple of times.
21:16
Speaker 2: I hadn't spent a lot of time there, but I'd
21:18
Speaker 2: worked with a lot of South African musicians. I produced
21:21
Speaker 2: to play a kind of anti apartape musical and so
21:25
Speaker 2: I knew a lot about South Africa. I read a
21:28
Speaker 2: lot about South Africa, and I knew that what people
21:32
Speaker 2: thought was the controversy wasn't really the controversy. And I
21:36
Speaker 2: saw all these Paul Simon fans buying Lady Smith Black
21:41
Speaker 2: Mambaza records and buying Machlatini and the Machatella Queens records,
21:47
Speaker 2: which was great. I mean, because it's great music, it's
21:49
Speaker 2: worth those records are very much worth buying. But everybody
21:53
Speaker 2: felt virtuous about buying them and that they were somehow
21:58
Speaker 2: supporting Mandela by buying them. And I knew that they
22:04
Speaker 2: were Zulus, and the Zulus were kind of the enemy
22:07
Speaker 2: of Mandela, that supporting Zulu culture was not the same
22:13
Speaker 2: as supporting the anc In fact, it was quite different
22:17
Speaker 2: and even opposed. And I thought, well, that's something that
22:22
Speaker 2: people don't know that I could tell them. And then
22:27
Speaker 2: I also thought about my time working in Bulgaria, and
22:33
Speaker 2: you know, I'd love those choir records, you know, the
22:35
Speaker 2: Mysterio a bulgar and the Kutev Ensemble. And I was
22:40
Speaker 2: always a bit head scratching, you know that those Bulgarian
22:45
Speaker 2: national ensembles were so great, and the rest of the
22:51
Speaker 2: Eastern European state ensembles were a kitsch and kind of
22:55
Speaker 2: weird and boring and you know, like acrobatic and what's
23:01
Speaker 2: that all about? And then I had I talked to
23:05
Speaker 2: Philip Kutev's daughter, who told me how much the Russians
23:09
Speaker 2: hated her father and why they hated him because of
23:14
Speaker 2: he used the authentic peasant voice in the choir and
23:19
Speaker 2: how Stalin was trying to get the you know, completely
23:23
Speaker 2: obliterate pleasant culture. And I thought, well, that's interesting too.
23:29
Speaker 2: So these three things, these three ideas, the Cuban rhythms,
23:35
Speaker 2: South African Zulu versus a NC, and Russians hating Bulgarian choirs.
23:43
Speaker 2: There's stories in here that I would have fun telling people.
23:49
Speaker 2: And I figured if these stories exist in Eastern Europe
23:53
Speaker 2: and Cuba and South Africa, they probably exist. And I
23:57
Speaker 2: knew enough about other cultures to know that there was
24:01
Speaker 2: probably some more fun stuff to dig up there. And
24:05
Speaker 2: so I just got started. And that took me seventeen years,
24:09
Speaker 2: and realize it's going to take that long.
24:11
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more from Joe Boyd. After the
24:14
Speaker 1: break in the history of the nineteenth and twentieth century
24:21
Speaker 1: kind of does seem to be region to region, this
24:24
Speaker 1: sort of repression and this sort of cultural movement bubbling
24:31
Speaker 1: up from people to to counter state repression with art,
24:38
Speaker 1: and your book really wonderfully tells that story. I wasn't
24:42
Speaker 1: expecting that to be narratively done so well in your book.
24:45
Speaker 1: But then there's also the way in which these cultures
24:48
Speaker 1: then shared. You know, all of the all of the
24:52
Speaker 1: music moved around the globe and then back again. And
24:57
Speaker 1: so music from Africa would go to the Caribbean and
24:59
Speaker 1: then back to Africa and then come to the States.
25:01
Speaker 1: And there's this cultural exchange happening amongst cultures and countries
25:05
Speaker 1: and various forms of music that we don't often think about.
25:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything, I mean the take one of the takeaways
25:17
Speaker 2: I hope people would get from the book is there
25:20
Speaker 2: is no pure culture. There is no pure musical culture.
25:23
Speaker 2: For sure, it's all mixed. It's all a blend. As
25:30
Speaker 2: you said, it bubbles up from underneath, and underneath in
25:36
Speaker 2: a way are two groups, Africans and Roma. I just
25:43
Speaker 2: sort of realized, and I've realized almost more after I
25:47
Speaker 2: finished the book and I've been touring and talking about
25:51
Speaker 2: it and doing Q and a's and things like that.
25:55
Speaker 2: One of the things I've realized is and I mentioned
25:58
Speaker 2: in the book, but maybe I might have if I
26:01
Speaker 2: went back and rewrote the book, I might make more
26:03
Speaker 2: of a theme of it is the fact that going
26:06
Speaker 2: way back, certainly to the beginning of that night eighteenth century,
26:11
Speaker 2: what defines modernity is how African it is or how
26:17
Speaker 2: Roma it is. You know, by the late nineteenth century, Cakewalk,
26:24
Speaker 2: the Grizzly Bear, you know, the Charleston all that became
26:31
Speaker 2: the dominant force of young for young people to dance to.
26:36
Speaker 2: And if you weren't dancing to that sort of rhythm,
26:40
Speaker 2: you were square. And if you go back a little
26:44
Speaker 2: further to Gerta and the Romantics, who was the big
26:48
Speaker 2: musical revolutionary list, you know, he was this matinee Idol
26:52
Speaker 2: who toured across Europe with fainting females, and he modeled
26:57
Speaker 2: his whole performance style on a roma musician that he
27:00
Speaker 2: saw that was famous in Hungary when he was a kid.
27:04
Speaker 2: And this flamboyance, this joy, this kind of decorate, taking
27:08
Speaker 2: the note written on the page and decorating them and
27:11
Speaker 2: playing them with trills and playing them with accents and
27:14
Speaker 2: playing them in a crazy new way. That's Roma. It
27:19
Speaker 2: defined what was new and what was shiny and what
27:24
Speaker 2: was attractive to young people. You know, that's one of
27:28
Speaker 2: the problems that European folk music has had, you know,
27:32
Speaker 2: in the more recent the last fifty years, has been
27:35
Speaker 2: that it lacks any kind of African feeling rhythmically and
27:43
Speaker 2: therefore is consigned to being square.
27:47
Speaker 1: You about it be English folk music in there's an
27:49
Speaker 1: example for me discography that kind of illustrates the way
27:52
Speaker 1: in which a group of people sometimes learn about themselves
27:56
Speaker 1: best from outsiders. You know, outsiders can sort of reaffirm
28:01
Speaker 1: your sense of who you are. And it's in this
28:04
Speaker 1: sort of this example from the Fairport convention.
28:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, convention.
28:10
Speaker 1: It's not until nineteen sixty nine and they discover song
28:13
Speaker 1: A Sailor's Life that they really embrace English folk music.
28:18
Speaker 1: Prior to this they sort of are working more from
28:21
Speaker 1: an American tradition. And maybe you can talk a bit
28:24
Speaker 1: about that, because I think.
28:25
Speaker 2: It's Yeah, when I first heard Fairport, I was very
28:29
Speaker 2: impressed with their musicianship. The upside was how good they
28:33
Speaker 2: were in particularly Richard Thompson on their instruments. The downside
28:38
Speaker 2: was they kept singing, you know, Richard Farina, Eric Anderson
28:44
Speaker 2: and Phil Oakes and to be fair, Bob some very
28:48
Speaker 2: good Bob Dylan songs. But I thought, why are these
28:53
Speaker 2: English kids so wrapped in this music that I kind
28:56
Speaker 2: of left America to get away from No, I mean,
29:00
Speaker 2: I just would never that sold on the white middle
29:02
Speaker 2: class singer songwriter idea, and so then they added Sandy
29:07
Speaker 2: Denny to the group. And Sandy had been around the
29:11
Speaker 2: folk clubs for a few years and she had never
29:15
Speaker 2: been a songwriter. Before, she had been a balladeer. She
29:19
Speaker 2: sang traditional Scottish Irish English ballads and she would play
29:24
Speaker 2: these ballads to them in the van when they would
29:27
Speaker 2: go to gigs, and little by little it kind of
29:30
Speaker 2: got through to them. And so then they did that
29:33
Speaker 2: track You mentioned Sailor's Life, but they just still thought
29:36
Speaker 2: of it as one string to their bow. You know.
29:42
Speaker 2: One thing that they did along with other things. Richard
29:45
Speaker 2: and Sandy were writing songs that was a new aspect,
29:49
Speaker 2: new dimension of their music. And then they had this
29:52
Speaker 2: terrible crash and the drummer, Martin Lamble, was killed and
29:58
Speaker 2: a girl, Jeanie the Taylor, was killed as well, and
30:03
Speaker 2: they were devastated and they thought they would break up.
30:06
Speaker 2: They would never play again, and then when they decided
30:09
Speaker 2: to reform, they wanted to do something completely new, so
30:13
Speaker 2: they would never play the songs that they played with
30:16
Speaker 2: Martin on drums with a new drummer. That was the idea,
30:21
Speaker 2: and right at that time out came music from Big Pink,
30:26
Speaker 2: and everybody, all musicians in London were just gobsmacked, as
30:32
Speaker 2: the English say, by music from Big Pink. And again
30:36
Speaker 2: there's a little outsider element there because they're Canadians, but
30:40
Speaker 2: still what they were doing was a fresh approach to
30:46
Speaker 2: a very American form of music and building something unbelievably original,
30:55
Speaker 2: appealing virtuasak all this, you know, with that record, And
31:02
Speaker 2: in a way they were following on from Bob Dylan
31:05
Speaker 2: at Newport in nineteen sixty five more than Bob Dylan was, yeah,
31:11
Speaker 2: and doing something really rich and interesting. And so in
31:15
Speaker 2: a way it hit the Fairport like a rebuke. Like
31:21
Speaker 2: you English boys from Muswell Hill, you think you can
31:25
Speaker 2: play some American stuff, you know, is how you want
31:29
Speaker 2: to reinvent yourself after the crash, forget about it. This
31:33
Speaker 2: is defining that moment. And so they really went to
31:39
Speaker 2: try and do with British traditional music. What the band
31:44
Speaker 2: was doing with American traditional music. And they were so
31:49
Speaker 2: lucky because they found well a lot they were clever.
31:51
Speaker 2: They found a drummer in Dave Masseox who was not
31:57
Speaker 2: a rock drummer. He was a jazz drummer. He was
31:59
Speaker 2: a dance band drummer, and he found the dance rhythms
32:04
Speaker 2: in all the songs that they wanted to play. The
32:09
Speaker 2: record is just comes alive, you know. Because of that
32:14
Speaker 2: mix and adding Dave Swarbrick, who was a very wonderful
32:18
Speaker 2: traditional fiddle player into the band, made this record that
32:23
Speaker 2: changed everything in Britain in the folk scene anyway. Legion Leaf, Yeah,
32:28
Speaker 2: he already had a huge.
32:29
Speaker 1: Impact, and he brings in the rhythms that you know,
32:34
Speaker 1: to your point where English folk music could be seen
32:38
Speaker 1: a square, he sort of starts to bring in some
32:40
Speaker 1: rhythms that maybe help you.
32:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, he does it with jazz chops.
32:44
Speaker 1: Yeah.
32:44
Speaker 2: At that time, I don't think Legion and Leaf was
32:48
Speaker 2: at the top of the list of the hippist records
32:52
Speaker 2: on the charts, but it was a lot hipper than
32:57
Speaker 2: any other folk record at that time, and it captured
33:03
Speaker 2: the imagination of a certain portion of the audience.
33:08
Speaker 1: It's just fascinating to me that this group that we
33:10
Speaker 1: think of as a consummate English folk group starts because
33:14
Speaker 1: they're sort of doing American folk music. In the process,
33:18
Speaker 1: we discover the English folk tradition. Canadian group does Americana
33:25
Speaker 1: better than and the American possibly could, and then forces
33:31
Speaker 1: Fairport Convention to confront who they you know, their own roots,
33:36
Speaker 1: and who they are as people.
33:37
Speaker 2: And this process repeats and repeats. I mean, one of
33:42
Speaker 2: the things I talk about in the book is that
33:44
Speaker 2: back and forth was Fela and James Brown. Yeah, you
33:48
Speaker 2: know that somebody said about when James Brown's extended jams,
33:54
Speaker 2: you know, extended dance tracks began making inroads. There's a
34:00
Speaker 2: woman writer who I quoted the book saying those records
34:05
Speaker 2: told us that we were really from somewhere else, that
34:10
Speaker 2: Africa was really over there, that there was something different
34:16
Speaker 2: about African American culture. And then Fela, you know, who
34:22
Speaker 2: had been watching as James Brown imitators spread all across
34:28
Speaker 2: West Africa, people imitating James Brown, very slavishly, trying to
34:32
Speaker 2: sound exactly like James Brown. And then he came to
34:37
Speaker 2: La and somehow that exposure to black panthers to the
34:43
Speaker 2: music to the culture. He went back to Nigeria and
34:48
Speaker 2: created something that was a bit James brownish but very Nigerian. Yeah,
34:55
Speaker 2: and so that back and forth happens, you know, not
35:00
Speaker 2: just between the band and Pairful Convention. And by the way,
35:03
Speaker 2: there was a lovely footnote to the Pairful Convention story
35:07
Speaker 2: that many years later later, an English singer who I
35:10
Speaker 2: know was playing at the festival and he met the
35:14
Speaker 2: guys from Los Lobos and they said, oh, do you
35:17
Speaker 2: know Richard Thompson in the Federal Convention. He said, yeah,
35:20
Speaker 2: I know those guys. They're friends of mine. He said, well,
35:23
Speaker 2: when you see them, tell them that if it hadn't
35:27
Speaker 2: been for Legion Leif, we would have still been a
35:31
Speaker 2: heavy metal band from East la whoa that it was
35:36
Speaker 2: Legion Leif which convinced Los Lobos to dig into their
35:41
Speaker 2: own cultural background.
35:44
Speaker 1: You would never listen to Los Lobos here, Legion Leaf
35:47
Speaker 1: that is.
35:48
Speaker 2: But it's just a conceptual thing. It's like like that,
35:52
Speaker 2: oh oh, maybe that's what we should do instead of
35:54
Speaker 2: trying to sound like you know, def lepper.
35:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's an additional wrinkle really in a
36:03
Speaker 1: way to the James Brown Fela interplayed and if you
36:08
Speaker 1: think about it, slave trade initiates from Africa in Cuba,
36:14
Speaker 1: you get these African rhythms that start to form and influence,
36:19
Speaker 1: you know, the music of Cuba. You get things like
36:24
Speaker 1: the habanera you talk about, which is a Cuban rhythm,
36:29
Speaker 1: Havana rhythm. Right, it comes to America likely i'd imagine
36:34
Speaker 1: through New Orleans probably, yeah, and you get these these
36:39
Speaker 1: rhythms that starts to influence early R and B music,
36:42
Speaker 1: which would then of course influence James Brown, which would
36:46
Speaker 1: then influence Fela fala Is also taking in Cuban music.
36:50
Speaker 1: Happened to be a big fan of Cuban music, was
36:52
Speaker 1: taken in those records directly as well. Comes to America,
36:55
Speaker 1: picks up the James Brown goes back, you know, and
36:57
Speaker 1: you sort of so you start to get this really
36:59
Speaker 1: bizarre Africa influence being Cuba going back to Africa through
37:05
Speaker 1: this James Brown connection in FLA, and it just becomes
37:08
Speaker 1: like whoa, Like there's no there really are no boundaries,
37:12
Speaker 1: there's no borders, there's yeah.
37:15
Speaker 2: Yeah. The whole extended jams of those James Brown records
37:21
Speaker 2: from the late sixties early seventies were inspired by the
37:25
Speaker 2: Montuno you know, the the scratch guitar parts are most
37:32
Speaker 2: of them are clavi one two one two three, one
37:37
Speaker 2: two one two three one two one two three. So
37:40
Speaker 2: you have the the influence of Latin Africa, Cuban music
37:46
Speaker 2: into America into Africa, meeting in the middle of the Atlantic.
37:51
Speaker 2: And you know you're never going to get a simple diagram, no,
37:57
Speaker 2: you know, a linear explanation of anything to do with
38:00
Speaker 2: music culture. It's so whirls around in the wind. You know.
38:05
Speaker 1: It's yeah, whether history is of any trees or cultures
38:11
Speaker 1: you considered including but ultimately didn't get didn't get to.
38:16
Speaker 2: Not really because basically the idea from the beginning was
38:22
Speaker 2: the music we all know but we don't know about it.
38:29
Speaker 2: So I love Rebetico, I love Fado, I love Northern
38:38
Speaker 2: African music, Algerian, Moroccan, Egyptian. That would have made it
38:44
Speaker 2: a different book. Okay, you know everything that's in this
38:47
Speaker 2: book is suddenly said, oh yeah, I've got a couple
38:51
Speaker 2: of Ravi Shankar records, I'll read that, or I took
38:57
Speaker 2: those Latin dance lessons when I was in college. And
39:00
Speaker 2: you know, I mean everything in there is hopefully got
39:05
Speaker 2: some tangential relationship to people's ex experience, listening experience with music.
39:12
Speaker 1: How is digital distribution in the modern age aided and
39:18
Speaker 1: or disrupted this global flow of music that you illustrate
39:25
Speaker 1: in the book.
39:26
Speaker 2: Well, in some levels, of course, it aided it, you know.
39:30
Speaker 2: I mean, my wife and I put together two playlists
39:34
Speaker 2: of one hundred tracks each on Spotify and Apple. You
39:39
Speaker 2: know that we can send out. I'm preparing a newsletter
39:42
Speaker 2: that'll send this out to everybody. And that's great, you know.
39:46
Speaker 2: And I can and in my research I was able
39:50
Speaker 2: to dig things out on YouTube and Spotify and hear
39:54
Speaker 2: things that I never would have been able to hear,
39:56
Speaker 2: and to write about it in a way that probably
39:59
Speaker 2: I couldn't have some in some cases. And I think
40:03
Speaker 2: that a lot of the changes that have pulled music
40:08
Speaker 2: away from the sort of thing that I like listening
40:10
Speaker 2: to didn't happen because of digital distribution. I think, you know,
40:18
Speaker 2: the traditional record companies that made so many great records
40:22
Speaker 2: and pressed so much great vinyl, and that whole ecosystem
40:27
Speaker 2: of vinyl records and jukeboxes, and you know that was
40:33
Speaker 2: destroyed by the cassette first and foremost. So on the
40:39
Speaker 2: one hand, you know, technology gives with one hand takes
40:44
Speaker 2: away with the other, and the same thing has happened
40:47
Speaker 2: with then happened with CDs and the death of vinyl,
40:51
Speaker 2: the rebirth of vinyl. The biggest change has been the
40:57
Speaker 2: rhythm machines. You know, in terms of the music that
41:01
Speaker 2: I write about in this book, I write about music
41:05
Speaker 2: that's made by people in a room in moment, playing
41:10
Speaker 2: off each other. You know, rhythms that have been learned
41:15
Speaker 2: from elders to youngers, that have been absorbed through culture.
41:23
Speaker 2: And now you know, rhythms fly around the world very fast,
41:27
Speaker 2: and you can, you know, you can, you know, sit
41:31
Speaker 2: in Tokyo and hire somebody to give you a rhythm
41:35
Speaker 2: track in Marseille, send it to you digitally and you
41:41
Speaker 2: can relay a Japanese wrap track over it. It's just
41:45
Speaker 2: a different thing. It's a whole different thing. And I
41:48
Speaker 2: you know, people say, how far up to the present
41:51
Speaker 2: did you write the book? I said, really, I wrote
41:55
Speaker 2: from antiquity up to the drum machine, because that's where
42:01
Speaker 2: everything changes and it becomes a different subject and not
42:04
Speaker 2: one that I could really address and keep the book
42:08
Speaker 2: under nine hundred pages.
42:09
Speaker 1: You know, there's another question I had, what do you
42:12
Speaker 1: make of hip hop and sampling?
42:16
Speaker 2: You know, when I hear even with it like a
42:18
Speaker 2: singer songwriter, and from the first bar, I know that
42:25
Speaker 2: there's a clip track going on here. It's not that
42:30
Speaker 2: you can even hear the percussion. It's just you can
42:34
Speaker 2: hear the regularity. You can hear the absolute inflexible regularity
42:40
Speaker 2: of the rhythm. And sometimes I'll hear very nice singing
42:45
Speaker 2: and a very nice words. But I don't feel I
42:49
Speaker 2: have to listen to it again. To me, I don't know.
42:52
Speaker 2: This is just my crack pop theory. If music was
42:56
Speaker 2: made in a moment where nobody knew what was going
42:58
Speaker 2: to happen next, from beat to beat, minute to minute,
43:03
Speaker 2: that sense of danger, that sense of adventure. You're not
43:08
Speaker 2: just laying it down with your heads and earphones. You know,
43:12
Speaker 2: with a click track somebody sent you and you're adding
43:16
Speaker 2: a base part to something that already has a keyboard.
43:19
Speaker 2: You know, if you're doing it live in a room
43:22
Speaker 2: with musicians and nobody knows how it's going to turn out.
43:24
Speaker 2: Is it going to be a good take or a
43:26
Speaker 2: bad take. It's a collective adventure. Yeah, That feeling passed
43:35
Speaker 2: through the technical process to the final product, whether it's
43:40
Speaker 2: a streaming file or a CD or a cassette or
43:45
Speaker 2: a vinyl or whatever it is, When the listener gets
43:50
Speaker 2: some of that sense of adventure, it translates. It feels
43:56
Speaker 2: more adventurous to listen to for me.
43:59
Speaker 1: Anyway, Well that's break and we'll come back with Joe Boyd.
44:08
Speaker 1: There was a you know, and Prince famously used the
44:13
Speaker 1: lind drum and various rhythm machines and drum machines. But
44:18
Speaker 1: you know, he forgat which hip hop producer was now,
44:22
Speaker 1: like we won't say a name because I don't remember
44:24
Speaker 1: who it was, but a very famous hip hop producer.
44:26
Speaker 1: At some point I had a conversation with Prince, and
44:27
Speaker 1: Prince said, you know what you're making these Like, I know,
44:30
Speaker 1: I used drum machines, but like you guys are only
44:34
Speaker 1: producing on the computer. At least with the drum machine,
44:38
Speaker 1: I would connect it to speaker. I was moving I
44:40
Speaker 1: was moving air still with my drum machine. Yeah, you know,
44:43
Speaker 1: I was moving air with it and then adding other
44:45
Speaker 1: things on top of it. You're only creating in a computer,
44:48
Speaker 1: and this is so this isn't music. There's no air
44:50
Speaker 1: being moved at all. Yeah, that is a great example
44:53
Speaker 1: of why Prince was great with the drum machine. And
44:56
Speaker 1: it's sort of.
44:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean, he's an exception that kind of
45:00
Speaker 2: proves the role or whatever because he did. But I
45:04
Speaker 2: have to say I went to see Prince one of
45:06
Speaker 2: the early times she came to London. It wasn't in
45:09
Speaker 2: an arena. It was in like a three thousand seat hall,
45:14
Speaker 2: and I had a pretty good box seat overlooking the stage,
45:17
Speaker 2: and I was kind of excited to see him, and
45:20
Speaker 2: but you know, there were light effects and there was
45:23
Speaker 2: things going on. Everybody had a little earbud and so
45:28
Speaker 2: you knew that somewhere underneath the stage there was a
45:32
Speaker 2: hard drive with something queueing, you know, like a pulse,
45:39
Speaker 2: and it got a little boring, a little tiring after
45:45
Speaker 2: a while, and then there was this moment where you
45:49
Speaker 2: could tell that he it switched off and Prince just
45:53
Speaker 2: got out his guitar and he started playing Purple Rain
45:55
Speaker 2: I think or something, and he was completely free of
46:00
Speaker 2: the click and it was just transcendent. You know, it's
46:04
Speaker 2: just realiant. It was just fantastic. I went to Lee
46:07
Speaker 2: years later. I went to see him at the O
46:10
Speaker 2: two and I got so there's some weird connection. My
46:14
Speaker 2: second cousin was playing keyboards in the opening act, and
46:19
Speaker 2: so I got to go backstage. And then we went
46:22
Speaker 2: to the after party, which the after show, which was
46:24
Speaker 2: in a small theater behind the two and some of
46:29
Speaker 2: the people in the back in the in the opening
46:32
Speaker 2: band and some of Prince's guys. They all were out
46:36
Speaker 2: on stage like hooking up their instruments, and Prince walked
46:40
Speaker 2: out on stage and he went up to the microphone
46:43
Speaker 2: and he looked around at the band. He looked around.
46:45
Speaker 2: He said, let's do Stevie. And so they did an
46:48
Speaker 2: hour long set of Stevie Wonder covers, just no click,
46:54
Speaker 2: nothing rehearsed, just these guys, this great band and Prince
46:59
Speaker 2: playing Superstition and you know, all this stuff. And then
47:04
Speaker 2: they take a break and they said we'll be back,
47:08
Speaker 2: and they come back like fifteen minutes later, and again
47:12
Speaker 2: everybody goes their instruments. They're all sitting there waiting, what's
47:15
Speaker 2: Prince is going to do? And he goes up to
47:17
Speaker 2: the microphone. He says, Sly and they did an hour
47:23
Speaker 2: of Sly covers and it was just fantastic, you know, yeah,
47:30
Speaker 2: and I did I have to say, I loved it
47:32
Speaker 2: more than the show, which was good.
47:37
Speaker 1: Oh than the two show, yeah, the O two show.
47:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I had a good seat and everything, but
47:44
Speaker 2: it was you know, you could feel it was very programmed.
47:46
Speaker 2: Everybody knew exactly when the cues were and the whites
47:49
Speaker 2: did this, and the you know, and even though the
47:52
Speaker 2: drummer was playing but he you know, everybody had had
47:56
Speaker 2: had earbuds and you know, it was okay, it was
48:00
Speaker 2: a good show, but that after party was never to
48:04
Speaker 2: be forgotten.
48:06
Speaker 1: In hindsight. Who knew the unfocused the drummer you can
48:10
Speaker 1: never get to pay attention or foot would be our
48:12
Speaker 1: greatest asset all these years. But it's like, you know,
48:18
Speaker 1: the drummer speeding up or change into it. It's like that, really,
48:22
Speaker 1: you know.
48:23
Speaker 2: But you know, sometimes, yes, of course, there are times
48:26
Speaker 2: when you as a producer, you tear your hair out
48:29
Speaker 2: because the drummer can't keep time. But other times it
48:35
Speaker 2: just picks up. The intensity sort of picks up in
48:40
Speaker 2: a nanosecond just because something has happened, somebody's done something
48:45
Speaker 2: on an instrument, and everything just gets that little more intense,
48:48
Speaker 2: and everything just picks up a little bit. And also,
48:52
Speaker 2: I mean and now there's some you know, Al Jackson
48:56
Speaker 2: and some of those, you know, you can't define it.
48:59
Speaker 2: It's just he lays back, he plays at the it's
49:03
Speaker 2: the last moment that can the last nanosecond that can
49:07
Speaker 2: still be considered the beat. Yeah, and it's and it's
49:12
Speaker 2: got a sensuality to it that a lot of modern
49:16
Speaker 2: references just are different. You know, it's not the same thing.
49:20
Speaker 1: And it's also the way that he's playing behind the
49:23
Speaker 1: beat in relation to Duck Dunn or yeah, exactly on
49:27
Speaker 1: playing bass or yeah, it's all or if you listen
49:30
Speaker 1: to or the Carl it's it's the way, Yeah, the
49:36
Speaker 1: piano players unique sense of rhythm against the bass player's
49:39
Speaker 1: unique sense against Tito's against it's and it's just all
49:42
Speaker 1: working against each other.
49:44
Speaker 2: If anyone ever says, well, I don't know, I don't
49:47
Speaker 2: think you're I don't think you're right. I you know,
49:50
Speaker 2: everybody should playing time, I would say Exhibit A would
49:55
Speaker 2: be try a little tenderness. You know, the way it begins,
50:01
Speaker 2: you know, it's just I think it's just a guitar
50:04
Speaker 2: and then just a piano comes in and it's very
50:07
Speaker 2: tenderative rhythmically, and everybody's just listening to Otis singing, and
50:13
Speaker 2: then it grows and then it speeds up and it
50:17
Speaker 2: gets more into you know, It's like the difference between
50:20
Speaker 2: the feel at the end of that track and the
50:23
Speaker 2: field at the beginning is a journey, unbelievable journey. And
50:29
Speaker 2: it's you could just feel the room these guys just
50:34
Speaker 2: looking at each other. Yeah, shall I do this now? Okay, Okay,
50:37
Speaker 2: I'll try that. Okay. Oh wow, Otis just did something
50:41
Speaker 2: and let's answer that. And you know, and it's just
50:45
Speaker 2: so intense that track.
50:47
Speaker 1: I feel like reading the book thinking about that. I
50:50
Speaker 1: love I've always loved to talk about it a bit,
50:52
Speaker 1: just the way cultures interact, interplay that the great boogeyman
50:57
Speaker 1: around this conversation these days is the word cultural appropriation.
51:01
Speaker 1: On one head, I understand the critique. On another hand,
51:04
Speaker 1: I hate that just the existence of the word could
51:09
Speaker 1: put in to anyone thinking about borrowing this from that
51:13
Speaker 1: culture or this thing from that culture, and then putting
51:16
Speaker 1: it together into their own thing and making it something
51:18
Speaker 1: completely unique.
51:20
Speaker 2: In the events that I do, Andrea County is usually
51:23
Speaker 2: with me, and she's running the Spotify streamer. When we
51:28
Speaker 2: want to have illustrations. I say, okay, let's go to
51:32
Speaker 2: the heart of cultural appropriation. Here is the error moment
51:37
Speaker 2: of cultural appropriation. And we play The Lions Sleeps Tonight,
51:42
Speaker 2: and then we play wim Away. And you know, Pete
51:45
Speaker 2: Seeger is a heroic figure who always was for the underdog,
51:48
Speaker 2: and he was, you know, for fairness and you know,
51:52
Speaker 2: but he was in an era when anything that you
51:54
Speaker 2: didn't have a composer credit was considered public domain or
52:00
Speaker 2: you know whatever. So he's getting money from wim Away.
52:04
Speaker 2: He's getting a little bit more a bit of the
52:07
Speaker 2: money from the Lions Tonight. And then I play boobe
52:12
Speaker 2: which is the original. And it's fascinating to see to
52:19
Speaker 2: feel the audience because they know Lions Sleeps Tonight by
52:24
Speaker 2: the tokens that everybody knows that they know Pete Seeger
52:28
Speaker 2: singing wom Away. That's familiar, or at least it's not surprising.
52:33
Speaker 2: Then they hear him Boobey. It's so intense and so
52:37
Speaker 2: profound and so rich and so individual, like this guy
52:43
Speaker 2: Solomon Linda who improvises the hook that has made millions
52:50
Speaker 2: and millions and millions of dollars for Disney. Now that
52:55
Speaker 2: the fact that no money reached Solomon Linda is cultural appropriation.
53:01
Speaker 2: That is cultural appropriation. There's a series now on in
53:05
Speaker 2: a film on Netflix called The Lions Share about the
53:11
Speaker 2: royalties of the Lions Sleep Tonight. It's fascinating, it's depressing,
53:17
Speaker 2: it's shocking, but you know, you understand in a way.
53:23
Speaker 2: It was a time before anybody had lawyers and thought
53:27
Speaker 2: about all these kinds of things. But you know, cultures
53:32
Speaker 2: all over the world, African cultures, African American cultures use
53:39
Speaker 2: the Hawaiian guitar slide steel guitar. It was invented by
53:44
Speaker 2: Joseph Kaikuku on Oahu Island in eighteen eighty seven. Yeah,
53:50
Speaker 2: you know, nobody never paid him anything. I mean, and
53:56
Speaker 2: to try and draw a border and say, now, okay,
54:01
Speaker 2: whatever went before is one thing, but now we're going
54:05
Speaker 2: to put up a fence. You can't actually listen to
54:09
Speaker 2: this stuff and use that influence in your music because
54:13
Speaker 2: that's appropriation. I think it's kind of ridiculous because nothing
54:18
Speaker 2: is pure. There is no pure culture. And the story
54:23
Speaker 2: of the Roma is some perfect example. I mean, they
54:26
Speaker 2: went from South Asia all the way across the Middle East,
54:31
Speaker 2: up into the Balkans, up into Europe. They changed European
54:35
Speaker 2: music totally, and popular music all over the world wouldn't
54:39
Speaker 2: be what it is today if it wasn't for the
54:42
Speaker 2: African influence through Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Mississippi, Chicago,
54:52
Speaker 2: you know whatever. And it always mixed. You know, the
54:57
Speaker 2: root of it all started with African slaves being forced
55:02
Speaker 2: to play for dances for the French did contra dance
55:06
Speaker 2: and quadrilles. And you know, it wasn't just African music
55:11
Speaker 2: they were playing. They were playing French music, but they're
55:15
Speaker 2: playing it mixed in with their own culture. And it's
55:20
Speaker 2: always been a mix. All music is a mix. So
55:24
Speaker 2: how you actually begin to parse out where the line
55:28
Speaker 2: can be drawn, I don't know. It's beyond me.
55:33
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about this, but you spend a lot
55:35
Speaker 1: of time with some early blues Grates, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon,
55:41
Speaker 1: Sisters at a Dar and on and on and on.
55:43
Speaker 1: You also got to spend a lot of time in England.
55:46
Speaker 1: Where do you in this particular era, where do you
55:50
Speaker 1: land on the led Zeppelin?
55:53
Speaker 2: I mean I was never a big led Zeppelin fan,
55:55
Speaker 2: but not because I objected to what they did with
56:00
Speaker 2: no anymore than object to Eric Clapton. I mean who
56:03
Speaker 2: I object to because of some of his public positions.
56:09
Speaker 2: I don't have a problem with Eric Clapton playing Crossroads.
56:14
Speaker 2: And you know, eventually, when the legal world woke up
56:22
Speaker 2: to the values of copyrights and all these things, Robert
56:26
Speaker 2: Johnson's sister, I think made you know, his family long
56:34
Speaker 2: after he died. Of course, got a pretty decent payday,
56:39
Speaker 2: a pretty good share of all those box sets that
56:43
Speaker 2: CBS issued of Robert Johnson, and even I think some covers,
56:49
Speaker 2: you know, by rock bands. And I know for a
56:52
Speaker 2: fact that Muddy Waters and Rosetta and people loved the
56:57
Speaker 2: fact that they found a white audience and the fact
57:01
Speaker 2: that they found people who ate up their music and
57:04
Speaker 2: loved their music. And you know, part of that would
57:08
Speaker 2: be the simple fact of buying a ticket to go
57:11
Speaker 2: see Rosetta. But you know, Chuck Berry stole from Rosetta.
57:17
Speaker 1: That's a good call, you.
57:18
Speaker 2: Know, I mean, Chuck Berry is pure Rosetta. Yeah, and
57:22
Speaker 2: then everybody else stole from Chuck Berry. And so you
57:28
Speaker 2: can't where do you draw the line, but you should
57:30
Speaker 2: Chuck not have stolen from Rosetta.
57:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, last question and I'll let you go. You talked
57:36
Speaker 1: about how the way music from Big Pink really changed everything.
57:40
Speaker 1: There were a lot of groups that then changed their
57:42
Speaker 1: style of music. Pete Townsend I said, when he heard that,
57:45
Speaker 1: you know, it definitely inspired him to write in a
57:48
Speaker 1: particular way. Other people as well. But you know, six
57:51
Speaker 1: months earlier, so it's a different record, but it's still
57:56
Speaker 1: it's a return to Americana in a sense. In the
57:58
Speaker 1: middle of psychedelia and all this stuff, Bob Dylan released
58:01
Speaker 1: John Leslie Hardy, and why did that not disrupt the
58:06
Speaker 1: sort of psychedelic thing and sort of re orient people
58:10
Speaker 1: the way music from Big PinkWood six months later.
58:14
Speaker 2: I mean, I love that record. I think it's a
58:16
Speaker 2: very good record, but it's not in the top five
58:20
Speaker 2: Dylan records of all time, so it didn't have the
58:23
Speaker 2: same impact at Blonde on Blonde, for example. And also,
58:27
Speaker 2: as Dylan himself acknowledged, I think in some interview or
58:31
Speaker 2: some something, I think Jimmy Hendrix had something to do
58:34
Speaker 2: with it, with the failure of John Wesley Harding record
58:40
Speaker 2: to have that impact, because Jimmy's cover of All Along
58:45
Speaker 2: the Watchtower blew it out of the water. I mean,
58:47
Speaker 2: Dylan acknowledged that, he said, I can't listen to my
58:49
Speaker 2: own recording of All on the watch Shower because I'd
58:52
Speaker 2: rather listen to Jimmy's and Jimmy's take on that just
58:58
Speaker 2: you know, it was so immense and so extraordinary, and
59:02
Speaker 2: I think, you know, you can't go back to the culture,
59:05
Speaker 2: can't go back to the well that often. You know,
59:07
Speaker 2: Dylan had huge impact, like three four times in a
59:13
Speaker 2: short space of time, you know, like whiplash. The whole
59:18
Speaker 2: Western culture suffered whiplash from Dyla, like, wait a minute,
59:22
Speaker 2: he done this, Oh now he's doing this. Oh my god.
59:25
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, at a certain point, particularly
59:27
Speaker 2: because it's sort of a subdued record, and that and
59:31
Speaker 2: Natural Skyline are and Self Portrait are kind of curiosities.
59:37
Speaker 2: And I like them all, I mean, but particularly John
59:40
Speaker 2: Wesley Harding. It doesn't surprise me that they weren't course change,
59:46
Speaker 2: they didn't like spin. The steering mechanism of the ship
59:51
Speaker 2: makes sense.
59:52
Speaker 1: Man, there's so much more of One Happened another time,
59:54
Speaker 1: Great speaking to.
59:55
Speaker 2: You, Okay, all of that.
59:59
Speaker 1: In episode description, you'll find a link to a seven
1:00:02
Speaker 1: hour playlist Joe Boyd created to accompany his new book
1:00:05
Speaker 1: and the Roots of Rhythm Remain a journey through global music.
1:00:09
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1:00:11
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Speaker 1: Our theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.