Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / David Gray

Transcript

David Gray · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the barber of Certified That.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My guest today is David Great. David, you have a
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: new album. Tell me about it.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's called Dear Life. It's been in the pipeline,
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: the creative pipeline, quite a while. It's it's it's birth
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: process has been somewhat dislocated by the complications of COVID
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: and all the sort of touring backlog and life backlog
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: that happened. So it's it's it's a massive work because
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: I think I'm trying to sort of clear the decks.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: So this is sort of chapter one of the stuff
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: that I've been doing for the last few years. It's
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: a record that, I mean, I don't know why some
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: records come out more sort of energized, or I say
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: about these songs that they were born standing up. They've
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: seemed very direct, melodic and and moving out to the listener.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: So some of my stuff maybe a little bit more
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: introspective or oblique or just slightly more abstracted. This record
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: is not suffering depth wise for its immediacy, but I
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: feel it has this kind of melodic principle and a
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: very direct engagement. It's straight to camera as I would
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: say as well. So I use the kind of short
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: story writer's imaginative trick of using other voices, not just
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: a straight autio but altobiographical approach. I kind of use
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: lots of different angles to get different views of the
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: same mountain. Twenty views of Mount Fuji by Hockasei's it's
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: it's lots of different views of life. Maybe as life
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: starts to progress, as the view begins to change. So that,
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: in an that's what it's all about.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. You say it was long time
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: in the development. Is that because of COVID? Be a
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: little more specific, please, yeah.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: No. I started the process in twenty nineteen in full
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: knowledge that in March of twenty twenty I was going
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: to be embarking on the White Ladder Anniversary Tour, which
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: was going to take most of twenty twenty out of
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: the equation, So I knew I would be sort of
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: rejoining the album at the end of that, But of
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: course life had other ideas, and we did all the
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: prep and we rehearsals and the production rehearsals, and then
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: the day just before the first show, we locked down
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: and it was a long time before the tour was viable.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: So it then changed everything and the real star burst
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: of song writing I had written a few songs at
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: the end of twenty nineteen happened at the end of
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: COVID when I've had a zoom call with my managers
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: and agents and we decided that the tour was going
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: to have to go ahead in early twenty twenty two.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Because you could no longer hold other dates. It wasn't
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: possible to sort of hedge your bets. You had to
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: either do it or not do it and wait another
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: eighteen months if you weren't going to go. Then there
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: were so many tours in a holding pattern, and that
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: kind of gave me this kind of clarity that I
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: had five months before rehearsal started. During COVID, I, like
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: many creative people, thought I'll go down to my studio
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: in the basement and I'm going to start making music
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: while everyone else is wondering what to do with themselves.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: But eventually the pressure and the strangeness of this experience
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: bore down on me and it became sort of ridiculously
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: unhealthy actually to indulge my creative principles when there was
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: something much bigger to address, which was life itself. Finally,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: the horizon had been canceled. What we just had was
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: the day, the time, and the people, and I'd luckily
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: had my family around me. So after a couple of
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: months of writing songs and trying to press record and
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: run in and record things, I just took the pressure
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: off and decided to just exist with my family and
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: partly that fund of experience and actually letting the field
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: go fallow I think had a huge effect, positive effect
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: in terms of the writing and the emotional coherence of
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: what then happened. So some of the lyrics and some
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: of the songs relate directly to that experience, but I
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: think just as a whole. Anyway, I got to the
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: end of twenty one, as I say, and we had
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: this Zoom meeting and it was clear that the tour
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: was going ahead in May or not or not at all.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: So with this clarity in mind, I just began to work,
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: and I worked in a way I've never worked before.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: It wasn't that new songs came, which is always something
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: that will happen if you put yourself at the cold
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: face and keep turning up. It was that the song
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: the Half Finished things which I've always got hundreds of
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: the ones I was just picking up, I was just
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: finishing them, and it was an extraordinary experience. I've completed
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: thirty or forty things in the space of a few months,
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: and that's a hell of a pace for me. So
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: it was informed by this whole relationship to not doing
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: it so that the making of this record. So sometimes
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: time can be a collaborator. Putting records out always takes
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: longer than you wanted to. In this case, there was
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: a great, big two year hole in the middle. But
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: in the end it's all been in favor of the music.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: It's all worked out well.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, So since you decided that working in the studio
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: was counter productive, how did you cope with COVID.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: Well, I just I tried to just be I mean,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: I've been telling myself perhaps somewhat dishonestly. Or did I
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: have the courage to just stop be with my family?
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: The elephant in the room is that I love these
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: guys very much, but it's always work that comes first,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: and there's always something burning in my imagination that I've
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: got to get to, or there's an event or a
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: tour or a deadline that I'm working towards so they're
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: just accommodated really a lot of the time in my head. Anyway,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: in amongst all that stuff that I chose, they were
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: getting into their late teens. It was a chance to
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: sort of be together with my wife and my children.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: I've been saying for years, Jesus, I need to stop
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: touring and just be for a while, And finally I
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: was being made to do it. And of course the
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: first thing I wanted to do was find something else
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: to do, so I kind of it took a while
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: to to see the elephant in the room, which was
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: that God, this stuff really matters. And I think there
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: was something that happened in COVID that was there was
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: many things that happened that were extraordinary. I know it
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: was a horrendous experience on so many levels for so
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: many people. But death in our culture is absent or
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: at least postponed as a reality in most kind of
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: conversations and dialogue. And here we were looking at daily
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: stats and hearing stories and suddenly it was the center
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: of attention. Not only that, but we were robbed of
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: this kind of must do something, the constellations of action.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: We had to just contemplate the bare realities of changing
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: seasons and the tick of the clock and people being
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: in life and death situations. And it was a very
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: contemplative experience. But anyway, I felt personally very enriched by
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: spending time with my family. We watched films, we played games,
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: we did stuff. It was like a long Christmas holiday
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: for a while.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: And have you gotten COVID?
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I got it in twenty one, and actually I
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: got it in twenty two, just before the tours, so
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: luckily I was nicely immunized before it all kicked off.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: And when you actually went on the tour in twenty two,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: to what degree did you have COVID precautions so that
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: the band or you didn't get sick and you didn't
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: have to cancel deats?
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: We didn't have any, to be honest, Bob, there was
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: by that point. I mean you were standing in a
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: room of however many thousand people bellowing at you. I
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: don't think on a sort of virus prevention level there
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: was much chance of avoiding things. What happened was that
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: one of the band got COVID during the tour, and
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: it was then passed on to all the other members.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Of the band apart from me. So one particular show
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: we had to do with everybody being isolated from everybody
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: else crew band. It was quite crazy, and I was
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: the only person who was actually healthy. So it affected
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: the tour in that way. But in terms of the
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: precautions when you're living on a tour bus together and
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: I mean you're constantly just in these situations, it was
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: it was very difficult. Like a lot of COVID it
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: was good in theory that you can do things, but
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: separation wasn't really possible. So we obviously we did We
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: didn't throw caution to the wind. We were kind of
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: mindful of what the dangers were, but I think at
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: that point people were restless anyway to reconnect. It gave
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: it provided the tour with an incredible burst of energy
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: for us who'd been denied the thing that we do,
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: but also for the crowds to do a feel good
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: thing like that as well. I mean to be gratifying
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: everyone in that fashion. It was just what they wanted
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: and what they needed probably, so it gave this electric
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: electricity to everything, a sort of extra charge. So that
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: was quite remarkable to be a part of.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Let's Go Back you say your work is always number
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: one in your family. We can talk about that generally,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: like hey, I have to go on the road, But
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: as a practical matter, how does that manifest itself. It's
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: like all of a sudden, you get an idea and
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: you go, I gotta go into my room. I gotta
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: cut it. Or your wife says, hey, you've been working
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: for twenty days straight. You got to stay at dinner.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Tell me what it's actually like.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Well, the way I deal with it, Bob, is that
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: I compartmentalize. So I do either of those things. Most
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: of my life is organizational. It's not creative at all.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: It's very hard to find the time for pure creativity.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: But when I get into a writing mode and I
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: say to everyone, right, stop emailing me, stop bothering me.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: I'm going to be writing a record. Now, I'm recording,
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: leave me alone. And then if I get three clear
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: days a week, I think I'm doing well. For it's
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: superb There's so many other things to attend to. So
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: I would normally work like a working day, get up early,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: get into the studio early. I like the fresh mind
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: of the morning, and I would work through till seven o'clock.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Maybe and stop, and that would be my working day.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: And as I say, Monday to Thursday if I can
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: get that, if I can't, and Tuesday to Thursday, you know,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: making this record. Sometimes I went away and that was
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: another part of it, to the countryside and would work
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: longer hours. I'd work into the night, and that was
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: actually very beautiful, so still so quiet. Some extraordinary things
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: happened in those spaces. But no, basically I try and
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: just be quite disciplined. So if I have an idea,
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: it generally just has to wait until I have the
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: time to explore it. I mean, now, I've just been
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: writing lyric notes down this afternoon. A few things came
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: into my mind, and then a musical idea came to
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: me while I was practicing. Because I got the tour
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: obviously starting for this new record, I've got to get
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: myself up to speed. So as accidents still happened on
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: the peyboard or on the guitar, and oh, that's interesting,
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: I must remember this. And then a little melody came
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: and I thought, actually that works with this lyric, and
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: blah blah blah, I just have to make a little
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: note of it and come back to it. So it's
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: it's it's it's not possible. It's like I work a
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: sort of milk round and I can get to be
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: a musician, you know when I've finished.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's say it's Monday to Thursday and you're working.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Can your family interrupt you? Or do you turn off
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: all your devices? And everybody knows David's working, leave them alone?
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: Now that kids will just interrupt you. They say things
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: like world shattering importance, Like Dad, the Wi Fi isn't working,
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: you know, I mean the world, the world's come to
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: an end. Life being what it is, there's sort of
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: digital hell. We've all been plunged into that. There's enough.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: There's always something going wrong, So no, there's there's if
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Amazon aren't tapping on your door or something, there's always
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: some bloody interruption. So no, I think, as I say,
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: broadly speaking, yes, if I said no, I'm in this mode,
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: that they wouldn't come down. I'd be left to my
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: own devices during the day. Now, I don't have a
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: studio at home because I've moved house. So I've got
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: a studio just up the road, a few miles up
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: the road in West London. So when I'm there, I'm there,
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: so that in a way, that's a lot more straightforward.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: When my studio was in the house, it was deeply problematic,
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: so children would have parties in there and all kinds
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: of things, you know, So it was it was, it was.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: It was a complex. Having my life squashed together with
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: the house above the studio sounds ideal, but actually it
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: was problematic. So I'm happier with this separation that I
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: have now in some ways.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: So why did you move house?
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Because kids are sort of getting older and leaving home.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: And we lived in a nice leafy part of London
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: called Hampstead, and it's all very nice, got lovely schools
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: and beautiful. The heath is what it's famous for, where
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Keats and Coleridge used to wander and compose their rhymes.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: But it's really a bit boring. So we've decided to
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: move right into the center of town. So we've kind
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: of we've moved into w one, trying to make our
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: lives a bit more interesting and a bit more cultural cultural,
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: I suppose, like, so you can just walk out and
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: do stuff, go to the shops, restaurants, theaters, galleries. Not
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: that I'm spending all my time doing that, but you
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: certainly can. And I like being just walking distance to everything,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: whether it's Selfridges or the Tait. I can kind of
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: just basically just wander to it. So that's been the change.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: I think I wouldn't have enacted that change if we
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: didn't have a second home. We're lucky enough to have
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: the ultimate luxury, which is a country place. I've got
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: a little house up on the coast in Norfolk, right
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: by the beach, so I get all the fresh air
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: and wilderness I can deal with when I'm up there,
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: and then I come back to London and I can
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: live in a different way.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: How many kids do you have?
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Two? I got two.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Girls in their presently what age.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Twenty two and twenty and are.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: They still live in their house? Are they out? Yeah?
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Well, one of them's kind of half living here,
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: half not living here. But I think it's a lot
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: nicer to live here than it is in her crappy
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: student flat. So the other ones just gone back to
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: university this morning. She's gone back to Glasgow, so she's
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: there during the terms and she comes back for holidays,
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: so they're kind of here some of the time. It's
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: a lot nicer being at home than it is in
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: your little flat, that's for sure.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: And you know, there's a TV show in America that
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: you may or may not be familiar with call Family
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Ties from the eighties nineties where the parents are hippies
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: and Michael J. Fox is very conservative. What are your
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: kids like relative to you and your wife?
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Well, I think just the way that they are as
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: they've always been very conversational children, So they're highly articulate
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: and sociable and not intimidated by adults or other people.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: They will be very chatty people, good, able to speak
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: much better than I am, certainly, So that's sort of
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: what they're like. What are they like politically culturally? Well
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: that they've they're in this touch of a finger generation
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: for everything they want, so they have a different relationship
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: to things. It's interesting. I mean I haven't protected them
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: from what was basically, you know, the open sewer of
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: the internet and social media. They've been a how to
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: ramble because I guess I feel that they need to
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: know how to survive this this world. So they've been left,
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: they've had phones, they've had all this stuff. They've been
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: exposed to god knows what. So but they have this
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: different relationship to music and culture, and obviously there's different
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: political opinions. So identity politics has become such a huge thing.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: It's something we all disagree about in our family.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: So they're there.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: They're My youngest is very political. Ye, this not as much,
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: although recent events have made her more so. So it's
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: that they're they're not dissimilar to us. They're just have
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: a different generation and they view certain things very differently.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: I think when I was growing up, music was it
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: was more than what you listen to, what kind of
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: reflected on you. It was it was actually your identity
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: because choosing what you didn't like was just as profound
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: as what you did. So if you were a mode
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: or a rocker, or if you were a punk, or
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: you were this, if you're you know, if you like
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: talking heads and this and that, but you don't like
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Joranne Joanna, you were you positioned yourself, glued yourself together.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: If you discovered Leonard coh and John Martin, Nick Drake,
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: these are the things that became what you were not
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: internally and also sort of your character sort of thing.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: I think it was more tribal, it was rara, and
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: now it's like everything's available all the time. It's it's
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: not quite the same.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: So if your kids turned you on to music or
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: turned you off to music.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Well, of course they listened to all They listened to
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: all kinds of stuff, which to me is it's just
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: lays it on too thick, maybe you know, moaning about this,
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: that or the rest. So but yeah, they've they've turned
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: me on to quite a few things because they have
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: very diverse listening. It they're being they're connecting through I
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: don't know if it's algorithmic, but they're certainly accelerating their
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: their knowledge and contact with music through TV through sort
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: of applied versions of the music. They find it in
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: places and then they pass it around like so they
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: have quite a kind of quite catholic taste in some ways.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I've picked up on a few tracks which
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: I really really like. So but generally one of the
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: problems is we don't share our listening. In the old days,
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: the parents used to have to watch Top of the
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: Pops with the kids and go, what's this rubbish? You know,
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: the crazy world of Arthur Brown fire. You know, he
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: should he should get a job, you know, like they
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: used to say things like that, and you know, these days,
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: we don't have that common experience. There isn't a thing
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: that everyone does to listen to music, So you get
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: to hear what they're listening to. You just occasionally hear
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: it blasting out of the shower or something, or they've
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: stolen your bow speaker and they've taken over the living
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: room and you get to hear something. But you know,
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: I think I heard they were the other days that
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: they were playing some Velvet Morning by what you McCall
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: it and Nancy Sinatra and what's his name? I thought, well,
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: I said, this is a great track. I said, have
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: you listened to this record? This is a great record.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: They were like, no, we just know this track. I'm like, well,
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: when you listen to the whole thing?
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, To what degree are you a student of the game?
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: To what degree do you know what the ticket prices are?
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: To what degree are you concerned with praises? To what
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: degree do you know the gross? Do you know the cross? Well?
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: I have I have to. I've been an independent artist
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: for a long time now, so it's touring has become
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: much more expensive and it's very high risk. I mean,
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: you you you spend a lot of money to put
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: a tour on, and this tour I'm about to do
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: for dear Life, it's called the Past and Present Tour.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: This will be the culmination of many years work. So
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: we're not going to sell a load of vinyl. It's
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: not like the coffers will be full. We've got to
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: go out and talk do these shows for our fans,
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: So it's very important. You know, people will push the
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: ticket price up, push to cover all these cost but
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: that just goes on to the consumer, and I feel
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: very strongly that there's only so far you can take that.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: So I think for these reasons, if you choose to
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: wash your hands of the sort of the dirty business
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: of selling tickets in the market, then you're in danger
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: of distancing people who haven't got as much money but
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: a big passion for music, and the very people that
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: probably prop you up. So for those reasons, I take
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: all that stuff quite seriously. I'm not sitting in meetings going, hey,
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: we should charge this, but I am paying attention. But yeah,
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: one of the great problems is the sort of the
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: profitability of things. It's become very expensive to tour, and
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: everyone's wages want to go up, and all the rest
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: of it, You've got things like environmental concerns and trying
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: to do things in a different way, which may be
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: more awkward, more expensive, more time consuming. So there's lots
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: of pressures to do things differently, but not much slack
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: in the line financially. So yes, I pay attention. I
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: have my own record label. I notice things, and I've
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: been involved in putting my own music out. Not I mean,
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: I'm not hands on deck or I'm not part of that,
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: but I'll be a part of the conversations. I'll meet
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: the people, and I'll take good note of what happens
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: and what doesn't happen, what gets spent, what doesn't get spent.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: Of course, because at the moment, I'm spending my own money.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: I'm spending my own money set up a new record company,
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: and I'm spending my own money making the record and
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: putting it out. So it's a lot of money that this.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: So this, all of this has an effect on how
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: you think about your ticket prices and everything else. It's
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: it's it's all interconnected, and it's no doubt a more
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: abundant creative space to ignore the whole damn lot and
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: just and live in your own little world, your little
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: creative bubble. But I find that I can't do that really,
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: I'm just drawn to the detail of what's actually happening.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, So if you stop being a musician today, do
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: you have enough money that you could get to the
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: end or is it album to album?
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: No, I'm comfortably off. I could stop now.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, So you're making this record, you know, the record
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: you made independently, but you've licensed it to other people
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: in different territories.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, well this time that's what we've licensed it
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: to secretly distribution this time. So that's that's that's a
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: worldwide deal as far as I'm aware. And was there
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: an advance with that, No, I don't take advances. It's
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: it's just to do with how much, what the marketing
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: spend will be and all those kind of things, and
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: you know, some of the other detail and how long
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: the deal's going to be. So it's a one album deal.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: That's that's what we've been doing for the last little while.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: So do you have a view on streaming?
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, you know, yes, yes, very much so.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: I I think that the way that our industry works
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: is to hell with it. That's the way. That's the
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: way it goes. With the tech and the power that
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: they you know, they don't worry too much about the
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: people who making the music. That don't worry all. I
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: wouldn't say, really, they've just got to float their brand
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: and get to so and of course it's ended up
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: being a hugely profitable thing for major labels who've stripped
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: out staff and costs and amalgamated and joined and all
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: this enormous back catalog that's just probably playing the minimum,
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: bare minimum to some of these people, and they're getting
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: phenomenal figures streaming all these old songs, so they're not
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: having to do anything, not spending anything, shipping a load
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: of vinyl to Canada. They're just you know, basically just
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: sitting there and this stuff's just pouring in. So it's
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: not recognizing songwriters, producers.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: There's just not.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Enough in there. So I think that what we thought
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: in the eighties was that you know, sound was going
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: to get higher and higher quality, and the tech would
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: get higher and higher quality, and you know, but actually
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: what's happened is it went the other way. And hell
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: with quality, it's just about immediacy, which is an interesting thing.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: So you know if there were higher quality brands, none
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: of them have really succeeded that you could have a
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: really incredible listening experience and maybe spend a bit more money.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: There might be a little bit more money there for
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: the artists. But and again that would take a load
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: of money to float it, and there's been various people
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: trying to launch various things. So yes, streaming is a
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: wonderful resource for the listener, it's not so rewarding for
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: the struggling artist.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, tell me about the difference between quality and immediacly.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Well as in the actual quality of the audio is
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: very very limited on your basic streaming platform on an
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: MP three, as opposed to listen to a beautiful piece
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: of finyl from an amazing record player and lovely speakers,
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: or then you had the CD and you take it
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: to the next musical clarity level. But what you get
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: is you get to listen to something immediately. Now, just
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: just touch it. It's there, it's yours. You don't have
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: to wait, you don't have to go to the shops.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: I used to have to save up my dinner money
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: for two weeks if I wanted to buy an album,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Basically half to starve meself at school and then get
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: the bus into town fifteen miles and buy the record
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: I wanted, and come back again. And I would on
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: the bus that I would have read the inside cover,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: the outside cover. I've looked at all the photos. I'd
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: even have taken the vinyl out and looked inside there
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: and read what was scratched onto the center of that.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: You had a level of sort of involvement that was very,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: very different.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, you have certain songs on Spotify with triple digit millions.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Are you making any money from streaming? Of course there
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: are songs with billions.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course I'm making I'm making good money. I
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: own the Masters, though I'm not in a I'm not
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: in the position that someone else would be, you know,
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: at a major would be in. I own, well, at
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: least I used to own the Masters until I sold them.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: So I own some of my I own my current music,
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: and the last record I put out is called Skelleig.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: I own.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: I own that record and this record. That's all part
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: of my new record company, so that those things, when
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: we put them out, the streaming will be it's not
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: getting taken by a record company. And I get my
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: whatever percent. At the end of it, I get whatever
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: that the majority of the money from the streaming. My
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: partners will receive a certain amount of that. So it's
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: it's it. Yes, when you start getting big numbers, it
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: starts to add up, and it's it's a significant thing and.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: You're a new work. Will the numbers be significant enough
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: to cover your costs?
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: HI? Hopefully over time. You know, I have no idea, Bob.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: And we've spent a bloody arm and a leg making
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: this record. We've got orchestra's horn sections, We've spent bloody
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: months on it, the damn thing, you know, years even so,
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: I don't know. It's going to take a while. It's
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: not just the spend of making the record, as I say,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: marketing it and all the people I pay who work
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: for me, who run the record label, I mean all
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: their wages, all their salaries. If I take that whole
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: chunk of time, it's going to take a long time.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: I'd say, be lucky if in ten years I've made
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: a penny out of the damn thing. But you just
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: never know what's going to happen. If you stay in
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: the boat long enough, you might just catch a fish.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: I maybe some mad TV producers going to go, you
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: know what this new David Gray song? This is it
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: sopranos too, We need this as the title music. It's
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: like you might get a break that you hadn't dreamed
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: of that could transform your fortunes, and suddenly you've got
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: gazillions of streams going on. No, the streaming numbers are
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: utterly unspectacular because in the world of finger touch immediacy,
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: the old are much much slower than the young, and
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: obviously Maya fans are by and large older than some,
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: so you're not dealing with this thing. I'm doing the
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: best I can to notify anyone who might be interested,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: but it's going to be hard work. I put a
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: record out a couple of years ago called Skellig. This
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: was a very uncommercial record. It's very very personal, very
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: low tempo. But we also because it was COVID, there
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: was no real marketing spend on. Very low amount of
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: money was spent. We could only do so much because
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: we couldn't physically do anything. So we spent a few
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: mony a bit of money and actually it's sort of recouped,
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: so within three years I'm now getting a very small
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: amount of money every month from that record, so it
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: shows that it is possible. The difference there is that
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: the spend wasn't anything like as great either on making
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: or releasing the record. So this time around it will
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: I'd say it's going to take a lot longer. I'd
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: like to think with the kind of immediacy of this music,
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: that it may strike a chord and we get some
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: kind of fire under the whole thing and it starts
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: to move a little bit. But I'm just not in
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: control of all that. All I can do is make
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: it as good as I can make it and put
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: it out there and sing my heart out.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: You've worked both in the old era and the transition
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: in the new era. Not that many people have, but
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: they used to say the tour was the advertisement for
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: the album, and now the album is the advertisement for
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: the tour. Today's scattered landscape and different remuneration periodigm does
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: that affect the inspiration and desire to make new records?
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: No, you know, making records is where it's at. I mean,
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: playing live is where it's at. The two things are
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: to a record as a world, I mean, anyone who's
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: experienced a record as a world gone to the planet
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: Pink Moon, or gone to the planet astral Weeks or Nebraska,
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: you know, free wheeling. Anyone who's been to any of
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: these places and been consumed by the spirit of Eden
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: by Talk Talk kind of Blue by Miles Davis. It
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter. When you've been there, you know what's going on,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: Marvin Gay. Once you've gone to a planet and like
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: being completely obsessed and absorbed by it, how can you
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: not want to make a record? I mean, a record
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: isn't a song. It's you hang the pictures in the
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: gallery and you take people through, and there's the cadence
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: of each song leads to a kind of cascade of
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: emotion that flows from one to the other and creates
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: an overall effect. So that's still what I believe in.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: I still believe in the novel. Even though everyone's writing.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: They're not even writing short stories, they're writing sentence.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, you mentioned a little bit earlier you sold your masters.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Traditionally in the music business, people didn't even own their masters.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: We live in an era where many people are selling
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: their publishing, selling their masters. Let's start with the masters.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Did you sell them outright such that you'll never get royalties,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: or did you sell the ownership and you still have royalties.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: It's a complicated question to answer. I didn't sell them
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: through choice. But first of all, I sold my recording
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: masters from White Ladder until Golden the brass Age, so
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: eight albums up until the one before Skelg. So it
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: was because I was at the end of a relationship
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: that had lasted through my entire career, and the only
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: way to get out of it was we owned a
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: record company together, was to sell the record company. Essentially,
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: it's sell the Masters. So that's that was the only
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: way to really make a break. So uh yeah, well,
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: I've maintained a stake in the Masters. I didn't sell
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: it all. I kept a bit, so I still have
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: a vested interest. I got skin in the game, underwhelming
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: skin in the game so far.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: So while we're on this tip, did you sell the
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: publishing too?
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, I haven't sold that. So for the
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: very first time in my life, all my publishing has
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: come back to me and it's now all housed with
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Chrystalis on a sort of rolling deal, so it's all
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: in the same place for the very first time ever.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: In fact, so they're sort of administering my publishing for me. No,
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: I haven't sold any publisher.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: Without any dire circumstances coming up. Would you ever sell
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: the publishing?
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: We never say never, but it's unlikely. For one thing.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Money is completely overrated, you know, as some kind of
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: great aid in your life towards greater meaning and enjoyments.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: It can be incredibly helpful when you haven't got enough
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: of it, but that's not the position I'm in. I'm
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: doing perfectly okay, thanks very much. So why would I
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: want to a pay shitloads of tax? By result, it's
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: getting a fuckload of money that I wouldn't know what
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: to do with anyway, And why would I want to
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: fuckload of money that I have no idea what to
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: do with. It's I don't want for anything, I don't
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: need anything. It'd be totally stupid. So those are the
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: reasons that I when money first broke in my life,
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: when things were going well, it was a really complicated
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: thing to negotiate because we started when it just coming
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: in and it didn't stop. After a while, you start just
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: making really bad decisions because nothing has as much meaning,
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: so you can just replace things you don't like or
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: buy something you decide you don't want it, and it's
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: like you're suddenly living an episode of the Real Housewives
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: of Beverly Hills. So that's something I've been exposed to
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: by my children. It's not one of my personal viewing choices.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I think that, you know, getting a routload
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: of money is great, but it's just it just ends
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: in a sort of disassociative, disassociative state where you're it
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: distances you from life and meaning and what I'm needing
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: to do things. So in a way, I'm kind of
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: I'm not falsely pressurizing. I'm choosing to be in a
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: more pressurized situation in terms of putting money out and
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: investing in it and having to make a success of things,
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: because it's a more relatable thing and it makes for
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: more sensible views and ideas about what you're doing. So
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: that's the way I choose to do it. As I
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: said that, the classic artist pose would have been, we've
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: received so much money, we don't have to worry about anything.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: Now we can just dream our dreams. But to me,
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: the dreams are part of this fabric. There's so many
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: compromises making music in a commercial world. Where do you
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: even start it's very, very elaborate, complex, full of compromise.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: So you I think it's important to understand what it's
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: like for someone spending money to get to your show
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: or to get your CD, just what that means. So
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: I think, because it's still a relatable thing for me
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: putting music out, I consider myself to be more in
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: relation to the listener because I'm in a more reasonable position.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: So you know, God knows. As I said, I wish
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: something wonderful happened and my fucking songs would go crazy
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: and I can just relax. You know, Wow, this is amazing.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: It'd be more amazing because the energy it would give everything.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: It wouldn't be the money. It would be the way
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: the show's go with this crazy energy because people are
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: a new wave of fans would be getting a hold
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: of this stuff. That would be incredible. So it's those
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: are the things that you lost for and being taken seriously,
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: so you know that those are my sort of preoccupations.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Just to go back a point, so how many times
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: have you been married? Just once and you got divorced
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: and that's why you had to sell the catalog?
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, it was my business partner, not my wife.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: She's still involved.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: So you had when you've been independent in this independent
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: record company, you had a financial partner, Yeah.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: My manager, my old manager and I. When White Ladder
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: came along, no one wanted to put it out, so
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: we put it out ourselves. We created a record company
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: and we put it out ourselves, and that's how that
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: that began. That record began in that way. We put
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: it out in Ireland, the only place where we could
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: sell anywhere records to the only place I had a
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: sort of beginning of a sort of commercial viability, sort
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: of cult following. So we put it out there and
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: it just began to sell and then began to sell
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: more and then like hotcakes, and that funded we signed
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: with Ato Dave Matthew's label in the States, and we
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: signed we licensed to Warners in the for the UK
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: and the rest of the world, but we kept Ireland
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: as our own independent thing, and that's how it began.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: So this relationship was very complex. And then for the
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: next however many albums it followed that we just put
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: them out through this record company and we licensed them
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: to various partners. So yeah, So when that relationship came
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: to an end after thirty years, the easiest thing to do,
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: the only thing to do, was to sell the company
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: in order that everyone could take a little bit away
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: with them.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: And why did the relationship come to an end?
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: Well, look, I don't want to get into all that.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: That's that's personal.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, So.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: These things happen, you know, it's a long time. We've
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: been through an awful lot together. And furthermore, this is
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: someone who without who's belief in me, I would not
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: be sitting in front of you now. The people who
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: invest in you, like emotionally and musically and in other
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: ways when you don't mean anything, those are the people
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: that you value, you know, really ultimately. So when someone
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: makes a choice not based on their own on the
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: profitability of something or whatever or the look that it
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: gives them, then that means a lot. So it's still
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: a very intense relationship, but albeit from a distance at
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: the moment. But yeah, it had run its course and
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: now I'm in a new phase of my life.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: Okay. Why was the record company called IHD?
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: He rob as Robert wanted to call it Hit Records,
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: but when we applied to company's house, they said that's
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: already taken. So he couldn't be bothered to do it.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: He's just turned changed the letters round, and it was
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: I h T. So that that was the story of
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: why it was I HD.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the present album. You started
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: recording before COVID. Generally speaking, are you always recording or
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: did you say I want to make an album?
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: No, this was definitely I'm ready to make an album,
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: so i'd I had some ideas live from the whole
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: COVID period, but even before that, I had I had
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: this spark of what the new music might feel like.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: I'd started to write a couple of songs. So no,
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: I was ready. I mean I was. I was more
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: than ready to make a record. I had no idea
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: how long it was going to take, so no, it
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: was definitely. It wasn't playing around. I mean, at the
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: end of this album cycle, I'll be finishing of this
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: touring cycle, I'll be finishing the rest of the music
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: from the same period off and that will come out
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: as a separate album. But when that is done, I'll
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: be pretty I'll pretty much have cleared the decks. Never entirely,
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: there's always lots of loose ends, songs that I haven't
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: found a place.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: For I thought you said it to trilogy.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: No, No, it's I'd say this album is a double
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: album in itself, Dear Life. I think if you time it,
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: it's like it's like four sides of vinyl for sure.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: So it's yeah, so this is a double Then there's
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: another album that's going to come out, which would just
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: be a single album a bit further down the line.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: So no, I'm always writing, making, thinking, storing as I say,
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: that's the way it works. Now. I have to just
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: make notes and then finally I'll come to a point
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: where I'll start going through some of the most of
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: them will be lost, but I believe this it like
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: you know, it all goes into the earth and comes
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: back out as new plants. I don't think you lose
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: this stuff entirely. I think if there was something good there,
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: you would remember it. So there's always lots of different ideas, lyrics,
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: stories that notes. I mean, the phone is a highly
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: annoying thing to have on you, but also highly convenient.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: It's got a camera, it's got a recording device, and
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: it's got a little notebook, so it just fits in
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: your pocket and you can do all these things. So
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: I'm constantly notekeeping. Not only that, I mean the inside
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: of my mind is like a giant sort of car,
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: like a giant warehouse full of car parts. I'm always
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: trying to fit something together. Oh, I could use that
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: that wheel would fit on here, or this axle would
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: work there, or you know, that steering wheel would look
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: good in this car. I'm always using one bit and
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: wondering whether I can finish another song with it, or
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: there's just unfinished bits everywhere. So that's just a normal
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: state of things that's constantly ongoing. But when I get
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: into writing, it becomes a little bit more focused and
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: the time opens out and I start to expand these ideas.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: The difficulty is that when you first have a mood,
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: the mood that envelops you when you come up with
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: a tune and you start to write, you're in a
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: there's a great suggestibility about your state of being at
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: that moment. You're sort of you're under hypnosis in a way.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: The music starts to hypnotize you. It's very hard to
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: pick up that thread at a later date. Oh yeah,
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: and that's what I Yeah, So it's that's what was
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: unusual about this particular sort of starburst of song writing.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: At the end of COVID, I was writing new music
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: but also just picking other things up off the shelf
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: and just finishing the songs, but not in a way
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: that you can see the join. It was just oh right, okay,
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: here we go. It was I was like, what was
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: going on?
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Okay? So you have these periods where you were saying,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: I'm writing the album. In between these periods, thoughts are
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: just going through your brain the car parts' occasionally making
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: notes or are you ever writing a complete song just
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: because something comes to you? Oh?
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean those are the best days. Yeah, those
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: are the days you pray for and if you keep
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: working hard enough, it will happen. So yes, occasionally there's
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: a song on this new record called that day must
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: surely come. And I was working on something completely different,
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: and I just made an A chord on the second
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: I had the capo to a chord or B, and
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: I just I made this extension with my pinky that
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: I'd never done before, and I went up, I went
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: under the A two four and then all the way
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: to five, very long extension, and then I moved the
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: bass note with my thumb, and I thought, oh, that's
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: a really nice run of chords. I've never played that before.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: And then I just began to pick it. And as
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: I picked it, I just read, I sang the first line,
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: and I just stopped what I was doing and I
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: just wrote the song. And in a couple of hours
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: later it was written, and it was in Those experiences
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: are have a mysticism about them, because you become both
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: more entirely yourself, the sort of fertile vistas of experience,
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: and all the loged emotion that you've held is waited
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: to be born into this song. At moments like that,
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: you could just they feel that they've been waiting a
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: long time to be born. This thing begins to emerge,
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: and at the same time, your brain is sending up
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: the sort of editorial drone. You're going up to the
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: top office on the top floor, and you're just making
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: very cool and clear decisions about what you're doing. So
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: you become more objective and more subjective simultaneously, and you
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: begin to work in a very unfussy, un self conscious way.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: And those are the best songs. Please forgive me that
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: they must surely come from here. You can almost see
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: the sea. These are the ones that just poured out
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: of me in like moments. So that's what that's what
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: I hope for.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, as a writer, but not a writer of songs.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about. And sometimes when
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: it's really working, I might become self conscious and then
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden it veers off. Is that something
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: that resonates? Oh yeah, totally.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: As I say, self consciousness is the enemy in life,
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: in music, in making. You know, it's it's it's totally
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: the enemy, very hard to avoid. And you know, I
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: use all kinds of tricks to trick myself out of
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: thinking too much. So for example, when I haven't been
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: making music, writing music, it's it's pressing. I'll be it's
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: pressing on me now because it's been a while since
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: I've been in that position, when I've been exploring and making.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: So when I get back to it, it'll have been
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: so long it'll be like getting into a cold bath,
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: not just a cold bath, ice cold. I'll be scared
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: of like what it all means. It will all start
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: meaning too much. So these days i'd use little tricks like,
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: for example, rather than I usually work from chords, the
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: rhythm of the cause, the chords, the rhythm of the chords,
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: a sequence of chords, and then the melody that associates.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: But if I find I work the other way round,
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: and I take a lyric and I try and fit it,
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: fit some music to the lyric, so I feel backwards,
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: or from a poem which I leave taking on this
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: record was a good example of that. I took someone
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: else's words and I sensed there was music in them,
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: and I felt like a water diviner with a stick.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: I felt blind across the ground, just looking for where
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: it could take me, and I began to make, like
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: a child in a sandpit. I just shaped things, and
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: I didn't get my head up until i'd sort of
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: made something. And when I had made something, I had
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: no idea. I couldn't do like a quality assessment of
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: it because my melodic instincts were disabled, and my sense
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: of meaning and value was also not engaged. So I
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: didn't have that sort of white writer's block preoccupation, this
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: is a piece of shit, Why should it matter? The
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: sort of doubting voices. I try and cheat those doubting voices,
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: and I find that once if I can manage to
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: find a way past them, the guards on the gate.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: Then once I'm in, I'm in the room of making,
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: and I get back into it. I stopped thinking about
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: it all so much, and it becomes much faster and
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: more immediate. That's not to say everything's great, it's just
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: I find that we've all got that writer's block, that
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: doubting voice, the negative voice that's waiting, and particularly I
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: find after an absence. So I mean, my ultimate existence
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: would be that I would never lose the fluency that
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: I have when I'm in these deep writing sessions. But
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: it's a bit like losing the fluency and my calluses
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: on my fingers from playing on the road. And as
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: a musician, when I'm playing every night, I'll reach I'll
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: attain a physical level of ability and emotional and mental
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: connection that I wouldn't be able to sustain on an
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: average day because I'll be doing two, three, four hours
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: of music every day. So you know, it's different. It's
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: like that with the writing too. You sort of lose
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: your confidence and you start to think about it far
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: too much.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you had this time you're with the family
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: with COVID, then you go back to writing. Are you
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: literally saying, okay, I'm sitting here. It's Monday to Thursday.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: I have to write songs. I'm going to sit here
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: until I finished the songs. Or do you wait for
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: inspiration or do you have tricks to trick yourself into inspiration?
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as I say, it's like self hypnosis. So I
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: don't sit there waiting for inspiration. I just get on
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: with it. As I say, I've always got a million
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: unfinished things, so I'll just pick one of them up
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: and start working on it. Or I'll think of a
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: little simple idea and I think that could be a
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: simple little song. Maybe I'll just start with that, something achievable,
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: something small, not too demanding, not too ambitious, something intriguing
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: and small. So I'll start humble. And then, as I say,
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: once I've achieved a few things, it's a little easier
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: to get into rhythm. So I mean, those those are
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: my tricks. I mean, I don't think there's any escaping effect.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: It's it's difficult. Yeah, it's some days you just don't
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: get anywhere. I mean, it's just the way it is.
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: So but I think you just turn up and you
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: start working, and sound can be a great unlocker as well.
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: It's like that you know, there's there's the same old
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: six strings on the same old guitar, but put it
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: through a sort of effect. It's like a Leslie effect
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: or chorus or you know, a new am or you
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: put a capo up high to change the tuning and
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: open tuning. Suddenly, ah, the same old motes remake. They
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: invert chords, and it inverts chords. It changes your relation
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: to the things you already know and charms you back
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: into that sense of mystery that you need to be in.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: So it's just important to well, anyway, these are the
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: ways I choose to do it. I mean, some people
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: work completely the opposite way. They wait until they're in
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: the mood and then they make music and they don't
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: stop until it's done. Maybe that's the best way to
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: do it.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: This is the way that my life is involved because
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: I wanted to be a dad and I wanted to
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: be a husband, and I've got all this music I've
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: already created, and I need to deal with curate my
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: own life to a certain extent, and my own businesses
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: demand a lot of my attention, so I need to
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: be I need to sort of compartmentalize a lot of
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: the time in order to get the space to work
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: properly and over long period. So this is just my
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: means of doing it.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, is your process that you write all the songs
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: and then you record, or do you write and record,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: write and record.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: I just write and record, and in fact, the recording
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: process is the writing process. I have a wonderful producer.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: We have a very strong relationship and it's very very complimentary.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: So I'm totally disinhibited these days in terms of writing lyrics,
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: trying things. I don't care. I'm not waiting till I
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: look good and then you can come into the room.
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: It's like you just see it all like I'll pour
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: it all out. Oh that's fucking terrible, like delete, you know.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: So we we just we work, so I'll stay. I've
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: got this idea. So like on this record, Eyes Made
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: Rain would be a good example, a very simple song.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: I said, it's like a mantra, eyes Made Rain, My
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: eyes made Rain, My eyes made Rain. And I have
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: this chord sequence, had all the chords worked out, I
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: didn't really have a lyric, and he was like, oh
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: I love this, I love this, let's start putting it down.
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: So I hadn't even started to write the lyric. I
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: had like maybe one or two lines that are going
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: to ghosting in here and there, and so we said, Okay,
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: what's the tempo going to be. Let's decide on a tempo. Okay,
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: let's take a little rhythm so I can play along
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: with it, so we don't want it just to click.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: Let's get a little rythm. He came up with this
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: really odd rhythm, and actually the arpedu I was playing
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: was the vital link. So I thought, oh, this actually
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: really works. It's like very jazzy, very odd anyway, So
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: then we began to work, and as we shaped the
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: sound of the song and we put these kind of
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: little sample drum parts in and other little sounds that
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: came into it, it began to speak as a piece
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: of music, and I wanted to inhabit the space in
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: a way that would have been perhaps different than what
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: I might have come to as a lyricist if you'd
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: just been and the acoustic guitar and I just toughed
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: it out and finished the lyric on my own. The
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: song became something I was getting inside of as a
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: piece of music. All the different elements, the bass we
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: added the drums, we added the little sounds and subtleties,
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: and the space we put it in. The short reverbs
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: and the different things began to sort of make me
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: feel like I was in a different country. So the
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: lyric became much more impressionistic in a way. I didn't
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: worry too much because I was kind of slotting into
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: us what was basically the finished song. So I hadn't
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: recorded a vocal on it yet. And we got to
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: the end of this few hours of making this track,
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: and I said, right, I guess you know, I need
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: to put some kind of performance on top of this.
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: So if you leave something without a lyric or anything
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: on it, a voice on it, it's less hard to
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: relate to, it's much harder to relate to other So
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: I basically just I sat down and until I had
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: like three verses and a middle section to some kind
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: of degree working, you know, no one could leave. So
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: I just sat there and he just had to wait,
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: and I was just writing and writing and writing and
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: writing until I had something. I was happy enough to
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: go in there and go behind the mic and try
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: and put down so that we had something to relate to.
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: And in fact, what happened was I remember thinking, God,
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: what is this? What I'm even saying? This is all
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: rather vague, but it's sort of It's just remained a
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: bit like that. So I did change a few lines,
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: but essentially I stuck with what I came up with,
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: and that was just we recorded it as I was
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: making it, so and that's pretty much true for I'd
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: say probably most of the tracks on the record have
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: been a bit like that.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: I'm fascinated you worked with Marius Defrees, who's a friend
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: of mine, and then you work with his son. How
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: does that happen?
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: It's such a lovely thing. And I'll tell you what's
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: absolutely beautiful about it is they both have this There's
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: talk about the genes of taste and subtlety. They both
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: have this incredible musicality, this rich and very subtle bordering
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: on classical understanding of music and voicings and orchestration. And
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: Marius is a very different personality to Ben. But yeah,
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: working with Marius was lovely, so much more pressurized situation.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: He came into a thing where everyone wanted a record
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: with a hit. I've had a couple of big hit
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: records and this was going to be life in slow motion.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: This was going to be a big deal basically. So
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: working with Ben has been very different, and we've over
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: the course of now three records and a few other
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: side projects, we've developed a wonderful relationship. But they they're
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: both old school. They don't flinch, they don't mess, they
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: don't mess. They there until the until the projects finished.
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: They give you everything that they should give you. There's
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: no none of this kind of you know, I'm tired
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: kind of bollocks you get from some people.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back though to what you were saying
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: before that you're in your writing phase. At what point
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: do you bring in the producer.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do need some time to myself two to
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: sketch the ideas, to begin to just so early on, though,
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: because I have the sense of trust with Ben that
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: I don't need a finished thing, although it's much nicer
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: to have. I've written the song, come on, let's work
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: on it. I'd normally be more in its infancy. I've
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: got this idea. What do you think of the idea?
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: Let's let's work on it. So very early on these
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: days the producer would come in because, as I said,
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: I've seen many good examples now of how we've got
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: a long way with the song without me having finished
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: the lyric. The lyric writing is what takes time. So
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: but yeah, but when this album and this tour slows down,
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: as I said, I want to finish this other record.
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: But after that, I'll be trying to sort of locate myself,
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: feel where I am, get a sense of the topography,
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: geography of my heart, what's going on inside me, the
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: bedrock of what this music is going to be springing from,
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: what's going to be built upon this next wave of stuff.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: I've got dreams and ideas already for what that will be.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: I've already started making notes, but it may be that
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: they never see the light of day. They don't. There's
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: no fruition for all that stuff. It's just a dream.
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: When I actually get there, something might happen and my
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: life might be quite different, and the record might take
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: on a different feel or tone. So but yes, when
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: when I've finished and things slow down and I get
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: some time to myself, I'll get my little studio set
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: up out in the countryside, and I'll spend some time
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: just working on things on my own and and feeling
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: for things Before I involve anybody, but it won't be
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: long before I do.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: So. Earlier you also said on this album you have
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: horns and strings. How did you decide to employ those?
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: Well, just where the music told me they needed to go.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's it's not a given that adding
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: orchestration or horns takes you any further down the track
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: in terms of realizing what a song must be. Quite
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: the contrary. I mean, sometimes some songs sound better just
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: on your own, sometimes better with a drum player, drum drummer,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: some with a bass player on to some without. So
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: with orchestration, there was a as I say, a melodic strength.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: There was just some of these songs we're just asking
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: for orchestration there there there they were big melodies. So
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: it's different every time. So and as I say, Ben
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: like his dad, is very very talented at voicings. So
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: for example, using leave taking user bass clarinet introduces the
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: the sort of the horn section. You don't go straight
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: in with a saxophone or a trombone or a trumpet.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: You you use a bass clarinet to play. I mean,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: who think of using a bass clarinet. It's a beautiful,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: beautiful sound, and there's a these little touches of class.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: We're using obo here and this there, and there's little
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: bits of knowledge and and and they to a much
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: more satisfying end result. So yeah, it's just it's different
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: every record. This time it wanted these. I don't think
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: the next record will probably have an orchestra or horns
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: or anything. I think we might get my friend Caroline
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: to come around with her cello and do a little
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: bit of playing on a couple of things, but it
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: will be more layering some strings into the odd song maybe,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: But I don't see that the next chapter will have
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: any of that stuff. This time around, it was. It
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: definitely felt right and it sounds wonderful that the session
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: we did for the orchestra was absolutely out of this world.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: It's phenomenal forgetting orchestra and other big productions. Your studio
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: in the old home, your studio up the street. Now,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: can you make the records in these studios or do
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: you have to go to another room to make the records?
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: No, I can make all the record that. If we
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: wanted a big drum sound, or we want to record
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: horns or strings, we go somewhere else because I haven't
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: got the mics, and I haven't got the mic stands,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: and I haven't got the space.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go to the previous album you mentioned. It
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: was very made during COVID scaleg I think, and in
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: the old days let's just call it pre internet, last century.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: If you made an album that was not as successful
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: commercially or critically, he could really negatively impact your career.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: To what degree is that a factor or is that
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: even not a factor in today's world.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: It depends how you set your stall out. I mean,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: I've seen it have that very negative effect on my
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: own career more than once. So God knows, I've seen
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: this every which way. I've been nowhere, somewhere, somewhere in between,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: and I've done things I love that didn't really get
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: anywhere with the radio, and then everyone turns around and goes, well,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: he's only worth this now, so dismiss It's like, yeah,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: you've got to be very careful. I think. Ultimately, though,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: you've got to make yourself happy. You've got to do
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: what you want to do. If you want to be
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: in music, if it's your life, then you're going to
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: be there with a passion and a zeal to see
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: it through till the end. Then you've got to set
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: your stall out accordingly. I mean, do you care about
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: the fucking numbers or what? Of course you do. Everyone
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: wants to connect to the listener who doesn't want listeners,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: But there's more to it than that. It's like what
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: kind of listener and how do they listen and all
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: the rest of it. So there are this Because I've
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: got my own label, I can I guess, to a
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: certain extent, do what I want to do. And this
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: record was a labor of love. And I think this
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: record will still be being listened to when I'm dead.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: It was a magic experience. But it's never going to
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: unless it gets some kind of sink or film placement
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: that suddenly makes everyone aware of it. It's going to
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: be a very slow word of mouth or word of
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: finger movement that it makes through people's consciousness. It's going
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: to be the sort of thing that's passed around. So
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: you know, I don't know. I did the White Ladder
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: to all. That meant all the promoters and venues suddenly
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: went well, look he sold all these tickets. So now
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: I'm being treated slightly differently because I can prove I
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: can still sell some tickets, So all the things you
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: say about the industry are absolutely true and they haven't changed.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: I think that when you've made as many records and
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: you've carried on as long as I have, it obviously
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: becomes maybe slightly less significant. If I just followed White
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: Ladder with, you know, some obscure electronic project that was
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: never going to flow anyone's boat, it would have been
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: maybe a really stupid dumb thing to do from a
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: commercial point of view. But if that's what I really felt,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: I wanted to do it just anyway. It's all down
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: to the individual, and I don't think there's a right
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: and wrong way of doing it. If what you're trying
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: to say is has it changed? Does the industry more
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: forgiving now? I don't think it really is. But I
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: think that it's so much easier to put music out.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: There's so much going out that it's not such a big, big,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: big deal. There's a lot of covering fire as people
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: putting shit out all the time, So it's it's it's
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: it's completely naturally saturated in new music, So maybe it's
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: it's just less prominent and less obvious now.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: In today's world. I mean you literally have your own label.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: You're involved. You know, we have a distributor does marketing
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: to what degree? Or you or your team involved in
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: social media direct access to your fans.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I try and keep the tone. I do
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: all the writing of the copy when it's in first person,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: they're my posts. And I don't use social media in
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: my life too. I don't use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, I
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: don't use any of it. I don't have person not accounts,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: I don't communicate with anyone through those things. But it's
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: as a means of letting my fans know. Writing something
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: on the blackboard is sort of how I see it.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't follow anyone. I don't engage. It
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: just gobbles up your time, mind, everything else. I can't
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: be bothered with any of it. But I see it
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: as a vital tool these days for letting people know
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: what's happening. So, of course the gatekeepers are very much
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: in control of how it all works. That there was
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: a certain innocent period when it sort of went out
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: to everyone. Apparently it doesn't work like that anymore. So
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: you know that it's very carefully managed, in choreographed so yes,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: but it's a personal things, and it needs to feel authentic.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: So when I speak one of the things I find
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: rather dull as these things become more important, which is
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: what's happened with Instagram, for example, something I quite liked
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: because you When I started, I was just doing weird photos,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: which I enjoyed, and writing because there was no limit
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: on the characters, writing a few words or a lot
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: of words about what I was doing or what I
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: was seeing. But of course it becomes like the only
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: show in town in terms of letting everybody know you've
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: got to tour an album of this. So everything now
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: is just basically much more related to your job. So
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: when it started, it was a bit more innocent and fun,
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: and that's not really true anymore. But it's still a
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: vital tool. So I try and make the best of
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: it that I can and give an authentic view into
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: my life, my thoughts and feelings. I don't share photos
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: of food, holidays, children, or opinions on current political situations
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: or war or anything. I keep that to myself. It's
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: not that I'm afraid of voicing those opinions, but I
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: don't foist them on my listeners.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: To what degree online are you two way interacting with europeand.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: Not at all. I don't follow anyone or any other artists.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: I don't engage in that way. I just put things
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: on my thing. If I was going to if I
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: was going to interact with a fellow artist, I would
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: send them an email.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, So where did you grow up?
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: I grew up in Manchester until I was eight, in
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: the North of England, and then my parents moved to
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: a tiny fishing village in the Very West Wales called Solver.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: So if you've ever read Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: then it was something like that, a sort of enchanted
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: realm of sea and sand and woodland and cliff that
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: I was suddenly thrust into and being a sort of
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: avid nature lover, it was just the most incredible adventure.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: It sort of seeded my imagination with imagery and thoughts
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: and beauty and I still draw on that fund now.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: And what kind of kid? Were you?
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: Very interested in stuff? Very sporty, loved all sport, loved,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: playing out, was just out all the time, kind of shy.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: So when I discovered going on stage, that was like
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: a big moment. I had to be a stand in
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: for the main part in the primary school production Christmas
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: play the main Wizard, the Wizard and the Wizard the Witch.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: The Wizard was taken ill on day of show, and
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: I had a very good memory. I had a very
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: good memory, so they said they plumped on me, even
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: though I was a year younger than lots of the
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: other children, to be the main part because I'm the
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: only person who might remember all the the different lines.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: So I learned the Wizard's part, but they didn't have
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: time before we got to the performance to teach me
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: the dances, so I had to improvise my song and
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: dance routine. And let's just say, Bob that I was
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: a big hit with the audience. I was a big
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: hit with the audience. The audience loved me. And as
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: I stood there doing my crazy wizard dancing, singing these
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: little songs, and they gave me rapturous applause. And I
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: remember looking out at them from this stage, which was
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: probably only about six inches high, into the dark all
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: that what felt like a sea of faces, which was
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: probably about sixty people, and thinking, yeah, I get this.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: I get I'm in a magic world of mate believe,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: and I'm what I'm giving them. They loved me because
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: I'm doing something freely and giving it to them, and
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: their their joy is in my giving and where some
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: people would have just been inhibited. And I was shy,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: but I love this and that stayed with me, and
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: I then sort of pursued sort of amateur dramatics. We
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: are probably grand term, but I was in school plays
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: from then on and I got some big roles and
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: I started my own band. So I loved it on
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: the stage. So choosing to do music over art was
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: probably because I liked the fact it brought me into
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: the world and you've got this instant reaction. So I
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: was when I was a teenager. I just became your
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: classic teenager, smoking, drinking and wanting to kiss girls and
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: you know, then wanting to be in a band. And
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: I stopped studying. I stopped paying any attention apart from
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: art and reading a few of the English texts. And
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: they all sort of were tearing their hair out. Probably
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine what it's like for my mum, but
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: she showed incredible patience. So I kind of disconnected from
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: my studies somewhat, and it made a bit of a
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: mockery of my exams at various points, but I kind
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: of got through. I chose the path of least resistance,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: which was art school.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: What did your parents do for a living, Well.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: My dad had been a baker in Manchester, in the
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: family in firm, and when they didn't know what they
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: were going to do when they went to well, so
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: my mum was making these quilted clothes using Liberty fabrics
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: and they started a little cottage industry selling these, and
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: then it became successful and they were Liberty in London's
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: biggest sellers. They were for a while, and then they
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: started their own little shop to sell their own clothes,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: which developed into a craft shop, and then eventually they
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: folded the clothing business and they just had a craft
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: shop and the restaurant down the street where I worked
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: as a washer up for many years made it to waiter.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: And do you have any siblings?
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I got two sisters. I'm the eldest. I got
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: two younger sisters.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: So how did you get into music? Yeah?
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: I always loved it. I mean, my mum was a
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: very good singer. She used to sing in the choir.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: And I didn't have any elder brothers and sisters to
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: kind of guide me. Into what was cool, just reacted
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: to things. So saw music on the Telly and fell
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: in love with Madness the Specials, sort of whole two
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: tone thing that was nineteen seventy nine, and I was
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: obsessed with that for several years and then became more
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: like an indie thing. And while I was getting into
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: indie music, I kind of got into other things that
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: was something we'd all talk about. You'd watch Telly Don't
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: Look Back was on, like the Da Pennybecker film. I
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: watched that fucking in hell. I already loved Bob Dylan.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: I discovered him, I thought, well, I started buying Dealing
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: Records and Leonard Cohen Records, Jny Mitchell Records, John Martin Records,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: and I started to explore Tom Waite's all these things
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: at the same time as listening to the cool pop
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: music of the sort of early to mid eighties. So
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: that's kind of what happened. I just got into it.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: My dad had an acoustic guitar which he didn't know
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: how to play. I just started using it, and my
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: friend wrote down some chords for me and I started
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: from there.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: So how did you decide this is going to be
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: a career? And how did you end up becoming a professional.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: Well, I was very lucky. I'm very fortunate. I've always
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: very driven, very self confident, very determined. So I went
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: to art school, I formed a band, made demos and
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: already at that point decided this is the way I'm
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: going to go. And so I was painting and stuff
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: for my degree, but really most of my energy and
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: money as well, I was buying equipment and stuff was
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: going into playing with my band, and we were playing
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: shows in Glasgow, tried Manchester, didn't go so well there
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: Liverpool where I went to art school, so I was
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: gigging and we made a demo at the end of
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: my last year and sent it into the Manchester Evening News.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: John Slater was an A and R man in Manchester
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: who do a demo review. So he really liked the
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: demo and sent an A and R man like a
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: scout to see us in Liverpool to check us out.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: He gave us a good review, and he sent a
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: scout and the scout was working for the person who
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: would become my manager, who was just taken on a
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: job at Pollardor to sort of pay a few bills with.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: So he was working for Polydor and also sort of
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: scouting out talent at the same time time from his
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: own POV and he was given this demo and so
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: my very first demo ended up in the hands of
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: the person who would be my manager. And then Pollodor
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: commissioned a second demo and things began to move forward,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: and they got a publishing deal with Warner Chapel the
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: following year. Then I moved to London and got a
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: record deal with Virgin So that's sort of how it started.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: It all happened very quickly. I mean I finished my
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: college and within a year I was in London with
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: a record deal.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: So the first three records were let's just say they
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: weren't hit. What was your experience, Yeah, it was well.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: I was, first of all, super exciting. I didn't ever
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: have a kind of overview or a plan of how
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: I was going to crack the music industry. I didn't
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: have some hey press guy, this is my take on things.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: I didn't have any of that shite. I just I
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: just had myself, my heart, my songs. I just wanted
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: to do it. So the whole thing was a crazy
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: learning experience, character building, as they say. So the first
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: album new record label, got to go to America, tour
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: America a couple of times as a support act, play
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: shows of my own in New York and LA and
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: you know, a super super exciting but by record too
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: because I hadn't sold any records, you know, they were
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: And also the guy who signed me, the classic music
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: business thing, he was sacked before the record. He was
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: sacked before the record had even come out, so my
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: champion was gone, and they kind of let me make
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: another record then said your recording budgets over. You just
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: have to put this out as it is, put it
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: out and then drop me. And then I was picked
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: up by a label in America very fortunately about six
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: months later. So this was the story of the first
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: three albums. But the only really significant thing that happened,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: apart from me learning the hard way, playing fucking horrible
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: shows in all over the fucking world as well as
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: some good ones, was the connection I made with the Irish.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: They loved my first album, and I got some really
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: good press, and I got some cool radio going on,
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: like late night radio stuff. And when I played my
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: first gig in Ireland at the beginning of nineteen ninety four,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: it was a sellout and second gig, and I thought, God,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: I love it here and I just kept going back
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: and I built up this following so they kind of
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: got it. The Irish got it. They got the lyricism,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: they got the sort of earthiness, the rawness, the simplicity,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: the singer songwriter in us of what I was doing,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: which was like not a very cool look at the time,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: So particularly in the UK, which is the hardest place
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: to break in the world, the most cynical, sort of
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: hard edged place I've ever been to anyway, putting new
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: music out and everything. So that that was the story.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: That that that that's that's That's pretty much how it went.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: So it was hard work. I think. By the third
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: record coming out on EMI America, it was a total
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: not a disaster, and they didn't even put it out properly.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: The whole thing was a joke. They were imploding, They
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: weren't even there was they were they were non functioning
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: as a record company. We went on an absolutely soul
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: destroying tour of the Midwest and that was that, and
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: we had an option to have a second album with them.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: We chose not to take the advance and just end it.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: Such was the pitiful state of things. So eventually that
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: led to me making a record in my own bedroom,
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: which was white ladder. But it didn't happen straight away.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: Well, well, before you go to the record your own bedroom,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: you know, you make the first record, you have all
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: the hopes, you have the second record, you know your
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: ain R guy goes. But then you sign with a
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: major label and that implodes. What does this do for
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: your confidence?
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I was doubtful about whether I wanted
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: to continue, if it was going to continue in this vein.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: I think it makes you think everyone's good when not
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: when it's not working out. Everyone's got ideas about what
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: you need to do and what you're not doing. So
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: I actually took a beat. It obviously does hurt. I mean, Jesus,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: my music is made of emotion. Music is made of emotion.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: This is.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: The deepest part of me. I'm showing everyone there's nowhere
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: to hide. And it was grim. So I thought, christ,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: I can't do this for a living. I need to
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: find something else to do. If if this is the
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: way it's just going to go. So yeah, it had
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: a huge effect and I wanted to pause from being
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: with my manager. I wanted to pause from everything. I
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: took some time out after the year Ideal, just to
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: reconfigure myself and work out what it was I was
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: doing and why, because it seemed like I didn't know anymore.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: I'd lost all that youthful momentum and now I was
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: in a completely different reality.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, and what was the next step forward?
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Well it was this record we made at Homes.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: A little bit slower, just just to start. The manager
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: who you had ight with, was that the same manager
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: from day one?
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so Rob, Rob Holden, we kind
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: of got back together. I had to say. I took
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: a little hiatus from everything and kind of got back
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: to Oh okay.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: Wait, wait you're you You're on your hiatus? What do
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: you living on?
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: Just very Fortunately, an Irish singer called Mary Black covered
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: some of my songs, albeit without my consent, for her album,
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: some of my new songs. A demo I'd made while
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: I was on EMI had got into the hands of
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: a producer who was a big fan of my music,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: and she covered a whole load of my stuff. So
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: I had this Suddenly at the MCPS came through from
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: her album being pressed up, and I had a little
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: bit of money to live on. My wife at this
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: point had started working as a solicitor. She was actually
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: the main breadwinner. So that was the reality at the time.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: It was kind of we were making it up as well.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: Go along. How did you meet your wife?
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: I met her when I moved to London. I got
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: a room in the squat that was her best friend's
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: squat in South London, in the Elephant and Castle, and
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: I then met her. I met her on the day
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: of the general election April the ninth, nineteen ninety two.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: I called it the death of the British imagination. I
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: stayed up all night to watch the horrifying reality of
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: the Tories getting in yet another time. So and I
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: called it the death of the British imagination. So we
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: had a common ground and that we were utterly disgusted
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: with our conservative country. Little did we know how worse
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: it was going to get. So yeah, we's that was
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: a sort of early bonding thing. So that's when I
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: met a day of the election April the ninth, nineteen
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: ninety two.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, this is when your career is on the up,
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: When your career is on the down, is she supportive?
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: Or is she saying, maybe you need to get a
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: day job. What is her reaction to you, and what's
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: your relationship like.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, at what stage, like when things weren't going well
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: in my early career.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: No, no, after it ended with them, I.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: Oh well, I mean it was just.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: It.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: She was supportive. Yeah, sure, if she could see when
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: she met me, I was this. I was a person.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: I have a I have a mission. It's not I
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: need to be doing something. It's sort of non negotiable.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: It's a giant coping strategy. It's not something I have
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: a choice over. I have to make things. So maybe
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: I don't have to make music. Maybe I could make art,
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: but I need to make something. I don't think I'm employable.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: So so she was supportive. Yeah, Well we didn't get
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: to the point of total meltdown because life rode into
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: the rescue or on a white steed. So a fairy
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: tale ensued, whereby I made a record in my bedroom
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: and okay, we're gonna get anyway.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: We're going to get there right now. So you have
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: the money from the Mary Black covers, you say, yeah,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: you were disconnected from the manager and then the manager reconnected.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: What happened there.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I just said I need a break because
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: I can't listen to your thoughts about what I need
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: to do. I need to work out for myself what
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: it is I'm doing. I don't need extra advice. I
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: need to just everyone to shut up. I need to
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: go away and do this. I don't know if I
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: want to do it anymore. Let's just take a break.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: When he said, very reluctantly, he said, okay. So after
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: a break, I sort of fooled around, looked for a
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: few different ways of doing it, scouted about, and then
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: I began to make White Ladder. And once I was
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: making that, it was he that introduced Yestin Poulsen, who
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: was the guy who would become the producer of that record.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: It was co produced with me and the drama Clune.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: But yes, it made the massive difference to the sound
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: of it all. He knew what he was doing. So
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: we made this kind of bedroom recording together. So and
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: that was us coming back online. And then, as I say,
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: no one wanted to put the record out. We couldn't
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: get any takers, so we put it out ourselves and
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: is history.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, bye, by way, you're making the record. To what
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: degree is this record informed by your previous three records?
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: And to what degree is this a clean sleep? You
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: know you took some time off. You don't need any
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: more business advice when you start to write and make
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: this record. What is the inspiration and what is different
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: or the same from what you've done previously.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: Well, there's so much that was different because it was
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: made in my bedroom, so we didn't have any equipment.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: We're using a computer and a drum machine and a
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: little you know, zip drive or hard drive or jazz
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: drive and an ADAP to record the actual physical sound
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: if you like. So what it gave me working over
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: sort of drum machine rhythms that was programming in because
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: it gave me a freedom to perform over them. I'd
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: never really used clicks or anything like that. I'd always
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: just wanted to go free, but it actually freed me up.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: So that was an important creative development. And there was
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: also the sort of intimacy of your own personal space
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: and the times of day when you can just work
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: when there's no one around and there's no sound, and
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: it led to a more intimate relationship with the vocal
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: mic and the guitar mic it just brought me in
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: as opposed to being a sort of arm's length kind
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: of style recording in a big POSH studio which could
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: be a car showroom or something, this was like my
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: own little space. So I think those were important things
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: that that definitely was a significant change. What was in
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: terms of what the record was based on. I have
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: to say bother and I've talked about this ad infinitum,
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: ad nauseum over many many years. I can give you
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: in a nutshell, I think it was definitely a back
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: against the wall. That the principles of how I wrote
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 2: a song remained the same, but this was a back
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: against the war moment. I'd been through this thing. One thing.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: I was determined I was going to make a record
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: that from start to finish would be identifiable, coherent, interrelated,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: and flowing from the first note to the last. That
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: was the objective. We started to use electronic sound. I
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: was itching to get sound into the music, and so
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: it was going to be this kind of hybrid form.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: And I was also determined to not just give up
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: with everything and blame the music industry, blame journalists, blame
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: whatever the hell I wanted to. I thought, I can
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: do a better record. I haven't made the record I
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: could make. I need to make the best possible record
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: I can. So it's a kind of heart on sleeve
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: record it had. I wasn't shy of melody. I never
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: shy away from melody, but I didn't shy away from
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: melody or open hearted sentiment. So I didn't. I'd recovered
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: enough that I didn't retract into sort of bitterness or
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: hide myself behind some sort of opaque shell. I let
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: everything show. It was a greater act of vulnerability and share,
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: and that was what the record's power was ultimately. But
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: the process, the principle of how I wrote and how
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: I did things, was largely the same as the way
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: I'd always done it. I just did it under different
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: conditions and definitely with a different mindset. And I also
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: involved other people in a way that I never had
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: up until then. I just wrote songs and other people
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: played on them or helped press record while we did that.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: This was like involving people from the ground up and
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: how it sounded, what it might sound like, how we
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: might make a record, and far from actually diluting the
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: effect of what my music might be, how personal it was,
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: how its identity might be it actually strengthened it because
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: they brought their strengths and wisdom and energy and sense
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: of fun, and it lightened the music and it made
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: it much more effective.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, in the US, living in the West Coast, you know,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: public radio started to blow Babylon. It looked like an
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: instant's success. But the record had been out for over
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: a year in the UK. Yeah, so you put out
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: the record, you have the best perspective. Was it a
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: constant uphill trend or what was it like when the
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: record came out.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a lot of hard work, but I
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: mean it was absolutely amazing in Ireland by the end
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: of nineteen nineteen, and we released it in nineteen November
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: ninety eight, was actually released in Ireland on our own label.
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: By the end of December nineteen ninety nine, it was
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: seven times platinum, so we'd also released it in the
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: UK at that stage, but on our own label. So
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: by the time Warners got involved at the beginning of
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: two thousand, I think we made this maybe sold twenty
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: five thousand copies in the UK. In America and ato
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: the record came out, we signed the contract at a
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: big concert in Ireland at the end of nineteen ninety
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: nine and the record came out in early two thousand,
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: so by that point we were almost i'd say, eighteen
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: months into working the record. But what was amazing was
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: it just the record had a magic charm. It just
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: connected connected and people would pass it around and every
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: show we could feel the vibes that we could feel
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: them in Ireland, and by this point we felt we've
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 2: got something. This record has a magic. We just need
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: to get out behind it and it's going to translate.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: So that's what it felt.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: The whole ascent to the top was absolutely incredible. It
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: was a thrilling, thrilling two years once we got to
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: the top. So by the sort of towards the end
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: of two thousand, when it had been a you know,
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: a hit in America, hit in the UK, hit in Australia,
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: New Zealand and everything became a bit of a blur.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: But the climb up was absolutely incredible and the view
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 2: from the top was unforgettable. From that point it becomes
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: a bit of a blur. The shows get bigger, they're
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 2: always old out, everyone's your friend, you're having the best
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: time you've ever had. And there you go.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: Why ATO as opposed to another label in America? Were
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: there even any other authors?
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: But we didn't even ask around. I mean it felt
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: like a perfect fit. We already believed in that you
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 2: didn't need a load of people or a load of money,
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: You just needed the right people working in the right way.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: So Michael McDonald and Chris Tetseli that was ATO Records.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: We had no one IHT Records was me and my manager.
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 2: So it was like, so what Obviously Dave Matthews was
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 2: a big influential character, a great supporter to have, and
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: not only that, he had fans and people's street teams,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: people who'd leaflet for you, put the word out for you.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: We had something concrete. Well, they basically said to me
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: was we'll work your airstaff. And they were good to that.
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: They fucking crucified me. I did six tours on record,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: so you know, they said, we'll send you out and
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 2: will they do it the old way? They were old school,
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: but I like the lack of bullshit, so yeah, that's
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: the way it's going to be. So we signed up
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 2: for that. Years of suffering.
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: So at this point, twenty five years later, are you sick
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: of White Ladder.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: No, but there's certainly been points where I have been No.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: I think it's great. I mean playing the anniversary tour
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: was an unexpected thrill. I think, coming as it did
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: after the COVID shut down, it gave it this kind
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 2: of crazy energy. It was a record that really connected
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: with people. People love that record. They feel so strong.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: I love it. I love it too, but I wanted
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 2: to distance myself from it when it was all I
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: was was the White Ladder guy, because it becomes suffocating.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: I'm not I'm an artist. If you listen to my
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: new record, it's as good as White Ladder. I'm not
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: saying it's as perfect as a commercial form, or that
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 2: it's ever going to get the breaks got That was
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: the right record at the right time, But it's the
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: dip in quality hasn't happened. I'm still going. I'm still pushing, experimenting,
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: reaching out, branching out. So I'm looking for new ground,
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: new ways of saying things, freshening things up. So so
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: it's it's It's a record I'm hugely proud of. I
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: think it's great. I love its economy of means. We
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: didn't have any stuff. So we just it's just very
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: simple really. But what we did, we did well. So
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: you know, if we bring the claps in and please
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: forgive me. You know, I remember the Chemical brother saying
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 2: to me, yeah, it's amazing you kept the claps back
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: right to the end. I'm like, yeah, because we haven't
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 2: got it an we haven't gotten it enough to bring
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: in put the claps in. It's like so it was.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: It was an exercise in minimalism, which to a certain
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 2: extent is still the way that I think about making music.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: If the vocal or the main rhythm instrument and the
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: rhythm or if that can uphold the song for a
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: long period of time, then you can bring other things
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 2: in and really make an effect.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, forgetting the anniversary tour, to what degree are you
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: feeling an obligation to play songs from White Ladder on
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: a tour?
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean the way I have subdivided my touring
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: now is that like on this tour, I've told people
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: you can expect to hear the songs you love to hear.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: They'll be mixed in with new songs, and not just
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: songs from White Ladder, but songs from all those old albums.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: This is going to be a really, really deep dive,
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: and you also hear a few unexpected cover versions. It's
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: going to be a highly energized tapestry of stuff. But
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: you'll definitely hear sail Away Babylon, Please Forgive Me, etc.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: The one I Love You Know, Blah blah blah. You'll
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 2: hear these songs. I'm not pretending. But on other when
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: I toured Skeleg, I said to the audience, you're only
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: gonna hear Skeleg. If you buy tickets for this concert,
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: you're not going to hear anything except this. And when
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: I did the Century Ends tour, the tour of my
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 2: first album first two albums earlier last year, I said
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: the same thing, that I'm just going to play the
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: two first albums and that's all I'm playing. And it's very,
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: very liberating, and I enjoyed them absolutely enormously those tours
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: because I was not obliged to play anything, and I
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 2: think it's a much more simple way of dividing Otherwise. Basically,
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: every tour is a negotiation with the audience to get
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: them to listen to something they're not maybe as familiar with,
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: and that's if you cut your cloth too much in
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: their favor. Excuse me, cut the cloth too much in
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: their favor. You'll end up resenting them and not wanting
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 2: to do it. I think I'd just be bored if
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: I just felt I had to play those songs all
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: the time. So for me, it's it's it's it's a
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: constant negotiation. But I love those songs, so in this context,
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: I'm going to enjoy playing them. They're going to be
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: part of a much beer a picture.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, when you did Skellig and you did the first
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: two albums live, Todd Rungren has gone out many iterations
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: and he's done the same things and I'm gonna play X.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: But there's still people who come thinking they're gonna hear
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: the so called hits. When you said, because you know,
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: we live in a world it's hard to get the
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: message out and people are fit when you said I'm
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: only going to do this stuff, did you find that
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: that was the audience you got or do you still
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: get people saying I want to hear White Ladder.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: There was a few heckles. What you're really dealing with
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 2: there is secondary ticketing, so people reselling their tickets and
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 2: they'll just say David Gray tickets tonight, you know, and
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: that they won't have all the info in it, that
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: of what it is, and that's what happens. None of
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: the fans who bought tickets will be in any doubt
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: as to what's about to happen. But you get the
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: odd person who's out with their girlfriend or you know,
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: their mates, and they say, oh, let's go and see
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: Davi Grant and then they want to hear Babylon. It's
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: like you know with Babylon, So that happens every now
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 2: and again. Yeah, you can't stamp that, but it actually
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: worked for the rest of the time. The skellic thing
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 2: that that happened didn't happen at all. I mean people
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 2: were completely in on it. I didn't get any heckles.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, you have this huge success with White Ladder, you
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: go to pick another record. To what degree do you
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: feel the pressure and to what degree do you say
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: I should replicate the previous formula, make it in my
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: bedroom of this stripe, although now I have all the
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: money to do it the old way. What was it like.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: Or just to return to the theme of self consciousness,
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: we'd gone from very innocently making something for nothing, having
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: no idea that it was going to succeed whatsoever. That
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: would have been a preposterous thought to suddenly being in
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: the reverse. You know, we were underdogs. We became fain it,
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: and we had a huge budget and a load of
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 2: people chomping at the bit to sell millions of these things.
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: Not only that, I you know, we just had a
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: child and that was a kind of traumatic experience that
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: went horribly wrong. My father had just died, So I
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: came back from tour. I had a dead father and
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: a new baby and wife who'd been very ill, and
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: that was my reality. I was also suddenly famous. I
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: had money starting to come into my whole life felt
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: like it belonged to somebody else. So it was. It was.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: It was tricky, you know, to find a way to
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: connect to the music without thinking about it too much.
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: So certainly for at least one record a new day
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 2: at midnight, I think it was impossible to feel normal
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 2: about anything or find a comfortable way of doing things.
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 2: Everything was odd. So and I'm not the kind of
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: guy who like, you know, hey, yeah, check out my
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: new ferrari and my girlfriend. You know, I'm drinking the
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: best tequila man can buy you know, whatever, you know,
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 2: Let's have fun, Let's make a record, Let's go to
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 2: the Bahamas. I'm not that person. I take it all
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 2: very seriously and too seriously sometimes maybe so I was
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 2: wearing it and trying to wear it in a way. Anyway.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 2: It was surrendous. I didn't enjoy that period. I was suffering.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: It was a bit like being John Malkovich. I was
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 2: sort of looking at someone else's eyes, so but trying
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: my best to connect and do the things. And there
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: was a lot of pain in there, and there's a
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 2: lot of weirdness because I just suddenly was in this
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: other reality. But I think by the time of life
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: in slow Motion the next record, I took some time
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: to rEFInd my way into music and that rescued me.
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 2: So we made a huge amount of music. I bought
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: a studio and we just basically embedded ourselves there. The
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: band are on retainers at this point, and we just
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 2: recorded and recorded and recorded and had a way of
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: a time just coming up with things and using a
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 2: big studio. So that's basically, in a nutshell, how it
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: sort of evolved from that white ladder moment of innocence
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: through the sort of completely debilitating fame and oddness and
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: self consciousness to refinding my way back to music and
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: honesty and naturalness. It took a few years, to say
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: the least, and I think it took a lot longer
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: than that for me to come to terms with what
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: had happened.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: If I said to you, I want you to write
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: a hit song, would you say, I don't know what
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: a hit song is. I don't want to write a
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: hit song. I could write what I think is a hit,
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: but I'm not sure. Or do you just say I
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: just do what I do? Who the hell knows?
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't genuinely don't really know what a hit
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 2: song is, and I don't even know what a hit
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 2: looks like anymore from my point of view. So you know,
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: I've got probably the most commercial song I've written in
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: many years, in plus and minus on the new record,
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: which has received a certain amount of airplay over here.
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 2: I have no idea how it's doing in America, but
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: that's as close as I'm going to get to a single.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: I don't go seeking them. But if something comes along
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: and I think, oh this, you know, this is like
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: a three minute pop song, It's not that I throw
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: it out. I won't neglect it. I'll try and make
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: it work. I love three minute pop songs, so you know,
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: the point is having some depth to everything. It's just
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: it's not enough just to satisfy. I don't know. Commercial
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: lusts for success and numbers. That's not what motivates me.
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: But when we were making White Ladder, I was also
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: involved in a movie called This Year's Love and the
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: director was a big fan, and he said, Dave, you know,
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 2: i'd like you to write the title song of the film.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: And I said, but that's not really what I do.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 2: I mean, I said, if I just write what occurs
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 2: to me, I don't look for a project or like.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: But then I went away and I thought, Jesus, I'm
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 2: in the complete commercial wilderness. This is a guy who's
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: making a movie. He's a big fan. He's asked me
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: to write, so why don't I at least try? And
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: I went home and I literally wrote This Year's Love
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: that afternoon, and I sent him a cassette of it
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 2: and said, this is what I've written. What do you think?
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: He said, I love it. In the end, the movie
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: came out. V two bought the movie rights and the
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 2: song was removed from the movie. It was only played
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 2: on a transistor radio in the back of a scene.
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: But that's another story. But you know, and that's ended
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: up being my most streamed song, So it's it's I
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 2: don't necessarily fear doing something with a commercial sort of
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: reason behind it. If only life was so predictable that
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 2: there was sort of some kind of integrity ometer that
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 2: you could apply to things. I don't believe in that
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 2: fantasy stuff. I think that life's generally are compromise and
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: lots of different things. But I think it's more the
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 2: way that you make something and what you give to it,
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 2: how you bring this brushstrokes to life that really matters.
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: So yes, if you asked me to write a song,
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: it'd have to depend who you were and what the
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 2: context was. I'd probably ignore you, but it's possible I
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: would take you seriously.
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: At this point in time, you have the best viewpoint.
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: You know, Where can you tour? Where are you successful?
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: Obviously Ireland is a hotbed to what do we the UK,
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: the US, the continent, anywhere else where are your fans?
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're all over the place, and obviously mainly English
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 2: speaking countries, Ireland, UK, Canada, America, North America, you know, Australia,
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: New Zealand, South Africa. But you know, there were certain
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 2: points where I did have fans. I can see on
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: the streaming numbers when streaming started that, Wow, there's a
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 2: lot of people listening in Santiago, Chile, and there's quite
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 2: a lot of people listening in Mexico City, and there's
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: people listening here and there and everywhere. And I've obviously
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 2: got fans in Germany. The problem is when you engineer
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 2: a tour, you're looking at your best markets and do
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: the best show for those markets. And then if you
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 2: basically go and tour around Southern Europe, as much as
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: it will be beautiful and the food will be great,
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 2: you know, you canie a shitload of money because you're
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: not selling enough tickets there to sustain the crew, the
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: band and all the stuff you've got with you. So
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: it's like you just need to cut your class accordingly.
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 2: So I think if I do another acoustic tour, I'm
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: going to try and get to some of the places
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: I've never been, you know, like South America and Central
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 2: America and the places I haven't been for a long time,
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 2: like the southern Europe, Italy, Spain, et cetera. Paris, places
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 2: like that will playing smaller venues and it won't be
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 2: such a big deal. So you know, that's that's what
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 2: my fan base looks like. It's all over the world,
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 2: but it's mainly in those English speaking countries.
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about playing some covers on this tour.
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: You know you have a White Ladder live album where
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: you cover some Bowie songs Tainted Love. You know, how
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: did you choose those and what kind of covers might
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: someone expect.
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to talk about it because it's going
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 2: to be a surprise so in terms of what we're
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 2: going to do next, but it was a huge pleasure
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: to play the well. Obviously, say Hello Wave Goodbye is
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 2: a soft cell song. So on the White Ladder tour,
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 2: I got Mark Alman to come out and sing with me,
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: and we surprised him by having prepared a version of
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 2: Tainted Love. I think it was absolutely horrified, to be honest,
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: but he's a good sport and he stepped up and
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 2: he did it and the crowd went absolutely crazy. So
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: we kind of fired off the back of that. Say
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 2: Hello Wave Goodbye would end the White Ladder set, we'd
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 2: come back out and do Tainted Love, another Soft Cell
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 2: song or famous made famous by soft Cell. It's not
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 2: written by them, of course. And then the Bowie story
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: was part of the history of White Ladder and the
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 2: very this big long story about my dad being sick
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 2: and us playing at Glastonbury and meeting Bowie, and I
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 2: tell the story, and then we play life on Mars
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: into Oh you pretty things. I mean, those songs were amazing.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 2: Just getting to play those songs was so exciting. People
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 2: were just blown away by that, you know, to hear
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 2: someone really do a good version of that. So yeah,
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 2: that's in terms of if I was going to record
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: a cover and use it on a record, that would
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 2: be a much more delicate matter. But live, I'm just
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: what I want to do on this tour is use
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: covers to bring the energy up without having to play
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 2: a Babylon card or a big song card, so to
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: unexpectedly surprise people and just suddenly disarm them. So that
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: I'm buying space really for the intimacy I need for
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: some of the more low key stuff. So I'm going
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 2: to use short bursts of very famous songs to energize
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 2: people and hopefully thought provoked them a little bit.
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: Now you mentioned the Chemical Brothers, you mentioned Mark Alman.
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: Are you someone who knows everybody in the rock and
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: roll high school or use somebody as more isolated.
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 2: Totally isolated? Yeah, totally said. I don't know anyone.
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: I don't.
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 2: The celebrity village was a mystery to me. I couldn't
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: really make head nor tail of what the ground rules
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 2: were supposed to be. So whatever it is the gift
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 2: of getting to, you know, make making people feel at ease,
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: I don't seem to have it in that capacity. So
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 2: my friendship group is basically the people I make music with,
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: put music out with, and the people I knew before
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 2: I became famous. It's my wife's friends who are very
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 2: dear friends of mine. That's those are the people I see.
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 2: I don't have famous friends, per se. I know a
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 2: few people, of course, you know, Jesus, there's a lot
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 2: of nice people out there that I've met and sort
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: of become friendly with, But that's not my gig. Now
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: I'm much more isolated, I think, unhealthily so. In some
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 2: ways I feel that that the artists need the community
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 2: of artists to support them and with whatever it is.
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 2: I don't know why I've evolved a certain ways. It's
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 2: complicated without getting to some kind of deep Freudian shit.
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 2: I think that that's just the way I am.
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: And you know there's that blind in the Joe Walls song.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: You know, everybody's so different and I haven't changed. To
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: what degree do people treat you differently now that you're
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: famous or you know, your recognizable character? To what degree
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: is that inhibiting?
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I think it's died down to such an extent
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: that it's not really a big deal. Two things have happened.
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I've got used to it. And
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 2: also people don't give a shit about me anymore, you know,
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: So it's it's might I live a completely pretty normal life.
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: I don't I go out, I wander around. I can
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: go to a restaurant without everyone standing and looking at me.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 2: You know. I was in a I know Ricky Gervais
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 2: from he's a fellow resident in Hampstead where I used
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: to live. I used to see him out and about,
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: and of course he's always got the shades on. And
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: I remember being in the pub and we were just
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 2: sitting there as a family having lunch and he came
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 2: in with his wife. It was obviously an impromptu thing.
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 2: Place was packed, and they kind of went, oh my god,
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: we better sort Ricky at, We better sort Ricky at.
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 2: And they gave him this. It was like right in
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 2: the middle, and everyone was just looking at him, and
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 2: I just felt so uncomfortable for him, and he just
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 2: got up and left. After a certain amount of time,
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: they started placing an order and he went and they
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: just went. And I thought, yeah, my god, you know,
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: what's it like being whatever you think of these people,
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 2: Harry and Megan or Brad Pitt or something. You walk
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: into a room and everybody it's like it's all about you. Jesus.
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 2: Sounds horrendous. So yeah, I don't have to deal with
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 2: any of that stuff. I don't got no high grade
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 2: sort of scrutiny going on. Of course, I live a
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 2: life that's in the public eye. Occasionally get stupid stories
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 2: in the press or whatever. It's the usual carry on,
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 2: but it's not something that inhibits my life. I do
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 2: exactly what I want to go to the beach when
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: I'm up in Norfolk, I go for swear, I do
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 2: whatever I want to go to the pub for a pint.
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 2: I don't give a shit. I just do what I
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 2: want to do. I go to you know, it doesn't
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 2: there's there's nothing happening. I don't see what's happening behind me.
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 2: I might be walking down the high street and they go, oh,
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 2: I was David gra Occasionally someone will bellow, some drunk
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: will bellow out to me, but you know, it's pretty
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 2: low key.
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: I'm not very I'm not really very famous anymore.
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: Well, that may be your perspective that a lot of
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: us feel differently. In any event, David, I want to
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: thank you for taking the time to speak with me
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: in my audience. You've made a lot of very perceptive,
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: insightful comments certainly rooted me. So I want to thank
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: you again and wish you luck with a new album.
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Bob. And this is maybe the
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 2: longest interview I've ever done. I had no idea it
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: was going to be so epic. If Concord was still running,
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: someone could have flown to New York in the time
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 2: we've had this. Yeah, I wish you all the best,
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: happy and healthy New Year, Bobs. And if you're in
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 2: Los Angeles, Yeah, I hope that the fire the fire
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 2: has died down real soon, so I'm sorry for you
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 2: all the suffering that's over there, and let's talk.
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: The winds died down in any event. Next time, this
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: is Bob left Sex