Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Guitarist Kevin Armstrong (David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Iggy Pop, Morrissey, Sinead O'Connor) [Episode 160]

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Guitarist Kevin Armstrong (David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Iggy Pop, Morrissey, Sinead O'Connor) [Episode 160] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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The next week, I get sent to a session with an anonymous superstar and
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it turns out to be David Bowie and there's the rest of my life mapped
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out right there. We're totally bummed rock and roll. I mean got leave
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you. You're reading Little Hands says it's time to rock and roll record,
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Roll up. I totally booked. Welcome to book don Rock, the podcast
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for those about to read and rock online. It booked on rock dot com,
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where you can find every episode along with links to the listening platforms,
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exclusive videos, blogs, and the latest rockbook releases. Kevin Armstrong is this
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episode's guest. He's got a book out called Absolute Beginner, Memoirs of the
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World's Best Least Known Guitarist. David Bowie said of Armstrong, quote, Kevin
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does what I pretend to do. Kevin's a proper musician. Iggy Pop said
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quote, Kevin Armstrong has been around and around. In the early eighties,
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Armstrong signed to EMI Records as a solo artist, but fate had other plans
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for him. He's going on to carve out a career as a producer,
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songwriter and guitarist, performing live and recording with Thomas Dolby, David Bowie,
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Iggy Pop, Paul McCartney, Roy Orbison, Morrissey, Shinead O'Connor, and
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many many more. In Absolute Beginner, Armstrong takes us into the backstage world
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of artists he's worked with for over forty years, what it's like to have
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a prime seat at the high table of rock and roll, and what it
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takes to survive as a self taught musician. He's had quite a career and
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he's here to tell us all about it. To hear the songs Kevin Armstrong
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performs on, head over to the show notes page. Hi Kevin, welcome
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to the podcast. Hey Eric, good to be with you. Boy,
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what an introduction to this book. This I don't think there's a more compelling
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introduction to a book. It's short and sweet, but boy, it made
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me want to dig into it some more. Referring to July eighteenth, nineteen
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eighty five, well, there's the first typo in the book because it actually
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the date is July thirteenth. It's the thirteenth, he's correctly referred to later
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in the book. But that's a major typo in the first line. But
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hey, okay, things happened well we're going to leave people in suspense on
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that will. We'll get to that, but let's talk about what led up
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to that day and that whole period of your life. Tell us about where
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you were raised and the music you listened to, because you do mention you
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were part of the generation that literally hit under the bed covers with the transistor
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radio listening to pirate radio. Yeah. I'm a suburban kid from South London
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from an ordinary kind of background, really not a privileged background, a kind
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of you know, working class kind of background, and just got fascinated with
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music early on. My mother was musical, she was she could have been
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a classical pianist, I think had she not given up to be a housewife
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in the fifties. And I just got the bug for guitar and for what
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I heard on the radio, and just the whole idea of pop culture grabbed
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me very early on. And I guess being my age, my life's kind
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of mirrored the whole trajectory of it, you know, I grew up with
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it. I was born two years after Elvis Presley got famous, you know.
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And also, you're a musical autodidact. That means you're self taught I'm
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self taught only. I mean, yeah, like I say in the book,
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I had a little bit of a classical piano education, you know,
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I attempted that, but it wasn't really going to be my thing. I
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just think I had an overwhelmingly good ear for music and that sort of superseded
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my patience for the study of it. So, and of course, if
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you start playing the guitar, it's one of those things you can get good
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at it quite quickly. If you're sort of physically capable and you have a
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good ear, you can get some quite good results quite quickly. So that
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was what spurred me on. I think, well, that was what I
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was going to ask. I always feel like if somebody's self taught, it
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encourages more creativity, because it's not by the book. Do you feel that
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that's the case. Is there an a long hell debate. I don't know,
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but what to say about that. There are times in my life when
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I wish I knew more about theoretical harmony and stuff, But there are other
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times when I've taught myself a lot about that anyway, and there are other
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times when I think, yes, you are more free. I guess if
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you're not classically trained, you're sometimes more free to break the rules. Of
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course, there's an argument that says, in order to break the rules,
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it's good to know them first exactly, otherwise you're just making it up.
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But I mean, being self taught, I think it has a good and
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bad things about it. But I have no complaints having been able to call
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myself a musician for fifty years. Quite a career. Yeah, absolutely.
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And your first guitar you got on your own. You saved up with the
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paper out and you watch cars and you buy your first guitar, and it
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appears as if your dad was a really cool guy. Instead of trying to
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stop you from a career in music, he encouraged it. He told a
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sixteen year old Kevin Armstrong to go for it. What led to your move
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to London? And yeah, well there was you know, like I say
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in the book, there was a lot of auditions. You could see in
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the Melody Maker. There was a newspaper with a big classified section at the
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back of music paper, and a lot of quite really famous bands got together
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through advertising in there. And I just used to go to auditions and things,
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and one time I got the opportunity to say, go to London and
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join a band. I only grew up like twenty miles south of London,
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but it was like a big deal at sixteen to sort of butt out of
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school and be in a band. And my dad a lot of love him
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and rest his soul. He just said go for it, because it wasn't
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like a full throated yeah. It was just like sort of, well,
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if you don't do it now, you'll regret it, so you better go
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and do it while you're young enough to make a mistake, I think,
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And luckily for him and for them, it wasn't a mistake. It was
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the right thing to do. So I took his advice to heart and just
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left home at sixteen to join the circus kind of thing. I want to
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ask you about the first band that you formed, but first I want to
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ask about Thomas Dolby, because you speak very highly of him. An amazing
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talent here in the States. It was blinded me with science. That was
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that put him on the map. You play guitar on that track, right,
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I played guitar on that track and Hyperactive too, and a lot of
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his stuff. When did you meet Thomas and talk about it? Your early
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impression of him as a music Yeah, well, I hired him as a
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session musician for an album I was making with my band, Local Heroes,
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because that contained the bass player Matthew Seligman, again, a dear friend of
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both mine and Thomass, who left us due to COVID in twenty twenty.
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But Matthew and I were in a band together, Local Heroes, and I
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wanted a new element for something we were recording, and Matthew said, I
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knew this guy who's interesting with electronics and everything. So he came in just
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just played a few things on the record, and I recognized talent when I
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see it, and I just thought, oh, he's amazing. And then
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at the end of the band a kind of year later or something, he
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said to me, come and play on something I'm doing, and I did,
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and we got on really well, and we even worked together as recently
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as about twenty twelve. We did a tour of the States. We did
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south by Southwest and we dragged a bus and ourselves around around the States and
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did something. Then he's just an immense talent. Really, He's one of
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those people who's cleverer than ninety nine point nine percent of the population and always
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will be a very clever guy. She blinded me with science. What do
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you recall about that recording that song? Did you know it was going to
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be a huge hit after you listened to it? I don't know really.
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I mean it was something that Thomas brought along and he had an idea for
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it, and Matthew and I we kicked it around in rehearsal and we started
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to sort of strip it down and it started off, you know, like
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Rolling Stones film where they keep playing Sympathy for the Devil in twenty thousand styles
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until finally the conga player gets up and they nail it, you know,
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And it was something like that. We were just throwing the idea around and
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then we stripped it right down, stripped it right down, stripped it right
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down. Then eventually it turned out to this kind of funk thing that you
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hear the record, like the record, and it started to work, and
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I think we thought it was quite exciting. I didn't realize it was going
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to be a big hit, but it was. It was great. Yeah,
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good for him. Were you in that video? Yeah, you're in
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that video. Yeah, I'm in the video with the one with all the
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sort of mad scientists around. Yeah, yeah, I think I'm I think
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I'm lowering a gas mask over someone's face in there and pushing a trolley along
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and running around in there somewhere. I'm in there. I mean it.
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Basically, we were dressed in scrubs all day and hanging around for like eighteen
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hours or something. Oh man, did you realize MTV was going to be
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such a powerful tool to sell I think it was already by then, wasn't
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it. I mean he three three, I think it was already. It
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was already starting to explode then that. You know, to get anywhere you
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had to have a video, And again Thomas is on the leading edge of
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that. A lot of the early things he did with video were very clever
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and very groundbreaking, even the first kind of use of drones and things.
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Recently, he did a fantastic in awfored Ness where they have this abandoned military
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lighthouse. You're not supposed to go on it, and Thomas went there one
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day in a kind of rowing boat from his house in Shingle Street and then
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used the drone to make a video of himself. And that was years ago.
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I mean, he's really been always he's always at the forefront of something.
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Now he was with EMI Records, where you eventually signed in the early
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eighties. This was your band, Bush Telegraph. Yeah, that's the one,
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okay that didn't pan out. What happened with Bush Telegraph, Well,
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I don't know. I think it was just a sort of I was trying
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to put a band together and I did, and it was it followed on
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the Thomas's success. We shared a manager and so we kind of got showed
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in through the door at EMI, and then we made an album and somehow
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it got away from me. It just was a pivotal point in my life
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where I thought I wasn't particularly ready for that. I don't know why.
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Something about my you know, to have your ducks in a row to be
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to want to be an artist, you have to have everything right, you
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know, And I think I just wasn't really ready. Something about the thing
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was playing a part, or it wasn't wasn't deeply connected to myself who I
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am, and I think you shouldn't try and fake that, and I think
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part of me was faking it in way and so it didn't pan out.
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And also record company politics being what they were at the time, a lot
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of money was thrown at acts in the eighties, and if you didn't make
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a spark very quickly, by the time the next regime came into the record
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company, they just put a red line through that band if they weren't making
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it, you know. And that sort of happened to us, and it
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just didn't connect, you know. Yeah, that's the misconception. A lot
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of people will just will just assume if somebody is extremely talented, then they
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make it. If they don't make it, then there's just something. There's
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a lot more to it. There's so many working there. There's a lot
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more to it. And for me, it was for me, it was
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like the being frightened of the spotlight being on me somehow, and I couldn't
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quite admit that to myself, and that was what it was, you know,
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really, I just wasn't I didn't have the kind of a driven ego
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thing where you know, I think a lot of people who make it really
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big they have to, out of necessity, be quite focused on themselves at
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the expense of a lot of other stuff. And I just couldn't quite go
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that extra ruthless mile for that, you know. Yeah, And there's always
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that that thought that the universe is always going to try to steer us in
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the right direction, and for you, it comes with the story of mister
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X. I cannot complain about that. You know, literally it was like
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out of the out of the ashes of my career, which I was like,
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oh my god, what am I going to do now? Now you
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had hit rock bottom? Yeah, you said you felt The next week,
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I get sent to a session with an anonymous superstar and it turns out to
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be David Bowie and there's the rest of my life mapped out right there.
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Wow. Yeah, So talk about that day you walk in, you see
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him, or he actually comes in. You guys were waiting and we were
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already waiting. He came in and and it was just immediately he put us.
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He put everyone at their ease because he was extremely charming and understood people
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in a way few artists I've worked with do. Really. I mean,
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I think he was an extraordinary sensitive person and he and yeah, so he
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just put us at our ease. He was He's very easy going, lots
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of laughter, and that was just a very happy day. It just went
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really well. It couldn't have gone better for me. And if I recall
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correctly, this was a movie soundtrack he was working on. He brought you
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it was the same it was. It was what became Absolute Beginners, that
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the Colin mckinness book that was turned into a movie by Julian Temple. It
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was a bummer of a movie. It was a turkey at the box office.
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But the song Absolute Beginners came out of it, and that was his
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theme tune for the song. And of course that's a great song, as
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everyone knows, it's a great, terrific song. And of course everybody remembers
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David Bowie just as a brilliant mind. What was he like to work with,
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to see him at work? What was that like? Well, like
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I say, it was always very relaxed. Everything went very quickly. Everything
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was quite spontaneous. If there was any mashing over artistic kind of intellectual approach
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to his work, of which undeniably there's a lot a lot of it that
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was under the surface or it had already had happened, or what was happening
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off somewhere else, because when it came time to actually create the work,
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it was always very lighthearted, very quick and done in a spirit of energy,
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and it was it was great crackling energy really around him was it was
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fantastic to work with him. And you were a fan of his music growing
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up, right, so that was I was quite an experience. What was
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the first first song or album that you remember? Well, Space Oddity was
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the first thing I heard of his when it was a hit in Britain.
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I heard Space Odity, And then of course he had that run of incredible
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albums Manus Old the World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy stard Us, the lad
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Insane, Diamond Dogs. I mean, those are just the core of so
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much music, and so many genres have spun off in pop music from those
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records, extraordinary things, you know, punk to electronica to glam rock.
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I mean just so many things came off his output at that time in the
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early mid seventies, and by the time you're working with him, it's mid
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eighties. But he still has so many ideas left, as we know,
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as the years a go on, he would experiment with so many different things
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and it just scary was probably maybe my favorite, scary monsters your favorite,
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yeah, yeah, even that later period of low and heroes and scary monsters.
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Fantastic creativity and he never wasted it a day, that's what he was
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doing. I mean, even that absolute Beginner's song, it was tacked on
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half an hour at the end of the session. It was just like,
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well we got half an hour, what we're going to do. We threw
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that together really quick, and he obviously had the bones of it before that.
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Everyone has their favorite Bowie period because there's so much breadth to his work.
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It just covered so many areas. You know, he went into American
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funk and Philly soul with Station to Station and all that, and David Live
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and all that stuff. It just went so many you know, punk heavy
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rock manas sold the world just so many, so many things. So to
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work with him was there was there was always something unexpected would happen, always
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the process between you and him. Did he give you some leeway or did
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he say this is this is the riff I'm looking for? How did that
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all play out? No, there was no. That's the remarkable thing I
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think about his amazing talent for spotting, you know, for spotting the chemistry
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of people that go together. He hardly ever said anything about music really to
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anyone. I think he you know, he assembled the people he wanted and
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he just let them loose, and his own creativity in his own pocket of
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his songwriting and everything was so he had so much faith in it and confidence
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in it. He just let people loose on it. And that's how he
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that's how so much innovation happened on his records. How many studio albums did
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you work with Bowie? Four with him? I suppose three really, Blah
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blah blah with Iggy Pop was one, which obviously he was in tech to
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the whole thing. Then Tim Machine, the first Tin Machine album, and
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then the Outside album. Although my contribution to Outside was apart from co writing
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the title song was quite small. I just did overdubs on a few tracks
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for that. So three really okay. And I believe there's a picture in
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the book of you, David and someone else for the Iggy Pop album.
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I believe because you were doing vocals. Yeah, I mean that was Eardl
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Kazilke. He's a Turkish musician who like a multi instrumentalist, who David was
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using a lot at that period because he lived locally in Switzerland where David was
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working. So that was Eardle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, those sessions
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were fun. So this does lead to the story now July thirteenth, nineteen
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eighty five, take us back to that surreal moment where you wake up that
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morning and where you end up at the end of that day. This was
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a great story. Yeah, Well, you know, as I say,
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I was in a kind of a very humble flat which I'd broken into and
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squatted illegally, which is what we used to do in London. Then if
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we had no money and just used to find an empty place and get the
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power switched on and the water hooked up, if we could and live there,
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and I was, so I was. That's how I was living at
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the time, hand to mouth. Really. Of course we'd done them by
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then. We'd done the absolute beginner's recording session and we'd done the rehearsal,
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so we knew something big was going on. We were working with David Bowie.
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But the actual morning of the concert of Live Aid, I never realized
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how big that was going to be. I knew it was going to be
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a big deal, but not that it would take over the the attention of
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the whole world. World did the world, and that was that was a
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surprise. To wake up that morning and the streets were literally devoid of traffic,
17:45
it was all going on up the road. Unbelievable. And you recorded
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Dancing in the Street with Bowie and Mick Jagger. You play guitar on that
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track. What was that experience like working with Mick? How was he?
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Mick was great, just a relaxed dude, you know, just came in
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very you know. I spent one rehearsal I describe it in the book,
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in a very intimate setting with him and just him and David in a kind
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of a secret rehearsal we had for that, and then I had to teach
18:11
the song to the band, and Mick bold in and just did it.
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He did his thing, and he was very, very relaxed, you know.
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Obviously him and David had a very close body relationship going, and they
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laughed a lot together and it was good fun. It was good fun,
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crackling fun to be around them. Have you had a chance to listen to
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the New Stones song? No, I haven't, actually, yeah, only
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the single So Angry, which is a great song. Well, I'm glad
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you think so. I personally, for me, it sounds like start me
18:48
Up, but without the boughts. And that's what I think. I think,
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and I hear elements of auto tune or some production things which I think
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probably Keith Richards would be massively allergic to. So as a as a as
19:02
an Old Stones fan, it doesn't touch me that much. Although I want
19:07
to hear the rest of the record. I really do, Yeah, I
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believe, yeah, about a week from now it comes out. I just
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I think it's just fabulous to see a band like The Stones. There's obviously
19:18
no reason to make new music. It's not like they have to for any
19:21
other reason than they just want to, which I think, well, yeah,
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that's right. I mean. The thing about The Stones that I always
19:27
think is, like I say this to people, like I remember a period
19:32
in the maybe eighties, early nineties where people saying, oh, the Rolling
19:34
Stones should have given up long ago, those old arts, they should have
19:37
retired. And then you know, twenty odd years later, everyone's clamoring for
19:42
a ticket still, and I think that's that shows you something. That's that
19:47
where rock and roll has gone is it has become this reliquary of greatness in
19:52
a way, and instead of just being oh, well, it's really boring,
19:56
people still want to see the real thing now and the way it the
20:00
way that live performance has gone, they still want to see something like the
20:03
Rolling Stones. It's an experience, you know, It's not something you know,
20:06
like a download. You can download some new artists' work and just listen
20:10
to it on your headphones or whatever, but you can't replicate going to a
20:14
Rolling Stones concert. That's still vital now, absolutely now as an artist.
20:18
From an artist's perspective, Whenever I hear a musician say why bother making new
20:22
music because there's no money to be made off of it, I'm always thinking,
20:26
but you're a creative person. You have to create, right. I
20:29
mean, I know you're right now. Your book ends with you're talking about
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you're creating your own music. I don't see why you wouldn't, But I
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guess there's maybe there's a financial thing. Maybe there's maybe it's too costly to
20:41
put an album out if you're going to lose money. Yeah, well,
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you see. I can't speak for young youngsters in this regard, you know,
20:48
given the history that I've had and the things that surround me and that
20:53
and the kind of success I've had, really it means I have the luxury
20:57
of having time to put into creative projects and I don't care very much about
21:03
whether they make a lot of money or not. It's not my prime motivation
21:06
now. So yeah, I am working on new music and I'm doing it,
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you know. But I can understand if you're a young person in your
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twenties and you've got to put food on the table or pay your rent,
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that's a very hard thing to get together the luxury that I've got, like
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the time and the resources and the gear and all the rest of it to
21:23
do that. So I think it's a harder thing to do now. Although
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having said that, even when I was younger, are starved. I mean,
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many of my generation we did starve. We just did this is what
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we do, you know. We lived on a shoe string. There were
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possibly talking from an English perspective, like you say, you could break into
21:45
a house and you could sign on the unemployment every week and get enough money
21:52
to survive. And really that's what my apprenticeship as a musician consisted of.
21:56
You use what you could around you as a kind of for an apprenticeship,
22:00
if you like. And these days there's a sort of slight thing. There
22:04
was nothing like Berkeley around when I was going, so you couldn't go to
22:08
school to learn to be a rock star. But here now we have courses
22:12
at university to be a rock musician. There's every university has an audio engineering
22:18
course or a performance course, or a guitar course or something, and so
22:22
people go to school for that and that's great, but I just think it's
22:26
harder than ever now to you know, we live in a tough, tough
22:30
time for musicians, for young musicians. I think I want to go back
22:33
to David Bowie because I almost forgot to ask this, because there's a story
22:36
in the book about just the person that he was, and I'm referring to
22:40
something you've found out just six months before David passed. It was something that
22:44
the drummer for Public Enemy told you, And this is t Bone Davis and
22:48
t Bone's dad, Dennis played drums for David in later years, David helped
22:52
Dennis. Well, yeah, I ran into Public Enemy. I was playing
22:57
with Iggy Pop. We were playing at a festival in Iceland and the sun
23:02
doesn't set in the summer there for three or four months. It's just daylight,
23:06
you know, twenty four hours a day. So we came off stage
23:08
at the festival and we were all staying at the same tiny hotel near Keflvik
23:12
in Iceland. So we ended up drinking with Flavor Flavor and Chuck d and
23:18
all that. And you said he had the clock ye in the bar and
23:23
then yeah, but and I met t Bone there, who's his public enemy's
23:27
live drummer killing drummer. Great guy. We got talking about our backgrounds and
23:33
our histories and things, and I said, oh, I share something with
23:34
your dad, because I worked with David Bowie. And he told me,
23:37
yeah, that Dennis was Dennis was sick for many years and David helped with
23:42
his medical bills, which in America is a big dealer, as you know.
23:45
Sure, wow, what a good I mean. And that's probably just
23:48
one of many stories that people could tell about David. Boy. He just
23:52
probably didn't want anybody to know about it. He just did those kind of
23:56
things for people. I think he was you know, maybe when he started
23:59
out, you know, he didn't he didn't like you know, if you're
24:02
if you're on that trajectory as a young artist, maybe you don't think about
24:04
people so much. But I think in later life he definitely did. What
24:07
I love about some of these artists I've worked with David and Iggy is they
24:11
clearly did not have normal lives as young men. They were focused on their
24:15
own careers to the exclusion of everything else. They didn't have family, they
24:19
didn't have ties, they didn't look after other people. But what they did
24:23
was later in life they found that balance. I think I think lou Reid
24:27
did as well, and they found that joy in their families and their people
24:33
and looking after their friends and friendships and all that. I think that's that's
24:37
what where they've gone, and that's really nice. I like the idea that
24:41
these kind of you know, wild rockers and rock stars and gods of rock
24:47
turned out to have something to teach everybody, which is you can pursue your
24:52
dreams and then eventually, when you get there, you turn into a well
24:56
rounded person. And that's what they've all done. Yeah, and a lot
25:00
of times they find out the fame and the fortune and all of that,
25:03
it still leads them empty, and then they find the real happiness isn't the
25:07
things that all of us find happen. I think all of it made them
25:10
happy, you know, I think all of it did. But of course
25:12
all they all had their struggles, because it's a life that can lead you
25:15
into many alleyways, and there are many people who fall by the wayside,
25:18
and there are many casualties, but it's lovely to see the ones who succeed
25:21
really big and then they just they can turn around and teach us all something
25:25
about life. I think in the Price of Fame there's a story in the
25:27
book he's working on. This is nineteen eighty nine. I think there's somebody
25:33
who walks into the studio unannounced. This is in the book. David Bowie
25:37
had somebody walk up to him, right, Yeah. I think there was
25:40
a thing in the book about a session we were doing in montra with the
25:44
with Tim Sheene and yeah, I sort of slightly odd guy came in and
25:48
started to lean over David and give him a hard time. And this is
25:53
something obviously David had to live with very much, you know, being so
25:56
famous. And also there's a peculiar kind of a quality that David Bowie fanatic
26:03
fans have, which is a lot of them a little bit woo woo.
26:08
Yeah. Well, I think he was saying that you were supposed to meet
26:11
me and you never did write and David all that, yeah, and and
26:15
people take his lyrics as some kind of you know, they just read so
26:19
much into into what he wrote, because he wrote such imaginative things, and
26:26
I think some people it just turns some people's heads. And this guy was
26:30
clearly a sort of you know, shouldn't have been there. David handled it
26:33
really well. He was really relaxed about it, and I think I say
26:36
in a book, you know, me and Hunt Sales managed to kind of
26:37
hustle the guy away, but he did have to. David did have to
26:41
have a bodyguard because of John Lennon, right. He learned from John Lennon
26:45
for sure. You know, he was still he was still very much part
26:48
of Sean's life when I was working with him. Sean Lennon used to come
26:53
for summer holidays and spend them with David and hang out and stuff. So
26:59
he was hanging out with Yoko and I think he Yeah, of course John's
27:03
death affected him greatly. The book Down Rock Podcast will be back after this.
27:11
Kevin Armstrong is our guest his brand new book titled Absolute Beginner, Memoirs
27:15
of the World's Best Least Known Guitarist. It's out this week and in your
27:18
Market Value rose with Live Aid. This led to a job working with Iggy
27:22
Pop. How did that all come about? And what was that experience like
27:25
working with Iggy? Yeah? Again it was David. I just called me
27:29
and said, would you like to come and play guitar and Aniggy Pop record?
27:32
And I absolutely leapt at that because I was an Iggy fan too,
27:34
and so I just got on a plane with a guitar over my back,
27:37
went and made the Blah Blah Blah album with them in Switzerland. And then
27:42
it led on to Iggy asking me to put a band together for his tour
27:47
for that around the States, around the world, and I did that in
27:49
the mid eighties. You know Iggy again, he's just a ball of lightning.
27:53
Really as as an artist, absolutely fantastic. Is he the same off
27:59
stage? Ah No, actually not quite remarkably not. I think he can
28:07
be. But Iggy Pop's a creation. Jim Osterberg is the man and Iggy
28:11
Pop is a is a is his Doctor Jekyl and mister Hyde character in a
28:17
way. I mean that's not to say he's not a real person. When
28:21
you meet him. He's very much, you know, a very nice guy.
28:26
But Iggy Pop definitely takes on a new different It takes his personality to
28:30
a completely different level when he's on stage, and it's something he has to
28:34
work up to in performance. That's his art, that's his big art.
28:38
Is that Alice Cooper talked about how he struggled. That's at one point he
28:42
started to feel like he was that character and he had to learn how to
28:45
separate the too otherwise he for sure, for sure, I think Iggy Pop
28:51
took over Jim Osterberg's life for much of his life for sure. Now again,
28:55
like he's one of those guys. He's got a love beautiful wife,
28:57
he likes to live well, he looks after himself, and still in his
29:02
seventies, he's reached a plateau of kind of he's very he's a very happy
29:07
individual generally, and still Iggy Pop has to be He lets him out of
29:11
a box for the gigs and outcome right. Well, everybody loves the great
29:17
stories of rock and roll debauchery. I guess you could call it. And
29:21
yes, you toured with Iggy, you did the TV appearances with him,
29:23
and there's some stories in the book I love. There's the New York Ritz
29:26
gig where you hung out and got high with a few strippers at the Waldorf
29:30
that was in Texas. You went, what's the story of the bandmate hotel
29:34
room? Yeah, took everything out? Yeah, yeah, there's a lot.
29:38
I mean, there's lots of road stories in the book. There were
29:41
actually a lot I left out some that couldn't go in there. Well,
29:45
yeah, there's some that, you know, just to protect the innocent and
29:48
protect the guilty too, and may and just maybe spare the feelings of certain
29:53
people. But there's another book. Maybe when I'm older, there's a more.
29:59
Tourett's the book. I'll just put everything in. Yeah yeah, yeah,
30:04
but you took all the furniture out, TV and all and put him
30:07
in the stairwell. This is one of your bandmate's hotel rooms. Yeah,
30:11
yeah, we did. We we pulled a stunt on him. Yeah,
30:14
I mean it was just a stupid, really stupid, kind of stupid thing
30:17
that young young men do to each other. Yeah, we removed everything from
30:21
his room. Everything. Did you ever do the throw the furniture out the
30:25
window? The TV? Well, yeah, we did a bit of that
30:26
too. Yeah. There was definitely a you know, I think a TV
30:30
went over a Florida hotel balcony and some fireworks were let off, and we
30:37
we we we had our moments exactly. That's when you say I've made it.
30:41
Yeah, well I think maybe, yeah, maybe, I don't.
30:45
You know, I don't look back with any great pride on that kind of
30:48
behavior, but it's funny to look back on it. Yeah. Now I
30:51
get to the studio band that you were in for the Jonathan Ross Channel four
30:56
show, and this, I believe is what nineteen eighty nine when you got
30:59
this. Okay, not like David Letterman. It's a lot like the Letterman
31:03
Show, a live show, broadcast live with a house band and chat guests.
31:08
That's basically the format and a kind of you know, comedic, kind
31:11
of a jovial host in Jonathan Ross and that that was the same. It
31:15
was the Letterman format ripped really for a UK audience. That's exactly what it
31:18
was. But this gave you a chance to perform with some great names.
31:22
Roy Orbison, Robert Plant found his way into the story, which people can
31:26
read about in the book. But there's another name in there, Paul McCartney.
31:30
And this led to a gig with Paul in the studio to record his
31:33
eighty nine album and also play was for you to go out on the road
31:38
with him. But the atmosphere in the studio was somewhat tense and weird.
31:42
It didn't really work out with McCartney and me. You know, it's just
31:45
a story of getting invited to his office. You got it. Yeah,
31:48
well yeah, I'm you're not going to tell it here. You have got
31:51
to read it in the book in suspense. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
31:56
Otherwise we'll just we'll just end up doing the whole book with you.
31:59
But it's a there is a story about McCartney in there, which is it
32:02
was just odd. It's just a little bit of odd behavior which I can't
32:07
still to this day, don't know quite why. It's a mystery to me,
32:12
which is a shame because I'm a huge McCartney fan, and you know,
32:15
as I say in the book, it's sort of unfinished business. I'd
32:19
really like the opportunity to make it up with him and play with him again
32:22
for some you know, I did end up. I think my contributions to
32:25
Flowers in the Dirt on some of the early demos for it, and some
32:30
of the versions that didn't make the actual official album came out in a later
32:34
version. So I am on a couple of McCartney cuts officially on those on
32:37
that re release, Oh that's cool, okay, Yeah, which songs?
32:43
Well, it was the Elvis Costello and songs My Brave Face, so Light
32:47
Candy and something else as well. I can't remember now, but it's there
32:52
is a later version of that Flowers in the Dirt record. There's a kind
32:55
of reassume that came out, and it's got all these developed versions of the
33:00
songs on it, and I'm on a few of those. Oh that's cool,
33:02
okay, Yeah, And I remember you're writing to the one of the
33:05
Beatles feel to that album and yeah, I think I'm trying to remember who
33:08
is the producer of that? Well, that's that's the point. I think
33:13
at the point I was involved with it was Elvis Costello was producer. SA
33:15
I'm sorry, Yes, you're right, sure, but he didn't. He
33:19
wasn't the producer of that record because McCartney let it go through all these stages
33:23
and he had different people at the Helm for that. I think he ended
33:28
up possibly with Steve Lips and Trevor Horn's major engineer, producing some of it,
33:32
and maybe Phil Ramone. I don't know who else he did it,
33:36
but he did it with some other people as well. Your thoughts on Paul
33:38
McCartney at his age still, I mean he goes out there and plays what
33:42
too. Good luck to him, man, I mean, he's still got
33:45
the voice, he's still doing it. He's still got a killing band,
33:47
you know. I think it's like, I don't see why people should stop
33:52
if they if it's if it's good, if what they're doing is good and
33:54
people want to see it, then why not. You know, it's only
33:58
it's only wrong if it becomes sad, if someone's got dementia, or if
34:01
they're you know, really clearly can't do it anymore or whatever. Fine,
34:06
but there's no reason to grow up and stop. If you if you're in
34:08
your seventies, eighties whatever. BB King never stopped, John Lee Hooker never
34:14
stopped. Why should Paul McCartney stop. Why should Mick Jagger stop? I
34:16
don't don't see it. And Ringo too, Ringo Kim Apre Tour, the
34:21
All Star band indeed indeed great band. Yeah, And I you know,
34:24
I just think it's great that people carry on because if people want to see
34:28
it. I mean, if it does become a real sort of sad spectacle,
34:30
then fine, But I don't think it is I think it's really good.
34:32
And the way that technology is and the way the musicians are now,
34:37
they can still put on a crack and show at that age. It doesn't
34:38
have to be compromised at all. I don't think another milestone moment. You
34:43
worked with Morrissey, who's one of the most enigmatic figures in music. What
34:46
was he like, Yeah, Morris's a mysterious gentleman. You right, well,
34:53
yeah, you know. Yeah, he's kind of absorbed, a little
34:57
bit of a loner, not too many close friends. And again, I
35:01
really I'm a real admirer of his work. I think it's amazing. But
35:06
as a person he has people have some difficulty with him, and that's not
35:09
surprising. He's a pretty uncompromising I remember when he wrote his book, his
35:15
memoir. Everybody he wrote about in that book came out in some way not
35:21
spoken about that glowing right. And Mark Nevin from Fairground Attraction rang me a
35:29
week after Morrison's book came out, so said, have you read Morris's book?
35:31
I said, yeah, I have. He said, thank funck,
35:32
we're not in it. Well, yeah, that's the thing. To write
35:37
these books. It's like they want you to give some dirt well, you
35:42
know, I don't know whether anybody asked him to do that. I love
35:44
Morrison's book. I think that the first part of it is really great when
35:46
about he's growing up in Mancheston, about the poetry and all that stuff,
35:50
and it's really great until he gets to the smith's court case and then it
35:52
gets a little bit you know, it's not so much of a page turner
35:57
there, but it's a It's a great book, and I think Morrison's a
35:59
very interesting character. I still perform some of his songs that I was involved
36:01
in. But the period I was with him was the Boner Drag album,
36:06
so it was going to be a second Morrissey solo album after Viva Hate.
36:09
But somehow he didn't complete the tranch of new original songs for that, so
36:16
it came out as a kind of hybrid album. It had reissues from Viva
36:21
Hate and some new material and I wrote three songs with him, which was
36:24
which was great, you know, a great success for me that and I
36:29
still play some of the songs like what's that like? Writing music with him,
36:32
it was again a remote process. So it was like I figured out
36:37
that Johnny's method with him was probably the one to go for which is his
36:40
You know, you deliver to Morrissey quite elaborate guitar instrumentals that sound like finished
36:47
pieces of music on their own, and yet they have run for a singer
36:52
of his nature to sort of flow over the top. And so that's what
36:54
it is. I just gave him some demos and said pick something from this,
36:59
and he picked out three things to work on and came back with them
37:01
finished. I remember he appeared on Saturday Night Live and the crowd went nuts.
37:07
I mean, he just had this effect. I think he was on
37:08
the Tonight Show too as well, with maybe Johnny Cars or whatever. But
37:13
the fans, they just they go another girl's screaming. He really he took
37:17
over counterculture for many years, didn't He was like the new musical Express here?
37:22
How they think? I had him on the cover for every three or
37:23
four issues for years. And it amazes me that the Mexican fans as well.
37:29
There's the mech received thing, isn't there. There's a huge fan base
37:31
in Mexico. So good luck to him. Man. You know again,
37:35
it's an interesting artist. And that's another thing about why I told my story
37:38
at this point is because I've worked with some really interesting left field artists.
37:44
They're not your bog standard kind of pop artists, any of them. So
37:49
I figured out after a while, I've been really lucky to work with these
37:52
really interesting characters. You know, did you learn a little bit from each
37:55
that you now put into your own songwrit always and that's what's that's the title
38:00
of the book. It happens to be the song that I helped to make
38:02
with David Bowie. Absolute beginner. But that's the whole ethos of my work
38:07
is that I'm going to learn something in this situation, right. That's how
38:10
I started out, by saying yes to everything that I was offered and hoping
38:15
to learn something from it. And even you know, a lot of artists
38:17
who I've worked with, it seems like sometimes you can feel a little as
38:22
a musician, you can feel a little overqualified for something, or I think
38:25
that this is this is really simple, what they're asking here is And especially
38:30
if there are a singer or a big artist who doesn't play an instrument themselves
38:34
necessarily, and they just they seem to say dumb things. Sometimes you like,
38:38
you really mean that, you know, but then if you follow it,
38:40
you just think, wait a minute, drop your shit here and listen
38:44
to them, because they got where they are by knowing what's what you know?
38:47
And I've learned so much from these artists because you can learn, you
38:52
know, even if it's something's a little bit out of your grasp, a
38:54
little bit out of your reach, you can learn it on the job.
38:58
You can, you know, and if you don't, and you'll then okay,
39:00
it didn't work out. But it's always good to say yes. If
39:04
you're a sideman, if you want to work in music, it's great to
39:07
say yes, and they learn on the gig and just keep your ears open
39:09
and you can always you can always learn something from from the sometimes the most
39:14
unpromising beginnings. You can really learn something deep from someone's approach to something,
39:19
and just from a networking aspect too, because then that person knows somebody who
39:22
knows somebody. So yeah, there's always a benefit to it. Now there's
39:27
of course, there's one other artist say I definitely want to ask you about
39:30
because she sadly passed the summer, Snead O'Connor. You did work with her,
39:34
What was your experience? This was in two thousand and seven. You
39:37
worked with her two thousand and seven. Yeah, I was a good friends
39:40
with the father of her firstborn, John Reynolds, and her ex husband and
39:46
also drummer and producer and the person she most went to in the world for
39:52
guidance and trust and friendship. And I was a good friend of John's.
39:55
And I just got a call one day saying, oh, listen, we're
39:59
doing a tour in the state. We need a guitar player. Do you
40:00
want to come and do it? So, of course it was interesting.
40:02
I didn't know she made it really at all. Then she was again a
40:07
really enigmatic, interesting character. I think that her whole career was dogged by,
40:14
you know, partly her abusive childhood and her mental illness problems. She
40:17
did have emotional problems and mental problems and addiction problems and all the rest of
40:22
it. But she was at heart a very sensitive and funny and charming person.
40:28
And you know, I hate it when people slag her off, all
40:31
that sort of hatred that came out Joe PESHI wanting to bury her, and
40:35
you know the rest of it. For ripping up the Pope thing. She
40:37
was proved right in the end about the Catholic Church and the cover ups and
40:42
everything else she may have made her point in a kind of, you know,
40:45
less an acceptable way to a lot of people whatever, but she was
40:49
proved right, and that was typically sort of what sometimes you know bowl she
40:54
loud young women attract. If they step on the wrong toe, everybody wants
40:59
to kill them and everything, And she sort of ruined her own career over
41:01
it in some ways. But she was a really proper great artist she made,
41:07
and I think it's terribly sad the way she ended her life. Yeah,
41:10
I think in retrospect now, you know, when somebody's battling mental health
41:14
issues, you just have to have some empathy there because it's a lot of
41:16
it is out of their control. And the courage she had to do those
41:21
types of things with mental health problems, it's I'm sure it was so difficult
41:24
for her to bubble way through all of that as a absolutely and absolutely struggle.
41:29
So there were gigs I did with her, for instance, which I
41:31
describe in the books, where she's kind of literally wearing a hood and shuffling
41:36
around the stage whispering into a microphone, and others where she could just take
41:38
the roof off a place and it was just transcendently beautiful what she said,
41:43
That's what I wanted to ask. But yeah, like when she was on,
41:45
Yeah, it was mesmerizing. Yeah, but there are so many great
41:49
artists, aren't there we can think of who are the same, you know,
41:51
who are similarly like that. It's a bit of a lottery when you
41:53
go and see them, whether they're going to be transcendent or awful, you
41:58
know, and truly great artists don't always have a professional control over that because
42:02
they're so sensitive and they're so what they're giving you is so vulnerable. You
42:07
know. Bob Dylan I can think of, is the same. Really,
42:08
sometimes you see him, it's amazing, and sometimes you think, what the
42:12
hell's he doing? Right? Well, that's that's a fascinates me too.
42:15
About musicians, famous musicians. More often than that you find out that they're
42:20
introverts, they're shy. You would think that they're just they're out there and
42:23
the way they are on stage is the way they are off stage. But
42:27
they usually will just go into an empty yu. The only little thing you
42:31
know, I see about this is that some of the preparations I've seen,
42:35
you know, people like Iggy and Bowie make on themselves and the transformation they
42:39
go through to become the public performer and then the private person and the little
42:45
experience I've had myself. Even lately, I do a number of one man
42:50
shows, so I play with a looper and a guitar and I sing,
42:53
and I do some you know, Bowie conventions, or I do book launches,
42:57
or I do you know, little events and things like that. So
43:00
I have to go through that thing myself where I think, well, if
43:02
I'm playing a stadium with Iggy Pop, I'm not nervous. I go up
43:07
there, what I know what I'm doing, and they haven't come to see
43:09
me. They've come to see him, and I just kind of just enjoy
43:13
roaring away behind him, and that's great. I'm looking at the crowd.
43:16
I'm never nervous. If I'm playing an art center to fifty people and I'm
43:21
singing and playing, I have to go through like gut wrenching fear before doing
43:25
that. Yeah, it's something of the sort of feeling you think, oh
43:30
my god, look at that picture of Bowie at Milton Keynes in his yellow
43:32
suit like this and this sixty and eighty thousand people. You know what you
43:38
have to go through for that? Thinking about Michael Jackson, you know,
43:43
watching the This is It documentary about the one the tour he failed to execute
43:49
because he died, right, but watching him go through that, you can
43:52
understand why some people have real struggles with addiction and mental problems and things when
43:58
they have to be so completely on it and so brilliant in such a concentrated
44:04
way for so many people unrealistic expectations. Yeah, great, it's really admirable.
44:09
I mean, I really admire that. I really admire people like Iggy
44:13
Pop and the kind of pied piper like figure he can become when he hits
44:15
the stage. Now, Freddie Mercury, did you know him at all?
44:20
Because you were at Liveaine he was there with met him a few times,
44:22
but not didn't know him really know. I mean, you know, I
44:24
was just introduced to him. But you know, he was like that too,
44:28
very shy. They said he was a very shy person. Yeah,
44:31
I mean, you know, yeah, I think so. I mean I've
44:34
met, you know, other people like that, David Byrne very shy you
44:37
know off stage, right, Yeah, I mean very shy. Some of
44:40
these people are. Shanaide was extremely shy. But there you go. I
44:45
mean the performance space that you get into is a is a completely different thing
44:50
to normal life. It really is different. And I think you can be
44:53
you can be an introverted person and then you can concentrate your effort onto that
45:00
one little place and say that's my happy place, and this is where all
45:02
my skills and my life experience comes together in performance, and I love that.
45:08
I mean, there are certain performances you see, you know who are
45:10
big, big extroverted personalities. They give out, they give out. But
45:15
I like the ones who turn in on themselves and you sort of you get
45:20
drawn towards them. You watch Tom York or Joni Mitchell or Bob Marley,
45:23
and you just get drawn straight into what they're doing because they're so completely vulnerable
45:30
and giving you something secret of themselves. Real quickly, before I ask one
45:34
last question, you mentioned David Byrne and somebody I can't remember who was.
45:37
I told the story. They were at some venue and they were in the
45:42
men's room and they hear somebody throwing up in the stall and guy opens the
45:47
door as David Byrne, and I think he said something like I throw up
45:52
before every show. Well there you go. I mean, you know,
45:54
I met Joey Ramone as well. He was I think he was the same
45:59
fantastic. I saw the Ramones in their pomp, you know, nineteen seventy
46:01
eight or something. They were just terrific, I mean, so exciting.
46:06
And I met him once in New York and again very shy, really shy.
46:09
You know. I had this their manager, their road manager on he
46:13
wrote a book, so he was he had some great stories and he did
46:15
say Joey was like, he's just like a big kid. Yeah, he
46:19
was just I think he was dyslexic. I think or he had no he
46:22
had the the obsessive pulson or something. Yeah, and they used to all
46:28
his bandmates, you'd pick on him and they didn't know, they didn't understand,
46:31
you know. But yeah, anyway, let's let's finish with where where
46:35
you're at now, because at the end of the book you say you still
46:37
feel like you missed your calling as a singer songwriter, so you return to
46:42
it. And I see you in your studio there, and is that is
46:44
that a less Paul behind you? I see that's a that Yeah, that
46:46
is a custom less Pole. There's a few other actions around this place as
46:52
well, but those are love it current of nice ones that I play.
46:55
Yeah, so this is right. Yeah, this is in my garden,
46:59
this this building, and I spend a lot of time in here. And
47:02
also I'm performing more than I have, as I say, as a solo
47:07
artist. And there's some good, good little clips coming out on you know,
47:10
on YouTube and things of those things, and I'm still honing that.
47:15
And I still I'm sixty six next birthday, and I still think there's a
47:20
few years and I'm still trying to reach a place where I can say,
47:23
ah, I've never been better than this. Yeah. So will we get
47:27
new music from me? Any single? Yeah? Albums? Yeah? Yeah,
47:30
Well there's a no new album. There's my album Run that was from
47:31
twenty nineteen, and there's a new album coming now. I'm about seven or
47:37
eight tunes into it. I can't decide whether to throw a couple of them
47:39
out or not and start again. But it's so I don't rush these things.
47:44
So it might be another year or so before it comes out. But
47:45
I'm definitely definitely making new music. Yeah, when when does music come to
47:50
you? Anytime I walk? I'm a big walker, I walk, you
47:53
know, but I live by the sea, and I I'm a regular walker,
47:58
so when I'm walking often that comes, yeah, the endorphins. Yeah.
48:04
Where can people go to find more about you and your new music?
48:07
Again? Okay, well they can. They can look for my album called
48:10
Run on It's there's a there's a YouTube. There's this horrible YouTube, you
48:14
know, default channel of it. So now I'm called Run. It's on
48:16
Amazon, it's on iTunes, It's on all those things. My website is
48:21
Kevin hyphen Armstrong dot com and anybody can go there and you can see what
48:25
I'm doing. There's quite a nice video gallery there of me playing with Mike
48:29
Garson and Iggy and various people, and so they can they can see it
48:32
there, or they can just find me on Facebook and write to me.
48:36
I mean, what I've been doing the last few few days is the books
48:39
come out. The response on Amazon has been so good. They publisher is
48:44
going to do a reprint already. We've heard, oh that's great, it's
48:46
great. But I've just been personally responding to messages, people sending me their
48:51
dollars, and I've been stuffing on for hopes, addressing them myself, and
48:54
I've sent out a hundred books in the last two to three days. That's
48:58
great to hear that. It's it's a great read, absolute beginner memoirs of
49:01
the world's best, least known guitarist. And it's out officially October seventeen,
49:07
is the release date? Is that? Yeah? For sure. I'm trying
49:09
to where are you based, Eric, I am based. I'm in the
49:13
US in Connecticut. So you're in Connecticut because I'm looking at a SoCal book
49:17
tour, you know, towards the end of the year. I'm talking to
49:21
people over there and maybe going to LA and San Francisco to do a few
49:22
bookshops. Nothing in the New York area. No, well, I'm open
49:28
to office. For sure. I'm going to look at it. So yeah,
49:30
that's great. Well, you got my email. You let me know
49:32
for sure, you let me know. So job On Press, by the
49:36
way, too is the book publisher, and it's wherever books are sold.
49:39
So Kevin, thank you. This is great, some great stories. Thanks
49:43
Eric, good to meet you. That's it. It's in the books.