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- [00:00]
Nick Lowe
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Scott Bertram
Everybody. And welcome into another edition of Political Beats. My name is Scott Bertram. You can find me on X at Scott Bertram. The show, of course, is at politicalbeatsationalreview.com and over on our Patreon page as well. Patreon.com politicalbeats my tag team partner standing by as always, Jeff Blair. Jeff, how are you?
- [00:31]
Jeff Blair
I am fine. And for once I don't have any stupid jokes to make.
- [00:35]
Scott Bertram
I'm not even doing my long intro, as people know. Because we have a very special guest with us today. We are honored to be joined by the legendary singer songwriter. You might know him from his solo career that has gone on for many a year now, but also a member of Brinsley Schwartz and Rockpile and Little Village. Highly influential over the years. He's written some of the finest music of the past 50 years and performed some of the finest music of the past 50 years or so. He has a brand new album that is out first one in quite a while and it's fantastic. And we'll talk about that first as we begin our conversation with Nick Lowe. Nick, thank you so much for joining us.
- [01:17]
Nick Lowe
Not at all. It's a great pleasure to be with you.
- [01:21]
Scott Bertram
Well, as I said, Indoor Safari is the new record. I've been a longtime fan of Low Straitjackets dating back to their second record. And when I saw that you two had begun touring together like fantastic. And now you have the singles and the EPs and this album that is now out, Indoor Safari. And Jeff and I both have a lot of thoughts and questions, but I want to ask first about the concept of an album itself, because we are now in a day and age when people are streaming or getting their music off playlists and one song pops to a different song. And you've made this conscious decision to present what was sort of haphazardly presented in these EPs and singles and put it together in a single unified presentation. So why make that move? What's important about the album structure for something like Indoor Safari?
- [02:13]
Nick Lowe
Well, that's a pretty good question right off the bat there. When I first got together with, with Lost Street Jackets, we had no, we had no intention of recording together. It was just to do some live shows, Christmas shows, actually. And we didn't know whether we get on with each other or if it would work or anything like that. But we did get on and it did work. And so we did, we did a Christmas, Christmas shows because I had a Christmas record which was very well received, much to everyone's surprise.
- [02:57]
Jeff Blair
Hey, we all like Christmas at the Airport too. It was a fun song.
- [03:00]
Nick Lowe
Very good, very good. Well, it, you know, if you've got ears to hear, you know, it was a pretty good record. But sadly the two, two of the main protagonists involved in the record. Bobby Irwin, who played drums with me or tons and tons of my records, especially in the last 30 or 40 years, and Neil Brockbank, who was sort of co producer and tour manager and live sound he used to do for me. Both of them died one after the other and it took the wind out of my sails, I suppose you'd say. But the thing about a Christmas record, of course, is that every Christmas here it comes again, shiny and new, you know. And after a couple of years went by, it was gently put to me that I might like to do some Christmas shows backed by Lost straitjackets. We share a manager, by the way, so it's not that strange. I'd known them as well for quite a long time and I thought it was a pretty good idea. And that's what we did. And we did that for, you know, two or three years. But the thing about a Christmas show is you reach peak Christmas very, very quickly. You know, you can take it so far and no further. And so it got. So he got. Got old, you know, and we decided to knock that on the head. But at that then we started to get offers to do what I describe as out of season work, just regular, you know, dances and clubs and things like that. And that's when it started to get cracking. Then I started writing songs specifically for this project. And we started then to notice that our audiences were getting bigger and younger as well. A lot more younger people were starting to come. And so it became evident that there was a demand for us to have some kind of recording of ourselves available just on the merch table, really. We didn't have any ambitions greater than that and we did our best. It wasn't, you know, our problems were geographical in that. By which I mean, you know, that I live in London and the boys all live in the United States. And so we could only really record when we got together to do a tour. And we pick a city that we were appearing at and book a studio in that. In that city. So you wouldn't really know what you were getting. Especially as at the, shall we say, the more economy end of the market.
- [05:50]
Jeff Blair
Level studios, in other words.
- [05:51]
Nick Lowe
Yeah, most studios are, you know, generally two tiny rooms with it, with a computer in one and a kit of drums in the other. And that's because that's what most records, as you know, they're made on computers. And I don't want this to sound like an old guy rant, you know, about, oh, it was better in my day, you know, all that sort of stuff.
- [06:18]
Jeff Blair
It was truly actually better in your day. Let's not kid ourselves, friend. I mean, I mean, let's be honest here. An actual band in a room is a different sound and, or even just like, you know, a wider studio matters. I get it.
- [06:30]
Nick Lowe
Yeah, well, I couldn't possibly comment on that, of course, but of course that's how. Even though we've got some, you know, some go ahead and interesting ideas, the chassis that the thing is built on is quite retro. And so we do require a room, you know, that five people can fit in and someone counts in and off. We counter counts us in and off we go. But we did our best in the, in the computer rooms that we sometimes got. We did our best. We're all grown ups, you know, we know it's. How hard can it be? You know, and, but the, the, the other thing was the songs that I was writing were. They're simple songs and because that suits this act, let's face it, you don't go to see a group where 4/5 of the people on the stage are wearing Mexican wrestling masks, expecting an intellectual experience, you know, it's not an evening.
- [07:44]
Jeff Blair
Of, yes, music here going on. Right.
- [07:46]
Nick Lowe
You know, quite so. So I was writing these simple, jumpy little songs, you know, but those sort of songs are all very well, but they only really come to life if you've played them in front of a live audience five or six times. And we were having to record them before that process had taken place. In some cases, the songs weren't even really finished.
- [08:12]
Scott Bertram
So.
- [08:13]
Nick Lowe
But anyway, we did our best, put them out. And I don't actually know if anyone bought them, in fact, but about 18 months ago we put out three EPs with four four tracks on GP and some of them were covers. We did some cover songs and some of these originals, but we did our best, as I say, to do what we could on this and, and that was that. Then about 18 months ago, Yeprock, my and. And LSJ's record label said, all right boys, we're gonna. We want to put these 12 tracks out on an album. And I said, well, hold on a second, I like your thinking, but that is really just not good enough. You know, there's some good stuff here, but we've got to at least revisit some of the better tracks that we did. And get them right. Now we know how they go. New vocal, new guitar here and there, hand claps, oohs and ows, all that kind of thing. And record a couple of new things. And, and, and. And also hire someone who knows what they're doing, who can make all this stuff sound like it was recorded in the same week, you know, rather than over.
- [09:37]
Jeff Blair
As opposed to over the span of years. Right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [09:41]
Nick Lowe
Sort of continuity. And we found the great Alex hall rescue. And anyway, that's what we've done. And I have done quite a lot of interviews. You might notice that my telling of this quite complicated story is quite slick.
- [09:59]
Scott Bertram
Yes.
- [09:59]
Jeff Blair
You're pattered down. I'm impressed.
- [10:01]
Nick Lowe
Yeah. Because I've had to do it a few times now. But the point I'm making is that I have tried my hardest to let people know that a lot of this stuff has been released before. Not in this format, but it's not all entirely new stuff. But no one seems to care. I'm staying banging my head against the wall here.
- [10:24]
Jeff Blair
Okay, I'm gonna tell you. Wait, I'm gonna tell you why nobody cares. And it's so funny, you actually almost caught me up short when you said, when you were going through that, the telling of the story, when you were telling me initially it's like, oh, this stuff was actually all recorded in computers. It was kind of a. Sort of a dry. And then he said no, and we went back and fixed it. All right. Because I was about to say it does not sound like, you know, it's an astringent or it doesn't sound like under produced. It sounds really warm and really current. And the reason people don't mind is because nobody remembers an ep, but people do still remember albums. So, I mean, I just wanted. I wanted to only add this, and then I just want to ask maybe a question about the album itself. The music itself. We get asked a lot of times by the listeners of our show to do one of those, well, since then kind of episodes. We. On our. On our podcast, we cover an artist all the way through, like their entire career, basically. And then a lot of times they'll have released albums and stuff like that afterwards. And so our listeners, like, hey, why don't you do a roundup on what they've done since you covered them? And we always beg off because frankly, it's a really. It's almost always a really depressing story, you know, because there's a. There's a standard musical trajectory to most careers, after all, you don't want to hear some of the reunion. Ban the reunion era bands. It's never a fun ride, okay? So that's why we. You don't really feel the need to revisit it. That in particular is why it's such a, like, bizarrely wonderful pleasure to be here doing that basic idea, but with one album that actually utterly deserves it. And I'd say shockingly deserves it. But I don't know if you. Nobody actually would listen to all three and a half albums of that three and a half hours of that Nick Lowe episode unless they were already Political Beats fans. But, like, we were so impressed with the latter chapter of your career, the second half of it that begins, I guess, basically around, say, the mid-90s and the way it ended, in our opinion, just as strong as it was. The only question really was whether would be any more music, whether another album would ever arrive. And now we have the story about how it finally came together. And this is the shocker. I don't want to, like, you know, overstate this, but I think I'm. I'm not even overstating this. This is one of your finest, you know, in a career that has covered a lot of ground from the late 70s or the early 70s, frankly, for that matter, all the way to, like, well, the present moment. There have been a lot of places that you've gone musically, and I'm just really. I'm shocked at how, track for track, wonderful. This is. Scott, I know you feel the same way about the record, and I can only tell you how misera. Horrible an episode this would have been if the record had sucked. I mean, I was. I was thinking like, well, Jesus, what if it's a bad album? It's not. It's a really great record. And I guess the first question that comes to mind, and this is just a general one, if you feel like. If you feel like thinking about, like, the way the songs come together. You said that these are simple songs, right? And the thing about them is that they have these great songwriting virtues. They remind me of all the stuff that basically you have been interested in musically since the days, like the weird old, like, you know, pub days of Brinsley Schwartz, right, Where, you know, I remember there was a song by Goffin and King called Please Don't Ever Change that was on one of those Brinsley Schwartz compilation albums I heard when I was a kid. And it's just a cover tune of an old 50s Tin Pan Alley song. And I hear that's from 1972 73. And now all the way back around again in 2024. I hear, you know, songs that remind me exact of that. Something like Don't Be Nice to Me, which is the track that ends this album, just reminds me of great.
- [14:24]
Scott Bertram
Pop.
- [14:25]
Jeff Blair
And I was just wondering if. If there's something about. Something eternal that. About the kinds of songs that you like to write that has just remained throughout your career that explains how you can go from, like, you know, snarky new wave pop to, you know. You know, an awkward early 80s to country music, to this. This late period, sort of, you know, covering all the grounds, really. Now, what's the universal, like, thing in songs and songwriting that you gravitate to and I'll stop talking.
- [14:53]
Nick Lowe
No, no, please don't stop. Well, ramble. I'm. Yes, it's a good question and a hard one. A hard one to answer as well. I. I suppose that I. I don't. I. Am I unusual in this respect? I don't think I am, actually, but I am not. I'm not really sort of. I don't think of myself as an artistic songwriter, you know, for instance, I'm not interested in putting my diary to music and. And telling people, you know, my. What happened to me. I'm much more interested in the craft of songwriting, you know, and in that respect, I feel. You mentioned the word just now. I'm much. I feel much more like a Tin Pan Alley guy that doesn't really exist anymore. That kind of Brill building, you know. What. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. What kind of song have you got in mind? You know, almost like going to a tailor's, you know, inside leg measurement, you know.
- [16:04]
Jeff Blair
What song I gotta write a song about? The Bay City Rollers. Okay, fine, you know.
- [16:08]
Nick Lowe
Yeah, that sort of thing. Exactly. I was always much more interested in that. I thought it was just sort of a noble, you know, profession, you know, I don't think. I mean, I make artistic decisions when I write songs, but I don't feel like I've got to tell my sort of bad, bad story, you know, to people. In fact, I try and avoid it. At the same time, I'm just like everybody else. I've had my heart broken. I know what it feels like. I know what it feels to have, you know, been lied to and cheated on. And I know what it feels like to have lied to and cheated on people. And, you know, all the things that every human being goes through, I've experienced. So I draw on that, you know. But my. I've really got an Eye on the marketplace here, you know, I don't want to mess around here. I'm very, very keen on other people cutting my songs. And so I try and do my best to attract them and that. That, sadly, that market isn't what it was. Now, you look at the average pop song now, there's sort of six or seven writers, because one guy does the drums, somebody else does the intro, somebody else arranges the backing vocals. And again, I don't want it to sound like an old guy rant, you know, but I'm. I'm one of the lucky ones, you know, because I don't know how, but I've. I'm still at it, and I still feel like it's interesting to me. I'm still interested in. Fascinated, actually. I don't think it's too strong a word because I really didn't think that I would be doing this at my advanced age. You know, when I started out, it was out of the question that anyone in pop music would be doing it in their 70s or 80s or even in their 30s. You know, you were over the hill if you were. If you were in your 30s. Now you can't move for old geezers, you know, sort of staggering onto the stage and, you know, croaking away. But it is fascinating to see what will happen next. Cause I. I can see the checkered flag fluttering away down the. Down the road. You know, I know my. My days are numbered, but I can still actually do it, and people are under. You know, I'm very lucky to have some cool people, you know, advising me and helping me, you know, and needless to say, they're much younger than I am as well, but they're under strict instructions to tap me on the shoulder, you know, if need be, and say, nick, I tell you what, I think probably the time has come for you to. You know, that wasn't a standing ovation, you know, that was people, you know, leaving.
- [19:07]
Scott Bertram
I want to. I want to talk about a couple of the songs I really like, On Indoor Safari. And Jeff might have a follow up on a few of these. I Love a Quiet Place. I think that might be my favorite performance band performance on the record. The two. That's.
- [19:23]
Nick Lowe
That's a. That's very amazing because that is the one song on the record that. Well, I didn't write it for a kickoff, but. But that was that every. Nearly everyone did a lockdown record, you know, where one guy does the guitar and sings it, and he sends it to the drummer who plays drums on it. You know, another city, another continent. And we. We did that on that song that we weren't in the studio at all. We did it piecemeal. But it is a great little song, isn't it?
- [19:55]
Scott Bertram
Yeah, you would never know. Blue on Blue, I think, is magnificent. That would fit alongside anything on the Impossible Bird, which is just an amazing album. Different Kind of Blue later in the album is another fantastic performance and that's one that is improved, I think, by the presence of that full arrangement. There's a version on the 20th anniversary of the Convincer that it's not as fleshed out and I think it's better here on indoor safari. Let me ask you about the first song, though. Went to a Party, which is co written by some of those straightjackets. And I know you said you're not one to sort of open up a diary and tell a story about your life necessarily. This is the one song that feels like it's a little personal to you, just knowing a bit about your personality through other songs and through these decades, where you get up, going to a party and you're dressing up and you're excited about it, but you get there and it's not quite as good as you think it might be, and you're mistaken for Robin Hitchcock, which I feel might be a real story. And by the end you're like, it's way past time to go. This might not be the place I'm supposed to be. So is that a more personal song or is that based on a personal experience?
- [21:02]
Nick Lowe
Well, it is. It's all just made up, really, you know. But the Robin Hitch, funnily enough, after I've spoken to you, I'm going around the corner to meet him to have a cucumber drink, as a matter of fact. But Robin is always boring everyone, rigid about how he's always mistaken for me. And if you listen to him, it happens to him everywhere, you know, in the street, in airports. And, you know, he's always going on about this. And I know he's exaggerating because it doesn't happen to me. You know, people occasionally approach me, but very rarely. But anyway, it's very amusing, you know, when he does it. And it has happened to me with him, you know, I've been mistaken for him, but only when I've been at one of his gigs, I've been mistaken for him because we've both got white hair and specs. But anyway, yeah, so I had this mythical party. Someone comes up to me at the party and in the song and and says, I've got all your records. I think you're great. You know, you're really fantastic. But my favorite, and I say say is Propeller Time, which is one of Robin's records.
- [22:23]
Scott Bertram
Yeah.
- [22:24]
Nick Lowe
Oh, that's the. But that's absolutely the best one. So that was a little nod to him. Yeah, but no, it's. It's all just sort of made up, really. It's just an excuse to, you know, for. To play that kind of song, really.
- [22:41]
Jeff Blair
Listen, I know you disclaim that you ever write, you know, like big kinds of any themes and you said you're a craftsman. But it is funny how the album Indoor Safari still seems like it has like a feel to it nonetheless. And maybe that's just because you're playing with the right band, you have the right kind of sound. But there's also just sort of a late period resignation to a lot of these songs. Yeah. You know, you could take, you know, Raincoat in the river. Right. And just. Oh, that's a pop song anybody could sing. And by the way, it's a fantastic pop song I actually like. I keep listening to that one over and over again. I'm like, oh, well, there's a guitar break. Oh, now and then there's an extra little bit in the middle eight. I'm just thinking that the only difference between something like that and like a labor of lust song is, you know, that the lyric is a little warmer and it's maybe a little less self consciously trying to be cute and wry, you know. And then you ask yourself, well, why didn't you hear music like that anymore? I actually thought to myself how well produced songs like Lay it on Me Baby and Don't Be Nice to Me. Really. I think the second half of this record, however you guys chose to arrange those songs, it's just a remarkably strong run of songs from maybe from Tokyo Bay all the way to the end. Which is again why I'm really strongly recommending this album to everybody who's listening.
- [23:55]
Nick Lowe
That's really fantastic to hear. I think the songs are. You know, I don't want to stop blowing my own trumpet or anything like that, but it saves a hell of a lot of work. You know, when you go into a recording studio, if the song is all sorted out before you get in there, you know. And also, as I said earlier on, you know, when my long preamble about how the record came about, if you've played it a few times and you can sort everybody, the people who are playing on it are used to Hearing what the other people in the group are playing and they can fit it all together and. And then the other. The other thing is being able to do that and it not sound tired and slick, you know, sometimes if you arrange things too, too much, it can sound, ah, you know, like you're going through the motions in a way, you know, if the song is arranged right, then it's. It still. It's got some vibrancy and some. Some sort of joy to it which. Which even people who don't really know or much care about how records are made, they can pick up on it. I believe they can. They can hear that. And it makes people, the general public are a bit nervous about records that aren't made to a click track or metronomic, you know, metronomic timing. That's. Most records are made nowadays with metronomic timing and I don't really personally care for that. I like records that speed up slightly and slow down. As long as it's not just because the drummer can't keep time, you know, it's because. It's because everyone's playing the groove into the song and explaining it, you know. And sometimes that I think in rock and roll music you need a little surge here and there, you know, and bring it back and you can't really arrange that. It's a. It's a feel, you know, you have. You have for it. But some, a lot of members of the public, you know, I'm not expecting as great as is what you've said about this record. I am absolutely not expecting enormous sales here, you know, because the public can get really turned off very quickly if they hear that it's not metronomically in time, it makes them nurse. And if you've got ears to hear then something. A record like the one we've made is like a drink of cold water in the desert. But if not, if you haven't got much time and you're in your car, you can flip the station very, very quickly. But I can't help that I'm lucky enough to be able to make records the way I dig them, you know, and it's the deal you make.
- [26:59]
Scott Bertram
I want to ask about Trombone, another fine song from the new record, which features just a killer performance from the band. That's a great low Straitjackets track on trombone in there. The lyrics say. I've been told time's a healer Still I can't shake the love I lost it seems my destiny is to count the cost As a Nick Lowe fan immediately When I hear, I've been told Time's a Healer, I think back to the Abominable Showman and a song called Time Wounds All Heals. And so I'm just curious a bit about the songwriting process for you, who have written. You've written so, so many songs. Do you feel like you're in this evolving conversation with yourself at all? I don't know if you thought at all about Time Wounds All Heels when you wrote Trombone, but as a listener, I did almost immediately. So do you feel like you're always sort of talking to yourself, with yourself as you write these songs, or is everything siloed?
- [27:57]
Nick Lowe
That's a very interesting word, siloed. What does that mean?
- [28:01]
Jeff Blair
Meaning put off into, like, a separate place. It's just, like, compartmentalized, you know, just sort of like. I don't think about that while I'm doing this. It's a separate thing.
- [28:09]
Nick Lowe
I see. I see. Yes. Yeah, I think it is siloed. I think. I know. I don't. I don't really think about each one. I can sort of imagine the person singing it. I can imagine the character. It is like inventing a character. And if. And if. If he sings. Sings the same line or a line like something that's cropped up, well, that's just an accident. And also, I'm. You know, I like a nice songwriting cliche, you know, as long as you stick a fancy word in, you know, a little bit further down the track, you know. But that's. That's.
- [28:54]
Jeff Blair
That.
- [28:54]
Nick Lowe
That's just an accident. But with Trombone, I. I was sort of channeling Neil diamond on that. I thought it sounded like a Neil Diet sort of thing. He'd write a trombone, come play your song. You know, that seemed like the sort of sort of shtick, but it's. It is. It's a really good one that. You're right about. The Straight Jacket, they. They play that so great. And it's a funny thing, that song. That's one of the ones that when we recorded it to start with on one of those EPs, it wasn't actually finished when I thought it was going to be good, but I hadn't finished it by the time the little tour came up. I had to come up with something and to demonstrate that, we actually went and committed a cardinal mistake by putting a trombone on a song called Trombone. I was about to ask.
- [29:52]
Jeff Blair
I was like, why isn't it there? I was gonna make a joke about it, and I'm getting. It just sounded wrong. Is that the problem? Yeah. Didn't work.
- [30:00]
Nick Lowe
Yeah, it's just. No, no, no. Just over egging the cake. We were desperate for something, but so we. We did. We did it, you know, with. Something had to be done, and that was it. But anyway, we've. The song got finished and arranged. Right. And the latest one is the one that sounds like we do at our shows.
- [30:26]
Jeff Blair
All right, Scott, do you think it's time for us to maybe. Maybe take a few questions? You know, we're eager to ask this. Nick, I apologize in advance. Some question about the incredibly long career that came before this moment that I know Scott and I have just been dying to ask for a long time. And also our guest on our episode we did, Matt Murray, submitted a few questions as well, so I wanted to thank him for that. Scott, do you want to start us off with yours?
- [30:52]
Nick Lowe
Just.
- [30:52]
Jeff Blair
Okay, you. Just random stuff, not reflections, perhaps, if you've got the time.
- [30:58]
Scott Bertram
I actually want to. I want to start with Matt's question, because Jeff and I and Matt. Matt Murray, who did the episode with us, are huge fans, but I think anyone would be impressed with, as Jeff sort of said, that second wave of the career that starts with the Impossible Bird. And that's just an impeccable album from Beast in Me. Shelly My Love, which is magnificent. I Live at a Battlefield, is a great song, but that was such a different album. And Matt asked, and I'll sort of just paraphrase his question, the aesthetic turn around that time in your career. Fewer and simpler words, more direct, emotional singing, wordplay, but somewhat restrained, speaking more of real things while still being Nicklo. And so the question that Matt has that I wonder too, what was the intentionality behind that? Did you have to find new influences when that turn happened? New models, as that turn happened, Was that a natural progression for you as you got older? Did you intentionally think about that turn that happens around the Impossible Bird?
- [32:13]
Nick Lowe
Yes, I did. I found myself in the sort of, I guess the mid-80s, something like that, early to mid-80s, at a bit of a loose end. I could tell that my career as a pop star had come to an end. I wasn't enjoying the records I was making. I was under the gun, you know, I seem to change record labels every other week, and they were, you know, they wanted a new record out, and I knew I. I just wasn't feeling it, you know, and also, like this sort of. I. I was in the cliche of, you know, doing too many, drinking too much, doing too many drugs in a bid to try and inspire myself, which, of course that never works, otherwise everybody would do. And so I thought I had to take some time off and dry out, dry myself out. So that's what I did. And my personal life was in a bad way as well. So I made, I really took myself in hand and I did some hard thinking and I thought, well, my pop star career has gone and had been good fun, I had sort of enjoyed it, but it had stopped being fun. I was, I was tired of my shtick as like the public were as well. And I thought, well, right, well, here I am, I'm in my 30s, you know, and I've done quite well so far. I've certainly produced some good records, written some good songs, had a hit my. So it's like ticking boxes, you know. Yes, tick, tick, you've done this. But I couldn't, I thought, well, you haven't really done anything really, really great yet.
- [34:20]
Scott Bertram
You know, we would disagree but, well.
- [34:25]
Nick Lowe
It is in the air of the beholder. It's kind of, kind of, you say so, but I do understand that. But I wasn't digging it, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't on it. And so I had, I developed this idea about the fact that I was getting old. You know, like I was saying about there wasn't any such thing as aging pop singers at that time. There was sort of one hit wonders, you know, on cruise ships, you know, doing the same sort of thing. But there wasn't anybody in the same, like a jazz, like a jazz musician, you know, in pop, like somebody who was really, you know, you can't be too old to play jazz, you know, and at that time to play country and western, you know, it's perfectly acceptable to be quite ancient, you know, to country and western.
- [35:17]
Jeff Blair
Willie Nelson, quite.
- [35:20]
Nick Lowe
Exactly, yeah. And others besides, you know. So I thought, well, I'm going to try and develop a way of presenting myself and writing for myself and producing myself that will take advantage of me getting old. I can actually use it as an asset instead of it. Something that in show business has to be, you know, you've got to be terrified of, you know, I am going to embrace it and meet it now. And I thought if I get this right, I can interest young people in this as well. Like, I always liked older people's music. Always like, I sort of like my own generation stuff. Okay. You know, but, but I, it was always a generation ahead of me. It was the stuff I liked. And I thought if I get this right, I'm going to lose some fans, you know, some people who Think I don't, Nick. You're just not rocking anymore, you know, I'm sorry. Because this thing didn't involved playing loud, for instance. You know, I was through playing loud because I've was interested in swing, which is not in fashion anymore. But you can't make things swing if you do it loud. That's why, you know, heavy metal is the way it is. You know, it does. It doesn't swing, it does something else, but it doesn't swing. And swing was something I was fascinated by how two instruments or two elements in a song can sound completely different. But when you play them together, it creates a third thing, this mysterious third thing. And I was very interested in that. And so I put a thought into this. Now, alongside this theory is Elvis Costello. My old friend had encouraged me to do solo shows. He took me on tour with him, this sort of world tour, when I was sort of in the throes of this, the first thinking about what I've just outlined, and I was out of work and he spotted that and he took me on this fantastic world tour with him. He had this really fancy group with James Burton on guitar and Jim Cartner on drums, Jerry Sheff on bass. Fantastic group.
- [37:54]
Scott Bertram
Yeah.
- [37:55]
Nick Lowe
And he took me. He took me on tour with him to play a bit of rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar and sing some backup vocals. And then one day we were in Japan and he said, why don't you go out before the show and do. Just do quarter of an hour, 20 minutes, do some of your songs. And I said, oh, man, I absolutely can't do. They said, well, I just started doing this and you won't believe it. It's really. It's. It's a. It's a revelation if you do this. And I said, oh, I really don't think that my stuff will stand up to it. So anyway, he really sort of put his foot down. So I went out and I did this. And to my surprise, people liked it. And I started doing it every night. Then he had me do it, do it every night. And pretty soon then I started to realize how bad my songwriting was. And in that I was doing the records. It's a real difference between a good song and a good record, you know. And I was. I'd be standing up there doing this, doing a song, you know, which is well known, I think, to myself, while I was doing it. Why did you do this bit? This just doesn't work. Worked fine on the record, but standing up with an acoustic guitar and doing it, it. It's a It's irritating. It doesn't add to it. It's annoying. And then, holy. You do it again at the end. What's going on here? So it made a nick.
- [39:28]
Jeff Blair
You got to tell me which song. Which song?
- [39:31]
Nick Lowe
Oh, man. It was. There was. There was many. There was many.
- [39:36]
Jeff Blair
You can say that about several of your tunes, is what you're saying. I got it. Yeah. Okay.
- [39:40]
Nick Lowe
Well, all I'm illustrating, really, is it really changed the way I started writing songs, because I thought, right, if you can play this song on an acoustic guitar and make everything work and come together so everything. Everything happens, you. You sort of don't need a band. You know, you can insinuate stuff. You can insinuate stubborn by almost singing a little backing vocal, you know, quietly, you know, in between the lines, that kind of thing. And it really fundamentally changed my. My songwriting style. And I took. I started listening to a whole lot more, you know, country music and old soul and R and B. You know, I'd always loved that stuff, but I started getting into it, really getting into a lot more folk stuff. But I also. I love, you know, so many different. I love American music. American popular music is. Is my. My favorite. But I love what happens to it when it comes to Europe. You know, we're in this delicious position where we can look out over the United States and. As if it's a huge musical smorgasbord, you know, and we can pinch a bit here. A PID. 2. 2 pinches of that, which I think is harder if you live in the United States and you're from New Orleans, you know, it's. Why would you want to pinch, you know, a bit of something. You know, a bit of Broadway music or something like that and stick it in the mix? Whereas over here, no problem.
- [41:19]
Scott Bertram
Yeah.
- [41:19]
Nick Lowe
You know, we. We can treat it a little in a little more cavalier sort of fashion, and. Because I had no desire to be mistaken for someone trying to do, right, Nashville, country and western, or write a soul song, you know, I did. I wanted to be like an English person doing it, but with soul, you know, with feeling and heart, you know, and.
- [41:46]
Jeff Blair
And I was literally in my head thinking Rockpile's version of Heart with Billy Bremner singing it is the perfect ideal of that. Like, you know, just sounds just right. It's English soul, though, you know?
- [41:57]
Nick Lowe
Yeah. Yes, exactly. I. I didn't want to, you know, insult people's intelligence, you know, Lord knows, you know, you can't help it sometimes. But that's what I was trying. I was Trying to avoid. And again, I thought, well, if I get this right and I record right, I wanted to record more like a. Like a jazz record really. You know, live, you know, cut it live, cut the performance lines. You get the essence of the thing live and several takes and then you edit between takes. You know, that's what they all used to do, edit. Frank Sinatra, he wouldn't go in and do those performances just like that sometimes maybe, but they'd snip it. They'd snip the best bits and they get the. Get, you know, to something. Something really cool. And I thought, I'm going to use all those old techniques and, and, but with pop stuff as well, I'll overdub. Then once I've got the, the live thing, I'll overdub just like I was doing a, you know, as if I was George Michael, you know, and, and, and, and see what happens then. So you get a sort of this thing that sounds a bit rough, you know, it sounds a little bit funky. I mean, you know, funky sounding. And to me, interesting. It's a more interesting thing and harder to define and put your finger on what kind of music it is. It sort of lives in the crossroads of, you know, several things. But as I say, I thought if I get it right, I'll get younger people to dig it too, and thereby avoid the. What I was dreading was, you know, I have to be careful what I say here because God bless my people that have stuck with me, you know, through a lot. A lot of them dropped out, you know, at the time you. We're talking about now, that mid-90s period. But the ones that have stuck with me, I was dreading having to just perform to them, you know, and I. I'd have to behave like a kid, you know, in order to make. Cheer them up, you know, and I, I wanted to avoid that. And by having younger people come to the show and having them all, you know, all liking it and largely that's the way it's worked out.
- [44:29]
Scott Bertram
Yeah.
- [44:29]
Jeff Blair
I gotta ask you, you say you're always, you know, you're worried, like, hey, you know, this isn't set to a click track. I'm worried that the kids these days won't dig it. And of course that makes just me feel sad. But then again, I'm no longer a kid myself, so what can you do, right? You know, it's like, hey, well, you know, I was born in 1980, right. Anyway. But I think it's funny. There's a danger perhaps to try to want to read your career retrospectively, because as you just talked about, you sort of made a decision to sand away the artifice and the things you didn't enjoy doing and just, like, write songs. Write a song that you can play on your own guitar. That sounds right, just for the guitar. Right. But then I go back and I guess listen to the earlier parts of your career, and I think, well, yeah, you can see parts of that coming out in little bits and bops all throughout Nickelo's career. Like, there's this one little. I think it's like an EP track called Endless Sleep, where you can just. Just you playing an acoustic guitar, you might as well be in a closet. I think it's a cover. It sounds very creepy, like a murder ballad or something like that. You can hear the hiss. It's poorly produced. It sounds raw, sounds real. And that was 1977 or something like that. And the reason I mention all that is because I was wondering, the question I have is if you had any thoughts about maybe the earliest part of your career, which I don't know how often people ever ask you about Brinsley Schwartz, but I've been thinking about it a lot. They just reissued the whole set, like, all seven of those albums a couple years back, I think, on cd. So I had occasion to listen to them. I also. We threw them again when we did our show. And it's the same point that Matt Murray, our friend, made. It really kind of seems like sort of it was a school for you. I mean, you were so young. It was like, 69, and you were already failing at the Fillmore east or something like that, which is sort of funny. It's like, to imagine happening, like you're bombing out and you're 18. You're like, is my rock career already over? And, of course, it had only just begun. But you go back and you listen to the albums, and they're not perfect, but there's so much charm in them. And it also seems like it's all the styles that you've ended up traversing throughout your career. And, in fact, actually, the weirder thing is that, like, Heart of the City, the whole, like, you know, Stiff Records punk stuff, which is awesome. And, of course, it's probably what most people think about when they think of Nick Lowe's music, is that, you know, you still hear Cool To Be Kind on the radio here in Chicago. That's the change. And I. And it feels like there's almost like those core elements were already there even when you were a really young guy. So I guess my question is, do you have any thoughts on, like, what that would have been like for you as a formative era? First learning how to write songs. And I guess it seems to me, I look at the stuff you were playing back then and you've kind of returned to the basics in a really good way.
- [47:10]
Nick Lowe
Well, you're right. The Brinsley's was like being at a sort of college, some sort of school. We all lived together as well, which heightened that. Heightened that sort of impression. And we. We had this disastrous Fillmore east experience and which we should have. We should have broken up after that, but for some reason we didn't. We'd all been through it. We were quite shell shocked and quite appalled that we'd fallen for this guff, you know, that we were all going to be famous. You know, all we had to do was do this and we were all going to be famous and the world was going to be at our feet. And instead of breaking up, we got this house and we had a rehearsal room in there. We just spent all our time in this rehearsal room just playing and listening and then going out listening to records and things. It was like being at some sort of, sort of cross between a, you know, musical college and a sort of. When monks hang out. What do they call that?
- [48:28]
Scott Bertram
Monastery.
- [48:29]
Jeff Blair
Monastery, yes.
- [48:32]
Nick Lowe
Yeah.
- [48:32]
Jeff Blair
Right.
- [48:35]
Nick Lowe
And then along came pub rock, you know, which. Which couldn't have been better for us. It could not have been better because the Brits are very funny that if you, if you do something like, happen to us, you know, we would became the laughing stock because of this Fillmore incident. If you. Once you've spent a little time in the, in the, in the being cast out, you know, from society, you get accepted back in. Yeah. And by the time pub rock came along, we were shit hot, man. We'd been practicing, so we were playing in these pubs. We had a huge repertoire of tunes, our own tunes, and all these soul and country songs and suddenly we were the toast of the town. And, and, and no, you know, we were sort of totally forgiven for this, for this thing. Now your, your original point. Yeah.
- [49:51]
Jeff Blair
Learning the basics of songwriting, because I would still. I remember you covering Please Don't Ever Change and I think of like, you know, all the, like the nice little soul moves that would end up showing up later times in places like Rock Pile or like the Other Part Career. It just seems like it was. You tried every style there, including country, that you would eventually end up settling on much more securely. But it's it seems like, you know, you. You could start there and then skip to say, I don't know, early 1994. And you still have most of the story, which fascinates me, given that the famous stuff is. Is actually in the middle.
- [50:28]
Nick Lowe
Yeah, the famous stuff, yeah. Well, you, you, you. You make a. You know that when I listen to those old records, the Brinsey records, which I do sometimes, I. I'm very, very rarely, Very, very rarely. Occasionally I'll. I'll put one track on because I've. Someone's been talking about it, you know.
- [50:51]
Jeff Blair
And then cringe and you're like, oh, young me. Oh, God. You know, something like that, right?
- [50:56]
Nick Lowe
Well, sort of. Sort of. But the one perk of getting older is that you're much more sympathetic to your young, your youth, you know, than you are shortly after the period, you know, when you look back now, I think, well, you know, not. Not bad, actually, for a kid. Not bad, but not good. And mainly I. When I listen to it, I think, you've got a really good idea there, kid. But you. You've just hurried it up too. Too much. I mean, do you really want to talk about this songwriting, Lar? Because I'm always. I like talking about it, but generally I'm very, very nervous about talking about it in public because it sounds so kind of precious.
- [51:45]
Jeff Blair
I guarantee you I'm interested in hearing about this process and everybody else is too pleased.
- [51:51]
Nick Lowe
Yeah, no, well, I'll hate myself in the morning. Oh, yeah, yeah. So when I hear it, I think, well, you've got, like, had a good. You, you had a good idea there, but you hurried it through too quickly. You know, it's the art. You didn't let the idea just form. I can hear the good idea. And the first verse was good. And you didn't need to do a bridge there, you know, you could have left it, you know, you could. All the things that I. I'm more sensitive to now. I can hear that. I hear me making all these mistakes.
- [52:28]
Jeff Blair
Mistakes, right.
- [52:30]
Nick Lowe
And it's not, you know, I've said this. I think this is about the fifth time I've said this. It's all in the ear of the beholder, you know, because some. Because that's why people love artists and bands first albums because they hear this charm, you know, this sort of youthful exuberance and charm and it's a bit goofy and not really there. And then when they learn how to do it, it gets really dull, you know, and uptight, you know. And so I don't want to say, oh, my God, I can't stand all this stuff. Or, how could anyone, you know, it's. I. I can. I can see why people liked it and.
- [53:10]
Jeff Blair
But it's like. It's like baby photographs, right? It's just looking at, like, your gawky high school graduation photo where you got braces on your teeth and you're like that. Yeah, I get it.
- [53:19]
Nick Lowe
That's very true. That's very true. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, it's. Well, it is. You're right. I'm basically doing the same music, you know, that I sort of always have done. Even really when my. My mum taught me a few chords on the guitar so I could learn some Lonnie Donegan tunes. Like, everyone of my vintage, you know, in the UK were Lonnie Donegan fans. All of Led Zeppelin, all the Beatles, the Stones, all those people. Lonnie was our man because it was easy to play. They had this. Because they were jazz guys playing on the records. They had this great groove which is very akin to rockabilly. Very, very rock Island.
- [54:08]
Jeff Blair
Line's a fun song, man. I mean, can't deny it, right?
- [54:14]
Nick Lowe
And I, you know, I'm still doing that sort of thing, too.
- [54:19]
Scott Bertram
I'll preface this by saying that the centerpiece of my basement is a big framed photo of the Rockpile promo shot for Seconds of Pleasure. So that's the. That's the center of my basement. So I've got to ask a question about. About that band. You. You seemed very early on very aware of, I think, your strengths and weaknesses as an artist. Like the COVID of Jesus of Cool here in America, where you're trying on all the different sort of rock star poses, but kind of uncomfortable in all of them. And then on a song like Born Fighter and you say in the pages of the glossy magazines, the Coffee Table World, I could never fit in. Like, you sort of knew who you were when Dave Edmonds enters the picture, and you guys were friends before Rockpile came together. Why do you think that partnership was so successful, critically, you know, in terms of the. In terms of the art that was produced? How did you compliment him and what did he do to sort of maybe complement what you knew weren't your strengths when it came to songwriting or performing?
- [55:23]
Nick Lowe
Yeah, that's a great question, too, because I put a lot of work into become friends with Dave. He was a famous recluse and still is actually very, very difficult to get to know. And I sort of insisted that, you know, we became friends. I'd rather sort of stalked him and slowly, you know, he used to record down in Rockfield, famous Rockfield Studios, on his own. He made all his records by himself. And we, the Brinseys, used to record down there. We'd see him coming, coming and going and he'd always turn up at sort of about 10 o'clock at night and we'd hear all these strange noises coming out of the studio all through the night. And then in the morning when we got up for breakfast, he'd be leaving and then. I don't know, I can't remember how I first met him, you know, button holding sometime somewhere down there. And after a while he invited me into the studio to watch him, just to be an audience, you know. He didn't talk to me or anything, he just got on with it. And then he got me to scratch a microphone to see if it was working, you know, that sort of thing. And then he showed me how to. He'd got this little foot pedal how he. So he could drop in on the tape, you know, he could play a guitar and then drop into the bit he wanted. He showed me how to drop him in, you know, drop him in when he was playing the guitar solo. Then he got me to do hand claps, a bit of hand clap, you know. And all this was a long process. But all the time I was watching him and as you know, I. I learned so much off Edmonds watching what he did. And I sort of bent. I bent what he. What he did to suit the times. I was a bit more modern than he was, you know, but I loved what this way he worked the desk and he was. He used to work. Use the desk as. Like it was another instrument by sort of abusing it actually, you know, by over stressing it out, you know. He's made the most fantastic sounds and so I tried to. I tried to copy that, but I was younger than him and. And sort of a little more modern, you know. I was in on this scene, this scene with the pub rock thing and then Stiff Stiff Records. But I. When I became a record producer, which you could do that in those days, just if you said you were one, you could persuade people to take orders from you or let you be in charge, then away you went, you know, and all you needed is a little bit of success, you know, and hey presto, they were queuing around the block for your services. But I didn't really know what I was doing. I just watched Edmunds and picked up, you know, a tip here or a tip there and the rest, I sort of made stuff up myself. But I think it was that combination of the fact that I liked older people, the music that older people made, and he liked having me around because I was a bit sort of hipper than him at that, at that time. But I was a fan, I was a no holds barred fan of Dave Edmonds. And I'm, you know, I've said this to a few people who have asked about him. You know, I owe a lot of my. The fact that I have this fabulous small but perfectly formed audience in the United States due in large part to Dave Edmonds and Rockpile, you know, and all those tours we did and, and all that work we did. And I think it's a real shame that he's not enjoying the same, you know, the fruits of that in the same way as I am. I don't think we'd ever work, work together again. But I, I, I, I, probably he's much happier at home now, you know.
- [59:54]
Jeff Blair
But he seems like the kind of guy who just prefer to stay in his basement. Yeah, I'll play my guitar here and record, you know, that's what I'll say. Well, Scott, I don't know if you have any further questions about this or do we want to get. We've, we're already over an hour. We want to ask our dork trivia questions.
- [60:12]
Scott Bertram
If you have a few more. If you, Nick and wouldn't mind, we have maybe like rapid fire nerdy stuff. Tell them we're more important. Obviously, Jeff, you want to fire one off first.
- [60:27]
Jeff Blair
Okay, so, okay, this is the part of the, I guess the final and brief segment, thankfully, of the show where I just ask a few nerdy questions. Like first, like, for example, why isn't Bay City Rowers, we love you in print? Why can't a man find that in anything But a scratchy 45 RPM? That's on YouTube, man. It's a, it's a classy song, Nick. And I even, I've even seen you tell the story about how you wrote it and thinking to yourself, this could be a hit. And, you know, it's well written. And then of course, it goes rockets to number one in Japan. No, my real question actually is, and this is just a. And I could be so completely wrong because I don't actually know how the songwriting went. There's this, there's a song with you and Dave Edmonds called Never Been or Never Been in Love, I think. Yeah, it's, it's credited to Nick Lowe and Rockpile So I don't know exactly how that works. It's off of tracks on wax 4. Do you remember this one? It's a really obscure song.
- [61:23]
Nick Lowe
Yeah, it is an obscure. I can remember the title.
- [61:27]
Jeff Blair
The reason that. Reason I ask is that I'm convinced that Elvis Costello nicked a small part of that song for another song that he wrote called Girls Talk. Oh, and the subsequent history of Girls Talk is the reason I'm asking this question. Because of course you guys did that one on the next album right after it. And I just was hoping there might be a chance I was on to something here, but apparently I'm wrong.
- [61:52]
Nick Lowe
Well, it's quite. It's quite possible, right? It's quite possible you're right. But the, the. The thing that I'm really shocked about that time is when at one point the label I was on over here in the UK called Proper Proper Records. They were, you know, a small label. They got the rights to put out Edmonds's stuff and Rockpile stuff and. And my stuff. Well, I was obviously signed to them. But when they got. They dug the tapes out of the vaults, you know, the actual 16 track. It's all recorded on 16 track. Back in those days, the big reel to reel tapes, they dug all that stuff out of the vaults and of course it had with all the recording information on them. To my amazement, we were recording at an extraordinary rate. The dates on the boxes I'd be recording, for instance, my. Can't think what record it would have been. Labor of Lust.
- [63:02]
Jeff Blair
Labor of lust, Yeah, I would imagine.
- [63:04]
Nick Lowe
Labor of lust at the same time as Edmunds was doing whatever it was called, Repeat when necessary. Yeah. And other tracks beside from the next album were leaking in. You know, we'd be trying out this other stuff and we'd be working on labor and Lust in the daytime. And then we'd all go to the pub or take a little break and then go back in the studio and start doing. What was the one you just said?
- [63:34]
Jeff Blair
Edmunds is one Repeat when necessary. You'd be flipping from one album to the other one. Like just session, day by day, same.
- [63:40]
Nick Lowe
Day we were recording. It's a huge number, numbers of tracks, you know, all the time when we weren't on the road. And so it's quite likely that the song you, you mentioned, Never Been in Love.
- [63:57]
Jeff Blair
Is that what it called Never Been in Love? It's from a little earlier. So it's like back in 77, 78. It's before the timing when you guys were doing Girl Song, which is the reason I had the stupid theory in the first place is that I thought, well, I did the calendar calculations and I'm thinking to myself, there's enough time for Elvis to hear this, rewrite something and realize, oh crap, I kind of plagiarized those guys and then give it back to Dave Edmonds. But I apparently was completely sawed off on there on that limb I had gotten far out on. It's all right.
- [64:26]
Nick Lowe
Sounds more like we would have ripped Elvis off, right?
- [64:30]
Jeff Blair
To be fair. Hey, Scott, do you have any weird dork questions yourself?
- [64:34]
Scott Bertram
I have a weird door question that perhaps only I would ask will understand. So there's a fantastic documentary, yeah, see, there's a fantastic documentary on the making of those rockpal albums called Born Fighter. And I love this scene. There's a scene. Albert Lee is recording his guitar part for sweet little Lisa. And the camera kind of pans around the studio and you're there and Dave Edmonds is there, Billy Brender's there and Phil Lynette's there from Tin Lizzie. And Graham Parker is there listening and another guy is there named Hugh Anthony Craig iii, better known as Huey Lewis. And as you look around the room and all of that talent and all of that simply incredible music, and I am also one of the world's biggest Huey Lewis fans. So my question is just if, you know, five years from the making of that documentary, one of those guys in that room was one of the biggest pop stars in the world, would you ever have put your money down on Huey Lewis to be that guy?
- [65:35]
Nick Lowe
Well, he had bags of charisma, Huey did. And we're still friends to this day. But we used to hang around with each other quite a lot back then because we were quite broke, really, both of us. But Hughie was very, very popular with the girls, so I used to hang around with him in case there was a cast off going you. But yes, we knew how to enjoy ourselves on not very much money back in those days. And yeah, I think I probably, I don't know if I thought much about any of us being really big, but out of all of us in that room, yeah, I think I would have put my money on Huey. He always behaved like he was like that even back in those days.
- [66:28]
Scott Bertram
Well, Niklo, thank you so much for your generous time with us today. Thank you for all the music. We are massive fans, as we've made clear in this show and the other nearly four hour show we did about your career. And we encourage everyone to check out the new album because it sits alongside all the other great ones in the catalog. It's called Indoor Safari. Lo Straitjackets play on it and it is out now and it is fantastic. Nick Lowe, thank you for joining us here on Political Beats.
- [67:01]
Nick Lowe
It's been a great pleasure and thank you very much for having me on the show.
- [67:06]
Scott Bertram
Nick Lowe, also on tour this fall with Low Straitjackets with dates across the country. I'll be heading to Ferndale, Michigan, two shows in Chicago at Lincoln Hall. Jeff might be there, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and more. You can find all the show dates@nick nicklow.com that's nicklo.com we invite you to join us on our Patreon page If you like patreon.com politicalbeats we actually will have the video version of this interview there along with just a little extra bonus footage from the interview as well. You can find that@patreon.com Politicalbeats for Jeff Blair, I'm Scott Bertram. This has been a presentation of Political Beats.