Nick Lowe SXSW Interview, Pt. V (March 21, 1998)

I wanted to ask you about the album Nick Lowe and His Cowboy Outfit. 

Oh, yeah. I love that album. Yeah, that wasn't a bad one. What was on that? 

It had "Half a Boy and Half a Man." 

Yeah. 

"Maureen." 

Oh, yeah. 

And a quite incongruous song--but one of my favorites nevertheless--"L.A.F.S."

Oh, yeah (laughs). 

That album got me back into you. Then, I was living in Seattle in '85, where KJET-AM had your redone "I Knew the Bride" in heavy rotation, further reigniting my interest in your music, which I'd lost track of from about 1980 to 1984. Did you ever do a video for that? 

Yeah, we did. We did do a video for it, actually, and quite a sort of fancy video--in England, yeah. I never saw it. I think it was sort of in between two stools then because--it was too sort of--it was too old fashioned for MTV, and I'm not sure whether VH-1 had started then. So it never really got much play as I remember. It was quite a good video, quite a good one. 

Back to "All Men Are Liars," I've often wondered what you think now about the Rick Astley verse. 

I've felt very sorry about that. I really do. I really do regret saying that. At the time, I thought that [the Rick Astley song] was so awful. I just hated the sentiment of the thing. I know it's--I mean, maybe I was a little oversensitive, because you hear awful music all the time--"I'm never going to do anything horrible to you." I thought, "What? Can anybody sawllow this, that I'm never gonna do anything--?" Sorry, that was a lie. So, then, I thought, because it was a big hit at the time and it seemed as if Rick was on his way--he was gonna be churning this stuff out. But I regret it because I've since found out that, one, he's a very nice man--I've never met him, but they tell me he's an extremely nice man--and the other thing is that he's down on his luck a bit now. So I do feel rather bad about it because at the time I wrote it, he was huge and about to do more of it, so I thought he was a legitimate target. 

Do you regret that in 1998 people may not follow the reference? 

Oh, no. No, I'm kind of glad that they won't follow the reference actually. And that does happen more and more. I blithely make references about bands and artists from my generations to--I mean, obviously, you're younger than I am, but to some journalists I make these remarks, and I see their faces go creepy blank. You realize, "You've gotta get your references a little more up to date, my friend!" That's the way it goes. 

What did you think of the John Hiatt song on Little Village, "Don't Think About Her When You're Trying to Drive"? 

Oh, I thought that was a really good one. I like it quite a bit. Yeah, that's a really good one. And it was a funny thing, that, because--that Little Village thing--because when we did John Hiatt's record, obviously it was John Hiatt's record. He was in charge, he had the songs, and we were there to back him up. When you take away the front person and you have four people in there trying to create something, people are very reluctant to step forward somehow. If it's somebody's actual record, then obviously they are questioned and asked, "How do you want this? How do we play this?" You know. But when it's four individuals, all rather edgy about it, you come up with a kind of compromise. So John got, I think rather unfairly, got castigated for that thing because he sang so many of the tunes on it that people thought he was stepping forward and hogging the limelight, whereas in actual fact he was doing us all a favor by coming forward and saying, "Well, I'll do it. I'll jump in there." So it was unfair, that, I think. 

You mentioned the way that old pop songs, like Cole Porter's, contained many subtle and sophisticated references. I wondered if when you wrote "Cruel to Be Kind" you were conscious of the phrase's Shakespearean roots. 

No, I didn't know that it was a Shakespearean quote until people started saying to me, "Oh, what a brilliant thing you made up! 'You've gotta be cruel to be kind'!" And I started to say that it's a very well-known expression. Where I come from, people say it all the time, "You've gotta be cruel to be kind." 

You didn't know it originated in Shakespeare? 

I didn't know it was a Shakespearean quote. It was then that somebody said, "Well, it's actually from--" Whatever it is. 

Hamlet. 

Is it from Hamlet? 

"I must be cruel only to be kind." 

Brilliant. That sounds so much better though, doesn't it" (laughs)?

Nick Lowe SXSW Interview, Pt. IV (March 21, 1998)

Nick Lowe SXSW Interview, Pt. IV (March 21, 1998)

You've done so much good work in the '90's, it seems to me that someone's going to have to bring Basher up to date. 

Oh, well, I hope so. I hope so. 

Has anyone shown an interest in gathering your more recent-- 

Yes. They have actually. There's talk about box sets and things like that, which--I don't know. I can't work my way through a box set, even of people that I like. I've got a Johnny Cash box set. I've only listened to the first one. Whenever I want to hear Johnny Cash, I just put the same one. I never listen to any of the others, you know.

Speaking of Johnny Cash, did you write "The Beast in Me" for him? 

I did, actually, yes. 

Was there ever the chance that he would've rejected it? 

Oh, yeah. He did. I actually thought it up when he came to London and came to stay with me and Carlene [Carter]. He came around. Carlene phoned him up and said we'd written this song. And, in fact, what it was is, I had this first--I had the title and the first verse, and when he came along--he came 'round to hear it, and the song really wasn't finished--we'd made up a whole bunch of other stuff to tag onto it, but I knew that the first couple of lines were great. Anyway, I sang it to him, and he said, "Well, you're onto something here, but it's not quite right, is it?" I said, "Well, it's not really." He said, "Well, when you finish it, send it along." And that was about 1980. And every so often--I finished it in what? 1994 or something. But every so often I'd get this song out, or if I'd run into him, he'd say, "How's 'The Beast in Me,' Nick?" And I'd get it out again, and it was one of those songs where you think you've said it all in the first verse. There's nothing else to say. But something must've clicked one day, and I just finished it off. It just seemed to all fit, which sometimes happens. The song hasn't kind of revealed itself to you or something until some time passes, and that's the danger time [tape ends] ... the song we'll be revealed. So, anyway, I sent it off to him and didn't hear anything, and next thing I know American Recordings has come out, and it's on it. So-- 

He didn't tell you he was going to record it? 

No, he didn't tell me he was going to do it. It was fantastic. I did know that my step-daughter, who hangs out with him a lot, she said that he'd been playing it to people who'd come around to the house. He'd been singing it to them. So I thought, "Oh, that's interesting. So he got the tape." I thought he just might've listened to it and thought, "Oh, no! He still hasn't got it right." But, no, I thought it was good. 

"The Man That I've Become" sounds like a Johnny Cash song. Yeah. Yes, it is a Johnny Cash song--a Johnny Cash-style song. But I think Johnny Cash is such a great artist--I'm such an admirer, a fan, of his--as well as my familial connections to him--that I think it's sort of--he's a great enough artist--if you've got a good song, even if it sounds like--I don't know--like a good Barbra Streisand song--but a good song, good song--"People Who Need People," for instance. It's a good pop song of a kind, from the point of view of being in every airport, playing in every airport around the world. It's a crafty piece of work that everybody knows. But if you send a song like that, a really good song that doesn't necessarily sound like Johnny Cash, he'd be able to spot--"This is a really good song!" Here comes Johnny Cash singing it: (in mock Johnny Cash) "People--boom-chick-boom"--Now, he'd do something with it. He'd do something with it and make it brilliant, but I think it's sort of insulting to send a song to somebody that just sounds like them. It's sort of insulting to. People have done it to me. They mean well. They mean well. But they say, "Ah, here's a song! You're gonna love it!" And it's this rather embarrassing pastiche of three or four of your things slung together, and you go, "Thanks very much. That's very nice of you. That's very interesting, but it's not quite what I'm trading with at the moment." So I never would've dreamt of sending him "The Man That I've Become" because it does sound like him, especially with that Luther Perkins lick on it, that really does--it just cries out for it, you know. But the other thing is, it's got that country and organ music. I think organ on country tunes sounds so cool. It just puts something in there that's--on country songs--that's really emotional, better than a pedal steel for me, even though I like pedal steel played well. You know what they say, that women don't like pedal steel. It's only men who like pedal steel. There's something about that tone. Men react to the pedal steel much more than women do (laughs). I don't know. It's just one of those things. I think it's more sonic than anything else. 

I first heard "High on a Hilltop" as an extension of "What's Shakin' on the Hill." In both the "hill" is a metaphor for what's really important. 

I suppose it is. I hadn't thought about it like that. I think that that is a gospel song. I think "High on a Hilltop" actually is a kind of gospel song. I felt inspired with "High on a Hilltop." It's still pop, you know. It's still pop. I still think, "Would Dan Penn do this, or Arthur Alexander?" You know, some of the people that I like. Ivory Joe Hunter. I think, "Would they do something like this?" If I think they would, I think, "Oh well, I will too" (laughs). 

When I first saw the title "High on a Hilltop," I thought, "Yet another gospel song!" 

Yeah. 

"The Man That I've Become" goes well with "Failed Christian" because they both have verses about the choir. 

Oh yeah, yes. That's true. Yes, I didn't know that until we actually--I hadn't realized that until they sequenced it. But they do. Yes, they've both got the choir reference.

They sound as if they're being sung by two people coming at the same emotional or spiritual state from different perspectives. 

Oh, well, that's great. That's great. 

Such connections seem to continually emerge from your albums. I have the feeling that ten years from now I could play this album and discover more. 

Well, I hope so. I really hope so because--well, I like listening to it too. See, that's the strange thing. You get a real kick from sitting down and listening to your own record. There comes a time when you stop, but generally it's when you start thinking up a new way of telling your story. But until that comes along, to listen to your own record and really enjoy it and not be going--twitching and--you know, because you can hear yourself going to work--there are always things that you wish you'd done slightly different. Of course there are. But they're all honest, honest--you know, you overlooked something. I mean, it's honest. But to be able to listen to your own record and for it to sound like somebody else, for you to enjoy it as if it were somebody else, is a very curious sensation. Or maybe it's not curious enough. Maybe it's not a curious sensation. 

Did you always listen to your own records and enjoy them, even in the '70's? 

I did, but some more than others. Definitely some. Whenever I thought I'd done a good thing, oh yes! I'd listen to it over and over again and dig myself, you know (laughs)? But, no, there was a period when I was striving for something and not--I was very unhappy, and I felt very uncreative and at a low ebb and trapped. I felt--I was still with a big record label then, and when it's time for an album, you've gotta come up with one. It doesn't matter if you don't feel like it. 

Columbia? 

Columbia, yeah. And that's a terrible feeling, to go into the studio with feet like anvils, you know, just dragging them. And that's, of course, when you start taking to the bottle and thinking that if you've got half an idea--if you get drunk enough, you can actually turn it into something good. And the awful thing is that occasionally it works. But, of course, the next time you do it, what you're left with is this drunken mess. And that's awful, when you've got to--when you know you've done a record that, in your heart, you know is a sorry thing. 

Part III: https://arsenioorteza.blogspot.com/2009/05/nick-lowe-sxsw-interview-pt-iii-march.html

Part V: http://arsenioorteza.blogspot.com/2009/05/nick-lowe-sxsw-interview-pt-v-march-21.html

Nick Lowe SXSW Interview, Pt. III (March 21, 1998)

I'm a Catholic, so when I first heard "Soulful Wind," I thought you were singing about the Apocalypse or the Holy Spirit or something. Was I way off base?
No. I was thinking of something good. I rather thought the soulful wind was kind of a good thing, but at the same time maybe a good thing that could sweep away the bad stuff. So whether that's apocalyptic, I don't know. I always think of the Apocalypse as something that sweeps away a bunch of good stuff too. Everyone's history.

You use phrases like "the lion will lie down with the dove"--
Yeah.

Familiar biblical phrases--
Yeah.

And I thought, "Oh, he's writing a song about ultimate hope."
Yeah, I think it is. I'm--I find I'm using a lot more of that sort of language in the songs I write now, but it seems sort of natural somehow. I don't give it much thought. You know, I'm an--I suppose I'm an Anglican, you know, which they describe as "Catholicism lite" (laughs), but I'm not a practicing Anglican. But I have a sensibility about this, and the older I get as well, the more I'm at ease with whatever this thing is. But to me it's a kind of language. It's not something I thought up. It's a kind of a language and a way of expressing a feeling, and those--as we all know, those biblical phrases and things are--they strike chords and are really fantastic fun to sing. It's just great to say them.

Then I heard on this album--
"Failed Christian," right.

But also "Lead Me Not"--
Yeah.

And I thought, "Well, he's continuing in that. It's growing instead of shrinking."
Yeah, it does seem to be, but as I say, I haven't thought it out at all. It's so hard to come up with a sort of three-minute, simple song with a very direct lyric and a direct tune that people haven't heard millions of times before that if I started boxing it off and saying, "Oh, you can't do that. You can't do that. You've gotta--No, it's going too far this way." If I started corraling it too much, it would sound stiff and kind of make people feel uncomfortable somehow. I've done that in the past. I've had good ideas for a song--in my opinion, again, in my opinion--I've had a good idea for a song, but I've rather squashed the idea at birth. I've said, "Oh, it's that kind of tune! Right! It goes in this box!" And I've forced it into a box, and in fact the thing probably--you haven't served it well. I'm much more apt to letting the song--letting the lyrics and the melody and how long the thing is structured, whether those things are structured--I try and let the music do the talking much more now than me doing the talking. At least, that's what it feels like to me anyway. And one of them is in the strange sort of quasi-religious thing that seems to have come in. But, you know, I haven't had somegreat revelation, sadly (laughs). It's a sort of a device, but it's one that makes me feel good to use.

Why did you choose to cover "Failed Christian"?
Well, do you know who Henry McCullough is?

No.
Well, he's a very interesting man. He's from Northern Ireland, with all that that implies. And he's also a really fantastic musician. He was in the sort of Woodstock lineup of the Joe Cocker and the Grease Band. He was the guitar player--you know, "A Little Help from My Friends" and all that. And he was also the guitarist in the first lineup of Wings as well.

Henry McCollough?
Yeah.

Isn't there a Jimmy McCulloch who played in Wings too?
Yeah, there is, but they're no relation. Jimmy was--Jimmy followed Henry, actually. Henry was the person who did "Band on the Run" and "My Love," all those. But coincidentally the next guy's name was McCulloch too, although Jimmy was a Scot, and Henry was from Northern Ireland. Although they're very similar. You know, when you get up to Northern Ireland and Scotland, they're not very far apart. It doesn't sound like it. Their accents are completely different, but they're very similar sort of people. But, anyway, Henry had a lot of--am I rambling too much? Maybe you've got a bunch of questions that you want to ask, and I'm just--

No, this is fantastic!
Oh, all right. Well, Henry had a lot ups and downs with drink and drugs and what have you, and he really blew his--blew his thing, really. So he decided, in the nick of time, to go back to Northern Ireland and kind of clean himself up and get himself straight again and organized again and stop hanging out with these hoodlum friends and whatnot. And I lost touch with him. I was never really a big friend of his, but he got Brinsley Schwartz--the band I was in, Brinsley Schwartz--onto the Wings tour to open for them. He got us onto it. And, anyway, I lost touch with him. And about two summers ago, myself and my boys were doing a show in Belfast with Van Morrison, who, by the way, Geraint Watkins, the keyboard player, and Robert Treherne, the drummer, who play on my record and on The Impossible Bird, have just finished doing Van's album, Van Morrison's, the next one. Yes, it's coming out.

That'll be a different sound.
Yeah, I can't wait to hear it. I don't know what it's going to be like. I said to them, "Now, don't give away all your stuff that you do with me to Van" (laughs)! Anyway, no, it's a different thing, although he records live as well. He records his vocals live as well. Anyway, so we did this show with Van in Belfast, and Henry, right out of the blue, just came backstage, and it was really fantastic to see him. And he gave me a tape of some songs that he'd been working on. One of them was "Failed Christian," and I just thought it was a really great song because it had that--it's got that sort of naivete and wisdom thing working for it. It's not a particularly original thought. I've heard it expressed before. But the point is well made yet again.

I thought it was probably fifty years old or something.
Well, he's got that (laughs)--he sometimes seems extremely old. But, oh yeah, I think it's a really good thing, although people who haven't really listened to it right and heard what the song is saying have put it together with a few other things like you were saying--you know, those other biblical references -- and said, "What do you mean 'Failed Christian'? What's happened to you? Steady on now" (laughs)! And I say, "No, no, no. Just listen to it. It's all right. Everything's fine."

It's good to know that he's still--
Yes, he comes up with something as strong as that. Right. And he hasn't recorded it. I phoned him up and said, "Look, Henry, I've been listening to your tape, and 'Failed Christian' I think is so cool. What do you think about letting me record it?" And obviously he recorded the demo of it, but he hasn't got a record deal or anything like that. But he said, "Yeah, go ahead." So that's pretty good to give away a tune like that.

When The Impossible Bird came out, the publicity accompanying it made mention of the fact that you'd recently become wealthy by virtue of having a song on The Bodyguard soundtrack.
That's right, a song of mine you might be familiar with, "Peace, Love and Understanding."

Whose version was on the soundtrack? Yours?
No, it was done by Curtis Stigers.

So it was a new version.
Yeah, a new version. But it's a song that's been covered by lots and lots of people. I've got covers of it by a gospel choir--a sort of black gospel choir from Harlem--and it's a fantastic version. And bluegrass--I have a great bluegrass version of it.

I heard you say one time that you wrote it tongue-in-cheek.
Yeah. When I first thought it up, it was supposed to be like an old hick because everything was changing, you know, in the '70's so fast. You know, hippies were going right out of fashion. And it was supposed to be this sort of washed-up old hippie sort of saying to the new, you know, "Well, I might be out of the window, but one thing: what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding? You can answer that with your flash new ways." It was supposed to be sort of funny. But when Elvis recorded it, he put that anthemic thing into it, and even when I do it now, I do it with the--I've forgotten the original thing. I've got so used to people doing--but it is--it's got a great title, that song. I think that's why people identify with it. The song itself is very simple and trite, really, and sort of pretentious. "As I walk this wicked world" sounds a little bit much. But that's the way it was supposed to be when I did it. But now I don't think about it. It just seems to me all dead righteous now.

Pt. IV: http://arsenioorteza.blogspot.com/2009/05/nick-lowe-sxsw-interview-pt-iv-march-21.html

Nick Lowe SXSW Interview, Pt. II (March 21, 1998)

You said that you'd explain your reasons for cutting your vocals with the band.
Well, I've been trying to figure out--ever since--you know, the received wisdom says that you do your best work when you're a kid, and then come thirty or so--thirty years old or so--it's all over, basically. Everyone only likes--you do your best stuff when you're a kid, and then you go off. Either you try to redo what you did when you were a kid, only kind of grown up--and it's a rather embarrassing, not very edifying spectacle--or you just lose it and give up. So when the--you know, I had a brief job--a job for a short while--as a pop star in the late '70's. And it seemed totally natural. I don't ever remember once going, "I've made it!" I never remember thinking that. It seemeed totally that me and my friends--my contemporaries--it was our time, and everything we did was totally current, totally bang up to date, they were all hits, no matter if it was records I was producing--even my own records were hits. Or if I played bass on someone's record, it was a hit. Rockpile was having hits. We made lots of records, and they were all hits. And then the wheel turns, as it does, you know, all the time. The wheel turns and suddenly starts turning away from you. And that's when some artists--there are some artists who quite mystifyingly manage to stick with the wheel, like Elton John, for instance. The man has had a career that just goes through the decades. Cher, she just goes on and on and on. And so now especially--Madonna's getting up there. Prince almost did, but he got fed up with it and jumped off. He sort of stumbled a bit. But some of these others seem to go on and on. So I have no interest in doing that, but the elements of being a star--you know, famous I mean--when you start out, that's all you're interested in. That's the only thing that interests you, being famous. But it's amazing how quickly that you soon realize that it's the worst part of doing this job--being famous and pointed out in the street, pointed out, noticed. That's a real nuissance. So when the wheel started turning away from me, I said, "Look, what am I going to do now?" But I realized thart what was falling away was being in the public eye. And I said, "Don't worry about that. You never liked it anyway. So who cares?" What was more worrying was that I was perceived--on paper my career was perceived as being all over, and yet I'd had hit records, but I was perceived as being all over. "Sorry, you're history, man"--by the music business in general.

What period are you referring to?
I think sort of '82--1982--something like that. But I felt, even though I'd had hits and things like that, I thought I hadn't done anything that was much good up to this point. I thought, "You've got your pop-star thing over now. Now you can get on and do something." I thought, "Well, what is it that I feel I haven't done? I know that I feel that there's something not working here, but I don't know what the hell it is." So I started to try and figure out what this was, and how to record and write--how to write songs for myself and record myself in a way that uses the fact that I'm getting older in a business that values youth sometimes more than talent, but certainly as much--how I can use the fact that I'm getting older in this business as an advantage, as a real asset, as opposed to its being this terrible hindrance, because it's coming along anyway, so you might as well get with it now. Well, it took me a long time to figure it out, and because I couldn't figure it out, I couldn't persuade anyone to kind of help me. I couldn't tell anyone what I wanted them to do so they could maybe give me a hand and help me out, because I didn't really understand it myself. But, bit by bit, things got revealed to me that--a great thing that happened was when I got to meet, and play with and make music with, Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner and those guys, and John Hiatt.

You're referring to Little Village.
Well, not necessarily. The record, in my opinion, is not good. I think it's overfancy and fussed with, I think. But the experience of playing with those guys, in making that record--and the one before, the John Hiatt record Bring the Family--was a tremendous experience for someone like me, especially thinking the way I was. To suddenly be pitched into playing with these people--I learned a lot from that, and I saw a lot of the things that I thought were out of my reach, maybe, that I couldn't do, were possible. You've gotta have a certain amount of faith, you know, and things that I hadn't considered before. And I've gotta be really careful here because I love talking about this stuff, but it looks really pretentious in print. So you've got to be very, very careful (laughs) what quotes you use from me. But are you with me so far?

I think so.
O.K. So one of the things that bugged me was how I'd write a song--and putting aside whether the song was any good or not--and I'd sing it into a little thing like that [pointing at my tape recorder], a little Walkman, at home, and I'd play it back, and it would sound--again, putting aside whether it was a good or bad song--but it would sound great. You know, you have a guitar there and this voice sitting on top of it, and everything would make sense. And so I'd take it to the studio, and piece by piece this would be kind of chipped away and taken away, and it seemed that the people I was playing with, the people I was--you can't really blame them--but they were locked into a way of making pop records, pop band records. "There's a way of doing it. We all know how it goes. Let's get on with it." So my little song--well, suddenly it's a little too slow, so speed the tempo up. And when the tempo goes up, suddenly it's a bit too low down to sing in the key it's in, so we've gotta put the key up. So suddenly I'm singing it in a different way, a different character. A different character comes along now. And you're caught up in this, and suddenly your song is taken away from you and suddenly turns into something else. Occasionally it would be better--occasionally. But the overwhelming--

Can you think of an instance when a song got better as the result of those changes?
Well, I don't really want to do that because it could be something--a tune that people really like, and I don't want to spoil that. While I like talking about the way I make music and things like that, I don't want to spoil people's perception of--

You were saying that sometimes it would get better--
Occasionally it would get better--to my mind. This is all to my mind, all to my mind, it would get better. But the overwhelming number of times, I thought--after it happened about two albums in a row--not all the way through, necessarily, not every track--you know, it's an album full of things that I thought, "This sounds so tired and kind of not the--this ain't real. This sounds like it's too young for you or something. There's something not right here. It doesn't sound correct." So I figured out--I resolved that I had to find a way of writing songs for myself and recording myself so that it sounded like that thing on the Walkman, only bigger and with other musicians on it. And this all coincided again, as I said, with meeting Ry and all those people. But also I'd started doing solo shows. That was a real eye-opener as well, because when you stand up in front of a bunch of people and play your songs, you suddenly see your song in sharp relief, and you start thinking--as you're playing it, you think, "Why did I put this thing in, this bit in? This is hopeless! Why am I saying this again? I said it. Everyone thought it was really cool the first time I said it, but now you've done it again. It's sort of hopeless. No, no, no, you haven't done this right at all." So it started to make me write songs in a different way, because you use everything you've got. If you try to start writing songs, you use everything you've got. You've only got your voice and your guitar, but you make everything count--not too many chords, get on a nice groove and keep it there, and say something nice--and funky. Try and make it funky and uplifting in some way. I started thinking about all this stuff. And then, well, I started to sort of get it. I started to get it, although I suppose when I did Party of One--I did that with Edmunds, Dave Edmunds--he wouldn't have it. I remember saying to him, "Look, I really want to sing some of these songs when the boys are playing them. Give me a mic, and I'm going to perform it for you." And he said, "Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, let's just do it the way we know, all right? Just make the backing track, and then you sing on top of that." So I did it.

You did it his way?
I did it his way, and some of them came off.

"All Men Are Liars" sure sounds live.
Well, you know what? I think that might've been the only one that was. I've suddenly got a feeling that I did do that one live. In fact, there might've been a couple that I managed to do live, and that one might be one of them. There were some pretty good tunes on that. But after that record, I thought, "This is almost a good record. This is almost a good thing, but it isn't what I've got in mind at all." Then a few things more started dropping into place, and then I did The Impossible Bird, and by that time I'd had a few things that happened to me in my personal life, which had really made me blue. You know, I'd really started to know what being blue felt like. And, luckily, I'm an artist, and I can write some cool songs about it (laughs). I don't know how people deal with it if they can't do that.

They listen to your songs.
(Laughs) Well, that's pretty nice to know. But I know that's what I do. See, I listen to blues music, and it cheers me up. It makes me feel good. But at the same time, I don't want to put my diary to music. I want these tunes to be really good pop songs so that people will go, "Oh, I know--" Even though I'm saying, "I, I, I" all the time in the songs, it could just be a character saying "I, I, I." It's not necessarily my diary, you know. But the thing about atmosphere is really interesting and exciting. So I realized, as I say, that I have to sing the songs at the same time as we do the track. So what I did was, I started going to this--well, you'd describe it as a little kind of dance hall, a little dance hall which is near where I live in west London. And it's got a sort of wooden, sprung dance floor and a vaulted ceiling, and they have--it's a sort of community center. They have Cub Scouts meeting there, and they have aerobics classes, and they have a dramatic society--you know, all that. So I rent this place by the afternoon. When I've got a few tunes going, I go in there--to finish them off, I go in there and just sing them out into the room, just take a guitar there and sing them out into--because the acoustics are so great, really quiet, and it fills the room. When you sing loud, the room seems to absorb it, so it's a very inspiring sort of room to sing in. Then I'd let the songs kind of say where they wanted to go, you know? That experience would just take the uptightness out of it. And I'd sing these songs over and over and over again until--not so that I found one definitive way of doing it. Quite the opposite. It would get that I'd know these songs so well that they'd stop being my songs. It'd be like I'd be singing a bunch of covers. It'd be like I would open my mouth and sing "In the Midnight Hour" or "Bye Bye, Johnny" or something like that, something really familiar, so that when you open your mouth, you don't know how it's going to come out. You're going to interpret it different every time. But all you know is it works, and you know how it goes. So then I'd go to the studio with my guys, and they--as I say, they're really great musicians. I should say a bit about that because--especially being here at South by Southwest. Now, this town has been full of really good musicians all this week, and the world, in fact, is full of good musicians. You come from an area where particularly fantastic music comes from. And the people who've come here to this town are probably the best ones from their cities, the top guys who pack the places everywhere. When they come in here and they get with everybody else, it all levels out to kind of this--this level of talent, you know, this level of excellence which suddenly goes extremely bland. It seems to be like everybody can do it--except when you hear someone who is really good, and they just zoom out. They're so much head-and-shoulders above the average. And that's what I've found. I've been lucky enough to play with some really, really highly rated musicians in my time. And I won't name any names, but in my opinion some of these people are extremely overpraised. You know, they've got licks and chops and things like that that they do, but they don't really know how to open themselves up. And to find musicians who know how to do that, to open themselves up and reinterpret what they--different every time, is extremely rare, and so whenever I find people who are like that, I like to hang out with them. So I go to the studio with these fellows, and I show them how the song goes maybe once or twice, so they hardly know it at all. I know it inside out, but they hardly know it at all. And they know that they've got to listen to the vocal to get their cues, and they also know that I am going to be performing this thing, so they can trust me that I'm not going to be stopping it every two minutes and saying, "Oh, no! Not that!" They know I am going to be going for it. And I trust them as well. And they are good enough so that they interpret this song different every time, and if they make a mistake, well, a mistake is a mistake, and you stop and you fix it. But with this process, you just get these incredible little accidents and little clashes and things like that that come along, which you can't dial up because we're continually trying to trick ourselves into being like the way we made our first records--in other words, not having all the experience and knowledge that we've got. Because when you hear a record that's made by someone with bags of experience and knowledge, it sounds really dull somehow. The great artists that somehow transcend that sound have this great naivety and continually find ways of tricking themselves into doing stuff that you don't normally do. And then it sounds exciting and fresh and exhilarating. It doesn't sound like yours. It sounds like some other thing. This other element seems to come into the music. It doesn't always come along, but I've found that if you record like this, I get--I stand a chance of getting that element that I was trying to find when I listened to my thing on the Walkman--that naturalness--except it's with other people as well. I mean the sidemen, the musicians. And they're making these comments and kind of agreeing, you know, that sort of thing. These people, funnily enough, are--they can't really do sessions, you know? Not like session men do. The world is full of session men who've got loads of chops. A producer says, "Right, we need heavy metal on this bit." They bang a few pedals, and suddenly out it comes. "We want that!" And the world's full of those people, and they're very, very--that's admirable. Anyone that can make a buck out of making music has got my vote, but the people I'm looking for are the guys that--they play it one time, and the producer says, "That's great what you did in that--!" "What? I'll try. Uh, can you play it to me?" Because they don't really know what they're doing, but these people are great, great musicians in my book because they're not afraid to go into a studio and open themselves up. It's not a common way of making records. I can't help it if my records don't fit on the radio or anything like that. Too damn bad. It's too damn bad. I go through a lot of trouble to make my records sound the way they do, and I'm sorry, I can't help it if (laughs)--

Your hard work is paying off. These records, without sacrificing any naturalness, are so rich and detailed that some day--maybe in five years, maybe in twenty--someone is going to pick up on them and appreciate them in a big way.
Well, I really appreciate your saying that. That's really fantastic. I thank you very much. That was a very good compliment.

Pt. III: http://arsenioorteza.blogspot.com/2009/05/nick-lowe-sxsw-interview-pt-iii-march.html