Pierce Turner has a talent that couldn't play dead even if it was cremated. He thrives on adversity and has written some of his greatest songs at his lowest emotional ebbs. Which is just as well, because Pierce Turner has much to be depressed about.
Thus far, Pierce Turner has released only three studio albums (now deleted) and one live compilation. As for hit singles, he's had a nice round number. Zero. And yet, there are a great many of us who confidently believe that he has already created one of the finest bodies of work in contemporary music. Tragically, it is also the most neglected. "The only thing I've got going for me is that people like what I do," Pierce jokes, without bitterness or rancour.
Born without the gift for avaricious self-promotion, Turner has undeniably lost out in a business where bad manners are often confused with creativity, and where commitment to what you do is deemed an outrageous eccentricity. The record industry has let him down. The music press has let him down. Most of all, the idiot beast that is global radio has let him down.
If you think any of this is hyperbole then you clearly haven't heard Pierce Turner: The Compilation, the immaculate Best Of collection recently released by Beggars Banquet with whom Pierce was signed until the early 1990s. Featuring, among its 16 classic tracks, such timeless Turner prizes as 'Wicklow Hills', 'How It Shone', 'Orange Coloured Sun', 'The Sky and The Ground', 'Moonbeam Josephine' and 'All Messed Up', the album is an exquisite encapsulation of his extraordinary genius. "As the years accelerate," wrote Peter Murphy, in his rave Hot Press review, "Turner's work seems to become more and more profound."
The grim irony is that, despite all the acclaim and the undying fealty of his worldwide fanbase, Pierce Turner is currently sitting at home in his apartment on New York's First Avenue, without a recording contract. "Sometimes, it gets me down badly, to be honest," he concedes. "But the only reason it gets me down is 'cause I am writing songs here like a motherfucker and I have nowhere to put the fucking things. "That's really aggravating. I'd go as far as to say that it's fucking stupid and unjust. I don't intend letting that stop me anymore though because I've decided to just get on with it. I have been sort of saving songs. I have an album's worth of new material that has a kind of a theme that runs through it. It's been mostly written for about five years now. I do some of them onstage and I know it's a really strong selection of songs. In a way, it breaks my heart to think of them going out on fucking Pierce Turner Records.
"I could've kept making records with Beggars Banquet provided I kept my budgets way down but I stopped because I couldn't take making records anymore that were not going anywhere. But, I'm beginning to think that, perhaps, I shouldn't think that way. Maybe I should stop saving it up and just fucking put the bloody thing out, and get on with the next one. Ultimately, what's wrong with putting it out on Pierce Turner Records as long as people can get to
hear it."
Pierce has lived and worked in New York since the early 1970s. The static and sleaze of Noo Yawk are as essential to his writing as are the romantic memories of his childhood in Wexford. From now on, however, he plans to spend increasingly more time on this side of the Atlantic.
"I don't have to live in Ireland or London to do that. I sorta have to live in New York in a way. New York is really important to me. Maybe that's partly superstitious, at this point. But, from a writing point of view, it's really healthy for me. I also get plenty of work, doing music for half hour films and dance things, and that subsidises me.
"My idea is to live in both places but to play more in Europe, to make more of an attempt to make an imprint there. The States is insane. Even if you were the most popular band in New York city, they wouldn't know about you in Boston, which is just four hours away. The only way to conquer it is with some kind of Second World War invasion plan, and I'm not going to do that."
While we may think that the Irish and British recording industry is replete with louts, dolts and pseuds, Turner is adamant that its American counterpart is even worse. While remaining outside it, he has been able to view its machinations up close through his wife Clare who works with a major international label based in New York.
"Professionally, I've completely lost all interest in American record companies," Pierce asserts. "I just don't give a shit about them. I have no respect for them or interest in them. I think they're all crawling up their own holes right now. Through Clare, I've been at dinners where I'm on the other side of the fence, talking about it. It drives me crazy listening to them. Actually, all they're interested in is impressing their peers, the guys from the other record companies and perhaps some writers. They'd sooner sign an artist that was going to impress them than even an artist who was going to sell records. It'd nearly make you nostalgic for the greedy fuckers who used to work in record companies.
"All the labels want one big 'cashcow' - which is the term they use - be it some fucker that's useless. This cashcow then allows them to sign what they call 'cool artists'. But sure, the fuckin' cool artists they're signing are no fuckin' good either. The poor old cashcow is probably better than they are. Then, they drop the cool artist a year later. How long can you stay cool within an environment like that? You're not cool 'cause you're good. You're only cool because you've got the right haircut."
Pierce Turner has no intention of aligning himself with any of the cod Celtic crap that has become so popular in those dark, fetid corners of the States where the words Michael and Flatley are uttered with a hushed reverence rather than the derisive guffaw they deserve. "All that stuff's too Irish," Pierce avers. "It's corny Irish. It's not what I am."
Ultimately though, the primary problem facing someone like Pierce Turner, when it comes to breaking the US, is the innate conservatism of American audiences.
"Americans are old-fashioned in a funny way," he maintains. "If they see you with a tape machine behind you, it freaks them out. They never accepted drum machines in America. There's hardly ever been a successful band in America with a drum machine. A guy from a record company pointed that out to me. He brought over Ministry, who were big in England, but he couldn't do anything with them in The States.
"In Ireland and England, audiences don't give a shit, they're focusing on the songs. Americans want to see some guy bashing away on a drum kit. American society is a very macho society. It's an animal society. Their sports are very animal-like. The football jock attitude in America runs deeply throughout their whole society."
Mention of which reminds me that Turner is himself a keen sports fan.
"I'm absolutely nuts about soccer and I love hurling," he says. "I played hurling a lot when I was younger but I was useless at it. I was one of them fellas who hopped around for half an hour only to be hit by the ball. I could never get over an injury. The ball hit me on the thigh once. The fucking ball could've gone through the net 25 times while I was hopping around. I had a bruise for weeks after it."
A love of sports is part of Turner's marrow and genes. His grandfather was a European heavyweight boxing champion in the early years of the century, and the only Irishman to have ever contested the world heavyweight title.
"His name was Jem Roche. He's in The Guinness Book of Records. His bid for the world heavyweight title was one of the shortest in history. He was beaten in 58 seconds."
Turner's first cousin, the playwright Billy Roche, has been endeavouring to develop a film script based on Jem Roche's tilt at the world title for some time now. Pierce, who keeps several of his grandfather's plaques in his New York apartment, fondly recounts the story with his customary verve and humour.
"I've read articles from the newspapers of the time," he attests. "The whole country was backin' on Jem. It was such a dark country at the time, with no belief in itself. And here was their man, their chance to win something. The whole fucking country went to Dublin on the train. Up to this hall that only held 800 people.
"The night before the fight, Jem was kept awake with people shouting up at him: 'Go on, Jemmy, you'll kick the shit out of him'. He eventually had to go down and beat up two fellas that were fucking driving him crazy, two drunks who'd been shouting up at him in the middle of the night. In the end, he got no sleep the night before the fight.
"Then, there wasn't enough tickets on the night of the fight. There was an uproar. Half the country was left standing outside this place. The bould Tommy Byrne was his opponent. He came over from America with all his trainers. They left Jem in the ring waiting there for an hour and an a half before they got in. Jem was sitting in there sweltering in the heat, after not sleeping the night before. It was a real tragicomedy."
Tragicomedy is a term that aptly describes much of Pierce Turner's career. While he admits to moments of disillusionment, he knows he will never, ever turn his back on music and even appears to relish elements of the Herculean task that the propagation of his music has become. He also enjoys laughing at some of the absurdities of his relationship with the record industry.
"I really like the look of The Compilation but, apparently, the packaging is so expensive that the American wing of the record company will be very reluctant to take it on. Elton John didn't even get packaging like that on his Best Of."
If Pierce Turner: The Compilation sells well (and it will be your fault if it doesn't), Beggars Banquet have promised to re-release the first three studio albums.
"I'm driven crazy with people looking for those albums," says Pierce. "The Compilation only gives a taste of those albums. The way I approached this record was to start off with 'Wicklow Hills' and then see what sounded right after that. I wasn't thinking what's the catchiest or most commercial.
"This record is not like the closing of a phase or anything. I don't feel that way about my songs. When I play onstage, I'm very glad to say that I can still pull songs from any one of those albums and stick them in the middle of any of my new songs. I don't feel any kind of distance between them at all."
Pierce enters the studio to record some of his vast reserve of new material later this month. "I'll do all of the most radio friendly songs at once. Then, I'll take them to some of the Irish majors, and maybe stick out an EP. At the moment, Irish majors get more attention from their head offices than they used to in the old days. Ireland is no longer considered to be a complete joke, as it used to be.
"You know, I sat down once and thought, 'If I was to have the perfect label, what would it be?'. The best I could think of was a progressive Irish label. You almost have to be Irish to really understand what I'm up to here, to completely understand it anyway. But it would help if you had a global view when it comes to marketing. Presented in the proper fashion, I know people will listen to what I do. They just have to get a chance to hear the bloody thing." n