A CULT above the REST

The more discerning of you will have noticed that it is almost impossible to mention the name David Lowery in a sentence without also inserting the adjective ‘wacky’ into the proceedings.

As sure as Shergar is alive and well and living in New Hampshire, you will find these these words compulsory in any description of the man and his work. Which is not too surprising when you consider the subject matter of his songs: axe murderers, the continuing Lunar adventures of Lassie, the recreational possibilities for your local skinhead . . .

He has already inscribed himself into rock ’n’ roll folklore as the quirky former frontman of ’80s Californian wunderband Camper Van Beethoven whose alluring brand of screwball folk rock drew heavily from such diverse influences as West Coast surf music and the Eastern European folk tradition. Needless to say, they sounded like no one else.

It was the band’s glorious shambling quality and seemingly ad hoc way of doing things that endeared them to the, er, masses. The band reached their zenith with the release of their fifth and last album Key Lime Pie , by any standards a masterpiece of style and substance abuse and anyone who does not own a copy should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Almost inevitably the band split up soon afterwards.

Undeterred, Lowery formed Cracker with his longtime friend and collaborator John Hickman, a bona fide guitar hero if ever there was one, and continued, more or less, in the same vein. Following on from 1992’s eponymous debut, Cracker reaped commercial – as well as critical dividends – with the release of Kerosene Hat earlier this year, a phenomenon which had proved hitherto all too elusive.

While some critics pointed to the more accessible, radio-friendly sound of the album as proof of an artistic compromise, there were still enough songs about drug-addled cosmonauts and decapitated movie stars and a host of other quintessential Lowery-esque moments etched into its grooves, to please even the most die-hard Camper fan.

Why then did Cracker succeed where Camper failed ?

“A lot of that has to do with the way the climate has changed.” explains John Hickman, “People make such a big deal of the difference between Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven when so much could have been in either band. Reading some of the reviews you’d swear David had been playing classical music before Cracker! The polarity they make is amazing.”

“The English press is so horrible,” purrs David. “ One of the weeklies called ‘Low’ ‘grunge noir’ but let’s see Pearl Jam do songs like ‘Kerosene Hat’ or ‘Dr Bernice’. And in the States Spin magazine gave the current album a good review but said it just wasn’t up to the work I’d done with CVB, which is completely ironic since they never once gave Camper a good review. They slagged every one of our records.

“The crowd that embraces us now rejected us at the time ‘cos we were seen as too hippyish or too folky. People used to complain that we sounded like Neil Young,” says David with a wry smile alert to the irony of it all.

“Now it’s fashionable to cite him as an influence,” adds Johnny driving the point home.

It dawns on me that never once in the pages of the music weeklies through which I fumbled greasily in my teens did I come across the sort of epic, sprawling retrospectives of the Great Winnipeg whinger which now adorn every self-respecting music publication worth its salt. And so I make a mental note to write to my local TD and demand , at the very least, an independent enquiry into the matter.

“He’s survived ’cos he’s done what he damn well pleased the whole way through,” says Johnny in an impassioned, almost reverential tone.

Indeed, you could say that doing as he damn well pleases is something which also comes naturally to David Lowery. Throughout his career he has consistently ploughed his own ‘wacky’ furrow (see, there I go again) through the murky, water-logged fields of the music biz.

“People don’t realise how Camper got it started in the States,” he says. “All these bands you’d never expect, like Butthole Surfers, loved CVB. There was one New Year’s Eve where we were supposed to open for the Grateful Dead – but we lost out to the Neville Brothers! One of the first tours we did was supporting the Dead Kennedys. We were taking our lives in our hands. It was so punk rock to go out there and play ‘Take The Skinheads Bowling’ with all these people throwing things at us and screaming ‘FUCK YOU’ all the time. But they kinda liked us too. We had long hair and bell-bottoms and Paisley shirts or cowboy hats and overalls. It was really disturbing!”

Nowadays Lowery is opening for Counting Crows. Does he not find it just a little exasperating having to continually open for other bands ?

“Not really, I’ve been doing this too long. I’ve done eight albums. I’ll probably do another eight. I make a living. Sure, sometimes you get a little twinge: ‘Shit, I’ve been doing this for 10 years, why doesn’t that happen to us ?’. But we’re really good friends with those guys. In fact, originally they were supporting us. I was actually the one who told them they were going to be big. I said: ‘you guys are going to be HUGE and when you are, you’re going to have to take us out on tour’. And Adam (Duritz) said: ‘You’re so full of shit!’

Am I to take it then that he is content to forego his cult status in order to earn a few dollars more ?

“Well, as far as CVB and the cult status which people attach to it goes, you must remember that history is written by the winners. But, of course, that’s entirely revisionist. I remember the last tour Camper did of England: we probably played to 40 or 50 a night so when people come up to me and say ‘Oh man, I was into you when you were in Camper’, I go ‘Oh really, what was your favourite song?’. I’ll tell you, nine times out of ten nobody can name a song,” he says. Touché.

“We did the right thing. We didn’t try to trade upon the name or sound of Camper. That was the kindest tribute we could pay to its memory; ‘cos we were really big Camper fans ! I mean I wrote all the songs. I put myself in the shoes of a 16 year old whose favourite band in the world was Camper,” he says, sympathetically.

“I think most of the respect we got was because we broke up ! That’s why I am not enamoured with the underground scene,” explains Lowery, less with an air of bitterness than stoical acceptance of the fate of his previous band of revolutionary sweethearts.

“Me and Johnny have always believed that the best music – the most interesting stuff – was being made in the gap between the underground and the mainstream.”

So Camper fell between the two stools, enjoying the support of neither ?

“Exactly!”

So what of the current crop of bands coming through ? Who does David Lowery see as the present day Camper ?

“ You must remember where I’m coming from. When I was 18 punk rock came along and we got into it ‘cos it said that everybody who came before us was fucked, was an old fart and just get the fuck out of our way! But all the kids these days have the same idols I do and I have no respect for them because of that; because it seems that by now, in the 16 years since then, they should have invented something that comes up to me and makes me feel old. Green Day does not make me feel old.”

But surely there’s somebody out there keeping the Camper-fire burning ?

“Beck might be”, ponders David.

Johnny agrees.

“He either gets abused really badly or else really adored when he does shows. Music is at its best when you’re not quite sure what’s going on; when it makes you ask yourself: is he serious or is it irony ? I want my brain to work like that.”

I interject that this is precisely the way my brain was working (even the long term unemployed get a break occasionally !) when, in a moment of weakness, I turned on MTV to find the new Cracker video lying in wait for me. This was the same man who once sang “No more rock stars/ No more MTV/ No more bullshit” The irony is not lost on Lowery:

“You know something, the fact that we’ve eventually made it there just makes that song even better !”

It does too.

What other contemporary bands caught his eye? Further prodding elicits the name of an obscure Chicago outfit called Souled American, “the slowest band in the world”, according to David. Slower, even, than Red House Painters ?

“They play so slow, the guy can barely even finish his sentences when he sings. You might even think it belongs in a jazz category but the words are like George Jones. Also The Painbirds is really startling too. It’s so hard to find something that hasn’t been done.”

With the spectre of the whole Zooropa circus still lingering in the nether regions of my psyche, I suggest, with tongue planted directly stage left in my cheek, that this is because we are the ‘post-modern generation’.

“Fuck our generation,” he laughs, light-heartedly. “People my age – I really don’t understand a lot of them. They just seem whiney and spoiled. I really don’t give a shit about what a lot of the songwriters from my generation are singing about; it just seems really inconsequential. They need to go out and see the world.”

So do I, but not until I win the lottery . . .