BIRD IS THE WORD

Nick Lowe is lucky. He not only survived what he describes as the recent “Warner Brothers night of the long knives”, he’s also signed to a new label and released what just may be the finest album of his career, The Impossible Bird. Ironically, at the time of his last album, Party of One, he publicly celebrated his previous deal with Warner Brothers, suggesting then that it was “the only major left that actually likes music.” But that was back in 1990 and now things have changed, changed utterly, he claims.

“I was fired by Warners before they heard this record and now there’s all this fuss at Warners, with REM wanting to leave because Lenny (Waronker) and Mo (Austin) are gone and they were the two guys upstairs who know musicians and have produced records by people like Randy Newman, the Beach Boys and clearly did love music,” says Nick. He seems reluctant to accept that the new President of Warners, Danny Goldberg, also has a strong reputation within the music industry of being “extremely sympathetic to musicians,” according to one commentator.

“Lenny Waronker was the President of Warners, whereas most of the presidents of other major labels are lawyers and couldn’t give a shit. And rumour has it that Lenny and Mo are going to join up with Steven Spielberg and Geffen in a new record label, as part of a larger multi-media deal. But Warners got their accountants in and they said, ‘Who’s selling records and who isn’t and let’s get rid of those who aren’t’. And, apparently, 30 of my colleagues have fallen by the wayside. Basically, their entire second and third division. It was a night of the long knives. And they severed me very swiftly.

“But after I got over my initial embarrassment I thought ‘Hey, I’ve made this great record – which they weren’t even interested in hearing – so maybe it’s time for me to really make a change in my career’. I’m not after pop stardom. But I do want to cater for my small, but loyal fan base. So I decided to strip down my whole operation. And part of that meant investing in myself some of the proceeds from the windfall that came my way as a result of one of my songs (‘What’s So Funny ’bout Love, Peace And Understanding’) being used on the soundtrack of The Bodyguard which sold zcrillions of copies! So I did this deal with Demon, which is great because it is a small label and they know about music and I get through straight away when I phone! It’s sexy and saucy!”

Looking back on his time with major record labels Nick Lowe suggests that he was tired of playing second fiddle to major acts on a major label.

“I’ve had enough of being the poor relation to big stars” he says. “And there was a time they used to keep people like me on the books just to give the place ‘a touch of class’ and they didn’t really care if you sold any records. There was also a tax write-off element to all that, for them, which suited me fine. But things are different now. And the point, in relation to Warners, was that they funded The Impossible Bird but then when they decided they didn’t want it, they gave it back to me! So, in ways, the whole thing is working out well for me.”

The last time Nick Lowe released a new album, in 1990, he rationalised the preceding two year’s silence by revealing that he was “very depressed” during that time and “couldn’t seem to find anyone who thought about music the way I did”. He also suggested that writing songs was a dying art and that too much contemporary music was “fluff made to sound like something real because the machines play with all this phoney emotion.” How does he feel about such issues now?

“At the time I said that I was at a low point in my career and in my life,” he explains. “My marriage had broken up and maybe even more important than that, I was thinking ‘How is it that, on paper, I’m a washed-up ex pop singer of which there are many, yet in my heart I feel I haven’t even started yet?’ In fact I felt I’d just gotten the ‘Top of the Pops’ thing out of the way and was ready for the next stage. So I was at a loss, for a long while, trying to find a way to record my stuff as I believe it should come across. And with people who understood what I was doing.”

Sounding as though he can’t believe he allowed this dilemma to traumatise him so much, Nick Lowe emphasises “I really was in a terrible state about all this” then continues by explaining how an old friend, Elvis Costello, came to his rescue. Lowe had, of course, produced five Elvis and the Attractions albums, including My Aim Is True, Armed Forces and Blood and Chocolate.

“I had this tremendous stroke of luck insofar as I was invited to do a record with John Hiatt, and got to meet people like Jim Keltner and Ry Cooder. And suddenly I found myself with people who’ve had the same thing staring at them at some point in their careers and have realised how to survive it. In other words how to get older in the music business and get it right. After that, Elvis offered me a job in his band and I began doing some solo acoustic dates and suddenly realised ‘Hey, I can do this’ and then got the deal with Warners.”

But what precisely was he getting at when he described a lot of contemporary pop music as fluff?

“I don’t feel like a Luddite in terms of music, I am all for modern music and modern technology but what I meant in that comment was that too often what is for sale is devoid of true human passion,” he explains. “And I’m not necessarily talking about how technology has killed the heart of music. What’s worse to me is the phoney passion in singers who are too earnest to be true. A lot of people mistake earnestness for soulfulness, whereas I think earnestness is the enemy of soul, of communicating emotion truthfully. And with this album I did try to do something that is more grown-up, in terms of delivery and subject matter. I’m 46 and it’s unseemly to sing about little boy’s subjects. I mean, look at Johnny Cash. He is sixty-something and that’s part of what makes him one of the great American artists of this century. And he now sings from the perspective of a man who has lived a very complete life and that’s why you really have to listen to him, pay attention to what he has to say.”

Johnny Cash, of course, has recorded a couple of Nick Lowe’s songs but this is not why he rates Cash so highly, he says.

“Not at all, he is simply the kind of great American artist the likes of which will probably never come along again,” Lowe suggests. “It’s like, as great as Robert Cray is, he’s never going to be another John Lee Hooker. And I see John Lee Hooker and Johnny Cash as very, very similar. But the same applies to Dwight Yoakam. Dwight’s getting better with every album, and as he grows older, but he’s never going to be Johnny Cash. They come from a more naive era, whereas we’re all so knowing now.

“The way that youth is idolised in rock also obviously applies to country music at the moment. Because, as great as he is, Johnny Cash was dropped by his Nashville record company because maybe he’s a little wrinkled and isn’t going to look good on country music video. And because older singers like Cash and George Jones don’t get in to country videos they don’t get the choice of the best songs anymore, because those songs are given to kids. That all is very disheartening. But, although the same notions dominate rock I don’t give a shit. I’m not going to let those attitudes affect my life anymore.”

As in Nick Lowe’s case, despite being shafted by his major label, Johnny Cash soon did a deal with an independent label, American Records, and has recently released his debut album for that label, suitably titled American Recordings. Central to its good-versus-evil concept is Lowe’s song ‘The Beast In Me’ which also is featured on The Impossible Bird.

“Basically, I had the idea for that song in 1979 and sang it to Cash rather drunkenly one night,” Nick recalls. “And it was one of those songs where you have a great title and a great couple of lines and you’ve basically said everything and can’t get any further. So I tried to bluff Johnny Cash, sang a load of whole tosh for him. Yet he knew I was on to something and every time I’d run into him over the intervening years he’d always say ‘How are ya’ doing with ‘The Beast In Me’ and I’d think he was taking the piss out of me for being a bit drunk! But he was right about the idea for the song. And he’s been right before. He cut a song of mine called ‘Without Love’ which surprised me because I thought it was lightweight. But when he’d stripped away all the fluff there was a good song there. He’s got a great ability to do that. And he’s done it with ‘The Beast in Me.’ But then he knew I was writing about him in the end and felt I articulated those tensions between different sides of his nature, the beast and the softer side. And because I’d gotten a lot older since beginning the song I also realised, of course, that I could relate to that aspect of the song. That’s why I think it’s a really great song. Anyone could relate to it.”

Nick pauses before continuing.

“But I would have to say that apart from looking at those tensions within us all I also see the song as a love song to the beast in one’s self, this thing you don’t really understand and which is hopeless and is slightly out of control. As such, it’s basically a song of self-acceptance at that level, like saying ‘Accept this part of your nature, don’t run from the beast, don’t deny it’.”

Lowe concedes that metaphoric language which refers to the taming of the beast and comparing the lion with the lamb – as he does in his album’s opening track ‘Soulful Wind’ – is very Biblical, echoing gospel songs like ‘Peace In the Valley’.

“I’ve got a hankering to write gospel but have this coy attitude to it, being an Anglican, which is, as they say ‘Catholicism light’!,” he says laughing. “But although I love gospel music, for a white, middle-class English person if you’re going to tap into that kind of language, and imagery, you’ve got to be very careful you don’t scare people away. It’s better to just offer a thought rather than be pedantic about it, or preach in any way. But the gospel influence probably comes across even stronger in my music, in aspects of the songs that do have a hymn-like quality, irrespective of their subject matter.”

Indeed, one of the strongest features of Lowe’s new album is the pristine purity of much of the music, with gospel-like contrapuntal melodies weaving in and around many of the songs. This form of purity is his main aim as a songwriter, he explains. Soul music is another heavy influence, whether he’s covering Jerry Butler’s hit ‘True Love Travels On A Gravel Road’ or composing ‘Shelley My Love’ which clearly owes a debt to Stax writers like Gamble and Huff.

“I actually got my version of ‘True Love Travels On A Gravel Road’ from Percy Sledge’s version on the CD that accompanies Peter Guralnick’s history of Stax, Sweet Soul Music “ he explains.

“And I’ve always loved Gamble and Huff, as in the O’Jays tunes. But when it comes to the backing vocal lines I think it’s very important to make them fit into the overall texture of the music, rather than just endlessly repeat some indeterminate sound. It is a separate vocal line and I am lucky in that I can write that kind of thing very quickly.”

Even more evident on The Impossible Bird’ is that more than half the songs sing about loss in love. Does this all stem from the marriage break-up Nick Lowe referred to earlier or a more recent battering he received in the name of love, to cull an image from ‘I Live on A Battlefield’?

“My marriage is well over by now,” he says. “And although some of the songs stretch back over six years and many on this album do reflect a man in a poignant state of mind they are more composite pictures of my life rather than strictly literal. What I aspire to write is something quite pure and simple so that anyone can relate to it. And aspiring to that kind of purity means doing far more than setting diary entries to music, though I know many of my peers get away with that kind of thing. I’m not denying my songs are heartfelt and come partly from my experience but setting diary notes to music usually produces doggerel. So what I do is think myself into the mood I want to project in a song and adopt a character to do that. And through distancing the whole thing from being personal I let the character tell the story, which is much easier than having to worry what I can and can’t say in an autobiographical song and if whoever I’m writing about will give me grief because of that! In that sense I don’t bring too much of my emotional baggage to a song, leaving it more open – I think – for listeners to identify with whatever characters I’ve created.”

Finally, one can’t let Nick Lowe off the phone without asking him why, on the cover of his album one of his feet appears to have been surgically removed to make way for a chicken’s foot?

“I had decided to call the record The Impossible Bird and then Bobby Erman, who plays drums for me, told me he was first married to a Mexican-American woman and lived in San Antonio, Texas and heard this really strange local legend,” Nick explains.

“They have a logo in San Antonio which is displayed on posters for dances and so on and it’s a picture of a man in a lounge suit, dancing. And he’s got either one or two chicken feet! And that’s because the local legend claims that one night the devil came to this club and danced with the girls, and bought drinks and was a hell of a nice bloke. And it was only at the end of the night they all noticed, as he was leaving, that he had chicken’s feet! And I thought this was a wonderful story – a devil who is very benevolent and who can dance well.

“If that’s not rock ‘n’ roll, what is?”