Dennis Locorriere speaks to Hot Press ahead of Irish visit

Dennis Locorriere has just kicked-off his Point Zero tour when he agreed to take a call from Hot Press. It's a cold, blustery morning on the Sussex coast, which is where the former Doctor Hook frontman now calls home. Locorriere is easing himself back into tour mode, but already has plenty on his mind...

You’re in the early stages of the tour at the moment?

Yeah it kind of starts with a few weekend things, were I go out and I play and then I have a week to get stupid again.

What do you get up to then during that week then?

Last year was kind of an idle year for me and I didn’t do a lot of playing, so for the first couple of dates I was like "Oh God, do I remember everything.” Then when I came off stage I thought “Good, that’s all back in my head now.” But then I had another week, so I’d see how much of it I’d lose again. But once it’s back, it’s there.

How long have you been living in the UK then?

I’ve been over here for a while. I’ve been back and forth for the last ten or twelve years, but I’ve had residency for the last couple.

Well you haven’t lost any of your New Jersey accent anyway.

(laughs) I lived in Nashville too for 25 years and you never heard me talking like Hank Williams either.

What do you think of the music scene in the UK at the moment?

Oh, you know man, I don’t even really feel like I’m in the music business anymore. I feel like I’m in the Denis Locorriere business. I’m not particularly disillusioned by it because it has very little to do with me. I mean I don’t feel like I’m in competition with Ed Sheeran and Maroon 5, I’m just doing what I do, and letting water seek it’s own level. And there’s good music out there, and there’s not.

What changes do you see in it?

The business has changed so much. You watch the X Factor and you see these 18 year-olds who are suicidal because they didn’t become superstars in twelve weeks. And they think that their lives are over. You know I’m 64 and I’m still plugging along. The game has just changed so much. I never expected to make a nickle in this business when I started. People go into the music business now like it’s the medical profession expecting to get famous and rich, but it’s a different world. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of the old interviews with the Beatles and the Stones in the early ‘60s, and the question that they were always asked was “How long do you think this is all going to last?” And they’d all say “I don’t know, two years.” Nobody ever thought that they’d be doing it for twenty or thirty years. Everybody was thinking that if they could get a year out of it they’d be lucky.

So would that be your advice to kids starting out now?

It’s almost like paying your dues is a non-existent thing because it gets in the way of your overnight success. It’s just that they’re made to feel worthless immediately. There’s something that really irks me about singing competitions anyway. It just doesn’t make any sense. They’ve introduced this competition aspect to it that was never there before. I’ve learned over the years to compete with only myself. But I don’t really know what goes on in the business, it has very little to do with me. And I get asked all the time to be a judge on competitions. I can’t believe that’s an actual profession now. It’s a profession to tell other people to go the fuck home, that’s a gig?! What’s next? Become an executioner. I can’t believe it’s a job to sit there and break somebodies heart. But really if I had any advice for young people, it would be to run. Fucking run. Run as far as you can into the woods and write a song and come back out when you think that you like it. I don’t know what else I would tell them.

Retrospection is out at the minute. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Yeah that’s a compilation of my first two albums that I got back. They were licensed for a while, but they’re mine now. So I released them both in a package with some bonus tracks and liner notes and stuff lke that.

So is your solo work and the stuff you done with Hook like two separate lives?

The solo stuff means the world to me. I’m happy about my history. Obviously I know that you and I are talking because it all started a long time ago. I understand where it stems from, but there’s just something professionally botox about never moving passed that. Incorporating it into your life and stuff is good but I mean to just atrophy at a certain age is just not something I could do. I don’t think I’d still be doing it if that was the only option open to me.

You must get a lot of offers to play the Hook stuff though...

I get a lot of offers to play casinos, and nightclubs. I would play ‘Sexy Eyes’ and you would order a prime-rib and a drink. No thanks. I’m sorry. And the funny thing is that people think that I don’t care about my past and that I’m not greatful for it. But quite honestly, I’m more reverent than you think, and that’s why I’m not singing ‘Sylvia’s Mother’ in a chicken in a basket place. Is that how you would show reverence to something that meant a lot to you? And I take a lot of flack for that. But here’s the deal. There are two kind of Doctor Hook fans. There are the kind who come up to me and say “I’ve been a huge fan since forever,” and I find out that they only have the greatest hits album, and bless them for buying it. Hook made 13 studio albums. And then there’s the Hook fans who know all these records, and all the b-sides, and those are the fans that I kind of address myself to in concert and everything.

Do you still play some Hook songs in your live show?

If you came to my show you would hear some of those hits, and you would also hear some songs that if you were a Hook fan you would go “Wow, I never thought I would hear him sing that.” It’s like McCartney. I love McCartney and I love the Beatles. I’d take a bullet for the guy. I’ve seem him a bunch of times in concert and I know why he does it because it’s a high dollar ticket and you need production value. But for me, he could can ‘Live And Let Die’ and play two or three songs that I’d be dying to hear him sing. So I conduct myself that way. I play theatres and stuff, and I don’t go out and do the big venues with the greatest hits thing because there’s something awfully sad about not having the where-with-all to move past a certain point of your life. And sure that’s the stuff that was successful, but if I was successful as a baby model should I be touring in nappies?

But things change, you can’t help but change. So I just let water seek it’s own level. And I’ve got great fans. And the ones that interest me are the ones that say “I loved what you did 30 years ago. What are you doing now? And I never understand why that isn’t always the next question. I still love when McCartney puts out new albums, even if I’m not enamoured with every single track, there are usually a couple of things that make me glad that he’s still here. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan man. I don’t listen to Bob Dylan to be nostalgic, I listen to Bob Dylan because he’s fucking brilliant and I learn something everytime I listen to him. But here’s a guy that’s in his mid-seventies that whether most of the world knows it or not has just had one of the biggest temporary love songs on the charts with Adele. And I bet you most people think that she wrote that. And it tickles the hell out of me that all these kids are going “Yeah, she knows exactly how I feel.” No, a 75 year-old guy knows exactly how you feel, and that’s just unbelievable to me. I love it. And he didn’t pitch that, somebody found that. He didn’t write that because he thought it would be a big hit, he wrote that because he believed it. And there’s a really difference between saying what someone

What do you think it is that makes the like of Dylan, McCartney, Young and yourself keep writing new music?

Well one of the things I think that helps them is they way they've helped themselves. Look at Neil Young for example. Neil Young has never given a shit about how successful his last thing was. If his next thing is just electric guitar with fuzz on it, or techno, that's what he's going to do. These guys haven't designed their careers worrying about whether people are going to buy the records or not.

Surely it's easier to be that experimental though on the back of so much success...

I suppose yeah. And I think that everyone of them would like every album to be successful, nobody throws anything out there in the hope of nobody liking it.

Do you still listen to the Dr. Hook records?

Not really. I've had to listen to them in the last few years because there's a label (BGO) that's been putting out remastered re-issues. So I hooked up with them and agreed to write some liner notes and a track-by-track to give it a more personal feel. So I've had to listen to it and I've seen how it degradated after a while and I can point to exactly the point where we started guessing as opposed to doing what we felt was right. And when you guess - even if you guess right – you'll slide your chips out on the table and guess again. But what are you going to do with luck?

Aside from music you've acted a little and published a book of poetry. How did the poetry come about?

I'm always writing something down. One day I was talking to somebody and I read them a couple of things and they thought they were great. So I thought 'Great I've got to turn these into songs.' But they told me that they were finished, it's poetry. So I started to put them up on my blog, and my fans liked them. And then I got a call from this guy who had a publishing house and he asked me if I'd like to put together a collection of them. So I had about 60 or 70 of them at the time, and that was that. I've been writing poetry ever since.

Could that writing possibly lead to a new album?

Well it could to anything. But right now I'm calling this tour the Point Zero Tour because every few years I like to reassess and see where I am. And I do really feel like I've done lots. I've done this, I've done the Hook thing, I've got solo albums out, the poetry thing... So this is sort of like Point Zero to me now. It's all about trying to fashion all this into something that helps me to move forward. Because success to me is anything that allows me to do the next thing.

You're coming our way soon I see...

Yeah. I'm going to be in Vicar Street on April 5 I think. I've been trying to get back to Dublin for a long time so I was really happy to see Vicar Street on the schedule. We used to play the big venues in Dublin with Hook, and it's just a great audience. It's a musical audience. And it's an audience that I really miss playing to. So I can't wait to get back there and show them exactly where I've been and who I am.

Dennis Locorriere plays Dublin's Vicar Street on Friday, April 5.