Spirits Colliding

Pat McCabe: I think probably everybody in Ireland knows you were born in Belfast. Were you from an artistic or musical family?
Brian Kennedy: My parents were, certainly in terms of creativity, very quiet people. My mother was a very loud person, but in terms of creative output it was very underground. My father was a classic quiet Northern Irishman. My mother did all the talking. She did all the groundwork, did all the feeding us, taking all the brunt of it while my father was out running or out working.
What songs or music do you remember most from when you were a kid?
We were given a radiogram. It was a radiogram for about six months and then it became somewhere to keep the clothes. But for a little while it had a couple of vinyl records with it, one of which was a Blue Decca single, really scratchy, called 'Candy Kisses' by Tony Bennett. "Candy kisses, wrapped in paper, mean more to you than . . . "
What about Irish traditional music. Were you aware of O'Riada or the Clancy Brothers?
Certainly not. But I was aware of the McPeake family. But only on a really scratchy level. I knew they were around. But as you know, in Belfast, and on the Falls Road in that time, politically, it was absolutely unsafe to leave the streets, never mind the area.
Of course, you then get used to not leaving the area mentally as well as physically. For me, two things happen, you either don't do it ever, or it really gives you the mad desire to leave and go.
And what exactly is it we're not allowed to see? What is so dangerous that I have to stay in the street? I was probably more full of that and eventually I did wander out.
Were you aware of the McPeakes' links with Bob Dylan and the whole folk movement?
Absolutely not! I wouldn't even have had a clue who Bob Dylan was at that point. There was just no music in the house. Like I was telling you, there was a radiogram and then that became furniture.
No musical instruments at all?
God, no.
What about your grandparents?
Not at all.
When did you first become aware that you wanted to become a performer?
I think probably at school when just getting through the day was the toughest thing of all. Trying to get through the day without some kind of a punch in the face or some kind of pain. One of the only people that remotely paid me any respectful attention was the music teacher. He was called Seamus Ewings. He was a most extraordinary man. He would teach us the EGBDF thing. What were you taught?
Every good boy deserves favour.
His rhyme for it was 'Every good boy deserves a father', right? That's how he remembered it. And that's what he taught us. But of course music lessons were 24 boys, of which 23 would be at the back doing their homework and throwing stuff. He'd often had chairs thrown at him. It was nuts, very violent. But he was quite a forceful person. He did take me aside one day and said 'you can sing'. And that's all he needed to say, just that wee glimmer of somebody saying something other than disgusting or insulting to me.
Somehow a little nugget of encouragement like that shines all the brighter because of the adversity. Almost the adversity works ultimately to your advantage.
I think it's what saved me in the end. Whatever it is, a sense of queerness, a sense of whatever you call it, in your adult life.
Difference is enough. I don't think sexuality comes into it.
The important word is difference, because it's not about sex at that point.
What was the first single you bought?
It would be an Abba single, 'Dancing Queen'.
How much did it cost, do you remember?
75p.
What feelings do you remember when you first played it?
Well, I'd play it over and over again. I was absolutely in love with it. It was one of the most exciting things I'd ever heard. I loved the song. I loved the singing. I loved the harmony, even though I didn't know it was harmony at that point. It just made me feel good.
They always reminded me of The Hollies, Abba - quintessential pop songs, beautifully crafted, lovely harmonies.
Do you know what it was, as well? It just sounded happy, really happy. So for me, I used to visit that record as often as I could.
We'll move on into your own work. When you go into the studio, is there a dominant idea from the start or do the ideas come gradually as you work?
Well, probably without exception I've gone in with quite a dominant idea about a theme, maybe for the collection of songs we've chosen. And without exception it changes. Because we go in and something else happens.
As it should, really.
As it should. Even other songs appear.
It's an organic growth . .
Completely. I've never made the record I'm about to make. I've never made the record I've just made before. So each record is like making a record for the first time. I allow for it to happen. I love collaborating with people because I think collaboration is everything.
There does seem to be something about partnership in songwriting, doesn't there, that the great songs have come from collaboration?
I think about it like this. Without the make up of notes, without the collaboration of notes we wouldn't have harmony, therefore we wouldn't have the basics that make up songs. So, collaboration is everywhere. The collaboration between your ear and somebody striking a note is everywhere. So I would say that.
The collaboration is important, but the evolution of a Brian Kennedy song . . . I was just thinking particularly of the "subterranean whispers" in your song 'Lost'. Where did that come from? Was that in your head before you began the song?
It sort of was. I tell you about that song. I had this habit in North London, at that time, of constantly being pulled over by these born-again Christians or those people who basically were forcing their way. That whole stuff was happening a bit too much. It's not directly about that but it's certainly indirectly - the conscience fighting with the conscious. Like I'm talking to you now and, of course, there is another voice going on in my brain right now, but it was just a matter of turning that other voice up a wee bit so I could hear it. It's just this kind of almost incoherent voice throwing all this doubt at you.
I think it's going on in people's heads most of the time.
I think so, too. It was important for that to be my voice as well. Also what slightly influenced it - Van, live, often uses a harmonica microphone. I'm sure you've seen him do that. It's amazing standing next to him doing that because it sounds like - he almost swallows the microphone - and before that point it's very clean and clear and you can hear every tone in his voice and then suddenly it's like somebody's taken most of your ears out! And it sounds like a person inside of him shouting and doing all this amazing performance.
I want to talk a bit about lyrics now and what you think the relationship between poetry and lyrics is, if any, or what lyricists you might admire. You mentioned Tony Bennett. Tony Bennett sings 'baby' and Mick Jagger or Gavin Friday might say it differently. Some of them might expand it, some might reduce it. But you couldn't do that in poetry. The most powerful of lyrics can look quite banal on the page as opposed to great poetry.
Well, I could never sing the word 'baby'. I always thought it sounded funny. I wouldn't naturally say 'hey baby, how's it going?'. I wouldn't talk like that, so I try to sing how I talk, like a conversation. Some of my favourite lyrics sound like a conversation. They sound like something that's just happened and hasn't been sweated and agonised over. Of course I admire greatly people like Dylan. Joni Mitchell I'm a huge fan of.
She did amazing things with lyrics. Jazz lyrics almost, aren't they?
That's what it is, I suppose. It's real free-form expression, but it still makes complete sense. I feel absolutely nourished when I put on a song of hers.
There seems to be very special moments sometimes in art like that. I often think of 'Abraham, Martin And John' by Marvin Gaye, as if that was just breathed onto the page. Or like 'Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands', as if they were just breathed into existence and there was no work to be done on them, as if they were just born. It happens rarely enough, I think.
Anyway, we'll get onto Irving Berlin. What I wanted to say about him was that he's generally acknowledged as one of the greatest songwriters of all time. But what I think is significant about him is that he's said to have been very limited technically. And yet many trained musicians he worked with have given testimony to the fact that he had an extraordinary feeling for melody, harmony and form, with a rare instinct for the perfect combination of text and tune. What do you think about that stuff?
I think it's important to remember what came first, which is, at some point somebody made a sound beyond a grunt. Melody became something higher than grunting and therefore some kind of higher feeling entered expression.
Which came first, the tape-recorder or the song? Well, of course, the song did. What came first, the music or the business? Well, of course, the music did. So, it's no surprise to me at all that some of our most gifted composers were not gifted technically. What on earth has technology got to do with emotion? It's got nothing to do with it.
This is the last really hard question I'm going to ask you. This is complicated and I apologise to the readers of Hot Press, but I want to know the answer to this. It's been said of The Beatles that while their early lyrics were simplistic by the standards of Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson, Eddie Cochran, Lieber and Stoller and the teams associated with the New York Brill Building, that they far outstrip their rivals in melodic and harmonic invention. Bearing this in mind how important is complexity and how important is simplicity? I tend myself towards simplicity and I wonder what you think.
I think they're both important. Whatever turns you on, simply. I think if complexity turns you on, if you want to go down to Ronnie Scotts in Frith Street and you go 'fuck me, that's amazing the harmonic invention because a, b, c and d'. And that really turns you on and really floats your boat, then great. Personally speaking, I err on the side of simplicity. For me I really love to hear somebody sounding honest. It doesn't have to be wrapped up in anything other than honesty.
There seems to me to be almost something superior about the open heart surgery of Hank Williams or someone who slices it down the middle and says 'this is it. It's as simple as I can get it and I want everyone to hear it'.
Well, the thing is, here we are in 1999 in Sligo, talking about Hank Williams. We're still talking about him. We're still buying his records. We're still using those as templates of what human expression is and how to do it. So I think in the long run it speaks for itself.
It's been said of Paul McCartney - of the intervals he employs, that he was vertical - melodic and consonant and that Lennon was horizontal - harmonic and dissonant, right? I suspect that you would tend towards the McCartney camp on that one.
Well, first of all I do have an admission to make: I'd never heard The Beatles really until John Lennon had died.
It's hard for an old-timer like me to believe that one.
I know. My two elder brothers were fans, but because they were and records were very hard to come by, they were very precious things. So, for whatever reason, that was their territory. I remember they were talking on the television about John Lennon being an ex-Beatle. I remember thinking for some time 'what on earth is an ex-Beatle'? I couldn't even come up with an answer for ages. And then, of course, eventually it made sense. There was a long time when I didn't connect with anything like that at all.
But in terms of songwriting, of course, you can't not be influenced by somebody like The Beatles, because for the longest time the world orbited around them. They wrote all the best songs in the world. Birds, I'm sure, were whistling them in various parts of the country, they were so popular. So given that you grow up in that kind of thing, it's hard not to be influenced by them whether it's subliminal or not.
When you're working, are you disciplined? Musicians don't usually work regular hours, do they?
I'm pretty disciplined in my ordinary life.
How important do you think that is? For example a couple of musician friends of mine have stopped smoking because it seriously damages their voice. You have to take things like that into consideration.
You have to. David Bowie seems to break all the rules. He looks fantastic and smokes his face off. Those people are rare. These days especially, you're not inhaling the same chemicals as you were 25 or 30 years ago. Also I don't think the treadmill was quite as mad as it is these days. In terms of if the machine kicks in and you're suddenly sitting on a successful record . . .
Sometimes, from the perspective of a 44-year-old man who should be getting the zimmer frame shortly, I look at the music business now and almost throw my hands up in despair. I think it's become so corporate now I find myself yawning and totally disinterested. To me it's quite moribund at times. Do you think that's an unfair judgement?
No, I don't. First of all it's your judgement and it's what you see, so it's completely valid.
It may be the fact that I'm getting too old.
I don't think it is. That's too easy. I think that's a cop-out. When people say 'it's because of your age', it's a cop-out.
I don't hear the great songs and I don't see a great energy about it.
Neither do I. I don't see a great enthusiasm about it. I don't really see anybody enjoying themselves.
There's nothing subversive about it, either.
It's amazing. I just don't understand it. I actually don't feel like I fit into it particularly. On the way up here I was listening to Jack L and I do admire him greatly: for a 25-year-old to have distilled all the stuff he has, and to have managed to protect himself from all the shit that gets thrown at you - the shit that is wrapped up as music.
What I'm trying to say is people talk about what's being played on the radio and so on, and this is what the people want. But if you play a controlled amount of records and that's the only thing people can choose from. . . young people are not stupid.
They certainly are not. Young people were young then, too, and why did they put 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' at No.1?
If a young person can negotiate a path through all of that and still come up with something that's melodic and about real things, I think that should be celebrated. At a certain point there's so much of a yawn factor, somebody thinks 'for fuck's sake, wake up'. Punk was born out of a similar thing.
If, God forbid, someone had to listen to only one of your songs, which one would you recommend?
(pause) I'd probably say 'Captured' because it was one of the first songs I tried to write and it's been very good to me. The 1999 version has ended up on this album.
Do you like America?
I love it. I think it's more respectful of difference. America's appetite seems to be insatiable. It's not just about 'give me one flavour, and that's it'. And often, London has been about that. It's been about cosmetics rather than content . . .
Sometimes the relative absence of irony can be liberating.
Yeah, definitely.
How important is religion to you?
Well, religion, where I grew up, of course, I experienced a very profound, extreme version of faith. Basically the word faith should have been replaced with the word fears. Same amount of letters, same first letter. That's all I learned about at that point.
But I think faith is a great thing to have. I think ritual is important. I love going to churches, mainly for the smell, the sound. I love singing in churches. And for me, as much as I have bad memories about my early religious experience, it was also one of the first places where I'd walk in and sing somewhere and it was almost like the room sang back to me, because I could hear my voice in an amplified way. I have good associations and bad ones. I think anything that teaches you fear is not a good thing, because there's enough of it in the world already. And in terms of telling people how they should live their lives, I really think it's mad. The particular version of religion I grew up with made me feel anything but secure and happy.
But church music would be very important to you . . .
I think so. I love the sound. I love the fact that it's organ and voice. I love the fact that it's harmony, lots of voices together. And that's what brings me back to it time and time again.
Do you feel that your best work, the opus every musician aspires to, is yet to come?
Yes. I do. Most definitely. And like I say with every record, I've never made that record before. So what I want to do is work as much as I can, sing as much as I can, record as much as I can and write as much as I can, and hopefully at some point - there's a great line in a Joni Mitchell song where she says "He sees a stray in the wilderness and I see how far I've travelled". So there's a point at which she looks back and thinks, that's the journey I've made this far.
I would love at some point to pause and look back and see the journey and go 'great, I've made some records I'm really proud of'. And sing until I'm unable to sing any more. Tony Bennett is a real inspiration.
Absolutely. He'll sing his way into the grave, won't he?
He's a great singer.
What are you working on at the moment?
For the first time in a while I have written songs by myself. I haven't done that in ages. But that just seems to have come about because I'm in a house by myself at the moment. I have a house in Killaloe in the hills in Tipperary. I'm there by myself and there's not a whole lot else to do.
Chase the ghosts of Dan Breen or Sean Tracey perhaps?
Or Brian Boru, that sort of thing. And I find it's very good for me. I'm working on short stories that I've been doing on and off when I get time. In the meantime, America is calling very loudly.
You'll be spending a lot of time there?
I look forward to spending a good chunk of next year there. I can't wait.
Hopefully we'll see a book of fiction from you at some point.
That's something I would really love to happen. And it will happen. I can visualise it. I see it in my head. And I'm nearly there. But, like I say, the singing thing is absolutely what's at the centre of me.
James Joyce was a great tenor as you know and sang on the same bill as John McCormack, so you're carrying on a very noble tradition.
I wouldn't even begin to mention my name in the same sentence as those people.
But in the meantime, folks, the album is called Now That I Know What I Want and it's No.1 in all the charts and it's been a pleasure talking to Brian Kennedy here in Sligo . . . n