Interviews

The chance to speak with Damon Albarn seemed to bring with it some anxiety – more than the usual when preparing for an interview. It’s because I’ve read and seen interviews where Albarn has been painted as something of a prick; many times he’s even been the one holding the brush, in control of the colouring.

Add to that the scheduled time moving from 11.30am Saturday to 2.30pm to 3pm – but when I am finally connected it’s worth the wait and I find him to be affable, down-to-earth, focused, intelligent, engaged, engaging and not (in the slightest) a prick.

“It’s 6.48pm,” - he informs me precisely – at his end. Friday night. He’s in San Francisco. The Gorillaz tour of America has two shows left but he has been there for five weeks and there have been some 30 shows.

“It’s been incredible,” he tells me, sounding happy. ”Just incredible, I mean it’s a huge task this tour, easily the biggest thing I’ve done since the heyday of Blur in the mid-90s or early-90s or whatever, but of course in many ways it’s bigger, certainly in terms of the scope.”

There cannot be a lot of margin for error; it must be a tough job wrangling everyone together?

“What, you mean in terms of sorting the catering?” And he chuckles slightly before explaining, ”It has been tight for us, financially, this tour. But you have to make decisions, you have to be prepared to stick your neck out and take risks and you know this has been 10 years in the making so I think it’s worth the risk, even if it is tight. So what? It’s about sharing this experience with people and challenging yourself to move forward.”

Gorillaz, Albarn’s conscious attempt to bury himself in work and in the work following the success of Blur, is, he says ”a gimmick with a lot of life in it”, laughing off the idea that it is in any way, really, a gimmick. It can certainly be read as a comment on how, at his pop-star peak with Blur, he had been turned into a cartoon character, by the fans, by the press, by himself. And at first Gorillaz played on this entirely, appearing as a studio creation – sporadic, gradual live appearances saw video screens of the cartoon characters fronting for the “real” band; the musicians hiding (in more than one sense).

Now the musicians share the stage with their alter-egos created by Jamie Hewlitt (known for his Tank Girl strip, and an old friend of Albarn’s). And with each Gorillaz album the cast grows. But, impressively, the audience grows too. So Gorillaz, a flexible unit that has been releasing albums across 10 years, is quite the anomaly in that the project embraced new technology to put across its message, but has also worked at building up the brand in the old-fashioned way of breaking the artist bit by bit, adding to its audience with each release.

“Well, yeah that’s right,” Albarn agrees, ”I mean this new album, Plastic Beach, hasn’t sold as many copies as Demon Days, that’s still the biggest album we’ve done, but I guess in a relative sense it’s true, because in terms of today’s record sales figures compared with when we released Demon Days five years ago we are doing okay, so yeah, it’s good. It’s good.”

There’s a beat. And then, ”You know, it’s the way it should be, though. Really. I mean that’s how it has to be done, build the act up, make the work count. Release things when you think they are right.”

Albarn has regularly gone on record to voice his disdain for the X-Factorand Pop Idol-styled shows. So it seems appropriate to follow up what he’s saying about brand-building, time-taking and musical-care with a sound bite:

“Well, it’s just an empty vessel really, innit? I mean I just find that there’s nothing there at all. It’s pointless. And I think the really sad thing is that it’s actually just wrong to build up these hopes and to build this hype because where it is really wrong is that there’ll be a generation that will be left standing there with nothing. They will actually have nothing. None of this music is going to last. None of these acts will mean anything at all. And there will be a generation just left standing there holding this…this…empty vessel.” No chuckle this time. All business.

But of course Albarn hasn’t just taken his time to build Gorillaz up across the last decade. There was a final (for now?) Blur album in 2003′s Think Tank (an arguably underrated release in the band’s catalogue because guitarist Graham Coxon was already off making solo albums, taking some of the band’s fans with him) and, before that, Albarn collaborated withMichael Nyman to create the score for Ravenous (click here for a sample of that). There was the album Mali Music and the album The Good, The Bad & The Queen named after the “supergroup” Albarn assembled with legendary drummer Tony Allen, Paul Simonon of The Clash, Verve/Gorillaz guitarist Simon Tong and hip-hop wunderkind Danger Mouse.

So how does Albarn achieve more than just the overnight success he mocks the idol competitions for? How is he seen as not flooding the market? Fans seem respectful of his varied projects, mostly interested at least.

“Well it’s all about the palette you use. I mean, I’m still the same songwriter, I have the same ideas. In that sense it’s all the same but the entry point is very different, the palette is different. With Gorillaz, I mean, really, it has no form,” break for a brief laugh, ”hopefully it will feel like a benchmark really, this group. I mean that – it has been a rewarding experience. Also you have to remember that the reason I have been able to do all these things is because I work hard at them and I have not been touring. I gave up touring and focused on the work of writing. I have a young family so touring was not desirable, not ideal. And so I started working five days a week with a studio I’ve built, treating it like a 9-5 job. I’ve been bringing up a family and I’ve been enormously productive because of not touring and having a home studio – it’s really that simple. I’m interested in a lot of different music and I have worked hard to put it across.”

There will be, he says, another album by The Good, The Bad & The Queen (“well, I would hope so, definitely”) but something that Albarn thinks will probably please fans of that sound is a record by a new band that he is ”three-quarters of the way through; I need to get this finished, but there’s also another Gorillaz record I’m finishing up too. I’ve actually taken a mobile studio with me on this tour, because it’s the longest I’ve been out on the road since, as I say, the days of Blur at its peak, so I have that luxury now of recording as I go.”

The album that is three-quarters finished is ”another band with Tony Allen; centred around what he does. But this time it’s him and me and Flea from The Chili Peppers and some of my favourite African musicians will be involved also. Flea of course is an anagram for Fela and Flea is so into this music – so that’s been great.”

The hookup with Flea came about because Flea journeyed to Nigeria as part of Albarn’s Africa Express project. I tell him I’m surprised that he has not worked with Ginger Baker, given the shared love of Nigeria, of the music ofFela Kuti, given Albarn’s propensity for collaboration.

“Ginger? Oh yeah, well we were going to do something. We did talk about that, I would have loved that. But he’s very crippled with arthritis in the hands now, so that’s a real shame. He’s not playing as a result. But yeah, I love what he does and that would have been great: him and Tony Allen playing…” the thought trails off.

But before the new Tony Allen/Flea/Albarn band/album, Damon wants to release another Gorillaz album.

“It’s basically a tour-diary as a record, I guess it’s my love-letter to America. I used to be very baffled by this place, and I guess I still am in some ways; America confused me enormously. But right now with all that’s going on this is a good place to be and this has been a great tour, the shows have been very special. The audiences are the closest to mid-90s Blur audiences; I mean it’s really been wonderful. And we’re getting to play to good-sized crowds. And they know this music; they’re really into it. They know it well. So that’s great. I mean that’s what it’s about, right?”

Albarn repeatedly mentions Blur so I ask about the reunion shows and the future of the group. I suggest that therecent documentary felt cathartic for the audience, so that was surely the case for the band too?

“Oh absolutely. I was pleased. The whole thing was a lot of hard work and self-discipline – and all that work culminated in a performance at Glastonbury that was an emotional peak for me. Something that, as a performer, I don’t think I’ll better – not that particular feeling anyway, I don’t think I’ll get more from any performance or experience than that.”

So a world tour then? A new album?

“There won’t be another world tour for me – for anything – for five to six years; it would seem unlikely. I have a young daughter and it’s just not feasible, it’s too long away from home. This has been great, but it’s too much after a while and so, no, there won’t be any tours for me for a while, I should think.”

But the Gorillaz tour remains a huge excitement, especially given the scope and size of the shows (“there’s 70 musicians on stage” Albarn explains proudly) with a cast of friends and musical heroes. The show, coming to Auckland on December 21, features De La Soul, Simonon and Mick Jones of The Clash, Mos Def, Little Dragon,National Orchestra for Arabic Music, Gruff Rhys, Shaun Ryder and Bobby Womack.

“The funny thing about working with your heroes, as so many of these people are – it’s strange really, the more you get to know them as people, the more you think of them as just people – which they are. And you realise that you’re all helping each other. They’re getting a lot out of this and there’s a lot of mutual respect. For me seeing Bobby in action again has been great; here was a guy who was just done, really. He was spent. He was finished with music, he wasn’t doing anything and he felt used up, I guess. And he’s had a whole new start with this album and this tour and that’s been amazing to feel part of – he’s really starting to come out of himself on this tour and that’s great.”

There’ll be a rest from touring and though Albarn won’t confirm or deny new Blur material, there will definitely be new material from him: beyond the projects he’s already mentioned, he says there is interest for him to return to film scores, though ”the thing there is you really need to be working with a director who likes what you do; who is open to giving you a certain freedom to work with your ideas and explore them. But I love film music, I love listening to it and I love doing it. So that’s something I’d consider again.”

There’s also the small issue of a Damon Albarn solo album. There has been a collection of demos, some lo-fi recordings, a solo track for the Trainspotting soundtrack, but would Albarn ever consider a proper studio solo album?

“I’ve promised myself that one day there’ll be a proper ballad record, I don’t know – ‘Damon Albarn Sings Ballads’ or something,” he breaks off for a chuckle.

You could call it ‘Damon Albarn Sings Damon Albarn’?

There’s a hoot of laughter now, almost out of control, and then, “Yeah, Damon Albarn Sings Damon Albarn, I like that, I’ll write that down.”

We conclude with Albarn telling me to pass on to New Zealand readers that he’s ”really excited to be making it back down there. It’s been a long time. I know we were there when Blur was probably at its peak, or in around that time anyway, I don’t remember when exactly; it was a long time ago, but I do remember liking the country and I am looking forward to coming back. It’s great to be able to bring this show there.

What do you think of Albarn and (all) his music? What’s your favourite album/project he has created/been involved with?

Postscript: Albarn doesn’t remember our own Darcy Clay opening for Blur and playing his version of Song 2 as the intro to his second song. But he laughed when I told him (“it was a long time ago, but good on him, that sounds a laugh”)

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September 26, 2012 by Simon Sweetman

The George Clinton Interview

This interview first featured on Blog on the Tracks on Stuff here

I was given a number, told to call and ask for George Clinton. So I did. I found him in a studio, in Texas. He told me was “working on some new s**t with one of our new artists, top secret, wait and see” – and then he laughed. He sounded a little bit like he was choking.

George Clinton is 69 years old. He was a staff writer for Motown and had a doo-wop group called The Parliaments - they became Parliament. And things became funkier. There was also Funkadelic - as the name ably suggests, this group took the funk and added psychedelic rock; taking The Temptations and going way out.

Now it is all under the name George Clinton and/or the P-Funk All-Stars. The band is constantly changing but the songs remain the same. Or they’re completely different. The answers to questions definitely change.

Clinton used to straighten hair in a barber shop. There’s not a lot that’s straight about him now. If he gives you a straight answer it’s because he’s answering a question you haven’t yet asked. A chat with George Clinton is like trying to play a serious game of table-tennis with a balloon. It’s like an underwater fist-fight. Challenging, but fun.

It’s like, well, it’s like talking to the Godfather of Funk; the Godfather too of Hip-Hop.

“We was doing our Funkadelic thing and adding guitars, sure, we was making it go all rock’n'roll because that was the sound.” Clinton announces this for no particular reason.

So I start asking questions. He’s returning to New Zealand for one show in Auckland. What can we expect this time?

“Oh we always bring the funk, so, you know, we’ll be bringing some of dat. But we’ll do a whole new show with all new songs. All new, things you ain’t never heard. And we’ll play all the hits too.” It’s a fast answer. So fast I’m not sure if Clinton knows he just contradicted himself.

You remember the Richard Pryor character Mudbone? Well imagine Dave Chappelle hamming it up with an over-the-top impersonation. This is George Clinton’s speaking voice. And he finishes several sentences, or in fact interrupts several sentences with “know what I’m sayin’” – except it actually sounds like knowhatI’msay - and to make it worse I not only (often) don’t. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t either.

But if he’s not sure what the set-list for Auckland will be – he tries to settle on “a long-ass night of long-ass songs, all the old s**t and we will rock you with dis funk” – he is sure of a few things.

First, funk is still the number one thing, musically, for Clinton.

“Funk is it – first of all. And last of all. It is funk. I do this for the love of funk. I gravitate to it. I’m always looking for the next thing,knowhatI’msay, but, ah, funk is it, knowhatI’msay?”

He’s aware of his legacy too – it’s fair to call him the godfather of funkand hip-hop, look around, there are now so many godchildren: bands like The Red Hot Chili Peppers - Clinton produced their album Freaky Styley (“they’s nice fellas”). There are the P-Funk members who have carried on outside of Clinton’s mothership (Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell) and there’s the giant debt owed to Clinton – everyone from Prince to Dr Dre; the entire G-Funk sound is, essentially, based on a handful of Clinton recordings. There is a nod in the sub-genre’s name, of course.

“It is a great honour – and you know the thing to me that’s really special is this band. All the bands, in fact. All the band members. They don’t realise how important they are. I mighta been the shepherd but they are so important. Always. They are the sound as much as I am – or more. They are so special.”

And Clinton says he is pleased to hear so many of his records in hip-hop.

“We was hip-hop first anyways; we was doing it first. The hip-hop came from funk and we was doing the funk – so we was also doing the raps and making the hip-hop music.”

And then it’s diatribe time. We get some stray thoughts on the genres outside of funk and hip-hop as Clinton explains his wider listening.

“Anything the parents don’t like – I will go to it. I hear a band that is making the parents mad, I want to hear it. I love System of a Down. I had their bass player on my last record. Crazy cat. I love Tool. They do some great stuff too. And let me tell you I heard Iggy Pop when he had his band in the 1960s – he was punk before there was punk. I gravitate to this. Punk, to me, was valid from the 1960s. It was always real for me.”

But then it’s back to Motown. The label will “always be it”. So many memories are tied up in that sound for George.

“My next thing I’m doing, I’m working on now in fact is a bunch of Motown songs. We gonna do all sorts, some B-sides and we will do some of the big songs.”

I ask for some of the titles he plans to interpret.

Next thing he’s singing down the line in a croaky, post-smoke voice, “Can I get a witness….” and that is just the start of a song-title medley. Each song’s title is part-crooned, part-croaked, “we be doing My Guy and we do The Function of the Junction; we’ll be doing a lot of Smokey [Robinson] because he da man.”

That thought seems to stop there. And it’s off to discuss Sly Stone - Clinton has been working with the reclusive funk-master, co-Godfather.

“Let me tell you that Sly has always been working, he been recordin’, he been writin’, he been doing all the stuff he need to do. And you have to hear it, knowhatI’msay, you have to hear it. He’s still got it, knowhatI’msay. It’s fresh.KnowhatI’msay. And it’s real. And it’s a real trip, knowhatI’msay. So we gonna carry on with that and the record gonna come out and it’s going to blow people away. It’s going to remind people of why Sly is Sly, knowhatI’msay.”

Clinton says he too is always working. He’s been in the business for 55 years. This fact raises a dry chuckle.

“It’s the love of the funk, you know. I mean I just keep playing these songs because they are slamming,knowhatI’msay, and the fact that we get some new guys on board to take these songs out to the stage – that just keeps everything fresh. They all fresh and into it and that gets me all fresh again. We got to play these old songs because I got a whole new breed of funk fans, they love this stuff but the funk is new to them so then the songs are brand new to me again too.”

He says he’s busy right through the year with touring and whenever he has a break he’s in the studio.

“We always working on new things, always writing. Recording. It’s just how we do it. I’ll never stop. I’ll never stop.”

So there’s not an age in mind for retirement?

“Hell no!” And the husky laugh-cough returns. “Hells no, they have to pull the plug; they would have to pull the plug on me.”

So it’s time to get serious. A lot of people from Clinton’s era did not survive. A lot of people from his bands did not survive. Why is he still here?

“Pussy!”

It is his sharpest answer. His fastest. And just when it would seem to be his most honest – there’s a burst of laughter, a real cackle that suggests a comic’s timing. And he follows up with “well, writing about it anyway”.

Don’t you have to know the subject to write about it?

“Well nowadays they got that Viagra – so I be all right for a while longer, knowhatI’msay.”

Clinton’s stage show in the 1970s featured elaborate costumes, and sometimes no costumes at all – nudity. The band arrived on stage, as if just arriving to earth, a spaceship landing, the hatch opening to announce a band of merry funksters shadowed in dry ice. The stage show may have been tamed in recent years but it’s still a huge brood.

“We got 25 members we gonna hit you with. We gonna hit you hard. That’s about all you need to know, you know. But the spaceship gonna make a comeback. I’m'a bring that back one time, knowhatI’msay, I’m gonna do that one more time. Not dis time New Zealand, but the next time I come back to see y’all it’s going to be in the spaceship. We gon’ bring it back one time. You wait until the next time we play – then you gonna see some crazy s**t!”

I ask for a preview.

“Ha ha ha ha! You crazy man. I can’t tell you that. You wait and see now!”

So I ask if Clinton’s spaceship antics have ever made him curious about the real thing – about actual travel.

“Yeah, they got these tours rolling now – or they will have. And when they do I want to be up there, I don’t care how much it cost. I’m going to go. I’m going to get up there and have a look around, my man.”

I ask if he’d be interested in putting on a concert in space. In maybe writing some new songs there?

“Nah man, I’d just go to do what I always do, see if I can get as high as I can!”

He tells me that he’d like to work with Prince again (“that guy is a genius”). He tells me that he doesn’t think the world has another George Clinton (“well, I hope there is, I hope there is, I hope someone gonna step up, but I ain’t seen it yet, knowhatI’msay“). He tells me that he’s “so proud” of We Got the Funk and Atomic Dog (“how you gonna get sick of playing those?”). He tells me that Maggot Brain was “very special, you know. It’s own kinda thing. A really soulful kind of rock that no one had quite done before that.” He tells me that he was “doing some work with Fela [Kuti] and then he died. But he was incredible.”

And then he tells me that he has to go. In some ways he had already gone. In other ways he was more with me than anyone I have interviewed.

“They calling me man, I got to go do a vocal track.” There’s another throaty cough. And then, “you call me back though if you need some more… I talk to you some more man, you just holler. We in the studio. Call me on Monday night…”

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August 29, 2012 by Simon Sweetman

The Elvis Costello Interview

This interview first featured on Blog on the Tracks on Stuff here

A chat with Elvis Costello could be about so many things. And there could be so many ways to start it. I decide to open with a question about his prolific writing, about his work ethic.

National Ransom, out this week, is this third album in as many years – a time when Costello and his wife have twin boys about to turn four. I suggest it’s a ridiculously busy streak to be on. Costello, on the line from New York, sings back to me, “I drink a little beer in a tavern/Sing a bit of these working man blues,” and chuckles.

“Do you know that song?” he asks me. I tell him I do – I can tell he doesn’t believe me. I don’t think he’s aiming to live out the whole of Merle Haggard’s Workin’ Man Blues, presumably not the part about being married with nine children. But certainly the line about being a workin’ man dang near all my life/I’ll be working long as my two hands are fit to use seems apt. As does this set of lines: I keep my nose on the grindstone, I work hard every day/Might get a little tired on the weekend, after I draw my pay/But I’ll go back workin’, come Monday morning I’m right back with the crew/I’ll drink a little beer that evening, Sing a little bit of these working man blues.”

And right there, right at the start of the Elvis Costello interview we have, simultaneously, a glimpse into Costello’s encyclopaedic knowledge of music, of songs, and a glimpse into why some people find that aspect of him annoying. His decision to answer me back, in song, to test whether I knew the song, is part acerbic humour and part look-what-I-know showboating.

But, importantly, we’re off. We’re away.

And as it crosses my mind that every single question will be answered with a song, every anecdote laced with obscure references, Costello states in a matter of fact but relaxed fashion, “it’s what I do. I don’t deserve any awards for this, it’s just music. It’s just writing songs. You sit down, you write a song, you record it. You tour and play the songs live, dress them up a bit differently, or dress them down…”

But why the reliance on the album format? Isn’t it dead? Why the need to pump out the records?

“A few years ago,” the man born Declan Patrick McManus tells me, ”you would do an album then do the tour – and work the record for maybe two or three years. It’s not like that now. Maybe it hasn’t been like that for a while but the thing is, the records just don’t have the same impact, or even in some cases the likelihood of even happening, of getting out there and meaning something. I guess I like to put the records out still, when I can,” and there’s a sly chuckle to finish off that thought.

So to National Ransom - the title track showing that if this man of the arts has now mellowed, he still has a sense of outrage, if not full-blown anger.

“Well, this album follows Secret, Profane & Sugarcane from last year. That was, for the majority of the musicians, a first meeting, a rather austere working environment. There was some press at the time talking of all the people that played on that record like Jerry Douglasbut the truth is many of them only worked a day or two, there were comings and goings and many of them didn’t meet each other, or only met briefly. So the record was created but then,” there’s a beat, “then – we took that record out on the road and it exploded!”

“So,” he’s on a roll now, ”it became this really swingin’ band, I thought, and now we get to National Ransom which combines players from my other group, The Imposters and from the Secret, Profane & Sugarcane lineup, but again, many of them were playing on sessions at different times, so this’ll be a different thing again when we take it out on the road. We’ll have to see. I’m not really sure quite how we’ll approach this one yet, but there are always shows to do.”

Costello’s desire to create, his interest in moving off to explore different areas is, he is sure, ”dictated by what is going on in the song” but it can be a source of frustration for fans. Many will tell you that he could not put a foot wrong for most of the first decade of his career, an incredible run of albums from 1977-1986. Some will suggest that he’s barely put a foot right since, wobbling and weaving between genres in shoes that he finds far too comfortable.

Just don’t suggest that anything he has made is a “genre exercise”.

“Well I get very frustrated by this term ‘genre exercise’, I mean what exactly is that? Genre is not really relevant when you are writing a song, hopefully you are doing it to explore something, to create something and I don’t agree that any of my albums are genre exercises.”

The suggestion pre-empting this mini-outburst was that National Ransom is more an exercise in genre-hopping than the genre-exercises of the past: the excursions into opera and ballet, the solo piano jazz-noir, collaborations with Burt Bacharach, Bill Frissell and Allen Toussaint…the return to a country-folk album with last year’s Secret, Profane…

“Well, people called Secret, Profane & Sugarcane a genre-exercise, they called it a country album, a folk album, but really it’s an Elvis Costello record. And I thought it was a good album actually. And the new album takes some of those players and lets them loose on a whole new set of ideas. The new album has many layers; there is a lot of depth to this. There’s a lot happening, but I stress that it is always dictated by what is going on in the song – that is how these musicians were able to work. And that’s good, because that’s what I want from them.”

So, if Elvis Costello makes Elvis Costello Records it would seem right to compare them with each other, then?

Mistake.

“You know I find it to be the ultimate backhanded compliment when you are compared against yourself.”Costello’s anger is measured these days, still palpable though. He reacts. He’s articulate, verbose in fact. But it’s very easy to get him to react to something – he engages quickly, confidently.

“What you are doing,” he goes on to explain, ”and anyone who does compare someone’s newer work to their earlier material is, as far as I’m concerned, not telling the full story…what you’re doing is you’re not telling someone what it is – in any way at all. You are only telling people what it is not. If your aim is to suggest that North is not My Aim Is True then you haven’t done your job as far as I’m concerned. You have not in any way said what North is. You have only said that it’s not My Aim Is True. Which it is not. But it’s also not Armed Forces or Imperial Bedroom. They are all different. Well, hopefully,” and here he does slow down for a self-aware chortle, “hopefully they are all different from one another with the real link being that the same person made them”.

“I think the important point to stress is that I don’t want to be held to what I said 30 years ago. We change as people. You’re not going to want to be remembered for what you said in a bar 30 years ago, are you?” I want to tell him that I generally don’t want to be remembered for what I said in a bar 30 minutes after I say it. But Elvis Costello is holding court still.

“So, you know, I just find it all really redundant that these records come out and get compared to one another, I mean they’re not competing. And I don’t know that people should see it that way. They exist. I make them. And they exist – as their own thing and when a critic tells you that it is, in their words, not as good as something from earlier, well they’re not really doing their job at all.

“And you must remember,” he tells me, suddenly happier, friendlier, ”that the beautiful thing about music, really, is that it can often pull in a different direction from the lyric. And I like that – I like the clashes and twists and turns that music and words can take, working with each other and against. Music is full of wonderful surprises. The songs I like often have a nice surprise about them.”

It is at this point that I’m told I’ve got one more question. I want to ask Elvis about the infamous Ray Charles incident (which I referenced a couple of weeks ago here). But given his reaction to the suggestion that National Ransom has notes of other albums he’s made, particularly his comment about not wanting to be held to something he said 30 years ago, I opt for something safer, still hoping to get a reaction.

So it’s to Sweetwaters - specifically the 1999 reunion where Costello was headlining the anniversary show. He ended up performing a disjointed set, appearing frazzled and wound up, announcing with a sneer that he would open with The Beatles’ You Never Give Me Your Money, dedicating it to festival organiser Daniel Keighley. For many in the audience, word was only just getting out that the festival had gone bust, that people were not getting paid.

It guarantees me another 10 minutes on the phone with Costello. He had been quoted as saying he would never return to New Zealand.

“Well it was not a nice experience at all. But you know what, the thing is, thinking back now, I mean that guy that stuffed it up, I believe he spent some time in jail or whatever, but at the end of the day, he’s probably not a bad man. I mean he just didn’t do a good job, did he? And while it was not a nice experience I can’t say he is the worst promoter or most crooked person I’ve met in this industry.” A big laugh to finish this line off.

“I think the thing that I got frustrated with, really, was that people saw me as this guy leading the charge and figured that really it shouldn’t bother me all that much about not getting paid, you know like I could afford it. But, correct me if I’m wrong, people went out of business because of that, some of the smaller bands couldn’t afford to get back home. Am I right?” He is right. And he knows it. So he continues. ”I was the one that went to the press, I actually rang The Herald, and I told them that it was not right, because I was trying to get the message out. I think I thought that I could probably create some urgency or highlight it as an issue, but it was very unfortunate that I came across like the guy that could afford to take this on the chin and should have kept out of it. That’s not what I wanted and it’s not what I was trying to do.”

Costello was chased through the airport on his way out of the country, refusing to comment. He had already commented – at the event, to the papers, even appearing on TV.

“I went on one of your national TV shows, and I did that to try and clear the air. So I don’t know if that worked,” he breaks off for a laugh, “it probably made it worse…”

But what about the stories of him refusing to play here?

“Well that’s ridiculous. I mean, I have never been invited back. I would love to come back. Let me tell you something, an artist doesn’t go to countries and decide to play. Someone has to come and ask you to play so, yeah, if the offer was there of course I would consider it.”

It’s here that I tell Costello that I interviewed Daniel Keighley, when his book about Sweetwaters was released. I suggested to Keighley that he was probably not on Costello’s Christmas card list (there’s a huge laugh from EC when I tell him this). Keighley tried to tell me that he was sure Costello had been back to play in New Zealand, at least twice, since the ill-fated Sweetwaters of 1999.

“That is hilarious!” Costello roars with laughter. ”That is just too good. But you know, I never had an issue with New Zealand. I love the place, I’d love to be able to tour down there – I really would. You know I’m really glad you brought this up, it feels like a clearing of the air, a little,” and it falls away into laughter.

The interview now feels like I’m reconnecting with a mate after a night out, each of us with a slightly different memory of how the evening panned out.

“The way I was pursued through the airport, the way it all ended there – I’ve gotta say, I thought you guys hated me! And you obviously all thought I hated you! This is just so funny, because I’d love to play there. I remember thinking when I was playing in Australia recently that we should really go over and do a show in New Zealand. I had always loved playing there. And I did a whole bunch of shows at an arts festival in Sydney recently, where we did a night of piano tunes and a night with the band and it would have been great to bring that over.”

So Elvis Costello would be happy to play here again. All we need to do is make the offer, right?

“I mean, this is just so funny to talk about because I have friends from New Zealand. I was speaking with Neil Finn recently, he’s a friend, and he had asked me about playing in New Zealand. And the thing is, you know, until now I’ve never even had a request for an interview…I mean every album I’ve done I’ve never been asked for interviews in New Zealand. So I thought you hated me.”

So did he know that he was advertised as playing Napier’s Mission Concert in 2008, opening for John Mellencamp?

“No! Really? Oh that’s funny – you see I did not know about that at all! Maybe if they’d actually asked it might have happened. I think I remember something about a poster being put together for that before any actual shows. Hey, the funny thing is I’m doing some shows with John [Mellencamp] now and with Elton John and Leon Russell and a whole bunch of amazing people. Imagine if we could bring that down to New Zealand? That’s something I think everyone deserves to see, right?”

And with that there is someone on Elvis’s end of the phone telling him to wrap it up. And someone at my end telling me to wrap it up. My one final question has doubled the length of the interview.

We didn’t get to talk about Spectacle - the show that Elvis hosts – but I got to hear, clearly, that interviewee-turned-interviewer can easily revert to being the interviewee again, to getting riled, to being thoughtful, to feeling challenged. We didn’t really get to talk about how he fits his work in around family, but he did sing me an ole country tune.

And apparently we could have him playing here. It’s just as easy as asking.

“Thanks for clearing that all up,” Costello calls down the line as we are both urged, again, to stop talking. And you know he has banked this story for recall, as effortlessly as he quotes Merle Haggard lyrics; as easily as he recalls the name of an Auckland newspaper over a decade since his last appearance in the country.

And despite his protestations you can hear bits of other Costello records in National Ransom. And it is a better record than Secret, Profane & Sugarcane. If it’s not quite as ragged and rambling as The Delivery Man it still has some of that feel. There are traces of Brutal Youth and When I Was Cruel also. And if it suffers a little from having far too much thrown at the canvas – it’s almost every type of Costello song from the last 30 years on display, all mingling and arguing – then it also needs to be celebrated for that fact too.

Click here to hear another track from National Ransom.

Postscript: It was fairly recently that I offered some of my thoughts on Elvis Costello’s career here at Blog on the Tracks - see here if you missed that discussion the first time.

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August 20, 2012 by Simon Sweetman

The Mark Knopfler Interview

This interview first featured on Blog on the Tracks on Stuff here.

Mark Knopfler has a new album, Get Lucky, on the way. It will be released next week (here’s an audio link). I got lucky, in the sense that I was able to speak to Knopfler. He even called me (“Hi, is this Simon? Simon, this is Mark”).

With a new album to speak about, that was the focus – but Knopfler, careful, often guarded, is always engaging and is happy to talk about that band, specifically how happy he was to retreat from the big lights. That comes out in his opening comment concerning the new material: “It’s about the songs – it is always about the songs. It is about the writing and then it is about the performing.”

So what does Knopfler think of the new album, due on September 14?

“Is that when it’s out, is it?” He has a chuckle and makes a comment about that being “the marketing side of it” and so I ask what happens then, for him, when an album is complete – in the space between finishing it and seeing it released.

“Well, you know, you play the album a few times,” he begins, careful to make it sound like the universal experience – and it probably is, at least it’s a version of it – “and then it’s gone. Like a child leaving home…the songs have their lives and you leave them to go off and do…whatever, really. I get to play some of them live and that’s always good fun, but of course it has to come after the writing; so it’s thought of afterwards.”

For Knopfler, regularly rated among the world’s greatest guitarists and a reluctant guitar-hero when Dire Straits was at its peak, playing live is still – and always – “a beautiful affirmation of what I get to do for a living”. He says there are always “different versions of the songs to perform, just by nature of lifting it up from the page (or the record) and taking it to the stage it becomes different. And that is important.”

There is one show booked the week after Get Lucky is released. It will be September 23, Sheppard’s Bush, Bush Hall. But “there will be a tour on the books”. And then, another wry chuckle, before Knopfler adds, “there always is”. Lately, he’s been enjoying charity shows rather than full tours, telling me that it is always hard slog being out on the road.

Songwriting is the key, though. It’s the thing that keeps Knopfler in music; it’s the art behind the artifice that is the live show. “It surprises me that I go on writing this stuff. It really does. I don’t know what’s going to happen – I never know,” and it’s here that Knopfler really gets passionate, his voice speeding up, his tone changing from that casual drawl that is often heard in his singing voice. “I never know what I’m going to write next, I’m a parent to some particularly distant children in that sense. I like it that way though, I mean if I knew the answer behind what made a perfect song, if I knew what worked every time then I wouldn’t be speaking to you, because I wouldn’t have to prove myself time and again. And that’s as it should be. There are no clear-cut answers. But songwriting suits me best – it’s the most important thing to me.”

It is easy, especially these days, to view Knopfler’s old band, Dire Straits – essentially a vehicle for his songs – as one of the low-points in dinosaur rock; as an example of a band that was never (and never will again be) cool. But that’s because people have the (lasting) image of the headband and wristbands, of the neon and pastel, of this video, and of an album that went from being the high point of 1980s pop to the low point (seemingly overnight). It’s easy to forget that before the Brothers in Arms album, Dire Straits, while clearly not appealing to punk and post-punk hipsters, was a band with an immaculate track-record. Four superb albums. That word, immaculate, became part of the problem.

And when it became about so much more than the songs, that’s when Knopfler decided he had to pull this particular vehicle over. “That’s when I put the brakes on the band – when it became about more than the music. There wasn’t enough time in the day to keep up with the schedules. I needed breathing space.”

The breathing space started, arguably, with the soundtrack albums that Knopfler provided for Local Hero, Cal, Last Exit to Brooklyn and The Princess Bride and his production work for Bob Dylan’s Infidels and Aztec Camera’s Knife and then collaborations with Willy DeVille, more production work, this time with Randy Newman (it’s possible Knopfler’s Money for Nothing was the inspiration for Newman’s It’s Money That Matters) and of course the first move towards a form of anonymity with The Notting Hillbillies.

Knopfler assures me that all of those moves were just jigsaw pieces, part of the puzzle, a way to explore other avenues within the song. He returns to that basic idea, the idea of creating a song, telling me he feels “fortunate to have found the activity I ought to be involved with – it’s all I can do”.

Before he wrote songs, Knopfler trained as a journalist.

“It was a great thing to do as a kid. I went to college after being a newspaper lackey and I found I could organise stuff. I liked it. It was a great introduction to ‘life’ as a concept, to the world in general. I then moved into court reporting. I just remember it all as being a very good thing to be doing, a way to see how society is organised. A lot of kids don’t have a clue about that form of introduction to life. It influenced me and allowed me to meet people, to eavesdrop too, to take stories of other people home.”

And then to add them to songs – and create songs based on these ideas?

“Well, it certainly helps to have an imagination as a songwriter and to have some source material to draw from, sure.”

Knopfler’s approach to writing songs has been, so often, as a storyteller – putting characters into the songs, rather than being the confessional singer/songwriter. And while his journalistic background has often been used as a metaphor in his writing, as well as informing a character’s traits (think: “I go checking out the reports/digging up the dirt/you get to meet all sorts/in this line of work”) the listener has been rewarded with learning about Knopfler through his character-writing; the same way we learn about journalists through the pieces they file. Maybe not every article (or in Knopfler’s case, song) but piece by piece it builds up. All of a sudden there’s no surprise that Knopfler would write a tune like Private Dancer (essentially gifted to Tina Turner; “there is a version I worked up, it’s slower, moodier, more reflective. A quiet portrait, but I don’t think people need to hear that now” – that in itself says a lot about the man).

And there’s also the fact that so often the story is told, at least in part, by his lyrical guitar playing. That is still obvious when listening to Get Lucky, which follows on from 2007′s Kill To Get Crimson, but, in terms of relating this child to its siblings, it most closely resembles Knopfler’s first non-soundtrack solo album, Golden Heart.

Knopfler says the same things still fascinate and inspire him about the guitar. That idea that “I am transported back to childhood and instantly nostalgic for the music I heard as a child and tried to make; in many ways I am still trying to make that”.

He tells me that he would fall asleep playing the guitar (“sometimes I still do”). The difference now is that he respects the talent and knows it’s something to still work at. “I didn’t respect the talent I had, now I try to visit it more. I work at it. Particularly the craft of writing. You don’t write songs unless you sit down and get behind the plough, I think people forget that. And I try very hard to stick to that philosophy, to stay behind the plough.”

Knopfler’s been compared to J.J. Cale, Robbie Robertson (of The Band) and Richard Thompson. Cale’s voice has that warble and his lines mumble and grumble away, burbling and gurgling rather than stinging out all at once in an obvious fashion. But Knopfler has never enjoyed the comparisons. I see them as being obvious in the sense that all are reluctant guitar heroes; more interested in the song than the histrionics. But again, Knopfler’s different for actually being forced into and through that stage.

He’s done his best to be the shy, retiring type ever since. But in terms of actually retiring - that seems a way off. I point out that he’s been far more prolific as Mark Knopfler Solo Artist than he ever was as Leader of Dire Straits or as Mark Knopfler Soundtrack Composer.

“I’m still standing behind the plough. I’ve always been behind the same plough. I just show up more often now.”

And then we’re done. Mark points out, in keeping with his journalistic training, that he’s given me five minutes beyond our allocated time and he must ring Russia. He concludes with the obvious interview comment that he’s hoping to get down to visit us in the new year when the tour is sorted. But the way he delivers it makes it seem believable. “It’s just too far away to get there every tour – but I love the audiences there and I know I owe you a show.”

In the meantime fans can check out Get Lucky.

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August 20, 2012 by Simon Sweetman

The Sonny Rollins Interview

This interview first featured on Blog on the Tracks on Stuff here.

Sonny Rollins is one of the few survivors of his era, a living legend in the jazz world. He’s 80 years old – and he still practises every day (“I put down the horn to pick up the phone and talk to you, Simon”) and he is about to make his first trip to New Zealand. Rollins has played professionally since his teens. He’s played with all the greats. He has made two of my favourite jazz albums – both of them released 20 years before I was born. In fact they were released just a few weeks apart: Tenor Madness and Saxophone Colossus.

So how do you start a conversation with someone who has played with Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, with Max Roach and Thelonious Monk? Well, considering Rollins had just been awarded the National Medal of Arts, we started there. And he gave me his impressions of President Obama.

“I thought he was a very charismatic individual, very charming – a very commanding type of person. I could see why he was voted in and was successful there. We chatted and he knew something of jazz. He told me he had some of my records and played them when he was in college. So that was nice.” And here there’s a slight chuckle.

Rollins was pleased to receive the award and says that as much as it’s a personal honour, he receives it as a jazz representative. “You are always pleased, I guess, with such things. Sure. But to me it was really about jazz receiving some recognition. It’s under-represented and under-appreciated, I feel. There are barely any radio jazz shows or TV shows. We did well by getting jazz into the colleges. And as much as there are people coming through and playing, you feel that it has been sidelined. It’s been overlooked because it was not an easy music to commercialise.”

And now we’re at the right starting point for an interview with Sonny Rollins. We talk of his beginnings in jazz; his start in life, the start of his lifelong love affair with music.

“The early influences for me were Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong. They told a story, through jazz. And jazz expressed what American society was about. That’s the very deep thing with jazz. It was about the freedom of expression, about expressing creativity.”

Rollins was born into a musical family. His parents played and appreciated music. His brother was a good violinist. Sonny (born Theodore Walter Rollins) worked at the piano first but was given a saxophone as a gift from his mother.

“I loved music from when I was a baby in the crib, you know. I loved music and I still do. My enthusiasm hasn’t changed. My childhood was happy and music was important. I listened to players on the radio – that was the first exposure really. I would stay with my uncle and he had a collection of blues records. And I also discovered Louis Jordan. That was a trip. He was doing this amazing stuff with jazz and blues and just a great sax player. That was when I really noticed the saxophone. And that is what prompted me.”

Rollins developed a discipline early on, a focus. He worked hard at his craft. He felt immediate results but has always been his own toughest critic. He chuckles as I mention this – confirming that he still continues to be (“some say I’m my worst critic, maybe I’m my best critic?”).

“Please don’t think I’m being conceited,” he prefaces, “but I’m serious when I say that I always knew I would be an important player. I always,” he stresses, “knew this. It was just something I felt. So, you know, next thing I’m playing with Thelonious Monk, with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach and these guys were, well, they were geniuses – but I felt that I belonged with them. I wasn’t a genius, but I had a confidence that I could keep up.” He breaks off into a very soft bout of laughter. “You’ll word that how you like,” he laughs, “but I’m sincere when I say that and please don’t think of me as being arrogant.”

The influence of these great players was strong – and not just on Rollins’ playing.

“Around this period, the 40s, jazzers were introduced to heroin. I must qualify this by saying that all artists through history were susceptible to alcohol and hashish, to psychedelics and heroin; there is a part of the artistic nature that is vulnerable to things that remove them from everyday life.

“Billie Holiday, the great Billie Holiday, was addicted. It became part of the scene. Charlie Parker did it. So, we did it.”

Here there is a pause. And then Rollins points out, soberly, “we got messed up. Some of us died. Good friends died. Great players died. The creative mind is vulnerable to hallucinogenics, it’s a destructive force of any drug of choice and it was too much. We had to confront it. We had to get it off the scene.”

So how did Rollins get clean?

“Well, I’ll tell you something, you might not know this but it was Charlie Parker that got me off drugs. It was Charlie Parker that got me on to drugs. He was my idol; he was a hero. And he was doing heroin. So I followed. But Parker saved me. I was doing a session with him, Parker liked me. He liked my playing. And I was a disciple. He asked me if I was using. I told him the lie that I was clean. Then when one of the band ratted me out and told him that I was still using, Parker was devastated. I will never forget that look he gave me. I can see it now. It was like he could not save himself but he wanted to save the younger players, he knew what drugs had done to him and he wanted the younger guys to be clean. He wanted us to not be using. And that was it. That look he flashed when he found out that I was not clean, I was just crushed by it. A light went off in my head. And that’s it. I was clean.”

Rollins has fond memories of working with Miles Davis.

“We were good friends. We had the same sort of musical taste. We had a nice musical relationship and we became very good friends. He’d visit my house and I’d visit him at his house. And we would work on ideas and hang out. He was very kind to me. One of the best. I wouldn’t say that I followed all of his career when he moved into the rock and funk areas but I was always aware of it and what he did and I respected him always. He is one of the names people first think of when they think of jazz and it is with good reason.”

I ask for a word about Max Roach too. He is one of my favourite drummers – probably my all-time favourite.

“Well Max had to be up there,” Sonny offers. “I mean many people consider him the greatest or one of the greatest and really there was nobody better at what he did. And many weren’t capable of what Max did. Playing with Max was great. He accompanied me; he knew where I was going. It was a great privilege to play with him. He allowed me to develop my voice and that is what I needed to do. You cannot stay a copyist – you need to develop your voice and become yourself on your instrument. I felt I needed to do that.”

Around this time Rollins stepped up as a leader, abandoning work as a sideman. He became famous for his work leading a trio as the only melodic instrument; accompanied by just a bass player and drummer. And, essentially, he found his voice.

“I’ve always been a stream of consciousness player, very natural and primitive. That’s how I learned and it’s how I like it. Playing with the trio gave me the freedom. A lot of the bands would feature piano also. Now piano is a very beautiful instrument but I find that a piano can be very dominating against a horn player. You can drown out the horn player with a piano. You have 88 keys and it can become hard to compete. So I removed the piano. I wanted my mind to be free – I wanted the steady rhythm and then space to create and improvise, to just blow and see what happened.”

What happened were those albums I mentioned in the introduction to this interview. And a year on from those, the trio format established, two more jazz classics with Way Out West and A Night at the Village Vanguard.

Rollins is famous for taking sabbaticals. As we carry on through his timeline of playing he prompts this discussion, pointing out that “the first one was musical, the second one was personal”.

He elaborates, “in 1959 I had a lot of acclaim – but I wanted to improve my playing. It was that simple. I wanted to get better. I didn’t feel I was playing well enough; not as well as I wanted. So I stopped playing live for audiences. I stopped recording. And this is the, I guess, famous story that people know about me – you know The Bridge.”

Rollins would walk to the Williamsburg Bridge to practise his playing. Apparently it was to save a pregnant neighbour from hearing his horn. Nearly three years later he returned to the studio and offered The Bridge – one of his best sellers. The story becomes close to apocryphal; Rollins was “discovered” by various jazz luminaries, mistaken even as a busker. And it’s part of the inspiration for the character “Bleeding Gums” Murphy from The Simpsons, featuring significantly in at least one of the main storylines for this recurring character.

Rollins followed up The Bridge with a few strong albums throughout the 1960s including the collaboration with another hero, Coleman Hawkins, for Sonny Meets Hawk! and then on to Now’s The Time.

But he also took the second of his sabbaticals. “This time it was personal – although I guess it was relating to music. It was about my disillusionment with the music industry. I was very unhappy. Life was hard. Most musicians, and this is a generalisation, but most musicians are gentle in their approach, deep thinkers too. Sensitive, philosophical perhaps. And I was in a world that was hostile. So I went to India where I studied yoga. I started what I refer to as my spiritual journey. I developed rituals and studied and I still follow a lot of what I learned. In the 1970s I returned to music.”

Sonny Rollins has been back, making music, for the last 40 years. He believes that he is now as prolific as he has ever been. “I’m playing a lot. I don’t play every night but I do practise every day. And I’m writing a lot; writing more than I have in years. And I’m still recording regularly. Working on albums all the time.”

There have been tragedies in his life and he has lost many friends. He agrees that as far as jazz’s elder statesmen go he and Ornette Coleman are “among the last”. But Rollins intends to continue sharing his gift.

He has so many stories to share too. He tells me he will one day write his autobiography “but not yet. I’ll do that when I’m older. I’m working with someone on a biography at the moment. It will be his opinion but I guess you could call it authorised, I’ve sat and chatted with this writer and that’s fine. But I would like to tell my story in my words one day because I have lived through a lot.”

And this is where we get to Rollins’ story of September 11, 2001.

“It was,” he tells me, “a beautiful blue sky, a beautiful morning, very clear. My wife and I had an apartment in the city and a house in upstate New York. So my wife was at the house and I had travelled into the city to start packing to get ready for a trip to Boston. My wife and I would always travel together. So I’m doing the packing and then I just heard this noise – a pow! – and it was really quite something, so I figured, since we live quite near the Hudson River, that it was perhaps a small plane crashing there or something. But no. I turn on the radio and start to hear the news – so I switch on the TV.”

From there Rollins explains that his north-facing building couldn’t allow him to see the twin towers but he was just six blocks from the catastrophe.

“We started to head downstairs, people from my building. We’re all feeling rather confused and we’re just starting to try to understand what is happening and there’s a fire we can see in the building, one of the towers. It was a chaotic scene. We were waiting in bewilderment and then the second plane hit. Again we couldn’t see the actual impact but we heard that one of the buildings was collapsing, imploding. So then everybody started running. There was toxic snow in the air. It was an environmental disaster.”

Rollins is calm telling this story he’s lived through. No doubt he’s told it many times. But if it was ever a horror to walk through again it’s his calmness that prevails.

“We couldn’t leave the area so I went upstairs. Back up to my apartment on the 39th floor. And I sat. And listened. Watched TV. Listened to the radio. I spent the night there. We had power to start with. Then the lights went out. The National Guard came in and evacuated us. I took my horn, a small briefcase and a shopping bag. I was able to eventually get back upstate to see my wife – a day later. And then we made the journey to Boston a few days later to perform.

The concert was recorded and eventually released as Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert. Rollins says, “I didn’t want to play the show. I was so discombobulated, so unsure of, well, anything. But my wife said we should do it. I had to leave everything else in that apartment. My records, books, my stage clothes, even my piano which Monk would come around and make sound so sweet…all gone. I lost so much.”

Rollins’ wife, Lucille, passed away in 2004. He has continued touring and recording. He has continued without her as best he can.

He tells me, “I feel now I have more of an understanding – based on everything I’ve been through. I am at peace with myself as much as I can be; as much as an ignorant human being can be. I was very upset after 9/11 for a while. I was upset at what I had lost, my records, my books, instruments. But then I became very angry with myself for being so selfish. I had to say to myself, ‘Sonny, you are so lucky to even be here!’ I had to say that,” here he breaks off for some laughter, and “you know it’s important for us to remember these things. I was acting in a way that went against everything I believed in. But ultimately I feel I’ve become a better person; I’ve tried to anyway. I feel I’m at peace.”

We have, at this point, been on the phone for nearly an hour. I am close to tears – several times. I am talking to one of my heroes. He sounds like the nicest, wisest, kindest musical soul. He is telling me about other heroes – people he looked up to and learned from. He has told me about his time getting off junk; his time on junk. He has told me about his wife dying. About September 11. He has told me that at 80 he might get around to writing his life story when he has some time.

I tell Sonny Rollins that it feels like a naff question to ask him but I figure since he has not played in New Zealand before I have to inquire, on behalf of an expectant audience, as to what he might play.

“Whenever Sonny Rollins performs,” he announces himself in third person for only the second time during our chat, “he never knows what he is going to play.” He adds a hoot of laughter. “I’m serious though, I’m quite serious. I can’t play one song the same way twice, everything is improvised. I try to get my band in that space, so that they are ready. Jazz is the most spontaneous music there is. I want New Zealand to tell me what it wants!”

And then he adds that he will be playing some new compositions – and “bits of some of the old pieces will be there too”. But the plan is “to have a good time; to just go with it”.

Rollins believes that performing live is “the apogee; the top. I study still; I still practise because I’m still in search of the perfect style, the perfect soul, the perfect sound. It is a blessing that I’m allowed to play. I practise hard, work at rudiments, scales, I blow through ideas. And then when I get to play live it all hopefully comes together.”

So there’s still a thrill from performing for an audience?

“Well, yes there is. But let me tell you, Simon, I am not someone who expects the audience to give me energy. We do feed off energy, absolutely. But if you’ve paid your money to see me then you do not have to do a thing. It’s me that has to deliver! All right? I have to be on top of my game. And hopefully I am. I don’t like these people that stick to a clock and tell you that time’s up – they’re done. Not me. If we’re having a good time I will play all night. And that’s just something that I guess was drummed into me a long time ago. You perform for your audience. You never expect anything from them; they expect things from you. I still have things to say with my horn. And I want to share them with you. I am so privileged to play for you all. And I’m so looking forward to it. And thank you so much New Zealand for the invitation.”

If you’ve never heard Sonny Rollins you might recognise his playing on this Rolling Stones track.

Here’s a clip of him playing with Leonard Cohen.

And for the classic Sonny Rollins sound here’s his own tune, St. Thomas. And here’s another standard from the pen of Rollins, Oleo.

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August 20, 2012 by Simon Sweetman

The Mavis Staples Interview

This interview first featured in Blog on the Tracks on Stuff here.

Mavis Staples has been singing for 60 years. She is 71, although she will tell me with a hearty chuckle, “I had to record a message for Bob Dylan recently. He has a very special birthday coming up but I told him ’70 is the new 60′ so he’s like me, he’s got another 10 years before he has to worry about being 70 or any of that nonsense.”

I was told I would be speaking to Staples about an hour before the call went through. Mavis, formerly of The Staple Singers, now flies the flag for the family (along with her sister Yvonne, who provides backing vocals). She released You Are Not Alone last year, her first studio album since the 2007 “comeback”, We’ll Never Turn Back. She will play New Zealand shows in April with The Blind Boys of Alabama and Aaron Neville. And is excited.

“Music is such a joy, just an absolute joy,” you can hear the smile in Staples’ voice. “And I really am so excited to be coming back. We loved our shows we played in New Zealand when we had the last record out. I enjoyed myself immensely. And I was getting kinda worried” – a trickle of laughter seeps into play. “I thought we’d done something wrong, maybe you didn’t like us! I was waiting for somebody to call and have us back!”

Staples is excited when she speaks. And she’s exciting to listen to. She’s sharp and she tells fantastic stories. She’s very happy with the most recent album, telling me that they’ll be sharing most of it when she tours here just after Easter.

“It was so much fun to put this record together and we want to share it with you all – to me this record is a real joy. We have some lovely songs on it and we want y’all to hear them.” But if you’ve heard the fantastic Live: Hope at the Hideout or you caught Staples when she performed at Wellington’s International Arts Festival or Taranaki’s WOMAD, don’t panic. That amazing back-catalogue will get another airing.

“Oh yes, we’ll be playing all the favourites too.” Here Mavis has a giggle that becomes a chuckle after a throat-clearing cough. “There are songs that I have to play!” She’s getting evangelical now. “Do you understand me?” I do. But she further clarifies, “I can’t leave the stage if I don’t play some of these songs!” The exclamation mark is used like a conversational walking stick, propping her up as she pauses for effect, takes in the scenery, then continues her verbal stroll. “I’m talking about I’ll Take You There! I’m talking about Respect Yourself! I’m talking about The Weight! It would not be right if I did not play those songs!” And then finally, without the exclamation mark, a repeat, “it would not be right”.

Staples started singing as a kid. Her father Roebuck “Pops” Staples taught the children to sing, created a family band and took it on the road. Pops was raised on a cotton plantation and learned the guitar in an informal school of sorts; other pupils included Charlie Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson. Mavis learned at her father’s knee. She soaked up stories and songs from the Delta, from the cotton fields. Last year she worked with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. It’s not lost on her, the span of her work – the giant sweep of American songcraft that is wrapped up, connected to her career.

“Well, it’s been an amazing life. It’s really just been the most magical thing for me – and I have these musical friends from all walks of life. But the reason I do this, the reason I continued on – and still continue on – is because of Pops. Because of all that he taught us. I always believed in staying true to what Pops showed us. To what he taught. I really feel like I’m singing these songs for him now. I’m keeping his legacy going. And I’m singing songs that he would be proud of. I want to keep the family legacy alive and keep Pops proud.”

It’s not just Mavis who would be keeping Pops proud. Her guitarist, Rick Holmstrom, can at times sound uncannily like Roebuck Staples. I had to ask if this was a request, a direction from Mavis.

“Well, let me tell you about Rick. I first met Rick some years back and I was doing a gig up at Santa Monica Pier and so was Rick with his band. My band was late and I had watched Rick’s group and they were pretty good. And I could hear some of Pops’ sound in what Rick was playing. I couldn’t believe it. It turns out that Rick had been studying Pops for a while; he’d grown up listening to Pops. So this is before I even had met him. But I’m hearing Pops’ playing from Rick. And then it came time for me to go on – my band hasn’t made it and we found out that Rick’s group could play a few of our songs, they knew For What It’s Worth and The Weight, I’ll Take You There and Will the Circle Be Unbroken So we get on stage together – me with Rick’s band and I tell ya, when he started to play those songs I had to look around behind me; I had to check it weren’t Pops standing there playing. That boy can play! I tell ya.”

Holmstrom can not only replicate some of Pops’ parts, he recreates the spirit of Ry Cooder from the We’ll Never Turn Back record. Many feel that his playing on the Hideout live album is better suited to Staples’ sound than Cooder’s. And as Staples adds, “Rick has his own thing going on. He’s no copycat. He can definitely do some of Pops, some of Ry Cooder, but Rick is his own player.”

She is frank about the change to using Holmstrom and the new band. “My band I had when I did the Ry Cooder record, they just couldn’t do it. They couldn’t cut it. Not like Rick and the guys – so now they’re my band.” She adds a huge-sounding “ha”. It is its own exclamation mark.

So Jeff Tweedy is the latest in a line of distinctive guitar players to step forward and produce Mavis Staples. Before Tweedy it was Cooder, before him it was Prince. There has also been Curtis Mayfield and Steve Cropper.

“Well, I’ve been lucky,” Staples explains. “I need to hear the music that way, because that’s how I learned it – I’m grateful I’ve had these great guitar players producing me and working with me; understandin’ me. I learned with just Pops’ guitar and voice – and then I would sing. So to me that is music – that is how it works. You have the guitar, it provides the frame and you add the voice. Sometimes you start with the voice and you have the guitar moving around the vocals – but I need that. So I’ve just been so lucky to have these great men to work with. And I appreciate great guitarists. I’m not sure I’d sound the same if I worked with a producer who was a piano player.”

She rates Tweedy highly as a producer. She never once refers to him as Jeff, or Jeff Tweedy. It is always “Tweedy”. She uses it as you might a nickname.

“Working with Tweedy was great; a joy. A total joy. He’s a beautiful spirit. But he’s also a clown” – she lets out a hoot, then confirms, “he’s a comedian. A joker. And I just thought when I was working with him that, once again, God had blessed me. He really had. Because Tweedy can be tough. He can be demanding. Tweedy knows what he wants – and he knows how to get it.”

Here Staples chuckles – more so to herself than to me; it’s as if she’s just reminded herself of what will work as the perfect example to illustrate her point.

“Tweedy tells me with this one song, he says, ‘Mavis, I want you to go out and sing this song on the stairwell’. I say, ‘Tweedy don’t make me go out on no stairwell. It’s cold!’ And he say, ‘Mavis, get out on that stairwell and sing’. I say, ‘no, no, no, no, no! I ain’t going out there to do no singing Tweedy, it’s cold’. So next thing he says ‘quick, someone get Mavis a jacket, get her a hat and scarf and get her some gloves. She’s cold!’ And so I see he ain’t jokin’ no more, so I go ‘all right then Tweedy, if this is what you want then this is what you’re gonna get’. And we go out to the stairwell, and we huddle around one microphone. And we sing. And we get back in to listen to it and I say, ‘so, do I have to go out there again now?’ And he say, ‘no Mavis, we got it. It was perfect’. And he was right. So, I realised then and there that Tweedy can be a clown – he can mess with you – but he also knows what he’s doing. So if Tweedy tells me again to go out on the stairwell and sing, I’m going out there – even if I need an extra jacket!”

Staples has always toured regularly but says, if anything, she’s getting busier. “You know 2010 was a great year for me. It really was, but I got a feeling this year’s just going to be even better. And it’s busy. Already. I look at the books and man they are full but gigs are still coming in. It’s great. It’s really just such a blessing to do this – to get to see places and meet people, to go back to places I’ve been before. Your country was beautiful and I am looking forward to coming back.”

And then she addresses her legacy directly, saying, “my life has really been something. I’ve lived through trials and tribulations, I’ve seen change, I’ve gone from hanging out with Martin Luther King to seeing Barack Obama voted in. It’s been full of happy times, it really has.”

Touring does not stress the voice, nor does recording. Staples simply explains it away, “it’s just what I do. It’s not hard. I love what I do. It’s a joy to be able to sing.” She has a 50-year professional career and 60 years of singing to back that up.

These days a Mavis Staples show has a narrative flow from the singer: she’s a great storyteller – both in her recreations of the stories of others (the songs) and in the thread she provides.

“Well I never used to talk, you know. I used to be so quiet. I would sing. But I would never speak. Pops did all the talking. And I guess I just sorta started when he left us. I had to take over, carry on his role. And”, she gets on the giggle train here, “I’ve really made up for lost time!”

I suggest that she’s been banking up a lot of stories.

“Well, yeah, that’s true. That’s very true. But my sister Yvonne, she say to me, ‘Mavis you talk too much!’ And she also say ‘Mavis, you talk too damn loud too!’ And I tell her, ‘well Yvonne, you’re too quiet’ so there’s some laughter there too.”

But I’ve opened something up here: Staples is keen to carry on with this thread of her providing the thread, particularly the discussion she’s created about the volume of her voice.

“I do talk loud, but then I can also be a bit quiet still, sometimes. But lots of people tell me I am too loud. Prince would tell me that too, he’d say ‘Mavis, you should talk a little quieter’.” Spying my window, I suggest that Prince probably talks too quietly; should probably be told to talk louder…

“Well, you got that right sonny! You got that spot on, you know.” Next thing I have Mavis Staples impersonating Prince down the line, “Yeah, Prince be all ‘Mavis, Mavis…‘” [whispered voice] “and then he’s just all mumble/mumble/mumble/mumble and I’d be all like ‘What, Prince? Speak up!”

So many good stories…

And they are being recorded. Not just during interviews. Staples informs me that she’s working on her autobiography.

“And it’s great because I remember everything” – she hoots with laughter again – “I can remember my father calling us in to learn our first song. So you know, I’ve been sitting down to write these stories and these wonderful images just come back to me, I just visualise everything and think again how wonderful it’s all been…”

Friendships in the industry continues to be important to Mavis. The Staple Singers broke down barriers with their pioneering gospel/R’n'B; they connected with white audiences as well as black. They appeared in the classic concert film The Last Waltz; Staples’ rendition of The Weight (by The Band) is one of her, well, staples. And she’s still incredibly thankful for it.

“We’re still in touch. I mean, we’re going to be playing at Levon Helm’s barn later this year, he’s got this barn where he puts on gigs, and I see Levon regularly. His daughter is my god-daughter and she’s in a band now. So it’s just been wonderful growing up with these people. And Garth [Hudson] – we see him too. And Robbie Robertson - that’s all we have from that amazing band now; Robbie I last worked with properly back in 1999 but I’m looking forward to seeing him again soon. They’re all so special – such happy memories. We’re good friends with The Band – we were always good friends with them. The Last Waltz did so much for us. The Weight – that’s one of them songs I talked about earlier; I can’t leave the stage without doing that one!”

And it’s from The Band and these famous friendships that we get to Bob Dylan. Remember, we started with Staples discussing her birthday message for Dylan’s upcoming 70th. But we didn’t actually start there. We ended there. Only so much time on the phone with Staples and I nearly forgot to mention Bob Dylan.

Not only has she sung Dylan’s songs and travelled on the folk festival circuit with Dylan; he even proposed to her. Staples calls it “a favourite internet story“. We get to Dylan in the interview with me suggesting she will need to write a multiple-volume memoir, teasing it out over years like Dylan is. I then realise I’ve mentioned Dylan for the first time.

Staples, sharp as anything, laughs heartily, “Well honey you should have mentioned him earlier; we’re about all out of time now, aren’t we?” Then, barely a breath later she tells me “I’ve been saying to you that I just smile all the time, thinking about all these stories, all these people, Robbie and Garth, Prince and Ry Cooder; Tweedy and Pops. Well I don’t smile when I think of Dylan. I don’t smile. I grin. Dylan makes me grin. He always has. He always will.”