Well, I get a feeling inside, in my body, in my gut.
You just know?
Like when you meet a person and get a good feeling or bad feeling, it’s that kind of thing.
Would this being relate to D. H. Lawrence’s idea of the “roaring God-stuff” that makes up the universe and the shimmering electricity of life?
I have no idea. Never read D. H. Lawrence. But I kind of have a sense of what the Native Americans call “the great mystery.” I subscribe to that.
Is this knowledge through books alone, or have you traveled to Indian reservations?
I have been to reservations, yeah, in Canada and Arizona, but mainly through reading.
What makes modern Western culture a wasteland, or, as you call it on the new record, the weary land?
Well, I have lived in the community and in western Ireland, which is to me the old world, the ancient world. And when I came back to live in London, after a break of twelve years, I could sense the violence and uneasiness in the air. And a focus on celebrity, drugs, glamour, and superficiality. It was like looking at my country through a distorted lens.
But is that really any different than the last fifty years? What brought about this sudden recognition?
I think I had been away and saw it with new eyes. To some degree, my new eyes allowed me to see what was already there, things I hadn’t seen clearly before, but I also think to some degree there was a difference. You know, I noticed it mostly in the comedians. New things had become acceptable. Cruelty had come into the comedy: it had become more acceptable for comedians to use cruelty in their work. In the same way in the 1980s Margaret Thatcher made it acceptable to be selfish. Things that had previously been unspoken were now acceptable. I think in rock music in the early 1990s drugs became more acceptable, to the extent that Oasis had a big picture of cocaine jars on one of their albums. That hadn’t been acceptable for a long time.
Did that go against your early punk sensibilities?
Well, punk music had its own drugs of choice too, usually speed. But it had never been flaunted quite as much.
How important is spontaneity or improvisation to the live show or the process of making a record?
It’s not really very important in the live set. I love to improvise. I like to take a left turn during the performance of the songs. Recording-wise, I can record many different ways. When we recorded Fisherman’s Blues, we were improvising all the time in the stereo, but when I did A Rock in the Weary Land it was much more focused and disciplined.
This album feels very gospel-like to me. Do you feel that way?
I would say yes. I listened to a lot of gospel music before I made it, and I feel at least one of its legs is rooted in gospel. I’ve loved gospel music for a long time, and when I lived in New York I used to go to gospel concerts.
Did you go out to the churches in Brooklyn?
Up in Harlem. I used to see the a cappella gospel groups, no-name gospel groups that I’m sure are still around.
Did it revitalize music for you?
Well, gospel is a great storehouse of not only songs but imagery that rings a chord with people, because most of us have grown up in a nominally Christian background, so we know this language that is in gospel music, and it speaks to us on an emotional and soul level. I don’t think that Christians have got a monopoly on it.
But there’s also the intense use of parallelism—repeated rhythmical phrasing.
Absolutely, that is fantastic.
You’ve said that videos are bad for music, but I know you have also made some. Do you still feel that way, or do you think that you can make videos with integrity and a kind of soul?
Well, that’s a good question. I think a few people can make videos with integrity.
Like who?
Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush.
And how do you go about making a video that has integrity?
I don’t take well to video. I write songs to create images in a person’s mind, and video gets in the way of that for me. It undoes what I do. It’s a medium that I don’t recognize. Do you see what I’m saying? I don’t respect it as a medium. And I don’t have any hunger to do it. I went for seven years without making a video, from the “Whole of the Moon” in 1985 to Dream Harder in 1993. For eight years, in fact, I didn’t make a single video. And when I signed to Geffen records for Dream Harder in 1992, I remember the conversation with David Geffen when I said I don’t want to have to make videos. I’ll do them if I want to try it. And he said okay, we want you to be comfortable, and he was cool about it.
And I did try—I made two videos when I was on Geffen, and neither of them was a success creatively for me. One of them got pulled. I tried it again with Bring ’Em All In, and made one or two, and then tried it again with Still Burning, and made another two videos, but it just doesn’t work for me. I’m not quite sure what I’m doing wrong. I think it’s because I don’t see videos as a valid extension of my music, so it’s not going to work for me. It’s just tough luck.
There’s something very fake and businesslike about videos, whereas the Waterboys always had a very street-level feel; for instance, you were still busking in the mid-1980s and doing surprise gigs. That essence is totally lost in the video format.
Yeah, I am aware that in the 1960s there were artists who weren’t necessarily good-looking but had voices and became big stars because of their records, like Joe Cocker, or Eric Burdon and the Animals. They would find it very hard in a video culture, where the way we look is so important. And I think that’s a downside to video. I don’t think that music needs video. I’ve bought myself a little video camera, and we’re filming everything we do as we tour around the world with the band, and I can see a Waterboys “on the road” video.
That seems like a different process, more honest and documentary?
Well, it’s creative for me. And I’m not saying that all the people who make videos are dishonest about it, but it just doesn’t work for me. I may try it again in the future.
If 70 percent of live shows happen simply because of pleasure, then what’s the other 30 percent of why you play live shows?
I want to support the record, and I want the band to be seen and heard.
For the first four records, you were the producer, and for the next four you were the co-producer, but now you are producing again. . . .
I was burned out after Fisherman’s Blues.
But are you happy to be back in control?
Oh my god, yes, it’s fantastic. After Fisherman’s Blues, I didn’t want that responsibility of production for a long time, so I tried co-producing, and that was okay. I like the records I made during that period. But I really think I make my best records when I’m producing, like now. I think they have a greater degree of Waterboy-ness, whatever that means.
Some people say that the Golders Green Hippodrome show in 1985 was the Waterboys at their best live.
Well, that was a radio session. We did four songs only for a BBC radio show.
Was it a peak for you or just another link in the chain?
Yeah, just another link in the chain for me. We did a version of “Don’t Bang the Drum” that day that is on the Secret Life of the Waterboys record that was definitely wonderful.
But it was done without drums.
It was with piano, trumpet, fiddle, and saxophone.
And the trumpet player had only played spontaneously in the studio, never live?
Something like that. No, I think he had played it live, but we had always played it with drums like it is on the This Is the Sea record, but on this day I wanted to do a totally different version. So I played it on the piano, and got the three boys, the fiddle, sax, and trumpet, to improvise as I played the song on piano. And to inspire them, I got the trumpet and sax players to play up high in the royal boxes, because the Hippodrome is a converted theater, while I was down on the floor playing piano. They were way up, suspended off the ground, and then we turned all the lights off, and then we rec
orded it.
With the lights off?
Yeah, and everybody was inspired, and I think we made this magical piece of music.
Bob Dylan told you he loved the song “Whole of the Moon?”
Well, I don’t know how much he liked it, but when I met him, yeah, he told me he enjoyed it.
You jammed with him a little bit?
In his studio.
Is there any new Dylan material that stands out to you?
Well, I enjoyed Time Out of Mind. I loved the production on that. I thought it was a great record. I get so lost in the lyrics. The lyrics are so bleak, yet the sound of the music around him is so beautiful, it’s like he’s surrounded by angels that you can’t see. A beautiful record.
Has there always been a streak of independence in you, regardless of what ensemble you put together for the Waterboys?
In the Waterboys, I’ve always been responsible for the direction of the band. And it wasn’t until I met Steve Wickham that it became more of a band. Even on This Is the Sea, which looks like a band record, I’m directing the whole thing. The guys are coming down to the studio to play, and I’m using them as I envisage it. It wasn’t until we made Fisherman’s Blues that we played live in the studio as a band, and people were inventing their own parts. On the early records, I’m directing everything. And it is only when I work with a musician like Steve and develop a great intuitive musical bond that I can let go of the music.
Do you feel that your music is redemptive, not just for you but for listeners too?
I would hope that my music, and the Waterboys’ music, contributes to the good. My intentions have always been to inspire. When I make a record, I want to inspire people; I want people to be inspired like I am when I hear a record.
What music are you listening to right now that puts shivers up your spine?
Well, someone has given me a copy of the new Spiritualized, and the third track just does something, it is so great, it’s really turning me on.
Can you put your finger on what it is?
No. It’s an absolutely brilliant track, absolutely brilliant, inspired track. I’ve been listening to a lot of Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald.
What era of Davis?
Sketches of Spain, Porgy and Bess, Miles Ahead, and the Gil Evans record.
Is there still something unique or special about your relationship to Ireland?
Yes, very much so. It’s still very strong.
Even after you’ve lived in New York?
Yes, part of my soul is in Ireland.
And will that continue to filter into the music?
Yeah, it’s somewhere under the consciousness of the music. It’s not in the forefront like it was on Fisherman’s Blues, but it’s always there.
Is America just as weary and grotesque as Europe?
Well, wherever I go in America, I find there is this sense of clarity and optimism. America is built on different foundations than the European countries. For me, coming from the Old World, I find my experiences in America as very fresh ones. People are really friendly in restaurants. It’s things like that.
Richard Thompson: The Wit and the Wisdom
Originally published in Thirsty Ear, 2001.
Stepping into Richard Thompson’s tour bus, I was immediately overcome not by the cantankerous schlock of a traveling rock band, replete with beer-stained clothes, sunken eyes, and the lingering smell of Lysol, but instead by the cleanliness and serenity of a well-kept Cape Cod dayroom. A bowl of fresh fruit lay near an open window, and two members of his band watched TV quietly, barely nodding as I walked through the sleep quarters. “Is that good?” Richard said, pointing to a tiny table with a Game Boy on it. “We like our soccer game,” he said with a cheeky smile, his cropped flaxen hair slightly matted up. There wasn’t a trace of dust in the compartment, and the sweeping gray light was bracing. I was all set to fire off a steady volley of questions about his former wife and songwriting bandmate Linda Thompson and music, including his first successful band, the folk rock pioneers Fairport Convention, and his later avant-garde side projects with David Thomas and Fred Frith. He’s going to be a challenge of British proportions, I thought. Instead I came face to face with a man who was far more approachable, witty, and modest than his records chock-full of crisscrossing idioms (Celtic jig, folk musings, prog rock, Cajun zydeco, uptempo swing pop rockabilly); incisive and barbed lyrical wit; and exasperating, wigged-out, but crisp and melodic guitar playing would suggest. His calm, narrow, and concerned face led me away into history and politics, but that’s where his heart was at the moment.
You often try to inhabit the lives of other people and characters in your work.
That’s human nature, I suppose.
You witness their experiences but never really editorialize or moralize about them.
But there are songs, for instance, that I write in the first person where the people cut down themselves. They expose themselves. You put a character in an extreme situation, and the character will expose itself, you don’t have to do anything else. You don’t have to have a big sign saying the moral of the story. On the other hand, there are folk songs where the last verse is the moral of the story. And I love those songs too.
Are the Scottish ballads, with their direct, terse approach and economical sense of images, some of the finest forms of songwriting for you?
They’re handed down through generations of singers. The bad verses and weaknesses get filtered out.
They are distilled?
It’s a very distilled process, and in many cases [the songs] end up stronger than any one writer could have come up with. Sometimes these are songs that at some point had an intelligent hand in them.
An invisible one?
Sometimes they started out as printed broadsides and were sold as songs celebrating naval victories or a famous murder and were written by a hack, although sometimes a good hack, a good whore. The songs are sung by all classes, people in the upper class sitting around a piano singing about something and the people in the pubs would be singing it and the farm workers singing it, and it would get transformed over fifty or a hundred years.
The songs, in some cases, become unrecognizable. Sometimes a school teacher or a parson would get ahold of what appears to be a folk song and say, “Well, I could turn it up a little.” But in a good way, say, with weak verses. They may know a little something about poetry, and tweak it a bit. Skillful, intelligent, educated poets like Burns and Walter Scott would take folk songs and rewrite them.
Even T. S. Eliot would mix the highs and lows of culture by integrating workingmen’s songs into his rather erudite, lofty, and conceptual pieces.
The end process is that there’s some really good stuff in those songs.
Does it ever make you shudder to think that you’re just a link in the growth of the song, that’s there’s a whole burden of history behind the songs?
No, it’s a really good feeling. It may be frightening to some, but I’m not scared [laughs]. It’s nice to feel part of a tradition; it’s nice to know what a tradition is, to know where you come from and what the music of where you come from is. That is something you can build on—as they say, those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. It’s great to have that behind you. You feel part of a long process. And it’s easy to go forward from there.
Some critics argue that Bob Dylan was a great rock ’n’ roller, a great traditional folk artist, but never quite merged the two together in a way that appealed to a lot of fans. On the other hand, you seem perfectly adept at bridging the two forms.
I disagree with that Dylan part. He was very influenced by Scottish ballads, and he knows that stuff. He always knew that stuff. “It’s All Over, Baby Blue” is a rewrite of a traditional ballad about Mary Queen of Scots that he contemporized, which I very much like the idea of.
Speaking of roots, how did you get back to the suburbs of London? How did you decide on the material for Mock Tudor? Were the songs crafted over a per
iod of time, then finally brought into the light of day, or were they written in a burst?
I collect piles of songs for different projects. I put songs in piles and grab them, say, for a particular thing, like this one will be great for my album about the lost city of Atlantis [laughs]. Here’s one on the Nicaraguan trade union movement to go with my other fourteen songs on the subject.
You could save those for Billy Bragg.
Yeah, Billy. I had a small part, maybe two or three songs about suburban London and growing up in it, just as a project to do sometime. Then I said, well, now’s the time, I’ll see how easy or hard it is to write twelve new songs.
Was it easy as the songs grew and gained momentum?
It surprised me because there was obviously a lot of stuff there that I could think about and develop. So it was a quick process, though I wouldn’t say easy.
When Americans think back on 1950s England, I think they have images culled from things like Look Back in Anger and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.
It was all black and white.
But was it really all that?
Yes, it was bleak and black and white in the fifties, certainly. It was before teenagers had enough wealth to express their own culture. You had the Elvis, Buddy Holly, James Dean stuff that was imported, and we had poetry, and a sense of youth culture, but there wasn’t the wealth or influence to express it yet. In the sixties, it really blossomed, with the Beatles, the fashion thing and swinging London. There was a real youth voice at that point.
Mavericks of Sound Page 19