Episode 410 - John Cale

Episode 410 • Released July 28, 2013 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Guest:are we doing this really wait for it are we doing this wait for it pow what the fuck and it's also what the fuck what's wrong with me it's time for wtf what the fuck with mark marron

00:00:24Marc:All right, let's do this.

00:00:25Marc:How are you?

00:00:26Marc:What the fuckers?

00:00:26Marc:What the fuck buddies?

00:00:27Marc:What the fucking ears?

00:00:28Marc:What the fuck nicks?

00:00:29Marc:What the fuckstables?

00:00:30Marc:What the fuckadelics?

00:00:32Marc:What the fuckaholics?

00:00:34Marc:I guess I'm not tired of doing it.

00:00:36Marc:I guess that's what we're learning.

00:00:38Marc:This is Mark Maron.

00:00:39Marc:This is WTF.

00:00:40Marc:Thank you for listening.

00:00:41Marc:I am speaking to you from a hotel room in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

00:00:47Marc:I am here at the Just for Laughs International Comedy Festival again.

00:00:54Marc:For probably, I don't know how many times in my career I've been up here.

00:00:57Marc:It's hard to know.

00:00:57Marc:I think I started coming up here in 1995.

00:01:01Marc:I've been here two days.

00:01:03Marc:I'm exhausted.

00:01:04Marc:I'm exhausted.

00:01:06Marc:I will say this.

00:01:07Marc:John Kale, the legendary John Kale, the musician and record producer John Kale is on the show.

00:01:13Marc:He's live from not live, but he's in the garage.

00:01:16Marc:I'm clearly not in the garage.

00:01:19Marc:I'm in a hotel room battling with a nap.

00:01:22Marc:I mean, I'm going head on into a nap soon.

00:01:26Marc:From what I can only call some sort of pork-induced coma.

00:01:31Marc:But this is different than the other times, my friends.

00:01:33Marc:This is different.

00:01:35Marc:It's amazing how many people up here.

00:01:37Marc:Chappelle is up here.

00:01:38Marc:Chappelle.

00:01:40Marc:Dave Chappelle.

00:01:41Marc:I'm doing an impression of somebody none of you know.

00:01:43Marc:It's Esty at the Comedy Cellar.

00:01:45Marc:Who else did I see?

00:01:47Marc:Andy Kinler was here.

00:01:48Marc:We had a lovely time.

00:01:49Marc:Kyle Kinane, Pete Holmes.

00:01:51Marc:I saw Arge Barker.

00:01:53Marc:I saw Moshe Kasher.

00:01:54Marc:Neil Brennan is up here.

00:01:56Marc:Mike Wilmot, the lovely Mike Wilmot, the Canadian crankster.

00:02:01Marc:The cranky man of Canada, the Canuck crank.

00:02:05Marc:Mike Wilmot, one of the great comedians is up here.

00:02:07Marc:Had some time with him.

00:02:10Marc:Some drunken time.

00:02:11Marc:Not on my part, but on his part.

00:02:13Marc:That's not unusual.

00:02:14Marc:It was a lovely conversation.

00:02:15Marc:He was very effusive and supportive, which I will take.

00:02:18Marc:Bobby Slayton is here.

00:02:20Marc:Bobby Slayton I saw three or four times in the last two hours.

00:02:24Marc:In different outfits.

00:02:26Marc:Saw him in some gym clothes and I saw him in some other clothes.

00:02:28Marc:He's like, what?

00:02:29Marc:And he said, am I doing a spinoff of your show?

00:02:33Marc:Am I doing a spinoff?

00:02:35Marc:It's a little low, my impression.

00:02:36Marc:Back to Pide Couchon, the restaurant, Pide Couchon.

00:02:41Marc:I'm not plugging the place.

00:02:42Marc:It doesn't need to be plugged.

00:02:45Marc:It is almost a restaurant that celebrates our dominance and apparent contempt for the animal world in the way that it's one thing just to have a decadent meal.

00:02:58Marc:It's another thing to celebrate the guts and pieces of pig and animal that you don't really think you're going to eat in a lifetime.

00:03:07Marc:You don't really think that.

00:03:08Marc:But I had something over there.

00:03:11Marc:I don't know if I can pronounce it in French.

00:03:12Marc:I'm not sure it would do you any good if it would help you.

00:03:15Marc:I've been to this place before.

00:03:16Marc:I haven't been there in a couple of years, but I think that's about right.

00:03:19Marc:I'm not saying it's a bad restaurant.

00:03:20Marc:It's probably one of the best restaurants I've ever eaten in, but it's something you can only do once every couple of years.

00:03:29Marc:I had an in-house made head cheese.

00:03:32Marc:Who the fuck goes out of their way to get head cheese?

00:03:36Marc:I mean, head cheese is something we laugh about.

00:03:38Marc:It's something you see at the supermarket in the deli area.

00:03:42Marc:You're not even in the good deli area, but the prepackaged deli area where you're like, oh my God, who eats that?

00:03:48Marc:I think Oscar Mayer might make a head cheese, but not unlike many things that we condescend or think is gross or wrong or

00:03:57Marc:Maybe just for other people.

00:04:00Marc:Head cheese is a real thing and it can be made in a way that is high-end, high-end head cheese.

00:04:09Marc:So the angle of this particular dish was a slab of house-made head cheese over some thinly sliced potatoes with a bit of endive salad on the side with some pecans for some reason.

00:04:23Marc:It seemed to be floating in a puddle of some sort of oil.

00:04:30Marc:So I asked the waiter what is the best thing to get.

00:04:33Marc:He goes, well, this... I go, what is that exactly?

00:04:36Marc:And he says, it's a head cheese, fried.

00:04:42Marc:Okay, and then over the thin sliced potato.

00:04:46Marc:It's just really French.

00:04:47Marc:I'm no good with the accents.

00:04:49Marc:And this was just a large, maybe one and a half inch thick piece of fried head cheese, which is primarily pieces of pig from the head with large cubes of fat, cubes of fat in it.

00:05:02Marc:I think there's a cry for help.

00:05:04Marc:This is a genuine cry for help.

00:05:06Marc:Someone has to make me stop eating like this.

00:05:07Marc:I'm 49 fucking years old.

00:05:09Marc:So they bring this thing out and I ate like most of it.

00:05:12Marc:I chose not to eat a couple of the cubes of pure fat because I had this moment where I'm like, dude,

00:05:18Marc:Dude, you're 49.

00:05:20Marc:You're a Jew.

00:05:21Marc:You don't come from the best stock genetically.

00:05:24Marc:I don't know.

00:05:24Marc:There's heart attacks.

00:05:25Marc:There's colon cancer.

00:05:26Marc:There's this.

00:05:27Marc:There's that.

00:05:27Marc:There's things that'll happen.

00:05:29Marc:What are you doing?

00:05:29Marc:Is this a death wish?

00:05:31Marc:Do you enjoy it that much?

00:05:34Marc:Stop it, you fuck.

00:05:36Marc:And that was said to me in Hebrew, what I just told you.

00:05:38Marc:I had to sit here.

00:05:39Marc:I spent the last half hour on the computer translating.

00:05:41Marc:So that was God speaking to me.

00:05:43Marc:Stop it, you fuck, he said.

00:05:45Marc:God said to Marc Maron.

00:05:49Marc:I mean, come on.

00:05:52Marc:All right, stop yelling at you.

00:05:54Marc:Thank you, you.

00:05:55Marc:Thank you, Mark.

00:05:55Marc:I appreciate that.

00:05:57Marc:So I've had a pretty good time up here.

00:05:58Marc:I did an amazing live WTF that I'll give to you soon.

00:06:02Marc:I don't even want to tell you who was on it right now because then I'll never hear the end of it.

00:06:05Marc:When, when, when?

00:06:07Marc:I love you people.

00:06:09Marc:Do you know how much I love you?

00:06:10Marc:Like just in case I do die tonight from lard-induced blood thickness.

00:06:16Marc:I just made that disease up.

00:06:17Marc:That's not a real disease.

00:06:18Marc:Lard-induced blood thickness.

00:06:20Marc:So in case I died, I just want to tell you, you do have a good episode, a live episode.

00:06:25Marc:John Kale is on the show today.

00:06:26Marc:Did I say that?

00:06:27Marc:He's in the garage today.

00:06:28Marc:John Kale from the Velvet Underground.

00:06:30Marc:The man who produced, I believe, the second Stooges album.

00:06:33Marc:The man who produced Patti Smith's Horses album.

00:06:37Marc:The man who did at least a dozen solo albums on his own.

00:06:41Marc:A prodigy of sorts who chose against classical and went into avant-garde's noise music and sounds.

00:06:50Marc:And a man, something you can look forward to in this episode is that after we talked for about an hour and 10 minutes or whatever it was about the Velvet Underground and a bit about his solo career and his producing, he asked me if we were going to talk about the new album.

00:07:07Marc:And it was a difficult moment for me, but I chose to tell the truth and say, I never received your new album.

00:07:14Marc:That's a good moment.

00:07:15Marc:I would just pay special attention to that moment because I didn't know what the fuck was going to happen in that moment.

00:07:22Marc:He shot daggers at me with his eyes.

00:07:26Marc:And then I think what happened was one of the high points of the conversation in that because I hadn't listened to it, he had to tell me about it from his point of view.

00:07:40Marc:I couldn't impose my judgment on anything.

00:07:42Marc:But whatever, maybe I'm reading into it.

00:07:44Marc:I've learned my lesson.

00:07:45Marc:I'm not going to tell you how I feel about interviews during my intro.

00:07:48Marc:I'm not going to do that.

00:07:49Marc:This was the last time.

00:07:52Marc:I will set a scene for you, but I will not tell you.

00:07:54Marc:Did I mention I'm going to be in Chicago this week, this Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the Main Stage Theater in Chicago?

00:08:00Marc:Come out.

00:08:01Marc:I know it's Lollapalooza or whatever the festival is.

00:08:04Marc:So what?

00:08:05Marc:Take an evening.

00:08:06Marc:Come out.

00:08:07Marc:Come out to the show.

00:08:08Marc:It's a lot of shows.

00:08:10Marc:How many shows is that?

00:08:11Marc:Six?

00:08:12Marc:Main stage, M-A-Y-N-E-S-T-A-G-E.

00:08:16Marc:That's this Thursday.

00:08:18Marc:What date is that, Mark?

00:08:20Marc:Hold on, Mark.

00:08:21Marc:Let me check.

00:08:21Marc:Open the calendar, asshole.

00:08:23Marc:There's no reason to talk to me like that.

00:08:24Marc:I don't know why you got to talk to me like that.

00:08:27Marc:We're trying to do what we got to do here.

00:08:29Marc:Seriously, man, you're recording something right now.

00:08:32Marc:Look, just shut the fuck up.

00:08:34Marc:All right, I'm looking.

00:08:35Marc:Okay, August 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th.

00:08:39Marc:Yeah, that should do it.

00:08:42Marc:In Chicago at the Main Stage Theater.

00:08:44Marc:You know, my name has been mispronounced.

00:08:46Marc:Mispronounced?

00:08:47Marc:Did I just mispronounce, mispronounce?

00:08:51Marc:People can't seem to get my name right.

00:08:53Marc:Marin, M-A-R-O-N.

00:08:54Marc:Is there another option to read?

00:08:56Marc:How do you not know what that says?

00:08:57Marc:Marin, M-A-R-O-N.

00:08:59Marc:Not Marin, not Moran, not Moran, not Maroon.

00:09:03Marc:What the fuck?

00:09:05Marc:Marin, M-A-R-O-N, like baron.

00:09:07Marc:It's the only other word.

00:09:10Marc:A-R-O-N, B, baron.

00:09:12Marc:Put an M there.

00:09:13Marc:Marin, shut up.

00:09:16Marc:Moron, very clever.

00:09:18Marc:But here, the French pronunciation to my name is lovely.

00:09:24Marc:Lovely.

00:09:25Marc:Maron.

00:09:26Marc:Maron.

00:09:27Marc:Maron.

00:09:29Marc:Sexy.

00:09:30Marc:I was at the airport in L.A.

00:09:32Marc:at the Air Canada terminal at my gate waiting to board the plane.

00:09:38Marc:And I hear them paging some people.

00:09:42Marc:Could you please, Mr. Flan, Flan, Flan, Flan, Flan, please come to the ticket counter at Gate 22.

00:09:48Marc:Could a Monsieur Maron, please come to... And I'm like, what?

00:09:53Marc:Monsieur Maron?

00:09:55Marc:I'm like, I think that might be me.

00:09:59Marc:Yes, I am Monsieur Maron.

00:10:03Marc:And I twirled my mustache.

00:10:05Marc:And I said, what can I do for you?

00:10:08Marc:Bonjour.

00:10:10Bonjour.

00:10:10Marc:Marc Maron.

00:10:12Marc:Like it.

00:10:13Marc:Thinking about moving here.

00:10:14Marc:Just so I can hear my name said like that all the time.

00:10:18Marc:And that thought has passed.

00:10:20Marc:I just moved back.

00:10:22Marc:That was close.

00:10:23Marc:It was an exciting time.

00:10:24Marc:It was an exciting time to live here.

00:10:26Marc:That four seconds.

00:10:27Marc:Look, let's do this.

00:10:28Marc:Let's go back to the garage where I have John Cale waiting and talk to him.

00:10:34Guest:Enjoy.

00:10:40Thank you.

00:10:42Marc:How are you, sir?

00:10:43Marc:I'm very good.

00:10:44Marc:John Cale is in my garage.

00:10:46Guest:Hello, garage.

00:10:47Marc:Isn't that amazing?

00:10:48Guest:Yeah.

00:10:49Guest:Beautiful spot, though.

00:10:50Marc:Man.

00:10:51Marc:Have you been doing a lot of this kind of thing?

00:10:52Marc:I mean, is this unusual?

00:10:53Guest:Not in such a beautiful place as this.

00:10:56Guest:Oh, thank you.

00:10:57Guest:Thank you.

00:10:59Marc:How long are you in L.A.

00:11:00Marc:for?

00:11:00Guest:I moved out here.

00:11:02Marc:When?

00:11:03Guest:A while back, about six years.

00:11:05Marc:Oh, so you're around here.

00:11:07Marc:I'm around.

00:11:07Marc:Where part of the town do you live in?

00:11:10Guest:Career town.

00:11:10Marc:Okay.

00:11:12Guest:Low crime Christians.

00:11:15Guest:Got a new Pope.

00:11:16Guest:Yeah.

00:11:17Guest:Well, it's the 480 million Latin American.

00:11:21Marc:Yeah, that's what's keeping them in business.

00:11:24Marc:Did you grow up Catholic?

00:11:25Marc:No.

00:11:26Marc:Oh, good for you.

00:11:27Marc:You managed to get out of that one.

00:11:30Marc:What are you working on right now?

00:11:32Marc:Let's start here, and then we'll move back.

00:11:35Guest:Okay.

00:11:37Guest:I'm going to re-record.

00:11:39Guest:I want to talk to you.

00:11:40Guest:Revamp it a bit.

00:11:41Guest:You're one of your older records.

00:11:43Guest:Yeah.

00:11:44Guest:I just want to work on it, get a looser groove.

00:11:48Guest:Yeah?

00:11:48Guest:Yeah.

00:11:48Guest:I mean, I did it on the Fallon show, and it felt really good.

00:11:53Guest:And I thought, this feels better to me than the record does.

00:11:56Marc:And it's yours, so why not just do it?

00:12:01Marc:When you approach doing music now, I mean, when someone of your stature, and I have not talked to many, comes to talk to me, there's got to be this moment where I say to myself, where the fuck do you start with this?

00:12:14Marc:Because, I mean, your career spans a lot of years.

00:12:18Marc:You have a profound influence on just about all of modern music.

00:12:22Marc:So I figure like if you're going to re-approach one of your own records, when you say it needs a different groove, what groove is that that you're into right now?

00:12:29Marc:And how do you, like when you say that, like what is the vibe that you're looking for?

00:12:33Guest:Well, you know, I wrote this song with Danger Mouse.

00:12:38Guest:Yeah.

00:12:38Guest:And it had what was prepared tracks by Brian.

00:12:45Guest:Yeah.

00:12:46Guest:And I worked with that.

00:12:47Guest:Yeah.

00:12:47Guest:And then I forgot about it.

00:12:49Guest:Yeah.

00:12:49Guest:And I got through the record, and I finished the album, and then, whoops, we've got three more months to go.

00:12:56Guest:Right, let's go back and see what we can do.

00:12:57Guest:Yeah.

00:12:58Guest:And then I realized what we were missing, which was something with the Detroit flavor.

00:13:02Guest:Oh, really?

00:13:03Guest:And, you know, a little lope.

00:13:05Guest:And I remember this track.

00:13:08Guest:Yeah.

00:13:09Guest:So I was very, that needed a little bit of nudging and attention.

00:13:15Guest:So I did that.

00:13:17Guest:But it was still basically that tempo that we had there.

00:13:20Marc:So when you say Detroit, you think in Mitch Ryder, you think in Motown?

00:13:23Marc:Motown.

00:13:24Guest:That drive, right.

00:13:25Guest:Motown.

00:13:25Guest:and uh you know i was going for something with tambourines and and it um i didn't get anything so anyway having done that and finished the record we went out on the road and of course you know um i'm learning a little late that really things benefit from taking them out on the road and airing them in public and when you do them that way you suddenly get

00:13:48Guest:You know, if you do them, you just do them over and over every night.

00:13:51Guest:Yeah.

00:13:51Guest:And all of a sudden, when you say, I'm fed up with this, I'm going to do this.

00:13:54Guest:Yeah.

00:13:54Marc:And so it grows.

00:13:57Marc:It evolves while you're doing it.

00:13:58Marc:Yes.

00:13:58Marc:And it kind of finds its own breath.

00:14:00Guest:Right.

00:14:01Marc:Now, when you started, like, I recently was in, oh, what the hell city was I in?

00:14:07Marc:I went to see a show on John Cage and The Cubist.

00:14:13Marc:There was some sort of, it was.

00:14:14Guest:They've done a lot of it, yeah, because it's an anniversary of.

00:14:17Marc:Right.

00:14:17Marc:Yeah.

00:14:18Marc:And you, you know, your interpretation of like, I have to assume he was a profound influence on you, John Cage.

00:14:24Guest:Yeah.

00:14:25Marc:Now, can you sort of explain to me in your own words, you know, what that did for your brain and what that did for music in what he did?

00:14:33Guest:Yeah, he got in the door early.

00:14:36Guest:I mean, I was struggling with Elvis and rocker on the clock and all that stuff.

00:14:41Guest:But at the same time, I wanted to be a composer and really have this grip from my family of what classical composition and all that, how important that was and what the values were that were in it.

00:14:55Guest:But in Europe at the time, post-WW2, everybody was saying, listen, you know, we've got a hangover here, and you've got to really prove what the value of the piece is that you're going to do these social things.

00:15:10Guest:value of what you're doing before you write it.

00:15:15Guest:Anything.

00:15:15Guest:Classical or whatever.

00:15:16Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:15:16Guest:Well, if you're going to be a contemporary composer, and a lot of the people that were doing Avogad at the time were really in revolt against this.

00:15:25Guest:This thing about religion and its role in art and all of that was really a bugaboo for me.

00:15:33Guest:I just got fed up with it.

00:15:35Guest:And one of the things that Cage came along with was the Zen.

00:15:38Guest:I just opened my eyes.

00:15:39Guest:I thought...

00:15:40Guest:Yeah, there is life after music.

00:15:43Guest:Right.

00:15:43Guest:It's like, this is fun.

00:15:45Guest:Yeah.

00:15:46Marc:And irreverent.

00:15:48Marc:And sound and texture, and it doesn't have to be strict.

00:15:52Guest:Well, that was kind of the bottom line for me was how...

00:15:55Guest:And it opened up a whole other attitude towards music that really you didn't have to have this Sturm und Drang about structure and what it means.

00:16:09Guest:And that fitted well in with the rock and roll and all of that.

00:16:12Marc:And when you say classical, you were trained as a classical musician, and you played viola and cello.

00:16:20Marc:Viola, yeah.

00:16:22Marc:And so at that time, when you say the church, are you talking about the Renaissance, or are you just talking about Europe at the time, or what influence they had?

00:16:30Guest:I'm talking about the role, the part the church played in everything.

00:16:34Guest:In everything, really.

00:16:38Guest:And coming to Tanglewood,

00:16:42Guest:going into the masterclass in composition where everything was in the mix.

00:16:48Guest:And it was kind of constricting.

00:16:51Guest:And I had already made up my mind that I wanted to go and work with Lamont anyway.

00:16:55Guest:And I did some things with Cage, we performed.

00:16:59Marc:You worked with him directly?

00:17:00Marc:Yeah.

00:17:02Marc:And what were those performances like?

00:17:04Guest:Well, it was the Eric Satie piece.

00:17:06Guest:It was like, repeat this...

00:17:08Guest:468 times.

00:17:12Marc:All you had was a number to work with?

00:17:13Guest:Yes.

00:17:14Guest:It was a short piece, the Eric Satie piece.

00:17:19Guest:And you had it organized.

00:17:22Guest:People waiting, people playing, people keeping count.

00:17:24Guest:How many people were involved?

00:17:25Guest:About 10, I think.

00:17:27Guest:10 pianists all switched.

00:17:29Guest:And they went on for like 28 hours or something.

00:17:33Marc:And do people stay for the whole run?

00:17:35Marc:Some did, yeah.

00:17:36Marc:That's not necessarily important, though.

00:17:39Marc:It's okay to come and go.

00:17:40Marc:We'll be here doing this.

00:17:41Marc:Yes.

00:17:42Marc:Because that's what felt when I first saw it, because I'd never seen Cage perform it.

00:17:44Marc:I saw this piece, or it was an ongoing piece.

00:17:47Marc:I think it was part of a dance number originally.

00:17:49Marc:But there were three musicians.

00:17:51Marc:One was on the floor with a guitar, just wrenching sounds out of it that were not necessarily guitar sounds.

00:17:57Marc:Someone was playing a reed of a saxophone, not the whole saxophone.

00:18:00Marc:And it seemed to work in the space, and there seemed to be some order to it.

00:18:05Marc:But you're saying it was just, it was a movement, and there was a number involved.

00:18:09Guest:That piece, that Alex Satie piece in particular.

00:18:12Guest:But the rest of the stuff, you know, Cage knocked down the walls of the concert hall.

00:18:16Guest:You know, everybody in it was very precious about, and America inherited it, you know, all the symphony concerts.

00:18:24Guest:You've got to be quiet to listen to this in purity and all that.

00:18:27Guest:And Cage came along and said, you know...

00:18:29Marc:Fuck it.

00:18:30Guest:Yeah.

00:18:33Marc:Enough of this shit.

00:18:34Marc:Yeah.

00:18:34Marc:We have to relax this thing.

00:18:36Marc:Yeah.

00:18:37Marc:So when you got together with Reed and the other cats, I mean, what was the original thing?

00:18:43Marc:Like, how did you guys, I'm sure you've answered this a million times, but I have not asked it.

00:18:47Marc:Because, you know, I'm a big Velvet Underground fan.

00:18:50Marc:I'm a big fan of Brian Eno.

00:18:52Marc:I'm a big fan of yours.

00:18:53Marc:So, like, all this stuff comes together somehow.

00:18:55Marc:There seems to be an evolution to it.

00:18:56Marc:I'm sure it's been explored.

00:18:57Marc:I don't know what it is.

00:18:58Marc:So you come to Lou, who I imagine was fairly prickly, or he comes to you.

00:19:02Marc:What happened?

00:19:03Guest:Oh, we just met somebody at the record company said they had a single.

00:19:07Guest:He said, look, you look very commercial.

00:19:10Guest:To you.

00:19:10Guest:Yeah, I had long hair.

00:19:12Guest:Very commercial.

00:19:13Guest:I think we've got the right slot for you.

00:19:15Guest:Come and promote this record.

00:19:17Guest:And it was The Ostrich that we had written.

00:19:19Guest:Yeah.

00:19:19Guest:What really got my attention was that these guys had gotten drunk in the back room with a two-track or whatever, a tambourine and an electric guitar that all tuned to B, all the strings.

00:19:33Guest:Every string was B?

00:19:34Guest:Every string was B. It made a horrendous noise, but a really great noise.

00:19:38Guest:Yeah.

00:19:40Guest:So anyway, that was The Ostrich.

00:19:43Guest:Okay, we'll do this.

00:19:44Guest:Yeah.

00:19:45Guest:And then Lou and I started talking.

00:19:46Guest:We found out that there was something else going on here.

00:19:49Guest:Now, he was pissed off because they wouldn't let him recall the songs that he had really written because he was hired to do songs in the style of Liverpool, you know.

00:19:58Marc:Just whatever was pop at the time.

00:19:59Marc:Exactly.

00:19:59Marc:So he was like just a go-to songwriter guy.

00:20:02Marc:Right.

00:20:02Marc:That was his thing.

00:20:03Guest:Right.

00:20:03Guest:And then he showed me some of these other songs, and although they were written on a guitar and sounded very folky, there was this literary quality to them.

00:20:14Guest:And so we got off on this tangent of talking about literature and all that, and the value of risk in literature.

00:20:22Marc:So it got kind of lofty.

00:20:22Guest:Yeah.

00:20:23Marc:And he was under the heavy influence of Delmore Schwartz at the time, right?

00:20:26Marc:That's right.

00:20:27Marc:That was his poet laureate guy, his teacher.

00:20:30Marc:That's right.

00:20:30Marc:Yeah.

00:20:32Marc:So this pre-existed the factory and all that shit.

00:20:36Guest:Yeah.

00:20:36Marc:Yeah.

00:20:37Guest:So we just said, hey, let's go out and see if we can make some money at this stuff.

00:20:43Guest:And so I had the viola and a recorder.

00:20:47Guest:Yeah.

00:20:47Guest:And we both went and sat outside the Baby Grand on 125th Street to the jazz club.

00:20:52Guest:Uh-huh.

00:20:53Guest:And we sat there and we made quite a bit of money outside of Baby Can until the cops moved us on.

00:20:58Guest:You were just street performing?

00:20:59Guest:Yeah, just sitting on the sidewalk.

00:21:00Guest:And he had a guitar and you had a viola.

00:21:03Guest:Yeah.

00:21:03Guest:What were you playing?

00:21:04Marc:We were playing, I'm waiting for the man.

00:21:08Marc:That was the first time those songs were played?

00:21:10Marc:Yeah.

00:21:10Guest:On the street?

00:21:11Guest:On the street.

00:21:12Guest:Then the cop moved us.

00:21:13Guest:Go down and try 74th Street.

00:21:15Guest:There's a club out there that you can stand out there.

00:21:17Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:21:18Guest:So we went down to 74th Street.

00:21:20Guest:Yeah.

00:21:20Guest:And 125th Street was where we made the most money.

00:21:22Guest:And this was just a financial endeavor?

00:21:24Guest:Yes.

00:21:25Marc:Come on, really?

00:21:26Guest:Yeah, it was like, let's see what we can do.

00:21:28Guest:How come I never knew this?

00:21:30Guest:But to me, I'm coming from rural Wales, and I'm sitting on the street in Harlem, and I'm playing a viola next to an acoustic guitar.

00:21:42Guest:And people are actually throwing coins and dollar bills.

00:21:46Marc:They've probably never seen it before.

00:21:47Marc:What is going on with these guys?

00:21:49Yeah.

00:21:49Guest:Right, and it's... So it was an eye-opener.

00:21:53Guest:And I'm watching Lou handle people coming up, maybe who wanted a hassle, maybe weren't sure who they were.

00:21:59Guest:That was an education.

00:22:01Guest:How did he handle it?

00:22:01Guest:Oh, it was beautiful.

00:22:02Guest:Really?

00:22:03Guest:Like, was he tough?

00:22:04Guest:Yeah.

00:22:05Marc:Yeah.

00:22:06Guest:He had an edge to him?

00:22:08Guest:He had a means of bringing a conversation screeching to a halt.

00:22:12Guest:He could do it.

00:22:13Guest:And he just started very quietly saying...

00:22:17Guest:Are we bothering you?

00:22:22Guest:So Wales, I have no sense of Wales.

00:22:24Guest:Can you explain it to me?

00:22:26Guest:Very rural.

00:22:27Guest:It was very much part of the Industrial Revolution, a lot of coal mines, and a heavy tradition of choral singing.

00:22:34Guest:Everywhere you go, if you have a Welsh rugby team singing, you forget it.

00:22:38Guest:They're singing.

00:22:39Guest:Yeah.

00:22:39Guest:A lot of chorals.

00:22:40Guest:A lot of chorals.

00:22:41Marc:And what kind of upbringing did you have?

00:22:42Marc:What was your father's business?

00:22:44Guest:My father was a coal miner.

00:22:45Guest:My mother was a school teacher.

00:22:46Guest:And all my whole family was really driven to bring people out of the coal mine and into education.

00:22:55Guest:Yeah.

00:22:56Guest:And that was the drive.

00:22:57Marc:Yeah, to get out of the ground.

00:22:58Guest:Right.

00:22:58Marc:Yeah.

00:22:59Marc:And so a lot of them did.

00:23:00Marc:Yeah.

00:23:01Marc:Did very well, yeah.

00:23:02Marc:Was your father like, you know, in the hole every day, kind of covered in black?

00:23:05Guest:Yeah.

00:23:06Marc:Come home, just horrendous.

00:23:07Guest:Yep.

00:23:08Guest:I mean, the sad part of it was that because of his age, they'd give him the night shift so that all the younger guys would always get the day shift and go home at night.

00:23:23Guest:He would have the night shift and come home at 7 in the morning just as I was going to school.

00:23:27Guest:Yeah.

00:23:27Guest:It was really, you know, you lose touch easily.

00:23:29Guest:And how many siblings do you have?

00:23:31Guest:None.

00:23:32Guest:Just you?

00:23:33Marc:Yeah.

00:23:33Marc:Oh, that sounds a little lonely.

00:23:35Marc:Yeah.

00:23:36Marc:And when did you start playing?

00:23:38Guest:As soon as I could.

00:23:39Guest:10 or 11, yeah.

00:23:42Guest:I mean, they gave me a viola in school.

00:23:44Guest:Yeah.

00:23:44Marc:But my mother taught me piano, so it's all very in-house.

00:23:48Marc:But as the only child, I imagine it must have been comforting to at least make noise, make sounds.

00:23:54Marc:Not allowed.

00:23:55Marc:Really?

00:23:55Marc:Not allowed.

00:23:56Marc:What do you mean?

00:23:58Guest:I was really avidly listening to all the orchestral music I could on the radio.

00:24:03Guest:My uncle bought me a radio.

00:24:04Guest:It was like a shortwave radio.

00:24:06Guest:I was listening to everything, Russia, from Switzerland, all these orchestras, these great orchestras.

00:24:12Guest:And I was listening to them all the time.

00:24:13Guest:Sunday morning, no music.

00:24:16Guest:People are walking past the house to go to church, not allowed to make any noise.

00:24:21Guest:And yeah, they're repressed.

00:24:23Guest:Did you have to go to church?

00:24:25Guest:I did.

00:24:25Guest:Yeah, bad.

00:24:27Guest:Well, boring.

00:24:30Marc:The idea of God was never pounded into your head with any success?

00:24:35Guest:Yeah, some form of God was pounded, and I try to keep him out of that.

00:24:38Guest:I mean, I think I made him into a musician.

00:24:41Marc:Yeah, why not?

00:24:42Marc:Yeah, so you're able to translate it.

00:24:44Marc:Yeah.

00:24:45Marc:Okay, so like from the streets of Harlem, you ended up like, it's interesting to me that it was, by that time, you had a reputation with the recording label.

00:24:55Marc:They knew you were a go-to guy.

00:24:56Marc:How did they know that?

00:24:57Marc:How did they decide to set you up?

00:24:59Marc:What was it that they decided to put you with Lou?

00:25:04Guest:Nobody put me with Lou.

00:25:05Guest:I mean, that Pickwick Records, they weren't interested in what Lou and I were doing.

00:25:10Guest:I mean, we just said, hey, look, let's take our thing and try and put the band together and do it ourselves.

00:25:16Guest:And I thought, we could put this avant-garde shit that I was doing...

00:25:20Guest:And mix that in with the rock and roll, and we'd have something that was totally unique.

00:25:25Guest:You know, from my point of view, my bugaboo was everything had to be unique.

00:25:29Guest:You just did not show any genealogy in what you were doing.

00:25:33Guest:You just didn't know where this came from.

00:25:35Guest:It was boom.

00:25:35Guest:Right.

00:25:36Guest:And so we did that.

00:25:38Guest:I mean, Lou could improvise like nobody's business.

00:25:43Guest:And that's a lot of the stuff that we did.

00:25:47Guest:Where's Nick Lee?

00:25:47Guest:No, no, verbally.

00:25:49Guest:Oh, really?

00:25:50Guest:Yeah, he had the gift.

00:25:51Marc:Yeah.

00:25:53Marc:So a lot of the songs were driven, were pulled out of that?

00:25:56Guest:Pulled out of what happened that morning.

00:25:59Guest:You know, shit that was happening on the street.

00:26:01Guest:I mean, it was like, it was really good.

00:26:03Guest:So you guys would just get a groove going and he'd just start going?

00:26:06Guest:Yeah.

00:26:06Guest:And...

00:26:10Guest:So I said, hey, listen, we could give Bob Dylan a run for his money here, I said.

00:26:14Guest:We could never do the same concert twice.

00:26:17Guest:We just improvise.

00:26:18Guest:You just make up the lyrics, and off we go.

00:26:22Marc:And that honored your avant-garde sensibility.

00:26:25Marc:And it cuts him loose to do... And he dug it.

00:26:30Guest:Yeah.

00:26:30Guest:For a while.

00:26:31Guest:I think...

00:26:34Guest:I don't know what happened.

00:26:35Guest:I think he could get inside people's heads, I mean, really easy.

00:26:40Guest:Luke?

00:26:41Guest:It was very good.

00:26:42Guest:Yeah.

00:26:42Guest:You know?

00:26:43Guest:And...

00:26:47Guest:Sometimes it wasn't benign, but that's fine.

00:26:49Guest:Yeah.

00:26:50Guest:Not every day is a good day.

00:26:53Guest:Yeah.

00:26:54Guest:It just got tense and just kind of blew up.

00:26:56Guest:Yeah.

00:26:57Guest:Well, no.

00:26:58Guest:It was more of a, you know, of needling.

00:27:03Guest:Uh-huh.

00:27:04Guest:I mean, there were times in bars that I was warned about, but he had the way of, you know, somebody was drunk and come up, you know, staggering up.

00:27:14Guest:Yeah.

00:27:15Yeah.

00:27:15Guest:you know it said uh let me ask you something um have you ever fucked your mother he would say that yeah and i was just sitting there going shaking my head not the right time no when you guys uh so but in your mind integrating what you were doing on the avant-garde level into rock music

00:27:36Marc:That was really just a way of... It was an impulse.

00:27:42Marc:You didn't know if it would work, and you didn't know if you would ever find somebody to do that.

00:27:46Guest:Right.

00:27:47Guest:But it did work.

00:27:48Guest:As soon as we did Venus in furs, as soon as we did heroin, that was it.

00:27:51Guest:That was it.

00:27:51Guest:Yeah, the stamp was there.

00:27:53Guest:I mean, we did... The thing that we were trying to... One of the other things that was honoring about it was that...

00:28:01Guest:everybody in order to get a gig in those days you had to play the top 10 uh any of the top 10 numbers right in order just to get a gig and we were at the cafe a while we didn't do any of that we just played our own shit you had to be a cover band yeah and and the guy said look you play black angels that song you play that again you're fired so we played it again yeah the thing um

00:28:24Guest:we made it really difficult for people to figure out what we were doing.

00:28:29Guest:That is, our guitars were detuned in a specific way, and we went to town with that one.

00:28:34Guest:Yeah.

00:28:34Guest:And...

00:28:37Guest:It made the sound different.

00:28:38Guest:Yeah.

00:28:39Guest:And it sounded great because it sounded a little squashed.

00:28:41Guest:Yeah.

00:28:42Guest:And it was great.

00:28:44Marc:And when did Warhol get involved with you guys?

00:28:49Marc:Or were you still around?

00:28:49Guest:He came to one of the gigs.

00:28:50Guest:Yeah.

00:28:52Guest:Fortunately, just before we got fired.

00:28:54Guest:Yeah.

00:28:54Guest:And then he said, well, you know, he had films that were being put on.

00:29:01Guest:There was a Cinematheque in New York.

00:29:03Guest:It was a festival of new films.

00:29:04Guest:Yeah.

00:29:05Guest:Because everybody and their mother were making films.

00:29:07Guest:8mm, 60mm.

00:29:09Guest:It's happening again.

00:29:11Guest:You can just do it on your phone now.

00:29:13Guest:So all of that that was going on around, Andy was right in the middle of it, and he was putting up his films, which was one camera, no movement, and that was it.

00:29:27Guest:So he said, I'm looking for a band to come and play in front of what we're doing.

00:29:30Guest:So...

00:29:31Guest:um what's this 67 68 67 68 something like that yeah and it's it you know so we end up on stage in front of the projected on us yeah and it was all like a mess but the new york version of psychedelia yeah yeah it's kind of weird isn't it that like at the same time roughly in san francisco there was some other thing going on yeah do you think about that ever

00:29:54Guest:Yeah.

00:29:55Guest:I mean, I recognize that they were trying to do the same thing, only they were all a little... Happier.

00:30:03Guest:Happier, yes.

00:30:05Guest:What an ugly word.

00:30:09Marc:They seemed to be finding joy in what they were doing and embracing things.

00:30:14Marc:I know.

00:30:15Marc:But that was the New York vibe then, though.

00:30:17Marc:There was such an intensity and an edge.

00:30:19Marc:Yeah, when we came to L.A., they let us have it.

00:30:22Guest:Oh, did they?

00:30:22Guest:Well, Cher said famously that this music will replace nothing but suicide.

00:30:28Marc:oh my god that was good but i think it also like it's somehow the difference between maybe heroin and acid you know that the tone of uh of new york was a harder edge tone and there you know what was pushing there was it was definitely something different it was pushing into the grit where they were trying to push into the sky or something like that yeah

00:30:48Marc:And was there ever some outside of... So when the Velvets went to L.A.

00:30:53Marc:or when you went to L.A., there was definitely that... You were carrying that New York with you?

00:30:57Guest:Yeah, at the trip, they very thoughtfully sort of ID'd us with a dressing room and drew on the dressing room a gravestone.

00:31:12Guest:It's a velvet underground.

00:31:13Guest:Oh, my God.

00:31:14Guest:It was great.

00:31:14Marc:And so when you left that band or when whatever shit went down, went down, was there a, you know, were you sad or were you just sort of like, fuck it, I'm moving on?

00:31:25Marc:Do you have regrets?

00:31:27Guest:I was frustrated.

00:31:28Guest:No, but I mean, the first thing I thought of was that, you know, I've got some skills that I should be able to hone into some kind of production activity.

00:31:39Guest:I thought that I could be a producer because I had certain skills.

00:31:42Guest:Yeah.

00:31:43Guest:So I, you know, I went to Jack Holtzman.

00:31:50Guest:Who is?

00:31:51Guest:The head of Elektra at the time.

00:31:52Guest:who signed Nico.

00:31:54Guest:And I did the first Nico album of the Marble Index.

00:31:57Guest:I did the arrangements on Marble Index.

00:31:58Guest:I didn't produce it.

00:31:59Marc:Beautiful record.

00:32:00Marc:She was something else.

00:32:01Marc:I was just listening to stuff again.

00:32:03Marc:You seem very lucid.

00:32:06Marc:I mean, what memories do you go back to of those times?

00:32:09Marc:Like if you think of Nico or you think of the Velvets, are there specific memories that you're like, oh, that was a fucking moment?

00:32:15Marc:Or is it just a general time?

00:32:16Guest:Yeah, I mean, every record, I mean, she would lose track because...

00:32:22Guest:I'd be in there overdubbing and building this castle or whatever.

00:32:27Guest:Yeah.

00:32:27Guest:And she would only hear, like, the sound of the doorway, for instance, or the window, whatever.

00:32:32Guest:And when you played the whole castle, it was, you know, she responded.

00:32:37Guest:So at the end of it all, I mean, she would burst into tears, you know.

00:32:42Guest:Yeah.

00:32:42Guest:And this happened every album.

00:32:45Guest:Yeah.

00:32:45Guest:You know, so that at a certain point, you know, Nico crying, I said, what are you crying about now, Nico?

00:32:51Guest:Yeah.

00:32:51Guest:It is so beautiful.

00:32:55Guest:Well, that's sweet.

00:32:59Marc:Yes, very sweet.

00:33:00Marc:So those were your first experiences with actually being the producer of records.

00:33:04Guest:Yeah, I mean, I took that record moment next to Jack, and I was shocked.

00:33:09Guest:I mean, Jack said, you know, I really like this record.

00:33:12Guest:And I thought, whoa.

00:33:13Guest:Yeah.

00:33:13Guest:You know, in this particular time, to have an European classical, neoclassical piece like that album is.

00:33:21Guest:Yeah.

00:33:21Guest:And to have Jack.

00:33:23Guest:Anyway, I said, look, I want to produce.

00:33:24Guest:So if you come across anything, he came up with the Stooges.

00:33:27Guest:Yeah.

00:33:27Marc:that was it yeah it was that simple it was because like yeah i got a call and said come to detroit we've got a band that maybe i i see when you like me you know i'm not a huge music nerd but i love certain people and you create a mythology in your head like you know in my mind there was some conversation that had to happen between you and iggy or there was some other thing that happened but usually it's just sort of like yeah a guy told me to just you know there's a pallet of beer and then it

00:33:54Guest:that's it yeah so they had in his house and he'd sit and i went to see him yeah after after seeing the show but the show was enough i mean the show was magical you know he's got this thing who iggy yeah so you okay so he they'd signed them and this was their first deal and he was fucking out there and you saw him in new york yeah but it was all no i saw him in detroit they were opening for the mc5 right and i hated the mc5 i mean it's like you know nuremberg rally at the mc5

00:34:20Guest:They had an agenda of some kind.

00:34:23Guest:That's right.

00:34:24Guest:But, I mean, in contrast to Iggy, which was very playful and enjoyable.

00:34:30Guest:And a little disconcerting, I would imagine.

00:34:33Guest:Yeah, but not really because you knew this guy had a heart behind you.

00:34:39Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:34:41Guest:So when we went out to talk the next day or whatever, it was in a pharmacy or something.

00:34:50Guest:And then I think Nico had been there already or something.

00:34:55Guest:I read about that.

00:34:57Guest:And something happened.

00:34:59Guest:In the house, right?

00:35:00Guest:In the house.

00:35:00Guest:But he had these guitars.

00:35:03Guest:And the thing about it, he had these lap steel guitars.

00:35:07Guest:And they were tuned to one note.

00:35:09Guest:And I thought, wait a minute.

00:35:10Guest:What's going on here?

00:35:11Guest:Because that's just what I just spent six years sort of living down.

00:35:17Guest:You know what I mean?

00:35:18Marc:Can't we add some notes?

00:35:20Guest:Yeah.

00:35:20Guest:But it was interesting because he said he would sit there and play with his thing all night long because he was an isolated farmer.

00:35:31Guest:But all in all, that kind of sensibility and all of that just built a really good picture for me of somebody who's not going to go away.

00:35:39Guest:Really?

00:35:40Guest:You felt that?

00:35:41Guest:Yeah.

00:35:41Marc:That turns out to be pretty true.

00:35:43Marc:Yeah.

00:35:44Marc:He's not going away.

00:35:45Marc:No.

00:35:46Marc:But when you did the Stooges album,

00:35:49Marc:so you're a new producer you've done you've done nico with with with elaborate orchestration and you know in sort of a a softer sort of uh more classical vibe right so as a producer because i don't talk to many guys that produce a lot of records especially these seminal rock albums so you you you you see this lap steel you see iggy pop and then you go in and you hear their songs so what are you thinking what what do you bring into that

00:36:14Guest:Well, I was ready for anything.

00:36:16Guest:The main thing I was wondering about was how do we create what goes on on stage and put it on the record in the studio?

00:36:26Guest:And it's really a silly question.

00:36:29Guest:You'd work with what you're going to work with.

00:36:33Guest:But what was...

00:36:37Guest:obvious from the beginning was that they knew exactly what they were doing and they meant business right and when Iggy came in to do the vocals I mean we had we had 10 days I think we had five days to record five days to mix right and and then just before he came to do his final vocals um

00:37:00Guest:he came and handed me a sheet of papers, and they were the lyrics.

00:37:02Guest:Yeah.

00:37:03Guest:And I thought, holy shit.

00:37:04Guest:Yeah.

00:37:05Marc:This kid's prepared.

00:37:06Guest:Yeah.

00:37:08Marc:No, and he was really painless, and it just went straight through.

00:37:13Marc:But when you look at that album musically, it would seem to me, now looking at the way the album's laid out in side A and side B, I would think that 1969, I Want to Be Your Dog and We Will Fall, are sort of signature John Cale-sounding tones.

00:37:28Marc:Not purely, John.

00:37:30Marc:It was really Stooges.

00:37:31Marc:I mean, Jim wanted that.

00:37:32Marc:But there was that movement, that sort of pacing that you're sort of known for.

00:37:36Marc:And then the other side is just sort of like, ah, let's have fun.

00:37:39Marc:Yeah.

00:37:40Marc:And when you were listening to these guys, did you just let them play?

00:37:44Marc:Yes.

00:37:45Marc:Because We Will Fall goes on a while.

00:37:47Guest:Yeah, no, they knew what they wanted to do.

00:37:50Guest:They did?

00:37:50Guest:Yeah.

00:37:51Guest:I didn't have to tell them very much.

00:37:52Guest:I mean, it was very professional.

00:37:54Guest:So what did you bring to the sound of it?

00:37:56Guest:You were just on the knobs?

00:37:57Guest:Just as tight, make it as tight as possible.

00:37:58Guest:I mean, really, you know, squeezing into a really big noise into a small ball.

00:38:06Guest:Yeah, do you love that record?

00:38:07Guest:I do.

00:38:09Marc:Do you still talk to Iggy?

00:38:10Guest:Yeah.

00:38:11Guest:Last time I saw him was years ago at the Elvis Centenary.

00:38:18Guest:So right around the same time you start doing solo records?

00:38:22Guest:Yeah, eventually I came to solo records.

00:38:24Guest:I tried a few bands, didn't work.

00:38:28Guest:What was missing?

00:38:29Guest:Management.

00:38:32Guest:Very difficult to pull off.

00:38:34Marc:You didn't want to be a band leader, necessarily?

00:38:36Guest:Yeah, I didn't mind being a band leader, but it just didn't work.

00:38:43Guest:I had a lot of different people in bands.

00:38:45Guest:Yeah.

00:38:46Guest:And some of it was...

00:38:48Guest:When I went to London, that was when I had Island Records and I had Spedding and that band.

00:38:54Guest:That was really open season.

00:38:57Guest:I mean, that was like the Wild West for me.

00:38:59Guest:Because everything that I wanted to do with The View, we tried with that band.

00:39:06Guest:Spedding, you could play anything.

00:39:07Marc:So you'd done everything?

00:39:10Marc:That you'd pushed the envelope to the point where you were ready to come back a little or what?

00:39:14Guest:No.

00:39:14Guest:I mean, I just didn't find enough new things.

00:39:18Right.

00:39:18Marc:with other people or within yourself.

00:39:20Guest:Yeah, within myself, yeah.

00:39:22Guest:I was kind of losing my sense of humor for a number of reasons.

00:39:25Guest:Yeah.

00:39:25Guest:And, yeah, there weren't happy times at the end of the London thing.

00:39:30Guest:Which album?

00:39:31Guest:A lot of really, a lot of... Which albums were these?

00:39:35Guest:Fierce Lodazzle and Helena Troy.

00:39:37Guest:A lot of really out there albums.

00:39:42Guest:Well, yeah, definitely.

00:39:43Guest:And performances.

00:39:44Marc:Well, that trilogy is sort of like signatures, your stuff.

00:39:47Marc:But you're saying in retrospect, you were at the end of your rope.

00:39:50Guest:At the end of that series, yeah.

00:39:52Guest:It was kind of burning my candle.

00:39:55Marc:Yeah?

00:39:56Marc:You just pushed it out to the limit?

00:39:57Marc:What, just drugs and sanity?

00:39:59Marc:Yeah.

00:40:00Marc:Yeah?

00:40:01Marc:That happens, right?

00:40:02Marc:Not smart.

00:40:03Marc:Yeah, but what are you going to do?

00:40:05Guest:Well, I got out of it as soon as I could.

00:40:07Marc:Yeah?

00:40:08Marc:Yeah.

00:40:08Marc:But the album before that, I mean, Paris 1919, people love that record, and it's very different.

00:40:15Marc:And what happened between that and Fear of Slow Dazzle and Helena Troy?

00:40:19Guest:The improvisation came back in.

00:40:20Guest:All of Paris was kind of finished before I went in the studio.

00:40:24Marc:And those are all tight songs.

00:40:25Guest:Yes.

00:40:26Marc:They're lyrically beautiful, and they all have that, they're almost, you know, you can sit down and actually feel good about yourself after you listen to it.

00:40:34Marc:Oh, no.

00:40:39Marc:No, but in a melancholy way.

00:40:41Guest:Yes.

00:40:42Marc:Yeah, I'm not saying that you go like that.

00:40:44Guest:No, I know.

00:40:45Guest:Yeah.

00:40:45Guest:No, I know.

00:40:46Guest:But it is because it was worked on.

00:40:49Guest:It was manicured.

00:40:52Guest:Yeah, by you?

00:40:54Guest:No, more by Chris Thomas than by me.

00:40:56Guest:I mean, I did what I did, and then you sang and played.

00:40:59Guest:But then it was really, there's a lot of attention that was put on.

00:41:03Guest:It showed me a different sense of producing.

00:41:07Guest:He came from...

00:41:08Guest:air studios and the BBC regime of recording things, which is kind of strict, but it also produces very good results.

00:41:16Marc:So what exactly happened in between Paris 1919 and Fear that you just got frustrated and you're like, I'm not honoring myself, or what?

00:41:25Marc:Pretty much.

00:41:26Guest:Right?

00:41:26Guest:Pretty much.

00:41:27Guest:I mean, it needed more open-ended stuff.

00:41:30Guest:I mean, a lot of the songs are not Fear.

00:41:32Guest:You could go out on stage and you could open them up.

00:41:35Guest:Yeah.

00:41:35Guest:You could do improv or whatever.

00:41:37Guest:Sure, yeah.

00:41:37Guest:Change persona.

00:41:38Guest:Yeah.

00:41:39Guest:Musically or physically?

00:41:41Guest:No, lyrically.

00:41:43Guest:Okay.

00:41:44Guest:The way in delivery.

00:41:45Guest:Right.

00:41:45Guest:And that's what drove the solo shows was really you could...

00:41:49Guest:prepare it down right so all of these songs could be done and you could change your personality every night pretty much so there's a theatrical element to it that that required risk yes anyway okay that replace i mean that kind of risk was really manageable and it could be handled right and um

00:42:10Guest:So I enjoyed that.

00:42:11Guest:I mean, it's just, OK, well, I'm going to sing Antarctica starts here very sarcastically or whatever.

00:42:20Guest:And those kind of any windows, you could hear them on a solo show.

00:42:26Guest:You could get somewhere with it.

00:42:27Marc:So you still honored the idea that the songs are just a template for me to emote through it, however I'm feeling at the time.

00:42:35Marc:Exactly.

00:42:36Marc:And then somehow, once you entered the Fierce Woe Dazzle, Helena Troy era, that you put yourself on the line.

00:42:44Marc:Yeah.

00:42:45Marc:And then you got away from yourself.

00:42:47Guest:Yeah.

00:42:48Guest:Well, I think...

00:42:54Guest:I don't think I got that far away because I had a band, and really putting on a show, bringing people along with you.

00:43:02Guest:I mean, there were some really great moments.

00:43:07Marc:But this was a period of sort of disturbing theatrics, right?

00:43:11Guest:Some of it was disturbing, but a lot of it was really just creative, trying to do different things.

00:43:16Guest:And a lot of it worked, and some of it was hilarious.

00:43:20Guest:Yeah.

00:43:20Guest:Hanging upside down on a stepladder, you know, singing Heartbreak Hotel was like,

00:43:24Marc:Yeah, that version of that song is monumental.

00:43:29Marc:For some reason, in my mind, I would connect, but I guess the time doesn't really work out.

00:43:35Marc:How did you come to get the Modern Lovers?

00:43:40Guest:That was one of the things I did that we signed Modern Lovers, Jonathan.

00:43:46Marc:What was Richmond?

00:43:48Marc:How did you approach Richmond?

00:43:49Guest:Well, somebody came into my office and played me a tape.

00:43:53Guest:Yeah.

00:43:53Guest:And I said, okay, well, leave it with me.

00:43:55Guest:And he came back two days later.

00:43:57Guest:And I listened to these tapes.

00:43:59Guest:And the one thing about this was there's a song called Hospital in there.

00:44:03Marc:I love that song.

00:44:04Guest:When you get out of the hospital.

00:44:05Guest:Yeah.

00:44:05Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:44:06Guest:And it starts off as like a really weak kind of persona.

00:44:14Guest:Yeah.

00:44:14Guest:As it progresses, the weakness becomes a strength.

00:44:18Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:44:18Guest:And it transforms.

00:44:19Guest:And I thought, this is like a strange phenomenon.

00:44:22Guest:It's very good.

00:44:23Guest:Yeah.

00:44:24Guest:And songs like Government Center, that was so naive.

00:44:29Guest:Old World.

00:44:30Guest:Yeah.

00:44:31Guest:I mean, it was like really good.

00:44:32Guest:I mean, all Americana.

00:44:33Guest:Childlike.

00:44:34Marc:Yes.

00:44:35Marc:It was coming from a genuine place.

00:44:36Marc:This guy was thinking like a 14-year-old who'd never gotten laid before.

00:44:40Guest:Right.

00:44:42Guest:And this guy said, well, Jonathan, well, Jonathan, well, Jonathan, you know.

00:44:47Guest:Well, Jonathan remembers, you know.

00:44:48Guest:I'm going, what is this?

00:44:51Guest:It turns out that he was a guy that showed up at the Boston Tea Party at every VU gig and wrote poetry to the band.

00:45:00Guest:So he was a huge fan.

00:45:02Guest:An obsessed fan.

00:45:03Guest:An obsessed fan.

00:45:04Guest:And I just did not remember.

00:45:06Guest:Yeah.

00:45:07Guest:Did it click a memory?

00:45:09Guest:It did click.

00:45:10Guest:And then I thought, oh, shit.

00:45:13Guest:Yeah, I remember that guy.

00:45:14Guest:I used to come around.

00:45:15Guest:It's like Lewis.

00:45:18Guest:That guy's a pain.

00:45:21Guest:He's here again.

00:45:21Guest:He is.

00:45:25Guest:The thing is that he had this persona that I thought was really unique, just like Iggy had.

00:45:31Guest:And I thought, this is something... I was going for personalities, not going so much for hits, which is not really what record companies... I didn't make myself any fans at Warner Bros.

00:45:46Guest:were doing that.

00:45:47Marc:But I think what you're responding to, maybe, is that they're very earnest.

00:45:51Marc:Yes.

00:45:52Guest:They're very funny.

00:45:54Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:45:56Marc:You're almost like, is this a put-on?

00:45:57Guest:What's he talking about now?

00:45:58Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:45:59Marc:No, it's really him.

00:46:00Marc:He's passionate about this.

00:46:02Guest:Yes.

00:46:02Guest:Yeah.

00:46:03Guest:And everything he's done since then.

00:46:04Guest:And when I saw him in something about Mary, I thought, that's the perfect slot for him.

00:46:09Guest:It's like...

00:46:10Marc:Damn.

00:46:11Marc:And he's like the same guy.

00:46:13Marc:Every time I see him doing anything, because in my mind, somebody like that, that first Modern Lovers album, the one you did, is like a fucking important record.

00:46:23Marc:But then he sort of kept doing that in one form or another, whether it was acoustic or not.

00:46:27Marc:And the tone and the experience of how he saw the world didn't change much.

00:46:31Marc:And then when you see him in person, you're like, he's got to be bitter or angry.

00:46:35Marc:And you're like, he doesn't seem like it.

00:46:36Marc:He's just locked in this thing.

00:46:38Marc:yeah yeah yeah i you know i i hope he's happy he's one of those guys where i'm like i hope that guy's happy yeah i agree with you know yeah totally and okay so let's just go back real quick so after those three records that you called it the dark period did you feel that you were fucking losing your mind

00:46:56Marc:Or did you just feel burnt out?

00:46:59Guest:No, I didn't feel like I was just my mind.

00:47:00Guest:I was losing my sense of humor.

00:47:04Guest:Taking yourself too seriously or just too negative?

00:47:09Guest:I wasn't laughing as much.

00:47:10Guest:Oh, you're angry.

00:47:12Guest:What did you do to get out of that?

00:47:15Guest:Um...

00:47:19Guest:Just changed my pattern of behavior.

00:47:21Guest:Yeah.

00:47:22Guest:And decided, you know, this has got to stop.

00:47:28Guest:Right.

00:47:28Guest:Because it's not helping anybody.

00:47:32Guest:So I went back to the States.

00:47:37Marc:Dried out?

00:47:38Marc:Yes.

00:47:38Marc:Good, man.

00:47:40Marc:So let's talk about the other production.

00:47:41Marc:Can we talk about Brian Eno for a while?

00:47:45Yeah.

00:47:45Guest:Sure, I've seen Brian in years.

00:47:48Guest:You haven't?

00:47:48Guest:No, he's a producer.

00:47:49Guest:He's a very successful producer.

00:47:54Marc:But the sound, man.

00:47:56Marc:I mean, I think in listening to some of the stuff, he claims that listening to the Velvet Underground defined sort of how he saw music.

00:48:03Guest:I think it may have defined how he used equipment.

00:48:07Guest:You know, because he broke equipment, like, you know, or did things with them that, you know, I know a lot of engineers that were saying, yeah.

00:48:17Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:48:18Guest:Why are you doing that?

00:48:19Guest:Yeah, right, right, right.

00:48:20Guest:Yeah.

00:48:21Guest:But it's the way things work.

00:48:22Guest:I mean, it's the way you get sounds.

00:48:25Guest:I mean...

00:48:26Marc:But it sounds like when I listen, like the album you did with him, I liked a lot because I was a huge Eno fan and Valderon Graham fan.

00:48:34Guest:But the way the album was mixed was really how it held together.

00:48:38Guest:And that was you?

00:48:38Guest:No.

00:48:39Guest:It wasn't?

00:48:40Guest:It was neither Brian nor I. It was agreed that we would just do this part of it.

00:48:46Guest:Oh, really?

00:48:47Guest:But we weren't going to go into the studio and mix.

00:48:49Guest:Just so you wouldn't kill each other?

00:48:52Guest:Yeah, I mean, I think you'd realize that neither of us are going to be happy if we both go in there because we both got strong ideas about these things.

00:49:02Guest:And the best thing to do is just shake hands and say, let somebody we trust.

00:49:05Guest:And we did.

00:49:06Guest:We found somebody who had worked with Brian before, and he was very good.

00:49:12Guest:But he put the bow around it and wrapped it up nicely.

00:49:15Marc:And that was sort of like, I mean, in my mind, that was sort of like him coming back, or at least Brian coming back to more, you know, kind of songs, funner songs.

00:49:24Marc:Yeah.

00:49:24Marc:Like he'd gotten out of the sound.

00:49:27Marc:Do you appreciate, in terms of what you come from on an avant-garde level, the ambient records and all those records?

00:49:33Marc:I mean, do you dig those things?

00:49:35Marc:Yeah, I know what they are.

00:49:36Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:49:37Guest:Okay.

00:49:37Guest:I mean, yeah.

00:49:39Guest:Yeah, I don't learn much from them.

00:49:40Marc:Okay.

00:49:40Marc:Right, right.

00:49:41Marc:Yeah.

00:49:43Marc:I often wonder, and I say this with some respect, if he knows that he sort of gave birth to new age music.

00:49:49Marc:I wonder if he knows that.

00:49:50Marc:You know, that all those... What, elevator music?

00:49:53Marc:Well, not elevator music.

00:49:54Marc:I mean, massage music.

00:49:56Marc:You know, like the... Yeah.

00:49:57Marc:You know what I mean?

00:49:58Marc:Like, that's sort of like when you go into a spa.

00:50:02Marc:It's like... It's like, that's the legacy.

00:50:05Guest:More oil, please.

00:50:07Guest:Exactly.

00:50:09Exactly.

00:50:10Marc:Now, all right, so let's talk about the Patti Smith pairing.

00:50:16Marc:Yeah.

00:50:17Marc:So this probably brings you back to New York, or are you still in New York?

00:50:20Guest:No, I had a conversation with her when I was in New York.

00:50:24Marc:Because all that stuff was after you.

00:50:26Marc:I mean, the original, the New York punk movement was like, what, five years?

00:50:30Marc:Maybe after the Velvets had done, really.

00:50:33Guest:Yeah, it was working out of Worcester Street.

00:50:38Guest:Yeah, the St.

00:50:38Guest:Mark's Poetry Project.

00:50:39Guest:St.

00:50:39Guest:Mark's Poetry Project, exactly.

00:50:41Guest:Yeah.

00:50:41Guest:And I knew that that was going on, but I didn't know that it had gone beyond with Patty.

00:50:45Guest:Yeah.

00:50:45Guest:And I went to see her.

00:50:46Guest:I was up at Woodstock, and she was playing up there.

00:50:50Guest:Yeah.

00:50:52Guest:And there was this case of somebody with the gift of the gab again, you know, with... Yeah.

00:51:01Guest:There was unsloppable, kind of.

00:51:02Guest:Did you put that?

00:51:03Marc:That was her band.

00:51:04Marc:She had the band, right?

00:51:05Guest:The band was a family.

00:51:06Guest:That's the thing.

00:51:07Guest:And the whole thing about that band in the studio was that everybody watched over everybody else.

00:51:13Guest:And I came in there swinging an axe and saying, you know, you're

00:51:20Guest:We've got to change the instruments you're playing.

00:51:23Guest:You know, we had to call SIR up, get a bunch of instruments in there that were not warped.

00:51:29Marc:Right.

00:51:30Guest:And that sort of upset the Apple car.

00:51:31Marc:What do you mean warped?

00:51:32Marc:They were literally playing shitty instruments?

00:51:34Guest:Yeah.

00:51:34Guest:Oh, really?

00:51:35Guest:Well, they were out of tune, yeah.

00:51:36Guest:Yeah.

00:51:36Guest:It was very difficult to keep them into.

00:51:38Guest:I mean, we were recording, but at every step that we took, this guy was out of tune, that guy was out of tune, this guy was in tune, that guy was out of tune.

00:51:48Guest:It wasn't as if they weren't paying attention.

00:51:49Guest:They were paying attention, but they play, and they were a live band.

00:51:53Guest:The kind of discipline that sometimes is required in the studio is...

00:51:57Guest:Gotta do it again.

00:51:58Guest:It's a little different.

00:51:59Guest:Yeah.

00:52:00Guest:And if you play it so hard that you knock it out of tune, it's like, okay, that can go so far.

00:52:06Guest:Yeah.

00:52:07Guest:Anyway, getting instruments in there that sort of created a different landscape for them to deal with.

00:52:17Guest:And they'd...

00:52:18Guest:You don't want to interrupt the love that a musician has for his instrument.

00:52:25Guest:He's earned this instrument.

00:52:27Guest:He's gone through all this shit to get this instrument.

00:52:30Guest:He loves it, and he plays it, and he likes the sound of it.

00:52:33Guest:And then somebody comes along and says, you've got to play this one.

00:52:37Guest:Did they do all right with it?

00:52:41Marc:They did fine with it.

00:52:43Marc:Because it seems like now that you're talking about it, that she was fundamentally a poet, or she saw herself as a poet, and they were literally a band backing a poet.

00:52:50Marc:Yes.

00:52:52Marc:And they were basically a rock band.

00:52:54Marc:Yes.

00:52:55Marc:They weren't pushing the envelope at all.

00:52:58Marc:necessarily.

00:52:59Guest:No, they were a rock band, yeah.

00:53:02Marc:And you just tightened them up?

00:53:04Guest:I didn't really have to tighten them up, no.

00:53:07Guest:I mean, I think the most I did on that record was to have Paddy improvise poetry on top of herself.

00:53:15Marc:In terms of being a guy, because you're much more proficient on the production side than I even realized, in the sense that you knew how to play this game.

00:53:26Marc:I mean, you were in the record business.

00:53:28Marc:Yeah.

00:53:28Marc:So you understood how it worked.

00:53:30Marc:You understood who the Kings were and how they put things together.

00:53:33Marc:Do you miss that part of the record?

00:53:36Marc:It's gone.

00:53:36Marc:It's gone, in a way.

00:53:39Guest:Yeah, but I...

00:53:42Guest:No, I don't miss it.

00:53:42Guest:I mean, I think I never was part of that.

00:53:45Guest:I never felt part of that.

00:53:47Guest:I was more of a performer.

00:53:49Guest:I get off on stage.

00:53:50Guest:I don't get off signing contracts.

00:53:54Marc:But I mean, in terms of like... Cashing checks.

00:53:56Marc:Cashing checks is fun.

00:53:57Guest:Yeah.

00:53:59Marc:But I mean, just the idea that you were a guy that they trusted enough and respected enough as a producer that they would call you in.

00:54:07Marc:Yeah.

00:54:07Marc:That must have been exciting.

00:54:08Marc:You obviously have an amazing ear for production.

00:54:12Marc:I mean, how do you go from the Stooges to Modern Lovers, Patti Smith, and then you produce a Squeeze album?

00:54:21Marc:Yes.

00:54:21Marc:And that's like a whole different game.

00:54:23Marc:I mean, that's sort of the difference.

00:54:24Guest:No, it really was where I came from, though, because the stuff that we did in London was all low finance.

00:54:35Guest:Yeah.

00:54:36Guest:You know, in a couple of cases, we had a call of the band afterwards and asked them to return the microphones they'd taken home with them.

00:54:44Guest:You know, because the guy is like, we want to go back there and work some more.

00:54:49Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:54:51Guest:It was really being on the... That was really being on the ground floor of a movement that was going on.

00:54:58Guest:With Squeeze?

00:54:59Guest:With Squeeze and all the other guys.

00:55:02Guest:Sham 69...

00:55:04Guest:You know, a lot of that stuff.

00:55:07Guest:The new British pop thing.

00:55:08Guest:Yes.

00:55:09Guest:Post-punk.

00:55:09Guest:Yeah, the post-punk.

00:55:10Guest:And it's tight.

00:55:11Guest:It was Miles.

00:55:12Guest:Yeah.

00:55:12Guest:Miles Copeland and his label.

00:55:14Marc:Yeah.

00:55:16Marc:And was working with those guys, I mean, in terms of- It was very funny.

00:55:20Guest:A lot of it was just hilarious.

00:55:21Guest:Like why?

00:55:22Guest:Oh, it's just sort of people working very earnestly and very hard and screwing up.

00:55:30Guest:And then, you know, you book the police on a tour, and there's three of them.

00:55:38Guest:You put them in a Caroline van, Miles drives them down to Dover, they're going to Paris for a gig.

00:55:44Guest:Where's a carne?

00:55:46Guest:What's a carne?

00:55:47Guest:What is a carnet?

00:55:48Guest:It's where you put a list of the instruments, you take it across with you.

00:55:52Guest:He said, right, it zooms back to London, gets the carnet, comes back down, off they go.

00:55:58Guest:I mean, it's early days, you know, but a lot of very funny, funny shit was going on.

00:56:04Marc:Yeah.

00:56:05Marc:And all right, so now that you've survived all that, and here we are, when you got back together with Lou, what, 10 years ago or whatever?

00:56:15Guest:Yeah.

00:56:15Guest:For the BU one.

00:56:16Guest:Big disappointment.

00:56:18Guest:Yeah.

00:56:20Guest:In a way, I had an idea to go to BAM and talk to Harvey and say, Harvey, I thought I'd write an orchestral piece in homage to Andy.

00:56:32Guest:So then at the memorial service, at the party afterwards, Julian Schnabel comes along and I say, you know, I wanted, he came up to me and he said, we've got to do something for Andy.

00:56:47Guest:I said, it's a little difficult now to do anything for Andy.

00:56:50Guest:I said, but what do you got in mind?

00:56:53Guest:And he said, well, we got to do something.

00:56:56Guest:I said, well, I've got this project that I've taken to Harvey with you.

00:56:59Guest:I said, let's go talk to Lou.

00:57:01Guest:So he sort of molded that together a bit.

00:57:05Guest:And we started talking and talking until we got- You and Lou?

00:57:08Guest:Yeah.

00:57:09Guest:And then I went back to Harvey and I said, okay, now the project's changed a little bit.

00:57:13Guest:It's no longer a requiem.

00:57:16Guest:It's now a piece that's a collection of songs that Lou and I will write and we will

00:57:23Guest:just the two of us perform we're not reforming the band we're just doing it because i thought uh short answer would be more interesting to see the two of us together on alone on the stage yeah biting playing these songs that we'd written specifically for andy then getting maureen and getting yeah an orchestra so and that's what happened and um we filmed it and we did it and um you're happy with that record

00:57:51Guest:Yeah, it did what it was supposed to do.

00:57:57Guest:By the skin of our teeth, I think we got it done.

00:58:00Guest:Things started unraveling a bit.

00:58:03Guest:In what way?

00:58:05Guest:Relationship-wise or musically?

00:58:08Guest:I think we're very efficient when we have music stuff to do.

00:58:11Guest:We have three weeks to write it.

00:58:13Guest:We did it.

00:58:14Guest:And we both have cassettes of every rehearsal and how every song was written and how every song was... And all the conversations that went around.

00:58:26Guest:So at some point, somebody's going to have a day doing it.

00:58:33Marc:And the Velvet Underground reunion was a disappointment to you?

00:58:37Guest:Yeah, I mean, we started off, we could have done anything we wanted.

00:58:40Guest:I mean, we could have stood on our heads and done that.

00:58:43Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:58:45Guest:But the way things unraveled was really a very natural and sort of sweet way they came.

00:58:53Guest:Because Mo and Sterling, you know, they'd come along and say, hey.

00:58:58Guest:We've got to do this song.

00:58:59Guest:Because they remember, do this song.

00:59:03Guest:And all these songs I didn't know because they were written after I'd left.

00:59:06Guest:Right.

00:59:07Guest:And so it all suddenly became an exercise in...

00:59:14Guest:Classic hits?

00:59:16Guest:Yeah, of revitalizing a catalog.

00:59:21Guest:Nostalgia.

00:59:22Guest:Yeah.

00:59:22Guest:And instead of doing something that everybody would look up to us and maintain the standards.

00:59:29Guest:Right, right, right.

00:59:30Guest:And...

00:59:33Marc:so it's i guess well yeah it must be a little it's a i always wonder that about bands it's sort of like let's just go up there and play the hits i hate that right so i hated that right so you would have rather just sort of like look we're all artists still evolving let's fucking get together try and tap in what we used to have and fucking take a chance and they weren't willing to do it

00:59:53Marc:No.

00:59:54Marc:Yeah.

00:59:55Marc:Too scary.

00:59:56Marc:Whatever.

00:59:57Marc:Okay.

00:59:58Marc:When you get together, I've got friends I haven't seen in 20 years.

01:00:02Marc:I mean, when you get together with somebody like Lou or any of them, does it all come back for better or for worse?

01:00:10Marc:Or are you completely different people?

01:00:13Guest:Well, I don't know.

01:00:14Guest:I mean, I haven't seen him in a while.

01:00:15Guest:I mean, I have conversations with him.

01:00:17Guest:I mean, we exchange mails and stuff.

01:00:19Guest:Yeah.

01:00:19Guest:And we have a lawyer for what we're doing and all that that seems very straightforward.

01:00:24Guest:Right.

01:00:25Guest:So, okay.

01:00:26Guest:I'm happy the way things are because, you know, if you scratch an itch sometimes, it starts to bleed.

01:00:34Guest:Yeah, exactly.

01:00:35Marc:So let's talk about the new album.

01:00:38Marc:i don't think they i don't think they sent to me we can talk about the new album really yeah i'm not sure who's they whoever set it up really yeah before uh let's not talk about it if you don't want to talk of course i want to talk about it that's why you're here i'm here to you know do whatever you want to do are you tired are you aggravated no i mean um you get tired of talking about this shit yeah all right all right

01:01:03Marc:So let's talk about the new album.

01:01:08Guest:Let's do it.

01:01:08Guest:Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood.

01:01:11Guest:Good.

01:01:11Guest:Yeah, it's got a lot more, it's a little funkier.

01:01:14Guest:Yeah.

01:01:15Guest:And it's got, I mean, the songs are a lot of different things, and they all have really nice grooves in them.

01:01:24Guest:What type of groove are you working with?

01:01:26Guest:What inspired you?

01:01:28Guest:Dre.

01:01:31Guest:Oh, yeah?

01:01:32Marc:Snoop, Cocaine.

01:01:33Marc:So it took you a while to come around to that, huh?

01:01:35Guest:Well, it's really not trying to emulate them.

01:01:39Guest:Right.

01:01:39Guest:You know, there's all this stuff like Big Mellow, Dirty South.

01:01:44Guest:Yeah.

01:01:44Guest:You know, they do that, you know, they play things at 45 records at 33 and sing over them and stuff.

01:01:53Guest:It's like, so really, that was kind of like,

01:01:59Guest:a rubric you know like you want to fuck things up try this sure and then you you go back and you find all these rules that are just ready to be broken right and and that's really exciting i mean it's you have a different a different attitude towards things in the studio and how you you know how you you you play things at half speed or whatever you know and it

01:02:22Guest:And really, a lot of the songs like Nookie Wood, for instance, has sound design in them.

01:02:33Guest:And we got it right into a lot of sound design.

01:02:36Guest:You know, the kind of sound design that you have in movies where you establish the atmosphere of a room by what you put over it.

01:02:44Guest:Right, right, right.

01:02:45Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:02:46Guest:And so we established the atmosphere of the song by what's happening at the beginning, which is sometimes a Vietnamese commentator being put through a tannoy, and you're in a really different place.

01:02:58Guest:You're in Blade Runner all of a sudden.

01:03:01Marc:and so is this like is this pre-existing audio or you made the audio so no we took just a pre-existing pre-existing we found somewhere on the web is this the first time you started working with that way because it would seem yes that's exciting man yeah yeah so it's really unruly yeah and it's great so you can apply uh sort of the the same standards of avant-garde thinking that you used to yeah to classical music music yeah and then just fucking break it open and now use the entire uh catalog of recorded sounds yeah

01:03:29Marc:as your instrument.

01:03:31Guest:There was also this idea behind the song that I read a story in The Independent in London about a sea of trees.

01:03:43Guest:A sea of trees is a wood

01:03:47Guest:In Japan.

01:03:48Guest:Yeah.

01:03:48Guest:It's on an island.

01:03:49Guest:Yeah.

01:03:50Guest:And it has no animal life at all in it.

01:03:55Guest:It is just undergrowth.

01:03:57Guest:Uh-huh.

01:03:57Guest:And it's very quiet in there.

01:03:59Guest:Yeah.

01:04:00Guest:And on a certain day in the year, they have wardens that go and patrol whatever.

01:04:10Guest:And I saw this little YouTube video about it.

01:04:14Guest:that showed the game order, not the game order, but the warden coming to check on the trees or whatever.

01:04:24Guest:And on this one day, the day after, what happens is the police arrive, the ambulances arrive, and they go through the field because people kill themselves in this forest.

01:04:33Guest:They go there for that.

01:04:35Guest:And nobody knows why.

01:04:36Guest:And in Japan, it's a totally different issue.

01:04:39Guest:Yeah.

01:04:40Guest:Yes.

01:04:42Guest:I mean, it has a span of meanings, and nobody knows quite what to do because the people that have killed themselves in there, they don't fall into any pattern.

01:04:52Guest:They're trying to study it and figure out why this, that, and the other.

01:04:56Guest:and there was this in this little YouTube video this guy was you know he arrives on the day and first thing he does is look at the parking lot and see how long the cars have been parked there because if someone's been been parked there for a long time you're gonna find something yeah right and then he goes and finds a tent

01:05:18Guest:And he talks to the guy in the tent.

01:05:21Guest:The guy will not come out of the tent.

01:05:23Guest:So he's just squatting outside the tent, talking to him.

01:05:26Guest:Be kind to yourself now.

01:05:27Guest:So he knows that he's there for that.

01:05:29Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:05:30Guest:And he didn't.

01:05:31Marc:It's really very interesting.

01:05:33Marc:It's sort of like the Golden Gate Bridge.

01:05:35Marc:I saw a documentary on the Golden Gate Bridge where people...

01:05:39Guest:Do you remember that thing about this architect from New Zealand that was trying to call the suicide box?

01:05:48Guest:Uh-huh.

01:05:49Guest:That was trying to tie the suicide rate to the Dow?

01:05:54Guest:Uh-huh.

01:05:54Guest:No, that's crazy.

01:05:57Guest:Was he able to get a logarithm on it?

01:06:00Guest:I don't know.

01:06:01Guest:But I mean, I saw it was on the Tate Gallery in London.

01:06:06Guest:It was the first broadcast that they made about, you know, which was about breaking taboos and, you know, it was a thing that the Tate put together.

01:06:16Guest:But she was on it talking about how she was trying to create something that would give people...

01:06:23Marc:Well, this documentary I saw was just people, that's a destination, a suicide destination.

01:06:29Marc:And you see people who go there over a span of days and think about it, plan it.

01:06:36Marc:I think it's called The Bridge.

01:06:38Marc:And they actually have footage.

01:06:39Marc:They had cameras set up, stationary cameras, not manned cameras, that captured the thought that you could see the deliberation.

01:06:47Marc:Some people step over and they kind of like stand there for a minute.

01:06:51Marc:And it's bizarre, but it sounds like this woods, for whatever reason, has the same kind of appeal.

01:06:57Guest:Choreography here.

01:06:59Guest:Yeah, because they, you know, the newspaper reporter that wrote about it went with the police and every now and again they stopped and they found somebody who shot himself over there, found somebody hanging over there, somebody, Harakiri over there.

01:07:14Guest:Same day.

01:07:15Marc:Yeah.

01:07:15Yeah.

01:07:16Marc:That's fucking mind-blowing.

01:07:18Guest:So how did this inform the... It's just that whole... I've been trying to write a song about that for a long time called Sea of Trees and I couldn't... But it's all in Nookie Wood in a weird way because it has that atmosphere and the...

01:07:38Guest:Kitchens in the kitchens of the Mardi Gras.

01:07:40Guest:Uh-huh.

01:07:42Guest:The cooks of pestilence meet, you know, and it has that claustrophobic idea of what goes on in a place like that.

01:07:53Marc:And also in the person who's about to do that.

01:07:56Guest:You know, you look at the whole thing is beautiful.

01:07:59Guest:I mean, the foliage and everything else is like, but, you know, what he's looking for, he finds notes for people.

01:08:06Guest:He finds things.

01:08:07Guest:So it's, yeah.

01:08:09Marc:That sounds amazing.

01:08:11Marc:And when you, like, was this the first time you really sort of came around to sort of integrating ideas of hip-hop in your head?

01:08:21Guest:No.

01:08:22Guest:I've been trying to do it for a while, but I got, there's a song on the new album called Vampire Cafe.

01:08:30Guest:Yeah.

01:08:30Guest:And that one has this lurch in it, the beat.

01:08:34Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:08:34Guest:It's just like it's about to fall down.

01:08:36Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:08:37Guest:But that really came from listening to Dr. John, the night tripper.

01:08:43Guest:You know, the way those things used to go.

01:08:47Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:08:49Guest:And I remember seeing him in L.A.

01:08:51Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:08:54Marc:That New Orleans groove, that almost... That's it.

01:08:58Marc:Eric Abadu.

01:09:00Marc:Yep, that's it.

01:09:02Marc:yep it's that's uh it's got a lot of a lot of traction emotionally yeah because you know if you pick it up you're dancing if you slow it down you're dying yeah yeah right yeah yeah i fucking love that groove yeah so uh all right well i feel like we've uh we've done what we could do you yeah you okay with it yeah what about real quickly leonard cohen leonard yes

01:09:30Marc:Maestro, yes.

01:09:33Guest:Profound influence?

01:09:37Guest:An envious presence.

01:09:39Guest:I mean, he's very good with the way he constructs things.

01:09:43Guest:Yeah.

01:09:44Guest:I mean, I throw away.

01:09:45Guest:I tend to throw things away.

01:09:47Guest:But he has a way of really crafting his sentences.

01:09:54Guest:For years, I think.

01:09:54Marc:For years.

01:09:56Marc:Absolutely.

01:09:57Marc:It's a difference between, like, I've got to work and, like, doing this.

01:10:01Yeah.

01:10:01Guest:Yeah.

01:10:02Guest:No, but when did he try... Did he always play guitar?

01:10:05Guest:When did he start?

01:10:05Guest:I don't know.

01:10:06Marc:I've never asked him, so... And you think that, you know, like, because the poetics of that guy, like, you know, it's one of those things if you keep listening to it, like, he's only given us so much.

01:10:16Marc:You know, there's only these few things, really, and it's kind of... Well, there are 15 verses to Hallelujah.

01:10:22Guest:That's a lot.

01:10:23Guest:Yeah, that's a lifetime.

01:10:25Guest:All about Yahweh, about...

01:10:27Guest:I couldn't sing all those.

01:10:29Guest:I mean, those verses, when I got all of them, I said, no.

01:10:33Guest:Yeah.

01:10:33Guest:Got to do the cheeky ones.

01:10:34Guest:Yeah, tighten it up.

01:10:36Marc:Yeah.

01:10:36Marc:Well, thank you, John.

01:10:37Guest:Thank you.

01:10:37Marc:I hope I didn't frustrate you.

01:10:39Guest:No.

01:10:40Marc:Good, man.

01:10:40Guest:Not at all.

01:10:41Guest:Thank you.

01:10:41Marc:I appreciate you coming.

01:10:47Marc:That's our show.

01:10:48Marc:I wish I could hang out, but I can't.

01:10:50Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.

01:10:52Marc:I hope you enjoy John Kale.

01:10:53Marc:It was a real privilege for me to talk to him.

01:10:56Marc:It's kind of tricky when you've got a guy that's been doing things in a thing for 50 years.

01:11:02Marc:But we did all right.

01:11:04Marc:What do we got coming up?

01:11:05Marc:Don Barris.

01:11:07Marc:Don Barris on Thursday.

01:11:09Marc:Don Barris and I met at the Comedy Store when I first moved here.

01:11:12Marc:That is a very specific, very unique, and very revealing interview and very Comedy Store related.

01:11:24Marc:I will give you that.

01:11:26Marc:Don Barris on Thursday.

01:11:28Marc:Please go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.

01:11:31Marc:Enjoy the site.

01:11:33Marc:Get some merch, new merch on the way.

01:11:35Marc:More of those fancy ceramic mugs made by Brian Jones up in Portland coming your way soon.

01:11:41Marc:Oh my God, I can't breathe.

01:11:42Marc:I can't breathe.

01:11:44Marc:I've done some damage today.

01:11:46Marc:This might be it, folks.

01:11:47Marc:This might be it.

01:11:49Marc:Lard-related blood thickening.

01:11:52Marc:That's what's going to happen.

01:11:53Marc:He died of pig.

01:11:56Marc:Somebody stop me.

01:11:59Marc:Boomer lives!

01:12:14Boomer lives!