Features

Not only a great songwriter in his own right, Nick Lowe has forged a formidable solo career over the course of the last forty years. The brilliant At My Age was one of last year’s best sounding albums and it also showed how a musician can age gracefully in the music industry.

Some of Lowe’s finest songs have been gathered on the recently released fabulous double-disc compilation Quiet Please…The New Best Of Nick Lowe, while the three solo albums prior to his latest have been re-released as The Brentford Trilogy. The classic debut album, Jesus Of Cool, (retitled Pure Pop For Now People in the USA) has also been re-released and it sounds as fresh as it did when it was originally launched onto the British post-punk scene in 1978.

Despite the fact that his career had begun with pub rockers Brinsley Schwarz, Lowe had enough of a cutting edge – and sense of humour – to transcend what happened to a lot of other established acts, who were swept away by the so-called ‘new wave.’ He helped steer the early career of Elvis Costello and later joined his touring band; he also worked with Dave Edmunds in Rockpile. Later he joined Ry Cooder, John Hiatt and Jim Keltner in Little Village, the short-lived early 90s supergroup formed after the recording of John Hiatt’s Bring The Family.

Last September Lowe was reunited with Cooder and Keltner for two benefit shows at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall. Ry’s son Joachim Cooder and his partner Juliette Commagere were the support act (and Elvis Costello also popped in for a cameo). Lowe then appeared that same weekend at the marvellous (and free) Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park.

The reunion worked so well that Cooder and Lowe have been touring Europe – again with Joachim and Commagere as support – and they will be coming to Australia later this year. It will be the first time Cooder has been here in 30 years and the first time that Lowe has been here since he toured with his trio of Bobby Irwin and Geraint Watkins back in the late ‘90s.

“Yes, it was,” agrees Lowe when I claim that the Great American Music Hall show – the catalyst for the latest tour - was a very special gig. “It was also a lot of fun.” Ostensibly a benefit for Austin DeLone’s son Richard the concert saw Cooder play in Frisco for the first time in twenty years.

“We got together to do John Hiatt’s record Bring The Family, “ recalls Lowe about their original meeting. “We had four days to do it in and that was the reason why it was so good, I think, because we had to do it so quickly. We had these great songs and didn’t mess around with it. Then when we came back to do it again, Warner Brothers showered us with studio time. It was very nice of them but really that was what messed it up, I think. So it wasn’t an artistic success. I didn’t think so. But I personally found the whole experience extremely useful. I learnt a lot of useful stuff.”

“They were very, very high grade musicians those guys,” he explains. “So playing with people like that always ups your game. I was the worst bloke in the group and that’s a nice place to be. It’s no good being the best guy in the group. Somewhere in the middle is the best place to be. I learnt a lot of good musical chops and things like that and also what not to do because I saw them make loads of glaring mistakes which I knew from my days as a record producer was a bad idea and just had it reinforced. I thought, ‘Well, if even these real hotshots make a dumb move like that then I must be onto something because even I know that’s wrong.’ So it was very, very useful all round.”

Little Village released one very good album but Lowe is adamant that the follow up was given too much time and money and that the project completely lost its spontaneity.

“The other thing was that when we did Hiatt’s record he was in charge, it was his album,” he explains. “When we came to do Little Village no one would actually step forward, it was too democratic. You can’t really have that in that situation; you’ve got to have someone stepping forward and laying down the law a bit. But nobody would do that. So the result was that it wasn’t really focused. But the touring was great. I really enjoyed the live touring we did, we did quite a lot of that to support the record and that was terrific.”

“I think we would have done something better,” he adds, “but, unfortunately, relations between Hiatt and Ry Cooder were never very good so it was on a hiding to nowhere in any case.”

Last year on the Music Hall stage Lowe was allowed to a lot of his own songs, as Cooder took the back seat, and I got the feeling that he would love to go back into the studio with the same band and re-record some of his classics.

“Well, it is funny you should say that,” he responds, “because I was just saying that when I listen to a lot of my old records - which I have had to because they have been re-releasing them recently - I can hear so many of them that I got wrong when I recorded them. I was young and I didn’t really know what I was doing and you tend to overwrite stuff when you are starting out.

“Now, quite a lot of my older songs are quite extensively rewritten or, rather, have lots of stuff removed. By re-written I mean stripping stuff out. So it is with Ry. We are doing quite a few obscure songs of mine that Ry likes that I never do in my shows and they are much better than they were because they have been written right. You get the feeling that we could probably make a pretty good record with this unit.”

Those songs include ‘Crying In My Sleep’ from Pinker and Prouder (‘which sold about three copies’), ‘Half A Boy And Half A Man’ and ‘Raining Raining’ from his third album – a song that Lowe says is “much better than it ever was – and Ry Cooder’s playing guitar on it, which helps.”

For the European tour, Cooder had recruited Flaco Jiminez but, unfortunately, the legendary accordion player was unable to join them. Juliette Commagere, who has released her own impressive album, Queens Die Proudly, opens the show with partner Joachim Cooder on drums. They then join Cooder and Lowe on stage for the main show.

“The audiences just seem to really like it,” says Lowe, almost surprised at the response. “If you like hearing Ry Cooder play the guitar there’s nowhere much for him to hide. So if you are a fan of that it’s fantastic.”

“I know he could get many better bass players then me but I know how to stay out of his way and what he needs,” he adds in his customary self-deprecating style. “Also, as you say, I’ve got a few songs I can sing as well. So it’s a specialised job I am doing here. It’s sort of a family affair really, with me cast as the next door neighbour they’ve brought in to do a bit of gardening.”

I tell Lowe that there might be plenty of bass players that Cooder could have recruited but few would have written as many great songs as he had. Paul McCartney, perhaps.

“Well, that’s very kind of you to say so,” he responds, pointing out that when he does his own tours he takes a double bass player with him. “I can play the bass a bit but I don’t really play it anymore, I only play it when he asks me to. I play a bit of electric bass on my records. But it’s fun to thump away with him. I’m such a fan of Ry’s. I’ve got the best seat in the house really.”

“I’m lucky that my songs are short,” he continues when I compliment him on his solo festival show and the fact that he managed to keep the audience mesmerised for an hour, armed with just a guitar. [Note to budding musicians: pay attention here].

“They’re like jingles really and also I keep them rolling, almost play the show as if it’s a beat group…..like an old fashioned beat group concert when we used to do those ‘dances’ and you would just keep the songs coming with hardly any gaps in between. You find that way you can keep people with you, keep people’s attention, especially if there’s one or two that they actually know. That way you find that each song helps: the preceding song helps the one coming up. It is almost like playing one song.”

Lowe says that about two-thirds of the repertoire is comprised of Cooder’s songs. “When it gets too much for him I’ll step in and do one or two and just give him a breather. In the main it’s essentially Ry Cooder’s audience over here. I think it’s still evolving.”

Lowe then adds that when they started out he thought a five-week tour they might make them ‘very glad to see the arse end of each other’ but that this was not the case at all.

“I think that it’s just starting to get really good,” he explains. “We know what we’re doing but no so well that we play the same thing every night. We don’t know how it’s going to be every night and that’s very exciting. We’re still putting new songs in the show and it feels fresh and the audiences seem to respond to that. It’s a bit scruffy. There’s a few car crashes and train wrecks but that’s entertaining, I think, especially with musicians like us. People who like the stuff we do don’t really want to see it super slick; I think they want to see it so it’s got a real edge to it.”

I mention to Lowe that he also seems to be in tune with Cooder’s personality and they get on well together on stage.

“That’s true,” he agrees. ‘Ry is kind of a grumpy guy. There used to be TV version of Dennis The Menace and there was a character Mr Wilson, the next-door neighbour, who was Dennis’s nemesis. He was always breaking his windows with his footballs and what have you. So he was always shaking his fist at Dennis but actually rather liked him and he was rather a kind man. Ry sort of reminds me of Mr Wilson. He’s a very, very lovely guy but he barks at people a bit and makes them jump a bit but he’s a lovely fellow. Not only am I a fan but I am very, very fond of him as well.”

“He doesn’t really bark at me anymore,” says Lowe when I enquire. “He has done.”

Talk to Lowe for any length of time and you soon realise that he not only has a fairly laidback approach to his own career but a very pragmatic view of the music industry.

“I figured out quite a long time ago that the trick is never to really make it,” he explains. “The trick is to just stay out of the limelight so that if you need to every so often you can step into it if you want to draw attention to a new record or something like that. Step into it…and then just step out.

“If on occasion it looks as if I have been going to ‘make it’ – be very successful – I’ve taken drastic steps to ensure that doesn’t happen. The price that you have to pay is unacceptably high to me. Sure people throw bags of money at you but the fact that everyone freaks out if they see you in the supermarket, people staying outside your house and all that. I can’t bear all of that sort of thing.”

“It’s a great privilege to be able to make a living out of making music,” he continues. “It’s nice to have a comfortable living but being hugely famous is ghastly and not for me at all.”

The title of Lowe’s new ‘best of’ is aptly titled Quiet Please…” says it all about him. It also says a lot about his music. “I tend to make not so much noise as I once did perhaps.”