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My theory is that part of the fun back then was that there was a straight world and a hip world; nowadays, everyone's hip. Even the dull people are hip. Look at Simon Cowell [American Idol], he's a sort of a dull, hip person running things. I far preferred it when there proper straight people running things. -Nick Lowe |
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"I never really saw the punk rock thing, which by then was starting to happen. I never really cared for punk rock music, really. It was almost uniformly ghastly. But, the mischief and the mayhem was what I was interested in. I saw these big wheels in the music industry - who I thought were completely talentless clods - scramble while for a few weeks it seemed the monkeys were running the zoo. Their heads rolled, one by one, and this included really powerful disc jockeys at the BBC, these awful idiots who wouldn't play anything good and treated the artists like idiots and had nothing but contempt for them. They were awful people and one by one they lost their jobs because they couldn't cope with it."
"We had all sorts of people to help with this [mayhem program] because there was one club we'd all meet at called Dingwalls and a handful of pubs. And we knew all the music journalists, the cool ones anyway, and the NME and Melody Maker came out every week and had a huge readership. The NME was up to 6 or 700,000 copies every week, which is unbelievable. So, we could get these stories put into these incredibly widely read papers every week. Major labels could not compete with that; they had to compete through the usual channels of publicists, etc. A lot of really good writers were in on the joke, so to speak," recounts Lowe. "The big boys couldn't cope with it and they completely lost control of it. And that's when we got rid of them. It didn't last long - they're all back now. My theory is that part of the fun back then was that there was a straight world and a hip world; nowadays, everyone's hip. Even the dull people are hip. Look at Simon Cowell [American Idol], he's a sort of a dull, hip person running things. I far preferred it when there proper straight people running things [laughs]."
Strong Language
 Nick Lowe |
While punk may have accomplished its goals through artless power chords, shouting and bruising percussion, Lowe has often unearthed tremendous power in the effective use of strong, pointed language. There's nothing lazy about a Nick Lowe line, and one may find themselves cheerily singing along before they suddenly stop cold, realizing that they've just crooned, "She was a winner that became a doggie's dinner" ("Marie Provost") or a more recent dark-tinged creepy nugget like, "This one's almost done/ now to watch her fall apart/ I trained her to love me/ so I can go ahead and break her heart/ If you think that it's depraved and I should be ashamed/ so what/ I'm only paying back womankind for all the grief I've got" ("I Trained Her To Love Me" off 2007's stellar At My Age). In Lowe one finds the pen is as mighty as any blade or pitchfork.
"I have sort of habits that I have to really watch and censor out of what I do. Some of the things my fans really like are things that make me kind of cringe [laughs]. So, I try to keep it as straight as I can now, not too many puns and the like. I went through a terrible stage where I was quite pun-tastic for a couple of years, which I have a bit of trouble listening to now," offers Lowe. "If you can take two or three words together and really make them count, there's something really satisfying about that. You don't want to cloud it up with too much waffle."
Recent compositions like "What Lack of Love Has Done" and "Love's Got A Lot To Answer For" reveal just how effective getting the fundamentals right can be.
"The people I admire, that's what they seem to do and that's what I aspire to. I try to work at the song until I actually think I'm singing a cover. This is a process. I just work at it and work at it and work at it, always taking stuff out, until you get to a place where you think you're singing '(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay' or 'Tracks Of My Tears' or some old standard. And vice-versa. When I find a cover song I like, if I hear a song I think I can do, I work at it and work at it until I actually come to believe I wrote it. It's like the reverse process takes place," says Lowe. "It's the same when I hear covers of my songs done by other people. The ones I like are always when the artist has taken it somewhere else. Sadly, it's how I earn my living, by having my songs covered. It's good whenever anyone does one, but artistically it's disappointing when you hear someone do a slavish version of one's own rendition. That's why I used to love it when Johnny Cash used to cut my things, which he did two or three times. He'd just slap his thing right on top of it. There's certain phrasings and things he does that I've started doing like him because they're just much better than the way I did it!"
Which brings us to "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," a tune known worldwide as an Elvis Costello number but was originally penned by Lowe in 1974 and appears on Brinsley Schwarz's The New Favourites of Brinsley Schwarz (and thankfully opens the new Quiet Please... anthology).
"I don't lose any sleep about it," offers Lowe flatly. "It's not like he's stolen it from me, quite the reverse actually. It would have been lost if he hadn't pulled it out of the dustbin that my old band Brinsley Schwarz disappeared into along with that song. He's the one that put all that anthemic thing and passion into it that people reacted to so positively. If he hadn't done that then the song would be totally forgotten."
"It's absolutely amazing that the song has become a sort of standard. You hear it absolutely everywhere," Lowe continues. "It doesn't really feel like my song anymore. A strange thing happens, where my chest doesn't swell with pride. I just get a vague feeling of astonishment that someone else is singing it. It's odd."
Nick Lowe will be returning to the U.S. for a tour later this year and will hit the road in England in May. JamBase will keep you updated as the Stateside dates firm up.
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