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By Kayceman
Ain't no change in the weather, ain't no change in me
-From "Call Me the Breeze"
J.J. Cale |
It's quite possible that J.J. Cale's
first song from his first record, "Call Me The Breeze," is still the one that best describes him. Speaking with Cale
thirty-five years after he recorded "Call Me The Breeze" for his 1971 debut, Naturally, you get the sense that
time (and money) really haven't affected John Cale all that much. He's "just a regular guy" who digs music, loves
engineering music, and lives a simple existence. "I go into town, buy groceries, do the laundry. I'm just a regular
senior citizen," says the 67 year-old Cale. "I lived in trailers and stuff 'cause I was always busy, but now I have three
acres down here. Well I try to keep all that up, and I don't hire nobody. I don't hire any servants or none of that; I
do all my own yard work and house work."
Perhaps one of the few things that really have changed for Cale is the fact that he can now afford a few acres. J.J.
Cale's climb from humble roots to the top of the songwriting mountain followed a very unique, un-conventional
path, and it wasn't until his thirties that he began to get noticed. "The difference in me, the reason that [quitting
music] didn't happen to me, I really had a gypsy-lifestyle mentality," explains Cale. "It didn't matter to me whether I
had any money or not. I knew I could just get out a guitar and sit on the corner and play, whereas a lot of musicians
wanted something more from life; they wanted a new car or a new house or whatever. I never wanted anything
material; I was very satisfied sitting around noodling on the guitar, so I didn't really get caught up in that syndrome
of, 'I'm 30 years old, I got a wife and kids, and I need to quit this music and get a day job.' That happens to
most, but I had no desire to even do that. I was like, 'I can live in a trailer man,' and I didn't want a day job."
J.J. Cale |
And that's pretty much what Cale did - lived in a trailer and noodled on the guitar. He took a shot in Los Angeles
but returned home to Tulsa, Oklahoma not too long after. He struggled financially and took an extreme, laissez-
faire attitude towards his career; he was always one-day-at-a-time. Ironically enough, it was Cale's lack of ambition
that allowed him the time he needed to get his break. Where most even relatively ambitious human beings
(musicians or otherwise) would have given in to pursue a more promising life, Cale had no interest. He was content
to just play some guitar, mix a few records, and get by. But let's be clear by what we mean when we say "play some
guitar," or as he puts it, "noodle on the guitar." Another thing that hasn't changed with J.J. Cale is his modesty.
Noodling on the guitar for Cale has accounted for some of the best and most lasting songs from the past fifty years.
Hits like "Call Me The Breeze" (made famous by Lynyrd Skynyrd), "Cocaine" (Clapton), "After Midnight" (Clapton), and
lesser-known gems like "Travelin' Light," "Cajun Moon," "I'm A Gypsy Man," "Money Talks," "Lies," "Ride Me High,"
and plenty more all come from the J.J. Cale canon. And although his rate of production has slowed, he's still turning
out quality songs. For evidence, look no further than 2004's To Tulsa and Back. In addition to financial
success, if anything else has in fact changed it may be Cale's acceptance of the press, fans, and all the little things
that go into being part of The Music World. It's this slight shift away from J.J. Cale "the recluse" that brings us the
first DVD of his career, To Tulsa and Back - On Tour with J.J. Cale (released on DVD June 13th via Time Life).
Clapton & Cale at Crossroads by
Johnny A. |
Recorded over four days at the end of his 2004 summer tour (his last tour), the DVD is an intimate look into the
notoriously reclusive J.J. Cale. Not only do we get live concert footage, but we get to travel on Cale's tour bus. We
sit in on interviews with Cale, his sister, and his band mates, and we receive extensive commentary by Eric Clapton. It was actually Clapton's 2004
Crossroads Festival that spawned Cale's entire tour. Honored by Clapton's invitation and wanting to sound his best,
Cale decided he better play some shows to warm up. And heck, if you're gonna go out on the road, you might as
well stretch it a little and do a few more gigs.
When asked why he finally decided to let a camera crew into his intimate, private space, Cale sorta laughed and said,
"I thought they were just gonna do a little promo, five-minute kind of a thing. When you're on tour, you're jacked up
and it's different than when you're home. And I didn't know that's what it was they were doing. I kinda did, but
when I'm on tour I have so many other things going on and this was just sort of a side-project kinda thing, and I
didn't know it was gonna turn into what it turned out to be."
J.J. Cale |
J.J. Cale has always eluded the spotlight. He's made a point of lurking in the shadows and constantly deflecting
attention towards others. "I never was real crazy about doing the live thing," says Cale. "I was originally a guitar
player and played live all my life, but the J.J. Cale thing, which is a singer-songwriter thing, mainly a songwriter is
really what I do for a living, I was very reluctant. That's why they hung the 'recluse' thing on me, 'cause when Eric
Clapton and Lynyrd Skynyrd started cutting some of my songs back in the 70s, they went, 'Oh you need to go
out and promote yourself,' and I was very uncomfortable with that because I've always been a sideman,
background man, engineering kinda technical nerd. So I did the... the minimum, I'll put it that way, of promoting
whatever album it was I had out. As the years rolled by, I got a little more used to, 'Okay, you gotta get out and
perform.' I was always a guitar player in the band, so the thing [spotlight] was never on me, and now I'm a little
more of a 'Well, here I am folks' kind of a guy now. But 20, 30 years ago, I was very reluctant to actually get out and
be the patsy. I'm a little more used to it now, or maybe as the years went by I just accepted the fact that I'm semi-
well known and that's kinda the way it goes."
A highlight of the To Tulsa and Back - On Tour with J.J. Cale DVD is the back-and-forth commentary of
Clapton on Cale and Cale on Clapton. While Cale credits Clapton as "the reason I no longer have to work" (because
of the huge sums of money he's made through Clapton's covers of "Cocaine" and "After Midnight"), Clapton credits
Cale for "giving him" some of his most successful songs. "I'm very grateful to J.J.," says Clapton. "He's been an
incredible inspiration to me."
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I was never writing to sell my own records, I was writing to get someone like Eric Clapton to cut it.
-J.J. Cale
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If you want to hang out, you've got to take her out, cocaine
If you want to get down, get down on the ground, cocaine
Watching the DVD as Clapton dissects the genius of Cale's super-hit, "Cocaine," he contemplates the lyrics and tries
to determine if the song is slightly negative in connotation or slightly positive or maybe totally ambivalent. When I
ask Cale to explain the mindset he was in when he wrote the classic track, he says, "I never was a cocaine user. A lot
of my friends were, of course all my friends were musicians. I was just trying to write something. It was a subject
matter, and when you're a songwriter, number one before you write the hook or the lyrics or anything you go, 'What
the hell is the song about?' So I went, well nobody has written anything about cocaine. And then I tried to be not
positive or negative about it either way. I think Clapton was pretty much right in detecting some negativity; I put
some lines in. 'Well if you take cocaine, you better watch out.' And there were also some lines in there like 'Well
here's cocaine, you can have some fun with that.' And that's sorta the way drugs are."
J.J. Cale |
But it wasn't really the words that made "Cocaine" such a hit; it was the sound. "'Cocaine' really came out better than
I expected," says Cale. "It wasn't that it was that good; it sounded different." It sounded different to Clapton and to
everyone else and that's why Cale got rich off it. But it wasn't that "Cocaine" was different, Cale was different. He
had that "laid-back sound," that "Tulsa sound." "That's the engineering. That's because I'm mixing them [albums,
songs] myself," says Cale. "I'm mainly known as a songwriter, then probably a guitar player, and then probably a
singer in that order. But basically what I've done - everybody's an engineer now with the modern Pro Tools and stuff
- I've been doing that stuff all my life. I used to make my living as an engineer, so what I do is I mix most of my own
records. Well, if you mix your own records, you can take all the mistakes out. So that's always been my favorite art
form, is actually the recording process. And what we do is we make basic tracks and then go in and fix the thing
and overdub. Everybody's doing that now. Back 30, 40 years ago, very few were doing it. So that's what they're
talking about [when they talk about the 'Cale Sound']. It's no 'secret sauce' or nothing. I had a studio back in the
days when people didn't have studios; you had to go rent Capitol or whatever. I took all my songwriting money, and
the first thing I bought was a recorder and boards and that kinda stuff."
J.J. Cale |
In classic Cale fashion, he refuses to see just how great his versions of his songs are. "I'm basically a
songwriter. I was never writing to sell my own records, I was writing to get someone like Eric Clapton to cut it," says
Cale. Instead of crediting whatever it is inside his head, he's much quicker to give praise to someone else, or to
comment on the details of how he engineered the songs into sounding a certain way. And while that's no doubt
true, all of his material is also, at its very core, imbued with a distinct, understated vocal delivery and a subtle, "laid-
back" guitar style. It's been said that perhaps his unique sound is linked to growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. "Things
were more regional in those days when I was starting out," remembers Cale. "You were more influenced by the local
radio station. Now everything's the same. Everybody gets the same information by the TV, the Internet or whatever.
Back in those days, it was still a little regional. Kansas City was a jazz city - it's not too far from Tulsa, about a
hundred, two-hundred miles. Oklahoma City and the western part of the United States is all country, and there was
a lot of blues influences coming up from the Southeast. I don't know if I woulda sounded different or wrote different
songs if I had been from Philadelphia, so I don't know if the location I grew up in influenced the way I play, but there
might be something to that. It is the middle of the country; it's a good theory." Call it "Tulsa," call it "laid-back," call
it "Rock & Roll," "Americana," "Alt-Country" and everything else, but be sure to remember that whatever we call it, it
is most certainly a defining pillar of American Music.
So what's next for Cale? "I'm actually considering myself retired. I'll do something, I'm not totally through. But like I
said, I'm 67 now and I'm trying to enjoy life, and music is a lot of work - making records, writing songs, going on
tour. I'm not real crazy about any of that. I'm just trying to stay alive." 67 or 27, sure sounds like the same old J.J.
Cale - not much planned, not much desire to make a plan. "I'll tell you what I really enjoy. I buy guitars and modify
them - I love to do that. I can afford really nice guitars and then I'll put a different pick-up in 'em. And I do a lot of
electronics. And sometimes I'll just sit around and noodle and watch the day." Ain't no change in the weather, ain't
no change in J.J. Cale.
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