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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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