Dec. 16, 2025
Labi Siffre
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Since getting his start in the late ‘60s, Labi Siffre has had an unflinching commitment to writing exactly what he feels. The result was a debut album that announced a singular talent: a British singer-songwriter who could move seamlessly from jazz-inflected soul to tender love songs, all while addressing themes of love, identity, and justice that most pop artists wouldn't touch.
Over the next decade, Siffre built a catalog that defied category. Still, his 1972 song "Crying Laughing Loving Lying" became an international success, and his song "Something Inside So Strong"—written years later in response to apartheid—also became a big hit, revealing the true scope of his artistry.
And then there's "I Got The..." from his 1975 album Remember My Song that would quietly become one of the most sampled songs in hip-hop history, most famously by Dr. Dre on Eminem's "My Name Is."
On today's episode, Justin Richmond talks to Labi Siffre about growing up in 1950s London and the music he discovered that set him on his particular artistic path. Labi also talks about how he wants music to enliven him and how much it annoys him when people tell him to chill. And he explains why, after decades in the music industry, he's never regretted choosing honesty over commercial compromise.
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Labi Siffre HERE.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
00:00:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Since getting his start in the late sixties, Leby Siffrey has had an unflinching commitment to writing exactly what he feels. The result was a debut album that announced a singular talent, a British singer songwriter who can move seamlessly from jazz inflected soul to tender love songs, all while addressing themes of love, identity, and justice that most pop artists wouldn't touch. Over the next decade, Siffrey built the catalog that defied category. Still, his nineteen seventy two song Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying became an international success, and his song something Inside So Strong, written years later in response Apartheid, also became a big hit, revealing the true scope of his artistry. And then there's Igattha from his nineteen seventy five album Remember My Song that would quietly become one of the most sampled songs in hip hop history, famously by doctor dre on Eminem's My Name Is. Yet, despite his influence, which instead of waning, has actually grown over generations, Sefrie has remained something of a hidden treasure, an artist whose integrity and independence kept him just outside of the mainstream On today's episode, I talked to Labby Siffree about growing up in fifties London and the music he discovered that set him on his particular artistic path. Labby also talks about how he wants music to enliven him and how much it annoys him when people tell him to chill, and he explains why, after decades in the music industry, he's never regretted choosing honesty over commercial compromise. This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations. Here's my conversation with Labby Siffrey Man. So I came to your music through hip hop. I was a big hip hop fan growing up and going looking for samples. I discovered your music a handful of times across a few different using a few different songs. And over the years, some of those songs that have discovered you through have kind of faded away in my in my consciousness, and and and what sort of been left is your your actual real catalog of songs that just every year grow in terms of how much I love them and how much I listened to them. And so it was a really bizarre way to discover a songwriter as delicate as as as your as your songwriting could be in a in a in a songwriting, sometimes it's as fierce in terms of social criticism as your songwriting can be. But uh, I'm really glad that I discovered you about twenty years ago, and and and and so glad that we're able to speak because, like I said, your music is it means a lot. I gotta say, though the British music scene confuses me. It seems like what confuses me is it seems like there were a bunch of different scenes. But I'm not sure that there was like a I just I'm not so familiar with it, I guess, being from the States. And so I was curious when you were growing up playing music before just before you got your contract to do your first album, your self titled album, where were you and what was going on musically?
00:03:43
Speaker 2: Uh? Well, Christmas nineteen sixty nine, Uh, I was in Amsterdam trying to see if I could well, just to try and see what would happen if I went to a different country, and I was one of the gigs I did was at the parodies. Uh I made I make of friends with a Czech classical guitarist and his lady. He and I we did the We did the Paradiso, which was a kind of a psychedelic club, and he was on stage and he played an excellent classical guitarist and there was, you know, kind of smashing your applause. Then I did my set and it was huge cheers and a huge amount of things. And I came off the stage and I said to him, what was that all about? He said, well, they were they were screening Porner behind you and h and and about. Well, like I said, that was in That was in December sixty nine, and that the and towards the end of that I got a call saying somebody wants to offer you a publishing deal and a record deal. I had a band called Safari up till that moment, and I was on electric guitar, my old Harmony, and for some reason I decided the amp was getting between me and the guitar, and I wanted the Turvius to be one just me and the guitar. So I sold my electric guitar on an acoustic and went off to Amsterdam. And I remember the first gig very unlike me, because I was not the most confident personal in the world at that time. Still probably not, and I asked if I could sit in, which I thought was very brave of me at the time, and I found myself on stage. It was a listening audience. It was the first folk club that I had ever been in. That's one of the things that always amuses me because in my categories, of which there are legions, one of them is folk. I don't know anything about as far as I'm concerned. Folk music is Robert Johnson. Yeah that I know that I know, But European folk music, I mean, but that's fine, But you know, but I not part of my learning. But it's I think it's probably because I, apart from that I do play occasionally electric guitar, I mainly am seen with an acoustic right. And you have to remember that reviewers and the business generally, I mean, the only way of describing music is to hear it. So people who write about it tend to write in comparisons. They say, that sounds a bit like that person and a bit like that person crossed with that person, and the whole system of saying what the music is just doesn't work. Like I say, the anywhere of describing music is to hear it, so which is why I get soul, flunk jazz was the other one, not independent whatever it is. Indeed, indeed, indeed I get about five.
00:07:20
Speaker 1: I was reading a Spin article about you, or is an interview with you from nineteen eighty eight, I want to say, and they said, you know, he's he started as an R and B artist in England. That's true, you know, But was that true?
00:07:35
Speaker 2: I started as a Jimmy Reid clone when I bought my first guitar, a four pound ten from Chapels and Ealing Broadway, if anybody knows that, I got home and I bought two books. In the UK at that time, everybody bought Bert Whedon's Player in a day. But I also got chet Atkins had a by guitar. And I remember sitting on my bed in my bedroom and I couldn't make head or tail either of I just couldn't. I just couldn't work anything out. But I already felt because from the moment I heard Let's Together by Jimmy Reed. I mean, he's known mainly for a big boss man, but but the moment I heard Let's Get Together, it was kind of like, I don't know the first time, I don't know, like and still still for me, the best work he ever did. Hey, Joe the Hendrix, say and all the first time when we when we were working at an is room jazz club in Drury Lane. Uh, the first time I heard James Brown, I mean, these these changes.
00:08:52
Speaker 1: For on record.
00:08:54
Speaker 2: It was on the jukebox there we were in the bar, you know, after after hours, when the audience had everybody gone away, and somebody put James Brown on and and it was kind of my immediate thought was, he's got it backwards. He's playing it backwards, because as a jazz person, I was used to not on the one, not on the one.
00:09:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a strange emphasis, you know.
00:09:25
Speaker 2: So I was immediately confute, confused, and I knew I really liked it. But but I mean, that was my first impression. He's playing it backwards. What's going on? So so yeah, but like I say, I'm sitting in my bedroom and I but I already felt Jimmy reed and so I looked that, you know, that shuffle and and it went from there, and then I I was, I was, I was sixteen, and then I put a band together with my I've got I've I had four brothers, the brother just above me, was five years older than me. He's he's a Sally responsible uh for a hell of a lot, because he had a really extensive record collection, but he only had the best wow in every genre. Yeah, when I look back, he had the people who really made every genre work.
00:10:30
Speaker 1: Is that your brother who's on the cover of Children of Children of Children?
00:10:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's holding me. I'm the baby.
00:10:37
Speaker 1: That's your brother on that.
00:10:39
Speaker 2: That's that's that's calling. And so I mean I could say, for example, that I'm an autodidact. Now, oh yeah, I taught myself bullshit. He had a huge record collection whom I like, I say, from Robert Johnson through to Cecil Taylor.
00:10:55
Speaker 1: How does how do? How do you want? Tomass a collection of of of really choice music from America at that time. Like was it easy to get American records?
00:11:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I mean all of us were. I was brought up with the Great American Songbook, and I was brought up with American jazz right the way, you know, passing through our Tatum to Cecil Taylor as piano monk Miles Mengus. I mean I started out as a Jimmy Reid clone, and I had a disturbing piece of information. His son clearly the kind of kid who walking down the school school corridor you trip up, because his bass player was his son, who was either nine or eleven on that track, and it was kind.
00:11:47
Speaker 1: Of how dare you wait, Jimmy, Jimmy Reid's.
00:11:51
Speaker 2: Son, and it was kind of how do you be so talented and be able to do that groove and on that track. I don't know whether it's true, but I was told that his son at the time of that recording was either nine or eleven.
00:12:05
Speaker 1: Nine, ten or eleven on Let's Get Together, which was made famous later by I think cant He did like a version that was a hit.
00:12:12
Speaker 2: And oh right, I mean that's that track still living, It's that track is a part Wow.
00:12:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a strange. It's a strange. It's a shuffle, as you said, but it's a He has a really like, kind of laconic kind of well well, I mean, I.
00:12:28
Speaker 2: Mean, Jimmy Reed. I always I also say this about women Morton the composer, although it's a little unfair on Morton, but it's pretty much Walton that they both have only one thing that they do, but both of them are fantastic. I mean, you know, I mean to get that shuffle right, I don't. I don't think I've heard anybody else be able to do it right. Yeah, I know.
00:12:52
Speaker 1: Keith Richards famously, you know, is a fan of that as well, and he tries, you know, he has his version of it, but it's not the same.
00:13:00
Speaker 2: No, which is one of the funny things about we were talking about genres. I mean, R and B now is kind of what we used to call lovers lovers rock ah and R and B then had muscle now if I mean, I I must say one of the things that well, I do find a little bit is that I keep being told to chill.
00:13:31
Speaker 1: What do you mean explain music?
00:13:32
Speaker 2: Well, I go, you know, you go from music to music and music and it's always recommended because it's music to chill too. I don't want to chill. I want to be enlivenment. You know, I don't. I don't. I don't want to chill.
00:13:48
Speaker 1: You know, I agree, I agree, And you know, people think about I love jazz as well, and people always think about jazz as music you put to cool out to chill, and it's like the first jazz is really it energizes you. You get anxious. Yeah, exactly, exactly exactly, you could get wired. Yeah, I get wired listening to jazz. You know, I get the most energy I could get from anything.
00:14:10
Speaker 2: Clearly, also, they've never heard of David Sampon uh, and they've clearly never heard Paul Gonzales twenty minutes solo chill sorry.
00:14:22
Speaker 1: Man mingus, chilling, mingus.
00:14:25
Speaker 2: I think Monk is still my favorite pianist. Jazz pianis so yeah. I mean I I like I say, it's it's uh. And of course, of course when he gets up the dance with Charlie Rowse or most most Underrated, I love that band that those those that that's a great band. And like I say, for me, my I was talking about. You know, I could say I was I taught myself, but in fact I was taught because Collie had such like I said, with her, he had the cream of of every genre that he bought. And so I was taught by every musician I'd ever heard. On that record collection. You don't do this kind of thing on your own, you know. I remember hearing there was a rock god being interviewed and there and he was asked what his influences were, and he said, Oh, I don't have any influences. It's just me. And I thought, well, you're either a liar or a genius, and I know you're not a genius. You know.
00:15:32
Speaker 1: Do you remember who that was?
00:15:34
Speaker 2: No, I don't remember. Well, it was the kind of person to very quickly forget. So, yeah, I mean I had so, I probably had thousands of teachers.
00:15:44
Speaker 1: Can you can you locate that Jimmy Reid blues shuffle thing and you're playing at all because it's funny. I don't know if I hear it.
00:15:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I I used to play it exactly as he played it. Now I play it differently. Before before, I mean before I had my first record deal, I'm publishing deal. On the same day, I had a band call Safari, and we did We did some wood stuff and I arranged several backrack how David's song cool. But because I come basically from the jazz tradition, I've never seen the point of doing a cover where the only thing that changes is the singer's voice. The whole idea is that you're supposed to try, at least to take the material and put you into it. If you've got somebody to put into it. It's to take you and make it your own, even if it's not very good your own. But you're supposed to do what you do. My good friend Woody who was the drum well, we all met, Woody, Bob and I we met. Our first real work was with a guy called Hamilton King's Blues Messengers, which I replaced the Kings. I replaced Ray Davis as the guitarist in that band. And what he was on drums, Bob was on his Hammond B three.
00:17:20
Speaker 1: And did you know Ray Davies at that time?
00:17:23
Speaker 2: No, no, I no, And it's actually it's only in the past ten years that I you know, it just came across Hamilton's band and in which the article said that Ray Davis was a guitarist, not Dave Davis, who was the lead guitarist in the.
00:17:40
Speaker 1: King Yeah, Ray a songwriter.
00:17:43
Speaker 2: Yes, sorry. I replaced him with Hamilton King's whose Messengers.
00:17:48
Speaker 1: I think was in that as well, the drummer of Fleetwood. At a certain point it.
00:17:53
Speaker 2: Might will have done. I mean Hamilton Hamilton influenced a few people still see him now another giant. Yeah. That The thing about me is that I don't I don't have one genre that I write in. But when I got my contract, my first contract, when they discovered that I could actually hold the stage on my own. I mean, I supported people like Chicago at the Olympia in Paris, me and my guitar and you walk on stage, nobody knows who the hell you are. I had learnt because I, you know, a lot of the gigs that I did once I had my contract were in what we call working men's clubs, and they were also in clubs where you know, you know, I remember one in whole huge club. These were places where people went to eat, drink and have a laugh. And I did that for quite a few years, and I had to learn how to walk on stage, sit down and make them be quiet from listen and I this is one of the reasons why I worry about about people kids starting out now. I don't know whether it's the same in the States, but you know, there's not many places they can what I would call learn their trade, which I think is a disservice to them. The first thing that seems to go when money is short is the arts is very annoying and stupid culturally, frankly, But when they realized that I could actually hold the stage on my own. I had years and years, about thirty odd years of forty years of performing like that. Although my albums are mainly with a band with guys and girls playing, I should think probably ninety percent of my performances over fifty odd years have been me solo on stage kind of four guitars and a keyboard. And well, the other thing is once we started recording, because I think the first thing we had, the first on the first album, and the first song that we recall a turntable hit. It was a radio hit, and every said it's always going to get this is going to chart. There's a song called make my Day. I find I kind of got channeled into something that I was quite happy with because I could do it. It was obviously me. But jazz and funk and blues were not part of that deal. So they may occasionally slip in over those years. But and I'm no, I mean, that's not a fault. You know, it's not that that wasn't anything about the music business saying oh you can only do this, But that's just the general trend of how it went.
00:21:06
Speaker 1: But you know, you think about your first three albums, the first one your title it's you with the guitar looking very singer songwritery or you know, so maybe I could see how they could think folk and then the singer, and then the singer and the song is your second album, and then you know, the third album is again it's you with the guitar on the cover. So I mean, I guess I see why the image might People might see the image and think, oh, well, you know it's folks, and you know, you got your cat Stevens around and your who are you know, whoever else, and so it fit a niche.
00:21:37
Speaker 2: Well, that was also the time when you you were asked could you please smile?
00:21:45
Speaker 1: And how did you take that?
00:21:49
Speaker 2: Well? I kind of, I mean I kind of thought it's not my job to get in their way. They know what they're doing. So it took me a while. I mean, there was some difficulty in so far as I could only talk music, and the music business is not filled with people who know anything about music.
00:22:06
Speaker 1: There are people, but it's not filled with people.
00:22:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's not filled with them. And I happened to be at the situation where I could only talk music. So it was a matter of me explaining and I and I also got into all show me a while to get out of believing that people who were successful in the music business knew about music.
00:22:30
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, let's just say you signed with with with Pie Records. Who I mean we were just talking about Ray Davies. I mean, the Kinks were signed a Pie and you know, they did not get Ray and Davies did not get along with the label sort of felt that they had more of a pop sensibility and weren't weren't interested in his experimenting, you know, in terms of sound and song.
00:22:51
Speaker 2: And I have to say I did not get on with it.
00:22:54
Speaker 1: Right you you allowed it to sort of.
00:22:59
Speaker 2: Well, I take responsibility. I mean, I take responsibility for my career.
00:23:04
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:23:04
Speaker 2: I mean I can bitch if I wanted to, but it would be misplaced.
00:23:08
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:23:09
Speaker 2: In retrospect, I've been given a great deal of freedom in so far as at the time. And I knew this very early on. At the time, I was not mainstream.
00:23:22
Speaker 1: It seems like you could have been, though, I mean, like even just crying, laughing, loving line not getting the US release. You know, it's like you know when you think like on Warner Repriez, you know, like Randy Newman's getting released and you know who else, you know, some of the Beach Boys more experiment Van Dyke Parks right like, and you're like, there would have been there could have been a market for in the US, you know.
00:23:50
Speaker 2: I got to say, Vandidike Parks would have been a bit difficult for the I mean would.
00:23:55
Speaker 1: Have It's difficult for everyone over here too.
00:23:58
Speaker 2: It just wonderful. And I'm so pleased that Van Dyke Parks met Brian Wilson. So pleased because I loathed the surfing stuff. I just thought, I just thought, well, here's another gang of white guys, you know, stealing chut Berry's music and not doing it very well with craping. Uh. And then of course, if it hadn't been for Parks, my very favorite, I mean it. I didn't like the Beach Boys until I discovered the Sunflower album and then there was backs on that and I thought, ah, this is what he really does. Uh. And then still my favorite of all the things he's done is this is the song surfs up that album is there's a there's a line in that which ends with the words of Children's Song, at which point, on occasion I find crying. Uh, it's it's one of my all time favorite tracks, you know, along with five Union other's favorite track, but of the Beach choice of his work. And then of course they did he and I passed in when he kind of vaguely left the Beach Boys. After recovering, he and Van Dyke Parks did a really good album together. But I'm so pleased that they met.
00:25:34
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more from labby Siffrey after the break. What else were you listening to at the time, Because I mean, your music really is one of one. It doesn't sound much like anything else. What were you taking in at the time of early and you like Steps in the early seventies, at the time of seventy seventy one seventy two, as you're making those first few records.
00:25:59
Speaker 2: What was I listening to? Ah? Well, one of the things was I felt very lonely throughout my career because I couldn't find people in the UK who were writing anything that seemed related to what I was writing, very much as far as subject matter is concerned, but also stylistically. And it was not until I found this is early seventies, until I found the kind of I suppose the triumvirate of Brandy Newman, Harry Nilsen and Laura and Iro. Wow, it's those three, I mean New York Tenanderberry. Really really it should be one of the things that if you haven't heard this, I'm going to lock you in a room and handcuff you and you're going to listen to this. And it was only when I discovered those three that I thought that I felt I'd found a home. Wow, that I found people who were kind of doing what I was trying to do. So, I mean that was that was that was a great comfort to me because I did feel in the UK very alone stylistically.
00:27:27
Speaker 1: Uh, what was it you felt you were trying to do that they were doing as well.
00:27:33
Speaker 2: Funny, it's not. This is one of the reasons why I you know, you know the business about me having a hard time in music business. I was very fortunate because my first manager, who's really a real one, was was guy called Peter Gormley, who in fact was also the head of Festival International, which was the who I signed with. And uh, I actually think they looked after me in retrospect because I was never a really huge seller, you know, commercially, I was not hugely commercially successful, and at one stage they thought that maybe they put me with certain particular writers who who were making more commercially viable stuff, that it might rub off on me. Of course, what's the foolish thing to think. But it made me examine what I was trying to do. I started asking myself what am I trying to do? And I remember, rather I won't mention, you know, but this this is a guy, you know, multiple hits and written for outloads and loads of people. And I asked myself the question of well, what am I trying to do? And I came to the conclusion. My first conclusion was, well, they're trying to write a hit and I'm trying to write a good song. Immediately after which I thought, what the hell do you mean by a good song? If five million people or if a million people are emotionally moved by a track that you think is rubbish, hang on, that's a good song. What do you mean by a good song? So which is my com was my conversation with myself. You know, that's just lazy, siffy, you know, forget about good song. And I finally came to the conclusion that the problem was not a problem as far as I was concerned, was that I wanted to write useful songs, societally useful, said useful songs. That was the conclusion I came. I mean, other people might come to completely different conclusion, but that's what I realized I was trying to do, which was one of the reasons I think they they they were kind of patient because I was bringing in huge amounts of money. And of course I was one of those people then who and just about every company has that, they have one or two people who bring in all the money, and then they can take other artists who they think can do well but not that well. But they don't need to do that well because they've got you know, they've got the banc or someone of that of that, And so I was. I was one of those artists who occasionally had a hit uh and occasionally had a couple of covers, but not a big sell.
00:30:48
Speaker 1: And and and who was subsidizing it was like Olivia Newton John who was.
00:30:54
Speaker 2: Managed Actually the main the main money maker in Gorney management was griff Richard.
00:31:00
Speaker 1: Ah Shadows Shadows, right, yeah.
00:31:04
Speaker 2: Then Olivia, and then Dahlia Larvae and for a while Cardia Glen Cardier, who I produced, I produced a track which I'm still very very proud of. He wrote a song, Oh my god, it's online and then my memory is going again. We wait, it will come back to me. Really good track. Uh when the fire dies uh uh. And I produced that. It's happened a couple of times when I've heard somebody and thought that's mine, that I got it. You know, I gotta, I gotta produce it. I gotta, I gotta do an arrangement and produce this guy and uh and and that went very well. They I don't listen to my stuff very much, but I occasionally come across things and that track still gets to me. So yeah, I so in fact, record record business wise, I think I I think I've been very fortunate, and I can certainly think of other people who originally I would would would could have signed with who if I had signed with today, I'd be broke.
00:32:19
Speaker 1: Fair enough I signed.
00:32:21
Speaker 2: I was fortunate that I actually signed with a group of people who were honest, and I still, fifty odd years later, worked with three of them.
00:32:32
Speaker 1: Wow.
00:32:34
Speaker 2: One in particular, Bran Good. I did the art, he does the commerce.
00:32:41
Speaker 1: Were there other labels or management groups you were speaking with.
00:32:47
Speaker 2: No, I mean I I when what when the call came? You know, first I was publishing and the recording for the contracts up and down that time. I wasn't thinking about anything. I mean, I no, I the business. It would just never have occurred to me. People never believed They say it, eh, god, it's bookshit.
00:33:08
Speaker 1: I never.
00:33:11
Speaker 2: Yet. Fame and fortune was not part of my plan, not because I had a plan, It's just that they never occurred to me. Yeah, I mean I decided at thirteen that my first decison was I was going to be a bass singer. I mean, I remember college took me for two one hundred Oxford Street, which was a jazz club, and a vibe slayer called Bill Losage and his band were playing, and it was one of those raised stages, and I remember I Holly was standing there, and I was thirteen, and I was quite sure. I didn't start growing really until later, so I was still quite small, and I'm looking up and Bill Sage had a girl singer with him. Excuse the arrogance that's going to follow here. I was thirteen years of age and I was looking up at her, and I had two thoughts separated by about two seconds. My first what was I can do that, immediately followed by I can do better than that. I'm certain news. I'm thirteen years of age, and I just wanted to make music. And the other part of it, the business and the money and all of the fame and well fames another thing. Uh it just it wasn't that I you know, I had a plan or I decided to do this or did I didn't make any of those decisions. I just wanted. I just wanted to be able to earn enough money so I didn't have to do a day job and I could just the musician. But anyway, yes, that was my That was my first thing is I wanted to be a I wanted to be a singer. And I mean one of my greatest influences, I suppose as a vocalist probably be the Holiday, would be at the top the Divine's era, of course, be Joe Williams, Melton May, Jimmy Read Hallan Wolf, Uh, Alan Wolf. I don't think I'll ever get away from Alen Wold, and of course before that, Fats Domino, who his timing is incredible, The end of every line is perfect. Mm hmm, uh'd something. And of course Louis Armstrong, the first jes singer whose timing and phrasing is an embarrassment to us. All yeah, it was still you know, it's kind of yea, I give in. It's like it's like that bark moment, which actually I took quite seriously, the bark moment. I remember buying, uh, the partitas for for for solo violin, and I put it on and it was actually had this conversation with myself, which was, what's the bloody point? How dare you call yourself the writer of music? What's the bloody point? BArch has done everything, there's nothing left to do. In the same way that Miles said of Louis Armstrong, Louis played. Louis plays everything, including the modern stuff. Now, Louis wasn't Miles, but I knew exactly what Miles meant.
00:36:37
Speaker 1: And you know what's fascinating about Louis too, I mean he did fall out of I was gonna say he never went out of side. He did fall out of style a bit because I guess during you know, like during the Bebop era, you know, Dizzy made fun of him a bit, but he always had an audience like Louis always had from beginning to end. He always had an audience, which is fascinating to me, you know.
00:36:57
Speaker 2: We also for me as a singer, his timing and phrasing yeah are remarkable.
00:37:04
Speaker 1: Yeah what he lacks in and maybe uh, you know, some people don't prefer the dam you know as well.
00:37:11
Speaker 2: I mean, well, along come, you know, I mean along comes very White. There hasn't been a bass baritone in the charts apart from Barry White. And what another underrated person as far as I'm concerned. What an amazing thing at what great arrangements?
00:37:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing arrangements, you know.
00:37:33
Speaker 2: So Louis. I mean I never had a problem with the voice. I mean, you know, one of the one of the one of the frankly I think unfair things was the fact that you know, he was always laughing and grinning and playing around, which didn't go down down too well as far as the civil rights and on the movement. But he was not an uncle Tom No, No, yeah, you know, not not at all. If you see some of his interviews, he is nobody's fool.
00:38:06
Speaker 1: No, And I know, like like like I was saying, dizzy Gillespie, like you know, would make fun of him openly for for a long time.
00:38:13
Speaker 2: Apologize, but easy to make fun of Louis Armstrong's a bit rich.
00:38:19
Speaker 1: Point.
00:38:21
Speaker 2: Go on, that's a bit rich.
00:38:22
Speaker 1: I'll let you say that they're were going.
00:38:25
Speaker 2: To go along the line of cab callaway on from onwards. I mean, come on, that's.
00:38:31
Speaker 1: True, that's true. It's a good point. It's a good point. Yeah, yeah, one last break and we'll be back with labby Siffrey. Throughout your career, I mean, have you always been listening to new music as it always been?
00:38:52
Speaker 2: Well, you mentioned the Beatles, and that was different. We in my little group. I remember Woody and I. I mean, Woody is the drama. The drummer played in several bands would be he toured with Sonny Stet Wow and uh. He and I we would wait for the next Beatle album because every album, about five of the albums, every album changed the world as as musicians were concerned. I remember he and I we were in Padi Circus and there was there was a very it was a very narrow small shop and it was a music It was a record shop and they had speakers on the outside and they played, and I remember we were standing and we were facing Piccadilly Circus and she's leaving home. Came on. I started crying, we're standing there where. Yeah, we're grown guys, you know, we're toughies. And I started crying, and I I purposely didn't look towards Woody because I was afraid that he would be crying too, and then embarrassed. But every but every every album was the world has changed. And when I I heard nineteen ninety nine, which I still haven't, I'll never get over it. Uh, my world changed again. Wow. I mean it was like the first time I heard Cecil Taylor my world, the first time I heard on Coleman, my world changed, the first time I heard Miles, My first time I heard Bird by the Way. The orchestra, the album with Burden and orchestra sometimes gets frowned upon. He doesn't give an inch on that album. I mean, he just does what he does.
00:40:37
Speaker 1: I think it's a great album.
00:40:39
Speaker 2: Yeah I do too, I've heard it being you know, oh he's sold out. I mean the same as when Bob Dylan. The same as Dylan put down his acoustic and picked up an electric guitar. Apparently he was a traitor and he's betrayed the folk movement. Yeah shit, catch up. But then again, the artist is one of the jobs and the responsibility of the artists. The artist should always be ahead of the audience. I mean, if you'd have asked the listeners of the world world in the nineteen fifties, how would you like popular music to go in the sixties and seventies, you wouldn't have had. Well, all guys with funny haircuts and cheeky chappi is not from New York or from London. How about the northern Liverpool? How about Liverpool? And they're influenced by motown and Little Richard rock and roll, and they kind of get later on into really knowing something about classical music. And for some odd reason they're also kind of link to what we used to call a British music hall. Yeah, no one would have thought of that. You know, the audience doesn't know what it wants of any artists. They think, but the audience don't know what they want until they get it. The artists, really good ones kind of always a pace ahead of the audience. Yeah, and that's what's supposed to happen.
00:42:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, Prince too, where were you when you heard nineteen ninty nine, because you weren't making music at that point, or at least releasing.
00:42:26
Speaker 2: I I was still making a lot of music, but I wasn't really it wasn't exactly like me and the music business fell out. It's just that I realized at one stage that I shouldn't be in the music business. I mean, I just I don't fit, and so I kind of kept kind of retiring. And also after I was probably possibly it must be love. No, it was before it must be love. It was sometimes in the second album when people started to recognize me when I went out, and after about three months, I knew I was never ever going to light it really or whatever. I just joined, I'm never going I was never going to enjoy that. I mean, I learned how to do it, but I, like I say, that was never part of my plan, and it never occurred to me that that was going to happen. I just thought I'd make music. Actually, I don't even think I even thought about being successful. I mean, it didn't occur to me that I have the business of being a successful musician. I just wanted to play music.
00:43:38
Speaker 1: Was there was there was never a feeling of I want to be successful just to show my parents that, you know, look.
00:43:43
Speaker 2: What I've done. No, never, never, no, never.
00:43:50
Speaker 1: Did your parents approve of your musical career?
00:43:57
Speaker 2: Of nineteen And i'mre in the hall of our house and there's me with one suitcase, my guitar case and a guitar and doing the I going to be a musician, and my father and my mother in the hall. My father is shouting, you're throwing your life away. I quote for the batim. My father is shouting, you're throwing your life away, and my mother is crying, and I and I march out of the house in a I am going to do this. And I walked down to the bottom of the road and suddenly realized I don't know where I'm going. So my advice to people who are going to make a dramatic exit from the family is at least make sure you've got bus fare. I mean, when when you say had you got a plan? That's that was? That was how good my plan was. And if it hadn't been for Brian, my favorite brother who's now dead. I walked down the hill, I got to the bottom the street, the main street, and I didn't have anywhere to go, and I don't have any money. I called Brian and he had a run room. Uh. And the kid schured and he said, well, you better stay with me. So I stayed with him until because he was he was just about to get married and he was going to move from London up to Steptford, I think, so I stayed with him. And yeah, he helped me get a job. I mean, I mean I didn't know anything about what should I do. I've got to get a job, I suppose, and he helped me get a home and then my first job in soul Ways uh in Beth mcgreen. I just liked boxes around, boxes of goods around, which is actually where a lot of the stuff that they had they did. They did toys, but they also were the distributor for super Fun, which I think was the Czechoslovakian record company. They're still around h But it was really good quality stuff, you know, proper orchestras and everything. But they were slightly cheaper recordings in the UK and other places, so they were affordable. There was a Jordie in there who was older than me, and I was this kid and he said to me, have you taken anything yet, what do you mean, He said, well, we don't get paid very much. In fact, I was earning eleven pounds a week and I was living on milk, read rolls and the apples. Yeah, that's what I was living on. And and he said, we've got all these records. Taste some. I said, it was kind of stealing. He said, yeah, yes, yes, come on, and it was. And the part of the stuff was I got Yanachek's Glagolithic Mass, which once again changed my world familiar. I got the Master Sounds. Where's Montgomery's Brothers? That's where I got it from the Master Sounds, and a couple of things. I think I only took three or four because it was kind of stealing, stealing, But but it was a very good thing that I had because that's where I discovered. That's that I mean, that was my inn to twentieth century orchestral stuff, and that was my inn to wars Montgomery.
00:47:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, those are two strands you can that I can hear through the music. So I can't hear Jimmy Reid as well, but I can hear those things. Yeah.
00:47:37
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's funny because before the first album, I'd met a writer a fiction called David Leslie, David Stewart Leslie, and I read one of his books. It was really good, and he was kind of going to be our manager. He asked me, let's write a musical. This was a long time before I got my deal, So he and I wrote a musical for children called The Magic Bed. He wrote the book and I wrote the song. Now this is before. This is long before i'd started work on anything like on the first album, which was several years later that I that I started on the on the first on those tracks. So in fact, by the time I got the deal, I'd already written probably half of the first album, but A with a Magic Bed, almost from the get go, Apart from the songs that I wrote in my bedroom before I had marched out of the house grandly telling them I'm going to be a musician. It was after that that I actually kind of got into writing and from the from that first batch, some of which are now bonus tracks on some of the re mastered stuff. They're really good song Wow, they're very mean. When I listened to them, I think, yeah, that's very mean, and they're really good and actually surprises me because I I can't really, It's sometimes difficult for me to remember that person. And for example, Woody who mentioned before the drummer, as I say to all this sunny stick in the bands that we had, would he remember things from our past that which is probably a blooding thing. I was going to say.
00:49:29
Speaker 1: You you've had you've kept relationships for a long time, so it's surprising me that you kind of can't. And you were in a partnership for I mean what nineteen to.
00:49:41
Speaker 2: Well, Peter, Peter and I were together for forty eight years, Ruth and I were together for nineteen years, and Peter Rout and I were in a manager Tina for sixteen years. I mean, so very lucky. All in all, I've had fifty two years of love, which is a wonderful thing they both did.
00:50:08
Speaker 1: No, I'm always you know, curious, forty eight years does it ever feel like enough?
00:50:20
Speaker 2: Love is never remard.
00:50:23
Speaker 1: Because you hear these things. You hear forty eight years, sometimes you hear fifty years. And when I was younger, I used to think, oh, wow, well, you know, it's like a lifetime. You know, should be so lucky, and then you start to get you know, I'm a little bit older. I sort of think forty eight, there's no time, you know, my god.
00:50:42
Speaker 2: You know, well we I mean if they were both alive, we'd all still be together. I mean, I mean people. One of the things that people get asked is what makes a good marriage. I mean, we were a family of three husbands, you know, when when when Route joined us, that question about what makes a good marriage? Uh. And one thing that happens in a good marriage is that you become a tea and Peter and I were a really good team. Uh. And then when Route joined us, we were a better team because anything that two of us couldn't do, the third could.
00:51:25
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:51:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's how it functioned. That's how we functioned, and we and it was very clear which what each of us was good at.
00:51:34
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:51:35
Speaker 2: Uh, that's how. That's what a good marriage done. You become a team or not necessarily you have to be married, but a good you know, the partners. I mean human beings, you know about apart from apart from some notable departures, human beings are I'm very pleased about evolution. I wish it would hurry up and do something about the human race. But human and I don't mind the fact that we are genetically programmed at all, but human beings in the main I can certainly think of quite a lot of exceptions, have a need to nurture and be nurtured. Unfortunately, more than half of the world doesn't accept that. But that is what human beings are. They are programmed, and hopefully as I grow up that is made even stronger by association, finding the right person or something. And I mean I've often thought that the answer to the human problem is that, you know, everything does start with the family. I mean, I'd spent my whole life trying to make one, and eventually, when there were three of us, I suddenly realized one day what I've been trying to do for all those years before that I actually done it. You know, talk about you talk about the forty eight years. Yeah, fortunately, I mean yeah, I mean there's that commitment, but it's the business of Okay, So you start with they the couple, and that's that family of two. You can have a family too, and then it widens, you know, usually with children, and then that's the family. And then as it goes on, you include your first cousin, yeah, oh, your nephew, and then you've gon include, and it goes like that until you get to a few friends. One of the things that I just couldn't understand that made me really annoyed when Facebook turned up, what do you mean you're all friends?
00:53:58
Speaker 1: You know?
00:53:58
Speaker 2: I mean, this isn't your friend. You don't understand, do you?
00:54:05
Speaker 1: No?
00:54:06
Speaker 2: No, this is not your friend.
00:54:09
Speaker 1: Do you want? I think you want that argument?
00:54:12
Speaker 2: And so you're so. And it occurs to me that if we can, only, if we can only widen the amount of people who we consider to be family, which means that you you have a responsibility to them and they have a responsibility to you. And the more that gets widened, that would be a solution to Are are ever ever annoying as a species? Hubris? Uh? You know we're all number one. All our nations are great nations. Even some of our towns and cities are great towns and cities. You know, there's a difference between great and powerful. Yeah, And if you've got homelessness and child poverty, you are not a great nation. No matter how wealthy you are, you have child poverty, you are not a great nation. And you know you can sit on your sofas and in comfort declare yourself to be a patriot and wave your little fat flag. You know, start, yes, start, you know, take life seriously. Unfortunately that is a rarity. Yeah, h yeah, which is probably why I write some of the things I write.
00:55:37
Speaker 1: Do do you consider your songs part of your family, part of your.
00:55:43
Speaker 2: They're my songs. I try and protect them as nice as I can, because well, I mean, there's that business once the end up trying to be useful. And also there's that there's I mean, there's there's the spin offs which aren't aren't intentional, but they just happened if you write a certain kind of song.
00:56:05
Speaker 1: I mean.
00:56:05
Speaker 2: One of the things about writing love songs, for example, is that you could say that it's part of the job. It's actually part of it. It's something that does happen if you do it well. And that is you find yourself saying things that loads and loads of people want to say but they can't. So by the things that you write, you provide them with something so they can say something. I mean, it's it's like an audio version of buying flowers for the love. You know. It's it's because you can't because you can, and most people, lots of people can't say these things and you can say it in song, So it's a kind of gift. And the other thing, of course, is that there are lots of things. I mean, it's always fascinated me that as a child, and I think it's still the same now. The advice given is don't talk about politics or religion. And I'm from very young. I mean, I spent eleven years in a monastery school. From very young. It seems to me, well, who benefits if we don't talk about politics or religion? Religion, by the way, is politics. Who benefits if we don't talk about the two things which are in fact the two things that govern most things on this planet apart from money. I know, I've written things that very very few people would even dare to write. You're not going to find very many people who've written a song like school Days, for example, or a Kiss in the mirror and so. But as far as I'm concerned, those things are important. And it also it annoys me because novelists can do it, novelists can address serious issues. But about I mean, I always loathed that business. And there's still critics, certainly in the sixties and seventies who actually said no, pop music's not supposed to last. What do you mean, Yeah, yeah, so you want us to write crap and you'll applauded.
00:58:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's supposed to be disconfection, just kind of for the moment. It's yeah, yeah, it's well, you certainly did the opposite. It's it's incredible how you how your music seems to only pick up steam as it as time goes on. I mean, you know, even just I really enjoyed the movie The Holdovers I was watching. I watched that on a plane maybe a year ago. There's There's there's your song, you know, the title track from Loving Line, and then you know, Blessed Telephone now as its whole whole life of its own amongst young people, and certainly these songs are standing the test of time. Yeah.
00:58:57
Speaker 2: Well, my first agent and I remember saying, I I don't know why I came up in conversation. He said to me, I think it was probably see a good song never dies. Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry. Now that's how Ericans as well. But I mean, the interesting thing is I've always very much believed in my work. I mean, uh, you know, sometimes you know, we can within the distant past I have thought to myself, Uh, this is a good one. People will catch up. But it didn't happen. I mean that was that was the mantra in the older, in the time, in the in the early days of of the Stones and the Beatles, as far as their management was concerned, you have to break in America.
00:59:38
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:59:39
Speaker 2: So it was only when uh dre uh yeah, uh took the baseline I'd written for on for I got there. In fact, they took quite a lot of the track. Yeah, it was more than basement, uh base. But but that was the beginning of a kind of America, part of American small boat of America, uh, discovering my work and then Candy and and everybody else. So it did happen. I wish I'd be a bit more savvy. I hope that young I hope that young musicians are rather more I don't know, it sounds kind of more knowledgeable about the business than I was. I mean, I was fortunate that I was in that regardless when I said, my first deals was with honest people who kind of you know, I know it gets this, it does this, and by the way, here's the accounting, this is what we're doing, and I hope young people starting starting out are more savvy than I was.
01:00:55
Speaker 1: Can before we go, can I ask you what the the story behind Blessed Telephone is.
01:01:01
Speaker 2: I've done a gig. I think I can't remember this Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, I can't remember. And on well, and I was in my hotel room and a certain person rang just to ask how did how did it? How did it go? And then on. At the end of the conversation, which lasted half an hour or more, I found myself sitting on the bed in my hotel room and picking up the guitar and writing the telephone Wow, I mean that people often ask how long does the song take? I've written? I mean, I mean it must be love. I remember we were we were living above the car showroom, and Peter had gone off to work, and the door closed, and I picked up the guitar and went to the sofa to work, and I started writing. And I read the first verse and the core and then the chorus, and it must be love. And it's the only time I've ever done this. I thought, you have to finish this one, so if we this is that one took well, it took a day to complete the song, but it then took a couple of weeks to actually sort out which what goes where. But I mean there are songs of mine that have taken several years to write. You know a lot of people, and there's people online who you know who give this advice because loads and loads and loads of people they get to a stage, they half in a song and can't go any further with it.
01:02:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you still play? Do you still play?
01:02:33
Speaker 2: I'm well, I mean, I'm you're you're you're seeing me in my studio? Oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm still I mean, I say it as a joke, but I'm not sure it is a joke. I don't be writing on my deathbit I expect.
01:02:44
Speaker 1: Wow. Wow, Well, it was really great to meet you. You know, real honor, real pleasure. Thanks taking the time.
01:02:53
Speaker 2: Find my pleasure.
01:02:54
Speaker 1: Indeed, in an episode description, you'll find a link to our favorite Labrysi free tracks, as well as some of the hip hop songs that have sampled his work. You sure to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast to see all of our video interviews, and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record pot. You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rohadse, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordana McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tolliday. Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmonds.
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Since getting his start in the late sixties, Leby Siffrey has had an unflinching commitment to writing exactly what he feels. The result was a debut album that announced a singular talent, a British singer songwriter who can move seamlessly from jazz inflected soul to tender love songs, all while addressing themes of love, identity, and justice that most pop artists wouldn't touch. Over the next decade, Siffrey built the catalog that defied category. Still, his nineteen seventy two song Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying became an international success, and his song something Inside So Strong, written years later in response Apartheid, also became a big hit, revealing the true scope of his artistry. And then there's Igattha from his nineteen seventy five album Remember My Song that would quietly become one of the most sampled songs in hip hop history, famously by doctor dre on Eminem's My Name Is. Yet, despite his influence, which instead of waning, has actually grown over generations, Sefrie has remained something of a hidden treasure, an artist whose integrity and independence kept him just outside of the mainstream On today's episode, I talked to Labby Siffree about growing up in fifties London and the music he discovered that set him on his particular artistic path. Labby also talks about how he wants music to enliven him and how much it annoys him when people tell him to chill, and he explains why, after decades in the music industry, he's never regretted choosing honesty over commercial compromise. This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations. Here's my conversation with Labby Siffrey Man. So I came to your music through hip hop. I was a big hip hop fan growing up and going looking for samples. I discovered your music a handful of times across a few different using a few different songs. And over the years, some of those songs that have discovered you through have kind of faded away in my in my consciousness, and and and what sort of been left is your your actual real catalog of songs that just every year grow in terms of how much I love them and how much I listened to them. And so it was a really bizarre way to discover a songwriter as delicate as as as your as your songwriting could be in a in a in a songwriting, sometimes it's as fierce in terms of social criticism as your songwriting can be. But uh, I'm really glad that I discovered you about twenty years ago, and and and and so glad that we're able to speak because, like I said, your music is it means a lot. I gotta say, though the British music scene confuses me. It seems like what confuses me is it seems like there were a bunch of different scenes. But I'm not sure that there was like a I just I'm not so familiar with it, I guess, being from the States. And so I was curious when you were growing up playing music before just before you got your contract to do your first album, your self titled album, where were you and what was going on musically?
00:03:43
Speaker 2: Uh? Well, Christmas nineteen sixty nine, Uh, I was in Amsterdam trying to see if I could well, just to try and see what would happen if I went to a different country, and I was one of the gigs I did was at the parodies. Uh I made I make of friends with a Czech classical guitarist and his lady. He and I we did the We did the Paradiso, which was a kind of a psychedelic club, and he was on stage and he played an excellent classical guitarist and there was, you know, kind of smashing your applause. Then I did my set and it was huge cheers and a huge amount of things. And I came off the stage and I said to him, what was that all about? He said, well, they were they were screening Porner behind you and h and and about. Well, like I said, that was in That was in December sixty nine, and that the and towards the end of that I got a call saying somebody wants to offer you a publishing deal and a record deal. I had a band called Safari up till that moment, and I was on electric guitar, my old Harmony, and for some reason I decided the amp was getting between me and the guitar, and I wanted the Turvius to be one just me and the guitar. So I sold my electric guitar on an acoustic and went off to Amsterdam. And I remember the first gig very unlike me, because I was not the most confident personal in the world at that time. Still probably not, and I asked if I could sit in, which I thought was very brave of me at the time, and I found myself on stage. It was a listening audience. It was the first folk club that I had ever been in. That's one of the things that always amuses me because in my categories, of which there are legions, one of them is folk. I don't know anything about as far as I'm concerned. Folk music is Robert Johnson. Yeah that I know that I know, But European folk music, I mean, but that's fine, But you know, but I not part of my learning. But it's I think it's probably because I, apart from that I do play occasionally electric guitar, I mainly am seen with an acoustic right. And you have to remember that reviewers and the business generally, I mean, the only way of describing music is to hear it. So people who write about it tend to write in comparisons. They say, that sounds a bit like that person and a bit like that person crossed with that person, and the whole system of saying what the music is just doesn't work. Like I say, the anywhere of describing music is to hear it, so which is why I get soul, flunk jazz was the other one, not independent whatever it is. Indeed, indeed, indeed I get about five.
00:07:20
Speaker 1: I was reading a Spin article about you, or is an interview with you from nineteen eighty eight, I want to say, and they said, you know, he's he started as an R and B artist in England. That's true, you know, But was that true?
00:07:35
Speaker 2: I started as a Jimmy Reid clone when I bought my first guitar, a four pound ten from Chapels and Ealing Broadway, if anybody knows that, I got home and I bought two books. In the UK at that time, everybody bought Bert Whedon's Player in a day. But I also got chet Atkins had a by guitar. And I remember sitting on my bed in my bedroom and I couldn't make head or tail either of I just couldn't. I just couldn't work anything out. But I already felt because from the moment I heard Let's Together by Jimmy Reed. I mean, he's known mainly for a big boss man, but but the moment I heard Let's Get Together, it was kind of like, I don't know the first time, I don't know, like and still still for me, the best work he ever did. Hey, Joe the Hendrix, say and all the first time when we when we were working at an is room jazz club in Drury Lane. Uh, the first time I heard James Brown, I mean, these these changes.
00:08:52
Speaker 1: For on record.
00:08:54
Speaker 2: It was on the jukebox there we were in the bar, you know, after after hours, when the audience had everybody gone away, and somebody put James Brown on and and it was kind of my immediate thought was, he's got it backwards. He's playing it backwards, because as a jazz person, I was used to not on the one, not on the one.
00:09:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a strange emphasis, you know.
00:09:25
Speaker 2: So I was immediately confute, confused, and I knew I really liked it. But but I mean, that was my first impression. He's playing it backwards. What's going on? So so yeah, but like I say, I'm sitting in my bedroom and I but I already felt Jimmy reed and so I looked that, you know, that shuffle and and it went from there, and then I I was, I was, I was sixteen, and then I put a band together with my I've got I've I had four brothers, the brother just above me, was five years older than me. He's he's a Sally responsible uh for a hell of a lot, because he had a really extensive record collection, but he only had the best wow in every genre. Yeah, when I look back, he had the people who really made every genre work.
00:10:30
Speaker 1: Is that your brother who's on the cover of Children of Children of Children?
00:10:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's holding me. I'm the baby.
00:10:37
Speaker 1: That's your brother on that.
00:10:39
Speaker 2: That's that's that's calling. And so I mean I could say, for example, that I'm an autodidact. Now, oh yeah, I taught myself bullshit. He had a huge record collection whom I like, I say, from Robert Johnson through to Cecil Taylor.
00:10:55
Speaker 1: How does how do? How do you want? Tomass a collection of of of really choice music from America at that time. Like was it easy to get American records?
00:11:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I mean all of us were. I was brought up with the Great American Songbook, and I was brought up with American jazz right the way, you know, passing through our Tatum to Cecil Taylor as piano monk Miles Mengus. I mean I started out as a Jimmy Reid clone, and I had a disturbing piece of information. His son clearly the kind of kid who walking down the school school corridor you trip up, because his bass player was his son, who was either nine or eleven on that track, and it was kind.
00:11:47
Speaker 1: Of how dare you wait, Jimmy, Jimmy Reid's.
00:11:51
Speaker 2: Son, and it was kind of how do you be so talented and be able to do that groove and on that track. I don't know whether it's true, but I was told that his son at the time of that recording was either nine or eleven.
00:12:05
Speaker 1: Nine, ten or eleven on Let's Get Together, which was made famous later by I think cant He did like a version that was a hit.
00:12:12
Speaker 2: And oh right, I mean that's that track still living, It's that track is a part Wow.
00:12:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a strange. It's a strange. It's a shuffle, as you said, but it's a He has a really like, kind of laconic kind of well well, I mean, I.
00:12:28
Speaker 2: Mean, Jimmy Reed. I always I also say this about women Morton the composer, although it's a little unfair on Morton, but it's pretty much Walton that they both have only one thing that they do, but both of them are fantastic. I mean, you know, I mean to get that shuffle right, I don't. I don't think I've heard anybody else be able to do it right. Yeah, I know.
00:12:52
Speaker 1: Keith Richards famously, you know, is a fan of that as well, and he tries, you know, he has his version of it, but it's not the same.
00:13:00
Speaker 2: No, which is one of the funny things about we were talking about genres. I mean, R and B now is kind of what we used to call lovers lovers rock ah and R and B then had muscle now if I mean, I I must say one of the things that well, I do find a little bit is that I keep being told to chill.
00:13:31
Speaker 1: What do you mean explain music?
00:13:32
Speaker 2: Well, I go, you know, you go from music to music and music and it's always recommended because it's music to chill too. I don't want to chill. I want to be enlivenment. You know, I don't. I don't. I don't want to chill.
00:13:48
Speaker 1: You know, I agree, I agree, And you know, people think about I love jazz as well, and people always think about jazz as music you put to cool out to chill, and it's like the first jazz is really it energizes you. You get anxious. Yeah, exactly, exactly exactly, you could get wired. Yeah, I get wired listening to jazz. You know, I get the most energy I could get from anything.
00:14:10
Speaker 2: Clearly, also, they've never heard of David Sampon uh, and they've clearly never heard Paul Gonzales twenty minutes solo chill sorry.
00:14:22
Speaker 1: Man mingus, chilling, mingus.
00:14:25
Speaker 2: I think Monk is still my favorite pianist. Jazz pianis so yeah. I mean I I like I say, it's it's uh. And of course, of course when he gets up the dance with Charlie Rowse or most most Underrated, I love that band that those those that that's a great band. And like I say, for me, my I was talking about. You know, I could say I was I taught myself, but in fact I was taught because Collie had such like I said, with her, he had the cream of of every genre that he bought. And so I was taught by every musician I'd ever heard. On that record collection. You don't do this kind of thing on your own, you know. I remember hearing there was a rock god being interviewed and there and he was asked what his influences were, and he said, Oh, I don't have any influences. It's just me. And I thought, well, you're either a liar or a genius, and I know you're not a genius. You know.
00:15:32
Speaker 1: Do you remember who that was?
00:15:34
Speaker 2: No, I don't remember. Well, it was the kind of person to very quickly forget. So, yeah, I mean I had so, I probably had thousands of teachers.
00:15:44
Speaker 1: Can you can you locate that Jimmy Reid blues shuffle thing and you're playing at all because it's funny. I don't know if I hear it.
00:15:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I I used to play it exactly as he played it. Now I play it differently. Before before, I mean before I had my first record deal, I'm publishing deal. On the same day, I had a band call Safari, and we did We did some wood stuff and I arranged several backrack how David's song cool. But because I come basically from the jazz tradition, I've never seen the point of doing a cover where the only thing that changes is the singer's voice. The whole idea is that you're supposed to try, at least to take the material and put you into it. If you've got somebody to put into it. It's to take you and make it your own, even if it's not very good your own. But you're supposed to do what you do. My good friend Woody who was the drum well, we all met, Woody, Bob and I we met. Our first real work was with a guy called Hamilton King's Blues Messengers, which I replaced the Kings. I replaced Ray Davis as the guitarist in that band. And what he was on drums, Bob was on his Hammond B three.
00:17:20
Speaker 1: And did you know Ray Davies at that time?
00:17:23
Speaker 2: No, no, I no, And it's actually it's only in the past ten years that I you know, it just came across Hamilton's band and in which the article said that Ray Davis was a guitarist, not Dave Davis, who was the lead guitarist in the.
00:17:40
Speaker 1: King Yeah, Ray a songwriter.
00:17:43
Speaker 2: Yes, sorry. I replaced him with Hamilton King's whose Messengers.
00:17:48
Speaker 1: I think was in that as well, the drummer of Fleetwood. At a certain point it.
00:17:53
Speaker 2: Might will have done. I mean Hamilton Hamilton influenced a few people still see him now another giant. Yeah. That The thing about me is that I don't I don't have one genre that I write in. But when I got my contract, my first contract, when they discovered that I could actually hold the stage on my own. I mean, I supported people like Chicago at the Olympia in Paris, me and my guitar and you walk on stage, nobody knows who the hell you are. I had learnt because I, you know, a lot of the gigs that I did once I had my contract were in what we call working men's clubs, and they were also in clubs where you know, you know, I remember one in whole huge club. These were places where people went to eat, drink and have a laugh. And I did that for quite a few years, and I had to learn how to walk on stage, sit down and make them be quiet from listen and I this is one of the reasons why I worry about about people kids starting out now. I don't know whether it's the same in the States, but you know, there's not many places they can what I would call learn their trade, which I think is a disservice to them. The first thing that seems to go when money is short is the arts is very annoying and stupid culturally, frankly, But when they realized that I could actually hold the stage on my own. I had years and years, about thirty odd years of forty years of performing like that. Although my albums are mainly with a band with guys and girls playing, I should think probably ninety percent of my performances over fifty odd years have been me solo on stage kind of four guitars and a keyboard. And well, the other thing is once we started recording, because I think the first thing we had, the first on the first album, and the first song that we recall a turntable hit. It was a radio hit, and every said it's always going to get this is going to chart. There's a song called make my Day. I find I kind of got channeled into something that I was quite happy with because I could do it. It was obviously me. But jazz and funk and blues were not part of that deal. So they may occasionally slip in over those years. But and I'm no, I mean, that's not a fault. You know, it's not that that wasn't anything about the music business saying oh you can only do this, But that's just the general trend of how it went.
00:21:06
Speaker 1: But you know, you think about your first three albums, the first one your title it's you with the guitar looking very singer songwritery or you know, so maybe I could see how they could think folk and then the singer, and then the singer and the song is your second album, and then you know, the third album is again it's you with the guitar on the cover. So I mean, I guess I see why the image might People might see the image and think, oh, well, you know it's folks, and you know, you got your cat Stevens around and your who are you know, whoever else, and so it fit a niche.
00:21:37
Speaker 2: Well, that was also the time when you you were asked could you please smile?
00:21:45
Speaker 1: And how did you take that?
00:21:49
Speaker 2: Well? I kind of, I mean I kind of thought it's not my job to get in their way. They know what they're doing. So it took me a while. I mean, there was some difficulty in so far as I could only talk music, and the music business is not filled with people who know anything about music.
00:22:06
Speaker 1: There are people, but it's not filled with people.
00:22:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's not filled with them. And I happened to be at the situation where I could only talk music. So it was a matter of me explaining and I and I also got into all show me a while to get out of believing that people who were successful in the music business knew about music.
00:22:30
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, let's just say you signed with with with Pie Records. Who I mean we were just talking about Ray Davies. I mean, the Kinks were signed a Pie and you know, they did not get Ray and Davies did not get along with the label sort of felt that they had more of a pop sensibility and weren't weren't interested in his experimenting, you know, in terms of sound and song.
00:22:51
Speaker 2: And I have to say I did not get on with it.
00:22:54
Speaker 1: Right you you allowed it to sort of.
00:22:59
Speaker 2: Well, I take responsibility. I mean, I take responsibility for my career.
00:23:04
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:23:04
Speaker 2: I mean I can bitch if I wanted to, but it would be misplaced.
00:23:08
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:23:09
Speaker 2: In retrospect, I've been given a great deal of freedom in so far as at the time. And I knew this very early on. At the time, I was not mainstream.
00:23:22
Speaker 1: It seems like you could have been, though, I mean, like even just crying, laughing, loving line not getting the US release. You know, it's like you know when you think like on Warner Repriez, you know, like Randy Newman's getting released and you know who else, you know, some of the Beach Boys more experiment Van Dyke Parks right like, and you're like, there would have been there could have been a market for in the US, you know.
00:23:50
Speaker 2: I got to say, Vandidike Parks would have been a bit difficult for the I mean would.
00:23:55
Speaker 1: Have It's difficult for everyone over here too.
00:23:58
Speaker 2: It just wonderful. And I'm so pleased that Van Dyke Parks met Brian Wilson. So pleased because I loathed the surfing stuff. I just thought, I just thought, well, here's another gang of white guys, you know, stealing chut Berry's music and not doing it very well with craping. Uh. And then of course, if it hadn't been for Parks, my very favorite, I mean it. I didn't like the Beach Boys until I discovered the Sunflower album and then there was backs on that and I thought, ah, this is what he really does. Uh. And then still my favorite of all the things he's done is this is the song surfs up that album is there's a there's a line in that which ends with the words of Children's Song, at which point, on occasion I find crying. Uh, it's it's one of my all time favorite tracks, you know, along with five Union other's favorite track, but of the Beach choice of his work. And then of course they did he and I passed in when he kind of vaguely left the Beach Boys. After recovering, he and Van Dyke Parks did a really good album together. But I'm so pleased that they met.
00:25:34
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more from labby Siffrey after the break. What else were you listening to at the time, Because I mean, your music really is one of one. It doesn't sound much like anything else. What were you taking in at the time of early and you like Steps in the early seventies, at the time of seventy seventy one seventy two, as you're making those first few records.
00:25:59
Speaker 2: What was I listening to? Ah? Well, one of the things was I felt very lonely throughout my career because I couldn't find people in the UK who were writing anything that seemed related to what I was writing, very much as far as subject matter is concerned, but also stylistically. And it was not until I found this is early seventies, until I found the kind of I suppose the triumvirate of Brandy Newman, Harry Nilsen and Laura and Iro. Wow, it's those three, I mean New York Tenanderberry. Really really it should be one of the things that if you haven't heard this, I'm going to lock you in a room and handcuff you and you're going to listen to this. And it was only when I discovered those three that I thought that I felt I'd found a home. Wow, that I found people who were kind of doing what I was trying to do. So, I mean that was that was that was a great comfort to me because I did feel in the UK very alone stylistically.
00:27:27
Speaker 1: Uh, what was it you felt you were trying to do that they were doing as well.
00:27:33
Speaker 2: Funny, it's not. This is one of the reasons why I you know, you know the business about me having a hard time in music business. I was very fortunate because my first manager, who's really a real one, was was guy called Peter Gormley, who in fact was also the head of Festival International, which was the who I signed with. And uh, I actually think they looked after me in retrospect because I was never a really huge seller, you know, commercially, I was not hugely commercially successful, and at one stage they thought that maybe they put me with certain particular writers who who were making more commercially viable stuff, that it might rub off on me. Of course, what's the foolish thing to think. But it made me examine what I was trying to do. I started asking myself what am I trying to do? And I remember, rather I won't mention, you know, but this this is a guy, you know, multiple hits and written for outloads and loads of people. And I asked myself the question of well, what am I trying to do? And I came to the conclusion. My first conclusion was, well, they're trying to write a hit and I'm trying to write a good song. Immediately after which I thought, what the hell do you mean by a good song? If five million people or if a million people are emotionally moved by a track that you think is rubbish, hang on, that's a good song. What do you mean by a good song? So which is my com was my conversation with myself. You know, that's just lazy, siffy, you know, forget about good song. And I finally came to the conclusion that the problem was not a problem as far as I was concerned, was that I wanted to write useful songs, societally useful, said useful songs. That was the conclusion I came. I mean, other people might come to completely different conclusion, but that's what I realized I was trying to do, which was one of the reasons I think they they they were kind of patient because I was bringing in huge amounts of money. And of course I was one of those people then who and just about every company has that, they have one or two people who bring in all the money, and then they can take other artists who they think can do well but not that well. But they don't need to do that well because they've got you know, they've got the banc or someone of that of that, And so I was. I was one of those artists who occasionally had a hit uh and occasionally had a couple of covers, but not a big sell.
00:30:48
Speaker 1: And and and who was subsidizing it was like Olivia Newton John who was.
00:30:54
Speaker 2: Managed Actually the main the main money maker in Gorney management was griff Richard.
00:31:00
Speaker 1: Ah Shadows Shadows, right, yeah.
00:31:04
Speaker 2: Then Olivia, and then Dahlia Larvae and for a while Cardia Glen Cardier, who I produced, I produced a track which I'm still very very proud of. He wrote a song, Oh my god, it's online and then my memory is going again. We wait, it will come back to me. Really good track. Uh when the fire dies uh uh. And I produced that. It's happened a couple of times when I've heard somebody and thought that's mine, that I got it. You know, I gotta, I gotta produce it. I gotta, I gotta do an arrangement and produce this guy and uh and and that went very well. They I don't listen to my stuff very much, but I occasionally come across things and that track still gets to me. So yeah, I so in fact, record record business wise, I think I I think I've been very fortunate, and I can certainly think of other people who originally I would would would could have signed with who if I had signed with today, I'd be broke.
00:32:19
Speaker 1: Fair enough I signed.
00:32:21
Speaker 2: I was fortunate that I actually signed with a group of people who were honest, and I still, fifty odd years later, worked with three of them.
00:32:32
Speaker 1: Wow.
00:32:34
Speaker 2: One in particular, Bran Good. I did the art, he does the commerce.
00:32:41
Speaker 1: Were there other labels or management groups you were speaking with.
00:32:47
Speaker 2: No, I mean I I when what when the call came? You know, first I was publishing and the recording for the contracts up and down that time. I wasn't thinking about anything. I mean, I no, I the business. It would just never have occurred to me. People never believed They say it, eh, god, it's bookshit.
00:33:08
Speaker 1: I never.
00:33:11
Speaker 2: Yet. Fame and fortune was not part of my plan, not because I had a plan, It's just that they never occurred to me. Yeah, I mean I decided at thirteen that my first decison was I was going to be a bass singer. I mean, I remember college took me for two one hundred Oxford Street, which was a jazz club, and a vibe slayer called Bill Losage and his band were playing, and it was one of those raised stages, and I remember I Holly was standing there, and I was thirteen, and I was quite sure. I didn't start growing really until later, so I was still quite small, and I'm looking up and Bill Sage had a girl singer with him. Excuse the arrogance that's going to follow here. I was thirteen years of age and I was looking up at her, and I had two thoughts separated by about two seconds. My first what was I can do that, immediately followed by I can do better than that. I'm certain news. I'm thirteen years of age, and I just wanted to make music. And the other part of it, the business and the money and all of the fame and well fames another thing. Uh it just it wasn't that I you know, I had a plan or I decided to do this or did I didn't make any of those decisions. I just wanted. I just wanted to be able to earn enough money so I didn't have to do a day job and I could just the musician. But anyway, yes, that was my That was my first thing is I wanted to be a I wanted to be a singer. And I mean one of my greatest influences, I suppose as a vocalist probably be the Holiday, would be at the top the Divine's era, of course, be Joe Williams, Melton May, Jimmy Read Hallan Wolf, Uh, Alan Wolf. I don't think I'll ever get away from Alen Wold, and of course before that, Fats Domino, who his timing is incredible, The end of every line is perfect. Mm hmm, uh'd something. And of course Louis Armstrong, the first jes singer whose timing and phrasing is an embarrassment to us. All yeah, it was still you know, it's kind of yea, I give in. It's like it's like that bark moment, which actually I took quite seriously, the bark moment. I remember buying, uh, the partitas for for for solo violin, and I put it on and it was actually had this conversation with myself, which was, what's the bloody point? How dare you call yourself the writer of music? What's the bloody point? BArch has done everything, there's nothing left to do. In the same way that Miles said of Louis Armstrong, Louis played. Louis plays everything, including the modern stuff. Now, Louis wasn't Miles, but I knew exactly what Miles meant.
00:36:37
Speaker 1: And you know what's fascinating about Louis too, I mean he did fall out of I was gonna say he never went out of side. He did fall out of style a bit because I guess during you know, like during the Bebop era, you know, Dizzy made fun of him a bit, but he always had an audience like Louis always had from beginning to end. He always had an audience, which is fascinating to me, you know.
00:36:57
Speaker 2: We also for me as a singer, his timing and phrasing yeah are remarkable.
00:37:04
Speaker 1: Yeah what he lacks in and maybe uh, you know, some people don't prefer the dam you know as well.
00:37:11
Speaker 2: I mean, well, along come, you know, I mean along comes very White. There hasn't been a bass baritone in the charts apart from Barry White. And what another underrated person as far as I'm concerned. What an amazing thing at what great arrangements?
00:37:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing arrangements, you know.
00:37:33
Speaker 2: So Louis. I mean I never had a problem with the voice. I mean, you know, one of the one of the one of the frankly I think unfair things was the fact that you know, he was always laughing and grinning and playing around, which didn't go down down too well as far as the civil rights and on the movement. But he was not an uncle Tom No, No, yeah, you know, not not at all. If you see some of his interviews, he is nobody's fool.
00:38:06
Speaker 1: No, And I know, like like like I was saying, dizzy Gillespie, like you know, would make fun of him openly for for a long time.
00:38:13
Speaker 2: Apologize, but easy to make fun of Louis Armstrong's a bit rich.
00:38:19
Speaker 1: Point.
00:38:21
Speaker 2: Go on, that's a bit rich.
00:38:22
Speaker 1: I'll let you say that they're were going.
00:38:25
Speaker 2: To go along the line of cab callaway on from onwards. I mean, come on, that's.
00:38:31
Speaker 1: True, that's true. It's a good point. It's a good point. Yeah, yeah, one last break and we'll be back with labby Siffrey. Throughout your career, I mean, have you always been listening to new music as it always been?
00:38:52
Speaker 2: Well, you mentioned the Beatles, and that was different. We in my little group. I remember Woody and I. I mean, Woody is the drama. The drummer played in several bands would be he toured with Sonny Stet Wow and uh. He and I we would wait for the next Beatle album because every album, about five of the albums, every album changed the world as as musicians were concerned. I remember he and I we were in Padi Circus and there was there was a very it was a very narrow small shop and it was a music It was a record shop and they had speakers on the outside and they played, and I remember we were standing and we were facing Piccadilly Circus and she's leaving home. Came on. I started crying, we're standing there where. Yeah, we're grown guys, you know, we're toughies. And I started crying, and I I purposely didn't look towards Woody because I was afraid that he would be crying too, and then embarrassed. But every but every every album was the world has changed. And when I I heard nineteen ninety nine, which I still haven't, I'll never get over it. Uh, my world changed again. Wow. I mean it was like the first time I heard Cecil Taylor my world, the first time I heard on Coleman, my world changed, the first time I heard Miles, My first time I heard Bird by the Way. The orchestra, the album with Burden and orchestra sometimes gets frowned upon. He doesn't give an inch on that album. I mean, he just does what he does.
00:40:37
Speaker 1: I think it's a great album.
00:40:39
Speaker 2: Yeah I do too, I've heard it being you know, oh he's sold out. I mean the same as when Bob Dylan. The same as Dylan put down his acoustic and picked up an electric guitar. Apparently he was a traitor and he's betrayed the folk movement. Yeah shit, catch up. But then again, the artist is one of the jobs and the responsibility of the artists. The artist should always be ahead of the audience. I mean, if you'd have asked the listeners of the world world in the nineteen fifties, how would you like popular music to go in the sixties and seventies, you wouldn't have had. Well, all guys with funny haircuts and cheeky chappi is not from New York or from London. How about the northern Liverpool? How about Liverpool? And they're influenced by motown and Little Richard rock and roll, and they kind of get later on into really knowing something about classical music. And for some odd reason they're also kind of link to what we used to call a British music hall. Yeah, no one would have thought of that. You know, the audience doesn't know what it wants of any artists. They think, but the audience don't know what they want until they get it. The artists, really good ones kind of always a pace ahead of the audience. Yeah, and that's what's supposed to happen.
00:42:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, Prince too, where were you when you heard nineteen ninty nine, because you weren't making music at that point, or at least releasing.
00:42:26
Speaker 2: I I was still making a lot of music, but I wasn't really it wasn't exactly like me and the music business fell out. It's just that I realized at one stage that I shouldn't be in the music business. I mean, I just I don't fit, and so I kind of kept kind of retiring. And also after I was probably possibly it must be love. No, it was before it must be love. It was sometimes in the second album when people started to recognize me when I went out, and after about three months, I knew I was never ever going to light it really or whatever. I just joined, I'm never going I was never going to enjoy that. I mean, I learned how to do it, but I, like I say, that was never part of my plan, and it never occurred to me that that was going to happen. I just thought I'd make music. Actually, I don't even think I even thought about being successful. I mean, it didn't occur to me that I have the business of being a successful musician. I just wanted to play music.
00:43:38
Speaker 1: Was there was there was never a feeling of I want to be successful just to show my parents that, you know, look.
00:43:43
Speaker 2: What I've done. No, never, never, no, never.
00:43:50
Speaker 1: Did your parents approve of your musical career?
00:43:57
Speaker 2: Of nineteen And i'mre in the hall of our house and there's me with one suitcase, my guitar case and a guitar and doing the I going to be a musician, and my father and my mother in the hall. My father is shouting, you're throwing your life away. I quote for the batim. My father is shouting, you're throwing your life away, and my mother is crying, and I and I march out of the house in a I am going to do this. And I walked down to the bottom of the road and suddenly realized I don't know where I'm going. So my advice to people who are going to make a dramatic exit from the family is at least make sure you've got bus fare. I mean, when when you say had you got a plan? That's that was? That was how good my plan was. And if it hadn't been for Brian, my favorite brother who's now dead. I walked down the hill, I got to the bottom the street, the main street, and I didn't have anywhere to go, and I don't have any money. I called Brian and he had a run room. Uh. And the kid schured and he said, well, you better stay with me. So I stayed with him until because he was he was just about to get married and he was going to move from London up to Steptford, I think, so I stayed with him. And yeah, he helped me get a job. I mean, I mean I didn't know anything about what should I do. I've got to get a job, I suppose, and he helped me get a home and then my first job in soul Ways uh in Beth mcgreen. I just liked boxes around, boxes of goods around, which is actually where a lot of the stuff that they had they did. They did toys, but they also were the distributor for super Fun, which I think was the Czechoslovakian record company. They're still around h But it was really good quality stuff, you know, proper orchestras and everything. But they were slightly cheaper recordings in the UK and other places, so they were affordable. There was a Jordie in there who was older than me, and I was this kid and he said to me, have you taken anything yet, what do you mean, He said, well, we don't get paid very much. In fact, I was earning eleven pounds a week and I was living on milk, read rolls and the apples. Yeah, that's what I was living on. And and he said, we've got all these records. Taste some. I said, it was kind of stealing. He said, yeah, yes, yes, come on, and it was. And the part of the stuff was I got Yanachek's Glagolithic Mass, which once again changed my world familiar. I got the Master Sounds. Where's Montgomery's Brothers? That's where I got it from the Master Sounds, and a couple of things. I think I only took three or four because it was kind of stealing, stealing, But but it was a very good thing that I had because that's where I discovered. That's that I mean, that was my inn to twentieth century orchestral stuff, and that was my inn to wars Montgomery.
00:47:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, those are two strands you can that I can hear through the music. So I can't hear Jimmy Reid as well, but I can hear those things. Yeah.
00:47:37
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's funny because before the first album, I'd met a writer a fiction called David Leslie, David Stewart Leslie, and I read one of his books. It was really good, and he was kind of going to be our manager. He asked me, let's write a musical. This was a long time before I got my deal, So he and I wrote a musical for children called The Magic Bed. He wrote the book and I wrote the song. Now this is before. This is long before i'd started work on anything like on the first album, which was several years later that I that I started on the on the first on those tracks. So in fact, by the time I got the deal, I'd already written probably half of the first album, but A with a Magic Bed, almost from the get go, Apart from the songs that I wrote in my bedroom before I had marched out of the house grandly telling them I'm going to be a musician. It was after that that I actually kind of got into writing and from the from that first batch, some of which are now bonus tracks on some of the re mastered stuff. They're really good song Wow, they're very mean. When I listened to them, I think, yeah, that's very mean, and they're really good and actually surprises me because I I can't really, It's sometimes difficult for me to remember that person. And for example, Woody who mentioned before the drummer, as I say to all this sunny stick in the bands that we had, would he remember things from our past that which is probably a blooding thing. I was going to say.
00:49:29
Speaker 1: You you've had you've kept relationships for a long time, so it's surprising me that you kind of can't. And you were in a partnership for I mean what nineteen to.
00:49:41
Speaker 2: Well, Peter, Peter and I were together for forty eight years, Ruth and I were together for nineteen years, and Peter Rout and I were in a manager Tina for sixteen years. I mean, so very lucky. All in all, I've had fifty two years of love, which is a wonderful thing they both did.
00:50:08
Speaker 1: No, I'm always you know, curious, forty eight years does it ever feel like enough?
00:50:20
Speaker 2: Love is never remard.
00:50:23
Speaker 1: Because you hear these things. You hear forty eight years, sometimes you hear fifty years. And when I was younger, I used to think, oh, wow, well, you know, it's like a lifetime. You know, should be so lucky, and then you start to get you know, I'm a little bit older. I sort of think forty eight, there's no time, you know, my god.
00:50:42
Speaker 2: You know, well we I mean if they were both alive, we'd all still be together. I mean, I mean people. One of the things that people get asked is what makes a good marriage. I mean, we were a family of three husbands, you know, when when when Route joined us, that question about what makes a good marriage? Uh. And one thing that happens in a good marriage is that you become a tea and Peter and I were a really good team. Uh. And then when Route joined us, we were a better team because anything that two of us couldn't do, the third could.
00:51:25
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:51:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's how it functioned. That's how we functioned, and we and it was very clear which what each of us was good at.
00:51:34
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:51:35
Speaker 2: Uh, that's how. That's what a good marriage done. You become a team or not necessarily you have to be married, but a good you know, the partners. I mean human beings, you know about apart from apart from some notable departures, human beings are I'm very pleased about evolution. I wish it would hurry up and do something about the human race. But human and I don't mind the fact that we are genetically programmed at all, but human beings in the main I can certainly think of quite a lot of exceptions, have a need to nurture and be nurtured. Unfortunately, more than half of the world doesn't accept that. But that is what human beings are. They are programmed, and hopefully as I grow up that is made even stronger by association, finding the right person or something. And I mean I've often thought that the answer to the human problem is that, you know, everything does start with the family. I mean, I'd spent my whole life trying to make one, and eventually, when there were three of us, I suddenly realized one day what I've been trying to do for all those years before that I actually done it. You know, talk about you talk about the forty eight years. Yeah, fortunately, I mean yeah, I mean there's that commitment, but it's the business of Okay, So you start with they the couple, and that's that family of two. You can have a family too, and then it widens, you know, usually with children, and then that's the family. And then as it goes on, you include your first cousin, yeah, oh, your nephew, and then you've gon include, and it goes like that until you get to a few friends. One of the things that I just couldn't understand that made me really annoyed when Facebook turned up, what do you mean you're all friends?
00:53:58
Speaker 1: You know?
00:53:58
Speaker 2: I mean, this isn't your friend. You don't understand, do you?
00:54:05
Speaker 1: No?
00:54:06
Speaker 2: No, this is not your friend.
00:54:09
Speaker 1: Do you want? I think you want that argument?
00:54:12
Speaker 2: And so you're so. And it occurs to me that if we can, only, if we can only widen the amount of people who we consider to be family, which means that you you have a responsibility to them and they have a responsibility to you. And the more that gets widened, that would be a solution to Are are ever ever annoying as a species? Hubris? Uh? You know we're all number one. All our nations are great nations. Even some of our towns and cities are great towns and cities. You know, there's a difference between great and powerful. Yeah, And if you've got homelessness and child poverty, you are not a great nation. No matter how wealthy you are, you have child poverty, you are not a great nation. And you know you can sit on your sofas and in comfort declare yourself to be a patriot and wave your little fat flag. You know, start, yes, start, you know, take life seriously. Unfortunately that is a rarity. Yeah, h yeah, which is probably why I write some of the things I write.
00:55:37
Speaker 1: Do do you consider your songs part of your family, part of your.
00:55:43
Speaker 2: They're my songs. I try and protect them as nice as I can, because well, I mean, there's that business once the end up trying to be useful. And also there's that there's I mean, there's there's the spin offs which aren't aren't intentional, but they just happened if you write a certain kind of song.
00:56:05
Speaker 1: I mean.
00:56:05
Speaker 2: One of the things about writing love songs, for example, is that you could say that it's part of the job. It's actually part of it. It's something that does happen if you do it well. And that is you find yourself saying things that loads and loads of people want to say but they can't. So by the things that you write, you provide them with something so they can say something. I mean, it's it's like an audio version of buying flowers for the love. You know. It's it's because you can't because you can, and most people, lots of people can't say these things and you can say it in song, So it's a kind of gift. And the other thing, of course, is that there are lots of things. I mean, it's always fascinated me that as a child, and I think it's still the same now. The advice given is don't talk about politics or religion. And I'm from very young. I mean, I spent eleven years in a monastery school. From very young. It seems to me, well, who benefits if we don't talk about politics or religion? Religion, by the way, is politics. Who benefits if we don't talk about the two things which are in fact the two things that govern most things on this planet apart from money. I know, I've written things that very very few people would even dare to write. You're not going to find very many people who've written a song like school Days, for example, or a Kiss in the mirror and so. But as far as I'm concerned, those things are important. And it also it annoys me because novelists can do it, novelists can address serious issues. But about I mean, I always loathed that business. And there's still critics, certainly in the sixties and seventies who actually said no, pop music's not supposed to last. What do you mean, Yeah, yeah, so you want us to write crap and you'll applauded.
00:58:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's supposed to be disconfection, just kind of for the moment. It's yeah, yeah, it's well, you certainly did the opposite. It's it's incredible how you how your music seems to only pick up steam as it as time goes on. I mean, you know, even just I really enjoyed the movie The Holdovers I was watching. I watched that on a plane maybe a year ago. There's There's there's your song, you know, the title track from Loving Line, and then you know, Blessed Telephone now as its whole whole life of its own amongst young people, and certainly these songs are standing the test of time. Yeah.
00:58:57
Speaker 2: Well, my first agent and I remember saying, I I don't know why I came up in conversation. He said to me, I think it was probably see a good song never dies. Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry. Now that's how Ericans as well. But I mean, the interesting thing is I've always very much believed in my work. I mean, uh, you know, sometimes you know, we can within the distant past I have thought to myself, Uh, this is a good one. People will catch up. But it didn't happen. I mean that was that was the mantra in the older, in the time, in the in the early days of of the Stones and the Beatles, as far as their management was concerned, you have to break in America.
00:59:38
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:59:39
Speaker 2: So it was only when uh dre uh yeah, uh took the baseline I'd written for on for I got there. In fact, they took quite a lot of the track. Yeah, it was more than basement, uh base. But but that was the beginning of a kind of America, part of American small boat of America, uh, discovering my work and then Candy and and everybody else. So it did happen. I wish I'd be a bit more savvy. I hope that young I hope that young musicians are rather more I don't know, it sounds kind of more knowledgeable about the business than I was. I mean, I was fortunate that I was in that regardless when I said, my first deals was with honest people who kind of you know, I know it gets this, it does this, and by the way, here's the accounting, this is what we're doing, and I hope young people starting starting out are more savvy than I was.
01:00:55
Speaker 1: Can before we go, can I ask you what the the story behind Blessed Telephone is.
01:01:01
Speaker 2: I've done a gig. I think I can't remember this Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, I can't remember. And on well, and I was in my hotel room and a certain person rang just to ask how did how did it? How did it go? And then on. At the end of the conversation, which lasted half an hour or more, I found myself sitting on the bed in my hotel room and picking up the guitar and writing the telephone Wow, I mean that people often ask how long does the song take? I've written? I mean, I mean it must be love. I remember we were we were living above the car showroom, and Peter had gone off to work, and the door closed, and I picked up the guitar and went to the sofa to work, and I started writing. And I read the first verse and the core and then the chorus, and it must be love. And it's the only time I've ever done this. I thought, you have to finish this one, so if we this is that one took well, it took a day to complete the song, but it then took a couple of weeks to actually sort out which what goes where. But I mean there are songs of mine that have taken several years to write. You know a lot of people, and there's people online who you know who give this advice because loads and loads and loads of people they get to a stage, they half in a song and can't go any further with it.
01:02:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you still play? Do you still play?
01:02:33
Speaker 2: I'm well, I mean, I'm you're you're you're seeing me in my studio? Oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm still I mean, I say it as a joke, but I'm not sure it is a joke. I don't be writing on my deathbit I expect.
01:02:44
Speaker 1: Wow. Wow, Well, it was really great to meet you. You know, real honor, real pleasure. Thanks taking the time.
01:02:53
Speaker 2: Find my pleasure.
01:02:54
Speaker 1: Indeed, in an episode description, you'll find a link to our favorite Labrysi free tracks, as well as some of the hip hop songs that have sampled his work. You sure to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast to see all of our video interviews, and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record pot. You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rohadse, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordana McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tolliday. Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmonds.
