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0:37

This episode of Rock on Tours was

0:39

recorded before the passing of Shane McGowan.

0:42

Hello, Gary. Hello, Guy. How are you?

0:44

Yeah, a little bit chilly today. The weather's turned,

0:46

hasn't it? You know, so you can see I'm

0:48

wearing a sweater. I can see. It's

0:51

a very nice sleeveless sweater. I like those. It's

0:53

all my arms. My arms are not too bad.

0:55

It's my chest these days, you know. Oh,

0:58

I know your chest. Well, you

1:00

think it's a bit chilly where you are. I'm up on

1:02

the South Downs with my village cut

1:04

off by flooding. Oh, really? Yeah,

1:07

only at one end. But

1:10

flood actually worked, I think, probably with one

1:12

of our… Exactly. Which is

1:14

exactly why I said it, which is a

1:16

great little segue there. Steve

1:18

Lillywhite, one of the great producers.

1:20

Yes. And although he didn't

1:22

actually produce Here Comes the Flood because it

1:25

was on the first album, he did do

1:27

the third album by Peter Gabriel. Okay, okay,

1:29

okay. So, no, I mean, Steve

1:31

Lillywhite is probably, I'd say

1:34

to indie art music, what Trevor

1:36

Horn is to pop music, really,

1:38

isn't he? Absolutely, yeah. He's basically

1:40

defined New Wave. I mean, it

1:42

starts with, you know, he

1:44

got Ultravox signed. I know. I

1:46

saw that. With their demos. Amazing.

1:49

Ultravox with an exclamation mark. That's how they… That's

1:52

right. That's when they were going to be a musical. Yeah,

1:55

I think they got that. They stole that from

1:57

Neue, or one of those German rock bands. bands

2:00

you know who also had the

2:02

exclamation mark. My Bill Frindle moment

2:04

is obviously... Come on, yeah, this

2:07

is gonna be a long one I think. Well,

2:09

I'm not gonna go through the lot because you

2:11

know I've edited it slightly. But

2:14

I mean he's produced XTC,

2:16

Susan the Banshee, obviously we

2:18

said Ultra Box, Simple Minds,

2:20

Talking Heads, U2, Rolling Stones,

2:23

I've got Morrissey, Peter Gabriel, he has six

2:25

Grammy Awards. And he was a dear friend

2:27

of mine, I worked with him a lot.

2:30

Back in the day and some

2:32

of my favorite musical moments actually are from you

2:34

know working with Steve which

2:36

was with Kirsty McCall and it was with

2:38

him that I played on the duet that

2:41

Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop did. But

2:44

you see the thing about Steve is he sort of

2:46

he was there at the beginning of some of those

2:48

sounds you know with people like Susan. What that album?

2:51

I mean the screen. The

2:53

screen yeah which is kind of the

2:55

birth of Postpunk. I was listening to

2:57

Hong Kong Garden yesterday. It's brilliant. Well

2:59

it's the guitarist isn't he who's John

3:01

John McGarrick. No, no, wasn't it Mickey?

3:03

Oh no it wasn't it was McKay.

3:05

McKay. McKay.

3:09

I've never known how to pronounce

3:11

that name. And of course Kenny

3:13

Morris on drums. I mean that

3:15

kind of sound that he was

3:17

he was creating with M2 led

3:19

on to U2 obviously and well

3:21

not you but U2. That's right

3:23

but also interestingly enough

3:26

the famous 80s

3:28

drum sound which is kind of some reason

3:30

has got attached to Shoe Padgem and Phil

3:32

Collins but that actually comes from the Peter

3:34

Gabriel 3 album which Steve

3:36

produced. Yeah but there's particularly the

3:38

track Intruder. Intruder yeah. So we'll

3:41

ask him all about this and and much

3:43

more. He's currently residing in Bali apparently. Lucky

3:45

solder. No he's not flooded. Okay let's get

3:47

him on. Welcome to the Rock on to

3:49

hers. Okay

3:52

guys I'm ready. But a big tune for

3:54

sure. I actually wrote that originally for Tina

3:56

Turner. Of course I had gone and found

3:58

Joni Mitchell better. and brought her back. I've

4:01

listened to a few of them and they've been really good man.

4:03

I've been sitting in the back of the car coming into London,

4:05

they're brilliant. That caused a big problem in the

4:07

band actually. I was having too much fun.

4:09

Thank you guys for still being around,

4:11

still making music, still being into

4:13

it and doing this podcast. It's

4:15

fabulous. Well I get the feeling

4:17

that us two should go for

4:19

a pint. I'm in a band

4:21

now. It's called Roxy Music. You

4:23

know this thing about the 10,000

4:25

hours of experience. I get good

4:27

at something. When we recorded Arnold

4:29

Lane, we'd done about 50 hours.

4:31

The Rock Hunters podcast with Gary

4:34

Kemp and Guy Pratt. Keep our

4:36

rockin'! testing

4:38

one two over can you hear

4:41

me we can oh my

4:43

god gary kemp how do you do

4:46

can we see you Steve oh yes

4:48

you sorry i'm not as good in real

4:50

life but there you go that's me i've

4:55

known guy for many many years and um

4:57

yes i've never met you but that's one

4:59

hell of a jumper you know we were

5:01

discussing this before you came on the fact

5:03

that i was a bit chilly to me

5:05

it's kind of my uh paul mccartney vest

5:07

i thought it was clive done actually

5:12

tommy period pete Townsend used to wear

5:14

those jumpers quite a lot i can't

5:17

you're like yeah i mean it's just

5:19

sort of like the cyclical

5:21

nature of art is a fascinating thing

5:24

isn't it i

5:28

find it absolutely fascinating like the

5:30

mullet which bono used to always

5:32

say how much he hated the mullet in

5:34

the 80s my daughter now she's 21 and

5:37

she thinks it's the coolest thing and she's

5:39

got the mullet of mullets yeah the new

5:41

Robbie Williams documentary there he is with his

5:44

mullet oh right okay i

5:46

haven't seen it yet but it's on my

5:48

list oh where's you you steve seem to

5:50

have opted for the sort of full travis

5:52

bickel oh no no it's it's you know

5:54

i'm doing the minoxidil every day but it

5:57

doesn't really help does it you know it's

5:59

it's I used to have wonderful locks back

6:01

in the day Gary, you didn't know me but I

6:03

was the um you know and then all of a sudden

6:05

you hit 60. I'm actually quite

6:08

pleased Steve because I thought you still had because

6:10

you and I both had those sort of Hugh

6:12

Grant floppy. We were. And

6:18

so welcome aboard is all I can say. Can

6:21

I just take you back to that mullet

6:23

thing again because I probably may have said

6:25

this before but we are about rock aren't

6:27

we? The mullet the 80s gets

6:29

blamed for the mullet but actually right

6:32

Bowie I

6:34

mean that insane oh yeah 100%

6:36

the first mullet but actually it

6:38

wasn't Bowie. Bowie was influenced

6:40

by Marie Helvin who did the front

6:43

cover of a Novum

6:45

magazine wearing a kabuki wig

6:48

and Bowie looked at that and he said to his

6:50

hairdresser I'd like one of those. Blame

6:52

the kabukis the Japanese. Another

6:54

honorary mention for the mullet, pre-80s mullet

6:57

is Bruce Foxton. I did his only

6:59

ever hit solo record. You did.

7:02

It was called Freak and it was so

7:04

funny. It's such

7:07

a crazy record. It was a

7:09

top 10 single actually but god

7:11

it's a kitchen sink production

7:13

I tell you. I listened to it the other day because you

7:15

know I don't know about you guys but do you ever listen

7:17

to your records? Well now I've

7:19

almost at the tail end of

7:22

my life let alone career I've

7:24

gone back and listened not only to records I've

7:26

made but obviously to the records that I grew

7:28

up with and I'm a huge fan of rock

7:30

on tears I have to tell you Gary. I've

7:33

told Guy this many times but I've listened

7:36

to literally everyone and there are so many

7:38

things that I go I bet

7:41

Jack Hargreaves when I was 10 years

7:43

old I was nearly country

7:45

boy I need to tell them and

7:47

then it's like my favourite album when I was

7:49

13 was Egg the Polite Force.

7:52

Visit to a Newport Hospital is one

7:55

of my favourite fucking songs ever. You

8:00

know, Frog Rock was so big and

8:03

the connection that almost every single

8:06

person on the podcast has to

8:08

David Bowie, you know, is for

8:11

me, you know, Hunkie Dory is

8:14

the album that's, you

8:16

know, it's far, for me, far, it's

8:19

so much better than Ziggy Stardust because it's

8:21

whimsical and it's got all this sort

8:24

of, this wonderful piano playing and

8:26

orchestrations. Life or Mark, you know,

8:28

one of the things

8:31

I've ever written. Exactly, I

8:33

mean, it's fantastic. So, I

8:36

just want to say your cut

8:38

stones are the same as yours.

8:41

Exactly, and I know, Gary,

8:44

you're almost the same age as

8:46

Kirsty, almost to the, she

8:49

was born 10th of October 1959, right? Are

8:52

you born in 1959? I'm

8:54

16th of October 1959. I'm 16th of

8:56

October, yeah, that's right. So, you

8:58

know, it was very much, you

9:00

know, and me and her, we very much

9:02

had the similar musical taste. I'm

9:05

five years older than you basically. What

9:08

was your first sort of moment of music

9:10

that you still cling on to even

9:13

now? Oh, well, weirdly, it was Bowie,

9:15

but before then, well, I was, you

9:17

were either an enemy, a melody maker

9:19

or a sounds and I was a

9:22

melody maker. Okay, Steve, where is it?

9:24

This is a school. Yeah,

9:26

this was a school. I was... And

9:28

where is this? This is Eggham, near

9:30

Windsor. That's right. I basically, with a

9:33

name like Lily White, I was never

9:35

the cool guy, so I

9:38

was ridiculed horrendously at school, like boys

9:41

do, you know, grammar school, by the

9:43

skiddies. Welcome to my world. By the

9:45

skiddies. Yes, exactly, Mr. Pratt. So

9:48

you and me, we definitely have similarities. I

9:50

was, I was Kemp's Biscuit. You pointed that

9:52

out to me when the first time I

9:54

did a session with you. It's quite funny.

9:57

Oh, really? I remember, I always remember you

9:59

saying that. Yeah, but then I

10:02

picked, then my neighbour got a guitar, he

10:04

wanted a, you know, like let's

10:06

form a band, Steve you play the

10:08

bass, so I bought a Hothne violin for 15, no 30 quid,

10:12

which my dad helped me in, it's the same

10:14

old story everyone has really. And

10:17

I loved, and from then on I was

10:19

just, I got a few cool points because

10:21

my band was a school band and we'd

10:23

entered a sort of the Slough Arts Festival.

10:25

The band came third and, oh no you

10:27

don't know this guy and I caught him

10:29

at the... I got

10:31

an award for the most outstanding musician.

10:33

Basically, as a bass player, all

10:36

I did was play fast because my

10:38

favourite band at the time was 10

10:40

years after. And of

10:42

course, all they did was play as

10:44

fast, every single person in the band

10:46

just played fast. You

10:48

realise after a while that, you

10:50

know, if anything bass is one of those things

10:52

that is nothing to do with how fast you

10:54

play. I think the world has missed out on

10:56

the fact that YouTube didn't get together and write

10:59

songs because Lily White Pratt would have been the

11:01

greatest songwriter. Oh God, that would be terrible. But,

11:04

so you were a melody maker man? I was a

11:06

melody maker man. So I

11:08

used to... That's more prog, isn't it? That's

11:10

prog, isn't it? Well it's prog but blues as

11:13

well. I remember going to the Melody Maker Blues

11:15

Festivals at the Albert Hall and buying Mr. Wonderful

11:19

the Fleetwood Mac album with the

11:21

double gatefold, with Mick Fleetwood being

11:24

so tall across both. And loving

11:26

those early... Well loving that album which

11:28

was just an album of 12 bar

11:30

blues. But then loving

11:33

Albatross and loving Green

11:35

Manolini and Oh Well is like

11:37

one of the greatest things, you

11:40

know, it's just brilliant. I

11:42

like that Albatross is a re-release. I think we all got it,

11:44

it was a re-issue in the 70s. Was

11:46

it? Is that maybe that's when... No, no,

11:48

no. I remember The Beatles first

11:50

time round. Wow. And do you... Yeah,

11:53

you must... Do you guy? I

11:55

remember one of my earliest musical memories

11:57

is seeing The Beatles on top of the pops.

12:00

And I can't remember what the song was, but I

12:02

remember... It's just a couple of the parts. Because I

12:04

remember them being number one, and I must have been

12:06

incredibly young, because I remember thinking... I'm being number one

12:08

now, Gary. What's the

12:10

point of anyone else making a record if

12:12

the Beatles are number one? Oh,

12:15

well. I remember being on the London Palladium show.

12:17

That was my first... But

12:19

I always remember the Beatles were different, because

12:21

every time they had a new single out,

12:24

you knew it was the Beatles, but you

12:26

knew it sounded different to all

12:28

the other bands. When all the other

12:30

bands had a new single out, it

12:32

sounded too similar to their old one, Dave

12:35

Clarke Five, and all those other bands around that

12:37

time. But the Beatles, every time they had a

12:39

new record, it was like they were taking us

12:41

on a journey. And

12:43

I really felt that... Because

12:45

I've done more than one album with a

12:48

few bands, and it was always my thing

12:50

that you didn't copy what you did on

12:52

the previous record on the next one. Because

12:55

it's going to be the same band anyway,

12:57

so it's going to be the same singer.

12:59

So there's that connection. But production-wise, I would

13:02

always try and say, no,

13:04

well, that might work on that

13:06

song, but we did that

13:08

on the last album. So let's try and... And

13:12

of course, probably with U2, that was

13:14

something that they was in their world

13:16

domination plans as well. Was

13:19

there a moment then when you sort of thought,

13:21

I'm more fascinated in the architecture of a song

13:23

or a recording than I am in playing it

13:25

or posing in front of a mirror? Well,

13:28

what happened was that I was in the school

13:31

band, and I won this competition, and it was

13:33

in the local paper. And then

13:35

I said to my

13:37

dad, because I was nothing at school.

13:39

I was just last. I

13:43

managed to scrape through my 11-plus and go to a

13:45

grammar school. But I didn't

13:49

do anything. And I

13:51

got this job in a studio by

13:53

basically lying about having got a... a

13:57

physics O level, because that's what you needed

13:59

to get out of it. at the job.

14:01

This was in 1972. Now I'd done

14:04

the exam but the result hadn't come through.

14:06

So my boss said, you need a physics

14:08

solo. But I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well,

14:10

my result hasn't come through but I probably

14:13

passed it. Anyway, in the

14:15

exam I went in, signed my name

14:17

and after 15 minutes walked

14:19

out because you

14:21

had to do that. So I knew I

14:24

hadn't passed it but of course I had

14:26

a three-month trial and I was like, Mr.

14:28

Enthusiastic young boy, you don't want

14:30

tea and I was a tape-op. And he was

14:32

at the last recording studio in the world

14:35

that had a separate machine room

14:37

to the control room. So

14:39

instead of having a studio and only

14:42

two rooms, you had a studio, a

14:44

control room and where I

14:46

sat which was called room B and

14:48

I had a little orator next to

14:50

my ear and there was a microphone

14:53

on the desk and basically I had

14:55

to press play and record and there

14:59

was nothing on the desk that could run

15:01

the tape machine. So I had to be

15:03

at my station all the time. So

15:05

I became like an amazing tape-op

15:07

because I would always listen and I go, maybe

15:09

they want to do the second verse again. So

15:12

at the end of the take I would roll

15:14

back to just like 10 seconds before the second

15:16

verse and wait. So then the engineer would say

15:18

or the producer would say through the mic,

15:21

can we do the second verse again?

15:23

I wanted to be the fastest done.

15:25

What studio is

15:28

this? Well it was called Phonogram and

15:30

before that it was Philips and after

15:32

that it was Solid Bond. Solid Bond,

15:34

that's what Paul Weller's studio on our

15:36

lives. We were talking about this with,

15:38

that's where Roy Woods used to do,

15:40

that's what all the weather stuff was

15:42

done. I was tape-op on all those

15:44

Roy Woods records. Oh my God. I

15:47

was on top of the

15:49

pops with Wizard as the back

15:51

end of a horse. For either,

15:54

Be My Baby Jive, Angel

15:57

Fingers, Rock and Roll Winter,

16:00

or it's going to be the Christmas one.

16:02

One of them. That's incredible. But

16:06

it's a shame that didn't blossom into

16:08

the panto career that you were really

16:10

hoping for. Yes, I was. That was

16:12

with Aisha apparently. She was the, you

16:14

know, who had her own... Well this

16:16

is another thing that you've been taught,

16:18

I don't know in what context, but

16:20

we did Aisha's single with Roy Wood

16:22

at the recording studio. Yeah. And,

16:25

you know, it was so weird,

16:27

like recording those wizard singles took

16:29

weeks and weeks and weeks to

16:31

do one single. But there was

16:33

no click track. Roy Wood would go in

16:36

and do an acoustic guitar on its own

16:38

first. Think of See My Baby Jive. I

16:40

mean everything was done so slowly,

16:43

but there was never a guide vocal on the

16:45

song. Never. The thing

16:48

that recorded, like literally in real

16:50

time, was the vocal at the very end of

16:52

recording. I had no

16:54

idea what, I mean it was

16:56

all in Roy's head. That guy was

16:58

an absolute genius. Yeah. And

17:01

actually before I started at the studio there

17:03

was a, do you remember an ELO song

17:05

called 10538 Overture? Yes,

17:08

yes, yes. Which is fantastic. It's got

17:10

that descending... Yeah, yeah. But

17:12

I bet you don't know why it was called 10538

17:14

Overture. No. It

17:17

was the serial number

17:19

on the mixing desk of the

17:21

studio that I worked at. Oh

17:23

my God. And,

17:26

wow, I wonder if Jeff Lee knows that now. Yeah, yeah. I

17:29

mean that's still around. How many tracks? I'm not

17:31

sure that he is with me. But does this

17:33

mean, I'm sorry, that was 24 tracks. I started

17:35

at the studio in 1972 just as they'd gone

17:37

from 16 to 24. But

17:44

does this mean, so if you go into

17:46

your little room and you're running the tape

17:48

machine, it is possible that an artist could

17:50

come in, do a whole session and leave

17:52

and have no idea that you existed. No

17:54

idea. It was the loneliness, there's something of

17:56

the long distance runners. I literally, I would

17:58

get to the studio. the occasional roadie coming

18:00

in to give me a little bit of speed

18:03

or a joint or something now and again. But

18:08

honestly, I was never

18:10

allowed in the control room and I

18:12

was never allowed to press my talk

18:14

back to enter the conversation. So it

18:16

was... You're below

18:18

stairs. You are literally below

18:20

stairs. Yes, I mean I

18:22

could just about peek into the

18:25

control room but because my

18:27

boss was, you know, that was in

18:29

the day where a studio would provide

18:31

not only an assistant but an engineer

18:33

as well. So how

18:35

could I get my promotion from

18:37

tape op to engineer if

18:40

I was always in the other room and never

18:42

seeing the desk and all the knobs and buttons.

18:45

So at weekends, my boss would allow

18:47

me to go in to do demos

18:50

with, you know, just to learn

18:52

my craft. So I took in

18:55

this band that was called Tiger

18:57

Lily that then changed its name

18:59

to UltraVox. Well

19:01

done, you see. And this might

19:04

be the only time my career

19:06

and Gary's have sort of been

19:08

close because I

19:13

went off on a whole different thing and you

19:15

did. But there was a little time, you know,

19:18

because... Really, it was, I mean, Roland TR,

19:20

you know, 77 or whatever it

19:22

was, the drum machine that... Yeah, yeah.

19:25

At the beginning of that British band

19:27

bringing in German electronica to do... Oh,

19:30

absolutely. You know, I remember... Well, I did

19:32

the demos with UltraVox and they got signed

19:34

to Island Records and Island Records

19:36

said, you know, who do you want to

19:38

do your album? They said, well, we've been working

19:40

with this kid, Steve Lillywhite, who we like. And

19:43

they said, well, you know, you need to have

19:45

someone else. And they said, well, we

19:47

love Roxy music. I mean, they were like a punky

19:49

Roxy music in a way. And

19:51

so they said, well, we'll get Brian Eno. And

19:54

so that was the first time I

19:56

met Brian. And if you've

19:58

ever worked with Brian, he's absolutely... brilliant

20:00

but he's never there all

20:02

the time you know but in a

20:04

good way not in a Rick Rubin way in a

20:06

way that he you know he

20:09

had to drop that one

20:11

in didn't I? I

20:15

guess that's because you're

20:17

coming from the engineering side of things therefore

20:20

you're in the room you've got to be

20:22

in the room where these sides from the

20:24

music side and the arty side yeah we've

20:26

got to go weirdly I even

20:29

came from less than that I came from

20:31

the tape-hopping side I mean

20:33

my engineering abilities were

20:35

very very I mean I

20:37

was a musician as I say I was yeah

20:39

but you literally weren't allowed in the room I

20:41

wasn't allowed in the room so so it so

20:44

I was just you

20:47

know bluffing it really because I

20:49

had no um and I didn't obviously

20:51

get my physics O level but

20:53

by the time the results came in I was

20:55

already got the job you know

20:58

and no one ever said anything but so so

21:00

yeah so Ultravox was you know um and

21:02

and that was great because I knew him

21:05

before he was John Fox when his name

21:07

was oh you've got

21:09

me oh come on Gary what was

21:11

John Fox's real name Dennis

21:13

Dennis Lee is his real

21:15

name really Dennis Lee yeah

21:17

but I was here footballer

21:20

Dennis Lee right you're

21:23

getting two footballers mixed

21:25

up there Franny Lee right Dennis

21:28

Wise is a friend of mine actually

21:31

but anyway I digress I digress so

21:33

um and then I was you

21:35

know I I got this um you

21:38

know I got my first production credit

21:40

which was a three-way production credit of

21:42

the first Ultravox album which was produced

21:44

by Brian Eno, Ultravox and Steve Lilly

21:47

engineered by me so yes I

21:49

as you say I did come from the engineering

21:52

side but but not really that

21:54

much you you just you were kind of at

21:56

the cusp then of discovering

21:58

a new style of post-punk music.

22:02

So UltraVault, but this is before punk.

22:04

It was slightly before punk because... Yeah,

22:06

but it was burgeoning, wasn't it? This

22:11

then... They had a

22:13

very different interest. Punk

22:17

was my entry point into the

22:19

music business because it's

22:21

very much producing as a catch-22 situation.

22:25

How do you get the work if you don't get the hit,

22:27

but you need the hit to get the work? So

22:29

all of a sudden there was this

22:32

sort of wave called punk that I

22:34

just rode on and I was lucky

22:36

enough that my friend knew Johnny Thunders

22:39

and he'd just moved

22:41

to London with his Heartbreakers and

22:44

they had an album called LAMF. You

22:46

probably know... Track Records. This is

22:48

at the end of Track Records. Track Records had songs

22:50

like, you know, I get up for the phone, no

22:52

but... Great, really

22:55

good songs actually. Chinese Rocks. Chinese

22:57

Rocks, yes. I wonder what

22:59

that was about. But any girlfriend crying in

23:01

the shower stall? Yeah. So

23:04

I got to know Johnny and I was like

23:06

saying, Johnny, you know, I don't

23:08

think your album sounds very good and everyone was telling

23:10

him that, you know. And he

23:13

was doing a solo album

23:15

and he signed to Real Records, which

23:17

had something to do with

23:20

the Pretenders as well. So

23:22

I did this album with Johnny Thunders, which was

23:24

fantastic. It had a who's who

23:26

of the people at the time. We

23:29

had Phil Lynertz, it had Stevie

23:31

Marriott, it had Stephen Paul from

23:33

the Sex Pistols, Peter Perritt from

23:35

The Only Ones was brilliant. What

23:38

was it like in the room? I mean,

23:40

you're not dealing with the easiest people. I

23:43

mean, let's face it, there's junkies and alcoholics

23:45

or whatever. I mean, how was it? How

23:47

were you corralling them in? Well,

23:50

I realised and I've worked with

23:52

quite a few people who like

23:54

to get loaded, is that you try and

23:57

get them early and you try and get

23:59

them when they're on. good form and when

24:01

they're on good form you just do as

24:03

much as you possibly can. You

24:05

push them, when they're doing well you

24:08

think maybe I'm tired but they're not.

24:10

We have to really get because tomorrow they

24:13

may not be doing so well.

24:15

But anyway with Johnny Thunder there was this

24:17

fantastic song called You Can't Put Your Arms

24:19

Around a Memory. It was around a memory,

24:21

what a title. It's one of the great

24:23

records and during the recording the manager of

24:25

Susie and the Banshees came into the studio

24:27

and said, oh I like that drum sound.

24:30

Now Susie and the Banshees had just

24:32

recorded their first single for Polydore but

24:35

they had Neil

24:37

Stevenson was the manager and he came in. They

24:42

had complete artistic control. That was one of

24:45

the reasons they signed to Polydore because

24:47

at that point Susie had been on

24:51

the Grundy show and she'd

24:53

done the Lord's Prayer at

24:56

the thing. There was a lot of talk about

24:58

Susie and the Banshees but they hadn't released a

25:01

record. So I knew and they

25:03

recorded Hong Kong Garden with an

25:05

American producer and they didn't like

25:07

it. So I knew that when

25:10

they asked me would you like to record

25:12

our new single, I went, if I

25:15

can do a version of the song that the

25:17

band like then it will

25:19

be released and it will be a hit.

25:23

And yeah that's what I did. So

25:26

that started my thing that

25:28

I must make records that the band like. It's

25:30

nothing to do with my ego

25:32

or anything like that. How

25:34

did you develop that song though? Hong

25:36

Kong Garden. Was

25:39

that arrangement how they were playing it? We

25:41

were talking earlier John McKay's. How did he

25:43

pronounce his name? John McKay. Amazing

25:46

player. And I

25:48

am back in touch with him. He's

25:52

been a painter and decorator for 30 years

25:55

and he

25:57

was so influential on so many

26:00

guitar players, you know. And

26:03

not just Johnny

26:09

Marr. And he

26:11

wants to do something again, but

26:13

I'm talking to him about, you

26:15

know, maybe, I don't know what

26:17

we could do, but he's really

26:19

great. But they had a

26:21

drummer who Kenny Morris, he was an

26:24

art school boy, he wasn't a drummer,

26:26

he wasn't a musician, you

26:28

know. And that was fine. For me, it

26:30

doesn't matter if people are musicians. I've got a

26:33

lot of empathy for

26:35

working with someone. And I

26:38

heard Trevor Horn say last

26:40

week with you that he

26:43

can play everything better than anyone else.

26:46

But even if I could, it wouldn't

26:48

be the thing to do. It's like part

26:50

of your job is to make a band

26:52

strong. It's not about

26:54

pulling the band apart

26:56

for me. And how do you make them

26:59

strong? You make the weakest link stronger. So

27:02

you know, that's part of my philosophy

27:04

anyway. But that's because you're very much

27:06

a, that's what makes you a band

27:08

producer, isn't it? It's easier to produce

27:10

bands because they have a basis of

27:12

a sound. For me, the worst thing

27:14

in the world is when an artist

27:17

goes, I'll do whatever you want, Steve.

27:19

It's like, I don't know what I want. If you

27:21

give me 10 ideas, I'll go, oh,

27:24

that one's good. I'll take a bit of that.

27:26

I'll take a bit of that and let's make

27:28

a record. Bit like a bloody Blue

27:30

Peter television presenter, to be honest. So

27:33

to go back to Hong Kong Gardens,

27:35

were you aware of, because listening to

27:37

it now, this really is a new

27:40

soundscape, a new landscape in a sort

27:42

of fuller way than, say, Joy Division

27:50

or someone, I would say. Yeah,

27:52

well, Joy Division was all based on,

27:55

on, on Martin Hannett's use of the

27:57

Marshall Time Modulator, which was

27:59

a fantastic. fantastic piece of kit that

28:01

only Martin Haneck knew how to get the

28:03

best out of. In fact, I would follow

28:05

him sometimes into a studio and I would

28:08

immediately go to the Marshall Time Modulator and

28:10

make sure that I didn't change any of

28:12

the settings and just plug something into it

28:14

just to see what it was because he

28:16

may not have zeroed it at the end

28:18

of his... What was that? A

28:20

delay machine or something? Well it was,

28:23

yes, it was a phasing. All those Joy

28:25

Division records, everything Martin Haneck did was

28:28

through the Marshall Time Modulator. It was a

28:30

great piece of kit but I never... It

28:33

was not my kit. I didn't really know

28:35

how to use it. I think the question

28:37

that we're trying to get to is... Yes.

28:40

Was that arrangement sues his... Suzy

28:42

in the Badger? Right. Would you build that in the

28:44

studio? Yeah, we built it in

28:47

the... Well, obviously they'd recorded it once

28:49

but what I realised was that the

28:51

drummer, the drum

28:53

sound I wanted, I couldn't get with him

28:56

playing the drums all at the same time

28:58

so I did the cymbals separately. So I

29:00

would get him to do the drums and

29:05

the toms. And that was something

29:07

that I did a lot over the years was

29:11

making records that sounded like a band

29:14

playing all at the same time but

29:16

literally building it up one drum at

29:18

a time. Well, you were famous for

29:21

your snare miking, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah.

29:23

Well, like, say take 12 mics for

29:25

a snare. Yes, take big country or

29:27

something like that. Or Simple Minds. Those

29:29

were the Simple Minds album. Everything was

29:31

done individually, you know, and although

29:34

when you put it all together it sounds

29:36

like a band playing. Sure, but I never heard

29:38

of anyone doing the drums individually but did you

29:41

ever mention Mr Peter Gabriel? He went, oh, interesting.

29:43

Maybe we won't put the cymbals on at all.

29:45

But we'll get to that. No, no, no, we

29:47

can get to that one because... Yeah, yeah, yeah,

29:49

yeah, that's a whole other can of worms. Yeah.

29:53

Because, yeah, because there's this pip like

29:55

there's Hong Kong garden. Local operator. Was

29:58

that around that time or was that later? Oh my

30:00

God, yes. Do you know them? Yeah.

30:04

I knew him. My first

30:06

ever band, Speedball, we

30:09

became his backing band when

30:11

they split. Who

30:14

are you talking about? Joe...

30:17

What's his last name? His brother worked

30:19

for you too for many years. He

30:23

was the driving force behind Local Operator. I remember

30:25

it was quite a big deal when you did

30:27

their single. They were going to be a big

30:29

thing. I mean, certainly around the world are the

30:31

members, which is where I was hanging out. Right,

30:34

right, right. No, they didn't. Yeah. And he went

30:36

down one route and... Yeah. A

30:38

bit sad. But yeah, I mean,

30:40

I suppose XTC was another

30:42

good one at the time. Oh,

30:45

God yeah. I mean, God yeah. Yeah,

30:47

but for me, punk rock was

30:49

a great attitude, which

30:52

is something that you probably will agree with. You

30:54

know, the attitude of punk rock was great. But

30:57

as a musical art form, it was limited. And

31:00

I wanted to never work in my life.

31:03

So I thought, if I have a hit, it

31:05

means I can then choose who I want

31:08

to work with. See, I didn't

31:10

have this ego of saying, now I'm successful,

31:12

now I've had a hit. I

31:15

can make anyone good. It was more like,

31:17

now I've had a hit. I

31:19

can be my own personal A&R man

31:21

and work with people who I know

31:23

are going to be great. And

31:25

that's all of a sudden my

31:29

level of choosing artists. And

31:31

I very much knew who I

31:33

could work with and who I couldn't. So,

31:36

you know, even if I was offered, you know, because

31:38

you have a hit and everyone goes, oh, you're

31:40

on someone's list. And I go, well, no, I'm

31:42

maybe on your list. But if I say no

31:44

to you, you don't really need, want me

31:47

to work with you. Because the reason is I don't think

31:49

I can do a good job for you. And I realized

31:51

that when I did Toya, you know,

31:53

as much as Toya was lovely, I did it for

31:55

the wrong reasons, I think. And I really realized that.

32:00

after that. No, go with

32:02

your heart and everything else will follow, really.

32:04

Well I remember you saying something to me,

32:06

this is kind of out of time and

32:09

out of context, if it's

32:11

the right saying this, because I remember you got

32:14

asked to work with Brian Adams and

32:16

that didn't pan out. Because you

32:18

said something, I said what went wrong there,

32:20

Steve? You went, it's more craft

32:22

than art. Right, yeah. Which I

32:25

thought was a great line. When

32:27

I did listen to some of Gary Kemp's

32:29

solo album this morning, there was a little

32:31

bit of Brian Adams in your vocal, Gary.

32:33

I must have. I did think that. It

32:35

was much more American than I thought it

32:37

would be. It's just a little

32:39

gr- err err. Yeah yeah yeah, no I didn't know

32:41

you had that in. Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah yeah yeah.

32:43

A little bit of ruff. Getting old. Yeah

32:46

yeah. No it's only good. I was saying

32:48

the thing with Garrett, the thing I've always loved about

32:50

Garrett's voice, and certainly when he's writing, is that he's

32:52

actually quite folky. Yeah. Right.

32:55

Well not on those songs. Those songs were

32:57

absolute epic. No I'm saying

32:59

not necessarily on the finished album, but I'm saying,

33:02

Gary's natural bent. Thank you anyway.

33:04

Maybe you could do a, you could

33:06

do a G'Nidralog album, Gary. All

33:09

about me. I'd just

33:11

go back to the screen, that's his

33:13

first album. The screen. It's very different.

33:15

It's still, you know, it's probably one

33:17

of the few great survivors of that

33:19

era, isn't it? Yeah. And

33:21

also, Hong Kong Garden was recorded

33:24

at a different studio. We

33:27

then went to Rack Studio One for

33:29

the album, which

33:32

I could really experiment more with the

33:34

room miking. Because, you know, Studio One

33:36

at Rack, it's a big old schoolhouse.

33:39

And even Hong Kong Garden wasn't

33:41

even on the screen, you

33:44

know, in those days. You know,

33:46

it was a pretty good sounding record, and

33:49

it sort of got me, the

33:51

good thing is, you know, I had a hit with Hong Kong

33:53

Garden, and also I had a sort of hit

33:55

with the album, so that really, really

33:58

started getting me going. It was

34:00

always, as I say, punk rock was

34:02

a great entry point into the world

34:05

of having hit records. But

34:07

when Joan Armour Trading asked me to

34:09

produce, or Peter Gabriel, it was very

34:12

different, but why

34:14

not? And try

34:16

and spread the... So

34:19

I always thought Bob Rock had a very

34:21

unfortunate name, like he could only

34:23

do rock. Unlike

34:26

Chris Thomas, who was a producer

34:28

at Bistles Out, you suddenly

34:31

got yourself seen as being the

34:33

art version of...it was art music.

34:35

Yeah, it's always been art for

34:37

me, art rock, you know. Because

34:40

that's what I love. I never like

34:42

a melody, you know. I never

34:45

like the guttural singing of some of those

34:47

bands, you know, and I didn't like it.

34:50

So, yeah. I'm

34:52

working with Andy Partridge, who is one

34:54

of the most

34:57

talented people I've ever met. Really,

34:59

you know. Oh, he's...

35:03

But that's also because they introduced...I think there was a

35:05

level of...because this is one thing I do wonder, is

35:08

if you felt ever that because you're working in this

35:10

punk world, it's more of a post-punk world you're working,

35:12

if you felt there were parameters that you couldn't go

35:14

outside with the stuff you wouldn't do. Because

35:17

XCC, I would say, are a great

35:19

example of they introduced a complexity to

35:21

that. Yeah. Well,

35:24

it was great. That's

35:26

all the music that hadn't really been there. In

35:28

those days, you know, it was either good or bad. We

35:30

didn't have genres. I don't ever

35:32

remember really thinking about structure as

35:35

being like, it has to be verse, chorus, verse. You know, I

35:37

didn't think like that. It was, you know,

35:39

it was all in the ears. It was

35:41

never in the eyes, you know, in those days. And

35:45

you must, you know, now it's all

35:48

with the eyes and it's maybe a

35:50

different way of making music now. And

35:53

also in those days, I would

35:55

absolutely say to artists, if

35:57

they ever like wanted to listen to something,

36:00

I'd go, well that's finished record, you know,

36:02

we're making our own art, you

36:04

know, and if it sounded

36:06

a bit like another song, you

36:08

wouldn't say great, let's change a chord and, you

36:11

know, it'll be a hit. It was like no,

36:13

discard it. You know, it was very uncool to

36:15

sound like someone else's record. So

36:18

you know, all through my career it was

36:20

like that and we never, it was

36:22

very uncool to reference

36:25

other people. Yeah,

36:28

even Bowie was a

36:30

reference on, but it

36:32

was not a discussed reference,

36:34

you know. With

36:36

Bowie you had to find the reference, you had to

36:38

find the reference, didn't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, well we

36:40

did. You had to find the reference, that was the,

36:42

yeah. I don't remember ever doing it in the studio

36:44

and we never once referenced a song when we were

36:46

making our records, you know. No, you never did, no.

36:48

I think it's a very, it's something that I've come

36:50

across with people, it's a kind of 90, and

36:53

it's something that Gary's discussed before, and it's

36:55

a 90s thing when suddenly things became about

36:57

looking back and where suddenly,

37:00

where it became, in its universe, it

37:02

became all of a sudden. Sorry, Gary,

37:04

it's the technology leading it. The technology

37:06

leads the art form and it always

37:08

has, and if the technology allows you

37:10

to reference other people's records, the whole

37:12

music industry, when you're in the studio

37:14

you will do that. Hey,

37:19

it's Ryan Reynolds, owner and user of Mint

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Mobile, with a special holiday message. If you

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38:26

But let's talk about making plans for Nigel

38:29

because I think that way it's talking about

38:31

referencing I actually put that on the other

38:33

day because I'm doing my own album at

38:35

the moment and it was like I need

38:38

to listen to that record because those fantastically

38:40

flanged drums of

38:42

Terry Chambers at the beginning

38:44

that extraordinary guitar part is

38:47

so sort of angular and juxtaposed

38:50

to the rhythm but it's a

38:52

musical. It was the

38:54

perfect well when Barry Andrews left

38:56

XTC and then they got

38:59

Dave Gregory in and it became so

39:02

much simpler you've got the two guitars

39:04

left and right and they would always

39:06

play completely different things.

39:09

So for me I was really influenced

39:11

by if a band had two guitar

39:13

players why play the

39:15

same thing because I got

39:17

that thing with XTC that you've got

39:19

and it's just perfect to have the

39:22

two guitars left and right you've got

39:24

and Colin Moulding he was such a sweetheart

39:27

I would say to him how do you

39:29

want the bass to sound he goes I

39:31

want it sort of wooly and indistinct exactly

39:35

the opposite of really what you

39:38

know. Which is funny because he

39:40

plays beautifully constructed parts. Every

39:45

single member to Terry Chambers I went to see

39:47

him the other day in New York about six

39:49

months ago and he's got this

39:51

band called X-E-X-T-C

39:55

which is just him a very

39:57

good guitar player singer and a bass player.

40:00

And they play like all of

40:02

an XTC songs and it was

40:04

just amazing. Well

40:07

where is that? It's a good tribute. A

40:11

tribute band name is now. It's like

40:13

hairdresser's names used to be in the

40:16

70s, wasn't it? Who's got the great

40:18

pun? That

40:20

drum sound, it was still using a lot

40:22

of floor toms as hi-hats instead, you know,

40:25

finally. So

40:28

there's a hangover from Susie

40:30

there, but also Blanching, was

40:32

that your idea at the front? At

40:34

the front? No, that was Hugh did that.

40:36

I remember that. Because

40:39

it was your first work with Hugh, wasn't it? Hugh

40:41

Panham? Yes. No, well actually

40:44

we'd done Life Begins at the Hop, which was

40:46

done before the album. But

40:50

yeah, it was the first time I only ever

40:52

did three albums with Hugh, which was two XTC

40:54

and a Peter Gabriel. Is

40:56

this when Hugh was staff engineer at the Townhouse? Yes.

40:59

Because this is what something that

41:01

is very, I have certain to me, is

41:03

very important to your career, is the Townhouse.

41:05

Which became absolutely your domain in the 80s.

41:07

That was your studio. Well it was. I

41:09

mean Hugh was staff engineer at the Townhouse

41:12

and no one there had ever thought that

41:14

there was anything different between Studio One and

41:16

Studio Two. But I walked

41:18

in and saw that room in Studio Two and said, you

41:21

know, because before then I'd

41:23

been experimenting with ambience and

41:26

compression on Susie and the Banshees. You

41:28

know, there's a sort

41:30

of lineage that you can listen

41:32

to before we came up with

41:34

the drum sound, you know, of

41:36

Peter Gabriel. You know,

41:38

Hugh is a lovely guy, but he's not

41:40

a pusher. You know, he doesn't like push

41:43

the things. Peter Gabriel was. I

41:46

mean he was, you know, anything like I did,

41:48

he goes, that's great. Do it more.

41:51

You know, so it was a

41:53

great combination of the creatives. So

41:57

yeah, when Peter Gabriel asked me to do the album.

42:00

and we were discussing it, he said, Steve, I

42:02

don't want any symbols on the album. And

42:05

for me it was like, you know,

42:07

maybe some producers will go, well, you know,

42:09

blah blah blah, you need that. But

42:11

I, for me it was like,

42:14

great, how do we get, what sounds can

42:16

we do, what can we do? Because,

42:18

you know, if you have limitations in

42:20

art, as you well know, it's actually

42:22

a good thing. You know,

42:24

if you've got a bass player who can only go

42:26

boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom

42:28

boom boom boom boom boom boom. Then

42:31

you have to make the record sound brilliant

42:33

with a bass line that goes boom boom

42:35

boom boom boom. And I work

42:37

with a great band who had a bass player like that. And

42:39

you too, I mean. Yes,

42:42

of course. So the

42:44

limitations in art is

42:46

what I think enables you to

42:49

concentrate on the things that are unique,

42:51

you know, which is pushing yourself. It's

42:53

like in those days, if you wanted

42:56

to like, okay, I was doing

42:58

Simple Minds and we're on the very last song

43:00

of the album. And there

43:02

was one sort of average song,

43:05

but it had a really good verse. So

43:07

we decided at 3 o'clock

43:09

in the morning, song called Easter Easter

43:11

on Spark in the Race. We

43:13

decided to chop the

43:16

verses, just repeat

43:18

the verses like three times

43:21

to make the song. But

43:24

to do that, we had to run in

43:26

another tape machine from Studio One

43:28

at the townhouse. And we had

43:30

to run the leads from tape

43:32

machine to tape machine, copy

43:35

it and then chop the,

43:37

like we did it four times. We just repeat

43:39

the verse how you used to be.

43:41

Exactly. Now you do it in 10 seconds. But

43:44

it was fantastic to, you know, to be able

43:46

to do that then. I was

43:48

going to say just referring back to your

43:50

thing of like the No Symbols thing, for

43:52

instance, the drum sound, that

43:54

one on Intruder. If there were cymbals, you

43:56

couldn't have done that. No. That

43:58

would have been, it would have been just. too noisy, you

44:01

know, that you could not have gone

44:03

that far with the drums. Yeah,

44:05

well and Phil Collins was brilliant. I mean I

44:07

think probably the best drummer

44:09

I've ever recorded because

44:12

Phil Collins can be Ringo, you

44:14

know, people like Simon Phillips and

44:18

all these other guys are brilliant from

44:20

us and Carter Beauford from Dave Matthews

44:22

Band, incredible drummer but they can't be

44:24

Ringo and it's very important to be

44:26

able to be Ringo as well as

44:28

Mr. Paradiddle, you know, and Phil was

44:30

brilliant, compliment the film, which is what

44:33

Ringo always did. Yeah, exactly and Phil

44:35

was brilliant at that and the other

44:37

drummer on the album, a guy called

44:39

Jerry Marotta was a lovely guy but

44:41

it's like, he's a big guy, there's

44:45

a lot of him. Yes,

44:49

he wanted to play, you know, but

44:51

no, Peter wouldn't let him in and

44:54

so much of the sound on that album was

44:56

through this little plastic box

45:01

called, we called it a

45:03

995 because that's how much it cost.

45:05

It was a little speaker from Radio

45:07

Check. Now we had a synth player

45:09

called Larry Fast, a genius, who is

45:11

a genius but he's such a humble,

45:14

gentle New Yorker, you

45:17

know, and he would sit at the back of

45:19

the control room with his Prophet 5 and

45:22

just, he didn't want to

45:24

say, can you put this through the speakers so

45:27

I can get a sound. So he had this little

45:29

speaker, so he would like put it up to his

45:31

ear like that and when he had something that he

45:33

liked, he would go, listen to this,

45:35

we go, oh and it always sounded

45:37

brilliant through this little plastic speaker when you

45:39

turned it up full and distorted it. So

45:42

all the distortion on

45:44

the Peter Gabriel album, you can go back and listen

45:47

to it now and you hear the signature, because

45:51

we ended up feeding backing vocals through

45:53

it and at one point Peter had,

45:56

he had something coming

45:58

out of the speaker. and he

46:00

had the microphone and he went like that.

46:03

So it was like a fucked up version

46:05

of the Peter Frampton voice box. It was

46:07

in the back of your mind that kid

46:09

who bought John Bonham in there somewhere that

46:11

helped you to create. You know I was

46:14

never a Led Zeppelin fan. His

46:19

voice was never, I don't like that screechy. Because

46:21

that still is a great drum sound isn't it?

46:23

It's a great drum sound yeah but

46:26

no Led Zeppelin was, I

46:29

mean I was aware of it but they weren't one

46:31

of my favourites in those days. I can

46:33

tell. Never

46:35

really, weirdly, weirdly. And all

46:38

those, all those squeeze

46:40

my lemon and all. I mean it was just

46:42

all a bit manly. You mentioned Simple Minds. Yeah

46:46

you had Jim on of course. Yeah, was

46:48

there a concern with you that you thought,

46:51

you know I can't do you two and

46:53

Simple Minds because they're living in the same

46:55

world and obviously Simple Minds did.

46:57

And Big Country. Even though, Simple

46:59

Minds, to be honest, their first

47:02

albums, you know of Electronica were

47:04

very close to Ultrabox. You know I can

47:06

see that connection but they became kind of,

47:11

so did you go into the studio? I can't do that.

47:13

You took them kind of from that to the, it

47:16

was about your job was to make them the

47:18

Stadium Simple Minds it seemed. Well yeah

47:20

it was weird, it was

47:22

weird because actually I had been contracted

47:26

to work with a

47:28

band from Canada called Rush. Right. And

47:31

at this point Rush were the biggest band in the world

47:33

in 1983. And

47:36

I'd met them and I got on very

47:39

well with Geddy Lee and

47:42

I'd been to see the studio in Montreal

47:44

where they lived and the idea was you

47:46

know that the studio date was booked. And

47:51

a month before this recording session I

47:53

get the call from Simple Minds, would

47:55

you like to produce our album? And

47:58

I went oh yeah I'd love to. And I went oh. Oh,

48:00

hang on. I think I'm supposed

48:02

to be doing Rush. I better call them up and

48:04

tell them I can't do it. And this was the

48:06

only time in my career that

48:08

I've been sort of threatened, you will never

48:10

work in this business again. Because I called

48:12

up right his manager and I said, look,

48:14

I'm terribly sorry, but I can't do

48:17

your album. And he goes, and it was like, what

48:19

do you mean? He said, you know, it's

48:21

all that, you know, you're doing now. I said,

48:23

no, no, no, don't you understand? If

48:26

I don't want to do your album, it

48:28

means that I'm not going to do a

48:30

very good job. So if I say I'm

48:32

not doing your album, there's nothing, you know,

48:34

I was fearless, completely fearless. I

48:36

mean, why did you not want to, why did you

48:38

prefer Simple Minds to Rush? Well, because

48:41

I then, I think came to

48:43

my senses and realized, I fucking

48:45

can't stand his voice. Rush in 1983, especially

48:47

with the sort of work you've been doing,

48:50

I mean, that is, it's

48:52

a step outside, isn't it? Yeah, and so that

48:54

was why I wanted to do it. But, you

48:56

know, I mean, Geddy Lee hates me. And

48:59

even now, if you Google Geddy Lee, Steve

49:01

Lillywhite, it's like, I was very disappointed with

49:03

Steve Lillywhite. And it was, come

49:05

on, that album, the album that Rush did

49:07

was huge. Which was it? Was it 21?

49:10

They ended up working with that little

49:13

fella, Peter Collins. He ended up going

49:15

to Nashville. But yeah, they

49:17

worked with an English guy. But it

49:19

was, so, and also, of course,

49:21

I always say, when I tell this story, it

49:23

was when I met Kirsty, because Kirsty came in

49:25

to do some backing vocals for Simple

49:27

Minds. And I

49:30

basically saw her in the

49:32

studio, and I went, I'm going to marry that

49:34

girl. She had no idea that

49:36

that was my idea. I mean, I was 30 years old. She

49:38

was 25 years old. And

49:42

I sort of press-ganged her. And

49:44

that was a, you know, beginning of, that was

49:46

when I really... What a great, and

49:49

what a great, great album. And you know what? I

49:51

was thinking, Guy. On every front, Steve. You know, you...

49:53

I was, yes, but I was going to speak to

49:55

you. What magnificent couple. Guy, because, you know, Kirsty would

49:57

have been fantastic on this. And, you know, you could...

50:00

You could do an episode about Kirsty with people. That's

50:07

a great idea. That's

50:10

a great idea. Because

50:14

there's so much that you can talk about her. Because

50:19

as you know, the fiery

50:21

redhead was what she was

50:24

in tabloid speak. She

50:26

was amazing. And certainly one

50:28

of the most talented people I've ever

50:30

worked with. You

50:33

know there's a box set out.

50:35

There's an 8 CD box set

50:37

of hers. And it

50:39

has Pino Palladino soloing throughout the

50:42

whole album. Literally

50:44

soloing throughout the whole album. Amazing.

50:48

It's so funny. Because you produced obviously that

50:50

great fairy tale of New York which you're

50:52

all about to listen to. To

50:54

hear again. Over and over again. Well

50:57

no, except the first time you hear it it's

50:59

nice. Because you go, oh. And

51:01

it's still nice. It's still one of the

51:04

great lyrics and great, great songs. But for

51:06

me the greatest lyric I've ever recorded was,

51:09

I could have been someone, well so

51:12

could anyone. Absolutely. It's one of the

51:14

greatest lines ever written. Brilliant. And

51:16

I hope Shane is in

51:18

hospital at the moment. Well I was going

51:20

to ask who he was. Well I

51:23

just followed Victoria, his wife on Instagram

51:25

and she posted a picture yesterday of

51:28

her kissing him with, he's got like the

51:31

drip. And then the

51:34

long talk about not

51:36

to be scared and moving on to another

51:38

place with the angels and all that. Oh

51:40

wow. Yeah so I don't know. I mean

51:42

a few months ago he was,

51:45

but then he got better but maybe not now. I

51:47

don't know so I can't say. How

51:49

was it recording those two together? Did you actually

51:51

record them singing to the same? No. Not

51:54

at all. Not you, of course not. No, well. I

51:58

recorded the intro of Fairy to the Moon. of

52:00

New York was just piano and voice. The I could

52:02

have been, it was

52:04

Christmas Eve, baby. Been drunk drunk, damn dick. So

52:08

we just, and because the piano and

52:10

the voice were bleeding onto each other's

52:12

tracks, we had to choose them both

52:14

together. You couldn't

52:16

take the voice from one and the piano from

52:18

another, because it would bleed. So we did it

52:21

like 10 times, and we chose one take. And

52:23

then the band went in and

52:25

recorded the rest of the song. And

52:28

I spliced the two together. Now that was one

52:30

thing, they said, we've tried to record this song

52:32

so many times, but we could never do it,

52:35

because of the transition between

52:37

the two parts of the song. And I said, well,

52:40

let me chop it together. So it

52:42

was simple solutions to a problem that

52:44

no one, and

52:48

then they had some lofty ideals. They

52:53

wanted Chrissie Hein to sing it and

52:55

stuff. And it was really that, I

52:57

had a studio at home, so I

52:59

said, look, let's get Chrissie to do

53:02

a guide vocal. And she'll

53:05

do it for nothing and see what you

53:07

think. I literally, I remember

53:09

Shane giving me a copy of the

53:11

lyrics and him tearing out the bits

53:13

of lyric that he sang. So this

53:16

is what she's gonna sing. I

53:20

never got that close to him, because he was very

53:23

different person to

53:25

every other member of the band I got

53:28

on great with. Well, I remember him from

53:30

going to punk concerts as a kid. Yeah,

53:32

yeah, yeah. He always avoided as much as

53:34

you can. He was

53:36

a very powerful person. You

53:39

once described it to lovely discribers, because

53:41

you're really good at these, Steve. You

53:43

are saying to me that how him

53:45

and Keith Richards were the only two

53:48

genuinely bohemians you'd ever met. Yeah. Well,

53:50

if you could say, because I said, and how would you describe that?

53:53

And the way you put it was, well,

53:55

they could get up at eight o'clock in the

53:57

morning, but it was completely by chance. Yeah.

54:00

literally don't care whose jacket

54:02

they're wearing. I

54:05

mean, you know, it's like they don't smoke their

54:07

own brand of cigarettes. It's like, I

54:09

mean, although Keith Keith would only smoke Marlboro, but

54:12

Shane, you know, he would, you know, it would

54:14

be completely. Yeah,

54:17

but but he was fantastic and and and

54:19

the great thing is, I mean, I got

54:22

that band when they, you know, but I would have to

54:24

record them early, you know, and

54:26

and and again, you you look at the whole

54:28

project and you look at the whole album and

54:30

you think, how can I maximize

54:34

the potential of this music? You

54:36

know, it's nothing to do with this

54:39

is what I do. And even though

54:41

at the time, yeah, I was doing all those drum

54:43

sounds, but you know that bit me

54:45

in the ass at one point, you know, and

54:47

then I realized I can't do the same

54:49

sound on every record because I've worked with

54:52

this guy called Marshall Crenshaw and

54:54

I it was not successful and I and I

54:56

did this because we did it at the power

54:58

station in New York. So I I did all

55:00

my usual things, you know, and then

55:02

I realized again, you know, you should

55:05

always enter into a project

55:07

without any preconception as

55:09

to what you know,

55:12

I I'm not a big fan of

55:14

pre-production. So for a bit you thought

55:16

you had a moat. No, that's true. Yeah, you thought you

55:18

had a motif. Well,

55:20

I did. Yeah, but but then

55:22

I realized that motif means nothing, you

55:25

know, because you have that's Chris Thomas is it was

55:28

in his day was a brilliant

55:30

a brilliant producer of probably the

55:32

type I am which is where

55:34

you try and enhance the best

55:37

of you know, Trevor is absolutely brilliant.

55:39

You know, I mean he is my

55:41

favorite producer of all time, but

55:44

you know, he I can't

55:47

ever sort of play at that level,

55:49

you know, so I have to understand

55:51

what I'm good at and

55:54

and and and you know, like ego can

55:56

get in the way of a lot of

55:58

people have a hit. and then

56:00

they fall by the wayside because

56:02

they think they're better than they are. You

56:05

know they have this thing that they can,

56:08

because they've had a hit, they can

56:10

turn anything into a hit and I

56:12

always thought I'm a fan. If

56:14

I like their music then I want to

56:16

be able to make it into something great

56:18

for them. You know that was

56:20

really my idea and

56:23

if you have a hit single it's great. Okay

56:25

let's talk about the band then. Which

56:28

one? The Irish Boys. Oh yes yes. You

56:30

obviously did their first three albums and other

56:32

and other stuff with them later on but

56:34

so I'm taking it. You mentioned you saying

56:36

that you wanted to be your own A&R

56:38

man. Did you sort

56:41

of discover them Steve? Yeah

56:44

I remember getting sent a

56:47

cassette of their, well

56:49

it was demos but it was also their

56:51

independent release in Ireland. Produced

56:56

by Chas De Wole I think, weirdly.

57:01

Who was an A&R man at CBS. I

57:03

think I'm right to saying that. He could be part

57:05

of your, he could now go on your songwriting duo.

57:09

Wole Pratt and

57:11

Lillie White. And

57:14

I remember thinking it was a little, and

57:17

I liked it, but you

57:19

know in those days and still now if I

57:21

was to produce again I would

57:24

like to see them live. Because for

57:26

me when an artist plays live they're

57:28

not thinking about what they're doing. And

57:31

part of my job in a studio is

57:33

to enable them to be creative

57:35

and not having to think really

57:37

what they're doing. You know I

57:39

mean it's a weird thing but

57:41

if they're analyzing too much, stays

57:43

remember, recording studios was Star Trek.

57:46

People didn't have anything at home so

57:49

it was like it's a studio, oh

57:51

my god, and I'd been king of

57:53

the studio since I, well I'd been in studio since

57:55

I was 17. So even when

57:57

I, whoa, I'd be locked in a room at the back. Well,

58:00

yeah, but I'm not actually, but still

58:02

I got it

58:04

by osmosis. Yes. And so

58:07

when I was 24 on

58:10

the first U2 album, Bono was 19, Adam was 19,

58:12

and Larry was 17. So

58:17

even though we were close in age, there's

58:19

a big gap, you know, five

58:21

years at that age. Oh, it's huge. It's

58:24

huge in those days. So I

58:26

was, and I'm very proud actually

58:28

that I was the

58:30

first person ever to

58:32

make a successful rock album

58:34

in Ireland, because Thin Lizzy,

58:37

Rory Gallagher, Boomtown Rats, they

58:39

all came over to London.

58:42

Where did you do it? At Windmill? Was it

58:45

Windmill? At Windmill Lane, yeah. And of course, you

58:47

know, I walked into Windmill Lane and it was

58:49

a studio made for recording folk music. Well, you

58:51

worked there, right? Because you lived there for a

58:54

while. Walking through the reception

58:57

of Windmill Lane, it was

58:59

like this nice stone place,

59:01

and that was where the girls sat, because

59:03

there weren't mobile phones. So if

59:05

you needed to speak to someone, you call the

59:08

main number, and the receptionist would put it through

59:10

to the different studios. And

59:12

there was also the video editing at Windmill

59:14

Lane upstairs, right? You remember that. So

59:17

I wanted to record

59:20

the drums in the hallway, just said, but

59:22

that's where the girl sits. I go, well,

59:24

what time does she go home? She goes

59:26

home at 6 o'clock. I said, okay, we'll

59:29

record the drums after 6 o'clock, at

59:32

which point Larry had a

59:34

problem, because his dad said he had to be home.

59:37

Because he was only 17, and his dad was

59:40

worried about him. So

59:44

on the Boy album, it

59:46

was very much a, you

59:49

know, but even then, you know,

59:51

Bono hadn't finished all his lyrics. I

59:54

think I work best with those

59:56

sorts of people who aren't craftsmen

59:59

as songwriters. And I do

1:00:01

believe in making

1:00:03

something in the studio, that setting

1:00:05

up a scene that can make

1:00:07

a unique situation. Did

1:00:09

you sense that The Edge had a sound

1:00:12

that could band unique? Well

1:00:15

yes, he was definitely the

1:00:17

metronome of the band. He

1:00:20

would play through the echo,

1:00:22

so that was the sort

1:00:24

of tempo of how they worked.

1:00:27

It's funny because those echoes like the Memory

1:00:30

Man and stuff that he used to use.

1:00:32

What's interesting is that yes everything sets that

1:00:34

time, but you couldn't precisely set those times

1:00:36

could you? No, no, no, no. I

1:00:39

didn't use a click with them until

1:00:41

the third album. Using a

1:00:43

click, I don't know about you, did you ever

1:00:45

make your records without a click track going? No,

1:00:48

we used clicks. Everyone. So it

1:00:51

was clicking away in his headphones

1:00:53

while he was playing. Yeah,

1:00:55

yeah, yeah. On the

1:00:57

first two U2 albums, I didn't really start doing

1:01:00

clicks until 1983 and it was a fantastic

1:01:03

thing, but it was also, it was

1:01:05

sometimes, if the musicians couldn't play well

1:01:08

to the click, it just felt like

1:01:10

it was slowing down. When

1:01:12

there was a drum fill, it felt like it was so... Wow.

1:01:16

So we all know from computer music

1:01:18

that we make it now, it's so

1:01:20

rigid isn't it? There's no movement. Double

1:01:22

time is not double time and half

1:01:24

time is not half time. Well

1:01:26

you look at the drummer like... We've only got a

1:01:28

click, you know. Yeah, I mean Stuart Copeland, you

1:01:31

know, his whole tempo and

1:01:33

rhythm is so at the front of

1:01:35

the beat, it's fantastic. You know, pushing,

1:01:38

pushing, pushing at the front, but then you've

1:01:40

got like say Jerry Marotta or his brother

1:01:42

Rick Marotta, those big, those like American or

1:01:44

the bands, you know, those sort of people

1:01:46

who write on the back end of the

1:01:48

beat. You know, Nick Mason. Nick

1:01:51

Mason, absolutely, you know, and

1:01:53

it's wonderful the nuance

1:01:56

between all the different

1:01:58

styles. And... That's what

1:02:00

is slightly missing in musicians now because

1:02:02

drummers are fantastic now playing to clicks.

1:02:04

You know, because they can give and

1:02:07

they take and they, they, it's almost

1:02:09

like they don't have to be completely

1:02:11

in with the click for it to

1:02:13

work. They just like to hear it

1:02:16

for something. Anyway, back to you

1:02:18

two. Back to you two. What would you

1:02:20

like to know? Also what you were saying about

1:02:22

how you like every album to be different and to

1:02:25

have moved forward. Yeah, yeah. Which is

1:02:27

so true. I was probably for

1:02:29

the Adam episode listening to that first U2 album

1:02:31

and it's just an extraordinary thing. A,

1:02:33

you can hear all sorts of outside influences that you wouldn't have

1:02:35

thought of before, Echo and the Bunnyman, stuff like that. But

1:02:38

also everything is there. Everything

1:02:41

that is coming is there. Yeah,

1:02:43

I get a lot of base overdubs with Adam.

1:02:45

We would stay after the rest of

1:02:47

the band went home because, you know, it's

1:02:50

well known. They were, you know, Bono, Edge and

1:02:52

Larry were very much the sort

1:02:54

of Christian boys and

1:02:57

Adam was more my partying

1:02:59

partner. You know,

1:03:02

so we

1:03:04

would stay in the studio afterwards

1:03:07

and down to Lily's, Lily White,

1:03:09

Lily's Baudello. Oh my God. Fantastic.

1:03:13

They are the pink elephants as well. And

1:03:16

all those ones underneath. Oh

1:03:19

yeah, there was some great underneath Leeson Street.

1:03:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You

1:03:24

know, Edge only had one guitar. So

1:03:26

it was, you know, I wanted to put

1:03:29

some flavors on the music. I

1:03:32

didn't just want to record the

1:03:34

band faithfully. For me, that's like,

1:03:36

that's not using the recording studio

1:03:38

to its great advantage. So

1:03:41

it was like, I mean, we didn't even have

1:03:43

a synthesizer. So on one song, we

1:03:45

played the tuner and

1:03:47

we played that. And

1:03:49

I like covered it with all these

1:03:51

chorusing and echoes and stuff

1:03:53

like that. And it

1:03:56

was fantastic. I was just

1:03:58

in the studio with you too. like

1:04:00

a you know six weeks

1:04:02

ago recording

1:04:05

their new single called atomic city so great

1:04:07

you're back with them again I

1:04:09

know well I was in Vegas consulting

1:04:13

son doing the sound consultation for those

1:04:15

gigs at the beer oh man what

1:04:17

a gig amazing how was that like

1:04:20

I tell you sitting at the top table

1:04:22

was fantastic it really is the most

1:04:25

I went to see Adele it was

1:04:27

great but it was boring go to

1:04:29

see this YouTube show you've never seen anything like it

1:04:31

in the sphere I just wanted to ask because what

1:04:33

it seemed to me and when I was looking on

1:04:36

Instagram and various places at the videos of it I

1:04:39

was worried that the band was so diminished

1:04:41

by by the visuals no you see they're

1:04:43

very clever and this was one of the

1:04:45

things that we worked on was

1:04:47

like there's a middle section it would

1:04:49

get act two it's called like the

1:04:51

first eight songs are all from acting

1:04:53

baby then act two they do

1:04:55

and it was actually my idea I said why

1:04:57

don't you do each act

1:05:00

to rotate a different

1:05:02

album so they did they

1:05:05

they did a rattle and harm they did

1:05:07

all that you can't leave behind and

1:05:09

I just noticed the other day they

1:05:11

did a war one where they did

1:05:13

three songs acoustically or a different version

1:05:16

you know so and

1:05:18

that's where honestly Bono just

1:05:20

throws in some ridiculous things and

1:05:23

it's all unrehearsed and you

1:05:26

know if Bono starts singing another song over

1:05:28

you know because YouTube chords are very simple

1:05:30

you can sing a hundred songs over every

1:05:32

single chord so Bono will do that edge

1:05:35

immediately knows how to go and you look at

1:05:37

Adam and poor old Adam he has no idea

1:05:40

Adam is great when he's on the

1:05:42

tracks you know but take him off

1:05:44

the track he cannot he

1:05:47

can't react like

1:05:49

that you know but it's really

1:05:51

funny because they it's so sloppy

1:05:54

but it works because you've got this

1:05:56

crazy yeah it's humanizes

1:05:58

them and then they go back to

1:06:01

more acting baby, some of

1:06:04

the guitar playing on it is spectacular,

1:06:06

you wouldn't believe, it really

1:06:09

really, I was so proud of them. How

1:06:11

was it working later on of course, feeling

1:06:14

that you were having to work

1:06:16

in this co-operative if you like

1:06:18

with Daniel Anwar and Eno, Flood,

1:06:20

all the line up. Yeah, we

1:06:22

never worked together, it

1:06:25

was a relay race, nowadays records are

1:06:27

relay races, you've got

1:06:30

the guy who does the beats, then we give it

1:06:32

to the guy who does the vocals, then we give

1:06:34

it to the guy who does the mixing. How

1:06:36

did it work with you? It

1:06:39

was like a relay race, I would run

1:06:41

the final leg, basically where the streets

1:06:43

have no name, I walked into

1:06:46

the studio while they were working

1:06:48

on that song and Brian Eno was

1:06:50

putting a barbershop quartet

1:06:53

singing on it on

1:06:55

the outro and I went, they fucking lost

1:06:57

the plot hadn't they? And

1:07:03

Brian and Danny said to me, Steve, we

1:07:06

don't know what we're doing with this song, it's

1:07:08

yours. So me with my

1:07:10

fresh energy managed to,

1:07:13

with the band, we worked through

1:07:15

it, my

1:07:17

job became that really more

1:07:19

like. But then it became as it

1:07:22

went on over the years, you would always get

1:07:24

a call for some of it wouldn't you? I

1:07:26

remember being around at your house and eating one

1:07:28

night, having a nice up with you and

1:07:34

Kirsty and the phone went, the

1:07:36

phone in the hall, and Kirsty went out and got

1:07:38

the phone and

1:07:40

she went, Steve, Steve called you out and then Kirsty

1:07:42

just came back in and went, he's got

1:07:44

the call. Nothing

1:07:48

needed to be said, we knew who it was. Of

1:07:51

course, you know, on Joshua Tree

1:07:53

it's well known but Kirsty literally,

1:07:56

she did the running order of that album in about

1:07:58

10 minutes. We

1:08:00

were at the end, everyone was so fried. I

1:08:03

wasn't as fried because I was only there for like

1:08:05

two months. But they'd done

1:08:07

18 months of work on the album. Are

1:08:11

you coming in for the mixing, Steve? Or are you coming...

1:08:13

Not like... It's like a... As I say,

1:08:15

it's like a relay race. I ran

1:08:18

the final lead. And I was considered the

1:08:20

guy who did singles, which is so weird

1:08:22

because I have no pedigree of being the

1:08:24

guy who does singles. But

1:08:26

I'm much more that guy than Brian Eno

1:08:28

and Danny Lanoir, who have no idea when

1:08:31

a song is finished. You

1:08:33

know, I'm a good closer.

1:08:35

I'm good at like, okay, what

1:08:38

do we need? Let's get this song finished.

1:08:40

So they have... There he goes with okay with that.

1:08:42

There he goes with okay with that. Yeah,

1:08:44

because weirdly, they saw me

1:08:46

as the guy who was,

1:08:49

you know, I was their very

1:08:51

first studio person, really. So

1:08:53

they trusted me. You know, I remember

1:08:56

sitting in the studio on the first

1:08:58

album and there was a couch behind me and

1:09:00

I would be there at the desk and I

1:09:02

heard giggling behind me and I turned round and

1:09:05

they literally all went like this, like

1:09:07

teacher. So I was... And

1:09:09

even though I was only five years older than

1:09:11

them, it was considered... I was like teacher. So

1:09:15

they trusted me. I said to Bono once though,

1:09:17

many years later after all this, I said, you

1:09:19

know, I know I'm a nice guy, Bono, but

1:09:21

you always ask me back. Why

1:09:23

do you like me to come back? And he goes

1:09:25

one word. I go, what's that? He

1:09:27

says clarity. And it's

1:09:30

weird. I don't feel like I have

1:09:32

clarity at all really, but I

1:09:34

won't tell him that. He trusts

1:09:36

you obviously. He trusts you with his

1:09:39

work, which he's very, very precious

1:09:41

about obviously for good reasons. Yeah,

1:09:43

he goes above and beyond. You

1:09:45

know, I mean... Isn't there a way that

1:09:48

this can breed sort of the

1:09:50

people going before? It's like for Lanoir and everyone going,

1:09:53

oh fuck, it's fine. Steve and Eddie White's gonna sort

1:09:55

it out anyway. You know what? I

1:09:57

don't know if they ever think like that. No, I'm just sorry. I

1:09:59

don't know. I'm sure they don't. But I'll give

1:10:01

you a good, there's a great example of the

1:10:04

sort of ambition. I

1:10:07

had a slightly different job on the

1:10:09

Vertigo album called How to Dismantle an

1:10:11

Atomic Bomb because that

1:10:13

was actually the only time they'd had to let

1:10:15

a producer go. It's Chris Thomas. Yeah.

1:10:18

I won't say his name but you said his name. It

1:10:20

was Chris Thomas. But he, you know, when I

1:10:23

walked in I said, you know, let me hear

1:10:25

all the songs and there was a song called Native

1:10:27

Sum which I listened to

1:10:29

and I went, oh, that's a good song but

1:10:31

I don't like how it's been recorded. It's too

1:10:33

safe. You know, we can make it better. And

1:10:36

they said, okay, you know, over

1:10:38

to you, Steve. So I set the band up

1:10:40

in a different way and I

1:10:42

said, okay, we've got to finish song now. So

1:10:44

Bono, you go out and do a live vocal

1:10:46

with the band because this

1:10:49

is, you know, because normally Bono would

1:10:51

write the lyrics after the music was

1:10:53

done. So it was done separately.

1:10:55

But I said, here we have a finished

1:10:58

song. So you go out

1:11:00

and sing. He went out there, got the mic,

1:11:02

halfway through the song, he put the mic down, came

1:11:04

into the control room and said, I said, what are

1:11:06

you doing? He goes, I can't sing that.

1:11:09

No. I can't sing that. Now

1:11:12

you can go on YouTube, put

1:11:14

in U2 Native Sum and you

1:11:16

can hear what becomes

1:11:18

Vertigo. Now Native Sum's a

1:11:20

pretty damn good song. The thing

1:11:22

about it though is Vertigo is

1:11:26

still a classic live song of

1:11:28

theirs. So is there something

1:11:30

visceral about it? That's because the original tape

1:11:32

got stolen. No, no,

1:11:35

no, no, no, no. Native Sum. How

1:11:37

did it get out there? How did it get out there?

1:11:39

Because it was on the U2

1:11:41

iPod, which was pretty much

1:11:43

included 12 remixes

1:11:46

of Discotek along with

1:11:49

Native Sum. But it was tucked right

1:11:52

in at the very end of the U2

1:11:54

iPod. Someone then ripped it and put it

1:11:56

on YouTube. So you can go and

1:11:58

listen to it. it's

1:12:00

good you know but it's not vertigo

1:12:03

vertigo has something about it you

1:12:06

know so and I produce vertigo completely

1:12:08

from the beginning so that was you

1:12:10

know there's a different process

1:12:12

aren't they they're writing in the studio

1:12:14

as opposed to they you mix it

1:12:16

before they write it literally I

1:12:19

mean I mean honestly I mean

1:12:21

okay so I can this

1:12:23

is what happens I can do a mix Bono

1:12:25

comes in goes I love it sounds great

1:12:28

just give me a microphone I can sing it better

1:12:31

so he give him a microphone and he sings it

1:12:33

and you go well that's a really good vocal because

1:12:36

he's a great singer but then you go I'm not

1:12:38

quite sure what the lyrics are on that bit realize

1:12:40

he hasn't actually written the lyrics he's just bluffing

1:12:43

but he does a better vocal and then he

1:12:45

goes it's great needs a bit more

1:12:47

music though edge so edge puts

1:12:49

on his guitar and of course diddles a

1:12:51

little bit and changes a couple

1:12:53

of chords well that's good need

1:12:56

to change the bass now right drumbeat

1:12:59

three weeks later I'm going he

1:13:02

loved the mix of this song now so it

1:13:05

goes like that when I was after I've

1:13:07

done beautiful day with them they said we've

1:13:09

got two more songs for you Steve one

1:13:11

is called walk on and one is called

1:13:14

home I said okay great

1:13:16

and I listened to both I said well

1:13:18

walk on has got this great chorus walk

1:13:20

on walk on but I

1:13:23

don't the verse isn't great and home has got a

1:13:25

really good verse but doesn't really

1:13:27

have much of a chorus I said oh

1:13:29

funny you should say that at one point

1:13:31

it was the same song split

1:13:34

into two songs I said just put it back into

1:13:36

the same song then and

1:13:39

the lyrics were different but it

1:13:41

was it works so love I

1:13:43

mean it's just very simple things

1:13:46

you know I just quickly the

1:13:48

stones because you you you I

1:13:51

talked about two distinctive guitars you

1:13:53

can't get I know I know

1:13:55

there's a great there's a great line you had about that

1:13:58

at the time which I'll let you tell the story Well

1:14:00

I think I've said this before but I

1:14:02

always say I produce the worst ever Rolling

1:14:04

Stones album until the next one. But

1:14:09

I'll tell you the line you gave me at the time, which

1:14:11

was great, you said it was like a marriage that was being

1:14:13

kept together for the sake of the children. The

1:14:20

children being the new Virgin deal.

1:14:24

Right. OK, yes, it

1:14:26

was a bit like, well, we all know

1:14:28

that Mick would love to make

1:14:30

a living without the Stones, and he's

1:14:32

done so many things, but he's never

1:14:35

had success now. Keith

1:14:37

is a complete Luddite. But

1:14:39

there's one thing about Keith, is

1:14:41

that the music was always more

1:14:44

important than the lifestyle, which

1:14:46

is why whenever he felt it

1:14:48

seemed like Keith might go the way of

1:14:50

all the other people who

1:14:52

lived the Keith Richards lifestyle, because

1:14:55

he owns that thing, doesn't he?

1:14:57

The Keith Richards lifestyle. But

1:15:00

in fact, actually the part of the lifestyle

1:15:02

that you never talk about is

1:15:04

the absolute love of

1:15:06

music, and that's the thing that's

1:15:08

kept him from overdoing it. But

1:15:12

he's very, very Luddite in his, you

1:15:14

know, it's very simple. And the Stones

1:15:16

still record in that way. Have you

1:15:18

heard the – I mean I'm not a big fan of

1:15:20

that song, Angry. It's like a Mick

1:15:23

Jagger sort of pop song. And that's not – The

1:15:25

album's got some good stuff on there. It does. It

1:15:28

does, and I love that song with Gaga. And I

1:15:30

really like that. Yeah, I love it. It's a pop-exile.

1:15:32

That's great. Yeah, it's just the way it goes on.

1:15:35

It's fun for the whole act, too, of it. It's

1:15:37

really great. I really like the way the guitars are

1:15:39

recorded as well. I mean, you know, it's like all

1:15:41

modern records. They suffer from so much compression, which seems

1:15:43

to be the thing at

1:15:46

the moment. I know, I know. I

1:15:48

don't know about modern records. I love

1:15:50

listening to my Stack Ridge and my

1:15:52

– Oh! Nice

1:15:55

to hear that. Perfect. That's

1:15:58

a perfect rock on Thur's band, man. Well

1:16:00

done. Guy, you've got

1:16:02

such a great memory of those days. There

1:16:05

were such happy times. I don't know if we've

1:16:07

really got time because all my time recording it.

1:16:10

I was really hoping we

1:16:12

could tell the story of where the title

1:16:14

of Kite comes from. Yeah.

1:16:16

Kite was... Because this is one of the

1:16:19

proudest things in my career. Because I love it. Because

1:16:21

I started working with Steve and with Kirsty. I

1:16:23

was foisted on you by Johnny Marr, basically, wasn't

1:16:26

I? Right. I think so,

1:16:28

yeah. You got to use my mate. I was doing those stuff.

1:16:30

And then I went off and did the Floyd thing. And

1:16:32

then, so you asked me if I could get...

1:16:35

if I'd asked David to play on Kirsty's album,

1:16:37

which of course he did. Right.

1:16:39

And so there's this wonderful thing. There's this

1:16:41

wonderful thing. I think it's Waving or Drowning,

1:16:43

or Little... which song it is. Yeah. But

1:16:46

thanks to that, there is one song in the world

1:16:48

where the guitar... it's a Kirsty McCall song and the

1:16:50

guitar credit is David Gilmour and Johnny Marr. It's

1:16:53

the coolest thing ever. That's great. But

1:16:55

yeah, basically, the... The story of the title. The title

1:16:57

of Kite. Kite. We

1:17:00

said, you know, what do you... when Dave Gilmour

1:17:02

plays on your record, what do you give him?

1:17:05

You know, so, you know, you did like,

1:17:07

you know, what's your session? Double, double?

1:17:10

I don't know. So we said to him,

1:17:12

what can we do for you, David? He

1:17:14

says, send a kite to Armenia. And

1:17:17

we still, to this day, don't know

1:17:19

how much money exactly a kite is.

1:17:22

No, I said, I don't know what... because you... I remember

1:17:24

you called me and said, Guy, he wants to send a

1:17:26

kite. I mean, what's a kite? I mean, the people at

1:17:28

war, they don't want to be playing games. I

1:17:32

think that it means

1:17:34

check in some weird

1:17:36

rhyming slang that no one knows. 500

1:17:39

quid is a monkey or a carpet, one of those

1:17:41

words. But... Right, right, right. My

1:17:44

thought was a kite was just another...

1:17:47

No, I think it means check. But I'm not...

1:17:49

no one knows. I've also said, no one knows.

1:17:51

Can you ask me, Gilmour, please, Guy? I

1:17:53

think so. Is he there? I

1:17:56

mean, it's very obscure. It's the sort of thing you'd pull

1:17:59

out on an Eno card. isn't it?

1:18:01

Cinder cold. Yeah yeah

1:18:03

yeah. Obleek strategies. What

1:18:05

a fantastic... Have you

1:18:07

ever worked with... I've got a set, I've got

1:18:10

a set. You do. Here's a, you know the

1:18:12

great thing about Brian Eno is that

1:18:14

he is probably one of the brainiest people

1:18:16

on the planet. Yeah I saw him play

1:18:18

the other night. He did the... You saw

1:18:21

Brian? Yeah he played with the

1:18:23

Baltic Philharmonic at

1:18:26

the Royal Festival Hall and it was amazing. I've

1:18:28

never seen an orchestra used like that where they

1:18:30

would literally come on and they were wandering around.

1:18:32

Yeah yeah yeah. They were a part of us.

1:18:35

It was an amazing thing to see an orchestra

1:18:37

used like that. It was brilliant. I

1:18:39

did a week with him. Okay so this is my,

1:18:42

one of my real box ticks. I did a

1:18:44

week, no it was a week with when Roxy

1:18:46

Music tried to do an album and it was

1:18:48

literally 1972. It was Chris Thomas, Brian

1:18:53

Eno and with the five of them and

1:18:57

it split into two camps immediately and

1:19:00

no one talked to each other and kind of

1:19:02

nothing came of it. Brian

1:19:04

in fact, Brian went

1:19:07

on record, Brian Eno saying it was

1:19:09

atomically the same as 1972. Fantastic. Steve

1:19:13

thank you so much for coming on. I

1:19:16

mean my God I feel like I've been in

1:19:18

so many rooms including that rather claustrophobic one at

1:19:20

the beginning. Yeah yeah yeah.

1:19:23

Fantastic thank you so much. So

1:19:25

good, so good and it's you know

1:19:27

only scratch the surface it feels. It's

1:19:29

brilliant. What a life Steve, what a

1:19:32

life. Well done. We salute you. We'd

1:19:34

love to meet you properly if you

1:19:36

come to London. Yeah we

1:19:38

can do it. We can do an in-person one

1:19:40

if you want. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Would love

1:19:43

that. Guy, amazing.

1:19:45

So much of the important soundtrack of

1:19:47

our lives. 100%. I

1:19:50

mean and I think the influences and

1:19:52

the way he's drawn out of certain

1:19:55

things within bands that have become you

1:19:58

know motifs for a genre. some

1:20:00

of those guitar parts and those drum parts that

1:20:02

he created in the late 70s, early 1980s. Yeah,

1:20:06

no, he's shaped the, you know, you

1:20:08

now realise that those records, you know,

1:20:10

XDC, Susan DaVance, they went on to

1:20:12

shape everything that came after him. I

1:20:15

didn't even mention Hiroshima Mon Amor. I

1:20:17

mean, no, some of the Ha Ha

1:20:19

Ha, Ultra Box album. Absolutely, I mean,

1:20:21

that was one of the

1:20:24

records that was always played by Raph De Egan in the

1:20:26

Blitz, inspired all of them. Thank you for

1:20:28

helping get him on, Guy. Oh, it's

1:20:31

what we do, Guy. It's what we do. Thank

1:20:33

you so much for listening. Thank you to Ben Jones, who's

1:20:35

obviously sitting there producing this brilliantly

1:20:38

every week. And also,

1:20:40

I mean, thanks. Isn't that like that Steve

1:20:42

has said he has literally listened to every

1:20:44

single one? That's amazing. I don't think I've

1:20:46

even done that. No, I always just flipped.

1:20:48

What does that say about life in Bali?

1:20:52

I flipped through your bit and listened to

1:20:54

every, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

1:20:57

I'm going to get to the ads. All right,

1:20:59

it's good night for me. And

1:21:01

it's good night from then. Rock On

1:21:04

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1:21:06

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