 |
| Because he thought he'd write his best at 60. |
The Hit
I have to guess that most people of a certain age could mumble their way through Nick Lowe’s “Cruel to Be Kind” at their local karaoke joint. It’s a cute little bugger, lyrically, it opens with a nice strummed guitar and I’ve always liked the drumming - you don’t get a lot of one, one-two-three rolls in pop rock, or pub rock in this case - and it’s one of those great tunes that cuddles a tricky theme with a buoyant chorus. Anyone who remembers the video may share the same soft-spot I do for what they did in the video for the “Ooh-oooh-woo-oooh-wooo” that leads into the bridge…could be why it also struck me as a cute song.
No great stories attach to the writing of it, though it bears noting that Lowe first played it in his second band, Brinsley Schwarz. Oh, and they cut clips from Lowe’s 1979 wedding to Carlene Carter into the video…of the legendary Carter/Cash family. And I mean literally legendary. I tried to find Johnny Cash in the footage, but no luck so far.
Nick Lowe never wrote a ton of hits, but, holy shit, did the man live a life…
The Rest of the Story
…by which I mean his father was a RAF pilot (and eventually a wing commander), and one trusted enough to serve a stint in Jordan. Though born on Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, in 1949, Lowe spent enough of his childhood in Jordan to have memories of play-dates with the future King Hussein. Lowe passes on some of those memories in a whale of a 2018 Rolling Stone retrospective, including flying in the back of an old WWII era plane seated at the back with his mom and dad looking down at clear-blue skies while his dad let the auto-pilot do the driving.
Before all that, and the war, both of Lowe’s parents played and performed, his father as a pianist (nicknamed “the Dudenville” and wearing short trousers a la AC-DC’s Angus Young), his mother as a dancer. When he was old enough, his mother taught him some chords on a ukulele and gave him access to their record collection, from which he absorbed Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee and, young Nick’s personal favorite, Tennessee Ernie Ford.
From there, the story fast-forwards to Lowe’s first band(s). He first joined an act called Kippington Lodge, a band started by a friend from his school days, Brinsley Schwarz. Lowe actually blew up that first band by insisting they fire all the session musicians and play themselves, but that pales against the disaster engineered by their management - the aptly-named Famepushers Ltd. - after they renamed themselves Brinsley Schwarz in 1969. With an eye to making a splash Famepushers booked the band at New York’s Filmore East, opening for Van Morrison and the Quicksilver Messenger Service, and flew them and a bunch of music journalists in for the event…which flopped. They returned to the London pub-rock circuit and the grunt work of paying dues.
A March 2020 Goldmine Magazine interview has some great material/memories from Lowe about coming up in the London areas famous late-70s pub-rock scene. Lowe credits an American band, Eggs Over Easy, for accidentally inspiring the scene. Long story short, the original bassist for The Animals, Chas Chandler, flew them over with producing them in mind, only to strand them in (rough, pre-gentrified) Kentish Town. After lingering too long, they got bored and begged the owner of Irish pub - one that hosted mostly jazz and traditional Irish music - to give them his worst night, just so they could stay fresh. It wound up working and the scene grew organically from there. Lowe recalls the “great, diverse crowds” (“You know, different types of people—old people, young funky girls, from mods and rockers to bus drivers”), and playing with Eggs Over Easy, Dr. Feelgood, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, the 101ers (Joe Strummer’s first band, or one of ‘em); and all the while, a younger guy named Declan McManus knocked around.
The most curious thing about Nick Lowe’s career in music is how little of it involves music he played and performed. After leaving Brinsley Schwarz in the mid-1970s, he released a couple singles - e.g., “Heart of the City” and “So It Goes” in 1976 (get a whiff of Steely Dan on that one); his one and only international hit (“Cruel to Be Kind,” duh) came out in 1979 - and he joined Rockpile with Dave Edmunds, who put out just one album, though Lowe’s Labour of Lust and Edmunds Repeat When Necessary count as “honorary” Rockpile albums, apparently (it was a label thing). Despite more or less backing into it, Lowe spent a lot of this time as the head producer at Stiff Records, a label started by his then-roommate, Jake Riviera and a guy named Dave Robinson.
I have to guess that most people of a certain age could mumble their way through Nick Lowe’s “Cruel to Be Kind” at their local karaoke joint. It’s a cute little bugger, lyrically, it opens with a nice strummed guitar and I’ve always liked the drumming - you don’t get a lot of one, one-two-three rolls in pop rock, or pub rock in this case - and it’s one of those great tunes that cuddles a tricky theme with a buoyant chorus. Anyone who remembers the video may share the same soft-spot I do for what they did in the video for the “Ooh-oooh-woo-oooh-wooo” that leads into the bridge…could be why it also struck me as a cute song.
No great stories attach to the writing of it, though it bears noting that Lowe first played it in his second band, Brinsley Schwarz. Oh, and they cut clips from Lowe’s 1979 wedding to Carlene Carter into the video…of the legendary Carter/Cash family. And I mean literally legendary. I tried to find Johnny Cash in the footage, but no luck so far.
Nick Lowe never wrote a ton of hits, but, holy shit, did the man live a life…
The Rest of the Story
…by which I mean his father was a RAF pilot (and eventually a wing commander), and one trusted enough to serve a stint in Jordan. Though born on Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, in 1949, Lowe spent enough of his childhood in Jordan to have memories of play-dates with the future King Hussein. Lowe passes on some of those memories in a whale of a 2018 Rolling Stone retrospective, including flying in the back of an old WWII era plane seated at the back with his mom and dad looking down at clear-blue skies while his dad let the auto-pilot do the driving.
Before all that, and the war, both of Lowe’s parents played and performed, his father as a pianist (nicknamed “the Dudenville” and wearing short trousers a la AC-DC’s Angus Young), his mother as a dancer. When he was old enough, his mother taught him some chords on a ukulele and gave him access to their record collection, from which he absorbed Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee and, young Nick’s personal favorite, Tennessee Ernie Ford.
From there, the story fast-forwards to Lowe’s first band(s). He first joined an act called Kippington Lodge, a band started by a friend from his school days, Brinsley Schwarz. Lowe actually blew up that first band by insisting they fire all the session musicians and play themselves, but that pales against the disaster engineered by their management - the aptly-named Famepushers Ltd. - after they renamed themselves Brinsley Schwarz in 1969. With an eye to making a splash Famepushers booked the band at New York’s Filmore East, opening for Van Morrison and the Quicksilver Messenger Service, and flew them and a bunch of music journalists in for the event…which flopped. They returned to the London pub-rock circuit and the grunt work of paying dues.
A March 2020 Goldmine Magazine interview has some great material/memories from Lowe about coming up in the London areas famous late-70s pub-rock scene. Lowe credits an American band, Eggs Over Easy, for accidentally inspiring the scene. Long story short, the original bassist for The Animals, Chas Chandler, flew them over with producing them in mind, only to strand them in (rough, pre-gentrified) Kentish Town. After lingering too long, they got bored and begged the owner of Irish pub - one that hosted mostly jazz and traditional Irish music - to give them his worst night, just so they could stay fresh. It wound up working and the scene grew organically from there. Lowe recalls the “great, diverse crowds” (“You know, different types of people—old people, young funky girls, from mods and rockers to bus drivers”), and playing with Eggs Over Easy, Dr. Feelgood, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, the 101ers (Joe Strummer’s first band, or one of ‘em); and all the while, a younger guy named Declan McManus knocked around.
The most curious thing about Nick Lowe’s career in music is how little of it involves music he played and performed. After leaving Brinsley Schwarz in the mid-1970s, he released a couple singles - e.g., “Heart of the City” and “So It Goes” in 1976 (get a whiff of Steely Dan on that one); his one and only international hit (“Cruel to Be Kind,” duh) came out in 1979 - and he joined Rockpile with Dave Edmunds, who put out just one album, though Lowe’s Labour of Lust and Edmunds Repeat When Necessary count as “honorary” Rockpile albums, apparently (it was a label thing). Despite more or less backing into it, Lowe spent a lot of this time as the head producer at Stiff Records, a label started by his then-roommate, Jake Riviera and a guy named Dave Robinson.
 |
| Credits... |
Lowe only landed the producing gig “because I just spent more time in the studios then the other two.” The space was small, unsophisticated, and they recorded cramped and live, but it had good acoustics and the space matched Lowe’s style: he earned the nickname “The Basher” for telling the bands he produced “bash it out, we’ll tart it up later.” And yet some very famous recordings came out of Stiff Records, including Elvis (“Declan McManus”) Costello’s first five albums, a couple by Graham Parker, and The Damned’s Damned Damned Damned. (Side note: Lowe felt too old for punk and didn’t care for it, but he rated The Damned; he thought of them more as a garage rock band, and a good one.) The credits continued into the mid-1980s, with producing credits for John Hiatt, “new wave icons” Wreckless Eric, Paul Carrack, The Men They Couldn’t Hang, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, and even the Pretenders single, “Windows of the World.”
His music career didn’t stop during that time; in fact, Lowe released a steady stream of albums throughout - e.g., Jesus of Cool (1978), Labour of Lust (1979), Nick the Knife (1982), The Abominable Showman (1983). And after Rockpile folded, he played in several collaborative projects starting with Noise to Go, then Cowboy Outfit (released as Nick Lowe & His Cowboy Outfit in 1984), then Little Village with John Hiatt, Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner. He also admits to getting a little aimless and/or drunk around the same period (which, per the Rolling Stone retro, amounted to “detox in the Seventies” after a near-nervous breakdown from too much acid in 1971), “from pop wunderkind to boozy underachiever,” as they put it…
…and yet he’s still going. I’d direct anyone who wants the full story to the Rolling Stone retro and the Goldmine interview (though Wikipedia serves up a decent bio as well; see the link under his birth year/place) - in which you’ll find tons of casual name-dropping and ample self-deprecation - but Nick Lowe has lived nothing less than an incredible life, all the way up to staying up late drinking and listening to music with his once-father-in-law, Johnny Cash. He briefly considered retirement after losing a couple friends, but then Los Straitjackets put out their twist on some of his old songs, so he toured with them for a while. For all that, Lowe always aspired to be one of those musicians who “gracefully evolve,” in the vein of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. Or, as he once put it:
“I didn't want to become one of those thinning-haired, jowly old geezers who still does the same shtick they did when they were young, slim and beautiful. That's revolting and rather tragic.”
When the inevitable question of how he’s stayed in the game as long as he has came up in that interview with Goldmine, he gave this as a response - which I’ll quote in full because a gives what feels like a good sense of the man:
“There is that show business cliché that says, ‘You don’t give it up, it gives you up.’ As long as you can do it and not embarrass yourself, and people still turn up and get a kick out of hearing you — and they’re not just giving you a mercy clap, you know they really do like it — you would be mad not to keep doing it…What I don’t like is flying, especially international flights. That is the worst part of it. Hanging around airports and things and there really is no escape, even if you go to the shops it’s marginally better. But I’m not really sure why I am telling you this because it’s not some great secret. Everyone knows it’s like being f**king tortured, but it’s a small price to pay and that’s that.”
About the Sampler
This whole thing could have gone on for days, but, in the interest of your time and mine, I skipped over Nick Lowe’s later catalog entirely - e.g., Pinker and Prouder Than Previous (1988), Party of One (1990; after his divorce from Carter, I imagine), The Impossible Bird (1994), Dig My Mood (1998), and The Old Magic (2011). That’s not to say I skipped all of his later material - repped on the sampler by “The Club” and the old-school cute “Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day” from At My Age (2007) and “Homewrecker” from The Convincer (2001), and mostly because I preferred those two albums over the others. And, for what it’s worth, Lowe’s sound did evolve into something quieter, calmer, and more befitting the evolution to which he’d aspired.
As for the rest, I couldn’t help including a couple Brinsley Schwarz tunes - the organ-soaked romantic cautionary tale “Don’t Lose Your Grip on Love,” his nod to The Band (an influence for his pub-rock days) “The Last Time I Was Fooled,” and his original “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” - but the bulk of the sampler comes from his solo “pop wunderkind" era. Apart from the songs already linked to above that includes: “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass,” “Little Hitler” (he and Elvis Costello had a thing for Hitler references), “No Reason,” “Nutted By Reality” (more references to dictators...and that intro...what does it sound like?), the sappily tongue-in-cheek “I Love My Label,” and his first pass at “Cruel to Be Kind” (all from Jesus of Cool); the drum-heavy, new-wavy “Big Kick, Plain Scrap,” the old-school rocker “Love So Fine,” and a (perhaps) Irish-inspired “Endless Grey Ribbon” (from Labour of Lust); a pair that sound like what I remember from Rockpile (e.g., updated 50s) “Queen of Sheba” and “Stick It Where the Sun Don’t Shine” (from Nick the Knife), plus the 50s-stroll tune “Long Walk Back” from 1985’s The Rose of England.
Last, but not least, I stumbled onto a pair from Lowe’s 2020 surf-inspired collaboration with Los Straitjackets, Walkabout, “Tokyo Bay” and “Love Starvation.”
For what it’s worth, all of this grows on me with each listen. Then again, no small part of this comes from the front end of my era, I was a massive Elvis Costello fan (still love him, but lost touch with after Spike), and some version of this sound has been in my wheelhouse for decades.
Till the next one…which I’m looking forward to, not least because the band involved was a major hook for this entire project.
His music career didn’t stop during that time; in fact, Lowe released a steady stream of albums throughout - e.g., Jesus of Cool (1978), Labour of Lust (1979), Nick the Knife (1982), The Abominable Showman (1983). And after Rockpile folded, he played in several collaborative projects starting with Noise to Go, then Cowboy Outfit (released as Nick Lowe & His Cowboy Outfit in 1984), then Little Village with John Hiatt, Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner. He also admits to getting a little aimless and/or drunk around the same period (which, per the Rolling Stone retro, amounted to “detox in the Seventies” after a near-nervous breakdown from too much acid in 1971), “from pop wunderkind to boozy underachiever,” as they put it…
…and yet he’s still going. I’d direct anyone who wants the full story to the Rolling Stone retro and the Goldmine interview (though Wikipedia serves up a decent bio as well; see the link under his birth year/place) - in which you’ll find tons of casual name-dropping and ample self-deprecation - but Nick Lowe has lived nothing less than an incredible life, all the way up to staying up late drinking and listening to music with his once-father-in-law, Johnny Cash. He briefly considered retirement after losing a couple friends, but then Los Straitjackets put out their twist on some of his old songs, so he toured with them for a while. For all that, Lowe always aspired to be one of those musicians who “gracefully evolve,” in the vein of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. Or, as he once put it:
“I didn't want to become one of those thinning-haired, jowly old geezers who still does the same shtick they did when they were young, slim and beautiful. That's revolting and rather tragic.”
When the inevitable question of how he’s stayed in the game as long as he has came up in that interview with Goldmine, he gave this as a response - which I’ll quote in full because a gives what feels like a good sense of the man:
“There is that show business cliché that says, ‘You don’t give it up, it gives you up.’ As long as you can do it and not embarrass yourself, and people still turn up and get a kick out of hearing you — and they’re not just giving you a mercy clap, you know they really do like it — you would be mad not to keep doing it…What I don’t like is flying, especially international flights. That is the worst part of it. Hanging around airports and things and there really is no escape, even if you go to the shops it’s marginally better. But I’m not really sure why I am telling you this because it’s not some great secret. Everyone knows it’s like being f**king tortured, but it’s a small price to pay and that’s that.”
About the Sampler
This whole thing could have gone on for days, but, in the interest of your time and mine, I skipped over Nick Lowe’s later catalog entirely - e.g., Pinker and Prouder Than Previous (1988), Party of One (1990; after his divorce from Carter, I imagine), The Impossible Bird (1994), Dig My Mood (1998), and The Old Magic (2011). That’s not to say I skipped all of his later material - repped on the sampler by “The Club” and the old-school cute “Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day” from At My Age (2007) and “Homewrecker” from The Convincer (2001), and mostly because I preferred those two albums over the others. And, for what it’s worth, Lowe’s sound did evolve into something quieter, calmer, and more befitting the evolution to which he’d aspired.
As for the rest, I couldn’t help including a couple Brinsley Schwarz tunes - the organ-soaked romantic cautionary tale “Don’t Lose Your Grip on Love,” his nod to The Band (an influence for his pub-rock days) “The Last Time I Was Fooled,” and his original “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” - but the bulk of the sampler comes from his solo “pop wunderkind" era. Apart from the songs already linked to above that includes: “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass,” “Little Hitler” (he and Elvis Costello had a thing for Hitler references), “No Reason,” “Nutted By Reality” (more references to dictators...and that intro...what does it sound like?), the sappily tongue-in-cheek “I Love My Label,” and his first pass at “Cruel to Be Kind” (all from Jesus of Cool); the drum-heavy, new-wavy “Big Kick, Plain Scrap,” the old-school rocker “Love So Fine,” and a (perhaps) Irish-inspired “Endless Grey Ribbon” (from Labour of Lust); a pair that sound like what I remember from Rockpile (e.g., updated 50s) “Queen of Sheba” and “Stick It Where the Sun Don’t Shine” (from Nick the Knife), plus the 50s-stroll tune “Long Walk Back” from 1985’s The Rose of England.
Last, but not least, I stumbled onto a pair from Lowe’s 2020 surf-inspired collaboration with Los Straitjackets, Walkabout, “Tokyo Bay” and “Love Starvation.”
For what it’s worth, all of this grows on me with each listen. Then again, no small part of this comes from the front end of my era, I was a massive Elvis Costello fan (still love him, but lost touch with after Spike), and some version of this sound has been in my wheelhouse for decades.
Till the next one…which I’m looking forward to, not least because the band involved was a major hook for this entire project.
No comments:
Post a Comment