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| 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.
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.
