Status: Single
City: Swindon
Country: UK
Signup Date: 10/26/2005
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Monday, February 08, 2010
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Song of the Week
This week, we're posting the demo of "I Can't Own Her," which Andy discussed last week. This, and all the other demos for Apple Venus, can be found on the wonderful Homespun.
Check it out, and let us know your thoughts. Is it really "a little square, and a little wet," as the songwriter said? Or is it a beautiful little gem waiting to be further polished by Mike Batt and an orchestra in Abbey Road?
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Monday, February 08, 2010
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Folks, we're pretty much taking tonight off -- a weekend of shoveling more than two feet of snow from a 250-foot driveway, and now ceveral cervezas, have rendered your faithful correspondent pretty much incapable of doing anything more than typing up excuses ... so, excuse us while we crack open another cold one and wait for The Whom to show up on stage (hope I die before I pretend to be in the band I used to be in).
We'll post the demo of "I Can't Own Her" tomorrow. Cheers!
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Monday, February 01, 2010
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Song of the Week -- Andy's take
Part of an ongoing series of interviews by Todd Bernhardt with Andy Partridge about the songs we feature each week on MySpace. This week's song, "I Can't Own Her," is from 1999's Apple Venus, Vol. 1.
Javier Martinez won yet another edition of "Guess the Next Andyview" -- he's getting right up there with Per and Kim. We'd give you a hint for the next interview, but quite frankly we don't know what it is yet -- we'll tell you next week. There may be a surprise in store!
TB: So, I was reading the liner notes about this song, and you said that you didn't originally think this was going to make the album.
AP: No. I thought it was a little square, and a little wet.
TB: Meaning...?
AP: I don't know, it's little bit, "Oh, listen to him whining there and being a bit too lounge-y." [imitates lounge singer] "Ayyyye own this ri-ver -- thankyouverymuch ladies and gentlemen." Polite ripple of applause after the first line, you know. [laughs]
TB: [laughing] Viv Stanshall would have done a great job with it.
AP: Exactly! So, I thought, "Is this just too fucking lounge-y?" If it wasn't for [producer] Haydn Bendall pushing pushing pushing to record this, I think I would quite easily have dropped it.
TB: How did Dave and Colin feel about it?
AP: I think they were okay about it. I don't remember getting a huge rush of, "Wow, yeah, we've got to do this one." So, maybe they weren't so keen on it. But certainly Haydn said it was his favorite thing on the record, potentially. "We must do this song."
TB: Interesting. I didn't know he was that passionate about it.
AP: He loved it. And, hearing it again yesterday, first time in ages, I give all the credit to Mike Batt, the part-time Womble and arranger.
For me, the arrangement is the core of the song of the song. After Dave left the band, Colin and I just looked at each other, then looked at Haydn, and said, "Well, what the fuck are we going to do now? We're supposed to be doing the orchestral volume of this record, and we don't have the arrangements for this." You know, we only had my sketched-out stuff from the demos.
Haydn kicked in, and said, "Look, I know a great arranger, and he owes me some favors, because I've done a lot of bits and pieces for him over the last few years. It's Mike Batt."
TB: Had you been aware of him anyway?
AP: Sure. He kept cropping up on various projects -- the Wombles was only one of them. So, he called Mike, and said, "Look, we've got Abbey Road and an orchestra booked, and we haven't got the arrangements for these few songs. Can you do something?" And [chuckling] Mike obviously knew he owned Haydn some favors, so he said, "Sure! I'll do them."
I spoke to Mike a couple of times on the phone, and sent him the demos, and he worked a little bit on them. He'd call me up, and I would sit with a guitar on my lap and the phone under my chin, while he was sat at the piano at his end with the phone, and he'd play me what he had.
With this one, I knew that I wanted the "swirling sky" to be very passionate -- I wanted it to sound like a sped-up film of boiling clouds, and at the same time I wanted it to be like hair in water, swirling and dancing around. He'd be playing me some things, and I'd be saying, "Okay, when you do that run-up, can you make that bit more whatever," and he'd say, "Okay, how about this?" And I'd say, "Good, now try that." And together, we worked on these things on the phone for an hour or two.
And then he'd call me back and say, "Okay, is this more like it?" And I'd say, "Yeah, that's good," and he'd say, "Well, imagine this hand here is what the woodwind is doing, and this line here is what the cello is doing, and this line is the violins," and all that. So, I had to imagine it from him playing it on the piano down the phone. It wasn't until we got to the one mad day at Abbey Road, to do all the orchestral stuff for the whole album, that I actually got to hear the arrangement. And I can say that my socks were well and truly blown off!
TB: Of all the arrangements, I think he really put his mark on this one.
AP: He really did. This is a master arranger at work here, taking your chords and your pictorial sentiment -- "I want it to be all gray there, and that's got to swirl, and then there's got to be a release at that point, and I still want a heavy suggestion of this hanging note here. He did a phenomenal job -- I was almost in tears, listening to this orchestra playing this stuff. I was just so thrilled.
TB: I can imagine. Even now, as many times as I've heard the album, I still get a thrill at the base of my spine when they do that "swirling sky" swell...
AP: Oh, it's phenomenal stuff! And I really felt unworthy. I thought, "This is my wretched body, dressed in the nicest material, the best cut of cloth" -- do you know what I mean? It's velvet and ermine and jewels, and it's just my stinking carcass.
TB: [laughing] Oh c'mon, despite what they say, clothes don't make the man. You still need a solid person underneath.
AP: I just felt so humbled, that my basic little idea of a song had this phenomenally pictorial arrangement, which I'd only heard little sonic glimpses of down a telephone. To me, he made this track happen.
And he didn't even hang around so we could thank him! After we did the largest orchestrations, which he conducted, he then ran off, because he had to catch a plane to Germany. So, he just came in, waved his baton around a few times, and ran out! [laughs]
TB: [laughing] Who was that masked conductor?
AP: [laughing] And why was he waving his baton at me?
Yeah, totally and utterly fantastic job he did. And if ever he needs a favor out of me, he should call me, because -- damn, I owe him one for that.
TB: Let's talk about some of the instrumentation, and the changes and choices between the demo and the recorded version.
AP: The demo is so lumpen, I think. I found a patch on the keyboard that is a piano mixed with some strings, so when you hold a note down, the piano dies and the strings kind of swell. And, of course, every note you play is exactly the same on the piano and strings. So, it has this rather lumpen, porridge-y kind of quality -- like a big wedge of plasticine or something. The arrangement ideas are not fully fleshed at all on the demo.
TB: I don't know if I'd totally agree with you on that. Like I said, the body of the song is there, and that was what everything else was built on. The melody and the sentiment behind it are more or less unchanged.
AP: Yeah, I guess so, but I didn't feel worthy of that arrangement, really. But also, Haydn kicked in with some great suggestions. We were talking, while we were putting this track together, arrangement-wise, and when we got to the title line, I said, "Isn't it great the way that Brian Wilson would do things like using different-range harmonicas, specifically bass ones -- isn't that a lovely texture?" Haydn had some beautiful samples that he'd probably made of bass harmonicas, and said, "Well, you know, I've got some, so let's try it!"
Just talking about how some other people approached similar things really prompted some good ideas, and he had the tools to back it up. Like, if this was a big show tune, wouldn't it be nice if that little counter-melody that I've done with some twinkly sound on the demo, wouldn't that be lovely if that was a harp.
Haydn had a beautiful Celtic harp, which he'd made recordings of, into his own sample set, and they were just stunningly gorgeous. It was like, "Oh, that is so sensual, and so beautiful -- please, let's have that." Actually, I think the harp belongs to quite a famous player, but I can't think of his name. It's somebody with a French name. Haydn recorded him, and got him to make this beautiful set of samples with him. As soon as he played these things, it was a matter of feeling like you're inside that sound. It's all around your head, beautifully recorded.
TB: One of the questions I have here is to ask what instrument is in the left channel during the chorus -- I thought it was some kind of a horn or keyboard, but you're saying those are the harmonica samples?
AP: Yeah, there are bass harmonicas vamping on that part. They've all got that very dark, huffy timbre. "Fool on the Hill" has got the same sound, as well as some Brian Wilson things.
TB: Do you remember some of the other instruments that make up the orchestration? I know I hear flute and woodwinds. There's an oboe, certainly.
AP: There are some beautiful woodwinds. In fact, there's a lovely section at the end that we refer to as the "ducks" section. We'd always be saying to Haydn, "A little more -- can you turn the mic's up over on the woodwinds stuff? A little more of those ducks, please." Those quacking woodwinds are over that suspended-moon section -- the F-sharp over the C at the end.
But otherwise it was something like a 40- to 50-piece orchestra. It was the kind of thing where you do the full arrangements earlier in the day, then the people you don't need anymore go home. You know -- "Okay, all the woodwinds can go home." And, "Okay, now the strings can go home, and we'll just keep the brass and the double-bass, or the cellos." Then, "Okay, now we'll just keep the brass," and, "Okay, all the brass can go except for you, Mr. Flugelhorn Player -- you're still playing on 'Last Balloon'." See what I mean?
Because Haydn was a master at recording orchestras, he knew these wrinkles that I wouldn't have thought of.
TB: Right. The most efficient way to do it.
AP: Yeah. Don't pay for the whole orchestra all day. You use the whole orchestra, then a lesser part, lesser part, right down to one person. That one person's got to be here all day, because he's part of the brass section, but you don't keep the strings and woodwinds hanging around while he does his solo bit.
Another reason we worked with Haydn is because he had this reputation for making orchestras sound beautiful.
TB: And he did. It's a beautiful-sounding album.
AP: It's stunningly recorded. But it was not what Dave wanted to do, and he wasn't going to hang around while we spent the budget on an orchestra.
TB: It must have cost a pretty penny to get all those people in Abbey Road.
AP: Oh, yeah. Jesus. It was £20,000, just for one day, with the orchestra and Abbey Road. Might have been more than that, but that figure seems to be hovering in my head.
TB: Plus you had had the problems with the album anyway, where you'd burnt through some cash that you hadn't intended on spending.
AP: Well, we'd made both albums, pretty much, and had to scrap them because the tapes were stolen by Chris Difford. But that's a long story [see the first Q&A].
TB: Speaking of that, though -- one of the biggest differences between the demo and the recorded version is that there are drums on the latter. Let's talk about that. Prairie must have recorded all his drum parts at Chipping Norton in the absence of any of the orchestra, correct?
AP: He did the drums just to the piano and guide vocal. It was a case of, "Well, the drums don't need to be all the way through -- that'll just be too ponderous. But I would like this kind of tribal throb at certain points." And he did great. He just clicked into this groove, and it was a case of, "Stay away from those cymbals. Let's just use that tom and that tom, and use felt beaters instead of sticks." He did just what was required. I think anything bigger would have been obtrusive to the sentiment.
TB: I agree -- the drums are basically on the chorus, and on the end part. I love the end part, too, where he's doing those melodic runs down the toms. You guys must have worked together on the tuning of the toms, to make sure that they fit right in with the rest of the music.
AP: That was the sort of thing that I was keen on, at that time and on the previous couple of albums -- getting the drums tuned to the track. I think that that pretty much started around the time of Skylarking, when I was awakening to the fact that drums could be very musical, as opposed to just going bonk-bonk-bonk.
But, of course, this was being done even before I was even aware of it, by people like [Mummer producer] Steve Nye working with Pete Phipps on things like "Me and the Wind." You know, getting the drums musically tuned to be in with the track. Nonsuch was probably the apogee of that for me. There's Dave Mattacks drumming, and us saying, "Can you tune the snare so it's a seventh of the scale," or, "We're going to add this sample with the snare, so it'll be a third," or something that's in musical relation to the music going on.
TB: And I'm sure Dave Mattacks was into that, given how musical his drumming is.
AP: Very much so. Because if the drums are musically conversing with the other instruments, as opposed to just making knocking noises, it makes the drums much more part of the track.
TB: Well then, I think what's left to talk about are the lyrics.
AP: Ooh, I knew you'd say that! You're going to put a little pin into my coiled winkle of manness.
TB: [laughing] I think this is an important thing for any man -- or any person, for that matter -- to understand. You can only be with another person. You cannot possess them.
AP: Yeah. No matter how emotionally attached you are, they're not a chair. They're not a book. You can't say, "Yep. That's mine. I own that. I bought it, that's mine. I can sit on this chair, I can take this book anywhere I want." You can't do that with people -- it doesn't matter how fucking attached you get to them!
TB: And that realization ultimately makes relationships stronger, because you realize you can't take people for granted -- you have to constantly work at it, because it's always a mutual agreement.
AP: But when they pull that stool from under you, when they pull that carpet from under you and say, "I'm off," whoa!
TB: And we were just recently talking about "Me and the Wind," so...
AP: Exactly! It's kind of weird that you should pick these two next to each other, because they're not too dissimilar a sentiment.
It's the fact that one person who you thought was with you for life is going, and you're left with that realization of, "Oh my god, I didn't own them! I couldn't possess them, I couldn't keep them forevermore, despite the whole [adopts over-important voice] Judeo-Christian marriage thing." And here comes a new person into my life, and I realize I will not be able to own them, either! You know, my third eye has been opened here, and I've now been rudely awakened.
TB: Which, again, only makes that relationship stronger -- it's both edges of the sword.
AP: I guess so, because you realize that all the shit like wedding rings and vows and all that kind of stuff don't mean anything.
TB: It's all a choice.
AP: It's down to human foibles. A kick in the foibles!
TB: And a sense of commitment and dedication and work...
AP: Yeah. Making it work.
TB: Too many people, I think, get caught up in the whole fairy-tale aspect of "Til death do us part," and "They lived happily ever after."
AP: I think I was, until this kick in the foibles that I got. And suddenly I realized that you do not own people, despite whatever ceremony you did. That's a tough feeling! That's a painful awakening.
TB: Not too long ago, we were talking about "The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul," and you were talking about existentialism, and this is kind of a flavor of that, isn't it.
AP: Yeah! I can't remember the brand of cigarettes, but in the '50s there was an ad where there's a fellow wandering by the Thames in his mac -- you know, lonely man with his cigarette, being all very French and Left Bank, looking at the river -- and I sort of imagined myself as this existential actor caught between two scene changes. Here I am -- I can look at the river and say, "Yeah, that's my river. I live in this country, that's my river, I can own that if I want. But I can't own that person. This is my town, but I can't own that person!" The closest people to your heart -- they're going to run off, or they're going to die.
TB: Exactly. You can fool yourself -- you can say that there is a god, you can say there is an afterlife, or that there is an enduring love, such a thing as "happily ever after," but in fact there's not.
AP: There's not. And that was a real slap in the face for me.
TB: Do you remember sitting and writing this? Did the music and lyrics come together? Where the lyrics prompted by the chords you'd discovered, or by that keyboard patch you mentioned?
AP: I think I was messing around with it on guitar first of all, because it's this interval [picks up guitar] -- it's a C with a F-sharp. To me, it's a sort of a moon hanging on a string, and you can reach and reach and reach for it, and you can see it, and it's lighting you up, but you can't get it. You can't own it.
TB: You're the moth that's always flying toward it and never getting there.
AP: Yeah. To me -- because chords do this to my mind -- that C with that F-sharp hanging over it is that moon hanging on a string. It might not even be the real moon -- it might be a fake moon in a play. You can't reach it.
So, it was that interval -- which I'd been trying to put that into a song for a while -- and then finding that rising figure [sings melodic intro to verse vocal], just sitting at a keyboard, with this piano-strings patch, that got me going. And then I fell into being Left Bank cigarette man.
TB: Did the song come quickly, or did you build it over time?
AP: I think it came reasonably quickly. I'm not sure, though. The process of writing this is a little unclear -- as in, maybe I was trying to detach myself from this awkward feeling whilst it was being written. I know that sounds contradictory. I was sort of proud of it, but I didn't want to be proud of it.
I don't know why it seems I've got this screen in the way of remembering -- some sort of embarrassment about my weakness in the lyric, in that I'm showing vulnerability. I've still got some sort of wall up about it. But hearing it yesterday, in headphones, through three or four times, I thought, "Wow, this is very beautifully arranged!"
TB: Colin's bass playing is great on this.
AP: Oh, totally. Totally sympathetic to what's required. He does that beautiful, kind of bubbling counter-melody. Plus, he and I did things like sitting and listening, and I'd say, "You know, when it says 'Winos sliding down,' can you turn the key of the bass to wind the note down?" He did that, and you end up with that great aural metaphor.
I think we were quite sensitive to the arrangements of the counter vocals as well, in the middle section -- which I'd forgotten all about until I played them yesterday, and it was like, "Oh, that's not half bad!"
But, it's a funny old song for me, because I did feel that, unintentionally, I did give too much of myself away. And it's still a little bit raw because of that. There's a lot to this songwriting shit! [laughs]
TB: [laughs] You didn't know you were working so hard, did you?
AP: No! Almost broke into an anal-cleft sweat!
TB: [laughing] I thought there was just a treble and bass cleft! I didn't realize there was that one, too.
AP: [laughing] The anal cleft! That's the one that does all the clenching when you realize you're playing wrong.
©2010 Todd Bernhardt and Andy Partridge. All rights reserved.
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Sunday, January 24, 2010
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Song of the Week
Last week, Andy talked about the making of "Me and the Wind," originally released on 1983's Mummer.
This week, we bring you the demo, which can be found on Fuzzy Warbles, Vol. 5, and which Andy also discussed last week. Dig that crazy little drum machine — and guitar part!
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Monday, January 18, 2010
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Song of the Week -- Andy's take
Part of an ongoing series of interviews by Todd Bernhardt with Andy Partridge about the songs we feature each week on MySpace. This week's song, "Me and the Wind," is from 1983's Mummer.
Damo Waters was the winner of the "Guess the next Andyview" contest, using a shotgun approach. Well done! Tune in two weeks from now, when we'll talk about one of Andy's more poignant tunes.
TB: So, we started talking about Mummer before I turned the recorder on, and you were saying...
AP: I don't remember, now that you're recording! I've got studio fever. You've got to put that red light off.
TB: "Okay, we've got it in the can, love. Let's just do one more."
AP: [laughs] Ah, okay -- now we can have some fun!
It's an album that a lot of fans don't seem to like, and I think it's got its merits, actually.
TB: It's in my top five consistently. I find that every song on it has something to offer.
AP: Like notes, and lyrics! [laughs] And the fact that it's over shortly, and goes into another one that also doesn't hang around much, and then you can move on to somebody else's album!
TB: [laughing] It's funny -- when I first visited England, in '94, the two albums that I had running through my head the most were Mummer and Big Express. It depended on where I was....
AP: Ah -- whether you were in countryside England or town England.
TB: Exactly right.
Some people have said that the lyrics to "Me and the Wind" were about Terry and his departure.
AP: You're right! And I was thinking about that, playing it yesterday. Although it wasn't intentional, I can completely see what they mean, because of all the references to drumming, sitting on the stool, "imprisoned in your drumbeat," and the snare. But I wasn't mentally writing a song about being free from Terry.
TB: Had he left the group when you wrote this song?
AP: No -- he was still with the band. We may have even tried to rehearse it with him.
TB: So that kind of blows that theory out of the water.
AP: Yeah, yeah. In fact, I vaguely remember trying to get him to play a similar kind of rolling pattern, with that sort of little clay-pot drum sound that I was into for that album. Which was inspired by the cheap little drum machine I'd bought, really.
TB: Which is very evident on the demo of this song.
AP: Yeah, that funny little nattering, pattering [mimics drumbeat]. It's like a little potty, cardboard-y box sound, isn't it. That was the sound of the tom-toms on this little drum box, which I can't for the life of me remember what it was called. It might have been something like Drumatix, but I couldn't swear.
But I think the song was more a reflection on the last big serious relationship I had before I met my former wife, with a girl called Linda, who unceremoniously dumped me for a lab scientist, I think he was. You know, someone who dips litmus strips into other people's shit for a living.
TB: [laughs] Obviously you have a high opinion of him!
AP: She moved up in the glamour stakes! She wanted to play a higher game, so she went for a professional shit-dipper.
TB: He blinded her with poop science.
AP: He blinded her with his soiled litmus!
But I got the last laugh, because after about a year of being with him, Linda got in touch with me and my-then-girlfriend Marianne, and said, "Can we all go out for a drink?" I thought it was strange, but okay...
TB: Marianne was okay with that?
AP: Kind of, yeah. But when she went to the toilet, Linda leaned in, and said, "Oh, come back, come back!" And I was, "No no no! Mwuahahaha!" [laughs] "You sit by the fire with your shit dipper!"
It's that thing where the relationship is your whole world, and it ends, and part of you is thinking, "Oh my god, I'm totally free, I can do anything I want! I can go anywhere, do anything -- I'm free! Hooray! I'm not a slave to that relationship anymore." And the other 50 percent of you is saying, "Oh no! What do I do now? My rudder's gone, my steering's broken, what am I to do?"
So, it was kind of making allusions to the thing of, you can blow anywhere you want, you can pull and push anything, you can do anything you want -- but, at the same time, like the wind, you find yourself unanchored and in need of that emotional steadying or something. It's the sweet and sour of a relationship ending -- the freedom and the responsibility of the freedom.
What's the syndrome called where you find yourself missing your captor? Is it Stockholm Syndrome?
TB: I think it is. Patty Hearst fell prey to that.
AP: Really?
TB: Yeah, she became part of the Symbionese Liberation Army and was a revolutionary for a while after that, and had to be "deprogrammed," I think.
AP: Hmmm. That sounds like a euphemism if ever I heard one -- "Baby, come up to my apartment, and I'll deprogram you."
TB: [laughing] Turn a few dials....
AP: Put a few pins in a few slots, and give you a damned good deprogramming.
TB: This song, to me, seems one of the best examples of your songs that I've heard where the music and the lyrics go together -- the tone of the music, the conceit and emotion behind the lyrics -- they really go hand-in-glove. Even on the demo, you've got tons of reverb on your voice -- you're going for this windy, airy feeling. You've got a flute...
AP: That's where the song came from! It came from the flute. It came from the fact that my ex-wife had these mad phases in which she had to have all the equipment for whatever she was thinking of. She'd wake up one morning and suddenly make the proclamation, "I'm going to be an oil painter!" She'd have to have the easel, and the palette, and the brushes, and the oil paints, and the canvas and all that, and six weeks later it would all be forgotten and dropped, you know?
So, she woke up one day and said, "I've always wanted to play the flute -- I must have a flute!" So, we went and bought the cheapest school flute you could get -- which was still quite expensive! -- and I think the phase lasted about three or four weeks. Then she just didn't pick it up anymore. But, because it was a musical instrument, I just had to tinker. I think all my fantasies of being Ian Anderson came to the fore! [laughs] Standing on one leg whenever I could, and I had to have a codpiece on.
So I started nabbing this flute and just blowing down it, and I loved the picture that it made. It's wind -- it's musical wind, a musical breeze. I was just foofing on this thing, thinking, "Wow, this is like the wind," and almost simultaneously I came up with this guitar figure [plays guitar figure of song] -- I think the sort of "wind picture" of the flute is what brought the lyrics out.
I didn't really know what I was doing on the flute -- I could just basically get a scale out, and nothing much more. But it made this picture of the wind, and freedom, and being unanchored, and suddenly all the emotional stuff for me, about this previous failed relationship -- or previous dumping -- came out. They're never failed relationships! I'm just born to be dumped. [laughs] You know, some people are dumpers, and some people are dumpees.
TB: [laughing] But look at the lyrics and songs you get as a result!
AP: The Blues are good for creativity, you're right. We've said this -- great creativity is either a result of extreme misery or extreme joy, I think.
But just the simple act of huffing down this discarded flute, and finding this repeat pattern -- which, to me, sounded like a real piece of "modern" composition -- something like, if you changed the instrumentation to marimbas or something, you'd have a piece of Philip Glass.
TB: You're pulling on the strings while you're playing that pattern?
AP: Yeah, I'm pulling the strings, because I'm sort of trying to make it sound like a piano, I think.
TB: I was going to ask about that -- it's guitar on the demo, but there's very little guitar on the recorded version.
AP: It's piano, yeah. I was trying to make the guitar sound like a piano on the demo, but I had no way of playing the piano -- didn't have access to one, and I think the only keyboard I had was, either I would borrow the Prophet-5, or I'd borrow the monophonic Korg from the band pool of stuff, if you see what I mean.
I think Colin had the Korg at the time, which was why he was doing things like "Wonderland," with all those burping, farting, percussive noises. I was finding the softer, pad-y, flute-y tones with the Prophet. But I had no access to the piano, so I was mentally trying making to make the guitar sound like a "moderne" piano piece, ala Philip Glass.
TB: Did you feel, when it came time to do the recorded version, that guitar wasn't necessary?
AP: Well, there is guitar in there, under it, in different places. If you listen very carefully later in the song, you can hear an electric guitar playing that figure. But it was a case of, "We must make this predominant, cyclical sound a piano."
TB: Looking at another difference between the demo and the recorded version, in the demo the drum pattern kind of chatters along, but on the recorded version the pattern is very definite and melodic. How did you guys come to that?
AP: I think we kicked it around in rehearsal -- we rehearsed it in a scenery store of the Mechanics Institute theatre, which is a now sadly derelict building in Swindon -- it's a Victorian kind of leisure center built for railway workers. They had a theatre in there, and the scenery store, off to one side of the stage, is where we rehearsed this album. We either got it free, or for a song, to be able to rehearse in there.
I think it was just the musicality of Pete Phipps' tom-toms, which were beautifully tuned. Also, the way that [producer] Steve Nye records things is gorgeous.
It is a Steve Nye mix that we used -- the more aggressive songs, or the songs we wanted to sound bigger, we had remixed with Phil Thornalley and Alex Sadkin. But the more intimate ones, I think that Steve Nye captured everything beautifully. He actually mixed the more intimate ones perfectly small, like little Bijou jewels, if you know what I mean. And this was one of them.
TB: Although actually, when you think about the chorus, the drums get very big there.
AP: Yeah, listening to the demo today, I was obviously being lazy and just letting the same pattern muddle through, but I felt it needed a backbeat on the final version.
But a demo is for finding things out. It's for making as many mistakes as it is for sketching out the definite ideas you have. You know, you have sketch out, "Well, this is what I want the front of the building to look like, and I'll just put it away." Then, "Now that I've come back to it, I can see immediately that there should be a little dome on top." But you don't know that until you've sketched out the bits that you do know. So, demos are as much for finding things out as they are for solidifying the known knowns.
TB: Although I was surprised at how complete the demo is in many of its aspects and arrangements. The song is pretty much all there.
AP: It's got the basic repeated pattern, which had to be simplified for Dave to play on the piano. He couldn't keep doing that one little pull-off trill, which is a piece of piss on the guitar, but you try executing that repeatedly on a piano, at that speed, and it's going to break your fingers. So we simplified it.
[chuckles] Plus, I remember -- poor old Steve Nye -- we were recording this, and I said, "Can you make the piano seems like it's kind of blowing around you as he's playing?" So he put an auto-pan on the piano, which you can hear on headphones -- the piano is circling your head, it's blowing like a little whirlwind around your head. I remember saying to him later, while we were mixing later, "Do you know, I'm not sure whether we should use that auto-pan on the piano or not." He was so upset! He said, "But I've recorded the part with the effect on it! You liked it!!" I said, "Well, I did at the time!" But then he said, "Well, I can't undo it! It's stuck like that." "Well, okay then -- I must love it." [laughs]
TB: [laughing] Oh, you fickle bastard, you.
AP: [affects posh voice] Even the great can change their minds sometimes. "No, that wasn't Stalingrad I wanted to besiege! It was Detroit! Sorry, lads."
But Steve Nye did a beautiful job engineering and mixing this. Like I said, the smaller tracks, which he did, were just right.
TB: Yeah, and as I was saying before, it really comes across as a perfect marriage between lyrics and musical expression of the lyrics.
AP: Some things I knew straightaway that I wanted. You know the moaning bass on the demo? It's like a moaning wind. You put reverb on it, so it sounds like it's blowing over the hills.
This was the first album where any of the songs were personally demo'd by the writers, because in '82 was the first time that we got four-track cassette machines. We could make our own demos of how we wanted the songs to be. So, I remember saying to Colin, "Look, can you keep this moaning bass? Obviously, you can work up your own thing for the other parts, because I'm not totally settled on what the other parts should be." And he's using the Epiphone with the damper on, so it sounds like an acoustic bass. And also, I think he gets to be Glenn Cornick, Jethro Tull's bass player. He liked his playing, and so did I, so I think he gets to be an ersatz Glenn Cornick.
TB: Goes with the flute, right?
AP: [laughs] Goes with the flute! Goes with the codpiece, too. Dave, the poor sod, had to wear the codpiece on his face while he played the piano. [laughs]
TB: [laughing] Instead of the Colonel Cunt hat, you had codpiece on this album, I guess.
AP: [laughing] Exactly, yeah. The Colonel Codpiece.
TB: Let's talk about the vocals a bit.
AP: Well, Dave and Colin are doing the counterlines in the harmonies -- the "have I been such a fool?" lines -- and I'm doing the harmonies with myself, and the octave voices.
TB: Is Colin singing the high part in the harmonies, or is that Dave getting all the way up there?
AP: I couldn't tell you which one's doing which. It might even be a combination of the three of us -- I would tend to sing with Colin to bolster my lines, and we'd add Dave in for some air...
TB: I guess I'm wondering about a related question, too -- what ranges were typically "assigned" to you guys? I know that in bands I've been in, it's been a case of, "He's got the highest voice, so give him the top part." I know Colin's voice is pretty high, but Dave can hit high notes, too.
AP: He's very good with high falsetto, yes. With Colin's songs, I was the one who tried to kind of pitch my harmony under -- I'd go for the more brown-sounding fourths or fifths under Colin, because ages ago I'd read that George Martin had said that you should always have the melody be the high line, because that's where the ear is drawn. So, once I'd read that, we tended to pitch a lot of our harmonies underneath the high line.
TB: And you guys were doing that early in your career -- not just later.
AP: Yep, it's all George's fault.
TB: That always worked well for John Lennon and Paul McCartney anyway, because of their natural ranges. John did some great harmonies under Paul.
AP: Right, and I used to put my voice under Colin's. But do you know, you've hit a hole my knowledge here -- I'd have to go back and listen to a load of stuff to see if there's a pattern. We never tended to work this out so much -- it just kind of fell out naturally. We wouldn't notate it out or anything, because we couldn't read music -- well, Dave could, but Colin and I couldn't -- so we did what felt natural.
TB: Would the songwriter assign parts? Or, would it be a matter of someone suggesting a part, so they get to do it?
AP: It's that "rehearsal tennis." People are firing off ideas -- "Ooh, I'm not so sure about that -- what if I make it this note?" "Oh yeah, that's better, but I'll tell you what, try it lower." "Okay -- oh, that feels better." "And why don't I sing this bit? When he hits that note, I'll come in with that one?" So, you're knocking the ideas back and forth.
A lot of that actually stopped when we got to demo our own material, because we could try stuff out on our own. But before that, that was the only way of knowing whether something was going to work, because we couldn't retain all those ideas in our heads. You had a rough picture of how it was going to go, but there was more rehearsal tennis that went on before we started doing demos.
The voices at the end become a part that we played on the Prophet-5, which makes this sort of two-note flute sound that gets bent.
TB: I was wondering if that was voices that were then manipulated on the tape, or if it was a synth.
AP: The voices hang on to "fool" and are pulled down in the mix, and then at the same time, the keyboard part, which plays the same notes, are faded up, and then we used the pitch wheel on the Prophet to bend the notes, so they become more like a wind howling. Very Joe Meek! [laughs]
TB: And the bass is also doing its own bendy part at the end there.
AP: Yep, it's moaning.
What else have I got in my notes here? I was also very happy with the metal-yacht-mast-in-the-wind sound that we got.
TB: Yeah, what is that piece of percussion you're using there?
AP: I don't remember what it's called. I've actually got one -- it's a strip of metal in a little frame, and then you hold the strip of metal and there are two little beaters that you jangle against the metal...
TB: Exactly. I can visualize it, but can't remember the name either [it's called a "flexatone"].
AP: It's like a spooky house sound. But there was one of these in AIR Studios, which is where I did the lead vocal. We were mixing some tracks, and I wasn't happy with the lead vocal, or hadn't done the lead vocal by that time. There was some downtime, a couple of hours, in one of the other studios at AIR -- a side one to where we were working, mixing -- and so I went in with Steve Nye and he took the finished vocal.
But they also had one of those haunty house things, and I found that if you didn't flex the metal part of it -- if you just sort of gently wobbled it -- to me, it sounded like the sound you get by the harbor or the seashore, where you have boats with aluminum masts, and when the wind blows, the metal things on the ropes bang against the masts, which start ringing. So, to me, just idly shaking this percussion instrument at random suggested the wind by the shore.
TB: Yeah, it really helps the atmosphere a lot.
AP: Do you know, I think on this whole album, a lot of the songs grew out of more-pictorial suggestions. This was the first album where I was really free from having to do this live, so if a song came from just blowing down a flute, fine. I didn't have to try to play this guitar figure live and blow down a flute, you know?
TB: I think that's one of the reasons I like the album so much -- there is this sense of freedom to it.
AP: Yeah -- I was released from having to do a Rock-and-Roll stage version of each song. You're getting more into film territory.
TB: You stretch out beyond the traditional arrangement, since you don't have to perform it live.
AP: Sure. You're not just stuck as a bunch of actors on a stage doing it right in front of your face -- you can be more filmic with it. You can use all the dissolves, wipes, weird lenses, unusual lights, cuts -- all the things that go into making a film so dreamlike, in many ways. You can actually push your music into that area. It was that self-permission to become more Psychedelic or something.
TB: Other bands, when they get to the same stage in their careers, and want to stretch out in terms of arrangements, will tour with additional musicians. So, instead of the four Talking Heads on stage, you'll see an eight-piece or whatever-size band on stage -- the core band, plus the other musicians. It seems that a lot of bands in their middle or older age will do that.
AP: Yeah, I guess they're trying to balance the requirements of playing live with wanting to sonically expand. But for me, it was the thing of, "I'm not to tour anymore. I'm sick of it. So, great -- now we can really concentrate on making the music 'broad.' I don't have to worry about the logistics of having a string section with us, or a flute player, or brass players or people clanging aluminum masts on stage or whatever it is that you require." It's the film you're making. It's not the continued performance that you're making.
TB: Did you guys bring this album in within budget, or did it take longer or cost more than anticipated?
AP: It was more expensive than anticipated, but not because of the recording side of things. It was really the mixing side of things, where we felt that Steve "Grumpy" Nye -- the grumpiest person you could ever be in a studio with! Excellent engineer, but phenomenally grumpy -- did a great job with the smaller songs, which were recorded and mixed beautifully. Well, he recorded everything beautifully, let's face it -- fantastic engineer, which is why we wanted to work with him. But the songs that we thought needed a more-epic look -- things like "Elements" and "Human Alchemy" and "Funk Pop a Roll" -- we needed someone else to work with those mixes, because they weren't big enough, or epic enough. Steve Nye did the little garden mixes, but the other things, we wanted more broad landscape, so we had to work with somebody who could do that, so that's what racked the budget up.
TB: Do you guys have the copies of the Steve Nye mixes of those songs?
AP: Somewhere. They're probably somewhere in the attic. I haven't played them since then. But I remember feeling that the more-epic things just weren't widescreen enough.
TB: Still, it'd be interesting to hear those initial mixes.
AP: Yeah. If and when Virgin get 'round to an expanded Mummer, it would be good to put in some of the Steve Nye mixes that were considered too television-like and not cinematic enough.
I enjoyed hearing this track again, I have to say. I got quite a thrill hearing it -- hadn't heard it for many years, and I thought to myself, "You know, this isn't half-bad."
And it's not a paean to flatulence. I swear!
©2010 Todd Bernhardt and Andy Partridge. All rights reserved.
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Monday, January 11, 2010
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Song of the Week
Last week, Andy talked about the making of "The Man Who Sailed Around his Soul," originally released on 1987's Skylarking.
This week, we bring you the demo, which can be found on Fuzzy Warbles, Vol. 6, and which Andy also discussed last week. Check it out to see for yourself what prompted producer Todd Rundgren to give it a place in the running order he was devising for Skylarking ... and history.
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Monday, January 04, 2010
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Song of the Week -- Andy's take
(Reposted because of MySpace publishing problems with original interview post.)
Part of an ongoing series of interviews by Todd Bernhardt with Andy Partridge about the songs we feature each week on MySpace. This week's song, "The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul," is from 1987's Skylarking.
Tenas and Film Extras became the latest repeat offenders, er, winners in the "Guess the Next Song" game. Well done, lads. Let's see how you do on this one -- we'll be back in two weeks with an Andyview about a song with a main riff that he demo'd on guitar, but recorded for the album with piano.
Happy New Year, everyone! Best wishes for a peaceful, prosperous and healthy 2010.
TB: Let's talk about "The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul."
AP: Oh, I am so proud of this song. These are my best lyrics, I think.
TB: Really?
AP: This week's best lyrics, anyway. [chuckles] No, honestly, these are in the top three, possibly number one, lyric-wise.
TB: So let's start by talking about them. On the demo of the song, you don't yet have all the lyrics.
AP: No! In fact, when Mr. Rundgren said, "I want to hear everything," the state of the demo -- which is the one you hear on the Fuzzy Warbles series -- was more of an idea than anything else. The demo is so unformed -- it's just this rather Can-like rhythm in 7/4, and me strumming a badly recorded acoustic guitar and mumbling these lyrics.
It was really him pulling it out and saying, "Yeah, I like this, I think it's going to be track 12 -- have you finished the lyrics up?" "I thought, "Whoa, I better finish these up!" A deadline is really good for me -- I have no deadlines these days, which is part of why I'm stuck in the wilderness, I think -- and knowing that I rather liked the melody and chords spurred me on.
Speaking of the chords and melody -- about a couple of years after we recorded it, I got to hear "Nature Boy." There is a similar feel in the melody. I probably heard that as a kid, on the radio, and it must have gone in. But at the time, I didn't own any Nat King Cole records, and I certainly wasn't consciously aware of it at the time.
TB: Yeah, that song was a huge hit for him.
AP: I'm not sure if it was a huge hit for him in the UK -- I could be wrong. We never had any of his records, but they did play him on the radio a lot when I was a little kid. So, I think it went in when I was very young, and it was that thing where you think you've invented this chord shape and this melody shape, when after all it's not a million miles away from something you probably would have heard hundreds of times as a child.
TB: But that's true of most music that anyone creates, right? Isn't it all some form of something that you soaked in earlier in your life?
AP: Yeah, absolutely. You're either mangling it up on purpose, to get some further juice out of it, or you're smashing together lots of different things -- you know, you're making these songs mate. "I'm going to take a bit of that Beatles song, and a bit of that song by Frank Sinatra, and a bit of that Captain Beefheart one, and I'm going to force them to have sex, until the obscene abomination is born."
TB: [laughing] Then you release their mutant spawn upon the world!
AP: Yes, that evil spawn that leaves a trail of fluorescent snot everywhere it goes!
So, sometimes you do that on purpose, but sometimes it's by accident. You know, so many times in the past I've thought, "Wow, this is going to be great -- this song's wonderful! Oh no! I'm writing 'Hey Jude'!" Sometimes you catch yourself. But with this one, it wasn't until a few years later, when I got to hear "Nature Boy" -- I think it was on a TV documentary or something -- that I thought, "Wow, hang on a minute! That's not too far away!"
But, I did have to finish the lyric up, and I think it kind of goes hand-in-hand with the "Dear God" lyric. At that time, I must have been looking for deeper things.
TB: It seems as if you're rejecting conventional wisdom...
AP: Yeah. It's looking for the deeper meaning. Quite a few lyrics are like that on this album -- "Season Cycle" is another one.
TB: Although, in "Season Cycle," it seems as if you've found the meaning. You're saying it's all right here.
AP: I'm in the process of finding it, I think. Which is why the "Man Who Sailed Around His Soul" lyrics are the way they are, and the others are the way they are. You're showing people that you have found it, in a questioning song, if you see what I mean. You're doing your own interview -- asking yourself the question in the interview, and answering it.
So, it must have been a time in my life when I was trying to find the answers to everything. But I'm really proud of this lyric -- I think I tapped into something good.
TB: Let's talk about where you were in life, because The Big Express had not done very well, but you did have the first Dukes album out, and that had done well.
AP: Yeah, The Big Express had sold about 30,000 in England, while 25 O'Clock had sold something like 90,000! [laughs] It just goes to show that people like nonsense!
TB: And you'd been given an ultimatum by Virgin, which is why Todd was your producer on the album?
AP: Oh, absolutely. That was a very low time my life. I'd been told, basically, to stop interfering with my own records. They were telling me to, "Let Colin" -- let the handsome one, the one with the hair, who doesn't wear glasses -- "let him do more of his sweet songs, and you shut up and don't interfere. You need to have a big hit in America, and so you've got to have an American producer. You mustn't argue with him, and you mustn't try to fuck up your songs by putting in interesting shit! Because if you don't, you're off the label."
TB: So, this feeling must have informed the lyrical content of the album.
AP: Maybe the fear of losing the label made me dig deeper. I was certainly at that point in my life where I was starting to question everything, and finding my own answers. So, the lyrics to "Man Who Sailed Around His Soul" are really of me saying, "There is nothing more -- you die, and you're wormcake." It's sort of an existential idea of, "You're haunting yourself." It's tricky to describe, really. [Cockney accent, aggressively] "It's all in the lyrics! It's self-evident, really." [laughs] That's a bit of an interview killer, isn't it?
TB: [laughing] In a way, though, it's true! The lyrics are very well constructed, and the meaning is pretty damned clear.
AP: I was proud of all the internal rhymes -- the tension and release of the internal rhythm and internal rhyme. But as for the meaning, you're right -- it's all laid out. For anyone who doesn't get it, it's the story of somebody who realizes that all there is to life is your body, with your brain in it.
TB: Hence the resolution at the end: "Now he sits all alone / Knowing flesh blood and bone / Is everything / He found the treasure he'd been seeking."
AP: The treasure you're seeking is yourself, and your own experiences and knowledge. And what you do with that -- that's the treasure. It's not a matter of, "Well, I'll be a complete asshole all my life, and then repent on my deathbed -- because God loves a sinner who repents -- and then I'll go and live for all eternity getting sucked off by angels!" It's not going to work like that. I hope that more and more people are starting to realize that that's not going to be the case.
It's my kitchen existentialism [chuckles] -- which has just been completed with a nice sunroof! There is nothing more than your blood and guts and bone, and when you die, that's all gone. So make the most.
TB: So, let's talk about the music. You had sent over this demo -- it's acoustic guitar and percussion...
AP: And he said, "Yeah, I really want to do this song." He wanted me to finish up the song, so I came up with the rest of the lyric and the other parts of the song, but I don't remember rehearsing it before we left for Woodstock. The only time I remember running through it is when we were left for about a week on our own, in this freezing-cold shed that was Utopia Sound Studios, running through all the numbers before Mr. Rundgren came off of his holidays, or whatever it was he was doing -- he wasn't around, and we were rehearsing ourselves for about four or five days. We were just sat around in a little circle -- "Oh yeah, it's this chord, or that chord, and try it like that" -- you know. We were knocking stuff up between us.
When he came in and we got recording proper, he said to me, "How do you see this? How do you want to do it?" I had in my head that I really wanted to out-do "Mack the Knife" -- the Bobby Darin version.
TB: What turned you from your relatively straight-ahead acoustic treatment of this?
AP: Because it was "The Man Who...", it sounded like a spy film title to me. So I thought, "It'd be great to do sort of a John Barry secret-agent soundtrack thing." I didn't know how to do that, of course. But I was proud of this existential lyric with this kind of Beatnik angle, so if we could do Beatnik/coffeehouse/spy music, that what's needed! That's going to cover all the requirements here.
So, we decided we were going to get Colin playing the Epiphone Newport with the damaged damper on, so it sounded like an upright bass, and we did finger clicks -- which is Colin. We all had to audition our fingers, and he had the loudest click. "Jump to a finger click," as he says in "King for a Day"! Dave and I failed miserably, and I think Todd did, too, but Colin excels at clicking, so we sampled some Colin clicks, and they're played in from a Fairlight, which Todd had just bought, so he was pretty Fairlight-mad at the time.
So, Colin's playing this [imitates Colin's intro bass part, while clicking his fingers] -- and you can just imagine Sammy Davis Jr. kicking in, can't you?
TB: Oh yeah, sure!
AP: Another song I wanted to hint at was "It Ain't Necessarily So." You can see where I'm coming from on that.
So, there's this whole mash-up of stuff I was thinking of, and I said to Todd, "Ideally, make it like a Beatnik existential spy movie soundtrack. Can such a thing be done?" And literally, he went away overnight and came back with charts for this stuff. I don't read music, but he had these ideas mapped out. He said, "Look, this'll be flutes, and this'll be horns, and we'll get a high string line here" -- because I'd said, "Oh yeah, I want that Gershwin, Blues-y feeling." "Dear God" got that treatment, too, so that must have been in our heads at the time.
He did a fantastic job. I think the arrangement on this is immaculate. I think that was his strength -- it's not engineering, and it's certainly not people skills, but as an arranger, he's completely faultless, and he did a brilliant job of making this Beatnik spy music.
TB: Talk a little bit about the chronology of how this song was recorded. The album was done in both Woodstock and San Francisco...
AP: Do you know, I can't remember doing much of this song in Woodstock.
TB: That's what I wanted to ask -- did you do anything with this song before you went to San Francisco? Because there's so much orchestration.
AP: I don't think we did! We probably just booked the tape space with a click track or something. I remember 90 percent of it happening in San Francisco.
TB: Prairie wasn't just playing with a click -- he must have been playing with something else, right?
AP: We may have put the bass on in Woodstock -- certainly we did the finger clicks! [laughs] I remember that. But everything else, I think, was done in San Francisco. Todd got Mingo Lewis to do the bongos on this...
TB: Which is fantastic stuff.
AP: It's great, yeah. But he couldn't play shit until he got stoned, though. He was so nervous! I thought, "Oh god, are we making this fellow feel bad, or is he just exceptionally nervous when he gets in the studio?" But then he got himself stoned, enough to stop a rhino, and suddenly he was fantastic!
TB: I guess everyone has their own way of getting comfortable in the studio...
AP: He probably had enough dope to put the island of Jamaica asleep for the evening, but he was fantastic. And then there's Prairie showing off his Jazz chops...
TB: The drumming on this is incredible.
AP: Yeah, it's great -- lots of punctuation. That Big Band kind of thing.
And, listening today, I was reminded about how good the bass playing was, though it could have done with a little more of the Latin push, I think. Colin's very melodic, but he also puts all of the downbeats on the downbeat, whereas with the Latin bass it's more on the "ah-one" -- it's always pushing the beat a bit.
And Dave plays some great piano!
TB: Absolutely. He also does that low, spy-movie guitar, right?
AP: Right, which we did at Woodstock, after we got back from San Francisco. I said, "Look, we need a little more John Barry in there," and of course Dave came through with this great ersatz Bond guitar. But, for a man who says he's not a piano player, his piano playing is perfect on this! Just the right chords, just the right choice of inversions -- everything.
TB: And his sense of rhythm is perfect on this, too -- the way he punctuates against the horns, and all that.
AP: Oh yeah -- he's got a pretty good sense of rhythm. Always has.
TB: Was the piano done in San Francisco, or later on in Woodstock?
AP: You're really testing my brain on this one -- do you know, I cannot remember. I know Todd had a piano at Woodstock -- it was a big grand -- but I think there must have been a piano at San Francisco as well.
But I'm not playing on this. I'm just singing on this -- I'm doing nothing on the track other than that.
TB: What about the whistling in the song? Is that you?
AP: If there's any whistling, then it's usually me. I'm a bit of a whistle-aholic. In fact, Erica calls me "the whistler," because I'm whistling all the time at home.
TB: That's a sign of happiness!
AP: Or missing teeth. [laughs]
TB: [laughing] You had horn players and string players as well. They all played by themselves, I presume?
AP: Yep -- we did them all in session. We did all the horn parts one afternoon, then all the string parts another afternoon. All of this in San Francisco. And then the flute player came in -- there are multiple parts, but it's one flute player tracked up.
But the arrangement is so good -- it's got just the right sting at the end. It's just what I wanted. I wanted to beat "Mack the Knife" -- because, I mean, look at the pedigree of that song -- it's Brecht and Weill who did the music and lyrics, and that Bobby Darin version -- I loved that as a kid. That was on the radio a hell of a lot. I think I secretly wanted to feel as if I'd beaten out "Mack the Knife."
You've got to feel that you've beaten your influences. You've got to feel that you've beaten your heroes. You have to -- you have to kill them all, and stand on a giant heap of all your influences. They've all got to be dead, because you've written better things than them -- you know, you make a mountain formed of John Lennons, Paul McCartneys, Brian Wilsons, Brecht and Weill [laughs]. "You shall know them by their dead."
TB: Do you feel like you've done that, at least with this song?
AP: For me, I felt as if I had, but no other bastard bought the damn thing, because I didn't have Bobby Darin's charm -- or wig! [laughs]
TB: Well, the album sold pretty well, so some people must have thought you succeeded!
AP: Yeah, that album actually did save our career. Virgin didn't drop us -- phew.
TB: And you guys became college-chart darlings after that, for Skylarking through Nonsuch.
AP: Yeah, that's true. They couldn't scrape us off those charts. So, maybe I should have shut up and let other producers produce me! But the irony of it is that Todd was not like any other producer we've ever had, because he allowed us to be completely English. He did not Americanize us -- if anything, he took the Americanism out of us, because he was a big Anglophile.
TB: Yeah, when I was talking to him, last time they toured in this area, he was saying he was a big fan of you guys.
AP: Yeah, he was -- he had all our albums. Probably had them twice -- I think I saw them in his San Francisco house as well as his house in Woodstock. But, even so, I was instructed to shut up and be produced -- "You need a hit in America, so you've got to have an American producer, and you've got to obey" -- and weirdly, Todd allowed us to be as English as we wanted to be. He just allowed us to be the Dukes of Stratosphear, basically. Skylarking is the great missing Dukes album.
©2010 Todd Bernhardt and Andy Partridge. All rights reserved.
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Monday, January 04, 2010
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Folks, even though we published the latest Andyview last night about 9:00 EST, for some reason known only to MySpace the blog is not displaying unless you're logged in, and are a friend of the band.
I'm going to repost it now, hoping that this fixes the error, but this means that we'll have two copies of the interview (at least, for those logged in). In a couple of days, to fix this redundancy, I'll take down the "damaged" interview, so to the folks who've already commented on the interview -- please re-comment on the "new" interview, so your comments are preserved for posterity!
I apologize on behalf of MySpace's reduced staff and functionality...
-Todd (site admin)
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Monday, December 28, 2009
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Song of the Week
Season's greetings, XTCfans! The song this week is "Always Winter But Never Christmas," which first appeared on the 1991 fan-convention release Windowbox, and later showed up in 1992 as a B-side (if CD singles have such things) on a single release of "Peter Pumpkinhead," from the album Nonsuch.
Andy first talked about this one two years ago ... check it out if you want to know what the song is really about, or which eponymously-named band from the '60s inspired the song's bass line.
See you next year with a new Andyview!
I'd unwrap you if you'd only step down from your tree
From your present into some undone future with me...
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Sunday, December 20, 2009
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Song of the Week -- Andy's take
Part of an ongoing series of interviews by Todd Bernhardt with Andy Partridge about the songs we feature each week on MySpace. This week's song, "When You're Near Me I Have Difficulty," is from 1979's Drums and Wires.
No one to call out for guessing the song correctly, because Andy and Todd didn't line this one up until just a couple of days ago. So, we'll throw you a softball on this one (though maybe it's not that easy, given how many great lyrics Andy has written). The next one -- the first of 2010 -- will be about a song containing some of Andy's favorite lyrics.
Happy holidays, everyone!
TB: Let's talk about "When You're Near Me I Have Difficulty." I listened to it this morning, and realized I had almost forgotten how much fun this song is.
AP: It's sort of sophisticated and silly. It's "sillyphisticated." [laughs] Sounds like something gay clowns might do!
TB: [laughing] Ouch!
AP: Wow, crossing a few genres with that one! "He just wants some cream in his face! Keep the paper plate to yourself."
Anyway, my first thought in the notes was, "Appropriately goofy."
TB: It is goofy, but as you said, at the same time it's kind of sophisticated. One of the things I first wrote is, "The whole song is a great example of the whole guitar dynamic between you and Dave, and what Dave brought to the band."
AP: Oh yeah! In fact, I played this a few times today, and I remembered that three-quarters of all the guitars on here are in fact Dave! The majority of the guitar orchestration -- I don't mean "orchestration" at the Brian May level -- is Dave.
TB: He's in the left channel?
AP: I’m on the left channel, and Dave is doing the skanking guitar on the right, but then on the other parts of the song, all the guitar parts are Dave. So, I'm barely on this, playing-wise.
TB: Interesting! I thought you were doing the skanking part on the right side. Do you play the solo?
AP: Yeah, that's me. God, do you know, I never even registered that in my notes! It's kind of a repeat of the intro, if you know what I mean.
TB: And, throughout the song, you're also playing that ascending hook that links the chords under the verse's couplets?
AP: Yep.
TB: If someone wanted to muddle through this, do you remember what the basic chords are?
AP: I was trying to play it earlier on, and I don't remember it all! [picks up guitar, plays] I think it's something like C6, D6, G, Am7, then it goes to B-flat, F, then Fm, descending to Fm7, then back up again -- shit, I've forgotten the chords! That's most of them. Do you know how I said I could remember everything we played live? Well, we played this live thousands of times, and I'm damned if I can remember it! [chuckles]
TB: Hey, you can't give it all to them! They've got to figure out some on their own.
AP: Exactly. It's all easy stuff -- you know, I'm the laziest guitar player in the world. You think John Lennon's guitar playing was lazy, you've never seen mine.
Anyway, as long as you've got enough to write the song, then you've got enough. And also, there's the thrill of finding chords where you think, "No one's ever used this." They probably have used it, but maybe it was some obscure Jazz thing, where they used it as a passing chord between one nice one and another one -- you just sort of slip in a nasty one. I, on the other hand, would sort of accidentally stumble upon the nasty one and write a whole song around it!
TB: And that's the difference -- you write the song around it, rather than just using it as a flavor.
AP: It's a whole meal of pepper! [laughs] With a side of mustard.
But we did play this live quite a bit. There's some film of an Australian gig in Melbourne, and I think we're certainly playing it on that. You can see it on YouTube, I think. I don't know who owns all that stuff! I'd like to get the use of it. I'm sure we could clean the sound up and get a better picture quality -- that might be a nice disc to get together. Because there are quite a few things coming together this year, in terms of our catalog.
TB: Yeah, some people have been asking me, when are the Virgin reissues going to come out?
AP: They should have started last June, but I don't know what happened -- they never appeared. So I'm guessing sometime mid-year in 2010. They're starting with English Settlement, Skylarking, and Oranges and Lemons.
TB: Was there ever a demo of this song?
AP: If there was a demo, it would have been me just playing into a little mono cassette machine, probably with a little Hammond drum machine bonking along, if that.
TB: Do you remember working with the guys and rehearsing or arranging this?
AP: I don't remember rehearsing it, but I remember recording it, because it was done in a terrible rush -- as, in fact, all of the Drums and Wires album was, because we spent a languid week recording "Nigel," and spent the other two weeks cramming everything else in. You know, literally, just a few takes for each.
I didn't notice at the time how incredibly out of tune the guitar intro is! But it really is.
TB: You must have thought it was okay at the time, though.
AP: Well, I guess it was a case of, "That'll do." But hearing it back now, you say, "How the hell did we pass that? That intro is so out of tune."
TB: For the single version, you fixed that.
AP: Yeah, we went into DJM Studios, owned by [imitates him] Dick James, the Beatles' publisher. We went in there because Virgin said, "Oh, we need another single, and it could be one of these few tracks." So, we went and tinkered with a few tracks, and repaired things that we thought weren't good enough, or added things like percussion or backing vocals or whatever.
TB: Listening to the two next to each other this morning, and the arrangement of the two is pretty much identical. The differences that I heard were really more in the mix than anything else.
AP: I think some of the guitars were replaced, but I think we kept the bass and drums, and we probably replaced Dave's and my guitars. We may have redone the vocal -- I'm not so sure. I should have played it, though, because I can't remember!
TB: The big thing I heard that was different in the guitars is at the end, where Dave seems to be adding another rhythm guitar that gets more and more dissonant as you fade out. Or maybe that's you doing that?
AP: I'll have to check that out. If it's dissonance, it probably is me. Dave tended to stay away from dissonance -- he was the honey, and I was more the vinegar. You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar, as the old phrase go. If you should want to catch some flies, that is! [laughs] If you really want to have a lot of flies flocking to you as you play guitar, honey's the way to go!
So yeah, after all that fuss and expense and messing around with it, Virgin played the re-done version from DJM, and said, "Ummm -- no." So the songs never got released.
TB: Do you think they were looking for a "This Is Pop" treatment, where the song was radically different and bulked up?
AP: But we really didn't have time to do it, because I think we did all the re-record things in one evening. We did "Real by Reel," "Helicopter," and "Difficulty," replacing quite a bit of stuff on them and remixing them, trying to beef them up. But there just wasn't time, you know -- when most people would take a day or two or longer, to make a single -- and "Nigel" took a week -- to find a follow-up in a third of an evening is a tall order, you know?
TB: Going back to the guitar parts, you don't remember sitting down with Dave and working that out? It sounds pretty intricate.
AP: A lot of it was innate -- if one person's doing this, the other one stays away. Or, if one person's playing languid chords, the other one's chopping. If one person's chopping on the beat, you chop on the off-beat. It's sort of the idiot's guide to orchestration and arrangement -- it just feels better to play between the holes.
And there's a little bit of ego involved, of course -- "If he's playing there, then I'm going to play on the offbeat to that, so I can be heard, dammit! I'm not playing the same as him, because people won't know who it is!" There's some of that every time a bunch of blokes get together to play -- "Hey, wait, I want to be heard!"
It's the bane of the mixer as well, to have the band around. You know, young band in the studio -- "My my instrument the loudest!" "No, my instrument!" "What about mine?" So, the smartest engineers or producers give the band members a DFA fader -- the member of the band who is protesting about their instrument not being loud enough sits at the desk during the mix with a DFA fader, riding it up and down between two carefully drawn marks about half an inch to an inch apart, until they say, "Yeah, that's the one!" They never think to ask what DFA stands for -- "Does fuck-all." [laughs] But they swear that that mix sounds so much better when they're sat there with their DFA fader...
TB: [laughing] It's the placebo effect!
AP: [laughs] Exactly. Most producers know this trick. It's like, if you can't get a take out of someone, you say, "Okay, that last take -- brilliant. That's the one, that's great, and I'll tell you what -- now that we have that as a safety net, just go ahead and bang one out. Have some fun." And that next take is usually the one you get.
TB: Sure -- when everybody relaxes.
AP: Yeah. "We've got it now. Let's just muck about. Who gives a fuck, we can just play around now." And that's the take.
TB: Let's talk about the bass and drums a little bit. Is there anything in particular you remember when these parts were getting created? Terry's drum pattern is great, of course. I love the little double-hit pattern he does.
AP: It's an unusual pattern, and I can't remember how we came up with it. Maybe I was asking him for a twist pattern or something, and he got it wrong. But I like the way it moves, especially during the B sections.
I also was listening to the little percussion bits in the "iceman" section, and you know that "fzztzztzzt" sound? That's our little Korg!
TB: Really? I thought that was like a güiro or ratchet or something.
AP: We built a little percussive sound, using high-pitched sounds and an extremely fast wave, to create that effect. No one had their bike with them, or their best bubble-gum cards [chuckles], but we wanted an icy version of that effect, so we did it with the Korg. And the Korg also does the jellyfish sound effect.
TB: I was going to ask about that -- figured it had to be the Korg.
AP: Yep, ol' Kenny Korg, doing his best jellyfish impression.
I tried to figure out what this song was about, after I'd finished listening to it, and I thought, "Jesus, I think this is about my first big crush, at school!" A girl called Vanessa Kearley, who was a funny little thing. She was very skinny, with glasses, but so was I. You wouldn't say she was the most beautiful thing on earth, but she did have a fantastic energy. You know those people with really, shiny, strong, positive energy? She was just great to be around.
But when I got within about six foot of her, I'd just become useless -- just a bag of jello! My legs wouldn't work, and my arms would just hang like two strings of sausages by my side. I couldn't do anything! When I was near her, I had difficulty doing normal things.
I think the farthest it ever went, the deepest depth of that crush, was walking home from hanging out together outside of an off-license on the council estate -- you know, like, a liquor store -- I think I got to hold her hand, back to her house. That was as far as it went, but it was something!
TB: How old were you?
AP: Let me think -- "Man from Uncle" was at its height, so I must have been about 12 or 13. She had a real crush on David McCallum, and I did my darndest to make my hair go like his, and whenever I was near her, I'd try to wear my black, polo-neck jumper, because I wanted her to think I was the nearest available David McCallum on the estate.
I even made matching triangular UNCLE bands for her and me. I couldn't find one in the shops so I cut out some white cardboard triangles and put a safety pin on the back, and then in best ballpoint pen, tried to draw the UNCLE symbol, the silhouette of the man in front of the world.
TB: How'd she like that?
AP: I guess she was reasonably impressed. I got to hold her hand!
TB: So, when did you write the song?
AP: Just before we started the Drums and Wires album, but it was about my first teen crush at school. I think it was my first main crush that I actually got to talk to, as opposed to crushing from afar. Because there are different levels of crushing. There's crush from afar, crush when you get some communication with them, which this was, and then there's crushing of the third degree, which is divorce. [laughs] Yeah, there's all sort of levels of crushery and crushification.
TB: You was crushified!
AP: I was crushified by the crushificators!
TB: Let's talk about the bridge. You've got reverse reverb going on in the vocals...
AP: Yeah, you're right...
TB: And the lyrics strike me as your first use of the "Snowman" metaphor.
AP: Ooh! Hadn't thought of that. Though, I'm an iceman -- I'm [northern accent] harder than a snowman.
TB: Ah, yes. A harder man. Do you remember working with [producer] Steve [Lillywhite] and [engineer] Hugh [Padgham] on how to present the bridge in the best way? Why did you guys decide to do that?
AP: I think I remember asking if there was anything we could do to make the vocals sound icier. I knew that when you put them through a chorus, it sounded icier, because we'd already done that with "This Is Pop." But one of them -- it may have been Hugh -- said, "Let's try reverse reverb." You turn the tape backwards, and print the reverb, then turn it the right way around so the reverb is printed on another channel, but in reverse. You hear the reverb before the vocal arrives, and it gives a frosty layer of sparkle over the voice, which I thought was perfect.
Colin does all the harmonies -- you can hear him doing the "uprights" and all that.
TB: Does Dave sing on this at all?
AP: I don't think he does, no. I can hear Colin, but I couldn't hear Dave, unless he's mixed in there very subtly.
TB: Tell me about the ending. You guys have a cool thing going on there -- it's almost like a round.
AP: Yeah, there's the five-beat vocal thing over the four of the music. Terry's playing in four, Dave's doing his arpeggio thing in four, and Colin's part is also repeating in four.
TB: Do you remember how you came up with this?
AP: Probably just an improv, and I thought, "Oh, that's good! Keep going." You know, I tended not to plan that stuff out quite so much in those days. I might plan it more now.
TB: I thought it might have been something that you developed in the studio.
AP: Oh, it definitely would have come up in the studio -- not in rehearsal. But I might be proved wrong -- maybe someone has some cassettes somewhere that shows we worked it out then.
TB: Were you not playing this song live before you recorded it?
AP: I don't think so. After we recorded it, we played it live, of course, and it did develop into something more -- it got quite slick live. But I don't remember working on it live until we recorded it, so it was brand-new by the time we recorded it.
And then of course you start playing a song live, and it starts growing -- you get more confident with it, and you think, "Damn! Why didn't we do it just like this?" I mean, even by the time we were playing this song at DJM Studios, we were probably playing it better.
TB: The guitars certainly sound more confident on that version.
AP: Sure, you're rehearsing it for tour, or whatever, so it gets better. That's a constant thing -- if you don't play the song live first, there's going be that further discovery of any song as you play it live. Which is a nice thing, but you don't always have the luxury of playing it live before you record it.
©2009 Todd Bernhardt and Andy Partridge. All rights reserved.
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Sunday, December 13, 2009
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Song of the Week
Looks as if the holidays and end-of-year busy-ness are getting in the way of everyone ... no interview again this week, though we have some irons in the fire, and hope to have something up next week. As way of consolation, we give you a seasonal favorite — "Thanks for Christmas," which Andy talked about back in 2006.
In the meantime, check out these historical videos from the TV program "Swindon Viewpoint," which we found out about thanks to X(tc)pert Per Aronsson:
• The long-haired Helium Kidz perform "Adrenaline" in 1975. Love the hat, Andy!
• Pre-Barry Andrews XTC (that's Jon Perkins on keyboards) perform "Science Friction."
• XTC (same vintage) perform "She's So Square."
• XTC (ditto) perform a very slow version of "Neon Shuffle."
Enjoy!
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Monday, December 07, 2009
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Too many distractions preventing us from posting the usual interview at this appointed space and time, dear readers, so instead, we point you toward other goings-on in the land of XTC and APE:
OH COME ALL YE DUKES FANS
First, an announcement from the land of marmalade trees and tangerine skies: Hear ye, here ye, the extraordinarily beautiful
Complete and Utter Dukes boxset are selling at rates almost unfeasibly fast.
Don't delay -- order this sumptuous set TODAY. It's packed with vinyl albums and
singles, CDs, a jigsaw and a special t-shirt. Because the label is committed (and can only afford) to make a VERY limited run, you won't want to miss this Lord of all Dukes sets. Who wouldn't want to find this, steaming fresh, under their holiday conifer of choice?
This purple cloth-covered box has space inside to hold the 25 O'Clock and Psonic Psunspot CDs and also includes:
* 500 piece Dukes Jigsaw
* 7-inch single of "Tin Toy Clockwork Train"/"The Affiliated"
* Some "Dukes Dollars" to keep
* An exclusive Dukes t-shirt (just tell us what size you want)
* 180g Remastered 12-inch heavyweight vinyl pressing of 25 O'Clock in gatefold sleeve
* 180g Remastered 12-inch heavyweight vinyl pressing Psonic Psunspot in gatefold sleeve
(The vinyl LP's will be released in their own right on 26 Jan 2010
priced £14.99 each inc VAT)
Order your copy now. to assure that it makes it to you by your Winter Solstice holiday of choice:
http://www.ape.uk.net/acatalog/XTC_as_The_Dukes_Of_Stratosphear.html
This
boxed set is priced at the low price of £49.35 without VAT or £56.75 including VAT, without the 25
O'Clock and Psonic Psunspot CDs. If you would like to add either one of the
CDs to your box and buy the complete set, then please check the
relevant box(es) when you order.
If you buy the boxed set from
anywhere else (but please don't!), there is a voucher on the back of one of the "Dukes Dollars" for you to post to APE in return for your t-shirt in the size
you want.
PUGWASH PUGCAST PART 3
Yes, the Pugs cast great Pod. Part 3 of an entertaining Pugcast is up at the APE House ... let it take you by the gland and lead you for a third and final
wander down the avenues and alleyways of their sumptuous album Giddy.
You'll
hear words spoken by genuine Irishmen using only their mouths ... with
no safety net or nurse in attendance ... gasp! If you thrilled to Parts 1 and 2, you'll simply HAVE to top it off with the concluding part. If you haven't heard Giddy yet, then you are missing the best Pop album of the last decade. Don't say we didn't warn ya!
Listen to Part 3 at-
http://apehouse.prevuz.com/2009/11/giddy-pugcast-part-3
Order your Giddy CD at -
http://ape.uk.net/acatalog/Pugwash.html
ONE OLIVE'S ALL YOU REALLY NEED IN THAT DRINK
Finally, get yourselves ready for the Next Wave -- a young woman with a voice of gold and the heart of an angel (and vice-versa): Jen Olive. In this Podcast, we present let Jen take you on a Jen-tle aural ride through her forthcoming album Warm Robot, due out in February 2010. Just a taste of this truly beautiful record has everyone raving about its beauty and originality -- we think you'll rave, too.
Find out more here:
http://apehouse.prevuz.com/2009/12/jen-olive-tells-it-gently-warm-robot-part-1
Jen's just returned from a visit to Swindon to work with Andy and Stuart Rowe of Lighterthief, so listen for more musical happenings from this terrific trio soon. Stay tuned, and we'll let you know what we know when we know it! See you next week...
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Monday, November 30, 2009
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Song of the Week
Two weeks ago, Andy talked about the making of "My Brown Guitar," originally released on 2000's Wasp Star (Apple Venus, Vol. 2).
This week, we feature the demo, which you can find -- along with all the other demos of the songs on Wasp Star -- on Homegrown. Andy has previously said that, in a way, he prefers this version. What do you think?
We hope to be back with a new interview next week, but things on the scheduling front are still fluid, so no promises -- except, dear reader, that we will do our best. You are never far from our hearts and minds...
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Wednesday, November 25, 2009
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Andy has posted a blog over at the APE House about the label's present and future. If you want to know more about the artists, his philosophy, his finances or even whether he's heard your demo or not, get on over there.
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Sunday, November 22, 2009
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Song of the Week -- Andy's take
Part of an ongoing series of interviews by Todd Bernhardt with Andy Partridge about the songs we feature each week on MySpace. This week's song, "My Brown Guitar," is from 2000's Wasp Star (Apple Venus, Vol. 2).
Tommymac adds another winning string to his Rickenbacker with a correct guess for this week's song. Who will guess the next interview correctly? It's anyone's guess at this point, since we're still working on lining the next one up. Guess away -- at this point, one is as good as another!
TB: Let's talk about your "Brown Guitar," shall we? This song made an appearance before Wasp Star.
AP: I wrote in the notes to Homegrown that it was John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants who contacted me and prompted me to write this song, and "Prince of Orange." So, I dug out my track sheets for these today, and I was totally wrong! He contacted me after I recorded them.
TB: I was wondering if this song was somehow associated with your Bubblegum project, because the vocals on the demo sound very much like some of the vocals on the Bubblegum songs you've played for me. You've kind of got this nasal tone to your voice and, like so many of the Bubblegum songs, it's got a strong sexual undertone...
AP: Well, on the Bubblegum things, I was trying to sing like Cartman. [Todd laughs] Have you ever noticed that? All Bubblegum singers sound like him.
But let me take you way back to the beginning. Precisely, we're talking August '94. I was looking for ways of generating songs that were different than my usual approach. You know -- instead of starting with a title and trying to look for the "chord atmosphere" of the few lyrics, or instead of having a poem and squeezing that into a piece of music that suggests the lyrical content of the poem, I decided to do "automatic writing," or so it says here on the track sheet. I call it that, or "ah-beep" -- Holly and I were watching some Jan_Svankmajer -- it may have been the Punch and Judy one -- and part of the soundtrack was a choir going, "Ahhhhh ... bip!" Holly was saying, "Daddy, why are they singing 'Ah-beep'?" I thought, "Wow! That's great -- I love that phrase."
So, these automatic writings, or ah-beep recordings, were a matter of me just jumping in. I'd sort of done it before, with "Blue Beret," but this time I really wanted to make a conscious effort to see if I could do a whole album's worth of this approach, where you start with a tempo and you immediately start sketching out chords with no idea of where you're going, no idea of what it's about, what the atmosphere is, any lyrical thing -- you jump in and just grab the first chords that come to mind, and they don't even have to be harmonically related to the next one. "Okay, I'll do four of these, then I'll do two of this chord, and then I'll do eight of that chord, then one of this chord, then back to doing four of the first chord I did."
It's like panic buying -- you just grab music with no preconception of where you're going. It doesn't have to make harmonic sense -- you don't have to stick within the accepted frameworks of, "Ooh, this chord sounds nice when you put it next to that one." Forget all that.
So, I put a tempo down, and I'm grabbing chords, and throwing in lyrics that make no sense, apart from commenting on the previous line. You grab a line -- "Where the lions" -- and though you might want to complete that by saying something like "majestically move across the plains," or whatever, instead you say "wear the right tie" -- "wear" versus "where," and all that.
I'm thinking, [talks fast] "Lions -- Lions is a famous rugby team. Rugby team ... rugby shirt ... shirt and tie!" So, it became, "Where the lions / Wear the right tie." It's no more than instant running-down-the-rabbit-hole lyrics, if you see what I mean. They make no sense other than the immediate connections in my brain.
TB: Sure. It's word association.
AP: It's lyrical word association, yes. The previous line sparks off the next, and so on. I was looking for a way to kick-start my writing process, because maybe things were going a bit slow.
Let me have a look at the track sheets -- we're talking August '94. On the 3rd of August, I started "Prince of Orange," and on the 8th of September -- oh, that's interesting. I already had "Prince of Orange" by the time John Flansburgh phoned up on the 12th of August. He called me to ask if I would give them an EP of songs that nobody had heard, for their Hello record club. I was thinking, "What have I got? Ooh, I've just written this thing called 'Prince of Orange'."
So yeah, he called me up halfway between these two automatic recordings, so I'll adjust what I said earlier. He called me on the 12th of August, I already had "Prince of Orange" from the 3rd of August, and then on the 8th of September, I started "Some Lovely (My Brown Guitar)." I've written "automatic writing" again, next to it. So, maybe I thought this was a way of finding another song for the Hello record club, quickly.
TB: How were you able to give him songs when you were in the middle of a strike from Virgin Records?
AP: I was thinking that myself today! I was wondering, "How the hell did I do that?" I was being rather illegal, I suppose, because it was contract bucking, to say the least. And, why did I not think that putting out a CD in a public forum would not mean that people would copy it and distribute it among themselves?
TB: Well, that was still kind of new back then -- I can understand you not knowing about that.
AP: Yeah, people still used to tape stuff then, I suppose, as opposed to CD burning.
I think it was a mixture of my naivety on that side of it, and also I thought -- maybe it was vanity or something -- I could get some things out to the public, through the "underground." But I shouldn't have done it -- legally, Virgin owned all those recordings, and they still do, actually.
TB: So, you have discussed this with them? These songs that you made, during your interregnum...
AP: Oh! Good word! Between your regnum! [Dramatically] "Oh, open your regnum and let me get in there."
TB: [laughing] They are owned by Virgin?
AP: Yes. In fact, Virgin owns everything -- if I am remembering our first contract with them correctly -- that we did even before we signed with them!
TB: But you must have negotiated something with them for you to get the Apple Venus material back, right?
AP: Sure. We came to the agreement where they let me have the use of the demos back, which is why I have to thank them in all the Fuzzy Warbles. They let me have the use of the demos back if I'd collaborate with them on compilations and stuff like that. And also give them the use of any of these tracks if they wanted them.
TB: But not ownership?
AP: No, they keep the ownership strictly. I can use them. They own everything, basically, from our time with them, which went up to '97, I think.
TB: So, any song you wrote during that time, even if it ended up on Apple Venus or Wasp Star? I thought you'd gotten ownership of those songs back.
AP: We didn't start Apple Venus until '98, so they own the demos -- they own all recordings up to that point. They don't own the finished version.
So yeah, it was a bit naughty of me to let the Giants have these. But like I say, I think I just wanted to get some recordings out to the public in some way, and this was a good enough excuse.
TB: Did you make any money off of these?
AP: I think it was a couple of hundred dollars, and that was it. I've got a feeling it was a one-off fee. I have no idea how much they made from it. It might have been more of a labor of love than anything else. You had to pay a subscription for this stuff every month to them, so I'm guessing that's largely what financed the pressing of these things.
But I didn't mind at the time. Like I say, I kind of liked the illicit, underground thing of it -- "Ooh, I've done these recordings at home and I'm sneaking them out to the public! Hee hee!"
Do you know, the song I wrote after "My Brown Guitar," two weeks later, was "The Last Balloon." On the 21st of September, I started the demo on that one.
TB: So, you'd started this experiment of automatic writing -- why did you abandon it? Or, do you still use it as a technique?
AP: I do -- it's that thing of tricking your brain. The problem with me now is that the editor's too firmly in control. It won't let me be very creative. We've spoken before about this -- you grow your editor to have an opinion on the child-like, nonsense creation stuff that you do, and once he's gotten pretty at knowing what to keep and what to throw away and what to trim back, it's a good thing. But when the editor gets too powerful, he won't let the child create.
It's kind of like this giant, man-eating plant that you're growing. You're feeding this thing, and at first it's amazing -- "Wow, this editor is helping me make great decisions on trimming this stuff and what to do with it." But then, you can't stop feeing this editor, and it becomes the size of a city block...
TB: It's "Little Shop of Horrors."
AP: Exactly. It's stopping you from creating, because it's destroying even these little, embryonic ideas of creation. So, I have to find a way of slaughtering this man-eating plant that I've grown to enormous proportions.
TB: Maybe it's time to go back to automatic writing!
AP: I'm kind of doing that, down at Stuart's! You know, he and I will just start off with a tempo, and then we'll throw some things at it. I was down there just yesterday -- the previous week I had a little guitar figure that sounded something like "Shortnin' Bread." I was playing it in the key of A, then I said, "Tell you what -- let me play it in the key of B, then D, now E, now G," and we kept all these takes and were cross-fading them, so you had combinations of two or three keys simultaneously, fading in and out across each other. It was very dreamlike. Not at all what the editor would approve of! The editor would say, "No, you're starting in this key, so now you've got to go to this chord next," and all that.
So, I did this the week before at Stuart's, and then I watched this documentary on TV a couple of nights back about the early days of commercial aviation. There was the great word -- "aviatrix" -- a female aviator. Brilliant word. So, yesterday, down at Stu's, I just improvised four lines of vocal over a bunch of these things in about eight different keys simultaneously. I knew I just had to put the word "aviatrix" in -- and it was more automatic writing. The lines never made any sense -- they were just sort of me commenting to myself on the previous line. So I'm still doing it, as a way of sneaking past the editor.
Jen Olive is really getting into the spirit of this as well -- Stu's going to send her this track in a day or so, and we'll see what she comes back with, which gives you more stuff to shape and play with.
TB: I've been listening to a lot of Lighterthief lately, and it occurred to me that, when people ask what you're doing musically nowadays, and asking why you don't put out a solo album, the answer is, you're kind of in a band now.
AP: I'm kind of unofficially in a band, yes! With about a dozen other people.
TB: I was listening to all the songs that Stu has released, and that you guys have sent me, and it's a really interesting collection of songs -- very groovy and atmospheric.
AP: And there's some great stuff coming up. "My Dream Sea" and "Racecar" -- there's also one that Barry Andrews did called "Mothmen." That's an interesting one. It's sort of like Tom Waits / Beefheart territory.
Stu's just in the final stages of mixing and mastering his next EP, which is called Hard Listening. There's three more songs to go, and then in the new year we're going to be putting out the album, which at the moment is called I Am Disco. It'll be a combination of some of the things that have come out on EP, and some different things.
TB: You're going to release it as an actual album, rather than download-only?
AP: Yep.
TB: Well, there you go, folks -- Andy Partridge's new band will be releasing an album in the new year.
AP: [laughs] Well, don't turn up at Lighterthief gigs expecting to see me on stage pulling rabbits out of hats, though!
TB: So, getting back to "My Brown Guitar," let's talk about some of the word associations in the lyrics. So, "Where the lions / Wear the right tie" -- you have the where/wear pun. Then we're back to "where" again with "Where the gems roar." Obviously, "roar" refers back to lions, but where does "gems" come from?
AP: I cannot remember! I mean, we're talking, how long ago is this, 15 years? It made sense in my brain that day, and looking back on it, I can see the "roar" bit. But why gems? I can't think of why I made that connection at the time.
TB: Then, in the next verse, there are the lines, "Where the ocean / Wears the shore down." Looks to me as if you're getting into sexual territory there.
AP: Reading these lyrics yesterday, I realized it started out as pure nonsense, then it starts to get more and more, "I'm a rat with a nest [Andy's been battling rats in his attic lately], and I'm trying to lure Erica to come and live in it." Because we'd just gotten together at that time. In fact, looking through my diary today, to find when John Flansburgh called me up, I saw that my diary is sort of peppered with hearts and loving things written throughout it.
So yeah, "where the ocean / wears the shore down" almost makes sense...
TB: Yeah, that's a very coherent couplet.
AP: Dammit! I'm making sense.
TB: "Where's the on switch?"
AP: Don't ask! Again, I sat and read these yesterday, and thought, "What the hell was I thinking about?" Did I once own a vibrator by the Shore Company? Who knows?
TB: [laughs] Let's step back for a second -- where did you get the "There be lovely" line?
AP: It's like "There be monsters" -- you know, the medieval maps where, if you go beyond the known world, there are some badly drawn mountains, and then it'll say something like, "There be monsters." I thought, "What's the opposite of that? Come here, come live with me, because 'There be lovely'." By the end of the song, I'm making this little nest and saying, "It's all gorgeous -- come and be in my nest, because there be lovely there."
TB: So, then we go into the choruses, about how you can play every day together.
AP: Yeah! You can mess around on my brown guitar. And it is brown -- and it's a guitar, it's not anything else! [laughs] If my penis were brown, I'd be in the Guinness Book of Records, being an extremely white man.
TB: In the next verse, your thought process is a little more obvious -- "There be inchworm / There we football / Take my yardstick" -- you're obviously progressing.
AP: Yeah, it's getting bigger and bigger.
TB: Of course, you are bragging a bit with the "yardstick" line...
AP: Oh, sure. It could be my brown guitar, yeah! It pretty much gets into unmitigated filth, but, you know, pretty much everything I touch turns into unmitigated filth.
TB: Dirty boy.
AP: I was an only child! What else are you going to do?
TB: You got to play with something, right?
AP: You've got to keep yourself abused!
TB: [laughing] Then, in the next verse, there's the logical color progression -- "There be green grass / There be pink skies / There be blue birds / Come and nest there."
AP: Yeah, I'm saying, "Come and live in my nest, let's have some fun." You know, we'd just gotten together, it was brand-new love, the birds were tweeting for me, and I think I'm writing "Stupidly Happy" in a few weeks' time.
Let me check my book -- oh, after "Last Balloon," it was "Church of Women," then "My Land Is Burning," then "Dame Fortune" -- or "Dame Fortune Smile," as it's written here -- then it's "Greenman," then it's "Bumpercars" -- wow! Do you know, I never sit and read these things. Then it's "Your Dictionary," "Playground," "The Wheel and the Maypole," "Ship Trapped in the Ice" -- ooh, then I did "Paper Snow"! You can see the thought process -- "Ship Trapped in the Ice," then "Paper Snow." Then "Harvest Festival" -- you can see that the two albums [Apple Venus and Wasp Star] are totally interlinked.
TB: So, you would write and demo a song right away, just to get it down and out of your head?
AP: Unless it was automatic writing, I'd get it all to work -- you know, one instrument, usually guitar, and my voice -- get the whole shape of it right, decide in my head what the atmosphere is going to be -- the stage set -- and then try to make that musical stage set. But with the automatic stuff, you just crash in, and you say, "Okay, I'm just going to finish this, but I don't know where it's going, or what it's about -- there's no reason as to why I'm picking these chord changes."
TB: Let's talk about the music of this song, because it seems to center around guitar and drums.
AP: Yeah, because the first that would have happened would have been that I picked a tempo.
TB: And that's that drum pulse that runs throughout the entire song.
AP: That's the pulse -- in fact, we kept that on the actual recording. Prairie played a live kit, and then would sit out and stop when we programmed that pulse, that heartbeat that goes through the album recording. That was programmed. Prairie played around that on the studio recording.
We kept pretty much everything the same as the demo, because the nature of it was, it came out like that, and that is the song. We had a heartbeat pulse on the album version, like the demo, and I said to Prairie, "You're the wild drummer that's on the fringes of this. You do the stuff this pulse doesn't do. The pulse is the heartbeat, and you're doing all the wild stuff in the corners of this."
So, he does all those big tumbling rolls on the front, and then he kicks back in on the choruses.
TB: And he's so great with those tumbling rolls.
AP: Yeah, he does a great job with that. If you say to him, "I want a roll that sounds like two knights in armor falling upstairs," he can do it. He's roll-gifted. He's roll-enabled.
TB: He plays the roll of a lifetime.
AP: He's got roll in his soul. He is the Roll Royce. [Todd groans] Sorry! I can't help myself. He puts the Roll in Rock.
TB: [laughing] That's good! We've got to see if he wants to license that.
He talked a little bit about how you built these drum parts when you were in the studio, and that you were doing them in pieces, and making sure it was right. Do you remember how long it took to get the drum track to where you wanted it?
AP: Not too long, because there weren't any problems with tempo, since that was set by the programmed pulse. So, there weren't any questions about what speed we should be going, or variations in speed. Because the pulse went all the way through, we didn't have to worry about "carrying coal" -- you know, the weight is carried by this set-tempo pulse, so you can be freer and not have to worry about the donkey work of keeping time.
I think it came relatively quickly, this one. And it was done at Chipping Norton studios -- from the otherwise, pretty aborted sessions at Chipping Norton. I don't think much was kept from those sessions other than the drums.
TB: Tell me about the guitar parts.
AP: Well, it's me playing an approximation of Dave -- since he'd left the band by this time -- playing an approximation of my parts from the demo, I suppose.
There are a lot of guitars, a lot of different textures. There are two guitars on the demo -- one is marked "electric guitar" and the other is marked "brown guitar." [laughs]
TB: By "brown guitar," you mean the lead parts?
AP: I'm guessing so. Maybe one just sounded brown to me, and one sounded more electric. But in the studio there are quite a lot of subtle, different textures. There's that rhythmic, dirty guitar on the fadeout -- like a brown guitar, but done with a crayon -- very broken and gritty.
TB: And there's a skank part on the offbeats...
AP: Yeah, and there's an a steely, twangerous, sort of Indian Country guitar, on the intro -- it's a little bit [cod Indian accent] "Harri Georgeson." So there are lots of little textures of guitars, but I think that helps the disparate, dreamlike quality of it. It's like you're opening little doors up -- "Ooh, what guitar's behind this little door?" "That's a little steely guitar that sounds a little bit Indian." "Let's open up this little door up." "This one's a little grungier." "What about this one?" "That one is chime-y."
And all these little compartments and doors, where it shunts from one section to another, just like in a dream -- you know, you step through one door and you're in the Sahara, then you step through another and you're back in your kitchen.
TB: Did that present any challenges when you guys were mixing?
AP: [pauses] That's a tough one, because you kind of heap them all on poor old Nick Davis -- "There you are, Nick -- here are a dozen guitars, make them sound right."
TB: [laughing] But you were sitting there with him while he was doing this, right?
AP: Well, you don't sit there all the time. That's too intimidating. He says, "Look, give me a couple of hours to get the backbone of this up, and I'll give you a call, and you can come and criticize, give me some direction."
So, then you come back and it's, "Okay, that bit's great. Ooh, I don't think you've got that -- it's a bit echo-y, that sounds too far away, can we make it sound nearer?" And, "I like what you're doing with that guitar, but that one there is too thin -- can you make it sound thicker?" So, you're traveling up the pyramid to the sharper and sharper point, if you see what I mean.
TB: Yeah, it's more editing and guidance than anything else.
AP: Right. Then you'll go away for another hour, and he'll give you another ring, and you'll come down and refine further. And so on and so on, until it gets to the point where you're there all the time, and you're microscopically tweaking things with him. It's good to let mixers get in and shape out the big stuff in the sculpture as much as they can themselves. It's easier for all when that happens.
TB: Did he do the mixing at Idea Studios?
AP: No. We kept Prairie's drums from Chipping Norton, and we kept the programmed heartbeat, and I think most of my guitars were redone at Idea.
TB: And the vocals, and Colin's bass?
AP: Yes. So, really, it was largely recorded at Idea, and then mixed at Rockfield Studios, in Wales. So, you kind of go for a walk, or go read a book while he's doing his work -- in fact, I can tell you the book I was reading was Painted Books from Mexico, by Gordon Brotherston, which is where I saw the title Wasp Star. I was having conversations on the phone with TVT Records [makes sound of spitting]...
TB: [laughing] Your favorite label...
AP: Who've gone bankrupt! Yay!! Owing us all our royalties! Boo....
Yeah, so I was having phone conversations with them, and they were saying, "Look, we don't want to call this Apple Venus, Volume 2, it's too [starts speaking slowly and stupidly] confusing for our buyers and people who buy discs in shops."
TB: People are stupid, aren't they?
AP: Doesn't the word "two" help?
TB: "No no no, our customers are morons."
AP: Exactly! Basically, that was what they were saying. So, I was reading this book, and this fellow was talking about the Aztec word for Venus -- because I still wanted it related to Venus -- and that was "the Wasp Star." What a fantastic phrase.
TB: Not easy to say, but a fantastic phrase.
AP: No, it's really difficult on borrowed teeth! [laughs] But I thought it was a great phrase, and I began to look at Venus, in the sky, very differently. You look up and you think, "There it is, there's the Wasp Star."
So, it was TVT, largely, who were sort of forbidding us to call it Apple Venus, Volume 2.
TB: Let's talk about the bass part a bit. Is there anything special that you remember about that?
AP: I can't remember much about it, other than that Colin was obsessed with this Vox bass at the time, which was the one that T-Bone Burnett gave him. He just [laughs] had to try to get it on everything. It was very difficult to get a satisfying sound on, because it sounded like a soft fart. There was no weight to it.
TB: Did you want a little more punch for the bass in this song?
AP: A little bit. In fact, I wonder if we used two different basses, for the choruses and verses. We'd have to listen to the master recording, to find out, but certainly the Vox bass did seem to suit the "brownness" of the pulse in the verses, so maybe it was a good choice after all for this song. But I know that he was virtually sleeping with this bass at the time [chuckles] -- he was obsessed with it.
TB: Was it because he loved the feel of it, of playing it? Or was it because it was new?
AP: It has a narrow-scale neck, which is good for his hands -- he prefers that. And he just seemed to love that soft, old-fashioned '60s tone of the instrument. And, like I say, it did seem to suit the verses of this, with that throb, you know?
TB: How about backing vocals and things like that? He's obviously the one singing, "Lying waiting naked for you."
AP: Yeah, and we're both tracked up doing all the harmonies you hear throughout the song.
TB: When you guys do this stuff, do you typically give him the higher parts?
AP: It just sort of naturally congeals into what comes out. We don't think about it too much -- it's just sort of grabbed, if you know what I mean.
TB: Will he claim a part, or will you assign him a part, or what?
AP: Sometimes I assign him, but sometimes he'll say, "But how about trying this line?" I don't care who thinks up what -- if it feels better for the song, in it goes. I'm not precious, ego-wise, when it comes to that -- "Ooh, I want my part, and I must have my part sung or played." If someone else plays or sings something, and I think, "Wow, that's so much better," then in it goes. If it's not better for the song, it's not going to go in -- it doesn't matter who's playing it. You know, Mike Jagger in the studio, playing his electric spoons, and if it's not right for the song, it's ain't going in! Which, I think, Brian Jones found out to his dismay when he tried to play piano on "All Along the Watchtower" for Hendrix. It doesn't matter if it's Brian Jones, [laughs] it still sounds really wrong!
TB: Tell me about the little audience bit, before the last "You want some lovely"...
AP: You know, I knew you were going to ask me about that! Where the hell did it come from? I've got a feeling it was some sound effect that Matt Vaughan, the chap who did a lot of the drum programming for us on the album, came up with. He had his computer system set up in the back of the control room at Idea, and I think we were saying, "Wouldn't it be great if we had some sort of raising roar, and then it cut off" -- instead of a backward sound piling up to a stop, it was a sound that was naturally growing, and then it stopped. I think I suggested an audience, and he had a sample of that, but I don't know where it's from.
TB: On the demo, toward the end, you do kind of a drum solo, but on the finished version you decided not to do that. Do you remember why?
AP: I've got a funny feeling that there was some stuff from Prairie, but we didn't use it, because we all really liked the sound of that brown-crayon guitar, and the throb. Colin was really pushing, saying, "Oh, that's great, just the sound of that -- you should just go out on that." And he was right, because it made this wonderful, minimal psychedelic landscape -- just that brown-crayon guitar and the throb. It didn't actually need anything else. And, like I say, if somebody comes up with something better for the song, and it's proven to be better, yep, we'll go for that.
©2009 Todd Bernhardt and Andy Partridge. All rights reserved.
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