Pushkin. Niccolo grew out of England's pub rock scene to write some of the smartest songs of the New Wave era. His classics like so It Goes, I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass and Cruel to Be Kind stand up with any of the best songs of the time and He's still going. Nicolo's newest ep, Laid On Me, comes out June fifth and shows he's still the strong songwriter he always was. Nicolo established himself early by writing and producing one of the UK's early punk singles, for the Damned, produced Elvis Costello's first five albums, co founded one of my favorite record labels, Stiff Records, and wrote the classic What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding. Nick talked to Bruce Helum about all of this, plus what it was like Marion. It's Johnny Cash's family and a hilarious first encounter with Keith Richards. This is broken record liner notes for the Digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Hadlum and Nick Low from GSI Studios in Brooklyn. This interview was tape on Nick was on tour with Love Straight Jackets. So why don't we start with one of your new songs. Oh okay, yeah, last night was the last night of our tour. I've been on tour with the Straight Jackets, so place. The song that you've recorded with this is called Love Starvation. I'll do my best to do. Can you tell me the inspiration for that song? Well, I was doing some recording with the Straight Jackets in New York City last year and we came back from the studio. We'd had a pretty good day. We came back from the studio and I just thought we needed a song within that tempo that would that's that sort of tempo, kind of Bobby full of four, Ritchie Valen's kind of tempo, sort of sixties Holly Gully beat. You know. I could hear them doing it. And when I got back to the UK, I woke up one morning with this title Love Starvation, which I thought was a really really good title and I and it sort of wrote itself. Do you write every day? Is that part of Europe? I do. It's not always any good. In fact, mainly it's not. I'm not terribly prolific, but I never stopped writing stuff. But I because I've heard it before, I get impatient with myself because I just I think I've heard that that's no good. Oh yeah, there's more of that old rubbish, is it? And then one day something will come to mind that I haven't heard before, and and I'll I sort of go into a kind of trance, I suppose, and it might take a week or two, or sometimes that it goes after a week or two and I just sort of lose interest in it, or but if it's any good, it'll come back. But I go into a sort of a trance, and I fiddle around with a fiddle around with it until it's suddenly finished, and I think that I've written a cover song. On The ones that I think are good are ones that sound to me like not actually like an actual song that I've ripped off, but it'll sound like I haven't had anything to do with it. And those are the ones that I think are good. If I hear my little tricks and little fancies and things that you do, if I hear that, I get really impatient with it, and I don't like it. It's a very peculiar thing writing songs, because you can't turn it on, neither can you turn it off. And sometimes it well. When I was younger, I used to. I used to really freak if I if I couldn't write a song, you know, if I hadn't done for a while. I used to get really upset and then start forcing it, forcing it out. And that's that's the worst thing you can possibly do. So it's not forcing it up, but you still work at it. Yeah, working at it is pleasurable, but forcing it is unspeakable. Well I can. I'll give you an example if you like. I'll play something which is just a real work in progress. It's just something which has got three bits. It's got three bits to it, and it doesn't really make sense, but there's there's a there's a few bits and pieces that I would say could be good. It's the song is called I'm on Your Plane, which is a weird title like I'm on your level or something, you know, because it's got it's got possibilities. But I but it doesn't really sort of make much sense yet. So you'll try and come up with a bridge or do you think you've distinct parts that aren't fitting together? I think I think that the actual shape of it. I think the tune is good. And there's three parts. There's an A, B and a c part, and they all seem to I probably wouldn't do any I wouldn't probably wouldn't write any another part, but I might juggle change change one of the part, or two of the parts too, So they're quite they're a bit different the second time they come around. That's how I feel that one would go. And so you've always got some of those you're working on. What's your hit rate? If how many you say some things you just abandoned? How many songs would you rate before you would have an album's worth to say? Oh god, I probably. I mean my songs are all pretty short. So an album's worth is about eleven or twelve songs. I'd have to write about thirty to get twelve songs that I like. Well, something like that, because I always do a couple of covers, at least a couple of covers almost my records. When you were writing in early seventies and you were with Brindsley Schwartz and you were you wrote a lot of the songs that became your hits later on, was writing the same back then? For you? It was? It was when I hear that the early songs I wrote, I can really hear a kid, you know, start starting to feel his way, you know, my, my. The way I always explain it is that, you know, we figured out that in order to have any staying power, we had to learn how to write songs. So a couple of us were into it, you know, and you start off writing your heroes, you know, catalog and then and it's very very obvious that they you know where it's come from. And then you'll move on to someone else and rewrite their catalog, and someone else after that, and someone else after that, until one day you'll be writing your latest hero's catalog. But you'll put a bit of the first person and a couple of bits from the third and suddenly you'll find that it's not exactly like your latest hero. It's got something else about it because you put these other influences in. And that's the way it goes and goes and goes, until suddenly you've got your own recipe, you know, like a Hallett. Who was that first hero for you, the one you were imitating. Well, I think at the time I joined my first band and I really got, you know, started to take it seriously. I think it was probably the band I think I loved I loved the band Crosby, Stills and Nash people like that. No one too obscure, you know, they're all pretty mainstream. It's only a game. When I got older, you know, I started hearing I mean, i'd been a mod when when I was a teenager and so, and we should explain what does that mean that you're oh, well, it was a sort of youth movement in the sixties, and they they they were they had a sort of fashion, you know, they liked wearing the right clothes and things that we used to ride on scooters, you know, on little Vespers and Lambrettas. And the music they listened to was all American R and B music, motown and stacks, stuff from from Memphis and Scars scar and blue beat and reggae music. And so i'd been i'd been a mod, So I thought that I knew quite a lot about cool music. Um, you know how wrong I was. But but you know, for a seventeen year old, you know, I was pretty you know, I knew who you know, Solomon Burke was, and Johnny Taylor and people like that, but I wasn't writing like like that. That I thought that was really really hard to do to write those kind of songs, which is strange because they're simple. They're really simple, and it's very those that's the hardest stuff to do, is some a real simple direct message. What was the first country music you liked, because that's a big influence on Yeah, yeah it is. Well, um, that's that's much easier to answer. My my father was in the RAF and when I was a kid, I lived in the Middle East and wherever he was stationed in the Middle East, or Germany and Cypress Jordan, and they had I did a lot of listening to records then the family record collection, and my mother was very musical, and she had the you know, Sinatra and Nat King Cole and you know the stuff South Pacific and guys and dolls and all that stuff in a soundtracks. Well, forget back that, the soundtracks and Broadway shows all that. I had the King and I the King, and I absolutely and so I loved all these records. But she had in her collection very bizarrely, and she didn't know. When I got older, I asked her, where did you get those from? She had two ten inch tennessee Ernie Ford records. I just thought, this is the greatest thing I'd ever heard. He had this fantastic voice, you know, which was like a Disney like a Disney cartoon character, like I'm the King of the Swingers, you know, like Louis form was it, Louis Primer did did that. But he had this beautiful sort of baritone voice. But it wasn't just that that that his records were so swinging. I didn't know it was country music. I could tell it was sort of some sort of hillbilly thing going on there, but they were playing with all these jazz chords in and I didn't I didn't understand that that was the sort of California version of country and western music. I'd never heard anything like this, and it sounded like that Tennessee in my seven year old mind, something like Tennessee ear. And he was really cool. I could see that because of what the clothes he was wearing on the covers of these records. What was he wearing? California casual pool were right. He was never he was never a cowboy. He was if he did it was a sort of stuff that real cowboys didn't quite wear, you know, like a tasseled tailored tasseled swayed jacket or something like that might have got himself beaten up on the rail, but he looked so cool. He looked so cool. But also it sounded to me like his mates who were playing on this record were also really cool, which so they made each other sound cool because they were hanging out with Tennessee and obviously we're doing what he said, But Tennessee was cool enough to know these people who could make this fantastic noise. So that's the first thing I heard that really really blew my mind, I thought. And it was so swinging. And then what your first instrument was? Was it a guitar? Well, I had a little plastic sort of ukulele that my grandma bought me, and then I got another that I sat on that I think or somebody did anywhere, but I got another one. It was like a banjo version, same sort of thing, but it had an amaze using a little gadget that you clipped onto the neck came separate and you just you had elastic bands or something, and it had push buttons on it and each where each button was it had a little cord window. But you pressed the buttons down and it made underneath it pressed the strings down in the right place, so you effectively just playing the So he gave me an ear for for how you know which chords would go with, especially with simple songs like Lonnie Donegan was the guy that from my generation was the fellow that we all copied because he played very simple songs. They were they were sort of lead belly songs and you know, work songs and folk songs really, but they had this great swinging, swinging drive to them because they were jazz players who played on his records. But they were very simple and very easy to learn. And it wasn't too long before I thought, this is a bit uncool pressing the buttons down. You know, I'm going to figure out where my fingers actually go. You know, how then did it become your dream to become a musician from pressing a button on a plastic guitar. Well, I didn't really want to become a musician more than I wanted to be famous. That that was my first drive and have lots of people telling me I was marvelous. I didn't realize there was going to be any any work involved in it. And you thought just the hair and I had the head. That was a start yes, and being you know, any kind of believing that that I was any kind of artist was far from my my thoughts and and still is really. You know, I think of myself really as a as a as an artisan sort more than an artist. You know, I make artistic decis but I think I'm a hack really and proud of it. You know. I'll i'll have a go at doing anything jingles, you know, I'll have I'll have a shot at anything. But I make I make sort of artistic decisions along the way. Really. But and then how did that start for you? Did you drop out of school or you did? I went to quite a good school, actually, but I wasn't. I wasn't very academically gifted. I had a facility with for English and writing, and I thought I might be a journalist actually, And I can remember these well, these guys who have definitely been in the war, in the Second World War war correspondents, you know, they'd come out to these trouble spots and they'd come and stay with us because my dad, who was stationed commander of these places, he was quite high up, would would make sure they had the right accreditations and papers and all that stuff. Passes, you know, to go to these areas and used to stay at the house. And I really liked these guys, you know, there was something about them. I liked the way they drank and smoked, you know, and the way they talked and laughed with each other, easy sort of camaraderie. Also their clothes as well. I loved their clothes that they had well, very well worn, you know, And I thought I wanted to be one of those people. And I got this job at a paper as editorial assistant, making tea, sweeping up, filing copy. Occasionally they give me a movie at the local fleet pit. I'd get that, I'd go down and review it. It was a real break for someone like me, you know, to get into and I've been there about six months, I suppose, and I realized that I didn't have what it took. These fellows were really fantast it was only a local paper, but they were really good, and I realized that I didn't really have what it took to do that. My dreams of being in a in a foxhole with a mud spattered remington, you know, wearing a steel helmet with a cigar stub clamped in my teeth you know, knocking out the copy, you know, with the incoming incoming, I was just going to It was just really ridiculous, you know, it was never going to happen. And then I got a call from Brindsey Schwartz who said, come and join my band. And you knew him from school from school. I went to school with him, yea. And then you started playing? When did the writing start? Um? Fairly fairly soon after I joined again? I really messed things up for them, really because when I joined, when I joined the group, they were they were on Parlophone, which was the Beatles label. In those days. Anyone really who could knock out two or three chords and had a kiss of drums got a record deal. It was very, very very easy to get a record deal, but still with Parlophone that was something else, that was the Beatles label. And they got this deal. They didn't play on their own records, which was very common then. They had session people playing on the Compson. They on the on the record, but they they they sang. And when I joined the group, you know, I figured that I was way more hip than than they were, and so we can't have this and we've got to play on our own records, you know this, And actually the records that they did with the session men playing were sounded fantastic in but you didn't know about the Monkeys back then, you thought exactly, And so I said, no, no, we've got to we've got to play our own stuff. And so then we've we've very soon got fired as soon as we as soon as we started playing on our own records. I thought. After the Beatles, it was understood that musicians had to play on their own records. That was part of their appear that that didn't change. Well, the Beatles were you know, this was nineteen sixty eight when I when I joined them, The Beatles hadn't released their white album that then they were still actually going you know, um, so it was it was a it was a huge scandal in this story broke not that our group had session member, that any that most pop groups had session people playing on their records. It was you know, people couldn't believe it. We'll be right back after this quick break. We're back with more of Bruce's conversation with Nick Lowe. But you you had a period where you wrote a lot of sort of your what would later become big hits for you, you wrote so goes And that was really much later that the first. The first thing I wrote, which was really good was, well, it was an original idea. As I've I've said before because people have asked me about it, is a song called What's So Funny about Peace, Loan and Understanding? And I remember the day I had the idea for it. I thought I couldn't believe it, that I'd actually had an original idea that I hadn't come from. What was the what was the genesis? I suppose that the the the genesis of it was was it was sort of funny. I was because the hippie dream was sort of dying. I suppose this is about nineteen seventy one. I thought of this, and the hippie dream was sort of dying, and and people were starting, People who had been hippies were started rediscovered alcohol, you know, and they're rather embarrassed that they'd you know, dabbled with this this thing and they were, you know, le deserting the sinking ship in drow. And I suppose the idea for the song was a you know, a die hard hippie saying to all his followers or all the people who were in his commune, you know, who are now leaving. Well, you think I'm a you know, I'm an old has been. But but what you can't deny, you know, you can't deny that that peace, peace, love and understanding is that is what we should all be looking for, you know. And you're sniggering at it and laughing at it. But what's so funny about when it comes down to it, what's so funny about? That was the idea for the song, and I thought, well, it's a bit of a mouthful, but it's a really great title. What's so funny about peace, Love and understanding? Because because people did used to do that, Oh yeah, man, you know, do the do the peace sign, you know as a you know, whole piece and love man in this rather rather sort of annoying tone of voice, you know, that they'd adopt. So it was, it was it was a sort of funny song really about peace. The most cynical people person you can enjoy. But the but the surprising thing, looking back now from from this distance, is that I can remember also having a very mature thought, which when I think back to how I was in those days, I didn't have a single mature thought, you know, going for me at all. But in this case I did, and that was not to mess it up by trying to explain about an old hippie, you know, and you know I'm just an old hippie. What's so funny about peace, love and understand? I thought, no, no, no, this is a really really good idea. Don't just let the title do the work for you, and right, really simple verse doesn't matter if his cliches about walking the wicked world, searching for Pete light in the darkness, you know, and all that old nonsense, It doesn't matter that it'll The title is really strong, the tune is strong. Don't mess it up, you know, with some of your clever, clever nonsense. That is an amazingly mature thing to do. And the result is that that song has been covered by I don't know how many people. It's it's it almost feels like I really have had had nothing to do with it, because everybody knows it's never actually been a hit, but everybody knows that song. Can you play for us now? Oh yeah, sure? I tend to do it in this sort of slow tempo, but once again, you know, I'm sorry I'm sorry about my croquy, crokey voice, but I'll do my best. It's beautiful. When you you tripped over one word, you're probably expecting the crowd just to rise up and sing it back to you. Yes, come to your rescue. It had a huge effect on your career long after you rode out. Which is it? It made you financially independent. I suppose can you tell that story? I think you're probably referring to the Bodyguard record. Yeah, it that that was a real, real stroke of luck. Yes, I was in the I was in the middle of trying to figure out quite a lot of things. Really. I mean, my career as a sort of pop star was over. You know, I wasn't young anymore. And you can sort of tell, because I suppose because i'd been a record producer as well, and sort of yucked it up in the in the boardroom, you know, with with people, you know, the people at the record company, as well as being an artist to myself, I'd seen both sides of it. I was very aware of when when the pub when you know, the signs of the public had got tired of my my act, you know, because I was tired of it as well. It was. It seemed really exhausted, and I was, you know, I was drinking and all all those cliches I was. I was drinking quite heavily and all that, and I was just exhausted. I didn't like my records, and you know what I was doing anyway, I got myself, I got myself sort of cleaned up, and then I started when my head cleared, you know, I started to think, well, how right, how can I move things along now? Because I'm going to get older and I don't feel like I've done anything really really good yet that I want to be able to say I've written at least half a dozen really really good songs, and I don't think I have yet. I think I've got it in me too, But the drink and the late nights and all the rest of it have taken their toll, and that's spoilt a lot stuff. So I've got I'm now I'm going to develop a new act know and and so I did, and I came up with this pretty good record of best record I'd made for a while, called The Impossible Bird. Made it on a real shoestring budget, with a lot of called in a lot of favors, and I was, you know, even so I was effectively broke, and all of a sudden I got I knew that they were going to use this song in a movie, and I was pleased. You know, there'd be a few a few dollars in it, not bad, actually a nice payday, few grand And it's come out and it's sold, and curses Steigers, who you know, was a big pop star. Then he'd recorded this song, Piece of an Understanding, and this movie came out. It was a big hit, and all of a sudden it's on that there's a soundtrack. Album sold three three million, four million, five million, And when it had sold about eight million, I thought I'd better get in touch with old Curtis, you know, and say what happened? You know, I mean, you know, thanks very much. I definitely owe you a drink here. As far as I know, I've never actually seen the film. I feel as if I have, because I've tried to watch it a few times, but I'm not even sure if it's actually in the in the film. If it is, it's playing on a car radio somewhere in the background. But anyways, it's on the soundtrack road which I think ended up selling forty million. It did eight million. That was just early days. It went up and up and up and up until even though I got I don't know, I don't even know how much, less than a cent, you know, I don't know how what my share was, but it was after it goes up there, you know, to those quantities. You do the math, as they say. And I got this succession of massive checks through and they could not have come at a better time for me, because not only was I able to pay my boys, you know, who had done all this great work for me for nothing pretty much, I could pay them. I could go into the United States, where I still had this fabulous audience but but they were waiting for something to happen. I could go and see them, show them this new style that I wanted, this slightly more grown up style. I wanted to show them that would suit my advancing years in the pop business, because up to that point, there weren't that many people who have advances in pop music. Now you can't move for them. There's plenty of them. The buggers won't get out of the way. Yeah, but they're still doing everything they did when they were twenty three. Yeah, Well, I wanted to avoid that, you know, because as I thought, this is that'll be just two undignified you know, and preaching to the converted and all that. I wanted to bring a new, younger audience along as well as the old people, you know, because I like Johnny Cash's audience. I thought his audiences were fantastic. He had all age groups, so all digging it. But anyway, I was able with this money, this windfall, to take the boys over, to have a decent bus for us to tour in the US, and to stay at decent hotels, not top of the range, but decently we wouldn't get our stuff stolen, you know. And also to make another album on the proceeds of it, which also did well, and dig my Mood, yeah, and to pay off pay off some debts, you know. And of course once people see see you've got something going on, you know, then you're the initial windfall from the bodyguard. You spend all that, but it's suddenly there's everything, Everything get starts getting groovyer for you, and people start coming looking for songs, and so I got a few covers off those those records and things, so and that really allowed me to lift off, you know, and probably is the reason why I'm I'm a fortunate enough to be sitting here talking to you today. I don't ask you a little bit about producing because as you became well known as a songwriter and with Brindley Schwartz and then with rock Pile, you you became the in house producer at Steph. Yeah, and I don't know, I mean the most famously you worked with Elvis Costello and Graham Parker. I don't know what in what order you worked with them, who you worked with? First? To tell me, first of all, how did how did you work with Graham Parker? How did you well? Graham? Yeah, Well, when Graham formed his group, the Rumor they was formed first, First of all, he was managed by an ex manager of the group that I'd be in, Brindsley Schwartz Um. He also had two members of Brindsey Schwartz in in the group, plus the other guitar player had been had had worked for us, so he was he used to be a He was a roadie for the Brindsley's for quite a long while and a very good friend of the band Martin Belmont. But I was really pleased because I thought Graham was so good. And what was it about his songs that you liked so much for us? Well, they they they they sounded really mature, you know, they were really mature songs, and they were you know, he'd clearly been listening to really good stuff. You could see his influences and things. But he had these, you know, really great influences, I thought, because they were the same influences as I had, you know, so of course I thought he was he had excellent taste. But they were they were a very they were very good musics. They had a rate rhythm section, as well as Steve Goldingham and Andy Boden, now who I got to play on a few of my records as well. And then I think after that, I think Elvis Costello came next. He was signed to Stiff originally as a writer, but after they listened to his tape in depth, you know, they said, well, actually this guy's a bit he's a bit more fantastic than that. So I did you think that as well? No, I didn't really I knew him. I knew him decla. I knew him as as Declin McManus, And I didn't know him because he used to come and see Brindley Schwartz. Whenever we played in Liverpool, he used to or up the northwest of England. He would come along and we noticing because he looked so unusual. One day, actually we were playing at the Cavern Club, were famously the Beatles started out. We were playing at the Cavern and we were having a drink in the pub across the road. Both are gone now, of course, both the Cavern and the pub the Grapes, I think it was called Across the Road. And before our show and in Caane, this fellow I thought, I said, look, there's that there's that guy who comes to see us play. I'm going to go and buy him a drink, you know, I think probably it's a time, you know. And he says that he approached me at the bar and brought me a drink, and I don't know, but either way, that's where we met for the first time. And he had a group in the pub rock scene that was going on in London at that time. The Brinsleys were in and Graham and the Rumor, and well Graham sort of was in it. They were a bit too good for that really, But Dire Straits actually were a pub rock band as well. Where are they now? No idea? And so I got I got the job. To start with, I was definitely in charge. You know, look here, kid, you know you do this and do that. And on his first album, that's the one and only record I did with Obviously I did five or six albums I can't remember now, but that was the one and only one where nominally I was in I was in charge, you know. I suppose I had the last word, but it really didn't take long before I realized that he was really was something else, and I'd be very foolish to override him. You know. Sometimes he come up with these really kind of crackpot ideas, you know, and I NA Nana, and then I, as I was about to say no, I suddenly found it turning into yes. And next thing I know, I was tugging my four lock as they say, you know, say good morning, mister Costella, what would you like to do today? And so our roles reversed and I was very much you know, he all the shots and I and I enabled him to do it. We'll be right back with more from Nicolo after the break. We're back with the rest of Bruce's interview with Nicolo. I want to talk more about songwriting. So can we hear another new song? Yeah? Okay, yeah, you played a beautiful song called Blue one Blue, Oh, I can do that. That was the one I was thinking of. Yeah, I'd love to hear that. Okay, okay, here we go. Can you tell me about the writing of that song. I can't really know. I just sort of made it up when I was on holiday in Italy and just sort of was sitting around in the in the heat, in the dark and in the one afternoon and just messing around with a guitar, and that, you know, simple little chord called figure came came out. But I seem to be able to get it to roll into the other parts, you know. That that was it will go in and out of time. You never kind of know what key it's in either. It sort of starts off in one key and it sort of changes into another and then changes back again. And and this's this sort of rolling thing. I thought was quite interesting, and I thought blue on Blue is a pretty good title, which I kept on. I was making noises to start with, like you doo blue move blue bloom, you know, and it turns into you find yourself same Blue on Blue, and then and then you'll think, what are you saying? Blue on blue? That's pretty actually pretty good, and it just sort of felt right. And it's funny you mentioned the rolling in that song. When you go into the I guess it's a bridge part. There's this um tension until you go back into the kind of the I'm ever so pleased that you make a comment like that. Nothing cheers me up more than to hear well, it's almost it's almost a little nervous. I get a little nervous in the bridge waiting for it to come back, and then it loops in and I think you just do the second half of the chord changes at that point. That's right, Yes, yeah, just a huge relief comes over me when I'm listening to that, and thank God he's back. It's also one of those it's one of those chord progressions. It could just go on forever. Yeah, yes, it's There's there's nothing very original about it. It's all except the way that the structure takes it. Well, it feels like it's still going. I think some Van Morrison songs are like that. It's like it's going all the time. We just dip in and listen to three minutes of it and then we dip out. But it's still going. You know you didn't. Now well, I must say, it's a it's a song that I really really like doing and and and especially doing with the with this straight jackets what they've they've brought it, brought it up. You know, it sounds really cool when they do it. You've been very generous. There are two things I do want to ask you about before you go. We talked about country music earlier. In your great love for country music, you then married into country music royalty. What was it like? This is the music you loved, and then suddenly June Carter is your mother in law and Johnny Cash is here, I guess your stepfather in law. What was that like? It was? It was unbelievably great. I couldn't believe my luck, even though I mean, they were so they were so kind to me, but both both of Johnny and June I absolutely adored them. But still it was Johnny Cash. You know, I used that every time I met him. There was a good fifteen minutes when I was with him that I could barely speak because he was so charismatic. It almost sucked the air out of the room. The only other person I've met like that was was Solemn and Burke. But John had this effect on me every time i'd meet him until you know, as I say, about ten or fifteen minutes had passed him. Then he was such a lovely guy. I've got, you know, tons of stories I could tell about him, including him the time that he and June came to stay with me and Carlin in when we lived in Shepherd's Bush, which is now quite a smart part of London, but back then was funky, you know. It was dead funk as an Irish part of town, and of course the Irish loved John and June, and John wouldn't go anywhere out without being dressed up as Johnny Cash. You know. He didn't know there's no sweats and baseball cap pulled down lower andything like that. He had the black frock coat, the boots and everything. He was high. I'm Johnny Cash, you know, and walking out in Shepherd's Bush with him and June in a sort of in coat with a mink hat on and some incredible jeweled brooch, you know, and saying hi to everyone. Oh, my god. It was terrific, so funny and cheered everybody up. You know, all these Irish people say, oh Johnny, what about chair, you know, shouting at him. It was great and and getting up in the morning. We had we had a nice little house. I mean it's it was a funky little house then but now it's probably the house is probably worth about four million because the area has gone right. And Johnny cast actually belonged to Tony Viscontia. I bought it from Tony Visconti. He used to live there. And did you ever do you ever talk music with Johnny Cast? Yes, I was, That's what I was going to say, actually, because um, he he liked nothing better when especially in this house of ours in in in Sheba's Bush. I can remember on occasion when he was such a music fan and we'd opened a bottle of wine and you know, have a few glasses of wine and we get start playing record. He played records to me. He played me stuff. He turned me onto things like furling Husky and um, Johnny Horton, who was who was a good friend of him. You know, he played me fantastic stuff and he was like a fan, you know, he oh listeners listening to this one, you know, and trying to couldn't quite get in the groove, especially after we'd had three or four glasses of wine, you know, girt, you know, scratching the record. Um, oh, this is fantastic, this is great. You know. He just just like a music fan does, and you'd forget that it's Johnny Cash and you're listening to records with with John Now, I mean, I just think it's just such a fantastic memory, you know. But back then I sort of took it for granted. I can't I can't believe that I did. But he was a super super guy and m and I still miss him. I still do think about him all the time. And June, Yeah, I wonderful. What was she like? Oh? Beautiful, funny, kind, never a sort of a bottomless well of patience that she was with, especially with John, who was quite a hat could could be quite a handful a time. I never saw him when he was mean, you know, and I believe he was mean. I never ever saw him mean, but I saw him when he was out of sorts sometimes, you know. But he was always really funny and lovely. That's a scary father in law. Well, yeah, law, I suppose it was. Yeah, I suppose it was. One more story which I've read about, but it talks about this collision between sort of the world you inhabited with Rock Pile and Prinsley Schwartz in the much bigger world, which is and I don't know if it was the first time, but the time you met Keith Richards, which which I've read about it and just seems completely ridiculous to me. So could you tell a little bit of that. It was ridiculous, Yes, it was when the Rock Pile really were We could we could have, should have would have made it, you know, we were really poised to be very successful, indeed, but we were We were inherently a lazy band. Played this basically we played the same set for three glorious years, you know. But there was those things that made people like us in a way, the fact they could see we were having such a laugh. You know, we didn't take it seriously. You know, we were having such a great time. We had a little run of shows at the bottom Line that much loved and lamented bottom Line, and we were playing there in the in the middle of this little run of shows. It was the night after Keith got out of jail in Canada, and for some reason this room we should explain. I think it was heroin possession or some drug thing. I couldn't possibly comment on that, Okay, something you know that Keith had got up to. I think it was something like that, but we'll film the RCMP. I think it's determined pretty well documented anyway. But anyway, he got out of jail and for some reason he decided to come and see rock Pile. Why I know not. It was the day after. It was the day after he got out of jail. I'm sure I could think of plenty of things I'd rather do after I got out. You got him through that experience. I'd like to think I helped anyway. Of course, he couldn't believe it, you know that he'd want to come. We heard this rumor, you know, and we were in the little cramped dressing rooms that were the back, the back of the bottom line, and in walked Barbara sharone well well known publicist and writer at that time. Anyway, she walked into the dress room, she said, I'm here. I'm here with Keith, and we'd we'd sort of heard us a bit of a rump us out in the audience. You know, they were very very excitable audience because they knew what they were getting. But when this word went round that Keith Redger was coming down, I mean you could feel it coming through the walls, you know, people were so excited. Anyway, Keith, she said, can I bring him? You know, can he come and play? Do you think of course he can? Yeah. But the funny thing was that we were all keen, except for Edmonds. Because Edmunds had been in his the top band in Wales in the nineteen sixties, like nineteen sixty one sixties. So they're in the top band in Wales and along comes this band from London to do a little tour with them through the Welsh through the Welsh valleys, and they're doing the same sort of music, Chuck Berry music, you know, and it's it's the Stones and and Edmonds said, oh they were rubbish, you know. So Edmonds wasn't pleased, and he was all for saying, oh no, I don't want him in here, no, no, tell him to tell the clear off. And we were, you know, really keen, or it was almost impossible not to be carried along with this. It was overpowering, you know, the audience expectation. So you're on stage, You're looking back and forth at the two of them, hoping it's not a fight or they just go well. I don't think Keith could care less, you know, but but Edmonds just glowered at him all night, you know. But he started, you know, he he got on stage, he started turning up is the wrong amp? You know, we had our amps and say it's quite squashed. And I suddenly found my my I was playing bass, you know, and suddenly the bass got louder and louder and louder, and then I thought, what the hell's happening here, you know, and then super twangy, you know, waning wing, and then it sounded really deep like reggae bass is a woom boom. And I look around in Teith is trying to adjust his own guitar, but he's on my knobs, you know, adjusting my man. So it was understand why he wasn't getting louder, and he couldn't understand his he couldn't understand why he was he was turning everything up, you know. So it was I mean, he tried to stay on with us, you know, because we just pressed on, you know, we'd tried to get him off, you know, the enemy right thing, Keith Richard, Thank you Keith, you know, and he wasn't going anywhere, you know, he just stood there sort of swaying and forwards and and uh didn't know any of your songs? Could he He had to go, yeah, he had to go, but it was it was really really hopeless and the and he got old pretty quick. You know, you could tell that the the the audience weren't digging it nearly as much as they were when he stepped on this day songs? Did he? Did he stay for I think about three maybe maybe four? And then we had a we had a tour manager who had a real sort of English sort of manner sort of oh, oh really is could I possibly could do you mind? Awfully? If I had? It was very very you know, he had that corny English thing, you know, going jeeves sort of thing. And he eventually I won't tell you what Edmund's actually said, to call him out and and and tell him and get Keith off. But it wasn't very polite. And there was this great sight of our tour manager did sort of taking him gently by the arm, you know, and just leading him whilst taking his guitar off him and putting it, you know, putting it away, and just leading him gently off the stage where which you know, which I'm sure he was quite pleased to. But they were the crowd I seem to remember. The crowd was actually not too bad. I mean they they I think they realized that he wasn't really in any condition to do it, but they've given him a nice clap. But it was so such a weird night. And have you seen him since, Keith? Yes, No, he was he there when you finished? Was he just did he? No? It wasn't backstage? No, oh no, he'd gone by the time by the time we got off. No, that didn't surprise me at all. It was you know, quite beastly in there, and and of course the entourage that he had with him or you know, taking up quite a lot of room. Dave Emmons was pretty he was delighted. Yeah, oh boy, we had a laugh about that. But yeah, it was a great It's one of those things is a great experience in retrospect. Had it has been a good story. Thank you so much for everything. Well, I've taken so much of your time. It had been really generous. It's been a pleasure. Will thank you. Thanks to Nick Lowe for playing for us and talking to Bruce about his creative process and career. Be sure to check out Broken Record podcast dot com for a playlist full of Nick Rose songs as well as some of our favorite songs that he's produced over the years. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast. Broken Record is produced to help from Jason Gambrell, me Lobell, Leo Rose, and Martin Gonzalez Pushman Industries. Our theme music is by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.