Pushkin. The London based XL Recordings is one of the premier indie labels in the last few years. Along with their offshoot Young Turks. They've released music by Adell, Radiohead and Tom York, Kamassi Washington, Ktronata, F, Gay Twigs, and this new release, Richard Russell's Everything Is Recorded. Richard Russell is the head of XCEL the boss Man, but he loves producing tracks. He's been doing it since the eighties, but there's a period of time when he gave it up to focus on developing the label, and it was a good move because once XL got off the ground in eighty nine, they quickly established themselves with big releases from The Prodigy and later releasing some of the earliest records from The White Stripes, Vampire Weekend and Tyler the Creator. Richard and Rick Rubin first met thirty years ago when Richard was trying to get a distribut uan deal for XCEL in the US. A deal didn't happen, but they've remained good friends. So when Richard was in LA recently, he and Rick sat to record an episode of Broken Record. They talk about Richard's return to making music when he produced the last album by the late great Gil Scott, Heron, Rick and Russell. Trace XL's evolution from its beginning as a dance label to its release in Dizzy Rascal's first album, A Widershed Moment in British Rap, to their success with indie bands and adele. This is Broken Record Season three liner notes for the Digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick Rubin's conversation with his friend Richard Russell from Shangra la. Oh when do we meet? Do you remember what year we met? I think I was out here and meeting year in ninety one? Wow? And what year to do start to label? Eighty nine? Yes. So there was a record store in London called Groove Records in Soho in Greek Street. Soho in London us to be full of record stores. That was a fantastic grassroots scene, the kind of record store scene. So the Yeah, there was the record stores. There was Groove Records. There was a guy called Tim Palmer. There was a producer. There were two Tim Palmers. This is not the producer Timparma. This is the record store owner, Tim Palmer. In London. Groove was the best shop. It was the smallest shop. It was tiny. They had all the hip hop records used to come in from New York, used to sell them in their dance records from Chicago and Detroit. It and it was to me that was a portal, magic, mystical portal. How often did you go? I used to get the tube up there. I actually remember once when I was meant a bit of synagogue on Yom kipor getting the tube up to Groove Records and feeling a fair bit of guilt. That's what That's what I was meant to be doing. So Tim had Groove Records. He was selling huge amounts of certain imports, and he was introduced to the idea of licensing in that if you're selling thousands of copies of one import twelve inch from New York, you could potentially do a deal whereby you have the rights to press it yourself. And that just makes more sense than importing, of course, And there was a burgeoning kind of cottage industry for labels in the UK, licensing records from independence, mostly in New York. And he was introduced by his brother to Martin Mills, and Martin had Beggars Banquet, which was a label, the label of going newman in the UK. Who. I guess you would have been making records for not long after this, right, you'd have been making a cult record. Yes, that was the first album I ever produced, was the cult Electric for Beggar's Banquet, first non hip hop album. It may have been the first first period because i'd only done I think i'd only done singles up to then. I can't remember if the cults Electric or if he Little Cool Jay's Radio came out first. I cannot mind you. You you are not the best historian of your own history. I've noticed this with you. No, I don't. I don't remember much. I think it's very healthy. Yeah, well I don't look back at all. I know I've noticed that. I think it's healthy. I listened. There was a very funny moment. I don't know if you noticed how funny it was in when you did one of these with T bo Burnett where I've not listened back. So you talked about the but he was sitting right where you're sitting right. You talked about that. Yeah, sort of. This is like a self referential moment and referencing back. Yes, I'm always referencing back to things. There was a moment in the show where you talked about the wonderful Robert Plant and Alison Krauts record Yes, I love that record spectacular And you said to him, have you worked on any other records where you've got two unlikely people? Yes, and he said, have you ever done that? And you can remember if you ever had done that? And then somewhat later in the show he mentioned the run DMC and Eira Smith record yea, and of course you had done that, and that's one of the most famous examples of that being done ever. Yeah, and you did that, but you can record it in that minute. No, and I wouldn't. I don't think of it in that context, but yes, it does fit. Yeah, absolutely. That must help you, right with you with what you do, to not be all down in what you did before. I guess I don't know. I don't think about it at all. It's not a it doesn't come into the doesn't come into the thinking at all. But it must be. There must be some philosophical reason for not looking back. We'll usually just take so long to make things. And you know, if I listen as a fan, I mean listen to something a thousand times, but probably not a thousand and one. You know, there's a certain point where you've played it out and you don't listen to it again for a long time. Anything I've worked on, I've listened to it enough for my whole life before anyone else has ever heard it. And I'm good with it. And there's so much music to hear, and I love music. Why would I want to spend more time listening to things that I made when I can listen to things that other people made and maybe that I've never heard. Well, I could suggest a reason why you should do that? Tell me how sort of evolutionary paths as people? So much of it is about self awareness as people. Right, Yes, So any therapy we do whatever, we're kind of exploring stuff that happened. So I wonder if there's an argument that if by examining previous work we do and seeing what we did and seeing what happened, I think it is potentially it can. I suppose it depends how the individual works, but I think that can be a way of learning things about ourselves now and for what we do, like why we made the decisions we made when we made them. Yeah, I mean I went to something called a pitch black playback where they take an album and they blindfold you and you sit in a black room and listen. That sounds great. And they were doing an event for the album I'm New Here I produced by Gil Scott heron Beautiful and invited me to go. Initially, I was like, well, I'm not going to go. I'm you know, I'm not gonna do that. And then I thought, it is ten years ago I made that record. That was actually the first record of this era of record making for me. It's kind of that was the start of a ten years what's so far up in ten years of making records in an active, studio based way, and I thought, I think I probably should do that. I mean, the record was only twenty nine minutes long. I thought why not. So I went along and listened to it and it was extremely revealing. Yes, one thing I realized is that I've learned a lot about producing records since then, and whilst that might be helping me in some ways, I also think it's causing me to that there's a risk of losing some of the spontaneity it was occurring then, partly because I just didn't know what I was doing. Yes, I think it was helping me. No, for sure, that's true. That's true for everybody. By the way, that that idea that when we start doing things, there's this naive energy where we may make some terrible mistakes, but very interesting things can happen. And then as we do it for a long time, we kind of learn our craft and we replace that naive energy with wisdom that we didn't have before, and we just make different things. It's not better or worse. But I don't know that you can put the genie back in the bottle, do you know what I mean. I think it's just I do a lot of things in my work to not know what's happening. I tricked myself in different ways to experience something as if it's the first time. Yes, I suppose I've never quite articulate to I do that as given an example of how you do that. When we're working on a project, I never take anything home with me, so I don't have the thought of listening to it. I try to work on different things at the same time because I'm if I get completely absorbed in a different project, even for two hours. There's been this palette cleansing effect of working on something else and really focusing on it that when I'm coming back there is a little bit of a reset. So if there was something, if I was getting any tunnel vision before from working on it in a straight line for a long time, I might start losing perspective by working on something different. And it could even be by listening to other things. It's happened sometimes with a band, like for working on a song and playing it over and over and over again, and it starts it starts sounding like they're not as interested in it, Like even though we're getting closer to the correct arrangement, you can see that the life of it's going away. I might say, hey, play a different song, you know, just play one of your favorite songs, and just shifting out of the mood of the song could be enough that when we come back to it it has kind of a freshness again. That's extremely interesting, and I think I've ended up adopting the opposite approach, and I do question it sometimes in that I've established this rule for myself of working incredibly strictly on one thing at a time and only one thing at a time, and I take stuff out of the studio and listen to it and all sorts of other places, and I get so immersed in the project I'm lost in it. In some ways, I think I like being lost in it because it's almost like oblivion or something. I'm so sort of in it, almost like I'm in it and I'm asleep when I'm doing it. But it's um, it's probably good. It's downside, And I think one thing is that I think there's something about the taking out of music from the studio and listening to it that does have a slightly can be stressful when you do that, and stress is never really helpful. There's something about that because it's like you something you're in the middle of working on. If you listen to that, you you're really listening. I mean, that's not like someone listening to a tune on the radio. And so because I take it with me, I will do that at home. And so suddenly you're working. You're working, and you're working intensely hard, and you can't really take action on what you're working on because you're not in the studio, so you can't make the changes you're hear. Yeah, and it's almost something that might make sense to do if you were in a tremendous rush to get something done, but I never am, so I slightly wonder why I've got into that. Okay, well that's a very useful, so useful things come out today. I'm going to have to I'm gonna have to ponder that. And my theory in general is if you have a method that works for you, try something different. So that means for me, I'm going to try a project where I just think about it all the time and see what happens. We'll be back with more Richard Russell after the break. We're back with more from Richard Russell. So, yeah, when I when I met you, I think it was shortly after the Weed license Prodigy to Electra, and it actually might have been the other way around, because yeah, because I didn't know if Prodigy was right for us, because I knew we had the opportunity to do that, so it probably wasn't signed yet. I think we talked about I don't even know if you had albums because I thought it was just twelve and when we first could it could have would have been that. But you know, the Electra, the Prodigy, Electra, they all was short lived than maybe it was. Yeah, maybe that's right, it was that we got you know, signed and dropped really quickly. Yeah, so that may have been. It was that that experience of kind of walking into like a corporate American kind of shiny record company, everyone being really pleased to see you, and then like smash cut to like the record is not a hit, Yes, and it's like and I do think it's one of the one of the things I've identified as the sort of the shortcomings that if you have to deal with corporations, it's like there's these there's these modes of dealing with you whereby if you're like the objective desire or you're someone who's generating money for them, like you can, they'll kind of treat you a bit like a god. But if you're like not of interest, they're sort of like nothink. Yes, And really the correct way of dealing with someone is neither of those things. Yes, it's just to deal with a person as a person. Both both are unhealthy and neither of them support the best artistic work. Those experiences, though, with the licensing records to US Majors, which we did throughout the nineties and into the two thousands, although I was seeing a fair amount of stuff out here where I was like, you know, I was thinking, that doesn't doesn't seem that great, what's going on? I was also seeing this whole kind of ambitious way of looking at game music out there. Yes, it's kind of unique to America, and I do think I took some of that back with me. Yes, And I think I sort of developed this idea that that was really not It wasn't anything new about it. It was a combination of existing things. Where I was like, independent record labels are often especially the classic ones in the UK, they're often got really integrity, musical integrity, artistic sensitivity, genuine respect and support for the artists. That that was their big advantage. Majors had drive, ambition, they were competitive, they wanted to get the music to the biggest possible audience. Those were like the respective strengths and then there were respective weaknesses. And I just had this sort of it was almost like an epiphany of like, well, why can't we just be both of those things, the sensitivity of an independent in the integrity of it, and the drive of a major. And the next thing I thought was there must be a reason people don't do that, and there must be some part of the formula there must be. And the thing that struck me was hardly put any records out because otherwise it's not going to be possible. It's going to be there's not you know, you're not gonna have the power or the funds to do that a lot. But you could do that a bit, and so then it was like, okay, but then it needs to be. There needs to be real heart and soul in what these things are, absolutely and what we do, and even in the most sort of earthly mainstream thing we've ever done, which is Adele Yes, I think she's got that yes, because it's in HER's if you've met her, she's got it. She's not sweetness and light. That's not how she is. She's telling it like it is, you know. And the joke I made after I first met her to Jonathan, who's her manager, as I said, I think she's a punk Barbara Strident. She is, and she is, and it's like, I don't think anyone else has ever combined punk and Barbara Streident. So again it's like a I don't know what her I don't know what her takers along I'll ask, I don't know what her takers on that that idea that that's what she don't know how she feels about punk music, but unquestionably she's got that ability to say, mmm, fuck that we're moving on, and it's such a big part of her building what she's built. So I think that kind of character, I'm very dawned to that kind of character, you know, the sort of it's characters who who are often seen by people as difficult, but they're not really difficult. They're only difficult if you're sort of trying to mess with them and stop them doing what they know they should be doing. Yes, But actually working with that type of character, it's it's really the easiest thing, isn't it if you if you're a believer, Yeah, because they know what they're doing and you support what they do. It's they're only difficult because people trying to get them to do something that they don't, that they know is not right for them to do. Yeah, And then it's God help you exactly, God help you know trying to do that. So I think those, you know, those type of characters always and I always get a sort of you know, Jack, whyite is that type of character? Damon albarn Is that type of the first artist. So it started as a dance label. Would you call it a dance lay What would you describe the early excel a rave label, rave le ray label? Yeah, so it was elected. Was it all programmed? Yeah? Oh yeah, so I don't. I don't there was a live instrument or one of our records. Program based electronic music. It would be the precursors of edms. Could we say that, well, m M, what was it the precursor of or is it? I mean ADM to me was a bit like if you had hippie parents and they had a child who became an investment banker and they were sort of looking on a ghast. That's how I felt about ADM. Okay, but so so then it is then it is what I That is what I mean. So it was the That's how the blues guys probably felt hearing led Zeppelin, Do you know what I'm saying? Possibly there was a I think there was a there was a materialism. It was the sort of Las Vegas materialistic aspect of it that seemed felt to me. I don't think that that. I mean, that's that's about the culture of it. But the music, I don't think the music was made with Las Vegas and man, that's probably true. Yeah, that's that's probably fair. I mean that the rave scene in the UK was you know, I've been I've been traveling back a little bit recently because Keith Flint passed away from Prodigy very recently. Yes, and so that's led to us just talking about that period, which we really talked about a lot. I mean, you know, it was an amazing, amazing time and I think when you were in it, you were just in it, aren't you? You're just doing it. I had the same experience here going to raves that I had going to the early hip hop clubs. It was the same feeling. It was the same energy and excitement. Yeah, so I mean the early parties at home where there was a combination. I mean, it was. One thing that was interesting was it got the outdoor events, the unlicensed outdoor events. They were really big, the thousands of people. But it was something that just started existing so very quickly. It was just this sort of I suppose you know now people you talk about something going viral, that was that was the viral, pre pre viral viral. Yeah, and it's obviously always been possible for things to go viral. I suppose the Internet is just a means of that occur amplifier. Yeah, so you know, we beat those of it and they were quite a spectacle, those events because there were thousands of thousands of people and you know, dancing to music that was mostly from Chicago and Detroit. And then you know, we started making these records where we were kind of taking that sound. Of course, a lot of that sound was like a European synthesizer influenced sound. So they'd already been such a great dialogue. It's beautiful, isn't it. So there's you know, they're being influenced by like European dance records. They're making these more soulful techno records, and we were all frustrated be boys. We wanted to be making records like you made. You know, that's what we want, and it just did. We all did, and no one liked them. You know, we all made British Sure where recor was. Liam was in a group called Cut to Kill. You know, I used to work with this MC called Lord Jat. I mean, we really tried to do that, but no one was really interested. And then when we used those breakbeats and sped them up on the wrong speed, added them to the the techno sounds, and you know, we were making this this breakbeat rave sound. It's hard called breakbe rave sound. Suddenly everyone wanted to know about it. I made that song The Bouncer in an hour, and it was a top ten pop wreck. I mean, it was insane, but it was. They weren't on the radio, but the movement was so big, The grassroots movement was so big. If you had a song that was big in those parties, big on pirate radio, so many people will go out and by the twelve inch you'd find yourself. And so you know, I was on top of the pops. How did this happen? You know my name and my synth? Can I find the Bouncer right now on the streaming service? It could just be a question. That is the This was actually a mix that was on the B side, but it was still pretty good. I get this do it all day. That's nice. The thing that strikes me from from hearing that, though, is that we were you know, we were making records to DJ with. That was that was the only aim, and you couldn't really get it wrong. And the records we were putting out, and so we were making records and we were we were putting out other people's records, but they were they were for our DJ set, and you couldn't get that wrong. But there was a weakness in that approach I've worked out in retrospect, which was I got the first thing aphex to've never made, and I remember thinking, klenge thing, I can't look at. I get this in my DJ said, though, I can't work out where the spits. And I kind of put it on the shelf, literally on a shelf where I used to sort my records out because he put out a white label and I got it from Zoom Records in Camden. I tried to get it in my set. I can't get this in my set. I knew there was something interesting with it, but it was like constructs didn't It didn't fit the framework exactly, which was a limited framework exactly. And so I think the next phase for the label was like, well, let's now work with some things which don't fit. And what was the first don't fit? Um? There was a guy called Badly Drawn Boy who was from Yeah. So his debut was really really very very good records well, you know, there was a there was a ground, a sort of DJ ground there, and that he was working with a guy called Andy Votel who was like a kind of digger in Manchester, and they had a label called Twisted Nerve. So they had their little kind of scene going there that their culture and Andy was into like crout rock soundtrack movie Italian soundtracks. He was a beathead um. He did the artwork, he played an important but so it wasn't like completely removed, but it was definitely a leap somewhere different to someone who was clearing an album artist a live artist. I mean, we had one artist called sl two which was in the early which was two DJs called Slip Matt and Lime, and they had a couple of huge rave singles. They were monsters, these songs. And I remember when I tried to discuss making an album with them, they were absolutely not going to make an album. And the reason for that was they said, well, the songs we record at the start, by the time we get to the end of recording, they're old and this is DJ music like this, I'm making this and it goes out now it's just current. Absolutely, So they were kind of not making an album as an ultimate statement of sort of DJ solid there or something, it's amazing. So there's no sell two albums. And you realize, because you don't make an album, you do slightly slip off of historical absolutely, And you know, it's funny because in the early days of hip hop, I never would have guessed there would ever be hip hop albums. I thought for sure that it was going to remain this, this twelve inch format. And it was my partner who said, no, we're gonna make albums, Like, how can you make an album that's not what this is? So it's interesting I could. I completely understand the perspective of and my reason was different. It wasn't necessarily the immediacy of it. It was just that the format of these of a long track on one side and then maybe an instrumental or a variation on it on the b side. And it really did function in a way where if you were a DJ, you needed all stuff. So if you put that on an album, it won't be a good album. If you put all those those DJ tools on the album, it's not so good, you know. I I returned to that kind of eighty six era hip hop and it's not nostalgie of this. I think it's very inspiring. There's something still very inspiring in it for me. I've also been listening to a lot of been, that kind of crowd rock, that sort of German progressive stuff of the seventies, and I don't know, there's something about both of those types of music for me which just feels it says a kind of rawness and a spontaneity going on there. And there's you know, I've got I suppose you know, they've got the drums in common a lot of it, but there's a yeah, I've got a deep abiding love for that, for that era of music, it just hasn't gone anywhere. Well it again, it's like listening to the Beatles. It's like it defines, it defines a style of music. And the music that's made since in pup is really different than that. I wouldn't say it's worse, it's just different, yes, And if you want that, that's where you go to get it. It's like there's there isn't anything else that's specifically that flavor. Yeah, yeah, but it feels to me like there's maybe I mean, I guess this is why hip hop has maintained it's relevance. Is I think it's to do with a lack of deference to what went before. Yes, and I think that's really healthy. Yes, And I don't think see one thing I started noticing with with rock bands it's a little while ago. None of them When I was when I was talking to like band new bands, there was a moment where I thought, none of these bands think they're going to be better than the Beatles or even the Stones. They don't think that. Now, rappers and R and B artists are in no way looking at the people who went before them and saying I'm not going to be better than them. That's true, and that puts you in a completely because really, if you're if you're saying I'm not going to be better than something that happened fifty years ago, yes, I would argue, you're a little bit screwed. And I think what we're seeing there is you know what we're what we're seeing in I mean, I was thinking, you know, who's the greatest female R and B vocalist of all time? One strong argument is that it's Beyonce and that's happening right now. So we are in the sort of peak and maybe there's more peaks, but we're definitely not going down. Um, I don't think she would tell you that she's better than Aretha Frank No, No, absolutely, I understand that. But she's occupying a very very different space in culture and in commercial terms, staggeringly different. Yes, because my understanding is that Aretha was not competing with the biggest commercial things of her of her era. Depends in different moments. She did okay, but as a rule not always the case. Yeah, and you know, Beyonce, that feels like an artist where on a sort of creative level, on a commercial level, things are at such a kind of high that that affects everything in its genre, isn't this Everything's kind of higher because of that. And Yeah, and rap artists they just they just don't have that. I mean, it's amazing. We'd like the British thing. No current British rapper knows any British rapper in the past, and they are moving forward. That seems great. What's happening healthy Right now, We'll be back with more from Richard Russell and Rick Rubin. We're back with more of Richard Russell. After a badly drawn boy who was the next in the well. I think then we kind of hit our stride, like something was sort of unlocked then. So there was like a run where we worked with completely different artists and like basically we got to do the opposite of what we did in the first place, which is what I really wanted because no question, those scenes scenes are a great place to start, but you know what starts as the platform kind of becomes the jail, you know, and you get typecasts really easily. So we were doing in fairly quick succession Dizzy Rascal, who was a very very significant game changing artist in the UK in terms of he was the start. He made the defining masterpiece of crime, the Boy in the Corner album, astonishing album, and there was something going on there where I was like, because badly John Boy had won this thing, the Mercury Prize in the UK, which had really helped him. But Dizzy was a British rapper whish rap was a dirty, dirty word, yes, but he had made a masterpiece. I knew he was making a masterpiece, and I felt like, what this artist needs is something like that, yes, And I remember actually putting them under time pressure and saying this should be submitted I mean yet they might totally ignore it, but this needs to be submitted to that thing. And he ended up winning that prize. Wow, yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, and it was a huge thing I think for this world where he was coming from a pirate radio, proper street music in the UK and he was tell people about the Mercury Price because many people in the in the in America don't know about that. Well, it's a very healthy thing. I mean, obviously we all have to be a bit circumspect about awards because it's not it's not a reason to be doing things. But the Mercury Prize they basically say every year they say these are the ten best British albums. This year they name the ten records. All of the records kind of win. Yes, and it's and it's always by a first album. It's not it's not debuts, it's just British records. What I'm think, does it have to be their first album? Could be, it could be any from any point in their career. Yeah, so that I always think of it as a new artist. So when skept one a couple of years ago, so so they name ten records, but then one is named on the night they have a panel and they're in a room, yes, and they argue about it on the night in some secretive way, and then they come out and say, this one's the winner. It's obviously it's always a bit controversial, but then that's fine. You know that it makes people talk about albums absolutely, So the year that Skepto one the other most the other. The argument that evening I was told obviously between should the Skepto album win or should that final David Bowie album Black Star when? And that's just a really healthy, absolutely sort of dialogue. And my own record, which is called Everything is Recorded, It got was in it last year, so that was great and we performed, you know, I got everyone who was on the record and we all agree, you know. So that was a that was an exciting thing. But I think it was it was seismic for Dizzy and for grime because because it was it was shedding a light on something that people were brushing under the rug absolutely and that you know, it was in the in the raids and in the you know, it was it was bubbling. There was stuff going on, but it needed it needed something like that. So yeah, that was that was kind of seismic. So there was there was Dizzy, Um, there was the White Stripes. You know, I still worked with Jack White and so that was a very very interesting thing of like they were you know, they were some way into it already to what they were doing, because they've been putting albums out over here, but I think somehow people are sort of bracted them. Was like a blues act, a sort of odd act, and kind of like initially there was a feeling about the White Stripes because they had two albums out of like we just don't need to bother with this for some reason. But then then there was just that moment where things seem to kind of click yes, and suddenly people were seeing how exciting and unique this potentially was. And you know, Jack's one of these polymath figures. Is very unusual, you know, to have all these abilities of virtuoso guitarist, vocalist, writer, producer, does the artwork. You know, it was a furniture maker, you know, like almost like a prince like spread. So yeah, the White Stripes was like it was. They were very very successful in the UK. We didn't put their records out in America, but they were really like a sort of um they just caught on in a huge way doing something really original and outside of the mainstream that became the mainstream. And then there's this amazing sort of seven nation army thing when this has become like I actually wonder if that is now the biggest guitar riff of all time. I know that's a big claim, but it's up there. I mean, you you hear it everywhere. You hear you hear I don't even mean I mean you people sing the guitar riff everywhere. Yeah, I mean, because it became this huge sports thing all around the world, Yes, where soccer fans sing that riff. I'd say it's definitely the last great guitar riff. Probably not say there never be another one, but since um so and then m I A where you know this was my A was an artist who people really could not get their head around in the UK, but we always kind of had a feeling that here somehow, and there was an you know, I'd had these experiences of coming out here and licensing records to people, and we did her record with Interscope out here, and that it was pretty helpful, you know, to sort of help really show people out and working with Diplo. This was the first thing Diplo did, so actually, I think Diplo and Maya was a bit of a two Alpha's combination, like that wasn't going to last forever, but it was fireworks while it did. It was really great, and they both had a sort of similar approach to like a bit of the clash, a bit of dance all you know, a bit of Brazilian music, and that was this this Yeah, it was very very exciting. And then so then we were sort of into this other phase where I was wanting to get back in the studio and I made this record with girls Apharent so then this so this started a kind of other sort of another lane open. Yes, and I'm back in the studio and I'm making a record with Gil and this leads to making a record with Bobby Womack and then the Damon albarn Sola record, and uma that Gil was going to be the first one, Like did you how did it work out that Gil was the first one you chose to do? So I was, you know, Liam from Prodigy. He was always very good at saying to me, are you making beats? A you're making records and you were you used to say that to me as well? Yeah, and I really know you really like it, y, because I love it. I love doing that, I really know. And when I didn't do it, it really wasn't good for me personally, I mean, you know, I mean, I think the label got some benefit from like me being one hundred percent folks on a while, and that was good. So it wasn't like I wasn't being constructive in that time. But I think what happened was in that time I built something, Yes, and I also and I populated populated it with really great people. And I think at the time I didn't even know why I felt we needed I need such great people there, but I knew I did. And then so Liam had said to me, have you got a laptop, an Apple laptop with reason on it? You're going to like this. This is good beat making stuff. And I was like, oh, well, okay, this is sort of interesting. So I got the laptop and I learned how to use reason and that led into me learning how to use logic, and suddenly I was like making hundreds and hundreds of beats. I spending all my time doing it, really loving it. These like very sort of clunky, sample based things because I was listening to a lot of grime and making all these like little things in headphones, all obsessed like a teenager with it. And then Kanye had a song on his second album called My Way Home, which was sampling girls Home is Where the Hatred Is with common wrapping over it, and I remember hearing it and thinking, I want to hear a new Girls Got Home record. I'm going to make a new Girls Got Home record. That's how it's gotta work. So and almost straight away I started putting songs together because I thought, well, it's probably not been writing before you even reached out to anything. I stop puting the songs together. Yes, why not arm myself with that? And then when I was listening for songs for him, I was so alive to the music I was hearing. It was like hearing music for the first time. And then I managed to get in touch. That's a really interesting point, is that when you're listening to music for a particular project, you listen to it beyond the excitement of it. You listen in a different way. If the parameters are different. Yes, fascinating, and this is why I think a lot of time times people lose their excitement and connection to music is because they're not listening to it like they were when they were a teenager. Yes, they haven't got the newness and the excitement. Yes, I think if you've got a reason now, I think if that reason is you're trying to have hits and make a buck, that won't work, That doesn't that doesn't happen. But if you've got whatever the reason is, you're trying to find a cover for someone, or you've got a theme in mind to explore and you want to play someone some references, Wow, you're so open. And also what I find happens in it, It leads me into new things. And when I say new, either newly recorded or old, but new to me, because there's a whole world of that out there still, and I'm discovering things that to other people are like the most important music of their lifetime. I'm just hearing it now in so much fun. Hearing music that you've not heard before and you're looking for a particular thing for a particular reason, And when just that deep dive in that vicinity is super fun and we get to learn so much about music through the process. Amazing. Yeah, it is it is amazing and girl was Girl was incarcerated at the time. So we started writing letters to each other and he was a I mean I like I like writing letters. I like writing yes, and he was an amazing letter wasse And we used to write these nice letters to each other. And I was kind of saying, I've got this idea and he was like well, but we were kind of writing letters to each other. And then I went and visited him in Ricaus. I am wow, and I see in prison for it possession I mean insane. Really, you know this is a it's political, isn't it. I mean three strikes and out kind of thing. Possession of coke. I mean, I would argue there was nothing sort of ethically or morally any more wrong with that than possession of a bottle of gin. And there you are in jail. And when I went to see him, he said the first thing he said to me was there you are. And it was like, yeah, I don't know. He's like he was expecting me to turn up in some slightly deeper well I'm not exactly sure what I made, but there was something about it. There was something about this sort of very free conversation. I had with him, and I thought they didn't have a very strict sort of thing there about like right, you're done now, But they just didn't really seem that bothered. So we were just sitting there having this conversation, and it somehow felt very light. It's like a very light energy. Although we were in this insane we weren't it. It's like hell, isn't it, And yet it seemed light. And at one point I said to him, you don't. I've noticed you haven't complained about anything in this conversation, because I was slightly surprised by that because I thought, you know, and he said, if you complain, no one wants to hang out with you. I kind of took that with me. Yeah, And he did have a he had an immense amount of very deep and resonant wisdom, beautiful and that he was happy to share. And in terms of making a record, he was like he was pretty nonchalant about it. You know, he'd had one of those runs of records like the Beatles or Bowie. You Beatles in the sixties or Bowie in the seventies. He had that in the seventies. You know, he made thirteen records in like it was ten years. He was never a huge commercial artist. It had a massive amount of impact, lasting impact, the kind of between the politics and the jazz and the jazz aspects of it. You know, it's very resonant in music now. I think Elscott Harron he's very resonant, very present in music, and he was he saw I really wanted to make a record with him, and he was like, all right, okay, let's try it. So happens so and how long had it been since his last album? Well, so he did all these records up until eighty two. Then he didn't make another record until one in the nineties called Spirits Whi's actually really pretty good on TVT ninety seven ish, and then no records until this one, so, you know, and people have suggested things to him, and he just didn't fancy it. He was performing live though he was active live all the way through. He saw that as more his jobs was to perform live. And when people used to ask him when have you got a new record coming, he would say, have you heard all my old records, because if not, there's a new one for you there. Yes, good answer, yeah, I mean it's a fair point and it is quite a catalog to study his catag There's a lot of very very interesting stuff in there. Still reveals itself to me, actually, especially if you do the vinyl listening with it, because there's all the sleeve notes and stuff. He used to write a lot of sleeve notes, and there's a lot of very you know, he used to talk about the environment a lot in the early seventies, which, you know, you really think, Wow, people were onto this fifty years ago. How is it that this has happened? You know that we've got here and we're kind of just getting alive to it. Yes, because you know, went to an America. I mean went to an America. Sounds like it's about now, so prescient, unbelievable really. So when he got out, we started recording initially in what was Philip Glass's studio, Looking Glass You ever worked there? It was nice in Soho and then it closed. I guess it was that era of studios closing. And then we moved to Clinton in Hill's kitchen and that was good. And I would come out to New York and record him and then I'd go home. I had his Clinton stuff there. Anymore, It's like the doors were closing behind us everywhere we left as we as we went, like I will be back, I'll come back in a month, and it was gone. It was a very interesting phase of like something old phasing out and I guess some new things coming in, but I would go home and work on it. And also what I was doing was I was presenting him with material, a lot of which was his material, because I had his old poetry books beautiful, and I was suggesting parts that I thought might be relevant for the piece we were making, and he would do, yeah, it worked really well, and he was doing readings of stuff. So like the into and outo of the album we made, it's called Oncoming from a Broken Home, Part one and I'm Coming from a Broken and part two. That was a poem that was in I was a long piece of a long poem that was in his poetry book, which was called Small Talk at one fifth and Lenox, same as the same as his first album that came out in nineteen seventy. There's stuff he'd written when he was twenty, but it felt so alive to me on the page. So I would like ediot bits out and say what do you think of that? And he'd go, yeah, that bit, but actually there's another bit, and he pulled some more stuff out, and then I would sometimes I'd take him like little musical sketches I've made, and we had this word spartan. I'd suggested we made a record that was quite spartan. And he used to then pull me up using that word because when I played him stuff. So I would take home and work in my studio at home in the basement, scribe spoken um containing nothing that is not absolutely necessary, just the minimum um. And I think I found I found early hip hop records to be that, yes, right, that's what that's my that's my mission in life, right, spartan. So I would occasionally playing things and he would say what about spartan, because I'd have done a bit too much. So he was kind of he was a and R and me yes as well, and I've been making all this stuff, and so I was like, you know, he he'd sort of freed me up. He given me permission to like make music properly beautiful, you know, and kind of get it. I mean, I was making musical ready, but I was in the dark on my home and he was kind of saying, let's do it together. And also what was quite interesting was he said, I took a photo of him one day and I said, I think that's a I think that's a that's like a that's a cover shot. And he said where are you? And I said, well, I'm not on the cover and he said, well, it's going to be strange though, isn't it when people see the name Girl scot Heron and Richard Russell but they only see me. Don't you think it's going to confuse him? And I was like, yeah, it's not going to say that on it though, it would say girlscot Heron. And he said, oh no, we've made this together. Why would you not have your name on it? That's what I do. And he referred me back to his albums used to make with Brian Jackson. They are all built to Girl scot Heron and Brian Jackson. And I remember the feeling I got when he suggested it was actually terror, Yes, doing that your Gil scot Aerin, I'm not betting my name. But of course, actually what he was suggesting was it was boy. It was very generous, but it was also entirely logical and reasonable. The other thing was that he was he was he really want there to be photos of everyone who's involved in the record, in the artwork, which we ended U'm not doing. I don't really believe in regret, but that, you know, that should have happened because he did suggest it. For some reason, it happened. But he was like the engineer. So I played guitar on the song I'm new here. All these people should be they should be pictured, and that is a lovely, you know, way of looking at it. I can remember we were recording one of the later Johnny Cash albums and we were doing the song that he suggested, called We'll Meet Again, and he insisted that everyone who worked on the project sing on the choruses We'll Meet Again, and he wanted everybody's voice to be with his. And I think he was thinking it was his last album, right, So I guess that's similar. And was it his last album. I don't know if it was his last album, but it was near the end. I mean, I did start to wonder if there was something because I've ended up making two records for people where it was their last records, and I did start to wonder if the So if you look at an artist making their debut, there's an urgency there. Yes, I wondered if that might apply if you're making your last record with me, and some part of you would know, right sure, some part of you wouldn't your last record. Um, and you know that Bowie Black style record. I suppose that's the most avert one where it seems it seems like he very specifically needs as well. And I think that's very valuable. I mean, there's obviously a lot of taboo around death, you know, in the West, and it's very counterproductive that. But I think you know, maybe you ushered in an era where you know, it's like the late career masterpiece and it's a great thing, yes, because you know, the sort of old fashioned music business idea of like you're washed up, you know, it's terrible, Yes, to the idea that people are like when they're past their commercial peak, we haven't got anything to hear from them. It's ridiculous. And I think it's always applied worse in music than in other fields. You know, And you know, you don't want the movie director to be in his twenties and it might be right, it might be great, but you definitely like you're not going to rule them out because they're in their fifties, sixties, seventies, or painters or writers. So I feel like that's the kind of area now where like you say, no to twenty year olds are the same, Yeah, no to seventy year olds are the same. And so you know, we can hear a great record from someone of any age. Absolutely, as that was one of the best things about the success of the Journy Cash records we did were I had other i'll call them grown up artists coming to me saying I feel like I have permission to make something good now before I wouldn't have even tried. It's a great thing. And I think that in hip hop, I would imagine that that last jay Z record is going to give people a bit of permission to think, oh I can grow older in rap. Yes, because I think that's a fantastic record. Forty four is brilliant and of course, you know, I mean, it wasn't even fifty when he made it, so of course, why shouldn't you make a great record. But I would imagine that's the first time that's happened for sure, right, but not the last. Richard Russell's book Liberation through Hearing is out now. You should also check out his album Friday Forever Under the Monitor, everything is recorded. You can check out a playlist with some of our favorite songs on XCEL. On our website, Broken record podcast dot com and why are You there? Sign up for behind the scenes newsletter Broken Records. Producers help from Jessica Brell, Miila Bell, and Lee Rose. Our theme music is by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening. H