Ep 59: Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie

is a real warmer, a real cracker. I'm not going to get give you the full history of my guest because you know Primal Scream and you know Bobby Gillespie, and there's no way we were going to comprehensively cover the story of his thirty years in music in a shortish podcast. So it's fortunate that the album Primal Scream released a couple of weeks ago, zones in on a

very specific period for the band. It's called give Out, but don't give up the original Memphis recordings, and I won't go into too much detail because Bobby sets the scene pretty nicely in the conversation you're about to hear, but in a nutshell. Back in nineteen ninety three, Primal Scream just won the Mercury Prize for Scream of Delica.

They were suddenly a very big deal. There was a lot of heat, a lot of attension, a lot of pressure on them, and they headed to the legendary Ardent Studios in Memphis to record the follow up with producer Tom Dowd. Now, he was known for his work with Ray Charles Otis, reading Aretha Franklin Legends of Soul music, but he wasn't necessarily associated with rock bands like Primal Screen.

And after a while the band realized it wasn't turning out maybe the way they wanted, and when they got back, they reworked and re recorded the album with a new producer, the album You'll know as Give Out but Don't Give Up, which has tracks like Rocks and free on Them. Now fast forward almost twenty five years, and Andrew Innis from the band found those original tapes from those Memphis sessions in his basement and they decided to share them with

the world. Now they haven't just put the music they rediscovered out but also made a documentary about this time. It's broadcast on BBC four on the City sixteenth of November, and it's a really moving, funny and passionate portrait, not just of the Primal Scream story, particularly those early years back in Glasgow, but specifically the time they spent in the Deep South around the making of this album and

Bobby and Andrew travel back to Memphis. In the film, You've got some big personalities who were close to it who helped tell the story, so Noel Gallagher, Alan McGhee, they're entertaining in it with their punchlines, but beyond that, I found it quite a moving watch really, particularly the contributions from ex Primal Scream singer Denise Johnson and Bobby's emotional memories of guitarist Robert Young, who played on this

album but passed away a few years ago. And you maybe think of Bobby as a lot of swagger, bravado, maybe a little bit formidable. That's there, But above all, it's a very tender, vulnerable film and brilliantly done. So yeah, check that out. Hopefully it'll be on BBC iPlayer afterwards as well. Before we get into that conversation, if you're listening to this podcast for the first time, the second time, or maybe you've been with us for a little while.

Please do subscribe to Midnight Chats. Wherever you're listening to this you're getting alert a reminder every time we put out a new episode each week on a Thursday at midnight, and please do comment and rate and share all that stuff that helps spread the word. I hope you enjoyed last week's episode. By the way Stuart's speaking to cat Power, I thought that one was particularly good, so do check that out if you haven't already. We also have a new issue of the magazine we make Loud and Quiet

out this weekend. Tons in there. Jimithy Lacoste is on the cover and interviews with the likes of the Beastie Boys and gets loads and loads of great new music. Loud and Quiet dot com to get hold of that. But back to tonight's guest Bobby Gillespie. I'd only met Bobby once before, about two years ago. Now, we went record shopping for a video series we make at Loud and Quiet called Bands by Records. It's on YouTube if

you want to check that out. Not long after that, Bobby had a really serious accident where he fell off stage at a festival in Switzerland and broke his back in four places. He had to travel by air ambulance back to the UK for treatment. So that's why I started by asking him about that in case you're wondering, and the rest I won't spoil. So here we go,

Episode fifty nine of Midnight Chats with Bobby Gillespie. Last time I saw you was about two years ago and we went to a great little record store in Camden Town in North London. A couple of weeks after that, I read that you'd had your your accident on stage and with primal scream in Switzerland at the festival, and I was just wondering how you are because I haven't seen you since then, and that sounded pretty serious.

And then I kind of fell asleep that night and I woke up the next morning and you know, like really shot philomorphine and I started to come back to consciousness and you know, I'm in a hospital in his tiny room. What's wrong? You know, when I wonder what I've done, I wonder what the damages. Will I be able to walk again? I didn't know. So the doctors came in after my breakfast. Doctors came in and they said,

we'll get some good news and some bad news. And said, the bad news is you're broke in your back in four places. The good news is the good breaks.

been met. I've had to operate and that could have been tricky, and but as it happens, they were just there was four fractures and I just had to wear chest brace for a couple of months. And I was at home. You know, I spent a lot of time in bed, and I was very tired. I was ex dosted because the bodies, the body uses all the energy from you know, food and stuff and sleep to repair itself, and so I slept a lot. The body demanded that sleep, and I did you know, I just watched a lot

of films. Even that I couldn't sit in the living room and watch a film. I couldn't sit. You have to be flashypan normal. Yeah, because I had a chest brace on. It was metal chest prace. So I did just line my back and I had this, you know, got stand to put an iPad on. And I just watched a film half a film and it just doze off. I never listened to music either the whole time. I think it's very strange. I know it's you know, normally

I listened to music all the time. Well, maybe I was in heavy drugs and I think maybe I don't know, I was thinking a lot. You know, I don't want to hear music. The only music I really listened to was at night in my bed and I'd get headphones on when the lakes went and I would listen to some tracks by George Harris and All Things Must Pass, Beware of Darkness, and the other one that was Isn't It a Pity? Real real healing music, And yeah, I

listened to them every night. You know. I think there's a lot of loving those records and then those songs and yeah, very spiritual and yeah that that that was a bit. And then when I was sort of getting a bit better and I could walk a bit better and stuff, I listened a lot to Tom Paige's Greatest.

bettered by that point. End of August, the injury, the fall, what happened I think on the second of June, and then maybe midway through September, we did a gig with Massive Attack at the Downs and Bristol in front of thirty thousand people, and I started moving again. You know, I had to make and I was running to the edge of the stage, and you know, I'd been doing a lot of fezzio and swimming and stuff and a bit of running, and I was ready to rock.

bit of the story. It's nineteen ninety three, Screaming delic has been out, you're following that up with a new record. You decide to head to Memphis to try some different as promised have done consistently throughout your career, But what was going through yourself in the band's minds when you're thinking, right, we're going to head to the Deep South and make a new record.

was getting. He was sort of getting a harder, more extreme techno, you know, very unemotional, but Andy would say it's emotional that you know, I found it unemotional. But we didn't think that it could work with, you know,

the direction of songs that we were writing. So we tried to do some recording at the end of ninety two at the Rent Studio in London with Jimmy Miller who had produced The Stones and Traffic and Spencer Davis Group and Johnny Thunders and Motorhead, and we then ever worked out because Jimmy wasn't the best of shape and we weren't in the best of shape, and also we only had two songs, not enough to make an album. So those sessions folded after a while, you know, and

then we reconvened. I think in the spring of nineteen ninety three. We'd had the idea to work with ask Tom Dowd to produce, and we'd loved his work with Retha Franko, you know, you know, he rod Sture and he'd worked with Eric Clapton. We didn't know that at that point, but you know, he'd record he'd produced Leila, and he'd also produced The Cream and engineered the Cream. He We didn't know that because we went into that music, but we knew the soul stuff that he'd worked on.

We knew he'd worked with John Coltrane and my favorite Things, and he'd worked with Theretha and we were listening to a lot of Aretha and we needed a rhythm section, so we asked Roger Hawkins and David did from the Muscle Show rhythm rhythm section because we love their work, you know, with the staple Singers with Wilson Pickett, with Bos Skaggs, with Willie Nelson, Donni Fritz, lither Ingram. You know,

they're playing a lot of our favorite records. So they all Tom and the Muscle shows guys came over to London and they rehearsed with us for two weeks and so we worked up versions, early versions of the songs, and then we headed down to Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee to make the record.

that studio. It was an adventure, you know, so but really we were mostly in the studio working. You know, we don't have a lot of time get but I think you know that there was the scene of Memphis had. It was a lot different from the fifties, sixties, and even the seventies. By the time we got there in the late nineties, it was it seemed.

was wrong. But back then and even still today, you know, making a record was a very it was like a battle between good and evil. You know. It was like a real knife edge stuff. So the less people and the way, the better, you know. So it's a shame because we don't have documentation, but or we don't have much documentation. But I just remember working very hard. You know.

The band shared an apartment, six rooms of rooms, and we every day, you know, we get up and breakfast, play table tennis, and then we go to the studio. And at twelve, I think midday and start working with Roger, David and Tom and work until whenever Tom decided we should finish, maybe have a couple of drinks after it,

then go back back home. What's your bet? Italian? And Tom Dowold demanded quiet, you know, he demanded respect because of his He was a good you know, he's obviously he had a great track record of music, and he was a real gentleman and a really intelligent man and a very courteous He was a gentleman, and you know, you wanted to do your best, not just for yourself and your band, but for Tom, you know, for even you know, we were flower that he would want to

work with us, you know. So, I mean he was at sixty seven years of age at that point, and he did a long and illustrious career. As they say, you know, it's very successful. So I was still writing

a lot of the lyrics for the songs. I'd have like maybe a couple, you know, a few songs, I would have all the verses and choruses, and for some others I would just maybe have like a first verse and a chorus, and I didn't have a seting verse you know, or a middle ay or a coder, you know, or there's chunks of lyrics missing, and but you know, I had the idea of what the song should be about, and so I felt that pressure when I was going

to in a Memphis. I felt, oh my god, I don't want to hold this recording, but I've got to deliver, you know. And also we had the pressure of following up Screaming Delica. And then of course and Alan McGee had sold his label Creation to Sony for a lot of money, so they wanted they wanted some payback as well.

We started from there and then we started, you know, it was things were turned the guitars up, turn of drums down, turned the vocal down, you know, turn the back of vocals down, and take the horns off. And then we began doing things like we re recorded the song Big Jet Plane in Memphis with Tom producing. You know, I mean, the version on this album that had just

been released is so beautiful. Why we wanted to record that, I don't know, because that song and that version of that song with that arrangement is the exact reason why we went to Memphis and work with Roger, David and Tom. In the first place, we must have been insane, maybe we don't know why. It might have been an immaturity and insecurity in our party.

Always quite hyperbolic, and so I was like, okay, yeah, released as a single, you know, will proudly do that. But this time he was a and also actually made a trip to Memphis during the recording, and he does well, he doesn't remember being there. He said he was stuck to a wall for three days.

which aren't as good as the Tom David ones. You know, Rowing Number one. Never let the band there, especially the guitar players, guitars Louder and Alan from day one and one of George Daculis to produce, because George was a friend of Alan's and he was a young guy. He was the same as us. He loved exactly the same music as us, but he was he had a lot of success with the Black Crows, who were getting like selling a lot of albums. So Alan felt this would

be good for us. But we were coming from a different place from the Black you know, from the Black Crows, and we were looking for something else. You know. There was this suggestion from Alan, why don't we a George to remix the tracks, and George said, well, you know, I think he spoke to Andrew and us and he said, look, if I if I just if I re record the band, it will sound pretty much like what you've done with Tom.

But why don't I just try to do some remix, you know, and I just try something slightly different, you know, and make it more stupid, you know. He goes, I can't make it any better, but I can make it more stupid. And those were his immortal words. When they replayed the bass, the Andrew and Has replayed the guitar, they whacked huge drum beat under Rocks and under Jailbird,

and I guess made it more contemporary, more nineties. And you know, al McGee felt that the Dowd mixes weren't edgy enough and they weren't contemporary enough because it was at the time of grunge, Nirvan and Pearl Jam, and it was at the very beginning of Brick Pope and stuff. So when we heard the George mixes of Jailbird, Rocks and Crimes are blind Out, you know, they were they

sounded like hits, you know. And then we started re recording the rest of the album, calling me I think everybody needs Somebody as a demo on the original ninety four album, and all this stuff was lost until Andre and us found the tape and has has ex Sailor two years ago?

took it. We Are, took a year of ninety six, wrote record a vanishing point, and then we just from then on, we just kept making albums in tour. So this was just forgotten about it, because you know, we we it was a very brave thing. I think to go to Memphis to work with these guys who no one knew about anymore. They were all guys and we were like a very hit band. We were young. We'd made Skim of Delica. We everybody loved Scheming Delica, and they wanted Scheme of de like a part two, and we.

wrong there. Because the albums that came after the Vanishing Point, the Shutters went up emotionally, the lyrics were less, they were more guarded and more hiding behind imagery. They were less direct, and then on the album after that, Exterminator, it was just real anger and you know behind you know, like an unfit them in her cocaine wall of rage, and you know, we were kind of like it was everything was it was outward anger to cover up the

rage inside. You know. It was really there wasn't hardly any fragility or tenderness on that record, you know, so it's kind of like hiding, you know, you were kind of hiding behind rage, you know. And also the lyrics became more fractured, but they became more fractured because my mind was becoming more fractured and my life was becoming more fractured. So there's you know, it is reflected in your art. But I think with this album, the give Up,

they'll give up original Memphis sessions. There's a real it's kind of love Lauren and you know, and it's like, I guess the narrator and the songs is a creating some kind of connection.

This is you know this is Scimi Delicate was the transcending acid House, high energy, you know, kind of rave rock and roll record, and you know it was at a time of possibilities. Acid House was a time of This record's a bit darker, I think, and a bit more yeah, more raw and more open. And I think it's interesting to hear that I really love this record, you know. I mean even like in the records a song called Free and you know, I never sang it, and we asked Denise Johnson to sing it and she

sings it really beautifully. And I still don't know why I never sang it. I think I lost confidence, you know something. And but it's I wrote the lyrics, I wrote the melody. I was like, you know it was it's a very open, emotional, truthful song, and yeah, I never sang it. So yeah, that was a strange.

back down again. So is that how you feel about things? Like, you know, maybe the that time spent kind of being on a lot of you know, chemically influenced things meant that you were you felt a lot more guarded. And then with not being then there's like a rawness that comes to the fore.

for a while. When you're numb, you don't feel, And I guess that's part of the reason you're taking the drugs in lease the tires and yourself. You know, you're trying not to feel so that you can stay alive. And I guess function in some way. And a part of the problem with that is that it definitely makes you, Yeah, it shuts you off from your feelings and your emotions, and you're and you're you're kind of hiding, you know,

you're hiding and playing sights. So maybe some of the lyrical work and the sound of the records shows that, you know, because as I said, lyrics became more fractured more you know, yeah, just a bit more symbolism, more fractured, a bit more still trying to express stuff, but in a way that was hidden, and maybe only I could understand what it was, you know, and and maybe it

was a fear of revealing myself. But I think that it's kind of like you're going deep inside your how you know, you've got a strong interior life, and you you just don't you don't want to come out, and it's really depression. I think, you know, it's like, you know,

that's it's like it's a reaction to depression. I think, you know, you you go really inward and you but at the same time, because you're an artist, you've got creative words and you want to express yourself, but you've got to find a different way of expressing yourself and maybe in this album, the lyrics were either very influenced by country music and soul music and blues music, which is very honest, direct, raw and open and tells it like it is. And to me, that's my favorite type

of songwriting and lyric, you know, lyric writing. And I really was I wanted to become you know, simply sophisticated or sophisticatedly simple, you know, like Hank Williams, and that

was that's my aim. And then you know, I started hiding behind imagery and as I say, you know, fractured, cut up kind of stuff like a influenced by William Burrows and you know, that kind of but that was good as well, because it's you know, I love words and I love playing with words, and I love getting different meanings that you know, you know, like you know, even when they use these political terms like collateral damage, you know when they give you know, like they take

a phrase and give it a different meaning, well, like to take that phase and give it another.

write words and melodies that would they would. It was sympathetic, you know, to the sound and the emotion that he was playing. So whether it was you know, something raw and dirty like jail about the Rocks, or you know, or something gentle like crime myself, blind or everybody somebody, I would. But I had the same feelings and emotions as he had. You know, we we were somewhere in a lot of ways. But but when Robert wasn't around, you know, creatively, the band, the sound of the band

completely changed. You know. That's why Vanishing Point and Exterminators sound completely different because and then this is a blues record. That's why I love it as well. And it's a blues record because of Robert Young.

pressure which we put on ourselves. You know, I'll mcgaine ever put that on us or Sony. We it was something that we put in ourselves. We're very hard on ourselves. So this time we went as Andrew and myself, we just it was a bit more pleasurable because there was no there was no pressure. We just had to go and you know, be interviewed and ardent studios and be filmed. You know, some Phillips Recording Services and me Jerry Phillips

with some Philips has some really amazing stuff. And we met William Magleston, who was the photographers whose photograph was on the original give Up, We Don't give Up cover We won't meet William and that was lovely, So we had a lovely time.

and an incredible musician, and he's a great guy. And he's dead man, you know, it's but he's I know it sounds a bit nostalgic or whatever, but he's not dead. Because as long as you can hear this record, you can feel the soul of Robert Young, whether as I say, it's a dirty, filthy runch of jailbird or the you know, the very pray epic guitar player, or the you know, the broken heart and blues of Everybody needs Somebody this you can hear the man and his and his music.

Highvey I think it is. And so they've rebuilt the studio and you know sit similar mixing desks in the sixties seventies, and apparently it looks exactly like it was back then. So he's invited us to go and make a record. So at some point it would be great to go to muscle shows and play with the guys again. I don't know if David, sorry, I don't know if Roger's still playing the drummers Roger Hawkins, but I think David still playing.