¶ Intro / Opening
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¶ Labi Siffre's Early Life and Music
Hello and welcome to Soda Jacker on Songwriting. I'm Brian, accompanied as always by Simon, and joining us for our 299th episode is a celebrated British singer-songwriter, musician, and poet.
As this arrives in your podcast feeds, he's just released a new two-disc best-of-compilation album, a personally curated selection from an exquisite songbook spanning three decades.
It's a remarkable collection of tracks from a singular artist and we're very honoured to welcome that artist, the wonderful Labby Sifri to the show.
Labby was born in Hammersmith, London in nineteen forty five, to an English Barbadian mother and a Nigerian father. The fourth of five brothers he grew up first in Notting Hill, then moved with his family to Hampstead. He received his early musical education via his elder brother Collie's record collection, where he discovered blues and jazz artists like Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, and Wes Montgomery.
However, it was while listening to one of his dad's Frank Sinatra LPs that eleven year old Labby stumbled upon Old Blue Eyes' spine tingling rendition of One for My Baby and One More for the Road. Struck not only by its sound but also its lyrical sentiment, he became obsessed with the record, played it over and over for weeks, and became convinced his futile lay in music.
He picked up the guitar in his mid teens, took classes at the Eric Gilder School of Music in Soho, and gigged around London, including in the house band at the jazz club Annie's Room in Covent Garden,
He was also writing his own songs, but it was actually in late sixties Amsterdam, not London, that he first performed his own material. It was while he was in the Netherlands that his demo tape found its way to Australian manager Peter Gormley, who swiftly signed him to his own Festival International label.
After a distribution deal with Pi Records was secured, Labby released a string of beautifully crafted albums during the first half of the seventies, including his self-titled 1970 debut, 1971's The Singer and the Song, Nineteen seventy three's for the children, and nineteen seventy fives remember my song.
¶ Career Hiatus and Comeback Success
In spite of this stunning creative hot streak, easily the equal of any other great artist of the time, and subsequent covers of his material by bands like Madness, by the eighties our guest had pretty much withdrawn from the music business. It was midway through that decade that he was encouraged by China Records Derek Green to record a staring new song he'd written called Something Inside So Strong.
Eventually issued as a single in nineteen eighty seven, it was a top ten hit, won Labby the Ivan Novello for Best Song. was swiftly adopted as an anti apartheid anthem and ushered in a second phase of his career, which saw him release several more albums, including nineteen eighty eight's So Strong and nineteen ninety one's Man of Reason, as well as become a published poet.
It was also during the nineties that a new generation of hip hop artists discovered his work, a number of whom went on to sample it. Perhaps most notably Eminem, who interpolated the B section of Labby's 1975 song I Got There into his own 1999 hit single, My Name Is
Following the release of nineteen ninety eight's live album The Last Songs, our guest once again retreated from performing and recording, this time to care for his ailing husband Peter, and later his husband Rude. Labi's full back catalogue was finally given a long overdue reissue treatment in twenty twenty in the form of the deluxe nine disc My Songbox set.
If you're not already following the Soda Jacker podcast on your platform of choice, we recommend doing so to ensure you don't miss any future episodes and maybe take a little time to browse our extensive archive of songwriter interviews. You can support this indie ad-free show at SodaJer.com.
Just before we move on, our thanks to Brian and to Ben for their help calling.
Okay, we hope you enjoy this conversation with the wonderful Labi Siffle.
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Lovely to see you. Thanks for joining us. Are you out in Spain or are you in Lobby?
Yeah, that's where I live.
Right. We're both from Liverpool originally.
It's a good times in Liverpool. I used to fairly regularly, maybe a couple times a year do I don't even know but it's still there, the Shakespeare, is it still there? The Shakespeare Theatre? It's probably gone.
Was this in Liverpool? Oh I'm not sure where the Shakespeare Theatre was.
Uh
I would go and it was an amazing thing. It was a little bit like like a Quaker meeting. In so far as if you felt the need to sing You just sang and everybody shut up and listened. It was very special. It really was. I was there two or three times. But yeah, I I always had a good time in in Liverpool.
¶ Reflecting on His Songbook and Return
Yeah, yeah. Well um this new collection, the best of, it brings together music from right across your career. We wondered Does seeing it all together like this kind of throw your body of work into any kind of new perspective for you? Do you find new points of significance or meaning in it over time?
Well, I did know I'd written a lot. But I have to say this past few years it's kind of been Devons I did write wrong a lot. Maybe they were right. I used to be told I was a workaholic and I would say, Nah ridiculous. I have actually had to admit that there has been some truth in that. But I mean it wasn't forced or anything. It's just that I'd get the end of writing something and I'd want to write another one. And I did start fairly
early. I mean I I bought a a guitar from uh Chapel's in Ealing Broadway for four pound ten. I was sixteen. And I also bought at that time Bert Whedon's Playin' a Day.
Yeah.
And I bought the Chess Atkins book of how to play the guitar. And I sat on my bed in my bedroom for several days. and I couldn't make head or tail of either of the books. But at sixteen I already knew and felt deeply Jimmy Reed. And so I started playing Jimmy Reed on guitar. So that's the way I went.
And then two years later, at the age of eighteen, I remember of sitting on the bed in the same bedroom. That's when I wrote my first song, which I have no doubt was crap. It was uh Nobody Loves Me, which is what you write when you're eighteen. Fortunately, I didn't have any recording gear at the time. So it's lost. But then there was a guy called David Leslie, who lived in the Swiss Cottage. He was a novelist, and together we wrote a musical. A musical for children.
It was called The Magic Bed, and it was about Simon. who had a little dog. The bed could go over the sea. But one of the lines in it, Simon was on on the bed with his dog and they were going across the ocean, and they met a cetacean of a certain kind, And the conversation included I think we're talking at cross poipouses, and the reply was dolphinately.
Yeah.
Ha ha ha.
I've always remembered that as being really appalling. But the songs I wrote. turned out to end up remastered.
As bonus. I'd be proud to
And how about these days, Labby? Because I remember there was that lovely documentary that Alan Yentov presented a few years back, and in that you seem to be quite engaged with songwriting again at that moment. Has that continued into the present?
Yeah. I'm recording at the moment. I'm yeah, I'm at home recording a batch of songs. But yeah, I mean I've had all in all, I would say almost eighteen years, I would say, of not doing any music at all. In most of that time, although I didn't do any music, I never stopped listening. I mean, it's almost impossible for me not to listen. Since I was eleven, there's never been a time when there's ever been in my life what's known as background music.
Mm-hmm. As David Hockney would say and has said, there's a difference between seeing and looking. And Hockney says that most people don't know how to look. They have to be taught how to look. I had a brief time at the Eric Gilda School of Music, and the class was called Musical Appreciation. And he used Walton's first symphony as his work materials, a piece that's remained very important to me over all these years. And it was a class in how to listen. rather than how to hear music.
Once again, there's a difference between seeing and looking, and there's a difference between hearing and listening.
¶ Influence of Jazz and Songbook Tradition
Yeah, well we're certainly grateful that you devoted your time to creating all of these songs through the years, Labby. On revisiting the catalogue we were struck by the melodic and harmonic approach to songs like Entertainment Value and So What? Is that something that you were specifically trying to do with the For the Children album, or is that just something that emerges naturally depending on what you're writing?
Yeah, that was the first album that was a an entity in itself, a project. I was brought up. Thanks to my brother who's five years older than me, Collie. I was brought up with the creme de la creme of modern jazz, which meant that as a writer, my foundation was the great American songbook. Right.
as Bird did, you take the song and you you rewrite it in your own way. You style it in your style. And a lot of Bop You took the chord changes of a very well known popular song and you wrote a beepop melody over it, which he and Dizzy Gillespie did, to great affair. So basically I was brought up with the Great American Songbook, which meant I was brought up with songs where the whole song was called a chorus. Thirty-two bars, there'd be a middle eight, sonata form.
And I got to the stage at that time where I decided That I wanted to change the way I wrote. And So What was one of the things I made. It was a kind of small a small suite, three parts. And during which I wrote one of my as far as I'm concerned, one of my one of my best songs, certainly one of the ones I'm most proud of. Pristine verses. Which is I think is one of my best songs. and is unlike any other song I've ever written. I was consciously trying
the Great American Songbook. So that's where those three and several others came from as a writer.
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¶ The Spontaneous Songwriting Process
pure to us, you know, in the sense that it feels very much like it's your words, your voice, your hands on the guitar or the piano. What are the the typical starting points for your songs, if there is a typical starting point? You know, might it be a a concept or a memorable line or just a melodic phrase?
One of the problems I have, and it is a serious problem Depending on what you say to me, I'll start writing a song. I mean it can be anything. It just has to catch my attention or I can see something. I mean, one of the problems is almost there are too many socks. Which of course can be a real bastard, you know, if you decide to work on a project, for example, a recording project.
And you go so the posters are playing and writing the stuff, and you know, decide to record five songs or whatever it is, not every day, but far too often, you start writing another song. Which demands all of your attention because you want to finish the bloody song.
But you should be doing something else. You should be concentrating on the project you're working on. But you've got to get it down. There was a stage where I saw If I think of a melody, which is virtually all the time, if it's a good melody I'll remember it if I don't write it down. In a week I'll have remembered it. If I don't remember it, it can't have been a good melody. I very soon learned that that was total bullshit. You know, where the melody comes, write it down immediately
It sounds practical. It sounds sensible. You know, if you think of a good melody it will stay with you. No, no. I have been known to dash up to startled people in the street and say, Have you got anything to write on? Have you got a pencil? I have done that a few times when I was younger. And the trouble with that is, details are important. And if I start one, I won't stop till I think I've got it seriously correct. Which means if I'm working on something else and an idea for this song arrives.
the something else has already been written, but the new one has to be made into a form where it's solid. Then when it's solid, okay, I can put it aside then and come back to it later, but it has to be made.
¶ Defining 'Useful' Songwriting
And in assessing what you've made from those early records through Man of Reason and Last Songs to the present day. Are there things that have maybe remained constant in your approach to songwriting? Is there a core mission that guides you, would you say?
I I mean I had a long debate with myself. 'cause it it was clear to me at the beginning that I wasn't mainstream. that I was difficult to do things with as far as the business was concerned. It was probably the second album, the end of the second album, well maybe the third, where I had a debate with myself about what am I trying to do?
And I remember it was Peter Gorman, my manager at the time. They brought me with some very successful songwriters in the hopes that some of that commercial ability would rub off on me and that I would start writing that kind of song from the viewpoint of writing a song in order for it to be a hint. And it was a lovely idea. It was bound to fail. And I remember having a debate which meant that I should ask myself, what am I trying to do? Primarily as a writer.
And I came to the conclusion that they wanted to write a hit song and I wanted to write a good song. And then I said to myself immediately, Well what do you mean by a good song, Cyfri, what do you mean by a good song? If you think it's crap but it actually moves a million people. How can that not be a good song? Good wasn't a sufficient description. I came to the conclusion that I wanted to write useful
in my definition of useful, of course. Examining what I'd written up to that time, that was what I concluded I was trying to do.
¶ Courage, Vulnerability, and Authenticity
Well you certainly succeeded, didn't you? I mean the songs are introspective and certainly interrogate things that you were going through, but they're meaningful to other people too, who can relate to those ideas, aren't they?
Most people think they know who and what they are, and most people don't know who and what they are, mainly because we are trained not to self examine ourselves. Especially guys. You know, it's called wool gathering, navel gazing. Uh, you shouldn't do that. You know, just be positive. Which has always made me want to throw out because a lot of things that people tell me are positive, I consider to be incredibly negative.
You have to have the courage to be vulnerable as well as being selfish. When you've got something that you know you want to do that works. You will often find people coming along and saying, No, no, you can't do that. The people we think of as the people who change the world artistically. They are focused. And also many of them, that business of examining yourself, that business of the authentic self, a lot of it is finding out what you are.
And you often find out that you are, in part, things that you don't necessarily admire. This is a courage that most people don't have. That ability to be vulnerable. Which is extremely difficult for guys. You have to have that. You know, when Randy Newman wrote She Chose Me, a song that very few men would have the courage to write.
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¶ Exploring the Inner Self in Songs
I do have a
Which is a mental process, but it feels like a physical activity. You're looking at the facade of labi sifri, this face. Is the facade. It isn't me. This is my face. This is the facade. I slide it to one side. and this part, which is the real me. Comes forward and tells me about myself and how I really feel, which often is not comfortable. It took me a while to learn how to do it. I think I noticed what I was doing and then decided I had to work at how to do it when I wanted to do it.
And it's still quite difficult. I'm rather tired of people saying, Oh, you must enjoy writing you must enjoy these songs. And I have a tendency to say to them, Look, have a listen to uh school days. Have a listen to A Kiss in the Mirror, which is about a girl, young girl who is regularly raped by her father and then finds the courage to run away from home. It's not fun and enjoyable to write that.
But that business of getting rid of this, moving it to the side, the real me comes out from the back of my head here and slides in front of me. Often it isn't nice what it shows me or tells me is important. But when I'm doing it it feels physical. and the luck comes from that.
Yeah. That makes me think of the song The Vulture as well, in which you're embodying a a pretty loathsome character. He even says in the song, I am an evil man. You know. And I've always loved that breadth of lyrical perspectives in your work. You know, on the one hand you have these impossibly romantic, optimistic songs like Nothing in the World Like Love, but then there's something like The Vulture where you're slipping into the skin of this seriously unpleasant individual,
Not the kind of person you want as a friend.
But these kinds of people do exist, you know, and and you're acknowledging that as a writer?
Yeah.
It's fascinating that you can find those elements within yourself as well, as you say. You you slide the sort of facade to the side and you give yourself room to explore all those things that are probably within all of us, I guess.
Well that's the job. It goes with the making of things. I'm not a one trick pony. And I don't see any reason why I should pretend to be. Mhm. And that goes for all of my work, whatever it is.
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¶ Adapting to New Music Technology
As we've touched on, you took a very long break from music, didn't you, at the turn of the millennium? Since you've picked it back up again, are there any new approaches to writing and recording that you've developed? And was there maybe a period of of adapting to the advances in the technology in the time you'd been absent?
I mean, my last album was The End of 1998. That was the last songs.'Cause I did a tour. Peter had already had his first stroke, but the tour was already booked. And I decided well I have to do the tour'cause it's already bought. And when I finish the tour, I'll quit and I'll look after Peter. So the tour ended in January nineteen ninety nine. So that was a long, long time ago.
That was followed by, as I say, probably about uh sixteen years and then think it was together and then um then Ruth died. So there's more no music. So all in all, I've been out of music for Mm, I don't know, seventeen, eighteen years. So now I got to the point of starting, committing myself to to doing these tracks. So I started and I realized I have a hell of a lot of learning to do. And it's been a very interesting journey. I mean things like uh
production qualities, how sound is used now, and things to do with the studio, the mechanisms of of production and stuff like that. It's been several years of learning not just learning, you know, production values and learning those changes that have happened in the way that music is made and how people are thinking and how it's developed. but also, once again, the authentic self, learning what do I want to do? I have no intention whatsoever.
of doing what I was doing thirty years ago. If I had to do that, I'd quit. I mean another conversation I had was of the things that I do in music. writing, playing, singing, a bit of producing, recording. What really is the thing that I get the most out of? The thing that I get most job satisfaction out of is the writing, because it's like creating something out of the shadow of nothing. So it's the making that I get the most.
out of the making. I've had to admit to myself that that's the main thing I am. I can't help it. Mama Risa.
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¶ The Producer's Role and Creative Breaks
This whole process it's really, really been good. To be honest, I was frankly relieved to find that at my age I'm still eager to learn. But one of the important things, as far as you know, doing the recording, is seeing the wood from the tree. I wear the hat of the writer, I wear the hat of the musician playing the things, I wear the hat of the orchestrator, the arranger, I wear the hat of the singer.
And I also wear, fortunately, the hat of the producer. And like a film director, it's the producer's job to see the wood from the tree. And I use that hat a lot to say, no, no, no, get back to the point. This is what you're trying to Don't get sidetracked. Take lots of breaks. You know, let's leave this for a week and get on to another song. And it's interesting that when you come back. is kind of, oh, that's the way to do it.
You see it immediately. And before, of course, you were deeply depressed because you couldn't make this thing work. You know, why doesn't that bar work? There's something wrong with that bar. And sometimes of course it's just take a break, make a cup of tea, watch fifteen minutes online or something. Okay, time to get back. You walk upstairs, you go in the studio, you sit down, and it's kind of Oh, of course.
We hear that from lots of writers. It's that break that allows your brain to just process something and then the solution presents itself.
Yeah. Which you've probably known. But you're too tired to do it. Anyway, that's the way to do it, seeing the woods with the trees.
¶ Genre Fluidity and Artistic Freedom
Yeah. It's great to hear you're so engaged in the making. The songs run the gamut, don't they? From those very intensely crafted songs like Not So Long Ago, something that's got loads of lyrics in, loads of kind of narration, almost in that kind of Randy Newman style that you talked about. through to the stuff that's more kind of groove based, like the vulture or I Got The
And then through to obviously those major, major songs like Something Inside So Strong, which, like you've indicated earlier, they have a personal meaning, but they're also really important to large groups of people. They have this wider political significance as well. So you you've pretty much done it all, haven't you, through the years? And so it's great to hear that you're still so involved with trying to make stuff and and still so kind of respectful of the process.
I did realize fairly early I'm not fixed to any one genre of music. I just write what I feel at the time. And I've actually I've often thought to myself, am I fascinated by music or am I fascinated by sound? 'Cause I don't have any problem with listening to Morton Feldman all day. or Schoenberg or or Weather Report all day or or Miles all day. There's very little of music that I don't like. And that not being tied to anyone's genre. А дід реаліз самот проблематик for the business.
Business likes things in boxes.
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I mean the last time we had a Who didn't at all bother with the business of having an album that's all got the same kind of songs on it was the Beatles. I can remember we waited for the next Beatles album to change everything. And it did. But they weren't interested in doing the same thing, the same kind of song. and their albums were filled with different genres, as it would be called today.
¶ Deconstructing 'I Got There' and Turnarounds
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting that you mentioned the Beatles because, you know, as as well as having that lack of stylistic limitations that you talk about. They would also think nothing of of sort of bolting two disparate song sections together. I suppose the ultimate example would be um A Day in the Life. And you did a similar thing, of course, with I Got There, which takes that incredible left turn for the B section.
We always wondered with that. Did you just have those two different existing pieces of music there and fuse them together? Or did you come up with that second movement on the spot in the studio?
I read the first part. And I came to where I would normally put a middle eight. This was during the period of trying to get away from the Great American Songbook way of writing. And I determined to do something different. I didn't know what it was gonna be. So I did the usual thing, which is how things often start, just improvising, just searching, you know, what will happen if I put my hands here? What will happen if I play this chord? And I found myself writing a turnaround.
And I'd always, since very young, wanted to write a turnaround. which is a musical perpetual motion machine. And once it gets going, it's really down to how brilliant you are as an improvise. You know, if you're David Sanborn, you can go on forever. Or if you're Paul Gonzalez with Duke Ellington, you can go on forever. I mean, those are the people who can start down here. And it just gets more exciting. And you think they can't get any higher?
And there are a few people who could do that. The most famous turnaround in jack. When you get to the end of the chorus in a great American songbook, then you get to the end and you go back to the beginning, and to get back to the beginning you do da da da and there you are. And you can choose to go back to the beginning whenever the hell you like.
And years later I discovered I was listening to Beethoven's Egmont Overture. And there in the finale of Beethoven's Egmont Overture played on I think it's first and second violins is Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da
It all goes back to Beethoven.
The most famous jazz turnaround was written by Beta. I'm with Schroeder in Peanuts when Lucy says to him, What's the secret of life? And he bangs his fist on his toy piano and says, Beethoven. I agree.
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¶ The Genesis of Iconic Hits
Just before we let you go, Labby, because you've been so generous with your time, can I just ask about a couple of those other songs that you're just so well known for? Particularly because we heard such kind of prosaic stories about how they were written almost. For example, It Must Be Love, we heard that you were on a sofa in a flat above a car showroom and when it came to something inside so strong we heard you just hit a C chord and then the first couple of lines just fell out.
As we wondered, was it that simple for you with both of those songs, or was there a long process of craft that was also involved in taking those songs to what they became?
I mean this is not always the case, but most of the time I write the lyrics and the music at the same time. The melody comes with lyrics. That was the case with both those songs, as it is with many of my songs. The idea of the song and the lyrics and the music come together. Yes, it must be loud. We lived above a car showroom on Musulham Road, just along from the Oval station. Peter went off to work, and I was there and I sat on the sofa with my guitar.
I wrote the first verse and chorus. They just arrived. Melody and lyrics. And I got to the bridge and I thought, You have to finish this one. It's a hit. It's the only one I've ever thought that of. Of course, going from there to writing the rest of the lyric, there tends to be a pause in the writing and then the finishing. I mean, this is why there are loads and loads of people with half finished songs, because you get to that point where you pause and you don't know where to go next.
I can't remember how long it took, not a hell of a long time, but would have taken a few days to get it right so that the lyrics actually didn't let the first lyrics down. It's actually an odd song in many ways. Which is why I had to write the baseline for the verse, and I had to write the baseline for the chorus. The medal eight, a good bass player, would improvise that. That was not a problem.
But because of the way the verse and chorus were constructed, I had to write the bass lines for those. So that took time. But the writing of the song itself would have been probably known.
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Possibly a year we lived in a village called Cuddington, just between Thame and Aylesbury. And Aylesbury built um a multicultural centre. Uh which they asked me I became patron of. And at that time there was tensions between kids in the in they'd meet in Friar Square and it would be white kids on one side and Asian and black kids on the other side and they'd have a Barney and and that.
and the multicultural center, there was a discussion about what to do about this, and they asked me to chair the discussion. And it was disappointing insofar as The kids wanted more amenities, you know, a youth club and more th that kind. And the only thing adults could offer them was a nightclub where they could get more alcohol. So I came away from there feeling really pissed off with adults.
but that plus apartheid, which of course I'd been interested in for a long time. So I had decided I wanted to write about that kind of issue, probably about a year before I certainly six months before I actually got round to writing the song. We lived next door to a pub. And also, because we were friends with the people around the pub, we could stay late to drink.
Anyway, I went back and I was gonna go to bed and needless to say what actually happened is that I found myself in the music room, as usual, and I literally I sat down at the keyboard I played a C chord, put my head back and sang the first two lines straight out. Then I just I had to make it. I had to construct. It had to be done. It took me about three weeks.
to get it
As I wanted it. The very first demo I did of it was reggae and then it changed and I changed it to the keyboard part I played on the final recording. So yeah, it did develop, but that's how it got written.
Well that's a great place to end.
Thank you guys. It's it's been nice talking to you.
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and your insights.
My pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you both.
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¶ Hosts' Reflections on Labi Siffre
That was Labby Sifri talking to us about his life in songwriting.
I mean he sure threw himself in at the deep end when he started out, didn't he? Writing songs for a musical?
Yeah, I hadn't heard that before actually. That was new to me.
Me too, yeah. And I think that demonstrates a certain level of confidence that he had right from the get go.
Well he was on a mission, wasn't he, from quite an early age? He even wrote his manifesto at fourteen.
He did. And as his career went on, he became sort of more and more embroiled in that relationship between inspiration versus craft versus commerce.
Yeah, not that they're necessarily in conflict with each other, but they're all part of that wider ecosystem, aren't they? Yeah. That the songwriter is working within and has to kind of wrestle with every day.
Yeah. And as I said to Labby, you know, his writing is very pure, and maybe that's why he found that ecosystem quite difficult to operate in at times.
Possibly, yeah. I mean he does feel things quite deeply, I suspect. I mean he writes songs like Bless the Telephone or Nothing in the World Like Love, which are just beautiful love songs, aren't they?
Yeah, well I mean the the latter is just a masterpiece of Bacharakian proportions for me.
Yeah.
And well he straddles a lot of genres too, doesn't he? Like country, soul, folk, reggae, funk. It's all in there.
Yeah, and tied together with that emotive voice that he has and it was kind of the same with the Beatles who you mentioned, wasn't it? You know, their artistic identity and and convictions overrode the conventions of any genre.
Yeah, yeah. And he quotes the Beatles on so what, doesn't he?
Yeah, he does a bit of You Never Give Me Our Money on electric piano in that song. Not sure how he got away with that one.
Maybe it's not a good idea.
I think I hope we haven't let the cat out of the bag there.
And lovely to hear about those classic temple songs as well, like It Must Be Love and Something Inside So Strong.
Yeah, it was interesting to hear about the former because, you know, we grew up on the madness version, so it's easy to forget just how colourful his original was with those ukulele chords and some of those melodic choices like on um every night, every day.
Yeah, there's quite a lot of tension in his version, I thought. Maybe that kinda got ironed out in the mainstream hit.
Yeah, yeah. And of course we discussed his writing mindsets, which he visualises as a kind of opening up of his head and accessing his psyche within.
Well, yeah, I mean there's a lot of layers of facade masking all of us, I suppose, in our everyday interactions and songwriting's one opportunity to strip that back, isn't it, and take a good look at yourself.
Definitely, yeah. And it was lovely to discover he's still learning and still testing his skills every day in that way. Oh, and for any uh local historians out there, we looked up the Shakespeare Theatre in Liverpool after we finished talking to Labby, and it turns out it was a a stone's throw from
Lime Street Station just off London Road and it was a beautiful old theatre which was um sadly demolished in the mid seventies. So uh there you go. We've learned something new today as well. About our hometown.
So thanks to Labby for the insightful conversation. The best of Labby Sifri is
Cheers to Ben and Brian for their help and we'll be back again soon.
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