Dave Stewart

I said, well, you know what, really, you know, I thought it was like a joke, but it really never rains. But when it rains, it does pour. It's funny watching everybody panic here in Los Angeles when it rains, because where I'm from it's so sort of rainy and cold. But the rain is different. See, the incomes sideways with

a wind with it. Right. So, when I was little walking to school and you have to wear short pants, you know, when I got to school, one side of my I was always covered in little dots where the rain was like, Okay, where exactly did you grow up?

I grew up in northeast of England, in a place called Sunderland, which is was looked at as the poor cousin to Newcastle, you know, because for instance, Newcastle was you know, a bit of a bigger and named a city, and Sundland was a town when I was growing up, and you know, we got all so second sort of

handoff things. So if you went to the vegetable shop, the vegetables were all the sort of monkey vegetables are a bit bruised because the rest went to London, you know, everything was And when I was growing up, of course, it was a period when they closed the railways and they closed the coal mines so and shipbuilding, which was the biggest thing in the town. They closed the shipyards. So I don't know if you've seen a thing called Billy Elliott. So that's a little bit so about twelve

miles from where I was. But you know, it's all about the minor's strikes and that's all a similar sort of scenario or where you've got, I think in my town of something like unemployment with men who were used to working in the shipyards, in the coal mines or whatever and at least bringing home something for their family and now they've got all usunemployment and strange tactics you know,

to calm people down. So a brewery came out with a beer that's a penny a pints kind of thing, and of course then everybody gets so completely addicted to drinking, and then fights and brawls start up. And so when I was sort of about thirteen or fourteen, um, it was a weird sort of the duality of things happening, because you could get the enemy or the melody maker from one little newsagent shot up and you're kind of

reading about some kind of hippie psychedelic movement. Meanwhile Europe in the northeast of England, where people are rolling around on the ground fighting, you know, just generally miserable and like no future. A bit like later on that happened, you know, when the sex Pistons came out with pretty Vacant and all that stuff. But it was already happening, you know. Okay, you know a lot of my listeners are American. Not that we don't reach the world. We're

ignorant in America. We don't know England. How far is Sunderland from London? Were roughly really far and how it's near the border of Scotland. That was my question. How far from Scotland about sixty five miles very close. So you would, you know, for those of us who are unfamiliar, would you go to Scotland. Oh, yeah, Scotland's a very beautiful place, and so is the northeast of England, you know, Northumbria.

American might have seen it if they watched the History Channel where the Vikings came over and slaughtered most of the population of my hometown. They started with the monks and they landed on Linda's farn, remember remember the yeah I knew them, actually a great man, but Linda's fan where the monks made very peaceful and the Vikings landed there and couldn't understand why they weren't fighting back, so they were just chopping everybody up. And so that's the

first sort of Biking invasion to Britain. Then they realized, oh, this is going to be easier. Nobody fights back. Of course they didn't realize that we had castles and stuff further inland. Um so, but I think, you know, I've got Viking blood most people from the northeast, you know, where they were just raped and pillage going back. So if you do a DNA tests, lots of us have like Norwegian, Danish or scan an Avian in the DNA.

You know, have you done the DNA test? Well, I don't want to because I personally think that it's going to be used. It could be used later on in a very sort of scary way, just the same way as everybody's selling data and information about everything your DNA. I'm sure they could do the same thing. And also when things right rise up, you know, fascist movements, so whatever. Um, I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't want to people to know their exact genetic history, you know, well I

don't want to know. I don't want to, you know, to find out all these people in my history and come tracking me down and there's a lot of stories. Unless you do it at a really high level, you get inaccurate results anyway. So what did your parents do

for a living in Sunderland? Well, my father when he was his dad was working in the shipyard just for the how far asunderland from the water, our Sundland's on the water on the Yeah, you see we have the river where which has had a large you know, it was a large river in the mouth, so they could build as big ships as only Japanese and Sunderland that were the biggest ship building towns in the world. And obviously when something closes down then you don't really hear

of it. But if you read in the history of it, Okay, just to be very clear, Sunderlands, how far from Newcastle are about fourteen miles? And why was the ship building in Sunderland as opposed to New Newcastle. I think it was just the narrowness of the river in Newcastle and the width of the river in Sundland. So when they

launched these giant ships so which were enormous. I remember once as a school kid, we got taken to the side of the launch, you know, and it was like, you know, as a kid, it was just like, well, it's like three streets of houses, you know. Um. In fact, there's a there was a Japanese chap who worked out when they got lost inside a ship that big, big wan they're trying to build it, they had to have

a method of to work out where they were. Oh really, yeah, So I can't remember his name, it's thing us Away Ketami or something like that. He Um, he worked out a thing and now they call it the fishbone method, which is still used in many other. Well, yeah, yeah, I went out a really large ship for this event. And the little fish in the row and the carpets

you know which direction you were going exactly. Yeah, But he divided it up into bones on a fish so that you knew you were in section you know, three B, and that's where this rivet had to go into this thing. And my dad's father worked in the shipyard and a lot of men would go deaf because they had to hold the giants or washer and rivet on one side, where another guy sort of bashed on the boat on the other. So there's ringing in the ears and and so my dad didn't really have any shoes until he

was about nine or ten. He used to play football soccer in the street with the pigs bladder from the butcher's so they would blow up the pigs bladder and then let it dry and then that would become their football. And so when he was sixteen, his dad saved for about ten years and bought my dad a bicycle, you know, on his sixteenth birthday, so he could go and into the town and get a job as somebody who delivers things on a bicycle. On a first day, he came

out of this office where he was delivering something. Somebody had stolen it. He had to walk all the way home in tears. So so my dad then, you know, about a year and a half later, was told, well, now you have to go and be in the army or the air force or whatever, because war broke out and he he wanted to be in the air force. And then the most bizarre thing happened. A lot of these guys said, okay, we are you going to get

on this ship? And the ship ended up in India, right, And it was in India for like four and a half years. And what they had they had sort of planes there that were sort of hidden as reconnaissance planes, um, because the Japanese had started to sort of come into the war. And he was so confused because he'd never been out of Sunderland and it was suddenly boiling hot in Calcutta. And but then years later, there's a lot a lot happens when men are grouped together into a

situation like that. He always flex on it like it was the best time with you know, all these guys from his hometown mixed with guys from other places. I think the ship on the way there held about or something that we're all throwing up all over the place because it was never been on a ship, and it was miles when they got I think when they got to Glasgow to chain ships, they thought they were there.

They'd never been anywhere. Yeah, and so then they were really confused when they got put on another ship, and then they were like days and days and days and days. So yeah, and my mom, she her mother um, brought up four girls on her own, running a pub, you know, like a bar in the coal mining area of Sunderland where all the coal miners would come covered in coal and stuff to drink. Yeah, after they came out of

the mine. But her father, remember this father died when she was nine of consumption, which is a little bit like I suppose you get with the coronavirus, speeded up your long sort of you can't breathe anymore. Basically, was he a coal miner, Uh no, I think you might have worked at the pit, but I don't think he was in mind that I went down. Obviously I never

got to meet him. But so what happened was, and this happened probably in America too, is my mom was working as office girl runner kind of person in the town, and the guy who ran that company said, all the girls here, here's a soldier and an address. You must write to them while they're away. Yeah, and be a pen pal. So my dad would get a letter like once a month in India somehow from this, and he called Sadie and of course they fell in love over

the letters. Right, So immediately he returned and her twin sister had been right into another guy, so they had a double marriage twins with two soldiers returning. And I have to since your mother is a twin, I my girlfriend's a twin, right. How close was she with her sister?

Are ridiculous because they were identical twins, and strange things would happen, like evidently when me and my brother came, the twin sister would ring up my mom, who was asleep, to tell her the milk was boiling over wow, and stuff like that. You know, my my girlfriend talked about

that kind of stuff too. They say, they sure a brain, they'll show up wearing the same clothes, and so so much so that when I was that was pretty sort of kind of a rough place when I was growing up, So a number of sort of run ins or sort of running away really from kids rough you know, kids or wanted to have fights and stuff. At one time, this score here on my wrist. Those these kids caught hold of me in a field and they were trying

to sort of cut me up with something. They couldn't find anything, and they got a rusty old tiner peas and they started like rubbing the lid on my arm till it sort of slipped my wrist. Well. Of course, I ran into the shop where my mom was working, a little newsagent that sold newspapers and snuff and tobacco.

And the blood was just spurting up all over the black and white newspapers, and I thought it was my mom, but it was my mom's twin sister, and she she was obviously screaming like but they immediately did the right thing and tied a sort of teetowl around my arm and held it up in the air, and then I had to walk down the hill to her children's hospital. The way I think guys titched it up with no anesthetic or anything. It was just like, oh, come here, son,

like you. But so yeah, maybe we would often confuse my mom and to insist it was bizarre. Okay, So

they stayed married. They stayed married till my mom, who had to work in the pub with her mother from the age of eleven, so never really went to school, and so she didn't really understand her intelligence to My brother went to the grammar school, and he was bringing home books and talking to his friends about their homework, and she was really interested in this stuff they were talking about, and so she saw that they ever seen Julia of the Spirits. I haven't seen her, Bama aware

of it. I've seen a woman under the influence, of course. Okay, so can you imagine that sort of housewife in the house. My dad's now at work every day and doing night schools to try and you know, get a better position, and she's starting to lose her mind because so boring and everybody is talking about, you know, the price of fish and this, and she's kind of got like in her head some philosophy and a bit of Shakespeare whatever

my brother's been studying. And so she thought she was going crazy, and so much so that my mom actually went to a mental hospital, and I remember cycling to see her visit her. It's very distressing because they immediately put you on some kind of drug and then they started giving her a series of electric shock treatments, which lou Reid taught to me about. You know, he had electric shock treatments. His parents sort of and sisted he

get them. Thought he was mad and so um. But one day a miraculous thing happened, which is some people are just stunning, right. So a guy comes to the hospital, a new younger guy to be ahead of it instead, I want to see every patient. Taught them for a while and listening and at the end of talking to my mom and this he said, uh said he, I really don't think there's much wrong with you. I think

you really are really intelligent. And you need to go to a night school or something and study and and I personally will take you and drive you there twice a week. Yeah, and he did, and she then immediately started to sort of feel better and absorbed in what when this was happening, Well, I was about ten eleven twelve, and she went to college past a lot of exams and matriculated into Durham University, which is very difficult university to get in, and got an honors degree and went

to London, left my dad and became a teacher. Then a headmistress of a school for children with special needs. So um, my dad though, he got really depressed and he didn't want to leave. But she used to say something really great. It was like I didn't have the the strength to stay or something like that. It was like it was so difficult for her to now not continue the journey, you know. And then she met a

zen Buddhist guy called Julian. It's incredible story and I thought would be a brilliant opening to her re sort of beautiful story of a love um in a you know, some low budget film, but they cically, she met this woman that when she arrived in London who was going to the same sort of the next step you have to take to become teaching at special school. And this lady was called Begonia and she had a husband called Julian,

but they were kind of sleeping in separate bedrooms. But she'd heard her talk about this amazing woman called Sadia is coming for tea. So Julia he got sort of one of those boards that you wear around your neck and wrote on it, the ice caps are slowly melting. Everybody is in great danger. For more information, ring this number just back in like nine eight or something like that, and because he read a book by Fred Hoyle called Ice,

which was predicted exactly what's happening. And so my mom was coming down a street in Roustall and Hill in Hampstead out of the tube station or what you call the subway, and there's this guy with a long, funny gray beard and hair sticking out everywhere, ringing a bell with his sign. And the reason he was doing that is because he had to d visions, so he couldn't you know, he had to be make sure that Sadie saw the sign. And she stopped him and she said, hey,

excuse me, there's some mistake here. That's my telephone. And he said, Sadie, I've been dying to meet you, right, And they basically fell madly in love and ended up getting married. And my dad did the most amazing thing. He came to London and gave her away like a father, would you know? Yeah, So did he ever find somebody new? He did later on, but it took him almost to that point to so of let go. And so it

was amazing. And Julian became a very large influence on me, being a Sain Buddhist and funny enough when Bob Dylan used to come around my house in London Tour East. Then I bought my mom a little flat round the corner before we would go somewhere else. You go, hey, how about we go and see that Julian guy again, And we would go there and Julian had no idea

who he was. And you know, Julian wrote haiku poetry that was translated back into Japanese, which is, you know, pretty tricky thing to do when you're from Brittany and you're writing in English. So you're from France writing in English and it's translated into Japanese. But my favorite one that he wrote because he never used any food, you know, that was brought to that my mom made. He lived completely from stuff you found on the street. You know,

you lived by his words. So he knew the baker's shop. He wasn't stupid, so that would put out the bent classant, you know, on the morning and night, but it was still nice and warm. Then he would see the guy who always went to work and put his Sunday and the Times newspaper in the bin. They just pulled that out and eat the cross on. And he just lived like that for it. You know, even when she met him, he was doing that, so she was used to it. But he wrote this great hyper hiker, was this dunk

to biscuit? Will it won't it reach my mouth? That's how much she was into, like just you know the moment when he wrote other great ones like between the Slabs of Gone Civilizations the grass grows right. So, but yet every now and he would write a fun one. You know, did he have a paying job. No, he didn't, you know, any paying job. But he didn't actually have any money or spend any money. And he didn't you know, he he would find everything. I would come around. He

always called my mom poppet. Right, He's French, and if I were, oh, David, David, He's found an electronic chest set somebody had thrown away and plugged it in. It's having having a wonderful day playing against you know. He always had something going on. Okay, and your father did what for a living? Well, my father worked for the same firm that my mother wrote to him from. So this guy was a lovely guy called Allan J. Gray.

And it was like a firm of accountants that would when I say accountants, they would do go into a little shop that sold everything from rubber bands to comics, and they had to take stock of the whole thing and help them work out their tacks and everything, and things like guys who would back their lorry into the

sea and get coal out of the sea. So it was nobody's and then but it was covered in salt, just all sorts of mad stuff, right, So he worked his way up from being the tea boy there because when my mom married him, of course, the same guy, Allen J. Gray, who owned it, said, well, then we come and work in here a bit, and then you realize you're smart, so you kind of went up the ladder,

said night school. A lot of people used to help each other outs, just had the war, you know, it was like they'd all come back, these soldiers, no jobs, nothing. And he worked his way all the way up to becoming a partner. Yeah, but a tiny little it wasn't even it was in seam Harbor, which is and even smaller, tiny little town, not even town or village, just outside

of Sunderland. But it was a big thing for the family because we lived in a house like you know when you watch Beatles help you know, the houses are just a Coronation Street. Well, that's exactly where we lived, and to tell you through it, it was very happy little row of streets because the neighbors all had the doors open. It didn't matter if I I'd be like six or seven, I'd run into a neighbor three up for jam and bread. You know, just everybody just was helped.

You know. The big thing my dad had an allotment where he had would grow new potatoes and then once every four months or something, the neighbors would all come around the house and eat new potatoes with butter and mint salt, and that was the big thing of the of the week, you know. Okay, so you grew up your other brother. Your brother is older. Yeah, my brother's five years older than me. And what is he doing right now? Well he's retired now. But before that, he

started off with a bumpy start. He went to Liverpool University where he wanted to study law, but he wasn't sure what he wanted to do when he chose that. The first week there, he was in a fish and chip shop where a fight broke out and somebody was stabbed and murdered. So because it was a gang, he was then told we had to go back to Sundland and and he would have protection when he had appear

in court as a witness. But he couldn't be in Liverpool anymore basically, so he was really depressed and he went on a job picking tomatoes in Guernsey and things like that, and then he eventually ended up going to a college in London and studying to be a teacher. But he didn't like that either. He was just always obsessed with film. I remember even when I was a kid, he was like I had acted in his film, you know,

And there's some funny films my dad has. When my brother's got the camera and like my brother's given me like a toy cowboy gun. I'm about nine or something and he's like giving me my lines and everything, but I'm really annoyed. I'm gonna just see me run at the camera with the back of hit him on the head and the cameras falls over. So okay, so you're in Sunderland, you're growing up. Are you the type of kid who's popular? Do you have friends? How do you

do in school? Um? Now I was when I to what's called the eleven plus they have a different name for here, you know, it's but it's basically when you're eleven and you do this exam and it decides where you go to and the same as when you would do it here for college. However, but you're only eleven years old, and my brother had already got into what

was called Bead Grammar School for boys. Now Bead was named after the Venerable Bead, which even though I'm from the northeast of you know, Sunderland, like the churches and things or a thousand years old, you know, it's like so Bead was the first person to sort of like right down the official English language, you know. So if you go to Durham Cathedral which near there, he can see Venerable Beads writings and stuff. So he got into this school and it was a grammar school. Now grammar

school that means your parents pay for it. No, No, grammar school is when you've got very good marks on your eleven plus so nobody pays for it. That's like a private schools. Just and when the Labor government came in, they scrapped grammar schools because I said it was unfair that you would have some people in a secondary school.

But the grammar school had the better teachers or whatever. Well, what happened when I took my MN plus, I actually, even though I actually didn't know what I was doing, somehow I got very good marks. That was only about three kids chosen to go into a special school in durham Um that had you know, kids with you know, gifts in certain areas. And but I can't complained like mad for my parents to let me go to the same school as my brother. So they eventually gave in.

And because my dad had now become a bit higher up in the accountancy firm, he thought, okay, I'll get a house where the fence joins that school, and then he usually clearly cut the sort of cut secretly on a Saturday, this kind of hole in the fence and put hinges on it that you couldn't see. So I didn't have to go all the way around all the streets. I could go out the back garden open the hole

in the fence. You wanted to go to the grammar schools opposed to other school because because my brother went there and I was scared to go to Diramote was like ten miles away something. And well I made a bit of a mistake because like. Then a year later they changed the law and there was no grammar schools. Everything was called a comprehensive school. And so where we lived was right next to a very rough housing estate,

like a project. And of course so all the kids who were that the grammar school just they weren't liked by their kids from the projects. And I was particularly not like because I was a bit sort of I don't know, probably eccentric or whatever. And I would do all sorts of things that I thought they might like, but there was always the wrong thing, you know what,

I mean to try and befriend them. And then when I look back, and I actually wrote a book called The Business Playground where I put one of the things I were doing it as kind of the wrong thing to do. And I managed to make a sort of trick shop machine right that if you had both hands held of these two things, I would like wind the handle and it it would give them electric shop. Well, obviously that's not going to go down well. In my mind, I thought they'd enjoy it, but I must go back

to my mom getting electric shot. I don't know. But so I got into you know, very sort of lonely kind of position there and The only thing I thought I could do is I joined all the sports teams. You know, I want to play everything, And so I was played soccer like three times on a Saturday for three different teams. I did pole vaulting. Sounds odd, but I did it and highest you clear, I don't know, Um, I'm not sure. Actually it's about sort of probably twice

the height of me at the time. But the worst part about it was this wasn't like poll vaulting you've seen in the Olympics. You know where the pool bends. This is like the poll doesn't hardly budge, and it's like metal and it hits in the teeth, you know. So anyway, you know, during that soccer sort of I suppose obsession. I actually had my knee broken really badly, has put in hospital, and when surgeon spoke to me after the operation, he was really chirpy and he was going, yeah,

let's be great. You know, you'll be up and walking in six months and probably playing football in a year. And I was like what And honestly, I I was so depressed. I had no idea. Um. I had to get my head around that, like what to do for six months? Can't walk? And my brother brought in and all you know when you go around some of his house, and I've got a Spanish guitar, dusty with castanets, and

nobody's ever played it. My grandma had one of those, my grandmother, and he brought it in with about three strings on it, and I was like, what am I going to do with this? I wasn't even interested in music, even though my brother had come home once and seen seen the Beatles play at the sound An Empire and was trying to explain it. I was just saying, so, and did your parents play music in the house. Nope?

My mom when she ran about this time, my mom, you know, had come back from the mental hospital and being gone, and she had discovered Ray Charles. But now I realized why she kept playing take these Chains from my Heart, Set Me Free right, which she played over and over again till I was give us a break. But but what happened was in the hospital I realized I could pick out a chun on one string really easy,

like a workout at tune. So when I got home, my brother had another guitar, but he'd gone off to pick tomatoes and then was going to college, and so I picked up this other guitar, and the guy around the corner to me, his father was in a Japanese prison of war camp and he stayed alive by he made a guitar out of the floorboards or some wood and wires and things to entertain his you know, other guys. But I think most of them were tortured to death, right,

so he was one of the few survivors. And funnily enough, his son just told me today's dad was just a hundred and one, was still talking and doing talks actually, and things like that. But he I realized he played this guitar. So I went round his house and he was really pleased, like, oh, good, well done. Ka, Yeah, I'll show you how you do a few things. But I didn't realize he didn't really play the guitar in

normal way. He just invented a tuning and was just putting his finger across it and growing up and down, and he kind of tried to invent quasi Japanese English things so the guards wouldn't sort, you know, be too tough on him. And so I went away from that thinking, okay, I'll try and play that. And then my brother and my cousin simultaneously. My brother was now eighteen and he'd got into blues music, and my cousin, who I know,

it sounds like it was our family. But at the age of about thirteen, this is in Sunland, where I'm trying to talk in a much more sort of like an accent that's not too strong, say my normal accent. You wouldn't really understand. Can you do it for the last a little bit? Sure? What do you want me to say? Continue the story with your normal accent? All right? Well me cousin Ian who lived in South Sas Okay, Okay,

back to English. Okay, I didn't even actually lived in Southwick, but my cousin who lived in a littlaria called Southwick with my mom's you know, the son of my mom's non twin sister. And she also had a tiny little shop that's sold newspapers and the stuff called snuff that you put up your nose a bit like coke, money legal and and so I don't know why, but about the age of twelve thirty and he started speaking with

a heavy Memphis twang. Right now. He used to get beaten up every day for this because in Sunderland, if he suddenly got to school and you go, how y'all do and the like shut the funk up, like bum bum bum, you know. And he he just wouldn't stop, like you, just wouldn't stop all the time until he got to about seventeen and eighteen and he went to

Memphis and he lives there still. I hope he's listening, yeah, and he actually when I made the film Deep Blues in one, you know, I went out filmed R. L. Burn Side and all Jessim a Hemphill and all these amazing players, um with Robert Palmer doing the narration, who wrote the book Deep Blues. And Ian was really helpful because most of these people obviously didn't have a telephone, well none of them out a telephone, and nobody had a particularly easy way to get to their place, which

was up a dirt track somewhere. And then it was like, yeah, when you can meet like the oil man, who was this other blues player at this post office at so and so, you know, it was like so complicated. Anyway, so Ian sent me and my brother a box from Memphis, and honestly, when it arrived, it was the first thing we really seen from America. It was just an American stamp, you know what about six stamps on it, and it

was so exotic. So we just looked at the box for about an hour and then we opened it and it was covered in um right very I can't even explain because when you're from Sunday and everything is so rough. So I had this kind of soft tissue paper. So we sort of we're touching that for a bit, and then we owned it and there was these Levi corduroy jeans in it, and who was like, oh my god, like, so I've got these jeans out. But then under that he had put Mississippi John Hurt, Robert Johnson King the

Delta Blues scene like these albums. So I put them on and when nobody was in, you know, my leg up and I was like it sounded like something from out of space, like, but I also sounded like my neighbor two doors down who was singing half in Japanese and half in English with his guitar to into a weird chord. So I started to sort of like play blue stuff in this called you know tune, and they really I mean our old burnside if he plays jumper on the line he's literally just playing e ju Jun

chunk junk junk Jun didn't play, you know. And and even the early blues you know, where they're just a one string pulled across and they hit it and barron

out and then they started using a slide. So I got a wine bottle or a beer bottle, and there was this guy called stuff and Grossman had a book about how to play the bottleneck guitar, which was in this music shop in Sunderlin, and you said, okay, you put your wine bottle under the tap, you pull a string around the neck like so it gets hot, and then put under the cool tap, hit it and it

fell off. You stick it on your finger. My share, I wish I brought my guitar and a slide with me actually, and you then can actually play this bluesy slide. So once I got that going on, I was that was it. It was the same obsession as soccer. I just wanted to learn every way of playing blues music. And then my brother brought the first Bob Dylan album and the second Bob Dylan album and then I was like reading the words of it. I was like fucking

he hang on a minute. And then I realized he was playing some kind of weird blues stuff, quasi blues, with like these amazing lyrics that were dealing with stuff, you know, in a different way, because a lot of blues music, as you know, was just trying to cope with the pain of being in the garden fields and slavery and and and then drinking sort of like neat alcohol and white lightning and all this kind of stuff.

So that got me really interested in songs. And I know it as a whole because I was delayed in being interested because I was in the soccer. I kind of got into the Beatles when they had already started to sort of listen to Bob Dylan themselves, and then the Beach Boys are listened to the Beatles and vice first. So and I was like suddenly in a an amazing library wealth of stuff. I could hardly take it all in, so I was trying to learn it all at once.

And that's why I became, I suppose, so eclectic in my musical taste, which I brought into your rhythmics, was you know, he suddenly electronic, it's R and B and then it's and Annie also who has trained to be a classical flute player and harpsichord at the Royal Academy Music. Hated it because it was so it was like going to school and competitive about you know, how ready is your neck from playing the violin, how much to practice all stuff. But she had really been obsessed with hearing

Tamla motown. When you're in Scotland or Sunderland, are saying on a Friday night, there might be one place all the girls put the handbags in the middle and dance around a bit like Northern soul knights, and they play Tamla motown music. So our sort of fusion of the different worlds that we've learned meant and it could suddenly play classical keyboard. Oh, she could sing like a sort of Tamla motown soul singer. But I also need then had to make that sound, you know. And so and

of course her stories not too dissimilar to mine. You know. In Aberdeen, you know, it was also very tough, hard working people who had had a lot taken away from them. So, okay, so do you graduate from school? Oh? No, I mean I ran away from school in this incredible mad thing happened. There was these guys called the furies from Ireland, a family of gypsies or of folks singing. And I started to go to folk clubs and I'd learned some Bob

Dylan songs and some blues songs. And I would stand there outside and ask if I could play in the girl nor Son you know, you kind of come in, you know, because I looked about twelve and I was about fifteen. And then one guy says, you can come in,

but you can only play two songs. That's understandable, right, okay, So I mean in English, and so I sang, um, it's all right, mom, why bleed or something my favorite and some blues song and with a bottle, which was people were like, I don't think they've seen it right, So it was that was kind of my trick to get in, and then I became regular at playing there.

Then I got to see these other people coming through and they were like amazing, Bert Yea and David John like all these John Fay like okay, the actual people. They were the actual people. And then because there was folk clubs in London and then he wanted to do a tour, you know, and so and so I just got completely bonkers about playing the guitar and getting better

at it. And so once I played at these folk clubs, um I started to understand like, Okay, there's the Kinks, and he's written a song Walter Loose Sunset, and there's this kind of writing in this kind of writing, and I just I just was so obsessed with learning everything that I would literally my fingers would be almost bleeding in the house. I used to put them in there vinegar at the end of the night to sort of get them tougher so that I could play all day.

My dad once took me to the doctor because he thought one side of my chest was getting sort of concave from pressing the guitar against her all the time, right, And I just wouldn't be seeing without a guitar around town. So I was getting a bit older, I'd run away

from dropped out of school. I would just go and hang out in the guys shop, the one boutique in Sunderland called West One, and they would let me sort of hide in the back or and I just played a guitar and now eventually hitch to London, and you know, it was the sort of gradual escape. Okay, then you

end up making a deal with Rocket Records. What happens between running away from home and ending up with Alton John's company, right, Well, because I'd start playing guitar and got the folk clubs, there was a sort of supply teacher, like a temporary teacher, had been to our school just before I left, and he played the guitar and so he started to show me some real folk like Pentangle and that kind of stuff um Fairport convention. So we

started playing together. Then we met two other kids from Sunderland and we started to play the four of us for acoustic guitars and was like Crosby Steels, Nation and young kind of thing. And we sent a tape to London and to Lionel Conway, who was stired from the other day he was he was running Ireland music for

Chris Blackwell and he thought was really interesting. And then he realized that one of the kids brothers played drums for Elton John, and he gave it to him and I don't think he could believe it was his really younger brother, right, So anyway, this is very funny. Him and Mickey grab him from coaches, came around our by

now we were in a squat in Sunderland. They came around to see if we really did could play, and so they brought with them from London this weed that was like really strong like and we'd all been able to buy like pound deals of Moroccan Harsh or something like spread amongst like twenty joints for fifty people, and they rolled them just straight like that and said, hey,

I try some of this. So we did, and all that happened was we tuned up for two hours in front of them, all right, that's all we could do. But they didn't seem the mind. They were just like smiling and listening and they must have went back and said they're good, but I think they don't remember anything about it. So we all went out of London and the next thing we knew we were signed by Chris

Blackwell Island Music. And then suddenly about honestly, about three weeks later, we were signed to Rocket Records and we were told we're going to get this what's called an advance, and we're going to go on to studio and make an album. And when we went into Rocket Records, it was like walking into a very expensive perfumer. You know, Elton had now been quite successful and everything was you know,

he was just giving everybody present. So the little kids working on receptions smelt fantastic and everybody had all the sofas were like luxurious velvet sofas, and we're from Sundland and went, fuck, you know, we've landed in like sort of like it's like Pinocchio in the Bad Boys Land, you know. So they gave us this money and of course we didn't understand anything. We've never had a manager.

We didn't understand anything at all. So I bought four acoustic guitars on Denmark Street in a day, and one thousand capsules of mescaline and I think half a pound in wake. This is of hash like what you would call hasher but yeah, like solid that's in a day, right. So we had this rented house in Tottenham and we invited our friends down from some of them like hey,

you know this is happening, you know. So they came down and everybody was like hallucinating, and I think I brought my girlfriend down, you know, she was only seventeen, was a nurse that had had been working at the same mental hospital that my mom was, and how we ended up getting married and eighteen who whoaa. And so when Rocket Records sent somebody around, I think it was Stuart Epps or Swepts. He used to call just knocking our daughter to see how we were doing with our

demos for the record. I think he reported back like that, you know, we better help do something because there was just people lying around or reading the carpet, you know, like everything was just nuts. And so they went, oh God, if we'd better put some order into this. So they got a guy called Ian Matthews for me and Matthew's

second comfort to go on the studio with us. But that day, for some reason, I decided and this is because honestly, well I'm talking about going really out there on hallucinogenics, not like today is awful mixed up terrible drugs that I would advise nobody to take. This was like pure you know, ousley lsd on blotting paper and

stuff like that. That. Um. I don't even know how we got to the studio, but I had somehow had an upside down paintbrush on and a kilt so it looked like a sporn, you know, that paintbrush, and and a tamas shanty like a hat, and a whole robe with like things and I couldn't play, you know, probably or anything. And there was the teacher who was a bit older than us. He was the only one that could drive and was saying I think he was pulling his hair out, and this guy Ian Matthews gave up

after a day. He's just gonna no chance, right. But eventually I think it took us about a year and we ended up with Dave Mattis from fair Pubvention drumming. In a few we managed to a record, which was a miracle, but it it It didn't really, I don't think we actually understood that we've made a record or anything. And then we went on tour with Dalton supporting him, you know, in huge places. Now we've only played in a folk club now. The band was called Long Dancer.

And the reason we were called Long Dancer was a mistake anyway, because Ian Hunter from What the Hoople, we were all sitting on the floor getting stoned in Ireland music because when you went to get your weekly wage from this lovely guy I want to say his name, had long blonde hair down to halfway down his before

his waist. He always would ask us to go in one by one and then he he would put the money there and then there was grass there and like Speeder coake there and something else, and like you would say, like, so what do you want, Like you want like a hundred pounds, so you want fifty pound and some of and I remember my and now then wife at the time was like, now don't get this, get the h Yeah. But anyway, so we would go in this little room

in Ireland music. Everybody went in there, Ian Hunter, everybody, you know, John Martin, click the money. Of course, We're going this little room and get completely stoned. And then we were trying to think of a band name and we were passing a joint around and there was Ian Hunter said that was a long dancer, meaning it made your lungs burn, and we all went, oh my god, that's such a great name. That's it, that's it, and

he just looked confused. And the next thing when we saw him, we had the album and he was falling around laughing because we go long dancing anyway. Yeah, okay, So you went on the road with yeah, and we ended up, you know, in in playing large places in England and then cycle stadium things in Italy. Now this was very overwhelming for us. I don't remember much about

it until mostly after the gigs. I remember we had to stay in our dress room for ages while the mob counted the money out with John John Reid before were lawd out. So it was like really annoying because like Nigel used to go mad because he was dripping in sweat and all this kind of stuff. Anyway, we're all on the bus with Elton, you see, it's just one bus, and then towards the end of the tour, it's a funny thing happened that Now I was in Elton's room and there was about thirty people in there,

all different kinds. Some people looked like there were ballet dancers, guys and different characters. It looked like it was like a sort of weird movie. And I was just reading American comics that Elton had got me because my grandmother used to sell them. And he's very sort of generous, so like, oh yeah, you let these things here you go, And I think it was his favorite thing to do, was like give gifts away. So I eventually the party, I don't know if it was a party of whatever.

It was the top of the Hilton Hotel in Rome, at the time, it looked like it was just sort of very strange. So I went in the bathroom when I came out with a kind of a towel on my head and a towel robe, and I did this kind of pirouetting kind of dance. And then I sat down again to reading my comics, and this guy said

to me, Hey, kids, come over here. And he had a very strong Italian accent, and he had two of the most beautiful girls sitting with him, and and he goes, hey, I'm making a movie and that thing you just did that it was really interesting. I was wondering if you want to be in it, And he told me the

name of the movie. And so I rang my then wife because about nineteen and she's had to answered the phone in the hallway of a house, you know, there's one phone, and I explained to her, look, I might have to stay on a bit longer to be in this movie. Called her, and she didn't say anything for a while, and then she just said get home anyway. Years later was my wife and Nuska i'm married to now.

When we were first going out, I took her to a meal in Hotel cost in Paris, right, But sitting there, this guy kept staring at us and and then he came over and he said, hey, hey, aren't you that kid that was in the room without this and that? And I was like, I didn't really remember much about it. And my wife when he went away, said, she went blind me. You know Roman Polanski, And it was Roman Polanski who was in the room at the time, But

I had no idea. So basically I'm describing a story of naivety and it's just like not knowing anything that was going to what are you star struck? I wasn't struck at all. I was just completely so you're fine, and this is Alton, you know, no big deal. I was just just I was completely unaware of what was going on. The only time I got a shot that's when we walked out on the stage at the Cycle Stadium. But for some reason, I've ould always been I don't know,

interested in what's going on. And there was a lot going on basically that was interesting. And also you know, it was like really stoned and like it was all it was all very exciting the time, you know, like in music, and but then after that obviously was like HiT's sort of harsh reality, completely broke. I didn't know how to get a job or do anything apart from

play the guitar. So this thing had started, and this guy up the road told me about it called Camden Lock Market, and so I don't know how I managed to do this, but I decided I would have sell records, vinyl records, because I knew about that. I can unlock market, but I didn't know how to get the records to sell. Then I met this other guy said well, somebody you'll give your records to sell, sailor return and I went down there and it was Trojan Records, right old amazing

reggae records. And so I had all these Trojan records and I had a market. Of course, my my stall bit came surrounded by huge clouds of smoke. In course, Rastafarian London kind of immigrants too. I made great friends with and that led me on another musical trail where this guy came to the store and he was in

a bank called Asabisa. And as I always had a little guitar behind my store, is that you said you should come around my apartment and I went there was all Africa and made amazing African food and they were playing these rhythms and I was trying to play, and then this guy showed me something, so I learned to play a little bit this criss cross rhythms on guitar, and I was just I was always on this sort

of musical exploration journey. And and I went from there two somehow getting asked if i'd meet this girl who had formed a sort of feminist um kind of political activist group, theater group, and wanted somebody to work on with music, And so I went there and I just went bang the day, walked in, fell in love with the lead girl called Judith Alderson, and just to start for a second part, did it in with lawn Dancer.

It's sort of imploded because one of the members, I think, had a bit of a nervous breakdown when we were in Germany and we were meant to launch the record and he was we although he's going to jump off the roof of the hotel, and it all became very traumatic and there was obviously we couldn't really carry on, and then we tried to do another album with it. A couple of other guys joined the band, but it

wasn't the same thing. We went all from Sunderer anymore, and it was nobody had any sort of heart in it, and it's sort of just fizzled out. Okay, Rocket Record said, fine, you're done, We're moving on. I don't remember even talking about Rocket Records. I just remember the band actually breaking up. Okay, So now you go to this theater group, you fall

in love with this woman. Yeah, And she was an extraordinary character and still is actually just still taught by her email and she had been through a lot of stuff, but basically, to cut a long story short, she had formed this theater group and she had a little girl as well, and I moved in with her and I had to tell my of course Sunderland, which didn't go down well. But I still taught to her as always

still friends. So um. Then we went to WOD and I realized this was just a very unusual outfit and what she was saying and what they were putting across the music was it was kind of pre punk, but it was kind of punky cabaret, weird theater. And but then we had a massive car crash. A friend of mine had brought over to help drive a car, and Judith, her name was and the little girl was Amy was in the seat behind. I was in the front. I drove all the way from the sort of docking I

think in Amsterdam or Rotterdam. We rented a car and then we drove all the way to a part of Germany. Then my friend took over from Sunderland. He'd never driven in Europe, and just pulled the wrong way somehow onto the order Barn at night. So those cars coming towards us about eighty and I just took a huge line of speed when we in the bathroom. So when we pulled out the wrong way, I think it was the only person for a split millisecond realized, yeah, we've turned

the wrong way, right. I think I said it out loud, But did you know something? Yeah, I is so full of amazing sort of connections to your brain and neurons or that if your I sees that something terrible is going to happen, like an accident, it's immediately shuts down loads of the part of the brain, so you don't remember it. That's why most people come out of a car accident and I don't remember what happened. I just

remember waking up in hospital. So I have a bit of that, but I do remember a few flashes of things. But um, yeah, it was a terrible accident. It was on the front page of the German newspaper, you know, and you uh, I mean, honestly, some of the things that sort of happened in your life that sort of come around again, like the one I said about Roman Polanski years later. Incredible because I didn't see the little

girl Amy for years. You know, she was only about three until I was going to the little opening of my friends, tiny little restaurant in Camden Town and this girl came up with some canopies and she said, oh, listen, you won't remember me, but I remember you. And I said, oh no, I don't remember by now. I was like very lovely nineteen year old girls twenty one or something. Said I'm Amy. Remember I went flying out the car

window in Germany. It's like fuck but m yeah, so so Jude and I. We sort of didn't break up. Was more was smashed up, you know, the car accident. Her leg was, her knee was broken, and like all these things happened, and I ended up in crouch End, and I used to live in crouch And before with my wife. But I've given now given that flat to my mother, and um. I was sort of sleeping on the floor of my mother's place, and I didn't realize

I had punctured my lung. I thought I had terrible sort of like something wrong when I breathed in, and so I was a bit messed up. I went to the hospital and they did that awful thing when you lung collapses, where you have to be awake while the doctor pokes a needle into your chest well, but stops before it puncts us the lung and then sucks the air at so your lung can reinflate. Not the nicest of feelings, but so that sort of temporarily fixed it.

And one day I was just walking up the road and crouching and the guy who used to be in the stall next to me at the mark Kid sort of knocked on the window of the inside of a shop and he was decorating it and he said, hey, hey, come in. So I went in. He said, nobody knows this, but I'm squatting in this shop and I've got the house upstairs, and he's calling the shop Spanish Moon after a little foot so and he said, hey, you know

let's celebrate or something. So we had a bottle of Jack Daniels and we had a little glass, and he was sitting in the shop window talking about everything that had happened to him and to me, and he said, you never guess what. I met this girl the other day and she is working in this sort of like health food restaurant, and but she plays this weird old harmonium and sings a kind of a bit like Joni Mitchell kind of songs. Do you want to meet it? I think you would get away with I said, yeah,

why not? So we drove up in his car, and at the time I think I had sort of like spiky turquoise hair and sort of you know, just look generally not right for the restaurant. So the manager wouldn't let us in. But so I kept sort of breathing on the window, and every time I saw the girl who I was right now, I love you backwards in the steam and all that stuff. And then the manager was going up to her obviously like like do you know these people? And so when she came out, it

was Annie. Of course, when she came back, said what the hell are you doing? And I'm nearly getting the sack here and Paul says, oh, no, you should meet my friend Davey plays music too and everything, and we started talking. We actually moved in together that day. That day that day, yeah, we sort of, well you moved into her apartment. This is about six o'clock and he and well, she had a tiny room slight of this really, with a harmonium in it, in a single bed, and

we moved in there. And then the next day we are she was she ors was a bit a little anxious, kind of panic attack, and I said, well, let's go and see my mom, right, So we went in a double decker bus to Crouch End and my mom was torn to her and she's feeling a bit better. And then my mom says, but actually I'm going somewhere else for a week where you can stay here. So we stayed there in my mom's flat, which is in Creach End, And then we realized Paul had got all the house

above the record store. So we went to see Paul and said he it's all right if we like live upstairs there. He says, well, I'm going to live upstairs there as well, but it's got three floors. So we did, and this became like a landmark in creat end. We just an odd place. It's full of musicians and artists, and it was journalists they you know, Julie Burchill and

all these people. All she would actually come in and sell all the records being given to review, and like it was just you know, Adamant was at art college up the road in Genesis pr Age and Chris and so the first track with Annie and I released was actually me and her and Chrissie Cozy Fanny t d from Robbing Gristle. So we became in world and all this I kind of art cred there and we were really happy because it was like but we didn't write any songs together or separately for the whole time we

lived there. We just were in another band with Pete Combs called the Tourists, and we played all his songs. Okay, Pete Tourists had a deal with Virgin Did they have that deal before you got in the beginning around? It wasn't with Virtune. Maybe it came out through that later

here or something, but Tourists, we haven't. We signed with a tiny label which was a folk label called Transatlantic, which was Fairport, conventional and then it was called Logo, changed its name and then they sold themselves to our Cia. So we ended up being you know, inherited twice and we had some kind of success, but it was really

not from what we wanted. We just lacking about in the studio and did a version of I Only Want to be with You only speeded up with like ricking back a twelve string and you know, the birds meats punk kind of thing, and that was a huge hit in Britain and Australia and some places. Did you make any money? Well, we sold a lot of albums and but you know that didn't mean to say you made any money. Still, I'm asking you what are you living on? We we well we lived together, which saved a lot

of money when we were on tour and everything. And you know we had a little wage through the management company who got the money and which is years later my dad, you see, who trained to be an accountant. They did the best advice ever when Annie and I got a contract as rhythmics, and he said that I've read the whole bloody thing. He said, it's all gibberish and I can't make head and the tail of any of it. Apart from I advise you one thing, like

they give you the money and then you pay the managers. Really, yeah, that's pretty smart. Yeah, and so we did. So we formed a company called d n A Limited David Annie, and the money went there and then we paid people from there. Okay, so you're on the road with tours, you go through multiple ownerships of the label, but you're not doing your original material. Now. We we weren't playing

me and Annie's songs. We were doing Peter songs. He was a great songwriter and we we felt actually that we couldn't even try to compete with His songwriting was very good. But Pete was you know, very addictive personality in every way, and it became worse and worse, you know, to heroin and he couldn't get hero and he had to drink a bottle of like jin sing whiskey or something. It was like really sad seeing it go down, but

we realized just couldn't carry on. We're in Australia. Pete had got lost and you know, you kind of went somewhere looking for heroin and oh deed and that to manager had to find him and and it was it

was just obvious that we couldn't carry on. So on the way back from Australia on a plane, Annie and I was sitting next to each other, and we've been through all of this stuff, and on the plane we said maybe we should sort of live separately, right, And we both just decided it and sort of went to sleep. And then when we got there, we think, well, to know how we do this because we haven't got any money.

The reason you want to live separately is, well, we've been like three or four years not only living together, but being going around and round in the van like it was just seven. We thought we'd caught court Nutcle had something called folly at which is like when two people are together all the time constantly. And when we went with the bandit se would just be us two was nobody else's company because we liked it. But you can become sort of a little bit sort of on

the outside of society or reality or whatever. You're in your own world, right, So we decided to live separately, but the romance was going to continue. Well, this is when it gets complicated because and he's separately but and he then just moved upstairs, right, so they and she was upstairs and then that didn't really work, so she said, moved to the end of the street. And then this went on throughout the eighties. I bought a house when we got some money. She bought a house in the

next street. Because we became rhythmics. See, so we would together, stuck together like glue. So even if we were separate, as you know, a couple, we were every day together, like working on our staff and touring. And how long

did it maintain a romance? Well, you know, like all of those complicated breaking up on and it just sort of it was like a sort of slow motion car crash, but at the same time, unlike a lot of people might have experienced, it was a fast motion rocket taking off because as we were slow motion car crash in the relationship, we were sort of becoming really successful in factually,

in fact because of a number of reasons. Some guy playing our imported record in Cleveland on the radio, playing Sweet Dreams, and because MTV had just started, and I'd always been obsessed with filming stuff, and we've made this very strange Sweet Dreams video that the record company couldn't understand, which i'd, like, you know, obviously took lots of influence from French French filmmakers and surrealism and stuff like that.

We had one up our sleeve, and then we had another one up our sleeve and another one up our sleeve. So when in the garden, which was an amazing experience with Connie Plank, you know, he taught me how to ignore everything about recording because I didn't like the sound of the other records. Because those days you weren't allowed to go to the mixing desk. It was the produce

of the engineer. You sit at the back and if you go near any of the knobs like no, no, don't touch that, you know, And Connie Plank taught me you are you can do whatever you want, like turn that up and make the whole base drum distorted, and see what that sounds like, put the microphone down this well, and all this kind of stuff. And so that would have led me to want to have to record ourselves. And when I just made your operation because my lung

kept collapsing. And he went to Scotland and while she was away, I bought first little drum machine, tiny little thing. You know, you couldn't actually doing much, You couldn't tell it to do certain things that would just if you press that button and that button it did that. And and a little synthesietic called the Wasp. It was plastic thing.

And I had a thing called the Porter Studio was like a cassette with four tracks, and I I started making these tracks that are some of them are half of the Sweet Dreams album that we just transferred to an eight track and I played some of them down the phone to Annie at her parents house and she was like, woh god, that's really interesting. And I was talking about like we'd make this like electronic music, but Annie sang soulfully on top of it as a juxtaposition.

So we started doing these experiments. But in the in the middle of Sweet Dreams, how Money would get so depressed or see we are a couple that had broken up, but like we're making this music, but what are we doing? Had nothing to do with any music that was going on.

We're all going to die kind of, you know. Unfortunately I've been there, yeah and so, and people would come and visit us, like I'd become really good friends with Claim Burke from Blondie and we were in a picture framing factor, which was the top of these stairs, but underneath that, we're making that noise like and claim we'd come and see us. So Frank confront from Blondie and

what are you guys doing. We're making a record on this like eight rap tape recorder and the eaves of the pit you had to bend down the whole time because it was just like the very eaves of it and an old building that had probably been there three hundred years or something. And tell me if I'm wandering into sunderland speak, you know, because I'm trying to keep a grip on it. But so we explained, you know,

this is the record. We're making a record, And and then when we delivered the record one, how did you get a deal? We were we were already signed, you see, because when the tourists broke up, we had been signed individually as well. But then it was like, but we're going to be a duo called Rhythmics, And they thought about it for ages and said, okay, well you can do an album this very low budget. So we went to Connie Plank in Germany and that wasn't very successful.

So at that point I think they're thinking about dropping us. But there was a lovely guy young junior an arsenal called Jack Stevens, and he would visit that sneath. That was amazing what we're doing. And of course, just before we get there, why was it the rhythmics, teld us the story rhythmics was because, um, the thing is how I explained it to the record company is quite funny. But basically we liked the word that EU are at

the beginning for Europe and rhythm. But there's another thing called rhythmic, created Emil Jack del Crows, which is about the study of rhythm and music and thought patterns to help. It's used often in schools at Rudolph Steiner schools and whatever. It just is a way of like understanding, um, your body and you know, and so well it's more than actually,

but we spent another three hours talking about it. But I had to go in and tell the record label we were going to be called rhythmics, which was a difficult tongue twister, and when you looked at it written down, it was like, yeah, So I always like to do, like, you know, if it's going to be something I'm going

to explain when I'm pitching a TV company whatever. It's always the element of surprise, right, So I remember just jumping from a standing position which I practiced onto a desk, right, so like just doing one jump and then I said Eurythmics, all the one go and it was complete silences. About three of the record label left and they said well, and one guy said, isn't that like something you have

to get treated for? And it was like nonspecific eurothritis or something and I was like now, and I explained, and then we don't know about this, but anyway, we got away with it. A Sweet Dreams album came out, and then yeah, Sweet Dreams, what's the development story there? Well, we were making an album that's quite quirky, using limited,

very limited equipment. Because I went to the bank manager who had been the bank all during the tourists and and he was really nervous about this, but I was convinced again with my surprise actions using my I ked and Haiku mixed together or whatever, that I would be able to get him to lend us some money to buy the exact amount of equipment that this guy we knew called Adam Williams has sort of written out and

we've got pictures cut out of catalogs. If we needed this desk, secondhand, this secondhand Clark Technique reverb, this bell noise reduction system, and this one really important thing a space echo. Right for the space echo, because we wanted to make like dub sounds and all that stuff. We had everything written out and the wires came when it came the fourth thousand and eight hunderd pounds or something,

and we could make a record on it. So we went there and he sat silent in the bank manager's office and I explained, and I put all the pictures out and I said, you're seen in the past. We've made an album and we had to pay all these people, and we couldn't recoup really because the studio was this and producing the engineer. But now I'm going to make the record. We have the equipment, and if the record only sells this amount, we can make another record on it.

And now it doesn't cost us anything. And he was listening the whole time and then he and he says, you know what, that's a very good idea, and he gave us five thousand pounds. The only problem was when we stepped outside the bank, this friend of mine who was called Ashley Cohen, who was a situationalist artist, and unfortunately his situations art at that moment was he had a mini full of cats and he would stop it

and hand people cats and then take polaroids. Right. He had another terrible one needs to do is to pick people up at a bus stop and say, oh, I'm going your way, and then so I'm just could have stopped at my friend's house and then he would take them in. Then he would sneak out and leave them there, and that was his art form. Well, there's a picture of the bank manager with like a cat on his head and me and Annie with cats, and I can see it about manager's face is like, what did I

do right? Right? But then afterwards we gave him all these gold albums and platinum albums and but yeah, so in the picture faming factory. But then we couldn't afford the rent anymore. So, um, the guy who owned it said you can't be here anymore. And we were sneakily borrowing his synthesizers sometimes because he would go up there to practice. So then I was, you know, we just

didn't know what to do. We were about halfway through making a record in inverted Commas, and I was walking up the street and crow chain and there was a huge church and this guy opened the door with gray hair and a weird beard. He looked like a wizard and he said he you like. He said, are you looking for somewhere? I was like yeah, I said, I'm looking for somewhere to make a record. He says, come in here, and he showed me this sort of room. There was the vestry of a church. He said, well,

what about this room? I said, well, yeah, that would be great. I said how much is it? Says no, no, no, you can have it. And I was like, this is So I went and told Danny and she was like, this sounds really weird. So we went there and the guy and his partner we're really sweet, but really odd couple. I think obviously a gay couple that they've had to hide, you know, for years. They were in by then sixties

or whatever. And in the end they helped Bill there's another studio for us upstairs when we got successful, you know, by night with their lights that they used to do their animated feature films. And then the end he said, look, we want to move now to Florida somewhere to retire.

Do you want to buy office, and in the end we bought that church and then had then I bought it off any later, and then I had it for years, and then I sold it to David Gray, and then when he was going to make it possibly flats the whole of cretch and was up in arms. But Paul Etwith came to the rescue and Paul up within great producer has it and been there a few games with Paul and it's still the church there where we made so much stuff. Okay, so Sweet Dreams, how do you

write it? This is like me being an interviewed is like one of them stories where the narrative gets so lost in so many different I'm totally a control of the narrative. Are good, okay, but I'm ultimately going here, Okay, do it? Yeah, I'm just don't know what. I don't know when Sweet Dreams is complete, because I know you've probably told the story of how you wrote or whatever. Do you know it's going to be a monster here now?

We have no idea. In fact, the record label in um London released I think two or three singles from the album before that because they had In fact, they said to me at one point, look because I had inkling. Annie and I were very excited when we first recorded it, and then we were you know, deflated when nobody seemed to have ary with us. But I had inkling it was something special. But I actually remember being told, look,

this song has no beginning, middle chorus and whatever. It's just and I was kind of thing yourself, well, that's kind of what's good, that's exactly. But but it was this guy in a radio station in Cleveland got an import. He kept playing that there was no action in the UK. No action in the UK. I love as the Stranger,

like barely graced the top seventy five or something. This guy kept ringing up our c in New York and saying, look, you've got this band called the earth Mix And every time I'm playing this song sweet Dreams on this important, it's just going bonkers. All the phones are ringing. And they kept saying that we don't have a band called the Earthquakes, so we don't know what you're talking about.

And eventually somebody realized he meant Rhythmics, which was signed in England, and they hurriedly got that out and sort of managed to service radio stations, and so it was a very quick rise from that guy playing it to sort of going. And at the same time, Sweet Dreams was on a video so you could actually deliver a video to MTV immediately. And we went to America to

play live. And by the time I saw you at the Palace all right, well, by the time we got from New York to l A, it was already gigantic. And then we were in a Japanese hotel room. It's like a Japanese hotel in San Francisco. I can't remember what it was cool anyway, um, I might have imagined it's a Japanese hotel. It had a Japanese restaurant in it. But somebody the two manager said Annie, you and Dave have got to go into one room because the Rector

label the phone you up. And we sat there and the phone rang, and somebody from the label said, I just want to let you know you're going to be number one right in a minute or something right, And we were like jumping around going away, and then we looked out the window and where were they were. Everything just looked exactly the same. God a great story, and we like, what do we do? We just weren't quite sure what to do, you know, because we talked about

a couple that it's not a couple. But now we've been through all this stuff and when number one in America, we just didn't understand what that meant. We didn't understand the normally the size of America. All we knew is when we got to the gig right then it had come out. There was lines around the block. Was the great San Francisco Famous ball Room whatever it's called the film more film or yeah, the film are East right now the East is in New York, the West. But

then it was closed and then it was winter something else. Yeah, winter Land was there. Now it's the film war again, and there's a great American music hall that's there. It was a film or and it was one of the unbelievable shows. And then we were invited to this club afterwards.

And it was one of those moments, the first time we realized that gay community or the LGBTQ community, or the alphabet community or whatever you want to call it now had embraced us massively, and that Annie was perceived as um as some kind of heroine or hero or heroine in this world, which we loved, you know, and you know, we started off making the first thing over recorded was with christ and Cozy Fanny two t from so we're quite aware of this world. A lot of

our friends were in this world. But we didn't realize that in America this has been building up through the radio, that the song had been adopted and interpreted in many ways. Anyway, we had amazing time at this club till god knows when six o'clock in the morning or something, and and that was the end of the tour. So it was like we ended on this completely massive high. And and so you know, I mean from then on it was literally six or I think seven or eight albums in

a row, all in eight years. As you've had the massive hit, to what degree do you feel the pressure? Internal pressure? How are you going to have a mass

if you had on the follow up? Well, what happened in England was when Sweet James was number one in America, it immediately went to number two in Britain because there was a record that was stuck at number one, and of course the record the least before the single before that was a Stranger, came back in the Child at number six, and and we had also had that thing of touring a lot in the tourists and in touring

the rhythmics, so we had a show. We weren't just like, oh, how we how are we going to do it, which happened to a lot of bands at a time, like heck at one hundred or all these bands came out and got to America and we're like, oh, there was no shot, there's no show, right, So when we played in England, of course it was like blimy, rhythmics are real sort of happening, and there was the Tube and all these different TV shows, and so we went in the studio. Well to put it, really, we never went

in a studio. We and it was usually my fault. I was like, well, now let's record in a hotel room. Now let's record in a sort of youth club in the outskirts of Paris, which we did. You know, it was always something different because I'm a great believe as a producer like Brian Bryan, you know in a way that like it's not just to do with like sitting there with the engineer in a gray room in a basement,

you know, it's to do with everything. You know. So the same as the thought process, you're writing, or well, it might be good to go on the rowing boat, or it might be good. You've got to allow the stuff in rather than just trying to chase it. So your best creative thoughts always happened when you're doing something else. Yes, classically, when you're in the shower, or it's the end of the night, you watch a little TV read all of

a sudden SUPs as fire. Yeah, I mean, you know, for me and Annie, we then had endless amounts of you know, unrequated love songs kind of because we lived together and now we were forced to get together. But we couldn't be together. I mean even the last songs we wrote together seventeen again, you know, it says who couldn't be together, but couldn't be a part? It's like, so that was easy. Um so then we came up with here Comes the Rain Again. To what degree did

you feel internal pressure? Did you feel when you went back to record again each time that you could make something that the audience in the business would accept? And I never personally thought like that because I've always been so stupidly positive and confident that things will work at so I personally didn't feel that pressure. I was more in it in my you know, okay, but then you know Tompenny wrote a whole song about it. You know, Uh, the record company doesn't hear a single, so would you

consciously think, you know, I have to create a single. Well, you know what happened was, um, I think the record. And it was so so shocked and amazing how big our record was around the world that they didn't really bother us. And because I consciously said, let's record in a youth club on the outskirts of Paris, we didn't really have many visitors. You know, it was in the Russian Quarter and so it wasn't like they were checking

honest to anything. And we would just say this is the single and this is the video that goes with it. And we made video albums ages before people made video albums. And they just thought we were this eccentric duo that they didn't know what was going to happen. But it's probably going to be all right. And I remember John Preston, who became head of the label one time, and he was chairman of the British phonographic industry. He came, you know, to meet us and he said, oh, I'm so excited

to work with you guys. So when are you going to do your next album? I said, well, we're going to deliver it on me the first and he said, oh great, Can I ask some demos? I said, don't make demos. I think we're only going in there in the studio on April the seventh, and he was like what. So we would actually write and record the whole record in three weeks from scratch. Um. I think it was because I enforced it, because I had in the back of my head like necessity as the mother of invention.

So I'd seen these other bands being mons and months in the studio and remixing and adding more things. And I limited it to an eight track when one track was used for what's called a SINC code. And so when I had seven tracks, and I was thinking that the early records that the Beatles did on Motown on four tracks and two tracks, and so you would make

bounces right there and then you couldn't go back. So and he would do some harmonies we have, you know, like four hands on deck or whatever, have them mixed, and okay, you move it there at this point and bound some all to this one track over here. Hey, we've got four more tracks now, and we just made our records like that. And then I would sit in the mixing room with the engineer who had been working with it, and and just get to the end of a mix that was it. Hooray. You know, we always

stopped at seven thirty and drank. We just never went past that start. Let's start about noon, okay. So when you were still through every album, we did that. Okay, April seven, you have any musical ideas before you show up. We had the untouched It was the only time we had a song. We started looking out of the Grammars the what are called the Mayfile Hotel overlooking Central Park. We sort of started a tiny tinkly bit of here

comes the rain again. Okay. And this works for you because of the pressure, because now you know, I gotta come up with it. It's got to be delivered. The internal pressure, well, I think. Okay. So that's a big question because it's a lot of things in life. When it can be in sport, it can be in music, and be anything. Is having a kind of confidence about what you're about to do now, in fighting or anything.

If you if you're slightly doubting it as you're going in you kind of going inside ways, you know what I mean? So h m, we both had a different kind of confidence, if you know what I mean. I don't think I never recorded nanny vocal ever where she ever sang one now attitude. And she never showed me a lyric that she was writing in her journal but or anything that was ever trite or you know, did she write those before the April sev to speak? You know?

What happened was what would happen was she would have bits of words in a journal and I would But how we liked to work, which she liked to sit behind while I was fiddling about making tracks, you know, playing something on the airplanes, and then you jump up and go, I want to play on that bit and play that bit, and then she said keep playing up bit over and over again. And she would get bits of the lines in her journal. And then sometimes you said, I don't know, I don't think this is any good?

What do you think? And then I would go, I peraeply moved that bit there, that line, and then that would fit over this bit here was like a jigsaw puddle. And but somehows she'd write like a whole load of words that just were like, for instance, sisters are doing it for themselves. We'd finished the record and Annie, what then, so I've written a poem like a you know, sort of a female empowerment home and it was sisters are

doing it for themselves and didn't change one word. And I was like, when we should do like an R and B so or in a tiny little room trying to not hear the music I was going on in the other room, and I just did a little loom do do do do do do do a little loom do do, And I said, I'll put this track down like an old record. Now. I was doing everything that.

I was picking up boxes and making jam jars with pencils and razor blades and shaking them like and at the time, I was working with Tom a lot, so I was friends with Ben Mont and Mike Campbell and I've got to play on it. I don't know where Annie went at this point, but we made because I remember we're doing an interview two years ago and she

didn't realized they were playing on it. But that's on a record just sounded like this monster track, right, And then it was like somebody said, I can't remember, and he said it, or somebody in about says, hey, why don't you do this as a duet were talking about sisters, and I was like, oh, who could that be with Tina Turner this one right one? And I think it was Clives might have said, hey, why don't you do with a wreath? And Nanny was like and so. But

we were excited about it. And Tom Petty's engineer, great guy, but like we flew with him with the tapes. But we got to Detroit and he left him on the plane, right, okay, then what so we're sitting waiting for a Wreatha who was late anyway, then he was I could see him looking all nervously about and he went flying back to the airport and a taxi because there were huge, heavy tapes or something come often said this must be something.

We got them back and nothing was said to a Wreatha because she arrived and I've made chicken for y'all, you know, but at the time an Krishna, so it was all like I was like sort of trying to sort of delay time while he arrived out with the tapes. But one of the most amazing experiences I had in a musical sort of emotional sense with somebody else. I had hundreds with Annie. But Aretha told me to come in this room and it was about the size of this which is a very tiny room by the way listeners.

And it was a piano, right, piano, and she was playing about on it, and I think she was trying to get to the point of asking me, what's this song really about, like, because she saw Annie with a cropped hair and the whole thing. She was wondering if she was singing a gay anther and but she started off just playing a piano and she started singing, and she sang the whole of the way we were really, you know, the gladdest night and I'm just so funny,

can't believe it, little boyfriend. Suddenly I'm leaning on the piano like, you know, as if normal, and her she started crying as she's singing and playing it, and I'm like, BLI me. I was just like stunned, you know. And she didn't say anything about it's just like wiped a tear away and she was like started chatting. And then I noticed she had lots of people with her in the other room, right. I think she might have been

singing it to them, and it was onto people. I was asking for something here and something there and like anyway, then she got round to say and so like this song, like she had the lyrics and she said, so, you know, ringing on their own bell. So I just what's the actually mean? They're like I was saying, no, no, I'm making you know, she's She's probably thinking she means like you know, and then yeah and uh and I'm completely convinced.

And then she was looking at Annie and she's probably thinking, I'm going to sing a duet with this skinny white girl from Scotland. Does she have any idea who? No idea who? She's just been said, Clive, this is going to be a good idea. And I've got this great bat film on VHS shot through the window of them. So they're around like Mike, facing each other like this, right and aretheis got like her sort of denim jacket with studs in it, and she out of a cigarette

and I didn't smoke or anything. It's like smoke going everywhere, and and the song starts, you know, and immediately Annie starts singing, searing the pull a jacket and put a cigarette.

She realized she gained sing right, and she's got raised loud voice and he as well, so so then it became almost like a dueling competition, right, And then as it went all the way through at the end you can hear it, you know, the badly blinds equal pay, that's what we say, and Annie's answering, and it was all just like done in a take like that, and no overdubs, nothing, no fixing. Wait, how many takes did you do? Mm hmm maybe two? Maybe he kept the first one and we did a wreath to say a

Wreatha said, oh, you got it enough. She was in such a good mood afterwards with all these thoughts, were laughing and playing it back, and I remember George Clinton coming down from somewhere into the room when the rumors filling up with people all listening to it, going fucking hell, this is like, you know, this is serious, like because any track you pushed up of their vocal was amazing. But then I push it up, what the hell's that sound?

And it's like a box full of like razor blades and pencils, and and then that goes with the waa over he had and all this stuff, and it didn't matter what you pushed up, which way you left the faders, it still sounded great. Did you ever have any interaction with a week after was successful? Yeah, well I didn't actually go to the video shoot, and it was shot in Detroit, you know, because the wreath it wasn't flying back and on. He flew there. But it's quite funny.

I watch it looks like they're not in the same place and that it was put in afterwards. But they were actually on the same stage. But like I don't know why they did it, like eight ft apart and so. But after a giant or had a few things like Clive Davis things, she was always very very nice to me.

And I think I think that actually funny enough got a wreathing into a different mode of earning because then she made her obum Freeway of Love and a pink Cadillac by the way, which goes sisters are doing a free day of Loving. It's almost the same backing track, you know. And I got into a a different mode for a wrethis, so I think she was happy about that. Okay,

so this is all happening. You make it money? Oh yeah, well, any and I made money from the Sweet Dreams album onwards, because he because of what my dad said, be we formed a company called in a limited and we've learned from all the tourists and all the stuff before how to have a limited company and how to be able to pay our tax taxes correctly. Would also be able to claim a lot of the things that we cost

us money, you know. And so we were now a legit, you know company, and we had a proper accountants in it and everything. And so the money would arrive in our Barclay's bank account at the time in the local crush, and the guy who lent us to five thousand was now seeing five hundred thousand the account and more and more and more and more. So um, and we weren't. Actually people are running around going crazy. So I remember when we had quite a lot of money, I rang

up my account. I said, you know, do you think I could like buy a car? And he said very typical English legal type of he said, Stewart, I think you have a reason for cautious celebration. I was, I hung up, and I was like trying to think how you celebrate cautious? So you were not proflab good with the money. You you were not blowing it now, but later on I did. I'm I'm the worst person in the world. I had buy a property when it's really high and sell it when the markets crashed. Every time.

I just just hopeless at keeping it. I'm quite good at making it. We can't. Okay, how does it end with the rhythmics? Well, I don't know. I mean, I've had dinner in the last two weeks about three times with any here, and we don't really talk much about you.

It makes I mean, we played in December at this rainforest fund with Springsteen and Sting and some other people, and we kind of went on stage and we kind of nailed it, you know, so we hadn't played for ages and we sort of and then we never talked about it afterwardside that we just but you know, I'm personally I love touring and playing live. And Annie always wasn't that keen on it, partly because the two hours of singing those kind of songs pitch perfect and actually

running around the stage and doing all that. And also she know, she's like I am, I'm sixty seven, so she's a bit older now. Doesn't really want to go flying around changing airports especially nowadays. Um but I actually, I mean, of course, everybody now just has a residency in Vegas and everybody comes to you nothing. You need to do that. But that's what we don't really want,

the residency in Vegas, don't really. We never made decisions about that way, like, well, that's where we'll make loads of money, because I think we both like things about life, you know, like how we want to live our life. And that's why I Alwa was so terribly when the markets crashed. I think, I think I'll live in France now, you know. But I'm never sort of really worried about, oh my god, how am I going to make some money? Because I would just easily adapt to not having as

much money. Okay, you're right, let's go back. How do you get involved with Tom Petty? Well? God, how did I get involved with Tom Pei? Oh? I remember, I

don't even know if this is how it started. Ah. I can't remember if I was involved with Bob Dylan before Tom Petty or I introduced Dylan to the idea of having the Heartbreakers as a band, because I think that I think I did a conversation with Diller once he was saying I never really had a band like the band since the band, but I said, there's only one.

I could think it would be the Heartbreakers, right. But yeah, Tom Well say, I'm almost having these crazy ideas about, um, it's a film or TV shows whatever, and I've invented this thing called Beyond the Groove for British television. Where the idea was I'd have all these artists on it, but they all had to be live or acting, you know, acting parts, right, and it had like a little narrative and it was really to show you know, Cadine Lange and Tom Pettey and and they're all in and it

was shown on Channel four. I think it was six one hour episodes or something. And I think that was might have been the first time I approached him, and maybe that was late and know when was don't come around? Oh I know why it was, Yeah, because Jimmy Ivan rang up while I was in the studio. I'd written a song all right, this all goes back to the

San Francisco and the number one hit like stuff. So in l A before that we'd played and Stevin Nicks asked me afterwards we sort of hanging around in the backstage area and said, hey, I'm having a party at my house. Would you like to come. I didn't actually notice Stevie Nicks, and I didn't know much about Fleetwood Matt because while they were sort of peeking, we were like it was like the Clash and the such bistols.

So I said, okay, why not? So she said, well, I've got a car right here, and in the car was her two backing singers. And I went off with her and we got to this house in and it must have been in Beverly Hills. Maybe I didn't know where I was. Now, back in that time, you got imagining, like no cell phones. I'd left my two itinery and dressing room. I just gone off with these people. We got to the house and go in. It's like this

massive sort of Gothic type mansion. And in my eyes anyway, and then I'm sitting down, it was like no party, not even any music on, and I can't find them, the three of them, And so they've gone in a bathroom cocaine. Well probably yeah, doing what I would call marching pad. So so I was really naked. You know, we'd flown from somewhere to l a play the show. I would like still in the clothes, like you know,

and I was like this huge place. I went along and I found a bedroom that was obviously nobody's, you know, it was like a spare room. I just thought, I've got a crash out. And in the morning at least I had memorized our manager in New York's number office, right and I could ring them and ask them where are the bands and like. And so I went and just crashed out and that. And then at about six or just as the light was coming up, I heard some noises and it was Stevie as if it was

like the middle of the day. So of opening these different cupboards and going and trying on all these different Victorian nightclothes or lacey kind of things, and I was like, okay, so anyway, I don't I don't want to go on too much about the rest, but basically we became friends. And then I'll cut to the next bit. I wrote this song in hotel room, and it was don't come

around here no more. The chorus, you know, saying don't come around here, and when I'm playing a coral sitar guitar, yeah, not the verses cora and I had played the whole back and chat and the sit our guitar and everything. And when I came back to l A had befriended Jimmy Ivan and he said, hey, you should live with me on the top of Mullholland so I did. And then I didn't realize that he was trying to produce a Stevie Nick's album. But I also didn't know that

they've been living together, but now they didn't. So this was just learning the sort of the complicated where but stuff that was going on. So anyway, I played it at Jimmy went, oh god, this is doing a smash for Stevie. Um come to the studio. So he gets Steve with the studio. She comes, you know, about four in the afternoon, and Jimmy goes, this is a smash DV. She said, well, she already knew that I had kind of written this song for her, but she wasn't saying anything.

And then we're around she started reciting sort of Shakespeare in the mic on the verses. You know, well, it might not have been Shakespeare, was Shakespearean language. Jamie keeps saying, Stephen, like, listen, it's just just right. You know. The chorus comes in and when she sang her voice on the chorus, it sounded killer. But the verses will are thou and THEE

and all this stuff. And so we got around a little piano and Jimmy started saying to Stevie, look, can you stop doing that in front of my friend David, you know, because it's embarrassing. You don't even know. She says, what the fun we slept together the other night. That's the only bit of that story. And Jimmy was like, what he's like looking at me because I hadn't said anything,

but I didn't know that they had been living. It was all just and then I was like, oh my god, this is terrible, and she went marching off to the bathroom him. And then Jimmy sort of calmed down and said, I know I'm gonna do. I'm gonna ring up Tom Petty. And so Tom Petty arrived at about an hour and he introduced me and I said, hey, how are you doing?

Really did he knew I was? He says in a book somewhere that he had said to Jimmy already I want to do something different, well about this guy, But I don't think you would have, you know, just such an obscure choice of person I would be with anyway. So he Jimmy plays the song to him and it's like always a confusing song for him and the harbor, as would Sita, but he had some Jack Daniels and I don't think what else we had, But anyway, we

got on like a house on fire. He said, oh, why don't you come back to my garage under the house, I've got a studio. So we go there and then Jimmy sees what's happening, so his tags along. He goes. We all go at the garage and we decided to play it with his band. But the band are looking a bit sort of annoyed because this is nothing like you know, the album, which is about Southern accidents and and I you know, I'm from the northeast of English.

What do I know? All I knew is that I love the song Refugee because it was the only song that's slightly fitted in the punk era where I'd come from in England. You know that he was the only band that could play at a festival with the clash on it, you know, so um he started to sort of you know, you know, calm the band down, like you know, and I said, listen, I've got an idea, like obviously I've made this on this little fourth track port to studio, I carried around with a drum machine

and a sit on. This doesn't sound anything like you guys, I can tell it, but why not at the end you come in right as the band, And then I said, I had a whole idea about, Hey, it could be like the Mad Hat's Tea Party and then you know the whole madness of end up being the video. Yeah,

it would end up being a video. And so the band came in and then Mike comes into this great wah wild guitar solo, and Tom got sort of it kind of broke a kind of spell because he had gotten really sort of down in the middle of this album and it was all getting it was taking a long time, and and this all of a sudden, it was just this is just not like anything on Earth, right, and to this that I'd still be weird, like there's this someone a Mad Hat's Tea Party video and drum

machine and it's the interesting thing was he was cold. Yeah, you know, we'd done the album with Jimmy and they did long after dark. This didn't sound like this and this is what reinvigorated his career. Yeah, but you know I understood for the Heartbreakers, they were like, what on earth is this alien from out of space? But then they started playing it live and it started to change the whole show. And then Tom started coming out with the top hat live and then it started to be

a different show. And then when they played the end bit, they extended it and it became this amazing solo with mine. Did you cut the final version his garage that day? Yeah? Okay, since you keep bringing them up, how did you be dealing?

I was in a studio right in Los Angeles and there was this Irish kid called Fergil Sharky from the Undertones, and the lady receptions at the studio rang through and said, Bob Dylan's on the line for Dave Stuart and I just went, oh, this is Fergil because we were we're always lacking about with each other, and I paid, I went yeah, and this voice started speaking and I was like, it's definitely not this is definitely Bob Jel and nobody can imitate that voice, you know, And he he said,

you know, I can't really do his Swiss good. I was just wondering, like you like movies and I was like yeah, she says, yeah, yeah, I like movies. Do you want to go get bite to eat? And I was like okay. I went to meet him and he said, you choose the place. So I was thinking, um, so I knew these Thai people who had a restaurant sunset called the Tali Side, and I said to them, look, you know, can you just get me a look like a tiny bit of it to the side, not in

the window or anything else. So they didn't built the whole hedge kind of and they kept bringing out all of the dishes instead of one, like you know, four different tom car guys and stuff. But he didn't anything about that. But we ordered some drinks and all that stuff. And then he said and that's was my girlfriend at the time. And after that he said, hey, do you want to come with me to During the meal, he

was asking what kind of movies I liked? And you know what, you know, what kind of music I listened to and all the stuff we've done. Let's go back a chapter. You're in Sunderland playing It's all Right by your folk guitar. Yeah, you're out to dinner with Bob Dylan, what's going through your mind? Well, I think it's a bit like the thing when you know, I was explaining your eyes realized you're gonna have a car crash, right, So I think at the time you don't panic, it's

just afterwards you go fucking what happened. In fact, you might find this funny, but there's a a TV series started in Britain and the first episode it's called um It's something. It's like something like about a rumor or something, but it's basically an actor playing Bob Dylan coming to visit me in England. And I won't tell you anymore. I'll send you the link. It's very it's hilariously funny

and brilliantly done, brilliantly acted. But basically, yeah, it's kind of odd because you know, he was very much It wasn't really an interrogation. It was more like almost like an interview. You wanted to know, like all this stuff.

But when I started talking about like, you know, blues players that I liked and this and that and ones that were quite obscure, and he was like, oh, they really sort of livened up and he was talking about all this stuff and and and then I talked about you know, French filmmakers and all sorts of different Italian filmmakers and and it's like, yeah, right, well you want to come to this place with me? And I said okay,

So I followed. It was like going miles easterly somewhere I don't know where I was, And we pulled up at the back of this sort of bumpy car park and there's a door and we get to the door and he does like knock on the door and I'm thinking, where are we and the door arms and this is God's own us truth. It's just so like a Bob Dylan's song. It's the door ups as as a very small person in a wedding dress, Mexican lady, and she

goes Bobby and I'm like okay. And as we were walking and he says, drink out of the bottle, so I said okay. So we're going there and we're drinking bottles of beer and then it's quite a beautiful other woman comes and sits next to us talking and he goes, how about we start shooting tomorrow? And I'm like it's like two in the morning. I'm like, you mean today? He goes, yeah, today this this girl's going to be in it, and I'm like, okay, so what's it about?

And then so we just well, like I was like scrambling the next morning and I found okay and shoot something in a church right on the corner of like Highland, right, and he said, oh yeah, I want to do this song called no it's not called tight Connection to My Heart, it's called when the Night Comes Falling from the sky, right. And then I want to do the snow one called Emotionally Yours all in the same day, and I'm like, the one's a ballad and ones like this, and so

I'm thinking he means a video. He keeps calling them phil for it because and then they only said I hate making videos. So on the one when the Night Comes Falling from the skies, literally me and him, and I got Clembert on drums and Fergel who was in the studio playing tambourine, and the girl who he said, we'll be in it like miming you know, when the Night comes falling, right, So and just filmed it like a performance, but we start off in a bus. I made it like how mad it was that nobody knows

what was happening. I had Steve from Talk and Heads, the percussion player, and we go on the bus and we go there in emotionally years. He says, now I want a girl to play Elizabeth Taylor in this one. This is like three in the afternoon, like ah okay.

So so then he said, yeah, I want to I want to have an argument with it in the song so you can see it online and it's like, so there's just a piano in the middle of the room like coming through the window and he sings, you know, emotionally ours and then it goes to a bridge section

and it's outside not far from the church. We walked across from around the corner and I just got the girls just swinging on a rope like Rember right, and he's just sitting at the tree like and they're sort of having an argument without speaking, and then she storms off down the street. This is all done in like like zero time to get ready for it. And so after that we became friends and he came to England

and he messed around in the church. We never Everybody kept saying you produced, some ve done and I said no, we never did anything apart from just jamming making up stuff and being sort of friends really, and then when he came to England another time, he said, hey, why don't we make another one their films like Tomorrow and okay, So I hired a top hat from the BBC. So when he came around at twelve o'clock, all I had was to eight million meter Sindy cameras and I saw

a pat so he put the top hat on. We went down Camden Lock Market because I knew the area and on a house boat and I just decided to film see what would happen if I had a long lens across the other side of the road and Dylan just walked around with the top hat on. And of course what happened was Peter looked like the scene it goes. It was like whoa, or they would start following and it became like the pie Piper. And then I lay on the ground and filmed them walking over me like

the pie Piper. And this we didn't even know we're going to do this till he pulled out a trap that it recorded. This is the weird thing he had forgotten that I got a studio putting his garage from up at on the top of you know where he lives on just past Blabu. I got a friend of mine and I got some equipment and just sort of put a studio there for him, which he never ever used it, but it was, you know, a multi track

track soundcraft studio. He could record there, and because he was saying he hated the recording process too, as well as making videos, and so then he said, ha, I used that studio, And I said, and he'd used just two tracks on it to record acoustic guitar and voice. And there was that whole album Blood in My Eyes, and we did that video to Blood in my Eyes, just shot on eight millie sydy camera. I had too, but like I was trying to get a shot to cut away and this my brother in law went past

for a second. I said, quick shoot with this camera out and he goes, why, I said, that's Bob done over there. He goes, fuck. He said, okay, so he should say, and I'm filming, and then he says, hey, I have to give you a camera back because I'm getting the tiles from my mom's kitchen. And I'm like, sucking, I know, but that's very sort of english. Singly, well, I have to go because I'm doing this. But I love that video. It turned out great. Um, but yeah,

do you maintain contact with him? Well, yeah, so sometimes my past messages back because you never know where he is. But jeff Rozen, you know, we passed messages back and forth fire jeff Rozen. Yeah, and he's always been great and like obviously the messages are the things that I passed to him. The fact he said, actually the funniest thing,

the fastest Bob has ever replied to anything. Well, when I asked him if you could make some wrought iron gates for my house in Jamaica, you know, just like it, just like yeah, like you could probably turn down, you know, would you like to accept the sortle Nobel prize but it'll make the gates? Well I engage. Yeah, okay, because I understand why you say, because like him, you know, you're doing a lot of metal work, and love's getting all broken up old stuff and turning them into things

and all that stuff. So I understand. But yeah, okay, why is it that you are become friendly with all these people? Why do you think that is? Um mm hmm, I don't know. I don't know. It's hard to answer that question. I mean, they could be varying things. One you could say someone so talented, they're tracking them down for the out. But even when you listen to you, you're a good time. Even when I met you, like a year ago, you're very friendly. You you you treat

everybody like an equal, etcetera. But you know, it's a little bit like the movie's like you talk about that you fit in anywhere. Do you think it's something about your personality or people respect your work or what do you think that? I think, probably now that I'm older, it's because I'm very enthusiastic about stuff and that's very infectious. So um, and that I don't particularly want anything from the person and love. Successful people are often approached because

somebody wants something, right, So I'm just really enthusiastic. And I suppose having worked with lots of different people and it being such a small industry, um, so well would get around, Oh this is this kind of personal This is an enthusiastic person. You might probably have a you know, good session or but I don't even do session. I say, I never approach anybody to try and write with anybody.

I've never said to my publisher, well, why aren't I writing a song with them, or I've never said a record company, hey, I want to produce this band, not one, So it's um that probably two people seems odd because I've never thought of anything as a career, like, oh, I'll be a record producer. Now what the record producers do? When you make records and then once they're write, you look for the next band you're going to make a

record with and you're being a producer. And I've never thought, oh, I'm just a songwriter, so right, I must find somebody that writes songs with or write songs. I just actually, I'm just doing whatever I want to do. Okay, let's switch to yours you deuced? Or we're one of the producers on the last Stevie Nicks record, which is on the one I produced, the one before and then the last one. Yeah, okay, but the last one with secret Love and all that other stuff, that's the best album

since the first one. Okay, especially that title track. I've listened to that dozens of times. It's not enough. How did you come to work with her again? All right? So what happened to us having you know, known Stevie jo in the eighties and then lost touch a bit and then sometime I can't remember. It might have been in the nineties. UM Jimmy said they're going to do an HBO. It might have been two thousands, even early

two thousand's. They want to do a TV show UM in partnership with HBO, and would I be the per us and that interviews various people for it. So HBO made UM a pilot. They want to make a pilot, and Jimmy said, oh, why don't we do the pilot with Stevie. I said, okay, she wants to do it, so then we spoke on the phone. Then we were laughing and talking on the phone, and she says, yeah, yeah,

this will be great. I love to do it. So we made that pilot with Stevie, which nobody's ever seen, and then we made a real one with you two with one oh and edge where actually, if you could see it uncut, it's funny because we get absolutely plastered because somebody had the bright idea of halfway through the interview with an audience in the break, they bring us

jokes of Margarita. This is like three or four in the afternoon, and of course after that the interview goes Haywire and lots of things that are probably off, you know, like we're cut out, We're really interesting that Bono and Edge were talking about. But I think that aired, and then I did a one with Ringo where he shows how he plays left handed and why you did that drum feel like this and all that stuff and and

so that's how connected. Okay, So what do you think about the music business in the Internet age, because certainly radically different from it was in the pre Internet era. Well, I think what's happened is the barbel is slid completely, almost vertically up and down. So the middle class of the music business, meaning all the bands that could get by by just telling you know a number of albums that allowed them to go and play live, I mean

that kind of disappeared. And all of the artists who became enormously successful very quickly, like you know, well quickly comparatively, but like the Taylor Swift State hearings and people are that are earning as much as the Beatles did in their whole career in a very short space of time because of all the ways in which they can perform now and all of the ways they can put stuffat and the brands and everything, so you know all of

the brand attachments and stuff. So then you've got the ones even below the middle class that slid down to the young starting out who are getting advised. Like I read something the other day, I think it was a CD baby put something saying, oh, if you're an independent artist wanting to release a single in here's a few

suggestions of what to do. And it was about nine pages long, and I was thinking, like, even for myself, who understands just about most things about you know, marketing, Internet, everything, I would just be bored after about the third line of it and just give up and say, you know them, I might as well go back and just start working

at the shipyards, you know. So um, I think it's an absolutely absolute nightmare crisis for artists that's been going on for quite a while in certain areas of the art form, you know, and not in music definitely, because we were the first to go cosse MP three's were so smaller download but generally UM writers and journalism and in many areas it's just become the barbell is right turned vertically instead of horizontally. And I think if I was a new artist then starting out now I'd be

so lost as to where to start. The noise that's been generated through all of the people you know, eating raw chili and getting millions of views on YouTube and like, you know, just all of the things that's happening that people. I suppose I would call it like the meat. When it changed to being me, we kind of like, hang on, I think I could do something and you know, go on YouTube and do a makeup tutorial or do this

or do that. Um, it's confused with the people who are actually I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, and there's some great people on their helping addiction and all sorts of stuff, but it's jumbled up with people who are trying to put out art or music and there's no sort of division. So if there was a division, they tried to make one, like you know, YouTube for

artists or Spotify for artists. But all of these things they don't realize is because look, when the mob was running things, to tell you the truth, it was a lot easier because like, at least they like music would come down the studio and give you drugs and money. But you know you don't get that from Google, right, the Google's like not going to pop in the studio, go hey, you'll do. And by the way, he's some coke.

It's like now, it's just like when your money is disappearing into you know, some vacuous space and then they give in their annual returns of billions and schoollions and the tax was all avoided by all these schemes through Ireland and or whatever. And I'm just looking at it all and you know, um from a perspective of like a nineteen year old kid or whatever who's written a great song and he lives in Nebraska, and and I'm thinking it must just look like sort of like insanity.

So I my suggestion to any of these kind of kids starting at is, look, I think the same thing might work is when I was a kid in the folk club. As you go and try and find somewhere to play, and you sing your songs to that small audience of ten, and then maybe he's twenty, and then maybe he's fifty. And forget about thinking that you've got like ninety six friends on Instagram or whatever. Just like go in your local town and then go to the

town next door and the town next door. Somehow, Now that I'm creating some things that I think might help because there's so many ridiculous problems to play. You know, you used to actually get even when I played in a folk club, they would give me fifty pence some free beer. Now they're so, yeah, you can play here. No, no, we don't pay you, you can just you're allowed to

play here. And so every we're all on the line. Musicians, young upcoming musicians and guys have been doing it for ages, but now they can't sell any records and the streaming is very low income. All of those people, all of the the ways in which they would make a living has been kind of stripped away now with the we're talking here while there's been the outbreak of coronavirus. So some people are going, well, we don't sell records, but we can play live now all the concerts are council. Now.

I was meant to be playing from today actually at the Grammy Museum, just to talk in a performance and like so I had my drama fly from Philadelphia, not from Cleveland. Surrey and Judith Hill who was going to we all rehearsed yesterday and there was guitar tics and roadies and you know the amount of people you have

to do something and then we're not doing it. Now put that on a scale times a million all around the world, whether you're a group in India or Thailand, or France or Italy or it's just that's been stripped away too, so nobody knows. When you know, the world's given the all clear, which I don't imagine a siren going off soon going everybody can come. So but I mean, you know this, the same problem has happened to car workers in the car industry or stuff all over the world.

I think the one thing that people as a misconception about artists is I'm talking about you know, musical artists, is that soon as they put a single out or an EP or a video, people think they're making an income.

Now they're not. It probably borrowed the money off their anti or their dad and they're probably isn't their dad's car and like to try and get to a gig, and if the dad has a car, I mean it's like it's it's just not easy and it's getting more and more tangled and complicating that it's just because all the corporations gobbled each other up. It started I'll tell you the beginning for me when I realized this is

the beginning at the end. And it was the middle of the eighties and the head of the record label changed and a guy came in from Hurts rent a car to run our c A Records, and my manager was Gary Kerr first, who managed to talking B fifty two. You know it was, yeah, it was like kind of semi gangster, but but it great taste in music, the B fifty twos, talking heads, the Rabones, rhythmics. And he just said, I just can't talk to him. You're just like freaking out there. Just can't talk to the guy

about music because he didn't understand and know anything. And I was going in to deliver an album called Be Yourself Tonight and he didn't want to go in there. Gary was like, I just give up, and so I said, I want to go and meet him and give the album. So he was a huge Colombian guy, and he and shook my hand nearly broke my fingers and he said Stewart loved the album, just like Ghostbusters, and I was like, like Ghostbusters, it's like what anyway? I thought, Okay, this

is just the weirdest thing. And then you know, the whole murder case where his son's murder him and his wife. And then I'll find out through various people who been involved in all of those stories, like, oh, yeah, that's why. Because Tom Petty was confused why we were selling massive amount of albums around the world and the medium amount in America, but selling out everywhere, cover of rollings to

everything you can imagined. And it was because he was printing them in Colombia and selling them through the Peacher's chain or something and putting it in the soft porn industry and laundering it through a talcompared to company and like, and I was kind of right when I walked in

and thought this is the beginning of the end. It was actually when he said he had an idea, and it was we were going to be the CD was going to be on the top of a giant sized drink from a Hamburger chain, like pressed into the top, and I was like, I'm not sure about that. Yeah, And so it's just went pretty much downhill from there.

When the Internet happened among these people that sort of early on kind of new things were coming, and I had friends who were like Internet sort of obsessed geeks in the the nineties, you know, and so when it was by the time it was two thousand and two thousand and one, and I could see what was going

to happen. I actually I organized a meeting. This is crazy, but I think a quote in my book by the chairman, know, the board of Deutsche Bank, a guy called Michael Philip, who said, you know, I organized a meeting, and at that meeting turned up was like, you know, lou Reid

Stevie Wonder, Dr Dre's guy. I can't remember anyway, you know, George Olivia Harrison, I can imagine all around one table and I did as this talk about the internet and how we have to sort of somehow take control over something. And he put a quote in my book he said, there's two talk for hours about the future of digital digitalization and the incident he says at a banker. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. He said.

Five years later we all found out. But it was like I could just see what was going to happen. And I had created this thing called fab you know, the first startist bank. Like this has to be some kind of bank vault, not literally for money for stuff, otherwise it's just going to be all over the place, right, and and you have no control over any taste. Right. So we make a video of sweet Dreams, and that's a video that was on the TV and you could see it, and we had control over the look and

feel of it. Now you can type sweet dreams in Google and there will be hundreds of videos come up, and it's be anything from the dance girls dancing in a Betha to it to all sorts of of unimaginable things, you know, and it's like you have to almost just go well, okay, Like but imagine if you're a painter and just allowed like a hundred people coming out. I think I'll change that paint over that and that should be dark brand, you know, not red. What the hell

are you doing? Like Picasso? You know? Okay, So today Spotify Top fifty is mostly hip hop. What's your view on hip hop? Uh? Well, funny enough, I love loads of I've always been very eclectic, so I love loads of hip hop music. I love lots of rap music, but obviously I'm drawn towards the ones that have kind of interesting lyrics to me, because I I do like loads of the beats that they create in hip hop

music and all the all the transitional beats. I mean, I always was crazy about reggae music from the beginning, and I love lots of different Afro rhythms and King Sunnia Day and so when hip hop started experimenting and now you know trip hop and you know, all the different kinds of beats, I like it, but I'm not too keen on. You know, the tracks that just keep repeating the same misogynistic stuff are more keen on. Um. You know when they're saying something you know and which

you know. There was some great n w A and when all that first came out, it was a very exciting moment in time, a bit like punk music coming out. Um. But again, what's happened is there's such an easy way to upload everything. So there's an avalanche of people making stuff in their bedroom on their laptop and then just putting it out everywhere YouTube, saying claud wherever you want, there's this stuff. So it's it's a labyrinth. You know.

I've got four kids, all mad about music. Three of them are musicians, and you know they they have been basically exposed to this since they were bought right, so they can like with through all sorts of stuff and eliminate all this stuff. And but they still are overwhelmed. They'll say they're overwhelmed by everything. They're overwhelmed by the news, by the amount of bombardment of things coming at them in music, and and they actually struggle, like now what

to do? They just want to do the real thing and be the real thing. Listen, as bad as it is for them, it's for the customer. You're completely overwhelmed, and uh, let's go. So in the time you have left here on the plane, what's the dream? Well, everything I'm doing really music is the intel inside of it. So I'm actually trying to create stuff with other people

that helps the balance of that. Barbella was talking about tips lightly that way again, Um, I don't want to give away too much of the stuff I'm doing, but like it's to do with them ideas that changed the way. Oh just get to be able to play live. That doesn't cost them so much to do it, but they can still travel around, although that just changed in the

last the last three days, you know. But it's usually to do with songs and what songs, the power of songs, what songs can do, how songs can help our music and help in various situations and things to do with um political social, political situations. But I only like to use things that I understand, which goes back to music

as the intel inside. So you know, Um, for instance, not long ago, there was a film called A Private War and about Marie Colvin and you know journalists in France, and and a friend of mine and Just Stones actually is portrayed in the film. He was the guy who was with her and worked with her and everything. And he wrote the words to a song called take Good Care and we recorded and we gave it to Amnesty. And then it's just doing stuff in music all the time.

Like I used to work with anit Erotic in trying to get Herman Wallace freed from the Angle of three in prison, which eventually he did get freed, but he'd already had cancer at that point. But you've been thirty years in solitary confinement. Um the stuff I did, you know, years ago, creating Nelson Mandela's four six four, and then he used music as the way to get it a bit of attention. But I like doing this stuff beforehand. That's preparing it so that it doesn't fizzle out like

a firework, you know. Um, And I just continue doing that stuff. I mean, I love writing songs, I must admit, and I actually have gone back to I didn't tell you one bit at the beginning. But like my dad's I give him a lot of credit from blowing my mind with music when I was about four or five, because he had a tiny little workshop and in it

he built these little wooden speakers. He got to speak assent from Germany, Grundy, he must have written away to them, and he built these lovely oak cabinets, and then he had made it himself, like all this record deck and put it inside this wooden thing. I didn't know what the hell it was. He just wouldn't let me in the workshow because the last time I was in there, I put the drill on the cat by the stake, and the cat was spinning around and round when he

came in but not knowing what I was doing. But about eight o'clock in the morning one morning, when I was about five, this whole little Coronation Street type house just exploded with music. Because my dad had bought every Rogers and Hammerstein album and then he just put it on, and I think it was the King and I or

something like that. And I'd never heard music loud and with such amazing quality, and so I had forgotten this for years, and then it I remembered why am I was singing like bits of flower drums, song and sounds specific and the King and I, And then I remember that's what it was. Every morning you would sing along with him and put them on. You know, we all that's our error. We all grew up with it. James Taylor has a new album. The last track is you

know Sorry with a fringe on top. It's like our roots. Meanwhile, this has been wonderful, Dave. You know you're loquacious and very insightful. We could talk forever, but we're gonna go back into the rain. Great to have you here, Thanks for doing it. I just stole the title. If you're right there, Back into the rain absolutely till next time. This is Bob left set