Nick Lowe | TapeOp

Not many in our field can make the claim of composing a bona fide alternative anthem with "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding," producing a handful of the century's most critically praised albums with Elvis Costello (My Aim Is True, This Year's Model, Armed Forces, Blood and Chocolate), extemporaneously forming a supergroup with Jim Keltner, John Hiatt, and Ry Cooder (Little Village), and writing songs covered by Johnny Cash. But Nick Lowe can make these assertions with style, humor and pride. In the '70s Lowe instigated pub rock with his band Brinsley Schwarz, and helped morph it into British punk and new wave with his solo records, his work with Dave Edmunds and Rockpile, and his raw, unfussy production efforts (as Stiff Records' house producer) with Costello, the Pretenders and The Damned, where he earned the nickname "Basher" for his quick, efficient studio sessions.

After the winning sparkle and high praise of his first two solo albums, Jesus Of Cool and Labour Of Lust (which contained the hit single "Cruel To Be Kind") ebbed, Lowe followed with a few good-but-not-great albums. Then in the early 1990s, he seemed to step back and undergo a reinvention of sorts. His songwriting began to embrace maturity, and his musical persona has taken on a more comfortable, adult spirit, though it has certainly not lost its edge. Songs like the quasi-lecherous "Born Fighter" and blackly humorous "Marie Provost" gave way to more contemplative pieces such as the clever, confessional "The Beast In Me" (later covered by Johnny Cash, Lowe's ex-father-in-law) and drolly self-pitying "Lately I've Let Things Slide."

There's a documentary film called Born Fighters that shows you and Dave Edmunds working on some Rockpile material at Eden Studios in the late '70s. There's a lot of drinking during the sessions, but the playing and synergy are fantastic. It got me wondering how your philosophy of studio work has changed over the years.

Well, quite a lot really. Back when the Born Fighters documentary was made, our philosophy was to get absolutely sloshed and go in and knock out a record! I used to record like that all the time, and some of the things we did were quite amazing, given the circumstances. But then I went through a period when it really just didn't work and I realized I had to rethink the whole thing. I suppose the main difference now is that I do much more pre-production than I used to do. I rehearse and rehearse the stuff I'm going to do — not to define a way of doing the song, but to know the song inside out. I work with very good musicians nowadays, and they know how I work. I find if I know the song really well, I can feel very free about changing it or trying different ways of doing it. And if the band doesn't know the song very well, you sometimes stand a chance of finding really fantastic little mistakes, because we record everything live, including the vocals. I mean, a mistake is a mistake. If something is bad then you do it again or you cut it out, edit it or do something like that. But the little flaws in the playing I think ought to be welcomed, and they can create a real atmosphere — it becomes more like a jazz recording. The trouble is that a lot of people don't like hearing that in records — it makes them really nervous. The general public has gotten used to hearing flawless recordings. You can make a perfect-sounding record in your bedroom, and unfortunately most people do. Even if it's a really dreary song, you can make it sound like it's all going on. If everyone's record is "good" it means that it all kind of sounds bad or bland. So if you hear a "bad" record, something that sounds really funky, it can sound like a work of art. Don't get me wrong, the new technology is great. It's not like I'm a Luddite — "Oh, we should all still be recording onto wax cylinders" — or something like that. I like the new technology, but I think one shouldn't be a slave to it. One should use it to make the music come alive as opposed to just making it sound perfect.

Neil Brockbank is a heck of an engineer. How did you meet him and when did you start working with him?

You're right, he is a heck of an engineer, because like all the greats he can combine a wealth of technical expertise with an acute musicality. He's a craftsman. Neil is a friend of Bobby Irwin, aka Robert Treherne, who has played drums with me off and on since the late '70s. In the mid '80s I was trying to find a new way of writing songs and recording. I don't know why it was such a problem, but back then I couldn't find any engineers who were able to help me with it. Some looked at me a bit pityingly when I said I wanted to make records live in the studio and that I wanted to do it so if felt good and soulful. I didn't want it to be just an experiment, whereby the mere fact that it was done live meant that everyone had to jump up and applaud and say, "How marvelously you rock." [laughter] Anyway, I just couldn't get anyone to help me with it, and now it seems just so simple. Bob said, "I know this guy who I think can help us with this." I met Neil and we talked about it and he got really excited about it. We sort of learned together how to bring this thing on.

How did you come upon the idea of recording this way in the first place?

For quite a few years I had been using a tape recorder to record my little demos just with guitar and voice. I could get a really great little demo just using a very cheap tape recorder, and it usually sounded really good. But it would be frustrating to take my new song to the studio, and as soon as I got there — where the song technically should sound much better — I began to lose control of it. The tempo would go first, and then the key would have to be changed because it didn't sound right — maybe it was too energetic, or whatever. Anyway, I'd start losing the original soul of the song. I got fed up with this and thought, "Well, this is stupid." I wanted to figure out a way where I could just use the studio like my desktop recorder and make a record that I was totally in control of and would actually have some rock and roll music on it. The first thing that goes is the roll nowadays, because people tend to play too loud and too hard. If you can get in the studio and play soft, but turn the mics up, then you can get the roll part to reconnect with the rock and it sounds much better! This was the thing we started to explore.

How did this affect your songwriting process?

Well, I hardly ever record demos anymore. If I get an idea for a song, I don't worry about forgetting it. I think, "If it's any good I'll remember it." I might forget it for a bit, but it will always come back and I'll just continually work on it when I'm driving in my car, shopping or walking down the street.

Your first album using this live-in-the-studio approach was The Impossible Bird?

Yeah, although I had tried it before. I did one last album with Elvis Costello & The Attractions called Blood and Chocolate, and I tried to get them to record that way. It sort of worked, but they played too loud, really. I had them not use headphones — probably a step too far. Now I think it's okay to wear cans in the studio. But they used stage monitors, which at one point we thought was quite a good idea. It gave another edge to the recording. We recorded that at Olympic Studios in London — a great, famous studio where some really great records have been made — now sadly closed down. I tried to do it as well on my record Pinker and Prouder Than Previous [1988] with mixed success.

Blood and Chocolate is one of my favorites of the Costello albums you produced. It has a really cool, sort of ambient sound — definitely unusual for 1986. Is that because of the monitors blasting into and leaking into the drum mics?

That might have had something to do with it, and also the fact that we mic'ed the whole room up. It was a great big room in Olympic. We didn't really know what we were doing, but there are some really good moments.

Do you have any plans to get back into producing other artists?

Well, I think I've sort of lost my chops, really. I gave up producing in the '80s when the role of a producer changed drastically. It was about then that the producers' and engineers' jobs started to merge. I had an interest in engineers, but I had no interest in learning how to be one myself. But if I found an engineer I liked to work with, I enjoyed pushing him to take risks and go a bit further, even if I didn't know what I was talking about. I picked up a few little tricks along the way by making noises and saying, "Make it sound like a car," or, "Can you make it sound like a...?" and I would describe what I was going for, and they'd try and cheer me up. It was the same way with producing bands. I liked the sort of management angle of it, where you could find where the power lay in the room. I've said this before, but the power might not be with the glamorous lead singer whose picture's on the cover of all the magazines. It might actually be the bass player who doesn't say anything. You'd make friends with the bass player, and through him you'd get the glamorous lead singer to do what you wanted him to do. Having said that, it wasn't so much what I wanted them to do — I wanted to encourage them to go as far as they could with their record. Then in the '80s, of course, all that changed when records started to rely heavily on computers. I know very well that many great records have been made like that, but I was just never interested in staring at a computer or listening to a bass drum for hours. I used to get very impatient with that. I just wanted to get a vibe down on tape. It's the most important thing, and I was never one to get the thing "perfect," for want of a better word. That was never very interesting to me, although I think along the way I did make some records that in a funny way, were — because I definitely couldn't have got them any better! [laughter]