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That’s ‘Strange Combination’ by T-Bone Burnett. That’s a … he’s a man whose gates are just walking cubisms and whose conversation slips from mutilation to art school with symbolic ease – he’s also related to me, he’s my brother, those two remember that, who toured with me earlier, earlier in the century, twice last year in fact, in America and again in England, so some English people will have seen him and er through the discotheques of Switzerland and some other European countries.
Are you going to continue working with him?
Er, yes, in two shapes or forms. There’s a shadowy duo who are putting out a record in, I think at the end of June, or maybe earlier that that, called the Coward Brothers, a song called ‘The People’s Limousine’ which is either the next Imp release or The Men They Couldn’t Hang’s ‘Ironmasters’ is the next Imp release, it’s just a question of erm whether we can afford enough plastic for both records, er, and then there is some vague possibility of recording the next album in Paraguay with him at the end of the year – or no with a Parakeet, sorry it’s just a (laughs).
Are you a great Sam Cooke fan Mr. Costello?
Yeah, yeah I am. Again I had another of these wonderful things where people slip tapes into your hands in dark alleys and say listen to this and sometimes though there are people crooning, y’know, saying things like, I’m sorry I would have made this demo better but I couldn’t afford a microphone – which has always confused me because how did they get the words on the tape …. y’know. Sometimes I get really good songs and sometimes, as I said before, I get, y’know, tapes that people have made up because they think you’re going to be interested in them, which is a really nice thought y’know. Somebody maybe reads somewhere you have an interest in a certain artist and they have a record you may not have heard, and it’s really generous, and this is such a record this is the sugar free Sam Cooke and a song called ‘Lost and Looking’.
The Pogues and ‘Muirshin Durkin’ and before that it was Sam Cooke and ‘Lost And Looking’. How do you find time to listen to music when you’re working all of the time?
I don’t very much actually no. Like I say, I get given tapes a lot when I’m touring and since I haven’t been touring I seem to have found enough to occupy my time with working on one thing or another that I’m involved usually with that y’know. I mean that’s, that Pogues track was the B-side of ‘Brown Eyes’ which I produced earlier in the year, that was actually produced by Phil Chevron, so there’s a kind of Imp connection there as well – getting it in everywhere! And, y’know, I really don’t have that much time. I try to listen, I don’t even have time to listen to all the records that come out on Demon, y’know, which is the label I’m associated with. I don’t really have any dealing with, y’know, the decisions there but I get all these records mount up in my office and I rarely get time to play through all of them, y’know, just the one, I try, I sort of sit down and listen .. and tapes, I do listen to tapes that are sent to me, I don’t just throw them away or anything so between that there isn’t a lot of time for listening to records that you actually like yourself. A question of getting up in the morning and sticking on a tape or a record while you’re actually doing all the other things that you just do at the start of the day.
What were the Pogues like, or what are the Pogues like to work with?
They’re really good, a lot of this, I think one of the things, one of the traps of a group with a lively, with lively personalities such as they have in the group is that you tend to get a reputation for being outrageous or drunken, y’know. I mean, certainly there’s a few of them definitely like a drink, y’now, but it’s not the only string to their bow by any means and I wouldn’t be working with them if, y’know …I can go and get drunk with anybody if that’s what I want to do. I wouldn’t be working with them unless I thought they could, they would make really good records, the songs are really good and I think anybody that’s got a copy of the ‘Brown Eyes’ record and has read the lyric, it’s a really incredible lyric, er, and sometimes people just overlook that, they only see the thing that immediately strikes the eye – which is this kind of lively thing. The minute people hear an accordion and a kind of 2:4 beat like that they start jumping around and doing some sort of hybrid Highland Fling, they imagine it’s what they’re supposed to do to that kind of music and really, of course that’s part of it, the excitement and everything that they generate, but there is a sort of heart to it, y’know, and really good songs inside those, inside – on their first record as well and certainly the record that we’re working on at the moment. I never like to talk too much about what’s contained on that record but I can assure their listeners and their fans that it’s, they have songs that are tough to the core. There’s a toughness that you don’t, when you don’t have to try and nearly everybody that, er, that we’ve played today has got that quality, no matter how quiet the music is, Sam Cooke’s got it, y’know, Aaron Neville’s got it – they don’t have to try and it’s tough to the core and that’s what’s important, y’know, and we have at least one song, er, that we’re working on at, in current, next few weeks and hoping to finish the record in the next few weeks, the second album, which makes ‘Brown Eyes’, which is a very tough song, sound like ‘How Much Is That Doggy In The Window’ by comparison, y’know. So they’ve got some very strong songs that are, I hope that people actually listen to them and still enjoy their kind of wilder side of it – don’t get. I’m not saying we’re going to make a serious record, it’s got the humour and the, everything that’s good, y’know. You just go to one of their gigs and you see what’s good about them.
What are you like to work with?
Horrible, I’m an absolute tartar. No, I …..
Are you very strict?
Well, I just, I don’t erm. The job is there to be done, er, it’s all very well having a party in the studio, but, er, if the next day you get up and the record sounds horrendous, then there’s no point in doing it.
I would imagine that you don’t suffer fools gladly.
Well, I don’t work with any so that’s, y’know, either in my own records or in the things that I do. I don’t produce many records and er, y’know, I wouldn’t work on other people’s records unless I have some degree of respect for them. You don’t have to think they’re the be all and end all to work with people but you’ve obviously got to have something, some sort of empathy, y’know.
Ray Charles, brilliant.
Yeah, well this comes off a record, which is a, was a very influential record I think on a lot of people. I think it’s from “The Modern Sounds Of Country Music” which was a kind of bold step when Ray Charles recorded it, probably nearly twenty five years ago now, or twenty years ago certainly, er, because, y’know, coming from R & B he suddenly did all these country songs or country based songs. This is called ‘It Makes No Difference Now’.
Wonderful stuff. That’s Ray Charles and ‘It Makes No Difference Now’. Before we get on to Agnes Bernelle, erm, do you have any plans to act again, after your Scully appearance?
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