The show of a lifetime comes to Songbirds
In Nick Lowe’s extraordinary five-decade music career, he’s recorded perfect pop songs such as “Cruel to Be Kind” and “So It Goes”, produced Elvis Costello’s first five albums and “New Rose” by the Damned (considered to be the first British punk single) and written oft-covered standards, such as “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” and “The Beast in Me”.
But in his seven decades on the planet, Lowe has never visited Chattanooga, which will be remedied this Saturday with a solo performance at Songbirds.
Lowe, however, does have links to Tennessee, both through musical affinities and relatives—having formerly been married to Carlene Carter, which made him a stepson of Johnny and June Carter Cash.
“I still have friends in Nashville, and I’ve always loved so much of the music that’s come out of Nashville,” said Lowe via phone, from his West London home. “I do feel when I go there, I don’t feel that much of a stranger.”
In recent years, Lowe has found another fruitful Tennessee connection, collaborating with the masked Nashville garage/surf-rock band Los Straitjackets, which shares the same label (Yep Roc) and manager as Lowe.
“When we first got together, we had to start somewhere,” said Lowe. “I sent them a list of songs I thought we could do, and they really learned the record.
“They did a pretty good job of it—they’re great musicians—but it didn’t take very long before I said to them, ‘This would be much better if we didn’t try to copy the record.’ As soon as we started doing that, that’s when it started to get good.”
“It started to feel more natural, not quite so stiff as if they were a backing band,” said Lowe. “I started writing songs with this project in mind, so that now, it sounds like an entity all on its own.”
Lowe has embraced such ways to expand his audience, and he supported Wilco on its fall 2011 tour.
“After I toured with Wilco, I found there are lots more younger people coming to see my shows, and I give them a lot of credit for that,” said Lowe. “It’s really, really great when [there’s a wide age group]; that’s when everyone starts to have fun.”
In the ’70s, Lowe developed his chops as a member of the pub-rock group Brinsley Schwarz and later formed the power-pop quartet Rockpile with Dave Edmunds; he was an in-house producer for the British indie label Stiff Records and was nicknamed “Basher” for his raw, urgent production style.
Lowe’s initial run of acclaimed solo albums, starting with 1978’s Jesus of Cool and 1979’s Labour of Lust, went from pop-rock gems to rockabilly stompers with lyrics that swerved from cheeky to heartfelt.
However, after his 1990 album Party of One, Lowe decided to “duck out of things for a while” and reassess his situation.
“I’d spent two or three years, not exactly licking my wounds, but I had to clean up my act,” said Lowe.
Lowe made a new record, The Impossible Bird, which in retrospect serves as a milestone, marking the beginning of the second stage of his career.
“I thought it was the best record I’d made for a while, but I couldn’t get anyone to take this record,” said Lowe. “And then I got some interest from this little label in Boston, Upstart Records. They put this record out, and it started getting a lot of interest from a younger generation.”
“All I needed was to go on tour and promote it, but I couldn’t. I was broke essentially,” said Lowe. “I’d made this record all on favors.”
In 1992, the film The Bodyguard, starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, came out, and its soundtrack album became the best-selling soundtrack album of all time.
On the soundtrack album was Curtis Stigers’ cover of “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding”, which generated close to one million dollars in royalties for Lowe.
“That really couldn’t have come at a better time for me,” he said. “Presto, I was able to pay off a whole lot of debts and pay all my musicians.
“I was able to tour America in a decent bus, stay at reasonable hotels and also make another record. And a few bits and pieces, couple of suits, took a couple of people out to dinner, and that was about it.
“But of course, it put me back in business again, and I fall to my knees and give thanks to Kevin Costner every day,” concluded Lowe, with a laugh.
Nowadays, Lowe describes himself foremost as a songwriter.
“It’s very nice work if you can get it, getting your songs covered,” he said. “I’m always keen, not only because it’s a source of revenue, but I’m always interested to hear how people do my songs.
“I’m always very excited when people will take one of my songs and really change it completely. When that happens, it cheers me up.”
Lowe compares his work to craftsmanship moreso than artistry.
“I am more of an old-fashioned Tin Pan Alley kind of guy,” said Lowe. “And that’s really out of style; in a way I feel like it’s a kind of craft.
“I sometimes feel like some of the songwriting I do is being like a thatcher—someone who knows how to fix a thatched roof, or a dry stone wall, a wall you see over here in the country made out of stones. You just place them very skillfully without any cement or anything to keep them up, but they’re very strong. It’s a craft which is sort of dying out.”
With vivid characters and situations in his songs, many fans have assumed that they are autobiographical.
“They get quite disappointed when I say, ‘No, no, no, I made it all up,’” said Lowe. “Most people think that all songwriters are writing absolutely about their own experiences, and in a way you are, because I know exactly, like everybody else does, what it feels like to have your heart broken or to feel betrayed or to feel misused, mistreated or to feel guilty.
“They’re autobiographical in that I’ll have the character behave in a way that I might have behaved, or have something happen in the song that’s happened to me. But it won’t be actually autobiographical. I choose entertainment over authenticity any day.”
Lowe also favors clarity over enigma.
“I always try make it pretty clear what I’m talking about,” he said. “I suppose that comes from my love of country music, where the lyric is always so clear and easy to read and with no fat on it. I think nowadays that writing is really mysterious. I used to think it was a process of writing, but I think it’s a process of listening.”
Lowe describes his “listening” method of creation as being in apartment with thin walls, overhearing a radio in the next room.
“One day, they program a new tune on this station, and suddenly you hear this tune coming through the wall, and you say, ‘Whoa, what the hell’s that?’ and by the time you’ve taken notice of it, it’s finished, it’s gone,” he explained. “Occasionally it’ll come on again on the radio station, and the next time you’re ready for it. You’ve got a wine glass you can hold up to the wall, so you can hear it. And it’s because you want to sing this song.
“So each time it comes on the radio in the flat next door, you learn a little bit more of it. It’s almost like they’ve been written before. I don’t mean just ripping stuff off. It’s complete; it feels like it all stands up, and it all makes sense.”
His best work has always grown from time for contemplation, Lowe added. It’s a luxury he hasn’t always been able to afford—but given the gift of time, he has made magic. One song that took over ten years for Lowe to write was “The Beast in Me” for Johnny Cash, which appeared on his 1994 album American Recordings.
“I played to him before it was finished really. It was an extremely embarrassing occasion,” said Lowe. “He told me, ‘It’s good, you’ve got something going here, but it’s just not right yet.’
“Every time I’d see him, he’d always ask me how’s ‘The Beast in Me’, and I’d mentally get it out of the box and have a look at it again. It had a really good first verse, but I never really got any further than that, until the last time I saw him play in London at the Albert Hall, and he asked me about it that night.”
Lowe went home and finished the song that very night.
“And it all joined up, it all sounded like it had been written at the same time, and it was sort of amazing, really.”
One might wonder why it has taken so long for Nick Lowe to play Chattanooga. At 70, his music might not have the more brash style of the “Basher”, but he’s a deliberate writer of timeless songs with a rich, velvety voice that has never sounded better—and some things are worth the wait.