PITTSBURGH — Among the more unlikely pairings to emerge in the last decade is the meeting of a British power-pop icon with a masked American surf-rock band.
Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets, who play the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival on Friday, first met when the British rocker — renowned for his work, going back to 1970 in Brinsley Schwarz, Rockpile and as a solo artist/producer — was producing for The Mavericks in the mid-'90s and they went to see the Nashville instrumental quartet.
In 2012, they crossed paths again, at the concerts celebrating the 15th anniversary of their shared label, Yep Roc. Then, in late 2014, Lowe recruited Los Straitjackets for a tour supporting his holiday album, "Quality Street: A Seasonal Selection for All the Family."
As he explained in a phone interview from London, it progressed from there to Lowe, now 73, writing songs for the project, starting in 2018 with an EP of his first non-holiday music in seven years and continuing with two more EPs that capture the retro-cool of this quartet plus one.
Lowe, who made his first solo venture in 1978 with "Jesus of Cool" and enjoyed his biggest chart success with the 1979 power-pop hit "Cruel to be Kind," had a stellar career behind the soundboard, beginning in the late '70s. Along with producing the very first British punk single, The Damned's "New Rose," he helmed the first six Elvis Costello albums and records by Graham Parker, Johnny Cash, The Pretenders and John Hiatt, among others.
Q. How did the one gig with Los Straitjackets escalate into this ongoing project?
A. A couple of years after the Yep Roc thing, I had recorded a Christmas record and it had done rather well, especially in the United States. Unfortunately, two of my main collaborators, and best friends, actually, who worked with me on all my records, Bob Irwin and Neil Brockbank, they died one after the other. And it rather took the wind out of my sails, you know, so I didn't really feel like going out to promote this record, but the great thing about a Christmas record is when the next year comes around, it's another opportunity to put it on people's plates.
And so, it was suggested to me after a decent period of time that I might like to consider doing a few Christmas shows and get Los Straitjackets to back me up. So, we got together in Minneapolis, where we were playing the first show, a few days early and we knocked this thing into shape, but it became apparent very quickly that, bless their hearts, they tried to sort of copy the records, and most of my records have keyboards on them and the Straitjackets, of course, don't have keyboards. So, they tried to sort of copy the parts and sometimes it was pretty cool, but it sounded a little stiff, so it took no time before I said, "Look fellas, just throw that rule out of the car window and just play the song as if you were going to do a instrumental cover of it and I'll just sing on top." When that happened, it started to get in gear.
After about three or four years of doing this Christmas show, we had had enough of doing that and we thought that was going to be it, but we started to get offers to do shows out-of-season and that's when it really started to get good, when I started writing songs for the act. Whenever I do these tours with them, it doesn't feel at all that they're backing me up. It really just feels like it's an actual entity that exists purely in its own space, and I kind of joined their group, more than them backing me up.
Q. What kind of adjustments did you make in your writing to accommodate the project?
A. Well, not many, really, because since I started doing solo acoustic shows, encouraged by Elvis Costello in the late '80s/early '90s, my writing style changed quite considerably because I realized that if you were standing on stage with an acoustic guitar, the song has got to really stand up. You can't hide behind some little thing you put on the track in the studio, some little gimmicky noise or something, so the whole thing stands or falls on that. The song has got to be super solid and work perfectly well with just an acoustic guitar, and if you have songs like that, really, they'll take any kind of mistreatment. You can do them any way you like and it's completely foolproof. And I've got quite a lot of songs like that, so really it wasn't a problem.
Q. Do you feel like they take you back to an earlier time in your life, an earlier sound?
A. Not really, because we're very well suited. They're kind of like me: They're kind of ancient and kind of modern. There's something very up-to-date about them and yet their influences, I suppose, they're rock 'n' roll guys, like I am. Also, they're great musicians, but they're also funny. They take what they do very seriously, but they don't take themselves seriously, which is very common amongst people who like to play rock 'n' roll music, I've found. I don't think it's just a retro thing, but we certainly all like old-fashioned styles of playing music.
I'm really fascinated by the arc of your career because you started in the pub-rock scene, playing a variety of music, and then you ended up producing the first punk rock single out of England. Could you take me back to that time and tell me what you thought of this new sound coming with these bands like The Damned, The Clash and the Pistols? A lot of the older guys probably rejected it.
It was something that I'd sort of felt was coming for quite a while. In Britain, at any rate, it was very closely aligned to the feeling of the pub-rock music even though pub rock was much more conventional. Bands were trying to play like American bar bands, really, a great mixture of their own compositions and well-judged covers. That was a sort of a new thing at the time, where it hadn't been around since the '50s or '60s. But there was a feeling that it was sort of outside the mainstream and you could tell that it was going to go somewhere a bit further and it was an American invention, really. It came from New York. The look was like Richard Hell and Television — a British mod kind of look from the '60s, but it was much more arty-farty, the New York thing. The Brit thing was much more gritty and down to earth. That was the difference between the two, but it started in New York, and I did not really think much of the music, you know, 'cause I was too old by then. I'd been a mod myself and I loved R&B and Country & Western, all that sort of stuff. But, what I did like was the kind of attitude. That absolutely was right up my street. That's what I loved about The Damned. They were fantastic, but, to me, they were like a garage-rock band, like Iggy and the Stooges or something, and I loved that sort of music. The classic punk rock, you know, a thousand miles an hour, that very kind of white beat, that never really rang my bell. That's why I was more attracted to working with Elvis and the Attractions, for instance, because they had that attitude but they wanted to do something that, to me, was more subversive. It was more approachable and stood the chance of reaching a wider audience in order to affect a change — affect a change which I thought would be for the better. It's funny how nowadays when I listen to a lot of the music that I thought needed kicking out, and replacing, I think it's really pretty good now. [laughs] It's funny how your opinions change.
Q. Are you talking about classic British progressive rock and stuff like that?
A. Yeah, that sort of stuff. I never used to like Queen, for instance, but now when they come on, I think, "Oooh, man. This is pretty good."
I guess something like The Damned may have reminded you of the early Who or something like that.
Yeah, they did, and they weren't that much younger than me, but it was four or five very telling years. I think I was about 25 and they were in their late teens, maybe 20 the oldest, but it seemed like a massive gulf, you know, and they used to call me "Granddad" and "Uncle" — "A'aight, Uncle!" in this rather insolent kind of way. But, it was great. I loved doing that stuff with them. They were fantastic and whenever I hear those records come on, especially "New Rose," I can't believe it, really, that it sounds so good, still, and hasn't sort of dated. It still sounds really tough and fantastic.
Q. How did the Elvis connection come about? What made him want to work with you, and vice versa?
A. Well, he was a big fan of Brinsley Schwarz, and he used to come and see us play all the time, especially in Liverpool. There he'd be, always on his own, you know, and we really noticed him. One night we were playing at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, you know, where the Beatles started out, and we were having a drink in the pub across the road, which was called The Grapes. That's where all the bands who played the Cavern used to drink. It was quite a historic pub. Of course, they've knocked it down. That was a very clever idea. Anyway, we were having a drink in The Grapes and he walks in and we said to each other, "Look, there's that guy." And I said, "Well, I think it's about time I bought him a drink." So, I walked up to the bar and said hello to him and bought him a drink, although when he tells the story, he says he bought me a drink. I don't know. What the heck? Who cares? But anyway, that's how I met him and that would have been about 1972 or 1973, and then I lost touch with him, really, but he came to London and formed a pub group himself and they weren't great, you know. It must be said, they weren't great. But he was clearly the most eye-catching member of the group and then the next time I saw him, it was when Stiff Records had just started, and on the day they released Stiff's first record, which happened to be "So it Goes," a song of mine, I met him on the platform of Royal Oak, the nearest tube station to where Stiff Records' offices were, and he'd just been to Stiff to buy a copy of "So It Goes" and I said, "Well, how you gettin' on?" And he said, "Not very well, because I keep on thinking that it would be much better, rather than sending tapes of my demos to the record companies, I should just turn up with my guitar and just pull my guitar out and start singing these songs to a record executive." And he said, "But every time I do, they seem to really get nervous about it, you know, and they don't really like it and try to get rid of me as soon as they can." And if you've ever had Elvis play one of his songs to you in the room, it's like he's performing at Carnegie Hall, there's nothing sort of intimate about it. He gives his all, and it is quite nerve-wracking, so I did sympathize with some of these nameless record executives that he did this to.
Q. Makes me think of Springsteen doing this to John Hammond at Columbia.
A. Yes, I'm sure it was like that, especially John Hammond. [laughs] So, when I got up to Stiff, he had actually taken a tape in and left it with them, and they were listening to it, and Jake Riviera, who was managing me and sort of started Stiff was very keen on it. He said, "This guy is a great writer. We ought to sign him as a writer." But, then, as he listened to it a bit more, he said, "Actually, you know, I think he's really got something, this guy. We should just sign him up." And one thing led to another, and I found myself producing him because I was deemed to be the house producer at Stiff. So, I got the job to do his first things.
And amazing they were. "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" is definitely one of the best songs to come out of that era. What inspired you to write that, and did you feel like "Oh, this is a keeper. This is going to last 40 years."
I get asked about this song quite a lot, and I always cite it as being the first original idea I had. Up till that point, I'd been trying to learn how to write songs by just really rewriting my heroes' catalog, changing a bit here and there. It was very easy to recognize where I got the songs from, and there's no shame in that, you gotta start somewhere. But I remember very clearly writing this song. We used to share a house, Brinsley Schwarz, and I was sitting in my room one morning and I got the idea for it. Initially, it was kind of a joke, actually, because, in my mind, it was a hippie guy singing this song as sort of a complaint about the fact that the hippie dream was dying. As they say, the '60s sort of drifted over into the '70s somewhat, and the hippie dream by this time had burst. People who had been on board with it were suddenly like, "Wait a minute. This isn't going to get us anywhere." So, they were going back to how things had been, and here's this hippie guy saying, "Well, you might have decided that it's all nonsense, this hippie thing, but when it comes down to it, you know, what's so funny about, peace, love and understanding?" You can't deny it. And as I went on with this song, I thought, "There's a kernel of something a little more profound in this and I don't know what it is," but I remember thinking, "You have a really good idea here, don't f--- it up." And this was an extraordinarily mature thought for me to have, at the time, because I was a complete idiot. I recognized that I had my first original idea, so I kept the verses sort of beige and let the chorus and the title sort of do the work, and people liked it quite a lot. We made a pretty good record of it and when we broke up, like all bands, the catalog just goes into the dustbin of history, but, hello, what happened to that guy with the glasses who used to come and see us at the Cavern? When I was doing his "This Year's Model" album, he said to me, "I want to cover '(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?'" At that time, I don't think he'd done any covers. He only did his own stuff, so he did his own version and it was a really cracking version and that's really what the world was waiting to hear. The original thing that we did, nobody remembers that. It's Elvis who put it on the map. And since then, of course, there have been scores of different versions.
Q. Last thing I want to ask you: This is probably a quote that haunts you. You said at one point that you didn't see yourself rocking in the later years, after a certain age. What changed your thinking on that?
A. Yeah, I know, it's strange. I read in a magazine the other day, somebody said that rock 'n' roll wasn't designed for older people. But what are you going to do? There's people who seem to really like watching old people's rock 'n' roll music. And if people want to see it, and one is able to get there and turn in a decent show, why wouldn't you? And, actually, it does work pretty well with old people doing it. And I don't sort of feel old when I'm doing it. That old chestnut, "I just don't feel my age!" The truth is that I do sometimes, but when I'm doing that, I don't at all. It feels the same as it always has.
