Another Awesome Conversation with John Waite – HuffPost 6.4.14

Mike Ragogna: John, your latest is titled Best — not a “Greatest Hits” per se, but more of an overview of what you felt was your best material on your terms. A lot of the package is made up of live renditions and a couple of re-records. What motivated you to do a project like this?

John Waite: Last December, I was wandering around Beverley Hills and it was raining and it was Christmas, I was doing some Christmas shopping and I got caught in the rain. I walked past a Richard Avedon photography exhibition and I went in, to get out of the rain, really. I’m more of a David Bailey guy when it comes to sixties photography. I worked with David for one of my album covers. I’ve always been interested in art and photography and painting, a lot of different forms of art, so it was great to get out of the rain. I thought, “Avedon, I’ll give it a shot,” you know. It was very high fashion, very sixties, very period, you know, and there’s this one wall that was covered in small framed portraiture, really, everybody from Janis Joplin to Mick Jagger to Elizabeth Taylor to Jean Shrimpton, all sorts of different people. I was stood there looking at it and it just came to me, “What would it sound like if that was music?” If it was a history of my work, what would it sound like? From there on I was making mental notes about how to go about it.

I went back to Britain to see my mum for Christmas and took a sketchbook and filled it full of different lists of songs, every day I would spend five minutes on it and I more or less had the same eighteen songs; I didn’t have anything that didn’t make it on here. But in the mean time I’d been thinking about re-recording “Missing You,” “Back On My Feet Again,” and “Change.” I flew back on New Year’s Eve and almost immediately went into the studio. “Change” I couldn’t do anything with at all, it’s just a period piece that rang the bell really hard in 1981 or whenever, ’82, but it was a complete piece like it was supposed to be and it had a great live version ready to go. But with “Back On My Feet Again” I pulled back all the production and made it as current as I thought I could. I really felt that it would benefit from being stripped down. I’d written the lyric to that song the morning I sang it. It was originally called something else and then the band had cut this track–The Babys–and I hated the track and didn’t want to sing it, so the morning I was supposed to sing it I got out of bed and wrote “Back On My Feet Again” and re-wrote the entire melody and the words and went in and sang it. I only really had, truthfully, about three hours from conceiving it to singing it. Thirty five years later you’ve lived a lot of life, you’ve listened to that song a lot and it was great to get another chance to sing it, and I think I sang it better! With “Missing You” it was the same thing. It had been mixed in a glossy way which was of the time, but the rest of the record wasn’t, it was very hardcore avant-garde over the top, a very risky record with no brakes. The single “Missing You” had been mixed with view to it being a single, so it had all the gloss of the eighties on it. It was also the same thing, I’d written the lyric about five days before I sang it, so it was incredibly new as well. I wanted to go back over those two songs and put the thirty years plus or whatever it was that’s happened to me into the songs. I think if I’d have sung it with a hoarse, burnt out voice it would probably sound just as engaging, but I seem to be pretty much in my moment as a singer, I seem to have gotten stronger. It’s got a hint of cowboy in it somewhere. I was thinking about Jimmy Webb–the Wichita Lineman–when I wrote the song, and I was thinking about a Free song called “Catcha A Train,” I was just channeling those two songs really, but there is kind of roots of blues in “Missing You.” Nobody ever really got that. I tried explaining it on a morning show once in New York City. If John Lee Hooker sang “Missing You,” you’d think it was a blues with three more chords. It’s a bit more complex than a blues, but the phrasing and the intensity behind it is blues!

MR: Well, its storyline and sentiment, the topic, is, I think, the blues. To me, it’s all about what’s going on in the lyrics that’s the biggest hint.

JW: Yeah! Absolutely! When I got those two songs, I tried to get “Change,” I had the original guitar player and the original bass player and I just couldn’t sing it the way I’d sung it before, I’d learned too much. a lot of people go back and re-record their masters and I don’t know how they do it because it means singing it like you don’t know what you know today. I got about two bars into it and said, “F**k it.” I gave up the record immediately. The live version is wild, so I’m quite happy with that.

MR: You mentioned the thirty year difference. You know, I used to be a purist, not liking artists re-recording their material. But now I realize now that an artist should be allowed to grow over the years and has every right to look their work and go, “You know what? This really could be a little better here and that could still be a little better there.”

JW: There is a purity, though, when you hear that original sound on the radio, the sound of the drums coming in, you are taken back to a time and there’s enormous nostalgia attached to that. I’m quite a nostalgic person, but as a musician, not as somebody who had written the thing in the first place. It was the need to finish the story somehow. To sing it again at another time in my life. I respect the past and I have quite a strong sense of nostalgia, but after seeing that exhibition and so many people putting out ten songs as “The Greatest Hits” and that’s all you’re going to get, I felt I’ve developed so much more as an artist and I wanted to get that across. If it was the last thing I did, I wanted to have that as my testimony. There’s “Bluebird Cafe” on there and “Suicide Life,” which are two extremely unlikely songs to put on what you would regard as a greatest hits record, but as a singer and as a writer I don’t think I did anything better. So I wanted to put “Bluebird” on there and I wanted to put “Suicide Life” on there, and that’s where things got sexy, because then it was no longer about songs that had charted or that you knew me for, they were obscurer songs. I just felt like it was the artist’s way. There’s two ways of going, there’s one of making a dollar, and one of just being an artist I guess.

MR: Right, and it’s also the element of revealing more about you than just your hits.

JW: Yeah! I was hoping people would see the roots, because I was raised on western music, Frankie Laine was huge with me; Marty Robbins, they were gods to me; when I was about five, I was wearing a cowboy outfit and running around listening to that. Years later, I got to play the Opry with Alison Krauss and that to me was more meaningful than being number one in the rock world because that was my first inkling of music; country. A lot of things in my life have come full circle, they really have.

MR: Isn’t that funny, how you mentioned it just now? That was more important in your life than having a number one record.

JW: I can’t even begin to tell you how nervous I was backstage. I went out on stage with my band and Alison and it was broadcast. I’d recorded a Vince Gill song about seven years before that called “Whenever You Come Around” and Vince was backstage and as I went out on stage and we went into the top of “Whenever You Come Around” I turned around and Vince was plugging in about fifteen feet behind me, plugging into this old amp he was just trying to get turned on. We played the whole thing live on the air and that was just like Christmas. I can’t imagine a higher moment than with Alison Krauss at the Opry.

MR: It seems you’re digging deeper into the reality of the songs and who John Waite is. It’s really a theme with you, huh?

JW: Yeah! Well, I’ve grown up. I’m not really classic rock, Classic Rock Magazine in England barely write about me. I took a full-page ad in the magazine this month because we just got back from Milan, we went ove rand played the Milan Frontiers Rock Festival and we went down like a storm. We just blew the place apart. But I don’t fit into their perception of what a classic rock guy is, and I’m very opinionated and I say what I mean about music and a lot of classic rock is complete crap. It just is. It is, and there are people who can’t think of anything else to do but repeat the past. I have this weird kind of thing going on where I’m not mainstream, I’m not classic rock, I’m not country and I was saying to Jim Ladd the other day on this Deep Tracks show, me and Jim go back years, “That’s what’s what,” and he said, “Yeah, but you’re a singer-songwriter,” and I thought, “Wow, I guess I am in some strange way.” If you look at “Suicide Life” and you look at “Bluebird” you would consider that singer-songwriter.

MR: I think he’s right. But you’ve always been a singer-songwriter because you’ve had great songs. I guess it’s just the clothes one puts on the musical body, the image, that differs.

JW: I agree, there’s a way of putting on the table. As Steely Dan once said, “You’ve got to learn how to put it on the table,” and I think I came at America with a very good tailor. I really wanted to engage people visually, but I think I was toying with the idea of the whole thing. It was like a game, but behind it all it was deathly serious. I was trying to write a song so that it would last thirty years and apparently I’ve managed to do that. I felt, honestly, making this record, that it needed to be done now because I wanted to get on with something else. I needed to explain myself to people in these songs and then move on. I might even make an acoustic record. I’ve got half of the album and it’s really out there, but it’s very spartan and lyric-driven. I wanted to draw a line in the sand, I wanted to say, “This far and no further.”

MR: Look at Robert Plant, what he did was he presented himself as he saw himself, not just as Led Zeppelin.

JW: He probably did that when he set off. But you do get trapped into a logo. I think I took a left turn after “Missing You,” I made a quiet record, I didn’t go and try and imitate “Missing You.” I’ve always tried to do something that people didn’t expect, but I don’t know what’s going on anymore, I’m not listening to other bands like I used to. I couldn’t tell you who’s number one right now.

MR: It’s pretty difficult! I asked Glenn Hughes how he felt about what’s going on in the music scene and he scratched his head. Now more than ever for you to have a huge, huge hit means record companies are putting a lot, a lot, a lot of money behind you. It almost seems like they are taking no chances and you have to act exactly like your brother and sister records.

JW: Absolutely, everything’s compartmentalized. But you know, that doesn’t mean that people aren’t making great art. I just got off the phone with somebody who said they expect a hundred thousand new people to arrive in Nashville this year. A hundred thousand people. And I’m worried about what happens to Mister Bluegrass and what happens to Larry Sparks and Del McCoury and Ricky Scaggs and Alison Krauss. I’m worried about those people, the real people.

MR: I often wonder what the motivations are for young people who are going in to music now. Is it to make art? Is it to make music because they don’t know any other way? Or is it for the American Idol illusion?

JW: You beat me to that! I was going to say at the end of that road is American Idol. It’s not the satisfaction of bringing the house down at the Ryman, or writing a song that stops people breathing for a second. I don’t want to come down on what’s going on around me, because there’s still great songwriters out there, it’s just that the whole focus has shifted on to show business, which is great, too, because all the idiots are going to be in one place at one time.

MR: [laughs] What advice do you have for new artists?

JW: I would just go your own way! Steve Marriott once said, and I may have used this as my answer twice now, “The first idea you have is the best one.” There are so many people involved in making a record when you’re at a record label and the money is so tight, they’re so scared of releasing anything that’s cutting edge that everything’s like three minutes and everything’s aimed at a demographic, as they say. That doesn’t mean–when you look back to Tracy Champman doing “Fast Car” somebody, somewhere at a record company saw her and went, “She’s the real deal.” And then they backed it up with a tremendous video because they understood how deeply she felt all of that and how real she was so they so they gave her the video too. There was nobody saying, “Put this dress on and sing about this.” It’s a threatened business. Artists are much, much bigger than the business. People that chase after artists, that’s what they’re meant to do, but the artist is going to be the uncompromising guy on the end like Dylan or somebody who just changes the world with three chords and starts singing something. It’s like that great moment in Llewyn Davis movie where he’s singing that song to the agent, and then he stops playing the guitar and he sings the rest of the song with just his voice and it’s heartbreaking and you think you’ve got this reaction out of F. Murray Abraham and then he says, “I don’t see any money in it.” It’s just a great moment, but that’s the world.

MR: What ever’s going to happen to that level of talent?

JW: It will be okay. It’s always going to be okay. There’s always going to be somebody who takes a step to the left and then everybody follows them. It just takes that one percent. It’s more fun to go your own way anyway. I think once you get on the wheel you’re kind of sunk. I’m very positive about music, I think it’s a beautiful thing and it’s always going to be constant and people are going to want quality. I guess all kids that want to be in the music business, there’s going to be a percentage that are going to be brilliant, but everybody seems to be in it at the moment.

MR: Well, I hope some of those hundred thousand descending upon Nashville are coming from the house of brilliance.

JW: Oh man. Just oh.

MR: We mentioned classic rock earlier. You have one of the great classic rock songs, “Head First.” That became an anthem, maybe because sports arenas played it, it got endless airplay, all that.

JW: Although there was soul stuff and blues stuff, it wasn’t fully The Babys direction, really. Whatever it was, it was come upon honestly. There was no uniform to wear, there was no club to join, back then it was just great rock radio. It was before MTV. You had to fight to play, really, it was like the underground. I thought The Babys were exceptionally great, but I have a hard time calling that classic rock, it’s not like the guys running around giving high fives on stage and wearing spandex still. I don’t understand any of that, I don’t. Speaking of Glenn Hughes before, he’s got a tremendous voice, he’s an incredibly great bass player, a very musical guy and a nice geezer, and I’m sure he’s puzzled as much as I am when he looks to the left and the right of himself and sees how people want to compartmentalize music.

MR: Yeah, his group California Breed doesn’t really fit into one particular thing.

JW: I haven’t heard that yet, but I’ve heard it’s good! He’s always swinging, he’s always coming out of his corner fighting.

MR: Speaking of The Babys before, I recently interviewed Tony Brock recently. They’re releasing a new album as well. John, I’m imagining you have an affection for The Babys and what you did during that period, too.

JW: Oh, absolutely. “Isn’t It Time,” “Head First,” there’s a few Babys songs — we do a live version of “Every Time I Think Of You” on the record. Pretty much The Babys would’ve done it, just a three-piece band, maybe some Hammond organ, although we had no organ, but we had a backup singer, Debby Holiday. It’s bluesier. I don’t know if we finished as well as we started, because we were a five piece by the time we finished. I think we might have lost a thread when I stopped playing bass, but my favorite Babys stuff is probably the first three albums.

MR: Yeah, but it’s a nice place in history.

JW: You know, there’s a great beauty in the fact that we didn’t make it completely to the top. There’s something ironic about it, but there’s something ironic I just love about the fact that people are still playing it. We might have just been ahead of our time.

MR: That reminds me of The Move versus… or Free versus… hmm…

JW: Yow!! [laughs]

MR: Maybe that’s a little grandiose, sorry.

JW: No, that was great! God! I wouldn’t have made that comparison. I still listen to Free and just sit there and go, “How did they do that?” It’s three guys and a singer in a room and basically they’re playing live. But they were that good. Bands in the seventies, the bands that really influenced me, that I went to see at the local university on Friday nights, The Who and Quintessence and Family and all the great bands that I saw there, they were three-piece bands that had a Hammond organ player on the end. It wasn’t big productions. If I know anything, after Bad English I was so disgusted with myself I went back to being completely a singer-songwriter. Temple Bar was a songwriter album. My life began again at that point.

MR: Bad English seemed like an excursion.

JW: Yeah, I think it was a detour. It had its year and then it was kind of done. We were done. We couldn’t top anything we’d done.

MR: It’s like The Firm, or a couple of other bands that happened around that time.

JW: Yeah. It brought a smile to a lot of people, it was good fun, but it was high time to leave when it was time to leave.

MR: What’s the future for John Waite? What do you want to do?

JW: Well, I think I got very close in ’96 when I did the When You Were Mine album, “Suicide Life” is off that, and that was dark and it was lyrical and it was way out, and “Bluebird Cafe” was on that record, too. I think I’m going back to that. It’s in my nature to keep taking a left turn and taking a right turn and trying to get out of the maze of where I am and find somewhere new, but I think I was on ground there that was really truthful. The songs that I’ve written so far for the new record are pretty extreme, they’re pretty out. That doesn’t mean to say I’m not going to go out and sing hard rock and do “Missing You” and do all the other things as well, but I might tour smaller places just for a few months, just coffee houses or something just to get that vibe back of being on the acoustic guitar. Everything about my life comes from the acoustic guitar, and I’m a rock singer and I’m influenced by western music and blues, so I haven’t a clue. And I’m glad I don’t! I take it as it comes. There’s so much more to do and I want to do it while I can still sing full-out. My voice is in incredible shape for some reason, and I’m enjoying the hell out of my life and I’m enjoying the new record. Tomorrow’s pretty bright.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne