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Speaker 1: The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now. It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid it's still only me, Craig Ferguson on my own, standing on a stage telling comedy words. Come and see me, buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones. I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but you should at least know what's happening, and it is. The tour kicks off late September and goes through the end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash tour. They are available at the Craig Ferguson show dot com slash tour or at your local outlet in your region. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness. My guest today is one of the to my mind, one of the most important artists working in America today. He is a singer, he's a songwriter, he is a composer, and I you know, I'm not really that comfortable around people with great talent, but he's very personal, as you will see. Let me tell you what I'm doing, which is I'm breaking my rules by A. I really wanted to talk to you in person because I feel like that helps, and B or two I don't normally. There's a couple of people that I've never ever wanted. I kind of break my own rules a little bit. I never invited David Bowie on my old late night show because I thought, what if it doesn't work out, what if he's what if he's heard it? And I've had the same problem with you and Sting You David boy and Sting. I'm like, I don't know if it's gonna work. Yeah, so this is really if it works okay with you, then our books thing. But other than that, a coupled coupled white male. Uh, you worked with him, then you didn't you do a tour together with why?
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Speaker 2: I worked with with Sting a few times, and and I knew David somewhat.
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Speaker 1: He he he.
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Speaker 2: Came to a few of my shows back in the day, and and uh and and we actually even had a bit of a of a not a disagreement, but a misunderstanding at one point early on, which which was very exciting.
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Speaker 1: It sounds very exciting. Yeah, could I ask what it was about? Yeah, No, it was, it was, it was, it was.
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Speaker 2: What what had happened is that we were both doing this Tibet House benefit.
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Speaker 1: I was very young.
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Speaker 2: I was I think I was twenty three or something, and we were both doing this benefit, and I was also making an album at the time. I was making Want One. I was a little older than twenty. I was more anyways, So so I'm getting I'm getting up there and I'm sixty's it's crazy. But anyways, but I was making a record, and I was using a lot of David's musicians, most notably this great guy called Oh God, now okay, now it's going to happen.
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Speaker 1: Great guitar players. Spooky Ghost is.
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Speaker 2: Jerry Leonard, great guitar player, and and and then I had his drummer and so forth. And I think David Bowie felt a little bit scared that I was poaching his band, his band at the time, like which I wasn't aware of, but he was. That was sort of an underlying thing that he had. Anyways, We're doing the show together for the Tibet House benefit, and there was this quartet, a string quartet that was playing. It was also that David Bowie had brought in to do with him and and and I said, well, there's a quartet available, maybe I'll do something with the quartet as well, because and it was kind of offered in that way. So so I rehearsed with the quartet, gave them something to do. And then the first time I met David Bowie, who when he was sitting there, he was thinking, this guy is trying to steal on my musicians, you know. He was just like that. The first thing I said to him was, hey, David, thank you so much for letting me work with your musicians. Like it was the first guy I brought up. And it kind of took the and I was talking about the quartet just because they were there. But then he used to have this woman with him, Coco, who would hang out, who was sort of his protector, this woman, and she yeah, and she immediately shielded him from me and was like get away, and like, don't you know, I don't know, so so I so so it was. It was it was not a great first meeting, but then subsequently he we we he understood that I wasn't going to steal his entire band, and uh and and then he you know, was fine. He came to a lot of shows and and in a way, It's.
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Speaker 1: Funny because I always sort of imagine musicians to have a sort of collegiate uh environment where they are quite open and collaborative with each other. But I suspect maybe, as you there may be egos involved as well, maybe slightly slightly.
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Speaker 2: I mean, look, you I what what always struck me the most about David is how almost childlike he was still, I mean in the sense that he was he still has such a sense of wonder about everything. Like when he went to see my show and I get in and I think he enjoyed it. I could really tell that he was dumbfounded by what he saw, and I'm sure was that's the way he was like with a lot of things that he loved. You know, it was like a genuine kind of openness, and but that comes, you know, with also a little bit of you know, childlike anger.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. It's interesting because I wonder if you have the same if you have the same thing, because you you travel across many different type genres of music. It seems to me effortlessly like you, like you, you just inhabit one and then move to another. You you can move from folk to jazz to you know, Broadway kind of rasthmatize and remain yourself within it. Is that is there a sense of do you have a sense of wonder about it? Do you retain a sense of wonder a bit?
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Speaker 2: Well, I have to maintain a sense of wonder about everything in my life in order or not to you know, I'm not gonna say slit my wrist. That's a little over dramatic, but but you know, to certainly I understand, to certainly function, I I I have to keep that spark going and and yes, it enables me to I think. I think what I've managed to do, which is pretty good, is that I've managed to sort of you know, I dropped out of school twice, like I first I dropped out of music school and then I dropped out of art school. Like I never received a major education in the you know, in college. And I think that was a real saving grace because for me, because therefore I never really felt like I totally knew what was happening or what I was doing or like, I never had a degree to be like, no, I'm it's official, because I would find that so I'm always so I always feel like i'm I'm learning as I go along, and that's yeah, I think it's important to try to remain ignorant a little bit.
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Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by that take on it because I how how you know your experience of you? Because I find you like, I mean, I know and love your work, but I knew next to nothing about you. I mean, I know of what's available on the internet, but I feel like your work and in a way I know that it's probably a comparison that's done a lot. But but I had the same kind of feeling with Leonard Cohan's work that I felt there was a kind of, uh, there was a kind of humorous, almost Gothic menace with it, with a sense of fun which I could never quite pin down. I feel like it's it's contained somewhere in a in a minor chord somewhere, or maybe it's a or maybe it's maybe it's that that super kind of uh weird Canadian intellectual world that I find fascinating. Yeah, well, it's a little bit the Canadian.
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Speaker 2: I think the Canadian aspect cannot be underestimated in the sense that, look, I don't I was born in the US. I was born in New York. My dad's loud and is American, has lived in New York his whole life. But my mother, Kate mcgarago, was Canadian. And yes, when when when I was when my parents divorced, I moved to Canada and was brought up there mainly. And I do feel that there is this kind of and it kind of also interestingly enough, relates to Scotland and to England. Is that, you know, growing up and the fact that it was Quebec, which ad has a whole other with the whole French thing, is that you're in this strange world where you're part of a faded empire, you know. And it's even more it was much more pronounced, like in the eighties, it was so pronounced in Canada as opposed to in England, where it was it had become sort of you know, they'd had enough and uh, and certainly in Scotland and and but it was still so trying to be English. But then you're right next to the United States, you know, which is just so dominant. And then I was also in Quebec, so we're all doing this in French and and so you get developed this strange perspective I guess, of of both, you know, being in the middle of everything and also being totally and nobody can understand where you come from. So it's so it's it's a it's ah. Yeah. Being Canadian has definitely influenced me as.
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Speaker 1: It has a weird kind of I wonder if it's something to do with the darkness. I always think that in Scotland, just the fact that there's no light for half a year really and it somehow it makes a different sort of person.
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Speaker 2: What's interesting is growing up in Quebec in Canada and we had incredibly cold winters, which sadly I don't think there's as cold as they used to be, but they were, you know, this these Gothic called winters with a lot of snow and the whole thing of like how Russia. You know that whatever the Soviet Union was, this evil empire that you know that nobody could understand.
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Speaker 1: We kind of got it.
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Speaker 2: We were like we kind of related more to the Soviet Union in terms of what we had to go through in terms of winter, because at least even you, even you guys had like the Gulf Stream, you know, right, we would.
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Speaker 1: Get a lid a little bit of beach there.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so we kind of understood that that me.
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Speaker 1: Have you been to Russia?
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Speaker 2: I went once, Yeah, many many years ago, and it was amazing.
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Speaker 1: And I found it fascinating because I grew up I'm older than you, but I grew up with the same information about you know, these people are the evil different this is the Soviet thing was. It's very sterile, and they're all kind of like autraumatons and yeah, frightening. And I went there and it's very Did you go to Moscow? Yeah, I went to mind Did you go to the because I went to Red Square in Moscow? I thought it was it's about it's it seems to me very high arch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was fabulous. Yeah, well I would.
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Speaker 2: I mean I remember flying into Russia, flying to Russia and definitely getting the sense that you were going into another universe, you know, like, yeah, it was, it was, it was. It has nothing to do. I mean, it's it's it's it's own, it's its own planet in a lot of ways, and and and you know, and then once I got there, I I I felt it it was even more pronounced. What I will say, though, is that of late and I don't know, I'm just going on and on because I tend to do that, is that I was just in Greece for a wedding, and uh, and I'd never been to a Greek Orthodox wedding. I've been to a lot of Catholic weddings, into a lot of you know, Protestant wedding or whatever, but I'd never been to a Greek Orthodox one.
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Speaker 1: And it really.
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Speaker 2: Struck me how different it was from from the you know, the West, how different the Eastern churches from the Western Church. It says that there's it's such a divide, and and I know it's sort of harkened back to that.
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Speaker 1: That's what the difference is. It's that do you do you have a connection to a church? Are you?
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Speaker 2: No?
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Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, I look, I was I was brought up in a very Catholic place.
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Speaker 2: I went to Catholic school. I was never baptized. You know, my mother was was highly affected by the church. You know, she's brought up by nuns and somewhat traumatized by that. And uh and and for instance, recently I wrote a requiem mass so that the premiered in Paris.
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Speaker 1: Uh.
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Speaker 2: And it's actually going to be in l A at at Disney Hall in May with it has a narrator part in it, and Jane Fonda will be the narrator.
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Speaker 1: That's tough. Yeah, yes, I was going.
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Speaker 2: To I was going to offer myself up, but well, you know what, you know what she did. That's precisely what she did. Yeah, because I was at an event with her. I didn't know her too well, but we were just talking and and and then I said, oh, yeah, we just we just come. I was just in Paris where we was premiered the Wreque. It's called the Dream Requiem and and there's a narrator part in it, and in Paris it was Meryl Streep.
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Speaker 1: Did it in Paris?
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Speaker 2: Okay, So and I said, and I said, you know, Jane, we're going to bring it to l A. And we're going to do it at Disney Hall. And then Jane went, I'm doing it. I was like what She's like, I'm doing it And she immediately hired herself.
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Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, yeah, yeah, I guess I forget. I guess that's it.
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Speaker 2: But but pertaining to the religious thing, yeah, that's sort of I'm not religious, but I'm I'm I'm affected by it somehow.
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Speaker 1: Do you have a belief system that connects to a deity.
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Speaker 2: I'm definitely not. I'm definitely not an atheist. I have a strange kind of childlike wonder, hope whatever that they're that everything is connected and everything has a reason and and I'm able to sort of tie that together with my music and and and with my career at all. It's always you know, uh that I wouldn't say nicely, but it's but it's it's it's always managed to come together, should we say.
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Speaker 1: And you have a kind of it also didact isn't the right word, but you have a quite but you have a didactic career. Anyway, you have an odd kind of are you looking for something that? Are you looking for something? In the music?
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Speaker 2: I'm a three headed monster because I have there's a and they're all very separated.
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Speaker 1: Uh.
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Speaker 2: One of them is a singer, you know, I'm a I'm a I'm a real singer. Like I sing my work and I sing other people's work. And stuff, and that is its own animal, who I know very little about, you know. It's it's kind of this creature that you know, appears and I kind of just have to ride, you know, and make sure that you know, to put it back or doesn't or doesn't devour other people. So so it's this there's this animalistic side. Then there's the songwriter, you know, which is more sort of like where I come from, like my family. It's like our trade, you know. It's like my sisters do it, my parents did it. It's what I learned how to do and and I love doing it and so forth. And then there's the composer wanting to be a composer. I think that's really me in.
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Speaker 1: Terms of composer. Yeah, well that's what I want to do as a human being.
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Speaker 2: I was like, I want to I would like to be a composer, and I've I've managed to do that somewhat. It's not all I do, but I mean, I'm talking up the stream requiem a lot, but it's just it's a big deal for me.
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Speaker 1: So no, it is a big deal. But to write a requiem mass is almost like it it one we're thinking it was. It's kind of an act of devotion in a way.
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Speaker 2: Right, Well, no, no, what's odd about it is that you know I wrote, I wrote a lot of it here in l A. There's a beautiful mansion in Silver like called the Paramour Estate, which is this old. It looks like something from Sunset Boulevard. It's up on top of a hill with these incredible views. And uh and I was and the owner of this wonderful woman, Dana, she let me use the a wing of the estate to compose the requiem. And I was there for a long time for months, and especially the I don't know if you remember if you live in a right you live.
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Speaker 1: I have done. I don't anymore.
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Speaker 2: But there was a there was a there was a winter like a couple of years ago where it was just raining, and it was when there was like ten feet of snow in the mountains like people.
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Speaker 1: I think it was webs.
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Speaker 2: So I was kind of shacked up in this in this estate. And the estate, after it had been privately owned, had been turned into into a Catholic girls school. So there was all these crosses, and you know, Virgin Mary's everywhere, and and and and it just I don't know it just poured out of me all of these religious kind of feelings, and especially you know, working with the Mass and the Latin Mass, and really and and and I was a little frightened at how easily it it came forth. And and in the end I decided, you know, I may not be you know, Catholic or anything, but but I would say that certainly, in the world we live in right now, which is so crazy and so you know, troubling, there is a need for some Christian, real Christian values. And I'm not talking about the church. I'm not talking about you know, but just just like good you know that shall not kill you know, you know everyone you know, and you know, let's save the poor and be good to the poor, and like, you know, these kind of simple Christian things which are very touching and and we and the world still needs even though you know you don't have to do it as a religious person necessarily, and even the religious people aren't doing it right now, which.
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Speaker 1: Is it's a real it's a real conflict. Do you I wonder if you're talking about living in the wing of this like mad old mansion as you as you write that, this uh, this Requiem Mass whenever I write, or if I talk to people who I write, Pruves and other people who write Prus the US. Music as as a place to go. A lot of people use music as a place to go to to go to a place of inspiration or a place where the doors open up, or or to put yourself somewhere else. And I wonder if that's possible for a musician to do, or if there's some kind of other stimulus that has to that has to be It is the silence, the something that does it is the music inside your head. Already it used to be alcohol and drugs. Well, and that was a great That was a great one. Yeah, that did the trick.
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Speaker 2: Now not now, not not as much so, So I would say, you know, it's funny because I mean, once we get into that conversation, I mean, I you know, I certainly I was afraid, you know, when I quit drinking a long time ago, that that I wouldn't be uh inspired, and I wouldn't be able to find you know, and you know and get into that that that that place I have found. Actually now that aging is the new kind of like hing of like not feeling so strong, not feeling more vulnerable, seeing your child have complete control over you, you know, and uh and just and and it's sort of and then that's when I kind of cling to songwriting into you know, lyrics and stuff and and and or going to a concert and hearing I find myself much more inspired now in a deep way, by by by by what's happen, by what's happening around me, because I I've gotten a little older and I kind of understand it more and it's therefore it's more frightening.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I I think I think the aging thing is is a fabulously interested in vain because I always thought I actually I have a tattoo right here where I normally wear my watch of Saturn, the Bringer of old Age, and you know, and and these Saturn and hosts. The Planet Suites was was kind of what got me onto it because in the Planet Suite with all the kind of rumpty tumpty, and then the Saturn piece of music is so weird. It's and I feel that aging is. I think you really nailed that. These kind of weird pushing minor chords, and it's like it's very very odd. It's not just the mortality aspect of it. It's the whole kind of this is.
00:22:34
Speaker 2: Well, this is it's also the gifts that you from from having survived and you know, gone through these experiences.
00:22:42
Speaker 1: I mean, I one thing for me that was so.
00:22:47
Speaker 2: Necessary and and kind of thought out when I started my career was was that, you know, I wasn't going to be this kind of rock and roll tragedy where I was, you know, the sort of flair that goes up and it's amazing, and then you know, who knows what could happen. You know, you either disappear, or you die, or you kind of get bitter or something. And that's sort of why I gravitated more towards classical music as like my main love and opera and stuff, because in that world, all the best music, all the greatest music, is written when you're old. Like all the great composers, the heavyweights, they're all it's always at the end of their life where they finally kind of get into this serious space of you know, contemplation or whatever. And so I'm you know, I makes a great Yeah, I've always got.
00:23:43
Speaker 1: It makes a great deal of sense. I mean, especially if you look at the rokers that do survive, they tend to play the songs that they were they wrote when they were, you know, in their early twenties, and the Rolling Stones are still singing I can't get no satisfied. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know after sixty years ago they wrote that song. I mean, and it's great, and that's a great song. But but if but if you want to, I wonder sometimes what it feels like to be connected so much to a piece of your life which is so distant.
00:24:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's sort of I mean, I it's funny you mentioned that, because it is. I feel so fortunate. I mean, look, I had I had a lot of success when I started out, and but I never quite was I never kind of hit the summit, you know that that that that of you know, pop hitness or whatever. And uh and I that was the greatest godsend that I could have ever wished for as an artist, because I've always been able to just explore and and go further into these other different without having to you know, Harke. I mean, there's a couple of songs like everybody wants to hear me saying Hallelujah, Okay, we'll do that, and maybe cigarettes and chocolate milk. Composers like these kind of things. But it's not. But I'm not. My whole career is dominated by those by that, by that work. So it's so it's I'm very fortunate in that way. I mean, I would have loved the you know, financial perks of having you know, written hallelujah.
00:25:23
Speaker 1: But but but but what I don't know though. I mean I I know quite a few very rich artists, yeah, who who I think would be much happier in your shoes if you less million dollars. Yeah, totally. I think that the the problem is that it particularly now, I don't know if you get any pressure to do this. I suspect no, because I think I think you exist. I see the way I see you, and this may not be how you are, but the way I see you is you. You live within your own world. You you said the you set the limits to what you want to do. I I find myself constantly fighting with people about can you post this? And Instagram? Can you do that?
00:26:12
Speaker 2: And I'm like, yeah, I mean yeah, I mean I have to do that as well. Okay, so that makes me feel no, no, you have to you have to kind of play that game a little bit. And but yes, in the end, of the day.
00:26:27
Speaker 1: I have not.
00:26:29
Speaker 2: I never whatever. I never took a bite out of the apple or whatever.
00:26:33
Speaker 1: You know.
00:26:34
Speaker 2: I I just I just stayed true to you know, what I wanted to do artistically and in a lot of ways, not out of desire. It was just I didn't know how to do anything else, you know, I I was you know, I wasn't particularly I just was so driven by what I heard and saw that I that I just had to go that way.
00:26:52
Speaker 1: Well I think that's an artistic impulse, though, isn't it. I mean, I think that's what that's the gift of being, of being like that.
00:26:58
Speaker 2: I mean, it's funny because there's people, I mean, look, I know, you know, I'm very good friends with Neil Tennant from the from the petch Up Boys, and and he's a dear friend, and he's he was, yeah, and he's my favorite person to talk to about all things kind of cultural and historical and.
00:27:19
Speaker 1: Especially to do with show business and so forth.
00:27:21
Speaker 2: And he you know, really he started as a journalist and he and he wrote about you know, pop, the pop world and and and so for him, like having a pop hit was such a huge deal and and really all that he what what he dreamt about. He still knows about great music and great art and stuff like that. But he was you have to be invested in it, and he was still very much invested in it and he got it and I was never invested in it, you know.
00:27:53
Speaker 1: And yeah, well you come from the strange dark French English politician Canada. You know, there's daylight nighttime, but you know it's I I don't know. I I imagine you live in a you know, in some kind of castle. The books are helping.
00:28:12
Speaker 2: Castle esque. Actually actually sang it Hurst Castle over the weekend. Yeah, I was up there. I was invited to sing in the dining and then they call it the refector reflector reflect refectory, refectory. Okay, yeah, but it's it's the dining room. But I sang. I sang there, and that was that was pretty wild because when you think of who had hung out up there, and you know.
00:28:39
Speaker 1: It's a bit I'm fascinated about that time. Actually, this is my this is my pitch to you. Actually, this is what I think I am. I'd be saying this to everybody because of what's going on right now, Like everyone's saying, oh, it's so crazy, the politics have never been so crazy, and it's so bad. I've got into reading Gorfy Dolls Narratives of Empire. These it's like seven novels set from you know, America. I think it was all the way up to Watergate, from the beginning of America. And have you read them? I haven't read them. I mean I have a big pho. You've got to read them, or because they have such a in a weird way. I always found gour Vidal's very reassuring anyway, because I thought, for somebody that clever around, it will be all right. And he he writes so well about the craziness that America has been going through since the beginning. Yeah, and and and I found it. I find that the it has a real gothic quality about it as well. Yeah.
00:29:49
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I think, no, go ahead, no, no, I think I think you're you're correct. I mean, it's it's this. I mean, yes, we're we're gearing up for will probably be a very violent, you know period with the rhetoric is very violent, but there's been periods that have been way more violent. I mean, the whole thing of assassinations and people are getting made up and like mobs and stuff. It's it's very much part of American culture and part of world culture.
00:30:20
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's part of humans. It's the fight against that, the fight against the you know, that kind of impulse in darkness is is on a big level, you know, on on a societal level. It's it's it's hard to change, as what you talked about earlier, the idea of moving from the self destruction of the alcohol and the drugs and all that kind of stuff and moving away from it because it feels like agency. I think that's why people are so attracted to, you know, that kind of rhetoric and violence, because it feels like you have agency in the world and perhaps you don't really And and I think that I felt the same. I got sober thirty two years ago, and it was I felt the same thing that I thought, Well, I don't know who I am if I if I'm not drinking, and you know, in party and who am I and and whatever. I always thought I was much funnier when I was drunk, and when I got sober, I didn't think I was as funny. But a lot of people who saw theeople.
00:31:30
Speaker 2: Like yah, yeah, perspective yeah, I know it is. It is so interesting because I even I have the same thing I I want. I always feel like I feel as though I was much funnier when I was stone and stuff. But I looked then at footage, you know, because for me it's been a long time as well. But I look at footage and and I'm hilarious all the time, you know, I mean, this is my my very nature is hilarious, you know, just to this whatever the voice, the way I kind twiddling around, and the way I see things, and and it's me, you know, and it's I'm not trying to you know, it's not an act, which which which is always funnier when it's not an act.
00:32:18
Speaker 1: I think the truth is much funnier. It's much harder to believe. But that also that that authenticity in that truth is going to lead you to I think it seems to have led you to the gothic mansion in Los Angeles where you write the Requiem mass or singing at Hurst Castle or not, you know, writing a surefire talp album that will get you the you know, the arena tour. And I don't know, I think there's a limit to what money can do. For you.
00:32:50
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's also it becomes your your drug of choice, then becomes artistic exploration. I mean, I mean, I'm you know if I'm like one of my greatest stories ever for me in terms of getting sober and what that meant, and something that I think about all the time is that I was many years ago, I was super high and drunk and stuff, and I went to see this production of Elektra the Opera Electra by Strauss and it was an amazing evening and it was so wild and crazy and my head exploded and all of that, and I really loved it. And then a few months later I had went to rehab and got sober, cut to uh, you know, a few months later go to the same production of Elektra.
00:33:39
Speaker 1: Because it was still at the opera.
00:33:40
Speaker 2: It was just as amazing and my head was just as blown, and it was the art that kind of went searing through and it was just and for me, there was such an emblematic experience of like, Okay, you don't need whatever, just focus on that, you know, because it has all the power.
00:34:08
Speaker 1: Whenever I talk to someone who's getting sober, who's artistic, and the the worry is always that is that I won't be able to create. I won't be able to write or sing or play the guitar or whatever it is, and or paint or And it always seems to me that artists really interest in artists who are who are creating work while they are drunk and high, are creating network despite the fact that they are drunk and high, not because they are drunk. Yes, And and if you get if you are in a situation like that, then I think it it you get frozen, like you know, like you going, like you saying that you went, moving into classical music and becoming more you know, I'm getting older and weirder, you know, which is I think something that's hard to do if you're stuck in that.
00:35:03
Speaker 2: Well. The other thing too, The other thing too is that when I was in the pop world, and I still am occasionally, but it is more centered around not centered so much now, but but it's certainly back then about around about around drugs and alcohol. I mean, it was pure love and you know, smashing pumpkins and everybody and and uh, Jeff Buckley. So it was sort of this very hazy time and it was you know, fabulous in a lot of ways, and I wouldn't have it any other way. When you get into the classical world, drugs and alcohol have nothing to do with anything, like it's just it's a total other subject. Once you get on stage and you're rehearsing or you're composing something and you're presenting, it's just one hundred percent about the music and that's it and that, And I've just always that that has always been very that has helped me a lot to have.
00:35:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think also the collaborative nature. I mean, if you're working with a sixty piece orchestra, got it's now. And I think also the idea of collaboration with other people who are technically if not if they're not right in the piece is the way they can play. They're just as good as you in terms of being able to you know, better on the instrument.
00:36:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, better in a lot of cases, you know, in a lot of ways.
00:36:26
Speaker 1: And I think that that it's also like you want to bring your game up a little bit if you were around it. I think you're right. I think it becomes because I got sober when I was not when I was doing stand up, but I was doing a play I was doing I was doing the Rocky Horror Show in the West End in London, and there was a lot of moving parts and a lot of and there was a lot of you know, like, I don't think Richard O'Brien was sober at that point either. And but but you could get hurt if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, if the machine came down and it kind of required you to be on top of it a little bit. Yeah, And I think that that's kind of encouraged me to also, I didn't when you see that look at disappointment on people who know you can do better. Yeah, the most horrible thing. Oh yeah, I know that. I know that, I know that. Yeah, it's it's my least favorite look. I try never to practice it on my children when I like, but if I really want to torture my boys, I'll say, you know, I'm not agree, I'm just disappointed to old of your boys. Now, I have a twenty three year old and a thirteen year old.
00:37:36
Speaker 2: Ah, so you're still in it. You're still in it? Well, I mean, yeah, I have a thirteen year old daughter.
00:37:42
Speaker 1: Right, Well you're dead that that's the in it and it's it's it's an interesting challenge with the generation, not so much the thirteen year olds. Now, like my thirteen year old, I feel like I can have a I have a direct and easier communication with him. Yeah, but the my older son is very much a generation which yeah, we we're great, were on fine, but it's it's a difficult generation for me to connect with. I have to I have to work out it a little bit because I feel like I can feign very easily. I don't want to do that. I don't want to hit people's feelings and I really genuinely don't and I feel like it's easy to do that. Yeah. Yeah with that, Yeah, I mean my my daughter.
00:38:27
Speaker 2: I think I think our thirteen year olds are in an interesting position because I think on one hand, there's just really tough what they've had to endure, what they've seen with you know, with the whole pandemic thing, and then you know Trump and you know, like like there's no sugar coating to to the world and phones and you know this, you know, like so so it's very they're on one hand and and the one time there's there's there's a lot of worries, especially I think with daughter, with with I think with girls, it's it's it's it's kind of well, I think actually it's actually bad with both. But but that being said, I think they're I think they have to be tough, which is a good thing, you know. I mean they have to you know, you know, they you know, they have to. They're not they're not having it handed to them.
00:39:15
Speaker 1: No, It's also it's also I mean, I'm very grateful that I came of age in a time when my behavior wasn't being digitized over. I mean, I made a fill of myself and a lot of a lot of evenings falling down. You know. Just the truth is I I sometimes like to talk of my drinking is and drugging is is kind of like a bad, wild, sort of crazy thing. But if it was just that, I'd probably still be doing it. It wasn't. It's kind of pathetic. It's it's the fetal position at four o'clock in the morning, you know, it's the it's the it's the incontinence of mouth, you know, speech and everywhere else. You know that the pathetic nature of it. I would hate to see that, yeah, now, you know, and I'd be embarrassed by I also think, you know, the idea of you know, people, I'm very glad that I got married and was in a stable relationship before dating apps as well, because I don't know how I wouldn't know how to do that. It seems it's yeah, it's a it's a law. And you know, junior high school is the world is junior high school? Yes, No, it certainly is. It certainly is. No, it's very yeah.
00:40:40
Speaker 2: And this is the thing also as talking when I spoke earlier about getting older, is is sort of the new drug. But it is this strange kind of thing where you become Now I do feel like the nerdy teenager in the corner, like while the party is going on, of like nobody's paying attention to me, and I'm like kind of a crush on you know whatever, like the football player. Like it's like, it's just it's just it's it's it's I've just reverted back to that that state, which is horrible in certain ways, but it's also you're really looking at the you're kind of fascinated by the world as well. Like I've know's it's it's less it's because it's more more scary. It's it then becomes more interesting.
00:41:28
Speaker 1: Well, it contains, it contains terrors that I hadn't I hadn't kind of done the idea of my own you know, crumbling is less frightening to me than the fact that you know, I have children and I you know, I love them more than I can understand. I don't know what to do with that, and and to have that kind of man, yeah, to hang around. It's it's a strange. It's a strangeness. But I think I think I quite like getting older. Yeah, if I'm honest, No, I I do.
00:42:12
Speaker 2: I mean I just hit fifty one, and I will say that my I loved my forties. They were Yeah, they were just flying high, gliding through, you know, checking out the scene. You know, it was just looking great, feeling fine. You know, it was just it was just amazing. Fift Then you hit the fifties and you really like you hit it and and it's only because it's not because you feel totally different, but there's a slight change. It's a very slight change, and just and you just start to have thoughts like you know, that little pain could be my death. Like yeah, like like like there's it could happen, you know, And it's and it's just so there's just this I think the early I'm imagining, and you can tell me that the early fifties are tricky because you just start to sort of like, yeah, there's these little bells that go off, and you're like, oh, I imagine that. By the end of your fifties, s's just like whatever.
00:43:08
Speaker 1: You kind of get used to it. Okay, I felt like my fifties, but end of my fifties that was used to it. When I turned fifty, I was I was crazed. I didn't even want to talk about it. When I turned sixty, I was like I don't Yeah, And now that I'm sixty two, every now and again it's it's shocking to me. Yeah, you know that. It's like, this is shocking that I'm sixty two and it has it has that discordant quality. It has that weird, like a weird piece of music, that saturn you know, a piece. And but not to get too depressing about it, but since.
00:43:47
Speaker 2: We're but we're both of Celtic descent or something like that, are the Scottish Celts.
00:43:54
Speaker 1: The Scottish Clts? Right?
00:43:56
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but but no, is that what I think is that the sixties, you probably get used to it, but sadly and now I'm going to get really dark.
00:44:08
Speaker 1: You know.
00:44:08
Speaker 2: My mother died and when she was sixty three, and I think, like, if you die in your sixties, it's terrible because or if you know you're going to die, because you're just you've just gotten into it and you're kind of looking forward to old age a little bit, yea, like you know, and to have that robbed, you know. I think in a strange way is I think so so so just make it past your sixties because I think sixties, well, that's exactly what you get through. Seventies, seventies is the new thirty. That's what it is.
00:44:43
Speaker 1: I think that's right. Seventy is the new thirty. Yeah, but it's like it's the day's it is, no and I whenever I can be here in the moment, yeah, I'm slightly better than when I can't do Yeah. Yeah, I think sixties is a new ninety.
00:45:08
Speaker 2: Seventies, thirty fifties, the new fifty fifty.
00:45:15
Speaker 1: One is the new forty. I think you'd be fine. It's been a joy speaking with you. Yes, I was a little nervous about to talk to you. Because I'm intimidated by great talent. Oh thank you. I don't like being around it that much. I find it unsettling.
00:45:33
Speaker 2: I think we have one friend in common. I mean it's been ages, but you remember Jen Stills? Yes, yeah, I know I haven't seen her in ages, but I just remember her speaking about you.
00:45:46
Speaker 1: Was it okay? Yeah?
00:45:47
Speaker 2: No, yeah, yeah, no, she she toured with me once. She was great fun, an amazing character and a wonderful woman. Then yeah, she spoke very highly of you.
00:45:57
Speaker 1: Do you know Dominating Miller as well? Don't? Yeah, he's stings guitarist.
00:46:01
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well well I sort of no, sort.
00:46:05
Speaker 1: Of maybe probably. I haven't seen domin years either, but he's a he's a good lad. He can play a bit. Yeah. Yeah, listen, it has been a great joy. I am. I think going to come to Carnegie Hall of the you must, you must, you must.
00:46:25
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I think I'm going on the twentynin, yes of twenty eight in November, right, yes, day after Thanksgiving please right. I think I might be able to get it quite again, it's quite I can't gamble.
00:46:37
Speaker 1: We're taking. I think I think you'll be okay, I think you'll be all right, I'll bring some friends great, please do all right. Okay, thank you so much for this. It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much.
00:46:49
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Okay, goodbye.
00:46:51
Speaker 1: By on four four two four three th
Speaker 1: The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now. It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid it's still only me, Craig Ferguson on my own, standing on a stage telling comedy words. Come and see me, buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones. I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but you should at least know what's happening, and it is. The tour kicks off late September and goes through the end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash tour. They are available at the Craig Ferguson show dot com slash tour or at your local outlet in your region. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness. My guest today is one of the to my mind, one of the most important artists working in America today. He is a singer, he's a songwriter, he is a composer, and I you know, I'm not really that comfortable around people with great talent, but he's very personal, as you will see. Let me tell you what I'm doing, which is I'm breaking my rules by A. I really wanted to talk to you in person because I feel like that helps, and B or two I don't normally. There's a couple of people that I've never ever wanted. I kind of break my own rules a little bit. I never invited David Bowie on my old late night show because I thought, what if it doesn't work out, what if he's what if he's heard it? And I've had the same problem with you and Sting You David boy and Sting. I'm like, I don't know if it's gonna work. Yeah, so this is really if it works okay with you, then our books thing. But other than that, a coupled coupled white male. Uh, you worked with him, then you didn't you do a tour together with why?
00:02:24
Speaker 2: I worked with with Sting a few times, and and I knew David somewhat.
00:02:32
Speaker 1: He he he.
00:02:34
Speaker 2: Came to a few of my shows back in the day, and and uh and and we actually even had a bit of a of a not a disagreement, but a misunderstanding at one point early on, which which was very exciting.
00:02:49
Speaker 1: It sounds very exciting. Yeah, could I ask what it was about? Yeah, No, it was, it was, it was, it was.
00:02:55
Speaker 2: What what had happened is that we were both doing this Tibet House benefit.
00:02:59
Speaker 1: I was very young.
00:03:00
Speaker 2: I was I think I was twenty three or something, and we were both doing this benefit, and I was also making an album at the time. I was making Want One. I was a little older than twenty. I was more anyways, So so I'm getting I'm getting up there and I'm sixty's it's crazy. But anyways, but I was making a record, and I was using a lot of David's musicians, most notably this great guy called Oh God, now okay, now it's going to happen.
00:03:34
Speaker 1: Great guitar players. Spooky Ghost is.
00:03:38
Speaker 2: Jerry Leonard, great guitar player, and and and then I had his drummer and so forth. And I think David Bowie felt a little bit scared that I was poaching his band, his band at the time, like which I wasn't aware of, but he was. That was sort of an underlying thing that he had. Anyways, We're doing the show together for the Tibet House benefit, and there was this quartet, a string quartet that was playing. It was also that David Bowie had brought in to do with him and and and I said, well, there's a quartet available, maybe I'll do something with the quartet as well, because and it was kind of offered in that way. So so I rehearsed with the quartet, gave them something to do. And then the first time I met David Bowie, who when he was sitting there, he was thinking, this guy is trying to steal on my musicians, you know. He was just like that. The first thing I said to him was, hey, David, thank you so much for letting me work with your musicians. Like it was the first guy I brought up. And it kind of took the and I was talking about the quartet just because they were there. But then he used to have this woman with him, Coco, who would hang out, who was sort of his protector, this woman, and she yeah, and she immediately shielded him from me and was like get away, and like, don't you know, I don't know, so so I so so it was. It was it was not a great first meeting, but then subsequently he we we he understood that I wasn't going to steal his entire band, and uh and and then he you know, was fine. He came to a lot of shows and and in a way, It's.
00:05:14
Speaker 1: Funny because I always sort of imagine musicians to have a sort of collegiate uh environment where they are quite open and collaborative with each other. But I suspect maybe, as you there may be egos involved as well, maybe slightly slightly.
00:05:32
Speaker 2: I mean, look, you I what what always struck me the most about David is how almost childlike he was still, I mean in the sense that he was he still has such a sense of wonder about everything. Like when he went to see my show and I get in and I think he enjoyed it. I could really tell that he was dumbfounded by what he saw, and I'm sure was that's the way he was like with a lot of things that he loved. You know, it was like a genuine kind of openness, and but that comes, you know, with also a little bit of you know, childlike anger.
00:06:06
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's interesting because I wonder if you have the same if you have the same thing, because you you travel across many different type genres of music. It seems to me effortlessly like you, like you, you just inhabit one and then move to another. You you can move from folk to jazz to you know, Broadway kind of rasthmatize and remain yourself within it. Is that is there a sense of do you have a sense of wonder about it? Do you retain a sense of wonder a bit?
00:06:39
Speaker 2: Well, I have to maintain a sense of wonder about everything in my life in order or not to you know, I'm not gonna say slit my wrist. That's a little over dramatic, but but you know, to certainly I understand, to certainly function, I I I have to keep that spark going and and yes, it enables me to I think. I think what I've managed to do, which is pretty good, is that I've managed to sort of you know, I dropped out of school twice, like I first I dropped out of music school and then I dropped out of art school. Like I never received a major education in the you know, in college. And I think that was a real saving grace because for me, because therefore I never really felt like I totally knew what was happening or what I was doing or like, I never had a degree to be like, no, I'm it's official, because I would find that so I'm always so I always feel like i'm I'm learning as I go along, and that's yeah, I think it's important to try to remain ignorant a little bit.
00:07:47
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by that take on it because I how how you know your experience of you? Because I find you like, I mean, I know and love your work, but I knew next to nothing about you. I mean, I know of what's available on the internet, but I feel like your work and in a way I know that it's probably a comparison that's done a lot. But but I had the same kind of feeling with Leonard Cohan's work that I felt there was a kind of, uh, there was a kind of humorous, almost Gothic menace with it, with a sense of fun which I could never quite pin down. I feel like it's it's contained somewhere in a in a minor chord somewhere, or maybe it's a or maybe it's maybe it's that that super kind of uh weird Canadian intellectual world that I find fascinating. Yeah, well, it's a little bit the Canadian.
00:08:52
Speaker 2: I think the Canadian aspect cannot be underestimated in the sense that, look, I don't I was born in the US. I was born in New York. My dad's loud and is American, has lived in New York his whole life. But my mother, Kate mcgarago, was Canadian. And yes, when when when I was when my parents divorced, I moved to Canada and was brought up there mainly. And I do feel that there is this kind of and it kind of also interestingly enough, relates to Scotland and to England. Is that, you know, growing up and the fact that it was Quebec, which ad has a whole other with the whole French thing, is that you're in this strange world where you're part of a faded empire, you know. And it's even more it was much more pronounced, like in the eighties, it was so pronounced in Canada as opposed to in England, where it was it had become sort of you know, they'd had enough and uh, and certainly in Scotland and and but it was still so trying to be English. But then you're right next to the United States, you know, which is just so dominant. And then I was also in Quebec, so we're all doing this in French and and so you get developed this strange perspective I guess, of of both, you know, being in the middle of everything and also being totally and nobody can understand where you come from. So it's so it's it's a it's ah. Yeah. Being Canadian has definitely influenced me as.
00:10:32
Speaker 1: It has a weird kind of I wonder if it's something to do with the darkness. I always think that in Scotland, just the fact that there's no light for half a year really and it somehow it makes a different sort of person.
00:10:48
Speaker 2: What's interesting is growing up in Quebec in Canada and we had incredibly cold winters, which sadly I don't think there's as cold as they used to be, but they were, you know, this these Gothic called winters with a lot of snow and the whole thing of like how Russia. You know that whatever the Soviet Union was, this evil empire that you know that nobody could understand.
00:11:13
Speaker 1: We kind of got it.
00:11:16
Speaker 2: We were like we kind of related more to the Soviet Union in terms of what we had to go through in terms of winter, because at least even you, even you guys had like the Gulf Stream, you know, right, we would.
00:11:28
Speaker 1: Get a lid a little bit of beach there.
00:11:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so we kind of understood that that me.
00:11:33
Speaker 1: Have you been to Russia?
00:11:35
Speaker 2: I went once, Yeah, many many years ago, and it was amazing.
00:11:38
Speaker 1: And I found it fascinating because I grew up I'm older than you, but I grew up with the same information about you know, these people are the evil different this is the Soviet thing was. It's very sterile, and they're all kind of like autraumatons and yeah, frightening. And I went there and it's very Did you go to Moscow? Yeah, I went to mind Did you go to the because I went to Red Square in Moscow? I thought it was it's about it's it seems to me very high arch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was fabulous. Yeah, well I would.
00:12:14
Speaker 2: I mean I remember flying into Russia, flying to Russia and definitely getting the sense that you were going into another universe, you know, like, yeah, it was, it was, it was. It has nothing to do. I mean, it's it's it's it's own, it's its own planet in a lot of ways, and and and you know, and then once I got there, I I I felt it it was even more pronounced. What I will say, though, is that of late and I don't know, I'm just going on and on because I tend to do that, is that I was just in Greece for a wedding, and uh, and I'd never been to a Greek Orthodox wedding. I've been to a lot of Catholic weddings, into a lot of you know, Protestant wedding or whatever, but I'd never been to a Greek Orthodox one.
00:13:04
Speaker 1: And it really.
00:13:06
Speaker 2: Struck me how different it was from from the you know, the West, how different the Eastern churches from the Western Church. It says that there's it's such a divide, and and I know it's sort of harkened back to that.
00:13:20
Speaker 1: That's what the difference is. It's that do you do you have a connection to a church? Are you?
00:13:26
Speaker 2: No?
00:13:26
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, I look, I was I was brought up in a very Catholic place.
00:13:31
Speaker 2: I went to Catholic school. I was never baptized. You know, my mother was was highly affected by the church. You know, she's brought up by nuns and somewhat traumatized by that. And uh and and for instance, recently I wrote a requiem mass so that the premiered in Paris.
00:13:53
Speaker 1: Uh.
00:13:53
Speaker 2: And it's actually going to be in l A at at Disney Hall in May with it has a narrator part in it, and Jane Fonda will be the narrator.
00:14:02
Speaker 1: That's tough. Yeah, yes, I was going.
00:14:04
Speaker 2: To I was going to offer myself up, but well, you know what, you know what she did. That's precisely what she did. Yeah, because I was at an event with her. I didn't know her too well, but we were just talking and and and then I said, oh, yeah, we just we just come. I was just in Paris where we was premiered the Wreque. It's called the Dream Requiem and and there's a narrator part in it, and in Paris it was Meryl Streep.
00:14:29
Speaker 1: Did it in Paris?
00:14:30
Speaker 2: Okay, So and I said, and I said, you know, Jane, we're going to bring it to l A. And we're going to do it at Disney Hall. And then Jane went, I'm doing it. I was like what She's like, I'm doing it And she immediately hired herself.
00:14:45
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, yeah, yeah, I guess I forget. I guess that's it.
00:14:50
Speaker 2: But but pertaining to the religious thing, yeah, that's sort of I'm not religious, but I'm I'm I'm affected by it somehow.
00:15:05
Speaker 1: Do you have a belief system that connects to a deity.
00:15:10
Speaker 2: I'm definitely not. I'm definitely not an atheist. I have a strange kind of childlike wonder, hope whatever that they're that everything is connected and everything has a reason and and I'm able to sort of tie that together with my music and and and with my career at all. It's always you know, uh that I wouldn't say nicely, but it's but it's it's it's always managed to come together, should we say.
00:15:39
Speaker 1: And you have a kind of it also didact isn't the right word, but you have a quite but you have a didactic career. Anyway, you have an odd kind of are you looking for something that? Are you looking for something? In the music?
00:15:58
Speaker 2: I'm a three headed monster because I have there's a and they're all very separated.
00:16:05
Speaker 1: Uh.
00:16:06
Speaker 2: One of them is a singer, you know, I'm a I'm a I'm a real singer. Like I sing my work and I sing other people's work. And stuff, and that is its own animal, who I know very little about, you know. It's it's kind of this creature that you know, appears and I kind of just have to ride, you know, and make sure that you know, to put it back or doesn't or doesn't devour other people. So so it's this there's this animalistic side. Then there's the songwriter, you know, which is more sort of like where I come from, like my family. It's like our trade, you know. It's like my sisters do it, my parents did it. It's what I learned how to do and and I love doing it and so forth. And then there's the composer wanting to be a composer. I think that's really me in.
00:16:57
Speaker 1: Terms of composer. Yeah, well that's what I want to do as a human being.
00:17:01
Speaker 2: I was like, I want to I would like to be a composer, and I've I've managed to do that somewhat. It's not all I do, but I mean, I'm talking up the stream requiem a lot, but it's just it's a big deal for me.
00:17:13
Speaker 1: So no, it is a big deal. But to write a requiem mass is almost like it it one we're thinking it was. It's kind of an act of devotion in a way.
00:17:23
Speaker 2: Right, Well, no, no, what's odd about it is that you know I wrote, I wrote a lot of it here in l A. There's a beautiful mansion in Silver like called the Paramour Estate, which is this old. It looks like something from Sunset Boulevard. It's up on top of a hill with these incredible views. And uh and I was and the owner of this wonderful woman, Dana, she let me use the a wing of the estate to compose the requiem. And I was there for a long time for months, and especially the I don't know if you remember if you live in a right you live.
00:18:01
Speaker 1: I have done. I don't anymore.
00:18:02
Speaker 2: But there was a there was a there was a winter like a couple of years ago where it was just raining, and it was when there was like ten feet of snow in the mountains like people.
00:18:12
Speaker 1: I think it was webs.
00:18:15
Speaker 2: So I was kind of shacked up in this in this estate. And the estate, after it had been privately owned, had been turned into into a Catholic girls school. So there was all these crosses, and you know, Virgin Mary's everywhere, and and and and it just I don't know it just poured out of me all of these religious kind of feelings, and especially you know, working with the Mass and the Latin Mass, and really and and and I was a little frightened at how easily it it came forth. And and in the end I decided, you know, I may not be you know, Catholic or anything, but but I would say that certainly, in the world we live in right now, which is so crazy and so you know, troubling, there is a need for some Christian, real Christian values. And I'm not talking about the church. I'm not talking about you know, but just just like good you know that shall not kill you know, you know everyone you know, and you know, let's save the poor and be good to the poor, and like, you know, these kind of simple Christian things which are very touching and and we and the world still needs even though you know you don't have to do it as a religious person necessarily, and even the religious people aren't doing it right now, which.
00:19:39
Speaker 1: Is it's a real it's a real conflict. Do you I wonder if you're talking about living in the wing of this like mad old mansion as you as you write that, this uh, this Requiem Mass whenever I write, or if I talk to people who I write, Pruves and other people who write Prus the US. Music as as a place to go. A lot of people use music as a place to go to to go to a place of inspiration or a place where the doors open up, or or to put yourself somewhere else. And I wonder if that's possible for a musician to do, or if there's some kind of other stimulus that has to that has to be It is the silence, the something that does it is the music inside your head. Already it used to be alcohol and drugs. Well, and that was a great That was a great one. Yeah, that did the trick.
00:20:33
Speaker 2: Now not now, not not as much so, So I would say, you know, it's funny because I mean, once we get into that conversation, I mean, I you know, I certainly I was afraid, you know, when I quit drinking a long time ago, that that I wouldn't be uh inspired, and I wouldn't be able to find you know, and you know and get into that that that that place I have found. Actually now that aging is the new kind of like hing of like not feeling so strong, not feeling more vulnerable, seeing your child have complete control over you, you know, and uh and just and and it's sort of and then that's when I kind of cling to songwriting into you know, lyrics and stuff and and and or going to a concert and hearing I find myself much more inspired now in a deep way, by by by by what's happen, by what's happening around me, because I I've gotten a little older and I kind of understand it more and it's therefore it's more frightening.
00:21:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, I I think I think the aging thing is is a fabulously interested in vain because I always thought I actually I have a tattoo right here where I normally wear my watch of Saturn, the Bringer of old Age, and you know, and and these Saturn and hosts. The Planet Suites was was kind of what got me onto it because in the Planet Suite with all the kind of rumpty tumpty, and then the Saturn piece of music is so weird. It's and I feel that aging is. I think you really nailed that. These kind of weird pushing minor chords, and it's like it's very very odd. It's not just the mortality aspect of it. It's the whole kind of this is.
00:22:34
Speaker 2: Well, this is it's also the gifts that you from from having survived and you know, gone through these experiences.
00:22:42
Speaker 1: I mean, I one thing for me that was so.
00:22:47
Speaker 2: Necessary and and kind of thought out when I started my career was was that, you know, I wasn't going to be this kind of rock and roll tragedy where I was, you know, the sort of flair that goes up and it's amazing, and then you know, who knows what could happen. You know, you either disappear, or you die, or you kind of get bitter or something. And that's sort of why I gravitated more towards classical music as like my main love and opera and stuff, because in that world, all the best music, all the greatest music, is written when you're old. Like all the great composers, the heavyweights, they're all it's always at the end of their life where they finally kind of get into this serious space of you know, contemplation or whatever. And so I'm you know, I makes a great Yeah, I've always got.
00:23:43
Speaker 1: It makes a great deal of sense. I mean, especially if you look at the rokers that do survive, they tend to play the songs that they were they wrote when they were, you know, in their early twenties, and the Rolling Stones are still singing I can't get no satisfied. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know after sixty years ago they wrote that song. I mean, and it's great, and that's a great song. But but if but if you want to, I wonder sometimes what it feels like to be connected so much to a piece of your life which is so distant.
00:24:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's sort of I mean, I it's funny you mentioned that, because it is. I feel so fortunate. I mean, look, I had I had a lot of success when I started out, and but I never quite was I never kind of hit the summit, you know that that that that of you know, pop hitness or whatever. And uh and I that was the greatest godsend that I could have ever wished for as an artist, because I've always been able to just explore and and go further into these other different without having to you know, Harke. I mean, there's a couple of songs like everybody wants to hear me saying Hallelujah, Okay, we'll do that, and maybe cigarettes and chocolate milk. Composers like these kind of things. But it's not. But I'm not. My whole career is dominated by those by that, by that work. So it's so it's I'm very fortunate in that way. I mean, I would have loved the you know, financial perks of having you know, written hallelujah.
00:25:23
Speaker 1: But but but but what I don't know though. I mean I I know quite a few very rich artists, yeah, who who I think would be much happier in your shoes if you less million dollars. Yeah, totally. I think that the the problem is that it particularly now, I don't know if you get any pressure to do this. I suspect no, because I think I think you exist. I see the way I see you, and this may not be how you are, but the way I see you is you. You live within your own world. You you said the you set the limits to what you want to do. I I find myself constantly fighting with people about can you post this? And Instagram? Can you do that?
00:26:12
Speaker 2: And I'm like, yeah, I mean yeah, I mean I have to do that as well. Okay, so that makes me feel no, no, you have to you have to kind of play that game a little bit. And but yes, in the end, of the day.
00:26:27
Speaker 1: I have not.
00:26:29
Speaker 2: I never whatever. I never took a bite out of the apple or whatever.
00:26:33
Speaker 1: You know.
00:26:34
Speaker 2: I I just I just stayed true to you know, what I wanted to do artistically and in a lot of ways, not out of desire. It was just I didn't know how to do anything else, you know, I I was you know, I wasn't particularly I just was so driven by what I heard and saw that I that I just had to go that way.
00:26:52
Speaker 1: Well I think that's an artistic impulse, though, isn't it. I mean, I think that's what that's the gift of being, of being like that.
00:26:58
Speaker 2: I mean, it's funny because there's people, I mean, look, I know, you know, I'm very good friends with Neil Tennant from the from the petch Up Boys, and and he's a dear friend, and he's he was, yeah, and he's my favorite person to talk to about all things kind of cultural and historical and.
00:27:19
Speaker 1: Especially to do with show business and so forth.
00:27:21
Speaker 2: And he you know, really he started as a journalist and he and he wrote about you know, pop, the pop world and and and so for him, like having a pop hit was such a huge deal and and really all that he what what he dreamt about. He still knows about great music and great art and stuff like that. But he was you have to be invested in it, and he was still very much invested in it and he got it and I was never invested in it, you know.
00:27:53
Speaker 1: And yeah, well you come from the strange dark French English politician Canada. You know, there's daylight nighttime, but you know it's I I don't know. I I imagine you live in a you know, in some kind of castle. The books are helping.
00:28:12
Speaker 2: Castle esque. Actually actually sang it Hurst Castle over the weekend. Yeah, I was up there. I was invited to sing in the dining and then they call it the refector reflector reflect refectory, refectory. Okay, yeah, but it's it's the dining room. But I sang. I sang there, and that was that was pretty wild because when you think of who had hung out up there, and you know.
00:28:39
Speaker 1: It's a bit I'm fascinated about that time. Actually, this is my this is my pitch to you. Actually, this is what I think I am. I'd be saying this to everybody because of what's going on right now, Like everyone's saying, oh, it's so crazy, the politics have never been so crazy, and it's so bad. I've got into reading Gorfy Dolls Narratives of Empire. These it's like seven novels set from you know, America. I think it was all the way up to Watergate, from the beginning of America. And have you read them? I haven't read them. I mean I have a big pho. You've got to read them, or because they have such a in a weird way. I always found gour Vidal's very reassuring anyway, because I thought, for somebody that clever around, it will be all right. And he he writes so well about the craziness that America has been going through since the beginning. Yeah, and and and I found it. I find that the it has a real gothic quality about it as well. Yeah.
00:29:49
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I think, no, go ahead, no, no, I think I think you're you're correct. I mean, it's it's this. I mean, yes, we're we're gearing up for will probably be a very violent, you know period with the rhetoric is very violent, but there's been periods that have been way more violent. I mean, the whole thing of assassinations and people are getting made up and like mobs and stuff. It's it's very much part of American culture and part of world culture.
00:30:20
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's part of humans. It's the fight against that, the fight against the you know, that kind of impulse in darkness is is on a big level, you know, on on a societal level. It's it's it's hard to change, as what you talked about earlier, the idea of moving from the self destruction of the alcohol and the drugs and all that kind of stuff and moving away from it because it feels like agency. I think that's why people are so attracted to, you know, that kind of rhetoric and violence, because it feels like you have agency in the world and perhaps you don't really And and I think that I felt the same. I got sober thirty two years ago, and it was I felt the same thing that I thought, Well, I don't know who I am if I if I'm not drinking, and you know, in party and who am I and and whatever. I always thought I was much funnier when I was drunk, and when I got sober, I didn't think I was as funny. But a lot of people who saw theeople.
00:31:30
Speaker 2: Like yah, yeah, perspective yeah, I know it is. It is so interesting because I even I have the same thing I I want. I always feel like I feel as though I was much funnier when I was stone and stuff. But I looked then at footage, you know, because for me it's been a long time as well. But I look at footage and and I'm hilarious all the time, you know, I mean, this is my my very nature is hilarious, you know, just to this whatever the voice, the way I kind twiddling around, and the way I see things, and and it's me, you know, and it's I'm not trying to you know, it's not an act, which which which is always funnier when it's not an act.
00:32:18
Speaker 1: I think the truth is much funnier. It's much harder to believe. But that also that that authenticity in that truth is going to lead you to I think it seems to have led you to the gothic mansion in Los Angeles where you write the Requiem mass or singing at Hurst Castle or not, you know, writing a surefire talp album that will get you the you know, the arena tour. And I don't know, I think there's a limit to what money can do. For you.
00:32:50
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's also it becomes your your drug of choice, then becomes artistic exploration. I mean, I mean, I'm you know if I'm like one of my greatest stories ever for me in terms of getting sober and what that meant, and something that I think about all the time is that I was many years ago, I was super high and drunk and stuff, and I went to see this production of Elektra the Opera Electra by Strauss and it was an amazing evening and it was so wild and crazy and my head exploded and all of that, and I really loved it. And then a few months later I had went to rehab and got sober, cut to uh, you know, a few months later go to the same production of Elektra.
00:33:39
Speaker 1: Because it was still at the opera.
00:33:40
Speaker 2: It was just as amazing and my head was just as blown, and it was the art that kind of went searing through and it was just and for me, there was such an emblematic experience of like, Okay, you don't need whatever, just focus on that, you know, because it has all the power.
00:34:08
Speaker 1: Whenever I talk to someone who's getting sober, who's artistic, and the the worry is always that is that I won't be able to create. I won't be able to write or sing or play the guitar or whatever it is, and or paint or And it always seems to me that artists really interest in artists who are who are creating work while they are drunk and high, are creating network despite the fact that they are drunk and high, not because they are drunk. Yes, And and if you get if you are in a situation like that, then I think it it you get frozen, like you know, like you going, like you saying that you went, moving into classical music and becoming more you know, I'm getting older and weirder, you know, which is I think something that's hard to do if you're stuck in that.
00:35:03
Speaker 2: Well. The other thing too, The other thing too is that when I was in the pop world, and I still am occasionally, but it is more centered around not centered so much now, but but it's certainly back then about around about around drugs and alcohol. I mean, it was pure love and you know, smashing pumpkins and everybody and and uh, Jeff Buckley. So it was sort of this very hazy time and it was you know, fabulous in a lot of ways, and I wouldn't have it any other way. When you get into the classical world, drugs and alcohol have nothing to do with anything, like it's just it's a total other subject. Once you get on stage and you're rehearsing or you're composing something and you're presenting, it's just one hundred percent about the music and that's it and that, And I've just always that that has always been very that has helped me a lot to have.
00:35:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think also the collaborative nature. I mean, if you're working with a sixty piece orchestra, got it's now. And I think also the idea of collaboration with other people who are technically if not if they're not right in the piece is the way they can play. They're just as good as you in terms of being able to you know, better on the instrument.
00:36:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, better in a lot of cases, you know, in a lot of ways.
00:36:26
Speaker 1: And I think that that it's also like you want to bring your game up a little bit if you were around it. I think you're right. I think it becomes because I got sober when I was not when I was doing stand up, but I was doing a play I was doing I was doing the Rocky Horror Show in the West End in London, and there was a lot of moving parts and a lot of and there was a lot of you know, like, I don't think Richard O'Brien was sober at that point either. And but but you could get hurt if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, if the machine came down and it kind of required you to be on top of it a little bit. Yeah, And I think that that's kind of encouraged me to also, I didn't when you see that look at disappointment on people who know you can do better. Yeah, the most horrible thing. Oh yeah, I know that. I know that, I know that. Yeah, it's it's my least favorite look. I try never to practice it on my children when I like, but if I really want to torture my boys, I'll say, you know, I'm not agree, I'm just disappointed to old of your boys. Now, I have a twenty three year old and a thirteen year old.
00:37:36
Speaker 2: Ah, so you're still in it. You're still in it? Well, I mean, yeah, I have a thirteen year old daughter.
00:37:42
Speaker 1: Right, Well you're dead that that's the in it and it's it's it's an interesting challenge with the generation, not so much the thirteen year olds. Now, like my thirteen year old, I feel like I can have a I have a direct and easier communication with him. Yeah, but the my older son is very much a generation which yeah, we we're great, were on fine, but it's it's a difficult generation for me to connect with. I have to I have to work out it a little bit because I feel like I can feign very easily. I don't want to do that. I don't want to hit people's feelings and I really genuinely don't and I feel like it's easy to do that. Yeah. Yeah with that, Yeah, I mean my my daughter.
00:38:27
Speaker 2: I think I think our thirteen year olds are in an interesting position because I think on one hand, there's just really tough what they've had to endure, what they've seen with you know, with the whole pandemic thing, and then you know Trump and you know, like like there's no sugar coating to to the world and phones and you know this, you know, like so so it's very they're on one hand and and the one time there's there's there's a lot of worries, especially I think with daughter, with with I think with girls, it's it's it's it's kind of well, I think actually it's actually bad with both. But but that being said, I think they're I think they have to be tough, which is a good thing, you know. I mean they have to you know, you know, they you know, they have to. They're not they're not having it handed to them.
00:39:15
Speaker 1: No, It's also it's also I mean, I'm very grateful that I came of age in a time when my behavior wasn't being digitized over. I mean, I made a fill of myself and a lot of a lot of evenings falling down. You know. Just the truth is I I sometimes like to talk of my drinking is and drugging is is kind of like a bad, wild, sort of crazy thing. But if it was just that, I'd probably still be doing it. It wasn't. It's kind of pathetic. It's it's the fetal position at four o'clock in the morning, you know, it's the it's the it's the incontinence of mouth, you know, speech and everywhere else. You know that the pathetic nature of it. I would hate to see that, yeah, now, you know, and I'd be embarrassed by I also think, you know, the idea of you know, people, I'm very glad that I got married and was in a stable relationship before dating apps as well, because I don't know how I wouldn't know how to do that. It seems it's yeah, it's a it's a law. And you know, junior high school is the world is junior high school? Yes, No, it certainly is. It certainly is. No, it's very yeah.
00:40:40
Speaker 2: And this is the thing also as talking when I spoke earlier about getting older, is is sort of the new drug. But it is this strange kind of thing where you become Now I do feel like the nerdy teenager in the corner, like while the party is going on, of like nobody's paying attention to me, and I'm like kind of a crush on you know whatever, like the football player. Like it's like, it's just it's just it's it's it's I've just reverted back to that that state, which is horrible in certain ways, but it's also you're really looking at the you're kind of fascinated by the world as well. Like I've know's it's it's less it's because it's more more scary. It's it then becomes more interesting.
00:41:28
Speaker 1: Well, it contains, it contains terrors that I hadn't I hadn't kind of done the idea of my own you know, crumbling is less frightening to me than the fact that you know, I have children and I you know, I love them more than I can understand. I don't know what to do with that, and and to have that kind of man, yeah, to hang around. It's it's a strange. It's a strangeness. But I think I think I quite like getting older. Yeah, if I'm honest, No, I I do.
00:42:12
Speaker 2: I mean I just hit fifty one, and I will say that my I loved my forties. They were Yeah, they were just flying high, gliding through, you know, checking out the scene. You know, it was just looking great, feeling fine. You know, it was just it was just amazing. Fift Then you hit the fifties and you really like you hit it and and it's only because it's not because you feel totally different, but there's a slight change. It's a very slight change, and just and you just start to have thoughts like you know, that little pain could be my death. Like yeah, like like like there's it could happen, you know, And it's and it's just so there's just this I think the early I'm imagining, and you can tell me that the early fifties are tricky because you just start to sort of like, yeah, there's these little bells that go off, and you're like, oh, I imagine that. By the end of your fifties, s's just like whatever.
00:43:08
Speaker 1: You kind of get used to it. Okay, I felt like my fifties, but end of my fifties that was used to it. When I turned fifty, I was I was crazed. I didn't even want to talk about it. When I turned sixty, I was like I don't Yeah, And now that I'm sixty two, every now and again it's it's shocking to me. Yeah, you know that. It's like, this is shocking that I'm sixty two and it has it has that discordant quality. It has that weird, like a weird piece of music, that saturn you know, a piece. And but not to get too depressing about it, but since.
00:43:47
Speaker 2: We're but we're both of Celtic descent or something like that, are the Scottish Celts.
00:43:54
Speaker 1: The Scottish Clts? Right?
00:43:56
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but but no, is that what I think is that the sixties, you probably get used to it, but sadly and now I'm going to get really dark.
00:44:08
Speaker 1: You know.
00:44:08
Speaker 2: My mother died and when she was sixty three, and I think, like, if you die in your sixties, it's terrible because or if you know you're going to die, because you're just you've just gotten into it and you're kind of looking forward to old age a little bit, yea, like you know, and to have that robbed, you know. I think in a strange way is I think so so so just make it past your sixties because I think sixties, well, that's exactly what you get through. Seventies, seventies is the new thirty. That's what it is.
00:44:43
Speaker 1: I think that's right. Seventy is the new thirty. Yeah, but it's like it's the day's it is, no and I whenever I can be here in the moment, yeah, I'm slightly better than when I can't do Yeah. Yeah, I think sixties is a new ninety.
00:45:08
Speaker 2: Seventies, thirty fifties, the new fifty fifty.
00:45:15
Speaker 1: One is the new forty. I think you'd be fine. It's been a joy speaking with you. Yes, I was a little nervous about to talk to you. Because I'm intimidated by great talent. Oh thank you. I don't like being around it that much. I find it unsettling.
00:45:33
Speaker 2: I think we have one friend in common. I mean it's been ages, but you remember Jen Stills? Yes, yeah, I know I haven't seen her in ages, but I just remember her speaking about you.
00:45:46
Speaker 1: Was it okay? Yeah?
00:45:47
Speaker 2: No, yeah, yeah, no, she she toured with me once. She was great fun, an amazing character and a wonderful woman. Then yeah, she spoke very highly of you.
00:45:57
Speaker 1: Do you know Dominating Miller as well? Don't? Yeah, he's stings guitarist.
00:46:01
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well well I sort of no, sort.
00:46:05
Speaker 1: Of maybe probably. I haven't seen domin years either, but he's a he's a good lad. He can play a bit. Yeah. Yeah, listen, it has been a great joy. I am. I think going to come to Carnegie Hall of the you must, you must, you must.
00:46:25
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I think I'm going on the twentynin, yes of twenty eight in November, right, yes, day after Thanksgiving please right. I think I might be able to get it quite again, it's quite I can't gamble.
00:46:37
Speaker 1: We're taking. I think I think you'll be okay, I think you'll be all right, I'll bring some friends great, please do all right. Okay, thank you so much for this. It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much.
00:46:49
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Okay, goodbye.
00:46:51
Speaker 1: By on four four two four three th
