The Archive Series: David Crosby - April 1993

The first of an extensive series of archival interviews, this 1993 conversation with David Crosby marked the beginning of a dialogue that has continued for nearly 30 years … read and enjoy!

 

There are few current artists with David Crosby’s combined history and track record. In 1964, Crosby co-founded The Byrds, pioneering what became “folk-rock.” The Byrds blended the intelligence of folk lyrics with the innovative musical trails being blazed by rock musicians, led by The Beatles, who dubbed Crosby and Co. their “favorite American group.”

Unlike most of his early ‘60s peers, who allowed a preconceived public image to represent them, Crosby always broke down artificial barriers, being as real as possible, and reflecting that attitude in his songs. This highly individual stance ultimately resulted in his ouster from The Byrds’ nest in 1967, a blessing in disguise if there ever was one.

Crosby soon cultivated new musical friendships and alliances, including Joni Mitchell, John Sebastian, and most importantly, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. Crosby had actually been a temporary member of Stills’ Buffalo Springfield at the Monterey Pop Festival in ’67, filling in for an absent Neil Young, after performing with The Byrds. After the Springfield’s demise, Crosby and Stills began working together as a duo, committing a few songs to tape, and plotting out a future, when the “big event” took place. Although the actual location differs depending on the source, on one fine day in 1968, Crosby, Stills, and Nash locked voices for the first time.

Crosby and Stills were sitting around with friends, Graham Nash, then of the Hollies, among them. Nash listened attentively as Crosby and Stills ran through each other’s songs. After requesting three successive renditions of Stills’ “You Don’t Have to Cry,” Nash added his high harmony into the mix … and there was no looking back.

Crosby, Stills, and Nash, the band’s 1969 debut, showcased three exceptionally talented singer/songwriters whose otherworldly vocal blend took the country by storm; songs like “Marrakesh Express,” “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” and “Long Time Gone” proved that this trio was a formidable one that would set new standards in popular music. Almost a quarter century later, a CSN concert is still a celebratory event. A certain timeless magic transforms the sights and sounds into something way beyond the ordinary.

Like many other groups, CSN has had its share of problems of the years, the most serious of them being Crosby’s increasing addiction to freebase cocaine and heroin, beginning in the late ‘70s. That habit eventually landed him in a Texas jail cell in 1985. It was a distressing and disheartening experience for the group’s fans, who had always looked upon them as ‘60s survivors.

As one of those fans, I am happy to report that Crosby’s problem is a thing of the past. He is 100% back in the land of the living; healthy, sane, and sober, and has a great new album, Thousand Roads. Enlisting the help of his friends including Graham Nash, Phil Collins, Jackson Browne, John Hiatt, Joni Mitchell, and Marc Cohn, Crosby’s third solo effort is easily his strongest, firmly reestablishing his reputation as a master singer/songwriter and peerless interpreter.

I spoke with Crosby just prior to the album’s release. Our conversation covered almost every aspect of a career that has spanned almost thirty years.

Roy Abrams: With your new album, you’ve come full circle in a way. With The Byrds, you focused a lot of attention on interpreting other artists’ material, most notably Bob Dylan’s. With CSN, CSNY, and your solo career, the emphasis was on self-penned songs. Now, with Thousand Roads, there are seven magnificent examples of the art of interpretation. You’ve really made the songs your own. What was your criteria for choosing those particular songs?

David Crosby: I have to give credit to Bonnie Raitt. I listened to Nick of Time and I thought, God, this is one of the best albums I’ve heard in ten years. And I said, well, Bonnie didn’t write all that stuff, she just made it hers. I thought, I can do that. I can’t sing like Bonnie, but nobody else can either! [Laughs] I only maybe write three or four songs in a year that I really, really like, so this took a lot of pressure off me. It also gave me a much wider palette of colors to work from. The selection process was the simplest possible criteria you could ask for. The only thing that matters to me about a song is, does it make you feel it. I don’t care who wrote it, I don’t care where it came from. I care (about): does it make you feel anything? And that was my whole yardstick. I was very lucky. There were some things that happened that were just really unusual; you know, writing a song with Joni (Mitchell), which doesn’t happen. I don’t think anybody’s ever written a song with her. Having Jimmy Webb give me a song like “Too Young to Die,” which is such a stunner──or discovering “Natalie” in the middle of a bunch of songs of Stephen Bishop’s. I was lucky.

RA: How would you compare writing alone with collaborations?

DC: I like ‘em both. I don’t try to legislate it; I just do what comes. But I find that working with other people very often sparks me into going to places that I would not have gone, and I love that! It inevitably makes it better, widens the scope.

RA: Are there performing plans for this album?

DC: Yeah, if the record (goes) well, I’ll definitely try. There are some people I’d love to work with; I’d love to put together a band and go out and play. I’m definitely gonna do some stuff this summer with Graham ‘cause we worked CSN all last summer. We’ve been trying to change it up, keep it fresh, so he and I are gonna go out and do a couple of things this summer; us and a couple of other singer/songwriters in a package, and I think we’re gonna do a couple of dates with symphony orchestras which ought to be fascinating

RA: Are there any moments that especially stand out during the album sessions?

DC: Yeah, several. Recording “Hero” with Phil Collins at the Genesis studio──Fischer Lane Farm in England. The sessions that I did with Glyn Johns at his place in Surrey were amazing. I had never worked with Andy Fairweather-Low before, or Wix, the keyboard player from McCartney’s band. I had known (former Eagles guitarist) Bernie Leadon but I hadn’t played with him before. Those were amazing sessions, man. Glyn Johns is astounding. The session when we cut “Too Young to Die’ with Don Was was just a stunner. “Helpless Heart” with Jeff Porcaro playing was a great (session). The session that we did “Old Soldier” at Jackson Browne’s studio──John Leventhal, Lee Sklar, and Marc Cohn playing piano, Nash doing a harmonica solo. Man, it was so good! It as just so easy, it was like [snaps his fingers]──things just falling exactly where they should. There was a lot of that on this record. This record was not a struggle to do. There was some trepidation about it, using so many different players, producers, locations, kinds of songs. But it really jelled remarkably easily. I don’t know──somebody up there smiled.

RA: Do you think that CSNY might at some point say, “Let’s do it again”?

DC: With Neil, you mean? Yeah, it’s possible. I just did a rally in Portland with Neil. He and I are really good friends and I love working with the guy. But you have to understand, he really doesn’t need us. He is self-contained, by himself, as powerful a musical experience as you need. He’ll take you on a full, complete trip. Just Neil. Whether it could happen or not … you know, it’s a really complex chemistry. The four of us is really just a little too much to fit in one package, and sometimes that’s a very good thing, ‘cause it makes kind of a compressed, explosive mixture. Other times, it really doesn’t work. It’s really hard to know when is the time to pull that one off or not. I have absolutely tremendous respect for (Neil), and for his artistic integrity and for his courage and for his skill, his art. I think he’s a fantastic guy and I would work with him anytime.

RA: At the Dylan Tribute at the Garden last year, Neil came out right after Sinead O’Connor got booed off stage and managed to turn a really strange atmosphere back into a party.

DC: I think they were wrong to get on her case like that, but I think she was wrong in how she made her point. I don’t know her, but I think she’s a very sincere person, but not tremendously skilled at getting her point across. Frankly, if I was an Irish woman, I’d be really pissed at the Catholic Church myself. Wanna know the truth? That’s the truth. I totally disagree (with the Church). I think it’s complete reproductive irresponsibility. That’s my own personal opinion. You know, I do benefits for Voters for Choice, so you know which side of that question I’m on. I’m sorry that there were people there that felt that they had to take her down for it. But Neil has such power as a performer.

RA: I wanted to thank you for introducing Michael Hedges during last year’s tour. How’d you hook up with him?

DC: You know, it’s a funny story. I ran into him several years back in the parking lot of a market in Mill Valley. He knew who I was and came up to me and said, “Hi, my name is Michael Hedges, and I play guitar, too.” I said, really? and he said “Yeah.” I said, what kind of stuff” and he said, “Here, I’ll show you.” And he played something like “Aerial Boundaries” and I went WHAT?!?!?!? Who are you?? Come up to my house! Play me some more of that stuff. I was still stoned then, you know, so I didn’t really pursue the friendship because I was mostly into getting loaded. Later on, I heard a couple of songs off his Watching My Life Go By album. He just knocked my brain out. I think the guy’s incredibly talented. Him and Marc Cohn and Shawn Colvin and Paul Brady are my four favorite up-and-comers.

RA: Who’s out there that you would eventually like to work with?

DC: Bruce (Hornsby). All the musicians you talk to will say Hornsby right away, ‘cause he’s an absolutely brilliant musician. Who else … Paul Brady. He’s probably one of the best singer/songwriters in the world, and he’s completely underrated. He wrote “Luck of the Draw” (a popular track from Bonnie Raitt’s breakthrough album). Shawn Colvin … I think Shawn is one of the two or three best woman singer/songwriters in the world. I’ve worked with Michael (Hedges) some already but I would like very much to work with him more. He and I wrote that song “Arrows” on the last CSN album, and that was a great experience. I think he’s a major talent.

RA: Performing a very personal song can be like walking a tightrope. With songs like “Carry Me” and “Guinevere,” do you ever have a problem making it through the performance?

DC: I can make it through the performance, but I’ve wound up in tears (afterward) But that’s good. You write from things that really make you feel something and you’re into the real stuff. I really think that’s’ the central thing about songwriting: to write about stuff that really makes you feel something. Sometimes it’s dangerous because you re-live the experience. But that’s okay; it’s healthy.

RA: In terms of your own songwriting, are you still into the various open tunings and stuff?

DC: Yeah! Most guitar players start by tuning the low pitch E string down to a D, so you can play in a D tuning. After you realize that you change it, then you start changing all of ‘em, (and you get) all kinds of weird patterns. When I ran into Joni, she was so advanced in it──before she ever made her first album, the one that I produced. I think she’s still probably one of the most advanced of all. Her and Hedges, I think, are probably the two farthest-out people in tunings that I know about. Nash does some amazing ones. Stills does some amazing ones.

RA: When you were growing up, your brother got you into jazz and your mother turned you on to a lot of classical music.

DC: Yeah, that’s true.

RA: To what degree did the music influence your harmony singing? Or was harmony just ingrained in your DNA?

DC: I think that stuff really had a strong influence on me. Not to say that the Everly Brothers didn’t, and some other very strange influences, too, like the first of the Bulgarian Folk Choir albums that came out in the ‘60s sometime. It just nailed me, you know. They were doing stuff that no one else had even dreamt of. But I’ve always been fascinated with harmony singing. Some of the earliest records I remember were people like the Weavers. I sang in choirs, too. I lucked into a very wide set of influences.

RA: How much of an impact did The Beatles have on you when you were first starting out? What was it like hanging out with them?

DC: The impact was sort of like a sledgehammer in the forehead! [Laughs] I hung out with them a fair amount over several different periods of time, the best being in England at the time they were making Sgt. Pepper. John was a good guy. I really regret him going. I have a long list of people that I really regret losing.

RA: You’ve worked with Dylan in the past. What’s it like?

DC: Ah, he’s a fun guy. He’s a great guy. [Long pause] I’m very comfortable with him ‘cause I’ve known him for a long time. On another level, I’m in awe of him as a writer, but as a human being, I’m not I can sit with him, comfortably talk to him and relate to him as a person, so he and I have a great time. Most people, when they get around him, they’re kind of like [makes shell-shocked face], and he plays with them. If they have a distorted viewpoint of him like that, then he’ll play with them.

RA: You and Chris Hillman worked with Roger McGuinn on The Byrds’ boxed set and recorded four new Byrds tracks in the process. Do you think you’ll be doing any more work with McGuinn at some point in the future?

DC: I want to, but I don’t think he does. I’ve asked him several times, ‘cause I would really like to be doing some Byrds stuff along with all the other things that I’m doing. He doesn’t want to do it; I don’t know why. Chris and I──and I don’t mean to say it in a snotty way──who have more active careers than he does, are both willing to set them aside and take the time to do it. But he doesn’t want to do it. You have to ask him why. I would love to do it. I think the guy’s a genius and I would love to work with him. I think that the chemistry is still there as proven by the things that we did [in the boxed set].

RA: If you were to put together your own “magic band”──past or present influences──which names would come to mind?

DC: With me in it or not?

RA: With you in it──why not?

DC: Magic band? [Long pause] Me, Phil, Hornsby, Clapton, and Lee Sklar. Phil’s just an astounding drummer. Now, everybody sees him as a singer and forgets that he’s one of the best drummers there is.

RA: Even though you included several previously unreleased gems in the CSN boxed set, I know there has to be a lot more material floating around.

DC: There is──

RA: Are there any plans in the future to sift through and put out “Little Blind Fish” (the only song all four members of CSNY share songwriter’s credit)?

DC: [Laughs] A lot of people would like us to do an archival series, a sort of vault album. Stuff that is really for people who are pretty way deep into it. Those (songs) have a limited market; we’re considering it. There is some fascinating stuff, some very, very interesting stuff. We have an entire album’s worth of demos of the first time anybody put down anything about a song. The first time Graham played “Teach Your Children,” or when I was playing “Wooden Ships” before we ever had the words. Interesting glimpses, you know? But they have a very limited appeal. There’s not many people who care about them. Those who do care about ‘em care a lot. We’re looking for a way (to release the material).

RA: Are there any outtakes from the Crosby/Nash Wind on the Water period?

DC: You know, it’s funny you should bring that up. I was listening to that record not long ago and it hit me again that I just have got to do another one of them. That was some of the best work I’ve ever done in my life and I was talking with Graham about it and I think we’re gonna do another Crosby/Nash album. We’ve been working as Crosby, Stills, and Nash for the last couple of years, so I think we’re gonna do it Man, every time I listen to that record, it still just rings my bell.

RA: When you first started out in this business, did you ever consider the possibility that you’d still be doing this, let alone achieve this level of success?

DC: Nah.

RA: How do you feel, looking back?

DC: I feel like I’m very lucky to still be here. I’m sorry that I wasted as much time as I did being stoned, because I could have done a lot more, but I’m very, very happy with where I am now and who I am now and how my life is going now. I’ve paid a lot of dues to get here but it is a great place to be. I’m pretty comfortable with what it is I do and how it is I do it. I think I’m a very lucky man.

 

© 2021 Roy Abrams

Originally published in The Island-Ear, Issue 369, June 7-20, 1993

Cleared for Takeoff: Brandon Gurba Launches His Solo Career

Brandon Gurba

Having known singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Brandon Gurba since he was 16, I was already aware that he possessed a degree of musical talent almost eerie in both depth and scope. His former band, The Little Red Men, was a regional favorite a few years ago, but the members parted ways and have moved in different creative directions. During the past six years, Brandon has matured into a confident, assured artist whose new material reveals just how much he has grown. Back at the end of April, slightly more than a week after the April 17 release of “Paperman”, Gurba’s debut single, we set aside time to catch up and talk. Our conversation roamed far and wide, with Brandon sharing his thoughts and experiences on launching a solo career, the intricacies of the one-man recording process, and his journey from being a four-year-old songwriter (!) through today.

Roy Abrams: So, as of this morning (April 26), “Paperman” reached #3 on the New York City Metro indie chart on Reverbnation, and it is  ranked #13 globally. From what my ears are telling me, this single is going to do a lot of things for you.

Brandon Gurba: Thank you so much! I don’t know why it’s doing so well. On Spotify, I reached my goal of breaking 1,000 streams in the first week. I had some friends message me, saying, “Wow, that was fast, congratulations!” I was so thankful, you know. 

RA: It even jumps out of an iPhone speaker! My prior experience as a recording artist taught me that if you can get the song sounding good out of a pair of small speakers, you’ve done your job well. That was the old school method, at least. Let’s talk about your debut release, including the writing, recording, arrangement, and production. I understand this is a D.I.Y. effort.

BG: Yeah, although my friend Stevie Lomangino played drums on the track based on my original demo version. I had a drum demo that I recorded at my house, and we based his part off of what I was doing.

           

RA: After more than a dozen listenings, I am absolutely captivated by your vocal arrangements. You’re talking to a harmony fanatic. I love the notes that you picked out of the air and how you placed them in the mix. You know, when you were 16, you were already creating music that had a real “wow” factor but you’ve attained a whole new level here. Vocally speaking, you possess a very Zen-smooth delivery. To my ears, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke comes instantly to mind.

BG: Wow. That’s such a compliment, because when I was writing the song, working the song out, I was really influenced by In Rainbows, specifically a track called “Weird Fishes.” There’s something about the momentum they create in that song that’s incredible; specifically with the vocals. Thom Yorke has this wonderful mixed voice, a very light and soft tonality. Something about it reminds me of “easy listening” but it has this really interesting experimental arrangement I think as I’ve gotten older, my voice has matured and softened. I (also) started listening to a lot of R&B music. When I was younger, I was self-taught; I really didn’t know how to sing—like, I knew how to sing, but I didn’t really know. Then I had a vocal injury when I was a senior in high school, It was from not knowing how to use my diaphragm. I never told anyone that; I mean, a few people know that, but yeah, I had vocal nodules, which was really from not knowing the proper technique and being so self-taught that I didn’t know how to sustain, like breath support, and I didn’t know anything about shoulder tension. I found a vocal coach, and he helped me a lot. I studied with him for eight months, and it was incredible. I went to a vocal therapist before deciding to go to him. The therapist was like, “I don’t know if you’re really going to be able to sing again like you used to,” and it scared me so much so I really got into the vocal/technical things regarding not just singing, but also performing. I went to the vocal coach and he helped me out; I healed within a month and a half. The things that I can do now far surpass what I could do when I was younger in every way: The amount of time I can perform live and sustain my voice without being tired; the riffs and vocal runs that I can do, I can do stuff now that I really never thought I could do, and I’m really happy about that. Definitely, the last few years, vocal technique and all that has been extremely important to me. When I was a little younger, it was more about energy and vibe and feel, but now it’s a lot more about sustaining and lasting in a performance, lasting in a career. I want to be singing for as long as I absolutely can. I don’t want to lose my voice when I hit a certain age, because that happens to a lot of singers that I look up to. 

RA: Let’s circle back to the song itself. We had a really interesting discussion the other day about the genesis of the lyrics. You were talking about trying to figure out why this is resonating with people. As you and I both know, it’s not just the words, it’s not just the music; it’s the combination. This is what my ears are telling me, which even goes down to the key that the song is in. We both know that the mood or emotional pull of a song is also predicated on what key it’s performed in. I think that where your voice is going melodically, with those lyrics and what’s going on with your arrangement, is what’s tugging at people’s ears and hearts. There’s a certain yearning, desperation, and yet a sense of resolution contained in your lyrics. 

BG: Thank you so much! That was certainly the intention. I wanted the song, especially the vocal performance, to give off a sense of “I’m biking up a hill and it’s hard, but I know I’m gonna get to the top of it.”  I’m sincerely trying to get to a better place, and I feel that’s sort of what it explores. The way I delivered it, vocally, I tried to pull a lot out of my chest voice, specifically. I tried to shout when it was appropriate. There’s a few parts where it almost feels like I’m yelling. It’s soft, and the timbre is nice, but I’m really pulling with my chest voice, and I feel like it creates a kind of yearning, desperation sort of feeling. I would say that I think I did that well in the choruses of the song, at the hook. I never would have been able to do that song a few years ago. It took me some time to mature. It required a lot of patience. I’m really a perfectionist when I’m doing vocals. I will spend a half hour on a word if I have to. I just want it to be right. I’m extremely particular. I know what I want. I could show a demo to somebody and they’ll be like, “Oh, the vocals sound great!” but I’ll be like, “Yeah, but this word, I gotta re-do it.” Luckily, I was able to knock that out in a session. I think I recorded the main vocal in three or four hours, but the harmonies really took a long time because of the arranging and the performance and all that. It’s funny, because whenever I arrange vocals, I don’t spell it out on piano or guitar, I just kind of do it by ear, where I’ll stand there and loop a certain section. I’ll sing a low part, above the bass but not too low, then I’ll decide (if) I want it on every word in the phrase or do I just want it on one word. That was just a beast, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the vocal arrangement. There’s a lot of yearning and sincerity in that performance, and I’m really proud of it, looking back at it. But I’m always super critical; even when I finish a vocal, I’m like, “Hmm, can I do this better? Can I do that better?” At the end of the day, nothing’s really going to be perfect, you just have to accept it.

RA: Oh, yeah. That’s a process we all have to go through, I think. One of the most difficult things in a recording environment is knowing when to say, “Okay, the song just told me it’s done!”

BG: Without a doubt! I have a lot of music right now that I’m kind of sitting on, trying to tweak, and I have a couple of songs that I tweaked too much, and I had to go backwards. It comes down to being able to trust your performance and trust your work. Yeah, that was definitely a battle with “Paperman” because I wanted it to be right. I knew from the beginning that I wanted this to be my first song, because you only debut once, you know? I wanted it to be a quality performance, I wanted the mixing to be good. This was definitely my jump, like I jumped off a cliff right into the whole process with mixing, tracking and engineering it, figuring out which microphones would be good on this guitar part; every little detail.

RA: Was that done by trial and error or were there courses that you were taking at SUNY Purchase that gave you a lot of insight?

BG: It was really just trial and error. At Purchase, the professors will help you with a song, when you want to show it to them. They give you tips, but it’s really about the students taking control and deciding for themselves what they want to do. They really gave us a lot of time to work on the projects that we wanted to work on individually. I showed the song to a couple of professors and got their opinions and tweaked it last-minute based on that, Here’s the thing: I was working on the song and was feeling a little iffy about it and was a little bit scared because it was going to be my debut. I showed it to my professor, who is someone I really admire. He’s a GRAMMY-nominated, award winning producer and mixing engineer. He’s a brilliant guy, and I showed him the song and he was like, “Listen. I really feel like this song will take your solo career to the next level.” And I was like, “Really?!” He said, “Yes. I suggest that you get this professionally mastered by Alex DeTurk at The Bunker Studio in Brooklyn.” I had never done that before, I never reached out to a mastering engineer. I spoke to him, and we went back and forth. It was a really cool process. My point being that people believed in it and that really encouraged me to put it out.

RA: You told me that you originally planned on nipping in and out of the studio but one night, you went in at 10:00 and ended up not getting out until 10:00 the following morning—

BG: That was for the harmony vocals.

RA: Did you get all the vocal performances done in those 12 hours or was that inclusive of the full mixdown?

BG: I did the main vocal, verse and chorus, probably a week prior to the actual harmony tracking session. What I usually do is write down the lyrics, then I’ll go into a session where I’m solely just recording the main vocals. Depending on the song, I’ll usually take a week to decide if I want harmonies. I’ll listen back to it on my phone and go, “Does this phrase need a harmony? What can I do here? What can I do there?” Usually, after that week, I go into the studio with a pretty good understanding of how many vocals I’m gonna track to put over the main vocal. With “Paperman”, I kind of knew what I was gonna do; I was like, “I’m gonna do this, that, and that.” I thought that it was only going to take like three or four hours but then I’m in there and (thought), I can do this differently, let me try this. Then you go down this rabbit hole … wait a second, what if I try this? Earlier, you mentioned that the key of a song is really important to how it makes the listener feel. Usually what I do is, when I’m writing or when I’m stuck on something, I’ll take my song and pitch it up or down completely, and I’ll sing random harmony ideas over it, and I’ll actually get different ideas from it being pitched differently. It makes you feel differently emotionally, so that gave me a bunch of new ideas. It just took so long! For each vocal track, I probably did like 20 takes and picked the best of the best and figured out what sounded good together. In the end, it came out as something I’m really proud of.

RA: You did a masterful job. Here’s another question. The single came out on the 17th. Here we are .. it’s nine days later and the song is taking off. How do you feel?

BG: [Sighs] Oh, man. I’m just so thankful. These last couple of years I’ve been dreaming about releasing a song, dropping a debut, putting out something under my own name. I’ve been working by trial and error, researching how I could promote it. For the past couple of years, I’ve been doing my homework on all fronts, preparing and working. It’s definitely a process. There were a lot of moments where I was so frustrated and it was very discouraging. My goals, my dreams are so high … there’s a lot that I really want to achieve. I just kept going with it, even when it got hard. There was a lot that I had to learn with production and mixing, even singing. To look at it now, only nine days after the release, and see the response that it’s getting is extremely fulfilling and inspiring. It feels so validating, you know?

RA: When I really like a song, I have a tendency to listen to it over and over again. With “Paperman,” that’s what’s happening. Every time I listen to it, I hear something else, which leads to yet another listen!

BG: [Laughs]

RA: As with Radiohead, I think that musicians will be drawn to this track because of the wealth of cleverness and musical ingenuity. For harmony singers, boy, is there something to wrap your head around!

BG: A fun thing with this song in particular was the instrumentation. This is the first song that all the guitars are just clean guitars; there’s no solos, no distortion, strictly clean guitars with reverb, that’s it. I wanted to challenge myself because I (used to) rely on traditional hard rock elements. I love that, but a thing that I like to do with clean guitars is to pan them hard left and hard right. I’ll make these arpeggiated, sort of chordal, fingerpicking sort of things—I don’t know how to describe it—but each note locks in together, syncs together, and it creates this sort of harmonically rich texture, I did that a lot with “Paperman” and I think I was successful with it.

RA: When did you pick up your first instrument?

BG: I have a really weird, interesting story with music. When I was either three or four years old, I heard The Beatles for the first time, it brought me an insane amount of joy that has continued to last my whole life. From that young of an age, I wanted to make songs and be an artist. I would make songs in my head, write lyrics down, always had a melody associated with the lyrics so I would never forget the melody. I’ve probably been writing songs since I was four or five. My parents got me a toy guitar but I didn’t know how to play it. I couldn’t figure it out; I had no clue. I wasn’t the type of kid who would go on the internet (and research). The way I learned was very hands-on. I would read a book about it, but I couldn’t really understand it because I had no knowledge of chords or anything. I didn’t even know that you could tune a guitar! From a super young age up until I was about twelve, I didn’t know how to play any chords. I randomly would let the guitar be in whatever tune it was, and I would figure out little shapes and would mimic songs. When I was in 5th grade, there was this Coldplay song called “Fix You” and the chords in it are super repetitive. I had this toy, cheapo acoustic guitar and what I would do is take my two fingers, go by the twelfth fret, and just go up and down (the neck) and let the strings ring out. I would sort of make weird arrangements but I had no clue what I was doing. Finally, someone showed me when I was twelve, you know, “Here’s a chord.” I was like, “Oh, that’s a chord? Oh, now I get it!” That first week, I probably learned ten chords. When I was younger, I would make CD cases, like album artwork. I would take construction paper and just draw albums, logos, and put them in a blank CD case and go, “That’s my album!” I just really wanted to have a CD so badly. I’ve been doing all that since I was really young and I guess it was directly inspired by The Beatles. Probably The Beach Boys, too, and Johnny Cash, but I wanted to have a tangible product and be an artist. I started singing in choirs when I was like nine, and I kept doing that all the way until college.

RA: What’s your next step?

BG: I’m going to be announcing my next single in a few weeks. I want to put that out on May 22 but will probably announce it a week before that. That’s the next step.

Note: As of today, July 9, Brandon’s follow-up single, “Saw You There,” has kept him in the Reverbnation Top Ten in the NYC/Indie chart at $8, #66 nationwide, and #93 globally. You’ll want to check this song out as well!

© Roy Abrams 2020

“Paperman” recording information and credits

Snare: SM57s on the top and bottom snare

Toms: Sennheiser e604s

Kick: Shure Beta 52a

Bass guitar: Squier vintage modified Jaguar, DI

Vocals: MXL 9000 tube mic

Guitars: Fender Stratocaster and an Epiphone LP Custom.

Amps:

Marshall DSL 100 w/ Marshall 4X12 Cab, Fender Mustang III Combo

Guitar Amp Mics: AT 2020, SM57

Interfaces:

Presonus Firestudio Project, Behringer Uphoria UMC404HD

Produced by: Brandon Gurba

Written by: Brandon Gurba

Mixed by: Brandon Gurba

Performed by: Brandon Gurba, Stevie Lomangino (Drums)

Recorded using LogicPro

Mastered by: Alex DeTurk of The Bunker Studio

Recorded at: Brandon’s house, and SUNY Purchase Recording Studios

Mild-Mannered Superman: A Conversation with Steve Hackett

Steve Hackett
image by Lee Millward

In the five years that have passed since my last interview with Steve Hackett, the iconic English guitarist/composer has been on a nonstop flight of creativity that has taken him, both literally and figuratively, to the far ends of the earth. With a career spanning more than 50 years, Hackett’s imagination has cultivated a loyal global audience that eagerly looks forward to each album and each tour. Best known for his innovative lead guitar work with the progressive rock pioneers, Genesis, Hackett has spent the decades since his departure from the band in 1977 pursuing his muse, a quest which has proved insatiable and lifelong. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010 as a member of Genesis, Hackett allows his music to speak for itself. However, in conversation Hackett is revealed as a true Renaissance man of culture, a quiet genius whose words reflect a deeply intelligent, profoundly spiritual soul.

Catching up with Steve a few days before he and his band headed across the Big Pond to begin their North American tour, we talked at length about many things past, present, and future. Grateful thanks to Steve for his time and his candor, and for gifting me with years of musical inspiration and wonder. Read on and enjoy!

Roy Abrams: Very psyched for your return to Long Island on March 8^th at the NYCB Theatre at Westbury! This is going to be a special tour for you in that you’ll be performing Selling England by the Pound, the 1973 Genesis album you’ve referred to as your favorite from that group.  Are there any new band personnel who are joining you this time around?

Steve Hackett: Yeah, we have two new guys; Jonas Reingold, on bass, from The Flower Kings, and Craig Blundell on drums, who most recently played with Steven Wilson. It’s an extraordinary rhythm section. Apart from that, it’s pretty much the same band as we had before. Nad Sylvan, the other Swede, is on vocals. Roger King is on keyboards, Rob Townsend on woodwinds, brass, extra keyboard, bits of percussion, and myself.

RA:  What is it about Selling England that makes it resonate so strongly with you?

SH: Well, you know, I think it came out of left field. Back in the day, I don’t think anyone realized how popular it was going to become. I think that’s the best atmosphere and attitude to undertake an album. We didn’t realize that John Lennon was going to say that we were one of the bands he was listening to at that time. It also had an unlikely hit single in it, in the UK we had a single, “I Know What I Like” … again, an unlikely song, because we weren’t known at the time for doing short songs. Everything tended to be epic length; the musical continuums were roguish at the time. People were making albums as audio journeys and it was only really in the 1980s that the idea of doing a collection of 10 short hit singles, MTV-friendly, was starting to supplant the idea of the album as a force in itself. But I think that the band’s playing took a quantum leap forward on this one. (There were) lots of instrumental passages. I was very proud of its quirky Englishness. It’s still my favorite Genesis album; I think it’s better written than all of other ones. I’ve made a couple of changes to the solo stuff; I’m doing (material from) Spectral Mornings, and it’s the 40^th anniversary this year of Defector, so we’ll include some of those things.

RA: “I Know What I Like” was a collaborative effort between you and Phil (Collins). The bonus track from the album, “Déjà Vu,” which you’ll be performing on this tour, marks the only occasion where you’ve written with Peter Gabriel.  Was there ever any discussion between the two of you, post-Genesis, of working together again?

SH: I never really tried to hit Pete up for that. I mean, we’ve helped each other, swapped phone information and all that. We’re basically pals, but I think I’ve always been aware that he wants to distance himself. There were very few occasions, like in the early ‘80s, when we got together to do the Milton Keynes show, and everyone was a part of that. (Other) creative collaborations … there was a band reformation in 2005 but there just wasn’t enough common ground. From my end, I was very much up for it. Everyone had achieved so much collectively and individually, but the thing is, it takes a band to tango, to make that work. It doesn’t always come easily, if it comes at all. I figure my job, or my pleasure, if you like, is to take the early music from the classic period of the band, when we were a five-piece, and honor that. I don’t mind if it’s a song of mine, or a song of Mike’s, or Tony’s, or Phil’s, or Pete’s; it doesn’t really matter. The thing is, there’s a lot of great music there that came out of a bunch of guys, all of whom were songwriters, and as much as any band could share, we managed to share that.

RA: Your fans truly span the globe, a fact I know firsthand through reviewing the web analytics of our past published conversations, in 2014 and 2015. The only continent that is as yet unrepresented is Antarctica!  The same global reach applies to the diversity of artists with whom you’ve worked in the recent past.

SH: [Laughs] Well, that’s extraordinary! Yeah, the last couple of albums had 20 people on them from all over the world. This time, we managed to incorporate India into the mix. Sheema Mukherjee, she plays wonderful sitar on “Shadow and Flame,” so for the first time I was working with a real sitar virtuoso rather than trying to do an impression of it myself. It’s my proudest album, I think, as a convincing travelogue, a journey. I think that album doesn’t really falter. That doesn’t mean to say that everyone’s going to love every track; I loved every track, I loved everything about it. It had so much variety, so many different genres. “Shadow and Flame” is based partly on my wife Jo’s experience in India, where she described the Ganges, watching the dawn over the Ganges and seeing wonderful things: candlelight gave way to daylight, but at the same time with these beautiful visions of people bathing, there’s dead bodies floating down the river (wrapped) in shrouds, so you get the sublime and the ghastly side by side. I got to travel there with her many years later, and I saw the most stunning things … and frightening things. It’s an extraordinary place of extremes. Indian percussion (is great); it’s not just the tablas and the gentle lilt of the talking drum, there’s (a lot) of unlikely stuff. It’s a fascinating place, if you like to visit colorful places; the whole place is a riot of color. (We visited) temples that were carved out of caves, and temples carved out of monoliths! In other words, their idea of sculpture is, you take a mountain, and you carve it into a building, you carve a herd of elephants! We can’t possibly (duplicate it) with the technology of today, and they (achieved this) at least a thousand years ago. For all sorts of reasons, it’s stunning, it’s mind-blowing, and in a way, you can see the seeds of the ‘60s. You see the seeds of Pop Art, all the colorful things that the 1960s were all about. You see it on the temple ceilings, the walls, the figures, the detailed carvings on the front of some of these places. It wouldn’t be out of place on Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band if you just stuck in a stray photo!

RA: You recently said that it was very important to make albums with people from all over the world. When did that perspective begin to solidify?

SH: I think that the more I started to travel, not just on the rock and roll touring but beyond that, to explore other places. In recent times we’ve been to India, to Egypt, China, Ethiopia … you travel, you make friends—that’s what happens! And also my contact with the Hungarian band, Djabe, who also work with people from all over the world, so they introduced me to people from Africa, Azerbaijan, (and) the United States. (Hungary) is a real melting pot, a crossroads of Europe. It’s been extraordinary working live with (these people). We didn’t start out with the idea of trying to build bridges between cultures, it just happened naturally. In other words, the rise of right-wing politics and nationalism seems designed to drive people apart; I think it’s an opposite direction to the way I’ve been working recently. I feel that my albums celebrate the best of whatever people are capable of; it doesn’t matter where they’re from. I’m very happy to work with people all over the globe—the United States, the U.K., Iceland, Africa. If not people from those places, certainly instruments from those places, which the guys in the band have adopted and adapted to, so it’s a very wide church.

RA: Your music can be viewed as world music in the highest possible relief.

SH: I certainly try!

image by Tina Korhonen

RA: We’ve spoken before about the cinematic aspect of your writing. You’ve described your work as “film for the ear,” adding that “it’s quite common for my music to have a lot of drama, as it the case with most of the best music.” As you compose these “audio films” is the process an entirely visceral one or is it a combination of gut-level intuition and brain logic that informs your muse?

SH: It’s the hardest thing to explain, because there isn’t really any formula for writing songs. Music doesn’t appear on command. There’s a certain amount of waiting, but I think that when an idea is in the air, if you can preserve it in some kind of way, whether it’s some recording device or pen and paper, the main thing is to get the idea down. I’ve got books of unfinished things; riffs, songs, symphonies, all sorts of stuff. Often, I have to remind myself to go back to rejects, pretty much in the same way that Genesis used to go back to rejects, (to find that) this idea is pretty damn good, let’s run with the ball, and until you actually start recording, you don’t really know how far it’s going to go. The strengths and weaknesses of an idea show themselves once you start baking the cake! You have all the ingredients; you think, this might make a nice, big, glorious sponge (cake), but you don’t know how sweet it’s going to be, how moist. So yeah, it’s pretty much like cooking a meal, in a way! It’s an inexact art, and I’m very happy with that.

RA: With regard to your live performance arrangements of the classic Genesis material, aficionados will discern occasional slight variations in instrumentation or song structure. While the majority of fans welcome this exploration, we both know that there are devout purists who view any departure from the original version as sacrilege. What is your philosophy regarding evolution versus preservation of the original recordings?

SH: If you look back at the early recordings and you contrast them with the live versions, we’ll have a certain amount of evolution. It just has to be that way. It can’t be cast in stone. With Genesis, we did tend to segue ideas, messing around rather a lot. I try and do authentic versions; I try to be authentic to the spirit of the song. For instance, if I’ve spent a long time getting a particular guitar solo together, I’ll be thinking of it as not just an instrumental part, but part of the writing of the song. If I play “The Musical Box” I play exactly the same notes because it’s all about not being spontaneous. If something is composed, and if you’re still proud of it, stick with it. But then, at the end of something like “Supper’s Ready,” I’ll do some of the existing phrases but then I’ll go off on a bender, maybe going on for another couple of minutes, until I’ve had enough. I think you have to be flexible. I think (on) “I Know What I Like,” which started out as a small little tune, when we were doing it with Phil Collins (on vocals), it facilitated some of his antics. When he was doing the tambourine dance, it reduces the song to a virtual handclap, so that we’re accompanying the visual on Phil’s terms. With my band, there’s no point in doing a tambourine dance or trying to be Peter Gabriel, running around with a lawnmower onstage! What we do is we have a sax solo that gets very jazzy, but then I go into a very rocking guitar solo and start playing fast triplets so that it takes off like a rocket in a different kind of way, but then we bring it back respectfully at the end. This stuff continues to evolve. Of course, the diehards, they might want to go and see any one of a number of tribute bands who faithfully reproduce everything we did, including the limitations of that time, but techniques and technology improve and it makes it possible to have a band of—dare I say—virtuosos, like my guys. It takes us off into another direction, at the drop of a hat, I think it’s all the better for that, and I think the audience usually suspends its disbelief. They pick up on the interaction that goes on onstage between the various characters who are talking to each other, and there’s genuine spontaneity there.

image by Lee Millward

RA: In July, you’ll be publishing your autobiography, A Genesis in My Bed. Pardon the pun, but what was the genesis of the project, and how did it come to fruition?

SH: I’d done a series of interviews way back in the past with Alan Hewitt, and people were referring to it as “my book” and I kept saying to people, well, actually it’s not my book; it’s Alan’s book, and I was the interviewee. Doing that is not quite the same as doing a much more considered, in–depth thing, where you’re having to think about why you did something, how you feel about it now. I wanted it to be more revealing, and not just a complete collection of anecdotes. I didn’t think that was going to do the ideas justice. I’ve really gone into the music in a big way, and I hope people like that. There are the jokes and asides and all those other things, and I’ve hope I’ve been fair about all the people I’ve once worked with. I don’t think there’s anyone whose praises I didn’t sing. There might be the odd criticism, but in the main, I’m overwhelmingly positive about everybody. I might tweak the noses of a few, but, you know, that doesn’t matter. I think it’s been fun doing it, and we are still at the stage of putting in some extra things we haven’t thought about, so over the course of the next month or so, we’ll add stuff. Jo will ask, what was it like meeting Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney?

RA: What was it like?

SH: Extraordinary! Whenever you get to meet people who’ve been a huge part of your early life, first of all, you hope that they’re not going to behave like an absolute asshole, which neither did, and they were both polite and talkative, which was lovely. I don’t think the autobiography is a kind of “who’s who” of everything. Yes, you’ve got a few people mentioned there, and some unlikely ones, too, but in the main it’s trying to create a two-way mirror. If you were a fly on the wall and you saw what I was like at three years old, you’d have an idea of some of it; struggles at school and all that kind of stuff. That’s not all legendary by any means. I want to be self-deprecating and send myself up and say, well, at one point, I had stage fright and I saw a hypnotherapist to get me over it. I don’t have that problem anymore. That’s the sort of stuff I’m revealing (in the book). I want to give people hope and say, it can happen to anyone. Sir Laurence Olivier had suddenly reached a point where (I haven’t mentioned this in my book) he couldn’t look at any of the other actors; he didn’t want them to catch his eye. He wanted them to look to the side, because for some reason (direct eye contact) unnerved him. How is that possible for someone who was seen, to the world of English acting, as lord and master? Even the greatest … Mick Jagger was telling me at the time that he was tired … there was this whole entourage, this whole circus around him, masses of people. It reminds me of a story when I was in Japan for the first time, and Michael Jackson happened to be staying in the hotel, and what a revelation that was! A hundred people gathered at the lift entrance, and the camera light would be above this seething mass of people, it was moved twenty-five yards to the left, and they all moved back, and the lift doors opened, and they were gone. Talk about life in a goldfish bowl! His life must have been like a mobile zoo. I don’t know how you could exist like that, except on your own property, on your own terms, but then it becomes a prison. I wouldn’t want that level of celebrity. I don’t think I’d be able to handle it at all. I think I’d go around dressed as Groucho Marx or something.

RA: Speaking of stage fright, original Genesis guitarist Anthony Phillips said that stage fright ultimately drove him from the band. When we last spoke, you brought up the prospect of collaborating on an album together.

SH: Funnily enough, we collaborated on two different projects. He was on one of my albums, I think it was Out of the Tunnel’s Mouth, he was on a couple of tracks on that, and then we did something recently for an elephant charity called Harmony for Elephants, and we did a track together. He provided a piano part and I improvised all over it, then he did some twelve-string work on it. He and I get on very well, and I’ve often said to him that if we’d been in the band at the same time, I suspect it would have been just fine because we’d be fine with each other’s ideas. He’s very democratic in his approach.

RA: Next year’s tour will feature a complete performance of Seconds Out—

SH: —That’s right, that’s what we graduate to!

RA: That album marked your point of departure from the band, and I’ve seen the Tony Banks interview where he said that your guitar was mixed out. So, my question for you is: in addition to anticipating the joy of rehearsing and performing this album, given the circumstances behind its mixing and release, is there any additional sweetness, if that’s the right word, in getting to set the record straight from a musical perspective?

SH: When it comes to Seconds Out, the whole album was a case of cherry picking across the whole of the band’s history, although the current album at the time was Wind and Wuthering. So, until we actually start working on that, I don’t know exactly how that will shape up. But when it comes to Tony, he tends to contradict himself. He tends to praise me on one hand [chuckles] and then criticize. I hope I’ve been generous about him in my book, because I think he’s one hell of a writer and a very fluent chordsmith, no doubt about it. There is no sense of “getting even” … I know they do tend to say (that I’ve been mixed out) but I can hear my guitar on it. I can hear my guitar more clearly on “The Carpet Crawlers” than it was on the (original) record! So, there’s a little bit of creative license, I think, with similar statements. Strange, obviously they called the album Seconds Out, you know, I’m right in the foreground of the album cover, although they asked Armando (Gallo) to darken it so I look like a shadowy figure, so I kind of became the black sheep, somewhat. Sometimes, I think that a band needs someone who’s prepared to say unpopular things and try and drive it forward. It’s a shame that the band weren’t more open at that time for everyone to have parallel solo careers. Once you start growing, people start to have families, divorcing, and various things, you can’t behave like you did when you were all kids together; it just doesn’t work anymore. I have no regrets; I love the music, and I honor it politics-free. That’s my take on Genesis now. I was hoping that Genesis might expand into a band that behaved pretty much like The Beatles. In other words, the occasional use of orchestra; I’ve done that myself. They’ve used the horn section from Earth, Wind, and Fire, but I think there is a bit of a limitation after all that time, I think it is important for there to be some evolution. But that’s just my opinion; a departed band member shares his opinions with you.

RA: The concept of “the music business” has essentially been supplanted by “the musicians’ business,” meaning that musicians earn a living these days primarily by getting out there and reaching their audiences directly through live performances. You recently said that you still felt the need to record and would continue to do so, if only for an audience of one; very much like classical musicians who wrote and performed for individual patrons. What are your thoughts on the current state of affairs, with particular emphasis on the freedom that you have come to experience by managing all aspects of your career with just you and Jo at the helm?

SH: It’s a multi-faceted question! I’d say that there was greater freedom in the 1960s and 1970s. In the ‘80s things were tightening up; things were becoming much more formatted, as I said earlier, (with artists) doing a collection of MTV-friendly potential singles. The magic of an album that at one time changed the world gets lost somewhere, so the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. Now, I think in terms of big business, there simply isn’t enough money in the record business for it to contain anything but enthusiasts. Moguls have moved on to something else. If you want to make tons of money, then go sell baked beans! Someone who’s in the music business who has no love of it has got no place being there, and I think unless you understand music, you aren’t really in with a chance. For me, as a musician, it’s understanding the audience, but also taking them on further than perhaps they intended to, (to) stretch their tolerance, but that’s how music works, because at first everything seems strange. First of all, you say, “This is strange.” Then suddenly it no longer becomes alien, it becomes your friend. The other aspect you mentioned, in terms of self-management, is with Jo, where basically we have a team. It means there’s no Fuhrer; it doesn’t work like that. We just have a team that very often talks things over, saying, “What do you think? This one’s a good idea; this one’s a no-brainer.” We have an immediate understanding. We have a band that wants to work, wants to travel, do as many shows as possible. Luckily, the albums are selling—the physical product—very, very well in an era where everyone’s saying, that’s all over, CDs are over. Well, I like CDs because I like to have a package, and I also like the size of vinyl records because you’ve got … let’s put it this way. The album sleeve (cover) is the best possible advert for a record you could possibly have. The size of the original album sleeve, 12” by 12”, whatever it was, was a piece of artwork or an incredible photograph that you could stick on your wall. Remember those days? I personally love the quality of sound of CDs but we like to release in all formats to keep everyone happy; to keep the vinyl fundamentalists (happy) and the audiophiles, you’ve got to address them too, plus make things available for download. If there’s a new format, I’ll go for it.

RA: As a musician, I have worlds of respect for you, for everything that you’ve brought to the table for decades. As I look at it, you’re a shining example of how to do it, how to keep the fun intact, how to keep your integrity intact. I think for any aspiring musician who wants to learn how to address all the avenues of their career with integrity, with creativity, and with heart, they can look to you and your career.

SH: Thank you very much! It’s very nice of you to say so! I’m sure you share that with your own input to music as well. It’s a natural childbirth every time, isn’t it? That’s how we keep it coming.

© Roy Abrams 2020