Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Singer and writer widely regarded as a master storyteller in music, known for compelling narratives and electrifying live shows.
On the island
Eight records
T-Rex is a band that I return to constantly. I think that Mark Boland was one of the truly great lyric writers. I think he basically invented his own language. He's not looked upon in the same regard, I think, in that respect to some of the other people from his time. But I think he was the best of the lot.
I remember first hearing this. I was driving in a car and this came on and you know I had to pull over and have this moment with this song because it's unbelievably moving. There's a fundamental truth to the way that she sings. It's a giant expansion of the heart when she sings this.
So they came down from Brisbane with a sound that they'd worked out entirely on their own, which weirdly sort of sat before the punk thing happened in Britain. We're very proud of that aspect of the Saints in Australia. We got there first and they put out I'm Stranded first, right? If there's one prevailing emotion that came from those live shows, it was complete contempt. about everything and that was really unbelievably exciting.
I bought a tape of this particular record from Camden Market just because of the amazing cover. It's got a picture of John Lee Hooker up close of his face and he looks like he's screaming in agony. And it just says It Serves Your Right to Suffer. And I thought, wow, what's that? … And played it in the car, and it really changed things for me because that first line, it serves your right to suffer, serves your right to be alone, you're still living the day, done, packed its bags and gone, or something like that. This desperate line sung to himself, and it pointed to a way of singing that you just sort of sat back. I hadn't quite worked that out yet, but I sing much more like that these days with a lot of sort of things. A kind of dark, bluesy croon.
Beautiful singer. I had this friend, Mick Guyer, who died of cancer twenty-something years ago. And he would make these extremely beautiful tapes of weird, esoteric, unknown music. And he would educate us. … When I think of Karen Dalton, I think of driving around Brazil in Sao Paulo, where I was living at the time. With Karen Dalton in my cassette, listening to her over and over again. This once again, this extraordinary voice, racked, tragic. And this particular song. I mean lyrically it's extraordinary and her version of it it's mind-blowing.
Now I think I saw this for the first time when Bob Dylan performed this song on The Johnny Cash Show when I was about nine years old in Australia. And I used to watch the Johnny Cash Show and there was something about Johnny Cash that really captured me. He was like the first time I'd ever seen the potential of music to be like evil, an outlaw and dangerous. He looked like a dangerous guy. He dressed in black and … He would um bring on different guests and and uh he sang Girl from the North Country with Bob Dylan, who of course I'm a massive admirer of. That's quite a moment. It's a very very beautiful duet.
I Am a GodFavourite
This became, weirdly enough, a kind of family song for us. My kids loved it, Susie loves it, I love it. It's an extremely playful, extremely dark, complex song where on the one hand Kanye is presenting himself as a god and then towards the end of the song he's like screaming in terror. It's unbelievably deep song in my view. … But yeah, this is a song that I I value on a personal level and actually I just think it's a a complete amazing work of art.
I think it's controversial as to who actually wrote the lyrics to this song, so let's not get into that. But the lyrics are a work of absolute genius, and Tim Rose's particular version of this song, which is, in my view, the sort of supreme version of it, is so racked and kind of apocalyptic in its delivery. It's just a sensational song.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:10How do you know when you're onto something [in songwriting]? It sounds quite physical.
Mostly when I write it's despairing and the fact that all I'm doing is writing bad stuff. I have endless note books which I've told my wife to burn upon my desk. … And I write a lot, and within that lot there are some precious moments that reveal themselves in time, by which I mean that everything I put down on the page looks bad, sounds bad, it's never like wow. But certain lines just sit there on the page and they do sort of lift themselves out of the kind of morass of rubbish.
Presenter asks
9:46[Your father] asked you quite a confrontational question when you were just twelve, and it was a penny drop moment for you. Would you tell us what happened?
But but he did ask me what I had done … to help the world. Or to save the world. … Yes, that's right. It was an unbelievably pompous question to ask like a 12-year-old. Who didn't even know what humanity meant? And I asked him what he'd done, and he showed me these little bits of writing, and he was very moved by that.
Presenter asks
12:17Your mother Dawn…when you were twenty one and your father was killed in a car crash. It must have been devastating for all of you. How was she able to come back from that?
The keepsakes
The book
Carlo Collodi
This book connects to me both as a child I think I had it read to me as a child read it to my own children, but it also very much connects to me as an adult. And it's so layered and so human.
She she was extremely warm, extremely loving, but she didn't go in for public displays of grief and by that stage I was in pretty bad condition and and not really able to handle this sort of stuff very well. I was, you know, taking a lot of drugs and drinking a lot and … And felt ill-equipped to deal with my mother's pain. And I regret that. I wish I had been … be able to talk ab about this sort of stuff with her, but I was just unformed, you know, I was unformed in these matters.
Presenter asks
24:03All through the early years of your music career you were using heroin. How were you able to maintain your life, creativity, touring, everything else? It all takes structure alongside that drug use.
I was a heroin addict for 20 years, and 10 of that I was young and out and having a good time and taking drugs, and it was all part of that world. The second ten years was much lonelier, much more isolated, much more despairing, just trying to stop, trying to stop, unable to stop, starting again, all of that. Just this complete waste of time. It in no way, I would say, aided my creative potential. … I found once I got rid of the kind of monotony of that particular drug, my life just sprang open like a jack in the box or something like that.
Presenter asks
29:56In twenty fifteen, your family experienced an unimaginable tragedy. Your fifteen year old son, Arthur, died… You've described experiencing a rupture that time and memory poured itself into. Are you able to explain what you meant by that?
Um probably not. Or not adequately. … You know, I find these things strangely difficult to talk about. I find them easier to write about. It's one of the reasons why I have the red hand files or started it up in the first place in a way that I've got. … There is a kind of river of sadness that runs through the Red Hand files that is to do with loss, and I think it's really colored my way of viewing the world. … I think what I really want to try and do is to let people know in some way that it doesn't have to be thus and that there is a world beyond the grief that they feel.
Presenter asks
37:33You've said that today you're mostly happy and life is good. I wonder where you find your greatest joy in life today?
Yeah, I mean, there's so much to choose from, actually. You know, I do get it from from my family and from my wife. One aspect of my family that it's difficult to exaggerate how how beautiful this is that I have a little grandson who's like seven months old … No, I mean this little guy is so gorgeous and … It's really, really something. Uh his name's Roman Cave. … I also get much pleasure, um joy out of my work, you know. It's quite a privilege to go on stage and play to people. Uh I sort of understand that more.
“I think that there's something about a mother's love. If it is unconditional and it doesn't really it's not predicated on good behaviour, that's for sure. It's just there. This feeling acts as a safety net. You're able to operate in the world in an entirely different way with the confidence that if that safety net wasn't there, it would it'd be a completely different story.”
“I think I often got a lot of energy from the general contempt people had for me.”
“I think when I'm talking about hope, I'm also talking about the idea of joy. And for me, perversely, I suppose, joy is in itself a form of suffering in the sense that it understands the mechanics of what it is to be a creature of loss. … The sort of terrible secret behind grief and loss is that great joy can come eventually. A joy you've never experienced or could anticipate.”
“I started to understand the sort of fundamentals of these things, of what we are as human beings and how we are connected to one another and … we're connected in all sorts of ways, but we are connected in our loss.”
“I always just thought art was kind of, at the end of the day, everything. … And I think after Arthur died I just shut the office. … It it just I was just repelled by it in some way. It seemed so indulgent. … I find my responsibility towards my children and my wife and to be a citizen, a husband, these things are the actual animating force behind or should be the animating force behind our creativeness.”