The lost interview
STEVE EARLE TALKIN' 'TRANSCENDENTAL BLUES' Hardcore troubador, country outlaw, maverick talent, wild man of Rock...trying to pin Steve Earle down is not easy. The moment you have him nailed he's gone, off down some new creative avenue to turn all your preconceptions around, such is the essence of Earle's rebel spirit. It is also the key to why he has emerged, over the last two decades, to become one of the U.S.A.'s most talented songwriters and compelling performers.
Such labels do, however, capture the restless nature of Earle's creativity: he's not a man to stand around basking in former glories.
Whatever he focuses on he brings a keen and vital edge to the process that makes creative sparks fly. Sure he ruffles feathers, but you can bet they're feathers that needed plucking anyways - witness his spat with Del McCoury over Earle's use of profanities on stage when they toured together. Goddammit Del, he wore a suit for you - what more did you want!
With '94's career and life-threatening, drug-fuelled journey to the abyss now firmly behind him, Earle has just released a universally acclaimed 'career best' album - 'Transcendental Blues' - which more than underlines his total rehabilitation. That it's the fifth ' career best' album in so many years makes his comeback even more astonishing. clearly Earle is on an artistic adrenalin rush of creativity/productivity that shows no sign of peaking - indeed, he actually seems to be gathering momentum!
'It's logical to me, I don't have to wake up in the morning and find several hundred dollars worth of dope, and so I feel like I have boundless energy.' Catching him in between the imminent release of 'Transcendental Blues' and heading out on tour, Earle was in great good spirit and eager to talk (at the time of this interview in Autumn 1999). 'Things are going so good I'm beginning to get suspicious. I'm happier and in better health than I've ever been. Business-wise things are going really well and artistically I'm able to make records however I want...thanks for which goes to Danny Goldberg (Head of Artemis Records).'
'Transcendental Blues' is another journey of exploration for Earle and another step away from country - but not a total desertion. It boasts a great sound - especially in its rockier moments which carry echoes of, and references to, The Beatles - and it sees Earle breaking new ground as a lyricist. 'I wanted the album to be a 'big' record in scope because I didn't want to feel compelled to make another record for twelve months if I didn't want to, because there was some other stuff I wanted to do.' Earle's emphasis on 'Transcendental Blues' being a 'big' record is absolutely spot-on.
The sound, level of performance and diversity of styles give it a scope and internal dynamic few other artists can achieve. The album encompasses bluegrass, Celtic music, country blues, Stonesy r'n'b, pumping rock, and heartache balladry - all held together with liberal sprinklings of Beatle-dust. 'I made a conscious decision to give myself a lot of room as far as different kinds of music was concerned.
' The 'other stuff' to which Earle alludes - and which he believes has enhanced his writing on 'Transcendental Blues' - is his immersion in prose, poetry and play-writing. 'I've done five records in five years - that's 75 songs, but alongside that I've written 10 short stories, 15 poems and 50 hiakus - I'm writing one a day for a year. They're emotional snapshots - seventeen syllables and you're out of there! They're going to be published - Tony Fitzpatrick, who does the artwork for my albums - the 'William Blake of the Millenium' - may illustrate this. I just write all the time. I've got a collection of short stories coming out - 'Doghouse Roses'. Writing prose is not as much of a leap as writing poetry or a play. The one big difference with prose is it's more time consuming. It requires getting up in the morning and putting your butt in the seat on a regular basis! It rarely takes more than a morning to write a song - prose is much more involving. I'm also working on a play that I want to workshop and produce. It's about the first woman to be executed in Texas in one hundred years, her name was Fay Tucker and she was executed four years ago. It's a hardcore abolition piece - a vehicle for my girfriend which has evolved into a theatre company and a theatre - it'll be ready in a year and will be premiered in Nashville.' The payback for Earle from his immersion in other forms of creative output is that he believes it has enhanced his songwriting. ''Transcendental Blues' is the best collection of songs I've ever written. I've done things on this record I've never done before because I've been working in these other forms. I've learned how to do things that I would never have learned by thinking of myself - and restricting myself to being - a songwriter.
' Nowhere on the album is this better borne out than on its most affecting track, 'The Boy Who never Cried'. 'My favourite - the one that benefitted the most from writing outside the realm I'm comfortable with. I usually write narratives...and I still don't know what the fuck it's about! I think it's about growing up, but I wasn't conscious of that when I wrote it - I had no idea how it was going to end until I wrote the last line. It was written during the first two days of recording - at night - and recorded on the third day. It's probably my favourite song I've ever written. It's a fable - it relates to the way men do, or do not, grow up. We're taught not to cry and we become very hard to live with because of it - I wouldn't want to live with me!' One of the most striking features of the album - and this is true of all the albums Earle has cut since 1995 - is its immediate tough'n'tender sound but which this time carries unmistakable references to The Beatles' recordings. Together with Twangtrust production partner, Ray Kennedy, achieving this was a pre-requisite of the album for Earle. 'I had a blueprint sonically, which was 'Revolver'. The Beatles are where Ray and I always start - and with 'Transcendental Blues' we've set recording back thirty years - based on the maxim, 'no-one before, and no-one since, has made records that sound any better than Beatles' records'. 'Revolver' has this really tough, compact sound throughout and so we patterned our bass and drum sounds after that record.'
Such homage to The Fabs did not always yield the results Earle expected - 'Because we were working in this groove I sent Chris Wilkinson off to do the string chart for 'The Boy Who Never Cried' and figured she'd come back with 'Eleanor Rigby', but she came back with 'Kashmir' - it just flipped me out!'
Further clues to how Earle achieved such a fabulous Sixties guitar sound - vibrant, textured and strong - like Earle and the Dukes are playing in your front room - are given when he describes the equipment and recording techniques employed on the album. 'We use old ribbon mics when we record electric guitars - just stick 'em in front of the amp. and they seem to hear in a figure of eight pattern, so it's more open sounding and so you're hearing the back, the front, and the area all around the amp. - which is what you hear when you play. Those mics hear more like ears hear - it's live-R. We don't use reverb which washes guitars out, we use a lot of compression. We've got a lot of old gear - a Telefunken console and three original B76s that came out of Abbey Road.'
This return to older recording techniques flips back even further when it comes to Steve's vocals. 'Things have changed since I got out of jail and away from MCA, where I recorded digitally. I met Ray Kennedy, recorded some demos with him and loved the way my voice and guitar sounded. I realised then that was one part of the process I'd been doing backwards. We record my vocals live - we do not overdub as I did at MCA, we don't take breaths out, we compress them. It's easier to convey emotions on record that way. We record until we get a performance from me (or whoever we happen to be recording), and then, if you've got to replace everything else, then replace it - but don't ever replace that performance the artist has achieved. That's why the early Elvis records are the best - that tension of live performance is there from beginning to end. That's hard to do when you are stopping and starting to drop a wrod in here and there - it's hard to get a performance that way - getting perfection reduces the quality of performance.
' That 'Transcendental Blues' has stayed in the U.K.'s Country Top Ten since its release in June is an indication of both it and Earle's enduring appeal in the U.K.. His Autumn tour sold out immediately - only Springsteen holds a candle to Earle's commitment and intense, life-enhancing level of performance when it comes to playing live. In another of his many lives Steve Earle is an impassioned campaigner for the abolition of the death penalty throughout the U.S.A. - as evidenced by the theme of his forthcoming play, and the song, 'Over Yonder (Jonathan's Song)' that closes the new album and which tells the story of Jonathan Nobles, a serial killer whose execution in 1998 Earle witnessed. 'If my government kills someone then I'm killing someone and I'm not comfortable with that. Politically it is oppressive for any government to have that power.' His view on carrying a gun have also changed.
'I've come full circle on that one - I bought the idea that guns didn't kill people, people killed people! But it's apparent the U.S.A. is the only country were people are running around fuckin' armed! We have the highest murder rate from handguns. It's time to admit the U.S.A. is out of line with the rest of the World when it comes to gun law and the death penalty.' For good measure he adds, ' And we need to quit throwin' our weight around - we don't need to dictate to other people how they should conduct themselves.
' Steve Earle's passion and commitment for such causes is real and powerful - that he can make a difference by writing songs such as 'Over Yonder (Jonathan's Song)', 'Ellis Unit One' and 'Billy Austin' is undeniable. He does not use his songs to preach, he simply tells a story, but in doing so he reaches inside to touch the core of our humanity and so cause us - for a moment at least - to pause and reflect. And in that moment minds and attitudes can change. There can be no greater gift of persuasion than that. Long may he rock!
COLIN HALL.
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