Indepth Interview RE New Album and Life in General...
Sep 04, 08:09 AM
Transcribed From Redbrick University Student Newspaper Interview. To Be Published Soon.
Hello Jack, and thank you for agreeing to this interview. Lets start off with “How are you?”
I’m great thank you, had some time off after a pretty hectic schedule making the new album. Its been nice not to have the weight of constantly needing new songs over me, and being able to just relax. It can start to take over your life if you’re not careful.
How did you first get started in music?
Growing up in Birmingham I was always aware that my father was a musician. I didnt know him as a child and the concept of an adult “playing” something, like a piano, as a job, was always strange to me. But something about it was always appealing.
I met my dad for the first time when I was about 11 and he took me all around Rome where he lives. One of the places he took me was the posh hotel where he worked as a piano bar player. Music seemed really glamorous to me back then, everyone drinking Remy Martin and smoking cigars to the sound of Billy Joel.
When I used to visit him, he’d have to take me to work with him as he had no one to look after me. So I’d fall asleep in the corner of this hotel lobby where he was playing, hearing these classic piano bar songs as I’d drift off. Strange as this sounds, I’ve often wondered if thats the reason why I find coming up with my own melodies very easy.
I knew at 14 that I wanted to be a songwriter when I grew up. I told my dad. I was was visiting him on my school holidays and the night before I’d been with him to one of his shows in a hotel outside of Rome in the hills. He’d let me get up and sing one song with him, Joe Cocker’s verison of “Unchain My Heart”. It had gone down well. We were sat on the beach the next day, and thats when I told him I wanted to be a songwriter.
What did he think of that?
He was a little hesitant at first, thinking it might be just a whim. But he could tell that i was dead serious. I’d been singing in bands then for about a year, and I knew that this was what I wanted to do in life. The only advice my dad could give me was to “eat bread and Beatles”.
You are half Italian and half English, do you feel more English or Italian, and why?
In day to day life I definitely feel English. I spent the most formative years, 12 to 17 living in Birmingham, and from there I get my teenage memories which i think are very important. I have a strong sense of the bizarre, having grown up with the Two Ronnies, Monty Python etc. There are alot of TV memories, music memories that come from that era, and they all lead back to England.
But when I’m with my father I also see alot of myself in him. His impulsiveness, quick temper, his artistic temperament. He’s psychological out look on life, which I think is a very Italian trait. So I’m a mongrel of sorts.
What was it like growing up in Italy?
We were nothing but poor in Italy. We were poor all day, every day. We lived in a place called Paterno’, just outside of Catania. We rented a house in an area where Italians would have holiday houses, at the foot of Mount Etna, the largest active volcano in Europe. We lived there all year round cause it was cheap, whilst the Italians would go there during holidays. That made it a strange place to live, cause most of the time the place was completely isolated, only us and an American family who worked on the local US military base, lived there all year round. Come the weekend or holidays however, the place was over run with loud, spoilt Italian kids and their families. It was strange, during those times I hid in doors.
My mother was struggling to get work as an English school teacher, and there was no one else around to help us. It got really bad. Sometimes we’d go to the local shop, “La vecchia signora’s” we called it, “the old lady’s shop”. I would go in and give the old lady a story about how my dad had gone to Rome and forgotten to leave some money for food. Could she give us the food now and my dad would pay later. We did this a couple times, when things got really bad. After a couple times the old lady commented something like “your dad’s a bit forgetful isn’t he”… but we always paid her back so she didn’t mind. She wasnt stupid, she knew the score.
Those years in Sicily gave both me and my mom a strange relationship to money. For me, I’ve never had a penny in my life, so when I became an adult and had no money as a broke musician, it didn’t scare me, it still doesnt. Whereas my mom never wanted to go back to that situation. When we left Sicily we flew back to England and ended up living in Luton of all places.
My mom had two suite cases and £100 in her pocket, with two kids to look after.. Those years of poverty drove my mom to become successful, and she achieved it. She started her own company and made a lot of money, which she later lost, but she’s still driven to succeed. I’m incredibly proud of her. There’s only 17 years between us, cause, well she was 17 when she had me.. so I can relate to her as an adult as well as a mom.. So thats why i’m so proud of her.
Looking back on your first album, what memories or emotions come to mind?
Misery….. It was a fucking nightmare… Just no other way of putting it. But I’m glad it happened the way it did, it made a man out of me, but it was a nightmare.
In my early 20’s I’d turned down two record deals. So when I got the offer from Paul Lindsey to invest in me, allowing me complete artistic control over the record, I felt it was time to put some of my songs down.
I’d never felt I was good enough until then. Thats the reason why I left Honeyman, my first real band. I just didnt feel my song writing was ready to put songs on a record, although everyone around me was screaming at me to the contrary telling me to stop hesitating and get a record out.
By the time I met Paul I felt ready. He and I created RAR Records with the intention of making a great album, then licensing it to a real record company. One of the things that attracted me to the deal was that Paul and I had the same intentions, to make a fantastic album, and Paul was prepared to help me make that happen.
So we went ahead, worked with Tchad Blake, an amazing producer, at Peter Gabriel’s Real World. The problems started happening after we’d finished. By the end of the recording, i’d been so pedantic with the sound, wanting it to be the greatest record ever, that we’d run up a huge bill. So when it came to license the album, nobody wanted the responsibility. It was just too much for an unknown, first time artist. The industry at the time was in panic, not knowing what to do about the downloading problem, and here I come along with a hugely expensive, introverted debut album with songs about Crashing Cars and suicide. This happened both here in Norway and in London.
It was a terrible period in my life. Fucking nightmare. I wouldnt want to go through it again. We did get an offer for distribution by a huge Major label, but i didnt see the point. Its no good a record being in the shop if a record company wont let me have the means to tour the record and get to a venue in a town where they might be selling the record.
What was even more frustrating was that the first single we released in Norway on our own independent label, the song “She Makes Me Feel”, had been A listed by 8 different radio stations and play listed by 17 all across Norway. It stills get regularly played in P1, the biggest station over here. By the end we’d had 3 songs play listed by stations all across the country on heavy rotation.
It was a fucked a situation. I’d waited so long to make the perfect record, worked for years on my songwriting, turning down record deals etc, and here I was being told nobody wanted to risk it. It was a very difficult time.
Eventually, we turned the situation into an advantage. By not being tied to anyone, we could make our own decisions. I Knew I had to keep moving forward, it was a desperate time. Thats when Paul and I took a huge risk, we decided to make this album a stepping stone to the next, hoping that we could get interest in me as a songwriter and keep moving forward. So we put the record on the Net as a free download.
People thought we were crazy, but it worked. Newspapers in Norway became interested, and people from all over the world downloaded the album, curious to hear this album that had been made at Abbey Road and Real World by Tchad Blake, and was being given away for free.
From all this publicity I got the deal with a clothes company who bought up 20 000 copies of the album and sent me on a 49 date tour of Norway. This really helped as it again created more media interest on radio and in the papers. From having zero budget to promote the album, not even a penny, I’d managed to do a huge tour, (nobody does 50 dates in Norway) and get myself in something like 50 newspaper articles. From there I went to the next album.
Looking back I’m proud i got through the first year after the first album was made. It nearly broke me and I’m proud I didnt brake. Many would of given up, but time and time again I kept asking myself, do i really need this shit? Do I need to be a songwriter this bad? is it worth this hell? and every time the answer was.. of course I fucking well do.. But i’m not sure I’d put me or my family through that again if i had to go back.
Can you tell us a little bit about your new album, the inspiration behind it and the goals you set yourself with it?
I began writing new songs for this album immediately after finishing my Norwegian tour, around March of 2009. I’d seen some amazing landscapes along the way, the north of Norway is very deep into the arctic circle, its like what I imagine being on the moon is like. The new songs I was writing reflected some of my experiences. It was originally going to be called “The Glacier Bridge” and I imagined lots of glacier type sounds.
I knew I wanted to use a different sound pallet to the first album. The first album is very organic in its sound, which was ok for then, but I definately wanted to be more experimental this time. I had a very strong idea about where it was going even before i set foot in the studio. I knew I wanted it to be more rhythm and bass orientated. I’d been going through all the old recordings I did with my first band Honeyman who were hugely rhythimcal and bass driven, it sort of reminded me of where I come from. I also knew I wanted there to be a lot of distorted keyboard lines. There’s something about the frequencies distortion gives off that just excites the ear, especially when its used on instruments other than the guitar, like a keyboard line. I always loved the way Sly Stone used it on his vocals.
I was also determined to have a lot of raw honesty in the lyrics of these new songs. During the time between album one and this one, i feel like i’ve changed, become more blunt and brutal about the way I express myself in song. I still love metaphor, like the song Perfect Crime off album one, which is a metaphor for suicide. I just wanted these new lyrics to say exactly how i am feeling right now. I really love the way alot of the hip hop artists just lay it all on the line, real brutal like. I love the way Lennon did it too. He managed to write personal, universal songs, if you understand what I mean.
I had about 15 songs written by the end of Spring 2009. I was planning to make the album with Ian Grimble in London who had recorded the two singles off my first album. We had everything set, the band, rough dates etc.
Then on the 20th of June I got a phone call. It was one of my oldest friends. I thought nothing of it when I saw her name come up on my phone as I was supposed to see her in two days time. I answered and heard her crying down the phone. I was walking through the library in my home town trying to find a quite spot to hear better. She said I have some terrible news, she basically told me that her brother, one of my best friends had died the night before. He was 38.
I spent the next 3 weeks helping the family out with funeral arrangements, trying to be there as much as I could for the family, helping in any small way i could. I cant really put into words what Paulie meant to me. Not only was he one of my best friends, someone I loved deeply, he was also heavily involved with my music, having been involved with it on many levels for about 13 years, as a fan and sounding board.
When the dust settled, I had a burst of creativity. I needed to express how I felt about it. Deep down i needed to talk about Paulie, I couldnt bear the thought of that being it for him. We were so full of plans, dreams, things we were gonna do together once our ship came in. I had to keep him in my life some how, and the only way I knew how was to write how i felt about him. I loved him deeply, he was such a good friend to me.
Do you think you managed to express what you wanted to say in your songs?
I needed to express myself in a way that was multi dimensional. Its like I mentioned with Lennon, the personal/universal sort of thing. The songs had to be wide in their dimensions, otherwise there would be no motion in them, no tomorrow.
Paulie’s death sent me on a journey and it was that journey I wanted to write about. The day after he died I planted a tree in my garden. I dug the whole with my hands, there was something soothing about feeling the soil slip through my fingers, its hard to describe, i felt connected to the earth, and it made it feel ritualistic. I wanted to feel connected to all things, and feeling the soil in my hands helped that, I felt like, if I could connect to all things, i could connect to Paulie again.
I started asking questions that I’ve never really considered before, Spirituality, Religion all things metaphysical. I spent days watching Carl Jung video’s on Youtube. Its funny how you attract things into your life. I went to a big charity fate around the same time and came across loads of books on the subject I was studying, a whole Time Life series about metaphysics, a Carl Sagan book called “The Demon Haunted World”… i mean this was a local fate in Drammen Norway. The chances of finding metaphysical books in English are pretty remote. Thats where songs like “The Enemies Of Reason” came from and “The Heart Beats On”. They were sort of my conclusions on all the things i’d been studying…
How did you end up working with Thomas Johansen in Washington DC?
All through this learning and studying period i was writing new songs and sending them over to Ian Grimble in London. The songs were becoming more and more electronic and keyboard driven. By September 2009 it was apparent to Ian that something had to be decided upon. He called me up and we spoke at length about the album. He felt i needed to take a decision, either make a guitar based album with him in London, or follow the direction the demo’s had been taking into a more experimental area.
I wasnt sure what to do. Ian is an amazing producer who’s worked with artists I really admire. i put the phone down and sat and thought about it for half an hour. I called Ian back up saying I was a little nervous about it, but I felt I wanted to develop the keyboard/experimental dynamic. Ian, was an absolute gentleman about it, something I’ll always respect him for. He said he thought i was making the right decision. He said he knew someone who could help. That was Thomas In DC. It was a huge risk I was taking. I was going from someone I knew and trusted to someone I didnt know at all. But I trust Ian, so I went with it.
Tell us about working with Thomas Johansen and being in DC?
I ended up going to DC 3 times. I liked DC straight away. We were just outside the city in a place called Reston. Its a very clean, polite and quiet type of suburb. But I liked it. Its funny with The States, you can be in the cleanest, quietest suburb going, but somehow in the back of your mind you know the wilderness is always just around the corner. What I mean is, Reston for example is like i mentioned clean and quite, but you drive 10 minutes down the road and you’ve got Great Falls, a crazy powerful river with rapids, Eagles and Rattle Snakes. I got the same feeling whilst visiting North Carolina.
When I landed Thomas met me at the airport, and of course I was nervous, i had no idea whether it was going to work or what the studio was like. But it all worked out amazingly. The studio was in Thomas’s house. He had a whole ground floor area and my room and bathroom were right next to the studio. It was just amazing.
Thomas is perhaps the most similar person to me I’ve ever met. it was very bizare getting to know him, it was like looking into a mirror thats slowly demystifying and starting to see the reflection in the mirror looks more and more like you. We were so similar on so many levels.
Give us an example
Well, one of the ways he’s like me is how he’s very laid back with most things, until it gets to music. He’s a very sweet and kind guy, kinder than i’ll ever be, but when it comes to music, he takes no fucking prisoners..! he’s brutal. He in fact rejected most the songs i presented to him. I really liked he’s brutal honesty and reacted well to it, cause thats how i am. Thomas is Danish born and bred, and like the Norwegians who I know a little about, they are the most fucking blunt people you’ll ever come across..!!
What did Thomas Johansen think of you ideas regarding the sound etc?
We spoke about where i was coming from, but right from the off we had a clear picture of where we were going. We wanted to cross hip hop beats and production with my melodic type songwriting. Thomas never had a doubt were he wanted to take it. We spoke about albums that we wanted to keep in mind during the production, the main one was Kanye West’s “808’s & Heart Breaks”. I’d spent the whole summer listening to it. Its just an amazing piece of art which i admire greatly. We also played Kid Cudi’s debut album alot too. Thats where we were going beats wise. Melodically I just bought my natural instincts which always revert back to my love of Lennon & McCartney and Benny & Bjørn. I just love clean, logical melodies. The logic appeals to me. What’s difficult is placing those clean melodies into an environment where they don’t become sterile. Thats where Thomas came in.
Thomas loves subverting sound. We pulled in different directions, me towards the centre which is my natural instinct pulling towards straight pop songs, whilst he was pulling me away from the centre into more left field areas regarding beats and distorted basses. Thomas is amazing. I could not of found someone better to have worked with on this album.. He took any suggestion I had and took it much further than i could ever imagine it. He is an exceptional producer. Even more exceptional for being so kind and patient with artists.. As an artist this is hugely important and something that producers often forget.
Do you think you have achieved everything you set out to do on this album?
Yes. When i listen to the album i hear me, my thoughts, twisted, contracted, inverted, yearning and manic. Lyrically I expressed what i wanted to say, and musically Thomas managed to create the perfect environment for the songs.
Jack Rubinacci “The Opal Tree”. Out soon.
Interview by Beth Porter.
Photo by Luke Rodilosso
