....What keeps me invigorated is just music, I mean it's the love of music! Gilbert O'Sullivan
The following BBC Radio 2 Interview was broadcast on September 24th 2003. Also in the studio with Steve were his sidekicks Janey Lee Grace and Tim Lee.
About Twenty minutes prior to Gilbert's appearance Steve read my email on the air! This is what Steve said:
I've got so many e-mails on the subject of Gilbert O'Sullivan who is coming in the next hour. This for example is from Joe DiMuro and it says...Hey just wanted to say hello from New York City. I've been running a fan website dedicated to Gilbert's music since 1997. Please give my regards Ray. His new cd Piano Foreplay is wonderful. Also please say hello to David Birch who is over at BBC Television Centre. I'll be listening from Manhattan. Thanks for having Gilbert on the show!...
Steve plays "Get Down" prior to introducing Gilbert!
SW: Well, now we're going to welcome back Gilbert O'Sullivan. Who's here.... Gilbert O'Sullivan.
SW: And you said, didn't you, the other day Tim...one of the greatest songwriters that ever lived.
TL: Absolutely and also I think if you look at songs like "We Will" and you know that's one of my favorites, possibly one of our foremost poets as well.
GOS: I don't think songwriters are poets. There are good lyricists and there are bad lyricists. The closest I get to poetry is Spike Milligan.
TL: Really?GOS: I love Spike Milligan.
TL: I think the images you evoke in a lot of your songs and I do love "We Will"? That is poetry.
GOS: That's what a lyricist's job is to do....to create that.
SW: Yeah?
GOS: But it's not poetry. It's not meant to be on it's own. It's meant to be with the music.
SW: I know from talking to you before that you are a bit of a looking forward guy. You don't really like to look back. It's almost as if you don't really want to discuss songs that you wrote in the 70's and 80's and yet those are in a sense your heritage. McCartney's the same.
GOS: I do them when you do a concert for two hours. You are performing those songs, so I mean that's the bottom line. I don't think songwriters should talk about their songs anyway. I think they should just write them....
SW: Really?
GOS: And then let people make up their own minds what they're about.
SW: Could you tell Elvis Costello that?
[Studio Laughter]
JLG: Truth is we are interested in who you wrote various songs about and what was the inspiration behind certain songs. You just have to tell us to 'shut it' if you don't want to answer.
GOS: The point is, say you had a particular song you liked, not necessarily of mine but of anybody, and then they told you what it was about and it went against what you actually thought it was about...
JLG: Yeah.
GOS: It would spoil it for you.
SW: Yeah, I asked George Michael one time about "Careless Whisper." And I thought ok, Los Angeles...in a red sky....coming down at night. And he said no, he wrote it in Bushy. And I thought well that's disappointing, very, very disappointing indeed.[Studio Laughter]
SW: You know I like some of your more unusual songs and some of the songs that people generally don't know about like "Susan Van Heusen" is one of my favorites and "Mr. Moody's Garden."
GOS: That was Kenny Everett's favorite.
SW: Yeah, perhaps that's where I heard it. And from that moment when I heard "Mr. Moody's Garden." I thought there's nothing like this guy. What's he up to?GOS: And you hadn't even seen how I looked at the time.
SW: In a sense, have we later discovered that, that was not you and that was an image you created or was that you at the time?
GOS: If I created it. It was me.
SW: Well don't get argumentative. Just tell me the answer. What's the answer?
GOS: The answer is that it was very much me. Nobody else would be mad enough to do something like that.
SW: You couldn't have been walking around like that?
GOS: Yeah but in 1967...I mean when Janey hears, when was this, a hundred years ago? Late 60's...Flower Power, you have the image of the late 60's. flower power..beads, kaftans, long hair and there's this guy looking like Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin with pudding basin haircut, cap, long trousers, Charlie Chaplin jacket. This guy is going to Bernie Andrews and John Peel show recording it and that's how I looked. The great thing was that I was able to get away with that kind of look because I wrote what I thought and still believe are good songs.
SW: But was it to bring the songs to the attention of people?GOS: To be different Steve.
SW: It was an image is what I'm saying.
GOS: It's a word that doesn't appear anywhere in music today, to be different.
SW: Because I used to read stuff about you and it used to say that he collects old newspapers and he piles them high. And I thought, yeah I believed it at the time but now looking back was I right to believe it?
GOS: I have all those of course because that's the lyricist in you. You collect things because you get ideas for songs and stuff. And I think the character thing, I just wanted to be different. It was impossible to be different and look good.
TL: Did you walk around Swindon looking like that? Because I grew up in Swindon. Did you get away with that?
GOS: I walked around in Vegas looking like that.
[Studio Laughter]
GOS: Hobnail boots...pudding basin haircut... I mean they were arresting me every evening.
JLG: I think the question that both Steve and Tim would love to be able to ask you but obviously don't want to draw any attention to it is how have you managed to keep your hair? They are just utterly gutted, the both of them.GOS: That's unfair Janey.
SW: But you look, you must be about 80 or 90 years old by now and you just look fantastic Gilbert, brilliant.
[Studio Laughter]
TL: Have you got a picture in the attic?
SW: You've got one of those?
GOS: Sometimes when people say to me you look the same as you did 30 years ago, I'm not sure it's a compliment. You have to change but I think the great thing is that what keeps me invigorated is just music, I mean it's the love of music. You can't stop yourself getting older but you can have the same enthusiasm you had 35 years ago for music.
SW: By the way this girl on the cover is...
GOS: It's a nice cover. Show the audience it.
SW: You just hold that out to everybody, a semi-naked girl. She's obviously naked behind the piano there.
GOS: That piano is from about 1850. I bought that in....
SW: I'm not interested in that. Just talk about the girl. Who's the girl?
GOS: It was a very sweet girl who came in. Just a model for the day.
SW: He's talking about the piano. No one's interested in the piano.
TL: Yes they are because the album is called "Piano Foreplay." Hence the semi-naked girl in the picture.
GOS: Absolutely.SW: I know that.
GOS: I was there when the session was done Steve.
SW: Really you probably wrecked that piano now by playing, probably with your hand movements that you do.
GOS: I like sensuality. So it's a kind of sensuous cover.
SW: Let me just play, this is called "Make My Day." This is really classic Gilbert O'Sullivan isn't it?
GOS: Yes it's the kind of song that if you really were an old Gilbert O'Sullivan fan then you....
TL: It does seem to hark back to your classic days of the 70's and 80's.
SW: Alright, let me just play it and we will be back in just a moment with Gilbert O'Sullivan......Gilbert O'Sullivan..Radio 2 don't move...listen to this.
Steve plays "Make My Day"
SW: Gilbert O'Sullivan that was. That's very nice. You see now that's just simplicity isn't it really?
GOS: Well that's a kind of traditional GOS stuff I think.
SW: Yeah.
GOS: Which is nice too to be able to do that and stuff 'cause it pleases those older fans but it is also nice to do newer things. But I know for example last week you had Parkinson on.
SW: We did yeah.
GOS: And do you know his band are the band on the whole album. It's Laurie Holloway's Trio.
SW: Oh is it Laurie Holloway?
TL: Fantastic.SW: Fantastic. Yeah 'cause he's a musician's musician.
GOS: They are great musicians, because Laurie and his trio came over to Jersey, recorded the whole album in a few days and stuff. They don't want to do twenty takes and stuff. After about the first take they think "do we have to do it again?"
TL: And that's great. So you recorded the whole album in Jersey. No going to Monserrat or coming to London or anything like that?
GOS: This is the first time where I've done where it is basically; it's the same musicians on every track. In fact, there is a double bass on every track bar one and it is Laurie's Trio. But we brought in the odd extra musician like John Parricelli. He's a sort of jazz guitarist. It has a jazz tinge to it, but it is kind of still for me they are good pop songs.
JLG: Are you going to release a single? Or do you feel that it is not worth trying going for the singles market at this point?
GOS: Well, it's very interesting that because it boils down to Radio 2, in other words..
JLG: Obviously you won't feel any pressure.
SW: It's up to you.
GOS: I think "Make My Day" is being talked about as being released as a single. But it is like the old days of Radio 1 and stuff, middle 70's. Steve will tell you this. If you were going to bring out a single and you weren't getting a good reaction from Radio 1 then the record company were inclined to say don't do it. These days, with Radio 2 being so powerful, if Radio 2 don't support you, you're wasting your time because they are the force on national radio whether we like it or not.
JLG: You are the force.
SW: What are you saying, you don't like it?
GOS: Radio 2?
SW: You said whether you like it or not as if to say you don't like it.
GOS: Like what?
SW: The power of Radio 2.
[Studio Laughter]
TL: He's just trying to stir things up.
SW: Yeah what's wrong with that?
TL: Can I ask another question? Do you ever sit down and write a song and think oh that would be good for so and so?
GOS: No.
TL: Do you ever sit down and think I'm going to write a song maybe for somebody else?
GOS: No, I've always written for myself, but I suppose I do have those times when I think that would suit somebody. There's a track on here I think called "Answers On A Postcard (Please)." I've always thought that, what's her name who is in that musical in London?
TL: Alison Moyet.
GOS: Alison Moyet....she did "That Ole Devil Called Love." "Answers On a Postcard," I thought at the time of writing that that might suit her. So occasionally I might think like that but it is always written for myself because that's a kind of priority for me.SW: While it seemed that you were away. I think that the public, they saw you in this court case with your former management and all of that stuff, all of that trauma...
GOS: That's a long time ago.
SW: I know it is but I am thinking the public must have thought you'd had a block. You know writer's block. But you didn't did you?
GOS: No, I've never had writer's block. What you do is the quality of your material depending on what you are going through mentally at the time may not be that good, but the key is always to be doing it.
SW: How do you work best? Do you work best under pressure or to deadlines or do you work best when you are just left alone?
GOS: It's self-inflicted. It's the discipline you put on yourself to just go in on a Monday morning at nine o'clock when it is miserable out and sit there till five and then do it for five days, do it for a month, do it for six months, however how long it takes. I mean writing lyrics is a bit like school. You start with an empty notebook and you just kind of have to sit there. You have to be very disciplined to kind of stick with it.
TL: Is that what you do? You go in like that 9 to 5?
GOS: Yeah, it's the Brill Building (in NYC) mentality that I've always kind of adhered to. I like that. Diane Warren is another like that. She sits there at nine because it's all about the next song.
SW: Now what about living on Jersey because we were talking about islands the other day, weren't we? It was quite interesting, you could put the population of.....TL: Well, we thought that you could put the population of China stood shoulder to shoulder on the Isle of Wight. Then we thought actually no that you could do that with the entire population of the whole world. Then somebody said no you could do it on the Isle of Man. We were thinking were Jersey came in?
SW: Could you get....
GOS: Jersey has a population of about 80,000 I think, it's about 80,000. It's a small island, 9 by 6. It is the largest of the Channel Islands.
SW: What's it like there? What's it like living there?
GOS: Ah it's beautiful, it's beautiful there. It's a wonderful place to bring up children.
SW: Is Charlie Hungerford still running it or not? (Character play by Terence Alexander in Bergerac)
GOS: The great thing about Bergerac, what it did for Jersey was that it promoted the island all around the world. And you get people coming to Jersey, say in the middle of November and December when it really quite cold, same as here and they think "where's the sun?", because they see Bergerac and Jersey is always sunny.
SW: Do you have to be rich to live there?GOS: I did. There are certain conditions, controls that allow you to go in. They have this kind of system, you have to come under a certain bracket to be allowed in. It is very restrictive in many ways but it suited us because it was the end of my court case and we could have gone back to England and we had a young child that was just about to go to school plus for me prolifically in terms of product. I mean I've written really good material. I've really been happy working there.
SW: Do you miss Ireland or do you get back to Ireland?
GOS: No, I don't miss Ireland because I'm Irish by birth and I'm very proud of my roots. I was raised in Swindon. My team the greatest football team in...
TL: Absolutely...in the world in fact. You wouldn't like to take over Swindon would you and use your doss that you got stashed away in Jersey in a way that say Abramovich has with Chelsea.
GOS: We have our jockey friend...Willie is there and he's growing in stature every season.
TL: Just a bit more money please Willie.
GOS: Yeah I like Swindon. You come from...?
SW: I'm London really. Yes I've been to Swindon though when I worked for GWR (Digital UK Radio Company).TL: You just went to see the roundabouts.
GOS: We live up in Old Town. Swindon is our home.
SW: Now what about the future? Now because I know that you tour a lot. Cause I sometimes am driving around and I hear you on local radio stations. You love to tour don't you?
GOS: You have to. It's no good saying right I've made a record that's it I'm going to sit back and do the next one. You have to get out there and promote it. We're going to rehearsals now with this album. I won't be using Laurie's Trio because they will be too busy on Parkinson.
SW: They'll be on Parky.
GOS: Although we are going to use them on Top of the Pops 2.
SW: You're going to do a Top of the Pops 2 thingy.
GOS: So they will be doing that and we'll get on the road by the end of the year.
SW: Great. Gilbert O'Sullivan's new album "Piano Foreplay" is out now and you'll like it.
GOS: It's really good.
SW: It actually is.
TL: Really is.
SW: Thank you very much Gilbert. See you next time.
GOS: Good to see all of you.
SW: Thank you very much Gilbert O'Sullivan!
Steve plays "Nothing Rhymed"
As always...a million thanks David B.
