The Gerry Ryan Show 2FM RTE Radio - March 12, 2004

 

Gerry Plays Matrimony

 

GR: Yes, that's exactly what it is! Let me ask you a question this morning. Do you remember songs just like the one we played? Then there was "Nothing Rhymed," "Alone Again (Naturally)," "Clair" to name just a few because the list is in fact a little  longer than you might realize once you start looking at it. If you do know who wrote and then to all the Boy Bands listening this morning, there lies the key to longevity. Who wrote and sang these songs. You're about to be reintroduced to him once again not only through this program this morning. But indeed the release of a greatest hits album. The album is The Berry Vest of Gilbert O'Sullivan and he joins us in the studio!

 

GR: Welcome back!

GOS: Yeah nice to be here again Gerry.

GR: The last time you and I spoke was up the corridor in another studio.

GOS: Absolutely.Good chat I remember.

GR: How are you?

GOS: I'm doing very well thanks.

GR: Welcome back now. Great list. I was complimenting you on not only the inclusion of certain titles but the way you put this together. This is always a challenge I think to decide how a greatest hits should flow.

GOS: Two hits and twenty fillers right?

GR: Tragically for some that's it. Rod Stewart did a great one I remember. The slow side and the fast side but you cant do that nowadays?

GOS: I mean the nice thing for me is that very often I've discovered that when you do concerts, cause you get to meet people who like you, that their favorite track isn't necessarily the biggest hit There favorite track is an album track or something or even a b-side. That's always interesting. I don't look at the Internet but you have those Internet.

GR: You have a big Internet following cause the fact that you were coming on this program was put on your Internet site and we've had a lot of strange enough people who want to contacting us.

GOS:No..no..no I don't like the Internet. Too much information. But it's interesting when you do compile a list. The thing about me is that it isn't just the hits. I mean I wrote every song on my albums. For every hit you had on an album there were eight or nine other songs that you hoped were as good in a kind of different way. So it's nice to include those. There is a song in this album, which came from in album in '77 which was the first self-produced album I did in 1977. During my kind of break up with Gordon Mills. It didn't sell anything but there was one track on there called "Miss My Love Today" and that is a track that the new people I'm working with at EMI and the people I'm working with at SONY, they pick up on it. They heard it for the first time. They like it. So I find that interesting that as writer that's been around for a long time to see a song that was written a few years back, that wasn't a hit song, to be actually regarded by young people.

GR: When you say the A&R people maybe at EMI or SONY they pick up on a track like that. What happens when they look at the other songs? The songs the people become obsessed with.."Nothing Rhymed" or whatever?

GOS:I don't know if they are doing that because they are too young. So it would be their parents. They picked up on "Miss My Love Today" because they have never heard it before. They may have heard "Alone Again" or "Clair" on the radio or their mom and dad playing it but they never heard "Miss My Love Today," as an example. So what's nice about that is that it introduces me to a new audience and it proves to me that the quality of a song isn't just determined where you are on the Hit Parade.It's determined by how good a particular song is. Does it have longevity? Longevity is proved by the fact 20 years later somebody likes it. It's good creatively as a songwriter if you're not selling millions of records at least you're getting something back.

GR: When you wrote these songs like "Clair" and "Alone Again (Naturally)" and "Matrimony" which we just heard a few moments ago. Did you think that one day they would be continued to be cherished in the way that they are particularly by my generation?

GOS: No, of course not. You don't analyze what you do. You leave that to other people.You just record it..you write it..

GR: OH! You did leave it to other people didn't you?

GOS:(Laughing) That's a leading question.The point is that you do the work. It's the three R's: write, record, release that's my philosophy. And I don't go into any analyses about why I do it..How I do it. What makes a hit? For me that's not my department. My department is creatively to write the stuff and I love doing it. I have to say but you don't think about something like this in twenty years time. It's nice when you're 20 years old that people do pick up on those particular songs, the standard issue because I get cover versions of "Alone Again (Naturally)" and "Clair" popping up all the time. I find that interesting.

GR: Have you ever gone into a bar, to a wedding, to a pub, to a restaurant and heard people, cause very recently I was sitting in Nico's Italian Restaurant, still one of my favorites on Dane Street, where they still do the double old fashioned cocktail. And there was the piano player playing "Alone Again Naturally."I looked at him, he was an elderly man, even older than us and I thought, wow that's amazing that song lives and lives now in this restaurant tonight.

GOS: When I go to a hotel in London, where I have meetings occasionally, I hear "Alone Again" on the piano but there is no piano player.

(Gerry and Gilbert laugh)

But you know that's nice that I get letters from people that "Matrimony" was sung at their wedding and stuff. Like Robbie William's "Angels" has been sung at funerals. There's something nice about when people react that way to a track and it kind of means something to me. "Matrimony" for some reason, maybe because it's Latin and they say Latin never dates.

GR: I was thinking about this yesterday and all these earlier songs particularly and harping back to the earlier songs is a pain in the arse normally for people like you. Except for the fact that this is a greatest hits album, so it's something that you have to indulge is in.

GOS: Well, I have no problem with it.

GR: Well, some people don't like it

GOS: Well I wrote them.

GR: Yeah you wrote them. But some people don't like it and get upset about it and I'm not referring to any particular artist but there are one or two.I've been to their concerts recently where they wont touch their old material that people loved. So, you're kind of sitting there saying that's kind of interesting what he's doing now but where's the other thing. Anyway, I was thinking where does the early albums come in my record collection? What was I listening to? And I think it's interesting how you crossed so many divides. There was the Fragile album by Yes. There was Foxtrot by Genesis. There was Leonard Cohen. There was, God forgive me, Journey with Arthur Brown. There was Tontos Expanding Head Band and Gilbert O'Sullivan.

GOS: I guess so. I don't remember. I can tell you albums that mean a lot to me but mine wont be one of them.

GR: Would it not?

GOS: No, I don't think so. I have lots of albums that are favorites.

GR: Do you put them on yourself at home?

GOS:What?

GR: Your own music?

GOS: Are you serious? Do you go home and listen to yourself?

GR: No…for legal reasons.

GOS: It's the same feeling you get when you hear yourself on the tape recorder for the first time.

GR: Do you get that?

GOS: Yeah but not while I'm recording in the studio. That's a different mindset. But generally, if I hear one of my songs on the radio I turn it off.

GR: Now why is that? Is it embarrassing?

GOS: No, it's not embarrassing. It's that I rather hear other people then myself. I can't learn from listening to myself but I can learn from listening to other people. It's a good attitude.

GR: Well, maybe a healthy attitude well but would it be like to perform the songs? I presume it would be an obligation? In order for this album to breath oxygen requires performing them. (Bring Gilbert out..stick the batteries in)

GOS: Every time I have a new album, I will always get out there and do a tour. If I can, it may not be as easy as it seems. You know we're doing a concert in London on the 26^th (of April). But I'm not sure about Ireland? I've got to get the Irish people off their backside because it's all very well to get people to come and see you. The generation that liked me and there's a lot of people in Ireland that like me and I'm grateful for that. However, they really don't buy records anymore. I sell less records here than I do in Mozambique. (Gerry and Gilbert laugh) It's a fact. I don't loose any sleep over it. But it's a fact that I have to live with. When I read about the likes of Damien Rice and David Gray going platinum in Ireland, my attitude is well I go "rust"!

GR: And yet Irish people would be very, very quick to claim, you know

GOS: Yeah, I'm one of their own.

GR: He's one of our lads.

GOS: Absolutely but I meet them in the street and they say, I'm your biggest fan. Then I say when is the last time you bought one of my records. Oh well I've actually never bought one of your records. But that's something I can deal with because as a creative person and contemporary songwriter, that's the kind of values I have to work my way through. And I'm really quite happy to do that because I always believe the key to what I do is writing a song, making a record, hopefully somebody will play and somebody will hear it and go Oh what is that! So with that in mind, my naiveté may be, but I actually like that approach because that's how it's been for 40 years. If I hear something, if I hear a record by John Mayer. I think who is that? I write it down and go and buy it. So I like to believe that when I make a new album, which is what I do for a living, that the opportunity for someone to hear something that I'm doing will come along. And therefore that will lead me to a kind of new audience. After all, what could be simpler?

GR: Where do they buy the records?

GOS: They buy them..

GR: Don't tell me the record shop!

GOS: No, in fairness to the public, it's true they have great difficulty in getting them cause most record stores are only concerned with those that are currently in the Top 20. They're not really concerned with artist...

GR: They're all on Amazon.com anyway.

GOS: Yeah, that's true.

GR: And some pretty weird import things as well.

GOS: For Me?

GR: Yeah

GOS: Well, there's some good stuff too. We have a 3 CD box set out in the States on Rhino which is a really interesting package. And we have a B-side collection in Japan. There's a lot of good stuff out there.

GR: Japan! Are you that preverbal big in Japan?

GOS: Well, it's a bit of a cliché because everybody says that...

GR: Well I wouldn't care as long as you're getting money out of it.

GOS: Well, everybody is big in Japan because they're all very small. No, I mean Japan has been good to me. I have to say, hand over heart because they've helped me finance...I own my own product and as you know yourself, It costs a lot of money to make records.

GR: Yeah.

GOS: And it costs more as time goes by. It's not bedside stuff. You don't do it in the bedroom. Hip as that may be. It's serious business, proper studios. And therefore, it's costly so half of the cost of what I do is paid for by the Japanese, which allows me the freedom to be able to license around the world. And when you get an artist who says they never want to hear their old hits part of that is because they don't won them. When George Michael says that he's not going to make any more commercial recordings and that he going to put all his new stuff in the future on the Internet..

GR: For me, Prince disappeared on his own backside.

GOS:..they wouldn't do that if they owned the original work. When you own the product.

GR: Prince for instance is selling records on the Internet.

GOS: I've got one of them.

GR: What's it like?

GOS: Well, it's instrumental rubbish.

GR: laughing..

GOS: Exactly, he's a great artist.

GR: Well I read this book when I was on holiday in New York and I was a great fan. I thought he was a superb musician. And wrote some great pop songs, bloody good pop songs and seems to have gone mad basically with bitterness.

GOS: Well, he's dropped the name and he's gone back to calling himself Prince.

GR: I'd be going back to calling myself Prince as well.

GOS: But what he's released on the Internet is basically instrumental stuff.

GR: And it's crap isn't it?

GOS: That's putting it nicely.

GR: Well Ok we'll be back in a minute.

[after the commercial, Gerry plays Alone Again (Naturally)]

GR: There you go just one of many on the Berry Vest of Gilbert O'Sullivan. And of course the image at that time, well was changing slightly around that stage. You were just mentioning you're the boy in the short trousers and the Yorkshire Cap. I don't recall if you were happy to talk about it the last time you and I met. But certainly now you have a lot of affection for that image.

GOS: Oh in photographs it's a fantastic image.

GR: Oh its brillant! The sepia photographs are great!

GOS: It's the Chaplin look. It was based on Chaplin and Keaton. I originally wore a Chaplin jacket. The short trousers I wore only for impact. I didn't wear that for TV or press. I did that just for impact. When I took that picture, the press people that were with me, hid behind a wall when a car came by. (Laughing) I was totally embarrassed. But I was really hitting against the business. I was saying to the business up yours. Because I felt powerful enough to do that cause I wrote really good songs, which people liked and people couldn't understand how I could look like this.

GR: And that short hair?

GOS: But puddin basin haircut and the reason why it looks really good now because it really looks fashionable. Where as most of the 1970's haircuts look pretty dated now.

GR: You've gone back to the ‘70's haircut I see. Why not you've got hair.

GOS: I had the short hair for five years. I mean I had real trouble with girlfriends. I was delighted eventually to loose it so I could get a few girlfriends. You must remember 1967 when long hair was here to stay and flower power was in, I was walking around looking like an escapee from an asylum or something. Because of that pudding basin haircut nobody was looking at me. I had serious trouble with girlfriends. So after five years I was really happy to change and grow my hair.

GR: Were the Gilbert O'Sullivan groupies different from others?

GOS: (laughing) You tell me. You wouldn't turn up dressed like me to support your favorite artist. Well, having said that people turned up..

GR: I remember the turning up dressed exactly like you.

GOS: Well, the "G" sweaters.

GR: I had one.

GOS: The "G" sweaters were good I liked them too.

GR: I still have one. I'll dig it out for Sunday.

GOS: I have film of the Dublin concerts in '71 and stuff and in '72.

GR: Did you film them? Is it just home movies?

GOS: Oh no, It was film by RTE. I've seen the concerts from Dublin in 1972. It's really good.

GR: Would you release it?

GOS: well, er Yes..it could be. Well we've never done a DVD. I've never been into that.

GR: Have you tried? A personal obsession of mine at the moment. That there are no real music DVDs. I'm sorry to say this but there are only a hand full of them. Most of them are videos collections of people's greatest hits and most of them are absolutely uninteresting. But what I'm really interested in is actual concert footage.

GOS: Oh yeah, We've have a Japanese concert which was filmed in Japan. We have the rights to it worldwide. But I've never gone down that road because I've never had the time to do it. I mean the time for me is taken up writing and recording. We're not interested in books and going back over the past. But having said that, we've uncovered a lot footage for two reasons particularly because we're doing a TV commercial for this particular album.

GR: Do you own the video stuff?

GOS: We get the rights. Yeah we own a lot of videos that I've made. I Made a few videos and I own those.

GR: Do you own the concert footage?

GOS: No, I don't. That's owned by another company. But we're in a position to be able to use it. We just have to pay them. You negotiate a fee and you give them a percentage. So it is possible to use that stuff. But it was interesting looking at some that stuff.

GR: How did you feel watching yourself performing live in 1971?

GOS: It was a little bit weird but I thought that was a bit of a disappointment. There was not any real change from the "G" look to the present.

GR: That's because you haven't put on 10 stone. We have to get the Cardigan. I've got one of those Cardigans. Is that good at the moment?

GOS: Three Cardigans.

GR: Three cardigans, the three cardigans look folks!

GOS: Essential. When I see people in t-shirts today, I marvel at them. How they do it? If I went out in a t-short today I'd have double pneumonia.

GR: Finally I ask you as tempus Fugit. Can we see you performing? Will we see you?

GOS: Well, if we get some Irish people to get off their behinds and purchase the music. The last time we were here was a great concert I have to say. But as I say the key is as a performer, as well a writer and recording artist, the key is selling records. That's what we're here to do. But if you feel that people aren't going to buy your records..

GR: What's the point!

GR: OK, what do you feel about the unplugged genre?

GOS: The unplugged genre?

GR: We do them. We have a nice studio down the hall with facilities. Fellas like yourself, always welcome to come in to perform.

GOS: Well I play piano. Can you get a 9-foot grand in here?

GR: You can get in here but can't get it into studio H.

GOS: If you detune that nine-foot grand in studio H, you be sued (laughing). I tell you. You couldn't detune a grand piano. I mean I have one especially made.

GR: I've done worser things.

GOS: If you did that it would be sacrilegious. Nobody's ever detuned a concert grand.

GR: Nobody?

GOS: No, No why? I did and I have two pianos. I have Bench stein made for me. A concert grand, which has lever, so unique in the world. When you pull the lever and it goes down to a semi-tone below concert pitch because I have a limited vocal range.