Joe Jackson RTE Radio 1 (Irish Radio) Interview

March 2001

The following interview is one of the few where the focus is on Gilbert's music and NOT the overly-mentioned court case or little Clair.

Left to Right: Bob Dylan......The Beatles.....Johnny Duncan.....Burt Bacharach.....Fats Domino

Pure Anglo-American Pop Music

J.Jackson: Gilbert O'Sullivan wrote some of the most memorable pop tunes of the early 70's such as "Nothing Rhymed," "Alone Again (Naturally)" and "Clair," but he is still writing some great songs. Today we look at some of the music and artists who influenced O'Sullivan himself. Here's Gilbert.

Gilbert O'Sullivan you once told me your history in music is pure English, pure pop from 1958-62, and your first choice is kind of to me a memory of children's Saturday morning request show. It's Johnnie Duncan's "Last Train To San Fernando."

GOS: Um, you know there's the moment when you sort of pick up on music as opposed to it just being in the background. I mean, I must have been, we'd just moved over to England from Waterford and I mean that's my earliest musical memory and also it was the beginning of the skiffle boom and there were kids down the street next to us with the washboards and the...

J.Jackson: Broom handle.

GOS: Yeah, and the acoustic guitars and that really kind of make my ears prick up.

J.Jackson: Did you get your broom handle out and join them?

GOS: No, I was too young. I was too young but I thought it was fantastic. It was really an exciting time because here was music that could be made anywhere.

J.Jackson: So, OK sorry Gilbert, that was not the original, you were pointing out as we listened to it.

GOS: How many times do you buy a record of an old song that you really like, that you couldn't get hold of before, and then you suddenly discover that it is a re-recorded version. They lose the magic. They never have the magic.

J.Jackson: Now that I see it they are putting it at the end of some CDs, this was re-recorded in a garage two months ago. But it's real small print and I think that people should be warned.

GOS: I've just come back from America where I was in Nashville and Las Vegas and I bought a load of CDs, sort of things I couldn't get here by late fifties artists, American artists and stuff and they were all re-recorded versions, and I was really disappointed.

J.Jackson: It should have original recording by original artists.

GOS: Yeah, you could send them back. But they don't cost that much so is it worth it.

J.Jackson: That's why they don't cost much because they are not paying for the original royalties.

GOS: Absolutely.

J.Jackson: You mentioned earlier that you came from Waterford. You were born there Raymond O'Sullivan in 1946 and you have said that if when you say that the influence is pure British Pop and American Pop, no Irish influence at all even for the first couple of years?

Irish Traditions..Brill Building Songwriters...Stephen Foster.

GOS: No, no, I mean the Irishness in me, it's the singing around the fire and everybody sings songs and the accordion and the fiddle and everything. That went on, it goes on in every Irish home, always has, always will and it is a great thing. But for me I found when I started to get successful, I went to look for my roots and stuff and I bought a lot of Irish records; The Clancy Brothers, I know that there are great Irish melodies and as a songwriter you listen to good melodies wherever they come from to see if it will influence you and also educate you. There are some great Irish melodies, but there was no link there, there was nothing that kind of grabbed me, in the way that I would hear a Goffin and King song. I would hear a Mann and Weil song, or I would hear a Bacharach and David song. Those things really kind of cut through to me, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, going right back to Stephen Foster. I mean, I was in Japan recently and they asked me to pick a record that would be my record of the twentieth century and I picked a song by Stephen Foster, simply because he is the first singer/songwriter.

J.Jackson: Which song was it by Foster?

GOS: It's the James Taylor version of "Oh Susanna." He's the first songwriter of the twentieth century. He was born before it but, I mean, he was before Berlin and if you read about articles on people like Berlin and Lorenz Hart they listened to Stephen Foster. Before Stephen Foster there was nobody. He was the first one and that is kind of a magical thing.

J.Jackson: Sure, he was also the first person to fight for copyright which also became an issue in your career, fight for copyright for songwriters because he had been ripped off with his early songs. So he set up that whole model for people to follow.

GOS: Yeah he was the first one to do the three-minute song. He got a lot of criticism because of the "doo-dah" and the black thing and stuff until today. But he is a wonderful writer. That's kind of interesting and from there on in you have got right up to the present day.

J.Jackson: OK and when did Fats Domino come on board? Were you playing strike piano when you were a boy?

Fats Domino...The Fab Four..Rick Davies

GOS: No, the Fats Domino thing came about because once the Beatles took off, everybody wanted to join a band, of course I did too. I played drums and I had my own band called The Prefects and I was at art school and a guy had left art school the time that I was joining, a guy called Rick Davies and he's one of these musicians who can...he's just a great musician, a couple of years older than me. So he was leaving college and I was joining and we kind of met up and stuff and he's a great blues piano player and a great jazz drummer. I mean he was into people like Buddy Rich and all these people, Joe Morello and all this stuff and I used to go up to his room where he had his drum kit and stuff and hang out with him and he had all the original records by the original artists, the kind of stuff that I would never have. I would come up with a Beatles album and say listen to this version of "Roll Over Beethoven," it's fantastic and Rick would say sod The Beatles, listen to the original. This is Chuck Berry, so he was that kind of person and so therefore it was Rick who introduced me to Fats Domino and he formed a band called Rick's Blues and I was the drummer and we used to do Fats Domino stuff and I love "The Fat Man" because of the piano thing.

J.Jackson: And he also was an early Rock & Roller as it was an 1949 hit which was way in advance of the Rock & Roll era. Let's hear him and let's pray to God that this is the original.

[They listen to "The Fat Man" by Fats Domino.]

J.Jackson: Gilbert you described yourself while we were talking there as a "popist."

GOS: I love pop music.

J.Jackson: But you had said to me that there was tendency in rock criticism to write off the years preceding the Beatles like the Brill Building era you mentioned Goffin and King, you actually think that they were classically constructed songs, simple melodies and simple lyrics and beautifully made.

Lennon & McCartney and their influences

GOS: What you must remember is that when people say oh the Beatles were great, but everything before that was rubbish. Without the Goffin and Kings and that fifties era of songwriters there would have been no Beatle writers because Lennon and McCartney learned so much from the likes of Goffin and King and Mann and Weil and all these people and Buddy Holly for example. Without them there would have been no Lennon and McCartney and I've always said and it's very true that what makes a great writer a contemporary songwriter from about sixteen onwards is what he hears not what he writes. So in other words the Beatles heard these songs and they used to do them on stage. I mean you got something like "I Remember You" by Frank Ifield, "Besame Mucho" all that kind of MOR stuff that's where the Beatles learnt their trade for songs and the great thing was with that training behind them they became good Tin-Pan-Alley writers and developed their own style developed innovative songs as they went on but they had that background for pure pop song writing which came from the Goffin and King and Mann and Weil stuff.

J.Jackson: Specifically, Paul McCartney and his daddy used to play all those records and he'd sit on the floor at home listening to the Berlins and Cole Porters and all that stuff.

GOS: I mean early Lennon stuff, If you buy early Lennon McCartney stuff, John Lennon got heavier as he got older but he was as popist as Paul was, simply because he was a Tin-Pan-Alley songwriter. It's very difficult today for songwriters because they don't really want to listen to that kind of music, they just want to listen to what's happening today whereas in '61 and '62 what was happening was that kind of thing, so therefore the Beatles were able to reproduce this material in such a gifted way.

J.Jackson: Well you chose also what is really a really pristine pop tune by the Beatles is "This Boy." Why that above all others?

GOS: Because the great thing about Beatles singles in the early days was the b-sides, they did wonderful b-sides and also the very underrated harmonies. I mean you talk about Lennon and McCartney as a writing team but the Lennon and McCartney harmonies even with George Harrison, I mean take George Harrison on his own not the greatest voice and John Lennon, a great voice, Paul a great voice, but put the three of them together and there's a very special blend rather like the Everly Brothers. I mean, I'm sure they were heavily influenced by the Everlys. But they were able to utilize that on many tracks. And "This Boy" is a good example.

J.Jackson: This is a very Everly Brothers type track.

[They listen to "This Boy" by The Beatles.]

....Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and The American ethos.

J.Jackson: Lovely harmonies. The Beatles, one of the main influences on my guest today Gilbert O'Sullivan. Gilbert you have also said that even Dylan in terms of his rhyme patterns was like a graduate of the Tin-Pan-Alley school.

GOS: Dylan thinks one of the greatest songs ever is Smoky Robinson's "Tracks Of My Tears." Again Bob Dylan is a classic Tin-Pan-Alleysongwriter. You find me a Dylan lyric that doesn't rhyme, Bruce Springsteen the same. They rhyme because that's the American ethos. It has to rhyme. No matter how deep the lyric. You listen to anything by Bob Dylan. It rhymes and that is pure tin pan alley. A lot of songwriters think that to be hip you mustn't rhyme. It's naff that. But traditional songwriting is about rhyming, which is not easy to do. It's not always easy to talk about a deep subject and rhyme each time, it's a hard thing to do. It's a craft. And those that don't do it, very often can't do it, because they are not capable of...you'll occasionally hear Sting or you'll occasionally hear Phil Collins and people like that who write their own words and Rod Stewart who writes his own words, they're not always the greatest lines in terms of rhymes and stuff because they really haven't got that good ability, but Dylan did. And the reason I'm picking certain tracks by certain people is not because they are my all time favorite records is because the Fats Domino thing because I'm a piano player, and therefore the influence was there for me when I was playing piano, the Beatles because of the songwriting and the image, how important that was to me, in terms of then what I wanted to do and so on.

J.Jackson: And Dylan's "I Want You?"

GOS: And the reason Dylan, jumping in on you there, the reason for Dylan was because when I started to write songs and sing I didn't have a great voice, I know I don't have a great voice but Dylan was the person that made us all believe that we could sing. The Beatles made us believe we could write, Dylan made us believe we could sing. So I was a fifteen, sixteen year old going around trying to write songs like Lennon and McCartney and trying to sing like Bob Dylan and that was the great thing with Dylan, he was having pop success with even his first album Freewheelin', not his first album , his second album Freewheelin'. I mean his voice was very unpop-like but for me who couldn't really sing that was...

J.Jackson: It liberated you?

GOS: It gave me the feeling that I could do it.

J.Jackson: So let's hear the non-singer Mr. Bob Dylan doing "I Want You."

[They listen to "I Want You" by Bob Dylan.]

J.Jackson: Ok, Gilbert you mentioned earlier, you were talking about how you took from the Beatles this idea of image...

GOS: And songwriting.

The Pros & Cons of the calculated "Bistro Kid" Image...

J.Jackson: And songwriting and the question on image in terms of, I know you were offended one time when I previously interviewed you and this idea that Gordon Mills in any way influenced your image in the beginning which was called the Bisto Kid, but you pointed out to me that it was the Charlie Chaplin influence, right...that was that very much something grew out of also your love of Chaplin and going to art school, wasn't it?

GOS: I mean the perception always annoys me that when people assume that it is a manager that created the image. I mean if a manager had said to me "look I want you to dress like this", I would have told him where to get off. But what I loved about what I did was I knew you couldn't dress like I did and write silly songs. You could do it if you wrote serious songs and that was the ecotomy if you like. That was the strange thing about me. I loved image, so image was a bad word. I always wanted to do something that the Beatles...the Beatles didn't have to have the mop top, they didn't have to have the cardigan jackets, they could have just looked normal 'cause they were a great talent, but they wanted to be different and I wanted to be different. So it was very difficult by '67 with flower power to be anything other than flowers in your hair, long hair, James Taylor look and all that stuff which was fine. Record companies said to me "Gilbert if you just look like them, you're going to be more successful, because the kids at college who will buy the albums that you'll make will identify with you. If you stick with this image they'll not." Well I said "it's tough, isn't it, I want to do what I want to do". We're not on this earth just to do what everybody tells us to do. We're on this earth to try and make our mark. And even if it's only just a small mark. I think that that's more important than just doing what everybody else does.

J.Jackson: Did you later feel and do you still feel that the image has worked against you?

GOS: Of course it has. In retrospect, its damaged me...I mean if I had wore a dress and make-up and high heels I'd be a cult figure today.

GOS: If you look at the pictures I took...what was interesting with the image I created was that it worked brilliant in photographs, I only wore short trousers in pictures, I never wore them on stage or on TV. I wore long trousers, one leg shorter than the other. The image was calculated and created and the haircut was against what was happening, very short, no side burns. The turned up collar, the no crease in the trousers, the hobnail boots, the football socks, the gray shirt, the shirt hanging out. Everything was like Keaton and Chaplin, I loved those silent seasons. But what I envisaged in my mind as a performer was that I would go on stage, sit at a piano which is very boring anyway, because you can't move much, unless like Jerry Lee and you put your foot on it, I would look but people would be looking at me and I would only sing but I would talk. Again like the silent thing, I would hold a card up to say thank you and I would hold a card up to say next song. So that was what was in my mind. It was a bit naive of me because obviously once I had established myself it was difficult because people were going to be seeing me and talking to me and I was just going to be a normal person in this strange image. But having said that people like John Peel who have a lot of credibility today...I went to do his afternoon program and I would dress like this and him and his producer Bernie, they thought "this guy's OK, he's doing what he wants to do, he's not like anybody else he's different, we like his songs, we're up for it." But when you get the success that I had people turn against you and yes the audience like yourself say, "like this guy's songs but does he have to look like that." But it did work against me.

Everything Rhymes...

J.Jackson: I know we have talked a lot about rhyming and you didn't chose it but I myself, my producer and our listeners would like to hear "Nothing Rhymed" just in terms of the rhymes. Have you any great objection if we play it because I think this actually shows the direct influence in terms of the rhyming pattern.

GOS: No problem.

J.Jackson: So let's hear "Nothing Rhymed."

[They listen to Gilbert's "Nothing Rhymed."]

J.Jackson: The lyrically intricate and melodically beautiful, "Nothing Rhymed." Actually Gilbert you wanted to play another version of one of your more popular hits, "Alone Again," a strange version.

"Alone Again" 2001 - It's where we're goin', it's where we've been, it's who we are.

GOS: Last year we were rung up by...Motley Crew in America are a huge sort of heavy metal type band, and their drummer has formed his own band called 58, contains amongst others, Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees, his son is in it. And because I own all my old masters, they have to get permission to use it, and they requested to record Alone Again. And I said "great, if I like it and its not humorous," cause I won't allow that song to be used for a humorous. So they sent it to us and we liked it. It's really good and we said they could use it and what's interesting is the album which they also sent us some copies of, is that there is twelve tracks on the album and eleven of them they wrote, so the only song...the only cover is Alone Again, it's really strange.

J.Jackson: I have to ask you this because it's my sisters favorite song of all time, did you every climb to the top of a tower and try and kill yourself? No?

GOS: No...I mean it's a third person. It's a situation as a lyricist that you put yourself into somebody else's shoes.

J.Jackson: But all of it, all the crying when your father died and the mother dying at 65.

GOS: Those are experiences that you don't necessarily have to experience something to understand it I think. A good lyricist would be able to get into a character, get into a situation and write about it in a sort of sensible way, in a realistic way without having to experience it. That's what I think makes a good lyricist. I would write about things that effect me, but by in large I'm just a straight forward Tin-Pan-Alley songwriter and I will write about all kinds of things using all kinds of situations, some of them my own.

J.Jackson: So this is more a character song.

GOS: Mm.

J.Jackson: OK so let's hear a character song.

[They listen to "Alone Again (Naturally)" by 58.]

J.Jackson: It's where we're goin', it's where we've been, it's who we are. Gilbert we have polarized the audience out there. If that's a graduate from art school you can see that as post-modern version of one of your songs.

GOS: It's interesting, it's interesting.

J.Jackson: You do listen to that, you seemed to be enjoying it. A lot of your fans are people who liked the original melody might have hated that. But you enjoyed that.

GOS: Of course, I mean to each his own. I'm sure if I'd bought "Alone Again" myself I wouldn't like this, but I didn't buy it, I made the record, and it is not spoiling it for the person who bought the original record because they don't have to listen to this, they don't have to buy it, they've always got their version. But I think as a songwriter for me to hear this...we are in the year 2001, it's interesting to hear things providing they don't make fun of it, providing it's not mocked, I'm up for it.

Gordon Mills...O'Sullivan vs MAM 1982...

J.Jackson: Up to about 1990 there had been 4 million performances of the song on radio, so it's one of the most played songs of all time and I know you'd get more than a tenner for that, being played on the radio because I know there's the legendary story of you being on a tenner a week while you were writing those songs, by choice because at first you picked the tenner because that's what you'd been earning working and then you felt you were exploited by Gordon Mills.

GOS: Not for financial reasons. I had not been exploited by him at all! Again, it is the spin factor in terms of how my case was resolved. My case is always referred to as a money case.

J.Jackson: This is for people who don't know the case, you took a case afterwards against Gordon Mills to win back the royalties...

GOS: No I did not. What happened was, if I can try and keep it short, was that in 1970 when I signed with Gordon or '69, I had been offered deals by publishers who said "look Ray we like your songs", everybody loved my songs anyway so that was how I was able to proceed, all be it slowly with the image and stuff and publishers were saying "we'll give you your own company." It was the beginning when writers were being offered their own companies as a new thing. Of course, as a songwriter to be offered the opportunity to have an interest in your songs, a publishing interest. I thought was fantastic, the little that I knew of it. I knew that it was good. So when I went with Gordon, Gordon said "well you know" will you give me something like that, he said "not now, let's see if you make it first, if you succeed and if you're successful of course I'll give it to you". So 1970, '71, by '76 I still hadn't had it and I said to Gordon and said "don't you think I can have this now?" And I hadn't had it. And then we broke up over artistic reasons. The reason we broke up was because by then, by '76 the hits were drying up and I wanted to work with other producers. He was spending more time on safari doing thing leisure wise and I'm young and I'm enthusiastic and I'm determined and I want to succeed. I've had a lot of success but I'm very determined to keep going as I am today. So I said to Gordon "look why don't we let somebody like Tom Dowd, who produces Rod Stewart, let him produce the album." It was beneath the man, I'd stabbed him in the back, it was Judas and that's why we broke up. So when we broke up I said "look will I still get my interest in the songs 'cause I know we're parting company?" He said "yeah go and see the yes-men in the office and they'll give it to you." I go to see the yes-men and they said "sod off." And that's when I went to court, only for that reason and then it becomes a can of worms that becomes something else.

J.Jackson: But you do own your own masters?

GOS: Won everything back.

A sexually dubious song.

J.Jackson: We're not going to end with "Get Down," which some people are saying is sexually dubious, it's an anti-feminist lyric. Has "Get Down" been accused of those things? You're a bad dog baby and all that stuff.

GOS: Yeah the get down stuff, I'm not worried about people saying those things. It amuse me. I like the idea of writing a lyric that means something totally different to somebody else. I mean, I think that's fun. We all do it, we all have lyrics that we think we understand what it means when we buy it by the artist who is singing it and we are very often wrong.

J.Jackson: Well you're a bad dog Gilbert.

[They listen to Gilbert's "Get Down".]

Peggy Lee....Show Tunes...Brackets (Again).

J.Jackson: So let's hear one of the more recent songs, you do own the rights to. Talk us into "Young At Heart."

GOS: "Young At Heart" is from an album I made a couple of years ago, it's my kind of background in terms of listening to people like Peggy Lee and I listened to the show albums. We used a big orchestra, a 30 piece orchestra, sang most of the songs, in fact did them at Windmill, did all the vocals here at Windmill and recorded with a big orchestra and very little piano playing. In fact, I play piano on just a couple of tracks. So it's that kind of influence album. One of my favorite songs always is Peggy Lee's "The Folks Who Live On The Hill." So I said to Laurie the arranger, Laurie Halloway give me something like that and I had this little melodic thing so that was the influence for the kind of song. We did that and "Young At Heart" is a nice little song.

J.Jackson: And it's not Sinatra's "Young At Heart."

GOS: No, No, No, same title... it's "Young at Heart (Will Always Remain)" in brackets.

J.Jackson: Very good, like (Naturally) after Alone Again, you like your brackets Gilbert. OK let's hear it.

[They listen to "Young At Heart (Will Always Remain)."]

Future Projects: a website, Bygum Records, entire catalogue on CD..

J.Jackson: We should end the show with that. We can go home now, it's a show tune that ends a show. Gilbert you were saying earlier that you own the masters to your albums, but I can't buy them in my local record store and also I checked the internet sites and there isn't a site where we can buy the old stuff. So for anyone who wants them what should they do?

GOS: We have a website waiting to be put out. We're going to release the records on our own label Bygone Records at some point, but it's time consuming and as yet I don't have the time to be able to spend to coordinate it. But the plan is to release every album, previous albums on CD, make them all available and when that happens, hopefully in Ireland they will be released.

J.Jackson: I also saw there was a Japanese fan reviewing a live show of yours and he said his fellow fans were very disorientated when a-la Jerry Lee you did get up on the piano at the end, doing "Get Down" and some of the fans who expected ballads, had forgotten that you were a rocker too.

GOS: Well there you go, when you come to my live shows that's what you get. The restrictive practice of being a piano player is difficult to overcome, so jumping on the piano is an opportunity to let loose.

J.Jackson: Lead us out with the last song.

New Songs....New Album....Water Inspiration

GOS: The last song is from the new album Irlish which is going to be released here in Ireland for the first time actually, normally we get released in England and then we get a few imports over here. But this is actually coming out on Universal here. Irlish is a nice selection of new songs. I'm very happy with them but there's one track called "Water Music" which is just...I heard this sample of these woman washing in South America, they kind of wash the clothes against the rocks and as they do so they make a sound, make a rhythm with it and this album was put together with just sounds like that, this guy going around with this tape recorder recording these sounds. My drummer, a couple of years ago, brought it into the studio to see if we could use some of the sounds on it while we were recording and I picked up on this and I asked him to make a loop of it for me so that maybe I could use it at some point. So that gave me the idea, so the inspiration was...it was called water drums and so I just use that as a backing, did this little song and it was a joy to do, so we put it on the album.

J.Jackson: OK Gilbert I thank you very much for being my guest today.

GOS: Joe it was good to see you. Till the next time.

J.Jackson: OK here we go.

[They listen to Gilbert's "Water Music."]

Left to Right: Peggy Lee......58......Stephen Foster.....Goffin & King.....Rick Davies

A Special "thank You" to Liamy MacNally of County Mayo, Ireland who took the time to have this interview placed on CD for gosullivan.com. Also Thanks for the Galway concerts tickets. Liamy! Please stay in touch!