I’ll be interviewing Patrick Wolf next week. In the meantime, here’s his single The City, which I’m quite fond of, Send in your questions for him! Are there any particular things you’d like to know?
"The music starts the songs." A conversation with Jamie Cullum
- This interview was taken by me last autumn for WIENER magazine. Here is the original version, on the occasion of Jamie Cullum's concert in Vienna next Sunday. For all the Austrians out there, we're giving away two tickets for the show at Austria Center Vienna, it's completely sold out. Just visit the WIENER Facebook page at www.facebook.com/wiener.online (Courtesy of WIENER magazine, Austria).
- Mudpies Utd.: Congratulations to the new album, I really love it. I noticed that most of the songs were written by you and Ben [Jamie's brother] this time around. Why did it take so long for you to make an album where about 80 or 90% are your own composition rather than covers?
- Jamie Cullum: I guess it didn’t take long in the sense that I spent all those 2 years working on the album. I think when I was finished touring „Catching Tales“ I wanted to take some time off to let my mind become a little bit more fertile. I needed to process all the things that happened to me in the last 2 years, because it had been such a crazy time for me, after "Twentysomething" and "Catching Tales". I hadn’t really sat back and thought it out. I wanted my brain to feel the need to make music and wanting to make something as relevant and good as this. I’m really proud of it and I think what happened is: I wrote about 30 or 40 songs, but I wasn’t writing them for an album, I was just … I wasn’t thinking: “Oh, will this work for the new album, is it Jazz enough or is it Pop enough. I put all of this aside. And after that year off, I started to think about the album properly. I started recording last summer, but we couldn’t make it on time so Universal couldn’t put it out before Christmas, so they said: “Can we wait until next year?” – and I was really annoyed about it…
- Mudpies Utd.: So that explains why there has been a four year break?
- Jamie Cullum: Yeah, that’s right. So by the time we finished I had written another 3-4 songs and we added those songs as well. So that was it, really.
- Mudpies Utd.: And did you ever write than many songs before for another album, say for “Catching Tales”?
- Jamie Cullum: I don’t know, I was always tend to write quite a lot, I guess, so I wrote at least 20 for Catching Tales – but again, it’s about finding the right balance between writing for a new album and just writing, because writing is just something that you do. Writing should be a free exercise, and not thinking “oh, this could be track 1, or track 2”, you know what I mean? And that’s the kind of creativity you need.
- Mudpies Utd.: But still, whenever I listened to your earlier albums “Twentysomething” or “Catching Tales”, I always enjoyed your own songs more than the covers. I mean, of course there were the classics, but there were also things like Jeff Buckley and I always wondered: How come that all those amazing songs by Jamie Cullum himself... why are there only 5 or 6 on them on the record? Do you think you needed to do the classics to become publicly known? Because, as I see it, in the last 20 years, mainstream Jazz has not been around, really. Do you think you needed to do the classics that people would actually notice you?
- Jamie: I think it was quite natural for me because I had such a background in playing Jazz and being a Jazz musician. As a Jazz musician, part of the education is learning the classics and pulling them apart. Anyone who starts with Jazz has to start with Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong. It’s like English Literature and reading Shakespeare. And in order to do the classics properly you need as much information and as much talent to successfully interpret songs, and I don’t see a big difference in energy or power in interpreting a song. I did an interview with Elton John once, he interviewed me for the magazine INTERVIEW in the US, the Andy Warhol magazine. And he said to me that he thinks that it’s really important, that the interpretation of the songs behind it all. He said not many people do it these days, and certainly not many people do it well, and he said “You have a real talent for songwriting and you have a real talent for interpreting, so don’t forget that that’s an art form as well.” I thought it was quite amazing to come from Elton John.
- Mudpies Utd.: Tell me about the songs that you wrote with your brother Ben, there’s a lot of Electro Jazz this time, can you tell me how these songs cam along?
- Jamie: I think they were partly done in my year off. We started a new band which was like a – I guess – beat electronic band mixed with Jazz. We did a gig at an Electronic festival and we wrote a bunch of songs for that, purely for our amusement, and obviously some of that flowed into what I was doing here. So we pulled some of the songs that were from those sessions into this project and we did what we normally do. We live next door to each other so, we’d have a cup of tea, we’d sit around and play a bit of Jazz. The music starts the songs, I guess.
- Mudpies Utd.: Tel me about the Cole Porter song. You worked with the Count Basie Orchestra, how did that happen? I mean, it must have been amazing for you to work with such a brilliant orchestra?
- Jamie: Yes, it was one of the most amazing things. The CBO saw me play in Paris. We were at the same party of some magazine and they booked me to do a solo show and then the CBO to play a full kind of big band show. And they saw me play and they loved what I was doing…
- Mudpies Utd.: So they actually approached you?
- Jamie (excited): Yeah! We actually just wanted to do a gig together, and then I was doing this album and I had this idea of doing “Just One Of Those Things” and I thought, well, let’s do it with the CBO. And before I know it I was flying over to NY and we recorded in the Bennett Studios in New Jersey.
- Mudpies Utd.: And is it actually recorded live?
- Jamie: We basically set up in a theatre in New Jersey and played 3 songs; the second take is actually on the record.
- Mudpies Utd.: There are two or three songs that made me think: Why did he do it? I.e. you covered Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop The Music” and Michael Jackson was involved in the song as well. Did you do it to do a tribute to Michael Jackson, because it was so popular and played so much during the last year? You’ve got all these amazing arrangements and there is so much diversity, and then this song comes up and you think: Ok? Interesting…
- Jamie: It’s each to their own, obviously. It’s funny, because that’s the track where people mostly get hoocked when they listen to the record – and they want to talk about it. As a Jazz musician, I feel it’s important to take songs and pull them apart and mess with people’s expectations. People would hear a song like that and think: ‘Oh, it’s just a Charts song, it’s on the radio’
- Mudpies Utd.: …and people will recognize it…
- Jamie: …and people will recognize it. But it’s more about improvising and doing something different with it. I was on the dance floor in a night club, I was dancing with my friends, and I suddenly heard this song, and I thought: Oh, this is cool, I loved it when I heard it. And before I knew it I was singing it all the time, it got underneath my fingers at the piano and I wanted to mix it with a slightly darker, acid jazzy chord. I also thought that the lyrics were really sexy. It’s a great entry point with the music I’m doing. Doing things like this… I can’t quite explain it, it feels very similar to writing a song, because it takes a lot of inspiration and excitement to do something like this. It’s really … obviously in your mind you separated the two things with the covers and the originals, but to me: When I successfully do a cover, they live in the same universe, they don’t seem like a separate thing.
- Mudpies Utd.: So it’s not more important for you to do your own thing than doing the classics?
- Jamie: Yes, that’s it. It’s part of the Jazz tradition, it’s part of the art form it’s certainly a part of my identity. Sometimes the balance between the two things is important, sometimes there are more originals and sometimes there are more covers. It depends on how I feel in the studio, really.
- Mudpies Utd.: And it’s really up to you, there is no label guy sitting there saying: You know, we’re not sure if this will sell and we need you to do some popular songs, to ask boldly?
- Jamie: I was hoping you’d know the answer to that question. No, it doesn’t work like that. It wouldn’t be interesting to me to do an album with someone else telling you what to do. There would be no reason for me to do that.
- Mudpies Utd.: Pretty much all of your songs are about love and easy things, do you have any intention to do more political lyrics for instance. Are we ever going to see more serious lyrics by Jamie Cullum?
- Jamie: I think there’s something serious in some of these songs, they are certainly more serious than I have been before. I rather wanted that version of “If I Ruled The World”… part of the power of this song are the very optimistic lyrics, but very dark and gloomy arrangements. That was definitely ment to be, if you want to call it that, a political statement. Also “Wheels” is a little darker, with the lyrics being “The wheels are falling off the world”. It’s about where we are in this universe. I would argue that there is that element already to the record.
- Mudpies Utd.: Do you think it’s important for musicians to do that?
- Jamie: It depends what you want to write about – you should never behold of what people expect musicians to do…
- Mudpies Utd.: No, that’s not what I meant, but as a public figure you do undeniably have a certain influence and if you’re popular people will listen to what you have to say.
- Jamie: Yes, I kind of see the responsibility in that as well. I think this particular album was very much written in a state for me of big personal change in my life and my circumstances, and that was the thing that really characterized it.
- Mudpies Utd.: May I asked what kind of change?
- Well, falling out of love in a big catastrophic way, and falling back in love in an extraordinary hard and brilliant way. Between those two poles, we have a record.
- Mudpies Utd.: How long did it actually take to finish the record?
- Jamie: In total it took about 3 or 4 months. We finished it in April.
- Mudpies Utd.: Are you looking forward to the tour?
- Jamie: Oh! Touring is the pot of at the end of the rainbow for me. I think it’s what I do best, actually, playing live. And let me say, I’m really happy that you like the album so much. I shall be walking around, telling everybody.
Check out this great interview with Lady Gaga by Caitlin Moran.
"My body is my own, and so is my soul."
- Here is the original length interview I did with Tori Amos about her record "Abnormally Attracted To Sin" last spring for WIENER magazine. The interview was taken in Vienna, May 2009. (Courtesy of WIENER, Austria).
- WIENER: I’ve noticed you’ve got a very emotional relationship to your fans, and that your fans are very critical when it comes to your music. Have you had the chance to play the new album to an audience so far?
- Tori Amos: I’m not here to take a poll. I don’t sit and take polls with what fans think. They know I don’t. I don’t make records by democracy. I am a composer and you cannot be great by trying to please the masses that are all experts. You have to know what it is you’re doing. And sometimes that will strike a chord with certain people, and at other times it will strike a chord with different people who follow the work... so that’s how I approach it. I don’t take a poll.
- WIENER: You see the fans before every show and take requests.
- Tori: Yes, but I don’t go up to fans and ask them what they think, are you kidding? No, when Matt Chamberlain calls me up and says „Oh my god, the way the rhythms were put together and it’s against the melodic structure", making me have to relisten to it over and over again. Matt, who’s one of the greatest drummers in the world, and I see, yeah, I’m right on. So that’s what you do. It’s a very different process for me than going outside and seeing people before a show and seeing if there are certain songs that will work that night. It’s a completely different thing.
- WIENER: A lot of songs remind me of your older work, like „Choirgirl“ or „Venus“. Is „Curtain Call“ a sequel to „Ruby Through The Looking Glass“ for instance?
- Tori: I think some songs are relations on a theme and they’re connected, although they might come at a different time and they have different subject matter. But I do think sometimes there are songs that live in this haystack-kind-of-concepts and you’re doing variations, although they’re their own as well. They may orbit in the same solar-system, musically, but I really like the listener to make those associations for themselves. I think it’s really important that the listener is able to do that without me always leading them.
- WIENER: You stated that the song “Strong Black Vine” is a political approach to religious intolerance. How do you feel these things change now that Obama is in office? Can you actually tell a difference, now that you're living in England?
- Tori: I travel a lot, I’m in the States a lot more than people think. I see England as my husband’s country and I’m a guest there. I have a lot of time for the Brits, but I’m an American: I vote there, Doctors, Dinners, everything. All the bits I do as a citizen are in America, I don’t have voting rights in England, I don’t use the system at all. I’m protected as American citizen and vote and pay taxes and do all that stuff like every other American citizen. And yes, I voted for Obama. I think the whole record “American Doll Posse” was about trying to be a part of change. And now that we have a new administration we also have all kinds of problems as a world that we’re dealing with. The economic crises has affected everybody because of the Domino Effect: friends, family, people who have to move... relationships and homes are falling apart because of the stress of people losing their homes and jobs. I know people personally who are going off to College and whose parents now can’t pay. So their dream is gone, they’re having to change and go to community college and work and have to find another way to get in. It’s all changing in such a rapid way. So this record was very much written during, yes, Obama getting in. But it’s also written during a time when the world as we know it is gone and we’re remaking the world. So there’s a paradox going on. And also of course – come on- we’re in a time of religious intolerance, where the troups are up in Afghanistan where they supposedly need to be because there are people of all the big religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism who feel the other shouldn’t exist.
- WIENER: Do you think there is actually positive impact happening right now, with Obama travelling through all these countries and trying to reconcile the people? Do you think there’s the danger of all this good energy turning into the opposite because the expectations are too high?
- Tori: Look, I think that what is on the world’s plate at this time is so immense that to have leaders with integrity [is important]. It’s just absolutely necessary if we’re going to get to a place where this little planet is able to work together. We somehow need to find ways to respect each others beliefs. It’s a very thin line to walk to negotiate to bring one side together with the other side, even emotionally. I think it was just unfortunate that with the triumph of getting rid of the idea that you can’t have a black president, getting rid of that segregation idea, segregation was still applied to the homosexual community. And this is what I’m saying to you: If we go back to the definition of sin: for me the greatest sin is intolerance of another’s belief. As long as they’re not trying to kill you then why are you so curious what’s going on in their bedroom, why do you care? Whether it’s the extreme Islamic or the extreme Christian community, the impression of how women see themselves is so important. The patriarchy has kept women segregating their sexuality or spirituality. I’m pushing it further with the art work and on this record, with the idea of erotic spirituality. In the word mother is the word “other”. A lot of mothers forget about the “other”, saying the “woman”. They don’t ever forget about the children, and they’re nurturing and trying to give give give to everybody else. But they forget to give to the side of the woman-aspect. And so that side ends up on the top shelf in magazines and the guys know exactly what I’m talking about, because some of these guys are gonna look and say: “Why can’t my lover or my wife allow herself to bask in her passion and her beauty.” What is it in us that shuts it off? And unless we’re having some elicit affair with some guy or some weirdo fantasy that we’re prostitutes… sometimes we get caught up in this self-image that eroticism is not for mothers and that erotic has become vulgar and where’s the sanctity? We can’t define sin like the church fathers do. We, as women, have to define it differently. The real sin is allowing the patriarchy to define sin for us.
- WIENER: That’s interesting, because we’re living in such a catholic country in Austria...
- Tori: Are you?
- WIENER: Oh yes. Everybody is catholic, but not in the traditional way. We’re born catholic and we get baptized and then Grandmothers tell us to go to Church and so on and so on... and then we pretend to be Catholics and to believe in God but most of us probably don’t do it, it’s just what we’ve learned to do.
- Tori: I had a grandmother who was a minister, a missionary, and a teacher. And I think she and I didn’t get along because her philosophy was “you give your soul to God and your body to your husband.” And it’s no. My body is my own, and so is my soul. Some people, even scientists, are trying to get us to see earth as a sovereign entity, that the church and governments should not be able to have jurisdiction over earth. Because if we’re going to retain this place for a hundred years from now, we have to make grave changes. We see her as a sovereign entity, not just this kind of - I don’t know - sex slave that we can do whatever we want with, whenever we want. Women included you know. Just because the religious patriarchy or the governments want the earth to act a certain way, there’s cause in effect to carbon emission and there’s cause is effect happening on earth. She’s just not playing the fucking game, is she? She’s just not making it ok for them to continue the way that they have been without any effect. There is effect.
- WIENER: How do you think men can support this whole spiritual way of new women?
- Tori: Tthey win, really. Don’t you think? They win. It keeps their wives from having affairs with silly little Tennis instructors (laughs)… you know what I’m saying… I’m being a bit foolish. I am also saying to you: these women have to tend their own fire and you can’t always blame the breakdown of a relationship or a marriage on everybody else. We can talk about men’s infidelity until the end of time, however each of us has to ask ourselves: Was I tending the fire? Not for him, for myself! And then they both benefit. But if you start shutting yourself off from thinking you deserve that or need that, sometimes as mums you replace that side of self. It’s almost like you edited out a season out of earth’s year, so there's spring, summer, winter, fall. What if you just start editing out summer, the heat, the passion of that season? Oh no… ok. Spring, fall, winter. (laughs) As a mother sometimes you just edit out the passion that has happened because of what we’re attracted to. We’re not always attracted to the idea that erotica, spirituality, nurturing and monogamy can all be together. “Oh, if I could have, you know, this happen with this stranger for a few days …” and you write these fantasies, it’s amputated out of your “respected” life. I’m not saying these women don’t have sex, I’m not talking about having sex. I’m talking about seeing yourself as a sensual being that doesn’t mean to be kidnapped in a James Bond movie and shagged by some stranger to have it. And I do think that men would highly benefit from this because some of them think: God, I just wanna shag my wife. Can’t she just put aside being daughter, mother, career woman, responsible person? Where’s that woman I fell in love with? Because if you ask a lot of women they would sit and say: “I don’t know where she is.” We get in our routine and why does it sometimes take losing our relationship? Why does it take another woman for us to wake up sometimes, why? Why is that? Why can’t we..?
- WIENER: Do you think that your music can awaken this consciousness?
- Tori: I think the music takes me by the hand and takes me through different dimensions and possibilities of growing and changing all the time. And we need to. Like the earth changes, we do. That doesn’t mean she’s not stable. It doesn’t mean that the earth is gonna kick us all off. But I think sometimes we get afraid of our imaginations, of our yearnings and how to apply it to our relationship and daily life. These are huge challenges but a lot of times we are pressed by other people’s opinions of us. We just take them on instead of thinking: “No, I have to keep growing and I have to keep recognizing that my partner is growing and changing.” And that should be fascinating to me, right? (sighs) Sometimes though what women are attracted to! And some of the letters I get..! Sometimes they don’t value the subtlety. I mean why are they attracted to men who have power over them and reject them, opposed to attracted to men who don’t want to reject them?
- WIENER: But men do that as well, don’t they?
- Tori: In a different way. I mean, they have their own kind of thing going on. I’m way more fascinated with what we’re up to. Women are so complex. Not that men aren’t but really… My husband will say to me: “Why can’t I just ride my motorcycle, hug the asphalt, think about Arsenal winning and shagging my wife? It’ really not more complicated than that, ok?" (laughs) "I want to see the football game, I would like to shag my wife and I want to ride my motorbike. Why can’t it all be that simple, why does something else have to be going on in my mind? Guilt, because I thought I fancied some girl at the press tour or whatever the fuck it is..? It’s not that complicated, wife.” And sometimes I’m thinking it isn’t. For him, it isn’t. And that is ok. I have to say this because I get to meet women on all these promo-tours from all over the world and there was this conversation the other night just about this. I was in Germany, it was a mix of women from all over the world, and that woman was talking to her partner and she was just sounding off. And he wanted to fix it. Like, change the tires and fix it. And she said: "No! You can’t fix this, I just want to talk to you about the emotions." And he was just looking at her going: “What do you want me to do!?” And she said: "I don’t want you to do anything. I just want you to listen to me." "And do you want me to hug you and make love to you, is it that what you want?" "NO! No. I. Want. You. To. Listen. To. Me." And then she said: “I started to tear my hair out and think ‘What am I trying to make him into?’” I have a marriage now for 11 years, and it’s funny because Mark will say to you… he’s British, so totally different than American guys, however…
- WIENER: I’ve lived in London...
- Tori: So you know!
- WIENER: I know them.
- Tori: Yeah! (laughs) However, he’s well travelled and he’s my husband and he will say: “You know, the thing is, wife, our relationship, because of us…" I mean he’ll sit and listen to women talk quietly, sheepishly, now. He’ll just sort of get in the corner a little bit and act like he’s on his computer. But wherever we are in the world, he will say: “I had to understand that women express themselves, needing to talk. Men bond in different ways and we don’t necessarily talk about an emotional problem. But because of our relationship everything is about communication." But it’s taken years for us to find the language because now not only do I speak American and he speaks Britain, but the woman and man language is just so different. Hhe’s not going to sit down like the woman and say “I need to talk about this.” It’s been about me, learning that he’s not gonna put problems into words. Iit’s about me putting on my Sherlock Holmes hat and finding a way to let him tell me what’s bothering him. Sometimes a guy has to have the room, not the nagging wife: “Do you wanna talk about it?”, like you’re some sort of shrink. You just create a space where they can turn around and say “You know what..?”, and after a few days they’ve been holding this thing, they will talk about it. Part of the seduction is wanting to know what you’re partner’s thinking. The mental side of it is so much a part of it of the attraction. But if you stop taking the time, if you turn your back thinking your partner isn’t thinking and growing, then they’ll think and grow while your back is turned.
- WIENER: So that never stops.
- Tori: That never stops. It always takes work. But that’s part of the passion that the records are about. I’ll leave you with this: This record was so much work, with hammering out the arrangements. So he and I came into the room, being artist and production, and Tash [their daughter] looked at us and said: "Alright, you two. Enough! I need mum and dad. You just have to put the record aside.” I think we’re at an age now, where we can actually do that. There were times when we might not have put the record aside and argued about it. I never make records alone, I make them with teams of people. But I compose alone. And that’s a very lonely process, although the songs are rich and depend on themselves. But in order to conjure them, I have to go through something in order to translate them. It can be excruciating. Mark will say: “I do not envy you. I used to envy you being able to write all these songs. It’s trying to translate and understand them and feel all this feeling." With “Maybe California” I was just blue for weeks, because I allow the mothers and the feeling of wanting to remove yourself from a situation to take over my life. I had an experience that sort of made me hold that feeling. And I think sometimes to be a good composer you do walk a very dangerous line of having to feel things emotionally. If you’re not a composer and just a player you don’t have to take it there. But you have to excavate the unconscious to go to these dark caves and sometimes I know that Mark’s there on the other side with his motorcycle and a hand that says: “You need to get outta here and jump on the back, I’m taking you out of this."
