Talking To... Clive Gregson
#C Do you like it.
#N Most of the time. I live on the coast, sun, sea, sand, countryside not far away.
#C I come back to England an awful lot. I like playing here. Lots of family connections, friends, but I just don’t think I could live here anymore. I’ve been away sixteen years and it’s changed a lot in that time. In many ways not for the better.
Getting around is very difficult, it’s an expensive country and a lot of it isn’t worth it. There’s also no music industry in Britain anymore, to speak of. There’s a series of cottage industries and some thriving scenes, but I live in Nashville and it really is th last place on Earth where there is a music business.
You can be a musician, play on records, do live stuff and it’s all there. 24x7 venues still exist there, everything you need as a writer/musician is available. It doesn’t exist anywhere else
That makes it a fairly simple choice for me. I like Nashville, I like living there. I can be a musician there and make a living. It’s hard to be a musician in Britain now.
There is no music industry, no one makes records anymore, you can’t earn a living as a session musician. Gigs are getting harder to get, particularly if you want to put your own tour together, except at the very highest level, radio pop music, that I have absolutely nothing in common with.
I come back to tour and play solo stuff. I’ve been back quite a bit this year. I’m doing the Any Trouble launch and if it turns into something then I’ll be spending more time here.
#N Are you going to be playing with Nanci Griffith at all?
#C No. I handed my notice in with Nanci back in March. I was so busy with other stuff and we sat down and talked about it. I’ve done my time with Nanci, put my hours in at the coalface. It’s not an easy gig and I had a bunch of other stuff on offer, that I preferred to do, so I let that one go.
#N Nanci turned “I Love This Town” into a hit last year, which I think you wrote about Barrow.
#C I didn’t really write it about anywhere, in all honesty. It’s about Skelmersdale [laughs] That’s not really true. It’s allegorical, it’ about anywhere you don’t want to be anymore.
#N I was wondering what you thought about the Americanisation of the song?
#C I thought she did a good job of it. It was a real surprise she did it. I wouldn’t have thought of it as a Nanci Griffith song. We were working on the record and we were close to finishing and She said, “There’s one of your songs that I’d like to have a go at”. So she did it as a duet with Jimmy Buffet and I think it worked out very well. A really good job of it.
As a songwriter you hope that your songs are universal. You hope they’ll translate to different people in different situations. I really liked what she did with it. It did me extremely well.
#N Back to Any Trouble, good producers, good video people, is that coincidence or knowing the right people.
#C Some of it’s luck. Yes it is people we know. The record was produced by John Wood who did the first Any Trouble record and I’ve known John for about twenty eight years and worked with him quite a bit. We knew if John was available he was the man for that gig. He was so he got it. The video element is quite funny because it’s also just friends.
Phil, the original Any Trouble bass player, is involved in video production. He’s worked in video and adverts and that sort of thing for years. The company he’s involved in is one of the biggest in that arena. His director is a chap called Nigel Dig(?). He’s one of the most successful video makers of all time and the guy that was responsible for signing us to Stiff all those years ago. So yes we were lucky we knew these people and lucky they were available. Pure fluke. He’s currently in France watching the cycle teams pull out with the drug scandal and then he’s back for the video shoot. Maybe they should jut let people compete on drugs and make it fairer that way.
#N Maybe it should go both ways. If you have an amphetamine race, you should have one on dope.
#C [Laughs] you might get more musicians doing sport.
#N The 100 hundred meters ended after 15 minutes when the first competitor could be bothered to cross the line.
#C Which is sort of what Nigel’s filming. The opposite of the Yellow Jersey, the guy that finishes last. I think the shirt is called The Lantern O Rouge. The guy who finishes last gets it and a large amount of adoration. That’s what the documentary is about.
#N There are rumours of live dates
#C We’re playing a launch show and then hopefully some dates at the end of October. Only a handful to see how it goes, but we’ve not played properly for twenty three years so we’ll have to see how it goes. I’m sure it will all be fine. The main thing is if we’ll get an audience and I think we will, there’s a lot of people excited about it.
It’s a funny thing with Any trouble. I don’t think we ever made a bad record. I think we were a very good live band. People liked us, but not enough for us to constantly have hits.
We stopped for the right reason, we stopped because it was no longer viable whilst we were still friends. We stopped because there was really no reason to keep going. We remained friends.
#N Before you could be built up to be knocked down.
#C I think we were quite well treated at the time. We were consistent and desperately unfashionable. We weren’t part of a fashion thing.
#N You’ve been solo, in a band, in a duo. Where do you feel happiest?
#C If I have a favourite it’s songwriting. It’s a great, one minute you have a blank piece of paper and then you have a song. It’s great. I also like the thrill of being on stage. If you’re good, it’s great, if you’re crap, there’s nothing to hide behind. It’s a bit different now.
I have this theory, from the Eighties. Duran Duran ruined it for everyone. There were people that thought Duran Duran were a good band and I saw them three times and they were diabolical. You can be a bad band and be successful, have an audience, but it’s an exception.
Certainly the solo shows I think that’s the real thing.
Thanks