Soldier Of Love
Spencer Leigh talks to LITTLE STEVEN
The new album by Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul combines a CD and a DVD of the band's 2017 UK tour - playing with Paul McCartney as a guest at the Roundhouse in London and a full set of Beatle-related material when the band got to Liverpool, hence the title Macca to Mecca! I've seen many Beatle tributes in Liverpool - far too many, to be honest - but this one is at the top of my list.
Your new album, Macca to Mecca!, is recorded live, mostly at the Cavern. Have you been to Liverpool before?
I've been to Liverpool six or eight times and now I usually do a master class at Paul McCartney's university. Paul introduced me to the head there. I do a class when I'm in town. It could be a class on songwriting or record production or it could be on producing radio shows or acting. I have a bunch of crafts that I am conversant with.
Do you offer advice on songwriting?
Try to. My basic thing is to encourage people to write with purpose. It doesn't matter what that purpose is. It is better than having a blank sheet of paper in front of you and having too many options.
You'd be a teenager when the Beatles came to America. Did they influence you immediately?
They were everything to me. I didn't fit in anywhere and I didn't know what the future held for me. We had individuals rather than groups, and there weren't really any bands in America. Then we had four guys in the Beatles and they were followed by the Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark 5, Herman's Hermits, the Kinks, the Who, the Animals and the Yardbirds. They were all offering something different as they were communicating as a gang and what they were doing was about friendship, about being a posse, a gang or a team. I realised that this was a whole new world and I wanted to be part of it.
The Beatles were extremely important, but we only discovered the Beatles halfway through their career. We didn't discover them until 1964 and they had been together since 1957 really. They were gone by the end of 1969. When we discovered them, they were extremely good and very sophisticated. They presented perfection - the harmony was perfect; the hair was perfect; the suits were right. Everything about them was right. They revealed this new world to us but it wasn't like we could say, "Well, I think I could do that".
Luckily four months later, we had the Rolling Stones. They didn't have harmonies like the Beatles and they wore what they felt like. Their hair wasn't perfect except for Brian Jones'. They were like the first punk band but I like to consider the two bands together. They made it look easier than it was. So, the Beatles introduced us to a new world and the Rolling Stones invited us in.
In the UK, there was a lot about the Beatles vs the Rolling Stones, but in truth, they were very friendly with each other.
Yes, in those days, they talked up the rivalry for publicity. We had the Beatles vs the Dave Clark Five first (laughs), the Beatles versus this one or that one. It really was very silly, but it was a yin and yang thing. The Beatles were the ultimate pop band and the Stones never really were a pop band. They had a different point of view - it was blues meets R&B. The Stones had started out as missionaries and so there was a difference between the two of them and they complemented each other perfectly. They gave you both sides of the story and you could absorb both things. That's why we are who we are.
Those groups were turning us onto our own music. We got a history lesson on American music from the British Invasion. We are very grateful for that to this day.
So you really enjoyed playing Beatle songs at the Cavern.
We never get a chance to play Beatle songs and I wanted to do a tribute to them. I hadn't really played a Beatle song since my high school band, other than Paul coming on stage with us at Hyde Park in 2012. Then he invited me and Bruce on stage with him in Madison Square Garden.
Then he came on stage at the very beginning of the English tour at the Roundhouse in London in November 2017. What a thrill that was! It was like he was endorsing my music and that put me in a Beatley mood for that English tour. I said, "Let's do one of those lunchtime sets at the Cavern when we get to Liverpool. We knew it would fun, but we didn't know if they did them". Fortunately, the club's manager said, "Yes, let's give it a shot."
I love your version of 'Soldier of Love'.
Thanks. That's one of my favourites. I first heard it on the Beatles' Live at the BBC. It is the one song that I wish the Beatles had recorded for one of their albums. The recording at the BBC is a great recording, thankfully. They had done 'Anna' and the Rolling Stones had done 'You Better Move On' and I was getting into Arthur Alexander myself. 'Soldier of Love' became a favourite of mine and I really wanted to do that one. The Beatles didn't just do songs by the major guys - Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard. They also turned us onto the more obscure guys like Larry Williams and Arthur Alexander, and most people had never heard of them.
Slow Down 'is a wonderful rave-up, a totally manic composition.
It's true. You don't really appreciate the Beatles until you play the songs yourself and you sing then. You then realise how brilliant they were. Larry Williams was a very good singer and he was the replacement for Little Richard back in the day, but John adds more intensity to 'Slow Down' and he changes the melody a little. Larry Williams' version is great, but when I sang the song, I found that I would rather sing it John's way. He also changed the melody here and there. He did the same thing with 'Bad Boy'.
We happened to be on a bus for that English part of the tour and so about three days ahead of getting to Liverpool, we were able to rehearse the songs on the bus. I decided to do half the set with the horns, so we could do 'Magical Mystery Tour' and 'All You Need Is Love' as the Beatles didn't do them on tour. Half the set was Beatle songs with horns and the other half was the covers.
We could only fit about 200 people into that front room at the Cavern as I wanted to play the long, thin room with the arches. That is what I had seen on the 'Some Other Guy' video.
Will you be telling Bruce that he has to play Liverpool?
(Laughs) Have we never played Liverpool with the E Street Band?
No.
Oh, that is weird. We are going to have to fix that, for sure! I don't think it could be the Cavern though as Bruce is a stadium act and we play to 40,000 to 60,000 people when we're on the road. To reduce that to a couple of hundred people would be quite something, but you never know in this business. I wouldn't rule it out completely.
Now I think about it, the Beatles never got bigger than theatre size in the UK.
Nobody ever did back then as we didn't have the venues.
I don't agree. They did that New Musical Express awards show at the Empire Pool in Wembley with about 20 other bands. Surely it could have been booked for the Beatles on their own. Whyever not?
Is it true that you were married by Little Richard?
I read about him becoming a preacher. When the Russians launched Sputnik, Richard thought it would be the end of the world. He took all his rings and threw them into the river and became a preacher. We called him and said, "Come on and marry us." It was the first time he had ever done that. It was quite a rock and roll wedding. Percy Sledge sang 'When a Man Loves a Woman' when we walked down the aisle. We had the band from The Godfather movie ad it was a crazy rock and roll wedding, for sure. Little Richard was hilarious as he went off into some crazy Little Richard thing. We were laughing the whole time. I have a video of it but I seem to have lost it.
Is the new album on vinyl?
Oh yes. Everything that I do is available in every single format - vinyl, digital, CD. The Macca to Mecca! set is now part of the Soul Fire package - you can get a package of the whole tour or you can buy it separately.
I play vinyl myself but not as much as I used to. I love the big-sized records themselves though. I like to see the artwork big. (Laughs) I don't keep a lot of records in the house. We don't have the room. There's no room for big collections in New York City.
Spencer Leigh
Live
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