This week Leicestershire formed three-piece The Wave Pictures, a
group whose rough hewn music owes a heavy debt to bands like Television
and The Modern Lovers, unleashes their latest album ‘Great Big Flamingo
Burning Moon’.
For this, their fourteenth album in seventeen years, cult musician
Billy Childish has come on board. Not only has he lent them his
equipment, but he has also produced and co-authored the album, making
the it a more of a collaborative piece.
So Figure 8 managed to chat to front man Dave Tattersall in an
interview that was born out of rather chaotic circumstances. Delayed at
first because the band were due to record a session for 6music, then
later on the band found themselves stuck in Paris thanks to a fire in
the channel tunnel. Finally the week after the fire, we took the time to
chat to Dave about working with Billy, his cavalier attitude to writing
and recording, and his love of country music.
The new album’s coming out in February. And I’ve noticed
that Billy Childish is on there. In what capacity did you collaborate,
because I know he lent some old equipment to you?
DT: It’s much more than that, Billy and I wrote all the songs
together. I wrote the words and he wrote the music, I suppose. I mean we
wrote them sitting side by side on his sofa. Yeah, he plays guitar on
the record and he produced it basically. He mixed it, we used all his
equipment. We used his studio. He did overdubs. There’s a total
collaboration between Wave Pictures and Billy Childish. He’s someone
that we’ve listened to for years. And we were doing something with Mark
Riley, he’s a DJ on 6 Music, we were having a drink and he asked us what
we were listening to at the moment.
And we said, “Oh, we’re listening to loads of Billy Childish.” And he
said, “Oh I know Billy.” He speaks to Billy on the phone from time to
time. I think they’ve never met in person, but he speaks to him on the
phone. We said, “Well ask Billy if he’s interested in recording a band,”
thinking nothing would come from it and we’ve never hear from him. And
he just said yes, he wanted to do it. And he suggested writing the songs
together as well.
And at that point, we didn’t know that this was going to be the next
Wave Pictures album, we didn’t know what it was going to be. It was just
a little project for its own sake. We’re working on stuff all the time
and recording all the time. And so we just sort of went with it, yeah,
let’s write the songs together, and then we used all his equipment, his
guitars, everything. And then we just all loved it, Billy loved it. And
then we just decided to release it. It’s a complete collaboration. It’s
totally a one off sort of album for us.
I did actually read the press release and there’s a lot
of talk of using a lot of old equipment. Was it recorded in a very old
fashioned way?
DT: Yeah, I suppose you could say that. It was recorded onto tape and
two microphones on the drums. The band playing live, live vocals and
then a few overdubs. So a very ’60s way of recording. And that’s always
how the Wave Pictures have approached things. We always want to play
live in the room. You know, the modern thing is multi-tracking and doing
everything separately. You track the drums first and then you put
overdubs on. That’s how they make records nowadays, not to sound too
much like an old man. But yeah, that’s got no appeal for us really.
You’ve always been a band that has never been too
involved into the whole process of recording. Your music has always
sounded a bit rough around the edges.
DT: That’s important to us. That’s sort of what we sort of like
listening to as well. When you listen to records that are made that way,
they sound very spontaneous and sort of timeless really. Whereas if you
go with whatever the latest fashions are, everything sounds a bit dead
really and a bit dated. And with that live thing, funny things happen.
Little moments happen. And even if someone listening to it doesn’t
register that that’s what they’re hearing, there’s a kind of freshness
to it that we always want our recordings to have.
It reminds me of an interview with Graham Coxon that I
read, back when he was doing his solo albums. People thought he was
being a bit odd for doing stuff on analogue tape. And he said, “Well all
these big pop records from the ’60s, Jimmy Hendrix, all that kind of
stuff was done in one take on analogue tape, it’s not lo-fi.” Yeah,
people seem to forget that.
DT: Well that’s the good stuff. I think I read somewhere that Bob
Dylan didn’t do any overdubs on any record until the 1980s. Every Dylan
record you listen to, its people playing live in a room. No overdubs.
And let alone multi-tracking, let alone recording everything one thing
at a time. He didn’t even put anything on afterwards. When it was
finished, it was finished. I think that’s the best way to make records
or at least those are the type of records that I like to listen to. I
don’t like to listen to the other kind of records.
And I think that stuff still sounds great. It sounds better than the
stuff people are doing now. So it’s still something to aspire to. And
especially if you can use tape, if you can use analogue tape, it just
has its own quality. It adds a really great quality of sound. And
digital is very good and you can do an awful lot with digital. I’m not
like anti-digital all the way, or anything. But it’s much more exciting
to use the big tape reels and the sound is warmer. Tape compresses
things in a way that’s much more human. It sort of curves off the sound,
whereas with digital you get lots of little blocks of sound, and it’s
got a kind of coldness to it and a tape’s much warmer, yeah.
So is your approach to recording albums similar to the way you write material?
DT: Yeah… Not exactly. I think that they’re quite different things
actually. But to some extent I have a slightly cavalier attitude towards
both. Which is to say that my attitude is pretty much that I want to
entertain myself and by writing or by recording, or by whatever I do,
and I’ll worry later about whether I think it’s good or not. I’ll worry
about that some other time. Or I’ll never worry about it. I’ll never
judge it. It’s just for its own sake.
You never write a song thinking, “I should write a song like that.”
Or “people like that other song, so I should write a song like that
other song that they liked.” Or “I should write a song because it’ll be
popular” or “I’ll write a song to be difficult.” You’re just writing for
its own sake, for the sake of writing, which is just its own pleasure
and then you’re recording just as its own pleasure. And then playing
live is its own. They’re sort of self-serving things, I suppose.
They’re not done for the end result, making music. So that’s the
same. But I also often think with lyrics, the best lyrics are just
written very quickly. Often slaving over things isn’t the way to go. If
you’re feeling inspired and you write something, even if it’s a bit
silly, and a lot of my lyrics are very silly, I like to stick with it.
They come from some strange place that’s interesting to me to revisit.
Yeah, it differs from songwriter to songwriter, because I was reading what somebody said about Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan-
DT: Yeah, that’s right, yeah.
Leonard Cohen can spend 15 years on a couplet-
DT: Yeah, the story is that Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan were talking
and Bob Dylan said, “Oh, I like that song of yours.” And Leonard Cohen
said, “Oh thank you very much. It took me four years to write that
song.” And then Leonard Cohen says, “I like that song of yours.” And Bob
Dylan says, “Oh thank you very much, it took me 15 minutes.” I don’t
think that reflects badly on either of them. But they have very
different talents, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan has got a very wayward brain and he’s obviously just
capable of writing verse after verse after verse after verse very
quickly. And there’s a spontaneity to everything that he does, and
there’s sometimes an obtuseness, and a lack of meaning. Leonard Cohen is
very precise. It’s much more like literature, he’s a poet in the first
place. And the choice of words is much more pointed, I think, with
Leonard Cohen. I love both of them very, very much. Personally, I’m not
saying I’m as good as Bob Dylan, that’s for other people to say. But
personally I’m more on the Bob Dylan side of it.
I like to just throw stuff up, throwing stuff up and then seeing what
works later. And I don’t judge it. And I don’t think I should be the
judge of it. I think other people should tell me “I like that song” or
“why don’t you do that song?” or they don’t like this song, or whatever.
That’s not on my mind at all. I just like doing it, if that makes
sense. The end result is kind of boring to me. That’s the weird part of
it. The fun part is the doing of it. It’s the making of the things.
That’s the part I like.
I noticed the last album you did (‘City Awakenings’), was
written on a US tour, do you feel that your albums are a snapshot of a
time period?
DT: Yeah, to some extent, yeah. They do remind of the time that they
were written and the things that were going on in my head, those times,
yeah. I wouldn’t say that they’re autobiographical for the most part,
and some things are made up completely, or some things are exactly what
happened. It’s a total free-for-all. Basically I will do anything to
fill up a blank page. That’s about the size of it (laughs).
I once read somewhere that you said that you don’t
believe in writer’s block. Do you think having a similar sort of
attitude- like always writing ideas, or continuously do something, is a
good way of preventing writers block?
DT: Yeah, I think so. I think that writer’s block is something that- I
always tell people, “Don’t sit down and try to write a song and think,
‘what have I got to say? What’s this song going to be about? What am I
going to write?’” Then you’re just staring a blank bit of paper thinking
about what you’re going to do, not actually doing it. And then you’ve
got writer’s block basically. I think just write all the time, anything
you can and worry about it later.
So on the American tour, for instance, I just wrote, and wrote, and
wrote. I filled a notebook while we were driving around and turned it
into songs later when I got home. And now that isn’t the only way to do
it. The great thing about making music is that there’s just a million
different ways that you can go at it. And a lot of very talented people I
know, they write in very different ways than me. And that’s fine. But I
would have thought that you can avoid writer’s block by not putting
that kind of pressure on yourself. That’s what I think.
I feel like writer’s block is a sort of an ego problem where you kind
of think, “I should write something really great. I’m really great and I
must write something really great and what will it be?” And you sort of
start tearing yourself up. The trick is just to make stuff up all the
time. And not to question too much whether it’s good or bad. I think
that the part of your brain that’s a critic, if you like, that sort of
thinks, “Oh, that’s not right,” that part of your brain needs to shut up
when you’re making a song.
You make up the song, and then by all means once you’ve finished it
and you’ve recorded it and you play it, then you switch on the critical
part of your brain and think, “Oh, that’s not quite right” or “that
doesn’t work” or whatever. Do you know what I mean? It’s kind of
necessary- I think it’s necessary to not be too critical, really, and to
just do it and other people could well say, “Well that’s why you’re
rubbish” and I have to say, “Fair enough.” I just do it because it’s fun
to do. It’s not because I expect anything else afterwards.
Over the past few years you’ve toured the US quite a bit. I’m curious, what cities you usually get the best reception in?
DT: New York is very good. Chicago was good. San Francisco was good.
The cities that you’d expect, I suppose. Touring America overall was
extremely hard. We were lucky because the last tour was the long tour.
And we were in a van with Allo Darlin’. And Allo Darlin’ is just the
nicest bunch of guys that you could meet, really. And they made it into a
great trip. Things I’ll remember for the rest of my life very fondly.
But the reality of touring America is that without having had a hit
out there, or even a particularly glowing pitchfork review or a song in a
film, or any of those kind of things that you need, it’s backbreaking
work and it costs you loads of money. Touring America costs us money,
and our living is touring. We make a living from touring and playing in
small clubs in Germany and Spain and the UK and France and stuff. We
can’t really afford to do it. America is very, very hard. And it costs
so much just to get there, with visas and everything.
And then traveling around, you can’t even play. It’s such a strange
country really. We can tour Germany for three weeks. You can’t tour
Texas for three weeks. You play one city in each state. So you’re
driving nine, ten hours every day, playing all the capital cities of
each state. It’s backbreaking work, really, America unless you’re one of
those lucky people who happens to have had some sort of a hit going out
and it’s some kind of a buzz. But basically we can play to, I don’t
know, 300 people in New York but as soon as you get outside of that,
when you get down south or whatever, you might play to nobody or 20
people, or whatever.
So you drive nine hours, you play to nobody. You drive nine hours,
you play to nobody. And it all costs money. So America is very, very
tough. And it’s a very strange country, really strange. In Europe, we’re
used to so much variety in such a small space. We’re used to the
difference between Paris and Berlin and Madrid and Milan and
Switzerland, Austria. You know we’re used to a tremendous amount of
variety and history in a very small part of the world.
America, which is vast, is all the same. It’s all exactly the same.
Every city looks the same. They’re all built on the same grids for cars.
So it’s a very lonely, and sort of strange country when you get out
about in it. As much as I love New York, I love Chicago, I love San
Francisco, it’s a totally different experience if you’re in Baton Rouge
or Orlando, Florida or whatever. America is very, very homogeneous.
It doesn’t actually surprise me that you said New York
was quite a good place to play, because a lot of your influences come
from there. People like Television, Jonathan Richmond- even though I
think he was a transplant to New York.
DT: Yeah, and The Velvet Underground, I guess in the first place.
Dylan is another New York transplant like Jonathan Richmond. He’s not
from there, but you kind of associate him with New York. I do anyway.
Yeah, I love New York. New York’s one of the best cities I’ve ever been
to. I’ve got a lot of friends there. We always play great shows there. I
think New York is very different than America. America is a different
kettle of fish from New York, really. You can walk around New York. It
still feels like a pedestrian’s city. You can’t walk around Los Angeles.
It’s just for cars. Nobody’s walking. Absolutely nobody’s walking.
When I was at University a lecturer was telling us about
the first time he went to Los Angeles, he waited on the pavement and
people just looked at him like he’d been beamed down from another
planet.
DT: Yeah, it’s a very, very strange feeling. A lot of those cities,
Los Angeles is like that, Miami is like that, Seattle. Well, Seattle may
be less so. But a lot of the cities, there’s no centre. You feel as if
you’re always on the outskirts of the city. A mate of mine moved to San
Diego and he really likes it. He’s happy there but I couldn’t imagine
living in somewhere like San Diego. I’ve got to say. You’ve got to drive
basically. You don’t feel like you’ve ever arrived anywhere if you’re
on foot. You’re always next to a big road. It’s a very strange country,
America, because I’m so in love with American culture, films and books
and especially music.
Almost all the music that I really love is American music. And going
back to the blues and jazz and things like that and as you say
Television, The Velvet Underground. But god, country music. All the
things that I love, I was very excited about going there. But I would
think twice about doing a tour like that again. What I could imagine
doing again is flying over and doing New York and then flying over and
playing Los Angeles, or something like that and coming home. It was six
weeks of the hardest kind of touring, really hard touring.
Sleeping on people’s floors and then driving nine hours before sound
check and losing money all the while that you’re doing it. It’s not
something that I can afford to do every year, basically. I can only just
afford to live as it is, touring Europe, which is very close and very
pleasant. And you see a lot of great cities and you can travel around
one country and play everywhere in that country, doing like two hour,
three hour drives every day. Maybe you do one or two five hour drives,
that’s okay. I don’t mind that. But I could live without nine hours a
day and playing for no people.
It’s funny you brought up country music. Listening to your music, I wouldn’t have thought you’d be into that.
DT: You wouldn’t have thought?
Yeah
DT: No, I’m a huge country music fan. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean I love
all the sort of roots music of America. I love the blues and the thing
with country music, the narratives that you have in those songs, a lot
of story songs, which are very compelling and very sort of existential
actually, and very simple in how they can tell you a whole story in
three minutes. And you really feel like the character is real. I mean I
understand that a lot of people just don’t like the sound of country
music, they don’t like the twangy guitars and the warbling voices and
all that.
I love all that. I love the sound of it in the first place. But then
also I guess I sort of really like that sense of character that Townes
Van Zandt is singing, or Hank Williams or Waylon Jennings or Willy
Nelson or Johnny Cash, or whatever. If they say “I walked into the bar”
you believe that they walked into a bar. You’re just like, okay, you
walked into a bar. What happened next? Whereas with soul music, which I
also like, it’s not like that. If Wilson Pickett screams “I walked into a
bar” you don’t actually believe him. The words he’s saying are more
like they’re just dressing the music really. And that’s true of rock.
I like that country, I guess, the lyrics come first I think. I think
the music is there to support the lyric. I like it that way round. I
like it the other way around, too, but the rock thing or the soul thing,
pop thing is more like the words are just dressing the music. I guess
that’s the thing that really excites me about it.
Well there’s a radio station near me, and one guy on
there plays all that commercial stuff. That was all I knew until I
started getting into people like Townes Van Zandt and Gram Parsons.
DT: Yeah, Gram Parsons as well. There’s an awful lot of terrible
country music. You can get really misled. But that’s true of anything.
You can hear Guns N’ Roses and think that bands with guitars were
terrible, you know? You don’t really find the good stuff straight away.
But yeah, Hank Williams, Townes Van Zandt, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson,
Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn. That’s all just great stuff
and totally real, I think. Completely honest and real. Garth Brooks is
crap. There’s crap everywhere. Crap country does rather seem to dominate
people’s view of country. I know, it’s a shame.
So you’re touring around the release of the album. What plans have you got after that? Are you working on any material?
DT: Yeah, we’re doing some recording at the end of this month, at the
end of January before we go on tour. I imagine that we’ll just keep on
doing stuff. The next big session is the end of January. I’ve written an
album and I’d like to record it into one microphone, like the Billie
Holiday thing I was telling you about with all acoustic instruments.
Acoustic guitars, acoustic bass. Paul Rains from Allo Darlin’s going to
play on it. Got a couple of friends doing percussion and things like
that. So I think that should be really nice. I mean that’s the thing
that I’m really looking forward to is making that recording at the end
of January. And then we go on tour after that. After that, I’m not sure.
Okay, well it’s been great talking with you, Dave.
DT: Yeah, thanks. Sorry again about all the long wait and everything.
Yeah, thanks
DT: Pleasure
Okay, have a nice day
DT: Yeah, you too, mate. Cheers
Alright, bye
DT: Bye
Words by Matthew Shearn.
‘Great Big Flamingo Burning Moon’ is out now on Moshi Moshi.
