British music dean Nick Lowe on his newest wave of expression

Tour in support of '70s album re-issue features recent songs

By Wes Eichenwald
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Monday, April 14, 2008

Musicians revere Nick Lowe — who helped invent New Wave, even if he doesn't care much for the term — for his more than three decades of songwriting and performances laced with high-level wit, integrity and charm. Critics speak of this elder statesman of British rock in terms nearly as reverent.

Lowe's current U.S. tour is partly in support of his American label's recent 30th-anniversary reissue, with added tracks, of his groundbreaking solo debut, "Jesus of Cool" (retitled "Pure Pop for Now People" stateside by squeamish '70s record execs). But the 2008-model Lowe, silver hair and 59 years on him, is no nostalgia act. He's long since morphed from the leader of the let's-mess-with-pop pack to a maker of music for grown-ups. His love songs are genuinely romantic: mature, eyes-open, yet filled with experienced optimism, as he renders lines such as, "If even I can find someone, there's hope for us all."

Lowe views his callow self with detached affection, as if the '70s-model Lowe were the slightly wayward son of a friend. "I was young, impatient and noisy and sometimes that was great — I got a reputation — but artistically, sometimes not so great," he says, on the phone from his London home. The man called Basher has little patience for old fans who don't care to hear anything he's written since, say, 1983.

"I think a lot of them have actually dropped away," he says. "Those people still want to live their own youth through you. They did sort of cling on for a while, but they got more disillusioned and they finally said, 'Nick Lowe, he rocketh not!' I contend that I rock still, but not quite as loud and not quite as fast. But the good news is I seem to have picked up some new people."

So, then, how does he feel to be touring behind the re-release of an album from 1978? Lowe, a consummate gentleman, just laughs it off. "Actually, I do one or two songs from it, but quite by chance. But some of the songs get by. The second half of my career has been so long now — literally since the start of the '90s, I suppose — I know some people who have absolutely no interest in my early records."

It's their loss; those early records include such gems as "So It Goes," "I Knew The Bride (When She Used To Rock 'n' Roll)" and "Cruel To Be Kind." Not every song was a masterpiece, and the forthright Lowe will be the first to tell you what he borrowed from others, but "Jesus of Cool" shows him thumbing his nose at the music establishment of the day. His tinkering and remixing of pop structures, even if occasionally clunky, remains timelessly entertaining.

In 1976, Lowe, a bassist, singer and songwriter who was already a veteran of the pub-rock band Brinsley Schwarz, co-founded Stiff Records, a U.K. label that brought a boatload of new talent to public attention. Although the label was contemporaneous with punk, Stiff signed everyone from the Go-Go's, Devo and Joe "King" Carrasco to Kirsty MacColl and Lene Lovich. "I never really liked punk," Lowe says. "What I liked was the mischief that was being made."

Stateside, though, even given his longtime affection for roots-rock and old-line country — at one point he was even Johnny Cash's son-in-law — Lowe's been semi-famous at best, which suits him fine (he hates playing stadiums and prefers clubs, thank you).

Lowe isn't nearly as prolific as he once was — last year's "At My Age" was his first effort since the much-praised "The Convincer" in 2001 (Lowe's favorite). But quality over quantity suits him these days. Lowe doesn't expect to get a lot of radio play with this stuff: It's subtle and lyric-focused, but in terms of richness, depth and nuance, in everything from words and structure to vocal quality, it blows Act 1 away.

"I do a lot of work before I go into the studio," he says. "I like to know exactly what I'm doing, but I like the musicians I work with to know hardly anything about it; that way, you get these lovely accidents."

Lowe will play Antone's solo. "I like playing acoustic, because you can make a really full, fabulous sound with just an acoustic guitar."

No stranger to Austin, Lowe has been making stops here for decades. (He even has his own local tribute band, the Lowelies.) "When I stumbled upon Austin in the '70s I thought I'd found heaven, but it was very different to what it is now ... it was just a dusty town with a lot of bars and fantastic musicians, and I don't visit (now) as often as I used to."

Having a child in his mid-50s was another revelation; Lowe became a father in February 2005. Prior to this, he says, "I lived a totally selfish life, I lived on my own ... and so, having a little boy and indeed, his mama, to suddenly take precedence over myself is a brand new sensation, but not without its rewards. Would I go back to the way it was before? The answer is absolutely no. But I have to keep telling myself (that) at half past 5."

Indeed, Lowe called in an hour late for our interview, for which he apologized profusely — he'd been delayed escorting his 3-year-old home from school. He might be an elder statesman, but he isn't ready to put out to pasture just yet.

'Peace, Love and Understanding'

'I look for a much more sincere feeling in the stuff I do nowadays,' Nick Lowe says. ' ... I found that when I was being ironic, when I was younger, I would hit upon a truth every once in awhile, luckily, which still stands up now.'

Exhibit A is his best-known song, '(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding.' Lowe recorded it in 1974 as part of Brinsley Schwarz, but it took hold in the public consciousness after Elvis Costello gave it his all on the U.S. version of his 1979 album 'Armed Forces,' one of five Costello albums Lowe produced.

In the song, Lowe assumes a character, pushed to desperation at the state of the world, pointing out to his fellow sophisticates that the hippies they enjoyed mocking might have had a point or two. It was the striking, very nonironic way he put it that not only made listeners pause, but prefigured his later career. (He qualifies: 'I'm rather sort of cynical. I react badly to being preached at by some bloke with a guitar.')

'Yes, it's a strange song,' he says, 'because I always think of it as the first actual original idea I had. Up until then I was just rewriting my heroes' catalog; then one day I just came up with that and I thought, "Wow, that's something I've never heard before." ' (He volunteers that he 'stole a little bit of the melody' from the song 'Jesus Was A Cross Maker' by Judee Sill, a California singer-songwriter who died in 1979.)

'Peace, Love' has been recorded and covered live by everyone from Pearl Jam and Bruce Springsteen to the Flaming Lips and Steve Earle. In 1992, when Curtis Stigers' version was included on the best-selling soundtrack for 'The Bodyguard,' Lowe received a considerable financial windfall, which he then poured into recording and touring for several years.

Lowe still includes the song in his live set, but he says that it took his pal Costello to put it over the top. 'When he recorded that,' Lowe says, 'he put that kind of anthemic thing into it, but that was what people really responded to — 'cause it's an anthem. It's wonderful to have moved people — one looks forward to a time when it won't be so relevant.'