Aging rock act on new album: This time we wanted to go back to the basics

GAYLE KING: Very nice. Joe Walsh`s first solo album in twenty years is called Analog Man. He joins us in Studio 57 live and in color. Hello, Joe Walsh.

JOE WALSH (Musician/Analog Man): Good morning.

JEFF GLOR: Hey, Joe.

GAYLE KING: So your first one in twenty years. Was it scary to do this after all this time?

JOE WALSH: It was kind of scary, yeah, but it`s a really good feeling.

GAYLE KING: Because?

JOE WALSH: Well, I`ve been sober eighteen years. And I-- I really opened up and let people see the real Joe--

GAYLE KING: Joe.

JOE WALSH: --now that I know who he is.

GAYLE KING: Yeah. Were you convinced, Joe, that because after being sober for eighteen years, that when you first get into sobriety, were you thinking I can`t do it without the drugs?

JOE WALSH: I didn`t-- I didn`t think I could do anything. I didn`t think I`d ever be funny again. I didn`t think I could play live in front of people, everything-- I-- I didn`t know how to do it. And I had to learn and you-- you measure that amount of time in years.

GAYLE KING: Mm-Hm.

JOE WALSH: But Analog Man is kind of, I am, back--

GAYLE KING: Mm-Hm. I`m back.

JOE WALSH: I`m not done yet. And it won`t be twenty years till the next one.

GAYLE KING: Next one.

JEFF GLOR: That is good to hear. As-- as Gayle was-- was jamming out this morning--

GAYLE KING: I`m back.

JEFF GLOR: --to the new disc.

GAYLE KING: Yes.

JEFF GLOR: Some of the lyrics are poignant, though, I mean in Analog Man, the whole-- the whole world is living in a digital dream. It`s not really there. It`s all on the screen. You`ve been thinking about these concepts for a while.

JOE WALSH: I have. I have. And what I am trying to do with Analog Man, it`s-- it`s a reality check. Through music I`m trying to say that we live on an analog planet, which we`re systematically trashing while we`re spending more and more time in the virtual world which doesn`t exist.

GAYLE KING: Yes.

JOE WALSH: It`s an illusion made by computers.

GAYLE KING: Yes.

JOE WALSH: What`s really happening is that we`re sitting in chairs while our bodies are waiting for our minds to come back.

GAYLE KING: Yes. You do say, Joe, that there`s nothing that beats a feeling of being in the room with a group of people, really talented people just doing what you love to do and that`s play music. That nothing replaces that.

JOE WALSH: Yeah. With the new digital technology, you can fix anything.

GAYLE KING: Anything.

JOE WALSH: And you can make everything perfect.

GAYLE KING: Is perfection bad in music?

JOE WALSH: It doesn`t sound good to me.

GAYLE KING: Uh-Huh. Uh-Huh.

JOE WALSH: All the mojo is gone. You get a human performance of guys playing together in a room and there`s magic in that. And it`s such a temptation to fix stuff that doesn`t need fixing because you can you know.

GAYLE KING: Yeah.

JOE WALSH: And every time you do that you lose a little bit of the magic that was there and that`s what we love about all the old records--

GAYLE KING: Yeah.

JOE WALSH: --that we all love.

GAYLE KING: Yeah.

GAYLE KING: I did a piece a while back on vinyl records. You talk about Vinyl as well in this disc.

JOE WALSH: Yeah.

JEFF GLOR: There are things you just don`t hear when you go down to CD or MP3.

JOE WALSH: Yeah.

JEFF GLOR: And-- and that-- and that that`s great. I mean you still listen to vinyl, I assume, quite a bit.

JOE WALSH: Every chance I get.

JEFF GLOR: Good.

Belew says he immediately wanted to go to Italy - "Hanging in the sun and eating pasta in Italy? Sounds terrible, doesn't it?" he says - but it took three summers for his schedule to match up with that of Copeland and Cosma.

When he arrived at Cosma's studio he was surprised to see all the gear set up as if an actual band was going to play there, able to see each other and talk as they worked on songs.

"I thought I'd just play over tracks they'd already prepared," he says.

But Copeland says that was always the plan - to record an album like rock bands always did in the days before electronic files made worldwide collaboration as easy as hitting send on an email with a digital track attached.

"It was all recorded old-school, four guys in a room blasting away at each other," he says. "And I think you can hear it on the tracks. I think there's an X factor you get from mutual inspiration."

Why did he think he had to travel to Italy, if he thought it would just be a digital collab thing?

in the days before electronic files made worldwide collaboration as easy as hitting send on an email with a digital track attached

I mean you still have to play the fucking thing, it's not quite as easy as that

Been posted before that one, though the bit about eating pasta in Italy is new.

eating pasta is pretty back to basics, key part of the narrative

xp: Sorry about that! I ctrl-f'd for Belew but not Copeland.

what was the first "back to basics" move?

the elvis 68 comeback special?

Reading that Walsh/King exchange is good for making you think you’re high.

what was the first "back to basics" move?

John Wesley Harding?

...although all the Dylan records had been "people in a room" up to that point.

He just used fewer people and less electric instrumentation.

An earlier candidate could be the Chess Records "Folksinger" albums, particularly the Muddy Waters one.

Really that was the only one. I confused the "Real Folk Blues" sets for original albums instead of the comps they are.

Geoff Downes of Yes on the new Yes album:

There’s a lot of acoustic piano on the album, there’s a lot of acoustic guitar. This makes it almost a sort of urbane feeling that Yes has gone back to its roots in some ways.

Yes, that piano and acoustic guitar band from way back when.

can't wait for the return of the Jerry Lee Lewis era of Yes

lol

Now there's a prog rocker in Vladivostok
Got every side by Jerry Lee
But for Tales from Topographic Oceans
That guy could well be me

Many of the big prog groups had a 50s pastiche (16th note piano pounding) song/segment: "I've Seen All Good People" or "Going For the One" by Yes, "Are You Ready Eddy?" by ELP, the climaxes of "Too Old to Rock and Roll" and "The Spirit of Radio"...

i don't think there's any (or very few) musicians of that generation that weren't seriously influenced or inspired to start music by early rock n' roll

Sure, Steve Howe's guitar style has at least as much rockabilly as jazz and classical in it.

Yeah, that generation can often be relatable on that level, it's true.

I saw "Yes" (the Steve Howe version) a few years ago and the highlight for me of the dya was a solo acoustic piece Howe played that wasn't even technically a Yes song, it was him solo.

definitely felt like a gumbo of styles including rock 'n roll which is why I enjoyed it so much. the rest was great too but that piece stuck out more to me

i don't know his solo career but i always thought a solo instrumental fingerstyle acoustic album from howe would have been great (which may exist i don't know)

So you're saying you wanted Steve Howe... to go back to the basics?

One guy in a room

definitely felt like a gumbo of styles including rock 'n roll which is why I enjoyed it so much. the rest was great too but that piece stuck out more to me

One guy in a room

Why did he think he had to travel to Italy, if he thought it would just be a digital collab thing?

underrated question

See paragraph three (though it isn’t a quote from a band)

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-beatles-let-it-be-super-deluxe/

Duran Duran have a new album out.

Roger says: “Erol came in and said, ‘I want you to go back in a live room and play the way you used to play together’.

“He wanted the feel of our early 12in records, which he’d been playing in the clubs for years. So he’s kind of responsible for that beginning.

“He told us to forget technology for a little while and get in a room and play together. And that’s how we wrote this.”

Forget technology for a little while

*Chucks synthesizers out window, lands on an elderly lady walking the dog*

Excuse me, that elderly lady is one of Banarama.

and on and on and on it goes -

"The band’s two most recent albums, 2014’s They Want My Soul and 2017’s Hot Thoughts, were made with producer Dave Fridmann (Tame Impala, Lord Huron) in his Fredonia, New York, studio. During the Hot Thoughts tour, which wrapped up at the end of 2019, Daniel and his bandmates had a strong idea of what they wanted their next album to sound like. Daniel liked the electronic experimentations and rhythmic left turns of Hot Thoughts, “but it was a conscious decision after playing those songs live that we wanted the next one to be . . . I don’t know. I think every time you do an album, you’re reacting against the last one. We wanted to go back as much as we could to a record where it’s about a band playing in a room, playing rock and roll music, and playing off of each other. Just kind of more old school, where you figure out what the songs are going to be, hash them out over months, and then you hit ‘record.’”"

https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/keep-austin-spoon/

feel like spoon would be more self aware than to phrase it like that

lol I mean their whole aesthetic presents as “basic”

When I read this I thought “Britt was 100% aware of this thread when giving this interview”

It is hard to believe that bands can continue to be this clueless but this and the Oozing Sobriety thread (and others) suggest otherwise

Why is it clueless, though? I get it’s a cliché, but if it rings true to all these musicians, what is the criticism?

They could maybe try talking about in less clichéd terms? Any mention of rooms right out for a start.

Is there a thread on I Love Sports for athletes saying, “I’m just gonna give it 100% and leave it all on the field”?

They could maybe try talking about in less clichéd terms? Any mention of rooms right out for a start.

I think athletes talk that way so much, week to week, every game, that that’s transcended cliche.

The quotes in this thread are almost as tedious as interviews with athletes!

― Halfway there but for you, Sunday, 21 March 2021 00:08 (seven months ago) link

...but then again, this is one important way that records are made. And it's more pleasing to most rock listeners to heat a band talk about going back to a live sound than saying, "we decided on this record we would Pro Tools every individual sonic element until it sounded like digital static".

If so many professional musicians say the same thing on so many separate occasions, it must surely be true?

I'm sure for some bands like perhaps Duran Duran above, someone is the 'music' guy who puts together the tracks, sends to the vocalist who sends back the vocals and everything is just overdubbed and looped together - really no different technique wise than any hip hop or electronic music. They might have records that have never been played live together until they start rehearsing to tour. I'd say for some it is probably novel for them to get all back together and try to get that garage/basement vibe back.

Lots of Metal is made the same way that's why there are so many bands out there that get slagged for not being able to pull of their own records. They often literally cannot play what they have edited/sequenced together.

Is there a thread on I Love Sports for athletes saying, “I’m just gonna give it 100% and leave it all on the field”?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5uQBQzr8T0

:33

i feel like musicians probably don't read enough interviews with other aging rock musicians to realise how cliched the phrasing is