Part 3:
Musicians and their relationships with their partners, more on Arthur Baysting and his songwriting style, why Bill writes music, his working relationship with friend and frequent producer, Nick Bollinger, the difference between NZ music and Australian, the truth in songwriting.
Bill Lake: Photo by Andy Morley-Hall
“Yeah, its because they're not being honest . . . I just find if you're talking absolutely from your heart or about an actual situation you will say words that no-one’s ever heard before, you know what I mean?”
Interviewer: Hey, kind of from what you were
saying earlier about relationships, a bit off the track from our current flow,
but it’s a question I had prepared. What do you think it's like for women in
New Zealand or worldwide to be with musicians?
Be with
musicians? (Pours more wine).
Yeah, how do you think it is for their partners:
what's it like to be with musicians or songwriters? Do you have any comments on
that?
Well for
songwriters, I don't know, there probably are a few tensions but it's much
worse, its much more difficult for partners of working musicians and it's a
tension alright. It's partly just the fact that unless the partner is really
into it: comes to all the gigs and everything, there tends to be this
separation of lives and you're out at all hours and that sort of thing and it
puts a strain on things, I mean it certainly did in my relationship.
Really?
It did
because J., although she admired what I did a lot she didn't come to the gigs
much at all in recent years and I think she felt a little bit that it was this
different world that she didn't really want to be part of (laughs nervously).
Arthur made a good comment about the songwriting part of it because I said to
him at one stage I was very concerned that I didn't wanna make these songs
public, while I was still with J. because they're all about someone else and
obviously that would have upset her but even now I can still feel a bit that
way, but now I don't really feel that way, but I sort of do, and Arthur said
something like, "Oh you don't want to worry about that. If Jean (Arthur’s
wife) thought that my lyrics were sort of serious I would have been on the
street years ago" and it's true he's written a lot of songs about falling
in love and that initial moment and I’ve sometimes thought, what's going on,
you know. Is Arthur...? I mean what's going on?
(I laugh loudly.)
But I don't
think that anything is...
No. No
Particularly
going on, it's just that he's very good at inventing a situation and imagining
his way into it. He's a writer, he's a screen writer and then he writes the
words and he just knows how it goes, but Jean is sensible enough to understand
that it doesn't signify... Of course Arthur's not a working musician: he's a,
songwriting is pretty much a sideline for him. I thinks it's much harder for
working musicians because of course, as well as the fact that you are out,
you're just not there and where you are is, it brings its temptations and
musicians aren't proof to those temptations - they're probably less proof than
most people I know, but you know when you’re a bit drunk and excited about
playing and all that stuff... it's pretty easy to get excited about other
things. So it is hard I think.
Well I reckon maybe just a couple more
questions, cause you've done very well. As far as success goes and why you
write songs. Are you doing it to leave a legacy or do you ever wish you had
more success; do you ever blame it on being in New Zealand for example?
Oh right I
don't.
And why do you write songs in the first place? It's
become an ongoing thing but why?
Well apart
from this particular period I suppose receding into the past now I suppose
where I wrote from a sort of great pressure of feeling, but I mean even that's
not the whole story because of course I knew how to write songs/ Other people
would have known how to paint, like Steve[1] would have painted presumably or he
might have done something quite different but writing songs was a thing I knew
how to do apart from those sort of urgent circumstances.
I write a song when I get, what I think is a
good idea in the music; a piece of music that I like is the prime thing. Sometimes
even if I've come up with some words that I like or an idea that I like, it may
not, if I haven't got the music for it, it'll sit there till I have, not its
music probably comes slightly ahead, so that's why I write them then when I've
got... I want to get them right and get a song that actually has a good shape
and says what I want to say and has some interesting bits and I just want to
work out an arrangement and so on. After that, well I've gone on making records
and I suppose I will you know I don't want them to be restricted to my bedroom.
What about that aspect of it? What would you
like to achieve as far as your music goes? Would you like to see yourself, say
in twenty years, as someone who'd had some songs covered worldwide? Do you have
any desire as far as that goes, as far as wider success goes?
No not
really (laughs). I don't think so. I often wonder about this because it seems
so sort of freakish not to, but I mean it's not that I wouldn't. It's not that
I don't want any of that but I don't, you know I don't have a desire for it, I
don't, it's not the way I have thought about it. Having done the songs if I
think they're good and you know other people do, like Nick[2] particularly, if he thinks they're
good well then I want to put them out. I want to get them out there on a
record.
You value his opinion a lot, that's
interesting, do you wanna...
I do yeah.
... Divulge, I mean just say something.
Oh well
he's not the only opinion I value but well I mean I guess he is...
He's very dedicated to his study of music in
the...
Yeah he
comes from...he understands my kind of music, he's practically listened every
song I've ever written you know and he knows when one's good and when one's not
I suppose, so he's a good sounding board. But I mean, he's not the only one,
it's just that he often does comment and I do take his comments seriously
because he's a pretty good judge, I think, of what is a good song. Anyway, I
mean sometimes there are songs that I’ve felt were good songs even if I haven't
had a particularly strong response from him so I'll do them anyway.
Persevere, yeah.
So, you
know it comes down to... I want to get them out there on a record and I guess...
Why?
I don't
know, I suppose (very perplexed tone of voice) I don't think about it much, I
mean I don't think about why much, I just think...
Is it just a process that you have got into or?
Yeah I
suppose so.
Is it a bit like you've accomplished something
when you've done that and can move forward or is it...?
I feel that
when I've written the song and you know when the song's down on my little
cassette there (pours wine) I've written it. I suppose, yeah I think as long as
there are a whole lot of songs like this group, this particular group sitting
on the cassette I sort of want to get them out there as a group, this
particular group more than most. If I'd just
gone on in the same vein just writing the odd song I might not feel so strongly
about that, but you know I think they're good songs. I think they make a good
group of songs and I just think it would be an album that people would like,
some people would like, but I'm not very good at all, I'm not really interested
in kind of pushing it, promoting it or pushing it out there. I just want to get
it out there, then come what may sort of thing...and what usually comes is not
much.
I laugh loudly.
You know I
get feedback I really value: somebody coming up to me at a gig and saying, you
know of the most obscure songs someone will say, "I really love that song."
Somebody said this song that I originally wrote in about 1979 or something like
that...I recorded a version of it on an album that was vinyl and cassette only
and sold 200 copies or something (laughs) and this guy came up to me at a gig
not long ago and said "I really love that song Defrost Your Heart. And it's just hard to believe,
Great.
Yes, of
course you get a buzz from that feeling and then every time the Strugglers play
to people, different stuff, and the public often like the originals so it's
nice. That feedback alone is quite nice and I don't know what it would be like
if it were multiplied heaps, if you had sort of cheering crowds and large
stadiums and things, I can't imagine that. The music just doesn't... it isn't
like that. My own music is pretty intimate; it's not really designed for
stadiums and so on. The Strugglers is a bit more like a band: something that
can project a bit of a distance, but it’s just never been kind of my thing and
I've thought about that, I think it's partly my up-bringing. I just wasn't... In
my parents eyes I was headed for something like an academic career or even
being a bloody lawyer or a doctor or something. That's what my mother thought I
would do or should do and she steered me in that direction as long as she could
but eventually music took me away and not only music but a kind of rebellion
against that whole professional stuff.
Did they accept what you did?
I think my
mother came to feel that...
Are they both alive?
No my
mother's pretty, she's in a home with Alzheimer’s, she can't talk, she did say
once... I used to send her my albums as I put them out and I think she said
something like, she liked the fact that the words were sort of intelligent and
not stupid, but its not... the kind of music I was writing just had no contact
with what she'd ever listened to; it wasn't like something she could relate to
and she wasn't... as per my Father...
He's dead now?
Yeah. I
think he sort of liked it, but it wasn't, I don’t know, he's sort of less, in
some ways I think he's less of a musical soul than my Mum even though he was
the one that bought all the Beethoven and Mozart and Lonnie Donegan stuff. He
wasn't really a musical soul. Well there's a complication he's not my real
father, he's not genetically my real father so maybe there's something? My
genetic father was much more keen on music although he wasn't a practitioner, he
didn't play it, but he was really interested in American folk music strangely
enough...
Wow.
Early
American folk music, which is interesting.
In twenty years where would you like to see yourself?
Ooh I’ll be
74 but gee I don't know.
As far as you music goes?
As a
musician I suppose I'd quite like to be still able to play, and still able to
still go and play to a small group of people, play with a guitar and sing the
songs, play something that still has a bit of finesse and subtlety to it, I
mean, I can't guarantee that that will be the case, ten years is more like it
But I don't know...
(I laugh loudly.)
I don't, I
mean I, I'm a bit, it's.... Even if I had a radical change of heart about going
public and everything it's an unlikely thing to happen. The best, I mean the
most likely success, which isn't particularly likely, is that the Strugglers
would become a band that could go to say folk festivals and blues festivals and
things around Australasia and perhaps even further afield and play because we
do have a kind of unique sound and we've realised that from these beginnings at
the bottom end of the world imitating people who were already imitating this
very rather exotic music from the south of the U.S., we've turned into
something that actually doesn't really have a parallel around the world...
Windy City Strugglers in London October 2005: Photo by Steve Cournane
Do you think it's a sort of New Zealand folk
music almost?
Oh I don't
know about that because we don't sing about New Zealand.
Oh yes, oh
that's true. But that's Rick. Yeah that's true, Snow On The Desert
Road, well maybe it's New Zealand music, yeah there's no doubt about that.
It’s sort of a lead on in a way to a question. Thematically
do you think there’s anything about New Zealand music or do you think there's
anything about New Zealand musicians that is special. Could you maybe tell me
people you admire in any field? I'm talking about the whole gamut of New
Zealand music here, you know classical....
Right
Any anything about the way they write, original
music I'm talking about.
Coming from
Australia and the little I've heard of Australian music I think there is a real
difference between New Zealand and Australian music and it's a difference that
favours New Zealand, to my mind (someone
pours wine) because New Zealand music, I can't help thinking of it as a
geographical thing: it's like New Zealand is green, it's wet, and it's got high
things in it and Australia is flat and orange so Australian music has this real
drone quality whereas mostly they don't have dramatic changes of this and that
and New Zealand music does, because it's always, you know, they have harmonies,
they have melodies which go up and down and move around and a lot of harmony, a
lot of... I just think of it as sort of wet, that's the wrong word because you
know it sounds terrible.
(Both laugh.)
I mean that
it's got this kind of moist, sort of, I don't know, fertile quality about it or
something whereas Australian music is very dry to me.
Right, right, that's interesting.
And as for
people, I admire well I love Douglas Lillburn I mean I really like his stuff,
whenever I hear it, and I like Neil Finn, those melodies and things that he
writes and the singing quality, really nice voice, and I like a lot of, well I
like your stuff actually (laughs).
(I laugh loud) Dave Dobbyn?
Well one
thing about him that I don't like is that he uses a sandpaper voice. I don't
think it's his own, I think he could... it's the same reason I don't like John
Hiatt. John Hiatt, I often feel, if he just took the grain out of the voice,
which is an affectation, I think it would be lovely. It would be really nice,
but Dave would be the same if he did that, but also I think he's one of these
people whose got too many ideas and even Outlook for Thursday is song which
has at most, if it just had two ideas or maybe a suggestion of three ideas, but
basically two ideas, it would be a fantastic song. It is a great song but what
it's got is one terrific 'Stonesy" idea.
Right
And another
idea which is another kind of Stonesy idea which is slightly different, but
they cross each other; they don't entirely go together but that's ok, but then
there’s another one: another whole idea and a lot of these songs seem to be
like that. Of course Whaling is not like that, that's a real folk song
That's good song yeah.
And if only
he would sing it in a kind of moist voice.
I really laugh at this, the onomatopoeia of the
word I think
I'd love
it, you know if Neil Finn would sing it.
That’s interesting that you don't like his
voice.
Yeah, I
don't like his voice and it just strikes me as sandpaper and I think of it as a
falsity, like he's not willing, despite all the, he's obviously gone through a
lot of shit and he's trying quite hard to be to be real you know.
A vessel?
To be real,
you know a real person.
Or like of a conduit of some kind?
Yeah, I
mean he made a remark, I heard on this radio programme interview with him and
he was talking about songwriting, there were three of them there, but he said
this thing. Well you get into a situation and you start writing and those are
the best songs: the ones that come straight out of a situation are the best,
and you can always tell, and if you can't somebody else will tell if its
bullshit. I mean not those songs, but if you're writing a song and it doesn't
come out of something real, people pick it up straight way, people know.
Yeah that's really interesting. You've got twenty-five songs sitting over there don't ya?[5]
Yeah that's really interesting. You've got twenty-five songs sitting over there don't ya?[5]
And I straightaway
thought. Well I sat down and wrote one straightaway. I just thought what
situation am I in? And it was the period when I'd written these impassioned
letters to A. and I was waiting for a reply. It's called Too Good To Be True
and it's sort of sitting there waiting for this reply which I think I sort of
half way knew would be negative, just being upset about that, I think it's a
great song and it was inspired by that statement of Dave’s you know. He was
perfectly straightforward, you know...
You do it now and it's...
Because
obviously he's a person who... Well ‘cause he's a professional he has to produce
and I think he sits down and actually writes songs. He sits down and sets
himself to write a song and of course the risk there is that you are gonna
write something that's you know - it's ok, but it doesn't really come from the
heart and like he says people will be able to tell that. So you might have to
go back to it and get rid of the bad stuff and put stuff in instead, it doesn't
mean it's necessarily crap, it just means... ‘Cause you know there’s always
something going on with you, it's just that you have to reach it, you know.
Right so it doesn't have to be tragedy or...?
Yeah,
you've just got be able to reach it, and if you can't always do that. Sometimes,
if you can get started on a song and then go back to it sometime later, this is
what he was saying and you can say that bit was false. In other words, I wasn't
willing to be truthful there or I got tired or you know, I just wanted to
finish it off or something. But now I can say what I was meant to say, what follows from what I've done and how and what my
heart says about this, I mean, that's what music is about for me, it’s about
the heart, it's not meant to sort of issue facts about the world really. It’s
about emotion and so you've gotta be...
So is that conflicting with your philosophical
thing or is it?
It doesn't
conflict because I don't...
Isn't philosophy issuing facts about the world?
Yes it is,
that's philosophy, that's what I do, it's the other thing that I do in fact I
do more of that...
So you try to stay away from philosophy in your
words?
It informs
my words because the particular thing that I do in philosophy is about this
very thing: it's about getting rid of a whole lot of falsity in philosophy and
what you are left with is that we feel things and we say things and we think
things. This says to you that if you want to say what you feel, you've got to
avoid falsity, you've got to say what it is, you've gotta really say what it
is, gotta really say what it is, even if it's quite hard or painful. Although
it's not itself philosophy, it is informed by what I believe in philosophy.
You can't
do it by making a rule about it.
No, there's no rule.
(Inaudible)....
maybe....
But you know you hear songwriters who are
obviously not aware of it; there’s too much naiveté, you can hear it that in
their songs.
Yeah, yeah. Well let me think.
Because you've been writing for a long time you
must be tailoring it you know.
Yeah.
Doing things to your words so that they are...not
just...
Oh I do,
and in fact even though these songs, which I wrote recently, are the most
emotional songs I've ever written. Even though they come out of these
situations. Some of them are; the way that I've sketched the situation in the
song is not how that thing was, like I've made something of it, it wasn't
actually what was going on, it wasn't even what I thought was going on at the
time. I knew that this wasn't exactly what was going on, but I made it into
something because it's much more conventional.
I mean I
could have written a song about; there's a song I do called My Eyes Are Wide
Open and that was written about an occasion when after I'd sort of given up on
A. and told her so and then we'd played at the Dan Penn[7] concert with Rick in Auckland and
she was there and we had all these little meetings and she kept trying to
engage me in conversation and stuff and I avoided her like crazy because I just
wanted to stay away. I wasn't ready to talk to her and it was really painful,
it was very difficult and in the end she sort of cornered me at a point when I
couldn't really get away and she said, “Can we start again?” I knew what she
meant; she meant now that we've got all that rubbish that foo...being in love
with me shit out of the way; now that that's not the thing, can we be friends
again? (Because she'd always wanted to be friends I knew that.) I didn't ever take
that message to mean anything else even though the words, if you just take
them...
Literally yeah...
But when
you just take them, that's what I wrote the song about.
Right... oh yeah.
As if she
was saying let's start again.
And you were hoping that it was?
Yeah, as if
I was but even though I wasn't really, but at the same time the song does talk
about the situation.
Ok.
That I was
really in, that's about saying, even though I was saying well I'm gonna try to
be friends with this person because I have such a sort of feeling for her, I
just have, she seems to be this really special person and if I can't be lovers
with her...
It's better to be...
I at least
want to be, try to make myself friends, get myself to a point where I can be
friends with her, that's not what the songs directly about, but it’s like
"my eyes are wide open" to the danger of that situation because you
know, as it happened I was absolutely right, I did fall right into it as soon
as I met her again. You know that time at Alleluya.[8] So that was situation where I was
slightly falsifying the thing in the interests of making it a love thing rather
than something that was much more complicated, but a lot of times, a lot of
them are about the complicated, well the fact that basically she didn't want me
and I was trying so hard to get close to her and she wouldn't let me, that's
what most of them are about and that's, although it's not that common a
situation, it is a situation that everybody can know something about...
Can identify with?
Yeah, so I
didn't feel that was a situation I couldn't write about. Well I sort of had to anyway.
But you're right; I mean I don't want to... I suppose I sort of have in mind
when I write the song I don't wanna make it too impossibly sort of special to
me, you know I want to make it something that somebody else could get something
out of, but in a way you know, you throw yourself in at the deep end with songs
like this, you don't know whether anybody else is going to get anything from
it...
The cringe factor?
But if
you're trying to be honest, if it's a matter of being honest, I think a lot of
that kind of songwriting that you're talking about...
Where there’s a huge cringe factor, that's what
I'm talking about?
Yeah, its
because they're not being honest, I mean they're not: they're using clichés
instead of thinking about what is actually going on and trying to kind of say what's
going on in their own way. They're kind of resorting to clichés and it's very
easy to do. A certain amount doesn't do any harm because it tells the audience
what kind of area you're in, but you've got to have something that is new and
something where they haven't heard these words before and usually I just find
if you're talking absolutely from your heart or about an actual situation you
will say words that no-one’s ever heard before, you know what I mean? I mean
you'll say things that they've heard before because these situations, after all,
are incredibly similar between people. Every time you talk to someone about one
of these situations you realise...
They identify?
They know
what you're talking about and they know the feeling but at the same time, I
don't know, somehow the more open you can be to the situation, the more the
words will be fresh and will actually say something slightly different or
differently using different imagery and stuff, Images, I think that's half of
it really, it’s just images, thinking up an image or having an image come to
you that is something people haven't heard, you know, like I wrote this one
called You're the only fish in the Sea[9]
Which I love.
And you
know that's a phrase.
It’s a very well used image.
It's a well-used
image, but I don't think I've ever heard a song that actually uses that for a
love situation. I mean it's a phrase that you hear in conversation.
Plenty of fish in the sea.
Once I got
that one I thought of a whole lot of others that sort of go with it, but really
the fish thing is really operating for me: the fish in the sea, like I used to
love fishing as a kid and my brother absolutely loves it and still does so it's
kind of in there, but that fish, fishing and fish are kind of a warm thing for
me. I think for a lot of people they're cold (laughs).
Yeah right, right, right.
But for me
it's a nice thing. I just think of fish, fish and fishing.
There’s some sort of roots there?
Beaches and
things like that as a really nice thing, so that song just kind of rolls along
from this whole set of images and it rolls so that the image is actually turned
around From her being the fish in the sea to me being the fish that she's
caught, you know, that's the sort of turnaround anyway.
Right.
It just
happened really, but once I realised that that was the way it was going I
encouraged it, because you know it makes it a sort of fun area, more
interesting so that's the way it goes. I guess it's not a cliché to say, even
though it's an expression that comes out of speech. It's not a cliché to say because
actually the real cliché is "you're not the only fish in the sea"
that's the way people say it...
Yes, there's plenty of fish in the sea.
Yeah,
there's plenty of fish in the sea, all cats are grey in the dark all that sort
of stuff and that's the defensive attitude about this kind of thing. Oh you
know you're not the only one, I can find another woman quick as whatever and
here's this guy saying no (laughing). I'm sorry you're the only one; I can't
get past this. So that's the way it works. Have I answered all your questions?
I must have answered them ten times over
I think we've done bloody well man but I think
it's gonna stop any minute.
Well it's
interesting I really like (tape cuts out).
[2] Nick Bollinger, Bill’s friend, fellow Struggler
and producer of almost all of Bill's recorded work during the last ten years.
[3] The soon to be released album, Snow on the
Desert Road does in fact have some folk leanings in my opinion.
[4] Reference to a very evocative song on the new
album.
[5] Points to where his tape deck is situated in
the room.
[6] Graeme Downes Dunedin songwriter for The Verlaines who I played
with briefly with in the ‘80s.
[7] Dan Penn, the great American songwriter is an idol
of Bill's whom he supported with Rick Bryant during two gigs in NZ in 2000.
[8] Strugglers gig in Auckland, Alleluya Bar and
Cafe, Karangahape Road, Auckland.
[9] One of the few songs I have heard from the so-called
25. It hit me very strongly, both melodically and with its imagery.
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