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 (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Acting Your Age?
Nick Lowe Figures Out How to Use It to His Advantage
Years ago, when Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham were opening an Atlanta show for Nick Lowe, Penn looked out into the audience and said, “In case you’re wondering why these two old white guys are covering all these great soul songs, it’s because we wrote ‘em.”
Of course, the Penn and Oldham canon includes the likes of “I’m Your Puppet,” “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” and “Dark End of the Street.”
Much like Penn and Oldham, it’s often been pointed out that the songs Lowe has written are better known than he is – songs like “Cruel To Be Kind” and “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding.” That goes for the recordings he produced, too, including the first five Elvis Costello albums, and albums for Graham Parker, the Pretenders and the Damned.
Lowe’s 40-year-plus career has spanned pub rock, punk and new wave, stints in legendary bands such as Brinsley Schwarz and Rockpile, and as house producer at the iconic label, Stiff Records. From his earliest solo record, Jesus of Cool, to his latest CD, The Old Magic, he’s managed to go from sardonic young rocker to debonair elder statesman. Two tribute albums, Lowe Profile and Labour of Love, have put an exclamation point on his enduring influence.
On one track on The Old Magic, titled “Checkout Time,” Lowe sings, “I’m 61-years-old now. Lord, I never thought I’d see 30.”
During a recent phone call, Lowe, who turned 63 in March, talked about how he’s navigated the vagaries of the music business for so long, and what it means to still be writing, recording and performing after all these years.
As a guy in his 50s with grey hair and glasses, I think you are a pretty good example of a grown-up who’s found his own kind of grace and style and substance. Are you OK with being a role model for aging punks?
I’m very flattered by that. It’s nice of you to say so. I hope the old punk isn’t too far away. But you have to sort of act your age at some point.
It seems like you’ve had two very different but successful careers, which is no mean feat in this business. How did you work that out – luck or smarts or both?
I suppose I worked it out. You never really know what’s going to happen. The way I saw it was that after I stopped being a pop star in the 1970s, I had to do something. I mean I knew it was coming, because I’d been a record producer. I made my own records, of course. I had one foot in the artists camp and the other foot with the suits on the top floor. I knew how the suits talked about the artists, in a rather disparaging way. I’d joined in the general merriment and laughter myself.
That is funny.
Yes. But when the public has had enough of you, that’s it, unless you’re a very unusual person, like Elton John or Neil Diamond, whose careers just seem to roll on. They’re very unusual, those people. And I knew I wasn’t one of them. So when it came, I had very mixed feelings. It was disappointing not to be able to get a table in a restaurant, as one did when one was in the paper all the time. And the armies of exotic women didn’t want to go out with me anymore. That was rather disappointing, too. On the other hand, I was ill, really. I was exhausted mentally and physically and drinking too heavily. So I was quite relived that it was all over. I could just lie down in a dark room, so to speak, and recover.
How did you recover?
I just started to take stock, you know. Here I am, barely in my mid-30s and over the hill. I’ve done quite well but I don’t I feel that I’ve actually done much at all. I’ve had a couple of hits and I’ve written a couple of good songs and I’ve produced a few records. What do I do now? I think this is just the beginning of it. Not the end of it. Back then, though, that wasn’t the way it was. Once you had your go, get out of the way granddad. But I thought, well no. I’m going to figure out a way that I can use the fact that I’m getting older as a distinct advantage. See if I can figure out a way of presenting myself and writing and recording myself that will sort of embrace who I am and I won’t be compelled to just preach to the same fans I had when I was a pop star. That’s what many of my contemporaries have to do.
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