Revolution Of The Heart - Interview
Revolution Of The Heart - Interview
A staggering statistic about your songwriting is that it has, so far, contributed to 360 million records sold, worldwide.
“Well, they did some research and they said ‘Look! This guy has sold some records.’ I guess that’s why they gave me an OBE (the Order of The British Empire) which I was given by the Queen in 2000.”
It’s an impressive figure …
“I’ve been doing this since the ’60’s, it’s been five decades for me, so in five decades of success, you could reach that kind of a statistic – especially since my songs were not just sung by one artist. The Air That I Breathe has more than 500 covers, for example. When you think of that and you think of how many millions each one sells… The version of When I Need You on the Celine Dion record was 38 million albums alone. So there’s 38 million sales right there, with just one song covered by one artist. You start adding the millions and the amount of songs, and you can probably get to that figure. That’s not even including orchestras, or whatever. What can I tell you? I’m just a normal guy that is caught up in a new record of my own. That’s the only answer I can give you.”
It’s somewhat ironic that some of your most successful songs were first featured on a solo album of your own which was not very well received at all by your record company of the time…
“Yes, CBS shelved an album of mine that contained When I Need You, To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before and 99 Miles to LA saying ‘We don’t hear any hits.’ So they put it on the shelf until Leo Sayer had a Number 1 hit with When I Need You – and then they released it as a Johnny Mathis kind of record. There were a lot of disappointments and then I said ‘Well, I’d rather give my son the time and spend time with the family than go out on the road and be jerked off.’ Apart from wanting to spend more time with my family, that whole episode was another reason why I stopped for a while; I got angry at business and the world.”
Another great song you ‘contributed’ to is Creep by Radiohead.
“I don't publish The Air That I Breathe, I only own the writer's end, so the publisher of the song, Rondor Music, when the song Creep came out, pointed out to me that Radiohead had liked The Air That I Breathe so much that they had done their own song, based on the original. I take that as a great compliment.”
What first inspired you to write songs?
“I started at the age of nine. I made a record just for Gibraltar. I still have a copy, actually. When I hear myself I say ‘I can’t believe I used to sing like that!’ It’s like a pure, choirboy voice.”
Your songwriting covers a very broad range of musical styles – do you have a favourite genre?
“I think what I’m doing now, and my first two albums probably, also; It Never Rains In Southern California and Free Electric Band. But I have a knack of writing R 'n' B songs that Aretha Franklin, for example, records, and of writing country songs that Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson record - and rock songs that Steppenwolf will do, alongside stuff that Josh Groban or Carreras have done… All these questions are terrific but, to me, everything – all of my life – is like a mystery. I’m just a simple guy from a poor family that started off in Gibraltar and kind of moved on to Morocco and then to Spain and then to London and, finally, in the week that I had three songs in the Top 20 in the same week in England, I decided to go to America. I could have stayed in England and made a living. I thought ‘There’s more for me out there,’ and I went to America. These are hard questions for me to answer.”
Your songwriting is clearly multi-faceted; from the humorous, almost nursery rhyme fun of Gimme Dat Ding and I’m A Train to big ballads like When I Need You and One Moment In Time through to social and political commentary…
“I do have a lot to say, and the only way I can say it – because I’m not the kind of guy that goes out with a banner and protests and stuff like that – is through my songs and on my records. That’s what I give to the world, these are my feelings. For example, I wrote a song about my son and I – which I will record in the future – I played it to my manager, and he started to cry.”
If you look at the facts and the success you’ve had and at your tremendous achievements as an artist, songwriter and producer, it only tells part of your story. Reading between the lines, however, it’s obvious that, although you’ve had some luck – some pretty good luck – you’ve also had your share of bad luck, too.
“Oh, yeah. But not only me; we all have good luck and bad luck. You don’t have to be a star, a superstar, or whatever, to have that. My father had good luck and bad luck – and he was a fireman. He was lucky that, during an explosion in Gibraltar when 12 of his friends died, he didn’t die. When I look at my life, I say ‘I’m probably one of the luckiest guys in the world, to have achieved what I have achieved – even though I’ve had some bad moments in my life.’ But the bad moments are dampened by the good times, and if you didn’t have the bad luck then you wouldn’t know the difference. The most important thing that I’d like to get across about my life is that, with all of the success and whatever, I stayed the same. I still feel like I’m back in the streets of Gibraltar. Just a regular guy. If I have to sleep on the floor, I sleep on the floor. Whatever I have to do, that’s within my reach, I’ll do it. It’s fine with me.”
Do you have a favourite song of your own?
“That’s impossible to answer because I might have a favourite song that you might not even have heard yet, that’s on some obscure album that I did. I just couldn’t tell you that I have a favourite song. Every one of those songs are important to me because…do you know what songs do? The good and the bad? They lead you places, you need the good song to make you feel good and then you come down to a bad song that makes you feel ‘Gee, I better write a good one!’ So that leads you to write the next good song. I love songs like The Air That I Breathe and It Never Rains In Southern California and One Moment In Time, but…nah, I don’t have a favourite. I love ’em all.”
Which of your songs has been the most influential in your life?
“Well, it sounds silly to say Little Arrows, but that was my first big hit, so it must have impacted upon me – and it was my first worldwide million seller. More than that, it’s It Never Rains In Southern California, which not only started my solo career, but also established it. For me, it's one of my most important songs and, certainly, it was influential. That’s not only because I think it's a great song and I love it - and I think it tells the story of my life in a way - but also because I was the artist, the producer, the writer. I mean, everything was right; right song, right singer, right place, right time. If I hadn't had that, I might have gone slowly downhill, you know.”
What inspired you to write It Never Rains In Southern California?
“It was written in London, before Mike (Hazlewood, Hammond’s long-time collaborator) and I came to Los Angeles. We knew we were going to go and I’d been telling Mike the story of me in Spain when I started out. About how I had been reduced to asking for money outside of the train stations because I had no money to eat and I didn't want to tell my parents. My cousin was on honeymoon then, and he came out of the train station and saw me, and I didn't even know it was him... I just asked him for some money, too. And he said ‘You should be ashamed! I'm gonna tell your father.’ And I said ‘Please, don't tell him. He'll go crazy and stop me doing this!’ My cousin then took me back into the hotel, I had a bath, he gave me some clean clothes and some money. I moved on – but he did tell my father, you know. All these lines in the song like ‘Will you tell the folks back home I nearly made it?’ and that kind of stuff came from that era of my life when I was struggling, trying to make it, trying to get from Morocco to Spain, from Spain to England, from England to America... That struggle you go through, that's It Never Rains In Southern California - the story of my life.”
What advice would you give to anyone trying to make a living in the music business?
“Well, once you start, you’re inside the circle. Never get off the circle! If you get off the circle, you’ll never make it. Even if you never make it, at least you gave it the best shot. So don’t stop trying, don’t give up, believe in your songs even if the rest of the world doesn’t – that’s my message.”
How do you feel about your son being a musician – and a successful one, too?
“Oh, I’m the proudest father in the world. First of all, I’m so happy for him because this is really what he wanted to do. When he was young, I was a little worried because he had no rhythm – although he was a champion roller skater. From the age of 7 to 11 he came third in the whole of America and, in the West, he was Number 1. But I didn’t feel he had any rhythm. I took my son to see the show Buddy at the Victoria Palace in London. I took him because I played the Victoria Palace as a performer in the early ’70’s. I said ‘I’m going to take you where I sang, and you’re going to see the Buddy Holly story.’ So, when we got back to the apartment, because I used to have an apartment in London, he said ‘Teach me some of those chords, I really would love to know them.’ So I taught him three chords and I said ‘If you learn these three chords you can sing almost every Buddy Holly song.’ He spent all night learning them and, at 9am the following morning, he woke me up and started to sing me these songs. That was the beginning, you know. But I am the proudest father. I think that he is an incredible kid, he’s got a great heart and I will be there for him, no matter what, all my life – as long as I’m here.”
How do you write songs and on which instrument?
“Sometimes I write on guitar, sometimes on piano. I sometimes write with nothing, no instruments; it just comes. I sometimes take a song I wrote on piano and make it a guitar song because it feels better. That was the case with It Never Rains In Southern California, for example.”
When you write songs, do you work to a schedule?
“I can’t do regimented stuff. I’m just not that kind of a guy. I have to be inspired. That doesn’t mean that I can’t say ‘I’m going to work with somebody today’ and not get inspired. Maybe three hours into working with a person I suddenly do get inspired – and out comes this thing, that I don’t know where it comes from. That’s the thing. I was sitting here last night until three in the morning – and I must have written six incredible ideas. And I’m thinking ‘Where the hell did all of that come from?’ I just don’t know. It’s just one of those things.”
When you co-write, who writes what…
“It’s a combination but, mostly, I write music – and I always have a title and an idea. Those things come to you with the music. Sometimes I have a chorus and a verse but, otherwise, I’m just lazy! Leo and I sit down like I used to do with Mike Hazlewood. I used to tell Mike, for example ‘Look, I just met a girl called Rebecca in St. Louis and she was a Playboy bunny, but she was…pretty dumb.’ I just imagined her in Los Angeles and, together, we would come up with the words – and the same thing happened with Leo on Revolution Of The Heart.”
You’ve co-written with many of the best songwriters – can you choose a favourite among them?
“I don't know, I liked them all - but maybe I like Mike Hazlewood the most. For me, he was not just a co-writer, but a partner, and we were friends for forty-five years.”
What is a songwriter’s intent?
“My intention is to put a point across and, also, hopefully, to capture people and have them get involved in the song. The same song can mean different things to ten different people. I just hope to give people something that they can’t find somewhere else. How can I explain it? My life in music is a joy and I think I’ll do this forever – even though, occasionally, I retire for a while, but I still write songs. I always try going in the right direction and giving people their dreams.”
What is a songwriter’s gift…
“A guy came up to me once and said ‘I got married to When I Need You.’ Stuff like that is what gives me the thrill. It’s not about ten million albums being sold, or whatever. Selling records is nice but that’s not what’s going to give me the thrill. It’s that human touch; having somebody come and say ‘Did you write that song? Well, gee, with that song I fell in love with my girlfriend – who’s my wife now – and our kids grew up with that song, too, because I told them the story of what it meant to us.’ That is the gift. The gift isn’t the gold record or the money or the millions of records sold. I never thought of money when I wrote songs. I was just so happy doing it and playing it for people – and if people had a tear in their eye because it was a sad song, or a smile on their face because it was a happy song – that was my life. That’s what made me feel so great.”
