John Hiatt - interview

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Mark Coenen interviews John Hiatt

by Mark Coenen

September 1995, BRTN Studio Brussels

Mark Coenen of BRTN Studio Brussel interviewed John in September 1995. In the interview, John talked about his (at that time) soon to be released Walk On album. Mark also gathered some questions from the SOR list members, and got John's answers.

With Mark's permission, Rob Hall transcribed the interview and passed it along to us.

The tape of the interview just starts straight off, without preamble, into a discussion of guitar players...

MC: You changed guitar players. That seems to be a habit of yours. You've had Ry Cooder, Sonny Landreth, Michael Landau - a whole team of guitar players and now Michael Ward has been...

JH: ...kaput.

MC: Is he kaput?

JH: Well. he quit. I run though them. I think I'm hard on guitarists. I don't know why. It's funny because I almost look at the guitar player almost like my duet partner, you know? The guitar always provides the counterpoint for the vocal. I don't know why it is but it's a high rate of attrition, guitar players in my bands.

MC: And how did you find the new guy..?

JH: Dave Immergluck? He came highly recommended by Davey Faragher who plays bass with me, and sings, and Michael Urbano, the drummer - who has since quit as well...

MC: Really? What the hell is happening?

JH: Yeah, the bastard (ironic)...

MC: You have a new drummer?

JH: Yeah we have a new drummer, a young fellow by the name of Mark Williams, excellent drummer; and Dave Immergluck and Davey Farager are still with me, so we'll be going out as a quartet.

MC: It seems that the change of the guitar player changed the whole sound of the band. He plays a lot of subtle guitar, instead of on PGG it was sort of rougher...

JH: ...sort of subtle as a flying mallet on PGG, yeah. Mike Ward's style... the word "subtle" does not spring to mind! Dave Immergluck plays many different stringed instruments; he plays mandolin, he plays slide, he plays pedal steel...

MC: Is it also a return to the "mandolin" sound?

JH: Well, you know it was just an accident; we had the studio booked, we had the rhythm section, the songs... and all of a sudden Mike Ward quit, so I said "Hey, we gotta find a fourth guy! I don't care what he plays". So they recommended Dave and. literally, the first time that I played with him was in the studio and one of the songs, "I Wrote It Down and Burned It" was, I think, the first one we cut. And he played pedal steel on that through some sort of stomp box, I don't know what kind, all I know is that it sounds like woodpeckers on acid and I thought, "Well, that'll work!"

MC: ...I can deal with that. I got an advance tape and it's on side A and side B. Is that the way you work still, in "side A" and "side B"? The build up of an album - is it still in two sides, or is it...?

JH: You know, it's kind of hard to get out of the two sided thinking, coming from the days of LPs, but I kind of got out of it with this one... they have to divvy it up for the cassette, obviously, but I don't really think in terms of sides.

MC: And the album's title "Walk On": it that a theme song of the album, I mean "don't look back..."

JH: Well I'm always hard pressed to title an album, and so usually I just take the easy way out and name it after one of the songs! And that song just seemed - not that "Walk On" means anything in particular - but just the feel of that song seemed to have a lot to do with the record, seemed to be a kind of a theme song, or something.

MC: When I listened to the album I thought that the theme of the album was about missing someone.

JH: Well there's very much of that...

MC: ...A lot of love songs and longing for...

JH: ...my wife. My wife! You know we spent 13 months on the road with PGG - not straight through, I came home every 3-4-5 weeks - but we did a lot of road work, and I wrote all of the songs for this record during that time. So there's lots of songs about missing my wife, and the kids and the family, and there's songs about, just longing in general and that crazy state that you can get into...when you're just wandering around you start to feel like an uprooted tree or something, you know?

MC: Is it some sort of therapy, when you write on the road?

JH: Well it certainly was for me during the PGG tour. I had never really written on the road...

MC: Why not?

JH: Well, I think I live in fear of writing road songs! And maybe that's what I did, I don't know but...necessity being the mother of invention...I got so - literally - crazy, bored with the time in the hotel rooms, the time when we weren't playing, that I started writing, just to maintain my sanity. To have a diversion, to be honest with you.

MC: Is it compatible, such a long tour with a family, and all of that?

JH: Well it's very difficult, but we're still a family, so we must be working it out. I mean it's not the kind of thing you go into... "Honey, I'm going on a 13-month tour! Take care of the kids!" It's something that you go into as a family, you know, we have to make commitments and balance this and juggle that... but I think it's doable.

MC: Couldn't you do the Neil Young trick? He takes his whole family, I think he takes his horses with him on tour, isn't that a solution?

JH: Well, you know, Neil's got a tad bit more of the green stuff than I do!

MC: Maybe that's a possibility... maybe with this album you'll go triple platinum...

JH: ...well who knows...

MC: ...and the sky's the limit.

JH: ...triple platinum and then "Come on honey; pack up the kids, we're gonna be gypsies!"

MC: What I noticed also on the album were a couple of funky songs: "Native Son", "I Can't Wait" - you even sing falsetto. Is that a first...?

JH: I think it is actually...

MC: ...sounded like the Bee Gees meet...

JH: ..Whoa, the Bee Gees!

MC: ...meet the Jayhawks

JH: Jayhawks, OK!

MC: Yeah, I know; I mean the falsetto thing...

JH: Um... actually, that guy in the Bee Gees has one hellacious, great, falsetto voice... You know, we couldn't get a handle on the song, I was losing interest in the song: I started to think, you know, I don't know what it is, maybe I don't like this song. And all of a sudden, out of the blue, I popped into this ... I started thinking about Marvin Gaye; I had just seen a wonderful documentary about him on the public television channel back home. God, what a talent that guy was, and what a troubled soul, God bless him... so I kinda, you know just out of the blue, I thought "Hey, I've never done this; why don't you try to sing it different?" so, it just sort of came out.

MC: When you talk about Marvin Gaye, would you ever consider recording one of his songs? You're not known to cover a lot of songs, I mean....

JH: You know... he had so many great tunes. I'm a big fan of the early stuff that he did which was not... he didn't write that much of it - he wrote some - but I'm a big fan of the song writing duo of, oh God, I'm spacin' on their names...

MC: Holland Dozier Holland?

JH: No, the guy and the gal; the man and the woman...

MC: ...(unclear).. oh yeah, I know who you mean, er...

JH: ...yeah, yeah, you can't think of their names either! But they're fabulous and they wrote all of the great duets that he did, for example, with Tammy Terrell - "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and... I know we're totally...(unclear)

MC: ...That's a killer!

JH: That's pitiful. We're pitiful! But they're husband and wife, and they've written just... Ashford & Simpson! Thank you very much! Whoa!

MC: Another song on the album is "Shredding the Document" where you are rather hard on, I think, the American TV talk show business, where you say "I don't want to talk, I'll let the record speak". Is it so awful in America, that kind of thing?

JH: Oh, I was just having fun, you know?

MC: Is it a PGG-ish song, this one?

JH: Yeah, maybe. Maybe it did belong on PGG. But we had to have a little levity in the proceedings, you know?

MC: Is it that you'd rather let the work speak, instead of giving...

JH: Well, absolutely. You know it's hard talking about songs, but I was being somewhat facetious and cynical but, er, "all in jest!" I kept thinking of Tanya Harding and, you know, was she going to go to the Olympics...?

MC: ...that story...

JH: ....yeah, that story, which really kind of bugged me.

MC: Why did it bug you?

JH: Well, because they let her go ahead and skate. You know, after what had happened...

MC: ...she should have been in jail or what?

JH: Well, I just think, you know, your Olympic - I don't mean to get all nationalistic and proud - but I think your Olympic representatives, you know, should be a pretty... a pretty civil minded, decent bunch of folks!... but that's just me. I know I could never represent the U.S. in the Olympics...

MC: Why not?

JH: Well, for one thing I don't have any skills in those areas. Maybe race car driving, but that's not an Olympic sport!

MC: Not yet, maybe... 2017, you never, never know: Moscow again. Another one of your songs that struck me was "Mile High", a sort of "Twin Peak"-ish song...

JH: ...very astute!

MC: ...with (Johnny Mercer?) singing...

JH: ...exactly: Frank Sinatra sings in a David Lynch film...

MC: ...Yeah. Was that on purpose? Is this something...

JH: Well, it was just the darned mood I was in. We'd just done an all-nighter on the bus, and we were pulling into some town in Idaho, and, you know: the sun's coming up; I hadn't slept a wink; the hotel was crummy; something was wrong with the rooms and... I don't remember, but I was in a bad mood. And I pulled out the guitar and I started playin' that - it's almost like heroin music - and I think I was just trying to anaesthetise myself, you know, to "numb out" that fact that I was miserable, so I just started playing this really... druggie music, and then just all of a sudden that melody came and, of course, love is the only drug for me...

MC: Really?

JH: Absolutely.

MC: That's great...

JH: So that's where the lyric came from.

MC: And it is a bit of a "film-like" song; did you ever consider making a soundtrack, or making an album with that sort of...

JH: Well, you know I've had a few songs in films over the years, and I've always love that when that happens, because I love movies and I'm visual, and I like having my songs, you know, used in that way. It's great to listen to your music along with a scene, you know... Not enough of it happens to tell you the truth; I would love to do a soundtrack or something. It's kind of scary; a scary proposition.

MC: Why?

JH: Well, there's a lot of, sort of detailed work, that goes along with synching up, you known and cues, and all of the stuff that I'm afraid I don't have the patience for. I don't like minutiae, it drives me nuts!

MC: Really?

JH: Yeah, yeah...

MC: How long did it take to make this album in the studio; you have a couple of weeks, or...

JH: We spent... let's see, we recorded in November

MC: Just one month?

JH: Well, let's see... it was November, then we came back, took a break over Thanksgiving, then we came back and went into the first week of December, so it was about 5 weeks. And then we mixed it... it took about 3 or 4 weeks to mix. Don Smith and Shelley Yakus co-mixed the record.

MC: One thing that struck me on "Your Love is My Rest" is the stereophonic game that you play. I had it on my earphone last night and I only had one earphone on, and I didn't hear your voice, so you play...

JH: ....yeah, (unclear)

MC: ...sort of sixties

JH: ...to the right, yeah... Well we though it was a nice balance between my voice and when that sort of "Sons of the Pioneers" background vocals come in, you know, it's kind of like: I'm on one side of the campfire, and they're sitting on the other!

MC: Yeah, it's almost a sixties way of recording, isn't it? Are you a sixties fan, I mean, music-wise?

JH: Well, certainly, it was a heyday, for pop music; but then, so were the seventies... so were the nineties; the eighties were a little questionable...

MC: Yeah, I know, how did that go?

JH: Er, I'm sure that we could think of some good stuff that came out of the eighties.

MC: Yeah. People always think that the sixties and seventies were better, in one way or another, I don't know why...

JH: Yeah, sure. But I think the nineties have been very good.

MC: The nineties are also the time of the Internet. Did you know you had a...

JH: I have a chat line...

MC: ...a mailbox on the Internet?

JH: I know, I know...

MC: I posted a question on the Internet...

JH: Shot of Rhythm it's called... yeah..

MC: (rustling of paper)

JH: Uh oh...

MC: And I have er... let's see... 4 decent guys... one is from Brentwood California, Brian Kearnan asks this: he's curious to know what music you listen to, and wonders who your favourite artist is at this moment in time.

JH: WOW!!!

MC: Brain asks...

JH: ...Well Brian...

MC: He can't hear this!

JH: I like so many different things, you know. I'm really hot on this new group called Sun Bolt, that is the other half of Uncle Tupelo...

MC: Wilko and...

JH: ...Wliko was the first half, yeah, their record's been out for a while, and I like that as well, but the other guy - and I don't know who's who - but, the other guy started this band Sun Bolt and their record - I think it's just coming out, and I'm really fond of it. There's a jazz drummer that I'm just crazy about: Leon Parker, and he's got a - I can't remember his CD, the title of it, but it's just fabulous. He's got a keyboard guy; that guy Joshua Redman plays a little horn on it, on a couple of tracks. This is really great stuff. Leon plays a kit - according to the liner notes - he plays a kit that's a snare drum, a kick drum and a cymbal, and maybe one tom-tom, but it's incredible, what he does with it.

MC: Did you ever consider using, simple jazz influence in your work...?

JH: Well, you know, I'm so... whoa, I think I'm intimidated by the level of musicality of these guys; the level of musicality at which they operate is so deep, you know, and so much further...

MC: That's a technical point... I mean...

JH: Well, I don't think it's necessarily...

MC: You're as good as them emotionally...

JH: Yeah, but there's another, stream... that they're fishin' in! But I'm reminded of that great Van Morrison record, "Astral Weeks", it was incredible... that song "Slim Slow Slider", which remains one of my favourites... so why not? You know I do have a real strong notion to... my friend Jim Dickinson, who's a producer down in Memphis, has always wanted me to come down to make a record with the Hodges brothers, three brothers: organist, guitarist, bass player and they're the guys who played on all the old Al Green stuff, along with Howard Grimes on drums, who's still around - Al Jackson, of course, being dead. But I've always wanted to go down and plonk me and my acoustic guitar in the middle of that and see what happens, you know?

MC: Next question is from someone from Denmark: Michael Brotherstone, I think his name is - Little Village deserves another chance, he says.

JH: Michael, I couldn't agree more, I couldn't agree more...

MC: Is it a time schedule problem, or...?

JH: I think it's gonna happen, probably next year. I've spoken - I've not spoken with Ry about it - but I've spoken with Jim Keltner and Nick Lowe, and three out of four of us think... so if there's any kind of democracy at work there, then we shall have another album.

MC: Were you satisfied with the first one? Because...

JH: Well you know I thought it was quite an amazing process; it's an amazing band. I thought it really had its moments but, as a whole, I was somewhat - I would've kept it more raw. It came out a little too polished for my taste. I would've just put us in a room and turned on a couple of mikes...

MC: ...and get on with it

JH: ...and go, and go, kind of like we did with Bring the Family. But, you know, I think we all got into a sort of "oo, oo" you know...

MC: ..."it's gotta be good"...

JH: ...that nervous, yeah.

MC: The last question is from someone from Iowa, Brian McNeil, and he asks: why don't you perform songs from your first seven albums on stage any more?

JH: Ha ha ha! What's his name?

MC: Brian McNeil

JH: Well Brian, you know what buddy - and I know you can't hear this - but this comes from the heart pal: we're gonna do a bunch of old stuff on this next tour. Davey Farager and myself were just talking about it the other day. I have done old things - I've done "Riding With the King", songs from that, and we were doing "Pink Bedroom" on the last tour.

MC: Maybe it is because songs from the first albums are from another planet, so to speak?

JH: It's just the thing that I'm always... I've got too many songs, basically, and I'm always liking the new stuff and wanting to play it. But it's also fun to go back and re-interpret stuff. And I think that the time is right now for me to do that with some of the older stuff, you know, to re-discover it a little bit.

MC: The last question is: if someone is going to cover your song, if you could choose your favourite artist, who would that be?

JH: I would...

MC: Imagine the Rolling Stones playing...

JH: Yeah, the Rolling Stones!

MC: Would you mind, would you like it?

JH: Of course, I would love it, are you kidding? Those guys are, you know, that's like... but what a great song writing team. I don't think you hear enough about Jagger/Richards - what they've written, oh my God! But I would die a happy man if Ray Charles covered one of my songs...

MC: You think that's possible?

JH: I mean, I'm not saying "Ray if you cut one my song I'm gonna die...!" But I would be pleased. Specifically, I've always heard him singing "Lipstick Sunset", the song from "Bring the Family".

MC: Is he like, a "soul mate", or...?

JH: I just love his voice, you know. He's one of them guys, like George Jones, or David Hildago from Los Lobos, they could sing anything, and I'd be happy. They just have magic pipes.

MC: OK. Thanks a lot

JH: Yeah. Thank you.

...and it ends just as abruptly as it began.