British singer-songwriter Nick Lowe has written and produced for some of the biggest names in rock ‘n' roll, and is responsible for iconic 70s classics like “Cruel to Be Kind,” “So It Goes” and “What's So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding.”
More recently Nick Lowe has teamed up with Los Straitjackets, known for their signature surf-rock swing and for wearing Mexican wrestling masks on stage. Together, they're out promoting their new album "Indoor Safari." It's Lowe's first full length album in over 11 years.
Nick Lowe stopped by NHPR's Studio D to showcase new music from the album, and was kind enough to play us a few favorites, as well.
Transcript
[Referring to “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding”] It’s got to feel pretty good to have written something that's become so iconic. It's just such a part of the culture.
It is iconic, you know? I hear it. It's never actually been a hit, you know? It's been covered by so many people that it almost feels like I had nothing to do with it. Now it really is strange.
Yeah. It becomes part of the public. It becomes something else. You don't own it anymore.
Yeah. And I wrote it so long ago. The thing I always say is that it's the first original idea I had when I started writing. So I'd been writing songs for about two or three years, and doing what everybody does, you know, copying their heroes.
Sure. Yeah.
That's that's where you've got to start somewhere, you know. And then one day I woke up and that came into my head. And even though it was an unwieldy title: “What's so Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding" – you know, I thought it was a really good idea, and I couldn't believe that I had actually had an idea that was my own.
You've written for, you've collaborated with, you played with, produced for so many over the years, I mean, really diverse artists. I mean, I look at a partial list here: Johnny Cash, Elvis Costello, The Damned, Graham Parker, of course, The Pretenders, John Hiatt, Wilco and Mavis Staples, and of course, lately, Los Straitjackets. I mean, is there a particular–
Humperdinck's not on that list.
Really?!
Yeah, he got one of my songs, too. Diana Ross...
Oh that's right. Yes!
Tom Petty did one.
It's incredible.
I know! It is! Seeing as you've read out the list, I thought, "Ooh, not bad."
When you look back at that — that [list] has just an incredible breadth and depth of artists, and has different genres, of different ilk that have covered your tracks. Is there a particular song of yours that's been covered by another artist that pops into your mind as being the gold standard?
Wow. Well, I always used to get a real kick out of Johnny Cash whenever he did [one of] mine. I say whenever, you know, as if he did it all the time. But, he did cut two or three of my songs including "The Beast In Me," which I wrote for him, in fact.
He was a great one for taking liberties with the song, you know, singing it his own way. Quite, quite a lot of it. I mean, I like it when anyone covers my songs. That's the sort of business I'm in, really. That's what I feel most like, you know, a sort of a Tin Pan Alley sort of guy. But a lot of people, when they cover my songs, they tend to do my version of it, you know, and it's flattering that they do that, but I'm always slightly disappointed that they haven't kind of sped it up, or slowed it down or changed a few words here and there, which I'm always really interested in when people do that.
It's interesting to me that you've kind of gone back in the last few years — playing with Los Straitjackets, which is a full band. You're on stage with, well, guys in Mexican wrestling masks, which is a great look. It's very interesting, but you're almost kind of full circle now. You're playing rock n' roll again on stage, amplified rock, when you were kind of very quiet for a while.
Yes, yes it has. It has gone like that.
Although the straitjackets are — what I dig about them is they are actually quite a quiet group. They're sort of loud in a very quiet way. And that's the best way to make stuff swing, really. You can't swing if it's loud. But it's interesting actually trying to see how when there's four people on the stage with you wearing Mexican wrestling masks, you can't do stuff that's too earnest or too serious, you know? But it's very interesting to see how close you can get to that, because it can get kind of poignant, you know. The poignancy is ramped up. You know, guy in a Mexican wrestling mask is playing this song, which is pretty soulful, you know, and it's got some feeling to it. So it's not just a sort of a frat party thing, you know? It's got more to it than that.
Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets release their new album "Indoor Safari" on Sept. 13, and they’ll be performing at the Brighton Music Hall in Allston, Massachusetts in October 2024.
