'If It Ain't Stiff': Amazing BBC Doc on Britain's Greatest Label

The BBC got pretty much every surviving Stiff vet - The Damned, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Wreckless Eric, Devo, Madness, The Pogues plus, of course, label honchos Dave Robinson and Jake Riviera - to talk up a storm for this hour-long doc.





Part two, part three, part four, part five, part six

Lowe-Fi: The Production Genius of Nick Lowe

(Picture property of Getty Images)

"As a producer, my biggest break came during working on "Watching the Detectives" and I discovered where the echo button was on the tape machine."
Nick Lowe

Despite being a fabulous song-writer, a smart quipper and passably handsome, Nick Lowe never hit stardom. Part of the reason might be that Nick, a long-time bass player, never loved the spotlight quite enough. From Kippington Lodge to Brinsley Scwharz, to Rockpile to Noise-to-Go and Little Village (and those are just the more famous ones) Nick always seemed to want to be part of, not just a band, but a team of equals. He used to seem a bit like a McCartney in search of his Lennon.

Further proof of his knack for team-work is the number of classics for which he's sat in the producers chair. Despite a catalog stacked with witty pop songs, more people probably own a song that Nick Lowe (more here) produced than one he performed. In interviews he often expresses amazement about this, as he believes he's no whiz at the mixing board. And certainly he's no sonic architect like Phil Spector or (shudder) Mutt Lange. After all, he earned his nick-name, Basher, for his recording philosophy of "bash it out now - tart it up later". But that gut-level style fit the times so perfectly and even when times changed and things got electronic ("Any barnyard horse can kick a synth" he once said) Nick always kept the songs and the people who played them right up front.

1. Graham Parker Back to Schooldays
Nick's first gig at the controls was this album, where much of his former band, Brinsley Schwarz, were now backing up this fiery little British soul-punk under the name the Rumour.



2. The Damned New Rose
Nick also produced what is commonly called the first punk rock single (which contained a love song and a Beatles cover - hmmm).



3. Snuff Rock Gobbing on Life
C.P. Lee (of Albertos Y Lost Trios Paranoias who deserve a post of their own) strikes again with first punk piss-take, which mocks the Pistols, the Damned and the Clash in a few short minutes.



4. Wreckless Eric Whole Wide World
Lowe's only production for Eric was this single, but it's a monster that will never die.



5. Elvis Costello Watching the Detectives
Lowe and Costello's partnership is another example of his ability to draw out the best in others, I mean how else can you explain how Nick produced Elvis Costello doing what many consider the definitive version of Nick's own "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding"?



6. Dr. Feelgood She's a Wind-Up
The Feelgoods may be the very embodiment of pub-rock and they certainly cranked up the tempo and the volume of what began a a bit of a laid-back movement.



7. Carlene Carter Baby Ride Easy
Johnny Cash's step-daughter (and child of country legends, June Carter and Carl Smith) married Nick Lowe who produced some hit-an-miss albums for her. Strangely, her move to Nashville, thankfully accompanied by her husband (and Tom Petty sideman), the late Howie Epstein, began her prime period.

Video here.

8. Mickey Jupp Old Rock n' Roller
Jupp is another lesser pub rock vet (he did write "Switchboard Susan", which got covered by both Nick himself and the Searchers when they recorded at Dave Edmunds' Rockfield studios).



9. The Pretenders Stop Your Sobbing
I suppose there are more popular nominees for the absolute zenith of Chrissie Hynde's catalog but I'd say she's made a fine, storied career out of never quite topping this one.




10. Richard Hell Kid With the Replaceable Head
Nick produced Hell? Yup, again just the once. (The 'video' is for the Destiny Street version produced by Alan Betrock and Hell.)



11. John Hiatt Love That Harms
Nick's would have a strong hand in bringing Hiatt's taut song-writing to a broader audience but not just yet.



12. Johnny Cash Without Love
When Johnny Cash is your step-father-in-law you better write him a damn good song, you better play on it and produce it in your basement. Much later, Nick's "The Beast in Me" became the linchpin in both his and Johnny's mid-nineties comebacks.



13. Fabulous Thuderbirds Diddy
The fun-loving, crowd-pleasing retro-minded music the Brit's cheerfully call "pub rock", North Americans derisively refer to as "bar rock". This is probably because while the back-to-basics movement Nick and his contemporaries built was vital and alive, sometimes the North American equivalent sounded like paint-by-numbers boogie even when, in the Fabulous Thunderbirds case, they have Stevie Ray Vaughn's brother in the band and had some middling eighties hits.

14. Paul Carrack Don't Give My Heart a Break
It's Lowe's song-writing and production (alongside Carrack's warm vocals) that keeps this from descending into tinky eighties pop.

15. Moonlighters I Feel Like a Motor
Austin De Lone, from Eggs Over Easy, was the Yankee in pub rock's court and even in his next band, the Moonlighters, he kept a vigil for the sounds of '75.

16. The Redskins Keep on Keepin' On
Their goal was,"To sing like the Supremes and walk like the Clash" and Nick's job was to keep them from sounding like a Trotskyist version of the Commitments.



17. His Latest Flame Somebody's Gonna Get Hurt
A pretty, if lushly melodramatic, pop song that bears little evidence of Nick's tricks.

The Men They Couldn't Hang Greenback Dollar
Sure TMTCH were Pouges-ian but what a ripping version of this Hoyt Axton-via-the Kingston Trio song.

18. Katydids Lights Out (Read My Lips)
An Anglo-American folk-pop band, to whom Nick gave a bright sound, to no commercial avail.

19. Rain A Taste of Rain
Liverpudlian jangle, probably owned a lot of the same records as the guys in R.E.M.

20. Mavericks Blue Moon
The Mavericks, not a name you'd want to be pallin' around with in these post-Sarah Palin times, played country with a keen sense of history, which made them a perfect choice to do one song (again) with Nick.




Nick hasn't produced much in recent years. Since the nineties, he's focused on his ideal micro-niche as a writer and performer of tightly focused soul-country-pop songs over a four album Brentford Trilogy.



 

"It's either this or the biscuit factory, really."
Nick Lowe on his career

Live Stiffs

"Sex,Drugs, Rock n' Roll and Chaos" is the (bastardized) title of the final track on this L.P , featuring Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Wreckless Eric, Larry Wallis and Ian Dury) and it's a pretty damn good summary of the whole enterprise. The enterprise was to gather the eminent Stiff artists of 1977 and send 'em off all together on a package tour like Motown did with its stars back in the sixties.



Those Motown shows were, witnesses say, professional, polished performances whereas the Stiff shows were, often, a shambles albeit a glorious shambles. Look at those lovable losers grinning out at you from the cover, as if to say, "We were third tier sloggers but now we've got a shot at the top." Sure enough, everyone of those grinners, save Wallis, took a serious shot at the pop charts, all with some, if varying, levels of success.



Nick Lowe's was long known for his love of just bashing the music out (hence that "Basher' nick name). That reckless spirit, which made Nick a conduit between the old pubsters and the angry kids, permeates this record. Nick's prominent on both versions of the cover (with poor E.C. hiding at the back). Nick's tunes here include his best released version of "I Knew the Bride" and a fun obscurity, "Let's Eat", Wreckelss Eric's songs - "Reconez Cherie" and "Semaphore Signals" are a bloody mess (and bloody good - much more here) while Elvis C. and the Attraction attack "Miracle Man" and, shades of Imperial Bedroom, cover Bacharch-David's "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself". Larry Wallis only gets to play his best song ("Police Car") so that polio survivor and funky eccentric Ian Dury can get three songs (counting that pile-on version of "Sex, Drugs and Rock n' Roll" that ends the album). Enjoy this raw document because it seems impossible to imagine prominent label nowadays with a roster of such resolute individuals surviving.



Download Life Stiffs L.P.

Nick Lowe: So It Goes (First Stiff)

(A-side matrix "Earthlings Awake")

This month (August the fourteenth, to be precise) marks the thirty-third anniversary of the debut of Stiff Records, the most bizarre, wildly-inconsistent yet brilliantly prescient labels of all time. The fiercely idiosyncratic British label promised a future in the music world for renegades and miscreants. The label was founded by industry vets (Dave Robinson and Andrew Jakeman) and initially stocked by eccentric cast-offs (Nick Lowe, Pink Fairies et al.) before they signed (then) up-and-comers like The Damned and Elvis Costello. The history of Stiff is well learned elsewhere but, for something less seen, here is a list of thirty-four blunt yet witty Stiff slogans:

(From The Book of Rock Lists and scanned by CallPastorBob)

The label debuted (prefixed Buy 1) with a single , the jaw-dropping Nick Lowe solo debut on which Nick plays everything but the drums. While Stiff's quality level pitched wildly (the less said about Buy 3, the turgid Roogalator single, the better) this maiden release is forty-five revolutions per minute of wild genius.

"So It Goes" brought power-pop out of the doldrums by not only paying homage (and/or nicking ideas from) that crisp British Invasion guitar-pop but also by updating said sound with a slicing wit. Underneath that snappy tune, this is a brutal song, one which moves from a grisly loss of limb, to threat of violence in a large crowd, to the warring of nations. Nick chronicles all this ugliness in an off-handed manner, even ending the song off on a note of unrequited lust. And so it goes...

So It Goes
I remember the night the kid cut off his right arm
In a fit to save a bit of power
He got fifty thousand watts
In a big acoustic tower
Security's so tight tonight
Woh they're ready for a tussle
You better keep your backstage passes
'Cause the promoter had the muscle

Chorus:
And so it goes and so it goes
And so it goes and so it goes
But where it’s going, no one knows

In the tall building
sit the head of all nations
Worthy men from Spain and Siam
Al1 day discussions with the Russians
But they still went ahead
and vetoed the plan
Now up jumped the U.S. representative
He's the one with the tired eyes
747 put him in that condition
Flyin' back from a peace keepin' mission

Chorus

In the air there is after shave lotion
in the wake of a snake hip Persian
On his arm there's a skin tight vision
Wonder why she ain’t mine and she’s his and……..

"Heart of the City" is the more ragin' full-on rock n' roll track. The guitars are amped-up, the tempo races and the hook, while still fully-formed, is more staccato. Lyrically the cynical wit (Lowe now refers to it as "callow") continues, here delineating urban malaise in the form of sex, violence and an over-abundance of guitars.

(B-side Matrix, "Three Chord Trick, yeh")


{MRML Readers: More Lowe? Write a comment to lemme know!}

Download So It Goes/Heart of the City 7"


You need more Lowe. If you enjoy this single you need to buy his first album Jesus of Cool and/or his new compilation Quiet Please. Don't delay, your life is poorer for it's lack of Nick.



Next: Twee psychedelic pop?