Volume 2
First off, Francesca & Fulvia, that was not me dressed as Batman! Now,"An Inexperienced Man" is about experiences shaping you. About learning from them and being changed in some way, as in the lines, "Someone said, the plot decides the character/ The wind that blows will force the tree to lean." The person who said that about the plot was actually Aristotle when writing about how to write a tragedy. He believed that they should always be contained within 24 hours. One only wishes! The first verse is about me and the ending of my marriage and having to face something for the first time, but the second verse is about a man who's worked in an industry all his life who suddenly has no job and is thrown into inexperience. As most of the songs on the album, it helped me to understand where I needed to go.
Dear Els and Miriam, being a dad is my absolute priority. It's the best time that I've ever had. Your children learn from your decency, you hope. You have to understand that they are watching you all the time, as well as cartoons! I feel that so much of what they do has a genetic necessity to it, so it has to be channelled properly. We both love to climb mountains and that looks after lots of things that may otherwise turn to frustration. The other thing is to show them passion. If you look excited about something, no matter how subtle, they'll want a piece of it. Also, give them security. It will help them to leave.
Michaela, mountains make you humble. They reduce you, but bring your instincts for exploration and survival to the fore. All mountains that I've climbed and walked are in my life and therefore have something to do with my songwriting. I usually find that they clean the slate, or turn a page for me. Also, the rhythm of walking connects to the musical part in my brain and I love that. Read Rousseau's Reveries Of The Solitary Walker or any Wordsworth and Coleridge.
No, Sheila, I've not thought about running for an office or getting into politics. Although I can get very angry about things in our society or with certain politicians, I'm fundamentally too involved with my own internal struggles and energies to ever be helping others in such a profound way. All artists/writers are interpreters, voices of society, but always subjective, and often far too self-obsessed to make good politicians. But we have our role to play. I've always admired Tony Benn of the Labour Party, who has never been seduced to change his ideals for power, and is one of our greatest defenders of the underprivileged.
Karen, If I was on a desert island, I couldn't live without two things. A piano, with a picture of Fin, my son, on top. There are plenty of other things that go in and out of fashion but neither of those things will.
Dear Urs, I was so privileged to go to so many countries, but often a ubiquitous Holiday Inn and a venue never showed me very much. In saying that, I took as much time as I could to walk the streets and visit buildings and galleries, and there's a palpable difference between the countries of Europe that I love. The USA has an homogeneity that drowns you after a while. I love to live next to so much diversity. We went to the former Yugoslavia before the civil-war, and played to one of the most passionate audiences ever. It's not a cliche to say that the south of Europe is more passionate than the north. The audiences were always true to this. Since coming back home after living in LA, I've explored Britain with my son and love the history we have here. Unlike Ireland, Scotland and Wales, England lacks a traditional culture, destroyed by the industrial revolution, and our shame over the Empire, but that is changing with black and Asian kids and the input they have into Britain, and of course we have one of the greatest pop cultures in the world. I spent the Summer in Italy, and I'm always envious of their sense of being Italian.
To a curious fan in Spain, I play guitar, piano/keyboards, Irish bazouki, and mandolin. Piano is now my instrument of choice and the one that I've written my musical on and many new songs. I learnt a little of violin recently as my son was learning it, and I had to play harmonica in a film once, and learnt enough to get away with that.
Dear Monica. Favourite singer of all time (in pop) is David Bowie, still. I love performers when they are androgynous; mysterious. I don't like them to look like ticket touts or even boys next door. Pete Townshend has always been a great hero of mine, but my new discovery is Bob Dylan. I'd given up on pop music as I felt that I had nothing left to learn from it or be moved by. I saw a film called "Don't Look Back" and ironically did, and fell in love with the young man with curly hay-stack hair. He means something, and means it with such charisma. He's Keats with a guitar. Oh, and I also love that Gay Dad record. I don't have a favourite actor. I can't be as passionately committed to an actor as I can a singer/writer. Actors are about the script and director as well as their talent. In saying that I have to sing the praises of Bill Nighy's performance in the movie that I was lucky enough to work on, "Still Crazy". It's one of the great comedy performances.
Dear Daniela, the idea to write a musical came from Guy Pratt, my fellow music writer on the project. He felt that because of my theatrical background I should combine the two. I felt that pop music was not pushing me enough and so embarked on a huge devouring of shows to learn how. My son's favourite, and my favourite oldie is, "Guys & Dolls", but Sondheim is the genius that everyone aspires to, although two of those do not come along in a life time and one must not try to emulate him. His best shows are "Into The Woods", "Sweeney Todd", and "Company". You cannot argue with the pop ability of Shoenburg and Boublil, and Les Miserables is their best. Andrew Lloyd Webber is the most successful in the world at what he does, but so is Rupert Murdoch! In saying that all writers of musicals would love to capture some of the emotional manipulation that he's able to achieve, and he can write a hook. To me it was a challenge, now it's a passion. To combine drama, music, lyrics is difficult but the most satisfying thing that I can do while staying at home!
Birgit, the Millennium. Hmm? What does it mean, anyway. The working out of the birth of Christ took a lot of guess work by medieval scholars, but Herod (the King at Christ's birth) had already died 2000 years ago, so they must have got it wrong. Even when they fell upon a date, they counted 'one' from the moment he was born and not from when he was a year old, so the birth of Christ certainly wasn't 2000 years ago! And what about us atheists? In saying this, it will be significant on our mass psyche. The end of the last century was the time of the Decedents - very retrospective. This Fin De Siecle has been struck with post-modernism, and retro films and music; a feeling that it's all been done. Man last went to the moon before the life time of many young parents! The beginning of this century was marked with modernism in art and literature, and an urgency in science and architecture that held no bounds. People felt empowered by the 20th century. Unfortunately science was mastered in war and the 20th century gave us cynicism, quite rightly. We lost our innocence quickly. I think that all people in the arts will feel the responsibility of the New Millennium, and all that came before in art will be swept aside or simply ignored. I'm looking forward to the modernisation of films, in the same way that the novel changed so profoundly at the last centurie's turn, and I'm wondering what will be the new rock and roll. Let's hope that we don't begin the century how the last one started, with nationalism, greed, and war.
To a dedicated fan from the US. Your experience is the same as mine. It was painful but a learning process that I will always be grateful for. We must all learn from what seems the most negative things in our lives. Life is in flux and that's it's wonder, but humans try their hardest to keep it in one place, afraid of change. I think that I've learned that you shouldn't feel that you've failed if a relationship ends. That's as far as it could go, and one should cherish what experiences there were, but accept that your journey is no longer with that person. We get so angry if someone doesn't love us anymore. It's not their fault! Accept when it's changed and move on.
Dear Solfrid. I like games. I've got a little cottage in the country and play games a lot there with Fin in front of the fire. They're great for Winter evenings. He's into whipping my arse at chess at the moment, but we love Cluedo and there's a great game called Bookworm. On holiday this Summer my friends taught me Grabble which is an anagram game played with the pieces from Scrabble. That was fast and furious and good before dinner
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