Bernard Butler: Singer & Songwriter
September 1st, 1998
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Bernard Butler (BB): It was not difficult to make, it was hard work and I had to be pretty disciplined about it. But I had a lot of fun doing it, but it was really hard work…there was a lot I wanted to get through as I had a lot of ideas stored up to make one record.
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BB: I wrote [Stay] on a train in France, on the way to a studio and it was about a conversation I had just before with somebody, just before I left England. It’s a relationship conversation and what I am trying to get out in the song, by using the relationship, is the theme that if you don’t change, don’t make progress in your life, don’t take risks, and don’t jump off cliffs often enough, then you don’t find how good it is on the other end. It is the easiest thing in the world and pleasant to be complacent about anything in life, like cutting your hair or making a record. But taking a risk and making a change is a pretty hard thing to do. Fortunately, I haven’t had much choice about making changes in my life. It is easy for me to say that I made all these changes, but I had things forced upon me.
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BB: The whole thing was memorable, as we went to Capetown, South Africa...just that bit was incredible. I laid on the road for two days in the sunshine, it was great, best time of my life, singing my song while all these things were happening around me. It is a bit of a fantasy theory what the song is about which the director came up with, which is cool and I liked. The idea was that I had this road accident and I was lying on the floor, looking up at the sky, and nobody could work out why it was that I was lying on the floor, middle of this road, oblivious to all the chaos going on around me, and the cars going past me.
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It gets to the end of the video where all these people gather around me, thinking I am dead, and they cannot work out why I am staring up. Then they all stare up and realize that I am looking at the stars. It is quite a sweet ending. I like it because a lot of the songs I do, I feel quite fragile and static in the middle of them, as this chaos is around. I like that theory, rather than being incredibly hyper about everything all the time, and having to bang my head against the wall just because I am doing something intense. .
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BB: I’ll say it twice as loud now. You will not get out of me anything interesting by the way of conversation. Since I was a kid, music is the way I have communicated with people. It sounds weird, but it’s not really. The way I work with musicians is like that. We don’t have to go though things in a convoluted way, and discuss things for hours and hours, and plans, and what we should be doing, and what people think we should be doing. We just do it. It you are that kind of person than you can just do it and don’t endlessly have to talk about it. I think that there is much more in my music than anyone has got out of it and that has ever been spoken about me. It seems obvious to me. That’s was art's about.
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BB: My song writing, definitely, but I don’t view them greater than the other. My song writing encapsulates the whole thing that I do, and always have done. I don’t consider myself as just doing guitar solos and rocking out. I always have written songs for the piano and done string arrangements, it has always been vocally based. I have yet to do an instrumental. I would love to, but I always think that it would sound great with this vocal line on it. I have never gotten that far yet. Song writing is what is all about.
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BB: The Sea, I had on guitar, and I was messing around with it, had not finished it, and was not sure I was going to record it or not. I sat down one day at the piano and started to play it <Bernard plays the tune of the song> and it just sounded nice. I recorded it straight away, there and then, as it was in one take.
I never intended it to be like that. Maybe it would be better on guitar, I don’t know.
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BB: Because, I wrote initially on the piano, and I got to the studio, I sat on the piano while we were setting up. The drums and stuff, I started to play as I heard them. They are quite strong chords <Bernard plays the chords> and once I had the chords and the song together <plays main part of the song> and I finished it off with an electric twelve string.
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BB: Anything I listen to. I always doubt when critics pick up on one thing, one song. It’s normally wishful thinking that you fit into one category or another. When making this record, I listened to a lot of different and diverse records. While I was making it, I didn’t listen to a lot of music. When I am recording music all day, I don’t go that night and listen to a lot of music. First thing I do in the morning is to put on the recording from the previous day, just to hear it when I wake up. More this year I have started to get into Isaac Hayes, I love the arrangements and the cover versions. I despise people that do cover versions and make them the same, as a commercial career step. His songs speak to me. John Cale, the Stax box-set of 9 CDs of every single released in the 60s, John Martin, the Scottish guitar player. I listened to Soundtrack to Fist Full of Dollars, the other day, that’s pretty good.
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BB: Indie music became Independent music became which was this big commercial that, that people became millionaires out of and lots of bands made hugely successful records that are quite flawed. There are lots of interesting records coming out, but in the 90’s it is difficult to distinguish between those that sell loads and ones that are actually really interesting records, such as Spiritualized, Sunhouse, Radiohead record which sold billions and billions, and it is a great record. Verve Album I really like. I don’t like certain songs, the some of the songs are too much for me. I really like their first album, that was really incredible. But I know that everyone talks about the second one, which I really don’t know it.
Interviewer: Tiger Lily
Camera & Photos: Rodwin Pabello
Transcription: Tiger Lily
Editor: Catherine Lee
© 1999, 2000 Evans Media Group, Inc.