WE ARE
FAMILY
LOWE’S STARRY
COLLABORATIONSGoing back to his school days with his
pal Brinsley Schwarz, Nick Lowe has
always been a great collaborator and
team player. The friends worked
together first as Kippington Lodge, then
as the bluesy, pub rock band Brinsley
Schwarz, and their lasting legacy is in
the songs (What’s So Funny ’Bout)
Peace Love & Understanding, and Cruel To Be Kind.
Lowe became a vital part of Dave Edmunds’ touring band Rockpile, which also acted as a
backing band. They rarely slowed down enough to sit still and make records, settling for one
album Seconds Of Pleasure (1980) and one hit single Teacher Teacher. When Edmunds made
his one big hit single, Girl Talk, Lowe stepped up to play bass on it.
He not only married Carlene Carter, but also produced her albums Musical Shapes (1980)
and Blue Nun (1981), with Rockpile as her backing band. He also produced Without Love
(1980) for Carlene’s stepdad – and his stepfather-in-law – Johnny Cash, before writing The
Beast In Me for Cash, which he performed on his classic American Recordings album (1994).
Together with John Hiatt, Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner, Lowe formed supergroup Little
Village in 1986 and they all played on Hiatt’s 1987 stunning album, Bring The Family.British punk single, New Rose, and first UK
punk album, Damned Damned Damned, the
debut records from The Damned.LOWE’S MOST SUCCESSFUL
albums as producer – and his longest-
running professional relationship –came
with the emerging talent of Declan
MacManus, aka Elvis Costello, who had sent
Stiff Records a demo and
was originally taken on
as a songwriter for Dave
Edmunds (who wasn’t
interested). With just
£2,000 and a handful of
recording sessions, Lowe
made Costello’s debut
My Aim Is True, with its
knockout singles, Less
Than Zero, (The Angels
Wanna Wear My) Red
Shoes, and of course,
Alison. From then on their albums came
thick and fast: This Year’s Model (1978),
Armed Forces (1979), Get Happy!! (1980),
and Trust (1981). A conveyor belt of classicsingles like Watching The Detectives,
(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea, Pump It
Up, Oliver’s Army, Accidents Will Happen
and High Fidelity showed their mutual
mastery of the three-minute pop song. After
a half-decade break, they reunited for Blood
& Chocolate (1986).
“Some time in the 1980s,” observes Lowe,
“the way people made records changed,
almost overnight. It
suddenly went from
an analogue world to
a digital world where
more and more the
producer was the
engineer, and it was
much more a kind of
science. Whereas my
thing was more hit and
miss. Some days the
record company would
ask me how it was
going and I’d say, ‘We didn’t get anything
yesterday; we’ll have another go’. And in
the 1980s ‘we didn’t get anything done
yesterday’ didn’t work. They didn’t want“I WAS IDEAL FOR THE BEATLES AND THE
STONES WHEN ALL THAT HAPPENED. I WAS
15 WHEN THAT KICKED OFF”best because he had all the guys from Chris
Barber’s band, including Barber, on his
records. “They really did swing and jump,
and that interested me, this swing in music.
It never goes out of style, swing, and people
get astonished when they hear something
that really swings. You can see on their
faces... they can’t quite believe it.”
When he was sent away to boarding
school back in Blighty, he found a fast friend
in fellow music lover Brinsley Schwarz.
They wanted to play rock’n’roll music and
skiffle. “Call it what you will,” says Lowe,
“but that rockabilly, sort of scrub, scrub sort
of rhythm. I didn’t know anyone who knew
how to do that. So all we could do was just
listen to records. Just sit in your bedroom
and try to imitate them. I loved skiffle, and
still do. That’s still the philosophy behind
pretty much everything I do.” Then the
British pop scene exploded, and that was a
game-changer for Lowe and Schwarz. “I
was ideal for The Beatles and The Stones
when all that happened. I was 15 when that
kicked off and I was totally into it.”
The two friends tentatively started a
couple of youthful, eager groups, including
guitar pop band Kippington Lodge in 1965,
signed by Parlophone in 1966, even opening
for prog rockers, Yes. In four years they
released five singles, then seamlessly evolved
into the band Brinsley Schwarz, who neatly
fell into the new, bluesy genre of pub rock in
the early 1970s. No one could have predicted
that one of their old songs, (What’s So Funny
’Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding would
eventually become a hit for Elvis Costello,
then crucially be covered by Curtis Stigers
on what became the bestselling soundtrack
album of all time, The Bodyguard, starring
Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner. And
the royalties from this alone paid Lowe’s bills
for several years.
When Brinsley Schwarz broke up in 1975,
Lowe was known as a smart songwriter,
with plaudits also coming for his producing
chops. He now admits he was a reluctant
record producer, who fell into it and never
really thought he was any good. “I was very
lucky with the people I worked with, and I
just used to encourage people to go further
than they thought they could go.” Almost
by accident, he lucked out when he was
recruited as the sole in-house producer for
Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson’s brand new
label, Stiff Records. “They got me into gear,”
says Lowe. He ended up not only releasing
the first record on Stiff (his own song, So It
Goes), but also kickstarting punk rock itself
by producing what’s perceived as the first
Nick Lowe