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This is a transcript of a radio interview Gilbert did with BBC Radio 2 in the UK with Steve Wright, broadcast on the 12th June 2002. Also in the studio and part of Steve's team were Tim Lee and Janey Lee Grace.
As an introduction to the interview Steve played a medley of "GET DOWN", "NOTHING RHYMED" and "CLAIR".
STEVE: Well now look he's here, its' Gilbert O'Sullivan. If I give up the seat I've been saving to some elderly lady or man. How are you Ray? Alright?
GILBERT: Yes, nice to see you.
STEVE: Nice to see you again. I'm gonna call you Gilbert throughout 'cause that is obviously your professional name. So where have you been? What have you been doing? Where have you you been all our lives? Come on tell me what you been up to friend?
GILBERT: Working artist. I mean since the last time I met you..
STEVE: Yeah?
GILBERT: Another album..
STEVE: Yeah?
GILBERT: A tour, just come back from Grimsby, Newcastle, Leeds, those kind of places. So I'm just a working artist.
STEVE: Do you ever stop and take some time out?
GILBERT: In the profession I'm in and the age I'm at, if you get off the treadmill you're lost, you're pretty much lost while you are on it at my age but if you get off it, it's worse. So the important thing is to stay on the treadmill. Therefore you can kinda keep focused that way.
STEVE: So when you first started out and wrote all those lovely delicious songs that we've been playing, what was your focus? Did you think well 'I'll just be a songwriter' because it seemed to me that you didn't really want to perform and that you hid behind the image, would that have been the truth or am I way off?
GILBERT: Yeah the original image allowed me to just sort of sit there at the piano and play the songs and stuff and the writing was the key to everything I did so...I wanted to be a successful artist particularly in England because that's where I lived...but the image kinda helped me because it's very difficult behind the piano unless you're Jerry Lee and put your foot on it and stuff. It's very difficult to do anything other than just sit there. It's very static. Elton jumped around a bit and stuff, so the kinda image meant that people could look at you a bit odd and think ‘What the hell is going on here?’ So it kinda helped me in the beginning. Once that became established then… I’m a better performer now...I jump on the piano.
STEVE: I know.
TIM: Where did that image come from initially, the cap and hairstyle?
GILBERT: It’s a Chaplin and Buster Keaton thing. I used to really love the Chaplin season. I used to hire a Chaplin jacket. I didn’t really wear the short trousers, I did those only in pictures but I get sort of labelled with the short trousers, but it was fairly long trousers, Chaplin jacket, waistcoat, school tie.
STEVE: And the press always depicted you Gilbert as a very shy Irishman, which is really what you are, by the way congratulations on Ireland (referring to Ireland’s progress to the last 16 of the World Cup).
GILBERT: They’re doing alright.
STEVE: They are doing alright?
GILBERT: Ireland and England are doing very well…touch wood.
STEVE: Yeah so I always think of you as a very very shy retiring type of fellow.
GILBERT: I am not retiring...a lot of people say that they are basically shy and when they step on the stage it’s a bit of a cliché…it’s this thing about you’re in front of thousands of people and you’re quite sort of open and stuff, yet if you meet any of the audience in the lift afterwards you tend to clam up. I’m a bit like that but I like performing. I really enjoy performing.
STEVE: I know you do.
GILBERT: I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t do it. The reason I didn’t start off doing it was the danger that a lot of artists have fallen into, in other words the first album syndrome. Suddenly what happens is that you become hugely successful with your first record and everybody wants you all around the world they want you to come over and do concerts and do TV and stuff and so you spend the next year doing all that and then suddenly you need your second album. Well if you spent that following year doing nothing but touring and promotion and stuff, where is the time to write that second album? So the important thing for me and Gordon Mills was very good like this, God rest his soul, he allowed me just to write in that first year of success, which meant that I didn’t go to Australia, I didn’t go to Japan, I didn’t go anywhere.
STEVE: I like the quirkiness of your songs. You know my favourite song of yours ever and I’ve had conversations with Gilbert over the phone sometimes and I always say that "Mr. Moody’s Garden". Now you probably remember writing "Mr. Moody’s Garden" but it always strikes me that some of the quirky songs you wrote are inspired by perhaps the England of the 30s and 40s and not necessarily Ireland of the last century.
GILBERT: That’s an interesting point because the problem for me as a artist today is as you know when you are initially successful and you live in England you’re an English artist, the minute you are not successful you are where you’re from….
(LAUGHTER)
STEVE: That’s true.
GILBERT: Is that true? So when I started off as a songwriter, I’m very English ‘cause that’s where all my songwriting tradition comes from, but I was born in Ireland left Ireland when I was 7 so I’ve been brought up in Swindon, so therefore while I was successful I was an English artist, now I’m not successful I’m an Irish artist, where’s in Ireland they see me as a failed English artist so I mean I kinda sit between two stools. Doesn’t bother me in the slightest but it is interesting as a lyricist, it’s like Ray Davies, I see myself very much English in terms of what I write and I don’t like the idea of being a sort of an American type writer, I don’t like the idea of writing about L.A. and stuff, I quite like writing about Fulham and you know….
TIM: And Swindon obviously, as a Swindonian you’ll agree that the influence of Swindon has played a large part….
GILBERT: It’s a touchy subject because we get knocked a lot in Swindon and I defend Swindon.
STEVE: You haven’t done any songs about the excellent mini-roundabouts for example in Swindon.
(LAUGHTER)
JANEY LEE: He is trying to find poignancy for it.
STEVE: Or the G-W-R-H-Q.
GILBERT: Don’t knock Swindon!
(LAUGHTER)
STEVE: Let me just take a break. Oh look we must play, we gotta play this new single of yours, now on Top of the Pops 2 we are playing the video and Harry Hill (UK comedian) seems to be you. Could you just talk us through this?
GILBERT: We asked Harry to do it because visually he is very interesting as opposed to a comedian who might be funny but needs to say things, and Harry was up for it and he is just a very funny person, and he becomes me basically.
(LAUGHTER)
STEVE: He becomes the you of right after the short haired period.
GILBERT: Well we gave him an original sweater so he has got the whole thing now.
STEVE: OK we are going to take a break and play it and we’ll be right back with Gilbert O’Sullivan.
Steve plays "TWO’S COMPANY (THREE IS ALLOWED)"
STEVE: Now we are back here with Gilbert O'Sullivan. Well you know that’s gonna be a hit. How are you gonna cope with that? You’re not gonna hide away again are you?
GILBERT: No it’s not gonna be but it’s a good record, it’s not going to be a hit being realistic you know, I am very realistic these days, but I really enjoy what I am doing, there’s no downers for me. The idea of getting records out there and people playing it. I mean I’m really happy with that, there is a real buzz about writing a song, making a record, getting it released and not knowing what’s going to happen to it, but being happy with it.
STEVE: Would you want it to be a hit?
GILBERT: Of course but I don’t worry about that, if you worry about those things you’ll never write another song. The way you write is you just get on with it.
STEVE: I love the way you’re just…’cause you must be…living there on Jersey or wherever, you just must be loaded, you must have like so much money, yeah.
TIM: You’re so rude.
STEVE: No, no you are so passionate about what you do still.
GILBERT: I love it, life after Radio 2 it’s called.
(LAUGHTER)
JANEY LEE: No life during Radio 2.
GILBERT: With you but I think you know what I mean.
STEVE: Yeah!
JANEY LEE: But do you like going out when you are doing your gigs now, do you enjoy going out on your own or do you prefer to work with a band?
GILBERT: The London gig we did, we did it at Ronnie Scott’s and we did "Moody’s Garden" and stuff and the nice thing about doing a tour is I do it two ways; with the band which is quite heavy or I do it lightly and I have two singers and a keyboard player, so we did it lightly ‘cause it’s very intimate, it’s a sort of one to one thing, so we did things like "Moody’s Garden" for the first time…
STEVE: Yeah brilliant.
GILBERT: People like that song and what’s nice is that’s going back like 33 years or so.
STEVE: Unbelievable isn’t it really?
GILBERT: But even though you are singing about things that were relevant then because of the lyrical thing ‘cause a lot of what I was singing about in that song refers to people like Don Partridge….
STEVE: Yes.
GILBERT: Remember Don at that time, so even with that in it, it still doesn’t stop it being an interesting song to do.
STEVE: Is an interesting song in your view one that we can remember 30 years later or one that is of it’s time?
GILBERT: I don’t think it matters Steve but again you are into the analysis thing as a listener I would have a view on that when listening to other people’s work but I think as a writer I just, I haven’t a clue.
STEVE: Really?
GILBERT: Again it’s a kinda dangerous area. Don’t get into that.
STEVE: See none of your songs are forgettable, none of them.
GILBERT: No that’s not true
STEVE: Well most of the songs, I mean if you say "Matrimony" or "We Will" or "Nothing Rhymed", virtually everybody listening of an age will be able to sing them.
GILBERT: I like them, I’m proud of them but I don’t think too much about it I just get on with it and try to do the next one and stuff, that’s the important thing for me but I’m very happy and I have to learn them on tour, I mean there was a couple songs that I wanted to do this time but I couldn’t do them ‘cause I couldn’t remember how the chords went.
STEVE: No! What is wrong with your hands?
GILBERT: You’ll have to come and see me.
STEVE: I will, what is wrong with your hands that you need to play the piano….
GILBERT: It’s difficult to get it, it holds about ten people. We’ll work that out for you next time.
STEVE: Why do you cut the piano with your hands like that?
TIM: It’s an interesting style of playing.
GILBERT: It’s drums, it’s drums, and when you work on your own you create your own rhythm so the left hand becomes the drum kit, I’m the Bruce Welsh (of the Shadows pop group) of the piano.
STEVE: But how do you play a chord?
GILBERT: Well that it, it’s rhythm. I am not that great a piano player but I’m very good rhythmically, as I say like Bruce Welsh is not Hank (Hank Marvin, lead guitarist of the Shadows) but he is good rhythmically, so I am kinda the Bruce Welsh of the piano.
TIM: Did you have formal music training or could you just play the piano from any age?
GILBERT: Like everybody I had a few weeks’ lessons and stuff and didn’t like it and stuff. But you just pick it up.
STEVE: Would you or do you write songs in the style that you used to and what do you say when you get pressure from record companies and or people who say ‘Look we want another "Mr. Moody’s Garden" or we want another "Clair"’. Do you just say well look that was then this is now, do you cut yourself off from that?
GILBERT: Yeah I’m not interested in that. I have never followed that line of thinking. In other words if you sort of look at my career from the beginning you’ll see that the first hit was "Nothing Rhymed", the second one should have been a ballad which would be quite similar and would be just as big a hit, but it wasn’t, it was a rock ‘n’ roll thing called "Underneath The Blanket Go" which is what it did, it kinda disappeared. It barely made the top 30.
STEVE: Wasn’t that a hit, I thought…
GILBERT: It just made the top 30 but all the doom merchants said that’s it, it’s all over now, your career is over, you’re a one hit wonder. You’re finished. I wasn’t concerned at all. Gordon said ‘Well what have you got?’ So whatever I’ve got applies today. If you were working with me, if the three of you, if we were in the studio together, were going to make an album, you would say ‘Well what have you got Ray?’
STEVE: Well let’s make an album, you know I was going to set up a keyboard for you today but I thought….
GILBERT: How much time do you have?
STEVE: No but I thought that you would be in a mood anyway…..
GILBERT: (Laughs)
STEVE: ….and then you’d say ‘Oh no I can’t play that because that’s like an organ that’s not a piano but bring me a piano you’d say and then we wouldn’t do it but next time will you come in, I’ll put the piano in and you can play old songs and new songs, what do you thing?
GILBERT: Why not?
TIM: Have you ever been tempted by writing film music.
GILBERT: No although I am heading towards Radio 3, aren’t I? So I should be going into classicals now right? I’ve gone from 1 to 2 and now I’m going to 3, see that door, it’s not a door I like. So now I like songwriting. You know "Alone Again" is in this Stuart, what’s this movie about a mouse?
STEVE: Stuart Little 2 is it?
GILBERT: 2 is out so they’re using "Alone Again", Osmosis Jones used it and so they can use the old songs if they want to and stuff, we did a new song for a commercial in Japan and stuff, that’s a way of utilizing songs in that kind of area.
STEVE: Sure, Gilbert O'Sullivan’s new single "Two’s Company (Three Is Allowed)" is released on June 17th. You have to see the video, I think we have it on Top Of The Pops 2 either tonight, is it tonight, I think we have it on Top Of Pops 2 tonight, if it’s not tonight it will be next week. So you must check it out it is very funny,
GILBERT: Harry is good.
STEVE: …Harry is good and you are brilliant.
GILBERT: I’m a bit part player.
STEVE: Well you know the sweeping up, it’s an important part.
GILBERT: Well I’m a good sweeper.
STEVE: You’re a very good sweeper.
TIM: Excellent sweeper. It came very naturally I thought.
GILBERT: You don’t know how good I am at home.
STEVE: If you could have a look at the control room out there on the way out. Gilbert O’Sullivan’s new single "Two’s Company (Three Is Allowed)" released on June 17th, the album "Irlish" is out now also which I haven’t even got a copy of yet so if you could get one of your operatives to let me have one I would be deeply grateful.
GILBERT: LAUGHS
STEVE: Gilbert O’Sullivan everybody. Sparky, it’s always sparky with Gilbert .
Steve plays "WE WILL"
STEVE: And that’s a lovely Gilbert song too, Gilbert O’Sullivan "We Will" and I’ve just been called by BBC 2 Press, we did put it in the show tonight if you are watching at 6.20 Top Of The Pops 2 you’ll see classic pop performances tonight including Samantha Fox, Squeeze, Gloria Estefan and Gilbert O’Sullivan with Harry Hill. |
