By Ray Shasho
-Interviewed June 10th, 2015
Guitar hero DAVE EDMUNDS has never followed music trends, and
throughout what Edmunds jokingly remarks as a “semi-retired” music career, has
probably been more devout and grateful to the original rock and roll format
than any other musician.
Edmunds recently
released his new album entitled ‘Rags & Classics’ via the MVD Entertainment Group. It’s an
all-instrumental masterpiece that displays Edmunds’ proficient guitar work
along with his brilliant multi-instrumental and production skills. Recorded in
his home studio, most of the cover tracks on the new album have never been
performed as an instrumental and are extremely difficult to implement as a one
man band.
I really enjoyed ‘Rags & Classics,’ Edmunds did a remarkable job handpicking singles that are
classics but rarely relished. Some of the more notable tracks are the Brian
Wilson &Tony Asher “God Only Knows,” and the Elton John &Bernie Taupin
ballad “Your Song,” Both tracks are remarkable instrumental renditions while
acquainting the listener to a fresh prospective to an ageless classic. ‘Rags & Classics’ delivers an eclectic mix of captivating
musical gratification … you’ll be delightfully swayed by Edmunds’ intricate
instrumental renderings of Mason Williams’ “Classical Gas,” Procol Harum’s “A
Whiter Shade of Pale,” tracks from Dave’s guitar heroes … Chet Atkins “Black
Mountain Rag,” and Merle Travis “Cannonball Rag,” and a surprisingly but
phenomenal finale to an exceptional album, Mozart’s Symphony No.40 in G Minor,
Molto Allegro. Everyone will truly enjoy ‘Rags & Classics’ by guitar legend Dave Edmunds. ... (5) Stars!
DAVE
EDMUNDS, Welsh guitarist,
singer, songwriter and producer has collaborated with some of the greatest
musicians the world will ever know, including longtime pal George Harrison.
Edmunds is a 1950’s rock and roll purist and remains a loyalist to this day.
After his stint with
the blues/rock band Love Sculpture, Edmunds scored big with his cover hit …
“I Hear You
Knocking” (1970), a song written
by Dave Bartholomew & Earl King and first recorded by Smiley Lewis in 1955. Edmunds’ rendition added
authentic rock and roll dynamism and landed at #1 at Christmas on the UK charts
and #4 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in the U.S. It sold over three-million
copies, was awarded a gold disc, and became a rock and roll standard
worldwide.
In 1976, Edmunds began
collaborating with British musician/singer/songwriter/producer Nick Lowe
(Brinsley Schwarz) on several albums. Lowe and Edmunds were signed to different
record labels and couldn’t record together as ‘Rockpile’ until
1980 when they released Seconds of Pleasure, their only album to feature the
‘Rockpile’ band name. Drummer Terry Williams and guitarist Billy Bremner were
also in the group. Critics and music enthusiast adored Rockpile. Edmunds
describes Rockpile’s short and sweet musical career as as a party band for
four years which they never took seriously.Rockpile was also hailed as a band
that laid the groundwork for ‘new wave.’
Between 1976 and 1981,
Dave Edmunds released four albums on Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song Records. After
Edmunds and Lowe went their separate ways, Edmunds collaborated and produced
albums for an assortment of friends and musicians including … Paul
McCartney, King Kurt, Stray Cats, Fabulous Thunderbirds, Status Quo,
the Everly Brothers, Johnny Cash, and the Flamin’ Groovies. Edmunds also
collaborated with singer, songwriter, composer, arranger,
multi-instrumentalist and record producer Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light
Orchestra. Edmunds released a song written by Lynne entitled “Slipping Away”
which became a Top 40 hit in 1983.
In 1985, Edmunds
arranged and became the musical director of Blue
Suede Shoes: A Rockabilly Session, a televised concert held in London,
England, featuring … Edmunds, Carl Perkins George Harrison, Ringo Starr
and Eric Clapton. It was the first public performance by George Harrison
in more than ten years.
Dave Edmunds was
selected to play in Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band for tours in 1992 and 2000.
Studio
albums:
-Love
Sculpture: Blues
Helping (1968), Forms and Feelings (1970)
-Brewers
Droop: The Booze
Brothers (recorded 1973, released 1989)
-Rockpile: Seconds of Pleasure (1980)
-Dave
Edmunds: Rockpile (1972)
,Subtle as a Flying Mallet (1975),Get It (1977),Tracks on Wax
4 (1978), Repeat When Necessary (1979), Twangin (1981), D.E. 7th
(1982), Information (1983), Riff Raff (1984), Closer to the
Flame (1990), Plugged In (1994),Hand Picked: Musical
Fantasies (1999), Again ( 2013), Rags & Classics (
2015)
I had the rare
pleasure of chatting with David Edmunds recently about his new all-
instrumental cover album ‘Rags & Classics,’ the inception of “I Hear
You Knocking,” Rockpile, Nick Lowe, Carl Perkins, George Harrison, my infamous
‘Field of Dreams’ question and much-much more!
Here’s my interview
with rock & roll guitar slinger/singer/songwriter/producer
… DAVE EDMUNDS.
Ray
Shasho: Hello Dave! First of all, thank you for staying true to rock and
roll. With all the changes in the music industry over the years, you remained
loyal and I commend you for that.
Dave
Edmunds: “Yeaaaaaaaa!”
Ray
Shasho: Your new album entitled ‘Rags & Classics’
is your very first instrumental release. It’s an incredible mix of classics
recorded instrumentally while spotlighting your proficient guitar playing as
well as your multi-instrumentalist skills.
It’s
an impressive recording that everyone should enjoy listening to over and over
again.
Dave
Edmunds: “I wasn’t sure how it would be received
because it’s very different from what I’ve done and from what everyone else is
doing. I had the whole idea for doing this sort of album because it was done in
a home studio. If I had to rent a studio and book musicians, engineers, and all
that, it would have never got made. My studio is a Logic Pro 9 on my MacBook
Air in the shed at the end of my backyard, I don’t need much now. There’s no
pressure or hours to keep to, I just do it when I feel like it.”
“I started putting
down Merle Travis/ Chet Atkins things because I was interested in that since I
was about 16-17 years old, but then I went off that stuff and just started
playing rock and roll. So I’ve come back to it and thought I’d get it down, and
then I thought, what could I do with a Stratocaster, because that’s my main
guitar, and I just thought of these songs. What I really like is a well-crafted
pop record, apart from all the other genres of music; I do appreciate a
well-made put together, well-written, produced and recorded pop record. I was going
through my list of absolute favorites and that’s where I got these, I could
hear them on the guitar. I did the backend tracks so you’ll hardly tell the
difference from the original and that’s a trip in itself for doing “God Only
Knows” and whatever, and then the Telecaster comes screaming in and you go,
whoa, what this! (All laughing) I wanted to do something well-known, because if
you want to get people’s attention with new instrumentals of tunes they never
heard, just been written, or obscure, it will be very difficult to hold their
attention. But if you provide them with something everybody knows and then put
the guitar on, everyone knows the lyrics and its nice listening to in your
car.”
Ray
Shasho: Dave, the mix of music you chose for this
album is just perfect. I really enjoyed your version of “God Only Knows” the
Beach Boys classic. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an all-instrumental track
covering that tune.
Dave
Edmunds: “No one had done it as an instrumental before.
It was such a blast doing it and capturing what Brian had done, for instance,
weird instrumentation. The only intro on the song is two accordions and a
French horn, and that’s it. You go, wow, who’d of thought of that? But it was
such fun doing it.”
Ray
Shasho: Your cover of Elton John’s “Your Song” was
also brilliant!
Dave
Edmunds: “I’m proud of
that one, it came together nicely. I was sitting late at night on my sofa ready
to go to bed and was plugged into my Logic Pro 9 and my Taylor guitar, and I
had sort of worked it out before, but I just played it all the way
through in one take. Then I added a bass and a few strings on the keyboard and
that was it. Yea, I like that one.”
Ray
Shasho: On the next track you come in
with “Black Mountain Rag” รก la Chet Atkins. Your guitar playing almost sounded
like you were playing a 12-string.
Dave
Edmunds: “I did a double
track on that one a bit. I used a Taylor acoustic and a T5 which is like an
electric acoustic. There’s two ‘Rags’ on there and can’t remember which one I
used on each.”
Ray
Shasho: Another great track on ‘Rags & Classics’
is a song dear to my heart, and that is Mason Williams’ “Classical Gas.”
I used to sign-off my radio show with that song every night when I worked as a
deejay.
Dave
Edmunds: “When I did a
recording of that one it was very similar to the Mason Williams version, so for
that I thought I’d do it a bit different, so I did it in a swing beat with a
raucous bass going underneath it. Then I played some drums on top of that last,
which is very difficult to do. I think this album is a good example of my
style guitar playing and production.”
Ray
Shasho: The final track on the new album is a surprising finale … Symphony
No. 40 in G Minor, Molto Allegro (Mozart).
Dave
Edmunds: “I thought that’ll fool them! When I was
living in LA, my wife Cecilia and I went to the movies and saw Amadeus. I
didn’t know much about Mozart or classical music and on the way home we stopped
at Tower Records and she went over to the classical music section and bought
the best of Mozart CD ($4.95) all laughing. So I played it at home and
instantly thought … now I get it! This is why people talk about the genius of
Mozart. I just started picking it with a thumb pick, just the intro, and I
thought what am I doing? I kept listening to the original and inched my way
through it with the guitar, learning it, then I decided to do some solo
acoustic gigs around America and I learned to play it as the last song of the
set, and it went down a storm every time because people couldn’t believe it,
what’s this guy doing alone onstage with an acoustic and playing Mozart’s 40th.
It never failed and it was great!”
“So I thought I’d
record it. I did it all in one take, put a little bass on it, and thought it
would be good for the end of the album. It’s not meant for guitar but somehow
find a way in normal tuning, I’m in G minor, and I found my way around it. It’s
really difficult to play.”
Ray
Shasho: Dave, the last time I saw you perform was with Ringo Starr &
His All-Starr Band. I know you played in the band several times but this
particular lineup featured … You, Timmy Cappello, Burton Cummings, Nils
Lofgren, Todd Rundgren, Timothy B. Schmidt, Zak Starkey and Joe Walsh. Just a
great show!
You
were semi-retired for a while, are you going to be coming back full-throttle
with the release of this new album?
Dave
Edmunds: “I think I’ve always been semi-retired.
(All laughing) Not having any career plan really, it’s my hobby and I get to do
lots of things with different people and work with my heroes, so it’s never
been a full-on career, it’s more of …I’m lucky and made a living out of
my hobby. I’m kind of a loner in the music business …like a one-man band thing.
Maybe it’s because I came from Wales and not living in London like the
Yardbirds, Cream, and all the guys back then. I feel like I snuck in the
backdoor somehow and have just been on the periphery of the business ever
since, and went in a completely different way.”
Ray
Shasho: You scored the mega-hit “I Hear You Knocking” after your departure
from the blues-rock group ‘Love Sculpture’ …
Dave
Edmunds: “By accident! I knew some guys that had
a recording studio, not a professional studio. I recorded “I Hear You
Knocking” and EMI released it as just a single deal, not a record contract,
just a one off deal, I had no manager, no band, no press agent … and the record
just took off with absolutely any promotion, it went to Christmas #1 in Britain
for six weeks, which was the longest #1 Christmas single ever, and a few months
later it did the same thing in America, it just went screaming up the charts.
It must have been that the deejays loved it and they promoted the record
instead of the record company doing it, because there wasn’t a record company
just a one off deal. Then I was stuck because I didn’t even have an album to go
with it.”
“The song was first
released in 1955 by Smiley Lewis. I just happened to hear it on the radio one
day and I thought, gee, I had this idea to do Wilbert Harrison’s “Let’s Work
Together,” which I heard when I first came to America in 1969. I thought, when
I get back home I’m going to do that one and do my own cover, but Canned Heat
had the same idea. So when I heard Smiley Lewis, it was the same twelve-bar
format, you could use the same backing track for both songs, so I thought,
great, I’ll do that one instead, and that was it. It was done in 6/8 time, so I
brought it into 4/4 time to make it a little bit more accessible and just had
fun with it. It took a long time going back and forth, stripping it down and
starting again, and then it finally came together.”
Ray
Shasho: Who were some of the early guitarists that inspired you to pick up
a guitar?
Dave
Edmunds: “James Burton when he was playing with Ricky
Nelson, Scotty Moore when he was with Elvis, Chuck Berry of course, Cliff
Gallup of the Blue Caps … back then you had drums and drum fills and real
guitar solos. my son told me when he was working in the A&R Department with
Sony … he said, now what they want is no guitar solos, only a 4 bar intro and
the vocals have to be auto-tuned. It’s all gone. If you listen to all the stuff
that Ringo did with The Beatles, it’s fantastic drumming! But you don’t hear
that anymore.”
Ray
Shasho: “Do you ever talk with Nick Lowe?
Dave
Edmunds: “He lives in London and we don’t cross paths
anymore. When we did recently it was a Jools Holland gig and we were talking
for a bit, so yea he’s okay.”
Ray
Shasho: Rockpile was an incredible band but you guys
only put out the one album (‘Seconds of Pleasure’) …
Dave
Edmunds: “I think we ran out of enthusiasm by then and
quite rightly because he didn’t just want to be a band member, he’d done that
for years with Brinsley Schwarz. We had a great time; it was a party band for
four years and we never took it seriously, and that seemed to come over
onstage. We had a terrific goodwill from the American audiences, the record
industry, the radio, and everyone seemed to love us. I still get asked about it
today. But we only got together just to do a few gigs in London because we
didn’t have anything else to do at the time.”
Ray
Shasho: You also collaborated with Jeff Lynne
(Electric Light Orchestra) …
Dave
Edmunds: “I was just
about to move to America, I had just been through a divorce and hanging out
with George (Harrison) for quite a few years because I lived near him. He was
thinking about maybe making an album but he couldn’t make up his mind, and he
wanted me to produce it, but he kept flipping and flopping. So I said if
you want to do one work with Jeff Lynne because he’s very creative in the
studio. I kept after George to work with Jeff Lynne and after eighteen months
or so he finally said okay bring him down. So I did. I moved to LA. and then I
kind of fell out of the loop.”
Ray
Shasho: ‘Slipping Away’ (1983) was a
really cool tune …
Dave
Edmunds: “A lot of the purist
didn’t like it because I was working with Jeff Lynne and using a synthesizer.”
Ray
Shasho: In 1986, you participated in Carl
Perkins's Rockabilly Session television special with George Harrison,
Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton. …Great program!
Dave
Edmunds: “Carl asked me and George if we’d be on
his TV show. We said yes and then discovered that there was no TV show, he was
just asking us anyway and then hoping that we would put it together. So George
said to me, if you get all the directors, line producers and the studio and all
that and I‘ll get Ringo and Eric Clapton in. So I said right, let’s do it! So
it all came together and I was the musical director. It all came down to Carl’s
personality that brought it off. George was so excited to be back out playing,
he was like a little boy and enthusiastic to be playing with Carl.”
Ray
Shasho: What was George Harrison like?
Dave
Edmunds: “He was one of
the most interesting people that I’ve ever met, and one of the nicest. Whenever
the subject of The Beatles would come up … he always called them the fabs, like
the fab four. He’d say …when I was in the fabs … and always looked at it with
amusement, not with any ego at all. He looked at it like … what a weird thing
that was, how the hell did that happen? The other three may have been
egotistical about it and proud of being Beatles, but with George he saw it as
some cosmic joke. He was just amused by the whole thing, he loved it but he
kept it to himself, and you could tell when you were talking to him that there
was no ego at all. Maybe acid burned it off. (All laughing) …I do miss
him.”
Ray
Shasho: You got to work in the studio with The Everly Brothers …
Dave
Edmunds: “I did two albums with them. It was great! I
had to sort of pinch myself and I was very nervous leading up to that because
they are so iconic.”
Ray
Shasho: Dave here’s a question that I ask everyone
that I interview. If you had a ‘Field of Dreams’ wish like the movie, to
perform or collaborate with anyone from the past or present, who would that be?
Dave
Edmunds: “I would sit, watch, and perhaps play with
Merle Travis. I’ve played with Chet, and played with most of my heroes and some
are still my friends. Steve Cropper was one of my main influences and I’ve done
a lot with Steve, we did a long tour together in America with Dion DiMucci.
Yea, so it would be Merle Travis. I’d say Elvis but what the hell would you say
to Elvis without sounding foolish? Elvis you’re great, love your records! (All
laughing)”
Ray
Shasho: Dave thank you so much for being on the call today and for all the
great rock and roll you’ve given us all these years and continue to bring!
Dave
Edmunds: “Thanks Ray … bye-bye!”
Purchase the latest
release by guitar legend DAVE EDMUNDS entitled
…
‘Rags & Classics’ -an eclectic mix of captivating musical
satisfaction …
You’ll be delightfully
swayed by Edmunds’ intricate instrumental renderings.
-Purchase your copy
at Amazon.com … (5) Stars all
the way!
Track Listing:
1) A Whiter Shade of
Pale
2) I Believe I Can Fly
3) God Only Knows
4) Wuthering Heights
5) Your Song
6) Black Mountain Rag
7) Classical Gas
8) Green Onions
9) Cannonball Rag
10) Symphony No. 40 in
G Minor, Molto Allegro
Very special thanks to Chip Ruggieri of Chipster PR & Consulting, Inc.
COMING
UP NEXT … Longtime KISS guitarist/singer/songwriter …
BRUCE
KULICK (Currently of
Grand Funk Railroad)
Contact music
journalist/author Ray
Shasho at rockraymond.shasho@gmail.com
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