JJ Cale
The Bottom Line
New York, NY
March 16, 1990 late show
sbd > vhs > cdr > eac > shn
cajun moon
tijuana
sensitive kind
got my mojo workin'
dow
magnolia
after midnight
down in hollywood
-encore-
bringing it back
disadvantage
Rock Steady broadcast 10-24-1990
sbd > vhs > cdr > eac > shn
After Midnight
Tijuana
Hold On Baby
No Time
Magnolia
Cocaine
Crazy Mama
Sensitive Kind
Disadvantage
JJ Cale (guitar / vocals), Christine Lakeland (guitar),
Spooner Oldham (keyboards), Jim Karstein (cowbell and congas),
Tim Drummond (bass), Steve Douglas (saxophones),
Jim Gordon (harmonica) and James Cruce (drums)
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Rock Steady: After Midnight Special with JJ Cale
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NH: Nicky Horne, interviewer & presenter; JJ: JJ Cale, he who forms the point of all this...
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The Introduction
"Good evening and welcome to tonight's Rock Steady 'After Midnight' Special, and how appropriate that we feature in tonight's exclusive concert the man who is the very definition of a reclusive rock 'n' roll living legend. So much so that, whe n we began to plan Rock Steady, the one man whom everybody said we just wouldn't get to play live was tonight's star, JJ Cale. After all, the 51 year old Tulsa born singer / songwriter, is one of the least productive musicians in any form of music and yet , beyond doubt, one of the most influential."
"JJ began his truly individual career in saloon and dance bands way down in Oklahoma with fellow songwriters David Gates, who of course went on to Bread, and Leon Russell, who was to team up with Joe Cocker for his 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen' to ur and album. But, while his mates left for fame and fortune, JJ stayed put, only to emerge with the classic debut album Naturally in 1971, a collection of simple sounding ballads and 12 bar blues-y tunes that JJ claimed was "a collection of t unes that I've been working on for 32 years"; not bad for a 32 year old okie, because amongst those 12 titles there were the now standards, After Midnight, Crazy Mama and Magnolia."
[Brief interlude with Clapton playing Cocaine]
"Eric Clapton had been the first to appreciate JJ's writing and his versions of Cocaine and After Midnight have brought a larger audience to Cale's mastery of the understated. While Rock Steady caught up with the man himself in a studio in LA earlier this year, I asked him when he first heard Eric Clapton's version of Cocaine?"
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The Interview
JJ: I was over in Europe that year, touring and Carl Radle - I have no idea to whom he is referring!>, a friend of mine was playing with Eric Clapton and we all went down to the studio and they had just cut Cocaine and they played me the version about 2 days after they had cut it and my version had been out for about a year and I couldn't get anybody to play it and you know, you try to get pop radio stations to play it and hype it and zero... and Clapton cut it and they played me the version when I was over there on tour and then about two months later... the real ironic thing was for about 5 years after, you know, you'd walk into a bar and you'd hear everybody play it.
NH: Does it ever worry you that people like Clapton and others have had hits covering your songs and they're major stars, whereas you have kept, well, a fairly low profile?
JJ: To really be successful at it, you have to, well, you know, hustle, I guess you might say. As a songwriter, that put me in the fine print and I got paid for it, but I didn't have to get out and really work hard; I got to do what I like to do, w hich is mess around with recording equipment, play the guitar and write songs and I could do that at home, in my trailer or recording studios, in privacy.
NH: So you don't enjoy touring?
JJ: I consider myself a songwriter, not a performer nor an entertainer. I used to be more a musician kind of guy but as I moved in to songwriting, what I thought was really neat about life and what it is that I do, I could write songs and other peo ple had to do the touring and sit in the studio and play them and do all that stuff and I really liked what I had to do; I could do it at home and I didn't have to get out and go through the whole hassles of showbusiness.
NH: You have a very distinctive style, a style that is uniquely JJ Cale. How did that emerge?
JJ: Yeah, well, you know I was influenced by all the early guys when I was a kid and I never could ever play exactly like the people I listen to and try to play like -- I really can't play Chuck Berry as well as Chuck Berry does or Scotty Moore or Billy Butler or Clarence Gatemouth Brown or Wes Paul or Chet Atkins -- all the people that were from my era and so in trying to imitate them, I missed it and I came up with my own kinda thing.
NH: And what's the difference between the old songs and this new album Travel-log?
JJ: To me it's pretty much all the same thing. I just keep rewriting the same tunes, yeah, there's a little bit of difference but basically it's still the same thing. I try to escape from my style 'cause I'm a musician and I like to move forward an d I think I am during the recording and going through the process of making "art" but when I get through, it always sounds like the same thing I always do.
[Excerpt from No Time (video)]
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The Concert
NH: Cale's reputation is built on a handful of albums, released over 20 years, and almost no performance. He was last here in 1976 because not only does he shy away from the public eye, he also hates flying. So, for Rock Steady, we joined his last U.S. tour, in Northampton, Massachusetts, for a very rare treat: JJ Cale in concert.
[Set consisting of: After Midnight, Tijuana, Hold On Baby, No Time, Magnolia, Cocaine, Crazy Mama, Sensitive Kind, and Disadvantage]
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Interview transcribed from Rock Steady, a Channel 4 series -- bit of a shame it was so brief as they had some good concerts (for me, particularly this JJ Cale one and Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, Johnnie Johnson and Buddy Guy at the Royal Albert Hall). This program broadcast on 24/10/90, after midnight (no, really?!).
The interviewer and presenter was Nicky Horne and the band was JJ Cale (guitar / vocals), Christine Lakeland (guitar), Spooner Oldham (keyboards), Jim Karstein (cowbell and congas), Tim Drummond (bass), Steve Douglas (saxophones), Jim Gordon (harmonica) and James Cruce (drums), as far as I can make out from inlay cards and the introductions he gives during Cocaine!
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Clappo and Knoppo have copied his gruff songwriting style and biting guitar work, yet JJ Cale's public profile remains strangely low. Paul Trynka finds him happy to have dodged fame. "The money is in songwriting," he says. "Guitar p laying is hard to sell."
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quiet life
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"I do interviews every once in a while," sighs JJ Cale, with a resigned expression. "In fact, with this new album I think I've done more interviews than I can remember doing inn my whole life." Something in the tone of Cale's voice see ms to indicate that the 55-year old singer and songwriter is less than keen on the media treadmill. While he's polite, friendly, and specialises in his own brand of subtle, self-deprecating humour, Cale is anything but the shameless self-publicist. The ad jective he applies most often to his own material is 'not palatable', as in 'not palatable to the general public'. Yet the fact remains that Cale, despite his anonymity, is arguably more successful than any guitarist you're likely to meet. Precisely one m illion miles removed from the guitar-hero-as-fastest-gun persona, Cale specialises in subtle, laid-back songs worked out on a Martin acoustic. While he doesn't expound his approach with evangelistic zeal, Cale is content to point out that "the world' s greatest guitar players have a hard time paying their rent. In songwriting, if you write something that people really like it pays pretty good."
Jean Jacques Cale is a seasoned wanderer. Born in dustbowl town Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1938, Cale started out playing hillbilly and western swing music before forming his first rock 'n' roll group, Johnnie Cale and the Valentines...
"I listened mostly to the popular rock 'n' roll at about that time -- Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard. In terms of guitar players, Scotty Moore was a big influence, 'cause we had to do those songs when we played. Then there wa s Billy Butler who played with Bill Doggett, Clarence Gatemouth Brown for single-string blues and then all the standard people who everybody used to listen to on the radio."
Tulsa's musical scene was hardly bustling, with 'just a couple' of happening clubs for the 200, 000 residents. Thus it wasn't too surprising that Cale made frequent contact with the city's other now-celebrated musical resident, Leon Russell, exchanging gi gs or playing in each others bands. Cale's late -'50s dalliance with Nashville's country music scene was not spectacularly successful, but a move to LA at Russell's suggestion brought regular, paid gigs. It also brought Cale's first involvement in the rec ord industry -- a string of three 45s for the Liberty label, the third of which boasted a B-side entitled After Midnight. However, none of the singles made much of an impact, whilst his next project -- The Leather Coated Minds, masterminded by prod ucer Snuff Garrett -- proved decidedly ill-advised. Cale and band recorded a 1967 album of psychedelic covers of current hits, entitled A Trip Down Sunset Trip. There are those who consider the work to be a cult masterpiece; most commentators, like Cale himself, pronounced it 'terrible. Terrible.'
Cale returned to Oklahoma, and scraped a living playing guitar. Then in 1970 he discovered 'oil in my own backyard' when Eric Clapton recorded a cover version of After Midnight. There are those who contend that Clapton practically reinvented himsel f at that time, inspired by JJ Cale's rootsy, laid-back example. Cale himself was more than content with the fact that the former guitar hero's espousal of his style and songs projected him into the mainstream. "Those guys, like Clapton and Mark Knop fler, they're just picking up ideas. They might be picking some of them up from me, but they're also picking up ideas from other guitar players, musicians, and songwriters. They picked up some of mine just like I picked up some from the people before me. It's very flattering for me that people of that calibre are listening to what I do."
The opportunity to make a living as a songwriter, as opposed to a front-man, was a god-given one. Before that, Cale had looked on music as being "like playing golf or fishing. It wasn't something you did for a living."
"Basically I'm a background person. I was a recording engineer for a long time and a guitar player with different bands, and have been a front man for a band. So when I became successful with songwriting, I didn't really let everything else slide, bu t I kind of put all my energies into songwriting. Yeah, I still go out and tour, and I do interviews, and I've done some TV -- but I don't do as much as these other people do. And the reason I'm not more well known than I am is that I don't do a lot of th at. That's a whole other part of showbusiness from the one I'm in."
In the wake of Clapton's success with After Midnight, Cale returned to Nashville to record his first solo album, Naturally, and establish a style which he's maintained ever since. With a re-reading of After Midnight, and other distinc tive songs including Magnolia and Crazy Mama, the album was released by Leon Russell's Shelter label, and became a surprise Top 30 hit. However, it would be the cover versions of Cale's songs which were to do most to cement his reputation -- most notably Clapton's subsequent version of Cocaine.
"I guess I basically write thinking that possibly my recordings are not accessible to the point where the general public will go for it, I kind of write songs hoping that musicians will take them and male them better and more accessible. I've done th at for basically every album I've done, 'cause I'm basically a songwriter. So it was always kind of nice when somebody cut my song, especially when they turned it into something that people really liked. For lots of people, it's hard to listen to my versi on, because it's very raw."
Although Cale's natural sound is laid-back -- or, as he puts it, 'craggy and baggy', his recordings utilize a far wider variety of techniques than first impressions might indicate: "Even back then inn the times when I lived in trailers I had a little 8-track or whatever, and I've had several big studios with big analogue machines and boards, 16-track, 24-track or whatever. Lately I've got rid of all that stuff and have a small digital setup. So on a typical album, for maybe four or five songs I'll hi re musicians and a big studio, and maybe four or five songs I'll manufacture at home."
Cale's most recent album, Closer To You, is his first Virgin release. In traditional songsmith style, most of the songs were written in one day while Cale was trying out his newly-purchased custom-built Martin.
"I ordered this guitar," he says, "and a good guitar will inspire you. I wrote eight songs in one day, and cut them all as demos at a friend's house. Then I rented Capitol Studios in Hollywood and recorded the album in two days, with all th e vocals cut live. Then I brought the stuff home and started muddying those tunes up, and recorded three or four more."
Although Cale is a fan of electronic gadgetry, he has a refreshing habit of admitting that "I try all of these gadgets so that the songs sound different. Of course they don't -- it always ends up sounding like me." And while, after all this time , he has to be regarded as an expert songwriter in the traditional sense, he still can't write songs to order: "I'm not a poet, so I never write the lyrics out and try to add music to the words. If anything I write the music first and add some words to that, or write the words and the music at the same time. As the years went by and technology came in I used a lot of electronics. I even used a Casio MG guitar synth lately. I try and manufacture recordings to sound spontaneous. Then some things are spontaneous. There are some cuts on the new album, and there are songs on every album I do, where it's just me and the guys playing and we turn on the tape recorder. You name it, I've tried it, from acoustic guitar and just singing by myself, to the full band stuff, to electronic manipulating and everything."
"As far as songwriting goes, I wasn't really influenced by anybody. It's one of those things where you start off with a clean sheet of paper. There's a lot of songs I like but you can't really copy them because they've already been done. A lot of the time when I'm writing it's the chord sequence that comes first, I'll write a little riff, then try and put some words to it. Sometimes it just comes together easily, I'll be sitting with a guitar trying to write some stuff, and just start dreaming up a s ong, where it all works at the same time. I used to do a lot of recording where I'd cut the music and then add the words later when I'd finished them, but now I try to finish the song as soon as possible so you know what you're working with. It speeds up the process."
Although Cale's probably most associated with an acoustic approach, he's played a variety of instruments "to try and make myself sound different! Back when I could only own one guitar I played an old $50 Harmony -- a real cheap roundhole acoustic -- and I made all of my old records on it. Then it deteriorated through the years with touring and going on planes and everything, and I got into the position where I could afford several guitars. I played a Stratocaster for some time after that, and also me ssed around with Les Pauls and 335s. The Harmony was good because it was an acoustic guitar and that got me into songwriting. Now I play Ovations, and have had a couple of Martin Custom guitars made lately. But like I said, basically I sound that same on all of them."
"What I use depends on whether it's a gig or whether it's a recording studio. For the gig I'll just stick with one acoustic and one electric. I use Ovation for gigs 'cause they're so reliable. They're plastic, and humidity doesn't affect them much. I 've got some real nice Martins but I'm worried about stepping on them and breaking them on the road, 'cause I'm so clumsy. Then lately I've also been playing a Byrdland, and a '79 Gibson L-5 that's on the cover of the album."
"Then there's my mutant guitars... building guitars, or messing around with them, is a hobby of mine. I buy a guitar or something, maybe it's an acoustic guitar and I'll electrify it with the new piezo technology or a magnetic pickup and some capacit ors, and I've modified I guess eight or ten guitars. One time I actually built one from scratch. It's a terrible guitar, but building it helped me appreciated the people who really know how to do it properly!"
While guitar playing remains Cale's first love, you can't help notice more than a little relief if didn't become a full-time career.
"I play guitar because it's fun, but I write songs to make a living. The money in the music business is in songwriting -- guitar playing is hard to sell. So it's a good thing for musicians not only to play your instrument but to try and become a song writer and composer. If you get lucky you can at lest get a monetary thing happening from that."
For Cale, the monetary thing has brought him a laidback lifestyle that matches his music. Creature comforts comprise a dog, several acres of land, a good view of the local wildlife, and an assortment of recording equipment, all located in the middle of th e South California countryside: "Let's just say I live between Los Angeles and San Diego. I stay out of the big cities -- they're so crowded it's hideous." And if the nature of his accomplishments means he's not recognized in the street, that's exactly how JJ Cale likes it...
"You hit right on the money when you said the business I'm in is a different one from the business Michael Jackson's in. I've been all through the kind of crap that goes along with singing songs -- now I just do it because I enjoy it. Yeah, I'd recom mend writing songs. You get all of the money, and none of the bother."
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Later with Jools Holland: JJ Cale
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JH: Jools Holland, interviewer & musician; JJ: JJ Cale, he who forms the point of all this...
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JH: ... had his songs covered by EC, Freddy King, Lynyrd Skinner , Chet Atkins, has influenced endless sorts of people; in fact I've even covered his songs, and he's performing songs tonight from his 11th album, Closer To You. Ple ase welcome the legendary JJ Cale...
[Short set consisting of Call Me The Breeze (actually from his first album Naturally) and Ain't Love Funny]
JH: Welcome to the show; fantastic hearing that, I love this boogie rhythm. When you first started playing in Tulsa as a musician there, what was the music you first started playing?
JJ: Rock 'n' roll...
JH: Because I heard somewhere that it was after the big bands and some people wanted big band tunes and others wanted..
JJ: Yeah, in those days we'd play clubs and the older people wanted music from the '40s -- that was like the '50s -- and young kids wanted rock 'n' roll so we'd learn the old songs for the older people or they'd throw tomatoes at us and then we'd d o rock 'n' roll for the younger people. Generally the older folks would go home earlier and we'd play rock 'n' roll (all night?).
JH: And when did you first realise that you were a songwriter?
JJ: Oh well, I wrote songs for a long time; success made me realise I was a songwriter. I started... when other people started recording my songs "Oh, I think I'll be a songwriter instead of a guitar player".
JH: When did you first realise EC had a hit with After Midnight?
JJ: I was driving down the street in my home town and I heard the radio and I went "Oh boy" you know 'cause I'd never heard my songs on the radio before, "hey that's my song on the radio!"
JH: Well it's a real pleasure to have you along and what are you going to do for us now?
JJ: Well, we're going to get you to play with us and we're going to do that old song called Cocaine...
JH: Thank-you. JJ Cale.
[JJ and band play out with Cocaine (actually from the third album Troubadour) with Jools "tinkling those ivories" as the man puts it...]
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A good set albeit a little short (as well as JJ Cale they had Suede, Yossu N'Dour and other performers, plus a re-enactment of the gunpowder plot, complete with explosion, all in 50 minutes). As far as I know the line up was as follows: JJ Cale: guitar / vocals, Christine Lakeland: guitar and Rocky Frisco: piano. There were also two guys whose names I don't know, on bass and drums and Jools Holland joined with piano on Cocaine. The program was Later... with Jools Holland broa dcast on BBC2, 5/11/94 at around 11:15pm. One of the best music programs on when it's broadcast; thoroughly recommended, especially if you like Jools (a music presenter who knows what he's on about, shock story...)