Record Mirror, March 11, 1978

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His voice and approach to songs were so startlingly similar to Lowe's that some sort of comparison was pretty inevitable. This no longer applies. Although Lowe produced This Year's Model, he has skimmed off his own ghost. Elvis is Elvis is Elvis now, and it doesn't detract one bit. This is a less whitewashed, less vicious effort than My Aim Is True, but the bile still spills here and there. "I don't wanna kiss you, I don't wanna touch, I don't wanna see you cos I don't miss you that much," lip-curls from "No Action." And... "I don't wanna be your lover, I just wanna be your victim," from "The Beat." And... "I don't wanna be hung up, strung up when you don't call up," from "Little Triggers." I don't wanna this and I don't wanna that. The man is still a Aladdins Cave of anti-matter, the big negative. But I don't wanna listen... to the words that much, because they're not so important. What does matter is that Elvis really isn't a one album wonder, and who suspected for a moment that he was? Nick Lowe isn't the last pop craftsman; and neither is Elvis, but they're both of one breed, ie the short, melodic masterpiece. I find it difficult to wax eloquent about Costello, because he is a very simple artist. That isn't to suggest that he isn't personally complex — sure he's quite as twisted as he wants us to believe — but his product is like Ramones music, clever in its very lack of detail. There is some sort of formula to this album, though it isn't a strict one. The sound is very dominant keyboard and upfront bass / drum sound, with a feel not a galaxy away from the noise Blondie makes, with those same sixties-trapped 10 years on atmospherics. The voice is the magic wand that transforms This Year's Model into something unusual, something more than pop vogue. Nasal, almost asthmatic, it somehow manages to convey a strength that belies its superficial weedyness, sort of insubstantial but wiry. Looking at it through corporation eyes, this could be construed as an attempt to conquer the American AM market, which he's already dented. This Year's Model is definitely more Transatlantic than My Aim Is True, graced with that nice fat production that the Yanks suck up so uncritically. It isn't particularly welcome — I liked that very sparse approach — but then it's hardly going to detract from songs with the qualities of "I Don't Want To Go To Chelsea," "Lipstick Vogue," "No Action" and "The Beat." There are a couple of... unremarkable rather than puny tracks — "You Belong To Me" and "Pump It Up," then nobody's perfect. Elvis is getting closer though... closer all the time. God help his ego and us all if he reaches it. Tags: This Year's Model  •  Nick Lowe  •  My Aim Is True  •  No Action  •  The Beat  •  Little Triggers  •  Blondie  •  Lipstick Vogue  •  You Belong To Me  •  Pump It Up  •  (I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea  •  Live Stiffs Nicked Lowe Record Mirror Just who the hell does Nick Lowe think he is? Just who the hell does anyone think he is, come to that. What he has been is less insoluble. In no order: An editorial assistant on a local newspaper. A would-be bubblegum superstar. An acid casualty. A drunken bum. A hot stuff producer. A singer. A cult hero. A bass player. A joke. A Brinsley. A rural hippy. A rock 'n' roll grave robber. A white jacket case. A country music balladeer. A lumberjack lookalike. A guitarist. A mentor. A Jesus of cool. Right here and now, in the third month of the year 1978, some of those fragments have sunk without residue. Some lurk between the bones, just underneath the skin, some are still obvious. Some never really existed. Perhaps one cheap categorisation, above all the others, applies and has always applied. Lowe is a thief, a pop music burglar, a hook line shoplifter. The ironically titled Jesus Of Cool LP (to Nick Lowe, no-one could be less cool than Nick Lowe) is irrefutable evidence. Exhibit (a) "Nutted By Reality," nicked from "ABC" by The Jackson Five. Exhibit (b) "Music For Money" swiped from "Art For Art's Sake" by 10cc. Exhibit (c) "Tonight" stolen from a million fifties romances. Exhibit (d) "I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass" from "Breaking Glass" by David Bowie. Although Lowe readily admits to being a plagiarist, what seems to be the most blatant case of plagiarism on the album, he denies resolutely. "This is extraordinary. Whereas I really like Bowie a lot, I have never heard a David Bowie album. "It wasn't until I'd finished 'I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass' that someone told me that Bowie had done a number called 'Breaking Glass'. I had no idea at all. "Of course, coupled with the Bowl EP it looks as it I'm some sort of devotee of his. And whereas I do like him, it's pure coincidence. I still haven't heard his version of it." Implausible as that might seem, it's almost certainly true if only because Lowe wouldn't give a monkey's about telling the world if he had stolen it. Because, like Bowie, Lowe simply couldn't care less about anything apart from doing precisely what he wants to do, a quirk of his personality that has won him immense respect despite his very limited (up to now) commercial success. "I steal from people. I'm not ashamed of it. Jesus Of Cool has bits and pieces of songs from all over the place. I can't do anything else but admit it because it's there for the listener to hear. "I'm more into the ideas of things. I think ideas are exciting, not whether or not you create a new sound. If I steal a Beatles tune, I'll marry it with something completely different. Sometimes, I don't even know I'm doing it, but I'll try and marry it with something completely off the wall." Nick is spread across a brand new chair in a Kermit coloured room at the brand new Radar Records organisation. In each hand he clutches two of the distractions he loves most outside music, Woodbines and Carlsberg Special Brew. His hair is grey — Lowe is the wrong side of 30 — and the bags under his eyes look as flabby as ever. Lowe came to Radar from Stiff Records after deciding that Stiff was getting too successful for it to be fun anymore. It wasn't, as some believed, because he was disgusted with his final Stiff single, "Halfway To Paradise" a purulent piece of revivalism that rates as the most boring single he's ever made. "I didn't like 'Halfway To Paradise,' it embarrassed me. It wasn't the reason I left, though. Stiff was getting more and more successful. "Before Stiff, people were saying that an independent record company couldn't get a hit record. Once we'd got a hit record, we'd proved our point. "Eventually we had to get more staff, and it began losing its individuality, it became just another record company. The fun went out of it. "At the same time, I felt Stiff was becoming too elitist. It was like an in-crowd thing, if you're not with Stiff, man, you're not cool. "I didn't like that. I don't consciously try and make anything I do 'cool,' I just do whatever I want to do at the time. They're playing on this cult thing to sell records the best way they know how. I couldn't care less. "Anyway, I get tired of things really quickly. It's not that I'm worried by the idea of being successful, I just get bored." The Radar move was typical of Lowe's attitude to the music industry. Although it's his bread and butter, he treats his work purely as a hobby, and not even a serious one. "If 'I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass' was a hit, I couldn't go into the studio and think 'Oh God I've got to have a follow up' because I don't take it that seriously. I just can't, it's not a question of calculating anything, I just can't take it seriously. "I never used to be flippant, I used to take things very seriously, take myself very seriously when I was with Brinsley Schwarz, but not any more. I guess it gets up people's noses ... but I was looking through one of the teeny magazines the other day, and there was a pin-up of Mick Jones. And it had 'my first date' by Barry Blue, Mick Jones and Someone Else. He was saying sort of on my first date I took my bird home and her mum was a smashing cook. "And I thought, Christ, nothing has changed, nothing has changed." Lowe's frivolous attitude is just as pronounced on the flip side of his creative coin, production, as the occasional legend 'Nick Lowe for Keepitasahobby Productions' testifies. "It's all the same to me. I don't really think of myself as a producer. I can't just go into a studio with people and start ordering them around. I never twiddle a knob. People say to me 'what do you think of this or that studio.' They all look the same to me. They've all got speakers and lots of different coloured knobs. My job is more as a psychologist to make the performer actually deliver onto the record." Lowe lives somewhere in London with his buddy and partner the irascible Jake Riviera whom he describes affectionately as a "vindictive old bastard." That same residence contains Nick Lowe's entire record collection — Brinsley Schwarz Golden Greats which has got a cigarette burn on one side, a Status Quo album ("I don't know where that came from") and Chuck Berry's Golden Decade album. "Groups, groups, there are fucking millions of groups, but I don't like any of them anymore. Groups are four a penny. "I listen to the radio to hear the news, and because I'm interested in the anatomy of records. They go in one ear and out the other, really, but the way they're constructed is fascinating. "Think of any record you really detest ... a Smokie record for instance. I listen to them and it's like a sort of flagellation, like wearing a hair shirt. And I wonder to myself, why is this a hit? "Is it because of his stupid hairstyle? Is it because of his horrible read-the-book-and-seen-the-film voice? Is it because of the drum sound? What noise is it that makes a hit record? "And I'll steal from them. I'll steal from Smokie as well. If I think that those world-weary type vocals were needed on something of mine ... I have absolutely no scruples as to where I steal from at all. "I'm not scheming to try and get a hit, or anything. My work is extremely easy to me. I suppose it's a kind of talent to know where to steal from. It's just that its better to do this than work in an estate agent's or something. It's like stamp collecting, a hobby. People just happen to be interested." But the idea of having a successful record isn't as unimportant to Lowe as he sometimes suggests. Though selling a lot of records to him would be little more than a bonus for something he'd be doing anyway, he retains an affection for, what I suppose in his formative years, was the Hit Parade. "I would really like to have a hit single. When I did the Elvis album, I never thought it would do as well as it did do. And when it went into the charts I phoned up the engineer at Pathways Studio where we did the album and I said to him 'you know where the record is this Remaining text and scanner-error corrections to come... << >> Record Mirror, March 11, 1978 Tim Lott reviews This Year's Model. Record Mirror interviews Nick Lowe. Sheila Prophet reports on the screening of the Live Stiffs tour film. "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea" debuts at No. 50 on the singles chart; Live Stiffs debuts at No. 29 on the albums chart. Images Clipping. Blurry-eyed but laughing Sheila Prophet Hot on the heels of Steven Spielberg's new movie comes yet another celluloid epic, Close Encounters of The Blurred Kind. Complete with 20 quids' worth of special effects, new advances in the development of naturalistic camerawork and a full mono soundtrack, the film examines the stunning concept: is there life on Elvis Costello? Sadly, as the movie's 50 minutes draw to a close, the conclusion we must draw is no. It is obvious to even the most optimistic viewer that Costello is merely an immobile cardboard cut out. And Costello's companions on the road; Wreckless Eric, Nick Lowe, Larry Wallis and Ian Dury are only slightly more lively. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time to make a film of the Stiff live tour, but unfortunately, the result is a little like an animated postcard home — great fun to anyone who's in on the action (as the rowdies behind us obviously were) but to outsiders, a crashing bore. The evening was completed by an entertaining little 'b' movie originating from Akron, Ohio, and featuring up and coming musical combo, DEVO. "Are we not men?" says the funny man in the white coat: "We are Devo. D-E-V-O" reply the figures in the stocking masks. An intriguing initiation into the group's crackpot philosophies. Stiff are planning to show it before the group's own live show at the Roundhouse next week — a great idea. If the band's live performance matches up to the film, it should be a fun evening. Cover and page scans.

External links

• Wikipedia: Record Mirror
• Wikipedia: Tim Lott
• Flickr: Michael Kane
• americanradiohistory.com