Rick Driscoll Interview

hi and welcome to chris mars music now in today's episode i've got a great interview with a dear friend of mine rick driscoll who's a guitarist a composer and has worked in many different bands and he's going to be telling us all the wonderful stories that he got up to in the 70s 80s and 90s including the present day and what he's doing and what he's going to be doing in the future so if you like motorcycles guitars music and boats you do not want to miss this episode lots of goodies waiting for you so enjoy this episode don't forget to subscribe and also go to our website chrismas.com join the mailing list and you will receive a free track download plus lots and lots of information over the coming weeks and months ahead so enjoy and thanks for tuning in bye for now right here we are ow rick driscoll welcome to my youtube oh sorry about that welcome to my youtube channel how are you i'm good good to see you how are you nice to see you too yeah i'm great great great i believe you've just been vaccinated i have i've i've reached a funny age where i got my second vaccination early so that's oh great jolly good yeah yeah well that'll teach you so well as you prob you probably you're probably aware this um these interviews that i've been doing the last few months are all about music and i've known you for many many years far too many may i add a ridiculous amount of years we have dinosaurs in the music we haven't changed a bit though have we no except for that unfortunately your hair is getting longer and mine mine is getting very short much shorter than yours so anyway enough of that uh let's let's talk about you let's talk about your career and start right at the beginning what got you into music in the first place and what were you were your influences um well i think me like a lot of kids um in this in the 60s we uh the beatles came along everyone wanted to be a beatle or a rolling stone i was kind of um stuck between the two um part of me loved the beatles but actually i like the menace of the rolling stones so if people were to ask me i was really more of a rolling stance fan but that's kind of what really got me into it i used to pretend to be the beatles with a few friends of mine at school and kids in the classroom used to scream and i thought this is good i like this and so um and so that's kind of what started me off really uh that and my brother had a great record collection of um old kinks stones um jeff beck people like that and so yeah that's what really got me into it so you started playing guitar at a very early age i guess no funny enough not this this is this is a bit of an odd story really because um i i i never had a guitar until i was 18. yeah right okay i i i was more concentrating on being a singer and that's in fact you know what i became and that's what led me into pop stardom at the age of 17. um so i ca i did come to guitar late but the interesting thing for me was um i was so obsessed with guitar as a child as a young team um people like rory gallagher jeff beck clapton uh i was so obsessed with the guitar that i used to listen to it in forensic detail and watch every video i could see of performances of guitarists and so i kind of knew how to play guitar before i ever had one if that makes any sense it didn't make a lot of sense but actually yeah when i picked it up i thought it sort of knew what to do it's very odd i never had a lesson and i but i i picked up very quickly and within about 10 years of that time i was playing with some other quite big actors lead guitar so there you go yeah what was your first big break in the industry uh well that was that was um kenny really the we uh we were in a band meeting my mates from college excuse me and um we got uh headhunt not headhunted um that's the word i'm looking for um we were doing a gig somewhere spotty right and uh an agent said do you guys want to make a record and we said well that sounds good when you're 17 and and hungry for for success somebody offering you a deal was great the only thing was that the the deal involved performing songs that were written by a famous writing team the time martin and coulter we were having quite a lot of success um and like the basically role the same sort of thing really and we got signed for that and they and then we had a big hit with a song called bump and which got to number two yeah that was back in 1974 wasn't it end of 74 i think yeah yeah yeah so you did the whole top of the pops thing yeah that was quite a thrill as you can imagine is you know most of us that grew up in the 60s we lived for thursday evenings to watch top of the coast yeah absolutely that was amazing yeah from school straight on to the telly well it was really it was radio luxembourg on your radio to listen to all that stuff and then it was watching chocolate pops on a thursday night so it was just ingrained into me how what a wonderful show it was so to actually appear on it was an incredible thrill as you can imagine so i was laughing when you said trevi radio because that means something else these days well let's not get into that i'm not trying to be as politically correct yes of course no carry on do carry on yeah no i think i'm done i uh well i'm not done you then we went on to have a a succession it's been about four or five hits in the uk yeah um and then it sort of it sort of came to an end the main reason it came to an end um was the advent of punk really punk rock came along and uh there was kind of you know pop music and glam rock didn't really have a place at that point it was most glam rock and pop artists kind of disappeared you know funny i i was just thinking yesterday now i'm probably one of the few pop singers from a successful pop band of that era that's actually still alive i'm the only the lead singer of mahdi's dead the lead singer of the suite is long gone les mcqueen of course has died alan harrell from the arrows he sadly died of kobe last year um and so there's very few of us left so i should be able to corner the market really in the seventh as well shouldn't i yeah i think you should have a can you might decide to go in uni if i decide to go and give us kenny again although i do i i have done a few gigs as kenny in recent years a few years back and it is slightly odd performing songs that were written for you when you were 17 when you're in your 50s and so on and so i do find it a little bit old but on the other hand i'd never say never well after kenny um where did you move to musically after the after you of the band split up all well yeah when the band um split up i was kind of kicking around at least in i didn't know what to do um and uh i was sharing a flat with a guy called julian litman who's quite a well-known uh musician and songwriter and um i was sharing a flat with him over in uh in alien where i still am now actually and um and he just started doing a few sessions jingle singing for a guy called billy gray and um you know julian very generously introduced me to billy and billy and i got on really really well and so i ended up doing quite a few uh jingles which saved my life really it it gave me a it gave me a career it gave me yeah um an income and um and i ended up playing guitar and a lot of those things so yeah i did i did very well out of that for quite a few years it was a very lucrative time of my life and it was at a time where singers used to get residual so every time the commercial was shown on tv we we earned money so it was it was a nice time of course i spent it all so i wasted all on wine women and song i guess that wasn't but that's back in the 80s i guess uh yeah yes it was the earliest yeah um i see yeah and of course you've done some extensive touring with with lots of different artists perhaps you'd like to tell us a little bit about that well yeah as a result of doing the jingle work one of the guys that ended up working with us was a guy called lindsay elliott whose brother stuart elliott i still work with yes he's the original drummer of courtney rebel steve harlingen and um we we lindsey and i put a little band together and then we ended up getting a record deal with wreck numbers right sorry with rocket records right they sadly departed eric hall the lovely guy and someone got on very well with and uh he so he gave us the option to make a record and so we made a single and lindsey said why don't we get steve harley to produce it he's you know he's he's got a bit of a name and he's a interesting character and so we talked to steven see who said yeah okay i'm happy to use it and i was playing guitar on that record as well as believe vocals and at the end of the recording process steve said he said look i've got some gigs coming up um with courtney rebel um would you would you like would you interested to to join us and of course i said yes why not you know and i think it was it was all very last minute so the tour was happening in about three weeks time and he said i'll send over some tapes of the stuff and you have to learn it at home and we had some so i spent the next two weeks sweating and learning all these guitar parts which were quite complicated it was two guitars a lot of harmony work it was me and a guy called joe partridge on guitar and so i spent two three weeks learning all this stuff um and then we had i think a week's rehearsal if that and then went into our first gig um so that was quite a sweaty one but and then i played with steve harley and connie revel and recorded with him um for about 10 years or so something like that right when did you start that and was when you know i can't i'm getting a bit fuzzy with dates to be honest with you uh i think it was probably 84. sorry about that i'm gonna let the joys of laptops right um uh it's something like 848 i can't really remember exact dates but anyway it was in the 80s and we and we were worked along with quite quite a lot of touring and recording and in fact funny story i i ended up working doing a steve did a solo album steve harley album and i ended up playing some playing guitar on that and that was recorded at rack studios and this was at a time where when mickey mouse was still around he's long gone now um and of course when i was signed to kenny i was with rat records as a lead singer and we had a falling out with with rack because um kenny like many other acts at the time we weren't really getting paid um a lot of a lot of artists got ripped off i know loads of them did um basically rollers did and all right nothing's changed yeah nothing really changed so um so i uh but what was funny for me was and i i was in the studio recording with steve and mickey walked in and he clearly saw me and being the lead singer of kenny he must have known it was me but he never once acknowledged it which i thought was really odd he never acknowledged who i was but that's that's a side issue but what what was an interesting story for me on that session was that um uh mick ronson uh who was one of my heroes as a child uh of course famously bowie's right-hand man on guitar he he was on the session with us um you know and for me he was a rock god when i was growing up nick ronson without all that flamboyant hair and you know this incredible image and um he walked into the studio and i'll never forget it because he because he didn't speak like i imagined he should do looking like a rock guy because one of the first things he said was hi fellas how are you doing anyone got to wow very high pitched more than accent and it was it was you know they say you should never meet your heroes right yeah it was it was a funny moment but he was a lovely guy and we had great fun working together great yeah um that must have been a lot of fun in those days uh yeah of course there you were you also worked with alison moyer for a period of time i did yeah tell us a bit about that well as a result of working with cockney rebel uh who were managed by john giddings john gibbons who now runs the isle of wight festival lovely chat and um he alison was had just put a solo out now after yazoo the alph album and um he john giddings came to me and said look would you be interested she needs a band to go on tour with would you be interested in ending that and you know putting a band around her so that's how it happened really i ended up doing that with her and as a result of that some years later for her second for a follow-up song and rain dancing she contacted me and said would i be interested in co-writing some songs with her for that album circles i i left at that opportunity and i think i ended up with about half the songs on the album yeah right excellent it was nice yeah you you have a interesting story about mick jagger and uh and jeff beck which i think you should share with with well i i you know both of those characters i think i mentioned earlier jagger and jeff beck were heroes of mine since i was tiny you know they were part of my childhood and i i got a phone call one day too would i go and join mick jagger he was retaining some songs for a solo album then he needed some musicians to to help him do that i guess and so um i thought wow this is incredible all i knew was i was going to go and see and work with me for the day literally for the day really and i so i i was i very nervously turned up at the rehearsal room early and i i went in there and there were some amps set up on the stage and i took my guitar out and i i found a galen kruger out sat on that on the stage plugged in and um getting myself a sound and then the door of the rehearsal room opened and rode he walked in and he said uh oh sorry man you can't use that rig that's bex and i thought no he can't mean jeff beck can he surely not and it started to dawn on me that this could well be jeff beck coming in the room my absolute guitar since i was tiny and um and i was thinking right i need to go home now i can't this is too much i can't but anyway the next thing that happened was the door opened again and jeff beck walked in guitar over his shoulder much like this one like this he just walked in the guitar over his shoulder no case very cool came in and introduced himself and uh so i then i then spent the rest of the the day working with jagger and jeff beck and omar hack him on drums from weather report oh yeah oh excellent stuff it was an amazing day but but somewhat disorganized because um jagger hadn't got his people to send anyone any tapes or any any music nothing at all so we turned up and i'm sat there with jagger next to me so here goes this baby and he's playing my guitar brian was showing me the courses it was fairly chaotic was it that guitar next to you by the way by by any chance it was it was this very well this was my first ever guitar right now when i was 18 it's an old track um yeah just all plays at this time funny because over my um shoulder over there over my right shoulder there's an old acoustic and antoria nylon string guitar i had since i was about 12 years old and it it's beautiful i used it recently on a track i released a few weeks ago it's fantastic keeping those old instruments is um we have to uh just keep them alive because they have a a world of their own they're they're they're uh you and i have something very much in common in motorcycles and we both own motorcycles and uh yes you've certainly been riding some of the most amazing motorcycles i've ever known um tell us a bit about that how did you get into motorcycle racing and uh riding um i many years ago a neighbor of mine um graham berry he's a one it won the bath rewarders as cameraman of the year for treasure hunt with annika rice oh yes and graham was a very cool dude um and um i was driving along round the streets of healing one day and i saw this beautiful red motorbike coming towards me and then i noticed it was graham like and i didn't even know he had a bike he'd had it in a garage somewhere and i pulled out i pulled him over i said wow that's beautiful i said i need to ride a motorbike this is this was when i was about i don't know mid-twenties some of my early twenties i said i need to ride a motorbike like this so where can i so i went and learned right now um and then that's how i got into bikes from there and then then i did some training for for racing um got into a race team um yeah so i've um yeah i've had a whole life with bikes really and my my bike of choice has mostly been for the last 20 years do classes yes beautiful i currently rather a thing called a ducati panigale 1299s which doesn't make any sense on the road at all it should be on the racetrack but on the other hand it's a beautiful thing to look at and uh yeah it's a beautiful bike yes absolutely i love motorcycles i've always been into them but of course i i use them for getting in and out of town now so i'm on my way for commuting right so yes i do um as you as you know as you all know we we went to germany on and you rode my honda cbr600 yeah you you sent me to my car yeah you sent me a video of it recently i did yes yesterday it was a road pass that was great yeah yeah because we we drove over there i drove my car on my bike so i could keep my bike over there whilst i was doing these gigs thanks for that that was fun it was a little adventure wasn't it it is it was and it always will be going away on a bike is it's one of life's great pleasures but you have to be into motorcycles to uh to appreciate what we're talking about here and but it is a passion that we both do share i think i think a lot of musicians um you know they they love motivation musicians and actors i mean keith flynn from the prodigy of course famously uh was a motorcycle racer and had his own motorcycle racing team i think i didn't know that yeah and a british supervisor um sadly he's no longer with us but there you go he wasn't killed no yeah sad story yes you also own a very nice boat and perhaps you could like to tell us a little bit about that because that is a beauty and of course i have been on it a week on it with you a few years ago in in corfu which was which was incredible but how did you get into into boating well you know i i was doing a lot of music work for tv and um but as time was progressing i could see that the money in television was getting less and less um i thought you know what rick maybe you should have an extra string to your focus i love sailing so i foolishly bought a sailing boat uh a 46 foot um benito sailing though and then a buddy of mine um encouraged me to he said why don't you just run it as a business and trying to you know earn some money from that and so i've been doing that now for about 14 years in the yachts based out in kofu um um sail blue planet and i i uh yeah i run signing holidays and i also i'm an instructor for the rwa so i teach people sale right so you did the full captains course then yeah yeah i'm a fully uh department of transport stamped skipper yeah um when are you normally there how often uh to be honest with you i'd normally be there by now yeah but because of the whole covey thing and because we don't know what's happening with the traffic light system and so on and so on um i'm not going probably until the end of may right so we don't really know what season's going to happen because last year was was badly hit because of covet and people weren't traveling clearly yes we're hoping for a better season this summer right but you'll continue uh sailing over the coming years i guess yeah and i still do music work i you know i stuart elliot and i do a library album every every um winter and in fact we're working on one right now we've uh just finished in the last couple of tracks off as we speak yeah which i enjoy because i still love playing so yes i love playing live but there are less and less opportunities and of course because of covid and there are no opportunities at the moment yeah so where do you where do you see yourself musically in the next few years in terms of writing or performing you know what for me that there's there's there's you know songwriting there's less and less money in it um and i think well you know famously uh gary newman is is a prime example of of uh why there's no money in it he he recently he was complaining that because of uh music streaming um that he was making less and less money in fact he cited one of his tracks having been streamed a million times and earning 39 pounds yeah so that tells me um there's less and less money in uh in streaming and i think there's more money to be made for musicians nowadays through live work but only if they're a successful act you know but i think that's where bands are making most of their money in our lives and merchandise live is definitely um a great way of earning money yeah also i think merchandising is something that uh it started to come into its own because it is because record companies are aware of this yeah but bear in mind that a lot of artists don't actually need record companies these days as much as we used to um yeah yeah i think you're right i think once you've got a certain profile once you've got a good social media fan base yeah and database of of fans then if you play your cards right you can have a hugely successful career a lot of people do but i think there is there is the um of course the the work needs to go into it to create that fan base and it's not quite as straightforward um yeah and it's the marketing of you know when you've made an album or uh you know new recording you then it's the marketing of it the whole thing so yeah and that's that's where i think record companies come into their own but i think you're right if you if you have a big enough following um you probably don't need a label anymore yeah you know i'm guessing and you can make all the money yes absolutely absolutely i mean regular companies have never been very generous with artists no of course they've got a lot a lot more overheads than a single person a single musician but uh i think giving away 80 or 90 in some cases it's just far too much well then and then of course sharing that with your bandmates yeah and if you're in a pop group like where you've got eight members i'm guessing you're not earning much money from that yes yeah well it's a it's definitely a a changing time in the industry with with social media with streaming of course which is something that i've embraced a lot here in my studio um which has been a lot of fun um but uh it's also it can be quite an uphill struggle when trying to um monetize what we're trying to do which is basically play music and share it with other people yeah have you ever thought about uh performing via any kind of streaming platform at all you've been performing live live yeah uh no but actually yes thinking about it it's not a bad idea i should perhaps get the guys from kenny and do a do a one-off live gig and see what the response is well why not i mean um you know you had a he had a pretty good following i think back in the day and yeah i mean i you know nostalgia yeah yeah and there's you know like i say i'm probably one of the few lead singers still alive of that era so yeah yeah uh yeah who knows you know it's yeah it might be fun never say never chris i say no absolutely yes so um looking to the future into the crystal ball how do you think the music industry or how would you like the music industry to um accommodate artists in the in the future you know i the way i think the music industry is going or will go is i suspect um the labels will just give the records away i think i don't think they'll even sell them anymore at some point they'll give them away um and i mean they pretty much have to anyway because so many people download music without paying for it that um i i think labels are really going to make money from live performances and they already are aren't they you know bands are being signed up on global contracts where the record label essentially become agents and they take money from their live performances in the bands they're merchandising so i suspect it's going to go more that way you can't you know live performances you can't replace can you really you can't beat that experience of being in an auditorium and watching a band so um i think that's probably the way it's gonna go i think you know there's less and less money to be earned from the actual rebel sales but a lot more to be honest from live gigs for some reason people i don't know what tickets cost you have any idea what a ticket for a band is but i'm guessing 50 quid plus i'm guessing oh yeah definitely well you know you get smaller gigs for obviously you know small small venues 15 pounds but talking 02 you're talking you won't get much change out of 70 or 80 pounds right yeah and if you've got 10 000 people there um that's a lot unless a lot of money comes through the door isn't it it is yeah and a lot of it goes out again back to the venue or enter the promoters yeah so that's where i think merchandising it kicks in because that's where bands are going to start making i think the bands are going to make more money out of that if they sell merchandising then perhaps even ticket sales because it's an ever-changing shift isn't it it's as as time progresses the the amount of money that artists make from various sources for example tickets merchandising etc so sales of albums whether it be cd vinyl and even now cassettes are coming back which is an incredible uh who wants a cassette that's that's just will you be surprised i think you'll be surprised i think people want them more just just to own them as opposed to playing them but you want to play them they were bloody awful things i don't remember i remember you know tape being stuck in your machine having to rip it out the front of the cassette machine in the car yeah i know i know but there's some but of course vinyl is is alive and kicking right now um vinyl i can understand because it's a tactile thing isn't it you know records and of course you get a lot more for your money in terms of artwork and it's it's large enough to to hold and read and it's it's more of a more of a an entity as a person i used to love that you know it was an event buying a record absolutely it was an event and getting it home and looking at all the artwork and opening up the double forward sleeve and the lyrics and the who was playing what yeah it was lovely and of course cd kind of destroyed that really doesn't it yeah you needed binoculars to actually read any text on the pieces of paper in there you know to be honest i never embraced cd i didn't embrace it for many many years it took me about 10 15 years from when it came out before i actually started buying cds because i was always a vinyl person um but uh yeah it's funny how things change though well comes now streaming you've got no information at all really it's just it's a thing that appears on your phone well this is the weird thing isn't it because if you look at the bigger picture of of planet earth when we look back in time when you have archaeologists digging up old ruins and they find artifacts that have been there for so many years millions of years thousands of years and they actually physically hold something well in about a thousand or two thousand years from now when they dig our bits of our cities up they're gonna there's gonna be very very little um evidence of of so much material because it's all in the cloud it's all on a database which which is which is completely it's some massive hard drive somewhere yeah yes it's on a hard drive somewhere which can be deleted instantly yeah which is rather weird but um maybe that's another thing to think about is to actually start solidifying music again in a form in a in an unknown form which hasn't been created yet perhaps that's the evolution of music perhaps that's next step we don't know but it's it's an exciting time i think because because we are in the middle of this incredible technological bubble um excuse the the term bubble obviously we're all living in these 19 bubbles at the moment but we are in a technological um incredible time for technology where computers can can help create amazing new products yeah it's the technology there's no doubt as transformed as musicians transformed our lives i was with an old buddy of mine that i was in a band with when we were 13 or 14 maybe 15. and we we were reminiscing about how we'd spent an entire summer working in a factory to earn enough money to to go into the recording series to record two songs yeah you know uh of course now the laptop you know you can do it pretty much anywhere but you can record the whole orchestra on it now communicating so that is that's transformed their lives and you know i mean i i haven't seen stuart for a year stuart elliot i've worked with i've not seen him for over a year uh and we just we're just sending files back and forth to each other you know 20 years ago that was unthinkable really yeah it's amazing how it's changed in a very short period of time i remember many years ago i think it was well it was back in the 80s or yeah back in the 80s at some point when when um remote recording was in its infancy i remember paul mccartney talking about recording he was recording a track in in london and somebody was was i think michael jackson i think was attracted with michael jackson and it was amazing to actually do that they could record in two different parts of the world mind-blowing something that would have probably have been on tomorrow's world you'd probably find they had to hire their own satellite to get a link for it yeah probably probably a higher satellite space to do an uplink and uh you know yeah you're right things have changed so much and as a musician it's fantastic because it means you or i can be anywhere in the world and still work with work with our mates you know i don't think i'd be in italy work was to it in london it's it's great it's a it's really empowering in that respect yeah when you receive the file it's high resolution you can do what you want with it but of course there is one thing which uh prevents us from probably ever playing live remotely and that is the laws of physics because the speed of light travels at 186 000 miles per second and that is enough to create latency which will always have a slight delay when trying to play together online which has been the bane i think all musicians trying to play together oh that's the nerdiest thing i've heard all day yeah it is it is but it is a very relevant thing because there is still not enough well it will never be 100 there will always be a slight delay and of course we need to have um it will never replace being the same room as someone when you're sitting in no staying on the stage playing um but yeah i mean long way may uh collaborations like this continue um hopefully who knows maybe technology will catch up and uh allow us to actually play live with other people around the world yeah maybe yeah absolutely indeed yes so um what are your plans for the next few weeks uh my plans really are to finish this album i'm doing with stuart um and then uh uh depending on what our government announced today on tv um you know go out to my boat and get it get it ready for a season which may or may not happen we don't know so i really don't know um at the moment well you can always always have a socially distanced band on your boat and just sail around the island and play life playing harbors yeah that's true play the harbors or yes entertain the mountain goats on the side they might be independently asked all right um i'll have to um i'll have to take another visit there there was a wonderful time i spent on that it was fantastic yeah uh incidentally um i will be putting all your links to your to your boat trips etc down below at the end of this this interview and um perhaps if anyone wants to enjoy the fruits of your of your sailing uh around the beautiful cool food then um they can take it yeah we'd love to see it anyone wants to learn to sail or come and have a family holiday then then i'm your man yeah exactly that'll be fantastic uh well i would hope to manage to get out there at some point over the next one to two years hopefully once things quiet down a bit and we're allowed to roam roam this beautiful earth once more without fear of dying without fear of masks the what without fear of masks yes yes masks absolutely so going back to your musical career um after you're touring with different artists um and and your um your work with library music etc was there anything else that you wanted to achieve as a musician that you haven't actually achieved yet or some any plans that you wanted to fulfill around that time which you you're still wanting to to accomplish not not that i think it's achievable really i mean i'd love to i i'd love to go on stage with play alongside jeff beck but i don't think that's ever going to happen um i'll ask him would you yeah would you yeah you might remember me from the jagger from the jagger session you might do um i i don't know you know oh you know i i see because i i forgot to mention and it just slipped through the net there but um i i also play with a band called classics nouveau i don't remember sal solo and well classics yeah i do have a connection with them because when i toured with flocka seagulls their guitarist was gary stedman right who used to play with with class he was an original member okay so yes of course excellent band i guess i play replaced gary then because i think well i did a few tours with um with with uh classic nouveau who were just massive in in poland when poland was not poland was still common at that point it was not part of the eu and so on um and we would arrive at the airport in in warsaw and it was like it was like beetle mania there it was completely completely bizarre huge we were playing big big stadiums and this kind of stuff you know and then of course you would come home to england and come out of the airport and get on the bus yeah yeah so you didn't pay to get on you know fill your head with delusions of grandeur but you know but we were massive out there we even had our own tv hour long tv special how old did you play with classics it was a couple of years i think um sal actually ended up he he he jacked it in and he had he had a solo single which i played on um which was a hit actually sander miana i think he got two number five six in the chats with that something like that uh and that was really the last time i saw him then he he moved to america uh and i believe he's a priest or a pastor or something these days anyway he became very really he was very religious when i was working him he's he'd had a revelation in his life and found religion right yeah it's quite interesting how musicians obviously writing music performing um as they progress through life can then deviate completely away from music all conditions aren't all musicians deviants yes and no i mean when i was younger i i always thought i'd always be a musician which i am and i always will be but um i thought i'd branch out into into doing something like this for example you know we're living with yeah sorry you always expect well when i was younger i was when you see someone on television doing an interview or an actor or an actress you ex i i was always under the impression that that's all they did but as time progresses opportunities change and and people start branching out into writing writing books writing plays um films big productions theater plays whatever it may be within that industry i think it's great to be able to do that and it's a lot easier i think now to to branch out into another another area of media um i think it was before yeah i think you have to nowadays it's you know it's as i said earlier it's it's i i you know i wouldn't really want to be a musician starting out now it's not easy i mean it it never was easy but at least people got quite well paid back in the day and um i think in real terms musicians are earning less and less money than they ever did and it's harder and harder to earn money you know there are less live venues and so on and so on you know it's it's uh so i think you know to have another string to your vote is a good thing yes you know actually it keeps life interesting i mean people often say to me do i have a guitar on the boat and i did i took a fender strat out to the boat uh one year and it i had i had it in on board the boat when i took it out the case about a month later every single string was broken it rusted through from the sierra and it was rust all over it and and the varnish on the neck had burst open and it was terrible business so i don't carry a guitar with it people say don't you miss it and i yes but the weird thing is when i come back to it if i've been away for a few months when i come back it's like it's like being reborn again with the guitar and i find you found interest in it i don't i think it's a good thing i don't get stale i come back to it it's good i don't yeah you know i don't see it as a negative do you find um you go through long periods long periods of um of lack of inspiration how do you deal with that because i certainly do and then suddenly you get a burst of inspiration um how do you yeah with that kind of mental that that kind of blockage that i i find if you can it's change is is um like if you're trying if you talk about composing music i suppose i think i think um not a bad thing to do and is what i've been doing recently is to use a different instrument not the instrument that you're used to like so recently a lot of stuff i've been doing on the triangle i've been i've been recording i've been composing everything around the triangle it's a bit tedious but i know there's probably a market for it but now i think so i've i've been using keyboard more and so i'm not really a keyboard player i can play enough to um to compose tracks so i find using a different instrument is more inspiring sometimes because i think when you when you're used to an instrument your hands often go to the same place every time every time you pick up on the keyboard your hands tend to go to the same thing because you're that's what you're used to i think sometimes trying to use a different instrument um is helpful that's my top tip are you losing inspiration try a different instrument that's right i've always wondered why everyone i mean blessed the blessing that people do play the tuba but i've often wondered what drew them to playing that insta in the first place this massive unwieldy probably the actually probably the least sexy instrument on the planet i i it's amazing that people play i'm amazed but thank god they do yeah it wouldn't be me maybe we just need a few more female tuba players that will certainly uh give them a more of a thing you can't see the player he's stuck in anyone watching this who who is uh wanting to start out or is very much into the music industry and wants to succeed uh any for our young viewers what would you how would you um what piece of advice would you give them i think you know study your instrument and uh i mean now now you're very lucky there's there's so many platforms you you can get a band together with your mates um find somewhere to rehearse video that rehearsal if you if you think you're good enough um try and compose your own music because that's still where the money is going to be and you know at least you've got a platform now that you can you can put that stuff out on youtube you can send it to record companies and so on and so on um and i think it gives a much better picture who you are when we were kids you know we could afford to record one song or two that was it we were very limited and then we'd have to spend the whole summer working in a factory again to earn some more money to do all again so i think you know study your instrument learn it well um and rehearse hard you know rehearse rehearse rehearse yes but it's exciting for young musicians i think there's in in in a way there's more opportunities because i think when we were younger you had to go out do some gigs contact a record label and say can you come and see us play the dog and duck and mostly they'd say no we can't and so it was very hard to get spotted i think now with the advent of you know everyone's everyone's a tv star now right yeah everyone everyone's camera friendly everyone all the young people grow up with cameras they're not even camera shy anymore actually talking of cameras i find um a bizarre thing happened over the last year or two that uh all the tens of thousands of gigs i've done over the years i've hardly got any proper video footage of a lot of the gigs i've done because a lot of them are all over the place and yeah here and there but um suddenly we're starting to film ourselves performing yeah and it's becoming more and more the norm uh of course with the advent of really good quality 4k cameras on iphones and android systems you know you need a couple of gopros or something now yeah absolutely it is getting more and more uh well you see so many more people now uploading to social media themselves performing uh which is a great thing to see how looking into people's lives um sometimes you don't want to look into certain people's lives but they thrust it upon us but um there are a lot of very talented people out there who who do deserve to to get more exposure in that in that field do you embrace social media because it's it's a subject which always crops up when it comes to um another tool for musicians to use to further their career or get a fan base so is it something that you've embraced wholeheartedly or are you rather um not such a keen fan on on using uh i'm a favorite social media i'm a bit of a luddite i don't really um i i you know i'm of a generation where i find it a bit confusing and i don't find out how i don't really understand how it works um i mean i i have to use it i mean i use things like instagram and facebook and stuff but mainly for the for the boat business really yes um regarding music i mean i have a publisher and i i assume the publisher uses social media because that's their job um but um actually yeah it's to me social media is kind of a bit of a black art you know you know and how it works is beyond me you know people can become millionaires just because you know they play a video game on on on youtube and you know and they become they can become millionaires it's yeah it's it's bizarre is one thing that i find uh it's it's it's part of social media that i i've never been a huge fan of is is completely talentless people uh being thrust into the spotlight and making vast amounts of money and from from doing nothing well oh you couldn't react what about reality stars right yeah yeah not all of course there's there's are really great and god bless them but that i think the when we were younger here am i sounding very old now but when we were younger we had we did have those role models those incredible musical role models yeah i mean i think they still exist for us i think they do you know they do they do but but a lot of young people at the moment have role models who just shouldn't be rommels you know reality tv styles it's hard to justify yeah but you know that that's pop music i mean if you think about it it's pop isn't it pop music was kind of like that there was a lot of pop artists that were pretty talentless um who were chosen because they look good or you know i think it's kind of always gone on that um but amongst that of course there are talented people as well of course but you know it's popular television and that's clearly what the public want yeah so maybe we should become reality styles chris maybe i should grow some breasts that's an image i'm never going to get out of my head i'll just make you a bit bigger and better well she just says chris i thought you already had them frankly yes that's true yes or just change my bra size yeah i'll start wearing stilettos and suspenders down the street from selfies maybe that will change the course of my career yeah no but it's um no disrespect to anyone who has a beautiful pair of breasts of course other press are available on social media of course but um yeah yeah yes but no it's um i do have a love hate relationship with social media i love the idea that you can get material out there and um use it to your advantage but i just find that it is do i say is it getting to a saturation point where there is so much and so many people trying to make a living on it um in any way they can that they are completely and utterly uh committed to putting any kind of stuff out there um hoping that someone's going to pay attention and sometimes they do i mean people pay attention and pay for the most ridiculous videos i can't i can't highlight one at the moment but there's a lot of stuff out there that you know is ridiculous and earns people lots of money so you know i think i think probably if i was 16 17 years old i'd be put my mind into doing something as well as you know perhaps perhaps if if this existed when we were in our early teens perhaps we would have been doing the same who knows exactly exactly i don't i don't i don't think you can criticize i think it's you know it's what the world has become yeah you know i mean i'm trying to embrace it as much as i can and uh it is a necessary evil not that it's evil but it's a necessity uh but if if used properly and to one's advantage then it can it can be very beneficial yes the evil the evil inside yeah yeah of course so um well it's been a fascinating conversation we have touched on many many subjects and many topics and including your breasts apparently yes including that those two absolutely yes that's something i should maybe i shouldn't have mentioned um but um is there anything else you'd like to add before we go um no i think i'm done chris so you know i as uh i can't think of anything else to add at this point you know yeah well we often try and see if i can keep my lunch down after your last conversation yes absolutely absolutely look rick it's been great chatting to you again and sharing your stories your fabulous stories and if anybody wants to contact you directly and see your fabulous boat out in corfu and book it of course they can yeah look at the comments below and see up on the screen now it'll be coming up any second and check out the comments and connect with rick and um thanks ever so much for your time today and i'll see you very very soon hopefully yes so on that note i'll say goodbye and wish you all triangles back yes keep playing that triangle yeah i would should have had one to hand yes all the best take care take it easy bye bye [Music] you

2021-05-27 11:19

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