J.J. Cale Talkin' Blues interview 1996

it's hard work it's you know you get out of piece of Pap there's nothing to start with you know I mean there's no design there's nothing it's it's it's straight creativity you have to watch out that you don't sound like something else that you've heard and you know how many songs there is there probably two billion songs been written in the last hundred years alone so you got to watch out you don't write something you also have to watch out as old as fell as I am you have to watch out that you don't write something that you've almost you and it sounds something like something else you've already written that's real hard after you've done it for so long you you have you have a tendency to imitate yourself in the song You and then also you try to write a song that you know people will like I also try to write songs that I like got to remember I I just finished up my 12th album there's 12 songs on I mean I have 100 over 150 songs out on record that's not counting all the ones I've written that never made it to a record and when you write that many it becomes comes a brick layer plumber job and you just you know I approach it from an art standpoint sometimes and then you know go oh I got to write a whole album here you know and where do I start and where I finish and the last one didn't sell and what should I change and all that all artists go through that that that kind of thing but I I think the most joyous part of writing writing songs to me is um being when I'm through and I can actually listen to it like a member of like somebody else I can stand back and listen to my own song go oh I did that and I don't like it or yeah I really like that and that's the best part uh Eric Clapton had cut a song I wrote called after midnight and it become real popular once that's what every songwriter kind of hopes for is again is not necessarily their version of the song being real popular if I can get somebody that's popular that sells records to U record your song then I mean that's the epitome for a songwriter so uh he had cut that and you couldn't get it off the radio it was everywhere and so Audi called me and said you want to come down here and he said looks like you've written got a hit on your hands he said you want to come down here and make a record by having a successful song that just opened up all the doors that had always been closed this is the now version after midnight we're going to let it all all hang [Music] out after midnight we're going chugug and show we're going to cause talk and suspicion give an exhibition find out what it is all [Music] about after midnight we're going to let it all hang out [Music] LLY in tune guitar that song has paid my rent uh because they just keep re-releasing it and it was a beer commercial here in the United States about 3 or four years ago and it and there was a beer commercial for Eric Clapton about seven or eight years ago and then and then he sells tons of albums and they keep you know running his albums back over his retrospectives and and and old and and compulation albums and it just that song alone if I had never made naturally or the other 11 albums I've made since then that folks you probably don't know I've made that many but you ought to get out there and try to dig some up you know help the poor um uh that song Alone would give me a very comfortable life that's how uh much money there is involved in writing a head song U songwriters all know that that uh most folks probably don't know that you know if you write a h song it's like discovering oil in your backyard so uh I I haven't had any bad times because of that song and then plus I wrote a couple other things he got another song of mine and then all the other things I've did that was added on to that so I never really had any bad times as a songwriter cuz uh I never considered myself a songwriter till I had success success uh success got me a nice guitar I all success is is money that's all and it's whatever you want to do with it uh it really helps your ego you know you feel like you're somebody or worth something or you know that's why everybody strives for Success so what I did I went oh I bought me a new car I could afford a nice guitar uh you know I could afford some help in what it was I did you know and uh that's the main thing I noticed in success is U is um I could acquire material things which are basically to a musician are not that important but bort sh makes life easier you know blue show this is a blue show isn't [Music] it [Music] low down low down dir shame low down low down shame I've had nothing but the blues since I heard your name [Music] hey come on let's hear from JJ come on let's hear JJ all right if I was laidback we wouldn't be I wouldn't be sitting here talking into a TV camera because nobody know who I was Nor care but because my music is laidback people think I'm laidback I'm really a nervous jerk really you know uh uh I had to get up and move around to get people to uh record my songs or make records or whatever and you really if you're really laidback most people who are truly laidback are not ambitious at all the reason some of my records sound muddy was number one by accident number two is because for certain uh time in my life I couldn't afford state-of-the-art equipment and if you can't if you you know make a recording on on on a not state-of-the-art equipment it's going to sound it's not going to be a bigger frequency range on it so I was limited because I didn't have enough money to either rent a really good Studio or buy some real good equipment and I I cut a lot of records at home uh my records come out uh muddy right some people called it warm I I agreed with my critics I called them muddy too but then an advantage of that is it didn't really sound like anybody else was was one advant it might be bad you may not like it but it did sound like nobody else and there's something to be said for originality if you looked on the Billboard charts of the top 100 records you'd have a hard time finding it there'd probably be maybe six or seven Blues albums on there and the rest of them would be all kinds of different kinds of music country music so I think probably one of the reasons it's more popular than is is because it was popular already that Americans have a have a tendency to you know eat their young anything that's created here in America everybody just goes Hog Wild over it and then the next Generation goes oh that's Mom and Dad's music we' want to hear that it's not that the music was bad but it's like my generation didn't care anything about the Franks andotra big band sound rock and roll was for the young people the big bands were at at one time the big bands appeal to real young people you know so it's a it's it's probably more a generational thing the the young blacks of today don't care nothing about Blues they like rap that's new Blues is old mom Grandpa's music mus it may come back country music's real big country music was big in the' 40s um and now it's big again but there was a 30 40 year period there where it was not what you call mainstream country music in America is almost mainstream at present it's not but it's real close Blues may may do that yall uh so I I think that all those reasons and then a few reasons I have no idea why it's not popular I do know this that musicians will always keep it popular cuz musicians love the blues music it's the root of a lot of uh lot of popular music of the last 50 or 60 years here in America now we're only talking about America once you get outside this border blues music all is gets real popular everybody likes Blues it looks like except the Americans and the Americans just don't care nothing about it they're into something else that's happening whatever it is that's happening and it generally changes about every 5 10 years

Channel: The Blues Overdrive

Views: 133,835

Keywords: JJ Cale, J.J. Cale, Eric Clapton, Blues, rare, Cocaine, Derek Trucks, Beyonce, After midnight, Grateful Dead, Donald Trump, George Michael

Id: uGRYPHIYhpY

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 30 2016