Welcome to a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. Hello and welcome to the show. Our special guest this week is someone you’ve unlikely heard of if you live outside Australia.
But if you’re a native, he’s sure to be someone you not only know but really respect. Richard Clapton is one of our foremost singer-songwriters, who paved the way for generations of songwriters to write about the experience of being Australian. When Richard began his recording career in 1974, Australia was still in the vice-like grip of the cultural cringe.
He plunged into the deep water and legends like Skyhooks, Paul Kelly, Cold Chisel, In Excess, Midnight Oil and hundreds of others followed in his wake. Richard’s songs, like this one, are still omnipresent today. Richard Clapton’s records charted the political landscape of the nation and the turbulent lives of generations.
He grew up in Sydney in the 60s, forehopping a plane for London and then later to Germany, where he wrote an album, one of the first major Australian singer-songwriter releases. The first single from it was Last Train to Marseille. Tell us a little bit about that, what was happening at the time.
Well, I’ll describe it as a very hippie song. It’s a little bit nebulous, the whole background of that song. I had three Richard Clapton bands in London in the late 60s and the last one I had was two Californians and a Canadian.
And at that point, I’d never been into drugs. I was actually a bit wary of drugs, you know, I didn’t really go near them. However, I didn’t know that my bandmates were having pot sent over.
You know, there’s an old code of the film canisters, the black film canisters, and I was just putting down a post back and posting it from LA. And so they all got busted. I had overstayed my welcome in London and so I was unceremoniously marched out of the country.
Well, they couldn’t do anything about me because, you know, as I said, I had no association with drugs, even though I was playing in a band called Potheads. It wasn’t me. But the bobby and the beat would call by, you know, almost every day and say, well, when are you leaving? I was at a loss, I didn’t know what to do.
So what happens when you get deported, they put you on the ferry, the Cross Channel Ferry, dump you out at Calais and just say, don’t come back, pretty much. I was dumped at Calais and I really didn’t know what to do. In fact, I’m talking to you and I’m thinking, well, where do I get the train fare? My best friend from school was in Graz, in Austria, and I think I was heading for him.
So I was trying to be a hippie and there was an Austrian hippie girl. One thing led to another, on the last train to Marseille, you see. We both took the last train to Marseille.
I don’t think your program can cope with all the details of what happened on the last train to Marseille. But I wrote a song about it. And it was a huge hit.
I guess. I don’t like that old naughty bit. I’d be on a southbound train right now, ah, nah, nah, nah.
The last train to Marseille is considered one of Richard Clapton’s first serious songs, marking a shift in his songwriting and a sense of lost innocence. I was finishing an album during COVID and that kept me very busy for about a year. And then The Dog’s Breakfast, which is the live music scene, was struggling to come back.
I did want to write a book too, but I just haven’t found the time. Well, it’s fabulous that live music’s back. And those who could got creative during that time and have put out some fabulous music.
Yours, of course, that you offered us up during that time, was the Music Is Love album that covers 1966 to 1970 and pays tribute to some of your influences, doesn’t it? Yeah, look, Terry Blamey, who managed Kylie Minogue for their entire career, retired and then started coming to my gigs. So Terry and I became mates a few years ago. I got a gig in San Francisco.
I came back waxing lyrical about San Francisco. To us hippies, Nirvana or Valhalla, as we’d call it. I had a night with Terry at a late-ish hour in the evening.
Terry said, I know what we should do. Let’s do an album of hippie anthems. And at first, I was kind of reticent to sort of dive in because my knee-jerk reaction was, I don’t know, I don’t do covers.
You know, I’ve never really done covers. So I wouldn’t be comfortable with that. I started along with the idea.
So then we started curating. Now the curating took close to a year, probably. And I reckon we went through a hundred songs, might be an exaggeration, but at least 50.
And so it was a matter of making these lists. Now I live in Sydney, Terry lives in Melbourne. And we had hours of fun doing this.
Whether I was doing gigs down there or not, I’d end up around at Terry’s place and we’d have these fun evenings just playing all this old music. You know, culling it down. And it all eventually, after a very long time period, we culled it down to the 15 tracks that are now on the album.
And each track is more sensational than the one before it. Which is your favourite of all of them? Or is that too hard to cull? Well, when you consider my last answer about curating and culling down… They’re your top 15. Yeah, they’re my top 15, exactly.
So which one would you like my audience to hear now? Oh, gee, you put me on the spot. Well, because it plays so well. Very simply, it’s Cinnamon Girl.
I do it in my band, but Cinnamon Girl plays really well just on its own. Chase him alone like my cinnamon girl Silver saxophone of a riverboat The drummer relaxes and waits between shows for his cinnamon girl Many of your influences were people like Neil Young and David Crosby, The Byrds. You were hugely influenced by that whole movement when you first started out, weren’t you? Yes, because my first epiphany really was Bob Dylan.
And that’s all in my book about the first time I ever heard Bob Dylan. Because I’d actually had this background where… I mean, when I was about 11 years old, I was listening to Dave Brubeck, which sounds really weird. From Dave Brubeck.
Then I made this transition onto the great old black singers of the time, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, etc. And then my best friend from school, Ross, had a brother who’d come back from Brussels and he had six albums by this Bob Dylan guy. And we had a night.
And after a year or so of me listening to Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye, and how sweet it is, it doesn’t get any sweeter. I’m being confronted by this Bob Dylan guy and it was like fingernails down a blackboard. Ross, my friend, and I are saying to his brother, I’ve come on enough already.
We’ve heard enough of this. And then It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue came on and the heavens opened up and this brilliant shaft of white light came shining down on me. And that was my epiphany.
And I just said, I want to be that guy. And I’ve been obsessed by Bob Dylan ever since. In fact, in London, I used to put myself to sleep with Blonde on Blonde because Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, I think is 18 minutes long.
And I used to go to sleep with that. It makes a nice change to hear you’re influenced by Dylan. Most people tell me it was the Beatles that did it for them.
That white shaft of white coming down. No, I was quite, mine was quite different because then, because, you know, I’m trying to correlate the Dylan and the transition into Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Is a stranded painter from your streets? Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets? Despite the fact that I’m a London hippie, I’m not really a California hippie, I was listening to Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush and Joni Mitchell’s Blue, and especially David Crosby’s first solo album, If Only I Could Remember My Name.
So I was living in London but listening to all that California music. I could be really specific, it’s actually Laurel Canyon. That was the time, wasn’t it, that whole movement, and of course they’ve made those fabulous documentaries about that exact place and the music that emanated from it.
Of course you did spend such a long time in London, you fled Australia. Well, I don’t know, fled is the right word, you left Australia. Well, I don’t know, fled is the right word, you left Australia.
Why did you actually go? What were you searching for that took you out of the country? Because originally I wanted to be a fashion illustrator, which is such an anachronism now. Probably you might know what a fashion illustrator is, but I picture your listeners don’t. You didn’t pay photos back in the day, back in the 60s.
Like when I was still at school, anyway, look, I was quite talented or gifted or something in illustration. I wanted to be an illustrator. Now getting back to my book, the first chapter is about how, getting back to Ross, my friend from school, and another mate of ours, David, we managed to get into the Rolling Stones hotel on their first tour of Australia.
And we actually managed to spend the whole day on the Rolling Stones floor, where the houses are spending girls downstairs who couldn’t get in. And we were just cruising around. What, in the corridor or in the room as well? Brian Jones had his door open, so we just walked in and he was hanging a scyther and he was going zing, zing, zing, and he looked pretty out of it, to be honest.
It was about eight o’clock in the morning. Then Keith Rich came in and I ran down to our room and I got a drawing that I’d done of Keith. And he was really impressed.
Now if you don’t know this, Keith Rich also wanted to be, well, pretty much an illustrator too. Went to art school in Dartford. So I had this, you know, great, fairly long conversation with Keith who said to me, man, you’ve really got to go to St Martin’s in the Field in London because it’s the best school in the whole world.
I don’t know, I guess in your adolescence you get really obsessed and fixated and that became my goal. So specifically I went to London to go to St Martin’s in the Field and I did. And you studied and did you become an illustrator? Yeah, I actually became a graphic designer.
Now I look back on it because, to be honest with you, my daughters, occasionally they’ll say, dad, you used to be so great, why don’t you draw anymore? And I can’t explain it, I just lost my mojo It’s a whole different field now, isn’t it? It is, it is. I wouldn’t be able to do it now. Yet do I remember rightly that you actually designed the cover of that latest album? No, no, no.
That’s actually Clayton Dolly, the keyboard player. Clayton is quite a celebrated keyboard player in his own right. Or make the angels cry Though the bird is on the wing And you may not know why Come on people now Smile on your brother Everybody get together Try to love one another right now Some may come and some may go In which we surely pass Clayton was looking for something to do.
He found this software on the internet and he spent weeks fiddling around. That became his project. Richard, just jumping back into those early days for you, when you were in London, I didn’t know that you’d become a graphic designer there, but you also spent quite a lot of time in Berlin, in Germany.
What did that hold for you? Because when I lived in London, my favourite thing to do in my holidays, because I did, I had a day job. Now I think back on it, I was the highest paid 19 year old graphic designer in London. Now ask me why I drifted into music to play for nothing.
I don’t know. However, during my work holidays, my favourite thing to do was get onto the continent, stick my thumb out, and all roads always seem to lead to Berlin. So I already had friends there.
I’d been abandoned by the UK anyway, in fact by everybody. I didn’t know what to do. So I actually became a homeless bum for I think 11 months I was a homeless bum.
So I headed back to Berlin because I vaguely knew people there. Ironically or coincidentally, most of the people I knew in Berlin had been from Berlin University. And in 69, 70, Berlin University was a hotbed for left wing activists.
Now the first commune I moved into in Berlin was really hardcore. So everyone had to take turns at going and shopping at the market, bringing food home, cooking it, etc, etc. It was communism down to the nth degree.
However, it was so hardcore, I got kicked out of there after a while because I just kept arguing with the other people in the commune. So then I was out on the road again and I was sleeping in Copenhagen railway station for a while. But it was a remarkable time because the spirit of humanity in those days, really baby, we had it all.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. The young Richard Clapton may have been on the streets, but he couldn’t have been happier.
Okay, I was sleeping in Copenhagen railway station and a Danish dentist picked me up from there and said, no, no, you’ve got to come and stay with me. I lived in his luxury apartment, like, for three months. Wow.
So when I say I was a homeless bum, I wasn’t exactly living in a… Wow, amazing. And, of course, you were writing music this whole time, weren’t you? Oh, yeah. So there was plenty of food for thought.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, prolific. Those days were really the beginning of your career when your first huge hits came out, and that first number one that you had was 1975 was, of course, Girls on the Avenue. It just took off.
Yeah, look, just to step back a couple of steps, my theory is, so I arrived back here desperately poor with only a fairly cheap acoustic guitar, but I had really long, curly black hair. I went into a record company called Phonogram, which I don’t think even exists anymore, and I just bolted because I’d been coming into Sydney. I’ve always been from Sydney, and there was no way I was going to get a job because my hair was so long, and I did.
I looked like a hippie bum, and I couldn’t get a job. So I was walking up Oxford Street in Sydney, and their offices were in Oxford Street, and I just walked in and gave them a cassette. Last train to Marseilles was, and I’d written about ten songs in Berlin before I left, and I don’t know, the A&R guy, which started some repertoire, I waited in reception for less than half an hour, and he came out and said, come to my office right now.
I’ve just produced a contract, which I signed, and that turned out to be a real bum deal because shortly after that I met this legendary publisher, probably the best publisher ever in Australia, John Brommel. If you have anything to do with the music industry, you would have heard of Brommel because he’s a real legend. Unfortunately, he’s not with us anymore, but John has a look at this contract, and he goes, you’ve got to be kidding me, phoned this guy, I won’t name this guy in case he’s still around, and just started ripping him to shreds over the phone.
Brommel took me to Festival Records. They also signed me up almost on the spot. And I, I’m sorry, I forgot to mention, I reckon it’s because that year, 1972-73, Cat Stevens was the biggest act in the world.
So I come here, like, I’m not Greek, but Greek-looking with really long jet black hair, straggly jet black hair, and I’m a singer-songwriter, and I’m a singer-songwriter in Australia, you count it on one hand. Morning has broken Like the first morning Blackbird has spoken Like the first bird Praise for the singing Praise for the morning Praise for the springing Fresh from the wind There wasn’t many singer-songwriters at all in the early 70s, so that’s why I snapped up. I did the Prussian Blue album, and it got really great critical acclaim, because unfortunately my early scrapbooks were actually destroyed by an ex-manager.
But that first Rolling Stone review of Prussian Blue, my first album, was great. So the reviews were great, but sadly it didn’t sell. I think it sold about two and a half thousand, probably.
So festival records threatened me with an ultimatum that I either come up with a radio-friendly hit single, or they’re going to drop me. Now, especially those days, I mean, I was a real young rebel without a cause. Now I’m a grumpy old rebel with a cause.
But look, I shared a flat in Rose Bay in Sydney with this guy Colin, and Colin was, once again it’s this term, A&R, Artist in Repertoire, which is sort of the liaison between the record company and the artist. And he was for festival publishing, and I’d actually signed to festival publishing, and Colin and I moved in together, and Colin would implore me, because at first, I mean, the rebel without a cause, it’s like, screw you, no, no, you’re not going to bully me into writing pop music. Colin’s rationale was really sound, and I was really stupid, naïve and stupid.
Colin was saying, look, just use rap cunning for God’s sake, just give them what they want, and then you’ll establish yourself, you’ll have a foot in the door, and then you’ll have a career. One night I went out, Colin and I went out and got quite inebriated, came home. Now, this all, I mean, honestly, I’ve had this all said a thousand times.
We lived in Rose Bay in Sydney. Our street was called Chalia Avenue. On the next street along the avenue, there was a house with three pretty girls that lived in it, and Colin and I used to leer at these girls all the time.
These girls, I ran up, they’d contact me, and there’s where I even wrote their own book. Do they know you wrote the song about them? Yeah. Oh, yeah, they know it.
And loving it. Yeah. So all the stuff about Walkers and everything is just a crazy… People’s imagination.
Well, yeah, sort of. Girls on the avenue They’re trying to get you in Strolling by with a rosebud smile They’re all dressed up to kill Lean on the windowsill Looking your way with eyes of fire But don’t you flip Don’t you flip In love with the girls on the avenue Friday night See the girls on the avenue Stalker child A thick store window Should feel confused So many girls on the avenue You must have heard about me, I’m Richard Clapton, the one with the three R answers. But look, just to finish off about Girls on the Avenue, the record company hated it.
Colin was on the verge of getting a job as the first music programmer for Double J, and behind Festival’s back, he had been lunching with Ron and Marius, who founded Double J. After the ANR, once again, artists and repertoire, selection committee, rejecting Girls on the Avenue six times, on the sixth time, Colin had actually been to lunch and accepted the job. He came back and said to the Festival people, so come on, what do you reckon? And they kept insisting, no, the song’s a mess, I mean, what’s the chorus? And Colin went, what do you mean, what’s the chorus? And they go, well, is it Don’t You Slip or is it Friday Night? Which bit is it? And Colin was going, oh, jeez. And this time, at this one, Colin was quite inebriated.
He’d been celebrating, he got really cheeky, and the managing director said, you know what, Colin, we’ve had enough of you, you’re fired. And Colin took a swing at him and said, you can’t sack me, I quit. And by the way, I’m the first music programmer for Double J. So he started at Double J, and Colin had two thorns in his side.
One was JJ Cale’s Cocaine, which Festival had rejected, and the other one was Girls on the Avenue. So this is the only time in my whole career corruption has worked for me. He played Girls on the Avenue once an hour every hour, and then the mainstream radio stations heard it, and they said, you know what, it’s number one.
But don’t you slip Don’t you slip in love with the girls on the avenue And I’ve seen the girls on the avenue Like a child at big store windows You’ve been confused So many girls on the avenue How did that sit with you? You’d written a pop song, radio loved it, the country loved it, it soared up the charts internationally. Did that make you rethink what you were writing? Not really immediately. It was a very weird experience because all of a sudden I got swept up into the wonderful world of Countdown.
And when Girls on the Avenue was peaking, it was that weird thing about girls chasing you down the street and hanging outside your house. So this is what it’s like to be a pop star. How was that for you? Did you enjoy that? Because you weren’t the stereotypical pop star.
No, no. And look, I’d already put down very strong roots in Berlin. I mean, virtually the Berliners that I lived in the commune with had sort of become a surrogate family for me.
And I had a very feisty relationship with Festival Records and I actually ran away from Australia about three times because I just went, you know, if this is the music industry, I’ve had it. And my intention was to go back to Berlin and start from square one in Germany and have a European career because Festival really did rub me up the wrong way back in the day. I believe it wasn’t too difficult to rub you up the wrong way in those days.
Fair comment, Bill. I’m fond to read letters to friends, especially you. And we loved you for that.
Yeah. We used to go down to the beach at night Fireflies dancing in the prominent light All those rock and roll bands used to really swing And I’d do the foxtrot with sweet Christine Speaking to me with her gentle hands Fly on down to wonderland Deep water I’m caught up in its flow If I’m in over my head I’ll be the last to know I ran away to Berlin a number of times in the 70s. Richard Clapton, while you were here though, you were one of the pioneers for this culture to start writing about Australiana.
At the time, we were still in the midst of this cultural cringe where we looked to the UK and the US for music and nobody had really written about places and things and people here. You were really one of the very few that started that off. What gave you the impetus to start writing about Australia? Because I could see, okay, there was an embryonic little scene happening out of Melbourne with the dingoes and country radio.
And if I’m to be fair and honest, they probably were the true original pioneers. It’s just that I took it to a whole new level. I became a bit more… International? Well, sort of, yeah.
So I really warmed this whole Australiana thing. And truly, those Whitlam years were the most magical time. And that’s why I had made the decision to come back to Australia.
And I mean, I actually got an Australia Council grant from Ralph and Margaret to go around the world. That’s how I wrote Goodbye Tiger in Denmark. Jeez, you said The bands don’t seem to play around here No more Saturday night Just ain’t the same Wish everything was back the way It used to be before Now I sit here and push my long hair Back behind my ears Face I used to hide behind Is now becoming ghostly with the air Goodbye Tiger Chasing those Broche reader times Somehow you seem to have left Me far behind But you can hear me whisper On the night line I actually sort of joined these little posses in Melbourne with Daddy Cool, Spectrum, the Dingos etc.
And everyone was starting to get into this culture. Well really we were creating this culture. Because it was an underground subculture.
All of us loved these fairly obscure but incredible American songwriters. Which in those days really included Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell. And then I got caught up with the whole surfy hippy community.
Sort of the original Byron Bay community. Hippies gone surfing. Of all those Australiana type songs that you did produce at that time, which one did you like best? Blue Bay Blues That was easy wasn’t it? Why? For myself personally I just think it’s really up there with the best songs I’ve ever written.
Next you’re going to ask me how I write songs and how I would write something like Blue Bay Blues Well I’ll tell you one thing. Because I’ve been explaining this to my band recently. Because I really have to tune down some of those really old songs because they’re a bit high for me now.
My chords from those early songs are so weird. I made them all up. Because what I would do is, you know, I was just this laconic kind of hippy that just lounged around and I’d put my finger here and another finger there and I’d go, yeah that sounds good.
Before you know it I’d have four fingers on the neck and I’d go, wow this is cool. Fast forward forty years and guitar players go, we don’t even know what you’re doing. You’ll have to do that play that bit.
So Blue Bay Blues, I’m proud of the song because I don’t even know how I came up with those chords. They’re very strange but hopefully beautiful sounding chords. I’m just a little bit blue.
I can tell I’ve been getting to you too. Trying to make sense. Trying to shine up the end of the road.
Hard as with I’ve even known when. Nowadays we don’t see so many friends here in town. Somehow Richard Clapton managed to master that most difficult of show business acts.
The high wire that required the balance of radio friendly tunes and candid from the heart lyrics. These two dichotomies came together often for him and proved to be his calling card.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Tell us about the dark glasses that always adorn your face.
You don’t go to bed in them. Oh yeah, yeah, of course I do. You sleep with them too? Oh yeah.
No. No, I actually started developing these things called pterygiums. Pterygiums, yachties and surfers and even golfers get them.
But show business people get pterygiums because of the stage lights. Now, in my day, in pub rock, the stage lights were actually dangerously close to your eyes. The ceilings were really low.
It’s Mother Nature’s way of trying to protect your iris. So you get this white growth that comes over your eyes. The surgeon has to leave them for years actually because he can’t operate until they’re pretty bad.
So you’ve had the operation? Yeah, on both eyes. And you’re still wearing the glasses to prevent coming back? No, no, no. What that’s about is post-op, Frank Boar is my surgeon.
He said, look, if you’re going to keep performing and everything, why don’t you think about wearing shades? I went like a wanker. He said, well, you know, and he started reeling off a list of all these performing artists who wear shades all the time. To look cool, yeah.
Yeah, to look cool. And Dr. Boar said the thing is this is going to be recurring. You know, if you keep subjecting your eyes to these harsh lights all the time.
And he said, it’s up to you. So I just started wearing shades and then it really, I guess because I started in Goodbye Tiger wearing the shades and I was so high profile there for a couple of years, it sort of became an image and, you know, I just let it on. You mentioned you’ve got twin girls.
What did I think about you? Did they think you were cool or were they embarrassed by you? No, because when I wrote the book, Montana was living and working in Tokyo. She was there for about six years and Saskia, my other daughter, was in Amsterdam, I think. I sent them my book as a rough draft and I said to them, girls, I really want you to sanction this book because I left all the drugs, sex drugs and rock and roll, I left it all in there and I just did not hold back.
In the first drafts of it. And I didn’t want my daughter’s friends to be going, oh, your daddy was, you know, blah, blah, blah. And so I left it with them for a while.
Well, they’re both vociferous readers, so it didn’t take them long and they came back and I said, well, what did you think? And they said, Jesus, Dad, what happened? I don’t know either. What happened to the world? I don’t know. They read about those days and it’s like this wondrous time.
It’s like Wonderland pretty much. Yeah, full of freedom, no restrictions, lots of fun, fun, fun. As I said earlier in this interview, when I was a hippie bum on the streets of Europe, people were just wonderful and truly at the risk of sounding really schmaltzy, everybody really did love each other and it was like a sense of community, sense of humanity and now we’re, you know, I won’t say anything.
It’s just different times. All you children gotta reap what you sow Self-righteous suckers, you never choose You try and take me, I’ll take you Here we go Down the glory road Down and out Down the glory road So the long and short of that is that your daughters appreciate you. They’re proud of who you are and what you’ve done.
At this stage of my life, for the last number of years, I have marvelled at DNA and genetics. I know Carlyle Goodbrown said, you know, your children don’t belong to you, they just pass through you and everything, which is true, but in my case anyway, I think with a lot of other, maybe even most other parents, it’s just a miracle of life how your children become you. I mean, they’re just too many me’s, pretty much.
What comes next for you? I mean, we started off talking about the fact that live music is now back and you’re travelling around this country. What is there that you still want to accomplish? That’s a really good question and I don’t mind telling you that I’m pretty stumped now because I feel, I had a lot of high hopes for that, for what I call the hippie album, the Music Is Love album. And once again, I just think I’ve been thwarted by the situation around me.
I’m trying to be very guarded here. You are. Yeah.
So that’s hit me for six a bit. That album should have, because usually my career moves in waves. So on the occasions that I do have a hit album and I get a top five, top ten, that’ll keep me going for a few years.
It really is like riding a wave. Like in the 90s, I had an album called Distant Thunder, which went top ten and got heaps of airplay. And I actually moved to the Gold Coast and lived happily and comfortably there.
But then unfortunately that wave finally subsides. And in the case of the Gold Coast and Distant Thunder, I ended up having to move back to Sydney. I’ll be free with me These are the days we have been waiting for so long Now it’s the time to set things right right here at home Distant Thunder There is no doorway to the past Walk on home here I’ll be free These are the days we have been waiting for so long Now it’s the time to set things right right here at home I don’t know at all, Stanley, where this is all headed.
I don’t know where music is headed. Because you must have heard it’s impossible to make any money. Like in my case, I will just… Girls’ Avenue, Deepwater, Capricorn Dancer are up to about 20 million streams.
And I think my entire catalogue would be about 50 million streams. I’m earning deadly squat. Whereas for the first 35 years of my career… You were rolling in it.
Yeah, from royalties. Now I’m getting no royalties. Well I’m getting royalties like a pig.
You know, you definitely can’t live off it. And I’m sure you’re already up to speed with this. And this is why artists just go out and work live.
And for me, it’s okay. For my creativity, it’s a real bummer. Because for 30 years there, my royalty stream was so good, I only had to work, in other words tour, six months of the year.
The other six months, I would more often than not go back to Berlin or go back to California. And have fun? No, write songs, you know, for two or three months. Then I’d come back here and I’d record them for a couple of months.
And then I’d go out for another month or two and promote the album and all that. And then I’d go and do a tour. But see, I wouldn’t be able to afford to take six months off now.
So I don’t know how to answer your question as valid as your question is. I don’t know. It sounds to me that the whole financial side of things has kind of crushed the mojo a little bit again.
I think for everybody though, not just for me. That’s a real shame, isn’t it? Something’s got to give. Well, we hope so.
But anyway, to look on the bright side, my live career is alive and well and very healthy. Yet getting on the road and touring like you used to must be much more difficult too as one ages. I mean, it was demanding when you were young.
I can imagine it would be less attractive these days too. It is a dog’s breakfast. It’s a tough industry these days, right? It is.
And, you know, I don’t think I need to harp on about lack of government support. Absolutely. Richard, what song should we go out on? At the end of the day, probably Best Years of Our Lives, maybe my consummate song.
Because I’ve had nine. I’ve had nine radio hits. So, you know, if you include Iron Man Island, Glory Road, etc.
The Best Years tends to be, I think for fans, because you just mentioned the fan. I think my fans, after 40 or 50 years, like Best Years of Our Lives is their song. They think that’s their anthem.
Thank you for being with me today. It’s been so great to catch up with you again. I’m only sorry that the industry isn’t in better shape, but let’s keep our fingers crossed because a talent like yours, even after 50 years, we’ve got another 50 years of you coming.