DAVE EDMUNDS TWANGS FOR ONE

DAVE EDMUNDS TWANGS FOR ONE

FEATURES

by

Toby Goldstein

There were hundreds of non-profit organization-type people walking around the United Nations ballroom dressed in cocktail gowns and evening suits. They munched smoked salmon canapes, drank white wine and Perrier, and looked somewhat confused as two large projection screens broadcast videos of the benefit concert for Kampuchea relief. Paul McCartney and Wings or Queen they knew. The others, huh?

Even the couple dozen rock critics and promoids, relishing the first good-tasting press party in a dog’s age, got dressed up. Well, you don’t amble into the U.N, looking like an untamed terrorist unless you want to experience true grief. The music contingent tugged at their ties and concentrated on footage featuring the Clash, the Who, Elvis Costello and Rockpile.

Dave Edmunds quietly entered the room and immediately made for the bar. Given the choice everyone had, to chat charity with Rockin’ E or one of the lesser-graded Wings, Oave was surrounded. He set a record for smooth-temperedness by fielding a barrage of questions directed more toward the breakup of Rockpile than his feelings about hunger aid or even his new solo album, Twangin’. Enough of this, I thought. The guy, standing out from a sea of three-piecers in a crisp white jacket and black printed shirt, deserved a break today. I tapped him on the shoulder, interrupted some local twjt’s radio chitchat, and said, “Dave, I’ve got it.”

The action immediately shifted as Edmunds whisked me and my tissue-wrapped parcel to an empty table and, in fevered breath, asked me please to undo the paper now, he couldn’t wait. And what he saw...was a 78 rpm of Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On,” brought back from the Sun Records warehouse and an honored part of my archives until that moment when I judged Dave Edmunds a lot more deserving of the prize. I know how to make friends.

Edmunds spent the rest of the reception with the disc tucked safely under one wing like a child, A record exec asked him if that was the Kampuchea album he toted with such pride. No, he beamed, it’s Jerry Lee—totally confusing the man|f Dave Edmunds is far from an effusive talker, but his love for rockabilly and the rock originators never runs out of steam. It’s why Robert Plant’s imitating Elvis with Rockpile on “Little Sister” and Edmunds’ own tribute to the King, “Baby Let’s Play House” appear comfortable sharing the same label. If one of the latest rumors flying around the Apple is correct, the two Swan Song stablemates, neither with a band to call his own, might even create some future performing dream.

"What I regret is

Rockpile didn't work as we thought it would."

Slowly awakening in Atlantic Records’ office the morning after his arrival in New York, Edmunds was totally concerned with present tense, even if he wasn’t quite sure what day or what time it was. “I flew in on the Concorde. Had a 24-hour day yesterday, so forgive me if I’m a bit slow,” he whispered, mainlining coffee and orange juice. Edmunds had come in to promote Twangin’, make his presence felt at the Kampuchea fete, and deal with Rockpile’s dissolution as rapidly and gracefully as possible.

Others have lengthily chronologued the split as a series of who-said-what-to-whom , with Nick Lowe and Jake Riviera pitted against Edmunds, Terry Williams and Billy Bremner. -For his part, Edmunds was resigned, not rancorous. “What I regret is the fact that it didn’t work as we thought it would. We thought it’d just take off and we’d have a new ‘Rockpile’ music. That it wasn’t anything to do with what my albums sound like or what Nick’s sound like, but something of its own. But it didn’t happen. It still sounded like a few of Nick’s songs and a few of mine, and then Billy singing on it—those are my favorite tracks actually, Billy* should’ve sung ’em all!” When it’s noted that the blend of Edmunds’ roots rockabilly with Lowe’s melodic sentiments was precisely what made Rockpile endearing to U.S. audiences, Dave looked surprised and joked,. “Really? I think I’ll phone the boys up and start a tour next week.” Not likely.

In a more serious tone, Edmunds made it clear he’d rather be discussing Twangin’, his fourth solo album for Swan Song and God knows what number recording when you count his 15-year history of studio tracks. “I was surprised the other day,” he admitted, “when I was at a radio station that had all of my singles. I had eight Swan Song singles releasedI|Maybe more. I tend to lose track of ’em.” Twangin’ was actually recorded before Seconds of Pleasure but held in the can to avoid competition for the recordbuyer’s rapidly shrinking dollar. In the tradition of his previous solo discs, Twangin’ was recorded at Eden Studios, featured the Rockpile crew and was selfproduced, tireless wonder that Edmunds seems to be. If there’s any noticable difference along musical lines from his earlier albums, it’s the enlarged presence of country music, evident in the 50’s chestnuts, “Singing The Blues” and “The Race Is On,” and the sadly ironic lost-ballad, “(I’m Gonna Start) Living Again If It Kills Me,” written by Dave, Nick and Carlene Carter. Before the split, realized Edmunds, “perhaps I was thinking of doing more country or something like that, so it wouldn’t clash with the stuff we were doing for Rockpile. As it turns out, I’ll just keep forging ahead.”

Twangin’ blends Edmunds’ cover versions of tunes by the British pub mafia— Ian Gomm and Mickey Jupp—with surprises like John Hiatt’s gritty tune, “Something Happens,” which Riviera tipped him about, John Fogerty’s “Almost Saturday Night,” and a line-by-line clone copy of “Baby Let’s Play House,” in which Edmunds proves that he’s no Davey-comelately to the bop.

“Oh, that was obviously done as a very affectionate tribute to Elvis. That was my trying to get as close as possible to the Sun sound. I did three or four tracks like that, a long time ago, in 1968. It was never intended to be released,” he said, acknowledging that the speedballing psychedelia of Love Sculpture was much more in the fashion of the day. Edmunds dates his following of U.S. country, early rock and blues to the late 50’s, when he was a 12-year-old tuning in “the good stuff’ on Radio Luxembourg and listening to his older brother’s 45s. And while most Americans tend to dismiss current rockabilly as pseudo-original, those strange Brits have always kept the legend alive. Entire labels release nothing but old-style rock and blues, and the bands on'the club circuit range from 45-year-old Teds to ducktailed adolescents. Edmunds has found enough innovation in the new bands to produce two young combos.

"I was trying to Set as close as possible to the Sun sound."

“That’s the Stray Cats playing on ‘The Race Is On,” he enthused. “I hope they can get known in this country soon. They went to England just to try their luck and it was a great success story. They got every record company interested in them. Mick and Keith turned up to see them and wanted to produce them. They were on the front page of every music paper in England. It looked like a hype but it wasn’t. They just look so good and sound so good. They got the upright bass and the drummer stands up, he’s only got a snare drum. And they asked me to produce them.

“We took a break during recording their album and were talking about George Jones and ‘The Race Is On,’ and I said, let’s go give it a whirl, and it took about 25 minutes.

“There’s another band I produced called The Polecats. Would you believe their first single, which is a hit in England, is ‘John I’m Only Dancing’ done rockabilly?! It’s great! It’s really good. It started as a joke and sounded really weird, and we worked on it, it kept sounding better and better. And I thought then, it had to be a single.” Moving from the ridiculous to the merely quirky, Edmunds also contributed one track as producer on the new Squeeze album, even though the London popsters are cut from a slightly different instrumental cloth. Although Edmunds is now ready to call a halt on outside projects for awhile, he’d clearly prefer to work a double shift than sit and mope. After Love Sculpture survived a disastrous debut U.S. tour in 1968, he was put off live gigs for seven years, and doesn’t plan to let that situation recur.

“I’ve had quite a few offers to produce,” he said matter-of-factly. “But I find I’m too long in the studio. Because it’s a total commitment. It’s three or four weeks when you forget life as you know it. And especially producing, you have to be there all the time. It’s not like when the drummer finishes his bit he can go off and watch television or play Space Invaders. It can drain you. And you’ve finished it, you think, I don’t want to see the inside of a studio again. But then you find you got your own album to do.

“I don’t know who’ll be in my own band. It’s just in the formative stages. I’d like it to be Terry, obviously, because he’s the best drummer in the world. Apart from that, I don’t know. But the thing is, I don’t want to stop and start thinking about it and get depressed about it and sit around doing nothing. I still want to work. I still want to make rock ’n’ roll records. And there’s no reason why I shouldn’t!”