TECH TALK
I would describe Paul Carrack as one of the world’s favorite singers. For the last dozen or so years, Carrack has appeared on a number of pop music’s best singles, starting in 1974, when Carrack’s bar band Ace became a one-hit wonder with “How Long.”
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TECH TALK
DEPARTMENTS
PAUL CARRACK CATCHES UP WITH LIFE by Billy Cioffi
I would describe Paul Carrack as one of the world’s favorite singers. For the last dozen or so years, Carrack has appeared on a number of pop music’s best singles, starting in 1974, when Carrack’s bar band Ace became a one-hit wonder with “How Long.” After three albums, Ace couldn’t even come close to their initial splash and the band folded. At that point, Carrack became a respected sideman, touring and recording throughout the mid-’70s with Frankie Miller and Roxy Music. Carrack has always been a respected member of the British rock scene, in particular that hardedged brand of R&B blokes that hung together and emerged from the grungy pub scene of .the early ’70s. Those early pub bands consist of many of the British pop hierarchy, including Nick Lowe, Graham Parker and all the various members of the Rumour. It was to the pubs and the studios that Dave Edmunds vanished after Love Sculpture, his ’60s model, crashed and burned. It’s sort of the English version of the good of boy scene in Nashville.
Squeeze, themselves part of the scene, asked Paul to join the group in 1981, and as keyboardist and part-time lead singer, they recorded the masterful East Side Story. It seemed like a marriage made in heaven when his raspy tenor met with the wry intelligence of Difford and Tilbrook’s pop pastiche.
But Carrack soon split from Squeeze, joining up with wildman Nick Lowe and a couple of other mates, traipsing back and forth across the U.S.A. in what was probably one of the best four-piece bands since the English first invaded.
At about this time Carrack made a solo LP (Suburban Voodoo), and while Carrack’s voice scored once again with a Top 40 hit (“I Need You”), his record company at the time was unimpressed and unceremoniously dropped him.
“I’ve gotta tell you I was gutted by it (the commercial failure of the album and being given his walking papers) at the time,” he said recently. Contractless, but always in demand, he hit the road with Lowe again. So why did it take so long for this guy to come out with another solo record?
“It goes to show you how hard it is to get a record deal these days. I just carried on touring with Nick. He did have a deal and we survived by gigging around the States, albeit on a hand-to-mouth basis sometimes!” He laughs. “I kept doing demos and stuff with the band.”
Around 1984, Mike Rutherford enlisted Carrack’s help on his Mike & The Mechanics project. No one would have guessed the Mechanics’ record would become such a big hit, but it was.. .and the first Top 10 single, “Silent Running,” was warbled by none other than Carrack. The success of the project inspired Carrack and he soon found himself with a new deal at Chrysalis, releasing One Good Reason in late 1987. The difference in the new album and Carrack’s previous solo outings is obvious: While his voice has always been surrounded by an R&B ambiance throughout his career, the new record has a techno-pop sheen that reeks of serious production technique, courtesy of Christopher Neil. (Neil also produced the Mechanics album.) Like it or not, you must admit it’s as finely crafted a bit of ’60s style pop fluff as you’ve heard since .. .well, since the ’60s.
How does Carrack feel about the sophisticated production as compared to his earlier effort with buddy Nick Lowe?
He laughs. “Anything would be more elaborate than a Nick Lowe production. The last thing I wanted to happen was what happened to Suburban Voodoo. You know, all your mates like it, but it doesn’t get heard. So I wanted to make as strong an album as possible. In between, and out of the blue, I did the Mike Rutherford thing, and in the three or four years I spent with Nick he would not have a synthesizer. He’s on sort of a crusade: the sound he likes is sort of basic Hammond and piano. I was looking at all these people like the Paul Youngs and the Simply Reds making all these real greatsounding records with R&B influences and thinking I could do that. To be honest, I was sort of eating my heart out, and I was beginning to think it had all passed me by and I was going to be gigging up and down the bars of the world with Nick and whoever.”
He’ll be gigging, no doubt—but pubbound no longer. ®
