Interview: Danny Saber
Michael Hutchence was a musical icon who left this world too soon. The lead singer of the wildly popular Australian rock band INXS, he also branched out to record solo material, and his solo album was posthumously released 2 years after his death. Unreleased recordings were found in a tape locker in London in 2006 that was ultimately entrusted to esteemed producer Danny Saber. Saber is an LA-based record producer, audio engineer, remixer, multi-instrumental musician, and former member of Black Grape and Agent Provocateur. He has worked with a vast and diverse mix of artists, from Madonna, David Bowie, U2, The Rolling Stones, Ozzy Osbourne, Public Enemy, and of course Michael Hutchence. He and Hutchence developed a close friendship upon meeting in 1995, when Saber relocated to the UK, and remained close until Hutchence’s death. Having listened to and fleshed out some of the unreleased ideas and material that Hutchence left behind, the track “One Way” was released on April 5th, 20 years in the making!
‘One Way’ is the culmination of nearly two decades of work,” says Saber. “One of the fundamental reasons for releasing this music is to allow the fans to hear Michael’s voice on something new and fresh, offering a glimpse into what might have been, and, in turn, reawakening millions of people who may have simply forgotten about him.” (source: press release)
“Michael first contacted me in 1995 soon after the release of my album It’s Great When You’re Straight,” recalls Saber, referring to the UK #1 album by his band Black Grape with Happy Mondays’ Shaun Ryder. “Michael was a huge fan of my record and wanted to find the right sound for a solo record, a sound that would galvanize all the success he had with INXS and allow him to establish himself as a solo artist and spread his creative wings outside the confines of being the frontman of one of the most successful bands in the world.” (source: press release)
“I set about reviewing the recordings to find out if there was enough of a quality for some sort of release,” says Saber. Meanwhile, a documentary about Hutchence’s life was released in Australia and New Zealand, appropriately titled The Last Rockstar (2017), which included some snippets of these unfinished tracks. “I have been working towards bringing this music to the public for over 20 years,” he adds. “While some portions of these songs were featured in the documentary, the fully mastered versions had never been released.” Until now. (source: press release)
“One Way” was born from one of Hutchence’s discovered cappella vocal recordings. Saber was mindful to maintain the spirit of Hutchence’s sound and imprint on the track, while also putting his own spin on it. Through these songs, he hopes to continue Hutchence’s musical impact and open his music up to an even broader audience. “One Way”, as well as the track “Save My Life”, will be released in mid-May, via Boss Sonics label, on a 10” picture disc produced by Danny Saber.
You started playing guitar at 12 and then transitioned into everything else you do now-producing, remixing, writing, putting tacks together, and such. What can you tell me about your childhood and developing those skills and your love for music?
Yeah. It was, really, kind of weird. I was talking to somebody else about that, who asked me something similar. And it's like, when you were a kid, at least back then, compared to now...if you're a kid now and you want to do something, there's a clear pathway and so much information, right? I remember getting into guitar and just the whole sort of mystique around getting distortion. The only way you could figure anything out was like if you had a friend who had a distortion pedal or, god willing, a Marshall! Nobody had a Marshall (laughs)! So, the point was, there was so much mystique and I think for me, it was very organic because I saw a poster of Jimi Hendrix at 11. I worked my dad for two years, like "Oh, I have to get a guitar"! And then I had a friend down the street who had a guitar. There was a store out here called Zody's, which was like the Walmart I guess of the 70's and 80's, and they sold everything. You could buy a recliner, a stereo system, groceries, and you could buy a shitty electric guitar. He had this Les Paul and I used to drive him crazy and played it more than he played it! I finally got my hands on a guitar at 13 and was obsessed with it. I just got so into it. I think the other thing that helped a lot was that, by the time I was 15, there was a little congregation of musicians in my high school. They accepted me and I just fit in with those people and they just kind of let me in, so that helped. I was always around people who were older than me and better than me. It's weird when you're that young and trying to figure this out and realize this is something you really want to do. At the time it was like "Who can play whatever the best, note-for-note?", and I never had those kinds of skills. I was too ADD, or whatever, so I'd learn the beginning of a song but then I'd sort of go off on my own and where I could take it.
I think one of the other cool things that sort of was an early sign...this was way before having any equipment. We're talking, like, the early 80's. I would take two boom boxes and would lay a guitar part down on one and then stick it between the amp and the other one and keep going back and forth recording and making these layered seven-part guitar layered cassettes. I always had a knack for that. One of my mantras now is that there's so much focus on how to play, but nobody ever talks about what to play. What to play and the choices you make, that's where the artistry comes in. That's with any art, whether it's you as a writer or a painter or whatever. When you can transcend what's inside and absorb all of the things you've seen and heard and felt and then spit it back out in some form of consistent extension of your personality, that's the goal. Finding your style. That's really what it is, your personality coming through. And I think that is something that is greatly missing in the world today. It's just the nature of the world we live in. Again, with kids, everything I found, I discovered and half the things we were looking for weren't even real. But it set you off on this journey and mission whereas now I can just Google it and I know everything. It doesn't leave any room for...that's where all the advances come in mankind, either from mistakes or accidents. And then having the command to be able to grab them and then refine them and then do something with them. And all of that seems to be squeezed out, which leads us to Michael Hutchence. That's one of the main things about this music when you hear his voice again and the way I've tried to approach it, is that it reminds us of that hopefully. He reminds us of what greatness may be. And I'm not saying the songs themselves, but just his overall...what he stood for, what he was about, and what he was able to deliver. That's what I'm hoping for and it seems to be working. The response has been really positive. Just like "Remember this guy? Remember how he used to roll?", and hopefully it will inspire some people.
You have said that early on, in having so many different kinds of people with different ideas of what they wanted coming to you, that you really began to bring things to fruition. When you started out, did you have a vision of what you wanted your sound and process to be or do you feel that working with so many different kinds of artists and people shaped you and helped you grow into the process and sound you have now? Or was it a bit of both?
The latter. All I knew, and all I ever wanted, was just to be able to somehow play guitar and live from it. As a youngster, I went through so many phases, right?! And that's really insightful, what you said. I'm a product of everything I've ever heard and all of the people I've ever worked with. I think the one thing I had going for me is my personality is that I was just really open-minded, even young. And then I got my hands on a 4-track. And then as the equipment became accessible, I got a drum machine. Well, the first thing I got that wasn't a guitar was a JUNO-106. I got a synthesizer. I was about 16 then, maybe 17, and had been playing guitar for about 4 years and I started answering ads. Because the thing you notice is, like, if you're a guitar player and want to find some way to play with people, there are a thousand guitar players looking for bands. And I don't know if they still even have it, but they used to have this thing called The Recycler and it would be like "Musicians looking for bands" and "Bands looking for musicians". And if it was "Musicians looking for bands", there were a thousand guitar players. And then if you look for "Bands looking for musicians", there would always be, like, this guitar player that doubles on keyboards, or something like that. So, I kind of intuitively knew. Like, I could play piano a bit because I was in this jazz band class in high school and ended up switching from guitar to piano because of the same thing. There were 15 guitar players in the band and no piano player. So, if I played piano, I'd get to play every song. If I played guitar, which I still did, I'd maybe play once or twice a week. I think music is such a great...that's where I hope to take this. Especially with all of the tension and drama in the world and all of the toxic shit between people. Music erases all of that because it's all about cooperation and does it sound and feels good. And if you look at all of the barriers that have been broken down, at least in this country, especially in relation to race, music was always the first thing that put the cracks in the walls for them to open up. It's as simple as like, in your neck of the woods, when the Motown bands/artists would come down and they tried to separate the kids, they couldn't do it. When the band came down, the music took over. And the same with the Stax artists and bands. Those are the moments and the results of that are a big part of why music is so important.
I think, too, why things are different is look at what's held up as the standards of success. When I was growing up and you asked "Who's the best singer in the world?", you'd be like Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, or whoever. And now it's people winning talent shows. It's the kid who won the high school talent show. What's being held up as the standard of success has shifted so much! But you were so spot on. It was completely just having access to people. And then I started working with rappers, because, again, it's the same thing of "Who wants you?". In the '80s, everything in LA was, like...and I was in one of those bands where I have pictures of me wearing spandex and Capezio and have puffy hair-a poodle haircut" (laughs). It's just what you did. But I never fit into that world. And we were always a little different. I was in an all-white band with a Black singer trying to do, like, Journey in the 1980's. It was like "You're never going to get signed" and "They'll never play you on the radio". That's how crazy and different the world was back then. But that, to me, made perfect sense. I looked at it like, "Yeah, but we're the only people doing this". That's how much it's shifted. But then I started hearing Jane's Addiction and Public Enemy and started meeting some guys who wanted to do rap and putting beats together. I had that sampler. Something in me knew this was where everything was going. Getting into sampling was huge for me. I was one of the first people to do it...well, like a normal person. Not like Peter Gabriel with some $150,000 Fairlight in 1980. The equipment began to be reasonably accessible. You didn't have to be a millionaire! They were still expensive but not outrageous. I was still wanting keys. If I was more hip-hop-inclined, I probably would have gotten an Emulator drum machine or something. In those days it was crazy because if you wanted to tune a sample or a loop, you'd have to load the sample. The sequencer was built in. It would take 45 seconds to load the sequencer to check it and the tempo was 80 bpm and you'd play it and it was too fast. Then you'd have to load the sampler portion back up and it would take, like, 3 hours to tune a loop! But in those days, the fact that you were able to even do it was amazing. The first professional job I ever got was getting called to a session and it was Bobby Womack and Leon Ware. All they wanted me to do was sample 4 hand claps, and they ran the tape and I just did a pass of hitting hand claps on the keyboard. It blew their minds because that would have taken a whole day to do in those days. I did it in 4 minutes. And now it's automatic. What it's all about for me is a spirit and philosophy of going for things and not trying to control everything and balancing that with allowing shit to happen. It's like the Bruce Lee "Be Water" kind of thing. Sometimes the water can take down a mountainside and sometimes it can just be placid in a glass.
You moved to the UK in 1993 and joined forces with Shaun Ryder to form Black Grape. What led you to move to the UK and what can you tell me about that time and being in that band, which helped you to grow and showcase your abilities?
It kind of all goes back to that poster of Jimi Hendrix. There were phases I went through. The first phase was the Hendrix phase and would have arguments with other friends. And they'd be into whoever. and I was like "How can you compare any of these guys to Jimi Hendrix?". To me it was ludacris, because there was nobody who played like him. And I learned he went to the UK and then my mom was British and I had a cousin that was over there who was the same age and we had grown up together. I kind of lived there when I was little but my dad went over there and tried it out but he was too hardcore NY to do it. He was a real hardcore, fast-talking NY guy and in the late 60's, it just wasn't his cup of tea. So we ended up in LA. What happened was that I started to get some traction in LA because I was in a band with a girl named Melissa and the band was called Issa Joone. We were doing sort of a world beat meets Nine Inch Nails, like sample bass music in the 80's. I think we got together in 1985 or 1986. We ended up getting a development deal with Chrysalis, but all of the people I worked with who got signed, the one thing that everything sort of came from never really got a shot. She was amazing. If you look up videos, you can see that I'm running two samplers and sequences. And this was a local band and we were just kids. I'd rent an extra sampler and had to bring my own rig and, in those days if you walked into the sound guy and said "I need 4 stereo di's" they'd look at you like you were out of your mind. That opened a door for me though because her dad was really cool. He was one of the owners of The Palace, a really legendary venue in LA, and had a really bitchin' house up in The Hills. In the back of the house was a little clubhouse and she had an 8-track and a d-50 and so we pooled all of our equipment and set up this little project studio. Her dad was cool though and gave me a clicker. It was a gated house. I was able to work there whenever I needed to. Having that ability to just be able to work and have access to a studio was cool. Then I started doing demos with other people and hooked up with Bronx Style Bob and he introduced me to Guy Oseary, who was trying to break into the business and who manages U2 now. He was in high school and had his little stable of artists and I was sort of the producer. And he was the first A&R guy at Maverick. He was an amazing whiz-kid genius 17-year-old. I was in this band called Proper Grounds that was sort or rap and metal and hip hop...imagine Metallica and Limp Biscuit but in 1991. So we were way in front of everything, too early.
We were the first band signed to Maverick, which got me a publishing deal with EMI. Then I got EMI to send me to England to go do some lighting because I had always wanted to go. Once I got over to England, it was just like "Oh my god!". I don't know how I knew to go there, but the whole mentality was different. All of that compartmentalization of music and "Are you a metal dude? Are you a rap dude?"...over there, with the charts, there's no Black chart and rap chart. These are just the charts. It's a good thing and a bad thing. I mean, if you look at the charts there, it's crazy! There will be a boy band and then David Bowie, or whatever it may be right?! The attitude, especially when I got to Shaun Ryder because he wasn't the first person I worked with, they were like me. They liked everything and weren't afraid to use it. If you started putting beats on stuff with guitars, 9 out of 10 guitar players were like "I don't want any of that stuff on my record dude." So I'm working with Black rappers but they love rock n roll. Sean Kennedy (from Proper Grounds), knew Zeppelin, he knew Sabbath, and all of that shit. We were blending all of that together over here, so when I got over there, it was just like "Oh shit!". Everybody...well not everybody, but a lot more people think this way, of like "Hey. Let's pool what we love, and if it works and it fits in, then we use it." We don't care how it looked or what people were going to think or what it was going to make us. It's so funny how uptight people were about shit like that back then. I mean, it probably sounds ridiculous, but it's true. But that's why now it's not that way, because people have the balls to just say "Fuck it. Let's just go for it." Even if you listen to, like, the first Beastie Boys record, Licence To Ill, and you listen to the way the guitars are mixed with the drum machine, it's so simple but revolutionary. And nobody had really done that. That was Rick Rubin and a bunch of kids. He was a college kid. But it was people who kind of had their ear to the street and knew what was up, and there were so many people that were like that, but there weren't a lot of people like that in positions to then produce records and have the right artists. That to me was like "Oh shit!". I remember when Aerosmith was so on the skids man! I remember when I heard "Walk This Way" for the first time with Run DMC. I mean, you knew who you were talking to. Anybody that loved it, was like "Cool!" and anybody that hated it was like "Oooookay". And a lot of it was just traditionalism. It wasn't racial. It really wasn't. It was more just like "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY SHIT MAN? THAT'S MY SHIT! YOU'RE RUINING MY MUSIC!" (laughs). I mean, Aerosmith didn't even know what they were doing. They didn't even want to do it, evidently. I think Rick talked them into it or something. But it revitalized their whole career. They were on the skids. I remember they played at the LA County Fair. And they were one of my favorite bands as a kid. There's so much there in that and that's really what made me go to England. And more than anything, it was just, like, curiosity. That was my dream, to just be able to go places. I never wanted to go anywhere as a tourist. I wanted to go there and have people and be working. That's the coolest way to go somewhere. The first time I got to travel and get paid to work, was that I actually got to go to Berlin and it was a really major thing because I had always been a huge Bowie guy. There's so much mystique in Berlin and I got to go there.
You met Michael Hutchence in 1995, as he was a fan of Black Grape and sought out your advice for his solo career. What can you tell me about meeting him for the first time and building a friendship with him?
Essentially, Michael was one of those people who always...if you're in a band and are the frontman, part of that is always, especially once you become really big and are trying to stay there, just staying up on what's going on. Michael was always very driven by that. He was always on this mission to just discover new shit. It gets to be a slippery slope when it's a) why are you doing it and b) when you lose sight of who you are, trying to chase something you don't need to be chasing because you're already who you are. When you become that big, as INXS was...and there's no fault in them. I'm not criticizing them. It's just a fact. I've seen it with every band. It's like if a guy's playing golf and someone's playing with the lead and they have a 9-shot lead. And then they start playing really conservatively and are playing not to lose, instead of playing to win, which is what got them the 9-shot lead. It's like that. And Michael was the kind of dude where if he had a 9-shot lead, he's putting the pedal down and trying to make it 18, and not like "As long as I win by 1, it's cool." That's what led him to me. The Black Grape record had a big impact over there on a lot of people, I guess. I think for him personally, when he heard it, I think something kind of clicked in him. I know he liked the Beck record a lot too.
I think Michael was hearing something, and again it comes down to not ruling anything out. I actually met him first on the phone, because I had been sent a demo. He had been working with Andy Gill. He’d been meeting with different people and working on stuff on his own and needed an outlet outside of the band for some of those reasons. But creatively more than anything. It's not that he didn't realize how good he was or how great he was. I don't think that's what mattered to him. What mattered to him was, and it was all of us...I think that's another thing that's changed so much. I was so motivated, and most musicians were motivated by "Try to impress your peers." That was a big part of what motivated you. And the rewards were the rewards. You knew if you got it right...like, if you win the golf tournament, you're going to get the money. But focus on winning the golf tournament and not on the money. And it's the same thing. You put in the work and beyond that mission, it's got to be something you're compelled to do, not something you're doing because you're trying to get something out of it. Especially with music. But again, I think everything is like that. That was a big part of it and when we finally got together, he already had done a few songs with Andy. I think they had about 6 songs and I was initially brought in because he still wasn't happy with the sound. There was something else he was looking for. Remember now, INXS was a band that was the, if not one of, the best bands of all time, taking dance music and rock n roll and mixing it together. Everything was wrapped in a beat. I think Michael never gets the credit either as a lyricist, because if you look at some of those songs...with all the INXS songs, the lyrics are all saying something. But a lot of them are wrapped in a dance beat. I mean, he was dealing with interracial relationships and some heavy shit. The devil and you know, all the classics...satan and witches and the dark lord and rock n roll and drugs and that's it. That's all there is, right? These days I'm sure people would have something to say about that, but those are the classics you know, when it comes to rock n roll lyrics. And he was able to put his own spin on it. He was a really smart guy too. He was educated in Hong Kong and was a pretty worldly guy by the time he was 18.
When we finally worked together, it was liberating for him because I'm a multi-instrumentalist and the only rule we had was there were no rules. If there was an idea, we'd try it and if he had an idea in his head, and he's singing me something, there may be a guitar part, and there was nobody who was going to be like "Dude, I'm the guitar player and you're the singer". All bands have that dynamic. It's very rare when they don't. Again, not faulting anybody. I said the other day, it wasn't about either/or. You needed both. It was just a way to flex some muscles you didn't get to maybe use as much as you wanted to in the other situation. But it wasn't an either/or situation. I've said it too that without INXS, none of this would matter and nobody would care. That's not what this is about. It's about reminding the world of him and leading them back to all the great stuff. I was on the internet this morning and there's a girl who's really cool actually. She sits and listens to songs, which a lot of people do that, but picked a couple of solo songs from the record I produced. She actually picked this one song "Baby It's Alright" and was kind of grooving to it and listening to it. It was just cool to see that because it was like "Wow. You picked those?". They're not the obvious ones. It was kind of nice that somebody was picking up on that. And the response to this first song...the only real room for any real criticism would be that more recently there's been some stuff that's been released that was probably never intended to be and probably never should have been. But I think it's fair to say that you have to maintain the quality and standard that Michael established over his career. There weren't any shitty INXS tracks. Every song on the record was a hit single. There's a standard, so there would have been no point in just throwing out some...trust me, there were probably 23 things out of 30 that will never be heard. Maybe someday, there may be some sort of, like, special feature just to get some insight into Michael's process or something, but never as a commercial-produced track. There was enough there, but it had to be worthy of being heard.
Photo by: Dean Karr.
Along those lines, what can you tell me about finding all of the unreleased music that Michael had left and sifting through everything to figure out what you could use and what you couldn't? Also, how did you go about staying true to his sound while also adding your own spin to the music?
It's important not to lose sight of one thing, which is that Michael died under really shitty circumstances and he was my friend. For me, it's not about coming out and making it all about like trying cash in. Trust me, nobody is getting rich here, at least not initially. It's 10" picture disc vinyl. So that's not what's going on here. And to feed right into your question...first of all, people have to remember everything we found was on 2-inch tape. It was in London and it all got sent to France, and I was made aware of it by the guy who was running Michael's estate....the day-to-day of his estate. I was the last guy to work with him, so they came back to me and were like "Hey. There might be something here" and I was like "Alright. Well, the first thing we have to do is just listen to it and see what the hell it is." It could have been anything. I had never really heard any of it. Andy had his little batch of songs and then me and Michael started writing, and the stuff that's on that V2 record is very different. This had nothing to do with any of that. It was like, well ok, this is all just ideas and a mess. I mean, Michael was a citizen of the world and he had his own studio in the south of France, so he was always...who knows? It wasn't, again, like "Oh, here's a song with Michael and an acoustic guitar." It wasn't like I got a bunch of finished mixes. With the solo record, Andy had been working on those songs and I got good, solid rough mixes and could really see what was there. It was pretty clear to see where we needed to go to find what was missing and it was a defined situation. This was really, really open-ended, so that's why I don't want people to think there was one way that it worked and that was it. It was all bets are off and all that really matters is going through each thing. And there were at least a couple that were songs that I found, that I had written with him and that I had forgotten about (laughs).
Again, it's not like it was lost. It just resurfaced and I just forgot about it, because it was sort of like he would come to LA and we write. The crazy thing is that every time we got together, we came out of it with something that got used. But there were a couple of things that we just never really got the chance to finish because you don't go in and necessarily write a song and then that's the end of it. It's like, you're constantly chipping away at it until the record comes out. "One Way", funny enough...I don't think it was the first track I messed with. I didn't finish this version of it where it's been done and laying around. I've been working on it up until a couple of months ago really, until I really kind of finalized it for this release. But there was a version of it in The Last Rockstar (Michael Hutchence documentary), and that was ready to be released. So it's this luxury of being able to keep chipping away at these things without screwing them up, hopefully. It's been a long period of time doing that and it's been cool. Funny enough, when I first started working on "One Way", you know what sort of the band of the moment was? The White Stripes! And if you listen to the opening of it and that kick drum thing, that was like "Oh shit!". Look how far that's changed. And not that they're not amazing, but you know what I'm saying? They weren't an unknown new band, but they were on the upswing. They had just become huge or were about to be. I scored a movie with Scott Caan and he took me to go see it at the El Rey.
You've already touched on it a bit, but could you talk a bit about the song "One Way" that you recently released, as well as the track "Save My Life", which will both be released on a 10" picture disc in mid-May?
So, in following up on that, we kind of came to this conclusion that "OK. It looks like there's some stuff here". We didn't know what we had at that point, but we knew that there were potentially a bunch of options for putting a Michael Hutchence package together. We also knew that when the V2 record came out, outside of Australia, it didn't really see the light of day because there was no one to promote it, right? At this stage of the game, I think we're talking 2008, or somewhere around there...2007? Definitely pre-2010. It was like, "Alright. Let's do a documentary." Nothing had been done up until that point. Really, up until now, there's only one thing that has been done. So, we wanted to use the songs to help fuel the documentary that would center around the discovery of the music and etc. And within that is a way to tell Michael's story. We knew we didn't want to go down the tabloid-y, sort of toxic road. It was still really close to when he had died. It was only 10 years after he'd died. It was difficult. It took 10 years almost to get the movie made. Within that, we went down the path of trying to get the film made and that was a journey in itself. We were trying to find the right director because with documentaries it's all about having the right director. I didn't know anything about getting a movie made. Like anything else, it was like "Oh. I can get a movie made, yeah." And then you learn, 10 years later, or whatever. But I have some traction in that world now, because I actually got a movie made. And I say that to anybody who has successfully had a film made. I don't care if it's the worst movie ever made. You have my respect. It's almost like a miracle or an act of God. So many things have to go right and having to deal with people where 9 out of 10 of them are looking for a reason to say no. That was sort of a big motivator of, you know, kind of dictating how the music got...you know in the sense where we're trying to get this movie made. Then we finally got traction with the guy at Channel 7 Australia, Mark Llewellyn. One of the things I didn't want to do, is if you go watch the movie, I'm actually working on the songs in the movie. Usually in those movies, they'll go back in and pretend like, you know, they're going to the studio and start playing with faders. I knew that we needed a studio to film in and I'd need to pay for the studio and there was no money. So, I used the film budget to help get the record made and created a connection between the two. There are some moments in there where it's, like, the moment of creation. And most of that is Michael's vocal up to a cappella, locked to a click, and just seeing where it could take me. I've done it with Bowie with a "Little Wonder" remix where I literally took his vocal, got rid of all the music, and just started playing to the vocal. And you can hear the chords. It's crazy because it's so rich and telling you where to go and allowing it to happen. Michael had that same sort of thing. He had a song called "Temptation" and that's one of the clips where it's like I was doing the string arrangements or something, but I could hear it all. Circling back to your earlier question, I think that is what was liberating for him, and Shaun told me the same thing, where it's like, they both came out of being in bands and everything has to be done by committee. And that's what a band is and is what it's supposed to be. It's just a different dynamic and as a singer, having everything kind of built and tailored around you, and not so many people to have to run things through, it's just another way of working that gives you something that maybe you won't be getting in the other situations. It's not an either/or thing. But I think that was a big motivating thing.
With "Save My Life" and "One Way", you can hear that coming through. You can hear it in the track. There's nothing on there, down to the little Jordan Peterson snippets that are there to serve the greater good, which is hopefully whoever's listening to it to enjoy it. That was a totally random thing, but it was sort of going back to that ‘90s Jane's Addiction sort of vibe, where they would drop samples...just weird random samples. And another thing that nobody has picked up on, is that in "The Middle Age" there's sort of a riff. It's almost a Zeppelin-y guitar riff. That is the guitar player from The Verve, Nick McCabe. I think that's one of the cool things about Facebook and the internet. I ended up talking to him, and I don't even know how we connected. We just sort of connected somehow on Facebook. And I mean that's the thing...my god. I wish Michael was here for that one because that would have meant a lot to him, to have Nick playing on something. And I've actually got another version of the song that I'm going to try to maybe do because Nick laid down so much stuff. And again, that was that luxury of working on a song over 10...15...I don't even know how many years it's been. I said, "Hey Nick. If you're feeling something...", so he gave me a pass of just him doing what he does. And I told him "Look. The middle part is missing something." I think most people look at Michael and think about if Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison had a love child, right? I see that and it's a true, legitimate thing, but I always saw so much Robert Plant in him. And he has his own key. Those guys all have their own key. They're all in between the notes. Michael really had a lot of Robert Plant-isms in his voice. So, I always was like "Let's ramp it up and see how hard we can go." Not like heavy metal or anything, but you know what I'm saying? Obviously, there are nods to INXS and what he did with the band and beats. But that's what I do naturally anyway, mixing guitars with beats, but maybe a little more on steroids. And you know what the coolest thing about this to me is? And I know Michael would have loved this. It's getting picked up on alternative radio. We got played in between, ummm...it would have made Michael so happy. I made me happy. It got played between The Black Keys and Papa Roach on Q104 in NY. How cool is that? There's another one in Cleveland that picked up on it a little bit. And I mean, you probably wouldn't be talking to me if you didn't like the song and there wasn't something there. It's crazy, though. There hasn't been one negative thing said. There was one blogger you could tell so wanted to go there, but couldn't really do it. That was another thing. Me and Michael talked about that. After that whole episode at the Brit Awards, with the Oasis guys. And he was really bummed out because they were the band of the moment in England and it was so unnecessary. I said "Listen. Here's the deal. We just make the record so good, that if anybody disses it, they look like idiots." So, what are you going to say? You don't have to like it but you can't say it's a shitty record. It's undeniably good enough to not diss (laughs)!
You have said that through this journey, you have come to a better understanding of what happened to Michael and why? In what ways do you feel you better understand him and what do you see as his lasting impact and legacy?
The first thing is the time. The passage of time and having that perspective of time going by, where you don't see things in the moment and even ten years later, and even in my own life. And if you look at it like any, and I don't care if it's Elvis or Frank Sinatra or whoever it may be, there's no artist that has been successful in the entertainment industry that has never gone through, as was coined by Julien Temple, "the wilderness years", right? He did a movie called 'The Future Is Unwritten' about Joe Strummer. I was lucky enough that Joe coming out of his wilderness years was with Black Grape because Joe was hanging out with us and was 10 years ahead of Michael. And it doesn't hit everyone as hard, but even Frank Sinatra and Elvis had comebacks. Elvis had to come back. Now he's Elvis, but in the time, trust me, there was probably a window there where it wasn't that fun to be Elvis. Michael was at the end of the beginning of that portion of the story if we're looking at the sort of arc of his life. Then on top of it, he's in this tabloid frenzy because of the relationship he's in. It was just like a stew of toxicity. He was under a lot of pressure and stress and then he had that injury on his head, which caused him to lose his sense of smell and taste. That would be like Picasso not being able to see. Michael enjoyed tasting and smelling things more than most. So, to have that taken away, and then nobody knew. It's not like now, where being a victim of something is the most heroic thing you can do. In those days, you kept your mouth shut and walked it off. It wasn't the culture then to glorify all of the stuff you were going through. He wasn't wired that way either. So, he was holding a lot of stuff in.
And that's the thing, you know. It's just the time going by and then seeing the parallels to the world we live in now to then. There are so many people who if you time transported them from 1995 to 2024, and they saw themselves and the positions they were taking, they would be horrified at that person. Especially when it comes to issues of freedom of speech and things like that. And Michael was, like, a real champion of the underdog, because I think he always saw himself as the underdog, to a certain degree. It's just the things you can look at that he didn't get through, where he was at then, and then applying them to today and having a context. That's kind of what I meant. Hopefully, if we get to expand on this...and I don't want to re-release The Last Rockstar...but there is a potential opportunity to do something new. And it may not be a documentary. Maybe it's a narrative-driven episodic thing, or whatever it may be. But to use some of the stories, not just in Michael's life, but from that era, to kind of hold up a mirror to where we are now. And maybe it will remind people of how we got here. Because let's be honest, the world's a mess right now and I think music is like the canary in the coal mine. Everything that's happened to the music business, I've already lived it. Whether it's recordings being de-monetized or whatever it may be. The bottom already dropped out. A lot of things are heading for that same brick wall. Now that the dust is starting to settle and music again is starting...like the whole idea of doing vinyl. It's pretty cool that there's even a demand for it. I think music is starting to come back into the world because it's lost its place. It doesn't have the significance it used to hold. It doesn't mean what it used to mean and there are a million reasons why. But it all starts with people's values and what's held up as what matters and what doesn't matter and what's important and what's success. It's all shifted.