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At the point I met David Gray, I had just read my hundredth
"Irish David Gray Interview". All these interviews
constantly going over the same territory. I wanted to ask him
about his marriage and his relationships with his parents and
friends. The bloody nerve of me! At the end of a long day of
interviews, he answered all my questions and listening back
to the tape, I'm struck by what an honest bloke David Gray really
is.
Ken Sweeney.
Has this new album, White Ladder, changed things in your life?
"Things are constantly changing, so this album is going
to have a big effect on the way I think about things, it’s been
so successful. There’s a little bit of pressure to follow it
up which I don’t think I’ve had before (laughs). So in that
respect White Ladder will change the way I look at things. I’m
going to have to be dead serious without being too precious
about it all."
You’ve been very consistent: White Ladder is your fourth album.
Have you ever gone through a writer’s block ?
"Well, I haven’t written or finished a song since September
last year which is the longest I’ve ever gone without writing
a song. Before that I had an unprecedented run of writing and
writing. White Ladder was the fourth wave of writing, on top
of writing three waves before that. . . each wave getting me
towards what I wanted; each time thinking I’ve written too many
songs… that I’m pushing it too far. I’d written forty-odd songs
over a couple of years but since then I’ve done absolutely nothing.
"One of the reasons is that I’ve been working setting up
a record-company; for practical reasons I’ve been busy. I haven’t
been free to go into songwriting mode. Normally this gap in
my songwriting would freak me out (laughs)….but things have
kind of changed. I’m watching myself more to see how I feel.
How can I put it? You have to go through some stuff, to re-stock,
in order to get somewhere else. I’m pregnant with a whole new
wave of stuff at the moment so I’m starting to get broody and
moody. That’s how it’s working at the moment."
I know you’re married: how is that affected by being on the
road, travelling or being a songwriter?
"It’s not the perfect situation….When I was touring in
America, it was pretty hard, touring all the time, touring for
ten weeks, coming back and going off again. It was really difficult
for a while because you become kind of estranged. You don’t
actually see each other. In theory, you’re married but you’re
not actually seeing the other person… it gets weirder and weirder.
There’s no custom built nine to five monotony."
How did you deal with record companies when you were signed
?
"I didn’t deal with them very well. I didn’t have a full
picture of how everything worked and fitted together. I was
innocent in that respect. I just wanted to make my record Century
Ends. I was, like, let me in there. I want to sing my heart
out. But now, because what I’ve been through, I have all sorts
of opinions. You think ‘woh! I’ve been given all sorts of money,
this is marvellous’ … but when you think about it, what was
it based on? Nothing. It was a load of bullshit. "That’s
all they’ve got to throw at you: loads of money. That’s all
they’ve got: money, so it makes them feel better. ‘Hey’, they
say, ‘here’s loads of money, let’s buy some trainers and go
to an expensive bar’. That’s all they’ve got to offer you but
they ain’t gonna build you a career. I’m well out of it. It
works for some people; if you’re the trendy new thing, you can
make it all work for you - if you’re clever - but it’s a perilous
thing."
You’ve got a certain level of success now. Would you like it
to turn into Global Stardom?
"Yeah! (collapses into giggles). I’ve been looking at
myself to find out what the answer to that is. I’m not quite
sure. Yeah, it’s going to get a lot bigger than this. Where
Ireland is going like a steam-train, it’s time to get somewhere
else going because you can’t tour here for very long. It’s no
good doing four days, it doesn’t really satisfy you. We’ve got
something really good going on; what you want is more people
to inspire you to inspire them. "That’s what I want. I
don’t think getting bigger is the answer but you have to find
a new challenge. At the moment, getting bigger is the objective.
We’ve got to get some money in to sustain the whole thing. It’s
a rather fragile situation. I mean I want to take it to its
natural conclusion but you never know what’s going to happen
next. I might fall over, trip up, and all this might be an irrelevant
conversation."
Do you have friends in your life from way back?
"I’m a bit of a funny one with friends. I haven’t really
got anyone from childhood and I don’t think now I’ve got anyone
from school. I think I’ve "been set on my own thing"
and that might be why I haven’t kept any those early ones. "I’ve
got a whole bunch of friends now in London. I think friends
are very important. I think it’s something I’m started to realise
a few years ago, that I was missing out on a very valuable thing
in my kind of solo existence. I was married but I just try and
keep it to a minimum: a wife.- a soulmate! That’s efficient
friend-making (laughs). I don’t know why it is. It’s a quirk
of mine that I don’t seem to be very good at keeping the friendship
thing going. I tend to move on and be thinking different thoughts.
I can be in a completely different place. I mean, I moved around
a lot and when I got married, I fell in with a new bunch of
people that my wife knew. So that was like starting all over
again with a new bunch of people."
To be a singer, travelling around, outside of a normal 9-5
day job. Is that a strange thing?
"Yeah, but what isn’t strange? Life is strange. My life
is weird in its own way. Being a songwriter does remove you
a little bit. I think fame is real remover because if you get
famous, you get hassled and you have to live in the world of
the famous people who don’t seem to have that many feet on the
ground, collectively. It’s just a different world."
What do you’re parents think of your success?
"I was very lucky - they were very encouraging. I’ve always
been very into doing my own thing and they never said ‘you’re
not going to do this’. They were delighted I wanted to do things.
I cocked up all my exams at school. I got bored with things
because I knew what I wanted to do. So I worked out the path
of least resistance -Art School! Brilliant! A few dodgy paintings
and I’ll be there: form a band and stone me ! It all sort of
worked. "My parents have been tremendous. My dad has been
pretty intense about it. He’s dead proud and he goes on about
it and sometimes I’m like "shut up, dad!’ because he’s
telling everyone what’s happening. But (grins) parents, they’re
embarrassing aren’t they?!"
Tell us a story about being on the road in America?
"We had this strange experience being on tour in America.
The record company weren’t giving us very much money so we had
this incredibly tight budget. So instead of having hotels we
decided to opt for the sleeper buses and we basically got the
crappiest sleeper bus in the U.S.A.; this thing had done nearly
two million miles in twenty years. Going around and around America.
"The driver had been in it the whole time, a sort of Hobbit
type with really long hair and we should have known there was
something really funny about him. He had contact lenses and
he never took them out. He just squirted stuff in them early
in the morning. This guy lost his mind on the tour. He fell
in love with a woman and asked us if she could come on the bus
for the rest of the tour, and I said, ‘absolutely not!’. "So
he decided to take matters into his own hands and faked the
bus breaking down in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of
winter. It was in a place like Hicksville. We pulled into some
garage and he said, ‘there’s something wrong with my back tyre,
we’ll have to pull in here’. And it was a little café
with one guy behind the counter with teeth going everywhere.
This guy in the bus had tampered with the electrics so all the
power went off. "We were watching the video in the bus
and we all had to go into the café and the moment we’d
got into the café, he preceded to drive off into the
distance. He took all our gear, everything…. back towards Seattle.
We were left open mouthed, standing in this service station
and we had to call the cops. We had a full motorway chase over
a hundred miles before we caught up with him. "And I’m
not even telling you half the story. We missed three gigs because
of that. The police couldn’t do anything about it because it
was a civil thing. That was the weirdest thing that happened."
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