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Why did your new album, Life, Death and Dennis Hopper, take four years? VerulamiumParkRanger
I knew Dennis Hopper as the actor in Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now and Rebel Without a Cause, and that he stood for the counterculture, but I’d never done a deep dive. Ten years ago I saw his photos at the Royal Academy and realised he was also a brilliant photographer; I started reading biographies and checking out the movies I’d missed. Then I wrote a fun song about him, Hopper’s on Top (Genius), where every line rhymed with Hopper. I thought it would be great to do an EP, because his life was so colourful, but after some of my band members secretly recorded some instrumentals and suggested I put lyrics to them, I realised it could be an album of his life.
I started just before the pandemic but had all these other albums and box set projects, so I’d work intensely on Hopper then leave it and return with fresh ears. It has 25 songs. A friend of mine suggested I was doing too many voices myself – an American commentator, an old hippy and so on – and needed some guests. I used to love those Bruce Springsteen bootlegs where he’d do these incredible narratives at the end of the songs and thought, “If we could only get Bruce … ” He had come to a Waterboys gig in Dublin 10 years ago so there was a connection, and our manager asked his. Bruce did three takes for the song Ten Years Gone and sent all three. I got to pick between them. He did it so brilliantly and brought all the drama that I’d hoped he would.
What did you think of Prince’s cover of The Whole of the Moon – and Father Noel Furlong’s cover in Father Ted? SmilinPeter
Prince did it twice. He did a solo piano version at Ronnie Scott’s in 2014, which I’ve never heard, and a version in Minneapolis in 2015 with 3rdEyeGirl. I love it when people change my songs and make them their own. He flipped the lyrics round to sing “I saw the whole of the moon”, using the song to make a Black Lives Matter statement, which I thought was very powerful.
I love the Graham Norton version on Father Ted where he’s playing the bonkers priest in the caravan who remembers the words wrong. There’s a gay disco version as well, by Boys of a New Age, with a killer synth riff, which is storming.
In the The Double Life of Bob Dylan biography I discovered that you got invited to one of Dylan’s jamming sessions with Dave Stewart in London. How was it? Bibliophile63
It was 1985. Bob had heard The Whole of the Moon and apparently liked it, and invited us to come down to the studios. Three of us turned up – myself, Steve Wickham and Anto Thistlethwaite. Bob was really nice to us. He had a quiet word with each of us individually because he must realise that he’s precious to people and it’s nice to have a private moment with him. We played for a couple of hours. [Blondie’s] Clem Burke was on drums. The weird thing was that Bob wasn’t singing. They were creating instrumentals for which Bob would later write the lyrics, which wasn’t his usual way with a sheet of paper. In a quiet moment I leaned over and asked, “Do you still write songs the other way?” He leaned towards me with a sort of glint in his eye – as if he knew what I was implying – and said, “Yes, I do.”
What is the legacy of Dennis Hopper’s generation? MachoPud
Culturally we’re still only coming to terms with what happened in the 1950s and 60s. There was the march of technology, mass production and the confluence of civilisations: the Black African American experience meeting the white experience and Hispanic experience. Then the evolution of consciousness: the pill, women’s liberation. It was all in this melting pot of incredible musical and cultural progress. Jimi Hendrix’s guitar playing is a good metaphor for how ahead of its time it all was and we’re still catching up. Oddly enough, now we’ve got the backlash with Maga and all that. People are trying to turn back progress but it won’t work because humanity has to move forward, and we will.
When you released The Liar, did you think it possible that Trump would be elected president again? PaulWB1960
It was written around the time of his second impeachment. When it came out in 2022 I always had this sneaking dread that Biden’s presidency would turn out to be a moment between two Trump nightmares.
Would you have actually liked to have been a fisherman? Or indeed a “brakeman on a hurtlin’ fevered train”? DeJongandtherestless
There was a moment in my life where my personal circumstances were sufficiently confusing and confounding for me to wish exactly that. Unfortunately, I didn’t go off and do it. I put it in a song instead.
What are your memories of your teenage years in Ayr, and have you ever thought of doing an album inspired by Burns as you did with Yeats [An Appointment With Mr Yeats, 2011]? Chriswa29
Burns has been done so many times and so well that there’s not really much fresh ground for me. Yeats felt underdone. Ayr was very beautiful geographically, a great old town to be in as a teenager that taught me a lot of life lessons. My first band members were blokes from Ayr. My first girlfriends were the women of Ayr. I owe the town a lot.
My first gig was your old band called Another Pretty Face. How do you look back on your Edinburgh punk days? M1keM5
I was living in Edinburgh and in my first proper band. I had a job in the HMV shop to make money to buy instruments. The moment we got the sniff of a record deal I was off, but it was a golden time: great fun, uncomplicated. Me and the guitar player lived in a bedsit with an Iranian landlady and if you had any lingering guests after 10pm she would come storming up the stairs. Pity the poor interloper! I think of those times with a lot of fondness.
“Your coat is made of magic / And around your table angels play” is beautiful. Is When Ye Go Away about anyone in particular? IanJamesCameron
It grew out of another song, Killing My Heart, which is on The Best of the Waterboys and the Fisherman’s Box box set. I didn’t think we had the definitive version so I stole most of the lyrics and put new music to it. Killing My Heart was about my own relationship at the time with my partner who became my first wife, a relationship going wrong for a member of the band, and one going wrong for a member of my family. But When Ye Go Away is more reflective: all the pain was left in Killing My Heart.
What does Spiddal mean to you and do you ever get back to it? Captain L
Spiddal is a village on the north coast of Galway Bay in the Irish-language area [where some of Fisherman’s Blues was recorded]. I was there last summer being interviewed for a documentary about a pub called Hughes’ and everything came back to me. The charms of the place, the Atlantic light, the sense of freedom and the magic of the Gaelic-speaking world. We got a tour of a new studio there and I was smitten all over again, thinking: could we come back and make a record? It’s otherworldly and an inspirational place, so maybe something will happen.
When did you first hear the phrase “a bang on the ear” and did you have to ask what it meant? strawwdog
It was a telephone conversation with a crew member of the Waterboys who had a little boy called Benji. We were joshing on the phone and as we were signing off I said: “Oh, and give Benji a clout in the head from me.” It’s not meant literally; it’s code for an affectionate “hello”. I thought, “I like that phrase. I’m going to use that.”
Red Army Blues is probably my favourite Waterboys song. You sing it with real conviction even though it’s written from someone else’s point of view. How did the song come about? wyngatecarpenter
I was fascinated by the second world war and read two books that inspired that song. One was The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer, a Frenchman of German extraction who was drafted into the SS. The other was The Diary of Vikenty Angarov, a story of a Russian who had fought in the Red Army. Because he’d seen how people lived in the west, it was threatening to Stalin’s control. So a lot of the soldiers who had fought for Russia and defeated fascism were sent to the gulags. I was very moved by both books so I put together the song from the Russian soldier’s perspective, but using place names and incidents from The Forgotten Soldier.
Wikipedia says that there have been more than 80 members of the Waterboys, either as contributors to albums or tours. What does it take to be a Waterboy? 69thAnteater
It’s a matter of pride to me that we’ve had more members than any other band ever! I think the nearest competitor is Santana. I’m looking for people with an attitude or a character, and they have to be versatile enough to play all the different kinds of music that factor into the Waterboys’ sound. My skills as a bandleader have developed, so now I find it much easier to bring whatever I need out of the musician.
Did you recognise early on that Karl Wallinger was a talent best-suited to front his own band, and did you remain friendly after he left to form World Party? takinaride
I always knew he was a potential band leader. The first time I went to his flat in London he had a reel-to-reel recorder and played me some songs he’d been working on and was singing. I always knew he was going to go off and make his own albums. After he left the band I didn’t see him for years. Then, when he was living in New York in the early 90s, we met up, had a meal and played each other our new records. But he had this bad habit of putting me down in interviews in a very personal way, and that didn’t really foster a good relationship.
Will Steve Wickham be in the Waterboys again? Sharon
Probably. He’s on one song of the Dennis Hopper album, but the fiddle has a very particular sound and carries a very particular emotion. I spent 25 years singing with an incredibly talented and brilliant fiddle player who can mirror everything I do and go everywhere with me. At the moment, it’s really a good experience for both of us to not have to work alongside each other. For me it’s a bit like life after fiddle – or more likely life between fiddle eras. We’re still best mates.
