NEW YORK DOLLS: HIGH HEELS IN NEWCASTLE
Syl Sylvain interviewed when the New York Dolls were recording their 2011 album ‘Dancing Backward in High Heels‘ at Blast Studios in Newcastle, England.
You’ve got the whole world to choose from, so what brings a bunch of New Yorkers over to sunny Newcastle to record new material?
I guess its work you know, and Newcastle has been such an incredibly nice, hospitable place for us. They come out of the pubs to see us when we’re walking down the road. We played three nights at The Cluny and we were so well received. There’s such warmth and open hearts round here, that it’s the place to be. For any musician, you go to where you are wanted the most and right now for us its here in Newcastle. One of the main reasons that we are here is because of Ged and Eric at Demolition Records up here in Newcastle. They had so much faith in us and just loved what we were doing and they really wanted us to come over to do the record.
The main reason that you are here is to record a new album which is the follow up to last years Cause I Sez So. This will be your 5th studio album in almost 40 years so in New York Dolls terms this is pretty fast work since your last one. Are you in a rich vein of writing form at the moment?
It is a prolific time for us but having said that as a writer, you’re always bustin’ out a tune, at least one that you want to hear. I still like to write. The way I hear things coming out, I think it’s the most creative record that the New York Dolls, and me and David in particular, have ever done. We’ve worked with a lot of great people and I’m not putting anybody down and I’m not trying to compare it with earlier versions of The Dolls but as far as song-writing goes I think that these are the best songs that we have ever come up with.
Is this the first time you’ve recorded in England?
No, no, we’ve recorded here many times before throughout the ages but it’s our first time in Newcastle.
You’ve been over for a few weeks now, how have you found life in England compared to the States?
It’s just so friendly over here. There is such a warm hand that people give out to you no matter where you are from.
As far as style goes ‘Cause I Sez So’ was probably the most varied New York Dolls release to date and in many cases was quite a departure from your rock`n`roll roots. Will you be spreading your musical net widely again or will you be keeping things simple and direct?
What they love us for is “Personality Crisis”, “Looking For A Kiss”, “Trash” and stuff like that but we’ve already done that. We don’t have to make records. We have a name which we can use and perform probably for the rest of our lives. That’s not the kind of musicians and performers that we are. We’re doomed to write songs whether they are good or not, are well received or not, or flop like they did in the beginning.
We were told that we didn’t know how to sing, we didn’t know how to write and we couldn’t tune a guitar so why even bother, but you know what? We thought we looked pretty damned good doing that, even if it was a big crash. We had the last laugh though. It’s like those guys that’ll say “You only had one hit” but at least we got there once!!
We never really wanted to be stars, that was never in our minds, not that we never had that conversation, but we just became that. We thought it would be nice to last for two weeks as we just wanted to entertain ourselves. The norm of the day was so mundane. Stadium Rock `n` Roll became more like opera and nothing to do what we thought Rock `n` Roll should be.
As musicians, we cannot help but do something that’s important to us, and that is to write new music. We may feud and fight and try to make the best out of things. It’s sometimes a love and hurt situation, but we come up with new music that represents what we are about today and at this moment we want to do a record that shows many different sides to the band.
Have you ever come across a time where one or more of you just can’t seem to come up with anything?
To write a good song is such a hard thing to do. If you’re doomed to write songs then you have to write songs but you’re not going to be able to write every day. A song may be good for you or it could be good for somebody else. You’ve just got to write the song and worry about who’s going to get it later. Sometimes I write songs which I call “stoppers” where I can’t take it any further at that particular moment so I’ll put it to one side and give it a break and move onto the next one.
One day, all a sudden, either a piece of that one, or the results needed to finish that one, will manifest. So instead of trying to force things, we decided to make a u-turn. The song will come if you treat it right. It’s like giving birth and that’s the way it is with songs, you can’t really sweat over them too much. If they take too much thinking then you’re probably on the wrong track. If you’re flying on automatic then that’s it. If it takes an enema to get there, you just better forget about it and plug it up. The more you write the better you get at it, it comes with experience.
How many songs have written so far?
We came to Newcastle with about 20 ideas and we recorded about 16 of them and at the end of the day we’ll end up with about 10 really good songs which will cross that line and become magic.
So you’d prefer a shorter album with 10 great songs than a longer one with 15 not so good songs?
I like to look at it in the way the whole thing fits and makes a whole. Just because someone makes you a big pie doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll taste nice. What I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t matter about the size of that pie, it’s all about the taste and the flavour in every little bite and even though it’s only 10 songs, so long as those songs pass that magical point then we’ll have a great record.
On your last album you reworked “Trash” from your debut album. Why did you decide to do that?
We always do a cover or we do one of our own songs and why shouldn’t we cover ourselves, it’s great for our royalties…Ha!! We always try to lay our signature over a song and make it our own. On this record we’ve done a cover of “I Sold My Heart to the Junk Man” which is a Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles number back in the `60`s. It’s such a great song and we’ve done it our way. There’s a girl called Stephanie who worked in the pub around the corner called The Ship Inn singing on the album. One day I heard this beautiful voice coming from the pub and it was Stephanie and I thought “Wow, we need her singing on the album”. It then all of a sudden became like a movie, she was doing our catering from the pub and then she appears on our album. She also knew some singers from a college in Leeds and we brought them into the studio to play.
So you see we’re using the local fans and acquaintances on the album. They also knew a sax player who came in here and did some incredible sax work. We did this very Baroque style of song with the girls called “You Don’t Have To Cry”, it’s so beautiful and Stephanie who was singing also knew a string section. One night she went down to Leeds and brought us some singers and the next night she went back down to Leeds and brought us a string quartet. They laid down such a beautiful melody and David wrote some gorgeous lyrics for that one too.
Mick Burgess
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