In Which I Realize I’m in the Middle of a Learning Project
Yes, I hope the lyrics reflect that story of hope. It’s weird, because when I write words usually it’s not the case that I have a subject matter. A phrase will come to my head, or something will happen, or I’ll feel something or mishear something and it comes out of that. But here I’ve actually got to write on demand. It’s not like the white heat of inspiration has hit me, it’s like I’ve got this subject and I’ve got to write something about it. And that’s different to your normal process?
Absolutely. In the normal process you don’t necessarily have to come up with words, you don’t have to come up with a bit of music. You can do something else, you can go for a nice walk. But here I’ve got to come up something for a deadline.
The brutalist buildings might seem an unusual subject to those who associate your lyrics with nature and more pastoral themes?
Possibly, but I’ve begun to tire of that a bit because there seems to be a lot of it about and I’ve come to think it’s maybe a bit easy and we’re generating this false rural utopia. It’s not how it is. I think I’ve come to realise I’m a lot more urban than that. And yeah I did grown up in the countryside, but I’ve lived a long while in a city and I really love the city. I think actually, it possibly was that, but if you look a bit closer it’s more to do with states of mind than states of countryside… Even when it comes to something like ‘Low Bay of Sky’ [from 2007's Autumn Response]. That was improvised on the spot and I remember I had a book open in front of me about trees, but I think if you look at those words, it’s a mental state ‘low bay of sky’, it’s not a nature description. And winter isn’t exclusive to the countryside. Summer Wanderer – if you take the Gaelic translation of Sorley – Somhairle – it’s literally ‘Summer Wanderer’. Obviously Gaelic culture is very – well, it’surbanised now – but obviously all that comes from a very non-urban setting. The Summer Wanderer was wandering away from that rural setting to somewhere else, but my summer wandering was very much in the city. I think urban and rural have a different relationship now – they used to be quite distinct but now are quite blurred. And I think we are maybe more united by our psychology than environment… possibly.
The winter thing I did was another case of having to come up with words. Alun [Woodward] from Platform asked if I would take part in this event which was to do with winter, so I thought I’ll come up with something new about winter for the event. Winter has 154 days, so I’d come up with 154 lines and it became this thing which subsequently I performed elsewhere. One such place was in Poland and the guy who had invited me over to Warsaw said, ‘I really liked that, can you record it for my label?’ So I recorded it for his label and he’s going to release it on the first day of winter 2015. It’s the Populista label, operating out of Warsaw. I bought a reel of tape which lasted 33 minutes, which is the duration of the piece. The lyrics have been subtly altered. I saw ways to improve them through live performance. What you’ve got on the record is the memorialised version and that’s probably how it’s going to be from now on. But it’s a piece that I’ve only performed in winter, so I’ve got acouple more months and then I’ve got to put it away until next winter.
The composition of the piece seems system-based, almost Oulipan.
I had to write something about winter so I came up with a plan where there were 14 lots of 11 lines, every first two lines would be climactic, every third line would be addressed at winter. There’s a scheme there, so it’s quite like Demolished Structures in that you’re writing to order. But usually you can’t pinpoint where the inspiration is, it’s just walking along and maybe… I was buying my train ticket here and I heard someone in the ticket booth talking about their migraine and a mother talking to her daughter saying ‘you fought it away with your foot’ and it brought instantly to my mind ‘I fought migraine with my feet’. Maybe that’s the start of something! It’s things like that. It’s usually senseless doggerel!
On the Sunday at Counterflows you’re doing a solo set.
The solo set is going to be acoustic and voice. Sometimes when you talk to a stranger about what you do, what you play live, and you’ve got to make it sound socially acceptable, you say ‘I play acoustic guitar and sing’. But I think that only captures the half of it. I did an acoustic guitar and voice set and somebody came up afterwards and said ‘that was like a cross between William Bennett and Stewart Lee’. Now if you can do that with an acoustic guitar and voice, I’m quite pleased with that, because there is an element of playing the room and stretching their expectations. It’s not storytelling, there’s a performance aspect to it. I feel I’m at a stage with acoustic guitar and voice where I can get up there with no material whatsoever and still deliver a performance. As it is I do have material to fall back on and I do deliver material, but I never have a set as such. My acoustic guitar playing has got to the point where I’ve totally stripped it of all ornament and I think myacoustic guitar style could be quite disappointing to anyone who comes along expecting me being something like Sapphie or May because on those records I was possibly playing more ornamentally, more artfully. It’s just the way my style’s gone. I could play like that if I wanted to, but I don’t feel the need. Again, reacting against the way folk has become a catch-all for a certain kind of virtuoso storytelling faux-idyll. And a reaction against your own previous practice, trying not to repeat yourself?
Yeah, absolutely. When I did that house show, the final night I did an acoustic guitar and vocal performance – the previous nights hadn’t been that – and the final thing I did was ‘Soon It Will Be Fire’ from Sapphie, and it was bizarre, because it was kind of like Sinatra going into ‘My Way’. There was a ripple of applause, like ‘finally! He’s cut through that experimental crap and he’s delivering now’. That was possibly a rare moment. Having said that, I did three performances in London recently and although I didn’t do Sapphie, the first night I said to the audience, this is going to be about songs, if that sits uncomfortably with you, come back tomorrow night when it’ll be something different.
Some might see you interest in playing with the audience’s expectations as rather bloody minded or perverse?
Oh I’m totally bloody minded and why not? I’m not doing it out of misanthropy, I’m doing it out of trying to make it interesting for myself. If I’m on stage I’m thinking, for the next hour of my life I don’t want to be going through the motions. I think there’s a danger if you’re a song delivery mechanism on stage that you could be perhaps going through the motions. I’m probably setting myself up for a fall here! Come the Sunday night of Counterflows I’ll be saying ‘okay, now I’m going to play ‘Soon It Will Be Fire’. I’ve got a psychological need to keep it interesting for myself, which is possibly a bit selfish.
I once was told by a promoter that what I’d done was inappropriate. I think they were wanting something different, but y’know, it wasn’t too disappointing.
You were once thrown out of a folk club for playing the same chord for 15 minutes…
That was in the ’80s, I was physically ejected. That was ’19 Used Postage Stamps’, I don’t know if you’ve heard that. It’s actually the opening track on the seven CD No Fans boxset. I had a list of things as lyrics, things I’d received through the post, and I was just going to keep on going, playing the same two chords, and see what happened. The deal was… these old folk clubs were fantastic because you didn’t have to pass an audition, you didn’t have to submit a demo, it was very democratic. You get up there and do what you wanted, and people did, but it was usually within the folk idiom. Yeah I had an acoustic guitar and voice, but after about five minutes it became very clear I wasn’t going to be doing anything other than singing very elongated syllables over the same two chords. Ten minutes was the rule and maybe 13-14 minutes in the comperes realised I wasn’t going to shift and the guitar was taken out of my hands and I was ushered off. I got a cheer from the audience, I think itwas entertaining, and there was something like ‘it did him a lot more good than it did us’. But yeah, I was testing it. There was another time I went along to some folk club with a reed organ, and I just started sellotaping down the keys down and I ended up having a debate with the audience about why the hell I’d done that. I was young, I was that intense, I was angry. It’s not a deliberate provocation. The whole thing’s a bit of an experiment.
What have been your favourite shows?
I think the house show [Glasgow Open House festival 2014, where Youngs played a three night residency in a West End flat] was really fun, because I could do lots of different things. The first night I did a zither and towards the end of that show Luke [Fowler] came and did a bit of modular synth with the zither. The second night I did guitar, then voice… It’s nice to do all those different things, I find that satisfying. I did a night in Manchester with several different sets, that was quite satisfying, even though only about ten people came. But that was quite good because you could have a relationship with the audience, control the situation. Someone said to me afterwards ‘it’s not about entertainment is it?’ which I quite liked.
It’s satisfying when I feel I’ve done something personally interesting. Not necessarily when you’ve got a big cheer from the audience. Very much probably on my own terms, which is maybe a bit selfish. Equally, you do shows where I felt I did a good version of what it is I do and the audience seemed to appreciate it, and that’s nice. And afterwards people come up to you and say ‘I really enjoyed that’ and that is nice, it would be foolish to say I didn’t like it.
I’ve played to audiences who have no interest in what I do, I’ve played to audiences who are quite antagonistic, but I think with Counterflows the audiences just want you to do well… probably. They’re not out to get you – I hope!
Last year you played a gig at Glasgow Green as part of the Commonwealth Games. I heard you got a sing-along going.
Yeah!
Was it a different kind of audience to what you’re used to?
Possibly. Actually my dad came along to that one. Usually he doesn’t enjoy it, but after I’d finished playing he came up to me and went ‘HEEEY!’ I think he got quite a lot out of it. He’s in his ’80s and it was a really nice moment. It was a terrible day, it was so wet. The only other time I’ve played which was wetter was Lushfest, which was this event for Lush employees down in Dorset. I think it was the wettest day in Dorset on record. The Lush employees decided to go home and I ended up playing to the other people on the bill basically: Pelt, Alexander Tucker, the guy who had organised. That was the audience. It was actually very good!
Counterflows is very much a festival that draws on the Glasgow grassroots scene. Do you feel you’re part of the Glasgow scene?
I lived in Glasgow for probably about five or so years before I played live. When I moved to Glasgow I’d had records on Forced Exposure and things like that. I remember David Keenan coming to the first live show, I was supporting Ganger, and he came came along thinking ‘that can’t be THE Richard Youngs’ and I was speaking to him afterwards and he went, ‘what, you live in Glasgow?’ Cos he had bought the Forced Exposure record and it was a total headfuck for him as he’d bought these records by a guy who lived in Glasgow and he hadn’t a clue about it. I was very much on the periphery for ages and I’m not really a scene player but as time goes on you make friends and I guess probably I’m part of the scene now. But I’ve probably done it very much on my own terms. I remember in the early days, y’know, taking a record to a record shop asking if they’d stock it, and they’d do sale or return and sell one copy. But I’ve probably got more of a reputation now in Glasgow. I haven’t really doneanything to become part of the Glasgow scene, it just evolved over decades.
What’s on the horizon beyond Counterflows?
Well, VHF is doing a 7 CD retrospective box set No Fans compendium. All the No Fans releases, along with new material and unreleased material. So that’s the big release. I’ve also got a protest record which we aim to get out on election day. We’re just doing the artwork for that. The winter record in winter. A potential Flexibles 12”, we’ll see if anyone wants that. I’m going to be doing a record for Golden Lab. I’ve been working on that and I can exclusively reveal that it will be called Varispeed Etudes. Luke [Fowler] gave me this reel of tape. He’d just found it, this beautiful, pristine 5” reel of tape. I said ‘that’s a lovely reel of tape’ and he said, ‘have it, fill it!’. So I filled it with some ‘varispeed etudes’. Probably pretty obvious what it is! I should say that when I played London, Dylan Nyoukis was supporting, and he had these two cassette players with varispeed on them. And I remember having this conversation with him afterwards, saying ‘varispeed: it’s the future’. Soit kind of came out of that.
You’d been recording digitally – why the return to analogue?
I had a major, major computer crash and I had to erase everything and fresh install and at this time it was Christmas I treated myself to a 10” reel of tape to record the winter thing because I thought it would sound better on reel. And it does sound great on reel. Now the Varispeed Etudes is on reel, the Flexibles 12” is on reel. I decided everything I record from now on is going to be on reel, because it cuts through the crap. You’ve only got four tracks to say something and it gives it a certain sound. Sure, I bounce it down onto computer, because things are digital to a certain extent, but it means you’ve got to focus, there’s no frivolity, it’s midi-free. It’s a leaner, meaner recording machiner. It’s ham-operating. I’m ham-rolling at the moment.
Finally, which acts are you most looking forward to at Counterflows?
As a middle-aged man with responsibilities I don’t often get to see much music in a live situation, apart from whatever’s on the same bill as me. I very much like the opportunity to be surprised, so I’m going into it like, hey there’s other music, let’s bring it on! I’ll experience it as a rare treat. I’m very open-minded, I’ll take it as it comes.
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