Musician Nick Lowe on his legendary career and first new album in a decade

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: One of rock 'n' roll's greatest songwriters is out with a brand-new album. It's Nick Lowe's first full-length effort in nearly a dozen years and it debuted as number one on the Billboard charts in the Americana folk category.

Special correspondent Tom Casciato has the story for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

(Music)

Tom Casciato: It's hard to find rock 'n' roll's credentials more solid than Nick Lowe's. And it's not just because he tours with a surf rock band, Los Straitjackets in their trademark Mexican wrestling masks.

From pub rock to new wave, he built his rep in the '70s, solo and in the bands Brinsley Schwarz and Rockpile. He was also a producer for Graham Parker, The Damned, and Elvis Costello. He even penned one of rock's most memorable anthems, made famous by Costello.

But if rock 'n' roll is all you know about Nick Lowe and his 75 years on the planet, and well over 50 in the Music business, well, let's start at the start.

Nick Lowe, Musician: My father was a career RAF officer. He was a pilot. He met my mom during the war. She was in the women's Royal Air Force. She came from a show business family, sort of vaudeville really. She was a very good singer and taught me how to sing "Inchworm" from Hans Christian Andersen, Danny Kaye thing.

And that's got this lovely descant, where the kids sing one tune and there's a countermelody. I figured out how to be able to sing another tune while somebody was singing a different tune. And a third element is created. And I kept on bugging her to do it again: "Come on, mom. Let's do the 'Inchworm' song."

(Laughter)

Tom Casciato: He recalls more seeds his mother planted, the country of Tennessee Ernie Ford, the jazzy pop of Nat King Cole.

Nick Lowe: You know, Sinatra, Peggy Lee, pre-Beatles era Music, which I love.

Tom Casciato: But then came the Beatles, and scenes like this led young Nick straight to rock 'n' roll.

Nick Lowe: You know, I wanted to be famous, on the TV, meet more girls that way. That was my main ambition at the time.

Well, it didn't take me too long to realize that if I wanted to have any kind of long career, I had to learn how to write songs.

Tom Casciato: So a composer he became, writing songs he still performs today. But as he gained confidence, he also learned humility, as when he produced Costello's classic debut album.

Nick Lowe: I started the record with Elvis saying: "Right, Elvis, so I think what you should do here is this, that, and don't sing there."

And then after, about two days, I was turning up in the studio and saying: "Good morning, Mr. Costello. What would you like to do today?"

Tom Casciato: In 1979, Nick achieved hitmaker status on his own. A British documentary from the era shows him looking very much a rock star, but he says that involved a certain amount of role play.

Nick Lowe: I realized really soon that I wasn't the sort of person who could sustain that.

Tom Casciato: So you didn't think rock superstardom sure to follow?

Nick Lowe: No, no, no, no. You know, I'm not an Elton John or a Cher. And I have always thought that the most fun you can have is just before you make it.

Tom Casciato: In the '80s, just after he'd made it, it sure looked like Nick was having fun, maybe the time of his life.

You watch the videos and you look like you're on top of the world.

Nick Lowe: Yes, I suppose — I suppose it did. But I thought that was me in decline. I could feel my pop star status waning.

I was drinking and taking too many drugs in a bid to try and cheer myself up and write better songs. And it doesn't work, boys and girls. But also my pop star shtick was boring me as well.

Tom Casciato: It sounds like it was hard for a time for Nick Lowe to be Nick Lowe. But in the ensuing decades, he abandoned the rock star stance and took on the role he has to this day, that of what "Rolling Stone" has called a master songwriter who never takes himself too seriously.

Question: You are Britain's songwriter, right?

Nick Lowe: I think that Paul McCartney might have something to say about that. But…

(Laughter)

Tom Casciato: He gained that status partly by reaching back to the Music he learned from his mom.

A lot of the Music you have recorded from the '90s on, I think, has as much of a relationship to that pre-Beatles era as to the rock era.

Nick Lowe: Yes, well, that's nice of you to observe that.

Tom Casciato: Nick and the band have a new album, "Indoor Safari," in which they have rerecorded some of his favorite compositions of recent vintage.

And he still strikes a good pose, but he's got a few things to say to the kid who wanted to be a star.

If Nick in 2024 could talk to Nick in 1974, there's something to know now that you wish you knew then?

Nick Lowe: Well, Johnny Cash once said to me, incredibly disappointingly, I thought at the time: "Nick, what you have got to do is figure out how to be yourself."

I didn't really know what he meant. I thought, is that the best you could do, John? But, actually, now I do. Because, when you're young, you're trying to sort of cop an act. You are trying to be — always trying to be somebody that you're not. And you have got to sort of welcome in the things that you don't really like about yourself, you know, but welcome it in.

Because if you can figure out how to be yourself, it makes things so much easier.

Tom Casciato: For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Tom Casciato in Tarrytown, New York.