CO: From the last time I talked to you, I remember one time you had told me that you had sort of called up a friend of yours and he came and carted most of your music way. Are you buying new stuff?

AP: The only stuff I've bought in the last year has been mostly music from either the twenties or the thirties. I've been buying kind of syncopated jazz stuff or really old Duke Ellington kind of thing. I recently bought an entire box set of Robert Johnson. So, nothing that's been recorded after 1940. I don't know why, I guess it's cuz I can't figure out how they do that stuff. I know how they do all that pop stuff. Being school of pop Merlin, I know how they do that kind of thing. But, I can't figure out how or why they do syncopated jazz or really crusty old blues stuff. I find that stuff really magical

CO: There are bits of country music, that even now that I'm graying and getting into my thirties, I can appreciate.

AP: I wish I was thirty. No, I don't actually. I'm alright with it.

CO: When you're young and you're sitting down to music or whatever. I don't think you really have time for an extensive vocabulary.

AP: Yeah, it's part of the thing of youth, you have to be narrow-minded.

CO: You had once mentioned something about a bubblegum LP and now I hear you're interested in a sort of bootleg project.

AP: We just started that actually. There's so many bootlegs of us out there and I know people want to hear that stuff,but I feel really bad that people are buying CD's that are taken from tenth generation cassettes. And so I thought it would be good fun to take a bunch of the best of the stuff that we never recorded and just get together in my garden shed and record it. And it would be good-ish quality, because it's only home equipment but it would be reasonable enough quality, and people can get to hear reasonable enough recordings of those songs. So, I don't think we'd be beating the bootleggers or whatever but, it would give people a choice if they saw two of the disks there they can have a better recorded one and get something the band was really involved in rather than having a demo of something stolen off of a record company's desk or producer's whatever in the past and being copied and copied and copied. I'd much rather let people get better quality recordings.

CO: There's been tons of stuff that's filtered out. Does that bother you at all?

AP: If I think about the moral side of it, I get very upset because we had a shitty album deal. I mean we were getting a pittance and to think that with those bootlegs, we're not even getting a pittance. So, that side of it upsets me but, I can't feel upset if people are getting enjoyment out of it. That kind of counterbalances the money you'll never see. So, that sort of weighs it out.

CO: You don't mind, as it were, showing people your notes.

AP: Not so much notes...I don't think you can go down music street and it be a narrow road. It's a really wide, kind of huge vista. It's a wide avenue. You can get in all the things that you ever wanted to do with music. I mean. who knows, in a few years time, we may be doing some syncopated jazz. I don't know. But, this big wide avenue, for me, takes in noisy kinda pop stuff, it takes in jazz-tinged stuff, kinda ballad stuff, it takes in psychedelic music; it takes in dub music, it takes in ambient...or ambulance (chuckles) music. It takes in a whole load of stuff that I feel is completely bonified in me. It's the real McCoy because I just don't have one facet. I think everybody in whatever chosen artform-musician or a writer or a film maker, everyone has at least two faces. Why not get joy out of at least a dozen? So those are all musical styles I feel completely at ease working with. There are a lot that I haven't got into that I would feel completely at ease working with. Bubblegum music, I think I have a huge debt to bubblegum music.

CO: Could you name an artist, like just off the top of your head?

AP: Oh. just all things like a band named the Equals in England. I don't know if you ever got to hear them. They were originally two white guys and three black guys and the one black fellow that stood in the middle painted half his body white so there were two and a half of each color in the band. They played these really banal, kind of giddy and exciting youth club kind of things. They had some really huge hits in England but I guess they didn't come over the Atlantic. They were like bubblegum ska. They were very direct. As soon as you put an Equals record, there was an instant party. People like the Equals.. Oh, who was who did that "Yummy Yummy"? The Ohio Express? Lemon Pipers, although they were sort of at the psychedelic end of bubble gum. "Mellow Yellow" meets a Quick Joey Small or "Mony Mony" meets almost anything by the early Troggs. You know, it transcends or descends below all expectations and thus it comes out in another dimension somewhere. It goes faster than the speed of light ale and bursts through into the banal zone. I have a huge debt to bubblegum music. I love it.

CO: When you guys finally ink something, is it kind of an anxiety about which style to use?

AP: No, and I think this has lost us some deals, I've been really pig-headed about what we want to do. I want to do two disks because of all the material that's been written, the batch that came out after Nonsuch was mainly acoustic and orchestral. Sort of orc-oustic and because we couldn't work, I guess I sort of got that out of my system and then the later stuff, I wanted to hear really noisy electric guitars going. The music has gravitated almost to two different camps. Instead of smashing then all together like on Nonsuch, I think it might be more edible if we corral one type to one disk and the other to another disk. But the thought of doing two disks has been filling labels with horror.

CO: Nobody, especially in America, wants to put all their eggs in one basket.

AP: Well, I know I won't write anything else until I get this stuff out of the way. It's like a blockage. I've got to get it out. I've finished off 36 songs, which isn't a great amount in four years so I've got to get them out of the way. I think that in that mass, in the four album mass, I think there are two really good albums. And they've got to come out or else we won't be able to move on.

CO: So, you and the Czech Orchestra on the A disk...

AP: Yeah, there you go and on the next one, us just making a bit of a row.

CO: Since you brought it up, what do you think about Nonsuch these days?

AP: I haven't heard it for a while, for a couple of years. But, I'm immensely proud of some of the stuff on there, stuff like "Rook" and "Humble Daisy", "Books are Burning". I'm just really proud of a lot of that material on there. But, it was one of our worst selling records, I guess it just didn't click with people. I think it was too long. Yeah, I think it could of done with being trimmed out.

CO: Oranges and Lemons was not short.

AP: No, I don't think I was aware of that one being too long but now I'm much more tuned in to the length of albums. Anything over forty minutes starts to feel too long. Yeah, I think Oranges and Lemons was too long but I certainly think Nonsuch was too long and that's part of the reason that I'd like to make the listening experience on the next thing we do to guide your ears a bit more thoroughly through it.

CO: Paul Bailey (manager) said something about putting a box set together with Geffen.

AP: Yeah, Virgin's final fling contractually, and I shiver in my loon pants at the thought of it, will be a box set. They are gonna get the diving suit on and get the scraper out and go down to that barrel and see what there is. It fills me with trepidation, I don't know what they're gonna do. There's nothing really noteworthy apart from the official stuff we put out. But they've got a whole load of live tapes from way back when and they've got access to some BBC sessions that have never come out. I'm not sitting here thinking "Oh my God, I can't wait til that comes out", cause I don't. I don't think it's A-class material.

CO: Will Geffen do that in the U.S. as well?

AP: I don't know but we can't stop Virgin. It's one of those things so they could let us go. We had to agree that they could exploit us some more in our absence until they let us go.

CO: So, what do you think of Upsy Daisy? Is it sort of for corralling the sweet bits of your stuff?

AP: It's not our suggestion for running order or choice of tracks or anything. I mean this is really Geffen and thankfully, they listened to a couple of our suggestions and put on a few album tracks. I think "Seagull Screaming" is on there and "Chalkhills and Children". I just think that maybe other bands will pick this up and maybe they've heard "Mayor of Simpleton" they'll go back and listen to some of the other albums.

CO: Yeah, you could tell this a kind of package type thing. I'm surprised they didn't push it closer to Christmas.

AP: Yeah, I think they wanted to but they didn't want to pay anything for it. We at least got a little bit of an advance out of them.

CO: Well that's good you got something for it. Did you wind up assembling the Rag and Bone collection?

AP: Yeah, people kept saying "Why can't we get whatever on CD?" and I thought, "There's a whole load of stuff laying around that's kind of B-side or giveaways or obscure things that you could only get on vinyl and so it would be a bit of fun to gather all these together on one disk." And that's the best photo session we've done (laughs...cover art featured metal sculpture versions of the band). It's the most like us though, it really captured us! I made those up on the floor of the photography studio. Yeah this guys got a load of wreckage on his farm and I told him to bring some of it in. I told him, "I want some handle bars and I want just anything that you can bring in from this collection of wrecks on your farm." He brought in a trailer load of stuff and I sort of threw it around on the floor until it sort of looked like us and I went " There you go, that's the photo session."

CO: How did Dave and Colin like it?

AP: I think they afforded themselves a smirk. Captured our complexions perfectly.

CO: The producer issue, now that you're getting ready to do this, are you ready to work with someone again? Now that you're free, can you just say "That's it. Just leave us alone."

AP: Hmmm...That's really tricky because to do really well you have to sort of take off your overseeer's head and put on your performing head. And it's tough to keep changing heads. It's much better to have someone you can trust to oversee the birth of this baby. We'll do the pushing and they'll do the greasing and the pulling and there you go, it's born. We've been talking to a few people. Actually, interestingly enough, we've been asking the Dust Brothers, are they or is he interested. And, we've got some interesting noises coming back but, we'll see. We'd bicker terribly. If I was instructing everybody what too do, I'd end up with no band.

CO: Well, I've heard Chris Hughes possibly...

AP: I think he's gonna work out to be just too damn expensive. You wouldn't believe what some of these people are charging.

CO: You would think it would be more of a labor of love. Your productions are pretty complex at times. You'd figure that somebody would want to do it just for the nature of being involved in it. Like I was talking to Adrian Belew and I sort of tossed it out to see what he would say and he went "Oh, I'd love to do that. They wouldn't have to pay me a dime." and he was just really excited about the possibility.

AP: Actually, funnily enough, he was one of the names I contemplated. He recently sent me a couple of albums that he did, including Op Zop Too Wah.

CO: Did you like that?

AP: Yeah it was okay but I really liked Mr. Musichead. I really like the track "1967." I didn't like the other thing he sent (_The Guitar As Orchestra.) It might have been good as an effects demo disk.

CO: I've think it more or less coincides with the fact that he just built a studio in his home basement and he was having way too much fun before his wife could bring him out to help her have this baby they have.

AP: I considered him. I don't know what kind of producer he'd be. And I almost fear for inflicting this on him actually. We can be a bit demanding. Not too difficult but exacting.

CO: But you wonder is it smarter to go with somebody you'd tend to gravitate to more musically since you guys have similar appreciations as opposed to going to the Dust Brothers that aren't necessarily up your alley by reflex. Because they are doing dance records and stuff.

AP: Yeah, but I sort of like the kind of skewed sensibility of some of their things. I think it might suit the more electric material we have. I don't know what the hell they'd do with the more orchestral stuff.

CO: Well, could you split it and have two producers for the two disks?

AP: I don't know, maybe that might be too expensive. Producers are shockingly dear for what a lot of them do, which is not much. I know because I've been a producer and sometimes you do a lot and sometimes you don't depending on how much the musician or act puts in that end. Sometimes it's best if you just stand back. That's what gets it born best. And a lot of producers, probably with us, have to stand back.

CO: You know it's interesting though because with all your records you have a good assortment of people.

AP: I always wanted to find someone we could stick with but I never really did. You'd find one and think,"Well, he's great at getting the sounds but we need someone to act more like an arranger, editor type person." And then you'd find an arranger type editor person and they might be really bad at engineering or grasping what was going on there. Or you'd meet somebody who had a great vibe with them and they were completely out to lunch if you wanted to talk music; they didn't know what the hell you were talking about. And it's kind of the impossible thing, finding all the requirements in one person.

CO: But, even something like the Paul Fox stuff and the track on the Testimonial Dinner tribute album. Both of them carry forth who you guys are. They are obviously done by very different people at different levels.

AP: Well, the thing about Testimonial Dinner, the uncoolest thing I could think of was to be on your own tribute album, so I said "Look, can we be on it?" I'm really interested in the uncool. I thought it was the most beautifully crap uncool thing, to be honest with you. There wasn't any money. David Yazbeck sort of pulled the whole thing together. It's his baby really. He rang up bands or they approached him to do this and there wasn't any money to actually cut it so we just got this little local demo studio above this motor bike repair place and it was really dismal and stinky up there and we imported as much of our own gear in there as they had to get the session done. It sounds kind of demo-y,a little. It sounds a little small.

CO: And when you talk about sticking with producers, you guys certainly haven't been able to do that with drummers.

AP: Well, initially, the orchestral stuff, I didn't really see needing a drummer. It's almost like a percussionist may be able to do it but a drummer is just to heavy handed. They're essential for the big noisy guitar thing that we're doing. It would be pointless taking on a person full time because we're not the Monkees. We don't need sort of a balance to our personalities or anything like that. It's great to pick up people as you go along.

CO: But, you don't feel the need for a fourth wheel perspective on this thing?

AP: Oh. I was going to say yes but I suppose the answer's no. If they're a great player, that's inspirational. They might say "What if we do this?" and suddenly we get into an area we haven't seen. But, that's not something we can plan on. It never seems to work like that.

CO: But, what about somebody if you say "We need a fourth person and we really need input" Once you open that door, it might be scary. It could change the output of things.

AP: I suppose if somebody was given more input, it would take us back to more of the balance of Terry Chambers to who a lot of the material was built around what he could do with the drums. It was written with his playing in mind...or written with what he was going to do with it. You know, he was going to have this sort of voodoo-y industrial rumble as he got going and they couldn't be songs that that was going to steamroller over and kill. In fact, before he left we were rehearsing the Mummer record with him and he was having such trouble grasping some of that material.

CO: You mean conceptually?

AP: Just because it wasn't the classic steamrolling stuff that he'd been used to drumming on. It was just a lighter, airier feel to it like on "Love On A Farmboy's Wages," and "Ladybird." You see he would have been home with "Funk Pop A Roll" and possibly "Human Alchemy," but the lighter stuff he was visibly having trouble with. He actually complained to me "This fucking stuff is too fucking weird. I can't play this." in his fluent Trogg.

CO: And then he went off.

AP: That was it. The drumsticks went down, out the door. The door was shutting and his cymbals were literally still swinging on their stands.

CO: No looking back.

AP: Absolutely. It was final. He never even rang up someone and even ask someone to drop his kit off or anything.

The first part of this interview appeared in the July 15 issue of Consumable Online.