“When you come out of it, all you’re left with is yourself, and you either make sense of it or you don’t,” says John Power, at ease in his favourite Stoke Newington drinker. “Y’know, in the past I went seeking adulation, and when you’re in that eruption of a band and you’re amongst the madness of the pop industry, you think that’s going to bring great happiness. The truth is, you’ve got to have some stillness to know who you are.”
So far, there has been no shortage of eruptions and turmoil in Power’s musical life. Combined with the other slings and arrows fate has a habit of delivering, they could have been enough to make any musician throw their instrument down and lose faith in what music’s actually there for.
But this is the man who’s just recorded his best self-penned collection since he first appeared on record in 1987. The CD you hold in your hand is an acoustic folk session of campfire songs, rock and roll, blues and other conversations with the ether that invite the listener to gently depart the here and now, and enter a warmer, wiser world.
“These are the most comfortable, wind-in-my-sails recordings I’ve done,” he states. “It’s folk music, grassroots music. I could only have written this now, ‘cos I think you need a certain amount of living to write certain things, y’know? I feel like I’m only just starting to write and play the guitar. Everything else I’ve done, or have been perceived to have done… it means nothing.”
He’s wrong, of course. Alongside the myth-touched songwriter, vocalist and guitarist Lee Mavers, John Power was the other constant member of legendary Liverpool band The La’s. Power joined on bass in 1986, fresh from a city council scheme for aspirant musicians, and would keep the faith for six years. That group’s one album, a tortuously recorded self-titled debut from 1990, sustains a fervent cult of admirers but, according to the group, it never captured the true spirit of the band or the extraordinary set of songs that appear on it. Though he was de facto mouthpiece and ever-enthusiastic public face of The La’s, Power’s role as chief harmonist and bass player was, by the beginning of the 1990s, compromised by a burgeoning writing talent that would not be satisfied by occasional live outings of his songs.
Additionally, faced with the seemingly unending gestation of a new La’s album – Mavers was threatening to re-record the debut as well - Power decided to strike out on his own in 1992. He went on to take charge of Cast, a formidable live four-piece with whom he’d sell bewildering amounts of records (1995’s All Change was famously the biggest and fastest selling debut album in the history of the Polydor label). Whether on the charts, on magazine covers or headlining at the Glastonbury festival, Power the pop star was a phenomenon that lasted four long-players until 2002, when the finally wheels came off with the confusing, over-produced album Beat Route, and an abruptly cancelled UK tour.
“I tell you, I don’t even know if those years happened,” he reflects on this Britpop-and-after phase. “That album was us going, ‘You know what? Let’s go all the way with this.’ But a lot of I just don’t recall. Maybe Cast is still a little too close for me to make sense of it.”
There was a straight-ahead, dust-settling solo album Happening For Love in 2003, but Power was yet to fully hit his stride. “After the demise of Cast, I was still writing Cast-like tracks,” he says, “but without the verve I had when I believed in it. So I ended up just putting the guitar down. And then I got back with Lee.”
It was a dumb-striking development when The La’s regrouped for British, Irish and Japanese dates in the summer of 2005. But however curious and unexpected the shows were – setlists hardly deviated from those of nearly two decades earlier – they were more than enough to keep the believers excited about the prospect of a new album, though such a thing has yet to materialise… which reminds us. John, will there be another album by The La’s?
“I say ‘wherever and forever, now,” he says with a smile. “I saw Lee not so long ago and the guy spoke to me with the passion of someone who’s not aiming to miss. He’s tinkering with something that’s majestic. I can’t tell you where and when though, ‘cos whatever he does, whether it’s in this lifetime or the next, it can’t be rushed. But The La’s are a living, breathing entity now. I’ll never not be in The La’s. When I’m around Lee, he’s an inspiration, musically – playing with him’s the easiest thing in the world for me. I’ll forever man that gun.”
Power’s return to La’s bass duties was to pay more immediate dividends when it came to his solo career. Towards the end of 2005, after only playing bass for 18 months, he picked up his guitar again.
“I remember it well,” he says. “It was a sunny day and I just started playing, and for the first time it didn’t seem like a parody of something I’d already half-done. I’d stopped juggling and straining or just strumming. There was playing going on, and I could feel where it was pulling me.”
Recorded with producers Steve Powell and Ian Grimble, Willow She Weeps was recorded by Power on vocals, guitars and basses, and a drummer who didn’t have a snare or hi-hat - just bass drums and handclaps. Earthy, exuberant and frank, it gives a strong sense of new vigour via old values.
“What I listen to has always been there,” explains Power. “Marley, Beefheart, Son House, Muddy Waters… it’s all folk, brother. Peoples’ music, acoustic music, music that’s getting back to the old, original reasons for playing – the magic of the music, what it does for people, the story of lives and loves, things you want to do, things you’ve lost, things still ahead of you, longings, affirmations, friendships… human, day-to-day life stuff. Dogs howl at the moon, people sing. I’ve found my stance, and it’s an ancient one. This album defined itself while I was writing it – it’s warm and woody. Beefheart, Nick Drake la!”
The branches of this tree grew and spread out all-naturally. Power was routinely composing on the hoof, making up basslines on the spot, writing new songs when a space appeared for them; Old Testament country song Old Red Sea, for example, was written at 2.30am on the last day of mixing. Others tracks needed to be rebuilt, shorn of their rock band arrangements to get closer in on the glorious basics. Beauteous voice-and-guitar lament All My Days, for example, actually dates from the mid-80s before The La’s even existed.
“It’s ancient and dead sad, like a shanty,” enthuses Power. “It’s the first song I ever wrote, and I’ve been trying to record it ever since, in practically every session I’ve done but it’s always sounded shit because of all the drums and guitars on it. Now it sounds like the American side of the Mexican border! It’s the first time I ever captured it… and it’s my dad’s favourite of everything I’ve done.”
Elsewhere there is cantering, head-nodding riffs, no-fat rock and roll strum-and-clap and melodies swift to take up residence in the heart. But why no snares of hi-hats?
“It sounded wrong, too fancy” Power shudders. “I was freaking out, hearing these sibilant cymbals and snares… it’s about having the balls to just hit the back of the guitar instead (he knocks the wood of the pub table). Steve understands that.”
As well as providing the pulse for The La’s, John Power clearly has his own path to follow. Genial, re-energised (he’s newly married) and looking into a sunlit future, he’s already thinking about his next album. In parting he speaks of the commonality of music from the world over, and how the human ear recognises universal melodic phrases, and how we all see ourselves in traditional songs that pre-date us and will survive us too…
It sounds familiar; in this way, Willow She Weeps, his first true solo album, is a fair exchange between him and you, and you and him. “I’ve come full circle,” he says, “and now I wanna get active and do what I do, and get this thing moving. After all this time, I’m only just starting now to look forward.”
Stormbreaker is the distillation of a year on the road, honing the band into a great band. They have got to a position, as a band, of where the Hawks were at the time they were the Band. Sonically the band are in a great zone. Stormbreaker is the distillation of Rock and Roll, Beefheart, Blues and folk through John’s inherent Liverpool filter.
Stormbreaker…Stormbroken. |
