Episode 317 - Matt Johnson

Welcome Matt Johnson

0:00Hi there, Simon and Brian here, welcoming you to another edition of Soda Jerker on Songwriting. Joining us for episode 317 is an English singer and songwriter, best known as founder and ever-present frontman of The The.

0:31A true maverick of British music, he has a brand new book, hot off the presses entitled Cognitive Dissident. Co-authored with his good friend Jason Wood, it's an engrossing, conversational journey through his highly eventful and feverishly creative life. It's our great pleasure to welcome the brilliant Matt Johnson to the show. Our guest was born in Walthamstow, East London in 1961, and spent his early years living above his parents' pub, The Two Puddings, in Stratford. The family later moved to rural Suffolk, then to Essex, where the 11-year-old and increasingly music-obsessed Matt formed his first band, the glam-rock-inspired Roadstar, and began writing his own songs.

1:08He left school at 15, intent on getting his foot in the door of the music business, and eventually got himself a job as a gopher at DeWolf Music in the heart of London's Soho. Over time, he learned the studio ropes, rose through the ranks to assistant engineer, and was even able to work on his own material during downtime. It was during this formative period that the concept for The The took shape, Matt's experimental DIY approach taking its cues from the prevailing post-punk ethos of the time. In 1979, the same year the band gave their first live performance, Matt's limited edition cassette album See Without Being Seen brought him to the attention of the 4AD label,

1:42who would ultimately issue his 1981 debut solo LP, Burning Blue Soul. Two years later, the excellent follow-up, Soul Mining, was the first to be released under the banner of The The, and boasted such imperishable songs as This Is The Day, Giant, and of course the shimmering, uncertain smile, which features what is surely Jules Holland's finest recorded moment. Without a doubt, he plays an absolute blinder on that one. 1986's Infected reached the UK's top 20 and stayed in the charts for 30 weeks, while the great Johnny Marr lent his considerable talents to 1989's Mindbomb and 1993's Dusk, both of which reached the top 10.

2:19Following the release of Naked Self in 2000 and the subsequent Meltdown appearance at David Bowie's request, Matt set aside The The indefinitely, during which time he explored his love of photography, composed the scores for several of his brother Gerard's films, and became involved in local politics and conservationism. In 2015, Matt also embarked on his ambitious Radio Cineola project, centred around a live, 12-hour radio broadcast incorporating unreleased music, poetry, and political discussion, which was later depicted in the 2017 documentary The Inertia Variations.

2:50The whole process helped steer him back towards songwriting, and ultimately led to The The's welcome return to the live stage, and eventually the studio. The result was the triumphant 2024 comeback album, Ensolement. If you haven't done so already, follow SodaJerker on songwriting wherever you get your pods, leave us a nice review and rating, and explore our archive of well over 300 interviews with great songwriters like Matt. Support this fully independent and ad-free endeavour at SodaJerker.com slash donate. Before we move on, our thanks to Steve for his help setting this up.

3:21Okay, time to hear from our guest. Here we are with the brilliant, Matt Johnson. SodaJerker.com

3:54We were trying to remember when we first became aware of you, and we think it was a BBC Two series called The Music Biz. I don't know if you remember that. You were on there talking about the mechanics of recouping advances and things like that, and how crazy the industry is. Was it talking about cross-collateralisation? That's the one. Yeah, and I do remember that, because I wasn't told in advance. I was quickly asked that question,

4:26and I don't know whether I explained it properly, cross-collateralisation, but that probably would have been at an early stage of my career, and maybe I didn't fully grasp the horrors of cross-collateralisation. And then years later, well, where's all my royalties gone? And then you realise it's like having multiple bank accounts that are all in debt. Well, it was compelling stuff, anyway. And even more compelling is the new book, which we love. Oh, great. Thank you. Obviously, this is a songwriting podcast, and you touch on your songwriting in ways that are quite revealing in the book, we thought.

Method songwriting

4:57There's a phrase that you use in there, method songwriting. Can you explain what you mean by that? Did you borrow that idea from method acting? I did, and that was a period I went through, I guess, in the early to late 80s. My family were all very much into films, and my brothers and I loved, for instance, Taxi Driver was a very influential film for us. Paul Schrader wrote it, of course. Martin Scorsese directed it. And De Niro's explosion onto the scene as an actor.

5:28And so we're all a bit fascinated and obsessed by that. And I had this feeling, you know, with songwriting, I found it hard, I suppose, to write about things I hadn't necessarily experienced. And I liked songs and lyrics that were really expressing an inner life. And also, it had quite a negative effect on my personal life. I thought I had to act out the things that I was writing about. Obviously, not everything. Songs like Sweet Bird of Truth, I obviously didn't pilot an American fighter jet. But generally, an embrace of the seedy, dark side of life from my early period of visiting New York from the early 80s.

6:05I was quite drawn towards the seedier side of life. And I detail some of the experiences in Alphabet City and hanging around in the Bronx and Times Square before it became a sort of Disney-fied version of Times Square. And so it was really inspired by that idea, I suppose, really immersing myself fully into the things I was writing about. And obviously, the infected film that we shot, particularly the films down in South America, that was also embracing that sort of hedonistic, seedy side of life.

6:42And I mentioned in the book, you know, you can be just as authentic in a little country village in England as you can in the Bronx in Manhattan. It's about how you feel inside and what you're doing inside your own head and the life you're living, rather than necessarily where you are. So that was just a period I went through in my 20s that I grew out of.

Another Boy Drowning

7:03I think by your own account in the book, you say that your first real breakthrough as a songwriter was Another Boy Drowning from Burning Blue Soul. I think you said you cried when you wrote that and it felt like a kind of a rite of passage. What was it about that one that was such a milestone? Well, the songs I've been writing before that, notably things like Controversial Subjects and Black and White and some of the other songs on Burning Blue Soul, I suppose they were obscure or intentionally obscure because I really wasn't sure what I was trying to say.

7:35Probably nervous about revealing too much about myself. You know, I mentioned in the book, the biggest influence on me as a lyricist would have been John Lennon and that simple word of advice that he gave to songwriters, tell the truth and make it rhyme. And of course, everybody has their own individual truths. We all have different life experiences depending upon our background, our upbringing, the opportunities we've had, the people we know, where we live. So it's a case of finding your own truth, but also being confident enough to express it without fear of ridicule.

8:11I mean, that's part of the process of songwriting, performing or in any creative endeavor. If you're a writer, a poet, a painter, an actor, you know, there's a fear of ridicule probably as you're trying to find your voice, particularly if you've had, you know, like myself. I come from a difficult background in terms of school, I didn't get along with school very well. And so my confidence was probably knocked, as many young people's confidence is knocked growing up through school and you're not quite sure who you are. So writing Another Boy Drowning, I was obviously a teenager, but that was the first song that I wrote that was really expressing my own personal truth.

8:48And I suppose bringing myself to tears when I was writing, getting goosebumps, because I was really connecting with my essence as a person. And so that definitely felt like a rite of passage. And once I'd created that song, that became not exactly a template, but it certainly gave me the confidence to then go on and to continue writing songs, or certainly some songs with that sense of emotional confidence, I suppose.

9:19There's people up the streets, throwing rocks at themselves, because they ain't got no money and they're living in hell.

9:35But there's animals down the road, adding fuel to this heat, they never could take what she gets to be a sheep.

9:49There are a few instances in the book, actually, where you talk about crying during the writing of a song. I think This Is The Day might be another one. Yeah, yeah. And I think you've said that songwriting is therapeutic for you. Is that something that you felt from the very beginning? Yeah, very, very fortunate to have found music and songwriting, because it's been my best and closest friend throughout life, really, because through difficult situations, I've been able to lose myself in songwriting.

10:19And it's given so much solace and comfort and excitement and hope. You know, when we either listen to an incredible piece of music, or if we're lucky enough to be creative on ourselves, that sense of goosebumps, hair on the back of the neck standing up, adrenaline going, you either want to cry or laugh or dance around the room. Music is so powerful, despite it being diminished and over-commercialized, I suppose, over recent decades, with the rise of music and elevator music, and that music is absolutely everywhere.

10:52There's this desensitization process that's happened. But fundamentally, music is still such a powerful force of energy. And I think, look, if I can't make myself feel like that, if I can't bring myself to tears and to feelings of joy and excitement, then, you know, you can't make anybody else feel like that either. You know, so that's a very important barometer for me to feel that I'm really in touch with my own emotions through the writing process. And so, yes, Another Boy Drowning was probably the first time that happened. And it's happened many times since, and even on Insolment, writing that, particularly Where Do We Go When We Die,

11:29which I was writing for my late father. I mean, that made me incredibly emotional, as did quite a few of the other songs on the album. Yeah. I wonder if you had that really natural, easy connection with music because of the way you grew up around music, as you did in the family pub. That probably would have helped shape you as a writer, even, I would imagine. Yes, I think it did. And literally, the music was coming up through the floorboards of the pub, either bands playing there or the jukebox. So I suppose that probably wired my brain to a certain extent.

12:01And also the fact there were instruments in the pub itself, so we weren't allowed in the pub when the pub was open. But during closing hours, there was an old piano in the corner that I would bang around on. And sometimes the bands, if they were doing multiple nights, they would leave their equipments up on the stage. So my brother Andrew and I would go and play around on their instruments. Not that we knew how to play, but just, you know, that sort of primitive joy of, you know, just banging on drums or banging around on a piano on a guitar. Just the pure joy of making sound and seeing the way the different sounds affected moods.

12:36So that was a very potent part of my childhood, really. And that instinctive approach, you seem to have sort of maintained throughout your career, really. And you've described yourself primarily as a songwriter who plays instruments rather than a musician who writes songs. That distinction must affect the way that you work, too.

The post-punk ethos

12:55Yeah, it does. I suppose also because I came of age in the post-punk age. I was not a punk. My older brother was a punk. And I was obviously aware of punk. But it was the post-punk bands and the non-musician ethos, exemplified also by people like Brian Eno, I suppose. But a lot of the bands, whether it was, you know, Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, etc., that had that punk mentality, but very experimental, sort of non-musician. And so I grew up and came of age with that. There wasn't so much of an attraction or pressure, I suppose, to learn music theory and to study music.

13:32Also, because I had such a bad experience at school, particularly with my first music teacher. Not his fault. It was my fault. I was a very naughty boy. And so I was pretty much at the bottom of the class. But I had my own little band. It went from about the age of 11 or 12, Roadstar. And we did little gigs and everything. And that was my education, really, to music, outside of school, not inside school. My energies went into songwriting and production rather than music theory.

14:03And I suppose that has affected the way that I write songs, certainly. You've said that the studio is your instrument. Did you pretty much always think of it that way as you encountered technology? I did, really. And I was very fortunate to, at the age of 15, because I left school very early, to get a job in Music Dwarf, which still exists as a music publisher, a very famous publisher of library music for television and film. At the time, they were based in Wardour Street in Soho.

14:35And they had a small recording studio. So I got a job there as a 15-year-old and fell in love. And I mentioned in the book just the smell of cigarette smoke and coffee and also the old tape machines and the electrical equipment. It was so comforting and exciting for me. And I just loved being in the studio. You imagine the idea on an icy cold day, you suddenly lower your body into a hot bubble bath. Or on a boiling hot day, you dive into a cold pool. You know, that sense of real sort of bliss and euphoria.

15:08I felt at home instantly. I absolutely did. It was wonderful. And that phrase, you know, Brian Eno originally said that, didn't he use the recording studio as an instrument? And so his approach was influential to a lot of my generation, I think, realizing you didn't have to be a technically accomplished musician and understand music theory as long as you had a creative mind and you were prepared to learn the studio and able to get sounds that you needed to get out of instruments.

15:54We find it interesting that you have these sort of two worlds of songwriting or composing colliding in your interests. You know, you've got the classic songwriting inspired by sort of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan and stuff. And then you've got the soundtrack work. They would seem like quite different worlds, but are there connections between those two things for you?

16:26I'd say there's also a third world, which was the world of music concrete and experimental music, which was initially influenced by, say, Radiophonic Workshop, BBC's incredible department. And also my first exposure to that would have been Revolution 9 from the Beatles White House. Right. Yeah. So that really drew me in. So I'd say those three parallel lines, which, you know, I love all three, really. I don't see them as mutually exclusive and where possible, I try to sort of merge them, but I'm as happy with just playing around on an acoustic guitar, writing a song as messing

17:01around with, you know, boutique synthesizers and tape machines. Yeah. Cause you do mention a book, don't you? Composing with tape recorders by Terence Dwyer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't got that book, but just the title alone is interesting, isn't it? The idea that that's your mechanism of writing. I mean, yeah, I think you can still find it on eBay. It's probably quite expensive now and I've still got my original copy. Wonderful book, only a slim volume, but I think it was originally published possibly the early seventies and I got it in the mid to late seventies, but it's a very different world.

17:35Of course, all of those techniques can be instantly achieved in your door really and digitally. But in those days you had to really dig deep to create these effects. And of course it's the same, you know, in the film world now, when you see something in the cinema, if something is incredibly sort of big and dramatic, you instantly assume it's CGI, don't you really? I mean, a lot of the mystique has gone, I suppose, from filmmaking. The same as in sound, you may hear something and you assume, oh, well, it's just done digitally

18:05or, you know, a few decades ago, you had to really scratch your head and wonder how the hell are they achieving this sound or that sound and try to figure it out. It was a different world, but I like the best of both worlds. I like using high-end digital and also old analog as well.

Production ambition on Infected

18:22You mentioned that Infected before, and that one seemed like a significant leap in terms of your production ambition. I think Tom Waits was going to be involved with that one, wasn't he, originally? He was, I was very influenced by his album Swordfish Trombones, which came out in maybe 83, 84, I guess, and I saw him play live and I really was blown away. I mean, that was a real departure for him as well, and the production was astonishing. But there was several producers I tried to get involved in, in fact, there was Holger

18:53Schuke from Cannes. I was quite influenced by his solo album Movies, particularly the song Persian Love and his use of tape manipulation and shortwave radio. Didn't hear back from Holger Schuke. I'm not sure whether we had his correct contact details, but Tom Waits got back and was quite interested in producing. And so I went to New York to meet with him, but it transpired, his schedule suddenly became very, very complicated, so we couldn't do it, unfortunately. And then I ended up working with Roley Moseman, who's formerly of Swans, who died a year or so

19:26ago, Roley, he was a lovely man, and Warren Livesey as well, who produced four tracks. And then I worked with those two again on the Mindbomb album. And the sound of Infected was very influenced by a machine that I bought. I bought one of the first ones in the UK, which was the Emulator 2. Oh, right. Infected, which was the first, when I say affordable, it still cost about £9,000 in 1985-86, which was a lot of money, but compared to the Fairlight and the Sinclavia, which, you know, they cost

19:58£30,000 or £50,000. So it was relatively affordable. And so suddenly I had access to these wonderful orchestral sampled libraries. And what I tended to do was then record quite extensive demos using the orchestral sounds. And then we brought in real orchestras and real brass sections. So as a compositional tool, it was wonderful. And I think we obviously did use some Emulator 2 on the recording. So the sound of Infected from Soul Mining, for instance.

20:29Soul Mining was a completely analogue album, recorded analogue, with obviously a lot of analogue instruments such as accordions and fiddles and marimbas and pianos, etc., cellos. And Infected, although we did use real brass sections and real orchestras, it's also more digital sounding because of the Emulator 2, but also it was recorded digitally. I think it would have been on the old, possibly the Mitsubishi 32 track, which was a very high end machine in those days. But, you know, compared to these days, quite brittle sounding and a bit cold sounding.

21:03But we were always trying to be, I guess, on the cutting edge of technology. It's more like the bleeding edge, I suppose, because often things would go wrong and break down. I can't give you up until I've got more than enough. So you can't give me with your love. Let's bring me into sickness, let's bring back to hell. And I'm here with the gifts of the manly world.

21:34And just to come back to Tom Waits for a second, I believe when you met him, he gave you some very useful advice, didn't he, about capturing your ideas?

Collecting seed lyrics

22:04He did. He pulled out his pocket a little notepad. He said, you always have to carry one of these. This is your butterfly net. The ideas will always come, lyrical ideas, observations, he said, but unless you write them down, they'll fly away. So you always have to capture that. And that's something I've always tried to do. So even in the middle of a film or something, if an idea comes, I will always write it down. As you guys probably know yourself, you're half asleep. You have a great idea. Oh, I'll remember it tomorrow.

22:34But you never do. They just disappear. Yeah. And how do you know when something in that notepad is actually worth pursuing into a full song? Well, that's tricky. Sometimes you look back and you think, why on earth did I write that down? It doesn't make any sense at all. But I've got about a hundred or so pages of these, what I call seed lyrics. So they're just ideas. And I mean, these days I tend to write them in my phone rather than on notepads. And then I'll transfer them and then print them up. And they're part of this large folder of ideas.

23:05And so when I'm working on a new song and there may be a particular concept behind it or a particular subject I'm trying to work on, I will then reference back through these seed lyrics. It's, you know, I've tried to organize them roughly via sort of subject or mood, and then I'll be able to pick certain ones out. I find it a very useful way of working. And I say seed lyrics because sometimes I can just take the one line and then I'll play around rhyming with it and seeing where it goes. And you'd be surprised how it starts to grow in all directions just from one line.

23:37But everyone has different ways of working really. And for me, the seed lyrics could be just a stray thought, even a line in a film or an overheard conversation that could be on a bus or a train and someone would say something. It could even be something that's misheard, which is often more interesting than hearing the actual thing itself. Yeah. And so we all have different ways of working and it takes time to develop your own routine. And there's no right or wrong way. I mean, that's one of the wonderful things about our profession. And, you know, we all have access to similar equipment, similar instruments, but we're

24:11all very unique in the way that we go about creating, I think. It's cool that you've got a kind of system that you can dip back into the archive and find stuff. We've heard a few horror stories over the years of people with just endless unnamed voice notes and things like that, you know. That is a problem. That is a problem. Yes. You've got to try and stay fairly organized and it gets quite unwieldy because I do have probably 200 pages of these dense lyrics. I try to stay on top and organize them roughly, but there's a lot.

24:43I suppose at some point AI will be able to analyze them, but then it'll be writing everything. I mean, that's the other thing that's a concern is the impact of AI on our profession, on all professions, of course. It opens up lots of opportunities, but the world's changing very fast.

Hospitalization and Ensolement

24:57And you mentioned the last album, Insolment, earlier, and that was partly inspired by being hospitalized during the pandemic. You've described sort of pacing the wards and surgical stockings, thinking, you know, I've got to get a song out of this. Is that instinct to turn to songwriting something you've always had or something that's maybe intensified over time? That particular song, Linoleum Smooth to the Stocking Foot, it was a very unpleasant situation. I was quite high on morphine at the time, and it was quite a serious operation.

25:31And I was determined to get something from it. I suppose that's the, throughout life, whether it's through bereavements or, you know, all the various ups and downs I've had, if I can turn something negative to something positive, so to try to see an opportunity in even a difficult situation. So it was really that, I suppose. I was determined to get something out of the situation. And I wanted to include it in that recent album, while it was still topical for me. I had all the lyrics and the music that I created. It wasn't with the rest of the bands that were on the album.

26:02I played most of the instruments myself on that one and had contributions from the various session musicians, additional musicians, rather than the hardcore band itself. And it's quite different. It's more electronic, I guess, than the rest of the album. But it certainly fitted the mood of the experience, which was very disorientating. But that helped keep me sane in the hospital bed, you know, just jotting things down. Whenever you're going through a difficult situation, I think you've always got to be hopeful and try

26:34to look beyond that situation and give yourself something positive to look forward to. So I was thinking about, okay, I will turn this into a song, and that helped me get through it. Mm-hmm. So that line, linoleum smooth to the stockinged foot, would that be something you actually just had written down while you were there and then went away later and turned it into something? Yes, and a lot of the lyrics themselves. And because I literally did have those surgical stockings to assist my recovery, really, I was on an instinctive level.

27:04I knew I had to keep the body moving, to keep the lymphatic system moving and drink as much water as possible to keep myself moving. And so I will be going on these long walks with my surgical stockings and surgical gown, you know, through the day and even in the middle of the night, along these long linoleum corridors. And so it naturally came to mind, the title, and I thought, this is such a strange title. I've got to create something with this and wrote a lot of the rest of the lyrics there as well. Linoleum smooth to the stockinged foot, Corridor's dark scene, what I could.

27:40High priest, white lab coats, evangelize the disease as the antidote.

27:56Science by day, prayers by night, belief now stretched, sausage tight. I guess Insolment covers a lot of that territory that you've talked about, doesn't it? Love and death and AI and all kinds of stuff is in there. Yes, and I think, you know, as Nina Simone said, all artists, songwriters, painters have

28:28a duty to reflect their times. And I suppose with Insolment, just sensing, you know, we're on the precipice really with AI is causing a lot of excitement, but a lot of apprehension as well. We're not quite sure. Some people say it's going to affect 30 or 40% of the employment market. We don't know yet, but it's like any new technology. It can be used for good or for ill, same with nuclear power. It can be used to power a city and its hospitals, its universities and its schools, or it can

29:00be used to destroy cities. And AI is going to have very, very benign applications, and it's going to have very malign applications. But, you know, we got to live our lives. We've got to be hopeful. We've got to be positive. Got to fill our children with hope and positivity. And there's lots to look forward to, you know, so we've got to try and be positive. And I think prior to the last album, you'd sort of struggled to finish songs for a long time. And then, you know, suddenly you were able to kind of write a whole album. What do you think changed to make that happen?

29:32The pivotal point was probably there's a documentary, The Inertia Variations, that I did several years ago with Swedish documentarian, Johannes St. Michaels. And during the making of that documentary, which was shot over a number of years, my older brother Andrew died, Andrew, known amongst my audience as Andy Dog, created a lot of the artwork for those releases. And with him dying, I wrote a song, which was the first song I'd finished in years, called We Can't Stop What's Coming. And that sort of led to the comeback special, World Tour, which was my first World Tour in

30:06a long time, maybe 16, 17 years or something. No longer, actually, 18 years, I think. And that in turn, that confidence then, I derived in the energy from going back on tour, realizing that this is what I love doing, because I've been in sort of semi-retirement for a couple of decades, probably. It got my passion back, and I realized I had a lot more I wanted to say.

Returning to touring

30:27I just felt very, very inspired. And then Insolment would have happened sooner, but obviously the pandemic intervened and closed everyone down for a couple of years. And then writing the Insolment album itself was probably the easiest album I've ever written, certainly the most enjoyable. I was just grateful to be back doing what I love doing, and wondering why I'd stepped away from it for so long. And the songwriting, as many songwriters know, is a form of therapy. You know, I felt so enlivened again.

30:58And I had a very strict routine making the Insolment album. I would get up about five in the morning, sit at my writing bureau for about five hours every morning, have my acoustic guitar on one side and my writing materials, and do a solid five hours work before 10 a.m. And it was such a lovely time to be awake and feeling very, very inspired. And wasn't it your dad's old writing bureau as well? Yes, yes. Which his dad, my granddad Charlie, bought for him when my dad came out of the army after

31:33national service in the 50s. So it stayed in the family all those years, and now I've inherited it, and I restored it. And it's where I sit to do any creative writing. And it was just wonderful. And I just would often think, you know, be sat there at six or seven in the morning thinking, I feel so, so happy just doing what I love doing. And I suppose for anybody that's creative, whatever the creativity is, it could be gardening, it could be cooking, it could be painting, but that reconnection inside yourself, doing what you love doing. And there's an old cliche that I often love to use when I'm talking to young people, was

32:07it find a job you love and you'll never work another day. Because for me, I just love doing what I do. I love being in the studio. I love being on tour. I don't take it for granted. And I think that period of time away, not necessarily doing what I love doing, but getting involved in local politics, it made me realize when I come back to doing what I love doing, how much I absolutely loved it and how lucky I am to get up every morning and do a job that I love. Yeah, it's nice to hear that it was such a happy process or such an enjoyable process

32:38for you. And when I heard things like kissing the ring of POTUS and cognitive dissident, they're kind of politically charged and I was wondering if you would be kind of raging, but it sounds like it was more relaxed than that. Yeah, too old to be raging and I've been around the block so many times. It's different when you're in your twenties and you become more philosophical. It doesn't mean to say that you're not aware of what's going on in the world and not upset by it, but you have to be more philosophical. You know, and I don't want to be carrying rage around in summer stuff. I don't want to be carrying grudges.

33:09I don't feel any grudges towards people. I don't feel the need to settle scores. I feel quite sort of peaceful within myself. And certainly though, on behalf of my own children and obviously everyone else's children, I'm concerned of the direction that the world is going in. But I think there's better ways of possibly dealing with that than just being eaten up with sort of rage and anger. Yeah. I think you've been very clear in the past that you don't see yourself primarily as a political songwriter, even though songs like Heartland and The Beaten Generation are an

33:42important part of your work. Do you consider the audience at all when you're choosing what to write about? No. And that's not said in any sort of a negative, nasty way, because I think for whichever bands that they follow, they want the band or the singer-songwriters, whoever it is, to be true to themselves and take them on a journey, rather than the band thinking, let's try to give the audience what they want. I think you end up just doing the same thing over and over again. And sometimes the audience may like the journeys.

34:13Sometimes they like part of the journeys. For instance, in my case, some of the audience prefer Mind Bomb to Soul Mining, or they may prefer Naked Self to Infected or vice versa. But it's an interesting journey, I think. And the albums themselves, there's not one particular album that most people prefer. They've all got their supporters. And they're all done, hopefully, for the right reasons. You know, I've got to go on my own journey and hopefully take as many of them with me as possible. But if you start second-guessing what the audience want, what the press want, what the

34:44radios want, I think you'd kill yourself as an artist. The beaten generation, the beaten generation, reared on a diet of prejudice and misinformation. The beaten generation, the beaten generation, open your eyes, open your imagination. I suppose you approach political subject matter differently now anyway, just as life continues

35:18and your attitudes and experiences change. You're not the same person anymore, are you, I suppose? The person who wrote The Sinking Feeling, for example, you've moved on since then? Yes, I have, as everyone does and should. And in terms of the political songs, I research thoroughly, but of course, I'm a father, I've lived in quite a few different countries compared to the teenager that wrote The Sinking Feeling. But the important thing is that they're all written from a point of, you know, my truth

35:49at that particular moment in time, what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling. And that's all you can do, I think, is just be as connected and truthful as you can at that moment in time, but also always reserve the right to change your mind because the world is changing all the time, our lives are changing all the time, and one should always be prepared to change rather than be stuck in a dogmatic mindset, just to try to defend a point of view that you may have held when you were younger. It's a very stagnant way of looking at life and spiritual and emotional growth.

36:22I think you've got to continue evolving where possible.

Songs for loved ones

36:25You've also written a number of songs for loved ones. You've lost, you know, there's Love is Stronger Than Death and Phantom Walls and Where Do We Go When We Die. When you get into that particular mode of writing, does the process feel sort of similar each time or is each one of those songs kind of a completely different experience? They're all a very different experience and all bereavements are terrible. I don't want to write any more of these songs. That's four of them I've written now. The one for my younger brother, Eugene, Love is Stronger Than Death, was the hardest

36:56one to write. That was a very, very dark and difficult time for my family. I wrote Phantom Walls for my mother when she was dying. I wrote We Can't Stop What's Coming for my brother, Andrew, which was difficult in its own way, but not as hard as Love is Stronger Than Death. And then I wrote Where Do We Go When We Die for my dad. My dad was 86 at that point and his death was much easier than the other bereavements in the sense that he had a very full life and he was still very, very bright.

37:26He didn't go into much of a decline as particularly my mother and my brother, Andrew. My brother, Eugene, was a very sudden death at the age of 24. They were all very different experiences, but the one thing they have in common is that they were very cathartic for me and there were things I had to do, primarily for myself. Again, as I mentioned, the idea of turning something terrible into hopefully something that was beautiful and positive. And I suppose what I also wanted was for those songs to then help other people.

37:57It's very important to me that the songs, I hope, become part of the soundtrack of people's lives. And that's all that you can hope for as a songwriter, that they're not just for you in the room you're sitting writing them in, but they actually go out there and they have their own lives. And that's always something that's thrilling to me when people tell me different songs, what they've meant to them and what memories they associate with them. It's a wonderful thing for me, a very moving thing, that these songs have their own inherent energy on what they're at in the world.

38:29And through word of mouth or for whatever reason, they somehow embed themselves into other people's lives. As songwriters, it's a real gift that we have, as in a gift to us as well as to anybody else. It certainly gives me a lot of happiness to think the songs are out there. I guess This Is The Day is probably associated with a lot of weddings, isn't it? Yes, a lot, a lot. And love is stronger than death is associated with a lot of funerals. So I've been told by people that they conceived children to infect it, for instance.

39:04You get told all sorts of things. In fact, somebody told me the other day at a book signing, it was a lady. And she said to me, the best seduction she'd ever had was while listening to soul mining. She said, every time she hears soul mining, she thinks of that seduction. And I said, well, are you doing the seduction or was you being seduced? And she said, no, I was being seduced. And she said, and every time I hear soul mining. So I love those sort of stories. They really make me feel happy that the songs are out there doing their thing. Something always goes wrong when things are going right.

39:38You swallowed your pride, took what the pain inside. Someone's captured your heart, like a thief in the night. Whiskey thought you sat down till it ran dry. And I think with Love is Stronger Than Death, you've mentioned that the structure kind of mirrors the development of the lyrics.

40:20Is that something you're doing consciously during the writing or is that only something you notice on reflection? No, it's done both consciously and unconsciously, I would say, during the writing phase. Because, again, I'm very instinctive as a songwriter. I'll probably do things that maybe somebody that has a deeper understanding of music theory would think, oh, you can't do this, you can't do this. But for me, it's just this chord sequence and this change of key or whatever express how I'm feeling.

40:50So it's very intuitive for me. It's very much a case of sitting with the instruments and just feeling my way through it. This is the sort of feeling I'm going for for the verse, but I want to change into the bridge or into the chorus. So I would say it's conscious on one hand, but unconscious in that I don't necessarily understand the music theory of what I'm doing, if that makes sense. And we love that that leads you to sometimes have quite a joyous lyric, but it's underpinned by a kind of a darker sounding music, you know? Yeah, I think I mentioned in the book, the idea of having a dark lyric with dark music can be too much.

41:28A sweet and uplifting lyric with a sweet, uplifting piece of music can be too trite. So I try to sort of balance the two. So, you know, if the music is uplifting, then it would make people more receptive to the heavier, darker lyric. So that's something I've often tried to do.

Studio constraints and gear

41:44And do you have to kind of structure your life in particular ways to create the freedom to write? I know that you've said one useful thing for a songwriter is a lack of celebrity so that you can remain an observer. Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why I've turned down many things over the years, you know? And I didn't tour as much as a lot of my contemporaries say, Depeche Mode and Cure, for instance. And I turned down a lot of opportunities, but I was never attracted to the idea of there being a stadium band or something, or celebrity. I was always quite repulsed by too much celebrity.

42:16And what it did to people, which is understandable, it's very, very toxic, the whole notion of celebrity. So personally, I like the situation I was in. I can do good sold-out tours and sell a decent amount of records while remaining relatively anonymous. What price can you put on privacy, you know, to be able to walk around and live a normal life is very, very important to me. And to be an observer rather than to feel one is being observed, you know, because it upsets the bums.

42:47And so that was a very, very important thing for me to be able to do because I have a lot of other things outside music as well that I have to deal with, as well as having children. And we're running our own record company with Cineola, and we have lots of stuff going on that doesn't involve me sitting in the studio. And I think you guys will probably understand this. The problem with a lot of modern technology and pro tool systems is the danger of option paralysis because there's just so many avenues you can go down. I mean, when I'm working on film soundtrack stuff, I like to work with 16-track where possible.

43:20I will also make decisions to cut down the amount of options because I've got a lot of equipment, but I will purposely say I'm only going to use this, this, this, this, and this on this project and only this amount of tracks. I have to do that. Otherwise, I get lost for hours and hours. And I think that makes the best of limited time. I mean, when I was a teenager, I'd say 90% of my time was spent making music and 10% doing other chores. Now it's pretty much the inverse if you're, you know, a person with a lot of responsibilities.

43:50Probably 90% of my time is dealing with other things outside music and 10% being able to sit and write. So you have to make the best use of that time. And for me, that is making those sort of decisions, being very strict about what I can and can't use, creating templates. Say, for instance, in Pro Tools, so I can just turn it on, instantly go to what I need to go to. So technology has its incredible side, but you've got to be careful because it can become the master rather than the slave. And I suppose if you're trying to make the process kind of optimized, you might be encouraged to edit sooner or be more critical sooner as well.

44:27Yeah, try to mix as you go along and make decisions. Otherwise, before you know it, you'll end up with 300 tracks on a Pro Tools session, like, where do I start? So everyone has different ways of working, but, you know, I'm a product of the period that I grew up in. And the first studio I worked in had a big old Ampex 8-track machine, a lot of bouncing, a lot of editing, making decisions as you go along. So I've tried to retain parts of that. I imagine if I was a 17-year-old now, I'd have a very different way of working. I would probably enjoy having 300 or 400 tracks on the go.

45:00Yeah, constraints are important, aren't they? I think they are, and I think they're a precursor to creativity. It's the same with boredom. But, you know, growing up, boredom was a very important thing. Sunday afternoons were really boring, but it made you dig deep and be self-sufficient and become creative. I think children and young people don't have enough time getting bored these days because they're on their phones and their games, screen time all the time. So it's causing a lack of creative development. I think that's a whole other subject. Yeah, yeah. I guess the film music work must be subject to certain limitations too, just by the nature of the medium.

45:36Is that a fundamentally different kind of writing to making a record, or do the skills sort of transfer in both directions? Some of the skills transfer in both directions, but bear in mind with film, the image and the dialogue is king. Whereas with songwriting, obviously one's own viewpoint, lyrics, vocals, that could be the focal point, I suppose. But it's something I really enjoy, helping create moods. And also you realise the power of music within film because you can have the same scene and you could try four or five different pieces. You could turn it into a comedy, a tragedy, a horror or a thriller just by changing the music.

46:11I enjoy working with people that I'm fairly close to. And that collaboration with my brother Gerard, we have similar tastes and sensibilities, which makes it enjoyable. I turn down a degree of stuff because I don't really want to get involved in projects that I don't feel I'd be given much freedom, you know, because I do what I do. I have a very specific take on it and I wouldn't want to be like a jobbing soundtrack writer. That's not something that appeals to me. It must be nice to look back over the catalogue now and the film music and the pop music and observe all these nuances, you know, all these different ways you've gone about doing the work over the years.

46:47Yeah, and they do feed into each other. There are techniques that I work with in the soundtrack world that I then bring across to the other. So, for instance, Linoleon Smooth is the track we talked about earlier on. That could almost be a Cineola soundtrack piece if we remove the vocals. So there is that cross-pollination. And again, as I said, I just love being in the studio and you've got a lot of toys in the background that you've got. So what are your favourite keyboards? That's mainly a sort of 80s setup.

47:17So there's the D50 on top, the Alpha Juno II in the middle, and then the Yamaha DX7 on the bottom. Oh, a DX7. Yeah, very retro. And have you got yourself a Roland Integra 7 yet? I haven't, no. I mean, they've discontinued them now, but they contain all of the Roland sounds in one rack module, but that's worth checking out. If you can pick one up, it was Roland's flagship for a number of years and they discontinued it a couple of years ago. But that is the one to get. You shouldn't encourage him, Matt. No, I know. That's why I'm doing it.

47:48I can tell he's an addict. I'll have that by the end of the day. Yeah. Cool. Well, we've really appreciated hearing about your process, Matt, and thanks so much for coming on. Oh, it's a pleasure. I've really enjoyed talking to you. Nice questions, friendly atmosphere, two complete gear-addicted crazy guys. And congrats on the book. It's really superb. Yeah, love it. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. And I should say the chap I did it with, Jason Wood, is an interesting character in his own right, because Jason, he's published about 20 books, primarily on film, actually, and culture.

48:23But he also ran Home, which is the cultural institution in Manchester. And now he runs the British Film Institute in London. And Jason's a fascinating character, a real culture vulture. So it was a very interesting series of conversations, about 16 conversations over about five or six years. It was his idea to do the book, and he suggested the conversational format, and then we edited it and compressed it. But I'm very pleased with the book. You know, it deals not just with music, but obviously some political issues and social issues as well.

48:53Yeah. Well, best of luck with it. Thank you very much. Great to speak to you, guys. Yeah, you too. You too, Matt. Remember to buy that device. Oh, well, don't worry. All right, then. Cheers, guys. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

49:13Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

49:28That was The The's Matt Johnson talking to us about his creative life and his new book, Cognitive Dissident. Lovely guy. Really enjoyed that. Me too. And it really struck me just how much pleasure he takes in his work.

49:58Yeah, well, that old maxim he mentioned about loving what you do, it holds true, doesn't it? It really does. And, you know, we've only scratched the surface of his creative endeavours there. He's been involved in so many things, and I think he's often juggling multiple projects at once. He's an essentially creative being, isn't he? He really is. And you can hear that from the way he talks about not only pop music, but film music too. Mm-hmm. And how he uses his intuition and his sense of truth as a kind of common thread, tying all of that work together. Yeah, but, you know, a big part of achieving that is the mechanics that underpin what he does.

50:31You know, he captures and organises his voice notes. He has pages and pages of seed lyrics, as he calls them. He keeps his notebooks or his butterfly nets, as Tom Waits would say. Yeah, he sets constraints in the process as well, doesn't he, to limit his options so that he can realistically just get something done when he has time. Yeah, his approach is just a really nice mix of the practical and the experimental. And it goes back to what he said at the start about being a songwriter who plays instruments, as opposed to the other way round. Yeah, it reminded me of our previous guest, Glenn Hanson, that, you know, he sees the instruments very much as a tool to serve the song.

51:05Yeah, he knows enough to know what's going to work, doesn't he? But not necessarily enough to know technically why it works. Exactly, yeah. And, you know, a lot of songwriters like to do that, don't they? You know, keep themselves in the dark a little bit to preserve that sense of magic and play. Yeah. Sometimes the aura of a sound can be satisfying, incarnate, and inspirational, even if it might be quite musically simple. That's right, yeah. And, you know, that aura can be created by the artist, say, the quality of their voice, the way that they play, the chords or the words that they choose.

51:35And Matt certainly has his own voice and identity as an artist, doesn't he? Oh, he's so distinctive. So thanks to Matt for that fantastic conversation. Cognitive Dissident is available at all good book emporiums now, and we highly recommend it. Cheers to Steve for setting it up, and we'll see you on the next one. Take care. Bye-bye.