Where is Dave Edmunds?
Nick Lowe is always playing around town, I’ve seen him three times in the past fast years and Dave Edmunds? Not a word. But he is in fact back at it. At 70 years of age, he has left the US for land of birth, Wales, and has spend the first four month of the year working on a new album On Guitar… Dave Edmunds: Rags & Classics, released back in May I hadn’t heard a word about it till I decided I’d like to see Rockpile reform and googled him.
Rockpile was Nick on bass, Dave on guitar, Terry Williams on drums and Billy Brenner on guitar, and they were the best rock band of the late 70s era. As Phil Sutcliffe of the NME once noted, he’d test new writers by assigning them a Rockpile gig and if they hated the band he’d have a good idea whether he could use them or not. And as Robert Christgau noted, on one of the single best lines in rock critic history: “Lowe loves rock and roll for everything it implies as culture while Edmunds loves it for everything it is as music.”
With that noted, the bands only album, Seconds Of Pleasure, was a dog and at least one reason is because it was really their third album. The first two should have been Pure Pop For Now People mixed with Repeat When Necessary. Instead they were released as solo albums for no good reason.
I only saw Rockpile live once, between Mink Deville and Elvis Costello on the This Year’s Model tour –Lowe was dressed as a Harlequin and the band were excellent. However over the years I’ve seen Lowe and Edmunds many many times, whenever Dave played the Bottom Line I’d check him out for sure… waiting for the precious story where Keith Richards stumbled on stage, a complete wreck, to jam with them. At first thrilled, Keith was in no state to play and wouldn’t get off stage, so they unplugged his guitar.
Since Dave will probably be touring behind the instrumental On Guitar (it is great by the way -I love it when he arranges classical music for electric guitar) and Nick is always around, and since their music was more or less timeless rock and roll, and since Billy is still in the business, all they need to do is get Terry out of retirement for one more tour: cmon, guys, life is too short not to, there are indeed only seconds of pleasures, reform and give us some.
Here is last month’s Ultimate Rock interview with Dave.
On Guitar… Dave Edmunds: Rags & Classics – A-
Edmunds and Lowe released the earliest Rockpile material as solo projects because each was signed to different labels. Getting Rockpile signed as a group provided three options. Decent reason.
Dave’s been a friend since the late 80s. He’s recorded 3 of my tunes. I heard him first on Radio Luxembourg when i was visiting a Swedish first love and always hoped he would record one of my tunes. Dream come true and he and his wife Cici have been friends of mine since ’89. The songs? “Falling Through A Hole”, and “Every Time I See Her” (on Capitol’s “Closer To The Flame”), written with my partner in rhyme, Rick Bell. Then I was at his house for lunch one day when he lived in the Hills above the San Fernando Valley and he had on The Sunflower album by The Beach Boys! I knew he was a fan of those guys (I’m a Beach Boy freak!) but didn’t know how much. While having lunch he had asked for a cassette I had brought over for him to listen to. He was working on “Plugged In” at the time. I begged off giving it to him, saying I had another song to add to it and for him to trust me. I came back the next day with “Beach Boy Blood (In My Veins)” and he flipped! Took him two weeks to just record the vocals. (He was on a kick about doing the album all by himself so I didn’t offer any help…but one thing about Dave is he likes to hold to the sound of any demo he hears) We first met when my band, Jiva, was opening for Rockpile up and down the west coast in ’79. Dream come true in spades! (I would also love to hear Rockpile again)