I saw John last year, and he was just great. We had supper, and I’m very grateful for that night. We went and sat for the evening to tell stories, and then John’s jukebox caught on fire, which seems like the most beautiful way to end the evening—literally a vintage jukebox suddenly filled with smoke. It was like a detail in one of his songs: “That’s about the time the jukebox burst into flame.”
I was in Australia when that record fell into place for me, which is unusual, because that is where he’s from. I don’t believe I’d ever met Nick when he made that record, though I know we’d seen each other in passing and maybe looked snootily at each other at a festival site or somewhere. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to his music. It seemed a little overwrought for me. And then something about this record just fucking knocked me out. The way the mood developed, Warren Ellis’ playing on it, the way the songs sped up and slowed down. It just moved me. It’s all the same component parts, but it seems like he got closer to some real revelation. When I listen back to Push the Sky Away, I hear that they’re interacting as a band and listening to each other. It made me appreciate it. I went back and listened to all of his records.
This idea has been sold to us, usually by people with no talent, that music must be about eternal youth. In the popular music legend, somehow, you become feeble over 30. People that say Bob Dylan can’t sing anymore have literally no idea what singing is. By the way, when did he ever sound like Marvin Gaye? He always sounded like Bob Dylan. Lots of different Bob Dylans. So this particular record is how he sounds right now, informed by the seven years that he sang standards. That’s long enough to become a priest.
Even on the audacious “Murder Most Foul,” the last section of that song, where he sings that litany of names, song titles, and films—that actually brought me to tears. Just the fact that there was the consequence of all of that piled up, and the coincidence and then the jokes within it, where some of the names don’t seem to be in the same standing as some of the others, so they’re said with a little aside. It wasn’t pious. It wasn’t grandiose. It’s all piled up for you to view. What I don’t understand is saying it’s about JFK. It’s a bit like saying Moby Dick is about a whale. You know, it sort of is, nominally, but it’s not really, is it?