Interview with John Waite - "Stay Well, stay in love, be happy, long life"

John Waite

We had the chance to interview one of my favorite singer/songwriter, musician of all time…. The legendary John Waite. I can’t remember when I first heard John, it had to have been as I stole my brother’s old Baby’s record and I think it was Broken Heart. I don’t think I ever gave him back the record! I was hooked. I continued to listen to The Babys, John’s extensive and successful solo albums and was a big fan of Bad English.

A couple years ago, we had the opportunity to check out John as he played in support of his Rough and Tumble CD which I love. I am pleased to tell you that John has just released a LIVE CD; LIVE ALL ACCESS on his own label, No Brakes. It truly has exceptional sound quality and John again delivers a powerful CD that will have you playing it from start to finish. Here is our interview:

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Music Junkie Press: Thank you John for taking the time to talk with us here at Music Junkie Press. We have been enjoying your latest CD: Live All Access! I have always been a big supporter of live albums and this one just sounds incredible! Was it recorded at one show or throughout various shows?

John: No, there was two shows that it came from. There was one in South Philly, in a place called Philly Sound which is a converted church and the stage is where the nave would be and the recording studio building is to the side of the church. They did string quartets, and they do choirs, and they do rock bands occasionally and all those things. We announced it on the radio, threw the doors opened, bought a couple of kegs of beer per night, and played two nights. We got the first two songs, three songs of the set on both nights but it was so hot. It was like playing inside a cavern. There were some tuning problems so we gave it a couple months off, then recorded a few more shows. Then we got lucky and got the whole show of really good songs in New Hampshire. So we mixed the two together and there you go.

Music Junkie Press: We caught you a couple years back on your Rough and Tumble album tour and on that album, was one of my favorite songs, “If you Ever Get Lonely” which I understand you have remastered the single for release. Is that currently out now?

John: Yes, we just put a new remastered version up on Itunes and there is a band in Nashville named Love and Theft who recorded it and it is like No. 48 or something at the moment. But they had a No. 1 single last year with their song called Angel Eyes.

Music Junkie Press: That is exciting. Your songs have such passion in them. Do you have a particular song writing process or ritual?

John: No, I just pick up the guitar. I just did it about ten minutes ago. I played a chord and started singing and there is a song there. It gets to the point where I just avoid it. I tried to avoid it as much as I can, after being in the studio. Then about a week before I just start writing like I won’t be alive in a week. Say everything I got to say. It all seems to come together very quickly. I keep books around the house, and I scribble things down, I speak into the phone and leave messages for myself, bits of conversations here and there, and write them down and it all makes sense later on somehow. But I generally just pick up the guitar and start playing and there is song right there.

Music Junkie Press: I believe John you have written truly the most popular post break-up love song, with Missing You. It is amazing that the song’s popularity spans across generations and music genres and even Orianthi did her own version of it. When you originally released it, did you know that it was going to be so big or have a feeling about it?

John: No, it was that feeling, that at last, I had found what I was looking for. The first verse, bridge, chorus, most of the second verse, bridge and second chorus all came out like just on top of my head. Someone just told me the other day, that if I had just sang I’m Missing You it wouldn’t have had the same effect at all. Missing You is denial which makes it interesting. It does sound kind of poetic and I knew when I sung the first verse just what I got. But nobody knows what it is like to be No. 1 until you’re No. 1. There is no rule book. It just comes at you and you deal with it anyway you can. So about three months later I was number 1 and it was a hell of a ride. Bad English was No. 1 a few years later and it is probably more fun to be in a band when you are no 1 than being solo and number 1. There is a lot of satisfaction in knowing that you finally have arrived at the top.

Music Junkie Press: Another great song is “If You Ever Get Lonely”. It almost reminds me of the continuation of Missing You in modern day. Can you tell me more about how that song came about?

John: Me and Kyle Cook, There was a song floating around in my manager’s office called “If You Ever Get Lonely” and it had a great chorus. The rest of it was probably as bad as you can imagine. It was just really bad, it was like the songwriting things you get in Nashville, where someone writes a chorus, someone else writes the bridge, someone else writes a verse; these songwriting circles where everyone can have a go. My manager kept playing me this chorus and saying to me, “Isn’t this just a great song?” and I kept saying “No!” Then he said I guess it needs rewriting. So one day Kyle Cook of Mathbox 20 and I were doing Rough and Tumble, one day at the end of our sessions, I said, “Listen to this” so I played him ‘Thanks for calling, It is so good to hear your voice’ and I just kept going. It just segued straight into ‘If You Ever Get Lonely’. The signification of the melody and Kyle’s input both lyrically and musically, he put together a bridge section, guitar solo and we rewrote some of the chorus itself. We really did a major Frankenstein job on it. I mean it was just sitting there like this jewel.

Here is a video for “If You Ever Get Lonely”

Music Junkie Press: That is a truly beautiful song. I know that for a songwriter their songs become like their children and can’t play favorites but what song from your vast collection of songs, is the most special one or personal to you?

John: Well, I like them all for different reasons and I very rarely go back and listen to any of them once they are done. It is just not what I do. But there is song called The BlueBird Café that I wrote in 1996 in Nashville about a girl who is on her way to play at The BlueBird Café. I sang it in one take and I played the guitar and everything. It really is the most simple song I ever wrote, but it is a story. I always thought it was the best thing I have ever done. I would love Willie Nelson to do it. I think if Willie Nelson did it and sang a song about a young girl trying to get to The Bluebird Café. I’d kiss his feet. I actually put it in the press, I said “Willie if you do this, I will kiss your feet.” I would love to see him do it. That is a very special song but each song has its own meaning to me and you put a lot into it. The best one is the most simple.

Music Junkie Press: We are going to have to send our people after Willie Nelson for you! That would be incredible, it is a great song. If you could go back and talk to your 14 year old self, what advice would you give yourself?

John: Run! Not much, you can’t really teach people wisdom. If you put your hand in the fire, you’re gonna get burned. I mean, you don’t expect people to be dishonest. You just don’t and people can be. It is the music business and I really have had some misfortunes with business people twice, three times, that kept me broke for a very long time. And then contracts expired, and I knew better, and I had to start again. But I was kind of had no real money for 12 years. It just happens. It is a cruel business to be in. They’re such opposites; musicians and business people. Very rarely you get a musician that is a business person and when they are, their music is kind of generic. The two things don’t really go together, it is a very strange. This record LIVE: ALL ACCESS, is on my own label. It is the first time I have put something out, without distribution. Just on Itunes. You can get it if you send away for it on johnwaitethesinger.com, you can get it at shows. I am just taking a shot, and I am just putting it up on Itunes Worldwide and I didn’t expect it. I was just trying to like to put it out there and see if it was possible because I own a lot of my own catalog now. I buy it back and I license it out and it comes back to me. This is the first time I have put something out on No Brakes,which is my label, typically on Itunes. If anybody wants to get it, just hit a button and there it goes. I can’t remember the last time I bought a new CD.

Music Junkie Press: That is true! I personally love and miss vinyls. The sound is so great!

John: I think it is all going to go back to vinyls, eventually. The only time I buy CDs is in like Goodwill or somewhere in Europe where we call it Oxfam and you might find the greatest hits of the Movers or Small Faces. That is the only time when I ever buy CDs, when I go into secondhand shops and there are no more CD shops. So I am just giving it a shot and just seeing if it works just doing it on Itunes. But you can get it if you send away for it.

Music Junkie Press: I know that you have had a Babys reunion which is just awesome, but how about Bad English. Are there plans at all to ever have a Bad English Reunion show?

John: The Babys have gotten back together. They have new guitar players, singers, and all sorts of things going on and they are on their way. They are very happy. I keep hearing how well their doing and I think that is great. I love them and God bless them. Bad English, it won’t happen. I think once you’re solo it is difficult to go into a band. Me and Jeffrey Steele down in Nashville were going to start a band that was going to be like half country/half rock and I thought that was interesting but I don’t really go for the mainstream and I think we need a band that the edges get knocked off. Although I think the first Bad English record was rather pretty good.

Music Junkie Press: I wore them out! Did you write all the songs? It was incredible! That was one CD that I actually had a couple copies of.

John: Well ya, I wrote most of the lyrics and the melodies and that was my job. The thing about Bad English is that everybody did what everybody did the best. Sometimes we worked closely together on things and other times we just finished something off. I think it was a very intense short period, although it was a couple years.

Music Junkie Press: It was great! I loved them all Ghost in Your Heart, Forget me Not, Possession, It was one of my most favorite CDs that I played start to finish! Lay Down, I think I truly wore out my Bad English CDs. They were just on replay everday!

John: It was like arena with lyrics that are kind of twisted. It was not the obvious thing you expected. Even Possession. I just wanted to bring something darker to it. I think in the end, the audience were a bit confused as we all were. It was a good time.

Music Junkie Press: It was definitely a good time. In the past 20 years, with the technology advancing at a such a rapid rate, with the addition of the internet, social sites, digital cameras, etc. is there something from today that you wish you had when you were growing up.

John: Well I had nothing growing up. My Auntie Doris gave me a radiogram when I was about 7 and some records. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up so we didn’t have a lot of luxury. So when she gave me the radiogram it was like getting a space rocket. It was like getting something from outer space, it was ridiculous. The stuff now, you can download music, an Iphone, you can’t go anywhere now without your Iphone because it is like a computer, it has really disconnected people from themselves. Really, I think people talk more and they communicate more and as the world becomes more integrated it is better to have people able to talk to eachother. I could talk to someone in Iran and I can talk to someone in Iraq and I can talk to somebody in Afghanistan and surely that must be a good thing. If foreign policy follows through, and we don’t step on too many toes abroad. You can’t be having foreign policies that offends nations abroad and expect peace in the world. But when people can actually talk to each other they generally solve their differences. So, the internet is the way to peace.

Music junkie Press: That is a good way to look at it. You have helped me to look at the good side of it. I know that I have a lot of your music on my Ipod but If we could peak into your iPod/mp3 player what would we be most surprised at seeing in there?

John: Bill Evans. He is like 60s jazz keyboard player. I think he was born in New Orleans and raised in New Jersey. He is like a jazz three piece band, bass, drum and there is an album called Live at the Village Vanguard that I listen to a lot. And there is Erik Satie who has this beautiful, he was a late 18^th century musician and there is a movement of his called Gymnopedie 123 that is the most beautiful thing you have heard in your life. I listen to a lot of Blues, and I have a very eclectic taste.

Music Junkie Press: I am going to have to look that one up. Now how about when you are not writing or performing, what do you enjoy doing to do?

John: Well, I sleep a lot because on the road you are really burning the candle at both ends and you have to get up at a 4:00 in the morning. We played about three gigs in a row about a month ago and we played the first gig in San Diego at a fair and then we went back to the hotel showered up and had to be out of the room at 4:00 to go to the airport and fly out to Ohio to play a gig and then fly to Sioux City after that. You know when you spend your life doing that, your off time that you do have you tend to spend it really being the opposite. It is really demanding being on the road. It is not just the show, it is getting to the show that is the problem.

Music Junkie Press: I can’t imagine how hard that is. Also you stay so physically fit. How do you stay so fit as well with such a hectic schedule?

John: I don’t know. It must be natural, my genes are really strong. My Mum is 88 and my dad passed away 4 years ago unfortunately, God rest His soul. But my Mum is 88 and still firing on all cylinders, Looks great and really healthy. Walks into town every day to do the shopping, plays the piano and I mean just like really alive. I talk to her every morning and I say Hey, how are you doing and I am half a sleep and she is talking a mile a minute. That is kind of where I come from, I am a hardy stock. I will keel over one day but I don’t think it will be for a while yet.

Music Junkie Press: No, you have a lot of living to do. We are going to be sharing all your social media links and especially where to pick up the LIVE ALL ACCESS CD. Lastly, is there anything else you would like to share with our audience?

John: Stay well, stay in love, be happy, long life.

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John truly said it beautifully. We are looking forward to catching John out on the road at his show in October at Feather Falls in Oroville, CA. Make sure to visit his social media sites so you can stay up to date on where John is playing next.

Also definitely head over to Itunes and pick up LIVE: ALL ACCESS. I love live albums and this one just really has excellent sound quality! I love listening to the live version of Saturday Night on the CD, really just brings out intensity and energy. Definitely one of my favorites but John has given me 8 favorites on this CD to love. Get your copy today and let me know which is your fave.

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