Podcast: The Surrealists meet Lenny Bruce

We met at a studio in Marylebone this afternoon to record a podcast for the Times Online website with Journalist Pete Pahides.. we’ve done a few of these now and when you hear it .. well I guess you’ll hear that Mick and I seem to be developing quite a surreal double act these days. See it’s really hard doing all these interviews because you go in and really you’re there to “sell the product” as record companies in the old days would say.. but here’s the thing for us – WE are the record company and it is always kinda tedious doing the sell the product rap.. in a way undignified and we feel past that stuff – all that “well we recorded it then, it’s about this, we’re looking forward to the gigs” blah blah blah – cos our audience know all that anyway… So we go in and in a free form kinda way, just riff -Lenny Bruce used to call his routines where he free formed about any subject ‘Riffing..’ (nothing to do with Zeppelin riffs I might add!) – about wherever it takes us – Pete today was great and just went with it where ever we took the conversation – yeah, we covered a lot of our inner loves/hates like television, the media, Labour, anteaters and ..well I suppose…punk rock…. and how it got corrupted. In fact I find these conversations enlightening and cathartic as between us we explore our inner thoughts, dreams and broken dreams and memories – Mick told a great story too about how the BAD track “The Bottom Line” was a tune he originally wrote for the Clash and Joe didn’t like it – it was originally called “Trans Cash Experience” and so Mick rewrote it as the first ever BAD tune.. We explored our views on television – Mick obsessively watches 200 channels of everything a night while in our house we have a “turn it off policy” – Penelope reads while I practise guitar… Oh and there was a great Chrissy Hynde story – often things I forget about those days in 1975 of the London SS band that never was and Bernie Rhodes’s mad schemes … I glanced around every now and again at the producer and engineer through the glass expecting to see faces of thunder at these 2 madmen entirely off message, talking about anything but the record but I always saw people fascinated…. Are we mad, talking about what we think and feel, dealing with modern life, as grown ups, with fears and dreams.. and still loving rock and roll? Or are there thousands out there….. just like us? Let me know!….