New programme with MK - MARK LAWSON TALKS TO...

[Fletch]

It's on the BBCs iPlayer, but only in the UK! Hopefully someone will kindly YouTube it, I don't want to download a whole DVD just to hear about the red Strat again!!

[Jules]

It's on the BBCs iPlayer, but only in the UK! Hopefully someone will kindly YouTube it, I don't want to download a whole DVD just to hear about the red Strat again!!

I watched it last night with an Ipad app which alows you to watch online many of the UK tvs and was very interesting. Obviously many answers that we already know, but as MK was quite nervous, some answers had a kind of fresh thing.

Didn

[allen]

Due to some reason, I couldn't ues Youtube, so I uploaded the video on a Chinese website, so sorry if the Chinese characters make you upset.  Anyway, here it is:

Part 1:


Part 2:


Wishes
Allen

[dmg]

I've got mixed emotions from this interview.  On one hand it has some fresh things in it and Lawson did a good job (save for one silly question that needed elaboration), however there was that thing that has cropped up lately that disappoints me.  This concerns Marks insistence on railroading himself into being the songwriter and not the guitarist.  Never has it been more apparent than in this interview.  He even referred to the guitar as "the damned thing."

Interesting to note that he is now willing to talk about his past, including family life whereas up until probably just last year we knew next to nothing about this.

[herlock]

Thanks Allen ! I have watched it too.
I also have mix feelings. On the one hand, Mark seems to be keen to be honest and to answer everything (too bad he was not asked why he does not play TOL anymore, we might have gotten an answer !); on the other hand, the way he answers about his brother is strange, to say the least. MK is nervous during the whole interview, but especially nervous during this part. Reading between the lines, you understand that although he is embarrassed to say this on TV, his brother did not really meet the grade as a guitar player, and did not want to listen to his elder brother's advice (orders ?), that's why it was tricky... in short, it did go well with Pick because Pick was an experienced drummer who had recorded before; it did go well with John because John was both a decent bass player and a "yes-man"; and it did not go well with David because David was a stubborn inexperienced guitar player.... a bit tough. Is the analogy maded with Mark's first group ("They hated each other") is a way to tell that there was little affection between the two brothers ?
We also learn that money was not the issue. But in a DK interview we know that song credits might have been the issue. Did David actually write some of songs of S/T or Communiqu

[Rkd]

Thanks, Alan. This was great. Lots of old ground covered in this interview, but some nice moments too. I especially liked the insight we gained when MK talked about his father bringing a different perspective to their lives because of his background and how learning about other people's perspectives gives the creative person "another eye". It was also interesting to me to hear that the fifties were described as a drab decade in the UK. For me, as a white child growing up in the U.S., the fifties were all Ozzie and Harriet - a great time to be a kid. Of course, I had yet to learn about the discrimination that was pervasive throughout our country.  My "other eye" hadn't come into focus yet!

[twm]

From my visits to the USA, I know that it can be difficult for Americans to understand what the situation was like in Britain in the late 1940s and the early 1950s. Though the war in Europe ended in mid-1945, it continued for another year in the Far East and rationing in Britain didn't even end then. There was the blockade of Berlin in the late-1940s and the Korean War in the early 1950s, to both of which Britain contributed. Rationing continued and restrictions were only lifted bit-by-bit as the years went by but did not actually stop until 9 years after the war in Europe had ended.  There was a particularly harsh winter in the late 1940s and a major flooding in Eastern England in the early 1950s, both of which adversely affected food supply. Housing was in short supply and many lived in temporary accommodation. A similar situation applied in many parts of mainland Europe but, as much of Britain's war effort had  been funded by war loans (mostly from America), Britain had to repay those loans over many years after the war. Those loans were only finally paid back in full about five years ago (I forget the precise year but it was towards the end of the last Labour goverment, so prior to 2010). There were a few years when the economic situation in Britain was so dire that our government had to seek a postponement of that year's repayments.

The 1950s (especially the first half) are regarded as fairly dismal but things became a little brighter towards the end of the 1950s but the bright, explosive and rather uplifting Sixties didn't really start here until late-1962 or early-1963.

This is Philip Larkin's "Annus Mirabilis". People tend to quote its first verse but I rather prefer the last:

S-exual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

[dustyvalentino]

Spamual intercourse. Brilliant.  I think Larkin would approve. 

[Lis]

Many, many thanks, twm, for the insight into post-war Britain and for also including Philip Larkin's super-amazing "Annus Mirabilis". 

And many thanks for our "sex-word" filter... I was howling with laughter at the phrase: "spamual intercourse"...   

[Fletch]

Cheers Allen, Chinese yt works for me !

[twm]

Sorry about "sexual" instead of "s-exual". i missed that transformation. After a few attenpts to beat the "system", I finally cracked it and have modified my posting.

One of the things I didn't mention were the fogs - or rather the smogs. London had long been noted for its fogs (The Gershwin song, "A foggy day in London town", gives a rathe romantic notion) but smogs were much worse. Smoke mixed with fog produced a yellowish concoction known as smog or, colloquially, a "pea-souper"  because it was thick and resembled pea soup in colour.  It enveloped you, even got inside houses and, worst of all, got in your lungs, causing respiratory conditions.  I suspect that pea-soupers happened in other cities and towns but the one that really grabbed public attention was the one in London at the end of 1952, known colloquially as "The Great Smog".  Smog was not only almost impenetrable but also lethal. The number of deaths attributable to the Great Smog has been disputed but we're talking several thousands of people. Eventually, in the mid-1950s, the Clean Air Act was passed by Parliament, requiring the use of smoke-free coal and other fuel sources. It took a while for the benefits of the legislation to resolve the issue fully and, though I lived in outer London, I can recall going to school with a thick scarf round my face and a faint yellowish tinge to the fog.

It was literally and metaphorically a gloomy period.

[Fieneke2]

Allen THANK YOU for posting the links to the interview with Mark!

I loved watching and listening! 

Fieneke

[Pottel]

i really liked this interview, as most of his interviews of late.
also, i had hoped lawson would have asked about their relationship these days.
mark did only mention it was not about money at the time, when i remember Dave's statement he talks about later...
i did not sense nervousness, except that he kept wringing his hands. looked like he was in a decent mood.
a lot of new ground was covered imho

[foma]

http://vk.com/video_ext.php?oid=-1623526&id=164958829&hash=7730b3ad610664ac&hd=1

Here is the direct stream on vk.c?m to whole interview done in one piece with high bitrate and without ads at all.

[twm]

Finally got round to watching the BBC4 interview. I thought it pretty well done and sensed no nervousness on MK's part at all. He skated around the David Knopfler question but that's about it really.

Was the brief clip of him with Richard Bennett new to you? Ifd so, does this perhaps indicate when the interview took place?