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Boston Globe

Nick Lowe on creativity, tips from Johnny Cash, and the enduring appeal of ‘Cruel to Be Kind'

That apartment and radio don't exist. But for Lowe, 76, the scene is the best metaphor for the 'amorphous weird beast' of creativity; he gets a moment or two of inspiration in his brain, hears a snatch of something noteworthy through the mist of daily life, and eagerly hopes for enough inspiration to create a full-fledged song. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'It's all quite mysterious,' said Lowe, who's playing with Advertisement When it does work — when he can listen and not force the results — the songs he pulls out of the air may just become 'Cruel to Be Kind' or '(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love & Understanding,' songs that were once ubiquitous and still linger in the cultural consciousness half of a century later. Advertisement In the 1970s and '80s, Lowe was also the producer for many other new wave and rock classics, including numerous Lowe has written plenty of songs he is equally proud of since the albums 'Jesus of Cool' and 'Labour of Lust' made him famous in the 1970s, but at a certain point he changed his approach and stopped chasing commercial success. Instead, he began writing and recording ballads, country, R&B, and roots music — in other words, whatever struck him outside the realm of pop and rock. 'It was a conscious decision in my 40s,' Lowe recalled, noting that he was losing his audience, but was also 'fed up' with the whole experience. 'I started writing and recording for myself. I knew it wouldn't be for everyone, but I felt if I got it right, I wouldn't just be reaching my older fans, but could reach young people looking for something different.' He owed that freedom to Cash and Costello. When he was young, Cash told him the key to happiness was to 'just be yourself.' Lowe said he told Cash he was disappointed that such an icon would trot out such trite platitudes, but Cash insisted it was a hard-won truth. Years later, Lowe finally realized that when he stopped projecting an image, as he had in his 'Jesus of Cool' era, he was happier and the music was better. 'It made everything much easier,' he said. Advertisement And when Lowe was struggling in the '80s as his record sales plummeted, Costello hired him as a guitarist and vocalist for a world tour, then sent Lowe out to perform his own songs solo and acoustic before the show. 'It was a revelation,' Lowe recalled, saying the experience forced him to strip back each song. Without the bells and whistles that went into pop production, he could hear the essence of the music and the lyrics. 'That definitely affected my songwriting.' But the Nick Lowe of old is still in there, especially on last year's 'Indoor Safari,' his first album in more than a decade. Backed by the Nashville band Los Straitjackets, it's twangier than his earliest works, but the songs often feel like they could have been on his first two albums. 'Went to a Party' is an old school rocker about staying too long at a night of debauchery; 'Love Starvation' has a jaunty roll to it, even though the narrator's 'hugging my pillow all alone in a rickety bed.' In 'Jet Pac Boomerang,' Lowe's vocal inflections are reminiscent of Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner, who has cited Lowe as one of his favorite songwriters. In the song's last line, Lowe sneaks in an homage to one of his own favorites — the Beatles — by incorporating a lyric from 'Please Please Me.' These days, Lowe still enjoys touring, especially in the United States, where he has worked to maintain his fan base more than in the UK. But he knows that he won't go on forever. 'I can sort of see the checkered flag fluttering away down the road,' he said, adding that he trusts his manager and family to tell him if he starts phoning it in or getting shaky in his performances. Advertisement 'If I ever catch myself going through the motions, I look out at the crowd and see people are really digging it, and it's touching, so I give myself a kick,' he said. And while he's excited to perform his latest creations for his fans, Lowe is not an artist who begrudges doing his biggest hits. While he sometimes rolls his eyes about 'Cruel to Be Kind' overshadowing some of his other songs, he acknowledged that 'it's actually fantastic just to have had a hit.' 'It's not a chore to play at all,' he added. 'I've played it thousands of times but it's still so strange that I once was the only person in the world who'd ever heard that song, and now I look out at the crowd and they're all singing along. That's fantastic.' NICK LOWE & LOS STRAITJACKETS At the Center for the Arts in Natick, 14 Summer St., Natick, Wed. Aug. 13, 8 p.m.