lewis taylor INTERVIEW 2023
The last time I interviewed the English prog-soul cult hero Lewis Taylor, was on this very site for a post-retirement exclusive, timed to coincide with an unauthorised major label re-release of his classic eponymously titled debut album. Back then, Lewis was adamant that he was done with making music both professionally and personally.
Discarding an exceptional talent that was able to assimilate sounds from across the spectrum of recorded music – from blues to soul, rock, slop, funk, jazz, avant-garde, and pop – and creating art uniquely his own, he turned his back on a distinguished career. While it may not have been overwhelmingly successful in commercial terms, it was nonetheless lauded by household names like D'Angelo, Lalah Hathaway, Elton John, David Bowie, and that lead singer bloke from Go West.
Initially, Lewis continued to work as a sideman for bands like The Edgar Broughton Band and Gnarls Barkley – a testament if ever there was one, to the broad, multi-genre nous on which he could rely – but these stints only reinforced his belief. They confirmed how little pleasure or satisfaction he now found in picking up the guitar and how remaining in the public eye had become damaging to both his mental health and his sense of well-being.
"When you get a tom cat neutered, he still has that pissy smell for a while even though he's had his nuts chopped off. It’s the gland draining off. It was like that. I was still piss-boy for a while, but I smell nice now,” is what he told me in 2016 - ten years after he quit music - by way of an analogy that was as graphic as it was unequivocal.
“A real underrated cat, man…”
D’Angelo
And that was that-or so I thought. People used to ask me, ‘So honestly, tell me, do you think he’ll ever make a return?’ and I would respond confidently, ‘Nah sorry, neeeeever gonna happen. He’s done, mate. Finito.’ I’d kept in touch with Lewis sporadically over the years. Every now and then, I would hit him up offering to do a follow-up interview - which, until recently, he always politely declined. I also made sure to pass on any enquiries - collaboration requests or commercial opportunities - that were sent to me for his attention via the connect section. Since Lewis lacked an online presence, the site was regarded as a potential hotline that people could turn to. Once forwarded, I assumed all-comers were deftly dismissed and batted away with finesse. Occasionally, I would also update LT on anything else I stumbled upon online that I believed he might find interesting.
Like the time D’Angelo curated a psych-funk radio hour for Sonos, during the UK’s third COVID lockdown. Selecting “I Dream The Better Dream,” a lesser-known yet brilliant B-side from Taylor’s debut single “Lucky,” D’Angelo - presenting with a voice that sounded like it had been matured by tobacco and liquor - waxed poetic about Lewis. “So, we gon’ go to this other cat, man. A real underrated cat, man. An overlooked cat…” – is how the introduction began, before he sighed and added, "... but this muthafucka’s a genius, man!” (To which Lewis commented, responding via email, 'What a nice chap.')
Little did D know, or I for that matter (investigative newshound that I pride myself on being) that for the past year or so, Lewis had been ensconced in his home studio in Enfield, North London, secretly working on new material for a 6th studio album.
The first indication that he was making a return came a couple of months after our D’Angelo exchange in 2021, when an official Lewis Taylor Facebook page appeared. Not long after, a snippet made the rounds, taken from the intro to what would become his comeback single, “Final Hour” (incidentally, an instrumental entitled “Iceland” added to Spotify around the same time had nothing to do with Lewis and was added by the streaming platform in error).
Then last summer, 2022, without mainstream fanfare or hype, Lewis dropped Numb on the market via his reactivated indie label, Slow Reality, a full sixteen years after his shock retirement. By that point, only a handful of diehards were aware of its existence (at the time of writing, Taylor’s Twitter/X account, still has fewer than 400 followers).
Crafting a concise suite of ten original songs – no outtakes, Lewis insists – Numb delves into the trauma he felt prior to withdrawing from music. With a lightness of touch that, surprisingly given the subject matter, doesn't become overly sombre, the past viewed from the vantage point of recovery.
His most personally revealing work to date, it's an emotionally resonant return to form: soft and warm, the quiet after the storm. Blessed with his signature sound, Numb resides in the vortex between Marvin Gaye and Brian Wilson. With a myriad of other influences swirling around — Pink Floyd, Son House, Miles Davis, and so on — as is his wont, it's reassuringly familiar, as if he's never been away.
Though, of course, he has been, for over a decade and a half. During that time, he had to make ends meet, just like the rest of us mere mortals. The rumour, which Lewis pooh-poohed during our last interview, suggested he had been working as a plumber.
“I did a few things, went back to fruit and veg for a while which I've always loved, especially in the summer,” Lewis messaged via email, his preferred mode of communication for interviews nowadays. “I did some painting and decorating here and there, something I'd never done before,” he adds. “I was really surprised to discover that I actually have a bit of a flair for it. So, yeah, I worked, which was really good for me. Then, unfortunately, the pandemic happened, which put a stop to all of that.”
Apart from washing his hands more often and wearing a mask to the shops, not much else changed, says Lewis. “I was just busy working on the new album.”
There was no epiphany that coaxed Lewis back to the studio. It came about quite innocently when his partner, Sabina Smyth - a longstanding collaborator who co-wrote and co-produced every song on Numb with Lewis - simply asked him for a bit of help with a song.
‘Oops, that sounds a bit like LT!’
“I don’t think the desire was actually sparked in any real sense,” Lewis explains. “I’m still pretty much living the same life as I was when we last spoke. I am a bit further on in my ‘human journey,’ so there are fewer and fewer things internally for me to be anxious about. The way it all started was pretty much an accident. Sabina was working on a song, and she asked me if I wanted to put some guitar on it. I did, and we had fun. Then I went back to whatever I was doing and didn’t give it any more thought. A few weeks later, she said she had a song with a vocal line that was a bit out of her range and asked if I’d be up for putting a rough vocal track down for her. Again, without thinking, I just said, ‘Yeah, okay.’ But when we listened back to it, we both thought, ‘Oops, that sounds a bit like LT!’ After a few more adjustments and tweaks, we had a rough draft of what eventually became ‘Final Hour.’”
I suggested to Lewis that “Final Hour,” with its lyrics concerning judgement at the pearly gates, seemed quite a foreboding way to start an album. Lewis lol’d.
“If you feel it's foreboding, then that’s fair to say, I suppose!” He joked, emphasising the 'you' with italics. “The lyrics on that one were actually inspired by the music,” he elaborated. “Sabina thought it had an end-of-the-world feel to it, and so we built upon that theme, taking it further to a final judgement sort of thing.”
Encouraged by the results, when Lewis and Sabina dusted off his old gear and proceeded to embark on the new project, they encountered a few snags.
“Well, I did sell off a lot of the guitars years ago,” Lewis explains. “I think it was more of a mental clearing out ‘cos like everything else it was an obsession, a slippery slope that I've just about managed to stay away from. Just about! What I did have was all packed away. Matter of fact halfway through the album the whole studio setup died and because it was so out of date, we had to replace it all and learn how to use a completely new system.”
A lot has transpired since Lewis left the business. The Great Recession of 2007-2009 occurred, Greece went bankrupt, Donald Trump became president, Brexit happened, and of course, there was COVID-19. Given all of that, how much of Numb was influenced by looking outward at the state of the world today?
“None of it,” says Lewis, to the point. “It’s all very navel-gazing… but done in a way that I think relates.”
In our previous interview, Lewis mentioned that his songs were never directly about his own life. Yet, the subject matter of much of Numb, with song titles such as “Apathy,” “Worried Mind,” & “Being Broken,” harks back to the conversation we had in 2016. Back then, he explained his reasons for shutting everything down (his YouTube page, the website, leaving America mid-tour) because he felt, and I’m paraphrasing here, that he had lost himself to the public persona of Lewis Taylor the artist. This time, however, the lyrics are a literal representation, he says.
“I think it would've been impossible not to have been affected by having gone through what I went through.”
What was the diagnosis, a nervous breakdown?
“No, not really,” says Lewis. “There was no official diagnosis. I think it was more to do with several aspects of my life sort of joining up together, not all of them music-related, but it culminated in a sort of lifting of the veil which exposed a completely different person to the one I thought I was. The sudden realisation that for all those years I'd been operating in such a dysfunctional way was a bit of a shock to the system to say the least.”
The title song, and second single, "Numb," was one of the first pieces that Lewis & Sabina worked on following "Final Hour."
“The sound of the siren and the bassline going round and round actually came to me in a dream, which is something that rarely happens to me. So, I told Sabina, and we put that little idea down really quickly. It was a while until it let us make it into a song.”
I asked Lewis about their musical influences for the track.
“A couple of things I had in mind were “Dogs” by Pink Floyd and the overall vibe of Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom, which is an album that has always been an influence. Nothing as far as Sabina’s concerned though, she doesn’t work like that.”
I can hear the influence of “’Til I Die” by the Beach Boys on the song “Numb,” I tell Lewis, putting my head above the parapet with an oft-worn comparison to the Californian band. I also cite the gorgeous “Being Broken” as having heavy Brian Wilson vibrations.
“I did go through a bit of a Brian phase in the mid-‘90s,” Lewis acknowledges. “I had those tendencies back then - very obsessive. I would get into something and be very tunnel-visioned about it, not just with music, but with all sorts of things. But having said that, yes, he did do some nice stuff, our Brian.”
It was Sabina who began the songs that later became "Worried Mind," "Feels So Good," and "Apathy." For the latter, she had already written the line, "It’s a long, long way to fall when you think you’re standing taller than the rest, and you're turning into someone you detest."
“It’s all very navel-gazing.”
“'Apathy' actually took a very long time to record,” says Lewis. “Lots of to-ing and fro-ing because, although it had been written, the appropriate way to record it kept evading us. Working on the whole album was a new experience for me because all the old stuff was composed while it was being recorded, whereas this time the songs were written first.”
"Feels So Good" also has a Pink Floyd connection; the lyric 'Even think that I should be together' references a famous Syd Barrett line from an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. I comment on how much I dig the guitar solo.
“That was on a Strat, though there's so many effects on it that it wouldn't have made a difference what guitar was used!” Lewis explains, then adds, “Also, it was less of a solo than it was a piece, Sabina actually wrote it. You can always tell the difference because my solos are always blues-based riffery, whereas the ones she writes are much more melody-driven.”
Hot on the heels of Numb, Lewis has swiftly followed up with a new release, The Acoustic Album. As the title suggests, this project features stripped-back renditions from his songbook, including fan favorites such as “Bittersweet,” “Damn,” “Lovelight,” and “Keep On Keeping On.” What stands out is how comfortably the song “Numb” nestles in amongst the established classics, emphasising the strength of the return.
(Quick one: As I sit here typing up the interview with a half-drunk mug of coffee beside me that's grown cold, and a shaggy lump of a dog whining at the door to be let out, The Acoustic Album plays in the background. “Waves” is on, and I've noticed that Taylor has changed the lyric from 'She comes in waves' to 'Love comes in waves'. I presume he did this to give it a more wholesome touch. I hadn't picked up on that before. As the haunting piano notes play - sounding like “Trouble Man” performed at St. Paul’s - and the stack-o'-tracks purity of Taylor’s angelic background vocals starts to swell, I experience chills, distracted from my train of thought and the task at hand. It just got me thinking about how much I've missed this, y'know? It's so good to have him back. Anyway, I digress…)
The Acoustic Album also showcases other selections from his last release, highlights such as “Is It Cool,” “Worried Mind,” and “Feels So Good”. There's talk of it getting the deluxe treatment from the esteemed vinyl specialists Be With Records. “Rob [Butler] and his team have done an amazing job,” says Lewis, praising Be With Records, who have already revisited Numb and much of Taylor's back catalogue. "The releases look and sound brilliant!"
Given that Taylor is now a couple of albums deep into his comeback, what are the odds of him slinging the guitar case over his shoulders and leading a band back to the stage?
“I don't know; I'd have to see how things go,” He replies, understandably with caution.
“I don't have any immediate plans. I'm still sort of getting used to things, getting used to being musically active again. I’m fairly keen not to have my life impacted by things as much as it was before.”
Right. Totally get it.
But it probably should be added as a caveat: never say never.