Carl McIntosh

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Our next guest is somebody I think all of you guys have gotten to know actually over the last 48 hours or so, in a very informal setting. This is slightly more formal, but still somewhat informal. He obviously is a multi-instrumentalist. Very talented one, which takes into account all these instruments you see around us. His group, Loose Ends, is one of the most important groups to come out of the UK soul scene in the ’80s. He is of course here with us. Won’t you please join me in welcoming Mr. Carl McIntosh.

Carl McIntosh

Thank you.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

How you doing today sir?

Carl McIntosh

I’m all right. Thank you.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Pleasure to have you here. Maybe a little background. Like I said, everybody... You’ve jammed with a lot of these guys in this room. Played with them in support on some of their club performances last night as well as the night before. I guess, for maybe those who are not as familiar with your history, let’s go a little bit into Loose Ends and yourself. I guess, firstly, how did you come to learn how to do all these wonderful things that you do?

Carl McIntosh

First of all, I was in a group in the ’80s called Loose Ends, as you probably know. It was quite a treacherous group. We didn’t sometimes work out the road ahead how we was gonna do things. They would just happen organically. For instance, I may have written a song in the songwriting situation with my group and when I got to the studio they had already decided not to use the instrument that I played. For instance, we wrote a song called “Hanging On A String.” I was a bass player. I wrote the song ”Hanging On A String.” All the top lines and everything, but my actual instrument when I turned up to the studio was being replaced by bass synth. It wasn’t something that was worked out. It was something that when I got there, it had already been decided.

From that, I guess you could take that I wasn’t a leader at that point. I joined the band after it was already running and live and worked my way up. What happened was, from being a bass player that was faced with this situation, I had to then adlib. While the session went on, and they were playing the bass, my parts, someone else was playing, I would play the piano in the corner. While they would hear bits and pieces of the piano playing. I was playing, they’d say “We need that on the record.” Then when they did that, I would play the guitar in the corner. They would say “Hey, we need some of that on the record.” That’s how I became a multi-instrumentalist. I was not going to go down.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You weren’t going out without a fight.

Carl McIntosh

Right? Eventually, the records, I ended up playing percussion. I was doing background noises. I was programming. I realized that the competitiveness of what was happening internally in the unit I was in, I didn’t realize that I would be faced with that. I just had to pull out all stops and do what I could.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

OK, so it was survival of the fittest?

Carl McIntosh

That’s right.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Within Loose Ends. All right. Name of the group was Loose End originally. What was that? Where did that come from?

Carl McIntosh

Loose End had two other members, a guy named Steve Nichol, and a girl named Jane Eugene. I think before I came along, one day they were walking along and they saw a hair salon. It was called Loose End. They said, “We should call the band Loose End.” Then, little while after I joined and then after I joined, we had an issue with a certain person in London called Pete Waterman. You may have heard of him. He had production company in the ’80s called Stock, Waterman and Aitken.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

He made a lot of hits.

Carl McIntosh

He made a lot of hits in the ’80s.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

For various artists like...

Carl McIntosh

Kylie Minogue.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Rick Astley.

Carl McIntosh

That’s right, Rick Astley. A whole bunch of people. He was so big. He had a production company called Loose End productions. He didn’t like the fact that there was this band called Loose End, so he tried to sue us. The only way around it was by putting the s on the end of our name, so we became Loose Ends.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

All right. I guess, how did you... I guess how did that whole UK soul scene at the time come up? I mean, that was a very fertile time for bands. Just try to paint the picture for us of what was going on around that time.

Carl McIntosh

All right. Well first of all, people in London, black people in London around the ’80s were of West Indian origin. Most of us came from families that came from the West Indies. Our indigenous music would be reggae. There was no different art form music genres then. It was either reggae or soul. What we did... We had to find our niche in a totally different country and come forward as a youth, bringing elements of the reggae and elements of soul, and trying to do something that was impossible really, because there was no market for us. There was no terrain. There was no road that was already there for us. We was having to carve a new niche.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Because there were no groups on the radio more or less for you to draw from as a role model or anything like that at the time except for maybe American groups?

Carl McIntosh

That’s right. American groups were there. For the most part, bands like Earth, Wind & Fire, Stevie Wonder, people like that. They were there. But you have to understand, in London in the late ’70s, there was no English black music or English dance music. It had to be American. If you was English, basically you had no chance. Then, every now and again, I would see a band. Like there’s a band called High Tension. That was the first band that really I think came from my generation. I don’t know if you were here yesterday. A gentleman was talking about Top of the Pops. I don’t know if you remember that. Terrible program. But they were on Top Of The Pops.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

High Tension was?

Carl McIntosh

High Tension.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And they were a UK group?

Carl McIntosh

UK group. Sounded similar to BT Express and Earth, Wind & Fire. These big bands with horns and stuff. They had a hit kind of. Wasn’t a number one, but it was a start. Still, the music was hard to get across. We had... Radio was king. Radio at that point was not playing more than I would say three hours, maybe four hours a week of black music on the radio. Or dance music.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

A week?

Carl McIntosh

A week. If you was doing... At that point, it wasn’t dance. It was black music. It was black or white. You was either doing rock music, or you was doing reggae or soul. Basically you had a slot on Saturday, and you had a slot on Sunday. One was soul, and one was reggae. That was it. Even if you were assigned to a record company, you really... That record company would have a hard time promoting you because you wouldn’t get hardly any air play. There was no air play. There was no landscape. What was already on radio was being filled with the American bands what were coming over. Parliament, and Stevie Wonder, and James Brown. Those type of bands.

Basically, young up and coming British bands didn’t have any respect either, because the ground work had never been done. No one don’t know who they are. To sign them was a little bit, it was iffy. It was a hard road, but a great thing happened. This thing called pirate radio. This was Loose Ends accidental market. It was something that happened. A film came out in the ’80s called Convoy. This sparked off a whole generation of people trying to buy CB radios. From CB radios came pirate radios, once people figured out that you just needed the transmitter and you could communicate with someone. That was like the first step in pirate radio. These pirate radio people were just playing their record collection, basically, over the airwaves. I don’t know if any of you have heard anything like that, but it’s normally really amateur, talking. It’s probably done in someone’s kitchen. Then after awhile, it started to become the new trend. You couldn’t stop it. There was too much going on. There was a pirate radio station for nearly every street almost, in London. Someone was doing it. With that came the experience of these DJs. After a while, they become good at doing pirate radio.

I’ve got to say, it even got to the point where top DJs are having to listen to pirate radio stations. Now, Loose Ends were lucky. We had two breaks. Just after we were signed, we had a few singles that didn’t do anything. The record company was Virgin, and they were trying to put us with... Let me just give you an example. One of our singles, the producer, his name was Pete Walsh. The band that he did before us was the Sex Pistols. You can imagine, this is like an r&b group that's being produced by someone who just did the Sex Pistols. That’s the type of psyche that the record company was fighting with to try and get that sound commercialized. They didn’t know really what they were going to do.

Then, when pirate radio came along it was like we had a break. The record company did believe that once they got the producer thing right, they just needed to find the way out. Once we had the way in, which was to get the band with the right type of people to make music, the next thing was to find the way out. Which was, how to put it to the people. Luckily for us, pirate radio was playing our songs from demo form. We were in America making our records, and when we came back to England, pirate radio already had our... Excuse me, already had our material on radio.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Really?

Carl McIntosh

It was blaring out all over London. I mean, I’m hearing mistakes in songs I’ve done on the radio. It was good.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

How’d those demos get leaked out? They were just tenacious in finding stuff, or was it someone at the label had leaked it to them?

Carl McIntosh

Right. Now, what had happened was the label had been receiving a weekly rundown of what we were doing from the studio.

Someone in the radio station was running off copies. They probably knew someone who had a pirate radio station or something like that. Normally, when we do recordings for Virgin, it seemed like there was this sort of bewilderment of, “How are we going to put this out?” When we turned up to the record company with a big smile, they’d be looking at us like... These guys were rockers, basically.

They were not, and there probably still are not, black music personnel that know black music or know dance music in that division of A&R. We were like totally lost. This time now, I noticed when we came back from recording our first album, which was called The Little Spice, it was like they had recognition. They understood. Pirate radio was there helping the whole enthusiasm behind our cause.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Yeah. Showing them the way.

Carl McIntosh

Right. These DJs were young, they had no experience, but they were playing good music. Suddenly, they’re playing Loose Ends. The record company immediately began to feel confident about what they were doing.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Right. Do you want to play the first song on one of Loose Ends’ biggest hits?

Carl McIntosh

OK. We’ll play some of the old school for the young people.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Anybody who’s unaware can get a little crash course.

Carl McIntosh

Right. Yeah.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What song are we going to hear right now?

Carl McIntosh

We’re going to play “Hanging On A String.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

“Hanging On A String.”

(music: Loose Ends - “Hanging On A String” / applause)

“Hanging On A String.” This is one of your first big hits, or one of your first big smash.

Tell me a little bit about the sound of the song and what have you guys been shooting for. In addition, what sort of static it might have caused with certain parties.

Carl McIntosh

Right. Right. This song, it was around about 1983 where we had... How many people were born then? Really? OK. We were in the studio, and we came up with this song, and it was very different songwriting to what had been there before.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Before, with your group?

Carl McIntosh

I mean in black music, in dance music in general. The songwriting and the way we wrote the song, the subject matter, being that it’s a duet. As a guy and a girl singing on the same record, normally it’s a ballad type format.

Here we have a song that was a club record, even though it’s quite slow. What had happened was the form of the record had been totally different. Had different drums, and but the song part of it was the same. We worked with a gentleman called Nick Martinelli, who was a producer from Philadelphia. He was a part of the new generation of what we call, and you probably still call them, remixers now. That’s where we really started, in early ’80s, early to mid-’80s. He was a producer second from being a DJ. He used some of the DJ knowledge to, how should I put it, drive home the urban type of flavor he wanted in the songs that he was making, remixing, and producing. Before then, it was musicians, that a producer would be a musician. He would be someone who could read music. He had done songs before, that was all based off of reading music. Here we have a new generation of producers who are DJs.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Right. He was coming from a club...

Carl McIntosh

A club perspective.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

A club background. Okay.

Carl McIntosh

There had been some producers at the time that were from a band called The Time. Their names were Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. What happened was, this producer, Nick Martinelli, had taken this song and he had told us to program a beat just like Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, S.O.S [Band]. It was like, just in case you might have had it mixed up, it was S.O.S first. Then, we came after. We literally copied the beat.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

From S.O.S programming.

Carl McIntosh

Programming. They used a drum machine called 808. 808, it’s a Roland drum machine, and fairly standard but it does breathe differently to most machines. It doesn’t count like most machines. It’s got its own type of breathing pulse. It ticks over differently, the way it goes to the end of the bar and starts again. It’s totally different. It sort of bubbles along rather than clicks like a normal metronome. We basically programmed the song, and then we put the 808 underneath it. It became last. It was like a marketing tool, if you like. I’d never seen anything like that before. Before that, we just wrote a song, and we just put the song out as it was. Someone would maybe remix it, but remixing would be like add some tops, and add some bongos in them days. Totally different to now. That was probably the first time when we actually saw, or I actually saw, someone change the form of the song by just changing...

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

By applying this beat underneath, that you were doing.

Carl McIntosh

Needless to say, it caused a lot of friction between Loose Ends and Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, who did not like us for doing that.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Everybody know who Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis is in this room? It’s okay if you don’t.

Carl McIntosh

Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis produced Janet Jackson and...

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

S.O.S band, Cherrelle...

Carl McIntosh

Old bands.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Alexander O’Neal.

Carl McIntosh

Cherrelle. Oh you said that. Human League.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Yeah. A lot of big hits. A lot of big hits.

Audience Member

What were the songs?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

S.O.S Band “Just Be Good to Me.”

Carl McIntosh

“Just Be Good to Me,” yeah.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

“Saturday Love,” Alexander O’Neal and Cherrelle. Cherrelle, ”I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On,” right? Right?

Carl McIntosh

Right. Good stuff.

Audience Member

[inaudible].

Carl McIntosh

”Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

But the 808 sound was something that...

Audience Member

[inaudible].

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

We’re going to get to that in a second. So slow down. The 808 was like a trademark sound with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. These were guys who were in The Time and came up under Prince, and then had a dispute with Prince...

Carl McIntosh

That’s right.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

... About finances, and thus quit The Time and went off and became big-time producers of their own.

Carl McIntosh

That’s right.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So what happened then, as far as what are some of the details of the friction between Jam & Lewis and you guys because you guys did it, in a way, in homage to them. Right? Maybe explain a little bit about that.

Carl McIntosh

Yeah. I mean we loved what they were doing. The thing is, it was the beginning of a new era. It was the sound pool machine, it was the drum machine, it was whatever you had at the time that you could add to your game. There is no copyright for that, even though you can do the same beat. Right now, you can play the same beat or you can get a drum machine to play it, but the beat is the beat. It doesn’t really matter who does it or how it came about.

So, the fact that we used the same beat, you couldn’t really say that we had stolen anything from them even though it sounded like it because what was the real creativity was what we put on top. I think it’s the same now. If you use someone’s sample, I think what’s really important is what you do with it. If you just take their beat and you put it out and you just say something silly and you turn it down, and it’s more about their beat, they’re fine. Ask them. Really, you’ve bitten them and you haven’t added nothing to it. But when you bring something to it, when you bring some creativity that has got its own form, I think that’s different. It was hard for them to see that because I think they felt bad about what we had done.

There was this friction and we was always under their shadow. We were looking up at them like these are the guys that we want to work with. So, when we did things like that, it was us really just trying to be like, “Please, welcome us, recognize us.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Because we’re thinking similar to what...

Carl McIntosh

That’s right. But because we had done that, it caused terrible, terrible friction.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So how did that manifest itself? What happened?

Carl McIntosh

Well, Virgin eventually got around, on our request, asking Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to work with us. What happened was, they were so angered by what we had done that I think the representative from Virgin that went out there, came back and said, “If I were you, I wouldn’t mention Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis again. Don’t be seen in their neighborhood. They’re going to be working with Human League. Okay?”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Who is...

Carl McIntosh

Which was on our label.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

On your label.

Carl McIntosh

We basically asked him to go and ask Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to work with us and they came back and said, “nah, they’re not going to work with you. But they will work with Human League.” So, that’s how we had the song, “I’m Only Human,” which was a Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis song.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Right. Was that song...

Carl McIntosh

Well, that song was meant to be for us.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, there was a point where that song was meant for you guys?

Carl McIntosh

Yeah. That was going to be, doesn’t matter about the song really, it was that sound and that time. That slope there was for us and we ended up getting some “I’m Only Human” out of it, which was a big hit. I’m not bitter. But that’s life and that’s the business. Who can tell?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You embraced the 808, though, and a lot of the other recordings and everything?

Carl McIntosh

Yeah, I mean we learned from that. We wouldn’t copy someone’s beat like that again, after that. We just wanted to keep the sound the same, but venture off and do what we considered to be new beginnings with the drum machine and move into eras where we started to use MPC... Was it MPC 3000 and MPC... the first one. I can’t remember what it was, it was like...

Audience Member

The 60.

Carl McIntosh

It was. 60 yeah. Started with the Lynn 9000, then went to the MPC 60, and then the 60 Mark 2, and we started to use those type of drum machines. You have to be strong about your identity. We didn’t really want to piss no-one off, so we just wanted to keep going. We loved the drum machines, and so we just based our creativity off of that for awhile and we did other songs.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Now, you said something funny to me yesterday, which was at the time, you had this experience first-hand, which was there was a bass keyboard taking your slot. Talk a little bit about the drum machines and how they sort of came in. What did you equate the drum machines to?

Carl McIntosh

Well, the drum machine was, I’m telling you, it was almost like soldiers marching down the Main street. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen movies where you’ve got like the coup or the new beginning of a new government and they’ve got the soldiers marching. That’s what was happening in the ’80s. The drummer was just... He was out. The drum machine was king. If you had the drum machine, it was like you had a chance with the newness, the new sound that was coming, and you couldn’t stop it. There was no stopping it. Like now, we have samples, and you can’t stop them, no matter what you do. You’ve got your little laptops and you’re burning off songs. You just can’t stop that and that’s how it was for us with the drum machine. No matter what you were doing, how great you was as a drummer, drum machine was in the studio somewhere waiting to be switched on. So we just had to work with it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

As a musician would you have conflicted feelings about that at all?

Carl McIntosh

Yeah, sometimes.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You’d play drums as well, but I mean was it a primary thing?

Carl McIntosh

Depends on where you were trying to go because it’s a bit like when I look at the room and I see a lot of young musicians that have basically grown up with laptops and the technology. So, you’re looking to go with the new. Although, there are old... Even some of the instruments I’ve got here are quite old... They really sound good when you use them with something new. A little piece of it, rather than trying to be totally organic. The little digital stuff that you mix with it, that really makes it special. I think I’ve always been trying to look for that in my music. If you don’t move on, I think you’re going to be static. You need to have that futuristic outlook and always be going forward.

When the drum machine came, it was a little bit like, I felt bad for people who were drummers, friends of mine. They’d come to the studio and I’d be playing with a drum machine and they’d get this funny look. “Ain’t that the same beat that we heard on the radio just a minute ago.” I’d be like, “Yeah.” But really and truly, you could tell it was a little bit of...

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

A little resentment?

Carl McIntosh

Resentment. Yeah. Like it was a shortcut.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you want to play anything else from that era or even a little bit after that?

Carl McIntosh

Sure. OK, yeah. What you got on there? “Stay A While.” Yeah, before you play it though, let me just say something.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Yeah?

Carl McIntosh

The next tune I’m going to play, it was recorded with a Fairlight synthesizer and it was the beginning, I think, of multi-timbral synthesizers. Anyone ever heard of a Fairlight? Yeah? Anyone ever seen a Fairlight? Yeah? It’s like a great big machine that you almost need a room for it. It’s like a coffin and a screen, amazing thing. We had to come up with an intro. I had an idea to have an Indian-type intro for the song and the song and the intro have got nothing to do with each other, but just flavor. There was no way I was going to be able to create this without doing something special with synthesizers.

(music: Loose Ends - “Stay A Little While Child” / applause)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

We had a question on this side of the room.

Audience Member

Somebody sampled that. [laughs]

Audience Member

Do you know who sampled that?

Carl McIntosh

Yeah.

Audience Member

Who was it? I can’t remember.

Carl McIntosh

I know a few people sampled it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Did you get paid for it?

Carl McIntosh

Yeah, yeah.

Audience Member

High five.

Carl McIntosh

Well, I got paid for the Mariah. I don’t know about anyone else. I know Mariah sampled it recently.

Audience Member

Not recently. I’m talking about an old song.

Carl McIntosh

Oh, OK. No, maybe I didn’t but that’s cool. I mean, because it brings a new life to it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Let’s sort of mention a little bit about these, not only this track and “Hanging On A String”, but you know what I mean, some of your stuff that’s been sampled by... What’s your attitude about that?

Carl McIntosh

I think it’s so cool to be sampled. You know, what’s funny about the sample thing is that I think lawyers, publishing companies and lawyers, they take the whole thing and make it business, and that’s a shame really because I think it is business, but it’s more about music.

It’s more about music than they think because you’re doing two things, you’re making a new song and your bringing life to an old song. And sometimes with a business, it gets in the way and it kind of puts up a gate or like a wall between the old and the new and stops it from being a fun thing.

When lawyers start talking about how many times have you used the sample and we need a certain percentage of your song and they start working out deals, it kind of sometimes gets a little bit like, the gentleman said it, “Did you get paid?” I mean, there must be about 20, at least 20 times when that song’s been sampled and I didn’t get paid. Someone in the club probably heard it and danced to it and didn’t know it was me. And when I do my thing now, suddenly they recognize it, which is where I gain off of that. I gain much more mileage I think from a sampled record, where my music is being sampled than if I had my lawyer get up and say, “Look, we ain’t going to let you use that because we really want to get paid, or we want to get paid a certain amount.”

So I have this thing where I just clear everything. My publisher said, “Please don’t call me again and ask me if I want something to be cleared, just go ahead and use it.” I mean, there will be a percentage that they all work out, but I try not to stop people...

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You don’t want it to be prohibitive.

Carl McIntosh

Yeah. I want to see which one is going to be the good one. If it’s not good, I think people won’t listen to it more than one or two times. If it’s good, then people are going to hear it. And I think if it’s good and it’s heard a lot and people actually recognize it, the new form, well then that’s the time when I think the lawyers should step forward and say, “Hello, this is me now. This is Loose Ends. We have to talk about this because you’re starting to make some money at this.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Right.

Carl McIntosh

But before that, it seems to me like it’s a lot of business and sometimes for me it can go the wrong way.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Why do you think you have that, you know, attitude, that sort of more progressive attitude than maybe some other musicians have? Is it because you feel like you’re a part of that generation to a degree?

Carl McIntosh

I think so, yeah. I could see it coming because the hip-hop generation, it very much changed music and I think I saw that coming. I could see, you know, before hip-hop, things were getting a little bit stale. And I think Loose Ends were a part of the ending of organic soul. I think Soul II Soul came and capped it. I think after that, maybe I could count on maybe one hand artists that have got up and done real music and we love them.

You know, D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, and the whole new classic soul thing, is probably... And gospel because gospel is beginning to take some roots from new classic soul, and I can see where that can maybe be a form in itself, but really and truly since those times, I’ve only really seen maybe one or two people get up and do something organically new. I mean, I think people are fighting now to put music in the song. I hear The Neptunes and I can even hear them fighting to put music in. Like they want to put music in, but they know the beat is king and they just have to stick with that beat. Maybe at the end of every four bars I hear a piece of music come in and then it’s out again before you get a chance to say, “What was that?” And I hear Snoop doing that as well and it’s great because they are definitely giving you that flavor, but it’s not in the same context. It’s not like a full backdrop, it’s just a little piece.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Well you guys also did some songs with sampling as well. Do you want to play “Don’t Be A Fool”?

Carl McIntosh

OK, yeah. All right.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Tell us a little bit about what this track is. First thing, when I remember hearing this back in the day and noticing right away it was part of that, you know, that period as far as beefing up hip... of hip-hop’s influence on soul music and beefing things up a little bit rhythmically I guess.

Carl McIntosh

Oh, yeah. Let me just say something. I need to speak of it. This song, it came at a time when the original members of the band had left the band and it was just a very odd situation I know for me because here I was, I was the bass player of a group that had become the guitarist of a group and the percussionist and then a lead vocalist. I’ve kind of come up from the guy that would be sitting in the back with his bass.

And for the love of music, this is where the growth of success or growth in success affects people in different ways because we’ve got three people and we’ve got two people that are very comfortable with their situation and they’re living the life. Then you’ve got one person, I’m not saying I wasn’t living the life, but my focus was on music and I could see what we were doing, the form that we were doing it in was about to change and I wanted to be on that bus. So I started to study hip-hop music and electronic and sampling and I think I was probably a part of that when the change came.

Now the other two in the band, they were ...

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Steve and Jane?

Carl McIntosh

Steve and Jane, they were losing focus and eventually they were blaming each other and having fights in the studio. I remember one time Jane actually punched Steve, punched him in the face in the studio. They had a big argument. She just stormed in and just went pop, you know, and after that, Steve was a little bit sour and he didn’t really want to work with her again after that, but he kind of kept his cool.

You know, things like that happened to the group in a kind of a way and a time where it was coming to a point where people had money in their pockets, we were driving Mercedes and we had houses and everyone, their chest was high. And their way forward was unknown still. I could see something was coming. So what happened after the argument now, they grew further and further apart until Steve one day, now I must say that Steve Nichols is the leader of the unit that I came from, but something happened to Steve, you know, in there. Just the focus, he lost it a little bit, and still thought that he had control over the group. So he went into the record company and he said to the record company that he didn’t want to work with Jane no more, and then he said that he didn’t want to work with me no more. And that’s how that went.

So they was like, “OK, let’s see what Jane has to say.” So they called Jane into the record company and she said she didn’t want to work with him no more. They were gunning for her to be the first option soloist out of the group.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Right, because she sang lead on a lot of songs.

Carl McIntosh

On lead, yeah. And when a group breaks up and they’re on a record label, what normally happens is the record label will go for the lead singers straight away and try to separate them from the rest of the band because they figure that the marketplace that that group had, they can put that singer in that marketplace. It’s already there. It’s already laid out.

Well, what happened was they had a problem with Jane because Jane did not want to work with Steve and Steve didn’t want to work with Jane, but Steve was the leader so they put Jane on hold and they asked me to come in. Now I was probably the ugliest of the three and I was the roughest. I used to have locks and I used to have a beard. I used to be in the studio all night. I was rustic, I think the word is. Keep it rustic. What had happened was... We all bought houses and stuff, but when I bought my house, my main drive was to build a studio. As I said, we had money at the time. I built this studio in my house. I kept calling them up when I was finished, I was so happy. After I build my studio, my publishing company gave me an advance to go buy equipment. I was still quite green even though I had some money and I had had some hits. I didn’t know that they were going to give me money to buy equipment. Before then, they were just trickling off little $1,200 here, $1,500 there, and then suddenly, we got to this point where we had some hit records and it was time for the big advance to come around. That contract had come to an end and the new one was going to come in. It was just at the time I had spent all of my money on the house. They said “Look, here’s 20 Gs, go and fill your studio out.” I was like “What?!” I was so happy. Can you imagine, in your house, someone giving you that amount of money?

I went out and bought all this equipment. I saved some back to pay for an engineer because the equipment that I bought, I didn’t know how to use it. I needed someone to come in and just work the stuff. I was very excited. I asked Jane to come over and do some songs. She would always say “Yeah, I’m coming over at 7.” 8 o’clock would come and no Jane. 10 o’clock, no Jane. I’d call her again maybe at the end of the week. In the meantime, I’ve got songs coming out my ears. No Jane. I’d call Steve, same thing. Steve was busy doing something else, flying to France, or doing something in his world. It was disheartening, but at the same time, you know when you got toys and you’re getting on with stuff? You’re distracted by that, lack of focus, but because you’ve got all this stuff here, it didn’t bother me at all.

By the time the record company called me for my little meeting when we had broken up, I had an album. It was a very odd situation. I was a bass player, that was a guitarist, that then became a singer, now has his own album. He has the next record that they should be putting out, totally in his control. They had nothing to do with it. It was a really weird situation. They said, “Carl, could you leave a copy of that record and we will get back to you?” They called Jane in again and they said, “Jane, we have an idea of what you should be doing next. We think that you should go and work with Carl.” She was like, “What?! I’m not having it. He should’ve stuck up for me when Steve said whatever he said.”

Basically, they had a little friction going on there. She had to go. The record company was no longer going to deal with that because they already knew that they had a record. I had used different local people. When Jane wouldn’t turn up to the session, I used local people. People that weren’t even musicians, someone who could sing. The two writers that I used, one was a taxi driver, the other was a courier, but they just had that passion. With all that new equipment and everything, they stuck by me and they learned stuff. They wanted to be a part of what I was doing. I was able to do something in the room that they had never seen before. It was like a magician, and they wanted to be a part of the magic. They helped me through it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You would bounce ideas off of those guys?

Carl McIntosh

Definitely. These guys were so amateur but yet it was so raw. I would say to them, I have a melody, and I would say the melody goes [hums]. They would be like “Okay.” They would go away, write the lyric, come back, and be like, “This is how you sing it Carl.” [hums] They’d be looking at my face like... [gesticulates] I don’t know about that. He couldn’t sing but the energy that he would give me when he is telling me to sing my own melody, I had to think about it for a second. It’s not about how good you can sing when you’re writing.

There is people who can sing good and there is people who maybe can’t sing as good but they can create. That sort of creation, some times we don’t have it all. We ain’t got the chops to make it sound great at the time, but we have something, we can create something if we give it to someone else who can sing. The song I played, “Hanging On A String”, I do a guitar solo in it and at that time I could not play guitar. I could copy a guy called Wes Montgomery a little bit.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Right.

Carl McIntosh

I could just copy a little bit. When I was doing it, they said, “Lovely. We’re going to put it down.” It was pathetic really but with effects and stuff, I created something that sounds like something that... When I do a live show, I have great guitarists play with me and I say, “Can you play this solo?” They’re like, “Well, I don’t know about that.” They are great guitarists but at the time when I did it, I just created it. That’s the thing about electronic music and future music, it’s the unknown creation that you can go with that’s more powerful than just being able to play. It’s the fight between what you can do and what you can create. Anyway...

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Let’s play “Don’t Be A Fool”

Carl McIntosh

Yeah. Wait a minute now. This song here is the first song that came from that period, when the record company said, “You are the one and I want you to go with whatever people you want to work with, this is the new Loose Ends.” This is the first song we did.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

All right. “Don’t Be A Fool” by Loose Ends.

(music: Loose Ends - “Don’t Be A Fool” / applause)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do we have a question on the side over here? Yes, young man?

Audience Member

Yes. Just hearing the song, it just made me remember, I always wondered man, was there any ever friendly rivalry between y’all and Soul II Soul?

Carl McIntosh

Yeah.

Audience Member

Did you and Jazzie B... Did y'all ever work together or what was that situation like?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What year is this album and this single?

Audience Member

That was 1990, wasn’t it?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Right around the same time as Soul II Soul.

Carl McIntosh

The rivalry with Soul II Soul and Loose Ends was that... It started with a song called “Mr. Bachelor.” It came at a point where the Jane, Eugene, Steve, Nicola rivalry was manifesting itself. Steve was in my ear telling me, “We need to get that singer.” Caron Wheeler. At that point, Caron Wheeler was not in Soul II Soul. There was this little nine month period where we had used Caron Wheeler on the song called “Mr. Bachelor”. She was just excellent. What happened was I took Caron to dinner that night, just by accident after the session. We just went out and had some dinner and stuff and she was looking like she was lost a little bit musically. She had come from a band called 15-16-17 or something like that, Brown Sugar, which was a reggae group, and she had a background vocal ensemble called Aphrodisiac. She used to sing background vocals for people like rock artists. Who was the guy that sung, “Watching the bitches on the beaches”. Costello? Elvis Costello? She used to sing background vocals for people like that. Totally different niche, but she was looking to do her own music.

She had worked with us and we were very happy. We thought at that point, if this girl Jane keeps going the direction she’s going in, that’s going to be the next thing. We’re going to have to bring in Caron to replace her. Now, Steve reneged on that a little bit. Later on, Steve said he didn’t want to work with me, which was to his own detriment really. That was the beginning of it. We had come back from America and Caron was everywhere as Soul II Soul. Basically, that was... We should’ve moved quicker on it. The little time we spent in America was the time that she had developed her little relationship with Berrisford or Jazzie B. We just had to let that one roll. You win some, you lose some.

What happened now, when I was... When I was a dread, I used to have the helicopter hair do. You have your locks and you tied them up. Like Jazzie, right? If you check all the pictures, right, it was me. I did it in 1985 or something. When people do something like that, it’s a compliment. You look back on the image and where it’s coming from. Even myself as a dread, or someone with locks, I didn’t create that. I was bringing that whole image from the Rastafarian and I was borrowing it really. I wasn’t a Rasta, I was a dread. Jazzy became a funky dread. It just kept growing. That was all good really.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Just out of curiosity, “Don’t Be A Fool”, is that directed at your former band mates?

Carl McIntosh

Yeah. If you listen to the lyrics, one thing I’ve always been a fan of is when people consolidate messages within the lyric. They’re singing a song and you are hyped up about the song, and then maybe a month into knowing the song, you listen into the lyric and you think, “Oh my gosh, do you hear what they’re saying?” I’m a fan of that. The songs that grow on you. That’s why I like Outkast and bands that have got a message that is not between the eyes. If you listen to an Outkast album, that first glance is weird, it’s a bit strange. After about maybe sometimes as long as 10 months, that album becomes more and more relevant. I love stuff like that.

When I was doing the songs here, like “Don’t Be A Fool”, even the title... It was a bit of a strange title. It’s got a good message, but I wanted people to dance first. I wanted them to get off on the music, and then later on listen to what I was saying.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Yeah. I guess, one thing I’m curious to get your perspective on also, you guys did really well in the States for a UK group...

Carl mcIntosh

Yeah.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

How was that after sort of being shunned by your own country and the media, and not having the outlet? You were embraced on... These songs were big on urban radio in the States.

CARL MCINTOSH

The whole thing in America was an eye-opener. I’m not sure where to start with it. You go from not being able to get any air play in your own country to being No. 1 in America. It’s incredible. We were getting into limos and the phone was ringing with chart predictions of No. 1 next week and there's motorbikes each side of the limo. That's madness. I mean, we're ordinary people, really, all of us in this room need to experience need to experience something like that 'cause that's what was happening -- just some ordinary people in the limo. But from the outside, it looked great, and from the inside, it feels like, "Wow." I mean, we got to restaurants like that if we can. You know, “I want to go to the West Indian shop. Bring the motorbikes.” Why not? For maybe two days.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

Did people in the States, when you did radio promo and stuff like that and you went around, did people realize you were from the UK or they assume that you're American?

CARL MCINTOSH

I think, at first. There is definitely something different about the music. It does feel like it's not American but it feels, but the form of it is American, so there's a little confusion there, but obviously when we start talking, then they realize that we're English. In a funny kind of way, that added. That added to the goodness of it, and I think it helps Soul II Soul as well 'cause people love this music.

Even though this is old music, I think in our hearts, it's a true form. It's like reggae. It's a true form, and it's really where a lot of things came from and even the sampling. A lot of people sample this music. It's still good food. And I think with that, you know, it's something ... I don't know. You can't really knock this. This is some good old stuff, you know.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

Do you think that there is any kind of, you know, common trait in UK soul as far as songwriting goes or melodically? I mean, as an American, we're used to hearing certain things, in this area anyway, on the radio can be very … something we were talking in the last lecture as far as not necessarily the song changes as far as melodies go, and I associate always a certain breeziness, you know, to certain UK sounds or the bands that were influenced, were influential on that sound. Is that true?

CARL MCINTOSH

Yeah, we definitely have a different way of doing it. You know, what's funny is we think that we're doing it the way Americans do it 'cause we are really copying their language. We're not doing English music, really. We're doing American music. It's their landscape and it's their form and it's their forefathers that have made this music and it's their music, really, but what we do and the way we do it is going to be different 'cause as I said before, we come from the West Indies, really. We come from Jamaica.

All three of the Loose Ends members are Jamaican parentage and there is something about people that had that Jamaican parentage. You can hear it in their music or not even parentage, but even the influence of reggae in some way in their music. I can hear it in Timbaland. I can hear it in Missy. I can hear it even in Alicia Keys. These people right now I can hear reggae is starting to influence them a little bit, and it's something that we … I'm lucky that my parents are from Jamaica, but I think with the music and the form that we're doing it in, it is something that definitely we think we're doing the same, but we have something else that we can't explain it. But it is different.

When we were doing our thing with these songs, I think a lot of people recognize it, but we can't really put our finger on it. It's something that just happens when you try to make your own music.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

I mean everybody's here collaborating with one another. Talk about, I guess, your own process coming up with melodies and songs and how important it is for you to collaborate. I always figure if you're a producer, you're doing instrumentation and whatnot, that maybe it's all something that can come together from yourself, but talk a little bit about what helps you as far as collaborating.

CARL MCINTOSH

Quickly, I'll just go for it 'cause it's quite deep. I mean when I'm working with someone else, I can organize them really well. I can put the pieces together for your record 'cause my mind can work in a sort of way, like a mini-production office. Even though I may not have all the people working for me, I can help you to define what it is you need to do next.

When I'm working for me, now, that's where everything goes wrong. For some reason, I can't change the hats fast enough. I might come up with a beat and so the beat hat is secure, then when there's songwriting part comes in now, I have to change hats, and I just want to do beats and sometimes if I don't kick myself, if I don't stop myself, I will get lost doing the music all the time, and I won't stop and say, "All right, it's time to do songwriting, lyrics. Think about lyrics this week." It's hard to change for me.

What's good is when I'm writing, when I'm coming up with new music, I will just do what's free and easy, do the things that I like, and I will bring someone to the table that's going to add elements of things that I can already do, but I'm going to let the person … if I respect what they do and their ideas, and it doesn't have to be someone who's as good as a musician as me or as good as a writer, just basically someone who has a feel for the opening at that time.

They might be in the room, and sometimes some people just have that thing where they can just add icing, top lines. They can't add no meat and peppers when they can add just a little bit of tomato ketchup, and that's sometimes what makes a meal nice. It's funny 'cause the guy that used to play in the band, Steve Nichol, he always used to add just that little nice piece that made the whole thing work.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

You want to play what we talked about yesterday?

CARL MCINTOSH

What I can do is I play you what I like doing when I'm writing songs, and then I’ve got a whole bunch of songs here, stuff that I'm working on at that moment. And these songs, as I say, I just done the beat, and I'm humming the melody and I sing gibberish as well. I am the heavyweight champion of gibberish singing, and when I'm coming up with an idea, most times what's coming at me, the thing that I like to play with is what's coming out first so if run the track and then I start singing. Whatever come out first and felt good, I'll stick with that, and then we'll try someone in to write something to it so bear with me one second.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

Okay, so these are works in progress?

CARL MCINTOSH

This is like work in progress.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

A couple of things.

CARL MCINTOSH

A couple of things.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

Some ideas.

CARL MCINTOSH

Yeah, some ideas that I'm working on at the moment and as I say, I've done my part of the first stage. Okay, go ahead. [plays part of a song he’s working on] I don't know if anyone can spot the Marvin Gaye sample. [song continues]

One more. Maybe I'll just brush through. [plays another song he’s working on] Now, I haven't done no melody yet, so if anyone hears anything.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

[inaudible] somebody rapping on that.

CARL MCINTOSH

Okay.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

[inaudible]

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

You guys can fight for the track.

CARL MCINTOSH

All right, well, it's open market. I mean, as I say, I take ideas from whatever source.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

[inaudible]

CARL MCINTOSH

Oh, really?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Yeah.

CARL MCINTOSH

Alright. We'll have to talk about that. Alright, I'm going to play some other things quickly and you can. This is, I also mess about with James Brown stuff as well. Some oldschool people, they just keeping coming back. When I'm looking for stuff, sometimes someone will bring up something and it's like, "I’ve just got to use that like it is and let me think about how I'm going to change it after," so this is James Brown tune, and kind of I've done something off the top. [plays another song he’s working on]

And these ideas, basically it doesn't really matter how long you have them 'cause it's like ideas like this is like money, you know, it's something that it always has value and the value never ... You might not be able to use it now. It's like something you can always use in the future, and so don't worry about having ideas around this two years, three years. You can always pick it up and do something new with it, and that's it. When I'm writing, as I say, I love other input 'cause I know what I'm like and you basically, I put them in down and then I meet maybe someone like yourself maybe after this thing, maybe on MySpace or something and they'll say, "Look, I know that track there," or "I like that track, and I can do something with it," and I'm free to do stuff like that all the time 'cause I believe that that's how the music will grow.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

Speaking of, what you had said earlier about when you collaborated with people, and they might have added just a little touch of something, one of the songs you were mentioning yesterday was the Loose Ends song "Love's Got Me," right?

CARL MCINTOSH

Right.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

You had mentioned how Steve had come in and done something.

CARL MCINTOSH

Yeah. There's a part. I think my, hopefully, this is going to be all right. We have this song called "Love's Got Me" and I had the beat and the song, and it was just basically the chorus line, it's like minor to major and most people, when the situation is like that, most keyboard players would have come in and laid down the chords just straight so the chords will be like [singing] but Steve went [singing] and it's that little [singing]. That just made me feel singing something uplifting. If he just went [singing] it would have been like kind of ordinary, but he just added that little part there and just for doing that, that was his special thing. He wouldn't add things just normal. He would add the little bit of something different, something freaky, something just ... not even freaky so much, just his character, I think, and it added to what we were doing and it's a simple thing, but it's one of those things where I used to share all my royalties with this guy and I'd come with a beat, the bassline, the top line. I'd sing it and see what come in. The beat, the bassline, the top line. I’d sing it as he would come in.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

There you go.

CARL MCINTOSH

That would be his favorite of the song.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

Right.

CARL MCINTOSH

You can't look for that. You can but why fight it?

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

Can we hear a little bit of that?

CARL MCINTOSH

Sure.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

Do we have that one? Or?

CARL MCINTOSH

We didn’t sort out “Love’s Got Me.” We can't play that one now.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

Yesterday, you mentioned how you built your own studio.

CARL MCINTOSH

Right.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

In your house which is really unusual.

CARL MCINTOSH

Right.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

At the time, it was unique for somebody in the UK to have a home studio.

CARL MCINTOSH

Well, yeah. It was a new thing because what had happened was ... I'll tell you the reason why I built my own studio was because at the time I was getting 3 pence a record from Virgin. It's not a lot of money. We were selling 100,000 units in England, 500,000 units in America, and after they broke down the limo, and motorbikes, and the studio time, and all of that stuff, we were always in debt. Our albums weren't costing a lot to make but at the same time, we were always in debt.

When we looked to the royalties and where the money was going, a huge chunk of our money was going into the recording part of it. I felt that making my own studio, if we were tight at the time ... It happened to be the end of the group as we knew it. If we were all on the same page, we could have sat in my studio all night. Whereas, if we sat in a demo studio in the middle of Barbican in London, it would have cost something like 200 pounds a day. When you're on three pence records I think it was 99 pence for the whole record. When you break down the cost of the individual things we were getting nothing.

That was my way of saving some money. It came with responsibility. It meant that we had to have an engineer present and then all this equipment was in my house. It was a funny house as well because there were floorboards everywhere. The kitchen was in the walls were painted but there was no carpet. There was no carpet and no table or chairs. Just cutlery. The studio was totally kitted out, though. You couldn't sit down without getting dust on you, but you could make a record in there.

It was a burden because this equipment as we have it now it's so accessible. We have this mixer maybe the size of the whole table. The CD player would have been a massive thing with top load or something stupid.

It was all big bulky equipment. You needed a whole place for it to be. Then you had to have an air conditioner. Stuff would get hot. It was all valves and big stuff. I'm glad that's it kind of come down now and I'm glad that everyone can do what I did, but do it in a way that you can understand it. It was good. At the time, it was a first. People making records in there. I had a half-inch tape machine. I remember the guy was talking about yesterday when you master from tape, it's a whole different experience. There is a thing called tape compression. I'm not sure if anyone’s aware of this. When you're mixing down digitally, you don't have that little consolation to all the hard work that you've done.

It actually helps make the song sound tighter. It's almost the difference between if you pull a pair of pants out of the laundry and you iron them, and they just look nice. This is what tape compression does. It makes the whole thing sound ironed but in a nice way. All the nice bass pockets. If it was boomy, now it would now become tight. You would lose all the looseness and it would just kind of make the song sound nice and compact and thick and fit.

Basically, it's a great experience. I had one of these things in my house. It looked like a Dalek. I don't know if you guys know what a Dalek is but it's a great big machine with flashing light as soon as you came through the door. I was proud of it. I wanted everyone to see it because I knew you knick it. That thing was heavy. It was just the fun of having all that equipment, and if you ever get the chance to use equipment like that, it's a great experience to use it with your digital keyboards and your little sequences. Eventually, that will bring something to your sound.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

You also said you have experienced what you went from going to this big complex studio that he had never seen before. Do you have any anecdotes on that end with any particular personalities?

CARL MCINTOSH

Yeah, I'd like to speak on that for a second. When you work at home ... I'm not sure how many people have worked in big studios, but at some point, if you're faced with success, you're going to have to do the big studio thing. It's a daunting experience. I know that there's a big studio upstairs, and I think that everyone in their little time here, try and take their operations through that studio. I know one party over there that had definitely done that.

It's growth and at the same time, it's a little bit of confusion. I don't think anyone can walk you through that one. You have to learn yourself. You have to make mistakes. You have to learn that road. Your own ears have to walk through that and you have to feel the disorientation for yourself. It is disorientating. One quick story. I was working with this man, Robert Palmer. He's dead now. God rest his soul. He was one of my idols. He called me up and asked me to do a little remix, and I was in my little home studio at the time. This is after the band had broken up and I hit success on my own and everyone was calling me trying to get me to work with them. Robert called me up and he sent me the song. I remixed the song in about two, three days and sent it back to him, and he was loving it.

Then came the nightmare. He said, "Why don't you come to my land and work in my studio?" That was hell. When I got there … Basically, when you're going through that a situation like that would feel like, “Wow I'm about to work with one of my idols. This is where I should step up, but it was terrible.” When we got there I had no time to feel out the room. As soon as I got there the session was already starting and I just had to work with whatever the situation was. My remix sounded odd in there, whereas in mine it sounded great. It sounded flat and the EQs were all different. I had to come to grips with what it would take to make it sound like it does in my studio.

At the same time, Robert Palmer was trying to analyze where I had changed his song and tried to sing with the remix. Which is a mistake don't sing with the remix. Let the remixer remix your song. Really, if you are remixing no matter how great the artist is I think it's best if you and them do not cross paths. From my own experience, if someone asked you to remix a song, I would say, "Send the song to me, I'll remix it and send it back to you." I think that way you keep your own surrounding and what you use and know, you can add it to their music. I think if you start going into their studio and try to do things even the biggest … Don't go anywhere that you don't know the room.

If you go to a studio try to get 48 hours. No matter how big the budget is, it's important I think that you get acquainted with the room. Just to be on the safe side, I would say stay where you know. Even if your music comes out thinner than what would be if you went to a big studio. Stay with what you know because I think that your creativity will be up against a bigger problem. You might be bigger now or sound bigger, but what was good will be small and what was bad will be big. Then you have to make all those measurements and adjustments, and I think that it's important that you don't do that. Keep it where you know it.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

What happened with Robert?

CARL MCINTOSH

Oh, it was terrible. Robert started to sing the song and it got to be 4 o'clock in the morning, and I was trying to adjust the song while he was trying to sing the song differently. We got to 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning and just finished singing and adjusting and it was just the end of the time. He woke up and put a bottle of Bacardi to his head and just went Glug all right. He was ready to go again. but we had been going all night. It was like, “Listen to that remix.” As a matter of fact, he was probably my worst ever work.

I remember hearing it on the radio when they played it and the DJ said, "That was Robert Palmer with some experimental…" Oh my God. It was terrible. It was probably the worst thing I've ever done. It was that point actually that my gut feeling said, "Make sure, even though you like this guy, make sure that you do what you know you can do." He was so enthusiastic and what was making it worse is he's a very rich person and has a whole different lifestyle to me. Whereas I just want to get on with the mix, he was trying to take me out to dinner and he had people that he wanted me to meet. It was all in the time where I would be in the studio. Totally messed me up and threw me off of my game. Don't do that.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

If you had a chance to go back then you would not have met one of your idols?

CARL MCINTOSH

Yeah.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

Just done it on your own?

CARL MCINTOSH

Yeah, because I think that the end result was when the guy played it on the radio. That was really what you want to remember. When that guy plays your song on the radio. Not all the going to dinner and hanging with Robert Palmer and his pretty girlfriend. People don't care about that. People care about when his record is played with my name attached to it, how great that moment was. That's really what the whole thing is about. That one came out terrible. The dinner stuff was terrible. To me, I can't even look back on that. I'm trying not to think about it.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

Yeah.

CARL MCINTOSH

It's a great experience. It's something that I know I'll never do and I can pass it on.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

You talked about turmoil within the group.

CARL MCINTOSH

Yeah.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

Everybody is collaborating but some people are probably working in groups or things of that nature.

CARL MCINTOSH

Right.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

What is the situation now with the group? What is the wisdom? Can you pass it along as far as people interacting with the other band members?

CARL MCINTOSH

I'm going to say … First of all, before I say anything else … Loose ends currently going through legal processes where I got myself in a situation with other members of the group which was not good, but it's an experience still. The music business can creep up on you and do things that you never expected. I was asked by Jane Eugene to come over to LA where she lives and do some songs. That never really worked out. Then, she asked me to come over and do some shows. I was going there under the impression that it would be nice nostalgically. Big mistake to work again as a team, you know?

Then, as I was going over intimately doing these shows, Jane was arranging with lawyers and promoters to do a tour. I had no knowledge of this tour until it got to a point I think where maybe six months of her trying to arrange this without my knowing, people started ... She did actually mention that there was talk of maybe we're doing a tour, but she was way into the arrangements. I think that the people that she was talking to were starting to become a little tired of the way she was negotiating. Her inexperience in that field came from experience that I've passed on to her. I thought I was helping her, but she did the most Machiavellian thing I've heard of in the business, which is basically she had one of her friends try to buy the name Loose Ends. It's a sad thing, really, ‘cause I was over there trying to help her. While I'm trying to help her, she tried to pull a stroke on me. At the moment, I'm actually fighting in courts with the US PTO, which is I think the US Patent and Trade Board in America to have that dissolved, the situation, so that the name comes back to me.

I guess it's a good story. It's good because here I am, relaxed and thinking I've made some money and I'm trying to help people and I'm totally ... My guard is down. I'm taking risks, if you like, cause I'm working with people that made decisions. It's time for them to do something about the decision that they've made. I think when I continued with Loose Ends without Jane and Steve, I think that they felt bad. They must have felt bad because I'd feel bad if I was in a band and suddenly I'm no longer in a band and the band is on the radio every day and you can hear them continuing the success. I think that that was accidental, but still some resentment come with that. The phone calls of, "Hi, Carl, come over and play. We just want to see if we can do some shows together. Wouldn't it be nice?" Me just kind of taking the bait. Didn't realize what I was walking into.

Be careful when you're working with people sometimes. That was an old relationship that just jumped up and bit me in the ass, really. Even when you're working with people, what I like to do is if I'm writing a song, normally they wouldn't have got me like that because if I felt some creativity was going to happen I would have had this thing called a letter of intent which I make people sign if we're going to work together on any project or I would draw out what I think that the splits of the song that we're working on is from get-go, from the minute they start coming up with something.

I don't really want to get into a situation where we're arguing cause I had that song that I played, “Don't Be a Fool,” a piano player came to my house, and he played a whole bunch of stuff. He's a genius this guy. He's dead now. His name's Phillip Linton. He played a whole bunch of stuff, and when he left I had two cassettes worth of stuff that he played. I basically pulled out a little piece of it and put a song on it. When I played it back to him, he basically couldn't even remember what it was that I edited. He knew it was him, but when he played it and the context that he played it in was totally changed now cause he just came over to do a jam and I let the drum machine roll and he just played with it. Here he is listening to the same thing he played, in part, but now with a vocal on it and a chorus. It had been the foundation of a song. A song had been built on his ideas.

I said to him, "Maybe we should go with, maybe twelve percent 'cause I've got Kenny, Trevor, the two guys, the courier, and the taxi driver, myself, and that's already like three people," him, they had another writer they worked with as well with the melodies, so like four people on this song. I just said, "Look, maybe twelve percent," for him. He was like, "You got to be joking. Twelve percent? You better give me twenty-five percent." Then we had this little argument where he was like, "I've got the cassette of the session, and I remember when I played it." I tend not to get into that now. Soon as it looks like it's going to be good, I will try and nail the business there and then. The situation with Loose Ends was a whole new step for me because it's live. I think for you as well, doing live music is a whole different world. How you portray yourself, how you use the situation, writer contracts, what you need on stage, technical writer, what you need in the dressing room, all of that should be written out, really, as part of business to be effective.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

After you and Phillip had that disagreement, did you work together post that?

CARL MCINTOSH

Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Cool, so you ironed it out?

CARL MCINTOSH

Phillip had me by the curlies, really. He said to me, "Listen, I've got a tape of the session." I just took a lesser percentage than I would normally. I wanted to take fifty percent of the song and have all the little people ...Watch it, Carl.

CARL MCINTOSH

All the other very important people.

CARL MCINTOSH

All the other very important people.

CARL MCINTOSH

Right. All the other very important people take the rest of the percentage, but with Phillip taking twenty-five percent, that meant that Kenny and Trevor, the courier, and taxi driver, and their other friend would have to share twenty-five percent, which is not fair. Then, I had to take I think a third ... No, I took twenty-five percent. Everyone got scaled down. It was a shame, really, 'cause it would have been nice, but in the end, everyone had repertoire from that.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

Right.

CARL MCINTOSH

I know that if I had fought Phillip, it would have had an effect on the release of the record and I didn't want to do that.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

Any other questions for Carl at this point?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I just want to know about the creative process that went into “Mr. Bachelor” ‘cause it's a classic song. The three parts, how did that come about?

CARL MCINTOSH

You see, “Mr. Bachelor,” yeah? One day, I was in the studio that ... You remember, I said we used to be put in the studio in Barbican where we used to have to make our demos? I turned up at the studio about one o'clock and I set up my Linn 9000 and a JX-8P and a DX7. I was waiting for Jane and Steve to come to the studio. By three o'clock, I had eaten and everything was ready. The lights were on. No Jane and Steve. I basically ran the Linn 9000 and it just had this drum program that I'd made up. I know it might even sound a little bit funny to say this, but basically, there's three songs together. I created the medley. First song was called “Tomorrow,” the second was called “Mr. Bachelor,” and the third song was called “I Just Got to Have It All.” Those three songs were made in twenty minutes. The whole thing. Everything that you hear on the record.

Basically, the beat is about seven minutes long. I basically just ran the beat at the beginning on track one I play the bass line to one song, then I got a bit bored and I played another bass line, and then I got a little bit bored and I played another bassline. When I ran it back, I could hear three different songs so then I played the keyboards to one song. Then, it just ran into the next song and I played the keyboards to the next song. It just ran like that for about twenty minutes. Then when I sat back and I listened to the whole thing it was some great big fifteen-minute medley.

Jane and Steve, they turn up about nine or ten and I'd played them basically what I'd done. They were like, "Wow, who was here?" I was like, "It was just me. Just sing something. Let's see if we can get something on it." That was that. Jane sang the melodies and Steve didn't actually ... I don't think Steve put anything to that ‘cause Steve was going for a little ... He had issues at that point. I think that day Steve crashed his car, his Mercedes, into a bus stop. We had a phone call from the studio saying that he had injured someone at the bus stop and that his car was found somewhere. Then, Steve turned up saying that he didn't know what we was talking about. It was kind of a ... It was like, "Are you okay?" He was like, "Yeah, I'm fine." I played him the song.

He didn't actually do nothing at that point 'cause that was 1987. I don't want to put Steve down, but he came to a point where this guy was like a trumpet player that was a model that had a degree in music and drama and he was pretty and he was fashionable and he was everything that I wanted to be. Then, he just got to a point where I think the fame had a different effect on him. He just wants to chill a little bit after that. He didn't mind that I'd go to the studio ... Obviously, he couldn't have minded. I'd be there before him and I'd have something there for him when he got there. I think maybe it might have bothered him. I think the creativeness started to grate on him after a while, but you can't stop it. If you want to be there, if you snooze, you lose. Who gets the studio and does the beat and does the work, if it's good work, you can't deny it. It won't get thrown in the bin. If he says, "I don't want to use that. I've got a better idea." I'm like, "Cool. I'll put that away and we'll listen to your idea." You see that idea? I ain't going to forget it. You know what I mean? I'm bringing it out later. Someone is going to hear that. That's the attitude for it. At that point, that's what was happening. It's a great time.

The “Bachelor” thing, Jane herself was very reluctant to sing at the time. She was saying her singing teacher says she musn't sing. She must rest her voice. She was turning up to the studio saying stuff like that. We just had to deal with whatever mood she was in. That's where the Caron Wheeler thing came in because we started to get sick of this thing. We was like, "Look, this girl says it one more time we're going to have to bring in Caron Wheeler." Lo and behold, she did. Then we brought Caron Wheeler in and Caron finished the song off. There's a part in the song where they say, "You owe me. You owe me." That's not Jane. That's Caron Wheeler. If you want to listen to that again, you'll hear the part where Caron starts to creep into Loose Ends a little bit.

Afterward, I actually produced a song called “UK Black” for Caron Wheeler, which was a story about how black people came to England and thought that the streets were paved with gold. The whole advertisement for the West Indian people to come over to England and work as bus drivers and train drivers and do the menial tasks the unions and people in England didn't want to do. She pinned that song really well. I think it's probably one of the best songs I've ever been a part of. I think Caron Wheeler is a great storyteller.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

You have this stuff here. As we take any final questions or anything, do you want to do anything while we're ... Does anybody have another question for Carl at this point?

Carl McIntosh

I do sing and sometimes a good warm up … for people who sing in here, is just to do straight notes and change the chords underneath it. When I'm warming up my voice an example of what I might do is the A-E-I-O-U stuff, all the vowels. Basically, the concept is simple, if the note is [singing], I'll do that all morning. I know I drive my family mad. You got teenagers running up and down the stairs and you're going [sings]. It's something that has to be done.

I believe that spontaneity isn't really spontaneity. I think when you see a situation … I'm not sure how many people came to the club last night. We had Fonty up there doing, and he was with the crowd and he was doing participation and it seemed spontaneous at the time. But I know that he has experience there. I could feel it. I know that people that was there could tell that this guy, that wasn't the first time that he'd probably done that. He'd probably been in that situation before. When you see a situation that feels like it's spontaneous, that person has probably ... It's something like they have this old saying that's like, “Good luck is where opportunity meets preparation.” I think the opportunity was there last night for someone to come up and do something spontaneous, but really the only thing spontaneous about that situation really should have been just what that person was doing. The whole thing inside, even what he had to bring, would have been something I think would have felt better if he had done it before.

Secretly, I think that we have to be rehearsed as much as we can be. It's a good thing to have your secret rehearsal, stuff that no one doesn't really see you do. When you do something and people go, "Wow," they think cause they've heard it the first time, that's the first time you did it, but it isn't. It shouldn't be. It should be the millionth time you've done it. I think that that's important that you understand, and it's the same with acting.

When I was younger I did acting for a little bit. I thought it was spontaneous ‘cause I was told I was a good actor. "Just do what you do, Carl," they said. When I got to the set now, there was tape on the ground and someone was telling me where to stand and I had to stand on a box cause I was shorter than the girl I had to ... I was terrible. I just did not like that situation at all. What I'm trying to say is that the on-the-spot moment it's better that if up here that you really have worked out what you're going to do. That's it, basically. Practice is everything. [applause] Thank you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

That you were just playing, what was that?

CARL MCINTOSH

That I think ... Do you know, I do not know the title of the song. This thing here [plays chord progression]?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

No, just the A-E-I-O-U thing.

CARL MCINTOSH

That's just practice. I don't have a title for that. That's just me practicing.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Yo, we need to do something man. Seriously, for real.

CARL MCINTOSH

Really?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

For real.

CARL MCINTOSH

Okay. What do you want to do? How do you want to do it?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Let's do it upstairs. We can do like ...

CARL MCINTOSH

Really? That's a conversation for after. Oh, yeah. Come on. Thank you, everyone. Been great talking to you.

JEFF “CHAIRMAN” MAO

Let's give it up for Carl McIntosh, please.

CARL MCINTOSH

Thank you, everyone. It’s been great talking to you.