Nick Lowe, Harrogate Theatre, February 24 (From York Press)

Nick Lowe, Harrogate Theatre, February 24

11:30am Friday 17th February 2012 in Music news and reviews By Charles Hutchinson

NICK Lowe decided The Old Magic would be the perfect name for his first album in four years, even before he began to write it.

“I don’t know why no one has used it before when it’s such a well-known phrase, which I thought would apply to my later stuff – even though naming an album is usually done more on the hoof than you think,” says Nick.

That said, the Walton-on-Thames troubadour has had a habit of coming up with memorable names, from Seventies’ works Jesus Of Cool and Labour Of Lust to 2007’s At My Age.

He will turn 63 next month –“Lord I never thought I’d see 30,” he sings in Checkout Time – and Lowe has undoubtedly improved with age.

What’s more, not only rock critics have noted that. Whereas he once played to a near empty York Barbican Centre, next Friday’s concert at Harrogate Theatre has sold out as Lowe sets out this week on his first full UK tour for many years.

“It’s certainly very odd. I seem to be experiencing an Indian summer,” says Nick, who, in the words of the New York Times had spent his twenties “not fitting into three successive movements: pub rock, punk and new wave”.

“I did give it some thought when what I call ‘my brief pop career’ finished in the Eighties. I took stock of my situation when I recovered and thought, ‘I haven’t done too badly here. I’ve written a few hits, had a few myself’’, but there I was on the scrapheap when there weren’t any rock musicians doing it in their sixties and seventies – whereas there are loads now! Yet though you were considered past it in your mid-30s, I didn’t feel I’d even started.”

Nick’s challenge was to find a way of repositioning himself by using growing older to his advantage; to shake off the perception of him as “that pub-rock bloke who’s over the hill”.

“I had to spend some time in the wilderness to find a new voice, and the old following has welcomed it,” says Nick.

“But I also have a new following, like in Spain, where they’d been totally immune to my charms for years and knew very little about my early career, though I’d had hits there with Cruel To be Kind and I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass, but the ‘new thing’ has really caught on.”

The United States has taken to The Old Magic too. “It got into the Billboard 200. I think it spent Christmas Day afternoon there, reaching the dizzying heights of number 87 – and that’s the most chart action I’ve had since the 1970s,” says Nick.

What Nick Lowe has done is address love and life as he and others experience it as the years pile up, unlike the Rolling Stones who don’t acknowledge creaking bones.

“I think I’ve grown into a persona or a style that I aped when I was younger when I always wanted to be older artistically. I always enjoyed older performers, like Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Otis Redding,” says Nick, whose country, blues and jazz album sounds like a record you might spot in a second-hand shop window with a tea-cup stain on the sleeve.

“My contemporaries were all a bit spotty and not as interesting, in the same way that a young blues band doesn’t seem to work, just as I don’t enjoy listening to young comedians.

“So, in a way, I’ve grown into the person I was trying to mirror, and I’ve felt the disappointments that everyone feels and I can reflect on the experiences that everyone has and do it with a bit of humour.”

His big enemy is earnestness.

“That serious and preachy stuff just gets on my nerves. It makes me switch off,” he says. “You have to try to make it seem it’s not as difficult as they say. Many people have the same experiences. Thank goodness for the jobbing songwriter.”

Nick recalls the wonder of writing his most enduring song, (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding, penned in his days in Brinsley Schwarz in 1973.

“I always think of that as my original song, because, back in ‘73 you realised that if you wanted to have longevity you have to write your own songs, get on with it and figure out how to do it,” he says.

“As everyone does at first, you rewrite your original hero’s work and then you get to writing like your current hero’s work, and put bits of the two of them together and create your own style.

“I remember thinking when I came up with (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love And Understanding, ‘This is amazing, this is an original thought, this song; don’t muck it up’. I knew that all I had to do was come up with a good tune and words and not mess it up by making it too complicated.”

Nearly 40 years later, the craft still can surprise yet thrill him.

“When it comes along, it’s glorious writing a song,” says Nick. “You do figure out some stuff on the way, over the years, but the actual process of song writing becomes even more mysterious.

“How it happens, why it happens, why it doesn’t happen: I liken it nowadays to making a dry stone wall or thatching a roof. It’s a dying craft that will die out in 50 years.”

• Kula Productions present Nick Lowe at Harrogate Theatre next Friday, 8pm; sold out. Box office for returns only: 01423 502116.

Did you know?

Nick Lowe co-wrote Dr Feelgood’s 1979 Top Ten hit Milk And Alcohol and produced The Damned’s New Rose, the first English punk single in 1976.