Gilbert O’Sullivan: A singer-songwriter and his love for the art of creating music that has connected.

Buzz Knight:

I am Buzz Knight, the host of the Takin’ a Walk podcast Music History on Foot. Follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, iHeart or wherever you get your podcasts. When you follow us, you’re never going to miss an episode. We’d also appreciate when you follow us, kindly leave us a review. That would really be helpful. Today, our guest is full of rich music history. He’s a singer-songwriter who topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. His music has been covered by a range of musicians, from Morrissey to the Pet Shop Boys. He’s embarking on a US tour, which is going to take him to City Wineries across the country, including Boston on March the 11th. Welcome, Gilbert O’Sullivan to Takin’ a Walk. Well, Gilbert, congrats on the upcoming tour, which includes Boston on March 11th at City Winery, and also works its way across the US to other City Wineries, New York on March 12th, Philadelphia March 15th, St. Louis, Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville. It sounds like we’re riding on a train, Gilbert, with all these stops, but congrats on the tour.

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

Thank you. Well, normally what we would be doing… We’re doing the north, all the venues, places you’ve mentioned, and then we would be going to the West coast, but this time we’re coming back to the UK and then going back to the West Coast in October, I think. We’re kind of spreading them up and stuff, but I’m really looking forward to this. It was two years ago that we first… It was just a year before the pandemic, before Covid, we managed to do a few dates in America, and then the gap with Covid. Last year, beginning of last year, we did quite a few dates and that’s what’s bringing us back this time. It’s been very special to be over there performing, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Buzz Knight:

Paint the picture. You’re in the Channel Islands in Jersey, correct?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

Correct, yes. It’s a small island, only nine miles by six miles, but it’s only half an hour by plane to London. It’s 50 minutes by boat to France. It’s a beautiful island. It’s very healthy, good environment, healthy air, nice beaches, [inaudible 00:02:29] nice beaches. The weather’s slightly warmer than the UK, a good place. It’s been very productive for me, in terms of songwriting. Of course it’s been very good for my family with their two daughters school and their education.

Buzz Knight:

When you moved there, I think as you were maybe trying to convince some of the town locals, you said that you were really not the kind of person who throws televisions out the window and you lead a calm existence. Is that correct?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

Well, here’s the thing. To get into Jersey, the weird thing about being allowed into Jersey, you had to have a meeting with the economic advisor. He determined, you might be the wealthiest person in the world, but if he doesn’t like you or if he finds something wrong about you, you don’t get in. At the time that we came in, they had only let about five or six people in this category that you were labeled under. For me, when I met this economic advisor, they’d never had a pop singer in the island before. They had golfers and authors, Jack Higgins and various authors were coming to Jersey, and golfers, of course, but never a singer.

The myth about rock singers and pop singers throwing television sets out of the window, I assured the economic advisor that the reason we were coming to Jersey was, of course, financially it helped, no doubt. But we had two young daughters ready for school and Jersey was a good place to educate them. I keep a very low profile. I do not get involved in things going on, I just keep myself to myself. I’m all for being Gilbert O’Sullivan outside of Jersey when I go around the world. But when I’m back in Jersey, I just like to be just part of the community. That low profile seem to help. Anyway, he gave us the go ahead.

Buzz Knight:

I was confused about something though when you mentioned economic advisor, I thought our wives are our economic advisors.

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

They’re house advisors, and they do have some input into that, I must say.

Buzz Knight:

Take me back to you as a 14-year-old, what motivated you to start writing songs?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

Well, it wasn’t so much to write songs to begin with. To begin with it was two things. One, I had the piano in the garden shed and stuff, and because of the Beatles arriving in ’62 with Love Me Do and then Please Please Me, we all wanted to be in a band. That started it off. Then I was in a school band, then a youth club band, then a more serious band. It’s during that period I started to write. The big influences were Lennon and McCartney for songwriting, Bacharach and David, Goffin and King, Sadaka/Greenfield, all the great songwriting teams. Of course, from a voice point of view, Bob Dylan was a huge influence because I don’t have a great voice, but I do have what I think a distinctive voice, and he certainly had a distinctive voice. The combination of being influenced by Lennon and McCartney, and then being influenced vocally by Bob Dylan. If you heard some of my early demos from the mid-sixties, you’d probably understand where that influence was going.

Buzz Knight:

Now, did you encounter over the years any of the individuals that you just mentioned that were influential?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

No, I was invited to a reception by Paul McCartney, when he had his second solo album, a big do in London, but I’m quite shy and stuff. I remember being in the hall where he was there with his wife and they were over in the corner dancing and just having a good time on their own. I’m not one of those people that would go out to him and say, “Oh, I’m so and so, and great to meet you.” I’m not really like that. I have respect for a lot of people, admiration for a lot of people, him of course, and many other people. But so that’s it. I met Ringo Star once to say hello to. Let’s see, Bob Dylan. No, I think the likelihood of that ever happening would’ve been extremely remote. But I loved early Bob Dylan records, loved him.

Buzz Knight:

Well, when you were young, too, you had had some loss in your life, in terms of your dad, I believe. There had been some other challenges you faced, so music really channeled you in another creative direction at that time, right?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

All the things it kept me sane, my father passing away, I was never very close to my dad. My oldest sister, Mari is three years older than me. She has good memories of my father. I have very few, if any memories of my father, which I deeply regret. I was 11 years old when he passed away. I kind of regret that, because I know my dad liked to gamble a bit on the greyhounds. When he was in the army, they backed onto a racing track, horse racing track. Along with other soldiers in the army, they used to gamble away their money. But I know that if my father had been around for my success, one of the things he would’ve asked is for me to buy him a horse, which of course I would’ve gladly done. But the other issues in terms of throughout my career, the legal issues and stuff, what kept me sane, what kept me grounded throughout all those periods of dissent and whatever board cases it was my family and music it just helped me to get… It’s always held me together.

It’s the one thing I feel I can do better than anything. I’m one of those people that I don’t need you, Buzz, to be able to tell me that I’m good. It’s nice when you do that, now, but I’m not dependent on you doing that. In other words, you have people who you… I’ve seen people who are hugely gifted, but they need you to tell them if they’re any good. That’s the danger thing. If you depend on others to tell you how good you might be, you’re in trouble. The key is that you may not be good as you think you are, but thinking you are is good. That’s my philosophy.

Buzz Knight:

Well, as far as the legal challenge part of things, your music was used at one point where it was a copyright infringement, and it was one of the earliest situations, I believe, maybe the first in terms of a copyright infringement suit. Is that correct?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

It’s sampling. It’s the first sample case to go to court. After that, anybody who was sampled, if you had music and they sampled it before my court case, they could have got away with it. They would’ve got away with it. But after my court case, the judge set it in stone, it sets a precedent, so after that. That’s the positive thing. The negative thing was, I needed to go to court like you need a hole in the head. The Biz Markie scenario was that he sampled the track, and I told him he couldn’t use it because he’s a comic rapper and I didn’t like any association with that, for that song. But he went ahead and did it anyway. I had to go to court, and I didn’t go to court in England. I had to go to New York to do it. I fought the case, I won. There is a positive that came out of it for other people, but who needs to go to court? I don’t recommend it.

Buzz Knight:

A draining process, needless to say, right?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

And expensive, because here we are, I’m going to New York and I have to pay the lawyers, and you can imagine what lawyers’ bills are. I had to pay a lot of money up front before we even got into court. The sad irony for me was I’m the one in court that had to go on the box first, go on the stand first to be questioned. Biz Markie wasn’t even there. Just the arrogance of these people. I don’t understand. The judge was very much on my side, thank God.

Buzz Knight:

You studied art and you also played in a band called Rick’s Blues with a future founder of the band Supertramp, Rick Davies. What was that like?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

Well, that was great because that’s what I mentioned earlier, starting because of the Beatles, we all wanted to be in a band. From the school band, to the youth club band, to the more serious band, the more serious band is Rick’s Blues. Rick is one of these gifted musicians. He’s just an incredible musician. He’s a great piano player. I was the drummer in the band. He’s a fantastic drummer. He’s a better drummer than I could ever be. His collection of records and the influences that he had that he would listen to. For example, we used to do in the band, Bill Doggett, numbers, Bill Doggett in America, not many people know who Bill Doggett is, but Rick did. I would bring him up the Beatles album and say, “Listen to All Over [inaudible 00:11:14] by the Beatles.” He’d get Chuck Berry out of his bag and say, “Listen to the real thing.”

Rick was a fantastic musician and we could have turned professional. With Rick playing the keyboard, and me beginning to write songs as the drummer, we made a demo in London of two of my songs. We could have turned professional. We were that good, but the bass player in the guitar player were on apprenticeships, so they didn’t want to risk leaving. That meant that Rick and I had to decide what to do. Rick needed to be in a band and I was on my own. Rick then joined a bank called The Joint, which became a band called The Lonely Ones, which ended up being Supertramp. But I ended up just going on my own up to London to break into the business, and that’s pretty much how it went.

Buzz Knight:

When your songs became hits, we’ll talk about Alone Again, naturally, or Clair, or Get Down, were you surprised at all of the aspect of what fame suddenly was part of your life?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

Only the success outside of the UK was I didn’t look… I wasn’t sort of wanting to change the world or to take on the world when I got wanted to make… I wanted to make a record, I wrote songs. I wanted CBS to give me a record deal, which they did reluctantly. I wanted to get a record out there and to have it released and stuff. I only saw [inaudible 00:12:37], in terms of success, it was the UK. I didn’t think in terms of Europe or America, my goodness. When all that happened, it was special to have the success in America with Alone Again, as it was the success I had in Europe and other parts of the world with various songs. But as I said to begin with, I just wanted the postman to be whistling it when he walked up the drive with the letters, and I would’ve been a happy boy.

Buzz Knight:

For sure. Now, do you feel that if Alone Again, naturally came out today as a new song, do you think it would be received any differently than it was when it first came out?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

I think it’s interesting you say that, because I don’t think Alone Again would be… Despite it being one of the few songs that deals with suicide, I think that the one that would be difficult today would be Clair, because it kind of depresses me a little and stuff. I wrote Clair as a thank you to my manager and his wife, Gordon Mills for managing me. His wife, for feeding me cooking dinners for me and stuff. I used to babysit for them four children, Clair would be the one getting up and you get attached to kids. I come from a large family, it’s no problem. Clair used to get attached to me and called me Uncle Ray. The song was written as a thank you to her. There’s nothing more about that.

But today, in the environment we’re in today with pedophilia child and sexuality and abuse, I think it would be a problem. It’s not a problem in concert, everybody loves it and stuff. But in terms of it being recorded today, I think arguably that probably certain radio stations probably wouldn’t even play it now, because of that link with a grownup man, although I was 22 years old and a young child, and so there you go. I find that kind of depressing, but an interesting aspect of how things have changed in terms of what people can say, but they can’t in a song.

Buzz Knight:

You had an album called I’m a Writer, Not a Fighter, and you encountered the great Muhammad Ali as you were doing some publicity shots around that release. Can you talk about that experience?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

Well, there’s a few things about that. There’s one, we had done the album I’m a Writer Not a Fighter, I did boxing as a school boy and a junior. I had about 32 odd fights as a school boy and little trophies. Then you move into the junior stage and you get sets of cutlery and stuff, which your mum is even pretty happy with if you win. But I gave it up as a junior because it started to hurt. We thought, “Well, let’s approach Muhammad Ali.” My PR agent said, “You’ve got this album, you’re calling it a Writer Not a Fighter. You did boxing. Let’s see if we can spar a few round with Muhammad Ali.” We went to his training camp. I think this was at the time when he had refused to, what do you call it, to join up to-

Buzz Knight:

Oh, for the draft? Yeah.

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

Over the draft. I think he was spending a lot of time at his training camp, and we went up there and it was fine, and we took pictures. I tell you a nice thing, my flat in London where my older daughter lives Cara, she’s in publishing, but in the flat, there’s the photograph of myself, of Muhammad Ali. It’s fists up to each other, we look like we’re about to spar. My daughter tells me when her friends come round and they look at the picture, they all know who Muhammad Ali is, but they say, “Who’s the guy with him?” That is really nice.

Buzz Knight:

Did you feel he had a special aura about him?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

I think there’s yes and no. Muhammad Ali, he was a fantastic boxer. We loved him as a boxer, no question like that. But there was a side of him too… I remember a driver who used to drive us around in London when we were touring ’72, ’73. He drove Muhammad Ali on a few occasions, and his memory of that wasn’t that great still. I guess, I think there were more pluses than minuses attached to him. But what he went through, he was in a way extremely special. First time ever somebody like that achieved such great success. Fantastic Boxer. What can you say?

Buzz Knight:

Why did you never fall into the excesses trap that so many musicians and rock stars fall into?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

What’s that? Like what?

Buzz Knight:

Well, just excessive drugs, alcohol, bad behavior, et cetera.

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

No, not me. I’ll give you another little insight. In London in ’67 when flower power was massive in London, and it was a great time to be in London. We had a flat in London, three of us and three students, three of them were, but I had a friend who worked in a advertising agency and his wife. On the weekends they would come round and we would have a meal in the flat. On quite a few occasions, the other guys in the flats would be there with their friends and they would be smoking cannabis. Bob, his wife, and myself, would be in the corner eating fish and chips. We weren’t interested in that, because we just thought it was all a big con. We always felt that what they were doing was smoking something and they wanted to believe it was affecting them, but we don’t think it was.

Other excesses, no, I’m really down to earth, very basic. I’m not extravagant. If I like a glass of wine, I’m disciplined. I need to have it on a Friday, on a Saturday or if I go out for a meal. I’m pretty normal underneath whatever success it might appear I’ve achieved, and I have achieved a lot. I’m pretty grounded in the real world. I meet people and it’s just normal. There’s nothing, I’m no exception to anybody else in many ways. No, there’s no nothing. No, no TV’s throwing out. Now, what else could there be? I think it’s a bit boring, Buzz.

Buzz Knight:

You’re a gem. You’re a gem, but your tour is called… Isn’t it called the Driven Tour?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

Well, it’s the album. The latest album is called Driven, which is pretty much that sums me up. That’s pretty much how I am in terms of songwriting, in terms of what I want to do recording wise, getting the product out. BMG are very supportive for me, a major record company, very supportive. I have that in me. I’ve always had that driven thing of wanting to… If I write a song and nothing happens about it, I’ll write another one. I’ll write the next one. I let it get me down for a short time, then I move on, because it’s the songs always that keep me looking ahead, keep me with a good perspective and what it is I want to do. It’s all separate to my family. I think there’s that famous phrase I read in the paper that “You’re the most important…” For my wife, this is, “You’re the most important person in my life next to my music.”

Buzz Knight:

But you don’t go to pubs, you don’t… Do you drive, drive a car?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

No, I don’t drive. My dad didn’t drive, so I don’t drive. I would be very bad at it because I like to sit in the back. I’m always have songs going around in my head. I would be terrible. I’d be an accident waiting to happen, a dangerous person on the road to drive. But having said that, when I lived in Wadebridge, in Surrey and England, a private estate, I bought a Willys Jeep. My gardener convinced me to buy a Willys Jeep. It’s a private estate. So there’s roads around the private estate, and I did drive the Jeep badly around that estate without hurting anyone.

Buzz Knight:

I know there’s a couple of topics that are important to you today, and maybe you could talk about them. One is certainly racial profiling, and the other is climate change. Can you talk about those topics and how important they are?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

Well, global warming, if you listen to the… If you’ve heard… Because I like to incorporate things in my lyrics, which are relevant to today in a subtle way, not to be blatantly obvious about what you’re trying to say. God forbid you should be preaching like a Bono or something, but I can get them in there. Global warming crops up a few times on this current album, it’s just there because I think all of us, for it’s there and we have to learn to deal with it. Racial, what would you mean in that sense? That’s a broad subject.

Buzz Knight:

Well, I would say if we certainly look at this country, there’s been many challenges in large cities when it comes to racial profiling, and when it comes to certainly the important and great work that the police departments do. But there’s been unfortunate scenarios that have occurred and that certainly have been very public.

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

No, I observe that. I don’t necessarily write about that, because that’s on your home ground. I’m conscious of it and we all would like to see that ending. I know in England, in Europe… Strange enough in England that there is an element of that. I’ll give you one example, and I’ve actually incorporated that in a song on this current album. There was this couple which I read about. They were in quite a fancy Jeep, a Range Rover, and in Central London where they lived, and his partner, the girl had a baby. They had a baby which was there in the car with them. Stopped by police when they were driving. They were black, both of them, black people. They were stopped by a police car and they were searched, and they were harassed, and treated very badly.

There was nothing in there. They hadn’t done anything wrong. He wasn’t driving fast. It’s just that in the policeman’s eye, I think, well, we know they’re in a fancy Range Rover, should they be driving a Range Rover? You see that going on. I observed that and I actually incorporated that into a verse in one of the songs on my album. That’s an example I think of what we see going on in this country. We won’t talk about Ireland, Northern Ireland in that that’s something we will get nowhere, if we try to deal with that.

Buzz Knight:

Agree. You are on a desert island, imagine it, and you have an opportunity to bring a handful of your favorite albums that you can’t live without. What would some of those desert island discs be for Gilbert O’Sullivan?

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

Well, it’d be a Beatles album, Please Please Me, the first album recorded in a day. For all the times I played Beatles records, the first album will always seem to be the one that I go back to, because it’s the fact that it was all recorded in one day. That would be one. A Nina Simone album, love Nina Simone, quite an influence for me on the piano thing. Bob Dylan, Freewheelin’, Bob Dylan. But those are sort of obvious examples. I have some many albums I enjoy listening to. For example, Bonnie Raitt, who got the Grammy for that… We didn’t know about that. I got my daughter to play it for the first time yesterday. I love Bonnie Raitt. I have few of her albums and there’s a track I play for almost every other day around six o’clock in the evening.

I play soundtracks from all musicals in the morning and I play Beatles stuff and new albums in the afternoon, and I play what I like, Joni Mitchell. Yeah, a Joni Mitchell album I would put in that half dozen. In the evening. In the evening I play Joni Mitchell, or Carole King, and Randy Newman Feels like Home, fantastic and stuff. Those are some of the records I would take with me, but where’s the record player?

Buzz Knight:

Right? We didn’t answer that part of the question. But that’s a pretty good collection, Gilbert, that you brought with you.

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

Yeah. Well, but I thought the question were going to ask me, “What’s the one thing…” Because they have this program over here, Desert’s Island Discs where people are brought on and they’re allowed to bring one item to the island. What would that one item be? In my case, it would be a portable radio with a wind up radio. I love radio. Radio’s the key to all my earlier songwriting, because that’s how I was able to hear great songs, because I had the radio in bed with me at night. The battery [inaudible 00:25:23], I still love that in the radio. Radios are always on in the house throughout the whole day here, because the radios the most important thing to hear in new music. That’s how you get into music in the first place, because you’re hearing it for the first time. So a little wind up radio would be my luxury.

Buzz Knight:

Gilbert, define success for me.

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

Well, I think, as I mentioned earlier, it’s set out really quite categorically that I write songs because I love it. Then when I’ve written one I think is a a good song, I want to try and get it recorded, get a record company interested. I achieve that and then I want to get it released. I achieve that and then it sells. But I’m not looking to sell. I’m not saying, “It must sell this.” It’s not about that to begin with. It’s just about the joy of having a record that you’ve written, that you’ve made, and you can hold in your hand. There’s something very special about that. That for me determines pretty much what success is.

Buzz Knight:

Gilbert, what a joy it’s been talking to you. I wish you well on the upcoming tour. You’re playing at an amazing series of venues in the City Wineries. I know you’ll have a blast, and I know your fans will have a blast. Thank you so much for being on.

Gilbert O’Sullivan:

It’s a pleasure, Buzz. Good talking to you, as well.

Speaker 3:

Takin’ a Walk with Buzz Knight is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.

After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.