Joe Boyd

He stopped doing it after a bit when things got too hot for him." So it was inspired by a true event, but, uh, I don't think the jail part of it was.

Uh, [laughs] producer Joe Boyd mentioned in several interviews over the years that the song regularly ran 10 to 15 minutes in concert with extended instrumental passages, uh, but the band knew obviously they had to shorten it for the use as a single.

He also said it was a complex recording involving some tricky editing, recalling that the middle section with Wright's organ solo was recorded as an edit piece and then spliced into the song for the final mix.

The band's management, Black Hill Enterprises, had paid to boost the single's cha- the single's chart position.

initially and were able to drive all of those things forward which i think is

well you know in electric records they were really good to us they were a great company for us we made the right choice and uh they were patient and you know they let us make some decisions especially with the wishing chair and the producer picking joe boyd and going to london Um, you know, and when that record didn't recoup, obviously they wanted to have a little more, uh, decision decisions being made, but, um, they, they were good, good to us.

So, um, When we sent the record to John Peel in England and My Mother the War became somewhat of a, like number 28 or 23 in his, the poll of the John Peel show on the BBC, that made record companies in the United States kind of interesting.

And there was, we play, so around Easter of 84, We're playing at Danceteria.

True.

So when, when did you guys feel a big shift internally when you had this infrastructure around you? Was it in my tribe or was it the next record? Like, when did you kind of feel, I don't want to say we've made it because I'm sure it was just a constant motion forward and a constant busyness.

Or did you feel you made it even with Joe Boyd and recording the wishing chair?

Yeah, right.

I've been asked

that a lot, and it's funny, there's some real conflicting opinions of that between me and one of the producers, or co-producers on that record, it was Lenny Warnker, who's a fabulous record producer, and Joe Boyd, who wasn't a good record producer, but was politically lucky to be in that position, and Joe mostly sat in the back corner of the studio with a newspaper, and and stayed out of the way, and Lenny did all the work, but yeah, it was,

I can't remember,

oh yeah, well, actually, I was still with Butter, you know, and the Great Better Days band, when I did that session for Midnight at Two Aces, and we had a concert the next day in Los Angeles, oh sorry, in San Francisco, and I'm doing this session in L.A. for Maria, and we did the track.

And just picked that spot.

I think there was an interview with Joe Boyd on the production.

I believe it was Joe Boyd.

Someone's going to put me up against the wall if I didn't get this right.

But he said when they were mixing Arnold Lane at Abbey, I think it was Abbey Road, Roger, right when the synth solo starts up in Arnold Lane, Roger took his fingers onto the faders and pushed it up.

And so So, you know, in wanting to clarify their sound, they chose not to go with Don Dixon and Mitch Easter, who had produced the first two albums.

They picked a producer by the name of Joe Boyd.

Joe Boyd was an expat living in London.

He produced some early Pink Floyd albums and he was working with the folk artist Nick Drake at the time.

And Peter Buck was a big fan of his and suggested him.

They kicked around some other producers, but they ultimately landed on Joe Boyd.

I'd also heard that Joe Boyd worked for Warner Brothers for a while and that he had done not the music, but like the soundscape to A Clockwork Orange.

Oh, is that right? I didn't know that.

I mean, Tiger Lily, you produced as well.

You'd worked with outside producers before then, like Joe Boyd and Peter Asher and Paul Fox.

Did producers have a big impact on those records? And was that something that you thought by the end, you're like, I just want to be, again, in control of what I'm doing?

It depends.

mean,

that's a nice way of putting it.

remember seeing joe boyd at he's i've spoken with him for carol pop too but i i remember seeing him at south by southwest in the early 90s and and uh and he mentioned he was talking about you and rem and he said yeah i always i produced the album before the commercial breakthrough he was kind of making a joke on himself but uh i enjoyed that record that was the one that i that i got hooked on with you guys with can't can't ignore the train as a kickoff track and everything else um

It's funny, we came to the conclusion that we wanted to work with Joe Boyd at the same time that REM did.