Images of Peter: Finding Peter Godwin

Peter Godwin: Last year I wrote an album, Nine Lives, with one of my childhood heroes, you could say: the extraordinary Steve Winwood. I was very fortunate, because the album got to #12 in the US album charts; that’s something that doesn’t happen often in your career. . . certainly not for a more “underground” (?) poet/musician like me. . .

Steve is all over the history of popular music, in all its most ambitious and original forms, starting when he was 15. Just go to his website and look at his “Timeline” and prepare to be dumbstruck by just how many seminal albums he’s played on, let alone his own work with Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, Blind Faith (with Eric Clapton), and his solo career; the list includes Jimi Hendrix (on Electric Ladyland, playing Hammond as a 20-year old!), Joe Cocker (“Get By With A Little Help From My Friends”), John Martyn, George Harrison, Toots and The Maytals, Robert Palmer, Marianne Faithful (Broken English), Talk Talk, Billy Joel, Tina Turner, The Who, Etta James, Paul Weller (Stanley Road), Christina Aguilera (Back To Basics), Tito Puente. . . actually, the list is truly endless.

Johnson Somerset and I had already started work on the Nuevo album and Johnson had associate-produced Steve’s previous album (About Time) and was working on Steve’s latest. It was Johnson who introduced me and recommended me to Steve. It was an extraordinary opportunity to write for Mr.Winwood’s sublime and uniquely soulful voice. I’m forever indebted to my friend Johnson for bringing us together. Working with Steve, you really feel you’re in touch with history and in great company, as it were.

What was also fascinating to me was that Steve embraces musicians and musical influences from all over the world: his band and collaborators include José Neto from Brazil and Richard Bailey from Trinidad (born Guyana), alongside of English mates like Eric Clapton (featured on “Dirty City”). And Steve likes to combine different musical traditions—soul, folk, blues, rock, jazz, gospel, Latin, pop—in order to find an original sound and expression, which is much more than what is classified as “World Music.” I feel Steve’s creativity has a much richer DNA than what they call “World.”

So you can imagine, I didn’t find it hard to relate to his vision: it is in some kind of parallel universe to mine, even though the final art is quite different. It has some of the same dream behind it. I feel that when “Englishness” was sort of defined, back in the Sixties—yes, it did include some very English and local lyrics and stories like “Waterloo Sunset” rather than “Route 66.” But it also included the Englishman as Traveller and lover of the exotic, as in “Tomorrow Never Knows” (opening lines from The Tibetan Book Of The Dead), “Julia” (opening line a revamp of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet and eastern pentatonic scales in the melody), and of course, “Within You, Without You” (pure George Harrison Hindi Raga).

Actually, the list here could be very long and diverse and goes beyond The Beatles, who obviously combined both traditions of “Englishness.” Probably The Beatles should get some of the credit for initiating that interest in the musically exotic, starting that fire, but it spread everywhere, especially to the US, of course.

I understand that Americans—and other nations—have these definitions of music that comes out of Britain and Europe, but, as with so many things, the truth is often a much more complex reality, harder to hold in your hand. . .

Click here to read more from Peter Godwin on. . .

Setting The Scene
Influences
Cult Following and Italo-Disco
Benitez, Bowie, and Electronic Music
French and Spanish Inspirations
Producing and Writing
The English and European Aesthetic
Working with Steve Winwood
Off The Map
Working with Others
Forays Into Acting
More On Acting

Introduction:

Cherchez la femme: “Images of Heaven”
Discovering Peter Godwin
Rediscovering Peter Godwin

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