Jeff Lowe
Hello there little monster, what are you up to?
Today, here in Totnes in Devon, I’ve been to see a spiritualist who kept laughing out loud every time he went to tell me my future, this made me very angry and I felt like hitting him, but I left feeling very upset because I’ve never been able to strike a happy medium!
Apart from that I’ve been doing what all little monsters do, you know, eating people, reading Goodbye (as opposed to Hello) magazine, and this afternoon when the sun came out I went for a troll along the river.
So, tell me a bout about what you're here to promote?
It’s my first solo album: ‘Hitchcock Café, one might say it’s my first cameo role in my own Café (double egg and chips Charlie) . I’m promoting it partly to try and pull some ‘Birds’ and partly to take a few small steps (39 to be exact) towards getting my songs, musicianship and production out there.
And if we didn't have any clue as to who you were, what should we be looking up on Google?
The song ‘Frigid as England’ The band ‘The Cutting Crew’, ‘Public Information Song’, ‘Hitchcock Café’, The ‘Jude Roea’ album. ‘Holly Jazz Lowe’: ‘Blindfolded’ and www.Jefflowemusic.com
And as Jacko had the Moonwalk and Elvis had the snake hips, what do you have that makes you unique?
I have my snake walk and my moon hips (but that’s only if you get to see my dark side) for starters, then of course I have my ageing, agnostic and slightly verbally abusive budgie that sits on my shoulder. He’s my accountant actually, very quick with numbers but I’m getting very tired of his seedy jokes. Apart from that I have a very unique lyric/song writing style.
Now, clearly we need to get to know each other more, so tell me an interesting fact about you that noone else knows?
‘I wish I was a girly, just like my dear Mama’!
What song do you wish you'd written?
The list is endless, but this question should be answered seriously…mmmm either Suzanne by Leonard Cohen, In My Life by John Lennon, Maybe I’m amazed by Paul McCartney or River by Joni Mitchell. But I could pick another five in the next ten minutes endlessly on and on…..
If I was contemplating coming to your show or sitting at home and TV, how would you convince me to come out?
I’d set fire to your house!
And if you were to take me on a trip to your hometown, what would be the first place we'd go?
The local bakers, they make the most incredible veggie sausage rolls.
What's the best prank you've ever pulled on someone?
As a kid I used to tie cotton around a door knocker, carefully keeping it at a tension so that it was lifted, take it across the road at a the right height for a car to break and tie the other end to a door knocker on the opposite side of the road. Then, we, my mates and me, used to crouch in near by bushes and wait for a car to drive by and break the cotton. At this point both knockers would knock on the doors and people would come out almost simultaneously and be looking around wondering what was going on, we thought it was hysterical at the time. The cotton is too thin to observe immediately so they would be looking at each other with such puzzled faces…such fun.
And what's the most daring thing you've ever done? Please tell us how it ended up!
The most daring thing I’ve ever done is playing with my band live in front of the whole nation on ‘New Faces’ (the X factor of it’s day) when I was 20. I think the viewing at the time was something like 17 million. This was a live show so if you cocked it up that was too bad. It was the gala final; we had won two shows previous to this and were in all the tabloids, the pressure was definitely on. We didn’t win, a comedian won. The prize was a season in Las Vegas, and it apparently was cheaper to book a comedian than a five piece band, but we came third.
Have you ever been naked in public? Elaborate.
Every Thursday. When the bin men come to collect the bins. I always forget it’s Thursday for some reason. So at about 7 am, when I hear the truck with its bleeper coming up the hill, I leap out of bed and down the alley trying to get the bins out of for them to take away.
Have you ever been arrested? Again, elaborate.
Once for being drunk and incapable when I was fifteen in London. I was taken to a cell, out cold, and left to sober up till the morning. My parents were notified and came and got me in the morning. My dad was laughing and my mum was near crying, but they were very understanding. The joke was that it had only taken me 3 pints to get in this inebriated state. I came out of the pub where I had been watching a band, and staggered up to a police car to ask him for a lift (I didn’t know how to get home) at that point I passed out and rolled over the bonnet of the police car into the road. That’s all I can remember till the morning. I had to go the juvenile court and was fined five pounds.
Speaking of prison - if you were to send someone to prison for crimes against music, who would it be?
Spandau Ballet for the song ‘Gold’.
What were you doing last night at 11?
Practising my guitar. A bebop solo to be exact that takes place in one of my live songs, called ‘Know your Mind’.