Saturday, November 13, 2010

Nick Lowe: (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding

Nick Lowe's long career has taken many turns. In the early 1970s he was the bass player for pub-rock band Brinsley Schwarz. Pub rock was a forerunner for punk rock. Lowe later went solo while serving as the house producer for Stiff Records, where he perhaps gained his greatest fame, producing Elvis Costello's early albums, including Armed Forces, which ended with Lowe's composition, "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding."

As for his own recording career, Lowe's biggest hit was "Cruel to Be Kind."Lowe's more recent work is hard to classify, I'll call it country crooning.

Watch as "the Basher" sings "Peace and Love" in the fashion of his later output. This performance comes from a 2007 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. That's Benmont Tench  one of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers on keyboards, not former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Yeah, they do look alike.



Lowe was married for a while to Carlene Carter, Johnny Cash's stepdaughter. The Man in Black recorded Lowe's  "Without Love" for his Rockabilly Blues album.

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