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GONZO WEEKLY #74: Jon meets Billy Sherwood
Billy Sherwood is a remarkable man. Of all the people that I have interviewed since I first started my association with Gonzo Multimedia over two years go, I think that Billy is one of the most interesting.
He does so many projects. Just a brief look at his recent workload reveals records with Gene Loves Jezebel, Days Between Stations (on which he proves himself to be a remarkable drummer as well as bass player, guitarist and producer. He also produced the astounding debut album by XNA which has been one of my favourite albums of this last year.
He is possibly best known as having been a member of Yes during the 1990s, and his long-standing relationship with Chris Squire has come back into play recently as he was called back into action with prog rock’s longest running soap opera, to do production work on the backing vocals on the band’s eagerly awaited new album which is out in July.
He was kind enough to agree to our second interview some weeks ago, but events conspired to thwart us. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. The first time I was scheduled to telephone him, I did so at the agreed time, but he was unavoidably delayed somewhere else, and we had to reschedule.
The next time – a week later – the delay was entirely my fault. One of my nephews came to visit, and there were various family issues to discuss, some wine was drunk, and I completely forgot all about it or where the time had gone. I sent an apologetic email to Billy asking for yet another reschedule.
The third time, things worked out just dandy. Billy and I had a long and cheerful conversation about his recent activities, and once again I was left in awe at quite how much this pleasant and unassuming man manages to do with his life. He is not only a massively talented musician and producer, but a damned nice fellow as well, and I always enjoy our conversations.
It is telling, and quite the mark of the man, that he told me about his own new solo project (that sounds very interesting indeed) as an afterthought, having forgotten to mention it earlier in our conversation. Not one to shy away from difficult subjects, no matter how high concept, his new solo project sounds as if it is going to be a suitably apocalyptic career highlight. I, for one, can’t wait. Listen to our conversation here.
