The View From The Hill

The Ruth and Joe Biermann Interview

February 5, 1997 

Ruth Biermann : The name of your new solo album is The View From the Hill. How did you arrive at that title?

Justin Hayward : Oh well, because I live on the side of a hill and so it's a literal title and I suppose also because it's a sort of place that I feel I've reached in my life, a place that's sort of an overview of what's going on in Europe and in my life and music generally, and I suppose that's a place that I've arrived at, literally and metaphorically.

RB : It's a good place to be.

JH : Yeah, well I hope so. My roadie said I should've called it "The View From Over the Hill." (Everyone laughs). But then he would say that.

Joe Biermann : Now he's your former roadie...

JH : He would say that, yeah.

RB : You recently taped a music video for "The Way of the World."

JH : Oh well I actually taped some footage and it hasn't turned into a video yet, but there is some footage of it, yes.

RB : Can you give us a little sneak preview of what we might see?

JH : Oh, you just see me walking around in Hollywood, I think that's about it.

RB : No beautiful women?

JH : No.

RB : OK, so you have no idea when or where we may see it.

JH : Um, I don't believe it will be released commercially. I think they just use some footage that I did of it, just little bits and pieces and I don't believe there's a complete video. Be nice if there was.

RB : I was hoping to see it on VH-1.

JH : Hmmm, no.

RB : It should be. Is there going to be anything for Broken Dream?

JH : I don't know, is the answer.

RB : OK. I'm going to quote you now from a recent interview where you said, "Music can make the world a better place, and that the most powerful thing you can be is an example to someone."

JH : Yeah, that sounds like one of my cliches.

RB : I'd like to know how TVFTH fits into that philosophy.

(Justin pauses)

RB : That's a hard one.

JH : No, I think as music does for me, you know, it enhances my life greatly and through music I can find out things about myself and about my relationships with other people and about the interaction that I have with people. And not *my* music, but that's my reaction when other people's music really moves me, and I know that this album is really so much from the heart that it's a very sincere record of songs. So I know that if it really evokes those feelings in me it'll work on others as well, so they can't help but share.

RB : For me when I listened to the "Promised Land", it made me think of my mother and father when they came to this country. To me it sounded like it was written with them in mind. So I was wondering, since you're travelling around the country and talking to your fans, are they all telling you that they can relate strongly to certain songs on the album?

JH : Yes they can. And that's one of the most moving things I've found on these, you know, in store things, and meeting people, that I've done. It's very touching and very moving, a lot of the time what people have who want to share. The only thing that I can always say really in response to that is that you know it's not really me because they don't know me. But then, I'm the embodiment of that music that they really like, and so that I'm sort of the physical embodiment of it, I suppose. But they bring their own emotions and self to it, and that's what makes the music live -- is in them.

RB : You said they don't really know you.

JH : No, that's right. I don't think they do.

RB : But I think they get to know you through your music.

JH : Well they know the part of me that's in my music.

RB : That's a big part of you.

JH : I suppose it is but I don't know whether that's the real person, that's not the sort of everyday person, really, you know there's me and my life and what goes on in my life and then there's this other world. It's like opening a door and going into another room that's my music, and although there's not many other people in that room, it does exist in its own sort of right. I wouldn't say that it's actually part of me all the time.

JB : Which do you value more, your personal life or the professional life?

JH : Oh, the personal life really, because I find it actually rather disturbing sometimes that I can't consider myself a complete, sort of fulfilled person without having the other part of me that is involved so much... I can't imagine what my life would be like without music and that disturbs me because I really envy people that I meet whose life is fulfilled and complete without something as nebulous and intangible as music.

RB : I wish I had some sort of special talent.

JB : That's what I was going to say. A lot of people would probably reverse that role and say "Gee, I wish I had some sort of talent" that they could write and sing and have a career.

JH : Hmm, maybe they would but this is what its like on this side of the fence.

RB : I was going to ask you about the fact that your fans really can't separate the man and the music but you already answered that question. OK, tomorrow you're going to be at Borders in Springfield.

JH : Yep.

RB : And we're going to be there.

JH : Oh, OK.

RB : And you've been performing at other small venues around the country. I was wondering how the response has been. Has it been better than you expected?

JH : Yeah, it's been great. It's been sort of quite overwhelming, really. The respose in terms of people, it depends on how much publicity they do. And if they're really doing press and publicity to the right kind of people then there'd be great... a good turnout, and we'll have a nice time. So it depends on that, how many people I know that are around. In some ways I wish that if I'd have known that there was going to be this kind of response, I'd rather have just come and done a gig really, because at the end of the last Moodies tour I did some concerts on my own with my own boys and they went really well, and I think I could be doing that as well.

JB : What about some smaller venues, instead of like the Garden State Arts Center?

JH : Exactly. Well,that's what I've been doing on my own, yeah. I did The House of Blues and The Coach House down in California. And this summer I'm going to do a little tour of my own around the Moodies tour in between and around it.

JB : Anything East coast?

JH : Yes, yeah. I'm going to work my way right across.

RB : I was going to ask how your solo plans fit in with the recording and touring plans with the Moodies.

JH : Well, the Moodies, we're out again this summer. We're touring England through March and then doing some stuff in Europe all through March and the beginning of April. Then we come back here in May and June with the band. So really, the problem with the Moodies is that we work so much on the road that we record so infrequently. And I think for me, as my life is so much about being a songwriter, that I don't find that I get satisfied in that area, not like when we used to do like one or two albums a year, years ago. Then I was satisfied. But now we haven't recorded for such a long time. And even now I can't see us releasing an album for at least another year.

RB : But you have another solo album in the works, don't you -- for CMC Records?

JH : Ummm, noooo, not quite. There are some demos, but I haven't started anything yet.

RB : But they've asked you to do one.

JH : Oh I'm sure they have, yes, they've asked me. Yes.

RB : So that means yes?

JH : Well, it means yes when I get 'round to it, yeah. That's what it means.

RB : To me that means yes.

JH : Oh, it'll be there. It'll be there, yeah.

RB : You pretty much answered all my questions. I just wanted to ask you if there's anything else you'd like to say about TVFTH because we'd like to get the word out.

JH : Yeah, sure. Well, really it was, you probably know this, but it was an album... it was songs that I started writing I suppose back in '91 for a Moodies album, and I just had so many songs and I've still got so many things. I became, when I moved down to France, I became for some reason, unknown reason, really productive and stuff started just flowing out of me, and I'd forgotten what that was like. And then I met a few other musicians, or met up again with a few other musicans -- English musicians -- down there. And one of them was a guitar player that was working with a guy called Eros Ramazotti, who's a well known Italian artist. And he said, 'you've got to come and see some of these Italian boys play'; it's a bit like football players in England, or soccer players; you know you have the Italian soccer players come over and they're just so fantastic. So he said, 'you've got to come see some of these musicians' so I did and I went to see a couple of gigs and had a look at the studios and it was just so great. It really turned me on. So I thought, well, I've got all of these songs and I love it here on this particular part of the Mediterranean. And everything just came together. Then between myself and Micky Feat on bass and Phil Palmer, and Paul Bliss on keyboards, you know we put a little band together and the four of us worked out the stuff, rehearsed it up, and it really was, as I say on the album, it was a celebration of music. I'd forgotten realy what it was like to do that. The Moodies is wonderful recording, but it's a very solitary thing. You know, maybe it's just me and a producer some of the time or one of the other guys and a producer, and people sort of come and go in it. But this was just four weeks of recording where everything was recorded and rehearsed and played really well. And it was a really shared experience for all of us, very enlightening really. It was wonderful.

Joe and Ruth thank Justin for the interview and go on to work on some promotion for the WINS show.

Interview copyright Joe and Ruth Biermann. All rights reserved. Extra special thanks and gratitude to Joe and Ruth Biermann for allowing this interview to be published on this site.Copyrights held by their respective owners. Original text/graphics copyright 1996, 1997, Forosisky/Rucker.

Last Modified on Sunday, September 14, 1997