Lowe landed on his feet as, in effect, the Stiff Records in-house record producer and that, in turn, got him behind the desk for the early Elvis Costello albums. Costello covered Lowe’s What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding and set up what has become a steady income stream for the song’s writer after Curtis Stigers covered it on the soundtrack album to The Bodyguard in 1992. It went on to become the biggest-selling soundtrack album in history and made Lowe a millionaire off the royalties from a single song.
But that was much later. Through the late seventies and on into the eighties Lowe produced albums by Costello, Grahsam Parker, Dr Feelgood and The Damned along with singles for, among others, Wreckless Eric, the Rumour, Alberto y los Trios Paranoias, his then father-in-law Johnny Cash and the Pretenders. He usually worked in a rough and ready bash it out—we'll tart it up later environment that resulted in the nickname Basher. It was a style that sat rather comfortably with the punk aesthetic, though Nick was never actually a punk rocker.
With Edmunds in Rockpile he was more interested in reinventing the three-minute pop single and playing the hard-driving rock’n’roll that became characterised as power-pop. Rockpile’s problem lay in the fact that Edmunds and Lowe were signed to different managers and recorded for different labels so while the only official Rockpile album is 1980's Seconds of Pleasure, Lowe's Labour of Lust, Edmunds' Tracks on Wax 4 and Repeat When Necessary, and the album Lowe produced for his then wife Carlene Carter (Musical Shapes) were effectively Rockpile albums.
While his early solo singles and the first two albums, Jesus of Cool and Labour of Lust, were fairly quirky expressions of New Wave sensibilities, brimming with catchy hooks and an infectious energy as times changed Lowe changed with them, heading increasingly towards roots rock with Noise To Go and Nick Lowe and his Cowboy Outfit, and, briefly, in the short-lived Little Village collaboration with John Hiatt, Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner. The quartet originally got together to record Hiatt's 1987 album Bring the Family and continued in business just long enough to cut the underrated Little Village.
From there he increasingly veered away from what he did when he was famous, out of a desire to avoid becoming one of those thinning-haired, jowly old geezers who still does the same shtick they did when they were young, slim and beautiful,so his most recent recordings have been heavy on crooner ballads, drawing on country, soul and R&B elements and, most recently, Quality Street: A Seasonal Selection for All the Family, a collection of Christmas music.
Those changed sensibilities did not, however, prevent him from touring with Ry Cooder (Brisbane concert reviewed here) so maybe there’s still hope for something rootsier…
Links:
Nick Lowe: “That would be my idea of hell. To let people relive their youth through me”