Big Think Interview with David Gray | Big Think

Big Think Interview with David Gray

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A conversation with the “Draw the Line” musician

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David Gray:

David Gray is an English singer-songwriter. His most recent album is Draw the Line. Although he released his first studio album in 1993, he did not receive worldwide attention until the release of White Ladder six years later. It was the first of three UK chart-toppers in six years for Gray, the latter two of which also made the Top 20 in the U.S.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: How did your relatively late popular success affect your perspective on fame?

David Gray: Yeah, a good deal, because the formative period since putting my first record out—that seven or eight years before success really kicked in—some of it was quite a harrowing experience. And it stays with you; it gives you a perspective on things. It also stood me in good stead in a way. We all know that the world functions on nonsense and so it has sort of debunked a few sort of myths and or cleaned my eyes a little bit as to how things worked, and also allowed me to develop some relationships which proved to be very important. Whereas, if success had come very quickly—you just immediately turn into a parasite in everyone's eyes—it's more difficult to form some sort of— there's a degree of nurture that's necessary if longevity is what you're after. That’s really the way that I saw the world.

Occasionally people would put the question to me, “Do you ever pine for these days when you were free of all of this, press, or hassle, or people being on your case in this way—[when] you were this very credible, obscure artist?” But that's just a fantasy that people have. They just put those words together. I’d say, “If you knew what it was actually like, you'd never wish anyone back there.” It's the toilet tour, as it’s known, when you are playing the smallest and least pleasant venue in town on a regular basis. It's not for the fainthearted, and [for] anyone who had just watched the film repeatedly, it's like Spinal Tap in the back of the bus—[it] used to be quite a sort of painful experience [to] watch, as funny as it is, because it was that close to the bone. And they’d at least been successful and are now less so.

I was billed under spareribs famously at one club: “Spareribs sold out, David Gray, 9:00.” But I went through many permutations of the same sort of miserable story. It's not for the fainthearted. So that stuff stays with you, and negotiating success is equally complicated and riddled with illusion as well—a lot of it of your own creation. I think the world of success is a much more self-conscious place, it's essentially a hall of mirrors [that] shines you a distorted view of yourself back repeatedly from many different angles until you start to get a bit paranoid about what everybody thinks about you. Everybody has to go through that and I don't think it completely leaves you. You are essentially exposed and vulnerable [when] you are in the public eye, and you can be criticized or categorized or drawn in a sort of cartoon version of yourself freely by people however they see fit, and you just have to live with that. But there is no way of winning; you just look worse the more you struggle and resist, the more people try and enclose you in a little bubble. And you go, "No, that's not me. I'm deep and meaningful,” or whatever, whatever it is you're particularly trying to prove. But it's just quicksand the more you struggle, the quicker you sink. The only way to escape is through the grandeur of surrender—just not giving a fuck about the whole thing and getting a sense of perspective above and beyond. So I think having an audience is a wonderful thing and should never be taken for granted. Much as it also should be your job as an artist to challenge them as well as challenge yourself. You just give them what they want.

But playing music has got to be one of the best jobs in the world, so if you’re ever torturing yourself to the point that you can't see that, then you've lost your perspective. So, I think that unquestionably, just like a plant having a bit longer to get its roots down into this earth – yes, the early years were useful in a way, because when I started out, I was totally green as to what the music business even was, what was its modus operandi. I didn't know, I didn't care—making a record, someone was giving me money to make a record, that was just enormous.

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