2000 interview with Linda Gail Lewis
Van Morrison first met Linda Gail Lewis at a Jerry Lee Lewis convention at the King's Hotel in Newport in south Wales in 1993. She was performing and he was just hanging out but there was an immediate rapport. But it was several years before they met again. "He invited me to have dinner with him. We talked over dinner and found we appreciated a lot of the same music," Linda Gail recalls. "Then I went to see him play in Cardiff. My brother Jerry Lee is such a great performer and musician that you imagine you've heard everything. But I stood on the side of the stage and when Van started singing it was incredible. He has such a magic in his voice." After the show, Van suggested they got together and played some songs. "But I didn't realise I was going to be singing with him. He did a couple of blues songs and I played piano for him. It was just a private room. We'd been talking about one of my brother's songs we both loved called "Let's Talk About Us". It was written by Otis Blackwell who wrote "Great Balls of Fire" but it wasn't really well known. Van asked if I knew the words so I wrote them down for him and he asked me to sing it with him. Suddenly I was rehearsing duets with Van Morrison." Van was so impressed he asked Linda Gail if she was free the following week and booked a studio on his mobile phone there and then. "I didn't imagine much would come of it. My hope was that maybe one song might be good enough to emerge on one of his albums," Linda Gail says. And she was not used to Van's way of working. "He likes to cut everything live. I'd never done that since I made a duets album with my brother back in 1969, I honestly didn't think I could do it. I was convinced I was going to mess it up so I didn't have high expectations. "I was supposed to be playing the piano, reading the lyrics, watching Van and singing - all in one live take. Everybody's feeding off each other and you've got all this engery and chemistry. I didn't realise what a genius he is until I saw how he works. Even the harmonica solos he did live and he's cueing the band at the same time. It's all spontaneous and so it's very exciting." Yet she found similarities between Van and Jerry Lee's approaches. "Van's a performer in the studio like my brother is. Those guys aren't just in there recording, they're giving a performance. That's what you end up getting on the tape and that's why it's magic. I just relaxed and decided to have a good time - which is maybe why it worked so well." They cut nine songs together before Linda Gail returned home to Tennessee, not expecting to hear any more about it. When she returned to Britain, Van invited her to tea and told her he planned to release an album of their duets. They went back into the studio and cut seven more songs. "The song selection was easy because we both loved the same stuff," she says. "I love "Jambalaya" and I play that in my set, so we did that. And there were more Hank Williams' songs like "You Win Again" and "Why Don't You Love Me". We did a great version of "A Shot Of Rhythm and Blues". Then we cut "Old Black Joe" by Stephen Foster. In our research we came across a Smiley Lewis album in Van's collection and picked "Real Gone Lover" off that." They also cut one new Van Morrison composition called "No Way Pedro". "Most of the songs are covers but in a way they're not because Van totally reinvents them. We played the songs once before we recorded; that's Van's idea of rehearsal. It's a very real and honest album and I think people are starving for this kind of music. You could say that it's country or rock 'n' roll or blues or r&b, because it's all those things," Linda Gail says. "Van is a genius as a vocalist and I didn't know if I would be able to phrase and harmonise with him because his style is so unique. But I did it. I don't totally understand what happened but when we sang together we seemed to know what each other was going to do. People have said he's hard to work with. But he's not. It's a challenge at times but if you're going to be creative you need that. I was amazed at what a good country singer he is. It was incredible. It's like you're listening to Hank Williams." When she first heard the mixes, Linda Gail admits she was reduced to tears. "It took me back to the first time I heard my brother's records. It's got the same magic those old Sun recordings had. In fact the whole experience was a lot like playing with my brother. These two guys have given their whole lives to creating wonderful music and I put Van right up there with Jerry Lee." Part of the van-the-man.info unofficial website |