Some of you may know I’m in the midst of a major Nick Lowe obsession just now, and have been eagerly consuming everything related.
Just stumbled across this duet between his Rockpile bandmate Dave Edmunds and Nick’s then wife Carlene Carter.
I love this song, though it’s lyrics may raise an eyebrow these days! But genuine warmth comes across between the two of them and I don’t mean that in a pervy way. It follows on from the wonderful Born Fighters doc from the late 70s when Edmunds tried to talk his mate into taking it easy.
But, back to the point – Carlene – wow.
Great song. I love Carlene. I see her at the new Opryland in Nashville and she was on fire, running into the audience and sitting on the knee of the bloke next to me, singing to him then giving him a big smacker. So near!
I used to sing that duet in a country band in Paris, great song.
For me, it has a similar, innocent quality to The Beach Boys’ ‘Wouldn’t it be Nice’.
Here’s another performance with Carlene wearing Nick’s famous Riddler jacket…
https://youtu.be/uytQbhzCsOs
I never need an excuse to watch this. She has the best eyes* I’ve ever seen in a video. Spot the all star backing band.
* Yes actually her eyes!
100%. I have a feeling the director of the clip with her and Dave Edmunds had the same idea as he seemed to focus on her every time she said ‘if your lovin’ is good’. Might just be a coincidence of course…
Love that none-more-country line – ‘right between the eyes with a two by four’ 🙂
Two thoughts:
1) She looks exactly like Nick Lowe from that era, with the same “oh, shucks” expression on her face.
2) No wonder the Explorer-shaped acoustic never took off. That thing would have needed a case the size of a piano.
Looks wise, there are some of us who think Nick was punching well above his weight when it came to Carlene.
No.
Not at all.
She has Gram Parsons’ eyes
And Carter Family teeth. 😉
It’s great that she’s back making music after those rather dodgy ‘wilderness years’. Those albums she made while associated with the various parts of Rockpile still sound great and I saw her quite a few times when she was living in London.
I’ve only seen her a couple of times since the comeback and it was (understandably) a lot tamer affair than they used to be.
I recommend a search for the live video of a gig she did at the old Marquee in Wardour Street which was typical of the size of venues she played.
Her ”Little love letters” album is also a cracker, and the couple that followed it.
Interesting bio, a married mother at 15, divorce, another marriage, another baby by 20, suddenly in London being backed, first, by the Rumour, then by Rockpile, marrying the dapper dude on the bass along the way. I wonder if that had anything to do with being daughter of June and grand daughter of Mother Maybelle, when her ma upped and married that rough house Johnny Cash, she being roped into the family band, along with step-sibling Rosanne, both on pre-teen backing vocals.
One of the stories she used to tell just at gigs after she’d split with Nick Lowe was that ‘Rosie’ took her aside and explained that she didn’t need to marry every man she F***ed!
….and if you factor in the largely undocumented (apart from maybe ‘Stronger’) part of her life (when she was living in New Mexico with Howie Epstein) when she appeared to be in somewhat of a downward spiral and got out not long at all before Epstein pushed it a bit too far, it becomes even more intriguing.
She talked about that period in the Word – he was a junkie and her comment was “when you live with the barber sooner or later you’re going to get a haircut”. Glad she got out in one piece. Great shame he didn’t.
I bought this back in the day. Nice little ditty.
Her photo on Wikipedia is either someone else or she hasn’t aged well.