Ivan Julian Makes Some Noise

Story by Bill Kopp

When people think of the leading lights of the New York punk/new wave scene of the 70s, Richard Hell and the Voidoids surely come to mind. And deservedly so: their pioneering approach wedded the aggressive sonic attack of punk with the more literate, sophisticated style of peers such as Patti Smith. The group didn’t last long in its original incarnation, but its members went on to spread their influence in other ways. Guitarist Ivan Julian formed The Outsets and gained notoriety (among those in the know) for his production, session and sideman work with artists including The Clash, Shriekback and others. The one thing he didn’t do until recently was release an album of music under his own name. Released in 2011, The Naked Flame is a collection of a dozen compelling, abrasive and yet catchy songs.

On some level, The Naked Flame track “A Young Man’s Money” sounds like a modern rethinking of Mose Allison’s “Young Man Blues.” The track has a blues sensibility while not really sticking to the blues form. Julian admits that he was thinking “exactly that” when he wrote the song. “The Who album Live at Leeds came out with that song, and I’ve always thought, ‘What if I wrote a modern version of that?’ Because it’s a great song…it’s a long jam. So I didn’t want to write something that was current, but that said the same thing; that’s not what I do.” Julian says that he filters those ideas through his own.

Julian recounts an amusing story tangentially related to the song. “I actually went to Leeds Auditorium in England. And…it’s a cafeteria! I was expecting this giant hall, but it’s a room with nine-foot ceilings and a bunch of eating benches. Live at Leeds sounds so big; partially because of the Hiwatt amps they were using, so when I saw this room I said, “Are you kidding me?’”

One hallmark of The Naked Flame is lots of skronky guitar. Every song features interesting guitar textures and sounds. And every song is sonically unique, set apart form all the others. “I love to make albums like that,” Julian says. “I’m a huge fan of tone. I have a recording studio, so I could have made any kind of recorded I wanted. And I wanted this to be a rock’n’roll guitar record. There are a couple of records that come to mind as quintessential records in that sense,” Julian observes, mentioning (among others) The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers. “It keeps coming at you guitar-wise,” he says. “Another one is This Year’s Model by Elvis Costello. “It’s not thought of as a guitar record,” Julian says, “but it’s a record where all of the songs sound slightly different, but they’re akin to each other.” That’s the sort of record he sought to make with The Naked Flame.

Another factor that influenced the record’s ambience was the recording schedule. “My studio was booked all the time,” Julian laughs, “So I always had to record at night, from 9pm to 9am.” Sometimes the quest for the right sound threatened to derail certain songs. “On one song, I couldn’t get the guitar sound I wanted,” Julian says. “So I ‘flew in’ the guitar part from the eight-track demo I had done for the song. And luckily it matched up.”

Julian reveals that there are different versions of The Naked Flame. “The American version of the record has been slightly remastered,” he says. “I kept butting heads with the guy who was doing it. He’d say, ‘Well, there’s static everywhere.’ And I’d say, “Well, I know that!” Julian laughs. “‘I want that!’” Thus yet another (albeit unconscious) connection to Live at Leeds, an album that famously included a note on the LP label reading, “Crackling noises ok, do not correct.” Julian speaks disdainfully of modern digital plug-ins that can make a modern recording sound “as inoffensive as a three year old.” He’s clearly having none of that.

The track “Hardwired” is most conventional, daresay commercial song on the album. It’s almost – to use an arcane expression – radio-friendly. While that might be the result, Julian says it was not his intention. “It just turned out the way it turned out. I have no friggin’ interest in being conventional, or in focusing on airplay; that’s just never been my thing.” He laughs and notes, “but I played with Matthew [Sweet], and he got airplay.” Julian says that he gathered together songs he had written recently and long ago, and asked himself, “Which of these deserves to be on this record?”

Julian muses, “When a lot of guitarists from bands finally make their solo album, there’s not a lot of guitar on the record! They’re trying to do this radio thing, and all of a sudden, they don’t play.” His approach on The Naked Flame was different: “I said, ‘I’m not going to make that mistake; I’m going down to the studio and bash it out.’”

Most of the songs on the album are written solely or in part by Julian. But he includes two covers: Lucinda Williams‘ “Broken Butterflies” and Alejandro Escovedo’s “The Beat.” Julian says that the original of Escovedo’s song is “a seven-inch I’ve had for years. And I’ve said to myself for years, ‘One of these days I’m going to re-record it. Because the world needs to hear it.’ Well,” he chuckles, “not that lots more people will hear it, but more people will hear it than the first time. Because there were only maybe five hundred of those things pressed.”

“As far as the Lucinda Williams song,” Julian says, “that album Essence is one of the best albums ever. And I thought I could get away with it, to be honest,” he laughs heartily. “Of all the songs on there, it’s the least like her doing it that I can possibly imagine.

The track “The Funky Beat in Siamese” has a deeply confusing beat. “Sometimes it starts with a lyric,” Julian explains. “And then I have to find a backdrop to make that lyric fit. That song is a summertime song, and so I wanted a groove for it. I’m very groove-oriented. I was listening to a lot of James Brown when I wrote that.” Julian raves about Brown’s brand of genius, noting that he “created his own genre. It was James Brown music, and it became funk. He took no prisoners; I wanted to write songs like that.” The song’s title might need some explaining, and Julian obliges. “The fire department hookups on New York City streets are called Siamese sprinklers. The song was inspired by seeing one of those turned on during a hot summer day. In New York, when it’s hot, everybody’s sweaty and has this rat-in-a-cage look to them.”

In the studio, Julian approaches his own recordings the same way he does with other clients (Candy Golde, The Fleshtones). “I consider myself an editor,” he explains. “So I try to edit myself. But I will admit that I allow myself to do some things I’d never do with other projects. Like,” he laughs guiltily, “preparing eighteen mixes of ‘A Young Man’s Money.’”

One of the more remarkable tracks on The Naked Flame is “You is Dead.” The cut has a country blues / work song vibe, and it sounds like something of which Alan Lomax might have made a field recording. “That was the idea,” Julian admits. “I was sitting in my living room with my Epiphone Bluesmaster; it’s a kind of Robert Johnson-looking acoustic guitar, and it sounds like a cardboard box. And I had a tube mic that’s kind of scratchy as well. And I just decided to record it there; it’s the one song on the record that wasn’t recorded in a studio at all.”

“I was listening to a lot of Howlin’ Wolf around the time I wrote the song,” Julian admits. “I wanted the courage to write something like that, to have the complete bravery to say something like Howlin’ Wolf would’ve said it.” Julian succeeds in this song, a clear message to his late friend and collaborator, guitarist Bob Quine. Julian sums up the song’s theme: “You is dead, fuckin’ asshole. Why’d you do this?”

Even though it’s certainly not retro, Julian’s track “Sticky” is full of subtle nods to the sixties: the Mamas & the Papas, the Kinks, and Dylan by way of Hendrix. Julian says that the sixties feel was “not really what I was going for, but that’s how it happened. I love those groups, and The Turtles. But those West coast bands,” he marvels, “you can’t live on the East coast and write music like that.” Julian chuckles that his goal here was to write a “socio-political quasi-ballad.”

There’s a jagged, buzzing, live in the studio feel to all of these tracks, especially “Constricted.” Surprisingly, the record wasn’t recorded that way at all; the tracks were pieced together. Spain-based band Capsula recorded the basic tracks on tape at their own studio, then converted the music to digital files to send across the Atlantic to Julian in New York City. “Then I put it back to tape,” Julian explains, “and added everything else myself. Part of the live sound comes from the fact that I try to use tape whenever I can.” The Naked Flame is pleasingly as far as possible from a sterile studio concoction. “One thing I can do,” Julian laughs, “is make noise.”

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