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| Photos by Hristo Shindov |
For this, my third interview-length conversation with Trevor in eleven years, I wanted to focus the discussion on his new release as I had listened to it numerous times prior to our meeting (without the context of lyrics and liner notes) and had plenty of questions to ask about the songs. Rio is a definite event in Trevor’s career, having not released a solo vocal album for over 30 years, but there are also some tangential threads to be found. I always try to provide good conversational points for the Maestro and I can only hope he shares my opinion.
In part one, we discuss the newest member of the Rabin family, his son Ryan’s musical journey, Trevor’s relationship with his past and his heritage through the lens of South Africa, youthful hijinks, and a few of the wonderful and meaningful songs from Rio.
As always, many thanks to Trevor for being so generous with this time and an interesting and engaging conversationalist; with additional thanks to Henry Potts and Cee for technical support, and also the good people at Chipster PR & Consulting.
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What I wanted to start with is the namesake of this album, who is going to be two at the end of the month, talk about time flying! And she’s absolutely adorable. So since you’ve created a piece of art which is her namesake - you know what kind of relationship you’re going to have with her, you know, as she grows up. Have you thought about what kind of relationship you want for her to have with your art, given that you’ve now created a piece of art that is named for her?
Oh wow, that’s a good question. To be quite honest I haven’t thought about it to that degree but obviously I hope she - when she gets married, you know - when she’s older she’ll look upon it and say “That was my grandfather, he made that for me!” So beyond that I haven’t really thought about it.
I know family is very important to you - and to your entire family - that you all have really deep enduring bonds. And so, you know, I’m just thinking about the continuum, from Ryan to Rio, and how I know that he is going to make sure that she realizes how important it is. That she comes from an artistic family, she comes from a family that is very close and has a lot of traditions that are meant to endure, and I feel like this is another piece of that. Of course it completely makes sense why you would name it for her, but also in the bigger picture it makes sense to me. And I just thought it was such a wonderful gesture.
When I first thought about it, I thought, well I should speak to Ryan and Kyly about this and I said, “You know I think I’m gonna call the album Rio, what do you feel about it?” And they were great with it, they said, “Oh fantastic!” And I have to say, she doesn’t stop singing, she sings constantly. And every time she sings I’m listening for it, as I did with Ryan, to see whether I could judge how musical. But you know at two years old you could deviate from a melody just because you don’t have the capacity at that point to kind of intellectualize what it is or hear really what it is. But I’ve been doing exactly the same thing I did with Ryan. And I’m not sure what the conclusion is yet.
Well I imagine in a few years that she’ll be sort of led along the path of musical inclination to see how she feels about it; you had said in previous interviews that you and Shelley had never forced Ryan to take music lessons or to do anything like that, but just as a way of general enrichment and then of course he grew into it as something that he loves because I think he’s growing up inside of it. It’s like oxygen, you’re living inside of this atmosphere.
Absolutely; I very consciously didn’t want to try and push Ryan into anything with regard to anything musical. But other than doing what I did when I was five years old, although he started a little later than five - late bloomer, I think he was six-and-a-half - piano lessons, and I decided I didn’t want to do it myself, because I think an outside source might be a more healthy thing. And I got a teacher, I can’t even remember who it was, but I used to sit in the living room while he had his lesson once a week and that was really the full extent of influencing him to become a musician. And then halfway through these lessons, he was at school, and now he’s 12 years old, and he says, “Oh Dad, do you wanna come hear our band?” I said, “What band?” And he had a band, they were playing the lounge of the guitarist place and I said, “Okay, do you need a keyboard, or -?” And he said, “No, I’m a drummer!” and I said, “You’re a drummer?” and it’s not like I wasn’t involved in him every second of the day kinda thing but this was just something he took upon himself and he went in, someone had a drum kit and it felt good and he enjoyed it. Next thing, I bought him a drumkit and he became a drummer and when he went to USC he took a music course - and this was his idea by the way - he was already in a band and they were touring, and touring all over the country and he said, “I think I’m going to leave the band and go to college,” and he went to USC. And, you know, did a music degree, and the initiative was all his, I must say. And GROUPLOVE was all his although they lived here for two years while they did the album and they did it in the second studio we had here, well, a room that was a studio.
Right, your original studio.
Well no, not even my original studio, it was a room that first was a gym, and then a storage place, and we just put all the equipment in there, set up a recording situation and he recorded them there.
Oh okay - I’d been thinking it was your original studio, you know, the one in the garage.
Yeah no - and that’s gone now, it’s on the same property but it’s a very different place now. The garage has cars in it, thankfully.
Going forward, I really wanted to talk about “Thandi” and “Egoli” because I think those songs are very important, not only within the context of the album but within the context of your history. And so “Thandi” - is it about poaching?
100% yes.
Ah okay - see, because I’ve been listening without the context of lyrics and liner notes, so I’ve been very carefully trying to work it out. And loving some of these lines, for example, the lines that open the song: Buried in shame/dust in my eyes/looking for ways to be there.
Right.
And to me that speaks of someone who is, you know, feeling horror and remorse at a situation where there isn’t really anything that you can do, or very little.
Isn’t that the hardest thing, it’s like watching someone being beaten or something and there’s nothing you can do to help because you’re shackled somewhere. It is a helpless kind of feeling. This is - the only thing I can do is just talk about it. It’s horrific, and it’s been happening for decades obviously, probably centuries. What was I watching the other day - it was about Ferdinand, the reason for the First World War. He was such a hunter, I think it was something like 200,000 kills or something. It’s like, how do you go to sleep at night? If I stand on an ant I’m like, “Ah, I didn’t mean that,” but it’s not as bad as going out and killing this beautiful lion or elephant and holding it up like it’s a trophy. I just don’t understand it.
I feel like a lot of Western culture is predicated on what I call “blood sacrifice.”
Yeah.
Not only war, and conflict, but also, yeah, hunting. And that people believe they’re enacting the primal impulses of our species but I think we’ve evolved far away from that. I really feel the deep sadness of the song you’ve been able to express. Now Thandi, it’s a name endemic to South Africa, but what is it meant to be the personification of in terms of the song?
Actually, if you look up Thandi the Rhino you’ll find a whole story about this particular rhino, but really that’s just the name and there’s a story about that but this is essentially purely about the poaching. And the poachers, sometimes the rangers can get to them, but you know it’s a losing battle and the ivory just keeps moving, and these horrific murders I think they are.
Yeah, and strictly for greed. It’s horrible.
100% greed. And happily my piano has plastic keys, which is another thing that’s also dangerous to the earth but at least it’s not ivory.
Right. So, at the beginning of the song there is a collage of sounds and things like that. Is one of those sounds Rio, her voice?
No, that’s an actual rhino.
Okay, because I know there’s another animal growl as well.
Yes, all of those are the sounds of a rhino. You know, different rhinos.
Oh I see, and so you did some pitch-shifting on them for texture?
Not so much pitch-shifting but reverb and placements are changed for reasons of Art.
I think it does create this atmosphere that’s really interesting. I like the blending of the rock energy of the verses and then the more mbube style of the choruses and how it shifts really well. It gives me a “Me and My Boy” vibe in terms of the energy, is that Ryan on drums?
That’s Lou Molino.
Because the energy of it, in terms of the drum track, was making me think of Ryan. Because we know Ryan is a very high-energy player.
Right. Actually, Lou played great on this album.
Oh yeah, absolutely! I particularly love his playing on “Big Mistakes.” The sounds that you got from it, all of that cracking on the snares and things like that. To me, it’s like an absolute banger, feel-good hit of the summer kind of thing. It even kind of makes me think of the Captain Cuts aesthetic, I know that you weren’t going for that necessarily, you’re working in an idiom that you’re thoroughly familiar with.
Right.
You’re a master of melodic rock. But at the same time, you know, you’ve heard all their songs. So you know that they’ve always got such a great hook and really big energy, like EDM or Emo or a combination of the two, and that their songs just reach out and grab you. And that’s what it made me think of.
Initially the idea of the song is I wanted to get this particular guitar sound which is when the song first comes in. And once I had that sound, that allowed me to carry on, if you like. And then Lou’s idea of how the drums were gonna sound, what they were gonna do, came in it just kind of flowed from there. But really the essence of the song is just remembering early years and the mistakes we all make as teenagers and the curiosity that leads us to some unfortunate places.
Because I was going to ask: are you willing to disclose one of these big mistakes?
No.
No.
(mutual laughter)
It really is just a question of: I cannot believe I went through that and lived to tell the story. You know, it could just be the irresponsibility of having a fast car during Rabbitt, for example, and speeding with a dear friend of mine who just passed away who was the engineer on the Rabbitt albums. Here’s something specific: we raced one Sunday and we were at least cognizant enough to consider that there’s no one on the road and do it on that day. But you know anything could have happened besides writing ourselves off, but yeah things like that came to mind and just came through in the lyrics.
Since you just said that, I was thinking of that infamous story of how the three of you had won a car in a battle of the bands thing -
Oh my goodness!
- and you were driving it without a license to your gigs.
Oh, you know, we used to - how can I put this - one member would say “So-and-so’s coming to pick the car up and we’re going out,” and my parents would say, “Oh okay.” And I’d wait until they were busy on something and I’d just drive. And you know I could barely see above the steering wheel, and we all used to do that, we all drove that car into the ground. ‘Cause we couldn’t really drive.
That’s what it was for, right?!
That’s absolutely what it was for, and it was before Rabbitt. The start of Rabbitt was really Ronnie Robot, Neil Cloud, and myself and we functioned under the name Conglomeration for years and years and years and then I started working with Patric van Blerk who became the guardian, if you like, of the band.
Right.
And that’s when it evolved into that. But yes, Sound 69 it was called. And we won a car and we were so excited. I think all the parents thought: “What are they excited about? We’re gonna have to take them in this car, what do we even need it for?” and it became a pivotal thing. Eventually we were driving ourselves to gigs in the car, and you know it stopped even being a concern that we were driving without a license.
Since we’re in the South African years, I wanted to talk about “Egoli” a bit and also wanted to note that other people were wondering what the title meant, well, I knew thanks to Margaret Singana. I think on one of the tracks on Tribal Fence she makes a reference to it, she says, “Egoli: City of Gold” and so for years now I’ve known what that meant. And so as soon as I saw the title I thought “Oh this is great!” because I love it when you work in that idiom. I was going to state that to me the song is expressing your specific experience of the South African diaspora, for your specific generation, that all of you have this deep ambivalence regarding your homeland: the place that you were born, the place of your family, the place of your youth and whatever good memories that you do have. But also of course a place of incredible terror and corruption and cruelty. And so therefore having to deal with that emotional baggage all of your life. I feel like you’re expressing that in the refrain, that you’re asking for things to heal yourself and to heal the nation -
Take me up and feel my soul
erase the pain and make me whole.
Take my hand and show the way
I’ll be home on Judgement Day.
- meaning that you’re trying to seek a specific emotional unity that I think is particularly characteristic of the South African diaspora.
That's an amazing recognition of what it's all about because, you know, in the song I was hoping to put across a sound musically that is happy. I did a show, the Mandela concert, in South Africa and met with him and had lunch with him. Which was one of the most incredible times, because he was an absolute hero of mine. I’d known about Mandela all my life, my uncle was his lawyer for decades.
Right.
So, meeting him was just so exciting. In ‘94 this possibility like a rainbow opened up, that this country’s gonna be healed and become just a fantastic place, there wasn’t gonna be bloodshed. And that happened. But once Mandela went, that’s what the song is about. It’s like a kleptocracy, particularly Johannesburg which is obviously the biggest economical hub, if you like, in South Africa. The corruption is just way beyond belief. There’s so many issues. And what keeps this kleptocracy sustained is there’s just so much wealth in the country and the government just seems to keep on doing this. I think it might be moving towards a different solution because the ANC are just not as strong as they used to be. I don’t think they’re so weak that they would lose an election but certainly there would be coalitions formed now and the hope and desire is that it’s just not so corrupt and insular.
And so therefore it was very moving to me to listen to this and come away with a fuller understanding of what you’re trying to express. I think that any great nation has an ambivalent populace, because often you’re dealing with a land that you love, a place that raised you, nurtured you. but at the same time also a nation that is capable of terrible things. And as you grow into an adult you have to start recognizing that.
Absolutely.
And some people choose never to do that, but we won’t go down that road. So “Paradise” is a very interesting song to me, this riff - and I know you’re probably gonna say “You’re crazy!” - this riff sounds like something that Mutt Lange would have written for Shania back in the day.
You know, that’s quite amazing, someone else had mentioned that. And I hadn’t even thought about it until then. One of the things about Mutt that I don’t think people knew when he started doing that first great Shania album is that Mutt was a massive Country fan all his life. We used to do sessions together when I was a session musician, a lot of it was Country stuff. There’s a deep understanding, I think, in South Africa with Country, but Mutt became an absolute expert at it. I like what he did with Shania.
Yeah absolutely. Because of the uses of “Rule Britannia” and “By Hibernia” in the lyrics, is this a song about the UK?
Yes, in the chorus, it’s about once again a happy-sounding song but with a pretty dire prediction that Paradise is leaving.
Right.
You know, I love England, I loved living there. But obviously the power of the Empire was so substantial in the early years. I don’t know if you watch The Proms, where they play the most beautiful Elgar music. I’ve always loved Elgar, so I don’t know if that makes any sense.
Like the heritage of what England represents.
Yes exactly.
And I feel very vindicated to have figured that out.
That’s quite amazing, I can’t believe you don’t have the lyrics and you’ve been hearing all these things, that’s great.
I’m a dedicated close listener!
