Lou Cowell
It’s like this: I can’t help writing songs. Call it what you will; a blessi… Read Full Bio ↴It’s like this: I can’t help writing songs. Call it what you will; a blessing, an affliction, a gift, an excuse…
The ultimate control freak; my biog is to be a self-penned affair. I could go undercover and refer to myself in the third person I suppose, the editorial anonymity thus providing the freedom from which my penname could lavish ‘the artist’ in praise and linguistically glowing compliments… but, frankly, that’s just not my style, so I’ll just tell it how it happened.
It all started with Eric. Eric the keyboard teacher. A lusty (far beyond my humble12 years) almost-teenage me, waited at the gate in anticipation of this desperately good-looking, funky young muso who was to teach me to play the Casio 2-octave veritable orchestra-in-a-box that my folks had given me for Christmas. Alas. Eric was partially bald, notably wobbly and sweating profusely by the time my disappointed (and more than a little disillusioned) eyes met his over the plastic ivories.
The Monray School of music (with me aged 6, perched precariously upon one of its posh piano stools) had been something of a similar unmitigated disaster some years before. My mother, a classically trained musician herself, had determinedly planted me there every Saturday morning from the day I was (not quite) tall enough to reach the pedals. After more than a year of still not being able to identify all (any) of the ‘C’’s on the keyboard (and not being remotely concerned with looking for them during the half hour ‘practice sessions’ I endured each night after homework and before ‘Neighbours’); piano lessons had been necessarily aborted. Until Eric. Eric was a keyboard teacher after all, not a stuffy piano teacher.
Following the crushing disappointment that was my brief musical liaison with Eric, and a half-arsed rendition of Axel F in the bag, several piano teachers came and went, as did: a fumbled Fur Elise, a very entertaining ‘Entertainer’ (for all the wrong Les Dawson-associated reasons) and numerous Minuets in different keys (than the ones they were supposed to be in).
I should, at this point, mention that my home life during this time (though far from being a crowd-winning, last-5-minutes-of-‘Britain’s Got Talent’- sob-story) was quite, um; unusual. My parents had decided, in their wisdom, to open an animal sanctuary. In the early days of what is now one of the biggest organisations of its kind in the country, Wildlife Aid consisted of hutches of cubs under the kitchen dresser, nests of fledglings in camping stoves on the work surfaces and cardboard boxes of baby hedgehogs in the airing cupboard in my bedroom. It was not unusual for resident barn owl, Fleur, to be present perched on the sitting room door during tea, curiously eyeing the rissoles- as well she might- created by my mother (to this day it remains unconfirmed that this is actually what they were). I grew up the regular nurse Doolittle, bottle feeding badger cubs, where my peers were swapping stickers in pony club annuals. Though quite the envy of my aforementioned gaggle, it never occurred to me that a fox cub curled up asleep in the porch was anything out of the ordinary.
My sister shone when she danced, and turned emotions inside out in the productions put on by her drama club. I was ‘a conscientious student’. I got B’s. I played quite good netball, quite good hockey. As GSCE choices loomed, I opted for arts, music and the like, and I discovered smoking.
Practice room 15, with its rickety old upright, was nicely secluded from prying authoritative eyes and provided me the perfect cover with which to indulge my new favourite thing. Benson & Hedges. Seemed a shame to put my (distinctly questionable) dusty old piano ‘skills’ to waste though; so I noodled. Every now and again I would hear my kindly, aged music teacher pause outside the door. Presumably liking what he heard, he would walk on and just let me get on with the important business of smoking … and writing songs.
So I grew up, with my songs surreptitiously tucked into my pockets, and got on with life. On occasion someone would hear a song of mine and I was always genuinely surprised by their reaction, their encouragement. But I didn’t see my songs as anything other than my diary or clandestine smoking companions.
For want of something better to do, I did a couple of (notably loosely) music-related courses having left school, and generally spent the majority of my days either busying myself with passing the time in the most social way possible or at gigs. Gigs moved me. Standing in a warm blanket of my friends, I could let the music get into me, playing my feelings like a pounding symphony; resonating with very fibres of me with which I had, hitherto, been entirely unacquainted.
Suddenly I had all these songs, and soon found myself riding a wave of chance that saw me sailing through various studios with various producers who seemed intent on empting the contents of my song-full pockets for all to see.
I have been incredibly lucky with the people I have worked with… Massive Attack’s Neil Davidge, Joni Mitchell’s Phil Brown, renown production duo Bacon & Quarmby to name but a few. I’d aired all the rock-angst I’d had to give in my late teens in pubs where, frankly, body armour should’ve been the required dress code, so that by the time I came face to face with these acclaimed maestros; I was distinctly under-dressed. Together, over the period that followed, we recorded my musical offerings in many different ways. I was a girl with a piano and songs, but no real idea of how to convey them; to me they were far more based on feelings than they were on the actual notes that carried them. Some of the stuff we recorded sounded great, and was enough to get me signed, following a spate of London piano/vocal gigs, to Chrysalis Music. But, it just didn’t ring true. The sounds coming from the speakers didn’t envelope me like the comfortable, safe arms of the piano late at night while everyone else was sleeping.
I think it was about this time that I took up boxing. It has to be said, the odds weren’t stacked in my favour with regards to this particular pursuit. I am, after all; a mere 5’4” featherweight with a dodgy left knee. But, my God, am I stubborn. I took to the ring like butter and salt to a baking hot spud: with heat and grit. Though these two loves of my life are slightly at odds with one another- I boxed for 3 weeks on a broken wrist- I can’t see that my (still, even after all this time) ‘unique’ piano playing can be that adversely affected…!
And then I wrote a book. It caught even me a little on the hop to be fair. My love of music, I think, is surpassed only by my love of words. Following my return from popstar life, recording with the Massive Attack crew, with my tail tickling my inner thighs; I had moved back home- back to the funny farm. Music-ing, song writing, gigging and boxing all nestled into the corners around my 9-5, (barely) rent-accommodating, job. Rather than bottle-feeding the patients of Wildlife Aid, I was firmly ensconced in the administrative side of the charity’s work. Where I still am today. The book was a collection of stories- a little James Herriot-esque if I might be so bold- telling from my father’s eyes, some of the weird and wonderful places and situations his work has lead him. So I was a published author and a published songwriter (and a lean, mean fighting machine).
In addition to which, I had a- quite unexpected- hit in France with one of my songs ‘A Good Day’, as performed by Emmanuel Moire- the winner of the French equivalent to our ‘Pop Idol’! I have to say it was most odd sitting in my ‘snug’ little admin office, scrunched up next to a broken-winged seagull intent on jabbing me in the rib every time ‘imposed’ on HIS territory (the cheek), watching some Parisian dish on YouTube croon the words that I had crafted in some past moment of unrequited (I now realise) love, at my friendly old Joanna in the next room. C’est la vie, que sera, Una cerveza, por favour.
Life was good.
But my songs haunted me. So, I put all notions of who I should be, how I should sound, how I should dress and who I should impress firmly into a punch bag and beat the living crap out of it.
My songs and I are candid- sometimes with the purest intention possible at heart, sometimes for the personal amusement of the associated shock value. We’re thoughtful though, often shy and unsure of ourselves, how others might find us. We’re concerned with our weight (though not really sure why- we’ve never been the type for shoes, make-up or hair; preferring that people take us as they find us- ‘those who matter don’t mind, those who mind don’t matter’ kind of thinking). We’ve got our issues and our angers, our laughters and our most precious memories. We’re passionate, unstoppably so, when something touches us, when something’s really important to us. We’re the best of friends. We’re loyal. We’ve loved and we’ve lost. We’ve fought; we’ve defeated and we’ve been defeated. We’re just trying to be ourselves as best we can. Just like everybody else.
My brief to producer Jay was ‘I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks of this record; I want to love it with all my heart.’
And I do.
The ultimate control freak; my biog is to be a self-penned affair. I could go undercover and refer to myself in the third person I suppose, the editorial anonymity thus providing the freedom from which my penname could lavish ‘the artist’ in praise and linguistically glowing compliments… but, frankly, that’s just not my style, so I’ll just tell it how it happened.
It all started with Eric. Eric the keyboard teacher. A lusty (far beyond my humble12 years) almost-teenage me, waited at the gate in anticipation of this desperately good-looking, funky young muso who was to teach me to play the Casio 2-octave veritable orchestra-in-a-box that my folks had given me for Christmas. Alas. Eric was partially bald, notably wobbly and sweating profusely by the time my disappointed (and more than a little disillusioned) eyes met his over the plastic ivories.
The Monray School of music (with me aged 6, perched precariously upon one of its posh piano stools) had been something of a similar unmitigated disaster some years before. My mother, a classically trained musician herself, had determinedly planted me there every Saturday morning from the day I was (not quite) tall enough to reach the pedals. After more than a year of still not being able to identify all (any) of the ‘C’’s on the keyboard (and not being remotely concerned with looking for them during the half hour ‘practice sessions’ I endured each night after homework and before ‘Neighbours’); piano lessons had been necessarily aborted. Until Eric. Eric was a keyboard teacher after all, not a stuffy piano teacher.
Following the crushing disappointment that was my brief musical liaison with Eric, and a half-arsed rendition of Axel F in the bag, several piano teachers came and went, as did: a fumbled Fur Elise, a very entertaining ‘Entertainer’ (for all the wrong Les Dawson-associated reasons) and numerous Minuets in different keys (than the ones they were supposed to be in).
I should, at this point, mention that my home life during this time (though far from being a crowd-winning, last-5-minutes-of-‘Britain’s Got Talent’- sob-story) was quite, um; unusual. My parents had decided, in their wisdom, to open an animal sanctuary. In the early days of what is now one of the biggest organisations of its kind in the country, Wildlife Aid consisted of hutches of cubs under the kitchen dresser, nests of fledglings in camping stoves on the work surfaces and cardboard boxes of baby hedgehogs in the airing cupboard in my bedroom. It was not unusual for resident barn owl, Fleur, to be present perched on the sitting room door during tea, curiously eyeing the rissoles- as well she might- created by my mother (to this day it remains unconfirmed that this is actually what they were). I grew up the regular nurse Doolittle, bottle feeding badger cubs, where my peers were swapping stickers in pony club annuals. Though quite the envy of my aforementioned gaggle, it never occurred to me that a fox cub curled up asleep in the porch was anything out of the ordinary.
My sister shone when she danced, and turned emotions inside out in the productions put on by her drama club. I was ‘a conscientious student’. I got B’s. I played quite good netball, quite good hockey. As GSCE choices loomed, I opted for arts, music and the like, and I discovered smoking.
Practice room 15, with its rickety old upright, was nicely secluded from prying authoritative eyes and provided me the perfect cover with which to indulge my new favourite thing. Benson & Hedges. Seemed a shame to put my (distinctly questionable) dusty old piano ‘skills’ to waste though; so I noodled. Every now and again I would hear my kindly, aged music teacher pause outside the door. Presumably liking what he heard, he would walk on and just let me get on with the important business of smoking … and writing songs.
So I grew up, with my songs surreptitiously tucked into my pockets, and got on with life. On occasion someone would hear a song of mine and I was always genuinely surprised by their reaction, their encouragement. But I didn’t see my songs as anything other than my diary or clandestine smoking companions.
For want of something better to do, I did a couple of (notably loosely) music-related courses having left school, and generally spent the majority of my days either busying myself with passing the time in the most social way possible or at gigs. Gigs moved me. Standing in a warm blanket of my friends, I could let the music get into me, playing my feelings like a pounding symphony; resonating with very fibres of me with which I had, hitherto, been entirely unacquainted.
Suddenly I had all these songs, and soon found myself riding a wave of chance that saw me sailing through various studios with various producers who seemed intent on empting the contents of my song-full pockets for all to see.
I have been incredibly lucky with the people I have worked with… Massive Attack’s Neil Davidge, Joni Mitchell’s Phil Brown, renown production duo Bacon & Quarmby to name but a few. I’d aired all the rock-angst I’d had to give in my late teens in pubs where, frankly, body armour should’ve been the required dress code, so that by the time I came face to face with these acclaimed maestros; I was distinctly under-dressed. Together, over the period that followed, we recorded my musical offerings in many different ways. I was a girl with a piano and songs, but no real idea of how to convey them; to me they were far more based on feelings than they were on the actual notes that carried them. Some of the stuff we recorded sounded great, and was enough to get me signed, following a spate of London piano/vocal gigs, to Chrysalis Music. But, it just didn’t ring true. The sounds coming from the speakers didn’t envelope me like the comfortable, safe arms of the piano late at night while everyone else was sleeping.
I think it was about this time that I took up boxing. It has to be said, the odds weren’t stacked in my favour with regards to this particular pursuit. I am, after all; a mere 5’4” featherweight with a dodgy left knee. But, my God, am I stubborn. I took to the ring like butter and salt to a baking hot spud: with heat and grit. Though these two loves of my life are slightly at odds with one another- I boxed for 3 weeks on a broken wrist- I can’t see that my (still, even after all this time) ‘unique’ piano playing can be that adversely affected…!
And then I wrote a book. It caught even me a little on the hop to be fair. My love of music, I think, is surpassed only by my love of words. Following my return from popstar life, recording with the Massive Attack crew, with my tail tickling my inner thighs; I had moved back home- back to the funny farm. Music-ing, song writing, gigging and boxing all nestled into the corners around my 9-5, (barely) rent-accommodating, job. Rather than bottle-feeding the patients of Wildlife Aid, I was firmly ensconced in the administrative side of the charity’s work. Where I still am today. The book was a collection of stories- a little James Herriot-esque if I might be so bold- telling from my father’s eyes, some of the weird and wonderful places and situations his work has lead him. So I was a published author and a published songwriter (and a lean, mean fighting machine).
In addition to which, I had a- quite unexpected- hit in France with one of my songs ‘A Good Day’, as performed by Emmanuel Moire- the winner of the French equivalent to our ‘Pop Idol’! I have to say it was most odd sitting in my ‘snug’ little admin office, scrunched up next to a broken-winged seagull intent on jabbing me in the rib every time ‘imposed’ on HIS territory (the cheek), watching some Parisian dish on YouTube croon the words that I had crafted in some past moment of unrequited (I now realise) love, at my friendly old Joanna in the next room. C’est la vie, que sera, Una cerveza, por favour.
Life was good.
But my songs haunted me. So, I put all notions of who I should be, how I should sound, how I should dress and who I should impress firmly into a punch bag and beat the living crap out of it.
My songs and I are candid- sometimes with the purest intention possible at heart, sometimes for the personal amusement of the associated shock value. We’re thoughtful though, often shy and unsure of ourselves, how others might find us. We’re concerned with our weight (though not really sure why- we’ve never been the type for shoes, make-up or hair; preferring that people take us as they find us- ‘those who matter don’t mind, those who mind don’t matter’ kind of thinking). We’ve got our issues and our angers, our laughters and our most precious memories. We’re passionate, unstoppably so, when something touches us, when something’s really important to us. We’re the best of friends. We’re loyal. We’ve loved and we’ve lost. We’ve fought; we’ve defeated and we’ve been defeated. We’re just trying to be ourselves as best we can. Just like everybody else.
My brief to producer Jay was ‘I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks of this record; I want to love it with all my heart.’
And I do.
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Lou Cowell Lyrics
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