The Art of Longevity Season 14, Episode 1: Gilbert O'Sullivan

60 years as a pro also makes O’Sullivan the most longevous guest so far on the Art of Longevity podcast. Nile Rogers isn’t too far behind (only a mere decade), and then comes Gary Numan (1978). Unless I can persuade Macca or Mick Jagger to come on (don’t bet against it) no guest is likely to go further back in the musical time machine. And yet Gilbert is churning out new music at the same rate as someone in their first decade, almost. The new album On The Record is a brand new set of original songs that comes off the back of two other recent L.P.s, 2022’s Driven and 2018’s self-titled album (often referred to by O’Sullivan as “the Ethan Johns record” after its erstwhile producer*).  Not only that, but these records are as good as anything in his now extensive body of work.  So how come O’Sullivan is on a roll when he might easily have downed tools or just played live “jukebox” shows like Bill Joel does (or indeed his contemporary British counterparts Leo Sayer and David Essex - both of which come up in this conversation as currently touring their old songs)?  What has longevity brought to O’Sullivan? "Mostly it's the songwriting. Everything revolves around the songs. I don’t know what else I would be doing. I’ve been writing songs since I was 15 years old and it’s almost second nature to me now. I love the craft - that’s what provides me with the feeling of being good in the present and looking forward to the future. I don’t dwell on the past although I’m proud of what happened. But I’m in a good place and that’s all down to the songs”.  He’s definitely made a few belters on this new record. Opening track “It’s Me” bounces along like Steely Dan, but that voice and lyrics can only be Gilbert O’Sullivan. After 60 years nobody sounds like him. He follows it with “I Suppose”, a song that comes off like one of his 70s singles. The album’s lead single is the wistful ballad “Growing Old Disgracefully” which he wrote in a hurry, convinced that one of his peers would come up with the same title and get it out before he had the chance. It also comes across well as a t-shirt slogan on the tour (“we sold 52 of them at the first show” he tells me, impressively on top of his merch operation).  Any album that’s got three good songs at the start is already doing well, but a little deeper in we get the more introspective “I Must Be Going” - a great song and one of those album centrepiece tracks with real depth - including superb guitar work by Gilbert’s right hand man of the past few years, Bill Shanley. Later on the record, “Wait” sounds like another mid-70s hit single, while the closer “See Us Gone” employs a male voice choir and harks back to his “comeback” album of 1994 (and a big favourite of my own) Every Song Has Its Play. It’s been good fun revisiting Gilbert’s catalogue in preparation for the conversation and reading some old reviews. This one from Record Collector on (2nd album Back to Front 1972) really caught my eye: “Back To Front is rammed with diffident, bashful, playful greatness, from the assonant convolution and linguistic legerdemain of The Golden Rule to the could-the- world-ever-have-been-like-this innocence of Clair – a song that, as O’Sullivan ponders in the sleevenotes, probably couldn’t be written in a century as cynical and suspicious as this one”. If we thought the last century was cynical and suspicious in 1972 then consider what we have now, but if you replace the song titles, that review could well apply word-for-wordy-word, to On The Record.  The Art of Longevity Season 14 is powered by Meze Audio, because good things take time. Visit https://mezeaudio.com/ Support the show Get more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/