HT Interview: Living Colour’s Corey Glover

Schultz: Did your involvement with Jesus Christ Superstar delay any of the work on the album?

Glover: Not really. Only in the very beginning, when I had rehearsals. That was when Doug Pinnick (King’s X) came out and did a few shows in Europe. There was a slight delay but we kept on playing. When I wasn’t doing Superstar, I was out with Living Colour. For the most part when there was down time with the show, I would be with Living Colour.

Schultz: How long did it take to record the entire album?

Glover: It took forever. Whenever we came off the road, we would stop and record a few songs before packing up and heading back out. It took a long time to get all this music together because we had all these bits and pieces and fits and starts. We would go to our friend Andre Betts’ house out in Jersey and record some stuff to see what it sounded like and see what it felt like. We saw what worked and what didn’t and then we would go on the road and come up with some more grooves that Doug (Wimbish) and the sound people held on to. When we got to Sono, we unfurled all that stuff and said “Let’s do something with this. Let’s do something with that.” and eventually “Let’s do something with everything.” It took, really, I would say, about three years. We always knew we would have another release but as the years went by we finally got more focused.

Schultz: About three years ago, I interviewed Vernon Reid for Earvolution. At that time, he said that one of the things that would determine Living Colour’s future was whether the band had anything left to say. With The Chair In The Doorway, what is it that the band had on its mind?

Glover: The album title came first. We came up with this name – The Chair In The Doorway. What the hell does that mean? And then we made the record and said, “Oh, that’s what that means.”

Schultz: What did it turn out to mean?

Glover: For me, it was about living ten steps to the left of what’s supposed to happen and what’s considered reality. Nobody actually lives in that place. Nobody lives on the median line. Absolutely no one that you know of lives straight down the center, 9 to 5, goes through life and does his thing. Everyone has these deviations in their life on either side of the line. It’s sometimes ridiculous and sometimes profound but no one really walks a straight line . . . ever.

Schultz: Is the chair in the doorway supposed to be on that median line?

Glover: I think the chair in the doorway is the fact that you don’t live on that line, you never lived on the median, no one’s ever lived on the median. If you did, you would really have nothing to say. There’s no one that lives The Cosby Show/Leave It To Beaver television sitcom lifestyle. No one lives the life that most politicians and preachers talk about. Everybody’s got something behind them or in front of them or to the left or right of them that they sort of sway towards.

Schultz: There’s always a sociological undercurrent running through Living Colour’s albums. Does that continue with The Chair In The Doorway?

Glover: I think it does. There’s a line on the first song, “I tossed my keys in the river/so now I can’t go home again.” In reality, that’s not true but as a metaphor it says something. On another song we have something about pigs at the trough. That’s about indulgences and the psychological places that you put yourself in that may seem outrageous to you in hindsight but, at the time, it’s real and it has to happen. Nothing is as important or profound as what people are thinking while they’re out on the streets, walking to work, going to the bodega or going wherever it is they’re going. It’s just not something you can throw away. To me, that’s sociological and political.

Schultz: From a thematic standpoint, it also sounds more insular than anything Living Colour’s done before.

Glover: The politics of living is a very interesting thing. You could watch the news and hear the talking heads on TV jabber on about these things. For example, today, I had to take my kids to the pediatrician because they’re starting school. Now the health care debate washes over you after a certain point: until you have to take your kids to the doctor and you’re paying ridiculous amounts of money just for a routine examination. The cost of living; it sounds like words until you have to go to the store. The costs of being in this place at this particular time are arbitrary in certain ways.

[Photo by Denaflows]

Schultz: Do the problems you encounter today differ from those of twenty years ago, before Living Colour became a well known band? Does that change the equation somewhat?

Glover: It never changed for me. I was always Corey. I never treated this . . . well hold on, that would be a lie. There was a time when I did indulge and did utilize this “thing” – “Hey! Do you know who I am?” But for the most part, I tried not too. There’s a story I like to tell about when we came off the Stones tour. I walked in the door, full from the high of being part of this successful thing, and my mother hands me a bucket and a paint brush and tells me to go paint the stoop. The fact that what I was doing was successful didn’t stop me from being the person I was before I became successful and I try to keep that as much as possible. I loved when Mick Jagger would call places just to hear him say he was Mick Jagger. It would just roll off his tongue – well that’s my name, that’s what people call me and that’s what I go by. That’s normal for him.

Schultz: Mick Jagger though probably can’t interact with anybody without the fact that he’s Mick Jagger playing a pretty significant role.

Glover: I would imagine so. I’m sure to his kids it doesn’t matter. I’m sure to his parents and friends it doesn’t matter. I think those are the more important aspects of anyone’s life. I would imagine those are the people who don’t trip over the fact that he’s who he is.

Schultz: Living Colour is about to embark on its first tour in the United States in quite some time.

Glover: It’s been three or four years since we played the States. In the interim, everyone’s been out on the road doing something. With me it was Superstar and I saw a completely different world: the theater world. It’s the same setup as to going on the road with a band except the audiences you’re dealing with are not the same. They run the gamut from little kids to old ladies that know the show inside and out. With Living Colour, things are a little more rough and tumble. The similarities were there though: you got on a bus, you went to the next town, you set up and did a show and then went on to another town.

Schultz: Does that make its way, in some form or fashion, onto The Chair In The Doorway?

Glover: I think so. There was a long period of time where I was touring with the band and going out on the show, which meant that I was singing constantly. So my apparatus was always working. Doing [Superstar] was really interesting. I saw the country for 2½ years in a way that I hadn’t seen it in a very long time while living in a world that I’ve never lived in. I took those experiences and put them into songs. Going into the Gulf Coast a year or so after Katrina, where people still wanted entertainment but the devastation was still there and permeated what’s going on there. It’s incredible to me. We’re coming up on the fourth anniversary and it’s still not right. There are empty vacant lots where the water brushed these houses away as well as houses that are still boarded up because they burned from the inside out and there’s nothing but the shell of a house.

Schultz: That sentiment sounds like one that has always fueled Living Colour.

Glover: Yes and that’s what’s in this record. My life and the things that I try to put myself into serve as content.

Schultz: Do you think a song like “Which Way To America?” still has resonance?

Glover: Absolutely. Again, it’s about what’s normal. I look at the TV and they say that this is what America is. When I go there, when I’m there in what’s called the Real America, it’s different.

Schultz: Living Colour’s music has always been, to some extent, about community and pushing for societal change. Not to make this a political discussion, but what do you think Obama’s election has done to the belief that things can be changed?

Glover: We were in Europe during the election and coming back home afterwards was a joyful time. The reality set in once everything started happening. I think that people are scared by what’s happening with the so-called economy and what’s going on in certain sectors of America and the world. Everything’s different now but does that mean its any better. Again, those are the kind of things we talk about on the new album.

Schultz: Would this album have happened if Obama had not been elected?

Glover: I think it definitely would have. It might have had a very different tone though. The same problems exist regardless of whether Obama is in the White House or whether its John McCain, George Bush, Ronald Reagan. I think the country as a whole was ready for something other than the status quo. Having radical ideas and implementing radical ideas are two different things. Electing one man is only half the battle. There’s this idea of “I want my America back.” I mean what America was taken from you in the first place. I think it relates to the steps people will take to really change their lives. Either it happens suddenly and it’s foisted upon you or you have to really get yourself together for something to change.

[Photo by Denaflows]

Schultz: When you go back out on the road, do you think you will be reintroducing everyone to Living Colour?

Glover: We were just talking about that. For many people, particularly in the States, the only indication of who and what we are is based on what they’ve seen on YouTube, which is basically our old videos. It’s going to be difficult to push past the idea that I’m not in a green wetsuit; I don’t have the braids and the dreadlocks, neither does Vernon. Yet, the visual aspect of it still has to be just as compelling. Perception vs. reality is going to be the difficult space that Living Colour’s going to have to occupy. We have a tough hill to climb in getting people’s perception of what we are in line with the reality of what we are.

Schultz: Since you brought it up, can you still fit into the spandex?

Glover: It’s rubber. I guess it will stretch. (Laughs). I put that in mothballs a long time ago.

Schultz: If everybody’s perception is going to be this moment frozen in time from the late Eighties, what is Living Colour’s reality in 2009?

Glover: That the music is just as compelling now as it was then. We might have changed and we might look different than we did twenty some-odd years ago but the music is just as compelling, if not more so. The music is just as important in the context of what’s going on with the world as it was twenty years ago.

Schultz: Despite the fact that’s people’s perception may be tinged by a younger version of the band, it can’t hurt that people will remember the name Living Colour.

Glover: Fortunately . . . or unfortunately . . . Cult Of Personality seems to have permeated and lasted throughout the past twenty years. You can hear it on a video game or even in the political arena. I find it fascinating that people decide to use the song for good or for ill, which is what the song was about in the first place, to say that Ronald Reagan was a cult of personality or that Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are a cult of personality. When I hear that I think, “OK, you know that doesn’t quite mean what you think it means.” We’re fortunate in that that particular song sort of burrowed into people’s consciousness. A song like Glamour Boys, you may not have heard it in a long time but when you hear it you’ll go “oh yeah. I remember that song.” We’re fortunate that people’s memory of the band allows us to go out and play for folks.

Schultz: When you discussed the album with Rolling Stone, you said that The Chair In The Doorway can’t be compared to any of your prior albums . . .

Glover: It can’t. Friends of mine who have heard it say this is the record they expected from us and that it’s more in line with what Living Colour is. OK, but I don’t know what that is because we have so many influences. There’s so much stuff that comes in and out of here: there’s the world music that Will plays, the avant-garde jazz stuff that Vernon plays, there’s Doug’s stuff, my background.

Schultz: From what you’re describing, it sounds a lot like Time’s Up.

Glover: It’s hard to say that there’s anything to compare it to. It’s got some really hard stuff, it’s got some experimental stuff, its got stuff that’s somewhat quirky and a little out there. It’s a good record. I love the fact that it’s not more than an hour long; the songs are like three minutes long and have a Ramones sensibility. Get in, get out, get our point across and then be done. It gives us an opportunity to take these songs out live and then stretch them out. The possibilities are endless: it can go full on theatrical to minimalist to jazz to funk.

Schultz: Now that you bring up The Ramones, Living Colour was one of the more successful bands that got their start at CBGB to return in 2005 in an effort to save the club from eviction. Does CBGB still hold a place in your heart?

Glover: I’m devastated that CBGB isn’t around any more. For me, that was the real New York music Mecca. That’s where it all started. Everything came out of there. Where do you go to cut your teeth in this town to go play music now? I guess you can go to Williamsburg. There’s no place to go as a band and learn how to create your sound. That’s what CBGB was for me. It’s where I figured out what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it. Sometimes the sound was horrible so I had to adjust how I sang. It prepared me for every other venue that I ever played. It’s where you go to learn. You could go there every week if you wanted and learn something. Whether you were playing or not, you learned something.

Schultz: Could something like CBGB happen again or was it a product of that point in time?

Glover: I think it will happen again. I have a sneaking suspicion that it will happen here in Brooklyn. One of these clubs out here in Williamsburg will be a place where you go to check out bands. For whatever reason, Manhattan has become very much about being a residency and a place to live.

Schultz: At the time Living Colour was coming out of CBGB onto a larger stage, much was made over the fact that the band was exclusively African-American. If you were to come around now, do you think that would still be a focal point?

Glover: I think it would still be a big deal. Everyone can point to a band that they like that has an African-American or a Latino or an Asian person in it. Can you name a band where the whole thing is and always will be this one thing? Inasmuch as Fishbone and Bad Brains are legendary in my estimation, they’re still the exception and not the rule. You have Kings X that’s interesting and now Alice In Chains has a lead singer that’s an African American, that’s going to be interesting to see.

Schultz: The Dave Matthews Band is a multi-racial band but you rarely hear anyone refer to them as that. It’s as if it’s not a big deal anymore.

Glover: I think that’s because everyone focuses on Dave Matthews. Every one of those guys in that band is amazing. But unless you are a musician’s musician, you don’t really talk about those guys, you talk about Dave. A friend of mine who I worked with on Superstar is a ravenous Dave Matthews fan but when I asked her what she thought about the rest about the band, I realized that it wasn’t in her consciousness. It was about the songs that she remembers and the emotion that she feels about the songs . . . and Dave.

Schultz: I would think that it would be more about the music than race at this point.

Glover: In that, I am happy because that’s what’s most important. But the music does come from some sort of perspective and it does come from a perspective of where we are and who we are as African-Americans, Americans, New Yorkers, East Coast people, travelers of the world. All that comes into play.

Schultz: Speaking about being New Yorkers, Collideoscope had a post 9/11 feel . . .

Glover: and that’s what it was about. The idea that a collision of cultures will bring about a whole host of things. Are these the growing pains of a collision of ideas and places? I think that’s what we’re dealing with.

Schultz: Is The Chair In The Doorway picking up on that thread?

Glover: I think it does. It picks up on the fact not only are we post-anything, its now and this is the life we are in now and this is the life we have to deal with now. You can plan ahead but you can’t live ahead. You have to live right now and sometimes trying to live ahead means you have to deviate from a particular path to get to your goal.

Schultz: After the American tour and its European counterpart are completed, what comes next?

Glover: I think it’ll be more playing. This year, starting in September, it will be about getting the word out about The Chair In The Doorway and that seeing us live is an experience that should not be missed.

By David Schultz