My nan was a piano player and she played by ear.

How did you first get into playing keys? Are you self-taught? Now I just do a session and, with a little ‘ping’, it’s gone thousands of miles and it’s on someone’s track. You couldn’t leave it in your hand luggage. The shenanigans people used to go through when they were doing an international project in the old days – they were scared of putting analogue tape through X-ray machines because you could wipe it quite easily. I did a remote session for a fella in New York – having been around for quite a while, it’s amazing to me to think I’ve just done something that’s on an album in New York and I didn’t have to go there… Mick Talbot ‘All my ancient gear needs care and attention – it gets a bit sick if you take it on the road without souping it up’ The colours on my palette are all there – the five or five principal sounds that I gravitate towards. While we were locked down, I did a few remote sessions, but I always go to my friend Ernie McKone’s studio, in Muswell Hill, where a lot of my vintage gear is, like my old Hammond, Wurlitzer, Clavinet and Rhodes – he maintains them for me.Īll those ancient things need care and attention – they get a bit sick if you take them on the road without souping them up – and he’s got the space for them. Chris and I were only in the same room on two occasions – the rest of it was all done with musicians we know. We wanted to try and capture the atmosphere of half a dozen people playing in a room, but that wasn’t possible at the time. Mick Talbot: Yeah – but there were various times when there was a little bit more freedom. It creates an atmosphere and conjures up an image, but, Chris is so poetic he wants to tell you what that image is.” “He tries to paint a picture with sound – each track is a vignette of a movie. “Chris does a lot of different things – he’ll give an arrangement to the horn players of him singing what he thinks they should play, so you get a funny demo with him singing, thinking he’s a saxophone. Bangs & Talbot ‘Chris tries to paint a picture with sound – each track is a vignette of a movie’ He might do a slide on a keyboard on one of his demos, I’ll get the gist of what he wants me to do and redo it all, and then he’ll say, ‘I really miss my slide!’ So, I say, ‘Put it back then!’. “Sometimes he suggests stuff and asks me to adapt it – I’m not precious. He adds: “I’m not always sure what all the influences are because on a lot of the tracks Chris puts an infectious rhythm together – he likes playing bass and he also plays drums, guitar and keyboards. It’s got a lot of different grooves, but most of them are quite immediate.” “That’s the great thing about a lot of this album – it’s either head-nodding or dancey. “A lot of our past stuff was influenced by the ‘70s, but Chris wanted to get back to some ‘60s stuff – good grooves that were danceable,” explains Talbot, speaking to Say It With Garage Flowers. It’s Alright takes a trip to Detroit, with fuzz guitars, and the jazzy Leela’s Dance has more than a touch of Dave Brubeck’s Take Five about it. Sometimes this feeling is almost ecstatic, and I can say that I haven't plunged into despair at all.Marvin Gaye’s soul classic, How Sweet It Is, has been reinvented as a cool shuffle – Brand New Heavies’ guitarist Simon Bartholomew provides some tasty licks – while Stingray pays its respects to gospel and evokes the atmosphere of legendary California club P.J’s. And it's a bloody good feeling being alive.

I'm just sitting here in my room, and I love this room, and ain't this nice just sitting here? And I realised: you are alive and you are existing in the moment. And I thought: 'I love being in my room.' Normally, I'd be sitting there thinking: 'My room is very groovy … but I'm really hung up about this.' I'd be worrying away about some rubbish. 'I've got my room really nice, and it feels great sitting in there with my things around me.

'Normally I suffer from depression, and I thought maybe this was a reaction, but then a few nights later I was sitting in my room upstairs,' he said. He told the Guardian last year that the knowledge he had terminal cancer had given him a sense of freedom. Since his diagnosis, Johnson has continued to tour, and has dates booked through to 15 March around the world.

Wilko johnson jools holland