adds to the material about Jesus Rock, CCM and spirituality in rock music which has been published here previously. See the
. The series will conclude with an interview by Rupert with
This post is a new interview with Nick Battle, conducted six years after the interview published as the second post in this series. Nick Battle has had a long and varied career in the music business, including spells in significant Post-Punk christian rock bands such as
After The Fire (ATF) and
Writz.
Woefully Transparent : Another interview with Nick Battle, November 2025Rupert Loydell: So I think you feel a bit misrepresented by that six year old interview that was recently published. Nick Battle: I wasn't six, I was 62. 😀
RL: Okay, that interview from six years ago. Apologies, anyway. NB: No worries.
RL: Perhaps we can bring things up to date and of the moment? You said it doesn't represent you now, that you've moved on. Can you explain what you meant?NB: Well, I've been on a journey spiritually whereby, having taken so many funerals and also, like everybody else, coming through Covid (I lost seven people in one year). I don't really do church anymore, I regard myself as someone who believes in a creative power that made this wonderful planet we live on, someone who can't deny the existence the existence of God when I see the sea, climb a mountain, or get introduced to a newborn child or hold someone as they pass away.
But also, I've been retired, having taken close to 700 funerals over a seven year period. I've stopped doing that now.
RL: Were they Humanist funerals?NB: No, I became the guy that people wanted there, with some semblance and understanding of God as they saw him or her as they said goodbye to their loved one, but not in a formal way with a man wearing robes and a funny hat.
RL: Spiritual but non-traditional?NB: Yes. Because my strange Christian faith has always informed my life, I saw myself perhaps as some kind of bridge between them and God, at a moment when they are having a hard time in their lives.
RL: Did that change or inform the music you've been making? You've had several solo albums out in the last few years, so can you talk about them a bit?NB: Umm, yes. Well, I wrote a whole load of Christian books and made a couple of records –
King of My Heart and
Let Go & Let God – in the noughties and I simply recognised that there's a whole wonderful, glorious world outside of any subculture and, from time to time, I inhabited a Christian one.
But I realised whatever culture you are in, there's loads of important stuff outside going on around you. Everyone should step outside, and no-one should just assume their way is the only way. Anybody who is so set in their ways that they aren't prepared to listen to, discuss, laugh or cry about, or work through other people's opinions and ideas, is walking a very dangerous tightrope of potential bigotry and arrogance.
RL: I've always found it really strange that it often people who say they are the most devout or convicted in their beliefs are the ones who can't face talking to people with different ideas.NB: Whatever you believe, be it political, spiritual or sexual, you should always weigh what you feel, not be afraid to listen to other opinions and never just blindly accept.
RL: Also, why would you think that rules you decide to obey apply to other people? It's a bit like someone coming over from the tennis club down to the golf course and telling everyone they are playing the game wrong.NB: It's a kind of arrogance.
RL: So coming back to the music, your albums are very carefully produced. How does the music transfer to the live concerts you are doing? I know at the one I saw a few weeks ago you mostly played as a duo, and then brought on your son and his friend on for some extra percussion and vocal duties. How does that looser feel affect the music?NB: It's the greatest thing in the world to create something that somebody else responds to. For artists you're not always there when that happens, I mean work gets hung on walls or in a gallery, but songwriters are a little bit more fortunate to often be in the building when they play and get an audience response, be that good or bad.
For me, the tragedies and the joys I've had in my life, inform what I create. Some of the greatest (and sometimes the most miserable!) songwriters' work has been written out of insight and pain – I'm thinking of people like
Nick Cave and
Nick Drake. I just want to tell stories through my songs and also the introductions to songs when I play live, and weave them into a narrative.
RL: I'm always suspicious of anything that wants to tell me something or to try and emotionally move me. Isn't that just working by empathy and not challenging anyone to think for themselves? Why is a musician's (or author's or artist's) experience something to share? Isn't that just ego? Shouldn't the arts question and challenge?NB: There is ego in anything, yes; that's part of why we create, we're very needy creatures who are desperate for approval. But am I telling ? Or showing you? Am I showing you something that is really lovely that I want to share with you? Look at that sunrise, for instance...
RL: So you can point things out and talk about them?NB: You can tell stories. I can talk to you or show you my non-exclusive take on loss, my non-exclusive take on jewellery, my non-exclusive take on betrayal, my non-exclusive take on alcoholism. I'm just a bloke who's lived and I just want you to share what I have and, yes, I do want to move you and for you to be touched by my songs, because art... [sighs] I'm going to quote a song now, one which was written in a lot of pain, back in September 2025, which will be the title track of my next record… It says
The mind suffers and the body cries out
Under pressure there can be no doubt
Pain is what it is, like a walking piece of art
The soul is the compass to the map of the heart
I wish you happy trails
For me, that is acknowledging who I am. I'm horribly and woefully transparent and it comes out in what I do, even though sometimes I wish I was better at containing it. Sometimes it feels like a tsunami coming out...
RL: So you're sharing and showing, not telling or declaiming.
NB: Yeah. It's perhaps even a compulsion.
RL: Ok. Now earlier you were teasing me about liking obscure bands. I think I'm a bit more of a jazz and rock fan than you, so tell me about Pop Music. Last time we met you introduced me to some exquisite music from the likes of Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway, and Beth Nielsen Chapman, which in many ways are quite unproduced, or apparently so. So what is music production about? I know we both like Steely Dan and those last two Talk Talk albums, but does anybody need to spend a year recording 40 minutes of music? Does one note, a cymbal sound or a guitar effect change anything that much?NB: I think the best songs come spiralling down through the air and we are the happy conduit through which they flow... The best songs stand up. Bare bones. Say guitar and vocals. Or piano and vocals. You can produce that and make it wonderfully grandiose, like 'Head Over Heels' by
Tears for Fears, for example, which Chris Hughes produced. It took forever but it's an exquisite record, an extraordinary piece of work, but the song has to stand up first. Its like saying 'Here's a naked body, which is fit, lithe and muscular.' If we put it in an Antony Price suit it gains a whole extra meaning, but it's still the same body underneath the suit. How you dress the body or, indeed, leave it naked, is up to the creator.
RL: Okay. That's intriguing, because the next question on my sheet of paper says 'Is a good song one that stands alone when reduced to the tune?'NB: Yup. Listen to the B-side of
Elvis Costello's 'Oliver's Army'. It's a cover of 'My Funny Valentine' with just him and a bass guitar played by Nick Lowe. That's all there is.
RL: There are some amazing stripped-back versions of Costello's 'Alison', too.NB: Yes there are. He’s an incredible writer one who I had the privilege of meeting when I represented
Burt Bacharach for Windswept Pacific back in the ‘90’s. Very few songwriters can be brilliant wordsmiths and consummate melody writers….
RL: So after being a musician, you spent a lot of your career searching out, writing for and recording pop musicians, for major labels and big names. What you think a good bit of pop music should do? Make you dance? Have a hook that wormholes into the ear? Or is it just a song dressed up in a good way?NB: Okay, so for me a classic bit of pop is
ABBA's 'Knowing Me Knowing You' aha. It's a wonderfully produced record, the vocal performances are fantastic and nuanced, and the lyrics are insightful and knowing, not to mention a little world weary. It tells a story, it's not just the
Spice Girls asking, 'Do you wanna be my lover?', it deals with despair and how, 'Breaking up is never easy', and I assume it was written and recorded about the break-up of one of the band's relationships. It's wonderful, and it tells you about what happened and what someone feels like when it happened.
So, yes, pop music can be banal, like the Spice Girls,
Backstreet Boys or
Five (and, yes, I'm in a small way partly to blame for all of them) or many others, but there is more intelligent pop music too. ABC's album 'The Look of Love', Tears for Fears,
Roxy Music, even
Level 42, who were a great band journeying from jazz-funk into extraordinary pop songs like, ‘Something About You’ and ‘Leaving My Now’.
RL: I guess what I'm interested in is... Pop music is short for popular music, obviously...
NB: The lyrics need to tell a story. It shouldn't be banal. There is rubbish crap pop music but there is also intelligent pop music.
RL: But what's it doing more than what you laughingly called obscure music earlier isn't?NB: It moves you, touches you. 'Killingly Me Softly' by Roberta Flack, is a great pop song.
RL: I'm not against great songs, I'm just intrigued why some people aspire to fame and popularity.NB: Well, do they aspire? I don't think you should aspire to fame at all, it should only be a by-product of excellence. If you write something great and you become well known because of that, it's different. Fame as such, however, is a totally useless thing to aspire to. What you should aspire to is creating the best possible art you can. If fame comes as a result of that, fine, but it's not going to be much fun.
RL: Okay. Maybe that's what unnerves me.NB: I know lots people who are famous and I feel for them. I wouldn't want to be hassled in the supermarket, I don't want that pressure.
RL: There have been bands who stayed unrecognised (as individuals) for a long time. Pink Floyd were massive but didn't put band photos on the first few albums. Why now do people not quite understand that fame is different from income, is different from creativity... I get very confused by it all.NB: It's quite simple. Fame is a pathetic pursuit which has no value whatsoever, unless you can use it to help other people, be that financially or socially. In the way
Bob Geldof and
Bono did, and in some ways still do. That's when fame becomes useful, otherwise it's a facile endeavour. And I speak as someone who did want to be famous as a kid but am really glad I never was. I wouldn't have been good at handling it, I'd have imploded and ended up either in the Betty Ford clinic or dead.
RL: I guess I came out of the same era you did, maybe a little bit behind, but to me music was made on 4 and 8 track recorders and distributed by tape or through indie labels. Nowadays, you can put recordings on the web and get your music heard but I'm at the point where I am far too old to be rich and famous and all I can do is offer my art and writing to people. I don't mean giving it away, though it's better to have readers than none, but I don't understand artistic drive.NB: I make music because I want to connect with people. I want to meet you and also, at the age of 68, I want to leave something behind. If I'm famous after I'm dead that will suit me fine because I won't have to deal with any of the nonsense that comes with it.
Why do you paint? Because you have to and for many of us the creative process is essential to our well-being, something we have to do. Also, we don't have much control over it, and it's best when we don't control it. I used to write for
Cliff Richard back in the day, when I was trying to be a pop writer, and I was like a Savile Row tailor. The demos we did for him were pretty much like he did on the finished record, so we were pretty good tailors, but that's very different from me writing a song for myself, when it comes from my heart and soul and I then get in the musicians I need. We all kick it around and try arrangements and versions out; and they put their heart and soul into it too
RL: When does that compulsion begin? I mean I've written poems since I was 12 or so, but to be honest I only did visual art at degree level because I had to take something alongside creative writing, there simply weren't many standalone writing degrees. I fell back on art even though my Art Foundation course had totally put me off the subject, but since the end of my first year I've had a compulsion to paint and draw and collage. I'm quite intrigued by why we make the things that we do, what triggers or caused creative urges.NB: I wrote my first song when I was twelve, about Watergate; and then my second about Raquel Welch. (Don’t ask!) I got the words and tune in my head at the same time. I guess I had a desire to document life.
RL: I certainly understand that. I used to laugh with a poet friend of my Dad's, Brian, about how he always wrote notes and processed everything into his work, but now I find myself doing that. How do I make sense of a week of rain? That, along with what I read or listen to, and what I do, always filters into my work. It's how I make sense of the world.
NB: Well, we're sat here in Cornwall and it's grey, oppressive, foreboding and cold, and it informs how we think, how we feel, what we might write, which guitar we might pick up or which colour paint we choose, and the medium. I guess we are reflecting, we're commentators aren't we?
RL: One of the classes I used to run at university, a group tutorial, was about how we might think of ourselves as writers. We can be historians, researchers, comedians, prophets, reporters, entertainers, etc. etc. We might think we are simply writing a story or poem but we might also be doing something else as well.NB: I would argue that it's best not to frame yourself. I remember once doing some psychological test or other and being encouraged to think outside the box. My trouble is I could never find the box to think outside of. [Laughter]
RL: I wasn't trying to box my students up! Just trying to say every so often you need to step back and think about what you're doing.
NB: Interesting. Why do you have to step back though? Why can’t you just go with the flow? Go with it and see where it takes you.
RL: Err, creatively you can, but remember I was working within academia. Self-reflection is often part of assessment, which means thinking and writing about your own work and the work of others.It's intriguing that you've answered most of my questions without me asking them! I know you've been working on a new album so let's hear about it.NB: Yes, I have made a new record. It's a mini LP called
Dark Passenger and it documents my struggles with health issues – some self-imposed and some not – and the breakdown of the fabric of my life really, at an age when I didn't expect that to happen.
RL: Is there some kind of resolution?NB: Right now there's not. Right now I guess that dark passenger is not driving the car but certainly sat in the back seat, although he's no longer directing. That'll be out at some point in the new year with a cover by a lovely young artist, Ella Sausby, who you saw play and sing with me live.
There's also a companion album called
Happy Trails. I'm not sure if that will be part of the same package or a separate release. Even in the darkest times I go back to a line from
Bruce Cockburn (who I published and promoted in the 80s), a quote Bono picked up on too: 'Gotta kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight'. I think even in the darkest times, as the song says [Nick breaks into song] 'Even when the darkest clouds are in the sky / You mustn't sigh and you mustn't cry / Spread a little happiness as you go by.'
I think even at the darkest possible times in my life, when the black dog isn’t so much calling as howling your name – and I've been to some very dark places in the last twelve months, as dark as when my first wife died – there is still a chink of light.
I'm not going to call it hope because I'm not sure hope is that useful. It's a man-made construct. 'There's always hope.' Is there? Maybe there's just the now and the just now is that I will try and take joy out of every daily situation that I can and accept that that is enough, rather than search for this mythical 'happiness' which is supposed to make everything alright, like a Hollywood film ending.
Hollywood endings don't exist in real life, but what does exist in real life is coming to terms with yourself, your environment and the people, places and things around you, which you cannot necessarily affect or change. I've learnt that you must make peace with all of that and then be joyful with it. I'm not a sad or depressed guy, I'm someone sitting with the realities of life as they happen on a daily basis, accepting that it's happening and taking a view that this too will pass and it's not forever and that something better might come round the corner and surprise you in a beautiful way. It is what it is.
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