Hollywood– It’s a busy afternoon in the offices of Weapons of Mass Entertainment, the company created by musician Dave Stewart of Eurythmics fame to oversee his many musical, theatrical, television and film projects.
In a softly lit room, one of his crew is working on computer visuals to accompany the song “Magic in the Blues” for Stewart’s show at the Troubadour in West Hollywood on Friday, an intimate show set to celebrate the release of his new album, “The Ringmaster General.”
Next door, two more members of Stewart’s staff are working on edits and a trailer for the documentary film of the same name, a quirky inside look at the making of the “The Ringmaster General” and its predecessor, “The Blackbird Diaries,” over two five-day bursts of creativity in a Nashville recording studio.
Stewart takes a seat in small conference room in his penthouse suite on the 11th floor of a vintage building at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. The window behind him offers a spectacular view of the iconic Capitol Records building on the north side of the block.
The wall in front of him is filled with names and photos from brainstorming sessions for casting several movie and TV projects he’s developing, one of them a movie he and Beatle Ringo Starr dreamed up, another one a musical titled “Zombie Broadway.”
On the table are pitch boxes – which he makes and fills with objects to send production companies and studios to pitch his ideas – including one for “Malibu Country,” the sitcom Stewart created that stars country star Reba McEntire and comedian Lily Tomlin, premiering Nov. 2 on ABC.
You quickly get the feeling it’s always a busy day at Weapons of Mass Entertainment.
“What I do – this place, all the people who work here – we nickname it the Idea Factory,” Stewart says, his soft voice lightly accented by the northeast England of his childhood. “And what happens is, I have these ideas. I’m just thinking in my head, disparate things. And I start to formulate this idea.”
He truly is a ringmaster of sorts, spinning off thoughts and concepts and then collaborating with others to make those visions complete. It worked in Eurythmics with Annie Lennox, his partner in that band. It’s worked throughout his career as an in-demand producer for the likes of Mick Jagger, Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty. It worked when he landed in Nashville and threw together a group of hot musicians and guest singers to make his recent albums, Stewart’s first solo releases in 13 years.
“It slowly dawned on me when I put on this top hat in this very, very old hat store in London,” Stewart says of the idea of his role and how that led to the title of his album and documentary film. “It’s called Lock & Co. and it’s been going since 1676. And when you’re in there it’s this old wooden door and it’s creaky and you go inside. And on the walls are these measurements and handwritten things. And it’s Charlie Chaplin’s measurements of his head and King George, going all the way back.
“And I put it on my head in the shop and was looking in the mirror and went, ‘Oh, that’s it, I’m like the circus ringmaster.’ I went up the road to another very old shop that sold stuff to do with riding, and there was this amazing old sort of whip, like a circus ringmaster’s, and I thought, ‘OK, this must mean something.’ “
A Pair of Albums
In much the same roundabout way, Stewart’s recent pair of albums were conceived, the first of which – “The Blackbird Diaries” – emerged as a roots-oriented country and blues-influenced collection thanks to another accidental discovery in a London shop.
“It starts with me buying this guitar and finding out it belonged to this old country singer called Red River Dave,” Stewart says of the story behind that album as well as the start of the film. “And then somebody called to have a meeting with (country singer) Martina McBride.”
He hadn’t been to Nashville since 1983, and even then it was just to play a show and move onto the next town. So he flew out to meet with McBride and her husband John about a project that’s still in the works – and ended up finding a project for him.
“We all got drunk, we went back (to the McBrides’ house), and I didn’t even know they had this huge studio called Blackbird Studios full of vintage equipment and incredible stuff,” Stewart says. “We stayed up until 3 in the morning. And I suddenly got that feeling. I hadn’t written for myself in about 13 years. I was like, ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘I’m going to come here and make a record. And they were like, ‘Oh, great.’ And I think he thought like sometime in the future. But I meant now.”
Stewart came home to Los Angeles but within weeks was on his way back, sketching out a few ideas for songs on the flight and trusting that his ability create in the studio would serve him well once he landed.
“I never sit at the piano in an empty room and think about, ‘Oh my, what should I write about?’ ” he says, talking about his process as a songwriter. “I’m just writing about it as I’m speaking to you. One of the words I might say or a sentence gets logged in my mind – ‘Oh, that might be interesting for a song’ – and so there are sketches and ideas for songs all over the place.”
John McBride had gathered a group of top Nashville session musicians, Stewart called in friends and people with whom he’d worked such as Colbie Caillat, the Secret Sisters and, of course, Martina McBride. And over five days in the studio he wrote and recorded “The Blackbird Diaries.”
Those 2010 sessions were also captured on camera and when he returned a year later to make “The Ringmaster General” in much the same fashion – this time with guests such as Stevie Nicks, Joss Stone and Diane Birch sharing vocals – the filming continued.
“You see me in the studio, but it’s ultimately a film about how my mind works, and how I write songs and how I sort of connect seemingly disconnected dots,” Stewart says of “The Ringmaster General” film, which premiered in Nashville in August and will eventually arrive on television and DVD. (See the trailer for the film above.)
The roots-y vibe of “The Blackbird Diaries” came about in part through the nostalgia that jamming in Nashville stirred up in him, Stewart says.
“There was a big thing there that reminded me of Sunderland, of my hometown,” he says. “Because you see there I was a singer-songwriter, but I’d forgotten about it. And everybody would sit around playing each others’ songs in a kitchen. That was your sort of entertainment.
“And when I got to Nashville I thought, ‘God, that’s a very familiar feeling, everybody’s doing the same thing.’ “
“The Ringmaster General,” which comes off slightly more rock ‘n’ roll and a little less country than the earlier album, derived partly from Stewart’s desire not to repeat himself exactly and not to follow any particular trend – the same motivation, he suggests, that shaped Eurythmics’ sound and style in the early ’80s.
“In Eurythmics I made a conscious decision not to play guitar at all,” he says, “and make something icy cold and European with Annie’s very soulful and melancholy voice. That was because in England we’d just had punk music, full-on Sex Pistols and Clash, and anything to do with guitar in forming a band was, ‘What’s the point?’ “
Punk “was such an amazing statement and wall of noise, socially and politically, in England with those bands. It wasn’t like you were going to come out with a pop band playing guitars that anybody would care about, including yourself.”
In Hollywood
Eurythmics, which initially arrived with the onset of MTV, also contributed to Stewart’s current work in film and television production, he says.
“Even then I would think of the song visually,” Stewart says. “So ‘Sweet Dreams,’ I wrote down the whole video in like a cartoon storybook: This is what happens scene by scene. And we shot it scene by scene like that.”
He produced a TV series in Britain that starred musicians and actors such as Tom Petty and Harry Dean Stanton. He wrote a book on business creativity called “The Business Playground.” And eventually, as with the recent albums, puzzle pieces fell into place for a broader career in Hollywood.
“These things on the wall,” he says, gesturing to the listings of movie projects and cast lists in front of him, “every single one has to do with a music-driven piece. So I just formed the company around the fact that music can be the center, the centrifugal force, but the ancillary or revenues needn’t necessarily come from the music.”
So “Malibu Country” came about in part from his travels back and forth between Los Angeles and Nashville and his musing about what kind of story could be told if a star from Nashville retreated from there to the world of Malibu. His theatrical musical version of the movie “Ghost,” written with Glen Ballard, was a hit in the West End of London this year and played this spring and summer on Broadway.
“Zombie Broadway” is a black comedy and musical about a post-zombie apocalypse Manhattan in which the zombies can only be calmed and neutralized by the sights and sounds of musical theater. “Hole in the Fence” is the film idea by Stewart and Ringo Starr about a group of young guys in Virginia who escape their humdrum lives by forming a country band.
And so far the success rate for these projects is almost perfect, Stewart says. ABC bought “Malibu Country.” Director Jonas Akerlund, who has worked with Madonna, Lady Gaga and U2, is involved with “Zombie Broadway.” And Paramount picked up “Hole in the Fence” for development.
“You know what?” he says as the conversation wraps up. “I think I’m having more fun than most people at my age. I like making music and I like writing songs and I like filming things.
“It’s what I love doing. And it’s too late to stop now, as Van Morrison said.”
