After years playing other people’s music, it’s Rachael’s turn.
When Rachael Wood agreed to join us, she ended her email with a confession:
“My other passions in life are cooking and trying all the cheeses of the world.”
So naturally, before we got anywhere near guitar riffs, songwriting or her debut solo album, we had to establish her cheese credentials.
For the record: hard over soft, British over French, Cheddar over Stilton. Mascarpone? A bit “nothingy”.
Serious journalism.
But there’s a really interesting story underneath all that.
Rachael has spent much of her musical life playing other people’s music. She started playing guitar at eight, spent around seven years with Cirque du Soleil, has worked with the likes of Sinéad O’Connor and Skunk Anansie, and is now part of The Wedding Present.
But all that time, her own riffs, fragments and ideas were accumulating.
Now, finally, she’s finished them.
Her debut solo album, It’s Not The End Of The World, puts Rachael somewhere she admits still feels slightly unfamiliar: front and centre.
We laughed a lot recording this one, but we also got into some lovely territory:
- Starting out at eight with an enormous guitar, learning by ear in the days before YouTube.
- Going from the self-described “side woman” to writing, singing and discovering what happens when everybody in the room is suddenly looking at you.
- Why Surfy #10 put John Travolta and Uma Thurman into my head, and why somebody else had already told Rachael the album sounded as if “Tarantino started writing music”.
- Why she finds lyrics so much harder than guitar parts, and describes them as exposing your “ultimate vulnerability”.
- Why she deliberately avoided using AI to help write those lyrics.
- What happens when you’re playing guitar for Cirque du Soleil and somebody’s backflip depends on you playing exactly what you’re supposed to play.
And naturally we get back to cheese, somehow devise a film about it, discuss David Bowie, guitar solos, sweaty little venues and the one guitar Rachael would save if she could only keep one.
It wanders about a bit, and we didn’t try to stop it.
Rachael Wood’s debut album It’s Not The End Of The World is out now.
▶️ listen to the full conversation below.
https://player.captivate.fm/episode/d41b9063-553d-438d-9646-5d23c1537ec6/
The Third Half. Interesting people, interesting ideas, and apparently quite a lot of cheese.