You’re in for a special treat today. It’s not every day that you get to interview musicians who have worked closely with classic rockers and these two incredibly talented musicians, Jonathan Lea and Carla Olson, have a lot of stories that they’ll be sharing in this interview.
Tall Poppy Syndrome are a supergroup made up of Vince Melouney of The Bee Gees, Clem Burke of Blondie, Jonathan Lea of The Jigsaw Seen, and Strangers in a Strange Land members Paul Kopf and Alec Palao.
Members of Tall Poppy Syndrome have worked with some of the biggest names in classic rock including Bob Dylan, Pete Townshend, Dave Davies, Iggy Pop, Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs, Nancy Sinatra, The Ramones, among others. An impressive CV!
On their latest single, they joined forces with their friend Carla Olson, who has worked with many great names such as Kathy Valentine of The Go-Gos, Mick Taylor of The Rolling Stones, Gene Clark of The Byrds, Eric Clapton, and Bob Dylan. This latest single is a cover of Brenda Lee’s “Is It True?” recorded with Jimmy Page in London in 1964 when he was working as a session guitarist. It’s an excellent version of the song.
You can listen to the Brenda Lee original below:
We’re very lucky to have Jonathan and Carla with us on the blog, so without further ado, here’s the interview with Jonathan Lea and Carla Olson:
Angie: How did Tall Poppy Syndrome get started?
Jonathan: In 2018, Clem Burke and I were asked to play on some sessions with the Bay Area-based duo Strangers In A Strange Land (consisting of Paul Kopf who had been a member of Magic Christian with Flamin’ Groovies’ Cyril Jordan and Alec Palao of the Creation Records band The Sneetches) that were being produced by the legendary Shel Talmy (The Kinks, The Who, The Creation) in Los Angeles.
During the sessions, Alec told me that they’d like to record something with former Bee Gee (and founding member of the influential Australian band The Aztecs) who I’d started working with a few months previously (in 1994, I’d co-produced the Bee Gees tribute album “Melody Fair” that helped bring awareness of their 1960s material to the Indie Rock crowd.) I spoke with Vince and he agreed to participate so Vince, Paul, Alec, Clem and I recorded two tracks produced by Shel.
The first was a version of Vince’s friends The Easybeats’ hit “Women” released by Vince in 2020 and the second was an unreleased Bee Gees song called “Ring My Bell” released by Strangers In A Strange Land and Vince in 2021. Both tracks did amazingly well at press and radio so it didn’t take long for us to decide to release a third track. When I posted that we were doing so, I received a message that asked “why don’t you guys just start a band?” and that was the “idea” moment. I wrote to everyone to ask if they were agreeable and everyone was. When I started searching for a name for the group, I stumbled upon the term “Tall Poppy Syndrome” and immediately thought it sounded cool but when I Googled it and discovered that it was an Australian term for “resenting someone due to that person’s success,” I knew it was the perfect name as Vince had told me that he currently lives in England because he’s experienced this treatment in Australia. When I mentioned the name to Vince he loved it and Tall Poppy Syndrome was born.
Angie: How did you initially get into playing rock music?
Carla: When I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan playing together and making incredible sounds vocally and musically, I just wanted to play in a band. I got myself a very cheap guitar and listened to records to learn chords. Eventually, I swapped that guitar for an electric one so I could play rock and roll songs.
Jonathan: My natural talent is actually visuals or graphic design but I’d always loved the connection between music, design, style and fashion and decided as a kid that I wanted to combine these elements and eventually, I managed (mostly by going to see bands) to teach myself to play basic guitar so that I could join a band.
Angie: Who are your biggest musical influences?
Carla: Definitely I would say the British Invasion, such as Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, The Who. I was also a big fan of English blues like John Mayall. His guitarists Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor were my main influences. And the American folk rock bands like The Byrds and the Buffalo Springfield were on the local radio stations. Everyone wanted to sound like them.
Jonathan: My biggest musical influence was actually my mother, who very sadly, passed away in May. We lived in Hollywood in the ’60s and everything in our world was based around music. When we weren’t listening to “Boss Radio 93 KHJ” around the clock, we were playing 4-track cartridges by The Beatles and Bob Dylan in my mom’s 1965 Mustang. She’d occasionally take me to see her friends The Grass Roots and The Spiral Starecase rehearse during the afternoon at nightclubs where she worked and I absolutely loved the show business environment. In 1967, I asked my mom to buy me “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and she did. It was the perfect combination of sounds, instrumentation, production and graphics and I became obsessed with it, literally listening to it every day for the next five years. The influence is still apparent as I love concepts and hidden meanings in music and try to think “big” (musically and visually) with every project that I’m involved with.
Angie: What were your favourite concerts you’ve been to?
Carla: In my hometown Austin, we got a lot of good shows, but most of the big acts like Jimi Hendrix played in San Antonio, which was about an hour and a half away. That’s my favourite concert, The Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1968, I saw him three times before he died, the last time was in May of 1970. It was just absolutely life changing. The shows were very short back then, but they were packed with great songs and great playing. Another one was the Blind Faith concert, which was Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, and Ginger Baker, in San Antonio in 1969. That was their only tour of America. I also saw Cream in 1968 in Dallas. The Stones’ concert in 1975 was amazing too!
Jonathan: I got to attend some amazing concerts when I was a teenager in the ’70s with a couple of highlights being Led Zeppelin and Queen, each at the Fabulous Forum in Los Angeles. My absolute favourite concert was seeing David Bowie at The Shrine in LA in 2004. I went by myself and was able to buy a third row ticket at the box office right before the show started. To my surprise, my third row seat was on the end of the aisle at the center of the stage right where his catwalk ended so I was literally two feet from him the entire show. On songs like “All The Young Dudes,” “The Man Who Sold The World” and the “Ziggy Stardust” material, he’d occasionally catch me singing along and wink at me, an incredible experience.
Angie: Carla, what was it like working with Gene Clark on So Rebellious A Lover?
Carla: Gene and I met at one of his gigs. He taught me a lot about singing softer. We started out singing together at his house in LA. I would usually be sitting in the living room, strumming guitar with Gene just singing songs that we liked. And suddenly, before you knew it, we developed a sound together and we decided that it might be a good time to try an album with all acoustic instruments. So we put together musicians and recorded the album in Hollywood. “So rebellious a lover” is a line from the song “Del Gato” that Gene wrote with his brother, Rick Clark. It was great working with Gene. We just hit it off. Playing shows with him was fun. There was always something going on, something funny on stage, and he’d make a joke. He was a real unique writer and one of the most genuine poets of our time.
Angie: How did this collaboration between Carla and Tall Poppy Syndrome start?
Jonathan: Clem, Vince and I had all been friends with Carla for decades so we all thought it would be fun to record something together. We each suggested songs but we couldn’t all agree on one. One day, I saw that Jimmy Page had posted a song he’d played on in 1964; “Is It True” by Brenda Lee, so I listened to it and thought it might work. Later that day, I was out on a walk and heard DJ Palmyra Delran play the song on Little Steven’s “Underground Garage” channel and considered it a sign. I sent Brenda’s version to everyone and they agreed to record it. Coincidentally, after our version was released digitally, Little Steven heard it on the air and designated it his weekly “Coolest Song In The World” at his radio channels where it’s been played 500 times and is still in rotation.
Angie: What was it like recording “Is It True”?
Jonathan: It was fairly easy. Vince lives in the UK and Paul and Alec are in Northern California so the tracking session consisted of me on guitar and Clem on drums with Carla singing a guide vocal in the control room. Clem wasn’t feeling well (he’d be diagnosed with cancer shortly after) but being a trooper, he came in and knocked it out in the first take. We recorded a second take to be safe but the first take is the one we released. Clem was probably at the session less than an hour and Carla returned about a week later to record her proper vocals. Vince, Paul and Alec recorded their contributions at their own studios and sent everything to engineer Mark Wheaton at his studio in Echo Park where he and I compiled their tracks and mixed the final master which was then sent to Sean Magee at Abbey Road for mastering.
Angie: Last year, Tall Poppy Syndrome recorded a great cover of The Kinks’ “This Time Tomorrow” that got praise from Ray, Dave, and Mick, what are your favourite Kinks songs?
Jonathan: My list of favourite Kinks songs is endless but I’ve fortunately been able to play many of my favourites with Dave Davies, even if only privately and not publicly. When I worked with Dave, I’d suggest my favourite songs to him and occasionally, he’d agree to try them so we did end up playing “Shangri-La” during tour rehearsals in London, “Big Sky” exactly once as a show opener in Detroit, a bit of “Sleepwalker” when someone in the audience shouted out the title and “Misfits” back stage in San Francisco. Dave’s song “Strangers” is another favourite, and one I got to play hundreds of times with him. “Waterloo Sunset” might top my list but I consider it to be too much of a Ray song and never considered suggesting it to Dave.
Angie: What was it like working with Dave Davies? Sounds like a dream come true!
Jonathan: It was definitely a dream come true. The first song I ever learned on guitar (and also the first song I ever performed to an audience) had been “All Day And All Of The Night” so to be playing it (along with “You Really Got Me,” “See My Friends” and others) twenty years later on stage with Dave was incredible. It was a fantastic fifteen-year experience.
Angie: What makes the music of the 60s special to you?
Carla: I was a teenager when 1964 came around, it was exciting and youthful and had songs that were very simple, but yet very memorable, very melodic. I loved the records of The Beatles, The Stones and The Who. In the ’60s there were great radio stations in Austin, one called KNOW. They played everything and would mix pop, rock, country, soul and even some Mexican Conjunto music.
Jonathan: For me, it’s a combination of musicians having to play actual instruments (and mostly playing them simply and tastefully) and the willingness of a lot of artists to be adventurous. I love the mixture of musical genres and the experimentation of that era, things like using sitar on “Norwegian Wood” and “Paint It Black.” For me, in the mid-1970s, with a few exceptions like Side Three of “Physical Graffiti” and David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy, Rock music seemed to lose that combination of melody and exotic instrumentation that I like. I’m not a fan of the artificial programmed instruments trend of the last few decades, especially with classic artists. Most of the current music I listen to features guitars played through tube amps, real acoustic drums and interesting instrumentation, those will always be the sounds that appeal to me.
Angie: What do you miss most about the classic rock era?
Carla: I miss albums rather than everything just being a single, one track. You could read the lyrics and the album notes, look at the photos. That’s the way that I make records now. I make albums, I don’t make just singles. It’s great to have a single out and if people like just that song, but if they don’t ever hear anything else, they probably don’t realise that there’s a whole body of work there.
Jonathan: I miss the element of mystery and surprise that artists used to have. In the ’70s, I read every music magazine available and still, while record shopping, I’d be surprised to find new releases by my favourite artists, having heard nothing about them (sometimes, local radio stations would play an album track a week or so in advance.) Also, we didn’t know every detail about artists we liked back then and it was very difficult to find information, especially regarding their history or previous releases. These days, labels release a single months before an album is released, the artwork and tracklist are also then posted everywhere far in advance, so by the time the album is released, it often already seems like old news.
Angie: What is your proudest accomplishment as a musician?
Carla: In 1983, I was asked to be in Bob Dylan’s first ever video, for the song “Sweetheart Like You.” I played the guitar parts and solo that Mick Taylor had played on the record.
As a “thank you,” Bob gave me his unreleased song “Clean Cut Kid” that my band The Textones recorded. It appears on our debut album “Midnight Mission,” released in 1984.
That led to my working with Mick Taylor from the Rolling Stones. He and I recorded a live album here in Los Angeles that was released in 1990. When you’re standing there on stage next to him, he brings you up to his level. I continued to record studio albums with Mick. Also very gratifying to me was to have my own band, The Textones, which I started with Kathy Valentine (she left to join the Go Go’s, and then I became the leader of the band.) We released two albums and toured Europe and America. There was a reunion album recorded and released in 2018.
Jonathan: I have so much to be proud of, including a Grammy nomination, recordings used for classic scenes in cool TV series like Futurama and Shameless, over a dozen tracks I’ve played on in the last few years that have reached #1 at various radio outlets, getting to work with artists I’ve admired since I was a child, and so on, so it’s difficult to pick a “proudest accomplishment” but my favourite experience as a musician was getting to play “You Really Got Me” with Ray and Dave Davies at their historical reunion at Islington Assemby Hall in London on December 18, 2015.
Angie: What advice do you have for aspiring musicians?
Carla: The most important thing is be genuine, be yourself, follow your heart. If you keep at it, and you keep being authentic, the people will find that music and they’re going to identify with what you’re writing and what you’re playing. That’s my best advice.
Jonathan: My advice is always to just stick with it, don’t chase trends and don’t compare your achievements with those of others. I’ve always loved radio and listened to it endlessly when I was a kid, so to have made and continue to make records that get played every day at radio stations around the world is my idea of success.
Angie: What’s next for Tall Poppy Syndrome and your other music projects?
Jonathan: Since our friend and bandmate Clem Burke passed away in April, I’m not really sure what more Tall Poppy Syndrome can do except possibly finish and release our remaining recordings. It was devastating hearing the news that Clem was ill last summer. A mutual friend later told me that Clem was still interested in doing some recording even during his treatment so I sent Clem a list of ideas I had for tracks that I thought might interest him but unfortunately, by that time, he wasn’t up for it.
As for other projects, I’m currently working with Marvin Etzioni of Lone Justice and Thee Holy Brothers (whose current album “High In My Balloon” is fantastic) on a couple of projects, the first of these will be released soon. Also, in the ’90s, I was the guitar player for singer-actress Ann Magnuson’s performances of her theatrical Glam Rock extravaganza “The Luv Show” (based on her Geffen Records album) and I’m happy to report that she’ll be reviving the show (with me and other members of the original cast) later this year to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary.
Angie: Tell me more about the upcoming album of songs you co-wrote with Pete Brown, what is the story behind the album and the songs?
Carla: Pete and I met through Paul Jones from Manfred Mann. Paul had a radio show on the BBC and Pete was on talking about Cream and the London scene in the ’60s. His musical partner had passed away and he said he was looking for someone who wanted to co-write. I got in touch with him, and I offered to write music. He started sending me lyrics in 2019. Within a couple of months, he sent me several sets of lyrics. And during the pandemic I wrote a lot of music to Pete’s lyrics. Pete died in May of 2023 after his long battle with cancer. I’ve been recording the album over the last few months to be released before the end of the year and I’m really looking forward to it.
You can follow Tall Poppy Syndrome on Facebook, Instagram, and Bandcamp. You can follow Carla Olson on Facebook, Instagram, Bandcamp, and YouTube.
If you want to get a copy of “Is It True?”, you can purchase it from Tres Melo Musique or from Tall Poppy Syndrome’s Bandcamp, linked above. A 7″ vinyl single will come out later this year.
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