Vince Gill
For Vince Gill,the awards keep coming. Grammys,CMA and ACM awards, gold and platinum records…the trophy case just keeps growing! Vince copped his second Entertainer Of The Year trophy, his fourth Male Vocalist Of The Year award (a CMA record!), and his second Album Of The Year honor (for his contribution to ‘Common Thread: The Songs Of The Eagles).
(Q):How do you view your overall career within the music business over the past 10 years?
Vince: Oh shoot, I don’t know. I’d say it’s more a peaks-and-valleys experience that anything else. Because there were times in my career when, depending on the circumstances,things were all kind of relative to what I was doing. Like when I was in bluegrass music, there were areas that most people would look at and say my career was nonexistent, but actually it was a very successful time for me in that world. After all, some of the people I got to play with in bluegrass music back then were huge, and the whole time was great for me. Pure Prairie League was a different thing for me. We were probably not the biggest rock band in the late ’70’s. We had a couple of hits and did a couple of good things back then.
Q:How was beginning your career in country music different?
Vince: Starting a country career was like starting over. Overall, a career is just like life. You go and you play and you do what you do. Then you’re done..
Q:Is Vince Gill a hopeless romantic?
Vince: Probably in song, and maybe in life. I don’t know. I love the romantic part of life, and I love that part of a song, so 99 percent of my songs are about love and relationships. I think people throughout their lives think about love and romance more than anything else. I know it’s what I remember in a song. Not so much commentary or opinions or what someone feels socially,I like those love songs.
Q:What motivates Vince Gill to continue as a country singer?
Vince: It’s kind of interesting. I’m still passionate about playing, singing, and writing music. Sometimes I kick myself, because I’m not as passionate as I was in my youth in my zest for finding and listening to good music.
Q:You would think, as time goes on you would become increasingly driven to create better songs and achieve greater success.
Vince: I agree, but for me there are other things, like my kid, that take precedence over me going to find the greatest new record and spending two hours listening to it. Instead, I can go to the movies with my kid and have a hot dog. That to me is more precious than the other thing. All I mean is the parameters are different now than when I was 18 years old.
Q:Is your love for country music any weaker that when you were an 18-year-old?
Vince:I’m still nuts for it as a fan.
Q:Do you feel that come of your fans maybe take your song lyrics a little too seriously?
Vince: I wouldn’t say that, but they may take it to more of an extreme, I guess. It’s really gratifying in one sense, but there are times when it gets kind of scary. My makeup as a person is such that I don’t take things to the extreme. It’s amazing that people still want my autograph. It still blows my mind that people want me to scribble my name on something. I have people I like, but I wouldn’t go out and stand in front of somebody’s bus and wait for them to come out. That’s just my makeup as a person. I don’t mean that it bothers me when people ask me for an autograph, I think it’s sweet. It’s pretty neat that people think that much about what you do.
Q:It’s probably more gratifying than the monetary rewards of the music business.
Vince:Yeah. I mean, right now we’re doing an all-acoustic tour in in-the-round type places, and it’s a blast. The shows are real intimate. It’s sometimes fun to do things you don’t normally do.
Q:You’re viewed as a hunk by many of your fans, yet you primarily sing romantic love ballads that focus on loving another without any racy or raw references to having sex without love or marriage. Is this an intentional effort on your part not to be overly explicit in your song lyrics, or are we back to the hopeless romantic side of Vince Gill?
Vince:I know what you mean, and I think, to be blunt, it’s 10 times more gratifying to love someone and have them love you than it is to have sex with them. (laughs) I mean, don’t get me wrong-that’s a nice thing, too! Real love is a lot stronger to me and much better. It has a much deeper feeling, it’s a much richer feeling, and it has more substance.
Q:You seem to write the majority of your lyrics in the form of another person’s perspective and rarely your own. Why?
Vince: When one becomes fairly self-indulgent and says, “Listen to me sing about me,” that’s when I push the button on the radio.(laughs)
Q:Your music appeals to such a broad audience. Is this a conscious effort to reach so many people with a song whenever you write your material?
Vince:It’s my intention; I guess I like simplicity. I’m simple in that I wear my heart on my sleeve and my emotions just kind of come out, good and bad. They seem to come out in songs, too. I want people to listen to my music and feel like it’s for them. A lot of people say to me, “You say in your songs what I wish I could say.” That’s a neat feeling to have someone like your lyrics to make them think they feel the same things as you do.
Q:That’s not the easiest stance to take in songwriting-or in life, for that matter.
Vince: Not really. It’s more honest. Emotion is the truest form of life. To me it’s the most important one really.
Q:The song you wrote for Keith Whitley, “Go Rest High On That Mountain,” has to mean a whole lot more to you since your bother passed away last year.
Vince:That song wasn’t finished until after my brother passed away. Then he passed away and I brought it back out,because you need to deal with this emotion and finish this song. You know, at the same time, I think out of respect, I didn’t finish it, because in dealing with Keith, I wouldn’t want anybody to ever think that I was taking advantage of what happened to him. Writing a song, recording it, then putting it out might appear that I was taking advantage of the moment. So I just kind of set it back and didn’t finish it. At some point I knew I would want to finish it. Then, losing my brother gave me a really valid reason to finish it. It’s a pretty good feeling. There’s a song I wrote on my Christmas album, it’s called “Won’t Be The Same This Year,” and it meant the world to me and to my family.
Q:Country music has become such a competitive field of music these days. So many new artists are breaking on the scene daily. Does Vince Gill feel he must compete with the new country artists who are having their first big hits this year?
Vince:I can’t control that. I can’t control what other guy’s record and sell or what they do. I don’t mean to beat them, it doesn’t matter. I think that I’m looking at my career, as I kind of want to look at life. When I get finished, the only thing I demand and want is to have my character intact when I’m done. My integrity and what people think of me, along with how I’ve treated people, are important. Once you strip blue ribbons and all those awards and record sales, all you’ve got to be judged by is your character. That’s all you can really want.
Q:Do you feel your attitude shines through in your music?
Vince: I hope so. I feel like it does. I feel like my music is a fairly honest representation of me.