The Spark: Jimmy Turrell on Snails, Rave Culture and Creative Chaos

0:03We are back with the wonderful, the delightful, the very entertaining Jimmy Turrell, whom I just had to ask, how do you pronounce your surname? Because I've only ever seen it in print. You put a bit of a French spin on that there. Turrell. Oui, Turrell. I can't get asked you, we have seen it when I'm in France, it's the only French I know. Je m 'appelle Jimmy Turrell. Oh my God. I don't know why, but that's really, you know. Made me blush. Right, okay. What else do I know? Nothing else. Où est la station? That's it. Oh, oui, oui. Je m 'appelle Katia Cowan. Oui. Oh, gosh. Anybody who's in France are going to think, good God.

0:45Yeah, we've already slagged the food off. The English trying to speak French again. You know, I was in a restaurant once and the waiter just got really impatient with me and said, just speak English. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love Paris, but like, if you don't speak French when you're across there, you kind of get the look, you know, you get that little look like, come on, do better. Make an effort. Make an effort. Exactly. I get it. I get it. Now, I love that I've brought up your surname because, you know, Anthony Burrell. I always call him Anthony Burrell. And every time I see him, I'm always like, how do I say your name again?

1:17And he's always like, however you want. And then he does a little chuckle. well weirdly enough right so he's Anthony Burrell Burrell the twat I'm going to kill you Tony this whole time I've been saying Anthony Burrell and he's never corrected me that's just because he's a lovely guy no he's a twat he'll be smiling I love Tony so his name Burrell is what my name actually is Turrell right but when my dad became a fireman there was a boxer called Ernie Tyrell and he sort of flipped the pronunciation so I've only I've only ever known Jimmy Tyrell but when he was a kid my dad was a kid he was Jimmy Tyrell so Tyrell Burrell when we did the collab I was going to say to Tony can we make that ring you know and I never got wrong to it or you didn't look up the courage yeah maybe maybe it was that yeah maybe I'm sure he would have loved it yeah now this is the spark Mark, this is our like bonus episode after we've had the lovely chat.

2:23And if you haven't heard Jimmy talk through his career and all sorts of fascinating stuff. I mean, we spent a good while talking about random creepy men from our youth, didn't we? Yeah, just strange, strange, weird people on the stage looking at clocks and trapping you in corners. Absolutely. Yes, random man. And that was on Monday. So if you want to check that out, it's available now wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, my God. It's almost like I've been doing this for five, six years. It is, man. Incredible. Getting there. Very pro. Very pro. Just keep saying everyone's name's wrong. So we're going to ask you some questions.

3:00You've chosen these, so I'm not putting you on the spot. Yeah. So we can get to know you a little bit better, Jimmy. Try to remember them. Well, here we go. Here's the first one. Okay. Ooh. Okay, this is really interesting. This always surprises me. What's the smallest thing that instantly improves your work day? um this sounds this is a bit boring but it's and i don't do it enough but um if uh if i exercise i have to go for a walk in the mornings or just like you know i've got a little peloton in my garage that kind of stacks things sideways rather than on top of each other if that makes sense yeah yeah yeah um and i just think i find like that the endorphins or the dopamine or whatever you get a hit off like just movement makes everything better you know if i'm if i've got a hangover whatever in the studio the work's never good man you know i mean it's always it's a struggle so i think like you know through the week i try and like nail at least a little bit exercise in the morning then love it it just makes it more creative there's no other way of putting it you know is are you an early riser or is it are we talking like five in the morning six in the morning and go out and watch the sunrise?

4:08You know what? I'm not a great sleeper. I probably like tops. I get six hours. So that means I'm actually late to bed and early up. Crazy. Are you on your phone? You're on Instagram, aren't you? On those short terms. No, I've done all of that kind of digital cleansing and all that. The phone's not in my bedroom anymore. Everything's out and I just read a Kindle and all that. But I'm just wired. I just wake up. I've got restless leg syndrome. So I wake up like, you know, weird energy inside of this. Weighted blanket. That's what you need. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. I've never heard that one. Weighted blanket, but you need a summer one now because it's getting warm again.

4:43So what's that then? What's a weighted blanket? It does exactly what it says on the tin. What else would it be? Basically, for restless legs, because I obviously went through a back injury, so I had a little bit of that. Did you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it just weighs your body down and it sort of helps. Apparently, it's really good for helping just calm the nerves down. Yeah, I've just got that. I feel like there's electricity inside of us and it's just like, it's really... If I jump in the shower, I'll have a shower. Sometimes I can go back to sleep. But on the whole, I have to get up in there and just do a little run or have a walk.

5:17And then I'm primed for the studio actually then. Were you always like this? Were you like this at uni? Nah, not really. Where's that come from then? Damn, man. It's just sort of... I think your sleep gets worse later as you get older. Do you know what I think? Yeah. we're gonna we're gonna become skinny again aren't we we're gonna be like our necks are gonna sort of like go forward and we're just gonna we're gonna just be a mess you know it's so funny i was in well like fingers crossed but i was um i was doing some filming yesterday and um i think i think jack who um is a brilliant filmmaker and producer he was there bless him and i was showing one of these lovely people how to do how to build a strong core she was like what's a bird dog so i was on the floor showing her how to do a bird dog what's a basically all that kind of stuff to build you know a strong body and then uh they were like so you hurt your back and then later on they were like talking about chairs and i was like oh yeah because i had a neck injury when i was 23 i did a bungee jump and they were like what the you are falling apart i said yep yep yeah so i'm i'm like if you've got any problems with your neck or your back I'm your woman I know how to fix it all you know what gets you out of it weights man weights I love them yeah yeah it's amazing for your back I had back like I wasn't like I didn't have anything what you've got you know what I mean but as soon as I started doing weights just click and I've got a stand up desk so this rises up so I shouldn't be tapping the table but that was meant at that time what chair have you got my love I don't I've got a purposely really uncomfortable chair let's have a look oh okay i've got this school chair i've got this that's nice it's like um so basically it's uh what is it again it's a caprisco hag and so it is deliberately uncomfortable so you fidget and you move around well i just i've made it deliberately uncomfortable so i never sit down generally not honestly like just don't sit down because you're smoking like i think it's like you're smoking 10 fags a day if you if you just sat down set it with lifestyle you know so just keep honestly the work this changed my life never had a bad problem since brilliant you've just tuned in to the creative boom podcast you thought it was about creative work but actually it's about health and longevity and beryl beryl beryl damn it next time i see tony i'm gonna kill him um okay what's a project you said yes to and immediately regretted now be careful there's a thing called defamation no this is a matter man because it was a i was i was so glad i uh i knocked it back weirdly enough uh a guy used to play football with really nice kid he got me involved with this project and um i was buzzing it was canny old canny old wedge and i was right in and it was for davidoff and um so i was like oh this is amazing man so he sends is the templates and stuff and I've never been that good with like you know technical templates and stuff anyway but I'm kind of like three days into this this commission it was all like kind of what he wanted was like a kind of post-modern um almost a bit like Memphis-y style 80s vibe you know like dots and colors and stuff like that and he's like well we're trying to get like you know under 25s into the brand sort of thing so I was like okay so I'm working on this thing and I'm dropping like the textures and the type and stuff on the top and I'm thinking and this is like a weird shaped aftershave box, you know?

8:55So I phones him up the same day and I'm like, Ed, what's the crap? It's like, it feels different, this, you know what I mean? He's like, well, it's basically, it's only being marketed in Russia and Thailand and it's like I said, it's to get young people into the brand, you know what I mean? I was like, all right. And I said, but the packaging, it's strange. And he says, well, that's, obviously that's where the cigarettes come out of, do you know what I mean? What? And I'm like, whoa, I dare. And Davidoff is a cigarette brand. I didn't realise, I thought, you know, Davidoff Cool Water, that's all you ever say at Christmas, you know, the adverts for it.

9:27And my whole family have died of lung cancer, basically. Anybody in the north, everybody's smoking from that generation. Awful. So I was like, bro, I'm going to have to bail on this, man. I said, I can't do it, you know. Well, no, but we've signed you up and all that. I said, no, but I thought it was after shift. I didn't realise it was fags. You thought it was going to be, you know, some lovely scent, not the waft of but just the idea that were trying to attract young people into it was just even darker you know just by making it colourful 100 % like the alcohol industry in the 90s for us isn't it weird though I've done stuff for for like beer companies and stuff before and probably out of the tune if you look do you know which one's actually more harmful for families and you know all of that malorties I'm just being truthfully and being honest would I do something for a beer band maybe it's because I have a pint and I don't smoke or something like that but it's just the effect that smoking per se has had on my family and other people I think it's quite I mean I know that they say booze can be passed on as well in terms of violence and all the rest of it yeah of course yeah gosh so was that defamation against Abiddoff no I don't think so I think that's more about your moral character that's it Yeah, yeah.

10:47Yeah. But yeah, like honestly, I think as creatives, we all have to have that difficult. There's a lane, isn't there, for everything? Yeah. You have to sort of say, is this right for us? Is it sort of aligned with my, you know, and also you talk about alcohol. Professor Nutt, who worked with the government, they hired him to do a sort of, you know. A buy his beer. A deep. Oh, is it the one with the. Yeah, Gabba. Yeah. So he did a deep dive on all drugs and alcohol came out as the most dangerous, I think. Absolutely the number one. And ecstasy was the safest. Yeah. They didn't like it, so they sacked him.

11:27Yeah, don't give it the truth. Stop with the truth. Wow. Doesn't that say something about how things are funded in terms of research? Moving swiftly on before I get in trouble. if you could steal one skill from another creative discipline overnight what would it be well I've kind of you know I've tried to spread myself across many disciplines just by collaborating with people you know what I mean like I was saying before getting them to do the bits that I don't know how to do but if I could if I could do something if I could have a skill it would be to be able to make me work 3D and sculpt to be honest because I'm crap with my hands I'm like you know the worst DIY guy in the world but I'd love to make um my kind of a lot of me hand handmade collage which is you know just let's not beat around the bush ripping things up and sticking it down with pritt stick and imagine being able to use those instincts in a in a more sculptural manner and so you know i look at like people like cause and you know how they've managed to go from just being like 2d graffiti artists to creating these huge structures you know like um Yorkshire Sculpture Park or wherever yeah um it's definitely doable you know i mean maybe more so now because of like 3d printing and stuff but just the idea of creating something with your hands just from from from beginning to end i would love to do you know maybe you should do that then maybe that's next year's project i just know that i would be it would just be such a mess you know and i'm a messy i'm a messy bastard to start off with the studio just be chaos you know are you is your big thing studio a bit untidy it's it's It's what is it?

13:05It's organised kiosk. So I know where things are basically, but my wife sometimes tidies up and I just don't know where anything is. You know, it's like I knew where that thing was behind the thing that is behind the other thing sort of thing. Yeah, fair enough. You know, it's how you work. And sometimes, you know, like I'll be looking for a specific bit of source material from some old magazines, some Swedish sewing magazine that I found in Oxfam and when I'm doing that, you know, that'll be lying on top of something else like a Dazed and Confused cover from the 90s and you get that weird thing where you're getting like different decades clashing together, you know, and it's kind of, you get this third strange meaning which comes out of the juxtaposition of those two things, you know.

13:49So by keeping it untidy, I actually get really inspired, you know. Yeah. Can I ask a really dumb question? Yeah. And remember, I'm not an artist. I'm just a journalist that ended up doing a platform for creativity and I think I feel like I've learned a little bit along the way but yeah when you're using when you're using materials to create your artworks how how is that not um just using somebody else's sort of creativity yeah do you know what I'm trying to say like is it a stupid question is there sort of like a copyright um you know clause that allows you to be creative and create your new your new kind of thing with a different medium well I mean what I would see to that is is um you know what we're all no art is created in a vacuum in a way you know we're all influenced by different stuff and what i try and do is it's getting back to that idea of juxtaposition is is to try and take a disparate um uh imagery and to give it a new meaning whether it's a contemporary meaning or by you know just by putting those two things together you get like a third a third way in a way yeah i get what you're saying you know the copyright aspect of it but if i'm finding some old sewn manual like i bought a thousand books online i bought a job lot of a thousand vintage books and this truck arrives outside my house uh with me ex-girls ex-girls and i think i may be one of the reasons that we split up and i just went through these books so some of it was like i say from stuff from the 80s other stuff from like 1920s onwards and i feel like I'm giving stuff a new life in a way like that stuff was I actually spotted the guy and he was going to dump the lot on a skip yeah you know what I mean and I came and kind of rescued it in a way shall we say so yeah yeah um in terms of like copyright I'm careful you know if you're working for a big brand or you're working for an advertising agency or whatever everything has to be cleared but if it's something that's self-initiated or it's a one-off I mean if you look at Warhol and people like that they were they were clashing things together and it was like there one-off pieces you know that he would sell on so i think it's um i think there's some rule with collage i think it's a 25 rule or something like that is that as much as you can change it if there's 25 of it that is is um it's it's it's changed enough or you know you've changed the composition enough then then then it's okay you know but i think with instagram stuff like that check this one another guy who was only cutting up um Dior um all Dior mags and I even went when I was in London I even went to like you know um D &AD um um workshops on copyright and what not to do and all that and this guy was cutting up these Dior mags his work's beautiful was stunning yeah and he um he gets an email from Dior one day he gets a DM from them and he was just saying we're chatting and he's like, oh, just shit me, sir.

16:49And I was like, oh, what's happening here? And they were like, we want to hire you, you know? You know what I mean? So it's became a bit like the way of West a little bit with Instagram. People are just putting up things that inspire them or whatever. And that guy's creating that stuff as one-off pieces. So I think, you know, all of that kind of went out the window a little bit. And I would never, you know, I would never use a photographer's work or whatever. Of course not. No, no, no. You know, if it wasn't cleared. But like, if it's just for sketchbook stuff, I think that's fine. Brilliant. I've just always wanted to know.

17:20It's just really interesting. Okay, that's cleared that up. I feel informed. What's your weirdest creative habit or ritual that you swear by? I've got a bit of a, with the chaos in my studio and with the fact that I collect so much source material, I have to have some structure within that. And what I mean by that is if I'm like, you know, just about to start on a project and I've got like, you know, know 50 drawers of different material in front of us it's you can get a bit overrode and it actually becomes um constrictive in a way having that having that much stuff to look at so i've got this thing where i um i don't know i can send you a picture of this but i've got all my drawers drawers i've got numbers on wow and and some of the some of them are kind of like i say there's a one drawer is just full of stickers there's 670 stickers another one's stamps another one is uh sometimes it's material so it's scalpels and stuff like that and then there's other stuff which is like old time life magazines.

18:18And what I do is I roll dices. So I'll roll a dice three times and then I'll end off with that number. So I'll end up working with box number three, box number six, and that's the only ones you can use. So you have to come up with stuff out of those three boxes, which means it constrains you, but it also makes you more inventive in a way because you have to get around it. And it doesn't feel like you're kind of, you've got Pandora's box in front of you, which I think can, like I say, can be constrictive. So it's a weird thing that I do, but it can be really helpful. Brilliant. Ah, that's so interesting.

18:53I feel like a studio tour's on the horizon. Well, I've started doing workshops with that exact way of doing it, you know what I mean? So I'll just bring, for a Birmingham Design Festival, I did that down there. I just did your favourite album cover, but you have to recreate it out of these things. Oh God, that's so good. What was your favourite album cover? My favourite album cover is a bit weird because it's not the best bit of art ever, but it's something that my dad gave us when I was a kid. And it's Disraeli Gears by Cream. It's Eric Clapton's band when he was on his first projects. And it's Neon.

19:25It's like one of the first Neon album covers, like 1967, something like that. It's beautiful. Beautiful, kind of very intricate, Victoriana sort of style. When the hippies were getting into Victorian stuff, basically, the vibe on it. Yeah, it was. My mum was into all of that stuff. Yeah, like Bieber, that sort of vibe. it's a beautiful like genre definitely yeah oh swirly carpets and what were those like like powdered colored bonbons they always had those in my house the pink ones

20:00oh now this is a good one so speaking of homes um if you could host a dinner party with two people dead or alive and i think you might have mentioned them in our monday's episode who's coming and why? I would say it's a bit of a weird one being an English person saying this but Maradona was always a hero without any of the hand of God stuff I've always been obsessed with like He's a great footballer He's just incredible man but like you know a bit of a tortured genius in a way as well you know kind of you know had so much talent but like you know at the other end of the scale you know he's probably an addict or whatever and the other one would be Barney Bubbles who was maybe in a similar similar vein you know was kind of lived life on both ends of the scale burnt the candle both ends sort of thing so I think Barney Bubbles because because he was analogue as well and he would say he almost created like digital looking covers just by just by using a scalpel and just you know hand hand eye coordination sort of thing so but it's just his his knowledge of like design history and fine art and you know all of the other stuff history per se he just did so many diverse things so he would do like something for like Ian Dewey you know like kind of pro-punk stuff but then would do something like a bigger album big you know Led Zeppelin and stuff like that so I think Hawkwind and all that stuff that he did Hawkwind you know kind of prog rock stuff which I was never into that sort of music but like the album covers always drew us in in a way so then too I think you could have a good old you get on it a little bit with them I think what would you cook for them?

21:41snails mine of course snails straight off the street oh my goodness me well I appreciate the honesty yes it's got to be we were in our I was in a sort of house and this was in I'm flicking through my notes because I'm trying to find last week's guest's question because we do this chain reaction where we basically ask each guest a question from the previous week from the previous guest, and I can't bloody remember what James Martin asked. I think it was something like, if you could be... James Martin the chef. No. Is he the Saturday morning kitchen? He called James Martin. I saw him once. I saw him once.

22:26He's like, why are you cooking a scargut?

22:31Oh, I love it. That's brilliant. No, he, it's the graphic designer. The graphic designer. So he's become, he's one of these amazing people that has, he's been running his successful design business, but he's absolutely run with the Instagram and the TikTok, I think. And he's created, he's turned himself into a, you know, famous creative and he's doing really, really well from there. You've seen a lot of that kid. He's been like, because I'm not on TikTok. I just think it would be like. Oh, I tried. Yeah. Yeah, man, it's a rocky road, isn't it? It's a rocky road. I mean, Instagram I'm on and I do some, I've just started to do reels and videos and things like that.

23:13We reenacted a Beastie Boys music video the other day. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're going to do another one tomorrow as well. Wow. Which one? Sabotage. Oh, you've done Sabotage. What, you did? You've already did Sabotage. No, we just did. Which one did we do? Sabotage is a lot, man. You've got to get a car and everything, you know what I mean? Well, we've got it all sorted. we've got a shoot list and we're going to be doing it around Huddersfield. So if you want to come and join us, you need to get some aviator sunglasses, a tie, a white shirt and a mullet wig. One of the best videos of all time.

23:45It's brilliant. Actually very easy to reenact. So it'll be fine. Yeah. Just lots of dodgy cop stuff, you know. Yeah, exactly. Leaning around, kind of being on the corner of a building and leaning around and talking into your smartphone. It's a bit stasking, hutching at the whole thing. I think so, yeah. I think it'll be good Now then The lovely James asks If you could be Any zoo animal What would you be And why And tell us What the ability Of said zoo animal Would appeal to you The most So it's like A three part question I mean I'd like to say Like something cool Like a leopard Or a puma Something like that You know But the monkeys Seem to have a good time man Yeah Chucking shit At each other Just chilling You know especially the gorillas I think gorillas they're the kings of the castle sort of thing and I don't know they just seem like yeah they kind of they throw their weight around a little bit but they seem to chill a lot of the time you just basically want to be you know you want to have like put 10 t-shirts on don't you yeah exactly back to cream getting the cream big rugby shirt on top what a cringe oh dear have you managed to build any muscles my power move is an Arnie press that one A little bit tiny.

25:03Yeah, my muscles are getting... You're ripped. I am ripped. Yeah, you should see my stomach. It's amazing. And my butt.

25:15Oh, dear. And before I make this any more inappropriate, thank you so much. Oh, I need to ask you, what's your question for the next guest? Which I think at this point is going to be the gorgeous Zoe Hitchen, who is a photographer, but who she is, your question should not matter. I don't know why. I went into Moira then from Schitt's Creek. Tell us, the guest, tell us your question for the next week's guest. Since we've been talking about food so much, if she had to pick one country, one nation's food to take on a desert island for the rest of her life, what would it be and why? Oh, that's a good one.

25:58Oh, she'll love that. That's brilliant. And she's just down the way in Yorkshire, so... It's going to be... She's going to go full British then, isn't she? She's going to be puddings on the island. Possibly. I think she's from Lancashire. She's from Lancashire. Oh, Lancashire girl. All right, in Pontefract Cates. Is that still Yorkshire? I don't know where she's based, you know. Somewhere she's in a lovely little idyll. Eccles Cake. That's the one. Yeah, yeah. Maybe that. All right, I'm not prejudging you, but let's see. Let's see what she has to say. Well, thank you so much for your time, Jimmy.

26:30This has been absolutely magical. Really good fun. Really good fun. All right, love. You take care. Nice one, mate. See you later.

26:38Thanks to Adobe Acrobat Studio for sponsoring this episode. Head to the link in the show notes to find out more.