356. Stan Grant on Jonathan Wilson 'Gentle Spirit' (2011)

My Favorite Album with Jeremy Dylan

Today, Australian broadcasting legend Stan Grant joins me to talk about friend of the show Jonathan Wilson’s quasi-debut ‘Gentle Spirit’. Stan opens up about how he discovered the record while dealing with PTSD and the emotional fall out of years embedded in war zones as a foreign correspondent. We talk about how this album revealed Wilson as a songwriter and artist in his own right, as he was mainly known as a great producer and instrumentalist. We break down the influences on the record, from Neil Young to Pink Floyd to The Beatles and more, and how Wilson stays on the right side of inspiration rather than pastiche. We talk about why Stan never became a musician himself, his memories of seeing Wilson play live in LA and how music has influenced Stan’s writing.