Steve Earle interview: Why I am a Harry Potter fan

Steve Earle might just get away with being cast as Rubeus Hagrid yet it still comes as a surprise to learn that one of America's renowned firebrand singers is a Harry Potter fan.

There's really no holding back Earle at the moment. His excellent new album is out in April, he's one of the guest television stars on HBO's acclaimed new series Treme and he's written his first novel, I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive - also the title of his new CD.

The full-length novel seems to be the most challenging adventure - so what were his literary influences?

Earle, speaking from New York, told the Telegraph: "I mainly read non-fiction, and that's probably because I have a huge amount of insecurity about my lack of education and the things I don't know. But I loved the Harry Potter books. When the Potter 'Phoenix' book was released in 2003 I was living with a woman and her 10-year daughter and we went out at midnight to get a new copy. There were kids lined up to buy a f------ book. I thought that was so cool. I know a lot of kids gave up on the Potter books but I read every one.

"I also tend to re-read the fiction I liked when I was younger, like Tolkien. I was that hippie generation, don't forget. The British artistic socialists tend to believe that George Orwell got f----- over when Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings beat 1984 to be named 'Book Of The Century' but maybe they forget Orwell renounced socialism before he died.

"Another book I really loved was Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through The Slaughter, a historical account of Buddy Bolden's last few years. Fiction is what I read least and then it tends to take the place of drugs. I get addicted and go back to things like Tolkien.

"Poetry is another of my other loves - Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, the poet Michael Longley from Northern Ireland. They're terrific."

The title of Earle's own novel, which will be published in Britain in July by Harvill Secker, is a reference to a Hank Williams' song - and the ghost of that great singer is one of the main characters of the book. "It's really weird, full of heroin and ghosts - it's sort of a Harry Potter book for adults," Earle added.

It took eight years, on and off, for Earle to finish I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive. He added: "My father passed away three years ago and a lot of the book relates to questions of mortality. He died in 2007 at the age of 74 but the last few months when he was ill was a period when I was thinking a lot about the themes that would come out in the book and the record. Both are about the same things, really, and that's why they have the same title. I was trying to push the poetics of the lyrics as far to the right of the decimal point as possible. All the writing has helped me become a better songwriter."

Of course for a lifelong musician and song-writer, there were major differences in committing to a novel, especially for someone who admits he is a "slow typist".

"I had to be careful about how I wrote. I couldn't listen to songs with words while I was so sometimes I would have jazz on in the background. The book was written over about eight years in six or eight separate marches. It was started before I met and married Alison [the celebrated country singer Alison Moorer] but I began really writing in earnest in Barcelona about six years ago. I got a lot done there when we went in the summer we married in 2005. Alison used to hear me read some out to her."

Earle, whose political songwriting has created waves in America, is an unlikely candidate to be a bandwagon celebrity writer and as his music is so highly praised, is he worried about bad reviews in this new territory?

"There's nothing I can do about what reviewers will say. When I wrote some short stories before the reviews were pretty good, except for the New York Times, who called it "a vanity project" by a songwriter. It wasn't. I paint too and I don't care what people think of that. The review was one of those things and it won't stop me from writing if I decide it's worth the torture. In any case, I have an idea for a new book."

He's certainly likely to get plaudits for his excellent new album, which was produced by T Bone Burnett and is due out on the 26th April.

Earle said: "It surprised me how pleased I was with the new album. We recorded it really quickly, in just five days, and then T-Bone and I did a lot of mixing. I had been on a solo tour so that had influenced me as well. Because it was T-Bone I didn't want to work with my regular band. It was my call to have a fiddle player. Sara Watkin played great fiddle and sings as well on I Am A Wanderer. It's more country - but my idea of country music."

One lovely track is called God Is God, but it's a song with a message that could easily be delivered by Wallon - the drug counsellor character Earle played so powerfully in the award-winning HBO series The Wire.

Earle, whose own battles with drug addiction have been well documented, explained: "It was the first song I wrote for the album so it's the oldest. I originally wrote it for Joan Baez, when I produced her album, and I said to her people are going to think you're on the 12-Step programme. I'm not a Christian but it's about my spiritual system. I'll probably give her a copy of the CD when I am in San Francisco for an Amnesty event soon."

Another exceptional song, This City, is used as the closing song to the first series of Treme - and Earle, with his talented singer son Justin Townes Earle - make guest appearances on the show as musicians.

Earle said: "When I was on The Wire I had heard that Treme was coming. And Wendell Pierce [Detective Bunk Moreland] is from New Orleans. It gives the show an authenticity. The music was all live when they were filming. Even when the actors could not play an instrument, the musician was just off stage as recording was taking place. I grew up in Texas but spent a lot of time in New Orleans. I didn't think I could live there, though. I'd have been a corpse in a few years.

"New Orleans is a unique environment. The show's co-creator David Simon finds it very gratifying that the locals like the show. I think he cares more about that than any reviews or popularity. Yet I think all the acting has also helped me become a better performer."

David Simon asked Earle to write a new song that sounded as if it could have been composed in New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina - and This City earned the singer a Grammy nomination in the Best Song Written For Motion Picture category.

Earle recalled: "We recorded the song This City and Allen Toussaint came straight from a Gulf Aid benefit in a silver Rolls and he took off his dinner jacket and hours later, with the help of T-Bone Burnett, we had this great record and great song. That song was like a second chance. I should have recorded it after the hurricane."

If all this wasn't enough in Earle's life, he also recently became a father again at the age of 55.

He said: "My wife thinks I'm crazy. I don't sleep as much as I should. I'm the last person to bed and usually the first person up - although sometimes our new baby John Henry beats me. As you get into your mid-fifties I guess you have to take better care of yourself but I'm trying to get as much out of the moments as I can.

"Alison was over in England in January working with the Transatlantic Session tours, and a friend of ours acted as nanny. I was going to go but then was on call for Treme."

Earle is now on his seventh marriage but seems at ease with himself as an older father. He said: "The issues of being a parent now are very different. I was very present in Justin's life when he was very young but with my other son Ian, after the marriage had broken down, I was absent. But I re-connected with them both and we are close. They call me a lot and not just when they need money. But I'm going to be a better father. It's a case of 'If I knew then...' well I'm in my mid-fifties so I better put my money where my mouth is and be a better father. I can't use youth as an excuse.

"Family is important. It was my mum's younger brother who got me into music initially. He bought me my first three guitars and my first Beatles album. He was a musician but he had a bad drugs and alcohol problem so never had a major record deal. He died this February at the age of 61. He was only five years older than me. But if I hadn't been for him I might not have ended up a musician."

Earle has faced his own battles in life. Drugs, failed marriages, a spell in jail - but he remains remarkably upbeat and positive about life. Asked about his outlook, he returns to the question of writing.

"One writer who really bums me out is Cormac McCarthy," said Earle.

"He has great chops as a writer but his views burn me out. Intent matters. His view seems to be that nothing is gonna be done to stop things turning out bad. I don't want to give up on us. I love the Coen Brothers and I loved the film No Country For Old Men but I haven't wanted to watch it again. I think it adds up, what our intentions are.

"I mean, the human race survived the Inquisition. We can survive. It's like the Anne Frank quote: 'in spite of everything I still believe that people are basically good at heart' Given what happened to her it's one of the miracles of the world that she said that.

"This is where I disagree with Cormac McCarthy because I am not pessimistic about anything. Having a child at 55 . . . that's optimism."