MOST RECALL the hit "Cruel to be Kind" or may know that Nick Lowe wrote the often-covered "(What's so Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding." But with the prints he's left on albums produced for Elvis Costello, the Damned, the Pretenders and more, as a member of Brinsley Schwarz and Rockpile, and in the honest, graceful solo albums of recent years — the latest is 2007's "At My Age" — Lowe has been keeping rock interesting, on many more levels, for decades.

In 1978, his debut solo album, released as "Pure Pop for Now People" in the United States, that panned pop as ingeniously as it showed his finesse with it, wasn't released under its intended title until this February with the bonus track-rich reissue of "Jesus of Cool."

Dan Burn-Forti (ENLARGE)
Nick Lowe, who says 'it's always much more fun to just be on the brink of making it,' will play April 22 at Variety Playhouse.
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In revisiting the album, how do you feel about it now? Does it seem like a different guy?

It's definitely a different guy, but I can sympathize with that young fellow. I hadn't listened to the album in about 30 years. It's like the equivalent of seeing a home movie of yourself: You kind of recoil in horror from your hairstyle, the clothes you're wearing, the antics you're getting up to. I wouldn't have admitted it then, but looking back I think I actually knew I had talent. It wasn't what you might call fully formed, but at the same time I realized my time had come.

Yet it turned out to be an influential album in its own right.

I don't know how it influenced anybody, really, but I knew people would check the record out because I had a lot of success producing albums for other people at that time, most notably Elvis Costello, so I knew people would listen to it, but I didn't really think it was much good.

Was it received differently than you intended?

I thought it was [lyrically] cheeky and irreverent, and I thought that's the part that would stick. Musically, there are a lot of blatant steals from other people's records, which was thought of as really uncool in the mainstream to do that sort of thing back then, but I made a virtue of it.

You were an influential figure in punk and new wave, and there was a time when what you were doing was right in step with popular music. Then on your later albums it seemed that your styles starting going backward in time toward pre-rock sounds. Did you make a conscious choice to not absorb current musical fashion?

I've always liked being an outsider, ever since I had an early brush with stardom at a very early age, and it was awful. I made up my mind then that if I saw myself ever getting really huge — which was very unlikely [because] I'm much too lazy a person — but if I ever saw myself getting that way, I would take steps to make sure it didn't happen because it's always much more fun to just be on the brink of making it. It's just about the most exciting place you can be. It's no fun being unknown and working away, and it's awful being really famous.

Many of your fans feel you haven't been given what you are due.

I rest very easy at night with the way things are. Believe me, I've seen [fame] at close range. It's absolutely vile. When my career as a pop star finished, which was about 1981, I saw it coming because I'd been a record producer as well, so I had my feet in both camps. When it did come, I totaled it up: I had a couple of hits, I produced some good records, written some songs for other people.

Where did the resolve to go on come from?

I couldn't do anything else [besides make music], and I certainly didn't want to be reliving the '70s for the rest of my life, as some people are condemned to do. I wanted to do something that could bring myself on and that could be elegant. Something I could be proud of and not embarrassed by. ... So I started working, even back then, on a way of re-presenting myself and writing and recording myself, which would take advantage of the fact that I was getting older as opposed to it being a hindrance. So that even youngsters would say, oh, I can't wait to be as old as Nick Lowe.

• THE 411: Nick Lowe with Ron Sexsmith. $25. 8 p.m. April 22. Variety Playhouse. 1099 Euclid Ave. Atlanta. 404-524-7354, www.variety-playhouse.com, www.ticketmaster.com.