Musician, March 1986: Difference between revisions
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A few months later Declan was in Hollywood. T{{nb}}Bone and recording engineer Larry Hirsch came into the TV lounge at Sunset Sound to tell him they thought they had a final mix of "You're So Lovable," an uptempo number the former Costello co-wrote with new fiancee Cait. Heading for the mixing board, Declan displayed an impressive knowledge of the technical side of record making, pinpointing an elusive echo that seemed to be on the vocal track as the fallout from an effect on the guitar. He wanted it all as dry as could be. | A few months later Declan was in Hollywood. T{{nb}}Bone and recording engineer Larry Hirsch came into the TV lounge at Sunset Sound to tell him they thought they had a final mix of "You're So Lovable," an uptempo number the former Costello co-wrote with new fiancee Cait. Heading for the mixing board, Declan displayed an impressive knowledge of the technical side of record making, pinpointing an elusive echo that seemed to be on the vocal track as the fallout from an effect on the guitar. He wanted it all as dry as could be. | ||
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T{{nb}}Bone said later, "I don't think anybody's realized yet how good he is. Because he came in on a trend that was part of a street movement in England. The guy can ''really'' sing, can ''really'' play, and can ''really'' write songs. For me one of the failings of his other records was that while the Attractions play the type of music they play brilliantly, to take them out of their idiom is really unfair to them. They end up sounding not as good as they really are. And most of this record was out of that idiom. This record is a break with his past. It's back to what he really cared about in music in the first place." | T{{nb}}Bone said later, "I don't think anybody's realized yet how good he is. Because he came in on a trend that was part of a street movement in England. The guy can ''really'' sing, can ''really'' play, and can ''really'' write songs. For me one of the failings of his other records was that while the Attractions play the type of music they play brilliantly, to take them out of their idiom is really unfair to them. They end up sounding not as good as they really are. And most of this record was out of that idiom. This record is a break with his past. It's back to what he really cared about in music in the first place." | ||
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Which is as it should be. Because these may be the best songs Elvis Costello — by any name — ever wrote. Declan stripped his work down to its emotional core, eschewing flashy chord structures and virtuosic wordplay. There is great delicacy in the composition, but not extravagance; skill and humor in the lyrics without showiness; deftness in the performances rather than flash. In its feeling of standing outside time and trends, ''King Of America'' recalls the first two LPs by the Band. Some of the album is concerned with a traveler arriving in America. This inspiration came from Declan's grandfather, a one-time ship's musician who regaled the family back in Britain with tales of New York. A less skillful writer might try to summon the disorientation of a British immigrant in the new world with images of skyscrapers or the Statue of Liberty. Declan accomplishes a lot more with the phrase, "new words for suspenders and young girls' backsides." Real funny, real evocative, and real true. | Which is as it should be. Because these may be the best songs Elvis Costello — by any name — ever wrote. Declan stripped his work down to its emotional core, eschewing flashy chord structures and virtuosic wordplay. There is great delicacy in the composition, but not extravagance; skill and humor in the lyrics without showiness; deftness in the performances rather than flash. In its feeling of standing outside time and trends, ''King Of America'' recalls the first two LPs by the Band. Some of the album is concerned with a traveler arriving in America. This inspiration came from Declan's grandfather, a one-time ship's musician who regaled the family back in Britain with tales of New York. A less skillful writer might try to summon the disorientation of a British immigrant in the new world with images of skyscrapers or the Statue of Liberty. Declan accomplishes a lot more with the phrase, "new words for suspenders and young girls' backsides." Real funny, real evocative, and real true. | ||
In the emotional intensity of its best songs, ''King Of America'' is a little like ''Blood On The Tracks''. Like Dylan Declan | In the emotional intensity of its best songs, ''King Of America'' is a little like ''Blood On The Tracks''. Like Dylan Declan seems to have used his recent emotional ups and downs to create extraordinary narratives. ''King Of America'' sounds like a record made by a man who's been through the darkest night and come out of it convinced that goodness is possible. | ||
Which is exactly the sort of pretentious rock criticism Declan MacManus hates. When we finally sat down in New York in early winter to start what became a series of interviews, the man the world still calls Elvis admitted, "Before you came over Cait said, 'Tell Bill that how you write songs is, I just say mad things and you put them down.' | Which is exactly the sort of pretentious rock criticism Declan MacManus hates. When we finally sat down in New York in early winter to start what became a series of interviews, the man the world still calls Elvis admitted, "Before you came over Cait said, 'Tell Bill that how you write songs is, I just say mad things and you put them down.' | ||
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And because I was recording with new people, when it came time to do the songs I had no way of masking it. I didn't have any mannerisms of the band to hide behind. Which I suppose is why the band didn't end up playing on much of the record. The only mannerisms were my own limitations of pitch, of voice, of technical ability. By the time we finished the record I felt more at ease with the strangers than with the Attractions. It was weird. | And because I was recording with new people, when it came time to do the songs I had no way of masking it. I didn't have any mannerisms of the band to hide behind. Which I suppose is why the band didn't end up playing on much of the record. The only mannerisms were my own limitations of pitch, of voice, of technical ability. By the time we finished the record I felt more at ease with the strangers than with the Attractions. It was weird. | ||
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''How did you approach working with such a range of musicians? | ''How did you approach working with such a range of musicians? | ||
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The Attractions played really good on "Suit Of Lights" and we got some other things in the can that will come out as B-sides.The band that got the most tracks on the record, the TCB Band, were also the people who recorded in the first weeks, so I'm not saying any one group of musicians were better than any others. I'm finding it a lot more fun to go in and do it like this, and the results seem to be better. Next year I might do something completely different. | The Attractions played really good on "Suit Of Lights" and we got some other things in the can that will come out as B-sides.The band that got the most tracks on the record, the TCB Band, were also the people who recorded in the first weeks, so I'm not saying any one group of musicians were better than any others. I'm finding it a lot more fun to go in and do it like this, and the results seem to be better. Next year I might do something completely different. | ||
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''When you sing "I was a fine idea" — or ideal — "at the time / Now I'm a brilliant mistake," it sounds like a sadder, wiser sequel to your old notion of "This year's model." | ''When you sing "I was a fine idea" — or ideal — "at the time / Now I'm a brilliant mistake," it sounds like a sadder, wiser sequel to your old notion of "This year's model." | ||
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''When you say you dismantled the "affected complexities" of your songwriting for your first album, do you mean because of the punk climate in England at the time? | ''When you say you dismantled the "affected complexities" of your songwriting for your first album, do you mean because of the punk climate in England at the time? | ||
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I went out and got those records, the Pistols album and the Clash records, and I thought, "This is what's getting all the attention." I knew that the songs I'd written would sound really precocious, I knew they had a lot of American influences and that was very out of fashion. I thought I would just get dismissed out of hand. My accent on the first record sounds much more American than it does now. I can't get away from it; it's just the way I learned to sing. I suppose it's derived from the singers I really admired at the time — Rick Danko, Van Morrison, Randy Newman. It never occurred to me. That's why Johnny Rotten was so great: he was the first actual English rock 'n' roll singer. | I went out and got those records, the Pistols album and the Clash records, and I thought, "This is what's getting all the attention." I knew that the songs I'd written would sound really precocious, I knew they had a lot of American influences and that was very out of fashion. I thought I would just get dismissed out of hand. My accent on the first record sounds much more American than it does now. I can't get away from it; it's just the way I learned to sing. I suppose it's derived from the singers I really admired at the time — Rick Danko, Van Morrison, Randy Newman. It never occurred to me. That's why Johnny Rotten was so great: he was the first actual English rock 'n' roll singer. | ||
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The songs were influenced by success, the change, the fact there was now an audience, and by the increasing experimentation in my life, including drinking too much, taking drugs, and things that change the way you write only in that they slightly change the process of your ''thinking''. | The songs were influenced by success, the change, the fact there was now an audience, and by the increasing experimentation in my life, including drinking too much, taking drugs, and things that change the way you write only in that they slightly change the process of your ''thinking''. | ||
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On the one hand I was looking out the window of a bus driving through America, going to Manhattan for the first time, absorbing all these things like a movie going by. At the same time there were the rigors of being in a professional band and working much harder than I'd ever imagined working. | On the one hand I was looking out the window of a bus driving through America, going to Manhattan for the first time, absorbing all these things like a movie going by. At the same time there were the rigors of being in a professional band and working much harder than I'd ever imagined working. | ||
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Sometimes I'd exasperate the band by changing the arrangement every ten minutes. Then I'd start re-writing in the studio, saying, "What we need is a couple of extra chords here!" By the fourth and fifth albums a lot of our songs had irregular structures, so they were hard to learn. And I'd start knocking out bars and bits. We worked from very rough chord charts, and that makes it harder to adapt quickly. "King Horse" has three superficially similar-sounding verses which are all totally different in length and chordal structure. It would be quite frustrating for the Attractions if I kept saying, "What we need to do is add an extra bit here!" Then I'd decide to change the whole rhythmic feel. By that point the bass parts, particularly, would be a problem. Some of the songs had too many chords for the bass player [Bruce Thomas] to get around fluidly, and then, once he'd found a bass pattern that would work around those changes, I'd halve the feel or something. Which made his job even more impossible. We'd quite frequently go through frustrating rounds of a couple of hours of finding a feel that felt right for me to sing it in, and then find that by playing it like that the song was now seven minutes long. | Sometimes I'd exasperate the band by changing the arrangement every ten minutes. Then I'd start re-writing in the studio, saying, "What we need is a couple of extra chords here!" By the fourth and fifth albums a lot of our songs had irregular structures, so they were hard to learn. And I'd start knocking out bars and bits. We worked from very rough chord charts, and that makes it harder to adapt quickly. "King Horse" has three superficially similar-sounding verses which are all totally different in length and chordal structure. It would be quite frustrating for the Attractions if I kept saying, "What we need to do is add an extra bit here!" Then I'd decide to change the whole rhythmic feel. By that point the bass parts, particularly, would be a problem. Some of the songs had too many chords for the bass player [Bruce Thomas] to get around fluidly, and then, once he'd found a bass pattern that would work around those changes, I'd halve the feel or something. Which made his job even more impossible. We'd quite frequently go through frustrating rounds of a couple of hours of finding a feel that felt right for me to sing it in, and then find that by playing it like that the song was now seven minutes long. | ||
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''When you were recording in this hyped-up state did you and the other musicians get into tugs of war over which way to pull a song? | ''When you were recording in this hyped-up state did you and the other musicians get into tugs of war over which way to pull a song? | ||
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I probably wrote too many songs and made too many albums. I think I've made twelve albums. Twelve albums is a lot in eight years. Inevitably a quarter of the songs must not be worth having ''written'', let alone recorded. Just by the law of averages. [Laughs] Some people would tell you it's quite a bit more. | I probably wrote too many songs and made too many albums. I think I've made twelve albums. Twelve albums is a lot in eight years. Inevitably a quarter of the songs must not be worth having ''written'', let alone recorded. Just by the law of averages. [Laughs] Some people would tell you it's quite a bit more. | ||
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''Yet you have fans who hang on every word. | ''Yet you have fans who hang on every word. | ||
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I'd been listening to a lot of standards, and thinking maybe I could write something styled after that, sort of crossed with baroque psychedelic records like the Left Banke. I had lots of piano meanderings. I sent one tune to Sammy Cahn to see if he could write lyrics for it! This sounds a bit pompous, but I had this mad notion that I wanted a link with that era. He's a bit of an old ham, but he wrote "All The Way" — and that's a pretty good song. I talked to him on the phone and he was a bit bemused by me, I think. But in the end the piece was far too meandering in structure for him to get an idea of and he sent it back. Chris Difford then wrote some lyrics for it and it became "Boy With A Problem." | I'd been listening to a lot of standards, and thinking maybe I could write something styled after that, sort of crossed with baroque psychedelic records like the Left Banke. I had lots of piano meanderings. I sent one tune to Sammy Cahn to see if he could write lyrics for it! This sounds a bit pompous, but I had this mad notion that I wanted a link with that era. He's a bit of an old ham, but he wrote "All The Way" — and that's a pretty good song. I talked to him on the phone and he was a bit bemused by me, I think. But in the end the piece was far too meandering in structure for him to get an idea of and he sent it back. Chris Difford then wrote some lyrics for it and it became "Boy With A Problem." | ||
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I can't actually play any instrument properly. I can't read music. And here's the ''New York Times'' calling me the new George Gershwin. It was so ridiculous, really embarrassing. It was embarrassing to watch these people fall into the trap of their own critical conceits. And it tainted what I was doing, as if the conceits were my own! I simply liked those records. Like, "Almost Blue" is directly modeled on Bill Henderson's "The Thrill Is Gone." It's not close enough to be a plagiarism suit, but it's transparently modeled after it. I had Chet Baker in my head when I wrote it. But it's a sincere lyric, and if the tune's not totally original, there are millions of songs based on that kind of minor blues progression. You don't have to be a virtuoso to write those. | I can't actually play any instrument properly. I can't read music. And here's the ''New York Times'' calling me the new George Gershwin. It was so ridiculous, really embarrassing. It was embarrassing to watch these people fall into the trap of their own critical conceits. And it tainted what I was doing, as if the conceits were my own! I simply liked those records. Like, "Almost Blue" is directly modeled on Bill Henderson's "The Thrill Is Gone." It's not close enough to be a plagiarism suit, but it's transparently modeled after it. I had Chet Baker in my head when I wrote it. But it's a sincere lyric, and if the tune's not totally original, there are millions of songs based on that kind of minor blues progression. You don't have to be a virtuoso to write those. | ||
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Sometimes when you're found out you run for cover. You don't want to admit it. There are certain songs I'd be fearful of when I sing them, either because I associated them with some time I didn't want to consider, or because they said something so bleakly personal that even the morbidity of the song didn't do justice to the darkness of the thought behind it. For "Man Out Of Time" I invented a series of stories to illustrate the point of the song. But it could have been just a simple country song based around the four lines of the chorus. When I consider what the words are and what made me think that way.... If somebody said, "I've got you now" and pinned you down and put a spotlight on what you felt at that moment, it gets embarrassing. It's too personal and it's too important to you. It's embarrassing to other people and it's just not polite. It's like farting at the table. | Sometimes when you're found out you run for cover. You don't want to admit it. There are certain songs I'd be fearful of when I sing them, either because I associated them with some time I didn't want to consider, or because they said something so bleakly personal that even the morbidity of the song didn't do justice to the darkness of the thought behind it. For "Man Out Of Time" I invented a series of stories to illustrate the point of the song. But it could have been just a simple country song based around the four lines of the chorus. When I consider what the words are and what made me think that way.... If somebody said, "I've got you now" and pinned you down and put a spotlight on what you felt at that moment, it gets embarrassing. It's too personal and it's too important to you. It's embarrassing to other people and it's just not polite. It's like farting at the table. | ||
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''After the excursions of ''Almost Blue'' and ''Imperial Bedroom'', ''Punch The Clock'' found you back in the pop/rock style. Why did you pick Clive Langer to produce that album? | ''After the excursions of ''Almost Blue'' and ''Imperial Bedroom'', ''Punch The Clock'' found you back in the pop/rock style. Why did you pick Clive Langer to produce that album? | ||
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On ''Goodbye Cruel World'' I had another moment where I thought I wasn't going to do it much longer. That's the only time I ever wrote by going and sitting in an office. I put an electric grand piano and an amp and an acoustic guitar in there and deliberately didn't let myself write any place else. Usually I collect fragments of songs — verses, titles, lines — over a period of time. I might write a song in ten minutes, I might write it over two weeks. It's like a water tank filling up; enough time goes by collecting phrases and fragments and at some point songs start coming out. The only time I ever stopped the process was when ''Goodbye Cruel World'' was coming up. I didn't let the songs come out. I deliberately stopped myself. Just to see what would happen if I waited and then went and sat in a room and let it all come out in a rush. I didn't know if it would make it better or worse. Some of the songs on that record were pretty good. As songs they're much better than the ones on ''Punch The Clock''. It's also the worst record I ever made. ''Punch The Clock'', for all I don't like about it, is the record we went in to make. When we went in I was going to make ''Goodbye Cruel World'' almost a folk record. Clive and Alan really didn't want to do it. I said, "I don't really know who else I can ask. Will you do it anyway?" Clive said the songs didn't fit their style of production. I said, "I know that, but you do know how to put things on tape. Just sit there and do that." | On ''Goodbye Cruel World'' I had another moment where I thought I wasn't going to do it much longer. That's the only time I ever wrote by going and sitting in an office. I put an electric grand piano and an amp and an acoustic guitar in there and deliberately didn't let myself write any place else. Usually I collect fragments of songs — verses, titles, lines — over a period of time. I might write a song in ten minutes, I might write it over two weeks. It's like a water tank filling up; enough time goes by collecting phrases and fragments and at some point songs start coming out. The only time I ever stopped the process was when ''Goodbye Cruel World'' was coming up. I didn't let the songs come out. I deliberately stopped myself. Just to see what would happen if I waited and then went and sat in a room and let it all come out in a rush. I didn't know if it would make it better or worse. Some of the songs on that record were pretty good. As songs they're much better than the ones on ''Punch The Clock''. It's also the worst record I ever made. ''Punch The Clock'', for all I don't like about it, is the record we went in to make. When we went in I was going to make ''Goodbye Cruel World'' almost a folk record. Clive and Alan really didn't want to do it. I said, "I don't really know who else I can ask. Will you do it anyway?" Clive said the songs didn't fit their style of production. I said, "I know that, but you do know how to put things on tape. Just sit there and do that." | ||
But their production process is completely at odds with that. We play live; but they assemble things. Halfway through they talked me into doing some songs their way. Clive said,"Well, there'll be a contrast between the songs." Then we started doing things like "I Wanna Be Loved" and "The Only Flame In Town," which was a perfectly good 6/8 R&B ballad I'd written with Aaron Neville in mind that we jazzed up into a hyperactive pop record — a second division "Everyday I Write The Book." It actually made the song sound less sincere. It was nice on the radio, but it didn't have any feeling at all. | But their production process is completely at odds with that. We play live; but they assemble things. Halfway through they talked me into doing ''some'' songs their way. Clive said,"Well, there'll be a contrast between the songs." Then we started doing things like "I Wanna Be Loved" and "The Only Flame In Town," which was a perfectly good 6/8 R&B ballad I'd written with Aaron Neville in mind that we jazzed up into a hyperactive pop record — a second division "Everyday I Write The Book." It actually made the song sound less sincere. It was nice on the radio, but it didn't have any feeling at all. | ||
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And I let the keyboard parts get disproportionate to the strengths of the melodies, the weightiness of the arrangements, because Clive's production ethic leans heavily on keyboards. The actual nuts and bolts of recording became longer hours. Instead of doing it spontaneously it became a crafted thing. I was guilty of losing patience with being in the studio so long. A lot of strange sounds that I didn't like crept onto that record. Some of the keyboard things didn't make any sense at all. Like on "The Deportees Club," a funny, ranty song that suddenly had all these serious synthesized keyboards. It was that problem of a sound being made obsolete by the next synthesizer to come out three months later.That record is identifiably the 1984 DX7 synthesizer. It gives a bit of a "flavor of the month" aftertaste to the whole record. You can't hear any of the songs! | And I let the keyboard parts get disproportionate to the strengths of the melodies, the weightiness of the arrangements, because Clive's production ethic leans heavily on keyboards. The actual nuts and bolts of recording became longer hours. Instead of doing it spontaneously it became a crafted thing. I was guilty of losing patience with being in the studio so long. A lot of strange sounds that I didn't like crept onto that record. Some of the keyboard things didn't make any sense at all. Like on "The Deportees Club," a funny, ranty song that suddenly had all these serious synthesized keyboards. It was that problem of a sound being made obsolete by the next synthesizer to come out three months later.That record is identifiably the 1984 DX7 synthesizer. It gives a bit of a "flavor of the month" aftertaste to the whole record. You can't hear any of the songs! | ||
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Yeah, that song's about why I couldn't write rock 'n' roll songs anymore. The opening line ("How many times can you jump out of the cupboard before someone gets suspicious or someone gets discovered") is about the disproportionate importance placed on rock 'n' roll, particularly in America. It's about the Elvis Presley industry, all that bloody nonsense, how it's all blown up, including the stuff I've been party to. It's a bit of a write-off. "Sour Milk Cow Blues" is another one. It's a bit of an update (on Presley's "Milk Cow Blues Boogie"); that world has turned sour. | Yeah, that song's about why I couldn't write rock 'n' roll songs anymore. The opening line ("How many times can you jump out of the cupboard before someone gets suspicious or someone gets discovered") is about the disproportionate importance placed on rock 'n' roll, particularly in America. It's about the Elvis Presley industry, all that bloody nonsense, how it's all blown up, including the stuff I've been party to. It's a bit of a write-off. "Sour Milk Cow Blues" is another one. It's a bit of an update (on Presley's "Milk Cow Blues Boogie"); that world has turned sour. | ||
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I said I used to write the songs from looking out a window. Now I was writing from looking at the television, the stupid things that jump out at you but aren't worth a whole song. You see a preacher with his hand up saying he'll heal you through the screen. You could write some witty singer/songwriter song about that. You could see some people I really like, like Randy Newman or Loudon Wainwright, doing that. But so what? That's a trap in itself. So I just dashed off a lot of these things, but in the end the record didn't cut it musically and the whole thing was a waste. | I said I used to write the songs from looking out a window. Now I was writing from looking at the television, the stupid things that jump out at you but aren't worth a whole song. You see a preacher with his hand up saying he'll heal you through the screen. You could write some witty singer/songwriter song about that. You could see some people I really like, like Randy Newman or Loudon Wainwright, doing that. But so what? That's a trap in itself. So I just dashed off a lot of these things, but in the end the record didn't cut it musically and the whole thing was a waste. | ||
I always had this credo of simple performances; that a song that was a real song could be played on the piano or guitar and didn't need a symphonic production extravaganza to make it live. That really brings me to the current record. It's to T{{nb}}Bone's credit as a producer that he pushed me toward thinking like that. We sat and prepared and talked a lot about those things. Not to get fraught about the artistic creation, but to keep reminding myself what records I really like, to not get too affected by pop. | I always had this credo of simple performances; that a song that was a real ''song'' could be played on the piano or guitar and didn't need a symphonic production extravaganza to make it live. That really brings me to the current record. It's to T{{nb}}Bone's credit as a producer that he pushed me toward thinking like that. We sat and prepared and talked a lot about those things. Not to get fraught about the artistic creation, but to keep reminding myself what records I really like, to not get too affected by pop. | ||
I've lost interest in pop music. Most of it bores the pants off me. You get to the point where you're looking for something new to like and you convince yourself you love a record that's a load of crap. There's nothing wrong with listening to the same record twice, whether it's five minutes old or twenty years old. I've lost my love for the neurosis of the pop process. My new songs are clearly written; there are less obscure meanings in them. There's less trickery in the words. It's recorded and arranged in such a way as to put the voice and the song absolutely first. I just tried to talk more straight. | I've lost interest in pop music. Most of it bores the pants off me. You get to the point where you're looking for something new to like and you convince yourself you love a record that's a load of crap. There's nothing wrong with listening to the same record twice, whether it's five minutes old or twenty years old. I've lost my love for the neurosis of the pop process. My new songs are clearly written; there are less obscure meanings in them. There's less trickery in the words. It's recorded and arranged in such a way as to put the voice and the song absolutely first. I just tried to talk more straight. | ||
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That's as clear as I'm capable of making it now. Maybe I'll get more clear, but I think any more than that might put me in danger of becoming the very thing I said I abhorred: the "Fuck me, I'm sensitive" school. | That's as clear as I'm capable of making it now. Maybe I'll get more clear, but I think any more than that might put me in danger of becoming the very thing I said I abhorred: the "Fuck me, I'm sensitive" school. | ||
Once I discovered ambiguity and irony could be strong techniques, I started thinking that obscurity was as well. You start kidding yourself that a song is really evocative, and it's just muddled. If the music isn't clear it isn't evocative. | Once I discovered ambiguity and irony could be strong techniques, I started thinking that ''obscurity'' was as well. You start kidding yourself that a song is really evocative, and it's just muddled. If the music isn't clear it ''isn't'' evocative. | ||
I never thought of it like "This is my quest! I must be clearer!" But that's the way it came out and maybe it's time to stop messing about and hiding behind things. One of those two songs is very sad and one's very loving, and that's as clear as I could possibly make them now. | I never thought of it like "This is my quest! I must be clearer!" But that's the way it came out and maybe it's time to stop messing about and hiding behind things. One of those two songs is very sad and one's very loving, and that's as clear as I could possibly make them now. | ||
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''Whereas in "Indoor Fireworks" when you say, "I'll build a bonfire of my dreams and burn a broken effigy of me and you," the fact that it extends the fire metaphor is completely secondary to the emotion. | ''Whereas in "Indoor Fireworks" when you say, "I'll build a bonfire of my dreams and burn a broken effigy of me and you," the fact that it extends the fire metaphor is completely secondary to the emotion. | ||
I tried to write one that had some chill in it. Like "May Ye Never Be Alone." I was aiming up there. Whereas when I wrote "The Only Flame In Town" I was trying to write like Allen Toussaint. I was thinking, "How tough does Hank Williams ever get?" He didn't ever shy away from the matter. If you're going to be true to yourself you've got to say, "Could I say it as cold as Hank Williams did?" You have to keep reminding yourself how strong the really strong songs are. | I tried to write one that had some chill in it. Like "May Ye Never Be Alone." I was aiming up ''there''. Whereas when I wrote "The Only Flame In Town" I was trying to write like Allen Toussaint. I was thinking, "How tough does Hank Williams ever get?" He didn't ever shy away from the matter. If you're going to be true to yourself you've got to say, "Could I say it as cold as Hank Williams did?" You have to keep reminding yourself how strong the really strong songs are. | ||
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Revision as of 16:10, 29 June 2021
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