Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo

Transcript

Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. I initially reached out to you because I didn't
0:22
Speaker 1: realize when Bob Weir passed away that you were a fan.
0:26
Speaker 1: And I had only started getting into The Dead since
0:29
Speaker 1: about 2020 when it clicked for me. The great thing
0:32
Speaker 1: about music is there's always these great catalogs just kind
0:36
Speaker 1: of waiting to be found. And Sonic Youth similarly in
0:40
Speaker 1: the last five years clicked for me. Not that I
0:43
Speaker 1: didn't like Sonic Youth before, but I think I was
0:46
Speaker 1: a little scared of you guys because, you know, it
0:48
Speaker 1: just seemed very intimidating as a, you know, I was like,
0:51
Speaker 1: I don't, there's already so much that felt like so
0:55
Speaker 1: much cooler than me as a kid. And then it
0:56
Speaker 1: was like, Sonic, he's another level beyond that.
1:02
Speaker 2: You know, we were, we were like fun loving goofballs,
1:06
Speaker 2: you know, but for some reason, especially early in our career,
1:09
Speaker 2: we had this weird reputation where people were a little
1:12
Speaker 2: afraid of us for some reason. They thought, because the
1:15
Speaker 2: music was ferocious that we were going to be ferocious
1:18
Speaker 2: as people as well, which was not the case at all,
1:21
Speaker 2: you know?
1:21
Speaker 1: And now that I know you guys are familiar, more
1:24
Speaker 1: familiar with you guys, it's not that way, but you
1:25
Speaker 1: guys were in a time when purity mattered a lot
1:28
Speaker 1: and authenticity, you guys were like the gold standard. It
1:30
Speaker 1: was like, you know, you couldn't get better. You pegged
1:33
Speaker 1: everything against, you know, Sonic Youth. And so it was
1:35
Speaker 1: kind of like, oh man, I don't, you know, I
1:37
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm cool enough, you know?
1:39
Speaker 2: So you never saw us play?
1:41
Speaker 1: You know, I probably did at a festival at some,
1:43
Speaker 1: at some point. Maybe so. Maybe so. I'm sure I
1:47
Speaker 1: did a bunch of L.A.
1:48
Speaker 2: Festivals for one thing. Obviously, we played a lot of festivals. But,
1:51
Speaker 2: you know, since Kim was based in or Kim grew
1:54
Speaker 2: up in L.A., we spent a lot of time in L.A. And,
1:56
Speaker 2: you know, our record company was in L.A. And we
2:00
Speaker 2: played a lot out there, which was really cool for
2:02
Speaker 2: me to be able to spend a lot of time
2:04
Speaker 2: in L.A. because I really love it.
2:05
Speaker 1: Really?
2:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, we played at like Al's Bar. And was there
2:09
Speaker 2: a place called Club Lingerie?
2:11
Speaker 1: I think that was in LA. I was too young
2:13
Speaker 1: for that, but I've heard of Club Lingerie.
2:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, we played those places. And we played the Roxy
2:16
Speaker 2: and stuff like that as well at some points.
2:19
Speaker 1: Did you guys... Yeah, it's funny, and I guess it's
2:21
Speaker 1: the Kim connection, but it does feel like there's a
2:25
Speaker 1: bit of... Between SST and Geffen, you just feel like
2:30
Speaker 1: there's a strong... And then Death Valley 69. It feels
2:33
Speaker 1: like there's a West Coast streak that runs through... Sonic Youth. Yeah, yeah.
2:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. And we were totally
2:41
Speaker 2: fascinated with that, especially that period of the Beach Boys
2:45
Speaker 2: on the one hand and Peace and Love and Manson
2:48
Speaker 2: on the other hand. That's the period I was talking about, actually.
2:51
Speaker 2: When that song came out, it was one of the
2:53
Speaker 2: first songs that a lot of people heard. We'd be
2:57
Speaker 2: going around and people would imagine that they were going
3:00
Speaker 2: to meet a bunch of Mansonites or something like that,
3:03
Speaker 2: and which couldn't have been further from the truth or
3:06
Speaker 2: further from the kind of the subject matter of the
3:08
Speaker 2: song in a way. That was funny. People, people had
3:11
Speaker 2: a certain impression of us because the music was ferocious.
3:14
Speaker 2: You know, I used to say that we were friends
3:17
Speaker 2: with a lot of bands in New York in the
3:19
Speaker 2: early days that were living really edgy lifestyles, like kind
3:23
Speaker 2: of ferocious lifestyles, you know, deep into hard drugs and
3:26
Speaker 2: stuff like that. And then they'd get on stage and
3:28
Speaker 2: the music was. less ferocious than their lifestyles. And with us,
3:33
Speaker 2: it was kind of the reverse. Offstage, you know, we
3:36
Speaker 2: wanted to live in nice places and have refrigerators with
3:39
Speaker 2: food in them or whatever it was, eventually having kids
3:42
Speaker 2: and stuff. But we wanted the onstage to be where
3:45
Speaker 2: the ferocity lived, you know?
3:47
Speaker 1: Was there a catharsis to it, you think?
3:50
Speaker 2: There's always a catharsis to be playing music. I mean,
3:53
Speaker 2: that's the case all the time. And to play music
3:56
Speaker 2: that could be as wild and free as some of
3:59
Speaker 2: our music was super cathartic, you know, in a way.
4:01
Speaker 2: But that was something that was definitely coming out of,
4:05
Speaker 2: I mean, not just the New York scene, but we
4:07
Speaker 2: were really feeling that from a lot of the things
4:08
Speaker 2: that were happening here back at that point in time,
4:11
Speaker 2: like what bands like Teenage Jesus or DNA were doing
4:16
Speaker 2: or Glenn Branca and Reese Chatham. I mean, this was
4:18
Speaker 2: really music that wanted to move you in one way
4:22
Speaker 2: or the other, like really in that cathartic sense, you know. And, and,
4:26
Speaker 2: you know, the stuff that was going on in LA too,
4:28
Speaker 2: Black Flag and Minuteman. And, you know, it was just like,
4:31
Speaker 2: they didn't want you to just stand there as a,
4:33
Speaker 2: as a passive observer. They wanted you to be really involved. Yeah.
4:37
Speaker 1: What, I mean, given that there was so much going
4:39
Speaker 1: on around New York, it always seems to me would
4:42
Speaker 1: have made more sense to maybe sign with like a
4:44
Speaker 1: Z Records or 99 or something, you know, versus. Yeah.
4:48
Speaker 2: We would have loved to have been on 99. I mean,
4:51
Speaker 2: the first two records were on Glenn Branca's label, which
4:53
Speaker 2: was a brand new indie label at a time when
4:56
Speaker 2: there really weren't like indie labels all over the place,
4:59
Speaker 2: you know, so it was kind of a radical move
5:00
Speaker 2: that he did that. So our first, our first bunch
5:03
Speaker 2: of records were on New York labels, but we were
5:07
Speaker 2: in love with SST records. We were in love with
5:09
Speaker 2: everything they did. And we just thought they were like
5:11
Speaker 2: the pinnacle of, of a record label at that point
5:14
Speaker 2: in time, all the bands we loved were on SST
5:16
Speaker 2: saccharine trust and meat puppets and, you know, you name it. And, uh,
5:21
Speaker 2: so when we had the chance to, to move to them,
5:25
Speaker 2: we really just kind of jumped at it.
5:28
Speaker 1: Signing to SST, did it, did you get to know
5:31
Speaker 1: everyone over there pretty well or was it like a
5:33
Speaker 1: family or a group?
5:34
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, to a, to a, to a large degree.
5:37
Speaker 2: I mean, we certainly got to know, uh, Greg Ginn
5:39
Speaker 2: and Henry Rollins and all those guys. And, and we
5:43
Speaker 2: were already, well, probably right around the same time we
5:46
Speaker 2: signed with them. We were, we got to be really
5:48
Speaker 2: good friends with Mike Watt in particular and, and the
5:50
Speaker 2: Minutemen guys. And, And the Meat Puppets, you know, we
5:53
Speaker 2: did lots of shows with all those bands. It felt
5:57
Speaker 2: really cool to be a part of that. You know,
6:00
Speaker 2: and Petty Bone, you know, Raymond Petty Bone was sort
6:02
Speaker 2: of part of that crew at that point.
6:04
Speaker 1: Yeah.
6:05
Speaker 2: He became a good friend. And then, you know, things
6:08
Speaker 2: changed and we ended up on another California label with Geffen,
6:11
Speaker 2: which was also really cool.
6:13
Speaker 1: Just to stick on SST for a second, you were
6:15
Speaker 1: there when the Minutemen kind of changed into Firehose.
6:19
Speaker 2: Yeah. We were playing a warehouse gig in L.A. with
6:23
Speaker 2: the Swans the night that D. Boone died in Arizona
6:27
Speaker 2: or New Mexico, wherever it was. And I was actually
6:31
Speaker 2: playing his amp on that gig the night that he died.
6:35
Speaker 2: I mean, I think he died later in the evening
6:38
Speaker 2: than our show was. But that was pretty devastating. And
6:42
Speaker 2: we were really close to Mike in particular. in that period.
6:46
Speaker 2: And especially once that happened, then we were, then we
6:48
Speaker 2: got really close to Mike. And actually, you know, when,
6:51
Speaker 2: when that happened, Mike kind of shut down for a
6:54
Speaker 2: period of time. He wasn't doing anything. He wasn't playing music.
6:57
Speaker 2: And he came out to New York when we were
7:00
Speaker 2: recording the record Evol, like 1985, just not that long
7:05
Speaker 2: after Dee had died, I guess. We had this one song, actually,
7:09
Speaker 2: this song called In the Kingdom that, that I sang that,
7:12
Speaker 2: was kind of a Stooges-esque riff, and we never really
7:14
Speaker 2: finished it as a song. It was always going to
7:16
Speaker 2: be this thing. I was going to do this kind
7:18
Speaker 2: of spoken word thing over. And Mike was in the
7:22
Speaker 2: studio when we were getting ready to record it, and
7:25
Speaker 2: we asked him to play on it. And he played
7:28
Speaker 2: the bass on that song and this other song. We
7:30
Speaker 2: did a cover of Kim Fowley's song called Bubblegum. And
7:33
Speaker 2: I think those were the first two. That's kind of
7:35
Speaker 2: an extra track from that period. And those two were
7:38
Speaker 2: the first things that Mike did in music again since
7:41
Speaker 2: D Boone died. And then shortly after that, Ed from Ohio,
7:45
Speaker 2: as he's known, called Mike up and said, hey, let's play,
7:48
Speaker 2: and Firehose started.
7:50
Speaker 1: Wow.
7:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.
7:51
Speaker 1: Yeah.
7:51
Speaker 2: So I always felt like we had a hand in
7:55
Speaker 2: pulling Mike out of his doldrums of D Boone's death.
7:59
Speaker 1: You kind of kept a relationship with Pettibone. Did you
8:01
Speaker 1: keep a relationship with Greg as well?
8:05
Speaker 2: No, not really. I mean, I think we had a
8:07
Speaker 2: falling out when we left the label, and I don't
8:09
Speaker 2: think he was very happy about the situation. And it
8:12
Speaker 2: was kind of an awkward moment, and we didn't really
8:14
Speaker 2: keep up much after that.
8:17
Speaker 1: But that didn't transfer to Pettibone at all, like the
8:20
Speaker 1: awkwardness of that?
8:21
Speaker 2: No, not at all. We were relating to Raymond on
8:24
Speaker 2: a completely different level. And at that point, he was...
8:28
Speaker 2: starting to be more in the art world than the
8:30
Speaker 2: music world. And, you know, Kim and I trained as artists,
8:33
Speaker 2: and we all had a real affinity for his art
8:37
Speaker 2: in particular, you know. And he lives nearby here. We
8:41
Speaker 2: see each other every once in a while.
8:43
Speaker 1: That's amazing, man.
8:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, we actually, my wife Leah and I acted in
8:47
Speaker 2: his most recent movie, which was a, you know, he
8:50
Speaker 2: made all these movies in the late 80s, early 90s.
8:53
Speaker 2: He made a whole bunch of, like, feature-length movies that
8:55
Speaker 2: were really, he did one about the weatherman. that I
8:58
Speaker 2: think Kim and Thurston are in, he did a whole
9:01
Speaker 2: bunch of movies. And he started making some again. And
9:06
Speaker 2: his most recent movie was about the Beatles. I played Ringo.
9:11
Speaker 2: And Leah played Linda Eastman. And this artist, Marcel Zama,
9:16
Speaker 2: played Paul. And this costume designer played George. And this
9:22
Speaker 2: couple from England, I think, played John and Yoko. And
9:25
Speaker 2: it was just a It was kind of, his movies
9:28
Speaker 2: are kind of like his drawings, you know, like a
9:31
Speaker 2: bunch of people standing in one position and saying stuff,
9:35
Speaker 2: you know, just kind of like the drawings are. So
9:37
Speaker 2: they're very, very weird movies. Very cool.
9:42
Speaker 1: Sounds like it might be better than the, I think
9:44
Speaker 1: they're putting out like four Beatles biopics soon.
9:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're coming.
9:48
Speaker 1: They're coming. I think I'd rather see you as Ringo. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
9:53
Speaker 1: Did you, the move to Geffen, did you guys get
9:55
Speaker 1: to know Geffen before?
9:58
Speaker 2: We had really one meeting with him when we were
10:01
Speaker 2: getting ready to sign with a major. I guess it
10:05
Speaker 2: was in the wake of like REM signing and the
10:08
Speaker 2: replacement signings. or who's could do it was like all
10:10
Speaker 2: the majors started to get interested all of a sudden
10:13
Speaker 2: you know so we met with with david geffen we
10:17
Speaker 2: met with uh ahmed erdogan for atlantic records we met
10:20
Speaker 2: with herb albert and and the people at a and
10:23
Speaker 2: m but we met with like all of these like
10:25
Speaker 2: classic record men you know from from the older generation. And,
10:30
Speaker 2: and like, that was the coolest thing to us. Like
10:32
Speaker 2: we met Herb Albert in the studio in, uh, in
10:36
Speaker 2: the A & M studios in LA and, you know,
10:39
Speaker 2: where like all these great records were made and we're
10:43
Speaker 2: walking through the studios with him and we come around
10:45
Speaker 2: the corner and there's his trumpet, like sitting on a pedestal.
10:50
Speaker 2: And he says, Oh yeah, that's my trumpet. And like,
10:52
Speaker 2: he picked it up and he played something for us,
10:54
Speaker 2: which was like totally surreal. We met Ahmed Erdogan at
10:58
Speaker 2: a kind of a swanky Chinese restaurant in Uptown in
11:02
Speaker 2: New York here. And the coolest thing about all these
11:04
Speaker 2: meetings was these guys told us all these insane stories,
11:07
Speaker 2: like stories about being in the studio with the Stones,
11:10
Speaker 2: like with big bowls of Coke on the mixing desk
11:13
Speaker 2: and all this like debauchery going on. Like Geffen told
11:16
Speaker 2: us stories about having to smuggle David Crosby pot across
11:20
Speaker 2: the country because he was supposed to play Madison Square
11:22
Speaker 2: Garden that night with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and
11:25
Speaker 2: his pot delivery didn't make it. And he was like
11:27
Speaker 2: refusing to go on. And Geffen's like, I'm not going
11:30
Speaker 2: to carry pot on the plane, you know, and all
11:32
Speaker 2: this kind of stuff. And, uh, and eventually he did,
11:35
Speaker 2: but we just got so many cool stories from like,
11:38
Speaker 2: we were deep into that, the moments of that era
11:41
Speaker 2: and all these bands that had, you know, like the
11:43
Speaker 2: beach boys working on those classic records or the carpenters
11:46
Speaker 2: or whatever. And so to meet with all these people,
11:49
Speaker 2: like we would, we almost didn't care if we got
11:51
Speaker 2: signed or not. We were just like, this is amazing.
11:53
Speaker 2: We get to like suck the stories out of all
11:56
Speaker 2: these uh people which was really really interesting and then
11:59
Speaker 2: we chose geffen because they really offered us the best
12:02
Speaker 2: deal in terms of full creative control no um no
12:06
Speaker 2: oversight like didn't have to present demos or or any
12:09
Speaker 2: of that stuff and it worked really well for us
12:11
Speaker 2: with them for for a pretty good amount of time
12:14
Speaker 2: yeah yeah i mean we're still it doesn't it's not
12:17
Speaker 2: called geffen anymore it's called universal but we're still on
12:20
Speaker 2: that path with with you know the records we made
12:22
Speaker 2: with them we're still putting out stuff through universal But yeah, they,
12:25
Speaker 2: they were good. And then, you know, on, on our backs,
12:29
Speaker 2: they signed Nirvana. So at that point we could do
12:31
Speaker 2: no wrong within their eyes. You know, it was like, boy,
12:34
Speaker 2: we brought them like the biggest cash cow of, of the,
12:37
Speaker 2: of the era.
12:38
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And, and, oh, and that's right. And you
12:40
Speaker 1: guys shared management with Nirvana too, right? Yeah.
12:43
Speaker 2: They, they followed us. They, they, they were asking us
12:46
Speaker 2: who should be their management. And we liked our, our, uh, Silt,
12:50
Speaker 2: John Silva out in LA. And so they, They signed
12:54
Speaker 2: with Silva. They signed with Geffen. They used our merch people.
12:58
Speaker 2: They were kind of taking their lead from what we
13:02
Speaker 2: were doing, which we felt was a real compliment.
13:06
Speaker 1: It is an amazing thing about you guys because much
13:09
Speaker 1: for a group of people who seem to be as
13:13
Speaker 1: uncompromising about their vision as you guys were, you guys
13:17
Speaker 1: seemed to be fairly happy to bring people along and
13:21
Speaker 1: bring people around.
13:22
Speaker 2: And it was definitely our trip completely. You know, as
13:25
Speaker 2: soon as we could bring opening bands along, we just
13:28
Speaker 2: brought all the people we wanted to hear every night.
13:30
Speaker 2: And that was a main component of Sonic Youth was
13:34
Speaker 2: that kind of inclusivity. We had the chance to do
13:38
Speaker 2: this museum show towards the end of our career, like
13:40
Speaker 2: in 2008 and 2009. We did this massive show that
13:45
Speaker 2: took over museums in five different countries in Europe. And
13:50
Speaker 2: it was part stuff we had done, like they exhibited
13:53
Speaker 2: a bunch of our guitars and, you know, artwork that
13:57
Speaker 2: individual members made. But we also had like Allen Ginsberg
14:01
Speaker 2: photographs and the Wolfeyes guys drawings and crazy paintings. And
14:06
Speaker 2: there were like 50 or 60 different people. Like at
14:08
Speaker 2: that point, we were associated with all these artists. So
14:10
Speaker 2: we had we had Pettibone and Mike Kelly and Gerhard
14:13
Speaker 2: Richter paintings and it was this really amazing, massive show,
14:18
Speaker 2: Dan Graham sculptures. And so it was kind of a
14:21
Speaker 2: mix of like artwork from some of our indie rock
14:24
Speaker 2: friends and then like really heavy stuff from like really,
14:27
Speaker 2: you know, well-known artists and musicians. And our whole thing
14:32
Speaker 2: was always like bringing more people to the party. That
14:35
Speaker 2: was a big part of Sonic Youth, you know. We
14:38
Speaker 2: always would rather talk about stuff we were interested in
14:42
Speaker 2: than talk about our, our, ourselves really, you know?
14:45
Speaker 1: Yeah. I read something Thurston said that like when you
14:48
Speaker 1: guys initially signed to Geffen, people there had the idea
14:52
Speaker 1: that maybe you guys had a, um, a dark side
14:55
Speaker 1: of the moon and you guys like, you were, they
14:56
Speaker 1: were kind of thinking of you as, as a, like
14:58
Speaker 1: a sleeper pink Floyd, you know, kind of all these
15:01
Speaker 1: crazy records and then, Oh, but they're going to, if
15:03
Speaker 1: they get focused enough, they're going to have a dark
15:06
Speaker 1: side of the moon. Does that ring true?
15:09
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. I mean, with every record from
15:11
Speaker 2: the very first one, there was a single that they
15:14
Speaker 2: were like, this is the song that's going to break
15:16
Speaker 2: you guys wide open, you know. And for a while
15:18
Speaker 2: we kind of fell for the verbiage of it. But we,
15:22
Speaker 2: you know, it quickly became sure even like a song
15:25
Speaker 2: like Cool Thing or I don't know which ones they
15:28
Speaker 2: chose from those couple of records. But, you know, it
15:31
Speaker 2: was never going to we were too weird a band
15:33
Speaker 2: for that to happen in the same way that it would,
15:35
Speaker 2: for instance, that it happened for Nirvana. But, you know,
15:38
Speaker 2: we had our own kind of dark side of the
15:39
Speaker 2: moon in us. And, you know, I would cite certain
15:43
Speaker 2: of our records as being in that category for us.
15:45
Speaker 2: You know, a song like The Diamond Sea is like
15:47
Speaker 2: a 20-minute song, 25 minutes on the 12-inch single. And
15:51
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, we did it. We were doing
15:54
Speaker 2: our own thing.
15:54
Speaker 1: You know, I guess that's the thing. Like, you know,
15:58
Speaker 1: what I've realized as I get older is how much
16:00
Speaker 1: of success is down to marketing and being willing to
16:02
Speaker 1: buy into or create a narrative and kind of... Yeah.
16:07
Speaker 2: You know, a certain a certain aspect of success is. But,
16:11
Speaker 2: you know, like the kind of success that someone like
16:14
Speaker 2: Dylan or Neil has is not down to marketing. You know,
16:17
Speaker 2: it's down to being a true artist. And, you know,
16:20
Speaker 2: there's fans that I could cite as being completely successful
16:24
Speaker 2: that never, never had a gold record or any of
16:27
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. You know, I mean, in a way,
16:29
Speaker 2: Pavement is a band like that. It's a huge, huge band.
16:33
Speaker 2: That's not huge in the bigger scheme. They're not Bob
16:35
Speaker 2: Seger huge or whatever, you know. But to the right people,
16:39
Speaker 2: they're like, you know, top shelf or whatever.
16:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, absolutely.
16:44
Speaker 2: Like for those manager guys, success was measured in how
16:47
Speaker 2: much money you could make for how long you could
16:49
Speaker 2: make it. And those were not the values that we had.
16:53
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah.
16:54
Speaker 2: We were making music, not making money.
16:58
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Speaker 1: for pairing with a hazy little thing and good company.
17:28
Speaker 1: Here are the songs making the cut on my next camp.
17:31
Speaker 1: First up, I've been on a bit of a David
17:32
Speaker 1: Crosby kick lately, so I'm going to start off with
17:34
Speaker 1: a couple of songs from his catalog. The first is
17:37
Speaker 1: Draft Morning. It's a beautiful song from the Byrds' 1968 album,
17:40
Speaker 1: The Notorious Byrd Brothers. The song has the sound of
17:43
Speaker 1: a stark, beautiful morning. Just the kind of morning you
17:46
Speaker 1: wake up to when you're camping. Then I'd cue up
17:49
Speaker 1: Music Is Love from Crosby's solo album, If Only I
17:51
Speaker 1: Could Remember My Name. It's a beautiful meditation on the
17:54
Speaker 1: nature of music and consciousness, featuring Graham Nash and Neil Young.
17:57
Speaker 1: Of course, those are his perennial partners. And the rest
17:59
Speaker 1: of the album features members of the Grateful Dead. It's
18:02
Speaker 1: one of my all-time favorites. Then there's Suzanne by Leonard Cohen,
18:07
Speaker 1: which of course is a beautiful song all on its own,
18:09
Speaker 1: but I can never divorce it from its stunning opening
18:12
Speaker 1: sequence to Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, where Warren
18:15
Speaker 1: Beatty's riding through the Canadian wilderness on horseback. It's one
18:18
Speaker 1: of the most beautiful sequences in all of film history.
18:22
Speaker 1: And then to round this whole thing out, something from
18:24
Speaker 1: just last year. Billy Martin's Planets. Billy is a phenomenal
18:28
Speaker 1: singer-songwriter who writes some of my favorite songs. This one, Planets,
18:33
Speaker 1: happens to feel like pure wonderment, similar to the awe
18:36
Speaker 1: I experience taking in nature. A great camping playlist isn't
18:40
Speaker 1: about hits. It's about songs that hold up next to
18:42
Speaker 1: the sounds of crickets and a crackling fire. Download it
18:45
Speaker 1: before you go, because out there, you get one shot
18:48
Speaker 1: at cell service, and it's not coming back. If you've
18:51
Speaker 1: ever reached for a cheers when your favorite song comes on,
18:53
Speaker 1: you're ready to embrace the haze with Hazy Little Thing
18:55
Speaker 1: from Sierra Nevada. Hazy, citrusy, smooth, juicy, but not sweet. Hoppy,
19:00
Speaker 1: but not bitter. America's best-selling hazy IPA for a good reason.
19:04
Speaker 1: Hazy Little Thing. Enjoy responsibly. How was it touring with
19:10
Speaker 1: Neil and getting to know Neil? It was good.
19:13
Speaker 2: It was amazing. He was at a high period and
19:16
Speaker 2: you know, we were, he had the, the crazy rust
19:19
Speaker 2: never sleeps, giant amplifier sets and everything. So, you know,
19:23
Speaker 2: we knew all about that stuff. So it was amazing
19:25
Speaker 2: that we were getting to see that stuff. Cause we
19:27
Speaker 2: didn't see those original concerts. It was the first time
19:30
Speaker 2: we'd ever played those kinds of hockey arenas and stuff,
19:33
Speaker 2: you know, and we did three months of it with him. And, um,
19:37
Speaker 2: it really, uh, taught us how to do that. And
19:40
Speaker 2: we were kind of learning from the master because he's,
19:42
Speaker 2: he's the King of making those rooms sound great, you know? And, um,
19:47
Speaker 2: Same with meeting Erdogan and Geffen and all those people.
19:50
Speaker 2: We were deep into all of these musicians from that
19:54
Speaker 2: period and like what Neil did with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby,
19:57
Speaker 2: Stills and Nash and his solo careers. like, we read
20:00
Speaker 2: all the books. We were deep into, you know, everything
20:02
Speaker 2: that happened to these cats and suddenly to be around
20:05
Speaker 2: them and to be on one of these big tours
20:07
Speaker 2: with like a full on crew. And, you know, we'd
20:09
Speaker 2: never done tours like that with a semi truck of
20:12
Speaker 2: gear and all, you know, all that kind of stuff.
20:14
Speaker 2: And it was, it was an eye opener for us,
20:16
Speaker 2: but it was really, The same as signing with the
20:19
Speaker 2: major label where we always felt like we're really an
20:22
Speaker 2: indie band that's just kind of like spies in this world.
20:25
Speaker 2: It was the same thing on these big stadium tours.
20:28
Speaker 2: That was not our scene. And we kind of went
20:31
Speaker 2: through it and came out the other side of it.
20:33
Speaker 2: And we're back kind of where we started and where
20:36
Speaker 2: we were happier. I mean, at first when we got
20:39
Speaker 2: on that tour, it was the first tour that Neil
20:43
Speaker 2: had ever taken opening acts with him. He never had
20:46
Speaker 2: opening acts before. He was a monster success. He didn't
20:50
Speaker 2: need to do that. And his crew were totally not
20:55
Speaker 2: into it. And they were not into us. They thought
20:59
Speaker 2: we were a bunch of jokers, that we were just
21:02
Speaker 2: making fun of the whole business and making noise and
21:05
Speaker 2: that we didn't know how to play. And they were
21:08
Speaker 2: really mean to us, with a few exceptions, a few
21:11
Speaker 2: very classic exceptions. Like Neil's front of house guy, Tim Mulligan,
21:15
Speaker 2: was always super nice to us and warm. And Neil's
21:18
Speaker 2: guitar tech, Larry Craig, was amazing and fixed our guitars
21:22
Speaker 2: when we broke them and all that kind of stuff.
21:24
Speaker 2: But it took their crew a long time to realize
21:27
Speaker 2: that what we were doing was something. And I think
21:29
Speaker 2: even by the time we finished that tour, they were
21:32
Speaker 2: just like, these guys are idiots and we'll never see
21:35
Speaker 2: them again. And yet, because we were friends with Neil
21:39
Speaker 2: and with Elliot, especially Elliot was very warm to us.
21:43
Speaker 2: like every time Neil would come through or we'd be
21:45
Speaker 2: in the same city and he'd be playing, we'd go
21:47
Speaker 2: and we'd like hang with him backstage and like watch
21:50
Speaker 2: the show. And like the crew guys kept being like,
21:53
Speaker 2: you guys are still fucking here. And like, eventually they, they,
21:57
Speaker 2: we are kind of their respect because they realized we
21:59
Speaker 2: weren't just like out there to take it, take the
22:02
Speaker 2: piss as they say in England. And, and, you know,
22:05
Speaker 2: we'd never, you know, they, they realized we were in
22:06
Speaker 2: it for the long haul and they, they came around
22:09
Speaker 2: to being like, By 10 years later, they were like, hey, Lee,
22:13
Speaker 2: how you doing when we were backstage or whatever. But
22:16
Speaker 2: it was an evolution for them to open up to
22:19
Speaker 2: that kind of thing and see that we weren't just
22:22
Speaker 2: like jokers who didn't know how to tune our guitars
22:24
Speaker 2: or whatever.
22:26
Speaker 1: It's incredible to hear Neil's crew levying all the complaints
22:30
Speaker 1: most people have about Neil.
22:33
Speaker 2: The agreement we had going into that three months of
22:36
Speaker 2: touring with him was that we could be as loud
22:38
Speaker 2: as we wanted. and have full use of the PA
22:41
Speaker 2: and all that stuff. But for the first couple of weeks,
22:43
Speaker 2: they were tamping us down. And our sound man who was,
22:48
Speaker 2: you know, he was kind of learning on the job,
22:49
Speaker 2: had a mix for these big rooms, just finally came
22:52
Speaker 2: to us and said like, they're not letting me do
22:54
Speaker 2: my thing out there. They're, they're pulling down the master
22:57
Speaker 2: volume or whatever it was. And, and this was like
22:59
Speaker 2: two weeks into a three month tour. And we're like, okay,
23:02
Speaker 2: if we can't fix this, we're going to quit. And,
23:05
Speaker 2: and the news got to Neil and like, he put
23:07
Speaker 2: his foot down and was just like, I asked these
23:09
Speaker 2: guys to play, you give them like everything they want. And,
23:12
Speaker 2: and it just got like so much better from there,
23:14
Speaker 2: but you know, like, and it really took Neil himself, like,
23:18
Speaker 2: you know, coming, coming forward on our behalf. And, and
23:22
Speaker 2: that was, that was super cool. And, and it really
23:24
Speaker 2: smoothed a lot of things out.
23:26
Speaker 1: It's incredible guy to have on your side, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
23:29
Speaker 2: Yeah.
23:29
Speaker 1: Yeah.
23:30
Speaker 2: Incredible. Yeah.
23:31
Speaker 1: Did you ever figure out Neil all those years, no
23:33
Speaker 1: opening act and then why, why you guys?
23:37
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think it was just the times
23:39
Speaker 2: were changing and artists needed to have opening acts to
23:42
Speaker 2: draw more people in and to make it a fuller bill.
23:45
Speaker 2: And that was like dealings between Silva and Elliot. While
23:51
Speaker 2: we were on that tour, we tried to convince Neil
23:54
Speaker 2: that he should have Nirvana open for them. And it
23:56
Speaker 2: never happened. But we were just like, you should have
24:00
Speaker 2: Nirvana open for you, man.
24:02
Speaker 1: He just had no clue. Yeah.
24:05
Speaker 2: It wasn't the right moment, and then they were too
24:07
Speaker 2: big to do anything like that. When we were talking
24:10
Speaker 2: about them, they were still kind of an underground band,
24:13
Speaker 2: but we were just like, you should hear this band.
24:15
Speaker 2: They're so amazing. The next summer, or that summer, I guess,
24:20
Speaker 2: Nevermind grew up.
24:21
Speaker 1: When you guys put up the Goo demos, the front
24:25
Speaker 1: cover is a photo of Cher, and one of the
24:28
Speaker 1: inserts is Cher with David Geffen. in kind of like
24:32
Speaker 1: an intimate pose.
24:34
Speaker 2: They were, they were, they were a couple. You're right.
24:36
Speaker 1: But like, did you, did that, was that like to
24:39
Speaker 1: fuck with Gavin or was that?
24:41
Speaker 2: You know, I guess so. I mean, nobody ever said
24:44
Speaker 2: anything to us.
24:45
Speaker 1: No.
24:45
Speaker 2: You know, the first idea we had for the cover
24:48
Speaker 2: of Goo, we wanted to use a pettibone and the first,
24:52
Speaker 2: and we were also aware that, you know, we were
24:54
Speaker 2: making this jump from the indies to the majors and
24:57
Speaker 2: people were going to say sell out and all that
24:59
Speaker 2: kind of shit. And so the first, cover proposal we
25:03
Speaker 2: had with Geffen was his pettibone picture of, it was
25:07
Speaker 2: a big line drawing of the face of Joan Crawford,
25:11
Speaker 2: like with these huge red lips. And it said over
25:15
Speaker 2: the top, blowjob with a question mark. And we wanted
25:18
Speaker 2: that to be the record cover. And we wanted to
25:20
Speaker 2: call the record blowjob, uh, just as a commentary on
25:24
Speaker 2: like the indie band signing with the major and all
25:26
Speaker 2: this shit. And like, they kind of came to us
25:29
Speaker 2: and said, we know we can't tell you what to do,
25:32
Speaker 2: but please, please don't do this. And they made a
25:36
Speaker 2: strong enough case that we changed it to the cover
25:39
Speaker 2: that everybody knows, which became such a crazy, iconic, uh, cover,
25:45
Speaker 2: you know? Um, as a matter of fact, last year,
25:48
Speaker 2: this Canadian artist put out a book of all, you know, there's,
25:52
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've ever seen any of the
25:53
Speaker 2: variations on that cover. I mean, there's a million spinoffs of,
25:58
Speaker 2: of the goo cover. Like, Obama and Hillary or C-3PO
26:02
Speaker 2: and R2-D2 or Jay-Z and Eminem or Brad Pitt and
26:07
Speaker 2: Angelina Jolie. There's like, there's hundreds and Ren and Stimpy.
26:11
Speaker 2: You know, there's hundreds of variations on that cover. They
26:16
Speaker 2: keep coming out all the time. There was one called
26:18
Speaker 2: Islamic Youth with a woman in a burqa and a
26:21
Speaker 2: guy next to her. And some artist wrote this long
26:25
Speaker 2: conceptual essay about it and published this kind of like
26:27
Speaker 2: zine-like book. with like 200 different examples of these spinoffs
26:33
Speaker 2: on the goo. They're called goo mashups. If you type
26:36
Speaker 2: that into your computer, you can probably lead you somewhere
26:39
Speaker 2: where you can see a bunch of them. But yeah,
26:41
Speaker 2: we went with the right image instead. I don't think Blowjob,
26:44
Speaker 2: I don't think that would have happened with Blowjob.
26:46
Speaker 1: You guys have always had great covers, but that one
26:48
Speaker 1: definitely just captured the imagination of people in a super
26:52
Speaker 1: unique way.
26:52
Speaker 2: I mean, the Mike Kelly images on Dirty Dirt, also
26:56
Speaker 2: were very popular. That sock puppet and all that stuff,
26:58
Speaker 2: you know?
26:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
26:59
Speaker 2: We had cool cover artists. That was definitely for sure.
27:03
Speaker 1: Yeah. In the Bad Moon Rising era, you guys did
27:07
Speaker 1: the Richard Kern video for Death Valley 69. Yeah. There's
27:10
Speaker 1: kind of like the, there's the Bad Moon Rising cover,
27:13
Speaker 1: which is like, you know, I guess Halloween-y. There's a Halloween-ish.
27:17
Speaker 1: Everything was a little horror movie, Halloween themed there for
27:22
Speaker 1: a second, you know?
27:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was definitely that autumnal kind of children of
27:28
Speaker 2: the corn kind of moment. I don't know why we
27:32
Speaker 2: were mining that, you know, at that particular moment in time.
27:35
Speaker 2: You know, Husker Du had put out that record called
27:37
Speaker 2: New Day Rising.
27:38
Speaker 1: Yeah.
27:39
Speaker 2: And we felt like Bad Moon Rising was our East
27:42
Speaker 2: Coast version of that in some way. And of course,
27:46
Speaker 2: we loved the Creedence song and the scarecrow on the
27:49
Speaker 2: cover has a flannel, you know, a John Fogerty-esque flannel shirt.
27:54
Speaker 2: And it was right when we were starting to work
27:56
Speaker 2: with Blast First, the back cover of Bad Moon Rising
27:59
Speaker 2: was like slapped together at the last minute because we
28:01
Speaker 2: really needed a rushed back cover. And it's that picture
28:03
Speaker 2: of the four of us with Bob Bird on drums
28:06
Speaker 2: and the scarecrow. But the original back cover picture of
28:11
Speaker 2: that record had a lot of handwritten text and it
28:15
Speaker 2: had pictures of the four of us in our most
28:19
Speaker 2: hippied out days, like me with super long hair and
28:23
Speaker 2: a beard and Thurston with like a leather jacket kind
28:26
Speaker 2: of punked out with long hair. And like, it had
28:28
Speaker 2: these pictures and like Paul Smith looked at these pictures
28:31
Speaker 2: and said, people are not going to get this. They're
28:34
Speaker 2: not going to understand that that's not you right now.
28:36
Speaker 2: And again, he was like, please don't do this. You know,
28:40
Speaker 2: it was like, but we thought it was funny to
28:41
Speaker 2: put like pictures of us from a previous, uh, in
28:46
Speaker 2: our previous incarnations when we were young, you know, hippie
28:49
Speaker 2: freaks or whatever. I don't know. We just had this
28:51
Speaker 2: pumpkin thing for a while. We went to England right
28:53
Speaker 2: around that same time and they didn't have the, the
28:56
Speaker 2: pumpkin jack-o'-lantern tradition, you know? And so we were doing
28:59
Speaker 2: like our first like big major show in England at
29:02
Speaker 2: this place called the ICA, this Contemporary Art Institute. And
29:06
Speaker 2: Paul Smith had the idea that we'd have like, you know,
29:09
Speaker 2: four dozen jack-o'-lanterns on stage, all carved and, and ready
29:13
Speaker 2: to go. And, and like, there were no pumpkins in England.
29:15
Speaker 2: There were no orange pumpkins the size of your head.
29:19
Speaker 2: There were these little softball sized green squash that like
29:24
Speaker 2: looked like pumpkins. And so that's what they got. They
29:26
Speaker 2: got like, they got like 40 or 50 of these
29:29
Speaker 2: little pumpkins that we spent a couple of afternoons carving
29:31
Speaker 2: them and had them all over the stage. It was,
29:33
Speaker 2: it was super cool looking, but we were like, really,
29:36
Speaker 2: they don't have pumpkins over here.
29:38
Speaker 1: It was, it was, I love that. I love that
29:40
Speaker 1: you guys, whether it's blast first or you guys, the
29:45
Speaker 1: label head is always mad at you guys.
29:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, beleaguered. Always beleaguered, I guess.
29:52
Speaker 1: It's a great word, always beleaguered. It's a unique talent
29:56
Speaker 1: you guys have.
29:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.
29:58
Speaker 1: Is it true that When you guys were doing Cool
30:00
Speaker 1: Thing and you guys had Chuck D come record that
30:03
Speaker 1: he had a crew of people with him, including Vanessa
30:07
Speaker 1: Williams and Ice Cube.
30:10
Speaker 2: I don't think that's true.
30:12
Speaker 1: That's not true?
30:13
Speaker 2: But I don't think that part about Vanessa Williams and
30:15
Speaker 2: Ice Cube is true. He came on his own. You know,
30:18
Speaker 2: we were working at this place in Soho here. We
30:22
Speaker 2: did Daydream Nation there and we did Goo there. And
30:26
Speaker 2: Public Enemy was working in the same studio. So we
30:28
Speaker 2: were always there working in one studio and they were
30:31
Speaker 2: in the other studio. And so the song is written
30:35
Speaker 2: about LL because Kim had just interviewed LL and we
30:39
Speaker 2: really loved that first LL Cool J record so much.
30:43
Speaker 2: Can't Live Without My Radio, that whole album. We just
30:45
Speaker 2: played that record to death. And the studio we were
30:48
Speaker 2: working in called Green Street was really a hip hop studio.
30:52
Speaker 2: We were one of the first rock bands that were
30:54
Speaker 2: in there doing stuff. And the guy that we worked
30:57
Speaker 2: with on that record, I don't know if he'd ever
31:00
Speaker 2: done a rock record before. He was a hip hop.
31:02
Speaker 2: They were all hip hop producers in there. But you
31:04
Speaker 2: had Public Enemy working across the hall, making, you know,
31:08
Speaker 2: It Takes a Nation of Millions and Fear of a
31:10
Speaker 2: Black Planet. At the same time, we were making Daydream
31:13
Speaker 2: Nation and Goo. And so we got to know those guys.
31:16
Speaker 2: And in particular, we were admirers of the Hank Shockley
31:19
Speaker 2: and his crew. Oh, the Bomb Squad. Yeah, the Bomb Squad.
31:22
Speaker 2: So we got to hang with them a little bit,
31:24
Speaker 2: which was like really cool for us. And Chuck just
31:28
Speaker 2: wandered across from like his room to our room one
31:30
Speaker 2: afternoon and did that on the spot, you know? So,
31:33
Speaker 2: but I don't remember how. Ice Cube and Vanessa Williams
31:36
Speaker 2: may have been visiting those dudes. And, you know, Flavor
31:41
Speaker 2: Flav was in the hallway when my oldest son was
31:43
Speaker 2: a little kid. He like came over and put his
31:46
Speaker 2: big clock around the neck of my son and, you know,
31:50
Speaker 2: stuff like that. But Chuck came over pretty much on
31:52
Speaker 2: his own to do that. And he just went in
31:54
Speaker 2: the vocal booth and like, without even much preparation, just
31:58
Speaker 2: in like one take, he kind of did his thing.
32:01
Speaker 1: Incredible. I might've misread the liner notes. I don't know.
32:06
Speaker 2: I mean, I might be wrong about that, but I
32:07
Speaker 2: certainly would remember if Ice Cube and Vanessa Williams were there.
32:11
Speaker 2: I don't remember that.
32:12
Speaker 1: Okay. Your lyrics around that time starts to feel like
32:16
Speaker 1: maybe it corresponds with turning New York. Also the fact
32:20
Speaker 1: that you guys were recording in a studio with Public Enemy,
32:24
Speaker 1: but it does feel like there's a bit of like
32:26
Speaker 1: a turn in theme around that time too. You know,
32:30
Speaker 1: Daydream Nation, I guess I'm talking.
32:31
Speaker 2: There may be. You know, we were a New York
32:32
Speaker 2: band and all the stuff that was happening here was
32:35
Speaker 2: influencing us greatly. Certainly when hip hop started, kind of
32:39
Speaker 2: the same moment that like these noisy musicians were happening
32:43
Speaker 2: like us and Swans and Live Skull or whoever. I mean,
32:46
Speaker 2: hip hop was kind of starting at that same moment
32:49
Speaker 2: and we loved that music. And we considered both kind
32:53
Speaker 2: of what we were doing and what they were doing
32:55
Speaker 2: as kind of these new urban folk musics of two
32:57
Speaker 2: different sorts, you know, being made in the city in
33:00
Speaker 2: this kind of urban environment. So we were definitely influenced
33:03
Speaker 2: by that stuff. I don't know if I detect evolution
33:08
Speaker 2: in the gritty quality of our music. I mean, I
33:10
Speaker 2: think we always had kind of a gritty kind of
33:13
Speaker 2: observational eye on things that took different forms. I mean,
33:16
Speaker 2: sometimes more romantic and sometimes more gritty or a little
33:22
Speaker 2: darker theme.
33:23
Speaker 1: Yeah. New York... In 1980 versus New York in 1989,
33:27
Speaker 1: what was the evolution? Did it feel different?
33:31
Speaker 2: That pretty much is our first decade. I mean, New
33:34
Speaker 2: York changed a lot in that decade. It was the
33:36
Speaker 2: beginning of New York kind of coming back to life
33:40
Speaker 2: from this really, like when we start in the period
33:43
Speaker 2: when we started in like late 70s into early 80s,
33:46
Speaker 2: New York was a pretty scuzzy place and it was
33:48
Speaker 2: dirty and there was a lot of junkies on the
33:50
Speaker 2: street and a lot of dope on the street. And
33:53
Speaker 2: there were, you know, if you went to the East Village,
33:56
Speaker 2: you know, it was, it was, could be scary to
33:58
Speaker 2: go over there. You know, New York slowly was pulling
34:01
Speaker 2: out of that. And I mean, by the end of
34:04
Speaker 2: the 80s, a certain scene that we had come up with,
34:08
Speaker 2: you know, the New York bands that we were, we
34:10
Speaker 2: were kind of comrades with and the bands from around
34:14
Speaker 2: the country and LA, a lot of that stuff had
34:18
Speaker 2: either run its course or was kind of mutating into
34:20
Speaker 2: something else at that point, you know, and, and we
34:22
Speaker 2: were too, in a way we were going from being
34:26
Speaker 2: a very local band in our first couple of years
34:29
Speaker 2: to being a band that started touring the U S
34:33
Speaker 2: and started to meet, you know, like meeting the Steve
34:35
Speaker 2: Albini and big black in Chicago and meeting the butthole
34:38
Speaker 2: surfers in Austin and meeting all the LA bands and
34:41
Speaker 2: Seattle bands starting to be an American band. And by
34:45
Speaker 2: the end of the 80s, we were on our first
34:47
Speaker 2: worldwide tours and we were starting to like see what
34:50
Speaker 2: was happening in Japan, for instance, and in Australia and
34:53
Speaker 2: all over Europe. So we were becoming something different. I mean,
34:58
Speaker 2: New York's place in our vision was not the totality
35:04
Speaker 2: that it was in the early period, you know, in
35:06
Speaker 2: a way. We were broadening out into all these, you know,
35:10
Speaker 2: seeing all this other you know, marvelous music culture that
35:13
Speaker 2: was going on all over the globe. And like, again,
35:16
Speaker 2: like bringing as much of it into our fold as
35:19
Speaker 2: we could, you know, touring with the Boredoms, for instance,
35:22
Speaker 2: from Japan, or just bringing as many interesting people into
35:26
Speaker 2: the picture as we could.
35:31
Speaker 1: Was the scene you guys were a part of, late 70s,
35:34
Speaker 1: early 80s, was that replaced with anything in the early 90s?
35:37
Speaker 1: Was there anything like that, that you just weren't, part
35:42
Speaker 1: of anymore because you guys had kind of maybe outgrown
35:44
Speaker 1: it was there anything there grunge grunge.
35:47
Speaker 2: Okay you know grudge is what took over in the
35:50
Speaker 2: early 90s you know mud honey and all the bands
35:53
Speaker 2: from seattle and and of course nirvana or you know
35:56
Speaker 2: and even before that like sort of proto grunge like
35:58
Speaker 2: dinosaur junior dinosaur that would you know we played a
36:01
Speaker 2: lot of shows with them we loved them and both
36:05
Speaker 2: grunge and then bands like pavement and the breeders and
36:08
Speaker 2: you know there was a real um renaissance of like,
36:12
Speaker 2: you know, sort of what they grew to call indie rock,
36:15
Speaker 2: you know, and, you know, these new personalities like Kim
36:18
Speaker 2: Deal and Malkmus and his crew and whatever. And, uh,
36:23
Speaker 2: and Courtney, of course, all the, all the Seattle bands, uh,
36:28
Speaker 2: that's kind of what was happening. And we really embraced
36:30
Speaker 2: that stuff. It, I mean, if you look at a
36:32
Speaker 2: record like Dirty, which was the record that happened after, uh,
36:37
Speaker 2: Nirvana and, and the rise of that whole not just Nirvana,
36:41
Speaker 2: but this kind of harder-edged, like, you know, Stooges-y, you know,
36:46
Speaker 2: Seattle movement. I mean, we embraced a lot of that stuff.
36:51
Speaker 2: And for a period there, our music, especially on Dirty,
36:54
Speaker 2: I think our music got harder in kind of emulation
36:58
Speaker 2: or inspiration from a lot of those bands.
37:01
Speaker 1: I was going to ask if there was pressure to
37:04
Speaker 1: make a certain sounding record after the Nevermind explosion. There wasn't.
37:09
Speaker 2: Only internal pressure. Like, man, this sounds great. Let's make
37:13
Speaker 2: a record that has that kind of balls-out ferocity or whatever.
37:17
Speaker 2: And of course, for Dirty, we used the Nirvana team
37:21
Speaker 2: of Butch Figg, who we'd known for years, and Andy Wallace.
37:27
Speaker 1: Oh, wow. You did the dual combo. That's amazing. Yeah.
37:30
Speaker 1: I didn't know Andy Wallace mixed that.
37:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, he mixed that. And then Butch made the next
37:34
Speaker 2: record with us, but not Andy.
37:36
Speaker 1: Andy.
37:37
Speaker 2: And then we just went back to making records on
37:39
Speaker 2: our own, like where our comfort zone was in a way,
37:41
Speaker 2: you know, but that was the first couple of records
37:45
Speaker 2: for Geffen. By the time we did Daydream Nation, I
37:48
Speaker 2: think our recording budget for Daydream Nation, which was obviously
37:51
Speaker 2: the biggest one up till that point was like $ 30, 000
37:56
Speaker 2: or something like that, you know, and maybe we made
37:58
Speaker 2: that record in 10 or 12 days total. And the
38:02
Speaker 2: next record, Goo, the budget was like $ 150, 000. And it
38:06
Speaker 2: took us weeks and weeks to make that record, maybe
38:08
Speaker 2: months and months even. A bunch of different studios. And
38:12
Speaker 2: those first couple records there were like us wondering, like, well,
38:15
Speaker 2: if you took a band like Sonic Youth and you
38:17
Speaker 2: really produced them the way you produced an Aerosmith record, say,
38:22
Speaker 2: you know, threw tons of money at it and spent
38:25
Speaker 2: all the time it would take to make a record
38:27
Speaker 2: like that, you know, what would Sonic Youth sound like
38:30
Speaker 2: in that regard? And those were the records where we
38:32
Speaker 2: were experimenting with that. And, and in the end we
38:34
Speaker 2: realized like, didn't really matter. It didn't make a big
38:37
Speaker 2: difference to who we were as a band. And, uh,
38:40
Speaker 2: and we actually liked a little bit more homespun kind
38:43
Speaker 2: of production anyway, that wasn't so big and bossy or
38:47
Speaker 2: glossy or whatever. You know, we, we made our own
38:50
Speaker 2: studio after that and just made our own, made our
38:52
Speaker 2: records at home after that pretty much, you know, and
38:55
Speaker 2: just started making our records in our own little clubhouse and,
38:58
Speaker 2: and that was really where the action was for us.
39:02
Speaker 1: Do you think by that point, too, that you felt
39:04
Speaker 1: you kind of knew you weren't going anywhere?
39:06
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think we felt that at every
39:08
Speaker 2: point in our trajectory, but we just always felt pretty
39:12
Speaker 2: much in control of our destiny, and it wasn't like
39:14
Speaker 2: we were being buffeted by outside forces of fame or
39:17
Speaker 2: fortune or anything like that. We got sick of paying
39:21
Speaker 2: $ 1, 000 an hour or whatever it was to work in
39:23
Speaker 2: a fancy studio, and we worked in some incredible studios,
39:27
Speaker 2: but It was more fun for us to be able
39:29
Speaker 2: to have, like I said, a kind of clubhouse atmosphere
39:33
Speaker 2: here on Murray Street, kind of not far from where
39:35
Speaker 2: I'm sitting, and and just like show up four or
39:38
Speaker 2: five days a week, work 12 to six or whatever
39:41
Speaker 2: it was, and just get together, read newspapers, share magazines
39:45
Speaker 2: and books and play for a few hours. And, you know,
39:48
Speaker 2: you might get a take, you know, the machines were there.
39:50
Speaker 2: It was always set up. All the mics were in place.
39:52
Speaker 2: It was always ready to go. And we started making
39:55
Speaker 2: our records like that. And that, that was, uh, really
39:59
Speaker 2: conducive to a lot of our later records, for sure.
40:03
Speaker 2: And we started our own label called SYR, where we
40:06
Speaker 2: were putting out not songy stuff that we put out
40:10
Speaker 2: on the Geffen records, but more experimental stuff. And it
40:13
Speaker 2: gave us this laboratory to do all kinds of different stuff,
40:16
Speaker 2: a lot of weird collaborations. That's how we first started
40:20
Speaker 2: working with Jim O'Rourke, who became a full-fledged member for
40:23
Speaker 2: a period of four or five years. He came to
40:26
Speaker 2: New York and we were doing these kind of collaborative
40:28
Speaker 2: recording sessions and we did one with him and then
40:31
Speaker 2: that led to him co-producing our records for a little
40:34
Speaker 2: bit and playing in the band.
40:36
Speaker 1: So there was no point in your career were you
40:38
Speaker 1: ever worried uh maybe we maybe i'll have to get
40:42
Speaker 1: a day job or maybe i won't be able to
40:44
Speaker 1: do this forever.
40:46
Speaker 2: No not after we quit those early day jobs uh
40:49
Speaker 2: you know we by the time we were made i
40:51
Speaker 2: think bad moon rising was probably the last record where
40:53
Speaker 2: we had day jobs and then we started money started
40:56
Speaker 2: dribbling in from tours and enough to live on. You know,
41:00
Speaker 2: New York was a cheap place to live back then
41:02
Speaker 2: as opposed to now. And once we quit our day jobs,
41:06
Speaker 2: we never looked back and never even thought about the
41:08
Speaker 2: fact that we might have to do that again. You know,
41:10
Speaker 2: we're getting established. We're getting a certain kind of respect,
41:13
Speaker 2: even if it wasn't dollars and cents kind of respect.
41:16
Speaker 2: But it was, you know, Art Forum was writing about us. And,
41:20
Speaker 2: you know, people were writing about us in a lot
41:23
Speaker 2: of like cross-cultural ways, not just the music magazines or
41:26
Speaker 2: the fanzines, but they were writing about us too. And
41:29
Speaker 2: and the English magazines. At some point, Rolling Stone and
41:35
Speaker 2: Spin started picking up some stuff. We were just on
41:38
Speaker 2: a pretty hermetic trajectory. We were doing our own thing.
41:43
Speaker 2: We were making some movie soundtracks and making our albums.
41:46
Speaker 2: It was all going in the right direction as far
41:48
Speaker 2: as we were concerned.
41:49
Speaker 1: Speaking of movie soundtracks, I want to ask you about
41:53
Speaker 1: the system. Oh, yeah. Last question before we get to
41:57
Speaker 1: the system is, You guys used standard tuning on the
42:01
Speaker 1: first Sonic Youth album, right?
42:03
Speaker 2: The first one.
42:04
Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess what changed?
42:07
Speaker 2: You know, even the first record, I don't think it's
42:09
Speaker 2: all in standard tuning, but those are the earliest songs
42:12
Speaker 2: we wrote. But when we started, you know, I'd been
42:15
Speaker 2: playing with Glenn Branca at that point, and he was
42:17
Speaker 2: tuning the guitars in all kinds of weird ways. And
42:20
Speaker 2: I knew a bit about that before I grew up
42:22
Speaker 2: using altered tunings. That's kind of how I learned to
42:25
Speaker 2: play guitar. I had an older cousin who showed me
42:27
Speaker 2: some stuff. And once you tune the guitar to an
42:31
Speaker 2: open chord, you sound really good, even though you can.
42:33
Speaker 1: Barely play, you know?
42:35
Speaker 2: And that's still my hypothesis today, basically. But we didn't
42:41
Speaker 2: have many guitars, but the ones we had were kind
42:43
Speaker 2: of cheap and they wouldn't really stay in tune. And
42:45
Speaker 2: so we started just fucking with them, you know, putting
42:47
Speaker 2: stuff under the strings, screwdrivers and drumsticks and just using
42:51
Speaker 2: them as noise-making tools. And as soon as we left
42:56
Speaker 2: standard tunings behind... We became a unique band. You know,
43:01
Speaker 2: that was the one thing, especially in the early period before,
43:03
Speaker 2: like a lot of people realized you could play in
43:06
Speaker 2: different tunings. You know, by the time Pavement comes around
43:08
Speaker 2: in early 90s, they're playing in open tunings and kind
43:12
Speaker 2: of inspired by what we were doing. But in the 80s,
43:15
Speaker 2: nobody was doing that. And when you heard us play
43:19
Speaker 2: or you heard our music, it just did not sound
43:22
Speaker 2: like anybody else because we weren't playing G and C
43:25
Speaker 2: and D or whatever it was. I mean, maybe we
43:28
Speaker 2: were in these weird open tunings, but we just had
43:31
Speaker 2: a different kind of sense of tonality and musical texture
43:34
Speaker 2: going that was different from everybody else. So you heard
43:38
Speaker 2: our music and you immediately knew it was Sonic Youth.
43:40
Speaker 2: It wasn't Green on Red or the Long Riders or
43:44
Speaker 2: whoever else was kind of popular guitar bands back then.
43:46
Speaker 2: We were doing something totally different and it immediately set
43:49
Speaker 2: us apart. And we didn't do it because we wanted
43:52
Speaker 2: to be set apart. We did it because that's what
43:54
Speaker 2: naturally where our minds went with it. But And it
43:58
Speaker 2: opened up this incredible world of tonality, basically, that wasn't
44:03
Speaker 2: there in playing those standard chords. We couldn't rely on...
44:08
Speaker 2: When you learn guitar, you learn whatever it is. You
44:11
Speaker 2: learn Clapton riffs, or you learn those basic bar chords.
44:15
Speaker 2: All that shit went out the window, so we couldn't
44:18
Speaker 2: fall back into these standard odds. Here's how many guitar
44:21
Speaker 2: players have you heard riffing over a set of blues changes,
44:25
Speaker 2: and they're playing You know, they're playing Clapton-esque riffs or whoever,
44:28
Speaker 2: you know, fill in the guitar player here. And our
44:31
Speaker 2: stuff was just so different because we couldn't do any
44:34
Speaker 2: of that stuff because our strings were all weird. So
44:37
Speaker 2: it meant we had to devise a language of our own,
44:39
Speaker 2: which really, really set us apart in a lot of
44:42
Speaker 2: great ways.
44:43
Speaker 1: Are there tunings that you, to this day, are more
44:46
Speaker 1: partial to or do you just.
44:48
Speaker 2: They kind of shift and change over the years. I mean,
44:51
Speaker 2: I don't even know if I'm using any tunings right
44:53
Speaker 2: now that Sonic Youth was using back then. And we
44:57
Speaker 2: went through a million different tunings across our career, which
44:59
Speaker 2: is why we had all these like cheat sheets and
45:02
Speaker 2: spreadsheets with different tunings for different records. And our crew
45:06
Speaker 2: guys really kept all that stuff together for us. But
45:10
Speaker 2: there's actually one of my main tunings now I probably
45:13
Speaker 2: was using back then as well. But, you know, it's
45:17
Speaker 2: just kind of a constantly evolving thing. You pick up
45:19
Speaker 2: a guitar, you start twisting the strings until it sounds cool.
45:22
Speaker 2: And then you start trying to figure out where you
45:24
Speaker 2: put your fingers.
45:25
Speaker 1: Tell me about the system. I imagine you saw the
45:27
Speaker 1: film before you made the music and before you signed
45:31
Speaker 1: on to do it.
45:32
Speaker 2: They were working on the film while they were sending
45:35
Speaker 2: me rough cuts. And as I was making the music
45:38
Speaker 2: for different scenes, they were updating the cuts of the film. Yeah,
45:43
Speaker 2: it's done by this Dutch director named Joris Postema. And
45:47
Speaker 2: they asked me to do it. And I mean, I'd
45:50
Speaker 2: done a bunch of stuff for films before. Like I
45:52
Speaker 2: worked on that Todd Haynes film and some other things.
45:54
Speaker 2: And Sonic Youth did four or five different film soundtracks.
45:57
Speaker 2: But it was one of the first recent ones that
46:00
Speaker 2: I've done on my own, like start to finish. And
46:02
Speaker 2: in the last two years, in addition to the system,
46:06
Speaker 2: I did the score for a film by these two
46:09
Speaker 2: Brazilian directors that's just starting to hit the festival circuit
46:13
Speaker 2: right now. And I did a short film for this
46:17
Speaker 2: independent director in Boston named Tom Bell about is kind
46:20
Speaker 2: of an artist portrait of this guy from Maine that
46:23
Speaker 2: does these weird drawings out in swampy waters. And that
46:28
Speaker 2: film actually, that short film, my score won a best,
46:32
Speaker 2: best score award at some, some small festival, which was
46:34
Speaker 2: kind of cool. But in the last two years, I
46:37
Speaker 2: started doing more movie soundtracks and I sort of built
46:40
Speaker 2: myself a new studio for, for this purpose. Uh, and, um,
46:45
Speaker 2: working on the system was a great experience for me
46:47
Speaker 2: because it was really, it was my test drive for
46:50
Speaker 2: the studio. I was working on it. I thought could
46:52
Speaker 2: be like a potential place where I could do more
46:54
Speaker 2: film scoring and I could also work on my own music.
46:57
Speaker 2: And I've in between these film scores, I've been working
47:01
Speaker 2: on what's going to be my next record, which I'm
47:03
Speaker 2: now full steam working on my next proper album. But, um,
47:08
Speaker 2: they liked what I was doing. And right away I
47:10
Speaker 2: started giving them some weird stuff and they, they responded
47:13
Speaker 2: to it. And, and, gave me a lot of free
47:15
Speaker 2: reign to do some different things. And so for me,
47:18
Speaker 2: it was a really cool experience and it was a
47:20
Speaker 2: really intensive experience over like four or five months or,
47:24
Speaker 2: or more maybe of sending tracks back and forth with
47:27
Speaker 2: them and kind of debugging my studio and setting up
47:31
Speaker 2: more and more instruments to work on it. And I
47:33
Speaker 2: guess we connected through Ethan Miller, whose silver current label
47:36
Speaker 2: is putting out this, uh, this re-imagined soundtrack of the movie, uh,
47:42
Speaker 2: The movie soundtrack has got a lot of music on it,
47:45
Speaker 2: some piano music and some other stuff. And Ethan came
47:48
Speaker 2: to me. He really responded to the music. And he said,
47:52
Speaker 2: let's put out a record that really focuses on the
47:55
Speaker 2: guitar music you made for this movie and put out
47:58
Speaker 2: a kind of like a Lee Ronaldo guitar record kind
48:02
Speaker 2: of thing and a more experimental guitar record. And so
48:04
Speaker 2: that's the tracks we focused on for his really upcoming
48:07
Speaker 2: vinyl release. I think it comes out October 2nd. he
48:11
Speaker 2: chose a really good group of tracks. We used a
48:13
Speaker 2: couple tracks that the movie didn't end up using. So
48:15
Speaker 2: there's a couple, uh, unreleased things on there. And, um,
48:19
Speaker 2: for me, it was, it was a super cool experience.
48:21
Speaker 2: I was playing a lot of keyboards on, on some
48:24
Speaker 2: of it and, and a lot of, uh, a lot
48:25
Speaker 2: of different acoustic and electric guitars and some other, uh,
48:29
Speaker 2: I play a lot of these weird homemade instruments that
48:31
Speaker 2: this guy in Holland builds for me just had pretty
48:35
Speaker 2: free reign to do this. You know, there's three main characters.
48:38
Speaker 2: And so I kind of developed a theme for each
48:39
Speaker 2: of them and, And I feel like I'm kind of
48:42
Speaker 2: primed at this point that I could do some more
48:44
Speaker 2: film soundtracks.
48:45
Speaker 1: Well, it also makes sense to me that you say
48:47
Speaker 1: you're also primed or full steam ahead on your next
48:51
Speaker 1: solo thing. Because, I mean, you know, sometimes you hear
48:53
Speaker 1: a film soundtrack and it can even be a really
48:56
Speaker 1: good film soundtrack, but sometimes it doesn't have the character
48:59
Speaker 1: of the person who made it so much in it,
49:01
Speaker 1: which isn't always a bad thing. But at least the
49:05
Speaker 1: version that Ethan put together of it, which is what
49:08
Speaker 1: I've heard, It really has a lot of character to
49:11
Speaker 1: it beyond the character of what I imagine is the film.
49:13
Speaker 1: But it feels like there's a lot of you in it. Yeah.
49:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it definitely does. I'm deep into my next
49:20
Speaker 2: record and I'm super excited by it because a lot
49:22
Speaker 2: of the tracks are just turning out really great. And
49:25
Speaker 2: all of this work on the system and these other features.
49:29
Speaker 2: and this short film that I did have all kind
49:31
Speaker 2: of contributed to where I'm at right now in general.
49:35
Speaker 2: So it's a good moment for me.
49:38
Speaker 1: That's great. Are you working with anyone else on that
49:41
Speaker 1: project or is it just you?
49:43
Speaker 2: I'm working with this guy that I've been working with
49:45
Speaker 2: for the last two or three years called Yonatan Gatt.
49:49
Speaker 2: He was in a band called Monotonics. He's Israeli. He's
49:53
Speaker 2: lived in New York area for a long time. And
49:56
Speaker 2: he's a multi-instrumentalist and producer. And so I've been playing
50:02
Speaker 2: with him in this group called the Medicine Singers for
50:04
Speaker 2: the last few years. And it's a bunch of sort
50:07
Speaker 2: of rock and experimental players playing with these indigenous Native
50:11
Speaker 2: American singers and drummers that sort of sit in a
50:15
Speaker 2: powwow around a circle with all their regalia on and
50:18
Speaker 2: they're they're singing their native songs and we're kind of
50:20
Speaker 2: backing them up with like a drum kit and electric
50:23
Speaker 2: guitars and stuff, electric bass. And it's been really cool.
50:27
Speaker 2: We've done some work with the medicine, medicine singers themselves
50:30
Speaker 2: are a new England tribe, but we've done work with
50:34
Speaker 2: a bunch of first nations players in Canada. And we
50:37
Speaker 2: were down in Brazil working with indigenous musicians down there.
50:42
Speaker 2: It's it's so it's kind of a hybrid project. That's
50:45
Speaker 2: been really cool. And Yonatan brought me in on that
50:47
Speaker 2: and we've gotten to be friends and So he's working
50:49
Speaker 2: with me a lot on this project. Brian Chase from
50:53
Speaker 2: Yeah Yeah Yeahs is playing drums on a lot of it.
50:56
Speaker 2: And I think there'll be more people to come as
50:59
Speaker 2: we start adding more musicians. We're kind of like pulling
51:01
Speaker 2: all the tracks into shape at this point.
51:03
Speaker 1: That sounds amazing.
51:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think it's going to be really cool.
51:06
Speaker 2: We've got a couple of really killer tracks at the moment.
51:09
Speaker 1: I'm dying to do a music trip down to Brazil.
51:12
Speaker 1: I am dying to do it.
51:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's awesome. I've been going there a lot for
51:16
Speaker 2: the last couple, well, up until Pandemic. I was going
51:19
Speaker 2: there a lot, and it's amazing. It's an amazing culture,
51:22
Speaker 2: and the music culture down there is fantastic.
51:25
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, great to meet you, man. Yeah, yeah.
51:27
Speaker 2: It's been really fun talking to you, so let's do
51:30
Speaker 2: it again at some point.
51:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it, man. Broken Record is produced and
51:35
Speaker 1: edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler
51:38
Speaker 1: and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Talladay. Broken Record
51:42
Speaker 1: is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this
51:45
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Speaker 1: podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond.