Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / [HIGHLIGHT] Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” — Written In One Afternoon? - From EP 371

Transcript

[HIGHLIGHT] Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” — Written In One Afternoon? - From EP 371 · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here's a clip from our latest episode of book Don
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Rock Anthony Gomez the third. He's the author of Mazzie
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Stars So Tonight that I might see part of Bloomsbury
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Publishing's thirty three in a third series. The album opens
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: with that big hit, Fade into You. That's the first track,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: written by Hope and David Roback. You suggest that Sandoval
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: is singing both to the listener and to Rowback. How
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: did that change the way you heard the song?
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: I've always heard it, I think because of the way
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: it's used in film and TV. It's always used. I
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: call it as a cheat code for romance and nostalgia.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: It's almost always played in kind of youthful moments or
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: when people are looking back or people are kind of
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: wistful for something that may or may not happen. And
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: I thought that's a great interpretation, and I don't think
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: there's any wrong interpretations. But I thought it was kind
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: of interesting how two introverts could kind of be pushed
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: into a spotlight on this song, and how two introverts
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: on this song, especially in the music video, seem constantly
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: kind of interacting with each other. And it seemed that
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: maybe there's a kind of other way of thinking about romance,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: not just for the opposite sex, not just in the
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: kind of traditional romantic way we think of, but as friends,
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: as two people who actually are able to kind of
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: be comfortable with each other. I don't think there's anything
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: better than finding someone that you're able to be in
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: a state of comfortable silence with, that you don't always
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: have to kind of talk, you don't always have to
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: kind of find something to kind of conversate about. But
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: here are two people who are willing to kind of
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: expose themselves in a way that they didn't really have
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: in other people before, in a way that they hardly
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: even had in other bands, because these are people who
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: came from other group musical groups first. And yet what
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: does it mean to also fade into someone that you
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: really care about as a friend. And I thought maybe
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: that was another kind of interesting potential way of opening
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: this song up to a new dimension of listeners, or
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: to at least a new kind of way of thinking.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: And there are two videos, right, two videos were made.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: There's one the Kevin Curse Lake version. That was the
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: second one made. Yeah, that was a marketing decision by
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the label.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: It's believed to pretty much be a marketing decision. If
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: you look at the first video that they did for
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Fade Into You, which you could look on YouTube. It's
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: called the international version now, but the original cut of
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Fade Into You was a black and white music video,
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: and it had a couple of scenes of the band,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: but they were kind of covered in shadows, and when
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: it kind of zoomed away from them, it moved into
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: a building that's completely obfuscated. You can't quite tell what's
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: going on. It hardly seems like the thing that would
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: have wrapped up viewers on MTV back.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: In the nineties.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: It's kind of almost an uninteresting piece of like visual art,
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: something you could see at a museum and be like, huh,
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: I wonder what that's about. But instead we got a
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: kind of video that's now more famous, which futures the
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: band David Roeback in Hope, Sandoval in particular, out in
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: the southern California desert, not too far from the kind
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: of Joshua Tree area, and in the second video, which
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: was kind of a forced decision by Capitol Records, in
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: the kind of terms of one critic, a kind of
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: cynical decision to kind of push our lead woman to
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: the front and center to give the viewer something they
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: thought was more interesting to look at than the black
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: and white fuzziness of that first video. And in the
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: second video, Massie Starr bring on a friend, someone that
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: they've worked with before, to help them kind of create
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: a visual image they want, and that is them kind
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: of out in the desert in which we kind of
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: see them in these kind of oft repeated, oft reposted
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: images online now. But it's a kind of interesting kind
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: of and one of the few times that they're ever
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: kind of forced to do this.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: What do you think that video reveals about the band?
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Maybe that the song alone does.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: I think one of the things is one it goes
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: back to that kind of Mexican agornography, the desert, the
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: kind of almost surrealist kind of landscapes that they're playing with,
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: the kind of ways the kind of modern world is
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: kind of crashing on the natural world is constantly happening.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: But also there's these weird, interesting slow down scenes of
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: David Roback and Hope Sandoval really kind of finding comfort
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: to each other. I think David Roback is literally driving
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Hope Sandoval across the desert at times hope Sandoval's looking
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: at him. I don't think necessarily romantically, but longingly happily,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: And there's a kind of comfort of them that I
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: think the song doesn't necessarily evoke on its own, but
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: by seeing them and hearing them kind of paired with
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: that song, we see that kind of friendship and we
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: see how close these people really are as a unit.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: The video, the song itself. You put those together, You
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: got a big hit. Reach number three on the US
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Billboard Modern Rock Track chart in nineteen eighty four, peaked
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: at number forty four on Billboard's Hot one hundred. In
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, the song eclipsed one billion plays on
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Spotify one billion. Do you think the band ever wanted
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: success on that level.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: I don't think they ever would have predicted it. I
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: hardly think they wanted it. I think one of the
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: most amazing stories, if you believe it, is Fade into
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: You was almost an afterthought. They claimed they wrote it
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: in an afternoon where they pretty much were walking around
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Santa Monica, Los Angeles. They go back to the studio
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: in LA and they toss off this song called Fade
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Into You, and it ends up being, of course the
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: lead single. It's an amazing kind of coincidence, and it's
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: the most accessible track on the album. It's the most
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: radio friendly track on the album, but it's also, in
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: the words of David Roback, just a great song. I
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: think anyone who listens to it, it doesn't matter the age,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: finds something that appeals to them with it. I don't
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: think it's a coincidence. It's used all the time because
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: it just evokes so much emotion, But whether they would
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: have predicted it and whether they wanted it, probably not
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: in both fronts.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.