We did mention [our respective reputations], of course. The curious thing for me is that I was such a fan of his; he has one of the most beautiful voices in American music. The singer-songwriter is almost back in vogue now, but it certainly wasn’t when I was coming up. Ours was the music that was going to get rid of that—along with a lot of other stuff. But it usually doesn’t work that way. After a while, everyone has to fess up to having older records in their collection. Like the Clash—“No Beatles, no Stones in 1977”—then London Calling comes out and you realize that’s Joe Strummer’s entire record collection. But I think we’re past those juvenile arguments about music, like, “Our generation, our music.” Because right now you’re living in a time when everybody you speak to can listen to everything they want to.
From your debut album, My Aim Is True, and on, you have incorporated country, reggae, Tin Pan Alley, and scores of other styles, but you were marketed as one thing: punk. Well, I was marketed by other people, not by me. And “punk”—what nonsense that was. Or “new wave”—even bigger nonsense. I’m just a songwriter. I knew older stuff and I knew newer stuff.
believe that this was some sort of very aggressive image, but if you look at the outtakes, I’m laughing in almost all the shots. There was just something inherently ludicrous about that pose to me, because it was the opposite of what I felt like. I didn’t feel like a rock’n’roll star. I was just some guy working in an office who’d written some songs. And the fact that I had this absurd name and was posing like a rock’n’roller with these splayed legs—it was a satire. That’s kind of the same thing in “Pump It Up” [from This Year’s Model]: If you listen to the lyrics, it kind of goes against the grain of hedonism.
Still, your early work was fueled by a fair
amount of intoxicants, no?
With “Pump It Up,” I was taking those little
blue pills [amphetamines], so there were a lot
more verses.
Introducing the episode with Smokey Robinson, you said you couldn’t be more excited if Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, or Groucho Marx were about to come out. Was Robinson the most daunting guest you’ve had? He was pretty daunting. I wasn’t kidding when I said the first record I ever owned was With the Beatles and the first Smokey Robinson song I ever
But as far as marketing goes, that was definitely some of the coolest of the 20th century. Didn’t you relish being part of it? Yeah, but I never really went along with the philosophical background, because I never really thought it was entirely the work of the people. It was the provocateurs who had more to do with that—the Malcolms and the Bernies [Sex Pistols impresario McLaren and Clash manager Rhodes, respectively]. A lot of the lesser groups just got on the manifesto.
Did drug use play a big role in shaping your style of hypomanic wordplay? I don’t think it did, actually. It just helped me stay up longer and do the stupid things that became the subject matter of certain songs. But I was always into writing a lot of words. I liked the effect of a lot of images passing by quickly.
CLOCK WISE FROM LEFT: LFI; NBCU PHOTO BANK; JOHN ATASHIAN/CORBIS
References:
http://www.myspace.com/smokeyrobinson
http://www.myspace.com/smokeyrobinson
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