INTERVIEW: Art Alexakis (October 2019)

I can’t seem to help myself, to be honest – I always want to be cool in these situations, but never seem to manage it. Upon being introduced to Art Alexakis, the longtime frontman of Portland alt-rockers Everclear, I ’fess up to him almost immediately that I’ve been a fan of his for well over 25 years now. “Boy, that is a long time!”, he laughs - perhaps pondering both the lengthy commitment and his own chequered career within the music business. With hindsight though, the admission serves a dual purpose – it immediately seems to put him at ease as he realises he’s chatting to someone who’s on his side, rather than another jobbing journo keen to stitch him up with gossip.

Every great band needs one killer trick up its sleeve, and in the 1990s alternative universe they didn’t come much more potent than Everclear’s marriage of crunching rock tunes to wry observations of damaged individuals (it didn’t hurt that they also had a signature vocal tic in the form of their frontman’s memorable cry of “Uuuuuuppp… Ohhhhhh!”). Following the acrimonious dissolution of the band’s original line-up in 2003, Alexakis soldiered on heroically, weathering further personnel changes, relationship breakdowns and bankruptcy to bring a revitalised Everclear roaring back to life with 2016’s Black Is The New Black. He’s currently out on the road with his first solo album, Sun Songs - a true individual effort on which Alexakis plays every instrument and strikes a resolutely more personal tone than his parent band.

Even in slightly subdued form, Alexakis projects an undeniable charisma. Ahead of being introduced to him, I was told that he was feeling under the weather and that I’d likely get 20 minutes max, but he ends up chatting warmly with me for the best part of 45. A lot gets said during that time, both on and off-mic. At the end of our interview, he tells me an amusing story about a German reporter who insisted on giving a lengthy existential analysis of the back cover photo on So Much For the Afterglow, only to be told that it was basically just a shot of the three band-members looking really cool. I proceed to tell him that no fucking Beatles record ever had a run of tracks as consistently good as the entire sequence of that album (he counters with Abbey Road, which I’m willing to cop to). What I don’t tell him is that songs like ‘Santa Monica’, ‘Heartspark Dollarsign’, ‘Everything to Everyone’ and ‘Amphetamine’ are essentially the sound of my beating heart – formative loves and mainstays from my teenage years right through to the present day. I think he somehow gets it, though. In concert that night, he introduces an audience request slot as the “surly jukebox interlude”, before answering the crowd’s questions with a sort of wry, feigned weariness which belies the fact that he knows we’re hanging on his every word. Certainly, the raucous singalong which seems to greet every Everclear classic – and god, there are a lot of them – suggests that I’m not the only one in attendance who still feels as passionately about these songs as their author admits to.

So, I read somewhere recently that Learning How to Smile was originally mooted as your first solo album – was that the case?

Yeah, it was – but it was a totally another thing at the time. It was called Song For An American Movie. And, uh, it was…. I had gotten tired of… it was like, a “being the writer in the band” job. Just really dumb stuff, and I’m like: “You know what? I’m going to do my own record – you guys go do something; we’ll catch up in a year or two”. And, um, I did most of the record – and the record wasn’t as rock as the record is now, as it became; it was much more R&B and Pop. It was kind of weird – weird sounds… It was never finished, but it was three-quarters of the way there. I hadn’t mixed it yet. I played it for my A&R guy and my manager, and they’re like: you gotta play this for the band. And, like, they all… all these people showed up at my house without telling me, and were just like: “We’re begging you to make this an Everclear record; it’s the right thing to do for everybody”. I’m like: [shrugging in submission] “Okay…”. And I hadn’t even written ‘Wonderful’ yet – I wrote ‘Wonderful’ after that, because I was going through a divorce with my daughter’s mom. And, um, yeah – so it became an Everclear record.

And you were happy to do that?

No, not really…!

No…? That’s interesting.

…I acquiesced.

So the second part, that was intended as “the Everclear record”.

That was… I wanted to make a rock record. I wanted to make a pop record and a rock record, but originally to make a double record that was: soft song, heavy song; heavy song, soft song – that basically went back and forth, and told two stories like this; you could separate them and let go of the heavy song. I just wanted to do something conceptual and different, and just do a double record – but my manager convinced me to do it this way, because ultimately it made more money to do it as the two different records. And I feel like the second record’s very dire – I feel like the first record, Volume One, is a pretty good record. It’s one of my favourite records.

That is very interesting to hear.

It’s the most successful record here [in the UK], for sure. So that’s the one we’re gonna play next year. We’re coming on tour and we’ll be here probably in April – we’ll do the whole album; we’ll do a few songs from Volume Two, and we’ll do all the hits from Afterglow, and fan favourites… we’ll put on a long show; an hour and a half, which is long!

It’s always perhaps the obvious question to ask in these situations, but – particularly coming off the back of an absolutely killer Everclear album in Black is the New Black, why now for this solo album? Why this group of songs?

Well, I started writing… like, I don’t decide to write, I just feel like: hey, man – I’ll pick this guitar up, I feel like I got an idea, and I’ll write down ideas and come up with melodies. And I’ll know when my soul and my body’s ready to start – I know it sounds kind of hippy-ish, and I’m not very hippy, but I just kind of let my spirit and everything tell me when it’s time to write, you know? And I was writing; I was already writing songs and coming up with ideas, but I just did not want to make another Everclear record. I didn’t want to make another big rock record right now, it just didn’t… I mean, I felt like Black is the New Black was one of our best records.

…It was fucking awesome.

It’s a good rock record, you know? And I just… I don’t know if I can better that. So I just wanted to do something different and, uh… yeah. I always… when I did the solo record that turned into Songs From An American Movie, it was different - but it wasn’t that different, because it was still me calling all the shots just like I do in Everclear with a bunch of guys, right? And it was different, but it wasn’t really different – I wanted to do something different. I’m like, as with most singers who aren’t really good singers – you know, “vocalists” – I wanted to put my voice out front, because I’d never done that before. And I knew with an acoustic background, that would be the right time to do it. And I wanted to do a record where it was truly a solo record: I played all the instruments, I figured out everything – all the harmonies, all the backgrounds… everything. I was just going to work with me and an engineer; an engineer/co-producer who helped me do the whole record, Stuart Schenk, who had worked on Invisible Stars and had been a friend for years. So we did that, and it was no set timetable – just like: let’s try to work two-to-three days a week, minimum two days a week if we can, and he had others things going on, and I had the band going on, family and all sorts of stuff… But it took us about a year to get it done, and that was fine – I told my label I was going to do it, I was like: I’ll probably just put it out on an indie, but they were like: no, we’ll put it out – we’ll give you some money. And I was like: okay! I can pay my guys with that, that’s fine. Not a lot of money, but I didn’t need it – I have my own studio right down the street from my house, like a mile down the street; my daughter’s school’s a mile the other way on the same street, so I got a good situation where I live. And now my wife’s got a space right near mine – she’s doing, like, yoga and hippy stuff!

I don’t want to linger too much on the MS diagnosis, as I know you’ve addressed it at length elsewhere – not least on ‘The Hot Water Test’, which is a really beautiful song that’s a major highlight of this record. It sounds very much like you saw it as a defining moment which presented a challenge as to how you choose to view the world and live your life from this point on. Did it help to put everything into perspective for you?

What, the diagnosis? Yeah, absolutely – I mean, you know… it’s scary. Like in the song, the doctors kind of like… What happened, I got into a car accident, and no-one got really hurt, but like a week or two later, things happen – like, when you hit something, even if there’s airbags and everything, you’ll get a pinched nerve. And I called my doctors – they’re like: “Yeah, I’ll just give you a shot in your neck, but do this MRI so I can see where it’s at”. I’m like: okay – and I’d done MRIs before, so I went and got the MRI, showed up at his office, this little examination room, and there was like six doctors in there – in a room not even as big as that stage. Six men, and they just kind of turned around and looked at me – I’m just like: “Oh, fuck…”

Well - either they’re all huge Everclear fans, or…!

[Laughs] Yeah, that wasn’t gonna happen! These were like old guys with stethoscopes. So they told me what they thought, and I talked to a couple more neurologists, and they both had looked at it and they were pretty sure of what it was, but I had to go to my own neurologist and get my own opinion. But they told me “Multiple Sclerosis” and it scared the hell out of me – I had no idea what that is; most people don’t. I know it’s bad – I thought you died from it, you know? It scared the hell out of me. I told my wife, and by the time I got home after calling her, she’s got like two or three computers up, she looked like she was hacking into the government! She’s like: “Oh no, we got this. We can do this”. And, um… yeah! It’s been a humbling thing, but it’s also… we’ve been really grateful for good things, and for what I have. Every glass is half-full.

I wanted to ask you – it’s maybe a bit of an asinine question to ask a lot of people, but are you a happy person, given everything that’s gone on in your life? You seem like a really settled family man nowadays.

I am now… When I was younger, I was never satisfied. I was always trying to… I was trying to sleep with everything that moved, eating everything… I didn’t do drugs, but I acted like a drug addict: it’s what we call a “dry-drunk”. [Begins fiddling with a box of toothpicks] I’ve been clean and sober for thirty years, but I really exhibited a lot of addictive behaviour. Now, my addictive behaviour is down to this. [Starts chewing on one] Four months ago, I stopped eating all meat products, all sugar, all nicotine… everything, just 100% vegan, clean, and I feel really good.

So you just put a toothpick in there instead now. Well… why not?!

’Cos no, that’s the thing: that’s what people are doing - you chomp on the toothpicks. I was going through a pack of these every couple of days – now, it’s like: I’ve had this one for two weeks, so… I’m slowing down! When I get that kind of addictive… like, have you ever smoked…?

No, but I have kind of an addictive personality myself, so I know what you’re talking about: it’s either one thing or another. You’ve got to have that one specific thing at any one time that you sort of fixate on and do to death – and then you move onto whatever the next thing is.

- Sugar! Sugar was like, for most junkies who are clean, or even drunks… sugar. It hits the same brain synapses as cocaine – it looks the same way on an MRI. So to answer your question, yeah – I’m grateful and I’m happy, and not complacent in a bad way, I’m… not complacent, but content. I still want to do things, I still have an edge to me – I’ll never be Mr Sweetness and Light, but I do experience joy now. And I can find joy in places where I didn’t see it before. I can see joy in just about everywhere.

Given the times, it’s kind of obligatory to ask any American artist what they make of the current domestic situation, particularly if they’re politically active or outspoken as you’ve been in the past. So, I was going to do that – but then I heard the song ‘White People Scare Me’, which kind of answered it for me! As an active liberal campaigner, do the kind of things you’re singing about there help to strengthen your resolve, or is the overall feeling actually closer to what you’re articulating in that song?

I always felt that – it used to be a joke, me and my friends were like: white people are horrible, man! Every bad thing in this world came from white people, pretty much…

White men, specifically.

…White men. Definitely white men. Yeah, you can’t really blame the women! I agree. White people just kind of… I mean, the thing about white women too is that they’ve been complicit. They’ve been complicit.

Women For Trump – they’ve got a lot to answer for.

You see some of those pictures, and…

Oh, they’re grim. But they are the ‘Volvo Driving Soccer Moms’ that you used to sing about, are they not…?!

…No… maybe. Maybe! Maybe the older, M.I.L.F. or G.I.L.F. – the G.I.L.F. version! Maybe. I don’t know: there’s Republicans, there’s conservatives - and then there’s Trump people. That’s a different thing!

…Right! Well, we’ve got our own version over here with the Brexiteers, of course…

Oh, fuckin’, worse than… yeah, I know. It’s grim, man.

But is that something that keeps you motivated? Or does it kind of make you go: “…Urgh. I don’t know how I deal with this”…?

Yeah, a bit of both. At first, I think I’m like: “Really? What the fuck are you…” – then I’m like: “Fuck you guys. No. This isn’t happening”. That’s usually how it is – I get frustrated, then I get angry, then I get vocal about whatever it is, so. And you probably know me well enough through my music to know that I’m not a guy who sits on the sidelines.

Well, I’m certainly anticipating the next Everclear record…

Well, we’ll see. We’ll see what happens - hopefully! But there’s several political songs on this record – ‘A Seat at the Table’… ‘Line in the Sand’ is more of just a personal socio thing, but…

‘House With a Pool’…?

‘House With a Pool’, definitely. A lot of people don’t pick up on that – it’s like: “I don’t really like that song, because I don’t really want a house with a pool”. Oh yes, you do…!

…You’re told that you do, and you just don’t know it!

Yes, you do. It might not be a house with a pool, but it’s… you get it, though.

It’s an iPhone.

It’s that shiny fucking thing. [Whispers] You can almost get it! It’s right here…! What’s funny is, I’m building a pool in my back yard right now! [Laughs] Because… because…

…Because you want it!

Well… yes and no! But really, let’s be honest about it: the reason my wife’s letting me spend $85,000 to build this pool is the fact that with the MS, I can swim and not get overheated every day. And she loves watching me swim; I’m a good swimmer. She likes watching me swim, and I love to swim. Seriously - I will use it every day.

That’s your reason; you’re sticking with it…!

Yeah! That’s why I’m spend a shitload of money on it – it’s got a hot-tub; I’ll go in the hot-tub in the morning, swim for about twenty, thirty minutes… and then at night, go out and swim for about ten; get in the hot-tub, go to bed. Sleep like a baby, I guarantee it – I know what’s going to happen. So that’s ironic, but there’s… I think that ‘Orange’ is political. Orange is like: I don’t know if you know, but there’s Orange County, which is this southern…

…Yeah, a real melting-pot. I’ve got family who used to live near there.

In Orange County, California…? Wow! Well, for years it’s been a sort of conservative bastion – and it is slowly, not-so-slowly anymore, turning blue. That’s kinda the whole thing – and it’s also like: you stare at something long enough, it’s gonna change its shape from what you think is orange. It’s gonna turn blue; or what you think is blue might turn orange, you know what I mean…? It’s also that thing of, like: this guy get in this relationship, and he thinks it’s all this and that – and he doesn’t grow, she grows, and he’s lost. I think there’s a lot of that that goes on in our society.

Looking at your body of work in its entirety, it strikes me that there are two overriding themes – and I was wondering if you would agree with me if I identified them as the following….

Okay!

The first is: a sometimes almost David Lynch-esque glimpse behind the white picket fences of America to explore the broken individuals and forgotten communities which lurk within. Do you agree with that?

To a certain extent, yeah – I’m definitely… Well, you gotta understand, I grew up very poor. I grew up in a housing project, which is government housing – long rows of buildings with poor people living there. So, “middle-class” is what I’ve always wanted to attain. The white picket fence is what I’ve always wanted: Mom, Dad, kids… security, yard… pool. House with a pool! You know, that thing – that’s all I wanted. I’ve never wanted to be rich; I still don’t. If I won, like, five or six million dollars, like in a lottery, that’d be great. If I won, like, forty…? I’d be bummed – because your life’s gonna change. My life’s great right now. Would I like to have a little bit more financial security, like everyone? Yeah – especially since if this thing ever progresses, I’m not gonna be able to work. I’ve got life insurance if I die; I don’t have life insurance if I can’t work. So there’s that fear – so yeah, I would like some money, but I’m just not… I’m not a money guy, you know.

Obviously growing up being poor is one contributing factor, but do you think that theme might also be a product of the 70s divorce culture in America? It strikes me that a lot of people who were affected by that started to come of age in the 1990s and ended up forming successful bands which ended up resonating with a lot of people – yours being one of them.

Yeah - but, like, Kurt, and Billy [Corgan] and a lot of the 90s people, they’re all fucking broken. Kurt was broken; he ended up putting a gun in his mouth. Billy’s broken – all those people who grew up, and all of us that made music in the 90s grew up in the 70s, and it’s very aptly said: a divorce culture. In my case, my dad refused to pay bills, so my mother was not… a lot of these women came out of this divorce culture – men didn’t help subsidise them, so they had no idea how to support a family; that wasn’t their “job”. They weren’t raised to do that, and so we ended up living in government housing. It broke my mom’s heart, but she did it; she did it for her kids. And you know what, I’m glad, for a lot of reasons: because it really made me appreciate things, and it made me very open-minded racially, you know? I’m colour-blind in many, many ways.

I’ve always wanted to ask you, actually – I’m not sure if it’s something that’s been covered in interviews previously, as it’s quite difficult to get old American press over here - ‘Heartspark Dollarsign’ has such an emotional message, articulated in a really heartfelt way; was that a true story?

Yeah. When I was, um… you know, I grew up in a housing project, man, I was just a horny boy, just like every teenage boy…! And driven, and over-sexualised younger – I was abused and raped when I was a kid, and instead of turning it into abuse, I just became overly and overtly sexualised. And addictive – I think that really opened up the door for addictive behaviour. An, um, I liked all… I never had a type; I liked all types of women. I like all types of women that are my wife now! [Laughs] Because that just seems to work better. But yeah, I dated girls and would bring them to meet my mom after I’d been dating them for a while. My mom was from the Deep South, and consciously she didn’t think that she was racist – I never heard her use the ‘n’ word, not once in her life. And if others used it, she’d chastise them – she’d smack ’em for that, so. But seeing her boy with a black woman…? [Grimaces] It was worse with a Jewish girl! She just… didn’t like it. But I loved my mom, she was wonderful – she died about twelve years ago. She had a lot of love in her heart; she just… she was abused.

- Another product of her environment.

I mean, she came up with a household of kids - they were all fucking everything that moved, you know, up in the mountains, the Smoky Mountains… abuse was rampant, it was just everywhere. Ask Dolly Parton, she’ll tell ya! That’s what happens growing up poor with a big family. You know, you gotta look out for yourself! [Laughs] Dolly Parton’s awesome. I love Dolly!

We all love Dolly…

How can you not like Dolly Parton? She writes phenomenal songs.

It’s true. We have a huge poster of her hanging on our wall at home.

Oh, really…?

Yeah. Because she’s… well, she’s fucking Dolly, man…!

She can play any instrument better than most people. Definitely better than me. And she’s, what – a hundred and forty years old…?! I went and saw her with my wife, and I think we were the only straight couple there! [Laughs] It was all gay people, and just… man, she was so good! Anyways, back to your question. What was your question…?!

…Was ‘Heartspark Dollarsign’ a true story? You’ve kind of already answered it.

Yeah, so then in my twenties I dated this girl - and boy, we just fell for each other really hard, but her parents… actually, she had a half-white mom and a black dad, and her dad was cool with it, but her mom was not cool with it. And my mom wasn’t cool with it, so… we tried, but it was hard to do it with people against it. Anyway – she ended up marrying a couple of white guys and had babies with them and stuff. I see her… I haven’t seen for a for a few years, but she used to come to shows with her kids. But yeah, it was one of those things.

So the second recurring theme is: a refusal to let the trauma of the past encroach onto or inform the present. This is particularly evident in ‘Father of Mine’, which I personally think is probably your finest song – I’ve always found it very moving that you speak so openly about your desire not to make the same mistakes with your own children.

Yeah – well, it’s a conscious thing: I think you can’t avoid it doing that. But you can be aware, and conscious, and woke and present about it, and make a decision like in that song: refuse to let it as much as possible. But it’s still going to affect it, you know what I mean? I don’t think you can get away from trauma – you just have to be aware of it, and aware that it’s happening, like: why am I doing this? Why am I thinking this? Why am I reacting like this? Okay, it’s because of this, and this, and this. “Let me walk that back” – you know what I mean? You have to be conscious of it, because I think it’s a sort of programming; we’re all programmed by agreements we make, and agreements that we disagree with.

But yeah, those are themes – I think escape is a theme, too: like, getting out of this situation and making something better; finding something better. I think that comes up a lot.

I follow the band on social media, and you’ve got what I think is quite an interesting promotional strategy – I saw one tour advert that said “Hey, we’re Everclear – remember us, from the 90s…?”

[Pulls a face]

Ah, okay – not something you authorised…!

[Laughs] I didn’t see that…

When you do things like the Summerland tour though, are you happy to position yourselves as riding a bit of a nostalgia wave, or do you just see it as a way of acquainting people with the present incarnation of Everclear?

Well, okay – to answer your question: if there’s nostalgia: god bless. I mean, what is it? I don’t care. That’s fine, if it brings people out. What I’m doing is: I love these bands; I love the music from the era that I came up in. It wasn’t nostalgia at the time – [indicating to me] when you were twelve years old, it was relevant and present. It still is to me as well. It’s rock and roll! It’s just good rock and roll. And I think there’s really good bands that are still trying to work – and if they’re working, I wanna work with them.

It’s kind of the paradox when it comes to bands who were big at any one time – some of them never actually split up, and they stay really great; the mainstream just moves in a different direction.

Well, it happened to us – we can’t all be the Foo Fighters, you know, or Radiohead. It’s just – for the most part, a lot of those bands are just not doing what they used to do. They’re not playing arenas – we used to play arenas, we’re not playing arenas anymore. And… that’s fine! I’m not… like, someone asked me if I’m bitter. I’m like: “What…?!” I make a pretty good living, and I get to play music. And I’m very grateful.

Now, you’re quite notable in the history of rock as far as I’m concerned for being someone who wrote a song about their child which wasn’t complete rubbish! To that end, I’ve always wanted to know what your daughter thinks of ‘Annabella’s Song’.

Um… I haven’t talked to her about it in many, many years. You know, when she was little, she loved it. It started as a lullaby - like, she’d be crying, I’d go into her room at night, lay her down and rub her head and just: [singing softly] “Anna… Anna… tell me what you want… baby, tell me what you need… Anna… you are never alone”. And that was it, right? And then I wrote the song from there. And I wrote it for, I think, Sparkle and Fade – a more “rock” version of it that you can still hear online – but it didn’t really fit the record. Which pissed off the label - they wanted it on the record, and I’m like: “Creative control, you gave it to me – fuckers…!”

…Yeah, you get ‘Heroin Girl’ instead!

‘Heroin Girl’s a good song. They wanted ‘Heroin Girl’. I love ‘Heroin Girl’! Um… But then I had the idea to record it with the big band like a Sinatra song. And I actually recorded it in the same room where Sinatra did all those Capitol records: Studio A of Capitol Studios, underneath the Capitol building, the round Capitol building. So that was pretty cool – I sung the vocal in that vocal room where he did that.

So she likes it, then? Because I suppose she could be like: “Aw, Dad…!”

Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. There’s a song on my new record for my new daughter – “my new daughter!” – my twelve-year-old. She loves it.

Is that ‘Arizona Star’…?

Arizona, yeah.

That’s a great song. I presume you’re going to be doing that later so that we can all do a bit of “Ayyy, ayyy, ay!”…?

No, actually! I’m just… I’m still working into the new songs and getting comfortable with them.

So, here’s another one that I’ve always wanted to ask you: in ‘Everything to Everyone’, what is the instrument that does the siren hookline at the beginning of the track?

That… So, we had recorded the record in the fall of ’96, and it was called Pure White Evil. And there were a bunch of songs that are not on it now – it was missing a few songs. It had ‘Everything to Everyone’, but it didn’t have the intro – it just came in with the “Dum-dum-dum… dum-dum, duh-duh, dum-dum-dum…” with me singing, and then the drums came in. And we mixed the record, and we played it for my A&R guy at the label and he’s just like… I knew it wasn’t as good as my last record; I knew it. I knew there were some really great songs on it, but I knew it wasn’t ready. And he’s like: “It’s good, but it’s not great. It isn’t going to do what you want it to do”. He goes: “But there’s a lot of great songs on here; it just does not sound like a record yet”. He was right, but I was kind of devastated.

I spent two weeks in New York by myself, just walking around and sitting in my hotel room – I went and saw this movie called Jerry Maguire like, five times, and that’s where I got ‘Song From An American Movie’, ’cos there’s a Bruce Springsteen song in there called ‘Secret Garden’. And I would go back to my room and write and write… I went to the drug store and bought of notebooks, and one notebook was just how to make every song on that record better to fit these new songs. And if I couldn’t figure out a way to do it, the song would be left off the record. I spent, like, two or three weeks doing this, and then I called my A&R guy, my manager, the guys in the band – I’m like: “I know what we’re gonna do; we’re gonna do this, and this, and this, and this – we’re gonna go to this studio and do this, we’re gonna do this…” and they’re like: “Whoah!”. And I’m like: “And I want Andy Wallace to mix it”, and Perry’s like: “I’ll take care of that; I will make it happen”. Perry’s my A&R guy – he’s a Brit. Perry Watts-Russell. Landed gentry! Stuffy. So we went in and finished it in, like, June, and it came out great!

So what is it, then? Some kind of synth, I presume…?

No. You asked! So, it’s four vintage keyboards – electric keyboards called, uh… I don’t know! And it’s me playing it and doing harmonies and stuff, and putting it through a distortion pedal, and through different effects. I’m like: “Try this – bring it back a little bit… pan this over here…”, because I had this sound I wanted to get, and finally I got it – I’m like: “Phew!” And Perry’s like: “I don’t know how you did that, dude, that is amazing”.

Honestly, for years now I’ve wanted to know that, because it’s such a great sound…!

Four keyboards, and a bunch of effects! My guitar player now plays it with just a guitar, but nothing sounds like it. You can never recreate it!

So, finally: what are your Top 5 favourite songs that you’ve written, or what are the five that you’d most like to be remembered for?

Wow. Let me just answer this: I really don’t care what I’m remembered for. I know what I did; I know what I like. So I think that’s a better question, is like: what do I think represents me… represents me in the way I want to be represented. What people remember…? I can’t control that, and I don’t really care.

Um… ‘Learning How to Smile’… I’m really proud of ‘The Hot Water Test’ and ‘Line in the Sand’ off the new record… ‘Summerland’… there’s a song on just about every record. ‘You’, the song ‘You’ that’s on Black is the New Black… I think there’s a song on just about every record that is like that. That’s five. I mean, I could go on – there’s about ten songs that, like, I’m really proud of. I can’t say… I’m proud of all my songs. I mean, there’s some songs I don’t like as much as others – I can tell you what those are…!

Well, then! Which ones do you hate which you can’t escape…?!

Well, I don’t hate, but… ‘Unemployed Boyfriend’…

…I love that song. I LOVE that song!

You’re such a sap! Such a sap…!

But you’ve done that one a couple of times – you recorded it, then you re-recorded it as well!

No, I did it because they paid me money…! I did that fucking stupid “re-record” record so that I got enough time to record - in the same studio time - Invisible Stars.

Ah, right. Still, I really do love that song. It’s funny, isn’t it, how there’s always going to be someone who likes the songs you hate!

Don’t like that song very much… ‘Good Witch of the North’…

So it’s none of the big ones – it’s not like: [resentfully] “We could live beside the fucking ocean...”

No, I love that song – that’s a great song. No, I like my hits; I love my hits, they’ve been good friends to me. They’ve got me through hard times.


Sun Songs is available now on The End Records/BMG.