MON., JUNE 01, 2009
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eMusic Q&A: Mark Everett of Eels
by Barry Walters
Those with only a passing understanding of Eels might mistake its sole original member, Mark Everett, for a cantankerous curmudgeon. First known for his 1997 alt-rock hit "Novacaine For the Soul," this Virginia-born, LA-based musician subsequently inspired Republican ire with ditties like "It's a Motherfucker," placed his songs in every Shrek, authored his autobiography Things the Grandchildren Should Know, and starred in the BBC documentary Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives about his father Hugh Everett III, the physicist who invented the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory.
Everett based his latest Eels album Hombre Lobo on a werewolf-like character he created for 2002's "Dog Faced Boy." Its 12 songs follow his loner's thwarted attempts to seduce a girl he believes to be his soul mate. The result is this songwriter's most outgoing work ever. Accordingly, the Everett that eMusic's Barry Walters encountered was open and gracious.
Forgive me for forgoing the chitchat. I like this album a lot and have a bunch of things I want to ask.
(His famously doleful voice brightens) Oh, that's nice to hear. Great! Fuck the chitchat!
There's a clarity and immediacy to these songs, both lyrically and musically. Did you intentionally pare them down?
Yeah. After doing Blinking Lights, a double album with 33 tracks and grand orchestration, it was only natural that I'd want to do something immediate and I think that's what led to the subject being desire, which to me equaled the electric guitar and a stripped-down band feeling.
Since Nirvana and Radiohead became models for hundreds of bands, abstract lyricism has become commonplace. It seems you've evolved the other way.
I certainly have songs that are more impressionistic, but it depends on and what I'm trying to convey. I do have a lot of stuff that's autobiographical, but other times, it's really just a story I'm making up from some character's point of view. People often mistake that for autobiography because I like to do it from the first person.
Do you sometimes get sick of yourself?
Yeah. The last thing you wanna do after Blinking Lights and writing your autobiography and making a film about your father is to do something blatantly autobiographical. But even if you're writing through the voice of a character, you have to identify with it personally in some ways for it to work. It's a very valuable thing to do, putting a mask on. It really frees you up to be more fearless and get to the heart of the matter.
In creating this character, you seem to be singing from your own feelings even more than ever.
You can think of all of these songs as sales pitches from a guy who's trying to convince the object of his affections that he's the man for her. And he's taking different approaches in each song, and sometimes he's more gentle and sometimes he's more aggressive. Then he's frustrated and says, "Okay, let me put my guard down and tell you what I'm really like." And by the last song, he's saying, "Let me try a different approach. You seem like a really smart person. You should see that my differences are things that should be looked upon as assets rather than scorned."
You resisted the temptation to give the story a happy ending.
Because it's an album about wanting the girl, not an album about getting the girl. And the listener can decide what the next song after that [the album's ending] would be like.
One of the few things you have in common with the '90s alt-rock era you came from is the perspective of an outsider looking in. Is that how you see yourself?
That's one of the ways I can identify with this character on this album. Some of these songs could certainly be taken from the character's point of view or from my own personal point of view.
Your protagonist knows there's love out there, and it's embodied in this one girl that he longs for, but it seems it's at a distance that he can't quite cross.
We've all been there, haven't we? (Laughs). One of the things that endeared me to you was learning that you'd been asked to give a dust jacket quote to a soon-to-be published edition of Kurt Cobain's journals and you responded, "Please don't do this to me after I kill myself." Were you also having a lot of demands put on you at the time?
Yeah. When you sign up to be a rock singer, you're thinking about doing what you wanna do everyday instead of working at some shitty job. But there's no way to prepare for the fact that a lot of it is like a shitty day job. The fun part is making the record, and everything after that is the opposite of fun, the kind of stuff Kurt Cobain couldn't handle.
Nirvana's popularity opened doors for a lot of '90s bands that in any other era would not have gotten within spitting distance of the pop charts. Like yours.
The first Eels album was commercially popular, and I really hated the experience. But it made me focus on what I really wanted to do. I made a concerted effort to whittle down my audience with an album about death [1998's Electro-Shock Blues]. Everyone around me said, "You're crazy. No one wants to hear this." And it was the best thing I ever did because it started the long process of having an audience that would slowly grow over the years and it keeps getting bigger and it's all on my terms. It's a really good feeling.
I remember Cobain saying something about seeing people at Nirvana shows that would've beaten him up at high school.
That's exactly what happened to me on the 1997 Lollapalooza tour. I would see all these people who were the people I hated in high school, and think, "Something's not right here."
How did you summon the courage to consciously alienate those people?
I think of it as the moment I became a man. I had this manager who was very much like a father figure. He really had a problem with Electro-Shock Blues and didn't think I should put it out. But I felt for the first time in my life I had a clear vision of what I was doing, and I believed in it to the point where I realized I was gonna stop taking his advice. I had to fire him, and it was a scary time. But it was the best feeling when I stuck to my guns and it all worked.
What were you not willing to do?
Put out Beautiful Freak Volume Two and more $300,000 videos. The way that music is made now is basically for people who don't like music. It's made by focus groups. I would go insane. The only person I'm thinking about listening to a song when I'm making a song is me. I'm just trying to impress myself. If other people like it, that's great. But I'm not going to write a song to try and please a certain kind of person.
Have you ever tried to write a song to win over a girl?
Of course. Who hasn't? Certainly a few songs on this album were written with that in mind. They're all written in the mind of a character trying to do that. A few of them I'd written before we started recording with that purpose.
Do you want to talk about your beard?
[Almost flirtatiously] Of course.
What is its current length?
Well, the goal is to grow it so long that I don't need to wear pants anymore. I'm getting pretty close to my goal.
You were several years ahead of the curve for musicians to wear beards.
I often get the blame for the influx of bearded hipsters on the city streets these days. I'm certainly not the first one to grow a beard; I just grew an extremely large one in 2001.
Is its excessive size a way for you to maintain your competitive edge?
Yeah, let's face it: Those are boys' beards. This is a man's beard.
I don't know if it's a Sigmund Freud thing or a Santa Claus thing, but I think I read somewhere that men with beards are more likely to be asked directions.
[Guffaws] I've never heard that, but that makes sense. There's this unwritten rule that girls don't like beards, but I've often found the opposite to be true, and maybe it's because we have a wise old guru thing about us. I gotta say that while I'm out walking the dog lately, I do get asked for directions a lot.
Dogs are a people magnet.
I know. If someone had just told me that I wouldn't have bothered starting a rock band. They're so much easier.
Everett based his latest Eels album Hombre Lobo on a werewolf-like character he created for 2002's "Dog Faced Boy." Its 12 songs follow his loner's thwarted attempts to seduce a girl he believes to be his soul mate. The result is this songwriter's most outgoing work ever. Accordingly, the Everett that eMusic's Barry Walters encountered was open and gracious.
Forgive me for forgoing the chitchat. I like this album a lot and have a bunch of things I want to ask.
(His famously doleful voice brightens) Oh, that's nice to hear. Great! Fuck the chitchat!
There's a clarity and immediacy to these songs, both lyrically and musically. Did you intentionally pare them down?
Yeah. After doing Blinking Lights, a double album with 33 tracks and grand orchestration, it was only natural that I'd want to do something immediate and I think that's what led to the subject being desire, which to me equaled the electric guitar and a stripped-down band feeling.
Since Nirvana and Radiohead became models for hundreds of bands, abstract lyricism has become commonplace. It seems you've evolved the other way.
I certainly have songs that are more impressionistic, but it depends on and what I'm trying to convey. I do have a lot of stuff that's autobiographical, but other times, it's really just a story I'm making up from some character's point of view. People often mistake that for autobiography because I like to do it from the first person.
Do you sometimes get sick of yourself?
Yeah. The last thing you wanna do after Blinking Lights and writing your autobiography and making a film about your father is to do something blatantly autobiographical. But even if you're writing through the voice of a character, you have to identify with it personally in some ways for it to work. It's a very valuable thing to do, putting a mask on. It really frees you up to be more fearless and get to the heart of the matter.
In creating this character, you seem to be singing from your own feelings even more than ever.
You can think of all of these songs as sales pitches from a guy who's trying to convince the object of his affections that he's the man for her. And he's taking different approaches in each song, and sometimes he's more gentle and sometimes he's more aggressive. Then he's frustrated and says, "Okay, let me put my guard down and tell you what I'm really like." And by the last song, he's saying, "Let me try a different approach. You seem like a really smart person. You should see that my differences are things that should be looked upon as assets rather than scorned."
You resisted the temptation to give the story a happy ending.
Because it's an album about wanting the girl, not an album about getting the girl. And the listener can decide what the next song after that [the album's ending] would be like.
One of the few things you have in common with the '90s alt-rock era you came from is the perspective of an outsider looking in. Is that how you see yourself?
That's one of the ways I can identify with this character on this album. Some of these songs could certainly be taken from the character's point of view or from my own personal point of view.
Your protagonist knows there's love out there, and it's embodied in this one girl that he longs for, but it seems it's at a distance that he can't quite cross.
We've all been there, haven't we? (Laughs). One of the things that endeared me to you was learning that you'd been asked to give a dust jacket quote to a soon-to-be published edition of Kurt Cobain's journals and you responded, "Please don't do this to me after I kill myself." Were you also having a lot of demands put on you at the time?
Yeah. When you sign up to be a rock singer, you're thinking about doing what you wanna do everyday instead of working at some shitty job. But there's no way to prepare for the fact that a lot of it is like a shitty day job. The fun part is making the record, and everything after that is the opposite of fun, the kind of stuff Kurt Cobain couldn't handle.
Nirvana's popularity opened doors for a lot of '90s bands that in any other era would not have gotten within spitting distance of the pop charts. Like yours.
The first Eels album was commercially popular, and I really hated the experience. But it made me focus on what I really wanted to do. I made a concerted effort to whittle down my audience with an album about death [1998's Electro-Shock Blues]. Everyone around me said, "You're crazy. No one wants to hear this." And it was the best thing I ever did because it started the long process of having an audience that would slowly grow over the years and it keeps getting bigger and it's all on my terms. It's a really good feeling.
I remember Cobain saying something about seeing people at Nirvana shows that would've beaten him up at high school.
That's exactly what happened to me on the 1997 Lollapalooza tour. I would see all these people who were the people I hated in high school, and think, "Something's not right here."
How did you summon the courage to consciously alienate those people?
I think of it as the moment I became a man. I had this manager who was very much like a father figure. He really had a problem with Electro-Shock Blues and didn't think I should put it out. But I felt for the first time in my life I had a clear vision of what I was doing, and I believed in it to the point where I realized I was gonna stop taking his advice. I had to fire him, and it was a scary time. But it was the best feeling when I stuck to my guns and it all worked.
What were you not willing to do?
Put out Beautiful Freak Volume Two and more $300,000 videos. The way that music is made now is basically for people who don't like music. It's made by focus groups. I would go insane. The only person I'm thinking about listening to a song when I'm making a song is me. I'm just trying to impress myself. If other people like it, that's great. But I'm not going to write a song to try and please a certain kind of person.
Have you ever tried to write a song to win over a girl?
Of course. Who hasn't? Certainly a few songs on this album were written with that in mind. They're all written in the mind of a character trying to do that. A few of them I'd written before we started recording with that purpose.
Do you want to talk about your beard?
[Almost flirtatiously] Of course.
What is its current length?
Well, the goal is to grow it so long that I don't need to wear pants anymore. I'm getting pretty close to my goal.
You were several years ahead of the curve for musicians to wear beards.
I often get the blame for the influx of bearded hipsters on the city streets these days. I'm certainly not the first one to grow a beard; I just grew an extremely large one in 2001.
Is its excessive size a way for you to maintain your competitive edge?
Yeah, let's face it: Those are boys' beards. This is a man's beard.
I don't know if it's a Sigmund Freud thing or a Santa Claus thing, but I think I read somewhere that men with beards are more likely to be asked directions.
[Guffaws] I've never heard that, but that makes sense. There's this unwritten rule that girls don't like beards, but I've often found the opposite to be true, and maybe it's because we have a wise old guru thing about us. I gotta say that while I'm out walking the dog lately, I do get asked for directions a lot.
Dogs are a people magnet.
I know. If someone had just told me that I wouldn't have bothered starting a rock band. They're so much easier.
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