The Minus 5's Scott McCaughey
Scott McCaughey steadfastly refuses to take himself seriously, but that shouldn't stop the rest of us. Over the past 15 years, the goofball frontman of the Young Fresh Fellows has evolved behind the scenes into a pillar of big-league indie rock. In addition to his day job as a utility player for R.E.M., he's the bassist for Robyn Hitchcock's backing band the Venus 3, adding oomph and sparkle to Ole Taratula and Goodnight Oslo, two of the strongest and most ambitious albums of Hitchcock's career.
Last year he started up the Baseball Project with R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and former Dream Syndicate frontman Steve Wynn; the record is a tuneful tribute to the odd stories lurking within the national pastime. And since the mid-'90s he's been maestro for the Minus 5, an alt-rock collective with a rotating cast that has included members of the Posies (Old Liquidator, 1995), Guided By Voices (The Lonesome Death of Buck McCoy, 1997) and Wilco (Down With Wilco, 2003).
On the Minus 5's new Killingsworth, McCaughey once again lingers along the boundaries of acceptable weirdness. He's enlisted members of the Decemberists to recreate the Sunday-morning-coming-down laziness of '70s L.A. country-rock: slow-strummed acoustic guitars, dripping pedal steel, chirpy girl background singers. (Buck makes occasional appearances, too; "I never want to be in a band that doesn't have Scott in it," he's declared.) As if all that wasn't enough, McCaughey has simultaneously released I Think This Is, a new Young Fresh Fellows album of good-natured garage nonsense.
I met up with McCaughey at the Ace Hotel in New York City on the eve of back-to-back tours with Hitchcock, the Fellows and the Baseball Project. Outside, rain pelted; inside, McCaughey's soggy Converse sneakers dried on the radiator. "I only brought one pair of shoes," he explained.
Robyn Hitchcock, "Hurry for the Sky"
Robyn wrote this about Brian Epstein, didn't he?
Yes. During shows he'll introduce it and say, "So, Brian Epstein is in a nightclub and he sees this sexy sailor —" And people start laughing, because they think it's Robyn doing a Robyn rap that doesn't make sense. And then maybe he'll say two more things about Brian Epstein and people think, 'Wow, he's taking this joke really far. 'They think it's Robyn being funny. He's actually being really sincere.
I know Peter was playing with Robyn back in the '80s, but when did you meet him?
The Fellows opened for Robyn in Berkeley around '86. We played "Give it to the Soft Boys." I figured he wasn't going to play it, so it wouldn't matter. He was different then. He was a little more guarded and occasionally grumpy, which he isn't at all now. After the show I said, "You didn't mind that we did it, did you?" And he goes, "No, except people will say, ‘The opening band did "Give it to the Soft Boys" '— that's what they'll talk about."
Peter and Robyn both have a lot of star power onstage. But I've watched you up there, and you seem to be the soul of the band.
I'm probably some kind of light relief. I can't contain myself. I'm up there playing fuckin 'Robyn Hitchcock songs and Soft Boys songs. Any band I'm in, the point is to have a whole bunch of fun.
Troggs, "With A Girl Like You"
Was the '60s garage thing big for you when you were growing up?
Definitely. The Fellows probably pictured ourselves as a '60s garage rock group. But unlike a lot of bands who came out around the same time, we didn't confine ourselves to that. It wasn't like the Chesterfield Kings or the Fuzztones — they would wear the gear and everything. We were also into country music and NRBQ and the Replacements and the Buzzcocks and a lot of English punk. But the Troggs and the Kinks and the Stones and that Pebbles and Nuggets stuff was definitely in our hearts. If I look at the first Nuggets collection that Lenny Kaye put together, I've probably played three-quarters of those songs in bands at one time or another.
When you were a kid, did you have a record that was a talisman, that you didn't want anybody else to touch?
The Monster Mash album was the record that made me discover rock and roll. Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt Kickers. I was eight years old. My dad brought it home as a joke. He worked at Sears and they had a record department. He thought the kids would think it was funny because it had a cartoon drawing of Frankenstein on the front. Little did he know what he started. I didn't know that the songs were basically classic rock and roll songs that they changed the lyrics to and made into monster songs. To me, it was this big beat and these swinging rock and roll songs. Then when the Beatles came out the next year, I was primed and ready. When I heard the Beatles, I totally flipped.
John Prine, "All the Best"
There's a sensitive singer-songwriter in you, fighting to get out.
I know every song off the first John Prine record. And I got really into the first couple of Jackson Browne records. That's when I started writing songs. That made the singer-songwriter thing click in my head. Before that it was always about bands. All of a sudden I realized that you could be a guy who plays guitar and writes songs.
The Minus 5 album is sort of "Cabinessence" to the Young Fresh Fellows '"Surfin 'U.S.A."
The Minus 5 started out as slow, weird songs. Peter and I envisioned it as psychedelic folk. Fairly acoustic. I write way more slow, weird songs than fun rock and roll songs. So I try to save those for the Fellows.
Scott Walker, "All I Do Is Dream of You"
Wait a minute. I've heard this song. Is it Bobby Darin?
It's Scott Walker.
No way! It can't be!
He did teen-idol pop in the late '50s under his real name, Scott Engel.
Wow, that's crazy. I knew he did some stuff before the Walker Brothers, but I've never heard anything like this. The Walker Brothers occasionally did pretty schmaltzy stuff, too.
I was thinking about the new Minus 5 song, "Scott Walker's Fault."
I was on a flight to Europe, and on the plane they showed that documentary about Scott Walker [Scott Walker: 30 Century Man]. One of the talking heads in the movie was Hector Zazou, who was a French composer. He said something like, "It's like the strings of the instruments are perturbed." I thought: perturbed — that's really good. I started thinking about Scott Walker's music, and how all the instruments were tortured, in a way. So the song was my attempt, inspired by Hector, to describe his recent music in an impressionistic way.
Nick Lowe, "Cracking Up"
Oh, awesome song. He's so amazing. His music always resonates with me. He's got a lot of qualities that I strive for, but I'm never going to be like him. Just classic pop songs, super catchy, yet totally demented lyrics. I've definitely tried to mine that territory. He and Robyn are neighbors in London. They started running into each other and becoming pals. The last time I was there, Nick came over and we had a little hootenanny. I brought out a couple of Charlie Rich songs, and Nick was playing a new song that he was writing. He said, "It's not done yet." He played it and it was a totally classic, perfect, amazing song. It was me and Robyn and Nick and John Paul Jones and a couple of other people. It was insane. I was sitting there, thinking, what the fuck am I doing here? It was the greatest night ever.
