An Interview With Songwriter Danny O’Keefe
Exploring Music and Popular Song
by Steve Wacker
The ferry ride from West Seattle to Vashon Island only takes about fifteen minutes, but once there it feels like you’re days away from the bustle of downtown Seattle. And there must be some kind of time warp in effect, because a recent lunchtime conversation with songwriter Danny O’Keefe was over practically before I knew it. It was as if time had stepped on a banana peel and slipped by quicker than one can say “Double cappuccino.”
O’Keefe has been dancing with the muse for more than 30 years–it’s hard to believe that his “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues” dates from the early 1970s–and his reddish brown hair and weekend stubble are shot through with gray. His eyes, though, are incredibly alive and alert, and one senses there’s nary a nuance that he doesn’t pick up on. They’re the clear blue eyes of the storyteller and songwriter, eyes that read emotions and hidden meaning like most people read street signs. And when he’s passionate about the subject at hand, one swears that if the room were dark it would take on a bluish cast from the intensity of his gaze.
Although O’Keefe achieved substantial commercial success with major labels in the 1970s, his most recent and mature work has been on independent labels. In 1984 he released The Day to Day on Coldwater Records, from which two songs reached the charts. Since then he’s continued writing and performing, alone and with others, and has also worked as a contract songwriter on Nashville’s Music Row. O’Keefe’s songs have also been recorded by a wide variety of artists, including Judy Collins, Elvis Presley, Jackson Browne, Willie Nelson, Alison Krauss, and Waylon Jennings.
While he’s accumulated an impressive song catalog, O’Keefe is not one to rush product to the marketplace. The followup to his 1984 release didn’t come until early in 2000, when Runnin’ from the Devil was released on Miramar Recordings, a boutique label based in Seattle. The themes O’Keefe explores on this CD include (as always) matters of the heart, but songs like “Can’t Outrun the Years” and “Never Got Off the Ground” (the latter co-written with David Mallett) are commentaries about mortality and the human condition in general. “Only An Ocean Away” is a beautiful, touching song about a veteran leaving a child behind in Vietnam, and “Well, Well, Well” (co-written with Bob Dylan) is a commentary about human abuse of the Earth.
Conversation with O’Keefe rambled all over the place, from his career as a songwriter and chronicler of affairs of the heart to his thoughts about Napster and MP3, from his musings on the creative process to his wide-ranging knowledge of the forces that shape the ever-evolving state of American music. He also talked about some of the people he’s known and worked with. But it’s not all about music; an especially meaningful topic to O’Keefe these days is The Songbird Foundation, the non-profit organization he founded in 1997 that’s dedicated to the preservation of songbird habitat by promoting ecological methods of growing coffee.
First, a little bit about your background. You’re a Northwest native,
right?
Yes. Born in Spokane, raised there and in Wenatchee–and a little
bit in South St. Paul, Minn. I finished high school in St. Paul, and my
grandmother owned a stockman’s hotel in South St. Paul. It was the
second-largest stockyards in the nation at the time. I lived there from the age
of 17 until about 19.
So–the Midwest. Didn’t think I’d be asking this, but do you have any
appreciation for Garrison Keillor and A Prarie Home Companion?
I love
Garrison. I was just listening to him this morning. It’s very Minnesotan, and I
think of him as a closet singer/songwriter who’s established his own venue.
ON SONGWRITING AND POETRY
How did you decide to become involved with music as a singer and a
songwriter?
Like a lot of young men in their early 20s, I took life a
bit too fast. The result was a serious motorcycle accident that broke my left
leg in numerous places. During a long convalescence, I started evaluating what I
really wanted to do more than everything else.
I found that songwriting alleviates the day-to-day tedium. If I’d been, say,
a restaurant supplies salesman it would have been alleviated somewhat by family
and friends, but the gaping hole of tedium would have been patched by drugs,
drink, television, whatever. It’s that urge to be creative that many people have
not been allowed to explore, or have been told that they don’t have–which is
the biggest lie that gets sold to us by the system at large. Woody Guthrie said
everybody should write a song.
Do you feel there’s much of a distinction to be made between songwriters
and poets?
I think the music fills something that the words themselves
can’t do. They give you space, and within that space they give you emotional
context. How do you describe something that’s more feeling than vision? In the
synthesis of eye and ear, the beautiful thing about the music is that it holds
you. You can do things with a song that you can’t do with a poem on the
page.
How does the songwriting process work for you? Do you write quickly, or do
you like to let things simmer?
Once I get an idea, I usually charge
through it. I don’t write songs over months. I tend to stay on it, because it’s
like something unknown that’s revealing itself to me, and I want to see it.
Do you write about matters of the heart primarily from experience, or do
you take points of view of people that you think about to create your work?
Both. You have to think of yourself through another–that’s part and parcel
of the creative process. Who’s that woman? It’s Magdalena. She’s an icon, a
metaphor for all other women. Maybe there’s an element that’s very real and
personal, but she’s Mary Magdalene. She’s the sainted whore. She’s that analogy
that you’ll work to death if you’re not careful.
But an icon is the basis of a metaphor that allows you to keep reinvesting,
because metaphors are a part of that archetypal set of structures that are the
common language from which all language is predicated. They’re the science, the
semiotics that you draw from, the universal–and I don’t think you can help but
use them. That’s all you have, really. And how you invest them with yourself is
the feeling that you’ve got from your own real experience.
It’s the feeling that really counts, and if it gets you to invoke a key
experience that perhaps you don’t have adequate words for, you will make that
connection with your audience, because that’s what they’re really there
for–they’re making their song up as you sing yours.
That was the beautiful thing about 1950s radio. “In the Still of the Night,”
for example. You had your own story that goes along with the song. It went on
for 3 generations until we get to the point of a video that dictates someone’s
idea of what the pictures have to be for the song.
I have my own pictures for “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Their pictures don’t
bother me, but I would love that song just as much without them. To me, it’s one
of the greatest rock ‘n roll songs of all time. Like a lot of people, I miss
Kurt Cobain. I wish he had been less fearful, and that he would have challenged
himself into his next life–but too bad. Unfortunately, he died young and left a
beautiful corpse…
It’s best to write from the heart and soul. Sometimes the songs that are
written to be commercial are the least successful. If I had written “Never Got
Off the Ground” for Alison Krauss, I don’t know that she would have recorded it.
But she heard it–I think from Mollie O’Brien’s version–and it appealed to her
strongly. (O’Keefe’s version of the song, co-written with David Mallett, appears
on his new CD Runnin’ From the Devil, available from Miramar
Recordings.)
The song “Only an Ocean Away” on your new CD sounded so real that I
thought it might be autobiographical. Did you serve in Vietnam?
No. The
motorcycle accident left me with a bad leg and a 4F deferment from the military
and Vietnam. That song is the result of many conversations I had with Vietnam
veterans who still struggle with the emotions of serving their country in an
unpopular war. I knew a lot of guys, and most of them came back with a lot of
damage. They had no forgiveness. We didn’t forgive them, they couldn’t forgive
themselves, the Vietnamese weren’t going to forgive them, and a lot of them did
leave children there. That longing of not being able to find your child is what
motivated me.
However, everything I write has a certain amount of autobiography–it’s
inevitable. You have to let your heart get broken, and sometimes rebroken,
before it can be set right again. That’s part of the emotional creative process.
If you define yourself so that you’re rigid, you’ll break –which is what
happened to a lot of those guys. They’re afraid of the overwhelming potential of
the grief they carry, and you have to look at that grief as energy you’re not
using creatively.
What do you think about the notion that songs don’t get written, but
transcribed?
I know it happens. “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues” is a
classic example of that. It pretty much wrote itself in 45 minutes. It was a
very simple song, and there’s something very deceptive about a good, simple
song. I think of John Prine and Hank Williams as the all-time champion 3-chord
songwriters.
WRITING AND PLAYING WITH OTHERS
You’ve never really been a trendy songwriter, but you must feel the
influences of the times. For example, “Along for the Ride” (from the 1984
release The Day to Day, re-released on Miramar Recordings) has
something of a disco beat…
The sound of that song was largely due to the
person who wrote the music. Actually, I’ve long thought that it would be great
to cut that as a bluegrass tune.
When you’re working with someone who’s doing the music you sometimes think of
it as so complex, but when they break it down you see that you could make an
arrangement that works just fine. Elaborate synthesizers and drum machines
sometimes overwhelm you, until you see the structure of the song.
Most of the songs on your new CD are written with other people, and in
your early years you were known more as a classic solo singer/songwriter. How
did you come to start writing with other people?
I never knew how to do
it, and missed some really wonderful opportunities with the Eagles and some
other people as well. I tried to sit down and write with them, and I couldn’t
understand it. To me, the song was cut from whole cloth, and I couldn’t imagine
adding a line and then next Thursday you adding a few lines, and after a while
we’d have a song. It’s still a little strange to me.
I wrote for Warner Bros. in the 1970s, and in the 1990s I started working as
a contract writer. Most recently I wrote for Dylan’s publishing company, but I
worked for another company in Nashville on a freelance basis before that. What
publishing companies want is a lot of songs, and the way you do that is to work
with other people.
When you’re writing for yourself, there’s a consistency to it. But when you
write with someone else, for me there’s something new musically–which is really
great. It’s like somebody brought a new color for your palette.
You were a contract writer for Dylan’s publishing company? For how
long?
Yes, for a couple of years. For the first year or so, the woman
who developed the company, Tina Snow, was still there, but in the second year
she had left. I was generating my own work, but there wasn’t really a person at
the company to run songs at that point. They paid my salary, though, for two
years.
It was an interesting time. I probably wouldn’t go back to Nashville again to
write, because I’m more interested in another kind of writing, one that’s more
connected to my poetry and has nothing to do with radio. I know radio is
important, but I think it will assume less importance in the next few years. I
can’t really do what I want to do and be concerned with the commercial end of it
anymore. That’s not to say I couldn’t write with commercial in mind, but…
One of the songs on your new album was co-written with Dylan. What was it
like working with him?
Well, that wasn’t like much of anything, because
it wasn’t an in-person collaboration. He provided me with a music track, and I
wrote the lyrics. I really wanted to do it, because I thought I might never
again have a chance to write a song with him. The chances of being in the same
room with him are really extreme, you know? Somewhere on the tape that Dylan
sent me are the words “Well, well,” which gave me the idea for the title of the
song.
Do you ever get frustrated playing solo? Do you wish you could afford a
band to play with?
I don’t know about a band… I don’t know if I’d
really need a band, but the luxury of having a couple of other players is nice.
It was fun playing for the opening of the Experience Music Project in Seattle
recently. We had one rehearsal, and they were mostly friends of mine–and good
players. They learned the songs and we had a good time. It was very
satisfying.
I would love the luxury of a really good utility player. I always thought
Jackson (Browne) was very lucky to have the Lindley Brothers. When they first
started playing together, it was Jackson Browne and the Lindley Brothers. That’s
how David billed himself, because he played so many instruments. He’s a really
delightful human being, and also a really wonderful, inventive player. A lot of
that inventiveness was really on exhibit with Jackson, because he not only loved
Jackson but also loved Jackson’s music–and he created some wonderful things.
Everybody would love to find that kind of player.
Carrying another person is hard, because if they’re really involved in your
music then you have to be really involved in their lives and provide them with
an income. I don’t really have that luxury. It’s a big thing to carry a band.
Bonnie (Raitt) carries a band, and has to figure out how to pay their bills each
month.
I always think of Ellington, being on the road most of his life with a big
band–but the reason he was on the road was to pay for them, and they grew older
with him. Whatever he made on the road, he just paid to them. The luxury of
having that kind of complex instrument, of those players, some of the greatest
players of the 20th century–to have them at music’s beck and call –that kind
of luxury doesn’t happen very often…
Do you write on other instruments?
I tried to learn piano, and I
couldn’t get my hands to work independently–probably just an old-dog-new-tricks
deal. But there’s also something about the embrace of the guitar that makes it a
unique instrument for writing. If I felt like I’d exhausted the possibilities
I’d probably be driven to something else, but the only other instrument is the
piano. I love writing or playing with people who play the piano.
Your new CD has such a beautiful, lush sound. Have you ever thought about
recording instrumental songs, without any lyrics?
I’ve not really
thought about writing only instrumental music. I have enormous respect for
instrumentalists that I’ve worked with. I remember a music festival in Canada
where Leo Kottke was playing. I could hear all the influences, and I knew
exactly where it all came from, but he’s distilled it to such a beautiful
cleanliness… I really loved listening to him play.
I sometimes play the bases of my songs as instrumentals, but they feel naked
without the words, because the words carry the idea for me. I can change my
creative options through the voice, because space and inference can be used in
completely different ways. Maybe if I were a more capable guitar player…
THE EVOLUTION OF POPULAR MUSIC
In the last fifty years or so pop music seems to have shifted its focus
from melody and allegorical lyrics to rhythm and more confessional lyrics. Do
you have any thoughts about how popular music evolves? Whether it’s cyclic or
linear, for example?
Contemporary music, like all music, is synthesis.
And if it starts off with someone simply banging on a log, it will get more
complicated, because I think it’s the nature of things simple to become more
complex. I’m not sure if it’s the nature of things more complex to become
simple–that may be inevitable, as things become too complex and break–but I
don’t know.
It’s all really very interesting. For example, at the turn of the century,
before jazz really developed, it was still in a very rudimentary form in New
Orleans. Many people who became jazz players were trained by those who studied
the classics, especially French classics. A lot of those old jazz tunes came out
of French quadrilles–so they had their antecedents not only in Africa, but also
in European court and folk music. There’s a synthesis right there, and one that
says the idea of jazz being a uniquely American music is really only partly
true.
You see an interesting thing more recently in hip-hop. It’s a synthesis of
street music, borrowing from street players with boom boxes or simple drum
machines or whatever was handy–they could just make up the bedrock to jam
on.
There wasn’t much lyric content making social commentary until well after
World War II. There was inference in lyrics, but popular music was usually
watered down to its lowest common denominator in order to sell it. Take
“Limehouse Blues”–that was about opium dens, but the public never really knew
that. And a lot of love song lyrics were referring to sexuality, but it was
“Let’s veil this as much as possible so no one understands but us.”
With the advent of the 60s and the so-called protest songs–which are really
like broadsides from the 1700s or 1800s–you started getting that assumed right
of privilege to say whatever you wanted to say. The advent of FM made a lot of
those songs possible. A lot of Dylan’s music wouldn’t have gotten on AM
radio–very little did, actually–and his influence really was heard on FM. The
Beatles made it on to AM radio, but probably not with anything from, say,
Rubber Soul on that was really important to them. If they’d only been
FM artists without the big hits but still accepted by the audience that they
cared about, I think they’d have been more than successful in their own eyes.
I’ve always thought Dylan’s acknowledgement of the vocal harmonies in
early Beatles work was interesting, because he tends to be thought of more as a
wordsmith and poet instead of a vocal arranger or melodist.
In folk
music, which is where Dylan was coming from, that’s what you listen to–the
strange mountain harmonies, the harmonies in bluegrass. The first time I ever
heard the women’s choruses from Bulgaria, I wondered where did that come from?
And that’s ancient. And then you study it a little bit and realize that Bulgaria
was the crossroads of the world. Everybody came through those mountains. And
that’s what the music sounds like.
THE SONGBIRD FOUNDATION
How did The Songbird Foundation (http://www.songbird.org) come about?
I’ve done a lot of benefits for a variety of causes, and the thing about the
songbird habitat just really spoke to me. It’s also about trees, because the
birds depend on the trees, but there’s more. We lose so much of our tree cover
on a daily basis, and when you take away the trees you lose the soil.
Also, our culture has a powerful effect on the rest of the world. For
example, the Chinese believe they’re growing a culture that will give them a
lifestyle that is at least the equivalent of the Japanese, if not the American.
This is the reverse part of colonialism, bundling all of the goods that you use
and then selling the quality of the lifestyle you’ve acquired back to those who
are least able to support it.
Our appetite for energy resources is another concern. Our oil is still very
cheap, and when the price goes up we’ll see how expensive this life that we’re
living really is. There’s a great quote, although I can’t remember who said it,
that in the future (which we’re in right now), the luxury items will be cheap,
but the essentials like water and air and food will be expensive.
One of the things we hope to accomplish with The Songbird Foundation is to
spotlight these types of issues for enough people so that perhaps some kind of
change can be accomplished.
Have you worked with any of the existing organizations, like the Sierra
Club or Greenpeace?
Well, it’s an ongoing process. We were disappointed
with the Audubon Society, because they stuck their toe in water with the
songbird issue but then backed away from it, apparently because of funding
issues. I thought of it as a core Audubon issue, but…
Also, I think Audubon got in business with a coffee company as a moneymaking
venture, which I thought was a bad idea for a non-profit. But hey, they didn’t
ask me.
It’s been said that one reason why more coffee companies aren’t certified
for cultivating shade-grown coffee is because the certification process is
unnecessarily complicated. Do you think that’s the case?
That’s not
exactly true. Starbucks’ shade-grown coffee is certified by Conservation
International, and other coffees are certified as shade-grown by Rainforest
Alliance’s ECO-OK program, Quality Assurance International, and the Smithsonian
Migratory Bird Center. But there’s room for a lot more certified shade-grown
coffee in the market place. There’s also a fair amount of shade-grown coffee
that isn’t certified, because it’s just considered another expense to the grower
who hasn’t been shown the benefit.
It isn’t hard to certify for shade, and other groups are including it in
their existing criteria. Essentially, it requires putting someone on the ground
to record the diversity of shade cover. There are many ways in which this could
be monitored, but basically an eyeball visit and a simple measure of diversity
is all that’s needed. The more the consumer is aware of the importance of shade,
the easier the process will become. Much of organic coffee is shade-grown, as is
much of the fair trade coffee.
We’re hoping to get the existing organizations to certify for shade along
with their other certifications, so a separate shade certification might not be
necessary. Hopefully, the coffee countries may begin to do it as well. It’s
largely an educational process, and it does seem to be working as evidenced by
the increasing amount of sustainably grown coffee in the market place and the
emphasis that the three local biggies have put on it. Starbucks, Tully’s, and
SBC’s (Seattle’s Best Coffee) shade-grown coffees are all very good. Small
steps, but we’re getting there.
Do you think it’s possible for human beings to grow and harvest food and
still live in harmony with the Earth?
Well, not when bankers are running
the agricultural systems, and land is seen as nothing but a view through a
ledger. We’re destroying more and more of our resources as we’re adding more and
more consumers. Two billion more consumers in 20 years? I don’t know if that can
be effectively imagined. We’re losing more species on a daily basis, and the
loss of diversity is perhaps the greatest loss of all.
Sometimes I think there’s something wrong with us. We seem to have built into
our psyche an outlaw or escapist mentality, and we think that we can sustain
ourselves in the dire moments of calamitous earthly change. We’re nomads, and
that is a core of our unconscious processes. You burn out here, and then you
move on. But if the Earth wins through cataclysm and catastrophe, enormous
numbers of life forms will be lost.
Do you tour to promote your music, or to make a living, or to raise
consciousness about the social issues you talk about?
Part of my problem
is that I have a hard time touring because of the blood clotting condition in my
leg. I’m in that position of having to find new ways, novel ways, to reach an
audience. The Internet is potentially an effective tool for me, in that people
will come to my web site to hear new music or to read something new that I’ve
written. The same way with the Songbird Foundation’s Web site–you can find
people who sell coffee on line, and you can find out something about the birds
and why the issue is important.
Actually, being able to get out there on the road–the real reason I go out
and play, ’cause there isn’t much money in it–is to be able to play in front of
people. That’s really what it’s all about. If what you have doesn’t work, it
doesn’t work there. If it does, it doesn’t matter if radio plays it or the
record company promotes it. You know it works if you play a song and the
audience gets very still and someone comes back to you later and says “God damn
it, that song made me cry…”
ARIF MARDIN and BONNIE RAITT
Besides having your own career and accomplishments, you’ve worked with
some people who have significantly influenced the course of popular music, like
producer Arif Mardin. Do you still see him?
I don’t see him much, but
when I do he’s still the same wonderful person. He’s so busy that we never have
enough time. It’s one of the luxuries of writing with people–a lot of time
they’re people whose company you really enjoy and you couldn’t spend time other
than in that creative moment.
You and Bonnie Raitt are pretty close friends. How did that relationship
come about?
Bonnie’s longtime partner was my manager, and we used to see
each other a lot then. We did a lot of benefits together, and as we got to know
each other we came to respect each other’s work and like each other’s senses of
humor.
Bonnie is one of the strongest and toughest people I know, but completely
open in that strength. She has standards that she doesn’t deviate from. She
knows you can’t just be a chick with a guitar–you have to make that sucker
talk. And her style is deceptively simple–deceptive because it’s so graceful
and eloquent. I fully expect her at the age of 65 or 70 to walk onstage and
slide that sass around just like she does today.
Her music is so well structured, and always in service to the song. A lot of
blues and bop players just use the framework of the song to jam on. But if
you’re a singer you tend not to think that way but in terms of the song, which
gives your voice more resonance. Whether it’s the human voice or the voice of
the slide guitar, when you sing you tend to value the places where you need to
breathe.
I don’t know of anyone who has done more for environmental and social justice
causes than Bonnie. If anyone ever added up all the money that she and Jackson
Browne have generated for causes they believe in, it would be an amazing
number.
INFLUENCES
Who would you say has most influenced you as a songwriter?
I don’t
think of other songwriters very much. I think of people who have influenced me
musically. I think of John Hurt–he’s a constant source of delight and awe
whenever I hear him. His work, like Bonnie’s slide playing, is deceptively
simple. A lot of times, the things that seem most simple are the most difficult
to play. Space is sometimes the hardest thing to play.
One of the most epiphanous moments I ever had was when I was, I think, a
junior in high school, and some hip college freshman played Miles Davis’
Kind of Blue for us. It was extraordinary. It connected me to all the
jazz that my father had loved, which was really pre-1940s jazz, and it still
does. It’s a record that I have never tired of–and I can’t really say that of
anybody else. Also, Nino Rota’s music from the Fellini films.
It’s not necessarily other songwriters, but other writers. It’s essentially
driven by ideas. I don’t really listen to other songwriters that much. I don’t
find that it really does me any good.
What about those people who push the envelope? Joni Mitchell, for
example?
Well, when you’re pushing the envelope, you’re generally not as
successful in a commercial sense. “Circle Game” and “Both Sides Now” and songs
from Hejira are the more popular. The Hissing of Summer
Lawns–other writers may think great, but…
I think Joni’s Mingus record is an amazing work of genius, and it’s
still not recognized as such. That record wasn’t really appreciated by either
jazz aficionados or Mitchell’s audience. Who else could have taken on Charlie
Mingus? There are none now and there were none then in the jazz world who could
have done that honor and justice to him, and Mingus knew it. That record really
stands alone, and will be discovered by another generation. But that’s alright,
too.
The real key is to be appreciated by at least 3 generations, ideally 3
successive generations. For example, there are people in the next generation who
will rediscover Louis Armstrong and have their minds blown.
Do you ever hear other artist’s interpretations of your work and think of
it as the ultimate evocation of the song? One that comes to mind is Judy
Collins’ version of “Angel Spread Your Wings,” which she recorded about 3 years
after you did with the same producer–Arif Mardin–and even some of the same
players, like Hugh McCracken on guitar.
To be honest, no, not really.
But sometimes I’ll hear something that I really admire. For example, I really
like Waylon Jennings’ version of “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues,” because
it’s really Waylon. He plays it just like he would of one of his own songs. He
knew what my arrangement was, but he didn’t bother to make it his. I thought
that was a great thing–I really liked that.
I don’t know if everyone is aware anymore of what a great picker of material
Judy Collins was–maybe still is, I don’t know. She had a really good ear for
hearing a great song.
A group that isn’t listened to very much anymore but had a wonderful ability
to appreciate a good song was the Kingston Trio. Listen to The Kingston Trio
Live at the Hungry I for some great material.
You say you tend not to listen to other songwriters, but are you familiar
at all with the tribute album Lyle Lovett did a few years ago to all the Texas
songwriters who influenced him? It’s an amazing collection, called Step
Inside This House.
Only as I’ve heard them played by him on Austin
City Limits or Studio on West 54th. That’s a tradition, going back to your roots
to acknowledge and make people aware. For example, who’s aware of Townes Van
Zandt? Most people don’t know about him, and he probably would have been a
difficult artist for them to watch. But there’s a bunch of those guys–and
they’re not just in Texas, they’re all over the place. It’s a really great thing
for an artist to focus on them–Bonnie’s done it, and other people have done
it–to make someone aware of the prior generation that is the substrate of one’s
own creativity. Because it’s that continuity of music that is history.
You can go back and listen to Louis Armstrong and whoever from the 20s and
30s–like Art Tatum. There’s so much to learn that has something to do with now,
because people still borrow from what he played.
RECORDING TECHNOLOGY, NAPSTER, and MP3
Do you have recording equipment in your home?
I’ve done that in
the past, but for me it’s more trouble than it’s worth. I have good friends that
are reasonably priced and very skilled, and I find it easier to go to the studio
and let somebody do it right.
Studio time is now incredibly cheap compared to what it was 15 to 20 years
ago. I pay between $25 and $45 per hour, and to my ears the $45 an hour is just
as good as it was at Wally Heider’s for $150 per hour. For less than $50,000,
you can have a very competitive studio. That same studio would have cost 5, 6,
maybe 7 times as much 10 years ago.
Seattle had a 3 track studio when I started recording. An 8 track Scully was
like science fiction in Seattle, and Atlantic had sold their 8 track Scully
machines to Muscle Shoals, which is where I went to record. Atlantic had just
gotten in MCI 16 track machines, and nobody could imagine how we could fill 16
tracks.
Do you feel that the advances made in personal recording technology affect
the way you think musically?
It’s affected the whole business. Look at
what happens on the Internet. A lot of that is made possible–musically–because
of the decentralization of the process, whether it’s people with studios in
their home, or independent labels, or people putting their own music up on the
Web via MP3 technology or whatever.
As you decentralize anything, you take the centers of power away. There’s a
huge issue right now, with Napster and Gnutella and everybody else jumping on
that bandwagon, of how to deal with the protection of intellectual property
rights. It’s huge.
What’s your take on that? Is it safe to say you’ve made a pretty good
portion of your living over the last 30 years from “Good Time Charlie’s Got the
Blues?”
Yes, that and “The Road” and a few other songs.
What do you think of people listening to your music without paying for
it?
Well, they don’t pay for it on the radio, unless they pay by being
forced to listen to the ads. They pay for it on DMX by paying their cable
subscriptions, and I receive percentages of that based on whatever deal BMI
works out for me. If they buy a CD, I obviously make some money from that. But
if they buy a CD and put it on their hard drive, and then boot up to Napster and
send e-mail that says anyone can have this if they want it–that isn’t the same
thing. They’re taking away potential sales, which means no royalties would be
paid.
There’s a classic misconception that people who create art aren’t doing it
for the money and therefore don’t need to be paid. The idea that when I write a
song I’m not really working as hard as someone who’s shoveling a ditch–I take
offense at that, because if that guy knew how to write that song he’d be writing
it, and it would make his life more valuable to him.
The idea that you shouldn’t have to be paid for your art is no different than
you shouldn’t have to be paid for your patent, or your copyright, or your drug,
or whatever you’ve created. However, you can question the value of the artist or
the scientist or the patentholder–that’s a debatable issue–and the rates
songwriters are paid, which is an arbitrary thing.
A lot of the lawsuits that organizations like BMI and ASCAP and SESAC are
pursuing nowadays are with people who don’t want to pay anything. They think
that because they’re running a business they should be able to use your music
for free in order to make money for themselves. And I think if you pose the
question effectively to anyone, they’ll admit that stealing is stealing, however
you do it. You’re stealing in a sense when you flip your cigarette butt out the
car window, because it’s an act of not caring, an act of abuse. When you steal
someone’s work, you’re abusing them by lack of care. It’s a lack of
responsibility.
I don’t want to get too prepostrous about this, but I think the key to
freedom and liberty is a personal thing that involves responsibility. To the
degree that you take responsibility for yourself and your actions, you have the
potential to develop your own liberty, your own freedom. And in doing so, you
develop someone else’s.
As far as Napster and MP3 are concerned, it’s hard to draw too many
conclusions about the meaningfulness of a particular moment, when a business or
phenomenon is expanding. All the old pyramidal structures of the music business
are being challenged by structures that are more global, like the Internet. The
structure is becoming more dynamic. It’s more decentralized, and any of the
points within that context can be the sources of direction for the whole. That’s
a unique thing, an historical development.
How you protect someone’s investment is really essential, in the same way
that developing effective policing measures to catch hackers is essential. You
protect what you have to protect as a qualifier for effective participation. If
it makes money and you participate and you don’t get any or you don’t give any,
it won’t work. Money and electrons are still the common denominators that make
things run.
What do you think about the argument that the rise of Napster and MP3 is
similar to when blank cassettes were introduced in the late 1960s? At the time,
everybody said it would bankrupt the record companies, and it didn’t. The
argument continues that while it may be negative for the record companies, it
helps the artist because more people will be inclined to buy their music and/or
to see them in concert.
I think it remains to be seen. If someone’s
making the assumption that we’ve reverted back to the old days when your records
were only used for promotion…
Take Little Richard, for example, who never made anything to speak of from
his records. He had his publishing bought out from underneath him, he was
playing a lot of one night stands, probably 250+ nights a year, burning himself
out. Is that what you want to return to? Well, you can’t. You can’t work the
road like that anymore, and you don’t have that small number of artists to
maintain that kind of uniqueness.
The most difficult part of dealing with the amount of music that’s available
now is how to wade through it to find something that’s interesting. That’s sort
of the position the record companies took–they were there to shout about
something that they believed was great product. A lot of times they were fooling
you, but they couldn’t fool you too long. Eventually, it would be discovered,
whether it was the Dead or Michael Jackson. If it was good it would get out, and
if it wasn’t good, you ultimately were going to reject it. You have to have an
organizational capability in order to promote something. Otherwise it’s just a
sea of chaos.
RECENT SONGS, and SONGWRITING AS THERAPY
It appears that you’re trying to draw conclusions about some big questions
in some of your recent work, like in “Can’t Outrun the Years” on your new CD.
Are all the songs on the new CD recent songs?
“All My Friends” is from
the 70s, but everything else is pretty much from the 90s.
There’s a thread of melancholy running through your music. Some call it
haunting, some depressing, some fatalistic.
It certainly might be.
Is that a conscious reflection of your demeanor?
Writing for me is
a form of therapy, and I do exorcise demons with it. It’s hard to write songs of
joy, although a lot of times the investment that you make in the performance of
a song that’s moving–not necessarily sad–generates a powerful enough emotion
for it to become liberating. And it’s liberating for the audience, too.
I don’t really think of my songs as sad. They’re descriptions of life and
living, particularly the songs on this record. I was raised a Catholic, and
although I’m no longer a Catholic I’m still running from the devil. Someone
asked me “Who’s the devil?” Well, the devil’s time. There’s a great quote in
James Gleick’s book Faster, although I’m not sure who said it: “Time is
the devil, and God is speed.” The ability to be instantaneous is to be
all-powerful.
You sort of develop an economy, and it’s an emotional economy as well. I
don’t want to blather as much. I want to be able to get right to the heart of
the matter. I make an assumption that may or may not be valid–that what has
moved me will have connection to the other and will move them. And that’s all I
really care about, the moving aspect.
I have some “entertaining” songs, but they’re deeper than they appear. “In
Northern California Where the Palm Tree Meets the Pine” (from the 1977 Warner
Bros. album American Roulette), for example, is an easily misunderstood
song. I don’t perform it too often, because I’m concerned that someone might
have their feelings hurt by misunderstanding it. It’s about transformation, and
the person singing the song is the one transformed by the humanness of the one
that’s supposedly deformed.
I used to sing “Louie the Hook vs. The Preacher” (from the 1972 Cotillion
album O’Keefe), and the guys in the white shoes and belts and the plaid
polyester pants would get up and walk out. I didn’t see that as a victory.
Does the song “You Could Have Been Eva Braun” (from the 1984 release
The Day to Day, available on Miramar Recordings) ever get
misunderstood? I think that’s a fall-down-on-the-floor funny song.
I
thought it was funny too. It helps when you explain it, and I have an
introduction that explains it in terms of the power of women. The quote that I
use is “Any man who doubts the power of women probably hasn’t been properly
toilet trained.” Because anyone who’s had any kind of a relationship with a
woman, whether it’s a grandmother, a mother, a wife, a daughter, or even a
sister, knows that they can usually get you to do what they want you to do.
The whole point of that song is that if Hitler had only had a real woman, all
this shit might never have happened.
One of your songs that has long haunted me is “Just Jones” (from the 1977
Warner Bros. album American Roulette).
The voice is a marvelous instrument
so is the heart and brain
so’s the fire and so’s the wind
and especially the rain
Was that about a particular person, or more about a general feeling you
were trying to convey?
There are masks that you use. My father’s definitely in it, although it isn’t
about him. It’s about the emotion of his death, but I don’t know if I succeeded
with that song as well as I’d have liked. It was also about the older couple,
looking up at the ceiling, not being able to speak to each other. That was Jones
in the song, looking down at me, not being able to speak to me. It’s that
inability to communicate that walls us off from ourselves and others.
My daughter, on her graduation, recited a piece from Tennessee Williams’
Orpheus Descending: “Take me up to Cypress Hill in your car, and we’ll
listen to the dead people talk. And they do talk up on Cypress Hill–they
chatter like birds. All they say–the only advice they have to give–is ‘Live.
Live. Live.’” Sounds simple, don’t it?
If you’re only waiting for death to reveal the wonderfulness of what’s
waiting for you, then you’re not alive.