December 13th, 2007
AVC: During the show, you played an older, unreleased song and mentioned regretting not including it on an album. How do you decide what songs to keep?
PJ: I think it was actually that night when it occurred to me. It's so interesting to me how songs take on a shape and body of their own and grow, and that song's just grown into this really special, really strong song about life, death, and the meaning of everything. When I wrote it, I thought nothing of it. It's amazing to me. A song like "The Desperate Kingdom Of Love" [from Uh Huh Her] as well has just grown into this giant thing. It's a whole little world there. It doesn't need me, it never did. Going back to your first question, it was on the tip of my tongue at the time, but I wanted to say that it's important to not become confused between the singer and the song, and the writer and the song. Because I think I'm a maker of songs, and songs are like films or a picture: You put them over there, and they have nothing to do with you. They're this thing. They're their own world. They inhabit their own universe, and other people can come and step into them. But they're not me. The craft, the writing of a song, is about that. It's about creating a story, a life story, a world within three minutes, but that's the frame, if you like, the picture frame. That fascinates me.
And that is what I do, and what I concern myself with. I think I wanted to emphasize that you shouldn't separate the piece from the way it's intended. I always feel like words shouldn't be unraveled from the music. They're all linked so much together. That it's a song, it'll forget about you. It's not just the words, and it's not just the performer. It's the song. And those songs will live on way beyond me, some of them will. That's the beauty of it. You very occasionally write a gift of a song, which doesn't happen that often. Like "Desperate Kingdom Of Love." I don't know where that came from, but that feels like that's going to be around for another hundred years. I know I might be speaking like I've got a big head or something. But I know that song has got nothing to do with me. That's just a song that was maybe a hundred years old already. Does that make sense?
AVC: Onstage, you seemed more like a conjurer than a songwriter, moving around and bringing things out of the instruments.
PJ: That is so interesting. Some of my friends that were there said the same thing. They said it was like watching a magician. I thought, "Wow, that's lovely." A couple of my close friends were saying it was like some magical mystery thing going on there.
AVC: This idea of conjuring music instead of writing it sort of comes from the blues world, which seems to be an influence on your work.
PJ: I can agree with you on that, because I think blues music is music of the soul. Of course, there are other forms. You could call some classical music blues music in that way. Things that make you feel, that go into that innermost core. It's about being human. That's the stuff of the soul. If that means blues or country or whatever, it's just that. It's soul-to-soul business. I think that's enormously comforting, nourishing, and inspiring, and always has been.
AVC: So many of your songs are love songs. Do you keep pursuing that theme for any particular reason?
PJ: Ever since time began: What song is not about love? Whether it's about love from man to woman or parent to child, or grandmother to granddaughter… It just goes on and on. Or whether it's the love of one's country. I think it's just something sung about a lot, because it's one of the strongest human emotions that we all touch on, every day of our lives.
AVC: There's a ghostly quality to much of White Chalk. A lot of the songs seem to be about looking for things that are no longer there, or trying to reach something you can't see, in the past, or even out beyond history.
PJ: I'd never thought of it until you put it into words just now, about it being about looking for something that's not there. That certainly hadn't occurred to me even as I was making it. I felt like the music I wanted—the music and words—I wanted them to inhabit a different world, almost. It wasn't particularly the world we know as planet earth, and it wasn't particularly heaven or hell or whatever—just a different universe. I was very pleased with the way the record ended up sounding. It sounds like it's from a different universe to me. Even myself as the maker of it, I feel a bit confused. "What I am hearing? Where is this from?" It does sound like it's from a different planet, really.
AVC: The photo of you on the cover of White Chalk, and the way you present yourself in these shows, there's a definite persona there that seems to coincide with the type of music you're making now.
PJ: I feel I'm the host of the song, and [my image] is a very important part of it. Like you said, the album cover felt right to me. I listened to what the music is and I get the visual picture. I wanted simplicity, almost to be like a walking painting, I wanted to be very covered. So I'm just this walking piece of artwork, really, in which I could covey the song. It felt absolutely right, even to be very covered, to be in a fitted and beautiful gown made out of rags, with graffiti on it. Again, getting into what we talked about earlier, these songs are there for people to project their own lives onto. In the same way, I wanted to be an open painting. People come at the album and get from it whatever they need, right now. I wanted it to be very simple, not too much suggestion other than the song.
AVC: You are the central image on every one of your album covers, but they could all be different people.
PJ: It always comes from the music. It always comes from how to hang the songs; how to present them best. And I'm the link in the chain between getting them to other people, so I have to try and present them in the best way.
AVC: You mentioned how your songs take on lives of their own—
PJ: That's endlessly fascinating to me.
AVC: Some musicians say the best part is the moment of completion, when the song is done and they're ready to move on. You seem like you're saying the opposite: that when the song is done, that's just the beginning for you.
PJ: I think that's something quite different. I think what you're talking about is the speed at which people produce material. Some people, like Leonard Cohen, write one album every 10 years, and labor over a song for five years at a time. Others, like Howe Gelb, a friend of mine, he can just write 20 songs a day. So I think that's a different thing. What I was saying is that once the song is written, then it's alive and it can grow or it can die. Some songs were right for that moment, and then they die. Other songs get bigger and bigger and bigger and just keep going.
AVC: As a listener, you can go through phases when songs come and go and mean more or less to you as time goes by.
PJ: I heard "What A Wonderful World" the other day, and I thought, "Jesus Christ, what a song!" That is just never going to die. That song is incredible, isn't it?
AVC: These days, its sentiment sounds pretty reassuring.
PJ: That's what I mean. They grow and they change. They become something different according to the world that we're living in, and they can take on this whole different shape and form.
AVC: A few years ago, when Uh Huh Her came out, you were asked how you felt about making music when so much horrible stuff was going on in the world. You said something like, "If anything, it makes it feel more important." Here we are again, you have a new album, and the same stuff is still going on. Do you feel the same way?
PJ: I couldn't change the way I feel. It's more important than ever, and all forms of human expression are in need more than ever at times like this, not just songs.
« Previous | 1 | 2
- Comments