Caption on Green's request: At least I still have my Smarties!
Long interviews sometimes can be really interesting or it can be… just long. Thank lord this one is the case of the former. SUPERSWEET meets up with Adam Green who in our opinion doesn’t need a blurb whatsoever for this article, you know who he is! Find out about his new rap project, and how a Dictaphone can make him feel like a man... And there’s also a One-Off’s coming next week in the Columns section!
SS: Someone told us about your family background and how your family were involved in the musical theatre business, is that true?
Adam Green: Is that right? dad is a professor of Neurology of Columbia University, but I wish, that would be cool! Oh, that’s true, my grandparents they owned a hotel so there were a lot of performers and stuff, I used to go and visit there when I was little. I was really young so they didn’t mind if I was in the dressing room. I go to be in the dressing with Jackie Mason, and Rodney Dangerfield and also Red Grooms, my favourite artist to this day.
SS: Has that inspired you to do what you do now?
Adam: I think probably wouldn’t inspire me the most now, but I guess seeing Iggy Pop or Leonard Cohen, it’s kind of different but I appreciate both.
SS: There’s a really nice variety of songs on the new album without a solid theme, what made you approach it this way?
Adam: Every song has a theme. I don’t write narrated storylines and put them into songs. It’s actually more like a time period that connects it. In a way, there’s a parallel theme of what’s happening in my life, whatever’s being expressed is finding its way into the song, but it’s always been really abstract, my approach to writing, it’s never been that clear what I’m writing about. I think also I spend a long time writing music, I spend like a month writing the music, the lyrics to me is almost a chance to take a step back and just do something off the top of my head.
SS: Do you think the concept of the album is gone?
Adam: You could always make it. I plan to make another album for sure. I can see how there’s less focus on it in the music business but I think for songwriters it’s very fun to make albums so I will try to continue to do it. But I’m not necessarily aversed to the idea of releasing songs singularly because that’s how I work on them any way. I don’t really work on albums, I work one song at a time and I don’t think of other songs that much. To have a big idea, that eliminates all the fun for me. Part of what I like is to not have that many ideas and to come into the process with not a lot. I like to feel like I’m just making it as I go along, I don’t like have it all too planned out.
SS: How do you view making music and having a career in it these days? Has it changed a lot since you first started?
Adam: The whole concept or just for me? I think for me, it’s been the same. I guess I’ve pretty much been doing the same sort of process since I began, the biggest thing that changed is probably some time around when I was 17, I started writing down, I favoured writing more things down and remembering them and try to use them to make a song. That’s when I realised the process of how I would like to write songs and I’ve been following that ever since. But there’s been a few things along the way, one of them was I stopped writing songs on the guitar and I started writing more on this Dictaphone. And I just walk around with this and I just walk around with this Dictaphone and sing into it. That’s how I’ve been working for the last 4-5 albums. The last 4 albums, I’ve been doing it like that which frees me up because I think I’m more musical and creative in my head than I am as a guitar player and it frees me up to change the music. I can hear the music in my mind; it’s just easier for me to write a song, I like to finish it before I even touch a guitar. It makes me feel like a man that way (smiles).
SS: What about the industry, has it changed?
Adam: I think it changes every day. I’ve seen people start their career after I started and they’re way gone, you know, like Avril Lavigne or something. I guess that I’m just really not thinking about money when I’m writing music, that’s just my philosophy (laughs). Ultimately, [the industry] has something to do with it, but I try never to think about it. We’ll see, I mean I have my own apartment now so maybe I’ll never have to think about it (smiles).
SS: What song do you see as the biggest leap, in terms of departure from the previous stuff?
Adam: I was really happy with how ‘You Get So Lucky’ came out which has a panpipe flute on it. It’s something I’d wanted to do for a while and I had the idea to do that for a while. I was carrying that panpipe flute melody to be played on a panpipe flute, and for some reason it just never seemed like it would be right until this song, so I put it there and I’m really happy with how that worked. While the quieter songs like ‘Getting Led’ I think is really nice as well, in general I try to do something I haven’t done before in every song that I released. What do you think? I’m doing all the talking (laughs).
SS: There’s that really cute “doigh” sound you’ve used all over the album this time. What’s that called?
Adam: The Jew’s harp? I like it, I first heard it on Incredible String Band’s album, The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. It’s like a British psychedelic folk album from the 60s. I was a big fan of them when I was 15 years old, especially that one, The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter and Wee Tam and the Big Huge. They used a lot and also they used it on another record I like by the Tower Recordings called Planet TR. It’s really just a lot of things you just get back from a lot of things you hear. I started playing music in noise bands which for me just meant me and my friends would get stoned in a closet, turned off the lights and tried to play Turkish saz music with Casio drumbeat and put some tuba in there. I think I have really formalist approach on my records: Friends of Mine, Gemstones and Jacket Full of Danger; I started to bring some of that back - some of the things I’ve learned from home recording, for the first time I treated the studio like a four-track. That’s just because I just came to the end of my interest in doing everything a certain way but I don’t regret that I did that, I think that’s great. This record has a really pristine sound, and for one thing I’m maintaining is the wooden aesthetic. Until now I’ve never really used electronic instruments on my records on the most parts. It’s really silly I had an interviewer a few days ago, he was like, ‘I’m so disappointed, I heard you spend a lot of time on this record and you were trying all these new things on and I’m so disappointed that you didn’t do more stuff on electronic music and sampling.’ (Laughs) And I thought he’s such a naïve… surely the man with the computer thing has been done really well by Prince or Beck or Eminem at this point?
SS: People have too many expectations that aren’t really theirs to begin with.
Adam: That surprised me that that’s what people still perceive that sampling is the future of music in the same way that they believe in flying saucers (laughs).
SS: At your last Union Chapel gig (Nov. 07), you were telling a story about how a woman got really offended when you were singing ‘No Legs’, what happened?
Adam: It was there (the Union Chapel), I was opening for Cerys Matthews. The woman, she had a freak out. She was yelling all kinds of stuff in the middle of the song, it was really obnoxious on her part. I think that’s really because I was new to doing concerts on my own, it was ultimately a big downer that happened at the concert and then afterwards, after the whole thing was done I felt this tap on my shoulder and it was her saying she was sorry that she realised that I wasn’t a knob. I wasn’t a bad a guy she thought and she felt bad.
SS: Did you have to do any explaining to her?
Adam: No, I think I played ‘No Legs’ too early in the set and by the end of the set she thought, ‘Oh… His music’s kinda nice. That was pretty, that song ‘We’re Not Supposed to Be Lovers’, he can’t be that bad.’ (Smiles) No I don’t think I had to explain to her, she was ok. That was fun. I mean to do this kind of thing in a church is silly any way, but it’s such a nice venue, there’s really no place like it. But that gig you went to was like the last show of that tour. That one really came together. There were some really fucking horrible concerts before that. I don’t know around this leg of the tour I started just retreating into the recess of my emotions (laughs).
SS: What? From touring for so long?
Adam: I don’t know, it wasn’t even that long, it was like 3 or 4 weeks but I just started going black. I don’t know why that’s been happening with me lately, but I really want to get over on this tour, I don’t ever want to just turn into a vegetable.
SS: Anything else interesting you’re working on?
Adam: I started a rap group with Jeffery Lewis and Jack Dishel from Only Son and Steven Mertens of Moldy Peaches and he’s also in my band. He’s sort of a producer. We don’t have a name yet, we’ve been working on 3 or 4 songs but there’s no rush.
SS: Are you the rapper?
Adam: We all rap!
SS: So who’s doing the music?
Adam: Steven Mertens is doing it. It’s pretty fun. It’s just an excuse to get the boys out for the night without their girlfriends (laughs).
SS: What do you guys rap about?
Adam: Civil War! (Smiles)
SS: You guys better come up with a band name soon.
Adam: Yeah, I want to do The Four Amigos but no one’s there with me (laughs). I’ve always wanted to be in a band called The Four Amigos. There’s nothing wrong with it (laughs), they just didn’t like it.
SS: Are there any other projects you’re doing or want to do?
Adam: Yeah… erm... (full 2 minute pause). I said I wanted to collaborate with David Bowie but they already printed that in the NME. So I feel like that’s already out of the bag. I always wanted to make a film set in the medieval time.
SS: Do you have any plans for it yet?
Adam: It’s sort of this endless book I’ve been writing, it’s a thousand page long. I like to type on a computer like… what do you call it, free-association. I just like to type on the computer as fast as I can and just whatever happens happens, so I’ve been typing a thousand pages on my computer and it’s become my book so I need to make that into a movie.
Adam: Hey, can I come up with a caption for this photo?
SS: Yes.
Adam: (Goes into a very long story to explain why, but we’ve decided to leave out) “At least I still have my Smarties!”
Photography: Krittiya Sriyabhandha