Eitzel Interview – Idler 41 May08

Music B E A U T I F U L A N D A N A R C H I C A N D C R A Z Y A N D G R E AT Idler literary editor Tony White interviews Mark Eitzel of American Music Club Mark eitzel has been making records and performing with American Music Club since the mid-1980s. The string of albums that have seen him called “America’s Greatest Living Lyricist” include California, Everclear and this year’s Golden Age. Start anywhere you want and you’ll find plaintive, witty songs that have been bracketed as alt.country, americana, and indie, amongst other things, but which exceed attempts at categorisa- tion. What there is is a cussed and contrary artistic streak and an illuminat- ing honesty and insight into human dramas — from the out-and-out elegaic (as in Everclear’s ‘Why Won’t You Stay’) to, say, a moment of fragile optimism occasioned by a visit to a bookshop. Eitzel also brings an almost willful “outsiderness” to his music and performances — on stage at a packed Kilburn Luminaire he half-jokes, “I’m not like you!” We meet at the Soho landmark Maison Bertaux, and repair to a quieter corner, chatting randomly en route about my new digital recorder, the UK’s “Underage” movement that in the past year or so has seen gigs and festivals put on by teenagers for teenagers, and Eitzel’s own first attempt-at-a-band — a bunch of prog-rock inspired school friends in Southampton, UK, in the mid-1970s who called themselves Instant Bucephalus (or maybe he was winding me up). The band fell apart after five church hall rehearsals when he discovered punk, reggae and Joan Armatrading. idler:-So how do you write? What’s the always trying to keep my mind focused process? on a song. You know I’ll play the song mark eitzel:-I wasn’t kidding about before I leave the house and I’ll play it being endlessly lazy. I’ll do everything when I get home, because that keeps it I can to avoid working, everything. in your head. You kind of wait for those You know, endless, endless, everything else moments when it all kind of sparks. You but … Except that I always have a note- can’t rely on inspiration but with all book, and I always make notes, and I’m these notes you’re kind of working out 2 1 0 e T H E I D L E R e S U M M E R 2 0 0 8 “what is it that this is?” And it kind of creative life. unfolds. You make it up too. Especially me:-Yes, ridiculously against the odds, when you’re a rhymer. I love that story sometimes. I think people grow older about Charles Bukowski, who whenever differently. There’s no morality in it. he hated a poet he’d say [disdainfully], Most of it’s just habits and physiology. “Ah, that guy’s just a rhymer.” And I’m a But also it’s a philosophy that keeps you rhymer! reading and keeps your mind not stulti- idler:-I always find it interesting how fying into … Listen, testosterone is great, we all still continue to make work; to for fucking and making children and write songs, write books, against the going and hunting and coming home, balance of the odds. It’s an Idler preoccu- but it’s also great for keeping you home pation — how to wrest your freedoms and keeping you hunting and keeping you from The Man and try to sustain a frozen in this isolated, incoherent male T H E I D L E R e I D L E P U R S U I T S e 2 11 dullness, that I’ve noticed so many people these hen party girls with their matching just relax into. You know, great! It’s not a outfits, stumbling around half-naked in bad thing. It’s normal. But music really the middle of the night, and drunk out comes from enthusiasm. of their minds. And everybody is out and idler:-I read somewhere you said that a I was, you know, it kind of frightens me piece of music makes the world a better a little bit. Not because it’s threatening, place. but more because it makes me feel, “Oh, me:-I really think so. Maybe there’s too I’ve wasted so much of my life and much of that. Maybe it’s a desperate they’ve wasted so much of their lives.” attempt to band-aid over the fall of the But also, “I wish …” because it’s so beau- West or something. This is the last days tiful and anarchic and crazy and great, of our golden era, it really is. It’s amaz- and in that way frightening to me. And ing. There’s so much good stuff happen- these cops were walking along, these ing now. I see bands that I just can’t bobbies, and they were smiling at the believe. I mean, talk about prog rock. girls and the girls were being cheeky to I’ll go to see some musician’s amazing them and it was all fun. There was no side-project and there’ll be about twenty problem. people there. And I just think, “as the But in America everyone is so fright- empire falls; all this beautiful art.” ened of the cops. If the girls were being idler:-Which empire’s collapsing? Are cheeky to [US] cops, they’d be on the we talking climate change? ground, handcuffed, and thousands me:-No, just “the West”. I’m sure that more cops would be called and suddenly China will be a viscious, brutal empire, it’s a riot. Just because people were but it will be the next one. And the EU, if partying in the streets, having fun. it survives, and it can’t survive unless it In New Orleans it could happen, learns how to deal with less oil. But I it happens some of the time in San think America won’t survive because Fransisco. But where else in America? I it’ll never be able to deal with any of don’t know, New York, maybe. In the those changes. You know, thirty years American government there’s just of spending more money on prisons instilled in everybody a fear of the peo- than schools have left it kind of over. I’m ple. A real fear! This leaking ship, trying talking about what so many Americans to stay afloat with fear, and it really talk about, the theory of it, but it’s the frightens me for America. Only twenty- last remnant of the cold war; a failing four per-cent of Americans have a pass- cold war power with an increasingly port. They never leave. They never know despotic regime. that other people are freer than us. Other It’s interesting. I was in Brighton people are not afraid to speak, they’re last week, and I’m walking through not afraid to … I have a little thing on the streets. Really not wanting to drink my website about how much I hate because there’s so many people drinking Bush. I did it myself. It’s very amateurish, and it was just like Saturday night and all with links to MoveOn.org. It’s kind of 2 1 2 e T H E I D L E R e S U M M E R 2 0 0 8 lame; middle-aged man style. But I’m irises are scanned when they arrive in kind of afraid of it now, because they’re the US, but there’s talk of this happen- hiring a private corporation to track ing to everyone. And if you don’t have people who travel internationally and your iris scanned, and you don’t have an see what they say and do. RFID chip, then you don’t exist. Or idler:-Mapping dissent? you’re a terrorist. And with the increas- me:-Yes, and it’s not government con- ing divide between rich and poor in trolled. It’s a private corporation that has America, it’s really frightening. But I to find results, you know. So you have hope I’ll be dead before it all happens. this weird sort of power, this corpora- idler:-But you know the expression it tion that’s feeding into government and only takes two people to think the same completely bypassing any supposed thing and you have a conspiracy— and rights that we’re supposed to have, if the technology’s there, it’s going to be because it’s a private corporation. used. And like Naomi Klein’s recent idler:-So maybe in a couple of years book, The Shock Doctrine; how the invasion they’ll need to look for a new revenue of Iraq was parceled back to US corpo- stream, new kind of business model, and rations. It’s already happening. they’ve got all this data, so what are they going to do? Sell it, or look at ways to merge it with other databases, with RFID data? me:-Exactly, so everywhere you go with your drivers licence and your RFID Chip — it’s like driving down the free- way with a helicopter overhead, follow- ing you: “Oh yeah, you went there yesterday—you went to San Rafael, and you turned down the street, and we saw these other people that we suspect of being Al Qaeda were on the other side of the street …” me:-It’s terrifying.

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