Post by Caroline on Nov 24, 2003 23:17:40 GMT -5
I don't know if this had been posted yet but I just picked up this magazine at Tower on Thursday since it had this nice interview with Paul. I scanned it in to post. Please forgive the typo's I didn't manage to catch.
Here is part 1:
"Nobody’s Everyman: Paul Westerberg and the Question of Genius"
by Malcolm Devereaux
Filter Magazine, #8, Holiday ‘03
THE BEAUTIFUL THING about being drunk is how it numbs the sense of your own stupidity. Some drunks carry pens when they go to the bathroom, armed with the damp epiphanies they seek to share with people who move their bowels in bars. There is a stall somewhere in America that says above the toilet, "Paul Westerberg is a Genius." It might be the only truth from the drinker that night.
The Replacements were that kind of band. Paul Westerberg had an articulate gift, even if his tongue was thick with drink and his gospel uttered in mumbles. "I'II have what he's having," "Yeah, what he said," and you could wave your shaky hand in Westerberg's direction, leaving the struggle to speak in his incapable, accidentally poetic hands. The Replacements disbanded in 1991 amid no fanfare or official farewell, but there's still a gaggle of hopeless romantics who take slow sips and argue over Westerberg couplets like a missed call at some ancient football game, the details distorted by a clear memory of only the home team's loss.
Over the course of the next year, Paul Westerberg will release a documentary entitled Come Feel Me Tremble, accompanied by an album's worth of new songs recorded for the film. He's also readying the release of another Grandpaboy record, which has become a steady outlet for his more "band" oriented work, even though he writes and performs everything. These three will be rounded out by a fourth, sometime in 2004, by Westerberg's sixth proper solo recording. All are the fruits of a newly prolific Westerberg-returned to the basement of his Minneapolis, MN home--writing and recording daily in a self-imposed exile just below the surface of the earth.
Emerging from this subterranean song-tank, Westerberg will be greeted by a throng still marching a not-so-straight line to the shaky cadence of his melodies. And 24 years since the Replacements announced themselves to a bear-hug reception of camaraderie, Westerberg remains the only man willing to "try and teach a whore about romance."
There's a particular kind of person that obsesses over the work you do. They might even invest a bit too much in what you do in relation to their own lives. How would you characterize the people that love your music! Do you like them!
Well, of course I like my fans. And some of them—you're correct—they do almost live their lives through my songs. Others can take it or leave it. There are those that would like to see me with the Replacements and there are those who see me playing alone acoustically as the thrill of their life. But, I've got 'em. Not millions, but they're there.
Has your agenda for making music changed from when you began! Are you fueled by the same motivations!
I would say I'm back to the purest motivation of all now, which is pleasing myself, and then if it makes me money, great. I'm working on a pretty low budget because I'm recording it at home by myself. I've had to go through the process of playing in bands and playing in studios, and you just can't capture what you can at home when no one else is there listening.
For some, you are a hero. Do you have heroes!
Hmm [long pause]...lf I say my father, maybe we can get it to him before he dies. Not really. Growing up, the Rolling Stones were like my idols and then when punk rock hit, the Sex Pistols I thought were the coolest thing in the world. But, you know, for a guy who's 43, 1 guess I wouldn't say I have a hero.
Some people hang on your words as if they're an everyman's gospel. Do you purge yourself of troubling thoughts or ideas by writing them down!
I should write things down. I read something and it inspires me and unless I have a piece of paper right in front of me, I usually don't go hunting for one and write it down. That's when I get into serious songwriting mode. Now I just sort of let things pass and figure that perhaps it will sink in. But, you know, the everyman title is maybe a misnomer, because I would say that the everyman, the average man, is probably not as intelligent as the people who listen to my music. So, I think maybe [John] Mellencamp might have his finger on the everyman. My fans, I think they're a little bit smarter than your average rock fan.
I think you just said that fans of John Mellencamp are dumb.
No, you just said that. I think he appeals to everyman and that's a wide audience. If I appealed to everyman, I would sell millions of records.
If you can take two seemingly unrelated ideas and make them rhyme, does that make your lyrics seem more truthful!
No, but it's a really fun game for me to play. If I do forget lines, I just rhyme one off the top of my head. Many times it just comes from what I'm seeing out in front of me. It's funny...the audience is singing along the correct lyrics and I'm making up different ones as we're going.
How important is truth in songwriting! Do you lie a lot, either in your songs or in your own life!
No, I think the most truth comes out in the records that I make. My life, you know, you go back to "It's A Wonderful Lie"--that's certainly how I was feeling at the time--my whole life and the whole notion of going out and playing is a lie. But that was maybe four years ago and I passed that little hill and I don't see anything on either of these records, from "What Kind of Fool Am I" to "Dirty Diesel," there's truth to all of it.
Is writing something you have to do, or is it something you just do because you're not doing anything else!
Well, I guess I have to do it because it's what I do. You have to do what you do best and I think I write songs better than anything. That doesn't mean that I don't get tired of it. I'm at a strange point now where I'm forcing myself not to write songs, because I've got so many on the way out and so many on the backburner that if I keep writing I'm just erasing tape and going over things.
Do you do anything to help yourself get better!
Nope. I'm all done with using the thesaurus and wordplay and stuff like that. I think my lyrics are becoming simpler and more direct. I'm not doing anything to increase my songwriting ability, although I am reading a broader spectrum of things. I'm reading about Nijinsky and the Russian Ballet of the 1910s, which is something that wouldn't have interested me 1O years ago. I find it fascinating now, just because it's performance and I do all kinds of performance and art, so maybe I'm concentrating less on songwriting and I'm reading and finding out about other arts. Perhaps that's the way I practice in my head. A creative germ turning...
Fans of yours seem to have a bit of a hang-up with the past, either yours or their own or both. Do you spend a lot of time reflecting, are you forward thinking, or do you have a Zen-like peace with the present!
I'm forced to think of the past whenever I go play because inevitably some of the songs are old, or very old. But I don't think--anymore than any other 'artist---I have an audience that's obsessed with the past. I mean, you name it, any band you're gonna go see that's been in captivity for 10, 20 years, you're gonna want to hear the songs you like best. They're very receptive to the new stuff.
Is Minneapolis a comforting place for you to live!
Yeah, it is a comforting place. It is home. It feels like home. I've toured the world more or less, and there are places I still haven't been, like Japan and Australia and I just doubt if I'II ever get there. But it makes being home more precious, I guess. I like to be at home. But once I'm out traveling with a reason and an audience waiting, I can still dig that as much as ever did.
There's this notion that you're a bit of a curmudgeon, funny in a cynical way, bitter perhaps. Do you sometimes play into the type that's been created for you, or do you think the perceptions people have about you are fairly accurate!
[Sighs] Well, I don't know. Who do you ask! Do you ask one person who came to 14 of the shows, or do you ask the person who saw me for the first time! [Pauses, laughs] I kind of forgot the question.
I guess I'm trying to say there are two separate versions of you: the kind of person people think you are and the kind of person you actually are. Do these two versions ever converge into an accurate representation of Paul Westerberg!
Buy these records, watch this film and I think you get a real good idea of who I am. It's been there from the beginning. I never created a fake me and went home and was a different person. I mean, this junk pretty much reflects how I am. I do have a bluesy side and a side that's preoccupied with death, but then again I can also be footloose and fancy-free and kick up my heels.
Part 2 next
Here is part 1:
"Nobody’s Everyman: Paul Westerberg and the Question of Genius"
by Malcolm Devereaux
Filter Magazine, #8, Holiday ‘03
THE BEAUTIFUL THING about being drunk is how it numbs the sense of your own stupidity. Some drunks carry pens when they go to the bathroom, armed with the damp epiphanies they seek to share with people who move their bowels in bars. There is a stall somewhere in America that says above the toilet, "Paul Westerberg is a Genius." It might be the only truth from the drinker that night.
The Replacements were that kind of band. Paul Westerberg had an articulate gift, even if his tongue was thick with drink and his gospel uttered in mumbles. "I'II have what he's having," "Yeah, what he said," and you could wave your shaky hand in Westerberg's direction, leaving the struggle to speak in his incapable, accidentally poetic hands. The Replacements disbanded in 1991 amid no fanfare or official farewell, but there's still a gaggle of hopeless romantics who take slow sips and argue over Westerberg couplets like a missed call at some ancient football game, the details distorted by a clear memory of only the home team's loss.
Over the course of the next year, Paul Westerberg will release a documentary entitled Come Feel Me Tremble, accompanied by an album's worth of new songs recorded for the film. He's also readying the release of another Grandpaboy record, which has become a steady outlet for his more "band" oriented work, even though he writes and performs everything. These three will be rounded out by a fourth, sometime in 2004, by Westerberg's sixth proper solo recording. All are the fruits of a newly prolific Westerberg-returned to the basement of his Minneapolis, MN home--writing and recording daily in a self-imposed exile just below the surface of the earth.
Emerging from this subterranean song-tank, Westerberg will be greeted by a throng still marching a not-so-straight line to the shaky cadence of his melodies. And 24 years since the Replacements announced themselves to a bear-hug reception of camaraderie, Westerberg remains the only man willing to "try and teach a whore about romance."
There's a particular kind of person that obsesses over the work you do. They might even invest a bit too much in what you do in relation to their own lives. How would you characterize the people that love your music! Do you like them!
Well, of course I like my fans. And some of them—you're correct—they do almost live their lives through my songs. Others can take it or leave it. There are those that would like to see me with the Replacements and there are those who see me playing alone acoustically as the thrill of their life. But, I've got 'em. Not millions, but they're there.
Has your agenda for making music changed from when you began! Are you fueled by the same motivations!
I would say I'm back to the purest motivation of all now, which is pleasing myself, and then if it makes me money, great. I'm working on a pretty low budget because I'm recording it at home by myself. I've had to go through the process of playing in bands and playing in studios, and you just can't capture what you can at home when no one else is there listening.
For some, you are a hero. Do you have heroes!
Hmm [long pause]...lf I say my father, maybe we can get it to him before he dies. Not really. Growing up, the Rolling Stones were like my idols and then when punk rock hit, the Sex Pistols I thought were the coolest thing in the world. But, you know, for a guy who's 43, 1 guess I wouldn't say I have a hero.
Some people hang on your words as if they're an everyman's gospel. Do you purge yourself of troubling thoughts or ideas by writing them down!
I should write things down. I read something and it inspires me and unless I have a piece of paper right in front of me, I usually don't go hunting for one and write it down. That's when I get into serious songwriting mode. Now I just sort of let things pass and figure that perhaps it will sink in. But, you know, the everyman title is maybe a misnomer, because I would say that the everyman, the average man, is probably not as intelligent as the people who listen to my music. So, I think maybe [John] Mellencamp might have his finger on the everyman. My fans, I think they're a little bit smarter than your average rock fan.
I think you just said that fans of John Mellencamp are dumb.
No, you just said that. I think he appeals to everyman and that's a wide audience. If I appealed to everyman, I would sell millions of records.
If you can take two seemingly unrelated ideas and make them rhyme, does that make your lyrics seem more truthful!
No, but it's a really fun game for me to play. If I do forget lines, I just rhyme one off the top of my head. Many times it just comes from what I'm seeing out in front of me. It's funny...the audience is singing along the correct lyrics and I'm making up different ones as we're going.
How important is truth in songwriting! Do you lie a lot, either in your songs or in your own life!
No, I think the most truth comes out in the records that I make. My life, you know, you go back to "It's A Wonderful Lie"--that's certainly how I was feeling at the time--my whole life and the whole notion of going out and playing is a lie. But that was maybe four years ago and I passed that little hill and I don't see anything on either of these records, from "What Kind of Fool Am I" to "Dirty Diesel," there's truth to all of it.
Is writing something you have to do, or is it something you just do because you're not doing anything else!
Well, I guess I have to do it because it's what I do. You have to do what you do best and I think I write songs better than anything. That doesn't mean that I don't get tired of it. I'm at a strange point now where I'm forcing myself not to write songs, because I've got so many on the way out and so many on the backburner that if I keep writing I'm just erasing tape and going over things.
Do you do anything to help yourself get better!
Nope. I'm all done with using the thesaurus and wordplay and stuff like that. I think my lyrics are becoming simpler and more direct. I'm not doing anything to increase my songwriting ability, although I am reading a broader spectrum of things. I'm reading about Nijinsky and the Russian Ballet of the 1910s, which is something that wouldn't have interested me 1O years ago. I find it fascinating now, just because it's performance and I do all kinds of performance and art, so maybe I'm concentrating less on songwriting and I'm reading and finding out about other arts. Perhaps that's the way I practice in my head. A creative germ turning...
Fans of yours seem to have a bit of a hang-up with the past, either yours or their own or both. Do you spend a lot of time reflecting, are you forward thinking, or do you have a Zen-like peace with the present!
I'm forced to think of the past whenever I go play because inevitably some of the songs are old, or very old. But I don't think--anymore than any other 'artist---I have an audience that's obsessed with the past. I mean, you name it, any band you're gonna go see that's been in captivity for 10, 20 years, you're gonna want to hear the songs you like best. They're very receptive to the new stuff.
Is Minneapolis a comforting place for you to live!
Yeah, it is a comforting place. It is home. It feels like home. I've toured the world more or less, and there are places I still haven't been, like Japan and Australia and I just doubt if I'II ever get there. But it makes being home more precious, I guess. I like to be at home. But once I'm out traveling with a reason and an audience waiting, I can still dig that as much as ever did.
There's this notion that you're a bit of a curmudgeon, funny in a cynical way, bitter perhaps. Do you sometimes play into the type that's been created for you, or do you think the perceptions people have about you are fairly accurate!
[Sighs] Well, I don't know. Who do you ask! Do you ask one person who came to 14 of the shows, or do you ask the person who saw me for the first time! [Pauses, laughs] I kind of forgot the question.
I guess I'm trying to say there are two separate versions of you: the kind of person people think you are and the kind of person you actually are. Do these two versions ever converge into an accurate representation of Paul Westerberg!
Buy these records, watch this film and I think you get a real good idea of who I am. It's been there from the beginning. I never created a fake me and went home and was a different person. I mean, this junk pretty much reflects how I am. I do have a bluesy side and a side that's preoccupied with death, but then again I can also be footloose and fancy-free and kick up my heels.
Part 2 next
