Since releasing its 1991 debut Yerself Is Steam, Mercury Rev's back-story has been almost as entertaining as its music. Brawls between band members, a dismissal from Lollapalooza for "excessive noise," and the expulsion of founding member David Baker are just a few of the juicy Mercury Rev tidbits that have kept tongues wagging over the years. But when asked what legacy he hopes Mercury Rev will leave, Donahue focuses on his band's musical output, saying modestly, "We're just another branch on the tree--just another stone in the walk of music."
LAUNCH executive editor Dave DiMartino conducted the following interview with Donahue and Grasshopper; video excerpts and an exclusive live performance are showcased in Issue No. 28 of LAUNCH on CD-ROM.
LAUNCH:
Uniformly everyone talks about how different-sounding this album is from your previous efforts. To your ears, what is the major sonic difference?
GRASSHOPPER:
Deserter's Songs really is different. There's a lot less guitars and more orchestration. It was a challenge for us to go that route because we had done the first three albums with a lot of guitars and things. We wanted to use different instrumentation. Also, we were very conscious of trying to make all the songs very focused and cohesive so the whole album could be enjoyed. And the sound is the best we've gotten onto tape. It's the best-sounding record.
JONATHAN:
I think not only to ourselves but to our fans, the first difference you notice is that there's a lack of distortion, loud aggressive guitar work. To us it was a challenge not to rely on it, to work harder on the use of silence. Which probably was one of our weaker points earlier in our career. This time we tried to work harder on the use of space.
LAUNCH:
Are you comfortable with the term "orchestral pop" when it's applied to your music?
JONATHAN:
Yeah, I think the word orchestral pop is not a new phrase or a catchphrase now. It certainly has always been throughout the middle part of the century, especially in American music, most pop was orchestral. Popular standards, probably 90%, had their basis in orchestral music, whether it was Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin. It's something that critics feel the need to use to get their own point across. I guess that's their business.
GRASSHOPPER:
Orchestral pop...labels are weird, but yeah. In the tradition of somebody like Phil Spector making little symphonies for the kiddies, it's not a bad tradition.
LAUNCH:
There's a theory that emotional turmoil affects art. You've had kind of a rough road of late and I'm curious as to how that's reflected on the new record.
JONATHAN:
Well, we did. We had a rough three or four years where there was just complete mental breakdowns within the band, even the people surrounding us. I think there's a great misconception by people who may listen to records, but don't necessarily create them, that by going through something tragic or some heavy drama in their life that it automatically creates a masterpiece. I think I can speak for a quite a few artists when I say that when you're in the midst of depression and it seems like your whole life is crumbling around you, the last thing you think of is making a record. It's generally the last on the list of priorities. The first one is just getting up, finding a reason to wake up in the morning and journey through the day. For us, it wasn't to see how low we could go to achieve great recordings. I didn't really give a f--k about making music for years. It was just enough for me to wake up and see the dog, let alone pick up a guitar.
GRASSHOPPER:
There was a lot of soul-searching on our part. A lot of turmoil--either personally or with the band. I wouldn't advocate that for everyone to go through, but with us, it definitely put a stamp on our songs and on Deserter's Songs. I mean, that's what a lot of songs are about, going through that period. So hopefully you come out on the other side unscathed.
LAUNCH:
How about the people who contributed to the album and the people you are compared to: Jack Nietsche, Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, members of the Band? That's heavy company. These people are unique entities that stand apart from pop music for a variety of reasons. What do those names bring with them, what separates those artists from some of the others in pop music?
GRASSHOPPER:
The Band, Levon Helm and Garth Hudson, or Jack Nietsche or Phil Spector, they were trying to make music that was timeless and that had a definite atmosphere to it. They were also sort of outlaws within the music that was being made at the time. They were doing different things. They operated in their own sort of musical vacuum. That's something that we would hope to accomplish. One of the reasons we moved up to the Catskills was to get away from the hustle and bustle. I lived in New York City, and it's stimulating, but sometimes it can be too much. You forget what you want to do. But you can do what you want in the Catskills. And that's Deserter's Songs. The title is about that--deserting the rest of the industry and finding yourself.
JONATHAN:
I think the artists we've always been attracted to--not always for the music, but for their own personal character--are people who have railed against the odds, who didn't get their just desserts in the end. Alan Vega from the group Suicide never really got an ounce of what today's groups get in terms of financial reward or even credit or some sort of career. I think that's why when we chose to work with Levon and Garth from the Band. The music they were making in the late '60s was somewhat counter-current to the '60s mumbo-jumbo psychedelic nonsense about drugs and flowers. It was a return to roots. They stood firm. And that's where we always felt we were. That's who you look to, especially when you feel insecure about the music you're making.
LAUNCH:
I understand that "Goddess On The Hiway," a song that was written some time ago, may be released by the label as the next single. How did that come about and how does something that has been around for so long come back to life, so to speak?
JONATHAN:
I think that's something we had done in a very basic demo cassette form nearly eight or 10 years ago. Somewhere along the line it got lost, and both of us blocked it out of our minds for whatever reason. We came back to it a few years ago, to give the song a second chance. On some of those tapes that were found, there was a lot of music from 10 or 12 years ago, that are closer in nature to Deserter's Songs than anything else we've done. It's a little bit of history repeating itself, I suppose, and a large part of it was poor memory.
GRASSHOPPER:
"Goddess On The Hiway" was a song that always stuck in my mind. I liked the words, it was fun to play on guitar. I kept bugging Jonathan to do that song. For whatever reason, he didn't want to. On Deserter's Songs, for some reason we tried it and it worked out.
LAUNCH:
Every single reference to your new record, in the press or whatever, brings up former bandmate David Baker. He's long been out of the picture, so are you weary of seeing his name come up after all this time?
JONATHAN:
Well, David's departure certainly was heavy, though not for maybe the musical reasons that people would associate. But the personal ones. He was my best friend, and it took a lot out of us. Even on the first two records that he sang, I was doing about 50% of the singing anyway, so it wasn't a large leap musically or vocally to assume the rest of the responsibilities. I miss him as a person, not necessarily in a working context, because we had different views. But certainly as a friend, there was something there that got pulled out of my soul and will probably never be filled again.
GRASSHOPPER:
[David] was a really strong presence. It's weird; the band has existed longer without him than when he was in it. He's still remembered because he wrote great lyrics and performed really well. We just had differences personally and musically in things that didn't work out. We still talk with him, still fight with him sometimes. But he's doing his own thing, and really for the band to survive, we had to split. It was hard, sad, for both parties, but it was just something that had to occur.
LAUNCH:
Is it a fair assessment to say the music on Deserter's Songs is production-heavy, and do you think you can pull it off live?
GRASSHOPPER:
I don't know if it's production-heavy, but we like to look at the studio as one situation and live as another. Some of our heroes treated it the same way. You see Bob Dylan or Neil Young, the Allman Brothers--live is a lot different than the records. If you want to hear the record, you can stay at home and hear the record. But live, it's a different situation. It's a little more raucous and bombastic. But I think that's good. We get both sides, people say, "I didn't think you could pull it off!" Others, mostly in France, get bummed out that it's not exactly like the record.
JONATHAN:
We play almost all the songs live, you know? Some of them have different interpretations. We're always trying to see what the strength of the songs is, how well they can be interpreted. We treat the studio and the stage somewhat differently, simply because of the lack of control you have in a live context, which you can maintain in the studio.
LAUNCH:
Tell me about the saw you use as an instrument in your live show.
GRASSHOPPER:
We don't have the actual saw with us live onstage because it's really hard to mic when you're playing the guitars and stuff. To mic a saw, you probably wouldn't hear it. We have other things to reproduce some of our sounds.
LAUNCH:
How--or more precisely, why--did you record some of the music onto 35mm film?
JONATHAN:
If I remember correctly, we were doing some work on Yerself Is Steam and we ran out of tape mixing down some of the tracks onto quarter-inch or half-inch audiotape. There was another machine that somebody in the studio seemed to know how to use, we ran some wires and recorded onto it. For us, it was just more tape, a chance to finish some work late at night. Maybe it has a warmer compression. It was born out of necessity. Not like we thought our music was "filmic" or anything. It was just another machine that somebody knew how to work.
LAUNCH:
When you're not making music together, how often do you guys hang out?
GRASSHOPPER:
I think we've learned that it's important sometimes to just hang out and go to a bar and talk about other things than the music, because you have to live together in such a small bubble for long periods of time, whether it's a studio or on tour. It just helps to get things off your chest. Sometimes when we rehearse, we just blow it off and watch a hockey game or something.
JONATHAN:
Just like any two best friends, you go through periods of time where you're shoulder-to-shoulder or it seems you're mountains away. Where we live at home, it's a small town, so you're always bumping into each other.
LAUNCH:
So, Grasshopper, how did you get your nickname?
GRASSHOPPER:
Grasshopper was a name I got when I was younger from a teacher. Seemed like all the kids in the class had different names, like "Rooster" and "Squid," and I was just Grasshopper because I was hyperactive, hopping about.
LAUNCH:
You guys have tried other things musically--Grasshopper did a record, The Orbit Of Eternal Grace, and you guys did the Harmony Rockets side-project. How did that come about?
JONATHAN:
I think it basically came out of a different headspace. We created the Harmony Rockets, not necessarily as a reaction to Mercury Rev, but simply out of boredom. We'd get together and start on a piece. The name came up quite a few years ago when we did this show and it really didn't bear a resemblance to Mercury Rev. We just gave it a new name, never thought anything would happen, but as time went on, it built up its own small lore around it.
GRASSHOPPER:
There are just other outlets to try other things. It's like apples and oranges. We just know whether it's a Mercury Rev song or a Harmony Rockets thing. I think for all of us, Mercury Rev is really the main thing, but you can learn other things about the studio or different instruments and bring that back and use it in the band.
LAUNCH:
I see the word "psychedelic" applied to your work. If I told you that your music was psychedelic, would you agree with me?
JONATHAN:
I think some of it could be classified as psychedelic, some of the early live shows, where the songs were sort of long and stream-of-consciousness. I think it's a catchphrase that has ended up as something of a cop-out these days. It may be more appropriate for other groups and songs. Just the idea that something's psychedelic because there is no verse/ chorus/ verse/ chorus, I think is somewhat misleading, especially for music like ours.
GRASSHOPPER:
"Psychedelic" is a weird word because it sort of brings up connotations of different things. If you think of the Grateful Dead as psychedelic--we're not really like that. Something like the Velvet Underground was considered psychedelic. It's just a word. We like to say, "Let's trip this out." I like that a lot better than "psychedelic."
LAUNCH:
What inspires you to make music?
JONATHAN:
Growing up, my mother listened to music from a station called WNEW in New York. They had this popular standards show called The Make-Believe Ballroom--I grew up on old Sinatra, Artie Shaw, and it just became part of my own consciousness. As I hit the teenage years, I listened to the Sex Pistols, the Ramones. In my head it was obvious that I had to react strongly against the Benny Goodman thing and dive into punk-rock. As I go on in years, though, I can't shake those influences very easily and they tend to come out in the work I do more so than the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, and Black Sabbath.
LAUNCH:
Tell me about some artists that you think are criminally overlooked. Who do you recommend?
JONATHAN:
I don't tend to preach, but there are artists I enjoy who are overlooked or dismissed. Groups like Suicide, Delta blues, the Allman Brothers. It doesn't always go down well in interviews, but I love the Allman Brothers. I think there's something in their music that strikes a chord for us. They're usually dismissed as just "classic rock." Where we live in the mountains of upstate New York, there are just a few stations. One plays 24 hours of hillbilly music--Bill Monroe--and the other plays a lot of classic rock. In the car or at home, I just go between the two stations. No differentiation. It's music I love. I might hear a great song by Traffic and then flip the dial and hear Flatt & Scruggs.
GRASSHOPPER:
I like Nikki Sudden a lot, and a lot of people don't know about him for whatever reason. He's probably had some hard times in his life. And it's people like that whose music and lives are very intertwined: those are the kind of people that I look up to, because that's the way I feel--your life and your music are connected.
LAUNCH:
There's a lot more attention focused on Mercury Rev than in the past--there's a certain momentum going regarding your career. I know you just released an EP with some older stuff on it, but do you think about putting another record out sometime soon?
GRASSHOPPER:
I think it will be sooner than the last. Between See You On The Other Side and Deserter's Songs was three years. Part of that was because of personal things, it was also because we switched record labels. We couldn't record for a while until some of that was ironed out. Now, we are getting along so well and creatively it's working out. Hopefully, we'll go into the studio after we're touring and just start working again. But who knows, anything can happen!
JONATHAN:
I don't know. It'll either be a quick follow-up or a really brilliant crash and burn. I wouldn't place money on either one.
LAUNCH:
How would you like to be described in some pop music history book written in the future?
JONATHAN:
I don't know. I don't really think in those terms. The best description we always seem to come up with is that we're just another branch on the tree. We don't pretend to be an entirely different tree and we don't pretend to be the roots or the trunk. We're just another branch on the tree of music. We'd be quite happy with that in the future, if people were still listening to our music 20 years down the line and just saw us as another step, another stone in the walk of music.
GRASSHOPPER:
How about this: "Mercury Rev is like a rainbow that you can't find the end of!"
