The Story Of 'O'

05/02/2004 7:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Lyndsey Parker

The story of Irish singer-songwriter Damien Rice is a fascinating one. After achieving U.K. chart success in the '90s with his rock band, Juniper, but then bitterly discovering that the fame-and-fortune experience wasn't all he'd imagined it would be, he left the group the evening before they were to begin recording their much-awaited debut album, willfully abandoning the rock 'n' roll lifestyle for a humbler and quieter existence as a farmer under the Tuscan sun.

This disillusioned troubadour could not ignore his artistic impulses for long, however, and his love of music eventually let to a freewheeling trek across Europe as a nomadic street musician. But it was when Damien hooked up with a distant cousin who, much to his surprise, turned out to be a famous producer and composer, that his musical career got serious again: This cousin offered to fund a mobile studio in which Damien could spontaneously record whenever the urge struck him, and over the course of the next two years, Damien used that studio to create his phenomenal, Shortlist Award-winning debut disc, simply titled O.

Yes, Damien is real artist who turned his back on fame to record an indie album on his own terms--and now, ironically, he's more successful than ever. And even as he cautiously ventures back into the fray of the music business (O, which was originally issued on Damien's own label, has been re-released by heavyweight Warner Bros.), he's remaining admirably true to himself and to his art.

Damien recently came by the LAUNCH studios, where he and his cellist, Vyvienne Long, performed exquisite, acoustic renditions of his haunting, heartbreaking ballads "Volcano," "Cannonball," and "The Blower's Daughter." Damien then sat down with LAUNCH editor Lyndsey Parker to discuss--in his own thoughtful, stream-of-consciousness, wise-beyond-his-years way--his long, strange journey from rock star to farmer to homeless world traveler to award-reaping critics' darling. Here's what he had to say:

LAUNCH: Can you talk about the experience with your previous band in Ireland, Juniper, and why that whole situation made you leave the music business for a while?

DAMIEN: Well, with Juniper I'd gotten to the point where I had everything that I had wanted as a teenage musician, which is to be in a rock band. My dream was to play a show in the Olympia in Dublin, which was this big theater--when I was a kid it was like, "If I ever play there, then I've done something right!" To record in big studios that the likes of U2 or Radiohead or PJ Harvey had recorded in, and to have a deal with a major label--that's what I thought I wanted when I was younger. And we worked and worked and worked towards it, and then eventually we got that. We were recording in these studios, we had a deal with a major label, and we sold out the Olympia! [laughs] And it was around that time that we had just put out our first single, and the second single was coming out. I was quite young at the time, so we kind of compromised on the first single. It is a really strange situation when the label pays for everything that you do: They pay you money to live, they give you money for extra instruments if you need bits and pieces, they pay for the studio, they pay for the transport to the studio, they feed you while you're there, and they fly you there. And you know, it gets to a point where as a human being you start feeling sort of obliged towards these people who are providing you with everything. So while we were in the studio recording the first single, they were asking, "Can we just make it a little bit more radio-friendly?" And there was that sort of guilt feeling, where I allowed myself to soften a bit and go, "Oh, OK--if we make this a little bit more radio-friendly and it works well, though, I want to be able to do whatever I want to do on the second single." And they said, "Sure, once you get in there; all you need to do is just get in the door." It was that classic story where you do what they tell you. And I was younger at the time and I didn't know, I didn't have the experience. That's something I love to tell younger musicians, that you don't have to do any of that. There are no rules at all of how you need to get into the door and once you're in the door then you're fine. That's bullsh-t!

LAUNCH: So what happened with Juniper's second single?

DAMIEN: Yes, anyway, we had the first single out, and it was a hit. And then it came to the second single, and I gave them "Eskimo" [now a Damien Rice solo song], and they said, "Oh no, it's a bit too slow. No, we're thinking of something more uptempo." So I said, "You want something uptempo? I've got this great song here..." They said, "No, it's not new enough for us," or "It's too new." It was just this horrible situation; I can't even explain it. It was an emotional waste. I got really frustrated because the label brought me in on my own without the band, and I found out years later that the band didn't even know about this time that I was brought in my own, sat down, and told, "This is the single you're releasing." Had I been signed solo I would have just said, "F--k off," but I was in a band, so I didn't want to be the person who put our deal in jeopardy. So the label put the second single out, and from the moment that happened, I just lost heart. I lost belief, and I lost focus. The whole thing started sort of dwindling then and falling apart, and I got to the point where just before we went to record our album, I sat down with myself and I kind of thought, "OK, the guys in the band are my best friends; we've been all the way through school together, we went through college together, and we've been in a band for eight years now." And it was so hard, but I thought, "If I stay in this any longer, I'm just going to get miserable and I'm going to end up hating them and they're going to end up hating me." Because if we recorded the album, that meant I was sort of committing myself to another couple of years. So I left just before we recorded the album. We went our separate ways and it was hard for a while, because they were obviously very angry. But we worked through it, and it all worked out fine. [Editor's note: Damien's bandmates went on to form the critically acclaimed group Bell X1.]

LAUNCH: Then what did you do?

DAMIEN: I then went and recorded some solo stuff, and this guy in London really liked what I was doing, so he suggested that I record a song or two to show to his boss with the idea of recording a record of my own. And I recorded [the O song] "Amie" and another song, and I got the same thing again: "It's not commercial enough. How are we going to sell this? How are we going to market this? How are we going to get this song on the radio? How, how, how?" And I was like, "Can you just listen to the song? Do you think it's a good song? Can you just forget about how you are going to market this?" So at that point I got frustrated and I just went, "Why am I doing this? Why am I trying to please these people? Why is it that they're looking for something that I don't want to do? There's something fundamentally wrong here." So I faxed them from Germany, where I was staying at the time, saying, "Take this as the end of the contract." And so it was.

LAUNCH: Is that when you walked away from the music business?

DAMIEN: Yes, I went traveling around Europe, playing on the streets and stuff. I had no income anymore, so I just started this completely new life, this new way of being, and just traveled around, living off the street. And I got this completely new perception in life. I was free! I didn't have any obligations. I wasn't waiting for some other person to let me know what it was I could do with my life. It was just like I had no connections or ties to them anymore. It was this freedom, which was beautiful and really interesting--and really hard at the time. But looking back at it now, of course, it was perfect and romantic and amazing. It was just one of these things where I always got the right amount of money when I was playing in the street, and that if I needed to move on, I got a pile of money. And if I didn't, it would just trickle in. It would be enough for dinner, so I'd be OK. [laughs] I learned a lot. I learned how to trust. I had a bank card with me, but I never used it. I had some money in the bank, but not much. I just learned how to trust in life and trust that when you open up to it, it's amazingly beautiful, and the places it brings you sometimes are amazing. Now I have money, so if I go traveling to Europe, I'll stay in a hotel. But before, when I didn't have money, I was forced to play in the street, but then I'd meet somebody in the street and then I'd go stay in their house. I just realized that sometimes when you take things away from yourself, it brings you into things which you never could have given yourself.

LAUNCH: Didn't you take up farming in Tuscany for a while?

DAMIEN: Yeah, I did--that was straight after I left the band. I felt like I couldn't deal with the music industry, so I thought, "OK, I love music, I love art, but it's wracking my head because the industry is so connected to the art. So I'm going to live in a farm in Tuscany among the vineyards and olive groves." Everybody told me I couldn't do it: "Do you know how expensive it is over there?" You get told things all the time by people who, I don't know, maybe they're just afraid for you or concerned for you or whatever. But I went over there just blindly, and the first day, I found this amazing place up in the hills. You had to have a Jeep to get to the house because a car would scrape too much on the bottom. Wild deer and boar would pass by the house. I was there for a while and it was really amazing--but I got restless. I thought I was going to be a farmer or something; I planted vegetables and whatever. But the music thing started coming back to me. I suddenly thought, "I'm never going to run away from this. It's just going to come with me." So I wanted to face it and just see where it brought me. And so I went back to Ireland for a while.

LAUNCH: I know your cousin, the James Bond film composer David Arnold, helped you set up your own studio once you returned. Is it true that when your grandmother gave your cousin's phone number, you didn't realize who he was?

DAMIEN: Well, when my grandmother first gave me a newspaper cutting and said David was my dad's cousin, I just didn't know who he was. I just thought he was this cousin of my dad's that happened to be into the music industry in London. So I just rang him for a bit of advice on record deals, because Juniper were just about to sign at that time. And we got on really well and we clicked and stuff, but I didn't realize that probably one of my favorite songs at the time, "Play Dead" by Bjork, David co-wrote that song with her. I had no idea! That came a while later, and I felt a bit embarrassed about it, but it was fine. I was actually glad that we had kind of clicked anyway, because we both felt a little bit like black sheep in the family. We'd gone a completely different route to the rest of the people in our family, and he didn't know anybody else in our family who had really gone the same way. There are musical people in our family, but nobody that had really gone the writing direction or the composing direction.

LAUNCH: So then he helped fund your mobile studio. Why did you choose to use a mobile studio to make your album?

DAMIEN: Well, the main studio that I had worked in before was Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin, where U2 had recorded a lot of stuff. And it's not that I don't like big studios--there are great rooms sometimes in there. But I had found from being in studios before that if you book in for a certain length of time and you have this particular day to get your thing done...for me, that's a bit like booking the toilet for five past 5 o'clock or something, you know what I mean? Like, "OK, I'm going to go to the toilet at five past 5." You can go and force it and maybe you can do it, but I prefer just living, and your body then lets you know when you need to go. [laughs] That's how it is for me with music and writing and performing. So I just lived and I just waited, and the studio was set up all the time. I waited until I'd come home one evening and I'd be pissed off at the particular person that I had written that song about, and I'd just be feeling, "Here we go--it's here!" [laughs] I didn't have to think about it. Those were the moments that I waited for, and that's what I was looking for on the record. Half of the next record is the same--some of the songs that are on it I literally wrote and recorded at the same time. And then there's a few other songs that we've been playing live a lot recently that I do want to record in a big studio--like, we're going to do a day in Abbey Road and just invite some friends in and record them. So the next record is a slightly different direction, but it's still the same kind of thing, because I much prefer being in my own space and my own time and just letting something come of it, if it comes. And if it doesn't, then it doesn't.

LAUNCH: Were you wary about diving back into the music business after your previous bad experiences?

DAMIEN: Yes, I was wary. Actually, wary is the wrong word. I was very cautious about getting involved with the music industry again. All I did, really, was make a record over a period of two years. I just sat around, lived life like a hippie, just doing nothing. Everybody thought I was a bum. I started thinking I was a bum myself, you know! After a point I was thinking, "My God, I've been talking about doing this record, but it's a year and a half later and what have I done?" But I just trusted inside, and I just recorded the record. And then I thought, "OK, what do I want to do? Well, I like playing gigs and I'd like for people to hear the record, so I could sell it at gigs. All right, well, why don't we put it in the shops? OK. So how do we do that? We call around to all the shops, or find somebody who puts them into shops, like a distribution company. Well, that means I should really set up a little office-type thing...oh, why don't we set up label?" So we set up the label, and we just put the record out. It's as simple as that. I still wasn't thinking about the industry at the time. I was a little cautious, but I was thinking, "All I'm doing is what I want to do," so I still didn't feel like I was getting involved in the music industry. But then all of a sudden the record was out and it was doing really well, and I got a real taste then. I hadn't given a f--k about what I was doing and I just did it, and it worked out so well that I kind of thought, "If that worked out well, why don't I just continue being free with it?" So I said I wasn't interested in a record deal or a publishing deal. I wasn't interested in what the record industry usually offers. There was no point in even talking to me about it; it was like if I was gay and a girl was coming to hit on me, I'd say, "I'm sorry, you're beautiful, but I'm not interested!" There's nothing to exchange in that way. The labels hadn't anything that I particularly wanted. I didn't want money. I didn't want to be famous. I didn't have any need or desire for the things that record companies usually offer people. I actually wanted the opposite, which was total artistic freedom. I even wanted financial control over what was being spent or what was being done. I just wanted to kind of protect what it is that had been created, and make sure it wasn't abused. So eventually we got to the point where we met people who seemed to come from the right place, and we found a way of setting up partnership deals. And so far, so good. It's been really interesting. Because when you get to the point where you're free to do whatever it is you really want to do, then the only person you can fight with is yourself.

LAUNCH: You used the word "protect" a minute ago, and I've heard you say more than once that your job is to protect the music, not promote it. That's an interesting statement. What exactly do you mean by that?

DAMIEN: I had reached the point before in Juniper where I had gotten all the things I thought I wanted and I was completely unhappy. So my whole perception on life, on what I wanted out of life, and what way I approached life completely changed. And now I'm at the point where I'm not actually looking for anything, I've just been living and exploring--and things come to me. So the songs come to me when I'm open and I don't have any attachment as to how I want the songs to be or what I want them to do for me, when I just leave them alone and let them be, and they turn out really well. They turn out better than they would have turned out had I tried to create them. They just sort of pop out. And if I record freely with them, the recording just goes really well and turns out in a way that I really like. But I know that the nature of people in business and the music industry is to want to use the music to get something else. But my thing is these songs are not here to be used to benefit anybody in any way that takes away from them. I almost feel like the songs aren't even mine to do anything with, I just feel like they're mine to share, but to share in the truest possible way that I can share them, with the most integrity and the most beauty and the most honesty. I don't want to abuse where they came from, because the songs give me so much more than any of the things that abusing them could possibly give me.

LAUNCH: What do you mean?

DAMIEN: Yes, I know that sounds very confusing but, you know, the things people usually look for--or that people usually think you're looking for--are money and fame and so on. For me, money--as I was saying before, when I was traveling around Europe, I actually had a better time than I would have had if I'd had money. When I didn't have money, it forced me to play in the street, which allowed me to meet really interesting people and have beautiful experiences. So money does nothing for me--in fact, I find being on the edge of life is more intriguing. And then the whole fame thing can be really annoying, really intrusive; it just makes you feel demanded. Some people think, "Isn't that great that people think you're great?" But I don't need for people to think that I'm great. Because all I need to do is deal with what I think of myself. The whole fame side of things is nothing that I crave at all, because you're just in demand and therefore people need something from you, and you're like, "Hold on a second, I need something from me!" So those are the reasons that I have no interest promoting what it is that I do in order to make it as big as it can be. Because it's not about being big, it's about doing whatever you do beautifully, and being happy every single day that you wake up. That for me is success. Just getting up and going, "Brilliant, brilliant! I'm doing a gig! I love this venue! And we're going to this town and then we're taking a day off, and we're spending money, losing money, but who cares? We're enjoying ourselves!" It's about living now for me, not doing all this stuff in order to get to some end-being success. It's about being successful now, every day, and living.