Shortly to arrive on these shores to perform at Electric Picnic, alt rock veterans Eels have been busy this year touring their latest album, the typically excellent Wonderful, Glorious, and also recently acted as backing band for comic actor Jim Carrey on his NRA-baiting tune ‘Cold Dead Hand’ (the song was credited to Lonesome Earl and the Clutterbusters).

“I’ve known him for a few years,” says Eels frontman E of Carrey. “He invited me to a poker game out of the blue, and I love poker, so that’s how that started. He was a fan and got in contact. He won the poker game of course! In terms of playing music with him, he was a surprisingly good musician and an amazing singer. He’s kind of a big explosion of raw talent – he’s always on.”
There has of course been a notable filmic element to Eels’ career, with the band’s music used in scores of Hollywood movies, including Knocked Up, American Beauty and Hellboy II. Any that he’s particularly enjoyed?
“When they put one of my songs in the first Shrek film, I really liked it,” he replies. “They showed me the film, and it’s hard to appreciate this now all these years later, but at the time, it was a kind of groundbreaking thing – it was the first time where the fairytale ends and the princess turns ugly, instead of the other way around. I thought that was a really nice message for kids. In terms of films, there’s a couple coming up that I’m excited about but I can’t talk about them yet.”
Eels also once collaborated with the famed German director Wim Wenders, most noted for directing the arthouse classic Paris, Texas, who became a fan of the band after he randomly came upon the cover of Beautiful Freak in a record store and loved it. Wenders would eventually direct the video for the Eels track ‘Soulkjacker Part 1’.
“It’s been a while since we’ve done anything. Hopefully it’ll happen again,” notes E. “With the ‘Souljacker’ video, it was a strange case because we filmed it in an abandoned prison in East Berlin and it was just the band and like a hundred German girls in bikinis. It was typical of a dream I may have on any given night, but it was all Wim’s idea. It all came from one of his dreams, not one of my mine.”
As relayed in his superb autobiography Things The Grandchildren Should Know, E – whose real name is Mark Oliver Everett – relocated from a dreary Virginia suberb to LA in the late ‘80s to pursue a career in the music industry. The book also discusses his remarkable – and often tragic – family background; E’s father, Hugh Everett III was a renowned scientist who corresponded with Einstein and died when E was 15 (it was Evertt who found the body). Meanwhile his sister Elizabeth committed suicide in 1996. In addition, E’s cousin Jennifer Lewis was on the plane
that hit the Pentagon during the September 11 attacks.
These days, he remains based in LA. Many musicians who live in the city, including Trent Reznor, Josh Homme and Dave Grohl, have regular interaction and occasionally collaborate. I wonder if E considers himself part of a community of artists?
“I occasionally meet guys like you’ve mentioned, and I have acquaintances, but really we’re kind of locked away in our own insular world,” he responds. “It’s really just me and the guys in the band. From time to time, somebody will scale the walls of our fortress and join us, but it doesn’t happen that often. It happens once in a while – Peter Buck played on one of our albums and so did Tom Waits. When you get the opportunity with someone like Tom Waits, there’s just no way to avoid it, you’ve got to make it happen.”
Given that Eels are coming to play at Electric Picnic, I wonder if there’s been a recent festival performance that E has been particularly impressed by?
“We haven’t done any festivals yet this year. The last time we did them was a few years ago, and I remember we played at a festival in Belgium. We performed right after The Hives and they put on such a good show that I found it a little threatening. It was hard to go on after that. They’re fantastic live.
“That’s one of the fun parts about it; if you have time to just stand on the side of the stage and check out some bands while you’re there. It’s good because I would never be at a festival if I wasn’t there to play. It’s nice to take advantage of the fact that you don’t have to trudge around in the mud all day and sleep in the tents. I can just go and check out a band cos I happen to be there anyway.”