American Stars and Bars

Thankfully, American Music club are probably the world’s worst kept secret. Ever since 1985’s The Restless Stranger they have been the darling of the critics. In 1992 Mark Eitzel was Rolling Stone’s Songwriter of the Year and Everclear the same magazine’s album of the year, while last year’s brilliant Mercury, their first for a major label, reached the number five spot in your very own Hot Press Critics’ Poll.

Critical acclaim has never been a problem for AMC whose fans also tend to be of a very devoted and committed sort. Genuinely huge commercial success of the megabuck variety, though, seems so far to have eluded American Music Club in spite of the fact that lead singer and lyric writer Mark Eitzel makes no bones about wanting to reach as large an audience as possible. However, there’s always more than a touch of ingeniousness in the way in which Eitzel answers questions and very often the intentions and meanings behind his answers are as ambiguous as many of his songs.

So, when he declares that with AMC’s seventh album, San Francisco , it was the band’s intention to make a pop record then it should be borne in mind that it is also Eitzel’s view that, to a greater or lesser extent, all of AMC’s releases have been pop records. We’re not talking about the usual idea of pop music here, are we?

“I’ve a different idea of pop music, I guess,” Mark says. “For us it’s more like making a statement that’s exciting and a little bit upbeat. Something that has a little more push than your normal AMC song.”

For the band’s first ever visit to Ireland Mark Eitzel is accompanied by his usual interviewee companion, bass player Vudi, who sports a rather eccentric straw hat which has undoubtedly seen better times. During the interview Vudi almost seems to act as a more detached point of view, as someone who is very nearly but not quite an impartial observer. His laconic after-thoughts are the perfect foil to Eitzel’s impassioned, self-deprecating involvement with the subject matter of his music.

“What we call pop music most people – record company people, journalists, your average listener - would laugh at,” asserts Vudi, offering another angle on the pop essence of AMC. “When we delivered the record we went ‘Isn’t this great?! We delivered a pop record. Don’t you love it?!’ And they’re saying ‘This isn’t a pop record. This is a difficult record!’”

In a most unrock ’n’ roll fashion the discussion is prematurely interrupted as refreshments are brought over. Not, as you might imagine, various chemical compounds but coffee, Coca-Cola and hot water. The hot water is for Mark Eitzel, who, in order to try to cut down on the amount of coffee he drinks, has his own box of Hibiscus herbal tea, which he produces from the trainer style bag he carries over his shoulder. Too much coffee makes him jumpy he says. Ritual completed, Vudi returns to tackle the question of pop.

“Metallica plays pop music.” (Eitzel readily concurs.) “Over here people think pop music is from Kylie to Phil.” “Whereas,” interrupts Mark, “in America, Pearl Jam are pop music. And Nirvana. Whatever MTV plays ‘cause it’s all T.V. based over there. Radio has nothing to do with it.”

Did signing to a major label make any difference?

“Yeah it did” responds Mark. “It made quite a bit of difference. First of all, they didn’t make us change our music in any way. The whole thing is when you’re on a major label you tour around and they support you. You can stay in hotels. They give you all the money you want to make the record you want to make. They tell you you can use any artwork you want. They send you great photographers and then they let you pick the photos that you want to use. I mean they’re really, really good to us. And then they tell you well you don’t sell any records. And you say ‘You’re right’. And it seems kinda like you’re stealing money.”

As it turns out, there are at least four transcendentally beautiful pop classics on the new disc San Francisco (and a case could be made for two or three others). The entire record is, of course, a good cut above the best available in rock music at present but it does also contain some extraordinarily catchy tunes. A lot of AMC’s music manages to complexly blur the lines between pastiche, parody and sincerity. There’s a humour present which sometimes gets overlooked. Apparently, most of the songs on Mercury were written for friends who have AIDS. The aforementioned ‘Johnny Mathis’ Feet’ is a particular case in point. It had one of their friends, who has contracted AIDS, rolling around with laughter.

Do people miss the joke?

“No I don’t think they do,” affirms Mark. “I think they miss the point that we’re just normal rock people. But it’s also my own fault because in interviews I just go on and on and on in these big, deep philosphical discussions and journalists when they have to write it up go ‘How the fuck am I going to write this? I can’t write all of this. I can only pick this and this.’ Then they pick quotations that make me look like an absolute fool. It’s my own fault, though, cause if I stuck to the agenda and said, well, if you asked me a question like ‘Are they self-parodaic?’ I’d say ‘Quite often they are because whatever’. You know what I mean? It’s my own fault. Once when I was in college I went to the library a lot. I wanted to be a psychologist.”

You wanted to be a psychologist?

“Well, no I didn’t really,” demurs Mark, “but I was interested in creativity. I used to read all kinds of information about it. Psychoanalytical and psychological tracts about the human mind. One thing I found was this thing that was done in the ’Fifties about the I.Q. ratings of different kinds of artists. Musicians got the lowest, rock bottom. It makes so much sense to me though. In pop music the more I.Q. you have the worse it is for you. You really have to be a very natural soul when you’re a pop writer. People say about me that all the words I write get in the way of the rock. They’re right in a way. I overthink things.”

Before we can lapse into questions of what art is, though, we return to the subject of success which Eitzel claims he desires. Isn’t there a price to be paid for all this public profile that goes with popularity?

“Yeah you do pay a price because basically what you’re doing is you’re undermining your own privacy that you need to write by explaining yourself or explaining anything or just being so involved in the process of selling it that you lose sight of the actual creating it. That’s where the problem is for me. Which is why I try to do interviews in blocks. As many as possible in a short space of time. Then I spend a week recovering from it and try to forget about it. The worst thing for me and I noticed it happened once is that I start getting this self-perception of being a much more important person than I am. It’s really evil. Once I played a show and I just watched myself expect all this adoration or expect people to like it as if they would know me. It’s always the worst thing to do. Every single time you play it’s always the first time. You always have to make that show happen. That’s the weird thing.

“But we’re such ugly guys,” continues Mark, warming to his theme. “If I was a punter and saw the picture of myself of the live show that was in Melody Maker I’d say ‘I never want to see that’. I would seriously. He looks like a loser. He doesn’t look charming. He’s not handsome, he’s not interesting. It sounds like the music is very difficult. What I’m saying is that if you look at the press and you look at that picture, it’s like going to see Nosferatu. It’s like yeah, maybe. If I’m in the mood for having blood sucked out of me.”

“The amount of exposure we’ve had should merit a lot success,” adds Vudi. “The balance is ridiculous. There’s more of us than there is of Wet Wet Wet but damn it they’re on the radio. Twice an hour. It’s horrible.”

“People want to escape – and this is a good thing, this is not a bad thing – when they listen to music,” recommences Mark. They want glamour, fashion, beauty. A good time. A nice sounding song they don’t have to think about. Easily digestible. They want a diet drink. Sort of sweet but not gonna really do anything. A little bit bad for you. A little bit good for you. It’s normal. It’s fine. We don’t do that. Our drink is thick and syrupy. Sometimes it tastes like old piss. Sometimes it tastes like sugar. It’s weird for people and I understand that. I just think that I’m the kind of music I like. I’m really committed and every time we play we’re really trying. We don’t often go through the motions.

“You know what the best music is. You go out. It’s a really good club. You ignore the band and you have a great night. And everybody is in a really good mood. You see someone you want to fuck and the band helps the night along. That’s when you know the band’s really good because the band is like the wallpaper which makes that party happen. It’s much better to have good wallpaper than bad art. Always. I wouldn’t say we’re art. I’d say we’re wallpaper. If somebody said we were art I’d quit this business immediately. Sometimes, though, we interfere with those primal urges that we were talking about previously.”

There’s certainly a lot going on in AMC to interrupt you in whatever it is you might be doing at the time. There’s also little doubt that San Francisco is as ear-catching as any other AMC release even if it is definitively poppier than some of the other records, especially the fabulous Mercury. During the making of Mercury Mark Eitzel resided in a desolate place in San Francisco known as The Mission, a kind of inverse Disneyland of crime, prostitution and drugs which couldn’t but feature heavily on his mind at the time.

“I hated being home. Two weeks after I moved out, the father killed the mother. They were always fighting. There was a son and his wife and the son would pick up his wife and just fling her against the wall. You know what that’s like when neighbours do that and then there’s this moment of silence and the whole building just goes ‘Oh shit’? And then the screaming begins and goes on for hours.”

Vudi chips in with his version of the low life of The Mission.

“You were really weird during that time,” he says to Mark. “Every time you went to visit him there was like somebody ODing or getting a blow job right down on the front steps. Mark was really into sensory deprivation there I can tell you.”

“Yeah there was this big drug dealer across the street called Mountain Man,” takes up Mark again. “Then there were the hookers too. I had a little room with a skylight and I had a rug over the skylight. The windows were all sealed with the headphones on. I had ear-plugs. Eye-plugs. You don’t want to write surrounded by that energy. All you want to do is watch TV. You don’t want to deal with it. You come home. At four in the morning there’s gun fire out on the street. You look out. There’s a whore screaming at somebody in a car. She’s pulling to get out. She can’t get out. You call the cops. The cops never come. On and on. Every single night. Then because you’ve got the hookers there’s always cars cruising slowly. All the women in my house were terrified cause they’d always get ‘hey baby’. Every day of the week there was some big hassle.”

“But there’s a lot of young writers who’ve read Bukowski who think that’s the milieu that you desire. Because they’re from the middle-class they’ve never seen it,” suggests Vudi.

“I have to have quiet around me to write,” pleads Mark, recharged, as if the memory of The Mission still haunts him. “If there’s some neighbour with a huge stereo playing, how am I going to write my fucking songs? You gotta pull stuff out of the silence. You can’t just have a party. You can get ideas from that all right but then a lot of writers get their ideas from reading other books. Actually, my songs come from friends, stories, books, and bars. I’m always looking for stories. Not that I tell stories in my songs. I do read tons of science fiction though and recently I’m reading Tennessee Williams’ short stories. They’re nearly better than his plays. Out of his fucking mind but he was a true genius.”

By all accounts, Williams had a dreadful life of pain and anguish. Eitzel, too, is often perceived as being quite a sad character. Does he feel that that kind of unhappiness is necessary to write?

“I don’t have to feel unhappy to write my songs. Just inspired. It’s better if I’m happy. If I’m unhappy I usually just get depressed and sit around and can’t do anything except stare at the walls for hours. I do find it annoying in others when they’re depressed but that doesn’t mean that I’d have them medicated. Or that I would tell them that they were wrong. People need to do what they need to do. I prefer science not having anything to do with the human mind. I don’t like this whole conception that my songs are because of some medical problem. Or because I’m manic depressive. Jesus Christ, there’s been sad songs since the beginning of songwriting and they’ve always been the best.

“People connect through pain. This over-analysation of music is awful but it’s only because music is not the realm any more where things are said. There was a time where music was where things were said but now it’s simply where things are sold.

“But you know there are talents,” continues Mark. “Okay, here I am in Ireland, and I just read the Sinead interview in Q magazine. Look at Sinead, for instance. She’s got a fucking beautiful voice. She’s an absolutely gorgeous woman. And I think she’s really cool. I’ve always liked her. I liked her Prince song. it’s just that she’s this stupid young person that gives these stupid interviews. Suddenly now she’s a laughing stock. You read ‘I tried to kill myself’ and you laugh. When you see that on the cover it’s like ‘Oh, of course.’ It’s really distressing and I feel bad for her. If only she could exist as somebody with a voice. Why does she have to be analysed or why does she have to analyse? I wonder how many interviews did Elvis give at his very peak. Probably very few.

“Poor Sinéad, I love her. I think she’s really, really great. I was even going to write her a letter. Of course I wouldn’t. But just to say shut up for a minute. She’s been eaten alive.”

“She likes it,” offers Vudi, not unsympathetically.

“She must like it,” agrees Mark cautiously. “She likes the fame and the sense that she is a powerful enough figure to get up and say whatever she wants. But Jesus Christ. Her father won’t talk to her? Oh my God. Poor girl! Why does she get herself into such a mess? I saw her tearing up that picture of the Pope on TV and I thought it was great. In a real pop way, I thought it was hilarious. And I’m on her side against those stupid Bob Dylan fans. They’ve got swastikas tatooed on their foreheads those people. Why can’t she be allowed to be this beautiful girl who sings, you know.”

Does Mark Eitzel ever think about whether a song is going to fuck somebody up whether it’s going to help them?

“Yeah, I do think about that so it won’t happen. I was talking to somebody in Dublin and they were asking me what I thought about Kurt Cobain wearing our t-shirt and talking about us on the radio or something. I was thinking Kurt Cobain and us? No way. Then, of course, the question is what was he listening to when he died, right? Oh Jesus, ‘Firefly’. Oh God. Then the jokes begin. I would say, though, that I’m not really responsible for anyone except myself and I try to make these songs obscure enough that they’re not easy to use that way. If you enter into a song and follow it through to the end you’re probably not going to be in that state. You’re going to be listening to the song hopefully. I mean some of my songs are really depressive but that’s because I can be that way. Maybe the way to diffuse a violent person is to show them violence.”

For a man whose publishing company is called I Failed In Music and who has said that most people have grown out of what he does and are living decent lives, is Mark Eitzel unhappy that he’s not living a “normal” life.?

“No. I don’t want to live a normal life. Not at all. I like my weird life. I have a really strange life. That’s fine. Why would I want to live a normal life? What is a normal life anyway? A normal life means that you maintain a really open and youthful viewpoint all your life. You try to keep a child-like openness about you. That’s what it should be but what it actually is with most people is they just allow all their inertial tendencies, all their bad habits to define their every day existence.

“Then that makes them tired. It undermines all the beauty they have and they sort of vanish and they become habits. Just habits that act. Like machines. That’s what I am ninety per cent of the time. Most people are just ants. They act anatomically without even thinking. I do believe, however, that you have to really breathe and think and grow. That’s what life is about. For me, anyway.”

You could also say that that’s what the music of American Music Club is all about too.