Girls, girls, girls

For those accustomed to speaking of Red House Painters in hushed, reverential tones, it came as quite a shock to see Mark Kozelek – usually the angster without a moll – play a fumbling parody of a hippie in the movie Almost Famous – Cameron Crowe’s account of the (s)excesses of ’70s rock’n’roll.

As the bass player in the movie’s fictional band, Stillwater, Kozelek showed a willingness to let himself be the butt of a joke that belied his reputation as the solemn, sullen figurehead of modern American sadcore. If you showed Almost Famous to a gathering of the Red House Painters fanclub, after the initial bewilderment you might expect to hear a Dylanesque cry of ‘Judas’ from the aisles but the role was something of a light, not to mention lucrative, relief for Kozelek. Yet to what extent, if any, did the movie ape life on the road for Red House Painters?

“I think there are things that are similar,” muses Kozelek. “If you take a look at that band (Stillwater), you’ve got one guy in particular who’s very stressed out about things and you’ve got another guy who’s really concerned too. And then you’ve got two guys who are just along for the ride and don’t care very much what happens.

“Whereas in real life I’m the singer and my band is a constant concern and worry. Every day of my life I’m dealing with things with this band that have to do with tours and expensive lawyers and accountants and being dropped by labels. And I’m the one that carries that shit on my back. It was interesting to play a part in a movie where you’ve got two guys arguing about t-shirts and I’m the one saying, ‘oh, let’s just go get something to eat’.

“Also, during the making of the movie, there was this hierarchy of actors – and I was way down on the totem pole. I know in my band, there’s been a few cases of people coming up to one of the guys and saying, ‘Hi! Could you give this to Mark for me?’. So it was interesting to be the guy on the other side of that, with some pretty girl coming up to me and saying ‘Hi, are you Mark?’ And I say, ‘Yes, I am’ and she says, ‘Great, could you give this note to Billy (Crudup, lead actor) for me?’. After that, I decided to treat the guys in my band a lot better!”

Not that Red House Painters haven’t also had their fair share of ‘band aids’. At last year’s acoustic solo gig in HQ, Kozelek related a story of how a girl he had picked up at the first Red House Painters gig in Dublin a few years ago had been so inebriated that she mistook the closet in his hotel room for the toilet… with unpleasant consequences. So just how Spinal Tap does it get for Red House Painters on the road?

“It’s definitely not like the stuff you see in those Poison VH1 specials where they send out guys to videotape girls and then bring the videotape back stage to show the band who then have their pick. It’s not anything like that,” laughs Kozelek.

Of course, the male of the species can often be the worst offender when it comes to obsessive fandom – just ask Morrissey. Kozelek himself has been inundated with questions about the delay – almost three years – in releasing the new Red House Painters album, Old Ramon, the band’s sixth record (not counting the two solo records Kozelek has put out in the meantime) which has just seen the light of day here thanks to Dave O’Grady’s Independent label.

“I mean, every two weeks for the past two and half years, I bump into kids who say to me, ‘hey, Mark, you’ve gotta put that record out, oh my God’ – as if it’s gonna put some big dent in the fucking planet if my record doesn’t come out. One guy said, ‘Mark, I drove eight hours to come see you’. I’m like: ‘something’s wrong with you’. I don’t know who the fuck would drive eight hours to go see some guy who has no college education playing some dumb songs about girls. There’s definitely better things you can do to benefit your life.”

As dumb songs about girls go, they don’t come much better than Kozelek’s close-focus portraits of his thorny relationships with the opposing sex. And you can’t beat a good drive! From the stunning 1992 debut, Down Colorful Hill, through to Kozelek’s recent acoustic re-shapings of the back catalogue of Bon Scott-era AC/DC (on Rock’n’ Roll Singer and What’s Next To The Moon) the enfant miserable of our time has proven time and again that good things often come in damaged packages. And, let’s face it, giving a hoary old metal band like AC/DC the Nick Drake treatment was a stroke of genius.

“Everyone thought it was a joke,” explains Kozelek. “Even Cameron Crowe – after Rock’n’Roll Singer was made, I went down to do voice-overs for the movie and he told me that he thought ‘Bad Boy Boogie’ was one of my best songs! He didn’t know.”

As for Kozelek’s fledgling film career, Crowe has cast him in his next movie, Vanilla Sky, in a cameo playing opposite Tom Cruise. “Cameron’s a fan of the band. He would tell me how when he was making Jerry Maguire how he was listening to Songs For A Blue Guitar all the time driving back and forth.”

I wonder was it an eight-hour drive? b

Old Ramon is out now on Independent. Mark Kozelek’s solo album of AC/DC covers, What’s Next To The Moon, is also available through 4AD