INTERVIEW: Marshall Crenshaw
- Michael Van Gorden
I recently had a chance to talk with Marshall about his new album # 447 and his other side projects. Marshall was open about his music, and offered many insights into the new album.
Consumable Online: I find #447 quite different from your other albums. It has an open sound; quiet, not mellow. Was this planned, or a result of the equipment used?
Marshall Crenshaw: Let's see....quiet. When I went in to master the record, the engineer said how hyped up do you want to make it. I thought the mixes had a sort of a warm, intimate vibe to them and I thought we should keep that. The other thing is that the bass is really nice because it's mixed on to analog tape using this really beautiful old tape machine that I bought called an Ampex, so sonically it's really warm.
There's also a lot of acoustic bass on the record; a lot of stand up bass. I grew up on a lot of 50's rock; most of those records have stand up bass on them rather than electric bass, and I always found the sound to be just really fat and sort of corky and this time around, I used a lot of acoustic bass on the record.
CO: The instrumentals were very interesting to find on one of your album, but not out of place. Two of them you wrote for the Yogi Berra documentary. How did that come about?
MC: The producer was a guy that I knew from a long time ago. He used to write for a music trade magazine called "Record World" that isn't around anymore. Sometime during the last 10 years he got involved in film production and so that's what he does now and he called me up asked me if I'd have any interest in doing it and I jumped at it . I'm interested in doing more of that kind of work.
CO: Where'd you come up with that title for "West of Bald Knob"?
MC: That was also written for a film that is in production right now; some friends of a friend are making this documentary and it's about their experience adopting a child. Most of the action takes place down in Hotsprings, AK and it just so happens that I once looked on a map and saw this town called Bald Knob, AK. And Bald Knob is East of Hotsprings, so therefore Hotsprings is west of Bald Knob.
CO: "Dime A Dozen Guy" was a riot; that's a funny song.
MC: Yeah, that was just me and this guy David Cantor in New York, just fooling around. I barely even knew him. I heard this song he wrote a few years ago called "Florida Time". About a guy on death row, but it's a humorous song. One of the sickest kind of black humor songs I've ever heard. I've always liked that song and I met a friend of his about a year ago and he said yeah David said he would like to get together with you and I just called him up and I'd only spoken to him once but we sort of just messed around for a couple of days and we came up with that.
CO: What about "Ready Right Now"? You've said that is your fatherhood song...you captured what it is like having a child.
MC: I'm talking about something really intimately personal. I don't discuss it; I mean, I'm not one for like really spilling my guts, to a bunch of strangers, but it came out, ended up being about that topic. I just feel like the song it's possible to appreciate it more if I actually declare what it's about. It's got some depth to it that somebody might not get it unless I sort of spell out what it's all about. When you love something that much, it's just so heavy, it carries all kinds of implications.
CO: How did this VH1 thing come about? Did it come as a result of the book you wrote?
MC: Yeah, I worked on that book, I guess it was about 5 years ago now. It was pretty well received by critics and historians, and so forth, I find that it's still in usage as a reference.
It's pretty hard to find. But people that have it go back to it like and know and again I get some kind of a call about it from somebody somewhere like around the same time this VH1 thing came along, I just finished, I did this interview for BBC2 radio documentary that was kind of based on the book, so I get asked to through in my 2 cents when people discuss rock n roll movies because of the book.
CO: Is this knowledge in your head? You seem to have such a vast knowledge of not just rock n roll, but music.
MC: Oh...I guess. I mean I have a pretty big library. I feel like that's a good thing to have in your life. I once said in an interview that maybe half the books that I have were about music, but I think that's wrong, I think more like 1/3. I'm an avid listener and avid reader.
CO: Getting back to this VH1 thing real quick, the movie "Dean Reed -American Rebel", that was an amazing story. I'd never even heard on him, but just your little synopsis, it just interesting how he disappeared, just when he was about to begin a US tour. A little conspiracy there.
MC: I know, you gotta wonder about that. He was huge too, I mean in the documentary, they have lots of clips from his movies and massive adulation that the guy had and then he just disappeared like that and nobody asked any questions about it. It's a very peculiar thing. I talked to the guy who made the film, he was so spooked out by what happened.
CO: What was it like auditioning for Bob Dylan? Are you a big fan?
MC: I felt a little awkward. At the same time it was real interesting. I'm happy to have had the experience. The best part of it was, I really dug into his music in a way that I really never did before. I got to be a much bigger fan because of that, just hearing all those fantastic songs. The other thing that was interesting to me about him was when I finally got to understand a little bit about his sources, the interesting combination of influences that he brought together and what he ultimately did with them, is something completely unique.
CO: Do you keep up with the Power Pop underground?
MC: You know what, I really don't like underground. I still really enjoy listening to Buddy Holly and the Beatles and other 50's and 60's music, but the latter day stuff, most of it just, I don't have any feel for it. It's just too white bread for me. Too much of it is like Anglophile, like suburban Anglophile music and that really just turns me off.
CO: You said that you're really getting into jazz, have you always listened to it? It just now seems to be coming to the forefront of your music.
MC: Yeah, that's true, I've always had a casual interest in it, but about 5-6 years ago I was in Tower Records, in Nashville and I made like an impulse buy. I wanted to hear some HammondB3, so I got a Jimmy Smith greatest hits cassette to listen in the car and it's kinda just gone on from there after that it was more Jimmy Smith, and then other organ players, then I started checking out drummers and then from there it's just sort of developed from there. Another thing was after my daughter was born, I guess I heard someplace that playing music was beneficial to their mental development, and I though that made sense, so I started getting really interested and thinking about what kind of music I should play for her, so I played her lots of Bach and Mozart and I also wanted to play some stuff for her that had some sort of humor to it and so I started playing some Fats Whaler and Thelonius Monk, and she really loved this one album by Max Roach, called M'boom, but it's this percussion ensemble with lots of xylophone and tinkly bell stuff, so she really loved that so you know part of it was having to play music for my little girl. I found that for about a year and a half I was listening to almost exclusively jazz and classical music.
