For Two Nights Only Page 4

  That’s very nice of you.

  It cost me nothing. I barely noticed the money disappear. It was more about the symbolism of the gesture.

  I think you had started to say you picked up the piano quickly when you returned to it.

  Yes, Christ Chris you got me way off track, but as I was telling you it’s like riding a bike, and when I got back on a bicycle after ten years of not riding it was awkward and weird and I probably zigzagged all over that French road but within a hundred yards I was smooth as could be. Took me weeks to learn to ride one the first time, and thirty seconds to re-learn it. Same with piano. I wasn’t great when I first went back to it, but I got great pretty quickly.

  Was your father happy to see you at the piano again?

  Probably. We never spoke about it.

  But he started you on it, he must’ve been happy you hadn’t abandoned it for good?

  Probably. I really don’t know. We never talked about it.

  Okay. I’d like to talk about your music a little bit.

  Excellent. A topic I’m interested in.

  I read that the first song you wrote was “Black Hole Heart,” when you were sixteen. It was released on Muscle Memory, and I’m curious why you waited until your third album to put it out. And maybe you can talk about why you started writing your own songs.

  Sure. I started writing my own stuff because I’d been picking apart songs from other people for a long time, and songwriting didn’t seem all that complicated. It wasn’t this impossible feat that only a few can do. Once I understood the formula everyone used it was easy. For Black Hole Heart, I waited awhile because the original version was redundantly simple. The album version is pretty simple too, but by that point I knew how to arrange a song better. It was one I’d always liked and it still resonated with me, but because the elements were so basic I never thought it was ripe. There was never a version where I thought, this is it, this is as good as it’s going to get. I’ve got loads of songs that don’t end up on the album I’m making at the time, sometimes they need to simmer for a few years, or I need to learn more about songwriting before I’m ready to make a version I release. But Black Hole Heart is one, it’s interesting actually, that’s one I wrote on the piano when I was first learning. It’s simple, just a basic chord progression that sounded great on the piano, but when I switched focus to the guitar and played it on that it never sounded right, it lost something in the translation from one instrument to the other. Something was always missing until I went back years later and played it on the piano, and at that point I felt good about what I had and how it sounded and so I put it out. It just happened to coincide with when I was working on songs for Muscle Memory so it ended up on that album.

  When you came back to it years later to record it, could you still identify with the place it had come from?

  Of course, that’s why I released it.

  What did it mean to you at the time you wrote it? And did that meaning change when you revisited it?

  I’ll tell you, but do you know the song?

  I do.

  Good, I want to hear what you think it’s about.

  To me it’s about acknowledging your issues. It’s the moment when you realize something is wrong and you need to make a change.

  I like that as a concept for a song. I’m going to steal that. Which means that no, that’s not what I intended. But this is why I hate explaining the meaning behind songs. I like your interpretation, and if that’s what you get out of it then you should keep that version.

  What if your version is better than that?

  How could it be? Your interpretation is personalized just for you. It’s exactly what you need it to mean. My version will be slightly different and if it doesn’t fit in with how you hear the song you’ll be disappointed.

  So just give me an overview. The vaguest explanation you can.

  Sure. “Black Hole Heart” was about the end of innocence. And it still is.

  That’s it?

  One sentence. That keeps it vague. You can keep your interpretation, it still fits under the umbrella of my explanation.

  Is your explanation honest?

  That doesn’t actually matter. Not when you’re talking about art.

  I think it does.

  Then yes, I’m being honest.

  I gave him a moment to recant, but he had nothing more to add.

  Your first album came out when you were eighteen. You had three singles hit number one, and a fourth that peaked at number three. Almost immediately you were sent on a nine-month tour of the States, by the end of which the album had taken off in Europe. Another four months over there. Essentially you were touring for most of your eighteenth and nineteenth year. What was that like?

  Fucking incredible.

  He sat back in his chair and grinned.

  I was hoping for more detail.

  I answered your fucking question, if you don’t like the answer then reshape the question.

  How often did you do drugs on that tour?

  Now you’re getting at it. But tell me, why is that the first question you ask about the tour? Is that all you music journalists look for, something to fill those little box quotes in the article? Do you think it’ll make your piece if I say something like, I tried every drug under the sun before I was done with the U.S. leg and all of them thrice by the time we left Europe? It’ll be a boring fucking article then, nothing new there. Musician does drugs. Big “get” Chris.

  Did you miss your family?

  The tour came at a good time, I needed to get away. I was ready to leave Grand Rapids, my parents’ house, school, and I was excited to play for large audiences. My record company invested in the success of the album and sent me on tour. They were okay to me, a lot of people have terrible stories about record companies and claim they’re all evil. I don’t see it that way. To me it’s straightforward. They wanted to use me to make money, and if I agreed I’d have an opportunity at fame and riches. Very Faustian in a way. I won’t claim I knew that from the beginning, although my mother did warn me to be careful and got her brother, who’s a lawyer, to read every contract they put in front of me. I am indebted to him for that, since the first one they threw at me said they’d own all the rights to my music. The fact that they ended up bending is quite amazing, but I knew I had something as soon as I saw how excited they were. That’s the interesting thing about those meetings, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever had the opportunity to be a part of one but it’s weird. It’s a show, with every character in the room dressed in some costume, usually pinstriped, and smiling like a fucking cartoon. They tell you how amazing you are, how much they’ll do for your career, how you’re the next big thing. And then when you make a demand, like you want to keep the rights to your songs because, after all, you did fucking write them, they turn on you, say you won’t be anything without them, that Yes, they did say the songs were good but they’re raw and need work and they’ll get you the best producer to make the songs into something truly great. They play both sides of it. I was lucky enough to have Murphy.

  Who was Murphy?

  My A&R man. He found me at The Hill, this dumpy little hole in the wall I loved playing when I was seventeen. I started out doing twenty minutes on Tuesday nights, but Gus, the owner, was soon overcome by my charming disposition. He thought my music was crap, told me point blank on many occasions, but he liked me. He was more of a country guy, and you’ll never catch me putting out a country album. I may write a song in that style once in a while, just to figure out how they work, but I couldn’t do a whole album, and he knew he’d never change me. Gus was this older man, in his forties at the time, and he’d run The Hill from the time he was twenty-seven. He started working there at eighteen when it was owned by someone else, I seem to remember that guy’s name was Art. I never met him, because he kicked the bucket when Gus was twenty-seven and left the place to him. There was never an explanation for why Art chose Gus and I never asked, but it was deeded over or wha
tever and that’s how it happened. In a way I think he resented the place because he was chained to it from a young age, and he never felt like he could get away. He always joked he was “Over The Hill” but everyone knew he couldn’t walk away. There was some sense of loyalty that made him keep it and not sell, like he would’ve been doing Art a disservice. When I met him, Gus was this guy in his forties, super relaxed. He was going bald on top so he grew his hair long in the back and I always told him it looked fucking awful and he should cut it, but he was a hippie and didn’t care what a kid thought. Didn’t care about much other than The Hill, never bothered about his clothes or looking like the boss. He chain smoked like no one I’ve ever known and was rail thin because of it. But he was happy, and he had a sweet wife, a few years older than him, she’d come in and listen to my sets after I moved to Thursday nights. That’s how it worked there, you started on the shittiest day of the week that had music, Tuesday, and if people liked you then you got to move to Thursday. No one went there on the weekends. Thursday was the night.

  What kind of venue was it?

  Basically a coffee house, but it had a small stage off to one side and in the evening there’d be music and Gus would serve alcohol. I didn’t understand anything about liquor licenses at the time, but turns out in Michigan there are only a certain number of them per square mile. Somehow they want to keep it regulated, I guess, or maybe there’s another point to that law, but that’s how it is and Gus had one, even though, from what I’ve heard, they’re terribly fucking expensive. The craziest part was, he never sold alcohol before six. Up until then it was tea and coffee and pop, and after six he’d start serving. I think he wanted to control the atmosphere and keep out the afternoon drunks. Man, he’d fucking hate me now for what I’m doing.

  He picked up his glass, now empty, and looked through it.

  The Hill had a stage off to the side. Did I say that already? Just a small thing with an amp you could plug your guitar into and a mic stand. My god, when I think about the stages I play on now it seems absurd I ever fucking played that shit. But it was incredible the way you could connect with an audience in that small of a setting. I should do a tour of only small venues, now that I think about this. Seventy people max. So I can see everyone’s face, and when they sing along I can actually hear them. I should talk to Murphy about that.

  The same Murphy? The one you’ve always worked with?

  Oh yeah. When you find something good you stick with it.

  Does anything else stick out about your days playing at The Hill?

  There’s not much else to tell, really. I started playing on Tuesdays after I spoke to Gus one afternoon and told him I had some songs and I wanted to play out. I’d been going there for a few months by then, knew the staff, and he asked me to give him a performance on the spot. I got my guitar from my car, played him a song and was given a timeslot.

  You kept your guitar in your car?

  I didn’t go anywhere without it. It was always in the back seat of my car in case something popped into my head.

  Do you remember what song you played for him? Anything you later released?

  I couldn’t tell you which one for sure but I know what I was playing at the time and it must’ve been one of three. None good enough to ever see the light of day, though. But Gus thought I was okay for a Tuesday. He told me he’d give me a chance to get better on stage. Which was sort of intended as an insult, to put me in my place. I was probably a little too confident about my musical abilities, given what they were at the time. He was doing me a favor, though. At that point he’d been running the place long enough to know what performing live can do for an artist. He gave me that opportunity. You can really hone a song on stage, I mean you really know what isn’t working for the audience when it feels like you’re starting to lose their attention. Whoever says there’s no such thing as a collective conscious needs to get up on stage with me sometime and I’ll play an unfinished song and that person can feel the way the audience starts to recede, the way the attention and focus breaks up and disappears. I got much better at songwriting when I had to sit up in front of people and go for four minutes at a time, because if at any point in those four minutes you feel it’s not going well, you know you need to improve the song. Over time you learn what not to do, and what you need to do. It’s that simple.

  Did those first performances go well? Were you comfortable on stage?

  I was, because I’d seen other Tuesday performers and I knew I was much better than them. It’s easy to be confident when the competition is shit. You think I’m cocky, but it only took about a month before Gus’s wife convinced him to give me a crack at a Thursday. There was already a crowd built in there, because everyone knew that if you went for a beer at The Hill on a Thursday you’d hear good music. After three weeks I had a following.

  And Murphy?

  What about him?

  Where does he come in?

  He was in town because he was touring with a band he represented. I don’t remember who they were, which tells you how big they ended up getting. That’s the type of A&R man Murphy was, if he was assigned to you he put himself into it full-tilt, he’d be there at every stop for the whole tour. Murphy had been to Grand Rapids before, he knew The Hill and stopped by that night to say Hi to Gus before heading to his band’s show. Because I was seventeen at the time, I was always given the first or second slot in the lineup. The music went all night, but I was still in school and always played at seven or eight so I’d be home by ten. Murphy came in while I was on stage and got me on a particularly good night when I was really controlling the crowd. By that point I was writing new songs every week, sometimes two a week, and testing the material live. I’d play some that people knew and loved so they could sing along, test the new stuff, and drop songs that didn’t get the reaction I wanted for newer ones that did. Over time the set evolved to forty minutes, always with some surprises. I’d leave out a few songs people liked so they’d come back the next time. It was a living set, always evolving, and I encouraged people to sing along if they liked something. I love everyone singing together, and I’ve always had that gift for a big chorus. I enjoy the theatrics of it.

  People really sang along? In a small bar like that, I mean. To big choruses?

  Yeah, they did. I could coax them to it, and once I had a half dozen people coming every Thursday to hear me, always singing, it encouraged others to do the same. And on the night Murphy came I had the crowd in the palm of my fucking hand. He watched about twenty minutes and, according to him, decided that was it. I was going to be the next artist he signed. And I was.

  And you still work with him?

  Yes. Except for a few months a couple years ago when we didn’t talk. We weren’t seeing eye to eye and the relationship lapsed.

  Why’s that?

  He thought I betrayed him.

  Charlotte have anything to do with it?

  Charly was not a factor in my dispute with Murphy.

  What was it then? Elaborate.

  It’s not important, and it involves someone I care about who doesn’t need his history dragged into this.

  I understand you don’t want to hurt Murphy or his reputation. But you have to trust me, I’ve done this before. You need to feel that you can tell me anything, and later if you don’t like how I write it I’ll give you veto power. We’re in this together. It’s in my best interest to make this work. Trust me. You can say anything here.

  Anything?

  And if you don’t like what comes out and don’t want it in the book, it won’t be there.

  So you’ve already graduated to biography, have you? Slow down, Chris, we aren’t there yet.

  Understood.

  It was rare to give a subject power to edit anything out. However, because I wasn’t on assignment from a publication and had booked the job on my own, there’d be no editor asking for the audio of the interview. As long as Darin agreed that the conversations had taken place and everything was accurate
, I could do whatever I needed to get my story.

  Murphy got drunk one night about two years ago. It was a November evening, the kind of bitter cold you get here in England when the sun goes down early. We were mixing in my studio, this was for “Under the Sun,” and we were putting the finishing touches on the last of the songs, so far along that we were discussing track order. We always drank to excess, imagine that, while we mixed. You have to, you’ve been listening to the same goddamn song for months, just picking apart every little piece. Toward the end you get drunk just to be in a different state of mind. You’re just trying to hear the song in a new way. Murphy was a wine man, you know where I stand. We were at it for hours, drinking and mixing and getting excited about what we were hearing. The critics shat all over “Under the Sun” but I stand by it. The fans loved it. I mean, fuck it, the concerts sold out and the album went gold so I shouldn’t care but it does sting when the critics, who I respect at least a little, don’t like something. Lots of people say fuck the critics, but I value their opinions enough to read them. That’s a tangent.

  We’re in the studio, we’ve gotten drunk and we’re hopping around digging these songs and talking about how much everyone’s going to love them, how they’re a huge step forward for my songwriting and getting closer to what I want my music to sound like. I’m excitable when I’m passionate, Chris. It’s my personality and always has been. I think it’s partly what made me strange as an adolescent, because I get fixated on things, they excite me, to an extreme other people think is abnormal; other middle schoolers, at least. As an adult, I’m still the same, I get pumped up on life, and when I’m listening to a song and it’s everything I want it to be and I’m really sauced up I get excited. Murphy has always been someone who brings that out in me. He has twelve years on me, and he’s always been a little bit mentor, a little bit guide, a little bit of a devil on my shoulder egging me to push myself. He’s the type of guy who’ll always say yes to me.