A Conversation with Matt Nathanson – HuffPost 8.5.13

Mike Ragogna: Hey Matt, your new release, Last Of The Great Pretenders. Did you sneak a concept album by us?

Matt Nathanson: Oh boy, I wish. It comes from me so I guess it’s conceptual in that respect, that it’s extracted from my life, but I didn’t mean to if it happened.

MR: But look at how these songs string along.

MN: Yeah…. It was funny, we started just structuring the record, picking the songs that were going to go on it and this was the first time I ever had more songs than just the ten that went on the record. We started structuring it and I was like, “F**k! I think I say ‘San Francisco’ in the first four songs here.” And then when you lay the running order together, you always want there to be a sort of thread that feels like, “Oh, it’s kind of a story,” because all of my favorite records do that, whether it’s a real concept record like Lou Reed’s New York or Uptown Baby. When you listen to Uptown Baby, it’s a journey from the start to the finish of this person. It’s always in the back of my mind to have a continuity, and it reads like a storybook, but I don’t think I have the bandwidth to pull off a concept album well. I wish. My double live concept album. That’ll be the next one.

MR: Perhaps it could be a double live concept album about San Francisco.

MN: It’s funny, we started putting the thing together and I said to my manager, “Dude I’m super self-conscious because we put all the songs that say, ‘San Francisco’ at the beginning of the record.” But I went with the idea of if I wasn’t self-conscious about that, if I was just fearlessly putting these songs on based on how they felt, all right, let’s just do it and I was like, “I’ll f**king take it.” But then there have been one or two comments–and whenever you’re hypersensitive about something when somebody points it out, you’re like, “Oh my god, I’m a fraud and everybody knows! All this ‘San Francisco,’ this must feel so disingenuous!” But I swear to God, it was completely just like, “I’ve got to get my head out of my ass and just put the songs in the order that they are.” It would have been nice if we could have spread out these songs. It wasn’t like I was trying to put San Francisco is any of these songs. That’s what was so cool about this record in terms of lyrics. I tried really hard. I call it “The Assassin,” right? In my head, I have an assassin that is like razor sharp. He sits there and he just picks off anything that maybe puts me at risk of being judged or makes me feel uncomfortable in some way. He’s been there all my life. This has been my first record where I actively handcuffed him and stuffed him in the trunk. I tried real f**king hard, and every time he’d rear his head, I’d bat him back down and be like, “You’re not welcome here. You don’t show up. I don’t need you to protect me.” I’m a fanatic for music and all the records I love, the engine for them is the laying of yourself out in a way that could potentially be embarrassing.

MR: Like in “Earthquake Weather” when you’re calling yourself an a**hole?

MN: [laughs] Yeah! That was how it felt! It’s time to stop rounding the corners of these things and trying to put my best face forward. The best part of music is the antithesis of that.

MR: Was this album the result of a maturing process?

MN: I don’t know. I feel like the records always directly reflect the person who’s writing them. Even if you’re trying to hide it, it just sort of does. And as people we’re always trying to evolve and always trying to get better and become more of ourselves. I feel like the goal is to be confidently yourself as far along as you can get. So at seventy, I’m going to be a pillar of confidence; it reflects for sure in the record, I think.

MR: Okay, let’s take that further. What is the most revealing song about the current Matt Nathanson? I think it might be “Farewell December.” Maybe “Sunday New York Times.” No, I’ll go with “Heart Starts.”

MN: Well, that’s awesome. That made me feel good. It’s funny, what makes you feel that way about that song? Does it just feel that way?

MR: I thought you were assertive with a simple, direct message.

MN: For me, it’s “Earthquake Weather” just because of the first line, “I’d kill anyone who’d treat you as bad as I do.”

MR: Yeah, I love that. Nice way to start an album.

MN: That one felt like it, but “Heart Starts”… That’s the thing. Before, in my catalog of songs, the one that felt I was being most honest was a song called “Wedding Dress.”

MR: Yeah, really strong.

MN: I have to tell you, it’s about coming dangerously close to divorce and the wreck of a marriage and people are like, “I love that song, I’m going to play it at my wedding.” At first, I started saying, “Well people just don’t pay attention.” It sort of took me a while, but with this record, I said, “I’m not being f**king straight up about stuff. People are misinterpreting things.” Here I am pouring my heart out and showing everybody my f**king terribleness, and they’re like, “It’s so beautiful, I want to put it on my list!” So that was the catalyst. That was two records ago, but it really took until this record to be like, “Okay, no more f**king mystery here.” The things that saved my life as a kid and the records that save my life now are records that you hear and you’re like, “I can’t believe that person just said that.” I love music so much that I felt like music deserves more than my trying to save face and be clever. If I get to do this for a living, I feel like I have to be straight, as straight as I can be, you know?

MR: Well that’s where The Assassin got boxed for this one, huh?

MN: Yeah!

MR: So you approached this album differently than your others. In your opinion, are you a different Matt Nathanson on all of them?

MN: It’s funny, it’s really hard to give feedback about myself. I can tell you that there was always a feeling that I was being me and being honest and then with this record, after the “Wedding Dress” thing and putting out the last record, I felt like I had to take a much scarier step lyrically with this record than I’ve ever done before. There’s always progress, but I feel like in life and art, there’s a nice moment where you face what scares you or what you perceive as the scariest thing, and then you move into it instead of away from it and you realize it actually wasn’t that bad and it actually wasn’t that large a leap. That happened with this record. I was challenged by the producers more and I kind of got out of my comfort zone on a lot of levels. I wrote with a lot of different people that I would have never written with before because my assassin would have taken them out. So this time, I really just kind of said, “Yes.” I got a new manager who’s incredibly creative and he helped me, and he’s a nerd for music like I am. We would talk about it and scheme and we would shoot the s**t and talk about, “Oh, did you see The Replacements movie?” “Oh yeah, did you see this? It’s great!” So when it came time to write the songs, he said, “Look…” I wouldn’t get frustrated with any of his ideas because I wanted to grow and I felt like he was going to put me in a situation that was going to challenge me and not let me be the alpha person who gets his way. I got to get knocked around in the process, and it wasn’t fun, but at the same time, I feel like the results pushed me way further than if I had done it by myself.

MR: Might one of the scariest elements about working on this project and going through the process you went through with this batch of songs be discovering that you’re not actually the a**hole from “Earthquake Weather” but you’re really a good guy?

MN: [laughs] It’s funny, I don’t think I’ve ever thought of that. I think, truthfully, my biggest fear is that– here’s how it works, this is as honest as I can get with this– my biggest fear is that I want so badly to be accepted that instead of being myself I’ll subjugate who I am in order to go over well. So as a human being people will meet me and say, “Oh, he’s so nice, he’s so great,” because I can work a room. I’ve spent my life working on that as a human because I didn’t want to be cast aside, right? I wanted to be accepted. I was realizing that not only was I doing it in my life, but I was doing it in my art and I was doing it in the place where you’re not supposed to do that at all. Iggy Pop doesn’t fucking do that. The records that blow your mind never do that. Bob Dylan didn’t fucking do that. All the people that I admire. I realized my biggest fear was not being accepted and not being welcomed in and so this was the first time where I ignored that and I said, “This is what I wrote and this is how I felt and I should be able to express this, and if people don’t want to take it they don’t have to. If they do, they can.” Again it feels scarier than it is becuase some people listen to this record and they listen to me say this and they say, “It’s not like you said anything fucking revolutionary in this fucking record, what are you talking about?” But I did, to me. For me to be able to say these things felt like, “holy shit.” If I’m going to get anywhere on terms of being a creative person I have to stay honest with myself and this feels like the real first baby step towards this process of being as honest as I can be.

MR: Nice. So the single is “Mission Bells,” and it’s got a variation of the title, that line being “The last of the worst pretenders.” It’s a pretty different approach for you, single-wise, and it looks like it’s a Triple-A hit. You think this could be the beginning of a rally?

MN: I don’t know. I gave up on that part of it, too. I don’t know what anybody likes. I’m a scholar of musical history, so I always think I know, but I really have no idea. For me, it was like, “All right, does it feel good? This feels good. Does it feel sort of like a special moment? Yeah. If it feels like a special moment, let’s keep it. If it doesn’t feel like a special moment, then let’s get rid of it.” “Mission Bells” was totally one of those that felt like it stood out on the record. All of a sudden, it was like, “Oh that’s neat. That kind of rears its head a little bit.” So that’s where we went with it.

MR: And you took another angle with the video, literally, working off the Hitchcock reference in the song.

MN: Totally, and that was fun as s**t! I felt like I was playing this guy with this, “There’s a woman, there’s me, isn’t this romantic?” thing. What I loved about that Hitchcock video was that it felt very… Remember a show called 120 Minutes?

MR: Yeah, classic.

MN: 120 Minutes schooled me on music when MTV used to play it. It used to school me. I’d be like, “Oh my God, Love & Rockets?” or “Oh my god, The Cure?” It felt like I was going to another planet. What was so great about this video in the treatment–and it ended up in the video, which, thank God because I would’ve been bummed–the treatment was like, “This feels really strange and B-movie and kind of awesome, and I like that stuff so that’ll be fun to be a part of that.” That’s kind of how I’m going. This is the revolution I’m talking about in my brain–from complete lockdown of myself all of a sudden to this thing that was like, “But I love the idea of B-movie!” Those movies changed my life when I was a kid, so we went with it. It was fun.

MR: And let’s not forget that in “Annie’s Always Waiting (For The Next One To Leave),” you have the line, “…my whole life’s a movie, if movies made you wanna jump off a bridge.” Hey, after this video, how soon will it be before you start going on casting calls?

MN: Oh my God, never. NEVER. Oh my God. I can’t… Oh my God. The only reason I would do anything related to that kind of stuff is if it would allow me to play music for more people. Honestly, I’m not just saying that, I promise you I’m not, it’s just that I’ve always wanted to only be a musician. I wanted to be f**king Gene Simmons so bad when I was five and ever since, it’s like those are the people that have been my heroes. Most of my heroes have been musicians. It’s like anything; if you’re not really into music and you get into the music business, it’ll kind of s**t you out the other side. It’s the same thing with acting. If you’re not really into that kind of stuff, I would think that it would kill me. Can you imagine? Being on set all day and I’d have to deliver these lines someone else wrote? It’s crazy. You have to really love that. Just like YOUR job, you have to really love talking to people and processing and asking questions and people who don’t really love it get s**t out the other side of it for sure.

MR: [laughs] Well, the jury is still out on me. So there’s “Last Days Of Summer In San Francisco,” yet another ode to that magical land of which you love to sing. It’s a mini-movie in waiting if you ask me. Or maybe you should just do one on San Francisco already. Even though you don’t have the acting bug, do you at least get tempted to do any kind of longer format other than quick videos for your music?

MN: No. It’s funny, I always like when people take the songs and put them in television shows and things. For me, it’s always fun to see the song against someone else’s cinematic vision. I’d be wide open and psyched if somebody wanted to do it, but I’ve never thought about it that way. For me, the trip is in the song. The movie experience feels like it’s happening when I listen to it and that’s kind of enough for me from my end. But it’s the kind of thing where if somebody wanted to make a little mini-movie from one of my songs, that’d be a blast.

MR: Matt, what’s your advice for new artists?

MN: For me, whenever somebody says, “What should I do?” the two things are like you have to really not let others beat down who you are because you have to be aware of the source giving you the opinion. Consider the source because for most people, who you are doesn’t make them comfortable. Who they want you to be makes them comfortable. The only currency we have as human beings is our unique, weird, f**ked-up and cool selves. The more you can foster that in the music you make, the more unique you’re going to be, and that uniqueness is going to be the thing that carries you longevity-wise through a career. That’s just really it.

MR: Nicely said. I’m looking at your album cover and though I see a storm cloud-headed protagonist depicted, my eyes go to that bag. That’s a cool bag.

MN: It’s a real cool bag, and the way it’s shot, it’s the coolest looking bag I’ve ever seen. The lighting on it really makes me like, “I need a bag like that.” And the shoes, too. Those are two things that pop for me. The shoes and the bag. Nice.

MR: We need to hear something about Matt Nathanson that no one knows yet.

MN: Oh boy. Let’s see, that nobody knows. I’m like a tween girl. I love all those terrible Disney Channel shows that are geared towards twelve year-old girls, like when Hannah Montanna was big, and all those shows, I just loved them. Selena Gomez, Wizards Of Waverly Place… All those shows. And now, the new generation of stuff, I just love watching that. It kind of mellows me out and I dig it. So a thing about me that people don’t know is that I’m like an eleven year-old girl trapped in the body of me.

MR: [laughs] Next thing we know, you’re going to say you read Entertainment Weekly.

MN: [laughs] No, no, that part of me is out. The furthest I go is the Disney Channel.

MR: Man, this has been great, as usual. You’re too frikkin’ smart, Big guy. Before we go away, I do have to ask you what was your favorite summer movie is so far?

MN: Oh man. I’ll tell you that I haven’t seen a lot of them, but I’m really looking forward toFruitvale Station. I know that’s not a summer movie in the true sense of a summer movie like losing yourself in the popcorn, but it’s the one over the summer. I saw Star Trek, that was okay. I saw a couple others. But to me, it’s the first movie in a long time where I’ve been like, “I have to see this.” That and the new Woody Allen. Those are the two I’m looking forward to.

MR: Yeah, the Woody Allen movies seem to be consistent again. I really love that he’s back on his streak again.

MN: I love when he’s in a groove. We watched Sweet And Lowdown again the other night and if that’s not one of his most perfect movies. I don’t know what is. He’s just so amazing because he always talks about how once he finishes a movie, he moves onto the next movie and he never dwells on what the movie does and he’s constantly just moving from inspiration to inspiration. That’s such an incredible way to look at things and I try really hard, like now that this record’s out, I try really hard to not worry about what it’s doing, I try very hard to adhere to the Woody Allen idea of, “How do we make the next one? I want to start working on the next one,” because the creative life is the fulfilling life, not the goal-oriented life.

MR: This question never really works with most artists, but now it seems perfect for you. Got any thoughts about your next project yet?

MN: For me, it’s neat for people to get it, but once an album’s out, even once it’s done, I start amassing all the next round of lyrics and I start getting excited about the next round of songs and I start listening to music differently. Goal-oriented living does not work for me. I don’t know who it works for, but it’s not me. It just leaves me feeling hollowed out and sort of unsatisfied. To live like this–we’ll call it the Woody Allen model–I feel like it’s a much healthier way to go.

MR: And if Woody Allen were to direct a video for this album, what song would it be?

MN: Oh my God, I would have to say “Sunday New York Times” just because of Manhattan. I watched Manhattan when we wrote that song. I had just watched Manhattanagain. The black and white… And there’s a line in that song that says, “You’re framed in black and white.” I feel like there’s no better love letter to New York City than Manhattan, so I sort of felt like when I wrote that song, I was freshly inspired by it.

MR: I felt the same way as you about the movie, but then I felt like a traitor to Annie Hall.

MN: Aw, dude, Annie Hall is f**king perfect. Annie Hall is so perfect and Diane Keaton is forever… In Manhattan, she’s a character that you don’t want her to be and in Annie Hall, she is on point. You feel like you’re watching her be her. It’s incredible. Ugh, it’s so good.

MR: Well, I guess it’s time for us to say goodbye to this interview and to Woody Allen now.

MN: [laughs] Goodbye, Woody. That’s awesome, thank you so much. I love talking to you, this is great.

MR: Me too, let’s do it again next week.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne