A Conversation with Matthew Sweet – HuffPost 9.26.11

Mike Ragogna: Matthew, your first track, “Oh, Oldendaze,” has one of my favorite lines on your new album, Modern Art: “Memories never stand the test of time.” I love that. Can you talk about the inspiration for the song?

Matthew Sweet: Well, it’s hard to say. Part of the thing with Modern Art was that I spent some time going through the very first moments from when I was making up an idea, and then tried to sort of translate that without chopping them up and making them into normal songs. I think that “Oh, Oldendaze” was the first one I worked on. I kind of completed that before I did the rest of the record, and so it does sort of exemplify, in a lot of ways, what I was going after. I wanted the record to be really personal and have melodic parts that were memorable, especially if I knew it was going to be structured kind of weirdly. So, I think that it has a very personal vibe, that song. The idea of memories and times that have gone before come into it, but it’s sort of in this trippy fashion. I guess what I mean by “memories never stand the test of time” is that it will never be as good as when you were there and it was happening. And in some ways, you don’t want to spend your time in the past thinking about it. But also, it’s more abstract than that. Even at the beginning, I think at some point I say — I might just be talking, I can’t remember — “first impressions.” Part of how I got the record to be more abstract was by using those first impressions of the songs that I had. So, it covers a lot of territory on what the record’s about to me.

MR: To me, the title Modern Art relates to how the album was constructed — it’s abstract but still “normal.”

MS: It’s hard to do both things. I had the urge to tear songs in half. When everything falls apart in the middle of “Oh, Oldendaze,” it’s kind of like that. But how do you do that, exactly, with music and then have it not be so incidental? Like, when you’re only going after a moment like that, to me, you need some more feeling in it than just that. “Modern Art,” the song, also kind of refers to the weird modern world we live in, where things have changed so much because we’ve all become so connected through the internet. There’s even a song that mentions the internet — it’s not on the main album as it’s coming out — called “At The Screen With The World Flowing In.” It’s a bonus track somewhere, and it’s got that feeling as well, a very almost psychedelic feeling of information flowing out of the screen and into you, and what it means to become emotionally swayed by things even though you’re not really sure how they were meant. (laughs) So, there are a lot of feelings in the record, but I didn’t plan it. It mostly came out of starting to record and then something coming from that.

MR: Matthew, when I listen to that song I get all sorts of impressions. You mentioned wanting to tear a song in half, and I’m noticing that it’s also about showing all sorts of influences. For instance, I’m hearing some George Harrison and some nods to the latter days of The Beach Boys.

MS: I love all those things! I’m totally flattered that you would get even a vibe from them like that. I’ve heard that a lot about this record, that you can hear a lot of different influences. There’s a thing that goes on where even on the songs that are sort of simple and seem like a normal song. For instance, “Baltimore” kind of repeats the same chords most of the time, but every time I come at a verse or something, it’ll be a different thing. It’ll be a different melody. When I’m writing songs, I do that a lot, I try some different things. Some of those sections that come along — a lot of them only happen once, and then they go by — are kind of a separate little thing to learn. I can see how that might show influences as well.

MR: You’ve also been compared to Neil Young in the past. How does that not go to your head?

MS: (laughs) Well, because I’m clear on it. I have no illusions that I’m like Neil Young. I worship those kinds of guys, but I don’t have my design to be as great as they are. I’m happy to be in their shadow, you know what I mean?

MR: (laughs) Yeah. I’ve seen you perform a number of times, and you do share some qualities with Neil, oh by the way, sir. Her, what was your first Neil Young adventure, and what’s your favorite song of his?

MS: Wow, that’s hard. It would be hard to pick one song off the top of my head without thinking about it for a while. I really got into Neil Young when I was making the demos forGirlfriend. I had a drum kit and I’d split up with my wife — we had separated — and so I’d set up the drum kit in the living room and thought, “I’m going to try to play the drums.” I was not good at playing drums, but my manager — who is still my manager to this day, although he was my lawyer then, Russell Carter — heard those demos and said, “Oh, it’s like Neil Young in Crazy Horse.” I was kind of like, “Oh, I know — I have a really high weird voice” or whatever because I didn’t really know Neil Young intimately. I was in my stratosphere because I listened to rock radio as a kid. I just hadn’t gone there and learned about him and gotten into it. So, Russell made me these cassettes of Neil and sent them to me, like with Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, and then I was like, “This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard,” because it made sense with what I was kind of trying to do right then. So, I got really into Neil. I kind of went back to a lot more of that primary music — The Beatles and The Byrds and things — and learning about them. I was there already with The Beach Boys. I’d been turned on to Pet Sounds by… I want to say Peter Buck down in Athens when I was just out of high school. I knew about Pet Sounds and was also hugely into Big Star, who took so many influences from those ’60s things as well. It also had to do with the fact that I’d spent several years learning to program drums in the ’80s and trying to make them sound like real drums just so that I could control what they were doing. Then, when I played real drums, it kind of opened up this whole new world. That’s when I really got into that music and became such a huge fan.

MR: That’s a pretty interesting route.

MS: It is strange. I’d found some great things when I was a teenager, but I’m not one of those guys whose parents had all the classic, great records or whatever. I’d learned stuff from my older brother, who was five years older than me, and so I’d gotten some Beatles records from him. And there was some ’80s stuff I was into. I remember when he got The Pretenders’ first record and we became fans of that. So, there was more New Wave — Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe and all that stuff — before I really knew the classic people like Neil Young or The Beatles as well as I do now.

MR: Speaking of drums, you have Ric Menck back on this album.

MS: That’s right, yeah. It’s like we’ve never been apart.

MR: (laughs) He’s your longtime musical cohort.

MS: Oh, we go way back. Paul Chastain, who is the other member of Velvet Crush with Ric, is also going to be touring with us this year. But, yeah, Ric plays all the drums on the record, with the exception of the one track that Fred Armisen plays, which is “Ivory Tower.” Fred and I became friendly when Susanna Hoffs and I sang in a couple of his comedy shows he did when he’d come out to L.A. over the last couple years. During the time I was doingModern Art, to anyone I would see who was a drummer, I’d say, “Send me raw material, or give me junk. I might turn it into something.” Fred went in a room in New York and recorded two or three things and sent them to me, and I’d had the song idea already and it weirdly melded with the exact thing he played. So, I didn’t even change anything about it. It’s just like I jammed along with his crazy drum thing.

MR: Okay, back to the songs. In “She Walks The Night,” I love the lyrics, “How many times to her face did I lie and she wakes me when the sun comes out again.” On the surface, it seems like a love song that can have an interpretation of a guy being forgiven by the gal for coming home late after being a dog, but there’s this creepy, eerie undertow of a story going on.

MS: Yeah, in the song it’s really strange because the girl is dead. She’s basically a ghost. “She drapes around, her feet are barely touching on the ground, she loves the dark because she knows where it’s coming from, she comes alive painted in the glow of the streetlight,” and he says, “How many times in her place have I died?” It’s like he doesn’t want to believe that it’s not reality. He says, “Why would I pretend she isn’t there if I can feel her be, she’s real enough to me,” or something like that. I’ve never quoted so many lyrics from a song, ever! Luckily, I’ve been trying to learn a version of that for us to play live, so it’s a little bit in my head. But it is like a love song as well, and “she wakes me when the sun comes out again” is like when he gets up and it’s daytime and it’s reality, it’s because she ushers him into it or something. It’s interesting to talk about these lyrics because it’s so abstract for me. I don’t even know what I mean by stuff when I’m writing. Later on, you can go and say, “Oh, this is what that’s kind of saying,” and unlike what I just said, a lot of songwriters have very specific things about the songs. I’m more open-minded. I love when someone just gets what they get from it.

MR: What about “Ladyfingers?”

MS: What we call “Ladyfingers” are those inch-and-a-half firecrackers, and where I grew up in Nebraska, fireworks weren’t illegal. I sold fireworks as a teenager around the 4th of July to make a little bit of money. We would have Roman Candle fights in the parking lot and stuff, so, “there in the smoke she lingers,” I think, is like the smoke from fireworks, kind of. But it’s about an imaginary woman, I guess. I’d have to look at the lyrics — it almost has kind of a trucker thing going on in it, where he’ll be rolling along. It talks about “four-eyes,” because he has glasses. I thought that was kind of good. (laughs) “I keep four eyes on the road.”

MR: Let’s move onto “Late Nights With The Power Pop.” Power Pop is a category you’ve been sort of placed in for years.

MS: That comes from a thing that happened on tour with Tony Marsico, who played bass with us for years and years, until Paul started playing bass last year. Tony had this little book thing called “Late Nights With Bob Dylan” that was about when his band, The Cruzados, backed up Dylan on …Letterman. There was always intense interest about it, so they made this little fanzine about it called Late Nights With Bob Dylan. Ric would joke that he was going to have his comeback, which was “Late Nights With The Power Pop.” It’s especially funny because it’s “The Power Pop” instead of just “Power Pop,” so I just had that title in my head. I always planned I would just make a song that used the title, but then it worked in this weird way to have this song that had memories of some of our times live in it. There’s an interesting bunch of stuff going on in it.

MR: Another one of my favorite songs is “Baltimore.”

MS: You know, there isn’t really much of a story. I wrote it in Baltimore — I just liked the name “Baltimore” and thought, “I’m just going to write something with ‘Baltimore’ in it,” and it became kind of… You get the idea that there was a relationship and it ended when they got to Baltimore, and somehow, she escaped and he’s sort of there. It doesn’t really knock Baltimore as much as it is his fate. That’s where it went down and he’s still there.

MR: Now, you’re becoming a musicologist of sorts. Your Under The Covers albums with Susanna Hoffs are wonderful equally from the performances and the material you’re choosing.

MS: Oh, thank you. We pick stuff that we think we’ll be able to do. (laughs) We stay away from stuff we think we just can’t do. I think we have a pretty good instinct for what might work with the two of us.

MR: And you have a good working knowledge of a lot of music.

MS: Kind of — I really think of myself as not knowing as much as people might think that I do about records. But I know this guy Ric Menck, who plays drums with me (laughs) and he is a musicologist. He really knows a lot of stuff, and so I do rely on him a little bit as well.

MR: Well then, in regards to Ming Tea and the Austin Powers movies, who comes up with the appropriate music?

MS: The Ming Tea thing was really just a little riff that I made up and we all kind of jammed on together over at Mike’s house. I think of it as being a little bit like the song “Dinosaur Act” off of Altered Beast. It has a similar thing going on in it. But then, later on, we wrote another song for the third Austin Powers movie. Mike and I wrote it together, it’s called “Daddy Wasn’t There.”

MR: Are you working on any movies currently?

MS: I’m not doing any movie stuff right now. I’m actually at the tail end of another album — what will be the follow-up to Modern Art. I’m almost done with it. I finished Modern Artlast September, so it’s taken us almost a year to get it out through various hitches along the way. The other thing that’s going on is that we’re going to make an ’80s record with Susanna and I — we’ll be working on it when I get back from touring this fall.

MR: Nice. Volume Three.

MS: Volume Three.

MR: Yay. Also, you have your fingers in some other pies. You worked with Hanson for a while.

MS: Oh, yeah. That’s been a while back now, but I did write a couple songs with them and got to know them a little bit. They were very nice. I’ve seen them a few times over the years and they’re so grown up now. They look like male models or something, in their late twenties. How old are they now? They may be 30. More recently, I did a theme song for the latest Scooby Doo episode, “Mystery Incorporated.” (laughs) I worked on that last year. I know there are some other things I’m not thinking of.

MR: Well, you made it into Guitar Hero with “Girlfriend.”

MS: Oh yeah — Guitar Hero and “Girlfriend” go a ways back. I started hearing about that, and then eventually, a friend of mine’s kid performed it for me while we were at a party at their house. (laughs) I thought it was me — the real recording — when I heard it. They did such an exact job of copying everybody, and a few people tried to get a lawsuit going because nobody got much money for it, and then it became the biggest video game of all time. I know The Romantics and 38 Special and all these people that were on it wanted to get something from them. Somehow, it never got going as a class action thing, and it was forgotten. So, we just have to be happy for the promo, which is pretty big.

MR: But we have to discuss your biggest break that came with your big screen debut inTerms Of Endearment.

MS: (laughs) Oh, my God. I was an extra in Terms Of Endearment. At the time, I guess I was in high school. I was a senior, and I had convinced my counselor to let me go and take university courses my last semester of high school. So, I was taking weird courses I didn’t have prerequisites for, like poetry, for which I was supposed to have taken other poetry classes, and film, for which I was supposed to have taken other film classes. But they just let me do it because I was sort of under a “visiting student” status. So, I was taking this class on Film Noir and James Brooks, the producer of Terms Of Endearment, came and talked to our class. Afterwards, a few people were kind of hanging around and chatting with him and listening to him. I was one of them, standing in the background with nothing to say. (laughs) He said, “If any of you want to be extras in the movie, go over to the stadium later today and they’re going to be picking a bunch of people.” It was great because I got off of school for several days, because we had to keep going there and be in the same spot. I’m kind of in the background, I don’t even know how easy it is to see me, but I’m pretty sure you can see me there somewhere. There’s a great photo of me and Debra Winger on the grass while filming that movie. She was really funny–she cussed like a sailor and was dating the governor, so it was kind of cool to be around.

MR: Since we’re going into the past, you’ve got Community Trolls, Oh-OK, Buzz Of Delight, and all other sorts of stuff to mention. What are your thoughts, looking back on that period?

MS: It was a real growing period for me. I felt like I was pretty innocent and wide-eyed and was just taking in what I saw most of the time. I was lucky enough to be around a lot of cool people, to be around R.E.M. when they were just starting to really take off. At the time, it seemed pretty simple. I had met them when they were playing in Nebraska at this little place called The Drumstick — it was also a chicken restaurant by day and was like the New Wave club of Lincoln. So, I went and saw R.E.M when there were fifty, sixty, seventy people going to see them. I had their 45 of the Hib-Tone “Radio Free Europe” backed with “Sitting Still.” So, I was just a fan of this indie group, and then I moved down to Athens because I was writing postcards to them, and they hooked me up with Mitch Easter from Let’s Active. I was a really giant fan of Mitch’s stuff from some indie records and compilations and things I’d got his stuff from. So, for me, it was really amazing to get to be around those kinds of people. They were really nice to me, so it was kind of a special time. I think, later on in Athens, it became much more cutthroat and there was more of a larger community/judgment kind of vibe. (laughs) But during the time I went there, I think it was still kind of small. There were people who knew the B-52’s and the people that knew R.E.M. and a few other bands. Everybody was friends and went to the same parties. There was Pylon, who are so amazing, and Love Tractor… I love all those records.

MR: And of course, you were on a few records here and there. Then you got your own record deal. Russell Carter’s in this period, right?

MS: Well, there was this guy, Steve Ralbovsky, and he called back on one of my tapes and was interested. He was at EMI at the time and was going to be leaving and going to CBS. He was interested in these multi-tracks I was doing, and I think it was Jefferson Holt who was R.E.M.’s manager who hooked me up with Russell because he thought I could use a lawyer to figure out a couple of things. When we did Buzz Of Delight and stuff, we had tiny little agreements for the indie records. So, that’s how I met Russell. And then, I got deals before Russell was really managing me — or managing anyone — but he did the legal stuff for my deals. Then I ended up getting signed at Columbia by the same guy that had been interested — Steve — and in fact, my fate went with him to A&M and I made a second record there. Then there was Girlfriend, and he left the label right at that time. So, we sold Girlfriend to this little, up-start label called Zoo Entertainment. That third record was really the charm for me, and like we were talking about, it was the one that really had a human feeling and was more retro than I’d been thinking most of my young adult life up to that point.

MR: Which brings us to the 20th Anniversary of Girlfriend. Twenty years later — I can’t believe it’s twenty years later — what are your thoughts on that record?

MS: Well, it’s interesting because I’ve been having to learn the whole thing. We never even did that back in the day, we’d just pick which songs were easy to do or best known and tended to play those songs. It’s kind of weird. It’s forced me to go through what my feelings are about that time. I have good feelings about the record. It’s a record that worked for people really well; they could put their own feelings and thoughts and lives into it, which I like. It made it really a communal thing, and it was unlike other records. It’s not like there are a million records that were just like it or something. It’s so unique, and when we were making it, we were just doing exactly what we wanted to do — some (tracks) being influenced by The Beatles and The Byrds and Brian Wilson and some by The Velvet Underground or Neil Young or Jimi Hendrix. There were a lot of things we were all digging as records, and it just had that vibe where people really like the record. It’s a one-time record to me. It would’ve been hard to make Girlfriend over and over again, because it was such it’s own way, you know?

MR: Yeah, yeah. What classics, and kicking it off with “Divine Intervention” is genius.

MS: That’s one of the earliest songs that’s on that record, probably when I guess I was still coming to terms with the fact that I am an atheist. (laughs) Not in any evil kind of way, but at the time, I still was kind of like, “I’m going to be nasty towards God.” I was mocking a little bit, but that’s not to exclude Christians or whatever. It’s not that I don’t believe in Jesus or that his ideas aren’t great or whatever. “Divine Intervention” dealt with that a little bit. I noticed in the lyrics of “Nothing Lasts,” which was originally going to be the title of record, one of the three bonus tracks out in the outer reaches, says, “…if I could locate a god above.” I was coming to terms with that a little bit, that that wasn’t going to be a big help in my emotional life, exactly. There are so many. “I’ve Been Waiting,” which is just a real innocent thing about falling in love. And of course, “Girlfriend,” the title track itself, which Russell believed could get on the radio, and he was right. It was on rock radio and sounded just unique to what it was at the time.

MR: That was one of the most memorable hits of the era — it was unlike all of the nice, clean, little pop songs that were programmed around it.

MS: Yeah, I wasn’t afraid to be noisy, although the other thing about that time was that our live shows were twice as ferocious as anything on the record.

MR: I remember. And you also had those anime clip videos, which didn’t hurt.

MS: That’s right, and it’s so fun to think that it wasn’t so hugely well-known in mass culture then, and now you think of anime as almost American sometimes. (laughs) At the time, my wife and I, when we were dating, were collecting anime posters and trying to find comic book translations and things. So, when they said, “We want you to make a video,” I tried to get something I liked into the video so I would want to do it, instead of it only being me or something, which I dreaded. That’s a really cool thing, because now people look back and it’s like part of the ancient history of it or something. (laughs)

MR: One of the fun things about that record was the controversy over the song “Winona.” Did you ever meet after that?

MS: We did meet. I was touring once with Soul Asylum and Dave Pirner and her were going out and so she was kind of hanging around. I didn’t see her a lot on that tour, but I saw her once or twice. At one of the shows, I showed her how to play the part on acoustic guitar, and she actually came out and played with us. So, she actually performed “Winona” once with us. We never really discussed the song — I was a fan of hers and she was one of these girls I sort of fantasized about, but the song wasn’t literally only about her. It could’ve been anybody, but it was titled “Winona.” It was because Lloyd Cole knew that I really liked her, and he was like, “You should call it ‘Winona'” in his English accent, and I thought, “Yeah, maybe I will. That’s kind of cool.” It wasn’t really about her, but it had a movie star in it so it made sense.

MR: (laughs) I love that story, thank you. Before we get back to Modern Art — “You Don’t Love Me” is one of my favorite songs of yours. I had to confess that.

MS: Somebody just asked me, “What are your favorites on that record?” and that’s one of the ones I picked. It just really captured a dark, undertow feeling that went along with part of what I was going through at that time. I really like that kind of melancholy music. It’s not really the popular music, ever. People are always looking for a happier pop song that’s more normal, but I always loved those songs that are deeper like that on records that I was a fan of, so I always try to have a couple of them in there.

MR: And I think “Come To California” should’ve been a huge hit. What a hook.

MS: Oh, thank you. Brendan O’Brien thought that too. We got a little action off of it, but it wasn’t huge, I don’t think.

MR: Now, the expanded version of Girlfriend that’s out right now is a double-disc set with all sorts of fun extras.

MS: Well, at the time, they had me get together some tracks for a “thing.” It was really a gift to retail and mom-and-pop stores. A lot of retail, although it’s hard to imagine now, really drove the popularity of Girlfriend, with people getting into it at their record store and playing it. So, we made this disc called Good Friend as a gift to retail at the end of that year for what they’d done for us. It then became this thing that was really hard to find because there weren’t that many of them, and for a while it was even like this rare thing you had to pay hundreds of dollars to get. Of course, now it’s out as the bonus disc for this version ofGirlfriend — The Legacy Edition.

MR: With fancy packaging too.

MS: Yes, it’s very fancy. I was very excited that they did that. I didn’t really have a lot of input into it, but they did a really nice job.

MR: I know that some of those packages don’t involve the artist because of contractual weirdness and all that, but I was such a fan that I just had to reach out to you when we were doing your To Understand collection at Universal.

MS: Your thing turned out awesome — it was totally great.

MR: And I loved collaborating with you on that. It was a lot of fun.

MS: Yeah, it was. I agree. I had to go back through a lot of the history — I remember talking with Jeff Calder a lot about it during that time too.

MR: Let’s get back to Modern Art and “My Ass Is Grass.” Why? What did you do?

MS: Why? What is that? I don’t know, it was more about how you’re mortal or whatever, I guess. (laughs) Yeah, that’s such a weird thing because there’s not much to it as a song. But there was just something about it that I liked, and I remember my wife really liked it. We just thought it was kind of funny, I don’t know. “My Ass Is Grass.” (laughs)

MR: It always begs the question, “Well, what did you do now?” (laughs)

MS: What did you do? You were alive — you got born. Your ass is grass.

MR: (laughs) Let’s talk about one more song on the album, “December Dark.”

MS: I like “December Dark.” It’s one of those songs that’s a little bit like “You Don’t Love Me,” which we were just talking about. I go through Seasonal Affective Disorder, I think. I feel it strongly. I suffer anyway from Bipolar Disorder, so when I get to the time of year when there’s the least light, I can just feel it pulling on me. I know Susanna gets that too, and it’s funny because I just made up this song called “December Dark.” But it also is symbolic, like a “My Ass Is Grass” sort of thing, because it’s sort of symbolic of how you never fully escape the dark side of things. It will come back around.

MR: Beautiful. Matthew, what have you got as far as advice for new artists?

MS: God, it’s so hard. I mean, I can’t imagine being a new artist now just because there are so many people that are artists. I think you should do your own thing that you’re comfortable with. If you just get really into it and you’re doing what you dig, then other people are more likely to dig it. If you’re trying to think like other people or be like something else, I think it’s a lot harder. So, I would say be yourself and try to really care about the music the most. All of the other stuff? First of all, it’s very hard to have success in music and second of all, when you do, it’s not going to be forever or at the same level. You might try and try and try and never get that far or you might do incredibly well and then it all goes away. So, in the end, you just have to really like doing music, and that separates, as they say, the men from the boys, or I guess the ladies from the girls as well, in terms of who hangs in there and becomes an artist. You have to have the urge to keep doing it, to really hang around long enough to have made a mark.

MR: Well, you sir have stayed around, and I am personally grateful. With every album that you put out, there are three or four songs that mean a lot to me.

MS: Mike, you’re so nice. Thanks so much.

MR: By the way, “Easy” is still one of my favorite songs ever.

MS: Oh, I like “Easy.” It has a little bit of hurt in it there. I like that song — it’s the opening song on Earth. That was one of the ones we played live when I first played live. It has a little bit of that achy feeling in it, like “Things were good and now they’re not so good.”

MR: But it is so simple, and it reflects “Oh, Oldendaze.”

MS: “It was so easy.” Yeah, it is a little bit like “…Oldendaze.”

MR: Matthew, you’re going to do a tour, right?

MS: Yes. We’re going to tour this Fall. It looks like all over the East Coast as well as in the Midwest. I looks like the Midwest will be more in November, but we’re still kind of working that out. I’m going to be in New York right on Halloween and the two days after, we’re doing three shows there. And with all these shows, we’re going to attempt to play the entireGirlfriend album, which will probably take up most of the show. And then we’ll play a couple songs from Modern Art and maybe a couple of other things.

MR: Nice. Will you include the three bonus tracks from Girlfriend.

MS: I think we’re going to, yeah. We’ve been rehearsing them. It’s a lot.

MR: I don’t want to keep you too much longer, although there’s so much to talk about. You’ve been very generous with you time, Matthew.

MS: Oh, it’s my pleasure.

MR: It’s always good to talk with you. We’ve got to do this again soon.

MS: Same here, I would love that. Hang in there.

Transcribed by Claire Wellin