1988-03-09 East Coast Rocker
An Interview with They Might Be Giants: "You can't just tour in a van your entire life"
By Tom Sinclair, East Coast Rocker, March 9, 1988
John Flansburgh and John Linnell, otherwise known as They Might Be Giants, aren't sure if they're successful. "Everything is exactly the same, just a little more hectic," says Flansburgh, the bespectacled Giant, over coffee in a Lower East Side pastry shop. "A lot of people come up to us and say, "You guys have really done it. What's it? Where is it? We could use some of it."
The two grew up in Massachusetts and wound up living in the same building in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, in the early '80s. It was there that the first incarnation of TMBG was cobbled together. Originally slated to be a four-piece, Flansburgh and Linnell decided to remain a duo when they failed to turn up a drummer and bass player with the requisite commitment to the TMBG concept.
In those days, both Giants were working day jobs and performing when and where they could. Linnell was pedaling the streets of Manhattan as a bike messenger when he had the accident which proved to be a pivotal point in TMBG's career.
"I didn't maintain my bike very well-that was the thing that brought me down," recalls Linnell. "I've never been clear on how this happened, but somehow the bike froze and I went over the handlebars with about forty pounds of stuff on my back and landed on my right hand. That ground the band to a halt for about four months while my wrist was healing. That was really the thing that started the Dial-a-Song because we couldn't play out."
TMBG's Dial-a-Song was one of those obvious ideas no one else seemed to have picked up on. "We got a phone message machine and we started putting songs on it," says Linnell. "It was as simple as that."
Dial-a-Song initially served as a means of gauging public reaction to new songs. ("We tremble in fear of public opinion," says Linnell). Both Giants used to listen carefully to the messages callers would leave on the tape following the daily song but, alas, they've since had to stop that practice.
"It got to be too much, just listening to a half-hour of messages every day," admits Flansburgh. "We used to have regular people calling up, people who'd read their beat poetry to us. Then you'd get the occasional psycho-nut who leaves the most brain-frying messages. I got a couple of messages that were absolutely out of Taxi Driver kind of things. I just don't want to subject myself to that."
Still, Dial-a-Song rolls on, with the songs changed practically every day. With such a backlog of these telephone tunes, how many songs have these two actually written?
"It's really hard to say," muses Linnell, "because we're constantly taking things apart and putting them together in different configurations."
"It could only be one song, for all we know," interjects Flansburgh mischievously. "The thing is, so many of them are so bad. Even people who really like us, who think they'd like to hear that kind of stuff, would like us a lot less if they ended up hearing those songs. Take it from us: the very best stuff we do is the stuff that ends up on the album."
The two don't stick to any one method of songwriting. Usually, each Giant will bring the other a song and, in Linnell's words, wait for the other to say "I hate it" or "I like it, let's play it."
In concert, TMBG make frequent use of props, one of the most popular of which is The Stick, a hunk of wood from Lincoln, Mass which Flansburgh uses to pound the stage in the song "Lie Still, Little Bottle."
"Audiences have really been going wild over it," says Linnell. "Virtually every show, they scream for The Stick." Flansburgh points out that The Stick is "not a fusion jazz instrument, and more a piece of a tree than an actual stick."
TMBG are not an easy band to pigeonhole. Bubbling with the pop-smarts of Squeeze, the irony of Randy Newman and the wacked out wordplay of Captain Beefheart, their music vaults from rock to country to polka to tinkertoy and back again. When pressed, they categorize themselves as a rock band.
"We play in rock clubs and that sort of defines what we do," says Flansburgh. "If we were living in another era, we might have been called a cabaret show. But cabaret these days is like the most hokey bullshit, so we're not cabaret. It's not about singing lounge songs. It's not theatrical like Alice Cooper, but there's some-thing more graphic about it than just a regular rock band. Maybe that comes out of it being just two guys on stage. We're definitely in the rock idiom, whether we like it or not. And that's a good place to be, because you can just sort of declare yourself a rock band and then go on and do what you want. There's no reason to think there are any limitations to it."
Actually, it seems TMBG's roots are pretty punky. Flansburgh, who is 27, admits to being blown away by "the whole punk rock, New York 1977 scene" as a teenager. "It was far and away the coolest thing I'd ever heard of," he recalls. He remains a Ramones fan.
"Ramones songs are incredibly open-ended," he enthuses. "They're really colorful songs. I don't know what people think of when they think of the Ramones, but to me Rocket To Russia is like the greatest record."
Another good thing about punk, adds Linnell, was that "you could write a song about whatever you wanted. Anything you were saying that seemed true was a good basis for a song."
Linnell, who played in a New England pop outfit called the Mundanes prior to teaming up with Flansburgh, says, "people are right to see a connection between us and a group of British bands that came out seven or eight years ago, sort of poppy bands like XTC, Squeeze and Elvis Costello. That was definitely stuff that appealed to us at the time. I think you can probably tell who our influences are."
At the mention of Jonathan Richman, another New England pop eccentric whose band, the Modem Lovers, at one point included Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads and Dave Robinson of the Cars, Linnell sits up with a grin.
"That song, 'Roadrunner,' really speaks to me and John, because all the parts of the song are about where we grew up. Route 128, the power lines-that's our area. It's a place where driving is a form of entertainment 'cause there's a lot of interesting stuff to see late at night driving around. It's a very green place, the Boston suburbs."
And, while we're on the subject of rock 'n' roll, how do TMBG really feel about Minneapolis rockers the Replacements? (The duo has recorded a zippy ditty, "We're The Replacements," which is on the flip of the "Don't Let's Start" giant 45.)
"It's definitely a pro-Replacements song," says Linnell.
Flansburgh concurs. "I hope people don't take that song the wrong way. We think they're a fully happening outfit." Actually, Flansburgh explains, TMBG identify with the Replacements. Both bands have risen above cult status and seem destined for bigger things and, says Flansburgh, both units are ludicrously being charged by older fans with "selling out."
"We're right now just at a point where we're getting a little more attention than a regular local band might. We've been doing this for five years and we're really happy to be where we are. There's nothing wrong with it. I can't see how the Replacements could have stayed the way they were and not have been buried alive. You can't just tour in a van your entire life. It's too hard," says Flansburgh.
Linnell isn't particularly worried about alienating low-rent elitists, either. "Some people who liked us a lot in '84 feel like we don't have anything to say to them. And they may be right."
Has success brought with it typical rock star problems such as- er- groupies? "We've been told they exist," says Flansburgh dryly, "but they have yet to make themselves known." More common, says Linnell, are fans with unique interpretations of TMBG's oft times surrealistic lyrics. "They have all sorts of funny ways of talking about them," Linnell notes. "There's probably something about our songs that lends itself to that."
TMBG certainly aren't druggies, but they do like their caffeine. "It's a way of regulating ourselves," says Linnell. "We do drink a lot of coffee. We're at a point now where we drink it to stay sort of normal." Flansburgh jumps up twice during our interview to track down a waiter for coffee refills.
"Being on an independent label is a real struggle." says Flansburgh. "There are big record stores that won't carry your record unless you can guarantee mega-sales It's really rigged against independents. I don't think people realize how big a challenge it is to go that route It really is a grass roots thing." Flansburgh credits Bar/None with getting the first Giants album out there and available. What does the future hold for TMBG?
"It's hard to say," says Flansburgh. "I sort of feel like it's not up to us. I mean, we didn't put our video on MTV. That was somebody else's decision. We're on writing and performing, and ultimately what ends up gonna keep happening depends on some brave soul making the decision to take a chance."