1992-10 Rumpus Magazine
Interview with John Linnell
By Aaron Craig, Rumpus Magazine, October 1992
Archived from: https://web.archive.org/web/20031026151858/http://www.tmbg.net/articles/rumpus1992.html
"One torpid August afternoon in a rank basement room of Toad's, a nervous lanky young man in a mod black T-shirt introduced himself to us as John Linnell, one of the two Johns that constitute the most wholesome underground group to come out of New York, They Might Be Giants. The other John was "Hanging around here somewhere" but remained misanthropically away, leaving his wan partner alone to confront Rumpus -- and summarily, himself. He sat noisily in a chair and scooted up to the beer-stained table, slid his half-inch thick glasses up his nose, and urged us to begin the interview."
R: Now, you were in New Haven two years ago. Do you like playing in New Haven?
JL: Sure sure.
R: Or is every club the same to you?
JL: Oh no, every place is different.. We've played here a few times, we
also used to play at this other place. It was a teeny place, and it had
something like a, there was some sort of barn or something, with no
stage, or ceiling...
R: That place is gone.
R: Why James K. Polk?
JL: Well, we were sitting around talking about obscure Presidents in
history, and whether they were actually as unimportant during their own
time. And the name James K. Polk came up, and we looked him up and found
that he was actually a pretty important guy. He started a trumped-up war
with Mexico. He supported Manifest Destiny. Wait, are you Canadian?
(unaccountable altercation (due to poor tape recording) ensues.)
Anyway, Polk wanted to do all this stuff. Basically, he was a real bastard.
R: Is there an interesting story behind how you and John met?
JL: Not really.
R: Did you or John ever consider attending Yale?
JL: No, no I didn't. I don't know about John. John's Dad is a trustee at
Cornell, so I think if he'd gone to an Ivy league school at all, it would
have been Cornell. But I don't think he did. He went to about three
different colleges. Next week we're playing... where's Dartmouth again?
R: Is there anything about New Haven that strikes you?
JL: I don't know it very well. The last time we were here, we walked
around the campus a little bit, because that's where we were, but not too
much.
R: And what do you think of the campus?
JL: Very pretty.
R: I was wondering why you are the official band of International Space Year, and what does space mean to you?
JL: Well, we're not actually the official band or anything, but we were
asked to represent International Space Year when we went to NASA to get a
graphic for the record jacket (Apollo 18). That's how we got picked.
They found out we were in a band and were touring the world in 1992 and
they asked us if we could help promote International Space Year because
it seemed like we had some kind of a space theme on our record. So we
said "Sure!" and basically, it's just meant for us that we say it in our
press kit with a little logo on the back of the record. But we don't have a
lot of information about it, I don't think most people have heard that
this is International Space Year.
R: Do you think that the Apollo Moon Landing was a hoax?
JL: No.
R: So you got both of these graphics from NASA (Pointing to the spaceship and the sea-scape on the cover)
JL: No, just the spaceship. The other one comes from a book cover. It's
one of those little 50s pulp magazine things that John found in a bookstore.
R: (pointing to the whale-squid skirmish) Have you ever seen this happen?
JL: No, if you're talking about a hoax, I think that's a hoax right
there. I think there's some sort of implication in that picture that the
squid might win the fight against the whale, but I think what happens is
that the whale eats the squid.
R: Did you know that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the National Bird?
JL: Yes, I did. I think that's a good idea. I think it's a shame that it
wasn't, because it's really much better. Doesn't it seem like a better
choice? It seems less arrogant. It's more of an American bird. The
original idea of Uncle Sam was a scraggly, ugly guy, and generally, when
we see him now, he's been cleaned up, and he's a handsome old guy. But
the original idea was a crusty Yankee who was sort of scrappy. Really,
the human equivalent to a turkey in a way. The eagle is much more of a
fascist bird.
R: On the cover of "Lincoln" who are those two guys, who also keep popping up in your videos?
JL: Have they popped up in our videos? Oh right, there's that one
section. Right. Those are our ancestors. The bearded guy is my
great-grandfather, who was a guy who lived out in Illinois in the middle
of the nineteenth century. And the other guy is Flansburgh's grandfather
who was a General, actually, and this is going to seem very silly and hard
to believe but his name was Hospital, so his name was General Hospital.
We haven't told anybody because no one would believe it, but that really
was his name.
R: I'm wondering how you deal with the "Very high metabolism rate you have?"
JL: I drink a lot of coffee.
R: What do you think about the Presidential election? Do you see yourself, twenty years down the line, writing a song called "George H.W. Bush?" Will he be an obscure President?
JL: I don't know. The thing is that Polk at least achieved all the things
he set out to do, while Bush is really a political washout. There's
nothing he wants to achieve.
R: What do you think of Yale's effort to raise $1.5 billion in five years.
JL: How is it going to be raised?
R: From alumni. Yale just takes it from these people.
JL: I think that's great.
R: Could you raise that much money if you performed for five years straight?
JL: 1.5 million?
R: Billion.
JL: No.
R: Would you be interested in teaching a College Seminar here on pop music, or something of that sort?
JL: I don't know.
R: Do all of your songs have meaning?
JL: Yes. Some of them suggest things that are elliptic in some way, they
say things indirectly, but they're not nonsense. They're songs that we
feel good enough about to put on the record.
R: What are the last few books you've read?
I borrowed our drummer's copy of The Arabian Nights because it was
translated by an Arab, it was pretty interesting because he talks at the
beginning, in no uncertain terms, about how his translation blows
everyone else's away.
R: Would you mind if we were to take a picture of you in a Yale sweatshirt?
JL: Oh, I don't know. I think I'd feel really silly.