1993-02 CROSSBEAT
They Might Be Giants
By Atsushi Sasaki, CROSSBEAT, February 1993
Archived from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tabloidfootprints/35195902923
Translated from Japanese.
"We're really almost the same person. It's not the differences between us that matters, but the complexity of each of us."
As readers of this magazine will undoubtedly know, They Might Be Giants is a duo consisting of two "Johns," Linnell and Flansburgh. There was even a band called The Three Johns (!) back in the day, so it's not particularly unusual. But even so, when the audience calls out at their live shows, it's strangely funny because you can't tell who they're addressing. Of course, it's probably both.
These two Johns look quite different — Linnell is relatively small and somewhat nervous-looking, while Flansburgh is portly and has a magnanimous appearance — but musically they operate as a single entity, and song credits are always listed only as TMBG. The division of roles between the two in songwriting and production remains shrouded in mystery.
The reason I started with this is because, due to scheduling conflicts, Linnell and Flansburgh were each interviewed by different magazines in separate rooms of the same hotel. I was assigned to interview Flansburgh; if it had been Linnell, I would have liked to ask him about his participation in the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, but oh well. Ideally, I would have liked to hear from both of them, but since this was such a rare opportunity, I prepared some questions to get Flansburgh to talk about the differences between him and Linnell in his own words. I titled it "He Might Be Giant?" But, as expected, the conversation went off on tangents...
Have you already started writing songs for your new album following Apollo 18?
"Actually, since my last visit to Japan, I've been on tour non-stop. Trying to write songs during that time is difficult. I inevitably end up singing something like, 'We're a rock band, playing in a bar!' (laughs). I have a lot of ideas scribbled down in my notebook, but I think it will still take some time before they take the form of songs."
So it starts with everyone bringing their own ideas together?
"Sometimes the two of us write songs separately, and other times we consciously try to work together. The division of labor between lyrics and composition varies depending on the situation. Plus, for most songs, we first play them on our Dial-A-Song service (a service where you can listen to their songs by dialing a designated phone number) at the demo stage to see how the fans react."
I imagine that during the songwriting process, it becomes difficult to say whose idea it was originally. But I'd like to know if there's still some degree of division of labor involved.
"In reality, the roles each of us plays in a song are quite clear. Sometimes John has written most of the song and I just add a little bit, or vice versa. Why do we always credit the band name? Because we want to maintain a kind of anonymity. When we were still relatively unknown, we even hid our identities, and TMBG was quite a mysterious entity. Even now, we deliberately don't make the personalities of the two members too clear, partly to create a certain distance between ourselves and the listener and prevent any strange familiarity."
Your songs are relatively simple in structure, yet they always seem to contain some kind of experimental idea. I assume that comes from your collaborative work together?
"In the past, we would prepare a huge number of songs before recording. We used to just start out and then gradually refine it through trial and error. But now that our songwriting techniques have improved, we can predict what we want to do in advance. Experimentation is like proof of the band's existence. Because we're not a world-class hard rock band, and we're not handsome either. That's all we have to rely on (laughs)."
Don't you ever find that once you start getting carried away, there's no end to it? I mean, new ideas keep popping up for a song, and you don't know when to stop and finish it...
"We were influenced by punk in the very early stages of our musical journey. Punk songs are all simple, but they're very spot-on, right? We want to do something like that too. It's like editing yourself, you know? Also, the reason our songs are all short is because we don't want to give all the answers in one song; we want to leave it as a question. Three minutes is just about right for that."
How do you usually decide on song titles and lyrics?
"Sometimes the melody comes first, but for us, it's usually the title that comes first. No, rather than the title itself, we often come up with a key phrase before that, and the idea develops from there. For example, with 'My Evil Twin', the phrase came to me more than a year before the song was written. I thought I could write all sorts of songs with this title, so I kept thinking about it. And in the end, it became a story about a man who pushes all the bad things onto another personality."
By the way, I'm still wondering about this (laughs), but could you tell me about the differences in your and Linnell's hobbies? It doesn't have to be limited to music, you know.
"Ah, well, hmm (he smiles wryly and thinks). That's a difficult question, because I feel that the complexity we each carry within ourselves is far broader than the differences between the two of us. In fact, the reason John and I have been working together for so long is because we are very similar in sensibility and we share similar musical tastes. Neither of us writes weirder songs than the other, and we are really almost the same person (laughs). Well, in terms of personality, I'm a bit more extroverted, and he's a little more reserved, that's the difference... What John and I have in common is that we like a mix of real and fake. That's why Japan is so interesting to us (laughs). And that's what rock music itself is all about, isn't it? Rhythm and blues, which has a proper history and roots, fused with something that suddenly emerged in the '50s as a plastic culture with no tradition whatsoever, and that became rock and roll."
So, what about hobbies other than music? Like movies, for example? TMBG has songs with a film noir feel, and there's also "Road Movie to Berlin," which is clearly a reference to Wim Wenders. Plus, the band name itself is the title of an old movie, isn't it? Which of you two is this love of movies?
"We did take the name 'They Might Be Giants' from a movie title, but it's not a big deal at all. We started out as The Pencils (laughs), a very New Wave-esque name. But in '83 we decided it was about time to change our name, and we chose it mostly because we liked the length.
We're influenced by all sorts of things. Not just movies, but pop culture in general. But to be honest, I'm not really sure how important those influences are. The good thing about those kinds of things is that they have a specific image, so they're convenient for directly appealing to the listener. But that can also backfire. I think my own interest in movies isn't that different from most people. Like everyone else, I just like movies. I think John is the same. (Here, suddenly, he points to Apollo 18 on the table) This first song, 'Dig My Grave', there have always been a lot of songs with titles like that in rock music. And most of them have a double meaning: "Dig your own grave" and "I like my own grave." We deliberately used it in the simple former sense only. But Americans would never think that's all there is to it."
So you twisted it again and made it normal.
"That's right. In French, a double meaning is called double entendre, and it's become American English slang. We use it when we only meant one thing, but the other person arbitrarily adds another meaning to it. That kind of thing happens a lot these days, like with Madonna (laughs). Even with rock lyrics, everyone likes to overanalyze. Everyone's become strangely ironic. People might think we make music that's like an ironic parody, but to be honest, I hate parody. But that's the era we grew up in, so to some extent it can't be helped. With TMBG, the parts that people think are parodies are often based on very common sense."
I've been thinking lately that the ironic era is coming to an end, and a different set of values is emerging. A new kind of frankness, perhaps. Of course, it's a sensibility that comes after going through irony, so it's not simply naive. And I think you guys are pioneers of that movement.
"Thank you very much for that (laughs)."