1995-09 14850 Magazine Online
Interview: They Might Be Giants
By Marchette Du Bois, 14850 Magazine Online, September 1995
Archived from: https://web.archive.org/web/20031011115418/http://www.tmbg.net/articles/14850mag1995.html
14850: How do you write songs?
John Flansburgh: We always try to figure out new ways to write songs. We've actually written songs using a lot of different approaches. The most standard way is just sitting with your instrument in front of you working out a melody and trying to figure out if there's a phrase that would go on top of it.
We've done things in much more devicee ways as well. Some of the more left-of-center songs have been done in unusual ways.
14850: Like?
JF: There's a song on our previous album Apollo 18 called "Spider" that's basically a couple of samples that John [Linnell] had made with a sort of percussion concept, and I added musical instruments to support it. It was really more like song construction rather than song writing. It was a musique concrete type thing. But that's pretty unusual.
We've experimented with the collaboration process on this album (John Henry) There's a couple of songs that were done with finished lyrics being handed off. That's a totally new horizon for us and remarkably efficient in a way, because you write a lyric presupposing that it's going to fit a song. It's almost hypothetical, you're just working with the very standard notion of how the metric part of putting together lyrics work. Figuring "well, this'll fit" and then the person writes the music that's already complete and bounces off the lyrics.
14850: Do you mean you'd have a set of lyrics and a set melody and then try to fit them together?
JF: No, I gave a sheet of lyrics to John and he went through them and figured out which ones were interesting. "Subliminal" was one of the tracks that we cooked up that way. It just had very simple words. It had two verses basically and the word subliminal as the primary part of the chorus. Again, that was one of the more devicee ways of doing it. By and large I think we write our songs in an old fashioned way. Our songs are pretty verse-chorus oriented.
14850: Do you think about the regular format of a pop song and then fit your lyrics to it?
JF: Yeah, It's not that different from a lot of other kinds of expression where there's this over-arching form. Everybody who writes a play has to deal with the limitations of presenting something in this set place; the chairs on one side of the room, the stage on the other. There are things that you just have to take for granted. Some people find that really limiting.
14850: It's nice to have a set of rules to follow.
JF: Yeah, the pop song is a weird thing. Some people think of it as being this incredibly obtrusive and alien form. I think of it as one of few compelling forms of expression left. There aren't a lot of things that get me going as much as a good [song].
14850: Do you think you will venture into other musical forms?
JF: The double-edged sword of being in a rock band that becomes well known is that everything you try to do after that will be in the shadow of it. In a way I think it's sort of unfortunate.
14850: Would you use a different name?
JF: That's another hassle. I've never had leanings that way personally. I've never really been into classical music. I'm not a great improviser. I'm not a great instrumentalist. I basically feel like I'm working to my strengths in this kind of format. I think about someone like Captain Beefheart who retired from rock music and became a painter. He's a pretty interesting painter; he's legitimate. He got enough respect in his rock career that it didn't hold him back. On some level I don't think he'll be as highly regarded as Jean-Michel Basquiat, who was probably just as guilty of hedonistic pursuits that makes people's characters be questioned. I think people just go "oh, rock star trying to stretch out."
14850: Oh no, Madonna's trying to act again.
JF: Right, there's something a little bit nerve-wracking. It makes people feel uneasy. There are lots of good examples of people trying it and failing. But look at the Beatles -- when they started they were as crass as you could possibly be. They were a FAD. They actually managed to co-opt the notion of what a fad was and turn it into this kind of cultural revolution.
14850: Do you think it was because of their talents or their manager?
JF: Well, I think they became a fad because of their manager. But they became cultural astronauts because of their talent. They really did a lot of stuff -- if it had been Herman's Hermits I don't think they could have pulled it off. It was a fair amount of good luck and a fair amount of good timing, but I also think they were obviously extremely talented. Also, they had a really un-neurotic response to their success. Most people are left blithering idiots by any level of public recognition. Often it runs contrary to everything in their background. By becoming successful they go "what went wrong" where the Beatles were like "hey, bring it on".
14850: Are you both musically literate? Can you read notes?
JF: I can read very slowly. I can't really sight read at all. It's like an encoded message for me. But John is a pretty good sight reader. He's a horn player. Most guitar players just read charts. They don't really read notes. They just become familiar with chord progressions, and just figure out ways to cope. I think guitar players in general are the illiterates passing for literates. They come up with really complicated systems to hide the fact that they are in fact completely illiterate. "Read that for me, would you?"
14850: "What's it sound like?"
JF: "What is this rhythm? Hum this bar out for me again." Of course, it's just as hard to figure out the rhythms. A lot of times I get the notes, but it's actually the rhythms, the division of the written music. But you know, the beauty part of what we're doing is that we make up the music and other people have to learn it.
14850: Do you bring written charts to your sessions?
JF: I've made a few charts on my computer, some horn parts, and I'm not at all a horn player. We've had this six-piece band with a horn section for a while and we've gotten pretty good at it.
14850: Do you ever walk into a rehearsal and just say "It goes like this"?
JF: Sometimes. It depends on how simple it is. A song like "Spy" is three chords. It's so simple that people know it before they even hear it. Minor blues. So where are you calling from?
14850: Ithaca. I understand you had family in the area at one point.
JF: Yeah, my entire family is from Ithaca. My mom and dad were born in Ithaca. They actually went out on dates to the State Theater.
14850: That's right.
JF: They courted there.
14850: It must have been kind of strange to be playing there.
JF: Well, I would go to Ithaca every Christmas to visit my grandmother, and we would go to that downtown area to do my father's last minute shopping. It was just funny to be there when it wasn't filled with snow.
14850: There's a lot of lyrics in John Henry about misunderstandings. Are you afraid of being misunderstood?
JF: Communication is just an effort to not be misunderstood. I think that's what most songs are about. On some level I think saying something's finished is putting your faith in the fact that you won't be misunderstood. Or that it's unimportant that it needs to be explained any better.
On some level, I think we'll always be misunderstood. What we're about is just a little bit too complicated for the music press to appreciate. Musical movements are presented as monolithic slabs. They're really synthesized and boiled down into descriptions that don't really apply to a lot of people. When I was a teenager and the whole punk rock/ new wave thing was happening, it was really clear to me that these bands were very distinct from one another. As far as Rolling Stone was concerned the most important thing was that everybody knew that they were all the same. What we do has a range to it that is very confusing for people. To some extent, because we do some songs that are really light-hearted, it really skews people's perspective of what's going on. Our intentions are just as bombastic as any art rocker. We basically are going for the most sophisticated thing that we can cook up. [Our music] is often presented as if it's really a middle-brow activity. I think it's sort of a cross to bear to a certain extent. People are always going to think that we're a party band. People are always going to think that we're "The Funny Guys."
There are a lot of very over-the-top theatrical rock stars, and people talk about them like they're poets. And they appear naked on stage. I would never. I just think of that as really inappropriate behavior.
14850: Do you like to keep your real life and your stage life separate?
JF: We're pretty street-level people. It's not like we think of ourselves as leading schizophrenic lives. We wear the same clothes on stage that we wear in our regular lives. The one thing we do try to do is make it clear that our songs are our best effort. We're just not into the whole hero trip of the rock performer. We don't want people to live like us, or dress like us. All that stuff seems like a drag to me. I'm not going to tell people how to vote.
14850: Gee, why not?
JF: So many people are looking for that.
14850: People like to be told what to do.
JF: Yeah.
14850: But it's not your job.
JF: Yeah, definitely not my job.