1997-09 R&R
Interview with John Linnell
By Chris Hoover, R&R, September 1997
Archived from: https://web.archive.org/web/20040517014650/http://www.tmbg.net/articles/r&r1997.html
Chris: If I may be so obtrusive, where are you calling from?
John: Brooklyn.
C: Isn't that where you two are originally from?
J: Yeah.
C: So, when are you starting your tour?
J: Not necessarily a tour, but we're doing some shows from (September) 5th to the 15th around the east coast and then we're off again. Then, we're going to try to make a record in the fall. That's sort of our general plan.
C: I hear you guys travel in Ford Crown Victorias. What's up with that? Is there some odd fascination with it?
J: Well, I don't think it's much of a style thing. It's not like we're doing it for someone's benefit. We got one of them because we needed a car, we used to buy a car to tour in and we wanted to get a new car. We checked out vans too but decided if we're going to live in a car, we mind as well get a nice car.
C: They look like cop cars, don't they?
J: They do. In fact, they are cop cars. They're huge.
C: I thought it was some weird idea to throw people off or something.
J: Well, it does have its advantages... When you're speeding down the highway and you go by the state trooper, I think he's less liable to hassle you. As sad as that is, it's probably better than driving a Cadillac. It's a sad, sad world.
C: (Laugh) Your name comes from a George C. Scott movie, no?
J: That's right.
C: I read in an interview that there was a meaning behind "They Might Be Giants," though you guys never claimed it. Wasn't it a reference to Don Quixote?
J: Yeah, yeah, in the movie it was a reference to the windmill scene-how the world would be if Don Quixote never thought those windmills were giants. It's funny now, because we came up with the name like 14 years ago, and now we're really not thinking that hard about the name of the band or what it means to us. It has turned into more of what sounds we make. Basically, someone asks you, "What do you do?" and when I answer, he goes, "They Might be WHAT?" It pretty much comes down to that.
C: (Laugh) I think it was the same interview, but when I read through it, I sensed this nihilistic attitude of Dadaists in you guys. Later on, John F. (Flansburgh) mentioned you two played the "exquisite corpse" game (invented by the Dadaists) to write lyrics. I didn't know if that was just a coincidence?
J: Uh, we've never done that actually. No, I don't know where that came from. There's a song on our last record (Factory Showroom) called "Exquisite Dead Guy" and it was a reference to that game, but the lyrics weren't written that way. We've never quite done that. It might have been a good thing to do and maybe we could still do that. We're really not that experimental. I think mainly we try to write interesting lyrics and we scratch our heads to come up with them. We do it the old fashion way-sit in front of a type writer and just crank it out.
C: Well, I still think you guys have nihilistic tendencies. You break away from the established musical norm and create unprecedented combination of sounds.
J: We strive to be different. We don't want to just blend in. We feel like we have something to say. We've established a way of writing: Where we talk about (things), whatever we want to talk about, whatever subject that interests us-not those that are officially approved. I think that's really where it's at. In other words, we're pretty old-fashioned. We like melodies.
C: Your music is so intensely layered-structurally, stylistically and lyrically-that it simply blows my mind away.
J: Why thank you.
C: But I think your musical complexity is overlooked by many of your listeners, because they only see these two jocular and nerdy guys. So, the critics ended up branding you as being "quirky." How do you deal with the stigma and how do you want to be taken as an artist?
J: It's funny about this quirky thing, because in a way, it doesn't tell you very much about anything. Actually, it's okay with me. I think some people may get the point we're not doing it to be quirky. We're writing songs. It may not be obvious, it's not even obvious to me, about other bands, but this is their lifestyle. They have spent all this time working on a project and they want to be taken seriously. Even if it might appear that they're just tossing things around. What we're doing is important to us. It's not like we have any other jobs.