1997-10-24 The Brown Daily Herald
Birdhouse in Your GCF — An Interview With TMBG
By Lee Drutman, The Brown Daily Herald, October 24, 1997
Archived from: https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:1048529/
They Might Be Giants are not that far from actually being giants, at least in the world of music. With their fun lyrics and quirky sound, the band has captured the hearts of both teenage girls and sophisticated, hardened college students. Most everybody, at least, owns a copy of Flood.
So when They Might Be Giants accordionist John Linnell, one of the founding fathers of the band that changed the way we think about Turkey’s capital, called me the other day, I had a lot of questions to ask him. (Of course, I had prepared them before-hand, knowing he was calling for our scheduled interview.)
GCF: Why do you guys do They Might Be Giants?
John: I can’t think of a clever answer. We started doing it because we liked doing it, and then, after several years, it became our source of income, so now we’re at a point where we’ve been doing it for so long and it’s been our job for so long. If the bottom dropped out, we’d still be recording and writing songs, and doing whatever we could to get attention. It’s a thing that really gives us pleasure. It’s satisfying. Sometimes it’s really hard work. Sometimes we feel kind of burnt out. We have to do a lot of things like sleep on a bus for days on end. It’s not out favorite kind of lifestyle. The glamour part of being in a band wore off ten years ago for us. A lot of people like what we’re doing, so the gig really supports itself and that’s very satisfying to us.
GCF: Is there a message behind They Might Be Giants?
John: We don’t really have a message. We don’t feel like we have any more insight into things than everybody else. It’s more of a personal kind of message, not a political or social message.
GCF: How do you view your lyrics?
John: I think they’re not as funny as people think they are. It’s a way for us to talk about stuff that’s too unbearably horrible. Bands get into being gross and a drag, and there’s some kind of excitement in their satanic evilness. When we want to talk about something dark, we look at it as something disturbing, but also kind of absurd.
GCF: Do you see your music lasting years from now?
John: I feel as though it’s mainly contemporary music. It’s meant to be heard right now. I don’t know how it will be interpreted in the future. Contextually, it makes most sense right now. We’re trying to make the kind of records that we know we would want to buy — interesting, exciting, thought-provoking, something that sounds coo. I remember my favorite early experience, hearing the Beatles on the radio when I was a kid made me feel cool hearing it.
GCF: Besides the Beatles, what are some other bands that have influenced you?
John: Some are kind of embarrassing. When John (Flansburg, the other founder of They Might Be Giants) and I got out of high school, we were interested in the punk movement. The general climate was bands doing whatever they wanted to do. There was freedom going on, it seemed. The other aspect of punk ws that you didn’t have to be a good musician to say what you wanted to say. You didn’t have to be technically gifted, which was encouraging for us.
GCF: Of the stuff that They Might Be Giants has done, what stands out for you?
John: It changes from day to day. Certain songs we become accustomed to playing. Then there’s stuff that hasn’t been in show for a while and we unearth it, and that’s when I sort of remember the original impulse of the song, hearing it fresh. We brought back Letterbox again, and that’s a nice song. Some of the older lyrics I feel like I was sincerely writing what I was feeling, but it seems so long ago, and it’s hard to get that now. Some songs we play are 15 years old. I was a lot younger then.
GCF: What is the songwriting process like for you guys?
John: We have different ways of collaborating, passing material back and forth, lyrics or tracks on a multi-track recording. Mostly, we each individually write songs. I know when I’m writing a song, I’m writing a song John has to play since we have equal footing, we have to consider other people’s place. Always think about John.
GCF: Has having the same first name as your colleague, John, ever been confusing?
John: Might be for other people. But I always know if I’m addressing John, I’m not referring to myself.
GCF: What’s your favorite aspect of the process?
John: My favorite thing is writing. But sometimes, I can’t stand to sit down and it’s the last thing I want to do. The most obviously difficult part is touring. It takes it out of us physically. Sometimes we get sick. Recording is the funnest when we’re actually recoding. A lot of what we do is more drudgery, like listening to a mix over and over again. I’m really bad at that. I like writing and arranging.
GCF: What’s your approach to arranging and instrumentation?
John: Keep it changing. It’s fun to come up with new sound. My instrument is the accordion, but like sounds of other things. We don’t feature accordion that much on record.
GCF: How is the accordion for writing songs?
John: The accordion is a good instrument for writing pop songs.
GCF: They Might Be Giants started off as just you and John. Now it’s a full band. How has that changed They Might Be Giants?
John: We traded off a certain amount of control for extra, added fun, and the pleasure of having other people cooking along side of us. The thing all rock bands know, and I didn’t know when we stopped working as a duo, is that you can really cook up a sound very quickly is you have musicians working together. Simple to come up wth intuitive kind of groove.
GCF: What do you think about Brown University?
John: I used to play as a part of a band composed mainly of Brown students in late 70s. We used to play at Grad Center Bar, Lupo’s. We were called the Mundanes. We were the new wave band at the time. Got to open when the Ramones or Talking Heads came to town. I hung out in Providence, not so much in the school, but around Thayer Street. It was a little different then. Not quite as done up. I was commuting from Boston. Took bus to station downtown, I’d walk uphill, stop at Dunkin’ Donuts on Thayer Street, and then practice in somebody’s garage.
GCF: What’s the best part of being in They Might Be Giants?
John: A lot of different things. I’m happy to have income. That’s changed my life in certain ways. I can kind of relax about paying the rent. We really have to be careful not to become a Spyro Gyra band that tours the world and doesn’t record anything interesting. The satisfaction of working hard at something feels like work pays off. It’s always different. Every time we cook up something we like. It’s not like we’re building the same highway over and over, feeling like yes, we’ve done it again, another fabulous interstate built by the contracting company. It’s a satisfaction that’s different each time and continues to be interesting.
GCF: How do you feel about having people really appreciate They Might Be Giants?
John: I feel mixed about stuff. Maybe I’m just neurotic. Sometimes it’s awkward. If I say I’m in this band, somebody in this room who has maybe heard about it, behaves like a fan, feels like I have to be Mr. They Might Be Giants. I prefer to talk to people on the same level. I don’t spend a lot of time hanging out with fans. Feel sort of ungenerous in a way because I know people would dig hanging out and talking, and they’re interested in what we’re doing, But I feel like I prefer to be in a more even footing with anybody. That’s my own personal neurotic problem.
GCF: Do you feel as through you’ve had a big influence of the world of music?
John: That’s not a big part of what we do. It’s not necessarily a good thing across the board. It’s not one of the positive benefits. There are lots of positive things John and I have done, coming up with interesting stuff, entertaining stuff, being part of the cultural dialogue. Among the bands that sound anything like us, it hasn’t turned out all that well for us. It’s not fruitful trying to do what I’m doing. There are bands that I like that have had an effect that has been obvious. Pixies clearly influenced music and moved it forward.
GCF: Can you explain the lyric, “Everybody wants a rock to wind a piece of string around?”
John: There are a couple of places where that came from. One, it sounds flaky, but there’s a way when you make a ball of string, the problem is the beginning part, starting the ball of string, there’s nothing to wrap the string around. In order to make the ball, you need something that’s the beginning point, the ball of string is the thing you’re winding the string around. The rock is the metaphor for the thing that gets you going and from then on, you get your own momentum.
GCF: You recently released the Then compilation. Does this indicate that you think you’re experiencing the pinnacle of your careers?
John: Oh no. The pinnacle of our careers is in the future. The license came up for those recordings, and we now have the freedom to put that stuff out. The other thing is that those first two albums weren’t too available in the record stores. They’re harder to find. We wanted to repackage for the audience.
GCF: How much longer will you do They Might Be Giants?
John: There’s no particular reason for us to quit. We could stop doing this for a long time. If we felt like we wanted to hang out and not do this, and do some other thing, we wouldn’t be letting go of the franchise. There’s no real reason to say that it’s over. I don’t understand it when bands break up. They break up and then get together as a way of drawing attention to themselves. I feel like John and I get along pretty well. We’re never gonna become enemies. Among different bands, that’s not the rule. Most bands have some kind of problem. John and I have been friends for more than 20 years, and we’ve been playing together for more than 15 years.
They Might Be Giants are appearing at Lupo’s this Saturday night. They may even play "Letterbox."
And make sure to get to the show early enough for the opening act, Lincoln. This New York-based band offers up a fun, quirky brand of pop similar to They Might Be Giants, and is definitely worth seeing.