1998-09-24 Kris Maxwell
Phone Interview with John Linnell
By Kris Maxwell, September 24, 1998
Archived from: https://web.archive.org/web/20031228173047/http://www.tmbg.net/articles/linnell1998.html
Kris Maxwell: Hello?
John Linnell: Hellooo, this is John Linnell here calling for Kris Maxwell.
KM: This is him.
JL: Kris, how ya doing?
KM: Not too bad, how are you?
JL: Sorry I'm late in calling, we had a kind of late sound check.
KM: That's alright. Did you get everything handled, taken care of?
JL: Everything is SO together now, it's incredible.
KM: Alrighty, well let's hope you can hold on to it.
JL: Oh I hope so.... not likely.
KM: Well, I don't know, I think it will be fun either way.
JL: That's right.
KM: So, how is the tour going?
JL: Pretty good, we're working our way east. We're out of the blazing-hot Texas shows, and we're doing pretty good, I guess. [aside to tour manager "Chris"] How are we doing, Chris? (Tour Manager "Chris": Just great, shows have been selling out)
JL: Shows have been selling out, according to our tour manager.
KM: Oh, wow, that's great.
JL: And the vibe is very good, we've got lots of new material we're playing...
KM: Oh yeah, I like that "Working Undercover for the Man," very good song.
JL: Oh yeah, cool, thanks. Where'd you hear that?
KM: I caught you down in Dallas.
JL: All right [sounds really pleased for some reason]
KM: You kind of neglected us Oklahomites.
JL: We have. We've played a total of 1 show in Oklahoma so far. But, you know, we will atone for our sins.
KM: We'll be looking forward to it. Well, before I get on to the formal part, how much time...
JL: I thought we were in the formal part.
KM: Well, it was a delusion.
JL: We have like 20 minutes. This is the best part, you know, the part where we're just talking. It's the part you should print.
KM: I think I will. Just do a picture of both of our heads... cool. So, um, anyway, I'm trying to figure out where I should start here. I guess we should talk about the new album.
JL: Let's talk about it.
KM: Ok, just go off...
JL: General things about the record? Well, I think we put our best club-foot forward with this record. It's funny how we backed into this more typical band thing of putting out live albums and stuff. We didn't get a band until John and I had been playing together for about 10 years, so it was all new and exciting. And we didn't really accumulate enough good live recordings until last year, so we decided to pretty much put out the recordings on the basis of what sounded good, with some concessions to 'songs that were beloved' by people. But we also included a lot of material that nobody asked for, including the six-part Planet of the Apes tribute at the end of the record.
KM: Now how did that come about?
JL: Well, it was sort of an accident, like many of our most hailed moves. We were doing a thing in our show that was more or less free improvisation, and the official excuse for it was that it was songs based on Planet of the Apes movies... but we were just making up stuff.
KM: Why did you choose the Planet of the Apes movies themselves?
JL: I can't remember how it started... I think it was our bass player Hal Cragin commented once early last year that... he made some comparison to the Planet of the Apes. Like being on the road for him was somehow equivalent to being Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes. And we took that ball and ran very far.
KM: [laughing] I guess so. Well I don't know if that's had anything to do with it, but I've noticed that there's been a huge explosion with Planet of the Apes...
JL: It's CRAZY what's going on out there.
KM: Can you claim responsibility for that?
JL: No, no. We had no idea. It wasn't even that we had tapped into the Zeitgeist. I think it was that we were part of it. AMC just started playing all the movies, and they're showing a thing called "The Making Of...," which is a long documentary. And they've just released these letterbox versions which you can buy now as a set. You can buy all the movies now, they've been re-released. And they've got interviews with Charlton Heston and all those great people.
KM: I have to admit that I just saw Planet of the Apes for the first time on AMC just the other day.
JL: I think I saw the same showing. It was the first time I had seen the first one.
KM: Yeah, I came in late. I caught the cool "damn you!" line, though.
JL: That part is great.
KM: That's classic, I get all the jokes now.
JL: I think that's where Hal was checking in about touring.
KM: That was the vibe he was getting.
JL: That was the feeling, yeah.
KM: Well I guess you could get that, because you guys tour quite a bit, huh?
JL: We do.
KM: How much time do you think you have spent on the road?
JL: How long have we spent on the Planet of the Road? Well, this is a six week tour that we're doing right now, but we played a lot of shows over the summer, and we were touring solidly in the spring as well. We have sort of changed our routine now, because we've been putting out records in a more erratic fashion. For most of our history we toured for half the year. We normally put out a record and toured for the better part of a year, and then were home for the better part of a year making the next record. And that has been our scene historically; pretty much half on tour, half at home.
KM: But you've thrown that all away...?
JL: Well, it's all gotten mixed up now. I think we're on the road half the time still, but it's hard to work out the math because it's all gotten confusing.
KM: So what are some of the biggest challenges you've faced by touring and doing live shows all the time?
JL: Well, laundry is a big one. Doing our laundry.
KM: You've gotta carry it on the bus, huh?
JL: We've just got to do it whenever we can. If there is a day off, that it a cherished time for the band and crew, because we all march to the laundromat to take care of our hygienic concerns.
KM: It helps you get a flavor for the places you're playing too. You can compare their laundromats?
JL: Oh what?
KM: Kind of the local flavor edge, you go to a town and go check out their laundromats...
JL: Oh yeah, you do. You get to check in with the local culture, the local hairdos. Yeah there's that, there's getting enough sleep and eating. You know it's all the really most basic concerns that man has had since the beginning. Food, clothing, and shelter. There are daily concerns, we're often struggling to meet all of those needs.
KM: So what keeps you on the road? What do you like best about touring and performing live?
JL: For John and I, it's particularly gratifying because we get to really blow our horns. It's a crazy ego trip going on playing our songs. I won't deny it. But I think it's more complicated than that. I think about other jobs I've had. In some ways, there was more stability to working in one place over and over again, having a sense that your income was sort of guaranteed in a steady way. This is way more chaotic, but I think it's a better job than what I was doing. I worked in a darkroom for a while. That was my highest paying job that I ever had.
KM: I noticed that you did some of the photos for the album...
JL: I did, yeah, I'm an amateur photographer. I didn't pay myself, so I'm still an amateur. Yeah, I took those pictures out of my window mostly.
KM: I was wondering about that, because those are some interesting photos, with the snow on the car...
JL: Yeah, we had some crazy winters in Brooklyn. I just take pictures all the time, and I've got a lot of pictures I've taken on the road that you can visit on our website. Lots of pictures of old incarnations of They Might Be Giants, and people we've met, places we've been.
KM: Do you ever plan on releasing those? Maybe the They Might Be Giants Coffee Table Book?
JL: That would be the thing to do, yeah, at some point.
KM: After listening to a song like "They Got Lost," I'm sure you've got some interesting somethings that have happened on the road. Have you got any strange or frightening stories from the road?
JL: Well... Strange, yes. Frightening, yes. Most of the interesting things that happened to us were pretty early on. We used to try to crash on peoples' floor, before we were making enough money to stay in motels. And that was a really colorful period.
KM: I remember reading a story about that.
JL: Our manager wrote a story while he was on the road. He kind of exaggerated some of the details, but he gave the basic idea of it. It was really freaky. You meet some of the most psycho people on earth when you ask an audience if there's somebody who's sofa you can crash on. So we're happy for Motel 6 and Holiday Inn.
KM: So "They Got Lost" is kind of a fictional tale?
JL: Well, it's sort of fictional and yet it's based on a horrible, continuing reality. When John and I are driving around, we tend to get lost pretty much every single show, in some small way. And then occasionally we've gotten really ridiculously lost. We once drove almost to Atlantic City when we were trying to get to Asbury Park (sp?) in New Jersey, and we drove about 100 miles further by accident. We got excited because there's this town called Cheesequake, and they have a rest stop. It's been this routine when we're driving south on the Garden State Expressway that we stop in Cheesequake. So we were all screaming and yelling about Cheesequake, and we stopped there, and then we just kept driving, not noticing that we were already at the exit.
KM: I guess that would do it to you... Cheesequake.
JL: We just went nuts!
KM: It'll make you go crazy. So, why did you decide to put out a live album, what was your motivation behind that?
JL: Well, I dunno. That's one of those questions that makes me want to run to the corner and throw some furniture in front of me to protect myself, because I have no ready answer. I guess we had some new material, we are out of our Elektra deal, so we were able to cut an individual deal, and we had all these live recordings that seemed interesting. So we though it would be good to present a document of our live shows, which are very different from the studio recordings that we've made. We feel like at this point we've got something that we feel kind of proud of that we do live.
KM: I was reading something that Flansburgh was talking about, how the sound has changed on a lot of those songs. It's almost like this is a cover album of your own material, because some of it sounds so different.
JL: Some of it is, yeah. They're like oddball covers of They Might Be Giants songs. And then of course it gave us the opportunity to throw in a lot of new material, and kind of mix it up.
KM: Speaking of your Elektra deal, how is the hunt going for a new label?
JL: Well, I haven't asked our manager yet, but it's looking like we're going to do something very low-key next year, like a one-off with a smaller record company. What that will be, we haven't 100% nailed down, but I think we're going to hold off and see wether we can cook up a better deal for after that. It sort of depends on how things go with... you know... with things. [laughs]
KM: So you're planning on having a studio album out in the next year, is that what that boils down to?
JL: Yes. There will be a studio album next year. We haven't started working on it yet, but we've got a lot of songs, and we have the desire, and we have the inclination. And we need the money.
KM: The driving force.
JL: That's right.
KM: Well, I've read a lot of interviews and stories about you, and seen a lot of your TV appearances as well, and it seems to always come up that people want to label you with some kind of adjective. Quirky keeps coming up, and I know you cringe at that.
JL: yep.
KM: And funny, and all that. So if I'm going to use and adjective in this story, I've been wracking my brain, what should I use to describe you?
JL: Interesting. Dignified. Actually, people probably wouldn't identify us with dignified. That doesn't spring to mind. But we want to push the dignity thing.
KM: Is that the whole goal of the Integrity Project?
JL: Integrity Project, that's right. Artistic. I think that we've made a point of not begging people to take us seriously, and that's lead us down the garden path of being not taken seriously. So it's our cross to bear.
KM: I can understand that. I would cringe if I got labeled like that all the time. I will not put the word quirky in the story, it won't be anywhere in there... Oh let's see. I'm lost.
JL: That's alright. We should probably wrap up soon. [drawn-out selfish radio tag thing]
JL: Hi this is John of they Might be Giants, and you're listening to the Bastard, on the Underground.
KM: Thank You! Just one other quick question. Have you heard about the tribute album that's being put out by Matthew Ondrey?
JL: No sir.
KM: It's about to be released, it's not commercial or anything. it's completely ....
JL: Below board.
KM: Yeah. Something on the line of 50 or 60 songs by people that aren't necessarily in bands- some of them are, some of them aren't. They've been working on it for several years.
JL: Holy Moly!
KM: It should be out next month.
JL: Great, where do I get my copy?
KM: I believe they're going to be sending you a free copy, and you'll probably get one lobbed at you on stage by somebody.
JL: I'm hope we get two free copies.
KM: I'm hoping they will. They're releasing it on CD and DAT.
JL: Great, well our lawyers will be getting in touch with them. No, that sounds great, it's very flattering. That sounds like it will be fun.
KM: Well I hope you appreciate it, and I appreciate your time. And I hope that you manage to come to Oklahoma sometime soon.
JL: Aren't we? Isn't that why I'm talking to you? We've got a show coming up in...
KM: No, I'm afraid not.
JL: No? Wait a minute. Now hold on! You're telling me we're not going to Oklahoma? I though we booked a show in Oklahoma! Jesus H Christ! Wait a minute, you know we did, there was a show.
KM: There was, and you ended up playing in Arkansas instead.
JL: Is that what it was? Oh, shit. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Oh my god. Oh dear. Yeah we are. We're going up into the Great Lakes. We've got a show in... nope, no that's not near you. We've got a show in Atlanta, that's in the south. Geez, we had booked a show in Oklahoma, and I just assumed that was going to happen.
KM: [joking] Well if you ever need to play here, you can crash at my place!
JL: Well thanks dude, I'm sorry we can't. Well, tell everyone we'll be there next year, If I have anything to say about it. Which may or may not be the case.
KM: Power to the John.
JL: Right.
KM: Well, I thank you for your time, and have a good show tonight.
JL: Ok, thanks, uh , Kris. Nice talking to you.
KM: Alright, thanks a lot.
JL: See you around.
KM: Ok, bye.
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