2002-07-19 KPSU
Live Friday: No! Interview
Conducted by Dave Cusick, Postmodern Rock, KPSU, July 19, 2002
Archived from: https://web.archive.org/web/20031011140253/http://www.tmbg.net/articles/KPSU-071902.html
Dave: Hey all you listeners out there, you're listening to KPSU 1450AM in Portland, 98.3FM on the PSU campus and worldwide at kpsu.org. My name's Dave Cusick, I'm the host of the Postmodern Rock show which is on Thursdays from 2-4pm. The show that you're listening to right now is called Live Friday, and with us in the studio are two very special guests, John Linnell and John Flansburgh, better known as They Might Be Giants.
Flansburgh: Hello!
Linnell: Hey Dave.
Dave: The song we just heard was the title track to your brand new album, No!, which you're currently on tour for. Now, No! is a children's album. How—how and when did you guys decide that you were going to do a children's album?
Linnell: Well I think we would have done one a lot earlier in our careers, but we... were trying to kind of establish our credibility as a normal, you know, rock band, against... you know, we were confronted with the problem of being perceived as some kind of... not quite ordinary thing—we were a duo, we had a drum machine, we were doing stuff that was already challenging for people. So I think if early on we had decided to make a children's record it would've just thrown another, you know, spin on the whole thing. At this point—we're like nearly 20 years down the road of doing this stuff—we sort of thought... it was something that we had wanted to do all along, and... I think there are a lot of people who thought we were doing stuff that was appropriate for kids in the first place... And we thought, you know, it might be a way to get rich.
Dave: [laughs]
Linnell: So, you know, there were a lot of good reasons to do it.
Dave: Right, sort of a get-rich-quick scheme.
Linnell: Exactly, yeah.
Dave: Well that's cool, is there any—
Flansburgh: We'd settle for get-rich-slow.
Dave: [laughs]
Linnell: Yeah, exactly.
Dave: So you've been thinking about doing this for a while then.
Linnell: Yeah, well, I mean in other words, it's been one of those things that we were totally agreeable to, and uh, it just was, you know, finally—we came to that part of the list, a couple years ago...
Dave: Have you gotten any response from people with kids, like are parents coming up to you and saying "oh, my kid's listening to it, playing it a hundred times a day..."
Linnell: Yeah we've gotten—we, I mean... like I said we had already gotten that kind of response from people who were playing our adult music for their kids. So, this was... not—it didn't seem like a big leap into the unknown. But yeah, we've gotten a great response, I mean personally I have a lot of friends who have kids, who heard the record even before it was released and their kids were already, um, just picking out their favorite songs and stuff...
Dave: Let's talk about you guys' history for a little bit. You guys have been together you said 20 years?
Flansburgh: Yeah, we're actually— in August we're celebrating our 20th anniversary as a band. We're doing a big show in Central Park, a free show in Central Park on the 16th. Basically, right around the 20th anniversary of our very first show.
Linnell: Right. We've known each other, obviously, longer than that, but we started playing 20 years ago, so...
Dave: Right. How'd you guys meet?
Flansburgh: Uh, we met in grammar school. So uh, and it was just uh... you know, John's a year older than me, he was just in the class above me, and so it's just kind of like in a small town you just know everybody in your class. I don't—it wasn't like there was a day we were introduced.
Dave: Yeah. So like, kind of in the early days of the band, was it always you guys two, or was there a third, I Might Be a Giant kind of...
Linnell: We've always had other people who were involved, I mean one of the guys who got involved very early on was our producer Bill Krauss, who toured with us, and produced the records, and did our sound and stuff. And then, you know we've had other musicians playing on our records... But we didn't really get a band until we'd been doing this for about nine years. And since then, we've toured with bands.
Dave: Let's talk about songwriting. How does that work with you guys, do you guys have like a—a normal process that you go through, or does it kind of change dynamically, or...
Flansburgh: Well... you know, it's... I mean part of the thing about They Might Be Giants as a band is that we tend to, um, try to write as much as possible. So we've kind of come up with a lot of—over the years a lot of really crazy strategies just to generate new material, but in a lot of ways, most of the stuff is... generated the same way that... any songwriter might cook up a song. You know, you just kind of sit in a room and drink a cup of coffee and work on a chord progression and try to figure out a good idea for a lyric.
Dave: Mm hmm. So would you say that you collaborate on individual songs, or like, you know, you would both write songs separately—
Flansburgh: Oh we write separately. We write separately, by and large, but we do... I mean, on any given album there's always, you know, a couple songs that we've worked on together in a very active way. And the productions of the songs—I mean, that's really where the collaboration, um, is probably at its most intense... and that can range really wildly from, you know, just being sort of a facilitator, the other person's role is just kind of like a facilitator, or, really kind of helping recast the song in a more successful way. It really depends, I mean some songs just work very very automatically and naturally, and other songs are kind of, you know, saved to the last minute.
Linnell: Right. Other songs, the other John has to come in and say "let me help you out a little here, it looks like you're in trouble..."
Flansburgh: Right... "I think four swear words in a row is a little too much..." [others laugh] "...you kind of lose them after the third..."
Dave: So, what would you say that, outside of songwriting, your roles are, within the band?
Linnell: Well, we—you know I play keyboards, John plays guitar, we both sing, um, uh... you know. Um, John wears glasses. [others laugh] We... I think we each sort of try and do the same thing the other guy's good at... I mean obviously it's, maybe not for us to say, but I guess, you know, we do complement each other in a lot of ways, so, you know, uh, in certain ways. But I think we... A lot of it has to do with the way that we—like John was suggesting, the way that we kind of use each other as editors. You know, we write individually, mostly, and then we have the other person come say "That's not a very good idea."
Flansburgh: Right. I think, you know, one of the odd things about—you know, we're a duo, but it only takes being a duo to actually be a band in some larger sense. I think we both are kind of, I mean—as ridiculous as it might seem, we're kind of writing for a project. Like there is... one of the things about what we're doing is that there's kind of an abstract notion of what the abstract idea of the band is, and we're kind of jazzed by the idea of writing for this specific thing. So it becomes, it's a... I don't... it's hard to explain, uh, you know, [laughs] help me out here, John... But... it is like, you know, we're collaborating, in the sense that we're writing for a project together. And, uh, I don't know, there's—it's a different kind of gig than just being a singer/songwriter.
Linnell: Yeah, I think it's really important that we have each other to bounce everything off of. That—it plays a major role in everything we do... as evidenced by our inferior solo work. [others laugh] Just kidding.
Dave: You guys have been doing some solo projects?
Linnell: We do, yeah, we've both made solo records... and you know I think mainly that was sort of a good way to try out stuff that was obviously—like, didn't have that quality of being part of this project... do stuff that wouldn't be... so Giants-specific. But, you know, the great thing about They Might Be Giants is that we kind of each get to do whatever we want, really. You know, it's kind of... it's about freedom...
Flansburgh: And freedom isn't free. [others laugh]
Linnell: That's right. That's right.
Dave: Right. So, um, I think I heard something about a musical? Is that...
Flansburgh: Oh, my—uh...
Linnell: That's some kind of vicioius rumor, I think...
Flansburgh: No no, I think—I... that is a complete... side thing that... My wife, actually, has written a musical that's going to be performed in September, that, I'm not sure where you're getting your information from but it's very... uh, but yeah, that's a completely different project called People Are Wrong.
Dave: People Are Wrong...
Flansburgh: ...that both John and I have performed in... but it's not a They Might Be Giants project officially.
Dave: Oh, okay.
Flansburgh: It's just related. By marriage.
Linnell: Right.
Dave: I want to play another track, this is from the new CD, it's called "I Am Not Your Broom."
Dave: You're listening to KPSU. This is Dave Cusick, I'm in the studio live with John and John of They Might Be Giants, and that was "I Am Not Your Broom" off their new CD, No!. Now, there's some songs on this CD—it seems like a lot of them are trying to... evoke things in kids, or kind of teach kids about little basic stuff of life, like the title track for example, it seems like it's telling kids, like it's okay for both parents and kids to say "no"...
Linnell: I think that... One of the things John and I talked about—one of the few things we actually... really articulated to ourselves about this project...most of the idea of the record was just to kind of enjoy ourselves and get loose, but one of the things we really thought we'd try and do is avoid instructing kids, 'cause I think we felt like there was enough of that stuff around. We wanted to make a record that was not... supposed to be good for you. You know, which... Horribly, I think that's what people instinctively try and do when they write music for kids, and it's not something you do when you're writing music for adults. So we wanted to take the same approach that we take on our regular records, which is to, you know, sort of "let the bird fly."
Flansburgh: Yeah, I mean it's interesting how much—how jive most children's music is. You know, it's like people think that kids—Kids can tell, you know—kids are emotional creatures that can detect... you know, um, disingenuousness very quickly, and yet, so much of what is officially sanctioned as "for kids" is... just completely filled with insincerity, and... You know, I mean beyond just like whether there's like, actual educational content, I think there's just a general thing of—I mean, when I was a kid, one of the things I noticed about children's music right away is that it just seemed like everybody was phoning it in. Whereas adult music—or like pop music like the Beatles—had this, you know, absolute direct kind of emotional, uh, focus on the listener. And you really got what they were—you could really, you know, dig it. So, I think there's something to be said for not pandering to some—not creating music that has a pandering quality to it for kids. I think, you know, kids... they're naive, but they're not... they're not dumb.
Dave: So do you guys have... you don't have kids yet...
Flansburgh: John has a son.
Linnell: I've got a son.
Dave: Oh really? He's how old?
Linnell: He's three.
Dave: Oh okay. Cool.
Linnell: Yeah. He's really into this record. Thankfully. 'Cause we'd punish him otherwise.
Dave: [laughs]
Flansburgh: Right. "It's quiet time." [others laugh]
Dave: So what's it like now? You're married, you've got a kid... what's it like being on tour?
Linnell: Unh, it's not as good as it used to be I think, to that extent. I think we—it puts a strain on our relationships, definitely. But, you know, it's still sort of the most efficient way to get the word out about what we're doing... I mean I still like travelling around, and they're gonna come out— my family's coming out to meet me in L.A., so I get to see them occasionally on the road. But that's what the gig is, as everybody knows, that's what you do when you're in a band.
Dave: Mm hmm. So you've got the Band Of Dans with you, is that right?
Linnell: Yeah.
Flansburgh: Yep. We're doing a show, actually tonight is our first show without Dan Miller our guitar player. But we've had the same lineup for a number of years now, a very very excellent band.
Dave: Would you say that they contribute to arrangements?
Flansburgh: Oh sure. I mean they're—One of the weird things about hiring side men is that you'd be an idiot to hire musicians who are worse players than you, you know, so there's this strange kind of upside-down reality to hiring a side band, you're constantly playing with people who like, have it all over you technically, um...
Linnell: Yeah, we have to sort of play the artiste card. You know, "Look, you may be better than me at playing, but I have the secret beans." [others laugh]
Flansburgh: Right. "You can't tell that I have the secret beans," [others laugh] "...but we have all the secret beans right here, in our secret pocket."
Linnell: Yeah. I mean, one thing that we've learned early on playing with these guys is that it made no sense to completely dictate all the music, all the drum parts, because, as it turned out, the drummer actually knows more about playing the drums than I do. So I mean it's a hurtful lesson, [others laugh] but we've learned it I think now.
Dave: I know it's kind of soon to ask this, but I just wanted to ask you guys one more question. Do you have any definite plans for your next album, like anything on timeframe...
Flansburgh: No, you know, we actually have this anthology coming out in the Fall through Rhino that's like a two-CD set that's like a 20-year anthology of what we're doing. And then we'll be working on the next album all through this year and probably early into next. And, you know, it'll be interesting to see how it evolves, after doing this children's album, I think probably it'll be our most... loudest, most heavy-rocking album to date. [others laugh] You know, just given the way that you naturally gravitate towards the other thing after doing a—you know we're going to get into that kind of pit-and-the-pendulum, Elvis Costello reality of like, the psychotic back and forth, uh, you know. And then after that it'll be the easy-listening album.
Linnell: The timid folky stuff.
Flansburgh: Yeah.
Dave: Okay, but it has to be Slayer first.
Flansburgh: Right, right. So the next album, is...
Linnell: Queensryche, I'm thinking, actually.
Flansburgh: Yeah.
Dave: [laughs] All right, well I hate to cut things short, but...
Flansburgh: Well thanks for having us.
Dave: Well I know you gotta get moving, so thanks for coming in.
Flansburgh: What is the venue we're at tonight, actually?
Linnell: It's the Crystal Ballroom?
Dave: Yep, Crystal Ballroom, it's apparently a sold-out show.
Flansburgh: Oh it is? Ah, forget it then.
Linnell: [laughs]
Dave: Thanks you guys for coming in.
Flansburgh: See you next time.
Dave: You're listening to KPSU.