I wanted to talk about
your latest record, which isn't really new anymore.
Phillips
It's been kind of a slow growth. And Nonesuch is on a different schedule.
I love being with them. They don't have singles. They don't have videos.
They're kind of trying to find your audience without going through the
same old mainstream avenues.
I think it's a great
album.
Phillips
Thank you! I'm very happy with it. It means a lot to me.
The instrumentation is
amazing. How do you decide what instruments to put on a song?
Phillips
It's always what sounds good to the song. We tried to economize as much
as we possibly could. [Producer] T Bone [Burnett] and I were both tired
of production. And also because we wanted to create a certain mood and
make a world. It seemed from the very beginning to be a whole album,
and I wanted to take the listener into some kind of a smoky world, and
a lot of production would have been inappropriate. It's trial and error,
too. We cut a different version of "Wasting Time" with a four-piece
band, and it just didn't work. I love Van Dyke Parks and I love cello,
so I said, "Will you try a cello arrangement, three cellos, on this?"
I think he did such a lovely arrangement of that.
How did you record it?
Did you lay down the vocal first?
Phillips
Yes. I sang it, and he composed and the cello player played three tracks
around that. Which is pretty amazing, because he and the cello player
loved each other. They had never met. The cello player walked in and
saw the chart and was thrilled. Van Dyke loved the way he played it.
We were really lucky that day that everything worked out. Because it's
not always that way. Strings are very expensive, and sometimes they
don't understand what the composer is trying to do, especially somebody
more eccentric like Van Dyke. We were thrilled that it worked.
In "Fan Dance" is it
the cuatro that makes that sound that's so perfectly Chinese?
Phillips
Yes. Marc Ribot overdubbed that part. It was Jim Keltner and Carla Azar
(two drummers), T Bone playing bass, and me singing and playing guitar
in our living room. Ribot came in after the fact and soloed on top of
it all.
What inspired that song?
It has almost a film noire feeling.
Phillips
Songs are funny that way. It's always trying to express the inexpressible.
So, I guess I'm doomed from the start [laughs]. But that's always
what I'm reaching for because that's what interests me—the nonverbal.
So, I'd be sunk if I were a writer. Being a songwriter, I have the music
to help me along and I have a little more freedom with words. It was
about a year after I had Simone, my little girl, and there was a feeling
of being completely submerged and never knowing if I was going to come
out of that and resurface, let alone make records again or sing live
for people. That's the thing I like about this record—that it was
something done underwater, underground, completely detached from the
music business or from any kind of ideas about careers, or what people
would like, or what was on the charts. I really had no idea what was
happening at that point in the outer world.
You said you lived in
L.A. pretty much your whole life. Does Hollywood influence your music?
Phillips
Yeah. Not having grown up in show business, it's really more the Hollywood
in my mind, not the Hollywood that exists. I was being dead honest in
"Taking Pictures" that "the places I go are never there." That's really
how I feel. It's more about the things that are going on internally.
Has T Bone Burnett produced
all of your records since your Contemporary Christian days?
Phillips
He and I met in 1986, and he produced my last gospel record called The
Turning. That was the beginning of our work together. I love working
with T Bone because he's never been static as a producer; he's always
growing as a musician, as a writer, as a human. It's never like working
with the same producer. Every record is different, because he's in a
different place. We get along so well in the studio, and our tastes
run the same most of the time. I think one of the best things he can
do is be objective. That's one of his gifts: being able to look at things,
judge a performance, and come at it from some other perspective. That's
what makes it hard to produce yourself—you don't have the perspective
someone else does.
Has the way that you
work together evolved over time?
Phillips
We've done our growing separately, so when we come together there's
always something new that he brings, that I bring. But the communication
is pretty swift because we know each other so well. On Fan Dance
he was able to relax a little bit more. He played bass on a lot of the
songs, so he was more like one of the performers, rather than having
to preside over a recording session. So, we worked more side by side
on this. We wanted the record to feel more performed than produced.
So you were trying to
capture as many things live as you could?
Phillips
Yes. And I left a lot of bad notes in and mistakes. Certainly, I'm no
great guitar player, but I feel like the basic pulse and the heartbeat
of the songs is important. It's like Hoagy Carmichael playing piano
and singing on his songs. It may not be perfect, but you do really get
a different perspective on the song when you hear him do it as opposed
to a really great singer or polished musician.
Who makes the decisions
about instrumentation?
Phillips
It's different on every song. I always loved the early Beatles records
because it was such a sketch. There was so much suggested in their more
sparse records. In "How to Dream" I wanted to see how much emotion we
could get out of just me playing the song with Carla playing the drums.
T Bone finally added a bass, because we thought that would round it
out. But I especially appreciated Carla, because she played with a lot
of emotion on this record, and that's not typical with drummers. I wanted
the listener to be more involved, to be filling in the blanks in their
heads. The places where they go that aren't there. I really wanted
to draw the listener in. So much of music now I'm shut out, I'm pushed
out by ambition or insecurity, people wanting to be geniuses or wanting
to sound tough or indifferent or to be sensational. I hear a lot of
that in the music, and I really tried to let down my guard and let the
listener in. I'm very interested these days in how people mature and
progress in music, and I'm interested in making grown-up music.
Talk about the edge [laughs]. I think that's the edge in a whole
other way. It's a little bit easier to make angry teenage music and
imitate what's on the charts, but to go into this other territory, post-rock,
post-punk, post-everything [laughs]—this is where we find
ourselves at this point.
Your earlier songs seemed
to be built around great hooks and choruses. When you're writing, are
those the things that come to you first?
Phillips
Sometimes. It's all different ways. There are little melodies that bug
me into writing them. There are some things that hang around for five,
six, seven years that I finally find a place for in a song. But a lot
of times it will be one sentence or a rhythm. I've experimented with
all kinds of different ways of writing, but I love melody and simplicity.
I'm so limited, that it's a good thing I like simplicity [laughs].
Are you generally playing
the guitar when you're writing a song or the piano?
Phillips
A little bit of both. Sometimes nothing at all. This record especially
I was playing guitar. I thought it was important to do. Not because
of being unplugged or anything like that. I'm definitely a rhythm player;
I don't have a lot of guitar chops. But I really appreciate rhythm guitar
players, and I think there's something to that: one own's rhythm.
Do you ever mess around
with open tunings?
Phillips
T Bone has done a little more of that. That's a little more complicated
than what I was doing on this record. I probably will do that more in
the future. When I get that far along, I usually go to the piano because
that was my first instrument (guitar is my second). You have a lot more
freedom on the piano.
When did you start playing
piano and guitar?
Phillips
As soon as my hands were big enough, I started playing piano—I
guess that would have been about six or seven, taking lessons. There
were stops and starts. The guitar I picked up because my older brother
was playing guitar. I started that blindly and never got a great visual
sense of the guitar. The piano is so visual—it's right there. The
guitar I sort of sleepwalk through. I started dancing when I was three,
and I always feel that that was more influential than any of my music
lessons. That was about developing an ear and feeling the rhythm physically,
and that has helped me the most with being a musician. That helped my
time. When you're dancing, you're listening to the music in a really
intense way, because you're interpreting the music in a sense. I think
it helps develop an ear for melody and different rhythms.
Do you ever play, even
informally, with other musicians?
Phillips
I have been more. That's what this record was about. And scoring this
little TV show has been fun. It's micro music. We make these tiny, tiny
records and then they still have to chop them up to put them in television.
But I've been doing a lot more playing with other musicians through
that. It's fun. There are some people who can collaborate with anyone.
I'm very private, so it's a big deal to collaborate. I really have to
find someone that I feel comfortable with and someone I connect with.
Does that experience
affect your songwriting?
Phillips
Well, with a lot of the television show music I've done, I come in with
an idea and then it takes a different turn as Carla plays something
on it or T Bone. Then we kind of go in that direction. With the television
show, I'm a little more free to experiment. I'm not putting out an album,
putting my face on it, my name on it.
What TV show are you
working on?
Phillips
It's called Gilmore Girls. It's on the WB. It's about a mother
and a daughter, whose relationship is more friends than mother-and-daughter
because they're closer in age. It's a pretty sweet, benevolent show.
Are you doing all the
music?
Phillips
Amy Sherman-Palladino, the one who created it and oversees all the writing,
has a lot of ideas about what kinds of music she wants to license. I'm
doing most of the score. She licensed one of my songs for the pilot
and thought that was the musical direction the show should take. She
wanted the score to be music that was inside the characters' heads—almost
like another character in the show. Having to have music finished every
week has been an interesting discipline. It's not that much music, so
it's doable.
What song did she license
for the pilot?
Phillips
An old song from Cruel Inventions called "Where the Colors Don't
Go."
You wrote "Say What You
Mean" with T Bone. How did you work together?
Phillips
That was really fun. T Bone went into a period of composing. He's been
so busy that he hasn't had a chance to put these songs down and make
a record. He had a melody he wanted lyrics for. Usually, if anything,
it's the other way around—I would have a melody and would ask him
for help with lyrics. This is really fun because I got to do the lyric
when he had a beautiful melody.
I think the lyrics are
great. I particularly like "the heart collector had his hands on me."
Do you remember writing that line?
Phillips
No. I was probably at the piano. Making this album, I was really talking
to the men in my life, real and imagined, idealized, even acquaintances.
It was the first time I ever remember doing that. It was never a group
of men; it was always specific people I knew.
Is that the theme of
the album?
Phillips
I guess. I never start out to make any kind of theme. It was just a
natural thing. These are the people who came to mind—and different
for every song. That's who I wrote to.
Do they know who they
are?
Phillips
No. I used them shamelessly. I wouldn't want them to know, because it
was a lot about my ideas of them—not the real person.
Were all the lyrics in
"Five Colors Blind the Eye" from the Lao Tsu poem?
Phillips
No, just that line.
How did that song come
about?
Phillips
That song started by walking a labyrinth. There's a labyrinth in the
woods I walked with some friends, and it was a profound experience.
Some people from the Episcopal Church went to a cathedral in France,
where there was a pattern on the floor. They traced it and brought it
back to the United States. They have one at the Grace Cathedral in San
Francisco. My friends put that pattern in a clearing. You walk all the
way to the middle and all the way back out and keep your mind open as
you're walking in, then pause for a minute, and then on the way back
think about any insights that came to you. I wasn't prepared for how
powerful that would be. Then I wrote the song about that, again indirectly.
I'm a bad shot. I could never be one of those pro songwriters in Nashville.
I'll aim for a country song and end up way over in a tortured jazz song.
So, you're surprised
by the results, yourself?
Phillips
Yes, always. There's some kind of wild animal that wants to go the opposite
way that I can count on.
Does faith still play
a part in your songwriting or have you completely left that behind?
Phillips
Fundamentalism was the beginning. It was a very narrow viewpoint. Some
people do drugs in their youth; I did Fundamentalism [laughs].
It was good. It was better than doing drugs and a lot of things I could
have done, but it certainly had its warps. There were a lot of things
I had to heal from and get over, but I certainly learned a lot. Everything
having to be black and white and living by rules—it's a very fear-based
thing, and it's immature. You have to grow past that at some point if
you want to get to the big questions, the real issues in life. I'm grateful
I had that beginning—it was a good start—but I don't think
I would have gotten anywhere spiritually had I not left that behind.
It gives you a unique
perspective as a pop songwriter.
Phillips
Yeah. In the early days of gospel music, you had to take one theme and
do variations on that theme. I think that was probably a good discipline
for a writer.
When you perform your
songs, do you play solo?
Phillips
I have played by myself and I've had one guitar player play with me.
In New York, I had a variety of instruments—accordion, guitars,
bass, piano. . . It's been a hodgepodge. Because the record was so sparse,
there's room for embellishment and interpreting it differently. Every
time I perform, it's been different. I haven't had a chance to tour
the West, but I'm hoping to do that in the next few months. I'm not
a big fan of doing the record. I think live is different, it should
be different. It's more fun that way.
But when you're traveling
with other musicians, do you arrange the parts for them?
Phillips
No. I'm always amazed at
that kind of thing. There are certain melodies I might want them to
play, but I know a lot of singer-songwriters who are control freaks.
When they go in the studio or play live, they'll actually sing all the
parts to the musicians that they want played. I've always thought that
was bizarre. I think you find the musicians you think are creative and
great and sympathetic and then you let them go and do what they want
to do in the song—give them some room. That's when you get interesting
things. Otherwise, you might as well play every instrument yourself.
What about your own playing.
Are you generally strumming, fingerpicking? What kind of guitar do you
use?
Phillips
This time I played an old, cracked Gibson guitar. Tone is really important
to me—the way things sound. I'm not a big fan of pickups and new
guitars. Most of the guitars T Bone and I have are 1960s or older. I
have old strings on the Gibson, and I basically strummed it with my
fingers, no picks, and not a lot of picking. I love the old Gibsons.
On "Fandance," there's a hollow-bodied old guitar from the '30s that
I played. The strings had been on there for nine years! I think I got
the last performance on those strings, and then one of them broke and
we had to change the strings and it didn't sound as good.
So, you play into a microphone
live?
Phillips
I like playing smaller places. My theory about live is that if you have
to go to the Forum or some kind of big arena, the price should go down
considerably. It should be like $1. If you're going to see someone at
a club in an intimate setting, then it should be more expensive. What
kind of experience is it when you're sitting in a stadium and people
are miles away from you? But playing smaller places, what I've attempted
to do (and it's more difficult with drums) is use one mic for guitar
and vocal.
Did you ever take guitar
lessons?
Phillips
A little, but it's been mostly by ear. I wasn't interested in being
a guitar player. I'm more interested in trying to sing well and write
songs.
Are you playing first-position
chords, then?
Phillips
I'm pretty simple. Barre chords. Unless I get to the piano. Then I have
more room to do odd chords. Most of the things on this record are pretty
simple. Even the guitar players that I love are not the technicians.
There are a lot of people who play faster and more precisely than Segovia,
but I've always loved him because he had such a beautiful soul and he
was himself when he played. I think that's the main thing about a musician—I
feel that way about Carla Azar and T Bone. It's not a drummer; it's
Carla. Their personality comes out so much in their playing.
Are you working on any
other new projects?
Phillips
I'm just starting to write some new songs. But I've taken a break.
Does having a child affect
the way you write?
Phillips
Yeah, it did, because you don't have as much time, and your concentration
is hit hard because you're always having to stop and start. And lack
of sleep always helps for a more psychedelic experience.
Really? You find that
the more tired you are, the more interesting the songs come out?
Phillips
Sometimes! We laugh about that, but it can be true. We'll see what this
next record comes out like. I do feel that it's going to be very connected
to Fan Dance, almost part two. I may be wrong, since I'm such
a bad shot. It could be completely different. But it seems to me that
I've just begun to write in this area, and I need to expand. It was
just the beginning of something.
How would you define
"this area"?
Phillips
Certainly disconnected from pop music. The threads, maybe musically,
would be country music, old jazz, old pop, but also maybe some kind
of Eastern European influence as well.
This is an exclusive
interview available only on the Web. Read the article on Sam Phillips
in Acoustic
Guitar magazine, July 2002,
No. 115.
