My Morning Jacket |
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Thu. October 09.2003 4:05 PM EDT |
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My Morning Jacket: Southern Men & Bear NecessitiesWhat if Brian Wilson led Crazy Horse? Louisville's Jim James talks about Erykah Badu, Kermit the Frog, and almighty freaking Zep. by C. Bottomley |
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My Morning Jacket (Publicity) |
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Before you look at My Morning Jackets long hair, farmyard chic and ecstatic jamming and think, Southern rock, be careful. Sure, It Still Moves, the Louisville, KY band's third album, rocks and reels hard enough to make you think there's
In fact, lead singer and songwriter Jim James holds Kermit the Frog in higher esteem than Ronnie Van Zant. His influences are rooted in an idyllic childhood immersed in the Muppets and Walt Disney. Hes not ashamed to declare When You Wish Upon a Star a classic song "of sadness and beauty, and happiness and fantasy." It Still Moves magic kingdom is a solar system away from the gothic terrain of Dixie rock. James songs of loss and memory are drenched in reverb, the band stretching roadhouse riffs around his plaintive alto or creating a thicket of melodies with acoustic guitars. A mix of both bad-ass rocking and wistful innocence, the Jacket might be Crazy Horse if Beach Boy Brian Wilson sat in for Neil Young. Since releasing The Tennessee Fire in 1999, James and his confederates have gone from strength to strength. The endorsement of Dutch author Nanne Tepper made them stars in the Netherlands, and Dave Grohl declared 2001s At Dawn his album of the year. Last year they agreed to work for Dave Matthews ATO Records, as long as their recording studio remained a barn belonging to guitarist Johnny Quaids granddaddy. So dont let the beards fool you. These dudes arent jamming in Georgia graveyards, and theyd probably sniff at Kings of Leons heartthrob status. But former art student James isnt above admitting Led Zeppelin changed his life - or tackling Erykah Badus Tyrone. He told VH1 about iPod democracy, the Zep's crunch, and his favorite stuffed bear. VH1: Early memories are important to you. Did you have a fun childhood? JJ: I was really lucky. I was raised by great parents and had some great friends. Some of my fondest memories are of things my Mom showed me, of what was beautiful about the world. VH1: Like what? JJ: Music and going for walks to the park, cause we didnt have a lot of money or anything. Good parents can turn anything into a fantastic, wonderful experience. Even when we were just watching TV, she would pick the right things for us to watch, like The Muppet Show or The Wonderful World of Disney. She wouldnt just plunk us in front of the TV and put on like soap operas or anything. VH1: Which one of the Muppets is your favorite? JJ: Theyre all so beautiful. I think it is a mix between Kermit and Dr. Teeth. I always wanted to be in the Muppets. VH1: What about Fraggle Rock? JJ: No, I would always run from the room and hide when that came on. The creatures were really scary; I just couldnt handle it. Something about them being in a cave really freaked me out. VH1: Whats the first song that you taught yourself to play on the guitar? JJ: Losing My Religion by R.E.M. I started trying to play guitar in seventh or eighth grade. I had been into heavy metal for quite a few years, but then all out of nowhere the huge Seattle thing happened. R.E.M.s Out of Time and Nevermind were pivotal in making me realize that I could do something with my life & in music. I didnt have to be some big metal dude that could play guitar at like a million miles per hour, but I could be some weird kid who could try and be creative with his guitar and try and make music mean something. VH1: Your music is a lot more grandiose than Losing My Religion. What happened? JJ: We enjoy playing, and get so into a song that it gets taken to a certain place on its own. We try not to think about it too much. We let the song guide itself. Some are really simple and some are quite complex. VH1: How much have the songs on It Still Moves grown from when you first wrote them? JJ: There are tons of them that are supposed to be even longer! Dancefloors is a really short song, but we were having so much fun with it, that we decided to put some horns in it and go with it for a while. I consider Golden to be a pretty simple short song, but Run Thru has developed over the last three years or so into this weird, big, complex maze of a song. We let them all have their own lives. VH1: Did you meet Willie Mitchell when you did the horns for Dancefloors at his studio? JJ: Yeah, he was awesome. Hes like 74 or something, and hes a bad, bad man. He liked [the music]. He was like, What kind of drugs you smoking? VH1: Is there something you never leave home without? JJ: Definitely music. I just got an iPod, so Ive finally moved into the 21st century. Ive been able to take tons of my records and put them on one thing. Thats been an awesome development. VH1: Is the iPod killing that communal agreement that goes with putting on an album in the tour van? JJ: We have a cassette player that we put our iPods through, so we are constantly broadcasting. We have always been butting heads with our CD players, cause we all have different tastes. Sometimes well pop in some John Prine or some AC/DC or something, and everyone will instantly sit up and gather around like its Christmas morning around the Christmas tree and start singing. Its really nice. VH1: Who is the most likely band member to wake up in jail? JJ: [Laughs.] I dont think any of us are likely to wake up in jail anywhere. We tried to kill off our Motley Crue tendencies. [Our drummer] Patrick likes to have the most fun, but I dont think anyone is going to end up in jail soon. Were such nice guys that every time we trash a hotel room or something, we clean it up the next morning. We end up waking up in the morning feeling guilty. Cleaning ladies f*cking love us. VH1: Everyone likens you to classic rockers like Neil Young. Does dance music mean anything to you? JJ: Good music means a lot to me. I love good rap music if its good rap music, I love good dance music if its good dance music, I love good R&B music if its good R&B music & Theres tons of sh*tty classic rock, but there is also lots of great classic rock. Theres tons of sh*t in all kinds of music. Im a real bastard when it comes to music and I hate most music. VH1: Name me a classic rock band that in your mind is completely overrated. JJ: Grand Funk Railroad, Foreigner, Boston & I think Skynyrd was overrated as a band. When I think classic rock I think the Band, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Dylan - bands that have achieved their place, but you dont hear them all the time when you turn on the classic rock radio. When you turn on classic rock radio you dont even hear the f*cking Beatles! I think to most people classic rock is a joke. VH1: Whats a favorite song that you perform thats not your own? JJ: I like doing Tyrone by Erykah Badu. It suited me, I felt like I could sing it pretty good. Its just a great groove, and a really funny song, the way she sings it. I thought it would be soulful and funny to have me, this big dude, singing these lyrics about her calling Tyrone, and telling him to pack up his sh*t and leave. Erykah is an awesome example of great modern R&B music. We do Black Sabbath as well. VH1: Whats the Neil Young disc that you go back to most often? JJ: I love them all. I have a great bootleg from the Royal Albert Hall in 1971, right after After the Goldrush and before Harvest came out. Thats probably the thing I go back to most. Im more of an acoustic Neil [fan]. I go through different stages. I love his MTV Unplugged album. We were talking to Danny Clinch and he was telling us about putting together the Bonnaroo 2003 DVD. I guess Neil wouldnt let him use any of the footage from the show because he wasnt happy with the performance. But it was f*cking awesome! Everyone thought it was one of the best performances he has ever done, yet he wasnt happy. VH1: If you had $17.99 to spare, what album would you buy for a friend? JJ: If it was a younger friend who didnt really know the music that I love, I would take that $17.99, add another $10 and buy Physical Graffiti. The first time I heard Led Zeppelin was on Halloween night when I was in fifth grade. It was Ramble On from Led Zeppelin II, and it changed my life. VH1: So on November 1st, you woke up, and what happened? JJ: I knew I loved music before that, but after that I was like MAAAAAAN! I knew about Motley Crue and the Muppets and Simon and Garfunkel, but when I heard Ramble On, just the power and mystery, the way the song could have so much spooky qualities, but rock so hard, was something my childlike mind couldnt understand. VH1: Where did the idea of having a stuffed bear on the album cover come from? JJ: The art on the albums is very important to me, theyre all really thought out. With that one I wanted to create a picture that we made. I had this vision. One day I went up into this barn on Johns grandparents farm. The ceiling structure was like the belly of a whale, and I had the vision of the bear up there. I talked to Sam Erickson who was coming down to do some photos. He finally found this [stuffed] bear out in Kentucky, and I had the guy bring it out to the farm. It was like nine feet tall and it took like six of us to pick it up. We wheeled him in there and moved him around, and made a whole day of it. VH1: Who has got the bear? JJ: Here is the thing: we had this bear, we do the photo and we gave him back. Well, were playing Louisville, and we wanted to rent the bear to put on the stage while we play. The dude said he sold the bear! I called the guy [he sold it to], and he agreed to rent us the bear. He was going to drive it down from Indiana, so I got it all set up with the guy, and I gave him the directions and stuff. But he calls me up and tells me that he ripped the bears teeth and mouth out - because he [thought] it might scare people at the trade shows, where he rents it out - and replaced it with him eating a salmon. So he totally f*cked the bear out of the only chance it had for a good life. We told him we didn't want him any more. |
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