Stan Ridgway interview Aug 19 1986 (HD) transcript

out-blurted, "Don't box me in." At one point, we said, "Well, that's probably better than I won't want to follow." Which was kind of vague, you know. And you were trying to tie in the title of Rumble Fish somehow? At first I did, but it didn't seem to fit. I sat in my room for a while on the guitar and piano going, "Rumble Fish, Rumble Fish." And it just it didn't it it didn't feel comfortable to have it as a chorus.

Yeah, yeah. It's one of those things that you either have to do it really throw away pop song and Rumble Fish, Rumble Fish, I love you or just you know Mary had a little lamb and dosey dosey dosey. Rumble Fish and something, you know. Wouldn't probably wouldn't work. One of the things that I really like about your writing style is that you write very much in a narrative form. And I know that these styles of music are completely different, but it's the same sort of form that Harry Chapin used to write in.

And it's something that I guess was popular in the early part of the 1970s, but it's not one that a lot of songwriters use these days. Well, I just think it you know, I I'm not really sure where it comes from really, but I I just consider myself really at the bottom of it all kind of a a fairly dull guy and to write a song about me um is probably the least interesting thing I could do, you know. So I I I find it more interesting to kind of place myself in a position where it's someone else and I kind of get in there and crawl around in his skin for a while, you know.

And I feel like I can get taken over by that. So I'm not too uh concerned with self-consciousness or being part of, you know, kind of a self-confessional thing. I don't really just pull these stories out of the air? As say for example, Drive you said about a guy who's a taxi driver and a bank robber gets into the car and they take off down through the streets and yeah. Well, I think they're probably on this record, on the Big Heat, I I really I looked at it after I finished it and I thought, you know, I probably just read too many bad detective books, you know, or something or a lot of trashy TV and things like this.

They're really not very unique and you know, the stories themselves, a lot of them are kind of like, you know, your kind of grade B minus movie or something in a sense, but I think uh I wanted to to couple that with music to make it a kind of a travel log. So, used to do the it so it would take the listener someplace and it'd be a little bit more entertaining than just uh, you know, uh, dancing or something like that.

Nothing wrong with that either, but I'm just not that good at doing that. Now, most executives of record companies would say, "No, no, come on. You've got to have the hook and you've got to repeat the chorus uh, three times and you've got to have this, that, and the other thing. Your song doesn't seem to Huh? They did say that as well? Oh, of course. Mhm. Well, you know, you have to kind of you have to come up with rationale with uh, with with the people that are at record companies or whatever uh, to show them that there's a lot of unusual things that can be popular, you know.

Uh, you you go into a somewhat of a dancing bear routine to uh, convince them that this kind of little odd piece you've made could could be popular even though you might be thinking, "No one's going to buy this, you know." Um, it's it's something you have to do just to get along, yeah. There is no perfect uh, you know, company or people you work with that say, "Oh, we just love everything you do, you know." I mean, they invested money in it.

They want it back, you know. Being able to write these three and a half and four minute vignettes uh, as well as you you can. Have you ever thought about perhaps going into a little bit more long form and perhaps writing a book? I tried writing things like that, but they usually end up being songs. And then um, Maybe you should try writing a song. It'll become a book. I That's a good idea. Write the song first and then it could be a book.

Yeah. No, I could do that. Yeah. So, you've tried in the past and you just I just I feel like songwriting is really, you know, a real it really it takes up all my time now. It's a big challenge for me. It always has been. And um, I'm quite satisfied with just doing that. Although, you know, as time moves along, I might be doing some other things and we'll see which way the wind blows, you know. I think it would be interesting to try a book.

Yeah. I've always wanted to try one myself, but Well, I always end up like writing and then condensing it all and and I I I I like I just writing songs to me is the most fun I can have, you know. You're fairly unique among songwriters as we were talking before for not only your narrative style, but also because of the fact that you took the advance from your first three solo LPs from the record company rather than giving it to somebody else to record in their studios, you went out and you bought a bunch of recording equipment to do it at your own studio.

Yeah, that's that's a pretty novel idea. Uh-huh. Well, we we thought at some point it would just be better to you know, purchase our own equipment and then, you know, consequently each project that we would do in there would be probably cheaper. Yeah, not only for the liquidatable assets, but also for the fact that you would have the studio here at your beck and call 24 hours a day. Yeah, it's it's uh it's worked out to be uh you know, a good it was a good way to go at that point.

Um it just seemed to me to make a lot more sense to uh make some kind of a place to do this stuff in, no matter how simple or or or spartan it would be, but at least it would afford more creative time to go over things and stuff. Not in all ways is it uh uh advantageous sometimes though because when you have a whole bunch of time, uh you actually postpone a lot of decisions that you might naturally make if the clock was running and you were burning up money.

So, we we making the record took some amount of time a little bit longer than it normally would have because we we kept leaning back in our chairs going, "Well, we don't have to decide on that now." Sure, let's go upstairs and watch a movie or something. can just hang out. And by the end of the day we had about 30 decisions that you know, we hadn't made as we went along. So, What's your recording technique? Do you pick up a sound and then go downstairs and explore it and you do that sort of sporadically?

Because as you said, when the clock is ticking, you go in there and you bang it out as fast as you can. It's very intuitive. You just start with something and see what strikes your fancy, you know, and then knowing that you're recording on on uh you know, 24 tracks or 16 tracks or something, I always feel that anything that anything there can always go away. You might start with something that inspires another sound.

And later on you realize that you'd rather keep the one that uh you're going to keep the one that was the inspiration and get rid of the one that started it. Or you think this one's very essential. So, you build it up and eventually you have something that you're kind of wrestling with. And it's It's hard for me to say how it actually happens. You have to have a lot of self-discipline though, I imagine, because as you said, you could just tend to loll around and say, "Well, you know, I can come back in here tomorrow and do it." That's exactly what I do.

How do you find that out? Um yeah, well, you have to spies everywhere? You have to be a little obsessive about it. You You naturally want to get it done, but there's also a side of me that is extremely lazy. You know, and and and just wants to have it done now, you know. And uh just get it over with. Cuz writing a song is a lot like uh putting together a jigsaw puzzle. You see the picture, you know, you know what you want.

And then you just have to put these little pieces together. And sometimes that can be a bit tedious. Mhm. You end up uh actually cheating sometimes, shaving the piece a bit, you know, and shoving it in there, you know. Just to get it done. Sure. And But then later on, you know, you you There's many roads to the same place you could get to, yeah. You said with Wall of Voodoo was described as being very American, you know, just definitely an American sound.

And I think it's the same with uh with your solo career and The Big Heat. Yet, over in Europe and the UK you're you're you're huge. Uh Big Heat was a hit, Salesman was a hit, Camouflage was top five over there. It's interesting that such a definite Lewis is American sound. Yeah, it's like that. I'm going to be touring with Jerry uh next year sometime, me and Jerry Lewis. No, I'm sorry. I'm But it's like that situation.

It's a quintessential American thing going over huge in Europe. I don't know. I think I think Europe and Europeans are interested in American things. They always have been, but I think also there's a tendency for them to feel they don't want to be Americanized, you know? And I think that's natural, you know? Um We just got back from Europe and and camouflage over there was in the top 10 and that was a real fun ride. It was you know, fun to do.

I I can't really explain it. I don't know. I think that a lot of European countries now are a lot of are interested very much in American things or things from North America because they've had a lot of English music now. And the English aesthetic and sensibility I think is in some ways becoming uh little predictable for them. So, they find American things to be novel once again, you know. And now maybe the American mainstream seeing that camouflage was a big hit over in Europe will say, "Aha, it was a hit over there.

So, let's make it a hit over here." Let's hope so. Thanks a lot for coming in, Stan. You're welcome. Have a great show at RPM tonight and tomorrow in Montreal at the Cafe Campus. Just before you leave, we have we have these presents that we give away the standard MuchMusic fair here. Oh, a burnous for my head. yes. And it goes quite well with the rest of your outfit here. Basic black with a little bit of white thrown in.

Oh, that's nice. Thanks again for dropping by. Keep making good music. Thanks a lot. Cuz cuz if you don't, the record company will throw you out the washroom. And I'll probably be back washing cars with this. I understand that you have a terrible fear of laundromats. Me, I don't like laundromats. Don't like them at all. They steal your socks there. I heard that what happens is the socks crawl over the edge of the tub and they actually get between the tub and the frame of the of the washing machine and there's no way you can get it back.

You seen that, huh? Yeah. At least that's what the lady in the laundromat told me. Thanks again for coming in. Here's Stan's latest from the Big Heat. Get this guy a doctor. This is Camouflage on MuchMusic.