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Alanis Morissette
Santa Monica 2000
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Recently you've written some beautiful songs such as "Uninvited" and "Still" by yourself. Is writing alone something you want to do more of, or will you continue to work with Glen or others?
I think I am going to do more writing alone. I may write with other people musically. Lyrically I don't think I will ever write with anyone else. Or I may just do it all on my own. I would also be open to working more with Glen. The best thing about my working with Glen is that we're interdependent. He can do his own thing and I can do mine, and we can work together too. But there's no pressure to do any of those three.
After doing so much collaboration, how does it feel to work alone?
It feels beautiful. Yeah. [Laughs] I'm less afraid. Figuratively and literally, I'm not afraid to write alone. Whereas I think in my mid-teens, even though I had already done it so many times when I was really young, I was in environments that were kind of leading me to believe that without Mr. X I wouldn't be able to do what I was doing. And I knew intuitively that wasn't the case, but there was a part of me that actually believed that it might be true, out of fear.
You've been great at coming up with provocative opening lines, such as for "Thank You" which starts, "How about getting off of those antibiotics?"
That is a funny one. [Laughs] It's true, though. I was on antibiotics, and I was talking to Glen, and I was just jittery all day and freaking out. And then an hour before writing I was saying that I had to get off of these. And then when he started playing the music [Laughs], it was such a natural thing to sing.
Is "Thank You" another song that came fast?
Yes, it did.
In it you give thanks to India--
I was thanking the experience of my having gone there, and the space that I entered into and emerged from surrounding the time of my having gone on that trip.
You did one cover on your Unplugged album, Sting's "King Of Pain." Why did you choose that one?
I didn't really choose it. In the sense that I actually had decided not to do a cover, because there's so much pressure on your proverbial Unplugged record with the proverbial cover, you know? So I was trying out all these different songs and playing some of them on the guitar. And none of them I was able to sing with conviction. So one day during rehearsal I turned to my bandmates and said, "I'm officially announcing that we're not doing a cover on this album." And they all said, "Okay, cool." And within seconds the keyboard player started tinkling a few notes on the piano randomly. And it reminded me of the intro to "King Of Pain" so I started singing it. So we all just looked at each other, and continued. And it was very obvious that it wanted to be on the record.
It almost sounds as if he wrote it for you-
[Laughs] Well, it was hilariously ironic. And just sweet. And those lyrics are great. Some lyrics that Gordon Sumner (Sting) has written are just so great. He's a fucking genius.
When I was a teenager, when I first got my license, the Police Greatest Hits record was in my CD player in my car for a year straight. That's all I listened to.
Your song "Front Row" has that great chanting section behind the chorus, which gives it such a unique subtext of musical and lyrical energy.
Yeah. That is my favorite part of the song. I sang the original chorus, and then when I was playing it back, I started to sing the other section underneath it. So I was just went in and recorded it over. It was really simple. But a lot of people tried to talk me out of that.
Why?
Because they thought that they needed to be able to focus on one lyric, and not have to split their brain in half and listen to two. And I said, "How exciting is it to split our brains in half? Don't underestimate people." And they are more subliminal, those lyrics. They're almost like a footnote to the song.
"Baba" seems directed at a guru gone bad, or a false prophet.
Yes. A whole lot of the environments I had been in over the years, not just in India or in Asia but in L.A. for that matter, had a foundation that was supposedly compassion and kindness and nonjudgment, and I found the opposite to be true. And it was really sad and wonderfully disillusioning. I was kind of disillusioned in the greatest sense of that word to begin with. So it was kind of affirming the fact that we don't find this bliss and this sense of our higher selves outside of ourselves, it's something that we already are. If you are around people who seek and seek and seek, you will seek forever, because it's not outside of you.
It has the line, "I've seen them overlooking God in their own essence." Which is a theme you've touched on in other songs, as in "Thank You," when you say, "How about remembering your own divinity." Do you think people hear the fullness of what you are saying in your songs?
[Laughs] I think a handful of people do and a handful of people don't. And it doesn't matter who does gets the message and who doesn't get it. What matters is that I have the power to express it.
I think the greatest thing about music is that it's such a choice for the people who receive it. No one is forced to listen to these songs. Or to agree with anything that I'm saying in them. I'd far rather present a record to someone and have them be able to turn it down or accept it, rather than stand on a soap-box and hammer away at all these ideas, preaching to people. I would never be able to do that.
I'd like to name some of your other songs to see w hat response they evoke.
Okay.
"All I Really Want."
That was one of the last songs written for Jagged Little Pill. It just felt like this song was my wanting to start again, wanting to close the chapter of Jagged Little Pill and start a whole new record right in that spot. But it was time to tour. So I had to stop recording, put out that record, and hit the road.
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"Princes Familiar."
That was a song we wrote for Supposed Infatuation Junkie, but that record was already really long, so we couldn't fit it. I actually didn't like how "Princes Familiar" sounded when we first recorded it. Breaking it down in the acoustic form for the Unplugged record was exciting. Because I loved the song itself. I wanted to approach it from a different way. But a lot of people are furious with me for not having shared that version, because they loved it. And I might share it at some time.
"That I Would Be Good."
I actually had taken a break from writing the record for a few days because I had gone into the studio one day and Glen could see I was under a lot of pressure, just time-wise, if nothing else, to hurry up and finish this record. So one day I turned to him and I said I was buckling a little bit here. And he said, "Go away." And I said, "Right on, see ya!" And so I was sitting in my house and I had room- mates here for a minute or two. And when I write I need to be alone, for the most part. So I didn't want to kick them out of my house, but I needed silence. So I just locked myself in my closet and sat there and I wrote everything that I felt. And those were the lyrics for "That I Would Be Good." And a few days later I went in and wrote the music with Glen.
"Still."
Ooh, writing that and making that record was a juicy, beautiful time. I actually just listened to it today. I hadn't heard it in months. I was just really excited to be able to sing about who and what I thought God is. I was in Dublin, and I saw a rough cut of Dogma. I had told everyone that if I saw it and I was inspired, then I would write a song. And if I saw it and the song didn't want to come, that it wouldn't. And they said, "Okay." I saw the movie while riding on the bus somewhere through Dublin. And I went to bed that night and couldn't stop writing. I was writing everything I felt God was. And I woke up the next day, and I had sort of a pseudo-studio built in my hotel room, and I stayed in and wrote it and recorded the demo that night. And I produced the record at Abbey Road a few days later.
"Joining You."
It's one of my faves. And it is very true. It's a tough one. I hate being in a position where I have to preach or give advice. I oftentimes don't really even believe in it. But in this I was being asked just with my own self if I was actually going to call someone and give them any reason to not want to end this existence, what would I possibly say to them? And that is what the song became. The person I wrote it for cried when he heard it. And he said to me, "I don't even understand half of what you are writing about. But I will one day." [Laughs] I said, "Right on."
How do you see your musical future ?
I see that I will continue always making records that are snapshot of what I am thinking about and feeling at that time. And I'll continue stretching always, trying new instruments, working with different people in different environments, different countries, different flavors, and always evolving. It would be hard not to keep evolving.
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