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Rickie Lee Jones:
The Bluerailroad Interview
page 2
Bluerailroad: The new album is so powerful. The entire subject of Jesus and what he meant is such a volatile one.
Rickie Lee Jones: Yeah, that's part of the reason I did it. I happened upon it accidentally. The reason I suppose I agreed to do it at all is because so much damage has been done. And it takes someone to cross that line - because we are so divided - and say, "You know what - you people don't own this idea. And there's a lot of good just in the idea. And the ideas that he spoke about aren't the people who surrounded it and took it over and created all these goofball religions. But at the center of it is just a little book of a few things that somebody said a long time ago. That are really great things. [Laughs] And the guy was murdered, you know, for going up against established religions."
And I liked that. I liked what he said. And I liked the idea of taking it out of the context of religion. Because I separate religion from Jesus. Jesus didn't create these religions. He didn't really go for organized religions at all. At least not for taking money to pray, or all the things that people do in his name.
So I thought, what if I champion this idea and at the same time, go, "No conversion. You don't become a Christian. You don't go to heaven or hell." What if you get rid of all the other ideas, all the other stuff about it, and just talk about all the stuff he said. Just the way we do with the Buddha. Another Eastern philosopher. And I like that idea. I think it can be a little bit healing. I hope so.
Did you write the words before you started recording?
Three of the songs were improvised. Which means I stepped up to the mike and closed my eyes and made it all up. On three or four of the other ones, I had a piece of paper over here, and a piece of paper there, and glanced at them as I made them up with points of reference around me in the physical world. And then, towards the end, I had a couple of texts that I wrote out. One was "Tried To Be A Man. And "Seventh Day" and "Elvis Cadillac." And then the last song, "I Was There," I made it up and wrote it. What's remarkable about "I Was There" is that I'd been brewing that first verse for months. I just had those first four lines. And I had the feeling of the song. I knew what it felt like, but I didn't know what the words were. And it was the end of the day - and it was the third song we did that day - and it was about 10:30 or 11. And I said, "I just want to do one more song." And I knew they were really tired, and didn't want me to do one more. And I said, "Lee, I want you to film this." So he sat there and filmed me, and the first time that I did it - I did it two times - that first one is the one that ended up on the record. And that's the one that we filmed. So if you get the extended version of the CD which has a DVD on it, you can see me making that song up live to tape. And that doesn't happen very often in a career. Or in a process of any record that you get to see the conception of the thing.
So it's pretty cool for me to see me making the thing up. [Laughs]
So often songwriters have to toil away and work, and rewrite. But it came out whole?
It came out whole, yeah.
Was Lee's book The Words the main inspiration for these songs?
I think that the book, yes, but the book evoked this idea, this complex idea. That things are so misrepresented, and they're so simple and right in front of you. And even as I stand talking to you, you don't see me. And I'm standing right in front of you. And later you'll see me, and you'll go, "Oh wow, maybe she was like this or like that…" And how that story's told over and over and over. So I just wanted to tell it again. Whoever and whatever I am. I'm just standing here in front of you. Do you see me? Because I've been here thousands of years. And so have you. [Laughs, then softly] So have you. So I used that sense that I have about myself - and I didn't do this consciously, I'm just saying this after the fact, talking about it. I think I used all these things to tell this story of this person who stands with one foot in that world and one foot in this world. Through our eyes as we watch through its eyes.
The songs are so rich, I find you can just listen to one track over and over, instead of going from track to track.
[Laughs] Yeah, we felt like that, too. When we were listening to it. I started this about a year and a half ago now so I've been listening to them for about a year and a half.
I've gone through phases of wanted to listen to different tracks. Presently I am obsessed with "Where I Like It Best." That is such a powerful statement - musically and lyrically. So many religions insist you go into a place, a temple or a church, to pray. And it's beautiful when you say, "You can pray alone in the secret room of your heart."
This is exactly what Christ said. This is what people don't know. There's all this beautiful stuff he said that doesn't get repeated. That's exactly what he said. And I didn't know - I was just making it up, and also I had the book - and afterwards, I said, "Lee, did I come up with that part?" And he said, "No, that's Christ's words exactly." [Laughter] I thought I came up with that. "You can pray alone in the secret room of your heart." And the sense of him as a Rabbi and as an Eastern thinker, this record evokes that, I think, just a little bit more. Because he's been absconded with by people from Alabama. And I think we need to return him to his dark skin and his other way of speaking and thinking, and where he's coming from.
The way you've painted the huge spectacle of religion is powerful. How people are preaching on TV, and wanting to make a big parade out of their faith.
Cause he said that. In his own time, he said, "Whatever you do, don't be like the pious and go out in the street and bang your tin drum and make a big show out of how pious you are." And to me it was exactly the same thing that they're doing on TV. Or he said, "Don't be like the heathens and say your prayers over and over and over again." Like the Catholics saying their "Our Father." So it's all so relevant.
"Where I Like It Best" is the Lord's Prayer filtered through me into our time. But it's just basically the entire Lord's Prayer.
It certainly is filtered through you - your spirit and perspective is rooted in today, and you have lines in this that to me seem like such essentially Rickie Lee lines, such as "that dance you make right before your mother calls you on the phone." That really brings it down to earth in a clear, specific way.
Yeah. That's me. [Laughs] That's me. When you're all by yourself, that's where you're speaking to God, I think. It's that moment when you were caught, when you were doing a little thing all by yourself, and then your mother interrupts you. That's your prayer. Later when your mother is dead, you'll say, "That was wonderful," and though it was an interruption, I had a mother and she called me. Those are the holy places, the holy markers of my life.
It's also very touching how you express gratitude. "I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you."
It's hard in this world. Because we're looking around at so much sorrow and horror, and we see it. And yet in my heart I feel so grateful to live in this beautiful living world that I live in. I love it. It's beautiful. And in spite of the horror we see, we still do need to come from a point of gratitude. With everyone we meet, and everything we do. I think when you come with a point of gratitude, it relieves you of so much. Cause I think sometimes people don't want to be happy and hopeful and grateful, because it's a hard world. So they kind of feel irresponsible if they're joyful, which is a whole aspect of Christianity. But I think the greatest voice, the greatest way to evoke God, is to be joyful. That's when God can manifest and shine through. And it's much harder for God to find its way through when there's so much sorrow. So you can only fight that sorrow with a joyful, joyful noise.
That's when you're being courageous. And all these things lead to this one thing: faith. Because faith is the thing that manifests. That brings things from the invisible world to the physical world. Faith is the secret ingredient. That, in spite of what I see or experience, I believe this thing to be true. Whatever it is. When you have that faith - and that word is such a run-over and abused word, so if you think of another word, that's okay - but when you have that belief, then you can change the course of your life.
That's why I like that thing about if you have that faith that is pure and absolutely concentrated that was just as big as this little seed, and it was absolute, there's nothing that you can't do. Because I think what we'll ultimately learn is this mystical thing, that there's got to be some point between the invisible world and the physical world where they meet. Where it manifests into this one and this one speaks to that one. That single point is probably the point of belief and faith and understanding without evidence. And I think all the philosophies and religions reflect that more or less. They say the magic thing that you have to do is you have to believe. And if you believe, you will make it so. And maybe it echoes into after death, I don't know. Maybe we're weaving our way into after death. Maybe it's as simple as if you believe it, that's where you'll be, and if you don't believe it, that's where you'll be. [Laughs] You weave your way into where you go. Because we weave our way to where we go in this physical world.
It seems that one of the most overt intersections of the spirit world and the physical world is music. If I listen to one of your songs from Pirates or Flying Cowboys, the spirit in it remains vital and unchanged. And it moves me as much as ever. It contains genuine spirit that one can experience.
It does. Two things: the spirit it inhabits, and the spirit that is your's. The one you step into when you hear it. I don't know if they're the same one. I don't know if everybody enters the same house. But I know what you're talking about.
That's why the gratitude is important. For a musician to get to live a life of music, that's a wonderful life.
[Laughs] It is. I'm happy every day I wake up.
The song "Lamp of the Body" is beautiful - musically it's like ancient cantorial singing.
Yeah. Yeah it is. It's one of the more challenging ones to do live, because it's this droning thing. And it's a real simple text. It's him. There's this moment when he's saying about his journey to meet John the Baptist. This is right out of the book. He journeyed into the wilderness to listen to John the prophet, the one they call the Baptizer. He spoke to you with truth, he was a burning, shining light, and you were willing for a while to follow him. That's me reading from the book.
I think "the lamp of the body is the eye" is also something that he said. And I just said that over and over. I didn't even notice. I was just opening pages and reading them. So it's very Eastern. It's kind of like the Islamic poets. They write their beautiful poems of love to God. These words of Jesus are so similar to those poems. I never really noticed how they are before. Before I started reading the poets. And I realized these are just all poems of love. To God. What a beautiful song, what a beautiful idea.
The album starts with "Nobody Knows My Name." Was that the first song you did?
Yeah. The first one we did.
The track of that is powerful. It's anchored with an acoustic guitar, but has such a heavy feel.
Yeah. [Laughs] I know. I hadn't really listened to the track when I did it. I guess I listened to a little of it, and just said, "Okay, let's do it," and I just jumped into the water. And that was the first song, the first day, the first hour. It just came out like that. They always say how amazing it was that I ended it there. But to me it ends in full-throttle. [Sings ending in full voice.] That's where it ends. And I remember at the time thinking that I have so much more that I could say. Thinking, "that's where I am supposed to stop. So okay." [Laughs]
Is there a sense that a spirit is guiding this creation?
There's a sense of that. Absolutely.
Did Lee bring you the book The Words to read?
I had it a long time, but I hadn't really read it. I kind of opened it up when I got to the studio. I still haven't read the whole thing.
I think it's courageous that you even took on the subject. It's provocative for a lot of reasons - for those who believe in Christ, and also those who don't - or who are kind of frightened of the entire subject.
Yeah. All the interviews I'm doing are coming from people who in their lives have probably been very unsympathetic to the idea of anyone doing anything about Jesus. Or people who are Christians. I think there are three types: there's the hostile type. There's the type that would be open to it, but because of its associations don't want anything to do with it, but aren't hostile. And then there are the Christians, who feel like Christ has been somewhat absconded with and defiled. So it resonates true with all those people.
Even those people I thought could have been hostile or suspicious are not because my aim is true. And the music is really great. And I have no purpose. This is just a journey I took creatively and it inspired me, looking out of his eyes. And I haven't read one dismissive thing. Which was the possible thing, that it would have been just dismissed. We anticipated the possibility of a confrontational dialogue. And were kind of looking forward to it in a way.
The St. James version of the New Testament that we all know is so heavily edited. I began to say to Lee that, this thing [Jesus] says here really seems incongruous with what he says here, and Lee says, "Well, a lot of scholars don't think he really said that." So I became aware that the very text itself was suspicious and has been diluted, and that made me feel better about it, because the incongruous part of it makes it very hard to buy the part that you might be sympathetic to.
There is much that Christ is purported to have said that, in English, is ambiguous - such as "Ye must be born again."
People have taken that to mean "born again into Christ," but what does that mean? "Born again into Christ" is something someone made up after the fact. Well, we have these feelings of being born again. The thing is that your life gets old and tired. So to find your new way, you have to be brand new and born again. But it doesn't have to be a movement. All the church phrases and clichés, I don't go for any of it. I find a lot of love and hope right there from the source, and not from a priest, not from a preacher. Not from coming on Sunday at 8 or 10 or 12. It doesn't mean anything to me.
Did you grow up with religion?
I grew up Catholic. But I loved it. My upbringing was not fierce in any way. It was very gentle. You could take it or leave it. I didn't have the sense that if I didn't believe it, I was gonna go to hell or was bad. It was a very open discussion. And I felt the church was so romantic. I thought it was so pretty, and is this where God lived? And I was confused about crucifixes. And the sexual body impaled on the cross. And the Catholic church was very confusing because there was such serious secretive sexual overtones, and you go into the little confessional to confess your sins, and all of it evokes such sexual feelings. In all Catholics, for sure. Absolutely.
Makes me think of your song "Altar Boy" - about a monk with a hard-on.
Absolutely.
There's so much repressed sexual energy.
That's what it is. It's not necessary for it to be that way. If you want to deny having sex because it helps you, that's fine. But in order to be an ambassador to Christ, it's not necessary. It's okay if sects want to do that, but I don't think it has anything to do with prayer or the words that he said. It all seems extraneous to me.
That's why putting these ideas into a song is powerful. It's not extraneous. People feel the inspiration of the music, and the message comes across. And it's very much a message of love.
Yes. That's very true. A lot of songs that are supposedly songs to God are really not very good songs. I was thinking of the Sufi poets. They wrote poems of love to God. I read "The Gift" by Hafiz e Shirazi. An Islamic poet. And I was thinking that Christ's words are the same thing. He is in love with God, and he is thinking about it wherever he goes. So for me, Christ becomes part of the tradition of Eastern philosophers. And when you put him in that group, it's easier to readdress him in a new way. And these songs are in that tradition of love songs to God. And I think that's how they feel. Many journalists are describing the album as a song cycle. And I think it's all inspired by this one moment when we look at the divine with so much love and let it embody us, and we speak through it.
(continued ...)
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