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Rickie Lee Jones:
The Bluerailroad Interview
page 4
A lot of artists wouldn't know not to do that.
No, I knew that would be the kiss of death. With such a huge hit, the only possibility of me having a lifelong career was to absolutely follow my muse. What I thought I did well on the first record was to tell stories. I can say this after the fact; I wasn't thinking this before I did it. What I did well was tell stories, so the only thing I could do that would resuscitate the career from the huge heights it was having to fall from was to be an amazing story-teller. And that's what I did. And I told these stories in a really new and unique way.
I think that gave me credibility with journalists. And [Pirates] sold, right away, a half a million records. Which at the time was an incredible disappointment to the record company. I didn't go on tour for about a year and a half before I toured with Pirates. And I was always still defining myself, so that a year after making that record, who am I gonna be onstage doing this stuff? So I was kind of into doing a New Orleans revue kind of thing. Which is a long way from the impetus of Pirates. So you're taking Pirates out in a New Orleans revue. If I would have taken Pirates out the minute I'd done it, it probably would have been a very different show.
From the first album on, you had a language all your own in those songs. It wasn't imitative at all. I remember hearing that line from "Night Train," "broken like valiums and chumps in the rain," and knowing this was new, this was different -
Yeah. That strange, weird poetry that I remember at the time thinking, this poetry is strange. But I couldn't help myself. That's really the kind of line I would write. And it showed up again in this record, too. You pointed out that line about the little dance you do before your mother calls you on the phone. That it was a very Rickie Lee kind of line. Same kind of thing, yeah.
That's why your work matters. You've never contrived anything to be a hit. You have always written what is true to you.
It's so idiosyncratic. You'd think, if anything, that would encumber [Laughs] your ability to have a hit. And same thing about the way I sing. The strange idiosyncratic faults of my voice are what I find most repeated by singers who sound like me. The things that were kind of questionable are the things they picked up most of all. The pronunciation or the no vibrato, or the kind of young kid tonality. That's what I hear everywhere. The stuff that I wouldn't have done if I could have avoided it.
It's amazing you didn't get blown away by that early success. A lot of your peers, such as Tom Waits, never had a big hit. But you had this huge commercial success and retained your artistic self. Was it tough to balance those two worlds?
Well, you know I was a beginner, so I started out with that. If I had been an artist for a few years and had that happen, it might have been devastating to me. But I think having it from the moment I began, it was just a wonderful, kind of ominous introduction to what my life was gonna be like. It was gonna be unexpected, and working with bigger strokes than anyone else. I can't answer that because before that record I didn't have a career. So I wasn't in the water yet to get thrown out of the water.
It's miraculous to me that Warner Brothers was smart enough to leave you alone and let you write your second album in peace. Nowadays they would have you out on the road. They were really taking good care of you.
Yeah. They took really good care of me. I was their girl. They loved me. Lenny [Waronker], Mo [Ostin].
The business sure has changed a lot.
Yeah, I don't think anybody's left there anymore.
Randy Newman told me he wanted to quit, but he didn't know anyone to call.
[Laughter] He's so funny.
Did you have a lot of time to write Pirates?
I wrote it in about a year and a half. I think so. Wrote a couple songs, and then nine months later wrote a couple of more.
An aspect that still astounds me about it to this day is that many of the songs, like "Pirates," "Living It Up" and "We Belong Together" are more like suites then songs - they have time shifts in them, the tempo kicks in and out. Hardly any songwriter, except maybe Zappa, has time shifts like that. Was it hard to get that sound and dynamic with a band? It's so delicate.
[Very softly] Yeah, it was. Really hard.
How did you do it?
We just kept coming back again and again until I got it. "We Belong Together" was recorded about three times, I think. It took a long time. All of them were hard. We were doing "Living It Up" and it was going pretty well. And I liked to talk to [the musicians] about what the story was about, or the feeling of the song. And we were playing that song again and all of a sudden, I'm playing away, and I hear a big crash, and [Jeff] Porcaro has stuck his sticks through his snare! And he says, "Fuck this art shit!" [Laughter] And he stormed right out of the recording studio. [Laughs] Yeah, 'fraid so.
Lee: I've been watching Rickie with drummers since Ghostyhead. And it's incredible, because some people have perfect pitch. Rickie has perfect time. And she'll be talking to the drummer the whole time. Very sensitive to timing. She hears all these weird shifts, and it can be very bewildering to a drummer. Pete MacNeil had a big bruise on his arm.
[To Rickie] Did you see his big bruise? It was from hitting all the beats on his arm that he didn't want to hit. Because you were telling him to miss beats. So he was counting them off like that. He said that trying to get Rickie's time was so hard, because of all these missing notes. It's that idea that a lot of this stuff is written in the silence, or written in the margins.
Rickie Lee: I began by playing with the best drummers that there are in popular music. And they are so good that the follow you, you don't follow them. And not only do they follow you, but they play wonderful things while they're doing it. And they anticipate where you're gonna go. They listen to you do it once, and they hear where you're gonna speed up and slow down.
So with anything less than that, it's a struggle. Because that's an incredible gift, and not all drummers have that. But sometimes it's a thing of me relinquishing control. Because the best that a drummer can do is play what he plays. So then I let go and I have to go with him, and decide that the golden egg lies there. And I can get where I'm going by relinquishing control to him. Otherwise I can't work with them. So you find a few drummers that listen to you, and it's a rapport, or you have a drummer where you have to follow them. But the ideal thing is when it happens where we're all playing the same song. And I don't even have to look at him. And he doesn't even have to look at me. We'll be there together. It doesn't happen, unfortunately, that often with a drummer. I don't know why. It's hard to find.
Your music is delicate and dynamic. There's a vast dynamic range. It would take a real artist to play all of it right.
It's delicate and dynamic, but you also have to be there. I find playing ballads can be deceiving, because if you're going [sings] "Something cool, I'd like to order something…" He's got to play the chord so I'll sing "cool." I've had piano players waiting for me to sing "cool." Then they'll play it. It's very frustrating. To find the right musicians to play with is hard. And I need them to lead. And they don't want to lead. I think it's old school. I think if I had a piano player from Frank Sinatra's time, there wouldn't be any discussion. They'd just know how to do that job.
How did you preserve the time shifts in songs like "Living It Up" - were you taping yourself while writing?
I think so, yeah. Yeah. I had to record back then.
You wrote much of your first album on guitar, then wrote most of Pirates on piano. Why?
I went to the piano because I guess I always wanted to play the piano all my life. And now I had enough money, and I had a chance to get to the piano, and so I did.
To get back to the present -
Good -
How did "Elvis Cadillac" come together - did you improvise that one?
That was maybe the last song I wrote. "Seventh Day" and "Elvis Cadillac." And Peter [Atanasoff] was playing his guitar, and I said, "Hold that thought," and I went in and wrote a lyric. And we went in and recorded it live. He played it and I sang it. So as much as we could, we kept getting that feeling of this is the impetus right here right now. That's how that happened.
Did you have your father in mind when writing it?
I had my daughter in mind. I was thinking about how hard it was for her generation to get started. She's 18. And my mother had had a couple of strokes, and I think it's about wondering where are the markers in her life. Where are they gonna be? We had Jimi Hendrix, we had the love revolution. We had these important markers that are our Jesus. Our disciples. Our big story. Our mythology is made out of those things. What will her's be? So this is kind of a letter from heaven, our heaven, with Elvis. And Janis Joplin. To her. Saying, "you're just starting out." You know, like if we were telling this story again, Janis Joplin has to go get her first job in the bar, and now we're on our way. It's a kind of odd point of view.
It works well in the context of these songs about Jesus.
Yeah. The Europeans love it. [Laughs] They love Elvis stuff. Elvis as Jesus.
He is about as iconic as the image of Jesus now.
I think he is, in many ways. Especially since his death. He provides solace and hope. And people just love him, idolize him, adore him.
Did you like him when you were a kid?
No. I liked, when I got older, before he died, I saw that comeback film in the '70s. He was pretty good then. But I didn't care for him other than that.
How about now when you hear him?
No. It doesn't speak to me. I think he's an amazing singer. I listen to "You ain't nothing but a hound dog." That's pretty amazing. I've heard the original version by Big Mama Thornton. And both versions are pretty great. Her version is pretty cool, but I think his is better. His takes it to some other places.
That was written by Leiber & Stoller, who were writing rock and roll, but were still part of the tradition of two people writing one song - one wrote words and one music. And most songwriters, even today, are better with words or music. But you're one of the rare ones who is great with both elements.
[Softly] Thank you. They come at the same time. And as long as they come at the same time, it's usually a really good song. But I spend more time on the lyrics. If I have to hash something out, I hash out the lyric more. To make sure it has continuity, and its delivery is somewhere I want to go. And I don't really have to do that musically. Musically I'm always a pilgrim. So anywhere I go is okay. But lyrically I have a kind of responsibility.
A lot of songwriters repeat themselves musically, going over the same patterns. You don't seem to do that.
No. Each time I make a record, it's a movie. So some new set of ideas has come upon me. And this one will be flavored like this. I think I write movies. If I was just writing songs, maybe they would tend to become the same. But everyone is a whole different film, so it's a whole different way of writing. The continuity matters. In "We Belong Together," I was noticing the line, "the only angel who sees us watches through each other's eyes." And in Flying Cowboys, writing about the "Ghost Train." I'm always talking about the invisible world. Always. And that's the continuity that brings me here. That's one reason why I think this record can't be suspicious, because there's something about that which is a total culmination of everything I've ever written. Even though it's different. What's new about it is that I've challenged myself to improvise, and I've walked into somebody else's house. So if I had had to write everything, it wouldn't have been so new. Because I can only write the way I write. And I can't be that raw. It's not in me to write that way. But I can go there and find new places to go.
I would be suspicious of me if I said, "I am just gonna do a guitar-drums-bass record." Even though I would love to do it. I think I would go, "If they hated Ghostyhead, I'm won't even gonna get this record out." Because people start to say what you can do, what they will allow you to do. And a lot of my career has been to keep pushing those limits.
I think I could have done probably much more work if I didn't always have to be justifying everything I did, and why it wasn't like the last thing I did. If I didn't have to do that, I probably would have done a lot more work. And all of it really different. I might have done a cabaret record, I might have done a Country Western record. There's so much music to be made, and I love it all. But because of the career - if they like that singer-songwriter hat, you can just be one voice. [Does quick Dylanish singing.] And you only can sing like that. And if you're a real singer, they're suspicious.
So I just kept defying it. Well, I'm a real singer, and I like a lot of different stuff, and I'm not going anywhere. And I think, finally, at this moment in my life, I'm being understood and respected and described in ways I think are accurate. It's a really great moment. When they describe my diversity, they describe it with respect. And that feels good. It's hard to always be the itinerant outsider. It's fucked up. And I feel like that has been one of my main identities, the outsider.
It's interesting to me what songs stick in my head, and after days of hearing your songs from your entire career, the song that keeps returning is "Stewart's Coat," from Traffic From Paradise. That melody is so haunting.
Yeah, it is. I heard that whole. It was in the back of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. And I was walking in back of it over the bridge and that melody descended upon me whole. With the lyric. [Sings] "Walking in the rain…" And it sat like that for many years until Sal [Bernardi] said we should finish it. But I actually started it maybe in the mid-eighties.
(continued ...)
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