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Rickie Lee Jones:
The Bluerailroad Interview
page 5
Does that give you the sense that songs come from some place else, when you receive a song whole like that?
Well, where could they come from but some place else? Because they don't come from here. [Points to her heart, laughs.] When they come whole, it makes it feel like it's somebody else giving me the work. But I don't know. There are so many answers. It could be made of your confidence, your need to hear it whole. Or it could be being delivered to you. In performance is when you most feel like you're a conduit. When I write stuff, I always go, "Thank you so much." So if I answer truthfully, I feel like I'm talking to somebody else. Whether or not it's my heart that is setting me free or somebody else's, it feels like there's somebody else to say thank you for what happens.
McCartney said that when he got the melody to "Yesterday," he was sure somebody else had written it. Do you feel that?
[Laughter] Yeah, I do. I feel that must already have been written. But I feel, no, no, you're just writing it now. But it's almost like we've already been here, and we already know we wrote it. And then when we do, we ask, did I write that or did somebody else write that? I've had that happen, yeah. "Saturday Afternoons" was like that. It seemed to be a melody we all know well, yeah.
Ghostyhead is such a powerful album, with songs like "Firewalker" and "Howard." But I guess a lot of people just couldn't accept it?
Two things happened. It got really mixed reviews. And when we went out on tour, we were really exploring improvisation onstage. Really new stuff. Not so new now. Really new cutting-edge stuff. But my record got sold to Universal, and they didn't put it out, so it was only out six months. So any kind of understanding that could have come to it or sales never had a chance. That's what happened to it.
I like how you combined the acoustic bass with techno. A great blend of humans with machines, of warm and cold.
Yeah. And reading poems and making up tunes to that environment. I thought it was a fresh idea.
Lee: It was very connected to this record, too. Because the subject material is coming out of -
Rickie Lee: All prayers.
Lee: Prayers, mysticism, sociology.
Rickie Lee: At the time I'd always describe it as a record of prayers. People would go, "Oh really?" But "The Cloud of Unknowing" came out of the Bhagavad Gita. It has this passage of , "They dropped the web from the spider of heaven into the pit of blood at the bottom of hell. And high above a bird flies…"
Lee: That comes out of Catholic mysticism. Great mystic books from the 15th century that saw God in the female gender, and saw God as transcending the spiritual, church tradition of the time. And these writers were persecuted at the time. So a lot of those songs were kind of precursors for this record.
Rickie Lee: I want to say something about the Catholic issue, because I like Catholicism a lot. I think it evokes an ancient, mystical thing. But as far as following a religion instead of the words of Christ is what I don't like. You can be Catholic and it doesn't necessarily mean you have any knowledge or understanding of what Jesus said.
Just the name 'Jesus' is a red flag for some people. I've heard people say they didn't want to listen to this album because they're "turned off by the whole Jesus thing."
Rickie Lee: See, that's what I was worried about. But the truth is, if they didn't know what it was about, they would never know what it was about. It's just a great rock record. That's why I want to keep talking about it. You just keep walking over, and walking over. And eventually it gets healed.
I love the lines, from "Donkey Ride," "You're going into town on your donkey tonight, but you'll be going out on a cross."
That often gets lost because of the dissonance. But I feel like that a lot. When you're heading into town with great expectations and hopes, but you'll be going out on a cross. [Pause] It's like my first record.
"Gethsemane" is amazing. Instead of writing about Jesus, you look through his eyes with poetry.
I wish you could have seen us record it, because it kept evolving in the studio.
It has many voices woven in.
Yeah, that was a lot of work, making that. We did it in two parts. The first part was improvised. I improvised the second verse but lost my way. So it took me a whole year to finish the second verse. "You wake up one morning and you're someone else." I wondered, well, what is this chorus going to be? So I had all the voices that were all around him all singing. So that's what you hear.
I love the lines, "And you cry to the God who leads you there, to the branch and the bird and the open air. To the God of why can't we turn around." It really makes one look at what it felt like for Jesus the person.
He was a person. [Laughs]
"You wake up one morning and you're someone else…"
Lee: Yeah.
Rickie Lee: Don't you find that to be true? And in his story, I think that's what happened. I think he was living this life and being a Rabbi and walking around. And if you go over the story as told, he wakes up one morning and now he's the son of God and he has to die. That's it. There's no discussion. You're dead. And the despair. But then when the hour came he said, "I don't want to do it. I could do so much more if I could stay. Does it really have to be this way?" Like anybody would. And he hears them coming and goes, "I want to run. I want to run away." And all of us feel that despair. That's the human despair. I don't think there's anything about this story that's divine in that it's beyond our experience. It is our experience. Whether or not it's a divine story or not, whether or not he's the son of God is secondary to the story of what happened and what he had to say. I don't care if you said he's divine, I'd say okay. If you said he's absolutely not divine, I'd say okay. It doesn't matter to me. It's like what color he wore. It's not an essential aspect of the story. And I think that's what's wonderful.
It's meaningful to have these songs, along with Lee's book, to lead us past the layers of distortions back into the heart of Jesus' message.
And it's worthwhile because I didn't come to it as a Christian. And I wasn't a Christian. I'm still not a Christian in the way people think of that. But I am pretty impressed and beloved of the relationship I am having with my life speaking on behalf of this gift. Because I've always had a strong connection with the invisible world. I feel pretty intact there. But I've avoided Christ and Jesus and any of that, because I just didn't buy it. But that's why there's something really profound happening. Because for me it's like, okay, we'll leave behind everything that religion's created, and let's just see what Christ said. And so it is a kind of new idea.
It seems like now there is a reawakening to the meaning of his life, a reevaluation of what he means.
To me all that matters is what he said. For me it just doesn't matter if he rose from the dead. That's all that people emphasize - somebody stuck nails in his hands, and he rose from the dead. Well, do you have any idea what he said? Did you know that he said, "Nobody comes to me except through God?" Because what they quote is "Nobody goes to God except through me." But, no, that's not what he said. He said, "Nobody comes to me except through God." I get that. Yeah. It's an evolution of enlightenment. If you're in my breast, if you're being held close to the words that I've said, God has led you here. But you have to take the I out of it. Because people get so involved in the I, in terms of what I said, instead of I said.
I think the emphasis should be on the message and not the messenger. And I think a lot of people chant his name and they don't know anything about the message. And frankly, you could not know who he was, in my opinion, and you live a life of compassion and humility and love, and you're living a good life. You don't have to say a prayer in anyone's name. But I guess what I wanted to do was say, if you do say a prayer in his name, those of us who feel we are kind of enlightened shouldn't be ashamed of you and look down upon you because of your association with the bad Christian movement, which has become so political. You've seen them. They're scary people. And I can't see that they in any way reflect a loving and humble person. They are so far from that.
And I'm happy to talk about all of this but it's only possible to discuss it because the music is vital, and people seem to be enjoying it a lot.
This work is both inspirational and inspired.
Yeah. Something nice happened to me. I think I was just able to… relax. And something so intimate happened. Something so… special.
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