Adam Green – Interview – February 2010
By: Keri Kennedy
Rockfeedback’s Keri Kennedy joins Adam Green on his tourbus on the seafront outside Brighton’s Concorde 2 just before the last night of his UK tour for a chat about Wetherspoons, Goblins, Har Mar Superstar and feeling alone amongst strangers.
Keri Kennedy: So this is the last night of the UK tour, are you worn out?
Adam Green: “Yes, tomorrow we go to France. I feel strangely at ease and good. I went for a long walk on the beach and it got me…sorted out. I didn’t mind being amongst all the people, but that place over there [points to the Nivea Volleyball Centre over the road] made me feel weird. That place is new, I played here with Cerys Matthews and it wasn’t there then. I was sat amongst all these people in the café and they were wearing like Oakley sunglasses and talking about sports with their kids. I felt like I was in the way, I felt like I was like some sort of alien. It made me feel like I was truly alone [laughs].”
KK: So do you get lonely on tour?
AG: “No, only just then, that’s the loneliest spot in the whole fucking world!”
KK: I’ve been following you on Twitter and have noticed you’re partial to a visit to Wetherspoons, are you becoming a fan?
AG; I was introduced to Wetherspoons by G (his Geordie bus driver), the road warrior over there [points to G having a cigarette next to the volleyball court]. It suits me fine. In the mornings I found it interesting to have breakfast where it’s socially acceptable to be drinking. In fact if you’re not drinking they look at you funny.
KK: So you’ve had a fry up and a pint?
AG: “I’ve been getting used to eating breakfast with a Guinness. So I’m embracing the culture I feel. We don’t have anything like that in America. If I did live next to a Wetherspoons and eat breakfast there every morning and get kinda wasted, it would be bad, have a negative effect on my life [laughs]. I’m like the youngest person in there, and for me to pull off that old man shtick, I don’t think I can do that.”
KK: Talking of twitter, you seem pretty open with what you are doing or where you are going. Have you gained any stalkers?
AG: Nothing really, sometimes I really try to orchestrate something like a party at the Burger King on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, and I feel like I don’t know if people are taking me seriously or no-one cares. I’ve been trying to wrangle people and it’s sometimes successful, sometimes not. But I think there’s something interesting that on a place like twitter I can be like ‘let’s meet at Wetherspoons and like 50 people come’. I don’t think there’s many people that follow me in Brighton.
KK: There’s the #Brighton feed on twitter, maybe you should orchestrate something later?
AG: “So you can hashtag Brighton? Oh wow, I think I need to be genuinely inspired, but tonight I’m already going to be surrounded by tons of strangers.”
KK: The new album went straight to Spotify on the day of release, do you like Spotify?
AG: “I just saw it the other day. I was in Manchester and I ate breakfast at the Gemini café which I typically do, while I was eating, this little Lolita type girl was standing in the bathroom line and I was sat at the table. We started talking and she said that she went to the concert last night, then we went to the city centre together on a bus… then her boyfriend got really pissed off at her and was sending her text messages so we ducked into Wetherspoons and started drinking. Then this French kid comes by and he knew her, he actually managed her boyfriend’s band. So me and him kept on drinking and eventually went to Marks and Spencer’s and bought some Irish whisky and went back to his house. We listened to music together and he showed me all this music on Spotify. And that’s the first time I ever saw it.”
KK: Some of Minor Love seems to have more of the old lo-fi sound rather than the big sound of Jacket Full of Danger. What style do you prefer?
AG: “Well, I just think I prefer the atmospheric style of textures and I was really trying to do that on Sixes and Sevens but I didn’t quite have the balls to do it as much. Jacket Full of Danger, Gemstones and Friends of Mine and are all very formally recorded with a clean production. At the time I was listening to French cabaret music a lot and kind of viewing myself as, or trying my best to see myself as, a composer or something, and wanted to draw attention to the arrangements. It was almost to show how it would be played live under an ideal circumstance. I was listening to Scott Walker records and they are very clean. But you know what? I got bored of that so I ended up trying to make things sound shitty and I mean who knows? I might go sh*ttier. I’d like to make a heavy metal record.”
KK: That would be amazing, we listed to ZZ Top driving here to meet you.
AG: “Really? Don’t you call them zed zed top? I can’t take credit for that joke, my drummer came up with that. It’s hilarious...”
KK: Is ‘Goblin’ about anyone in particular?
AG: “Yeah, it’s a true story [looks unhappy to talk about this].”
KK: So it’s not a pet name? Was she short and ugly?
AG: “Anyone can become short and ugly [laughs] in any circumstance.”
KK: Jeff Lewis and Kimya have the Bundles, would you ever join an anti-folk supergroup or reform Moldy Peaches?
AG: “I don’t think so, I said I would never before but there’s no point in saying I would never, but probably not. I have a sort of a band with Har Mar Superstar called Mumps.”
KK: Have you ever played?
AG: “No but we have written a couple of like prototype songs. Some of them are pretty cool but it’s kinda like something to talk about rather than actually do.”
KK: You’re pretty good friends with Har Mar aren’t you?
AG: I love Har Mar, he’s my best friend.
KK: He sent me a couple of questions to ask you, and I didn’t really want to ask, however here’s one. Is your favourite food really Clam Chops?
AG: “[Laughs] Clam Chops! “
KK: Yes, I thought I wouldn’t ask you that
AG: “Well…clam chops is a erm…”
KK: I know what it is. Then he said ‘Just ask him loads of questions about me’.
AG: “Exactly! Well you know, Har Mar is a wonderful man. I believe he might have lived in the UK. He lives in LA now, and I stay on his couch.”
KK: Moving on…The film Juno brought the Moldy Peaches and especially Kimya a lot more attention, I recall Kimya once writing on her blog that she would like her gigs to return to normal and for the crowd to consist of her old school fans. I get the impression you’d like the extra attention?
AG: “I don’t think that people really know that I was even in the Moldy Peaches [laughs]. I’m kidding, it would take a lot of Googling to find me out. I’m sure that somebody has found out about me through Juno. I do want people to associate me with the film Groundhog Day, because I like that film a lot.”
KK: You should do a remake.
AG: “I’m no actor. I am the worst actor. I can’t even play myself, you can see my brain reading the lines… I can memorise, but I don’t understand what actors are doing and I don’t know how they do it. I’m so unfamiliar with what it takes to be an actor, I’m wary of actors!”
KK: A question that I’ve always wanted the answer to is have you ever had anyone genuinely offended by the song ‘No Legs’?
AG: “Yeah, most notoriously in my mind is the time is when I was first touring the UK opening for Cerys Matthews, and I played at Union Chapel, I played No Legs in this church and somebody really freaked out. This was pretty early on in my set and I just continued to play. I mean, by the end of the set I was backstage and this woman came over and apologised because she realised, after seeing the whole thing, I wasn’t this bad person that she thought I was. I played it too soon and she thought ‘this kid has to die’. You know, I was never like a brat, if there’s one thing that I get upset about is that people think that I was some kind of a brat because I wrote songs like No Legs. But I was never a brat. It doesn’t have anything to do with what I was really like, they are just songs that I thought would be interesting to write.”
KK: ‘Jessica’. Are you going to write a part two now she’s with Billy Corgan and recording songs with him?
AG: “I think that is a good idea. I’m proud of Jessica.”
KK: That’s it, thank you Adam, are you off to soundcheck?
AG: “They don’t need me yet, drink your beer and relax.”
Keri Kennedy.
Artists in this article: Adam Green