June 4th, 2009
A Conversation With Dean Wareham (Part Two)
Yesterday, in part one of our interview with Dean Wareham — of Galaxie 500 and Luna fame, as well as Dean & Britta (the band he shares with wife/singer/bassist Britta Phillips), which plays Johnny Brenda’s tonight — we talked mainly about the singer-guitarist’s recent memoir, Black Postcards, which was just published in paperback. In part two of our chat, Dean talks more about the book, Britta’s reaction to it, playing Galaxie 500 songs all these years later, and dealing with the acrimony between he and his former Galaxie bandmates:
Is it weird having strangers come up to you and tell you that they’ve read the book?
[Laughs] Everyone knows waaay too much about me now! I get e-mails from girls who are like, “I used to have a crush on you until I read your book.” [laughs]
Does that change the dynamic of dealing with fans?
Naaahhh, I don’t think so. What can you do? You can’t please everyone.
One of the big things one takes away from the book is your assertion that bands — well, with rare exceptions, like the Rolling Stones and whatnot — are destined to break up, and probably somewhat acrimoniously. So how have you and Britta make it work, and do you fear what might happen in the future based on what’s happened in the past?
Umm, I mean, musically there hasn’t been any problem. I dunno, we’re getting along great now, everything’s going well, so…I hope it doesn’t end like the other bands, I’m not planning on that! It’s been really nice to have her on the road with me. I think it’s just kinda civilizing.
Her reaction to the book was?
Well, she said she didn’t enjoy, you know, hearing about people that I’ve slept with.
Imagine that…
[laughs] Yeah. But she liked the book. She thought it was funny.
Did she really?
That’s what she said.
Do you find people coming up to you wanting to talk more about the funny parts, the controversial parts about your former bandmates, or the more emotional parts — the really personal stuff, I mean?
Well, I get a range of things depending on people’s own experiences. I get letters from guys who have been through a divorce looking to me for advice. I hear from people who were in the same music scene in the late ’80s and ’90s, like, “I know so many of those bands, those places.” It’s nice to hear from musicians – I get a lot of e-mails from people in other bands.
I was gonna ask if you’ve heard from people in bands who are glad you wrote about some of the same experiences they may have had but didn’t necessarily have the nerve to write about.
Yeah. I’m just glad I haven’t heard from Moby.
Hah. So you’re doing a reading from the book at the Johnny Brenda’s show?
You know what, I think I’ll take about five minutes out of the set and read a little something. In the middle of the encore, I guess. Not right away at the beginning. I’ve done readings, but I haven’t done them in the middle of the set. The readings have generally been…I read for 20 minutes, I play four songs on an acoustic guitar, I take questions …
Did it take you a while to decide which passages you wanted to read in front of an audience?
It didn’t take me that long. I would read the story about the flight attendant in Spain– I thought that was slightly humbling. It’s a little uncomfortable to stand there and read that stuff, I guess. You start reading stuff out loud and you’re like, “Ooooh, I think I’ll skip that sentence.”
The “performance” of a book — if you wanna call it that — is an interesting thing, to get that immediate response from an audience. Do you enjoy doing that?
Umm, you know what, I was terrified at first, and now I enjoy them. Now I realize it’s not that hard — you’re up there, the words are on the page, I’m kinda good at doing it, and it’s fun.
Did you think about that when you were writing? Did you think that someday you would be reading passages to people in these environments?
No. I didn’t. I didn’t think it through [laughs]
I’ve seen in other interviews you’ve done, people asking you if you’re going to write another book, and you’ve said you haven’t really thought about it. Is that still true?
I don’t have a plan yet, so…
Would you want to write fiction?
No, I don’t wanna write fiction, you know why? I just think for myself, if I was going to buy fiction, I wouldn’t buy a book of fiction by me. I’d buy the new Philip Roth novel. I mean, I don’t wanna read fiction by Nick Cave…
No?
No. Have you read his novels?
No, I haven’t, but I saw one of his movies that he did the screenplay for, that western [The Proposition].
I saw the movie too, what did you think of the movie?
I thought it was all right, it was a little disappointing.
Yeah…you know what I found really distracting was the soundtrack. His voice constantly coming in.
It seemed a little indulgent…
Yeahhh! I dunno, I think when you’re doing a soundtrack for a movie you have to be careful about putting too much personality in the music, because every time a voice or a lone instrument comes in, it pulls attention away from the film. It was, I dunno…sometimes I like Nick Cave, it’s just, like, he can also be incredibly pretentious.
You’re still doing the Warhol shows [in which Dean & Britta perform original scores beneath projections of 13 of Andy Warhol's black-and-white screen tests] this summer?
We’re doing it into 2010, I think. The shows keep coming, it’s been really good. We’re doing Philadelphia on September 18th at the Fringe Festival.
Oh cool, I’m looking forward to seeing it. I haven’t seen it yet.
Yeah. We haven’t done just a regular Dean & Britta show for a while now. It’s all been Warhol shows.
Are you working in any new material to the set you’re playing here in Philly?
We’re working in old material, actually. We’re gonna do about half Galaxie 500 songs for a change.
Really? Half, wow.
Yeah like six or seven songs.
How come that many? I know you’ve done maybe one or two Galaxie songs in recent years.
I dunno, just to give people something different, I suppose. We did it last summer, too, at a show in New York, and people seemed to enjoy it.
Do you find new things in revisiting that old material?
You know, it’s always a lot of fun to play a song you haven’t played in 15 years. It really is. You get sort of an emotional charge out of it, like you’re doing a cover or something.
Do they seem like covers at this point?
Yeah, kind of! [laughs] It’s hard to sing those songs, too. I feel like I need to cough, and I sing real high. Your voice naturally lowers as you get older, I think. And also, I didn’t know how to sing at all in Galaxie 500.
Some people would say that was a good thing…
Yes, absolutely. That’s absolutely part of the charm of it, when people say, you know, the vocals on the first Galaxie 500 album sound like I’m singing from outer space. I think I was thrown out there in front of a microphone and I’d never really been in that situation, I hadn’t practiced in front of a microphone, and I only got one take of everything. I’ve since learned that it’s on the third take that I start to get it good. It’s never the first. Sometimes the second. With vocals, that is.
Do you feel like, no pun intended, you’ve closed the book on the Galaxie 500 stuff with Black Postcards once and for all? That you don’t need to deal with or talk about that acrimony between you and [ex-bandmates] Damon [Krukowski] and Naomi [Yang] anymore?
Hopefully not, yeah. People have asked me about the way the book opened — that it was provocative, starting with that quote from Damon. Initially my editor said the same thing, he was like “Don’t start with this, no one knows anything about it,” but he changed his mind. And I didn’t…I tried to be kinda balanced about them. I wouldn’t have started it with that quote except that that article is on their website to this day, and that [Ptolemaic Terrascope] interview is where they say all this stuff, and people ask me about it and I’ve had to deal with it, so I was like, I figured … it’s one thing, you know, if you’re being interviewed and you might have had a drink or someone pushed, someone asked you this and you say something, you’re mean about someone… Anyway, I’m over it!
Dean & Britta play Johnny Brenda’s tonight at 9pm. $15.
[All photos of Dean & Britta live in Philadelphia by Michael Alan Goldberg.]
