Interview: The Magnetic Fields
Stephin Merritt of resplendently melodic band The Magnetic Fields spoke exclusively to Joe Fuller, ahead of their theatrical Brighton Dome shows. To read the full interview, head to thelatest.co.uk.
Could you tell us about the 50 Song Memoir album that the two shows will be pulling from?
50 Song Memoir is an autobiographical, five disc set of entirely true songs about me, which is something that I usually would never do. I am not an autobiographical songwriter. Some people write songs about their life. I do not.
I like the decision to split it into five discs. It reminds me of EPs and how they’re easy to dip in and out of.
Yes, when I did 69 Love Songs, it seemed like one hour per disc was perfectly reasonable but nowadays, one hour is forever. Especially if you expect people to listen to the lyrics. Without something to look at, it’s hard for people to absorb information from listening, nowadays. They’re expecting information from something glowing and warm in their hands. But for the show we actually have a huge, pretty projection screen with appropriate visuals that help keep the focus on the lyrics.
Will that include videos like ‘A Cat Called Dionysus’’ animations, or is it a range of things?
It’s a range of things. The Dionysus video is more literal than many of them are. But we tried to have the projections have different relations to the music, rather than all of them acting out the lyrics or something.
Will you just be playing the albums on the evenings or will there be other fan favourites too?
(Laughs) We’re just playing the album. The album is two and a half hours long. What with banter in between and changing instruments, it would be painfully long if we also played The Book of Love. And we don’t do encores. We’re just playing the album.
I was thinking about something you said before when you said that you don’t look for realism as a producer and you like to hear the notes in a big sound rather than individual instruments. Some of your records have been heavily synth based but live it is a more acoustic affair.
Only a few of our records have been heavily synth based. Three of them in a row had no synths at all. But we generally try to have the arrangements for the shows to not have that much to do with the arrangements on the records. They may have different instrumentation but they at least have different notes. I am not a fan of going to see a show which is the same thing as the record. That said, this show is probably the closest we will ever get to sounding like the record because we actually have seven people, seven instrumentalists, including me. (Strange noise on Joe’s end of the phone call.) Is that a bird?
Yes, a seagull. In Brighton there’s a lot of seagulls. Have you been to Brighton before?
I have: we went once on tour. I have not been to Brighton on vacation. Bookending this tour I’m actually going to do vacationing, which is something I never do. Last time I was on vacation, I went to Costa Rica in 1998. So it’s been 19 years since I had a vacation. We’re starting the tour in Edinburgh and ending it in London. I’m going to spend almost a week in Edinburgh beforehand, and a week in London afterwards. I wish I could also spend a week in Brighton. I really like Brighton. It has really good food, even.
“Honest musicians admit that they don’t enjoy touring.”
Good food, and good pubs too. In Kemptown there’s some good gay bars as well if you did want to write, although if you’re on vacation I guess you might not want to be songwriting.
Oh no I don’t know how to turn that off actually. When I was in Costa Rica, I was songwriting on the beach. I imagine I will be hanging out in gay bars and writing songs for a few hours every day. It’s a hard habit to break. The United States equivalent of Brighton is Provincetown in Massachusetts, a few hours from Boston. It’s also a traditional vacation spot which has become especially focused on gay vacationers and is also an art colony too.
After the vacationing, do you have any plans for you or The Magnetic Fields?
Well we go to Australia in October. I am not thinking beyond the tour. When I do other things I can think beyond them but touring doesn’t really work that way, because there is always the possibility that they will add more tour at the end of it. We haven’t actually been to Continental Europe, except one festival in Barcelona and it sure would make sense to play Scandinavia and Germany and Spain and Portugal like we usually do. Portugal is the place in the world where we are most popular, for some reason. Not the United States, but Portugal. And we haven’t played there which doesn’t make any sense. So I’m hoping that the tour will get longer.
You’re excited about the tour then?
Well I didn’t say I was excited about the tour (laughs). I don’t enjoy touring. Honest musicians admit that they don’t enjoy touring. Except… I was just talking to Laurie Anderson backstage at a benefit and she said that she loves touring. And now that she’s alone she loves the opportunity to meet new people that touring affords. The last thing that I want to do is meet new people that I’m probably never going to see again. What fun is that?
She curated Brighton Festival last year. You could see that that was something she was excited about because she collaborated with different musicians and created a new show. So it’s part of her artistic process, performing live.
That’s not touring: that’s a residency. Residencies make much more sense. Residencies are a lot more fun. You can discover a restaurant that you like and you can go there as much as you want, and all that, whereas touring is sitting around in airport lounges. So maybe when she said she likes touring, maybe she means she likes residencies. How dare she be an unreliable narrator!
I’m curious about the ethical system you posited in the song ‘How I Failed Ethics’. What did you come up with when you were at college?
I came up with an ethical dictum that one must act in order to maximise the information flow. Rather than obey the will of god on one side, or maximise pleasure for everyone, or do no harm. My principle was to create a universe in which information flow is optimised. So that there’s an end state where everything is alive. And alive in the best possible way.
Through the combination of everyone maximising the information flow?
Yes. I am not advancing this ethical stance now. I’m saying that this was my idea in college. I’ve since returned to being an ethical sceptic. I think that ethics really is a branch of aesthetics and it’s an attempt to rationalise our mammalian instincts and codify them. Not that that’s not worthwhile.
The Magnetic Fields: 50 Song Memoir, Brighton Dome Concert Hall, 7-8 September, 7.15pm, £20/£24 per Part or £43 combined, brightondome.org, 01273 709709
