By Steve Morris
"It was very shocking to read. It's fiction."-about the suggestion that he's a phoney in this NME article
But surely part of the process of selling the music.
"Well, the performance of the music is the only selling point."
You still have to do interviews, meet and greets...
"I don't really do that very well. It takes a very small amount of time actually, it's very harmless but very draining."
"Yeah, it's strange. It's good."-about being surprised by the response to his music
Where did his music come from? What did he hear as a child?
"Mendelssohn, Chopin, the Messiah, erm, Funny Girl, West Side Story, Elton John, Joni Mitchell from my mom. From my stepfather, Pink Floyd, Grand Funk Railroad, Moody Blues, Cat Stevens, Crosby Stills and Nash, Bob Dylan. I think that was my mom too. Beatles of course and Hendrix and Zeppelin. And also the popular music of the time like Stevie Wonder had Innervisions and that was all over the radio."
His mom was an accomplished and respected musician. Had he been "guided" toward playing?
"No, no, I found it in my grandma's closet. It was an acoustic guitar, gut string. My mom never wanted me to play 'cos she had been through so much bullshit with lessons as a kid, so much pressure, she didn't want to put it on me. So she never pushed me in any one direction, ever, she saw I was doing something I liked. She just enjoyed it."
At what point did he realize he had a talent for music?
"I don't know how to tell you that, because I really don't get that sense. I mean, how do you get the sense that you are male."
"They said that about, er, pick 'em, Cocteau, Picasso whatever...some people fall short 'cos they're just gesticulating, but sometimes in art you need to be ridiculous, you have to be the clown. As long as you don't stay too long, man!
"Last night it was somebody's birthday and I did the Marilyn Monroe Happy Birthday Mr. President thing; really fun and wonderfully faggy, happy and..."
Being a Buckley of course such "fun" is not going to remain "just fun," people will "interpret."
"Yeah, that's a danger for them actually 'cos they'll never perceive anything correctly."-about his meditative style being seen as pretentious
"The album is like some of flavor you taste in the distance and it's coming close. It's pretty easy to rely on your instincts and basically you just concentrate on what you don't want to have happen."-about the making of his album
It gets harder though, life on the road making the writing of another album a lot harder.
"Totally warped and thwarted. I spend most of my time traveling, sound checking, eating bad food and being interviewed. There's not a lot of time to be alone. I get key fragments into my notebooks that I'll try to nurture later.
"I need some time off. I want to be able to reload, I want to have something new out this year ('95). I'm so tired being afraid of sucking all the flavor out of this material, 'cos I need new material to mend this old material. Not to say that I'm tired of playing it 'cos it's always a new journey but I'm just afraid of the future being not as bright as I think it could be."
"Even if I'd called myself Johnny Goat people would still catch wind of my heritage and make the same oddity out of it."
And the people waiting for him to become his father?
"They're safe and there's no rebuttal to what they have to say. It takes a certain amount of resolve and some maturity that I'm trying to dredge up but I don't manifest yet 'cos it still hurts."
Yet there are some folks who'll want, for whatever dumb reason, to see history repeated.
"That I'm destroyed? If that exists then there'll be full on war because my only act of rebellion is to continue to live. It's probably the thing that'll piss them off the most."
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