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Star child >> The family ties that bind Rufus Wainwright by LORRAINE CARPENTER
Mirror:
So how has life treated you between albums? Rufus Wainwright:
Well, it’s been interesting ’cause it’s 75 per cent drudgery,
being in the studio and in buses at all hours, feeling lonely. But,
on the other hand, I’ve have some really incredible experiences
and had the opportunity to meet a lot of people whom I only ever fantasized
about meeting. But to maintain that security—unless I start dating
some celebrity person, which I’m hoping to—I’ve really
gotta hold up my end of the stick. M: Were
you wracked with second-album anxiety? RW: I wasn’t
really affected, but there were moments of delirious insecurity and
doom when I would wake up at night with a cold sweat worrying about
it. I think that’s just the way I am, you know, either I’m
totally happy or I’m totally paranoid. But, in terms of going into
the studio and getting into the material itself, I kind of lost any
sense of reality or what I was supposed to be there for, what sex I
was. I sort of morphed into this big musical note. M: What
sets Poses apart from your debut album? RW: The major difference is that my voice is the centrepiece, it’s not so much about the arrangements. There’d be times when Pierre [Marchand, producer] would be very tough, he’d say, “You sound like shit today, you smoked too many cigarettes last night,” and I’d be, like, “[getting pouty] But I can always sing, I’m like a one-take Osmond!” I think my first record should go down as a museum piece just based on how much stuff was piled onto those songs, like 500 xylophone parts. Thank God I had the greatest studios and the greatest orchestras available ’cause at least we knew we’d get something. Pierre was very insistent on this record sounding like it wasn’t trying to hit you over the head with how fucking brilliant it was all the time. He wanted a subtle vibe that just happened organically and not based on how much money was poured into it. We ended up pouring in tons of money anyways, but he’d be into, like, “let’s go ask the guy at the corner store if he plays drums,” that sort of attitude, which was very fulfilling but also very frightening because you never quite knew what to expect.
Much Loudon M: Have
you ever considered incorporating your theatre experience into your
show? RW: The
show is pretty theatrical already—not in terms of the staging,
I don’t have a chorus line or anything, but I’m very talkative
and tend to screw with the audience a little bit. I’m kind of like
Tallulah Bankhead at times. Actually, my father accused me of that—“you’re
Tallulah Bankhead, always trying to upstage people!” But I’m
actually at the point now where I’m trying to not speak between
songs because sometimes it just gets a little much. M: Speaking
of your dad, why did you decide to cover his song “One Man Guy”? RW: Well,
I think it’s a brilliant song, it’s one of the unknown American
classics in the folk tradition, sounds great around a campfire. Also,
when Martha [Wainwright, sister] and Teddy [Thompson, fellow bandmate
with folk star folks] and I sing it, there’s just something about
the rawness of the guitar and voices that I thought was important to
have on my record, like a moment of relaxation. And, subject-matter-wise,
I relate a lot to his being staunchly independent and incredibly armoured
against the world. I think I have a lot of that in me, but he’s
really like that. He’s much easier to understand through his work
than through his personality, like most fathers. M: Was your
cover, in a way, a response to the song he wrote about you when you
were a kid? RW: “Rufus Is a Tit Man”? No, not really. Both my father and my mother have written songs about me and I’ve actually written a few angry songs about him, which will probably not go on record. And of course I wrote “Beauty Mark” about my mom, and my sister writes about me. We all write about each other, it’s sort of like playing softball with your family or something. “Toss the song…”
Never fear,
Yoko’s here M: So how
did you get involved in the I Am Sam soundtrack? RW: It was
all very fortuitous. They asked me to do a Beatles song for the soundtrack
during a time when I was hanging a lot with Sean Lennon. There was this
John Lennon benefit happening, which was for gun control at first and
then of course there was September 11 and it was dedicated to New York.
Sean thought “Across the Universe” would be great for my voice,
so me, him and Moby performed it at that benefit and it came out great,
so the song came to me, which is always the best way. I do believe that
songs have a life of their own. It took no effort whatsoever to record
it because, for some reason, that song wants to be heard again. I’m
trying to be all cosmic about it but that’s probably because it’s
got a lot of lyrics I don’t understand. It’s funny ’cause
it’s Sean Lennon playing guitar and backup vocals, and we recorded
it on his birthday, which is also John Lennon’s birthday, so it’s
kind of a spooky track. M: And you
were in New York on September 11, right? How did that go? RW: My experience
was crazy. A friend of mine was slightly in trouble with the law and
I’d promised to buy him a plane ticket to L.A., so he called me
at nine in the morning on September 11, kind of fucked up. He was like,
“Oh Rufus, help, I gotta get outta town, I’m out of money
and all these people are chasing me—and, also, a plane just hit
the World Trade Centre.” So I turned on the TV and that was happening,
and I told him to come upstairs but the first thing I thought was, “I
gotta get this guy out of my apartment.” So I got on the phone
and managed to book a flight. I booked a flight on September 11, it
was very freaky. Anyway, then he left and I went over to Sean Lennon’s
house, John Lennon’s old house, the Dakota, and Yoko was there
and I was actually with Lorca Cohen, Leonard Cohen’s daughter.
So Yoko said, “We should get out of town,” and I was, like,
“Okay,” so we got in the car with Lorca, Sean and Sean’s
girlfriend Bijou Philips, whose father is John Philips from Mamas and
the Papas. Yoko ended up driving all the kids of rock stars to her farm
in upstate New York, and we stayed there for two weeks and acted like
four-year-olds! M: Whoa,
okay. And where did you end up next? RW: I actually
moved back to Montreal after that. It wasn’t necessarily because
of what happened. The most important thing for me right now is to have
a place I can consider home, and Montreal just seems to be the perfect
place to do nothing and live a monotone life, ’cause otherwise
I’m just lost in the hullabaloo of it all. M: I don’t
know how much you follow the Montreal music scene, but I saw you at
the Dears/Stars show last Valentine’s Day and I was wondering if
you feel, musically, closer to the scene these days? RW: Well, I’m sure they’re all influenced by me! I’m not gonna play Little Miss I’m Not From Montreal and I Didn’t Do Anything for This City. Honey, I created the Montreal scene. No, I didn’t. I was never really part of it before I got signed, unlike my friend Melissa Auf der Maur, with Tinker. I was more into the theatre or spoken word scene, the Jake Brown era. But I definitely felt part of Montreal’s downtrodden, educated, bohemian, kind of college dropout scene. And when I come back, I still feel like, in their eyes, I’ll always be Rufus, and it’s good to remember that. This city is very important to me. It keeps me alive. : With Teddy
Thompson at the Spectrum on
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If
Rufus Wainwright has proved anything since his singer-songwriter career
blossomed in 1998, it’s that there’s no getting around Rufus
Wainwright. The child of folk icons Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright
III, the local boy done good, the revered musician, the gay icon, the
party fixture, the Gap spokesman (albeit briefly), and that voice. With
his quietly brilliant sophomore disc Poses, supplemented by an ongoing
series of soundtrack spots, Wainwright continues to frequent the spotlight,
famous friends and requisite vices in tow. In a pair of interviews,
conducted in Montreal last June and on the line from Vancouver last
week, Wainwright confided in the Mirror about his album, his dad, his
9/11 debacle, and the city that keeps him sane.