What could you possibly ask a man who is notoriously guarded, and doesn't like interviews? Mark ‘E’ Oliver Everett has gone through finding his dad, who came up with the parallel universe theory, dead at the age of 15; whose sister was a manic depressive and died of an overdose; whose mother died of cancer and dedicated a whole album to the subject; and whose cousin was an attendant on the plane that crashed into the pentagon on 9/11. Despite, or maybe because of this, Eels have produced the most exciting, poignant music of recent memory. With the release of their first new album in four years, Hombre Lobo (Werewolf in Spanish) maddog spoke to E about music, the past and er – beards…

MD: May I just say, before we get into this, that I am a huge fan – have been for years and would like to fawn for a moment if you would allow me to… you’re great!

E: Wow, thanks, that’s better than the opposite.

MD: I could always swing the other way if you prefer, let’s see how this goes!

E: Yeah, that’s a good point – you may change your mind by the end of the interview.

MD Let’s jump straight in and talk about the new album – which, by the way, I have not managed to listen to yet. The record company guy was meant to send me a link, he didn’t send me a link so yeah – I apologise profusely for not knowing a damn thing about it!

E Ah, well, that does make this kinda awkward.

MD: yeah… we could always just end it now and I can crawl away in shame… or something.

E: Um… well, what do you want to know about it?

MD: Well, Hombre Lobo seems a change in tone from Blinking Lights, which was a very personal album. This album is a character driven album. What was the reason for the change?

E: Well, for four years, dealing with autobiography pretty much constantly, it’s kinda the last thing you want to do, so at that point it’s a pleasure to slip into someone else, so to speak.

MD: And how is the Dog Faced Boy? We worry about him over here y’know

E: Well, he’s a man now and he’s grown into a dignified old werewolf… apparently

MD: So he’s doing OK then?

E: That’s what the album’s about; he’s not doing OK, he’s got issues

MD: That sucks. Is it – I don’t know whether I should say this, but is it more of a concept album?

E: To me, they all are in a sense, there’s always a thread that connects the songs, and this is certainly no exception to that.

MD: Do you find it more difficult to write in that context; in the sense that this is the Ipod generation and people just don’t sit down to listen to a whole album from start to finish anymore? Does that make it harder to sit and write a whole bunch of interconnecting songs?

E: Yeah, it’s tough because everyone always goes on about how the album is such an antiquated idea, but it’s how I like to do it and am so far not interested in stopping it.

MD: I think that the whole heralding the demise of the album is premature because there are a whole lot of kids that are now getting into vinyl, partly for retro reasons partly because it’s kind of seen as cool again and for me, there’s nothing quite like sitting down and hearing that crackle of the needle on a record.

E: It’s nice that the vinyl thing is making a comeback. That’s my favourite way of listening to music. I really miss having the break between side one and side two that you don’t get on CDs.

MD: What was the process of making the Hombre Lobo? Was it different because you wrote the whole thing from a character’s point of view?

E: Well, it all started with my beard. I was working on some other music and I was brushing my teeth one morning and I looked in the mirror and I thought “Y’know, this beard doesn’t fit the music I’m working on” and I was about to cut it off and at the last moment it occurred to me that why not make an album that fits the beard?

So that started off the idea and I thought about the last time I had a beard in 2001 for the Souljacker album; and the reason I had a beard then was that I was getting into character for the first song, which was Dog Faced Boy. Then I thought “Well, he’s older now, what did he become?”

MD: My beard, generally, isn’t as creative or as planned as yours is. Mine is usually born out of laziness, but I will certainly bear that in mind when I sit down to write something.

E: I don’t know if I’m the only artist who is motivated by facial hair but that’s what it’s come to.

MD: Almost ZZ Top, but so, so different.

E: I’m getting there, y’know, but they’re still ahead of me on length. My goal is grow it so long I don’t have to wear pants

MD: That is pretty much heaven right there. Are you nearing your goal?

E: Yeah I am, I’m pretty close to it; I’m not far off

MD: Was there a pressure, either self-imposed or from the record company to replicate the critical and commercial success of Blinking Lights or were they just grateful you didn’t turn in another double album?

E: I think that if I’d given them another double album they would’ve put it out but after doing Blinking Lights I didn’t feel like doing that again. I could’ve given them a triple album.

MD: Ahhhh, that would be very cool – that’s not been done in a while! On a slightly different note – my other job involves working with young offenders and I am slowly converting them, one by one to the joy of Eels.

E: They can become my new target audience!

MD: The criminal demographic is sorely overlooked. I hope you don’t mind! You will have to have notices up at the entrance “warning, pickpockets operate in this area”

E: Thank you for inviting hundreds of criminals to my concerts.

MD: That’s fine, thank you, but really, there’s no need to worry in the short term, they’re banged up; they’re not going anywhere just yet. But this is what I wanted to say: I use the first chapter from your book (Thing’s The Grandchildren Should Know) as a resource for learning.

E: Really?

MD: Yeah, and truly, it’s phenomenal – easily the best thing I have to make them sit up and take notice and want to learn more.

E: Wow, that’s fantastic!

MD: I’m not entirely sure why they connect with it. I don’t know if it is because the themes are so universal; in the first chapter especially, the sense of hopelessness that is conveyed maybe gives them a glimmer of hope about their situation and what they could potentially achieve.

E: That’s exactly why I put the book out. I didn’t get a book deal upfront. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do; I just thought that as an experiment I would try to write it. I didn’t even know if I was going to finish it let alone put it out but when I was almost finished with it I saw that there was something there to the story that I thought could even maybe be inspirational to some people and that’s when I decided that “OK, I gotta finish it and put it out.” So I’m very happy to hear that. And I’m also looking forward to the crime sprees that will be happening at English Eels concerts in five years!

MD: Is there something that is uncomfortable about putting so much of yourself in the public domain?

E: Yeah, it’s very uncomfortable but it’s part of what I like to call taking some stitches to keep you from bleeding to death. The hard part about not bleeding to death is that it’s going to hurt taking some stitches. You just have to get through the uncomfortable part to get to the good stuff at the end. It was very difficult to write that book and I would never want to do it again because it was very painful. I can’t say I enjoyed writing it but I can tell you I really enjoyed finishing it. It was really good for me.

MD: having put out the book and the release of the Best of Eels last year, does that draw a line under that chapter of your life now because your personal life has been dragged through your work and everything you could say about your bad times has now been said. With the new album intentionally not autobiographical, is that it? Is that closure?

E: In my mind it’s not so much a line has been drawn but it just seemed the natural thing to happen next after four years of dealing with the past. The last thing you want to do is something autobiographical after all that.

MD: How much of the man who wrote Electro Shock Blues do you still recognise and relate to now, eleven years on?

E: Everybody is gonna be getting older and growing and changing in some ways and you can only ever get younger versions of yourself which is just that, y’know.

MD: Is there a point you can stand back objectively at your body of work and see the good from the not so good and the painful from the frivolous?

E: I can only be so objective being the artist but I do think I’m pretty good at stepping outside of myself and keeping an eye on the big picture, but you can only do that so much when you are that person.

MD: The great thing about being an Eels fan is that, when you go to an Eels show, you never know what the hell you’re going to get. Was it always the intention to do something complete different for each tour or was that born out of necessity when band members left at the beginning?

E: It was always the idea from the start but it creates a lot of problems for us because there’s the kind of music fan who wants to come and see what that band does and see it every time and I never understood that kind of fan. I was always the kind of fan who was always blown away at how unexpected something was, so I’m just trying to impress the concert going me.

MD: what has been your favourite tour?

E: I’ve enjoyed them all maybe equally because they were what I was into at that moment. I get so into that moment that I feel like it’s the only moment – I don’t think about comparing it to another show, but maybe I’m just not aware of it anymore – I just get fully immersed into it

MD: It definitely shows. The last tour when you interspersed the music with readings from the book was less a gig but more of a production – almost like a piece of theatre but not quite, and I really liked the contrast.

E: Sometimes it can get like that!

MD: The first time I saw you was in 2000 for the Daisies of the Galaxy tour, where you had the amazing Lisa Germano and the Eels Orchestra. I was working in the theatre at the time so got to work early to sit in on the sound check from the balcony and was blown away by the sheer scale and scope of what you doing.

E: That was a really fun tour.

MD: What are your tour plans for this year?

E: I don’t know yet, I’m just getting this album out there so we’re just starting to get the planning done for the tour and see where it goes from there.

MD You said before the Strings tour (with a string quartet) that you were tired of the album, tour, album, tour cycle.

E And then I did three different world tours after that!

MD So there is no consistency!

E: Everything can change from one moment to the next…

MD: How are the audiences different around the world?

E: Y’know, they tend to differ from year to year, like you can go back to one city that was terrible the last year and they are fantastic this year and vice-versa so it’s hard to say. It’s an interesting thing that happens and it’s just something that happens with the collective energy in any given room that makes the chemistry that night, not always based on what city you’re in

MD: Of everything you have done and everything you have achieved so far, what are you most proud of?

E: I guess the fact that I’m still doing it. I just always feel good that I’ve been doing it the way I want to do it and it’s nice that it’s worked out. I think it looked to other people after the first Eels album (Beautiful Freak) had commercial success that I was trying to whittle down my audience at that point but really all I was trying to do was focus on doing the best I could do, the way I wanted to do it, by sticking to my guns and that’s what I’ve done the whole time, and the opposite has happened; the audiences have kept growing, very slowly and quietly but in a way that is built to last. I’m just very happy that it’s turned out the way it has and I hope that it keeps going.

MD: One last question that I am frankly embarrassed about and I apologise in advance for asking, but what was the weirdest ‘Dear Uncle E’ letter you ever got?

E: Well, we stopped doing that a few years ago now and I can’t remember any specifically but I think most of them were pretty weird.

MD: Is that a fair reflection of the fan base?

E: I’m really proud of our fan base because there isn’t any particular kind of Eels fan. I mean, I see in the audiences every night they look completely different night to night; there are all different age ranges and colours and sexes and it’s all different. I think that’s great. Y’know, when I was in high school and college I would always look at the different cliques and I always thought they were all missing the point. Back when I was a kid there was a large group of punk rock kids, and I thought they were missing the point because they all looked the same and it wasn’t about being an individual at all. I just feel that we have a large audience of individuals.

MD: I think that what sets Eels fans apart is that they are so knowledgeable about music. They like music for the sake of music and not because it’s cool

E: The only kind of fans I don’t appreciate really, and I think every band has these kind of fans, the fans that get too far into it where they just become assholes, you know, like the internet bitchy fan that just complain about everything because they are too into it. Those people can all go away and I wouldn’t care.

MD: At the end of the day, it’s a record, get over it – if you don’t like it, don’t listen to it.

E: Yeah, they are constantly disappointed based on what they expect me to do and it’s something I wrote about in the book, it’s like, sorry – I’m doing what I want to do. If you want what you expect, start your own fucking band

MD: That’s exactly what I did! Not that I was complaining, but my old band got together through a shared love of Eels. That was our bond and Eels was our musical bible if you like. The ad stated ‘MUST LOVE EELS’

E: Alright! That’s nice to hear!

MD: We broke up. It’s in the past.

E: See? It’s not so easy keeping it together

MD: We got over it, thanks – we’re not bitter. We’re still friends, it’s all OK!

E: That’s how it is with me and all the Eels of the past

MD: It’s so much nicer than bitterness I find. Does the revolving door of artists in the band help to keep things fresh?

E: Completely! I mean, that’s the idea. It’s like you want to get things out of other people’s imaginations that you wouldn’t get out of your own imagination, or from the same group of people year after year, y’know?

MD: So who do you have on this record?

E: It’s just three of us; me and Kool G Murder on bass and knuckles on drums

MD: Fantastic, stripped down, raw and angry! I can’t wait to have a listen when I finally get the link to download it!

E: Hopefully we’ll get on that

MD: well, it has been an absolute pleasure and a joy to be able to speak to you. I have been nervous and excited for days now and I hope I haven’t been terrible for you, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.

E: Not at all, it has been a pleasure

MD: Good luck with the album, and will see you out on tour.

E: Thanks very much

Hombre Lobo is out on Universal on 2nd June

Things The Grandchildren Should Know is out now and published by Little, Brown

www.eelstheband.com

Words > Stuart Hogben