Ian Webber
of the Tender Idols/The Pets 

 

 

Feb. 15, 2003- In the Madcap Studio

 

Lisa King: When did you move to America?

Ian Webber: I came here for the first time in 1992, about the end, December of ’92 just to visit, and then I ended up staying within a month. I came on holiday for about three weeks, and that was it. By the end of the month I was living here.

LK:What part of England are you from?

IAN: I’m from Devon, it’s southwest England, it’s about 5 hours from London. Sea side town, nothing to do, everybody goes there on holiday in the summer. Fake palm trees, all that kind of stuff. Two pubs. I think everybody has this image that everything is really small in England, like London is close to everything. But I’m five hours from London, which because of the roads it takes forever to get there. There is no big main highway. It’s all hills and one lane behind a lorry type of thing.

LK: Talk about some of the records that you discovered very early on. Some of the music that inspired you that you can remember.

IAN: The earliest thing is when I was, god I don’t even remember how old, maybe ten or eleven, something like that, I got one of those tape players for Christmas that has a little portable microphone that comes with it. They were showing a whole load of Elvis movies that Christmas, every single one of his movies, and so I taped every time he started a song. I would tape the song, and they would cut the beginning off, and the end off, so I would get about a minute and a half of all these Elvis songs. So that was the first thing I can remember about taping music and getting music. After that the first couple of tapes I bought was like ELO’s greatest hits, and a Squeeze tape,…that was like really, really early on. And I also remember all of my Mum and Dad’s records I used to listen to them all of the time. They had a lot of Beach Boys and Beatles, all of that typical seventies stuff too, and I definitely remember all of that stuff. When I started school, getting into music, I first joined a band and played bass to begin with. That was when I started really getting into music, and used to practice with this other guy from my class. It was just the two of us because we didn’t have enough people to start a band. So I would just go over to his house and we would listen to Jimi Hendrix and the Doors, Blondie, all of this kind of sixties mixed with early eighties New Wave stuff. We were trying to play those songs, and I at this point had never even sung at all, I was too shy to sing, I just played bass, so we would just play along and do old Doors songs; stuff like that. Which is good fun for a while.

LK: What was it like being in Britain when the whole New Wave kind of hit.

IAN: You know, I don’t remember much there being like some big scene. Because I was living in Devon and Cornwall, which is so far removed from anything cultural; it’s just so country. So, if there was any kind of scene I’m sure it was going on in London, and Birmingham, or Manchester…but it wasn’t going on in Devon or Cornwall. I don’t remember there being any kind of scene, there was just one record shop in my town. I would go down and check out all the new stuff, the top 40 singles and that kind of thing. I used to go to school discos, and I went through so many different phases when I was going through my ska phase, when I was in school, and The Specials and Madness, and all that kind of stuff. That was kind of a scene thing or a movement that was going on. After that the whole Duran Duran and Spandau Ballett, and those bands came out.

The first single I ever bought was “Save a Prayer” by Duran Duran. I bought that and ABC at the same time. See? I can remember all the very first things I bought in music.

I think I was the only boy in my class that liked Duran Duran. I went to the show with about four girls from my class. I’d just switched schools, so I didn’t know anybody. But I liked Duran Duran and they were the only people that wanted to go, they were like “Come on, you can just come down with us!” So that was my first show.

LK: Are there any painters, or writers or anything you’ve read that really hit you or influence you?

IAN: I’m actually a really terrible reader. Being a singer, and writing lyrics, I really should read more. It just takes me so long to read a book. I’m like a big film fan; I’ve seen tons of films, and those really influenced me.

LK: What films?

IAN: God, there’s so many. I like a lot of the underground, alternative stuff. I think one of the first ones I saw over here was “Drugstore Cowboy”, and “Midnight Cowboy” was awesome too…I dunno. There’s so many. You can’t just name one…I depends on what mood you’re in too. Usually the depressing ones are the best ones to inspire you to write.

LK: What attracted you to bass as your first instrument?

IAN: Well, nothing really. I actually had a guitar first, briefly, and I was just interested in playing music, and there were some guys at school that had a band, and were like, “Well, you know, you can play bass…” That’s always the way bass players start I think. “I was a guitar player, but then you know, they needed a bass player…” So that’s what happened to me. I had a birthday, and I got a bass guitar and amp for my birthday. So, nothing really inspired me to play (bass.) Any instrument would have done. Any instrument I would have been happy with. I just wanted to have a guitar or bass, and try to figure it out.

LK: Is there a place or a season, or a time of day that you feel the most creative?

IAN: Probably two or three ‘til seven in the morning. In the middle of the night. I can be a total vampire in America. It’s great. That’s one thing I like about America. Everything is so 24 hours, so you can sleep all day and be up all night, and have a totally opposite schedule to anybody else, and still be able to do your shopping or whatever you need to do in the evening. And that’s the time that I’m most awake, is after 12. If I’m writing a song, I can come up with some ideas in the daytime, but as far as writing words, and lyrics, it takes me all night. I go through the whole night, and after a few hours of just sitting there with nothing, all of a sudden stuff will start to come filtering through. And it’s usually a mixture of lack of sleep, almost like a dream state. If I can get the first line, which for me is the hardest, because from there you can work off that. The album that I just did, I wouldn’t say was fairly easy to write, but it was probably a lot easier than writing stuff for the Tender Idols, just because I took a lot of stuff from growing up and put those into songs, which I didn’t do with the band I was with before.

LK: The album seems very personal, like you were saying, almost like a book.

IAN: That’s kind of how I went about writing the songs, and they all happened within two months which is unbelievable for me, to be able to write that quickly. But it was one of those things where I’ve got all of these things I’ve never said before, so why not just go ahead and say them, just put them on an album of my own.

LK: What were the reasons behind you moving on to that next step from where you were? Were there any reasons you decided to do a solo record?

IAN: As far as the words, I really just wanted to make it more of a reminiscing kind of thing, where I’d had all these real life experiences that I never really talked about growing up. So I wanted to base it all around that. And it’s not something that I really thought about, when I was in the band. It was just a more natural thing to do, because when the solo record comes out it’s just your name against it. And that’s that whole book aspect too, it’s almost like the first part of an autobiography. That’s the way I see it.

But there was no big decision to change, it just came out that way.

LK: When you started to work on the record, did you have a producer in mind? Did you have someone you were talking to or some sort of direction?

IAN: No, I just pretty much threw everything out the window, with all that kind of stuff. I wasn’t interested in going about it the way that everybody is supposed to go about it. It’s one of those things where I had a load of songs written, and I just decided, “Hey, you know what? I’m going to put it out on an album, and I’m just going to pay for it myself.”

The guys in my old band played on the album for me, and we did all of it live in about six days over at Tree Sound Studios, which is a really nice studio. It just so happened that our guitar player had a studio over there. And he has been producing bands too. So it was pretty much self-produced with everybody just accompanying me on the songs live. It was great. We all were just in a big huge room, mike’d everybody up, and it was great. It was like, “Why didn’t we ever record this way before?” Because you’ve got your traditional ways where it’s like, “Okay, bass and drums first, eleven songs, off you go…”

And I’m like, “Well, I’ll be back in two weeks then.” And then it gets to your turn, and you have to record all the vocals for eleven songs in a week, and get inspired for all of those songs to just mixes instrumentally in your headphones. So the way I did it with everybody live in the same room was just great. I loved it. And whenever you look at all of the old videos of bands like The Stones and The Beatles, they all did it that way. So I don’t know why things changed. I think it just got a bit stale.

LK: Sounds really good.

IAN: Yeah, it has a kind of earthy sound.

LK: There’s almost a spiritual element to it. And that’s maybe that’s because as you were saying it’s autobiographical.

IAN: Also, I recorded the songs, and then I gave those guys all tapes, and I think we recorded within about two months of that, and had about a month and a half of practice before we went in an recorded it. So everything was really fresh in everybody’s mind which I think helps a lot. The thing that I would never do again is spend a year and a half recording an album, when you just keep going over and over songs, and it’s bullshit. It’s ridiculous. You just don’t need to do it that way. It’s like, hey, your song’s finished, record it before you loose inspiration to sing it the way it was first sung.

LK: Indoor cat. What does that make you think of?

IAN: My two cats. I have two indoor black cats, so that’s probably what I think of. Those two terrors running around, knocking my shit over, all the time. Waking me up way before mid-day.

LK: Blue screen.

IAN: Blue is probably my favorite color. Blue and black. I probably have more blue clothes than anything else. Blue is a good word too. Screen doesn’t make me think of anything.

LK: Pennies Never Lie.

IAN: Pennies…I hate pennies. I throw them away. All the time. I never save anything like that, so if that tells you anything about me. Loose change, no good.

LK: Down by the River.

IAN: That makes me think of back home. Just growing up by the seaside. Rivers everywhere. Streams everywhere. Throwing stuff in the brook, tadpole catching and stuff like that. And then going to the pub. There’s a pub right by this river, where I grew up that has really strong cider. Which I don’t drink. Pass it on to whoever’s visiting. “Taste this, this is really good…”

LK: Intimacy.

IAN: Not for me, thank you very much. No, I’m scared of all that stuff. I like my own company. I have lots of friends, and stuff, but nobody really close. I keep my own space, and just do my own thing, and if I need company it’s usually somebody that will put up with me for a little while.

LK: Slow Fear.

IAN: I don’t really have any fears, about anything. I kind of live everything for right now, and don’t worry about anything. I suppose that makes me think of getting older, but that’s no big deal.

LK: Modern Orange Sky.

IAN: Could be a cool name for a band. I dunno, “Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Red sky at morning, shepherd’s warning.” Always used to say that, but it always used to rain when we all got up in the morning. Always. So I never saw any red skies. Or orange ones.

LK: I’ll let my sweater figure it out.

IAN: Don’t like sweaters. So, I would probably say, “I’ll let my t-shirt figure it out.” Because I have a million t-shirts that have stuff written on them. But sweaters are kind of ugly to me, you know. It just depends.

LK: We think of Morrissey when we think of sweaters.

IAN: Yeah, I saw him on his last tour, and he was wearing one of those button up sweaters, and that’s like what they used to wear in the eighties anyway. I don’t know if I could bring myself to wear a cardigan.

LK: No turn on red.

IAN: Only in America. Anywhere else in the world, no, you can’t go anywhere. But do whatever you want in America as long as you don’t get hit. And if you get hit from behind, that’s fine.

LK:Crush puppie.

IAN: I dunno…wasn’t “Crush” the last Bon Jovi album? I always wanted a dog, but could never have one. Everyone in my family was allergic.

LK: A doorshape in a dark room.

IAN: That makes me think of my house, with all my bead curtains hanging in between the doors, and I always leave all of my doors open, mainly I suppose so my cats can just run around everywhere they want to. I suppose that makes me think of having lights on in all my rooms, with bead curtains, and the light coming through.

LK: Lamppost and Television.

IAN: Lamppost made me think of right off the top of my head, going to meet a girlfriend at seven o’clock at night, after it gets dark really early in England, at about five o’clock in the afternoon. And all the lampposts are on. And I can just see them all lit up down the road, and me just standing outside going, “I don’t know whether I should knock on the door or not. I dunno…Maybe I’ll just stand out here a little bit more, maybe she’ll come outside.” And what was the other one? Lamppost and what? Television? I could talk forever about television. I had a cool black and white television in my room. Which I wish I had now, because it was totally white and mod. Like a lot of furniture in my house right now. But it would have totally fit in. I dunno where that is now. I always call up my Mum and Dad, and ask them how much stuff of mine they’ve got it their loft, and they’re like, “No, just your schoolbooks,” and I’m like, “What about that black and white t.v.?”

“No, that got thrown out about 15 years ago, Ian.”

LK: You can get those on ebay now.

IAN: I’ve never seen one like that. It had the whole swivel white, the round white swivel thing, the floor stand, and it came off the stand. Awesome. I’m sure it cost like 5 pounds when Mum and Dad decided “Okay, Ian can have a t.v. in his room. Let’s get him this cheap old black and white.”

LK: Story within the story.

IAN: That makes me think of the way I write most of my songs. I try not to be too direct, because that might be giving too much away. So I try to be a bit vague, and leave it up to people to figure out what I’m trying to say. And if people ask me what I’m really talking about, then I can kind of avoid that. There’s different parts in different songs that mean things. But I try not to reveal everything at once.

LK: White glitter notebook.

IAN: Wearing makeup like six years ago. And sprinkling stuff all over everybody else in the band, making them all look like girls.

LK: A moving electric charge.

IAN: I always hated physics in school. Most of my answers are going to be from my growing up past I’m sure. Because that’s what I suppose I think about more. What I relate to. But I was really bad at physics and circuit diagrams, and stuff like that. I never knew the answers to voltage questions. I’d always try to copy somebody next to me. It’s probably been a good thing because I studied photography and filmmaking when I was at school, and I wanted to be a t.v. cameraman. I actually got down to the final interview to be a t.v. cameraman, and the thing that I failed on was the guy showed me a circuit diagram, and was like “Hey, what’s the voltage” and all this kind of stuff, and I didn’t know. I was like, “I haven’t done this for 5 years, since I was at school.” So I failed the thing, and I didn’t get it, so here I am right now. It’s a good thing, because otherwise I could be running around England in a little van for the 6 o’clock news right now.

LK: A waxing crescent.

IAN: All my candles at my house that may start fires. I have a lot of candles, but I’m pretty anal about making sure everything is blown out. Even incense. “Did I leave some incense burning?” I’ll stub those things out before I leave the house.

LK: Line boy and shape girl.

IAN: Boy makes me think of those things you have in swimming pools. These little round balls that they call buoys. That separate the lanes and stuff.

LK: There will be more questions soon.

IAN: As long as there are no equations.

LK: Accuracy.

IAN: Cure song? I just bought that album again, “Boy’s Don’t Cry.” I’m re-vamping all my cd’s and that’s one that I haven’t owned forever. That’s on that album I think, so…

LK: When it falls, you’re at The Point.

IAN: That just reminds me of being at The Point. The old rock club. Like being up in the balcony and watching all the bands. Making sure I don’t fall off the balcony. Because that was always a good place to see bands.

LK: We need a better backdrop for this play.

IAN: Backdrops are like one of my favorite things. Backdrops. I always used to use backdrops and cinema projections, and I think that’s another thing that goes hand in hand with music. It’s part of the presentation, anything that you can add that adds interest to somebody who’s out there listening is a good thing. I always stick up colored sheets or anything that will just distract people, as well as listening to the music.

LK: Velvet crush.

IAN: Some dodgy band that we used to play with when we did a tour with Matthew Sweet, and a couple of the guys in his band were in this band Velevet Crush. I don’t know that their that dodgy, I haven’t listened to their stuff, but that’s what that reminds me of.

LK: Invisibility complex.

IAN: Me skulking out seeing bands play, at the back, with a hat on.

LK: Like “in a white room with black curtains.” Ever thought about that song in that way? The Cream song. “In a white room, with black curtains.”

IAN: I think that was just more about the décor of the era, the sixties mod black and white thing. But yeah, now it takes on a different meaning. Definitely. But that’s me hiding at the back of the room, cause I always like to go out and see different bands play. I just like to go there on my own and check it out because that’s the best way I think to appreciate music, is without anybody trying to say something, or some kind of conversation when the music is playing. You can go outside and talk if you want. But if you go to see a band then just kind of shut up and listen.

LK: Out of convenience.

IAN: Kings of Convenience. A very good Norwegian band. You should check them out. I would describe them as a jazzy Simon and Garfunkel. But it’s brand new stuff.

LK: I’m in the dark, and I can’t see what I’m saying anyway.

IAN: I’m in the dark, and I can’t see what I’m saying anyway? Sounds good. Sounds fine to me. I love the dark.

LK: A five leaf clover.

IAN: It doesn’t exist. Except when somebody at school breaks one of them off, and sticks it to another one and then goes around telling everybody.

LK: We have one.

IAN: So one of your schoolmates broke one off and stuck it together? Did you ever do that at school? Go around looking for five leaf clovers?

LK: Yeah, but we accidentally found one, one day. And it’s legitimate.

IAN: It’s the same thing. Like trying to catch a falling leaf. All the things you do at school. It’s really hard to catch a falling leaf, have you ever tried it?

LK: We used to try to catch those propeller seed pods.

IAN: Yeah, from Sycamore trees. We had lots of those in England. I’m not sure if they come from the same tree in America, but did you have “conkers” over here?

LK: No.

IAN: I don’t even think they have them over here. I’ve never seen them. And I don’t know what the equivalent thing is over here. It’s a tree that has these spiky cone things, that you break open, and there is a brown nut inside, but you can’t eat it. They’re not edible, and we used to boil them to make them really hard, and then drill a hole through them. And then hang them on a shoelace. It’s a schoolgame. Play conkers. That’s what they were called. You would hold them up with the conker at the bottom and somebody else would whack your conker, and whichever one broke apart first, the other one won, obviously, and became a “oner, twoer, or threeer, or fourer” depending on how many games you’d won. But we used to throw sticks up in the trees, I think it’s Sycamore trees, is where you have conkers from. But we would throw them up and break these things open. I’m wanting to say it’s the same tree that has those propellers, but I just haven’t seen one over here.

LK: Flowers grow where your words fall.

IAN: Sounds like a good line. Did you just make that one up? I’ll take it.

LK: We’ll charge you for that. Making opportunity out of necessity.

IAN: That would be making stuff happen for yourself. If you want to get something done, nobody else is going to do it. So, you should do it yourself, and not worry about anybody else. Kind of reminds me of the way I try to think about stuff. You should try to do what you are going to do, and don’t worry about what everybody else thinks.

LK: What was your perception of America before you came.

IAN: “Dukes of Hazard,” Just t.v. shows. We had the “Dukes of Hazard” after the football finished on a Saturday afternoon, that we would watch, and that was American, and then “Starsky and Hutch” and “Dallas.” But that’s what you know, you don’t really know about what it’s like to live here. When I came here the first place I went to was Miami, and that’s like totally bizarre. Miami is just unreal. When I came out here for the first time it was in February, and flew into Miami. So, in England it was freezing, and I had two jackets on, a couple of sweaters, well…maybe not sweaters, but t-shirts…and I flew into Miami, and you get out of the airport and those doors open, the automatic doors open and this is at eleven o’clock at night, and it’s eighty-five degrees outside. And the humidity just hits you, and it’s bizarre. It’s the middle of February, eleven o’clock at night, and it’s like a sauna. It’s weird. There’s a funny smell too. So that was my very very first experience of America. A funny kind of hot smell from Miami. And then palm trees everywhere. It’s very surreal. I was very white. I was the whitest person in Miami.

I don’t think I’d ever had a tan before. And I went from white to red in a week.

LK: Did you have music in mind?

IAN: No actually, I worked on a cruise ship for a couple of years. I was a photographer. They sent us out to ships wherever. I just happened to work on a ship that went to Miami. But I was living in London, and the band I was in broke up, and I’d studied photography, and just answered an ad in the paper, and it got me over to America. From there I was a lot closer, so I was free to be able to get from the ship into America. It wasn’t like I had to pay $500 to fly over to America and find somebody to stay with. I was already on a ship, and I met people from America so it was a lot easier to visit. I discovered a lot of cool bands and places to play, with live music, and they were all playing their own songs, not cover songs. So, I just wanted to get back into the music thing.

LK: What did you think about American bands, growing up in England.

IAN: I went through a big American music fan stage. When I was at school, there was a time when I was really into R.E.M. and there was this big L.A. scene, that kind of jangly-pop rock scene. I had all these albums by bands like The Rain Parade, and Green on Red, and R.E.M. and The Long Riders. I loved all of that stuff. No English bands were doing that. The closest was The Smiths. A jangly thing with an English singer. I liked it all. I guess I wasn’t really all that influenced by it, but I liked a lot of that stuff.

LK: Did you listen to the 4AD catalog?

IAN: Yeah, I have so many albums and cd’s of all sorts of kinds of music, I want to brag that I have a wider musical taste than almost everybody. For so many different types of moods that you’re in, and times of the year, wherever, there’s so many different types of music out there, why not have it all? If you can. So I go through stages, and I listen to all of that stuff. The Cocteau Twins, and then that led into Bauhaus and Peter Murphy, and the gothy kind of stuff. Then back to pop stuff, Depeche Mode. I have it all.

LK: Did you ever listen to the blues?

IAN: There’s the one percent of my bragging that fails me. I don’t have a lot of blues stuff. When I was really young, I had some really old traditional blues records, the famous blues people, Muddy Waters and all that, but I don’t have a huge blues collection.

LK: What did you think about the Yardbirds and Eric Clapton?

IAN: Yeah, I’ve got Yardbirds cd’s, but I think it’s more of the pop stuff. Most of my cd’s center around things with a really good melody, pretty poppy stuff, like that Yardbirds singe, “For Your Love.” It took a while for me to digest it and figure out the Yardbirds turned into all these different bands. To me they were too bluesy. Like the Animals, it was all based around rhythm and blues.

LK:Did the other people you grew up with in England look at that stuff as something that was ‘washed up?’ In America, people will see something, and it’s twenty years old, and think “Okay, We’re done with that for another twenty years. We don’t want to hear about Eric Clapton anymore.”

IAN: No, I think everything is pretty classic in England. Everybody is into classic stuff.

They just had that concert for the Queen, and it was all of those classic bands, and you couldn’t even get a ticket, because it’s so big. And you’ve got all of those people playing. People definitely respect all of those musicians. I think because a lot of the bands from the last fifteen or so years have such a short lifespan, that when you look back at those classic bands you respect them more because they have had long careers. In England everybody has an Eric Clapton album, whatever age you are. They are still in the charts now. I bet if you picked up Billboard and looked at the English top 40, there would be a greatest hits repackage of one of those classic bands. Maybe not so over here, but that stuff lasts.

LK: Do you think because geographically the area is so much smaller than America, that there was a higher concentration of exposure to those acts? For instance, in America, you hear about a band in L.A., and you have to deliberately search that out to listen to it.

IAN: When you live in America for any length of time, then England seems like it is really tiny, and in reality I suppose it is, but living there, it’s huge. I would never plan a trip to go up to Liverpool or Birmingham, or Manchester even if it is about 6 hours from where I live. Even London, that’s like a day trip. It takes you a whole day to get there.

So there really isn’t a community thing, I felt like where I lived in Devon was really cut off from everything else. Although, that’s where Coldplay are from. And also Radiohead went to college in Devon. That’s where the met. Queen are from Devon. They went to art college in Plymouth or something. So it has some stuff going on. But you don’t really travel that much really, within England, even if the distances are a lot smaller than over here.

LK: In America, it seems there is such an over saturation of musical groups, that it is very difficult for a band to rise above that, and get a lot of exposure, is it like that in England too? Where people are so used to this classic rock?

IAN: I don’t think so. Because I never really noticed there being that many bands when I was living there. It’s been about 8 or 9 years, so most English people would probably call me a Yank now. They would say, no you’re not even English anymore. “How can you speak about us lot? Living in America..” I never noticed there being a huge amount of original bands. That’s one thing I liked about over here, there was a lot of original music. Everybody plays cover songs over there. You know, Beatles, Stones, Clapton, whatever. Jimi Hendrix, Doors, they all play that stuff. Covers. And I never felt like there was a huge amount of original music. I suppose there is. I think it works a different way over there. I think the way it works is, you don’t play out as much before you get signed. It’s kind of one of these things where, they discover you, throw your face on the front of a magazine, and all of a sudden you’re huge. Then you go and do a tour of all the cities, without even playing 4 or 5 years, building up an audience in a city. I had never heard of that. It was always like, “This band, they just got together like six months ago, they’re going to be the next big thing.” And they have only played out once or twice. That’s how I feel about that whole thing. Over here, you play out a lot more, and pay your dues.

LK: Who are your favorite vocalists? Melody is something that seems to be very natural to you. Not necessicarially your influences, but who do you like to listen to?

IAN: I really like Martin Gore from Depeche Mode. I wish he was the singer for Depeche Mode. They are like equal favorite bands for me with The Smiths. I really like his voice. I like Barry Manilow, he has awesome melodies. I have a few of his albums, my Mum and Dad had those, so I guess it’s their fault for having Barry Manilow albums. I love the way he writes songs, and builds them up and up and up, and modulates the song at the end so it seems like it’s getting bigger and bigger. Most of the singers that I would like are ones that have memorable melodies. In the chorus, it’s strange, but I always imagine that most songs wind up getting played in restaurant instrumentally, and if you can recognize a song, in a restaurant, then you’ve probably done a really good job with the melody. Actually the latest thing, that I’ve found is ring tones for a cell phones. There are so many ring tones out there, there’s hardly any that you can recognize instantly. And if you can recognize it instantly, then that’s great. I have an INXS ring tone on my phone, and you can recognize it straight away.

LK: What about female vocalists?

IAN: My favorite new singer is Fiona Apple. I think she’s great. I don’t have a huge amount of female singers that I really like. ‘Cause they sing about girl stuff. Guys sing about guy stuff obviously, so that’s why I have more stuff by them. But the singer from Prefab Sprout, is awesome. But I like Nick Drake, Paul McCartney’s solo stuff, really good melodies. I could give you a list of a hundred people, but there is no top five that I would say.

LK: Are there any voices you heard that you thought really stood out in your first impression? Some of them may be very odd, even if you are not really a huge fan or influenced by them.

IAN: The early stuff was probably like Leonard Cohen. I don’t know if he really sung, or if he talked, but it is still put to music. Like what we were talking about earlier, Elvis, was a huge first impression. Just because he has a really powerful voice.

LK: Do you like his earlier stuff and his later stuff?

IAN: I never liked any of his later stuff. I always hated “Suspicious Minds.” I always liked really early stuff. The really raw early stuff. His first album is his best I think. But I do like some of the cheesy stuff too, like some of the soundtracks from “Fun in Acapulco” and “Blue Hawaii.” Where he’s singing this salsa kind of boss nova stuff. That’s another type of music that I really like a lot.

LK: You spent some time in Athens, Ga. Did you feel any kind of inspiration being around the place where some of the music you listened to in school was being created?

IAN: Yeah, I did feel that a little bit actually. I saw them at the 40 Watt, played pool with Mike Mills. You do feel that to begin with. That’s just one of those new things, about everything being new in America. Which is almost why I feel like I should move somewhere else. Even another country. Maybe I should move to Sweden. Totally different. I feel like I know the American culture now. Now I’m ready to be completely messed up and thrown into something else. I could do that. I would like to do something like that. It would be kinda cool to be thrown into a completely different culture.