After the Green World Tour
Peter didn't even want to look at an electric guitar, much less play one
Like with most efforts, we don't really
pick a conceptual road that we want to take
We kind of know what we want to avoid
That's the only thing we knew, going into the songwriting process for this record
we wanted to avoid the guitar, pretty much
We'd live with the big rock 'n' roll lineup playing the arenas and stuff
It allowed a kind of impersonality of playing those big huge situations
We wanted to leave that behind
It was fun, but the 90s needed to be something different for us
The rest of us, in terms of musical direction like that
we were always more reactive and not proactive
we'd let Peter be the proactive one and he'd say
"This is what I want to do and this is where I feel we should go"
and, unless anybody had a huge problem with that, we'd say "That's fine"
I personally wanted to make a more Baroque-sounding record for a long time
Well, you know, I love guitar
but I was in danger of becoming very competent or almost competent, which—
For me, songwriting is the main thing I do
and, to keep it fresh, it's nice to try different instruments
For me, the mandolin is kind of a shortcut to stupidity again
For us, as a band, it was kind of a record of challenges
It was an incredible challenge for these guys to write
on instruments that were not their primary instruments
It was an incredible challenge for me
to write the type of songs that I've always despised
Is the new record more political, or overtly political?
No politics
Is that a conscious effort this time?
Yup
Why?
I felt like it
It's all love songs
They're so common, there're so many love songs
they're so poorly written
So, of course, the one biggest challenge as a lyricist
that I could bring onto myself would be to write a body of love songs
that were intelligent – quote, unquote – that were not stupid
I'm really happy with the songwriting
It's one of the first records we've ever done, where I walked in
before we laid down a note and just was really pleased with the songs
I think they're very diverse
You know, it's still us
If you don't like us, you're probably not gonna like this one either
It's destined to be pop legend
It's the best thing we've done
- Really? - Kind of
It's gonna redefine music, I think, in the 90s
Really? How so?
Well, it's brilliant
Do you think it's gonna redefine pop music?
I think we already have
Even before this record
All that, but we still don't have a name for the record yet
What are some of the ideas?
Every record we've ever had, the name just occurs real early
and it makes sense, because it kinda says what the songs are all about
but I think the songs are so—
Nothing links them, really, either lyrically or musically
Nobody knows what to call it
Every time we make a record, we put up a list
and it says "Name this record"
like most of this one, and we're on our fourth page
This is the first page, featuring such great titles as
Imitation Crabmeat
We were thinking of calling it Willful Obscurity
Trolling for Olives
Dignity and Aplomb
- Love the Squalor - Cat Butt
Pomegranate
Those are too literal for us
We needed something more oblique
Warner Bros. called us to say
"Look, your record release is going to be affected
the release date's going to be affected if you don't name this today"
They had all the artwork ready except the actual title
There was just this blank on the mock-up
It was like, pick a title that day, or else it's going to be like Spinal Tap
You know, how black can it be? This black. There'd be no title on the record
I was like "Oh, shit. We're out of time"
You know, it was like "Whoa"
The big shocker, of course, to Warners
was when they announced that they weren't going to tour
How happy did that make them?
We just felt like "Let's not go on the road"
"Let's not just be a performing unit right now"
"Let's just concentrate on working and writing and see where it takes us"
It was like, write songs, record them, tour them
Take a small break and do it all over again
Without a band touring, the record company has to spend
twice or three times as much
Every single person that talked to us said
"You know what? You're just kissing your career good bye"
They're like "You're making an acoustic record and you're not going to tour"
"Well, forget it. Everything you've worked for all these years is gone"