Interview with Tori Amos
For Alternative Press
(Pre-magazine edit)
 

Shape Of Her Heart
Tori Amos sets off on a wild journey around the heart – wearing her battle scars like armor.
Randee Dawn stows away in the cargo hold.

Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
-- Flaubert

On this placid June day the lobby of London's hotel H---- is still and patient, everything designed in a quaint English coziness, from the rich green walls to the lush bouquets of fresh flowers. Stargazers startle with an overabundant sweetness, ivy trickles along a nearby mantelpiece and everything is in its place, as if the hotel is simply waiting.

And into the quiet, Tori Amos arrives. She is not alone: Outside a car with a driver awaits; alongside her is her assistant Natalie, tall, capable, strawberry-blonde. While Tori, small, wide face, hair straggly and the color of an old penny, graciously greets and sizes up her interviewer, Natalie immediately sets down her bags and heads with blinding efficiency to the desk to check everyone into the hotel. Everyone wishes they had a Natalie. Because of her, even though Tori has just ended a lengthy train ride from her where she lives in Cornwall with husband Mark Hawley, it is possible for her to say, immediately, "Well. Should we get started?"

In a moment.

Articles about Tori Amos spend a fair amount of time trying to capture her in a net of adjectives. Fair enough: That is, in large part, what writers are supposed to do. But rarely do they seem to rhapsodize and overcompensate as much as they do with Amos. Read her press and learn: She has a (not-visible to the naked eye) bone deformity in her face, she's elfin, she's a wisp with striking pale gray eyes and a torrent of flashing red hair. She's painted floridly enough that on meeting her it is expected that a cartoon of a spritely fairy will appear and start spouting literary and mythological references which writers, ever-eager to prove that they are at least as smart as their subjects, will regurgitate, thereby proving that they are in touch with/in harmony alongside the ethereal Mistress Amos.

Fortunately, that doesn't happen.

"…Shadow defines light," she is saying later on, sitting firmly in the bright sunshine, parked on a Holland Park bench on a day so fine everyone who passes seems shell-shocked. "You can't have one without the other. It's a choice on how we use it. To say I don't ever feel murderous…. Oh, please. We think of that term as being associated with blood. Chucky. Scream." She makes a stabbing motion with her hand. "Eh, eh, eh."

Her lyrics don't help matters. They're thick and chewy on first listening, but that's not a dis: With repeated listenings, Amos' mind comes through clearer, meanings lose their fuzziness, phrases take on a near subconscious meaning. But who would know the meaning of "auditioning for reptiles in their Raquel Welch campaign" (from her forthcoming "Glory of the '80s") if you didn't know a pre-fame Amos had once appeared in a commercial with La Welch? The point being that with Tori's lyrics, like the woman herself, she's the only one who really gets all of it. Everyone else merely interpreting.

She continues, "…But there are ways that we withhold from other people, there are ways we don't give it up to somebody who could really use it in that moment. It's about power; we all have different ways of not being there for our friends, for ourselves. That's our shadow. Someone asked me if I watch horror movies, and that's not where the real horror is. That's so obvious. The horror is when you're watching two women at a restaurant and they're talking and you're seeing how they know each other well enough to know the buttons and the sensitive places and they're sitting there … they don't even need to pick up their knives."
And still, the fact remains that Tori Amos has not been portrayed accurately. (This article probably doesn't do her justice, either.) There is little doubt she has the ability to be the over-literate faerie goddess/sprite/flake writers expect her to be. But on two days in June of 1999, Tori Amos was none of the things that have been written about her. She is small, but far from frail; she has a sturdy, broad face and a terse, wiry body. She is not overly girly, and the only affectations noticeable are her lack of inhibition in touching the person she's talking to in order to make a point and her extended pauses between words. She stares directly into your eyes, but no more so than anyone should be able to handle.

"… Women … we mine emotions. We know them as weapons and we also know them as medicine. Why do they always have to have a happy ending in some of those Hollywood movies? It's very distressing, because sometimes people don't get back together. And sometimes people do die. And sometimes the person that you love doesn't make it."

 So when she turns out to be pretty much completely normal (as much as that word can apply to anyone) … that's the really disconcerting thing.

Picture a heart. A real, bloody, beating heart. Think of it in three dimensions. Then, imagine you could take a journey around it, like the space shuttle orbiting earth, or a photographer circling her subject, wanting to see every angle, commenting along the way. Get that, and you've got the basic premise behind Tori Amos's sixth studio release, a two-CD set called To Venus And Back, which includes one CD of new music, Venus Orbiting, and a live CD, Venus Live. Still Orbiting. It's an album that came together in an unusual, unplanned way, and has come in the wake of major life changes in Amos' life: A miscarriage at the end of 1996, then a marriage in early 1998 – both of which have affected her more deeply than she could have ever expected. There's a lot going on with Venus – and even Tori isn't fully aware of all of the layers of herself that have gone into shaping it.

Which is at least where things stand on this fine June day.

"I've been around the world seven times, and I'm always trying to go behind the heart," says Amos. "That place, where the unconscious lives. I don't think it lives in the head … I think it is behind the heart. On this record, each song has a different perspective of what love is. What motivates the heart is very different for this character in each song."

Tori Amos is not the sort of artist to release gimmicky albums. She takes her musical expression seriously, from concept to execution, because, music is her real first language. As she notes, "I don't think that you write songs because in your everyday living you express yourself exactly the way you want." Hence her long pauses, hence her occasional dip into singing her lyrics mid-sentence to make herself better understood. As with many serious artists, writing music isn't a hobby or just something they're good at; creation is an imperative -- something they have to do in order to communicate. "Sometimes, I just want to play a song for somebody," she continues, "and you're always being graded, because it's what you do, and you've been doing it so long people say, 'Oh, you should put that on the next record.'" She sighs. "It's like, I was just playing a little tune. One of the great things about playing with the guys in the band is that sometimes we'd just sit there at soundcheck and play. And nobody hears it. It's not about, 'Is it finished? Is it good enough?' It's just about people jamming."

So last year, when the time seemed right, she began writing again, with no solid plan in mind. "It was just going to be B-sides, a double [live] box set with just a few extra tracks that hadn't been written yet," she explains. "What I saw was to do a live record of songs over a ten-year span, and I knew I was going to start writing something, but I didn't think I was going to write a whole novel. As you don't, sometimes, when you start writing."

But then, Amos was kicking back with a bottle of wine and two friends (including Natalie) to share it, and they were discussing the concept behind her new work, and how it would all tie together with the live music. "They were asking me what I was going to call this thing," remembers Amos. "One of the women said to me, 'Could you see yourself like an astronaut? I mean, if you could, would you go to Mars?' And I said, 'Oh, no. Not me and Mars. That's all too male for me.' And the other woman said, 'You'd go to Venus, wouldn't you.' And I just looked up and said, 'That's it! To Venus and back!' "

Earlier, walking into Holland Park, Tori Amos is full of questions for her interviewer, which is flattering, but there is one question in particular she wants to get out in the open. "Did you get the CD player?"

Her concern is genuine: She really wants her songs heard a particular way, and anything less is unacceptable. She'll even wield her not inconsiderable power to have a CD player bought for a luckless interviewer, in order to have those songs heard correctly. And it's worth going through the trouble. Through a CD player's headset, her newest tracks: "Bliss," "Juarez," "Suede," "Glory of the 80s," "Lust," "Concertina," and "Riot Proof" take on an undeniable third-dimensionality. The music seems to encircle the listener's head, like an invisible helmet … or a photographer circling her subject, wanting to see every angle, commenting along the way. Hearing the music as a tangible object changes it – and puts the listener in the moment of Amos' thoughts. She grins at the notion. "You're in it, it's like a hologram, and you become a person in the circumference, because the music is traveling with you. You're in the shape. When I hear things, it's always about a visual for me, it's a shape, with dimensions."

Which makes the concept of a Tori Amos live record – one not recorded in an evening, as with her 1997 RAINN benefit "retrospective," but made up of careful selections from a previous tour – seem almost impossible. How could someone so attenuated to the shapes of sounds and so exacting in her need to have those sounds heard properly ever settle for the aural imperfections of live recordings?

Well, first, she learns to compromise, something she's finding a lot easier to do lately. "There is a self-righteousness," she muses, "that can come so much from people who are in their 20s. I was pretty self-righteous then, myself." Assembling a band for From The Choirgirl Hotel was a first major step in learning to compromise – though certainly not sell out – and the live record is a next logical progression. Still, once you've recorded every single song from every single performance on an extensive Choirgirl tour, you've got a lot of music to wade through. "Talk about throbbing jaws!" she laughs ruefully, referring to her often-painful facial bones. "Sometimes, it's agony to see how bad you can really get. But we've gone through every single song, and we had a ranking system, 1 through 4, with 4 being the best. And my performance … there were a lot of 1.7s."

The band members had an equal input. "Sometimes they would say I was being too harsh," remembers Amos, "or sometimes they would say, 'Obviously you have an emotional attachment to this show, but … it's only a 2.' " Ultimately, what won out for the live record was not the need to have every popular Amos song represented, but rather to cull the strongest performances from the tour. "It's a tricky thing to decide what songs will make it," she admits. "Obviously, I have a bias for certain ones – 'Bells for Her' – needs to get on, because Marcel [van Limbeck, engineer] and I have a soft spot in our hearts for it on this tour. Mark has a soft spot for 'Space Dog.' Is it my vision to have 'Space Dog' on? No. But there is a place for it."
The new songs were, as she'd mentioned, originally to have been included with some B-sides leftover from the Choirgirl era, but as she came up with more of them, and as a concept began to spell itself out in her head, clearly, there was something bigger at work. And once Marcel heard them, says Amos, "He said, 'You can't put this with the B-sides. They don't live in the same world.' This is a world. And they work with a live CD because the two CDs are separate … but together."

If Amos's new songs are, indeed, a separate world, it's a much  happier place to live. Amos verbally winces at the idea: "I don't think the work is becoming lightweight," she protests. "We equate happy with vapid."

Then, perhaps … content? Between the bodily fluids of "Lust" to the wildness of "Bliss" to the resigned nostalgia of "Glory of the '80s," early versions of her new works definitely have a wider world-view that seems to be coming from the head of, yes, a happier person. Yet Amos herself sings on "Concertina," "It could all get way too cheerful." If she's wary of such labeling, so be it. But Amos herself is in a better frame of mind than ever, and one of the primary sources of her newfound flexible happiness is marriage. Few people are as surprised as Amos to discover that – at least for the time being – the state of wedlock agrees with her. "People started coming up to me and going, 'You look really happy,' " she confesses. "I would just be sort of reading the paper, sitting there. Marriage has been this mystery adventure for me. It's … really different than I thought it would be."
She thinks about it a bit, and her gradual assessing takes a few minutes. As most fans already know, Amos married Hawley in February of 1998 in a neo-Victorian, pagan-English ceremony. Hawley had been the father of her miscarried child, and they'd been dating in secret for some time. After the wedding, Amos promoted Choirgirl, went all quiet for some months, and emerged with Venus. And what her months of silence have proved is that her head has been very preoccupied with her heart. "Marriage has changed me," she states after a moment or two. "I've lived with other men, and I've been blessed in having had some good experiences with men. But because those relationships split up, some people would think we failed. No. They weren't failures. And in 20 years, if Mark and I want to move on and experience something else, that doesn't take away from what we have right now. This sense of calmness I'm getting is because of what I went through with them, and what I'm going through now. The whole idea of failure is changing for me."

As many things are. There is a certain maturity in learning to interpret life as a circle, wrapping back upon itself as it spins around an axis, rather than a linear experience with no useful end in sight. Making sense out of life's disappointments and tragedies takes time, and while Amos would probably shrink from considering herself fully healed, she's at least learning to live with her scars. That includes coming to terms with her miscarriage. When asked about it, she speaks vaguely of gynecological reports, operations and becoming healthier, signs that perhaps the miscarriage was merely a wake-up call to a larger problem. "Would I like to be a human mother? Yeah. But there isn't really the race for children at this point, because sometimes I think you have children just to fill a need with dealing with your own lost childhood," she says. "I've had to work through a few health issues that deal very much with being a woman, and I'm feeling healthy now. Sometimes, things out of control are happening to you within. Your cells are mutating – stop! So I'm trying to find ways to get to places I don't know how to get to, because I do think that something spurs the body to start imploding."

All of which has led her to work at making peace with her body, not just her scars. "I think I'm at this stage where as I think about it I'm becoming fulfilled. Just as a woman. So much of the time you're the daughter of somebody, or the wife of somebody or the girlfriend or mother of somebody … and it's nice to just have womanhood."

So there she is – Tori Amos, adult. Not the waifish little girl so widely portrayed (the sprite lives inside), but instead a grown up person, with all of the trappings of normality – a husband, a home, a career, good friends – turned just a half-degree off-center. The ability to recognize change, and incorporate it into her work has made Amos stronger, and if Venus is truly about anything, it's about allowing her long-time fans to come along for the ride with her. On this trip, Amos is definitely not going backwards. "People ask, 'Are your songs autobiographical?' and the answer is yes, but only up to a certain point," she says. "My songs work like a diary – and that's it. You can only write your diary once. I wouldn't write 'Spark' again. I have no interest in rewriting anything I've already done."

Sidebar
The Excursion Route

"This album is so much about the heart," insists Tori Amos, "even if it's stuff that makes you crazy." On the other hand, Amos isn't much for explaining her songs – since she's just interpreting, too: "I don't think about what the songs mean to people when I'm trying to translate them, because it's out of my hands." Herewith, then, a travel planner for the journey to Venus and Back. Just watch for the potholes.
 

"Suede"
"There's this moment in 'Suede' where I really feel [the narrator's] being called 'evil' by this other person because of whatever she's done to them in their minds. But there's this side of obsession and passion where one party thinks the other party is doing something to them … and sometimes people aren't always looking at their part in something. In 'Suede,' she knows what she's up to, she knows what she's been doing."

"Concertina"
"Do you ever feel like you walk in a room, and you don't know why, but … you're just so uncomfortable you're crawling out of your skin, even though nobody's touched you, physically? That's in 'Concertina,' when you feel like you haven't excavated enough of your different personalities that when one pops up, you're not sure where it came from, and you try to hack it out of yourself. It shocks you that you could have this kind of fault, or that other people could bring it out in you."

"Juarez"
 "I read an article before we went on tour, about several hundred women in Juarez, Mexico, who had been taken out to the desert and brutally raped and murdered. When they didn’t come home, their brothers would go and look for them, and many times they’d find nothing, sometimes they’ll find a hair barrette or a sock or something they knew was their sister’s. The authorities haven’t really done anything about it ... they get into this serial killer theory. I mean, how much serial can one man indulge in? So as the song started to develop, I really began taking the voice of the desert, singing in that perspective."

"Bliss"
 "Sometimes when you express thoughts to people, you do leave it open for somebody to tromp in there, and start tearing it down. I sing, 'father I killed my monkey,' to lead off the song, which explains that sometimes you even destroy your own so they can't excavate it. When I was growing up, I started becoming very secretive about my thoughts and the sensory world I would go to, because there's a lot of mind control as you and I both know that goes on constantly, people wanting access: What are you thinking? So sometimes I'd have my own defense going, which would be to look them straight in the eye and make them think I've killed my imagination. But it's like, I'll take control."
 

It's 11:30 on a Saturday night, and what's that sound? It's a hot blasting sax wail, designed to shake things up and smack a viewer right out of his couch potato complacency -- and for 25 years, the opening theme music for Saturday Night Live has worked like a charm. Whether the Saturday Night Live Band opening and closing the show, playing during a sketch, or a musical guest performing one of two pre-arranged songs during an evening, ever since SNL first began airing in 1975, music as been as inextricably intertwined in the show's format as comedy.

"Comedy and music always went together," insists original music director Howard Shore (1975-1980; 1985). And he's referring to the days before there even was a SNL -- when he and pal Lorne Michaels were teenagers playing around with SNL precursor, "The Fast Show" in Canada. When they transferred their concept of a late-night music and comedy show to NBC and were given all but free reign to do what they liked, Shore took full advantage of his part in things. Instead of setting up his musical ensemble in the style of the popular shows of the day (The Merv Griffin Show, The Tonight Show) with a big, swing band, he leaned closer to Junior Walker and the All-Stars. Culling together a group of heavyweight studio musicians, Shore deviated from the norm and played music he wanted to hear.

As it turned out, so did much of the country. "That particular formula of having all those horn players was unusual," explains current co-musical director Cheryl Hardwick, (a mainstay for the first five years, who returned with Michaels in 1985).  "At that time, R&B music featured a lot of horns, so you could do hip stuff, classic rock and roll, but have this horn section to keep the studio happy."

"It was always my intention to write a theme song that would be fluid, that would change with the different years musically, and that was timeless," explains Shore -- and with that notion, the music on the show became just as countercultural as much of the comedy. Dipping into his large jazz and R&B vocabulary, Shore set up a R&B/blues/rock format that at once sounded familiar ... yet has never sounded dated.

Late Show With David Letterman musical director Paul Shaffer got his first big-time gig playing piano with Hardwick during the first five years of the show. "I was thrilled that finally we were using rock and roll as a style within to do musical comedy and parody," he remembers. "Until Saturday Night Live, a musical number on television would be one where the guy says, 'Oh, let's do a wonderful '30s sendup' or 'Let's do a flapper parody.' "

Among the band's responsibilities were to play in and out of commercials, during commercials, provide music for sketches (on an average week, Hardwick helps put together approximately 10 to 15 songs, perhaps one or two of which will make air), and occasionally back up the visiting musical guests. Every so often, particularly in the early years, band members also participated in sketches -- sometimes in bee costumes, as nurses, and Egyptians (backing up Steve Martin's "King Tut" number), and occasionally in featured roles, such as Shaffer's impersonation of Don Kirshner.

Amidst all of this music and comedy integration, something huge finally emerged. "I got a call one day in 1978 from Howard Shore," recalls Tom Malone, who was with the show from inception, hired like Shaffer to help write songs for the show, but who became musical director from 1981-1985. "And it turned out John [Belushi] and Danny [Aykroyd] had this idea for a comedy routine, where these sleazy musicians who wear the same suit -- too small on one, too large on the other -- do these funny dances and play blues music." The idea took some coaxing (Michaels rejected using The Blues Brothers as anything more than an audience warmup at first, then tossed it in at the dead end of the show after a few weeks) but ultimately became one of the show's biggest breakout hits, spawning albums and two films.

In between all of this, there was a constant stream of musical guests, one per show, performing two songs, sometimes appearing in sketches. "When Star Wars was out," remembers Shaffer, "Carrie Fisher hosted the show. So we did a sketch where Princess Leia fell to earth in the middle of a beach party." More notorious were guests like Elvis Costello, who early in the show's history stopped playing the tune he'd rehearsed and launched into "Radio, Radio," an attack on the radio establishment; many years later Sinead O'Connor would mortify several nations of Catholics while tearing up a photo of the Pope onstage. But most of the time, the cast and crew were just in awe of their musical visitors.

"You got these really candid moments, where Paul McCartney comes in and sings," remembers Hardwick, "and all of the secretaries are mooning around the stage. And when Aretha [Franklin] is there, or Mick [Jagger], of course your blood is running faster."

"We always view it as a special event when one of Columbia's own makes an appearance on the show," enthuses Don Ienner, Chairman of Columbia Records Group. "From Bill Withers in 1975 to Ricky Martin in 1999, and the many performers in between, Columbia's artists have consistently benefited from the great exposure the show has provided."

To Executive Vice President and General Manager of Atlantic Records, Ron Shapiro, the results of having an artist appear on SNL are tangible. "It remains the pinnacle live television booking for musical acts," he explains. "It has not only has the most eyeballs to be seeing one three-minute song, but it's also probably got your most targeted demographic audience. By and large that the people watching SNL love music and are pro-active about going to buy it."

A recent appearance by Irish band The Corrs shocked everyone at Atlantic: "SNL decided they wanted to break the Corrs, and booked them," recalls Shapiro. "This is a band who have painstakingly sold a quarter million albums in America, then gone away. And their new album wasn't doing anything. But they went on the show, and the sales of their albums just skyrocketed. Within our industry, once you get booked on SNL, all of a sudden you're worth begin taken note of."

From the start of the show music was integral, and remained so even after the mass cast and writers' exodus after the fifth season. Starting from scratch, the show hired former Jay and the Americans singer Kenny Vance as new musical director, and he attempted to introduce a new opening and closing theme. By the time the show was shut down for re-working halfway through the season (it had lost nearly all of its focus and direction without the original members), however, he was gone and Malone had been hired in his place. With Malone in charge, the band was forced to take a back seat, playing out of a loft high above the stage, and rarely were invited back down to participate with the cast. Although the show remained on the air, the band remained in the background until 1985, when Michaels returned with many original members -- including Shore as a consultant and Hardwick. The following year, G.E. Smith (who had been married to original cast member Gilda Radner) was paired with Hardwick as a co-musical directors.

"No one knew where this show was going by then," Hardwick recalls. "We had to get the momentum back." Smith took over fronting the band, leading with his own favorite style of music -- guitar-driven blues -- and Hardwick worked closely with the writers. It was never easy, she says, but it taught the musicians an enforced versatility. "We had to be this guerrilla unit that could march into any battle and do a samba one minute and then do a Broadway show tune another minute, and then play Led Zeppelin."

The Smith-fronted band once again was given center stage, was listed in the show's opening, and for the first time was featured as bumpers leading into commercials. Smith also took full advantage of inviting fellow guitar players to come sit in and display their chops. "I wanted to bring more of a bluesy kind of music to television," he explains. "When Buddy Guy was in town, he'd sit in. David Gilmore from Pink Floyd, Eddie Van Halen when [wife] Valerie Bertinelli hosted the show. When Eric Clapton was on the show, he sat in with the band, and at the end of the night he played the closing theme with us. We went off the air, and he kept playing -- for another 30 minutes. It was great: Even the old union guys, electricians and cameraman, wouldn't close the place down while he was playing."

In 1995, Lenny Pickett (who had been with the show since 1985) replaced Smith as Hardwick's other co-musical director, and he has remained in that position ever since. As a sax player, Pickett has helped the band revert to their brass roots, and tends to take a more low-key approach to leading the band. "It's our job to be chameleons, and provide whatever music is needed," Pickett points out. "We have a function that's a little like clowns in the rodeo. We're in-between acts, between the bronco busting and the bull roping, and there has to be something to keep the people busy between commercials."

And yet, the band has always been more than just a way to keep people occupied; it runs an invisible -- though audible -- thread through the entire production that lends a full-circle stability and closure to a show that relies on neither for survival. When Hardwick retires after this season, she expects there will be more changes, yet again. But she also has every expectation that the show will go on. "You can't put a dagger in the heart of this thing," she believes. "It's going to live. But you have to stay current, and little by little the band will start getting younger as people are replaced. When we started, disco was current. Now it's a reference point. So we can do that kind of thing, but deep in your heart you know that some 23-year old should be doing this -- not Grandma."

To a director, location is everything --  particularly if you're going to pick up and move that everything to the cantankerous, often rewarding locale of New York City. To a composer, however, location is an afterthought. Yet woven into that afterthought is a complex set of reasons as individual as their compositions that keep several of Hollywood's most eclectic composers anchored in the East. And by insistently placing themselves outside the "bubble" of L.A. industry, they echo the statement made by the independent film revolution: If you want originality, look outside the system.

"Being here wasn't a conscious thing," says composer Howard Shore (Analyze This, Dogma), who moved from Toronto in 1975 to work on Saturday Night Live and never left, even after he reinvented himself as David Cronenberg’s film composer. "By now, I'm connected to New York, and the great cultural diversity that is here. Just to be able to go regularly to the Metropolitan Opera, to be that close to it so puts me in the right frame of mind for writing music."

Composer Elliot Goldenthal (Titus, The Butcher Boy), on the other hand, says he's found a perfect fit for his style of music by incorporating New York’s quirks. "A lot of my music is very demanding -- and New York musicians spend their days playing Stravinsky and Mahler and Beethoven. Musicians in L.A. spend 90 percent of the time playing commercial music. They’re perfectly able to play complex compositions ... but in New York there’s less stretching of muscles to access difficult pieces. New York musicians are already in tune with what I want."

Carter Burwell (O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Mystery, Alaska), like Shore, more or less fell into composing, scoring the Coen brothers' films, among others, but echoes Goldenthal's admiration for the quirks in the system. "I find an interesting amalgam of musicians here who are well off the commercial mainstream radar. They're not really session musicians --  they've developed peculiar individual styles and approaches to musical problems that I like."

As ostensibly the dominating trinity of major film composers who base themselves in and around New York, Shore, Goldenthal and Burwell would seem to form the framework of a legitimate scene of composers who refuse to adhere to the rules set up by the West Coast. But all three deny that any real sense of "scene" exists in New York. For one thing, notes Burwell, "Composers tend to be people who just work by themselves. I probably have a social moment with another composer twice a year."

Lonely lot or no, however, film composers express almost uniformly warm thoughts towards the city in which they're based, praising the diversity of the musicianship, the unique sound quality found in the oft-used Manhattan Center (originally built by Oscar Hammerstein in the early 1900s and sometimes used as a convention ballroom when not booked for recording), and the sheer pleasure of being surrounded by culture, yet not drowning in industry. "I feel like I'm lucky to be able to stay and work here," says up-and-coming composer Edmund Choi (Wide Awake, The Castle), currently under contract with Miramax. "Right now it benefits me to be here in case Harvey Weinstein needs me, but I have family here and I like the vibe of New York. Los Angeles is a very interesting city, but it's bubble land. You live in your own little bubble, you drive in a bubble to another bubble at work. In New York, you can at least pop out your head and see different people, and that feeds me from an emotional and mental point of view."

But not everything is so rosy: Composers for television series have seen their jobs farmed out internationally more and more over the past few years, as viewership has fragmented, and budgets slashed. "It's a business here, but it's not a big business, and it's getting smaller every day," sighs Shelly Palmer, president and creative director for Palmer Intermedia, who composes for TV ads and shows like Spin City. "The commercial production industry is already over --  anybody who tells you they're in the jingle business is just lying. The state of the business in New York is somewhat underwhelming because the dollars just aren't there. It's such a small amount of work available for the money, and it forces you to look in other areas."

And so many have --  Brian Keane (New York: A Documentary Film, Babe Ruth), scores for television most of the time, contributes to occasional features, and also produces records. But he says he likes working on the East Coast because "they're less corporately-influenced here. L.A. tends to be slavish to corporate interests, and the New York musicians' scene is much better from the standpoint of diversity and innovation. Innovation is not one of L.A.'s assets."

Composer John Morris (Blazing Saddles, Stella), who currently scores the series of Gene Wilder's Larry "Cash" Carter A&E mystery movies, agrees. "There's a sameness to California. Some of the happiest moments of my life have been working for PBS in New York. Those shows wouldn't be done in California."

Still, even those who extol the virtues of the Big Apple confess that it lacks one major component: recording space. "In the last couple of years, we've been screaming our heads off for recording spots," explains music and orchestra contractor Emile Charlap. Says Charlap, there are only three major places for an 80-90 piece orchestra in New York. For a slightly smaller orchestra, there are approximately six locations, and below that, perhaps a hundred or more. "We have a real lack of space for a large orchestra."

And, on a different level, most composers grumble over the high cost of hiring musicians. "Sometimes, [unions] price themselves out of existence," notes symphonic composer, and occasional film composer John Corigliano (The Red Violin, Revolution). "Only a few orchestras can afford to record in this country."

Goldenthal agrees. "There's a lot of scoring going on in London because of the union situation. Sooner or later the unions are going to have to confront the situation when they find they're losing too much work. The London orchestras are booked like crazy, and they're going to get more and more work that takes away from both the L.A. and New York musicians. I'm not anti-union, I'm pro compromise, because I like to see musicians keep working --  and keep working here."

Between the lack of space and high union fees, composers have discovered that even if you live and score in New York, you don't have to record here. Few, if any, composers score and record exclusively in Manhattan, even when they call it home. "There have been tremendous leaps in communication," notes Keane. "From FedEx to the Internet. Now, from the standpoint of convenience, it's less convenient to drive across the horrendous traffic of Los Angeles to a composer's studio than it is to get an MP3 file over the Internet into your edit room."

Even newcomers recognize that permanent relocation can be made to a city of preference, and recording and scoring can be done on a where-needed basis. "Once you get to a certain level, you can really be anywhere," says Ryan Shore (Analyze This, Gloria), who moved to New York to work with his uncle, Howard. "You could be in Wisconsin, as long as you have a fax machine, a phone, FedEx and an airport nearby."

The global reach of composing hasn't been entirely absorbed by the industry yet --  composers like Burwell recognize that they may have lost out on some jobs because they aren't in the thick of things. There is a plus, however: "The up side is that I don't waste my time going to a lot of those coffees and meetings with directors, and usually people who come all the way across the country to find me --  I usually think it's because they're serious about my work."

And there's always the flipside to those die-hard New Yorkers who venture forth to record their compositions in cheaper, more spacious venues like Melbourne, Australia or Los Angeles --  the occasional Los Angeles based composer who prefers New York. David Robbins (Cradle Will Rock, Everything That Rises) grins that he comes East to score his brother Tim's films because Tim refuses to go West, but adds that there's nothing like the energy of New York City. "I have an affinity for that kind of connection. In Los Angeles, if you get the same cronies together every time, there's a little more of them controlling you than you controlling them. I worry about that less in New York --  I can throw together different sets of musicians from different areas, who know each other but haven’t necessarily worked together, and that's very refreshing."

Another convert to the East? Quite possibly so. In this day and age, with today's technology, there's no reason why location has to be an afterthought any more. "For whatever I've done in New York," notes Robbins, "New York has been just perfect."
 

Having a hard time distinguishing the Top 40 chart from TV ad campaigns? You're not alone. Thanks to broadcast advertising campaigns from companies like Gatorade, Nissan and Revlon, which spotlight recent chart hits from musicians like Smash Mouth, Lenny Kravitz and Shania Twain, the sound of TV advertising is becoming less and less distinguishable from what may be blasting out of your personal CD player. It's a recent trend ad agencies and corporations are taking in stride -- but which has industry insiders wondering: At what point does advertising cease being a way to sell a product -- and instead become a way to co-opt the personal experience of enjoying a new song?

What it boils down to is that the first generation who screamed, "I want my MTV" are now changing their rallying cry to "I want my MTV everywhere" -- and changing the industry to fit that desire. Snappy jingles, says Adweek critic Barbara Lippert, don't cut it any more. "Having to advertise on MTV made advertisers realize they had to seem that much cooler," she explains. "Plus, there's a lot more cross-pollination between people who do music videos and movies and commercials these days."

One example of such cross-pollination is director Samuel Bayer, who directed videos by bands like Marilyn Manson and Nirvana ... and most recently tackled Nissan's X-Terra ad campaign, featuring Lenny Kravitz's 1999 hit, "Fly Away." Recalls TBWA Chiat-Day copywriter Mark Abellera, who worked with art director Jason Stinsmuehlen to conceptualize the campaign, "If we ended up using this music video guy and put some lame music with it, it would fight the images."

Nissan cold-called Kravitz's record company, Virgin Records, and made their pitch. "They were using a top-quality video director," remembers Virgin Senior Vice President of Visual Marketing and Licensing, Cynthia Sexton, "and they were going to be spending a substantial amount of money on the media buy, which when we're licensing is something we take into consideration. An ad campaign, in general, is a good thing. The amount of eyeballs and eardrums we can expose our music to can only be a good thing."

Agreed -- but good for who? Although Sexton insists that no product is endorsed by an artist's music unless the artist agrees to it, once an artist has become a major commodity, the stakes seem to increase exponentially. Shania Twain, for example, had been looking around for sponsorship for some time, and was in talks with Revlon when she appeared on this year's Grammy telecast singing a new tune, "Man, I Feel Like A Woman." Watching her performance sold the song. "It was the perfect pitch for the Revlon campaign," insists President of Special Artists for CAA (who represent Twain), Liz Dalling.

Revlon not only co-opted the song for their Color Stay Liquid Lip campaign, but also re-shot some sequences that appeared in Twain's stylish video for their own ads. "We embraced her overall image," says Grace Tallon, Revlon's Marketing Director. "We weren't looking to change her at all."

That co-opting intent is precisely what bothers critics like Carrie McLaren, who publishes Stay Free!, a non-profit magazine that examines commercialism and American culture. "When you look at the evolution of advertising, it grows and absorbs things that aren't advertising until everything becomes advertising," she notes. "When they've completely outdone music, they'll have to move on to something else. We've already got advertising in the schools -- it absorbs the entire culture."

"There used to be a concept of 'sell out,' " adds Lippert. "In this culture now, that's completely moot. I find that kind of sad."
 Robert Hays, manager for Smash Mouth, who licensed their chart-topping hit from this year, "All Star," for use in one of Gatorade's campaigns, says the notion of "selling out" isn't just anachronistic, it never made sense in the first place. "A lot of bands don't have the opportunity to have their songs used in ads," says Hayes. "If a company approaches you and says you can make more than your entire recording contract was [for licensing your song], why would you turn that away?"

Depending on who you speak with, Smash Mouth's experience delving into song licensing is either the best or worst example of synergy between the two media: "All Star" was written at the last minute, when Smash Mouth's record label, Interscope, insisted on a big summer hit. Tacked on after the rest of the album was complete, the song turned out to be the biggest hit on the record. Additionally, prior to any agreement with Gatorade, Smash Mouth's music video was set, in part, to shots of girls playing soccer -- images similar to the ones Gatorade would ultimately use in their campaign.

From inception, "All Star" seemed destined for an advertisement. "The song was almost obvious," explains Danny Schuman, creative director for Foote, Cone and Belding, the Chicago ad agency who put together the ad. "It was perfect for the images we had of girls playing soccer. As long as the song itself fits what you're trying to say and show, that's what's crucial."

Yet despite the successes of these campaigns, both corporate and artistic camps are divided as to whether using fresher music equals higher sales. New bands sell their songs more cheaply than, say, the Beatles, and the general consensus is that the newer the music, the more contemporary the product appears to be. But, says Gatorade's Group Manager for Equity Development Liz Bardetti, "We don't want to be Rolling Stone. I wouldn't go chase after the next hot new band, because that's not an objective for our brand."

That's something Smash Mouth manager Hayes would agree with. "I wouldn't license anything before it was a hit. You want people to associate the song with the band, not with the drink."

So it would seem. And is it really somehow worse for Nissan, or Gatorade, or Revlon to use a hot new song to sell their product than it was when Nike made use of the Beatles' "Revolution"? Yes, say some critics. When popular songs, particularly new ones, are used in advertising, explains McLaren, "It's like commodifying your inner life, commodifying your experiences and friends. As if the admakers are saying, 'We're going to tell you what you should see and feel about this, and we're going to tie it into a product.' Even people who aren't critical of the commercial system know that you can't just tell yourself to separate it -- music is an emotional thing. You can't pretend the association doesn't exist."

Don't be surprised, then, if even more recent Top 40 dropouts turn up pushing products on television mere weeks -- or days -- after release. "I don't think there's enough outrage for there to be a backlash," notes Lippert. "Bands are looking for more revenue streams these days, so I think it's going to happen more."

"You're in this business for a short time," states Smash Mouth manager Hayes. "My band is realistic. Get in, make your money, get out. Ever since that [Gatorade] ad came out, I've had thousands of people writing and telling us about it -- 'It's so fucking cool!' And I've had one person write in and go, 'You fucking sellouts.' One guy. So it's like, who's really concerned about it? The media? The critics? It's not the fans."

Some television shows offer viewers a sense of place. And some shows are the place. But none use their location quite in the same way as Law & Order, a show in which New York truly is the fifth main character.

"Law & Order is a star in our crown," enthuses Patricia Scott, Commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Film, Theater, and Broadcasting New York City. "It has been the linchpin for us in attracting other prime-time series. When you have a bonafide quality hit that's solid, it forever blows away any sparkledust which has plagued us in the past that it's too difficult, or too expensive to work in New York."

There are few who would dispute such a claim. When Law & Order filmed its pilot in 1988, Manhattan wasn't on anyone's list of places to go – and that included much of Hollywood. Other than a few scattered productions, television filming in the Big Apple was minimal, as union crews battled with producers, working from anachronistic feature film contracts. When union negotiations broke down and forced a boycott, New York production all but ground to a halt. "The studio started talking about moving us to Los Angeles, or Canada," recalls L&O Line Producer/co-Executive Producer Jeffrey Hayes. "So I went to the union guys and said we had to do something." What emerged from those talks was the episodic contract that today serves as a boilerplate for all New York television crews.

Notes Scott, "It is very extraordinary to have, going on ten years now, a series that employs directly upwards of 125 people and which also leaves somewhere around $30 million direct annually. The benefit of that is at least threefold."

But L&O hasn't made just the teamsters and the Mayor's office happy: Those employment records expand exponentially when it is understood that the show hires almost exclusively local actors to fill the often-meaty supporting roles on the show every week. "Since its 1988 inception, Law & Order has provided a total of 34,490 extra jobs for our members," says John Sucke, Executive Director for New York's Screen Actors Guild. "It's a core level of employment the likes of which we haven't seen in the city since Kojak. Law & Order's depiction of all levels of New York society has given our members acting opportunities unrivaled by any other show."

Often, the elements that make for this kind of successful drama are less tangible than numbers and contracts. The show does a clever bi-coastal two-step in piecing together the writing (West) with the production (East) that takes advantage of the best of both worlds. It all starts in Los Angeles, where  Executive Producer René Balcer coordinates scripts and writers until a completed draft emerges. After a script is ready, West Coast ships script and primary writer East, to East Coast Executive Producer Ed Sherin, who oversees a read-through with writers, actors, and the draft. "Then they give us their notes, which can range from, 'You can't get green trucks' to asking us why this character behave this way or that," explains Balcer, who says they accept feedback from all areas – including actors and production assistants. "It's pretty freewheeling," he admits. "We don't care where the good ideas come from, so long as they come."

Meanwhile, locations are being scouted around the city, many of which are drawn from the show's location department database, which houses over 20,000 files of potential filming sites. The city, says Hayes, "goes out of its way to make it work" when the show wants to film somewhere. Other than the occasional co-op board/owner dispute, the show finds filming around town absurdly easy: "We don't even have on-set security. We've never been stopped because of traffic, and we don't necessarily have the police around."

New York … safe? Certainly, this is not the same place where Law & Order broke ground almost ten years ago. With L&O using the city as one large backlot – with the city's grateful permission – there's no question that this is one program that knows where home base is. "How many places in this business can you work and go home between lighting setups?" laughs Hayes. "I've twice run into my wife, walking by where we were filming."

But it is New York's intangible otherness that gives L&O not only a place, but a tone, a mood and a three-dimensionality required for the reality the show insists upon. As longtime L&O writer David Black notes, New York provides the story for those willing to hear it: "The first year I was with Law & Order I did a lot of scripts with [former writer] Robert Nathan. And he said, 'I don't know how to write street dialogue, I'm a middle class kid!' So I said, 'Take two days off and ride the subways. Listen.' And he came back and ended up writing some of the best dialogue on the show."
 

You can have all of the network goodwill, award-winning actors, and high demographics you want – they mean zip if you can't back them up with smart writing. That's hardly a problem at Law & Order, television's most consistently well-written drama, where over the past ten years, the writers have discovered their own set of rules for success:

1)  Operate like a newspaper. "We don't have weekly writers' meetings," explains Executive Producer René Balcer. "We have one meeting at the start of the season where we have maybe a dozen ideas. I'll assign a story, except when I'm doing the story myself" [Balcer has penned upwards of 60 scripts] "and we'll beat it out. I'll drop in periodically to check the writers' success, and resolve any story problems they might be having. Then it'll go to teleplay, it goes to the East Coast for a read-through with the actors, then notes, and more rewrite, until it's all shot, and that's the way it happens."

2)  This is not Gunsmoke (the show Dick Wolf says he plans on beating out for longest-running TV drama). "It's not white hats versus black hats," explains longtime writer David Black, whose controversial scripts have dealt with issues ranging from abortion to the militia. "True drama comes from the conflict, when people profoundly believe in their vision of the world and it comes smack up against someone else's. The episodes where I was able to write that are the ones I liked best."

3)  Limitations can be strengths. Law & Order averages 40 scenes per show, whereas most hour-long dramas survive with 26, and rarely deals with characters' personal lives. "We don't have the luxury of interpersonal scenes where character and story develop in an organic way," notes former writer I.C. Rapoport. "Everything is in this Socratic method of cops asking questions and getting story." Some cross-examination scenes have gone through 45 rewrites. "And that's not because we don't know what we're doing," points out Rapoport, "but because when you try to hold some information back, somebody smart like René looks at you and says, 'Why didn't the cops ask the same question?' You can't say, 'I was saving it for trial.' We can't make our cops look stupid." Acknowledges first and second season writer (and co-author of the 200th episode, "Empire") Robert Palm, "There's a kind of Orwellian freedom in that really tight structure."

4)  Trust your viewers. "It steamrolled from Dick Wolf saying 'I want an accurate, fully-thought out legal show' to now, nine seasons later, we've used the easier legal issues. So now in order to come up with original stories, we dig deeper and deeper," says former Legal Advisor, now Producer, Bill Fordes. "We just decided that we were going to trust our audience, and we've educated them enough that we don't need to explain what 'ROR' [released on his own recognizance, used at bail hearings] means. That's a lot of fun: How do you make a legal argument dramatic, make it concise, and fit into the show. When people say, 'You're not 100% accurate,' I say, 'You want 100% accuracy, tune into Court-TV and have a nice nap.'"

5)  Rip from the headlines – and anywhere else that strikes your fancy. "I'll read a character portrait in the New York Times about a schizophrenic attorney, and that'll be the jumping off point for a story," says Balcer, "or I'll get into the middle of Act Three and realize I need a twist, so I'll go into my file. Dick Wolf keeps a file of news clippings." Or, as with this season's serial-killer episode, you reach into your personal life. "'Agony' was a story whose genesis was this horrible crime that happened to a friend of a friend of mine," says co-Executive Producer Cathy McCormick. "I wanted to skewer this guy on national television."

6)  It's not as easy as it looks – and sometimes, you've just got to cross your fingers. "Before I actually did it," says former public defender turned staff writer Richard Sweren, "I thought, 'Well, that doesn't look so hard.' But these stories are intricate and hard to write. It's not something you can sit down and rip through." Acknowledges Balcer, "We're always trying to keep one step ahead of the audience. Good writing, good acting, good directing. And a lot of luck."

SIDEBAR
Getting It Right
L&O proves that reality doesn't bite the hand that feeds it.

Keeping it real has always been a first priority for Law & Order: If a real cop couldn't do it, or a real lawyer couldn't argue it, it's not fair playing ground. So when questions arise, writers go right to the hired guns, like forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz and retired NYPD detective Mike Struk.

Both experts are on constant alert for calls from writers. "They usually talk to me when the script is still in a treatment stage," says Dietz. "They'll have me suggest dialogue between the psychiatrist and whoever is being examined. And if they want a particular outcome, they'll want to know what techniques the psychiatrist could use to elicit the information."

When it comes to the cops, Struk realizes that he's not as much in demand these days because they know a lot of the police jargon already. "A lot of the writers are seasoned hairbags themselves," he jokes. Struk usually receives full scripts, which he reads and forwards comments back to both coasts. When writers do call, though, what do they ask about? "Everything, from how to wear a gun to why to wear a gun to why to arrest people. You name it."

Of course, there can be such a thing as too much reality – Dietz says certain kinds of viewer education can be just plain dangerous. "When I've suggested that something in a story was going to promote copycat crimes, and they've always listened and revised it."

But does he mind when some of his direct dialogue echo back to him from the screen? "Why would I mind?" wonders Dietz. "They give me a credit, and they pay me, too!"
 

Got an indie film? Want it promoted? Good luck. In a 500 channel cable universe, there's every chance in the world you can get your small, homegrown, home-budgeted indie film promoted, pushed, reviewed somewhere -- but as with all things indie, it'll take some creative ingenuity.

"Entertainment Tonight will not come out and cover a first-time director, unless it's someone like Sofia Coppola doing The Virgin Suicides," notes Marian Koltai-Levine, a senior vice president for marketing at Fine Line. "With Shine, we did not get on TV until we got a Golden Globe nomination."

It's a tough world out there. There is coverage out there for independent films, but getting recognized takes more than a few good reviews. Major morning and late-night talk shows want celebrities, not first-time directors and C-list actors. What's left are a smattering of mid-level profile shows like the Independent Film Channel's At The Angelika and Sundance's 24 Frame News, occasional interstitial "making of" clips shown on stations like Bravo, Sundance and IFC, and the odd cable-access program usually done as a non-profit making venture.

Why such a dearth of indie-related coverage shows? According to the President of IFC Films, Jonathan Siering, "Independent film is a small piece of the moviegoing pie. It’s not Wild Wild West, a movie that's going to make more money than every independent movie put together!" PBS's Vice President for Program Management, Donald Thoms, says he's gotten lots of pitches for shows dedicated to showcasing new indie theatrical releases, but doubts they would play in Peoria. "We wonder … how 'inside' is it? I'd love to sit and watch. My wife wouldn't. And I think my wife represents most of America."

Therein lies the need for promotional creativity. "The thing about cable TV is that it's the ultimate in target marketing," explains President of Sony Pictures Classics, Tom Bernard. "On cable, there's a show for every specialized group. If you have a Latino film, you want to get on the highbrow shows on TeleMundo or CNBC. There's so many talk shows, there needs to be some synergy between the topic of that show and the film. We find our audience and go to them."

Talent executive Alisa Gichon has booked guests for shows like USA's Happy Hour and MTV's Loveline, and says she works hard to get indie representation. "The way I like to work is to get out the quirkier things that are on the cusp of breaking, and don't get as much recognition as they should." She points out bringing Tia Carrera on to Loveline when 20 Dates was released. Dating equaled sex equaled … subject matter for Loveline. Never mind that Carrera was basically a cameo in the film, or that she had no expert advice to lend; the point was to invent the synergy.

Then there's the rare show host who makes it a point to bring on independent filmmakers – and not just the actors. "One who gives one of the biggest opportunities is Charlie Rose," says Fine Line's Koltai-Levine. "The Charlie Rose audience I would equate to a film festival audience: Very targeted, very loyal, relatively sophisticated."

"What interests Charlie is the story, not the star that's in the film, and a lot of the time independent films have much better stories than huge commercial mainstream films," explains Charlie Rose Producer Jonathan Norman. "We're not afraid to have on the directors, the screenwriters and the producers, and you're not going to find them on any other show. Our show isn't based on ratings, so we don't necessarily have to have the big stars."

And then there's the small fry, shows scattered across the country, produced by locals on cable access, which Brian Caldwell, a senior vice president for marketing at Fine Line, says they aggressively go after for promotion. One such show, CLIPS, has been run out of Phoenix by critic Roger Tennis for seven seasons and airs in seven states on local channels, with a potential audience in the millions. It's very basic, comprised of clips sent by the distributors or studios from regional promotion offices. Tennis covers mainstream and indie films, but says that pushing the latter can be like navigating an obstacle course: "The problem first is getting the product," Tennis explains. "For major films I'll get hour long EPK tapes with B-roll, soundbites, whatever I need, while smaller independents have trouble doing this. And then I have to make sure the movies are opening in the areas where the show is broadcast."

And that doesn't always happen, since independent films notoriously open small, and in major coastal cities. Which brings the promotion wheel all the way back around again, to regular old broadcast TV, wherever a spot may happen to be open. Fine Line's marketers point particularly to Good Day New York, Fox's local morning program. It may only reach a small geographical area, but that small area is crucial for an indie: "New York is one of the highest-grossing markets for independent films," says Koltai-Levine. "A two-hour localized show can give you some of your greatest opportunities. And sometimes, that's all you need."
 

Entertainment, like nature, is inevitable. And the continued success of television production in New York is living proof. Despite a continuing lack of stage space, traffic hassles and high expenses, the city has posted record direct expenditures for or the fifth consecutive year. Television alone increased shooting days to 7,680, and direct expenditures totaled $1.2 billion. Impressive numbers, all acheived thanks to a cooperative Mayor's office – and in spite of New York's well-recognized obstacles.

But it's not as exciting as in previous years. "We're seeing a settling," acknowledges Patricia Reed Scott, Commissioner for the New York City Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting. "New York hasn't exactly peaked, but call it a natural settling."
 It had to happen sometime. The 1990s have been very good to the Big Apple, and the new millennium promises more big things, from the all but assured construction of the Brooklyn Naval Yards to the in-progress Hudson River Studios (scheduled completion: Fall 2000) to the established Chelsea Piers, there will soon be more square footage of stage space in New York than there has ever been. But this past year, that "settling" took a toll on actual numbers, as the industry paused a bit to see what might come next. While numbers were up across the board, they weren't as impressive as in the past three years: 1996 saw an 18 percent rise in shooting days from the previous year; 1997 saw it go up nearly 14 percent. But in 1998, the increase was a mere 3 percent, a considerable dropoff.

Call it a hiccup. Certainly those who produce and direct television series in and around New York City would. When scouting around for a city to base his new NBC series Third Watch, Executive Producer and Creator John Wells says he "made an effort to show more of the country off, and looked at other urban areas. But there were really no other cities that have the depth of acting pool and depth of crew that New York does. You can save costs by shooting in Atlanta or Salt Lake City or Canada, but then you're always trying to fake it a large urban area."

HBO's Senior Vice President of Original Programming, Carolyn Strauss, agrees. "There's nothing worse than a fake New York." Currently, HBO films some of television's most-buzzed about fictional programs in and around New York: Oz, Sex And The City, and The Sopranos, and says there's no way they could have been filmed elsewhere. "For those shows New York was such an integral personality of the show. Plus, in New York you get all of these actors you would never get in Los Angeles – gritty actors you would believe in the roles they play."

"The beauty of a show that's produced in New York is that because the industry is not completely here, it gives everybody in the production a sense of identity that shows that are produced out of L.A. don't have, because everything is produced there, and there's kind of a sameness to it," explains Eileen Katz, Executive Vice President for Programming at Comedy Central, which films The Daily Show, Strangers With Candy, and the Upright Citizens' Brigade in Manhattan.

But she also recognizes that "there isn't much studio space for the volume of stuff that's being produced," which led to a bidding war when it came to finding space to house The Daily Show, when it moved to its own self-enclosed space last year. Lack of space is a familiar rallying cry for producers and network executives – and with the city recently declaring certain areas to be "red zones," calling them temporarily off-limits for shooting, a cramped setup may be made even more so.
 "I detect less accommodation now that more people are filming here," points out Sex And The City creator and executive producer Darren Starr, who also filmed his short-lived Central Park West in town. "Filming is disruptive, but the fact that people want to film here brings a lot to the city. Of course, the same problems happen in L.A."

It's a balancing act that's slowly being solved two ways – with one result: More stage space. Although the future Brooklyn Naval Yards appear to have a heavy feature-film contingency anchoring them thanks to the combined financial weight of Robert DeNiro and Harvey Weinstein, Commissioner Scott sees the potential for television shows to invest in the space: "People who bring TV series to Manhattan like Dick Wolf, Michael J. Fox and Bill Cosby, if they have a second show or a spin-off of a current hit, they can have side by side facilities that can accommodate audiences and have economies of scale."

Television will also find space, on a more limited basis, in the Hudson River Studios when they open last year. Anchored by Procter & Gamble's soaps, the Studios have already signed a third lease for a five-year deal of $30 million. That leaves two stages open in a facility that plans on being as self-contained as possible. "We're going to have a 15,000 foot construction shop, and over 120,000 feet of warehouse space," explains Richard Benowitz, President and CEO of Hudson River Studios. Additionally, the Studios are making themselves High Definition-ready. "The networks are not retrofitting," says Benowitz. "If you're going to shoot in Hi-Def or digital, you have to go rent the space somewhere. And there doesn't seem to be anybody else coming behind us."

This may sound like chump change, since Los Angeles has 3.6 million square feet of studio space alone, but it's the magic ingredient New York may require to remain competitive over the next decade. But some networks aren't waiting for more space to open up, and they're creating their own. ABC is in the midst of building a new studio at 1500 Broadway in the heart of Times Square, scheduled to open in the fall of this year. "We'll be able to do Good Morning America out of that studio," projects Valerie Schaer, Senior VP, Production and Reality Programming for ABC Daytime. "We're very committed to having strong production in New York, and this is another example of it.New York is really being revitalized in terms of production. There's so much going on."

The need for space is something networks like NBC recognized some time ago – their Today show Window on the World paved the way for MTV to open up a similar studio, also in the heart of Times Square, last year. "It's allowed us to really push our limits," enthuses Dave Sirulnick, Executive Vice President of News and Production for MTV. No kidding: MTV routinely draws large crowds outside the window and in the center of the Square to broadcast live; recently their VJ search drew a line of 4,000 auditioners. "It shows off Times Square every day. When we go out there, we can shoot any show at any time, and there's always something to see. I love that we're in the middle of something very, very big."

And when their own space hasn't been enough, says John Miller, MTV's Senior Vice President of Development, "we've used theater spaces. The small theater spaces really love to make a little money to rent out space for some odd venture. And New York offers a different vibe and accessabilty to that sort of thinking and development."

All of which may just prove that numbers aren't everything. Whether they build it or not, it seems Hollywood will come, and that's at the heart of the appeal of New York. "As people start reacting to the homogenization of television, and try to expand what TV is about, that can only be good for New York production," asserts HBO's Strauss.

A reaction against the ordinary, causing producers to yearn for the good old days? Well, anything can happen in New York. "Being live helps convey the exciting energy of New York," insists Kris Slava, Executive Producer of A&E's Live By Request. "It's like, 'Wow, we're watching New York! Wow, this is television the way television used to be … when it really was television."

SM: I'm fine. I'm on a 3-days without eating anything but fruit and juice. I'm on a fast. I'm kind of freaking out.

Are you protesting something?
SM: I'm protesting the death of indie rock. No.

A little late for that, aren't you?
SM: Yeah. No, I'm just trying it out. I haven't done it for a couple of years. I wanted to see how it would make me feel.

Did you read that Dick Gregory book on fasting?
SM: I know he's a proponent of it, isn't he?

He's Mr. Fast, Mr. Enema, which is where I draw the line.
SM: Oh, yeah, I know. I did that the last time I did that.

That's where I have to cut it off.
SM: Yeah, I tried that. It wasn't as exciting as I -- well, I wasn't expecting that much, and it wasn't that big of a deal.

You didn't have very high expectations, and it still didn't meet them.
SM: Yeah. We'll see. I'm trying to go 2 more days, to make it 5 days.

It's not too bad, just juices and fruits.
SM: Well, now today it's just juice, and then it's just water. So, we'll see.

Is it just for the fun of it, or health reasons?
SM: Well, yeah, just to see if it works like they say it does, gets rid of toxins and shit like that. Last time I did it I didn't feel much better, but I felt weird while I was doing it. Real spacey.

I find you get a lot of free time, when you're not eating.
SM: Yeah -- I wonder if it's that, or...I wonder why the day seems to last so long.

I don't think you need to sleep as much, because your body isn't so tired.
SM: I guess so! I haven't needed to sleep that much, that's true. It's weird, the day is like -- I want it to end because I want the next day to get started.

So tell me about Terror Twilight. Are you psyched about it?
SM: I'm happy with it. People seem to like it. That's all my friends like it, so yeah. I'm excited.

You've moved into the range of 24 track?
SM: We've done that before. We've used it on “Crooked Rain.” Maybe it's -- this place that I was, maybe the first time we'd been in a really expensive studio. We'd been at cheap, reasonable 24 track, this is just unreasonable New York studio.

Somebody with money was footing the bill this time around.
SM: Exactly. Not Matador these days. We just moved quick and it was still -- the budget wasn't out of control, but most of it was frontlighted on studio time.

How is this one different from what you've done before?
SM: We've got a producer.

Always a good step.
SM: We never had that, it's all my songs, Scott used to have one or two, it's a little -- we spent a little more time on it, cleaned it up, and I spent more time on my vocal takes. Not the lyrics, but to make sure I was singing in tune for once.

Are these changes just because you can do it, or because you're expanding musically?
SM: We wanted to see how it sounded this way, I guess. We weren't sure if it was the right thing or not. We just thought, "Let's see how we sound if we sound more like a major-label band."

Do you want to sound like a major label band?
SM: Yeah, we wanted to see how it sounded, more polished, a tiny bit. To see if we sounded cool. I don't know how we wanted to sound, we just knew we wanted to get a producer and go to a more expensive studio and see how it sounded there.

Do you think it worked? Does it sound more polished?
SM: I think it does, I guess. I haven't listened to our old stuff in so long I don't even remember what it sounds like. To me it sounds pretty slick, but Nigel [producer] himself would say no, no it's not. He'd say he's toning down the reverb on your voice. And I was like whatever, do your thing, I've been doing this long enough, I want to share the creative reins with someone.

It must be nice to get to that stage where you can let go of the reins.
SM: Yeah, we let him do that a lot. We let our guy Bryce do that a lot, in mixing, and he's pretty macho about mixing and controlling, but we'd be at least able to touch the board or something. Nigel's like a control freak in a good way.

Most producers seem to have some control issues.
SM: Yeah, I'm that way, too. I was willing at this point -- I just wanted to sing and do my thing and you can handle that. As long as we don't sound too much like Radiohead, or something. I said it's cool.

Are you surprised that you've been able to do this more than 11 years?
SM: Yeah, I'm surprised that I'm not on the other side of the phone now. I don't know what I'd be doing, but I'm pleasantly surprised -- we've worked hard for whatever scraps of acclaim and notoriety we've gotten, but I'm surprised that we're still going in some ways.

Do you see youselves  going far into the millennium?
SM: No, I think -- yeah, we're talking so much that there's all these interviews, 'Ten years of pavement, they're so great, they're a great 90s band,' I think it's over for us after -- they're trying to use that as a marketing/bargaining chip in press kits now, it's going to come back: 'They were so 90s. It was so gross, thank god for 2000s.'

Is that going to give you a good excuse to break it up?
SM: I don't know if we're going to, but I can see that media spin. Everyone's trying to climb over the dead bodies to the top of the heap.

Well, hopefully Pavement hasn't become a corpse yet.
SM: I don't think so! But you never know what peoples' agendas are at times. If the record is good, it doesn't matter, any of that stuff. It should move people, I hope it does.

What can the audience expect this year at Lilith?
SM: Fabulous music. All day long, from 3pm to 11pm, they're going to be blown away. Socks off, toes in the grass, it'll be great.

You knew it was going to be a 3 year mission from the start –
SM: Yes, we all sort of set out with that goal in mind.

Was that played up in the press?
SM: No, that's why now people are like, 'What do you mean by 3 years?' And I'm saying, 'I've been saying that since the beginning.' It's a huge undertaking, and we had 3 years, and we decided after that we'd take a break. It's sort of this or have kids. Its so much work for people – we could do it another year, but, it would be nice…the people who are the heart of the workforce, this is 100 hours on top of their 100 hour work week. They have very little bit of a life outside of this when it's going on, as well as for months previous, so they have busy, busy jobs as well as this.

And does the kid thing apply to you, as well?
SM: Yeah. I'm trying to simplify things so I can…I'm not going to get pregnant the second I get off the stage or anything, but…we'll see. I am going to take probably the year 2000 off. I'd like the opportunity to float for a little while. My life has been so planned out for so long, it kind of goes against my natural grain. I like to not be able to know or care about what I"m doing tomorrow, and if I feel like doing something, all right, let's go do that. Just to have that freedom again.

What are we going to see this year that we haven't seen before?
SM: Sheryl Crow is doing the whole tour, which is great. We're very excited about that. Dixie Chicks are doing a bunch of dates. We've been working on broadening the style every year, too, and now that Lilith is part of the vernacular, it's easy to draw people from different genres of music, and they can see that it's a smart move on their part if they want to break into different markets. Dixie Chicks are obviously well on their way to going beyond country music, in the same way that Shania Twain broke so much ground. I think it's great, I think it echoes more truly the spirit of the public. I love county music, but I love pop music, and I love all different kinds. It just depends on the mood you're in, I think most people are like that.

It's also a function of age. When I was in high school, it was like: British pop, that's it.
SM: Everything else is crap. Yeah.

What is it you think you've accomplished?
SM: I don't really know. I haven't sat down to think about that lately. Personally, it's been a huge boost for my confidence, just the positive feedback I continually get from it is really – feeds me a lot, you know? It's very empowering. Just physically being there was an amazing experience, as far as being able to be surrounded by my peers, all of these incredibly talented women who are doing something similar to me in the music industry, they're following their dreams, and it's nice to get an opportunity to spend some time with those people who are on a similar wavelength to you and hear their stories and connect with them on some level. And that's been incredibly meaningful, and I've formed a lot of really great friendships and bonds from that experience. On so many levels -–just to fulfill my silly little dreams of getting the opportunity to sing with people you grew up listening to. I got to sing with Bonnie Raitt, I sang with Sinead O'Connor, Indigo Girls, Emmylou Harris – everyone I could think of, every chance I could because I really enjoy their music and I love singing with people. Really, really fun. So it's great on so many levels.

Do you think you've made a real difference in the way people perceive what a rock festival can be?
SM: Absolutely. A lot of this is feedback from other people, like a lot of younger artists, which I really appreciate, will come up to me and say 'I just came back from a radio station and they said they were going to add my song and it was largely due to the success that Lilith had.' And people tell them that, and they tell me that and it makes me feel great to think that this has had a positive influence on the music industry, especially on the radio because they have so much power.

Do you think by ending it now you're nipping it in the bud?
SM: No, I think it's pretty firmly in place. Lilith could not have been a success in the first place were it not for the fact that a lot of these artists were already very well established in their own right, being very successful, and when you put a number of those successful acts on the same bill, it's a powerhouse. It sends a  really strong message. But as I said, a lot of us were very firmly established, and now, a lot of people in the industry who might have been hesitant about putting them on the same bill together or playing them back to back on the radio, they can't really use that argument any more. They'll have to come up with a different one now. It's so funny, there have even been TV shows, some teacher was acting really sexist to these two young girls, and they looked at each other and said "What, did Lilith not happen?"

So it's become a real touchstone for young women.
SM: Yeah, especially for young women. And you have to give a strong tip of the hat to all of the women who came before, who set up our society the way it is today, and when you start thinking about the women in Afghanistan – it's horrendous. I can't imagine what it's like, because we in our society live with all of these freedoms that I take for granted that 50  years ago we didn't have, 100 years ago we definitely didn't have any, and it's not a long time ago. It wouldn't be that hard to revert back. I think there are still a lot of people who still have those attitudes. Right now, they're trying to oust the abortion laws in America, and that would be quite easy to do. Just a few more representatives vetoing bills, and we could be back in the dark ages. You really have to stay on top of things, that's one of the things I learned about, coming out of my bubble, is that I've been very lucky to be surrounded by people who have always treated me very equal, and been in a workplace that has always been like that, men and women, but it's just not like that out in the world.

It'd be nice to get to a point where you can breathe easy and not have to think everything is so fragile.
SM: And then when Lilith happened, and all of the – there was a lot of positive feedback, but a lot of negative feedback: "Oh, you hate men, or something?" Why is it when women want to do something positive, it automatically – it has nothing to do with bringing men down, it has to do with bringing women up.

You said you're thinking of taking a break – is there something – could Lilith come back?
SM: I…you never know. I think if it did, it would be in like ten years, or something like that, a kind of reunion. It depends. It would involve a lot of people gearing back up. It would be nice to do. There's always the possibility of the hokiness factor, and ending on a high note. I'd hate to come back in 5 years and try to do it and it be half-baked. It'd be horribly depressing, because that's all people would remember, that we tried to do it again, and it really flailed the second time. And I'm not sure if I want to keep doing a Lilith, per se. There are a lot of male artists out there that are really incredible, too. Then it becomes: Is it still important, and does the world still need something like this, and what music do you want to put in your festival this week?

Are you really looking forward to playing Europe this time around?
SM: Yeah, for me – I was sort of hesitant in the first place, but it's a good challenge, and I sort of need those things to feed me, because I haven't had any success in Europe personally.

Do you think the festival will be perceived differently over there?
SM: It's hard to tell. I have to go over there and get a feel for it.

There's another Lilith album coming out.
SM: There's two, actually. Volume II and Volume III. It's really inventive, those titles. They're all recordings from last summer. We were thinking of having 3 total this year, but it turned out that two made more sense. It's really hard to get approval from people – that's the hardest part. It's more the record company than anybody else. A lot of record companies don't want to put their artists on other peoples' labels. Everybody's got a very busy career, and they're off doing stuff, and it's like 'we need approval in two weeks' and the artist might hear it and then forget about it. I'm terrible about that, I drive people nuts, people have to send me ten emails before I'll reply. But I understand, it is frustrating, I should really gain some knowledge from that and not do it any more, because it drives people nuts – it drives me nuts. That's the hardest part, getting approval, because you're waiting and you have deadlines and you want the whole thing to sound good together, and feel right, and if you don't have the approval of the tracks, you can't put them in. So we ended up doing 2 CDs, which is all live stuff. More than anything, I want to document the whole thing, and because there were some really great performances and moments, as much as it goes against my grain to capture them on tape, it's not a moment any more then, I enjoy listening to that kind of stuff, and other people do, too.

What can you tell me about Mirror Ball?
SM: Well, talking about documenting, I have a fabulous band, and because I'm taking a fairly long break and they have their own lives and they may go off and I might never get them back altogether again, I wanted to document our live show, which I think is really strong. We recorded the whole spring tour last year, and –

Why the title?
SM: I was really into mirror balls, we had one and I begged and whined for the longest time to my L.D. (lighting director?) and said 'We've got to have a mirror ball,' and she said, 'No, no, you don't want one,' and I said I do, I do! Please, so they brought them in. I love singing and there's a mirror ball. It's so much fun.

No connection to the Pearl Jam/Neil Young song, right?
SM: Shit, I didn't even know about that when I came up with the title. I was dead set on having this name, and then somebody told me, 'You know, there's this record out from a couple of years ago,' and I'm like, 'Aww, I can't call it mirror ball?' And we kind of went up and down about it. Everybody thought it would be ok.

Is it a live greatest hits, or just special stuff you liked the version of?
SM: It's 14 of my favorite tracks from the tour. Certainly a lot of the singles or what did well on radio are on them, but – a song like "I Love You," which is one of my favorite songs on there, it doesn't sound too dissimilar to the record. One of the things I like doing when I play live is changing things around musically, especially because we do tour for such a long period of time, as musicians to keep it interesting we try to rework the songs. "Sweet Surrender" is one of my favorite ones because the bridge section is very altered, and I like it better than the record. Little things like that. But that's stuff that appeals to me, and maybe other people will be like "Whatever." Those are the things I focus on. It should be out the beginning of June. "Angel" is doing so well on the radio, they wanted to wait a little while.

Are there other things we should focus on?
SM: I have a cookbook coming out.

Vegetarian recipes?
SM: In the sense that there's no meat – there's a lot of fish. My kind of vegetarian. When we went out on tour we had the luxury last time of taking our own chef out and I was always bugging him for his recipes and then a girlfriend of mine was starting a publishing company, and I thought, Hey, why don't we do a cookbook! We can get this guy some help and get his recipes out there, and give him a step up. He's such a talented guy, and he's so passionate about what he does, and we thought that would be fun, to give him a cookbook, but that was a lot of bloody woork, though, I tell you. I ended up writing all of the text for it, and I was like, Oh, man I don't know how to do this! It'll be called Plenty: A Collection of Sarah McLachan's Favorite Recipes or something like that. His name is Jaime Laurita.

I'm looking forward to seeing the festival this last time around.
SM: Yeah, get out there, it'll be the last time for a while. But you know what, I bet someone else will pick up the torch.

Would you let them call it Lilith?
SM: Nooo! Not a bloody chance. I'm a control freak, don't forget!

Reports of Neil Tennant's death are greatly exaggerated. But then again, that's a news flash he recently found on the internet (rarely a source of accurate information). "It always amazes me what fans get in a flap about!" he laughs, phoning from a tour bus driving across Texas. "They thought for a while the new album was going to be called Bananas!"

Fortunately, the sixth full-length Pet Shop Boys release (the Boys are Tennant and Chris Lowe, and have been since they released "West End Girls" in 1984) has a much better name: Nightlife. It also comes packaged alongside their first American tour in eight years. Those numbers, and the length of time they span, are staggering, in a way, considering the ephemeral nature of dance-pop music. But the Boys have never fallen out of fashion, often instead teetering on the cutting edge, and Nightlife is no exception -- to flesh out the tracks this time they conspired with members of Massive Attack, film composer Craig Armstrong and New York-based DJ David Morales. And, says Tennant, there's a theme: "All the songs take place at night, and it's about going out and how people's needs are greater at night, their paranoia is greater, they go out and drink, take drugs, get fucked up."

Fucked up is good, particularly when the Pet Shop Boys are in charge. And now that it's been suggested, Tennant believes even Bananas could be a good forthcoming, if somewhat, er, fruity release. "We could do a Jamaican album and have Sly and Robbie produce...." he wonders. And here are a few other passing thoughts: The albums that made Tennant (a former music journalist himself) the man he is today:

First Record You Bought
Sandie Shaw, "Girl Don't Come"
"I bought it with a record token I got given at Christmas, probably around 1964. I loved it! It's a great song, and it's got a lovely trumpet introduction, and I thought she was very cool. She didn't used to wear any shoes on television."

Record That Reminds You of School
T-Rex, "Ride A White Swan"
"It was T-Rex's first hit, in 1970, when progressive rock was all the rage. Which I didn't really like, but T-Rex was kind of alternative. He was also the first person I ever interviewed, when I worked at Marvel Comics, which was my first ever job, I interviewed him. It was downhill all the way after that."

Song You Fell In Love To
Désenchantée, and it's by Mylene Farmer [Ed note: Accents pointing right go over the first and third "e" in the song title; an accent goes over the first "e" in her first name, but it faces left.]
"The last time we toured, I met someone and fell in love with him, and we were touring in Europe and kept hearing this record. So I bought the album, and I liked it so much that the following year I made a record with Electronic called ‘Disappointed,' and it includes the line ‘disappointed once again, disenchanted, encore.' My little tribute to Mylene Farmer."

Heartbreak Song
Dusty Springfield, "I Don't Want To Hear It Any More"
"From the album Dusty in Memphis. It's written by Randy Newman, and in this song Dusty is singing the song of a girl who -- all the neighbors are talking about the fact that her lover has left her and she's heartbroken. It just breaks my heart to listen to it. And it has these fantastic backing vocals. The backing vocalists all go ‘Oh, so sad...' Ah! It's a great record."

Record For The Greatest Summer In Your Life
David Bowie, "John, I'm Only Dancing"
"1972 was a pretty good summer in my life, and this was the record that was doing it. I was a real David Bowie fan, I had my hair cropped. We liked all the sexual ambivalence of the lyrics, and the weird feedback noise at the end. It was a very hot summer in 1972 and I'd just left school, and was about to go to college in London."

Record For a Night of Debauchery/Record That Inspired You To Form A Band
The Flirts, Passion
"It was produced by New York disco producer Bobby Orlando, and he was the first person we ever worked with. The record's all about passion and sex but we loved the electronic sound of it. We liked the record so much that when I was in New York I met Bobby Orlando, and I played him a demo of Chris and me, and he said, ‘Lets make a record,' and then we made ‘West End Girls.'"

Record Guaranteed To Clear The Tour bus
Shastakovitch, Piano Concerto No. 1
"On the last tour, I would play this, which I happen to really like, and that would clear the bus. It's got slightly hard harmonies to it. I think it's really good, but they just don't like classical music!"

Midnight on New Year's Eve, 1999, What's On The Hi-Fi?
Bananarama, "I Heard A Rumour"
"I have a house on the Northeast of England, and when my main CD collection grows too big, I take them up North, so consequently up north you get a rather weird selection of records. So we'll be dancing to things like the Bananarama song, and then suddenly you'll get Marvin Gaye. Last year we ran out of dance records, and my sister discovered we had a CD of Liza Minelli's, and we played it twice. So it'll be a rather eclectic choice."

What Song Would You Like Played At Your Funeral?
Dusty Springfield, "Goin' Back," by Dusty Springfield
"When we went to Dusty Springfield's [with whom PSB collaborated on, "What Have I Done To Deserve This"] funeral, earlier in the year, it was an amazing event. It was obviously very sad and moving, but slightly camp as well, because she'd obviously planned it that way. When the priest said the whole ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust' thing, there was this sudden silence, and then you heard Dusty singing ‘Goin' Back.' And I started to cry then. So I think I'd like to have that song played at my funeral as well. It kind of takes you full circle."

Favorite Album Cover
Bryan Ferry, Another Time
"The one where he's wearing a white tuxedo by the swimming pool in Los Angeles. It was an even better billboard -- there were billboards all over London when it was released -- and the full picture was in the swimming pool. It looked so cool and sophisticated, we all just wanted to be that."

"We're not going away," promises Oasis' guitarist and songwriter Noel Gallagher. "We're probably the first band since Depeche Mode not to just come over, make a quick buck, and fuck off. We’re not going to give up on the place." And so, with their fourth album, Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants, Oasis are back again, a little calmer (both Noel and his brother, Liam, are married – Noel has a baby on the way and Liam's written one tune, "Little James" after his stepson) but no less determined to make noise across the pond. And whether you think their Beatles-meet-T-Rex approach to straight-out guitar rock is archaic in a rap and techno world or not, there's no denying: this is one persistent, charismatic set of cheeky bastards.

AP: Why "Go let it out" for the single?
Noel Gallagher: We didn’t want to release anything that wasn’t representative of what the album sounds like, and this is representative. "Go Let It Out" has all the usual elements of what makes Oasis what they are, the guitars and a good tune, but it also has some modern sounding effects, and some 60s effects, and you can dance to it.
 
AP: You picked the fairly lively "Go Let It Out" for the single -- were you concerned about making sure you weren't releasing "Wonderwall II," which is the song most people in the US know you by?
Gallagher: Well, I’m just glad they think of us in the States. I don’t give a shit what they think of us, so long as they think of us. At least we’ve got one song they remember us for.

AP: And what's the album title about?
Gallagher: It’s a quote from Sir Isaac Newton, and it was his way of saying you could only see greatness by standing on the shoulders of giants. But I took it from 'round the edge of the two pound coin in England.

AP: There's a two-pound coin? I've never seen that!
Gallgher: I hadn’t seen one, either, because I’m an internationally famous rock star and I don’t carry money, so I sat in the pub the night we finished the record and somebody showed me the two-pound coin. So I wrote it down on a piece of paper, and I got up the next day and it sounded good, so we kept it.

AP: "Little James" is the only song of Liam’s on the record, right?
Gallagher: It’s the only song Liam’s ever written, darling. Not only is it the only song of his on the record, its the only song of his on any record.

AP: Will he do more?
Gallagher: I hope not!

AP: Why?
Gallagher: He’s not very good, is he? No, I’m only joking. No, actually, I love "Little James." If he writes anything that’s up to that standard, but as long as he doesn’t get it into his fucking head that he’s getting 5 songs an album, it’s like -- I didn’t fucking build the band up just to give half the fucking songs away. I let him sing him, he’s not writing them at all. If he starts writing them, I want to start singing all his stuff. Which is only fair.

AP: Your record label's founder, Alan McGee, left his own record label, Creation – and then you guys departed, too. What happened?
Gallagher: He left because of something between him and Sony [who own Creation]. That did us the biggest favor we could have ever asked, because we’ve finally gotten our own record label after all these years, and now we’re masters of our own destiny. Sony wanted us to be part of Sony music, and we don't want to be major label artists. We negotiated a deal where, in England, we’ve started our own record label called Big Brother. We’ve got the license to sell our own records how and where we want. For the rest of the world we’re on Sony and Epic. We let Epic run America and we’ll run England.

AP: Does Prime Minister Tony Blair know you’re going to run England?
Gallagher: He’s well aware of that, yes. But I’ve told him his job’s safe for the time being.

AP: You had two longtime members (Bonehead and Paul McGuigan), both leave earlier this year – and replaced them with Andy Bell (ex-Ride) on bass and Gem Archer (ex-Heavy Stereo) on bass. How does that change the band?
Gallagher: It’s really great having them two in the group, because it’s almost like being in a new band, and that’s probably what’s kept us together. We’re really excited about going into the studio and making a new album with these guys, because they’re far superior musicians. And they’ve got far superior haircuts, I have to say.

AP: Which is important.
Gallagher: It is if you’re a rock and roll band from England. There wasn’t no baldies in the Rolling Stones, were there.

AP: Does your relationship with the British press become burdensome?
Gallagher: I fucking hate them! I can’t stand them. Even the music press -- they’re evil, spiteful people. They fucking make it up as they go along. Now, they’re all starting to get behind the band, because we’re not splitting up, and they’re going, "Fucking hell, man, they’re not splitting up, so we might as well write something nice about them, because we’ll sell more copies."
 
AP: Do you care about them getting into your personal life?
Gallagher: It doesn’t really affect me, because I am not a controversial person.

AP: Oh, well, I wouldn’t say that.
Gallagher: I don’t think you’ll ever see anything written about me in the papers you didn’t already know. They’re fascinated with Liam because he’s married to an actress [Patsy Kensit], and because he’s a rock star, so there’s stuff to write about, but I’m married to a normal person, I live a normal life. Albiet in a fucking extremely large house.

AP: Is there a big gate around it?
Gallagher: Two big gates. Patrolled by two very hungry dogs. I live a quiet life in the countryside, I don’t live in the city any more, so I don’t go out that much.

AP: Have you settled down a bit now that you’re married, have a kid along the way?
Gallagher: Yeah, I haven’t done any drugs for two years, and I don’t drink so much. I still swear a lot, but I can’t help that. I’m a bit of -- I’m more of a healthy-living chap these days. And it’s good, man. I feel good for the first time since I was about 16. I don’t wake up feeling like shit any more.

AP: Did you ever think you wanted to be a normal person?
Gallagher: I decided I would give up while it was still my choice.I started to look like I was 40 instead of 32, I wasn’t being very healthy and me writing was suffering and all that stuff, and I wasn’t focused and I didn’t really want to be in a band. Something had to go, and it was the rock and roll lifestyle.

AP: Where do you see the band going for the next record?
Gallagher: Now I know the type of records that I don’t want to make. The five songs that I’ve written are completely different to what’s on this record. And then we’ll see. If they turn out to be acoustic fucking country rock, then that’s what it’ll be. I don’t sit down with any agenda and say I’m going to write a futuristic fucking rock dope album. I just have to wait for the magic to arrive, and when it does, that’s all.

AP: What are your Y2K plans?
Gallagher: I’m going to spend New Year’s eve with Ronny Wood, actually. So the next time you see me, I probably won’t remember a thing about it.

 back