Music > Interviews

Mercury Rev

25/05/16

New York in the mid 80’s was a maelstrom of musical talent, and one band who came out of this whirlwind was Mercury Rev. Their first two albums were full of crazed chaos; they went on to create one of the most loved indie albums of all time, Deserter’s Songs and several other albums. They’re playing a mere handful of dates in the UK this summer, and one of them is at Norwich Arts Centre. What a treat! I spoke to legendary guitarist Grasshopper about the magic between him and singer Jonathan, their latest album The Light In You and wearing his slippers on a flight to the UK.

What sort of music were you interested in when you were growing up, and were your family musical?

My Sicilian grandfather played the mandolin and my Polish uncle played the accordion, so I had musicians on both sides of my family. My mother’s brother was the vice president for promotions for Atlantic Records during the 80’s and he had a big influence on me. He would send me tapes of bands that were just coming out like The Pretenders, The Clash and The Ramones. I played the clarinet when I was young so he’d send me a lot of jazz records too like John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Miles David. I had an upbringing of New York jazz and punk.

How did you meet Jonathan back in the mid 80’s and how did the band come together?

I was going to the University of Buffalo, studying film. There used to be a club there, The Continental, and lots of Canadian bands would play there. There was a really hip DJ who would play things like New Order and Echo and the Bunnymen which you wouldn’t hear anywhere else in that town. I met Jonathan there, we started playing guitars and writing music for film soundtracks.

How come you called yourselves Mercury Rev?

We had a bunch of different names and one day Jonathan said “What about Mercury” and then I was thinking about it overnight and suggested Rev. We liked that because of revving a Mercury car, and also Mercury the planet revolving around the sun. There are a tonne of reasons why we liked it really.

What other bands were around on the New York scene when you started up?

We were friends with Galaxie 500 and Lunar, I knew Jon Spencer and we played early on with Dinosaur Jnr and Porno For Pyros so we met a lot of those people.

You studied Film at university and worked with some interesting people – did you have an input into your amazing videos like Butterfly’s Wing and Opus 40?

We just gave general input as to what we wanted but then we let the filmmakers do their vision because the guys who made those were pretty accomplished. We’d just put together a framework and send a few editorial ideas but we’d let them run with it.

Your first two albums were pretty raw and challenging indie psych rock. How do you feel when you listen back to them now?

I love ‘em. It’s like looking at that younger, angsty rebellious part of yourself which we do still have but it’s channelled in different ways. That raw abandonment..we barely knew how to play our instruments then. As you play through the years you learn how to play and change. I still really love those records especially the guitar and the production values – a lot of bands weren’t really doing anything like that at the time. We had so many instruments and we wanted to make them sound like they were popping out of the speaker into your brain, ha ha!

When your original lead singer David left after Boces your sound really changed and became more melodic and delicate. Was that because you’d always wanted to make a different sound but he didn’t, or was it a more organic process?

A little bit of both – having him in the band was very chaotic and always confrontational and that came out in the music, which at the time we really loved. Jonathan and I got more into other forms of music like classical, doo-wap and show tunes and we wanted to incorporate some of that into the music.

You headed off to a Jesuit retreat when See You On The Other Side didn’t do too well. What did you learn from that experience and is it something you draw on even now?

Yes I do, I go back to that place in my mind and I guess it’s a tool for meditation. It had been so very crazy before I went there; everyone was fighting. When I went to that monastery I just stepped back and breathed.

Deserter’s Songs in ’98 gained an incredible response. How did you manage this fame and accolade all of a sudden?

It was pretty insane especially in England and Europe, being recognised on the street and then having to book into hotels under different names because crazies would be trying to get in. That was interesting but also scary! We were travelling so much..one time I was so busy getting my stuff together to go on tour, got to the airport and realised I was still wearing my slippers! I had to fly in my slippers and buy shoes when I got to London. Another time I forgot to bring my guitar in all the confusion so I had to borrow one! I just got absent minded because I was so overwhelmed!

That album was recorded in the Catskills. What was the mood amongst the band then?

It was kind of like a last stab at it. We thought it would be our last album, because See You On The Other Side didn’t do so well. We got signed to V2 which gave us a new lease of life and hope and they were really encouraging. We were just going for it. We’d met Garth Hudson and Levon Helm from The Band, they worked on the album with us and they were both survivors who had gone through the music industry. Levon was like “Oh, the industry, it goes up and down and you’ve just gotta ride it out, change is gonna come” and that was kind of cool. And then Deserter’s Songs was really big!

There’s such a magical sparkle to Mercury Rev songs that I can never quite put my finger on – what’s your secret ingredient?

I think it’s the friendship between Jonathan and myself. He and I try to create this world through music that’s a different place. It’s not trying to be escapist but there are many realities that you walk through in life, and we try to create a real space that people can enter for as long as they listen to our music.

The Light In You is your first album in seven years – what have you all been up to during that time?

I had a baby who’s great, and we did the rerelease of Deserter’s Songs and toured with that which was a big project. We put out a lot of old demo’s and artwork, so it was like putting out a whole new record because we remastered it. That came out in 2010 I think so it wasn’t all sitting around. Whilst Jonathan and I were working on songs, a hurricane hit his house and wiped it out. We lost a lot of the tapes we were working on so we almost had to start all over again. A lot of the songs we remembered but other stuff were just sketches which we completely forgot and so they were lost. Jonathan grabbed his guitar and a few clothes and when he came back a second time there was nothing left at all. There was a lumberyard near his house and there was so much wood floating away in the torrents of the river near his house.

This latest album saw you and Jonathan producing for the first time. How come you hadn’t done that until now?

We never produced with Mercury Rev but we did some albums with Nicolai Dunger from Sweden and Heather Nova. A lot of it was about scheduling; Dave Fridmann didn’t have a lot of time, and neither did I because of the baby so it was difficult to travel. So we took it on and thought it would be something different for this record.

Is your side project Harmony Rockets still a thing? Might you make more music?

We still play in the Hudson Valley near home, and a few in NYC the past couple years while we’ve been between albums.

You’re playing Norwich Arts Centre, which is a converted church with a capacity of just 260. How come you chose to play a small venue like this?

We’re playing all these massive festivals like Glastonbury over the summer so we just wanted to do some nice intimate club shows, something with a totally different vibe. Instead of looking out at 10,000 people you can really connect with people in a small venue, which is something we still really love to do.

How will you go about choosing your set here in Norwich as you have so much to choose from?

We’ll be playing an hour and half to two hour set in Norwich whereas at Glastonbury, that we’re playing the following day, I think we get 45 minutes. We’ve been rehearsing a bunch of songs that we haven’t done for a while, songs from All Is Dream, and even from Yerself Is Steam, our first album. We usually decide the day before what we’re going to play, but we rehearse a lot of songs from each of the albums ahead of time.

What’s your favourite line in a Mercury Rev song?

“Bands, those funny little plans that never work quite right.”

Mercury Rev play Norwich Arts Centre on 24th June. This date is sold out.