[music]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar, in for Alison Stewart. Thanks for spending part of your Tuesday with us. I'm so excited you're here. On today's show, we've got actor, comedian, Eddie Izzard, to talk about her turn in Hamlet. Author Leigh Bardugo joins us to discuss her new novel, The Familiar. Performer Caitlin Clark will tell us about her new one-person show, which is inspired by graffiti on bathroom doors and walls. That's the plan. Let's get this started with Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson of The Magnetic Fields.

[music]

Kousha Navidar: We're kicking things off today with another installment of Silver Liner Notes. That's our series in which we spotlight an album that was released 25 years ago. In 1999, The Magnetic Fields released their album, 69 Love Songs. At that time, a review in The Guardian called it, "An album of such tenderness, humor, and bloody-minded diversity. It'll have you throwing away your preconceptions and wondering how you ever survived a broken heart without it." It's an album of what one critic called "witty ditties," that take a tongue-in-cheek approach to explore the cliches often found in love songs. Boy, are there a lot of them. Here's a little bit of the opening track, Absolutely Cuckoo.

[MUSIC - The Magnetic Fields: Absolutely Cuckoo]

Don't fall in love with me yet

We've only recently met

True I'm in love with you but

You might decide I'm a nut

Give me a week or two to

Go absolutely cuckoo

Then, when you see your error

Then, you can flee in terror

Like everybody else does

I only tell you this because

I'm easy to get rid of

But not if you fall in love

Kousha Navidar: Joining us now to talk about 69 Love Songs and their upcoming tour of the album's music, I'm so excited to welcome songwriter and producer, Stephin Merritt, as well as one of the group's vocalists and the band's manager, Claudia Gonson. Stephin, Claudia, welcome to All Of It.

Claudia Gonson: Thanks.

Stephin Merritt: Thank you.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. Listeners, hey, are you a fan of 69 Love Songs? Give us a call and tell us which one of those songs speak most to you, or how these songs have maybe helped you make sense of love, or do you have a question for Stephin and Claudia? Give us a call, shoot us a text. The number is 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Let's talk about the album a little bit. Stephin, you've said that 69 Love Songs is not remotely an album about love. It's an album about love songs, which are very far away from anything to do with love. When you were making this record, what did you feel like love songs were actually about? Why did you want to explore that over the course of 69 songs?

Stephin Merritt: I have come to realize that that quote is a mistake, and it is only actually the lyrics of 69 Love Songs that are about love songs. I completely ignore the tradition of love songs in the music. The music is much further ranging than you would expect from the label of love songs. For example, punk love and experimental music love are inconceivably distant from the tradition of the love songs.

Kousha Navidar: How would you describe the tradition of love songs that you were trying to buck against at that time?

Stephin Merritt: I would say that the epitome of a love song is the reviled Paul McCartney and Wings' song, Silly Love Songs, which begins similarly to 69 Love Songs. It begins with a tape loop of some abstract noises, and then goes into the dumbest conceivable pop song, which is very meta about its love song subject. I'm not going to quote it.

Claudia Gonson: Love song about a love song.

Kousha Navidar: Claudia, you and Stephin, you were friends from back in high school, right? What do you remember about making this album together? What were the original conversations like?

Claudia Gonson: The origin story, which is also in the liner notes for records, so it's all become very mythic, is that Stephin was sitting maybe in a piano bar or a cabaret.

Stephin Merritt: A townhouse.

Claudia Gonson: In the townhouse.

Stephin Merritt: Where I now can't go.

Claudia Gonson: Said to himself, "I'm going to make a Broadway, a stage show of 100 love songs." He was, "I'm going to make a grand act. I'm going to make a big statement," and a bit of a PR point for him. "I'm going to do this." Then realized after thinking on it that that was a lot of songs, so narrowed it down to the next evocative number, 69, and set to writing it. I actually can't remember how we morphed into it being an album, but it seemed like that was within our ability more than--

Stephin Merritt: I realized that in order to teach the four drag queens, who would be performing the album, all of the music, I would essentially have to make the album. If I was going to make the album, I may as well make the album for public consumption and skip the step with the four drag queens.

Kousha Navidar: [chuckles] Take us back to the '90s. What were your conceptions about love at that time that you were trying to make these songs out of? What were the influences that were dictating the ways you were writing these songs?

Stephin Merritt: I lived in the East Village, so half the people I knew were in the middle of dying of AIDS. People's attitudes towards love and sex were extremely different from what they are now. During our show on Saturday night, I saw someone in the front row wearing a T-shirt saying in big letters, "It's okay. I'm on prep." That attitude would have been extremely novel in 1999, but also, prep didn't exist in 1999. My attitudes towards love were pretty hyper-local and very East Village.

Claudia Gonson: There's also the piano bar cabaret angle, which inspired this album. There's a few songs on the record, which are distinctly tipping the hat to Irving Berlin and Broadway shows. There's fun modern inversions of cliches from epic love songs that you would've heard in the theater or in musicals. Then the other angle is that we were a little indie band in the '90s. Our sales went, I don't know, 20-fold after 69 Love Songs came out. We were a band that had sold maybe, I don't know, 5,000, 8,000 records. We had a little indie label, and we called the little indie label and said, "We're going to make a record that's going to have four hours or three hours of music on it," and they said, "No, you're not."

There was an interesting backstory to that too, where we sat down and argued with them about making this bigger-than-life project, and they were amazing and agreed to do it.

Stephin Merritt: Now they're a great big indie label.

Claudia Gonson: Yes. Then they bought [laughs] a new office off of 69 Love Songs. [laughs]

Kousha Navidar: Wow, really shot things off.

Claudia Gonson: They bought a whole building.

Kousha Navidar: 69 songs were a great bang for the buck. [laughs]

Claudia Gonson: It was great. We don't want to sound too, whatever, superficial about things, but it was definitely a PR move a little bit. It's also fun to think about how maybe Irving Berlin was also making some PR moves when he wrote White Christmas, or whatever.

Stephin Merritt: There's an anecdote where Cole Porter publicized a show that he was in by taking out an ad for a missing singing cat. The cat has gone missing from the show. Great expectations, whatever show it was.

Claudia Gonson: We're not entirely ironical.

Stephin Merritt: Completely fictional, but-

Kousha Navidar: It's also funny how-

Stephin Merritt: -for publicity.

Kousha Navidar: -even back then, cats were a great way of going viral.

Stephin Merritt: Sure.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: Always go back to the cats. Always. Stephin, you had mentioned something about trying to make this album for public consumption, I think was the word that you used. It's interesting because it seems like the proof is in the pudding. It had such a big impact after the album came out. We actually just got a text from a listener that I want to point out. It says, "Hi, there. My husband and I are huge fans of The Magnetic Fields. We saw them perform at town hall last week, and it was incredible. Our first dance was actually a cover of Nothing Matters When We're Dancing, performed by my husband's bandmates. Such a special memory. Thanks for everything."

Walk me through what the reception of the album was like once it came out. I'm sure expectations can be so huge. What was it like hearing people pay attention now to the little indie band that you're talking about? The little indie album when it came out. Claudia, to start us off.

Claudia Gonson: It was in real-time. We did a performance in which somebody shouted, "When did you move to Connecticut?" Then we felt bad about ourselves for not being punk rock anymore, whatever they thought we were.

Stephin Merritt: No, we didn't.

Claudia Gonson: [laughs] Some of us.

Stephin Merritt: We sneered with contempt.

Claudia Gonson: We sneered with contempt. Then within three months, that person apologized. What I'm trying to say is that there was a little bit of a learning curve with the fan base and with the reception of the record, because it was so out of whole cloth weird. Like, why is this band making this enormous project of sort of classic love songs?

Stephin Merritt: Also it was inherently slow burning because the first pressing was sold out and the second pressing couldn't be manufactured for a while.

Claudia Gonson: I remember why.

Stephin Merritt: Was it?

Claudia Gonson: It was the bookbinder.

Stephin Merritt: The bookbinder.

Claudia Gonson: Because it was Christmas and the bookbinder had a long list of books they had to make for Christmas, so it was delayed by six months or something, which actually may have been also good for us, who knows? Because we had this huge second explosion in the next printing.

Stephin Merritt: In the meantime, we couldn't get press because we couldn't get any copies of the record.

Claudia Gonson: We had no record.

Kousha Navidar: It endeavored and it came out maybe not exactly as you-- go ahead.

Claudia Gonson: Sorry, that was the long answer. The short answer is that it took a long time, and I'd say the record came out in 1999. I'd say by 2002 we were really touring. We were really acknowledged. It was this interesting kind of, whoa, what was that feeling for a little while? Just because of all of these issues that we're talking about with changing our look, changing our population reception, and suddenly having to get into a new gear. It was fun, but it was also a little dizzying and weird. The record also came out within a week of Moby's play and so there was a lot of energy around that just kismet of two different albums that came out that both really hit in a weird way that nobody was expecting.

Kousha Navidar: You know that term weirdness, it's not pejorative in this sense. I think it's very much like a feature of it because I think that that difference and that approach is what stuck with folks. Getting ready for this segment, we looked up fans and what they had to say, and we found one on Reddit who was talking about the album, and they said this. "The beauty I find in 69 Love Songs is that everyone I have talked to about it loves a completely different assortment of songs." I think weirdness plays a part of that. It's got something for everyone, and we should offer listeners right now a chance to listen to some of the music.

Let's start with-- starting with Papa Was a Rodeo. Here's about a minute of that.

[MUSIC - The Magnetic Fields: Papa Was a Rodeo]

Papa was a rodeo, Mama was a rock and roll band

I could play guitar and rope a steer before I learned to stand

Home was anywhere with diesel gas, love was a trucker's hand

Never stuck around long enough for a one-night stand

Before you kiss me, you should know

Papa was a rodeo

Kousha Navidar: If you're just joining us, I'm Kousha Navidar, this is All Of It. We're talking about Magnetic Fields, their album 69 Love Songs. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, I'm here with Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson from the band and listeners, we want to know if you've got memories of Magnetic Fields or about their '99 album, 69 Love Songs that you'd like to share with us. We just heard a text from somebody brought in a comment from Reddit. We'd love to hear from you. The number is 212-433-9692. You can call us. Text us. That's 212-433-WNYC.

Stephin, we just listened to the track just now. You started addressing someone named Mike, and over the course of the song, we learned that the singer was raised by a rodeo and a rock and roll band among other things. Your songs often evoke characters and I'm curious what doors that opens for you as a songwriter. When you're writing these songs, how do you think about who's singing and who they're singing to and how does that influence the song?

Stephin Merritt: My life is deliberately very boring. I do the same thing every day as much as possible so that I can have a songwriting routine. If I wrote about my life, it would be I am sitting in a bar writing a song, and that would be my entire list of subjects. I like to write about other people's lives. Often I am writing about the other people in the bar, eavesdropping on them or imagining what their lives are like.

In the case of Papa Was a Rodeo, I wrote it in a gay bar called The Rainbow Cattle Company in Austin, Texas. It's no longer there. I don't remember who I was imagining that it was about, but I do remember that later that evening I played pool with a biologist so maybe it was about him, I don't remember.

Claudia Gonson: Also, Mike is sung on the record. The response by Mike at the end of the song as a female vocalist and I remember that 20 years ago when we talked about this on stage, we mentioned that there was a character played by Nancy Sinatra in-

Stephin Merritt: The Wild One.

Claudia Gonson: -The Wild One, whose name is Mike. We were able to-- and we do this-- oh, he does this all over the record, sort of play with gender and gender stereotyping by having a song that if it was sung by a man to a person named Mike might be considered to be a more homosexual song but then it doesn't, I guess what some people have really expressed to me over the years that they like about 69 Love Songs is the gender bender angle, which in 1999 was a little new of having a girl named Mike, or it could be a man. That kind of feeling of just, it doesn't matter.

Stephin Merritt: A reporter recently told me that they thought of it as the queerest record ever made.

Kousha Navidar: Did they say why? Was it that gender-bending moment and other pieces?

Stephin Merritt: Yes it was the gender-bending piece.

Claudia Gonson: It's all over the record this feeling of who's talking doesn't have to be, and even on stage sometimes we switch vocals and we have a female vocal playing what might have been a typical male role.

Kousha Navidar: Stephin, my producer is telling me that you just told the queer publication them that your view on gender is the more the merrier.

Stephin Merritt: Sure.

Kousha Navidar: I'd love to hear a bit-- yes go ahead.

Stephin Merritt: [crosstalk] We used to say, "My gender is none of your business unless you were wanting to bleep me."

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: Hey, public radio, good call. Let's listen to another song. Here's a bit of the song Washington, D.C. which you sing, Claudia, here it is.

[MUSIC - The Magnetic Fields: Washington, D.C.]

W-A-S-H-I-N-G-T-O-N, baby, D.C.

W-A-S-H-I-N-G-T-O-N, baby, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

It's paradise to me

It's not because it is the grand old seat

Of precious freedom and democracy

No, no, no

It's not the greenery turning gold in fall

The scenery circling the Mall

It's just that's where my baby lives

That's all

Kousha Navidar: Claudia, what kind of interpretive muscles do you feel like you're flexing when you're interpreting a song that Stephin wrote?

Claudia Gonson: We met when I was 14, so I feel like that's become so ingrained in me to just be this sort of vessel. [laughs] I don't know how you want to put that, I've really listened to Stephin writing songs since I was a teenager and I guess I just, I don't really know how to respond to this. I just sing the songs, I've always felt extremely dedicated to his art. I love listening to his songs as they come out of him and listening to different ways that he's interpreted them and I don't really know. I guess I just--

Stephin Merritt: Well, you are totally familiar with my taste in music so it doesn't occur to you to emote the lyrics. You just--

Claudia Gonson: No matter what I sing, it's sad.

Stephin Merritt: You sound great.

Claudia Gonson: It's just the way I sing. I have a kind of a sad voice.

Stephin Merritt: You don't need to try to be operatic.

Claudia Gonson: There was that one time I tried to be Angela Lansbury, but generally speaking I just sing in this very-- that's always been true with Stephin's songs as you start to sing them is as uninflected as possible to just deliver a song that is there--

Stephin Merritt: Unless they demand a cockney accent. [laughs]

Claudia Gonson: Sometimes, I'm Angela Lansbury but also I don't really see myself as a singer in this band. I really have been a musician in this band. I played piano and drums for a long time, I played percussion with the band. In that way, I do feel very much like I've contributed musically to this band, with parts and ideas. We've had a lot of singers.

Kousha Navidar: It's interesting to hear that. What I hear you saying, it's kind of the waters in which you swim. You met Stephin when you were 14. You two have known each other for so long. It's this organic, like years and years of just working together. It's muscle memory almost [crosstalk].

Claudia Gonson: I actually just had a flashback to being really very young in high school and coming home with a bicycle and we took a contact mic and put little pipettes of straws inside the bicycle wheels and spun it and recorded that. It's been a lot of like, just, "Let's see, how can we make stuff?" Even just listening to Washington, D.C. like the way we recorded it, thinking about the way that the vocals are in each ear, a lot of echoes of ideas from influences we've had. For instance, Fleetwood Mac who do that two different voices coming at you in the-- so it's a whole world. It's there's a whole mythology and library of ideas there.

Kousha Navidar: Speaking of influences, obviously influences on other people. We have some texts that I want to share with you right now. "Just texting to say thank you to TMF for the best live use of a triangle that I have ever seen on April 3rd." This is Victor from Sunset Park. Another text, "All Of It, when my wife and I go driving, Abigail starts up every time when we queue up the directions. We also have several of their songs in our one-year-old daughter's nighttime playlist," which is lovely. All different ways that folks are feeling the music. We also have a caller, I'd love to get to, John in West Milford, New Jersey. Hey John, welcome to the show.

John: Oh, thank you. I just have a quick question for Stephin and Claudia. I've seen them in many forms of bands over 25 years, and I know that they've been together for a long time. I was a little concerned, I saw the fantastic show in Town Hall the other night, and I just wanted to know when they're climbing over on to do a duet on 12-foot ladders. Maybe they can have somebody spot them. Have Chris or Dudley. That was incredible. I was a little nervous watching them climb up a ladder, though.

Stephin Merritt: I used to paint. I briefly had a job. I was very bad, but I used to paint, and so that involves ladders and no one is ever concerned about you when you're working as a day laborer and you happen to need a ladder. Just because we can sing doesn't mean that we can't climb ladders.

Kousha Navidar: [laughs] John, thanks so much for that call. John was alluding to live performances. You're both touring right now. Can you tell us a little bit about this tour? It seems like there's an interesting way in which you're presenting all the songs of this album. How's that work?

Claudia Gonson: We are doing all 69 Love Songs over two nights. Songs 1 through 35 on night one, songs 36 through 69 on night two. You can see them actually this week as well, we did four concerts of them last week, and we'll do four this week, which is two full cycles of the record. Wednesday and Thursday at Town Hall is nights one and two, and Friday and Saturday at Town Hall are nights one and two again, and then we're going to head out to--

Stephin Merritt: Unless we fall off the ladders-

Claudia Gonson: Unless we fall off the ladder.

Stephin Merritt: -and die.

Kousha Navidar: Unless Chris can spot you. [laughs]

Claudia Gonson: Yes. Then we'll head on. We'll go to Chicago and LA and San Francisco and then over the summer more touring and then to Europe, and it's going to keep going for this 25th anniversary year.

Kousha Navidar: Folks can see, or they can experience all of the album. They have to come to both performances, correct?

Claudia Gonson: Correct. Yes.

Stephin Merritt: If you want to see us fall off ladders and die, you have to come on Thursday.

Claudia Gonson: You're right.

Stephin Merritt: When we have--

Claudia Gonson: Thursday or Saturday. Yes. Although tickets are available on Thursday, not so available on Saturday.

Stephin Merritt: If we die, then there won't be a show on Saturday.

Claudia Gonson: No.

Kousha Navidar: I'm sure safety regulations will help us out, but when we're talking about that, it's talking about those challenges I guess generally. What would've been some of the challenges in preparing to tour and doing these songs live?

Stephin Merritt: Finding the right triangle.

Claudia Gonson: Oh, it's been a lot. It's like herding kittens a little, we got like 10 of us or something, and we're all trying to remember our parts and it's just been--

Stephin Merritt: From 25 years ago.

Claudia Gonson: [laughs] It's been really fun but also a lot.

Stephin Merritt: It's funny how when you knew something 25 years ago, you assume that you know it, and then you realize only when 1,200 people are staring at you that you don't know it.

[laughter]

Stephin Merritt: Fortunately, we have lyric sheets in front of us.

Claudia Gonson: It's been hilariously loose, but everybody-- I keep telling people half of this experience is how much love we're getting from the audience, and people are just so happy and we run into people after the show we're like, "Oh, we flew in from New Zealand for this," so it's been really, really heartwarming and amazing.

Stephin Merritt: Post-COVID audiences in general are much nicer than they used to be.

Claudia Gonson: They don't take it for granted anymore.

Stephin Merritt: Even in Philadelphia, they're just full of brotherly love.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: Shout out to Philly, full of great people, New York City, LA, you're both hitting up the entire-- you're going coast to coast on this. If you would like to find out more, The Magnetic Fields are performing Tuesday-- Oh sorry, remind me again when you're performing.

Claudia Gonson: For this week at Town Hall, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. We just looked at the Box Office, there are definitely tickets available for Thursday, and there are very scattered tickets available for the other shows but Thursday, you can, if you want to come see us, climb ladders.

Stephin Merritt: Bring hundreds of friends for Thursday. Dozens of friends for the others.

Kousha Navidar: We've been talking to Magnetic Fields. They just celebrated their 25th anniversary of their album 69 Love Songs. We've been talking to Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson. Thank you both so much for coming, for talking to us, and best of luck on your tour.

Stephin Merritt: The other thing that we'd like to advertise is Eddie Izzard's amazing one-person show of Hamlet-

Claudia Gonson: Hamlet, which we went to.

Stephin Merritt: -which we saw yesterday.

Claudia Gonson: It's amazing.

Kousha Navidar: It is. It is wonderful we're talking to her later on. It's going to be exciting. Just to end us off well, I'd love to go out on a track called, Yeah! Oh, Yeah! which features the two of you singing--

Claudia Gonson: On ladders. [laughs]

Stephin Merritt: On ladders.

Kousha Navidar: On ladders, let's hear it, play it now.

[MUSIC - The Magnetic Fields: Yeah! Oh, Yeah!]

Are you out of love with me?

Are you longing to be free?

Do I drive you up a tree?

Yeah! Oh, yeah!

Do I drive you up the wall?

Do you dread every phone call?

Can you not stand me at all?

Yeah! Oh, yeah!

Though I need you more than air

Is it true you just don't care?

 

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.