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Photo courtesy of Admiral Wiley Balls
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Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy Is Will Oldham Is A Total Asshole
Will Oldham doesn’t like to be interviewed. That’s just about all you ever hear about the dude. We were nervous to interview him because, well, because we thought he’d be exceedingly crotchety. We expected him to tell us to shove whatever was handy up our asses. “You can take that tape recorder and shove it up your ass!” for example. But he seems to have unnecessarily gotten a bad rap. As I see it, talking about oneself is often painful unless you’re chatting with friends or are a big asshole. Will was doing neither. The interview jumps around a bit because we talked for awhile and had to cut a lot (who wants to read unabridged transcripts of meeting people?). At one point, as Sam pointed out his nervousness at talking about his own filmmaking on tape, Will gave us a knowing glance. It’s a pain in the ass to describe art, especially if it’s your own. Enjoying art, on the other hand, is usually pretty simple, you do or you don’t. Attempting to assign some definite validity to something is often counterproductive.
Mr. Oldham has a new album out under his alias, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy (Greatest Palace Music on Drag City). It’s basically country music, and he’s a damn fine songwriter. They’re all songs that he’s recorded before in his various “Palace” titled bands. All these different names he uses become pretty confusing. I think maybe we’re supposed to pretend that his name’s actually Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. Let’s all promise not to let him know that I tipped you off (we’ll have to only talk about it in folded notes). He paid for our beers. Yup, he’s a prince after all.
Andrew: We don’t have a lot of interview stuff planned. We were hoping we could just bullshit a bit.
Will Oldham: Sounds good.
Andrew and Sam: [extended yammering…]
[Will asks us about the magazine…]
S: Are you doing any acting anymore?
No, not really. But this guy sent me a script recently and said that he wants me to play something.
S: You might do it?
Maybe.
S: You just do it for friends now? Like Julien Donkey-Boy…?
Yeah. Just for friends.
S: I don’t know…(nervous laughter)…um, in the Jessica McLure story [Everybody’s Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure, a 1989 TV movie about the girl that fell in the well] you played Chip [Jessica’s dad]…
Uh huh.
S: …And she was the girl of the moment. And now there’s this whole Elizabeth Smart thing…
Right.
S: …And now I think you might be able to pull off the, uh…
…The kidnapper?
S: Yeah. The guy that kidnapped her…
(unenthusiastically)…Yeah…
S: I don’t know if you’ve thought of that…
Haven’t they already made at least one TV movie about that?
A: You could double-fist Coors the whole time.
Is that what [the kidnapper] did?
S: Actually, I think he drank MGD.
A: Have you seen the photos in the Enquirer or whatever with his arm around [Elizabeth Smart] at some house party? He’s got an MGD in either hand.
Was she smiling?
S: You can’t tell through the veil…
…So, you’re heading to Japan?
Yup.
S: You ever been there?
I’ve never been there. You?
S: No.
A: I’ve never been there either.
S: Ever since Lost In Translation, though, it’s the place to go.
Yeah. (laughs) Have you seen Lost In Translation recently?
S: Yeah, I’ve seen it a couple times. I love it.
There’s real people in there, you know? Like Charlie…
S: Which one’s he?
A: The friend guy. The crazy friend [that takes them around the city].
S: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
People say he’s playing himself. He’s friends with Spencer Sweeney who I’m going on this tour with. And when Spencer goes over there, he hangs out with Charlie. He’s been to that apartment where they smoke pot.
A: Does he say he’s really that wild?
Yeah, yeah. [I think he quotes something from the movie here, but I can’t understand it from the tape].
[Wrap up of next few minutes: Will and his band will be in Japan for twelve days and are getting rail passes. We talk for awhile about how foreign railroads often kick the shit out of the American rail system. None of us know enough about railway privatization proposals to form much of a solid opinion…After Will leaves LA, he’s going to Vegas. He’d like to catch a Gladys Knight show…We talk about live music in LA and Louisville (where Will lives)…We start on the loads of interviews he’s been doing for the new album…]
S: You wanna talk about interviews a little? Since we’re doing an interview, and it’ll make this a little reflexive?
Sure, give it a go.
S: I’ve been reading tons of interviews with you these past few days. And every time, in the intro and the first few questions, it’s like, “Will Oldham hates giving interviews,” and “blah blah blah blah”…[stammering]
A: I think what Sam is trying to say is: Why do you think people are so obsessed with the fact that you don’t like to do interviews?
My quick and easy answer is that, people who write for a living have to write about something. When they get to work, they think, like, “How am I going to fill my column space.” You know, “I need to have a couple issues; I need to have an intro; I need to have a thesis; I need it to go somewhere.” You know? So they just fill it up with whatever they can. And usually it’s something easy that they’ve read somewhere else. You know, that’s why most record reviews are completely useless…
A: Cause it’s someone just comparing the music to some other music…
But it’s also someone just trying to do their job; they don’t really care about the record. It’s like, “My job is to write something about this record. It doesn’t matter if it’s good, bad…I don’t have to think about it. All I have to do is make it look good, good copy. And, fuck the record. If it’s good or bad, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I get paid. And keep my job.” That is all that matters…(a Bjork song comes on)…I like this song.
[We listen and talk about Bjork a bit. Oldham toured with her.]
A: Were you not a fan of hers before you went on tour with her.
No, I’m not a fan like (laughs), I don’t own all her records. But I like her a lot. I’ve never sat down and listened to her records, but there’s a weird ambiguity to them…I think I bought her first two records on used cassette and listened to them four, five, six times and said, “Okay, I’ve heard it.” The quality is so good, but there’s something weird about them. It’s like (pointing to pastries in the case next to us) those are all really good, but could I eat them all right now? I mean they’re the best. They’re amazing. But it sort of feels like, after flipping through the third time, “Whoo, I am stuffed!” But it wasn’t like that live. I think one of the things is, she does everything so great, that you say, “I can’t argue with it. This is great.” It doesn’t leave much room for me because I’m not great. As a listener, I’m pretty imperfect. It’s so perfectly done…
S: How do you think about that as a songwriter. I’ve never even thought of that. How do you think about giving something to somebody…?
See, I know something’s wrong with it right away.
A: (to Sam) How do you think about that when you’re making films?
S: Yeah, I know there’s something wrong, but I’m not very good at being able to say that.
That’s the thing. You can go and, like, knowing everything that’s wrong, say, “Well, it doesn’t matter because I’ll go and fix it with my next movie. But I’m looking forward to this next part that I know is good.”
A: And do you not think that Bjork looks at it that way?
No, I don’t think so. I think that she takes the time to do everything so that it’s all great.
A: Do you think that [Bjork’s] more like a mathematical mind? Because they say that, like, classical composers have more mathematical minds. Rather than creating music as they go along, they see it as a whole piece.
No, because I don’t think that she’s that kind of a control freak. I think she’s amazing. I think she really values the contributions of everyone she works with. So, in that way, she can’t prepare in advance for how something’s going to sound, but she does know at the end if it’s exactly what she wanted. It’s not mathematical like that. It’s mathematical with giving an allowance for a variable, for chaos, and saying, “That is included in my equation.” It’s mathematical, like making everything fit perfectly together.
A: Did you meet Matthew Barney [Bjork’s old man, a sculptor and the critically lauded creator of the Cremaster film series. He used to be a jock, but decided to be an artist. Laser disks of his films sell for hundreds of G’s]?
Yeah.
A: Is he nice?
Yeah, very nice. (laughs) Toward the end of the tour, we had a show at this baseball diamond on Coney Island. And there was this party afterwards. It was sort of arranged by Matmos [art musician dudes]. It was a theme party, where you were supposed to pick one of your favorite songs, bring a CD of it and dress as the song. And then Matmos would call your name and play your song. And you’d go up and have to perform it. That was the first time I met Matthew Barney. He was totally just like, “Dude…” He handed me a drink. He was just like, American dude with a drink. He could be your older brother.
A: What was your song?
Well, I didn’t have my whole record collection, so I chose Bobby Bland’s “Little Boy Blue”. I wore this (points to blue sweatshirt) and some blue sweatpants to match.
S: Is that [sweatshirt] from the press photo of you?
Exactly.
S: That’s a great photo, man.
It’s a self-portrait with a timer.
A: Yeah, I was wondering, because I saw the photographer’s name, and I was wondering if it was you.
What was the name?
A: I don’t remember. It sounded like a created name.
There’s one photographer name that I use, which is Admiral Wiley Balls…
(laughter) A: That’s it!
S: What did Matthew Barney go as?
He didn’t. But Bjork did America, “Horse With No Name”. She had a big horse head, and it was really really great because it was inter-cut with another song. Matmos would mix the songs in and out. She would dance to “Horse With No Name” with the horse’s head, and then they’d mix the other song. I can’t remember what it was, maybe some punk rock song. And she’d thrash all around, and they’d mix it back down. Yeah, it was really good and fun….And then I ended up going to a barbecue at [Bjork and Barney’s] house. Oh yeah, and (laughs), at one point there was this freak-out commotion. I was standing in the kitchen and Bjork came down. I was like, “What’s wrong, what’s wrong?” And she says, “[Matthew]’s got a tick!” They live in New York, and there’s bad Lyme’s Disease there, so they thought that he had a deer tick on his head. And he’s looking for a utensil to get it off. And she’s says to me, “Do you know anything about ticks?” “Yeah,” [I said]. “Have you had one?” “Yeah.” You know, I’ve had forty or fifty ticks. (laughs) And she says, “Will you look at it?” And I went up and looked–all these people are gathered around his head, which was almost shaved…And David Byrne was standing right there…So I look…(laughs)…And I was just like, “Dude…It’s a zit.”
(laughter)
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Volume 2, Issue 2 contents
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