An Interview with the Eels, Saturday's Moore Headliner
"Ask the birds singin' I am The Man"
His lyrics often touch on the most gut-wrenching of subjects and are quite frequently juxtaposed against music seemingly on the other end of the emotional spectrum.
The man known simply as E has been through more than his fair of tragedies in his lifetime but we’re happy to report he appears to be doing quite well.
With his newfound sense of gratitude and optimism, E released the latest record Tomorrow Morning, which is by-far his most refreshing and quite likely, one his best yet.
The Eels will be in town this Saturday night and we were lucky enough to catch up with Mark, aka E, for a chat in advance of the show.
The Moore Theatre // 1932 2nd Ave // 8:00 PM // $23-$28
We were just looking up your tour schedule and we were amazed at how grueling it looked. How have you been holding up?
Holding up surprisingly well. It’s just been a really fun tour. We’re literally circling the globe. We started in Japan and then we went to Australia. Then Europe to the East Coast of America and then making our way West. I’ll walk back into my front door the opposite direction I left it.
Wow. That’s really impressive. Any good memories from the road so far this time around?
We travel with a croquet set. We’re just really into croquet. In Australia we had a couple of days off and we actually discovered a professional croquet course near our hotel. I don’t know if I’ve ever even seen one before. And it was closed that day, so we crashed it and hopped over the fence and played croquet on the professional Australian croquet course all day.
When it comes to what happens off the course, do you find you get different reactions from crowds depending on what continent you’re playing?
Actually, it’s almost always great. We’re very spoiled. The only time that we notice anything is different is if it’s not as ridiculously enthusiastic as we’re used to. It almost always is. It’s very rare that it’s not.
Any tips on how people can help create the best experience at one of your shows?
The main thing that concertgoers need to understand is that we all got to work together to make it a great experience. All you have to do is have heard the end of Abbey Road to get the message. “The love you take is equal to the love you make.” That’s all you have to keep in mind when you come to any concert. You’re only cheating yourself if you’re not going to give something back to make the experience for everyone. The performers are going to play better and have more fun and put on a better show if they feel comfortable and if they like you.
We don’t have a lot of trouble with loud crowds these days. Only in certain cities maybe in England where they just drink so much beer and you’re doing a quieter kind of show it doesn’t work out so well. But most places it’s OK. We’re kind of rocking this year, so it’s not a big issue either way.
How are your shows structured these days?
Well, it’s really fun and exciting for us because we’ve got three albums of material that we never played on stage before. Also, we’re not just playing all new stuff, we’re playing plenty of stuff from the old days as well.
We’ve been really enjoying Tomorrow Morning and like any listener and many critics, we can’t help but notice it seems to come from a more positive place than some of your previous albums...
To me all the albums are positive in different ways but this one is very overtly positive. It’s about appreciation and renewal.
Often when we think about artists trying to portray positive experience, we can’t help but think of Harvey Danger’s song “Happiness Writes White” about that very struggle…
That’s very true. I think it’s much more challenging to write about overtly positive topics.
Was there anything with this most recent album that made it easier for you to tap into that side of the emotional spectrum more successfully?
I just got lucky in that I was going through a genuinely happy phase of my life and I was very interested in that as a topic. You just have to push your imagination a little bit to figure out how to make that interesting.
As we've been following your career over the past decade and a half, we were really fascinated by the documentary you did with BBC “Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives” and…
That has a lot to do with why I’m happy actually. That was such a great experience for me to get the opportunity to learn about my father and really understand him. It had a lot to do with why I was able to make any album like Tomorrow Morning.
How did that opportunity come about?
It all came from the BBC. They’d knocked the whole thing out before they even came to me to talk about it. Then they came to me and said “do you want to be a part of this.” And I thought “Hmm, I don’t know. Do I?” I really didn’t know what to think about it. And then I thought, yeah, I’d have to see what would become of it because it seemed like such a rare, odd opportunity. It turned out to be one of the smartest things I ever did. Everybody should be so lucky to do something like that.
Are there any favorite activities you particularly enjoy in Seattle?
We enjoy hanging out down at the pier. Having some seafood. If we have time, we try to do something like that. But often, you don’t get a lot of time in Seattle because of the long drive between wherever you’re coming from and wherever you’re going to next.
OK, we’re down to the penultimate question and it’s one from left field, actually from one of our friends who hoped we’d ask it. Has ZZ Top inspired your career musically or fashion-wise?
I don’t know how much musically ZZ Top has been an influence but I did grow up in Virginia playing a lot of Southern Rock and stuff like that. I was a drummer back then and I certainly played on a number of ZZ Top songs. I have an appreciation. Billy Gibbons is an amazing guitar player.
Any last words to our readers?
Lock up your daughters, here come the Eels.
