Fountains of Wayne
We caught up with Fountains Of Wayne bassist and songwriter Adam Schlesinger in Manchester on their recent UK tour.
We caught up with Fountains Of Wayne bassist and songwriter Adam Schlesinger in Manchester on their recent UK tour.
Your new album is called 'Traffic And Weather', how have you found the traffic and weather over here in the UK?
We haven't had any bad weather, it's been very sunny here in Manchester surprisingly, and no traffic because we've been driving at night.
Is there anything special about playing over here to crowds in the UK?
I think the crowds in the UK are similar to the crowds in the US, there aren't really any major differences. It's very different in Japan though, they all seem to be very polite and all stop clapping at the same time and wait for us to start the next song.
What's the best place you've ever played?
We've played so many thousands of shows it's really hard to say. We like playing to smaller club audiences usually more than the festivals, although every once in a while you have a great festival show. Festivals can be rough, especially if you're playing in the broad daylight. We just played at Coachella in California and it was like 105° in the desert.
Have you any plans to play festivals in the UK this summer?
I don't know if we're going to this year, we're booked up mostly in the States so we wanted to come over here and play a few shows just when the record came out and we'll probably come back and do a more extensive tour in the Fall.
You're named after the shop Fountains Of Wayne, do you ever go back there?
I drive by it quite a bit just because my parents live about five minutes from there, but I haven't actually been in the store in many years. We did talk to the store owners when we started the band and made sure they weren't gonna sue us or anything!
Have you ever bought a fountain from there?
Umm, no I never have.
I've actually been to the shop, and went in and asked about you, they didn't seem too happy and said "We were here first!" Do they begrudge your success?!
They were there long before us and I don't know if they bear a grudge, but they certainly don't need us to keep going.
What would the band have been called if the shop wasn't there?
Umm, maybe empty parking lot in Wayne!
Many of your songs, not just on the new album, but throughout your career, have been about "someone", for example 'Someone To Love' is about Seth Shapiro, there is 'Yolanda Hayes' and 'Michael And Heather At The Baggage Claim' - where do all these stories come from? Are they based on truth?
A lot of them are just made-up characters, although occasionally there have been songs that have been named after real people. Actually, Michael and Heather are real people but the story is not really about them, we just borrowed their names. There's a song on our first record called Joe Rey, that was a real guy as well.
Did you write this album solely yourself?
I didn't write it solely myself, I wrote the bulk of it but Chris (Collingwood) wrote a few of them. I tend to be a little bit more prolific than Chris but that doesn't necessarily mean that his contributions aren't just as important. I think the two things balance each other out.
On your single, 'Someone To Love', Melissa Auf der Maur guested with backing vocals, how did that come about?
I wouldn't say we're good friends, we've known each other for a while and actually I met her through James Iha whom I'm very good friends with. He's now a partner of mine in a recording studio in New York and also in an indie record label. So Melissa was in our studio working on her own music and we just asked her if she wanted so sing on our song.
And she liked it?
Yeah, I think so. At least, she pretended to!
Back in 2004, 'Stacy's Mom' was quite a big hit over here, as it was in the States. It got to number 11 and whether people liked it or hated it, everyone knew it. When it first came out in the US, did you expect it to blow up as it did?
I wouldn't say we expected it. At that point we were kind of used to the idea that our singles would fail miserably! But we felt it had as good a shot as anything else we'd ever done. It took a long time actually in the States, it didn't happen right away, it was a very slow build that song, it took the better part of a year for it to really become a hit.
Were you surprised then when in the summer of 2004 it was all over the radio?
We were surprised at how far it went. It just kind of kept going and at a certain point it was on all these big top-40 stations and that's the most mainstream radio in America.
And the video helped?
The video definitely helped, no question.
What was it like working with Rachel Hunter on that?
We didn't really work with her too much. We basically just stared at her while she writhed around half-naked, so that wasn't such a hard day really.
Because of that single, a lot of people know you as the 'Stacy's Mom' band. Are you happy about that? Do you see it as a curse?
There are two sides to it. Obviously, there's more to the band than that and I would hope that people would discover some of the other stuff we'd done. But at the same time I'd rather have people think of us as something than have never heard of us, which was mostly the case before that.
If you had a preference for a single to do well, would it have been 'Stacy's Mom'? I mean, it's kind of a bit of a novelty really.
Yeah, but that's kind of why it was a hit. You can't really choose which one is going to strike a chord. I think we've had a lot of singles that for whatever reason are just too odd to be a mainstream hit.
Apparently you've said that if the new album sold 13 units it would be a success, do you want to go back to being a band that's just on the fringes of the mainstream, as you were previously?
I think it's good to have low expectations, then you can feel like you've reached your goal each time. Honestly, we just want to be able to keep going and we would love to have more hit records, but that's not really what we spend our time thinking about. We just want to be able to keep the thing moving and keep playing.
In 1997, two songs did have a bit of success over here - 'Radiation Vibe' and 'I Want An Alien For Christmas' - after so long with lots of critical success but not so much commercial success, did you think that maybe that that was going to be it?
Before we made that record that 'Stacy's Mom' was on we weren't even sure if we were going to keep going or not. Ultimately we decided to just make a record with our own money and see what happened. We weren't really sure if we were going to keep doing it, we never really are. After every record we have to make a decision if we're going to make another one.
Are you going to make another one after this?
Too early to tell!
It's doing ok in America?
It's early days, but yeah, so far so good.
Why do you think it is that despite the band being a darling of the critics - reviews have been positive for almost every album - that this hasn't transferred to the general public so much?
I don't think press really has anything to do with record sales. People that read music reviews are a small, weird group of people to begin with and people that actually buy music tend not to sit around reading blogs or Rolling Stone or whatever. And also I think that music is something that you react to viscerally. If you hear a song and you like it then you might want to go buy it but if you read about it it's not going to convince you that you want to go buy it. You can't really write about music.
Do you want to please the critics or do you not read the reviews?
I do read them sometimes, but I don't really think about that too much. I think we want to please ourselves. I personally like it when I get a record and I hear a band just fucking around on certain songs. I don't think every song is supposed to be swinging for the fences trying to make a masterpiece. I think you're just trying to do something that you like and entertain yourselves.
Do you have a particular song that's your favourite? One that you like playing live more than any other?
There's a bunch that I really like. We've played 'Radiation Vibe' every single show since 1996 and I still like playing it, it's a fun song to play. But there are a lot of them that are really fun. And there are others that I really love that we just can't play live because they don't really work live.
For example?
There's a song that we put out on our B-sides compilation called 'Girl I Can't Forget' and that's actually a song I'm really proud of but we just can't play it live because it's too many words and Chris will have an asthma attack if we play it!
A lot of bands such as yourselves that were popular in the mid to late 90s have made a bit of a comeback in recent years, take Nada Surf as another example, and are perhaps even more popular than in what was seen as their heyday. Do you think there's any particular reason for this?
I think Nada Surf and us had a similar trajectory. They had an early hit that was a bit of a novelty but they just stuck around and ultimately people just acknowledged they were making good records and were still viable and that's all you can hope to do.
You've made a bit of a name for yourself writing music for films, 'Music and Lyrics' most recently. Is this something you want to do more of?
I really enjoy doing it, it's a good job first of all and it's also just fun to work with other people and work on a different kind of project. I definitely don't see it as personally my artistic statement, it's more just you're getting hired to try to deliver something that they need.
You've been in demand recently, do you think it's because you're such a good storyteller?
I think I'm a good chameleon. If somebody tells me we need a song that sounds like this era or that era I'm good at approximating those different sounds so maybe that's why.
You've got influences from the 60s, 70s and so on - do you hold anyone in particular as the biggest influence throughout your career?
The obvious answer is The Beatles, I think we're big Beatles freaks, but apart from that I'm a big fan of Randy Newman, Ray Davies, Elvis Costello, Squeeze, Joe Jackson and a lot of writers from that era. I think part of the thing with Fountains Of Wayne is we just like so much different music and from so many different periods and we try and incorporate a lot of it into what we do.
You probably won't thank me for reminding you but you're going to be 40 later this year I think... Is that right?
So I've heard!
How is that going to affect your rock star lifestyle?
I think I'm going to have to cut down on the heroin a little bit, my body just can't take it any more!
Who have you been listening to most recently? Apparently you're a fan of British bands such as Hard-Fi?
I did like that Hard-Fi record a lot. It's funny seeing all the CCTV signs everywhere here. I didn't even know that their artwork was literally just taken from those. I also really like this band called The Broken West and we're actually going to be playing with them. They're signed to Merge Records in the States which is the label that puts out Arcade Fire and Spoon and a bunch of other bands. They're like a power-pop kind of band, sound a little bit like Big Star or Teenage Fanclub. That might be my favourite new record right now.
Is there anyone in particular that you'd like to share a stage with?
Oh there's loads of people we'd love to play with. I'd love to play with Spoon. I'm a huge fan of that band and I know Britt (Spoon vocalist) a little bit and I'd love to play some shows with them one day.
What's your favourite biscuit?
Biscuit? I don't even know what a biscuit is. What is a fucking biscuit?
Like an Oreo.
Like a cookie?
Yeah.
Oh I would have to say maybe the Lido or Milanos, the Pepperidge Farm, do you have those here? Check 'em out, they're good. Mint Milano is a good one.
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