interview: E

EELS frontman about the dark side and life on the road

Backstage at the (now defunct) Vredenburg concert hall in Utrecht it's a bit of a madhouse. People from the record company acting as if they are the most important persons in the world, roadies towing gear around, catering setting up food on tables. And in the middle of it all is EELS frontman E, sitting calmly, playing with a pipe he doesn't smoke. The tour promoting the Electro-Shock Blues album is only a few days old and as the album is not yet available everywhere EELS plays, giving the audiences quite a hard time adjusting to the 'new' EELS. On the day of the interview, the new album is officially released in The Netherlands.

eels.nl:You're making it quite difficult for the audiences. Playing new songs and on top of that they have to sit down for an entire evening...
E: "Well, yeah. I got bored of the loud and noisy crowds on the Beautiful Freak tour. I mean, there were people moshing and crowdsurfing while I tried to play songs like Flower or Manchester Girl. This time I wanted the audience to pay attention."

eels.nl: Yet now you have audience members pissed off because they are expecting a party and they get a funeral wake instead. Yesterday in Groningen people were yelling all the way through Dead Of Winter.
E: "What I'm trying to achieve is that people will know that coming to a show by the EELS means that they can expect anything. Someday I might return to full blown rock concerts, but I'm in a totally different space right now. Yesterday in I actually considered stopping the show altogether at that point. But then I'd let them win. Eventually we won them over, didn't we?"

eels.nl: Indeed you did. Opening act Lisa Germano is having even a harder time on stage.
E: "It's disrespectful. A few times we had to send Butch on stage to tell the people to shut the fuck up."

eels.nl: Speaking of Lisa, she's also playing on Ant Farm on the new EELS album. Surprisingly she doesn't play along with you guys when it's played during these concerts.
E: "We haven't actually thought about doing that. We've never even rehearsed it with her. But who knows... I don't think she has her violin with her though."

eels.nl: About the new album, it's not the least bit similar to Beautiful Freak. How do you hope people will react?
E: "I don't know. I hope people like it, but if they don't... You know, I write songs for myself in the first place. And this is what needed to come out right now."

eels.nl: Recently Manic Street Preachers released an album called This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. Initially their record company did not want to release it in the United States as it was ' too dark'. Though compared with Electro-Shock Blues the Manics' album is one of the most uplifting of the year. Weren't you afraid your record company would find the album too disturbing for release?
E: "Generally speaking the Americans are obsessed by the dark side of life. Look at how popular acts like Marilyn Manson or Nine Inch Nails are. But that obsession is for what I'd call 'cartoon versions of the dark side'. I show them a real dark side and a lot of people can't handle that. I'm very aware that I may lose a lot of 'fans' that like EELS because of the singles of the Beautiful Freak album. But you have to question for yourself what's most important and to me that's artistic growth."

(MORE COMING SOON!)