Since the release of Beautiful Freak life hasn’t been easy on E from Eels. His sister, who was a
drugaddic, commited suicide and his mother got incurable cancer. This has made the brilliant
new album Electro-shock Blues a travel through death, ghosts and ilness, but it’s also
cleaning things up. Here is E featuring as guide on each of the 16 songs on the album.
ELIZABETH ON THE BATHROOM FLOOR
- it’s a quite hard begenning on the album, cause it must be about your sister.
- Yes, after my sister died a couple of years ago i didn’t want to write about it because it
seemed to painfull of many reasons. But after some time i began to think about her and the
things she had been through, and i began to think about myself and my mother who had cancer
and my father who had died earlier. I was the last person in my family, that made me think
about mental ilness and cancer and i began to look at the world and how everything
is connected. It was in a moment like that i woke up and thought: " I have to write about
this. It make sense, and it’s a worthy story giving to people.
GOING TO YOUR FUNERAL PART I
- Is it about your sisters funeral?
- Yes
- How did you feel that day?
- It was terrible. A terrible day.
- It have to be difficult writing about things that are so personal, cause you really open
yourself up.
- Yes, but it’s also that way i get some control over a very uncontrolable situation, by trying ’
to create something good out of it. I think that just making a song is positive act.
CANCER FOR THE CURE
- It’s about more than one thing at the same time. Cancer eats a persons body and i thought
about all the ilness that eats up my family and i connected it with cancer that eats of the world,
of the society.
- Yes, cause you start with some kind of fucked-up family values by singing : " The kids
are digging’ up a brand nem hole/where to put the deadbeat mom/grandpa’s happy watching
video porn".
- I would have a kind of times perspective in it. It’s like we are looking for a cure against cancer,
but in some way it’s the opposite entrance to it. Like healing a wound instead of changing things,
so the wound wouldn,t even arise. What happens when the cure for cancer gets cancer.
If we find a cure for cancer we will just continue doing things that fucks the world up and
Make cancer inside. There is a reason for cancer, it will be replaced by something else.
But then again, if i had cancer i would pray for a cure was found. I’m not an idiot, i want
to live as long as possible. It’s not that black or white.
- Courtney Love also appears in this song.
- Yes, "Courtney needs love. I’m just fascinated by her name. She just seemed like someone
who needs love to me, and i understand that. It’s a sign of times.
MY DESCENT INTO MADNESS
- Is it about you turning eighteen ?
- It’s a little confusing. It’s seen from both me and my sisters point of view. But it has a lot
of angles at the same time. It’s a story about being on a mental hospital and about being in
a town without love and about rather staying at at the hospital.
- So it’s like the mental ilness really is outside the hospital ?
- Yes, but it’s on a different level. The first line, "Springfield’s looking pretty dusty today"
is a reference to Dusty Springfield and a hint to Dust Brothers, The Sompsons and The Living
Springfields. Things like that happens a lot, i’m trying to make it interesting on to levels.
3 SPEED
- It seems like it’s written from a girls point of view.
- Yes, it’s from a young girl. After My Descent Into Madness it’s a kind of flashback to the
time before things went wrong.To the innocence of the childhood, but there is a dark cloud
waiting above.
- what does 3 Speed mean?
- It’s a bicykle from the sixties
- what is a 3 speed doing in this song?
- It starts like that, she is riding on her 3 speed. It’s a symbol of the innocent time.
HOSPITAL FOOD
- Hospital food has a bad reputation. No one will eat it. Maybe it’s good in some countries,
but most places i have been it seems like people are feeling the same way about it, but
everybody is going to eat it sometime, so i thought about why we are
getting ill, in that way it’s a song about responsebility and living your life and having fun
with it.
- What is "karaoke castration"?
- I don’t know, i just like those two words. Yes, it’s a quite paralysed line, to me these two
words are summing up Amerika.
- It Could be understand like when the popular culture - if you you can say it this – take the
the libidinous out of the society
- Yes, when you think about karaoke it can sometime be quite humiliating.
- Have you ever been singing karaoke?
- Yes i have (laughs)
- Where you good at it ?
- I don’t know… it’s a long time ago and it was a kind of a bet. I chosed the strangest they
had, Rasperry Beret by Prince. I couldn’t believe there was a karaoke version of it.
- There is also a part in the song with "The one about the cat".
- Oh, "the tribute album to the world"?… Yes, "The cat/who’s always getting wet/He’s
Always got a problem/He’s a very bitter dude/And now he’s complaining about his hospital
Food".
- A cat got nine lives
- Yes, nine lives filled up with complains.
ELECTRO-SHOCK BLUES
- My sister had been in electro-shock therapi, that actually helped her at that time. After she died
we found some things she had written, something the doctor had told her write. That’s the
main thing in this song. I just wanted to make a tribute to her and show that understand how
she felt.
- It’s a terrible word; electro-shock….
- Yes, it has a terrible reputation, but actually it isn’t that bad today. It really can help people.
EFIL’S GOD
- I wanted to write a song about …when somebody dies they’re calm. Death is accepted.
Death isn’t perceived as the opposite of life, it’s perceived as a part of life. Efil’s God
is "Dog’s Life" spelled backwards, we had another song by that name which we sampled
backwards and made to a new song. Maybe we are the first band who sampled themselfs
backwards.
- This song really sounds like one with the razorblade in the hand.
- It wasn’t meant that way at all. It’s somebody who’s incurable ill and ready to die. It’s
natural, it’s accepted. I just wanted to look at it from another side. I hope i will feel
that way about it sometime.
GOING TO YOUR FUNERAL PART II
- Part one is about how terrible the day was. This is more like a tribute to my sister.
- Why is the song instrumental?
- I think that instrumental music can be really strong. I don’t know…. It just felt right.
LAST STOP: THIS TOWN
- There’s a feeling of small town in this song, but there’s also parts of it that have the atmosphere
of a big city. Where are we?
- Anywhere you want to be and that’s the good thing about this song. I think it’s inspired by a
painting I made a few years ago which is featuring on the cover of the album.But is cut in two parts.
The top of it is on the front of the album and the lower part is on the back. It’s a family with
their dog talking a walk through the sky. They fly across the city with factories, smoke and
billboards. But it’s mianly inspired by a couple of days after my sister died. My landlord, who
lives next to me, came over and said: "I don’t want to scare you, but i saw the ghost of a young
woman walk into your house yesterday". In the beginning i was scared as hell, but then i started
to think about it and it felt good. Like she came to say goodbye. That is what the song is build
on. And then the landlord died.
BABY GENIUS
- The funny part about this one is that is build on a religious song played by a musicbox that i saw
on a museum. Then we put a new melodi and a lyric on top of it, it was like another way of
sampling.But it’s not that different from what Ray Charles did. Take an old spiritual song
and turn in it in to the music of the devil.
- Are your music the devil’s music? Is that the way you try to make it?
- No, not at all. I make things with a good spirit.
- I can ask in another way: Do you think you could make the music of god?
- I don’t know. Let’s ask him. Maybe all music is the music of god.
- also death metal?
- In a way. I like to think that god enjoys a bit of Slayer once in a while.
- What do you think god is doing when he’s listening to your music?
- I think he wants to pick me up, rock me a bit and say: " It’s all right, man".
CLIMBING TO THE MOON
- There’s a nurse in this song.
- In some way it’s the second chapter of My Descent Into Madness.
- You use a lot of metaphors to the hospital world, therapi…
- I had been surrounded by death and hospitals and it became the main theme of in my life
while we were making this album. I Saw it all bieng connected and felt that’s how people is
feeling. It’s not the typical music thing and it could be rather interesting .
ANT FARM
- This song is summerising me, i think. A person who often is chynical but is struggling to be
nice and always tries to get to the positive side of things, and that’s important. I’m not
interested in making a record build on anger and rage and nothing else. I want to show that
there’s another choice, maybe a more difficult choice, which is to try to get to the positive side
of things.
DEAD OF WINTER
- Why is it called Dead Of Winter and not Death Of Winter ?
- It’s a way of speech. When it’s the absolute coldest part of the winter it’s Dead Of Winter. It was
originally called Standing In The Dark Outside My Mothers House, But i didn’t like that title.
then i opened a cartoon book and the first title i saw was Dead Of Winter.
- There’s a key line in this song, "I just wanna stand outside", is this you backing out of
Something ?
- Hmmm, I never thought about it that way…yes, when so much shit is happening in your life,
one of the ways to handle it is to back out of it. That was what Novocaine For The Soul was
about. To back out and make yourself numb, which brings us to the next song …
THE MECICATION IS WEARING OF + P.S. YOU ROCK MY WORLD
- But this time i wanted to choose the difficult option and don’t back out of it all, but feel things
as they are. If you feel the good, you also have to feel the bad, then you really are alive.
- It’s seems that the last songs are connected. That they are about getting out of the dark and
finding the meaning of it all.
- Yes, and on P.S. You Rock My World it’s like a shell shock but there’s enough light at the
end of the tunnel even if you don’t know if you’re giong to make it, then you have learned
that you have the control over "right now". You can die in a few minutes and what happened
before don’t mean anything anymore. So if you chose to you can enjoy "right now".That has
given me strength. Life keeps throwing things at me and in some way i keep getting through it.
I’m surpised how miserable i have felt and still overcoming it. I’ve got a lot of strength in it,
so there is something positive about it.
- it’s a very open hearted album, you’re telling about very personal things. If you imagine
that eels become really succesful with sale and publicity, don’t you fear ending up as a
Billy Corgan figure ?
- I don’t think that’s gonna happen. I don’t think that this is the type of record that while make
us The Smashing Pumpkins or something like that. It’s not a crowd-pleaser it that way.
I don’t think people like to sing along on words like cancer and hospital.
- But they obviously like to sing "Despite all my rage/I am still just a rat in a cage".
- Yes, but that’s something they can identify with. This is maybe to "mature" or something
like that. I’m not sure. But i hope everybody can get something out of it. I didn’t want to
make this album in a pretentious way. I didn’t want to make a rockopera. I would make
something that we all could enjoy and which talks on a level we all talk on, so i hope that
people can get something out of it. I think it can be advantageous expirience. If you’re
willing to let go.
Gaffa october 1998, interviewer: Jesper Nykjær Knudsen