Painspotting

Eel’s recent hit, ‘Novocaine for the Soul’, and new album, ‘Beautiful
Freak’, are proof that one man’s pain can give pleasure to millions.
Here, lead Eel Mark Everett (E) reveals all about his awful past, his
optimism for the future, and how come his band’s low-fi mix’n’match is
the sound of now.

You reach the Police Academy via Silver Lake, and old LA
neighborhood nestling on a cluster of hills that unravel like a genteel
switchback to the East of Hollywood.

This is where the newly prosperous office workers of the Fifties
settled. You can still see them on the sidewalk, hunched over their Zimmer
frames, chatting to neighbors, chewing the fat through plastic teeth. Their
successors are an altogether more bohemian bunch – all dyed hair, painted
skin and punctured meat. There’s something almost sci-fi about the mix of
Zimmer frame and pierced flesh. Like, when this lot get older will they have
their Zimmer frames surgically implanted?

From here it’s a short drive to Echo Park, a sunlit palm-fringed oasis
which resounds with the shouts of children by day and the shrill beepers of
Mexican dealers after dark. Here you’re likely to bump into Beck, The Dust
Brothers, Geraldine Fibbers, Sukia or even Scott Weiland – when he’s not,
you know, resting. It’s kind of like Camden but with sunshine and better
burritos.

Rev the car for the steep climb that leads you out of bohemia, up till
you’re almost level with the smog and the towering chromium-glazed
workhouses of downtown LA. Then the hollow structure of the Dodgers’
stadium rises up on the right, dormant until the season begins or U2 open
their PopMart back doors for the rolled-up dollar.

When you hear the violent crack of pistol shots split the air, you know
you’ve arrived.

‘Through this gate pass the finest police officers in the World’

The sign overhead is perhaps not one with which Hugh Grant would
concur. Nevertheless, we’ve waved though. They’re used to receiving
delegations of visiting foreign police officers. I swear the guy on the gate
quizzically mouths ‘vice squad?’ to his cohort as he attempts to second
guess the contents of the red convertible Dreamworks have given us.

Park the pimpmobile, walk past the sign on the notice board detailing
the number of officer deaths that week – three human, one canine – and
make your way towards the bellies of the beasts: the Police Academy
canteen.

Here, by the door, next to the cash till, you’ll find Eels singer, Mark
Everett – E if you’re in a rush, calmly reading his morning newspaper,
napkin scrunched up on the finished breakfast plate beside him, fingers
wrapped protectively around a fast-emptying coffee mug.

In his plaid shirt, bright purple chords and NHS-style specs, he’s ever
cubic-inch the nerd’s nerd, completely at odds with the thick blue line of
muscle surrounding him.

So, er, do you come here often? “I come here for the respect,” he
grins, surveying me through binocular-think lenses. “And I stay for the
oatmeal.”

“They all think I’m an undercover cop so it’s kind of fun,” he
continues. “There’s not too many guys that look like me round here. I like
to face my fears and jump right into things. At first it’s disconcerting living
right next to the Police Academy and hearing the guns on the shooting
range. And you think, ‘Well, better move.’ Then you think, ‘No, better
embrace it and start hanging out and eating here.’”

It’s a good insurance, I suppose. If they’re planning to pick someone
off the street it won’t be you. They’ll think you’re one of them.

“Well, it’s partly that, too. But I think I’m starting to piss them off. I
think they think I’m taking the piss out of then. When they pull me over
they’re probably gonna beat the shit out of me.”

He motions towards a gruesome, four-feet-long Billy club hanging on
the wall.

“Did you know they have a gift shop here? Teddy bears and guns –
the perfect American experience.’

A waitress brings the bill and E ‘fesses up.

“OK, the real reason I come here is that it’s tax exempt. Look at that I
just got the real big breakfast for, like, $2.75.”

You’ve probably met E in your living room – floating through one
window and out the other closely tailed by his two mates, the surnameless
Butch and Tommy.

But the suspended animation of the video to Eels’ first single,
“Novocaine for the Soul”, gives little indication of the turbulence of singer
E’s own flight from Virginia six years ago.

Not so much raised as left to fester I the shadow of the CIA
Headquarters in Langley by an alcoholic mother and an absent genius
physicist father, uneasy E would be a more choice moniker for the awkward
30-year-old.

The death of his dad, teenage drug addiction, years of the therapy and
the recent suicide of his sister have left E with a yo-yo attitude to life that,
for the time being, is more up than down. But despite his protestations of
that the heartache, that infects the 12 colorfully bruised songs on “Beautiful
Freak” is starting to fade, close encounters leave you with this newfound
optimism, like our present surroundings, could so easily slide into the sea at
any moment.

Despite the catch-all roaming Nineties soundtrack of “Beautiful
Freak” – a low-fi hip hop, grunge, jazz and chamber music mix’n’match
carefully bagged and tied by Dust B Brother Michael Simpson – the
concerns on the album are, more than anything, those classic singer-
songwriterly ones of birth, death, and all the miserable bits in between.
Painspotting par excellence.

Boiling down to a dozen songs from tapes of more than 70 spanning
the last three years, when it does slip a little too over the edge into grunge
whingery – “When I came into this world they slapped me/And ever day
since then I’m slapped again” (“Flower”) – its conveyed with almost
deliberate, subtle irony. Like that cartoon orchestral cloud that descends on
the intro to “Novocaine for the Soul”. You can almost see the strings
holding it up.

More fruitful leads can be found on E’s celebration of the freak, the
outsider. Take that title track, “Beautiful Freak”, the two words repeated
like a mantra until they’re perfectly married. Or on the new single “Rags to
Rags”, an indictment of E’s American dream. “rags to rags and dust to
dust/How do you stand when you’ve been crushed?”

While musically it may be the wiser, poppier brother to
Sparklehorse’s “Viva Dixie” country cousin, Eels also seem to mirror
Placebo’s appeal to the downtrodden, the strange in spirit and those you
wouldn’t normally trust within an arm’s length of metal cutlery.

Love the album, wouldn’t wanna open their mail, though.

“After we played in Manchester recently, I was signing this one guy’s
CD and as a joke I said, ‘Tell all your friends about us,’” E laughs. “And he
goes, ‘I don’t have any friends.’ So I said, ‘Well, when you get some, tell
them.’ And I though, ‘We’re probably never gonna be really big because
there’s not gonna be any word of mouth about is cos our fans don’t have any
friends. I’m kinda proud of that in a way. It’s kind of nice to have the
outcasts. A Lot of the outcasts are really intelligent people. It’s like the song
‘Mental’ is about being smarter than everyone else, all the normal people
who just do the lowest common denominator thing. I’m hesitant to talk
about this when I’m surrounded by police cadets.

“Albert Einstein said, ‘You only need a spine to march in the army,
you don’t need a brain.’ But if you do have a brain and you march away
from the others, they think you’re crazy or a weirdo.

“I’ve always thought that I was so normal and it’s not until I heard
from other people that I realize I’m not. My problem is that I always use
myself as a measuring stick for the rest of the world. Well, I like this so
maybe the rest of the world will. But the rest of the world is listening to
Celine Dion.”

Indeed, the rest of the world’s ears breathed a sigh of relief when
Polydor decided to drop their E following his two keyboard-heavy solo
albums, “A Man Called E” and “Broken Toy Shop”.

Most of the songs on “Beautiful Freak” where destined for E’s then
solo outing. Then he met Butch and Tommy at an open mic session in LA’s
Mint Room and decided that triage might be best served by a trio. Little did
he know what he’d set in motion.

“I’m kinda trying to model myself after Neil Young,” he says. “I’m
kinda thinking that Eels are my Crazy Horse. I might have a ‘Landing on
Water’ phase. I’m looking forward to the Shocking Pinks phase! I think
‘Trans’ might be next. I liked being a solo artist cos you don’t have to have
any artistic differences with anyone. But then we started playing live and it
just felt so good and it was so much fun to challenge myself as an electric
guitarist. I’m really a drummer. Now I’m the only guitarist in a three-piece
band and its really exciting.”

“The trick for us has been trying not to drown in post-modernism. I
guess the Nineties has been the decade that’s been about all the other
decades instead of its own decade. That’s what I think is so great about
Beck. He’s a perfect reflection of the times yet he’s also a perfect reflection
of what’s so wrong with the times. We’re a different think. We wanted to
be part of the modern times and get to the genuine moment of the modern
times. I hope that we’ll look back on the Nineties one day and say,
‘Remember when we were so into irony that we couldn’t have a genuine
moment to save our lives?’ These songs were written when I’d hit rock
bottom in my life and it have me a lot of freedom,” E changes tack. “The
upside of hitting rock bottom is that it clears you out and makes you braver
lyrically and more adventurous musically. So, I recommend hitting rock
bottom.”

It was a long fall. Strung out on cocaine and cannabis by the tender
age of 13, E was already better known to the local cops than the teachers at
school.

“The saddest part about it all was that I had such a lonely childhood
that when I did all that stuff nobody punished me,” he says, “I punished
myself, I straightened myself out. Nobody told my sister either, but she
spiraled down more and more. It was tragic.

“I’ve had a lot of tragedy in my life the last year. But a lot of good
things have happened with the Eels. Things have gotten better for me in that
I’ve realized I have the choice to be happy or sad so I’m choosing to be
happy when I can.

“Part of my problem is with intimacy. ‘Novocaine for the Soul’
sounds detached because it’s about detachment. That’s what I think is so
great about that song, and on that level I think it’s almost genius. It’s
detachment personified. I’m singing about numbness and I’m numb. It’s
about having too much feeling.

“I grew up in a family that didn’t wanna feel and I just wanted to ‘fess
up to it that I was that way, too. I was cut off in the most important ways.
But I’m not mad at them any more. They tried their best, they didn’t know
any better.

“The most important thing you can for your kids is make them feel
loved and that they’re the most important thing on earth. You really need
that the first few years of your life and you don’t end up like me if you’ve
got that.

“I don’t know if I was actually a mistake but I always felt like I was. I
think my mom wanted to have a child when she had me but I think my father
was completely not interested and my mom was just kind of, in the most
important sense, not connected to the kids. I don’t know why it was. It was
just how she was raised, she was just passing it down unwittingly. It just
instilled in me an incredible sense of insecurity that I’ve been working
against all my life. It makes me make up enemies in my life. Every time I
meet someone I expect them to have me. It’s a horrible way to live your
life.

“I wasn’t getting that warm embrace, I was not getting that feeling
that I was OK. And that’s why performers end up being performers quite
often because they feel like there’s something wrong with them but if they
do certain things, then they feel loved.

“Look at Michael Jackson. He’s so fucked up because the only way
he ever got love is when his dad said, ‘Good show, Michael.’ His dad was
busting his ass rehearsing and the only time he got it was if he did good on
stage.

“The only time you’re supposed to get unconditional love is when
you’re a little kid. The real crime in it all is that when you are little kid and
you’re not getting that unconditional love then you end being a little adult
and you end up emotionally taking care of your parents. You do things to
make them happy and then you grow up an eternal child and that’s why
these adult relationships don’t work because everyone’s trying to find
happiness from another person which they needed when they were a kid.
It’s amazing how much those first few years can screw everything up.

“I have on sister. She was older than me and she committed suicide
and that was it. My dad died where I was 19 and now my moms really ill
I’m looking at being the last member standing. It’s pretty weird to be this
young and to be in the position where you’ll have no family. It’s weird that
all this is happening so fast.

“My sister was obviously mentally ill, as I have been, too, to some
extent. But she had it worse than me. The question is how much of it is a
genetic thing and how much of it is an enviromental thing. I believe it’s a
combination of both. We both spent our live trying to fill a hole. She just
was weaker and gave up. I’ve been lucky for a couple of reasons. I’ve had
music which has given me something to do, a way to pass the days and get
through. And I’ve been strong enough to try and make things better.

“Yeah, I’ve contemplaited it [suicide]. But I hope that’s in the past.
The sad part is that I will keep trying to fill that hole all my life and
hopefully I wont get overwhelmed like I have the in past. But I know that its
completely possible that I will. The point is that I’m really trying to have
that not happen.

“In my whole life I have felt like a flower in a hailstorm but now I feel
strong enough to be the hailstorm. I could make a very harrowing record of
just the anger and the pain but I wanted to have something in the music that
was uplifting enough. It’s not denial, more of a desire to try and change
things. It’s a very intricate thing and I hope people can appreciate it.”

Apart from preposterous chin hair, just about the only thing E shares
with Andy Cairns is the fact that he’s been in therapy for the last six years.

“So many people are phobic about what I’m talking about, so I want
to talk about it cos I want to try and create less of a stigma for it. I want to
do anything I can to contribute to people helping themselves. I remember
reading this interview with Bruce Springsteen where he was talking about
how he’d gotten into therapy and it was really revealing and it struck a chord
with me. I thought it was a very giving thing for someone to do that
publicly, especially someone like Springsteen who’s perceived as this macho
rock guy.”

So, bad news Is good news. This is what Wim Wenders said to E
when he met him. Written following the death of his father, “Bad News” is
an Eels song that clocked too high a “harrowing ration” and was left off the
album. E cried when he played it again recently. Wim that was wonderful.

“He told me he’d been playing ‘Beautiful Freak’ every day since it
came out,” recalls E. “he said that he would do anything he could to get
‘Bad News’ into the movie he was working on. The he said, ‘Zo, bad newss
iss good newss!’ This is one of the greatest cinematic minds of our time.
No, I’m joking, he was very sweet.”

Meanwhile, there’s talk of a collaboration with Tricky, too.

“We played some shows with him. He said, ‘You guys are dope.’ Or
maybe he said, ‘You guys are dopes.’

“The really cool thing is, I just got back and there’s this letter from
Nicolas Cage – he says he really loves our record and ‘Beautiful Freak’ is
his favorite song and he doesn’t even realize that it was inspired by one of
his films.

“I wrote ‘Beautiful Freak’ the day after I’d seen the film ‘Birdy’,” he
explains. “There’s a line about flying inside. That made my day. It’s one
thing to get a letter from someone famous but to get a letter from somebody
famous that does work that you really admire – that’s a big thrill.”

The best piece of advice E ever took on board was from a Ray Charles
biography. “You’ve got to make it stink of your own shit.” Along with
everyone else, he’s becoming more fond of his own aroma these days. Let’s
hope it lingers.

“You guys seem to like us right now but we’re ready for the
backlash,” he says, finally. “Everything has become so disposable, everyone
wants the new thing, you know? Someone said to me the other day, ‘Give
yourself a different name every time you put a record out cos then you’ll
always be the new thing.’ Because I know we’ll put out our second record
and no one will care.”