hello trees! hello sky!
After death, depression and the daily threat of plane crashes, newly happy
eels mainman E has life to live and love to give - especially to baby
racoons..

Midwinter in California. Sunroofs are open, palm trees are luminous green
and, to the British eye at least, there's a palpable sense of smug
contentment wherever you go. Despite his reputation as a one man cold
weather front, eels mainman Mark 'E' Everett does nothing to dispel the
theory that all residents of the City of Angels have it real good.

As he pulls into a small car park behind Mexico City, one of Los Angeles'
finest Mexican restaurants, E leans out of his Toyota pickup and smiles the
smile of a happy man. He has good reason: latest single 'Mr E's Beautiful
Blues' has gone top ten in Britain with album 'Daisies of the Galaxy' set to
follow. After winning a Brit in 1998 as Best International Newcomer for
'Beautiful Freak', he can rightly call himself a global star of consistency
and distinction. And, more importantly, a racoon who's taken residence in
his back yard has just given birth to pups.

"How you doing?", he enquires while extending a hand, "I'm fine myself,
things are real good at the moment". He slams the driver door shut and
grins, "I'm back, I'm back on top and ready to rock!"
There's little evidence of the trauma he's endured in his 35 years. Within
his dysfunctional Virginian family  , his sister suffered all her life from
depression and was in and out of mental institutions until she committed
suicide four years ago. His mother died two years ago after a long drawn out
battle with cancer. E, meanwhile, had problems of his own. He was convinced
a plane was about to fall from the sky. On top of him. "When I was a kid a
plane crashed in my neighbourhood", he recalls with a nonchalant air. "And
you never forget what that sounds like. When I first moved to LA, I was
living in an apartment across from the airport. I would regularly get down
into the crash position chanting, 'This is it, this is it' when a plane got
too close. I guess that was a pretty miserable set up."

E gives a self-effacing grin and gamely tries to reduce one of two
mountainous plates of spinach enchiladas with molé sauce [the other he'll
take home for his tea tomorrow night:  "I tend not to cook very much so this
place keeps me alive" he confesses]. The American Morrissey, Little Lord
Misery Guts, or even Master of Air Disaster Related Paranoia are clearly not
present. Courteous, charming and very funny he provides ample credence to
his own claim to be the most misunderstood man in rock.

He's recently moved to a new apartment just down the road in the boho
district of Silverlake, gaining the same zip code as Spike Jonez, Beck, the
Dust Brothers, Red Hot Chili Pepper Flea and Madonna. An organic vegetarian,
he's started to moderate his teetotalism but "experimenting" with various
forms of alcohol. More importantly he's just released 'Daisies Of the Galaxy
', quite possibly the finest album of his career, a record that spins on an
axis of happiness and hope, a world away from the self-help grief
counselling of the last album 'Electro-Shock Blues'.

"Am I happy? Well I wouldn't quite go that far", he deadpans. "But I set out
to write some songs that had the feeling I was enjoying life, enjoying the
simple things like birds and flowers [laughs]. And I think I've achieved
that. I should have called the album 'More songs about Birds and Flowers'.

Last year, E's emotional state took a turn for the better. After his mother'
s funeral he travelled back to Virginia to clear out the family home. E came
away from the experience a changed man. "When I got back I just started
thinking, Okay, now I'm ready for the fun to begin. I'm ready for my
care-free years," he says "I felt I'd gone to my last funeral for a while".

A couple of items he brought back to LA made an impression on 'Daisies of
the Galaxy', The first, a 50's Greek children's book, provided the album's
artwork while a birdfeeder reminded E of his mother's love of ornithology
and provided the inspiration for 'I Like Birds', a breezy ode to the fact
that, well, birds are a good thing. "I got a bird bath too.," he grins "What
with the birds, my cats and
racoons as big as a dog in my yard, I've got a regular zoo going on out
 here". In fact, the only time on the album E's gander is even slightly
raised is in his anti-advertising jingle 'Tiger in my Tank'. "I just have
such a problem with doing commercials," he spits "I read Moby has licensed
every track on his new album to some commercial or film or other. It's like,
"What are you doing the music for in the first place?"" Last week E got a
call from an ad agency wanting to use his song 'Last Stop: This Town' for
a perfume ad. Beginning "You're dead but the world keeps spinning" it's
hardly Dr Alban's "It's my Life". Unsurprisingly E told them to do one. "The
thing is", he glares " when I was writing the song I wasn't thinking about
perfume, I was thinking about my dead sister."

E is in a good mood today. There are things to be done, stuff to sort out,
songs to practise with a six-strong band - including  4AD singer Lisa
Germano on backing vocals - before an upcoming European tour. He's also
working with John Parish from PJ Harvey on "some very rock, very cool stuff"
and new friend Peter Buck who co-wrote the spacious instrumental 'Estate
Sale' on 'Daisies.' "He's great to work with but he gets kinda busy with
that band of his, that side project", mugs E, "He can't always be an eel, I
have to give him time off to do his little pet projects". Things, however,
have a tendency to take on a darker hue when there's a lull in the
proceedings. "When I'm not recording or touring I do get extremely
 depressed", says E in a low voice "It was like that with this new album.
When I wrote it a year ago I was feeling very positive. After that I sunk
into depression for a while and just couldn't imagine going out and playing
the songs I'd written."  What do the record company think of this? "That's
my biggest problem right there, "E says, visibly brightening up "The record
company just can't keep up with my mood swings. They can never put my
records out fast enough [laughs]. I give them a record and they're like,
'Well, we can't put it out now because there's Christmas coming', and I'm
like, 'Shit! I don't know what kind of mood I'm going to be in next year."

It might help if E got out a bit, took some of advantage of his city's
renowned evening entertainment. Sadly, in E-world, going to bed after ten is
classed as a racy night. "I'm a real homeboy ", he admits with a shrug. "My
favourite club is my bed - Club Bed I call it. The thing is I'm not going to
meet anybody I actually want to hang around with in a club. They're drinking
and smoking and already we don't have anything in common. There's not much
fun in Grandpa's world apart from going to bed early".

However, the mere mention of the two M-words, miserable and Morrissey, finds
E swiftly attempting to assert his credentials as Mr Happy, going through
life with a smile and a cheeky wink for the ladies. "I'm quirky, not
miserable," he states with a not inconsiderable amount of force. "You know,
I do have a tendency to get down. The thing that's important or different
about me is that, unlike Morrissey, I'm not trying to make a career out of
drudgery. There's plenty of young, white, American acts that have taken care
of that. What's different about what I do  is that I'm really always trying
to look at the bright side of things, believe it or not. It's like you might
pick up 'Electro-Shock Blues' and take a look at the song titles and then it
's like 'Oh my God'. But there's a lot of humour there. The title itself is
a joke but people looked at it and went 'Whoa, heavy'

For an American, E does have a remarkable sense of irony. He enthuses about
a treasured bottle of Ozzy Osbourne Holy Water he discovered on a tour bus
previously used by Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler ["The bottle says, 'Each
bottle is blessed by Ozzy' - priceless"]. The fact that he drives a redneck
car when he left his hometown partly because of the Cro Magnon mentality of
it's inhabitants also speaks volumes about his high humour quotient. "yeah,
I know it's a redneck car, " he shrugs "But it sure is a sexy beast, huh?"
In his lean years, E's car provided him with a vital income, as he would
pocket the insurance money intended for the repair bills following a minor
accident. Point at one of the many dents and he'll name the year and how
much money he received. "That scrape along the side - 1991, $250", he
demonstrates. "That hole in the back that looks like a bullet hole? That was
a pipe that fell off a truck - 1994, $400".

In the roomy rehearsal space on the east side of town, E is leading from the
front. Co-ordinating and overseeing every detail of the eels live act, he
commands his five-strong troupe like a placid general, sitting calmly at his
electric piano while the minimalist brass section play through the break in
old hit 'Susan's House'.  The first gig for the newly expanded eels is in
two days and after that they're off to Europe before sampling the delights
of Japan for the first time. Right now, there's only one thing standing in
the way of E's ambition to gain the recognition he's been working all his
life to receive.. "I can't find anyone to look after my cats. I'm trying to
get the old lady down the road to do it but she runs away every time I spot
her. Decent cat sitters are so hard to find in LA."