😀 I just read that he sings on the Delirium song “Daylight” so I downloaded it on the spot. It was so awesome to hear him singing something different and with all the great work Delirium did on the track(the native-sounding background vocals and the uncharacteristic sounds to accompany Matthew’s voice). It’s certainly my new track of the month(even if it is a year or two old). 😀
When he heard the Matthew Sweet song, “I Should Never Have Let You Know” being recorded, Beach Boy Brian Wilson jumped up from his seat to proclaim, “I love it! I fucking love it!”
Being the big Matthew Sweet fan I am, I’ve always found his album art to be interesting. I had known of his use of photos of Tuesday Weld for two albums(Girlfriend and Time Capsule, his greatest hits collection) but I’d never really found out much about her… What I have just read was rather interesting. 🙂
“She is a wolf disguised as a sheep, lurking to prey on the weaker wolf. Her simultaneously sheepish and volpine smile blatantly admits as much; those attracted are quick to claim deceit when they were merely outsmarted.
That smile, that smile… a George Herriman moon under two sadly impossible stars shining black in a pale night sky. Her small gappily placed teeth are a physical — thus cinematic — emblem of the eternally enticing but unbridgeable distance between predator and lover, between dream and reality. They represent the generative nature of all gaps, teasingly opposed by her “family” name while her “given” name hints at the god of conflict. Is it any wonder that she played a matricide in the ’60s, and later starred in Mother and Daughter: The Loving War? ”
http://www.kokonino.com/weld.html
“HER SWINGIN’ ’60s CREDENTIALS: A beautiful but tragic figure whose youthful appeal, built up with her ’50s role as the coveted Thalia on TV’s “Dobie Gillis,” was sadly wasted in mediocre ’60s flicks.”
“She cautiously avoided all pictures which smelled of success and instead concentrated on offbeat projects she felt assured would bomb at the box office. Of those, Pretty Poison stands as her most perfect vehicle.”
LIFESTYLE: Sadly, reports are that she was only nine when she had her first nervous breakdown, she was a serious drinker by the time she was ten, she had attempted suicide before she turned twelve, and all that was before she’d made her first movie, Rock, Rock, Rock, at thirteen. She herself said that she doesn’t remember much of what she did as a young girl, because “as a teenager, I was a wreck. I drank so much I can’t remember anything.” ”
http://www.swinginchicks.com/tuesday_weld.htm
More Matthew Sweet stuff:
Matthew Sweet chose the following manga as his favorites in the liner notes of 100% Fun: Akira, Dirty Pair, Lum, Cobra, Outlanders, Crying Freeman, Bubblegum Crisis, Ranma 1/2, Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, Caravan Kidd.
I have the first book of Outlanders 🙂 I need to read it someday.
In order to use the Tuesday Weld cover photo, Matthew Sweet agreed to change the title of his album from its originally planned Nothing Lasts to its released title of Girlfriend.
One of the greatest strengths of Girlfriend is the ability of the instantly memorable melodies, strikingly intimate lyrics, and exceptionally strong guitars to cut across generic boundaries. Sweet admitted that one possible reason for the disparity between his music’s critical and popular successes is the difficulty of classifying what type of music Girlfriend actually is, saying “that keeps a lot of people from selling records, because radio is really what sells records. Most people just don’t know about anything that doesn’t get stuck right in front of them. And a lot of people listen to the radio, so I think that’s a place where that segregation really occurs.”
Another song on Girlfriend with a link to loneliness and movie actresses is “Winona,” with its plaintive chorus, “Won’t you be my little movie star.” “Actually, Lloyd Cole suggested I call it that,” Sweet explained. “I didn’t have a title for a long time and he knew that I liked the movie Heathers. He thought that we should call it `Winona’ because I wanted a kind of a country title and at the time she was still a lot more obscure. First of all it didn’t occur to me that there would be a lot of people giving attention to anything I did. And second of all it didn’t occur to me that people would think that it was about her. Then by the time the record came out she had actually heard the song through a guy at Rolling Stone and supposedly liked it so I thanked my friend for sending it to her because at the time I didn’t think the record was even going to come out. It was a really dark period and I thought, `Well at least Winona Ryder heard my record.’ ”
Label-free and living easy, the power-pop kingpin hits the road with the ’60s-inspired sounds of his latest release, In Reverse
In the choppy musical seas–where teen pop and hip hop rule the (air) waves–Matthew Sweet’s elaborately produced homage to ’60s pop, In Reverse, scarcely made a ripple last year. But it’s a gem, an album of rich textures and gorgeous sounds steeped in the studio techniques of Phil Spector and George Martin.
While Sweet has always been highly regarded in the musical community, his profile shot up enormously in the early ’90s with Girlfriend, the album that struck a universal nerve, from its Tuesday Weld nymphet album cover to classic songs like “I’ve Been Waiting” and “Nothing Lasts.” You may also have recognized him as a member of Ming Tea, who performed the song “BBC” and appeared in the ’60s-mod-cum-Laugh-In “band” snippets interspersed throughout Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery. Sweet is a man who’s ridden the rock roller coaster through enough hairpin turns and drops that he’s learned to live for the moment, to wait through the calms.
“I turned in my ‘best of’ record and that was the last thing I owed under my contract,” he says. While his tour is selling out–with no label push–he’s getting airplay for a collaborative song he did “as a lark” with electronic-band Delirium, called “Daylight” (“It’ll probably sell way more copies than anything that’s actually me,” he notes bemusedly).
After struggling two years to free himself from his Zoo Records contract (which got gobbled up by evil teen-pop juggernaut Jive Records), Sweet got the green light to make the album In Reverse. With the label’s directive to go in any direction he wanted, Sweet organized the “deluxe” recording session of his dreams, enlisting legendary guitar/bassist Carol Kaye (a session player with everyone from the Righteous Brothers and The Mamas and the Papas to the Beach Boys), Menck and Chastain, guitarist Pete Phillips and a group of session musicians that could recreate–in the studio–the famed Phil Spector “wall of sound.” Imagine George Martin standing next to the console in a lab coat, with Spector at his most fly ’60s mod, and then have The Byrds or Burrito Brothers stop in for a track or two. From the rococo backwards trumpet flourishes, tape loops and grinding power chords of “Millenium Blues,” the album’s opener, it’s easily Sweet’s best since Girlfriend, with lyrics that have the poignancy brought by age and experience.
“It is a crazy record, and it’s weird that they encouraged me and let me make this record,” he says. “It’s one of those things where they (the label) think they like it until they put it out and have to sell and promote it.” With no promotion behind it, the record–ironically Sweet’s most written about work since Girlfriend, sold fewer than any of his previous albums.
Having legendary West Coast ’60s session bassist Carol Kaye provided an authenticity to the album’s sound: her tracks lend the session an eerie realness that transcends mere homage. “Not only did she have great stories [of famous sessions over the years], but she really vibed on the music,” Sweet says. For the portions of the album recorded live with the 15-to 17-piece group, the excitement of hearing a track being created on the spot–an almost extinct concept in these sample friendly days–was a moving experience. “She got teary-eyed listening to the playback on some of those,” says Sweet, referring to Kaye.
By coincidence, former Beach Boy Brian Wilson was recording in the next studio. He popped in as they were mixing “I Should Never Have Let You Know,” an orchestral ballad replete with harpsichord, organ and theremin. While Sweet paced (“I was horrified–I couldn’t be in the room,” he says), Wilson tapped along intently. Just as Sweet re-entered the studio, Wilson jumped up from his seat to proclaim, “I love it! I fucking love it!”
Asked if he’s jaded with the music business and the current “niche market” state of rock (according to a recent McPaper spread), Sweet remains hopeful. He had recently been called in to write with teen-dreams Hanson. (Yes, all three of them; they only write as a group.) “They’d just been turned on to stacks of fantastic CDs–stuff we know–Todd Rundgren, Pet Sounds, all those kinds of records,” he says. He also mentions getting together to play with Phantom Planet, which features Rushmore’s Jason Schwartzman on drums and another teen, Alex, who’s sung in Gap commercials. “They’re really talented kids–they must be 19 or 20–and what they’re deeply into are these weird Beach Boys records, the early ’70s ones, stuff it took us years and years to know even existed,” Sweet says, truly impressed.
Of course, everything gets rediscovered. Not just the hits of an era, but the music that bubbled just beneath the surface–the vibrant, more personal sounds you have to dig to find. “It gives me faith that rock music–or power pop, or whatever it is we like–will live,” Sweet says.
“Sometimes I think `power pop’ is a little more limited as a musical range than what I’d like to think I do,” he confesses on the phone from his Los Angeles home. `But on the other hand, the power- pop world is the only place I ever felt I had any kind of stature.’ Sweet says he was proud to be featured along the Raspberries, Badfinger and other power-pop deities on Rhino’s definitive 1997 collection, Poptopia.
“I’m in self-imposed limbo right now,” he said, “but I do have to figure out what I’m going to do, if I’m going to pursue a traditional deal or do something myself. We haven’t advertised it at all; we have a couple of places where we know they’d be interested to talk when we’re ready. There were a few people when we were trying to get out of the Volcano deal before the last record (1999’s ‘In Reverse’). But we haven’t called anybody or approached anybody about it or spread the word. My guess is that most people don’t know.
“I’m trying to write some songs first and be able to go to people and say, ‘This is what I want to do.’ It’s fun and scary at the same time. It’s really good for my feeling about working at home, writing and getting into myself; I feel free. I just don’t have to care about anything, like I’ve gotten into playing drums by myself on my demos really badly and doing all this renegade stuff. That’s the mind set I’m getting into.”
“I’m trying to figure what rights I have to demos of mine so I can put them out myself, because there’s so much music I’ve done that never got made into records … like three songs for every one that got on a record.”
“I actually talked to her,” Sweet said proudly. “I came home, my manager was trying to get rights for this new photo, to get her to sign off on it, and I came home one day and I had a message from her on my machine! This is crazy! And so I called her back, and she was great, we got along really good, but she did accuse me of being weird. She said, ‘You’re weird, aren’t you? You like those young girls.’
“God, I didn’t think of it that way, I just thought it was cool. It was really intimate, sort of like you’re hanging out with the girl. I like how she’s sprawled on the cement on the back (cover). Those photos went together really well. I thought since it was a 10-year compilation, it was fitting to kind of reprise her role on it.
“In the end, she was happy to give me support to do it, and in fact she kind of went to bat for me in the final moments, when the legal department at Jive was trying to make it really hard to use the photo, and she eventually signed something where she vouched that it was really an old man from the studio that took the photos and he was certainly long-dead.”
One diehard from Larsen, Wis., seemingly speaking for all Sweet fans, said: “Why Matthew Sweet hasn’t consistently had hit records remains one of the mysteries in modern music. … This best-of collection follows his excellent ‘Pet Sounds’ for the ’90s, ‘In Reverse.’ And although fans will quibble over the track selection, this is a solid set. Those who are fans of Big Star, the Raspberries, Badfinger, Beatles, Beach Boys will love this CD. Not a bad song in the bunch. Listen to this over and over, then go out and buy his other CDs.”
“Times change, and it becomes more difficult, especially right now, for artists like me. On a certain level, I guess it doesn’t surprise me that much that I’m not suddenly having huge commercial success when no one else remotely like me is either. It’s frustrating, but it sure does give me hope when people say all those nice things about me. That’s all I can say.”
THE FIRST RECORD I EVER BOUGHT: “Electric Light Orchestra’s ‘New World Record,’ when I was in the fifth or sixth grade. I also had the green vinyl 45 of ‘Telephone Line.’ I thought they were very cool sounding. A bit of Lennon trivia for you, apparently he really loved ELO and said they went well with the Beatles.”
THE FIRST CONCERT I EVER WENT TO: “Interestingly enough, I went to see ELO play, with all the green lasers, in Omaha. I went with my brother and his girlfriend and my girlfriend. The place was so thick with pot smoke, I was practically developing asthma right then and there. I was breathing through my sweater. I ended up making out with my girlfriend in the back seat of the car all the way back home. A great night all around.”
THE LAST CD I BOUGHT: “I got the reissues of John Lennon’s ‘Walls and Bridges’ and ‘Imagine’ while I was at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I had driven out there to play at the opening of the Lennon exhibit and it made me want to expand my Lennon collection. Lennon’s really my inspiration right now. I’m getting back to what’s good and what’s real and honest about music.”