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Nicholas Britell

Photo by Dominic Nicholls

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Nicholas Britell On Scoring 'Succession' And 'The King' & Learning From Steve McQueen

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The Emmy-winning composer talks to the Recording Academy about moving between film and television, working with auteurs like Adam McKay and Barry Jenkins and more
GRAMMYs
Sep 18, 2019 - 10:58 am

It's safe to say that Nicholas Britell is living the dream—his dream, at least. "Ever since I was five years old, I loved movies and I loved music," the 38-year-old film and TV composer tells the Recording Academy over the phone. "As a composer, the dream is that you can write things and that people can feel the things that you're feeling."

That's exactly what Britell’s work does: It stirs up feelings, whether it’s the bittersweet strings that adorn director Barry Jenkins' 2018 tragic romance If Beale Street Could Talk, or the cascading pianos that usher viewers into the rareified air of the Roy family, the dysfunctional super-wealthy clan at the hardened heart of HBO's Succession. Britell's ear and knack for translating emotion have helped him build quite an impressive IMDb page over the past few years. He's collaborated with some of the most respected filmmakers active today—Jenkins, Steve McQueen, Adam McKay—which means his songs have appeared in two of this decade’s Best Picture winners (McQueen's 12 Years A Slave and Jenkins' Moonlight). Britell has earned some awards attention of his own, as well; he's been nominated for two Oscars for Best Original Score (for Moonlight and Beale Street, respectively) and, more recently, took home a Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music (for Succession, naturally). Odds are, if you have any friends who spend too much time on Film Twitter, they're fans of his.

The Recording Academy chatted with Britell about working alongside a series of auteurs, his score for the second season of Succession (which is presently dominating the TV discourse online), and his compositions for the upcoming Henry V-centric film The King, set to hit theaters on Oct. 11 before debuting on Netflix on Nov. 1. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

To start at the beginning of your recent run: What was it like being a young composer, working on a film as heavy and sobering as 12 Years A Slave and working with a master like Steve McQueen? 

Steve is incredible. It was truly inspiring and really a life-changing experience for me, to work closely with an artist like Steve, and to learn from him and just to see the way that he approaches things, his decision-making process, the way that he thinks about artistic choices. I often think back on that experience and I’ve stayed in close touch with Steve, and he’s been a very dear friend as well, since then. 

On IMDb, it says "Additional music" for your credit on 12 Years A Slave. Can you clarify: What was your level of involvement? You didn't handle all of the scoring, but you did some of it? 

Actually, I wasn't involved in the score of 12 Years A Slave. I wrote and researched and arranged all of the music that appears on-camera in the film. 

All of the diegetic music.

Exactly, all of the diegetic music. Everything from working with Chiwetel [Ejiofor] and coordinating, researching the type of fiddle tunes that an African-American violinst in 1841 in New York state might have played. Everything from that to exploring the field songs and dances in the South and collaborating with Steve on figuring out the best way to execute those performances. It was actually a huge research endeavor to figure out what's possible to be known about those types of performances and music, and also what are the limits of our knowledge on that. 

You've also collaborated with Barry Jenkins, who has such a distinct visual style, obviously, and favors a lot of close-ups of his characters, a lot of eye contact. What's it like composing for sequences and shots that are so direct, where the audience and the performer are both so vulnerable? 

One of the things about Barry's filmmaking style is that he creates a very full, rich aesthetic experience for the films that he makes. What you’re talking about, that sort of directness, is really emblematic of the way that he approaches all of the departments of the films: the colors, the cinematography, the music, the sound. There is a directness and a boldness with his choices, but it’s all in service of the feeling. A lot of what we’re trying to do, from my perspective, it’s about finding musical landscapes that can convey those feelings and the fullness of those feelings. 

And every film is different. There's no right score for something, there's just the score that you craft in collaboration with the director, at that moment in time. There are lots of possible scores, but I think one of the beautiful things about scoring is that it's so dependent on the process, and how it comes together, and that's what makes it unique to that film. Above all, it’s about finding a sound that feels like—for you and for the director—that it’s really woven into the fabric of the movie somehow. Some things just feel connected, in a way, and some don't. We ourselves don't really know, and the process is us experimenting together. 

You've also worked on two films with Adam McKay, who's an executive produer on Succession. Can you talk about how you got invovled with the show specifically? 

Well, actually, Succession was a result of those two films. I first worked with Adam on The Big Short, and it was after we finished The Big Short that we talked about Succession, and he told me about the premise and the ideas behind the show and asked if I wanted to be a part of the pilot, and of course I said yes. It was quite a few years ago, actually. My mental calendar is sort of a blur—but we did the pilot and I worked on that and then it was after the pilot, after some time, we then did the rest of the series and put it all together. 

I started talking to Adam about it before they shot the pilot and was able to go to set and be there for when they were shooting the pilot, which, it’s always a great experience because you get to see things up close. So, it directly came out of that experience of first working with Adam on The Big Short. I finished scoring Succession, the first season, while we were making Vice, actually, so I was doing those in parallel to some extent. 

The goal for me musically was that it had both this kind of gravitas to the seriousness of that world, which is—it’s a real issue in the world, that there are these increasing concentrations of wealth and power amongst fewer and fewer people. There's a darkness there, but there’s also this absurdity and I think that finding a tone that could balance both of those things was really the key. And it was very interesting, actually, working on Vice at the same time, because I feel working with Adam has been so crucial for me as a learning experience, too, and thinking about that interplay between drama and comedy.

How has the Succession score changed or developed from season one to season two? 

Season one really laid the groundwork for the thematic ideas and for the tone. Season two, I think it was really important for me that as the story evolved, I definitely wanted the music to continue its own evolution. I remember talking to Jesse [Armstrong, creator and showrunner of Succession] about this idea of, "Imagine a symphony that is Succession, what's the second movement sound like? What do we do?"

Also, you never want to overstay your welcome with certain musical ideas. There's definitely a sort of dark, maniacal streak to some of the music, and I want to make sure that when we’re using certain ideas, that we know exactly where and they have a power still. There’s certain new elements for Kendall, there are certain elements that are Shiv-focused. It’s the same Succession universe, but hopefully a bit more. 

How does working on a TV show compare to working on a feature-length film? 

The difference between film and TV is pretty large, actually. There's just so much more real estate in TV. Certainly, there's the micro-level approach, which is thinking episode to episode. But I really try to think about it as one entire piece, in a way. So, you're always thinking about, "Where do certain ideas get seeded, where do certain ideas come back? How does what we hear in episode one impact what we hear in episode 10?" It's actually quite challenging to think about that. 

That's something that I really love about film music, is thinking about the architecture of the ideas, like, where you start one idea and then how does it evolve, how does it change, where does it come back? And also, importantly, where do you not have music? That’s always really important, too. Each film has its own musical logic, and you’re trying to have the film tell you where it needs music and where it doesn't want music. 

You just won a Creative Arts Emmy for the Succession theme. There's always so much talk about awards campaigning, mostly about the Oscars. What does campaigning look like for a film composer? And how does it differ between the Oscars and the Emmys? 

I’m new to the TV world a bit. The film awards season and that process is very linked with the release of those films, so I view it very much as you're participating in helping bringing the film into the world. I remember last year, with Beale Street for example, it wasn’t even so much necessarily campaigning as it was, we would do a lot of Q&As at movie theaters, and really be there sharing what the story of the film is. 

With TV, actually, I haven’t done quite as much, I guess. In the sense that that kind of natural, going to movie theaters and doing Q&As and stuff, there really isn't as much of that. And I think that’s partly also just the nature of the medium. Which, I would actually add to that and say that I've been really awed by the level of audience that is possible from television. I love movies, and I love the movie theater experience, but I also think it is a wonderful thing that television is actually able to get out to more people, and more people, on a weekly basis, can participate in the stuff that you’re making. That’s been something of a new experience that I’ve had with working on a TV show. 

You worked on a film that's coming out in October, The King. Did you have to get into a dramatically different headspace as a composer, working on something that’s set that far back in the past? 

I definitely did not change my process. When I approach a new project, I try to have a blank slate in a way, where you’re trying to be open to feeling what that film or that series need in the way of music, and seeing what that is. Obviously, you don’t figure that out without talking to the director, and having that conversation: What are they feeling and what are they looking for? 

I remember with The King, the first thought that I had when I saw a rough cut of the movie was, "What would it be like if I imagined that the 1400s was actually like the 2500s?" You say to yourself, "What is that sort of sense of distance and time mean?" So I tried to create sounds early on that felt like they could be linked with the world that we were witnessing, but that also felt like they weren’t necessarily "period." I was very specifically not trying to say, "All of these instruments are from 1413."

So, the sound that I settled on, working with David [Michôd, director of The King], was this sound where it's a mixture of these bass clarinets that I pitched through this sort of tape filter that created a very strange texture. And then there’s the sound of a boys' choir, which emerges over the course of the film, and there's definitely some symbolism there, emotionally and musically, with the fact that this is a young man who is becoming king. And there were a lot of musical experiments that we did, too, with morphing some brass and morphing these sort of metallic sounds. I think it's about creating something that makes you lean into this world, to want to explore it—but at the same time, you need something that feels like it connects with you.        

I've seen a lot of people tweeting about your music, saying things like, "Just working all day to the Beale Street soundtrack." I imagine that if you're a film composer, it'd be rewarding to put your music out, but there would maybe be this fear that your work would be entombed with the movie it's for, just inseprarable from it. But it seems like people are more than happy to associate your compositions with the films, but also to break them out and use them in their own lives. 

Well, thank you. I definitely feel like when I’m writing, it's very important that the music for film can exist both inside and outside the project. I think that's maybe a little bit of an aesthetic criteria for me, of whether something works. For any piece that I’m writing for a movie, the music has to be able to exist on its own, hopefully, as an idea. So, I do think about its ability to exist outside of the project, but certainly, the number one goal is that it's right for the project. That's its only reason for being there. 

Music Is Coming: Composer Ramin Djawadi Looks Back On Eight Epic Seasons Of 'Game Of Thrones'

Yotto plays Regency Ballroom in San Francisco, 2019

Yotto

Photo: Demian Beccerra

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Yotto On "Is This Trance?," Launching Odd One Out & Building A BBC Essential Mix

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We sat down with the Finnish DJ/producer before his final show of 2019 to hear about the vision behind his brand-new label, the electronic music he listened to as a kid and more
Ana Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Dec 17, 2019 - 12:42 pm

For a globe-trotting DJ/producer who isn't convinced he's made any great dance tracks "yet," Yotto has a pretty impressive musical resume that has many others at odds with him on the matter. Hailing from Finland, Otto Yliperttula, a.k.a Yotto, has been signed to Above & Beyond's beloved deep house sublabel, Anjunadeep, since 2015 and has been packing dancefloors around the world with his emotive, pulsing beats rooted in deep and progressive house.

His tracks have been celebrated by longtime icons of the global house scene, including Pete Tong, Annie Mac, Sasha and Laurent Garnier. In addition to landing at least five of Tong's "Essential New Tune" selections over the years, the British DJ also invited him to do a BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix in 2018, a major DJ rite of passage moment. 2018 also saw the release of Yotto's gorgeous debut LP, Hyperfall, on Anjunadeep. This past summer, the "Radiate" producer launched his own label, Odd One Out, and toured historic venues and theatres across North America to celebrate, bringing his energetic music and down-to-earth presence to new spaces.

The Recording Academy sat down with the Finnish artist before his final show of 2019 to talk about the vision behind the label, the electronic music he sought out as a teen (including Sasha) and what he thinks makes a great dance track—which he'll make "hopefully one day."

You launched your Odd One Out label this summer. What made you want to start your own label?

I always wanted to have my own label because when I grew up, I was listening to all these DJs that were playing great music and then I found out they have labels. And I was able to dig through the labels' catalog and be like, oh, yeah, this is really, really good. And that always gave me a glimpse inside the head of the DJ who I really admired and the music they wanted to play. I like the idea of the label being an extension of the DJ.

The person who runs the label, shares the music he likes or thinks people will like, or the music that works well in his live DJ sets through it. That was the core idea of it and I don't know where it's going to go, I don't really have a big plan for it. It's going to be a lot of my own music, but also I'm going to sign a bunch of artists.

I just get so much really good music sent to me, from kids that don't really know what to do with it, so I'm just going to take some of it and put it all together. I'm working on a small compilation for next year, a curated album kind of thing. That's going to be the first thing I'm going to hop into when I'm back [home in Finland] from the tour.

Who are some of these people you were listening to when you were younger?

It was like Desyn Masiello, Sasha, [John] Digweed, the old progressive house DJs pretty much. Hernán Cattáneo was a big one. Also, there was this label called Underwater, Darren Emerson was on it. Those were probably my favorites.

How old were you when you first started getting into electronic music?

Around then, I was maybe 15. It was really hard to get that, because the internet was just slow. It was there, but just not the way it is now, of course.

Were there any good record stores where you grew up?

Yeah, there was one that I would always go to, and that's where I kind of found most of the records and the DJs because they would also sell music magazines. Ministry of Sound had a magazine back then—"Muzic" with a "z"—that was really good, really tasteful, kind of sarcastic, really good reviews on dance music. And Mixmag was around already, so then reading those and their reviews, and then going to the record store, trying to buy the records. Because I was underage I couldn't go to the clubs, so I would just have to listen to the records and think about how they worked.

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You got into it early, that's cool. It seems like in Europe, electronic music has been a lot more embedded into youth culture, and also just music in general, than in the U.S.

I think yeah, especially in the U.K. and Germany.

When I was a kid, I only knew about, like, Daft Punk. But so did everyone. Of course there were kids here that were really into electronic music, but it was a lot more sub-culture here in the '90s and '00s.

Oh yeah, sure. It was the same in Finland, it was very, very underground. There was a big scene around trance music, but the rest of it was small. It's a small country, so in relation to that, it was a healthy scene. So the best things, at least for me, I found out as a kid, were just reading about it and listening to the music.

Okay, back to 2019. To launch Odd One Out, you released "Shifter," then "Nova" and, most recently, "Is This Trance?"—the best track name ever. Can you talk a little bit about that one? And when you're working on a track—and on "Is This Trance?" specifically—where do you start?  

It depends on so much, each track is a bit different. That one was, I was in Italy for a couple of weeks on holiday. I was listening to old '90s trance that day for who knows what reason, and I was inspired by it after not having listened to it for a while. I just put my little spin on it, it's a lot slower than what the music was back then.

The name was a joke, but I just thought, you know, it works. Trance can be anything. It can be like ambient, slow music, it doesn't have to be club music. I think trance was always more about the emotional content of the music than a very particular style.

And you're about to wrap up the North American leg of the Odd One Out Tour here in L.A. tonight and you've done a lot of shows this year. What's been your favorite part about this tour?

This tour has been a bit different because I moved away from clubs a bit, doing venues like The Fonda and Regency Ballroom in San Francisco. I played a bunch of theaters and ballrooms and warehouses to just to do something a bit different and special. So it's been a challenging tour, but also one of the most rewarding ones. I'm excited to see what we're going to do next, I don't know yet.

I can only imagine that with touring, part of it is exciting, but it can also be kind of draining to not have a home base. What do you do to stay upbeat and grounded when you're all over the place?

I fly back to Finland quite often. I recently stayed here [in L.A.] for a couple of months just to make the touring easier, which was nice. But in general, I don't party that much, I try to work out a lot, eat healthy, just sleep as much as I can. Today is a party night, so I can have a few drinks because it's the end of the tour, so I'm happy about it.

You don't meditate to trance music or anything?

I've tried meditation, I haven't really got into it yet. I'm not a very anxious person. When I'm alone at an airport, I think that's already a form of meditation. I'm just sitting there and my head just empties.

That's a good skill.

It's kind of helpful, but also not ideal sometimes. I might drift away during a conversation and be totally somewhere else.

Well, when you're DJing, do you feel kind of immersed in it? What's the experience like for you when you're sharing music with people?

Yeah, there's part of me that's constantly thinking about or analyzing it, in a way where I kind of think about what record I want to play next. There's a few tracks that I know the people that actually bought tickets want to hear, so I have to figure out a way to make those tracks come through in the set, but also I just want to keep it fully free-flowing. I don't really plan the sets that much. I just play whatever feels right in the moment.

Last year, you released your debut album Hyperfall. You've put out a lot of music and mixes before then, but did it feel different working on a cohesive album versus a one-off track?

Yeah, it started just by having a few tracks that didn't make sense to me as singles at the moment, so then I started building something larger around them. It was something I always wanted to do. It's not a necessary thing for a club act today. Personally, I just wanted to have an album that has music that's not just what I play in the shows, it's just something different.

Also in 2018, you made your BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix debut, which is a big deal. Were you happy with how it turned out?

I'm really happy with the way it turned out. I used to listen to all of the Essential Mixes when they came out. I would the download sh*tty quality ones the next day, when they were available online after being broadcasted on BBC since 2003 or '04.

So yeah, when they invited me to do one, obviously my first reaction is, "Yay, that's amazing," but after that you get a bit nervous. You're like, "What if it's going to suck?" But then I just thought, I'm just going to record a mix of me playing music that I like, so then I just did that and then edited it a bit more, added a few extra in there, like an intro and outro. That was it.

I think it kind of functions as a really good, thought-out mix for me, and also a time capsule of where I was musically in that time of my career. If I were to make a new one right now, it would sound a lot different, but also similar. You never know.

Sounds like you didn't overthink it and it flowed pretty well.

I started overthinking it, but then it was like, yeah, this is not going to sound natural. So then I approached it as just another DJ set with just a few extra things.

What do you think makes a great dance track? 

I don't know if I've made any great tracks yet, hopefully one day.

You really don't think you've made a great dance track?!

I think I've made some decent ones, time will tell if they're great or not. But I think it's the combination of capturing a moment that people will remember from their lives and then, whether it's melody or just something that grabs their attention. And then with that, combined with the club functionality of a dance record. When those two things meet, then it's like a recipe.

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GRAMMYs

Robyn Hitchcock

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Robyn Hitchcock On Nashville Living, His 'Planet England' EP, John Lennon's Legacy & Making "Beatles Music"

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The delightfully eccentric singer/songwriter also discusses working with XTC's Andy Partridge, his cinematic single "Sunday Never Comes" and what other new projects he's got hidden up his colorful sleeve...
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Dec 8, 2019 - 3:34 pm

Chances are, you've never met anyone quite like Robyn Hitchcock. The beloved British singer/songwriter has spent the better part of the last five decades earning a sort of self-adjudicated PhD in all things rock and roll, poetry, folk, America, philosophy, the human condition, psychedelia and, of course, the Beatles.

"If there was a genre called 'Beatles music' rather than called '60s pop or psychedelia or something, that would be what I play," Hitchcock said. "There are other influences there, but the harmonies, the guitars, the tempos, the sounds, essentially, in my head anyways, [come from the Beatles]."

But don't let Hitchcock's reverence for the Fab Four fool you – he's one of the most imaginitive and original artists of his generation, which is saying a lot for someone who came up in the hotbed of '60s rock. From his early–and highly influential–work with the Soft Boys in the mid-'70s to his impressive catalog of 21 albums, either solo or backed by incredible bands such as the Egyptians and the Venus 3, Hitchcock has consistently released records that inspire the imagination, delight the ear and defy the norm.

These days, Hitchcock calls Music City, U.S.A. home, and plays with the aptly named Nashville Fabs. He's also recently diversified his psychedelc folk portfolio, penning the haunting number "Sunday Never Comes" for the remarkable Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke 2018 movie Juliet, Naked, and releasing a new collaboration EP with XTC's Andy Partridge just a few months ago titled Planet England.

The Recording Academy had the surreal honor of speaking with Hitchcock over the phone from his home in Nasvhille to hear about his ongoing project with Partridge, his love for the Beatles debates, John Lennon's looming legacy, and why what he's working on next is keeping him "incrediby busy."

By moving to Nashville, you bring an eclectic flair to its ever-widening creative scene. But what has living there brought to your life?

Well, it's brought great people to play music with. And you can also get anywhere in the bloodstream of the United States and Canada, anywhere east of the Rockies in about two hours by plane, which is fantastic. It's a very good place to tour from. Touring the States is my job, it's what I do for a living.

But I think all of the recent recordings I've done have been here with other people based in Nashville, and it's a joy that a great bunch of people just come around and run through songs in your living room. And then you find some other place to play, and then you can do a show or make the record. I haven't been in a community, such as small local, specific community of people all engaged in the same thing, since I was at what y'all call high school in my teens.

I see, regularly, people that do the same thing as me, and that I work with and play with. There was a little bit of that in the Soft Boy days in Cambridge, which was another small scene, but [Nashville] is bigger than that, much more professional. Very few musicians make it out of Cambridge alive. And Cambridge, U.K., it tends to kind of eat its own sons and daughters. But Nashville, it's a great hive. People are swarming, taking off and landing and get to the airport and it says, "Welcome to music city!" I love that element. It is great.

Being surrounded by songwriters like that, has it changed your writing process?

No. No, not at all. I haven't done that thing of getting into a cage with another songwriter and trying to co-write. Nashville wears a Stetson for publicity purposes, but all kinds of music goes on here. I think the commercial end of it is still quite country-ish. And my connection to country music really doesn't go any further than "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo" by the Byrds, which I love and gave me a crash course in some elements of country, but it doesn't influence me on the whole. Every so often I'll come up with a kind of pastiche country song, but I don't have to be in Nashville to do that. I think the last one I wrote, my last faux country song was written in Norway and probably the one before that, I was living in London. Being out here hasn't made me any more twangy.

"Nashville wears a Stetson for publicity purposes, but all kinds of music goes on here." -Robyn Hitchcock

Yes, I thought I heard it for a couple notes of twang on your new EP with Andy Partridge, Planet England, but I was mistaken. Maybe I was looking a little too hard for the Nashville influence, but I'd love to ask you about that project, too. You've said it could have been made any time in the past 53 years. Why was now the time for you and Andy to do this together?

I think because of the stage in our life cycles that we're at. We actually wrote those songs and did the basic recordings 12 years ago. We were in our early-to-mid-50s, but we didn't finish it off until last year for a whole variety of reasons.

I think Andy and I probably were quite suspicious of each other when we were young indie rockers, and then we were kind of both on the alternative charts in the States in the 1980s. By the time we were over 50, I think we were kind of able to approach each other really. Now we're heading into our late 60s. I go around to his house in Swindon when I'm back in Britain, which is fairly often. It's just down the road from my sister. So I could easily see a day's gone where I can meet him in Swindon and get back to Bath. And I've got country roots anyway, so you know, it's my parallel life. It's two old psychedelic pensioners rocking away in a shed in a back garden. It's just everything that Americans probably dream of, these quaint little Brits in some damp shed in a backyard with primitive equipment.

But actually Andy has the equivalent of the entire firepower of Abbey Road's Studio One in his shed and has always maintained it completely state-of the-art sonic libraries. So he's capable of summoning out any kind of sound that we want for our proto-psychedelic music. We're two guys who had been 17 when the Beatles broke up, still looking for that missing Beatles album. And so we're sort of basically trying to make it ourselves. I mean both of our careers have been that to some extent. And we think that the Dukes of Stratosphear [Partridge's band] really nudged it.

When I make a rock record or I play with a band, it's always some kind of basically playing Beatles music, and there are other influences there, but the harmonies, the guitars, the tempos, the sounds, essentially, in my head anyways is just kind of- If there was a genre called "Beatles music" rather than called '60s pop or psychedelia or something, that would be what I play and largely what Andy plays and, As we're getting the arc of our careers, we're getting to the point where that's what we really like making. So fingers crossed, two songs into another project and I'm supposed to see him in Britain at the end of next month so we'll see what we can do.

The Beatle gene runs deep…

Well you know, again, it's what people have in common. I've got this show tomorrow night with my band the Nashville Fabs. They're all Beatles freaks, and we do a ton of Beatles encores with guest singers, and I'm doing one. Everyone just disappears into the corner of their own mind trying to work out whether something is a major-seventh or a relative minor-third. Is it a minor-sixth or is it actually a seventh of the relative-fourth? I mean, it's fantastic watching people debating and playing. Now they've all got the Beatles on their phones, and they just sort of hold the phone up to the microphone, and we can all hear this transistor radio sound, on whatever it is, "You Won't See Me," or something. "I think it's a minor-" "No, it's not actually, it's-" "Oh, gosh, they're singing a D over B or is it a B over D?" You know, nobody's ever completely sure. I love that, they get excited about defining it.

Yeah, it's like one, big, first chord of "Hard Day's Night." Everybody's going to be debating what it is until the end of time.

It is! It's the library in Alexandria that the Romans burnt down, the repository of all human knowledge, hanging on the first chord of "Hard Day's Night."

Well, we're coming up on the anniversary of John Lennon's death [Dec. 8, 1980]. I thought maybe you could say something about what John, specifically, meant to you.

John Lennon, to myself and probably millions of other kids, including probably Andy Partridge, was a sort of an elder brother, you know, he was the cool, daring, kick-ass, wise-but-foolhardy older brother, the one who took the risks, the one who went out and got hit, the one who challenged authority, but also the one who had success, you know, the trappings of success. You could think, "Oh wow, John Lennon's got a house. John Lennon's got a plane. John Lennon's got a beautiful wife. John Lennon's got a drug habit. John Lennon's paranoid. John Lennon's beautiful. John Lennon's falling out with Paul McCartney. You can look at anyone you admire and the way they are on a pedestal, you can never be them. In another way, they're just like you, if somebody's too alien, they're very hard to kind of connect with, you know?

And I think there's that thing about idols with feet of clay. I think people do want a vulnerable hero, and John was just that. He was vulnerable, and in the end he was killed. How's vulnerable is that? It was awful. I am still grieving Joan Lennon much more than I grieve my parents. And you know both of them lived a natural lifespan. I mean there's so much now for John Lennon to live up to, that if he came back, he couldn't. Since he's died, he's been the good cop. McCartney's had to be the bad guy because he lived on. It's been "St. John" for nearly 40 years and you know, he obviously wasn't.

But he, as Richard Lester [director of 'Hard Day's Night' and 'How I Won The War,' both featuring Lennon] said, he made you care about him. I think he's a real emotional touchstone. The Beatles always make me feel very human. A lot of people I like, Captain Beefheart or Syd Barrett, they're kind of elsewhere, or David Bowie, there is more of a kind of, "I'm outside of this human orbit. I'm not down there in the mud with you lot. I'm somewhere apart." And Bob Dylan, you know, they're kind of insightful, mythical creatures on the edges of things. The Beatles are right in the center, and John was right in the center of the Beatles. And then he couldn't keep it together, couldn't keep up with Paul, who was actually probably tougher than him, but didn't get the knocks. John was the ice-breaker, he was the one who started it, but also [got knocked].

But I also don't think John was better than Paul, you know. I think it works because they were so evenly matched. And then George, became as evenly matched as them, and it was too much, a mouth with too many teeth in it, time for them all to leave home. But the tension on that journey is sort of, John starting it, and then Paul coming up, and then George coming up – what that did to them still produced incredible records. I love the Beatles. Really. Lennon could rubbish the myth all he wanted. It doesn't really matter what you are, it's what people think you are, especially once you've gone. It was for him to demolish the Beatles, but even he couldn't really, the myth is as strong as ever. And you know, as you can see, I have a lot to say about John Lennon.

Indeed. It's a tough time every year when this anniversary comes around to remember that loss.

It's awful and I feel for Yoko [Ono], and Julian [Lennon], and Sean [Lennon] because it's a personal loss for them. And for the rest of us, we're all sort of projecting, a person we never knew but had a relationship with.

Absolutely.  I also want to ask you about "Sunday Never Comes," specifically the new video you've made, which leaves you with a very beautiful and disconnected feeling, much the way the song does. You wrote it for a film, but how did it feel to have the song survive that process, and kind of come back to you in this way with the video?

We deliberately decided to do a proper recording of it because the only thing that was out was my demo for the Juliet, Naked movie, and I really liked the way Ethan Hawke sang it, but I wanted to see what it'd be like if I did it properly. So I recorded it with the Nashville Fabs, and then our friend Jeremy [Dylan] actually did that video. He was our roommate for a while, and he very sweetly makes these videos for us. He made that in Sydney. My partner Emma Swift, who sings with me sometimes and is working on her first full-length record here in Nashville – in fact we're doing some recording in LA next week – Emma's in there as my kind of- I'm this artist in an abandoned apartment somewhere. Nobody's decorated since the 1960s. Somehow the electricity is still connected, and I'm watching obsolete programs on dead televisions, and then Emma appears, my muse, but I can't get at her. She's somewhere else across the world looking desolate.

Most of my videos have always had some humor in them. I don't like taking things that seriously, I guess. I just think there's always got to be a laugh in there somewhere, or it's- Life is pretty unbearable [laughs]. And this one, we didn't put any jokes in. There's nothing funny in there at all. It's just me. I start drawing her at one point, and then I see her on the telly, but it's very unresolved. Sunday never comes, and Emma never turns up, whatever Emma represents, my enigma, my muse. But it's quite a sad one for me, but I'm sure whatever I do next will be a million laughs. [laughs]

Robyn Hitchcock performs "Mad Shelley's Letterbox"

Well, you latest LP [2017's self-titled album] was not only your 21st album, it was one of your best. What are you working on next? What are your goals and interests these days?

Well, whatever I put out, if I put out a 22nd one, I want it to be as good as the 21st. So right now I'm rather avoiding that by working with Andy and working on Emma's record, and whatever I've actually written. I never write the songs that I want to write. I write the songs that appear. "Sunday Never Comes" was a commission. But even then I didn't know what I was going to write. They just said, "Write a Robyn Hitchcock song." So that's what popped up. So what I've got lying around or what I'm working on is a collection of piano songs, rather somber piano songs. And I guess when Emma's record is done, because I'm part of that, I'm part of the hive mind working on that, guitar and arrangements. And once Andy and I are well into the Partridge record, hopefully next year, I will start recording these piano songs.

"I never write the songs that I want to write. I write the songs that appear." - Robyn Hitchcock

I bought a four-track cassette machine and a reel-to-reel. I want to do it on hissy, compressed tape with tape delay so it sounds like something that was done years ago. I mean, I know Elliott Smith was doing it 20 years ago, there's nothing new about retro sounding. But kind of how I used to take demos in the 1980s, I want to kind of get a sound that's all my own before I bring anyone else in. And then, you know, it might be a long time before anything comes out, but I'm totally working on it. And I've got lots of other projects, visual stuff. I'm supposed to be doing some paintings, and I'm got a collection of lyrics with illustrations. That's probably going to be the next thing to be "on sale," if you like.

So I'm incredibly busy. You wouldn't think so, but actually there's a hell of a lot going on. Plus, I play a hundred cities a year and I have to get to them all. So I've got L.A., Chicago, New York before New Year's and then it all starts up again.

Robyn Hitchcock will be playing at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles on Friday, Dec. 13, and tickets are available here.

WATCH: Robyn Hitchcock Talks With Portia Sabin About Touring, Songwriting, Rock & Roll And More...

Damian Lazarus at Day Zero

Damian Lazarus at Day Zero Tulum 2019

Photo: Juliana Bernstein

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Damian Lazarus Discusses Day Zero 2020, Spiritual Awakenings, Meeting Tiesto & '90s London Raves

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The globetrotting house music wizard dives deep into the beginnings of his magical Tulum event, cutting his teeth in the '90s underground U.K. club scene and his biggest hope for the new year
Ana Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Nov 26, 2019 - 4:53 pm

British DJ/producer/mystical event wizard Damian Lazarus' well-loved sound is much more of a mood than genre. The music he favors is ethereal, emotive and takes the listener on a journey. His parties often take place in awe-inspiring locations, from the expansive dustiness of Burning Man to the jungles of Tulum, Mexico. His DJ sets tend to last for hours, often until the wee hours of the morning.

With his iconic house and techno label Crosstown Rebels, which he founded in 2003, Lazarus has helped catapult the careers of fellow underground game-changing DJ/producers, including Maceo Plex, Jamie Jones and Francesca Lombardo, to name a few.

In addition to throwing down at major electronic music events (Amsterdam Dance Event, Desert Hearts Fest, Lightning In A Bottle, Art Basel Miami) and legendary clubs around the world (Miami's Club Space, Ibiza's DC10, Berlin's Watergate), Lazarus has been carefully curating his own beloved events, namely the Day Zero and Get Lost series.

The Recording Academy caught up with the globetrotting wizard, who called in during a rare moment of downtime in Mexico City, in between debuting a new party to close out ADE and bringing the spooky vibes to Los Angeles' HARD Day of the Dead. He dove deep into the surreal beachside origin story of Day Zero (which returns to Tulum on Jan. 10, 2020), what makes a great DJ set and more. We also revisited his teen and young adult years in London, where he got a healthy dose of club life during the then-burgeoning rave scene.

You were just at ADE not long ago. How was that experience for you?

It was really good, actually. Funnily enough, I was just at lunch here in Mexico City and saw Tiësto. I had to tell him about what I did at ADE because it was because of him that I started something new there this year. Many years ago, I was in Chicago about to play a show and the promoters said, "Oh, do you want to come see Tiësto play? He's doing an early evening thing." I'd never seen him play before, so I was really intrigued.

So we went and they took me to the green room. When Tiësto arrived, he made a beeline directly to me and was like, "You're Damian Lazarus, right?" I had no idea that I'd be anywhere on his radar. And he said, "I've got to tell you that your name is the best name in dance music. You know what it means, Lazarus, in Dutch?" And I was like, "No, I have no idea." And he says, "Well, when we go out on the weekend and then your friends call you in the week and they're like, 'What did you get up to in the weekend,' you're like, 'I got really lazarus.' It means to get really wasted."

So this year, I decided to create my own event in ADE; of course I just called it "Lazarus." Because people in Amsterdam would totally get it, but anywhere in the rest of the world, it's just my second name. That was on Sunday, so it was an ADE closing party. It started at midnight and I played all night until 7:00 a.m. That was really special. I also played Circoloco as well, which was on a Saturday.

I tend to just go in for a couple of days. I don't really go for the business meetings and stuff. I know it's very worthwhile for promoters and management but I find if I need to talk to someone or have a meeting about something, I can just pick up a phone. I don't need someone to tell me where to go and have a meeting.

I was always curious about that; is it really like the electronic music mecca that it's made out to be, or is it just a cool space to be when everyone's there?

It really is. I mean, first of all, Amsterdam is a really cool city on so many levels. They have more clubs per capita than anywhere else—throughout the year, not just during ADE. While I was there, I was polling quite a few of my friends and people in the industry about how useful it's been for them that week at ADE and everyone loves it as a business opportunity and also as a good chance to go out. It's one of the best places to go and do business but have fun at the same time.

Read More: Damian Lazarus' Day Zero Tulum 2020: &Me, Audiofly, Black Coffee, Dubfire, Ellen Allien & More

Recently, you shared some details for your Day Zero 2020 event, which I think is the seventh iteration of it.

This will be the seventh, yeah, we took one year off.

What are you most looking forward to, especially as we plummet into this new decade?

That's a good point. I just look at it as 2020, I haven't really thought about making a big statement with the new decade. Well, Day Zero began at the end of the Mayan calendar, which I saw as the beginning of a new opportunity as opposed to the end of the world. This time in the world is very difficult, there's a lot of unrest. I think for people in our world to gather together as a community, to celebrate with a backdrop of this beautiful jungle and incredible music—Tulum is a really an incredible place to create a joyful experience for people.

Every year, my mission that I set before my team is to make the next event even more impressive than the last. So we're in the planning stages at the moment and we have a lot of fresh ideas. After every event, we're fine-tuning the minutia of the experience. There's so many things that we plan out at this event. Everywhere you look, everything you smell, everything you touch, everything you do, every place that you go has been well considered by us before you get there, because we want this event to be a full sensory overload. We take pride in it and work very hard on it. So, I'm looking forward to this year.

I would love to hear a little bit more about the origin story of Day Zero and what throwing the party each year means to you, to be able to share it with people.

I had a very spiritual awakening back in 2012 on the beach in Tulum. A medicine man I'd seen earlier that day suggested I stand beneath the moon and stars and raise my arms up towards the moon at a certain hour that night. He wouldn't give me any more information about what I should expect to happen. Fortunately, I remembered to do it later that night and I had the most incredible energy—force field—connection with the universe. It was like a physical being.

You know that feeling when you're young and you try poppers for the first time? Not saying that that's a good thing to do, but imagine that feeling for like 20 minutes; nonstop connecting to the universe. So I had this incredible experience and I took that as a signal to create something that I had rolling around in my head. I'd been going to Tulum for many years; I've been going there for well over 15 years now.

I was playing in Playa del Carmen two years before the BPM festival began there. I'm very connected to that area. But I'd always refrained from DJing in Tulum because it felt like a very beautiful, pristine, secret place that maybe shouldn't open its doors to parties. I knew that the first time I would play music there and bring electronic music to the natural beauty of the area, I wouldn't be able to stop. So I prevented myself from doing it.

And then a couple of people started to come see the area and ask me to play it. But then I had this experience and I could see that I was really fighting against the winds of change. More and more people were discovering Tulum and the hotels, the restaurants and bars were building up. I could feel there was something coming. So, the Armageddon was supposed to be coming on the 21st of Dec., 2012, so I started to plan Day Zero then as a way to reset and recharge, and, like I said, gather people to create a very special experience. 

Sharing the experience means the world to me. This has been by far the most thrilling ride that I've been on in my career creating parties and stuff. And now we just started to open it up outside of Tulum for the first time this year. We just created Day Zero Masada at the Holy Mountain in the Dead Sea area. We had 15,000 people there for an incredible first show, I was very happy with how that went.

So now we're looking up where to go in the future. The idea of Day Zero is to get the best electronic music, forward-thinking, future music with ancient civilization. So we like that juxtaposition of the two things going hand in hand. For seven years now, we've been connecting with the Mayans in the ancient area of the Mayan jungle, complete with the
Cenotes underground. We delve into the Popol Vuh, which is the creation story of the Mayans, and work out performances around these ancient Mayan stories and connect with Mayan spiritual leaders from that come and join us.

We really try to show the new young generation the differences in historical background to how people used to live and the stories and the influence that these people have had on the world. But the thing is to not do too many because each event takes about a year in advance to plan. So yeah, so we have two running now, Masada and Tulum, and we'll see where we go in the future. And the Get Lost events which are really big as well. So yeah, it's a little bit busy.

Damian Lazarus at Day Zero Masada

Damian Lazarus at Day Zero Masada | Photo: Karim Tabar

Your sets are known for having a journey element to them. When you're DJing, say at Day Zero or in other special places, do you feel like you're connecting to something?

Oh yeah, 100 percent. Well, at my events, when I start playing there's an extra buzz around the place because it's like, "What's he going to do? What's he going to bring?"

You've set the bar high for yourself.

Yeah, I do. Every year I try to make it better and I spend a lot of time trying to find some music that is really going to make people go bananas. Of course, over seven years, it's difficult to continue to find those records every time, but I work very hard at that. I never plan a set, I never know what I'm doing from one track to the next, whether it be at Day Zero or anywhere else. When I'm DJing, I kind of tell myself I'm playing Sudoku or chess, so I'm always thinking two, three or four moves in advance.

So, I'm telling a story but I'm thinking about them throughout the whole experience. Of course there's some records that work really well together and you want to throw them together a few times. I like to think that I save my best work live at Day Zero or Get Lost. Of course I love to play at sunsets or sunrises. And the beauty of throwing your own event is you get to choose when you play and work everybody else around you. [Laughs.]

What has been one of the most powerful moments from your Day Zero events?

Oh my god. There's so many. But you've got to remember that I'm the kind of person that can't just rock up an hour before my set. I've got these events that I run from beginning to end every year and I generally am playing at the end. So I'm spending 16 hours running around the festival site showing my friends around, having fun, experiencing it for myself and making sure everything's working properly. And then I have to start playing.

It all kind of blurs into one. I could tell you that the magical moments are many. But I actually take more pride and enjoyment in reading other people's comments and what people react after these events, especially after Day Zero events. People do find them quite life changing. I've had people meet on the dance floor there and they're married within 12 months. There's people that write to me and tell me that they literally had their life changed. They were going through some trauma, and the energy that they felt at Day Zero helped them kind of rearrange and reorganize their life and their thoughts.

You never know how much of this is actually true. But if someone's going to take the time to write to me and tell me a story like that, then I want to believe it. So I think that's really the best thing that comes out of it for me, the fact that I get to make so many other people happy and that's the main focus.

I love that. What do you think is essential to a great DJ set?

Well, obviously the ability to read the energy in the crowd. Many times I've walked into a room and I feel that there's no vibe, no energy. And I think to myself, it's not that difficult to change this, you just need to be aware of it. Really focus on what music is going to lift people's spirits in time. I think it's important to be innovative but not too overly technical. Of course, it's important to mix and blend your music perfectly, because no one likes to hear dodgy mixing.

And I think there's a very fine line between showboating and really being into what you're doing. I like to think sometimes I'm a performer, but only realize that afterwards, when I let myself go, because I was really feeling the music in the booth.

Last year, you released Heart of Sky with your Damian Lazarus & The Ancient Moons project. Can you talk a little bit about that album and creative group?

Basically what happened was when I first made the first Ancient Moons album back in 2015, Message From The Other Side, I worked with so many different musicians from all over the world. I'd been touring and finding amazing musicians from Egypt, Pakistan, New York. I somehow managed to record all of these amazing people and I was making the new Damian Lazarus album. But once I realized that I had all these incredible other voices and musicians on this record, and it felt very cinematic and it also felt like I could perform this live, I realized that I should create this fake band name, which was The Ancient Moons.

Once I decided to take the project live, I actually had to put The Ancient Moons together. So when it came around to making the second album, I started to work with the band that I found from the first time. So we actually then did become a band making music together. Whereas the first album, I made it with a producer and some guest musicians.

I think that The Ancient Moons project's some of the best creative work I've ever done. But it's not something that I could just knockout every time I'm in the studio. Right now, I'm not working on any new Ancient Moons material but I'm focusing on doing a little bit more kind of straight ahead Damian Lazarus club music right now.

In fact, I've just made this track with Diplo and the band Jungle, which we're still trying to decide what to do with. I've just done a couple of remixes. I just worked on a remix with Teddy Pendergrass. And I did a remix for Art Department. I just did this really killer remix of this Rosalía track. I'm just waiting for her to listen to it and see what she thinks.

But yeah, so that's where we're at. I mean, maybe next year I'm thinking about some Ancient Moons material probably towards the end of the year. I'm already kind of pretty hectic for 2020. I'm already a bit busy for the first half of the year. And I have family at home as well. I need to prioritize my kids right now. So yeah, quite a lot going on.

And then with Heart Of Sky—

Heart Of Sky is actually from the Popol Vuh story. Did you see the film that we made? It's called "Heart Of Sky," by Jessy Moussallem, an amazing film director from Beirut. It's a 15-minute film that we made in the fields of Lebanon where they make Lebanese hash. So it's all the families of the community of people that are making hash. They've never allowed themselves to be filmed before. Obviously, the soundtrack is music from the album.

That's super cool. Zooming out, when did you first start getting into music?

Music was always kind of around in the house. My mother, in the '60s was involved in the the [Rolling] Stones scene, and hanging out in Carnaby Street and stuff like that. And my dad was more kind of into Motown and soul, Isaac Hayes, James Brown. So I had a really good combination there, but my grandfather really was the most influential person for me because he was proper East Londoner, really into the show tunes and musicals. He and I used to have a lot of fun with music together.

But it wasn't really until I was about 11, 12, that I started to buy music and be obsessed with listening to the radio and finding new music that I liked. By the time I was 14, I'd persuaded my parents to let me buy some turntables and a mixer. And I got myself a Saturday job in a very cool record store called Groove Records in SoHo, Central London and then just went on from there.

I did a gig for Pirate Radio, and then went to college and started making parties there. It wasn't really until around 2001 when I had the City Rocker record label that people really started to take notice of me. I always knew I wanted to be a DJ but I wasn't very good at it. It took me ages to work out how to mix properly, but maybe that was because there were so many different styles of music that I was into. So by 2001, I managed to really hone in on and focus on it.

When we were running City Rockers, we started this party called 21st Century Body Rockers in London. We did it for 10 weeks, every month during 2001 or '02. We had DJs like Soulwax and I was the warmup DJ. It was there that my friends said to me, "You're actually getting quite good at this. You should think about it as a career." It wasn't until I got friends and loved ones telling me that that I really thought I could make a go of it. And within a couple of years, I was playing at Circoloco [at DC10 in Ibiza] for the first time, and the Sónar festival [in Barcelona]. I guess the rest is history. [Chuckles.]

I started Crosstown Rebels in 2003 and it was pretty much seen at the forefront of underground electronic music since then. So that always kept me at the front of people's minds, I think, because I was always working with a lot of cool people and discovering new talent and putting on great parties. I guess my DJing skills improved. Things started to get better and better.

Do you have any photos from these 2001 parties? That would be amazing.

I'm not sure they're really for GRAMMY.com. [Laughs.]

Did you have a favorite club or place that you went to when you were younger in London?

There was one club that was really influential for me and helped shape my wide range of appreciation for music. It was called That's How It Is. It was every Monday night at Bar Rumba in London and was run by James Lavelle and Giles Peterson. They were playing anything from all the early Mo Wax stuff to rare groove or funk to jazz to techno. And then they kind of started to discover the jazziest end of the drum and bass sound. It was just this melting pot of all these amazing new, fresh sounds, like Massive Attack, all that stuff coming out at that time. I was on the dancefloor every Monday for a good few years.

But then, you know, I also went to Rage, which was the primary kind of early jungle party in the U.K. There was a couple of things I went to New York as well when I was young. But yeah, so many places have influenced and inspired me. And they still do. I sometimes think back to various places I've been to and I think how I can create something like that.

"One positive thing is that in times of economic hardship, you tend to find that's a really good time for underground music to really come out of the cracks."

Read & Listen: Jayda G Is The Environmental Scientist & House Music DJ/Producer The Planet Needs Right Now

What is your biggest dream that you hope will come true in 2020?

Impeachment.

Which one?

A few. I don't know. The world's f**ked right now really. It's starting to really get people down. But one positive thing is that in times of economic hardship, you tend to find that's a really good time for underground music to really come out of the cracks. I think it's been getting a little stale, a little safe. I think we've lost that kind of punk and DIY attitude in electronic music right now.

As a label owner, I'm finding it really hard to find really unique, new voices in electronic music. I mean, I do have a few people that I've discovered recently that I'm really excited about, but I think that something needs to happen.

I think that maybe the current state of the world and the climate crisis and everything else hopefully will take music more underground because people are struggling, I think, mentally with figuring out how to deal with all the issues that we face. When keeping your eyes open and not walking around with your eyes closed, you can't escape the fact that the world is f**ked. So I'm looking forward to some exciting new musical trends to come through.

Lee Burridge Hopes His New Album With Lost Desert, 'Melt,' Helps You See Passion & Truth In Yourself

Juliana Hatfield

Juliana Hatfield

Photo: David Doobinin

News

Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic: Juliana Hatfield Goes Deep On Her New Police Cover Album

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The alt-rock veteran cleverly balances some of the GRAMMY-winning band's most iconic hits like "Every Breath You Take," "Roxanne" and "Can't Stand Losing You," with some of their deeper album cuts and B-sides on her latest project
Will Hodge
GRAMMYs
Nov 18, 2019 - 4:16 pm

"I'm starting to think I may have finally found my true calling. I think this might be my thing and I'm really enjoying it," Juliana Hatfield mused, with equal parts dry wit and keen self-awareness. This confessional observation comes from the seasoned singer/songwriter/bandleader reflecting on her newest musical endeavor—splitting up her standard album releases with cover albums entirely devoted to a single artist or band.

Following 2018's widely celebrated Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John and this year's Weird, she has once again picked an inspirational muse from her early years around which to craft a lovingly loud collection of guitar-graced tributes.

For the second edition in her newfound cover album project, she revisited her formative years' fascination with British rock trio The Police to create Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police. For this engagingly inventive 12-song set, she cleverly balances some of the GRAMMY-winning band's most iconic hits like "Every Breath You Take," "Roxanne" and "Can't Stand Losing You," with some of their lesser known (yet equally emblematic) album cuts and B-sides.

Hatfield has always shown an enthusiast's flair for reinterpretation over the last three decades with Blake Babies, The Juliana Hatfield Three and as a solo artist. Yet the ability to move beyond the single nod of recognition found in a one-off cover song to the full-on deep dive of a full album dedication has allowed the brilliant guitarist and multi-instrumentalist to dismantle and reassemble a legendary songwriting catalog (or two) through her own creative filters.

Read: Nirvana Manager Danny Goldberg Talks 25 Years of 'MTV Unplugged In New York'

Recently, the Recording Academy spoke with the vibrant artist to find out what it was that so deeply drew her to The Police (both as a young fan and as the focus of this album) and how she picked which songs to cover. She also explained what it was like to step into each of the multi-genre musical shoes of Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland—she performed all of the vocals, guitars and keyboards on the album, as well as over half of the bass and drums.          

Juliana Hatfield: Almost immediately after releasing the Olivia Newton-John album, I started thinking about who I should do next. For a while, I was actually thinking of doing Phil Collins, both his solo songs and also his time in Genesis. I had already started to make a list of his songs when one day I was listening to "Long Long Way to Go" from No Jacket Required. Sting sings background vocals on that song and as soon as I heard his voice, I was immediately struck by the thought, "Wait, I should really be doing The Police."

I have much more of a connection to The Police and was a bigger fan of them than I ever was of Phil Collins. Apart from two Genesis albums that I really love, Duke and Abacab, Phil Collins is more of a singles artist to me. But growing up, I was truly fanatical about The Police and had all their albums and knew all the deep cuts. I just switched my brain over to Police mode and that became the new concept.

Once she set her sights on The Police, it might've seemed like the possibilities of whittling down their renowned catalog to just a single LP's worth of cover songs would be a fool's errand. From 1977 to their contentious split in 1986, The Police were regularly atop the singles and albums charts, all five of their studio albums went platinum and they won six GRAMMYs. Their final, 1983 album Synchronicity even knocked Michael Jackson's Thriller out of the top spot on its way to a 17-week stay at No. 1. At the apex of their fame, The Police were often cited as being the biggest band in the world.

However, while Hatfield's song selection process could've been bloated by the riches embodied in The Police's musical successes, she actually had the reverse problem when it came to deciding on the finalized tracklist.

For The Record: The Police 'Synchronicity'

Juliana Hatfield: It was actually a little hard to get the track list up to 12 songs. While there are plenty of great Police songs to choose from, it's kind of intimidating trying to work with most of them. It was hard to get some of those songs to obey me. "It's Alright For You" or "Rehumanize Yourself;" those two were really tricky. The Police versions are so energized and I was worried that I wasn't going to be able to reach the same intensity.

What was created when those three specific guys played together can never be recaptured. With Olivia Newton-John, it was more about highlighting the songwriting and the melodies. With The Police, it's really more about the chemistry between those three guys and that was intimidating to feel like I was never going to capture the right energy.

Since Hatfield played all of the instruments for the majority of the album's tracks, she had a firsthand experience of the interworking of what made The Police's instrumental interplay so unique. Her approach was to sometimes stay true to the eclectic vibrancy of the individual performances and to sometimes completely strip them down to just their essential components.

Other times, as with the case of her punched up, punked out take on the lounge jazz B-side "Murder By Numbers," she reinvented the song completely. It all depended on what the song seemed to be calling for and what performance style rang the truest to her musicianship.

Juliana Hatfield: Sting's basslines are a lot of fun to play. Sometimes they can be very simple, like "Hungry For You," and sometimes they can sound really simple, like "Canary In A Coalmine," but the groove is really tricky to nail. I tried to do that one like a million times but I eventually gave up and asked Ed Valauskas to do it because he's more of a pro bass player than I am. I really love that bassline but it was just too much for me.

Also, some of Andy's guitar parts were challenging because I was playing way out of my comfort zone. Playing the reggae upbeats on "Canary In A Coalmine" or "Rehumanize Yourself"—the rhythm guitar is playing on a syncopated upbeat and that doesn't come naturally to me. Sonically, I also ended up using a cool effect on my guitar that came from a Roland Jazz Chorus amplifier because I was trying to get that signature Andy Summers chorus effect. I'm really into that effect now and I never used to be.

As recognizable as Sting's bass and Summers' guitar work can be, it was Copeland's powerfully distinctive drumming style that imprinted most fully on The Police's overall sound. Dynamic mixed-metered grooves, jazz-infused snare and hi-hat work, punk-fueled fury and syncopated polyrhythms are just a few of the hallmarks of Copeland's wide-ranging skillset that have made him one of the most memorable drummers of the modern rock era—a fact not lost on Hatfield when she was deciding how to approach the drums for each track.

Juliana Hatfield: Starting the whole album off with a drum machine on "Can't Stand Losing You" was my way of saying, "Don't worry. I'm not going to step on your heroes' toes or try to compete with their legacies." It was always weighing on my mind; "How do I interpret Stewart Copeland's beloved, iconoclastic drumming?"

I was worried about pissing off his fans. I knew I was going to have to really strip the drums down and not try to do anything even approaching his style. If you try to mimic him, you'll fail every time.

Along with assessing the notable musical elements of potential songs, she also let the lyrics and subject matter drive the decision for some inclusions. Whether it was the real world, day-to-day themes of systematic oppression and abuses of power or the way that the band dealt with existentialism and romanticism, the longtime alt-rocker picked a few of the songs based on their intense relevancy—both to the current sociopolitical atmosphere and to her individual life.

Juliana Hatfield: I was looking for songs that seemed really relevant and ones that felt current, like "Landlord" and "Murder By Numbers." Those songs spoke to my anger and sense of frustration about how the people with the power and money are totally f***ing everybody over. There are songs about the evils of the ruling elite on here that make me feel murderous and like I just want to punch someone in the face, so I tried to convey that musically.

Also, some of the songs I ended up not doing—"So Lonely' for example—were because I didn't feel like there was enough substance there. "Hole In My Life" is also about being lonely but its way more existential. It's not about missing a specific person, it's about an existential angst. I can still relate to that. The love songs, at this point in my life, I can't relate to them at all. I just don't have those inclinations anymore. I pushed all of those love songs to the side because they weren't speaking to me at this stage in my life.

For the drum and bass duties that she didn't handle herself, she called on Chris Anzalone (Roomful of Blues) and Ed Valauskas (The Gravel Pit) to help her wrangle the right grooves for her reinterpretations. Some of the songs even went through multiple iterations before she achieved exactly what she was looking to accomplish with this musical love letter to her longtime inspirations.

Luckily, after all of the instrumental elements were sorted out, Hatfield was able to focus on the fun of recording the vocal parts that she had been committing to heart-memory since her youth. She even got to whip out some of her high school French for "Hungry For You (J'aurais Toujours Faim De Toi)."

Juliana Hatfield: When I look back at the whole project, it was really fun. However, when I try to analyze the individual tracks, I realize that it was all pretty tricky. A couple of the songs I had to start over after I already had the basic tracks recorded. For "Can't Stand Losing You" and "Next to You," I already had the live drums, bass and guitar recorded and I had to scrap it all and start over with just a drum machine and my own drumming.

I redid all the bass for those as well because something just wasn't working with the original tracks. It was like a puzzle trying to get everything to fit together. Singing them was second nature though. That was the fun part. I have such an affinity for those melodies and know them all by heart. Most of them were even in the range I like singing in.  

With an album concept like Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police, there are immediate "who will be next" questions that naturally follow. While there are always interesting contenders that easily bubble to the surface of conversations with Hatfield, flipping the question inside out—"What band would you like to record a cover album of Juliana Hatfield songs?"—prompted a wonderfully reflective pause and gleefully wishful response.  

Juliana Hatfield: I think it would be R.E.M., yeah definitely them. I would want them to do it. In fact, I dare them to do it. They wouldn't, of course, but that would be an absolute dream come true. I would love to hear that in my lifetime.

Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police is currently available on CD, cassette and multiple vinyl variants from American Laundromat Records.

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