#justtalk

JS: My parents moved us from Brooklyn to Long Island when I was 9 years old. To Woodmere. Part of what’s called the “five towns” on the South Shore. I never felt like I fit in Long Island. I never felt like I belonged there. Did you feel like you belonged where you grew up?

JM: I didn't feel like I didn't belong there. I felt there might be a fictitious place where I belonged. But I was born and raised in one town — I never moved. And I have a very male fear of change. And so I kind of just thought I would just live there forever. I didn't really think it through. I just was very emotionally attached to my house. And through that town I kind of learned about the passage of time: how a place is not the same place.

I didn't go to college after high school. Everyone in my school for the most part without exception went... it was a very exceptional thing not to go to college. It was just what the school was for. It was a really great public school kicking ass of the private schools. People were really well-prepared for academics. They were not necessarily prepared for college, socially, but they were prepared for academics.

JS: And so, growing up in this town and you're fascinated by sound.

JM: My brother had records, my sister had records. I just always kind of liked what they liked. My brother listened to classic rock with a heavy prog rock leaning. So, if you look up there I have a huge Yes collection. I deeply love Yes.  

JS: A lot of kids, including myself were into Yes growing up. I saw them live a few times.

JM: It's a funny thing with Yes... There's always two bands in the world: the kind of psychic image that we've created of a band, that was almost universally shared. Yes is a band where you say it and the people who don't really listen to Yes have the same vision of them in a kind of pompous hyper-ornate bubble. But there's also a different band in there that I think is really great.

JS: They were actually cool at the time when they first came out. Everyone thought it was cool. It wasn't uncool till a bit later on.

JM: Yeah, exactly. It wasn't uncool at all. I think they suffered a punk rock backlash. They definitely got hit.

JS: So, you're listening to your brother's record collection ...

JM: Yeah... But what he also had, was David Live, the David Bowie record. And I thought that cover was really scary, because I remember that age when I was afraid of stuff — I was afraid of Star Trek. The intro to Star Trek just scared me. I didn't want to watch it. I was afraid of the Sleestak from Land of the Lost. And I was afraid of the David Bowie cover.

JS: Did he have other David Bowie albums?

JM: I think he had that and Changesonebowie.

JS: The greatest hits.

JM: Yes. He wasn't buying Ziggy and stuff like that.  He was kind of a jock. But I remember because I'm born in 1970, and it was 1977 when punk rock is happening when I'm seven years old, and it's not a thing to me. And my brother is like, "You know people talk about punk rock all the time, well that's the first punk rocker." He’s 16 and sort of angry at punk rock, as of course punk rock is coming to destroy the rest of his records except for David Bowie. And he would say “You know, they could talk all they want, but that guy was doing it before anybody.” And I was very impressed by that, so on my eighth birthday, February 1978, I asked for a stereo. And all I had was an inherited weird mismatch of 45s and stuff, but I got money for Christmas in 1977. I got a couple of dollars, and I went and bought Gilbert O'Sullivan’s “Alone Again, Naturally” on seven inch and “Fame” by Bowie. And those were my two first records.

JS: It explains a lot.

JM: Yeah, I kind of feel like that's a pretty wide swath of self-pity and self-awareness.

JS: It's funny though at the time Gilbert O'Sullivan and Bowie were both having massive hits on English pop charts. Obviously one stuck around and one didn't.

JM: Yeah, but one of them made “Fame”, one of them made “Alone Again, Naturally.”

JS: Not that bad a record.

JM: No, it's not a bad record, but it's akin to that “oh, what a lonely boy,” the 70s self-pitying male… There is a real narcissism to those records. I'm watching this moment in history now when everyone is the wellness millennial. The healthy generation. It's inarguable that it is better to take care of oneself than to not take care of oneself, but I wonder about the obsession with becoming your “best self.” It reminds me of our youth of the 70s, it reminds me of the “me generation,” it reminds of the wide swaths of divorces that kids my age dealt with. When the parents were like, "I got to be me, man." You know, this obsession with health and wellness and the perfect expression of self. Like I have to sleep nine hours a day regardless of how that impacts everyone else, but I wonder if we're just repeating that, you know what I mean? That same cycle...  Right now it looks great, like I'm sure it looks great to everyone meditating, in primal scream therapy, finding themselves, and at the end of the day it's like, well, there is not a thing at the middle there.

JS: So, between Gilbert O'Sullivan and David Bowie, where did you find your own path musically? Was it to punk rock?

JM: Punk rock was what was left. My brother listened to prog rock, my oldest sister listened to Loggins and Messina and really soft stuff. My other sister was a singer and she listened to songs. She really liked songs, like certain Fleetwood Mac songs and “The Rose” and other songs she could sing and play piano to. But then she also liked the Gap Band and funk. And so, it just seemed the natural thing for me — now it was my turn. I remember sitting solemnly in my bedroom, I was probably 11, listening to the first Clash record in my army pants on the end of my bed. My sister came home and opened the door to my room and she said, "Oh, shit! My brother’s a punk,” and then left the room.

JS: And that record had already been out for a few years.

JM: Oh, yeah. Also records had two lives. If you lived in a city, the records came out, and they were a thing, and then you were like, “I can't believe you're still listening. You're lame.”  But if you lived in a fucking farm land… I talk a lot about the Violent Femmes debut LP. That record was a rite of passage for 10 years. Like, for 10 years you went through a period where you listened to that record. It's like The Smiths now. The Smiths is the thing now.  But for me I bought the records just as they came out, and they had this meaning for me. But for kids now it's just like, “Wow! I'm going through my Smiths phase!” It's like Zeppelin or something. Like, you go through the phase of it.

So, records just lasted for a long time, and to me punk rock was anything weird. And I remember, okay, even “Fame” was one of the… but also “Love Is Like Oxygen” by Sweet, I loved Sweet. And I didn't own it because I couldn't get a seven inch of it. I couldn't find a seven inch of “Love Is Like Oxygen,” and I couldn't afford albums.

JS: Were you going to the Princeton Record Exchange?

JM: Not yet. The Princeton Record Exchange at that point did exist. I'm not sure when it started but it did exist.  It was a tiny store then and it focused on rare classical and rare jazz, and it had a mimeograph machine, a blue paper list of all their rare records which would get sent to Japan and Europe, mostly Germany.  Apparently the people that want to buy those records were people who had lost the second world war.  That seemed to be the correlation between those things.

 And, in the front was just a till, and there was kids there who worked at WPRB — the radio station — who started selling punk records out of crates. There were no Bruce Springsteen records.  They had rare pressings of Miles Davis and Brahms, but there was nothing in between.

JS: Being from New Jersey, was Bruce Springsteen someone you were into?

JM: No. I had Darkness on the Edge of Town because my brother had two copies for some reason. So, I had that. And I liked him, but it wasn't really for me. I think I grew to like him more now, but I didn't really like him then, and I despised him around the Born In The U.S.A. period.

JS: So you’re finding and discovering punk in those crates?

JM: But anything weird to me was punk. Like, to me punk was not this, like, brash high energy thing. The B52’s was super punk to me. It was anything not normal. And I met a kid named Erick Daab from Staten Island, who was a metal head. He was a metal guitar player. And he gave me a copy of Kraftwerk’s “Computer World.” That's like in 82 or 83.

To me, punk… if it got too aggressive, I wasn't into it. The most aggressive thing I liked was Black Flag, but they were funny also. I liked Black Flag. I liked the Repo Man soundtrack. That was a big record for me. Black Flag had “TV Party,” which was hilarious. And Dead Kennedys were hilarious, but also had songs like “Holiday in Cambodia”, which was ripping. But on “Holiday in Cambodia”… the guitar playing is what I really loved about that song. It reminded me of Ricky from the B52s’ guitar playing. Like, the guitar playing at the end of “Rock Lobster,” which is I think some of the most searing, ripping guitar playing. So, to me there was always a queerness to punk rock. It was never this macho thing. Like when hardcore came out, I did not understand it. I did not like it because it felt like sports.

JS: I did and found out years later that Jello Biafra, from the Dead Kennedys was a Milk ‘N’ Cookies fan. And the Melvins, and of course The Ramones, who we played with many times. I wouldn’t have expected those bands to be into it really, except The Ramones, who loved glam and bubblegum music.

JM: But if you think about it, glam is a funny thing. Because if you have no social context and heard a glam record, and then a punk record, you'd be like, "Well this does not make any sense." But it does make complete sense.

JS: Total sense. To me.

JM: Yeah.

JS: Those bands like The Damned, they were all influenced by glam.

JM: And also if you're going to form a band around the time of like The Damned, the conversation you wanted to be having with people was, “Do you like T. Rex? Yeah, I do too.  Do you like The Stooges? Yeah, I do. You like Roxy Music? Yeah, I do, too.” That's the conversation, all the good bands had that conversation. Almost every band I liked at one point had a couple of members who bonded over those bands. There was always the British bands who liked The Stooges and the MC5, and the American bands who liked Roxy Music and T. Rex and Ziggy. And The Velvet Underground obviously. Every band I liked had that conversation.

JS: Marc Bolan of T. Rex was one of the first established rock stars to really embrace punk. And they all worshiped him. And he was a huge influence on all that.

JM: Which makes perfect sense when you watch the thread, but it is weird. It doesn't seem weird to me because the way I've always viewed punk, or what it always meant to me. I remember the first time I went to like a hardcore show, and I was super bummed. First of all, there are only dudes here, and they all kind of look the same.

JS: Where did you start going to punk and hardcore shows?

JM: City Gardens in Trenton, New Jersey. Manhattan still intimidated me. I only went to Manhattan with my friend Scott whose dad lived in the Village. So, I would go buy records with him. I'd go in the early 80s, and it was still sketchy.

JS: Did you go to Bleecker Bob’s record store ?

JM: Bleecker Bob’s was where I first got yelled at buying my first Smiths record, because you couldn't get The Smiths in Princeton. I bought the “This Charming Man” 12”. And I had a very funny experience, which it took me until much later in my life to recognize, to really understand my experience. I went in there and I said, "Do you have The Smith Brothers?" And The Smith Brothers is just an old trio. And I'm like, “This Charming Man?”  And he goes, "Oh, you mean The Smiths?” He was really dismissive.

And so, he just threw me the “This Charming Man” 12″ and I bought it. I was like 13 and sheepishly bought it, and went back home embarrassed of myself. And now I'm like, I bought, in a pre-internet age, came from my fucking farm town in New Jersey and I took the train to New York to Bleecker Bob's and bought an import only 12 inch of a British band that had no albums out. And I was like, "Man, fuck you."

JS: I think that it was a rite of passage to get yelled at Bleecker Bob’s. It happened quite a lot.

JM: That kind of experience doesn’t really exist anymore. I got turned on to a great record at Princeton Record Exchange by a similar thing. Modern English’s “I Melt With You” had just come out, and I wanted to get that record. “So, do you have the record?" And the guy said, "I found it, but have you heard their first album?” And I was like, "No." He's like, “Let me do you a favor, and do yourself a favor. Get the first record and then come back and see if you want this."

And that first record, “Mesh & Lace,” is to this day one of my all-time favorite records. It's incredible. It's ripping and aggressive and abstract and beautiful and weird. It's not at all like “I Melt With You,” which I like as well, but they were almost making a pop pose... like an art statement: "Oh, let's make a pop record." Whereas with the first album, it was appropriate that they were on a label with The Birthday Party. It was a scary sort of searing record. Much more like Joy Division — really dark and really cavernous. I love that record still. I have a bunch of records like that, that are just not important to the world, but super important to me.

JS: The Trenton venue City Gardens was the place to see punk rock shows?

JM: Huge. There was a documentary about it called Riot on the Dancefloor. John Stewart was a bartender. I wound up being a bouncer. That's where I saw everything the first time. The Ramones was my first show.  The second show was Iggy, and then it was just like a million Dead Milkmen shows... I think Fishbone played with everybody. Like, no matter who played, Fishbone also played. It used to be like, "Iggy Pop and Fishbone.” “Black Flag and Fishbone." And the Dirty Dozen Brass Band was always playing for some reason.

JS: I was the DJ at the Ritz, which became Webster Hall and everyone and their mother played at the Ritz.

JM: I still call it the Ritz. I really liked that we were playing the Ritz. In fact, we did a flyer when we came back with LCD. The first show was at Webster Hall, and I made a Ritz flyer.

JS: So you started to work as a bouncer at City Gardens?

JM: Yeah. I didn't work as a bouncer until later, till after high school. So, I was 17 or 18 years old.

JS: When did you start getting involved in doing live sound with bands?

JM: Always.

JS: Were you in a band already?

JM: My first band was in 82 and I have recorded sets of it. I found them recently in a storage space I didn't know about. I was canceling a credit card, I called my business manager and I was like, "Can we just cancel this credit card?" He said, "Sure." Then he called me back, "Okay, what card do you want me to move the storage unit charge?" I was like, "What?" I’d had it since the 90s, and it was like 14 bucks a month. And I went and found it, and it was bunch of miscellaneous crap that I'm sure I paid thousands of dollars over the years just to hold. But it had a box of cassettes and a lot them were my 4-track recordings, and recordings from my childhood. So I want to compile them, and make a little compilation of my 80s stuff. So, I started recording when I was probably 10 years old.

JS: You bought some equipment?

JM: No, I had a little tape recorder, you know the classic school cassette recorder that my family had. And I had a cassette that I taped over and over and over. And I made a drum set out of coffee cans. I had two tape decks. One was in my sister's stereo and the other one was this little tape recorder. And I would make a drum set with coffee cans and the snare drum had rocks in the bottom. And I would play beats and I'd record them on my tape deck. And then I play that tape in the stereo and borrow a guitar and I'd play the bass line on the guitar. And then I put that cassette in ... So, they'd be both playing, and I put that cassette in the stereo, and put that over the speakers and then I'd play guitar and sing, and I'd made these little songs and I was like 10.

JS: And did you teach yourself how to play instruments?

JM: Yeah, I taught myself to play everything.

JS: No piano lessons after school?

JM: I asked for piano lessons, I asked, but we didn't own a piano. I begged for three years straight for piano lessons, which is the weirdest thing a kid can do. My mom would get her haircut by this woman, Fifi, whose husband Eric was a professional musician. He had every instrument imaginable in their house. And I would go with her when I was like six to Fifi's house because what else do you do with a six year old, so of course, me with my mom smoking in the station wagon going to get her hair cut. And I would sit and quietly play piano. Fifi was always saying to my mother, “He's very gentle on piano, not like other six year olds. You should get him lessons.” “I will," she said just to shut her up.

And it never happened.  Over the years, finally Fifi made sure her husband was home when my mother came and her husband would work with me. They were really pressuring my mom to give me piano lessons, and she said she definitely would and never did. I asked, I asked, I asked. My mother was finally like, "We're not fancy!" I think somewhere in their mind they thought I was asking for, like, "Can I have a horse?" You know? "Can I have a pony?" "Can I have piano lessons?"  They thought there was something quite high-class about it, because in their family the piano playing was bar piano playing, and they didn't want me doing that. They didn't want me to be a circus musician, like some of my family were. And we also were not going to be fancy where I went to a conservatory. So, they didn't understand the idea of just taking piano lessons. They eventually got a piano.

JS: And did you get lessons or taught yourself?

JM: I self-taught everything.

JS: Can you read music?

JM: I can to a certain extent. I was in a choir. My high school had a very excellent choir — we were a gold medal choir, we would go and compete around the world, we would tour. So, we’d raise money, and we wore the worst costumes. Every other school had nice costumes — they had nice tuxedos — and we had these lime green velvet tuxedos. We had really outdated stuff. We had no money — it was a public school — and we raised money to go to Germany and compete in choir competitions and stuff. But it was great. It was a really great music education. Great music program. Big, beautiful orchestra band in my school. It's funny because people talk about music programs disappearing. We had a choir, a chorus, and two different small ensembles. It was a really comprehensive music program. Totally great, and so sad that that's just not what people get anymore.

JS: Tell me about your first band?

JM: We were just a three piece punk rock band.

JS: Doing original songs?

JM: Some original songs. There is a song about The Scarlet Letter — the book we were reading. “Bug In My Beer” was a song when I was 13, and “What Can I Do”. There was just me and this guy Dale Huang who was a drummer and my friend Paul Hurst was the bass player. And I found a cassette of it recently and it's very, very sad, because I'm really not that much fun to play in the band with. I don't compromise well.

JS: Don't play well with others.

JM: I don't play well with others. If I was getting graded on bands it would be like, “Does not play well with others.” And I was so neurotic... I have such a good time playing music when it feels good, and I have such a terrible time playing music when it doesn't feel good. Like, it’s excruciating. There are so many recordings of us working on a song, and instead of being able to chill out like my friends, you can hear them having fun and I'm like, “That's great, let's try it again, let's try and play it right!” You hear me and then you can hear them getting annoyed with me. And you can hear me trying to pretend that I'm laidback about it.

JS: And was the band playing shows out?

JM: No, we just played in the drummer’s or the bass player’s basements. The drummer's basement was fine: it was normal. You could play in drummer's houses because they already had a drum set, so the parents are like “Yeah, whatever.” I mean, it's already a nightmare. But the bass player had a basement that was converted and we kept working on it, we called it the Happy Buddha Club because there was a Chinese restaurant called the Happy Buddha restaurant, and they renovated once and were throwing these red leather booths out. We saw them and called one of the older brothers who had a pick-up truck, and got a couple of the booths. So we had a few red booths and we had beads. You come down the stairs and there’s beads you came through.

And we stole a PA system from the local grammar school by sneaking in at night. We went out in ninja outfits basically and snuck into the school and we would hang there and drink and party in the school all the time at night, in the gymnasium and stuff. We learned from the older brother who would go and play basketball all night. I was like, that’s no fun. But we would sneak in, climb up on the upper window, open the upper window and get in, and then party in the library. And then we found these PA columns and we fucking stole them.

And so we had a little PA and we had broken old turntables with flash lights that we taped to them — one facing either way — and they would rotate, and those were lights on top of the PA columns.

JS: Very creative. And what was your role in the band?

JM: I was a singing guitar player. So, a.k.a., nightmare person.

JS: And did things start happening with the band?

JM: No. The other two guys wanted to be normal high school kids. They played sports and went out to parties, had normal socialization. I did not have a normal socialization. The more I think about it, I have a couple of things I credit that to. My voice changed when I was 10, in the fourth grade. So, I went through a lot of hormone stuff.  I went through puberty when I was 10, 11 years old. So, before a lot the girls, which is very backwards. And so, a lot of my world view changed and everyone else was a little kid and I was a grown up person in a weird way. And then when everybody was sort of going through all that stuff a few years later I was like, “What the fuck is wrong with these kids? They are all insane!”

When kids started getting cliquey — and that's a natural thing that happens, it happens in every generation, but I missed it, and I hated it. I thought it was cruel and something weird. I felt like somebody had put something in the water in my town, and kids who used to be friends are not friends anymore because that kid is a jock and that kid is, you know, a weirdo, and that kid plays Dungeons & Dragons. And it's suddenly like watching all that kind of cruelty play out made me very, super, super alienated.

I was a big, socially capable kid. I wasn't an outcast. I was just self-ostracized. But I played sports up until high school. I swam and I played baseball, football, and basketball. But just never in school. Once we hit like 13, I was done with everything. And then I just played music.

JS: And what was the next step after this band broke up?

JM: The next step was doing it all on my own. It was probably 85 and I bought a four track tape recorder. I didn't get a Fostex, I bought a Yamaha. I was always into the other brand.

At first I borrowed a friends Fostex and I started making songs by myself.  And then I released a compilation cassette and made up all these fake bands, but it was all me. And I played with other people too, I played in a band and we recorded that live, which I considered the more “serious” thing because it was a band. But I did all the stuff on these tapes, made drum sounds on a synthesizer I borrowed and I borrowed little drum boxes, Casios, and I made all this music. And I would call it different bands, I'd I made up fake members and I just made this compilation.

JS: And what was the musical direction of the music you were making?

JM: Almost industrial. There was like some new wavy stuff, some 4AD Records type stuff… There was some spacey stuff and some alt rock like The Chameleons, and Cure type stuff. I just started making all this music by myself. And then I had to give my friend the Fostex recorder back. But I had enough friends that had equipment. I had a friend who had a Roland Juno-106 (I bought a Roland Juno-1 later on, it was the worst… ) I had a friend whose parents gave him stuff, and he had an Emax sampler eventually in the late 80s.

So, I would just cobble together things to work on for a while. And then eventually saved up some money and went and bought that nice Yamaha 4-track recorder at a super sale the store that my friend worked at had. And I bought it, and I bought a little drum machine and a box of cassettes. And then I realized that what they were doing was checking your receipt on the way out. So, I was like, “Oh, I don't need to carry this around, I’ll just put it down, because I could pick up a different one on the way out,” and then I was like, "Wait a second..."

And I went out. They didn't mark my receipt, and I put in the trunk of my car and then I went and got lunch. Then I came back and went back in the store and waited two more hours and went out again with the same stuff. So, I got two for the sale price of one. And then I sold the other set at once and got most of my money back. I came out way ahead.

And that's when I really started in earnest, because I could use the money from the one I sold to buy a microphone. I bought an SM57 and that was 60 bucks. And I felt pretty proud of myself. And then I just started recording the whole time, figuring out puzzles.

JS: And you were still living at home?

JM: Oh, yeah, I lived at home until I went to college. I didn't leave my home.  I was born and raised in one house until I was 19, when I went to live in New York.

JS: And would you send these demos out to record companies?

JM: I wouldn't even know where to begin with that. I didn't do anything. I didn't send it to any record companies. I sold them and gave them away. I just made music. And I didn't understand how any of this worked. I would look at my records and see a lot of people who are on Sire, a couple of people on Elektra, a couple of people on Arista. As far as independent labels, I knew 4AD, and I knew Factory Records as consistent labels, but I didn't think about independent labels versus major labels at all. I didn't think about any of that stuff. And in 87 I pressed and released a goth album.

JS: Under what name?

JM: Falling Man. They're like 500 bucks now on Discogs... not because of me. Because it's a small private-press goth record. And since I threw away 700 of them, there are only 250 of them in the world, I think.

JS: Were you thinking about trying to start your own label at this point?

JM: Well, a lot happened in the intervening years, between the 80s and the 2000s. I moved in New York, and I was listening to all the music I used to listen to, plus bands like Ministry and a lot more industrial stuff.

JS: Dance music, house music, disco music wasn't a part of your life?

JM: Not at all. Even though a lot of stuff I listened to would be dance music, and I did go dancing at City Gardens. And I liked Deee-Lite. Deee-Lite were kind of a universal thing, you couldn’t not like them. To me when I thought about going to a dance music club, I always could only imagine C&C Music Factory, which I did not like.

JS: Was disco a dirty word for you at that point?

JM: It was a non-word. I grew up and I listed to disco because I was six, seven, eight years old, and it was the music on the radio, but I didn't have any deep understanding of it. To me it was like the Bee Gees, and Andrea True Connection’s “More, More, More” (which I still think is amazing), but it wasn't like something that I cared about. A lot of the industrial music I listened to was dance music, like Nitzer Ebb and New Order.

But dance music was a couple of things: one, it's a genre, and the other, it’s a context — a cultural context. And I had no cultural context for it. So, I wasn't listening to it at all. I got to New York and somebody gave me Mudhoney and Galaxie 500. I started listening to Sonic Youth and Sebadoh. And then I went into a giant indie rock detour for the majority of the 90s, in which, again, I didn't fit in at all.

JS: And you were making and producing indie rock at that time?

JM: I was a drummer, I switched to drums. I'd been playing music for my whole life as a singing guitar player. And then went to college after I took a year and a half off.

I took a year and a half off after high school and I kickboxed and was a bouncer and did weird shit. Lived in my fucking town, lived in my parents’ house because I didn't want to go to college, because college was next. It was this sort of de facto thing that everybody did, and that felt too weird. I didn't like the idea that my life was set. So, I was thinking “I'm going to figure out what I'm going to do.” And then after a year and half, my dad was like, “You need to get out of this house. You and your mother are going to kill each other.” And so I went to NYU, largely because I had a couple of friends there, and I'd been going in on the weekends to stay with them and hang out with them.

JS: What were you studying at NYU?

JM: Writing. I kind of gave up on music. I was like, I'm not going to make music because I made my album, which went nowhere… because I realized I didn't know anybody. I was like, okay, I made an album and brought five to sell at the Record Exchange.

JS: So you were ready to give up?

JM: Well, no — I just didn't know what to do. I had a friend whose dad worked at Columbia Records, and I made a little presentation and gave him the cassette and he was just like, “Okayyyy” — he's trying to explain, "I work in sales, but…. there’s nothing here. You don't have a scene. There is no story.” I'm alone in my bedroom making music. I hired a studio and made an album. It didn't matter. My idea was like, “I'll make this thing look like a ‘real record.’ I'll make a record.” Everyone was making CDs... it was the beginning of CDs, and I was like, "No, I'm making a record.” That was worst idea. Then I went to NYU. I quit to be a student.

JS: And how long did that last?

JM: Lasted till my senior year.

JS: And you graduated?

JM: No. I dropped out because I got into a band and went on tour. I became a drummer. And I didn't intend to. I was dating a girl and she wanted to play bass, I was like, “Okay, I'll help you put together a band.” I've always been in bands. And she found a guitar player, and they couldn't find a drummer. “I will play drums. I don't know how to play drums really, but I'll play drums until you find a drummer.” They were rehearsing drummers and they'd be like, “It’s more fun when James plays.” That kept happening. It kept being more fun when I was playing, and so I got better and better at playing drums, and then I became the drummer. So, from 93 to 97, I was a drummer in indie rock bands.

I was in a band called Pony, which had a couple of singles and two albums, and a band called Speed King, which just released seven inches. We were so heads-up-our-own-assess, we refused to release an album. Just singles.

JS: And so is this around the time the idea of DFA starting coming together?

JM: The end of the 90s are coming up. I met a guy who stored his equipment, he moved from Los Angeles, and he had a bunch of gear. He was like, "I had a studio in LA and I want to set up a studio here,” and I'm like, "Well I already have a studio." He's like, "Well, maybe I can give you my stuff and we can put it in there and I can use your studio." I was like, "No, I'll just store your stuff because I have a fully functioning studio."

So, I stored this guy's stuff and let him use it sometimes. And that turned out to be Tyler Brodie who was my partner at DFA. Then I got kicked out of my old studio by my landlord. I had a studio in Dumbo that I paid 350 bucks a month for. It was a giant studio in the building that's now the cornerstone building of Dumbo. I was alone in Dumbo — me and one other guy and a pack of wild dogs. An entire city block building with no one there.

And I’d rehearse with a band called Dungbeetle — one of my favorite bands of all time — and we shared it as a rehearsal space and I had my recording studio. I had a control room and then a big live room. And I couldn't get a job producing. Nobody cared about me. There were studios that weren’t as good as mine and they still got more work than me. But I was a good engineer.

JS: And the idea of the studio was to produce other artists?

JM: To have a rehearsal place for my band, so we didn't have to burn money just renting rehearsal space, and to produce other people. And nobody really wanted to hire me. So, I got kicked out and I called the guy whose stuff I had and I said, "Hey, I'm getting kicked out. You got to take your stuff back." So, I delivered it in my band van to a building he got on West 13th street. I was loading it all in and asked, "Can I now store my stuff in your place?" And he was like, "Yes."

So, we're loading all my stuff in and I said to him, "Hey man, if you know anybody, or a place I can build a studio let me know." And he's like, "Oh, funny I was thinking of asking you, I need somebody to help me design a studio here." And I was just like, "Sounds like you got your chocolate in my peanut butter… You know, I'll build the studio." So, I designed a studio for that space, which took a couple of years to build. It finally got done in the end of 98, and I produced a Trans Am record there, a band from the 90s.

And then immediately David Holmes was the next record, and that's where I met Tim Goldsworthy. I was building a studio to record indie rock bands. And then I met Tim and DFA started because of that. Meeting Tim and David Holmes was the seismic change in my life. Like the big, big, big, big change.

JS: And what was the first thing you and Tim did as DFA?

JM: Well, I kind of think that David Holmes record in a weird way was like the formation of Tim and I as a team. We had nothing in common, on the surface.

He was brought in by David Holmes as a co-producer and technically he was the programmer. He was the guy who sat at the computer. Remember, a computer wasn't something that everybody used. You had to get a guy who was a specialist — who had his own little laptop — and was the programmer. And he would make samples and control the sampler, make your drums.  And that was Tim. He was one of the top guys for that.

JS: And he had come from working in the UK with Mo’ Wax Records.

JM: Yeah. Mo’ Wax and Unkle. And what happened was he and I didn't hit it off at first. He wasn't very friendly and I was not cool. And he was cool. And it was the typical, like, you know, he's a cool guy, he was in magazines and stuff. And magazines would write like, "What's Tim Goldsworthy up to? What's he doing?" But nobody was writing, “What's James Murphy doing?” My family was barely wondering what I was doing.

But by virtue of me being the engineer and him being the programmer we wound up spending a lot of time alone. The guys would come in and play some keyboards and Phil Mossman, who wound up being the first guitar player in LCD, was playing guitar and they'd be all just hanging out. And then those three would leave, and Tim and I are stuck in the basement trying to make sense of the stuff.

At which point we both realized that his first show was a Ramones show and my first show was a Ramones show.  And then we were like, "Huh." And then — this is something that people don't remember — it was not cool to like The Smiths at this time. There was a period where you didn't want to admit to it, and we both admitted it. “I was really a big Smiths fan.”  “Me too, I was a really a big Smiths fan.”

And so, we had a lot more in common than we’d thought. And as we worked, there was sort of a mutuality of what we liked and what we cared about, and what we were angry about, and what we disagreed with, and all that sort of stuff.

JS: You found common ground.

JM: Yeah, we found common ground.  And then the Holmes thing went really weird. There were a lot of drugs. But in the middle of that, David was deejaying and I did my first ecstasy while he was deejaying. And he played my favorite song, which is “Tomorrow Never Knows” by The Beatles. That was like my childhood. That was my song because it hummed. I liked psychedelic things as a kid.

It's also a fucking barn burner of a song. And it also kind of hipped me to the idea of what dance music could be. We started talking about it. We would do a label and it'll be like Factory Records. It will be this thing where everything matters and we could think about everything and we were super high all the time. And by then I didn't smoke pot, I was doing everything else. Just constantly getting into the minutiae of everything. When David left it was like, "Let's do this thing." We didn't have a label name yet.

I had been a live sound engineer in the 90s, that's what I'm forgetting. The big thing about the 90s is I was a live sound engineer. And I was really good at it. I would say it's the thing in my life, if there is anything in my life that if I look at myself in comparison to the rest of the world, it's the thing that I'm the best at, it's the thing that I excel the most at. It's a combination of years of doing it under grueling, awful conditions... doing sound in punk clubs is not like doing sound in my band now.

JS: And you went on the road doing this?

JM: Oh, yeah. Doing sound with my band now is very different. We carry a PA system, it's very technical, like 60 fucking inputs. What our sound guy Steve does is not what I can do. He’s amazing.

What I was doing was showing up, and there was some rickety PA, and I'm like, "I have to rewire this thing and make it work.” It's never going to sound pristine, but I'm going to have to make it blow people's minds. That's all I was about. I need to just fucking rip your head off and make you feel this. I need to make it not hurt, but be scary, and the emotional communication of sound was what I learned in all that.

JS: And how did these clubs react to that?

JM: It went 50/50, because I would make their system sound so much better. So, if they were cool about it, they were like, “It's fucking great.”  Or they'd be like, "I don't like that guy, he thinks he's so great." But, that was my real education in engineering.  It gave me the advantage that I carried into the recording studio — doing whatever it took to get things to sound right.

And also learning from Bob Weston, because he recorded the band Pony, and he was a real engineer. And having done this all on my own, like, alone just working it out, and then he showed me how gain staging worked and it blew my mind. So, working with Tim we suddenly have this thing where Tim knew all this stuff about programming, stuff that none of the people around me knew, and I knew all this stuff about live sound, which I could translate into dance music, specifically because dance music was body music.

And what I was used to doing was knocking people over, knowing when to compress something and knowing when not to compress something, and that sort of weird shit. So when we started, we were like, we're going to throw a party, we're going to do this, and we were just going to do it all homegrown, do whatever we want, and not care about what anybody else thinks. And we were talking about how we liked the Human League and disco. And I remember we were talking to a friend of Tim's from England who said the same thing. He was like “I know this sounds weird, but I’m really into the Human League and disco.” And we were like, “There’s something in the air.” And we had this big discussion about how many times have you loved something and it's been your thing and then a year and half or two years later everybody is into it, and you're mad.

JS: Right, all the damn time.

JM: And I was like, clearly all we have to do is do the thing we're really into as opposed to bitching about everybody else, or how bad music is or how these people don't really get it. Just do it.

JS: I know. People always ask me or say, “New York was so much better, this is so much better...” I'm like, well, just do something about it, and stop bitching about it.

JM: Right, that's the beauty of New York. I think it's harder… space is hard now. There is a very different thing happening that New York hasn't weathered since the 70s. This is a new challenge, the challenge of wealth and suburbanization. But I remember when we started DFA, New York was not fun. That late 90s, early 2000s period, I found it was hard to find fun. Tim was so devastated. He moved to New York thinking it's going to be people break dancing on the corner, it's just going to be amazing clubs and we would go out and he’d be like, “This sucks.” The music the people are playing was like the seamless, faceless shit that's not even, like, techno.

JS: Was the Plant Bar open then?

JM: The Plant Bar was not open yet. And these things were all things that we co-opted, made our own. Marcus, (Shit Robot) and Dom Keegan, who were Plant, they started deejaying long before The Plant Bar.

JS: You hadn't deejayed yet.

JM: No. I hadn’t deejayed at all. I think my first deejay gig was December 1999, at the DFA Christmas party at DFA. I set up a sound system in there, which was ripping, and we really carefully invited different groups of people. This was really key. We had a bunch of film friends, we had a bunch of the Black Dice and weirdo arty punk kids, we had a gay contingent…

JS: Everything that makes a good club.

JM: Yeah, we had these great breakbeat deejay guys like Bobbito and friends like that.

And then in walks Rosie Perez on crutches. And then the indie rock kids and The Rapture guys. We had this real mix. What we wanted was for nobody to feel like it was theirs, and that the other people didn’t belong. I wanted everybody to feel like they had to make it work. It wasn't like they can sit in the corner and be like, “I don't believe these losers are here. This is our party.” I wanted everyone to feel a little outnumbered and it was fucking amazing.

We had this great party, we had an open bar and massive amounts of E... and I was so nervous about deejaying, and I was so nervous about not being high enough or being too high, that I put quarters of E on the corners of the two turntables so I can work my way through them during the set so I know how much I had done.

JS: Weird thing is I've never done any drugs in my life, and have obviously been around it since growing up. And I don't drink. I’m constantly amazed how people do that and then DJ.

JM: That's probably why you can still do it. I’m a very self-conscious guy, and I was not fun. E was a great thing for me because, when I first did it I was dancing and I came to the realization… I'm like, "Wait a second… this is not the drugs.” I know when I'm drunk, I'm still me, but I'm just a little sloppy. When I was stoned, I was just me but paranoid. But with E, I was just myself, like I was really myself. And it changed me, so that afterwards I would dance without it, I would go out without it. Something had woken up in me. It has since gone back to sleep a bit because I don't do that anymore, because I don't think it works forever.

It was a pretty important thing for me. I would never have stuck myself out like that, just wouldn't have done it. So, yeah, we started the parties, then we wanted a label that was perfect. So, we started it and Death From Above was my live sound name, that's where it came from. It was my nickname because I was so loud.  And Tim was like, "I'm into that." So we became Death From Above, DFA.

JS: Did you design the logo?

JM: Well, first we had a little skull, and then 9/11 happened, and we said Death From Above at the moment in New York City might not be the right thing... so we became DFA. And then we had a meeting where we were talking about how we should have a logo. And we were doodling things and I drew a little lightning bolt in ballpoint pen… not big, a tiny, like, one-inch tall. And we were like, "Yeah, that's it." And then we were like, "No, that's it. We'll just never do it again.” It was very funny because people are like, "Can you draw a lightning bolt?" And I'm like, "No." Because I just did it once. And then we scanned that and that's the logo, and that's it forever. I think Jon Galkin still has the original.

JS: And around that time you met The Rapture?

JM: Yeah, through Justin Chearno, who is a partner now at the Four Horsemen.

He was my spy. He was always like, "Hey, you got to see The Rapture." And he brought me down to Brownie’s and I fell in love with them. And Tim was back in England and when he came back, I was like, "You have to hear these guys, you have to see these guys." It seems so perfect, they were perfect. They were a perfect band.

JS: Yeah, they were very inspiring to me as well. I was bored with the dance music scene at the time and what you guys were doing at DFA, and Trevor Jackson at Output Records in the U.K. and Robi Headman and In Flagranti and a few others really excited me again.

JM: I felt like, we had this advantage. I was watching Marcus and Dom deejay, and Marcus would explain, like, "Well, this is the record you to play to get from one record to another." I was so angry about it. I'm going to die, don't give me seven minutes of filler. Like we're all going to die. And I started thinking and I was looking at my record collection and I was remembering David Holmes playing “Tomorrow Never Knows,” and I was like, what an advantage to be able to play anything from any time. Clearly the quality level is going to be, just the inherent actual quality we're going to play will be higher. Because there is no way you can tell me that in the last nine months there is something critical I have to play... you have to go through phases as a DJ where you play the newest, that’s really important. And there is a value in that currency, but at that moment there was no value in that currency. People were filling genres. They weren't pushing things forward.

And so, I can go play Kraftwerk tonight, then I can play The Fall, I can play anything. I can play Suicide, and I can play the best music of the post-second World War, all of it. I can play anything, and you are only playing something out of eight labels that has come out in the last nine months. I'm clearly going to destroy you. It just seemed like such an obvious win. It's sort of saying, I have an all-star team from the greatest players around the world and you have a high school team and you have to pick from these 300 people. You cannot… there will not be the talent pool to beat my team.

So, I had in my record bag, “Do The Du” by A Certain Ratio and at any point, I can drop that. That's fucking going to rip it. And when we were running out of music… and the whole point of making “House of Jealous Lovers” and things like that, was we needed more of this to play. So, we did the Le Tigre remix, and that was the first DFA thing. And that to me was slowed down to disco tempo. At the time Morgan Geist and Darshan Jesrani, Metro Area, was the other thing we heard and I was like, "Fuck, we have to hurry up."

It was from a different angle, they were coming from much more of a traditional dance music background, and I was coming from a punk rock background. I remember the drums from Loose Joint’s “Is It All Over My Face, that sound and hearing that similar tonality in Metro Area’s records, that was a really big influence. Metro Area and Morgan Geist were a really big influence on us.

So, that was the contemporary thing I can play at any time. But we just wanted to make more music that we could play in that deejay set rather than just playing old records.

JS: And you remember the first time you played “House Of Jealous Lovers,” and the reaction it got on a dance floor, and made you feel that you were onto something?

JM: I don't remember. That's a great question. I can't remember the first time I played it. Because we had it for a year before we put a 12 inch out, and I didn't play CDs, you know what I mean?  You couldn't play it until it was pressed.

JS: But you knew this was special?

JM: Oh, yeah. I was like, “This is the best, listen to this, this is fucking amazing.” We wanted it to be like A Certain Ratio and Mr. Ozio, that's what we wanted, and that's why we looped the bass at the beginning and put it through the EMS filter and we were like, "How do we make this compete? Stand up next to...” If somebody plays Mr. Ozio’s “Flat Beat,” we need to be able to play our record next to it, so it needs to compete, can't sound scrawny. Like A Certain Ratio sounded scrawny, so it can't sound like that but at the same time A Certain Ratio has this energy. It had to have both of those things, the thump and the sprawling energy as well.

JS: But still, every now and then I’ll drop “House Of Jealous Lovers” in one of my sets and it still gets a crazy reaction.

JM: It was also a funny time in history when you could play that record for four years and still feel ahead. Like for four years I would go to Winter Music Conference and hear that. Somebody would be like, "What's this?" That's gone, like, you can't hold a record for that long, you know what I mean?

JS: And then DFA was up and running. The Juan Maclean record was next?

JM: Yeah. Juan was from the band Six Finger Satellite.  At the time he was living in New Hampshire and kind of isolating himself. And he quit music. We bought him a sampler and couple of machines and got him Logic, or the Cubase program. I started making and sending him these CDs I called “Juan Should Know” and it was stuff like Luke Eargoggle and some Gigolo records. I was like “Hey Juan, this is what's happening. You should know about this stuff and think about it, and make some music.”

And so, he started making music. He would come to New York and finish things off and then we put out the first 12 inch with him. So it was The Rapture’s “House of Jealous Lovers” and the second one was Juan. Those were the first two 12 inches and the second two were Juan again and LCD’s “Losing My Edge”, those were the first four releases.

JS: If you were starting out in a band or making records today, would you have a different approach? Does a record company matter anymore, the way it did, in as far as what it meant to have a record on DFA?

JM: By the time people were going to DFA to get their record on there, it didn't mean the same thing. It only meant something as a representation of a scene. It only meant something in my mind during the moment when DFA was a gang. I always saw it as a gang, and it was a gang that didn't just include the label. It was a gang that threw the parties, was a gang that did that art, was a gang that made music. Mike Vadino who's the art director who did all the first posters... I did some of the first posters right out of the gate... some of the first we just did because we didn’t have anybody and we met Mike right in the beginning, and since then, he did everything.

And Justin Chearno, who never worked for the label, had nothing to do with it, played a little guitar on “New York, I Love You” and did a show with us in Philly with us when Phil Mossman couldn't do it. But he was key in finding The Rapture, and finding Black Dice, hipping us to things before anybody. They were as much a part of the gang as anyone. So, if they were deejaying to me, it was like a DFA night and we were all showing up. We were all showing up at Plant Bar. It was like a gang, and as a label representing a gang, I think it was really important.

Once it became a label that you're sending your work to, I think it's less important. I think it's something different, it is important still but it's something different, more of a curatorial thing. I think what's happening now is you're seeing these scenes and that's what's important. And I think it's harder for someone who's isolated, it's much harder. And I got real lucky because that was the first time in my life I was part of something, and not just myself alone trying to do something for myself.

JS: But now is a label still important when there are other ways to get your music released?

JM: People still need something that they trust. Yeah, there’ll be a different outlet, but it'll be because some other artists like it...  it's not a democracy, in fact, if anything the lack of hierarchy has created a greater hierarchy. We now can listen to anything, you can pick up that phone and literally listen to the most obscure music that took me years of crate digging to find. And yet most people just end up listening to Beyoncé, you know what I mean. And nothing wrong with Beyoncé. What is our massive pop music is certainly at times pretty interesting. Like our number ones are more interesting than they've been since The Beatles era. But, the rest of the top 20 is more monotonous.

JS: You've had a number one record.

JM: Sort of.

JS: Well, you have, and LCD Soundsystem is one of the biggest bands in the world. Did you ever imagine that? Do you ever stop and think like, "Hey, wow."

JM: I stop and think about it all the time, all the time. The day you stop thinking about it is a very sad thing.

JS: Do you feel more driven or less driven, or do you feel that you’ve done it all now?

JM: I don't know. It's all too under my control in some ways. I'm not inspired to be bigger because it seems not that hard now that we're here, now that we're in this big position where I have like a giant platform. I can choose to make more commercial decisions or more like remarkable decisions.

But I also think that we had a couple of massive advantages. My years of doing live sound, our years collectively as group people in punk bands... I came from that scene and when we went and started playing festivals, that was our radio. We didn't get played on radio, what we did get was blogged about. There were huge things about “Losing My Edge” and “Yeah”... the internet did a lot for us. We played festivals at a time when bands were pretty lame. Bands were not that good to see, not as bad as they are now.  Bands were still coming out of the 90s, were still kind of polite like, "I'm sorry," and we were like, "We're going to fucking murder you." We'd be backstage not making friends. We still made our friends, we made friends for sure with some people, but we had our aims of destroying everybody. And we were scared and angry and we knew how to sound good. I knew how to make a band sound good.

JS: For sure. Seeing the band play live over the years, and now the sound you have at your live shows is amazing.

JM: Well, now we're more like hi-fi I think. But I think in the beginning we had a limited amount of gear we could carry, so we had to make it work with what we could check on a plane. I’d have my microKORG which I love, love that fucking machine. And so we would show up and I think, "How do we do as a five-piece ...” All we want to do is rip people’s heads off and we were so fucking loud on stage.

And so what would happen is other bands would come, you go see the other band that you're playing with on your festival stage. And we would just erase the other bands because we were twice as loud. And we were not friendly. And we would play just a short set and play as furiously as we could. And we were starting to get some good press. Lots of little articles all over especially in England and France. So, people would come and if there wasn't something really they wanted to see when we were playing, and usually at that point we were playing on the early side of the festival, they'd be like, "I'm going to check this band out."

And so, we were there to make sure you remembered us. And I think that was the best thing for us, people sampling us at a festival after reading an article about us in iD Magazine or something. And when you look at the songs that are our biggest songs, they are not the singles, but the songs we played live the best. The singles didn’t matter, but it's what we play live that translates to people most.

JS: Now that you're headlining festivals, and you step out there and you know everyone is there to see you and they know the songs. What are you feeling when you step out on stage?

JM: I go on stage worrying about the sound mostly. Does my mic sound okay, is Pat tired, or is the bass amp too loud. Mostly just technical stuff.

JS: But does it ever overwhelm you... when you look out and see thousands of people singing along to “All My Friends”?

JM: Sometimes, it sounds corny but that doesn't mean as much to me as the sound. If it sounds right and I'm being caught in a wave of sound, and nobody is reacting, I almost don't care. And if it sounds like something is wrong and it's not really working, I feel alone. 

I need it to feel good to me because then I'll be able to appreciate it, you know what I mean? It's like what you don't want to do is play piano and fuck it up and then have someone say, "Oh, my God, you're amazing" — you just feel lonely. Yeah, it wasn't amazing but now I just feel alone because you don't understand.

JS: Does that stem from being a perfectionist?

JM: Not even, it's not out of perfectionism, I don't mind if there are millions of mistakes, as long as it feels good. It's more that if I feel like we're distracted and people aren’t paying attention, and we're not connecting to one another, and sonically I can't hear Al’s guitar very well, it's that type of stuff. Because we were designed to be a little ball, and as we have expanded, we have to do a lot of work to maintain that ball, and it's much harder, you know what I mean. It's like being a friend group when you all live in a house together, and then suddenly people get married and move away. It's just harder to maintain that.

JS: When you guys got back together after the break, was it like let's try this and see if it's going to work again, or did you know immediately?

JM: I wouldn't have tried a show. We were going to be better, I knew we had to be better than ever. We had to sound better, we had to play better. Before that, we had a great sounding band, and then we completely redid the entire fucking thing. With all new microphones, new equipment, new sounds, everything. 15 years into the band and I'm like, we've always had the same exact guitar amp. I'm like let’s just rebuild the guitar amp. A totally new thing. We just started over. I was like, "What's the best way to do this?"

I knew, the thing is for anyone to feel like it was half as good as it used to, it had to be twice as good. You always have the, “Oh, it was better before.” Like, "Oh, you should have seen them with Ron Ashton before James Williamson.” There is a mythology always.

JS: So, are you still the guy that doesn't play well with others, hard to be in a band with or has that changed?

JM: Oh, no I don't play well with others. But it depends on what you choose. No secrets about it, the thing I've always said is like, if somebody says to me, "Oh, I think this is better, I'm like, "I'm not trying to make better.” My goal isn't to make the best, my goal is to make the thing that is the closest to what I envision. So, the specificity of my want is what I want LCD to be. Because if I wanted the best, I wouldn't sing, I’d just hire someone... there are millions of better singers, there are millions of better people at each instrument.

I will play the instruments a lot of times, I know what I want out of it, and despite any technical lacking or whatever else is going wrong, I can get it to do what I want it to do and I'm the best in the world at being me.

JS: And what’s the difference of it being LCD Soundsystem rather than James Murphy?

JM: It is a band, it’s not Prince. In the studio, people play in the studio, but it's a thing... it is sort of me doing what I want to do to a certain degree, and so I surround myself with people who have enough in common with me that they get it, and they can embrace that as, I know what LCD is about, I can do this, and they can add things and contribute, write, and do all sorts of stuff. And then we go on tour and we're a band. I don't ride my little bus and have my dressing room and be like, “Who are these guys,?” We're a band and we've been playing together for 15 years. Some of us like Tyler, Nancy, Pat, and I have been playing together since the first show in November 2002.

JS: I mean, was there a moment before you got the band back together that you thought you might do this as a solo thing?

JM: No. What happened was I just knew I was going to start making music. And I knew I had made a pretty big ending, and I just asked them if I'm making music again — is this LCD or is this me? Do you guys want to do this again? Because I'm not going to exclude my best friends, you know what I mean, because I made a selfish decision to stop. And Pat and Nancy said we're in, and Al said I'm in, and everybody was like, we're in. And that was great, it was going to be LCD.

And that changes what I decide to do to a certain degree. Because there is some indefinable set of rules that makes it LCD versus just me making music. Me making music is I do whatever. I mean, I made music for play that just had piano and cello. I made music for film that's all acoustic guitar. But making LCD music has like a set of logics to it, not rules but logics.

JS: I wanted to talk a little about David Bowie. He was a huge influence on me, and of course you as well. I remember hearing the remix you did for him maybe the first time you played it at Output and I though "Wow, this is what David Bowie should sound like now." And was hoping you would do more with him.

JM: In the back of my mind making that remix was my, was my way of trying to say, "Hey."

JS: And had you met him before?

JM: I'm trying to think when I met him. I did meet him before, when I was working on The Arcade Fire record and he came in to do guest vocals.

JS: I had met him briefly around that time as well, and was impressed at how friendly and nice he was.

JM: He’s possibly the best. He made me feel like I need to be less grumpy. Because he was really open and really engaged.

I think that was his great skill. My experience was that he knows the effect to a certain degree that he has on people. He knows that you're going to fucking lose it when you meet him. So, he's very good at filling that space for the minute while you adjust. He'd be like, "Oh, how are you?" You know put you totally backwards, and then while you're recovering make you feel comfortable and calm everything down. And I've heard that from a lot of different people. He had a great memory as well. Like a social memory. He'd be like, "How is your girlfriend?” And you’d be like, “What!?” I met him at the Arcade Fire session, and he didn't recognize me, because, why would he? And I was like, "Hi." And then he did a vocal and then he came back like a week later to do something else, and he walked in and he went straight to me and said, "I'm so sorry. I didn't realize it was you, I just didn't put two and two together. Of course, I'm a huge fan,” and I was like, “I can't...” You know, it totally put me on my back foot.

JS: How did the remix come about?

JM: I don't know the sequence of whether I did the remix before or after we met, I can't remember. And I was just asked by the label and I was terrified. It took me a really long time to do it. I knew I'd been listening to Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music” and I wanted to make an edit of it, instead I just got people in and made new clapping patterns and used that as inspiration. People wrote that it's a sample.  It's not a sample. I wanted a very specific recording of that, which was a performance that’s on video, which was the first performance of it with Reich and someone else clapping in a gallery. You see a white sheet rock wall and the sound was the sound which the video camera microphone gets. So, I did it in the hallway, not in one in the live rooms, with Hisham from Black Dice and a couple of people. We made these patterns and played them all together. And we would play for a while and I'd like shift the pattern around, they'd all follow and then I’d shift again so I could layer this thing out.

And I was really obsessed with it being as good as I possibly could make it, because I was terrified to do a half-assed job. And then also people think there’s a sample of “Ashes to Ashes” in it, but it's not. It's just me trying to reverse engineer how it was done. I was like, "I know Tony Visconti had the Eventide Harmonizer 910,” so I made a wobbling effect with the 910 and did it on an electric piano and acoustic piano and blended it together, trying to figure out the techniques.

JS: It was beautiful and it was a great homage to him.

JM: And what I really wanted is for him to say was, "This sounds better than the album, I should get him to make the next record."

JS: But something along those lines did happen?

JM: I think that's kind of what was beginning, but nobody really informed me what was going on. I was moving around, and doing stuff, I think I was finishing work with Arcade Fire and I was doing a variety of things, making a film. And we became e-mail pals. That's what happened. We had become email buddies, which I’ve heard from other people is a thing that would happen.

JM: So then we started communicating. I was on a family vacation with my wife and her parents. We were on a sailboat in the Caribbean. And we were coming upon Mystique, and I looked up Mustique and saw that David Bowie had a house on Mustique. It was Christmas Eve, and I was like, what are the chances... and I just wrote him an email like, “I know this sounds weird, but I'm arriving to Mustique, do you still have a place there?” And he wrote back immediately, like, “Oh, no. I don't anymore, but that’s so funny. Say hi to everyone.” And we were emailing back and forth. He was a real quick responder, which made feel like, “Hey, David Bowie is writing me right back!” 

And I got my gumption up, and wrote, “I would love, if you're interested at all, I would love to make some music with you. In any capacity, and I don't care if it comes out. If you have any interest in just trying something I would love to.” My vision was, what I wanted was to make a record with him my way. And I said, “You and me we're going to go to the studio and we're going to talk about some music. And we can do everything ourselves or you can bring people in. Your call. Between the two of us we can play any instrument, so let's just do it,” that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to make it along the style of the remix I did, him being like, "Well, here is my song," I'm like, "Great, let's break it apart and let's do what we want." He said, “Funny you mention it. Let's have a chat when you get back."

So, I get back and I go to have a meeting with him and sign a non-disclosure agreement, which was based upon people not knowing he was making records at the time. And he played me a bunch of demos, and the things he was working on, he's like, "Do you hear anything?" I was like, "I hear a lot." And I'm like, “Yeah, we're going to make this record, it's going to be great”. And he was like, "That's great." And I had to go do something, I had to go to Japan and make a film. And then I'd come back.

And he said, "Well, that's good because I'm going to do some little things I'm working with this jazz band, and Tony Visconti.”  I said, “Okay.” He said "Come back on this date, come to Magic Shop studio." So, I show up, unfortunately or fortunately, it is quite in-progress already. I walk in and there is this drummer, Mark and the bass player, Tim, a keyboard player, and saxophone player. Okay, that’s the band. And there is an engineer and a computer operator. There is Tony Visconti, sitting at the desk and David. And no chair is up there where I would normally go. What the fuck am I doing here? I'm like, "What ..."

JS: It didn't feel right?

JM: What am I doing? What's my job? And no one's told me what my job is. It's like, ”Do you have any things you want to suggest?” And I'm like, "Ohhhh, I'm supposed to play well with others.” And I'm listening and all I'm hearing is “I think the drums are too busy,” etc... But this was a room full of positivity for the most part. Meaning like everyone loves what's going on, and I'm not going to be like, "Hey Tony, move over, let's change the way these drums sound." That's not going to happen. So, I'm kind of like, okay, maybe I'll just go get some synths… I'll go get some things and see if there is some stuff I can do. And I did. I put a keyboard through my EMS and I'm like playing a little percussion here and there.

But then, I'm so frustrated because I want to dig in, and having members of the band be like, “Is this good?” And I'm like, "I think it's good.” Them — “Are you going to take the stuff back to the studio?" I'm like, "I don't know." And they were like, "We want you to..." It sounded great but there wasn't a space for me to do anything. Because what I do is play instruments, arrange, edit, engineer. And all of those roles are filled. So, I helped out where I could.

JS: Was it heartbreaking for you?

JM: Yeah. And then I went back to the studio,  but it started becoming clear to me that, okay, I'm supposed to “Eno.” You know what I mean?

JS: Yeah.

JM: And I'm not. I think someone like Eno has a different kind of ego than I do.

Regardless of who is in the room, Eno is quite flexible. On the one hand lets things happen, on the other hand end tells the rest of The Talking Heads to go, that he is bringing in Fripp and Belew. I'm certainly not going to do that. Eno can walk in, look at Tony Visconti and say, "Hello Tony, I'm going to do this," and Tony will be like, "Okay, make room for Eno." Of course I walk in and I'm like, "Hello, Tony?" and he’s like, "And you are...?" And I'm like, right — that is an appropriate reaction.

I'm not that personality, I'm not that bold, I'm not that challenging, I make music alone because I don't want to hurt people's feelings. I become negative, I'm like, "Let's get rid of all this, and start with just that." And it is hard to tell someone, "What you're playing, stop. Stop playing it, do this instead."

JS: I personally would have loved to hear the record you and David Bowie might have made together.

JM: Well, I think it wound up being a fucking great record in the end. I did take two songs away and I was supposed to make my own versions, and I did. And I never really got to play them for him, because I was now out. Tony came by and he wasn't super psyched on them. But I changed drums and I had the drummer come in and play a part. I was doing what I would do, which is disassemble and reassemble, but it wasn't going to make the record that was being made, it was not going to do that. And it was deeply saddening. I would have had to be somebody else, I would have to be a different person, but I'm not capable of that. It is a regret though.

JS: You're not really active on social media, do you hate all that?

JM: No. I don't hate it, it just doesn't resonate with me. I don't hate Instagram, I just don't have Instagram, because I looked at it and I don't need more things to look at. But I have a lot of friends who are very active on it... But the best excuse for being active isn't that they like it, is that they have to do it. It's like they got to do it, and that just makes me sad. You got to do that or nobody will come to your gig.

JS: Actually no one's going to come anyway.

JM: That's not my situation, so I don't like feel the need to engage in more stuff. Facebook is where I stopped. I don't have Twitter, I mean we, the band have it, but I don't to have to get everything because always somebody else gets it. So, we have LCD Soundsystem Twitter, an LCD Soundsystem Instagram. Facebook I only use because I follow people who do things that I don't know anything about. I don't have friends. Three pictures of your kids and I don't follow you anymore. It's just gone.

JS: Two is okay?

JM: You get away with two, and then I'm out. I don't want to know, that's not how I want to know about people's families, it's not how I want to know about people's personal lives, it's not how I want to know about political views. My stream includes Trevor Jackson because he's doggedly pursuing new music in a way that I'm not willing to or energized enough to do.  I have friends who know a lot about dance, I have friends who know a lot about art, I follow a person who digs for African music.

There is really specific stuff that I use as input. Or people who barely do anything, like someone who like, once a year is like, “This is a really good restaurant.” Great. Thank you. But anybody who is like, "Here is my cat, this is what me and my friends did on vacation...” Not that I'm against it, I just want to look quickly and I get my equivalent of the arts section or going to the coffee shop where I know interesting people are and I can chat with them and see what they're reading. That's what I want from Facebook.

JS: How do you deal with celebrity? Did you pick up any pointers from Bowie on that?

JM: No, that's not a thing I can learn. I can't learn to be taller. He had a grace and nobility to chill you out.  If somebody was talking to him he didn't want to talk to I think he could fucking ice you like nobody's business. I probably learned more from Adam Horovitz. We recorded a BS 2000 record together. I spend a decent amount of time with him and I'd walk around the city with him and people would come up to him, "Yo, you're the Beastie Boys, I got your cassette. What are you guys doing now?" And he would just be friendly and be like, "Hi, nice to meet you but I'm talking to my friend right now." And humanize the situation so much that you'd be like, "Oh, I'm talking to a person who's just on the street talking to his friend and walking his dogs”.

He was great at reminding people that he was a person, and he was doing a person thing right now. And this wasn't a press opportunity. So, that I learned to be a little like that... I've been walking with my son and someone comes up to ask, “Can I take a picture?” I'm like, "No, nice to meet you, but this is family time, and I don't do that." And someone else would be like, "Do you mind if I take a picture?" I'm like, do you want an honest answer, I would tell them, I don't like it.

I have nothing against this person asking for a picture, and I totally understand the impulse, but, you're documenting meeting me, but you haven't told me your name." Like it's replaced meeting someone. You just document the thing that actually didn't happen — you didn't meet. So I try to encourage people instead to tell me your name, shake my hand, tell me something.

JS: Do you engage with random people that approach you on the street?

JM: Sure. I like people, I'm totally fine with humans. I don't get annoyed, I mean there are times when I'm not in a good mood...

JS: Do you ride the subway still?

JM: I ride the subway all the time. And New York is a great place, because New Yorkers don’t care.  Also what I like to remind people is like Jay-Z lives here, who fucking cares about me? Real famous people live here. I'm a niche famous person. But also what I found, mostly what happens in New York is I'll go on a subway and I'll sit there and then as I get to Union Square or something, someone on the way out, as they are leaving the subway will be like, "I really like your band, man," and then leaves, that's it.

The worst is what someone did to me once on a subway. And as soon as I got on, he's real loud, "Hey man, LCD Soundsystem! I love your band, man!" And then I was like, now we have to stand next to each other for the rest of the subway ride. Like you save that for when you’re getting off, because the rest of this is awkward. And then people around me were like, "Yeah dude, that's not how you do that, you do that when you're leaving."

JS: What was the name of the band?

KB: It was called Filur, named after a Danish ice cream, a popsicle. So silly. We made three or four albums together, and then in the mid 2000s, my friend started a band called WhoMadeWho, he was the drummer, and I started doing solo albums.

JS: And was there a scene, like a dance music scene going on here in Copenhagen at that time?

KB: Yeah. It was pretty small. I think that’s partly why we were quite successful, because there was not much competition at the time [laughing], there were not that many people producing electronic music here, so we had a head start somehow. And that also made us able to live from making music quite early. Because of the crossover commercial success, we both were able to do more “left field” stuff, after our project ended.

JS: And what were you listening to growing up? What were you influenced by?  

KB: As a teenager, from 87 to 92, 93, the only thing I was listening to was hip-hop and I was collecting vinyl at that time. When I was even younger, I was listening to and collecting soundtracks, I was really into John Carpenter, Vangelis, Giorgio Moroder, and I ended up listening to electronic music in the mid-90s after a detour of being heavily into Britpop, Depeche Mode and The Cure. I started going to raves and parties in CPH, and that's how I got inspired to produce electronic music.

JS: And had you started to DJ at this time?

KB: No, DJ'ing came after I started making music, actually. We had to tour with our band project to promote the releases, and we actually started playing live before we were DJ’ing. We quickly found out that logistically and financially it made much more sense to DJ, because then we were just two guys traveling instead of five or six people. So yeah, then DJ'ing became the thing — and I was very bad at it at first and very nervous as well.

JS: You started DJ'ing with vinyl records?

KB: Yeah, vinyl only… I did that up until my record bag got stolen one time after a gig at Iceland Airwaves Festival, I think maybe in 2005, 2006. And then I was forced to, quickly for my next gig, burn some CDs and try out those CD players that I had been hating on for so long [laughing]. And then I got caught up in that. I am still buying some vinyl, I still collect vinyl, but I don't travel with it anymore. Then the whole digital USB thing started up, I tried that as well and I was like, “Okay, wow, let's just do this.”

JS: And then you started to travel internationally, DJ'ing and started releasing Kasper Bjørke records.

KB: Yeah, my first solo album got signed to Plant Music which was based in New York, and I produced the biggest part of that album in New York, actually. I was collaborating with a few people from New York as well, like Kap10kurt, as he was called at the time, who is still a close friend of mine today. Allison Pierce from The Pierces, which is a band from New York as well, was singing on one of the singles. And Dennis Young, the percussionist from Liquid Liquid was playing percussion on some tracks... I was finding my feet on that album and New York was definitely a big influence.

JS: What year was this?

KB: 2006.

JS: So around the same time DFA records in New York was starting to release records, and this whole new wave of things in New York was taking shape.

KB: Yes, I was majorly influenced by DFA, and I was friends with Dominique Keegan from Plant Music, and he took me to the Plantain building at the time where DFA had their office there, and where he had his office as well. So I got all the early DFA promos on vinyl. Still treasure them to this day.

JS: Did you go to the Plant Bar?

KB: I think Plant Bar had recently shut down at the time. But I heard a lot of stories about how things went down there, and how they lost their dance license, which to me sounded like the most insane thing ever, that you needed a license to dance.

JS: It's always been some sort of plague in New York that it was illegal to dance in certain situations. There was a huge campaign against it and recently it was repealed.

KB: What a relief. I do remember back then, there were some really fun unofficial illegal parties. I recall playing at one out in Brooklyn somewhere called Gunther — together with Max Pask, James Friedman, Andrew Potter — it was in an old bowling alley in a basement. So much fun.

JS: So you spent a lot of time in New York then?

KB: I did, yeah, and I came back for recordings on the next albums as well. I also just spent a lot of time in New York hanging out with friends, partying and DJ'ing, I played at some of the fun clubs around at that time like 205, Annex, Love — at Tribeca Grand, I played at a really great Modular Party. In the more recent years, I played quite a few times at Le Bain and after that I had a sort of residency at Output in The Panther Room for a couple of years, when they opened up.

JS: New York, it seems like, had a big influence on you.

KB: Yes for sure, as I said, even as a kid when I started listening to hip-hop music, New York was the center of it all.

JS: You were listening to New York hip-hop?

KB: Yes mainly. As soon as rap became too gangster, I lost interest. I mean I was a fan of NWA, but never really listened a lot to East Coast rap, Tupac and Wu-Tang and all that — I was more into Tribe, Jungle Brothers, Run-D.M.C., Black Sheep and so on. Anyway, later in my life, the whole house scene from New York was the most inspiring thing and, of course, also the whole post-punk and disco new wave scene with ESG, Liquid Liquid, Suicide, Talking Heads, etc. They were so inspiring — and then to be able to actually go there and make my own music and DJ there, it was really important for my development and self-esteem as a solo producer. Up until just a few years ago, I would go to New York at least two times a year. But after Trump became President, I just didn’t feel like going to the States. Around the same time, I became a father, and I still don’t want to travel too far away from him, not yet. I also try my best to keep my carbon footprint to a minimum, so it’s probably going to be a while before I will go back.

JS: So how many Kasper Bjørke albums have you released now as a solo artist?

KB: Five solo albums up until now, and now there's the sixth album, which is actually credited as Kasper Bjørke Quartet, because I recorded it together with some friends of mine that really added a lot to the music. The album just came out on Kompakt.

JS: And the previous albums, do they have a sound connecting them or each time you went for a different style or vibe?

KB: I really tried to refine my own sound on each new album, a kind of post-disco, new wave sound with a more commercial approach, using feature vocalists on the singles. I guess that stayed with me from my first project, that I had with my friend — I wanted to try to build a bridge between radio and club music, and also do albums that you could listen to at home. I also liked ambient music at that time, like one track on an album would be ambient or downtempo... But yeah, I was refining my own sound up until a point where I was like, okay, now I'm just kind of sick and tired of listening to my own sound, [laughing]. So the fifth album was a little bit of a detour, which was called Fountain of Youth. It was more a “straight for the club” kind of album. Music for DJs. I've always had remixes done for the singles from my album. They were really important to my music, because I needed those remixed versions for the DJs to play out.

JS: And you've done a lot of remixes yourself for other artists?

KB: Yeah and many of these ended up becoming swaps, where you do remixes for each other, which I think is great, it's a great way to collaborate.

JS: What are some of the artists whose work you have remixed?

KB: Hmm… There are so many… Sascha Funke, SONNS, Trentemøller, The Golden Filter, Rebolledo... I can’t remember [laughing]. I think I did around 40–50 remixes these past 10–12 years…

JS: And do you enjoy it when people remix your stuff?

KB: Yeah, especially because I have always been the curator, I’m the one that picks out the remixers, it’s not the labels. So I also got to know a lot of great people through that, like Axel Boman, Moscoman, Marvin & Guy, yourself and Bryan Mette aka Whatever/Whatever, Superpitcher, Michael Mayer, Nicolas Jaar, Mano Le Tough, Gerd Janson… I also think it's a great way to expand your network in the scene in that way, and it's so much fun to have people that you admire interpret your music. Nicolas Jaar for example, I was lucky enough to reach him via MySpace at that time, when he was still just getting started with Wolf + Lamb, and I wrote him and he said yes to remixing the cover version I did of “Heaven” by The Rolling Stones — and then he totally blew up right after.

JS: That's one of the great things about the internet. I mean there's a lot of things that maybe aren't so good, but the way you can connect with people. I've just met so many people that I never would have met, that I never knew, who liked what I did. And have become friends in real life with people that I respected, just by writing them a note.

KB: Yeah, you can reach out to basically anybody and get a reply, even if it's a “no,” it's all good...

JS: And in the age of the internet and DJ'ing and where it's gotten us to this point, what are your thoughts on the current state of dance music in general?

KB: Well it's a little bit stale, isn’t it…? I mean there's definitely still great stuff going on out there, but somehow it's the same labels that I've always been following, that I still like the most. Of course there's new things like Moscoman's Disco Halal or Soulwax’s DEEWEE label, but it's usually the people who really know what they're doing and have been around for a long time. There's so many new labels and generic sounding releases. I got to say, I only go to Beatport maybe twice a year to buy a few tracks, if I don't get them some other way. It doesn't really appeal to me, the whole tech house, deep house scene that is out there. And I think it also reflects a little bit in the way that some clubs book their lineups, it seems a little bit watered down somehow. But there are, of course, still great parties and great clubs around, but somehow most of them are the same that have been great for many years, you know.

JS: Do you miss the days of like going to a record store and buying 10 records and like really knowing them instead of getting inundated with thousands of promos and online purchases?

KB: Totally! I loved going every week to the two local record stores in Copenhagen called Street Dance Records and Loud. I think it was on Tuesdays that we got the new records here, and all the DJs in Copenhagen would stand in line and fight for those three to five copies of each release. I spent all my money on it every week — and it was amazing.

JS: Did you have a DJ residency here in Copenhagen?

KB: Yeah, I've had many through the years... These days I don’t want to have a residency as much, but I host two, maybe, three nights a year at a little club called Jolene. It is 150 people in a small space, and it's free entry, and there's a smoke machine, a laser and a great sound system, and it's a really great party atmosphere. Then I invite friends, like yourself and Tim Sweeney, Axel Boman and Marvin & Guy to come and play with me. It’s seven hours back-to-back. A complete trip from open to close. I enjoy that a lot. Then I, of course, also play regularly in clubs around Europe that invite me back every year. Which kind of feels like a residency... But yeah when I'm home, I try not to play too much.. I'd rather spend that time with the family, to be honest.

JS: And you're involved in the business side of things for other artists as a manager. So you get to see things from both sides of the spectrum, as a manager for Trentemøller, who is a huge artist, and you have a few other acts you're working with as well. How does that work with your own career?

KB: Sometimes it's hard to find time for going into the studio and work on my own projects. Because I'm always prioritizing the interests of the artists first that I work with, I'm never putting them aside to do something for myself. So when I produce an album or a track or an EP, I have to schedule it around what’s going on with them. So I wouldn't sit down and produce an album at the same time that Trentemøller would be launching a new album, because I know there is going to be a lot of work with his campaign. So there is definitely some compromises in that way - which I am totally cool with. I really enjoy this other aspect of my career. It makes me happy to see other artists do well and succeed and advance in their career. Maybe more so than myself actually, or at least it makes me just as happy to see the artists that I work with have success.

JS: Have you ever worked with other producers for your own material and have someone produce your work?

KB: No, no, never, no. I would never let anyone else touch it [laughing].

JS: Tell me about how your new album project on Kompakt came about and your interest in ambient music.

KB: Ambient is something I listen to a lot actually. I've had trouble sleeping and it helps me relax — and also when I’m flying, which I am super scared of, it calms me down. So I've listened to ambient for many years… Then seven years ago, I got a cancer diagnosis which was, of course, a life-changing experience. I was very lucky though, in the sense that I didn't need any chemo or radiation, I just needed an operation. After a five-year checkup period of regular CT scannings and blood work, the doctors let you go. During those five years, I decided that I needed to process the whole experience of having anxiety of a relapse, creatively through music. So, I decided that I wanted to make an ambient album to document my experience through instrumental ambient soundscapes. I didn't want to start making the music until after I was done with the checkups at the hospital. So after I had my last test results, I put together the Quartet. First of all, my friend Claus Norreen, who has an amazing analog studio with all the old synthesizers you can dream of, everything's set up amazingly. I went in with him and recorded these long synthesizer atmospheres, all recorded live, no MIDI or software. We didn't use the computer as anything else, except a recording device. We just hit record and then multi-tracked the synthesizers and reverbs and delays, space echo… It was a trip and it all happened very naturally.

Afterwards I asked another friend of mine called Jakob Littauer, an amazing pianist and musician, and I recorded him playing piano in a concert hall on a Steinway Grand Piano, and also on an old upright piano in a studio space, where you can really hear the body of the instrument, the noise it makes, the hammers. Finally I asked an old friend of mine, the Italian string composer Davide Rossi — who has worked with everybody from Coldplay to John Hopkins and Ennio Morricone — and Davide then played the cello and violin on the compositions, and that's how the whole album came about, really. Then I mixed and edited everything in my own studio, but tried to keep it as live and as free and spontaneous as possible. I named it The Fifty Eleven Project, after the department 5011 at the hospital where I was going for checkups those five years.

JS: And how long did this whole process take from when you started it to when it was finished?

KB: Recording the whole thing took maybe like six to eight months. Putting everything together, mixing everything. And then I sent it to Michael Mayer from Kompakt, as the only label actually. And he wrote back that he loved it and he wanted to release it. But the only problem was, that he didn't have time in his release schedule until October 2018 — this was like a year ago. But I decided to wait, because I thought that Kompakt was the perfect home for this album project.

JS: This kind of music doesn't really have an expiration date.

KB: Exactly. Then another idea came into the project and made it much bigger. I spoke to a friend, a director from LA, called Justin Tyler Close and asked him if he would like to make a music video for one of these super long compositions that I recorded, the whole album is two hours long. Instead we came up with the idea that actually it should not be just one music video, but one film for each of the 11 compositions. So 11 art films — that’s two hours of film, shot on 16mm here in Denmark this past summer. It’s been a crazy project that’s taken so much time and effort from everybody involved, but it came out amazing, I think.

JS: Will we be able to see these films?

KB: Yes - as an exhibition for now, not online yet. It just showed here in Copenhagen for 10 days in a huge space on 11 screens with headphones. The exhibition will travel to LA next, then hopefully New York, Paris, Berlin… We will see. We are still setting up the logistics. In the meantime, just one of the films will go online which I am very excited about — the film made for the composition, "Dur For Vitus,” which is my favorite track from the album.

JS: It's quite an ambitious project.

KB: It's very ambitious.

JS: And one thing I know about you is your interest in art, and how that relates and intersects with music, or doesn't sometimes. But it certainly was a big part of this project.

KB: Yes. I have been working with the American artist Landon Metz, who is based in New York. I’m a big fan of his work. Landon said, “Yes,” to paint three unique works for the album cover after I sent him the album demos. He was actually listening to the music in his studio when he was painting these works. The vinyl box, with the three vinyl sleeves inside and a poster, has turned out so beautiful and I am so happy and grateful that Landon would be part of the project.

JS: It's a beautiful looking and sounding project, and I’m looking forward to experiencing the exhibition when it comes to New York.

KB: I hope it does, yes.

JS: What's in the future for you musically after this?

KB: After setting up the exhibition and the album release, I haven't had any inspiration to do new music for myself, to be honest… I’m just currently working on some advertisement music. I’ve recently done music for Nike, Prada, Mazda and other brands, which is something that I can do with a different kind of mindset than having to do new music for myself. The next thing will probably be an EP, that I hope will come some time next year.

JS: Okay, we'll look forward to all of it.

KB: Me too!

And I haven’t really looked back since.

Justin: I remember watching The Beatles when I was seven...and that was it. I just knew it.

Lenny Kaye: It was a great role model. In New York, there weren't a lot of bands because it was mostly singing groups. You couldn’t just look and see rockabilly on the corner. It was more like harmony groups. But to see a band playing, especially a band like The Beatles which was really a band of equals — it was really one for all and all for one — it was inspirational and about nine months later (I guess the actual gestation period of a baby) I had my first gig with The Vandals.

Justin: Did that band ever record?

Lenny Kaye: No, no. It was purely a party band. Four sets a night, played for a fraternity. Everything from “What’d I Say” with all the risque lyrics like, "see that girl from Trenton State, that's where they teach you to masturbate. What'd I say?" And covering some of the English Invasion and Four Tops. I don't like to think of it, but when I went to college I actually learned my future.

Justin: You went to Rutgers?

Lenny Kaye: Yeah, Rutgers. I was an American History major so I learned cultural history and that's always helped me in my writing. And I was playing in bands. Those are the two poles in which I function these days.

Justin: Did New York City play a role in your rock n roll foundations?

Lenny Kaye: Yes, it was the capital of the universe, especially at that moment in time. There also was a real explosion of band interest then. At the beginning of the 70s there was no local rock bands at all. It's impossible to imagine this, but really it's true. And until the New York Dolls poster went up on the wall at Village Oldies record store where I was working, there was no local band scene at all. And slowly, slowly it grew. Then out of the New York Dolls and the associated groups like The Harlots of 42nd Street and Street Punk, it took root at CBGB, which became an actual breeding ground for New York rock, and a great moment in time.

Justin: Were you going to clubs and seeing bands in the late 60s before the New York Dolls?

Lenny Kaye: I did.

Justin: The Young Rascals ?

Lenny Kaye: I did see the Rascals at The Telephone Booth on the East Side. They were one of the greatest bands I’d ever seen. I actually placed bass behind a folk singer named John Braden during the summer of 69. We were the house folk singers at Ungano’s, we opened for Junior Wells and the Amboy Dukes. One week the MC5...that's kind of amazing to think of. But it wasn't really. I liked to go see them and, at that time, I just about started writing about rock n roll which gave me another entrance into seeing bands and getting involved in the inner workings of music.

Justin: Did you go to the Electric Circus club on St. Marks Place?

Lenny Kaye: I did. I saw Tim Buckley open The Mothers of Invention at the Electric Circus. I remember that one. I mean, a lot of it I was still driving in from New Jersey, so it wasn't as available as it might have been a year later. And then when I moved to New York, the Fillmore had opened and you could go down there every week and see the most amazing triple bills ever.

Justin: What did you start writing about when you started writing about rock n roll? Where were you writing about it at school?

Lenny Kaye: I did a little bit for the school paper at Rutgers, just trying it out, pretending I was writing for Crawdaddy. But when I got here, my main gig before I knew anybody was at Jazz & Pop — a friend of mine was the boyfriend of the editor there, Patricia Kennealy (later to marry Jim Morrison in a Wicca ceremony. So now she's Patricia Morrison). But yeah, I did my first record reviews there. I think my very first review was a review of The Small Faces’ Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, a great record still.

I'd get free records and maybe $25 and kind of started to see that this would be great. I wrote a review of The Stooges’ first album for Boston's Fusion Magazine and Danny Fields (who signed the Stooges to Elektra Records) called me up out of the blue and he said, "Who are you? Why don't you come to a press party," and literally discovered me — like he has so many others. I went to the press party and I met the circle of rock writers that were in New York at the time.

Justin: Who were the big rock writers of the time in New York?

Lenny Kaye: I would say Richard Meltzer. Lester Bangs was more west coast. It was mostly Richard Meltzer. I was kind of in the wake of Richard, Sandy Pearlman, John Landau and Paul Williams, all the Crawdaddy writers. I was a little bit in the second generation, even though it seems like splitting hairs now.

Justin: I might have seen those reviews as a kid. I don't think you can stress how important magazines were to someone who was interested in music because this was the time of no internet, nothing. And that was the lifeline.

Lenny Kaye: That's how you found out about stuff.

Justin: That and reading liner notes on albums was how I learned everything I know, basically, about music.

Lenny Kaye: You had to dig for it, which is good. By digging for it I remember, especially being a record collector, you had no information on who was in bands. When I put together the first Nuggets album I really had to do a lot of research into who's who. I just couldn't click on something and find out the personnel and where they're from. And I still don't know who The Magic Mushrooms are.

Justin: That was when I first became aware of you, when I got a copy of Nuggets album. And then I got a record by The Sidewinders that you produced. I was obviously a record freak, too.

Lenny Kaye: Power Pop, yeah. It’s all making sense now.

Justin: The Nuggets record didn't leave my turntable when I was a teenager for years and just turned me onto so much music. I guess it opened up a Pandora's box of music.

Lenny Kaye: A Pandora's record 45s box.

Justin: The Nuggets things just went on and on. Many compilations came after.

Lenny Kaye: That's pretty much why I get all the credit for it. But I didn't discover that music, and for me, I think one of the things that made Nuggets so popular is that it's not just about garage rock. It's about great records that are garage rock. Any of those records are just superb pieces of three minute great songs, or six minute, or whatever they were. They were very communicable. It wasn't like you hear something and you have to work to get into it. These were songs, some of them were actually semi-hits. But I never really thought Nuggets would come out.

Justin: What was the story behind it?

Lenny Kaye: I was hired by Elektra Records. Jac Holzman, the president, liked rock critics because he had an intelligent label and he liked when people wrote intelligently about them. He came upon me and he asked if I wanted to be an independent talent scout for Elektra. And I said, "Oh, sure." But I never really found any bands that they appreciated. I know I tried to get them to keep The Stooges on the label for their third album, which didn't happen. But one of the ideas he had was an album called Nuggets which would get the songs off of albums that had one good song. My theory about it is this: he got one of the first cassette players and wanted to clean out his record collection.

But he gave it to me, and in my willfulness and hubris, I got together all my favorite records and presented him with a list and kept asking for the moon. “A double album, let's do a double album” and “You know, I don't like that cover. Let's get this cover.” And the best thing about Jac — he had that mark of being a great record company president — once he trusted you, he’d want to see where you would go with your instincts. He wasn't trying to say, "Well, you know, we need more hits or we need less hits." He just went with it, which actually in retrospect seems unbelievable.

Justin: In this day and age.

Lenny Kaye: I can't believe I got away with it. And I only lasted at Elektra for about three months and I'd given him this list over that time. About six months after I left the company they called me up and they said, "We have all the rights to X number of songs. What are we doing with them?" And I thought, "Wow. This project is still going on. I can't believe it." So it got completed and now it's 45 years later and it's still buying me beers. I'll go to some weird city in the middle of Europe and there'll be a Nuggets fan there who’ll say, "You changed my life," and I say, "No. Nuggets changed my life, really."

Lenny and Patti Smith at CBGB

Justin: Did they get all the songs you wanted?

Lenny Kaye: Oh, no. Some of them have shown up on later projects. Like when Rhino did the box set, they had the list of what I wanted for the second volume...had there been a second volume. But I always wanted “96 Tears” by Question Mark and the Mysterians on it. I thought that should be there. I wanted “I See the Light” by The Five Americans. I couldn't get the rights to that. I couldn't get the rights to “Talk Talk” by The Music Machine, even though I still think it's on there for some reason, on my original one. A lot of weird records. And of course as soon as I did it, people started flooding me with their suggestions. And their suggestions, Blackout of Gretely by the Gonn, I mean that’s an insane, crazy record. Question of Temperature by The Balloon Farm. The Sonics from Washington, great, great records. I knew that was going to happen because as soon as you open a genre, people start digging.

I noticed this with the new series of albums that have just started coming out called Brown Acid. Songs from the American Come Down which gathers early 70s proto prog metal, these weird little singles by groups in the midwest. They all sound somewhat like Grand Funk, somewhat like Deep Purple and somewhat like Black Sabbath, but they were all crazy. And I realized this is a genre I never conceived of. It's what Detroit would have gone to if the MC5 could have stayed together. There's something really elemental about it, and now there's five volumes of it.

Justin: I think the internet has changed the whole way of people finding records.

Lenny Kaye: But a lot of them you can't find and that's what makes people go out and dig. I'm sure you're on Instagram. There's so many crazy vinyl people showing off albums, showing off their equipment, getting out there and digging and keeping everybody in communication.

Justin: I mean, it's a great thing. As great as it was to be digging in a dirty record store and finding that record that no one ever heard of. Nowadays you just type it in and you can pretty much find a lot of stuff.

Lenny Kaye: And you can drunk bid on it on eBay. “Oh, I don't know, what's another few dollars?” And then you wake up the next morning —

Justin: “What did I do?!”

Lenny Kaye: “Oh, my God!”

Justin: How did you go from writing to being in the studio with the Sidewinders and start producing things?

Lenny Kaye: Well, I think when you write about stuff it's kind of like Jean Luc Godard or Francois Truffaut. You want to start trying your hand at it, especially if you have a hand to try it. I always thought about being a producer. You need the opportunities, of course, and my friend Richard Robinson was working at RCA at the time and we found the Sidewinders and gave it a shot. It seems like a natural progression from writing and analyzing and looking at bands from the inside out to seeing what makes them tick and trying to help them make their record by being essentially their best friend in the studio. Sometimes the better you are as a producer, the less people know you're there, which is a tricky balance wheel. But I kind of like it. I always think producing is where the right and left halves of my brain come together. I have the analytical writerly side and then I have the musicianly side, which is pretty much all intuition. I don't read music, I hear it deep in my head and try to feel it. And I think producing is probably the combination of those two worlds.

Justin: I mean, there's producers like Phil Spector.

Lenny Kaye: Who is their artist.

Justin: Right.

Lenny Kaye: I mean, they're the artist and the group is there to serve them. As a producer, I was very lucky that I wasn't the artist. I worked with really quirky, strange, idiosyncratic artists, Suzanne Vega, Soul Asylum, Allen Ginsberg, Pussy Riot. I got to work with people where you're just trying to make sure they can make the best record they can. And whatever their next record will be, you find the groundwork within this record to give them a lot of expansive power, enhance the vibe, let the creativity flow.

Justin: More of the George Martin approach, or Rick Rubin.

Lenny Kaye: Absolutely.

Lenny Kaye: Try to find the right settings and give advice. I always think that if I make a suggestion and we're in the same ballpark, and you don't like it, well you're telling me who you want to be. If you don't like anything I say, I'm going to let you do it yourself, or find someone who's more empathetic.

Justin: When you were doing the first one, did you know your way around the studio?

Lenny Kaye: With the Sidewinders?

Justin: Yeah.

Lenny Kaye: No. I still wish I would have turned the dial on the reverb a little bit more. I was pretty conservative.

Justin: You were working with an engineer, I assume.

Lenny Kaye: Working with an engineer who says, the first time I walk in, "What kind of mic do you want me to put on the bass drum?" I still don't know, to be honest. But that's why I like engineers.

I think when you listen to a record you each have your role. When an engineer listens to a record, he looks at the frequency responses. I don't do that. I listen to the feel, parts and performance, that's my thing. I once went to Greg Calbi, the great mastering engineer at Sterling, with two mixes of a song that I had  been going back and forth on. One of the snares was a little louder, I just didn't know which one. So I said, "Greg, what do you think?" And he says, "You know, I don't listen to records like that. I can tell you whether it needs a rounder bottom, but I can't tell you which is the more effective mix as a listening experience." He said, "That's your job." And I thought, "Hmm."

Justin: I've produced stuff too, and people ask me to describe what a record producer does. In some instances I liken it to a director of a movie who sees the big picture and works with  other people who are great at their jobs. I mean, some people do it all themselves. Some work with a great team of engineers, editors, programmers or whatever. But the vision at the end of the day is between the artist and the producer.

Lenny Kaye: I think it's like being a mirror. The artist looks at you, at your sense of aesthetic taste, and they want to know if their hair is in the right place. “How do I look? Does that hat make me look better or not? How about if we try this?” It’s the old, "What do you think?"

Sometimes people want you to tell them exactly what you think, if you can be honest. And sometimes a producer has to be a cheerleader. “You're great! Aaaand I think this next take could be a hair greater.”

Justin: It's part psychiatrist.

Lenny Kaye: Oh, yeah.

Justin: There's a lot of psychology involved.

Lenny Kaye: It's a psychodrama in there. Especially younger artists or artists that are making their first or second records. There's a lot of paranoia. I've had so many discussions, "Let's over-dub this part or let's double this." "Well, I don't know if that's taking away from the artistic integrity." But my feeling is that a record is an illusion. It's not live. Groups always come to me and say, "We want to record live and take the best track," and I say, "Well, you can do that and you can sit there and choose the best track. I'm not exactly sure what I would do." Because record making is not like playing something in a club to a number of people who are freaking out in front of you and you're on 10, you got the atmosphere, you got the inebriations. That's not a record you're probably listening to at home far removed from a live show. So you have to create the illusion of live performance.

Justin: I remember when my band Milk 'N' Cookies got signed to Island Records and we were put in the studio with Muff Winwood to produce it, and we were playing him all these records we loved, all the glam records, which had a very specific sound. He kind of took a different approach. As much as we would push him, he kept it more organic and more straightforward. And at the end of the day — although at the time we were very upset about it — he was right, because it's lasted. It wasn't a gimmicky sound or something that was a fad.

Lenny Kaye: Exactly.

Justin: It was something that people, kids today still relate to. I think it was a testament to his no-nonsense approach.

Lenny Kaye: You guys are one of the founders of power pop.

Justin: Sometimes you need to listen to people.

Lenny Kaye: And sometimes you don't need to listen to people.

Justin: We did push him in, "Listen to these drums," or whatever. There were little battles.

Lenny Kaye: Sometimes even in conflict, when people have different ideas, like John Cale...we thought when he came in to do Horses he’d be all about the art and the spontaneity. And no, he was into his Beach Boys period. He wanted to layer this and layer that, and we wanted to go out there and look for improvised, live moments. And betwixt and between, that record got battered out. You're all in the same band. A producer joins the band for that album and he can be the frustrating bass player or he can be the genius orchestrator. Everything is different now.

Justin: Are you still producing?

Lenny Kaye: Very little. Actually I did a beautiful record this year that took me quite a long time to do with Jessi Colter, Waylon Jennings’ wife. It's called The Psalms, and it is what it is. When I was working on Waylon's book, I came into the living room one day and there's Jessi — who is a very spiritual person — with the bible open in front of her, singing away. Just putting her hands on chords, letting the melodies flow where they go. And I just thought, "Man, this is about as beautiful and illuminating experience as I've ever had." And so one day after Waylon's passing I was speaking to her and I said, "You know, Jess, there's a record I would like to hear, which is you singing the Psalms like I did in your living room." She came to New York, just about 10 years ago, and I got a studio with a nice piano and met her up there. We had no rehearsal, no discussion. We chose a psalm, set the bible on the piano, and she would sing it. One take, two takes, sometimes I went out there and we played together. It was very spontaneous. And at the end of the two afternoons, I had seven in the can.

Justin: Wow.

Lenny Kaye: She came a year later and we did another five just like that, no rehearsal or anything, and I had the other five, including the hit psalm, the 23rd. And over the years I tried to differentiate them a little bit texturally. I got Al Kooper to play on a few tracks, Bulgarian singers on another one, Jenni Muldaur, and Bobby Previte drums on a few. I tried to retain the intimacy, but make them a little… In one track she's just warming up, singing, and she plays four minutes of this beautiful thing. I was able to get a double bass on there and a harp. It's just a beautiful, beautiful record and SONY Legacy put it out this past March.

Justin: Congrats.

Lenny Kaye: I got to say, it's one of the most beautiful records I've ever been part of.

Justin: Now I need to listen.

Lenny Kaye: Oh, you really got to, especially during the holidays. Her voice is beautiful. Her interpretations on these sacred poems are so great. I tried to keep it non-denominational, to kind of take away the church part and move it toward the light. And yeah, it’s just a gorgeous record.

So I guess I still produce.

Justin: Good. You mentioned the New York Dolls. For Milk 'N' Cookies, that was the band that made it seem like, "Hey, we can do this."

Lenny Kaye: Totally.

Justin: It always seemed like The Beatles or Rolling Stones was too far away. It didn't seem like it could be possible. When I stumbled upon the New York Dolls my life changed.

Lenny Kaye: Oh my god. That must have been a great moment.

Justin: It was quite something. You were involved with this magazine called Rock Scene. It was like the bible of that whole scene.

Lenny Kaye: I wouldn't call it the bible. I would call it the high school yearbook.

Justin: High school yearbook or bible, it was informing everyone about all the New York bands. We were lucky we lived in New York, but for some kid out in OshKosh or wherever, it was a way for him to find out about things he could never have dreamed.

Lenny Kaye: To see what life was like backstage at CBGB. Now when you look at an issue it's got to seem really weird and historical. I wish we had a Rock Scene for when the bebop scene happened over at 52nd Street. Like Bebop Scene. I would have been great to see Charlie Parker in a rare pensive moment.

Justin: It was very, very candid shots. You did it with Lisa Robinson.

Lenny Kaye: And Richard Robinson.

Justin: What was the inspiration behind it?

Lenny Kaye: It really stemmed from Richard. When I first met him in the 60s, he was doing five magazines. He was doing Hit Parader or he was doing Go Magazine. He was a real media generator and got me and Lisa into that thing where “yeah, we're newspapery. Here's what's happening, let's have some fun with it.” Richard had the contact with this guy who had worked at Hit Parader and spun off and did Rock Scene. And Rock Scene lasted six, seven years. It's amazing. I don't think it ever broke into the black.

Lenny Kaye outside CBGB

Justin: I think there's 50-something issues.

Lenny Kaye: Yeah, it's quite amazing.

Justin: Bowie was on the first one, if I remember.

Lenny Kaye: Yes, that's right. Good memory.

Justin: No one put the New York Dolls on a magazine before you guys did. Do you remember seeing The Dolls the first time?

Lenny Kaye: Yes, I remember going over to the Mercer Street Art Center out of curiosity and seeing The Dolls, just thinking they were so great, and dancing to “Bad Girl” with Miss Elvis and Miss Ohio, wherever they are today. It was a great scene. There couldn't have been more than 20 people there to start, but it grew exponentially because there was a need for it. And then once that grew, there also came places to play, even though there was a real shortage until Max's restarted and CBGB started. I remember Patti Smith and I mostly opened up for weird folk singers in folk clubs on West 4th Street when we could get a gig because we never could break into the Club 82.

Justin: I remember seeing The Dolls at Club 82 and Wayne County and The Fast.

Lenny Kaye: Just Another Pretty Face, I remember them. They were great.

Justin: I saw Iggy and the Stooges do Raw Power at Max’s Kansas City. Mind blowing.

Lenny Kaye: Oh, yes. I remember that's the one where he cut himself.

Justin: That was a life changing experience, being three feet away from that.

Lenny Kaye: It was very small scale.

Justin: Everything was very intimate.

Lenny Kaye: It didn't seem so, but it was very private and I think that allowed all the New York bands enough space and time to get to where they wanted to. I must have seen Television dozens of times and it took them a year or two to play in-tune. Of course, this was before tuners, and I suffered from that, too.

Justin: Was this before CBGB?

Lenny Kaye: No, it was kind of contiguous. I think it was kind of end of 74, so CBGB was definitely happening.

Justin: And Television, were they the first band to play CBGB?

Lenny Kaye: I've heard that Eric Emerson was first. It's a little bit shrouded. Everybody claims to be first, but certainly by spring of 74 it was underway because I remember going with Patti. We went to see the movie Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones up at the Ziegfeld Theater uptown. After that we went down in a cab to CBGB because she had been invited by Richard Hell, and I'd been invited by Richard Lloyd who I knew under the name of Crossfire (that was the name of his earlier band). We went to CBGB and hey, saw the beginnings of what would become the central gathering spot of the New York scene.

Debbie Harry in The Stilettos, 1974.

Justin: And Television was playing that night?

Lenny Kaye: Television was there that night. If there was a Sunday night, they just would play. I think before The Ramones ever played there. Maybe Blondie had played there under the name The Stilettos. It's so nice. It's nice when these little loci become a touchstone for the universe. It's hard to believe, and when they're growing you don't really think of it because it's just your local scene. It's just a place you go to. I spent more time at CBGB out on the sidewalk chatting someone up than watching The Ramones inside.

David Johansen, Lenny Kaye, Dee Dee Ramone & Andy Paley, NYC 1977. Photo by Bob Gruen. 

Justin: I remember going to see The Ramones. And when did you and Patti Smith decide to play there as a band?

Lenny Kaye: It just happened organically, we never set out to be a band. What we were doing was out of the mainstream. We didn’t have a drummer.

Justin: Were you already doing things pre-CBGB?

Lenny Kaye: Yeah. We did our little poetry reading in February 71, and then we didn't do anything again because it was meant to be a one night happening. But then we started again. She had a piano player. She was singing standards and she'd do her poems, and I'd come up and play something like “Annie Had A Baby.”

Justin: Was she playing with keyboardist Richard Sohl then?

Lenny Kaye: It was before Richard. There was a guy named Bill and then we had a different piano player every gig until we got Richard. Richard came in March of 74 and we started really cohering as a band. Originally, I would just come up and do things and then she'd do something with the piano, and pretty soon I'd be on the stage the whole time and she'd do a poem. Then we'd segue into a song like “Gloria.” You know, a little poem thing and then we'd go into “Gloria” or “Land of 1,000 Dances.” We improvised and we didn't know quite what we were having. At each show we could feel, "Okay. We've gone as far as we can as this weird little trio. We need another bass/guitar player." And then we got Ivan Kral. When we went to CBGB to play with Television for seven straight weeks, we were just about a band. And that's where we met JD. He became our drummer and the rest is history.

Justin: How did that go from playing in CBGB to getting signed by Clive Davis to Arista Records?

Lenny Kaye: Well, he came down to see us because Patti is an incredible performer and we generated a lot of interest.

Justin: Seymour Stein of Sire Records was signing Ramones, Dead Boys, Talking Heads.

Lenny Kaye: I think this was before. It was really just us and Television as I remember. If we could play for seven straight weeks, four nights a week, it probably meant there were no other bands there.

Justin: Two shows a night?

Lenny Kaye: Two shows a night, and we would switch off with Television Thursday through Sunday. You know, it was pretty great, and then the ball started rolling and it became a scene. I mean, the English Papers and NME and Melody Maker would write about it, and all of a sudden people started coming down to check it out. And Clive came down. I think he might have even known Patti from Blue Oyster Cult...

He signed us and allowed us to do whatever it is we did, which was probably the point. I think we got an offer from him and an offer from ESP-Disk. Sometimes I regret not being on the same label as Albert Ayler or Sun Ra.

Justin: Is she still recording for Arista?

Lenny Kaye: She records for Columbia now. We shifted to Columbia. I don't even know if Arista still exists. I think we're on Columbia at least for the last three records.

Justin: The first album was 1975?

Lenny Kaye: 1975, amazing. Just about this time of year we were on tour with it for the first time.

Justin: And never could you have imagined that you would still be doing it?

Lenny Kaye: I can't imagine that still, you know? It really is remarkable that the work you do keeps on circling around and paying you back. I know a lot of it has to do with the fact that we have a very unique leader. Patti is so frontal on so many different levels, artistically, different mediums, and is such an incredible performer. A lot of that has to do with our longevity and the fact that we're not really pigeonholed as any kind of music. We're associated with the punk scene, but a lot of our stuff has as little to do with punk rock as anything else. We're as much a progressive jazz band sometimes. We have a lot of long songs and a lot of involved poetry. We're all over the place, and sometimes that's good if you can't be classified. I mean, lord I love The Ramones, but they had a very specific one-note sound. I think Patti's always been hard to categorize. It's kept us at a good level in the musical world. We're not playing arenas and we're not playing dumps. We're playing nice theaters, and that's always a good thing.

Justin: Do you think something like that is ever possible again in New York? A scene where something came out of nothing?

Lenny Kaye: Well, I don't know what's happening out in the wiles of Bushwick. I'm sure somewhere there's a collection of people who are doing what they need to do in this universe.

Justin: Because people are always saying, "Oh, New York's dead. It's not like it was.”

Lenny Kaye: Well, it's not like it was, but it wasn't like it was when it was. I mean, I got sheet music from the 1930s that says, "New York's not the place it used to be," bemoaning the fact that the lobster place in Times Square or Rector's isn't there. I mean, things change and I'm all for change.

I don't even think it should be “New York.” In my book I traced the evolution of these scenes, as I call it, from Memphis in 54 through New Orleans in 57, Philly in 59, Liverpool 62, San Francisco 67, New York 75 and on and on. It's interesting to see them all gather the energy. Whether this is possible in the age of instant communication, that's a question I think the 21st century will answer. I know one of my favorite places that I desired to go to see bands was San Francisco in 67. I had that Fillmore poster with The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service on my wall, waiting to get in the car so I could actually hear what they sounded like. I had no idea. I had no idea what Big Brother and The Holding Company sounded like, and I couldn't hit a button and just go.

Justin: There weren't records out?

Lenny Kaye: They hadn't put records out but you were hearing about them in the "underground press" and you just want to hear them.

Justin: Did you take that drive?

Lenny Kaye: Yeah. 1967, me and my buddy Larry got in a 56 Ford with $80 and just kept going. And we arrived there and I got to see The Grateful Dead in Golden Gate Park, Big Brother at The Avalon. They're just amazing.

The desire to be where it's at. Like how a lot of people migrated to New York when they heard about CBGB. Whether they need to do that now, I don't know. I haven't heard of a place that everybody wants to move to all of a sudden. Maybe the internet has made it too easy to get your message to somebody. You form a band and two days later your video is on YouTube, everybody could see it. That's a different path to people's consciousness. I don't know. All I know is that I really like when geography, time and space meet.

Justin: Milk 'N' Cookies was living in LA around 76, 77 when the whole UK punk thing exploded and the Sex Pistols played their last show at Winterland. And we all got in a van from LA with a couple of the Go-Gos and Brett Smiley and Legs McNeil and went to see the Sex Pistols for what turned out to be their last show ever.

Lenny Kaye: That's amazing.

Lenny Kaye: Maybe it's happening somewhere that I don't know about, and more power to it. I'm sure all those bebop jazz guys from 52nd street, when they heard about CBGB, would think, "What are those kids doing? They don't know a Flatted 5th if it fell on them." I like musical progression, and I think we're now getting distant enough from rock n roll that it’s almost like rock n roll is enclosed in its own parentheses. And I'm sure people will be playing guitars from now until kingdom come. But at this point, just about everything that you can do with a guitar has been done and maybe it's time to make room for the next type of music to take over.

Justin: Have you seen any newer bands that you think are exciting or inspiring?

Lenny Kaye: I actually just go see my friends play, I got to say. I'm going back home to continue writing. I'm trying not to do anything because I have a really bad deadline that I've blown already. Just happy to get this interview done with you.

Justin: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Lenny Kaye: Just enjoy it because we've been friends for way too long.

Justin: You were high on my list when I started this thing, and I know between touring and my DJ stuff it's been hard to make it happen.

Lenny Kaye: There's no wine before its time.

Justin: But it's great to sit down with you because, like I said, when Nuggets came out it was one of the records that was so inspiring to me, just finding all those songs. I knew some of them of course...

Lenny Kaye: Some of them were weird. You know what, we love music. I still find myself buying records and adding to my increasing piles.

Justin: You still dig for vinyl?

Lenny Kaye: Yeah! I just got a vintage Marantz receiver so I've been getting my records out and enjoying how great they sound. I just love music. It's really fun to be able to justify being immersed in it. I feel very whole in my consciousness, which is a great blessing in my golden years.

Justin: It's a beautiful thing when you get to do something you love.