Hi Jonathan! On the title track of your new album, you sing: “I was only just frozen sky anyway”. Can you explain this metaphor for us in a little more detail?
Yes. It is from the poetry of Paramahansa Yogananda, who wrote: “I am the vast blue ocean of sky, I am a little drop of the sky… frozen sky…” It seems a friend of his had just died and he offered this verse to suggest that death is only a change from one way of being in the universe to another.
Hi Jonathan! On the title track of your new album, you sing: “I was only just frozen sky anyway”. Can you explain this metaphor for us in a little more detail?
Yes. It is from the poetry of Paramahansa Yogananda, who wrote: “I am the vast blue ocean of sky, I am a little drop of the sky… frozen sky…” It seems a friend of his had just died and he offered this verse to suggest that death is only a change from one way of being in the universe to another.
Were you prompted to write about mortality by anything specific?
I had no idea what themes would be on the record until we were halfway through it. There was no song called “Just A Piece Of Frozen Sky Anyway” ’til I just somehow started singing it as we stood there in the studio. I think there was only one take of it. The songs are almost all the first and only takes, which is no big deal, really. But it does tell you why this record sounds like it does, because they were also mostly songs that had never existed until that first take. “But We Might Try Weird Stuff”, “You Need Me Too”, “O Guitar”… all either were totally or partly made up as we did ’em. It was only after hearing all of this stuff that I realised, “Holy shit! This album has a theme to it and that theme is death!”
Many of your songs are about youthfulness and enjoying life. So how have you managed to incorporate songs about death into the same songbook?
Well, contrast is OK, right?
What was it like working with your old Modern Lovers bandmate Jerry Harrison again?
Working with Jerry again is one of the great joys of this life. It’s very exciting to take him something I’m still in the middle of making up and [see] what he’ll do with it. So I hardly ever tell him anything. I want to see what direction he’ll take the song without me wrecking the adventure. When we recorded “O Guitar” though, I did tell him to play like the guy on “Rock Your Baby” by George MacRae – and on “David & Goliath” I told him to give me some reggae.
Would you ever consider touring or recording with a full rock band again?
No.
How much of your day do you devote to writing songs?
Well, I don’t really write songs so much as make ’em up in my head and then I write some stuff down later, after the fact, so I don’t forget anything I might want to use someday at a show. I put these ideas in notebooks. If you want to see one boring pre-show dressing room, come backstage to mine. It’ll just be me and Tommy [Larkins, percussionist] usually, with me sitting there thinking about songs and turning pages in some notebook, holding my guitar, sitting there pondering words in different languages that I don’t want to forget when I need ’em, or some new verse to “Give Paris One More Chance” that occurred to me earlier in the day.
My friends and family know they can come backstage as long as they don’t mind being ignored. Of course, if my children, nieces or grandson show up, then all bets are off, but if you’re most people, expect to be ignored. But there are no rules as to how I make up songs. I just do stuff. I use the “I’m-still-just-a-little-brat” method.
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