By Kyle Buchanan
tephin Merritt is a renaissance man. Best known for his band The Magnetic Fields (whose double album 69 Love Songs may be Merritt’s most acclaimed work), he’s got three more bands where that came from, plus credits in film composition, musical theatre, and magazines. Wry and to the point, Merritt was kind enough to email us about his influences while he’s busy working on another musical.
When you think of big gay icons, they tend to be people like Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland, Bette Midler…in other words, singers. As a singer yourself, why do you think that is?
Because women who are larger than life find acceptance in show business, and that often involves singing. So maybe it's not that singers become icons, but that people with iconic personalities tend to become singers, particularly in musicals (and even if they are movie stars who can't sing, there's always Marni Nixon). Gay men like big loud women because a) someone has to, and b) we see ourselves in them.
Do you feel the same attachment to those icons that many gay men do?
If being straight means never getting to see a Maria Montez movie, I'd prefer to remain as I am.
Who was the first singer that really resonated for you, growing up?
Grace Slick, of the Jefferson Airplane. She could paint little arabesques on her anger.
You’re well known for asking other artists to interpret your songs. Do you tend to work with people you know, or do you often write a song and reach out to someone you’ve never met to sing it?
If I stuck to people I knew, I'd run out of singers in a week.
What examples from your own catalog can you point to as the ideal marriage between singer and song?
I prefer to try to write songs that improve with new interpretations, so I don't think in terms of the ideal version. The Peter Gabriel version of “The Book of Love” is the sort of delightful surprise that can't be planned for.
How do you know when a song you’ve written is not for you to sing? Are there some things you feel your own voice can’t convey?
With a voice like mine ("Like the wind moaning through a small, relatively leafless tree" -- People) you just know.
You’ve worked as a film composer on the films Piece of April and Eban and Charley. Are there any film composers you really dig?
My favorite soundtrack, and one of my lifelong favorite albums, is Forbidden Planet, by Louis and Bebe Barron, which is so unlike typical orchestral soundtrack fare that it was credited as not music but “electronic tonalities.” I got kicked out of film school for devoting all my attention to the soundtracks.
Does the city you live in have a large impact on your musical mood? Is there someplace in the world you’d like to stay to see the influence it would have on your songwriting?
Right now I'm in Hanover, New Hampshire, working on a musical. I don't think it really matters where I am, and I don't travel for pleasure. (No musician travels for pleasure.) But I'm always happy to have an excuse to be in Barcelona.
You’ve collaborated on a lot of pieces of live musical theatre. Do you go to many Broadway shows? What have you seen lately?
Recent highlights include 110 in the Shade, The Apple Tree, The Drowsy Chaperone, and I really liked Curtains in LA, but I haven't seen it in New York yet. Also in LA recently was Karen Black's musical, Missouri Waltz…
What’s the last film you saw that you’d recommend?
Last week I loved The Happiness of the Katakuris, Takashi Miike's horror musical in Japanese with animation and singing zombies. This week I loved Stardust, Neil Gaiman's new intelligent and hilarious fantasy; for that and Hairspray, I'm rooting for Michelle Pfeiffer to finally get her Oscar this year.
You’ve worked as a critic for Time Out New York and a copy editor for Spin. I’m curious if there are any magazines you still read on a regular basis.
I buy every issue of Atomic Ranch ("a magazine devoted to postwar (1948-1970s) ranch houses and modernist tract homes") even though, or maybe because, my actual living situation is as far from Midcentury Modern as you can get.
Is there any magazine you feel has lost its way lately?
Well, the entire industry seems to be lost, in that the place of the print itself seems to be changing too quickly for any business or institution to keep up. I'm still stunned that the Weekly World News went out of business. How?!!! Could the world have changed that much so quickly? Of course, music is in the same situation.
Do you have a queue of books you’ve yet to get to?
I keep meaning to get around to my book of Henry James's selected plays; I want to see why they are considered unperformable.
After you’ve written a new song, who is the first person who will hear it?
Usually Charles Newman, my engineer.
Have you ever written a love song as a “present” for someone you’re dating?
No, I would find that creepy. Besides, half the fun in writing songs is being able to say anything you want and not be held accountable.