Some people will tell you John Lurie is best known for acting in such films as David Lynch’s Wild At Heart (You thought I was going to say Stranger Than Paradise, didn’t you?). Or they will tell you he is best know for his cable television show, Fishing with John, in which he acts like he can’t fish. Or that he was the narrator for Animal Cops on Discovery Channel’s Animal Planet. Or that he is best known for inventing the New York downtown hipster cool persona that so many downtown hipsters of today try to emulate.

In actuality John is known for all sorts of art practices - most notable is his prolific work in music. He’s done everything from scoring films to collaborating with a host of brilliant musicians on far out compositions to creating alter-egos just so he can feel secure stepping up to the studio mic to sing - if anything, he is the epitome of a pro-active experimentalist. He truly has had a long, varied and distinguished career, despite having not won that Grammy, but let’s admit having not won the Grammy makes his work that much more culturally relevant in music history.

Here then is a selection of what I believe are some of his most accomplished and beautiful musical works – collaborative and otherwise. Enjoy them here and then go buy the albums for yourself. You have to have them now.

Little (Fishing With John: Original Music From The Series By John Lurie)
I’m A Doggy (The Legendary Marvin Pontiac: Greatest Hits)
Yak (Queen of All Ears)
Voice of Chunk (Voice of Chunk)
Shark Drive (Fishing With John: Original Music From The Series By John Lurie)
She Ain’t Goin' Home (The Legendary Marvin Pontiac: Greatest Hits)
The Birds Near Her House (Queen of All Ears)
Snowmobile Dismount (Fishing With John: Original Music From The Series By John Lurie)
Flutter (Fishing With John: Original Music From The Series By John Lurie)
The Hanging (Voice of Chunk)

You can purchase Lurie’s music through iTunes or other places where music like his is sold.

Interview Part II - Music

Maria: I just discovered your music a few months ago. I now have Queen Of All Ears, Voice of Chunk, and Live In Tokyo.

John: You never heard Marvin?

M: Nope.

J: Marvin is one of the best records I’ve made.

M: You think so? Why?

J: Because it was more for the recording studio.

M: Hmmm, what does that mean?

J: Parts of those albums, if they had been as good as the band was live, they would have been great records. But for us to pull it off to play the way we did live but in the studio? It was next to impossible.

M: Why?

J: There was never the money to do it properly. You got nine people playing live in a room they’re all hearing each other through headphones. …It’s just hard to do. And because of that you do a song six times, well, some guys do their best take the first time and others are just coming into their stride and then people get tired. There’s moments in the records that are great, but nothing like what we were live. It’s a shame.

I stumbled across some Jazz blog thing on the Internet and it was like this guy, talking about my playing, “ Oh his playing is just horrible on this thing (Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs)”

But if they knew the situation that it was done in, I mean….

M: There’s always more to what’s in front of us. I mean there’s always a story behind the music.

J: It’s just not fair, I mean, it does, my playing on Tom Waits’ album is bad but it was recorded improperly. You get this one line, a flat tone, and, well it was just not very good.

M: It is unfair because you do the best you can but people develop their own ideas even though they don’t know the context in which something was created or the intentions of the artist.

J: With those albums I did the best I could with what I had at the time.

M: I’m not a jazz aficionado but I really like Voice of Chunk! Am I an idiot for liking it as it is?

J: It has parts that are good but some that are bad. It could have been so much better.

M: Don’t tell me which parts are bad! They’re probably the ones I like.

J: It just could have been so much better.

M: Speaking of, I wanted to ask about one of my favorite songs, It Could Have Been Very Very Beautiful, what was the inspiration for this song?

J: A girlfriend. She was a heroin junkie. I couldn’t be with her anymore and….

M: You loved her?

J: I did.
M: Had she kicked you would still be with her?

J: Something like that.

M: It is a mournful tune, but, sexy as well. You could play this at a funeral or as a prelude to a long night of romance.

J: Sure.

M: Moving on then, do you like working with your brother? He’s been working with you a long time in terms of composing music? Do you trust him? His instincts? He’s very cute by the way.

J: Oh yeah. He was a beautiful boy when he was younger. But yeah all these things just go by unsaid. It’s just obvious.

M: Do you feel lucky that you had a little brother that you could play music with and who helped you develop your style? Because it seems like he’s been along for the ride throughout the Lounge Lizard’s history.

J: He wasn’t in the band for a lot of years because he had his own projects. But there were a lot of other people that I was close to over the years. Intuitively close, musically, in the band. Calvin Weston and me were joined at the hip.

M: Who’s Calvin Weston?

J: A drummer.

M: Which albums did he play on?

J: He’s on Queen of Ears, He’s on Marvin. He’s on Get Shorty.

M: Was he the one that played with you in the National Orchestra?

J: Oh man, see, that’s another one that’s just so amazing live and that National Orchestra record was kind of a disaster, but from that trio there are two or three cuts on the fishing show that I am quite pleased with, but it never came together. But we went on tour together and by the time we ended it was the best music I ever played but we never recorded any of it.

M: What about the Live in Tokyo album. There is some really great music on that!

Do you think it’s one of the better albums?

J: We recorded that in one show on one afternoon. It’s got something on it. We were always sold out in Japan.

M: So you’re very popular there?

J: Well you know that comes and goes. You’re popular one year then two years later no one knows you then the next year you’re big again. I don’t know what it’s based on.

M: The Russians seem to really like you.

J: I don’t think they know who I am! That Preved thing… I don’t even know how it got started.

[Side note: Some how the Russians found Lurie’s painting Bear Surprise and proceeded to co-opt it for everything from political party campaigns to condoms.]

Maria: How did they get the image?

John: I didn’t even know that image had been published until Roebling Hall put it on their website when I had a show there, and somebody saw it. (Pauses) Do you have any idea how enormous that thing was? It was, like, gigantic. They flash my bear on a screen at a soccer game and thirty thousand people stand up, throw they hands over their heads and scream “Preved!” There are at least thirty t-shirt companies, three condom companies, all using my image. There’s an ATM company that is using my bear for their graphic.

M: Are you getting royalties for any of this?

J: No, nothing! It’s Russia they don’t have copyright laws.

M: Well, all truly good art speaks to people and it has a life of it’s own outside the life you gave it.

J: (looks at Maria blankly)

M: Anyway, back to music. I wanted to ask you about The Birds Near Her House. It’s a complex song. It’s also very long…. do the titles inform the music or do they come later? And are the instances in which the music, or the composition, in whole, or even in parts, come to you in a mundane way? Like you’re walking down the street and boom! An entire song called The Birds Near Her House comes to you?

J: No, and that’s not even what the song is called. I gave it that title after the fact. It’s really called “E. Eric,” because it was written in E and I wrote it with Eric (Sanko). The band only knows it as that. If I said, “Let’s play The Birds Near Her House” they would look at me with a blank face.

M: It’s a long piece. How long did it take you to develop it for the album?

J: See that one doesn’t really work well on the record as it does live.
M: I knew it! I knew the songs I liked would be the ones you thought aren’t that good.

J: No…that beginning piece is pristine but only a minute of it or so. Then there is a long solo, which I think is Evan’s, and that’s beautiful, but it doesn’t work as well as it does live. It’s complicated because I find a lot of jazz to be indulgent - these long solos - but you can do that live and let the musician find his way and suddenly it’s great. But on a record you want it to be concise but also you want to give the musician time to find his thing. So the two solos that are in there I think are too long. It’s like a twelve-minute song.

M: It is, yeah. But, I think it allows the listener to explore many emotional avenues in one space.

J: I feel like all the sections work. Live it could be amazing.

M: You paid for both of those albums, Voice Of Chunk and Queen of All Ears?

J: Yeah I did. We couldn’t get a deal though we were selling out everywhere we played.

M: Why do you think that is? Didn’t Blue Note want you? They’re the big jazz label, right?

J: No they didn’t want us!

M: That seems absurd that no one wanted to sign you, are you bothered by that?

J: I’m bothered by the fact we never got a chance to do it properly. I don’t feel hurt because they’re idiots. They’ve got their heads so far up their own asses. It’s ridiculous. I remember one night we were playing in Milan to four thousand people. Sold out show. Wynton Marsalles and Patti Smith were playing the same night. Their shows were only half full. But we couldn’t get a record deal. This went on forever.

M: But having produced them yourself don’t you have more pride in that or is it something that makes you cringe because they could have been better with more time and money?

J: They could be better. And, there were so many problems with both of those records.

M: How so?

J: Queen of All Ears was supposed to be for David Byrne’s label, Luaka Bop. But they knew I had money so they finagled it so that I was paying for it (to produce it) and they would pay me back. But then I had to appease them musically. You know, they were wanting me to cut the cello solo, do this do that. Then they wouldn’t give me the masters. It took me two years to get that record back.

M: I take it you aren’t friends with those people anymore?

J: Friends?! (scoffs) I think David Byrne is a wuss. I think he’s not a bad guy, but what they (the people at record label i.e. David Byrne) did to me was hideous. The way I would make a living was to go on tour, and then they got involved in the tour and the way they did had me losing twenty thousand dollars a week. And they said, “Well if you want your record to come out you have to go on this tour.”

So I agreed, signed the contracts, and then, they were only going to print three thousand copies of the record. My lawyer went crazy, and screamed at David Byrne, who then hid under the couch. So they pulled the plug on the deal. They wouldn’t give me the master back even though I paid for it. I couldn’t get the record back but I had to go on this tour and lose even more money.

M: So the record is not out but you’re on a tour playing the music from the record that no one can purchase at the show or anywhere else?

J: Yes.

M: Not very good business planning on their part.

J: No. I lost one hundred thousand dollars on that deal.

M: But it is a good record.

J: (laughs) Well thanks.

M: One last question about music: How did you know you would be a musician for life? Did you have an epiphany while playing one day? Like, “Holy fuck I am really doing this. I am really making music and it sounds like something that might be called music?”

J: Same as with the painting. I refuse to not be good. I remember there was this period of time when I would say to myself, “If I could just have my own voice on the saxophone that would be everything for me.”

M: Do you feel like you have achieved that?

J: I think so.

M: I think so too. I think it sounds like you have.

J: Yeah I think so too.

M: Absolutely last question: If you were an Indian, cause you’re not an Indian, what Indian would you be? Meaning tribe.

J: I don’t know.

M: Well then I will tell you.

J: You tell me then.

M: You should be a Blackfeet Indian because they are really tall. And, you’re tall too.

[Endnote: My friend Terrance Houle is one of the greatest multi-media and performance artists working today in Canada or anywhere else in the world. He is a Blackfeet. I think he’d love your work. In fact I know he would. He might be willing to adopt you in exchange for a print of Bear Surprise. Then you can be Blackfeet, and that will be good.]