Episode 165 - Rufus Wainwright

Welcome everybody to episode 165 of Soda Jacaron Songwriting. This is Brian, here as always with Simon. We hope you're all continuing to stay safe and well during this very weird time for us all. For this episode, we're delighted to welcome a master American Canadian singer songwriter, the exquisite Rufus Wainwright, back to the show.

As this reaches you, Rufus has just dropped a brand new studio album, his ninth of original material, entitled Unfollow the Rules. We met with him last December in those heady pre-Covid times at his publicist's office in London for a nice little chat about the record.

You might remember we first spoke to Rufus on episode fifty four, back in twenty fourteen, around the release of his excellent best of compilation Vibrate. He joined us over Skype from Canada, I think, on that occasion. So it was really lovely to get the chance to talk to him in person for this companion piece, if you will.

It really was, and now of course Rufus has joined Paddy McAlloon and Katie Tunstall in the rarefied surroundings of the exclusive Soda Jerker returning guest.

It's club. Yeah, he's received his special burgundy velvet smoking jacket, been granted access to the executive washroom and learn the secret handshake.

Remember this was pre-COVID so we could shake hands then. One unique and um faintly surreal aspect of this interview was the fact that in the office where we conducted it there was actually a bust of Rufus himself.

Ha ha ha.

To my knowledge, that's the only time we've been in the room with the guest and the clay rendering of the guest.

I think it might be right. We'll post a pick of that on the socials. As some of you will know, Unfollow the Rules was originally due in April, but like many of this year's releases it was postponed due to the ongoing pandemic situation. But it's here now, that's the main thing, and a typically melodic, emotive, well crafted record is his two.

Rufus has provided some killer content for fans during lockdown as well, hasn't he?

Oh yeah, doing his robe recitals from home and stuff.

Yeah, the quarantunes, as he calls them. I guess you have to look for positives wherever you can find them during these dark times, don't you?

Oh yeah, absolutely. And I'd say one of the nice things to come out of such an awful situation is all these intimate online performances we've been treated to from Rufus and many other great artists too.

Definitely, yeah. In the period since we last spoke, Rufus has remained as busy as ever. There was a double album recording of his first opera, Primadonna, in twenty fifteen. In twenty sixteen he released Take All My Loves, which was an album of Shakespeare's sonnet set to music, and that was followed in twenty eighteen by his second opera, Hadrian.

Sessions for Unfollow the Rules began in Los Angeles in June of that year with ace producer Mitchell Froome at the helm and a crack band of session aces including Blink Mills on guitar and drummers Matt Chamberlain and Jim Keltner.

The musicianship is top notch on this album, isn't it?

Well you get what you pay for don't you

You do indeed. You can listen to some tracks from the new record and selected cuts from our guests back catalogue by checking out our Rufus playlist, a link to which you'll find on this episode's page at sodajeker.com/slash podcast. There's also a link there back to our wide ranging twenty fourteen chat.

Find Rufus online at rufuswainright.com, Facebook.com slash Rufus Wainright Official and at Rufus Wainwright on Twitter and Instagram. We can be reached at sodijacker.com, Facebook.com slash Sodajaker and at Soda Jacker on Twitter and Instagram. If you're just discovering the podcast, do check out our extensive back catalogue of songwriter interviews and subscribe to the show on your preferred podcast platform so you never miss an episode.

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Before we move on, many thanks to Ash for his help setting up the interview.

Okay, here we are, down in London with the sublime roof.

Rufus, welcome back to the podcast.

Good to be back.

One of our elite returning guests.

Oh.

An illustrious honour for you, I'm sure. And congrats on the new racket.

Cool.

Absolutely love it.

Thank you.

It's just rich, isn't it? Musically and lyrically, we absolutely love it.

Deliver. I mean I am Rufus Waynewright.

You look like him anyway.

Is it about eight years since you did a sort of regular album, so to speak?

Yeah, it's been a while. I mean I I um Yeah, I guess the last quote unquote pop record I put out was Out of the Game, which was about eight years ago. Um I haven't been, you know, on vacation or anything. I I wrote a couple of operas and also did a a Shakespeare sonnets record that uh

Surprise didn't hit the charis. Uh but yeah, no but this is my my uh return to kind of my um my day job in a lot of ways, uh day and night and morning job uh which is being a songwriter.

And did you make a kind of conscious choice to take a break from the kind of regular songwriting or was it just'cause you you were so busy?

Well, I mean I I think it was conscious in the sense that when I began my career years ago, you know, I I grew up in the music business and and I saw my dad and my mom struggle and with the whole concept of, you know, putting out a record, then having to tour, then putting out a record, then having to tour. And I and I didn't I didn't really want to um repeat that

And would you say you've learned anything from working on those other projects that you've kind of ploughed into your new material?

Yeah, I mean I I I've been an opera fan, uh intense opera fan since the age of thirteen and and always instituted that sensibility into my songwriting work. Um having actually worked in the world of opera, I learned a lot about how boring that can be as well as uh challenging and and uh fulfilling. Uh but but but so I yeah, so I I kind of would beg Peter in order to pay Paul a bit.

The uh the title of the new album's very apt, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, if there are any rules to songwriting, you're not someone who follows them.

Yeah, no, I mean Unfollow the Rules is i um my daughter came up with the title. She's eight now, but she was around six, where she just walked into the room and and exclaimed that she would like to unfollow the rules. And uh I immediately took out my pen, my quill and and inscribed it. And then uh

We were kind of struck by the span of the material. Like the title track is nearly seven minutes I think.

Oh really? I'm I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I wish I could conform. With this record I'm trying to fight for the soul of of the album, i.e. the the symbol of the album, meaning it should be a immersive experience where you can turn on your sound system and play a record and and and really get lost in that experience and um and go through the, you know, the peaks and valleys that songs can present. And and I

The title track really succeeds in that, you know.

Thanks.

incredibly engrossing and there's some really interesting kind of intervals and and dissonances and some great lines. Um I'm no Hercules and this is Herculean. Yeah, yeah. Um just wondered what you could tell us about the writing of that.

Yeah, well I um as I said before, you know, my daughter came up with the title and she also came up with two other lines which were sometimes I feel like my heart turns to dust And sometimes I feel like my brain turns to leaves. Those are hers. I gotta be up front. And at some point she will have to get legal advice on how to you know, how to draw up some sort of contract. But but uh but we're not there yet. But anyways, but um a lot of the the rest of the song is about

Yeah. I love the way the music sort of brings out those tensions. You know, when there's something in the words maybe that's a little bit uh complicated, you'll always accompany it with some sort of strange change or some sort of dissonance which just brings those words to life.

I think Yeah. You know, one of the main aspects that I'm trying to convey with this record is that because I'd been away for a while in the classical world, I definitely started to hear from fans that they missed me and that they need me and and that it especially due to the, you know, treacherous times we live in and with with what's going on politically and and so forth, um Songs are required in the process of of of going forward.

I remember back in 2014 you told us that melodies tend to come to you fairly easily but and I quote lyrics are the bit.

Yeah.

Um do you still feel that way? Is it still the case that the words take?

Yeah, yeah. I mean one one of the things that's occurring right now is that, you know, my husband and I, we live in Laurel Canyon in in LA and um And I've worked with uh you know, I worked with Mitchell Froome on on this record who he's the producer and um and he also works with Randy Newman. And then of course I was very close to Leonard Cohen, who sadly passed

But when they come to you do you settle on those phrases quite quickly?'Cause you've got things like dispense with the niceties in there. I thought that was a lovely phrase.

Yeah. No, I I'm very happy with the words on this record. And I have worked hard in surrounding myself with with people like Joni and Leonard and Randy, who they're probably not even aware that I'm there, but but uh but in observing them from my Safe distance, um, I've been trying to up the ante in terms of lyrics. And I think this album hopefully illustrates that.

Mm. And did you put the songs uh for the new album together kind of in one batch or were they written over kind of extended?

Oh, they were a long extended period of time. Well, I mean w both when I was writing and producing Primadonna and and Hadrian, I would often um have to retreat in uh frustration to a practice room and just sort of re enter my my artistic process uh by writing a song or two just to uh remind myself that I, you know

Valid.

I think most songwriters have those questions running through their mouth.

So so I got a lot of material actually through working in the opera world.

...and it's the piano that's still you.

Piano. I uh often when I'm on the road I I just have a guitar with me, so so the guitar is is not to be um dismissed. But yeah, piano is my main squeeze.

Is it true you were taught by nuns?

I was uh initially. You know, my mother, all of her teachers were nuns and and that was Kinda the way it was. Uh up until really my generation. I still had it, but after that it was normal teachers, I guess.

Yeah.

We were

There you go. There you go.

Catholic Irish Catholic upbringing.

Uh we notice that sometimes you'll kind of um follow the melody you sing with the piano. Yeah. Um which you do on uh My Little You. Yeah. I think that's kind of a Randy Newman

And it's also very puccini. That's an operatic trick. Ah, okay. So uh I'm I'm patting myself.

And uh speaking of Randy Newman, um the song Trouble in Paradise shares its title with a Randy Newman album, doesn't it?

Does he have an alipot? Oh boy. I think I knew that somehow deep down somewhere.

Did you have that kind of title and and concept in mind for that song first before you

Well no, that song I I wrote many years ago actually,'cause it was it was for a musical that never materialized. Um that I was working on with Victor and Rolf, these Dutch fashion designers, and um and it was a song specifically written for a villainous character vaguely based on Anna Wintor. You know, the solid steel bob and the sunglasses and stuff. I'm not referring to her, but I'm referring to a kind of Devil wears Prada type uh figure. Mm-hmm.

That seems to kind of speak to sort of current state of the world in terms of like social media and stuff as well, don't you think? The sort of uh you know, the reality maybe not being quite what

Yeah, no the no i it it's the it's the, you know, thin ice that uh we're all walking on at the moment with this kind of bonfire, the vanities, as they as they called it in the eighties, of uh of just consumerism mixed with media, mixed with money, mixed with mindlessness. So Trouble in Paradise refers to that somewhat.

I can see how that vocal arrangement kind of lends itself to that idea'cause it's kind of a bit chaotic, but

Yeah, it's somewhat aggressive. Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm aggressively shattering the thin ice.

So how how would you work that out? Would you do that at the piano yourself?

No, I did I did that in the studio. Uh and I'm singing all those parts. Oh right. Yeah, yeah. So I'm singing all those on that song. Not on all the songs, but on that song specifically I'm doing all the parts. That actually ties very much into the sort of um Laurel Canyon tradition that uh that I Now I'm technically a part of because I live in Laurel Canyon. Right. So it's an homage a bit to like Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys and stuff like that.

A lot of the musicianship on the album kind of has a flavour of that seventies Floral Canyon.

Yes. Yeah. No, I I uh I purposefully wanted this record to be a kind of bookend to my first album, which was made in LA. This album completes it's like the end of an act, which is the first hopefully half. Oh, hopefully third. Hopefully the first third of my career is is this twenty year period from Rufus Weinright to uh Unfollow the Rules. And it's it starts and it ends in LA. Where I will go next time, not quite sure.

And we love the vocals on the record, your unerring vibrato is uh in vecked all the way through. I guess that helps when you're doing all those parts yourself, actually, because you can match things.

Yeah, yeah, no, I'm I'm very um attuned to myself, vocally at least.

Low register as well sounds kinda richer as well in this

Yeah, I know I might I mean one of the I've been asked a few times of late, like if there's anything I regret And for the most part I don't regret anything. In fact, I'm completely satisfied with my albums, uh, you know, my life choices, even, you know, the darker bits.

Yeah. Well I mean, y you're singing on Out of the Game we loved as well, didn't we? Montauk in particular was a a favourite of ours. Yeah. And that's one of those songs where you get your interesting melodies across by really singing them. Like some of those really chromatic things that you do up high.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Use the voices. Why to do that?

Yeah, well I I think certainly after the Judy shows. That's when I first had to, you know, get down to business with the issue of singing, uh, both in terms of of being able to last that long and also being able to maintain it as an interesting subject uh as opposed to me, you know, like just trying to get through the jungle. Right. So it started with that and then and then working in the opera world also and and and hanging out with classical singers who can still, you know

And y you briefly touched on um writing on the guitar. There would seem to be a couple of songs on here that sound like they had their origins on the guitar, like Damsel in Distress and uh You Ain't Big. Yeah. Does the guitar produce kind of different kinds of songs for you?

There's definitely more of an immediacy, uh more of a kind of dare say, masculine quality to the work. Um though my mother played incredible guitar. She was arguably a better guitar player even than my dad. Um

It's funny how the piano brings that out in people.

Yeah, yeah, now it is.

One of the other things I was gonna mention was um the unexpected qualities on some of the songs, like for example Hatred. Right. Um, that sort of low synth bass thing that you've got going on I thought was really interesting. Mainly because you've got such a kind of unrestrained flow when you perform and that's quite kind of robotic and quite

It's unexpected, isn't it, when it comes in?

Yeah, yeah. No, I I mean that song in itself is unexpected when it comes in. I mean it's at that point we've traversed a lot of territory, whether it's the Little Canyon thing or the kinda Randy Newman thing or the kind of Cynthia ladies at lunge moment. Um, but then when hatred hits it's like suddenly we're in a dance club.

Were those kind of synth textures kind of in mind as you wrote the song or was that more of a

production. Well that the the the sins thing were really due to the fact that well what actually happened with that, which is quite funny, is that we started producing the song and there was a lot of harmony and a lot of, you know, intense kind of bombastic Moments and I played it for someone in uh Toronto, and they the first thing out of their mouth was.

Yeah. It's a good motto for life really, isn't it? More Blade Runner, less phantom.

The first time we spoke you mentioned about how you generate a lot of ideas kinda while you're out walking and how different landscapes inspire you. Is that you still find that to be the case?

Oh yeah. Yeah. Well an and on this record I mean romantical man is the

Yeah, I was going to say

The ultimate uh example of that.

'Cause I think you said, um, London in particular was a place that inspired you a lot in that regard. Yeah.

Well London, you know, whether it's that song and also Damsel in Distress, I mean London isn't that you know. Square Sloane. That's very clever. Um But uh but yeah, Romantical Man specifically is a kind of um modern day Edwardian kind of walkabout, you know, down the boulevards by the motorway. Yeah. This, you know, opining romantic who uh doesn't quite connect though is, you know, nonetheless in the thick of it.

It's so vocative. I love the line about buying the scarf at Liberty. Yeah.

Uh I bought a scarf, uh, but I still can't disguise my ecstasy. Yeah. I took the veil. I took the veil at Liberty, which is funny.

That's lovely.

Yeah, great. UA Big's got a kind of a travel log kind of feel to it as well, hasn't it? Yeah.

Yes. It's funny, I wrote that song that that was kind of a toss off I wrote a long time ago that uh I thought maybe it was it was a song that I could like sell to like Dolly Parton or something, like or to someone in Nashville. But um Mitchell really gravitated towards it. And we made it we turned it to kind of from a country Nashville song into more of a Harry Nielsen number, kind of the lime in the coconut concept. And uh

Cleanse.

Cal cleans your palate, it's not too serious, it's there's a moment of levity and it kind of gets you on to the next um tragedy.

So the next album. French or something.

Yes. No, I'd like to I wanna make a French record them. At some point. No, I mean I gotta tour this one first and continue this um final chapter. But um Yeah, the French are on the horizon.

Mm-hmm. Did you find when you've written uh'cause you wrote an opera in French, didn't you? Yeah. D did you find like writing in in a different language? Well, I suppose it's it's a natural language to you, but does that produce different kinds of melodies almost that the

Yes. I mean I mean when I wrote Primadonna, I there's a a now fairly well known story about that process where Primadonna had been commissioned by the Met in New York and uh and you know, the opera takes place

Um one other song I think that was inspired by Travel and Older song, one that we didn't get to mention last time, was O What a World.

Yes.

We are on the Eurostars.

Yes, yeah. I was on the Eurostar to to Paris and uh that song came banging into my head.

Was there one particular image that struck you?

Um I mean I think it is the men reading Fashion Magazine is the outset of that song. For me it's really about and I've said this before, that between Paris and London, even though they're not that far away there's a bigger difference between Paris and London than between like London and Dubai or London and, you know,

Well Rufus, it's a fantastic collection of songs you've got there.

Yeah.

Congratulations and damn your eyes.

Thank you so much.

That was Rufus Wainwright talking to us in London about his terrific new album, Unfollow the Rules.

Lovely to sit down in person this time around, wasn't it?

Yeah, he's got quite the presence, hasn't he?

Yeah, and quite the beard.

Ha ha ha.

Yeah, it was a beard of quality and distinction.

But yeah, it was great fun and it's it's clear just from the way he talks and the way he uses his words, how his artistic flair finds its way into songs.

Yeah, what did he say? Mood erase? I think he said early on.

Moderate.

Think he invents his own words sometime?

Yeah, and clearly he's able to use his skills as a composer in other forms to elevate the scope of his pop songcraft as well.

and you can really hear that on this record can't you it's it's got that sense of drama

Well he's always had a great sense of drama, hasn't he, since the the earliest records?

He captures interesting things that his daughter says as well.

Yeah, and incorporates them into the work, writes them with his quill.

Yeah, and he confirmed for us that lyrics are still the bitch, which I was happy about.

Yes. Lyrics will always be the bitch, it seems. And uh well, you know, he's got some legendary friends he can call on if he gets stuck.

Yeah, of course, Joni can help him out.

Yeah, she's not too shabby, is she?

Must be nice being part of that Laurel Canyon scene.

Definitely. But yeah, what can we say? You know, the albums are welcome return. I I think the fans have really missed them. Yeah.

So

Unfollow the rules is available now and if you've got any sense you'll snaffle a copy ASAP.

a look out for his bespawn tour by checking his website for details.

Yep, he'll be back over to the UK in October twenty twenty one.

So thanks to Rufus for his time and to Ash and Barbara for their help on the day. We'll be back soon with more of the greats.