Part 1

Name: Ryan Adams
Occupations: Singer, songwriter
Nationality: American
Current Release and Events: Ryan Adams has just made his new albums Chris, Romeo & Juliet, FM and Devolver available on vinyl for the first time and on CD. Order your copy here. Adams is also about to embark on a big UK solo tour. For tickets, go here. Finally, there's a new entry in his series of integral renditions of other artists' albums with his take on Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks.

If you enjoyed this interview with Ryan Adams and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, and Soundcloud.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I learned to type on a manual typewriter at age 7, a large green Remington Rand my grandparents used which I own and still use to write songs on. I was raised mostly, in terms of influence and most time spent by them. So I watched old movies, film noir, war movies and westerns and since I can remember I read everything in the house - which led to my Grandma getting me a subscription to Readers Digest.

From the time I learned to type - and type many words a minute - I wrote plays and poems, short stories, movie ideas, reviews of books, basically everything. This creative impulse within me also was art based and I did a lot of drawing and doodles and I held a few backyard plays - eventually wrote a play for my middle school and starred in a few things.

It’s just who I am. I see the world in a way, I see it in its possibilities and the nuances that maybe get overlooked and I kind of follow that energy into a story, a song.

I loved the beat poets and edgy actors like Carole Lombard, Humphrey Bogart and later James Dean but Marlon Brando, Katharine Hepburn, Marion Davies and sometimes Clark Gable … those films and the big band music in those movies which sometimes allowed some hints at the jazz and blues music that were alive someplace off camera. All that made me dream pretty hard about art and music.

I was an advanced placement student until 9th grade so I was younger in older folks classes, and I did great until math got more advanced. I’m numerically dyslexic and of course, my brother was a stupendously talented mathematician and theoretical mathematician. He couldn’t draw a stick figure and I can divide. It worked out great til it didn’t.

Anyway I’m just here to work and make art. It’s why I’m here.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

There are no wrong answers. It’s swimming in cold water. It’s sunning on a hot beach listening to the ice melt.

I don’t do doubt. Or fear. It has no place in my work so there’s no concept at work. I do the work and sometimes the work shows up like a cat that needs to be fed. The different engagements into my process never matter or last - they literally fall to pieces the first notes or words that touch the page.

It’s like secret doors. These doors are everywhere. All day. Sometimes I’m the door.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

I’ve done it that way. I’ve created lists, song titles first, music first … but I suffer from extreme OCD and ADHD, the fact that I can concentrate at all is a miracle.

And unfortunately my gifts that allow my work to be such a fluent language for me also meant that I’ve had to learn I’m not like everyone and likely working from a very different mindset that most people. I don’t socialize well and people scare me and I’m not really sure what I’m ever doing in a social situation - I always want to get back to work. It’s made my life complicated because I was always told to go against that nature, and it’s been a burden to undo.

I’m now so back to myself and won’t ever care about anything outside of my work that isn’t deeply woven into my life. I don’t use terminology like the spectrum because I’m not sure when it applies, but for me, I just want to make art and listen to it and view it and I see God or what people might call God I see that in everything and most especially in art.

It’s all the colors and all the sounds all at the same time but different hands making them. I love it.
 
Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

I wake up and it’s there. Coffee makes the baseline move a bit more. My house is lit by 30 to 40 watt maximum gold bulbs because I have light sensitivity due to Ménière’s disease. Every room in my house has a different function - an art room, a library / study writing room and a home studio. It’s set up like a spaceship I am self contained.

But coffee is nice. I only had tea for 15 years because coffee is so bad for Menieres. But I don’t take any pain medication for my illness so at some point it felt right to allow coffee back in and I’m glad I did.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

I start with whatever. There’s no thought. The guitar plays a chord, my mind remembers a phrase I may have thought of yesterday, and in what feels like a single sneeze I have the song demoed.

There are literally at least 500 songs crudely demoed on my home system and more at PAXAM which is set up like a museum – microphones on everything – permanently set to make sound you only change with the playing. There’s a lot of music created and left to finish or full explorations that were so cool but gave way to albums that felt like they needed to go first.

The current structure of the music business, which is total chaos and like a huge sinking ship of methods of selling albums or making stats, it’s in free fall and none of the ideas that worked before matter. For an artist like me that is such a good thing. I can create and release albums at the pace my heart and mind create them.

There are no rules anymore and I think I’m able to see now there should have never been these artistic restraints on my work ever. It just built walls between my fans and I. Those walls are now gone and we do things in our own way and in our own time. The albums can exist as they wish and as soon as they like. I feel very comfortable with that.

I won’t always be here on earth so why in the world would I hold back my work. Lol. Silly silly geese.

When do the lyrics enter the picture? Where do they come from? Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

The lyrics come from dreams, overheard convos, comic books, novels, ghosts, memories, feelings … sometimes they emerge as things I don’t fully understand- that later I can see were sent from the future - something I was meant to understand later.

I do not police the words. They must pass through my filter of me being me - they must be molded to please me - but they often show up at this point or having written for such a long time, in a perfect state ready to go.

That’s the reward of being an extremely disciplined writer. I put my ass in the seat, as Stephen King says in On Writing and if the 8 hours pass with nothing I still learned something. The shelves are full of books and albums and encyclopedias. There is always something to think about.

What makes lyrics good in your opinion? What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

There are no good or bad lyrics. Making music is an act of faith and anyone willing to take that leap is worthy of their dignity. It does not have to be for everyone. The point is in the creating the work. The rest takes cares of itself.

Sometimes B-52’s lyrics are ridiculous and sometimes they’re profound. The sun makes things bright that later are more beautiful in partial shadow. I like a lot of music and an extremely varied amount. So I am not one to ask about good or bad. Bad maybe is there not being a record to listen to.