Kusha Navadar (2:47)

So joining us now to talk about 69 love songs and their upcoming tour of the album's music. I'm so excited to welcome songwriter and producer Steven Merritt, as well as one of the group's vocalists and the band's manager, Claudia Gonson. Stephen. Claudia, welcome to all of it.

Claudia Gonson (3:04)

Thanks.

Stephen Merritt (3:04)

Thank you.

Kusha Navadar (3:05)

Absolutely. And listeners, hey, are you A fan of 69 love songs? Give us a call and tell us which one of those songs speak most to you or how these songs have maybe helped you make sense of love? Or do you have a question for Steven and Claudia? Give us a call. Shoot us a text. The number is 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Okay, so let's, let's talk about the album a little bit. Steven, you've said that 69 songs is not remotely an album about love. It's an album about love songs which are very far away from anything to do with love. So when you were making this record, what did you feel like love songs were actually about? And why did you want to explore that? Over the course of 69 songs, I.

Stephen Merritt (3:54)

Have come to realize that that quote is a mistake. And it is only actually the lyrics of six man love songs that are about love songs. And I completely ignore the tradition of love songs in the music. The music is much further ranging than you would expect from the label. Love songs, for example, punk love and experimental music love are inconceivably distant from the tradition of the love song.

Kusha Navadar (4:29)

And so how would you describe the tradition of love songs that you're trying to. Maybe you were trying to buck against at that time?

Stephen Merritt (4:35)

Well, I would say that the epitome of a love song is the reviled Paul McCartney and Wings song Silly Love Songs, which begins similarly to 69 Love Songs. It begins with a tape loop of some abstract noises and then goes into the dumbest conceivable pop song, which is very meta about its love song subject. I'm not going to quote it.

Claudia Gonson (5:14)

Love song about a love song.

Kusha Navadar (5:16)

Claudia, when you and Steven, you were friends from back in high school, right? What do you remember about making this album together? What were the original conversations like?

Claudia Gonson (5:26)

Well, the origin story, which is also in the liner notes for records. So it's all right, you know, kind of become very mythic, is that Stephen was sitting maybe in a piano bar.

Stephen Merritt (5:37)

Or a cabaret, a townhouse.

Claudia Gonson (5:39)

Okay, in the townhouse and where I now can't go and said to himself, I'm going to make an album of a hundred. I'm going to make a show, a Broadway, like a stage show of 100 love songs. It's Like, I'm going to make a grand act, a big. I'm gonna make a big statement and a bit of a PR point for him. I'm gonna do this. And then realized, after thinking on it, that that was a lot of songs. So narrowed it down to the next kind of evocative number 69, and set to writing it. And then I don't actually can't remember how we morphed into it being an album, but it seemed like that was within our ability.

Stephen Merritt (6:18)

I realized that in order to teach the four drag queens who would be performing the album all of the music, I would essentially have to make the album. And if I was going to make the album, I may as well make the album for public consumption and skip the step with the four drag queens.

Kusha Navadar (6:42)

Take us back to the 90s. So what were your conceptions about love at that time that you were trying to make these songs out of? What were the influences that were dictating the ways you were writing these songs?

Stephen Merritt (6:56)

I lived in the East Village, so half the people I knew were in the middle of dying of aids. And people's attitudes towards love and sex were extremely different from what they are now. During our show on Saturday night, I saw someone in the front row wearing a T shirt saying in big letters, it's okay, I'm on prep. And that attitude would have been extremely novel in 1999. But also, prep didn't exist in 1999. So I guess my attitudes towards love were pretty hyper local and very East Village.

Claudia Gonson (7:47)

But there's also the sort of piano bar cabaret angle which inspired this album. There's a few songs on the record which are distinctly tipping the hat to Irving Berlin and Broadway shows. There's sort of fun inversions, modern inversions of cliches from kind of epic love songs that you would have heard in the theater or in musicals. And then the other angle is that we were kind of an indie, a little indie band in the 90s. Our sales went, I don't know, 20 fold after six, and love songs came out. So we were a band that had sold maybe, I don't know, 5,000, 8,000 records. And we had a little indie label, and we called the little indie label and said, we're gonna make a record that's going to have, you know, four hours or three hours of music on it. And they said, no, you're not. So there was an interesting kind of backstory to that, too, where we sat down and argued with them about making this kind of bigger than life project. And they Were amazing and agreed to do it. And.

Stephen Merritt (8:45)

And now they're a great big indie label.

Claudia Gonson (8:47)

And then. Yes. And then they bought. They bought it. They bought a. They bought a new office off of 69 lots. Wow.

Kusha Navadar (8:54)

Really shot things off.

Claudia Gonson (8:55)

They bought a whole building. Yeah.

Kusha Navadar (8:56)

69 songs. But great bang for the buck.

Claudia Gonson (8:58)

It was great. So. So, you know, we don't want to sound too. Whatever. Superficial about things, but it was definitely a PR move a little bit. But it's also fun to kind of think about how maybe Irving Berlin was also making some PR moves when he wrote White Christmas or whatever.

Stephen Merritt (9:14)

So there's an anecdote where Cole Porter publicized a show that he was in by taking out an ad for a missing singing cat.

Claudia Gonson (9:27)

Right.

Stephen Merritt (9:28)

The cat has gone missing from the show. Great Expectations, whatever show it was.

Claudia Gonson (9:34)

Yeah. So we're not entirely ironic.

Stephen Merritt (9:37)

Completely fictional.

Kusha Navadar (9:38)

But it's also funny how even back then, cats were a great way of going viral, I guess. Yeah. Always go back to the cats.

Claudia Gonson (9:45)

Always.

Kusha Navadar (9:45)

Steven, you had mentioned something about trying to make this album for public consumption, I think was the word that you used. And it's interesting because it seems like. I mean. I mean, the proof is in the pudding. It had such a big impact. After the album came out, we actually just got a text from a listener that I want to point out. It says, hi there. My husband and I are huge fans of the Magnetic Fields. We saw them perform at Town hall last week, and it was incredible. Our first dance was actually a cover of Nothing Matters When We're Dancing performed by my husband's bandmates. Such a special memory. Thanks for everything. Walk me through what the reception of the album was like once it came out. Were you. I mean, I'm sure you were. Expectations can be so huge. What was it like hearing people pay attention now to the little indie band that you're talking about? The little indie album, when it came out, Claudia, to start us off, well.

Claudia Gonson (10:31)

It was in real time. We did a performance in which somebody shouted, when did you move to Connecticut? And then we felt bad about ourselves for not being punk rock anymore, whatever they thought we were.

Stephen Merritt (10:45)

No, we didn't. So some of us sneered with contempt.

Claudia Gonson (10:49)

We sneered with contempt. And then within three months, that person apologized. So what I'm trying to say is that there was a little bit of a learning curve with the fan base and with the reception of the record, because it was, like, so out of whole cloth weird. Like, why is this band making this enormous project of sort of classic love.

Stephen Merritt (11:08)

Songs, but also it was inherently slow Burning because the first pressing was sold out and the second pressing couldn't be manufactured for a while.

Claudia Gonson (11:18)

I remember why it was the book binder. It was because it was Christmas and they had. The bookbinder had a long list of books they had to make for Christmas. So it was delayed by six months or something, which actually may have been also good for us, who knows? Because we had this huge second explosion in the next printing.

Stephen Merritt (11:35)

But in the meantime, we couldn't get press because we couldn't get any copies of the record.

Claudia Gonson (11:38)

Had no record.

Stephen Merritt (11:39)

Yeah.

Kusha Navadar (11:39)

But it endeavored and it came out maybe not exactly as you. Yeah, go ahead.

Claudia Gonson (11:43)

Yeah, the sort of long. Sorry, that was the long answer. The short answer is that it took a long time. And I'd say the record came out in 1999. I'd say by 2002, we were really touring, we were really acknowledged. It was this interesting kind of. Whoa, what was that feeling for a little while, Just because of all of these issues that we're talking about with like changing our look, changing our, you know, population reception and kind of suddenly having to get into a new gear. It was kind of fun, but it was also a little, kind of dizzying and weird. The record also came out within like a week of Moby's play. And so there was a lot of, like, energy around for some, you know, that just kismet of two different albums that came out that both really, really hit in a weird way that nobody was expecting.

Kusha Navadar (12:25)

You know, that term weirdness. It's not pejorative in this sense. I think it's very much like a feature of it. Because I think that difference approach is what stuck with folks.

Claudia Gonson (12:35)

I mean, in.

Kusha Navadar (12:35)

In getting ready for this segment, we looked up fans and what they had to say. And we found one on Reddit who was talking about the album and. And they said this. The beauty I find in 69 love songs is that everyone I have talked to about it loves a completely different assortment of songs. And I think weirdness plays a part of that. It's got something for everyone. And, you know, we should offer listeners right now a chance to listen to some of the music. Let's start with, starting with Papa Was a Rodeo. Here's about a minute of that.

Magnetic Fields Song Vocalist (13:03)

Papa was a rodeo Mama was a rock and roll band I could play guitar and rope a steer Before I learned to stand Home was anywhere with diesel gas Love was a trucker's hand Never stuck around long enough For a one night stand before you kiss me you should know Papa was a Rodeo.

Kusha Navadar (13:39)

If you're just joining us, I'm Kushan Avadar. This is all of it. We're talking about Magnetic fields, their album 69 Love Songs to celebrating his 25th anniversary. I'm here with Steven Merritt and Claudia Gonson from the band and listeners. We want to know if you've got memories of Magnetic Fields or about their 99 albums, 69 love songs that you'd like to share with us. We just heard a text from somebody, brought in a comment from Reddit. We'd love to hear from you. The number is 212-433-9692. You can call us, text us. That's 212-433-WNYC. And Stephen, you know, we just listened to the track just now. You started addressing someone named Mike. And over the course of the song we learned that the singer was raised by a rodeo and a rock and roll band, among other things. Your songs often evoke characters and I'm curious what doors that opens for you as a songwriter. Like when you're writing these songs. How do you think about who's singing and who they're singing to, and how does that influence the song?

Stephen Merritt (14:40)

My life is deliberately very boring. I do the same thing every day as much as possible so that I can have a songwriting routine. And if I wrote about my life, it would be I am sitting in a bar writing a song, and that would be my entire list of subjects. So I like to write about other people's lives. Often I'm writing about the other people in the bar, eavesdropping on them or imagining what their lives are like. And in the case of Papa Was a Rodeo, I wrote it in a gay bar called the Rainbow Cattle Company in Austin, Texas. It's no longer there, and I don't remember who I was imagining that it was about. But I do remember that later that evening I played pool with a biologist. So maybe it was about him. I don't remember.

Claudia Gonson (15:42)

Also, Mike is sung on the record. The response by Mike at the end of the song is a female vocalist. And I remember that we, 20 years ago when we talked about this on stage, we mentioned that there was a character played by Nancy Sinatra in the Wild Ones. The Wild Ones, whose name is Mike. So we were able to. And we do this, he does this all over the record, sort of play with gender and gender stereotyping by having a song that if it was sung by a man to a person named Mike, might be considered to be a more homosexual song. But then it doesn't. I Guess what some people have really expressed to me over the years that they like about six in Love Songs is the gender bender angle, which in 1999 was a little new, of having a girl named Mike. Or it could be a man. You know, that kind of feeling of just. It doesn't matter.

Stephen Merritt (16:28)

A reporter recently told me that they thought of it as the queerest record ever made.

Kusha Navadar (16:35)

Do they say why? Was it that gender bending element?

Claudia Gonson (16:39)

It's all over the record. This feeling of who's talking? Doesn't have to be. And even on stage, sometimes we switch vocals and we have a female vocal playing a what might have been typical male role.

Kusha Navadar (16:50)

And Steven, my producer's telling me that you just told the queer publication them that your view on gender is the more the merrier.

Claudia Gonson (16:57)

Sure, yeah, yeah.

Kusha Navadar (16:59)

And you know, I'd love to hear.

Stephen Merritt (17:00)

A bit we used to say. My gender is none of your business. Unless you were wanting to bleep me.

Kusha Navadar (17:08)

Hey, public radio, good call. Let's listen to another song. Here's a bit of the song Washington D.C. which you sing. Claudia. Here it is.

McDonald's Employee (17:16)

W a S H I n G T O N Baby DC W a S H I N G T O N Baby DC Washington DC it's paradise to me it's not because it is the grand old sea of precious freedom and democracy no, no, no, it's not. The greenery turning gold in fall the scenery circling the just that's where my baby lives, that's all.

Kusha Navadar (17:53)

Claudia, what kind of interpretive muscles do you feel like you're flexing when you're interpreting a song that Steven wrote?

Claudia Gonson (18:00)

Well, we met when I was 14, so I feel like that's become so ingrained in me to just be this sort of vessel. I don't know how you want to put that. I mean, I've really listened to Stephen writing songs since I was a teenager, and I just. Yeah, I guess I just. I don't really know how to respond to this. I just. I just sing the songs. I've. I've always felt extremely dedicated to his. His art. Like, I love listening to his songs as they come out of him and listening to different ways that he's interpreted them. And I don't really know. I just.

Stephen Merritt (18:32)

I guess also you are totally familiar with my taste in music. So you. It doesn't occur to you to. To emote the lyrics? You just.

Claudia Gonson (18:42)

Yeah, I mean, no matter what I sing, it's sad. It's just the way I sing. I have a kind of a sad voice.

Stephen Merritt (18:46)

You don't need to try to be operatic.

Claudia Gonson (18:51)

There was that one time I tried to be Angela Lansbury. But generally speaking, I just. Yeah, I just kind of sing in this very. That's always been true with Steven's songs. You sort of sing them as uninflected as possible to just deliver a song that is there.

Stephen Merritt (19:03)

Unless they demand a cockney accent sometimes.

Claudia Gonson (19:06)

I'm Angela Lane's movement. But also I don't really see myself as a singer in this band. I really have been a musician. I played piano and drums for a long time. I played percussion with the band. And in that way I do feel very much like I've, you know, contributed, I don't know, musically to this band, like with parts and ideas and. But you know, we've had a lot of singers, so.

Kusha Navadar (19:28)

Yeah, and it's interesting to hear that. It's kind of what I hear you saying. It's kind of the waters in which you swim. I mean you met. You met Steven when you were 14. You two have known each other for so long. It's this organic like years and years of just working together. It's muscle memory.

Claudia Gonson (19:41)

Yeah. I actually just had a flashback to being really very young in high school and coming home with a bicycle and we took a contact mic and put like little pipettes of straws inside the bicycle wheels and spun it and recorded that. I mean, you know, it's been a lot of like, just, let's see what. How can we make stuff. And even just listening to Washington D.C. like the way we recorded it, thinking about the. The way that the vocals are in each ear. I mean a lot of like echoes of ideas from influences we've had. For instance, Fleetwood Mac, who do that kind of two. Two different voices kind of coming at you in the. So, you know, so it's a whole world. Yeah, it's like a whole. There's a whole mythology and library of ideas there.

Kusha Navadar (20:20)

Speaking of influences, obviously influences on other people, we have some text that I want to share with you right now. Just texting to say thank you to TMF for the best live use of a triangle that I have ever seen on April 3rd. This is Victor from Sunset Park. And another text, all of it when my wife and I go driving, Abigail starts up every time when we cue up the directions. We also have several of their songs in our one year old daughter's nighttime playlist, which is lovely. All different, different ways that folks are feeling the music. And we also have a caller I'd love to get to John in West Milford New Jersey. Hey, John, welcome to the show.

Caller John (20:54)

Oh, thank you. I have a quick question from Steve and Claudia. I've seen them in their many forms of bands over 25 years and I know that they've been together for a long time. I was a little concerned. I saw the fantastic show in Town hall the other night and I just wanted to know when they're climbing over on to do a duet on 12 foot ladders, maybe they can have somebody spot them, have Chris or Dudley. That was incredible. I was a little nervous watching him climb up a ladder though.

Stephen Merritt (21:23)

I used to paint. I briefly had a job. I was very bad, but I used to paint. And that involves ladders. And no one is ever concerned about you when you're working as a day laborer and you happen to need a ladder. But just because we can sing doesn't mean that we can't climb ladders.

Kusha Navadar (21:49)

John, thanks so much for that call. John was alluding to live performances. You're both touring right now, Right. Can you tell us a little bit about this tour? It seems like there's an interesting way in which you're presenting all the songs of this album. How's that work?

Claudia Gonson (22:05)

So we are doing all 69 love songs over two nights. Songs one through 35 on night one, songs 36 through 69 on night two. And you can see them actually this week as well. We did four concerts of them last week and we'll do four this week, which is two full cycles of the record. Wednesday and Thursday at Town hall is nights one and two, and Friday and Saturday at Town hall, nights one and two again. So. And then we're gonna head out.

Stephen Merritt (22:32)

Unless we fall off the ladder.

Kusha Navadar (22:34)

Fall off the ladder. Unless Chris can spot you.

Claudia Gonson (22:37)

And then we'll head on. We'll go to Chicago and LA and San Francisco and then over the summer more touring and Europe. And it's gonna keep going for this, this 25th anniversary year.

Kusha Navadar (22:47)

So folks can see or they can experience all of the album. They have to come to both performances, correct?

Stephen Merritt (22:54)

Yeah, yeah. But if you want to see us fall off ladders and die, you have to come on Thursday, right?

Claudia Gonson (23:00)

Thursday or Saturday? Yes. The tickets are available on Thursday.

Stephen Merritt (23:03)

Right. And if we die, then there won't be a show on Saturday.

Kusha Navadar (23:07)

Well, I'm sure safety regulations will help us out. But when we're talking about that, I mean, talking about challenges, I guess, generally, what have been some of the challenges in preparing to tour and doing these songs live?

Stephen Merritt (23:20)

Finding the right triangle.

Claudia Gonson (23:23)

It's been a lot, you know, I Mean, it's like herding kittens a little. We got like 10 of us or something and we're all trying to remember our parts. And from 25 years ago, it's been really fun, but also a lot. It's a lot.

Stephen Merritt (23:35)

It's funny how when you knew something 25 years ago, you sort of assume that you know it and then you realize only when 1200 people are staring at you that you don't know it.

Claudia Gonson (23:50)

It's. Yeah, it's been.

Stephen Merritt (23:52)

Fortunately, we have lyric sheets in front of us.

Claudia Gonson (23:54)

It's been hilariously loose. But. But you know, everybody. I keep telling people, like half of this experience is how much love we're getting from the audience. I mean, people are just so happy. And we run into people after the show, we're like, oh, we flew in from New Zealand for this. So it's been really, really heartwarming and amazing.

Stephen Merritt (24:09)

Post Covid audiences in general are much nicer than they used to be. And they don't take it for granted. Even in Philadelphia. They're just full of brotherly love.

Kusha Navadar (24:23)

Well, I mean, shout out to Philly. Full of great people. New York City, Louisiana. You guys are. You're both hitting up the entire. You know, you're going coast to coast on this. If you would like to find out more, the Magnetic Fields are performing Tuesday. Or. Sorry, there's. Remind me again when you're performing.

Claudia Gonson (24:41)

Well, this week, Town Hall, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. And we just looked at the box office. There are definitely tickets available for Thursday and there are very scattered tickets available for the other shows. But Thursday you can, if you want to come see us, climb ladders, bring.

Stephen Merritt (24:54)

Hundreds of friends Thursday. Well, dozens of friends.

Kusha Navadar (24:57)

For the others, we've been talking to Magnetic Fields. They just celebrated their 25th anniversary of their album 69 Love Songs. We've been talking to Steven Merritt and Claudia Gonson. Thank you both so much for coming, for talking to us and best of luck on your tour.

Stephen Merritt (25:11)

Well, the other thing that we'd like to advertise is Eddie Izzard's amazing one person show of Hamlet, which we saw yesterday.

Claudia Gonson (25:17)

It's amazing.

Kusha Navadar (25:18)

It is. It is wonderful. We're talking to her later on. It's going to be exciting. And you know, just to end this off well, I'd love to go out on a track called yeah, oh yeah. Which features the two of you singing on ladders. On ladders. Let's hear it. Play it now.

Claudia Gonson (25:42)

Are you free?

McDonald's Employee (25:48)

Do I drive you the dream? Yeah, oh, yeah Do I drive you up the wall. Do you drive?

Claudia Gonson (26:02)

Me?

McDonald's Advertiser (26:12)

I'mma put you on, nephew.

Stephen Merritt (26:14)

All right, unk.

McDonald's Employee (26:14)

Welcome to McDonald's.

Stephen Merritt (26:15)

Can I take your order, miss?

McDonald's Advertiser (26:17)

I've been hitting up McDonald's for years. Now it's back. We need snack wrap. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Snackwrap is back.

Marshall's Advertiser (26:28)

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