Steve Wynn Interview: A Working Musician
Make It Right (Fire) isn't your standard issue singer-songwriter record, even given the history of its creator, Steve Wynn, best known as the leader of legendary neo-psychedelic band The Dream Syndicate. Each song references, lyrically and/or aesthetically, something about Wynn's past, moments in his life and sounds he dived into throughout his long career. Peppy album opener "Santa Monica" is named after the city and boulevard where he was born. The drum machine-addled, deadpanned "What Were You Expecting" and slinky slow burn "Cherry Avenue" loosely connect with a time in his life where he was no longer bright-eyed and idealistic, learning the rules of a cynical world. The jangly "You're Halfway There" and proto-punk-funk of "Making Good On My Promises" soundtrack a perspective shift, where Wynn realizes that conquering antagonism can breed strength. "Scars, scars / I've got them pickled in a jar / Fables and warnings / I eat them for breakfast," he cheekily sings. The album ends with a strummed, yet distorted track named after where Wynn lives today: "Roosevelt Avenue". You can pick apart Wynn's life and point to exact moments where these songs might have taken place, but Wynn would rather you do something else. "You can just put on Make It Right and use it as the catalyst to create your own life story, dig into your own past," Wynn wrote in the album's bio. "It belongs to you now. Let it tell your own tale while I tell mine."
Really, if you want to know about Wynn's past, just pick up I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True (Jawbone Press), his debut memoir, released in tandem with Make It Right. Though, according to Wynn, one is not needed to understand the other, it does make the exercise of not just breaking down Make It Right, but applying its lessons to your own life, a little easier. We might not all have grown up in Santa Monica, gone to a high school that produced members of Germs, had our band signed to a record label in our early 20's, and had said rapidly successful band break up in our late 20's. (That's where the book ends.) But we can all identify with having periods of our life that feel like a whole lifetime, followed by times of languishing. Really, it's not just Make It Right but Wynn's life, too, where we see ourselves.
Sunday, at the Hideout, Wynn will make a tour stop--that's a book and album tour--where he will play on acoustic guitar some tunes from Make It Right, Dream Syndicate songs, and other covers. He'll intersperse the performance with passages from I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True. And he'll be joined by Eleventh Dream Day guitarist and vocalist Rick Rizzo, who will open the show, sometimes join Wynn in playing, and sometimes lead a Q&A session. Or, as Wynn put it to me over the phone last month, "asking me questions, calling my bullshit." Wynn's "foil for the evening" Rizzo was there for a lot of Wynn's stories, playing on the very song that inspired the book's name; he sounds like he'll be a proper, but friendly, antithesis.
Below, read my wide-ranging conversation with Wynn about his new album and book, his artistic process, and the difference between then and now when it comes to the music industry, scenes, and touring. One difference, according to Wynn, is that people plan far ahead now; Wynn let me know that the band's sophomore album Medicine Show will be reissued next summer! For now, immerse yourself in the world of Make It Right and I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True. It won't feel like a lifetime.
Since I Left You: You released I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True and Make It Right in tandem. You mentioned in the epilogue of the memoir that you got some external encouragement to write a book because Alex Abramovich liked what you had given him about The Velvet Underground for The New Yorker. The pandemic was as good as a time as any to start writing, but at what point did you realize you wanted to make a record alongside your memoir?
Steve Wynn: The whole time I was writing the book, which was over about 5 concentrated years, 10 years in total, I kept writing songs and recording material. When it came time to release the book, I thought it would be nice to have a solo record come out at the same time, just because I was gonna be touring the book. As much as I enjoy being an author, I'm primarily a musician. When I [looked at the songs] I had been working on, I realized they all completely reflected the memoir. Of course: I had been so immersed in writing about my life and things I had long since not thought about, the songs I was writing fit that same subject matter. I put [them] all together for a record that really fit the book. I contacted my label, Fire Records, and said, "Hey, I'm probably gonna press about 500 copies to have at shows," and they said, "It works as a cohesive, standalone record. We want to put it out."
SILY: When people read that the two are coming out at the same time, they might at first ask themselves to what extent the record is autobiographical. I like that you very much clarify that it's instead a parallel to your life, a collection of feelings rather than a collection of events.
SW: I always put my own feelings and emotions and judgements and takes on life in all of my songs, even if I'm writing about a baseball player or a killer or a character I read about somewhere. I still put my own stamp on it. On this record, most of the songs are about looking back on things that happened in your life, moments where you might have done something different, things you might regret. Time and time again, with all 10 songs, that's what's going on: "That's where I was, here's where I am now." That little path in between, would I change anything or just say, "Yep, that's what went down." That's me in all of the songs.
SILY: Sonically, the record seems to touch on different moments of your career, both with The Dream Syndicate and solo, and your different aesthetic inspirations. Was that a conscious decision?
SW: I don't think I thought about that much. The record [was made] in different sessions in different countries and with different musicians, [some songs] with longtime collaborators and some with people I had just met and said, "Let's try a song together." Like with every record, I went in and followed the other people in the studio, the songs, the mood at that point in my life, and what I was listening to, what it all pointed to. Even when I go into a record saying, "It's gonna be this kind of record," I roll with whatever happens.
There's a section in the book about jamming and how a lot of what I do is just respond to what's around me. That's my favorite thing and why I love new places on tour. I went on tour with The Dream Syndicate to play new songs [in preparation for] a record that became These Times, about six years ago. I was very influenced at the time by Donuts by J Dilla, which seemed very unlikely because of what I do. But I don't think it really was, because it's a record that has a psychedelic dream state collection of sampled music. It's someone saying, "This is my record collection processed through me." I thought it would be a fun thing to do in the studio, but by the time I got down to Virginia to do the record, with the other members of The Dream Syndicate, not only did it become a very different record, but they were the sessions that produced The Universe Inside. The surprises often outweigh what's premeditated. I'm fine with that.
SILY: In the book, you're very open about what songs in the past you've tried to rip off, because you think there's no way you'll get sued since the inspiration and your final product end up sounding nothing alike.
SW: [laughs] It's so true. If somebody says, "I love the reverb on that Yardbirds record," people now know how to get it. It used to be you didn't have a lot of choices or tools at your disposal to try to recreate something, so you'd get close to it. Now, you hear a record on Underground Garage on Sirius XM, and people have figured out how to do it. In my case, I loved this record by The English Beat, and [the song I made that was inspired by it] sounded nothing like that, becoming "Tell Me When It's Over". Before this book, I'd give $100 to any given audience member who could have [correctly] told me where I got the song from. I'd be saving my $100.
SILY: The book offers a window into your process without getting bogged down in it too much.
SW: I love stuff like that. A lot of books don't do that. I really try to do a fair amount of that in this book, and I could have done more. I really enjoy books where people talk about how they made the music. Not just, "I used this EQ setting," but where their mind was while they were getting there, why their favorite album became the way it was. Richard Hell writes about his sex life and psychological challenges: all great stuff. I chose to write about how I connected with music from age 4 as a fan to age 21 as a kid making his first record all the way through to the end of the book at age 28 when I became disenchanted and then regained the love for it once more. If I had to say the book is about something, it's about someone who loves music, embraces it, and gets lucky enough to make a career out of it.
SILY: Because a lot of the book takes place in and around L.A., every stranger you run into seems like a future star. One person turned out to be a young Hope Sandoval, and another "new band" you rejected for your label turned out to be the Pixies. Each reference one-ups the previous ones, and you can't help it, because that was the environment in which you grew up, and the time period seemed to be conducive to things like that happening.
SW: I think you're right. Most people who write a memoir who have "made it," you're going to run into people [in the book]. Most of my friends at this point in my life are other touring musicians. We can get together for dinner, like we did last night, and you're not trying to drop names, but the conversation is, "I ran into this guy." or "You know who I met last night?" It was a time where things were very innocent. You could meet Hope Sandoval as a 14-year-old kid star-struck at soundcheck who would later become frontperson of a great band. Even encountering Bono on that tour [where we opened for U2], we were all in our early 20's or younger, trying to figure it out. At the time, there wasn't as much of a developed scene for so many things that are taken for granted now. Before The Dream Syndicate, if you wanted to be a musician, if you wanted to pick up a guitar and make records, your goal was to be a star, to play the arena in town. There wasn't the idea, "All I want to do is make records and sell 2,000 copies, get some reviews, and be the coolest kid on the block." A lot of bands did that, like Big Star and The Modern Lovers, but that wasn't their goal. Even those bands thought, "Well, I'm on my way." Our generation, The Dream Syndicate and The Paisley Underground bands, was the first generation to say, "We'd like to make it, and it'd be fun, but we're emulating our other failed heroes." Some, despite that, made their way out of that. We did, kind of.
SILY: I always have to remind myself that a band's ascent and descent happens these days more gradually. Back then--and you give Creedence Clearwater Revival as an example in the book--not only were bands putting out multiple records a year, they were putting out multiple records a year we now consider all-time greats. The way the industry works now, with record release cycles, it seems like labels want to milk as much as they can out of one piece of music. A band that's been around for 20 years might only have 4 records.
SW: I find that to be not the case now. What you're describing was very much the case in the 80s, which I and so many musicians found frustrating. You'd make a record, and you were not expected to make one for another two years. What you're describing is probably true for the biggest artists, but what I really love these days is you can make 10 records a year if you feel like it, under different names and expectations. A band like Wilco can release albums, and Jeff Tweedy can make solo records and records with his sons at the same time. You can have your big label release and a record you put on Bandcamp. If somebody wanted to be the new Creedence, they could. They may not sell a million records, but who does these days? It's kind of come full circle to what it was before I was born, where the records are just something you use to get attention for your tour. That's okay, too, because I like touring. But yes, you do raise a good point: There were times when you were discouraged to be prolific. Now, if you want to be [prolific], knock yourself out.
SILY: Touring-wise, nowadays, you can still be the scrappy band coming up and playing for not a ton of money but touring cheaply. You can be an arena rock band, too, of course. But it seems like that mid-sized band, who might be signed to a major indie label, seems to have trouble staying afloat when it comes to touring, balancing their expenses with their revenue. In the book, you mentioned some touring struggles, too, playing to half-capacity crowds in rooms you sold out the prior year, perhaps due to oversaturation. What do you feel are the differences between touring then and now?
SW: There's a lot of truth to everything to you just said. We just had this meteoric rise, and before we knew it, we were on tour buses opening for two of the biggest rock bands in the world. I was staying in nice hotels and had a four-man crew catering my every need. I thought, "I guess this is how the world works." Luckily for us--even though it seemed unlucky at the time--we had a quick comedown after that. By age 25, I thought, "All I am is a working musician," and not in the way an arena rocker is. I learned early on that what I do is not that different from what John Lee Hooker did or what Dexter Gordon did, or all of these people who were not rock stars but jazz, blues, and folk stars. John Fahey went from gig to gig. Where it's all leading is two hours down the road where somebody is paying me $375 to play to 40 people, and I'm pretty damn happy about that, because that's the next stop. It's very rock and roll to say, "I'm building this," but we're working musicians. You hear people say, "Why is Bob Dylan touring? Doesn't he have enough money? Doesn't he want to take it easy?" No, because Bob Dylan is cut from the cloth of, "This is what I do. I play music for people and keep moving on. I'm a troubadour." I play in the band The Baseball Project with two people who don't need to tour, Mike Mills and Peter Buck, who have done very well for themselves with all the success they've gotten with R.E.M. They could live out their lives on some beach, but they love playing music. They love their friends and being on the road and having adventures. That's why they do it. For a lot of musicians like myself, that's more important than the end goal. My end goal is to continue to do it for the next 10 or 20 years. [That's] more important than strategizing.
SILY: I wanted to ask, since The Dream Syndicate and them seemed to have similar ascent and descent paths: Did you ever cross paths with Pylon?
SW: I was a big fan. In the days before The Dream Syndicate, I loved their first album and saw them at a club in Hollywood. I'm still a huge fan. I've met [vocalist] Vanessa [Briscoe Hay]; I wouldn't say I'm a friend. It's funny: These people were our heroes two years before we started, which at the time it seemed like they were so much older, like they'd been around. "We can only dream of some day living a life like Pylon or The Soft Boys." The next thing you know, you're playing the same clubs and talking about the same things in the bar after the shows. All roads lead to the same place.
SILY: In the book, you tell the story of when your 5th grade teacher told your class everyone was free to do whatever they wanted for 15 minutes, so you decided to mess with a classmate who was painting. Your teacher scolded you for using your freedom to stop your classmate from expressing his freedom. You write about how that interaction informed your philosophy on playing music, that there is a language and, if not a structure, a ways of working to jamming. Is that something you take in to every recording session, even on a record like Make It Right that's comprised of short pop songs?
SW: I try to. That [section on improvising] was the last thing I wrote for the book. I [included it] because it says a lot about what we did and still do. [The teacher's lesson] was a good lesson. As a bandleader, and I'm a bandleader to different extents, because The Baseball Project has 5 bandleaders and I'm kind of the bandleader of The Dream Syndicate--I get a lot of welcome pushback from my bandmates. I try to be energetic and excited about the idea I have and what I'm doing while realizing the people around me are musicians getting excited about what they're doing, too. If somebody's playing a beat or a riff or sound that rankles me, when is the right point to say, "That's not what I'm going for," or, "Maybe they have something going here I'm not quite understanding. I should give it a second."? Believe me, my wife and drummer, who is two rooms away right now, would say, "Steve, you do not [do that.]" It's such a hard thing and one of the hardest things in life, if you're in a relationship, in a band, or President of the United States, to say, "Thank you for all of the advice, but I've gotta do it my way." There's no right answer. You can point to 10 different instances in your life where you should have taken more control, and 10 more where you should have let up the control. We're always trying to figure that out.
SILY: In the bio for Make It Right, you encourage folks to use it as a launching point to tell their own story. In the book, you mention how much you loved Once Upon a Time in Hollywood... and felt it very much captured the essence of where you grew up. I know people who have seen that movie, who remember Sharon Tate's grisly murder and hate the liberties Quentin Tarantino took with the ending. Are you one who pays more attention to narrative in terms of a feel that a linear story?
SW: Sometimes, yes, sometimes, no. I like when a record or a song or a movie leaves a little room for you to find your way in. Sometimes, you can spell it out too much, and [as a member of the audience,] you think, "You did all the work, I have no place in this." Randy Newman writes minimal words to make his point, and you come out thinking, "Is that irony? Is that what he believes? Do I really understand this character?" I like a little mystery in the writing. I don't like fluffy nonsense impressionistic stuff from all of the people who thought they could be Bob Dylan in the 60's but are just [making] word salad of psychedelic terms. If you write something that makes just enough sense to give you an image but doesn't quite take you all the way there, that's exciting for me. My favorite things I've done are like that as well.
SILY: Your memoir doubles as a story of how a scene was born. Do you find yourself wanting to explore scenes of music these days?
SW: I don't think about it as much. It's really different now than the days of the Paisley Underground, British Invasion, or even punk rock. Even far into the grunge scene, we were still working separately. In the pre-Internet days, Seattle was one scene and New York was another scene. Now, in a city, there might be a bunch of bands who hang out, but we're all unified. You know everything and connect with everything. You can be Facebook friends with someone in Slovenia who shares your taste, start collaborating, and find out what's going on over there. I don't think "scene" means [what] it used to. If I hear a band I like today, if it's current, sometimes that's enough. The great thing about streaming or blogs or YouTube is you can keep digging as deep as you want. That's exciting.
It's easy to say things were better then for this reason, or 50 years ago, 30 years ago, 5 years ago. It's just different [now]. I wonder whether we'll talk about bands who have come up in the past 10 years, 50 years from now, the same way we talk about the bands from the 60's like the Kinks, or Television and The Clash. Will it have the same longevity? Maybe, maybe not. Even the big ones, like Taylor Swift. Will we in 50 years say, "She's 85, better than ever, singing all the great hits!"? Things seem a little more disposable now, but I shy away from saying that. [After all,] "Tell Me When It's Over" is a song about a 23-year-old saying to someone, "I don't need you to tell me how it was or how it is. I'll figure it out myself."
SILY: It can make you feel straight-up existential when you think about how today's bands will hold up in the future. The only sure answer is, ironically, that we don't know. Certain things can shift the cultural consciousness to the point where something you never thought would be long-lasting or influential turns out to be so. Anyone who says, "I always knew this band would get its flowers," is probably exaggerating.
SW: Big Star and The Velvet Underground are so fascinating. They weren't utter failures--they were more successful than people realize, as a touring band making records that didn't top the charts--but 50 years later, their music travels the world and is so beloved. If you're in your basement making music for 10 people on Bandcamp, you can say, "That will be me in 50 years," and maybe you will be. It's so hard to say, but it's great it can happen.
The one thing that's different is a certain type of music fan grew up in the glorious era of the 70's, 80's, and 90's where albums reigned supreme. The album was a great art form. This 45-minute thing, give or take a minute or two, was how we gauged great artistic achievement. We look at the Mount Rushmore records, the Exile on Main St.s, the Revolvers, the Blonde on Blondes, the Neverminds, the cherished great albums. [Like] before the 60s, [over] the last 10 years, albums [haven't mattered] as much. I wish they did, because it's a great art form, expressing a collection of songs. But I think we're back to the world where it's just a bunch of songs that show up on Spotify that make you happy for a few weeks. Maybe the next Jimi Hendrix will be a blogger. That's fine, too.
SILY: Recently, I interviewed a blues musician who said the sequencing of her records is not that important to her. She said, “But it’s important to me that they hear all the songs. They all fit on the record in some shape or form.” Pitchfork does a video feature where they ask musicians to name their Perfect 10 album, and a lot of them say, "It's great front to back, no skips!" Perhaps I'm an anomaly as a millennial, but I don't really skip songs on albums I don't like that much! I just listen through! It's what's intended. Even if I'm listening digitally, I think about it as if it's a record, where you can't just push a button to skip to the next song.
SW: Personally, when I hear an album, I still think about it in terms of side A and side B. I don't just think about sequencing, but I think about the spacing between the songs. When I go in to master a record, I don't want there to be a millimeter of a second too long. The space between song 1 and song 2 matters. If you're hearing an album as an album, that stuff matters. I'm a big movie fan. You know they're thinking about that stuff when they're making a movie. They cut the last 3 seconds off of a scene [to make it flow more.] That stuff matters. Whether it matters to a new generation, it may or may not, but it does to me. I'm making records for myself at this point, and luckily, enough people are along for the ride.
SILY: As much as I don't like to talk shit about Gen Z, because in many ways, they're the most tolerant, respectful generation yet, I saw the trend that some of them watch films sped up because their attention spans can't hold up.
SW: Wow. That's the first I've heard of that. The multi-tasking thing, "I'm gonna check my email, watch a movie, look at my phone every 10 seconds." It's just different. I don't want to make a judgement. When people get cynical or disdainful of a 7-year-old looking at the games on their iPad, I think, "Maybe we're just training a new era of humanity for what's next." Our great-grandparents had horses and buggies. We evolve. Maybe the way things are now is just part of the evolution. That's okay! Maybe there will be something fabulous. Maybe this is the next step to transporting into a new level of consciousness that will put us to shame. How do I know? It will be long after my time. I'm 64 now, and I think I've got hopefully a lot of years left of making records and not standing still. That's exciting. Maybe I'll make a record that will blow my current mind. That'll thrill me.
