“I’d been kind of going through a bad time of what I’ve been thinking about myself musically,” he admits. “We’re only human, and everybody’s insecure, whether it’s people at the top of their game or people who are unknown. There are times that I look in the mirror and say, ‘Who the fuck am I?’
“Melodies come to me easily. But it’s all kind of fragmented, you know? I’ve got sonics that could make you cry, but they’re not songs. And then I’ve got stacks of lyrics of unfinished songs. And when I look at this heap of possibilities I wonder what I should do and, so, there it is. I’m just blowin’ in the wind, like a lot of people.”
The film is even more aesthetically provocative than the album, mixing grainy, black-and-white footage with bursts of psychedelic color, and musical interplay with philosophical meditations from Eno. As Lanois explains in the movie, “I’m trying to make a film that’s beautiful in itself, about beauty, about the source of the art rather than everything that surrounds it.” Eno responds that the key is to share with the viewers how “beautiful things grow out of shit,” which could be both a fertilizer metaphor and a punk-rock motto. He goes on to explain that artists aren’t necessarily anyone special, that great artists work hard to realize the potential that everyone has. “It gives people confidence in their own lives,” Eno continues.
Another conversation between the two has Eno proclaiming himself an atheist, a fascinating pronouncement for someone whose co-production of U2 has been so integral to the success of the world’s most popular Christian rock band. There’s plainly a spiritual dimension to the music of Lanois as well. In another contrast, Lanois says that, in the studio, “I think my biggest asset is my skill as a musician,” where Eno has long tagged himself a non-musician, if not an anti-musician.
Yet the two share an affinity that is obvious throughout the film, as well as through their U2 co-productions. “We play well together, even without saying any words,” explains Lanois. “We just walk into a room and start playing and in a matter of minutes something interesting comes out of us. We’re kind of made of hopes and dreams. He’s a very soulful musician — when he’s not lecturing!”
Beyond his formative years as the junior partner in the Eno-Lanois production firm (they’re currently in the studio with U2 for an anticipated fall release), Lanois has compiled an impressive production resume on his own. Except for the documentary, perhaps the most insightful account of his recording process comes from Bob Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One, for which Dylan chose 1989’s Oh Mercy as one of three albums to highlight.
“One thing about Lanois that I liked is that he didn’t want to float on the surface,” writes Dylan. “He didn’t even want to swim. He wanted to jump in and go deep. He wanted to marry a mermaid. All that was fine with me.”
Yet Dylan’s account includes plenty of creative tension, frustration on both sides. Of one cut, he says, “Danny was struggling to help me make this song work and he had the confidence to try anything. He cared a lot. Sometimes I thought he cared too much.”
Later, he writes, “I usually left the studio at night in a cold frame of mind. ‘Danny,’ I’d sometimes say. ‘Are we still friends?'”
“I love him like a brother,” says Lanois, who reunited with Dylan for 1997’s Grammy-winning Time Out Of Mind (Dylan’s first album of original material in the ’90s.) “I think we both got nervous at a certain point. He probably got nervous that maybe the record was a little too quiet and intimate. And I got nervous that maybe Bob was losing his interest in the project.
“He’s never spent a lot of time making records. And I think Bob has always leaned on the presence of other musicians. Because he walks in with songs, and the musicians garnish his work and oftentimes come up with hooks. And we didn’t have a lot of musicians around, so I think he missed that part. I would never do that to him again, sit down with two chairs, but I think it made sense at that time. It forced Bob to look in the mirror and say, ‘Who am I and what do I want to do?'”
In other words, even Bob Dylan was blowin’ in the wind. The Dylan sessions were a highlight of Lanois’ extended residency in New Orleans, where the atmosphere (and rhythm sections) inspired more than a decade of magical music from him as both an artist and a producer. A sense of place is plainly important to Lanois, whether it be a room in an old house where he has a studio, or the city where he chooses to work. He left New Orleans seven years ago.
“It was a great time and we made a lot of records there, but at a certain point I felt like we’d done it,” he says. “It’s an inspiring town to be a guest at for awhile, but there were a few complications. I fell in with the wrong people. The city has a dark side. I really don’t want to get into it too much, but some people tried to hurt me, and it really bothered me, and I decided I better get out of there. I was pulled south of the border, went to Mexico for awhile.”
These days, he splits most of his time between Los Angeles and Toronto (with extended side trips to exotic locales such as France and Morocco to work with U2). He likes to ride motorcycles in California and has returned to Canada to open shop with another studio. “It’s a little Buddhist temple that I bought,” he says. “I wasn’t looking for a Buddhist temple, but they were moving, and it had a lovely feeling in it. So we’re renovating that and it’ll be up and running for the summer.”
Then again, he says, “There are mornings when I get up and I feel I don’t need any of this. Despite the incredible edifices that I’ve built and anchors that I’ve dropped, there are times when I just want to burn all of the shit down. Maybe I’ll pick up my acoustic guitar, get on a train and say, ‘OK, I’m a troubadour, that’s what I do.'”
ND senior editor Don McLeese first interviewed Daniel Lanois as pop music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, whose editorial management has recently made him ashamed of that newspaper.
