Steve Earle – “I have an agenda, and I am unapologetic about that agenda”

IV. THE RECORD I MOST WANT TO BUY RIGHT NOW IS THIS LAST EMINEM RECORD

ND: One of the things that I thought was interesting about E-Squared was that you had gathered together some young songwriters who you were mentoring…

SE: Yeah, and I think that’s important to do.

ND: Are you finding other ways to do that?

SE: Well, I do that to a certain extent when I produce records. I believe in apprenticeship. I was the beneficiary of two good ones. More than two, really. I learned to write songs from Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. And Guy, it was a real live, long-term, hands-on apprenticeship. I mean, I played bass in his band, I hung out with him all the time the first two years I was here, and I learned an incredible amount, I was exposed to stuff I never would have been exposed to. I met Neil Young and I met Mickey Newbury, and it was pretty mind-blowing when you were 19 or 20 years old.

I have that relationship with some of the people that I produce. Ron Sexsmith, to a certain extent, although there’s not much I can teach him melodically. He’s pretty fuckin’ frightening. I’m getting ready to cut a track on Matthew Ryan, which I’ve wanted to do for a long time. We’ll see how it turns out, and if it turns out OK we may make a record. I think we’re going to make a John Hammond record, too.

I’m really proud of what we did [with E-Squared]. We didn’t get rich, but I was able to make my records exactly the way I want to, and I own my records. I’m really incredibly proud of the records we got made, because I think most of ’em were records that weren’t going to get made otherwise.

ND: I had thought this was the most language-driven record you’ve made in a long while, less focused on music.

SE: Definitely. It exists because of the ideas that I was going to get across. Transcendental was totally musically driven. The only lyrical agenda it has is I was in love, in a really big way, the whole time I was writing it. And I just sort of surrendered to that. And I wanted to write more melodic stuff. That’s what the record’s about, to me, is exploring melody in a way that I hadn’t before.

El Corazon is a little more rock record, but it’s musically driven, too. Transcendental turned out to be an archaic pop record, which was OK. I really kinda dug it. Everything that I’ve stolen from the Beatles since I started recording again in the mid-’90s sorta culminated in Transcendental.

ND: Do some of the textures from this record come from the South Nashville days?

SE: What, like the more R&B-oriented stuff like “Conspiracy Theory”? We’ve always done this thing of fucking around with samplers and stuff, but we’ve always done it in a real weird kinda retarded way. I don’t like to record with a click track. When you use loops, you’re locked into a click track, because if the track’s not steady you can’t trigger a loop over it and have it stay in sync.

But, yeah, all that stuff, I love. The record I most want to buy right now is this last Eminem record. When I’m making a record I don’t listen to any music. I love [Dr.] Dre [who produces Eminem], because he’s so musical. I love a couple of the guys who make hip-hop records in New Orleans, and I love Beck Hanson’s record. My favorite hip-hop is still, I’m pretty dated, I don’t listen to a lot of it nowadays, but I still love Public Enemy in a big, big way, and it transcends hip-hop. That’s rock music to me, and it’s really a part of my life in a way that almost no other hip-hop is.

But Dre’s like this whole…that’s why the Eminem records are so great. People want to try to make him out to be a poet; I’m not sure I buy that. But of course I don’t think Bob Dylan’s a poet, I don’t think I’m a poet. Poets are poets. I’m a poet when I write poetry. I totally agree with Gregory Corso about that. It pissed him off when people called Bob Dylan a poet. It really pissed him off (laughing). Because being a poet is like deciding you’re going to be a bluegrass musician. It’s a really hardcore decision and guarantees you’re never going to make any money.

ND: You can at least sell out as a bluegrass musician.

SE: Yeah, you can now (laughs).