Photographer - unknown - 2000.

THE MATT JOHNSON INTERVIEW

TIMBT - Los Angeles - October 2000

Closing out the third U.S. leg of TheThe's NakedSelf tour this October, Matt Johnson took some time out of his busy schedule to discuss with us all things The The, as well as his now infamous "Corporate Manifesto."

TIMBT: What are your thoughts on how the tour is going so far?

MJ: I think it’s been going very well, although there have been huge obstacles to overcome; largely, a lack of support from the record company, nothing/Universal.  They’ve had absolutely no interest in the new album – they didn’t even service it to the radio. So that’s been a major, major handicap. To come back to touring after seven years would be difficult anyway, but faced with all this it’s been extremely difficult. Virtually impossible in fact.

There have been some shows, like Pomona and Ventura, that were poorly attended, and that was difficult for us. We’ve had no radio and very little promotion, so you’re going into a very hard situation. In major cities though, the shows have been sold out and packed out – so they’re the highs. And I probably made a mistake by going into secondary markets with this situation. You know, it’s the charge of the bloody light brigade – are you gonna hide and do nothing, or go into a secondary market where you’ve never been before with absolutely no promotion?  It makes it very, very hard, and that was my mistake – I was the one who decided to do that.

I’m very proud of the team I’ve put together. Great professionals who’ve kept this thing going for a year with very, very minimal support – it’s remarkable.  So from that end it’s been very successful.

TIMBT: Did you decide to do that based upon some fan feedback from those markets, or was it just a plunge into new waters?

MJ: It was going into new waters.  But I thought, “How can I positively react to the situation that I’ve found myself in?” – which was the apathy of nothing and Universal.  When you’re looking at it, you can either admit defeat and go, “Okay, they’re not going to help me,” and you buy into that whole system, then, that your career is only as good as they allow you to make it.  Or you can be very pro-active, which you are when you start out in your career, because you’re on your own when you start, if you can even get a deal to do shows. And I think the problem comes when you’ve been with a major label for many years.  You start to get a bit lazy; you expect things to be done for you.  So it was a bit of a shock, this year; it taxed my original impulses. But I wanted to be proactive.  It was my decision to extend this tour. I’m not going to give in; I’m not going to abandon this record just because [Universal] have. Most of the shows have been sold out and very successful. I’ve learned more on this tour than I did on the last two combined, and I take full responsibility for the mistakes that happened on my part.

TIMBT: And the reaction of the musicians with you – what has that been?

MJ: They’re terrific!  They’re just real professionals, you know – as you saw at that [Pomona] show.  They give 100% wherever they’re playing, whether it’s to fifteen thousand or two hundred people – they’re the same.  And, we play for each other; I mean, we wouldn’t want to let each other down on the stage.  If one of us wasn’t pulling our weight, then that wouldn’t be right.  We have a lot of respect for each other.

TIMBT: What might have been bad for you – the lack of attendance – was a fan’s dream in its exclusivity and intimacy.  Last night’s House of Blues show was fun, but the musical experienced was diminished for this audience member by that packed crowed, the jostling and noisiness. But do you prefer that?

MJ: I prefer it when you’ve got a packed audience, yeah. The Pomona show and the Ventura show, they’re almost more like rehearsals in that intimacy.  And you have to crack jokes, ‘cause it’s an ego thing as well.  Musicians are egotistical!  The Pomona and Ventura shows were the most poorly attended shows – in terms of attendance to capacity ratio – I’ve ever had.  So it was sort of a strange new experience for me.  One I wouldn’t want to repeat.  (Laughs)

On an ego level, you’ve just got to dive right into it.  You’ve just got to accept it, embrace it. It’s a humbling thing; I don’t think it’s a bad thing.  I think everyone that’s had a career lasting more than five years is going to have ups and downs. The downs and the low points really make the high points that much sweeter.

TIMBT: Speaking of your audience and going back to the live performance issue, I was curious about how – after so many years of touring – you decide what to include or leave off the set list.  When you’re delving into those secondary markets as you mentioned earlier, people may want to hear very particular songs, so do you even think about that or just do what you want?

MJ: Oh, it’s pretty practical. Some songs are excluded just on practical reasons.  Songs like “Good Morning Beautiful,” which rely heavily on keyboards and samples …To try and make it work with a four-piece, stripped-down band meant some songs I could reinterpret, but other ones I just couldn’t – they’d just sound silly.  A lot of songs go out on that count.

Next, I like to have a mixture.  I wanted to do primarily the new album – most of the songs [on this tour] are from the new album. But then I would do mostly the better-known songs, the singles like “Dogs of Lust” and others.  And I basically chose a couple of songs from each of the previous albums. I think that was a good balance: fifty percent was the new album; fifty percent constitutes a couple of songs from each of the previous albums. And I chose by and large the most popular songs …with the exception of …

TIMBT: Of that one.

MJ: (Laughs)  “Uncertain Smile.”

TIMBT:Tell everyone what you said at the Pomona show when audience members screamed for it.

MJ: That song is now under heavy sedation. (Laughs)  It isn’t good to bring it out in front of the other songs. We don’t want to embarrass anyone.

TIMBT: When this tour is over, are you going to go back into the studio to record new material or are you going to tweak unreleased stuff and get it out first?

MJ: There’s a lot of unreleased stuff that I own – pre-Sony stuff and then stuff from the period between Sony and Universal when I was very active – so I can do whatever I want with it.  I’ve got dozens of boxes of multi-tracks that I need to go through, log and start mixing.  But I also need to take a break for writing and give the band some time off, and I said before, I’m forming my own record company, my own label.

TIMBT: Lazarus, right?

MJ: Yeah.  And so I’ve got to look at how I’m going to set that up. I’ve just really had it with the major label system. After I left Sony, I wanted to go independent… At that point I probably should’ve formed my own company, but for years I was in financial difficulties because I had the legal matter with Sony, and all that was running up loads of bills. I just wasn’t in the position to do it.  So there was the allure of signing another deal, and the Nothing/Universal deal seemed very different, initially – I didn’t quite know how under the thumb of Interscope they were. I guess they didn’t either at the time. Things above changed, and then their position changed within the company, and they were suddenly powerless. Castrated. That impacted me extremely badly, and it was a mistake but I didn’t know it at the time – nobody knew it.  It seemed like the right move for everyone, with only the best of intentions. 

I just couldn’t put myself in that situation again. I just do not want to have a long-term deal with a major label. I may do short-term licensing deals with the majors, just because of the way the distribution system works.  At the moment, it’s probably necessary to do that.

TIMBT: So will Lazarus be primarily a venue for The The or will you be looking to sign other bands to it?

MJ: No, no – to be quite honest, that’s a big responsibility, and if you’re going to have responsibility over someone’s career, then you’ve got to take it very seriously.  And I certainly wouldn’t want to mess other artists around.  I will be doing collaborations, though, possibly inside or outside The The.  But there will be collaborations rather than signings.

TIMBT: Is there any of that in the works that you can talk about?

MJ: Yes. The first release may be Gun Sluts.  The next one will probably be Pornography of Despair.  The one after that will probably be a Robert Johnson album that I’ll be collaborating with my guitarist on.  And then there are lots of live recordings that I’ve got.  I want to do a series of instrumental albums as well, a compilation of film music perhaps.

There’s a hell of a lot of stuff, four or five albums that I’ve got needing to be mixed.  Apart from the Robert Johnson one, all the other ones have actually been recorded – they just need to be mixed.

TIMBT: How mentally and spiritually distracting – or destructive – is it to an artist to have to be so involved in the business of releasing and promoting your own music?

MJ: It’s very distracting. To be quite honest, I am the person that likes to be involved in that anyway. I have a natural inclination to, but probably to the detriment of the songwriting.  That’s the irony, really – when you start off, you may have another job to support your music making, which is a hobby. You have more time to devote to music then than you do when you’re a full-time musician, because when you’re a full-time musician, the business stuff takes up more and more and more time.

Quite honestly, it would’ve horrified me when I released NakedSelf if I’d realized that in six or seven month’s time, the main topic of the conversation would’ve been my problems with the record company.  It’s certainly not something I wanted, but then again I couldn’t walk away from it – I couldn’t let them trample over me without hitting back, which is why I’ve been attacking them. I just think they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.  If it means I’ve put off other musicians from signing with them, then I’m glad, because I don’t think they should be allowed to get away with damaging people’s careers, which is what they’ve done to mine.

But at the same point, you’ve got to compartmentalize – you can’t let your feelings of frustration bleed over into the music.  So I’m able to do that for writing songs.  The new things I’m working on have actually intensified because of what I’ve gone through.  I feel quite invigorated and I feel a lot more positive now than I did even a year ago.

TIMBT: You seem like the sort of person that’s spurred to creativity by opposition rather than being put down by it.

MJ: Yeah, I always have been. The more people put me down, the harder I would always try.  The worst thing to do to me is to praise me. I get a bit lazy then. (laughs)  But the more people attack me, the more I dig in and become very determined.

TIMBT: What kinds of feedback have you received from “Corporate Monster Manifesto”?  Do you feel like you’ve become a sounding board for everyone’s  thoughts on the music industry?

MJ: I’ve been inundated with emails and messages from people, a tremendous amount of feedback. People are just passing [the manifesto] around the Internet.  A lot of musicians and people from the industry have been passing it around, too. And I’ve done many interviews about it.  I was approached by the Federal Trade Commission and sat down with them for a few hours, telling them everything that had happened to me.  There’s also been numerous interviews in Billboard and stuff like that.

The only thing is I don’t really want to get known as sort of a one-issue spokesperson, you know.  It’s not something I wanted to get involved in – I felt compelled to get involved in it, and I want to draw attention back to the music and the creativity.  But there’s a lot of things that need to be said about this industry, and I feel compelled to say them.  Others, like Prince or Courtney Love or Steve Albini and a bunch of people have been talking about these issues too, and I think it’s important to get it across.  If younger musicians read it, then they will hopefully wake up to what’s going on.

TIMBT: What can the average fan can do to help not only your situation but also the mess in general that you’re fighting against?

MJ: For my situation – for a The The fan – I would say subscribe to our mailing list and find the Web site.  Also, pass around the manifesto that I wrote – just send it to everyone on your email list, like a chain letter so it goes around and around.  Not only the piece that I wrote, but also the pieces that Steve Albini and Courtney Love wrote, all these pieces that are appearing on the Internet. 

The point of the Internet is it’s ability to communicate. It takes a little while, but it’s incredible…. I get things sent through, some fantastic pieces that have been written that you wouldn’t normally see in a magazine.

So I would just say, distribute the pieces that you come across, keep your eyes and ears open of the pertinent things going around, and try to be more aware really of what’s going on.  Follow the money trail – and be very suspicious.

TIMBT: One question that was raised by your manifesto, which speaks rather vehemently about “middle men”: How have you come to feel about the media over your years of experience in the industry?  Have journalists become “middle men” to you too, or do they still have the potential to help be constructive?

MJ: It depends.  It depends if they’re behind you or against you.  Particularly in Britain, there are some very narrow-minded – actually very petty and spiteful – journalists that I’ve come across that are just not very nice people, just driven by pure spite and bile.  That’s more of a problem in Britain and one of the reasons I wanted to get out of the country, because that’s prevalent – and not only in this industry but in a lot of other industries.  I don’t know why that should be – maybe because it’s an island.  (Laughs) But progressive, investigative, passionate journalism is essential!  It’s an essential component of democracy, and that’s what sadly missing in the political scene in this country.  You just don’t get much good investigative journalism – on television it’s like there are soap opera stars posing as journalists.  I would just say this country’s crying out for it more than ever, and luckily there are magazines like Ad Busters that are trying. But mainstream media is basically just a joke.  There’s very few journalists involved in it, I’d imagine, that can look at themselves in the mirror with any kind of feeling of pride.  I like magazines or books like the Censored series – do you know those books, from the Seven Stories Press?

TIMBT: Yes.  They’re great publishers.

MJ: They’re fantastic.  There are a lot of tremendous journalists, but any journalists that have any integrity and consciences will be shut out of mainstream media because they know that they can’t write the stories they believe in. So that’s a problem.  In the music industry, the main magazines like Rolling Stone or Spin are just a joke, I mean, they’re just towing the corporate line and they’re just gonna put people on the cover or in the magazine that will appeal to the advertisers.

But again, the Internet…. I think that journalists that have integrity and that are passionate about what they do have a tremendous role to play on the Internet, disseminating information and focusing, because it’s just a huge, big, unfocused mess, I suppose.  It does need people to help focus it, to help put some focus to the feelings that are out there.

I think journalists are very important.  I think if you didn’t have them…. Musicians tend to be egotistical as it is, and it’s important for there to be critics. The problem I have is when it stops being criticism and becomes personal, spiteful and abusive, which it often does. I think that reflects sadly on the journalists themselves. They’re not all like that of course – there really are still some great journalists out there.

In terms of the “middle men,” I’m talking about the record companies particularly, who aren’t so much “middle men,” but just like these middle monsters, really, because they just suck up most of the money and clog everything up. There’s really no need for them anymore. They must be replaced. They just soak up ninety percent of the revenues. I think that there has to be a way around that.  But it’s going to take a bit of time – they will fight tooth and nail to maintain their privilege.

But I would imagine the idea for me is that the musician/artist – or whatever you want to call it – owns their rights and are in complete control of their career, and then they hire and fire whatever middle men they may need.

TIMBT: Right – instead of having those people forced upon them.

MJ: Yeah, and to help with the communication and connection with the audience.  That’s the way it should be.