RUFUS
WAINWRIGHT Comes Full Circle
By Michael Raine
PHOTO : V . TONY HAUSER
“ I ’ m
enjoying today ,” Rufus Wainwright says , smiling through the webcam while flanked by jam-packed , ceiling-high bookshelves in his California home . He ’ s looking very casual , his hair a bit disheveled with a grey beard that embraces his 47 years . We ’ d agreed to delay our scheduled Zoom chat by an hour so that we could both watch Joe Biden ’ s inauguration speech . “ It was good . It ’ s all been very , very real here in Los Angeles , especially with the COVID numbers being so bad and the fires and everything ,” he adds , displaying more relief than jubilation that a new political era has arrived .
The city is central in his story these days , both personally and professionally . “ Oh yeah , make no doubts about it . Part of my reason for coming back to L . A . at this point was to claim my position in the Pantheon ,” he says , punctuating the sentence with a bit of a laugh so as to not be taken too seriously in his self-aggrandizement . But he is serious about keeping the family legacy alive as he approaches the elder-statesman stage of his impressive career . “ Yes , there ’ s a certain financial aspect to it , and I mean , I don ’ t expect to be put up on the shelf when Neil Young dies or anything in that sense .
But nonetheless , I do strongly feel that that era of singer-songwriters , which my parents were a part of , really held [ their craft ] to a very high standard , both in terms of music and lyrics , and the marriage of those two , and production as well . So , I ’ ve come here to , sort of , just help hold up the fort a little bit , because obviously they ’ re not going to be around forever , these giants , and this is the tradition that I believe in .”
The city of Los Angeles has no shortage of both lovers and haters . Possibly more than even New York , the City of Angels represents an almost extreme exaggeration of American possibilities , from the glamour of Hollywood to the despair of Skid Row . Wainwright , in his own small way , is fortunate to represent the uplifting side of that contrast .
“ My career began in Los Angeles , really . I mean , I was brought up in Montreal , of course , and I did a lot there over the years , but it was really when I came to Hollywood and I made my first album that I was , you know , thrust upon the mainstream , whether they liked it or not [ laughs ]. And so , in a lot of ways , this is really the epicenter , for me , in terms of my professional life as an attempted pop star [ laughs again ]. So , L . A . is a very important city for me ,” Wainwright says , though notes that even more importantly , he and his husband , Jörn Weisbrodt , also moved back to L . A . to be closer to their daughter , Viva , whom they share custody of with her mother , Lorca Cohen ( yes , daughter of Leonard ).
And while his old home towns of Montreal and New York will “ always be central in my heart ,” Wainwright says , it ’ s L . A . that he feels lived up to the hype , for him at least . “ You know , I failed in Montreal and several times in New York . It ’ s funny , because with Montreal , it was after my success in Los Angeles , actually , where I kind of returned to Montreal thinking that everybody would just be so excited to have me back , and they weren ’ t , necessarily . I mean , they were somewhat trepidatious . I think there ’ s this kind of Canadian instinct to be weary of American success . So , it was kind of weird to come back to Montreal for several years , but it got great eventually . And New York , I failed miserably at the outset . I mean , I went down to sing downtown at the time of like Jeff Buckley and stuff and my whole sensibility – this sort of this very dandyish persona who loved opera and played piano – really didn ’ t make sense in the hip , heroin-chic downtown of my era . It was really only when I came to California that it clicked . So , I am very much indebted to this town .”
34 CANADIAN MUSICIAN