Exit
Well, it had a different value to them. It
didn’t exist in the same saturation. Nowadays it’s difficult to escape music, and to
think there were people who, if they didn’t
play it themselves or weren’t in earshot
of people playing it, never heard it. Yeah.
They didn’t have portable radios
until 50 years ago or so. And there’s
something different that happens
to the song when you learn it, it’s
not the same song that you listen
to passively on a record. It changes.
And it becomes a part of you.
And it’s not like many other things. It’s
not like playing a sport, or knowing a
code in a video game or something. I feel
like it’s one of those few things that is
unique to the art of making music. It’s
true. One other thing I would say
about the book is that putting [it]
together we knew that most people
weren’t going to be able to play
these, but there’s a pretty substantial visual element to the book, too.
I think a lot of what people will take
from it is the visual element.
I don’t know, I think you’re underestimating the population of people who are
going to be psyched to play and interpret
and arrange these songs. You go back
and you think about how the Stones used
to play Beatles songs, and you’d never go
to shows and see that, but now you could
MUSIC
go to a show and have somebody be
like, “Hey, this is one of those new Beck
songs. You haven’t heard it.” I would
love that. And one of the things I
thought about was the fact that
some songs over the years have
been written in completely different eras and didn’t find their
definite version until much later.
There’s a song called “Lovesick
Blues” by Hank Williams that I
learned as a teenager, and I found
out later it had been written in
the 20s as sort of a Tin Pan Alley song. But he turned it into this
classic country version. He really
made it his own, and I think that’s
happened over and over.
I think that’s what you were saying before about making the music your own,
but still leaving it open enough so that
when someone does add their own style,
it doesn’t impede that interpretation.
Yeah, and people are getting much
more direct access to songs, so
there’s less of an ability to be able
to have a song be an extension of a
pop personality. People are gravitating to a song whether it’s by
Adele or a country artist or Deerhunter. I find, more and more,
younger people just care about the
song. The song will
prevail as time goes on.
HUFFINGTON
12.09.12