Elefant Interview

Elefant Interview
By alexander laurence

Elefant is a cool band from New York City. They started in 2002, and soon toured heavily and supported bands like Stellastarr* and Interpol. Their first album was Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid (2003). They were very popular immediately. After two years of relentless touring, they signed to a bigger label and started working on their second record. The Black Magic Show (2006) came in April. They already had finished another supporting slot with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, before they went off on their own headlining tour for this album. The second album has a bigger sound. It is more rocking. It was very shocking to heard for some fans. They didn’t realize that Elefant has more layers and mystery to them than your average group.

I spoke to Jeff James in Portland right before their show. When I caught up with them Diego was off listening to the Argentina friendly that was going on. He was wearing his Argentina team jersey and seemed to be really into football. He would be glad to know that Argentina has done good so far in the World Cup. I spoke to their manager in LA a few weeks later and I found out that their tour of Mexico was amazing and mind-blowing, and twice as intense as some of their American audiences.

Diego Garcia: vocals
Jeff James: bass/vocals
Mod: guitars
Kevin McAdams: drums

AL: How has the tour been going? This is your first headlining tour for the second album?

Jeff: It’s been very good. Very quick and painless. The LA and the New York shows were stand out gigs. They both felt important at least. We had a new record and everyone came to check it out.

AL: The show in LA was at the Wiltern, which is a rather large venue. Some places like Berbati’s Pan are a little smaller.

Jeff: That has to do with the state of radio in America. The place where we are getting played on the radio, we play big venues, and where we are not played on the radio, it’s smaller clubs. My guess is they find out about your band in the bugger cities first, and the rest of world finds about it later. I don’t know about these things. I just learned how to play bass and joined a band. I should have taken more statistics and business classes. I think about that stuff half of the time now.

AL: How did you all meet?

Jeff: We were in different bands in New York City. It’s a normal story. Diego played in a band that played with Kevin and Mod’s band. That is how they met. I met Diego at an Interpol show. He didn’t see me play that night. He was there to see Interpol who was playing later that night. He saw me hanging around and asked me if I played bass guitar. I thought that he had seen the show. I said: “Yeah, I play bass. Did you see the show?” He said: “No, I didn’t see it, but I like the way you look.” Whatever. My band soon fizzled out. I called him and he was still looking for a bass player. He asked a lot of people to play bass in Elefant. And here we are.

AL: I heard that Shawn Christensen of Stellastarr* played in a bunch of bands with members of Elefant.

Jeff: Shawn grew up with Kevin. They both grew up in upstate New York. I am not sure how they met, but they have known each other for years. Mod recorded Stellastarr*’s first demos. Shawn played bass in a very early version of Elefant. It was called Circus. Diego asked all these people who were lead singers later in other bands, to play bass, like Paul Banks, from Interpol, and Marcus, from Ambulance LTD.

AL: It seems funny now that you all knew each other?

Jeff: I moved to New York in the summer of 2000. There were a lot of bands playing at Luna Lounge, Sidewalk Café, and the club Tiswas. It was all in the Lower East Side. We all kept bumping into each other. That was right around the time that the Strokes started to happen. You would see bands play there all the time. Things were happening for all these bands at the same time.

AL: Did the success of the Strokes inspire you?

Jeff: That was in 2001. We started in 2002, and there were a lot of bands that were taking off at the same time. There were a lot of people in New York at the time.

AL: Diego had already written some of those songs on the first album.

Jeff: He definitely had a few. The first song I learned was “Misfit.” That was the first song we ever played together. I came into the room and we played that on the first day. Some of the first record was already written. We have some awesome songs that we have never recorded. Hopefully one day we will go back and re-record them. Maybe one day we can put them out as b-sides.

AL: How do you decide what goes on the album?

Jeff: Whatever fits. We are very album conscious, music nerds. At least I am. I have respect for the album as a concept and a piece of art. Some people think the first record and the second record are so different. They thought the first album was so planned. Like it was “Hey, let’s do some 1980s rip-off thing.” Those were the songs that fit together. We had songs with different styles that we were working on then. We had songs that were more rocking or heavier. We also didn’t want to have a long record. At the time there were all these CDs that were sixty-five minutes, and you couldn’t even listen to the whole thing. I love Radiohead, but I haven’t heard the end of Amnesiac. We were conscious of having a record that you could listen to at one time. People think we have changed and that we are more rock. We have always been a rock band and we have always had those types of songs.

AL: Some of these songs were played at the previous tours?

Jeff: Yeah. We played a lot of these songs before when we were on tour. When you put out an album that is thirty minutes long, by the time you play a headlining tour, you need more songs. You can’t just play thirty minutes. You have to give people their money’s worth. You want to play for at least forty-five minutes. We used to play “The Clown” and “Black Magic Show.” We played half of the songs from the second record in the previous shows. There were a few songs that didn’t make it on the record too.

AL: When were the songs written for the second album?

Jeff: The writing was happening all the time. We had tons of songs built up from before. We played a new song at the record release party for “Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid.” The writing had started then. Some songs didn’t make the second record because they were out of their time. I wish we could record more. That is one of our main goals after this record and tour: we don’t want to have three years between records. We don’t want that to happen ever again. We must have written sixty songs. That was frustrating. We only released eleven songs, but they were the best. There are still some good songs that didn’t make it. There are other songs that just got old and we couldn’t find the excitement to play them anymore. We have some demos. They will see the light of day.

AL: Diego writes all the songs?

Jeff: We tear them apart and put them back together again. Diego is a songwriter. He is really not a complex musician. He lets us take care of that stuff. We are not making it more complex, but making it more musically exciting. Part of Diego’s genius is that he writes simple songs. Every great song is very simple.

AL: Diego plays guitar too, right?

Jeff: Yeah. When he was fifteen, he learned how to play every song by the Velvet Underground. He wasn’t studying riffs by Jimmy Page. He was just playing chords. He was just writing songs. He didn’t care about riffs, solos, or even playing good.

AL: Do you think Diego will ever play guitar onstage?

Jeff: Yeah. We leave stuff open. You can’t blow your load too early, so to speak. Like, on the second record, Mod sang a lot. He didn’t sing on the first record at all. It was just me doing the backing vocals. On the second record it was me and Mod singing backing vocals. Maybe on the third record we will have a lot more singing on the record. We can have three part harmonies, and explore all that. Then also Diego is a great guitar player, but he hasn’t played any guitar on any of the previous records. That is another direction to happen with the music Elefant. It will definitely happen because we always want to try new things.

AL: Is it much different being on Hollywood Records, which is a bigger label?

Jeff: The major difference is the money that we spend. There is a big difference when all your records are in the stores. That is all you can ask for really. It’s great when you records are more available and out there for people to buy. Every label is the same. There are no more cool labels. All labels have horror stories and they have examples of great bands that have made great records. All labels have fucked things up. Labels are trying to catch up with things. The radio stations are all corporate. Bands can’t even get played on the stations. There are as many amazing bands right now than there ever has been, maybe more. The radio station and the culture do not reflect that excitement. Nobody is having a hit. If some of these great bands were being discovered and having hits, things would be like the Swinging Sixties in London. It would be crazy. It’s sad that these great songs take so long to find an audience.

AL: I was hoping that the Internet could create a new musical society. But a thing like Pitchfork has created a bunch of musical snobs, and haters of music. The Internet has created certain writers who use their own personal dilemmas to view music, and reduce everything to a knowable value.

Jeff: This Pitchfork thing is insane. As it moves to more instant assess and more Internet based, it creates more power. Some of those people are into it for the greater good of music. They all think they are Lester Bangs. They are not. They are just some assholes. We had some guy at Pitchfork who thought we were stupid. It was like he thought we didn’t even read books. He was going on like “Who are these guys to reference great literature?” He thought that we didn’t even read these books. Fuck you! We all went to Universities. What fucking community college did you attend? You probably went to a computer college. Those writers should include all the schools they attended. Pitchfork can lick my balls basically. It’s the most read website, but we know we are good. They can tear it up. We have better pop songs than anyone else.

AL: Just because Diego doesn’t play guitar, and he is a front man, people might see it as not so serious. So might think you are more pop like Duran Duran than Pink Floyd?

Jeff: Yes. We are entertainers. We are playing pop songs. It’s not as serious as people want it to be. There is a lot of humor. People don’t get the jokes I guess. How do you say “I offered her chocolates and beer.” Those are funny lyrics. I don’t understand when people say: “How can they sing such absurd lyrics? These lyrics are horrible.” They are pop lyrics. “She loves you, yeah yeah yeah.” How fucking simple is that?

AL: There is a lot of talk about you being a New York band. Do you or any of these bands live in New York anymore?

Jeff: Everyone is so busy nowadays. Everyone is always on tour. There is no more hanging out like we used to. There is no New York scene. We recorded our new album in Los Angeles. We were not complaining. I like all the new records from those bands. I think the new records by the Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs are amazing. I think our record is amazing. What you going to look to Canada? It’s okay. There is still a lot of action in New York. It’s just music.

AL: We are just talking about it too much?

Jeff: The more you talk about it, the less mystery there is. There are people that are amazing at doing that. Bob Dylan has never been honest in an interview in his life. It’s all a mystery. R.E.M. was like that. Radiohead took that and ran away with it. They had artwork on their record that was too bizarre to make heads or tales of it. Mystery is a big part of the band.

AL: Did you work with Ed Buller?

Jeff: We started recording with Ed Buller. The label wanted us to work with someone who was bigger. They wanted a hit maker. There was a lot of pressure on Ed. We worked with him in LA too.

AL: He is more known for his work with English bands like Suede and Pulp.

Jeff: He is amazing. He likes to tinker. We all do. He likes to work with tones. It would have taken a lot longer to make this record with Ed Buller. The pressure of the situation was too much. Everyone flipped out. The label gave Ed a hard time. He left and we got Don Gilmore, who was great. He did a Linkin Park record. We were never going to sound like them. Don created a good atmosphere. He is a funny guy. He must be one of the best producers going right now. We wanted to do something like the first Stone Roses record. It’s like fifteen years later and you are still hearing new things on it. We wanted to make a feast for the ears. We recorded it at NRG in Burbank. We lived at the Oakwood Apartments for four months. A lot of bands and stage moms live there. I thought the Oakwood was like this new place. But Ed Buller said he stayed there twenty years ago when he recorded a Psychedelic Furs record. I read that Nirvana lived there. Wu-Tang Clan stayed there and RZA was there.

AL: What are you doing this summer?

Jeff: We are going overseas. We are going to Mexico in June. We have never been there. That is going to be fun. We are hoping to go to Europe soon. The record is already out in Australia and Japan, so we are probably going over there very soon. That will be exciting. We don’t get played on the radio, so it is great to tour, because that is main way for us to make fans.

(Diego Garcia joins us)

Diego: Argentina just won. It was a friendly. It was 2-0. Everyone looked healthy and good.

AL: Did you see the Arsenal Vs. Barcelona match?

Diego: Yeah.

AL: Arsenal almost won, but they let it slip away. We were talking to each other a few months ago about doing an interview. I am doing it right now. This is it.

Diego: I just did four interviews with Mexico. They were all live on the radio. They were all in Spanish.

AL: Do you have anything to say to the people out there in Spanish?

Diego: Si. Te quiero.

AL: That’s it?

Diego: Te quiero con todo mi corazon.

AL: Thank you. Diego. What do your parent think of the band?

Jeff: My parents have been very supportive of the whole rock and roll shenanigans.

AL: Is everyone from the East Coast?

Jeff: Yeah, but up and down. I grew up in Atlanta. Diego grew up in Florida. Mod grew in New Jersey. And Kevin is from Upstate New York. I used to go to shows in Atlanta growing up. I moved away went I started college. Most bands came through there.

Website: www.elefantweb.com