Mama, this surely is an interview

By Meredith Gordon

Getting a record deal as an unknown band is hard enough, but getting a second one after your original label goes under is a feat most bands would find impossible. Not so for Marcy Playground, who took its name from the "experimental hippie" Marcy Open School lead singer/songwriter John Wozniak attended as a kid. As soon as these boys watched EMI go the way of the Edsel, they found a home at Capitol and promptly re-released their eponymous debut album. Since then, their hit single, "Sex and Candy," has made it onto the "play at least once every hour" list of every major rock station that doesn't transmit from within a cave. With a slight change in personnel (Jared Kotler, who played drums and some bass on the album, was replaced by Dan Reiser on the former and Dylan Keefe on the latter), Marcy has hit it big, touring across America and Europe and appearing on every TV show you can imagine--120 Minutes, MTV Live, LoveLine, Dave, and Conan, to name a few. They even have a date with Leno scheduled next month. After a show at NYC's Knitting Factory, I got to talk to Wozniak for a bit. Here's what ensued...

The Yale Herald: Other than providing you with the name of your band, what other influences did your childhood have on your music?

John Wozniak: I grew up on Van Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix is the great lost lyricist, you know. People forget about
his lyrics for his phenomenal virtuosity on guitar, which is sad because his lyrics are just absolute genius. I gained a lot of inspiration listening to Jimi's lyrics, and reading books like The Neverending Story by Michael Ende and The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. I think mostly I just like stories. And what I do is I create really short stories--you know, three minute stories.

YH: Did you always want to be involved in music?

JW: Yeah. In a word, yeah. I remember just wanting to do nothing else. At 13, I picked up the guitar, started writing songs, started smoking cigarettes, anything to be cool. You know, at 13, the most important thing in your world is to be as cool as possible, or to be as little of an outcast as you can possibly be. So anything to lessen my burden as an outcast was welcome, and smoking cigarettes and playing guitar ended up being my bag.

YH: So, how would you characterize your music? Rock?
Al-ternative?

JW: (Smiles) I would characterize it as electric folk. Whether or not it's "alternative," I don't know. See, the thing about alternative is, it started out as a bin in a record store. They didn't know what to do with these records they got from these independent record labels, so they put them in a bin and the record store labeled it `alternative.' So that has sort of become a corrupted word. And then they decided to call it `new music' or `modern rock' or things like that, and I think that's actually more accurate for what it is, because it's new. It's different. I believe in people doing something that is fucking different from what the last guy did. I don't listen to music I feel is contrived. It just annoys the hell out of me. It's a record label fantasy. It sounds like something you've heard before, but mildly catchy. That to me is completely and utterly worthless, culturally. I think that the bands that have been significant are the bands who have stepped out on a limb musically, maybe not with any message, but musically they have tried to do something unique. Those bands are few and far between on a universal scale, but there are a lot of them. I think my favorites right now are probably Radiohead--a revolutionary band, and Built to Spill--a band that is culturally taking music somewhere else. They are out there. Bands of the past have been like all the famous ones--Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, you know, they pushed the envelope in music.

YH: So why do you think your music has become so popular?

JW: Probably because our music is song-oriented. People just like songs in music nowadays. And a lot of the time it's groove-oriented music that makes it onto the radio, as opposed to something that people can really grab onto and hold for a longer period of time. I mean, a groove will last a certain amount of time, but then it loses its novelty, whereas a song that grabs your attention in a very special way, in a very personal way, could be there for the rest of your life. You can have that same feeling every time you listen to it for the rest of your life. That's what I care about. I like songs.

YH: Do you worry that people will see you as the band that plays "Sex and Candy" and nothing more?

JW: No. I think that when people like the single they go and buy the record. And they listen to the whole record, and when they come to the show, they know all the songs, they sing all the songs. It's not turning out that they only know "Sex and Candy," that they just stand there until "Sex and Candy" is played. It's not like that at all. I mean, people come out, and they're just jammin' the entire time with all the songs. And that's the best possible scenario for a band and a songwriter. That three-minute snippet that goes on the radio, that's only one-twelfth of the record, and it should just be that. It's a freebie. That one song is a three-minute commercial for the record. That's what it is. It's a door that opens for people to come and check out the whole record. It's not the end-all be-all of Marcy Playground.

YH: On the record you released last year, most of the songs are really short. No choruses, no guitar solos. Why?

JW: A lot of the time, a band will throw a guitar solo into a song just to have a guitar solo, just because they think it's supposed to be there even though it serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. That's really annoying to me. Really annoying. In my opinion, music is not for masturbation. If it serves a purpose in the song, then a guitar solo makes sense and I understand it and I believe in it. And there are a lot of songs that have brilliant guitar solos that are significant and mean something--Led Zeppelin in particular and Jimi Hendrix are people who were considered guitar heroes... It's not just because they were really good guitar players, it's because they were so incredibly tasteful with what they did in their placing of notes. And if you can do that, then God bless you. But I'm not that kind of guy, so I'm not just going to throw in a guitar solo gratuitously.

YH: So, why do you write and play music? Are you trying to tackle all sorts of deep, meaningful, important issues?

JW: No, absolutely not. I try and stay as far away from anything significant as possible. I just write songs that aren't bad, as far as I'm concerned. I just spend as much time trying to make the songs as not bad as possible. And in doing so I like to tell a story. And if the story is about something in my life, it's meaningful for me, but completely meaningless in a social sense. I think. If somebody finds important the social ramifications of my music, then that's their own bag, but it's not meant for that. It's just meant to be cathartic for me. And to tell a story. (Laughs) I'm going for this massive catharsis. I'm trying to purge my soul by the time I'm 30. Hopefully by the time I'm 30 my entire soul will be purged.

YH: So what will you do then?

JW: (Grins) Kick back on a beach in the Bahamas and drink margaritas.

YH: Sounds like a plan.

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