Song Exploder - Aimee Mann - Patient Zero

Episode Date: April 21, 2017

Aimee Mann is a Grammy- and Oscar-nominated singer-songwriter. In the 80s, she fronted the band Til Tuesday, and in 1993, she released her first solo album. In 2017, Aimee released her 9th album, Mental Illness, and in this episode, she tells the story of how the song "Patient Zero" was made. I talked to Aimee along with the song’s co-writer, Jonathan Coulton. The interview was recorded in front of a live audience, on board the JoCo Cruise, a music and comedy themed cruise organized by Jonathan Coulton. songexploder.net/aimee-mann

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hurway. Amy Mann is a Grammy and Oscar-nominated singer-songwriter. In the 80s, she fronted the band Till Tuesday, and in 1993, she released her first solo album. In 2017, Amy released her ninth album, Mental Illness. And in this episode, she tells the story of how the song Patient Zero from that album was made. I talked to Amy along with the song's co-writer, Jonathan Colton.

The interview was recorded in front of a live audience on board the Joko Cruise, a music and comedy cruise organized by Jonathan Colton. Here's Amy Mann on Song Exploder. Life is grand, and wouldn't you like to have it go? My name is Amy Mann. This song was originally written, or inspired by meeting the actor Andrew Garfield at a party. I had seen him in Social Network. I was a big fan of Social Network, and I think.

thought he was really great. And my husband was with me, and so we met him. We were very excited to meet him. And we were talking, and it was one of these big Hollywood parties. This was before Spider-Man, so he had just sort of landed in Los Angeles and was completely freaked out by being around super famous people and huge amounts of money and studios. Like, just the whole thing seemed to be not his thing at all.

And so that kind of gave me the idea for a story about someone who comes to Hollywood, a real artist with the promise that they're going to be in a big movie and then kind of gets chewed up and spit out by more corrupt influences. This is the crummy voice memo on my iPhone. I wrote it as a waltz. It was in three-four time. You know, I love writing waltzes on acoustic guitar. So it came really easily for me, but it also, because it was so much my bag is acoustic guitar waltz time, that it was not that exciting to me. I thought it could be something, but I just didn't have any sense of perspective about it.

And so, you know, I was kind of at the point where I knew that I had run out of ideas for it and thought, well, I'll just hand it to somebody else. For me, this record, I wanted it to be very soft and acoustic and depressing and melancholy. And I thought I should have Jonathan, of course. I am all of those things. Sing his sad, soft 70s-style vocals. I take that as a compliment. My name is Jonathan Colton, and I co-wrote this song with Amy.

Amy sent me that voice memo, I listened to it on the computer in my office, and she had said, this song is dead to me. I can't make it go. And you could do whatever you want. You can really wreck it. I don't care. It's a little bit I can't lose situation because if you come up with something, then great. And if you don't, then it was a piece of garbage. I was never going to use. When you're taking somebody else's song and trying to change it, what you don't want to do is learn it too well because you will get stuck in the same rut that they are in.

So I like to listen to it a couple of times just to get it and then let it unfold the way it wants to unfold. Putting it into 4-4 came pretty easily to me because once I started doing it that way, it made a lot more sense. And the lyrics sort of straightened out. And I don't know, I don't know how else to describe it, it sounds a little pretentious,

but it felt like it wanted to be in 4. I thought it was great. I loved it, and it really did what I was hoping it would do, which is completely revitalized the song for me. It afforded me a rhythm that didn't come as naturally to me, but made it more interesting. We finished this record last summer at my producer Paul Bryan studio. We were going to keep it pretty simple,

but this is probably the fullest production on this record. It's just irresistible. I mean, you're in the studio and you're like, you know, we probably should put some percussion. Jay Bell Rose played drums. He is such an interesting drummer, and we wanted to have him play on this because he doesn't approach it like a drummer

playing a drum kit necessarily. He picks drums and sounds and pieces of percussion that he thinks fits in with the song. He's kind of an oddball. As he was playing, I kept picturing the traffic going, through Los Angeles like it was blood going through veins. And I said something to him about it,

and he said, that's what I was thinking, that it was blood going through veins. He's got this very organic, evocative feeling to him. Well, now that there's percussion, you really want to hear some bass. Paul played on this song. He's my bass player on the road. My name is Paul Bryan.

On this track, I played an old 1960s Vox base called an Apollo 4. It's a pretty cheap bass, and it doesn't Nate very well. You can kind of hear the out of tune notes. I like this in a bass. I'm very influenced by upright players. And I think that little pitchiness adds personality. And then Paul is like, let me just write some string charts. So there's a song called Tinsletown in the Rain by this band called The Blue Nile. It's another Los Angeles song and kind of evocative of the same flavor. And it's got the strings.

And so I wanted to have pittsicotta strings to sort of echo that. Originally, I was not going to have strings on that many songs, but his charts were so fantastic and different. He's a great arranger. That's Jamie Edwards. That's Paul's piano. It's a Steinway that's old and dark sounding and his sadness built right into it.

Jamie is a person you can say, this is what this song is about, this is the vibe, and then he really replicates. It's so beautifully sad. He's just the greatest. You know, it's not a happy song. It's not the best that Hollywood has to offer in this song. And also there's a lot of references to Day of the Locus and sort of Raymond Chandler,

like the version of Los Angeles that's darker and more noir and more disturbing. There's a lyric that refers to someone named Carmen Sternwood, which is a character in a Raymond Chandler novel. Carmen Sternwood probably pull that trigger for fun. Carmen Sternwood is the daughter of a wealthy man, and she's just a nutbag who shoots a guy because it's hilarious, and she's crazy. But it's really an implication of wealth and Hollywood

and being spoiled and narcissistic has brought her to this. So I felt like it was a character that made sense to reference. but as I was writing it, I thought that it was Sherwood and then after it was mixed, I realized it was the wrong thing and so I came in and sang a st-oh on my lead vocal but we did not do it on the background vocals so you can hear that it's Sherwood on the background vocals. Carmen Sherwood probably pull that trigger for fun

well this song, it's definitely fictional but my brother-in-law is Sean Penn. So there's occasional brushes with movie stars and seeing how they are and having conclusions about what is good about being a star and what maybe it's not so good for people. I think also just my own experience

being a musician where the first band I was in was pretty popular for not very long, but I got. enough of a taste of that to feel like, I don't know how people do this. Have fans follow you home and get your phone number and call you up. And like, I don't understand how people cope with that.

That freaked me out. And so I think when I met Andrew Garfield and felt like it's a weird world. It really is a very strange world. And you have to have certain resources to navigate that world. So I was kind of worried about him, you know. But that was partially based.

on my brief brush with fame. I came out after most of the song was put together to do the background vocals. He was just singing a little melody that I thought was really great, and I said we should make that a bridge and asked him to write words for the bridge. In the hills where Hope is such a constant companion,

close enough to almost touch the lights of the canyon. That line in the hills where I hope is such a constant companion felt like the topic sentence, the sort of summary of the story. The other half of the couplet is close enough to almost touch the lights of the canyon. I am not really that familiar with the geography of Los Angeles. So when I sent that,

I wasn't entirely sure what that would mean if that was a thing that you could look and see lights in a canyon, and if that would mean that you were living in a place that was a fancy place or a less fancy place, I wasn't exactly sure what it meant, but I felt like I had heard other songs about Los Angeles talking about canyons, and that I was probably pretty safe in mentioning it,

and if it was completely off the mark, Amy would tell me. You're on firm ground. Close enough to almost touch the lights of the canyon. I did know that I wanted a particular sound in the background vocals. I don't really know where I got this idea from, I think, probably more easy listening records from like the 70s. It's probably Jonathan's influence

with his Acapello vibes. Amy Mann does not like the major seventh chord. It has a certain cheeseball quality, I suppose. But I like it a lot. I slather my songs with major seventh chords. There was a point where we had put some layers on and there were too many major seventh chords for Amy's comfort.

And so the first time through, you notice it doesn't go to the major seventh and goes all the way up to the tonic again. And so we save the major seventh for the second time through. It makes it more of a tension rather than a statement. By the end, it painted a picture.

It had sort of soundtrack elements to me of what this story was. It felt very Los Angeles at night and you see the lights in the canyon. I wanted it to have a sense of compassion You know, it's sad when good people can't negotiate a corrupt system. This person comes to Hollywood and they're like, this is going to be great. And it's just all terrible.

Just all garbage and they have to leave. I mean, it's a sad story. And now here's Patient Zero by Amy Mann in its entirety. They served you champagne like a hero. When you landed someone carried your back. From here on out your patience erode Smelling ether as they hand you the rack Life is good you look around and think I'm in the right neighborhood

But honey you just moved in life is grand And wouldn't you like to have it go As why Focus, Pocus with some magic Life is and think I'm in the right neighbor and just moved in. Life is grand, and wouldn't you like to last? Farm and Sternwood projects like a ring that was doomed from the start.

Visit songexploader.net for a link to buy this song and to watch the music video, and for links to learn more about Amy Mann and her collaborators. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs.

And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Weinrobe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city. Like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina,

Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage. And then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs were out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks.

Song Exploder is produced by me, along with Christian Coons. Special thanks to Jonathan Colton for inviting me on the Joko Cruise to make this episode. You can learn more about the Joko Cruise at Jococruise.com. That's J-O-C-O-Cruise.com. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary cutting-edge podcasts made possible by the Knight Foundation and listeners like you.

Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. Next time on Song Exploder, Little Dragon. You can find Song Exploder on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, at Song Exploder. And you can find all the past and future episodes. episodes of the show at SongExploder.net or wherever you download podcasts. My name is Rishi Kesh your way. Thanks for listening. RadioTopia.