The New Yorker Radio Hour - Aimee Mann Live, with Atul Gawande

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

Aimee Mann, the celebrated Los Angeles singer and songwriter, recently released an album called “Queens of the Summer Hotel.” It was inspired in part by Susanna Kaysen’s best-selling memoir “Girl, Interrupted,” about Kaysen’s time in a psychiatric hospital. Mann sat down with Atul Gawande at The New Yorker Festival to talk about the new album, the lessons of living through a pandemic, and how liberated she felt when she broke her ties with major record labels. “When you’re at a record label and you’re trying to ascertain whether something can be a hit or a single, you listen in a different way—and then everything sounds like garbage,” she said. Mann decided that she didn’t “want to keep baring my soul to people who hate everything I’m doing.”  This segment was originally aired November 26, 2021. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. If you're familiar with the musician Amy Mann, it may be because of this 1980s earworm. Or you may remember her soundtrack for the film Magnolia back in 1999. Amy Mann has been celebrated for her mastery of the craft of songwriting for a long time. In a review in the New Yorker years ago, Nick Hornby said that man-wry-writing. quote, proper lyrics instead of 10th-rate poetry. Her most recent album is called Queens of the Summer Hotel,

which was inspired by the memoir, Girl Interrupted. Last fall, Amy Mann appeared at the New Yorker Festival, and will start with her singing. There's a girl up in her bed, laid against her skin, I see you. Hoping the plane covers the dread, keeps the secret scent,

I see you You think there's no love there to hear I can see There's a girl all over a clue Trying to break her fall I see you I'll find when the lift Cling it to the wall I see you

It's flat Thank you. See as the sky. I see inside. Dryer than a night. I don't see. It cross stand. Thank you so much.

That was Amy Mann performing I See You with Jonathan Colton and Jason Hart. That's from her most recent album, Queens of the Summer Hotel, which was inspired in part by Girl Interrupted, the best-selling memoir by Susanna Kaysen. The title the Summer Hotel actually refers to the psychiatric hospital in Kaysen's book. At the New Yorker Festival last fall, man spoke with staff writer Atoll Gawande, whom you might know better as an expert on public health, on COVID, and much more. But Atul is also a passionate music fan. You know, you sent me the album, and I really appreciate that.

And I saw it, I got to listen to it on a day I'd come out of my surgery clinic. for those who don't know, I'm up in Boston and I work as a surgeon and in public health. And one song that called 15 Minutes got to me. And Susanna Kaysen, who wrote the memoir, Girl Interrupted, it opens with her going in to see a psychiatrist she's never seen before. And 15 minutes later, she is involuntarily, more or less, involuntarily admitted to, Kind of coerced, yeah, coerced to... To be admitted to McLean's psychiatric hospital where she'd spend almost the next two years.

Yeah. Which is a long time. It's a long time. And 15 minutes was about the 15-minute appointment, which my day is made up of 15-minute appointments. It is gruesome to think about, like, how we move people in an hour, right? Yeah, I mean, it's... I made it a funny song, but it isn't, yeah. He's an over-the-top psychiatrist by the time you're done.

You might say a couple of the lyrics about Electroshock, for example. Yeah. Let me see if I can remember it. Hold on a second. Let's see it. Let's do it. 15, give me 15 minutes. That is all I need to make the call.

With only 15, only 15, only 15. Women are so simple after all. Something like that. In the time it takes. In the time it takes to walk around the block, I can have you scheduled for electroshock. Something like that. Anyway, so I didn't really take it that seriously.

It is. It's surprisingly, I mean, the memoir is actually hysterical, and you managed to bring out, I understand your attraction to it, right? It's dark and it's funny at the same time. I mean, I think that that's sort of how you have to be. If you are, you know, you find yourself in a mental institution and you're surrounded by other mental patients. You know, you have to have some humor about it, right?

Yeah. Well, so, you know, I reread the memoir for this show. And the thing that struck me was it's, it is funny and at the same time this dark sense that here are these people who've lost. the thread of, I mean, almost all of them have attempted to commit suicide at one point or another in the book, and they've lost the thread of what makes life worth living. And in my own work, whether it's cancer patients or others, the question that I often like to ask people are questions about what they find makes life worth living so that we make sure we preserve that along the way. And it's one of my favorite questions to ask, as it's turned out, like one

person I got to write about, had said that, look, if I can eat chocolate ice cream and watch football on television, that will be good enough for me. Wow. Like, as long as you say that, so, low bar, what would it be for you? What's the minimum quality of life you'd find acceptable? Being around, being around my friends, you know, yeah, I think that, I think that's, that's the most important thing in making music. I was going to say, you didn't immediately say music.

If you couldn't make music, that would really... Dude, I think if the pandemic has taught me anything, it's that people need to be around other human beings and some, you know, more than one. Sorry, my spouse, but more than just one. It's, yeah, I need a little group of friends. And that's, you know, which is what a band is. And that's why, you know, I like to play live

and I love playing with other musicians. It's so, it's like a shared thing. It's like three brains forming to make this other thing. The next song that you're going to do is Goose Snow Cone. Yeah. And this one struck me, but maybe I'm misunderstanding it, as being out of keeping with your dark tendencies, it was based on a cute Instagram photo

that Friends posted of a snowy white cat. Well, it was inspired by the cat And then immediately Took a left turn into being very depressing So Oh, good So yes So don't worry

Yeah So my friends had this cat Name Goose And I was on tour in Dublin It was very cold and snowy And I saw this This picture of the cat Like in her little cone

You know, the cone of shame And and she looked like a little snow cone because her face was like a round white fluffy ball and so I started writing this song thinking that I would change the phrase goose snow cone to something else later and then just

you know it's called goose snow cone so it just didn't happen Goose snow cone and Amy Man Looking into the face of the goose snow cone you should be shaking loose but you do it all on Thank you. Every look is a truth, and it's ridden in stone. Better keep it together when your friends come back.

Oh, it's checking. Thought I saw my feet when origami cross. It was only the street and under the snow. Oh, it's snitching to feed. It's the devil I know. Friends come back. Yes, but I couldn't go. Thank you so much.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. There are very few new waivers who have an ongoing musical career. You know, Duran Duran, nope. Spandabale, no. I bet Duran Duran could fill some theaters. You can fill, but not creating new music that people still are drawn. Not just still are drawn to.

You're building new audiences and reaching people in new ways the way you have been. But I would love to ask you about you got there, and it was a dark journey through. record travails, record company travails. Can you tell us a little bit about what you went through before you came out the other side? Well, being on a major label at the point where I was

in the 80s and early 90s, I think, you know, the music industry is one of those industries where people feel like there's easy money, and if they can just figure out what the formula for having a hit song is, then they will make easy money and then they go to the artist and they say we need you to sound exactly like this thing that is already on the radio and here are I are dumb ideas for how to

do that and this was I mean that really is about about the size of it and you know that was a situation I really chafed at because I felt like if you don't like the music I'm doing then just release me from my contract so it was just a lot of waiting that out. In years, you'd record as Bachelor Number 2 and the album that would be a breakout for you. Yeah, Bachelor Number 2, I had recorded and it was

finished. That was a complicated situation. I was on Geffen and Geffen and a bunch of other labels merged into Interscope. So Interscope was getting a huge influx of other artists and they actually told me I could leave if I wanted to and I was like, thank you, Jesus. Finally, I can

get out of this. And at that point the internet wasn't really a thing. but enough of a thing so you could have kind of a mail order situation. And, you know, I just was like, I don't care if I have to sell this out of the back of a van. I just have to get out of this situation. So now, who do you write for? I remember seeing a talk from several writers where they'd answer the question, you know, why do you write?

And one would say, one did say, I write to illuminate relationships because it's the relationships between people and I don't want to understand. person said, I write because I want to stick it to the man. Well, why do you write? For different reasons. I do, I really do, you know, relationships between people is very interesting. Finding or going through or observing a complicated situation and boiling it down to its essence in three and a half minutes is very interesting.

It's like a little magic trick or a puzzle. I like getting inside other people's heads and writing from their perspective to see what it's like and then see what it's like and then see where I intersect with that person so there's different reasons but there's something that's sort of magical

that happens when when you have a complicated problem or feeling when you put that into words and that's really interesting and it's like a you know it's like an ink plot it's a raw shock test

You see things in it, and then the things suggest a story. And so you start writing a story. And it's just very interesting to me. Amy, this has been just fantastic. Thank you. Thank you so much. One last time. Please give it up for Amy Mann. That's staff writer, Atul Gawande, speaking with Amy Mann.

We'll close with the song, Save Me, which appeared on the soundtrack for the movie, Magnolia. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. See you next time. The New Say Why don't you If you could Say

The New Yorker The New Yorker Radio Hour Is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker Our theme music was composed and performed By Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts with additional music by Alexis Quadrato. We had assistance this week from the New Yorker Festival,

including Catherine Sterling, Amanda Miller, and Nico Brown, also Michael Etherington and his team. And a very special thank you to Fabio Bertoni and WNYC's Joe Plort. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund. Thank you.