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CWAS #8
Summer 2001
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Spring 2001
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Autumn 2000
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Summer 2000
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Winter 1998/9 - The Lost Issue
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Summer 1998
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Chris von Sneidern
by Matt Dornan
pictures
by Steve Pitman
unedited transcript
 I was on tables,
I was running around screaming, doing sermons! I was like getting down on
the floor and screaming 'I wanna tell you...' It was a little bit silly,
this skinny white guy trying to be James Brown. It's like 'get the hell
outta here, man!' But I had fun.
No, San Francisco's pop saviour Chris von Sneidern isn't reminiscing
about some beered-up, youthful trip to Majorca. He's referring to his
short-lived flirtation with 60s soul and rhythm'n'blues that was The
Sportsmen.
We only did four dates, the lodge is closed for The Sportsmen, he admits
over a Portobello Road Guinness during a hastily-arranged visit earlier
this year. Documented on the sold-out, Japan-only album, Spirited, this
side-step away from the expected classic pop route says more about the narrow-minded
(some would say dedicated, passionate) pop community than Sneidern's own
musical identity.
The only reason the pop community exists is because it's narrow," he
begins. "There's a lot of fear out there, people are afraid of
being out of their little 'thing' because then they don't know about it.
It's like 'I don't know about that so I can't talk about that to my pop
friends. We can all like the Owsley record.' The Owsley record is not Power
Pop. It's a good fucking record, but it's not Power Pop. Then there's all
those bands that I kinda know, like Cherry Twister. I wouldn't know Cherry
Twister if it was playing right now, but I know the name. Myracle Brah? I
think I like 'em but I don't remember, you know. Splitsville? I think I
like them too but aren't they the same band?
You know what it was? I fell victim to insecurity, because I was afraid
people weren't gonna like [Spirited]. So you know what I did? I made people
not like it. If I'd just said 'This is the new Chris von Sneidern record,
it's a little different, got some different players, really cool. Don't be
confused by the presentation, it's the same old CvS,' people would have
probably been more receptive to it. But because I was making all these
excuses for it, presenting it under a different name and all this other
bullshit, people got turned off. So I'm gonna put it out as a Chris von
Sneidern record. Chris von Sneidern 'as' the Sportsmen or 'with' The
Sportsmen, or 'in league with' The Sportsmen.
CvS began his musical career with legendary Bay area popsters The
Sneetches and Flying Color, experiences about which he's less than
enthusiastic.
If anything I learned from [The Sneetches] how to rehearse and how to put
up with rehearsal. They would just rehearse shit over and over and the way I
rehearse now, it's like Boom! Geddit? It's not working? We don't play the
song. I joined The Sneetches because it was the best thing available to me,
and it was fun. I had to play bass; it was a compromise for me. And I
couldn't write songs for the group either, so I left them to join Flying
Color and left Flying Color because I was being repressed, you know? Being
told my songs weren't good enough and that kind of thing which, with
hindsight is, I don't know... insane.
The four subsequent solo albums provide more than sufficient evidence to
vindicate such a verdict.
It's like, say you're the leader of the group and somebody comes along
who's obviously on their way to being the same thing, be a band leader. If
you're a real leader, visionary, then you give your people away to excel on
their own. You figure out a way that's mutually beneficial, but to tell
somebody that's with you 'You're not good enough' therefore you maintain
your 'position' - that doesn't get anybody anywhere. Flying Color
essentially broke up when I left the group. I learned a lot from those
groups and I learned, basically, not what to do.
For the most part 'what not to do' meant utilising his
multi-instrumental and production talents. His last solo release, 1998's
Wood + Wire, saw CvS allowing other band members into the fold.
I was trying to 'open up my world' because I'd made those first three
records basically playing everything and controlling the whole thing and it
had that sound, you know how the Jason Falkner records... it's that sound
of one man playing everything. No matter how good a musician you are you
can only, in the moment approach it from maybe three directions. But when
you work with other people - even out of their inability to grasp what
you're doing - they're going to approach your idea from another direction.
I think I know what I'm doing and then I pick a drummer who I think's good
but is too fucked up to make it to the studio or I'll pick people who I
think will work but who live three thousand miles away, so I have to
organise them in New York and put them all in a studio and then I have to
squeeze what should take three weeks into a two and a half day session. I'm
still going back and forth on what works and what doesn't.
Chris has built up a reputation as a producer/arranger that has seen him
work with some of mainstream rock's er, finest performers. Like, um, Jewel
and Paula Cole.
Paula Cole did some demos at my house when she was doing promotion for the
Harbinger record I think it was, her first Imago record. We did like four
songs in a day or something. As a list of, you know, 'clients' it's a
recognisable name, she got her Grammy three years later. And Jewel, we did
two versions of a Fleetwood Mac song and two versions of our national
anthem for the Superbowl and I played acoustic guitar. I guess the funny
bit was playing the acoustic guitar real close to Jewel who's singing the
national anthem... it's like 'let's sing another song, baby!' It's kinda
funny with big stars, cause Jewel's a big star right? I opened a show for
her in San Francisco three or four years ago and... nothing really special,
you know? Good-looking girl, as far as what we're told a good looking girl
is. She's got blonde hair, big tits, you know. She wears leather... but not
my type. Apparently I'm not her's either! Everybody on the session for
those tracks we did went on tour with her, all of them except me! Because
her manager said 'That Chris von Sneidern is trouble, we're not hiring him
to take on tour!'
CvS also spent time with Mark Everett, known to you and I as E, leading
light of skewed pop-meisters Eels.
In, maybe, February of 94 he was putting together a band because Parthenon
Huxley (a CvS contemporary who worked on the two pre-Eels solo albums) was
splitting off and we have mutual friends. I auditioned and 'Yeah, he can
play guitar and sing, he's got the gear.' And I think E was in a place
where it was like 'yeah, I gotta do this thing' but he was really
uninspired I think. You know the drummer for eels, Butch? He was there, he
wasn't called Butch then, and I was just in it for the allure you know?
Like 'he's got a label deal, maybe this will help me in my career' and that
actually kinda ruined things because E and I were kinda friendly but then
it got down to this money thing with the manager and the label was trying
to figure out how to not spend money, so they trying to cut it out of
everyone's weekly salary and this other musician's like 'well we'll just
hold out man, tell 'em we're not going on tour unless they give us
eight-fifty a week plus thirty-five a day' which is a fucking lot of money.
But I said 'I'll go along with that', solidarity, you know? Looking back on
it, from a position of wanting to promote a record I'd have gone 'you're a
fucking asshole, man. C'mon, you won't do it for five-hundred a week?' But
I'd just put out Sight & Sound [his 1993 debut], I didn't really want
to go on tour with anybody else, there really wasn't anything to gain from
it. I didn't really like playing his songs. It felt like, at the time, he
was not into it. He didn't want to rehearse, he'd want to goof off, he
wasn't having a good time. Then, shortly after that, his whole thing turned
around. He got dropped, essentially, and then a couple of years later he
got his deal with DreamWorks.
Perhaps more appropriately Chris got to work, albeit posthumously, with
tragic Badfinger mainman Pete Ham on the two volumes of home demos issued
in recent years by Rykodisc. After seeing Chris perform in 1994, the label
wrote to him requesting he play on and produce some tracks.
"I'm like 'why?' I didn't wanna do it and on the first volume, the 7
Park Ave, I didn't play. I just edited, chopped up the songs from three
minutes down to two, down to one forty five. So all those songs are bits
now. And then on volume two I overdubbed some drums and bass, and I felt
really timid about what to put on there. I would have done it different
now, I'd have gone the whole hog. I, personally, would rather just hear it
as is. But the guy who had the final say wanted a full-fidelity thing
which, I guess, makes sense. But I think a pure fan doesn't want to hear
Chris von Sneidern or anybody else, you know? I think I could have gone
further but because there's no feedback from the artist I was second
guessing myself the whole time.
With his tendency to cover songs from the sixties and seventies (during
this two date trip Chris played Mott The Hoople's All The Young Dudes, Big
Star's Ballad of El Goodo and Simon & Garfunkel's Sound of Silence),
and his recent Sportsmen experiment, is there a reluctance to 'move with
the times,' has he given up on contemporary music?
I haven't really given up, I just haven't stayed up with it. I've have a
lot of catching up to do so I guess I'll catch on up stuff that's from a
richer era of creativity.
CvS's music has been compared, perhaps predictably, to the likes of
Badfinger, Big Star and The Beatles, one US journalist nominating him as a
potential filler of John Lennon's shoes should The Beatles reunite. Chris
views such comparisons and the reluctance to build on such foundations with
a degree of cynicism.
It's a small palette really. If I just go onto auto-pilot it just sounds
like Rubber Soul, and I've done that. It all sounds like 1966, I can't do
that. But growing up on that stuff it's in there, you can't blame people
for sounding like that but I guess you can blame them for not trying to
grow. Squeeze'll always sound like that sound, Crowded House will always
have their sound but that's no reason to just re-hash. One thing about The
Beatles that's kinda strange and awesome is that every record was
different. They have I Am The Walrus and ELO based there whole career on
that one song. That was just one little thing.
A cursory listen to any Chris von Sneidern record would have you believe
that the relationship song is a bottomless well, and one he is content to
use as a source of inspiration. But appearances can be deceptive.
You know, a lot of my songs are written and presented in the form of
relationship songs [but] they're not about anybody, they're searching
songs. It's all about figuring out why you are and why everyone is and why
anything has to be. Philosophical bullshit. In the last couple of years,
the lyrics have been about changes, why people do what they do, why I do
what I do. A lot of times I'll start a song talking about someone else and
then I go back and turn the 'You's to 'I's. It depends who's singing them.
You can take a really dumb song and have it mean something if you sing it
right; or you can take a song that means a lot, but if you don't know what
it's saying and you sing it, it won't come across. Sound of Silence, right?
That's a heavy song. I never really realised it until I studied the lyrics.
Once I understood it, I'll never forget the lyrics now.
So what makes a great pop song?
I dunno, what makes a good dinner?
CWAS #5 - Summer
2000
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