Marshall Crenshaw

Marshall Crenshaw

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POP OVER EASY

Marshall Crenshaw Celebrates Two Decades of Tuneful Pop Perfection
In a recording career that's closing in on the 20-year mark, Marshall Crenshaw has consistently combined classic pop-song craftsmanship with pithy lyrics that cut to the heart of thorny emotional truths. The Detroit-bred, New York-based artist entered the pop consciousness with his eponymous 1983 debut -- now regarded a classic by discerning pop aficionados -- and has since amassed a catalogue of eight studio albums, a live disc, and a collection of home demos. He's also racked up a variety of extracurricular projects, including writing the book Hollywood Rock and taking to the big screen as Buddy Holly in La Bamba and as a high-school-prom bandleader in Peggy Sue Got Married. Now comes This Is Easy: The Best of Marshall Crenshaw, a 22-song compilation that spans his entire career, and a new, expanded edition of the aforementioned Marshall Crenshaw, which adds nine bonus demos and live tracks to the album's original dozen. Barnes & Noble.com's Scott Schinder caught up with the veteran popmeister to relive some old times.

Barnes & Noble.com: Does the release of this best-of compilation feel like a momentous juncture in your career?

Marshall Crenshaw: It does feel like a significant thing to me. It's a really good chunk of my life's work all on one handy document, like a little time capsule. When I went to work on the mastering, I got a buzz just seeing all the old tape boxes. When you make a record, you pour your soul into it, and then it's over, and then the tapes get carted off to a storage facility underneath Mount Shasta or something. So it was cool for me just to see the tapes again, to see the names of the studios where they were done. Also, I hadn't heard a lot of the tunes in ages. I never listen to my own records after I finish them, so when I was confronted with this stuff all at once, I got hit with a rush of nostalgia. And to my surprise, I was pleased with what I heard.

B&N.com: Are there tracks that turned out to be better than you remembered?

MC: That happened to me a lot. I really like "Little Wild One" -- I'd sort of forgotten that one. It's got some funny kind of Linn drum sounds on it and some real dated '80s touches, but it's also really heartfelt and real. When I started it off, I was trying to do a Jack Scott groove and write a simple rockabilly-type song. But by the time we finished the track, it'd just gone through all these changes. I was kind of afraid to listen it, but instead of being turned off by it, I actually dug it. There's also one called "Calling out for Love at Crying Time" and another one called "This Is Easy." I'm kind of ambivalent about the album on which those two originally appeared [Mary Jean and 9 Others]. At the time, I was trying to create an ecstatic-type listening experience, just trying to make the stuff really beautiful and lush and atmospheric. I didn't really get that all the way through on that album, but I think I got it on those particular tunes. There's also a handful of songs from my second album, Field Day, that have this really giddy quality to them that I like. We were having the time of our young lives when we were doing that record. On the compilation, they go straight into a track from my third album, this really remorseful little ballad written by Ben Vaughn, "I'm Sorry (But So Is Brenda Lee)." So it goes from this really cranking high-energy stuff into this emotional elevator drop; that pretty much sums up my whole experience of going from my second to my third album.

B&N.com: Your 1983 debut album, which Rhino has just reissued in an expanded edition, still looms pretty large in your album catalogue.

MC: Of all the records I've made, it might be the one that's the most listenable all the way through. Since it's my first album, I could put little disclaimers on it and say, well, maybe the lead vocal on this tune could be better, but it is what it is. By the time we went in to make it, I'd already spent a lot of time in recording studios and knew a lot about record making. And I had a point of view as a musician and as a recording artist, and I think that comes across, despite whatever flaws it has. By the time we made the first record, I had already recorded all the songs on it two or three times or more, so I was really confident about the material, and I felt like every line of every song was as good as it could be. On some of the other ones, I had less time to live with the tunes, and maybe the paint wasn't quite dry on some of them. I would say that the sound of the first album wasn't exactly the sound that I had in my head when I wrote those songs; you get a better idea of that from Field Day. But the first album has really stood the test of time. A lot of people really love it, and I'm happy about that.

B&N.com: For your recent albums Miracle of Science and #447, you did a lot of recording in your home studio, which presumably allows you to avoid some of the record-company politics that goes along with making major-label studio albums.

MC: Yeah, the way I've been making them for the last few years is nothing like the way I made them in the '80s. In the '80s, there was a lot of money at stake and many, many other people's interests and points of view that had to be dealt with. I had to jump through all these hurdles to make records, but I still feel like I got to do my thing.

B&N.com: At this stage of the game, do you feel like making records is something you'll do for the rest of your life?

MC: I think so. Many times over the years I've just sort of said, "OK, I'm done, this is all I've got in me." But then a little time passes, and I find myself wanting to do it again and find myself with some sort of an agenda in my mind, and that means that I've got to do it.

August 15, 2000

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