HUMAN DRAMA

Where do you guys come from originally?
I come from New Orleans. We started what was the roots of this project in 1979 with four other guys and evolved into what we are today. We moved to Los Angeles in 1985, got our first deal in '88 and been recording ever since.

How many albums have you done?
I think we have a total of seven releases, but only four full albums, one of which is Pin-Ups, which is all covers.

Okay, I've heard about that but haven't heard it.
You should hear that, I'm really proud of that record. It's on Triple X.

What kind of stuff is on there?
Two by Tom Waits, two by Joy Division, two by David Bowie, one by Lou Reed, one Leonard Cohen, one Nico, a Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Kinks, Mink DeVille, Genesis, all the stuff that was in my record colleciton.

How did you guys hook up with Projekt?
They were selling a bunch of our Triple X records overseas and I wanted to do an EP to be released prior to Songs of Betrayal, because I knew it was going to take me forever to get this thing out and I didn't want another year to go by without having anything new out. So I asked Triple X if they'd like to do an EP and they said they didn't, so I called Projekt and said would you like to do it and they said they would. They sold so many of the them that they asked for licensing of Songs of Betrayal.

Are you pretty happy with them?
I'm happy with everything. As bad as it's gone for us commercially, whatever the limitations are on us, I know about the 'right place at the right time' kinda thing that's gotta happen in this business and I never think too much about it. 'Cause if it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. But I'm happy because we make great records that are great to the guy who is writing them and thinking about them and living them.

So have you guys toured in Europe?
We played Germany. We have a scaled down version of the band out with us now and that's six people, ususally there's nine. We can't afford it. It's really tought for us to do these records live and I pay the people in the band. I'm thinking of moving to Germany next year, so we'll get there then.

So, how have you changed the songs, stripped them down to play with six people?
They won't seem stripped down to you, but if you're a giant fan of listening to records then maybe you'll miss a couple of things, but we compensate very well. I have one of the best violinists and guitarists in the world and I'm not building them up too much. You'll know when you see them. Tori Amos' guitar player, who's name is Steve Caton and violinist named Jamie Smejensky (sp?), who played with Shadowfax. He's won a Grammy. It's insane what these guys can do, they really fill it up.

Did they come to you?
Steve played on Feel, the first RCA album and we've just been friends forever. Whenever I know when I'm going to be doing something, I give Steve a call and if he's available, he does it. Jamie answered an ad that we had, which we usually don't do. I don't know how long he'll stay with us, but I hope he stays forever.

How did you first get into music?
I'll tell you how I got into music... I was going to get married when I was 18 and I went out one night and saw my fiancee with another guy and my life ended. In a search for something to do, because my days, 24 hours, were spent with her, with the exception of the three that she was out with another guy (laughs). I'm a young guy at this time, working at a radio station as a country music DJ and I had nothing to do. I woke up the next morning and realized, I have nothing to do whatsoever or anyone to call, so I was driving around looking for things to do. I drove past her house, I remember on this ride, then I went to another guy that I knew and his mother said he was in band rehearsal. So I went, nothing to do, I'm just going to hang out with these guys, kill another night. I go in and there's about twenty people in the rehearsal place and I asked the guy, 'What are you doing?' and he said, 'Our singer's got mono and we have two shows this weekend and we're auditioning singers and stuff.' So I stayed through the whole audition and at the end, he said 'Johnny, you know Bowie songs,' and I did, I know every Bowie song in existence, so he said 'Sing this Bowie song,' so I did. He said, 'Do you wanna come sing this weekend?' So I did, and that's how I got started. I'd never sung a note in my life, never thought about being in a band. From there, that was '76, as the years went by, I just learned little by litle each year what I had at my disposal and I found an avenue to get everything off of my chest and a way to live through the next day.

As far as your lyric writing, it seems like you're really well read, I was just wondering what kind of background you have?
I'm able to fool a lot of people as I see. My best friend in the world will be talking to me about things and read a line from one of my songs and goes, 'Do you realize what you've written here?' And I go, well, what do yhou mean, and he's like 'During what football game you were watching did you get this?' Because that's basically what I do, I'm not well-read at all and I'm embarrassed by it, but I'm starting to deal with it a little. I dont' know where these things come from. I don't read at all, I read Kurt Vonnegut religiously. I'm really into things like the Kennedy assassination, any book on that. I recently read a book about Syd Barrett, but that pretty much sums it up, 38 years worth of reading in about ten seconds. I examine every day everything that happens and I talk about it to myself throughout the day and within those coversations with myself come these lines and I express them musically. I'll fiddle with a guitar until I come up with something that matches the mood and I'll present it to the band and eventually it'll go on record. It's an odd thing, I really don't have a clue. I'd really rather be playing football.

I heard something about a World Inside video that came out recently?
Yeah, I'm realluy happy with it. We did six videos for about forty bucks and when you see 'em, I think the substance is there, the quality of film probably isn't. The best video on there, the one most like our music, is the one for "This Tangled Web" which is off of The World Inside and is like our biggest song, and it's cost $42 and some change to do. I think it really says what the song is talking about.

Have you got any airplay with any of the videos?
Yeah, our highest charting thing was the video for "Look Into a Stranger's Eyes" which got to number 12 on the nationwide alternative chart.

Who do you get to make your videos?
Whoever is like a fan of the band who owns a camera and will complete it. The thing with me is, if I allow you to start it, you've got to finish it. We had a lot of people send in their reels and scripts during the Feel album, when everything was big-budget, and they let me choose the director I wanted to work with. Really, I had tapes stacked up on the wall, everybody sent them in because they were getting paid like $30,000, and after going through everything, I found a cassettte by a guy name Tarsem and at that time he was at UCLA, still in college. I remember calling my manager and saying, I found the guy. And she said 'Who?' and I said 'This little guy Tarsem from UCLA' and she says 'Give me a break.' She comes and sees it and says, 'Absolutely, without a doubt.' So I met with him and had six months of long talks because the video budget fell through becuase they had to promote Starship's latest record or something. Which, I agree, it needed attention, they were at a ciritcal point in their career, this thirty grand definitely helped them more than it ever would have helped break a new band. The video budget went down, me and Tarsem stayed close friends. He fell in love with a song called 'My Skin,' which I was performing but hadn't yet recorded. He said 'Whenever you record this, I'm dong the video.' We recorded and, unfortunatley, he'd gotten the chance to work with R.E.M. on his first video as opposed to Human Drama, so he was really busy, but he threw another guy my way and said, 'This guy is going to do your video as I would have done it at no charge,' so we did a 30 or 40 grand video with this guy Steven Berkman through Tarsem. All the other people are people who were just fans.

Who's your favorite football team?
New Orleans Saints. I've got their logo tattooed on my arm.

How'd you hook up with Eva O.?
She is a fan of Human Drama and there would always be this woman standing up front, fully made-up, you know, completely over the edge, at all our shows. And then somebody told me that's the girl from Shadow Project, that's Eva. She called me while we were recording Pin-Ups, she came down to the studio and saw how I worked and she just asked me to do her next record. It's a good record, too, it's like a Genesis album, it's amazing. I've never had more fun working on a record.

Where'd you recorcd it?
At Fourth Street Studio in Santa Monica, where I do just about all my records. It was a blast!

Do you wanna work with anybody else?
I want to work with everybody. Anybody who wants to do a really good job at their music or their art. It's close as to what I love doing more, my stuff or working with other people. But it's kinda like the same thing, I have to dig the same stuff out of me that I dig out of them. I would love to keep producing records. I did a rock band in Los Angeles called Miracle Mile and I think I turned them into something a little different than what they were, which is what they wanted to be, they wanted to be hipper and cooler, more focused, and I think I got it.

What are your views on god vs. religion?
Oh, I have my own belief of what god is and I belive that we're all a small part of what makes up god. I have my belief that we all have our own individual type of hell, too. I think hell is never being able to find home, that's the thing that frightens me the most. Not being able to find it up here, that little sanctuary that they call home. The fear of not being able to find it, that's my greatest fear. I don't think that there's anybody watching us. I think that we're that god. Anything that you do wrong, you don't need anyone to judge you. What, you're hoping that you'll get up there and there'll be this guy with this big book and he's missed a couple of things? No, because you haven't missed anything. There is nobody with any more power than you have. I don't like organized religions, I don't like anything that becomes like a club, where you gain more power simply because they let you in. I think the power has got to come from you. Joining up with five other people doesn't make you any more powerful.

Have your parents heard your music?
They adore what I do. It makes them sad sometimes, like "I'm Fading Away," the song from The World Inside, they called me and asked me, 'Are you okay? Remember, if you ever need anything...' I think they got a little worried, but they like what I do and I quit the phone company in '79, and my mother said, 'Of course, you gotta make money,' and I said, 'Well, it's more important that I get to just be myself and see what happens.' She was all against it, and now I'm sure there's nothing she'd rathre had me do more than quit the phone company. So I managed to prove myself to my parents, but I still have to bum money from them every so often.

Who is Susan McBride [she was thanked on the Songs of Betrayal album]?
She told me a story about her life. She was given up at birth for adoption and I saw that as the ultimate form of betrayal, something I couldn't relate to so I kind of went back and looked at everything that happened in life is because of this. All my confusion, everything I do bad to myself is because of this. It's really from her perspective and "Emptiness," the song that finishes the record, is simply about what I saw in her for all those years.

What do you see as the most fragile part of the human condition?
So many things I'll desribe as what they do to my heart, but when I say 'heart' it's what I'm about, like all of the things you should get if you are a certain way and how many of those things you just don't get. There's no justification of it. I'm fragile in that respect. I believe if I do the work, the completion brings a just reward and that just doesn't happen in life. I've got to get that out of my head. You know, like you work long enough in music, you're supposed to get certain paybacks and it just doesn't happen. You have to get it all from inside of you, basically, and I still fight with that. I'm constantly crushed, be it relaitonships, society, I mean look at this O.J. Simpson thing. Come on, give me a break, after all these years of perfecting the system, it's such a joke. It kinda makes you not want to live here anymore. I was born in '57 so I remember black water fountains, black rest rooms, sigsn saying 'No negroes allowed,' things like that, and I knew way back then when I was six how horribly wrong that was, how easy it was to see that it was wrong and here we are today: the black people cheering because he got off, knowing full well that he did it, and the whites, well it's just kind of reverse discrimination that's happening right now. We've gotta all get smart or all stay stupid, we gotta make a choice. This just seems really stupid. Somebody has got to meet in the middle, and this just shows that we've never met in the middle and I don't think we're gonna now, I don't think there's a prayer and I think this proves it. In this country, there's gonna be hatred from the blacks and the whites for what happened many, many years ago and the whites are apparently not coming up with a system or bending enough to make it to where there can be no problems. All these people who were clapping because he got off weren't discriminated against, they just know the memory of discrimination, so it ain't getting no better. It's horrible to be living.

Is that part of the reason you're moving to Germany?
No, I just hate Los Angeles. I lived in New York. I hate Los Angeles, it's just disgusting.

Worse than New York?
Oh, New York is amazing! It's a great town, but I lived there for three years and it has a lot of memories that I kind of can't take, but I could live in New York, still. I'm just thinking of going someplace different. I'm just going to Germany to kinda explore. My wife is German, she's from German descent and she's got property there and she's always kinda wanted to go. She's doing her own record, her name is Rena and she's in another Projekt band called Thanatos. I just saw her photo in a little ad this morning and it made me happy.

Did you two meet through Projekt?
No, she saw a Human Drama show back in '89 or '88, something like that, and she stayed in touch and we eventually just got married.