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The Words of the Prophet:
An Interview with Robert Pollard
by David Rosenheim
photos courtesy Alexis Scherl (Ink Blot)
photos of "Kid Marine" courtesy Pam Stacey
and Rockathon Records
PART I
 Over the years the Guided By Voices mystique has loomed larger, their enigmatic rockability ever more elusive. Levitating from decade-long obscurity in the early nineties, they have since amassed a following of religious proportions. I must admit to having been somewhat intimidated before doing this interview.
After waiting nervously by the side of the stage during GbV's soundcheck, I finally got the chance to introduce myself to Bob Pollard. Thankfully, he's a very down-to-earth and laid-back person, and he agreed to meet me in their dressing room a few hours later. Unfortunately, the disarming warmth he exuded only contributed to his enigmatic status and made me even more nervous.
Somehow the band got assigned a dressing room only slightly bigger than a closet and the club denied their request for a bottle of bourbon. Happily, the Nineup and Ink Blot crews got their paws on a full bottle of Wild Turkey for Bob and his men.
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Ink Blot- What's the current Guided By Voices lineup?
Pollard- Jim Macpherson on drums, Greg Demos on bass, Nate Farley on guitar, Doug Gillard on guitar, and me - that's it.
So you guys are just out for this one show in San Francisco?
Pollard- Yeah, we're just doing one or two shows a month 'til our record comes out. Nate just joined the band actually. We'd been doing it as a four-piece for awhile. We're not sure when the new album's coming out...it could be June. You know...they say that summer is a good time to put a record out.
I heard Rick Ocasek produced it. How was that?
Pollard- It was good. It was a different experience for us because we had to slow down...do pre-production, arrangements and all that kind of stuff.
Was that a pain in the ass?
Pollard- To me, it was a pain in the ass, 'cause I like to do things quickly. But it wasn't as bad as what most people do...people spend a year on records. But he (Ocasek) was good. He's really positive...a really nice and laid-back guy. It was good with him...could have been brutal.
Does it sound different than your previous recordings ?
Pollard- Uh, it sounds a lot different. It's big...nicely produced elements. It's slick... well, not slick...it still retains an element of a nice edge. But it sounds good...everything's in place. You know, we did something I've never done before, where you sing the song a bunch of times and then they go back... Rick and the engineer Brian Ferman would take each line, and it's done eight times or whatever, and then you take the best line of each song. And I liked that...it's kinda neat. I didn't like to do it that many times, but I liked the process of taking the best line so I sound like I can sing. Doin' a couple of songs the first take was good, but on others maybe, I was a little high or low on a pitch. I just kept doing it until I got one.
Was all this recorded digitally?
Pollard- It wasn't digital, it was analog. Well you know...I'm not sure. It's all automatic...this big 48 track board where once everything is there, it's kind of locked in.
(Someone says: "I think they use the computer or something...")
Pollard- I guess. So once it's locked in, you see the faders move on their own. One time I thought a cockroach was crawling across the board!
How long were you actually there?
Pollard- We went to NY for 3 weeks for the first session, then we went home for a week or so, and then went back for a couple more weeks. And in the time between, Rick and Brian continued to work on stuff. Rick has a studio in his basement so he got to do some stuff in his studio. Yeah, it was pretty interesting. The main thing was just the slowing-down process and making sure everything was right. I usually don't care about that...sometimes I think that part of the charm of some of our music is that it's not "right." But I still get to do that with Robert Pollard stuff.
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A perfect segue way into your new solo record, Kid Marine. That was just released, right?
Pollard- Yeah. And with Kid Marine I was flirting with this kind of pseudo-side project kind of thing that was called Lexo and the Leapers. I kind of pictured this guy from an old magazine sittin' back and he looked cool, he looked like a rock star. He's sittin' there against the wall. So I made a cover with him on it and called it Lexo and the Leapers. At the same time I was doin' that, Rick said: "You ought to do a book of poetry." I was writing poems, 'cause I thought it was a good idea, and then I thought...you know...a really good poem to me is like a really good lyric and there's no sense in not putting some music to it. So I took the best 15 and sequenced them to that record and then wrote the music to it. So I kind of started backwards...
So are you going to put out the book of poems?
Pollard- No, I decided not to do it. I decided instead to put music to it, so it became Lexo and the Leapers. Then I thought, "Well that's a pretty ridiculous thing to do, I'll just make it a Robert Pollard record." It just came together really fast. It was already sequenced and I never changed it. You know...a lot of times things just fall together really quickly and easily and sometimes those are my favorite things. That one just happened to fall together very nicely and because they started as poems, I think it's lyrically better than most of the stuff I've done.
Do you usually start songs with the lyrics?
Pollard- No, not all the time. Sometimes...sometimes I just write the titles. I just go through and make up songs by the title and work with just whatever comes to mind lyrically, and then just kind of hash things out and add things where I need to. But I'm finding that now I like working from that angle - from writing lyrics first. Because then, you've got all these really weird phrases.
Is it hard to get pre-written lyrics to fit with the music?
Pollard- No, not really. I'll just start at the top and look at the first line and wait until I come up with something on guitar, and then I'll start to sing it and go as far as I can. When it kind of falls apart, I'll stop the tape recorder and then start from that section until I get all the way through it. By using that process you get all of these interesting, almost psychedelic turns in songs and experimental post-punk-sounding things. I kind of like to do it that way. But you know, I do it a lot of different ways. I might be driving a car and a couple of melodies will come into my head, so whatever...they're really aren't any rules.
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It's been said that you've written over 5000 songs. How do you keep track of them all?
Pollard-In a notebook and on a tape recorder. Just a solid-state, Realistic tape recorder. It's really simple. Technically, I do things very primitively. I don't even have a four-track. Some people think I do, but we used to just use Toby's (Tobin Sprout's) four-track. I just record straight into a tape recorder. But I stop, you know...I do a lot of punching. I'm getting better at remembering things. I used to have to write down everything and tape everything and if I didn't, I'd lose it. But I'm getting better at concentrating and saying, "I'm going to remember that," and I do.
Not to dwell on the biz, but when is the new Guided By Voices record coming out, and on what label?
Pollard-Right now we're going through re-negotiations between contracts. Other labels are interested now and Matador is still interested, so we're just trying to find out where our home is gonna be. As soon as that happens, and I'm trying to speed things up because it's been going on for awhile, as soon as it happens...well, one label that's interested wants to put it out now. I've heard from others that there's got to be at least a five month set-up time. And that's another reason I did... They let me do Kid Marine, because they know I've been sitting around with my thumb up my ass for a long time. As long as I'm working, I'm ok. I understand that in the industry there's set-up time for records, all the connections you have to make...plus my label, Matador, has told me, "Look, you have too much product in the record bin."
How do you feel about that? Do you agree with that?
Pollard-Well, maybe for the bigger picture, yeah. For the public, for the masses...the market, you know. To try to market the record maybe. But for the people who really like Guided by Voices, the hardcore fans, I'm sure they don't agree with that.
CONTINUE TO
PAGE 2 OF 3>>>
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