Across decades and over many monikers, Dean Wareham has captured countless, rich, hazy worlds through song. Whether through Galaxie 500, Luna, or his own eponymous project,he’s often associated with the washed out, reverb-laden sound of his early work. Beneath his reputation as a dream-pop/rock pioneer, Wareham cloaks a portfolio of humble and eclectic songwriting. From the longing simplicity of “Tugboat,” to the Lou Reed-esque, uber-cool detachment of “23 Minutes in Brussels,” there is great lyrical versatility, and a fascinating trajectory, to be found throughout his catalog.
Within his solo work alone, he has run the gamut from country experiment Dean Wareham Vs. Cheval Sombre, to a paean to our political times on I Have Nothing to Say to the Mayor of LA. His latest, That’s the Price of Loving Me, is ripe with glimpses of history, whether that be moments that sound eerily akin to his past auditory footsteps via reunion with Galaxie 500 producer Mark Kramer, or through the incisive and personal language he chooses. However, the songwriting here feels like the start of a new day for Dean Wareham. There is an attention to the union between lyrics and melody that stands out. Though this might be some of Dean’s most ‘conventional’ material to date, it is also some of his elegant. I chatted with Dean about his impulses and inspirations behind That’s the Price of Loving Me, as well as how his past plays into his work today.
That’s the Price of Loving Me is your first solo record in a handful of years. How does it look like for you when you decide that it’s time to do another solo record? What is the process for writing a record like this for you?
It’s easy to start writing a song. It’s easy to come up with a musical idea. But it’s really difficult to finish a song. I put a date in the calendar, and I book time at a recording studio. This is how it’s been for the last two records. That’s really the only thing that makes it real. I have to go downstairs, and start playing, and writing lyrics, and finishing the songs. I’ve got to have a deadline. I don’t just… sit around writing songs.
I think a lot of songwriters have this tendency to become more comfortable over time with a sort of open ended, less structured kind of writing. I felt sort of the inverse of that happening here. Like a bit of a tightening up and a movement towards an almost classical structure.
I think it’s true. Even the last couple of records, I’ve kind of challenged myself to… well, to have some more complex chord structures. I pressure myself to come up with things that really sound like songs. The melodies should be good. The melodies should be strong. Just so much music you listen to, I’m just like “there’s nothing here.”
I guess what I’m trying to say is that a good song is more than just a bunch of words set to music.
To me, there was almost a bit of a country approach to the kind of neat structure of some of this material. Almost like a little Glenn Campbell, or even Burt Bacharach, you know?
Well, I mean, the title is kind of country. That’s the Price of Loving Me. If you at least say it in the right accent, maybe it is. Country songs are often well constructed. And constructed around a good title..
I was listening a lot to Nancy and Lee, “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” when this record came out, and I was kind of thinking of them side by side. Reading your book, Black Postcards, getting ready for this interview, you mentioned that album a lot. It kind of freaked me out a little. It was a shocking coincidence.
There’s one of our great songwriters, as well as great pioneering producers of rock and roll. Just such a clever lyricist. Self-deprecating and funny. I interviewed him in the early aughts. They’re just like; “Oh, you can interview him on the phone.” And I was like, “Well, what if I go down there?” So I paid for my own ticket, so I could meet him, and brought some records, and spent a couple hours with him. That was fun.
In that work, and with that kind of Nashville approach to songwriting, there’s also a sort of psychedelic quality. You know, there’s something very trippy about “Wichita Lineman” or “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” that I feel in these songs a little bit.
Those are all great, great songs, and I do personally find it useful sometimes, with these great songs, to go and study them, and pull them apart, and borrow the chord progressions from them. Like “That’s the Price of Loving Me” — the chords are taken from a Serge Gainsbourg song. But that’s OK. If I ever feel bad about it, I’m like “he was a notorious thief.”
On “Bourgeois Manque:” ”I’ll eat when I’m hungry / I’ll drink when I’m dry / Dollars for breakfast / Religion when I die,” paraphrasing lyrics from “Moonshiner”, which is probably best known for the Bob Dylan version. Is there something to that?
A friend of mine was like “Oh, you got those lyrics from the Dylan tune.” I’ve never heard that song in my life! I got them from an old book of like, old English verse. So I took that. So that’s where he got it from. Again, he’s so… it’s OK! It’s OK to steal from thieves. They probably stole everything…
I feel like there’s a little bit of a fascination with the past and with inevitability on the record. You also cover this song made famous by Nico (“Reiche Der Traume”). A collection of influences, or at least nods to those influences, that are coming together to make something new, and very uniquely your perspective.
As I get older… I’ve said this before, but I guess I kind of get tired of just singing about myself all the time. To take an interest in politics, or other stories. Just to realize there are other stories to be told, other ways to write songs, so to speak.
This is your first time back working with Kramer, who produced a lot of the classic Galaxie 500 material. His influence is very palpable on the record, but once again, I don’t think that sounds like anything that you guys have done together in the past. There’s a kind of suggestion–That the influences in our past, well omnipresent, are not determinate on our outcome today.
At a certain point, hopefully you’re just beyond your influences. I remember Philip Roth saying that somewhere… like after writing seven books. Not completely there, but that you’ve hopefully established your own voice. I think Kramer was quite conscious of not wanting to do the same thing again. And I think I was too.
He very much took charge in the studio, which was nice. It was relaxing. Just watching him work, it’s amazing how quickly he can do it. Because, god… people can spend a lot of time just sitting in the studio, arguing about things. They can spend a lot of money that way.
You find that the more takes you do, the further away you get from something good. I could sit there playing that guitar solo 20 times. I’m not sure it would get any better.
Is there something about this material that made you think that now was the time to work with him again?
I just kind of decided, with time passing… I feel like I woke up one day, and I was like, we should do it. I shouldn’t just endlessly put this off and say “yeah, we’ll make a record one day.”
Especially during the pandemic, losing a couple of friends. You know, dying. I’m just like… we’re not going to be here forever. It’s become a thing, I guess. It’s probably almost every second press release now, isn’t it? A lot of “the pandemic made me rethink!”
You’ve been involved in so many groups, and a lot of them mean a lot to a lot of people. I think there are some questions about how you’re going to approach that history, and how you’re going to sort of pick and choose when and what to play.
Since we’re talking about Bob Dylan, I’ll talk about him. I went to see him a few years ago, and it’s great. He does whatever the fuck he wants. Doesn’t he? And that’s hit or miss. Sometimes it’s great. Sometimes it isn’t. It was great the last time I saw it.
I’m aware that I feel like people come expecting to hear some older songs. I think it’s nice to deliver that. But if I’m just doing that, it would get pretty boring for me. The way I was doing these shows was to just come out and play six new songs in a row. We’re kind of testing people… You can feel people getting a little restless. And then I would play older songs. The Galaxie 500 songs are pretty easy for me to play, so long as I can still hit the notes… although! When I say they’re easy, they’re actually deceptive. For whoever’s playing drums and bass, they’re actually kind of… there’s a lot of little parts to work out there.
And then we played a couple of Luna songs. I didn’t want to play them just the way that Luna plays them… try to do something different with the arrangements of those.
(A P.S. email from Dean
“I went and listened to “Moonshiner,” great performance by Dylan. I had stumbled upon those lines in a collection of poetry, The Oxford Book of Light Verse, edited by WH Auden. There is a poem called “Rye Whisky,” credited to anonymous, that contains the lines:
I’ll eat when I’m hungry
I’ll drink when I’m dry
greenbacks when I’m hard up
religion when I die
As you probably know, the folk tradition is all about borrowing lines, or borrowing whole songs.)