Articles

Mazzy Star - Tangled Up in Blue

by Alternative Press, Issue #99, November 1996

Mazzy Star went platinum with 1993's So Tonight That I Might See without compromising their artistic vision. An anomaly in the top-40 charts and in the crass world of rock, David Roback and Hope Sandoval's music reflects its creators' own melancholy dreaminess. Dave Segal intrudes upon their privacy and tries to unravel the enigma of these beautiful dreamers. Lee Locke attempts to get them to say "cheese."

"London's great if you like looking at clouds," observes David Roback while strolling in the city's Muswell Hill neighborhood. "And I do."

Rock and fuggin' roll, eh? No, actually, and that's part of Mazzy Star's substantial charm. Guitarist/songwriter Roback and his creative foil, singer/lyricist Hope Sandoval, shun the gaudy trappings of the rock lifestyle. Instead they retreat into a small, intimate circle of musician friends in London and California (where they divide their time), surfacing every three years to release glimmering, gem-like albums. She Hangs Brightly (1990), So Tonight That I Might See (1993) and the new Among My Swan (all on Capitol) are immaculate amalgams of folk, blues, country and psychedelia. Suffused in a woozy, post-coital haziness courtesy of Roback's deft deployment of feedback and effects and Doorsy keyboard atmospherics, Mazzy Star's mellifluously moody music is best enjoyed with a lover or by yourself at 3 a.m. Add Sandoval's seductively deadpan vocals to the equation, and you've got what one hardcore Cleveland fan calls "heroin for the ears."

Every Mazzy Star story revolves around the interviewer's frustration with David's and Hope's notorious reticence and evasiveness. The subtext of these pieces is that David and Hope owe it to journalists and readers to illuminate very personal things about themselves and their art.

"If it were up to us," admits David, "we'd do maybe one interview per album."

Frankly, there were many questions that should've been asked but weren't during our Saturday-afternoon interview at the Woodman pub in Muswell Hill, the region where Hope cohabits with Jesus And Mary Chain guitarist William Reid. Why? Well, Hope and David already appeared to be in great distress merely talking about their music. Delving into personal matters could've ended the interview prematurely, resulting in grave consequences for this reporter's occupational well-being.

What kind of questions? There's the matter of Hope and David's interpersonal dynamic. Were they once lovers? If so, that has important ramifications to the nature of their ongoing collaboration. (Neither David's brother Steven nor fellow L.A. musician Steve Wynn-who were also interviewed for this story-could comment with authority on this subject.) And how does David feel about Hope seeing William and her working with him? (She sang a duet with Jim Reid on the Mary Chain's 1994 hit single "Sometimes Always"; William also plays guitar on the new album's slow-building stormer "Take Everything." William declined to be interviewed for this piece.)

Another question never aired: Is Hope aware of the powerfully erotic effect she has on Mazzy Star's male-and probably female, too-fans? Tact prevailed, though, as well as a self-preservational instinct: Watching Hope restlessly scratch at the table during our talk, I feared that she'd go for my eyes next if the boundary of good taste were breached.

Sitting in a secluded corner of the Woodman, Hope and David look about as cheerful as the hapless souls grilled during the Spanish Inquisition. Most musicians love to gab about themselves and their work; Hope and David are not most musicians. Triple-takingly beautiful in tight blue flares and red midriff-baring shirt, Hope squirms, twists her hair around her index finger and looks into the distance from the first touch of "Record" on the Sony Pressman. David-looking a lot like ex-Monkee Mike Nesmith with his long sideburns and ever-present beret-speaks hesitantly in the soothing tones of a cool liberal-arts professor. Long silences follow almost every question.

Mazzy Star's creative nucleus could've coined the phrase used in that beer ad: Why ask why? Why do we need to know the motivation behind Mazzy Star's elegiacally gorgeous music and star-crossed lyrics? Because, basically, we're nosy bastards.

Many Mazzy fans probably are wondering what the band were doing in the three years between So Tonight and Among My Swan. They toured their asses off in the aftermath of the late-blooming popularity of the "Fade Into You" single. What else?

"We've just been experimenting in the studio," says David between gulps of stout. "We don't really take a long time when we're actually working on an album. We do a lot of other experiments that never see the light of day."

"We're constantly writing and recording," says Hope between sips of red wine. "It's just when we decide to release stuff..."

Capitol hasn't pressured you to be more prolific?

"We don't really talk to [Capitol] a whole lot," says David. "We just do our own thing."

What's the best thing that's happened to you since "Fade Into You" blew up?

Hope and David look at each other for a small eternity. Beads of blood form on my forehead. Finally, David answers, "In your personal life there's a lot of things...Sometimes it's good that a lot of bad things have happened."

Surely your lives are much easier now.

"My life isn't any different," Hope claims. "I mean, how big a hit [she makes it sound like a disease] was it?"

Well, it got tons of airplay and MTV rotation, it helped push sales of So Tonight to around one million.

"Yeah, but when all that was happening we were here [in London]," argues Hope.

"We missed it. When we went back home it was over. It's hard to imagine what it was like," she says wistfully.

But you must have purchased some luxury items.

"Same car, no house," David retorts.

"It's not that much," Hope insists.

"It's been a little bit easier for us to get some help from people," David admits.

"Everybody's been a bit more friendlier," Hope notes.

"Yeah. Other than that," says David, "it's very abstract, really. It's not like The Beverly Hillbillies or anything."

So what negative repercussions resulted from your unexpected popularity? Are old "friends" coming out of the woodwork wanting a piece of your action?

"I think that people who are involved in some kind of scene, maybe that happens to them. But it really hasn't changed anything," says David.

"Yeah. We sort of don't have a lot of friends," says Hope. "We maintain the same friends we've had for years."

Among My Swan is Mazzy Star's most consistently sublime album. It's more of the same, maybe more minimal and somber than before, but the overall quality is higher than that of their first two excellent LPs. Hope and David are joined by mainstays Will Cooper (keyboards, strings) and Keith Mitchell (drums), and ex-Hole bassist Jill Emery. Trance-aholics will buzz to the psychedelic triumvirate of "Rhymes Of An Hour" (also on the Stealing Beauty soundtrack), "Umbilical" and "Rose Blood" (imagine John Barry's theme to Midnight Cowboy dipped in the choicest LSD). Neo-country aficionados should cotton to the slinky charmer "I've Been Let Down" and "Cry, Cry" (echoes of Dylan's classic "Knockin' On Heaven's Door"). Lovers of chilling balladry can brood to "Disappear," "Flowers In December" and "All Your Sisters," which has the disc's spookiest lyric: "Gonna put something in you/ Make the devil feel surprised/All your sisters wanna fly/Around my golden sky." "Look On Down From The Bridge" aptly closes the album in understated spiritual mode.

Nothing on Swan rocks, but it doesn't need to. Some tracks could garner heavy rotation on VH-1, but they aren't by any means like the anodyne pap that clogs the charts. Hope and David write memorably beautiful songs bathed in a muted amber light; there's a shimmery gravitas that never allows the music to slip into schmaltziness.

Mazzy Star's magnetism largely derives from Hope, who is the queen of Sad Girl Music, a subgenre with more adherents than you'd think. Astrud Gilberto, Nico and Joni Mitchell are the godmothers of Sad Girl Music. Current pretenders to Hope's crown include Drugstore's Isobel Monteiro, Cranes' Alison Shaw, Sharkboy's Avy, Tricky's Martine, Low's Mimi Parker, Lisa Germano, Cindy Dall and Kendra Smith (David's old partner in Opal).

On Swan, Hope's never sounded more alluring, her voice going down like honey liqueur, so detached it seems beamed down from the clouds. Melody Maker's Taylor Parkes accurately described her voice as having "a timbre that is utterly unique, a wasted, watchful murmur. It is peculiarly sexual, but utterly without desire."

Questioned about the meaning of the new album's title, David asks, "What is the title again?"

Hope sullenly shoots back, "I'm sure you know it."

"Hope will help you with that," David says.

"Uh, it's just what it is," she answers after a lengthy pause. "What does it mean to you?"

The world doesn't care what I think about it.

"We care," says David, as he and Hope laugh. "You flew all the way over here."

It is enigmatic, and people will probably wonder what it's about.

"Do you like the title?" Hope presses.

Yeah. It messes with proper syntax, which is always good. (Now it's my turn to pause.) So there's no grand meaning behind the title? It's just kind of suggestive of something?

"Um, there's a meaning behind it," Hope ventures. "I don't know if it would be grand to you or to anybody else. I think what you feel about it is probably more important...If you even care." (Jeez, she makes one feel like such a cad.)

I do care. I think your fans will care and want to be enlightened. Many will scratch their heads in confusion.

"I think that's a good thing," says Hope. "It keeps people thinking. I believe in letting people make up their own minds."

Mazzy Star's music is undeniably melancholic. Some believe that melancholy music resonates deeper than the upbeat sort, endures longer, soothes souls in a more thorough fashion. Hope and David don't necessarily agree.

"I think one of the great misconceptions people have about what is called melancholy music is that it's negative," says David. "I think a lot of times it has much more to do with personal release from melancholy, overcoming those feelings. I always thought a lot of what's called melancholy was about escape. I don't think people like sad music-they like the bliss that comes after listening to sad music."

While Mazzy Star's music taps into a sad vein, it also rouses the carnal spirit. Some friends of mine claim that So Tonight is a really good record to have sex to. Is that a coincidental by-product of what you're doing?

"Are those close friends that told you that?" Hope inquires.

Yeah. I agree with them. Has anybody ever told you that?

"No one's ever told me that," David claims.

"The last journalist that told me that, I hung up on him and called my manager," says Hope.

Moving swiftly on, then, did you see the Mazzy Star entry in that Alternative Record Guide done by a monthly magazine run by the son of Penthouse magazine's publisher? There were some really negative statements made by a certain Bay Area female critic. Neither Hope nor David say they've seen it. Some choice passages: Hope "is sullen to an extent few have ever equaled." "She exudes female passivity but little else." "...emotionally anemic..." "The pair clearly have a career ahead glamourizing heroin addiction." How would you respond to that?

"It's just a person," Hope replies.

The writer's creating an image of you that a lot of people are going to read.

"I think she's creating an image of herself more than an image of me," says Hope.

"Everybody's opinions are just a reaction to something that is happening in their own personal lives. If we were to react to everybody's opinion...There's so many weirdos and uptight people."

"It doesn't really have an impact on us, don't you think?" David says to Hope. "It's really remote. Journalism is such a massive industry. There are so many clichés."

"It's like journalists just write for each other," says Hope.

That's true, to a degree. Do those statements anger you or make you want to confront the person who wrote them?

"I have so many problems in my life, I don't need to deal with anybody else's problems," says Hope. "It doesn't matter. It's so small."

"It's just a dream to us," says David. "It's not real. We just make music. We would do it at home if nobody cared, or we'd do it in front of thousands of people. We didn't ask for any controversy, to be judged, dissected by vicious people who want to put you down."

Mazzy Star were not exactly overnight sensations. David's musical history dates back to the early '80s with Rain Parade, an L.A. band he led with his younger brother Steven. Part of the short-lived "paisley underground" scene along with Dream Syndicate, Green On Red, the Bangles and others, Rain Parade were responsible for Emergency Third Rail Power Trip. In his book Kaleidoscope Eyes: Psychedelic Rock From The '60s To The '90s, Jim DeRogatis considers that debut work "not only the best album from any of the paisley underground bands, it ranks with the best psychedelic-rock efforts from any era."

However, David left Rain Parade after that smashing LP. "It became a drag. I just had to get away and do something else," David explains. "Musically it wasn't working out."

Steven Roback, now leading Viva Saturn and an underrated author of many great songs himself, says, "[David's departure] made sense at the time. There were too many cooks in that band. We needed to have a separation so we could all feel more productive. I was sad when [David] had to split. But he needed his own band, and I needed my own band, and that's what happened."

Ex-Dream Syndicate leader Steve Wynn, whose band shared many bills with Rain Parade, remembers being shocked when David left Rain Parade. "It would be like me being thrown out of Dream Syndicate," he says. "I never knew why it happened."

Wynn-who considers himself a fan of David's work-believes that bassist Kendra Smith left Dream Syndicate shortly after David split from Rain Parade in order to form Opal, partly because she and David were dating. Wynn has no hard feelings over this (nor over being the only Dream Syndicate member not asked to contribute to Rainy Day, an album of covers by several paisley underground fixtures).

He and David rarely communicate, but around 1989 Wynn received a strange call from Roback. "David said, 'I had this great idea that you and I should start a band, sort of a modern version of Cream. A freakout, acid, jamming kind of band. You could sing.' I said, 'Wow, that's a great idea. We should try this. Wanna get together later this week, next week?' 'Well, I don't really have any plans to get together. I just want to talk about it.' 'All right, give me a call when you want to get together to do this.' 'Okay.' We never spoke again."

Talking to the Roback brothers, it seems like there's a great distance between them-emotionally as well as geographically. Each claims not to listen to the other's music. But Steven says that he's not surprised by Mazzy Star's success. "David's a good artist and a good businessman. He hit on a formula that worked for him. He knows how to exploit people's strengths, so I'm not surprised at all." He punctuates that sentence with a weak laugh.

Are Steven and David competitive with each other, or do they have a mutual admiration?

"A little of both," Steven says. "There's a mutual respect on a basic level. I think we have a distant admiration of each other's work.

"David understands what he's doing. It's a completely calculating persona. The more you insulate yourself from the press, the more you become a blank screen for projection of cultural myths. That's why he's so silent. He understands that."

David once said in an interview that he didn't follow Rain Parade after he left, which suggested bad blood.

"I don't think it's bad blood so much as the need to clear the palate. We needed to clear our brains. If you're looking for dirt on a blood feud, it's not there. Sorry.

"One thing that David and I have talked a lot about is art history, rock and roll history. Our understanding of that plays into it. You don't want people to intrude in your personal life because you can say something, and it can really be taken out of context. It can come back to haunt you.

"I'm happy to give you what I can about David, but my head is pretty much focused on this whole other realm. There's not too much I can really...offer."

Wynn and Steven Roback remember seeing Hope near the front of the stage at many Rain Parade gigs with her friend Sylvia Gomez. (Gomez later played on She Hangs Brightly.) The two high-school friends had a folk band called Going Home. David produced their album in 1982 or '83, but it remains unreleased. After Kendra Smith left Opal in the middle of a 1987 tour with Jesus And Mary Chain (not before contributing vocals to the psych-glam classic Happy Nightmare Baby), Hope replaced her, and it seemed right to rechristen the band. Mazzy Star were born.

"When Hope and I started working together," says David, "there was no past, no other band, no progression; it was just our own thing. We've managed to accomplish a lot of things together."

The mutual respect Hope and David share is very evident. Some observers may be under the misguided notion that Hope is merely an attractive mouthpiece for David's vision. Actually, she writes nearly all the lyrics and also contributes substantially to the musical side. For instance, she co-produced Swan.

Does Hope need turmoil or conflict in her life to write lyrics?

"I don't know if people need it," she says. "I think it's just there, so people write about it."

In your own experience, is it a spur to create, or can you create when things are going well?

"I don't know. I never really have things going well."

From an outsider's perspective that statement seems hard to believe. Young, beautiful, talented, part of a commercially and artistically successful band free to create without compromising, living with a fine musician who appears to care very much about her-what's the problem? Aahh, that's the crux of this whole story-and Hope will not reveal anything about it.

When William Reid enters the pub after the two-hour interview, Hope displays a palpable sense of relief. He's here to drive her and David to rehearsal at nearby John Henry Studios. They debate whether to allow me to watch Mazzy Star rehearse for their upcoming European shows. Ultimately they agree to let me do so, which is unprecedented in the band's history, road manager Jim Holman later confides.

We pile into William's compact car. He drives us to his and Hope's place so she can get her notebook of lyrics. At the house, David goes to the back garden to pet William's cat. He speaks of his love of animals, nature and the beauty of Cambridge (where Syd Barrett lives, he notes). David's markedly more relaxed here than he was in the pub.

Soon after we're back in William's car and studio-bound. Once there, David and I get out. We watch Hope say goodbye to William, but after ten seconds or so David can't bear to witness it anymore and says, "Come on, let's go."

In the dimly lit rehearsal room, the band have been waiting for their prime movers. Kurt Elzner, who's in the Seattle band Pretty Mary Sunshine and will play guitar on Mazzy Star's upcoming tours, says, "I had four beers and misgauged the alcohol content. I was so hungover I slept until 2:30. I'm not drinking anymore."

David responds, "You came to the wrong country. Drinking is the national pastime in Britain."

The band members laugh and then kick into "Disappear," the first track on Swan. It oozes an easy bliss. Next is a pretty version of "Halah" from She Hangs Brightly. On "Flowers In December," Hope blows a nicely mournful harmonica, David and Kurt strap on acoustic guitars, and Will Cooper plays violin. It takes two tries to get it done to David's satisfaction. "I've Been Let Down," which may be the first single from Swan, has a lovely countryish lilt and deserves to be as big as "Fade Into You."

After a half-hour, Mazzy Star's road manager signals for me to leave. The rehearsal was as low-key as anyone would imagine. David and Hope may be the leaders, but they rule with a light hand.

Many writers use the adjective "waifish" to describe Hope, but she appears to be much tougher than that word suggests. If she were to leave Mazzy Star she could likely embark on a fruitful solo career.

Still, one question nags: Why is Hope so unhappy? Steven Roback has one theory. "The music business is not an easy business to feel good in," he understates. "When you're dealing with record companies-no matter how much they seduce you with money and promises-you have to remember you're dealing with people with a business mentality. That can be an area of disappointment. You can't mistake the business relationships for friendships. And it's hard to be on the road; it takes its toll on you. I think David understands that. He can work within that structure. It's probably harder for Hope. Commerce is the vehicle, and you have to go out on tour and promote your record, be lonely and experience all those things."

Hope's and David's moroseness is unfortunate for them, but for music fans of discerning tastes, the blood, sweat and tears seem worth it if it results in such exquisite music. When asked how they would like posterity to remember Mazzy Star, David responds, "I'm not ready to write my own obituary right now."

Hope says, "I don't really need history to remember me. I don't really think about it."