Have you heard of Rufus Wainwright?
Dreamworks Records—the music branch of David Geffen, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg’s recent collaborative empire—has certainly done its best to make sure you have. If you peek at any recent music publication you’re bound to see something about Wainwright’s recent self-titled debut album.
Repeated ad naseum are these Rufus Wainwright facts: His ma is Kate McGarrigle of the McGarrigle sisters, his pa is singer/songwriter Loudon Wainwright III; he grew up in Montreal; he would only listen to opera when he was a teenager; he was nominated for a Juno and a Gemini for a song in the film Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Collector; and he’s gay.
Then comes the part where they say it’s one of the best debuts they’ve heard in a long time, that the songs reveal a unique talent whose voice peaks and droops and growls and rolls through his courtly cabaret.
Initially I was ready to shrug him off as a spoiled, son-of-a-performer whose achievements up to this point could all be traced to the advantages of his birthright. And in a lot of ways it is true—he’s the first to admit it.
But one listen to the putrid debut of Adam Cohen—son of Leonard—should shed some light on the difference between nepotism and the real thing. His family may have gotten Wainwright’s foot in the door, but it is his talent that's charming it off its hinges.
In conversation he is tremendously comfortable and easy to talk to; there’s nary an ounce of deception in his frank answers. His showbiz history seems to have adapted him to the rigours of the Q&A.
All the Tommy Tricker fans that have been keeping track will remember that it was over two years ago that Wainwright was signed by Dreamworks, two years he spent in L.A. recording the album.
"When I got signed I hadn’t been playing a lot," explains Wainwright from a tour stop in Colorado. "I’d been playing in Montreal and living at home. I took time to develop my style. I was pretty green and it took a long time to get the proper recording. During that time I played a lot in L.A. Lenny (Waronker), my producer, really wanted the album perfect and was willing to spend the time and money to make it that way. It was really important for Dreamworks to have a record that was really worked on—they have a lot on the line right now."
Wainwright was the label’s second signing (after George Michael) and rumour has it the album cost a million dollars to make. You can be sure Wainwright is under a lot of pressure to make it large, but he knew what he was getting into.
"In my opinion, the record industry—the way it is set up for an artist—is usually a pretty stressful situation," says Wainwright, "a bit of a slave trade. I mean, you spend all of this money and you don’t pay it back monetarily, but contractually you don’t get a salary because you have to work it off. It’s kind of like being in boot camp. It’s pressure any recording artist feels. It’s an industry: we have to make money for the monster, for the beast!"
Before his move to L.A., Wainwright lived in Montreal with his mother and his sister Martha; the latter performs with him live and on the album.
"Montreal’s a great writing city. It’s poetic, you know, it’s got French and poverty. It’s a great city to do nothing and write songs. I know about 100 people like me except they didn’t get signed and I did."
Getting signed by a big international label while your friends wallow in the obscurity of a local scene has got to create a bit of friction. Admits Wainwright, "I’ve experienced a little bit of snubbing. Not so much jealousy, but a bit of resentment and frustration. I’m half-American; I have an American passport, so I could come here and work and it wasn’t that big of a deal. But a lot of them feel trapped in Montreal and in Canada."
It was in Montreal that he dedicated all his time to writing songs, surviving on an allowance afforded him by his mother whose only condition was that Wainwright focus on writing music. His mother told him "Rufus, don’t get a job, it will crush you."
"My mother said that because she knew I could do it. She’s an artist herself and she saw that I had the drive and the desire, the disease of performing. She had the means; she wasn’t rich or anything, (but) she could pay for me until I was 22.
"I think if you’re an artist you should try to make your money with your art. Maybe this is the American in me, but I think making music—at least making records—is a business and it is a job. It is getting up and going to work everyday. She knew if I got another job it would be pointless because I should be trying to make money at what I want to do, which is music, which makes sense if you can do it. It forces you to work a bit harder, to get out there and show it to people, to not keep it protected.
"One of the things about Canada which I hate—I mean, I love Canada, I love and hate Canada like most Canadians—is the state of the arts, (or) having so many people going to art school and passing so easily. I see kids going into CEGEP in Montreal and all of a sudden doing art theory their first year—already theorizing about contemporary art! There has to be some practicality involved, some craftsmanship in everything. In Canada, because it’s such a socialist country, it allows for that. I know a lot of people who end up on welfare writing songs here and there and thinking they’re doing just fine when 30 years down the line they’ve accomplished nothing."
At a recent show in Toronto supporting Sean Lennon, Wainwright was moved to the top of the bill because at many of their shows people were leaving after his performance. Many said this was due to his ability to entrance an audience to the point of exhaustion.
"Touring with Sean Lennon was amazing. He has great crowds," he says humbly. The Lennon tour was followed by a southern U.S. jaunt with Lisa Loeb that was a bit of a contrast. "That was kind of trying. It was very different. The majority of the audience was there to see her and relive some kind of college thing with their meathead boyfriend. It was not pleasant."
The biggest obstacle to Wainwright's commercial success (he’s sold 24,000 albums to date) is the peculiar nature of his music. His use of piano and string arrangements might give his music an air of aloof sophistication, alienating music listeners who have gotten used to the guitar-by-numbers, burb-rock of the last few years. The music leaves alternative-radio programmers and listeners scratching their heads waiting for the thumbs-up signal from the dharmas of dope. But Wainwright sees this as his advantage.
"On one hand I don’t have that," he explains, "but there’s billions of albums like that and for them to be in competition with each other it must be tougher. On the other hand, there’s no other album like mine, which is a real plus in terms of being noticed."
Wainwright cites opera as his biggest influence—not exactly an incitement to the majority of popular music listeners. But for a few years it was all he would listen to and as a result it has found its way into his songwriting.
"It’s taught me that a song can be two seconds long or 20 minutes long," he explains. "There’s no such thing as a standard. And that it’s important to shoot missiles to the heart whenever you can. It taught me how to rock, to grab ‘em by the balls."
Interestingly, the media reaction to Wainwright’s sexuality has been minimal. Perhaps this is because the straight forward image of Wainwright crooning intricate songs from a piano bench has more in common with someone like Ron Sexsmith. It’s a far cry from a rock star prancing around in a dress trying to convince a crowd that an innocuous dabble of lipstick means they’re the harbinger of some Gender-Fuck Revolution (read: Michael Stipe, Marilyn Manson).
Regardless, it is a significant benchmark since Wainwright, at 25-years-old, is the first artist on this scale to launch his career as an out gay man. "It’s definitely a part of me," he says. "I do think living a gay lifestyle can be hard. It can be harder than living a straight lifestyle; it might add a little bit more depth or something. But in the end I try to make my songs available for anybody."