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| Reprinted from The Album Network, May 24, 1996 |
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| On Villains, The Verve Pipe display an inclination toward resplendent arrangements and tight, multi-layered harmonies, along with a predilection for mid-tempo rock songs. They come across as an impressive studio band, to be sure, but - with the exception of "Barely (if at all)," "Real" and, maybe, "Myself" - you probably wouldn't guess from the CDthat the phrase, "They rock!" might be used to describe live shows. And so it was a bit surprising to hear the buzz that came out of New Orleans last January. We all know how unforgiving industry crowds can be, and yet the people who saw The Verve Pipe at that showcase came away spewing forth the type of accolades and praise generally reserved for only truly awe-inspiring bands. And so it was that Michigan's The Verve Pipe served notice that they would no longer be confined to regional success. The buzz that spread out of New Orleans seemed to propel the band onto more than 250 Rock, Alternative and Adult Rock Radio stations, but if their first two releases were any indication, Villains was destined to take The Verve Pipe to a much greater audience than their upper Midwestern roots; through their own label, LMNO Pop!, the band has sold a combined total of more than 40,000 copies of I've Suffered A Head Injury and Pop Smear. The songs on Villains are dynamic, powerful pop, which singer and main songwriter Brian Vander Ark says come from his love of ex-Husker Dü front man Bob Mould. "When Workbook came out, I really saw the light of what I wanted to achieve, sonically, and in Villains, I think you might be able to hear the combination of that and my love for The Beatles and XTC." Though the band is nearly always on the road these days, I managed to find Vander Ark and drummer Donny Brown - who started The Verve Pipe three years ago from the remnants of their respective bands, Johnny With An Eye and Water 4 The Pool - at their homes in East Lansing. AT THE TIME, DID THAT SHOW IN NEW ORLEANS FOR THE BMG CONVENTION SEEM LIKE IT WAS PARTICULARLY SPECIAL FROM YOUR POINT OF VIEW? BRIAN VANDER ARK: "You know, right after we got done playing that show everybody was just kind of, 'Eh, it was okay.' We didn't collectively feel great about the show until the people came back and they were just blown away. I feel like that's probably alwavs the way it's gonna be. So, as far as it being any kind of turning point for us, I think ' for the 'most part, it was. There's a great buzz about us live, and I'm so thankful that we pulled it off in that respect. It's ironic that it happened to be the show that everybody saw that could really influence what happens with this band, and we didn't really feel like that was one of our best shows. I thought the night before was the best show, and there was only like, 30 people in the audience." DONNY BROWN: "I didn't feel that great about that show - it's so ironic, but that's the truth. I enjoyed the show, and I was getting a great vibe from the audience, but personally, I think I could have pulled it off a bit better and made a little bit more of an impression. I mean, when I walk offstage I want to feel like, 'There, now what do you think?"' HOW IMPORTANT DID THAT SHOW FEEL TO YOU PRIOR TO GOING ON STAGE? BV: "I couldn't even explain it. We knew that it was an important show, but we didn't think that it was gonna make or break us. I think we had a fairly decent live reputation, but we knew that there were a lot of people who were really counting on us to put on a good show [that night]." DB: "Our manager always lets us know who's going to be there, but you try to forget all that when you're warming up before you go on stage. You try to remember that these people want to hear some good music and you have to deliver, so we kind of have the same approach if it's an industry crowd or not. I never heard the term industry crowd, by the way, until we were doing things like that." WHAT EXACTLY DOES LMNO POP! ENTAIL? BV: "It was kind of a slipshod type of record label, just something to, like, establish ourselves before we did all the paperwork to make ourselves a real label. We have a couple of guys who work [as] kind of a liaison to RCA, a liaison for our management, everything. "Also, we're looking into trying to sign other bands and distribution, that type of thing. Right now we're trying to concentrate on what we're doing, but it's really just kind of laving the groundwork for what we want to do." I KNOW THAT THE NAME OF THE BAND DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING, BUT WHERE DID IT COME FROM? BV: "We [were sitting] around one night in the studio and we were saying, 'We gotta have a new name now. We can't keep going as Water 4 The Pool or Johnny With An Eye.' So we picked four or five names, narrowed them down to two and then we picked one ... and [our old guitarist], Brian Stout, said, 'I'm not gonna be in a band called that. We're gonna call it The Verve Pipe.' And we're all like, 'Screw it, all right.' We just kind of threw up our hands and said, 'Fine.' Nobody really knew what it was, and at that time it was such an awful name to say. It still is. People say, 'What?' and they spell it wrong, or whatever, but we're stuck with it." DID YOU EVER ASK BRIAN WHAT IT MEANT OR WHERE HE GOT IT FROM? BV: "He was the kind of guy that didn't really want to talk about it, or really wasn't one to explain his lyrics, or anything. There probably was nothing to it. It was just two words that he had put together. To our chagrin, you know? "But it works out good, because I think it's fairly original and now as it's starting to progress. People go, "Oh I love the name." Back then it, it was like, "Oh man you gotta change the name of the band." BRIAN, IN YOUR VOCAL DELIVERY, YOU REALLY LIKE TO HOLD SINGLE NOTES, WHICH ISN'T BEING DONE MUCH THESE DAYS. WHERE DOES THAT TYPE OF PHRASING COME FROM? BV: "You know, I think that comes from Donny. He really taught me that you don't have to have so much movement in a melody. I mean, I listener to The Beatles and XTC in a different way than he listened to them. I always listened to how much movement there was, the voice of an instrument "you know, Paul McCartney in 'Penny Lane': the movement of the vocal is beautiful, it's wonderful. And Donny was the one [who] really taught me that by holding a note out you not only hear that, but you hear all the other instrumentation. I think that's why the instrumentation comes across on Villains." WHAT CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT 'PHOTOGRAPH'? BV: "Everything that I'd written for this album up to that point was very, very dark, musically and lyrically, and I kept saving to myself, 'I gotta write something that's just a little more lighthearted.' I wanted to show that I could be 'up' and not have this severe twist in the lyrics. And it was like everything I had ever read about songwriters who say, 'Yeah, that song just fell right into my lap.' It happened to be the song that Brian Malouf, our A&R rep, was turned on by." DONNY, DESCRIBE THE LIVING ARRANGEMENTS WHILE YOU GUYS WERE RECORDING VILLAINS. DB: "We were on two houseboats; Brian and his brother Brad were on one, and A.J., Doug and I were on the other. This was in Sausalito, right on San Francisco Bay. Jerry Harrison lives there, and we wanted to record near his house. "It ended up being a very good experience for us. There were a lot of times where it wouldn't have mattered if I was living in a shack or if I was living in the Getty mansion, because of what was going on at the studio, but the boat had its moments." HOW LONG DID YOU STAY THERE? DB: "We got there at the end of July and we went into pre production the following week, so we were there for two months." WHAT WAS IT ABOUT PRODUCER JERRY HARRISON'S BODY OF WORK THAT PUT HIM HIGH ON YOUR LIST OF PEOPLE TO WORK WITH? DB: "Well, I think with Jerry the impetus for working with him was the fact that - not disregarding the fact that he was successful and that he was hot at the time he comes from a musician's standpoint and played in a band. He's very much into arranging and very headstrong as far as what he likes when he likes it. Jerry's one of these producers who loves the moment and when it happens, he's very aware of it; you won't change his mind once he thinks the moment's happened." BV: "I'll be completely honest with you, Jim: Jerry really wasn't my personal first choice, and I've talked to him about this. It's kind of a little joke between us, but Donny was just a huge fan of his, and also Doug and A.J. I liked his stuff, too, but I was really hot on the Weezer album when it came out, so I really wanted to work with Ric Okcasek. And, of course, Brendan O'Brien - I absolutely love everything I've heard that he's done. Jerry was on my list, but he wasn't, like, my first choice. After we sat and talked to him, though, he seemed really laid back, and that was kind of the way that we were convinced. "He was great to work with. [His was] a whole different mentality, I think. We come from the Midwest and there's this Midwestern work ethic - especially when we're paying for the record ourselves - that you have to be in the studio at 10:00 in the morning and you're gonna be there until midnight, or 2:00 in the morning. If something's not happening, you keep working at it until it's hapening . And with Jerry it was like 'If it's not happening, why don't we take the day off and we'll come back and do it when it's happening?' That absolutely floored me. It's like, 'We can't do that, can we? We can't just take the day off now can we?' "I personally don't even prefer to work that way. I really love to be in the studio. I'll be in there forever until something goes." |