Interview: The Sunday Times
Posted on 20. Oct, 2003 by admin in Damien News, Interviews.
Pop: O yes it is…
He’s the new David Gray. Or so they are saying. But Damien Rice’s double-platinum album is a triumph in itself, says Mark Edwards
It is midday, and on the tour bus that is taking them from Atlanta to Chicago, Damien Rice, his band and crew are just waking up — in high spirits, apparently, judging by the shout of “Why is it called O?” that greets Rice’s announcement that he is doing an interview. Rice’s album is indeed called O, and, judging by the laughter that follows the question, “Why is it called O?” must be the press inquiry of which Rice is most heartily sick. Which leaves me all the more determined to ask it — albeit in a modified form. Given that you will no doubt heap ridicule upon me for asking what the title means, I say, is the answer interesting enough to justify my humiliation? “Not really,” says Rice. But he is wrong.
Rice’s answer amounts to this: he spent days trying to think of a title, failed miserably, then one day he was out for a ride on his bike and the idea of O just popped into his head. Perfect, he thought. Perhaps it isn’t an answer to get too excited about, in itself, but this unremarkable anecdote just happens to contain the essence of the man, the secret of his creative process and the story behind his slow but steady rise to musical glory. Do not try telling Rice that “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”. Rice’s motto goes more like this: “If at first you don’t succeed, stop trying, go and do something else and success will just sort of happen to you anyway.”
Rice spent eight years trying to make it big in the music world with the band Juniper. Then he walked out, gave up all his rock-star dreams, went busking round Europe, and here he is, one of the most fêted new singer-songwriters in the world. He has a double- platinum album back home in Ireland, a growing reputation in the UK (where he has been snapped up by the management and record executive behind David Gray’s phenomenal rise) and a television appearance on David Letterman’s show already under his belt in the States.
The buzz around Rice derives from the simple fact that he is a brilliant songwriter. His songs burn with the emotional intensity that was commonplace back in the 1960s, when the term “singer- songwriter” was first coined, but is hard to find these days. Delicate arrangements of guitar, cello and minimal percussion frame Rice’s aching voice, often augmented by the perfectly matched vocals of Lisa Hannigan. In Rice’s song The Blower’s Daughter, there is a moment where he sings the phrase “I can’t take my eyes off you” over the sparsest of backings, and you think to yourself: “Music really doesn’t get much better than this.” Then Rice starts strumming a bit harder, Hannigan joins in, asking, “Did I say that I love you?” and you stand corrected.
Rice’s solo career has been shaped by his busking trip. “When you’re busking, you learn that you can’t control what people give you. No matter how much you give out, no matter how hard you work, no matter how well you sing, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’re going to make a lot of money. And you have to learn to trust in that. I came back into the industry with that attitude, not planning anything, not having any desire to control what happens. I don’t try to do anything. I don’t try to write songs. I don’t try to sell records. I don’t try to get people into a gig. I don’t try to impress them when they’re there. I just do what I feel like doing, when I feel like doing it. It’s like the parts of your body. You’re much better off not thinking about it. Don’t think about your heart beating. Don’t think about your lungs breathing. Just let it happen.”
This attitude puts Rice at odds with the demands of the industry. The idea of booking studio time to record his follow-up album, for example, strikes Rice as ridiculous. How does he know in advance when he will feel like recording? “Booking a studio is like booking the toilet for five o’clock,” he says. And even as he tours the USA, he is assiduously cutting down his promotional work. His already meagre ration of “three pieces of promo a week” is about to be reduced to one. If the people around him want to make him the new David Gray, they are going to have a job on their hands.
“I have already sold enough records. I’m already successful enough for me,” he says. “It will not make me any happier than I am if it goes triple platinum. I don’t need it to move any faster.
I don’t want the hype. I don’t want: ‘Oh, you’re this amazing, wonderful whatever.’ I’m not. I’m just this dickhead Irish guy who makes mistakes and writes songs about them.”
O is out now on EastWest records
