Halftimemag.com: John Vanderslice Interview
[This is an interview I did with John Vanderslice in the summer of 2002. It was after Life and Death of an American Four Tracker came out and it had quickly become one of my favorite records of the year. As it turned out, he was probably one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and we ended up having a lot of stuff in common. Other than continuing to be a successful musician, Vanderslice still operates Tiny Telephone, a recording studio in San Francisco.]
The Resurrection of the Four-Track
by Ryan Pangilinan
Most people don’t know this, but beyond the world of fancy digital, there is the lush sound of analog. All the crackles and tape hiss provide beautiful mistakes in a world of crusty perfectionists and tech geeks. John Vanderslice is such a tech geek, yet he is an analog boy in a digital world. His latest release, “Life and Death of an American Four Tracker” on Barsuk Records, is a conceptual trip down memory lane for this self-professed hip-hop geek.
How did you get the concept for this record?
I guess the first idea I had was that “Time Travel is Lonely” is in a way about my brother. Then I thought, “Well maybe I should write a record that’s more about my experiences growing up.” Then I did the usual songwriter thing of exaggerating, sentimentalizing, and blowing up the importance of childhood. I definitely grew up in four-tracker culture, or at least wanted to be affiliated with home recordings.
When I was 17, my mom bought me a 4-track and I really took to it pretty quickly. It definitely changed everything for me, and that’s when I started getting interested in writing songs because of the additive qualities of multi-track recording. I had never seen anything like it. The year before I bought a 4-track, my friend and I figured out a way to use a cassette deck and just dubbing the left and the right sides. You know, we’d take two tape decks and turn it into a stripped down 3-track by dubbing two sides – actually, no, we had three tape decks. But it was incredibly complicated and labor intensive and when I got a 4-track, it all fell into place.
Part of the record is about the death of that culture, which I’m kind of sad about.
I was 16 when I bought my first 4-track, and I’ve had two or three since then. I’ve played around with digital multi-track recorders, but I don’t think that they’ll ever capture the feel of the 4-track.
And always, the medium does define, on a certain level, what type of art it makes. I think that 4-track music is very particular.
What’s your favorite song that you’ve ever recorded on your 4-track, or do you still do that?
(laughs) I had a [Tascam] 424 Mark III that I gave to John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. He could benefit from it much more than I could. He records everyday at his house, but he usually records onto a boombox. So it’s really just live, direct to a 2-track. And I decided that he would make better use of it because I have a 24-track. Once you step up…. The sad thing is that I feel like somebody who has betrayed his own culture. I’m pretty hooked on 24-track recording.
I also found that I didn’t want to record at home anymore because I spent way, way too long working in my house. I really found the need to start working elsewhere, so I have a studio space where I do recording, where I don’t have any phones on, or computers, so it’s much easier to shut out the world.
I definitely miss the limitations of my 4-track, but there’s something of the resolution that’s kind of appealing. There’s a song on “Time Travel is Lonely” called “Everything Changed” and a lot of the basic tracks of that song were done on my 4-track and transferred over. So up until that record, I had been using my 4-track to record the basic structure, then I would transfer that over to the 24-track and just build tracks onto there. So it’s always been a useful tool, but now I don’t have shit in my apartment. Except my net connection.
I hear you’re big on hip-hop records….
It’s funny that you ask that, because right when you were calling, I was doing [something for] Pitchfork. I’ve been harassing them to let me write for them. They gave in and let me write at top 10. I’m doing a top 10 moments in rap, for my own lyrical interest in rap. There’s KRS-One and Public Enemy and Paris and Talib Kweli and Aesop Rock. I like rap a lot. I probably listen to more rap than I do indie rock. Indie rock is probably at the absolute end of my list. I don’t know why. I guess I’m exposed to it naturally, by the studio and shows and stuff, to get a break from it, I’ve looked to other genres.
Rap, for me, is definitely the most important musical inspiration. At its best, it’s always been about stories and narratives, and wordplay, word games and word invention. Man, you do find some of that in indie rock, but you have to dig a little harder. I’m just really into stories and people telling me about their lives or making up narratives. That’s my addiction and it’s easier to find in rap music.
Is that why you feel that you’re attracted to doing concept albums? You have a way to tell these stories – you have a beginning, a middle and an end – as opposed to a collection of songs about a moment in your life.
At that time, for me, it was an easier way to structure the record and to give them a little bit more meaning than just having 12 songs on a record. I’ll tell you what really did it: those 70’s concept records. The giants of the 70’s like “Quadrophenia” and “The Wall” and “Landmines Down on Broadway” and a lot of Kinks records they still speak to me as great records.
In rap, there are some many albums that have so many dramas and stories in between songs. It’s a much less pretentious, more free flowing idea in rap. You have a record like Prince Paul’s “Prince Among Thieves” which is pretty much like a drama, an old style radio drama. I just eat that shit up. And it showed to me that you can do a looser, more lo-fi, less kind of high brow concept record and it can still be interesting…. You can still do that and it can still be very powerful.
What are your top five favorite hip-hop records?
“By All Means Necessary” – KRS-One, Boogie Down Productions. That definitely was a huge record for me. My favorite record of all time as far as having an impact was Public Enemy’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions.” That was the biggest record for me. The first De La Soul record (“3ft. High and Rising”) was really huge when that came out. I really like Nas’ first record, “Illmatic.”
Yeah, I noticed that you quote that a lot on your e-mails.
Yeah, it’s a really dense and interesting album. It kinda sucks where he’s gone from there. There’s so much money in rap right now, so many people are corrupted. Rap, for me, was a little bit better when there wasn’t as much, like, 20-inch rims, Cristal, and bling bling stuff going on.
But that first Nas record is absolutely great. I like “Labor Days,” the Aesop Rock record, a lot. And I like the Talib Kweli record and the Blackstar (Kweli’s side project with Mos Def) stuff. And there are the hundreds of rappers that I just download randomly. There’s always pleasure – from the early Jay-Z stuff to the pop stuff.
I download a lot of shit. If anything’s recommended to me, I’ll just go and download it.
