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MTV UNCUT INTERVIEW with/ RYAN ROSS HERNANDEZPART TWO OF THREE What about some of the songs that didn't make the cut for the record? For example, Man versus Water, I remember you talking about a song called Give Me Back My Lovin', Let a Man Be Lost, Rock Song, Hummingbird, Covered in Rain.Ryan Ross Hernandez: " Yeah well like I said previously, there are a lot of songs that come up as an idea and show all the signs of finishing themselves and at any point in a song it can peter out. That's why I feel like if they made it to the record then they're winners. If they lasted with my listening to them four hundred times then I know they are good, they are electronically tested for other people to last for a while. The ones that fall off in the middle of the pack, they get re-purposed, they get sent back and crushed becoming once again just an idea junk in my mind or laptop. They almost always come back somewhere else, like the chorus for "I am a New Man," is an excerpt from a song called "How Do You Break a Mended Heart?". That was the closest song I've ever had to almost going on a record but still not going on a record. A lot of people ask me "Why didn't "Break a Mended Heart," go on a record?," and it is this weird, I call it "artist choice," that is why I can never be a manager. If an artist doesn't feel it, they can't do it. I'm glad I waited because it feels that much better to have that outro become the chorus for "I am a New Man."" Do you think some of the songs that didn't make the final cut of the record still some make live appearances or do you think they are completely put away for good?Ryan Ross Hernandez: " I, I could see myself playing Man versus Water. But even then, see even when a song is finished and I think some of the lyrics are played out, I can't play them. You know, I just don't want to do it, because it makes me feel lazy as a songwriter. I don't even like when one lyric is out of place. I have songs, from earlier in my career, that I had rush out and finish them in a hurry and I didn't dig the lyrics. So every time I sing them, I just feel like asking the audience, "Does anyone else but me, notice that this lyric makes absolutely no sense right here?". There is a line in "Move Along and Go," a song from my first album as a soloist and in the bridge of that song there is this line that goes, "(sung) Gonna break it, like I need her. Gonna miss her the moment I meet her and it's only gonna get worse from there." What the fuck does that mean?! That doesn't mean anything. Every time I sing it, it is a miserable feeling to know I put down a line in a song that even I don't know what it means and I'm the one who wrote damn the song. That's why I've become such a perfectionist when it comes to writing lyrics because now I have to understand myself what every word in a song means so I can bring myself to actually finish writing a song." Have you ever thought of putting together or being a part of a supergroup? And if so, what would be your dream bandmates and do you think that would ever be induce enough to actually make some music?Ryan Ross Hernandez: " I often times think about playing guitar in other bands. I love playing guitar on other people's records. I love being in different musical scenarios because I'd like to think that I'm a very diverse artist when it comes to genres. That's why I've never wanted to tie myself down to just one particular music style or genre. That is why I think that very different bands and artists reach out for me to work with them or do some production work. Earlier this year, I was bouncing off doing musical work and production on Alicia Lena's debut album and also doing some production and mastering for Reckoner's second studio album. There is a gene inside, a musical gene that lets me understand when I'm called upon to do a collaboration or production what that particular act wants from me when I listen to their music. If I ever made a supergroup, I don't know who I would have in it, but if I did I wouldn't be singing all that much. I would want to sing lead for a few songs but not an entire record. I would just want to run up to the microphone and sing backing then run back to the amp and play a little more. You what I mean? All these guys in bands get to run around. Jimi Hendrix with the Experience. Hendrix in Stockholm, Sweden. He sang for a couple minutes then he just jammed to the Purple Haze solo for ten minutes. I would love to do something like that, have a little drink, go into the crowd and jam with them. Run back to the mic sing a little then keep jamming. Any time I am up on stage, I'm singing and playing guitar. I am steering the boat. So I would love to share some of the duties with another skipper. But I don't know who I would have in a supergroup. You couldn't put the virtual of every instrument into a band because that would be overkill. One thing that I know I would love to do is, sing with a woman, share some of the singing duties with a woman, I think that would be cool. And I would wanna be playing fast, because I can rock out but I just don't feel the need to impress people with just my skills as a guitarist. In my career right now as it is, I want everything to go hand in hand. I don't want any element of my music to surpass another. The songwriting goes with the singing that goes with the guitar playing on my records. It is just not my thing to want to be that kind of guitarist. But if someone else was able to keep up with me, I'd love to rock the fuck out. If someone else would sing I'd go all out. Who would I put in it? I'd have a female on vocals that is for sure. So, I'd have all of the original lineup of GirlSpice on vocals. Just get all the members of GirlSpice and have them on vocals. Then you get another band to play drums. I don't know get all of Infinite to play drums. You get Reckoner on bass. Regan Futrell and Jakey Comatose on guitar. Then I'd be the wise-cracker of the group. I wouldn't play guitar or sing, I would just be an unofficial member. Handle all of the production and songwriting. I don't know what the hell I'm going for anymore. It would be too tense to have some many ego's in a supergroup. That is why I think so many supergroups only end up being together a few years or an album then just dissolve. So I'd much rather just work on a song or two or just do some production for someone else, because that wouldn't hurt if I had a friendship with a person I was working with." One thing that's always impressed many critics and fans alike especially as you've gotten older, is that you have this ability to balance art with commerce. It is something that I think few musicians in this musical era have been able to accomplish, at least in the level that you have. How do you view making your music accessible while still maintaining credibility?Ryan Ross Hernandez: " You said the 'C'-word my friend. Credibility. I have a certain gene in my body that allows me to understand when someone else is saying, when they say "We wanna sell a lot of these things," like I don't see selling a bunch of something as the opposite of it being interesting or important or meaningful. I've always had, I've always seen it from both sides and it is a really interesting place that I'm in right now. I understand that I do have to balance, you know. If you saw my iTunes library, I could have a conversation with anybody at stereogum or pitchfork. But what I do with Spice Records, as the artist that I am with the records that I make, under the multimillion-dollar contract that I have signed onto, I'm taking all of my influences and I'm trying to convert them into popular mainstream music. That's my job right now. That is what the executives of Spice Records expect from me. It is not the only thing I can do and it is not the only thing I will do but as long as I'm still trying to make that can be played on top forty radio and be top five hits on the billboard charts. I wanna play by pop rules. I want to listen to top twenty songs and stay in the loop. I don't want to fall behind. I'm trying to take all the elements of music that I love and I'm well versed in, and convert them into music that a lot of people can get into. I don't know why I do that, I know a lot of people can't, a lot of people can find the compromise stressful and agonizing. I see it as just being another challenge and I see it as another talent. The ultimate talent of restraint and it is not selling out because I could go to a meeting room with the executives of Spice Records, my publicists team, and my manager tomorrow. And I could go and say, "Look, I need to make a record that is really not thinking about anyone else but myself," and we would all sit down and have a conversation and I would leave that office not making that record..... No, I'm kidding. But I'm a major label artist who has not only a record contract but like a public, sorta social contract. This is what I do for a living. I write blues songs, rock songs, soul songs, pop songs and I write them all under the same formation of commercial. That is not to say that in some point, I will need to make a record that I say, "Let's put this out in a different way. Let us put this out in a way that it is not expected to sell a lot of copies. I need to do this for me, this labor of love," and I know that someday I will release an album or a side-project that has very little to no commercial aspect to it. I'm never mistaken as to why I have the great success and I've been lucky enough to have the talent, little bit, to make it work. I think it is a good place to be in. I've always been able to do it, when somebody says. I haven't even hit that wall anymore because I know that before I hand in a record, what they need because I want it too. So I'm not handing in a record that's a mess and the label is going, "Well this is the single but you gotta cut it down," but because I am the producer, I am the in house person telling myself we gotta cut it or we better add this. I don't know why it doesn't work for everybody but for me you could see that I don't see myself as just a guitar player, or a singer, or a blues musician, or a pop musician, or a songwriter. I see myself as an arranger of all those things and I get better at it, I think over time at arrange those elements. And it is really a special little combination of things that I feel good about it. It is not like I think I'm going to go down in history as a guitar god or the guy that brought back blues in a mainstream in the twenty-first century. But I think I'll go down in history as being able to do that thing pretty well and that thing is putting music out on CD's they stamped out a whole bunch of. That is still musical and still has credibility and originality to it on a musical level but still reaches a whole bunch of people. I just wanna reach a lot of people and when I do something, when I have the need to not do that then it will be a conversation and it will be a different scenario. I look at it this way. If you want to do a documentary film, the movie studio is going to say, "Great! Here is how much money we are going to give you to make the documentary film and this is how much advertisement we will give you. It won't be as much as Inception because a documentary film is not a commercial project and the director who makes the movie knows that but he still feels the need to make it. So it is just understanding my place. I don't feel abused by it at all, for whatever reason I get it I understand. I feel like I am the most satisfied artist in terms of a record company, I get what they are saying and through that there is a trust level now. I wouldn't walk into someone's office and go, "No this is the single! 19 minutes long, don't cut it!," what is it called? "(censored) That! You Son of a (censored)!" You know, what I mean? I smell number one single. (chuckles) I don't know if you know, but I'm not exactly trying to be Bob Dylan—I'm already considered a popular musician. I'm not on some rock-snob archive label. I want to reach as many people as possible. Listen, I can play you Wes Montgomery's Smokin' at the Half Note. I can play you Van Halen's 'Panama. I'm not being arrogant but that's just me trying to explain to you and everyone watching this, that I'm a learned musician. I've done my studies in music, whether it be as a guitarist or singer or songwriter. I've studied all those aspects of being me, being that musician for the last decade. I love Big Bill Broonzy and I love Charlie Patton, but I'm not interested in carrying on these people's legacy, I'm interested in being informed by all of this music while still meeting the requirements of what a pop song is. I don't mind compromising." So your new single, "Hollywood Hills Assassin", is slowly but surely blowing up. Last week it debuted at number seven on the Top 20 Airplay charts and moved up a spot to number six this week. And on the US billboard charts it jumped from forty that got due to radio airplay for the first week to number ten on the charts this week thanks to both airplay and digital downloads. "Hollywood Hills Assassin", is an unusual single choice compared to your previous singles on the past two albums. What was about that song that made you go and say 'this is the first single'?Ryan Ross Hernandez: " Well, "Hollywood Hills Assassin," is a story. A progressive story that slowly builds up to what in my mind is the best guitar solo I performed on the record but still isn't really a song to show off my personal guitar skills. The story, is almost like a movie, a screenplay in a song. About a guy who is sort-of a killer, but not in the sense you would think. I see it as a huge metaphor to a guy who is a heartbreaker, a serial dater, a player in every sense. But inside the song, in the 'killer' metaphor, he meets a woman who plays the exact same game he has played for years and she takes him out because he wasn't as sharp as the mark. He thought the woman was beautiful and he planned on just doing what he did to every other girl before but he did something that any good killer shouldn't do, or is believed to be incapable of doing, and that's, that he falls in love with this woman but she can't truly love him back because it was her job to steal his heart then crush him. It is inside this vicious city called Hollywood Hills. At night man, when the lights go down, it is a sorta love battlefield when you go over those hills. I like to write a song like "Hollywood Hills Assassin," when after I know I have a record of tight little numbers that can be played in personal environments. So I feel like I earned the right with however many other songs are on the record that are structured in the classic songwriting structure. There is two or three other songs including this single, that don't follow that classical structure of verse and chorus and verse and b-section and chorus. I have like with "Hollywood Hills Assassin," to moving the chorus to two minutes into the song and really taking my time to progressively develop the song and build up to a really good chorus but that you only hear twice during the song. The music video is premiering on here I think, on MTV, on Thursday night so I'm excited for people to see it. It is going to be a really special because it is so different from any music video I've done before. It is a sorta short ten minute film about the 'killer' in the song. I play the 'killer,' so I'm glad because I get to have simulated sex with many beautiful women and be naked in bed with them. It has everything a person could ask for, sex, violence, me with a ton of beautiful women, it is very Mr and Misses Smith-like. And it was the first time that I got to direct and write one of my own music videos." Your life is a little bit like Superman and Clark Kent, I guess, because here in the United States you are huge and overseas like in the United Kingdom and such you are....Ryan Ross Hernandez: " (interrupting) Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Is that what you were going to say? I love when I go overseas like the UK for example, and I get asked for awkward questions. "(with British accent) In the States you are quite large, in fact you are massive. But when you get here to the UK, we would not piss on you to put you out of fire. There is a saying we have here called human garbage, and we say you sort-of get passed over for a bowl of mash potatoes." Well to answer your question I feel great about that. No I mean, I'd like to think I'm bubbling under, lets say. I still enjoy myself playing the UK and Europe and Japan and Australia, but there is a difference between those places and here in the United States. I've noticed in the interviews I've done over there in those places, that they truly just care about my music there. They do not care about my personal life or acting career overseas, they just care about my music. I just like to know where I stand because I know how to act and deal with it here in the United States now. But whenever I tour overseas, I feel like back when I started off here where I am just not sure how to act and that just takes more energy out of me. That is the time when people come up to me and say, "Excuse me sir," yes I know, what do you want me to sign for you? You want a picture? And they're like, "No, your flies down," so I don't know how to really roll over there. For the most part I just assume that no one has an idea who I am over there. That's why I always have to ask, "don't you know who I am?" no but seriously it doesn't bother me. It is sort-of like a progressive wheel, Jakey Comatose and PANIC! and Miss Vanity, are huge overseas especially in the UK, but they aren't particular as big as I am in the US, so really it is an age in the music industry where a certain act has their fan base in one specific market and they are now trying to reinvent themselves to also be huge in other markets." Now let's move on to a subject that the producers are asking me to ask you about because you were doing this right before we sat down for this interview. That is tweeting. Twitter. Where do you stand in all this musician or celebrities in general, with twitter and these other social medias and social websites?Ryan Ross Hernandez: " I don't use Twitter as a marketing campaign like so many artist do, because in my mind I don't see it like that. If I see something like Twitter, my brain looks at it from all angles, how am I gonna make this work? I'll use whatever means I can to stay in touch. I don't want to be like one of these big time artist who walk around with ten bodyguards, just to grab a cup of coffee at Starbucks. I want to stay known. I want to go out to a club and be able to enjoy myself without having to worry about if TMZ is gonna take pictures of me dancing with a tall beautiful brunette because celebrities are the world's worst data gatherers. We're day-trading in a small sliver of a demographic: people who read a third-rate gossip website and just have to post comments. Why would I want to jockey for position intellectually with people who read Perez Hilton or X17online.com?I appreciate that if you come home after making staplers all day, you might want to sit down and incite somebody on the Internet. They're exercising a voice. I get that. I'm lucky because I get a really big voice. Hopefully, I'll get you on something—hit you with one song, and you'll go, "Act-ually, I've gotta say, that song's my jam! But I still think he's a douchebag as a guy..." That all makes sense, but don't you think when you as person, walk out of a restaurant holding hands with a famous actress or when you go on Twitter and flirt back-and-forth with Nadia that you are purposely trying to push people's buttons?Ryan Ross Hernandez: " I'm not doing any of that to push people's buttons or make headlines. I'm just trying to live my life, like any other man that is my age, twenty-four on the brick of twenty-five is trying to. Walking out of a restaurant holding hands with a girlfriend is no crime. And no one would be talking about it if I wasn't this person and she wasn't that person. You just never know who's going to come into your life. To my mind, the only thing sicker than saying, 'Wow, you're a famous person and it would do a lot for my career to go out with you,' is to say, 'Wow, you're a famous person and I like you and all, but I can't do that to my career.' I don't think either of those is a good option. I admit that yes, flirting with Nadia on Twitter might be an attempt of mine to be funny but honestly I found her as a very attractive woman and I didn't have any other form to contact her and I just decided to complement her on the live-source that is Twitter. It isn't a poly of mine to attempt and mindfuck people, and it my way of saying that I'm secretly dating her because I'm not. Are we probably going to meet up one day and have a drink? Maybe. And that will be another event that people will blow way out of proportion and say we had intercourse in a bathroom stall or something." Stay tune for PART THREE of our interview with Ryan Ross Hernandez, this Thursday. He gives us a rundown of some of his favorite songs off his upcoming record "What Kind of Day Has It Been," give his opinion on some current ongoing popular issues, his view of the current music industry and peers, and what it means to him to be able and bounce off from making music, acting, and writing. Shortly following the final part of his interview, we will premiere his short-film music video of his new hit single "Hollywood Hills Assassin"! ( OOC: Thanks a lot! I really appreciate it. I'm trying a different aspect with this interview, I really wanted to humanize RRH. I think it is a good warm up for the track-by-track thing for the album that hope to start posting small bits of next week.) |
