Transcript:
Beth Jeans Houghton hits California and, curiously, Anthony Kiedis' house. Chris Ziegler tags along.
"Veins I wrote when I was 16," says Beth Jeans Houghton, remembering a particularly idiosyncratic track on her long-delayed new album Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose. "So that's now six years ago. Jesus! I was doing interviews two years ago about this record saying, You know Veins? I wrote it four years ago... And now it's six. And I'm still doing the same bloody interviews about the same bloody record. That is depresssssing."
But everything happens for a reason, she continues, although she says she hates it when people actually say everything happens for a reason. So if it took two years of frustration upon frustration before the release of her debut full-lengther with her band The Hooves Of Destiny, it was worth hardships like having to live for a week on OXO cube and cheese "soup" while her album advance dwindled.
Now this polite, practital Newcastle girl is about as far as you can possibly get from OXO and the North-east. She's sitting at the rough-hewn dining table in the Malibu mansion of Red Hot Chili Peppers' singer Anthony Kiedis, who kisses her lightly as he passes her a straw to sip through so she doesn't muss the lipstick for her photo shoot. Did Kiedis' confession of a "huge crush" on Houghton in a recent MOJO have anything to do with this relationship? "No influence at all, I'm afraid!," she says.
Houghton arrived just days ago, and her battered suitcase with 'BJH' painted-on is half open on the floor, but she's already been photographed by paparazzi at Kiedis' side at her first-ever Lakers game, and has picked out the dress she'll be wearing to Damien Hirst's upcoming dinner party.
"I've always felt like LA was my home anyway," she says. "I grew up listening to Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Ladies Of The Canyon was probably the first record I listened to on vinyl, and I was fascinated by it. From there I started listening to all the other artists from that place and time. The world seemed a little more naive then but a little better for it, if that makes sense? Like the first time I came to LA, I was like, Oh, wow, it looks like a vintage postcard! The sky was dusty yellow and there was this beautiful golden glow, and everyone told me, 'No, no - that's pollution.' Ignorance is bliss."
She's hardly ignorant when it comes to LA music, however, as she expounds on its 1960s-70s golden age like a scholarly local. She's slept in the hotel room where Gram Parsons passed away and enjoyed an afternoon slow riding with Neil Young inhis Cadillac as he tested out his new sound system. And while she still needs a work visa, a home of her own and an original copy of Love's Forever Changes LP before she'd call herself a resident, she eventually hopes to move to the artsy Echo Park area.
And after that? Figuring out how to get her record collection to California. She remembers exactly what she had in her headphones the day she decided to quit school, aged 14 - Nico's Chelsea Girl. After an earlier moment in music class, when her teacher told her one of her unpredictable loop-the-loop compositions wasn't a song, there wasn't much reason to stay anyway: "Fuck you!" she says now. "If you say I can't write songs, I will!"
A year later at age 15, she bought herself an eggshell-blue Stratocaster, and by 2009 she'd released a small but formidable selection of independent singles and ricocheted through a series of serendipitous encounters with fringe movers like Devendra Banhart and Tunng. It seemed she was just on the edge of becoming "a" - if not "the" - Next Big Thing. In MOJO that spring, she'd even discussed a potential autumn LP, and later in 2009 had released her Hot Toast Volume One EP with her band, the aforesaid Hooves. It started with the song I Will Return, I Promise.
Three years later, she did. Despite the intervening complications, the puff of breath that finished the EP might as well be the same inhalation that starts Yours Truly, and the years between collapse to a momentary interruption. On Yours Truly, Houghton and her Hooves (with Blur producer Ben Hillier) find an undiscovered space just past Kate Bush and Beirut, where pop songs become pocket symphonies and every chorus is flocks of birds in flight and bursting fireworks.
Now that Yours Truly is out, she's planning her next album, super-charged with new ideas to go with her new California home. She can't really recognise the Beth Jeans Houghton who wrote songs like Veins, she says. But doesn't feel she needs to, either.
"I feel like she's an old friend, as opposed to a younger me," she says. "I was talking to someone the other day about how all your cells regenerate every seven years, so every seven years you're a completely new person. I have probably a record-and-a-half rehearsed and ready to play, and I know when it comes time to record, I'll have a whole another set of new songs. I'm trying to catch up with myself."
Hillier'sAEGIS
BETH JEANS PRAISES PRODUCER PAL BEN
WHEN HER manager suggested she meet with producer Ben Hillier, Houghton recoiled. Ever since she had her first loop pedal, she's been wary of anyone fiddling with her sound - even if their production credits run from The Horrors to Blur and U2.
At their first meet in a London bar, she quickly outlined her don'ts, won'ts and never-evers: "I don't want it to be a clean record - if a mistake happens, I'm happy to keep it. I don't want it to sound overproduced. I don't want it to be necessarily commercial. I have an idea what I want it to sound like; if that changes, it's not a bad thing."
She was surprised when he agreed. After taping Yours Truly's lead track, Sweet Tooth Bird, creative harmony was achieved. But it was over lager Houghton knew she'd found the right man: "That's what's most important," she sayd. "To be able to be friends - so you can spend 12 hours doing the same thing over and over, and then go to the pub afterwards."
"Veins I wrote when I was 16," says Beth Jeans Houghton, remembering a particularly idiosyncratic track on her long-delayed new album Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose. "So that's now six years ago. Jesus! I was doing interviews two years ago about this record saying, You know Veins? I wrote it four years ago... And now it's six. And I'm still doing the same bloody interviews about the same bloody record. That is depresssssing."
But everything happens for a reason, she continues, although she says she hates it when people actually say everything happens for a reason. So if it took two years of frustration upon frustration before the release of her debut full-lengther with her band The Hooves Of Destiny, it was worth hardships like having to live for a week on OXO cube and cheese "soup" while her album advance dwindled.
Now this polite, practital Newcastle girl is about as far as you can possibly get from OXO and the North-east. She's sitting at the rough-hewn dining table in the Malibu mansion of Red Hot Chili Peppers' singer Anthony Kiedis, who kisses her lightly as he passes her a straw to sip through so she doesn't muss the lipstick for her photo shoot. Did Kiedis' confession of a "huge crush" on Houghton in a recent MOJO have anything to do with this relationship? "No influence at all, I'm afraid!," she says.
Houghton arrived just days ago, and her battered suitcase with 'BJH' painted-on is half open on the floor, but she's already been photographed by paparazzi at Kiedis' side at her first-ever Lakers game, and has picked out the dress she'll be wearing to Damien Hirst's upcoming dinner party.
"I've always felt like LA was my home anyway," she says. "I grew up listening to Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Ladies Of The Canyon was probably the first record I listened to on vinyl, and I was fascinated by it. From there I started listening to all the other artists from that place and time. The world seemed a little more naive then but a little better for it, if that makes sense? Like the first time I came to LA, I was like, Oh, wow, it looks like a vintage postcard! The sky was dusty yellow and there was this beautiful golden glow, and everyone told me, 'No, no - that's pollution.' Ignorance is bliss."
She's hardly ignorant when it comes to LA music, however, as she expounds on its 1960s-70s golden age like a scholarly local. She's slept in the hotel room where Gram Parsons passed away and enjoyed an afternoon slow riding with Neil Young inhis Cadillac as he tested out his new sound system. And while she still needs a work visa, a home of her own and an original copy of Love's Forever Changes LP before she'd call herself a resident, she eventually hopes to move to the artsy Echo Park area.
And after that? Figuring out how to get her record collection to California. She remembers exactly what she had in her headphones the day she decided to quit school, aged 14 - Nico's Chelsea Girl. After an earlier moment in music class, when her teacher told her one of her unpredictable loop-the-loop compositions wasn't a song, there wasn't much reason to stay anyway: "Fuck you!" she says now. "If you say I can't write songs, I will!"
A year later at age 15, she bought herself an eggshell-blue Stratocaster, and by 2009 she'd released a small but formidable selection of independent singles and ricocheted through a series of serendipitous encounters with fringe movers like Devendra Banhart and Tunng. It seemed she was just on the edge of becoming "a" - if not "the" - Next Big Thing. In MOJO that spring, she'd even discussed a potential autumn LP, and later in 2009 had released her Hot Toast Volume One EP with her band, the aforesaid Hooves. It started with the song I Will Return, I Promise.
Three years later, she did. Despite the intervening complications, the puff of breath that finished the EP might as well be the same inhalation that starts Yours Truly, and the years between collapse to a momentary interruption. On Yours Truly, Houghton and her Hooves (with Blur producer Ben Hillier) find an undiscovered space just past Kate Bush and Beirut, where pop songs become pocket symphonies and every chorus is flocks of birds in flight and bursting fireworks.
Now that Yours Truly is out, she's planning her next album, super-charged with new ideas to go with her new California home. She can't really recognise the Beth Jeans Houghton who wrote songs like Veins, she says. But doesn't feel she needs to, either.
"I feel like she's an old friend, as opposed to a younger me," she says. "I was talking to someone the other day about how all your cells regenerate every seven years, so every seven years you're a completely new person. I have probably a record-and-a-half rehearsed and ready to play, and I know when it comes time to record, I'll have a whole another set of new songs. I'm trying to catch up with myself."
Hillier'sAEGIS
BETH JEANS PRAISES PRODUCER PAL BEN
WHEN HER manager suggested she meet with producer Ben Hillier, Houghton recoiled. Ever since she had her first loop pedal, she's been wary of anyone fiddling with her sound - even if their production credits run from The Horrors to Blur and U2.
At their first meet in a London bar, she quickly outlined her don'ts, won'ts and never-evers: "I don't want it to be a clean record - if a mistake happens, I'm happy to keep it. I don't want it to sound overproduced. I don't want it to be necessarily commercial. I have an idea what I want it to sound like; if that changes, it's not a bad thing."
She was surprised when he agreed. After taping Yours Truly's lead track, Sweet Tooth Bird, creative harmony was achieved. But it was over lager Houghton knew she'd found the right man: "That's what's most important," she sayd. "To be able to be friends - so you can spend 12 hours doing the same thing over and over, and then go to the pub afterwards."
Scans:
______________________________________________________________________
Author: Chris Ziegler
Source: MOJO magazine
Scans: anthonykiedis.net
Date: 2012
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