Only singer/songwriter
Aimee Mann can make cotton candy seem sad. Setting up her new concept album,
The Forgotten Arm, Mann opens with “Dear John” describing the scene of the Virginia State Fair in the 1970s when “cotton candy was king” and her characters John, a boxer, and his girl Caroline meet.
Mann’s evocative voice and lucent storytelling detail how the couple falls in love and attempts to run away together. Their old Cadillac doesn’t move the relationship very far however, as mile for mile John’s drug and alcohol addiction shadows them.
Mann seems particularly empathetic towards the character of Caroline, who holds her pain at John’s side like a prizefighter. Sensitivity to the topic of substance abuse comes partly from Mann’s experience with friends who are recovering addicts, so whether she’s singing “Why does it hurt me to feel so much tenderness?” in “Beautiful, “We’ll have a big parade for every day that you stay clean” in “Going Through The Motions,” or “I was thinking I could clean up for Christmas” in “Clean Up For Christmas,” an insider’s perspective enlivens the CD with tender realism. By using the sucker punch as a metaphor for the unpredictable nature of addiction she frames the experience in a way it can be universally understood.
Released on Mann’s own Superego Records,
The Forgotten Arm, Mann’s fifth solo album, was recorded almost entirely live in the studio by producer Joe Henry in only five days giving songs like “I Can’t Help You Anymore,” “Little Bombs,” and “Video” additional intimacy and a sense of being in the moment. Listening to CD’s of heroes Elton John and Rod Stewart beforehand helped Mann set the swampy, southern seventies rock scenery that carries each track. Mann also features a honky tonk piano feel on the album to complete the mood.
While The Forgotten Arm’s songwriting seems dire as the record progresses, it actually becomes optimistic in Mann’s mind’s eye. Mann believes that when her characters hit the bottom, that’s when things get hopeful, because that’s when people change.
Suddenly that cotton candy tastes sweet again…
WOMANROCK: Your new concept album, The Forgotten Arm, follows the characters of John and Caroline as they meet, fall in love and try to run away together. What attracts you to the story of these two people?AIMEE MANN: The characters are kind of a composite of people I know and in general, the situation of people trying to have relationships with alcoholics or drug addicts. I have a very good friend who’s a drug addict, who is currently relapsing, and it can be a pretty bad situation, so I do have a personal experience with that. I also have other friends who are addicts in recovery or people who have friends who are drug addicts. I think if you are a musician you sort of inevitably run into folks with substance abuse issues.
WOMANROCK: You take a hard look at co-dependency within relationships, which can be a factor when you’re dealing with addicts.MANN: I think inevitably your first reaction is you want to help. There are all different ways for how people play that out. You can feel like you’re helping by pointing out the dangers of drug addiction, or trying to push people into treatment or there are various ways. I started going to Al-Anon because the same friend has relapsed before. He’s a crack addict, and not that any addiction is worse than another addiction, but he’s relapsed a couple of times so you are just immediately waiting for the call that your friend is dead. It’s pretty tough…Through Al-Anon I met people who have the same kinds of issues. Talking to them and listening to their lives, it all sort of goes in and informs the dynamic on the record.
WOMANROCK: Substance abuse is of course a universal problem, but you’re right about it being particularly obvious in the music industry. I relate to that anxiety of “waiting for the call” for assurance that the person you care about is actually okay.MANN: In music, it’s like your circle of friends are all addicts or people who are involved with addicts…I found the “open AA” meetings very helpful because you listen to peoples’ stories and, you know, it’s eventually, “Oh, he can’t stop.” I mean you know that, but you don’t really know that…
It’s a terrible thing the way people approach drug addiction in this country. There’s a lot of like, “Throw ‘em in jail.” There’s a lot of judgments about “Why can’t they get it together?” and “Why don’t they use their will-power?” which is of course the thing that got them into it in the first place. It’s certainly not going to get them out. It’s certainly a real tragedy and I wish this country had a more treatment-based approach to drug addiction, rather than a punishment-based approach. We’re a very punishing nation.
So that’s really the story on the CD. These people just run away together. It’s sort of the classic, “I hate my life so I’ll make a new life.” It’s like taking the trip to Oz or something.
WOMANROCK: You’ve taken up boxing. Was that part of the inspiration for making the character of John a boxer?MANN: Yes and no, or all of the above. My currently relapsing friend is a boxer and he kind of got me into boxing, so he’s sort of based on my buddy.
WOMANROCK: You talked about how “The knockout punch is always the one you never see coming.”MANN: Yeah, that’s kind of a classic boxing term. Another great quote is a George Foreman quote that’s sort of contextual because I think he was talking to somebody who had lost a fight. They’re like, “I don’t understand? I thought I had a great plan going in.” Foreman goes, “Everybody got a plan til they get hit.” To me that’s just my philosophy of life.
WOMANROCK: You titled the album, The Forgotten Arm. Why was that reference particularly appropriate to the concept of your story?MANN: “The Forgotten Arm” was the name of the move that my boxer friend showed me and his name for it was ‘The Forgotten Arm,’ which is the greatest name. The move is basically a move of misdirection. You have somebody on the ropes and you’re hitting them with one hand and you keep the other hand sort of at their waist so that they forget to keep their guard up against it. To me that was like the perfect metaphor for drug addiction. It’s just waiting there under the surface. If you’re not guarding against it, it’s really going to rise up and take you down and that’s the case for both of these characters, cause it’s something that she has to deal with too.
WOMANROCK: Musically you visualized the CD’s story taking place in the early ‘70s, beginning at the Virginia State Fair where your characters meet. What did you do to immerse yourself in that vibe?MANN: There were a couple of records that I was listening to that I remember from more or less that era because I was going for a little of that seventies southern rock. There’s sort of a seventies southern rock as interpreted by British artists. Elton John had a record called Tumbleweed Connection that I sort of referred to and I was listening to a lot of early Rod Stewart, Every Picture Tells a Story, which is really kind of swampy in parts, with its mandolin. I love it.
WOMANROCK: I love him (laughs). I’ve had a crush on Rod Steward since I was like eight. “Hot Legs,” “Do Ya’ Think I’m Sexy,” “You’re In My Heart,” “Tonight’s The Night” (sigh).MANN: (laughs) And the song “Maggie Mae.” I literally never get sick of hearing it. The sound of that and kind of the trashcan sounding drums, but also just the story, because once again, that’s just two people who just run off together. It starts out great and it’s sort of a kid with an older woman and this guy’s like, “What have I done?” He should be in school and he’s kind of thrown his life away. He left school and took a chance on this relationship that’s going nowhere. There’s a real pathos to that I remember. Even as a kid I remember not really knowing what was going on in the song, but you really hear it in the music and the vocals.
WOMANROCK: You also mentioned a “white-trashy, redneck feel that you have a weakness for.” Can you describe that?MANN: I had the idea that the characters would meet at the state fair because with him being a boxer, I just pictured his doing the exhibition bout and I’m obviously from Virginia and spent some time at the State Fair. It’s just like when you’re a kid, its just got this kind of cheesy magic, like the rides and stuff. It seems like the height of romance and that’s a bit of a white trashy ideal, that an amusement park is really romantic. It’s also a childlike idea. I feel like these characters are very childlike in their own world.
WOMANROCK: You wrote some songs on the piano for the first time?MANN: I gave it a shot. There aren’t that many songs that I actually ended up writing on piano, but I really did want piano to be featured and one of the ways to do that is to not have a lot of stuff going on in the mix so that you can really hear…I think especially this keyboard player [Jebin Bruni] keeps things moving rhythmically in a way that I really like, so I definitely wanted keyboards to be more featured.
WOMANROCK: Let’s talk about what’s happening to John and Caroline in your songs.MANN: “Clean Up For Christmas” is where the character of John is hitting bottom and a lot of the lines from the song were taken directly from a conversation I had with my friend who was at the tail end of a really bad relapse. He had really given up hope that he could ever get sober or live sober, so that was the sentence that he said. He was going to try to clean up for Christmas so that he could spend Christmas with his family.
WOMANROCK: It’s a heartbreaking conversation to have with someone.MANN: I know. It wouldn’t have been possible to write a song like that until he was out of danger and in treatment again…So the companion piece to that is “I Can’t Help You Anymore,” where Caroline’s realizing that at this point if she stays with him or maintains contact with him or whatever, that she’s going to get sucked down into it and she’s got to start worrying about herself. It’s like the awareness that she really can’t help him. It’s not only that she doesn’t want to anymore, but she sort of realizes it’s not possible and kind of sticking around to continue this fruitless endeavor is going to kill her, so she makes the choice to be in her own kind of recovery.
WOMANROCK: How about “Going Through The Motions?”MANN: “Going Through The Motions” is heavily based on the same friend. It was like a phone call I had with him, where he was out of treatment, in a half way house, and was super manic and then you just know that—you just know. Then he relapsed shortly after that.
WOMANROCK: “She Really Wants You” seems to go in a different direction.MANN: “She Really Wants You” is more heavily based on a different person, a guy who I knew who was an alcoholic. I was observing his relationship and it was kind of the classic relationship with the crazy girl. They would break up and get back together, break up and get back together, so I drew a lot from observing him.
WOMANROCK: I was paging through your press clips and I noticed reporters overwhelmingly label your music as depressing and tortured. Do you see your songs that way?MANN: I don’t see them that way, but then I’m probably the only one that sees the whole picture. For me there’s also a bit of black humor. I always think that there’s something that’s kind of optimistic about really just stating the problem clearly. If you’re really depressed, it’s hard to even state what the problem really is or move to any kind of solution, but obviously I know what’s in my head.
Another thing I get a lot is writers who say they find my lyrics really depressing, but the music kind of cheerful and that is always kind of bewildering. The thing is I never write lyrics unless I already have the music going and the music puts me in a certain mood. For me, the lyrics are already lightened by the music. You pick a song like “Dear John.” The music isn’t downright cheerful or anything, but it’s got a lightness to it, that to me, already informs the lyrics and sets the tone. You can’t look at them separately because they’re meant to go together. One mitigates the other. I think if I had lyrics that were really depressing and put really dark, creepy music under, it would be too much because that’s not how I intended it. I intended to have a bit of an emotional lightness, like a song like “Clean Up For Christmas,” which is very depressing, but I mean the impression I’m trying to give is this guy is completely at the bottom, but that’s a good thing, because that’s when people change.
Originally posted on WomanRock.com June '05.
Aimee Mann performing "She Really Wants You."
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