John Hiatt - interview

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The cry of love is so alarming

A conversation with John Hiatt

by David Hoppe

Thursday, June 15, 2000, Nuvo.net volume 11, issue 15

When John Hiatt was starting out, in the early '70s, he often played at the Hummingbird on Talbott Street near the Herron School of Art. By most accounts, the Hummingbird was an obstreperous room, a place full of music, drink and argument — about art, revolution, the meaning of life. Hiatt was still living in his parents' house at 54th and Broadway in those days. He was a precocious kid; started his first band when he was just 11. So here he was, a teen-ager trying to hold his own in a club full of smoke and noise.

Listen to John Hiatt and it hits you: If American tall tales like the legends of Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan could sing, they'd sound like this — untamed and soul-deep, tender but a little scary. At times, Hiatt wails like a wild animal. His voice is a powerful tool and back there at the Hummingbird, even though he was still a kid, he used it to grab people.

Today, John Hiatt makes his home on a farm in Franklin, Tenn., a town in the Cumberland Valley, just south of Nashville. Since leaving Indianapolis, Hiatt has recorded 22 albums and written an untold number of songs. Indeed, although his live performances continue to be known for their rip-roaring intensity, Hiatt has staked what may prove to be a more enduring claim as one of the most distinctive writers of his generation.

A songwriter's songwriter, Hiatt's tunes have been covered by a truly remarkable array of over 100 other artists, including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Rosanne Cash, Steve Earle, Buddy Guy, Emmylou Harris, Iggy Pop, Willie Nelson and Bonnie Raitt — who sang Hiatt's “Are You Ready For This Thing Called Love” at her induction to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

A rich stew of rock, folk, R&B and blues, Hiatt's work has, over the years, described a uniquely American geography of love and let-down. His sound, capable of turning from rollicking to reflective, is matched by a language that, while consistently plain spoken, is often playful to the point of being down-home surreal. Hiatt's characters, like the figures in Edward Hopper's paintings of lobbies and hotel rooms, often find themselves separated by improbably great distances — that, nevertheless, carry a redemptive light.

Some men will drive
to the edges of nothing
so they can take a peek at the great abyss some avoid love
like it was a plague or something
so they can leave the seat down
when they piss
I miss that crocheted thing
you kept on the Kleenex box
I miss my feet
on your cold linoleum floor

—from Hiatt's “Ethylene”

John Hiatt: My main motivation over the years has been just to get simpler — like a good sauce, a good reduction. The more you reduce it down, the more intense the flavor.

NUVO: That reminds me of something Nick Lowe said about songwriting back in the late '70s: “Why say it in four lines if you can say it in three?”

John Hiatt: Nick Lowe taught me a lot. Working with him for the first time back in '83 on Riding With the King, he set me on a course in terms of how to approach the bear of recording. You know they call him the Basher. He used to say, “Bash it down and tart it up.” I've pretty much got hold of that theory. I've spent more time on records but they haven't been any better because of it.

NUVO: Many of the characters in your songs are reminiscent of the sorts of people found in the works of writers associated with Dirty Realism, the short story renaissance of the 1980s. Raymond Carver comes to mind.

John Hiatt: I wouldn't put myself in the same league with Ray, but he certainly brought an approach to fiction that was based on simple, conversational tones. He pushed that to its rightful place in modern literature, I think. He's even acknowledged by guys as uptight and high-minded as, say, John Updike. I love that kind of writing. It's a real American approach, kind of like jazz music. It's pretty straightforward but ultimately very complex — as life would seem to be.

NUVO: You once suggested you felt like a 20th century guy. Do you miss the 20th century?

John Hiatt: I've decided I'm just now coming into my own (chuckles). I'm actually a 21st century guy. I was just ahead of my time and people are catching up to that. I've laid a trail — clearly marked — and they're coming.

NUVO: I read an interview you gave to a local paper called Hot Potato in 1980. You said you didn't like having your lyrics printed with your albums. But I see you've recently started printing lyrics. Has your attitude about your writing changed?

John Hiatt: I still kind of feel that the lyrics to a song aren't really meant to stand alone. It's not poetry. I was initially opposed because I didn't feel the words and music needed to be separated, but what changed my mind was touring a lot in Europe in the '80s and realizing these people — because English was their second language — would benefit greatly from being able to follow the lyrics so they could figure out what the hell I'm on about.

NUVO: In our folk tradition, which, over the past few decades, has been blended with rock, there's a history of certain writers finding language and imagery that, when you look at it in its totality, describes the American character. Dylan has been on this case from the beginning and it seems you have, too. Where do you turn for material?

John Hiatt: There's so much inspiration that comes from a conversation overheard, or reading a newspaper or a fight with the wife; one of your kids saying something, or some horrific wreck on the highway. Our music is probably more varied than, say, the Western European tradition. We draw from African music and we've invented a couple of types of music which come from the Southern United States and probably from New Orleans — if you want to think of the blues being the mother of it all. Jazz is sort of our classical music.

NUVO: A lot of this music seems like a response to disappointment.

John Hiatt: I always felt the blues was a music designed to take a load off your back or your mind or your heart. It feels so good to get it out, like a good laugh or a good cry. It's like getting the weight of the world off your shoulders for two or three minutes.

If I had a bullet I'd put it in this gun
and I'd catch that old dog napping
and I'd shoot him before he runs
cause he ain't much good for nothing
except staring at the dust
Lord, I wonder what he's looking at
sneaking up on us

—from “Dust Down a Country Road”

John Hiatt: I remember coming down to Nashville from Indianapolis when I was 18 and feeling like I'd stepped into another world. As we become more homogenized and less singular in terms of place, I guess those lines get blurred, but Tennessee is still a pretty different place from Indiana. I think about geography and how that shapes you as a person. Growing up in Indianapolis, my world was pretty much Indianapolis and north from there. That's very flat, prairie-like. It's almost the start of the prairie. Then you come down to Tennessee and it's all these big, green, lush rolling hills coming into the Cumberland Plateau and down into this Cumberland Valley, which is a pretty rich kind of place.

NUVO: Do folk traditions there inform you?

John Hiatt: Tennessee is like three separate states. West Tennessee is topographically a different world. A lot of lowlands and rivers, flood plain and, of course, Memphis and the great music tradition. Then you have middle Tennessee — the Indian tribes were all around here. This was sort of the happy hunting ground, where you came and put aside whatever tribal grievances you had and you hunted together because it was so rich, I guess, in terms of having food for everybody. That vibe's still here. It still feels like it's a place where you can draw a lot from. Then east Tennessee is more in the hills tradition, with Appalachian music and bluegrass.

NUVO: Indiana, on the other hand, seems to be a place that people tend to leave.

John Hiatt: Well, our state motto used to be “Wander.” (Laughs) It was on the license plate. They were practically asking you to leave. But, you know, you take it with you. You take Indiana with you — that's for sure.

NUVO: There are some folks from your Hummingbird days that want to be remembered to you.

John Hiatt: My coming out as a folkie was at the Hummingbird. I was like 15 years old. There was a lot of great music coming through Indianapolis when I was a kid. I remember seeing Cream at Clowes Hall in '66-'67. They were awesome. There used to be a coffeehouse in a basement around 52nd and College — I think it was called the Eleventh Hour — and I went there in '66 and heard the Yardbirds with Jimmy Page. He had his bow out, bowin' the strings and shit we'd never heard in our lives. Our little minds were blown. We saw Hendrix out at the Fairgrounds. He played 40 minutes, got pissed-off and left. I don't know why.

When I was a little kid — 10, 11, 12 — starting my first band, we had The Boys Next Door. They were like the hotshit local band. They were a Beach Boys cover band. We thought they were amazing. I think a lot of it was the matching shirts and the fact they all had Fender guitars and amplifiers. We had little shitty Silvertones and cheap stuff. We thought, “Man, if we could have that gear we'd be rockin' ...”

NUVO: Did you ever get over to Indiana Avenue?

John Hiatt: I played a coffee shop on Indiana Avenue. All it had was cushions. You sat around — it was the peace, love and understanding era. But I never got to go to the clubs where I could hear Jimmy Smith or Wes Montgomery. At that time I wasn't dialed into black music. I started listening to a radio station, WLAC, which is here, in Nashville. There was a gospel show on Sunday night and they used to play the great gospel groups of the day — Shirley Caesar, The Five Blind Boys, Solomon Burke; in a weird way, it's what drew me to Nashville. Although I knew Nashville was the country music capital, I also knew this radio station came from there. That was my introduction to black music.

She wrote it down and burned it
she clutched it to her chest
it said Jimmy loves cars
and Jimmy loves trains
ah but Jimmy, Jimmy loves me best

—from “Wrote It Down and Burned It”

John Hiatt: I've never seen the music business change as much as it has in the last 12 months. There are so many more opportunities right now for making music, for getting it out, for not following the standard major label operating procedures of picking three hits, taking them to radio and that sort of thing.

There are more opportunities for little guys to make big impacts — which is how the record business used to work before it became so corporate. I'm thinking of A&M Records, Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss sellin' records out of the trunk of their car. The Internet has created that type of environment again and it's pretty exciting.

You can make a record in your bedroom. You don't need to spend $200,000 in a fancy studio, dealing with some engineer who pretends this is stuff you couldn't possibly understand how to work so that you know that you need him. But you know what? You don't need him anymore.

NUVO: You once said you despised guitarists. How do feel about them?

John Hiatt: (Laughs) I was such a prick. I despised guitarists? No, no, no. No. I've been working with Sonny Landis and the guys who played on Slow Turning — The Goners. With these players you find the difference between technicians and real artists. These guys play way past their instruments. The kind of playing I've never been a big fan of is where technique is what it's all about. Admittedly, I have little or no technique. I'm a primitive in that respect — and I approach music in a primitive, three-chord, backward kind of way. But I love working that way. It's a legitimate artform. It's just like the argument between the trained artist and outsider or untrained artists. There's nothing wrong with technique but it can get in the way. On the other hand, it seems like the thrust behind most untrained artists is that they have to create. They don't necessarily know what they're doing; they have to do it. That's pretty much where I come from. I don't necessarily have a clue. In fact, I always have that feeling when I'm trying to write a song, that I haven't written one before. It's the weirdest damn thing.

NUVO: You don't write on demand?

John Hiatt: I've been asked to and I've tried but I can't write that way. I don't hold anything against people that can — there's a lot of great songs that have been written that way. I personally can't do it. It comes from somewhere else for me.

NUVO: Do you write in the studio?

John Hiatt: I've always felt like I've got to come in prepared. To me, it's about the songs, and the songs suggest where we're gonna go musically. I had this idea to do this acoustic record and I had 25 to 30 songs — some I'd just written and some that had been laying around for four or five years because they were more acoustic-oriented and didn't really fit on projects I'd done. So I had these songs aimed in this direction. I love this record. It's acoustic guitar, mandolin, bass and just stomping on the floor. It's got blues and gospel and folk and rock kind of all mixed up in this real simple approach. It'll be released through E-Music on the Internet in June and then as a disc this fall.

NUVO: It's interesting to see how artists of a certain age like you and Lou Reed and Ray Davies have managed to continue writing within the simplicity of the pop song form without losing middle-aged emotional complexity. Of course, folk artists have always been able to do this ...

John Hiatt: I think it was Keith Richards who was saying rock 'n' roll people of a certain age — we're gonna be the guys who turn into these old bluesmen who keep doin' it and gettin' better and better as they go ... Keith Richards is probably a good example, being from those '60s bands who are into their 50s, headed to 60-years-olds.

NUVO: How do you define artistic success?

John Hiatt: It's the work, not the result. It's the work itself; it's the doing. It's not what happens after it's done.

Opportunities to see John Hiatt perform in his hometown have been few and far between over the past 10 years. Hiatt, along with The Goners, the band with whom he recorded the album Slow Turning, will play Saturday evening, June 17 at 6 p.m. on the Oldsmobile American Music Stage.