Ira Kaplan Interview, 2006
Sunday interview … on a Saturday?! Whatever. I’m just using this opportunity to remind you that Yo La Tengo is doing their annual WFMU all-request fundraiser today 3-6pm! So many classics will be murdered. Tune in / chip in!
The much-beloved indie rock act Yo La Tengo recently celebrated their 20th anniversary. But the band isn’t mellowing with age—at least if you’re judging by album titles. In fact, they appear to be in something of an aggressive mood these days. Earlier this year, they released an often-hilarious, sometimes un-listenable CD of unrehearsed, live-on-the-radio cover versions titled Yo La Tengo is Murdering the Classics. And last month, the Hoboken, N.J.-based band unleashed the splendidly named I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass. Murder and ass-beating: For a band that’s more likely to be described as loveable than terrifying, this newfound predilection toward violence is a little bit perplexing.
“We just loved that title,” says guitarist Ira Kaplan, who formed Yo La Tengo with his wife, drummer Georgia Hubley, in 1984. “It’s such a great, powerful name. Once that title came up, no other ideas for naming the record could really compare.”
As for the origin of Ass’s title, Kaplan is keeping mum.
“It’s kind of like the name of the band itself,” he says. “Obviously, there’s a story behind it, but I’d rather not have it tied down to one single anecdote. I’d rather it kind of stand on its own. What makes a name good isn’t the story behind it, but that it has its own power and resonance.”
But enough talk of titles. What really matters is that Yo La Tengo’s new album is a sprawling masterpiece, a kaleidoscopic showcase for the myriad styles and song-forms the band has perfected over the years. Ass is perhaps one of their best efforts yet—no minor feat for a band this deep into their career. But the band has never played by the rock ‘n’ roll rulebook. They appeared on the scene in the mid '80s with Ride the Tiger, a pleasant, if somewhat forgettable album filled with the kind of jangly college rock that was in favor at the time. Kaplan and Hubley spent the rest of the decade touring and making a few more records with an always-revolving cast of backup musicians. But in 1990, the band’s lineup solidified with the addition of multi-instrumentalist James McNew. Beginning with 1993’s Painful, Yo La Tengo have constructed a string of uniformly excellent records—records that have grown increasingly ambitious and confident as the trio jumps effortlessly from whispered pop songs to feedback-laced epics, and pretty much everything in between.
“We’ve never really had a master plan as a band,” Kaplan says. “I think that as time has gone on, we’ve just become better at following our instincts musically. Not that we don’t still go through moments of total insecurity, of course.”
Getting started on the making of a new album required some inspiration, however.
“Having an entire album to be made in front of you—that blank slate—can be daunting,” Kaplan admits. “This time around we kind of procrastinated. But we were asked to play a benefit for a club in New York that we really love called Tonic, and we ended up putting a lot of work into preparing for that one show. And a lot of that preparation ended up kind of spurring us on into the making of the new album. Sometimes that’s what it takes, just focusing on something small, rather than the big picture.”
For the making of Ass, the band traveled to Nashville, where their longtime producer Roger Moutenot has a studio.
“We’ve been going down there for more than a decade,” Kaplan says. “It’s really appealing for a number of reasons—Roger being one of them. He’s really become integral to the process. He knows what we’ve liked doing that we want to do again; he knows what we haven’t liked doing that we don’t want to do again. And he knows what we haven’t liked doing that we want to try again, for whatever reason.”
So we’ve already established that these sessions resulted in a rather masterful record. But let’s discuss Yo La’s other, not so masterful, 2006 release—the aforementioned Yo La Tengo is Murdering the Classics. The CD’s 30 songs come from several years’ worth of annual fundraising radio sessions on the Jersey City station WFMU, wherein listeners make requests and the band (with barely any preparation) attempts to fulfill said requests.
“It was really hard to compile that record, because we had to find the songs that were butchered in just the right way,” Kaplan says, with a chuckle. “In some ways, it’s our most personal record. It’s just us.”
Among the songs that made the not-so-distinguished cut are BTO’s “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” Yoko Ono’s “Don’t Worry, Kyoko” and Burt Bacharach’s “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” Kaplan is especially pleased with the band’s utterly shambling rendition of Yes’s bloated prog-rock epic “Roundabout,” here slimmed down to a hilarious two minutes.
“I had completely forgotten about that, and when it came up, we were pretty much crying with laughter,” he says. “So that one made the cut.”
