Mercury Lounge, NYC
Friday, July 18, 2003
Interview by Mark Griffey
Film Still courtesy of Drew Denicola


If you’ve ever seen a Lilys concert, you know that the between-song banter is often worth the price of admission alone. Lead Lily Kurt Heasley tosses off bizarre non-sequiters like a schizophrenic comedian on speed. At a recent show in Philadelphia, he discussed the merits of tele-prompters and lesbian yoga camps and said, “Everyone loved you so much they called you on the walkie-talkie and said you’re a gay man.”

Whether Mr. Heasley is truly nuts or not, fans are just happy to have him back. Although 1996’s Better Can’t Make Your Life Better (Che) sold well and received glowing reviews, the major-label-released follow-up The Three Way (Sire) quickly became an expensive mess of clashing egos and multiple lawsuits. When the album was finally released, critics barely noticed and the fans weren’t impressed.

But Heasley bounced back this year with a new band, a few new children and a new outlook on life. 2003 also saw the Lilys back on the road and in the studio for the first time in three years to record the back-to-roots Precollection (Manifesto), which revisits the organic psych sound found on earlier Lilys records. I sat down in the dingy basement of the Mercury Lounge to chat with the always-entertaining Mr. Heasley. Dressed in a polo shirt and jeans, he hardly looked like the mod hipster from his more ‘60s-influenced days. He often talked in other voices and did impressions, which I’ve signified with quotes.

Are you originally from Philly?
No. I was born in Florida, in West Palm Beach. I finally moved to D.C. around the age of 10. From about 10 to 21 years of age I lived in D.C. except for when I lived in Richmond. I loved Richmond. Richmond was beautiful and very artsy.

I went to Richmond once. I wasn’t too impressed.
Well, it’s a secret world. You gotta know it. A lot of it is just so burnt out, race war. It’s just old; old hate. There’s a lotta old hate, not that new fancy hate. It’s old –

Deep-seeded hate?
No, it’s not even all that deep-seeded. It’s like, “My daddy’s daddy was your daddy’s daddy’s footstool.”
The new album sounds a lot looser than the past two records. Was the recording process different for Precollection?
Yes, we used water. It was more fluid. It’s more of what it sounds like when we’re all just hanging out making a record. It doesn’t really sound like a tricked-out Lilys record. That’s the trick. It’s like you can actually hear what we are as opposed to what we’d like to produce as an image. You can see more of us on the streets.

Were you more of a control freak in the past?
Everyone involved was a control freak. Very control-freaky. I don’t work with people that are like, “That’s good.” Well, if they say that it’s good, I’m like, “Yeah, sweet. You can leave the room now. (Talking in a robot voice) Put it in the machine. (Robot noises) Bing! Your drums are ready.”

Is it true you take several baths a day?
That is true. I do foot soaks. I had a phase where I was sleeping so little and the only thing that would keep me awake was water. I was sleeping like, three, four hours a night for months. So water, like, goin’ for a floaty. I used to do it, turn off the lights in the bathroom and just kind of float in it. It was like my little sensory-deprivation tank. (As if I was asking him a question) “You mean, like, John C. Lilly?” Haven’t you ever seen Altered States with Jeff Bridges where he becomes an ape? Do you know what a sensory-deprivation tank is?

I think so.
When you turn off the lights and you’re just kind of in it. You have time to relax. You’re not asking any questions and you’re not getting hung up on things. (In a boyish voice) “I’m so excited. I hope she says yes when I ask her to the dance.” You just say, “I’m in my place, I am here. In 17 seconds I’ll be there. Now I am here. See, I’m already 17 seconds into my future. See, I was ready.” You prepare, you prepare and then you hop out. “Okay, let’s take it again. Ahh! Nice! Nice!” And everyone’s like, “Jesus Christ!” And then you know at 4 a.m. everyone’s like, “Oh, man beer. Beer. Damn, that’s good.” They all sleep until noon. I’m poppin’ up at 7 a.m. and I’m like, “All right guys, look what I’ve done today.” Yeah, boy, there’s that secret. If anyone wants to send me a sensory-deprivation tank, I’ll accept. “Yeah, we closed our health food meditation yoga center and we didn’t know what to do with this, so we sent it to Kurt Heasley in Philadelphia, care of Lilys.”

Why is it that you never print lyrics on your albums? Is mystery something you try to perpetuate?
I was gonna do it for this record, but we turned in our artwork so late the label put their own artwork on the new record. We had all the lyrics written out. They were actually photographed and scanned. My handwriting is a font unto itself – a classical print in cursive. Everything is just kind of graphic. And uh, yes, there might be lyric sheets for this new record if we alter the packaging.

You never printed lyrics for the old records, right?
Um, no, I never thought about it.

They’re pretty hard to understand.
See, no one ever steps up and tells me that kind of stuff. That would be really cool.

Not only are the lyrics hard to understand, but they’re pretty weird, too.
They read very jaggedly, but when you hear them in the context of the song – my syntax is very abrupt – and to actually write it out as I sing it I would need someone who specializes in the English language. No that’s a comma exclamation mark dot dot dot line dot. I mean this is the beginning of a new sentence. And it’d be this very graphical, very graphic, very graphic lyrics.

Describe the songwriting process.
Even at my most remorseful, I would write like, “I’m sorry and uh,” you know, the apologetic stuff, I could always at least include the characters I was apologizing to with their faults as to not make it seem I was blaming myself or anything, or that I was taking the weight of the world on me. But at the higher end, your more conscious lyricists write, I think, from a universally-perfect stance. Universally perfect meaning that I don’t claim anything to be 100 percent true or 100 percent false. So as I generate my perspective lyrically and, you know, lyrics and music sometimes say one thing, music does another, you realize something maybe is not as perfect as I say it is, lyrically creating a juxtaposition.

Have your influences changed? There was a definite ’60s thing going on in the last two records.
With Better Can’t Make Your Life Better, I decided to become, as you say, more maniacal, and work on space or arrangement, letting guitar, bass, drums and organ work together to create this new syncopation where I could kind of stridently go (singing out loud), “lalalalalala.” The record after that was just kind of like, “All right, same guys, same drill, except now everyone’s all sad and egotistical.” Sweet. And it made for a great complimentary record, but I never said thank you in a way that the other players or other workers on the record could hear. I was appreciative of them and would have done anything for them. I made decisions to keep everyone together, and still that’s what drove everything apart. I didn’t have the listening skills to be able to seek first and understand where they were coming from, and then make my evil empire clear to them. I think the ’60s music that we did is so much more than what you call ’60s music. I’m not afraid to say that most of the best moments of those songs [on Better Can’t Make Your Life Better] are lifted from bands like Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Neil Young and My Bloody Valentine.

Was the new record a reaction against The Three Way?
Oh yeah, and it was totally great to have two-year lawsuits. It just ended with everyone wanting to put up their big-boy-I-can-do-this-if-you’re-gonna-do-this. I’m like, “What’s that? That’s no dream. That’s your dream?” That’s like working at Ralph Lauren where everyone is just like constantly in panic mode. I don’t panic. Panic is for when I’m running naked in the woods, you know? I’m not making records, this is working in the Senate or working at the sausage factory.

Was there stress coming from the label? Were they pushing you to put out a new record?
I think the label would have been much happier if I would have worked with new people. Since we didn’t have management, since I was the manager, they would never approach me about it. “What if he freaks out? He’s such a big guy and he’s probably kind of strong, and I know he’s got a really good shot. What if he freaks out when we ask him this stuff? He’s at the point where he should really take his career seriously. But we’re scared to tell him.” So they didn’t tell me, and it just became bad and they let me do my little paper mache art project record. “Look, it’s a giant fish mask.”

So that wasn’t what the label wanted?
Absolutely not. It took too long and everyone was very upset and tired and bummed out at the end of it. I wasn’t particularly bummed out. I was just broke. I did that record to be able to make more records and everybody wanted that record to be a final payment. I was like, “It’s our first record for those people. They can’t ask for the pot of gold. (Talking in a leprechaun voice) Oh you don’t think I can? I’m gonna ask for it.” I was like, “Oh my god, you are so dead in your career.” The drummer and engineer got into physical altercations, yelling matches on a daily basis. The engineer, producer, and myself did none of the pre-production work the label wanted me to do. They paid for two weeks and [the engineer] showed up for 20 minutes. He asked for me to call my lawyer to call his lawyer and play piano with the bass player and drummer. Then when I got back he was like, “All right, how’d you do?” I’m like, “He’s calling ‘em.” And he’s like, “All right,” and he picked up and left. The label felt like, “Gee, we can’t have any say in it, ’cause this guy is what, an ape? He thinks he’s such a genius he doesn’t have to do his job?” I’m like, “You know I love him.” That was strike one. Then strike two was it took longer than we said. Strike three was, as soon as we were done, [we] asked for more money after they said there was no more. None. So they tried to sue. And then the two parties in the studio sued each other for two years. And then they were going to sue me, but they thought, “That might be a really bad idea.” Because I’m a really good shot and I’m prone to extreme acts of violence. If people come and start picking on my peach tree, they need to understand the magic words, “Please Kurt, may I have a peach?” I’m like, “Absolutely. I have a whole tree full. Take one of them, I’ll break a finger. Do it again, I’ll break a hand.”

Has having kids changed the songwriting process for you?
Songwriting has become more imagination-based rather than physical experimenting. I go back to experiments in memory. I think of all the research I have done, the 12-hour, 15-hour days of just constant recording. Now I take care of the office and the lab, but I don’t need the actual arduous hard working hours. I need the smart working hours, fulfilling responsibilities, make sure all the calls are organized. My new hard work is remaining organized. I’m sure the next two records that we’re working on will be much more fantastical than The Three Way, compositionally and production-wise. I was at such an impasse about how I used to work versus how I want to work. I wanna work with the right people. If we can’t get it in like three or four contacts, are we looking for the right things? These are the songs we want to record so let’s play around with them, but let’s not play around. This is what broke me from thinking you’re allowed to pretend you’re Fleetwood Mac and be in the studio for a year and what got me into playing like you’re Lindsay Buckingham [Fleetwood Mac guitarist].

He was pretty obsessive in the studio.
Yes, but that was obsessive in the ’70s. This was obsessive in the drug-induced paranoia sort of way. Not that he wasn’t fantastic; he was. I’m not gonna compare Rumors and The Three Way. The Three Way is sausage; Rumors is a sausage with a string of hits. People can understand the lyrics on Rumors. Can you understand most of the lyrics on The Three Way?

Their lyrics are much more personal than yours.
They’re universally personal.

Would you ever write something that personal?
Uhhhh, yeah. I don’t know if it’d be about the same subject matter, but I can write from that level of personal experience. It wouldn’t be autobiographical. I don’t need to be singing about myself. No one wants to hear what I do for a living, but I have very wonderful interesting heroic friends that really do live life. And they are my heroes. Some of the biggest moves they ever did was getting out of bed that day.