Creating Utopia: An Interview With Jason Falkner

Posted in Interviews, Current Faves, Music |

Popshifter: Do you find you quote things without meaning to? Just because your influences are so close. . . and I don’t mean that in a negative way at all.

Jason Falkner: I’m pretty aware and adamant about not sounding like something. I mean, obviously I’m using the same kinds of vintage instruments. I’m using a lot of similar sounds and literally, the same instruments.

Author Unknown, 1996

But if I play something for someone and they go, “Oh, that sounds like. . . ” or I realize it does, I’ll go, “Oh shit, that sounds like whatever!” I’ll actually change it, just because I’m really trying to do something new. . . within the context of this kind of classic, vintage songwriting thing that I love. I think that somebody has to carry that torch because it’s an exciting thing. I think pop, or whatever you want to call it—pop/rock songwriting—has kind of all been done. So it’s kind of like, pick the era that you love and just mine that. Not trying to rip things off.

But I kind of live in (laughing) like, 1967 to 1983. But I also try to make things new and innovative. I did have a song once called “Miss Understanding” and I was really excited about this one part of the song. And then I was playing pool with my friend and all of a sudden a Green Day song came on the jukebox. There was a part in the song, like their pre-chorus, and I had accidentally picked that out of the air and ripped it off.

And I was like, “Fuck!” Of all the bands, Green Day.

Popshifter: (laughs)

Jason Falkner: And so I went home and changed it.

Popshifter: I don’t think of you as quoting things in a “wink wink” way. Not that that’s bad, but I don’t think of your music in that way.

I don’t know how you feel about this, but I think there is a difference between bands who talk about their influences and bands they love, who will weave references into their songs and bands who will just blatantly steal from others and then claim they’ve never heard of the other bands.

Like that guy Peter Schilling who had that song “Major Tom” in the 80s.

Jason Falkner: Exactly!

Popshifter: And he tried to say he’d never heard the Bowie “Space Oddity” song. Like come on!

Jason Falkner: I know, he’s talking about an astronaut in space named Major Tom. Really? (laughs) No I know. Or like Lenny Kravitz saying, “I’m not really familiar with John Lennon.”

Popshifter: What? He said that?

Jason Falkner: He said that on [the] Arsenio Hall [Show]. I will never forget this.

Popshifter: Oh my god, I wish I’d seen that.

Jason Falkner: There are a lot of people who will listen to a record and then just rip it off. I actually never listen to any other music when I’m writing and recording except—and I rarely even do this—when I want to get a certain sound, when basically I’m referencing the mix.

That thing with Lenny Kravitz just kills me. I think there might’ve been like a gasp in the audience, like, “You’re kidding me.”

Popshifter: Audible gasp! (laughs)

Jason Falkner: Yeah, someone was just like, “Boo!”

---

Click to read more from Jason Falkner on. . .

Revisiting The Beatles
Ripoffs and references
That “Power Pop” thing
“It all boils down to Bowie.”
A pre-Internet world
The dumbing down of pop culture
What’s next for Jason

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8