Even before the earliest days of alternative rock invading the mainstream public consciousness in the early ‘90s, Juliana Hatfield has been making a mark, unafraid to expand an already diverse musical palette and put her earliest influences on display. Whether it was the college rock of Blake Babies while still a student at Berklee, a brief stint in the Lemonheads, or carving out a solo musical path, she’s also been closely associated with the Boston music scene even when not living in the region.
“I lived in New York for a while. I lived in L.A. for a while, and I kept coming back to Cambridge or the Boston area,” Hatfield tells Vanyaland. “I just felt like, I don’t know, maybe I’m just stuck here, but I think it was just something about something in me. I’m just more comfortable in New England, I guess. I like Massachusetts. I know that there’s people who don’t like Massachusetts, but I guess when you’re from here, you can appreciate it.”
Recently, Hatfield has taken an affinity for certain artists that filled her youth beyond just wearing them on her proverbial sleeve. Beginning in 2018 with Juliana Hatfield Sings Oliva Newton-John and then the following year’s Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police, she’s shown an unabashed love for the music which shaped her across entire albums rather than just a tip of the hat interpretation of a song here and there. Hatfield’s latest all in covers project came out in November and is easily her most ambitious to date.
Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO sees her taking on selections from the catalog of UK orchestral pop of Electric Light Orchestra. Led by production mastermind and shameless Beatles obsessive Jeff Lynne, the music of ELO from the ’70s through the mid-80s varied from the perfect pop of “Mr. Blue Sky” to the guitar crunch of “Do Ya” and full length prog rock masterpieces like 1974’s Eldorado.
Ahead of a short East Coast run that kicks off tomorrow (January 26) in Washington D.C. and ends Monday (January 29) at City Winery Boston, Hatfield sat down for a Vanyaland 617 Q&A (Six Questions; One Recommendation; Seven Somethings).
She talked about why ELO was such an important part of her childhood and the decision to approach the songs in a stripped-down manner for the new record. Hatfield also spoke about the Boston music scene and what makes it stand out from other spots around the country, while potentially giving some insight into what could be her next covers project.
:: SIX QUESTIONS
Michael Christopher: How has your relationship evolved with the city of Boston or even New England in general since getting started in your career?
Juliana Hatfield: I really think that growing up in New England in general, I grew up on the South Shore, I think that there’s a kind of a mindset or an attitude around here. It’s sort of stoic, no frills. You just don’t complain too much, you know, dry sense of humor. I really think that’s just influenced everything I do – including my approach to a music career. I think that there’s not really any competition to be “rock stars” in Boston. It’s more like all the bands that I was coming up with; Throwing Muses, Dinosaur Jr., Galaxie 500, Lemonheads, all those bands were unique and everyone was sort of just focused on their music, working on the music, and it wasn’t about trying to become famous. It was just like this kind of almost studious, no glamour, no posing. It’s just like, you’re doing the work.
As opposed to a place like Los Angeles where everyone’s main goal is to make it big…
Yeah. I think people in Boston who have that attitude would move to New York or L.A. or something, if they want to get that sort of attention or success, but I think in Boston there’s much more like a working artist approach, I think to rock music. It’s like you’re just trying to do something with a lot of integrity. That’s the vibe I get. There’s this feeling of almost studiousness and integrity, but also no one takes itself too seriously. No one really ever wanting to step on anyone to get up higher.
When things started to blow up for certain bands, was the scene really supportive of itself, and of those other artists, or was there any jealousy like, “When’s it going to be my turn to get really popular?”
That’s part of what I was saying. I didn’t get any feeling that there was bitterness coming from anyone. Nor was there tons of, like, cheerful support. It was more just like everyone’s doing his own thing and it’s cool and there’s not unhealthy competition. Everyone is just sort of head down trying to find their music and make the vision come to life and people are supporting each other. It’s just like a camaraderie, but subdued, which is kind of a New England thing; the subdued, there’s no real cheerleading going on, but everyone knows everyone and everyone’s supportive behind the scenes kind of thing.
And then a lot of incestuous sharing of musicians I think, especially with my band, Blake Babies and the Lemonheads, there was all kinds of things going on. John Strohm, the Blake Babies guitar player, played drums in the Lemonheads for a while, and then Evan Dando played bass in the Blake Babies for a while, and I played bass in the Lemonheads for a while – and none of that was, it wasn’t a big deal. It was just like, “Hey, can you help out?” We didn’t have a bass player for a while and Evan was like, “I’ll play bass.” So that kind of thing, just helping out and being friends. People who were in bands in Boston were friends, I think friends more than competitors, I think friends and acquaintances.
There’s a lot of backstabbing in other scenes, like someone gets signed, it’s, “Oh, that band sucks. They shouldn’t be signed,” or, “They know someone at the label, that’s why they got signed” – a lot of sh*t talking.
There was some of that, depending on who we’re talking about [laughs]. I guess you could say the Lemonheads and Blake Babies were really tight, and so we were probably talking sh*t about certain people, but never publicly. And they would never hear about it. It was just among us. That happens when you get in the van; you just talk sh*t the whole way to the gig.
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When you see the city come up on your tour itinerary these days, is it something you circle or prep differently before the show?
I don’t feel like I have to prepare in any different way than I do for any other gig, except I guess emotionally I just have to be strong – just ‘cause there’s so many memories. And there are people that I might see that I want to see and I haven’t seen ’em in a while and maybe it’s sad to remember all the good times we had with someone who’s in our lives have moved on and people I’ve played with in the past. So, there’s some memories and sometimes it’s bittersweet, but as far as playing the gig goes, it’s kind of just, it’s a little, actually maybe a little less pressure just because I know the area well and I know how to get to the venue. I don’t have to worry about directions or anything, and I know how to get around the city. And so that actually brings a little bit of stress relief, just knowing the area, because sometimes when you’re on tour and you’re trying to get to a venue, it’s like can be really stressful just getting there sometimes traffic and other stuff.
What was your relationship like with ELO as a child?
Well, ELO, they were one of the bands that came on the radio that I was listening to all the time. When I was a child, I had a little transistor radio, and it was like an AM radio station, RKO or something, playing Top 40 probably. And so, ELO was just one of the bands whose songs would come on the radio, and I loved their songs. I just thought they were so wonderful and they’re pleasurable to hear and unique and they had such an original and distinctive sound, but I didn’t know anything about them. I didn’t know the names. I didn’t know Jeff Lynne was the guy, the main guy. I didn’t know any of their names or anything. I was just a kid. All I knew was that I loved these ELO songs that were coming on the radio, except one of ’em scared me. There’s that song called “Fire on High,” I think.
The instrumental?
Yeah. That used to terrify me. There are all these ghostly, that kind of eerie ghostly choir, all the musical changes. The scary backwards voices. It scared me, but it was also fascinating. I was like, “What is this?” And then the strummed acoustic guitars would come on and then it would be fun. [Starts singing the acoustic guitar part of the song] The strings would come in and it was just really fun.
In your friend group, were you all listening to ELO or was it your little secret? Did everybody know them from the radio?
Well, I think at that point in my early childhood, it was kind of a solitary thing. When I was listening to music, I wasn’t really sharing music with friends until later on I think, when Grease came out when I was probably 13 or something. And then I remember going to my friends’ houses and we would listen to the Grease soundtrack and Saturday Night Fever and also, we were listening a lot to AC/DC Back in Black. Certain records my friends, my two best friends and I would listen to together.
But yeah, ELO was earlier, and when I was listening to the songs on the radio, I remember it being very much a private pleasure. It was almost like my secret love was all this music, and it was all I would get in bed at night and the lights would be off, and I would have the radio up to my ear, and it was very much like the secret wonderful musical world that I was discovering and loving. Like I said, I didn’t even know Jeff Lynne’s name. I didn’t know what he looked like until later. And then I found out he had this, what a genius image: It’s just sunglasses and hair. I heard him talking about it once, saying that the sunglasses were just because he was kind of shy, and that became the image of him. How genius and simple – the simplicity of it. [laughs]
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Had you seen them live at any point over the years?
I never saw them. I had this period in childhood where I really loved them, and then I was into other things in high school and college, and then I started going to see concerts, like The Replacements and X and R.E.M. and Black Flag and all that kind of stuff in the late ‘80s. And then somehow ELO kind of faded away out of my mind, although, they were ubiquitous through time. I would always hear them. And they came into my mind again, and then I made this album and I remembered how much I loved them.
I feel like ELO songs have always had a sense of loneliness or isolation running through them. And I wonder if it was a coincidence that you chose to do an album of them coming out of the pandemic when a lot of people were fresh from a period where they didn’t have any social interaction. Even now they may have limited social interaction, and there’s still that feeling of loneliness and isolation for many. Or do you not see ELO’s music that way?
No, I do. They have other songs that are happier, but I chose songs that were the ones focusing on loneliness, alienation, difficulty connecting. But the pandemic, for me, it was like that’s how I lived my life anyway, pretty isolated. So, when people were freaking out around me, I was like, “Oh, now you get to see how I live. And I’m like, I’m so used to this. I’m just continuing on. I mean, I had to change some things. I had to figure out how to record into my laptop. I had done all my records before that in the studio, but that was a good thing for me to have to learn how to record into my laptop. But yeah, so I don’t think that choosing the isolation themes was a result of the pandemic. It was more just a continuation of my life, and the themes of my life are loneliness, isolation, inability to communicate, feeling like an alien. That’s just my existence. And certain ELO songs really speak to that.
The songs of ELO are so multilayered and dense and slick and have all of this intense orchestration and your approach was so different to that. How do you retain the emotion and even the integrity of the song itself by stripping away all of those things?
Well, I think I just have to start with a base of connecting with the subject matter of the song and with the melodies and harmonies. I have to have the visceral reaction to the music of each song I chose, and then feeling a connection to the lyrics. And the songs are so well written, so well-built that starting from there, it makes it that much easier. The songs are not all just about a groove or a vibe; they’re actually well-written songs, they can be played on acoustic guitar alone. And then I just kind of built up from there doing my own thing.
I wasn’t trying to recreate ELO’s recordings, obviously I can’t put together an orchestra – or I could have maybe – but no, I couldn’t really manage that and nor did I want to because I, I wanted to try to create something different, something that was more the way I would normally put a song, a recording together. So, I just did my thing. I just did my thing with his songs, with their songs and tried to make them feel like extensions of my own musical persona without altering them so much that it was awkward. I’m not trying to make novelty songs. I’m not trying to make anything that’s like, “Oh, look how weird I made this ELO song.” It’s more just trying to make it feel organic to me when I play it.
How important is it to strike that balance between, I mean, we’ve all heard songs that are like, “Oh wow, that’s that song?” They did it so differently, and it’s to a point where you can barely recognize it. And then there’s others that are carbon copies, which, why bother doing it in the first place?
I mean, I didn’t want to do either thing. I don’t want to do a copy. I feel like what’s the point? But I also don’t want to just make something radically different just for the sake of making it radically different. Maybe a cover will turn out radically different as I work on it, but I am never trying to be like, “Oh, I’m going to do a reggae version of this song.” It happens organically. Whatever changes, I want them to happen organically. For me, it just feels less awkward that way. There was a song I was contemplating doing, “Mr. Blue Sky,” and then Weezer came out with their covers album and their version of “Mr. Blue Sky.” Have you heard it?
I did.
And that is very, very true to the original, their version. It was almost like, why bother? I mean, it’s impressive. It’s impressive. But I also felt like how much fun is that for them to do it so close? I guess actually I can understand wanting to do that, wanting to be so literal with it, but it kind of turned me off from wanting to do it. I felt like Weezer just did it, so I don’t want to do it. Why should I do it after Weezer did it? I’ll just do it some other time, maybe. And then also I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Some songs I abandoned because I wasn’t really sure what to do with them or it wasn’t feeling natural in my hands.
:: ONE RECOMMENDATION
Juliana Hatfield: I think people should watch this movie called Fair Play. I saw it on Netflix. It’s about this young guy and a young girl, well, young man and a young woman, who work together in this really high-pressure finance industry in New York City, and they’re also a couple, and it’s about these sort of power dynamics and how they develop. I don’t know if men will like it as much as I did as a woman, but I mean, I think that it will be an enjoyable viewing experience for anyone. When it gets to the end, it’s kind of intense. It builds into this crescendo denouement, it just kind of really distills a problem that exists in society, I think, between men and women. It’s really amazing. I loved it so much.
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:: SEVEN OF SOMETHING
Michael Christopher: If you had an infinite amount of time, give me seven other artists from the ‘80s who you’d love to do a Juliana Hatfield Sings… record.
Juliana Hatfield: R.E.M….
Phil Collins…
Duran Duran…
The Cure…
Madonna…
Minor Threat…
XTC.
JULIANA HATFIELD ::Monday, January 29 at City Winery Boston, 80 Beverly St. in Boston, MA :: 7:30 p.m., all ages, $25 to $45 ::Event info::Advance tickets
