The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

E’s are good

“The following is a true story…” booms a disembodied voice before the curtain raises, not to reveal the traditional rock’n’roll staple of a support band, but for a large screen rolling a documentary about Hugh Everett III, the quantum physicist father of Eels frontman Mark Oliver ‘E’ Everett.

While this is certainly unusual, it’s not unexpected as anyone with even a passing interest in the eccentric Californian will know he’s led a life tainted by tragedy. Through the film and readings from his recent autobiography, we learn that he discovered the body of his dead father, his sister committed suicide and his mother died of cancer two years later. When Everett sings of his family, it is with the flat, clinical interest of a mortician. There is nothing mawkish about ‘Elizabeth On The Bathroom Floor’ and the matter-of-factness in Everett’s gruff voice and the haunted simplicity of his guitar-playing render this tribute highly emotional.

With Everett sitting with his back to the crowd and the stage unlit apart from a series of dim spot lamps, the songwriter creates a sense of distance from both his work and his audience, but it’s hard to fault his theatrics.

Opening with a swampy, bluesy version of ‘Magic World’, whose tenderness is sundered by the jagged howls of ‘Souljacker Part 1’, he is one moment softly affecting, the next fierce and furious, with the likes of ‘Bus Stop Boxer’ expertly capturing the vagaries of youth.

Accompanied by Chet Lyster, a multi-instrumentalist whose ferocious mastery of drums, harmonium, keyboards, pedal steel and saw is at odds with Everett’s often muted delivery, you get a sense of a symbiotic partnership born out of an unwritten understanding.

E later asks Lyster to read a passage from his autobiography, something which becomes a regular occurrence throughout the evening, as we’re treated to minute glimpses into E’s past, including the inspiration for gig highlight ‘Susan’s House’.

Although novel, Everett’s many gags do get tiresome, especially when the disembodied voice returns to announce, “Mark Oliver Everett, this is your life,” only for the large spotlight, which spans the audience to land on a startled sound technician whose scowled response clearly hints at a guy in the game for anything but love.

Later, Everett reads an excerpt from his supposedly fawning fan mail, in which one Australian native demands, “Why are you such a cunt?” as well as reviews of his “psychedelic funk rock sound” that make Everett wonder where he’s been going wrong, only for it to turn out to be a review of The Eagles.

Egotistical dalliances aside however, Everett’s staunchly honest approach to songwriting and life in general makes for a uniquely affecting show.

Goo & Hey

The soundtrack that accompanies the documentary Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives explores your life as a popular, globetrotting frontman while at the same time acknowledging the ridicule your father’s work initially received. What was the thought behind highlighting this obvious contrast?
“It was my roundabout way of engaging with his memory, I think; I lived in the same house as him for the best part of 20 years but he was an enigma to me, as he was to so many people. I only ever talked to him a couple of times and I certainly wasn’t aware he was some kind of scientific genius. It wasn’t all about chasing glory or fame for him, it was about believing in something so strongly that if it leads to disengaging with everything else around you, then so be it. I don’t think the physics overlords liked the idea of some young kid coming along and writing them out of the history books. But he was anything but a jumped-up rock star.

That your father came up with a theory so ahead of its time that it was always discounted must have been a terrifying feeling for him. Did this make you feel guilty about your own success?
Not all at, although I’ll admit I’ve had quite a bit of encouragement from the world. Even though I never spent any time with him as a kid I’ve always felt a connection with what he was trying to achieve; that sense of all consuming passion and belief.

Your autobiography Things The Grandchildren Should Know was written in your basement surrounded by your father’s physics papers and instruments. Was it difficult unearthing those documents for the first time?
It wasn’t the easiest of experiences, but like all these things, when I got into it, it became more and more cathartic. One thing I didn’t anticipate when making the documentary was the amount of interviewing and travelling I’d be doing… you know, it’s not a revelation that I’m quite an insular person, but I’m pleased to have done it. For me at least, it made it easy to forgive any shortcomings he had and see why he behaved the way he did.

Meet The Eels is intriguingly subtitled Essential Eels Vol. 1, but most compilations hint that bands are about to put down their guitars. Do you ever think about quitting?
It crosses my mind constantly, but I can’t see it happening any time soon. Like suicide, it’s good to have that option of a way out, but making music’s everything I love about life and if I wasn’t making it I’d almost certainly be dead. Right now I’m pretty happy to be alive.