It’s been an exciting summer for the musician known simply as E.
He may be 48 and a long-established master of melodic, delightfully odd rock music, most famous for his hit song Novocaine for the Soul, but even after releasing nine albums with his band the Eels and chronicling the loss of several loved ones on the acclaimed album Electroshock Blues — and then again in his memoir, Things the Grandchildren Should Know — there’s still plenty that can humble the man born as Mark Oliver Everett.
Like meeting and performing with boyhood idol Ringo Starr. E told the tale of his first meeting with a former Beatle just after returning from Europe and his first trip to China for a brief North American tour.
“Ringo is such a sweetheart,” he said. “He saw me watching his show in Norway, and he came over and said ‘Would you like to sing with me, it’s this song called With a Little Help From My Friends. And he started singing the song to me and I stopped him and said, ‘Yeah, I know it!’”
E realized, to his chagrin, that he had interrupted a private performance by his own hero. Still, he was touched.
“He inspired me to play the drums at 6, so it was a very moving experience for me,” he said.
E also endured the humbling experience of playing guitar before Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page in London.
“It’s a little intimidating,” he said. “I found out he uses the same pick as me, but I think he’s had better results.”
These weren’t E’s first awkward encounters with his heroes. In his memoir, published in 2008, he recounts his collaboration with singer Tom Waits, who sent him a tape of himself crying like a baby that later appeared on the song Going Fetal. Waits thrilled E by offering to do yard work for him to make up for accidentally erasing E’s vocals on the tape.
Then there was the first time he met Neil Young. E was horrified to hear himself blurt out, “I like your beard.”
Now, ironically, E probably hears that exact comment from his own fans, after famously growing a very long beard while on tour. He was forced to shave it after drawing scrutiny from airport security officials following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. And last year, his long beard drew the attention of London police while he was in Hyde Park.
E normally gets a friendlier reception in Britain, where the Eels have scored several hits. Their first appearance at the famed Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts this summer earned high praise from critics.
Europe can sometimes be more receptive to a musician known for his sound-collage recording style, blunt lyrics and fascination with all manner of instruments. That idiosyncratic approach was apparent on his recent trilogy of concept albums — Hombre Lobo, End Times and Tomorrow Morning — which dealt with desire, breakups and renewal.
“There’s more of an audience for music in Europe than America,” he said. “In Europe, music is still an important part of everyone’s day, unlike in America, where it’s slowly being replaced by video games or whatever.”
E stressed that he appreciates the Eels’ cult following in the US, where the band just made its fifth appearance for an enthusiastic David Letterman on his Late Show. But it was a British network, the BBC, that decided to make a documentary about E after he published his memoir, which recounted how he channeled the loss of his family — his father to a heart attack, his sister to suicide and his mother to cancer — into his music.
The award-winning documentary, called Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives and broadcast in the US on the Public Broadcasting Service program NOVA, focuses on E’s attempts to understand his emotionally distant father, the celebrated quantum physicist Hugh Everett, whose lifeless body was found by E when he was only 18. Everett, author of the “many worlds” theory of parallel universes, earned both scorn and a devoted following.
The same could be said for E himself, who has been savaged by some critics who say his music is alternatively too frivolous or too dark. E dismisses the critics and says anyone who comes to an Eels show will find it “undeniably fun.”
“It’s all very misguided,” he said. “All I’m trying to do as an artist is reflect life in all its different shapes and colors, and anyone paying attention knows there are all sorts of ups and downs in a song. It might get pretty dark but it’s always in the name of getting somewhere positive, and our shows are all about positivity.
“The whole goal is about feeling good about life and rejuvenated.”
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
RSS