Carl Hose: It's great to get a chance to get inside your mind, John. Anyone who knows your work knows that can be a frightening place to be. You have been involved with so many things it's hard to know where to begin, but let me start with the Crow. You co-wrote that script. Did what came out on the screen match your vision in the script?
John Shirley: Movie scripts go through phases before becoming movies. Sometimes the phases improve the movie, sometimes not. In this case it worked out--that is, the writing worked out. Brandon Lee, the star of the film, died during the filming of the movie . . . that's the real shadow over the whole thing. Anyway, I wanted to adapt The Crow comic, and as it went through its phases, with four drafts by me and more by David Schow, and film editing, it became, in the end, more like my original vision. But Dave Schow brought good stuff to it.
CH: You've written novels, screenplays, and songs. Is it hard to separate John Shirley the musician from John Shirley the novelist? Is there a difference or does is it all part of the same big picture?
JS: In some ways there's a unity, but just as playing guitar is different from playing piano (not that I play either one, I'm a singer only), so also being an artist as a storyteller in film and books is different than being a singer-songwriter. But I do hear the words I write in fiction aloud in my head; it has a sound to me; it's own music. I try to bring some of the energy of rock to my writing; I try to bring storytelling to my music. Most songwriting is also storytelling. It's singing to us about the point of view of the singer, the lyricist; the musical itself is like the "soundtrack" of that story. Sometimes it's truly more strikingly storytelling, when you get to Lou Reed and Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and Patti Smith, for example, people who tell stories in lyrics. Think of the story in the Rolling Stones song Sister Morphine . . .
CH: Which Blue Oyster Cult albums did you write lyrics for and how did you end up with that gig?
JS: They knew of me because I'd written a novel called Transmaniacon, title taken from a BOC song, and I had mutual friends. I wrote 18 sets of lyrics that they recorded over two albums and a soundtrack. Most of it is on these two albums, available on iTunes and at Amazon: Heaven Forbid and Curse of the Hidden Mirror.
CH: I've read a couple of your collections, most notably Black Butterflies (which I still regard as one of my favorite short story collections by anyone) and your most recent, In Extremis: The Most Extreme Short Stories of John Shirley. I love the no-holds barred approach you take in your fiction. How do you define yourself genre-wise as an author?
JS: I define myself as sui generis, meaning I'm my own genre. But I do work in recognizable genres--often chose as the ideal vehicles for the metaphor, the theme. If I want to make a futurological, or sociological, or satirical statement, science fiction is good for that. If I want to make a spiritual statement, supernatural stories work best for that usually. If I want to describe life naturalistically, perhaps a kind of protest, then "noir" crime fiction, or some variant of the thriller, does the job. But sometimes the choice is conceptual--I get an idea and that idea plays out best in a certain genre. However, I ignore a great many genre conventions. And I often merge genres--a new story coming from me, called At Home With Azathoth will be out this year, and it's cyberpunk science fiction merged with Lovecraftian horror. My novel Doyle After Death is a novel of the dark fantastic set in the afterlife, but it's also a detective story featuring Sir Arthur Conan Doyle doing some Sherlock Holmesian sleuthing. I combine near future fiction and urban fantasy in my novel Bleak History too. My novel Everything Is Broken is a crime novel and a novel of a near future disaster. It's also a political allegory. I'll just say that when I make a "statement," I try to do it via the story itself, not in any overt declarative way.
CH: The primary focus of this interview is John Shirley the musician. Tell us a little about your latest release, John Shirley and His Criminal Accomplices. This is an eclectic collection of titles that span a wide timeline. How did you go about choosing the tunes for this album?
JS: The 17 songs on the album were chosen as among the best songs that also seemed to resonate well with one another, a kind of progression, from the late 1970s through 2012. You can see what I'm doing develop; you can see a person developing. And you can be entertained. I worked with really fine musicians and sound engineers, many of them, and they make me sound good.
CH: Do you approach lyric writing from with same mindset as you do when creating a story in any other forms?
JS: In some ways. I am a storyteller and do tend to have an implied story--or "story" in the form of poetically sketching someone's personality, their experience of life. Sometimes there's a whole story beginning, middle, and end--a good example is in the Blue Oyster Cult song The Power Underneath Despair (not on the album, since it's not me singing). In that song, a tough gangster type is betrayed by his enemies, is sent to jail, is put in solitary, and there he discovers a "power underneath despair." It's a kind of paranormal ability, and also a channel for his rage. Then he gets out and takes his revenge.
CH: The music industry and the book publishing industry have changed dramatically since you started working in them. Do you see these changes as positive at all?
JS: I have to think of it as "it is what it is," and adapt, like everyone else. There are positive sides to it: more people get more chance of exposure for their work. Other ways of reaching audiences. Most of my books are both physical books and downloadable--and I have begun making more money off the downloads. As for music, when I first made a record, it was before CDs. The record company only used vinyl. There was no download at all. So it was about shipping physical copies. That was a harder thing to pay for. The company's overhead was bigger. That's less a factor now. Downloads are a fact of life. Of course, I'm not a fan of the current rampant piracy of songs or other kinds of intellectual property, which has resulted from the new world of Internet distribution, but I don't get all worked up about it either. I figure people will find my work and I'll eventually get the benefit of that. Sound quality may be compromised some by the digital format, though. Most of the time it's not a really huge factor.
CH: Do you have a studio you work in at home?
JS: For music? No, I hire a studio. There are always good ones at a reasonable price. I've been going to Jay Russio's studio here in the East Bay, a small and efficient studio. All digital. A lot of people record their music right on their own computer and do great stuff that way. My son Julian does that with his "Juji" hip hop recordings and other material. But I like a studio with a good microphone set up, everything ready for me. I have to spend enough time on the computer writing.
CH: Do you have a process that remains the same when you write or is it a seat-of-your-pants approach?
JS: A writer of fiction or songs develops a craft over the years; they develop techniques that work for them.They find a "voice." So it becomes second nature after a while. But I always look for innovation, long as it doesn't shake off the involvement of the reader or listener. I will innovate, but not so much I just confuse people. I have a lot to say and I prefer to say it in my own, developed "voice."
CH: What one song do you wish you had written?
JS: There might be about fifty all in a tie for that one. A few that come to mind, Lou Reed's Street Hassle and Sister Ray, Bitch by the Rolling Stones and their Sympathy for the Devil, Leonard Cohen's Bird on a Wire or his Hallelujah, Nick Cave's Red Right Hand, Iggy Pop's Search and Destroy.
CH: If you could play onstage with one band or performer, who would that be?
JS: Alive or dead? Jimi Hendrix if so. Band--the Stooges.
CH: What do you like to do when you aren't working? How do you relax or enjoy yourself?
JS: Ha! Listen to music! Watch movies! I read biographies of interesting people, great men like Lawrence of Arabia, writers like Edna St Vincent Millay. Partly because I like to see they're as fallible and human as I am!
CH: What projects are you working on now or planning for this year?
JS: Well, I've been hired to write a novel based on a major videogame, but I don't want to announce which game until I sign the contracts. I am meeting with a producer next week who's optioned my novel The Other End for a movie and hope to advise on development a bit. I have a television pilot called Time Warrior I'm taking out. I'd like to write a sequel toDoyle After Death . . .we'll see. I am writing lyrics. I'd love to put together a kind of neo psychedelic band to do covers and originals . . . I don't take drugs, not for years, but I get into the psychedelic state through music alone.
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