In the past, like for the last Rilo Kiley record, 'Under the Blacklight,' I wore exclusively hot pants because the themes in that record were the underbelly of Los Angeles.
It's just dumb: how you can have the number 1 record in Los Angeles and not have the number 1 record in New York? It's crazy.
I don't live in Los Angeles. I work in Los Angeles, and even that - I audition in Los Angeles; I very rarely film in Los Angeles. I don't hang out with producers on my off-hours, so I don't even know what that world is like.
I like to record records in Los Angeles. It's less distracting than New York, where I was based.
The first record was basically a quick, fast record. The second record, we were going for more of a poppier sound - like a heavy pop sound. For 'Rocket to Russia,' we'd sort of reached our pinnacle. We'd gotten really good at what we were doing, so that's like my favorite record - that's a really good record. It's just great from beginning to end.
If you repeat what you did in the last tour, the likelihood is it's not gonna be successful twice. People are nostalgic about a particular record, because it's about the time when they were listening to that record. But if you do it again, they're like, I'm not that guy anymore.
Whenever I approach a record, I don't really have a science to it. I approach every record differently. First record was in a home studio. Second record was a live record. Third record was made while I was on tour. Fourth record was made over the course of, like, two years in David Kahn's basement.
Writing the record for me - every record is almost a surprise. When people ask me, what are the themes you want to grapple with on this one? I have no idea until the record's finished.
If you're a novelist, you have sort of themes that run throughout novels. You start a novel and you finish a novel. With record-making in the singer-songwriter world or whatever it is that I do, it's a little different because there is no specific arc that is necessarily, like it's not a concept record.
My father was in record promotion in Los Angeles. He worked for Mercury Records, Capitol Records, and RCA Records. My parents divorced when I was about 9. In 1978, my dad moved to Nashville and opened an independent record promotion company, Mike Borchetta Promotions.
I'm super happy to see the record doing its thing and for people to like it, but for me, I had a great victory just as a person. I overstepped countless obstacles by creating that record. And the record's a metaphor for the personal steps I [took] throughout the past year.
Rilo Kiley was a rock band, so I wanted my solo records to feel different.
Los Angeles, the sun shines a lot, and it's blue, and there's palm trees; it's a bit like Sydney, I guess, but the underbelly is a vicious, mean, cruel, awful place.
When it all started, record companies - and there were many of them, and this was a good thing - were run by people who loved records, people like Ahmet Ertegun, who ran Atlantic Records, who were record collectors. They got in it because they loved music... Now, record companies are run by lawyers and accountants.
Bill Clinton blasted anti-immigration supporters at the National Council of La Raza convention in Los Angeles Saturday. Thousands of Hispanics poured into Los Angeles for the convention. The hot weather in the desert kept the numbers down.
Once I got into punk rock, I started mail-ordering albums, because a lot of the record stores in my area didn't carry the punk bands from England or Sweden or Chicago or Los Angeles
I didn't worry about my career ending, but there were days where I felt pretty beat up by it all and just pretty tired, because they didn't make it easy for me. And coming right off the last lawsuit, it was the last thing I wanted to get involved in. When it was over, we didn't really celebrate, we were just exhausted. I lost all interest in the record business and never wanted to do anything except hand in a record again.