Actor Clive Owen

DATE July 12, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Clive Owen discusses his acting career
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest Clive Owen is starring in two movies on opposite ends of the
commercial spectrum, the spectacle of "King Arthur" and the independent film
noire "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead." The British actor made his American
breakthrough starring in the independent film "Croupier." Owen played a
novelist leading a double life as a blackjack dealer in a casino. Owen has
reunited with the director of "Croupier," Mike Hodges, to make "I'll Sleep
When I'm Dead." Their new film has echoes of Hodges' now classic 1969 revenge
film "Get Carter," which starred Michael Caine. But although "I'll Sleep When
I'm Dead" is also about revenge, it's not about a violent rampage like "Get
Carter." Clive Owen plays a gangster who has left the violent life. In order
to keep away from that life and his own violent impulses, he's become a
hermit, living in his van outside of the city, but when his brother Davey, a
small-time drug dealer, is murdered, Owen wants revenge. Here he is slipping
back into the city, talking to his former lover played by Charlotte Rampling.

(Soundbite of "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead")

Mr. CLIVE OWEN: (As Will Graham) Look at me. Look who've I've become. I
sometimes don't talk to another living soul for (censored) days, weeks. I'm
always on the move. I trust no one, nothing. And it's got (censored) to do
with escape or withdrawal or fear. It's grief for a life wasted. And now
there's Davey, another (censored) wasted life, and I'm going to find out why.

GROSS: I asked Clive Owen if he and director Mike Hodges talked about the
nature of the violence in the film.

Mr. OWEN: The only really clear, strong discussion I can remember is whether
at any point we see Will Graham actually show that violence, of whether the
lid comes off and we see what he's capable of. I remember there was a scene
in "Croupier" and I remember feeling very strongly--there's a fight scene in
"Croupier" where somebody goes to fight him and the character gets into a
fight, and because it was a similar character in terms of keeping the lid on,
I was very clear and I wanted to let the lid off just that once, show what was
underneath this guy and then put it back on again so everybody could see what
he was capable of. So we had discussions about whether we should do a similar
thing with Will Graham about whether we should suddenly see the violence that
is within him and the violence that people are talking about having seen in
him, but we decided in the end that it would be sort of tighter and tauter
and more tense if we didn't actually release it throughout the whole movie.

GROSS: You're kind of emotionally dead in the movie, and so you're not
registering a whole big wide range of emotion--fear, anger, joy, laughter, you
know? Laughter isn't in the picture for you.

Mr. OWEN: I guess not.

GROSS: So how does that affect what you can use as an actor?

Mr. OWEN: It's strange because it was quite a deceptive script because it
was very lean and it read as being pretty straightforward, but when I actually
came to start playing the part, you realize that you can't just do nothing.
You can't breeze those situations just because a character isn't saying very
much. You still have to be very full up with emotion. He's a very emotional
character. It's just that there's a lid on it all the time, and there isn't
much dialogue to use. So really it was a case of sort of filling up and then
putting the lid on and that was deceptively hard. I remember when I first
started, I remember thinking it's much harder work than I thought it was going
to be.

GROSS: There's a lot that we don't know about the characters in the film.
There's a lot that we don't really know about your character including exactly
what happened that required him to, like, leave the city and separate from his
past so that he could disassociate from his violent past. Did you feel that
you needed to know more than the audience knows about your past so that you
could really inhabit the character?

Mr. OWEN: I always find that I need to know what I'm talking about. If
things--if there's a direct relation to what I'm saying or other people are
saying, then I need to have the information there, but I often don't need more
than that. I'm not the sort of actor who feels the need to go off and
research whole worlds. You hear of actors--you know, they play a doctor,
they'll go and live with a doctor, they'll talk to doctors, they'll immerse
themselves in that world. I tend to be more instinctive than that. I think
ultimately--the bottom line is you watch a movie and you believe the person.
The person says the lines, you believe them or not. And my thing, in this
movie, was really as long as I knew anything that anybody talked about my
character or that I said, I was fine with that. I didn't need to--ultimately,
all you're doing is, you know, you're capturing the scenes and I felt I did
what was necessary, no more really.

GROSS: My guest is Clive Owen, and he's starring in the new movie "I'll Sleep
When I'm Dead," which is directed by Mike Hodges, who also directed Owen in
the movie "Croupier."

I want to ask you about "Croupier." This is such a terrific film, and in this
you play a writer who takes a job as a croupier running a blackjack table in a
casino. And let me just play a short scene from the film. The film has a lot
of voiceover narration from your character, and he's usually talking about
himself both as himself Jack and as Jake, the main character in his novel.
Let me play some voiceover narration from your character toward the end of the
film. He's at the blackjack table.

(Soundbite of "Croupier")

Mr. OWEN: Chapter 10. You watched their faces as they lost, hour after
hour, night after night relentlessly. He questioned the conventional wisdom
that gamblers are self-destructive. He had come to believe that in reality
they want to destroy everyone else--their families, loved ones, everyone.
(Censored) the whole world. Without emotion, he watched them go. Jake
stayed.

GROSS: That's Clive Owen as the croupier in the film the "Croupier." This is
really such a great film in part about the meaning of risk. What kind of risk
is worth taking? When are you being a sucker? What are some of the things
you did to get into the spirit of this film, you know, in which--you're not a
gambler. Your character is not a gambler. He's opposed to gambling.

Mr. OWEN: He's very against gambling, yeah.

GROSS: Yeah, but he takes a lot of big gambles that just aren't in that
casino, but anyway, so Jake takes this job at the casino as a croupier at the
blackjack table. What's some of the preparation you had to do for this, even
in terms of just, like, learning how to deal?

Mr. OWEN: I actually went to croupier school for a couple of weeks and
actually trained with the guys that were teaching there, literally just
slotted in and did it promptly for two weeks, which was a real insider's look
at the way casinos work really because I was taught as they were taught. We
were taken around the casino. We were forbidden to gamble because all
croupiers are. And I remember the thing that struck me more than anything was
it's one of the few environments where there's still a lot of cash casinos,
which is unusual in this day and age to have so much cash flying around. So,
ultimately, they are obsessed about not being ripped off, so when they're
teaching croupiers, they drill into them every single day, `Do not think
you'll ever be able to take a penny from this casino. We've got everything
covered. You'll never get away with it.'

And I remember thinking that was sort of slight paranoia. It was really
striking, and it is related to the fact that, you know, you're handling money
all the time. There's not credit. It's, you know--and there are stories of
croupiers developing scams. They don't tell you this. You hear it from other
places, of scams of how to actually, you know, get money and take it from the
casino.

And then I remember the other really important thing we discovered very early
on in the movie is often with voiceover you'll play the scene and Michael'll
shoot the whole movie and then the voiceover is laid on afterwards. You put
the voiceover on. And there was this--on the first or second day, I was at a
blackjack table and I was just generally doing some dealing, and Mike said,
`Yeah, we'll lay some voiceover over that.' And it concerned me a bit, and I
went round to see him in his hotel room. So I said, `I'm a bit concerned
about this because it feels very unspecific to lay the voiceover just over
general dealing.' And I said, `I think it needs to be more specific than
that,' because often the voiceover is in the present tense. It just didn't
feel tight.

So we came up with this plan where I would go off and learn all the
voiceovers, and then when we actually came to shoot them, I would speak them
out loud and then we would do a take where I just thought them, so there'd be
people there, there'd be extras there, and thoughts were very, very specific,
so if I thought about a particular character or a person that was at my table,
I could flick them a look. I could--and it worked very well. It didn't mean
to say that Mike had to use all of that, 'cause obviously he can cut whatever
he wants to do, but the times where he did use it, it made the voiceover
very--you felt like you were inside the guy's head. It made it very, very
present and I remember that was a key discovery that we made together early on
in the movie.

GROSS: My guest is actor Clive Owen. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Clive Owen. He's starring in two new films, the epic
"King Arthur" and the independent film noire "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead." He
starred in the film "Croupier," and he made a series of action shorts created
as ads for BMW and shown on the Internet. Each starred Owen at the wheel of a
BMW driving a high-risk passenger. The shorts were directed by such
luminaries as John Woo and John Frankenheimer. I asked Owen how he got the
part.

Mr. OWEN: It was really through "Croupier." "Croupier" had just sort of made
its impact in America and then I got this call saying did I want to do a
series of commercials for BMW and I said, no, I didn't because I was meeting
a--things seemed to be opening up a bit. I was meeting lots of interesting
people, and I thought it wouldn't be a very smart, cool thing to do to just
jump into a bunch of commercials 'cause I didn't really know that much about
them. And they came back and asked again, and I said, `No, I really don't
want to do commercials. I don't want to do this.'

And then right at the wire, they sent me the script of the first one, which
was this 10-minute, proper, fully formed movie script, very well-written.
They said, `We've secured John Frankenheimer and Ang Lee to do the first two.'
And I suddenly thought this project is really unusual, it's very different
and, you know, they're attracting serious, quality people. So I literally
jumped on the plane the next morning. I arrived in LA and was taken straight
from the airport to a night shoot with John Frankenheimer to shoot the first
one. And I'm just enormously grateful that it didn't pass me by because, as
you say, I ended up working with some of the world's top directors, and it was
a very exciting project. To work with that caliber director was really
exciting.

GROSS: So what are some of the differences between how, say, John
Frankenheimer and John Woo directed you behind the steering wheel?

Mr. OWEN: Yeah, I remember the very first one that Frankenheimer, who's
regarded as the king of the car chases--and he took--his really is one lone
car chase, and he showed me examples of actors driving fast in movies and
examples of people that did it well and people who didn't do it well and why
they did, and he had the whole thing down to absolutely every cut of the
chase, so he knew when he was going from steering wheel to rearview mirror to
road to--and was incredibly specific and knew down to literally, like,
three-second shot. Like, `This is a bit you're just going to just pull the
wheel this way'--just literally two, three seconds and he'd be out of it. But
he was that specific, and you realize that's why he's so great at doing car
chases because you know he puts that much attention to it.

GROSS: I'll remind our listeners that John Frankenheimer, among other things,
directed "French Connection II." So when he was showing you examples of good
and bad acting behind the steering wheel, what were some of the things he
pointed out?

Mr. OWEN: It was really just to do with whether they looked like they were
really driving fast, they looked in the situation, and some people didn't.
When you watched them, you thought, `They're not connected with the speed of
the car, with everything else,' and other people looked very much in the
situation. I really just looked at it and it was--you know, the same acting
principles applied. There was nothing particularly about. It was just you've
got to really make people feel and believe that you're in this dangerous, you
know, high-speed car chase.

I think he was the one that invented the whole notion of--which I did a lot of
'cause a lot of people said, `Did you do a lot of the driving yourself?'
Well, what they used to do is they used to rip the steering out, put it on the
other side, place a stunt man driving the car, give me a dummy wheel. And as
long as you frame out the guy sitting next to me, they can throw that car
around and drive it pretty fast with me actually in it, so you can see the
world racing by outside the window. And I did quite a lot of that, and I
think it was John that was the first guy to do that.

GROSS: What did John Woo--what kind of advice did he give you?

Mr. OWEN: I mean, he was--I can't remember anything, you know, specific John
Woo said, but I was a big fan of John Woo and he's, you know, brilliant at
putting together action and there's a sequence in his one that was pretty--you
know, one of the more stunning car sequences of the whole series really but I
kind of...

GROSS: Is that the one where the car's spinning around a lot?

Mr. OWEN: Yeah, and there's a bridge being slowly going up and there's
car--you know, there's a whole sequence where the car eventually just spins to
a stop and the wheel literally is on the edge of this very high bridge. It's
a pretty stunning car stunt.

GROSS: And were you in the car for that stunt?

Mr. OWEN: Not--no. They took--the stunt guy got as close as he could do,
then they would replace the car with the wheel on the edge and then put me in
it.

GROSS: We've established that your face registers a lot in films. In the BMW
films basically it's all--it's mostly you behind the driver wheel and your
face has to express a lot. In "Croupier," your face has to express a lot,
certainly in "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead." What was it like the first time you
saw your face on screen?

Mr. OWEN: It's very stranger. I wouldn't say that that was the strangest
thing because, you know, you're used to seeing photographs of yourself. The
strangest thing is seeing the whole of you really. The first time you see
yourself on TV or on film walking down a street or turning around--it's the
perspectives that we don't get that is the most unusual. You think, `Oh, my
gosh, I walk like that. I look like that from that angle.' That's the sort
of oddest thing to see yourself that objectively. It's a very unusual
experience.

GROSS: Were there things you tried to fix or change about yourself after
seeing your full body from every perspective?

Mr. OWEN: It's strange, though, because I'm sort of wary. You know, there
are always people going to be advising you that certain aspects of
yourself--the way you talk, the way you carry yourself could be better, you
know, your posture could be better, your voice could be better. It could be
clearer. And I'm always a bit wary because I think ultimately acting's
about--you know, you can't be too contrived. You can't be worrying about
things like that ultimately. You've got to--it is an emotional job that
demands a commitment. Of course, there's always not enough skill and, you
know, you learn and improve and get better. It is a craft, but I'm wary of
too much of it, so in a similar way, I'm wary of changing things that other
people think it'd be better--you know, I'm 6'2" but I don't often stand up
very tall, but I'm comfortable in the way I carry myself and, you know,
suddenly if I start, you know, standing up much straighter, it just feels
different. It feels less like me and I feel I'm becoming something else and
I'm wary of that.

GROSS: When you first started on the BBC in England and you did your first
series which was called...

Mr. OWEN: There was a series I did called "Second Sight," but that wasn't
really where I started. I've done a lot of work before then. The first sort
of big TV series was a series called "Chancer," which was a series on ITV in
the UK way back when. It was, like, you know, 13 years ago.

GROSS: Now I read that after that series or maybe during that series, as you
were becoming really popular, the tabloids started to move in on you.

Mr. OWEN: Mmm.

GROSS: What was it like to, you know, suddenly when you're still, like,
pretty young have this kind of scrutiny?

Mr. OWEN: I found it very unsettling. I found it--you know, I went into
this TV series. You don't really know what to expect. You're a very young
guy, and suddenly when the series explodes, it becomes this big, prime-time TV
success, the tabloids get very interested. The tabloids love television, they
love, you know, actors in television. And I was pretty naive, and they'd
throw all the tabloid newspapers at me into my trailer to torture me, and I
thought, you know, you'd probably have to talk to everybody and I'd talk, and
then you'd get these sort of really tacky stories. I mean, nothing too
vicious, but it was all just unsettling and fowl, sort of ugly, and I found it
very difficult. I was really sort of quite resentful of it. I was very young
and I didn't quite know how to deal with it. So when it came to this--I did
the second series of this show, an older actor said to me, `You know, you can
say no.' So I did, and I said, `I'm not talking to the press.' And then I
got this obvious reputation for being difficult with the press because I just,
you know, avoided them and I didn't talk to them all during the second series.

And then I did one big press conference at the end of it to get some press out
of the way, and people said, `Why have you not talked to us for a year?' and I
explained my reasons, that I find it difficult, you know? Then every tabloid
was full of `Clive Owen and the price of fame.' `Clive Owen shuns fame.'
`The difficulty of being a TV star.' And it was horrendous again. It was,
like, I couldn't win.

GROSS: I know one of the things one of the tabloids did was track down your
birth father who had left the family, I think, when you were three. Let me
just stop here and ask you if this is something I can ask about or whether
you just don't want me to ask.

Mr. OWEN: It depends what you ask.

GROSS: OK. OK. Well, if it's a problem, you just tell me.

Mr. OWEN: OK.

GROSS: Had you already met him before the tabloid tracked him down?

Mr. OWEN: I--it was very difficult for me because my father had left the
home and I did this TV series and actually the character I was playing was
somebody who was estranged from their father, and I was just very wary and
cautious the tabloids would love this as a story--you know, the parallels of
my character and the fact that I myself, you know, was estranged from my
father. So I was very wary, and that's probably another reason why I find it
so difficult with the tabloid newspapers because there was something I was
hiding, there was something I was protecting and they smelled that I think. I
think they start talking about personal things and you look uncomfortable and
they're very experienced in honing in on the areas that people are obviously
hiding something or are wary of, and that was it for me.

And eventually--it all came out in the tabloids about my father, and it wasn't
that big a deal and eventually it was quite freeing up for me because then
there was nothing I had to protect. I didn't--you know, I wasn't feeling that
I had to be as careful around that area, and in a way, it coming out in the
tabloids was probably a good thing. It sort of opened it up.

GROSS: Were you trying to protect yourself or your father?

Mr. OWEN: I didn't want that parallel of somebody's--you know, my
personal--nobody wants their personal life in that way put out in the
tabloids. There are--and to a certain extent, you know, as I've got older and
married and got children, there are certain areas of my life that I don't
think are for public consumption, and I think, you know, I'll talk about the
work. I'll, you know, talk about my career, but the very personal, private
stuff that matters, I just don't understand the impulse to share that with
newspapers or journalists in any way.

GROSS: Well, Clive Owen, thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. OWEN: Thank you.

GROSS: Clive Owen is starring in "King Arthur" and "I'll Sleep When I'm
Dead."

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: It's kind of like an accordion but you blow through a mouthpiece.
Coming up, Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp, two of the very few musicians in
the world who own claviolas. Their band, One Ring Zero, has a new CD
featuring lyrics by such novelists as Dave Eggers, Rick Moody and Daniel
Handler.

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp discuss their band,
One Ring Zero, and new album, "As Smart as We Are"
TERRY GROSS, host:

They play lots of instruments, including one you've never heard of. They
write cool music. And the songs on their new CD feature lyrics by such
novelists as Rick Moody, Margaret Atwood, Daniel Handler and Dave Eggers. My
guests, Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp, are the founders of the band One Ring
Zero. They met while working for Hohner Harmonica repairing and tuning
instruments. Their new CD is called "As Smart as We Are." This track, "Natty
Man Blues," features lyrics by novelist Paul Auster.

(Soundbite of "Natty Man Blues")

ONE RING ZERO: (Singing) There ain't no sin in Cincinnati since I've been in
Cincinnati. I gotta get out of Cincinnati, or else I'll go plumb dumb and
batty since I mean to sin wherever I am, since I mean to sin whenever I can.

GROSS: That's the band One Ring Zero.

Michael Hearst, Joshua Camp, welcome to FRESH AIR. What instruments are we
hearing on that song?

Mr. MICHAEL HEARST (Co-founder, One Ring Zero): It's so many instruments, we
can't even remember what we put down. Claviola is one of the main
instruments. Theremin and...

Mr. JOSHUA CAMP (Co-founder, One Ring Zero): There's some guitar.

Mr. HEARST: Slide guitar.

Mr. CAMP: Yeah, organ. There's specifically the Thomas organ from the '70s.

Mr. HEARST: And, of course, voice. That is an instrument after all.

Mr. CAMP: Yeah.

GROSS: OK. Now you mentioned the claviola. And if our listeners are
thinking, `Claviola? I've never heard of that,' there's a good reason they've
never heard of that. And what is that reason?

Mr. CAMP: The claviola was a short-lived--it has a short shelf life, I guess.
It was introduced in the mid-'90s, maybe '94, '95, '96, and quickly was
discontinued because no one bought it because it was too expensive and...

Mr. HEARST: Overengineered.

Mr. CAMP: Overengineered.

Mr. HEARST: We like to refer to it as the Edsel of the music industry.

Mr. CAMP: Yes, exactly, which is what drew us immediately to it. And then we
started a band based around it.

GROSS: Really? Is that how you started the band?

Mr. HEARST: Yeah. I mean...

Mr. CAMP: Yeah.

Mr. HEARST: ...it was the most ridiculous thing we'd ever seen and decided to
form a band right there and then.

Mr. CAMP: Yup.

GROSS: And you were both working at the Hohner Harmonica factory at the time.

Mr. CAMP: It's actually a warehouse for North America. And Michael was the
assistant harmonica technician, and I was the assistant accordion technician.

Mr. HEARST: Believe it or not, I spent eight hours a day tuning harmonicas
five days a week.

GROSS: Wow. Well, I want to hear a little bit more about that a little
later. But, first, I want to hear more about the claviola. I think you've
brought one with you.

Mr. HEARST: I did...

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. HEARST: ...one of the 14 that came to North America.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: It's just amazing. Would you describe it just visually before we hear
it?

Mr. HEARST: I like to refer to it as it looks like a swan that's been run
over by a car. You wear it similar to an accordion, except you have a
mouthpiece that you blow into. And it has this one wing that comes off to the
left side, which encases several pipes, you know, that shape the sound further
from just the free-reed sound.

Mr. CAMP: And...

GROSS: So there's an accordion-keyboard-type thing on the left-hand side, and
on the right-hand side it looks like there's pipes almost like a really large
pitch pipe.

Mr. HEARST: Exactly...

Mr. CAMP: Oh, yeah.

Mr. HEARST: ...except the opposite.

Mr. CAMP: A panpipe is probably closer...

GROSS: Right.

Mr. CAMP: ...for visual.

GROSS: OK. OK. Can you play it?

Mr. HEARST: I can. And it's actually the opposite of what you said. The
right side is--not that it matters. Sorry.

GROSS: Well, the right side is the keyboard.

Mr. HEARST: The right side is the keyboard.

Mr. CAMP: Yes.

GROSS: That's the opposite of the accordion, isn't it?

Mr. HEARST: Otherwise, I'd be...

Mr. CAMP: No, no. Accordion is also the right side.

GROSS: Oh, OK. OK.

(Soundbite of claviola)

Mr. HEARST: So you can get some nice note bends. You can actually put your
left hand over the pipe and change the pitch slightly.

(Soundbite of claviola)

GROSS: So you're getting that bended note by moving your hand on the panpipe
side?

Mr. HEARST: Exactly.

Mr. HEARST and Mr. CAMP: (In unison) Yeah.

Mr. HEARST: Sort of creating an extension of the pipe itself to make the
pitch go down.

GROSS: Huh.

Mr. CAMP: Right.

Mr. HEARST: But, you know, we've come up with some interesting techniques. I
guess there hasn't been any...

Mr. CAMP: Yeah.

Mr. HEARST: There's no method book for us to follow...

Mr. CAMP: Yeah.

Mr. HEARST: ...on how to play it, so we've...

Mr. CAMP: That was the nice part about it. We sort of created our own way to
play it.

GROSS: Well, do you know that...

Mr. CAMP: You can also inhale on it.

GROSS: Oh, do that.

Mr. CAMP: Inhale is a different sound.

Mr. HEARST: Oh, that's true. We don't use it that much, but...

(Soundbite of claviola)

Mr. HEARST: Little thinner.

GROSS: It's like a harmonica. You can inhale on that.

Mr. CAMP: Yeah, it's more like a harmonica.

Mr. HEARST: Yeah, yeah. That's ...(unintelligible). And then, of course,
flutter tongue--well, not of course, but, you know.

(Soundbite of claviola)

GROSS: Wait. How are you doing that?

Mr. HEARST: I'm actually rolling my tongue. It's a technique that a lot
of...

Mr. CAMP: Yeah, wind players use it all the time.

Mr. HEARST: ...wind players use and just kind of doing a (makes drumroll
noise) sound with my tongue and...

(Soundbite of claviola)

GROSS: I think that's really great that this just kind of bizarre instrument
that most people thought was totally useless, you actually got these really
wonderful sounds out of it that you could use either for novelty effect but
also just for--it could be really pretty.

Mr. CAMP: Yeah.

Mr. HEARST: Yeah.

Mr. CAMP: Yeah.

Mr. HEARST: It really can. It makes some beautiful sounds.

Mr. CAMP: It can be haunting, yeah.

GROSS: So I just think it's really interesting that probably--I mean, has
anybody outside of you guys ever really used this instrument?

Mr. HEARST: Well, you know, having worked at Hohner, I can almost name
everybody who bought one of those 14...

Mr. CAMP: Yeah.

Mr. HEARST: ...you know. And, yeah, there are several people I know. John
Medeski actually bought one from me, and so he's used it with Medeski, Martin
& Wood. And, you know, there's several other people: Rob Schwimmer, who's
been on tour with Paul Simon recently playing claviola. So, you know, there's
a few around, and we need to go find them and steal them.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. CAMP: We need to eliminate the competition.

GROSS: My guests are Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp, the founders of the band
One Ring Zero. Their new CD is called "As Smart as We Are." We'll talk more
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guests are the founders of the band One Ring Zero, Michael Hearst
and Joshua Camp. Their new CD, "As Smart as We Are," features lyrics by such
novelists as Paul Auster, Daniel Handler, Rick Moody and Dave Eggers.

Did you ever talk to the inventor of the claviola?

Mr. CAMP: No, he--that's an interesting story. The inventor is Dr. Ernst
Zacharias, who was sort of the--probably the most famous inventor that worked
for Hohner over the years. And his most successful invention was the
Clavinet, which was made famous by, you know, a lot of early '70s keyboard
players; specifically, Stevie Wonder, you know, "Very Superstitious"--that
whole era. And I think he actually came up with the claviola idea in the '60s
about the same--you know, maybe a few years after the Clavinet. And it was
never--Hohner never decided to put it into production or, you know, come up
with any kind of practical design for it until the '90s maybe.

Mr. HEARST: One of the things that's fascinating to me about the whole
story--well, there's a couple things; one is that these guys still wear lab
coats in the factory in Germany, which is just great. A lot of...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. CAMP: Yeah. That's like really...

Mr. HEARST: (Using German accent) `We are engineers.' But the other thing
that's fascinating is that Ernst Zacharias never intended for these things to
be played in pop settings. I think it was very...

Mr. CAMP: Yeah, the Clavinet was, to him, an amplified clavichord, really,
you know.

Mr. HEARST: He was expecting it to be appropriate Germanic music, you know...

Mr. CAMP: Yeah.

Mr. HEARST: ...Bach and whatever, but, you know--and Stevie Wonder took it
and made...

Mr. CAMP: Ran with it.

Mr. HEARST: Ran with it. And so I don't know how thrilled he would be at
what we're doing with the claviola. But...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HEARST: ...oh well.

GROSS: Yeah, what did he intend it for?

Mr. CAMP: Well, that's a good question. I have no idea. Yeah, I mean, the
interesting thing about it is that it--well, as far as free-reed instruments
go, I mean, it's in the same family of accordion and harmonica, obviously,
though the direction of air is in the opposite of all these other instruments.
The reed vibrates essentially the wrong way (laughs), which is why it sounds
so different than accordion or harmonica.

GROSS: Well, why don't we hear one of the tracks on your new CD, "As Smart as
We Are," that prominently features the claviola. Now the song we're going to
play is called "Radio," and it's a song with a lyric by Daniel Handler, who
writes the "Lemony Snicket" novels. And, you know, all the songs on this new
CD are lyrics by writers that you have set to music. So, anyways, before we
actually hear it, if you could just play the claviola line from the beginning
of the song, so we can hear what the claviola's doing.

(Soundbite of claviola music)

GROSS: Great. And here it is in full 3-D (laughs) on the recording from the
new CD, "As Smart as We Are."

(Soundbite of "As Smart as We Are")

ONE RING ZERO: (Singing) If I had a radio for every time you loved me so, I
wouldn't have a radio at all. Now I sit and waste my time, my room as quiet
as a mime, and wait for someone glamorous to call. Radio, radio, radio,
radio, radio. If I had...

GROSS: It's a lyric by Daniel Handler, who writes the "Lemony Snicket"
novels. It was set to music by Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp, the two
members of the band One Ring Zero. And all of the songs on their new CD
feature lyrics by writers that One Ring Zero set to music. And the CD is
called "As Smart as We Are."

Well, I think your songs are just really, really good, and the instrumentation
is so interesting. Before we talk about setting these writers' songs to
music, let's go back to the Hohner warehouse--Was it?--that you...

Mr. CAMP: Correct.

GROSS: ...worked in. You were both technicians. One of you was working with
accordions and one with harmonicas? Do I have that right?

Mr. CAMP: That's correct.

Mr. HEARST: You do.

GROSS: Just tell us a little bit about what your day was like as a harmonica
technician and an accordion technician. What did you do? Fix the
instruments?

Mr. HEARST: Joshua spent--well, you spent your entire days repairing, tuning
and...

Mr. CAMP: Yeah, actually, towards the end there, I was mostly running the
department because my boss was in charge of research and design. And so I
would, you know, answer phone calls and keep track of all the accordion parts
to sell to various accordion technicians around the country. Yeah, it was--I
mean, a lot of our jobs was trying to make the lower-end quality accordion
harmonica sound a little better for the American market (laughs). That was
most of our day.

Mr. HEARST: Right.

GROSS: Well, you know, your new CD features lyrics by writers that you set to
music. How did you start doing this?

Mr. HEARST: We just kind of stumbled into a literary scene. We both moved up
to New York; we're originally from Richmond, Virginia. And in 2001, we both
moved up to New York. And, you know, I had read a heartbreaking work of
staggering genius by Dave Eggers, and a friend of mine said, `You know, I
think Dave Eggers has this little curio shop down the street in Park Slope in
Brooklyn.' And I walked up and down Seventh Avenue in Park Slope looking for
this store, and, you know, I stumbled upon it and finally found it and handed
a CD to the store manager, who loved it and quickly invited us to play
readings that they were having in this little space. I mean, the room was no
more than five feet by eight feet. And we have Rick Moody and, you know,
Viggo Mortensen, you know, these guys who--Viggo was actually reading and not
there to act, but...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HEARST: ...you know--so we were all cramped in this room. And Joshua and
I would get up on stage and play a few songs before the readings began, and
that's kind of how we met all these authors.

GROSS: Now these authors are not lyricists. Did you ask them to write lyrics
that you could set to music?

Mr. CAMP: We did. It was interesting. Rick Moody was kind of the first
person to take a liking to one of--the first person to really pull us in that
direction. He saw us performing at one of the readings and invited us to
improvise behind him while he read the opening chapter from his novel "Purple
America." And we got on stage and just winged it, and it turned out so well
we actually ended up eventually recording it and did several songs or
improvisations behind Rick Moody's spoken word. And at that point we thought
it'd be fun to turn the tables and ask Rick if he would be willing to write us
some lyrics. And there are originally three songs that he wrote lyrics for,
two of which are on our previous album, "Memorandum," and a third which we
saved for this CD. And that was kind of the impetus to start asking other
writers to--and, you know, had this idea of maybe we'd just get all these
authors that we've met to write lyrics for us.

GROSS: Well, one of the lyrics you were given was just a haiku...

Mr. CAMP: That's true.

GROSS: ...an urban haiku or suburban haiku. So that's just a few seconds.
I thought we'd hear that one, and then we'll hear another song. But let's
start with "The Haiku."(ph) Who's the writer of this?

Mr. HEARST: That's Aaron Naparstek. I had read a Talk of the Town article in
The New Yorker about this guy, who lived in Brooklyn, who got frustrated with
all the traffic in front of his apartment and actually threw some eggs out of
his window at the car and caused this whole ruckus in the neighborhood. And
he turned that into writing haikus against the whole automotive industry, I
guess...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HEARST: ...and started posting these on telephone poles throughout his
neighborhood. And it caught on. Other people in the neighborhood started
doing this and adding them, and all these haikus were popping up on telephone
poles. And I was so fascinated. We had just started this project. I was
like, `We should contact this guy and get him to...'

Mr. CAMP: Yeah.

Mr. HEARST: `...to give us a haiku or write a haiku for us.' And, you know,
he was thrilled to do it. And so that's--oh, honku, as he calls them, came to
be.

Mr. CAMP: Right. That's how we wrote a 28-second song (laughs).

GROSS: OK. Well, here it is from the album "As Smart as We Are" by One Ring
Zero.

(Soundbite of song)

ONE RING ZERO: (Singing) You, from New Jersey, parking in front of my house
in your SUV.

GROSS: OK. Well, there it is, the anti-automotive (laughs) haiku set to
music by Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp of One Ring Zero. And all the songs
on their new CD, which is called "As Smart as We Are," feature lyrics written
by writers that One Ring Zero has set to music.

Let's go through a slightly longer song that you set to music. And this is
one by the writer Denis Johnson, and the song is called "Blessing." Tell us
about Denis Johnson and about setting his lyrics to music.

Mr. HEARST: Denis Johnson was one of the more difficult authors for us to
get ahold of. You know, I guess originally when I kind of pitched the idea to
him, he wasn't so sure that our music and his words would go together. And,
you know, after several e-mails, he finally said, `Well, you know, I guess if
I was going to do this, I would kind of want a country song.' So we're like,
`Well, we'll write a country song.' (Laughs)

Mr. CAMP: Yeah.

Mr. HEARST: So that's how that came to be. And, I mean, they're fabulous
lyrics.

Mr. CAMP: Yeah, beautiful.

Mr. HEARST: They're really great. And...

Mr. CAMP: We're from Virginia, so, you know, we can handle country.

Mr. HEARST: (Laughs) That's right. And when we finally sent the finished
product to Denis Johnson, I got a phone call from him. And he was just so
excited, and he said he was so honored to be on this. And it really made us
both extremely happy...

Mr. CAMP: Yeah.

Mr. HEARST: ...that we'd pulled it off.

Mr. CAMP: And relieved.

GROSS: So this is a lyric by the novelist and poet Denis Johnson set to
music by Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp of One Ring Zero. They're singing on
it as well and playing all the instruments. This is from their new CD, "As
Smart as We Are."

(Soundbite of song)

ONE RING ZERO: (Singing) And the condemned man, in his tuxedo dream, his
dream of limousines and innocence. Take off your clothes and come to him in
dreams. Stand on the fire escape naked and blessed. With chairs like a
(unintelligible) codeine, the laughter spilling from our broken necklaces.
Ohh. Bless please the people...

GROSS: My guests are Michael Hearst and Johsua Camp, the founders of the band
One Ring Zero. Their new CD is called "As Smart as We Are." We'll talk more
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guests are the founders of the band One Ring Zero, Michael Hearst
and Joshua Camp. Their new CD, "As Smart as We Are," features lyrics by such
novelists as Paul Auster, Daniel Handler, Rick Moody and Dave Eggers.

Can you read a few of the lines that you thought were really good that some of
these writers and poets gave you but that are not typical song lyrics?

Mr. CAMP: Well, we don't even need to read them because we sing them, and we
have them memorized, but...

GROSS: Sure.

Mr. CAMP: ...which is good since we don't have them with us. But, `Christ by
the Dumpster peeling and tossing your lottery tickets. Oh, Nazarene...'

Mr. HEARST: `Drinking dust.'

Mr. CAMP: `Drinking dust.'

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HEARST: Yeah. I mean, that was more lyrical. Jonathan Ames' lyrics are
fascinating.

Mr. CAMP: Yeah.

Mr. HEARST: That's straight prose. And Jonathan...

GROSS: And that's Denis Johnson who you just...

Mr. HEARST: That was Denis Johnson that I--right.

Mr. CAMP: Used to sing.

Mr. HEARST: Jonathan Ames clearly gave us straight prose, and that was a
challenge to make a song with. He has the story that he's--I've heard him
tell several times at public readings about the sound he made when he was a
kid called The Hairy Call. And it somehow relieved him of all kinds of
childhood ailments.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HEARST: He had a horse sit on his back and...

Mr. CAMP: Elevated testicle.

Mr. HEARST: ...an elevated testicle, right. So--and somehow he'd made the
sound with his buddies on the playground, and it became the story. So the
lyrics he gave us were, `When I was a little boy, I was very troubled. I had
a bad back and an elevated testicle. I was eight years old. I wasn't exactly
off to a great start in life. For my back, I had to wear a corset. For my
testicle, there's nothing to do but wait.'

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HEARST: You make a song of that.

Mr. CAMP: Yeah.

GROSS: What was the process for this? Was it different from sitting down to
melodicize a more conventional lyric?

Mr. CAMP: Yeah. It was a matter of sitting down with a guitar and just
singing the words until some kind of pattern formed (laughs), essentially.

Mr. HEARST: We ended up having to go back to Jonathan and ask him if he could
come up with just one sentence that we could at least somehow repeat and make
into a chorus. And that's when he came up with, `I'm a trumpet and a wall.
This is the story of The Hairy Call.'

Mr. CAMP: Yeah. So at least we had some kind of...

Mr. HEARST: Something to repeat to make it...

Mr. CAMP: ...some song structure element.

GROSS: Well, why don't we hear "The Hairy Call"? And this is One Ring Zero
from their new CD, "As Smart as We Are."

(Soundbite of "The Hairy Call")

ONE RING ZERO: (Singing) When I was a little boy, I was very troubled. I had
a bad back and an elevated testicle. I was eight years old. I wasn't exactly
off to a great start in life. For my back, I had to wear a corset. For my
testicle, there was nothing to do but wait. I'm a trumpet and a wall. This
is the story of The Hairy Call.' One day in fourth grade Jonathan
(unintelligible) made us sound a little prayer, sound from the bottom up.

GROSS: That's Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp, the two members of the band One
Ring Zero. And their new CD, "As Smart as We Are," features lyrics by
novelists and poets that Hearst and Camp set to music. And they also sing on
it and play all the instruments.

So when you guys got together and you realized you wanted to form a band
together, what were you playing at the very beginning?

Mr. CAMP: I think our first project was a klezmer project. This is before
the claviola.

Mr. HEARST: That's right.

Mr. CAMP: We were just using Melodica. And the band was called the
Klezbians.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. CAMP: I just said that, didn't I?

Mr. HEARST: You did. We had a klezbian in the band. It was OK. It was
legit.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. CAMP: It was--yeah, I guess I made it OK.

Mr. HEARST: Sure. But that was a lot of fun. We actually would get--had a
house in Richmond that I still own actually. And the purpose, the reason, I
bought the house for the most part was to set up a recording studio in the
basement. And we would have these rehearsals once a week that never led to
anything. We never had the intention of playing live. It was just once a
week we'd invite whoever was interested to come over and join us in the
basement to play klezmer standards, which there actually are klezmer
standards, and there's whole books of klezmer standards. And we would just
get together and...

Mr. CAMP: But we ended up recording our record of klezmerized Christmas
songs.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HEARST: Minor key.

Mr. CAMP: Yes, called "A Very Klezbian Christmas."(ph)

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Why were you so interested in klezmer?

Mr. CAMP: I think it--kind of going back to all the various folk musics that
we were exposed to. And I somehow got a--early on in school and when I was in
college, somebody gave me a book of klezmer's standards. I didn't even know
it was called klezmer music. I just referred to it as `crazy Jewish music.'
And then someone, when I played it somewhere, said, `Oh, that's klezmer
music.' That was...

Mr. HEARST: `Crazy Jewish music.'

Mr. CAMP: Yeah.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HEARST: Sorry.

Mr. CAMP: This is--I never told Michael this story. And I loved it. I still
play those songs I learned, and I definitely started writing in that style as
soon as I got that book.

GROSS: Finally, I'm wondering, since there are only about 14 claviolas in the
world, what happens if yours breaks?

Mr. CAMP: Yeah, that's a good question.

Mr. HEARST: We go find John Medeski.

GROSS: Steal the one you sold him?

Mr. CAMP: Correct.

Mr. HEARST: Yeah.

Mr. CAMP: Exactly.

GROSS: Do you have access--do you know who's got the other remaining ones?

Mr. HEARST: Not all of them. I mean, we know where a good chunk of them
are. I mean, the one good thing of this whole situation is Josh and I were
both repair technicians at Hohner, so we know how to fix them.

Mr. CAMP: Yeah.

Mr. HEARST: That's helpful.

Mr. CAMP: That is helpful.

GROSS: Right. OK. Well, thank you so much for talking with us. It's really
been fun.

Mr. HEARST: Oh, thanks for having us. It has been...

Mr. CAMP: Well, yeah. We're thrilled to be here.

GROSS: Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp are the founders of the band One Ring
Zero. Their new CD is called "As Smart as We Are."

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.