Norman Salant Interview
Q: Word on the street is you have a rich history when it comes to music. Can you tell us about it?
A: First of all, thanks for saying so, although it’s a little hard to imagine any words on the street concerning me after all this time. Maybe you’re referring to my association with The Residents, since I heard they just played in Brooklyn, or at least tried to, but got shut down halfway through – on a noise complaint? Who would have thought? Anyway, yes, I’ve been involved in a lot of different projects over the years. I originally made my reputation as a sort of innovative saxophone genius in San Francisco in the 1980s. I put out a couple of albums of electronically based minimalism dance-pop saxophone albums, and no one could really figure out what I was up to or put a proper label on it. The music wasn’t that complicated at heart but it was determinedly original and uncategorizable. It was also highly listenable in a tuneful way, probably because I had really strong pop roots from growing up during Beatle time way before I ever started playing. As soon as the first record came out, I got asked to play gigs so I quickly put together a performing group, and other bands noticed and invited me to play on their records. One was The Residents for Tunes Of Two Cities, and another was Romeo Void. Benjamin Bossi, their sax player, brought me in to play on Benefactor, dueting with him on a song called “Orange.”
After Romeo Void broke up, he and I became a performing duo for a number of years. We moved to New York and jumped into the East Village downtown arts scene. As our time as a duo wound down, I put together a 40-Saxophone Orchestra for a big music festival in New York, fulfilling a longtime dream, and then founded the more manageable Moving Planet Orchestra, a band half of which was traditional Middle Eastern instruments and the other half the usual Western bass, synthesizer, etc. I would stand at the point wailing wild Middle Eastern-infused modal improv over this amazing rhythm and tonal texture.
Two years later I was doing something called Saxophone Stories on soprano saxophone, accompanied only by an electronic tamboura, something I had serendipitously picked up by trading a Sony Walkman to a touring Indian master vocalist. These were completely improvised solo performances conveying a very abstract notion of narrative in a hopefully coherent way. A total tightrope walk – the tamboura set the key, but I never even planned the first note. After that came The Invisible Ensemble, whose premise was to play free-form compositions based on short quizzical phrases like “the inside of a balloon,” but as quietly as possible all the time.
Along with these, there were other forays. MTV hired me to do music for those cool animated 10-second station IDs they used to do, and one of them ended up winning the coveted Annecy International Animation Film Festival award, which is like getting an Oscar. Then there was a down-the-middle commercial project of Top 40 dance/pop where I partnered with Lynn Mabry, a fantastic singer, who at the time was touring with Talking Heads for their Stop Making Sense. She had been one of the original Brides of Funkenstein with George Clinton, had been in Funkadelic, all that. I’d been trying my hand at hit-writing, thinking how easy it must be (wrong!), and thought I might have come up with something, so when we were introduced she agreed to give it a try. I spent literally my last $100 on studio time, did a quick basic track and then she came in and sang the lights out. I sent it to an up and coming manager I’d met in New York, by the name of Joel Webber, and immediately we were in meetings with the heads of the major labels, flying to L.A., rustling up demo money – this was during the Whitney Houston Madonna Michael Jackson era, right when the entertainment industry was figuring out how to interlock music, film, and tv into one huge profit center. I think they were calling it “synchronicity” or something. We spent six months doing a series of demos together, but then Joel suddenly passed away and all the open doors closed up tight. People who had been excited by the music suddenly were arguing with me about how the lyrics were too abstract. It was absurd. After that, I was basically done with commercialism and went off to do the duo with Benjamin. There was one night when we were playing at the Fillmore West on New Year’s Eve with Dwight Yoakum and Los Lobos. Everything ran late, it was one of those elaborate Bill Graham party events, so at the stroke of midnight we were still onstage. We just started screaming away on our horns like a couple of avant-garde banshees and got everyone in the house to scream at the top of their lungs too, all 2,000 people, and we rang in 1986 in good order.
Anyway, after Invisible Ensemble, I needed a break from the life and put the horn down for awhile to think about things. I wanted no part of the business side, and started asking myself why I was doing it at all. I realized it was about the writing, and being able to hear what I’d written. I didn’t need anyone else to hear it or know about it, only me. I figured whether anyone else got to hear it was extra, not my business. So I basically withdrew from public view and lived life. I picked up an acoustic guitar and kind of fell into songwriting. It was just nice to be able to pick it up and play at 11 pm in a New York apartment without worrying -- the saxophone had always been a struggle because it was so loud. And I’d always loved Dylan, the Beatles, but had never really tried to do any serious verbal art. Words… what a concept! I fell in love with it all and haven’t looked back since.
Q: You have played a number of different styles in your career as a musician. How does your recent release Yodeling Goodbye fit into your spectrum of experience?
A: It’s radically different from what I’ve released before, even though it’s all part of one continuum in my mind. People who might have known me back then would never recognize this as me, or likely even be interested. I have no problem with that, but what it means is I’m basically starting over. Everything on Yodeling Goodbye is informed by what came before, though, despite being a mainstream genre. There’s a song on there called “Home”, the opening track. It’s a long, deliberate song describing a departure, maybe from people, maybe just from a place you love, although it’s never spelled out exactly where to or where from. Anyway, the song evokes Americana, especially with the gorgeous Sana Nagano violin solo. But all the way at the end, I guess about six minutes in, a choir of soloing saxophones suddenly appears, I think it was three altos, all wailing away at the same time, dropping a texture very alien to Americana or indie singer/songwriter, but which has really been my musical signature forever. It was a dangerous choice, but it was meant to connect the present with the past, what I used to do all the time on those minimalist saxophone albums with what’s being created today. It sounds totally radical, but the idea of combining those two streams of music has become increasingly intriguing.
Q: Can you talk about some of the concepts and themes on Yodeling Goodbye?
A: The album, thematically, deals with, well, basically it’s kind of about endings, death, departures, moving on, moving away, mortality, saying goodbye. Either metaphorically or actually. The last song, Last Dance At The Parade, is an attempt to look inside someone who might take their own life. Riding Horses On The Moon reflects some sort of loving transcendence of earthly life. No Wind Tonight explores personal growth, finding the other side of a crisis and feeling that it’s ok to hide away for a while to think things through, it’s ok to be confused and lost and trying to figure it out, you know, “I’ve been down but I’m alright.” It’s my nature to be fascinated with the colors of the dark holes and the gorgeous feelings hidden down deep. The thoughtful quiet can be the most beautiful. The idea of Yodeling Goodbye was to dig some of that up and bring it out into the light through sound and poetry. It’s about sharing the ache of being alive.
Q: Word on the street is you have a rich history when it comes to music. Can you tell us about it?
A: First of all, thanks for saying so, although it’s a little hard to imagine any words on the street concerning me after all this time. Maybe you’re referring to my association with The Residents, since I heard they just played in Brooklyn, or at least tried to, but got shut down halfway through – on a noise complaint? Who would have thought? Anyway, yes, I’ve been involved in a lot of different projects over the years. I originally made my reputation as a sort of innovative saxophone genius in San Francisco in the 1980s. I put out a couple of albums of electronically based minimalism dance-pop saxophone albums, and no one could really figure out what I was up to or put a proper label on it. The music wasn’t that complicated at heart but it was determinedly original and uncategorizable. It was also highly listenable in a tuneful way, probably because I had really strong pop roots from growing up during Beatle time way before I ever started playing. As soon as the first record came out, I got asked to play gigs so I quickly put together a performing group, and other bands noticed and invited me to play on their records. One was The Residents for Tunes Of Two Cities, and another was Romeo Void. Benjamin Bossi, their sax player, brought me in to play on Benefactor, dueting with him on a song called “Orange.”
After Romeo Void broke up, he and I became a performing duo for a number of years. We moved to New York and jumped into the East Village downtown arts scene. As our time as a duo wound down, I put together a 40-Saxophone Orchestra for a big music festival in New York, fulfilling a longtime dream, and then founded the more manageable Moving Planet Orchestra, a band half of which was traditional Middle Eastern instruments and the other half the usual Western bass, synthesizer, etc. I would stand at the point wailing wild Middle Eastern-infused modal improv over this amazing rhythm and tonal texture.
Two years later I was doing something called Saxophone Stories on soprano saxophone, accompanied only by an electronic tamboura, something I had serendipitously picked up by trading a Sony Walkman to a touring Indian master vocalist. These were completely improvised solo performances conveying a very abstract notion of narrative in a hopefully coherent way. A total tightrope walk – the tamboura set the key, but I never even planned the first note. After that came The Invisible Ensemble, whose premise was to play free-form compositions based on short quizzical phrases like “the inside of a balloon,” but as quietly as possible all the time.
Along with these, there were other forays. MTV hired me to do music for those cool animated 10-second station IDs they used to do, and one of them ended up winning the coveted Annecy International Animation Film Festival award, which is like getting an Oscar. Then there was a down-the-middle commercial project of Top 40 dance/pop where I partnered with Lynn Mabry, a fantastic singer, who at the time was touring with Talking Heads for their Stop Making Sense. She had been one of the original Brides of Funkenstein with George Clinton, had been in Funkadelic, all that. I’d been trying my hand at hit-writing, thinking how easy it must be (wrong!), and thought I might have come up with something, so when we were introduced she agreed to give it a try. I spent literally my last $100 on studio time, did a quick basic track and then she came in and sang the lights out. I sent it to an up and coming manager I’d met in New York, by the name of Joel Webber, and immediately we were in meetings with the heads of the major labels, flying to L.A., rustling up demo money – this was during the Whitney Houston Madonna Michael Jackson era, right when the entertainment industry was figuring out how to interlock music, film, and tv into one huge profit center. I think they were calling it “synchronicity” or something. We spent six months doing a series of demos together, but then Joel suddenly passed away and all the open doors closed up tight. People who had been excited by the music suddenly were arguing with me about how the lyrics were too abstract. It was absurd. After that, I was basically done with commercialism and went off to do the duo with Benjamin. There was one night when we were playing at the Fillmore West on New Year’s Eve with Dwight Yoakum and Los Lobos. Everything ran late, it was one of those elaborate Bill Graham party events, so at the stroke of midnight we were still onstage. We just started screaming away on our horns like a couple of avant-garde banshees and got everyone in the house to scream at the top of their lungs too, all 2,000 people, and we rang in 1986 in good order.
Anyway, after Invisible Ensemble, I needed a break from the life and put the horn down for awhile to think about things. I wanted no part of the business side, and started asking myself why I was doing it at all. I realized it was about the writing, and being able to hear what I’d written. I didn’t need anyone else to hear it or know about it, only me. I figured whether anyone else got to hear it was extra, not my business. So I basically withdrew from public view and lived life. I picked up an acoustic guitar and kind of fell into songwriting. It was just nice to be able to pick it up and play at 11 pm in a New York apartment without worrying -- the saxophone had always been a struggle because it was so loud. And I’d always loved Dylan, the Beatles, but had never really tried to do any serious verbal art. Words… what a concept! I fell in love with it all and haven’t looked back since.
Q: You have played a number of different styles in your career as a musician. How does your recent release Yodeling Goodbye fit into your spectrum of experience?
A: It’s radically different from what I’ve released before, even though it’s all part of one continuum in my mind. People who might have known me back then would never recognize this as me, or likely even be interested. I have no problem with that, but what it means is I’m basically starting over. Everything on Yodeling Goodbye is informed by what came before, though, despite being a mainstream genre. There’s a song on there called “Home”, the opening track. It’s a long, deliberate song describing a departure, maybe from people, maybe just from a place you love, although it’s never spelled out exactly where to or where from. Anyway, the song evokes Americana, especially with the gorgeous Sana Nagano violin solo. But all the way at the end, I guess about six minutes in, a choir of soloing saxophones suddenly appears, I think it was three altos, all wailing away at the same time, dropping a texture very alien to Americana or indie singer/songwriter, but which has really been my musical signature forever. It was a dangerous choice, but it was meant to connect the present with the past, what I used to do all the time on those minimalist saxophone albums with what’s being created today. It sounds totally radical, but the idea of combining those two streams of music has become increasingly intriguing.
Q: Can you talk about some of the concepts and themes on Yodeling Goodbye?
A: The album, thematically, deals with, well, basically it’s kind of about endings, death, departures, moving on, moving away, mortality, saying goodbye. Either metaphorically or actually. The last song, Last Dance At The Parade, is an attempt to look inside someone who might take their own life. Riding Horses On The Moon reflects some sort of loving transcendence of earthly life. No Wind Tonight explores personal growth, finding the other side of a crisis and feeling that it’s ok to hide away for a while to think things through, it’s ok to be confused and lost and trying to figure it out, you know, “I’ve been down but I’m alright.” It’s my nature to be fascinated with the colors of the dark holes and the gorgeous feelings hidden down deep. The thoughtful quiet can be the most beautiful. The idea of Yodeling Goodbye was to dig some of that up and bring it out into the light through sound and poetry. It’s about sharing the ache of being alive.
Q: I read some of your comments about tape and couldn't agree more. I'm done with splicing. What was the recording process like?
A: Good question. I hadn’t been in a studio in over 20 years, and a lot had happened in the interim. I needed a fair bit of help getting acclimated and rebuilding confidence, so I knew I needed someone to produce. During the saxophone days, I’d produced everything myself, but this was very different. These were songs with words, and I was a brand new singer; I was going from the living room to the studio and didn’t know if I could do it or even how to do it. And I’m nowhere near the musician on guitar as I was on sax. I was gonna need a lot of help. I came across J.P. Bowersock on a Yelp talk thread of all places, and we got to talking and he agreed to try it. He came to see me at an open mic and was really taken with my choice to run the acoustic through a chorus as my basic sound. He took me to Mark Dann’s Tribeca studio, believing Mark to be a ProTools genius. He was right. I’d been around at the beginning of digital recording during the waning saxophone days, working with samplers and Performer 1.0 on my MacPlus for dance commissions and minor soundtracks and whatnot, so I had at least a sense of what digital editing could offer. But the complexity and sheer number of choices and plug-ins offered by ProTools was way way beyond, and Mark navigated all that effortlessly and seemed to always know how to make anything happen.
Yes, I’m very glad to be done with tape. Trying to do all the advanced multi-tracking on the saxophone albums had been torturous and full of compromise and limits. Now you can “remember” all your moves and all your work without having to reset boards and outboard gear every session, you can continually fine-tune mixes, rearrange song structures, fix flaws, these are amazing abilities. Of course you can go overboard too, and many do, but it’s not that hard to keep a human feel so that a dynamite take can be saved even if you blow a spot or lose intonation somewhere. We took advantage of all of this. If we needed to tighten the groove, we’d never go 100%, we’d just drop it within an acceptable range of imprecision which is where the “feel” lives. Sterility was the enemy.
In terms of the recording process, I had no band, so for live basics it was just the drummer with me on guitar doing a guide vocal for cues. Then we’d build it up track by track until it felt done. Mark would be fixing EQs and timing and level issues at the same time, so it was all pretty seamless. When there was enough there I’d go in to sing. Vocals were usually comped from five passes and we’d draw from all of them; J.P. and Mark did most of the choosing while I stayed out of the way with my veto power. Comping added depth and mystery to the vocal, mixing and matching from five different performances, five different feels. Sessions were short, usually 2-3 hours each, once or twice a week. We kept at it for about three years all told, and recorded 32 songs altogether. Yodeling Goodbye has only eight songs on it, and the follow-up album looks like it will have another ten. The album concept – and the concept album, for that matter – still has a lot of life, to my great surprise, and selecting songs according to theme and sequencing them properly can create a much enhanced listening experience.
Anyway, you asked about the process. A lot of close listening was done between sessions, and each night I’d show up with a long list of things to change before we could start on whatever new plans were happening that session. It got so that Mark would go, “So what’s on the list?” and we’d set to work. When other players came in, I’d usually have the parts written out, and once those were done we might try a few spontaneous ideas, but most of the work was figured out during off hours to save money. And by the time all the tracking was done, Mark had already worked out a basic mix, so all we had to do was tweak those. Again, the benefits of digital over tape: everything was saved, and it saved us a ton of time. Mixing to tape, you’d have to zero everything out and begin from scratch each day, rebuilding EQ, levels, outboard effects, manually riding faders, muting and unmuting channels while tape was rolling, it was a very complex choreography usually requiring six hands. And if the mix failed, you’d have to do it all again from the top. If you thought you had it and went home, but later changed your mind, you’d have to come back in and start all over. I’m glad that’s over with.
Q: How much of the record was written and performed solely by you?
A: I did all the writing and most of the arranging, but I had help on the performing side. I sang all the leads and harmonies with the exception of the “All Gone Forward” outro, where a diverse group of voices was needed including children and even a crying infant – you can hear it on the outro. I did all the basic guitar tracks and a couple of simple guitar overdubs, pretty much always a chorused-out acoustic playing either rhythm or fingerpicked. I did all the saxophones on “Home” and “All Gone Forward.” The rest was contributed by others, mostly J.P. and Mark. J.P. has strong past associations with The Strokes – he was Julian’s guitar teacher and electric guitar studio guru, and he’s a master of creating sounds. He did almost all the electric guitar overdubs and sound effects. Mark played all the bass, and when we needed something more exotic than a six-string guitar, he contributed that too. We called in specific players to do the violin, cello, percussion, piano and so on. All the players were newly referred to me, and I think we were incredibly lucky with who showed up.
Q: What should we know about your music?
A: That’s kind of like a “why don’t you tell me a few things about yourself” sort of question, something that always freaks me out a little. But if I were to try to answer literally, I’d say something like, as much as I ever loved saxophone composition and recording, I also love songwriting and recording. I have an inherently psychedelic mindset, and there’s an ecstasy you feel when a recording is finally finished and you hear it for the first time. Nothing in life compares. And I never write for the sake of writing, it’s too f—king hard, really, it’s often painful; I write from a desperate need to hear something that doesn’t exist yet. It’s like, well, you’re just gonna have to do it yourself. It’s a real need. It may take twenty years to get there with a song, but I’ll stick with it until it finally clicks and you go, “ahhh.” Every song idea has a “perfect” realization, and it’s your job as writer to get it there. I also try to make a song’s lyrics consistent with how I’d like the world to be, a bit utopian for sure, to not glorify negative behaviors. That doesn’t mean it has to be about lollipops, it can be a study of loneliness or loss, it can have a sharp edge. But a song should come from a deep place with as much positivity and honesty as you can bear. If you’re able to inject some kind of ironic humor, so much the better. But a finished song should be so beautiful and true, so musically balanced and lyrically insightful, that it both breaks your heart and leaves you feeling wonderful about being alive.
A: Good question. I hadn’t been in a studio in over 20 years, and a lot had happened in the interim. I needed a fair bit of help getting acclimated and rebuilding confidence, so I knew I needed someone to produce. During the saxophone days, I’d produced everything myself, but this was very different. These were songs with words, and I was a brand new singer; I was going from the living room to the studio and didn’t know if I could do it or even how to do it. And I’m nowhere near the musician on guitar as I was on sax. I was gonna need a lot of help. I came across J.P. Bowersock on a Yelp talk thread of all places, and we got to talking and he agreed to try it. He came to see me at an open mic and was really taken with my choice to run the acoustic through a chorus as my basic sound. He took me to Mark Dann’s Tribeca studio, believing Mark to be a ProTools genius. He was right. I’d been around at the beginning of digital recording during the waning saxophone days, working with samplers and Performer 1.0 on my MacPlus for dance commissions and minor soundtracks and whatnot, so I had at least a sense of what digital editing could offer. But the complexity and sheer number of choices and plug-ins offered by ProTools was way way beyond, and Mark navigated all that effortlessly and seemed to always know how to make anything happen.
Yes, I’m very glad to be done with tape. Trying to do all the advanced multi-tracking on the saxophone albums had been torturous and full of compromise and limits. Now you can “remember” all your moves and all your work without having to reset boards and outboard gear every session, you can continually fine-tune mixes, rearrange song structures, fix flaws, these are amazing abilities. Of course you can go overboard too, and many do, but it’s not that hard to keep a human feel so that a dynamite take can be saved even if you blow a spot or lose intonation somewhere. We took advantage of all of this. If we needed to tighten the groove, we’d never go 100%, we’d just drop it within an acceptable range of imprecision which is where the “feel” lives. Sterility was the enemy.
In terms of the recording process, I had no band, so for live basics it was just the drummer with me on guitar doing a guide vocal for cues. Then we’d build it up track by track until it felt done. Mark would be fixing EQs and timing and level issues at the same time, so it was all pretty seamless. When there was enough there I’d go in to sing. Vocals were usually comped from five passes and we’d draw from all of them; J.P. and Mark did most of the choosing while I stayed out of the way with my veto power. Comping added depth and mystery to the vocal, mixing and matching from five different performances, five different feels. Sessions were short, usually 2-3 hours each, once or twice a week. We kept at it for about three years all told, and recorded 32 songs altogether. Yodeling Goodbye has only eight songs on it, and the follow-up album looks like it will have another ten. The album concept – and the concept album, for that matter – still has a lot of life, to my great surprise, and selecting songs according to theme and sequencing them properly can create a much enhanced listening experience.
Anyway, you asked about the process. A lot of close listening was done between sessions, and each night I’d show up with a long list of things to change before we could start on whatever new plans were happening that session. It got so that Mark would go, “So what’s on the list?” and we’d set to work. When other players came in, I’d usually have the parts written out, and once those were done we might try a few spontaneous ideas, but most of the work was figured out during off hours to save money. And by the time all the tracking was done, Mark had already worked out a basic mix, so all we had to do was tweak those. Again, the benefits of digital over tape: everything was saved, and it saved us a ton of time. Mixing to tape, you’d have to zero everything out and begin from scratch each day, rebuilding EQ, levels, outboard effects, manually riding faders, muting and unmuting channels while tape was rolling, it was a very complex choreography usually requiring six hands. And if the mix failed, you’d have to do it all again from the top. If you thought you had it and went home, but later changed your mind, you’d have to come back in and start all over. I’m glad that’s over with.
Q: How much of the record was written and performed solely by you?
A: I did all the writing and most of the arranging, but I had help on the performing side. I sang all the leads and harmonies with the exception of the “All Gone Forward” outro, where a diverse group of voices was needed including children and even a crying infant – you can hear it on the outro. I did all the basic guitar tracks and a couple of simple guitar overdubs, pretty much always a chorused-out acoustic playing either rhythm or fingerpicked. I did all the saxophones on “Home” and “All Gone Forward.” The rest was contributed by others, mostly J.P. and Mark. J.P. has strong past associations with The Strokes – he was Julian’s guitar teacher and electric guitar studio guru, and he’s a master of creating sounds. He did almost all the electric guitar overdubs and sound effects. Mark played all the bass, and when we needed something more exotic than a six-string guitar, he contributed that too. We called in specific players to do the violin, cello, percussion, piano and so on. All the players were newly referred to me, and I think we were incredibly lucky with who showed up.
Q: What should we know about your music?
A: That’s kind of like a “why don’t you tell me a few things about yourself” sort of question, something that always freaks me out a little. But if I were to try to answer literally, I’d say something like, as much as I ever loved saxophone composition and recording, I also love songwriting and recording. I have an inherently psychedelic mindset, and there’s an ecstasy you feel when a recording is finally finished and you hear it for the first time. Nothing in life compares. And I never write for the sake of writing, it’s too f—king hard, really, it’s often painful; I write from a desperate need to hear something that doesn’t exist yet. It’s like, well, you’re just gonna have to do it yourself. It’s a real need. It may take twenty years to get there with a song, but I’ll stick with it until it finally clicks and you go, “ahhh.” Every song idea has a “perfect” realization, and it’s your job as writer to get it there. I also try to make a song’s lyrics consistent with how I’d like the world to be, a bit utopian for sure, to not glorify negative behaviors. That doesn’t mean it has to be about lollipops, it can be a study of loneliness or loss, it can have a sharp edge. But a song should come from a deep place with as much positivity and honesty as you can bear. If you’re able to inject some kind of ironic humor, so much the better. But a finished song should be so beautiful and true, so musically balanced and lyrically insightful, that it both breaks your heart and leaves you feeling wonderful about being alive.