The Sunday Times
June 5, 2005
E from Eels:
Eels' front man Mark Oliver Everett, better known as E, emerged as one
of
the great modern songwriters with his band's 1998 album Electro-shock Blues.
As with much of E's work, the songs are deeply personal and concern his
family.
The album was written after his mother died of cancer and his sister
committed suicide. Similar themes are explored again on his latest album,
Blinking
Lights and Other Revelations, which received a five-star review in The Sunday
Times when it was released.
E's family , its dysfunction and tragedies , doesn't just provide him with
subject matter, it also gives him poetic inspiration. "After my mother died
and
I went to clear out the family house in Virginia, I discovered one of my
grandmother's books of poetry, Music of Morning. I had heard stories about my
crazy grandmother who wrote poems. But I didn't realise until then just how good
she was."
E printed one of his grandmother Katherine Kennedy Everett's poems, Prelude,
on the sleeve of Electro-shock Blues: "Let me lie on your heart like snow/Cool
and apart/for a moment, so/Before the flames start/and the snows melt/and the
waters flow."
"I love that, it's really beautiful," he says. It was also important for E
to find another family member who could express emotions. "Maybe it skips a
generation," he says. "My grandmother's work is passionate, full of life and
longing. That was an influence on me , that vibrancy is something that I
strive
to achieve." Indeed, the final line of the album is "Maybe it's time to
live".
The lyrics of title track of Electro-shock Blues derive from writing that E's
sister Elizabeth did in a psychiatric hospital. "They had given her an
exercise," he explains. "She was told to write out 'I am okay' 100
times. She
managed it a few times, and then she started writing 'I am not okay'.
"Elizabeth had the family curse, but she didn't have the family gifts.
Without doubt, the thing that has kept me from the dark end of the family street
is
that I've been able to write these songs. The thing that ultimately killed
Elizabeth is that she couldn't do anything like that. By creating a song from
her
words, I wanted to give her that , the gift of being a poet."
Eels perform at Queen Elizabeth Hall, SE1, on June 12
Katherine Kennedy Everett