matthew levinson

Mark Oliver Everett writes like someone who’s used to having a great voice and timing to give his words nuance. Like a radio broadcaster… or a rock star, which he is. Everett’s the guy behind mid-90s group Eels (‘Novocaine For The Soul’).

(Pic from The Guardian)

His father was Hugh Everett III, who came up with the ‘many worlds’ theory of quantum physics.

Everett writes like you write a good pop song – simple and direct. It can seem a little plain, but like any songwriter worth his publishing contract, his book, Things The Grandchildren Should Know, has a story. His book – written before there are actually any grandchildren on the scene – is a warts and all memoir that dives deep into his childhood. And it’s messy.

He dealt with the death of every member of his immediate family by recording a series of increasingly popular records (despite constant battles with record labels), including Electro-Shock Blues and Blinking Lights and Other Revelations.

We don’t think that much about the emotional lives of snarling, pouting, grinting rock stars. OK so that’s not entirely true – the likes of Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin or Britney Spears do clog up plenty of column inches.

It’s pretty rare to get a frank insight into one of their lives – unless it comes with a truckload of self-pity, self-aggrandisement or at the very least self-consciousness. Most say, the songs speak for themselves.

But in this case, I’ve rarely had time for Eels’s records, and it was only the unrelenting thrust of his story that inspired me to listen back to records. They still didn’t do that much for me, but I love that Everett’s story was engrossing enough to make me want to hear his music.