Singing In The Rain

Reflections on singing, with Natalie Imbruglia and Counting Crows' Adam Duritz

Adam Duritz and Natalie Imbruglia have a thing or two in common, starting with debut albums that shot out of nowhere to sell millions and turn them into instant pop superstars. And, typically for such "overnight success" stories, there was really nothing overnight about it.

Duritz slugged it out for years in a succession of Bay Area bands before Counting Crows released their knockout first album, August and Everything After, in 1994: the crows latest double CD Across a Wire virtually reinvents the live album genre with radical reinventions of songs from August and its ambitious successor Recovering the Satellites.

Before breaking into singing, Imbruglia became a teenage soap opera star in her native Australia, moved to London and watched her acting career fall apart, then reinvented herself as a thoughtful singer/songwriter for last year's Left of the Middle, an uneven but extremely listenable collection with enough gems scattered through it to let you know she's just getting started.

Here's another thing: Both are more than capable songwriters who first demanded attention by inhabiting someone else's song.

In Duritz's case, that came when he performed Van Morrison's "Caravan" at the 1993 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Awards and won over the crowd; for Natalie, of course, it was her mesmerizing cover of Ednaswap's "Torn" which has been played to death on the radio and still sucks you in every time.

But then that's the kind of thing a gifted singer can do, which brings us to the suject of the day.

Duritz and Imbruglia had met but briefly before we brought them together one hot July afternoon to yak and munch sushi in a conference room forty-something floors above New York's Times Square. They turned out to be keen admirers of each other's music, which encouraged an easy rapport.

Mostly, they talked about singing-the art, the craft, the technique, the business-and in the process revealed another thing they have in common: the kind of uncommon commitment to what they do that makes you believe they'll both be around for a long time to come.

If everybody sings, why can't everyone be a singer?

Imb.: I think some people just can't sing[laughs]. I really believe that.

Duritz: I think there's a big difference between having a good voice and being a good singer, too.

Imb.: Totally-the delivery or emotion behind it is often more important than being a technically good singer, I think you can work with what you've got though. I had a lot of problems with my voice when I got my deal;I got nodules on my vocal chords. And the doctor told me that I'd have to have them cut off. I was freaked out;I didn't know what to do. So I started to do lessons again, like opera training almost. And that's when I thought, you can improve on what you've got, make it better or curve it;that's something I never thought you could do.

Duritz: Technique can make a big difference, especially once you start touring. I've been in a band in clubs all my lfe, but there you're playing once a month, you don't have an audience to play [for] more often;if you have to sing every night, it's s different.

Imb.: Do you have to warm your voice up?

Duritz: Yeah, I do now, religiously. I've taken voice lessons. I've got a natural thing I can do, but the more technique I've piled on that, the more of a tool you have to express yourself.

Imb: It's like freedom. I have to do 45 minutes before a band rehearsal.

Duritz: Yeah, I do thirty.

Imb.: When I got these nodules, I was in L.A. and I called a vocal coach. I saw him everyday for a month. He wouldn't let me sing, but he told me, "You don't need an operation. You'll be fine." And not only did he get rid of my nodules, I discovered this voice, and I almost became really into the whole opera training. I actually went too far with it: My voice began sounding too clear and pure, so you gotta watch that as well. But I swear by that training now. You can go onstage and not have to think about your delivery.

Duritz: It makes a big difference that way. I had a great voice coach in Berkeley. I sing really hard live and I get out of my head and I don't know what I'm doing at the end with my voice, and I was constantly getting nodes, over and over on tour. I'd have to spend three days shut up in a hotel room on the road, not talking and taking steroids.

Imb: Did you have to cancel gigs?

Duritz: Not a huge amount, but it would happen. Mostly, I couldn't take any more of the three day jags on the steroids where you're up. Steroids can be fine for you, but they can also hit you really badly. And if you're a little mentally weird like I am anyway, you know, you can have those three days where you're up and completely paranoid and it's not a pleasant thing. Finally, I was in New York, and we had to blow out one gig. I called this woman and she took the technique I had and in two hours completely tuned me up, gave me some exercises. I came back three days later before I started singing again, and in one more lesson with her I got a five, six, seven-note range on top of my voice. And I don't hurt my voice anymore. It's incredible.

[interviewer]What did she have to do?

Duritz: I push hard, and she taught me to make the volume come off the top of my palate and to change my notes on my palate instead of in my throat, where I was doing it. It's just stuff that makes it less of an effort for me to sing.

Imb: That was the same for me as well. You start to learn when your voice is placed properly, depending on whether you've been flying or doing interviews or whatever. Talking is the worst thing for my voice, and I talk a lot. And he places the voice so...the only way i can describe it is, it moves so you feel it in your head when you're doing the warm up. You're kind of pushing the air up inot your nose. When I was a kid taking lessons I always had teachers telling me my stomach was my diaphragm and "don't sing through your nose". You really have to use your nose more than I thought.

Duritz: It resonates off the top of your palate. You get the buzz up here.

Imb: And it's cool. Then I started getting to really enjoy this whole feeling when it was in the right spot, and not stopping the warm-up until it gets to that point. [interviewer]So now, when you go onstage, you don't think about it?

Duritz: There are still days. Sleep is really good for the voice, and I don't sleep very well.

Imb: I'm lucky in that department.

Duritz: Well, go to hell then[laughter].

Imb.: I can sleep sixteen hours, whatever.

Duritz: I don't sleep well, and going east is way worse than going west; I stay up all night. So that's a problem.

Imb. I'm a bit apprehensive about doing a big tour and doing it every night. I just did two weeks in Europe, I said, I want to do it really easy and feel out when my voice gets uncomfortable. So I did one day off, one on, and there was one day when there were two gigs together, and I just got through that. And when I woulg get to the next place I would just sleep all the time.

Duritz: Are you gonna open for someone or headline here? I never wanted to open. i read somewhere R.E.M. said they never opened for anyone at the beginning aof their career 'cause they wanted to make every night an R.E.M night. But what never occurred to me is that it's hard physically to play gigs, and that opening is a really good thing for that. We started off playing six songs a night for Suede and the Cranberries the first three weeks, then a little later we were playing 45 minutes to an hour opening for Cracker and that was still tough. Now we play an hour and a half, two hours a night, and that's tough but you develop the strenght for that.

Imb: So you think that's a good idea, opening?

Duritz: Yeah, 'cause physically it's hard. Also, there's emotional stress to touring: You're away from home and your friends, there are things to adjust to. When you're opening there's no pressure on you: It's not your fault if it doesn't sell out. You're not the center of attention either, but it's kind of an easy way to get out there-I mean have you played in front of audiences long?

Imb: See, this is all new to me and I've only done a little bit of it. But I'd imagine if you're opening for somebody else and everyone is there to see them, does that not feel weird? I guess I would feel scared that they would be like, "Get off!"

[interviewer]Maybe you should'nt open for Metallica.

Duritz: Find an audience that fits you.

Imb: That's one of my fears-not because I wouldn't want to do it, but I'm an insecure performer even when it is my fans. I'm like, have we sold any tickets? I'm panicking. But at least if you're doing your own thing, maybe the people are there to see you.

Duritz: But one of the things that happens when you start touring small is that the people who see you sought you out. Once you get big there are always gonna be people who are just there for "Torn" or "Mr. Jones" or whatever. Because the masses can appreciate one, where the core group will appreciate all your songs. So part of the nice thing about opening is that you learn to perform for people who are not converted. 'Cause once you get big there will be people like that in your audience too, and you need to somehow win them over with "Left of the Middle" or "One More Addiction", and they're bot gonna necessarily know all of the words for them like they do for "Torn".

[interviewer]Do you sing differently when you go from a club to a hall to a festival?

Duritz: I get more excited and jump around more.

Imb: Definitely. Especially since I'm so tiny, I have to do big jumps so they can see me! The first time I had a big stage, which was not so long ago, I was puffed-jeez, back and forth. I was exhausted.

[interviewer]As the singer, you're the focus. Does the success of a show fall on you?

Imb: I put it on myself, eventhough it's maybe due to this or that. I torture myself.

Duritz: We're really a band, so it's definitely on all of us. I don't know if the whole responsibility is mine, but if I don't have a good show it's harder for them to carry me.

[interviewer]The philosopher Edward Van Halen once remarked,"You've got to be a prick to be the lead singer." What do you think he meant by that?

Duritz: It means he doesn't like David Lee Roth[laughter]. That's that band. They seem to go through them.

[interviewer] Is there any general truth to that view?

Duritz: I don't know if it's about being a lead singer. I think in order to run something you have to be a prick sometimes. But that's okay.

Imb: It's about being in control of a situation and taking responsibility. I catch myself having fits and tantrums, and hating it. But there was a reason, and you have to keep control to an extent.

[Interviewer]Singing seems the hardest thing to fake onstage, at least in an emotional sense.

Imb: Well, there are moments when you're thinking about the laundry[laughter]. It happens! I zone sometimes completely. I don't know how that happens but I can manage-my brain goes over there.

Duritz: I have so many different moods onstage. Our songs change so much every night depending on how I feel. I used to think that wasn't cool, and then I thought, well, you know, I can only sing how I feel. Which does not appeal to every audience. More to our audience, because at this point they're used to that at our shows. If I'm having an angry night, everything's about that. But at least what you do up there is true.

Imb: There's nothing worse than trying to go up there and force an emotion you're not feeling.

Duritz: I had that problem with "Mr. Jones" after awhile, 'cause at its heart "Mr.Jones" isn't a happy song. It has a cautionary aspect to it, and there's a sad and mistaken aspect about this guy who's thinking everything's gonna be fine when he's famous. And especially having written it when it was impossible to dream about that, and then having gotten there, I had a lot f trouble singing that song and saying, "I want to see myself on television"-and at that point I so didn't, you know? So the genesis of the acoustic version is me finding a version of "Mr.Jones" that I could sing. The acoustic version felt much better. But that wasn't something that always pleased the audiences. They wanted their party to have their soundtrack the way they've seen it on MTV.

[interviewer]Natalie, it sounds like you're just getting to that point of figuring out what to do live.

Imb: [sighs] I'm like way at the beginning, yeah. When "Torn" took off, I was doing TV and I was getting panic attacks about it 'cause I was like, you've gotta let me do some gigs but you've got to let me do them someplace where it doesn't matter-somewhere where people haven't heard me yet. That was one of my temper tantrums, where they were throwing big things at me, this and that festival, and I was like, wait a minute, have you thought about the fact that I haven't done this, and you could be throwing me to the lions? So I made them give me two weeks in Europe, and it was great because it was just real fans, so I could experience that connection. That's better than a festival where it's a whole bunch of bands, and the fans are stuck in the mud, and no soundcheck-you know, nightmare. It's funny dealing with record companies, 'cause they don't understand, it's all about personal relations, and if you just let me get the confidence, then I'm gonna say yes to everything. But they throw things at you and you're overwhemled.

Duritz: But you really can't blame them for this because a job at a record company is so short-lived nowadays. They're not thinking of your career as being ten or twenty years long;they're thinking of your career as being "Torn". But that shouldn't be the way you think about it.

Imb: That's why it was really important to me, regardless of whether "Torn" exploded, that I was on a route I still wanted to take. So it was really hard at the very beginning when everything was going so fast and I was going, "Let's just stop for a second, it's freaking me out."

[interviewer] You both sing, you both write. Which came first?

Duritz: Well, I always sung since I was a little kid. I have pictures of me with a tennis racket in front of the mirror and I know I'm singing to "Can't Buy Me Love." I had the racket backwards-I didn't grasp the subtlety. I did theater when I was a kid, but there's no venue for that-what are you gonna do as a singer?Then in college I started writing songs. I can remember very distinctly two things: I had periods when I thought, it's a good thing i can sing 'cause I don't write very good songs. At some point i got those things together but not for a long time.

Imb: It was always the singing for me. I remember being very depressed in London when I made the decision to cross over from acting to singing and it was a very insecure time. And I remember thinking, "i may as well try to write, because I'd prefer to sing something that's coming from me a hundred percent. But if I'm really shit at it, then I'll just sing." I do believe you can just be a singer and sing really good songs. You still have to pick them. The same thing with "Torn": I didn't write it, but when I sing it I get into it and believe it and make it real for me. So writing was a whole new discovery. I was not expecting to be able to do it; I had thought it all had to do with intellect. And then to sing melodies, someone playing chords and singing freely over the top of it and then words coming to you, i won't say it was easy but it was almost magical because it can just happen spontaneously. What i didn't know about songwriting is that it's sometimes subconscious stuff that just spurts out and you don't know even what it's about. Often people say "What's this line about?" and I don't know. Sometimes I think it's cool that you don't really understand it.

Duritz: That's how "Round Here" was written: complete off the top of my head. it was in rehearsal with my old band the Himalayans. They were playing this four-chord groove, and I started singing for about fifteen minutes or however long they were playing. And then I went home and just edited it down. The whole song was there.

[interviewer] How does your songwriting affect the way you approach singing?

Duritz: If the difficulty is having something that comes from your heart to sing, then the fact that this does help a lot. Obviously, you can find songs to relate to, but if you wrote it, it cuts that process. It gives you something true. In A Moveable Feast Hemingway talks about living in Paris, starting to write each day, trying to write one true thing, and how everything comes out of that. That works for songs. If i can get one thing in a song, everything will bloom off of that, and I think if you have that song, then the singing blooms off of that. And now the conclusion...

Imb. I agree with what your're saying: As ;ong as you've got one thing, you can create a story. Often with me it's like one emotion you feel very strongly about and then you can build a story from that. You can go into fantasy but it comes from something that's real.

[interviewer] How do you keep your concentration in front of a noisy or distracted audience? Or get them to pay attention?

Imb. I've been dealing with it by just closing my eyes.

Duritz: I'll shush 'em. i don't have any trouble with that.

Imb: I haven't tried that! It works?

Duritz: There's a section on "Round Here" you can hear it on that live record where it breaks down and goes through some guitar parts. One day i wanted to break it down to Charlie [Gillingham] playing piano, but no one could hear him, so i said, shhhhh [laughter]. Then I started doing it every show 'cause I realized it totally worked. You could hear a pin drop. We played this festival in Holland-fifty thousand people there. We got to that section of the song and i said shhhhh, and it's fifty thousand people at a festival, middle of the afternoon, and it's dead quiet.

Imb: I'm gonna have to steal that! They're really bad in Europe.

Duritz: It's a very natural thing. You can tell them what to do sometimes. You're always gonna get one person who goes, "Yowwww, you fucking rule!" or "Rock and Roll!" But real communication is real communication. You're talking to an audience. Shushing them is the same thing as talking to them. It's just true: You want them to be quiet right then, you're gonna play a quiet part of the song.

[interviewer] Who are your main influences as a singer?

Duritz: Alex Chilton;he's very vulnerable. And Chris Bell from Big Star. You ever listen to that band, Big Star? In the early seventies they were a Beatles-influenced band playing in Memphis, which at that time was the soul capital of America. But more than anyone else, they were probably the band that influenced alterternative music today. Without them there is no R.E.M, no Replacements, none of that music without Big Star. He's got this great way of writing and making you feel what it must have been like to be a boy-not a man but a boy, all those dreams and yearnings-and communcating that as an adult. Which is what I think I wanted in my music in a lot of ways, to feel that yearning emotion.

Imb: I really connected with Shawn Colvin as a lyricist at first. That album Steady On. Even when it's just her and a guitar on that live album of hers, she has a way of delivering a song that you forget there's not a band behind her. But I didn't connect with anyone until quite late. I was obsessed with dancing and acting. Joni Mitchell was probably the first person. Somebody got me Court and Spark;that opened my eyes. And my father used to play the Carpenters all the time when I was a kid. Since I wanted to be a singer, I'd try and do Karen Carpenter's vibrato.

Duritz: She's the ultimate unaffected singer. And sometimes I like that, 'cause the songs are so good, and her voice-the texture of it is so beautiful. But sometimes I wish that she did a little more with it, 'cause she sings it so deadpan. My old drummer in our band had this Carpenter's fixation. I really hated them, but he would play them for us and I would realize that these are great songs, and I started to like it a lot more.

[Interviewer]Jennifer Warnes was saying that she feels that singers onstage are dream carriers for the audience. Do you feel that when you're up there?

Duritz: Well, I carry a lot of my own. I think that's the whole point of being there. I mean, I'm all for anyone who succeeds in this, because you have to have a really big dream to do it. Critics have ths discussion if you're a sellout or not, as if art was something where someone was trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes. And it's just not true; no matter who you are, you chose to do this and it's a difficult thing to do and the chances of succeeding are slim. The life's good once you get there. But getting there is really hard.

Imb: It's what's so hard about it that gives you that drive. And there's a new set of challenges presented all the time. That's what I love about it and I think that's why people like us do what we do. Who wants to be one hundred percent secure? How are you supposed to set yourself new challenges? Even now, you know, when you have some success it doesn't stop there; it just goes up a level. You know, when it's in you, it's so in you that it's almost like a chore; it's like, I don't want to do this, but I don't have a choice.

Duritz: And they think you're ridiculous. The thing you want to do is not something that anyone else takes seriously. It's like, "Well, Natalie, that's a hobby."

[interviewer] Or maybe it's so important to you that you kind of circle it for awhile?

Imb: I definitely did as far as making a record. That was something I pranced around big-time. If my acting career had gone along without a break, I wouldn't have made a record, 'cause I would never have confronted the fear. It was too much of a want, and I had opportunities when I was fourteen that I turned down 'cause I wanted it to be right so bady. I was given these opportunities but without my control, like to do a dance record, but it was never about me or what I wanted. And at that young age I was wise enough to think, I can't do that, I'm too young. So thankfully, I said no. But that was because I wanted it to be right and I couldn't stand the thought of at least not going into it feeling comfortable with the situation.

[interviewer] Where do you go from here? Is there a greater ambition to fill?

Imb: I always have them, but I don't say them aloud.

Duritz: Just longevity for me. I would like this to work out. I don't want this to be a flash in the pan. I want this to be my life. I like what I do; it's very satisfying. I don't want to be a fad that was here for this brief period of time and then was gone. The life expectancy is so short, but I don't see why it has to be.

Imb: It would be nice to keep a roof over my head and pay the rent, but as long as I don't have to get a "real" job, to do what I do forever, that would be cool.

Duritz: I'd like to avoid going back to landscaping. I worked as a dishwasher and in a video store-I got fired from both of those jobs. I did construction and landscaping. I was 27 before the first record company took a look at us, ever. So it took a bit of time. I won't say I was desperate. But I was getting whiny. It would have been fun to have been successful younger. I had a period of wishing I was better than I was and not thinking well of myself.

Imb: But the grass is always greener. I can look at it and wish I had struggled more, 'cause if it comes to you too quick, it can feel like it isn't real.

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