Photo by Christina Von Messling, photo illustration by Johansen Peralta
‘I’ve never been hip’: Catching up with John Linnell of They Might Be Giants
Half of the alt-rock duo joins 'Brooklyn Magazine: The Podcast' to discuss a 40 year career and recording a solo album in Latin
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As improbable as it seems, They Might Be Giants, the Brooklyn-based alternative rock duo known for quirky songs and killer live shows, is turning 40 next year.
John Linnell is one half of that duo, the other being John Flansburgh. Linnell writes and co-writes songs, sings, he plays accordion, baritone and bass saxophone, clarinet, and keyboards on enduringly charming songs like “Particle Man” and “Ana Ng” and “Don’t Let Start” (it’s hard to choose just a few examples out of a decades long span of productivity).
He is also this week’s guest on “Brooklyn Magazine: The Podcast,” on which he discusses, among other things the surprising longevity of his band.
“We’ve never been the current thing at any point which is actually probably the best explanation for how we’ve been going this long. We’re not strongly associated with any particular historical epoch,” he says. “Everybody gets to a certain age you start to realize that most of your existence is back in this period that’s long gone now.”
Linnell, 62, was born in New York, moved to Massachusetts at a young age, where, in high school he met Flansburgh. The two moved to Brooklyn at the same time in the early 1980s to a very different-from-today Park Slope. And then they started writing catchy, funny, oddball and charming songs together.
“The philosophy probably was, ‘we’re just going to be intuitive and see where this goes.’ But, saying that, I know that we have always taken ourselves way too seriously in terms of our presentation,” he says. “We privately are super uptight about all these little decisions about presentations and instrumentation and formal things in music. It’s pretty embarrassing because people think we’re just completely goofing around.”
We will talk about the career arc of They Might Be Giants today but also Linnell’s own background and idiosyncrasies. This year he released an EP called Roman Songs … with lyrics entirely in Latin. It comprises three originals and a cover of the Ramones song “I Don’t Wanna Walk Around with You,” or “Tecvm Circvmambvlare Nolo.”
“I try to stay au courant, but I’ve never been a hip, with it person,” he concedes. Though the band’s more rabid fans (and some are quite rabid) might disagree.
Speaking of those fans, while Linnell clearly and obviously appreciates them … they don’t always appreciate the things he would like them to, he says.
“I would say that what I like about us isn’t probably always overlapping with what everyone else likes about us,” he says. “Personally I like a lot of the music theory stuff behind the songwriting and almost nobody else cares about that. I like the way the notes and chords and rhythms all work. I’m very obsessed with that stuff.”
There’s a lot of ground to cover over the arc of a 40 year career and we don’t get to it all. For more on the band, their history and especially their new album, “Book,” check out this recent profile.
Check out this episode of “Brooklyn Magazine: The Podcast” for more. Subscribe and listen wherever you get your podcasts.
