Ryan Adams Just Wrote Another Song

The next afternoon, in the studio, Adams is taking another shot at "Game Over," the previous day's failed track. Only now it's been entirely rewritten as a power-pop song with lyrics that recall Bowie at his spaciest. New title: "Interstellar Collider." "I had a space dream last night," Adams says, cracking up he's so excited. "It's so not macho. It's floating in space, above everything. I call a chick an interstellar collider! That's fucking heavy, man. That's Skynyrd heavy. It's cool. It's the dumbest shit ever, but it's cool."

Adams is sporting a Heartbreakers L.A.M.F. T-shirt with the sleeves cut off and a hat that reads, my wife says I never listen to her. . . . at least that's what I think she said. He clamps on his headset and takes a shot at the chorus.

"The pitch sounds a little funny," notes producer Dave Dominick from the control room.

"Oh, fuck pitch!" Adams squawks through the intercom. "I'm not playing baseball in here!"

"You're in a fucking bad mood today," Dominick says, grinning, but not sounding entirely pleased.

"And what are you smirkin' about, Brad? Fucking can it! I'm dangerous!" Adams redoes the vocal, then enters the control room.

"Was that sterile enough for you, Mr. Corporate Rock?" he asks Dominick. It's all teasing, but delivered with an edge. Adams sighs. "I don't know why I'm doing it. Just get that guy Rob Thomas in here. We look enough alike. It's a stupid fucking song anyway. It doesn't matter."

He begins adjusting the sound levels on the mixing board but becomes irritated by the overhead lights and asks if they can be dimmed. "Am I being a diva?" he asks. "I feel like I'm being treated for colon cancer."

All of Adams' rants are delivered with tongue firmly in cheek. He makes it clear that he's tweaking his own image as the It Boy, the Moody Artiste. But at the same time, however much he tries to downplay it, everyone in the room is an extra in the Ryan Adams Show. And however mock-rant his rants are, they have the same effect as a real rant: He gets his way.

"I didn't want to be a star," he insists. "I still don't. I'm happy right here. I hope it doesn't get offered to me, because I'll just say no. There's no glory in this for me. Usually, I just want the person I wrote the song for to hear it.

"I mean, I love rock & roll, I love playing it," he continues. "But I have a really freaky idea about, someday, calling up a friend in New York and going, 'Hey, I'll meet you at Alt-Coffee on Avenue A. And then we'll head off to some theater and see my play.' And I'm just a dude. Nobody knows me. Like Larry Brown or Eudora Welty" (two Mississippi writers). "They could walk into a store and nobody knew who they were. They could just go get a beer, listen to Coltrane. That's cool."

Adams stares off wistfully and grins. "Putting your left foot on a monitor speaker, in leather pants and a muscle shirt, singing, 'Can you take me higher' to 100,000 people? That's not cool. That's boring. You're obviously doing something wrong."

[From Issue 881 — November 8, 2001]