Interview with The Puddles' George D. Henderson

The following is an edited transcript of Shane Gilchrist's interviews with The Puddle founder, singer-songwriter and guitarist George D. Henderson, and his drum-playing brother, Ian, conducted by phone on Monday, June 29, before the band embarked on a national tour beginning this weekend.

George D. Henderson

...On Tour Preparations...

ODT: How are the practice sessions going?

George: It's going really well, better than I thought it would. We've started doing the old songs, including some from Into the Moon.

ODT: That's unlike you, isn't it?

George: Yeah, well ... exactly. I don't usually like doing them because they haven't sounded good in the past. But doing them now, they sound great. It sounds like the same band ... on a better day. It opens a whole lot more potential for what we can do, in terms of different types of song, different beats.

ODT: That preference to move on, sometimes to the frustration of band members who had only just learnt previous batch of songs ... why did you feel that way?

George: I'm not so bad nowadays, but I guess I used to be running on enthusiasm and the minute something became work instead of fun, I didn't have the skills I need to do it justice from that aspect.

Now I do. Now there is no difference.

I still do this thing where if I'm writing a song, that's the only song I want to play. Once they've been played live a few times, I kind of forget them. But I have to do that to move on and write something else. Now I'm better at putting life back into a song in much the same way as when I wrote it.

It's to do with ... a mood thing, managing your energy. In the past I would wake up and from one day to the next I wouldn't know if I felt like doing anything. Now I know I do. Apply that to music and it means you can do anything you used to do with music -- but probably better.

...On Music...

ODT: There is a wide range of material on your latest album, The Shakespeare Monkey, from dreamy pop to distorted guitar riffery. Was that always the plan?

George: So that I don't repeat myself, my aesthetic changes over time. I go away and listen to music and think, 'why don't I do that?'. I've started putting modulations into songs, changing key in the middle of a song or even in the middle of a line. Now I'm doing that, I can't go back to the old way of doing things where it is rooted in the same set of harmonies within a song.

That has its own beauty, but now I'm sold on this other way of doing things. I'm also exploring the flat keys that I never used before because they are harder to play on the guitar. Again, because I have a bit more stamina, I can do things that are a bit more challenging to play. There is always something to be discovered.

I don't listen to a lot of music. The last music I listened to was a Bobby Darin album from 1968. That really impressed me. But most stuff ... I'm a kind of guy who might find a record I really like and listen to nothing else for six months. I don't necessarily put on music every day. I don't listen to the radio. Most of the music I listen to is my own.

The reason I make the music I make is that I can't hear it out there. I'm trying to make the music I would want to listen to. I'm getting closer all the time. That was always my ambition, from reasonably early on in The Puddle ... there were a few bands like Microdisney or The Smiths or Orange Juice ... why aren't people doing this; it's great.

So I had to do it. No one else was going to.

ODT: what re your thoughts on the current line-up of The Puddle, featuring your brother Ian on drums, and Gavin Shaw on bass?

George: I'm playing with people who are very skilled, but at the same time have grown up listening to me and like my stuff, so they want to play it 'The Puddle way'. They are often better than I am at thinking of what they are doing.

With my songs there is certainly room for improvisation, as long as it serves the feel of the songs, the mood that we are creating. There is a lot of freedom. People do get their solos.

ODT: One reviewer recently described you as the 'tortoise who has finally won the race'. Are you a better songwriter now than, say, 25 years ago?

George: I'm a late bloomer ... definitely. I've learnt things slowly and my own way. People could have told me but it wouldn't have done any good. When I look at my own songs, it wasn't until I was in my late 40s that I had the confidence to say what I wanted to in a song-or the skills to say it in a variety of genres.

You have to have a quality control. A song may not be original or it may express a view I'm not happy with. It is easy write a song-and without a good enough reason to do so. To even write a catchy song that isn't justified. You could end up regretting that. Well, I know I would. If I worked up every single idea I had I think I'd end up regretting quite a few of them.

ODT: Do you care what others say about your music? Do reviews matter to you?

George: Yeah. For No Love-No Hate, some guy said, 'he doesn't know anything about song structure'. That hit home. I don't put middle eights in my songs and there are reasons for that: if you're playing with people who aren't that well-rehearsed, it's good if you have no changes. Also, a lot of middle eights are gratuitous anyway. But it made me think. On the next album I put in a lot.

If someone is pointing out a fault that I'm aware of but perhaps haven't thought about for a while, then I read it in an interview, it does make me think, 'can I please this person?' Why not? It's always good to have new ideas.

I don't think I have as much of an ego as I used to . . . but if you are an artist, you have to have an ego; you have to have a thick skin. A lot of artists have a thin skin and that's why they seem to have an ego, whereas they are just sensitive. You really have to isolate yourself from everything in order to create and that's not easy in the world. That can come across as arrogance.

ODT: There are a number of musicians (no names . . .) who seem to regard music as product; they put the outcome before the artistic spark, the cart before the horse if you'll excuse the cliché. Your thoughts?

George: If you do that, it doesn't last. You may get your goal of shifting so many units but you're not going to make music that you'll be happy with in your old age.

ODT: Themes on The Shakespeare Monkey include love, romance, friendship, and also self-reflection; for instance, opening track As It Was. Please explain.

George: On As It Was, this guy is boasting, but at the same time what he is boasting about is . . . he's being lazy and he knows it and although he is self-taught and is individualistic and has achieved a lot for himself, a lot of it he has done for the wrong reasons. It's a satire on the self-made man in New Zealand; a certain kind of young, artistic intellectual, of how a life pans out if you spend your life on the dole, reading books or whatever.

...On Own Health...

ODT: I'd suggest there seems to be a correlation between the quality of your last two albums, No Love-No Hate and The Shakespeare Monkey, and your own health and/or state of mind. What do you think?

George: Going to Auckland [in 2005] has definitely been good. My health has been steadily improving; my lifestyle is very relaxed. I get enough sunlight. Instead of distracting me from making music, it seems to have made it easier. I'm living in the Waitakere hills, face to face with nature.

I wandered down Blacks Rd [Northeast Valley, Dunedin] twice the other day and it was like a foreign country. I thought, 'God, I could never come back here'. I used to come back every so often and it felt good, but now I feel like a foreigner and that's good. That's what happens I guess. You don't know you are in a rut until you get out of it, I guess.

ODT: Do you enjoy the relative anonymity of living in a bigger city?

George: Oh, hell yeah. In another interview, which I might as well copy here, I said it was like being in a witness protection programme. And it's not just me; it's the fact that most people in Auckland come from other places-they don't have pasts either . . . everybody has that liberation from the past. I don't stand out in that community.

ODT: Is it a way to escape your own history? Or at least others' perceptions of you?

George: Yes, to start again.

ODT: The adjective "shambling" seems to follow you around. Is it fair?

George: It is not undeserved, but it hasn't been true for a long time. At other times in my life, like in the early '90s I kind of moved on from it and it's not that easy because it's all people want to talk about. That's because it is, of course, interesting. I'd be more interested in that. Most musicians are drug addicts. That's a fact of life.

Most musicians who are any good, that you are going to hear about, are. It's a cliché. In the wider artistic field, the self-destructive poet is a cliché; the depressive novelist ... they are all clichés. So you have to have some way of making it your own in some way; you have to stand out in the crowd if you're going to go that way.