NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION was able to sit down with former THE WALKMEN front man HAMILTON LEITHAUSER to discuss things like the probably permanent hiatus of his long-running band, his ancestral link to a Bavarian tavern owner, and why ‘sometimes getting complicated is the worst possible idea.’ HAMILTON LEITHAUSER is here to promote Black Hours, his solo out June 2.
It’s a gusty and overcast March outside the record label offices when I arrive to talk to him. Sitting in an armchair, you have no inkling of how tall this man is, but the Teutonic connection makes sense when he stands up. Having seen THE WALKMEN live several times, and followed the band since their breakthrough Bows and Arrows (2004) I’m trying to reconcile the magnetic and intense front man from those sold-out shows with this easygoing, friendly married-with-two-kids guys sitting before me.
Recognized for a voice with elements ranging from PAUL BANKS (INTERPOL) to LOU REED, reminiscent of IAN CURTIS and SHANE MACGOWAN, Hamilton has often been described as the key figure in THE WALKMEN, the plaintive voiced front man who held their whole vintage instrument piano sound together. THE WALKMEN always sounded on the verge of collapse, like a circus tent with its ropes undone. On his solo record, HAMILTON LEITHAUSER has crafted a mix of rock and lounge, it started as an homage to Frank Sinatra and ended fully rock n roll.
Is your last name of German origin?
Yeah, my wife got me one of those research your name things for Christmas. It came back that it was the name of a Bavarian tavern owner. Here [in Berlin] it’s the only place where people pronounce it correctly, every time. [laughs]
2011 was the ten-year anniversary of THE WALKMEN. Where is the band now? Are you on hiatus?
Yeah, we’ve sort of gone our separate ways.
Is it permanent?
It very well could be, yeah.
Was it amicable?
Yea, it was. They’re more…like my best friends and my cousin. So we are all on good terms. It’s more-everybody …we worked together for so long, and after our last record, we all started writing songs: I started writing songs, Wal [Walter Martin] started writing songs, and Paul started writing these songs. It was sort of like we didn’t know how we were going to do it again, to be creative and feel new about it. The idea of getting back together was so daunting and it’s desperate attempt to try to feel new, that it seemed a lot easier if we all just tried to do stuff separately. Everybody was sort of into that idea, everybody who wanted to make a record.
It’s definitely brave-
It’s definitely scary…[laughs]
It’s a time when we are seeing so many bands from previous eras reunite. How does a band know when to stop?
It was a slog for us. We did it for years. The only way to make money was to travel and we all have kids and families and we don’t make a lot of money so you’re travelling a lot. Not to complain too much because, man, we can – once you get that train going you’ll can just go all day.
The drawbacks of touring you mean?
Yeah. You just – it needed a change.
As far as working on your own… what’s liberating about doing it away from the band? What are the drawbacks?
Well, it’s exciting and scary at first because you don’t have your gang behind you for moral support or creative support or anything. It’s different, it makes the things different and that is what’s fun about doing it the first place. That’s is why I feel much more personally connected to this record than I did to our last record. I’m not going to say it’s all straight liberating…I’m not just like ‘Oh I shed this dead weight…’ They’re my good friends and I miss them, you know? But I was glad I was able to write songs and see songs to completion in a way that I wanted them to be completed and not go through some sort of political thing.
I also saw on this record you had a lot of collaborators. How did that happen?
One of them is Paul [Maroon] from THE WALKMEN, we had a very good songwriting team/partnership going on. We just work really well together.
Another guy was Rostam Batmanglij from VAMPIRE WEEKEND. He heard I was doing this record and asked if he wanted to work on something. And that was a new- he’s a control freak, he’s a demanding guy, he can’t stop. He was really fun to work with because I was trying to put myself in a new world. To be invited into his world and being attacked like a [slaps hand together] like a pack mule [laughs] was really exactly what I needed. We did butt heads for a while but it really ended up working out and I was really happy I was brought to this new dynamic that was very unexpected.
Do you feel like when you started, is it almost like dating?
Definitely, because it’s intimate. Yeah, he’s technically the producer but I worked with him the way I’ve always worked with someday in a band: we are writing it together, we are telling each other what we do like, we are telling each other what we don’t like, then we are going out to dinner each other. It’s exactly like having a new band member, which is a close relationship.
I’d say half mine and half his. Maybe the first half him and the last half mine. It was a tie in to another video we were shooting that day. I just thought we get away with doing a sort of classic showgirls without looking like JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE.
Whatever happened to the novel that you guys were writing as a band?
I was thinking what we should of said is we were taking time off to finish the novel, but I thought of that like three months too late.
Do you still write?
I just wrote an article for this website [for Talkhouse]. The guy asked me to write on the role of the front man, which I … I took a lot of liberties.
So as far as themes and inspiration for this album?
The first major inspiration was the September Of My Years record by FRANK SINATRA. Doing a solo record I wanted to focus everything on the voice. The first two songs were the vibe I thought the record was going to be, but I started working with Rostam and he wanted to write rock n roll. That’s when we started to butt heads, then we came up with a medium where I felt I could really concentrate on my singing and he could write his rock beats and songs behind it. I wanted there to be a lot of variety of singing on the record. By the time the record finished it was about half the original way I imagined it and about half rock n roll. I’m very happy with the record, actually.
So I teach English to a group of German kids, and what we did today was listen to some of the ‘Black Hours’ album today and I had them write some reactions so here is your welcome to Berlin.
HAMILTON LEITHAUSER‘s youngest fans. That’s awesome! Thank you. [reading] ‘5AM makes me feel sad…5AM makes me think of peas?’
He meant to write peace but he wrote peas. Any reactions?
[reading]’5am makes me feel sad’ reminds me of when I was in the studio and I was recording a girl Amber Kaufman and I had my daughter with me and my daughter fell in love with Amber.
From DIRTY PROJECTORS, right?
Yeah, and my daughter was just enthralled, like ‘This is the greatest thing…‘ it’s probably WAS the greatest thing she’s ever seen, she’s only two and a half. Then Amber left and I listening to the song Self-Pity, and I had it kind of loud because my daughter likes the music loud, and it’s a minor key and it’s a bit dreary at first, and I look over and she’s bawling, it was the most horrifying thing.
But that visceral reaction to music: do you think we have more when we are younger?
I don’t know but it hit her pretty hard. I guess it was the minor key? I couldn’t figure out what it was.
Thinking of yourself and your trajectory, as a songwriter and musician, do you think there are certain songs you write with this purity of emotion that exists in your youth, that changes or goes away as you get older? How has your songwriting changed?
I like my songs more these days. You always like what you are working on, that’s why you’re working on it. I don’t know. Maybe it’s simpler back then maybe. But then, the more complicated- sometimes getting complicated is the worse possible idea. Honestly, the same thing never works twice. Right now I would say I’m’ a lot more technically competent with orchestration and guitar playing, but that’s just more like a skill. In terms of songwriting I really like the way it’s going now and I would say maybe it’s more complicated but … I don’t know. It’s hard to ever see if you are expanding on an idea or just garnishing something that shouldn’t be and it’s just crap.
What do hope and passion mean to you?
I think I use those words a lot on the record actually. Big words. My wife loves the word passion so much, because it’s so funny say, ‘I’m full of passion’: it’s just so ridiculous.
Is it like cliché ridiculous?
Yeah, but that’s not why she thinks it’s funny it’s more that it’s just so overwhelming, for some reason it has weight to it. The idea of it is kind of funny, it just seems so cartoonishly happy. I like the word passion.
And hope?
Hope to me sounds sort of negative. Hope always reminds me of ‘Why are you in a situation where you have to be clinging to this pathetic hope?‘ Why do you have a fall back on just your hope? I guess it’s just like a glass half empty kind of perspective.
