ARTS
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Thursday, July 28, 1983
The Michigan Daily
v
Paying a call*.
on Michael Been
By Mare Hodges
In a recent phone interview with
Michael Been, lead singer and
lyricist for the Call, the Daily found
out what it's like for a politically-
oriented, American band to com-
pete with today's top-40 artists. The
Call is on tour with Peter Gabriel
and will appear at Pine Knob Music
Theater Sunday, July 31.
Daily - Do you feel alone being one of
the only politically-oriented American-
based bands?
Been - Well, it makes it a little harder
to get media exposure. They're not real
open to it. I don't know, I have this
feeling in the back of my mind that
there are quite a few bands that are
doing this or wanting to do this and they
don't get record deals and no one ever
hears about them. It's real unusual that
we got a record deal and we did get a
deal through the British part of our
record company. The guy who found us
was an English guy and the American
part wasn't open to that type of thing
'cause they don't think it will make
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money. Then again you get back to the
capitalist system which should be a
good system but it destroys, ahhh. art.
They say why make the music
if it's not going to make money.
Daily - Did it bother you that the
British picked up on your music before
the Americans?
Been - Well, no more than it bothered
me, I just turned on the television and
Ronald Reagan has just assigned
Kissinger to South America and El
Salvador and that bothers me more
(laugh). It's a trend you know. But
being an American it's a frustrating
position but we do have the freedom
to complain about it and talk about it.So
in that way it's kind of an American ac-
tivity for me.
Daily - Some of your songs evoke a
strong emotion due to their vividness.
Did you actually experience these
things, in particular in "Violent Times"
you talk about "Honored friends who've
passed away" or even "Back from the
Front," which is a song seemingly
about returning from the front lines of
battle.
Been - All the songs are extremely
autobiographical. We've done two
albums and the goal is that we can stay
together and keep recording and
making records and go on playing
'cause the overall idea is hopefully that
I can put out four or five or however
many albums so someone can look at
all of 'em and draw some kind of con-
clusion. All the expression is trying to
express something that's happened in
my life. They're all about me - either
myself or my particular attitude 'cause
that's the only thing I know. So I do
write from my own experience just
because I don't want it to be fiction and
I don't want to make up stories. I don't
want to go onstage and be somebody
other than I am so I decided to just kind
of express my particular viewpoint.
Daily - So is "Back From the Front" a
personal experience for you as well?
Been - "Back From the Front" is a
symbolic or metaphoric song of wars
that are goin' on inside people, not out-
side. That's the setting for it, but (war
outside) is not the meaning of the song.
The meaning of the song is "Yeah, I'm
at war with myself," and being able to
come away from it and talk about it.
Daily - Because of the recognition that
Michael Been, lead singer and lyricist for the Call, discusses the 'anti-
politics' of his music.
"The Walls Come Down" and as a
result the album Modern Romans
received, do you foresee any change in
the music you'll deliver in the future,
since...
Been - Sure. Yeah, you know that
Modern Roman album was written
almost as a topical piece - not inten-
tional at all - it was just circumstance.
At that time I was going through a lot of
inner conflict and it was the same time
as all kinds of global conflicts. The
Falkland Islands, Beirut was going on,
El Salvador was in the media. And so
all those things were going on and it just
felt like a very warring time for me in-
side and outside so I tried to show the
idea that wars all of a sudden blow into
big global confrontations or nation
against nation and it seemed to dawn on
me that war - like I could look at the
Beirut war and trace it back to some
individual person or an individual
group that reached a point in their'own
lives within themselves where there
was such a battle going on and such
hatred and such mistrust within their
own lives and all of a sudden it explodes
out of their body and becomes this big
war between countries. So what I was
trying to talk aboutwasn't making any
anti-war statement, I was trying to
make a statement about why does this
happen? What is it about human beings
that it is so easy for us to be destructive
and go to those final measures.
Daily - You've been quoted as saying
that you don't think of your songs as
political songs but as love songs. Can
you elaborate on that because it's hard
for me to understand how songs like
"Turn a Blind Eye" or"Violent Times"
can be considered love songs.
Been - I think it's cause you have to
understand, well, this is my religious
belief of the word love. Although the
word 'love' doesn't mean anything the
meaning of love for me is what this is
all about. So what I'm talking about in a
lot of the songs is not love the way most
people would. I'm talking about what
I'm searching for. In "Turn a Blind
Eye" that song shows the loss of love
and the desire to have it. So in that way
it is a love song, maybe it's more about
the loss of love. All the songs are,
basically, if you're talking about war.
War to me is the absence of love, so
what the song is about is the desire to
find love again - but not love in}the
romantic sense. If we could get past
love and thinking about it in the roman-
tic sense and get back to the feeling of
love that you have for your parents or
your friends or for the beauty of life or
something like that, it's more with a
capital 'L.'
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