LET’S face it, Christmas isn’t just about rocking around the tree, jingling all the way and singing Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! as if there’s no tomorrow.
For Eels leader E, aka Mark Oliver Everett, the season to be jolly can also be a bit of a “bummer”.
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He’s just released the band’s third festive effort in a recording career stretching back more than 30 years — Christmas, Why You Gotta Do Me Like This.
And it serves as the final track on a new compilation, Eels So Good: Essential Eels Vol. 2 (2007-2020). More on that later.
The song is a poignant reflection on break-up and loneliness with added sleigh bells for seasonal atmosphere.
It finds the singer plaintively intoning, “I put up my lights and I hung the mistletoe/So why did you have to leave me all alone?”
On a morning Zoom call from his home/studio in the LA suburb of Los Feliz, E is looking well, beard under control, black-framed glasses present and correct, possibly still in his pyjamas under a dark top, wry humour intact.
He says: “I’m all for the jolly Christmas and I’ve had some very jolly Christmases myself.
“As a kid growing up in America, I was pretty satisfied just to sit in the dark watching the tree lights blink. I didn’t have my Nintendo Switch!
“But I do think it’s important to remember that BEFORE Ebenezer Scrooge becomes the nice guy who buys everybody Christmas dinner, Tiny Tim’s pretty miserable.
“So I thought, ‘Let’s do some music for him.’”
‘Very bad timing’
I suggest that melancholy shines through every line of the song. “It is pretty relentless,” E agrees. “But at least the sleigh bells automatically evoke snow falling.”
He continues: “As an adult, I’ve had Christmases, probably like everybody, which are just very bad timing.
“I wanted to do a song for that guy or girl who has just bought an expensive present for their partner and then got broken up with.”
At least the two previous Eels Christmas songs are decidedly more upbeat, as this singular songwriter is at pains to point out.
“The first, Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas, was an Eels B-side,” reports E, who turned 60 in April.
“I actually wrote it in my teens, so it’s really old! And it’s quite jovial — not for Tiny Tim but for Scrooge AFTER he bought everybody dinner.”
“For the second, I was commissioned to write a song for a specific scene in Jim Carrey’s Grinch movie.”
This resulted in a jaunty singalong called Christmas Is Going To The Dogs for which E salutes our four-legged friends with lines like, “We’d rather have chew toys than Yule logs.”
He says: “In the film, Carrey’s dog is dressed as a reindeer and dancing to music on the radio.
“I took ‘going to the dogs’ as a positive thing because I love dogs. It’s not another sad song either.”
As we’re talking, E catches sight of a framed picture of his now deceased rescue dog with wonky legs, Bobby Jr., dressed in a Santa outfit.
He takes a phone snap of the lovable old mutt that I once spent a happy afternoon in the company of and pings it over to me.
These days, E is the proud owner of two little terrors named Manson and Bundy after two of America’s most notorious serial killers.
I ask how they’re doing. “They’re still here, they’re still killing. Killing for Christmas!” he replies.
And will any treats be left under the tree for them?
“I tend to not give them anything special because anything outside their normal diet means I’ve got to deal with cleaning up diarrhoea for a week.”
But there is someone in his life expecting a visit from Santa — E’s son Archie.
The proud dad says: “He’s a six-year-old boy in America and of course he loves Christmas and Halloween. I often ask him which one is No1 and, as of a couple of weeks ago, Christmas had overtaken Halloween.”
And does E spoil Archie rotten with presents? “Yeah, it’s bad. He has a ridiculous amount of toys.
“He also just told me, ‘It’s time to get rid of every old toy and get all new ones.’
‘The odd one out’
“That’s expensive — the real reason I’ve made this Christmas song! It’s also the reason why it’s so miserable.”
To reinforce his “bah, humbug!” credentials, E has compiled a playlist called Mr. E’s Beautiful Bummer Christmas List.
You can find it on Spotify and, on the next page, he has given SFTW his funny track-by-track comments.
The list is wonderfully bleak with contributions from Marvin Gaye, Bob Dylan, Prince, Pretenders, The Everly Brothers and others.
It begins with Godfather of Soul James Brown’s Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto, which E calls “phenomenal” and “one of the best songs ever, Christmas or not”.
It also includes three incredibly mournful instrumental takes on jolly staples like Jingle Bells — all the work of actor/composer Jackie Gleason, doyen of American television in the Fifties and Sixties.
E singles out the inclusion of Dylan’s hidden gem Winterlude as “the odd one out” and provides a personal back story.
“That’s not a bummer and not one that shows up on Christmas lists,” he says.
“I need any excuse to expose another song from New Morning, which is oddly my favourite Dylan album.”
E explains why, for him, it is ahead of Highway 61 Revisited or Blood On The Tracks: “When I first moved from Virginia to LA, it was a very miserable time in my life.
“There was a long period when I would just lie on my mattress on the floor in my sh**ty little bedroom across from Burbank airport and listen to New Morning on cassette over and over again.
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“It was an album I hadn’t been familiar with but it became my best friend. I have a real soft spot for it.”
We move away from Christmas to talk about the 14 years of Eels represented by E’s second “essential” compilation.
He says: “I’m notoriously bad at picking singles. Sometimes I get lucky.
“But it’s easy in hindsight when you’re putting a ‘Best Of’ together because you know how things went.”
The first songs are drawn from the trilogy of Eels albums worked on simultaneously but with each having a distinct character — Hombre Lobo (2009), End Times (2010) and Tomorrow Morning (2010).
From the last of these comes fan favourite I Like The Way This Is Going.
“I never in a million years would have considered it as a single,” affirms E.
“It’s just me and a guitar and a bass but it became this song everyone was playing at their weddings. Then it was in a couple of movies.”
The uber-Beatles fan likens it to Here Comes The Sun. “They had an embarrassment of riches and didn’t even consider it to be a single, which seems insane. Now it’s their No1 on Spotify.”
Cue a quick diversion to the recently released “last” Beatles song, Now And Then, the John Lennon demo turned into a full band effort by groundbreaking technology.
“It’s chilling how clear John’s voice is,” he says. “I’m very pro-AI in the way Peter Jackson has used it for this and the Get Back movie and for how Giles Martin is using it to remaster the earlier stuff.
“But I am less positive about some of the other uses of AI. They are terrifying me!”
‘Making stuff up’
Back to Essential Eels Vol. 2. E has just received his vinyl copy, which he holds up to the screen in all its glory.
“It came out great. They won’t be disappointed,” he decided, pulling out the LPs. “Double Christmas translucent green vinyl and a booklet full of personally typed notes.”
So what about some of his other song choices?
“Well, Fresh Blood (from Hombre Lobo) was obvious,” continues E.
“It was written in character from the point of view of a wolfman. I happened to have a giant beard at the time and that’s how I got the idea. I’d been writing about my real self long enough so I decided to start making stuff up.”
Fresh Blood received a wider airing when it became the theme song for true crime series The Jinx, which delved into Robert Durst, property heir turned convicted murderer.
E turns his attention to That Look You Give That Guy. “That is a huge song in Belgium.
“We do good in some countries which are not English speaking because they ascribe meanings to my lyrics that aren’t really there. The translations turn me into Dylan!”
Next, he reflects on the “very autobiographical” Where I’m From and Mistakes Of My Youth. He says: “They’re from an album called The Cautionary Tales Of Mark Oliver Everett — a title I regret.
“There was something too transparent about it so I put it on transparent vinyl.”
Where I’m From touches on the subject matter of Electro-Shock Blues, the seminal 1998 album which deals with the loss of E’s sister to suicide and his mother to cancer.
His father, renowned “other worlds” quantum physicist, Hugh Everett III, had died when E was 19, so suddenly he had lost all his close family.
He says: “The opening line of Where I’m From is, ‘Three ghosts and I, sitting on the couch last night.’ I was going back to that for a moment.”
Other tracks on Vol. 2 come from the “very collaborative and fun” Wonderful, Glorious, The Deconstruction, which arrived in 2018 after the longest break in E’s career, and Earth To Dora, released at the height of Covid.
Of the latter, he says: “Six months deep into the pandemic, when it was still raging, it was obvious we weren’t going on tour.
“But I thought people still needed new music and they really appreciated it.”
Songs from last year’s Extreme Witchcraft will have to wait until Vol. 3 but he says: “When I was growing up in Virginia, I never dreamed I would make a living doing what I love.
‘Drive everyone nuts’
“Now I’m extremely proud of putting out a second Best Of. My new line to bragging young artists will be, ‘Yeah, shut the f*** up, talk to me when you’re doing Vol. 2 of your Best Of.”
I ask E if his passion for music burns as bright as ever.
“The fire you have as a young artist is so intense,” he recalls. “There’s nothing like that ambition and hunger.
“As far as the creative spark goes for me now, I’m not as desperate as I was but all the other stuff is the same.
“People think I’m mentally ill when they come to mine. I have stuff all over the floor, all over the tables, all over by the bed.
“There’s these little white notepads and pens everywhere and I drive everyone nuts because whatever someone says, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, that’s such a good song title.’
“I’m always on. I’ve always got the lightning rod out.”
It seems there’s plenty left in the tank for E, one of America’s finest songwriters over the past 30 years.
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“Something really good is cooking, can you smell that?” he says, without giving too much away. “It’s not my Christmas ham, not the usual s**t!”
And is he expecting to have a happy Christmas this year despite his sad song?
“I’m oddly having the best period of my life so far. Hope for everyone!” he answers.
“You never know when things are going to get really good.”
Rather like the enlightened Ebenezer Scrooge, E from Eels endorses the toast by Tiny Tim’s father Bob Cratchit at the end of A Christmas Carol.
“A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!”
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EELS
Eels So Good: Essential Eels Volume 2 (2007–2020)
★★★★☆
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