“I’M JUST waking up, so if I behave erratically that’s why”, Stephin Merritt tells MOJO. Sporting a ‘Rock Me Amadeus’ T-shirt, The Magnetic Fields’ linchpin has risen to talk about 69 Love Songs, the epic and wondrous triple-LP he’ll be performing in its entirety at this year’s Edinburgh Festival and at London’s Barbican. “Sometimes audiences don’t seem to understand we are performing the songs in order and they call out requests,” Merritt notes, lugubriously. “But I have an official response to requests, which is – Fuck off.”
Merritt will celebrate 69 Love Songs’ 25th anniversary as part of a septet which includes two of the original LP’s guest singers, Claudia Gonson and Shirley Simms. Gonson’s also on piano alongside Chris Ewen (synth), Sam Davol (cello), John Woo (guitars; banjo) and Anthony Kaczynski (acoustic guitar; vocals). Merritt will play hand percussion and sing.
“For Yeah! Oh Yeah!, Claudia and I are in a duet where I play a husband who is about to kill his wife,” he says. “We make it maximally theatrical on-stage, climbing ladders while we sing. Breath control is only part of the challenge when you’ve a mike in one hand and you’re clinging to a ladder with the other.”
69 Love Songs was originally conceived as a music revue wherein four drag queens sang its arch, acerbic songs while competing each night for a $100 prize. “But I realised that in order to teach performers the songs I might as well make an album,” Merritt explains.
“Our motto while making it was ‘…Or it’s done,’” he adds. “It seemed necessary to get in and get out as quickly as possible, partly because of the sheer volume of songs, but also because it’s essentially 69 different genres, some of which we had more affinity for than others. Our versions don’t sound like the definitive ones, and that’s been great for people covering the songs.”
True enough, Peter Gabriel, Tracey Thorn, Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and many others have tackled 69 Love Songs material. Does Merritt have a favourite cover? “I don’t and if I did I would certainly never tell anyone,” he retorts. “
