Producer extraordinaire Jon Brion on shaping music for the likes of Paul Thomas Anderson, Greta Gerwig and Kanye West

Few composers, musicians, or producers have had more impact over the past three decades on music in films and on the radio than Jon Brion. As a songwriter and session player, his music has been heard on records by Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Eels, and Elliot Smith; his imprint as a producer is immediately identifiable on everything from Rufus Wainwright’s self-titled debut to Apple’s When The Pawn to Kanye West’s Late Registration; and it’s impossible to imagine Paul Thomas Anderson’s films Magnolia or Punch-Drunk Love, or Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, without the evocative, idiosyncratic scores Brion composed to go with them.

With so many projects, it seems understandable that Brion’s own musical career has taken a back seat. His lone solo album, Meaningless, was released to a warm reception from fans in 2001, but didn’t find the same audience that Brion helped other artists reach. After disappearing from circulation for several decades, Meaningless was released on vinyl on October 21. Brion recently spoke to The A.V. Club about that record, his wide-ranging career, and his thoughts about where music is at, and where he hopes it’s going.

Jon Brion: I don’t spend a lot of time listening to my own stuff. Especially when I’m working on projects for other people or for movies, you’re immersed in it for quite some time, and my job is to have kind of intimate knowledge of it, so that generally stays with me. But in terms of the aural equivalent of staring at myself, it’s not something I do often. So it was a little bit clinical at first, just making sure things were okay. And then when going through stuff, it was also a little emotional, just looking at specific memories from my own life at that time having very little to do with the music or how it comes off. But for me, it is a time capsule of what I was doing in the midst of multiple things at that particular time.

AVC: How much was this record, either in retrospect or
even at the time, a bit of a clearinghouse for your quote-unquote solo
creativity after being such a fantastic collaborator with all these other
artists?

JB: It wasn’t that intentional a statement. And in
fact, it started out as something very different, and the record company was
just sort of turning things down repeatedly. And eventually they just said,
just turn in what you want and we’ll put it out. And so I collected some of the
things I had sent to them in the form of asking, is this better or are you more
excited about this? And I don’t mean that even in a commercial sense. It’s just
the first batch of stuff I handed in. I could never really get a straight
answer about what was, quote-unquote, wrong with it. Obviously, they just
didn’t hear an easy single. But at some point I was in the middle of doing
other things and I took about ten days off and went through some things that
were unfinished, and I finished them off and handed that in. And, you know, it
didn’t come out (laughs). So it’s really the opposite of somebody sitting down
and going, “I’ll show everybody.” It was a loose collection of stuff. And it
felt a little bit like I’m just handing some demos into The Void and really how
things went made it feel even more that way. But the record was not something
that I sat down going, I shall make a record that comes off in this way, and
stylistically is like this. It’s just how the conglomeration of stuff that was
laying around at that second fell together. Definitely not “here is my
statement.” Anything but.

AVC: Having seen you, many times at Largo back in the
day, it’s clear that you are a very intuitive performer. But your songwriting
is so incisive. Do you tend to take inspiration from experimentation—that
discovery process? Do you take it from life experience?

JB: Yeah, both. Like anyone who writes, it’s
everything. But for me, writing absolutely is about the chance to be incisive.
I remember even early on in life noticing that thing in, say, old movies and
that era when the back and forth of people talking was able to move at any
speed. It could both be slower or faster, but in critical situations, the
person might have a great thing to say in response to something heavy that
happened. And in real life, I noticed even in my youth that we all know the
feeling of a heavy life situation goes down, somebody says something that
throws you for a loop and you have driven away. You’re half a mile away and go,
“I should have said blankety blank!” And writing is your opportunity
to do that. Time becomes a nonissue. You are getting to collect your thoughts
and then release them at the pacing that allows your point to be made.
Sometimes one needs relief after something heavy, or something wordy, and
writing allows you that opportunity. And also it’s a good form of examining a
subject if you really allow yourself to take your time spent honestly going,
“hey, what is the truth of this thing?” I think it’s why I ended up
doing well at certain other jobs, because I essentially was always somehow
actively involved in composition. Even the improvised live shows I used to do, they
weren’t improvised in the sense of like a jam band or something. Songs might be
created on the spot, or maybe the way the evening was going to go was created
on the spot. But even that is a form of writing. It’s a form of composition.
And composition really is just improvisation where you get to take your time.

AVC: As a cinephile and a music lover of a certain age,
your work both in film and music was so inspiring and influential for me. How
smooth was the transition, or diversification, of that period for you?

JB: It was interesting, and I don’t mean that in the
way of sidestepping complexity. I mean interesting in that it was fun. There
were things to learn, so I felt actively engaged, just like I have when
producing something which requires coming up with some new answers for ways of
doing things. Even writing for orchestra, at some point you just get kind of
fearless about it, honestly. I already was very interested in the relationship
of notes to each other, so it wasn’t actually a stretch. And I listen to a lot
of instrumental music, and I’ve listened to a lot of stuff my whole life that
was arranged, so it wasn’t like being a rock guy who knew standard guitar
chords suddenly trying to figure out how to do something. I already liked
harmony and counterpoint and the way different chord changes could evoke
different feelings. The orchestra was just this instrument I was actively
interested in experimenting with. So to me, it was no different than walking
into a new studio I didn’t know the sound of, and there are some instruments
I’d never seen before—exactly the same, really.

AVC: The speed with which you leveled up with your score to Magnolia was remarkable to me, particularly for Paul Thomas Anderson, who not only seems so specific in what he wants, but who literally will bake melodies and instruments into the story itself. How challenging was it to find a working relationship between you two?

JB: We figured it out pretty fast, and I still kind of work this way. I like to just be in the room with the director, watching the movie together, and I play to it like somebody would play to a silent film. That’s the quickest, easiest way to describe the process. And once I’ve played something and I can see on them that there is a genuine response, and you can tell when it happens, somebody will immediately go like, “Oh, thank you. I’ve hated this scene all fucking year, but I’m remembering why I wrote it and why it’s there.” You’ll know you’re on the right track. If you’re in a room and music is being made, you can hear and even sense in the room when people are either excited, or checked-out, or disappointed. All of that becomes very obvious, and that’s where I think my love of improvising has really been helpful. I think I was served by a realization I had in my twenties that improvisation and music did not have to mean soloing.

There’s this sort of jazz conception of you have the chord changes and then you have your moment, and you play on top of those. And I was interested in things like improvising stylistic changes. And all of that becomes very useful if a director is sitting there. You can literally be talking with the person while the blueprint of the piece or the DNA of the piece are found. And then after that, it’s more of a coloring. I guess that goes back to having a notion of what writing is. I do want lyrics to be direct. And I do want them to make use of their time. And compositionally, I do want a melody and chord change to hold up regardless what style you play them in. Like if there is a theme that’s found for a movie, and myself and the director in agreement, that thing can be slow, fast, it can be done aggressively or sweetly. And that is the approach I take with writing for anything I do. But everything after that is just arrangement or playing around or creative coloration.

AVC: You created music on Hard Eight that was used
in Boogie Nights. Is that lost to history, or is there a chance we’ll
ever see that released?

JB: I don’t know. I talked to Michael Penn about it
once and said, “hey, we should put that out.” He went,
“eh.” And nobody has specifically asked. But there’s a few things on
that I like.

AVC: There’s a playlist on my computer of music you produced for Fiona Apple, Rufus Wainwright, Aimee Mann, and anyone who knows your work can hear its influence on these songs. Was there a common thread that have made these people such successful collaborators—or made you want to work with them in the first place?

JB: I have no idea. And I would say it wasn’t intentional. Aimee and I were writing songs together when she was in the middle of being signed to labels, dropped from labels, doing recordings that never came out. Eventually one label signed it and actually claimed to want to put it out, and we took some recordings that already existed and then worked on new ones and put it all together. So we were already writing together. It just more or less happened. The Rufus thing happened because of some people I met once I moved to Los Angeles, which would have been 30 years ago. I got recommended by somebody else because they said, “There’s this kid, and his music has a lot of chord changes I don’t know if anyone else would want to deal with it.” And that was sort of the mindset at the time. It was very clear what songs were supposed to be at that moment. And I ended up doing the record.

But it’s funny. When I did the first record with Aimee, I thought, maybe somebody will hear this and I’ll get hired to produce something. But no. And I try to talk to younger people about this all the time—about their notion of what they think the trajectory might be of their life, and God forbid, [their] career. I thought, well, I’ve shown I can produce a record, I think. And what happened is some people heard that and went, “I really like the sounds of those things. What are those are things?” And I said, “They’re instruments people used to use.” “Could you do that for me on my record?” And I’d get session work, for instance, as a keyboardist. So it turned into different stuff. I think the records I produced got me session work. Then that session work I was doing got me signed to produce. And then something I had produced years before gets played to a film director, because, okay I guess this guy can do it. Then I get hired for records because people want to make something, you know, the word’s will always get used, “filmic.” [Laughs] “I want some Cinemascope.”

AVC: The idea that Kanye West would recruit you to executive produce Late Registration was at the time a kind of unholy synergy of my interests as a hip-hop fan. The string arrangements on “Gone” by themselves just make my heart swell.

JB: Oh, that’s nice. I like that track.

AVC: You had certainly already been pioneering in your own use of sampling before then…

JB: You’re the only person who has ever said that to me, because I’ve I told people, before Kanye even came around, I don’t know why nobody necessarily hears that I’ve been trying to mix up those things in the influence of hip-hop, which for me didn’t mean trying to make something that sounds like hip-hop. What I really liked was the stuff that happened accidentally, especially during the first 10 years of hip-hop, where there were different eras of fidelity happening at the same time, and not because that’s what they were trying to do. It’s just, here’s where I found a drum break. Oh, I want a horn line on the chorus. And it would come in and it might not even be in the same key. And it would be from a seventies record, and the drums would be from a ’60s record. And I found those combinations of different fidelity very inspiring. And there’s some stuff I’ve done that I was intentionally playing with that. There’s stuff on the very first Aimee Mann record that was doing that. Eternal Sunshine is absolutely that. My live gigs had a lot of that of mixing and matching, not only eras of style, but actual physical sounds. So I always wanted to do a hip-hop record and nobody asked.

When I got the call from Kanye, it’s because he heard film scores and his original intention was me doing strings. But then we met. He played stuff for me. And I started doing overdubs with him sitting there. And I said, “Leave a couple of these tracks with me and come back tomorrow and we’ll listen. I’m gonna work on them tonight.” He came back the next day and said, “Okay, this record is going to be great if you’re producing.” [Laughs] So he didn’t know I necessarily even played any instruments. He didn’t even know that I had produced other records. It was only like a week or two into working that he discovered I was a record producer or a performer. None of those things were known to him. He wanted to have some film effect to his music. And I just remember even the initial business calls to me going, “He must have really misunderstood. Kanye is a producer. This guy is making up stories or something.” [Laughs] And I had to tell Kanye, “You’re going to have to tell your people that we’re doing this.” But he came there to get some film strings—and in the end, we didn’t even end up doing much of that. He kind of forgot about it in the midst of the project. And I was going to put some strings on some things. And then he was like, “I don’t know if we need to do that.” And then close to the end of the record, he was like, “Yeah, there should be some.” So I hastily arranged a session and put them on before we mixed.

AVC: You subsequently worked with Beyonce and Janelle
Monae, a lot of people who are themselves also iconic artists. What was it like
to be in service of them in a similar or different way to the artists like
Aimee Mann, Rufus Wainwright, Fiona Apple, who you worked with in the past?

JB: They’re both great and they’re both really like
super professional. Beyonce was keeping an eye on everything that’s going on.
While she was making the record I worked on, she had a building of people
getting together a stadium tour, and was doing dance rehearsals X amount of
hours a day and working in the studio X amount of hours a day—very, very
focused. Very hard working. And the same with Janelle, who’s sweet and just a
brilliant human being. And for the most part, it got to the point where if
somebody was calling me, I knew they wanted something different anyway. It had
sort of became a given. So those experiences have been good—you throw paint at
the wall, and you see which ones people choose when the record comes out.

AVC: After having worked with artists who were themselves so singular, working with Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, much less Paul Thomas Anderson, composing for Adam McKay’s comedies like Step Brothers seems like a departure from that.

JB: I love funny movies. I watch comedies, I watch rom-coms. I think because the first few things were looked at well, and also those people—I’m not even saying know my contribution to it—I think people assume, “Oh, he does the art movies.” And I’m basically just a huge comedy fan. And I can do other things by virtue of being a human [Laughs], having, you know, kept my eyes open.

AVC: But is that work as challenging, perhaps, as some of
the stuff that you had done for these other artists?

JB: It’s all the same thing. You just watch and
connect to the thing at hand. It’s no different than, I think, being an
arranger or a producer or even being a songwriter. If you have a piece of
subject matter in your head, you can tell if you’re off base with a chord
change, you know? It’s absolutely no different with movies. And for the most
part, I mean, if I’m looking for things to watch in my life, they’re comedies.
I mean, most people who are quote-unquote making their art are rarely even
artists. I feel like we’ve all lost a lot of time to other people’s idea of
themselves (laughs). And we sit through two hours of that. I mean, I like
anything that is engaging for me, and if I take on a job, I just try to get
immersed in what is, you know. And sometimes I feel like that’s even
part of my job when I’m working with people. They sometimes have a notion of
what their thing’s going to be to other people that isn’t always accurate. And
I feel like I can help make the window as good as possible for other people to
see what’s of value in it—on the good days.

AVC: When Lady Bird came out Greta Gerwig talked about wanting to work with you because she loved your earlier film scores. As people who respect your legacy want you to work with them because of that legacy, how tough is it to operate without a degree of self-consciousness to do something that isn’t, “This is what they think of me?”

JB: Usually you figure out in the course of working with somebody what it is they actually like. I also, in more recent years, have had people not say what it was they liked, for whatever reason—like they didn’t want to let on. Or people just have the weirdest trips about, A, doing creative work, or B, people being around seeing them while they’re doing it. But it’ll often come up once you’re into working on a project. Like oh, okay, I get it. You know this record and these two movies and that’s why you’re here. And it’s fine. I can be on to knowing where that is or somebody can say it. But all that does is put that person in the room. And even if I have awareness of what any given person is aiming at, really, there is the thing at hand—the film you’re working on, the record, the song. And in the end, you’ve just got to give yourself over to that and then try to give as much life to it as possible. Try to not obscure anything that’s already lovely. To me, those are the important parts of the job. So it doesn’t matter what got somebody there? Other than the fact of getting the job, it’s inconsequential to the job.

AVC: Suffice it to say that the sound of rock music has changed—that music in general has changed. How easy or difficult has it been to adapt to that changing tide where there is a constant influx of Swedish producers and songwriters who are creating all of the pop music.

JB: That’s fine, as long as the melodies are good. They’ve had a lock on doing some rather hooky popular music—and I mean that in a good way. As far as things changing, that’s literally the law of the universe. And if when I started out, the point was I wanted to find different ways of going about things, then that hasn’t changed. And the way you’re posing the question, that doesn’t bug me. The part of it that does bug me has nothing to do with music or the music business. It has to do with the fact that in the world, thoughtlessness has been on the rise. People’s need to have their own voice raised and be seen and must put out their opinions of everything, and then react to the comments about their opinions, all of that is so not only desperately unattractive to me, it’s actually no help to all of us functioning together. And all any of the arts are—either the most arcane of them or the most popular ones—they’re all just a reflection of stuff going on in the environment and stuff going on in the individual artist. It’s only that. And at the moment, thoughtlessness is the bulk of the environment. And I think even the one and two dimensionality of especially popular music at the moment is an accurate reflection of the culture.

I actually think music hasn’t changed that much. If anything, the shocking thing is how little creatively has been going on. It’s not like, oh, I got older and now these kids are just making noise. So, I guess, if I’m an offended old fogey who goes, what’s my place in this world? It’s because those things which are endemic in the culture, I’m not interested in chasing. And I’m not interested in watching it, listening to it. But in terms of living and working, I never saw the arts as a competitive thing. Like, you try to find something lovely. People like it or they don’t. That’s already profoundly weird by itself, and makes life awfully strange.