Question: Who would believe that the man responsible for the corniest pop duet hit of all time ‘Lucky Stars’, would return 40 years later with the most profound album of the year?
Answer: Anyone that actually listens to Dean Friedman’s brand new album, ‘American Lullaby’!
Jason Barnard speaks to Dean about his songwriting journey.
Hi Dean, let’s start at the beginning. You were born and raised in New Jersey.
Born and bred deep in the bosom of suburbia. Just a hop, skip and a jump from the New Jersey Turnpike, which permeated the air with all those petrochemicals. And I think it gave me an affinity for a lot of other Jersey musicians who breathe the same air.
So you were into music from an early age.
My mom was a singer and a performer, she was on Broadway and in film. So I grew up in a house filled with music. There was always a Broadway show tune on the piano. Music was always something that I knew was going to be part of my life. But once I started doing coffeehouses and people would throw me a few bucks to sing a song, I thought, wow, this is great. You know, to do something I love anyway and get paid for it. What a concept.
Where did you get your first instrument?
I purchased my first guitar with the bag of quarters that I earned delivering newspapers in Paramus, New Jersey. I went to 48th Street to Manny’s Music. That was Music Row in Manhattan. And I dumped this bag of quarters on the counter and said “I want that guitar.” I learned three chords and started playing Beatles songs and Monkees songs. And I never stopped.
And by the time you got into teens, was the music scene a bit more singer-songwriter?
I was born in 1955. So, yes, the end of the 60s, early 70s. Although I enjoyed myself and I always had really eclectic tastes, anyone who knows my albums will know that it is not just one kind of music. It’s rock, pop, jazz, folk, country, you name it. It’s whatever serves the song. I basically view myself as someone who writes short stories set to music. Having said that, even though I had disparate influences, there was always West Side Story playing in our house. So Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim were an influence. But I got a transistor radio and it was the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder and everything. From rock to metal to R&B to Jazz. I just love music. I think Louis Armstrong said there’s only two kinds of music, good and bad. That’s my attitude. I never had much patience for people that sort of were prejudiced against a particular musical style.
But having said all that, I definitely had an affinity for a certain kind of singer songwriter who came of age at that time. I’m talking about folks like Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Randy Newman, Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Folks who managed to paint vivid pictures with their words and music almost of a cinematic quality. And those songs always made an impression on me. And there’s something about that. Where they transport the listener into that world that was constructed in the song. That’s something I aspired to do, starting out as a young songwriter.
Your debut single ‘Ariel’ has got that imagery. It’s like a play.
I’m glad to say that when I first wrote it, I was sort of painting this pointillist scene of an ordinary teenager filled with adolescent angst and yearning. He was in suburbia and was smitten with this young lass. I know that I had accomplished that. But I was self-conscious. The fact that not much happens in the song. He meets a girl, they go on a date, they wind up making out while the TV signs off the air. In fact, there’s a writer in the States who wrote an in-depth article declaring that ‘Ariel’ is The Great Gatsby of music, in terms of the way it captures an era and a time and a place.
I’ve heard that Ben Folds is a big fan of that song?
It was described to me, and if you listen to his song, ‘Kate’, there’s what to me seems like more than coincidence. In ‘Ariel’ there’s a girl in a peasant blouse that smokes pot, that has religious inclinations and that’s in a public place doing charity work. If you read the lyrics of ‘Kate’, it was clear to me that almost line by line, it’s a reinterpretation of Ariel. He describes her by the music that she plays, the clothes she’s wearing, and she winds up also in a shopping mall handing out religious texts. And so there’s so many similarities that I take it sort of as flattering and homage to ‘Ariel’. But ‘Kate’ is a great record in its own right. And I think Ben Folds co-wrote it with a couple of people. So I’m not sure exactly where the influence came from, but it’s clearly linked.
We spoke last time about ‘Song For My Mother’, which is about depression and that you cover such a wide range of lyrical themes.
My impulse was to explore all these different genres and ways of approaching a song. But the common denominator was that I was again telling stories. There was generally some kind of a narrative. I guess I’m one of those writers who writes about what I know, and that would include my own life and the lives of my friends and family, things just in the world. And then on occasion, I would whip out my poetic license, which I always keep in my back pocket in case I’m stopped for excessive punning. And I’ll use that poetic license, which is really a polite way of saying that as a writer, I get to lie and make things up.
In that period you wrote and released ‘Lucky Stars’, a huge hit over here in the U.K. That brought you for about a year or so, huge stardom over here.
Almost too popular, and it was really exciting. The record company left Denise Marsa’s name off the single so she became a mystery lady. But I’m always proud of the song. And I think part of the reason there’s always been a little backlash to it is that the people don’t really appreciate that, although it’s filled with sincere intent, it is tongue in cheek. But every word of that song is true to life. And I think the impact that it made is because there’s not a couple that’s been together for any amount of time that has not experienced that phenomena where one of them communicates with someone from the past and the other one is really jealous. And that’s what the song is about. How do you grapple with those feelings and how to work it out?
Some people have put ‘Lucky Stars’, in the guilty pleasures category of songs. But then I guess that is the point. Why should you feel guilty about liking a song?
You know, Jason, that’s always been my perspective. I do feel like shouting, stop feeling so guilty. Admit it. And really, what it comes down to is, is the issue, which is just part and parcel of showbiz and the music biz in particular, which is that it’s always essential to remain cool. Anything that strays from being cool, anything that has the hint of being uncool, you don’t want to associate yourself with that. And I just think that’s really stupid. And I think what exaggerated the backlash is the fact that it was the last record in the UK of mine that charted in the way that it did.
If ‘McDonald’s Girl’ had not been banned, I think you’d be looking at a much different story because that song was cool enough for The Barenaked Ladies to cover. There’s so many more songs that would have changed the complexion of that perception of what I do and what my songs are about. I know there’s a lot more to my music and to what I do and to the stories that I tell.
You’ve got pigeonholed in the national consciousness. But then on the same album is the song ‘S&M’.
Listen, if that had charted, we’d be talking a different conversation entirely.
But nothing for you is off topic. That makes you, as a songwriter, a much more interesting proposition.
From the first dealings I had with the record industry, I think that part of the issue is that there is the inclination to try and pigeonhole every artist. And some are more successful than others at breaking out of that pigeonhole. And at some point, I reached the point where I was sort of just it was a futile argument to have. I never stopped writing the kind of songs that I do of every idiom and style, and I’m never going to stop. The people that are familiar with the gamut of what I do, they know otherwise.
By the 1980s you were composing TV and film soundtracks.
After ‘McDonald’s Girl’ was released, I was dropped by CBS. It was simply that it was banned by the BBC because it mentioned a commercial trade name, which 10 years later was apparently not a big deal. But at that time, it totally derailed my record career and I persisted and pursued the work that I could. There was always some musical component to it, but it started with doing soundtrack work for TV and film. I worked for about five seasons on the TV series Boom, starring Michael Elphick and Neil Morrissey. That was a great experience, great fun, really nice people to work with. And also there was a period of time in the 80s where I got inadvertently very much involved working in music synthesis and virtual reality. In 1986, I wrote and published what became the first consumer guide for synthesizers, sequencers and drum machines.. There was all this amazing technology that exploded in the mid 80s with the advent of MIDI, the musical instrument, digital interface.
And that work in music technology led me again, sort of inadvertently to try to work with a virtual reality program that allowed you to step inside of a video game and interact with animated objects. Now, this was 1989. We’re talking 20 years before Microsoft ever came out commercially with the XBOX and the Kinect. And I designed and programmed the very first virtual reality video game for national television, a game called ‘Eat-a-Bug’ that aired on a show called Total Panic. And following that, I programmed games for two seasons on a hit show on Nickelodeon called Nick Arcade.
Finally, in the late 90s, I wound up back in the studio. I never stopped being a musician. I never stopped writing songs. And I finally got the opportunity to record again. And I put a double CD called ‘Songs for Grownups’. And by then the Internet came about and I wrote to a thousand people on my email list at the time.
I said to my listeners, my fan base, “Look, I got a bunch of songs that I’d like to do for a new album. I don’t wanna have to wait another 20 years for some label to give me permission to be a recording artist. If you preorder the CD, I’ll make a record and I’ll send it out to you.”. I was a little afraid that everyone would write back and say, “Oh, Dean, get a proper job like everybody else.” But instead, to my delight, enough people were supportive of the idea that I was able to go back in the studio, and I wound up crowdfunding that album in 2001. And as far as I’m aware, I was the first solo artist to do that. The band Marillion did it first. And just a few months later, I crowdfunded what became ‘The Treehouse Journals’ album. And I’ve been crowdfunding since, including the new one, ‘American Lullaby’.
‘American Lullaby’ highlights the crazy political and social environment that we’ve been in.
Songwriters, writers, all kinds of artists can’t help but respond to the world around them, to what’s happening in their lives and the lives of their family, friends and the world. And inevitably, you’re going to try and express that somehow from your own perspective. In this instance, it was a really big challenge because basically the new album was my attempt to chronicle what’s happened to America and the world over the last six years. One morning we woke up and to the majority of Americans horror, a failed reality show huckster from New York, a well-known con artist and liar became President of the United States. And it shattered the sense of stability and reality for so many people around the world because it seemed impossible. We were just incredulous that this could occur and in our guts, we knew something had happened that was really wrong. The moment that happened, there was a sense of dread in the hearts and minds of anyone that knew who he was, that things were going to get worse.
And when the pandemic came along and hundreds of thousands of people died needless deaths because of his incompetence and because of his attitudes and not acting proactively. And when enough news channels and reporters say, oh, Russia, no collusion, it gets to a point where some people are embarrassed to say it again. The fact of the matter is, and this is all documented in the Senate Intelligence Committee report, is that there was Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. election. It’s all documented with facts. And this was a bipartisan committee run by Republicans and Democrats. So there’s no bias.
So this new album, ‘American Lullaby’, is my modest effort, my attempt to try and depict what happened. To try and understand what happened and the circumstances that led up to it. And also to try and have some sense of how we’re going to navigate and negotiate the upcoming future, which has the potential to be really dire.
So this is about putting the present in context.
Yes, I was also aware that it would be impossible to try and assess our current state of affairs without going back to some of the origins of it. And so in the case of being an American, it made sense to go back 400 years, which was the beginning of this country’s two original sins. The massacre of the indigenous population and slavery. Tied together with that is our inexplicable love affair with guns, which persists to this day. This makes the United States unique compared to every other country on the planet. I guess, part of the reason we’re a world power and have the biggest army is that we’re really adept at killing. We love our guns. And that’s not our only virtue. We have plenty of other virtues that we have contributed in wondrous ways to culture and to science and to the arts. But we do have this affinity for weapons of war. And so I crafted this album. It was clear to me that it wouldn’t make any sense unless I step back a little bit to give some context to try and understand how we got here because we didn’t get here overnight.
I was also determined to leaven those feelings and dire warnings with lots of a good measure of humor and an ample dose of silliness, because for me, I think that’s a crucial ingredient to survive the world reality; as we know, it is with a sense of humor, hope and joy. If we continue to care about our families and friends and our communities with an open and hopeful heart, then we can surmount and survive all these looming disasters.
That’s a perfect way to end, Dean, thank you.
Dean Friedman’s new album ‘American Lullaby’ is out on August 27th. He will be performing virtual zoom shows for Edinburgh Fringe Aug 13/14/15/20/21/22
And will be embarking on a 40 date UK tour starting in April 2022. Visit www.deanfriedman.com
