Harp
July 2003
"Yorn Again. Days of Yorn." pg. cover, 61-66, 110-112
(Photos: Dennis Kleiman. Story: Jaan Uhelszki)
read the article |
|
Jersey-bred singer/songwriter Pete Yorn is no mere pinup boy -
and he's got the chops to prove it.
Days of Yorn
Pete Yorn has come to San Francisco, that infamous city by
the bay to kick off his American tour for his latest album,
Day I Forgot. Unfortunately, the weather has conspired
against the singer, and the sky is shrouded in rain and ominous
black clouds absorb all the light, casting a pall over the late
afternoon. Despite the meteorological blip, Yorn is wearing a
capacious pair of sunglasses, huge and black, exactly like the
kind that Ray Charles wears when he performs. The glasses match
his preternaturally black hair, which is tucked into the collar
of a voluminous black coat that swallows him up whole. But in
spite of all the swaddling clothes and dark colors, you can't
help but notice that Yorn lights up the dank backstage area with
an effulgence reserved only for the very famous.
In the empty hall, filled with roadies scraping heavy amps over
the scarred stage, and road managers for the three bands on the
bill pacing, every so often looking at their watches, Yorn is as
cool as an oyster. He seems to float along the warren of halls
and dark passageways that encircle San Francisco's Warfield
Theatre like a labyrinth you might travel through in a
nightmare. Passing through the backstage antechamber, he stops
momentarily at the buffet table, malodorous with the stink of
garlic and incense sticks and turns up his perfectly formed
nose, wandering on without selecting any sustenance like a dark
wraith from a Poe short story. For Pete Yorn knows exactly what
he wants and what he doesn't, and he isn't likely to settle for
anything less.
Pete Yorn was just born knowing. The youngest child of a New
Jersey dentist and his schoolteacher wife, Yorn picked up his
middle brother's drumsticks at the age of nine and saw God. Or
at least his future. He taught himself to play by thumping along
to Supertramp and Iron Maiden records that he purloined from his
two older brothers' rooms, putting the discs on his Sesame
Street record player and playing them at nauseum, until he could
perfectly recreate the fills on Supertramp's ballast prog rock
masterpiece "The Logical Song." He hasn't looked back since-or
listened to "Logical Song" ever again. "I just can't stomach
it," he admits. "I listened to it way too many times."
He graduated to sturdier dare, discovering head-banging avatars
like Ratt and Judas Priest, but he really found his niche when
he happened upon Van Halen's "Dance The Night Away>" "That's the
first song I remember playing, because of the cow bell,"
enthuses Yorn. "Then I learned 'Sunday, Bloody Sunday," and it
was all over. I was a drum fanatic.
The self-confessed fanatic expanded his oeuvre, three years
later, when he was forced to learn guitar in a mandatory guitar
class-earning a D for his haphazard effort. Cornering a pall at
summer camp the next summer, he learned all the chords, and
instead of returning home with the requisite lanyards and
Popsicle stick sculptures, the twelve-year-old came back with a
new skill.
"Music was something that came really naturally to me and
something that was a huge part of my life when I was little,"
Yorn admits. " I just wanted to take a shot and see where it
took me."
It took him all the way to the talent show at Montville High
School, where the 16 year old sang the Replacements' "Talent
Show," fully aware of the irony of his song choice-but not the
effect it would have on the audience. His performance was so
riveting, that a competing band in the contest cajoled Yorn to
sing a cover of Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World" with
them-wowing the underage audience with his low throaty growl and
prescient rock star demeanor. And while Yorn didn't win the
contest, he did gain something even more valuable-the knowledge
of the benefits even incipient stardom brings. His popularity
skyrocketed.
But despite his early brush with success, the youngest Yorn
didn't drive the 33 miles to Manhattan right after high school
and try to get a job sweeping the floors at Electric Lady
studios to get closer to rock royalty, hoping some of it would
rub off, or move into a squat with some rock dissolutes while
plotting how to snare a record deal. Pete Yorn played by the
rules, enrolling at Syracuse University and promising his father
he'd become a tax lawyer. But instead of reviewing tax tables in
his spare time, he spent snowbound weekends writing voraciously
in his journals, sometimes penning two songs a day-racking up
huge phone bills because he insisted on playing them to his
brother Rick over the phone in Los Angeles. "I was always
writing songs because it was something I liked to do. Like some
people like to knit. I like to write songs."
Even though he filled his notebooks full of ruminations about
life and love, Yorn said he resisted pursuing his career as a
musician. "The music thing always came so naturally that I
didn't think I could get away with having a career in it. I
guess it's a lot of people's dream, but I didn't think it was
something I could actually make happen, so I was just focusing
on other things." Yorn spent his summers in Los Angeles working
as an intern at Creative Artists Agency where he learned the
underbelly of the entertainment business from the ground up.
When questioned about whether he had a game plan, he demurs.
"I didn't really decide I wanted to try it until I was twenty or
so. Then I was like 'Fuck it, someone's got to do it, it might
as well be me.'"
Pete Yorn would like you to think that he's that casual about
his career. Just like the necessity to write every single word,
and play all the instruments and sing every note on his two
albums, he likes to exert control over what you think about him,
how he looks, and what little information he will let escape
from his full lips. In Yorn's creation myth, he's a regular Joe
from the Jersey suburbs, who drinks a little too much, gets
pissed off when the Raiders lose a game, (yes, the Raiders,
despite his geographic proximity to the Jets), and is apt to
gnash his perfect teeth when a fellow traveler on the turnpike
of life forgets to use his signal. But despite his attempts to
make you think that he just backed into this perfect life, it's
clear he's a little too focused for it all to have been left to
serendipity.
Rather it seems the 29-year old musician has been preparing for
this moment since that sunny day in 1996 when he rolled his GMC
truck into the verdant hills of Los Angeles, following his two
brothers to the city of angels, as if he was being nudged
forward by a line from fellow Jersey-ite Bruce Springsteen's
most renowned song, pursing that elusive "runaway American
dream." Because, if anything, the Yorn brothers were obviously
born to run. Or at least run with the big dogs. His oldest
sibling, Kevin, 38, is a high powered entertainment lawyer,
defending the rights of the rich and powerful, while brother
Rick, 35, is the co-owner of Artists Management Group, and has
shepherded the careers of the likes of Cameron Diaz, Leonardo Di
Caprio, Claire Danes, Matt Dillon, Ed Burns, Benicio Del Toro,
Viggo Mortensen, Samuel L. Jackson and Gabriel Byrne.
[This is a sample from Harp Magazine available in stores now.
Go pick it up. My hands are about to fall off right now anyways
and can't continue typing. The rest of this article will be
archived soon after the magazine is no longer available.] |
|