GLASS IN FLESH AND BONES...AN INTERVIEW
Growing
up I was a huge fan of David Bowie and the Beatles and Pink Floyd, and, um, I
was always intrigued by the idea that a band can be, sort of, something that
they’re not. “The Wall” deals with the concept of alienation, “Sgt.
Peppers” deals with the concept of um, you know, a, a band being, you know,
some other kind of band and playing within a personality, um, David Bowie toyed
with the concept that he was you know, a man from another planet. For this last
album, I just thought it would be way easier to assume a character to say what I
really wanted to say, express what I really wanted to express. So I sort of
struck upon, you know, the idea that we would sort of imitate ourselves, and
that sort of would be the idea that was born, that we would sort of be a fake
version of the band. When trying to write the Glass character, I try to put
myself into shoes that I don’t even necessarily feel. I try to take it to
extremes that I personally wouldn’t go, I don’t believe I’m some sort of
prophet, but I sort of got in the shoes of the idea of what it would feel like
to believe you really are possessed with something that the whole world must
hear.
THE
FANS
You
know I saw the fan participation as a critical element of making this whole idea
work. You know if fans haven’t become so intrigued with the story and there
haven’t been so much activity on
the internet, this series, this animated series never would have happened. In
essence this is like the ultimate interactive experience. We allow fans to come
into a part of our world that most fans were never allowed access to. As much as
fans are participating in the story and try to figure out the mysteries that we
lay before them they still don’t really, sort of, understand the flesh and
bones. They see this, sort of, a fairy tale, but it’s not really a fairy tale,
it’s really is a fable in sense that it is about real things and real people.
Behind every part of the story is an actual sort of, you know, both success and
tragedy, it’s our own sort of, “Behind The Music”, and um, and I guess,
fittingly so well, better as cartoon characters than real people (laughs).
THE
GIRL
June
in the story really embodies you know, the female you know, and signals Glass’
male energy, but Glass is sort of an androgynous figure and in some ways, the
feminine June also has a lot of male characteristics. So the lines are
constantly blurred in the story, but the simplest version is that she’s just
sort of his girlfriend.
I think this is something that’s going to be, um, become more and more a part of Rock & Roll. Because Rock & Roll is always bigger that the artist, and it really is about the energy of the fans, and the fans at some point are not gonna be satisfied by just being able to go do a concert every two years and buying some CD or downloading some tracks, you know, every time somebody feels like putting them out, I think ultimately the fans are gonna own the bands, not the other way around.
FIN...