join the mailing list! add | remove

Tuesday November 18th, 2003

Guitars inspire creative muse of singer/songwriter Pete Yorn
By Michelle Nikolai

Pete Yorn got a secret songwriting talisman in the body of a Gibson SG Special. He bought the deep cherry guitar at a used instrument store in L.A. and, unknown to him, it had a girl's name carved in the back with a pen knife.

"I sat down on my bed and I wrote this song that just came pouring out of me, lyrics and everything in literally five or ten minutes, done," he remembers. "And I was looking at the guitar like a smoking gun - whew, this is great.

"I flipped it over, and I didn't realize it in the store when I bought it, but scrawled on the back was the name Nancy. So my mentality was, I don't know who Nancy is, but this song is for you."

"For Nancy ('Cos It Already Is)" is the sixth track on Yorn's 2001 debut album, musicforthemorningafter. The song's intense, fragmented lyrics lament a lover for going with another man: "Don't sell your heart and break just anyone/I want to run with you through moorland fields/convince yourself that everything is alright 'cos it already is, so take your lessons hard and stay with him and when your car crash comes down don't be misled . . .

Just the sort of urgent song one could imagine conjuring up on an SG. Yorn, a New Jersey native, says every time he gets a "new" guitar, it inspires him to write a song. All the songs are self-penned on both his debut album and his current April release, Day I Forgot, he co-produced (with R. Walt Vincent and Brad Wood) and he plays most of the instruments, choosing to record in a friend's house [Mesmer Studios] rather than a high-priced studio so that he has more room to breathe and experiment. He humbly admits that he's not always so certain of himself.

"I don't know if I know how to produce myself. The most important thing for me is when I'm involved to keep an open mind," he explains thoughtfully. "I do have other people in the room with me for a reason, and I am open to new ideas.

"It's weird, someone will throw out an idea and I'm like, it's not going to work, it's just a waste of time, but I back off and I just try it. A lot of times it ends up being something great that makes a song for me."

Yorn got some lucky breaks early in his career - he was asked to score the music for the Jim Carrey flick Me, Myself & Irene and had two songs in the film, "Strange Condition" and "Just Another" before he even released his first album. He also had a hit right out of the shoot with "Life on a Chain," the song that landed him his record deal when he played an acoustic version for a Columbia Records executive. He's had his songs placed in two other movies, the blockbuster Spiderman and the dark comedic drama Igby Goes Down and television shows "Dawson's Creek" and "Felicity."

Yorn's Epiphone Casino is his favorite guitar, the one he plays in his video "Come Back Home" (the first track on Day I Forgot). It's traveled the world with him and probably still has remnants of an especially vigorous show he played in Glastonbury, England where he cut his hand up. The guitar returned from the UK and he pulled it out in the studio months later to find his blood on the pickguard.

"I just like the feel of it, the look of it, it never goes out of tune really when it's set up right. I rarely break strings on it, I can beat the hell out of it, I throw it around every night," he explains. "It's got a good sound to it, I like the P-90 pickups."

He's mostly self-taught and actually started out as a drummer. He began writing songs at the same time he picked up the guitar, around age 12. He confesses that he got a "D" in his seventh grade guitar class, because he was goofing off and didn't do the assigned lessons - he sat in class and played the basslines from songs like "Smoke on the Water" and the Violent Femmes' "Blister in the Sun." That summer, a friend showed him some chords, and with a natural rhythm born from taking up the drums at age 9, he tried to emulate the different kinds of music he was hearing.

Yorn's first guitar was a single cutaway Alvarez he received from his father that he still has, though it needs a little TLC. His first really good guitar was a Gretsch New Yorker, but as he became more serious about his music and touring, he realized he needed guitars that could withstand the rigor of the road.

"I had this whole thing for Gretsches, but I realized they never stayed in tune for me and I was breaking strings every night. I switched over to Epiphone and Gibson, and I haven't looked back," he chuckles.

Though he says he's not a collector, he has several guitars including three Casinos and two SGs, a 1965 FG-25 and an LG-0. He's got twin Hummingbirds that he says he used so much he can't really tell one from the other anymore. He was playing a AAA radio convention, broke a string on his J-45 and didn't have a backup; The Thorns' Pete Droge happened to be standing by the side of the stage and came running out with his Hummingbird. "After I played it I was like, wow, I want a Hummingbird," Yorn says.

These days he says he embraces the blues a bit more in his songwriting, and some of his songs have a little country flair as well. "I know how to play more country riffs than I used to, which I like. I really appreciate bluegrass and that kind of picking style."

He recently played several shows with R.E.M. and while playing a show in Washington D.C. he popped five strings in a 10-song set. The next day, the band's techs suggested using a graphite product on the saddle, which seems to have solved the problem. R.E.M.'s Peter Buck was one of his major guitar influences while growing up, and during the last show Michael Stipe called him onstage to sing Patti Smith's part in the song "E-bow the Letter" from their album New Adventures in Hi-Fi.

"It was just me and Michael, we did Sonny and Cher," he laughs. "It was funny, I think I was Cher. It was great, they're good people - just like everyone on the crew."

Editor's Note: The two-CD set Light of Day: A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen includes Yorn's cover of Springsteen's "New York City Serenade." Net proceeds from the project go to the Parkinson's Disease Foundation and The Kristen Ann Carr Fund which fights sarcoma, a rare cancer.