Ryan Adams and Music is like making a Pizza

Singer songwriter Ryan Adams in an interview with the New Zealand’s Volume Anthonie Tonnon lets us into his the secret of his dong writing genius. It turns out like everything in life it can be explained with food.

The full interview can be read on : http://www.nzherald.co.nz/volume/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503191&objectid=10786990

"What I love about Adams is that while most people will be drawn first to his mainstream façade, there are further worlds to delve into. The PAX-AM website is an arcade game-themed site where messages are signed off by Bongo the Snowman. On Twitter, Adams more often than not talks about obscure metal bands, and recently recorded a cover 'Round and Round' by '80s hair metal band RATT for NPR. What I wanted to know was how these diverse versions of Ryan Adams fed into each other. To make a strong traditional album like Ashes and Fire, did it take letting you record a metal album? But Adams wasn't impressed.

"The best way I can explain this is this - wouldn't it be odd if you were interviewing a new interesting chef making French food, but if you talked to the guy and said, 'Have you ever cut up a potato and made French fries or have you ever made a pizza?'"

Well, at least I prompted him to turn a metaphor.

"Part of the joy of music is listening to lots of different kinds of music and learning from it. Specifically for me, I like writing songs that move me, and what moves me are beautiful songs on the piano or the guitar and really, really heavy music."

In a good interview, like a good conversation, you usually have to abandon the script and let things go where they will. Perhaps if we'd kept talking about The Strokes I wouldn't be hanging up the phone in a cold sweat. But would that be a real Ryan Adams interview? I'm not sure it would."