"They fuck you up..."
This was just very funny - from an article on Rufus Wainwright in the Observer. Incidentally, is RW any good? Does anyone know? He's certainly winning a load of plaudits from respectable sources. Anyway, his father, the fairly well-know (well, I'd heard of him before at any rate) singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright wrote a song called 'Rufus is a Tit-Man', "half-jokingly weighing up the competition" for his new baby song. (He'd have had a lot more to worry about if Rufus was an Arse Man). Still, not the finest song a father could pen in honour of his new arrival. Writes the journalist:
"That relationship and the absence is at the root of many of Rufus Wainwright's own yearning melodies, but if finds its most poignant expression in the song 'Dinner at Eight', which describes a confrontation with his father at a restaurant some years ago. 'We had just done a shoot for Rolling Stone together', he [RW] says, 'and I told him he must be really happy that I had got him back in that magazine after all these years. That sort of kicked things off. Later in the evening he threatened to kill me. So I went home and wrote 'Dinner at Eights' as a vindictive retort to this threat'.
Rufus is not the only one who dwells on the family break-up. The night before I met him I'd heard his sister, Martha, signing at a charity gig in a bookshop in Greenwich Village. She mines similar territory to her brother, though in a slightly more aggressive fashion. In interviews, Martha Wainwright is relative sanguine about her growing up. 'It wasn't the Von Trapp family', she says, 'But the issues that I have with my mum and dad are much less that those most of my friends have with their parents, probably due to the fact that there are no secrets'. Still, her first album will carry the title of a song which, she suggested on stage, was written for her parents: 'Bloody Motherfucking Asshole'.
Good interview.
This was just very funny - from an article on Rufus Wainwright in the Observer. Incidentally, is RW any good? Does anyone know? He's certainly winning a load of plaudits from respectable sources. Anyway, his father, the fairly well-know (well, I'd heard of him before at any rate) singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright wrote a song called 'Rufus is a Tit-Man', "half-jokingly weighing up the competition" for his new baby song. (He'd have had a lot more to worry about if Rufus was an Arse Man). Still, not the finest song a father could pen in honour of his new arrival. Writes the journalist:
"That relationship and the absence is at the root of many of Rufus Wainwright's own yearning melodies, but if finds its most poignant expression in the song 'Dinner at Eight', which describes a confrontation with his father at a restaurant some years ago. 'We had just done a shoot for Rolling Stone together', he [RW] says, 'and I told him he must be really happy that I had got him back in that magazine after all these years. That sort of kicked things off. Later in the evening he threatened to kill me. So I went home and wrote 'Dinner at Eights' as a vindictive retort to this threat'.
Rufus is not the only one who dwells on the family break-up. The night before I met him I'd heard his sister, Martha, signing at a charity gig in a bookshop in Greenwich Village. She mines similar territory to her brother, though in a slightly more aggressive fashion. In interviews, Martha Wainwright is relative sanguine about her growing up. 'It wasn't the Von Trapp family', she says, 'But the issues that I have with my mum and dad are much less that those most of my friends have with their parents, probably due to the fact that there are no secrets'. Still, her first album will carry the title of a song which, she suggested on stage, was written for her parents: 'Bloody Motherfucking Asshole'.
Good interview.
