In the Kitchen with Rufus & Martha Wainwright

Singer-songwriters Rufus and Martha Wainwright, the children of famous ’60s folky Loudon Wainwright III, stopped by Oberlin last Saturday to play a marathon show at Finney Chapel to packed, loving Oberlin crowds. Arts editor John MacDonald got a chance to sit down with this brother and sister team along with their half-sister, junior Lucy Wainwright Roche, who organized the show, to talk about their famous parents, Rufus’ rock n’ roll education and that whole Bea Arthur thing.

John MacDonald: So, being that you are from extremely musical families, was it always expected that you would become professional musicians, or at least amateur ones?

Rufus Wainwright: Well, at least from my side of the family. We have different mothers, Lucy and I it was not expected that we’d be musicians at all, but it was apparent from a very young age with me, and with Martha as well, that we were total star material (rolling his eyes).
JM: Right, right...(laughs)
RW: Basically we [weren’t] good in school, our grades [were] bad, [we were] indifferent about sports...So my mother enlisted us in the army of art.

JM: Now both of your moms were in groups of their own, right? The McGarrigles and the Roches. Would any of you guys go on tour with them?

RW: Yeah, I would go on tour with them.
Martha Wainwright: Well what they would do, they would build a vacation around a couple of shows. They would book a few things in Europe, or whatever, and then we would take the week off after that and sort of hang out and go camping or anything else we wanted to do. They weren’t bus tours, they were more like family tours with gigs to do.
RW: Yeah, it wasn’t grueling... Lucy really did the touring thing more then we did. (to Lucy) You’ve had weird baby sitters a lot of the time.

JM: So what was it like having rock n’ roll moms?

(there’s some debate about the appropriateness of the term “rock n’ roll” to describe both mothers’ music)

MW: Pop, not really punk, singer-songwriter moms. They were nice, I guess. They were okay. It was nice to see moms doing something other then cooking and cleaning.
Lucy Wainwright Roche: On take-your-daughter-to-work day, my mom would take me to the movies because she wanted to keep it a secret that she didn’t work during the day.

JM: Did they ever play on the same bill?
MW: [They played] on the same circuit.

(referring back to their experiences growing up with professionally touring and recording mothers)

LWR: You learn how to shut up and be quiet.
RW: And also, especially when they’re working in the studio, we had to be quiet. We weren’t allowed to play with all the buttons...or play any video games.

JM: I saw you at the 9:30 Club last summer in D.C. I forget which song it was before, but you unbuttoned your shirt and dedicated a song to Robert Plant.

RW: Yeah...

JM: Now, I know opera and cabaret are really important to you. Do you have other influences like Led Zeppelin and more recent stuff?

RW: More recent then anything. I mean recent over the last five or six years. Before I got signed, I was in Los Angeles at that time to make my first record, I really had no knowledge of rock. [But] then I moved in with Melissa Auf de Maur of Hole, the [former] bass player, and met and hung out with Courtney Love, and, ya know, a lot of that whole world, [including] Dave Grohl. It was one thing not to know a lot about rock ’n roll, but when you’re actually hanging out with the people themselves, it’s like a sort of crash course in pop culture.

JM: You were classically trained in the piano originally. Didn’t you go to a school in New York?

RW: No, to McGill. (A college in Montreal, where Rufus grew up.)

JM: And then you dropped out with the intention of sort of doing what you’re doing now?

RW: Yeah. Originally, I wanted to write and get a degree in music. Write orchestra stuff, operas and so forth, which I still am interested in. But I just wasn’t good enough in school. I didn’t do my homework. I never practiced my piano. I just spent the whole time at the bar or writing songs about guys and stuff. So I just had to go into pop because I didn’t practice enough.

JM: Do you have any plans to start a new album, or are you just touring now in support of Poses?

RW: Yeah, no. I’m working on a new album right now — I mean, at least writing the material...I’m now 28 (which I’m really feeling today). I’ve always been shocked by how... when I was in high school, college kids seemed like 40 year-olds. But now they’re so young. Things have just gone by so quickly. So my main goal is to get my next record out before I’m 30...and then I’ll have three records under my belt...in my 20s.

JM: Did you write most of the stuff for this last album on tour for the first one?

RW: No, I wrote most of it after I finished the tour and moved to New York and forgot all about music to focus on hedonistic pursuits.

JM: It’s definitely a New York-tinged album.

RW: Yeah, definitely pre-Sept. 11 crash when Monica Lewinsky was the news and everyone was making lots of money in tech stocks.

JM: Now, being an openly gay musician yourself and knowing that Oberlin’s student population is around 30 percent homosexual, does that influence your performance or anything associated with your stay here?

RW: I mean, I don’t think it directly influences anything per se, but ya know, I’m part of a great tradition (rolling his eyes and taking on a sarcastic tone) of gay people in show biz — like the average man in hell. (laughs). But uhh...
MW: It happens...
RW: I’m definitely in the right business. Actually music is a little different ‘cause music can actually be very, very straight. But at least with songwriting and, ya know, show biz in general, I’m definitely from some sort of tradition...

JM: Did you ever expect to be playing a gig in the middle of northern Ohio?

RW: Ya know, I never really expected to be playing at all, really, in terms of having an audience and being able to play these places. Every day is a surprise for me in my life right now. Like I was on Rosie O’Donnell yesterday — I never expected that. And Letterman. I like to keep some sense of surprise in my life.

JM: Okay, now, I must ask. At that same show, I’m not sure which song, but you introduced it with this whole story about Bea Arthur. And I was on this website the other day, some AIDS foundation in Sante Fe, and somehow they had her picture together with your picture. Could you explain a little bit about the connection between you two?

RW: We were doing an AIDS benefit together and she was the emcee. And I was there...and I had always wanted to meet her because I obsess over “The Golden Girls,” one of my favorite shows for a long time, that and “Mary Tyler Moore,” both of which were mentioned in the song “California” (a song on Poses). I essentially, ya know, went up to her and told her that I was a huge fan of hers and that I watched her a lot when I was very lonely in Los Angeles and wasn’t with my family. And I told her that she became my sort of grandmother — my TV grandmother. And she turned to me and said “I’m not your fucking grandmother!” and walked away.

JM: Now Lucy, what is the most important and/or interesting thing about Martha and Rufus coming to visit?

LWR: I’d say, it’s just really nice to have them come and see where I live. You realize you’re really a middle child when you spend two weeks xeroxing big pictures of your brother’s head. (Rufus and Martha laugh). And the other really interesting thing is just noticing that the standards of what is socially acceptable for people to say and do gets kinda blurred when there’s something in the public eye. It’s interesting to watch people on the campus start saying things that are maybe borderline insulting...

JM: Because of your relationship with Rufus...

LWR: But that you would never say to someone who wasn’t on a poster. It’s really interesting to see the license that people think they have.

JM: Would it be intimidating getting involved yourself with music with such a musical family?

LWR: Yeah...
RW: Yeah it is, ya know. I mean, I don’t know. I had no choice in the matter. I had to sing for my supper. But Lucy, you do music too, right? You play guitar?
LWR: Yeah, I mean, I’ve played here before and everyone has been really supportive.
RW: I’ve never heard her sing.

(everybody laughs)

JM: Any plans for you guys to tour together?

RW: Hey...
LR: I don’t know. I was watching a sociology video in my sociology class about family and a lot about that whole section of the Christian Right and what a family should be and everything, and I was thinking we should do a family tour with everyone involved and call it “The Family Values Tour.”

JM: Yeah, a different family values tour...

RW: Yeah. Family rejects...
MW: (in a sultry voice) Black sheep...

(everybody laughs)