It’s no great surprise, especially considering his royal pop lineage, that Rufus Wainwright is one of the greatest storytellers of his generation.
The son of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle has been heralded as a grand songwriter with a penchant for theatricality, elegance and buoyance. While many of his songs sound as if they were plucked from the dense score of an old-time Broadway musical, others come off as stolen opera songs put to curious, meandering words.
But it’s the stories he tells that are Wainwright’s great triumph. Like his father, Rufus tells tales casually and breezily – something fans will witness when he plays the Fillmore Auditorium on Tuesday night. But unlike his father, the complex orchestrations surrounding his plainspoken lyrics come off like a lamb wandering through a labyrinth – simplicity amid the elaborate.
Wainwright’s latest disc, “Release the Stars,” is rife with such juxtapositions, the most striking of which is “Tulsa.”
“You taste of potato chips in the morning,” he remembers in the song that later talks about “that fat guy with the green shirt that we both signed together” and “that poor girl who waited in the rain for hours to meet me” and “the antique shop that I want to go back to and visit when it’s open.”
Mind you, the song is 2 minutes and 19 seconds long, and these easy-like-Sunday-morning observations are surrounded by jolting classical piano and sweeping orchestral swings befitting a Cole Porter tune. There are multiple reasons Wainwright still has enough fans to justify his being on powerhouse label Geffen, and this unique writing style is right up there with his beautiful voice.
The Denver Post caught up with Wainwright to talk about his love of opera and Paris – and his current writing project, which is an opera set in Paris.
Q: How are the crowds in Europe liking the new material, or the show in general?
A: They go with it, probably because what I do is so unique, for better or for worse. Whenever people come to my show, they’re intrigued by my choices of music, probably because I haven’t had any No.1 hits. They can’t latch onto stuff, so they seem to really go with it. But I’ve also spent a good 10 years kind of diversifying my sets and making sure there are always different songs in the evening, whether they’re really big songs, my own songs, standards or whatever.
Q: Do people over there relate to you through your musician parents?
A: A little bit in the U.K., but not in the rest of Europe. Maybe in Belgium. It’s not a big deal. Probably the place where it’s the biggest deal is in Canada, more so than the U.S. I’ve kind of already outgrown that in the U.S. America has such a short memory, they’re still (stuck) on the fact that I dressed up as Judy Garland.
Q: Do you look to anyone who bridges that gap between classical or opera, and more pop-oriented stuff?
A: Oddly enough, I don’t think where I go in my music is necessarily it. But there’s a compelling argument that heavy metal is opera-related, sort of that Teutonic, Germanic intensity thing. But I don’t know. The person who really, really influenced me the most in terms of bridging the gap was really Nina Simone, not as a songwriter, per se, but by her whole hybrid of classical structure through jazz and into pop. That was really profound in my upbringing. So I owe a lot to her, especially with the piano.
Q: What about the opera you’re developing?
A: I don’t really intend to attack it ferociously until this tour’s over. It’s called “Primadonna,” and it’s a day in the life of an opera star.
Q: What’s the time period?
A: I think it’s set in the ’70s in Paris. I just like Paris in the ’70s.
Q: You’re more than halfway done?
A: Yeah I’ve done a lot of work on it, for sure.
Q: Did you always have an idea in mind for it?
A: I don’t know. I searched for years and years and years for an opera subject, and then this one arrived, and I do believe there’s a kind of connection between the unborn characters of a play or an opera and the composer, and where they finally meet and there’s a collusion that occurs, a real sort of life force is forced to be born or demands to be born. When it isn’t born, it kills the artist.
Staff writer John Wenzel contributed to this report. Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
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His own top five
Ask Rufus Wainwright to name his favorite piano-jangling singer-songwriters and you’ll get quite the list. Here are five.
Cole Porter: Widely considered one of the greatest American songwriters, Porter rocked hits throughout the ’30s and ’40s. He died in 1964.
John Cale: A primary songwriter with Lou Reed in the Velvet Underground, Cale continues today with his more abstract solo career. His “Black Acetate” topped The Denver Post’s best CDs of 2005.
Gustav Mahler: A Bohemian-Austrian composer who was obsessed with Beethoven’s career, Mahler died in 1911.
Laura Nyro: She hit in the ’60s, but you might not be familiar with her. But you know her songs, as many of them were popularized by other artists, including Three Dog Night’s cover of “Eli’s Comin’.”
Hoagy Carmichael: A great performer and composer, Carmichael wrote the music for “Georgia on My Mind” and countless other tunes. He died in 1981.
-Ricardo Baca
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Rufus Wainwright
POP|Fillmore Auditorium; 7 p.m. Tuesday
with A Fine Frenzy and Sean Lennon|$30|ticketmaster.com, 303-830-8497
7more
STEVE EARLE The beloved Texas crooner isn’t playing much these days, but he will play the AAA fest in Boulder tonight, which means the venue is small and the vibe is intense. He’s playing with Rodrigo y Gabriela and Lori McKenna at the Fox.
TOMMY LEE & DJ AERO They’re calling it “dirty electro house,” and you can bet that when media slob Tommy Lee and his DJ buddy Aero take over Vinyl tonight it will be dirty. Will Tommy be a man of the people, or will he lounge lazily in the booth and VIP? Heh, like we even needed to ask.
COLIN HAY The lead singer of Men at Work plays solo on Saturday at the Soiled Dove Underground.
SEAN LENNON The celebrated son of John Lennon plays Tuesday at the Fillmore. Last time he played Denver – at the Bluebird a few months ago – his mom, Yoko Ono, was in the house.
PAGE FRANCE Indie pop never sounded so sweet as it does with this Maryland troupe, which plays Tuesday at the Hi-Dive.
GWAR Metal! Blood! Gore! Lore – all Wednesday at the Fillmore as part of the Sounds of the Underground tour.
CENTRO-MATIC This Austin band is fronted by the impossibly talented Will Johnson, and plays Thursday at the Larimer Lounge.
– Ricardo Baca
