Here Alone

By Lester Sills

I don’t know if The Rooks are finished but if they are we should brace ourselves for a potentially brilliant solo career from band leader Michael Mazzarella. Not so much as a squeak of new music has been heard from the band since their last album A Wishing Well was issued in 1999 with a few website rarities CDs notwithstanding. A follow-up studio album Something Blue was started and then suddenly stopped in its tracks. Mazzarella’s next venture came in the form of a live, in-studio DVD backed by the mysterious Fellows Of Mortimer. Were these to be the new Rooks hiding behind a fictitious moniker? Subsequent interviews hinted so but nothing has transpired yet.

Maybe the Rooks are gone. Perhaps their string of great pop tunes, gorgeous guitar hooks and exuberant harmonies are sounds of the past. Michael Mazzarella’s first solo effort Grey Over An Autumn Winter suggests that the curtain has finally come down on his forever changing lineup of Rooks. The songs he wrote for that band were pop gems cut from the cloth of every great Beatles harmony, edgy-Stones guitar lick and majestic baroque-pop ornamentation.

If Mazzarella’s Rooks set their sites on scaling the musical mountains created by their heroes, then Michael’s aim as a solo artist seems to want to stay as close to the sidewalk as possible. Grey Over An Autumn Winter is so stripped down and basic in comparison, it could be argued that this is Mazzarella’s version of John Lennon’s first solo go John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Certainly there are harmonies here and there and a cello or two peek out but for the most part his new CD is dark, personal and haunting. Within eleven songs, Mazzarella has managed to (at least to this listener) conjure moods and sounds of confusion, mystery, acrimony, warmth, loss, beauty, isolation and finally heavy reflection. I simply cannot recall another album sounding quite like this one. Perhaps it’s the start of something great.

Q: Where have you been? 1999 is a long time in between albums.

A: I released a DVD last year (Only Hope For Winter) which included some songs that hadn’t been heard prior but you’re right. 1999 is a long time…what can I say?

Q: Well, I’m sure that there must be some fans out there who possibly assume that you’ve just gone away – out of sight, out of mind.

A: I suppose…I assume that any fan out there would be fully aware of The Rooks website, which is updated on a regular basis for those whom care and look for that sort of information. I’ve been writing all along, trying to further my skills, looking to refine and advance my work. I understand that it could appear as though I’ve closed shop but in reality…I’ve been busy. (Note: The band also has a Myspace page)

Q: And that work resulting in Grey Over An Autumn Winter?

A: Correct.

Q: Why a solo album now when I understand that there is an already in-progress Rooks project existing. Isn’t Something Blue supposed to be the next Rooks album? Where is it?

A: It’s on tape somewhere in New Jersey, the unfinished multi-track tapes. I started that in two different studios and they both have since gone out of business.

Q: Are the tapes misplaced?

A: No, not at all. I just need to find another studio in which to record and some capital to pay for whichever studio I find. A lot of the album has been recorded already. I’m going to try and make a sincere effort to complete that album this year.

Q: With The Rooks?

A: (long pause) With…Rooks, yeah. Let’s just say that.

Q: Which Rooks are on the album already?

A: Strangely enough Les, to this date I’m the only one on all of those tracks so far.

Q: Will the Fellows Of Mortimer lot be used?

A: I don’t know. They were used for a recording we did called "Folk Hero" which was supposed to be out like four years ago or something…of course, I’m exaggerating but the thing was supposed to be out a long time ago and the release date changes every two months. "Folk Hero" by The Rooks…

Q: As a single release or something?

A: For a CD which will supposedly accompany a book. I stopped promoting and talking about it because it’s gotten to the point where I won’t believe it’s happening until it’s actually in my hands so anyway, what were we talking about?

Q: Will The Fellows Of Mortimer/new Rooks find themselves on Something Blue?

A: Patrick Yourell maybe. I need to finish guitar tracks, bass and harmonies…some colors, strings and horns…I don’t know who I’ll bring in.

Q: If you are currently the only so-called Rook on the thing now, why not just simply release it as a solo album and have done with it?

A: That’s for me to ponder and determine. There is a great will within me to keep The Rooks going and I don’t know for the life of me why. Maybe the thought of there only ever being two Rooks albums out there somehow stabs at me. We worked so hard to build our reputation as a recording act…

Q: But then are you not just dealing in semantics at this point? If it’s been only you up to this stage who cares who else are playing on it and whether it’s utilizing The Rooks tag or Michael Mazzarella? Perhaps it would be a great addition to your already launched solo career.

A: Listen, I can’t argue with you and your comments and questions are valid. I have to make a decision and that decision will be based largely on whether I can a) find members to play with who want to be in a band called The Rooks and b) if I, in fact want to do the whole band…game again. I don’t know Les.

Q: Speaking of a solo career, it’s time we talk about Grey Over An Autumn Winter. What made you decide to record a new solo album as we now know that you have the Something Blue project on the shelf with only yourself playing and singing on it? Would it not have made more sense to just finish that?

A: Forget about Something Blue for a second. That’s in a two-inch tape format, a studio project which will cost a decent sum to complete. Grey Over An Autumn Winter was recorded very inexpensively within a digital format that I could afford. Although I’ve been writing a lot of songs for the last number of years, I realized that it had been some time before I got around to releasing any studio recordings.

Q: I guess I’m safe in saying that you never have a lack of songs in which to extract from.

A: Well, that’s the odd aspect regarding this album. I set a goal for myself and went out of my way to not record any songs that had been written prior. I thought about the direction to where I wanted to go and early on came up with a title, which set the template for the mood and structure of the album.

Q: You’ve written a countless number of songs and decided not to use any of them...fairly impressive!

A: To be truthful, I did include the song "Here Alone" at the eleventh hour. That piece was written long before this album project commenced. It was only recorded as an afterthought to allow the album more balance. My initial intent was to record ten songs but as the album became so piano heavy, I felt that one more guitar-based track would round the album out in a nice and necessary manner.

Q: So you recorded ten songs and…

A: And realized that one more song was imperative to the final sequencing of the album…especially one that was led by acoustic guitars and harmonies. "Here Alone" was hand-picked expressly for the purpose of the final balance of the album.

Q: You have been thrown, wittingly or unwittingly into the power pop category and that is no doubt where the vast majority of your fans first happened upon your band and your song writing skills. There is, to my ears only one out-and-out immediate “pop” song on the album, that being "The Colder It Gets The Deeper We Fall". Was there a conscious effort on your part to disconnect yourself from the power pop genre?

A: No. I’ve been attempting to walk on a writer’s path of linear development for a long time now. All you have to do is listen to The Rooks’ output chronologically to find it. A Wishing Well was a step ahead of Chimes. Something Blue is a step ahead of A Wishing Well.

Q: A step ahead meaning better?

A: Well, come on – to my ears yes, certainly. Better is subjective though. Any writer hopes that his or her newest work is a step ahead in some incremental degree. I mean power pop…with an album entitled Grey Over An Autumn Winter, what would you expect…"Night Writer"? (Note: "Night Writer" is a bouncy pop song from the Rooks first CD).

Q: Understood. I was a bit pleasantly surprised at the starkness of many of the songs though. "Winter Over Me", "Fairground Is Gone", "She Said" - brilliant stuff.

A: Thank you.

Q: Was the minimalist approach thought out in advance or…

A: I gave to the songs what I thought they called for. I‘ve always worked that way. I often talk in terms of sound-painting and try to only ever give to the color schemes what is necessary. There were no blueprints going into this album which is different to how I operated with The Rooks. The Rooks were always able to work up much of their material in advance. These compositions were recorded immediately after creating them. It was a fresh way for me to work and I found the exercise to be fulfilling. I’d write something and then record it. Often, I would re-record a song two or three times within a day or so until I found what I was looking for…

Q: Which was what?

A: Mood…capturing the mood of was my supreme goal, but that has been for anything I’ve ever recorded, with or without a band. Sometimes the hunt was elusive, thus rendering me to re-record songs. I think that I’m very good when knowing when to continue and more importantly, when to stop. This project was just me really, in terms of complete decision making from A to Z.

Q: One would get the feeling, along with factoring in the title of your album, that Michael Mazzarella has a bit of a cloud over him at all times considering the lyrical content reflected from your songs on this CD.

A: Why?

Q: "There’s a winter over me, You be alone just like me, I’m like a junkie freak in need of methadone…Why am I here alone?" Pretty downcast stuff…

A: Well, let me ask you…do you think that every actor who has ever taken on a dramatic or maudlin role necessarily feels like the character they are trying to convincingly portray outside of that role? I’m sure that Dennis Hopper didn’t carry on the personality of the guy he played in Blue Velvet after wrap-up, you know what I mean?

Q: But that’s a bit different as the essence of acting is to take on other personalities apart from who the actors are in reality.

A: Yes, but that doesn’t mean if an actor is portraying a serial killer in a film he or she will suddenly start knocking off unsuspecting innocents outside of that gig. Their roles are completely separate and apart from whom they are in reality, right? Their roles are not a reflection of who they are and how they carry themselves in everyday life..

Q: Yes, one would hope.

A: Why can’t a songwriter do the same thing?

Q: Certainly they can and often do. I suppose and correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve read interviews where you claim that you don’t write fiction. That’s where my line of questioning was building from.

A: I understand. I will admit that this batch of songs were probably the first lot in which I wasn’t necessarily writing from first-hand experience 100% of the time. I wanted to write an album quickly. Hey, that’s a lot of ground to cover in four weeks.

Q: You wrote the whole album in four weeks time?

A: Faster probably. The entire process from writing, recording, re-recording, mixing and re-mixing took about five calendar weeks in total, and I did not work every day. Sometimes I would take three or four days off in between sessions to regroup and evaluate my standing.

Q: Very cool! Back to the words, so not everything is about you. Did you just…make up stories?

A: No. Every lyric to my memory has truth BUT not every word, line and scenario necessarily involved me directly. I have some friends who are going through divorces. Some of those circumstances were loosely chronicled with liberties taken and embellishments created. I found myself role-playing vicariously through various episodes at times. Other lyrics were first-hand experiences that may have happened to me ten years ago or…to friends of mine ten years ago or whenever. So, in many cases I would end up with a composite of compatible situations not necessarily linked but creating a complete story in the end. As I said, I had to get imaginative in order to write lyrics for ten songs in a matter of weeks. I got through it.

Q: The “she” in "She Said" seems like…

A: The “she” in that song was actually me. For that song, I pulled a gender reversal so that the female character would be the bad guy or, not the bad guy so much but the more mysterious of the two characters involved. In reality ‘the summer made me ‘weak’ and I had ‘to roam.’ I was the one who needed to get out. It really should be a woman singing ‘he said’ to be accurate to that story. So yeah, it’s a real story but manipulated to suit my needs.

Q: Would you say that a good percentage of the lyrics are composite profiles more so than autobiographical reflections?

A: I don’t know, would anyone care? I don’t worry about minutiae like that. Some of the pieces on the album are just false rhyme poetry set to music with perhaps a bit of reality attached for good measure…to fill out verses. Before is about a one-night stand. I was scrubbing my memory for stories I’ve heard, scanning to find anything worth writing about…for some of them, anyway.

Q: And off you’d go.

A: Well, it would give me a starting point at least. So someone told me somewhere about a one-night stand he had. That’s how :Before" was born, lyrically. Of course, that’s just the outline for an idea. I then had to fill in the screenplay, if you will. I had to create the one-sided dialogue to capture the main character’s disposition and motivation. Once the lyrics were established, I then had the idea to wrap them inside of a sort of…French sounding music-scape using an accordion and such.

Q: Yes, I found it funny how your character doesn’t even know the woman’s name and admits that he may have to be reminded again.

A: Boys will be boys.

Q: But the punch-line is that he’s even willing to change his schedule around if it means he may get lucky again…funny. Was this lyric writing approach easy for you once you adopted it?

A: Well, it was a new approach for me in certain aspects but not so different in other ways. My natural instinct is to use myself as a model when composing lyrics. On the other hand, "Girl Cried Nico" (From The Rooks’ A Wishing Well) was inspired by a magazine article I read revealing the antics of Christa Paffgen. I obviously didn’t live that story, I merely reported on what I read and turned it into a lyric. The one night stand in Before wasn’t mine either but I used the circumstance as the basis for a song.

Q: I’m quite impressed with the words to "A Life In The Day Of A Man". It may be the most whole and fully realized statement I’ve ever heard from any of your song lyrics.

A: I look at that as maybe the cousin to "Steeplechase" (From The Rooks) regarding subject matter. An updated sentiment, if you will.

Q: That didn’t cross my mind, yet "A Life In The Day Of A Man" seems so much more resolved in its declaration with the moral of the story being, I suppose, that life can be quite difficult for some and…

A: Right. We start out as unblemished at birth and at a certain point, the realities and pressures of everyday life within this society can in time, dismantle a person’s spirit.

Q: Hence, the never-ending cycle.

A: Well, the burdens on humankind never lessen. The cycle is bound to reverberate. I had the idea to build a lyric utilizing drastic time spans, superimposing them together to try and make a point. In this case, a lifetime compressed using a day for my metaphor. Instead of using the four seasons winter, spring, summer and autumn to represent a life-span, I instead used morning, noon and night.

Q: Right, I suppose the ‘autumn of my years’ has already been written in some capacity.

A: Sure.

Q: "Girl Gone Bye" is simply gorgeous and I love how you captured so much sound by using just a piano and lush harmonies. It almost seems like something that could have been written in medieval England, like a ballad from a long time ago.

A: There’s a koto on it too, that I play against the piano. It is what it is.

Q: Are there any completely autobiographical or first-person songs on the album? The press sheet states that "Dear Mariann" is about your mom (Mazzarella’s mother passed on when he was seventeen). What’s the story behind that one?

A: (long pause) Just wrote it…in like five minutes (more silence)…or somebody...it wrote itself, really.

Q: Have you written many or any songs about her before?

A: Not…really. Maybe one a long time ago, but nothing...worth, I don’t know.

Q: Michael, congratulations and good luck with your new album. It is certainly one that I will be giving many listens to over the next few months. Will you be taking Grey Over An Autumn Winter on the road anytime soon?

A: Well Les, my motto is ‘give the people what they want’ and so far no one’s come a- knockin’ (laughs).