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FP: Is your next record going to be on Geffen? MA: No. Geffen changed as a company real heavily last year. The guy that was my A&R guy quit during the first sessions for my album. When that happens usually it's an excuse for the label to drop all that A&R person's artists, and they did that. They dropped everybody but me...and Guns N' Roses and Edie Brickell. He had like 25 acts, and they all got dropped except for me and the artists that sold millions of records. The company went from being a company that was run by three A&R people to there being a company that was run by 30. Their focus got really skewed as far as I was concerned. By the time I had sessions last summer and had delivered basically two albums of material they were still dragging their heels and wouldn't give me a release date. Finally my manager and I got together with the president of the label -- who is an old friend of mine -- and said, "Just please let us go." I think they would have eventually just dropped me, because I bitched so much, or they would have kept me and asked me to keep working on the same record, which I wasn't going to do. FP: So many artists get stuck in that limbo when they're not a priority... MA: Yeah, and I'd rather not even have a label in that case. The record will be coming out, though. I just don't know through who. FP: Had you (as a band) discussed going on the road to support your new record? MA: No, because for one thing it wasn't a Guadalcanal record, and that wouldn't have been fair, plus I don't think anyone could commit to something that long term, except maybe John and I. There was a rumor going around that I heard from a bunch of different sources that what really happened at Geffen was that they heard the Guadalcanal tracks and demanded I make a Guadalcanal record, I said no, and they dropped me. That's not what happened at all. I don't know where that started. The reason that couldn't be true was that the people I was working with at Geffen didn't know anything about Guadalcanal Diary. FP: It's like that line from Daniel Johnston: "Tongues wag in this town."" MA: Jealousy runs rampant. There were people saying, [in sneering voice] "I can't believe he got this deal on Geffen...". Whatever. I know who you are, by the way. |
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