Why are you so intrigued with people whose lives are falling apart?

Well, there's the question of why. How does this happen? How does it get so out of hand? It's funny, the answer with drug addiction is the same as the answer for recovery: one step at a time. You keep taking steps further and further away from sanity, and you can wind up in a really, really fucking dark place. And I always think the more information you have the better, like maybe you can protect yourself from such bad choices.

Can you take me through a personal history of you as a music appreciator, what your tastes have been and how they developed?

There were always just a very, very few things that I liked when I was a kid. My parents had a couple of records I really liked. Peter, Paul and Mary, Glenn Campbell singing all those great Jimmy Webb songs, a couple of Beatles records. [A friend stops by our table and Mann says, "We're talking about my musical history of hating almost everything."] So there were a couple of Beatles records, and my baby sitter had Neil Young's "Harvest." It was almost always more singer-songwriter-y kind of people. Just real classic early '70s, late '60s pop rock.

Has that changed?

Not at all, it's still the same.

And you still hate mostly everything?

Yeah. I always get asked what I'm listening to now. Nothing, really. In the '60s and '70s there weren't a ton of people who had put records out, because people hadn't yet figured out that you could make tons and tons of money. There weren't so many people chasing after that the way there are now. I don't know how people find music they really like! There aren't any music magazines I really trust. And also I have a very, very specific taste in songwriting, because that's what I do, and I try to write the kinds of songs that I really like. And I probably wouldn't even care about doing that if there were a number of people writing songs that were exactly the kind of songs that I like.

How would you describe that specific kind of songwriting that you really like?

There's a certain kind of melodic sense and a more old-school approach to songwriting, like a more crafted song. I'm not so excited about bands that are more about vibe than about good songwriting. But then again, the vibe has to be there too. And lyrics that are written to a certain standard, with the music married to the lyrics in a particular kind of way. When I write, I never write words first. I listen to the music and think, What does this sound like it's about to me?

So who are some of the prime influences on your songwriting?

I spent a lot of time listening to Elvis Costello. At this point, though, I just need a little more emotional connection than Elvis often delivers. The wordplay is delicious and the love of language is fantastic, but I really need the emotional connection. What's going on with you? What do you care about? What's bothering you? It feels ungenerous to me otherwise. I want to know. I want to know what you're thinking about. I definitely learned a lot of songwriting craft from him, though.

Burt Bacharach?

Yeah, I love Bacharach. Probably in "Bachelor No. 2" that was really prevalent, and is a little bit less so right now.

Dylan? I hear his influence much less in your music than with most singer-songwriters.

I can't say that I'm a Dylan fan, but I listened to "Blood on the Tracks" like 50 million times when I was a kid. There's usually just one or two albums that I'll get almost autistically attached to. You can't pry it out of my fingers.

So "Blood on the Tracks" was your Dylan record; which was your Elvis Costello record?

"Imperial Bedroom" and "Get Happy." Although really, I did listen to many of his records. More so than Dylan. You'd think I'd buy more Dylan, but I was happy with "Blood on the Tracks."

Randy Newman?

Yeah, but he's a little emotionally detached to me. I do like the way he writes from inside a character's head. But I almost get the vibe of the kind of guy who can only be emotional when he's really hammered. But yeah, he was a big influence. Especially with all the Southern stuff. I love that.

What about the super-literary types like Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave?

Tom Waits is a great lyricist, but that kind of back-alley, whiskey-soaked thing is a bit too much for me. I like more melody than that. And that Leonard Cohen, bless his heart. Bless his little heart. I don't really know Nick Cave's stuff.

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