Lana words

[ImTragic 734]

With everything that could have felt like something really sweet, there’s always been something out of the periphery of my world, beyond my control, to kind of disrupt whatever was happening. I’ve never felt like, ‘Oh, this is great.’

 

I know everything about myself. I know why I do what I do. All of my compulsions and interests and inspirations. I’m very in sync with that. It’s the other stuff that I don’t have any control over, just what’s going to happen on a daily basis. My interactions.

 

I guess I would say, like, I’m definitely drawn to people with a strong physicality, with more of a dominant personality.

 

I think I’ve been in more dangerous situations than other people. I am attracted to the dark side, but in the same way that everyone else is. Sometimes the things that are really dangerous are because the situations or people are really magnetic and imperfect, but then when the pendulum swings you see the reason things are so amazing is because the situation is really strange.

 

I never understood people who didn’t think traffic was romantic. There’s so much beauty in having to wait

 

 

 

 

I told Davey (David Kahne) that I wanted to sound like black and white, and I wanted it to sound famous and like Coney Island and like a sad party.

 

All the tough things that I have been through – that I've drawn upon [in my work] – don't exist for me anymore. Not all my romantic relationships were bad, but some of them challenged me in a way that I didn't want to be challenged and I am happy I don't have to do that now.

 

People don’t always go out to visit you in Malibu. So there’s a lot of alone-time, which is kind of like, hmm. I’m not in (indie-rock enclave) Silver Lake but I love all the stuff that’s going on around there. I guess I’d have to say (I prefer) town, but I’ve got my half-time Malibu fantasy.

 

I guess my songs started being songs that I liked when I stopped being nervous about the content. I do like singing about “Daddy” and “baby”-- “Daddy” being the man and me being the “girl.” I didn't know that that had been such a prevalent theme in the Fifties, but now that I’ve listened to more music from that era, I see that it is. And I’m very relieved, because I don't want it to seem like I have a complex! But it's something I can't get over. I want to have a life where there's just one man in it, and I haven't found that

 

I remember telling my grandma, “I wish I could meet someone.” And she said, “When I was young, we didn't have the chance or the choice to try and see a lot of people-- you had to meet a man and that was kind of it-- but don't be afraid to meet everybody.” And I thought, you're the first person in my family who's ever made me feel like it’s okay to want to try and find the right thing.

 

I used to live a really crazy life. I was in a relationship where times were happy but also chaotic. We were travelling between LA and Las Vegas. I can't gamble because I'm not good, but he was gambling. I was just swimming.
I used to indulge in lot of drugs and dark poetry and pop culture and amazing music.

 

I didn’t feel trapped in a trailer park. I felt trapped before I got to the trailer park because I had nowhere to live. When I got my trailer, everyone there had the same taste as I did. We all liked giant, lush, fake flower gardens and liked to decorate the walls with streamers even if it wasn’t our birthday. I couldn’t have been happier there. Before that, I did dream of escaping. I always just figured it was gonna be a man who would take me away. I don’t know if I deserve a good man, but I think about it sometimes.

[ImTragic 734]

I once had a boyfriend who talked about all the reasons why he loved flags, Rock-and-Roll, and America. I didn’t know much about all of that, but I did love him and I wanted to be just like him. So everything in the videos — the Vegas pyramid, the brides’ smile, the groom motioning “cheers” — they’re all different expressions of the happiness I had when I loved a man who loved me and America. You don't have that traditional relationship where maybe you go out with couples at night, or you do normal things. It's more of an extension of the creative process. There's high-impact events that happen, or big adventures, or big fallouts. So it's inspiring, and it's not grounding, but it's what I need to keep going.

 

I'm really specific about why I'm doing something or writing something.But it always kind of gets translated in the opposite fashion. I haven't done it yet, but I've learned that everything I'm going to do is going to have the opposite reaction of what I meant. So I should do the opposite if I want a good reaction

 

I really liked Cat Power, because I felt like I really understood her. She was a person who really meant a lot to me, just knowing that it was okay to start your performance with your back to the audience, at first, if you really couldn't face it. I mean, a lot of the time I just really felt like, 'I'm not really sure if I can do it.' But I mean, I've gotten better.

 

I had a dream that I was waiting for someone to find me, and in the sky, where the stars were supposed to be, it was an Uber map. And I was watching this person get further and further away from me, where the constellations were supposed to be. And I woke up totally confused.

 

But, I mean, I saw him off and on for seven years, and I'm still close with him. He's someone who really influenced the way that I saw things, just in terms of not being able to have what I wanted. And just being close to a life that I really envisioned and loved. It wasn't a career thing, it was a lifestyle thing. I was passionate about him and what he did, and it was being close to what I loved, but not really having it. Which I felt was just symbolic for the way things had been for so many years, standing right next to something that was so beautiful, but never quite having it

 

You know, I was living in Hancock Park once and thought about a movie idea. I was renting this house whose high walls had been grandfathered in, so of course I kept making them taller and taller. And I had an idea about writing something about a woman living there, a singer losing her mind. She has this Nest-like security system installed, cameras everywhere. The only people she saw were people who work on the grounds: construction people and gardeners. One day she hears the gardener humming this song she wrote. She panics and thinks, “Oh, my God. Was I humming that out loud or just to myself? And if it was aloud, wasn’t it at 4 in the morning? Did that mean he was outside my window?” Then a storm comes, one of those L.A. storms, and the power goes out except to the cameras, which are on a different source. And the pool has been empty for months because of the drought. And she goes outside in the middle of the night because she hears something -- and trips over the gardener’s hoe and falls into the empty pool and dies facedown like William Holden at the end of Sunset Boulevard

 

When I was 16, I had a boyfriend. I think he was... 25? I thought that was the best thing. He had an F-150 pickup and let me drive it one time. I was so high up! I panicked and was worried I might kill someone -- run over a nun or something. I started to shake. I was screaming and crying. I saw him looking over, and he was smiling. He said, “I love that you’re out of control.” He saw how vulnerable I was, how afraid, and he loved that. The balance shifted from there. I had the upper hand

 

My little heart’s path has such a distinct road that it’s almost taking me along for the ride. Like, ‘I guess we’re following this muse, and it wants to be in the woods. OK, I guess we’re packing up the truck!’ It’s truly ethereal, and it’s a huge pain in the ass.

 

I was trying to carve my own piece of the pie in a creative way that I kind of knew how.

Like when I was working with my first producer David Kahne and I was in that mobile home for two years. I was between there and Williamsburg and I had a boyfriend then. It was a very happy time.

 

I define myself eccentric psychologically but in the interviews that it’s often misunderstood. Maybe because my life had a lot of transformations, more transitions.

 

I had a seven-year relationship with the head of this label, and he was a huge inspiration to me. I’ll tell you later when more people know. He never signed me, but he was like my muse, the love of my life.

 

I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m trying to do what feels right. I tried a lot of different ways of life, you know, things I never really talk about, just because they are kind of different. I didn’t really have one fixed way that I could envision myself living. Going from a good relationship to a good relationship—I thought that was healthy

[Alison by Slowdive 26,016]

i love her so fucking much

[Surf Noir 189,421]

my queen of disaster  

[ImTragic 734]

Yes, definitely. I was a different sort of child, as half the children are. They are or they aren’t. I was in that category of being free-spirited [laughs].

I go back now to visit my grandma and grandpa, but it’s not really somewhere I’ve spent a lot of time, not since I was 14. It’s beautiful. It’s a vacation destination. Olympics. It’s small, 2,800 people [laughs] it’s very different from here. 

It was boring. That town is crazy, too. I was a bad girl, but I’m good now. I guess I have some bad tendencies. I don’t like to do hurtful things, but I am drawn to the wild side. I love riding motorcycles; I love rollercoasters; I do like adrenaline. But I’ve also found true happiness when I was living in New York and working with other people in that way that we’ve talked about. So, I don’t know. But I don’t feel at odds with it. 

They didn’t have too much music around, but they actually both had really nice voices. My dad wrote country songs for fun, and my mom sang for fun. My dad liked the Beach Boys, my mom liked Carly Simon, but we didn’t really listen to them; we just put the radio on – whatever would be on the radio.

 

I would write fiction on my own time, and I liked writing in school. I thought that was one of the less offensive school subjects, so that was fun for me. I transitioned to singing when I picked up the guitar. I’ve never been good at the guitar – always been bad – but it did help me write for the first four years.
They sound like stories. I’ve been in New York now seven years, and it’s been a really long road, so the parts of my life that I draw from lyrically are maybe the more dramatic segments of the time that I’ve been here. But they are all true.

Do you feel like you struggled when you moved to New York?
Yeah, it was difficult, as it is for everyone. Maybe myself a little bit more, but that was my own fault.

SCHOOL

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

Lana Del Rey: I was social, just in a different way. I loved my teachers. I feel like kids can be hard to get along with sometimes and I don’t know anyone from my school I’ve been to. I’m sure they were nice.

Lana Del Rey: No, I didn’t feel ostracized. I just had different priorities. I was reading and writing. I was pursuing my own education [laughs] which paid off, I’ve learned so many different things.

What does metaphysics entail?

It’s not as complicated as it sounds. There’s different branches so it depends on which branch you’re studying. If you’re studying something like cosmogony, you’re studying about the origins of the universe, and how reality came to be reality. Like this space that we’re sitting in now – how did we come to inhabit this place? And why this reality strikes us as it is. I studied that up in the Bronx.

 

I did move into a trailer park when I made my first record. I got ten grand from Five Points Records and moved into Manhattan Mobile Home in New Jersey. And I was happy, because I was doing it for myself. 

Well, I lived in the Bronx for four years. I lived in Brooklyn for like four years after that. I always consider myself to have a serious street side, even when I was in high school. I mean, I was pretty crazy. Everyone I knew was really crazy.

I define myself eccentric psychologically but in the interviews that it’s often misunderstood. Maybe because my life had a lot of transformations, more transitions.

My life has gone through various incarnations, mostly transitions. But I don’t consider myself to be someone very provocative or radical – I embrace a lot of traditional things. But I believe in alternative lifestyles and in alternative relationships.

Yes, exactly like Twin Peaks. I was hoping to get out and get to New York because that felt like heaven. I like going to the corner store and tell you that a man [in Spanish], “Hello beautiful, how are you? ‘.
 

_________________________________________________

I remember for the short time we lived together in NYC, I used to come home from work and see the entire wall of our studio apartment covered in weird tropical backdrops from the Party City store. There would be tinsel everywhere and streamers taped to the walls and I was furious because it looked like the most bizarre amateur movie set, plus I was worried for your sanity because I couldn’t see where you were going with all of it. Looking back though, your obsession with strange nick knacks and Hawaiian embellishments were like little hints of colors to come for future sounds and videos.
Yeah, of course I remember those days. You hated my electric fishtank which gave me endless amusement. (She winks!)

For the record, I loved that fish tank, you gave it to me for my 19th birthday. I believe the inadvertant theme was ‘Chinatown.’ Now, I know you don’t love to talk about this because journalists have sort of mythologized your past but let’s talk about the trailer park you lived in for a few years- I shot you there when you were 22 and continued to shoot you there for a couple years while you were writing and entertaining and wrapping up your album with David Kahne. You were so sweet and happy that you had your very own place to write and reside in, and extra money from that $10,000 indie contract. It was also a sad time for you because you separated from Steven Mertens who had originally produced that record and who was your boyfriend at the time. I don’t really have to ask you this because as your sister, I think I already know, but would you say this was your most enriching time as an artist and happiest time in New York (despite the split from Steven.)
[Smile] Yes.

Do you remember decorating David Kahne’s studio? I remember sitting next to a decorative Urn during one of your recording sessions. Even now, you’ll bring ribbons or bows or specific iconography to recording sessions. How important is it that your space reflects your personal style or headspace?
I honestly haven’t thought about that in so long. I used to have to have some sort of talisman with me if I was writing. Something connected to the lyrics like a sparkle jumprope or a golden compact mirror- at the time it was really important. Now I have internalized so much of what I’ve come to love that I don’t think about it as much any more.

I loved New York. When I was there it was almost my sole source of inspiration, more than any other man, writer or rapper, but it’s harder for me to get around now. I used to take late night walks over the Williamsburg Bridge, go to all the 24 hour diners with $5 and beg the waiters to let me stay all night in exchange for the purchase of one giant slice of chocolate cake. I would sit for hours and read about interesting people like Karl Lagerfeld and listen to books on tape by Tony Robins to keep me company. I would take the D train to Coney Island, take the D train back to the Bronx where I lived on Hughes Avenue.

I did move into a trailer park when I made my first record. I got ten grand from Five Points Records and moved into Manhattan Mobile Home in New Jersey. And I was happy, because I was doing it for myself. There was a white trash element in the way there was a time that I didn’t want to be a part of mainstream society because I thought it was gross. I was trying to carve my own piece of the pie in a creative way that I kind of knew how. And I thought it was cool to be living by myself and working with a famous producer. I was excited about the future at the time.

Like when I was working with my first producer David Kahne and I was in that mobile home for two years. I was between there and Williamsburg and I had a boyfriend then. It was a very happy time. 

I was doing open mic nights in the city with my guitar at Layla Lounge, Galapagos, where those places are open. Same place every girl singer was playing. One of many tragic Lower East side songstresses, oh dear! What must they think? And I met really nice people. Everyone in Brooklyn was doing a folk thing, and I was in that camp, singing sort of jazz. I entered a songwriting competition, I didn’t win, and one of the judges on the panel was an A&R man at a record label that had no other acts and I signed to them. We sent my demo out to five people and David Kahne got back to me that day, and said I think you’re amazing I want to start with you tomorrow. He was like my Harvard reach school, I couldn’t believe it. I was really excited. It was the first time anyone of any importance said I was good and I ran with that validation for a long time. 

“I was always writing little songs, but nothing I liked then. When I left school I wanted to do music because I thought I was good at it and I wanted to do something that I loved. So my uncle taught me to play guitar and I did these little shows, just me and my guitar, singing and playing the five chords that I knew.”

———————————————————————————–

In her years in New York, working “odd jobs” and “helping out in the community, in alcohol and drug awareness programs” and playing the singer-songwriter open-mic circuit.  

Just going to open-mic nights and things like that. It was mostly in Brooklyn. It was a folk scene. When I was 19, I signed to an independent record label. I was the only act on their roster, and then that record was shelved. After that, I still wanted to sing, but I started focusing on being an active member of my community.

In fact, she seems to be retracting more and more from public view, after buying a house in Los Angeles with her brother and sister. 

 

There was an older song that you’ve never heard called “Pawn Shop Blues”. [sings] “In the name of higher consciousness / I let the best man I met go / Because it’s nice to love and be loved but it’s better to know all you can know.” Because I remember I’d met someone so special and famous but I knew he wasn’t enlightened about how to be a good person. I knew it would get in the way of me becoming a nice person. That’s a difficult choice to make. 

How did you meet this famous person?
Um, it was in a self-help group. [laughs]. He wasn’t that famous. I just thought he was famous…

TV famous or movie star famous?
Rock star famous.  Just middle of the road ish. To me he was famous because I didn’t know anyone who was wildly recognisable. I remember thinking it was exciting at the time.

[ImTragic 734]

S. Where are you from?
LG. All over.
S. No, really.
LG. No really, all over. I’ve lived in Lake Placid, New York, Birmingham Alabama, Coney Island and New York.
S. Tell me about growing up? What was life like before coming to New York?
LG. Hmm. Growing up was just waiting to come to New York. 
(Lizzy requested not to talk about her life before New York in any more than a general way. She did reveal she was bred and buttered in Lake Placid and sent to boarding school at 15 years old, never to return except to visit her mom, dad and little brother, who still live there.) 
S. Okay, no questions about your life before New York. What’s your favorite color? Or do you prefer not to talk about it?
LG. I like blue. I like gold. (laughs)
S. You’re signed to Five Points records. How’d you get the record deal?
LG. I entered a song writing competition in Brooklyn, my first and almost only competition. And Van Wilson was a judge there.
S. Who’s Van Wilson?
LG. Van is the A & R guy for 5 Points Records. He was a judge on my night and he asked me to call him and so I called him right away. 
S. What did you and Van talk about when you made that phone call?
LG. I was (pause). I felt desperate. I had a lot of questions. I didn’t know who to ask them to? I didn’t know what he did? I just knew he said he was in the music business and I didn’t ever know any one who said they were in the music ‘business’. So I thought, you know, when you find some one who’ll talk to you, you just ask them anything. So I asked him everything. I asked, do you think I can sing? Do you think I should sing? Do you think this is stupid, to want to be a singer and he said, for you no! Not for you. For most people I don’t think it’s a good life, but I think you can have an audience. I asked him, how do I do it? And he said you just play, just play and sing.
S. So you met the right guy and got the right phone number on the first shot.
LG. Yeah.
S. That’s pretty much the dream, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t know, but I hear there are a lot of creeps out there!? A lot of liars out there that might say they’re something they’re not…
LG. It’s true.
S. You only hear that in the movies.
LG. It’s true. I’m going to have to keep that moment in mind when things are hard.
S. Did you win the contest?
LG. I won my round. I didn’t win the whole thing. The song writing competition loved that for PR.
S. How do you characterize your music?
LG. Well, I say that it is in the genre ‘Surf Noir.’ One of the first producers I worked with, Steven Saint, learned a lot from Dick Dale (father of surf music, pre-Beach Boys) so the beginning of the sound was influenced by some sounds from Hawaii and surf guitars, so that’s where the surf comes from. And the noir comes from, I like old movies and I just listen to old music cause it’s good. Eh, it just sounds good!
S. What kind of music do you listen to? Who do you listen to?
LG. I like The Flamingos and I like Elvis. I feel like they are my contemporaries. They’re my friends. I like the Beach Boys.
S. Who’d you listen to today?
LG. I listened to Elvis and the Flamingos and myself. I like myself too. (laughs)
S. How many songs have you written?
LG. Oof, a hundred. A hundred good ones.
S. What would say to some one who wants to become a singer? I mean, your conditions are extraordinary.
LG. Yeah, yeah, it doesn’t usually work out like that. With that being said, I guess you gotta ask yourself are you good. Either you have to be some one who’s really good, or some one who can be better than any one else who’s around. Or if you think that music is something that you want to make a life at, well, you just do it! Just don’t stop.
S. Regrets?
LG. Probably. But all the cool people say they have no regrets.
S. What don’t you like about the music business?
LG. I’d like to feel like I knew what I was doing.
S. I hear you don’t have a manager right now? Can you talk about it?
LG. Yeah I can, I’m just not sure what to say. It would be fun to have some one who could snap his fingers and make things happen. Especially since we’ve had good magic with the project and it seems whenever some guy, some big wig gets involved then good things happen. I feel if I had a new manager I’d have some new projects going on. I got a little bored but I’m having fun making my own movies and writing.
S. Movies?
LG. I have little videos.
S. The youtube stuff. You make those?
LG. I do.
S. Tell me about one of your songs. Tell me about writing “Mermaid Motel.”
LG. I wrote “Mermaid Motel” because I was so happy. I was on such a roll. I wrote three smashing songs, in my opinion. I wrote “Queen of the Gas Station,” “Jump,” and “Put me in a Movie” in a week. And that’s how it happens. I have to wait so long, I never know how long, could be years (for inspiration), but I know exactly when I have a song, and it comes all at once. It doesn’t take long to write. It comes with the melody. It comes with the harmonies and I have to take as long as it takes that day, because then it does leave. 
S. Anything else about your songs you want to talk about, anything that inspires you, or any story you want to tell about any of your songs?
LG. I don’t know, there are certain visuals that seem to keep coming up like things that are gold, Vegas or handsome guys or motorcycles.
S. You mean things that keep coming up in your songs? Is that where your head is at?
LG. I don’t know. It must be, ‘cause they reappear. …I don’t get tired of them (Laughs).