E, Eels

Mark Everett, a.k.a. E, is the man behind the Eels. If you know his music you know that his family has influenced him strongly by their absence, with albums like Electro-Shock Blues dealing frankly with his sister's suicide and his mother's death from cancer. Here's a song from that album with a cheerful video.



E: It wasn’t that musical a family. My mom sang in church and there was always music being played in the house, but the biggest musical influence on me was just the records that my sister was playing. My older sister used to play a lot of records and that’s what had an effect on me.

Did her tastes have a big influence on you? Do you listen to similar stuff?

E: Yeah, she was listening to really great stuff. Neil Young, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, all that. A lot of good influences.

One more quick question. I love it whenever you howl in a song; where does that come from?

E: I’ve always been a bit of a screamer. It pops up occasionally over the years. It’s something I’ve always been interested in. I remember being a teenager and listening to Sly Stone records in my car and I would roll up the windows, ‘I’ve got to learn how to scream like that,’ and I would roll up the windows while I was in a traffic jam and start screaming along. If you do that long enough you start get better apparently.

Tom Waits is a great howler too.

E: He is a fantastic howler. He recently complimented me on my howling, which was the greatest compliment ever because he is the master howler.

Kevin Swaby, The Heavy

Kevin Swaby is lead singer of The Heavy, who blend rock, soul, funk and hip hop. He sings like a preacherman werewolf.



“I’m one of 11. Our house was like a club. I could go in, see mum and dad playing anything from rocksteady ska to Al Green, little bits of Motown, it kind of went across the board.”

One of 11? That's a lot of kids.

“I was the last one. I don’t even think my mother knew I was there on the floor for a couple of days.”