EELS Frontman E Discusses His Open-Heart Surgery and the Band’s New Record

When artists set out to promote a new album, their publicists often encourage them to have “a story.” Mark Oliver Everett, otherwise known as E, frontman and chief songwriter of the band EELS, has a lollapalooza of a tale. His father, Hugh Everett III, developed the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Today, his theory powers the Marvel multiverse and countless other movies, TV shows and novels about parallel worlds, but Everett wasn’t recognized for his work until late in his brief life. He died of a massive heart attack in 1982.

E, who was 19 then, discovered his father’s body, and, a decade later, endured the deaths of his sister, who committed suicide, and his mother, from cancer. Left without a family, he chronicled his experiences in EELS’ 1998 masterpiece, Electro-Shock Blues, and his inspirational and funny 2008 autobiography, Things the Grandchildren Should Know.  

In 2017, the Everett bloodline rebooted when E became a father at the age of 54. But the story does not end there. Shortly after the band’s post-pandemic Lockdown Hurricane tour, his CT scan revealed an aortic aneurysm, and E underwent open-heart surgery to have it repaired.

The health scare did not curb his creativity. On June 7, EELs released its 15^th studio album since forming in 1996 (not counting his two solo records in 1992 and ’93). “After 25 or 30 years, whatever it’s been, our time has finally come. It’s finally EELS time,” he says — which, if you put an exclamation point at the end, is the album’s title.

After a spate of hard-rocking songs, EELS TIME! finds E, now 61, in a contemplative and grateful mindset accentuated with a poppier sound. Below, E discusses the album’s collaborative efforts with All-American Rejects frontman Tyson Ritter, the poignant music video for “Time,” which depicts three generations of the Everett family, and much more.

You’ve experienced quite a lot over the last few years: fatherhood, divorce, open-heart surgery.

It’s always something right? I got used to that a long time ago.

You’ve had quite a lot of experience with mortality. How is dealing with your mortality different from dealing with the deaths of loved ones?

Well, the one thing I don’t have any experience in is hospital experience. I’ve never been in a hospital before, which was a great run. I’m thankful for that. I was in the hospital for a week, so that’s a big deal. It turned out great. I’m totally good as new now.

It’s great that you were staying on top of your health.

It’s the one good thing that came out of my father having a heart attack and dying at 51. Doctors would tell me heart stuff can be very hereditary so keep an eye on stuff. Get scans. Whatever the best scan is technology-wise, get that. It was a CT chest scan that discovered the problem. [My condition] was not related to what happened to my father. It’s a different thing, but it’s still a heart related-thing and it’s only because of his early death that I found out about it.

How did working with Tyson Ritter change your creative process? Did you collaborate in the same room or were you throwing stuff back and forth via email?

It’s funny because we found out we were neighbors and literally live three blocks away from each other. But we did it all remotely. It was still the pandemic and I have a little kid in school. I didn’t want to be the asshole that shuts down his school by getting Covid.  

You also feature on indie-pop artist meija’s “Possum.” How did that come about?

The thing with Tyson started with me singing on a song he did, too. And then the meija thing happened. That just came out of the blue. A mutual friend contacted me and said, “Hey, this guy would really like to have you on a song.” He sent me the song, and I was like, “Oh, this is cool. Yeah, I’ll do it.” I even went so far as to be in the video.

“If I’m Gonna Go Anywhere” is one of my favorite songs on the album. It has a Bobby Gillespie/Primal Scream vibe,  

That one is all credit to Tyson, by the way. That’s his musical doing. I’m singing and writing lyrics mostly on that.

In the chorus, you sing that if you’re going anywhere, you’re going “there.” Where is “there”?

There is simply if you have a choice to make, why not make the nice choice. Why not choose love.

“Sweet Smile” is like that, too.

That’s exactly what “Sweet Smile” is about. Sometimes I’ll be walking down the sidewalk and I’ll realize I’m not scowling but I’m not smiling. I’ll think smile. And I’ll smile and it’s weird. It’s like, everything feels better and easier when you smile. With that song, I wanted to to write my version of [The Seekers] “Georgy Girl.” Just a nice, innocent song about walking down the street.

“We Won’t See Her Like Again” seems to be about someone you lost. I realize not every song is autobiographical, but I’m wondering if you wrote that about your mother or sister, who you lost at a young age.

I wrote that one with Chet from the EELS, and I don’t feel like it was specifically about anybody at the time. A lot of the songs that I’ve done over the years I can’t access if there is a personal experience that I’m writing about. And years later, I’ll look back and go, “Oh, that’s what I was writing about.” I think it’s a coping mechanism that helps me write unfiltered — to not let myself know that I’m disclosing all these things about myself in some cases.

When I hear “I Can’t Believe It’s True,” I’m thinking could E have found love?

Yeah, I’m hoping that song will be one that people will play at their weddings. We’ve had songs go on to become really popular that we never would have thought of as a single at the time they were released. They take on this big life because of being played at weddings or whatever. Really, the inspiration in the back of my mind was thinking about my kid. So, maybe it can be played at weddings and births.

Has your son Archie formed his own band yet?

No, I got him a little drum set because he’s at the exact age that I was when I started playing drums. And I didn’t want to push it on him. He likes to bang around on everything, but he has not shown anywhere near the kind of interest I had in it so far. But that’s fine.

It’s there if he decides he’s into it, but also I think I should probably get him an instrument that would make [him] more money.

In the letter you published on the EELS website a few days ago, you wrote that you almost lost your mind during the first part of the Lockdown Hurricane show. What was overwhelming you?

First of all, I was super jetlagged. Going to Europe overnight; that always makes me crazy. We hadn’t played in almost four years or something because of the pandemic. You might remember the pandemic. So, we finally got out there to play, and it was an extreme culture shock for me because it was the double whammy of being a new father — a new divorced father — during those years of lockdown. I got really used to nobody caring about me. Do you know what I mean? When you’re a father, you’re the last person in the family anyone gives a shit about. Then suddenly, from the first show of the first tour in almost four years, it was like everybody super cared about me and it really fucked with my head. I didn’t know how to process it, and I didn’t know how to act. I don’t get stage fright normally. I’m usually very comfortable being on stage, but I started to have a panic attack right before the first show. For the first week, I was just insane. Then I got my bearings, and it was, “Okay, it’s coming back to me now. I know how to do this.” I’m sure a lot of people have gone through situations like that from being in such an extreme situation during the lockdown years and then being thrown out. Then it was great. It was like, “Oh, people. This is fun.”

Will you be touring behind this album?

I don’t know when we’re going on tour yet. The last one took a lot out of me. It was a good one, and we worked really hard. But since we just went, it might be too soon to go right now. Maybe we’ll go in late summer or the fall. We don’t know yet.

“Song for You Know Who” is about not repeating the missteps of the past and forgiveness. Is that directed at yourself or someone else?  

I’ll never tell. My favorite thing about that song is going to become my least favorite thing about it, too, which is that everyone I know is going to suspect it’s about them. I couldn’t resist calling it that because I just thought, it’s going to drive everybody crazy around me. But I’ll never tell.

The video for “Time” is very poignant and emotional to watch. And having read your book, understanding the sense that you had no family and to see now you do have family, it’s really touching. Did that idea just come to you or was it something that you wanted to do for a long time?

When I wrote and recorded the song I didn’t have the video concept in my mind. It wasn’t until later – I can’t remember what sparked I, but I just thought, “Oh, wait a minute. There’s three verses. We can do photos of my dad in the first verse.” It fits the theme of each verse.

Then the second one where it says, “I’m riding on the train, I’m ready to stop anywhere and see what’s out there,” that’s like young me going into teenage me and EELS me. Then the last verse is about how I want to be here and I don’t want to ever leave because I like being close to the ones I love, and that’s my son.

The beard looks very strong in the “Time” video

That was filmed the day after I came home from our tour, and I couldn’t wait to get rid of the beard. That was my pandemic beard, and I was like, “Oh, we’re finally going on tour. I’ll save it for that. It’ll look cool onstage or whatever.” Then I couldn’t wait to get rid of it by the end of the tour because a beard like that is a lot of maintenance and a lot of work. So I called the director of the video and said, “I’m going to get rid of the beard.” He was like, “No, just keep it for one day after the tour and we’ll shoot it then.” The next day I trimmed it down extensively.

Okay, so you’re not in Fidel Castro territory anymore.

At the moment, no. But it can always come back. It comes back overnight if I want it to. I’ve got a lot of testosterone.