2024 marks the 25th anniversary of the release of The Magnetic Fields’ marathon album 69 Love Songs.
The album is about love, but it’s also about songs about love. In it, different corners are inhabited by rockers, balladeers, jazz heads, even art song eccentrics, but they’re all dwelling under the same irreverent roof, jabbing the ribs of the love song genre. Still, 69 Love Songs is heartfelt, moving, and sincere. Stephin Merritt is the backbone of the album, instantly recognizable from his magnetic bass voice. The founder of The Magnetic Fields, Merritt spoke with Sound of Boston in anticipation of a performance of the entire album; all 69 songs, in order, over two nights at Roadrunner on March 24–25, the start of their 25th anniversary celebration tour.
Tristan Geary: I know The Magnetic Fields have some deep roots in Boston. What is your connection to the city?
Stephin Merritt: I went to a few different schools there from elementary through college, but we moved around all the time. So I never went to any school more than four years. Most of them less than one year. My mother was a hippie, we moved around a lot.
TG: It’s not the first time you’ve done this [type of concert], if I’m not mistaken. Does it change each time?
SM: The song order never changes. The arrangements change a great deal.
TG: How so?
SM: “The Book of Love” is originally played on baritone ukulele, and for this tour it’s played on cello. We don’t ignore the original arrangements—we contemptuously sneer at the original arrangements, forging our heroic new arrangement.
TG: Where does that come from? Is that being bored with the original arrangements, poking fun at them, or just being playful?
SM: The Magnetic Fields on record are one thing and live are a different thing. And if we tried to sound just like the record, we would fail spectacularly because records are often made with electronic setups that cannot be duplicated…so if we just start with the song rather than the arrangement as the germ, we can go off in different directions.
TG: There’s a plethora of sounds in the recorded album. What kind of instruments can we expect to hear in the live version?
SM: We will be an eight-piece in Boston. It does keep changing. We have guitars and ukuleles and pianos and keyboards. I am singing and playing a little bell and a little egg shaker. I’m playing hardly any instruments on this particular leg.
TG: A lot of the songs on that album are quite short.
SM: I have two chihuahuas and drive a Mini Cooper and play the ukulele, so I like small things.
TG: Is that kind of a trademark of your songwriting?
SM: Well, the most recent album was called Quickies, and the longest song is under 2:15, so, yes.
TG: For the creation of 69 Love Songs originally, is there a specific composer or artist who you could pin as the most influential in the creation of the album?
SM: I don’t think so. I was inspired by Charles Ives 114 songs. But that’s art song. Very little of 69 Love Songs is in a particular genre, but only two or three of [the tracks] are art songs.
TG: What can you say about your relationship to Charles Ives?
SM: I remember reading his biography and feeling shocked to discover that he was as enthusiastic about insurance as about music. He was genuinely passionate about insurance and how it could be a great thing for people’s lives. This is 100 years ago, when insurance was essentially the only social safety net—other than the church, if you happened to be in a church with people who liked you.
TG: Will there be any insurance sales pitches at the gig on Sunday?
SM: Not if Charles Ives stays in his grave.
TG: What is the rehearsal process like for doing 69 Love Songs in its entirety? Do you rip through them as an ensemble, or are there ones that require lots of reworking and special attention?
SM: There being 69 love songs, as you can imagine, it fluctuates greatly between hugely complicated, and short and sweet. Sometimes we neglect the short and sweet ones until the last moment and realize that we actually need to work on them. That’s what’s happening today.
TG: What work needs to be put in when you say “work?”
SM: It really changes song to song. Sometimes there’s only two players, but they’re in different keys, and we need to decide which one works better. All of our voices have changed in the last 25 years, so there’s a few songs that are up or down a step, but mostly we’re using the original keys. Sometimes that means that we have to change who the singer is—but we already have to change who the singer is on at least 6 of the songs because one of our singers died during COVID, possibly of COVID, we don’t know. The coroner was very busy at that point. So we have to redistribute those songs. Hopefully we will all survive this tour and not have to redistribute any more songs.
TG: Yes, hoping you will survive as well. Do you have any favorite or least favorite pieces on the album to perform live?
SM: The favorite ones for me are the ones I don’t play on, so I get to actually listen to the music. When I’m singing or playing something, I need to listen for utilitarian reasons, to listen for my cue and that sort of thing. But if I don’t play on it, I can actually hear it. So those are my favorites.
TG: I know you have some quirks with your hearing. How has that been to manage playing live shows, especially a marathon show like this?
SM: Well, we don’t have a drummer, and I don’t sing very loudly. My hearing trouble is not part of being hard of hearing, but having excessive hearing in one ear. So I can’t deal with very loud and shrill sounds, so there [are] things that I can’t play. One of them is that I can’t actually play an acoustic guitar—middle string acoustic guitar—because that’s in the range of frequencies that makes my ear freak out. So I quickly can’t actually hear what’s going on. In real life, outside of music, I wear earplugs for any loud areas, like subways or bars or Times Square or something.
TG: How much attention is paid to the staging and the way that the show looks?
SM: Well, we haven’t started yet, so Boston is going to be the first set of shows, and we don’t know what it’s going to look like until we’re there. From that we will start developing some intentionality about the visuals, but we are not using a slideshow or fireworks or anything.
TG: No smoke machines?
SM: Definitely not.
The Magnetic Fields will perform 69 Love Songs over two days at Roadrunner on March 24–25.