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Gothamist Band Interview: Nick Zinner of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
By
Jeff Baum
Published May 2, 2006
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jeff Baum
Published May 2, 2006
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs was nice enough to talk to us over the phone not too long ago. The guitarist answered a few of our random questions about music, New York and Kelly Clarkson.
The band just played a massive set last weekend on the main stage at Coachella, and are now back in New York City (starting tonight) for two consecutive shows at Roseland.
Photo via www.auralminority.com
What kind of music are you listening to right now?
Um, not much recently. I feel like I've been more into making music than listening to it. I've been doing a bunch of remixes with whatever time I have. I bought the new Gris Gris record when we played with them in San Francisco.
Any thoughts on Kelly Clarkson stealing your riff from maps in since you've been gone?
You know, I can’t say that the word lawsuit hasn't crossed my mind, but at the same time...I don’t know. The YYY's have definitely stolen stuff before...so I guess it’s karmic.
Were you surprised when you heard that song? Did you instantly recognize it?
I was shocked! I couldn’t believe it. But...then I read some thing about the dudes who wrote the song, and I guess they were...they wanted it to sound like the Strokes? And that would be even worse, but um, I don’t know, its really strange. Not sure what my legal grounds are, but I think it would be pretty obnoxious...it'd be kind of like the Metallica/Napster thing. It's not even worth it.
So, you still live here in the city. What's your favorite place to eat? Drink?
I kind of like to stick to old habits...I like to eat at Zen Palate in Union Square. And for drinking, I usually go to bars my friends are working at, so I end up at Mars Bar or Lit or any of those places.
Do you have any venues in the city that you particularly like to play?
Um...I like Bowery Ballroom...It's still my favorite place to play. The Hammerstein and Roseland are a little bit...I dunno. I think we're still trying to get comfortable playing at that size. Not even the size of the stage or the size of the place, it's just that the biggest problem that I have is the bigger the place that you play, the further away the crowd is with all the barricades and the sort of ridiculous security measures that have to be in place. That’s definitely kind of hard for me. I like for people to be able to jump on stage.
You're now back on tour with the YYYs, but you've been playing with some other bands for a bit. How is that different from playing with bands like Bright Eyes?
It like night and day, those shows are so much more relaxing.
You have some other side projects, like Head Wound City. Are there any plans to get any shows together with them?
We're gonna try to. I mean, its hard to cause all of our bands are pretty busy for the most part. Like, it took 7 months to find that one week where we were all free. We played one show in September in San Diego, which was so fun, we're gonna try ad play another one at CMJ if we can, but I'm sure it'll be like one show every year or every two years.
Is there a lot of crossover between the YYYs fans and the ones who listen to HWC and might come out to those shows?
I definitely thought that lot of Blood Brothers and Locust fans would be YYYs haters, but it was incredible that a lot of people were really into what we do.
I know you're still taking pictures. Are you working on another book or just doing it for fun? Or has it always been for fun and you just kind of put it together?
Pretty much always been doing it for fun. Books are just something that happens when I get a large amount of photo that I'm excited about. So if that happens again, then I'll probably do another book.
Tagged
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Gris Gris
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Music
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Nick Zinner
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yeah yeah yeahs
Jeff Baum
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