Bruce Hornsby: "I'm looking for thrills" | The music

Bruce Hornsby could have spent his years gradually getting out of the MOR superstar. He could have continued to produce albums that sounded a little like The Way It Is, the world-famous piano-pioneered song in 1986. And now he'd probably have co-starred with tours titled Everlasting 80s, perhaps next to a list of Mr. Mister with an original member.

"It's a bit petty," said Hornsby, laughing softly. "But I know what you mean. And it would be a prison for me.

Would he prefer to stay home in Williamsburg, Va., Watch basketball all day long rather than go to that past?

"I prefer to teach at school," he says. And he's laughing again.

Obviously, Hornsby did not go on producing albums that sounded a bit like The Way It Is, even though it's his best-known song of all: the one sampled by Tupac and Snoop Dogg, the one whose DNA – of the synthesizer covered with rolling piano – is very present in the last two albums of War on Drugs. Instead, he has spent the last 30 or so years following a singular musical path.

"I'm looking for chills," says Hornsby. "It takes me a long way, from traditional traditional music, to folk music, bluegrbad, country song, song size, gospel, black tradition in church music, The most astringent, acrimonious and dodecaphonic modern clbadical music regularly inflicts on my poor, unsuspecting public, much to his chagrin. "

It is nevertheless quite possible that you consider the news of Hornsby's new album, Absolute Zero (which presents the long-time admirer Justin Vernon, of Bon Iver), with the best apathy and the worst disdain. I happened by chance, looking for something easy to play in the background while I was working, and then my socks were hit by one of the most unexpected discs in the world. 39, year, that of experimentalism research married to a rich melodic. If it was by these new Puritans, everyone would give it to their heart's content.

"There are minimalist composers who influenced me on this record – Steve Reich, Philip Glbad, John Adams – and this tends to be a less chromatic and dissonant field of music," Hornsby explains. "But the influences I've been in for many years are the great American avant-garde composer Elliott Carter, Schoenberg, Webern, Olivier Messiaen, Ligeti. Ligeti and Carter appear on this disc. That's before you read the lyrics, which were shaped by the reading of David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo, among others. But how did he get here? How did the guy with the terrible ponytail and MOR hit eventually make discs as unconventional as Absolute Zero?

The Way It Is has become a hit by accident; No one at RCA wanted to release it as a single, but a producer of Radio 1, Mik Wlikojc, took it back. Hornsby had been a musician for years – trained at the conservatory (in Berklee) and in dozens of bands – so he already had a huge frame of reference. "On the one hand, I'm a graduate musician. So I studied deeply and was introduced to an incredible variety of music at the university. But at the same time, I played in a rock band. I played at fraternity parties, with Animal House-esque fencing to prevent beer bottles from flying and hitting us. I played in country club parties and bar mitzvahs, playing KC and Sunshine Band. I played in rehearsal bands playing Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers and the group at "Grain Alcohol" parties to dance hippies.

He thought he was prepared for pop celebrity. "And then I realized: I'm really bad at it. That's why I thought maybe I was not as prepared as I was older. Damn, I was 31 when it happened, so I got under the wire. In a nutshell, I was bad enough to be a pop star. I was at a festival of radio fans, at a table with a pile of CDs or records, with a pen in hand to sign records. And all around me, there was New Kids on the Block, Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, and my 31-year-old donkey over there, and I'll say, "What's wrong with this picture? I would end up in places where I would think, "Hmmm, I wish there was an eject button that I could push right away."

There was also an advantage. He was originally a songwriter and producer on the three albums of Bruce Hornsby and The Range, at a time when CDs cost a fortune. So he earned the money that allowed him to continue his own idiosyncratic path ever since. "And we started asking me to play on so many incredible artists' records – Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Bonnie Raitt, again and again. I need to get into their worlds and see their process and learn from it, especially Robbie Robertson. But probably more importantly, I was asked to play with the Grateful Dead. I did it for a few years and the relationship lasted until 2015 when I gave the farewell concerts. "

Hornsby says that people mistakenly badume that the dead have released him to improvise; He points out that he has been trained as a jazz pianist and has been improvising for years. Maybe what they did, however, freed him from waiting to stay on the path to music. It's certainly since his years with the Dead that Hornsby has gone wherever he wants, whenever he wants. And now he has several disparate audiences coming to see him. "There are people who come to see me in the hope of a nostalgic evening, a walk in the memories," and they are generally disappointed, "he says." Then we have a group of people who are audacious listeners of music and who are interested in seeing our spontaneous movements, how we are going to take the songs and move and change them, so that's the audience we really want. " Justin Vernon's endorsement, which is also featured on his latest album, Rehab Reunion, "we're getting more and more of a younger audience looking at grandfather in search of forever." Again, he laughs from the absurdity of all this. "Although I am not yet a grandfather."

There is a place in the middle where Hornsby wants to be, but not in the middle of the road. "It's very simple to be very simple, to paint with numbers, to copy the latest fashions, styles and modes and to do something very simple," he says. "It's not hard to be very obtuse and obscure and get out of your music and do something completely impenetrable. For me, the really difficult area in which to work is the middle ground, where you are trying to do something that has depth and gravity that also connects. This is where I live. There are excellent examples of this over the years – Peter Gabriel has been. There are several indie rock and alternative bands that have this kind of success – Arcade Fire, Bon Iver. I think it's the hardest thing. So it's in the center for me.

It's a very particular version of the environment, certainly. There is nothing bland or unavoidable about it. But if you only listen to one record this year by a 1980s MOR star who now embraces "the realm of modern clbadical music that most people really hate", then Absolute Zero should # 39; be.

• Absolute Zero is now available on Zappo Productions.