Ryan Adams: 'It took a lot to know who I was again'

Photo: Press

"That was a dark fuckin’ time," says a wide-eyed Ryan Adams, glancing through his long, tangled fringe as he sips on his tea in Soho's Dean Street Townhouse. "At the very end of The Cardinals I was just out of all kinds of gas. New York was done for me, I don’t think I even knew that yet. I was just done, and so there was this whole time where everything just stopped. The ideas stopped and the reasons for doing them stopped."

The very notion of Adams finding himself at a loss for inspiration seems totally bewildering. Today, during a whirlwind run around London that will see him wow the Invictus Games, Later...With Jools Holland and the iTunes Festival (casually having friend and collaborator Johnny Depp join him on stage for two shows at Shepherds Bush Empire), he's an artist sitting on a wealth of material.

Here's an artist who's released 14 solo albums in 14 years. Beyond that, countless EPs and one-off singles. Adams is friendly and forthcoming as he bounds about the sofa to discuss his favourite passions - including recording studio Pax-Am, comic books, heavy metal, working with Bob Mould and Johnny Depp, Star Wars, where in LA to get the best fish taco and the best way to wear a denim jacket. He's a restless man at the peak of his creative powers - so what went wrong for him to wonder off the trail?

"The feeling was gone, and I hadn’t experienced that void before in my life, even when I thought I had writer’s block," says Ryan. "I was desperate to write, the need to communicate was there. Around Love Is Hell is when I had writer’s block, which is super-weird – which is why that record was super weird because I was actually writing about writer’s block on that record and nobody can tune completely into that because of the way that I wrote it. That record is almost entirely about watching television and movies and writer’s block.

"At the end of The Cardinals thing, so much of my life changed. I quit smoking, I had long-since quit taking drugs and drinking and I moved to the West Coast and it just got really quiet. I did a bunch of stuff to get to know myself in a deeper way. I had to handle a lot of physical issues, that I later found you handle mentally."

Photo: iTunes Festival London

The main physical hurdle Adams had to overcome was suffering from Ménière’s disease (a potentially debilitating inner-ear disorder than can cause vertigo) and the ensuing reluctance to play live.

"It was my balance issue," admits Adams. "It was like when you go jogging, after 15 minutes is when it gets hard. There’s a five minute interval where you’re like ‘God, I just wanna stop now because I’ve run now’. That’s the five minutes that sucks. That’s the five minutes where I shut my music off and have a deeper conversation where I left myself know that just on the other side is an entire rush. That’s what happened when I quit writing."

'Through hypnotherapy, I understood what my problems were. Why was I spiteful? Why was I scared about music? Why was I angry about music? What was wrong?'

By the time that Adams came upon the writing of 2011's stripped-back and soulful Ashes & Fire, he "didn't even know how to any more" - neither for himself, a band nor for any alternate reason or personality. The answer? Running up a nearby mountain, and facing his demons through hypnotherapy.

"You get really relaxed," nods Adams, remembering his hypnotherapy sessions. "It lasts an hour and I could understand what my problems were. Why was I spiteful? Why was I scared? Why was I angry about music? What was wrong? I think just being dizzy and afraid that someone was going to flash lights at me on stage made me not want to do it, because it makes me want to fall over. Before I fall over, it’s like having a panic attack. My nervous system feels like there’s electricity shooting through it, and I feel like everything is going to the right."

Beyond his own fears that were driving him further and further away from music, he had one more demon to square up to: himself. Taking a long look at himself in the media, he found himself baffled by the cartoon that had been created, made all the more frustrating by the fact that Ryan Adams himself is resolutely focused on the music alone.

"I made so many mistakes when I was young," he bashfully smiles. "Drinking and not being sure of myself and not being sure who to please and had to find my way. Honestly, I did things like a big dumb puppy.

"In the music press, I was just bumbling around, pissing on the rug, chewing on the fucking shoes like an idiot. I just thought that was what you were supposed to do, and I did it at the time when it all changed. When Dionysian ideas of excess went from being the stuff written about in books, to being the stuff written about in social media, that really changed people. I don’t think you could have a Jim Morrison kind of person now."

'I did things like a big, dumb puppy. In the music press, I was just bumbling around, pissing on the rug, chewing on the fucking shoes like an idiot'

At this point it's worth considering how little the media caricature of Adams resembles the man sat opposite Gigwise. The facts speak for themselves: you don't write a surplus of 14 albums in 14 years with a plethora of side-projects and endeavours if you're constantly wasted or foppishly bouncing between celebrity parties. His workrate is simply astonishing.

Photo: iTunes Festival London

Adams did, however, make fans grow a little restless during the wait from 2011's Ashes & Fire. After all, three years is a pretty standard turn-around for most artists, but it's the longest gap he's left between releases. As you can probably imagine, those three years were not just spent playing pinball and drinking tea (two of his favourite pastimes). In that time, not only did he record his self titled album, but also the break-neck garage punk EP 1984, and another album that was a tender tribute to his late grandmother. He spent $100,000 recording it, but ditched it because it was 'too sad'.

Either way, that's three records, folks.

"There’s more than that," Adams is quick to correct. "There’s the singles that come out every month. The Jacksonville single, the next single is about to be announced, then the one after that, then the one after that. There’s a lot of stuff. Hundreds of songs. That time was the most fruitful period I’ve had in a long time. We don’t even know how much stuff there is."

Listening to Adams speak about throwing himself into his work is not only inspirational, but it's enough to make even the most restless of polymaths feel just plain lazy. So what is it that keeps driving him onwards?

"Basically, you’re a human vessel, you have your muse – which would be the thing that you long for that you can not have. It’s like your star. Then there’s the motion of making it and the will and the inclination to make it is like the wind at your back. In order to get yourself in a position to get yourself towards the muse, you have to put yourself in the wind."

'There's the motion and will of making a record, and that's the wind up your back. To get back towards your muse, you have to put yourself in the wind'

He gestures outside and goes on: "I would see all of this, and it made me know a lot of things. It made me know that I have to go to my studio and I have to go hire my friends who have regular jobs. I need to go and say ‘Take six months off of your job and just come and play music with me every day’. We’re going to get ourselves in the wind. As soon as I did that, all of that information that I was uncomfortable about made itself available to me. I had to tap into something that could last a little longer – an intellectual pursuit, a song that has an intellectual destiny.

"All of these channels became very narrow to me and I started seeing a much larger, more energetic place to go.I knew who I was again."

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