Ryan Adams

Fri 23rd Jan, 2009 in Features

Ryan Adams has declared that it’s over – he’s retiring from music. Or, so the new reports have said…

“Of course I have been taken completely out of context…again,” complains the darling of alt-country. “I’m not quitting music. It said in my original blog – and I don’t blog at that original site any more – that I was looking for something a bit quieter and a new structure.”

So, in effect, Adams has not quit music, or retired, or anything like that – instead he’s simply decided that the time is right to disband the Cardinals, a band that he’s been playing with for several years now, and will soon embark upon a tour in Australia with him.

It’s not for no reason, or a simple whim, that he wants, or needs – as he says – to do this, but instead because of a serious concern that he has with a debilitating problem with his inner ear, meaning that he struggles with his balance, with hearing himself on stage, or with performing in the guise of a loud and brazenly up-front rock – œn roll band. Writing in a blog on January 14, 2009, he announced that the March 20, 2009 show in Atlanta would be the band’s swansong, due in part to his being diagnosed with Meniere’s Disease, a disorder of the inner ear that usually involves the sufferer having progressive hearing loss.

“I think change is good,” he affirms. “I’ve been changing a lot, and my lifestyle has changed a lot and the band and I have different ideas about what makes us happy – and I mean on a personal level. On a musical level I can’t stay in the Cardinals where it’s kind of solo and it’s kind of not; it’s too hard for me. It’s worse than when it was just my own name.”

Two years ago, however, things were very different. At that time Ryan was complaining that his band wasn’t getting enough recognition given their contribution to his sound, and that – in an ideal situation – he would have liked to remove his name entirely from the billboards, and simply appear as the Cardinals.

“That’s exactly how I feel. It’s not about projection it’s about being challenged – I want to be in a band,” he says, “and I want to play guitar and sing but I want someone on the other side of that to be either playing guitar and singing or playing bass and singing who has as many songs as I do that go on the record, or we totally harmonise completely.

“When I say a band,” he continues, “I don’t want to just pretend and be on a stage, but I want to sit in a room and collaborate with people on a deep level and feel challenged, and feel like I’m on the end of as many ideas as I’m exuding to the point where people – and I mean the press – doesn’t understand it to be a record that I made. The only review I’ve read of Cardinology in Rolling Stone [where it garnered a glowing 4-star review] talked about the record as though it was a solo album, as they it was a construct of mine. And I realised there was no way forward for me here, and I don’t want to continue.”

Ryan clearly feels under attack by both his fans and the media and very much like he can’t win. Criticised in 2005 for making three records in the same year – double album Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Night, both billed as Ryan Adams and the Cardinals releases, and the sombre 29 – he also feels just as pilloried when he holds back, and only releases an album every couple of years, with Easy Tiger coming in 2007 (and credited as a solo album) and Cardinology following it up in 2008 under the billing with the band.

“What the fuck is wrong with being inspired?” Ryan asks. “I don’t want to play this game anymore. I think I might be best as a motivational writer with other people, or as the bass player or the drummer in a band. I know I have stage-fright now; I’ve done the therapy. I’m sure you understand the perceptions of who it is that I’m supposed to be, and can you imagine what it’s like to deal with that perception of who you are when everybody knows that 50-70% of what is said and written about a person isn’t true? Especially in entertainment; it’s just part of the game, and it’s not fun.”

Yet, having been creative for such a long time in the musical field, it’s hard to imagine that Adams will simply stop expressing himself. Indeed, he confirms that he’s got a second book – a follow-up to his debut, Infinity Blues, due in 2009 – finished, and that ”...there are other musical things that I can do where I don’t have to be a person of speculation. There are other ways to make music where it doesn’t hurt my ears so bad because I am SO DEAF.”

Adams expresses no regrets, however, in channelling his creativity into music.

“I understand sociology and the rule of the mob and I understand trends I know what it’s like to have your character publicly assassinated when all you’ve done is sung a sad song and someone yells at the stage for forty-five minutes. I understand how juvenile and cruel people can be, and how kind people can be – I’ve seen both. I’m not tooting my own horn here, but I’ve more than done my share of the work. I believed in rock – œn roll to the point where I did it so hard it started to destroy my simplest physical abilities. I think I’m more than justified and entitled to step back, and even walk away if I decide.”

Ryan Adams and the Cardinals final ever Australian tour kicks off next week.