James Mercer On How Heath Ledger’s Memorial Service Changed His Life

Our stream of Heartworms, the new album by The Shins, was delivered together with lyric sheets and James Mercer explains it's "because The Smiths did it" that he chooses to do so. "I could sit there and sing and, oh!" he lovingly recalls of devouring The Smiths lyrics while listening to their albums back in the day. "Yeah, I love that." 

We love it, too, but stumbled upon a term in Rubber Ballz (from Heartworms) that we're not familiar with. What's "saltpetre"? "Saltpetre!" he laughs. "Right, yeah... saltpetre is some sort of a chemical that — in prisons, they used to give it to the inmates so they wouldn't have erections [laughs]. That's some sort of thing that, I guess, apparently makes you impotent. So [the song's protagonist is] like, 'I should've mainlined saltpetre instead/Can't get you out of my bed,' blah-blah-blah."

Heartworms is a series of vignettes, so we wonder... Mercer is still laughing. He's sitting across the table at a board room inside Sony Music HQ in Richmond, looking super-relaxed in a long-sleeved, dark blue checked shirt with black T-shirt underneath. What's so funny? "I just think it's so funny you picked that one out," he admits of the saltpetre question. Okay, settle down. So from whom did Mercer draw inspiration from for the murderous character in the aforementioned track? "That one, um, Rubber Ballz I kinda loosely based on this couple that I knew when I was in my 20s in Albuquerque and the girl was just, like, this incredibly charismatic and powerful personality. She was really beautiful and stuff, and she kind of like ran my buddy through the ringer, haha, and it was kind of like really funny to watch, but also, you know, sad for him.

"She was just an impressive person. She actually moved to Paris and is now a jazz singer in Paris, with a contract, and she speaks perfect French and she's, like, amazing; you know, she's just one of those characters. She probably doesn't even know — well she knows who I am now, because of stuff, but, like, at the time she was just this person that, you know, didn't know I existed, but she was dating my buddy. So I kind of took that and then I kind of amplified it, so I turned it into where she was actually having him stab people [laughs], right? Those are the lyrics and then at the end he kills her! So it's like Shakespearean or something. I'm just, like, using whatever I can to come up with something that's engaging for me, yeah."

"She actually moved to Paris and is now a jazz singer in Paris, with a contract, and she speaks perfect French and she's, like, amazing; you know, she's just one of those characters."

The album's lead single Mildenhall, so named after a small market town in Suffolk that Mercer once called home when his father was stationed at a Royal Air Force base "is a really autobiographical thing", Mercer allows. In this case, we just have to know what The Jesus And Mary Chain tape was that Mercer mentions a kid passed him during class in the song's lyrics. "It was Psychocandy," he enlightens. So did Psychocandy have a massive impact on the teenaged Mercer? "Yes it did, over time. Like, when I first heard it I just thought it was the weirdest damn thing I'd ever heard, you know; I think I made my own copy of it and then gave it back. Um, but what was cool about it is that there were songs there and they were easy to play — it's like cowboy chords, you know? So it was, like, really hip and weird, but it also was pop. So, I mean, there's stuff that's almost country music-ish, you know, and rockabilly-ish sort of vibes to that so, yeah! It reached me. And they looked cool as hell. So it was kind of my introduction to what that was, like, being hip and cool."

It was around this time, when Mercer was 17, that he "really got into" going and seeing shows. "I had some hipper friends who were adventurous enough to [be] like, 'Let's go to London and we'll go to this club and we'll buy Popov vodka from the bottle shop'," he chuckles. Mercer then reflects on some of the gigs he attended while living in the UK: "I saw House Of Love and My Bloody Valentine and The Telescopes and the Throwing Muses, and all kinds of just interesting bands."

He then moved back to Albuquerque, New Mexico "in the summer of '89". Even though Mercer acknowledges The Second Summer Of Love (and particularly The Hacienda in Manchester) "was really poppin'" around this time, he adds, "I didn't really understand anything about that and also I didn't know anything that was going on in Manchester at the time I left; that, for some reason, had not infiltrated our little area in Suffolk... It was a ways away, you know?"

Mercer admits he did purchase a smiley face T-shirt from Carnaby Street, without realising the garment was "an acid house thing". "I was such a poser," he laughs.

"It's weird to think that Manchester would have its own distinct scene at all," Mercer muses. "And at the same time the same thing was happening in Seattle; there was this sort of unique thing that — I don't know if that can happen anymore, I don't know." Because of the internet, perhaps? "Yeah, we all know everything," he chuckles.  

Fast forward to 1996, which is when The Shins formed, and we're curious to find out what sort of goals and ambitions Mercer had for this band. "I remember describing it one time as wanting to make some kind of little dent in the culture, like, have some sort of presence, you know. I remember saying that to a friend and him kinda being like [laughs], you know, 'Don't get your hopes up, kid!' Um, the other thing I remember was I was really exhausted, I was tired of the sort of tongue-in-cheek '90s-indie scene where everything was kind of half a joke; like Weezer and that, which I love, and I love Pavement — I love them still. But by '99 or so I was kinda like, 'Goddamn it! I wish I could hear a fucking song like Seven Seas by Echo & The Bunnymen that's a real guy fucking singing about something that he's feeling - this passionate feeling - and he's not afraid to just be, like, earnest for a moment, you know? So I kind of started trying to do that. I wanted to create something that could give you the chills again. And that came together with things like New Slang and so on. So it was actually from a very rebellious thing. I mean, I started talking shit about punk rock and, like, you know, just talking shit about the bands in town; I was really pissed, it's weird. I was, like, grumpy [laughs] and that's why there's New Slang."

New Slang — the lead single from The Shins' 2001 debut album Oh, Inverted World — was a slow-burner, but the song developed cult status after being featured in the film Garden State (2004). On whether he's held this up as a yardstick when writing songs since, Mercer offers, "I don't write from such a cerebral place, you know. I'm really kind of blindly searching for chords and waiting for something to happen sort of serendipitously. So I'm not strategic enough to be like, 'Okay, New Slang worked, now why? Let's just get in there and let's do it again. We can do this,' you know? I just don't think I could do it if I tried.

"I'm not strategic enough to be like, 'Okay, New Slang worked, now why? Let's just get in there and let's do it again. We can do this,' you know? I just don't think I could do it if I tried."

"It's funny, though, I remember when I gave Sub Pop the second record, Chutes Too Narrow, um, I think they wanted to hear something like New Slang again and, haha, Jonathan [Poneman], the owner, suggested that I go back to New Mexico... He felt like there was something about that song that sounded pastoral and like it was from the Southwest or something. And there is that element to it, but it really has nothing to with, like, well, you know, hanging out in my shitty apartment in Albuquerque but, um, yeah! So that's as close as I ever got to that sort of idea."

Reflecting on his decision to allow McDonald's use of their song New Slang in an advertisement, Mercer confesses, "I mean, really honestly, I regret it now. I'm willing to admit I regret it." The New Slang-featuring McDonald's commercial in question aired in 2002 around the Winter Olympics, which were hosted in Utah. So why did he agree to it then? "That happened so early on," he shares, "I didn't know that we would be around another year... and I was in debt and all that, blah-blah-blah. And I've never been a vegetarian or any of the things that maybe would've given me the sorta political understanding of what it meant. It was right before the shit hit the fan with, like, Super Size Me.

"We got paid good money to do it and we knew it was not cool — we knew it wasn't, like, a punk rock cool thing — but I was kinda so anti-punk rock," he continues. But Mercer stresses he regrets agreeing to the sync because it alienated fans of The Shins: "It sucks that that had to be the fly in the ointment and it's my fault, I guess, for not understanding the culture. I think when you're from Albuquerque in New Mexico — where I was living at the time — we just felt like we were on the ass-end of the universe [laughs]... you just don't put a lot of self-importance on what you're doin'. I just had no idea that it would have the impact it did, unfortunately... There were a lot of people who just kind of abandoned us because of that; they just turned their backs on us, you know."

When asked whether there was anyone to consult on the impact a brand association such as this could potentially have on his band back then, Mercer recalls, "The people around me — even the music writers and journalists and stuff that I spoke to about it, 'cause I was asking everybody, like, 'What the fuck am I gonna do? What do I do?'... I only got the 'don't do it' or 'you shouldn't have done it' after I did it. I mean I had, you know, people like Mike McGonigal, who at the time was doing this thing the Yeti [magazine] and he was a big writer, he was like, 'Dude, you're gonna regret it if you don't take this money. In five years you're not gonna be in a fuckin' band, you're not: you're gonna be back at the goddamn — in the cubicle, working with everybody else,' you know? So there was that fear of regret; everything goes through your mind. At that time it was early to do that sort of a licensing and, of course, it fuckin' had to be McDonald's, right? If it had been VW it would've been waaaaay better [laughs]. It would've been a thousand times better."

Still, Mercer is relieved that this particular Maccas ad "did not air for very long". So did he actually catch the commercial during its three-month stint on the idiot box? "I saw it one time on TV... and I was stoked! I was so stoked," he laughs.  

"I just realised that if I were to die I wouldn't have this fuckin' parade of awesome people [laughs], you know? Like, I'm a fucking ghost in comparison to this guy."

Mercer was asked to perform at Heath Ledger's memorial service in LA and credits this experience as changing his outlook on life. He'd previously met Ledger and Michelle Williams "near Melbourne" when The Shins tour manager at the time married a local girl. "It was all kinda timed with when we were on tour," Mercer explains of the TM's nuptials. According to Mercer, Ledger and Williams "were really sweet and really cool, and liked The Shins — they were into the band and stuff — and so we just had a great time and partied and stuff". "I mean, the other connection was [Ledger] working with Isaac Brock [Modest Mouse], my buddy up in Portland, on a video [King Rat]. 

"But then [Ledger] passed away and I was invited to sing something. And I knew Michelle would be there and so I went down and did that." Mercer says that even though he "didn't know Heath very well... it was really moving" to see "the impact that he had on the people around him". "And just the stories that people were telling about him made me really realise that I was — my introversion and my being sort of shy and all that was, like, gonna fill me with regret later in life," Mercer recalls. "Like, he was not like that; he was a very gregarious person, it seems. And I just realised that if I were to die I wouldn't have this fuckin' parade of awesome people [laughs], you know? Like, I'm a fucking ghost in comparison to this guy. And so it inspired me to just jump into things and be more brave and stuff.

"I mean, like, shortly after that I got asked to go down to Chile on this crazy trip where I was supposed to play guitar and go hiking through the woods and all of that, and I never would've done that — partly because I would have had to talk to people I didn't know, and I would have to be around them — and so I would've said, 'No, I'm scared, haha, I'm not gonna do that'. But I started saying yes to those type of things and it's, like, then you meet people and you realise that it's not so scary and you sort of you come out of your shell. You have to try — like, if you're shy, you have to make an effort."

Mercer remembers singing "a Merle Haggard song" at Ledger's memorial service, which is "the only memorial service [he's] ever been to". "It was very touching and scared the shit out of me," he reiterates, admitting that he came away from the service wanting to make changes to his own life "because [Ledger] was extraordinary from what people were saying". "One of the reasons I worked for so long with the first three dudes who were then in the band that I'd been in all through the '90s — you know, the reason I was with them is 'cause I was scared," Mercer reveals. "I was just shy, I couldn't — I was afraid to work with other musicians, you know, for whatever reason.

"It's better to break out and meet new people and all that," he laughs, "and have new experiences. And, like, working with Brian was a huge thing, Brian Burton, that was huge," Mercer extols of the pair's Broken Bells project.