For more than two decades Richard X. Heyman has earned a reputation as a pop stylist with material that sounds like one classic nugget of melodic sunshine after another. Over that time the singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and home recording artist’s approach involved playing nearly all the instruments and contributing nearly all the vocal parts along with assistance from his wife, Nancy Leigh. His craftsmanship and knowledge of the form — based on the early days of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kinks, Beach Boys and onwards – also led to playing drums for Brian Wilson and collaborating with Peter Noone (Herman’s Hermits).
Heyman’s method has produced a consistently strong body of work — eight albums and 2 EPs — on major, indie and self-financed labels. For his current release, Tiers/And Other Stories, he offered a twist to the same hook-laden pattern of the past by basing the tunes on the piano rather than guitar. The results on the two-CD, 31-song release remain stunning.
Regarding the project as two separate albums packaged together, Tiers recounts the early stages of his relationship with Nancy including separation and reconciliation. “And Other Stories” is just that, tales of their life together as well as other New York-based stories for this New York-based artist.
My conversation with Heyman spans his former days with New Jersey garage band, the Doughboys, and its recent reunion, crafting shimmering pop material in the non-soundproof confines of an apartment, giving the people more than they want and much more. ***
JPG: Good to finally be speaking to you after all these years after discovering you with the album, “Hey Man!” Just out of curiosity. Is your last named pronounced ‘Hey man’ or ‘Heymun?’
RH: It’s usually pronounced ‘Heymun.’ One of those strange things with the English language how certain vowels aren’t pronounced the way they’re supposed to be like Bill Wyman, Richard Heyman, you say ‘men’ instead of ‘man’ even though it’s spelled m-a-n. Of course, the Americans have totally abandoned the letter ‘t’ in the middle of a word to a ‘D’. You don’t say, ‘wa-ter’. It’s ‘wader’.
*JPG: Yes, such as spelling it Worchester, Massachusetts but pronouncing it ‘Woo-stah’. *
RXH: Now when you’re singing sometimes, you’ve got to make that decision if you want to pronounce that ‘t’ in the middle of a word because it sounds unnatural for an American to say ‘Wat-ter’ or ‘bot-tle’ because it’s got a ‘d’ now. It’s funny because I was trying to write a screenplay and I started to try to write the words phonetically like the way they are actually spoken and I started, I put all these d’s in the words because nobody pronounces all those t’s anymore. (laughs)
JPG: Generally, you’re referred to as a pop artist or pop perfectionist, what is your definition of pop music because it’s changed over the years?
RXH: In the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, they still would refer to an up-and-coming band like the Rolling Stones as a pop band. It was just sort of semantics, the term to describe popular music. I never considered myself a ‘pop artist.’ I’m not that popular.
JPG: Then, how would you describe yourself?
RXH: I don’t really put it into words. I just grew up playing music. I started listening more to jazz, classical and show music before rock ‘n’ roll. As a drummer, I was more influenced by big band jazz played by Buddy Rich, Elvin Jones, Gene Krupa, that kind of thing. But getting back to your question, it’s just a term. It’s just a short term of popular; it’s really just whoever is defining it at the moment. I don’t put too much stock in it, terminology. I think of myself as a musician.
JPG: Hearing songs such as yours it’s that unabashed pop sound. It evokes the British invasion and the ‘60s, that time when pop was still viewed as an art form rather than the pop of today where it’s more of a packaged cookie cutter songwriter/production/image type of thing. I think that’s why your music gets people really excited. It goes back to the arranging/writing art form in its core.
RXH: I try. I try to do that. I grew up in that transitional period when it was almost this teenage fad into an art form, when you think of the transition from “She Loves You” to “Eleanor Rigby.” “She Loves You” is a great piece of pop writing and yet some would argue that it’s just as valid an art form as “Eleanor Rigby,” but there definitely was a change. And so I grew up in that era where I felt like rock ‘n’ roll was a very interesting kind of art form.
JPG: In what’s viewed as modern pop, I think it all really changed with boy bands, pop divas and American Idol. Do you see it as going back to basics in a 21st century packaging?
RXH: I look at it in two different levels. I see it as entertainment and then I see it as art. You have this whole Madonna era dance music which brought back entertainment in a level of music, whereas what I was trying to obtain lofty bordering on, I don’t want to say pretentious, but just bordering on, trying to be, experimental and a little more interesting that was happening in the late ‘60s. It was a natural development from what Dylan was doing with lyrics. Beatle-esque pop/rock music. Indian music got merged in there and all these things were happening to make it this very eclectic mix. That was progressing and then you had different artists go back to trying to create good dance records that were a little superficial in a way but good, valid in a way. I think there’s some great Madonna.
JPG: And also, something like the Ramones, who at its core the music is bubblegum pop but just played in a particular type of packaging.
RXH: I agree with that. Almost like bubblegum on speed or something like adrenaline through bubblegum music. It had that energy, dedication to that style, which I admired.
JPG: With your material, how many songs have you recorded and released?
RXH: Not sure of an exact number.
JPG: Approximately 600 or over a thousand?
RXH: I have no idea. I usually put 14 songs on my albums and went about nine albums or something like that.
JPG: Was there any reason for 14?
RXH: Originally, it was just a homage to the British Beatles albums. Usually, they have 14 because, somehow, I don’t know if it was a financial thing or vinyl was different, but most American albums would have 11 or 12 songs. Early British albums appeared, they seemed to have 14 tracks on them. At least, the Beatles did. It was just a little tribute to that.
JPG: I didn’t know if it was an artistic decision. The songs themselves, I could see them so easily developed for others.
RXH: Getting covers is always nice. I don’t push for that. Lately, I’ve been working on getting songs into movies and TV. Always good to do.
JPG: By the way, when I visited your website I didn’t see a tour link.
RXH: I haven’t been performing because I just made a conscious decision not to perform live. I play drums in a band called the Doughboys. It’s where I get most of my live jones. Just to get out there. I always consider the drums my main instrument. I enjoy doing it. As far as my solo career, I may pick up again and start doing gigs but I haven’t any plans.
JPG: Those questions are leading to something. So many artists, in a reaction to how the music industry has changed, they’re touring to make money because the recordings aren’t selling. For yourself, do you have things figured out that you don’t have to tour?
RH: As far as money from music, most of that comes from song placement with TV and movies as background music. It’s a tradeoff on a certain level as far as trying to get a tour going because you have to pay the musicians. You have to find the right venues that would work good with you. To get all that together didn’t seem feasible. I haven’t really been performing for awhile. I made that decision.
JPG: You also played drums with Brian Wilson. When was that?
RXH: I don’t remember the exact year. It was when he was promoting a film called I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times. He did some promotional shows. I was in that band.
JPG: You started playing drums at the age of five. So, you’ve been addicted to music for quite a long time.
RXH: Definitely. A whole lifetime.
JPG: Do you remember the very first song or the very first conscious moment where something clicked with you?
RXH: First, there was the big band jazz because that was being played in our house. So, those were the earliest memories of hearing Gene Krupa play with Benny Goodman. But my first real rock ‘n’ roll recognition was hearing “Uptown” by the Crystals. I had three older sisters and occasionally they would go to the hamburger stand, these drive-ins, back then. Every now and then, they would let me tag along in the back seat to be with their boyfriends. I would be in the backseat of the car as a little kid and I heard “Uptown.” I was sitting there and the speaker was right behind my head and it was absorbing the song and it just really had this emotional impact. It was just one of those recognitions when, ‘Boy, I love music!’
And then I remember hearing “Wake Up Little Susie” by the Everly Brothers. That hit me hard, too. Every time I’d see the Everly Brothers were going to be on TV, it was always a big thrill. The anticipation that they were gonna be on TV. I just loved their pompadours and, of course, their great harmonies.
JPG: I’ve read that your music is even influenced by Broadway musicals as well as hearing everything from British invasion and Beach Boys and so much more in there.
RXH: When I was growing up, my parents would take me to see Broadway shows. We lived a half hour outside New York City; just to go in and see all these first run great musicals. Just hearing the pit band would be so exciting for me. I would always run up and look in there to see the drum set. Always a big thrill.
JPG: All of that has become a part of your musical DNA. It just seems to flow out so easily.
RXH: It’s always nice to soak up all of these influences and then, hopefully, it comes out the other end as something original out of all that. You can hear the influences in there, but it’s not derivative. That’s always the best combination.
*JPG: Can you think of a moment on “Tiers” or the other album “And Other Stories” where such an influence consciously came to you, maybe where you’re stuck and you think, ‘Oh yeah, Paul McCartney did it this way on this, why don’t I try this kind of arrangement.’ *
RXH: I don’t really think that way, more in service of the song. I’m so emotional about music. I think more in terms of the way it makes me feel more than how did somebody do it back then. I will say that when I’m singing there’s always my favorite singers, how to compartmentalize with my brain. So you’re going for a certain note or a certain line, you might think Stevie Winwood in here. I might think McCartney or Lennon here. I might think Dylan here. There’s that little connection because those are your influences. That’s what you grew up. You pick out your favorite singers and they’re all in the back of my head. As I’m doing a performance I might subconsciously go for a stylistic slam dunk. As far as general arrangements, my feeling is what emotionally is going to work more than how the Beatles did it. Maybe that’s in there, but I don’t really think about it.
JPG: Just curious, since your multi-tracked and harmony vocals evoke that pure pop ideal do you have some idea of your vocal range?
RXH: I just know that my speaking voice is a little high. I have more trouble with low notes than high notes. I’m always changing keys to get the best possible range. As far as high notes and the like, I can scream out a “B.” If I had a gun to my head, I could probably scream out a high “C.” Low notes drag me out. I’ll probably be the only singer in the world that does songs higher live than the recorded versions. Not everyone, but a lot of them are 1/2 step or a whole step higher than the recorded version just because live I need a little more of that push to hear over the band.
JPG: Because you’re singing in a higher range, I think that adds to the brightness and the sunny qualities of the songs.
RXH: One can only hope. Sometimes when I’m recording, I’ll put a song in the lowest key that I can possibly do it because I feel that the song might sound better with a little more of that somber quality at the low part of my voice, the baritone part rather than the tenor part. I don’t know, I am somewhat weird between, not really a true tenor, not really a Baritone. All that in between.
JPG: When I see the lengthy list of instruments you played on the albums and I hear your vocals multi-tracked, it makes me think of Todd Rundgren doing all the work on a number of his releases.
RXH: Oh, yeah. I started doing one-man band things like ’69/‘70, right around when McCartney first came out with his. I started doing it because I was working at a friend’s studio. He had a four-track. Being a drummer, I just naturally decided to put down the drums first and build up the track. I started getting proficient enough on the piano to be writing songs and putting chord progressions together. I was doing it back then but none of that stuff ever got released. But I happen to have it all. They’re not bad. Developmental. You have to start somewhere.
JPG: If the Stones can go back and pull old tracks and patch ‘em up for a new album, you could, too.
RXH: I have this album, Actual Size, where I went back and picked a lot of my earliest songs and re-cut them. Put that out a few years ago.
JPG: When Rundrgren was doing that type of thing, were you like, ‘I was doing it and now he’s getting all the credit?’
RXH: I thought it was a goof. If I hear music that moves me, I’m not really that concerned and impressed with the way it’s done as much as the end result. That’s how I feel about my own stuff. It doesn’t matter to me, how it was done. How does it feel when it’s all said and done is really what I care about. There’s this romantic view of the path to creating music, which is fine. Makes great stories. Some people are real sticklers for methods. They want to keep things pure. I respect that. I just don’t care about those things. Whatever it takes to get what I need.
In country music, they call the capo (a clamp fastened across the strings of a guitar to raise the tuning) the Cheater because you’re slapping this thing on the guitar and it’s making it easier to play on different keys. Now, it’s just an established way of playing the guitar. If you write a song that’s an open string ringing, you don’t want to lose that just because you changed the key. So I look at everything like that. With all the modern technology, I will say, I don’t use any sort of harmonizer or pitch correction because I don’t have those things. I do all of that the old fashion way. But it’s not because I believe in the purity of it. I could have those things and don’t know how to work them, yet.
The Doughboys
JPG: For yourself was it just a matter that it was much easier to get out of bed and work for four hours, take a dog for a walk and come back and work for three hours and you don’t have to deal with anybody else?
RXH: It all started from being in bands that for one reason or other would break up and you’d have these personality conflicts. You have all the tension that goes with being in a band. And when I finally started to find myself in a recording studio I wasn’t in a band at the time, I just started to overdub one instrument at a time which was fun and I got the song done. So, it was just the way I did it.
With the Doughboys we’d lay down the tracks altogether. It’s great! Something great about being in a room, musicians all playing at once, the different chemistry that happens. The spontaneity. It’s all valid. Whatever works. I once got a review early on and some writer was grousing about the song “Sidetrack” or something that was a little bar band sounding track. He admitted this track was great. It’s rockin’, and then he said, ‘But just knowing that he’s playing all the instruments kind of discredits it for me.’ I felt like that’s bullshit in a way. Once something can be done, once the technology is there, I think it’s valid.
JPG: I find it more impressive and more shocking to compartmentalize it in your head. Doing the drum track and having the feel and the swing to make it go with everything else that gets added on to it in order to make it sound like a full-fledged band that’s playing together.
RXH: That all stems from being a drummer. If I was not a drummer, I guess there’s people that play drums, but that’s not their main thing. Being a drummer, even though I’m not hearing the song, I’m still playing it pretty much the way I would play it with the whole band around me because I’m just sitting there singing the song to myself. I wrote the song and I’m singing it. I can feel the whole groove that I’m playing. Once you lay that down…The other advantage, too, is it all started with the drums and as you layer each instrument in you just make sure that next instrument really fits the drum track ‘cause once you’ve locked in with each instrument, all these little flaws go away because these recreate a band playing live.
JPG: The new albums are more piano-based, did you still go with that method of drums first or did you go piano first this time around?
RXH: This was the first album that I didn’t do the drums first. That’s because we had our little studio set up here, Logic Pro set up here. I live in a New York City apartment, so I can’t do the drums obviously, so I was so into the piano at the time, writing these songs, that I just laid down all of the piano and vocal tracks first. And then I went to a place called EastSide Sound, here in the city, and did the drums. Then I took that home and filled in the rest. Actually, when I did the drums I didn’t even listen to the vocal track. I just listened to the piano, just pianos and drums.
JPG: You bummed me out a bit when you said that you went somewhere else to record the drums because I imagined your apartment studio being like a soundproof panic room where you could even record the drums.
RXH: We, obviously, have people living right above us and below us. I’ll be like in my boxer shorts screaming vocals out on a microphone in our bedroom and then we start laughing wondering what these people must be thinking. They, honestly, can hear us because we can hear people when they play their TV or talk loud through the wall. It’s a little restraining in a way that technically somebody’s listening.
JPG: There you go. You may not do live performances, but technically you are for better or worse for your neighbors who may not be in the mood or are trying to take a nap.
RXH: (laughs) I am. We would always stop at 10 p.m. We just knew people could hear us.
JPG: Maybe that’s how you can start an album with the sound of a fist banging on the wall.
RXH: (laughs) We haven’t got to that point. We have had a few times at our other apartment recording there. We try to be respectful, we usually do a couple hours a night. Afternoon, we’ll do a couple hours there, a weekend afternoon.
JPG: With the way you write and record are you always writing and recording, working on something at your home studio every day?
RXH: Oh, not every day, but if I get an idea for a song… The only thing that’s changed really radically for me coincided with the time we moved to this new apartment, which was eight years ago. I stopped doing demos of any kind. I don’t really do work tapes. I always would just sing into a cassette playing guitar, piano and the vocals. So, I had a record of what to remember, what I did. I just got this thing in my head where I just didn’t want to do it anymore because I felt like I’m just gonna record it for real as soon as I can.
Of course, things pile up and other things happen, so a lot of songs are lodged in my brain and then they either disappear or they stick with me. I’ve been losing a lot of songs over the last years, have come and gone through my head and I didn’t get time to record ‘em. And because I didn’t get to record them in time, I forgot ‘em. Just kind of silly and stupid, but it’s just the way I do it now.
JPG: Why be so anti-demo?
RXH: Because I couldn’t keep buying these little cassettes. I’ve got literally, I don’t know how many, thousands of these cassette tapes in cabinets and drawers, filled with ideas over the last 30 years. Never probably going to ever listen to ‘em again. I pity the poor person after I die that’s going to discover the drawer with all that crap.
JPG: With the new albums, tell me about the ideas behind them as far as was it a concept first or did you just have a batch of songs that happened to fit a particular approach…?
RXH: I wanted to do a piano album. My original idea was I wanted to do something akin to “Ladies of the Canyon” by Joni Mitchell. I wanted to do a very acoustic — piano and vocal — very sparse, adorned with little things here and there and maybe a couple of guitar songs with it, but acoustic guitar. That’s how it started. And then things got out of hand. I started going back to my old ways of filling everything up. But instead, the only conscious decision I made was to try and keep the guitar to a minimum or not at all. I had just done that to death. How many guitar type albums do I need to make? I made a lot of ‘em, 95 per cent were guitar-oriented.
I got to write these songs on piano and that was the general concept, and then after I wrote the songs the whole lyrical theme was just coming out naturally. I wasn’t attempting to write about my relationship with Nancy. Sometimes you write and beget phrases that pop up right with the chord changes, kind of sparks the rest of the lyrics. And they all seemed to be about how I met Nancy. How I left her to go to L.A., and…I just let it happen. At a certain point, I had five or six of ‘em. Every one’s archived. I have to finish this now. Then, you get a little conscious of, ‘Okay, I’ve started this story which is based on fact.’ I knew what part of the story was. Very basically, it’s boy meets girl, boy leaves girl, boy gets back to girl, gets books and cats and lives happily ever after.
JPG: One of my favorite songs is “Game Stays the Same,” especially the reading of the letter.
RXH: Oh, thank you. That’s Nancy’s favorite, too.
JPG: Was it artistic license or a discovery of the actual letter from you to her?
RXH: Well, the letter was real. I may have edited, musically, to what I needed. But what happened was we were both living in Bethesda, Maryland and I took off to L.A . Moved into this apartment on Melrose and LaBrea the summer of ’77 or ’78. And my birthday was coming up and Nancy was very upset that I left but still wanted to maintain the relationship as friends or whatever it was going to be. She sent me this birthday present, these pajamas. So, my thank you letter for the present, I sent a letter which just fit right into the story. We called that as close as I’m going to get to rap music, I guess.
JPG: The letter really flows nicely from talking about what was going on with you and being at the Troubadour and Gene Clarke to…
RXH: That, too, was just one of those almost metaphorical moments. That’s all true. I did meet Gene Clarke and I didn’t think I’d see him again and I didn’t. Next thing I know he was gone. I felt like this tied into this whole story. At the time, I didn’t realize that I really belonged with Nancy and I shouldn’t be taking that for granted. I may wait too long and she may not even take me back, kind of like don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. don’t put off today…whatever. I thought the letter expressed that.
The other thing, too, when you were talking about the concept and thinking about this first record where I really…a lot of times you’re working in terms of certain boundaries like what’s a good radio song and how long should it be? You’re thinking about your audience. Thinking about styles. I didn’t have any of those thoughts on the sound at all. I didn’t think about, ‘Will this be a good radio song? Will this be a single?’ Those thoughts never entered because I just wanted to tell the story. The song meant I got to read a letter at the end of it. If the song passed 10 minutes, I don’t care. People don’t want to hear it, there’s nothing I can do about it. I just went out on a ledge there.
JPG: Was there any particular reason why you packaged Tiers with And Other Stories ?
RXH: What happened was all my albums, from the very first one, and I know Springsteen does this as well but I didn’t realize it until I read it, I pick a large pool of songs that I have. If you’re fortunate to be prolific and you have a lot of songs to choose from it’s always better to pick about 30 or more songs that are in contention for the album then you whittle it down to just say 14. So, this was no different. The only difference here was, on my older albums I would just pick songs that I had in my older repertoire. I wrote one that day that was a contender or hade one from 15 years earlier. It didn’t matter where they came from. Just as long in the end they came together for what I needed.
But on this album I wrote all the songs one after another, which I’ve never known to do before. Toward the end there was close to 50 songs. So, we’re just recording like we always do. I kept thinking that this was just going to be a single album, one disc. Then, I had all these songs recorded. It was matter of how you package it. In the past what I would do would put out the album and a few months later, I would put out what I call a bonus album. That’s what I should have done for this album in hindsight or looking back at it, what I wish I had done was just call it “The Other Album, “Bonus Tracks Album.”
Every double album in history has gotten flack when it comes out. People still put down “The White Album.” Then, I said, ‘Maybe we could get around that by calling it a twofer.” That was an idea that backfired because seeing the difference between what I’m calling two separate albums, well, in fact are double albums. I thought I’d fool people and say, ‘It really is semantics.’ I hoping people would just view “Tiers” as the main album and when they got around to it, they could listen to the other one.
I think the complaint is being accused of being indulgent. I understand. So, I was expecting a lot from an audience in this modern technological world we live in to sit and listen to…I never expected for anybody to listen to it all at once. Unless you’re really in a mood to soak up an album I say, ‘Listen to “Tiers,” an hour of music right there. ‘And even that’s too much I guess, but that’s how it all came out.
JPG: Actually, because one thinks of you in such a pure pop sense, when I did see that “Tiers” was 62 minutes I was surprised that it wasn’t more in the classic 40 minutes to 45 minutes.
RXH: I’m the first to admit that I got carried away. I had all these songs and I just figured to just hope for the best. I mean, you can’t tell people how to listen. But if I could, I would say, ‘Just listen to seven songs and stop, you know like you used to on vinyl. Listen to side one, ‘cause if you listen to just seven songs, then you’re getting an earful. You’re getting a whole side of album and take a break.’ That’s the main criticism I’m getting is that it’s too long, too much. I understand that. On the one hand it’s a good deal financially; you’re getting your money’s worth. People have different attitudes listening to music now.
JPG: That’s the interesting thing. You grew up in a time, as well as many others, where there were singles and they were collected onto an album. Then, by the time of say “Sgt. Pepper” that all changed where it was more album oriented. Now, it seems like we’ve come around again to single songs being important.
RXH: Downloads have people that want to just download the song they like. That’s the new single. I guess to younger people what a single is, the single song that they downloaded.
JPG: For you as a writer and an artist, and having gone through those changes, do you consciously or subconsciously write each song as a single or in the case of Tiers, using each song as one part of the whole.
RXH: My older albums, before there was this whole explosion with the internet, digital recordings and being able to download, being able to clone the original, in that era I still was in that kind of mindset of trying to write what I would consider an old style way radio single. Each song I tried to craft it to be…you’re trying to get the great American pop song. You’re just trying to attempt that each time. With this album, I didn’t think that at all. I wasn’t thinking singles. If anything, I was thinking emotions, just the cathartic way it made me feel. Had to get it out of my system. I was also thinking about my piano playing. I wanted to get that out there ‘cause I felt like support of my musical vocabulary that I really didn’t display that much.
JPG: From basing songwriting on piano to working with the Doughboys, what does all this lead to for the future? Are you working on a new solo album?
RXH: Well, all of these things are happening.
JPG: Is there a different approach?
RXH: The Doughboys album is going to start laying down the basic tracks, and I’ve written about half the tracks for it. The other writers have written half. So, that will be very fun and just will be grungy raw garage rock songs. I’ve been working on my next album for awhile now, which is going to be more guitar again. It’s got all different types of songs, real rock, real power pop, real high energy.
JPG: With the Doughboys I know you said you play drums, do you also sing lead?
RH: No, I sing harmony. We have a lead singer who is great. We have a lead singer who is great. Myke Scavone does the leads. I probably do most of the harmony. I get to write, just recently really kind of hit upon how to write for the band. It’s such a different style than what I normally do, which is more R&Bish garage rock.
JPG: Did you have to pull out some particular albums to reacquaint yourself?
RXH: The Stones, I’ve always been a big fan of the Stones. Growing up as a drummer, playing in junior high and high school, it was just my formative years as a rock drummer. Most of that music we played was more R&B-oriented. I loved that. When I started to write songs, I realized that I was just this closet melodic pop freak. I just loved the Beatles and the Hollies, the Kinks. The Beach Boys, of course. All that stuff until I realized those were suppressed influences while I was doing this garage rock stuff on drums. I always loved it all. Are you a Stones or a Beatles person? I was both.
