Adam: Yeah, I guess so. I've become more serious and relaxed about things. I’ve been chilling for some time. Before, I was nervous all the time.

In what way were you nervous?

Adam: I’ve been nervous before. Now I’m like – what do they say? My fingers don’t shake anymore. My fingers don't tremble.

What kind of nervousness was that? When did it happen? When you had to go on stage?

Adam: No, no, no, all-the-time nervousness! All the time, before the Jessica song. After that I was chilling. After that I was just wandering around, feeling good, because I felt like I really communicated with people.

Did you really communicate with your audience or was it just the feeling that you had made it to your listeners?

Adam: Just that song!

Adam: I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. (Police sirens in the street disturbing) oh, it’s really noisy now, isn’t it? I’m in New York City, you know?

Are you running around in the streets with your cell phone at the moment?

Adam: Yes, I’m walking in Battery Park in the financial area, you know, down-town. I'm visiting the stock exchange and checking out the stock market.

Do you have your own broker who takes care of your money there?

Adam: No, I’m just curious to see it. You can walk into the stock exchange here. You can see everyone trading on the floor. I just like to go there. I'd like to go to the pharmacy later. Life is not that exciting. I’m sure, everyone is like: Adam Green is gonna go do a bunch of drugs, or whatever. I really just feel like going for a walk and drinking some coffee today. No drugs today.

Well, I’ve heard you don’t get drugs that easily anymore in New York City?

Adam: (laughing) That’s not true.

A friend of mine who lives between 10th and 11th street on 2nd Avenue in East Village used to be able to watch the grass dealers outside his house and now they’re all gone. They cleaned out the area and the whole Tompkins Park, didn't they?

Adam: That’s true. Now you have to call them (the dealers) and they come over to your house.

Oh, wow, then you shouldn’t use your cell phone for those calls, because the police can check you out really easily, at least that's how it is in Germany.

Adam: That sounds like… Do you know The Lives of Others? It’s a German movie. It came out just the other year. It’s about East Germany. It’s about a guy who listens to what goes on in someone else’s apartment, you know. It must be really popular over there …

Let me ask you something. You are everyone’s darling at the moment, especially for all female listeners. How do you feel about this?

Adam: Well, I welcome it!

Do a lot of girls come up to you after concerts and ask you to go out or hang out with them?

Adam: Oh, all those lesbians! There are lesbians in New York; they want to have my baby. They ask me to give them sperm…. I didn’t even get there. Yeah, they came backstage, right? They had to crash into my backstage, lesbians who want to have my baby.

That’s crazy. Do you have a wife or a girlfriend?

Adam: Yeah, Loribeth (8:20) She’s on my album, she's on “Drowning Head First”.

How nice! Has she worked with you before?

Adam: No.

So how come she's on this album?

Adam: ’Cause she's a nice person.

Ok. On another note, people compare you with Leonard Cohen; the German newspaper FAZ even asked you if you were the new Bob Dylan. What do you think about that?

Adam: Of course!

Do you think you would be able to play his character and also play and sing his songs?

Adam: Well, I'd like to think I could be more a kind of Marlon Brando type. I don’t really want to play in a musical movie; I want to do more like play a drama, or maybe a crime film. I like hard-boiled detective fiction. I’d like to play a detective in a movie.

So you wouldn’t like to play another musician in a film story?

Adam: Well, I could do it. But I prefer – I don’t know how many movie offers I’m going to get, so. It seems like I’m getting a lot right here on the phone, I’m getting a few different movie offers. I’m going to get through them and choose the parts and – now I’m really worried about whether I could sing Leonard Cohen songs or not! I’m sure that I could, I mean, I’m sure I can sing Leonard Cohen songs.

I’m sure you can. Last year you had a hit called “Anyone Else But You” with The Moldy Peaches that appeared in the film Juno. How did you get into this?

Adam: Through nothing I did. I just got an email. Actually the actress chose it, Ellen Page. It was her choice. Thank you, thank you, by the way, to her for using it, because I feel like – I never thought about my songs in movies, maybe a little bit, but not really. So it’s nice, especially when it’s in good movies. Juno is a good one.

Would you like to do more songs for films?

Adam: Yeah, of course. Who doesn’t want to make music for films? Especially if I could do anything I wanted. I can’t say if I’d be good at it, but I’d like to try it.

So would you like to compose film music or just place your songs in films?

Adam: I would write them. What do you mean? What’s the difference?

Well, most film music is orchestral music that is composed with lots of different kinds of classical instruments. The musicians get the composition on paper and so on...

Adam: My music is like that too! I play it … For the string you have to write the songs on paper. I don’t write music, I don’t know how to write it.

Ok?... So your new album is called Sixes & Sevens. What do you mean by this title?

Adam: It’s a British expression. It means: I’m at war with myself. This is not for me though. I just liked how it sounded; I had no idea what it meant. For me the title is only important for how it sounds, or most important. A lot of times, as long as it’s in my head I don’t really care. There’s a comfort level with songs. You have to feel comfortable with everything that you say and think. I think it’s like, when there’s a cliff and the water comes on the cliff, it’s called “erosion”, when the water eats away a cliff, you know what I mean? That’s like a song. A bunch of different things that you throw at the wall and you see what sticks. And then you build on whatever sticks. That’s the way I like to do it, because I don’t like to plan too much to write a song. If you plan too much, it’s boring. The inspiration leaves for me if I plan it. If you can get past that moment, the inspiration stays, or then I’m able to follow it through. I like to not know what I’m doing till the end. And I almost never want to know till the end what the song is about… It’s hard to explain it. I can’t plan for it. For Sixes & Sevens I thought it was about gambling and numerology. I had no idea that it was about being involved with oneself.

But when you write songs like “Grandma Shirley and Papa”. Are songs like that autobiographical or how do ideas like that come into your mind?

Adam: I try not to do the cut-up method. I don’t do that. I don’t use that. It’s important to me that the words come from inside of my head and I put them in a song based on how I like them. I don’t like the idea of random; I don’t think that anything in my songs is random. I think that they’re all predestined. If anything, my music is marked by a feeling of destiny, it's arranged according to what I feel – that is an artistic way to do it. But it’s funny, though, because – …I heard Robby Kruger say this thing that if you talk about it too much it’s better to just do it. I don’t want to talk about it too much. It’s more like a jinx. I don’t want to explain it too much, explain it away, because I want to write more and I want to try to sing as much as I can and hope to write another good song.

When you say you want to write more, would you also like to write another book?

Adam: No! I’m done with that. Well, maybe I’ll write, I might write another book, but I don’t think so, not for a while … There are so many things that come out of me. I mean, if I accepted every invitation that I get on the Internet or something, it would be ridiculous. My manager tells me everyday if something is coming in, like “Do you want to do this kind of bullshit or that kind of bullshit?” My manager sends me emails asking me if I want to give a speech about frogs tomorrow. And I’m like: No! I just should try to write songs about it, that’s my job, you know?

What things do you like to do besides writing songs? You live in one of the most exciting places in the world, in New York City. You live there, you grew up there. There are so many things to do there! Warhol was there. Burroughs was there…

Adam: … Well, yeah. Burroughs is great, but the cut-up method is shit, isn’t it?

Well, I like it! I like cut-ups and Dadaism. I’m from Germany!

Adam: I dig that, I respect that, but I mean – you know, really – it’s no way to work! I don’t want to go into political office or something. You know what I mean? That’s the thing about morality, for me, music is like an amoral place to work. I can sort of be a little bastard in my songs. I’m allowed to be a little bastard, whereas, if I was a politician or someone, I wouldn't be allowed to do anything! I think it’s very limiting to – as long as I’m going along the way I’m going now, I probably can do anything with this. Let’s say that I want to sell real estate, right? Who would trust me to do that? I just try as hard as I can to not have to work at McDonald’s. I don’t want to work there. It’s not like German McDonald’s. Germany’s McDonald’s is nice; American McDonald’s is just like – earrrgh!

I guess you will never have to work at McDonald’s because of your family background. Both your parents are doctors, and I guess you studied something too, no?

Adam: My parents never gave me money. They helped me out when I started The Moldy Peaches. They helped me to pay my rent for the first year of that, which was really helpful. But you know what? They wouldn’t have made me do something different… I was working before, I was working at pizzerias and I had to work at clothing stores, vintage clothes, I worked at a video game store and the irony of that is, I hadn't played a video game since I was eight years old and I was selling them. Kids were always asking me: What’s the best game? And I had to say: I don’t know, I don’t play them! Then they wouldn’t be happy any longer. Then their smile would turn to the ground and then they would say to me: what do you mean? You don’t play video games? And then the boss would get mad at me. She'd say: Why the hell do you work here? Then one day, I came back and my name was not on the schedule, not anywhere. I was like: Hey, why am I not on the schedule? They were like: You’re fired. I tell you, that was a common way to tell me… I really don’t want to go back there. But you know, I don’t want to bug my parents for a slice of f… pizza. I’m a man now! … I wish I was a 70-year-old folk singer still, but this is not the way of the world, this is not where it went and that’s groovy, I mean – I’ve got nothing to complain about.

My impression is that you like it to be a little bit “anti”. The press even calls your music style “anti-folk”. But there are so many types of “folk” going on in NYC at the moment. What do you think about this, bands like Antony and the Johnsons, CocoRosie and so on?

Adam: Well, you know, everyone is a folk singer to one extent. And all the people you mentioned are perfectly good artists. I have no shame of being associated with any of them. I really enjoy all those records. CocoRosie – they are terrific! I think they're sisters. They are great! Anti-folk is – well, someone wrote a book about it. You just should read the book. Anti-folk is an old word. It’s been around for a while. There is a long history. But you know what? I don’t really identify with being a folk singer any more. In that way, I’m truly an anti-folk person.

The first song on your new album reminds me of David Bowie back in the 70s. How did you come to that kind of music? Aren’t you too young for that?

Adam: I remember listening to the radio when I was a kid, and being embarrassed by the singers who were on the radio. I thought they were horrible.

Who were they and where do you get new music from now?

Adam: I remember being embarrassed by the Scorpions. In a way it’s been a long time coming for me to listen to old music. But it’s not like that anymore. I like a lot of new music now. You just have to look for it. Lot’s of times I discover good new music when I listen to the radio. That’s just how I'd spend hours when I was a kid. And I look for it. It’s easier than ever to find good new music on the Internet. Also my girlfriend inspires me. Every day when I come home she'll get me to listen to a new band. She’s my inside source. What do you think music is to going to be like in the future?

As far as I see it, music repeats itself again and again, but there are always new elements and images in it. I think it will, of course, change. People will pick up old stuff and will mix it with new stuff, new instruments and noises, and they'll use new equipment, new electronics.

Adam: Let me ask you something: when one of my songs comes on the radio, do people think it’s an old song or do they think it’s a new song?

I could imagine that people who have experienced a lot of music would just know that it’s new, but they would compare it with old songs. Young kids don’t know any of the old music so they don’t even ask, they just enjoy.

Adam: I don’t think people see it as old music. I think there is something somewhere in my music that makes people understand that it’s not old music, that it’s new music. And I don’t know how it’s communicated, but people – well, no one ever thinks it’s old.

Well, that’s why you eventually have so many young fans, isn't it?

Adam: Yeah, and that’s it, I can’t explain, but that’s my secret really!

But what kind of music did you listen to when you were a teenager? What was it like to grow up in New York City?

Adam: I listened to indie-rock music. Coward Brothers, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, The Ramones … I wish I could have seen Joe Ramone ... I think Tommy Ramone is still alive. He produced the record by The Witnesses. Yeah, he’s still around. I've never seen him either, though. How do I know that he even exists?

(Disconnected – f… cell phones)

So what would you tell a teenager who wants to start a music career?

Adam: I would say: Write songs!

And go and check out a manager?

Adam: No, but you know what? As soon as you've already got good songs, I think the most important thing is to have a really good booking agent, ’cause they can get you a good spot for opening. Then you can play to a crowd of people who are unfamiliar with your music and if you can win those people over, you can sell some CDs and things at the show, that’s a good way to come up. You've got to fight for each CD that you sell. That’s a good way. And to go on tour. I opened for so many people when I started. I opened for The Libertines and The Strokes, They Might Be Giants, for The Kills, I opened up for Phantom Planet, Ben Kweller, Badly Drawn Boy, for Frank Black, a million people!

Did you know them before?

Adam: Some of them, but with most of them I got hooked up with them through my booking agent. That’s a good way to go.

I've spoken to quite a few musicians from NYC, like Joan As Police Woman, Joan Wasser …

Adam: Oh yeah, she’s on my record!

She told me that there's kind of a music community in NYC and people get together, play together and so on. Does it really work like that, like networking?

Adam: Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t really work with people. I work for myself really. The thing about New York that separates it from a lot of other cities is that nobody’s driving. So you see people in the street all the time. I always bump into people I know. It’s that and also – I’m sure every place is like that. Or why is Munich any different? People go out and see each other. If there are good musicians in Munich they might know each other, am I right? It’s also a matter of how active your social life is. Like with Joan Wasser, she gets around a lot, ’cause she likes the boys… that’s how she knows so many musicians…

Oh, now I know!

AngieBlack 2008