"See you soon in Madrid." This was the end of this telephone interview on February 20, Justin Vernon, convinced, like almost everyone at the time, that this spring he would go up with his band, Bon Iver, to the stage of the Madrid WiZink Center. The concert has been postponed until January 26 next year. Three days before, the group will perform at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona, three later, at the Coliseum in A Coruña. "Sorry, I'm late. I thought that You called me, not that I called, "Mike Noyce, guitarist of the band, interrupted the conversation after five minutes. There are talks that are born cursed from almost start.
"Look Mike, I'll tell you. He asked me what we are, if a group, a project, a collective ..., and this is what I was telling him ", intervenes Vernon, who became famous in 2007 with an album entitled For Emma, Forever Ago, recorded solo in a cabin in a remote forest. More than 10 years have passed and this guy born in Eau Claire (Wisconsin, USA) in 1981 is still struggling to make the world understand that he really does not like being alone. “This is a group, also a project. It will always change, I have resigned myself to that. Now we are a band that goes on tour of the world dominating it, but to see what comes out and how it ends. It is a project, somehow. Look, I don't know. I just know that it's the best group of people I've ever been with. Relaxed, good guys. "
"I am willing to work with artists with different ideas, but Kanye West was blinded"
The success of his exercise in sentimental pornography and isolation greatly disturbed the musician. For years he had tried to get ahead with his group, making decisions like moving from Wisconsin to Raleigh, North Carolina, to find success, something that even he is not able to explain today. In 2011, the sequel to For Emma ... went on sale and, unfortunately for Justin's emotional stability, it also swept away. Cemented his career as a successful singer-songwriter. Acoustic guitar, beard, plaid shirt and to cry and to make cry on the stages of the world. Both things, singer-songwriter and success, exploded in his face. He cried, but without taking profits from it.
None of that he wants now. Although the following albums, 22, A Million (2016) and i, i (2019), have been equally successful, the approach to music that makes, much more contemporary, a cross between what he was and what they are billing from Kanye West to James Blake, she is more relaxed, although conceptually much more baroque. “I still like people to understand that this is not something I do alone. I have made music with people almost all my life, demons ”, insists the man who has insisted on being accompanied by a member of his project in the interview, even if he is late. “I'm not tired of explaining that what sounds is the product of a common effort. Now there are other things that continue to worry me and that I still have to solve ”. For example, balancing your principles with the reality of being the leader of a successful gang that tours large venues with names of soda, credit cards, or food chains. “This question sucks me up. Much. I'm not doing enough to make all this make sense in this regard. When you try to play rock and roll league and you love it, you think you do what you want, and you invite people to break free and leave their long hair and quit their job. It's false. It is frustrating to see that you are part of all that you tell them to leave behind to be free. Business is a disease. "
"In this group there are no Trump voters, only humanists, not hateful or resentful people"
Justin Vernon is a type of principles. Now he moves the gears of a collective made up of half a dozen people, he is almost an entrepreneur, the leader of one of the entities that has released the most amazing music in the last five years. You can make concessions, but up to a point. Kanye West, with whom he collaborated a while ago and who is no longer spoken to, knows this. "Let's see, I'm open to working with people who have different ideas from mine. But the problem with Kanye is that he didn't want to talk about things anymore. I thought it was better not to see him anymore. And that's it. Sometimes you run into people who are very blinded by their ideas, they don't want to think about other options. You can no longer reason with them. " Are there any Trump voters in Bon Iver? "No! Zero. A very solid zero. Only humanists. There are no hateful and resentful people, "says Vernon. "The problem in our country is that there are two sides and neither listens to the other," Mike tries to appease. "Now, now, but there are no Trump voters here," Justin insists. "This is the best group I've ever been in, but I know if I have to kick someone out, the first to go is Mike," jokes the leader. "Well, it would annoy me, because when we travel I always look at the type of sandwich you ask for at airports to copy you," the guitarist replies.
In addition to his faith in Bernie Sanders, for whom he performed in Iowa during the rugged primaries of last February, Vernon has also recently become a staunch devotee of the religion of Grateful Dead, the hippy music collective led by Jerry Garcia that means a whole way of understanding life. What is Justin Vernon most interested in about the Grateful Dead? The philosophy? Music? The drugs? "Above all, drugs. I took a lot of LSD last year. Two, three times a week. It was great, very good for me. And then I fell in that the concept of the Dead always fitted with me. Sometimes I don't listen to them because they stress me out and they seem like a bad group, I must also admit. Of course, I think they are not recognized enough that they never followed the laws of rock and roll. It was a project of exploration of the human being. That freedom led them to improvise like crazy. I don't use the word visionary much, and in American music almost all visionaries have been black, but the Grateful Dead were, as difficult as listening to their music is sometimes. ” Grateful Dead and the series Doctor in Alaska , there is almost everything Vernon believes in. "That series. Don't remind me, I got to move city because of her. You have to be an idiot. ”