Okay let's unpack this. We are taking a deep
dive today into well it's more than just a band's
discography isn't it? It's like a singular intensely
personal journal set to music. Exactly. We're
charting the career of an artist Mark Oliver
Everett or E who basically spent Over three decades
turning, I mean, just immense personal tragedy,
but also these high concept physics ideas from
his family. Right. And just raw, messy humanity.
Into a sound that just absolutely refuses to
sit still. We're talking about eels. The American
indie rock institution eels. And the focus really
has to be on E. Because he's the sole constant
member, the driving force. Yeah, Eels is sort
of the ultimate example of a band as a vehicle
for one person's worldview. The musicians around
him change. They come and go. But that creative
anchor, E himself, he's absolute. And the sources
we're drawing on, you know, detailed biographies,
the full discography, they map out this incredible
history. It starts technically Las Feliz, Los
Angeles, around 91. But the name Eels came in
95. Right, 1995. But it's not just a band history,
is it? It's really a story about radical person.
And the sheer volume of work is kind of staggering.
15 studio albums since the 96 debut. Wow, 15.
Yeah, and seven of those hitting the Billboard
200. That consistency is remarkable, but what's
maybe even more remarkable is the extreme variability
of the sound. Totally. It swings from... alternative
rock fuzzy indie stuff to even those early kind
of unexpected trip -hop moments but the core
identity like you said stays fixed eel's music
is just so deeply tangled up with these huge
themes Death, family, you know, complicated grief,
love that doesn't quite work out. And it's not
abstract. It's pulled directly from his own life,
often really traumatic experiences. So our mission
today is kind of figuring out how this unique
way of dealing with chaos created something so
resilient, so enduring, and, yeah, so musically
varied. And I think that's the hook for you,
the listener. This isn't just musician overcomes
tragedy. It's about how an artist's deepest struggles
run weirdly parallel to his family's really mind
-bending scientific legacy. That's the tension,
isn't it? The son of this famous quantum physicist
grappling with a chaotic nature of, well, everything.
How does that collision shape the art? Let's
get into that right from the beginning. The genesis
of E. So Mark Oliver Everett's family background,
it's genuinely unique. It's defined by these
like polar opposites. Yeah. On one hand, you've
got this intense emotional vulnerability you
hear in the music and on the other. The absolute
pinnacle of theoretical thought. His father was
Hugh Everett III. A name that, if you're into
quantum physics, you definitely know. He originated
the many worlds interpretation. Which is, well,
it's a heavy concept. For anyone not familiar,
the theory basically suggests that every quantum
event, every possibility, splits off reality,
creating a new parallel universe. Infinite alternative
lives unfolding at the same time. Pretty mind
-bending stuff to grow up around. Totally. So
E's childhood has this incredibly cerebral theoretical
backdrop. Multiple realities are scientifically
plausible in his house. But then that high concept
physics is sharply contrasted by other parts
of his upbringing. Absolutely. You get this real
grounding element from his mother's side. His
maternal grandfather was Harold Kidd Gore. Ah,
the coach. Yeah, a figure of like solid athletic
normalcy. A celebrated coach at UMass Amherst.
Basketball, football, baseball. It's this fantastic
contradiction, isn't it? Quantum mechanics debated
at home and then stories about, you know, coaching
three different sports, pragmatism versus infinite
possibility. But the moments that really seemed
to shape E as a young adult were these sudden
visceral events, things that left literal marks
like his glasses, his trademark look. Right.
Most people probably think it's just style. But
it's not. It comes from this shocking incident
when he was a teenager. He was at a Who concert.
A Who concert. OK. And one of those special effects
lasers hit him directly in the eye. He said,
where are glasses ever since? Just this sudden
physical intrusion from spectacle. Wow. That's
quite a story and kind of darkly foreshadows
the deeper emotional traumas to come, doesn't
it? It really does. Because the defining loss
came early. He was only 19. His father, Hugh
Everett III, died suddenly. Heart attack. And
the detail that just hits you is that Mark E
was the one who found his father's body. Yeah.
I mean, imagine that at 19. That's a trauma that
just rips your world open instantly. And it's
not just something that influences his music.
It actively surfaces and resurfaces through the
years, sometimes hidden, sometimes very direct.
So before Eels became Eels, E was already trying
to make it in music, right? He moved out to California
from Virginia in 87. Yep. And by the early 90s,
he actually had two major label solo albums out.
A man called E in 1992. That had Hello Cruel
World on it. I remember that video on MTV. Exactly.
A minor hit. And then Broken Toy Shop in 1993.
And this is when the name E really sticks. But
the reason is surprisingly mundane. Totally practical.
Sources say it was just because his first name,
Mark, was shared by a bunch of people in his
life, causing confusion. So he just shortened
it to E. It's almost funny. Such a simple solution.
Very E in a way. That pragmatic streak, that
almost humorous utility, it carries over right
into the band's naming, too. When he officially
formed the band with Butch Norton on drums and
Tommy Walter on bass. They needed a name. And
the logic. Oh, the logic was brilliant. Brilliantly
flawed. They chose Eels specifically so the records
would sit right next to his solo stuff in the
E section of record stores. You know, E then
Eels. Alphabetical proximity. Simple. Makes perfect
sense. Until you hit the reality of music retail.
E tells this story about going into a Virgin
Megastore, seeing his solo CDs right there at
the start of E, and then just pages and pages.
Eagles, earth, wind and fire. Dozens of them.
Separating his solo work from his band, the Eels
records were nowhere near E. It's perfect, though.
A perfect little Eels story. Trying for structure,
ending up with beautiful, slightly awkward chaos.
So, OK, despite the name kerfuffle, by 1996,
the band Eels is officially launched and they
make a really big splash right away with the
debut Beautiful Freak. Yeah, this was a significant
signing. Eels was one of the very first acts
signed to the brand new DreamWorks records. Remember
DreamWorks? Huge deal at the time. Oh, yeah.
Elliot Smith signed soon after, I think. So Beautiful
Freak comes out and it just clicks internationally,
too. Driven by those huge singles. Nova came
for the soul, obviously. Susan's House, your
lucky day in hell. They were everywhere for a
bit, and it led to actual awards recognition
pretty quickly. They won Best International Breakthrough
Act at the Brit Awards in 98. Which is pretty
major for an American indie band. Susan's House
especially seemed to hit a nerve. particularly
in the UK. Right. The sources point out its style,
that slow tempo, the murky vibe, the distorted
spoken word vocal. It really resonated with the
trip -hop sound that was massive in the UK then.
Think, massive attack, Portishead. Exactly. So
this LA alternative band kind of gets swept up
in that UK scene because of that one song's resemblance.
Maybe a bit of an awkward fit for E! ultimately,
but it definitely worked commercially over there.
But even with that early success... instability
creeps in pretty fast. The touring for Beautiful
Freak was apparently quite grueling. And Tommy
Walter, the original bassist, he quit in September
97. So an early sign of things to come. E is
the constant. The lineup around him is fluid.
Change is the only certainty. And then, almost
immediately after that initial burst of success
and that first lineup shift, comes the absolute
pivot point in the Eels story. The 1998 album
Electroshock Blues. Yeah. He himself just called
it a terrible, difficult time. And you hear it.
The music is like listening to a raw, open wound.
Because the personal tragedy that was maybe simmering
beneath the surface just exploded. A cascade
of loss. His sister died by suicide. And then
right in the wake of that, his mother is diagnosed
with terminal cancer. Electroshock Blues is him.
processing these just impossible events in real
time through the songs. It's famously profoundly
dark. I mean, the themes are right there. Mental
illness, cancer, suicide, death. The lyrics are
brutal, almost like documentation rather than
poetry. If you look at the tracks. Climbing to
the Moon deals so directly with his sister's
struggles, the medication is wearing off. I mean,
the titles alone tell you it's harrowing stuff.
But essential listening, if you want to understand
E's whole creative drive. And what makes the
album feel so complete in its sadness is how
it connects back to earlier losses, too. The
song Baby Genius. That's for his father, Hugh
Everett III. Right. It brings his father's death
back into the frame, alongside his sister's suicide
and his mother's impending death. He was facing
the virtual dissolution of his entire immediate
family in just a couple of years. It's unthinkable.
And yet somehow in the midst of all this darkness,
the recording process attracted some amazing
talent. John Brien worked on it. T -Bone Burnett,
Michael Simpson from the Dust Brothers. Yeah,
it's like the weight of the material drew people
in. And despite the heavy themes, it still found
this cultural traction. The single Cancer for
the Cure. which is surprisingly driving, almost
manic, ended up on the American Beauty soundtrack
in 99. Bringing that incredibly personal pain
into mainstream Hollywood. But the real -world
cost was huge. The sources confirm part of the
U .S. tour for Electroshock Blues had to be canceled.
Because his mother passed away. Yeah. The art
wasn't separate from the life. It was completely
bound up in the ongoing, consuming grief. So
after the absolute emotional devastation documented
on Electroshock Blues, E clearly needed, well,
he needed a shift. A conscious, artistic choice
to step back from the abyss. Which leads us to
Daisies of the Galaxy in 2000. It felt like such
a deliberate, almost offensive... move towards
something lighter. Yeah this is where that parallel
worlds idea maybe starts showing up musically
even implicitly. He's using the album format
to compartmentalize the trauma, to actively move
away from it. He had that great quote comparing
the two albums. Electrochock Blues was the dreadful
phone call in the middle of the night. That nobody
wants to answer. Right. And Daisies of the Galaxy
was engineered to be the hotel wake -up call
that says your love and breakfast is ready. It's
just instantly warmer, more acoustic, maybe a
little fragile still, but definitely lighter.
And even with that shift, and the fact it was
recorded mostly in his basement, very intimately.
He still pulled in great people. Peter Buck from
R .E .M. is on there. Grant Lee Phillips, too.
But we have to talk about the big single from
that album, Mr. E's Beautiful Blues, because
the story behind it is classic E. Oh, yeah. That
track, co -written with Michael Simpson again,
it was absolutely not supposed to be on the album.
Right. E didn't want it. But the record company,
Polyor, they heard it and basically insisted
they knew it was a hit. So E, being E, finds
this perfect passive -aggressive compromise.
He lets them include it, but only as a quote
-unquote bonus track, listed separately on a
sticker on the cover. And crucially, separated
from the rest of the album by 20 seconds of silence
on the CD. It's his way of saying, okay, you
get your single, but it exists in its own little
universe, walled off from the actual album. Brilliant.
But E being E, he can't stay in that lighter
space for long. The pendulum swings back pretty
quickly. 2001 brings Souljacker. Yeah, if Daisies
was the gentle breakfast call, Souljacker is
way heavier. louder, more rock, grittier, moodier,
back towards the fuzz. And a lot of that shift
seems connected to his collaborator on that record.
Souljacker is notable for the heavy involvement
of John Parrish. The British musician and producer
worked a lot with PJ Harvey. Exactly. Parrish
co -wrote most of the songs, and you can hear
his influence. It's darker, more rhythmic, more
driving. It really textures that album differently.
And then just two years later, 2003, we get Shootin'
Any. Which he later described almost as a palate
cleanser. Yeah, like a break he took before diving
into the next big project. It sounds like it,
too. It's raw, immediate, recorded super fast,
live in the studio in just 10 days. Yeah, 10
days. Just a snapshot. Let's just play, not overthink
it. Which maybe was necessary prep for what came
next. Because what came next was, for many people,
his magnum opus. Blinking Lights and Other Revelations
in 2005. The ambition level here was just huge.
Colossal. The scope alone. 33 tracks, a double
album, their first for Vagrant Records. He apparently
felt he had maybe one massive artistic statement
left in him. So he just poured everything into
it. All the accumulated ideas. Pretty much. It
was meant to be his big final word in a way.
And the complexity, the ambition. It attracted
this incredible, almost historical lineup of
collaborators. Seriously. Tom Waits is on there.
Peter Buck came back. John Sebastian from The
Love and Spoonful plays harmonica. It's like
this gathering of legends to support E's deeply
personal story. And because the music itself
was so dense, so intricate, it led to this really
fascinating shift in how they presented it live.
The Eels with Strings Tour. Which totally redefined
vulnerability for them, didn't it? E on acoustic
guitar or piano. Backed by an actual string quartet.
Instantly strips away all the rock noise. He
had Alan, Big Al Hunter on bass, and Jeffrey
Leister, the Chet. Ah, the Chet. The multi -instrumentalist
genius. Mandolin, musical saw, pedal steel. These
quirky, beautiful textures. And treating the
distortion for that delicate, sometimes bizarre
chamber sound. just made the emotional core of
the lyrics completely unavoidable. It was captured
perfectly on that live CD -DVD, Eels with Strings,
live at Town Hall. Such a specific, powerful
moment. And that whole kind of retrospective
phase seemed to wrap up around 2008. You get
the greatest hits, Meet the Eels, Central Eels
Vol. 1, and the B -Sides collection, Useless
Trinkets. Right. And the tour that followed,
An Evening with Eels, was even more stripped
back, just E in the chat. Playing songs from
across the whole catalog, but with the Chet actually
reading bits from E's autobiography on stage
between songs. It's such a meta way to tour,
blending the memoir, the music, the performance,
really hammering home the biographical nature
of the whole project. Okay, so we've tracked
this incredible, sometimes chaotic journey through
tragedy experimentation, the darkness of electroshock
blues, the sheer scale of blinking lights. Where
does he go from there? especially given the pace
he works at. Well, the output stays relentless,
but around 2009, E finds this new way to impose
some structure on it all, maybe as a reaction
to the sprawl of blinking lights. He decides
on this rapid -fire trilogy of concept albums.
Right, the trilogy focusing on lust, loss, and
redemption, sequentially. It's amazing how quickly
they came out. First, 2009, you get Hombre Lobo,
that's the Desire album. Hombre Lobo, Wolfman
in Spanish, which apparently directly references
Look at the Time. Yeah, he'd grown this massive
beard while writing the song Dog -Faced Boy.
So the album has this restless, kind of primal,
animalistic energy running through it, reflecting
that theme. And that album gave us one of the
most unexpected, perfect soundtrack moments in
recent memory. The track Fresh Blood. Oh yeah,
becoming the theme song for the HBO docuseries
The Jinx. That dark, driving, tense piece of
music just perfectly scoring this... chilling
true crime story it really cemented the album's
vibe then literally the next year 2010 comes
part two End Times, the loss album, focused entirely
on broken love, the aftermath. And fittingly,
it sounds much more intimate, almost isolated,
recorded mostly on just a four -track recorder,
right? Exactly. It's got this beautiful lo -fi
vulnerability. And the sources say, reflecting
that deep personal focus, he initially didn't
even plan to tour for End Times. Like it was
just this private document of collapse, maybe
just for him and the diehard fans. But the story
needed its ending. So Redemption arrives just
months later, still in 2010, with the final part
tomorrow morning. the redemption album and this
one signals a definite shift up in energy He
announced a world tour with this one, the first
since 2007. Yeah, back with the full rock band
setup, the Chet, Cool G, Murder on Bass, Knuckles
on Drums, Peeboo on Guitar. It completed that
emotional arc. Raw desire, crushing loss, and
then finding some hard -won clarity. But finishing
the trilogy didn't mean slowing down. The output
just kept coming, proving E had basically found
this endless well of material in just living
his life and documenting it. Absolutely. 2013
brings wonderful, glorious... And this one leads
to that amazing pop culture moment of political
satire. Ah, the cold dead hand video. Right.
Released through Funny or Die, it perfectly captured
that Eels myth of serious commentary and just
absurd humor. Featuring Jim Carrey taking over
vocals for me. Doing the satirical country song
lampooning American gun culture, specifically
calling out Charlton Heston's ghost, all set
on a fake he hostile show. It was brilliant.
Just brilliantly weird. And the albums kept flowing.
The cautionary tales of Mark Oliver Everett.
in 2014 on his own E -Works records. That sounded
intensely reflective. Then 2018 gave us The Deconstruction.
Lyrically, that one really seemed focused on
rebuilding after big life changes. Looking back,
taking stock. And sonically, The Deconstruction
felt like a real summary of his whole career
up to then, didn't it? It touched on orchestral
pop, power pop, psych rock, indie rock. Yeah,
it was a really confident sound, acknowledging
the past but looking forward. And he's kept up
the pace since. Earth to Dora in 2020, and then
Extreme Witchcraft in 2022. That one felt significant.
Definitely, because it marked his first production
collaboration with John Parrish again since Souljacker
way back in 2001. And you could hear it immediately,
right? Much more of that darker, rhythmic, driving
Parrish sound. Yeah, it was a fantastic injection
of rock energy after the more reflective period.
A great reunion. And now, most recently, Eel's
Time, just out in 2024. So if you tie it all
together, the sheer volume. The wild stylistic
shifts from rock band to string quartet to four
track, it just hammers home that core truth,
doesn't it? E is Eels. He's the constant, the
author, the narrator. The musicians, whether
it's Cool G Murder playing bass and producing
or Big Al playing bass live, they're vital collaborators,
but they serve that singular vision of Mark Oliver
Everett. And beyond just the music. E's drive
to process and document his life, it naturally
spilled over into other things, equally compelling
stuff that really cemented his narrative in the
public eye. Like his autobiography, published
back in November 2007, the title alone is Pure
E, Things the Grandchildren Should Know. captures
that mix of legacy and maybe fatalism. It's a
remarkably honest book, often very funny too,
despite the heavy stuff. And that book became
part of the live show, didn't it? We mentioned
the An Evening with Eels tour. Where the Chet
would literally read sections from the memoir
on stage, blending the text with the music that
came from those experiences. It makes the whole
thing feel like a conversation with his own past.
But the most stunning non -musical project, the
one that really brings us back to that core tension
we talked about, is the documentary he made about
his father. Right. The 2007 BBC documentary Parallel
Worlds, Parallel Lives, all about Hugh Everett
III and the many worlds theory. What's so fascinating
is that it seemed like a journey of understanding
for E himself. You see him talking to physicists,
his father's old colleagues. Finally engaging
directly with that massive scientific legacy,
that idea of infinite realities that had always
sort of loomed over him. It was like connecting
with his father years after his death, but through
science. It was critically acclaimed, too. Won
a Royal Television Society Award. Aired on PBS's
NoVA over here in 2008. And then in a classic
E move of artistic accomplishment. They even
showed the documentary sometimes instead of having
a support band on tour. That's amazing. Talk
about maximizing your content. In terms of just
pure pop culture saturation, Eels' music has
done remarkably well getting into films and TV.
Oh, yeah. He pretty much was the soundtrack for
that 2008 Jim Carrey movie, Yes Man. Didn't he
have like nine songs in that? Yep, nine songs,
including a new one just for the film Man Up.
But the reach is wider, isn't it? You hear Eels
in really unexpected places. My beloved monster
is famously in Shrek. Tracks in American Beauty,
Edgar Wright used their stuff brilliantly in
Hot Fuzz. And E himself keeps popping up on camera
too, embracing the weirdness of his own fame.
He was in Judd Apatow's show Love. Playing a
character named Brian, doing a Paul McCartney
cover. Jet. Right. Had a little cameo in Bill
and Ted Face the Music. And then. The absolute
perfect piece of metacasting. His brief cameo
with his dog in the opening of Ant -Man and the
Wasp. Quantumania. A blockbuster literally all
about. Quantum realms and alternate realities.
It's just perfect. Speaking of connections, though,
there's one final really devastating personal
detail that ties his family story into this massive
global tragedy. The 9 -11 connection. Ah, yeah.
His cousin, Jennifer Lewis, was a flight attendant
on American Airlines Flight 77. The plane that
hit the... Pentagon. And E writes in his book
about how his father, Hugh Everett, had actually
worked in the Pentagon years before. And E wondered
if the plane hit his father's old office. It's
this almost unbelievable dark convergence of
personal loss and world history. Just layers
upon layers. On a completely different note,
though, he did get some nice recognition over
in the UK. Right. In July 2014, he was given
the freedom of the city of London. Which feels
like a long way, geographically and maybe emotionally,
from that Los Feliz basement where so much of
this started. Definitely. And one final personal
marker, something that must influence the more
recent work, becoming a father. Yeah, relatively
late in life. At 54, his then -wife, who worked
in the film industry, they had a son. And although
they later divorced, that experience, late -stage
fatherhood, is just another one of those huge
life shifts that inevitably gets processed through
the music. So as we wrap up this deep dive, I
think what stands out most is just how clearly
Eels isn't a band in the traditional sense. It
really is this continuous, deeply personal and
incredibly flexible vehicle for Mark Oliver Everett.
Yeah, his entire creative output feels like this
chronological, almost diary -like record of him
processing these profound, often sequential life
events. You see the arc clearly. The pop hints
of Beautiful Freak, the necessary darkness of
Electroshock Blues, then trying to find structure
with that later trilogy, Lust, Loss, Redemption.
And the distography itself, with all those stylistic
jumps, heavy rock, delicate strings, intimate
four -track stuff, it almost serves as this strange
kind of user's manual for navigating grief and
complex experience, offering different perspectives
through these varied musical lenses. Which brings
us right back to where we started, really, the
source of his creativity and that structural
tension in his life. his father's legacy. His
father proposed the many worlds theory, infinite
parallel universes branching off with every choice.
And E has spent his career using music to grapple
with singularity, the finality of death, of grief,
of loss. So considering that lifelong search
for meaning and those dramatic rapid shifts in
the music from the light of daisies to the dark
of electroshock blues, from loud rock to quiet
strings, we'll leave you, the listener, with
this thought. Are Eels albums, with all their
genre -hopping and emotional extremes, are they
Mark Oliver Everett's way of exploring the alternate
musical lives, the different emotional outcomes
hinted at by his own family's scientific history?
Is he maybe album by album and not just documenting
one life but actually traversing his own personal
musical parallel worlds?