Jules Shear.
September 16 1988



Jules Shear writes songs and sings them. Other people sing them, too, most notably Cyndi Lauper ("All Through the Night") and the Bangles ("If She Knew What She Wants"), but also Art Garfunkel and Olivia Newton-John, Ian Matthews recorded a whole album of his songs, which is possibly the first interesting thing Ian Matthews has done since he was in Fairport Convention. Shear writes more songs than he sings, or even wants to sing, or even wants other people to sing, because he writes a whole lot of songs and, he says, "Some songs you use, and some are just stepping stones to get in the ones that you use. I don't feel bad about the ones that don't get used. I really just want to write them, and not think that every one has to be important. That would just drive me crazy."

Shear is writing and singing songs these days with a New York-based band called the Reckless Sleepers, whose Big Boss Sounds has just been issued by I.R.S.; formerly he had been with the L.A.-based Funky Kings, then Jules and the Polar Bears, who recorded a couple of albums and a couple of EPs, one of which was produced by Peter Gabriel. And finally he made a few solo records, the most recent of which was simply a collection of his songwriting demos. Hearing Shear sing his own stuff, one wouldn't necessarily think to connect with such soft-pedallers as Art Garfunkel or Ian Matthews -- he's got a trebly, nasal sort of voice that cuts through the air like a hot knife through butter (or something), and he typically works in fairly assertive musical settings -- but it's really just tribute to the high craft with which his work is shaped, to its structural soundness, that it can support a variety of interpretations.

He started writing "in earnest" at 13 -- he can remember one song he made up in kindergarten -- and by the time he slipped the University of his native Pittsburgh for L.A. in the early '70s, he was churning them out under a self-imposed quota. "I wouldn't suggest that -- well, I would, actually. It's probably a good way to learn how to write songs, write a lot of different kinds, try to figure out which things are really you."

Nowadays an ideal writing day -- and there are fewer of them than Shear would like -- unfolds thus: "I wake up -- you really want to know this? -- about nine in the morning and go for a run around where I live, around Washington Square Park a couple of times, it's not really very far. And then I'd come home and then I'd walk the dog for a while. And then I'd come back in and start working on some music, and maybe do that for a couple of hours, and then go out and wander around with the dog some more, and then come back and listen to what I did and see if I had any perspective on it, or see if something interesting going on outside maybe got me thinking about something, and then work for like three more hours and maybe get something to eat, and then come back and work some more and take the dog out again."

The dog is named Cargo and came from the 92nd Street ASPCA about a year and a half ago. "I had really wanted a dog for a long time," says Shear. "That sort of innocence and loyalty really appeals to me. The kind of loyalty that this dog feels for me, I would love to feel that for somebody. I would think that would be a really good feeling."

His musical tastes are broad. ("Do you think it's stupid that I listen to Top 40?"), but his standards are high. For instance, "When Stevie Nicks writes, 'Thunder only happen when it's raining,' and you go, well that's obviously untrue, well, that bugs me. These people really must believe that no one's listening and no one cares or else they wouldn't say something that."

Unless she really believes it.

"She really believes that thunder only happens when it's raining?"

You don't think that it's conceivable?

Shear laughs a loud, long laugh. "You think it's conceivable -- let me get this straight -- that Stevie Nicks has never heard thunder when it was not raining?"

She may have assumed that it was raining somewhere.

Another long laugh. "Yeah, you're right," he says finally. "Thunder only happens when it's raining somewhere -- that I could go with."

© Copyright Robert Lloyd 1998 & 2011