"I had a fight with Tom Mellon once and I told him how I wanted this song to sound and he said, 'that's fake jazz' and I'm going 'I'm not doing fake jazz!' So, now I'm doing fake jazz, basically because of Tom."

'Fake jazz' is such a Mark Eitzel expression. Both an accurate description of the type of music on his new album, '60 Watt Silver Lining', and a little dig at his own musical ambitions. However, there is very little that is fake about the former lead singer of American Music Club. Living in San Francisco and with a history of alchohol abuse, he is a worthy successor to the Beats, both in terms of lifestyle and in his extraordinary writing.
"I've explained this to a lot of people from Europe and outside San Francisco. To go to any bar in San Francisco, mostly you're going to hear jazz playing and it's not mythology. It really isn't. The Beat thing was so wonderful, it was such a cool thing, it was so great. I mean some of the Beats still hang out there. They're still there, they're still drinking."

All of this is evident in '60 Watt Silver Lining', an album so soaked in alchohol and bars it almost drips beer all over the carpet, so melancholic it makes you thirsty and the perfect companion to Bukowski's tales of drunken excess. It is an album by someone whose romantic notions are turning to cynicism, and who has seen far too much for his own good. So, glib question, why are the songs so melancholic?
"I think that's just because I am. Also, I like that sort of music. I like music that's really slow and quiet and beautiful. I was talking with this Japanese kid in San Francisco, who later became a schizophrenic, and he gave me this thing about how he hated my music because he only liked hip hop. He talked about his whole culture and how he'd lived in complete hell and he said, 'Mark, the only thing I'll give you is that at least your music isn't ugly. But I still hate it, because if you really lived under the gun you would do everything you could do to make music that was away from what you had to live with' and I was like, 'yeah, I agree' and I think about that a lot. That's kind of why I go out of my way to make music that's quiet and slow and beautiful."

Talking to Mark you get the impression that the only thing he doesn't tolerate are the intolerant, the conservative and the fake.
"I get frustrated by conservatism in everything. I get frustrated by the conversatism in the pop music industry and I get frustrated by how little you see in people's eyes and all the stuff about how important it is to be a motherfucking success. It's not important. It's not the thing. Well not for me, obviously. I get frustrated by the way that everyone conforms to earn their pay check and that's fine, but I'm sorry, but I read books, I go to art galleries, I love what I do. I just don't want to have to wear a fucking uniform to do it."

Unfortunately, during his Saturday show at the Bloomsbury theatre he is dogged by a woman so conservative in her expectations that she kept shouting out for his old songs. This became too overt for him to ignore, as her calls for 'Grey Shirt' and 'Western Skies' filled any gaps between the songs and became truly obnoxious. So, finally giving in, he played a desperately glorious version of 'Western Skies' with his eyes straight at her and his voice cracking and slowly making its way over the haggard lyrics. It was an almost unbearable moment as he forced himself to do something that he obviously did not want to do and that visibly got to him.

At the end of the evening, after an hilariously hammed up 'Jonny Mathis's Feet' and a solo encore that ends with him moving away from the microphone and singing directly to the audience, he announces that this will be his last ever show in England. Whether this is true or not, there is certainly a tension in his relationship with this country.
"I grew up here and I was always the stupid fucking asshole American. I went to school and everyone always made fun of my accent and hated my guts. But then the only Americans I knew were my parents and I hated them, so I was like totally English, and only liked the English and things from England. Then I moved to America and I was like, 'Oh my God I hate this. I hate living here and I want to die.' So then I had to learn to love America and I still don't. I still just like certain parts, but you could bomb the rest of it off the face of this planet as far as I'm concerned. There are some beautiful places in America, there are some beautiful people. I'm a glib Californian and this is the way that I talk. It's like, I really like people and I just don't give shit about countries anymore."

Mark Eitzel; Misplaced, melancholic and an absolute genius.

(Mark Eitzel's '60 Watt Silver Lining' is out now on Virgin.)

Mark Eitzel was talking to Ben, in June 1996.