Finger Eleven

Interviewed By: Chris DePaul

Date: 2008-01-17

“When I was little I would fall asleep to my Dad reading The Hobbit [by J. R. R. Tolkien],” James Black, guitarist for Finger Eleven says. “So as soon as I was able I read it myself, I did.”

Finger Eleven – a Canadian-based rock band – released their highly anticipated album “Them Vs. You Vs. Me” to eager fans in 2007. The album comes four years after the band’s widely successful self-titled release featuring the hit-single “One Thing”. On Finger Eleven’s web site the band describes the new album’s compositions as “varying styles and colors, ranging from rock to country to dance to funk to old 60's songs. Many of these were written by exchanging files over the internet wherein one person would track a home recording, send it off into cyber space, and then someone else would build on it and send it on down the line.”

When asked about some of his favourite books, James Black can quickly rhyme off a few: Perfume, The Underground Man, Siddhartha, Ishmael, Valis, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Galapagos, and The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But Black’s introduction to all of these stemmed from a passion he developed as a child for the fantastical.

The wonderful and mystical world Tolkien paints in his Lord of the Rings series was Black’s first introduction to Fantasy literature. “Wizards, Warriors and You was one that was more in my range. It was a choose your own adventure type book so I would read them every which way, as the Wizard, as the Warrior, as a bad guy, as a good guy; I eventually read every page after one missed turn or another.”

Black attributes these fantasy books as having a heavy influence on his imagination. “It planted in me the need to escape to different worlds and different places where the rules were all different. This has heavily influenced my creative process through my whole life with art or music. I'm always trying to take normal ideas and turn them on their side or upside down, the way those books did with reality. What would this idea be like in a different world?”

Black’s love for Fantasy was soon accompanied with a new love: Sci-Fi. John Wyndham's The Chrysalids, introduced to him in an English class, was his gateway book into this genre.

For entertainment while on the road with Finger Eleven, Black packs three books with him to read during the band’s downtimes. “I read a lot of Philip K Dick. I read a lot of Kurt Vonnegut. I really like books that turn history on its head, like what if we lost World War II or what if Judas was a good guy. I recently read a book called The People of Paper [by Salvador Plascencia], which involves the characters interacting and revolting against the author. I love books that really play with the point of view of the narrator. [Vonnegut’s] Breakfast of Champions does that too. All of a sudden the author is in the book interacting with the characters.

“Another book called House of Leaves [by Mark Z. Danielewski] really blew my mind. It's very unique in every way. It's a great subject, but more importantly, the way the book is laid out is one of a kind. As the character falls in the story, the words are laid out on the page in a descending pattern. At one point in the book footnotes appear. At the same time, in the story, the characters get lost in a maze. If you follow the footnotes as you're reading this section, you eventually get lost in the book and have to start retracing your step, until you find a familiar place to continue from. I really love anything that makes you feel part of the story in any way.”

Black’s exposure and appreciation for fictional stories has directly impacted the way he writes lyrics, “maybe even more than other songs,” he says. “I wrote a song called Man From Mars from a Sci Fi narrative point of view about the world. Rather than be straight to the point literally, like a song like [John Lennon’s] ‘Imagine’, I fictionally talk about the world like Philip K Dick or probably more like Douglas Adams would do. I try to make my point by suggesting that if a man from Mars did come in peace, the first thing we would do was argue about who's the boss. Whose God is right? Eventually they agree to a little green man on a cross.”

The lyrics for Finger Eleven’s latest album can be read on their website here.

Purchase Books
You can purchase the books recommended by Finger Eleven here.

Links:
http://www.fingereleven.com