Interviewed juli 1997 at RoTown in Rotterdam.

Yo La Tengo seem to have existed forever. Every year the threesome from New Jersey: Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew release another record even more beautiful than the one before. Just like the one they released early 1997, the lovingly titled I can hear the heart beating as one, a record stacked full of A-sides of singles that will sadly never be a hit. That doesn’t really matter though, because Yo La Tengo is gradually becoming a constant factor in the laws of (pop)music.

Ira: ‘We have been doing this for twelve years now. But it still hasn’t become a routine. It something so completely different compared to getting up in the morning to go to your work. Every day there’s something new to experience, every day is different. I have never had the illusion that it would last as long as it does. Georgia and I met each other and we were both rather shy and very shy about the instruments we play. From that moment on, we started fooling around with music. Little by little we have come to where we are now.’

Ira is still a bit shy, but foremost he is modest. Yo La Tengo has been around long enough to draw a decent crowd of fans, and they are known to have influenced a great number of bands. Ira: ‘Well, what can I say? We just play music, we never really think about what people think of us or how they are influenced by the things we do. We never do market research. We just play what we play.’ So what’s Yo La Tengo playing? Ira: ‘There’s no rule, it changes all the time. We just want to make something that good, and that’s really the only criterium.’ Well that isn’t completely true. Yo La Tengo make classic popsongs based on the American pop and rock heritage of the past fifty years. Ira: ‘Ofcourse I’d like to see this band in that tradition. I liked it when punk came around, but I never believed it would obliterate all other music. I just liked it there were so many great records released. When the Sex Pistols started telling us that Pink Floyd is crap, I just though: “So what?”. Even Pink Ployd have made their share of good songs, probably even more than the Sex Pistols.’

If we start looking back like that, we could compare Yo La Tengo with The Velvet Underground. Ira: ‘That comparison doesn’t bother me, because there is some truth in it. But people all to easily start comparing us before they have even heard one note of our music and that’s a real shame. I used to be a music journalist myself and I know what I did and I know what other do. A journalist hastily reads the press release sees the name Velvet Underground six times and then he thinks he should at least mention that. Oh well, at least seventyfive percent of the guitarbands around at the moment are in one way or another influenced by the Velvet Underground. So it isn’t that good a comparison.’

Many of the bands in Yo La Tengo’s musical vincinity are related to postrock, all bands who play try to get rid of the narrow definition of songstructures and by playing instrumentals try to do something different. Ira: ‘What is so different about that? What Tortoise are doing can still be considered rock and I think they also see it that way. The idea apalls me that so many bands are so pretentious about doing something “completely different”. It’s something I’m definitely trying not to do in Yo La Tengo, still I must agree we now got some people from that same ’scene’ doing remixes on our autumn sweater single: Bundy K. Brown, Kevin Shields and Mu-ziq. On the other hand we did open for Johnny Cash. It’s both “rock”, you know?’ That’s probably the problem with I can hear the heart beating as one and all of Yo La Tengo’s previous releases, there’s not one single description to fit the music. Ira: ‘And that’s probably one of the reasons why nobody in this little country of yours (he means the Netherlands - Pjoe) is ever interested in our music.’ So do you have any ambitions left? Ira: ‘Yeah! But I wonder if we will ever be wise enough to do it. I would really like us to stop at moment we should.’ Hopefully that moment will never come.