Petra Haden
Petra Haden
Petra Hadenis an American violinist and singer. She is or has been a member of several bands, including That Dog, Tito & Tarantula, and The Decemberists; has contributed to recordings by The Twilight Singers, Beck, Mike Watt, Luscious Jackson, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Weezer, The Rentals, Victoria Williams, Yuka Honda, The Gutter Twins, and Cornelius. She is the daughter of the jazz bassist Charlie Haden; the triplet sister of bassist Rachel Hadenand cellist Tanya Hadenwith whom she has performed as...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth11 October 1971
CountryUnited States of America
I didn't know how write a song, (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, bridge, verse), etc., and I didn't know how to write lyrics, so that's when I thought, well, I don't have to write a song with all those verses and choruses or lyrics. I can just sing everything the way I want to. So I sang all the instruments with my voice and just went with it.
People are born with the knack to write poems and songs. I'm not a poet at all.
You have to be a poet to know how to write a song with lyrics.
I put out Imaginaryland, I heard a lot of, "Oh she's copying Laurie Anderson," and I was like, wait... but I don't know her music! Maybe - didn't she have a song called "Superman"?
Everyone knows about The Who, but I didn't. I knew the popular songs like "I Can See For Miles." So that was the first song I worked on because it was the catchiest and easiest.
I've already done two cover albums. I don't know, maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to do another, but I just did the Led Zeppelin song for fun, and I thought I could do it kind of quick since songs that I love a lot I can do fast.
Our dad played us a lot of old country songs by The Carter Family and he would sing along to it. I loved listening to him sing.
The first song I wrote was "Look Both Ways Before You Cross" from Imaginaryland. I started the song by singing a bass line, "hoo hoo hoo hoo."
Eventually I had so many little melodies and ideas that, you know, that they were all songs to me and I threw in a few cover songs like Enya's "Watermark," Bach, and my dad's song, "Song for the Whales."
I got a new 4-track cassette recorder a year or so after high school. For a while I would just stare at it thinking, how am I going to do this if I don't play guitar or keyboards? How am I going to write and record a song if I don't know how to play any instruments? I mean, I played the violin, but I didn't know anything about how to work a 4-track.
When I was recording my first solo album 'Imaginaryland,' I was listening to a lot of movie scores.
'The Conversation' was a movie I saw probably for the first time in the early 2000s. I immediately loved the piano and just how simple it is.
I wish I finished music school, because then I feel like I could talk more about the dissonant notes.
The bass line is the anchor for me. I started with the bass, and either doubled that and then added the harmonies, or sometimes added my own harmonies that I've always wanted to sing on the song. And then it just went on from there - singing violin parts and trumpet parts and just trying to emulate the sounds of the instruments.