![]() “I started it as an aggressive example, or allegory of my father and I’s troubled relationship. In the song, he compares his father-son relationship to David and Goliath. I was living at the Chelsea at the time, wrote ‘Dinner at Eight,’ then magically forgot about it for three or four years … I didn’t put it on my second album, ‘Poses,’ but when it came time to make ‘Want One,’ my third album, it just trickled back into my mind.” ![]() “I actually had to leave the house and drive back to the city that night because we didn’t want to see each other. “I wrote ‘Dinner at Eight’ after I had, arguably, the worst argument with my father ever,” Wainwright said. The craziness of life brought us this beautiful soul, who is Viva our daughter, and she never ceases to amaze everybody.”įatherhood themes have permeated his work, including the song “Dinner at Eight.” We’re all from Montreal, which is a big plus. “I’ve known the family for many years … I had a very good relationship with Leonard too. The two share parenting roles along with Wainwright’s partner Jörn Weisbrodt. He later donated sperm to Lorca, who gave birth to their daughter, Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen in 2011. As a child, Wainwright was friends with Cohen’s son Adam, and daughter Lorca. The connection to Leonard Cohen was not pure happenstance. “I was called in one afternoon to lay it down … I think it took like an hour, then it made it onto the soundtrack … The next thing you know, people are asking me to sing it all the time.” “I didn’t know the song,” Wainwright said. It was a powerful rendering that some say rivals Jeff Buckley’s cover, or even the original. His DreamWorks connection allowed him to record his cover of Leonard Cohen’s classic “Hallelujah” for the “Shrek” soundtrack. I just felt like it was part of the process like, ‘Why would I be doing this if I didn’t want to be the best I can be?'” It’s funny, that was identified by certain people as megalomania or conceitedness, but it actually wasn’t. I’m Best New Artist in Rolling Stone because I am the best new artist.’ It didn’t seem like such a stretch to me. The album landed him a Best New Artist nod from Rolling Stone magazine. But I was more concerned with the music, the quality of the recordings and the performance I wanted to try to pull off.” “I was certainly excited about getting all the attention, being in the spotlight and having a true power behind me in terms of what that meant years ago when you were on a major label. “Thankfully I wasn’t aware at the time of what was happening,” Wainwright said. “We’re doing ‘Hadrian’ this summer in Spain … They seem to have lives of their own now.”Īs for his life in popular music, Wainwright signed with DreamWorks Records for a self-titled debut in 1998. Singers love singing it, so it seems to have survived and is beginning to flourish,” Wainwright said. It was by no means a critical success, but there’s been seven productions of it all over the world. That passion would eventually lead to him writing two original operas, “Prima Dona” (2009) and “Hadrian,” which premiered in 2018 in Toronto, Canada. That was really for me the beginning of my personal journey into the world of music, specifically with songwriting.” It was very quick, I heard one piece, I was listening to Verdi’s ‘Requiem,’ and, after that two-hour séance, I could only listen to opera. “I plunged into this passion for that type of music. “When I was about 13 years old, I had a major conversion to opera,” Wainwright said. ![]() Still, he looks back to one specific moment that changed the entire course of his life. She loved to teach people music in general and to play music with people, so to have her son so eager was a real blessing that she took advantage of.” “My mother very much took on the challenge and really enjoyed that whole process. “From a very early age I expressed a real precocious nature and loved to sing and perform,” Wainwright said. When Wainwright was 3, after his parents divorce, he moved to Montreal, Canada with his mother. More the folk-rock version, because my mom went with my dad in the studio after the hospital and they put me in a guitar case.” “I wasn’t quite born in a truck or anything, but my first ever crib outside of the hospital was a guitar case. “I was a poster child for showbiz lore,” he said. His father, Loudon Wainwright III, was also a famous songwriter, known best for his ironic lyrics and pop-up performances on the ’70s war comedy “M*A*S*H”. His mother, Kate McGarrigle was a songwriter and half of a famous Canadian folk duo with her sister, Anna. Business & Finance Click to expand menu.īorn in 1973 in Rhinebeck, New York, Wainwright may have been destined for a life in music.
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