"I never worked so hard on anything in my life! It took forever, we all went a little bit mad."
Luna's Dean Wareham on the making of new album 'Pup Tent'

Although still a bit of unknown as far as the masses are concerned, for some people Dean Wareham is regarded as a bit of a legend. I've loved his guitar playing and songwriting since a friend lent me Galaxie 500's 'This Is Our Music' back in 1990. That was to be the band's last record, as Dean went on to form Luna and Damon and Naomi joined the somewhat self-indulgent Magic Hour in between being, erm, Damon and Naomi. Nowadays Luna are onto their fourth (and best) album 'Pup Tent' - a broader and more adventurous record than it's fine predecessor 'Penthouse' with Dean's distinctive guitar playing and wryly imaginative lyrics once again to the fore. I was lucky to catch up with Dean for a few words when Luna were over to play the Reading Festival. I started off my asking a bit about 'Pup Tent' and how it compared to their previous albums.
"It's different. We worked very hard - I never worked so hard on anything in my life! It took forever, we all went a little bit mad. We had six months to write it after we came off the last tour but we re-wrote everything in the studio anyway. That's definitely not a normal process for us as we don't normally use a producer - but this time we had Pat McCarthy (who engineered previous album 'Penthouse') from the very beginning. Every note, every mood and every word was scrutinized and I think that you can tell it paid off. Normally we would just have bass, drums, two guitars and not much else, but Pat was more interested in creating strange psychedelic moods and atmospheres. He can't play anything but that's good because he couldn't grab your guitar off you and start showing you what he wanted. He's more like -'what note are you playing? Well, how about you play another note?'"

Last time around you had Tom Verlaine (Television) and Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab) guesting.
"Yes, there are no legends this time around though! You know what happened? You let Tom Verlaine play on your record and everybody starts comparing you to Television! I couldn't really give a shit about that I suppose. Tom was fantastic and really improved the two songs he played on. The collaboration came about because Mario our engineer did the last Television record and a couple of Tom's solo records, and we were in the studio with all Tom's old equipment which we got to use - we gave Tom some of our studio time as a trade."

So it wasn't daunting to hook up with such a legendary guitarist? - I mean you're no slouch in that department yourself!
"I had no problem letting him take the lead. I've played enough guitar solos in my time it's not a problem for me to step aside. He's in another league anyway, he's incredible, unique. There are so few guitarists like that around. I saw Ron Asheton from the Stooges a while back with his new band Dark Carnival and that was the same sort of experience of a guitarist with an incredibly personal style."

On the subject of legends, how did you find your enviable role of opening for the Velvet Underground on their reunion tour?
"That was fun, the crowds seemed to like it although obviously they weren't there to see us. I don't think it particularly did us any good, it didn't raise our profile at all because a crowd like that is generally a lot older and aren't going out to get turned on to new music. But it was good to have backstage seats every night on that tour!"

How are Luna being perceived nowadays - are you out of the shadow of Galaxie 500?
"In America I've been out of the shadow of that for some time, Luna is bigger in the States than Galaxie 500 ever was. In the UK people still think of Galaxie 500, Luna don't mean as much here. I think that's partly because of our shaky start in signing to Elektra for the world, it has taken us some time to recover from that. Finally we were able to re-negotiate our contract for Europe- we ended up taking less money but it was worth it. You can't put a price on having your career sabotaged by people who aren't interested in you. We're very happy with Beggars Banquet in Europe and thankfully Elektra in the Staets have been good too."

Why did the first album 'Lunapark' credit the name of the band as Luna2?
"This was because some woman had called herself Luna and we couldn't use the name, so we put a little "2" in there and that wasn't good enough as we gave her some money and we both get to use the name now. She spells it Lluna now I think. No-one knows who she is but her surname is Wexler and I think she was related to Jerry Wexler who was one of the founders of Atlantic Records - so she could have had some muscle!"

Were you ever concious of retreading old stuff when you started Luna?
"There's a little bit of repetition I suppose, sometimes I do things that are similar. Some of the guitar solos on 'Pup Tent' and some of the falsetto singing may remind people of Galaxie 500 but generally I think that was a formula that I think we kind of exhausted in Galaxie 500. You have to change although fans of the original stuff may not want you to. People will have to wait a very long time for the next Galaxie 500 record!"

Are you still in touch with Damon and Naomi, the other members of Galaxie 500?
"We are in contact by the fax machine only which is kind of sad and ridiculous I suppose, but there's not that much to talk about. The longer you go without speaking to someone the harder it gets, and they were 'very angry at me for betraying them' which again I think is ridiculous. Magic Hour (the prog-rock type band they went on to form) have now spilt up, they're now back to Damon and Naomi. I've heard some of that stuff and obviously I'm not objective about it - there's too much emotion- so I don't sit at home and listen to their records, the same way they don't listen to mine."

What about current influences on your music?
"I'm listening to things like Ennio Morricone, Scott Walker. Lee Hazelwood is my favourite lyric writer at the moment - half bubblegum, half LSD. Well, he was from Arizona and he'd been in the army so I guess it was bopund to be strange! There's a bunch of records I like but I wouldn't say they were 'influences'. Tarnation are a band that remind me a lot of Morricone, and I like the later Talk Talk records a lot, in fact I've just bought Orang's 'Herd Of Instinct' which is great." (Orang are Paul Webb and Lee Harris from Talk Talk, fact fans)

Do you ever listen to other guitarists?
"People I love and who I don't really listen to all that much tend to come in pairs. I liked the Feelies who weren't big in England at all. They were a fantastic under-rated band and their drummer Stanley Demeski used to be in Luna! I like James Burton who was Elvis Presley's band leader, he also played with Ricky Nelson as well as on some Lee Hazelwood stuff. He's more countryish than most people I listen to, but he's a real legend."

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