Fifteen years after he scratched a lifelong itch and moved to New York City, Steve Wynn has settled in nicely to life on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The relocation also breathed fire into a music career that already had notched landmark albums by his first band, the Dream Syndicate, collaborations with Gutterball and a slew of excellent early solo releases. Once he turned 40, Wynn rolled up his sleeves and really went to work, cranking out masterpieces like 2001’s Here Come The Miracles and 2003’s Static Transmission. Wynn, wife/drummer Linda Pitmon, Peter Buck (R.E.M.) and Scott McCaughey (Minus 5) are set to begin a U.S. tour. Read our Q&A with Wynn. (Also read our 2001 Q&A with Wynn, conducted by novelist George Pelecanos, as well as our overview of the Dream Syndicate and its fellow Paisley Underground bands.)
Steve Wynn: I was born in Los Angeles, lived there for 34 years, and I’m not here to knock my hometown. Turns out it’s a nice place to visit, but give me about a week of sunshine, palm trees and late-night drives to 24-hour burrito stands and I’m ready to come back home to Manhattan. I moved here 15 years ago and have written more songs and recorded more music than I ever did in L.A. Something about the exchange rate for a New York minute, I guess. Has the city changed? Sure, there will always be people who say it was better in the ’90s or in the ’70s or maybe when Aaron Burr was still alive. (Question: Who were the more exciting duelists? Verlaine and Lloyd or Burr and Hamilton?) But I say the greatest thrill here is just walking the streets, hearing snippets of conversation, seeing things you’ve never seen before, changing your path and then embracing the random element. And the best thing about New York City just might be the subway pass. For $89 a month, you have unlimited access to a million different sub-universes, the extent of which you could not fully discover in 25 lifetimes. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to Sunset Park for some carne-asada tacos.
