James Franco is a busy man, apart from his numerous film commitments, painting endevours and English college courses, he has found time to create a record.
The upcoming album, inspired by the Smiths, is a collaboration between the Pineapple Express actor, Smiths bass player Andy Rourke and musical partner Tim O’Keefe.
Each song has been penned by Franco and is based around poetry he wrote that was directly inspired from the legendary English band.
The project is called Let Me Get What I Want, and features Franco’s band Daddy playing the instruments for the LP.
Speaking to Vice, Franco said: “We took a ten-poem sequence called ‘The Best of the Smiths: Side A and Side B. I originally wrote this sequence as a way to use one medium (music) to influence another one (poetry).”
“The Smiths’ songs provided inspiration for the poems, lending tone and situation. Once I had the sequence, Tim and I took the material one step further and turned the poems inspired by songs, back into songs of their own.”
The record includes bassist Andy Rourke playing on each track. A series of videos will be released in conjunction with the album, once they’re viewed in sequence the videos will form a narrative and tell a full story.
Musical collaborator Tim O’Keefe added: “We created the record at the same time James’s mom ran a program teaching kids how to make films [at Palo Alto high school].”
“They developed scripts out of the same poems that we made songs out of, then shot film based on those scripts… While they were doing that project, we took all of the raw footage we had for each song and brought in editors to put together our film.”
Watch the first of James Franco’s Smiths inspired videos below.
