Dhani Harrison's "One Way Out" Video interview

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Dhani Harrison's "One Way Out" Video interview

By Andy Langer

October 8 2012

In February of 2011, Esquire descended upon Detroit with five musicians and photographer Danny Clinch for our Second Annual Songwriting Challenge. Among our participants were country superstar Dierks Bentley, R&B renegade Raphael Saadiq, and a pair of Motor City hometown boys, Brendan Benson of the Raconteurs and Ben Blackwell of the Dirtbombs. But ask any of those guys about their favorite new friend from the trip, and they're likely to say Dhani Harrison, the cofounder of the modern-rock collective thenewno2. He's not just a musician's musician — a talented songwriter, singer, and producer — but also someone you genuinely want to be around. He's quick with a joke, easy to drink with, and thankfully, for the enquiring minds that want to know, gave off zero attitude when the guys dug for stories about his father, the Beatles' George Harrison.

At the heart of the trip was a songwriting contest, for which each musician had to write and record an original composition that included the line "last night in Detroit." Harrison's contribution was a seething, muscular guitar workout titled "One Way Out." And while it didn't quite fit the overall tone of his band's next record, thefearofmissingout, Harrison and bandmates Jonathan Sadoff and Jeremy Faccone recently revived the song for an acoustic session captured on an Epic RED camera by noted filmmaker and videographer Steven Sebring (Patti Smith: Dream of Life), premiering exclusively here on The Culture Blog.

Last week, while Harrison was in an Arizona airport returning from the first test screening of Beautiful Creatures — a fantasy flick featuring Emma Thompson, Jeremy Irons, and Viola Davis that thenewno2 is scoring — we spoke to him about the new "One Way Out" video, Detroit, and the friends he made there.

ESQUIRE.COM: We went to Detroit almost two years ago. Apart from the song, what did you take away from the experience?

DHANI HARRISON: I learned how to have fun with some new pals. I saw Ben Blackwell recently in Seattle. I've been in touch with Brendan and seen Dierks a couple of times in Los Angeles. He likes to text me bad jokes. I think what we all walked away with was proof that you can put five different people from five different genres together and have some fun without ego or competition. Musicians rarely get to hang out with people who do different sorts of music. It really made for some proper friendships. And there's so much to learn from each other.

ESQ: There's also a lot to learn from Detroit itself. We saw vacant building after building, street after street. It was hard to believe we were driving through a major American city.

DH: I remember being in a car with the guys, and we were randomly talking about the Cold War. And somebody said, "Who won the Cold War?" And just then, we drove over a bridge, saw a blown-out building, and I looked at you and said, "Detroit definitely didn't win." It looks like Bosnia or somewhere where giant robots have been and destroyed the whole city. To this day, I can't believe it's happened in America. I tell people, "Go to Detroit — you have to see this." But there's also a great community of young artists there. It's like they built a last-ditch artists' community in this world of zombies. If the zombies had taken over and all there was left to do was make art, that would be what it's like. They're the little islands of hope.

ESQ: Not surprisingly, I suppose, the scenic backdrop for "One Way Out" is a post-apocalyptic Detroit.

DH: Exactly. The "one way out" could be to die or make a really good effort not to die. The motor industry, what was the heart of Detroit, is in the song, only we're hotwiring a car to break out, to escape by any means possible. I was definitely coming at it from a post-apocalyptic angle. I was also thinking about the Simpsons, when there's a nuclear incident, and they're the only people left on earth. Homer jumps up and asks, "Who wants to go steal some Ferraris?"

ESQ: How do you know Steven Sebring?

DH: He's mad. I love him. He's properly eccentric. He's one of the chief testers for the Epic RED cameras. And we did The Guitar Collection, an iPad app documenting my father's guitar collection, together. He shot everything, and we used his 360-degree algorithm to stitch everything together. So we spent a few days together looking at insane guitars. We didn't want to do the app in a sterile studio, so we did it at my house. As a result, we cooked dinner together every night, and he basically moved in for the project. Not long after, he offered to shoot some stuff for thenewno2. And that's what you're seeing. And this summer, I got married, and he asked to shoot the wedding. He showed up and shot the whole thing on an Epic RED. I haven't seen any of the photos yet. They're too high-res. Nobody can open them. But I bet all the women look really, really good in extreme slow motion.

ESQ: You've got a new record and lots of clips floating around online, including videos like this one that feature songs not on the record. You seem to really embrace the notion that "content" is the key to the new music industry.

DH: You have to have your shit straight before you launch something. And yeah, you have to make content. There are so many platforms out there for content, but not enough actual content. It's why what we did in Detroit is so important — it forced people to write songs, to form friendships and then turn those friendships into collaborations. In the '60s and '70s, there was a different level of collaboration. You had Delaney & Bonnie, but also Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, where Eric Clapton is playing guitar. And then George Harrison is out on tour with them. You'd see a show that was unique and amazing. Now it's "I'm Coldplay." Or "I'm Radiohead." "I'm Rihanna." There are collaborations, but it's not as relaxed. People don't hang as much. Where are all these bands, where are they hanging? Thenewno2 is a gang, and we just go around assimilating people into our thing. Wherever I go in the world — London, New York, or even Iceland — there are always a couple members of thenewno2 to hang with, even if they're not in the live band at the moment. And now I can call Dierks when I have an idea. Or Ben. Or Brendan. I like collaborators and having people around to make music with. What could be more fun?