E is for exposed, eccentric and Eels

A physicist father, lonely childhood and family tragedy - Mark Oliver Everett's story is no ordinary rock memoir, writes Fionola Meredith.

Mark Oliver Everett - known to his friends and fans as E, from the rock band Eels - hates filling in personal information forms. When he reaches the part that requests "in case of emergency, contact: . . .", he has no idea what name to put. The musician is the last surviving member of his family: his father died prematurely from a heart attack, his sister took her own life, and his mother succumbed to cancer, all one after the other. Then E's cousin and her husband - both flight attendants - perished in the plane which was flown into the Pentagon on 9/11. It's a grim litany that has found expression in many of E's songs, but not necessarily in the way you would expect.

Yes, his music is death-haunted, but for E, that acute awareness of his own mortality is as likely to produce a celebration of life's fleeting glories - its moments of transcendent joy and piercing beauty - as it is to dwell on loss and pain and fear. And it might be performed by anything from a sedate string quartet to a tinkly toy piano to a trio of snarling, deafening guitars: the band is essentially a one-man operation, accompanied by "whoever else is along for the ride".

In his world, there's no telling what will happen next. "It's the loneliest feeling, having no family," says E - now 44 - in his autobiography, Things the Grandchildren Should Know. "Holidays really suck and I usually try to pretend they're not happening. On the bright side, Christmas shopping is a cinch."

It's a flash of mordant, deadpan humour characteristic of this most unlikely rock star, whom Rolling Stonemagazine has rather appositely christened "the Kurt Vonnegut of rock". In the same vein, the chapter of the book which deals with his sister's suicide attempt and the disposal of his father's ashes goes by the wry title, "Elizabeth on the bathroom floor/Dad in the trash".

In fact, E's story - told in a disarmingly candid yet never ingratiating style: "no flowery shit," as he says himself - is riddled with self-deprecating jokes at his own expense. He does admit to having an ego - "but not so big I think I was created in God's image. Unless God is a hairy ectomorph with bad posture . . . This isn't the story of a famous guy. It's just the story of a guy who occasionally finds himself in situations that resemble a famous guy's life." There's a level of reflection and maturity at work here that's far removed from the popular conception of the monosyllabic, bone-headed rocker.

Speaking from his home in Los Feliz, California, where he lives with his beloved dog Bobby Jr - whose spirited howling features on several songs, and whose mournful face adorns the fuchsia-coloured knickers that form part of the official Eels merchandise - E admits that writing his autobiography was difficult. But, curiously, that was the attraction: "I have this strange mechanism that activates when I think something is off-limits - I know I have to go there. Even if it means painstakingly recalling all the events my selective memory can muster."

An intensely private man at heart, E found the process excruciating at times. It really was like pulling teeth, he says. "But now I can hold the book in my hand - all those years wrapped up in nice little packages - and it feels like I've cleared the decks, I can go forward now."

Born in Virginia in 1963 to quantum physicist Hugh Everett III and his wife Nancy, E had an upbringing that was "ridiculous, sometimes tragic and always unsteady", and which, he frankly acknowledges, left him with an enduring sense of "bone-crushing insecurity".

He describes a dysfunctional family life where his father barely spoke to him or his sister Elizabeth, instead spending all his time at the dining-room table, "scribbling crazy-looking physics notations on yellow legal pads and drinking gin-and-tonics".

There was no intimacy; in fact, the only time E ever touched his father was when he discovered his already-stiff corpse lying sideways on his parents' bed: it was, he says, "the first physical contact I could remember, other than the occasional cigarette burn on my arm while squeezing by him in the hallway".

Meanwhile, E's childlike mother was prone to random crying fits that left young Mark feeling bewildered, helpless and unparented.

"It was tough for me because I needed a mother, and as a result, still do," he says bluntly, in the language of a man who has seen a lot of therapy. (This unfortunate tendency is fully explored later in a confessional chapter entitled "Why I Love Crazy Girls".) "Luckily for me, I found a way to deal with myself and my family, by treating it all like a constant and ongoing art project."

E has been ploughing back through his family history with a vengeance lately. Catharsis, it seems, is the order of the day. In addition to writing his memoir, he recently "took a journey into his father's brain", making a BBC documentary about his physicist father and his pioneering theory of parallel universes. Back in the 1950s, Hugh Everett's radical idea included the suggestion that every time we make a choice or a decision, a version of ourselves splits off and continues in another parallel universe, and so on, ad infinitum.

It was a barnstorming theory that challenged many quantum orthodoxies - and one that was later to be endorsed by respected scientists - but it went unrecognised at the time, leaving Hugh a frustrated and withdrawn man.

E says: "I was struck by what a tragedy my father's life was. How would you like to come up with something so mind-blowing about how the world works, confident that you knew it was true, but have no one support your view? It must have been the loneliest life, being the smartest guy in the room, just having to shut up and keep your thoughts to yourself while the regular chimps all chat away.

"I was determined to help to give him the day in the sun he never got when he was alive."

It was a voyage that brought E closer to his father than he ever thought possible. "One morning, I looked in the bathroom mirror. My father was looking back at me. I realised I could identify with him in a lot of ways now. How he was depressed from feeling under-appreciated . . . How he wore the same clothes all the time, just like me. I get it now. We're both 'ideas men' and anything outside of those ideas is a distraction."

It's true that E has experienced his own share of misunderstanding over the years. Bizarrely, his 2000 album, Daisies of the Galaxy, was seized upon by the then Republican candidate for the White House, George W Bush, as an example of the entertainment industry "marketing smut to children".

The furore was generated by the idyllic, storybook-like cover of the CD, which concealed decidedly adult songs such as It's a Motherfucker- not an obscene rant, but actually a delicate and poignant hymn to lost love. According to Bush's campaign, the CD demonstrated that "America's families cannot count on Al Gore to stop Hollywood from marketing this stuff to children".

To this day, E remains incredulous about the bit-part his music played in the presidential battle. But he's adamant that he won't be touching on politics in his own songs: "If there's one thing I'm not interested in, it's writing about politics. I'm more interested in the politics of the backyard, of your own life, and the little picture."

As far as E is concerned, music saved his life, offering him a way out of madness, chaos and death. In one of his songs, he muses, "A careful man tries to dodge the bullets, while a happy man takes a walk." Which one is he? "I try to be a happy man. I feel lucky that I experienced such extremes. I'm comfortable with who I am now, and that's a new, odd feeling. But I like it."

Things the Grandchildren Should Know , by Mark Oliver Everett, is published by Little, Brown on Jan 17