Neutral Milk Hotel’s music was a minor miracle, a perfect set of songs and performances that happened in a particular space in time. It can never happen again! Neither Jeff Magnum nor its horde of imitators will be able to reach for it. But what do we have left? Songs like “Holland, 1945,” one of the greatest alternative rock songs of the 1990s, and the quirky masterpiece that is “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.”
But are the rumours about “Holland, 1945,” true? And is the internet mad to fall in love the way it has with Neutral Milk Hotel? Those are tough questions, but the ones I’m trying to answer here.
Neutral Milk Hotel’s Road to Making “Holland, 1945”
Neutral Milk Hotel’s story should be an inspiration for every songwriter making bizarre music with their friends and facing great hurdles toward success. The band wasn’t designed to obtain fame. But it did, and it wasn’t in a way that anyone could have predicted. Hear that, quirky basement songwriter? Keep going!
At the tail-end of the 1980s, a group of independent Louisiana musicians befriended one another and, eventually, formed Elephant 6, an artistic collective. Bands that were part of it included Robert Schneider’s The Apples in Stereo, The Olivia Tremor Control, of Montreal, and Jeff Magnum.
Magnum had been part of a number of indie, psychedelic and punk-rock groups. Neutral Milk Hotel was, I suppose, simply a name for his expressive psych-folk songs.
Elephant 6’s Schneider helped Magnum record an early single and the album “On Avery Island.” These recordings were beloved by those in this tiny musical scene and ignored everywhere else.
In 1997, Magnum moved to Denver, recorded and released “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.” The album seemed destined to have the same fate as its predecessors, but fate would ultimately intervene.
In the years that followed its release, online murmurs turned the album into a cult hit. In fact, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a bigger modern cult classic than this one.
Meaning of the Lyrics to “Holland, 1945”
“Holland, 1945” was the album’s sole single. Clearly, Magnum and the people at Merge Records thought that it had commercial potential. And indeed, it’s a very catchy song that, even without knowing the lyrics’ context, sounds eerie and unsettling.
What are the lyrics about? Magnum became something of a recluse in the aftermath of the band’s breakup. We’re unlikely to find out from him.
However, most people believe Magnum was inspired by Anne Frank’s tragedy to write the lyrics for “Holland, 1945,” and some of the other songs on the album.
“The Diary of Anne Frank” is one of the most famous memoirs of all time, and one that Magnum was said to be reading while making the record. The book tells the story of Frank and her family living in the Netherlands at the start of WWII. Frank describes hiding from the Nazis. Sadly, the book remains unfinished.
In 1998, Magnum did speak about the impact of “The Diary of Anne Frank” on him, telling Puncture Magazine: “I’d never given it any thought before. Then I spent two days reading it and completely flipped out… spent about three days crying… It stuck with me for a long, long time.”
He went on to say, “I’m not sure I could allow myself to connect with a book that much. While I was reading the book, she was completely alive to me. I pretty much knew what was going to happen. But that’s the thing: you love people because you know their story. You have sympathy for people even when they do stupid things because you know where they’re coming from, you understand where they’re at in their head. So here I am as deep as you can go in someone’s head, in some ways deeper than you can go with someone you know in the flesh. And then at the end, she gets disposed of like a piece of trash. I would go to bed every night and have dreams about having a time machine, having the ability to move through time and space freely, and save Anne Frank. Do you think that’s embarrassing?“
However, the song could have just as well been called “Untitled” if it were up to Magnum. Chris Bilheimer handled the iconic artwork for the album and also suggested the titles “Holland” and “1945.” Magnum simply pieced the two together.
The Legacy of Neutral Milk Hotel
If Ween, surprinsgly, grew into being the internet’s favourite rock band, then “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” is its favourite album. It’s no exaggeration, I think, to say that this is “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” for the kids who got their musical education off music blogs and social media posts.
It’s not just that there’s nothing like it, no, not even Arcade Fire. Its fame is also due to the mystery surrounding the making of it, or the fact that the group never made another album.
Sure, “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” is best enjoyed as a single piece. Indeed, that’s the way most listeners experience it, even though I confess to considering “Holland, 1945” to be the catchiest song on the album.
That catchiness and the song’s startling poetry led Stephen Colbert to ask that it be played over the credits of “The Colbert Report.”
Just how big did Neutral Milk Hotel become? Search for most lists of the greatest bands and albums over recent decades, and Magnum’s work will inevitably be at the top.
Did Magnum and the band get to rejoice in the album’s success? Yes, but without selling out, as most would have. Neutral Milk Hotel briefly reunited in 2013 for a number of shows, then politely faded back into obscurity. What a gift to have this album exist!
