Ryan Gosling has spoken to NME about his short-lived indie-folk band Dead Man’s Bones and denied he ever performed under the stage name Baby Goose – check out the full interview, which also tackles Gosling’s brilliant new sci-fi blockbuster Project Hail Mary (in cinemas now) above.
Dead Man’s Bones released only one album back in 2009 but the self-titled record is still attracting more than 189,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, despite having released no new music for nearly 17 years.
According to Gosling, he and bandmate Zach Shields originally bonded over their shared love of Disneyland’s spooky Haunted Mansion ride. The iconic attraction features a singing graveyard and dancing ghoulies during a trip into the underworld. “I don’t believe this is true but my mum felt like our house was haunted when I was younger, so we moved because of that. She also liked to hang out in graveyards, read the tombstones and do the genealogy of those names. I hung out in those graveyards with her sometimes. All of that created a fear of the undead.”
“I worked at Disney when I was a kid,” continued Gosling, who had a two-year stint on The Mickey Mouse Club alongside Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake in the early ‘90s.
“When I went on the Haunted Mansion ride when I was 12, it presented [death] like: ‘Well, maybe it’s not so bad or scary. Maybe it’s fun.’ So it just clicked for me. I’ve always loved that [Haunted Mansion] ride and Disney’s approach to scary things, like [Walt Disney’s 1929 short film] The Skeleton Dance and [1937 cartoon] The Old Mill. They’ve an angle on [scary things] that’s very unique.”
Gosling asked Tim Anderson, co-founder of power punk group Ima Robot, to produce Dead Man’s Bones’ self-titled record after seeing him DJ at a party. “He was mixing the Haunted Mansion [soundtrack] with the other songs he was playing. I told him it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard, and asked if we could make a record together that sounded like that.”
According to Dead Man’s Bones’ label ANTI-, ‘Dead Man’s Bones’ was originally conceived as the “soundtrack to a play about a monster-ghost-love-story” but the stage show was ultimately scrapped due to how expensive it would have been to put on. The songs they had written lived on though.
In the studio, the idea was for Gosling and Shields to play every instrument on every song, even if they didn’t know how to play the instruments themselves. “The goal was to figure it out. There was a quality to [that approach] that we liked, but I’m sure we had people come in and help make [the album] actually work,” said Gosling. Dead Man’s Bones collaborated with the Los Angeles’ Silverlake Conservatory Children’s Choir, which was originally founded in 2001 by Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea, for the record and subsequent live shows.
Following ‘Dead Man’s Bones’ release on October 6 2009, the rock duo played a handful of gigs at churches, synagogues and cabaret venues. “We [definitely] kept on theme with the venues,” said Gosling. The crowd also got into the halloween spirit by dressing up in suitably spooky attire. Dead Man’s Bones reunited for a string of shows the following year, but haven’t performed live since.
However, Gosling is adamant that despite what Wikipedia claims, he never performed under the stage name ‘Baby Goose’. “Not true”. And if you’re wondering when a follow-up record might be coming out, while doing press for Barbie in 2023, Gosling said: “Never say never.”
‘Project Hail Mary’ is in UK cinemas now