The Mountain Goats, from left: Peter Hughes, John Darnielle, and Jon Wurster. Photo by Lissa Gotwals.

The Mountain Goats: "The Legend of Chavo Guerrero" (via SoundCloud)

On its face, professional wrestling is fiction: When a guy in tights steps into the ring, he’s in character, and his actions are largely predetermined. But behind the choreography and the scripts, there’s a real person with real emotions. “One of the great things about wrestling is how it interrogates this silly idea that you have one authentic self,” says John Darnielle, whose new Mountain Goats album Beat the Champ is entirely set in the world of headlocks and submission holds. “If you’re playacting, and somebody says something mean to you, that's gonna land on you. You don’t just sit there and go, ‘Oh, he wasn't actually talking to me.’”

Darnielle takes on a similar kind of duality in his role as songwriter. Even though his songs are works of fiction, the line between “character” and “author” can be blurry. “When I was younger I really resisted the idea that [songwriting] was autobiographical,” he says, “but now I think that no matter what you write, there's something of yourself in it.” So when he sings “I try to remember to write in the diary that my son gave me” on Champ’s “Southwestern Territory”, he’s in character as a wrestler—but peel back the facade and you’ll find some of Darnielle’s perspective, too. It’s a lot like how you can probably hear Roderick Toombs’ real-life emotions if you listen carefully to a “Rowdy” Roddy Piper monologue. “If I tell you a story about a man who plants some magic beans, you'll probably still get what my hopes and dreams would be out of that,” Darnielle says.

None of the characters on Beat the Champ hail from today’s modern wrestling climate, and Darnielle doesn’t actively follow the sport these days. ("I follow children around the house," he quips.) The album is largely set in wrestling’s territorial days—the pre-WWF period in the 1970s and ‘80s when professional wrestling was a local operation. "It was a glorious era, like before the major labels all consolidated," he says.

Darnielle grew up in Southern California, and when he flipped through Saturday morning and late-night TV, he would find wrestling broadcasts in both English and Spanish. There were local heroes and villains, along with guys like Andre the Giant, who would roll through town every now and then to leave fans like Darnielle in awe. "[Andre] comes walking in, and people just flock to him like he was a Messianic creature," he remembers of one live event. He actually shook the icon’s hand, too. "I remember this feeling, like my hand was vanishing in his—so cool."

A few of the album’s tracks are about specific people, like its lead single, "The Legend of Chavo Guerrero", which is an ode to Darnielle’s childhood hero. Meanwhile, "Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan" tells the tragic story about Bruiser Brody’s murder, and "Luna" is about the 2010 fire that destroyed many of veteran female wrestler Luna Vachon’s possessions. But Beat the Champ isn't just filled with historical accounts of noteworthy wrestlers and uncomplicated glorification of spilled blood and broken bones. It’s an album that details the quiet moments before the fans pile into the arena, the late nights on the road, and the emotional wear that comes from getting heckled by strangers. "I loved you before I even ever knew what love was like," Darnielle sings in a song called "Hair Match". These are wrestling stories, for sure, but they’re also human stories.

Pitchfork: Do you feel like there's a level of autobiography in these songs?

John Darnielle: That's a complicated question. I think all writing is necessarily autobiographical to a greater or lesser extent, and the less it tries to be confessional, the more likely it is that you’re somehow sneaking the things you need to say in there. It's based on a method of dream interpretation: You can get really good reads on your dreams if you think of every character in them as actually being you.

Pitchfork: You mentioned that wrestling challenges the notion that a person has “one authentic self,” but the wrestling audience is only expected to be invested in the character that’s presented on TV.

JD: It’s like fiction—the fact that somebody's telling you a story about people who didn't exist doesn't make the experience of the story any less real in your heart and mind. You go through heavy emotional responses to these stories, and wrestling is a similar thing—but it's happening in real space. You're agreeing to this fiction for the purpose of living some very high emotions. It's a lot like old drama—the way drama was in Rome.

Do you know what the word "kayfabe" means?

Pitchfork: It’s presenting something that’s scripted or staged as though it’s real.

JD: Kayfabe is kind of a code. To break kayfabe is to let people know that the punch was not real and that the match was scripted. At this point, kayfabe is dead and everybody knows that this is dance more than contact. But back in the day, wrestlers were expected to keep up their character if they were seen in public. It was to the point where ["The Million Dollar Man"] Ted DiBiase was spending lots of money in public to keep up this appearance of a rich guy.

The song “Fire Editorial” is based on Ed Farhat, who had this character called the Sheik that was a crazed rich oil baron and he never once broke kayfabe. When you would talk to him, he would pretend he didn't speak English. He was in fact the son of Lebanese immigrants and the boss of the whole Michigan territory, but he pioneered this hardcore style—this brutal, knife-wielding, fire-throwing assault style. The wrestling magazines would print these editorials, like, "Somebody's gotta stop this guy!"

Pitchfork: There are parts of this record that focus on the quiet moments where kayfabe doesn't really matter because there aren't fans around.

JD: Yeah, but these wrestlers’ character informs the way they look at things; it's like they learn about the decisions they make through their characters. "Heel Turn 2" is about a person who's in a match and he's playing as though the match were real. But it is real! If you're standing in the middle of a ring and you're playing the villain, and everyone is booing and throwing things at you, that’s real.

The Mountain Goats: "Heel Turn 2" (via SoundCloud)

Pitchfork: What was it about Chavo Guerrero that made you feel invested in him as a kid?

JD: Chavo was my hero. I never really felt anything like what I felt for wanting him to win and vanquish the evil villain. Every territory had its own belt, and he held the belt called “America's Title.” He was a local guy and he was greatly loved. He and his brother Hector would often tag team. Hector was the dreamboat of the two, but Chavo was the hero. He was the guy who would stand up and speak out. He would often rush the ring to attack a bad guy “off-script.” He really just seemed passionate about justice to me. [laughs] A very simple character who believed in what was right. Very anti-bullshit. He had an everyman feel. You felt like he was on your side. I didn't like the bad guys—I wanted them to get punished.

Pitchfork: "Foreign Object" is one of the more violent songs on the album, but musically, it sounds very joyful. Is that meant to mirror how bloodshed and weapons make a crowd go nuts?

JD: It's happy, but there’s also outrage. It's totally the case where as soon as the blood spills, something happens in the room, and you go [satisfied voice] "oh yeah." There's something primal about it. It's the same as the good feeling of getting hit. If you get into a fight and somebody punches you, you get two feelings. One: That really hurts. Two: That relief in the realness of, like, Wow, this is what it is. It's not an intellectual process. But in wrestling, people just throw each other around, possibly actually bleed, and are still friends in the locker room afterwards. But there’s a real glee—a feeling goes up in the arena, especially on non-TV days. If it's just people in a room and somebody starts to bleed, that's very exciting.

Pitchfork: Have you been in a fight?

JD: Sure. [pause] Look, when I talk about being hit—and I'm not trying to take this interview in this direction—I'm talking about being abused. There's this feeling when that happens. It is terrible, but the dread and anticipation and all that stuff goes away. It's like going through a bottleneck. It’s like, “Well, it sucks to be in the bottleneck, but on the other side of this, there’s quiet.” Not everybody relates to pain, but if you can watch other people playacting it, you can absorb some of that vibe. It's like watching horror movies—you want to have the experience, but in a safe environment.

Pitchfork: It seems like a lot of these lyrics and stories can be read a lot more broadly than being just about wrestling.

JD: Absolutely not! This is about wrestling! Man, you guys. [laughs] Nah, I'm kidding. What's funny is that people think, "Well there has to be something more than wrestling, because wrestling has such an absurd quality to it." But if you tell a love story, people don't ask what else is in there. They say, "Oh, it's just a love story." All stories have many levels, but these ones show their hand and say, "You might want to look a little deeper."