think i wanna tell the world

Some Other Guy

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 10:09:00 +0000

Here’s the transcript of my recent interview with Guy Garvey.

I went up to his house in Manchester, where over the course of an hour or two we talked about Elbow’s relatively newfound position as the go-to band for the big occasion. It’s been written about before, but I wanted to hear about that ascension direct, and how it feels for them now they’re there.

I also wanted to find out about the added pressure heaped upon Guy’s shoulders as the recognisable face of the band, plus his perceived affability. I mean, surely he’s not really as nice as everyone makes out?

(Turns out he is.)

*Looking at the whiteboard in Guy’s room*. There’s nothing on it.

If you’d have been here yesterday that would’ve had a load of things on it. Craig and I just finished the new I Am Kloot record. All that means is that you sit down and listen to the demos, make notes on that board, and then try every single idea until the whiteboard is clear, and when it is, that means you’ve finished your record. You can put ideas on at any time, but every idea must be tried, every avenue exhausted. And that’s the best way to have a band that are happy and satisfied. Everyone knows they’ve had their say. This improves the way band members think about a record, and in turns improves the way they present and perform the record in the future. It took us three albums to do that ourselves. We’ve got a board in the studio with everything written on it. I used to be the scribe but Mark does it all now.

How is the Kloot album?

When we did Sky At Night we had a few months to get in an do it, but this time it was broken up by our touring commitments, or recording Elbow things. We’ve been writing the new Elbow record for six months, you see. So it was patchy for Kloot, and a little frustrating because of that, just because we wanted to be at it. That did mean hearing the final result was more surprising because some of it had been finished for so long. Putting it together in the mastering was a real wow.

Do you enjoy producing more than being in your own band?

There are so many elements, really. When you’re producing, you’re helping people find out what they want to do, point out their strengths and assisting them get over what they have to get over to finish the record. Without a deadline I don’t think any band would ever finish a record, you’d always be able to improve it. Or change your mind. You have to prepare a band for the reality of a finished album, which is ‘There will be a song on this album that you will always wish wasn’t there.’ Just by the nature of the thing, and there’s always a straggler. Even if it’s all brilliant, there will be one that’s only very good, so it’s relative. What often happens is that you labour and labour and labour over a tune and ditch it, but then come back to it years later and realise it’s very good. As for whether I prefer producing, it’s impossible to say, they satisfy different sides of me.

Have you got Elbow songs on each album you don’t like?

Not so fast, you.

Have you got Elbow songs you’ve ditched and come back to, then?

The B-sides album took care of most of them, really. We went back to Lay Down Your Cross and Whisper Grass, which are more than good enough to be album tracks. But in terms of songs we return to that we’ve never done, there are chord progressions that we’ve had for ages that we never get right. There’s one thing called Amalgamation which, no kidding, we’ve been working on since I was 22. We can’t let go of it. It’s turned up here and there in ideas, but we’ve never managed to quite crack it.

Do you think that now it’s 16 years old that you’ll never let go of it, because it’s become a thing?

It’s so rare that all five of us go ‘Yeah!’ but that’s how it has to be so it’ll still be knocking around until that happens. Who knows?

Six months writing for the next album? That’s exciting? Quite quick considering Build A Rocket is only 18 months old and you’ve been touring the world.

We had a quiet summer, we only did seven or eight festivals whereas we’d done 30 the year before. All the band now have home studios too so the ideas are coming in more fully formed. We’re having a break next year, though. We’re going to keep writing the record till the beginning of 2013 then we’re having time off. Our gap year, if you like. We haven’t had one. It’s been hectic since Seldom came out, we haven’t stopped. It might seem a bit naïve a band in our position, seemingly at their peek, having time off, but we’ll see. The lads have got young families, we’ve all got projects we want to explore, and it’ll give us something we’ve never had before, which is a couple of months to listen to the record so far and work out what it needs. I’m so excited about the next album. It feels a bit like Leaders Of The Free World did at the moment. Not musically, but the atmosphere in the studio, everyone’s ready to change things a bit, and push things.

I don’t think having time off is naïve.

No?

No, not really. Albums are supposed to be documents of what you’ve been doing between that point and the previous record, aren’t they? You’ve got to live a bit.

Yes, exactly. Musicians by definition want to change what they do all the time, move forwards and push themselves. What we’re doing is already new with this record, it sounds different. Someone said when reviewing Build that it was rounding off a body of work, and I very much agreed with that. The themes on it, the relaxed nature, the confident introspection, lots of things about coming home – there always are – and getting comfortable with a new life, it’s all there and we’d been building to a point. It feels like the right time to do something different for the next record.

Build A Rocket Boys seemed to be the right record after Seldom Seen Kids. You didn’t try to make 11 versions of One Day Like This, which some bands might’ve tried.

Yes, I’m dead chuffed with that. I’m pleased we did it as fast as we did, and I’m pleased we made a record that reassured the old fans that we’re not going to change just because of a bit of success. This break will be good though, and we don’t want to feel like we’re repeating ourselves. It can’t feel like a conveyor belt either. And 22 years together or something, and we’ve never had a gap year, or went inter-railing. Pete’s going to take his family to Bali. I’m going to New York and see what they know, and have some adventures with Emma. We’re going to live there for a bit.

Presumably you always have something looming over you?

Yes, so this is a proper break. Separate adventures, then we’ll all bring them back to this record and catch up. I had 10 days in New York with Emma earlier this year and wrote three really strong sets of lyrics, and I want to go and see what happens if I’m there for a length of time. A lot of time when you’re away you write about home with some real clarity. There’s a real telescope thing that happens. You reorder your priorities when you’re away from home too, you think ‘That thing I do all the time? Turns out it’s not important.’ Or you figure that something you never do, you should actually do a lot more. We’ve had to make some adult decisions in the past few years. We always used to do five-day weeks, and nights, and that was the case with Seldom, but with Build, we only did four days. This next album is going to be bigger than Build, but not Seldom Pt II. It’s going to be an album, in the truest sense, and if there are singles they will just crop up as we’re making it, we won’t write ‘the single’. As much as anything we want to make it the most artistically defined album we’ve ever made. We’re really going to go for it.

But no one’s going to forget about a band in your position if you went away for, say, five years.

I would hope not. I think with Seldom we found the last of the record-buying public, people who treasure record and take albums to their hearts. Within that comes the coming shows, which are going to be really special. We’re going to delve into the back-catalogue a bit more than we have in recent years, and play some older stuff, or songs we haven’t played for a long time. And we’re going to play some new songs, which we’ve never done before, we’ve never played songs before they’re released. We’ve also just found out our first choice band are able to support us, Here We Go Magic. They’re going to be a great match for us. There’s a real simplicity to his voice, but there’s a real sweetness. It’s a lot like Paul Simon in place. The songs seem to be born of jams. And it’s really huge and expansive. I have a real thing for mantra in music, like hypnotic grooves. I love Ride and My Bloody Valentine, and into the space-rock thing of Spiritualized, their first two albums are perfect. There’s a lot to be said for everyone making music in their bedrooms, or listening to music on tiny speakers and iPods, but at times, you need to make music in a massive studio, and you need to hear something on a big pair of speakers. That’s what these gigs are about, one last blast before we go. We’re making an evening of it too. As people walk in there’s going to be a string quartet playing versions of Elbow songs as everyone takes their seat. Then Here We Go Magic, who I know our fans will love, and then during the changeover, we’ll have a singer songwriter on the B-stage. The evening will flow from the off. Older fans will be surprised by what songs we choose from our older recrords, but this is a bit of a goodbye.

Like a short-term farewell?

Yes, just that. And we’re going out with a bang that will leave people hungry for what we do next. I do think what we do next is going to shake the ground a little bit.

How long are you thinking? 2014? 2015?

The idea was that it’ll be a year from now, maybe a bit longer. I bet it’ll be March 2014. We’re aiming for the end of next year, but it’ll likely be later. It’ll be around three years, then, which is a long time between albums I think.

Your gigs are very communal experiences. I saw you at the Cambridge Junction, and then at the O2, and the experience was oddly similar – you make large rooms feel tiny, and tiny rooms feel cavernous. But can that nightly euphoria get tiring on a whole tour?

No, because every gig is different. It’s one of the reasons I talk to the crowd, I like to get out there amongst it, I need to see who’s there and feel how it’s different. The best way to goad a crowd is to tell them the previous town or the previous night’s crowd were better. We also get a twisted thrill out of getting the crowd to boo. On the second night at the O2 I said ‘They were better last night’ and we all laughed as 20,000 people booed us. Then someone in the front row piped up and said ‘So were you’. I dedicated the next song to him, John he was called, and it was a great moment. But things like that wouldn’t happen if you just walked on, did your thing and walked off, and it might feel a bit samey. Telly, I call that. We did used to just stand at the end of the room and play, and that’s telly – people gazing at you, picking their nose and forgetting that you can see them too, an interactive experience. That can be great, if that’s what you do. I’ve seen plenty of bands that do it and loved it, but I like to get in and have a feel. I like breaking that fourth wall. Our lighting engineer Kate, I always ask for more lights on the crowd and from the word go I’ve always asked for that. Also, if the rooms are big, you’ve got to look after people. Not in the arenas, but at festivals there can be hairy moments down the front. I often stop and get people to take a step back. I feel responsible for people when they come to see us. A lot of artists, according to Kate, ask for light to be shined in their face so they don’t see the crowd. I revel in it.

Is this because it feels hard-earned? Much has been said and written about the years you were together before things started going your way.

Perhaps. But then we’re not going on stage and saying ‘Adore us’ either. Because there’s five of us, there’s not a strong sense of ownership over the music. We’re more proud to be part of it. We open that up to the crowd and make them a part of it and we’re all sharing in the same thing. There are no singalong moments on the first album. [Emma delivers bacon butty]

So now you’re at a point where the BBC come to you for an Olympic song, people have One Day Like This playing at their weddings and during the birth of their children. Did you ever imagine this?

No. I knew we could handle it if it happened, but I didn’t expect it.

Does it change what you do as a band?

I can remember the first pivotal communal experience we had, and it was playing Glastonbury for the first time. I looked at all those people, and they were willing to sing. I asked them to sing ‘We still believe in love so fuck you’ as you know, and it went on Cast Of Thousands. It was a reaction to the invasion of Iraq, which virtually no one, at that point, had an opinion on publicly. It hadn’t polarised people in the way that it went on to, and it was basically me, Robert Del Naja, Damon Albarn and Ms Dynamite who spoke out. I spoke to other musicians and fear of losing the dollar is what stopped them. Look what happened to the Dixie Chicks? Plus, the celebration surrounding the Blair government was still going on, and people thought if they criticised him they were being unpatriotic by not supporting that action. When it became apparent it was illegal, it sparked the biggest public demonstration this country has ever seen, and it wasn’t on a home issue. It was foreign policy, which I think speaks volumes about British people, and the fact they were ignored speaks volumes about the system of government in this country. Blair should go to the Hague, along with everyone who was involved in that decision to invade. It was fucking terrible. So, that inspired the first big communal experience we had in the band. Writing these big sing-alongs then became something we did. So a comment on the war inspired something that happened live, and then that in turn changed something in the way we made music. Then we realised after we’d managed to seemingly shrink a couple of arenas during the Seldom tour that we could play quiet music to thousands of people. PA systems are so much better than they were, and it’s possible to get people to listen without playing flat out. To a degree we were treading new ground there. That again changed the way we made Build A Rocket Boys. Size of music is nothing to do with volume, but weight of emotion. Build A Rocket gets as much of a euphoric reaction as One Day Like This. It’s the same feeling. It’s a bit of a misnomer that you have blow people’s socks off to get them excited. It’s no mystery to me that live music now is such a big deal. How many people at the Isle Of Wight could hear Jimi Hendrix when he played? His drums weren’t mic’d up! Fucking ridiculous.

Does your public image interfere or have an effect on the band? ‘Guy Garvey, nicest man in music’ – that must limit what lyrics you can write?

Well the funny thing is that when I am outspoken on stage or in interviews it can be wildly reported but not really shake anything up. That doesn’t dent the affable image I have. The boys see the extra pressure on me being the most recognisable member of the band. Of course there are places I can’t go at certain times of the day, because I wouldn’t move for people. But I still drink in town in the same bars I always did, and get the tram, and not out of any misguided attempt to be a Man Of The People, I get the tram because it’s a great place to listen to music, and I love this city and travelling into that way. I still go about my business normally. By and large people say hello, or nice one, but I’m not molested. The lads in the band were there when it was hard to connect with an audience, and when everything I said went down like a lead balloon. I’m not under any allusion that I’m suddenly hilarious, I only get away with what I say and people only laugh because people like our tunes. People love what we do, I think. But the boys are supportive, and they have to be. If we’ve been working very hard and I then have to do something very public I really feel the pressure, and they’re there for me. Having their support is essential. Plus I don’t do anything without their permission.

How about darker lyrics? Would people accept something like that?

Well I think it’s part of the same thing. I once got some valuable advice many years ago of someone called Mano McLaughlin, who is one of the nation’s best songwriters that no one has ever heard of. He’s had a run of bad luck with bands and things, but he’s so gifted. I asked him when I was about 19 if he’d got any advice for me. He said very clearly that ‘the song is all. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done before, how you’re perceived what it sounds like or even if it doesn’t sound like your band, the song is all. You have to take it where it need.’ So with that in mind I wouldn’t let my public image affect the way I write. If there’s a note of hope in everything I write it’s because I can’t not do that. I can’t explore dark feelings and not offer that hope because I’m realistic about where our music belongs.

It’s the goal for all writers, but part of Elbow’s charm comes from you finding the beautiful in the mundane, or expressing normality in beautiful terms. Does it comes naturally, or do you have to labour over them?

I would that’s what we do. The extraordinary in the ordinary. The holy grail to a lyricist is finding a new way to say something universal. I’ve got one or two of them after all these years. As for it coming naturaly, I don’t know, I really have to work at it

You’re setting up a vinyl label with Jim Chancellor from Fiction.

Well, it’s this idea that your iPod is your travelling library and the vinyl is there to remind you what you have in your collection. Plus, as pointed out to me by a mate recently, how the fuck are you meant to pass on your music collection to you kids? If you’re going to bequeath something, you don’t want it to be on a hard drive. We’re looking into manufacturing a range of affordable turntables too. Why not? They can be inexpensive, with a USB out, or a simple audio out, and if we can get more people into vinyl by making a simple turntable, then that can only be a good thing.

Anyone in mind for the first release?

We’ve got a list. The only thing is we both have to love it. It’s not just unsigned or new artists, it’s going to be overlooked artists from the past few years. Pretty much what my radio programme is, giving listeners new music and telling why they should listen to it. The EP will do that for you. We’re going to put out 25-minute releases, instrumentals here and there, maybe some spoken word… They’ll be different colours, so the first lot gold rimmed, second silver, third bronze and the rest wood or something. I want to encourage people to forage for these things. I want artists to sell them at their gigs too. Snowball, it’s going to be called. So I want Snowball sold everywhere. But I don’t care about chart positions or investment returns. I just want to make sure people hear this music. There’s just so much good stuff out there that people need to hear. You can hear all the music you want with a computer and an internet connection, the only thing you need is a curator.

What’s on for the rest of the year?

Most of what we’re doing is focusing on the next Elbow record. But I’m writing some songs for King Kong The Musical. That’s a new experience. I was invited in my Rob from Massive Attack and I think The Avalanches are involved too. It’s really interesting and I’ve never done that before. It’s a new frame for me. I’m already doing it, and I’m going to do that in New York. There’s no better place to write songs for King Kong than in New York. Between that, and the label and the Elbow record I think I’ve got enough to be getting on with. That’s me for a bit. Most of it will be spent pondering on how to change the Elbow sound and then getting on with making it happen.

The Straight And The Narrow

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 09:25:13 +0000

Here’s a piece I wrote on Spiritualized for Drowned In Sound.

This is another piece I wrote for Australian magazine The Smith...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 19:52:00 +0000

This is another piece I wrote for Australian magazine The Smith Journal, this time on Eric Valli.

He’s a French photographer and explorer, now based in Paris after more than 20 years living in Tibet and various other places around the world.

He’s perhaps the most interesting person I’ve interviewed, and even though I spent a whole day with him at his home, I could’ve easily spent days and days talking to him about his work and philosophy. The piece is 3,500 words, but a 60,000-word book wouldn’t do this man’s life justice. Some of the stories I had to leave out sounded like Tin Tin adventures.

Every now and again you come across someone whose outlook changes the way you see the world yourself, and Eric is definitely one of those people. I found him at quite a strange time in his life, having lived a relatively normal existence in a beautiful Paris suburb for the past two years On the surface, he has everything one might want; a beautiful wife, four lovely children and a fantastic house. His work has paid well and it shows, although his possessions mean nothing to him. He has contempt for his own sedentary life. The spirit of adventure that’s driven him so far is still alive and well, and if his wife would let him, he’d give up everything he has tomorrow for one last mad excursion.

Anyway, here’s the piece. I really enjoyed writing it.

“The snow is falling with big flakes, and we walk slowly. The beasts are stopping continuously because they’re breathing heavily. It’s very steep and we’re at high altitude; 5,000 metres above sea level.

“I go on foot to warm myself because it’s very cold, and the climb is painful. The snow is so deep you have to really dig your steps. On top of this I had the bad luck to slip on the snow and fall into water, so now my boots are frozen stiff. What an incredible landscape… It’s a savage path between steep mountains, and there’s a dark line of yaks, moving in snow like imprecise silhouettes…”

French explorer André Migot wrote these words in Caravane vers Bouddha, his 1951 book based on his years trekking in the Himalayas.

Just 12 years later the book was read and re-read by an impressionable 12-year-old named Eric Valli in Dijon, France. The passage in question stood out, and was underlined for good measure. The book, later translated into English as Tibetan Marches, had been given to Eric by his father. A humble potter in a nearby ceramics factory, Valli Snr had never travelled outside France, but wanted to inspire his son’s imagination.

It’s impossible he could have predicted what the following 48 years would involve but it’s possible to trace back the beginning of an insatiable wanderlust back to that day.

Now, Eric, almost 60, lives in Paris and has been to far-flung parts of the world most of us have only dreamt about, or don’t even know exist. He’s also a highly respected documentary photographer and an Oscar-nominated film director.

Valli walks over to his bookcase – more of a small library – in the corner of his massive living room. The gorgeous house is in the bohemian Paris suburb Montreuil. He lives with second wife Debra Kellner, herself a renowned photojournalist, recently returned from illegally riding freight trains in the U.S. on an assignment for Paris Match, and their two children, aged nine and 12. He plucks out a copy of Migot’s book, flips through a copy of his first book Tsangbou: Between Nepal And Tibet, published in 1981, and lands on a double page spread.

It’s amazing; the image is exactly as his early hero had described all those years previously; several yak battling the sub-zero temperatures with their masters sheltering behind them from the icy winds. “It’s uncanny, isn’t it?” he says. “The book was published one year before I was born, but I managed to capture what he saw. And my father, he set me on my way.”

Had Eric not been so bloody-minded, however, things could have turned out differently. When he was 17 he was an apprentice cabinet-maker in Dijon, but secretly dreamed of travelling the world he’d read so much about. Before the summer break that year he announced to his parents he wanted to visit Turkey, and would be working in the Maille mustard factory to fund his first overseas visit. Concerned by what they’d heard of Turkey, his parents refused to let him go; the topic wasn’t up for discussion. One evening, Valli Jnr plucked up the courage to ask his father what he would do if he were in his son’s shoes.

“My father was a very honest man, so when I asked the questions, which turned out to be a clever move, he looked at me and admitted that he would go anyway.” A compromise was reached, though, and it was decided Eric could visit Lebanon for two months to take in the country’s exotic culture and the cedar forests.

“I had promised that I wouldn’t leave Lebanon, but I went travelling around the region, mainly to Syria. This was 1970, and Black September was happening,” he says, referring to the 11-month conflict where King Hussein of Jordan and his forces moved to crush Palestinian militants and regain control of the country.

“Despite all that, it didn’t feel too dangerous, and I discovered what life was about, the magic of human interaction. From then on it’s not about existing anymore. It’s living. You are here, and now, and completely awake and sharp, not a zombie anymore. A zombie, that’s what I am when I live this city life,” he says, gesturing to the spectacular converted factory he resides in.

Almost as soon as he returned to Dijon Eric planned his next voyage. Afghanistan. Thanks to the advice of a well-travelled Brit he met in Lebanon, this was where he wanted to go. So several months later he found himself there with nothing but a German friend, two horses, a gun and his backpack for company. Aside from an encounter with some bandits in Wakhan, which ended when he fired his pistol in the air to scare off the assailants, it was a peaceful time, a world away from the Afghanistan that springs to mind from rolling news channels now. Explorations continued, and by the end of the 1970s Eric had travelled all over the Middle East and on through the Himalayas, all the while taking photographs with the rudimentary camera his father had given him years earlier. He’d also met his first wife, Diane Summers, an Australian lawyer, while trekking in the region.

A family friend took one look at his pictures and suggested he seek out a publisher. That he did, but instead of offering advice, the publisher offered Eric a book deal. As previously mentioned, his first collection was published in 1981, and paved the way for his shots to be used in the most prestigious, widely read publications in the world.

German magazine Stern, National Geographic, London’s Sunday Times and Smithsonian, the periodical published by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, all became regular haunts for Valli’s work.

When “Honey Hunters”, his picture story on the courageous men of Nepal who risk their lives to collect the produce of the wild bees that nest in the cliffs above their village, was published it immediately became the most widely used photo essay in the world.

While the images are stunning, the way Vallli happened upon Manila, the lead honey hunter who maintains the 12,000-year-old tradition, is perhaps even more remarkable.

Completely in love with Nepal, Valli lived in the country’s capital Kathmandu for 20 years, using it as a base for his expeditions and raising his and Diane’s two daughters Sara and Camille, both fluent in Nepalese. One evening, through a contact at the French embassy, he was invited to lunch with legendary perfumer Jean-Paul Guerlain.

“This was 1984, maybe 1985. Jean-Paul was in Nepal to buy musk for his perfume. He told an amazing story about how these primitive hunters with poisoned arrows hunted the musk deer, little weird beasts with long teeth. I had to find out more, so I went through all the valleys of the Himalayas trying to find these people, but it was too hard. One day I got stuck on high ground in the rain, and one guy invited me into his hut to shelter. We were 3,000 metres high, and I was exhausted and just feel asleep on his bench.

“In the morning, I woke up and saw in the beam of the ceiling a long rope with steps on it. I couldn’t work out what it would be for. What did they need them for in a place like that? He said it was a rope ladder belonging to his father, who had died 12 years earlier. He took me to the cliffs and pointed at the big black nests where the wild bees live, and explained how the guys would climb up there to gather it. I looked in more valleys for other honey hunters but couldn’t find them. That was it, I thought, there were no more honey hunters to be found.”

Later that year, in London on business, he stumbled upon a magazine Bee World, which had a short story about honey hunters on the cover. Knowing he’d missed something, and broke from lack of work, Valli returned to the Himalayas and systematically visited all 1,000 valleys trying to track down the practitioners of this seemingly lost art. Finally, after meeting a group of old Gurkhas who had fought at El Alamein and the Battle Of Monte Cristo in World War II, he was told of Manila, one of the last remaining honey hunters.

Valli travelled to his village and waited five or six days for him to return from hunting in the forest. Manila, a virtual wild man with little time for white foreigners, was initially sceptical and told Valli if he was so interested in honey he should just buy some. Again, his strong will kicked in and he pointed out the age old tradition would die with Manila unless he took an apprentice, and that he should be that apprentice.

A chicken was beheaded to cement the deal – a sign of acceptance in the valley. The pair ate, bonded and soon after Eric began a two-year pupillage.

“It took 18 months to even find him, and then I was there for almost two years on and off taking photos. Diane and the girls would come with me, too. They loved the cliffs.”

It’s a stark contrast with the way Eric lives now.

There are games consoles, TVs and projectors all over the living room, which is next to a high-tech kitchen. The whole place looks like an architect’s dream, with giant windows opening out onto a courtyard. Adorning one of the garden walls is a giant dark wooden frame, which Eric explains was once the doorway of his home in Kathmandu.

It might appear idyllic, but Eric is slightly disdainful of his life in Paris. He’s a nomad, plain and simple, just as the rock salt farmers he once photographed in the Himalayan region of Dolpo are wanderers.

“I can’t stay like this for too long, I just dry up,” he says, looking around his house. “I’d become a serial killer or something if I stayed here too long. I’d die. I don’t want to accept this way of life. Like many of my friends I work with, I am a nomad. It’s something I can’t fight against. We live in an amazing place, but without periods of adventure and discovery I’d go mad.”

His most recent assignment seems to have penetrated his mind more deeply than most. For three years he photographed a permaculture community in Kentucky, a collection of people disillusioned with rampant capitalism who decided to opt out and disconnect. The results can be seen in Off The Grid, Valli’s latest book.

“It’s Debra that keeps me here, otherwise I would go and live there with the children, build a house and grow what we ate. It would be so good for them. Debra is convinced I would be bore of it quickly, but I don’t think so. I can ride a horse, shoot a gun and build things with my hands. I have the skills, and I have lived like that before.”

On the surface it seems those depicted in Off The Grid are no different to the beatniks of the ‘50s or hippies of the ‘60s who dropped out, seeking the excitement of jazz, drugs and sex in post-World War II America, or those who rejected the Vietnam War, but Eric maintains there is a big difference. Permaculture isn’t indulgent adolescents getting high and avoiding responsibility, it’s a sustainable way of life, and the million or so people who have adopted it in the U.S. alone decided to become part of a solution after years of being part of the problem.

Valli’s daughter Camille accompanied him on one trip to Kentucky as an assistant and was so enamoured with the way of life she stayed, and is now living in a similar community between Los Angeles and San Francisco, leaving behind her studies in a prestigious London art school. It seems the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree there, although, as we stroll from bar to bar along the Seine later that afternoon, it’s interesting to hear him voice the same concerns about his daughter’s adventures his father raised about his.

“The Off The Grid people have it right, in my mind. Are we going to carry on consuming at the rate we do now? I think at one point this way of life will become the way we all live. There has to be a simpler way of life for everyone. In the West we think there are only two options, either that you work and work and work, earning less than you did 10 years ago for doing the job of the two people that have been fired, or you go and live under a bridge and beg for money.

“In many ways the permaculture people are the same as the Dolpo caravaners, or the honey hunters. They live a simple life, work very hard but want for nothing. They are happy, and alive. Not zombies, living their life vicariously through Facebook, or video games and trapped in a virtual world.”

The similarity between each of Valli’s subjects doesn’t end there. With each, Eric first looks for a story, which hasn’t appeared anywhere else. Secondly, he says he must fall in love with each of his subjects.

He also doesn’t care for photography. He shuns digital cameras in favour of his beautiful old Leicas, and doesn’t consider himself to be in the same league as luminaries such as Henri Cartier Bresson, David Harvey, Steve McCurry and Jim Nachtwey. “I might take an OK picture, but what I’m looking for is an ethnographic testimony of the human adventure; a complete existence in one picture. I have worked with the best magazines in the world, but where my power lie is in the subject and who I decide to work with.

“I’m interested in what’s happening, what’s happening before people meet, the magic happening between them, the taming of people. All of the reportage I have done, they are people that are not easy to get to in touch with. They are not open people. That is the most interesting thing for me, the human story and adventure. That is what happens before I get my Leica out. I have maybe only done 10 stories in my career, compared to the hundreds my peers have done, but it takes me so long to find the subject, and when I have them I really want to explore everything. It’s very much a love story.”

“Well you can never just observe, because my work is all about the interaction. You see things differently after everyone you meet in your life, and a meeting is never by chance, it’s because we have something to learn from one another. But I don’t think my presence is a negative thing.

“I lived years and years with these people, Manila, Tinle and so on, so that cannot be impartial. We are friends, and we influence each other. How do we do that? I don’t know. I try to be light with them, I have nothing to teach them and they have everything to teach me. That’s what I tell them when I make my first approach. I say I am their student and I just want to watch what they do.”

Having nothing to offer his subjects is not quite true. Whenever he travelled, Eric would take medical equipment with him; first aid kit, medicine and so on. There were several occasions during his time in the Himalayas where the local Shamen was beaten by a patient’s injuries or conditions where Eric would step in with stitches, a leg brace or antibiotics. He saved many lives this way.

“I always tried to be as respectful as possible, and there’s really no other way. You play under a different set of rules there. You don’t go to teach people. I don’t believe in development like that. These governments go to regions like that saying they’re going to offer hospitals, build roads and schools, but all they really want to do is get a part of the world not yet buying their cartons of milk and DVD players to become consumers just like everyone else.

“It’s all done in the name of development. They’re going to develop a culture that has lived a balanced life for 12,000 years? How do they expect to do that with roads and refrigerators? All Western governments do is fuck up all that culture.”

For a man who has made a living from tracking down and living among some of the most remote communities in the world, Valli believes he’s “tame” in comparison to the greats. Despite being only the ninth or tenth foreigner to visit certain places in Tibet and Nepal, he describes himself as “just some jerk” that follows his dreams.

“If I am an adventurer, then who is Henry de Monfreid, or Richard Francis Burton, or Alexandra David-Néel, or Sven Hedin and Aurel Stein?” he says, listing his heroes he read so much about in his youth. “I’m a grabber. I worry that maybe there are no adventures left to have. There are no tribes to approach or tame.”

Valli has been living his “sedentary life” in Paris for around a year now since returning from work on Off The Grid. He says his work can be straining on relationships but, as he doesn’t believe adults should only ever be with one person, that doesn’t bother him too much.

He’s planning one final moment of madness soon, and has an idea for another of his unique stories. There’s no detail of the plan he hasn’t considered, although he requested the details remain secret should someone attempt to beat him to it. It’s in keeping with a trait of Valli’s throughout his career, where he refused to give editors the exact location of his shoots. Once, before delivering a 20-page spread to Stern magazine, Valli was told if he didn’t give up the location, they would pull the feature. He wouldn’t give up the details. Seeing how important it was to the photographer, Stern relented.

The root of Valli’s unquenchable thirst for adventure has to do with fear. He cites it as his main motivation, and coupled with a piece of advice given to him by a village elder, to always take the hardest of two paths as it squeezes out the best in a person, underpins everything he does.

“Fear is a big thing in my life. When I experience it, it helps me choose what to do. Fear is just a sign that I’ve reached the end of known territories. What I’m interested in is the unknown, going where I’ve never been, so fear is common. Fear is the most interesting thing in life. It’s just a sign to prepare yourself, not a sign to stop. You would regret it all your life if you just stopped.”

Valli has come within moments of death a number of times. Among the worst was when he contracted typhoid while trekking in a remote valley. “You could see the epidemic spreading from village to village. The grandmother I was staying with passed away, and my friend watched her boyfriend die in her arms. She looked after me, and saved my life.”

Another time he and two guides sneaked into Nepal, and while climbing an almost sheer ice face without an ice axe or crampons, he slipped with the sharp stick he was using to haul himself up and began sliding down a 150 metre drop.

“I remember the feeling of being in mid-air, looking at the cliff. I threw my stick away so I didn’t land on it. I knew I was going to die. I didn’t see the kind of things people talk about, my life didn’t flash in front of my eyes. The Sherpa I was with was in the Tibetan Special Forces, protecting the Indian border. He told me he parachuted a lot at night in the Himalayas, and they can’t use torches so all they could do was curl up in a ball. I remembered this during my fall, tucked myself in, and that was that.

“I woke up hours later. I slowly moved my legs, and hands and fingers to see if I’d broken anything. All I had was a big pain in my back, but I had landed on my rucksack. It was a huge bag, from above my head to mid-thigh.

“I found my stick, called my Sherpa and we made our way out of the country again. “I don’t think there is any reason to fear death,” he adds, finally. “It is just the next part of the adventure. The main thing is experiencing new and exciting things while you are alive, and not just existing. If you can say you felt something in your life, then you can say you have lived.”

ericvalli.com

Bat's Mouth

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 03:04:00 +0100

I recently interviewed Bat For Lashes - Natasha Khan - about her third album The Haunted Man. She’s a fascinating character, seemingly vulnerable and really steely at the same time, and completely committed to and wrapped up in her artistic vision.

Just after I spoke to her, she was going to be travelling to a lighthouse on England’s south coast to film a promo video. The wild, untamed, typically English location would be a perfect environment for the album, which was written and recorded in similar surroundings in West Sussex.

I did a write a feature from the interview, but I thought I’d post the full transcript as Natasha explaining the album’s creation in full is far more interesting on its own, without me.

Here goes…

The lighthouse sounds like a perfect environment for the record?
We chose it because I have a sketch book to go with imagery for the album and it’s full of rugged coastlines, lighthouses and typically English landscapes and things.

It sounds very English, this album.
Good. I think it’s the imagery and the arrangements. I made a conscious decision when I started the album to stay in England. For the second album I’d been all over America and travelled the world, and I didn’t really feel a sense of place, or connected to my roots. I spent a lot of time in the Sussex countryside by the sea, reading my old school books, reading about history and things, so I think that fed in to it all, plus I was living by the sea which shaped it too, wild, wilderness feel of it all.

How long were you in Brighton?
Two-and-a-half to three years. I moved to London just under a year ago to finish it off, but I made a real effort to stay away and be on my own. I had some creative excursions to LA and Italy and places, but I always brought ideas back with me.

That’s a nice name for a holiday.
It was hard work!

Do you call it a creative excursion so you can claim the tax back?
Hahaha. No, it was creative! When I was out there I wrote and brought back the good bits, either to my studio or to David Kosten’s.

The last album was released in 2009. Were you writing that whole time?
Pretty much. I wrote about 30 or 40 songs. I went to see Beck really early on, and I had 10 then. Out of those Oh Yeah and Marilyn made the cut. At that point I was writing fairly consistently, but it wasn’t until late on that the family of songs that has become The Haunted Man came together. I think the last thing I did was the Sydney Opera House with Coldplay, and then I was off. It felt like a long process, writing this album, but I got there.

I think you’ve crammed a lot in then, doing all this in about three years.
Thank you! Me too. People keep saying I’ve been lazy. I think I’ve crammed a fair amount in too, having toured Two Suns for two years and written and recorded this album. I’m very involved with every level of it too, so there are a lot of conversations with art directors, video people, producers… But I’m glad I took as long as I did and took time. The album is better for it, definitely.

Did you fill your time with anything else?
Yes, loads. I went back to my university as well and did some tutorials with my old art teacher, did lots of drawing courses, some dancing, pottery, gardening, you name it.

Does that all feed into the album?
I think so, I think everything feeds into an album. When I came off tour I felt void of inspiration and I felt miserable about it. Sometimes you can try really hard and try to push on through a block, but that gives me anxiety. I think it was about trying to get a routine again and finding things to do every day. When you leave the routine of touring, you shut the door and that’s it, no one rings you or anything. They just say ‘see you next time’ at the end of the tour. It can be lonely and there’s nothing but the pressure of writing the next album. Gardening and being outdoors, and studying again helped me focus, and it’s all part and parcel of the album. It’s a very visual process as well as a musical process, so I watched a lot of films too. I probably get more inspiration from films than I do music.

What did you grow?
Onions. I done some onions, as they say. Potatoes, dahlias, roses… But it wasn’t my garden. It was an old garden in the countryside that belonged to Virginia Woolf’s sister. Charleston House, it’s called. There’s a really mad family that live there, they all paint, and pot, and write poetry. There’s an amazing walled garden, and I made friends with the gardener so he let me help him and volunteer.

Does making music take a lot out of you?
Yes. It’s so demanding, and you can get obsessive about it and freak yourself out, in terms of the pressure and criticism. Each time I do one it gets harder and harder. That can be a good thing, though. I think I take it all a lot more seriously now, too, and I want to peel back the layers of who I am with each album and be more direct, more upfront, and get closer to the essence of what I’m trying to achieve.

You can’t get much more direct than the album’s cover.
That’s all part of it. I don’t want to hide behind the costumes, the imagery and mysticism and the symbols anymore. Musically I wanted the lyrics to be really upfront and loud in the mix too. The demos I made were just beats and vocals really. There was a lot of space that I knew I wanted to keep. And yes, the front cover is representative of peeling away things I’ve been known for in the past.

Was the front cover your idea?
It was, yes. I thought it was a great idea and then when it came to doing it I thought ‘Why am I doing this again?’ I knew I wanted Ryan McGinley to shoot it. I’d seen some of his work and was blown away by it. I’d seen some photos he’d done of people with foxes around their necks and things, and I loved how raw and wild it all was, and not retouched or Photoshopped. I loved how the people he shot were naked, too, but not the sexualised, glossy image of women we’re used to seeing, but really natural. I wanted to hark back to times in the late-60s and 70s, John and Yoko on the cover of Two Virgins or Patti Smith, where nakedness or natural-ness was really representative of them as people, not about them being sexual beings. The cover isn’t about sexuality, but the rich tapestry of things you can represent with a naked body; honesty and simplicity.

And John and Yoko were censored, the record being sold in a brown paper bag. Have you been?
Mine has stickers on it for some of the retailers. It’s crazy because it’s the most natural thing in the world. Kids should see it and think it’s natural and normal, not think of it as being sexy. Isn’t it weirder to see RnB videos of girls with their boobs out, not wearing any clothes and think that’s normal? Some of the magazines that are for sale in supermarkets, and my album is censored? It puts such expectation on people, what’s accepted as beautiful. We’re told what’s beautiful is on the outside, how tiny your waist is, how smooth your skin and how big your boobs are, or how muscly you are. But on this record, I’d spent so much time trying to be direct in my communication, and feel that vulnerability without feeling embarrassed, and tried to recreate that intense feeling when you are being intimate and not layering things or hiding behind sheets of mist, that I wanted to show it on the cover. Visually I want to encourage it. The relationship between the man and the woman is interesting too. He could be my son who’s come back from war.

You’d had to have had him when you were very young.
Ha, yes, maybe. But he could be my husband that’s injured, or my lover that I’m trying to forget. Or a ghost that’s a burden, literally hanging around my neck. It could be that I’m carrying the man in the relationship because he’s rubbish. And I think all that is so much more interesting than it being ‘NSFW’ or whatever.

Is it in the UK that it’s being covered up?
On iTunes and supermarkets. It says a lot about our society. Who says it’s unacceptable? And it’s sad that if something isn’t overtly sexual, and it makes you think instead, then it’s immediately shocking. It’s interesting how we’ve arrived at this point with the body.

How does this transfer into your live shows?
They’ll be more stripped back, but there is a difference between the album and a live event. There is a certain theatricality to a live performance , so I don’t want to strip everything back. A concert is an opportunity to create a world, and I don’t want to strip everything back and leave no magic. The stage won’t have as much symbolic imagery or be as cluttered as in the past, but it will have some theatre and stylised lanterns and things. I think I’ll wear black and white too. I’ve been really inspired by some black-and-white dance films from the 50s and 60s by Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham and Nina Bausch, and other avant garde choreographers, and I’d love to use that influence to bring in some stylised elements, but they will be stripped back. I think maybe some sea lanterns to bring in the English theme again, too. To start with there’s not much budget but if things go well and that increases I’d like to do a dramatic representation of the record, nods to 1940s British films and that sort of aspect.

Do you get nervous?
Yeah definitely. For TV and things. I’m definitely more confident as a performer, but pre-gig I’m a bundle of nerves and I’ve not improved at all.

How do you counter it?
I have a bit of a routine, I do vocal warm-ups and physical warm-ups, and a steam, and some Olbas Oil and that. I need to get in the headspace because it’s so different to how I am as a normal person, it freaks me out.

You inhabited a character last time. Is this you then, or another persona?
I think it is me, but in order not to feel so vulnerable I have to distil an essence of me on the record and try to step back into that. Otherwise I think I’d go on stage feeling very human but not in a good way. I would have no barrier and I’d feel exposed. Part of my ritual is getting into a particular aspect of myself, the performance side. The normal Natasha is private.

You should keep something back.
I think so, I’ve given enough away in the music, it’s extremely honest and revealing, so I hope that is enough.

The album is very sombre in parts.
Which bits?

Laura. Musically, at least, obviously not lyrically, which is the same across the record – on Lilies you sing ‘Thank god I’m alive’ to a really melancholic backing… There’s a lot of hope running through the record.
I wasn’t in a sombre frame of mind when I was writing it. I actually think it’s the other way around. A song like All Your Gold is very melancholic, but the music is upbeat. A lot of the more dancey songs are about nurturing and healing and resting and having empathy. But the chords are very positive. Laura is sombre, but that’s just the minor chords. They’re devastating, really, but the lyrics are about reassurance, telling someone that they don’t need to go back the party to be whole, that she’s still beautiful and worthwhile without being the centre of attention. I think it’s an upbeat record, really, or that there are many upbeat moments. Maybe it’s a bittersweet sound. The last album was a lot darker, and more in one mood, whereas this time I wasn’t really in one mood or frame of mind. I wrote it over two-and-a-half years, so that’s natural. I think I managed to pick several emotions and solidify them into a whole, so it makes up quite a rounded emotional landscape. The last record was only really about heartbreak.

What was Laura’s reaction to the song about her?
She loves it! Some of my friends appear in other songs. I don’ know how directly, but there are definitely elements. There’s a song I wrote called Wilderness about my friends going for a naked swim in the sea. Lovers have been mentioned in songs, and friends… All good muses. Daniel… Personal experience also goes in with imagination.

When I hear artists write solely about personal experience I worry that they’ll sabotage their own life, or the good things in their life, in order to have something new to write about. Is it something that concerns you, that you might not have a creative spark without a massive amount of drama?
It’s interesting… This is all a realisation I’ve gone through, after the last album. I think artists make much more boring work when they’re embroiled in too much drama. I can’t remember who said it, but there’s a quote that goes something like ‘Keep the drama on the page’ or ‘Live your life, but keep the drama in your art’ and there’s something to be said for that. When you are embroiled in drama and darkness in your real life, that’s the only thing you can write about, and it’s all coming from a place of fear, unhappiness and anxiety. There’s not much else. It’s all very extreme. When I finished my last album, I felt very sad about everything that had unfolded and inspired it. In turn that inspired the decision when making this album to stay at home and be normal. I didn’t want to go anywhere and just wanted to sit still. There’s a lyric on this album that goes ‘Just sit still. Does it hurt? Does it hurt?’ and it’s me asking myself if I sit still and avoid all the drama and stop the sabotage, what comes up? What am I actually feeling? And what I discovered was that by living a wholesome life, making myself happier, eating nice food and taking of myself properly, and seeing friends, it allowed me the space to see more minute emotions rising to the surface. There’s a richness there, and the detail in documenting the daily experience becomes must vaster than if you’re in a whirlwind about one particular thing. I made myself not create any drama so I could see who I really was. That was part of the whole thing of peeling back the layers again, it all came back to that. And this album feels much more three-dimensional as a result, because it’s grounded in reality and not crowded in other noise.

Where else did you draw inspiration from? It seems more aesthetic than anything else?
Yes, and definitely not albums, although I did really like the Drive soundtrack.

There are obviously aesthetic elements to that. That Gosling lad is a bit of a looker.
Oh hello! Yes, I definitely noticed him. I appreciated his visual aesthetic, shall we say. And Active Child’s album You Are All I See. I listened to that a lot and love the album. Otherwise it was more visual, and books. I was re-reading a lot of my childhood favourites; Goodnight Mr Tom, The BFG, Ring Of Bright Water, Watership Down, which are all so English. And animations; The Snowman was something I watched a lot.

Those books are so dark. An otter gets killed in Ring Of Bright Water.
Yes, very dark. That’s the thing about kids’ books, there is darkness, and brutality, which is very interesting. Nothing’s sugar-coated, and there’s a reality to that.

A soundtrack seems like an obvious move for you.
I made films at university, so I’m very interested in it, yes. It’s just a case of waiting for the right project then I’ll do it, I’d love to. I actually wrote a film script last year and would love to make it.

What’s happening to that?
I had to shelve it to get on with the album, but it was more an exercise in writing something and using the software to do it all properly. It was a really interesting thing for me to focus on, and I’m pleased with it but it probably needs lots and lots of drafts and rewrites, but I think it’s something that’s on my mind but just not the right time.

What happens after the tour in October?
I think I’ll be touring for about a year-and-a-half. Europe, then Australia and Singapore in February, then the US in April probably. Plenty of ground to cover.

How do you feel about that slab of work being put in front of you?
I can’t say I’m thrilled about it because I like to be at home, writing. It’s a marathon, you have to be fit, look after yourself and be able to survive that length of time doing something that’s really bad for you. I like being healthy so it’s quite a feat getting back in the cycle again. I have my friends come on tour, and do exercise and have creature comforts around me. I think after this tour I want to focus more on my home life, and relationships. I just feel like I’m going round and round, and I don’t want to end up being 50 having not married or settled. Real life. I think my 30s are beckoning me on a more human level, so there’s a conflict with the professional life I lead.

Do you like being in your thirties?
I think there’s something really nice about being in your thirties and maturing and letting go of the teenage thing. I’m quite excited about the next phase of my life, but there’s something about music and the musical life that’s very Peter Pan, that keeps you young and attached to your teens, but I don’t think it’s that good for you as a person and to avoid maturing. Especially men. I think when men hit their thirties and have children they really shine and do really well in that role. I think there’s a fear of that, and there’s a temptation not to grow up. But all of my guy friends that have become dads have turned into these amazing hot, capable men who are showing their true colours. They’re really cool when they have got something to be responsible for.

Don’t say that. I’m going to go home and play PlayStation all afternoon.
Don’t! Grow up and the ladies will be all over you. PlayStation is not a swoon-evoking thing.

Down In The Woods - Richard Hawley

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 14:33:28 +0100

I recently went up to Sheffield to meet Richard Hawley. As the piece below explains, we met at Forge Dam in Fulwood, a place of huge significance for Hawley. Walking along with him, he knew all the dogs in the park and their owners, the man who owns the cafe there, everyone. Detractors might have him down as some sort of professional Yorkshireman, but he really does love, live and breathe the place.

I asked him about his relationship with his hometown, and why he keeps writing about Sheffield, and he explained it’s not to be exclusive, or to make hyper-local music, he’s just sticking to what he knows.

“I’ve never lived in LA,” he said. “I don’t know what it’d be like to live there. I can’t even imagine what it’d be like to live in Cleethorpes, so why would I write about it? My music is about universal themes, that speak to everyone, but seen through my twisted lens and Sheffield perspective.”

Anyway, here’s the feature, as published by the Press Association. Thought it easier to post here than link out.

Richard Hawley is synonymous with Sheffield.

He was born there – in the suburb of Pitsmoor – in 1967, and whenever given the chance, talks passionately about the place. Each of his seven studio albums are named after landmarks, fondly remembered places in the city or, as with Late Night Final, the cry of the street vendors selling that day’s Sheffield Star.

It’s no surprise to hear that’s where he wants to meet for today’s interview, and has given the directions to one of his favourite places in Sheffield. It’s in the now-well-to-do area of Fulwood, a mile or two from his house; down a country path, along a footpath, next to a waterfall and duck pond.

Dogs run around and children play on the swings while their parents stand around eating ice cream cones and smoking.

The sun is in the sky, but it’s a cold autumnal day. Every breath hangs in the air.

Out of the haze, a Richard Hawley-shaped blur emerges. When he gets close enough to talk a hand flies out to shake.

“Eh up, kid. Fancy a brew?”

Hawley knows the café owner, Alan, well, and he’s on first name terms with most of the dogs that circle him too.

“He’s just like my Fred,” he says, patting a sheepdog on the head, and referring to his own beloved hound.

“Nice round here, isn’t it? My granddad brought me here when I was two, and I’ve been coming here ever since.”

Forge Dam is indeed a beautiful spot, visited by Hawley almost every day as he walks his dog. It’s also been the scene of some his very best songwriting.

“I’ve written most of the last two albums while out with the dog,” says Hawley. “I rarely sit at a piano or guitar to start off a song these days, I just get ideas while I’m walking and hum then into my phone. If Fred could talk, I’m sure he’d ask for 50% royalties, but he gets a nice bone from the butcher every now and again so he’s happy.”

It’s pleasing to meet Hawley on a day off and find he looks almost exactly the same as when he appears on stage. He might not be wearing one of his wide-lapelled zoot suits, but the Brylcreemed quiff is there along with thick black-rimmed glasses, making him resemble a cross between Elvis and Roy Orbison.
He’s wearing a big black coat, not unlike a donkey jacket, dark jeans with a teddy-boy turn ups and shiny black brogues, recently re-soled after an unfortunate incident in Barcelona.

Hawley was over in Spain playing a festival when he slipped on a step and badly broke his leg.

“I was stone cold sober,” he says. “That’s the most annoying thing about it, I can’t even blame booze. I’d taken a box of tea over to a mate who lives in Barcelona, and that’s all we were drinking. I slipped on a step thanks to the leather soles of these shoes, and broke my leg. I banged my head, too, so it’s all pretty hazy.”

He’s up and about on two feet again now, but during the summer he performed all scheduled shows – including Suffolk’s Latitude festival where he was wheeled on stage by Elbow frontman and close friend Guy Garvey – sitting in a wheelchair.
“I don’t cancel shows, ever. I’d had this right ordeal in the hospital – I was there six hours before anyone saw me, only to find I’d been wheeled into the dialysis ward. The marrow was leaking into my bloodstream and poisoning me. A few more hours and I’d have died.

“Anyway, we were back at the hotel an hour or so before the show and I just said ‘Let’s do it’, so we borrowed a wheelchair and went to play to 80,000 people. We did all the rest of the shows we had booked, just with me in a wheelchair. I hated that part, but the shows were great. To be honest, I was on so much Tramadol and red wine for the pain I don’t remember a lot.”

What he does remember from the eight weeks of not being able to walk, or go out with his dog, is the fact he didn’t write a single song.

“It’s a long time for me to go without,” he says. “All I did was watch The Blue Planet and England’s Greatest Goals on DVD. Doesn’t seem that long, but when you’re staring at the ceiling it’s more than enough.”

Needless to say, Hawley and his band are itching to get out on the road with new album Standing At The Sky’s Edge.

As with Hawley’s six previous albums – Richard Hawley, Late Night Final, Lowedges, Coles Corner, Lady’s Bridge and Truelove’s Gutter – its title is rooted in Sheffield history, Sky’s Edge is an area of the city that had both beautiful views across the valley and crime rates as high as the tower blocks.

While much of his previous work had him at its centre, Standing At The Sky’s Edge sees Hawley turn storyteller. The title track, for example, pulls together three dark vignettes; Joseph, who kills his wife and children, young Mary, forced into theft and prostitution and finally jailed in Sky’s Edge prison, and lastly Jacob, who stabs another man in a fight.

“They’re all people I knew when I was growing up in Pitsmoor,” says Hawley. “True stories, those.

“Thatcher took over when I was 12, and things started going very wrong in the community soon after. And it’s happening again now, which is why I wrote it. It’s about what happens when you take the rug from under people, and when a government gets rid of social safety nets, you’re left with social problems. It seems quite obvious to everyone but the Government.

“I don’t necessarily believe in governments anyway,” he adds. “I believe in people, and the idea that if we stick together we can effect change. My dad was a Union leader and that was instilled in me from an early age, that we have to stick together if we want to be heard.

“The apathy in politics worries me. As long as people have Domino’s pizza and satellite TV, people will stay heavily sedated.”

Stylistically Standing At The Sky’s Edge is a leap in a new direction, and save for perhaps two songs, Seek It and Don’t Stare At The Sun, largely ditches Hawley’s characteristic lush, orchestrated sound for Indian-tinged psychedelia (She Brings The Sunlight), Stooges-esque garage rock (Down In The Woods) and swirling, guitar-heavy walls of sounds (Leave Your Body Behind You).

The latter sums up the album’s contents best, and comes from Hawley’s realisation, after the death of close friend Tim McCall, a widely regarded singer songwriter, that there’s no afterlife and that we must do what we can with the time available to us.

“Kindness should be a way of life,” he sings on the track, “not something you have to think about twice.”

In lesser hands such lyrics could read like clumsy pub philosophy, but in Hawley’s, delivered by his honeyed croon, it makes for a positively life affirming moment on a great album, his best yet.

“I wanted to have a break from touring before we started this album,” he says. “Not for any dark reason, it’s just I’ve got a very stable marriage and children, so I wanted to spend some time being a husband and dad, and dog owner. Just stand still for a bit and be normal, you know?

“By the time we came to record, I had all the songs in my head, and I knew I wanted to widen the ground I stand on,” he explains, asked about his artistic change in direction.

“It’ll be even wider by the 15th,” he adds, hinting he’s already written most of what will become his eighth album, and has titles for his next two releases.

“I’d hate to get bored. If I continued with that path, you know, making albums like Coles Corner and Lady’s Bridge again and again, I don’t know if I’d get bored, there’s miles you can go with that music, but I’d know that I wasn’t pushing myself.

“I’m a very restless person and I’d have to have a word with myself.

“Another reason is I’m getting more confident, which is an odd thing for a 45-year-old man. You’d think I’d have dealt with all those issues a long time ago,” he says, finally.

“I think it’s because I am older that I don’t care about sales or anything. The main aim is to sell enough to be able to make another one. That’s it.

“If you have your eye fixed on LA and swimming pools and Maseratis, you’re doomed to fail.

“At best, all I’ve ever hoped for is a Mini and a bird bath.”

I recently interviewed Kenneth Grange for Australian magazine...

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 09:51:00 +0100

I recently interviewed Kenneth Grange for Australian magazine The Smith Journal. He was a pioneer of product design, responsible for styling everything from the Intercity 125 and the Anglepoise lamp to the Kenwood Chef and London’s black cab. Here’s the piece.

Formidable movie exec, godfather of the picture studio Samuel Goldwyn once defined luck as the sense to recognise an opportunity, together with the ability to take advantage of it.

In short, he didn’t really think there was such a thing. Another of his famous quips goes: “I was lucky. And the harder I worked, the luckier I got.”

The life of Kenneth Grange could perhaps be another one in the eye for those who believe field-changing careers can be fashioned out of little more than fluke and perseverance.

Reflecting on his work, the pioneering product designer says a number of times during our conversation “I did just get lucky, I suppose…” but he’s just being humble.

He may feel lucky to have achieved so much, but considering his success as a product designer over a career that began way back in 1958 and the impact his creations have had on everyday life for people all over the world, chance doesn’t come into it.

Anyone might get lucky and happen upon one great design in their lifetime. To design genuine icons such as the Kodak Instamatic camera, which transformed the fortunes of the company, the Kenwood Chef food mixer, virtually unchanged in almost 60 years, the Wilkinson Sword Protector razor, still unimproved, 35 years on, despite the manufacturer’s best efforts, the world-famous London Black Cab, class-leading Bowers & Wilkins speakers, classic Anglepoise lamps, a range of typewriters for Imperial, and the InterCity 125 train, which revolutionised high-speed rail travel the world over, suggests supernatural talent, above all else, is responsible for Kenneth’s all-encompassing hit rate. “Perhaps I just had a knack for being in the right place at the right time?” he offers, still downplaying a remarkable lifetime’s work.

After studying, then doing his National Service with the British Army in the late 1940s, Grange briefly worked as a set painter for the BBC before moving to an architects’ office where he was introduced to the concept of design, and most importantly, Modernism.

He went on to work on the Festival Of Britain in 1951, and seven years later set up his own company, Kenneth Grange Design having carved out a sufficient name for himself in the design world. Among his first commissions was the parking meter. Initially brought over from the U.S., they were deemed too ugly to appear on London streets by the gatekeepers of style, The Council Of Industrial Design, a government advisory body who demanded a reshape. Kenneth duly obliged and came up with a svelte, almost paddle-shaped object that immediately became part of the London landscape. It’s little wonder when film-makers want to recreate a period scene the meter is one of the first Swinging Sixties’ signifiers they go for.

If there is any element of luck in Kenneth’s career, it was early on, when he was charged with laying out Kodak’s display 1958 Brussels Expo. It was here a throwaway comment changed everything. “My boss asked how it had gone, so I said I was ‘pleased with the display, but the cameras were really bloody ugly’.” The remark eventually found its way back to Kodak and the following morning Kenneth received a call from the firm’s head of development saying “I understand you’re going to design a new camera for us?” Within a year the Kodak Brownie 44A was launched, to monumental success, while successors such as the 44B (1961), which introduced a focussing lens, variable aperture and two-speed shutter, the Brownie Vecta (1963), designed primarily to reduce camera shake, and the first Kodak Instamatic (1963), propelled Kodak’s worldwide sales to more than $4 billion. Between 1963 and 1970 alone, the company manufactured more than 50 million Instamatics.

Now 82, Kenneth resides just outside Exeter in England’s south west. He and wife April live in a barn they bought in 1996 and converted. As you might imagine, given Kenneth’s wildly creative mind and formidable practical skills, he did much of the renovation work himself, incorporating several outhouses he uses as a workshop, archive and storage for his beloved mini digger.

His love and understanding of design – from the smallest touch to the biggest idea – is present everywhere. The windows, for example, all open inwards to enable easy cleaning, while clever wooden panelling hides all cables, plumbing and electrical wiring. Guests to the house are greeted in the hallway by a bookcase shaped like a human body. In actual fact, it’s a coffin Kenneth designed for himself.

“When I pop my clogs, April will empty out the books and put me in it,” he says, enthusiastically showing off the build quality and standing in front of it to prove the accuracy of his creation’s measurements. “The lid is nailed to the back of the bookcase, ready and waiting to seal me in.” The bookshelf coffin stands next to a sweeping wooden spiral staircase, something of a masterpiece. It’s the only set of its kind in existence but, as is his way, Kenneth has worked out a formula so that the design can be altered to fit in any space, should a manufacturer wish to put them into production. “The stairs were originally only a temporary thing,” Kenneth admits. “I made a big hole in the floor so I could install an elevator, but since I had my new knees a few years ago I don’t need a lift and the stairs will do just fine.”

Above the dining table hangs one of Kenneth’s favourite design pieces, the Artichoke; a copper lampshade designed by Danish designer and great between-war thinker Poul Henningsen. “It’s an old design and sculpture, and extraordinarily clever. Unless you were to lie directly underneath it, there’s no way to view the lamp and see the bulb. It’s a stunning object.” Kenneth’s number one object, however, is a pair of Wilkinson secateurs designed by Hulme Chadwick in 1950. He still uses them most days and is constantly impressed by their functionality and elegance. “That’s an example of an un-improvable design,” he says, holding up the 62-year-old item, still shiny and razor sharp despite the heavy use. “Wilkinson never made a better pair; they’re such high quality and were absolutely built to last a lifetime.”

It’s a quality that exists within Kenneth’s work too. The mixer he designed for Kenwood in 1958, for example, while the many food processors, blenders and electric hand whisks he dreamed up for them will still be in operation around the world due to their somehow both contemporary and timeless design and high build quality. Perhaps above all aesthetics, Kenneth designed items intended to last a lifetime. Of course, not everything he designed turned to gold.

There was one occasion during Kenneth’s tenure as Kenwood’s lead designer when he unveiled a new blender to the board of directors. “This was at the end of the 60s; the pace of development was crazy. I was in their offices once a month with a new creation,” he begins. “Anyway, this blender was about as simple as it got; a base attached to a blade with a jug on top. I was more than happy with this design, so took my prototype to the meeting. Without any malice at all, one of the execs took one look at it and said ‘It looks like an elephant’s foot’.

He wasn’t being unkind, but the bloody thing became known within the company as the Elephant’s Foot and it was damned – it was never manufactured. If he hadn’t have said that, who knows? It might’ve been a big seller.”

Another doozie came while conducting business with Imperial typewriters in the States. The company had just been bought by New York-based firm Royal, who had won the contract to supply the U.S. Government with typewriters. It was a huge deal, and a great compliment to Kenneth when Royal said they were interested in rolling out his electric design across the country; hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people tapping away on something he’d designed.

The resulting meeting, on the New York’s Madison Avenue led to a particularly memorable day at the office. “It was exactly like Mad Men,” he says. “When that show started I thought Christ, this is like a re-run of my life. This office on was just like the inside of Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce. I’m not exaggerating at all; the men wore sharp suits, the girls were beautiful, and everything was just like you see it on screen.

“I was in my late 30s by this point, and I was confident enough to be quite forceful in my opinions. I can’t remember exactly what was said, but I’d obviously been holding forth on my typewriter, probably being a real pain in the arse about some minor detail. I eventually lost the battle and it came time to leave the office for the day. I walked out with this guy who was exactly like Don Draper; immaculately tailored suit, smart overcoat, briefcase, and fedora with a small brim. We were walking down Madison Avenue into a gale-force wind, against the flow of people. The man from Royal turned to me and said ‘Ken, if you gotta have it, learn to love it.’ It was good natured and good humoured, and it was a genuine piece of advice from an older man who knew that world. Basically, stop fighting it, enjoy it and get over it.”

Thankfully Kenneth didn’t stick to this advice when it came to redesigning the iconic black cab for London Taxis International (LTI) in the mid ‘90s. Even though he came up against stern opposition from the company’s staff designers who, understandably, didn’t take kindly to “some ponce of a consultant” being brought in by the director and ruining their once-in-a-career chance to do something significant. “When I came along they were pretty far along with a cross between a Land Rover and a Ford Sierra. This department had been given a task and they’d come to life, after years and years of waiting for a chance to prove themselves. They had a prototype, detailed production plans, everything, but I knew immediately it was wrong and not what the company should be doing. I didn’t think their design served either of the Black Cab’s masters: the driver and the passenger. I told the boss what I thought and came up with a design of my own.”

As a result, the LTI staff actively hated him making things difficult, but his design for the TX1 was on the money; it was an instant hit with cabbies, Londoners and the millions of tourists that travel in them each year. In 2007 LTI rolled out the TX4 which features only minor changes to Kenneth’s original, 15 year old design. “If I’m in a cab it occasionally comes up that I was the man that designed them, and I always get a good response from the driver,” he says. “It’s yet to result in a free fare, but I’m very pleased by their appreciation.”

Back when Kenneth was an art student in the 40s, product design, while existing in the post-World War II boom time, wasn’t known as such. At Willesden College Of Arts, there were just two options available to aspirant artists, fine art and commercial art, which almost always led to sign-writing, or hand drawing the odd book jacket for a forward-thinking book publisher willing to take a chance on a recent graduate.

“Art school was primitive back then, but it was also a free-wheeling, liberal sort of place. We students benefitted greatly from it being the post-war time. Art college in 1946 was like a New Jerusalem; young men coming back from the war, looking for excitement.”

While it might not have been articulated at the time – this was stiff-upper-lip 40s Britain after all – people wanted vibrancy, colour and aesthetically pleasing things after the austerity of the war years. Material possessions as basic as bicycles were unobtainable luxuries for most, but these were optimistic times, full of hope and brimming with opportunity. Having seen such hardship, it’s understandable Kenneth takes a dim view of the disposability of today’s culture.

“Old farts like me talk romantically about that time, but it’s very difficult for young people to realise what it was like coming out of the war. And perhaps they never will. I hope not, but it saddens me that we could go to the local dump this morning and pick up a TV in working condition that someone had thrown out because they didn’t need it anymore. It’s an immature way of looking at things, and we get more immature the more money we have.”

Of course such a gifted eye for detail can’t be turned off, and Kenneth constantly sees things he’d like to improve. The door of the Aga in his kitchen is top of the list (“it’s bloody stupid, you can’t get hold of it properly”) and various garden tools have been modified to make them easier for someone of advanced years to use.

He says he’s constantly critical of badly made products, although with his wealth of experience in the industry, he all-too aware it’s the mechanics of business and the endless quest for profit that’s the cause flawed products, not bad design.

He enjoys the aesthetic appeal of Apple’s products, believing the Cupertino-based giant is the only technology firm in the world still interested in form as well as function, while former giants in the world of aesthetics such as Olivetti, Pirelli and Braun have been forced to abandon their particular visions of Modernism due to shifting priorities in the face of falling revenue.

“Apple products can be a bit too clever for their own good at times, though,” he adds. “I have a Mac Mini, and the on-and-off switch is on the back. Why? It just doesn’t make sense for everyday use. It’s approaching design art, of which I am very scornful, and it’s a betrayal of the high position occupied by Apple. But against what they’ve succeeded in doing, this is a small matter.”

Aside from Apple, modern design worries Kenneth. Or perhaps it’s modern production processes that worry him more. He takes a particularly dim view of the technology giants in the Far East who, in his view, settle on the most effective lowest common denominator, which is nearly always price, and build their product accordingly. It’s part of what Kenneth calls ‘The Chinese Phenomena’, where manufacturers are disinterested in aesthetic culture to the point they’re cynical, resentful even, of the West’s desire for the products they’re making.

“The consequence is, they’ll make whatever you want as long as you order enough of them, and they don’t give a fuck about what it’s like or how long it’s going to last,” he says. “That completely betrays a Western ideology of trying to make something better. It’s cost-driven rather than product-driven, but we can’t blame them. Ultimately the biggest villain in this scenario is the buyer. You should not be able to buy a 42” flat-screen TV for £300, but you can. We need to realise that if you can pay so little for an item like that, someone isn’t getting paid properly and it’s almost certainly not being made properly.”

With that, Kenneth’s off again, back to his workshop where he’s currently working on a sofa to match the ‘Edith’ armchair he designed for Hitch Mylius. “I don’t feel I’m responsible for anything I’ve done that’s been a success,” he says, finally, powering up a bandsaw. “I had the good fortune to be taken up by firms who had an ideology that chimed with my own.

“Classic designs come from a manufacturer having their own motives for wanting to make a superior, long-lasting product, and after some hard work what you’re left with is a remark about the time in which it was made.

“Or, as I said earlier, it just comes down to luck.”

I travelled to Plymouth before Christmas to meet Ray Ives for an...

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:37:00 +0100

I travelled to Plymouth before Christmas to meet Ray Ives for an Australian magazine called The Smith Journal - it’s great, have a look at their site

Ray is a diver, and has spent almost 50 years scouring the seabed for treasure, like some sort of modern-day pirate. I was sceptical while on my way there - four hours on a train will do that - but what I found was approaching the magical, and I can honestly say that afternoon with Ray, nosing around his lock-up and asking him about his life is among the most interesting and enjoyable I’ve ever had.

Anyway, the magazine is out now, and here are some PDFs of the spread.

You can also watch a brilliant film of Ray by Amanda Bluglass, Ray: A Life Underwater, below. It was shown at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in January. The idea of a load of A-listers sitting down to watch Ray’s beautiful story fills me with utter joy.

Talking In The Dark: A Nightly Annoyance

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 22:27:00 +0100

“I’m just so glad I left there, you know? I’m just… I’m just ready for a new challenge and that place was bringing me down.”

If you’re bored by that extract, be thankful you weren’t there to hear it live. This chat lasted for five more minutes, and concluded with the booming-voiced rugby-type boaster showing his fawning female companion his latest gallery on Facebook because “you know, all I really want to do is shoot anyway. Working in an office is a waste of time, yeah?”

Overhearing a stranger’s existential-crisis-cum-seduction technique would be banal and annoying enough if you were in a pub, café or on a bus. During the final song of an Other Lives’ set? Well it’s nothing more than a sure-fire way to boil my piss.

I’ve a huge, huge problem with people talking at gigs, which is about to become abundantly clear.

Sometimes I think it’s my issue to deal with – I know I can’t tell people how to behave or how to enjoy themselves – but it’s so difficult for me to understand why someone would pay good money to see a band and then jabber all the way through their set.

I know not everyone stands motionless like me, wearing the same facial expression whether they’re having the time of my life or slowly dying on the inside, but if you’re not enjoying a set, why ruin it for everyone within shouting distance?

The two guys near me at one of Paul Weller’s recent Roundhouse shows will have paid almost £100 between them to attend, but chose to stand there, downing pint after pint of warm ale and moaning about their kids.

GO TO THE PUB YOU MORONS, IT’S CHEAPER, QUIETER AND THE BEER IS NICER. AND IF YOUR DAUGHTER IS THAT MUCH OF A PAIN IN THE ARSE, TAKE HER BLOODY MOBILE PHONE OFF HER.

Of course, this is London after all; land of the free guestlist, and I appreciate not everyone in a venue has paid for the privilege of being there. That’s still no excuse. I don’t pay for a lot of gig tickets, but I wouldn’t dream of standing there and behaving like I’m at some sort of crisis-strewn coffee morning.

I might, between songs, lean to a similarly geeky mate and say something like ‘Do you think that Les Paul’s really a ’59?’ or ‘That AC30 sounds amazing’, but to conduct a full-blown conversation about Liverpool v QPR, as the three Chattering Pricks behind me at a Shins gig did recently, is nothing short of an act of war. It doesn’t help that I’m a Liverpool fan and still feeling prickly about that loss. But regardless of subject matter, it was infuriating.

A plague on the houses of those utter, utter nobbers. Or at least confiscate their bank cards so they can’t buy any more gig tickets.

I waited and waited for them to shut up, which they never did, so decided to ask them to please be quiet. It worked for five minutes, after a few snidey whispered jibes about me being “some sort of talking Nazi” had passed, but then the ‘banter’ was back up to full volume. I moved, to find just as many people talking and then thought “Fuck it” and went to the Bull & Gate for a drink. There was actually less chat in there. It also turns out The Shins aren’t all that good live anyway.

Then there’s the head block – when two people arrive at a gig, barge their way in front of you and talk incessantly, meaning not only do you have to listen to their shit, but you also have the honour of staring at nothing but the side of their heads as they come together to bellow in each other’s ear. Wankers.

I have two tactics to defeat this – firstly, I blow gently on the nape of the person-closest-to-me’s neck. A bit weird, granted, but it normally works. If it doesn’t, out comes the enthusiastic loud whistle, right in the ear. Passive aggressive, but better than suffering in silence.

But how have we arrived at this point? Where no one seems to see the oddness in spending an evening in a venue as grubby as the Borderline talking to mates while a band plays, when they could be at home, or in a lovely boozer?

I think too much choice, essentially. And the subsequent dilution of an activity once the preserve of actual music fans.

That sounds horrendously snobby and elitist, but that’s not how it’s meant. I was the only person in my high school that went to gigs. It was pretty miserable going on my own and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, so I say the more the merrier. Just fucking well behave.

Incessant gig-chatting is the end result of the music performance becoming a calendar event for the upwardly mobile, or those who live their life as nothing more than a commodity to facilitate a gloating Facebook status.

In the same way Glastonbury has become Henley Regatta for the under 25s on the society calendar, gigs are a viable option for those wanting to be seen in the right place.

It’s like these Chattering Pricks, not a million miles away from the Camera-Phone Brigade (who prefer watching an event happening in real life in front of them on a 2” screen held above their head) only accept a guest list place so they can brag to their friends about it, rather than actually going to enjoy themselves.

It’s a modern disease. I have a friend who spent two days driving to Australia’s Ayers Rock so he could get a photo of himself next to the road sign.

No, he didn’t go so he could see an area of astounding beauty with his own eyes, but to get a photo to show people where he’d been. He couldn’t even be arsed walking up the bugger when he got there, he just got back in the car and turned around.

Similarly, you can bet your last ticket stub the Chattering Pricks, while not paying attention for a single second throughout a performance, will be in work the following morning crowing about how they saw ‘this really cool band, yeah?’ the night before, and that they’re ‘such a muso.’

As an aside, the word muso makes me feel all funny. I go to three or four gigs a week and own about five thousand records, and would rather be described as a predatory paedophile than a ’muso’.

And there’s another thing – going to that many live shows, when at the back of your mind you know you’re likely to die of a coronary caused by getting too frustrated by talking at gigs, is a tricky predicament to be in.

Having become increasingly sensitive to the issue in the past five years or so, I can’t help but hone in the conversations happening around me, maddening me even more.

It’s bad enough hearing the low-level murmur; when you discover these idiots aren’t even talking about music, but, as the guys behind me at a recent Spiritualized gig were, how much ice they like in their Magners, it’s almost too much to take.

I saw Michael Kiwanuka at XOYO the other month, where the couple next to me discussed the new iOS update at length.

I felt like leaning over and saying ‘Jesus Christ, just plug it in and accept the changes. Apple won’t let you get away with it for long.’

I know it’ll drive me mad one day, but I can’t help it. The details can, however, be to my benefit though, assisting in the delivery of a crushing blow from time to time. The best yet was during an acoustic Bombay Bicycle Club gig at Union Chapel about two years ago.

Just go over those words again – an acoustic gig. In a church. The great music in such reverential surroundings obviously wasn’t enough for the two ladies sitting in front of me, who spent the opening 20 minutes of the gig talking about their friend’s gastric band.

Their loudness meant I was able to butt in and say “Look, I don’t really care about your mate’s weight-loss procedure. Can you keep it down a bit?” and then made the patronising Ross-from-Friends gesture to lower the noise, head tilt and all.

I haven’t always behaved so well, and I still regret one incident from a couple of years ago – chatting is rude, but leaning over to a couple and barking “Will you two shut the fuck up?” is another thing entirely.

Moral high ground 1, Andy 0.

But why should we put up with it? No one talks in the cinema, and if they do, they get a stern ‘shhhhhing’ within seconds. Theatregoers don’t spend whole acts having a chinwag while actors tread the boards in front of them, an usher would kick them out, so why do concert attendees show such a chronic lack of respect for performers and fellow gig-goers? And crucially, why are they allowed to get away with it?

I’ve started asking bands about this lately. Rebecca from Slow Club says it’s her biggest bugbear and the whole band have now adopted a strategy to combat talkers – all of them just dead-eye the culprit and hopefully shame them into shutting up.

They also said during a particularly rowdy gig in Chicago in February, their bass player danced over to a girl who wouldn’t be quiet, and played directly at her for a few minutes until she finally turned, focused and got the message to shut the hell up.

What’s the answer though? Signs in venues? Bands dishing out reminders as they take the stage? Vigilant stewards who shine torches at chatty members of the crowd?

No. None of those things are the answer. Talking at gigs is a bit like sticking chewing gum on the underneath of chairs. No one likes it, it really annoys some, yet no one will admit to it in public, and asking people to stop makes me sound like a teacher. I’m not out to ruin anyone’s fun - I refuse to believe standing at a gig yelling at a friend can be fun - just to stop people ruining mine. That’s not too much to ask is it?

Until this changes, then, I’m going to just have to try and relax about it. Collapsing after a heart attack in Koko really is no way to go.

And, if people followed my rules, no one would be allowed to speak up to call an ambulance anyway.

Here’s the Guardian’s Indie Professor trying to explain why people talk at gigs - industry types, social events etc.

Here’s The Telegraph’s Lucy Jones having a good old moan about the same thing.

Here’s a group of musicians in The Independent responding to Simon O’Hagan’s article on the same issue.

And finally, here’s Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy doing what I wish every singer would when the talking gets too much. Nice one Tweeds.

Paul Weller via @independent_ie

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 22:04:49 +0100

Paul Weller via @independent_ie:

Here’s my Weller feature as used by the Irish Independent.

Weller: Tell Me More, Tell Me More

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:01:57 +0100

After a fair amount of toing and froing and four postponements, I finally managed to pin down Paul Weller last week - not literally, I reckon he’d beat me up if I tried that.

For all the stories of Weller being ‘a bit of a bastard’ in interviews, in our numerous meetings I’ve only ever found him to be affable and generally more revealing than an artist of his standing normally is. He genuinely seems to listen to questions anyway, and answers in a way that suggests he’s not merely trotting out some well-worn Wellerism, but thinking about what he says.

Or, maybe in his 35 years of doing interviews he’s learned how to deal with fanboys like me?

I’ve written a feature from the interview, but I’m posting the transcript here instead.

There’s been no shortage of praise for your last three records. Are you doing anything differently to when you were making records that weren’t held up in such high regard?

Sometimes you do things that people get on board with, and you in and out of favour. Sometimes people miss it, but other times people come with you. The past few years have been especially creative. Objectively I can see it has been a creative time. My attitude to making music has changed, and I feel liberated to try new, different things, or at least I want to try other things. I don’t feel any constraints, musically, at the moment, there’s nothing I don’t feel I can do. Perhaps my approach to making and writing music has changed. But then you know it’s a constant education, and there’s always something else to learn, no matter how long you’ve been doing it. I don’t think you can ever really think you’ve done it all or know it all. Music is always unravelling.

Heliocentric and Illumination seem out of place now. Can you see any pitfalls you fell into when you were making those records?

Some records are more inspired than others. Heliocentric, there are some great songs on there, but it didn’t have the same sort of spirit on there that I’ve had with the last few records. Looking back on Heliocentric, which I don’t care to do too often, but it was like pulling teeth trying to make that record. That’s what I’m saying, along this road there are going to be blips where you don’t feel inspired, but what are you going to do? Not make a record? That’s what I do, I make music good or bad, and then you put it out to the world and see what happens. I don’t compare my records, they’re all different to me. It’s like children, they’re the same but all different too. I don’t revisit a lot of it, I don’t go back and listen. Once it’s done it’s done. There are always good songs, and Illumination definitely isn’t one of my favourites but there are some great tunes on there.

What comes next? I know Sonik Kicks is out this week, but how do you carry on? Do you have to make hay while the sun shines, so to speak?

Keep on keeping on. I have no other ambitions outside of carrying on living, and carrying on making music. If I’m allowed to do that, I’m more than happy. That’s what I’m here to do, I feel, and that’s good enough. I’m excited at the prospect of making the next record, seeing where we can go, something different again. Who knows? I could make what I think is a great record next time and people would fucking hate it, so that’s just the way it is. I’m enjoying the challenge, and I’m just excited by that.

Do you think you might have a break? You’ve got the twins now, things are different for you. How about a few years off?

I don’t know really. To be honest I’m itching to get into the studio, but I haven’t had the time in recent months. I do get time off, I’m lucky. It might be hectic for a few months, but there are quiet times. I’m not touring the record at the moment, we’ll probably do some shows in December, but nothing booked in yet. We’re doing a few in New York, and European dates, and maybe Japan. I just don’t want to be on the bus for months and months, I’m not in the mood at the moment.

Do you think how the album might be received when you’re making it? Or is it just whatever makes you happy stays?

I don’t know. I think at the end of an album I start thinking about how it might be received, but at the beginning, no. It’s a purely selfish process at the beginning. It’s only when I get to the end, the mixing and finishing stages that I take stock and think ‘Fuck me, I wonder if we’ve gone too far’ or whether people will dig it. At the beginning I just want to surprise myself.

That Dangerous Age – is that about people having a dig about your age and the age of your wife?

It stems from that but it’s not autobiographical. There was a reaction from certain quarters about my wife’s age, you know ‘Ooooohh he’s got children by different women’ and all that so-called scandal, but it’s mainly about how we view people of certain ages. How are people supposed to dress and act when they get older? No one has laid down any maps for this thing, we all make it up as we go along. I think you have to act and dress and think however you want to. I wouldn’t make it too much about myself because it’d be boring, but it’s where it came from.

It’s mainly just about this guy earning all the bucks in his job, but not being happy with it and regrets all the things he hasn’t done. It’s about a mid-life crisis, which I’m not going through whatsoever. I got my mid-life crisis out of the way when I was in my late 30s. I got it all out of my system then, get it the fuck out of the way.

It’s almost a companion piece to Smithers Jones.

I suppose so, in the way we identify with the characters. That Dangerous Age is more about society’s reaction to the characters. Like the line ‘she wears her skirt so much higher’, you know, you hear people say things like ‘She’s a bit old to be wearing that skirt’ or whatever. As long as you’ve got the legs for it, it doesn’t matter.

Rock n roll is only a few generations old, and basically we’ve never had ageing punks before, so no one knows how ageing punks are supposed to act.

It’s the same with music. Are you supposed to stop listening to certain types of music when you get to a certain age? It’s probably true of a lot of people, but if you’re in love with pop culture, which I am and always have been, why would I want to give it up? If I live to 70 or 80 why would I still be digging the same thing? It’s part of our culture, and my culture. New things inspire me, and it’s a mod thing as well, it’s about adapting, and seeking out fresh ideas.

People expect certain things from you or your music. Whether your music is described as Dadrock, or you’re painted as a grumpy character. Would you agree? And what’s the biggest misconception people have about you?

As human beings we can’t help but pigeon hole things and people. It’s a natural thing to do. It’s like in the course of an album or even a song, you might think about different things. Well that’s what my mind is like as well. There are hundreds of things I’m interested in, and people try to paint me as this one-dimensional character, but that’s a natural human thing to do. Life isn’t like that, as you know. We can think about a million things in a day, some trivial, some important. I don’t know how people view me though, and I don’t really care.

You’ll never escape your past, but you’ve always managed to move on swiftly and successfully. Do you wish people could move on at the same speed you do?

I don’t know if that’s entirely true. When I started doing the solo thing in the early 90s I don’t know if people would’ve been expecting Wild Wood, or even my first album.

But there were early Style Council gigs where people heckled for Jam songs, or solo gigs where people called for anything but your solo material. Even now your gigs are full of old Jam fans waiting for In The City.

Well there was a very depressing lonely stage after The Style Council, yes, but then with Wild Wood it’s like we all met again, me and the audience. I remember very distinctly playing Glastonbury in 1994 and we finished on Shadow Of The Sun, which has got a really psychedelic, improvised ending and I remember being at one with the audience, and I remember thinking that three years earlier I wouldn’t have been able to do that. So I don’t know if I move faster than the audience, I think it goes in waves. I think sometimes really we’re in sync, and other times we’re off kilter and I accept that, I don’t let it affect me.

Did you see Plan B’s Ill Manors?

No I haven’t heard it but I like him a lot. What’s it like?

He’s rapping again, slating the government, talking about the riots.

Good.

You made socially conscious music in the past. Are you disappointed people aren’t doing it more now?

I don’t know if I’m disappointed, because I understand how people have arrived at this place we’re at now. Politics have been so grey and wishy washy for the past 20 years, that on the surface there doesn’t seem anything to get wound up about.

At the same time, other people have looked at politics more closely and become disenfranchised with the whole thing, and don’t feel they’re being heard. So I understand how we arrive at having no political music. The time you’re talking about with me, it was very extreme. Thatcher was in charge and you were either for her or you fucking hated her, there was no middle ground. She divided the country and trampled the working classes and unions. Now, politicians are all media trained and glossy, but maybe there’s a new wind blowing? Maybe we’re heading for something. And I’m always pleased to hear there’s someone’s making political music. Whether I’m disappointed more aren’t, I don’t know, but I do love it when people do, especially young artists like Plan B, because those sentiments should be coming from young people.

You must find it depressing that sentiments you wrote as a young man are still true though – the Eton Rifles form our cabinet. It must be disheartening to anyone wanting to write a song of their own too?

It is disheartening yeah. It’s not brilliant foresight on my part either, it’s the fact nothing has changed since I wrote it. That’s another reason I’m loathe to write political songs now, because it would be the same words and ideas as something I did 30 years ago. But has it ever been any different? I’m sure if you listen to folk songs from hundreds of years ago you’ll find people singing about the same sort of injustices and the same exploitation of the workers by the leaders. Does it ever change? But I don’t want to be cynical, I don’t want to do that. There’s always room for change, and it’s important to believe that. Tony Benn recently said cynicism is the real enemy, and he’s right.

You’ve a Teenage Cancer Trust gig coming up… You’ve been involved for a while now.

Well I don’t like to talk about ‘one’s charity work’ too much, but I have done bits for them, yes.

Is it important though?

Yeah, definitely. You only have to see the kids on the wards to know that. I went up to Newcastle earlier this year, the first time I’ve had chance to go up to see what’s been done with the money, and it’s pretty fucking impressive. Talking to some of the kids, it was amazing. And it’s great to see the money going where it should be going and not getting siphoned off by some fucker. But it’s really good, and a very positive thing to be involved in. But it’s important musicians get involved with everything; politics, social issues or raising money. Music is entertainment, but it’s also an education and a community of sorts, and it’s important to stay in touch with those things.

Tell me about your twins…

There’s two of them.

Thanks! How have things changed?

Well I don’t sleep as much, mate, I’ll tell you that much.

Is it a reality check? Gig one minute, thousands of fans, then home to two dirty nappies.

Exactly that. We were all back at mine after the gig last night and my mother-in-law was saying it’s really funny seeing me as a rock god one second and then washing bottles in the sink the next. But having kids is a great leveller, and a great grounding.

You’re not drinking, is that true?

Yeah, I’m off it.

And how is it affecting you?

It’s made me saner. It has changed an awful lot of things, and now I wouldn’t want to go back to those ways. I’m getting too old for it, and I can’t be arsed with three-day hangovers and all that.

Any impact on the songwriting or playing?

No. I was thinking it would have, but Sonik Kicks was a sober album. It seemed very creative to me. I just enjoy life more now, and I don’t feel shit anymore, shit after going out on the piss for three days. The press have picked up on it, you lot love this idea of me being sober.

But it’s pleasing to hear you feel better. I don’t think anyone was worried about you, but it’s good to hear you’re well and happy, I suppose.

Well that’s kind. I think my wife was worried, to be honest. I’ve been at it a long time though, I’ve been on the piss for 35 fucking years. And I enjoyed every moment, too. Well most of it. That’s important, but it’s time to move on.

Just for the hell of it, here’s one of my favourite Weller-penned songs.

The Joy Of Six: BBC Radio 6 Music at 10

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 17:41:00 +0100

I wanted to mark the 10th anniversary of BBC Radio 6 Music with a feature, so I managed to interview presenter Gideoe Coe and station editor Paul Rodgers, sit in on Lauren Laverne’s 10-1 show, and even have a go on Lamacq’s Round Table. It’s not round, but I really did enjoy myself.

This is a longer piece than originally published (by The Press Association) but I thought I’d post it here anwyay.

When the BBC launched BBC 6 Music on March 11, 2002, digital radio was in its infancy. While a station that catered to listeners that fell between the gaps of Radios 1 and 2 seemed like a no brainer, bosses didn’t really know if it was going to be a success.

Of course they hoped it would succeed, but with 6 Music being the first new channel the broadcaster had launched in 32 years, coupled with the fact hardly anyone in the country even owned a DAB – Digital Audio Broadcast – radio to receive the channel, the venture could have been a dismal, if well-intentioned failure.

As one story goes on Boxing Day 2003, 18 months after the station’s launch when average listenership was 154,000, then breakfast show presenter Phill Jupitus appealed for anyone listening to email in. Just one listener responded.

A decade later, however, and the audience currently stands at just under 1.5million listeners per day. Buoyed by the arrival of high-profile presenters such as Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, ex-Catatonia singer Cerys Matthews and Elbow’s Guy Garvey, who all present weekend shows, and Lauren Laverne, who has helmed the station’s flagship 10am-1pm programme since late 2009, and things couldn’t be better.

6 Music’s output is balanced by the likes of breakfast presenter Shaun Keaveny, who took over from original early-morning host Jupitus four years ago, station stalwart Steve Lamacq and the dream double act of Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie, the latter also presenting the Freak Zone each Sunday, an avant garde selection of music you’d be highly unlikely to hear anywhere else.

Tom Robinson, Liz Kershaw, Chris Hawkins and Craig Charles, all at 6 since the beginning, along with newer arrivals Huey Morgan, Nemone, Jon Holmes, Don’t Letts, Peter Serafinowicz, Marc Riley and Tom Ravenscroft, son of 6 Music guiding spirit John Peel, complete the line-up.

Each presenter has their own idiosyncratic style, and have all earned ardent followers, with statistics showing many established 6 Music’s listeners tune in all day, something of an anomaly in radio audience circles, while newer converts listen for around nine hours a week. Again, atypical. The average at other stations is lower.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that having come such a long way, during which time they’ve seen off a serious threat of closure – more of which later – the station wants to celebrate its landmark birthday.

There will be a series of special events, including a concert hosted by Funk And Soul Show presenter Craig Charles and featuring his Fantasy Funk Band (broadcast on March 10), live sessions from the BBC’s Maida Vale studios presented by Lauren Laverne from the likes of Spiritualized, Orbital and Paul Weller, and a concert on March 16 at London’s Royal Festival Hall featuring station favourite Laura Marling, Mercury Prize nominee Anna Calvi and Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys.

Gideon Coe, who can be heard on the station Monday to Thursday from 9pm, has been at the station since day one having moved from GLR (Greater London Radio, which later went on to become BBC Radio London).

“I remember being given this adaptor for my radio at home so I could actually listen to the station I was working for,” he begins. “No one owned DABs then.

“At that point, I couldn’t see 10 years down the line, but we felt very strongly there were lots of people out there who weren’t being catered for elsewhere. It was just a question of keeping on making good radio, and getting people to listen to us.

“I think the gradual rise in figures says a lot about the quality of what we’re doing here, and it’s more popular than ever, as of the recent Rajar numbers,” he adds, referring to the recent industry figures (Radio Joint Audience Research), published quarterly, which showed another consecutive rise in the number of people tuning in, up 27% on the previous year.

Coe’s ‘if you build it, they will come’ mantra is shared by station editor Paul Rodgers, who has been at 6 Music for the past three years.

Naturally he’s supremely confident of the station’s quality, and believes his task, happy the output covers all bases, is now just ensuring it reaches more ears.
“We’ve doubled our audience in the last 18 months or so,” he says, “but I think we can get a lot more.

“There is a tallest tree in each forest, and there is obviously a maximum figure a station like this can achieve. I wouldn’t know how to calculate that, but we’re not there yet.

“I honestly don’t believe popularity leads to dilution of purpose, and that’s what I’m here for, to make sure that doesn’t happen. We’re part of a portfolio here at the BBC, and as a broadcaster it needs to offer varied, specific services. We’d be shooting ourselves in the foot if we were to change.”

In March 2010, the BBC’s own Strategic Review, under pressure from the government to downsize the organisation, suggested the station, along with the Asian Network, should be closed.

Using the ‘inform, educate and entertain’ mission statement of Lord John Reith, who oversaw the BBC’s formation as a public corporation in 1927, listeners picked apart the argument for closure and lobbied the BBC Trust to reverse their decision. After many rallies and concerts were staged, and petitions were signed, it was announced 6 Music would be saved.

For Rodgers, while the station had always known what it was trying to achieve, the attention helped crystallise 6 Music’s purpose in the minds of the public. It’s fair to say the media spotlight shone on them due to the threatened closure won new listeners, but crucially, the majority have left their radio dials alone since discovering the digital-only station.

“Lots of people thought it was a clever publicity stunt at the time,” says Coe, “but for those of us that work at the station, it was very, very real. Without the effort of campaigners, we wouldn’t be here now, but ultimately it was the quality service 6 Music provides that saved it.”

“People might have tuned in because they heard about the closure in the news, but if they didn’t like what they heard, they wouldn’t have come back,” adds Rodgers. “6 Music is a place where like-minded people can consume brilliant things, and hear knowledgeable people speak about them.

“It’s quite simple really, but harder than you might think to pull off.”

Someone who makes all that seem really easy is Lauren Laverne. Sitting in the studio to observe her show recently, it became clear just how much work goes into making something appear effortless.

Laverne and producer Gary switch around songs at the last minute to ensure a balanced show, discuss coming events and answer emails, texts and Twitter messages – a platform on which she’s particularly active – from fans.

All this at the same time as enthusing about the latest records they’ve heard, settling in today’s live session guest Sharon Van Etten, and, this morning at least, field questions from a curious journalist.

“It’s a very special station,” says Laverne, seconds after turning down the fader on her microphone.

As it’s Thursday, it’s time to collect suggestions for the following day’s People’s Playlist, an audience-generated segment of her Friday show curated around a theme. This week it’s ‘jumping’.

“It’s so important to react to what people are talking about,” she says. “I want the show to have a community feel, like we’re all listening together, but I’m charge of the stereo.”

Another example of the community spirit is Steve Lamacq’s Round Table, which takes place each Thursday. Three guests are invited in to the studio to pass judgement on the coming week’s biggest singles in a Jukebox Jury-style manner. On the station’s website, listeners are invited in to do exactly the same, with scores averaged at the end.

A few weeks back, I was invited on to sit alongside James Brown of Pulled Apart By Horses, and James Endeacott, something of a messiah figure in the record industry having discovered The Strokes and The Libertines among many others during his time as the A&R at Rough Trade Records.

It’s very cosy, sitting there casually chatting about records. Talking to friends about music is something I’ve done since I was 12 or 13, just never before in front of a massive audience. Fortunately after more than 20 years broadcasting, ‘Lammo’ as he’s known to all, is hugely gifted in making his guests forget they’re being listened to by around a million people.

“Just don’t swear, libel anyone or be boring,” is his only advice, and during the hour we listen to and award scores out of 10 to Gorillaz, Alabama Shakes, The Wild Mercury Sound, Graham Coxon, Santigold, Azaelia Banks and Sleigh Bells, with Alabama Shakes’ Hold On rightfully coming out on top.

“People might think all these celebrations are a bit much,” concludes Laverne. “But we’re 10, and 6 Music is definitely worth shouting about.”

Taking It On The Shin

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 17:16:00 +0100

I’ve been a fan of The Shins since I was work experience at Q magazine in 2002 and their second album Chutes Too Narrow came in.

There was a spare copy knocking around, and Kerry Potter, the reviews editor at the time, said I could have it and write a review. It was never used, of course, but I felt like I’d arrived - a free CD given to me by my favourite music mag.

Anyway, finally interviewing James was a pleasure, and I was surprised by how humble he manages to appear, while at the same time covering up some of the more ruthless decisions he’s made along the way.

The Shins has always been his endeavour, despite having a solid line-up for the first three records. The way the story of Port Of Morrow unfolds, James looks like the bad guy, having essentially sacked the other members to start afresh, but in reality I wonder how much input they ever had anyway.

Maybe if James had been more honest about the arrangement in the past, no matter how self-important it made him sound, rather than giving the impression it was a democratic setup, the whole issue wouldn’t be such an issue now?

I also found it interesting that after their third record, Wincing The Night Away, he felt lost and with nothing left to say. He says had it not been for the intervention and encouragement of his good friend Danger Mouse and their Broken Bells record, which served as something of a creative rebirth for Mercer, Port Of Morrow would almost certainly never had happened and The Shins would be no more, in any shape or form.

There’ll be a new Broken Bells album next year, with a fifth Shins record roughly pencilled in for 2014. I’m already looking forward to it.

Here’s the interview in full, originally published by The Press Association. It should go without saying it’s not for reproduction blah blah blah.

There’s a scene in Zach Braff’s directorial debut Garden State where Natalie Portman hands over her headphones to Braff, plays him New Slang by The Shins and says: “This song will change your life. Seriously.”

She may as well have been talking directly to the band’s singer James Mercer, such is the way his career took off afterwards. From that moment, The Shins were no longer a minor concern to a few American college kids, they were overnight indie princes.

“It changed our presence in pop consciousness so much that we had to take advantage of our new audience,” says Mercer. “We were already on tour at the time, but thanks to the attention, we toured for a further six months.”

He wasn’t initially sure about letting Braff include New Slang (and another song, Caring Is Creepy) on the soundtrack.

In fact, he hints he only said yes because he didn’t think the tiny-budgeted indie film would ever get off the ground. That was before Natalie Portman agreed to star in it, however.

“I felt really conspicuous when I first watched it,” he says. “I sank into my chair. This thing started in my bedroom, and then all of a sudden, a dent in pop culture had been made.”

It might have started in his room in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but, on the eve of the band’s fourth album being released, he’s now sitting in a luxurious office belonging to his record label, Columbia, surrounded by posters of the company’s stars - Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Kings Of Leon.

He might protest otherwise, but he looks quite at home here.

“I guess I’m perceived very differently to how I was in 2007,” he accepts, finally. “It’s like I’m a legitimate artist now, perhaps, just from being around for a bit. That’s cool, it feels good.

“I don’t know how that translates in terms of sales and things, though.”

Port Of Morrow, the new album, follows on from the band’s Grammy-nominated third album Wincing The Night Away. It went to No 2 in the US album chart when it was released in 2007, and a respectable No 16 here in the UK.

That was five years ago now. It’s been a long time since The Shins were last in action and the band, forever essentially a Mercer solo project padded out with friends, has a completely new line-up.

After finishing Wincing The Night Away, Mercer admits he’d reached the end of the road. He didn’t know where to go next and, ultimately, wasn’t sure he’d ever make another record.

Thankfully, long-time fan Danger Mouse, aka Brian Burton, one half of Gnarls Barkley, coaxed him out of semi-retirement to work on Broken Bells, rejuvenating Mercer in the process.

“Part of what has happened to me in the last five years is that I’ve opened up, and I’m not afraid to try new things,” he says. “I was always so scared of that, because I was worried people would think I was no good.”

“You know that thing on Jools Holland’s show where they all play together at the beginning? That’s my worst nightmare,” he says. “I’m just not the type of musician who can jump in with other guys and play.

“It’s one of the reasons I didn’t used to like working with producers. I always thought they would come in and tell me how my album should sound, and I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.”

But gradually, through working with the likes of Danger Mouse and Port Of Morrow producer Greg Kurstin (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lily Allen, Kylie, Kelly Clarkson), he’s learned that’s not the case.

“I couldn’t face having to argue about a record,” he adds. “That’s the reason I formed The Shins.

“In my old band, Flake, we’d have a very democratic way of doing things, and when someone said, ‘I wrote a chorus for that song’ and I didn’t think it worked, I never felt I could say anything. With The Shins, it’s always been my band, and I write the songs.”

The results of his expansion are there for all to hear on Port Of Morrow, which brims over with confident-sounding, upbeat music. Simple Song, for example, the first single taken from the record, is the result of Mercer’s teen years in Britain.

He lived on RAF Lakenham in Suffolk between 1985 and 1990 - his dad was in the US Air Force - where he finished high school, and became obsessed with The Who, Rolling Stones and The Smiths, among many other British bands.

Amid the jollity, though, there’s a great melancholy on the album. Mercer says it’s the result of having children. He and music journalist wife Marisa Kula married in 2006 and have two young daughters, Sabine and Odette.

“There’s a lot of happiness in my life. Having kids and being married is very pleasing,” he says. “But because of that, I don’t like leaving the house. I don’t like being away from them, so it makes being a rock ‘n’ roller a bit harder. Touring doesn’t mean seeing the world anymore, it means being away from the family.

“And having children is a bittersweet thing, too,” he continues. “You watch them growing up, you see their future unfold, but then you worry about them, and there’s anxiety. It reveals a lot of darkness.

“Kids definitely shatter contentment. It’s wonderful and all that, but it’s a new world. You care more.”

Ill Behaviour

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 09:39:00 +0000

I think Plan B has just made the important song of the last 10 years in Ill Manors.

I interviewed and saw Plan B play live in about 2006 when he was in his original guise as an acoustic-guitar-toting sweary rapper. As brilliant as I thought Who Needs Actions When You Got Words was, it was clear to me his abrasive way with a rhyme was never going to be a mainstream success.

Ben was an engaging character too, clearly someone who’d seen his fair share of nastiness in real life, but perhaps too raw for primetime.

Thankfully I was wrong, and all that changed when he created his Strickland Banks character. The Defamation… was a great album; a tight concept brilliantly executed, hiding social issues under a Dap Kings-esque groove, but it did force me to wonder whether he’d diluted his art for the sake of chart success and a Bulmers ad campaign.

Then, after a year or so of promising to get back to his roots, he delivers Ill Manors, a brutal attack on the riots and subsequent government reaction, the condemnation of a generation and the greedy, commerce-obsessed, youth-hating place the UK has become as a whole.

The video (watch it below) hammers home the message. It’s not subtle, but desperate times call for desperate measures. At the moment, and following on from a brilliant interview with Mistajam on BBC 1Xtra, it seems as if Plan B is putting his reputation on the line to get home a message he believes in. Forget George Clooney getting arrested in Washington, this is the best use of fame as a tool you’re likely to see in a long time.

It’s long been said this era is waiting for its Ghost Town. It might just have been given it.

Here’s Dorian Lynskey, author of a book about protest songs, explaining the song more eloquently than I.

Tell Laura I love her...

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:03:02 +0000

I went to see Laura Marling at Hammersmith Apollo on Wednesday. It was the sixth or seventh time I’ve seen her, and I’ve only left her gigs feeling completely and utterly blown away.

I’m very lucky that go to a lot of gigs, and while I hope to never take that for granted, spend enough evenings in the Bull & Gate, The Borderline or the Scala, my least favourite venue in the world, watching bands out of professional curiosity rather than pure pleasure, and it can begin to really feel like work. At times, it even feels like a chore.

A Laura Marling show, however, makes me feel like a proper fan again. She takes me back to when I was 15 or 16, when I started going to gigs without having to be dropped off and picked up by a reluctant parent, and went for no other reason than being obsessed with a band’s latest album. No ‘checking out’ bands then. If I was going to see Ash, say, it was because I was wearing out my copy of 1977 and I was going to enjoy myself thankyouverymuch.

I find it hard to put my finger on exactly why Marling’s music fascinates me so strongly. I think she writes amazing songs, and plays them brilliantly, of course, but then so do so many of the artists I love going to watch.

It must boil down to old-fashioned mystique. She gives so little away on stage, the odd bit of interaction between songs, but nothing revelatory.

It’s not just on stage she keeps quiet, either. In the same way I attend a lot of gigs, I’m also very fortunate that I get to interview many of the musicians I love. What better way to find out more about an album or artist than to sit with them, fire a few questions across the table and get the answer straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

Over the years I’ve had theories of mine given credence or smashed to pieces by interviewees, and it can lead to privileged insights into a record. A record has to live and die by its contents, naturally - it’d be rather impractical if every fan had to interview an artist for it to make sense to them - but a little extra information can go a long way.

Despite numerous attempts, Laura Marling has always turned down interview requests from me. Actually, she hasn’t. Her press officer has, each time coming back to me with the response ‘Sorry, Andy, she’s just not doing anything’ and that’s that. I don’t take it personally. Apparently Laura doesn’t like interviews, and chooses them very carefully. Fair enough. I wouldn’t really fancy them either if the shoe was on the other foot.

As a result, there aren’t a great deal of other interviews with Laura for me to get my teeth into. With each album campaign, there’ll be a few broadsheet pieces - this wonderful Laura Barton feature being among the best, plus one in The Sunday Times by Dan Cairns I can’t find a link to - and the odd piece in NME or the monthlies, and that’s your lot.

Perhaps this is the reason I love her music so much? That I don’t know what she was thinking as each song was written, recorded and mastered, or what inspired each lyric?

Commentators want there to be some big secret in her music, and constantly try to get her to expose what that might be. A live session and interview with Lauren Laverne on 6 Music last year revealed as much. Searching for a truth behind her lyrics, Lauren wanted to know what prompted a 21-year-old to write something as bold and powerful as A Creature I Don’t Know, but Marling batted away any queries in a vague fashion, going on to state she’s actually pretty light in spirit away from her music and is really just a frustrated poet.

Mystique is everything. For years and years I didn’t read a single Radiohead interview because I didn’t want to know anything about them other than what they said on their records. OK Computer was good enough for me, why would I want to hear them explain it and show how they pulled the rabbit from the hat?

Going back to last week’s Hammersmith show, there was a moment where one wag shouted “Stephen!” across the hall, to which another Adam & Joe fan responded “Just coming.”

“Whoever did that is a genius,” said Marling, adding she couldn’t use the word ‘scorn’ anymore because it reminded her too much of Scornballs, one of the nicknames of Joe ‘Dr Scornballs’ Cornish.

I loved Adam & Joe’s radio show as much as the next member of Black Squadron, but the idea of Laura Marling sitting in her kitchen doing the same thing broke some kind of fourth wall. I realise musicians don’t spend all their time writing, recording and performing, but don’t rub it in my face. Highly unreasonable, I know. Paul Weller might have spent last Sunday in B&Q buying some energy saving light bulbs and a new bit of guttering, but I don’t want to hear it. Put him in some sharp threads with that sunburst Epiphone Casino and I’m interested again.

Marling’s often accused of being aloof, a quality some music critics find off-putting, but she claims she’s not. Anyone I know who’s met her says the same. Quiet and slightly shy, maybe, but definitely not aloof. Perhaps Laura’s just as puzzled by her gift as I am? Whatever, if she is keeping schtum about something, her secrecy on the matter is very much appreciated.

As her career’s gone on, Marling’s lyrics have become more and more influenced by Roman and Greek mythology, or are inspired by classic literature. Much of it is new to me, not being educated in the arts or particularly well-read, which only adds to the sense of wonder. If familiarity breeds contempt, her reeling off tales inspired by John Steinbeck or ancient goddesses of wisdom, draws me in immediately. She’s not my most-listened-to artist on Last.fm for nothing.

When I was her age I spent much of my time staggering out of student clubs, full of 2-for-1 alcohol and thinking of nothing deeper than where my next pizza was coming from.

Perhaps that’s another reason I’m so utterly bewildered by her talent, her youth? In the space of three albums, she’s gone from nu-folk poster girl to bona-fide great, and if she keeps up a similar rate of creative growth, her future is almost terrifying.

Ultimately, for all my omphaloskepsis - that’s ancient Greek for navel-gazing, by the way. See, I’m trying to broaden my horizons - one fact remains. I love Laura Marling’s music in a way I’ve not experienced since the first mad surge of youth. I just think she’s better than everyone else, but I don’t really know how or why.

Maybe I should stop trying to understand, dissect and analyse that so much, and just carry on listening.

POPFESSIONS: Andy Welch

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:42:38 +0000

POPFESSIONS: Andy Welch:

I wrote this over at Popfessions, a great blog where one can own up to past musical indiscretions, and the notion of the ‘G**lty pleasure’ is rightfully null and void.

popfessions:

Most music lovers have an epiphany; a moment when the Panini stickers or Sylvanian Families are put away to gather dust in the corner, and bedroom walls become more than essential features that hold up a ceiling, but vehicles to display pictures of popstars your parents with hopefully…

Kimbra

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 17:17:00 +0000

I was watching the video for Gotye’s all-conquering Somebody That I Used To Know a few weeks ago. I like the song OK, but mainly I needed to see the person singing as I refused to believe it wasn’t Sting.

After that, I Googled the song’s guest vocalist Kimbra, and came across this song, Cameo Lover. Averaging three or four listens a day for the past two weeks, you could say I’m a bit obsessed.

The song, seemingly a plea to a would-be lover to make up their mind about a relationship, is a lot of fun, while the video is suitably joyous. Kimbra, from New Zealand, sounds a lot more jazz-influenced in other songs, but here comes over like Bjork covering The Style Coucil, with a Motown-worthy middle eight.

And, yes, she looks pretty good dancing about in that red dress too.

She’s coming over to the UK later this month to support Gotye on his tour and perform their duet each night, while laying foundations to launch her solo career here later this year. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of Kimbra.