MY CONVERSATIONS WITH ROCK STARS

I'm bored, so here are some interviews

listening to: Brand New

TIM WHEELER ON LIFE…

Let me put it this way: Ash rock. And their new record, Meldown, rocks s’more. Known for their non-stop partying, killer pop tunes and pin-up front man, Ash answered the questions of their detractors with Free All Angels, an album that grabbed them from the brink of bankruptcy. So they must have a few lessons to teach us. Una Mullally brings you TIM WHEELER ON LIFE…


On the album, ‘Meltdown’:
It’s brilliant. It’s such blast to play live as well. We weren’t really scared making it because our confidence was so high after Free All Angels. We had reestablished ourselves so we weren’t concerned with pressure. It was recorded in the same room as Nevermind was. Dave (Grohl) hung out with us too, which was weird. I remember getting Dave’s autograph when Nirvana played King’s Hall, so it’s kind of come full circle.
We wanted to get that American sound. I mean, we were living in LA and listening to the radio all the time. It was the sound we always wanted to achieve. I didn’t think it was that different from what we had done before when we were recording it.

On the US:
We’ve made a real good fan base built on seven months of support shows, which made a good enough foundation. Then we got to do our own tour and we sold enough tickets to make it self-sufficient. We’re sorting out a new deal in the States because the guys we were with went bankrupt a few months ago, which was a bit of a nightmare.
It’s totally scary. It’s a challenge. I mean, we come from another culture obviously, and it is such a hard place to break.

On the rebirth of Ash drummer, Rick Murray:
As a drummer, he was totally adequate before. But American bands play to a higher premium of musicianship. We are so influenced by Nirvana, so we always thought that it didn’t matter how good a musician you were. But Nirvana were clever, they had one of the best drummers of all time! So, Rick saw all these American drummers and what they were doing. He used to be really neurotic about his drumming. When we started rehearsing, he had just changed. He was coming up with loads of new drum parts and stuff, and it was all of a sudden, sort of overnight. I think he just started taking it much more seriously.

On his voice:
It has strengthened. I think that was from being on the road so much. I pitched the album higher too, so I could really do it.

On the reaction to Nu-Clear Sounds
It was absolutely tough. I think people have a lot of misconceptions about it. I mean, people said it was so heavy, but there are ballads on it! I’m not sure if some people even listened to it before saying all that stuff. It takes a few listens. It was a real confidence knock. I still think it’s a great album.


On growing up:
We still party. But now, it’s more when we’ve got a day off. Y’know, if we’ve got a show the next day we’ll keep ourselves together. I think now, it’s a case that we want to give people value for money and not be (pauses to search for phrase) fucking cunts!


On getting drunk:
I remember one gig in St. Louis when Mark got so drunk. And on the last song – we were ending with Kung Fu – he was hardly able to stand. So he kind of leaned against a wall and as the song went on, he was slipping further and further down. By the end of it he was slumped on the ground. He just hit the last chord and passed out. He was still there about half an hour later until the crew picked him up. Hats off to him though, he got the last chord out. It was all a bit Spinal Tap.

On hallucinogenics:
One time we played in Japan and we took loads of mushrooms because there was this head shop around the corner and there’s some loophole in Japan that mushrooms are legal. Well, that turned out to be a complete disaster. We were on stage playing Jack Named The Planets – a song we had been playing for about ten years and in the middle of it, me and Rick just forgot the whole thing. We went into a Grateful Dead jam and our fans were just staring at us. Pretty bad!

On Guitarist, Charlotte Hatherly:
Charlotte’s album is great. She’s a creative person in her own right and needs an outlet for that, but she loves playing in this band. I know she’s totally committed Ash. People were really patronising when she joined. All her interviews were ‘what’s it like being a girl in a band with guys?’ But she proved to everyone how great she is.


On Pop
Playing the Pop Beach thing for TV reminded me how glad I am to be in a rock band. A lot of the pop life is so soulless. That’s all they do, those kinds of gigs, getting on stage for two songs and miming. It’s, Jesus, it’s living a sad life.


On Oxegen
I can’t wait for Oxegen. We’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves. Last time we played there was after Free All Angels. We were moved to the main stage at the last minute and it was pissing rain, but everyone stayed to watch us. I’ve never seen so many human pyramids. I’m looking forward to seeing Bowie and the Darkness. There are some really good bands on at the same time as us, like Muse. But it’s gonna be a good laugh. Bring it on.

THE CHALETS

POP ROCKS

Winning Best New Band at the Meteor Awards is another notch on The Chalets well-rocked bedpost. Yet, 2005 is really just the beginning, with a new single due in April and an album to follow. Una Mullally caught up with Dylan (aka Dilbot) of Ireland’s premier pop bitches.

In 2004, Britney had ‘Toxic’, Usher crunked ‘Yeah’ and Girls Aloud invited us to ‘The Show’. After these, number four on the list of best pop songs of the year just gone was definitely The Chalet’s ‘Theme’. You’d have to be a dour bastard not to melt in delight at that jumped up, Dublin dating world vocal dance off. MTV chose the accompanying A-Side, ‘Sexy Mistake’ as the soundtrack for those random sheep at the hairdresser ads, but it was ‘Theme’ that lit the match of hype. Luckily, it didn’t burn out, and while the music press preoccupied themselves with tales of boys avec guitars snapping strings in the backrooms of Whelan’s, The Chalets continued to dig their leg-warmered heels in, culminating in ‘The Nightrock EP’ at the tail end of 2004.

“You mean, how does it feel to be an ‘award-winning musician’?” asks Dylan when I query his view on belonging to ‘the best new band’. “It feels funny. It’s a bit of a weird one, because we were touring in England and we flew over. All we knew was we were nominated for the Hope Of 2005 award. So when we didn’t win, we though, ‘well, that was a bit of a waste’, because we had hired tuxes for the night. Next thing we realised there was another award for best new band, and we won. All very bizarre.” Apart from winning the award (which is too heavy to bring everywhere, so it now rests on Dylan’s kitchen table), the highlight of the evening was eavesdropping on a chat between Pat Kenny and Westlife backstage. “It was all very funny.”

Humour is reoccurring theme for The Chalets. Bursting onto the Dublin scene like an episode of Pimp My Ride in the middle of a video full of Questions and Answers reruns, they are certainly giving the generic a well-deserved jolt. The key to this freshness, “well we like to use our imagination.” A simple lesson many could learn from. “We’re not the world’s greatest musicians,” continues Dylan, “everyone seems to think we stick out like a sore thumb, but there’s no great mystery or science to it. We use our imagination, which leads me to believe that most people aren’t trying too hard. Being in a band is meant to be a creative thing.”

Having topped ‘next big thing’ lists for a couple of years running, The Chalets are currently riding higher than ever before. Just off an English tour with Art Brut, they headed to two gigs in Cork, one in Galway and then three in London, one of which is the excellent ‘Camden Crawl’, an MTV and XFM sponsored guerrilla-style take over of ten Camden venues. The Chalets will share the stage with Graham Coxon, The Cribs and The Departure, a perfect platform for their utterly fun, carelessly hedonistic and snappy as hell tunes.

Of course, pop is disposable, and fashions change (I hate ponchos). The Chalets are well aware of all this, they just don’t really mind, “we were driving up to Galway for a gig and talking about the lifespan of bands. All the bands that I like, have had limited careers. So we were saying how long we would last, and for all of us, as soon as it stops becoming fun, The Chalets wouldn’t make sense.” Thankfully, it looks like the fun isn’t going to check out for some time. To coin a culinary metaphor; since their inception, The Chalets continue to be a brilliantly layered cake construction of boy/girl tete a tete vocals with a creamy filling of choppy guitar chunks sprinkled with carefully careless imagination. Giz a slice.

listening to: Lost - Incomplete

mercury rev

Mercury (still) Rising
An interview with vocalist and guitarist, Jonathan Donahue

How are you?
Divine, how are you?


I’m good. How did the instore go?
It went fine, we signed and awful lot of Irish names. We learnt where to put the, the, eh (looks to record label minder for help), fada.


Everybody’s raving about ‘The Secret Migration’, how does that feel?
Um. I’m just coming down from my chocolate buzz, one second (he’s after devouring a giant slab of Matilda-esque chocolate cake). That’s a weird question. Um. It feels good.


What was the recording process like for you?
Um, we laughed a lot. We had a really genuinely good time, which isn’t always the case when we’re making records. And, it hadn’t been the case for a while, so this time around, we just felt really good. I understand, it sounds corny to say, it sounds cliché, but it’s not. It felt really good, most of it. There were dark moments, and, think confrontations, but, we were laughing a lot, an awful lot.


Are you able to predict people’s reactions?
I don’t know any artist who’s worth his or her salt who is. Usually the ones who are worth their salt are generally the worst predictors. You get so far into your own perspective, your own struggle to get the stuff out of you that you really can’t take in an awful lot of prophesising or predicting. It’s often why for a lot of artist - especially the good ones – the stuff that we love is not always the stuff that the public at large enjoys and visa versa; the stuff that the public may be rather blasé about is stuff that means an awful lot to us. And I don’t mean specifically Mercury Rev, but just artists in general, authors, painters. And I don’t know why that is, it’s probably because we see each other differently. The way I see myself is sometimes at odds with the way the public sees me. Sometimes.


The turmoil at the beginning of your touring careers has been well documented. What was the cause of that in the beginning?
There were an awful lot of strong personalities, who I don’t think were necessarily well prepared or necessarily predicted that we would all be together in this happy family of being a rock band. We just assembled together, had done some music in a very offhanded way for our friends, sent it around to a few labels and were pretty much routinely rejected. Small, gothic, death rock label loved it, put it out. We got some very favourable large-scale press. And then those six people had to go out on stage and try to do this thing that we’d only done once. You add into that money and you add into that a tabloid press in Britain and Europe, and it was a lot to handle, you know?


What did it take to pull through that to a better mindset?
It took four of the members to stop touring out of the six. And myself and Grasshopper, you know, we really love music, and the others did too, but we’ve always had a very close resonance between us. At some point we probably made some very unconscious, subconscious decisions that in order to go forward, we had to treat each other with a lot more patience and dignity, otherwise it would just burn out. Probably around ‘95/’96, we made some of those efforts to at times be good to each other, because at times we weren’t. Then again, it sounds very soap opera-ish, but he’s my best friend in the world. We make music together if it’s not going well, as a best friend, you’re not going to make that music. You can’t put that aside and say ‘well, we’re really not talking but we’ll just make a record together for the fuck of it with a big publishing cheque.’ It doesn’t work like that. So, you have to sort of confront those choices. How badly do I want to make music? And how badly do I need somebody as my friend? Ultimately, you make the choice for friendship. Music can come and go, but it’s the friendships you have that can pull you through the darkest times.


How did you work through it to become a more stable unit?
We thought of it as something we love to do together; playing music, writing music. And the way we were raised on music ourselves as an American band. Perseverance is the most important thing for the bands that we both played with and grew up listening to, all these bands from the early 80s. Sonic Youth. These bands have a great sense of perseverance. They’re not in it to be in the charts and then out again and then break up three years later. These are the bands we truly love, that inspire us. Not necessarily musically, but the idea that you keep going, that this doesn’t end when your record falls out of the radio chart or when it falls below a certain sales level, or you get a bad review. We do it because we love it, and that’s something that historically has been a very American quality, since the early 80’s, in a Sonic Youth way. And, I use them as a prime example, as a band that keeps going in the best of ways, because they love to do what they do, whether they’re in fashion or out, whether they’re on the top of the sound wave or in the trough and that’s something that we hold very close to us, because, as a band, we’ve been in and out of fashion. We make the music that we want to but at times, people don’t get it or there’s something else that seems more important to the press.


Are you surprised that Mercury Rev is nearly 20 years old?
It’s not surprising to us. Sometimes you wake up and go ‘wow, phew’, but the idea is, the word ‘no’ isn’t in our vocabulary, the idea to break up because our record got panned or didn’t sell, the idea to let it blow up in our face because our record did really well. These aren’t things that really cross our minds. We never talk about it. We live in a small mountain community in upstate New York and no one cares what chart position we’re at. No one ever asks. It’s a lifestyle we choose to live and it has enabled us to make the music we want to. As you probably have written down, and can see, over our career, it’s a sound wave. You’re up and you’re down in the public’s eyes, or even in the press’ eyes. But it’s something that we’ve always known and we’ve assumed we’ll keep going. And get better.


Out of all the shows you’ve played around the world, has there been any specific place that has stuck with you?
They all resonate like stings on a guitar. Sometimes they’re high E or sometimes they’re lower A, but in a different way. That’s the beauty of music. If you do it sincerely and do it truthfully to yourself, somewhere in someone’s being in some far away country, even close by, even if they don’t speak the language, if you hit that string, it resonates. It goes above and beyond books, literature, things like that. And it’s universal. You’re dealing with vibration and that’s not something that gets stopped at the border in customs. It’s not something that language breaks down. That goes right to the heart. You can’t fake it. Sure you can be popular in a pop way, or in a newspaper and people will come to your show in droves and wanna see it, but to have a lasting impression, it has to have a truth.


I was talking to a musician who said that when you’re playing night after night, the only thing that changes is the audience, and not your performance. Would you agree with that?
I think you have to move the audience, it resonates, it keeps going back to the sound waves and vibration. Our day’s a very long day by the time I go on stage at 9 o clock at night. But, you know what? So is the audience, they’ve had a long day, whether they’re working or going to school or whatever it is, they’ve been through a lot and so to just say, ‘well, thanks for coming, here’s our product’, eventually, they’re not stupid, they’ll understand. You have to work with it. It works really well when they work with you, and everyone can tell. Some nights just happen that the energy is bristling there, and of course, some nights are a little less or a little more. You have to work with it, you know? It’s entertainment and its bottom, but at its best, it’s communication.


This is your sixth album, and you’ve said, you’ve gone in and out of fashion, is there any part of you, before you release another record or go on another tour that wonders whether you’re still relevant?
The idea of relevance gets tricky. Are you making music to just change the way other bands listen to music? Are you making music just so you can be on the cover of a paper and be relevant in somebody’s press circle? That’s a very tricky game to play, trying to judge where music is at or where people’s heads are at. It’s a lot more sincere to just, what’s in you let it come out. Most accurate that you can, because that’s in there somewhere. It’s the human condition, that’s what we’re talking about, in essence. You have lyrics to music, or even classical music, you’re trying to get to the human condition. What is it about me that you might find something you can share? What is it about your experience that might be a good thing to express? If it doesn’t go there, then it’s wallpaper. You do the best you can. Not every song is meant to change the world or change someone else’s life. Some of them are just a really good way of saying ‘hey, how was your day? Chin up.’


What memory would you take with you if it ended?

I don’t believe in ends, so if Mercury Rev broke up suddenly, I would tend to view it as the beginning of something else.

listening to: The Immediate - Moneysworth

ANTHRAX

Having abandoned music for a decade to become a master watchmaker, Dan Spitz has returned to Anthrax. He spoke to Una Mullally about the fans, the music and his obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“I got the Elton John syndrome, he lost the love of his instrument.” Dan Spitz is explaining the moment he lost music, the precursor for abandoning one of the biggest metal groups of all time and discarding music. “In my heart,” he continues, “the music that comes through me, I lost it. I lost the love of my best friend – my guitar. I hated it.” If this sounds all a bit too dramatic then you’ve never listened to an Anthrax record. Spitz’s essence seems to echo the passion, speed and violence of his band. He speaks extremely eloquently, pausing and searching for the right word, often arguing vehemently with simple presumptions I make and always finishing sentences that often last for 5 minutes each.

Spitz himself brings up his extreme obsessive-compulsive disorder four or five times, ensuring that there’s free reign to discuss the reason why he abandoned Anthrax when the band were still selling out arenas and flogging millions of albums. And when he did it, he did with excess, “when you do something, it has to be to the further extent. It’s either on or off. So, I ripped all my stereos out of my cars and house, I gave my 53 guitars to Hard Rock Cafes around the world so they’re all in glass cases now. Then I enrolled in schools to become a watchmaker. A guitar is a never-ending learning experience, but as a child I had two goals; be on the cover of Guitar Player magazine and play Madison Square Garden. That accomplishment was complete. So I began studying micro technology and engineering.”

Spitz says he went from complete noise to complete solitude and is now the second best master watchmaker in the world, mainly repairing watches worth over one million dollars. For some unclear reason, the time to rejoin Anthrax has arrived for Spitz, “it’s therapeutic for me to bring back guitars. I’m like a kid in a candy store now. I look at pedals and get all excited.” Spitz speaks deadly seriously about his commitment to the band, as if he’s scared others will think it’s another momentary split decision, “I want the fans to know for me, that it’s not about the money,” he deadpans, “I have money, I’m there’s only one other person in the world who can do what I do. I love my fans and I miss them.”

Indeed, a return to the fabled line-up of Anthrax is something to relish, but with the constant surge of nostalgia on the road with the ‘return’ of Thin Lizzy, The Doors, Queen and, um, Oasis, will the allure still be there? Spitz is in no doubt, “we have to offer ourselves. We have that live energy. The magic is unexplainable. If you take out one person, it’s a different band. A band is a sum of its parts. We’re going to be going around the world destroying everyone.”

NANCY SINATRA

FRANKLY, NANCY

Rat Packers be warned, the F(rank) word, does not appear in this article. And there’s a reason for that. Nancy Sinatra was always more than her father’s daughter. Far before Debbie Harry was storming CBGBs, and before Cher had ripped open the fishnets, Nancy Sinatra was the female artist. And she remains an icon today, not just because of anthems like ‘These Boots Are Made For Walkin’’, but also because of her longevity, her charity work and her humbleness in a world of Divas and wannabe-divas. In other words, Nancy is the woman.

Today, following a hectic Memorial weekend (more about that later), she’s at home in LA, hoarse and reflective. So, in her opinion, what made her the icon she has become? “The fashion angle is always there. I think I was perhaps the first person to wear the mini skirt and the boots – in this country (the US) anyway. Until Twiggy came along I suppose! I brought the mini skirts home from London. There was no one else doing that, although Europe was way ahead of us as usual. Musically, I wasn’t the first female to do what I did, but I was the first white female. The people who were doing what I ended up doing were in RnB. They had the attitude. People like Ruth Brown. And the guys I liked; Elvis and The Everly Brothers influenced me too. I grew up with the great American songbook of course and I learnt from that.”

No one could have foreseen the success that these factors brought, although there was a fair amount of hard work involved too, “there were four years when I was recording and releasing single after single and nothing was happening. When he first song that really worked, ‘So Long Babe’, hit the US and I was asked to be on every TV show and called for interviews, I knew things were going to change. My Dad would walk out on stage and introduce himself saying, ‘I’m Nancy’s father’.”

So, back to the surname. When Nancy started out, the cynics rushed to slam her for trading on a family name. “It was kind of funny being compared to a male singer”, she laughs, “It’s pretty absurd when you think about it. They used to say, ‘Nancy will never be the man her father is’ – a lot of people didn’t even see the irony in that!” She was just trying to make it on her own, and a famous Pop help in some ways, but also demanded that she worked even harder to carve out her individuality, which she did with style. By the time the album ‘Boots’ had arrived, Nancy was a superstar across the globe. She pioneered fashion statements, and even photographic stances that still remain to this day, “sometimes I see Britney dressed in something, or Mariah posing in a certain way and I think, ‘I did that in ‘71!’ It’s flattering when people say they look up to you, or that you influenced them, although it did take me a long time to believe that I could be so powerful as to influence somebody”.

“Excuse my voice”, she continues, slightly embarrassed, “it’s just after memorial weekend here, and I don’t know if you know about ‘Rolling Thunder’, but at the weekend, there were 400,000 of us on motorcycles in Washington. We actually managed to get an audience with the president. So some of us went into the Oval Office and addressed him about the issues of war veterans. There is a struggle in the US with veterans. They’re just brushed under the carpet. We ride to call attention to that and to rally round. It’s not an easy task.” Committed to causes outside of music set Nancy Sinatra apart from the beginning of her career. “ Serving people is part of my upbringing - my father was the same. My grandmother invited in people off the street for meals. When we’d go to her house for dinner, you never knew who you’d be sitting next to at the table.”


In a career spanning decades, with hundreds of parties, hit singles, movies and a life in an ultra-famous family, one would expect a memory in that vein to have remained with Nancy until now. But when I ask her what times and what memories she would not part with for the world, I’m met with a charitable answer, “my USO work, because those images are still as vivid and real as when I was experiencing them. I met two people this weekend who saw me during that time and thanked me for bringing a smile to them. People are always thanking me, but I have to tell them not to, because it’s not me who should be thanked. In those memories, I found a brotherhood I can rely on. There are happier memories too, of course. I mean I made some of the worst movies!” I interrupt Nancy to remind her that she was to top female box office draw for two years in a row. “Yeah, well, the movies were with Elvis and Peter Fonda I guess! Y’know, It was a ride.” And it still is? “Yeah, and it still is!”

ok, if i wasn't bored at the start of this exercise, I sure as fuck am now.

Una