Interviews
Interview with Keith Airey, July 2009
"There was one funny picture ...I used to come round the front of the stage and do a solo with Tom [Jones] and these girls threw some knickers and they landed on the end of my guitar, and they were just dangling on the end. And there's a shot of me and Tom with these knickers hanging off and he's just laughing..." Click here for more
Interview with Dave Davies, June 2009
"[With Ray] some weeks it's better than other weeks. But it's difficult because I think we should just get on and do things..we're not going to live for long or forever...It's always been a problem with the fact that I shouldn't have spoilt him. He was too spoiled...you have to be careful with what you say because it could end up in one of his songs!" Click here for more.
Interview with Roy Harper, March 2009
"Roger [Waters] isn’t going to move a muscle. Roger is against paying anybody anything for doing anything in his past… Roger’s determined to be a bully and that’s it. There’s no one on this earth who can stop him from being a bully because he’s got the cash to be a bully.” Click here for more.
Interview with Brian Ray, guitarist for Paul McCartney, Feb 2009
"I didn't follow up, but two week's later I got a call...I came down to the office and I auditioned for it... I got a call the next day saying 'can you be on a plane to play with Paul McCartney for the 2002 Superbowl?' That was basically my audition - the 2002 Superbowl for one song. It was kind of crazy. A nice intimate little audition!" Click here for more.
Interview with Matt Hicks from Union Circus, January 2009
"I've always really played acoustic guitar...I never really grew into the electric guitar. I dabbled with it, and I realized it wasn't for me. Maybe I didn't have the ego for it I suppose..." Click here for more.
Interview with David Gedge (The Wedding Present), November 2008
"George Best is my least favourite Wedding Present record...Artists always tend to improve as writers and musicians as the years go on. I listen to it now and it's the sound of a band trying but not quite getting there." Click here for more.
Interview with Chris Squire from YES, November 2008
"The definition of music to me: a combination of science, emotion and being able to create a great feeling for a listener." Click here for more.
Interview with Laura Marling, September 2008
"I consider myself very lucky. I'm not a 'big deal', it's nice, it's good. I'm chilled out and relaxed and hoping that it will stay this way." Click here for more.
Interview with Chris Corner from IAMX, September 2008
"It's really about balancing what can be useful and what can be elegant and really effective...Something like MySpace can be really beautiful because it allows leftfield music to be heard and I truly believe that is the way forward. Independent movements are the way forward in music." Click here for more.
Interview with The Young Knives, June 2008
"Really, what it boils down to is being able to write, having the freedom. I mean obviously, there are some bands and they just have to have paying jobs to keep carrying on, but we’re lucky enough to have the freedom to write, and the time. So we do feel privileged in that respect." Click here for more.
Interview with Dana Fuchs, May 2008
"I spent a lot of time with Bono because we had a lot of scenes together. So, they put me in makeup with him every day. So, I was this close, you know, sitting a foot away from him. And the first day, the first few hours, I could barely speak. I mean, really I just was tongue-tied. I finally said "I'm sorry. It's just, you're Bono." And then we broke the ice and started talking about a lot of interesting things. He's really into Bob Dylan and the fact that he'd seen a documentary about Hitler being a cocaine addict!" Click here for more.
Interview with Amy MacDonald, May 2008
"I’m really proud of everything I’ve achieved, and I’m really happy and really honored to be in this position, so it’s great to be successful. But luckily for me, I’ve managed to have a successful music career but still remain my own person and still have a normal life with it." Click here for more.
Interview with Noble from British Sea Power, March 2008
"We just hope people know who we are. It's quite hard for people to know you exist. I think if people know that you exist, then they can make their minds up a bit. It’s just kind of getting out there and making people know there is a band called British Sea Power who do these kinds of things and make these kinds of songs." Click here for more.
Interview with Gary Nicks from Satellite State, March 2008
"We definitely matured over the past couple of years and we've got a lot of confidence on stage now and we really believe in our music and stuff and what we're doing so I really do think we're ready for the majors. I don't want to big us up too much but I think we can run with the big boys, if you like." Click here for more.
Interview with David Knopfler, December 2007
"I've never regretted doing anything when it comes to making decisions and moving on. I mean, I left a number of jobs in my time before Dire Straits when I had day jobs. I walked out on them when they didn't make me happy. You've only got one life." Click here for more.
Interview with The Brit Box creator, John Hagelston, November 2007
"There are a number of bands on here that are not going to be familiar names to U.S. record buyers, but we are hoping the ones who are well known will be enough to draw people in enough to give the whole box a listen, and I think there will be a lot of things they will discover and really get turned on to." Click here for more.
Interview with Rupert Wates, November 2007
"I love America and everything it stands for, but I do see certain trends right now in America that I feel need to be addressed by writers and artists everywhere. There are certain trends in America today, but I think they are aberrations from what America really stands for. But I don't want to [step] on peoples toes, and if you write a song that is preachy or dogmatic then you've failed as a writer. That is not what songwriting is about." Click here for more.
Interview with Dave Fendick from Vib Gyor, September 2007
"Where I get my kicks as a singer and as a writer - I found out in America - is going over there and playing to a sell-out crowd and everyone singing along. That’s why I am in a band. It’s not to scrape every single penny and deprive people of hearing my music for the sake of 79p off iTunes or whatever it costs these days to download a track." Click here for more.
Interview with Eddie Argos from Art Brut, June 2007
"When we first started, years ago, I was very shy. So people would clap and applaud and I’d say, 'Don’t be sarcastic.' Or I’d be apologizing after songs and stuff. And then one day we played with this band and the lead singer was so confident and charismatic, I thought, That is what people want to see." Click here for more.
Interview with Matt Hales from Aqualung, April 2007
"What people look to their musicians and artists to do: to be courageous and honest and to share something of themselves. You know, they don’t really care if it’s got a cracking chorus or not. People respond to music, to the emotion of music, I think, more than anything else." Click here for more.
Interview with Steve Rothery from Marillion, April 2007
"When it came to Afraid of Sunlight, we were in a situation where we had to record the album in 10 weeks. EMI dropped us after that record, which looking back on it was absolutely insane, because I think it was our finest record to date. It was still selling thousands of copies, so to drop a band in that situation is insanity." Click here for more.
Interview with Chris Olley from Six By Seven, April 2007
"Every time I play a gig someone comes up to me and says, 'Why isn’t your band bigger? Why aren’t we hearing you on the radio?' So maybe, I would like Six By Seven to be there where everybody thinks, That’s where you belong. Whatever that is in their minds. Then I don’t have to answer their questions anymore because we are already there. It would be so great really to be able to hold our heads up high and say someone has recognized what we are doing. That would mean a lot to me, I think." Click here for more.
Interview with Captain Sensible, March 2007
"At no other time in pop history would I have had a look in, to be quite honest. I was the luckiest bloke in show business - if you can call my career anything to do with show business. At any other time you had to be a s*** hot musician taught at the Royal College of Music or something like that. Well, that was the way it was in the ‘70s with all these ghastly Yes and Genesis prog acts, or you had to be a pretty boy, which is the case nowadays with the likes of Simon Cowell and American Idol and all that sort of thing. You don’t generally get anyone who is a little bit weird looking. I am not the most handsome bloke. You look at John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix: if they applied for American Idol, they wouldn’t get past the first stage. I got very lucky." Click here for more.
Interview with Joel Cadbury from South, March 2007
"I think there is a bit more of an economy of sound thing going on. We are stripping back a bit in that all of our records are very layered and complex ... [but] we are trying to get back to the roots and not over-complicate or layer things up too much. Saying that, we could end up coming out with the most multi-layered record yet." Click here for more.
Interview with David Fendick from Vib Gyor, February 2007
"As long as we are making music we are happy. We will carry on indefinitely. And that’s what’s important at the end of the day. Really, for us, it is about us five meeting, writing songs, being creative and happy. And if other people get it, then that’s a bonus, isn’t it?"
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Interview with Fyfe Dangerfield of Guillemots, January 2007
"With iPods and everything, it is like culture is moving much more away from the art of the album and much more towards having lots of individual songs that you just shuffle around. In a way, it was like a deliberate reaction against that and we wanted to make something that was very much an album and was greater than the sum of its parts."
Click here for more.
Interview with Steve Rothery of The Wishing Tree, December 2006
"I’d love nothing more than to sell a couple of hundred thousand albums. I think any more than that it would be a monster. And I think too much success could destroy something. It’s almost like it’s quite a fragile creature, you know. And too much attention would change it. I think the pressure that that would introduce would make it more difficult for us to do what we do." Click here for more. Photo(c) myspace.com/thewishingtreeband
Interview with Eric Burdon, November 2006
"I was, on Tyneside, the only kid around that would get up in front of several local jazz outfits. And, in fact, I recorded with some of the best modern jazz players that Tyneside had to offer when I was like 17 years of age in a little studio called Morton Sound in the center of Newcastle. We recorded straight to disk; disk to disk on acetates, which you could play for about 12, 13, 14 times, and then they would just fall apart. But that was a great experience for me. I never forgot that, and I’ll always keep those early lessons within me."
Click here for more. Photo(c) Marianna
Proestou
Interview with Jamie Cullum, October 2006
"It’s always really hard to follow up an album that becomes a phenomenon rather than just an album of music. You know, it became like a lifestyle kind of record that got given to people before they even knew whether they’d like it, because lots of other people had it. And I’m just proud that I followed up with a record like Catching Tales. It still sold really really well, about one and a half million, so I’ve got nothing to complain about." Click here for more.
Interview with Tom Smith from Editors, August 2006
"Playing live has always been one of our strengths. To start with especially, people were kind of attracted to that. And as the stages have got bigger over that period and the audiences have increased in size, I think we’ve adapted well to that. If you put that band when we first started on the stage in front of five thousand people at Brixton Academy they’d have probably cried and walked off! But a couple of months ago when we did it, it was some of the best nights of our lives."
Click here for more. Photo (c) Jill Furmanovsky.
Interview with James Doviak from Johnny Marr & The Healers, July 2006
"It's never been the case of Johnny Marr and a bunch of session guys, I don’t think. You may see it as that, but I don’t think Johnny sees it at all like that. It's just a bunch of mates who get together and jam. It takes time to function as a band unit, it's a lot of communication. It's like 90 percent of communication is not what you’re saying, it's your hands and gestures, and I guess there’s a degree of that in a band where there’s almost, when you get to the right level, a kind of telepathy about it." Click here for more.
Interview with Ian Ball from Gomez, May 2006
"We’ve always written kind of poppy, weird songs, but usually we get embarrassed by the fact that it’s so catchy or so, like, just a generic song, so we drown it in weird sounds to make it cool.
[But]
on this record we didn’t try and be cool at all. We just said, Okay, we’re going to cut some pop hits here, and this is what they sound like, without us hiding behind them. Which was a conscious choice and was really an experiment more than anything else, just to see what would happen if we did it." Click here for more.
Interview with Jimme O'Neill of The Silencers, May 2006
"When I write a Silencers song it has to come from inside. It has to come from somewhere inside me, and the most important thing is that it has to say something. It has to say something to me, it has to say something about what I believe in, and it’s always going to be that." Click here for more.
Interview with Guy Garvey from Elbow, April 2006
"Well what can you do? If James Blunt dictates our musical image abroad, it’s as heinous a crime as Hugh Grant representing us abroad. This kind of foppish, English twit image that he exports in all those bloody awful movies that he’s in, really gets on my wick because of the idea it gives people about the British. So, yeah, James Blunt is music’s Hugh Grant. Nothing to do with the reality of the country I live in."
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Interview with Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai, March 2006
"The mainstream press in England ... are really scared to chastise something that someone else thinks is essential. They don't actually listen to things and judge them on their merit. That's not everyone, there are a few writers that are pretty honest, but generally there is no point in even reading reviews." Click here for more
Interview with Rob Coombes of Supergrass, January 2006
"I'd like to think that we're not part of any particular genre. People talk about when we started and the whole Brit Pop thing was around—which we've always thought of ourselves to not be a part of." Click here for more
Interview with Chris Rea, November 2005
"It’s not until you become seriously ill and nearly die and you’re at home for 6 months, that you suddenly stop to realize that this isn’t the way I intended it to be in the beginning..." Click here for more.
