Episode 408 - Thom Yorke
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckaholics?
Marc:What the fuckadelics?
Marc:That's all I'm going to say today.
Marc:Those are the only names I'm going to do.
Marc:I'm actually getting a little tired of that.
Marc:How do you feel about it?
Marc:Have we outgrown the list of names?
Marc:Maybe not.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Sometimes I think, well, maybe I shouldn't have that all right at the beginning with all the fucks at the beginning because there are people driving kids to school, picking kids up at school, driving with children in the car.
Marc:Maybe they want to listen without worrying about that first opening salvo of fucks.
Marc:I am Mark Marin.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:I'm happy to be here.
Marc:I just got back from Nashville, Tennessee.
Marc:And I have a great time, as great a time as I can have whenever I go to the South.
Marc:And I always, whenever I'm in Nashville, there's part of me that's like, why can't I just live here?
Marc:Why can't I just get a house for about a third of the money it's going to cost me to add on to this house and just not pay state income tax?
Marc:And and live live in the American South in Nashville, Tennessee.
Marc:Why can't I just do that?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Then I have to start flying people to my garage.
Marc:I have to.
Marc:You want to do my show?
Marc:We'd have to put a budget for travel in.
Marc:We would only exclusively do musicians.
Marc:and occasional touring comics that would come through Nashville.
Marc:It's a beautiful part of the country.
Marc:The people are always nice.
Marc:I am done with stereotyping Southerners because every time I'm there, I meet a lot of very nice people, not just polite people in that malignant Southern way that you don't trust, that politeness that makes you say, I mean, are they really being polite or are they just tolerating me?
Marc:Do they want me out?
Marc:No, I mean, genuinely nice people, artists, bakers, coffee makers, people who sell shoes, record pressing people.
Marc:I just there's a lot of good people in the South.
Marc:They're just I'm not going to do it anymore.
Marc:I'm not I'm no longer going to adhere to any any stereotypes.
Marc:A couple other things I did.
Marc:Oh, by the way, Tom York is on the show today from the band Radiohead.
Marc:I spoke to him during the recording sessions of his recent project, Adams for Peace.
Marc:It's interesting because I was originally supposed to interview both he and Flea, who was also part of it, but Flea called in sick.
Marc:Not to the interview, but he didn't go to the session that day because he wasn't feeling well.
Marc:And I was able to just to talk to Tom, which I think was a beautiful coincidence.
Marc:Because I was nervous about talking to both of them.
Marc:Musicians are tricky for me to begin with, and Flea's a pretty large personality from what I understand.
Marc:But to just be able to sit down with Tom
Marc:You know, off one of the rooms, we did it at a Rick Rubin studio, which is this old mansion that once belonged to Harry Houdini up off Laurel Canyon Boulevard.
Marc:It's a pretty stunning property, but now it's just a recording facility.
Marc:And I was able to get about an hour in with Tom.
Marc:And I'd heard that he's difficult.
Marc:I know that he's a bit of a rebel, but I have that in me as well.
Marc:But I thought we had a lovely conversation, and we'll play that in just a second.
Marc:If you're still listening now, we'll get to the interview.
Marc:But it's not going to include any of his comments or anything relating to the interview.
Marc:to the fight he's having with Spotify.
Marc:I know that he pulled the Adams for Peace album off.
Marc:He pulled some of his solo work off.
Marc:He and his producer made a stand against Spotify around royalties and the ripoff of musicians.
Marc:But this interview took place before all that.
Marc:This interview took place a little while ago when they were recording the new Adams for Peace stuff.
Marc:So that will not be talked about because it was not on the radar then.
Marc:And, you know, it's weird when we talk about Spotify, about Internet, about, you know, how do you protect stuff?
Marc:You know, what is the best delivery system?
Marc:How do you continue to make money in a world where anybody can get anything for free?
Marc:I was able to go back in time.
Marc:I know some of you know that I've gotten into the vinyl lately, but I'm not a nerd.
Marc:I'm not a vinyl nerd.
Marc:I'm not a record collector.
Marc:I'm not looking for priceless pieces of vinyl.
Marc:I primarily get vinyl so I can listen to music on vinyl.
Marc:Now, you can have whatever opinion you want about vinyl as to whether or not it's all hokum.
Marc:The quality is not better than digital if you're one of those guys.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:I don't give a fuck.
Marc:I like records, and I'm enjoying playing records, and it's a reasonable midlife crisis to have.
Marc:I've got my tube amp.
Marc:I've got my records.
Marc:I didn't spend a lot of money on this stuff.
Marc:Records are not that expensive, and they're a beautiful part of life, and they're a beautiful part of my childhood, and they're a beautiful way to listen to music, and they're tangible.
Marc:You hold them.
Marc:You look at them.
Marc:You have a cover.
Marc:I know all of you have heard this stuff around records.
Marc:And, you know, I know it's a reason, you know how you know if something is a reasonable midlife crisis?
Marc:I got a tube amp.
Marc:I can't wrap it around a tree.
Marc:I can't get in trouble or lose all my money because I fucked it.
Marc:If you check, you know, yes on those two, like, you know, I can't lose all my money or get in trouble for fucking it and I can't wrap it around a tree and it didn't cost you that much.
Marc:That's a reasonable midlife crisis.
Marc:But it's also a way to listen to music in a very organic, almost magical way.
Marc:It's just it's great.
Marc:So here's what happens.
Marc:Just by coincidence, the United Record Pressing Company is in Nashville.
Marc:The guy who markets for them, their marketing guy, Jay Millar, he reached out to me, said, you want a tour?
Marc:And I'm like, it's in Nashville.
Marc:And I know that they do Jack White's records.
Marc:And I was like, yeah, I'd be interested in that.
Marc:So he walked me through his the record plant.
Marc:This is a record pressing plant.
Marc:And the interesting thing about a record pressing company is that they are not beholden to labels.
Marc:They press records for everybody.
Marc:They just press records.
Marc:And this company presses about 30 percent of the records available in the world.
Marc:And they've been around since 1949.
Marc:And they've been pressing records since then.
Marc:It was a fascinating conversation.
Marc:Again, not because I'm a record nerd, but just because I think when people talk about hipsters or they talk about even when it comes down to sort of local produce or the new farm movement or coffee or any of the stuff that gets sort of lumped in with this whole hipster movement.
Marc:I mean, you can trivialize it.
Marc:You can call it fashion.
Marc:Oddly, I think a lot of the fashion that hipsters sort of utilizes is originally from the American South.
Marc:But that aside, I think what people are craving is something tangible, something intimate, something organic, something that they feel has some integrity to it.
Marc:And I had no idea what to expect when I took this tour of the record pressing plant.
Marc:But I was I was blown away because it doesn't it reaches back to another time on some level, another time of manufacturing.
Marc:But it also it they are producing something.
Marc:tangible something organic something you can hold in your hand something that is not digitized that is not ones and zeros is not vague it is not really disposable and and the whole process he brought he took me through the whole process right from raw vinyl beads the the raw vinyl the virgin vinyl comes in almost these little beads of vinyl then then there are all these record pressing machines they make seven inch records they make 45 records a few of all the records that you have were pressed at this plant
Marc:There's a history to it.
Marc:I mean, there was a time where this was the only way that people listen to music.
Marc:You bought records.
Marc:So to see these machines, which they don't even make anymore, and to see people working at these machines, working at a manufacturing job, and they had just dozens of these machines, all different types, and to see the vinyl go in and to see the plates come down and press a record and then it gets trimmed out around the edges.
Marc:I actually held a hot record.
Marc:And it's almost magic.
Marc:He explained it to me.
Marc:I still don't understand how the music gets on to the record.
Marc:It has something to do with grooves, but it's not some sort of weird computer magic.
Marc:There's something beautifully organic about the whole thing.
Marc:And I think that, you know, a lot of people disregard that in terms of listening to vinyl.
Marc:Or owning vinyl.
Marc:It's not just about sound.
Marc:It's about holding something real.
Marc:Watching something spin.
Marc:Knowing that the parts that are involved actually have a motor.
Marc:And that goes all the way back to the manufacturing.
Marc:People working to make records.
Marc:They make 40,000 records a day at this place.
Marc:And he said that the record business has never stopped.
Marc:They've never stopped manufacturing records.
Marc:Even like during the time where CDs were popular, you would think like, well, who bought records?
Marc:And they kept making records and they kept making a lot of dance records and a lot of the longer playing club singles and stuff.
Marc:But he said it's never really stopped.
Marc:These machines don't even exist anymore.
Marc:They don't make them.
Marc:They have to have a machinist on site all the time in case a machine breaks down or if they need a part, he's got to make the part.
Marc:And I think Jack White had a lot to do with this because I went over to Third Man and now he's got a thing going.
Marc:He was doing the all analog thing, but now he's taking it a step further where he's recording direct to the acetate.
Marc:No tape involved.
Marc:He's got a machine where they do a live show and they record it direct to the platter, direct to acetate.
Marc:There's no tape.
Marc:They mix it on site and they make tape.
Marc:the template for the album right there at third man during a live performance.
Marc:Now that may seem trendy or it may seem weird or may seem affected, but it is organic.
Marc:It is pure.
Marc:It is real.
Marc:And, and, and, and each part of that process is human and, and, and indirectly compatible to machinery and to equipment and to real time.
Marc:There's no fucking computer magic or breakdown of sound.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I find the whole thing very magical and very profound.
Marc:Let's go now to my conversation with Tom York.
Guest:We went to Magic Castle last week.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Were you heckling?
Guest:Were you like, come on, where's the card?
Guest:No, we were trapped in the room.
Guest:We couldn't get out.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Barbara Streisand started playing really, really loud.
Guest:Someone was flying through the air.
Guest:We need to get out.
Marc:I've been there once.
Marc:You do feel like that once you get in there, that there's no way out.
Marc:It's a very bizarre thing.
Marc:You're led through the bar and into a room, and then there's another choice of rooms.
Marc:It is.
Marc:It's a vortex.
Marc:Do you like magic?
Marc:I mean, were you entertained?
Marc:Or are you more one of those guys who's sort of like, oh, that's ridiculous.
Marc:I never seek out magic.
Guest:No.
Guest:It was more like the horror.
Marc:The horror of that level of entertainment?
Marc:We're in the bowels of the entertainment.
Guest:I'm going to get in loads of trouble now, aren't I?
Marc:No.
Marc:What, you think the magicians are going to get a lot of hate mail from magicians?
Guest:Could do.
Guest:Well, maybe worse.
Guest:Maybe I'll be in three pieces in boxes tomorrow morning.
Guest:Tom York is now involved in a magic trick.
Marc:involuntarily yeah he was found in pieces the magician left the room refusing to put him back together well that'd be interesting you just tour as a wheeled out head your head still functions i would see you but i can't find my hands um exactly uh what what's your feelings about california do you spend a lot of time out here do you like it
Guest:I do really like it, yeah.
Guest:You know, there's a big British expat population here and it's the novelty of coming somewhere sunny where people, you know, seem at least on the surface to be friendly.
Guest:Oh, I don't believe it.
Guest:They're evil and predatory.
Guest:Yeah, well, of course, we're used to that, so it's okay.
Guest:We ourselves have sharp edges.
Guest:Yeah, historically, yeah.
Guest:Yes, it's nice to get away from the Tory party pulling Britain to pieces as well.
Guest:That's always, I like to get away from that and not think about it.
Marc:Are the politics constantly in your face?
Guest:It was just something I was thinking a lot last night.
Guest:Things are bad here, but I don't know what the situation really is here.
Guest:Obviously, the way that it works, the mechanics of it, but in Britain, we have a party who we didn't vote for.
Guest:And pulling the country to dismantling things beyond the point where they can be fixed again.
Guest:Yeah, we went through that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we didn't even ask.
Guest:We didn't even vote for them.
Guest:But there they are doing it and telling them that they won't stray from the path of righteousness, essentially.
Guest:What exactly?
Guest:Everybody, including the IMF, says, please don't do this.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they still do it.
Guest:What exactly is it?
Guest:They're dismantling the NHS.
Guest:They're dismantling the school system.
Guest:They're using what's happening with the banking system as an excuse to do a load of other shit.
Guest:What's that Naomi Klein shock doctrine?
Guest:You know that concept?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Sorry, you didn't expect to be talking about politics.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I used to talk about politics every day.
Guest:Okay, cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that whole concept of you have one...
Guest:you know, crisis.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you use that crisis to... As a portal.
Guest:As a portal to do a load of other shit without people knowing, putting it under the same veil, you know, dismantling infrastructure, opening it up to private enterprise, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Yeah, the privatization of public works and everything else.
Guest:It was the, you know, the neocon thing to do.
Guest:It was like, well, it's happening...
Guest:in a way that's never happened before in Britain.
Guest:And they're using the excuse of, you know, the debts or whatever.
Guest:But really, even the IMF says it's nothing to do with that.
Marc:So are they dismantling, you know, all what they see as socialized services?
Guest:They just, I think the whole raison d'etre, to even be a party at all, is to be as right-wing as they can.
Guest:Because they know...
Guest:Because to me, it's all PR, you know.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Cameron is a PR guy.
Guest:And the whole concept is, like, the only way we can possibly stay in power is if we look like Thatcher looked, as in unrelenting, you know, following a path without question.
Guest:A narrow path.
Guest:A narrow path.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:right through all the working people who are crying yeah well they don't really vote for them so they're not really bothered about that yeah and they know in terms of how they look that's the only way they can maintain their support within their core whatever yeah so that you get this bizarre scenario where they're
Guest:Whatever they've chosen, they won't turn around from them.
Guest:They won't back away from them, even though they probably know it's a mistake.
Guest:It's because if they did, they know they would lose power.
Guest:So they carry on.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's one big PR thing.
Marc:But I always wonder if they do know it's a mistake.
Marc:You'd like to think that they have human hearts and that somehow their conscience is bothering them.
Marc:But somehow they've rationalized their agenda into something that they think is the best for usually business.
Marc:And then ultimately for everybody.
Marc:Because, you know, the market...
Guest:We'll level off.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:But that's the point, isn't it?
Guest:Because they're surrounded by lobbyists, business lobbyists who are telling them that this is the way to go.
Guest:And they're the people who put them there.
Marc:Yeah, they're owned.
Guest:They're whores.
Guest:They're corporate shills.
Guest:But that whole trickle-down thing, which Thatcher started talking about in the 80s.
Guest:It doesn't work.
Guest:No one believes that.
Marc:Of course not.
Guest:Come on, that's up there with Americans still believing in, what was it, meritocracy?
Marc:Right, exactly.
Marc:Basically what trickle-down amounts to is, well, the poor will adapt or die.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And, you know, they're nothing but an obstacle anyways.
Guest:And the whole argument about, well, you know, if these people make money, then we all make money.
Guest:It obviously falls down when you've got the whole concept of tax dodging.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah, we'll make all their money.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How much of this, in terms of your intellectually and emotionally, I mean, when did you start really thinking about this stuff?
Marc:Because I know you had battles with record companies and seeking freedom from that.
Marc:It's not that much different.
Marc:Was that when you awakened politically or were you always like that?
Guest:No, I was always into it.
Guest:I was always into it, even at school, even at a private boarding school.
Guest:I was always the chippy left winger.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even though my father wasn't.
Guest:What did your father do?
Guest:We used to have, we went through a phase, me and my brother, of having the dinner arguments, the political arguments.
Guest:They won for like four, five, six years where, you know, my mom would have to sort of say, okay, that's enough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because it would end up in like stand-up rounds.
Guest:So you and your brother were on opposite ends of the spectrum?
Marc:No, we were both coming from the left.
Marc:So you're doing it to aggravate your father.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:Anyway, he was a nuclear physicist and then he did other things as well.
Marc:Anyway, how does that play out?
Marc:I mean, if he was a nuclear physicist, I mean, he must have had to deal with the dialogue as a lefty with sort of like, do you make bombs, dad?
Guest:No, no, no, no, no.
Guest:It was like he wasn't doing that long enough for that to be an issue.
Guest:He did other things.
Marc:Research?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, anyway.
Guest:It was more, you know, it was that period, the Thatcher period, where a lot of people really...
Guest:did subscribe to the idea of, like, that somehow there's this holy grail of capitalism.
Guest:We just free the market enough.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And as was happening during the Reagan era here, if we free the market enough, then righteousness will prevail and we will all be rich.
Guest:But actually, all that was happening is that the goldsmiths of this world were coming...
Guest:here and Britain and like buying it, pillaging it, taking the money and moving to an island and going mad.
Marc:That's absolutely, that's exactly it.
Marc:This idea that if you have
Marc:completely unregulated free market capitalism that will find its own level and everything everybody will benefit yeah and the one thing they never talked about which was a You know indicated during the banking big was like what you didn't take into mind that greed would somehow affect I know because the market is morally righteous There's no no greed
Guest:I wish they could come up with a set of more fluffy words for saying what we were just saying, though, because we both sound like chippy old lefties.
Guest:But actually, none of what we're talking about is chippy or lefty.
Guest:No, it's practical.
Guest:No, this is actually really, it's the shit right here.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:It's the truth.
Guest:Give me some other words to use and I'll explain them using those other words like, you know, Bill and Ben or, you know, like in some, you know, in the language of...
Guest:Sesame Street.
Marc:So people could really understand.
Guest:Yeah, would that be a great episode of Sesame Street, wouldn't it?
Marc:It is fairly complicated, but I don't understand.
Marc:I know in this country that the reason most people who will vote against their economic self-interest and not pay attention to the criminality of what's happening...
Marc:I think somewhere in the American sensibility that they're like, they don't think it applies to them because they could be a millionaire.
Marc:That could happen.
Guest:That's what I'm talking about with the meritocracy.
Guest:That's like, if you work hard, you'll do well.
Marc:Really?
Guest:I'm going to win the lottery.
Guest:Really?
Marc:You think so?
Marc:really what really so what so in terms of like even talking about that I would a very interesting thing happened when I was listening to the atoms for peace album in the car coming over oh yes yeah because I had it plugged into my phone and I had the phone plugged into the into the stereo but I also had the GPS going
Marc:So, so what, you know, you had this, you know, your beautiful lyrical rhythms and occasionally it's like turn right at Laurel Canyon.
Marc:And it almost felt like some weird mix, you know, like, I'm like, this is the GPS mix and it seems to fold right in.
Marc:It kind of works because there's a, there's a sort of beautiful kind of tone set by the, uh, the lyrical, uh,
Marc:thrust of the album, and it just, it is about direction.
Marc:This is the only direction I have during this song.
Marc:It's very bizarre.
Marc:But when you talk about politics, and when you talk about, you know, the power of music, or even calling a band or a song Adam for Peace, how do you think, like, I have to assume with your disposition that there, you think that there is something socially relevant and moving in that direction with the music.
Marc:Do you feel that?
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:In this country, I sort of feel like... In Britain, when you talk about politics and stuff, it tends to become a very angry us and them thing quite quickly.
Guest:What I liked about calling Atoms for Peace to me was... To just use the word peace in it to me is sort of... I like the references to the 70s.
Guest:I like the...
Guest:All that sort of thing about like, you know, the 68 movement and when I was born in 68.
Guest:And I kind of think a lot about...
Guest:as well as obviously the the eisenhower speech and the nuclear thing forget about that and sometimes i think about the idea of of of people on the streets you know yeah and they're not doing anything they're just on the streets yeah riots will only break out if the police charge them and i've been on those protests and i've seen them do that
Guest:But if you don't, if you just go and you're just there, you're always there.
Guest:Like in Spain at the moment, they're there every week.
Guest:I was in Bilbao, there was a different protest along the same bridge from this different...
Guest:you know four or five hundred people every single day with a different banner hanging down and but it was relentless you know and and we was there a few weeks ago and they were just talking about um how uh anyway i'm going off the point that idea of resistance but passive but there you're just there and you're you're animated but you're it's peaceful you know yeah yeah because i've been when i was a kid i used to go on protests and stuff
Guest:and i went on one one of the first big ones i went to was uh about student loans which are now commonplace but at the time when i went to university and the the idea was it was all paid for by the state and obviously being a student we were pissed off about that because it meant the the poor have less access to
Guest:education at least that's how we argue it right um but uh so we're on the other side of Westminster Bridge Parliament is in session Thatcher's extremely pissed off that we have the nerve to turn up that day and do that so she she calls the horses on us so there was um we had the riot police in front of us and I was sort of uh with my friend Stanley who would do the artwork with yeah um
Guest:and uh we stood there and there was the rose the the riot police with the plastic shields yeah and everyone's getting kind of angry because they wouldn't let us cross the bridge but it was kind of okay it was it was pissed we were pissed off people had started throwing bits of wood and things but it was all right yeah next thing we know the the the shields part
Guest:And the horses just charged straight towards us.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And there was this girl I saw who was pregnant, who had her leg broken.
Guest:Everyone ran, ran, screaming.
Guest:The horses, the guys, the policemen on the horses had batons, were whacking indiscriminately people's heads.
Guest:And they were cuffing, arresting whoever they could find.
Guest:it was insane it was insane terrifying and basically and then of course it gets reported that night as that we're troublemakers and so on it's like well no actually we were there and we were standing by the bridge and then they they do this thing called kettling where they they section off each other area yeah yeah that shit gets pissed off and says i you know and just calls the horses on us beats the shit out of us
Marc:Unbelievable.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So in a sense, because I feel this.
Marc:And I was at a relatively recent show of yours at, I think, Bonnaroo last year.
Hmm.
Marc:That the idea that when you create, because it seems to me some of the music you're doing now creates, you know, a vibe and a tone and a groove and there's something, you know, elating about it and there's a build to it.
Marc:But it's not like, you know, it's not designed for relief.
Marc:It's almost designed for movement and unity.
Guest:It's funny, I was talking to a friend of mine about this yesterday.
Guest:It sort of has dawned on us when we did the last Radiohead tour that sometimes, you know, we did this show in Phoenix and there was
Guest:I think because it was in Phoenix and the big shows don't happen a lot.
Guest:In fact, Fleet emailed me about it at the time saying, you know, people don't really play in Phoenix much at the moment because there's a lot of heavy shit going on.
Marc:Oh, yeah, the conservatives there are crazy.
Guest:But it was like...
Guest:They all came out of the woodwork.
Guest:All the people who don't like, you know, that's how it felt.
Guest:You know, like the stoners and the e-heads and the old musos.
Guest:Everybody was like there in a big, like, in a big soup.
Guest:And it kicked off.
Guest:Just, but through the music, you know.
Guest:And it was amazing.
Guest:It was really, really amazing.
Guest:And you felt like you were just part of this gathering.
Guest:And I can't describe it, but the room starts changing shape and shit.
Guest:There's something in it.
Guest:There's something in that collective... You have 40,000 people in a room who all move into the same groove.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's powerful.
Guest:There's something pretty powerful.
Guest:I don't know what it is, but it's something weird going on there, definitely.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also, I guess you probably...
Marc:Because at this point, the fans of yours and the fans of Radiohead and the fans of your solo stuff have evolved with you and understand where you're going.
Guest:To some extent, yeah.
Guest:Which I find bizarre.
Guest:Because the only reason that's happened is because
Guest:we've just gone a sort of certain line and people have gone, okay, and followed us.
Guest:But there was no, you know, I didn't wake up in the morning with messianic tendencies or anything.
Marc:No, no, I know, I know.
Guest:But no, but I think about it and like, that's really weird.
Guest:What, how many, that's mad.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But also, I mean, did you find, because you seem to have a sense of like you're surprised by it, but did you, was there, I have to imagine there was a moment, and I think you're relatively public about it, where you made a decision to evolve as opposed to repeat yourself.
Marc:And you made a decision to, you know, like, maybe the anthem rock business is not the business I want to be in.
Marc:Perhaps, you know, having, you know, the hooks that, you know, any idiot can go like, yeah,
Marc:here comes the chorus i've hit my distortion pedal yeah um but but so you must have been afraid that you know like well i got to do this and you know but you at some point must have been willing to lose them yeah always um uh
Guest:Yeah, there was a bit of that.
Guest:But then there was also like, if you're writing something and you mean it, you can't repeat yourself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you can't.
Guest:I just, I couldn't, you know.
Guest:To me, it's one of those, I go through my life...
Guest:come what may doing stuff because i can't not you know it's like well this is my instinct is to go here and that's it i can't do anything about it that's just how it is you know um i'm very lucky that that that it people stay with it but it wasn't like i can't i couldn't have done it another way and also that thing like i think
Guest:you know um you you can't like you can't write i mean even at our college and stuff is like you can't write stuff to please people you know you you have to write it because it's what you've got that's it you know you sit down you give it to someone it's a painting or whatever it's like this is what i've got this is it yeah i couldn't have gone any way otherwise this is me here is there is there an element of defiance to it because you seem like a guy yeah a little bit
Guest:Not very good with authority.
Guest:Actually, I was going to say before, like, when I was talking about the protests, like, the other thing about happens for peace to me and something I've been thinking, I remember, like, there was this, you know, there was this whole period in Britain where...
Guest:I think it suddenly dawned on a lot of people who were involved in protesting that it really wasn't happening properly in the way that they wanted because every time they went somewhere or got whatever they just got the shit kicked about and by the police or at least it was reported really badly and so
Guest:Someone sort of somewhere within this movement, I think it was this movement called Reclaim the Streets.
Guest:And they had a massive influence on me.
Guest:And there was people I knew who knew them.
Guest:They kept doing these stunts and there was humor.
Guest:So they would like do a protest.
Guest:They did this one famous one on a motorway where someone wants to create a bypass and shit.
Guest:and um and it was just funny man it was just funny they turned the whole thing on its head and go you know what i'm gonna do something so stupid it'll blow your mind yeah so they got this um giant they made it like a parade okay so they sort of shut the motorway down and they just turned up and they were a parade and they walked onto the motorway and motorway stopped yeah
Guest:And they had this giant figure with a giant sort of skirt and some girl on the top waving her arms about.
Guest:Underneath the skirt was guys as it walked along with jackhammers chopping the motorway up.
Guest:It was genius.
Guest:Good.
Guest:Awesome.
Guest:And like the cops didn't figure it out.
Guest:They thought it was a show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were like, well, they couldn't do anything anyway.
Guest:So it was amazing.
Guest:And they kept doing stuff like that.
Guest:And it's like, that's how you do it.
Guest:You make people laugh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And don't get angry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, yeah.
Guest:Just be peaceful.
Guest:Make them laugh.
Marc:Fuck.
Guest:with our heads sure you know and also kind of force people to be entertained and people that might not understand what's happening might be able to put together the metaphor exactly and and get it good it's that moral that moral of like resistance whatever anger you may feel is useless you know go go with something peaceful something humorous and you will get your doors will just open you know right and and artistically I mean I think the same question
Guest:yeah to some extent well is that like you know you have a problem with authority but i imagine that as a as an artist you have a problem with with expectation kind of yeah and i'm also yeah i'd spend i guess i've spent my whole time one of my one of the things i really enjoy is that kind of messing with people's heads a bit so you do one thing yeah and then you're like okay this is really gonna them up
Guest:How do you feel about me now?
Guest:How do you like me now?
Guest:You know, I'm a little bit like that.
Guest:Not like, not overtly, but sometimes it kind of makes me laugh, you know, like to do sort of following a path down a certain way.
Guest:And there is a sort of element of humor, like element of like...
Guest:It's kind of silly that I'm choosing to do this.
Guest:And that's what I'm finding inspiring about it, you know.
Marc:Who were your guys when you were growing up musically?
Marc:I mean, what compelled you?
Marc:What did you listen to?
Marc:How did you sort of find your way initially?
Guest:Well, the first... I mean, really, to be honest, the first...
Guest:I listened a lot, you know, I loved Queen.
Guest:I thought they were great when I was really small.
Guest:They are great.
Guest:They are great, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're pretty silly as well.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then, but, you know, as a teenager, I think, like, the band that really, really changed my life was R.E.M.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Susan the Banshees and Joy Division and...
Guest:Bob Dylan, bizarrely, was mixed in.
Marc:Emotional stuff, though.
Marc:I mean, you know, those are pretty, like, you know, Joy Division and Susie and R.E.M.
Marc:I mean, there was a lot of rawness and vulnerability that wasn't really angry.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, my favorite show that I went to, I didn't go to many shows because not many bands came through Oxford, but my favorite show I ever saw then was Susie and the Banshees.
Guest:And she was absolutely amazing.
Guest:She was like the first sort of front person that I'd seen just...
Guest:and it wasn't like there was sort of not like you know the singing wasn't like wow she's an amazing singer or anything it was more just her presence yeah she walks on the stage it's like this is her stage yeah even though you kind of want to watch budgie like on the drums a bit but basically she's totally in command of the whole audience but not in a like look at me sort of way she's just there doing it and it was that really blew my mind you know and then
Guest:And she was theatrical, though.
Marc:Yeah, really, that's what I mean, yeah.
Marc:Not on my queen.
Marc:Very theatrical.
Guest:But in a way that was like punk, in a way that was sort of... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It wasn't mannered at all.
Guest:It was just, that's what she wanted to do.
Marc:And also she sort of turned femininity on its head.
Guest:Yeah, completely.
Guest:Because she was kind of really sexy, but absolutely terrifying.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That's the best kind of woman.
Marc:It is.
Marc:Actually, you're right.
Marc:You don't always realize they're terrifying until you're too far in.
Marc:You might want to rewrite that.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I say it on stage when I do my stand-up act.
Marc:I think it's absolutely necessary that you're deeply terrified of the person you love.
Marc:Because I don't know quite how you're going to act properly if you're not.
Marc:I agree.
Marc:But even early on with Radiohead, your theatricality did not...
Marc:didn't rely on device you just have a certain intensity to it i mean you know you you're kind of you have to reckon with uh with your particular uh uh presence but it didn't it didn't require you know you didn't wear a leather jacket you didn't miss extraordinarily bad outfits well maybe that was the hook i hope not but how did you find your way you know on stage was it what did you was it initially discomfort
Guest:it was um i don't know i think it took a long time actually i mean when we when we because we signed to like ami and um you know we just said to them we haven't got a clue what we're doing i mean it's very nice that you like our songs and everything that you think we're going to be famous
Guest:but we haven't got a clue what we're doing.
Guest:We've just left college.
Guest:Um, give us some money for a van and, um, and maybe a little bit of money for a hotel so we don't have to sleep in the van.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, and leave us alone for like a year and a half.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we can figure this shit out.
Guest:Unfortunately, sort of a year into that, we get this, um, you know, we get this meeting with, um, a manager saying, um,
Guest:creeps a massive hit in um israel first and then in k-rock here yeah and in new york and you're you've got to go you know you've got to go so i'm still trying to figure this shit out you're a year into the van thing yeah and then suddenly i'm being you know i'm suddenly we're we're um flown over here and and and everyone's sort of expecting us to be rock stars and we'll be like
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Were you terrified?
Guest:Or were you sort of like... It was just on a roll.
Guest:You just don't know really.
Guest:You just show up.
Guest:Not thinking about it particularly.
Guest:Probably should have thought about it a bit more.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Well, you know.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:Anyway, I think I only personally felt like I started figuring it out.
Guest:Like...
Guest:maybe towards the end of the bends and part of that funnily enough was to sort of doing videos and things and getting into that and getting into the idea of putting oneself forward on that in that way and and being aware in a different way I don't know so you can watch yourself
Guest:Watch yourself and not be hiding behind the sofa.
Guest:Right, that takes a while.
Guest:It does, really.
Guest:It's a thing you have to learn.
Guest:Listening to your voice on tape for the first time and going, oh, shit.
Guest:So you literally only toured for a year before you really hit...
Guest:Yeah, it was a bit weird.
Guest:I mean, and it was kind of okay after that, we kind of managed it, and that's all very nice, thanks very much.
Guest:But we were still booked into these small gigs, and it was fun because, you know, people were turning up.
Guest:So it was pretty wicked, really.
Guest:I mean, it was just, we were still learning what the hell was going on, I think, at that time.
Marc:And did you feel immediately that the pressure was on that you'd done, you know, you'd done creep and they're like, well, now you got to make us 10 more of those.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that's, that was the first big, that was the first big battle we had because I mean, it's like our managers were as inexperienced as we were and they were sort of, they were having their arms twisted at the time.
Guest:So they were coming us to say it, and so we were in rehearsals writing stuff for a second record, and they were coming, like, saying, okay, where's the hit?
Guest:And we were like, no, you're not supposed to say that.
Marc:The manager was saying that?
Guest:Yeah, and because they were getting loads of pressure, and so it all got a little bit weird, and then everybody figured it out.
Guest:Like, hang on a minute.
Guest:You know, once we'd all sort of figured out this isn't...
Guest:We sat in a room going, if we really are going to carry on doing this, we're going to do it on our own terms.
Guest:And I threw my...
Guest:stamped on the floor a bit and, like, kicked people out and... Like who?
Guest:Like management or... Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Were those guys that you started with?
Guest:For a bit.
Guest:I was like, just get the fuck out for a while while we figure this out, you know.
Guest:Because basically, to me, it was... I mean, I think, you know, I was clutching at straws and my only experience really was art college.
Guest:And at art college, they're teaching you to follow your instincts and teaching you to...
Guest:rely on what you have on your work and everything else will once you've got your work everything else falls into place well hopefully so i was saying to you know everyone i mean we always like if the music's good if we if we make a good record all this stuff will just come whatever right you know the end reason we're in this situation right now is by accident
Guest:We made a tune that hit it on what we were trying to do.
Guest:So let's just carry on doing that.
Guest:But not like trying to write a hit.
Guest:Just carry on whatever that energy is we found.
Guest:Let's just work on that.
Guest:So we didn't really talk to anybody about anything until...
Guest:we were excited about the music, you know, so much of the time it's the other way around so much of the time, because at that time, especially, you know, you're involved in a huge corporate business.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:A lot of people, uh, want to drain money out of you.
Guest:well i think it just can it can it can just crumble your psyche because you you you're just part of this extraordinary machine yeah like nowadays i've only witnessed it recently in that form i think like going to you know over to uh uh studio city and and and to the sort of paramount lot and being shown some clip hi i'm the head of music and all i'm hiding and you're like
Guest:Oh, I remember this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like Capitol Records.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You forget, though, as an artist, don't you, that, like, originally, like, there's almost something beautifully infantile about, you know, being a creative person and investing your life in that because there's part of you that's sort of like, look what I made.
Marc:Yeah, you're a kid.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, this is, you know.
Marc:And then there's those assholes that are like, you know, we like this, but it's not like the other thing.
Guest:Yeah, we like this, but I think Bob Claremont really needs to change the drums out on this tune if you want it to be a hit.
Guest:And who are you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if you don't do what I say, then we're not going to put it out.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But you didn't buckle to that.
Guest:No.
Marc:Beautiful.
Marc:It was Get Fucked, Mate.
Marc:And the second album was The Ben's?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And that's a masterpiece, really.
Marc:Do you feel good about it?
Guest:Um, yeah, I don't know.
Guest:I haven't heard it in quite a while.
Marc:I know, and I don't mean to bring up the past.
Marc:I know, I'm by me.
Marc:If I could remember, I'd tell you.
Marc:But I mean, you remember making that record.
Guest:Yes, I do.
Guest:It was hard.
Guest:But then, you know, thus ensues the discovery that every record you make is hard, and if it isn't, you're in serious trouble.
Guest:Although, actually, this Atoms piece of record was not that hard.
Guest:It was quite fun.
Marc:It's a great record.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:And when you started to evolve, like, I mean, I guess we can skip through a lot of stuff because there are certain albums of yours that I listen to, you know, compulsively.
Marc:Like over and over again.
Marc:You know, not in an obsessive way, but it just seemed to work for me.
Marc:Like the one thing I noticed about, you know, certainly that like OK Computer and Kid A and some of the other stuff is that, you know,
Marc:there's a depth to your, there's something that you guys do, and I'll say you as well, where, you know, you can constantly listen to these songs, and then all of a sudden realize, like, how am I getting deeper into this?
Marc:You know, this is just a song.
Marc:How does it keep revealing itself, you know, with every listen?
Marc:You know, and that to me is a real sign of an amazing piece of art.
Marc:So the one message you got out of art school was just trust your instincts.
Marc:What were you studying in art school?
Guest:I studied art, well, I studied, they kind of made you study everything, but I ended up, I kind of wanted to paint, but I wasn't that good, I'm still not that good, and I still want to paint.
Guest:But you do it, right?
Guest:You did some of the album work, right?
Guest:I do, I do occasionally, but it's, I'm hampered by, like a lot of people I know, you're hampered by that thing where you first pick up the paintbrush, and you, I'm alright for about like five, ten minutes, and then I hate it so much.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:so it tends to be one of those things where me and stanley like stanley is is amazing because he's so painstainty i can't remember the word he uses um um he gets really you know he can work on something for days who's this um who the guy does we do our oh the artwork with yeah he does the artwork yeah um i went to art college with him um so anyway they kind of kicked me out painting yeah because i went awol for a term and then turned up and all i'd done was paintings of jesus
Guest:they were appalling as well what were they what was jesus doing there was one called the bullshit machine and that was just one of these the bullshit machine critique of the critiques yeah so i put these things up in the wall and like all hell broke loose and because you have these critiques yeah so your peers shoot you down what was jesus doing though i don't know it was like it was awful i mean even though i thought it was awful
Marc:The Bullshit Machine.
Marc:I was drunk most of that.
Guest:That could have been the name of a record.
Guest:I was drunk most of that.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:So you're living the life.
Guest:A life.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But then I got into video and computers, computers quite early on, and it was kind of fun, you know.
Guest:I just never...
Guest:art college to me was one of those things where i knew i wasn't really an artist particularly but the relief of of living and breathing this sort of creative thing and working with with other people and watching how they worked and watch and being taught to respect that as a thing um
Guest:you know, been exposed to so much creativity and to so much modern art and was amazing and, you know, completely changed my life because it made me confident about who I was, you know, and that was wicked, you know, where were we with this?
Marc:That's good, just, you know, what you studied in art school and that makes perfect sense, you know, to have an appreciation.
Guest:It's just everything, really.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:So, the evolution from...
Marc:you know what radiohead was known as initially and then you know when you sort of you know untethered yourself from from hooks or the necessity to have them and then i keep thinking maybe i should like rethink that maybe i should come up with a chorus because i do actually like songs with choruses
Guest:I don't want to put pressure on you.
Guest:I think you're doing fine.
Guest:There's a couple like, by accident, there's a couple of choruses, you know, but they usually happen by accident.
Marc:But on this record, there's a chorus.
Marc:There is a couple.
Guest:I remember distinctly one flying by the other day.
Marc:But there was some decision.
Marc:I mean, you kind of were a bit of a guitar band early on.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And Johnny is not on this record.
Marc:No.
Marc:And it's not a Radiohead record, and I understand.
Marc:But there obviously was some point where you were like, let's not do the guitar so much.
Yeah.
Guest:um with radiohead yes yeah um which was hard you know um it's hard for them it was hard for me too but it was sort of one of those things where again it was like do we really just carry on like this is this it i mean
Guest:Because, you know, just every time I picked up the guitar, nothing was happening.
Guest:And I wasn't listening to guitar music.
Guest:So, you know, so it wasn't like, to me, no choice.
Guest:And also, Johnny, in particular, is so incredible at picking up any machine that makes music.
Guest:and doing something with it yeah like instantly i mean it's insane like he did this piece i mean which is why i think he enjoys the the orchestral stuff because it's as much about whatever method he chooses and what instruments he chooses to put together and how they're tuned and whatever as anything else like he did this one of my favorite things he ever did was his quarter tone piano piece where he took one of um our stand-up pianos and he he rather than the normal scale everything just moves up incrementally in quarter tones
Guest:and he had it retuned for that yeah uh-huh and it sounds completely insane it sits in our studio and every now and again i sit and it you know to me it makes a wish but it makes no sense yeah it's impossible to make any and he wrote a whole piece around it um and uh at the moment you know we're talking about different scales and he wants to teach me loads of other scales non-western scales and like i'm so into it but i don't know where the hell to start and um
Guest:so i kind of thought the times like i've grown up with these guys and i know they can pick this this stuff up it's just going to take a bit of i need to pick it up as well you know we're all too but to me like the whole thing is part of creativity sometimes is when you you are wildly out of your depth oh yeah it's good because there's a there's a vulnerability to that in and of itself to like i don't know
Guest:yeah i've got no idea what i'm doing yeah we're gonna do we're gonna do and um yeah we're gonna do a string section on this and oh yeah okay and we're gonna um yeah this one yeah i mean it was just yeah the funny thing is you know kid a in the end to me i think when people listen to it now is you you can kind of see why that they're not so too that far apart okay computer and kid a to me right right i mean it was just that we're choosing to use certain instruments that lots of people associated with things that were
Guest:I don't know, unworthy or whatever, you know, part of the electrical, electric world.
Guest:Oh, oh, really?
Guest:Electronic world.
Guest:So there was some condescension, uh, there from, uh... No, it was just, uh, oh, yeah, he's listening, oh, Tom Yorick's discovered at A4X10, whoopee-doo.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:You know, it's like, hmm, I don't think Aphex Twin was too chuffed about that either, to be honest, the few times I've talked to him.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:I talked to Thomas Dolby.
Guest:Oh, right, yeah.
Guest:I walked into him.
Guest:I walked in, like, he was at my school, right?
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:At art school?
Guest:No, at my school.
Guest:We went to the same school.
Guest:And when you were kids?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I walked into, like, the main music room at school in my first year, wet behind the ears, 11 years old.
Guest:And there's this weird-looking guy with, like, and I mean, I knew what these things were.
Guest:He had a Moog synthesizer.
Guest:He had a drum machine.
Guest:He had all this shit laid out.
Guest:And I was like, wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was Thomas.
Guest:And he was the first famous musician to come out of the school.
Guest:Was he visiting?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:He was a kid at school there.
Guest:And he was a bit older than me.
Guest:He was like in the fifth year when I was in the first year or something.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, the reason I brought him up was that at the time he wanted to make the sounds he wanted to make, there was no machinery that would make it.
Marc:So he had to figure out, and it sounds like Johnny does the same thing, he had to figure out how to make sounds that he wanted to make with the technology that was available.
Marc:And I think he made his first drum machine out of a light switcher.
Guest:That's probably true.
Guest:I mean he was there's a lot of that in my school because that you know there's the school I went to what school Abingdon school.
Guest:Yeah boys.
Guest:Is it prep school?
Marc:Private school with no girls.
Marc:No girls.
Marc:So you got to put that sexual frustration into something.
Guest:I hit puberty at 11.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And walked into a bloody boys school.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:It made you who you are man.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Let's not pursue that, shall we?
Guest:That particular element of it.
Guest:There's a lot of like scientists, kids of scientists and so on that go to that school.
Guest:And the expectation was to go into that?
Guest:Mathematics, putting things together?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I mean, there were just kids of smart parents.
Guest:So it was quite, there was lots of sort of
Guest:Smart kids, I guess.
Guest:And Johnny is smart in a very particular way, you know, he always was.
Guest:He went there too?
Guest:What's his father do?
Guest:We all went there.
Guest:His father wasn't around, but he was, they were like RAF kids, him and his brother.
Guest:And we all went to the same school together.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And so is everybody cool with this?
Yeah.
Guest:well the atoms thing yeah um i think so we took a year this was supposed to be a year off anyway yeah um from uh we just declared a year off year off because i think it was kind of good for our heads really to actually officially say nothing really happening yeah tired well i think i just you get to that thing where like you get together because you don't know what else to do right and that's not good you should get together because you want to get together because you got a good idea right you know
Marc:Yeah, and when I saw you, I noticed that John, he spent a lot of time on the ground.
Guest:Yeah, he always does that, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he's moving some stuff around.
Guest:He's got some things going.
Guest:Oh, man, that's a simple setup.
Guest:You should see what he has in the studio.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:That is nothing.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, yeah, because going back to the kid, eh?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we started talking about doing it more electronically and stuff.
Guest:So Colin and Johnny then went off and spent thousands of pounds on modular synthesis, you know, and basically learned how to use it in a week, the whole, all of it.
Guest:So they're wizards.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Colin taught himself to use MPC drum machines and samplers, and they just did it, man.
Guest:They just sat there and did it.
Guest:And Johnny taught himself to use Max MSP, which is this super high-level, like, sound processing tool.
Guest:They just... They can do that.
Marc:And when you play... When you sing to this stuff, when you move away from the guitars, like, you know...
Marc:You know, when people sort of condescend, it's sort of like, oh, great, electronic music.
Marc:But you feel you can integrate your humanity into that.
Guest:Yeah, to me, it's not even an issue anymore.
Guest:I mean, if you look where music is now, at least not what's happening in the mainstream, but everywhere else, it's just ceased to even be an issue that you're mixing these things up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Do you miss the guitar?
Guest:Yeah, I played it last night.
Guest:But, you know, it's useful.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Do you write on the guitar?
Guest:Sometimes, not much, not at the moment.
Marc:I write a lot on piano at the moment.
Marc:And when I listen to the Adams for Peace record, I sort of wondered, do these things start as just a groove, and then you kind of experiment to find that groove, or the lyrics there before, or do you sometimes evolve lyrics with the music?
Guest:this was all born out of like the idea of things evolving from the grooves right and and then we jam a lot I mean
Marc:not today but um i can see that it's ready to go it's a little quiet in there at the moment that's amazing to walk through that place that you're in there i don't know if people obviously people can't see us but you know we're in a mansion on laurel canyon in in the rundown mansion yeah yeah rundown mansion and it's just a it's like it's like exile on main street man yeah you know well the girls are coming shortly you know we just thought we needed a few hours off
Marc:yeah yeah uh-huh yeah sure sure yeah all the drugs are coming you got to stay clean for a bit during the day otherwise things get better because someone's got to wake up bobby keys so he can play sax yeah yeah uh but okay so it is groove generated you know you know the sound completely and in the voice and then
Guest:you know and the riffs were coming basically out of that um guitar piano bass synth and so a lot of it we took away and wrote to it afterwards but it was it was born out of the fact that just sort of joy of just um you know just coming up with the grooves and they yeah and they said like they weren't like like
Guest:They weren't from cold.
Guest:We'd start with some sort of mechanical programmed thing that I had.
Guest:Right.
Guest:To set us off.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which forces these guys to play in a certain way.
Guest:So you come like the meter or where the one falls or where the bass line starts.
Guest:It's not where you would intuitively normally put it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which is good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it sets you off in a new place.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That was the whole thing.
Guest:The whole thing for this band is that for me is like...
Guest:Because they work very quickly and they bring all this crazy shit together really fast.
Guest:It's just a different thing and it's very much just about grooves in the end.
Marc:And how did you and Flea come together for this?
Guest:Well, I mean, it was a weird one because it was just... I'd seen them a few times backstage at Chili Peppers gigs and I kind of knew them.
Guest:And then Nigel and I went and saw them in London and John and Flea were going on about the Eraser.
Guest:your album yeah yeah the first one I did on my own and I was quite surprised because they'd listened to it a lot and they were asking how did you put it together and they were really into it uh-huh okay yeah and then a few months later when I was thinking and that was all you right that was me and Nigel yeah and Nigel's been with you since Johnny wrote a few um on the first tune he wrote the piano riff with me and Nigel's been with you from the beginning
Guest:um since the bands well he was the engineer on the bands okay and then we decided um enough of adults we can do ourselves anyway um um and then um yeah he uh where was yeah with the flea thing and then it was i had this niggling worm in my head where like i want to try and make the eraser thing
Guest:real because i'd done it sort of with nigel using mostly stuff written in a laptop yeah um with a bit of bass and that was it yeah but it was looking at it thinking hang on the bass is like um the lead instrument on this and i played bass and the funny thing is like a lot of time when i was playing the bass i was thinking of of flea because i'm obviously i like i love watching him play but
Guest:And there's not many bass players I know that play like lead bass.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I asked him if he was up for doing it and asked Joey in the same day and they both said yes, like a couple of hours later.
Guest:And it was kind of nice because it went from being something that was just sort of like a silly pipe dream to, ooh, which is really cool.
Guest:And had Joey and Flea worked together?
Guest:Oh, they knew each other.
Guest:I mean, because, yeah.
Guest:Joey's like a guy, right?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, he's everywhere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, but yeah, I mean, I seen, I guess.
Guest:And he played with R.E.M.
Guest:as well?
Guest:That's how I first properly met him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we became friends.
Guest:We've hung out for years on and off whenever I'm around.
Guest:Because he plays, he still plays with Beck sometimes.
Guest:And, you know, Nigel's produced Beck.
Guest:And we also just hang out quite a lot.
Marc:and do you find that uh you know given that you know you were is there any sort of historical element in your head where you get the opportunity to play with guys that played with bands that you respected that it's like you know kind of wow this is cool but that's well i mean yeah it sometimes it kind of spins me out a bit you know but it's it's actually really lovely because you know it's like it's a different thing
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, and I've been playing with the same guys since I was 16.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Other than this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it was a bit of a mind-blowing thing when you first did it, really.
Guest:And it was good because it sort of felt like, you know, years of sort of only being in that environment and just thinking, okay, well...
Marc:it just opens you up to other ideas in a way you kind of relax a bit yeah thank god for that you know right was it intimidating at all i mean to play with flea in any way or are you have enough are you grounded enough as a musician and performer that because like you know flea is sort of a he's a menacing little genius that guy in my mind was there a part of you that's sort of like i gotta keep up with flea here
Guest:Yeah, not really.
Guest:No, that's good.
Guest:He's always been like really sweet.
Guest:He comes to it with his own, you know, like he gets it, you know.
Marc:Like we all do, really.
Marc:Is there the excitement of discovery?
Marc:Do you guys feel it when you're all, like I imagine when you're doing, you know, when you're creating from grooves only, that there has to be that moment where you're all going and you look at each other and like...
Guest:yeah this is it no it's funny yeah well i what one of the one of the things i really have enjoyed about it is like it's funny like when you're in a space like we are today and you're working through shit and you're in you're into it and you think oh that's that's cool and then when we started like him when we did our first show at the echoplex um just this crazy little warm-up thing and i've been to that place it was that recently that was a while ago three years ago maybe it's a little rock club
Guest:yeah yeah little yeah and um they the footage of it back it was insane man it was insane it was one thing it just was there's sort of this crazy yeah i don't know it just had lots of energy to it yeah so
Guest:that got us really excited yeah you know there's one thing to be excited in the room and the other thing to actually watch it back and it's even more it's better than that yeah it's a nice feeling oh that's that's it's a great feeling yeah these are red wings mm-hmm love them got the best right yeah love them so when you travel you bring your wife and kids or what
Guest:um they're coming tomorrow yeah i mean you know the kids are at school so they can't how old are they um my son is 12 and my daughter's eight is that a do you love it yeah it's really cool i mean yeah it's you know noah's 12 years old man i mean he's going through the changes oh really yeah and it's lovely to watch yeah super cool voice almost yeah
Guest:Like everything skateboarding and surfing.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Does he have any interest in the guitars or anything?
Guest:He's a really great drummer.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That must be thrilling.
Guest:It is wicked, yeah.
Guest:Finally got him like a real kit recently.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:And he's insane to watch.
Guest:He comes back and he's been taught all these jazz tricks already.
Guest:It's a bit weird.
Guest:Are you a jazz fan?
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Yeah, Mingus is my man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Although when I'm here, I listen to Duke Ellington a lot.
Guest:Yeah, big band.
Guest:It really works.
Guest:You got to swing, man.
Guest:You got to swing.
Marc:When I was listening to music, some of my first impressions, even though it's electronic, that there was definitely...
Marc:something primitive about rhythms that like, you know, for some reason, the first time I listened to it, I kept thinking about Senegalese music and, and I kept thinking about like Baba Mal's early stuff for Baba Mal, Munster's sec.
Marc:It's a, it's an album that I have and I don't know a lot about him because I think he, he went, got more pop oriented, but then I started sort of tripping out on, you know, Brian, you know, John Hassel and guys who kind of used electronics early on, but also there was a, a primitive thread through there.
Guest:I think, because we make the choice... It's interesting, like, when we're setting up, we're working on shit at the moment, and we try mixing electronic sounds in with things.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:You know, within the percussion and the drums, just triggering sound.
Guest:And, uh...
Guest:It's more exciting when you're literally hitting shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you can hear it in the room.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's really cool.
Guest:And we're kind of staying with that because it fits together, you know.
Guest:And I listen to a lot of sort of, I mean, I can't tell you the names of it.
Guest:I randomly download this sort of thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I am into that.
Guest:One of the things when I first started doing it, I was fascinated by the idea that you write a rhythm on a machine.
Guest:Then someone can interpret that and make it in real space.
Marc:On an organic instrument.
Guest:Yeah, and also fascinated by the sort of rhythms I was tending to program.
Guest:Once you did that, once we started doing it, once you did that, you realized...
Guest:These are kind of like quite like, you know,
Guest:like African or something primitive primitive well yeah primitive is a better word like that's mad that sort of concept of you know just multiple rhythms and just and they ebb and flow because they're being played by humans you know and la la la it's a nice thing I find it really fascinating well that's sort of the whole I guess not to trivialize it in any way but to you know to sort of like if there is any power to a drum circle
Guest:Oh, no, I love all that stuff.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I mean, it's very, you know, I don't want to be too punny or trite, but, you know, it's very hands-on, man.
Guest:Yeah, it's the same thing as, you know, within dance music.
Guest:Like getting people on alpha waves, you know, trance and, you know, la, la, la.
Guest:You like that stuff.
Guest:I'm not really.
Guest:It's a bit of shit, but, you know, but I do like electronic music and I do like electronic dance music and the good stuff to me is the stuff where, you know, you get locked into a state of mind as you listen to it, you know, and I think that's kind of the point.
Guest:Exactly the same to me as like listening to really good can, you know, lots of stuff on Tego, Mago, for example.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's like,
Guest:You know, it's nothing... There's nothing particular... But you can pin your hand... Pin your finger on and say, like, okay, that's what it is that I like.
Guest:It's just...
Guest:it's in a particular it takes you into a headspace and i think we started first like the radio head first because we listened to can shit loads when we did kid a and it was that idea that there's nothing particular that you can put your finger on about this other than whatever it is whatever that was it just went past that's it
Marc:And also you started to sing from that place.
Guest:Yeah, as well.
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:So everything, it was like, you know, it's whatever, you know, you get together and you play and something happens and you can't put your finger on it, but it's whatever it is, it happens between the musicians and you're lucky that the tape was going at the time.
Guest:That's the point of making records now, you know, and it's different when you're working on a laptop and it's a little bit less like that.
Guest:But the same with this.
Guest:We got together at the end and we were all buzzing on what was happening between us and the band.
Guest:So we thought, fuck it, we're just going to the studio for three days and we'll just play.
Guest:Almost like a weird sort of celebration.
Guest:And Nigel's at the controls and you just get these waves of shit.
Guest:Shit just kicks off.
Guest:Maybe it's only like eight bars or whatever.
Guest:But when it does, it's like...
Guest:there's no rational explanation why that should be better than that bit.
Guest:And I would always like go back and go, yeah, but what about that bit just before about one that bit about afterwards?
Guest:And I'd be like, okay, let's listen to them.
Guest:And you listen, you go, yeah, he's right.
Guest:It was like in theory, all the bits are there, but they don't, whatever it is, the extra wave, whatever happened, whatever it is, that's it.
Guest:That's the magic.
Guest:It's probably the same with a drum circle.
Guest:You're stoned enough.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I think it's great, and the stuff's going well here, right?
Marc:And I appreciate you spending the time to talk to me.
Guest:Oh, yeah, no, enjoy it.
Guest:Nice to meet you, mate.
Guest:Nice to meet you.
Thank you.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:I had a lovely chat.
Marc:I connected with the guy, and I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:Please go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Get some merch.
Marc:Check the episode guide.
Marc:Leave a comment.
Marc:Get the lips and deals.
Marc:Start your own podcast.
Marc:Get the first 100 WTFs on DVD.
Marc:There's a number of things you can go there.
Marc:Check my schedule.
Marc:I'm going to be in Montreal this week.
Marc:I'll be doing a live WTF there, a solo show there, and a bunch of little shows Friday and Saturday.
Marc:You can go to the Just for Laughs website and check out how to get tickets for that stuff.
Marc:What else?
Marc:Oh, between me and you, there's going to be big news tomorrow.
Marc:If you're in the Marin world, there's big news tomorrow.
Marc:I'll leave it at that.
Marc:Right now, I'm that weird mixture of too much bad food, too little sleep, and a lot of coffee.
Marc:So I have to go sit down in another room outside of the garage.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:Boomer lives!
Boomer lives!
you