Interview with Mick Quinn (Supergrass) Nov 7th 2005, 'Melkweg' Amsterdam

This transcript has been published on www.strangeones.com in 2006.

Having just arrived and settled in our hotel room, my mobile went off: Mick, asking wether it was possible to come to 'The Melkweg' to do the interview now, instead of after the soundcheck. Twenty minutes later I had found my way to the dressing-room,got my borrowed old taperecorder running and blasted off with the interview...

Welcome to Holland.
Thank you

How was your trip to Amsterdam?
Well, I don't know. We've done it a lot of times, so we put on a DVD, drank a couple of bottles of red wine and I just remember waking up in the bottom of a ship and you feel like you're about to die, like you normally do. And that's when I went back to sleep and then I woke up and we were there. So pretty standard.

When did you leave England?
Ah, we set off at about 11 'o Clock last night. Yeah, tucked my daughter up in bed, went down the pub, had a few pints and then on the bus and then wake up here. Yeah.

This is another tour. Is it always difficult to have a first gig while you're on tour?
Well this one in particular, as Danny is not here on this tour. So we've got a stand-in drummer. And also Rob isn't on this tour, so we've got a stand-in keyboard player. So it's me and Gaz, carrying the flag of 'Supergrass' today, so it's gonna be interesting.

Any particular reason Danny and Rob are absent?
Well Bob has got some sort of personal stuff that he needed to sort out, so we sat down and talked about it and he's just gonna be missing for this tour. And Danny's got his baby on the way, so he wanted to be there for that, you know. So that's how it's worked out. We spent a bit of time rehearsing with our stand-ins. We've got Gaz' younger brother playing keyboards with us, which is quite interesting. Keeping it in the family! And we've got Loz Colburn on drums. He used to play for 'Ride' and me and Gaz played with him years ago and when we wanted a stand-in drummer, you can't exactly replace Danny, 'cause he's irreplaceable, but we thought it's kind of, you want to go with someone local, we don't want in some session guy that we've never met before and didn't have any affinity with, so we sort of looked locally. And ahh, he's got a different style, but it's interesting. And the set we're doing tonight is kind of loosely based on the acoustic tour we did in August. So it's not a classic 'Supergrass' gig in the way that it's kind of full of Rock and Roll, which I don't think we can compete with or to do properly without Danny, so it's kind of more in an acoustic vein and it works really well, you know. It lands itself a lot better to having a different drummer.

It's some sort of improvised setlist?
It's not improvised you know, as the set is really kinda based on the acoustic tour and we sat down and rehearsed that for three weeks, to get that acoustic tour into the shape it is. So the set's quite well thought out in the way that it works. We've got Satin Singh playing percussion on this tour as well, so I think it would be improvised in the way that, you know. We've got to make allowances for a different drummer. Charley's kinda got his own style on the keyboards as well. Which is different to Bob's, who's got a more strident and stuff and a bit more honky tonk and that works for some songs better than maybe Bobs' in a way, but you kinda let that in other ways but it's got a different kind of shape to it but I don't think it's kind of improvised. It's gonna be a good show.

And is the drummer the same one who replaced Danny in 1999?
No, we used Vinnie, Vincenzo Lamy to give him his full title and we kind of thought using Vinnie, but felt, for this tour in particular, Vinny is more a kind of a straight session drummer and we felt like we had to kind of coach him to speed up and slow down and put life into it, you know, which is kind of a standard thing with session musicians, but we felt just that Loz has got more of a natural feel for it. He'll put in fills you haven't asked him to put in and you open up and he puts in his personality and that's that more of what we're after.

You've just released your fifth album. Was it difficult to make a new one?
I don't know, you know. I mean, they're always quite separate from each other. Obviously we're the same people, so we approach some things in the same way, but we try not actually think about on how we went about the last time, we just try and change the process a bit, to keep it more interesting. We kind of done the 'Best Of', 'Supergrass is 10' in the mean time, so we had a lot of time to think of how we would progress from 'Life On Other Planets' to this record. And we did make that decision early on that we felt strong enough to go back and produce it ourselves, without using a producer. We didn't want to manipulate the sound in a way he had before with a producer and actually concentrate on the actual sounds and processing them and changing them. We kind of wanted to get closer to were we where on our demos, when we just played as a band in a room, and just try and make it sound more natural and sort of unforced. There's so many strands to make a record and we came to the decision that we didn't want to work in a proper studio persé, but we wanted to just buy studio equipment and set it up in a room and this gives you a whole range of sounds which are impossible to get in a studio. you kind of get this DIY effect. It's like a glorified demo, you know. When we used to make demos we'd put the bass amp in the toilet, put tea towels over the drumkit and stuff. And we wanted to do that, you know. We wanted not being too worried on making it technically sound brilliant, but interesting and unique. And that was fairly easy to do, you know. For a natural effect is involved as well. We got hold of Pom who did the engineering for it and he basically refurbishes studio equipment and he was telling us most of the residential studios in England have been closing down over the last five years, due to the advent of technology and people doing it in their own bedroom. So all these studio's are closing down and selling their equipment. So we are picking up all this equipment dirt cheap and just having it for ourselves and this just allows us to buy a nice radar system and to record the album very cheaply and we sort of borrowed Chris Difford's mixing desk from 'Heliocentric', which he just lend to us and we all have these connections to being able to have the gear cheap. So we just thought why don't we just get all the equipment together, find somewhere to set it up and just record in a really homemade environment. And there's no time constraints on that and you're not paying for studio fees, so you can take your time over it and being very relaxed and this worked brilliantly.

Is this a new approach you're gonna do with next albums as well?
Well, I don't know. You wanna change the process every time. I think if we try and go in and repeat exactly how we've done it before, we just end up with a similar record and that kind of creative death for us, you know. You want to keep yourself on your toes. And also I think in terms of the vibe to 'Road To Rouen', it's quite melancholic and quite reflective of some of the kind of personal upheavals we've had over the last couple of years, with Gaz' mom and lots ands lots of aspects to that. I think we've kind of moved on to that now, you, we want to explore something now, which I can't exactly put my finger on the way we're going musically. It's not were we were on 'Road To Rouen', we definitely, even if we're playing all of them live now, which is it's own kind of thing, I think. We're kind of starting to formulate an idea of where we're gonna go after that and it's not gonna be the same. When we've gone down and sat down and talked about it, that kind of dictates about how we're gonna go about it, wether we're gonna set up a new studio, or not. I can't really see us... I could see us use the same gear again, maybe with extra additions and stuff, but probably not in France again, because we've kind of, we've had half of it done in 'Life On Other Planets'. We've spent a lot of time writing in France and we spent all the time recording this time in France, so we move away from France and try a new envoronment, you know. But musically, it's gonna be more interesting.

Road To Rouen is on the whole a bit more eased down, a bit more than previous records. Is it a sign of the times? Are you all getting older?
I don't think it has to do with age. As I just said, it's a refelection. You know, we've had some really hard times. And also a reflection on the release of 'Supergrass Is 10', which contained all the singles. And at the back of that we kind of neglected all the other areas of Supergrass. If you look on our other records. Like 'I Should Coco' has got 'Sofa Of My Lethargy' on it. When you do release a 'Greatest Hits', you push all the hits in people's faces and that's what they perceive is the band. And that is a kind of an atomagh (??) to us, 'cause we wanna be heard like a three dimensional band and we don't wanna be known as the band who recorded 'Alright' or 'Pumping On Your Stereo', you know. However sort of arrogant that is. You like to make more out of it, so on this record we kind of resisted the temptation to go for the obvious tracks. There's touches of them, like I think 'Coffee In The Pot' is the closest we came to that. But it was a decision not to make that into a full song, put vocals on it and handclaps and use the usual glam-tricks to make it a big single. But just have it as a strange interlude within the record.And the overall feel of the record you know, we were quite. Obviously when we were recording it we were not kind of moping around or depresssed or anything, but we wanted to express the melancholia and the hard times we've had over the last couple of years. Gaz's mother's death affected him very heavy and Bob as well. Danny with all the tabloid stuff going on at the same time, created it's own kind of strangeness and frictions and stuff. I've been splitting up with my longtime partner for ten years over the last two years and this all kind of affected our overall mood. And we wanted to express this within the songs. And it felt just out of place to have blown up, happy songs over the top of that, as we didn't feel like it most of the time. But obviously some mornings we wake up and feel in a stupid mood and we wanna kind of do stuff. But we didn't want to have that represented on this record. It just didn't feel right to do that. So that's why. But next record who knows, you know! We've probably cheered up a bit.

How does the band write songs?
It depend on what song it is. Something like 'Coffee In The Pot' was written when we were trying to find the string sounds for 'Roxy'. We were working on the keyboard and Gazz hampered on this weird sample on his keyboard and we all thought 'Ah, that sounds amazing'. We just started playing and it got written in about twenty minutes. We just went with it for four hours and recorded the whole thing perfectly and just had that in the can and we went back to work on the string sample for 'Roxy'. And it was just this little gap of escape and it all got written just like that. But a song like 'Roxy', I think Gaz had that kicking around for almost two and a half years and he had this first section and he has written all the lyrics. And we realised this is just one set of chords and it used to go somewhere so we've played it around and then just cooked up a chorus for it . It had no melody for three quarters of the record and then eventually we'd get to the point: 'well you know, you have to sing this bit and you just play around and try and work out the melody for it and after about two days you come up with a really strong melody. And that about the two ends of the spectrum in terms of songwriting. It's always a mistake to think that Gaz writes the songs as Danny in particular is very good with chords and always comes up with really amazing chord structures. And somebody will write some good chords and somebody else will chuck a very good melody out of them. It's kind of a left field you know. Because I think if you're involved in your chord changes it makes it more difficult difficult for you to write a melody for it. But when somebody else is hearing them for the very first time, he might get instantly inspired and says 'Right, this is a melody that should be on that''. Bob comes up with very good chord changes as weel. He tends to be kind less upfront with it. More quiet. And for myself, I tend to come up with songs at the last minute. In fact I didn't on this record. I missed out. The closest thing I came on this was 'Sad Girl'. I worked on all the melodies on that. But on various songs you chuck different bits on and we always, always, always leave the lyrics to the last minute. And that's the hardest bit. To get actually try and get the words fit around as you've written the melodies with a specific vow sounds and then you try and breath meaning into the song. Which I think we did better on this album, than we've had before. So it's quite complex.

Who writes the lyrics?
Well, on this record it's mainly me and Gaz. We've spent a lot of time sitting around trying to get the lyrics written. It's an artform in itself. You kind of wanted to express the melancholy that we've been feeling, but not in a sort of self indulgent way. You don't wanna say 'I just wanna die' and it's all grimm. You just wanna sort of make it universal. The main thing is, I can actuially sit down and listen to the record and not getting solace out of it and it make me feel better. It's almost like Blues you know. You sing about hard times and it makes you feel better. That's kind of what we wanted to get over on this record. We spent probably about two months to write the lyrics and a lot of the inspiration was from just atmospheres and films we'd seen and books we'd read. You supposed to be totally about yourself or whatever. You're trying to conger up things that you've absorbed and things that you've seen around. It's quite a strange process.

And musical inspiration. What kind of music were you listening to, while writing and recording this album?
Ellioth Smith was quite an inspiration for this record. He commited suicide the year before. We knew he was quite a 'Supergrass' fan actually, which was quite strange. We've never spoken to him. We never met him. And I think Danny brought a copy of 'X/O', which is a really amazing record, that we'd never listened or heard carefully before and we came to listen to that a lot and that was very inspiring. Just the complexity. It reminded me a lot of 'in It for The Money' in strange ways. It's got the kind of very dark, very depressed lyrics, but very out music, you know. Very uplifting, although he's been doing it with very dark manners. But there's a whole lot of slew of other influences, I think. Gaz has been listening a lot to a musician called Michael Chapman, who used to play in 'Soft Machine' I think. And he released a solo album, somewhere in the early seventies or late sixties, with Mick Ronsson playing. 'Fully Qualified Survivor' [1970, LHD]. And that was a brilliant record! It was kind of the bridge before 'The Man Who Sold The World' by David Bowie. There is a very strange quality to it. It's got acoustic guitars, but with a really dirty sort of Rock band under it. A kind of acoustic Rock thing, which really interested us as it's got some very dark vibe. Very organic, sort of creepy. And we wanted to try and get some of that into the record. And what else did we listen to .. . 'The Tubes' with 'White Punks On Dope' and various things you've come along and you just think you might go for a bit of that. Nothing sort of classic. 'Pink Floyd' obviously is a reference point for us, as we've listened a lot to them, but I think that's something we used to listen to when we were about 18, 19. We don't really listen to it that much anymore. But because we used to get so stoned to it when we were younger, it became part to us in a weird kind of way. But at the same time I noticed that a lot of the reviews talked about 'Sad Girl' being very Beatles. And it really wasn't our intention at all! I was listeing to a lot of 'Bonzo Dog Doo Da Band', who do a lot of Beatles rip-offs. So it's kind of filtered through that. But it kind of surprised me when somebody came and said "Ah, it's The Beatles being ripped off again"! No, that wasn't our intention at all! It's just a coïncidence. So weird.

Don't you ever get tired, always being compared to 'The Beatles' or so?
Well, you couldn't get tired of being compared to that one, ofcourse! The Beatles have done quite some good stuff. I don't know. You can't really get tired of what people write in reviews, because it's their opinion. It's more difficult when reviews try to pigeon-hole you as people. It's strange. People take it how they want to. It's not really some thing you can take on board. I can only try to record records as un-selfconsciously as possible. I don't try and think about where influences are coming from or feel the influences are taking over the song, when they're just too apparent enough to just ripp somebody of holy. I worry on things like that. But beyond that you're just gonna express yourself and make music you enjoy making. And you get something out of that, so I can't really get tired of what people say about music. It's up to them. It's what amuses you.

You recorded RtR in France and then somebody else mixed it. Did you just hand over the tape and say 'make something out of it'?
We tried to yeah! That was the intention! We spoke to Pom, the engineer, with whom we've had a very close relationship with on this record. He sort of guided us through. Well, he didn't guided us through. But he was very every morning and kept us going. And we got in a conversation with him. I think we're always under some kind of pressure from the record company to get it mixed by some mixer so that we have huge commercial succes. And we usually sort of give in to them and then end up coming back with mixes that we will argue about and no one's happy with them and some people are happy with some parts, which goes back and forth. So this time we sort of said we were gonna pre-empty with them, grab a mixer that we want to use and you can fuck off, as that's what we're gonna do! So Pom suggested using Michael Ilbert. We spoke a lot about it with Pom. We like the sound of the records that were coming out of Sweden and Scandinavia and the whole 'production School' coming out of there. And this was from listening to stuff like Ron Sexsmith' 'Cobble stone Runway', which was recorded and mixed by a Swedish engineer. And also, strangely enough, things like 'The Cardigans'. I'm not a huge 'Cardigans'-fan, but i'm very big fan of their production-values, which is straight pop in a very interesting way. So we were kind of shopping around and he suggested Michael Ilbert. And at the beginning we were thinking of handing the tapes over and say 'Go on with it'. But as usual, being control freaks, we spoke on the phone to him, saying 'Can you please turn this bit up' and 'Do this on the other. But he was very accomodating and very relaxed about it. And this was quite strange, as we never met him face to face. We did this all over the phone, but at the end we felt like we really knew each other. It worked out quite well.

New single 'Low C' is out now. What's with 'Weeki Watchee'?
Who knows! We came round to do the video for the single and we had a lot more hands on control with the previous single, which was a bit of a fiasco actually. When we did the 'St Petersburg'-single, we actually wanted to fly over to St Petersburg and record the video wandering around in St Petersburg, but it kind of all fell through. So at the last minute we came up with the 'white room'-idea. It was a bit of a gamble to make a video like that, but it felt right for us, because we basically laid down what we wanted to do with that video. But I think the record company saw it as a not very interesting video and a bit of a failure, which I sort of disagree with. I don't think they've got the imagination to see that the next video could be different. They got a bit nervous and got Gath Jennings in to do this amazing, wacky 'Alright' video that everybody's gonna love. And we sat down with Garth Jennings and said: Ít's no point doing an 'Alright' video, as it's just going to be repeating ourselves. We're gonna look really stupid and it's not gonna work with this song. And he agreed and came up with this idea of working with the mermaids. Which he kind of pitched to the record company as 'It's gonna be quite wacky. The band is gonna be swimming around with mermaids. It's all gonna be amazing and Technicoloured etc'. And the record company said 'Good, good!! Big hit on hand'! And we just sat there and said that we were just gonna make some very weird video. We've seen a couple of Roman Copolla-videos, that were shot as documentaries and it's a lot more interesting. And the band are not in the front of the video. They're just part of the video and it's just a small element to it. And he just came back with this really strange video, which we all on the very first view were saying yeah, this is perfect. This is very interesting. Which is rare we all say at first view. And it IS a very strange video. People who've seen it, say it reflects the lyrics of the song and it represents the song as opposed to being a marketing tool. It's actually an artistic thing to do with the song. '. It was all Garth Jennings' baby and I think he did a really good job with it. It was left in and he came back and I watched it the very first time and said 'Yeah! That's brilliant'!

What was the fun part making that video?
Come on! We've had three days in Florida swimming round in this massive fresh water pool. Which is totally relaxed, very easy!

Was it hard to do the swimming bits?
Yeah, it was! I think Bob came out of it the worst. He just couldn't handle holding his breath that long. And obviously Danny, being Danny, was swimming like 50ft down and just waving and being very normal and stuff. But it was. It was quite easy for some of us, but not for all of us.

Now some questions from the early days on towards now. Did you ever expect that the demo you've recorded in 1994 would turn into a full album on a major label within 11 months.
No. No Way! When we started the band, we were playing in the King & Queen and stuff. Even when we recorded the record we didn't think this was gonna end up high in the charts and we were gonna be big contenders on the scene in England. I still find that difficult to come to terms with, you know, that you get mentioned in the same breath as 'Pulp' or, at that time, 'Pulp' or 'Blur' or anything, f***ing hell you know! We actually did something right, you know! So yeah, No! A big shocker! But it's good you know, 'cause we came to terms with it, well, up to a level. We made a record that people liked on our own terms and recorded it how we wanted to record it, so that's the way it's gonna go in the future. If you do it, how you wanna do it, then peiople are gonna like it. If you start feeling that you have to repeat something, or just cash in on the succes you've got before, then it might get into a formula and then you're f***ed, you know! It's not gonna work. so yeah, it was shocking!

But you came out quite alright.
Yeah, I think, we kind of kept our heads, you know. The key earlier on was Steven Spielberg, you know, we could have go on with the Steven Spielberg thing and it would have made us a lot of money. But, I think, would have really affected us as people, which could have been the end of our band, really. It would have been someone else's band after that, definitely!

Anything you did in the last 11 years you do regret, or simply don't regret at all?
I don't know, there's a few parts on records that I think you could have tried harder on that or some of the lyrics or, I don't know. There are parts of some songs that if you'd just taken this section out, it would have made song so much better or efficient. And maybe some things in terms of the videos or marketing we've done, or things that we've said in interviews. You know, I think it's not really how I felt at the time, or how I expressed that. It just ends up confusing people. It dilutes your message or what you're trying to do. But we aren't professionals. We've made mistakes and I think you just learn by them, but I'm fairly happy with the records we've made. It gets harder sometimes to push yourself, do something different and not repeat yourself. But that's the challenge we kinda like, you know. It's just been good for ten years.

Do you regret ever have written, played or recorded 'Alright'? Because on the previous album-tour, you sort of refused to play this song.
I don't really regret that song in the slightest. I think, when we wrote it, we really enjoyed writing it, but what hampers it, is the band is connected with it. It's 'The Supergrass Britpop Anthem' and you champion it, it feels like we using it to push ourselves, it feels like an advert sometimes. It just doesn't sit with our ethos of doing something different. We should start playing it at some point in the future, but it's difficult, because you think we might be using this to reinvigorate ourselves, the sales. And I kind of understand the point of view people coming to a gig and wanting to hear it. You kind of letting them down not playing it. If I were to see The Beatles and they didn't play 'Taxman' or something, I think you'd be really pissed off. Hopefully we can find a way of playing it in the future. That would be interesting. For me it's similar to 'Mansize Rooster'. When we play it now, it does feel kind of very dated. It feels like some band that we were years and years ago. But who knows we might find a way to re-arrange it and play it in a different kind of way and that can be more interesting and kind of updated. And the other bit is that people say it's about being young and stuff, but we wrote that song looking back at that time. I was in my mid twenties when we wrote that song and Gaz was 18 or so. But we're always thinking when we wrote that song: this is about when we were like 15 or 16 and first started to smoke and just have a good time, so it was always some sort of reflective song. It's not quite the sort of being dated in terms of us getting older. But it's a strange one. We should sort it out sometimes.

After touring for 'Supergrass' in 1999, there came remarks and rumours about things that were going wrong inside the band. what do you do now, to prevent such things happen inside the band?
On 'Supergrass' it was Danny who had quite a hard time on that point. He had a problem with the direction that record was taking. Which happens from time to time. We tended not to express it very well with each other. That kind of the upshot is, he wasn't there a lot of the time for the back of the record, which became a problem when we started doing interviews with it, because he didn't feel completely connected with the record. There were a number of things he said he wasn't completely happy with and that it hadn't worked for him. Which is probably correct. And on balance it did suffer from that as a record, as it isn't all three of us working at it. One of the main strengths as the band is when me and Gaz and Danny and to an extend Bob's as well are very connected with what we wanna do. We're all putting our input in and it makes a very strong record where it can get multi-dimensional, when it's just me and Gaz and Bob coming up with shorts. For me, there's still some regrets for that record, but going back and listening to it, it's just the sense of a weird sort of grandeur to that record, that kind of got lost, like a flawed grandeur. It didn't quite reach where it should have reached, but just the feeling that it's gonna reach that high, makes it an interesting record for me. There's some really strong bits on there.

And how do you keep the internal relations healthy after playing together for 11 years?
I don't know! It's all dynamics and stuff, like in any marriage. I think I've described mine and Danny's relationship before as a 'love-hate' relationship and it is exactly that, you know. Sometimes he just extremely pisses me off because he can be very selfish, even as a musician. But on other times he's just amazingly inspiring and he just makes me laugh my pants off, cause he's just so stupid. While with me and Gaz, we really respect each other musically. We tend not to have to talk about it being very empathetic and stuff. I just find Gaz very inspiring. There's always sorts of problems with Gaz in terms that he gets too stoned or gets kind of lazy and a bit strung out occasionally, but you just kick him up the ass and he get's on with it. But then again I can get quite hard headed and stuff. But I think that's the dynamics that have always been in the band. It just depends on when we get too tired to do the band anymore, get outside interests. You get distracted I guess, but the relationships inside the bands haven't really changed. We've gone on with it on the same level. I just remember I lent Danny £50 when we'd just started the band and he didn't give it back to me for about a year. This was just something, a part of that 'love-hate'-thing. He got away with it, because he just charmed my pants off. But it was £50 when we just had no money, you know. I'd buy a week's shopping. Me and Danny have always been like that, but we always come back in the end and say 'sorry' to each other. But you need frictions in bands as well. It's a good way to be. Yeah, it hasn't changed.

Did your decision to stop touring for long periods of time also affect your popularity?
Probably, I don't know! It's difficult to pin things down like why we've sold less records than 'I Should Coco' over a period of time. But I think that's pretty much untrue, as when your debut album comes out it's 'Really amazing! Brandnew! Never heard anything like it' and everyone wants to buy that record and they're kind of get used to what you're about. They get a bit lazy about selling things. People haven't bought this record as it's 'Just another Supergrass Record. I'll just buy the 'Kaiser Chiefs', as they've never heard anything like that before. But it just doesn't mean that their record is better than ours, it's just they're after novelty and this record was specifically made as not being a novelty, but just to express us as 'Here we are at this time'. Which is a self indulgent kind of risk, but that's who we are. We can't pretend to be anyone else. So that's just the way it is.

Why did it take until 'Life On Other Planets' for Rob, to get credited as a full member of the band?
That was tricky, as it had been a creeping thing with Bob. When we first started touring 'I Should Coco', is when Bob first started playing with us and at that point he had no musical input in the band. He primarily played the keys. But occasionally on soundcheckes, as I remember, he was playing these chords, just these four chords going round and we spent ages jamming it and that the became the chorus of 'Moving'. And we said 'You've written those chords. Let's give you a writing credit of that'. So on that record, he got a percentage of the writing. And it's kind of progressed over that. He played a lot random over the synths and came up with interesting syth-lines we just use all the time, all the occasional chord-tweeks here and there. And then we thought, you're there all the time. It just became a time-machine: Bob being there all the time in the studio, he's there all the time on the road with us, so we just got to a point where you'll split the money four ways and everyone's happy. Although you don't have the same huge production-credits, because Danny and me and Gaz probably spent more time on production, whereas Bob doesn't. But it kind of came to a point that we said you might as well start doing interviews and talk about what you're doing as well. And if he's doing interviews, we just split the cash in four ways and we're all doing the same amount of work. So that's how it worked out.

You've done all kinds of side-projects, like in 1999, playing with 'Dr John' on records. Are you still doing such things individually?
Not really. I think Danny has done most side-projects. He'd sort of recorded two albums with his wife Pearl. That's probably as Danny is living in London. He hangs out with a lot of musicians. I think he played drums on an 'Elvis Costello'B-side and he stepped in for 'Ash' at one point and played on a B-side for them. I think that's just his connection to London. He's very restless and he likes being constantly busy, so he's played a lot of things like that.
The 'Dr John'-thing kind of came along out of the blue. the record company said 'We signed Dr John and he's gonna do this huge collaboration-album. And because you're both on Parlophone, it makes life very easy if you wanna do it. And we thought 'fair enough'. How it gonna be to sort of sit down. It was just when we got there that we realized it was 'Dr. John' and, f***in' hell! We just sat down and started playing with him. And we'd seen him on 'Joolz Holland' two years before as we'd been on the same show with him. I remember meeting him at that time, saying 'I'd really like your band'. Which was a really nice compliment. So it's kind of easy to do that. But beyond that me and Gaz never really felt the need to do other things. Maybe as time goes on, we'd be more interested. But the ever tempering fact is that we have families, which I think a lot of other young bands don't have. And that's taken up a lot of our time, when we're not working. We just want to spent that time at home and just forgetting about the band. As it gives you a bit of space. I guess that's what other people go on to do other musical things, because they're unsatisfied with their own bands maybe, or they've got a lot of time on their hands. But I think we've put all our efforts into the music of this band and when we're not working with this band, we just not wanna be having anything to do with it. You just wanna get away from it. That's why.

Some future plans. You're now playing a set loosely based on the acoustic tour. Will there be more acoustic tours in future?
I don't know. I think at the end of that acoustic tour in August, we kind of felt it to be quite interesting. But we wanted to go back and play some more traditional Rock shows, as they're more vibrant and stuff. But it's been really interesting being on that acoustic tour. Just the way we've changed all the old songs and played them differently and just gave them new life. I just think we needed to do that after the 'Supergrass Is 10' tour. We really needed to not repeat what we've done before. So it has been interesting. But it's kind of a misnomer to call it an 'Acoustic tour', as it's more of a hybrid. I'd be interested in finding different ways of playing it, but not based on acoustic. Which got all sort of strung up Folk-vibes to it and feels like it's too gentle for where you should be and what you wanna do. Something more interesting. Gaz played me the video of Neil Young, when he was doing the 'Trance' Tour, which is really odd. When he's gone all electronic. Neil Young is playing acoustic, but with all this vocoder and things, it's really nasty and it's in a way pretty horrible. But really interesting. There's other ways you can change as a live band, without resort to being quiet. But again, you have to see the show tonight and the outcome is different and interesting, but not something you wanna do all the time. But I think for one set of touring cycles it's worth doing it. It's kind of interesting.

As you're very satisfied with the 'Ronnie Scott's'-gig, will this be released on DVD?
Well, I think some of that footage will be on DVD. I know that we all had really bad hangovers, so it's not the best performance in the world. Some of the songs came out really well and some didn't so I wouldn't be happy with releasing the whole thing on DVD. But definitely selected highlights, yeah. Although there were some corkers, because we were quite drunk in a way. Yeah, but maybe not the whole thing!

Will there ever be the release of a 'Lost Tracks' album, with songs like 'Out Of The Blue' and other songs you tried to record, but didn't really work out.
That's tricky. Every record done, there's been two or three songs that could have made it onto that record, but didn't. It's really difficult going back to these songs, as the feel like they're in the past and they're not where you are now. So it'll be quite hard work, emotionally, to go back and try and finish those songs off. Because you wanna finish them off in the frame of mind you were writing them, which is the only way that they really work. So probably not!
'Out Of The Blue' in particular was one of the songs that got to the point were it could have been released. It was in a shape and it had lyrics and everything. Were in the right place to release it as a single, no not as a single, but as a track in itself. There are some tracks that were really, really strong and could have been almost A-sides. But we didn't quite get them together at the time and they're kind of 'sad losses', you know. They're not in the position to release them for other people to hear, but I can still hear them in my head sometimes. They're really odd sort of ghosts, hanging 'round in the back. Some songs come back. You'll write a new somg and there'll be an echo of that old song in it, the kind of feeling you wanted to get into it and it all come back in a new song like 'Roxy'.
And some songs on this record are very old, you know. Like I said 'Roxy' was three years old, before we even recorded it. And there are at least four or five songs around that period that cast a life, but got left behind and are absolutely superb. I can kind of hear them half in my head and how they should be. Maybe they'll make it onto this new record, which will be really interesting.

Another ghost that's still chasing you, is the question "Will the old 'Jennifers' stuff ever be re-issued?"
Pffft! I don't know. I've never been in 'The Jennifers'. I can't answer that!

Well, we know about Gaz and Danny being in 'The Jennifers'. were there any bands you were playing in, prior to 'Supergrass'?
Yeah, many and vary. Lots and lots of bands were in Oxford, but nothing that made it. Nothing commercial. I used to play bands with my brother. . There's a band 'Bigger Than God', that was quite big in Oxford and I used to play with their guitarist. I'm still kind of in touch with people I used to play in bands with and who come to our gigs and sit down and talk about music and stuff. But all the people I used to play with, were in school etc. They all moved around England. Moved to other countries and they usually phone me up and say 'Can I come to your gig'. That's how I see them all the time and keep in touch with them. But never in any famous bands. No.

How do you see the future of 'Supergrass'.
I don't know. One day at a time. Impossible to say, you know.

And bearing in mind the increasing pressure on the record sales
The way I see it, it's not something you can really worry about. I mean, we can change the music specifically to increase record sales. I think we just have to inspire ourselves. We have to find new ways of changing the band to get really inspired with ourselves. If you make a really good record they wanna stand by. If you feel that strongly about it, that people are gonna enjoy and buy it. But there's also standard pressures. We're a band that's ten years old. And like I said of the 'Kaiser Chiefs', if you've got the choice of buying a brand new band's record, that you really excite. Brandnew, like you've never heard them before, you probably gonna buy that record over a band that's been out over ten years. But there's nothing we can do about that. So, what can you do?

A reviewer from 'Road To Rouen' once stated that both 'Supergrass' and 'Super Furry Animals' are making records which will still be relevant in about twenty years. What do you think about such remarks?
Well, it's very flattering! I only think he put SFA in there, because they were releasing a record that week as well. If it would have been some other band, he would have probably said the same thing. We're not trying to sound pompous about it, but when you make records, you wanna leave a mark and you wanna leave something that will last for a longer period of time. I remember saying when we made 'In It For The Money', that we'd wanna create a record that you get more and more out, when you listen to it. You discover new things in it.
I was in the car the other day and 'Starman' by David Bowie came on. And I was really drunk and suddenly I heard the strings line, that I've never really listened to. I've listened to this record for about twenty-five years, on and off, and I'd just heard the string parts in it and they just blew me away. I've never listened to them before and I'd discovered this new element to this song. And all of our records are like that. You come back listening to it in ten years and you'll hear something new. That's the kind records that I wanna make. So yeah, I hope they'll still be relevant in ten years time. In your life, you still get inspiration from them. That's the kind of one I'm after.

But underneath that remark, isn't there a certain kind of criticism on current bands in England? On their quality?
I don't know. Maybe there is. But that's not my job to criticise other bands. If a band has released a brand new record and I've been hearing a lot about it in the press, it takes me about two years to get round to buying that record. I think any band that puts records out, they should be standing out the test of time, that you should buy them two years later. And if the big fuzz about them was right in the first play and you still get something out of it years later, without all the hype. I think that when we were growing up, at that time the chartmusic was rubbish. So you start listening to stuff like 'Pink Floyd', old 'Gong' records and stuff that no one was writing about. It wasn't in the press. You didn't see this kind of music anywhere in the media. You'd go and make your own assemptions on this record and develop your own opinions about them and that's always more interesting than anything else. You kind of find out your own things and that works more inspiring. So, commenting on other bands of the moment, saying that they're not gonna last whoever, it's on the strength of their music really.


Speaking with Guto Pryce of 'Super Furry Animals', September 1st 2005, I asked him the same questions. Here's what he had to say about it:

Few weeks back, in a review of Supergrass' 'Road To Rouen' in one of the music magazines, I read the reviewer stating that both Supergrass and SFA are now making albums, which will still be relevant in twenty years time. How do you feel about such remarks.
Ah, nice! You know. It's funny, to be honest, we've always had good press, which doesn't seem for us necessary to be transcribed into sales in some places, but people write things. It's nice and it's what we're trying to do, yeah! We want to make albums and we want people to discover these albums in twenty years and get them to buy another one and, like we've done as music fans, discover old stuff. The records will always be there!

But what does it say musically, as it sounds to me that bands like Franz Ferdinand are doing okay now, but their records will be consider outdated in twenty years time.
Bands are different, aren't they? It's not that every band can be the same. Some music is of the moment and it's immediate, everybody likes it and then, maybe, they move on to something else. And what happens is, if a band get's very big, very rarely they keep that fan-base. So after a period of time, when they're not as big as they used to be, they look at them and say: 'Alright, they're finished'. We've never had that one massive record, that has overshadowed our whole carreer, you know. It's not that we turn up every gig and the audience is just wanting to hear one song. we're quite lucky in that respect. Not that we wouldn't want it to happen.

Listening to Supergrass' latest album and your latest album, there are certain parallells between the use of sounds and things. Like the songs seemed to be tuned down a bit in tempo and temperament with both Supergrass and with SFA. Is that something that happens with bands that play for twelve years or so?
We're getting older. Older and slower! I would say, it was a sunny record, you know. It was done in the sun, food and wine and stuff that slows you down. It's definetely more chilled. I mean, the next record could be a death Metal Hardcore Punk record, you never know. It would be sad, if we just kept on getting slower and slower untill we stopped. There's still plenty of energy left.


Back to Mick:

Are there any new bands we should focus on?
Well, it'll be difficult for me to say, after what I'd just said. Having said that, like the latest 'Kaiser Chiefs' single, that has just been released ('Modern Way', LHD), I find quite interesting. It kind of reminded me of something like 'Odd?'. It just had this strange quality to it. But there's other stuff I listen to. I really like 'The Coral'. We spent time touring with them. Gone really well with them as people and really like their attitude towards music and stuff. The whole sort of 'New Merseybeat'-scene: 'The Coral', the 'Zutons'. That's very interesting to me because it's out of the London centric spotlights. It's a whole scene going on up there, with people doing this whole setup with scouse bands and the way they interact with each other. You've got 'The La's' and a whole lineage of people from Liverpool, through 'Echo & The Bunnymen' and Julian Cope. All this kind of lineage going on in Liverpool. Which is quite interesting. It has nothing to do with 'The Beatles'. I just like the scene up there, all those bands kind of talk to each other and spent time playing in each others houses. It's just very organic, very interesting. Beyond that, people should just go back and listen to all the records of the Seventies and Eighties, because there's a lot of interesting stuff there. I'm always sort of discovering new records. Like Gaz telling me on to that 'Graham Chapman' record, which was quite a revelation. It's a record that's scored in 1970. And Gaz is some sort of record collector and he just read something about it and bought it. And we've been listening to it for the last two years. It's just one of those records that is part of your life now. You just find these records occasionally. I don't know, people should just get out and go through the old record shops and take a few chances. It's all I could say.

Are there any bands or artists you'd like to play with, or play with again?
Well again, that goes back to being shot to our record doing well and 'I Should Coco'. I don't feel like we are kind of on the same league as other people. You'd be a bit too shy to play for other people. You're f***ing up here, you're just 'The Supergrass-band'. I don't know, it's difficult. I just think we'd be intimidated playing with other people. I can't think of any band that kinda is that close to us in sound. You could replace other people in the band with you. We're an entity. It's not something we did when we were growing up early. You're kind of stuck with your own band. Unless you start playing with other people, when it was like the band you've had before. Then you just leave the band you're in and start playing with them, because that was the point: you find people that actually lift you up and made you play better than you did before. Never really hungered to look for that really, no.

Thank you very much!
Thank you!"