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	MUSIC WORKSHOPS CHRIS HELME and PAUL BANKS on guitar playing, singing, song-writing, getting signed, recording, A & R, management, the internet, touring worldwide with Shed 7 and the Seahorses..... u
	Pete: Right, we'll kick off today, our last session, our last Sunday session. It's my great pleasure to introduce Chris, Chris Helme here, and Paul Banks. Currently members of an excellent band called The Yards. ------------------- Chris's role is guitarist, songwriter, singer, Paul plays guitar in the outfit. Seven piece, with an interesting line-up - violin, cello, keys, guitar, rhythm guitar, bass, drums. Seven piece. Chris vocals, three part backing vocals. Very full sound. But as most of you probably know, in the past Chris worked with The Seahorses, and Paul with Shed 7. Both of which bands gained some notoriety on an international scene. Between them they've got about twenty top ten singles and half a dozen top ten albums to their credit, which is really quite extraordinary. And they've been there on the international stage - Phoenix Festival, Reading, across the States, across Europe, done all of those things. But they're also no strangers to the little pub gig either. Currently they're taking an independent route, I guess, and they'll perhaps like to talk a little bit about that. Now's your chance to ask them any questions, whether it's about their experiences within the mainstream, or as part of the mainstream if you like, what's it like gigging to fifty thousand people? Or, guitar work. Or songwriting technique. Whatever. Now's your opportunity. We'll have an hour as usual to chat. Of course later ...... There's chance to talk at the bar. So really ........Chris and Paul aren't going to be giving an address like Tony did last week. I think we really just want to have a chat today. So I'm dependent on you people for loads of questions for them. Paul: Here we go. Pete: Okay. Chris, maybe you could start. There's quite a few bands here, who are in a similar sort of position as you were prior to The Seahorses, when you were just starting off. Same with you Paul, just prior to Shed 7 and so on and so forth. Can you just talk a little bit about how it happened, how you got into the Seahorses, how you got into Shed 7 and stuff like that. Can you just kick off with a bit of history. Chris: Where do you want me to start, from the very beginning? Pete: Yeah, if you like Chris, whatever. Chris: I started music because I was a graphic designer and I was colourblind, so I was absolutely crap at it. So I fumbled my way through that for a bit. Then the girl I was going out with went out with someone else who was in a band, and I got jealous so I thought, "I could do that". So I started playing guitar, started busking, did that for about, I don't know, two or three years or something. And then one day this bloke walks past who's been out on his Sunday lunch with his family, quite leathered, and he said, "My mate's looking for someone to join a band, he needs a singer." I thought, "Well, okay, I'll give you a tape," so I did. I gave him a tape and he sent it to his mate. It ended up being John Squire from The Stone Roses. Then I ended up joining The Seahorses. So it was a bit weird, from busking to doing that. I mean, I'd been in bands before and stuff - I'd been in a band for five years before that. But that's basically how I started music really. It was all very fast. The thing I learnt was that if you've got most of your time to spend on writing songs and playing music, you end up ... if you're doing it every day, you just get really good at it. So practice makes perfect, basically. So you just keep playing and playing and playing until you find out what you want to do and what you want to sound like. And I'll shut up now before I go off on a tangent. ______________ Pete: Paul? Paul: Mine was a completely different experience altogether, really. I was at school with most of the people who ended up being in the Sheds, and we were just a typical school band. Just trying to make our way. And, a similar thing to Chris, we made a demo tape and we were fortunate enough to find a decent manager, who at the time just, I'm sure most of you have probably had people saying, "I can do this and that for you," but we were fortunate enough that he did have some contacts. And we just started hitting London every couple of weeks, over one six month period. And the gig that we eventually got a record deal from, there was five people at it, and four of them were the people that had come down with us in the minibus. And the A&R guy from Polydor was trying to mingle with the crowd so we didn't know who he was. It was pretty obvious, he was stood with all our mates and they were looking at him, "Who are you?" like. And they offered us a deal, and it was pretty amazing really because we were only about eighteen, nineteen. We got offered two deals at the time, we got offered an independent deal, but we got a bit more greedy I think, and went for Polydor, which was probably the wise move for us, because I think we needed a bit of nurturing. At that time, the major companies were quite good at that. And like Chris said, we just used that as our opportunity. Once we started getting a bit of a wage coming in, we were just writing songs and writing songs. But we were kind of fortunate to be in the right place at the right time, because it was when the whole Britpop thing was starting off, Oasis had just been signed about six months prior, and if you had the hair, then you'd get a record deal, was basically the criteria at the time. And that was how we did it really, but it was the whole, in the back of a transit van with as many people as you could possibly get, and just play in London, anywhere and everywhere. Not minding whether you were the first band on out of six or whatever, just doing it. And eventually something's got to give if you do that. Pete: Management came with John Squires I guess, didn't it Chris? Chris: Yeah. It was pretty much like ... I always compare it now, after seeing Pop Idols and all that sort of thing, because I had to do about three, they weren't auditions, they were more like gigs. I ended up doing three gigs for John. At the first two he didn't like us at all, he thought I was just ... well, the first time I was drunk, and the second time he was drunk. The third time, I went to Manchester, and I played in between two thrash metal bands. I was just playing guitar on my own, it was a bit strange. And the both of us were sober and in a good mood, so he asked me if I wanted to join the band, so I said yeah. But the management, that was strange, because our manager was Simon Moran, who owns SJM Concerts, which is probably the biggest concert promoters in England. Through that, it was really really lucky if I think about it, if I look back now, it's like, I'm in a band with an ex-Stone Roses, they have a massive following. Guaranteed to sell records. I feel like I probably cheated in a way, do you know what I mean? I joined in nearly halfway up the ladder. Paul: I thought you did at the time. I was really jealous. Chris: I was thinking at the time, "Oh God, I just want to get through this, and do it. It was very strange. So the management ended up getting us loads of gigs with people like ... I mean, the first gig I did was with Ocean Colour Scene at one side of the stage, and Noel Gallagher from Oasis at the other. It was the first time I'd played in front of anyone, these songs from The Seahorses, and I was absolutely shitting myself, basically, it was really really bad. But it was a good gig though, and I got over that. And then after that we just ended up doing supports with Beck and U2, did a world tour with Oasis and toured with The Rolling Stones and stuff like that. And this was all in the space of a year, so it was full on. I don't remember seeing my own house for about eighteen months - I never actually came home, it was all hotel rooms and stuff. It was really really good, but really tiring and incredibly stressful. But it's what you want to do - if you just want to play music, that's what you've got to expect. It's worth it in the end, because music's brilliant, and it beats working for a living. Pete: Paul, you were guys from York, weren't you. How did you find management? Paul: Yeah. We were doing a gig at Fibbers, I don't know if any of you know that, in York, and some guy that was on holiday just popped in, and he bought the demo tape, and he knew this guy that had been involved in record companies and stuff, who was looking for a band. He was based in Coventry. And the next minute we knew, we just got this phone call from this guy saying, "I'm going to get you a record deal." And we were like, "Yeah right, of course you are." But then, like I said before, suddenly we were getting gigs in London. He was doing right, and people were turning up. It was just pure luck. Pete: It seemed to happen really fast for you Paul didn't it, because I read York Music and stuff like that, but I didn't remember Shed 7 playing this little gig, that little gig, over a period of years, which some bands do. Chris: I remember you doing quite a lot around York. Paul: We were in loads of different bands, but the same people, but never at the same time. It was either me, Rick and Tom, with another drummer, and then I left and they got another guitarist in, and then that drummer left, and it was all ... but from the line-up that went on to get the deal it was six months. Chris: I remember you saying actually at the time ...... because the band I used to be in, we'd been together for five years, and all we wanted to do was play, we never even thought about getting a record deal. There were bands that were on TV that had record deals, and then there was bands like the band I was in that just played and played and played and played, and we didn't really have a clue what we doing, you just made it up as you went along. And then you got a record deal, and we were all like, "How the hell did they do that?" And you just said to us, "It all changed since we got management". And it is a true case of, it's not really what you know, it's who you know. And you have to really ... Paul: But you've got to be careful when you're choosing a manager, because there was one guy that we had before. This was a different incarnation of the band, but we did have another manager that signed a contract for a year, and became our manager, and suddenly you realise after two months that he's crap. But you're tied to him for another ten months, and that's a long time. So you've got to be careful when you're choosing management, and try and suss out what kind of contacts they really have got. What have they done before, can they walk ....... You see the beauty about our manager was that he could ring up Polydor, and he could go straight into the office, and sit with the head A&R guy and play him the tape. That was the kind of clout that he had, because he'd had experience before, and like Chris said, it is who you know. So if you're choosing a manager, sometimes ... we've decided at the minute, because we're a new band, we haven't managed to find somebody like that, we'd rather not bother at all. But there's plenty of decent management companies out there, you've just got to be careful when you sign and go on with one. Chris: You need a manger that's really into what you're doing without trying to change it a lot. I mean, they might try and mould you a little bit, but usually that's pointing you in the right direction, as opposed to trying to ... you want to sound like, I don't know, Puddle of Mud or something, and they're trying to make you sound like Steps. That's the wrong manager. Question from audience: How much control do they actually take, how much of your identity do they take over? Paul: I think yours had more control than ours did, didn't he, really? Chris: Yeah. With The Seahorses it was ... I think the reason why John asked us to join the band was because I was into the same kind of music as he was. He was the one who was deciding what we sounded like. The management didn't really get a look in, because he wouldn't have had them managing him. From my point of view, I had the creativity taken out of my hands, it was all John's. But now we just do what we do, don't we, really? Paul: With me, again we were lucky. He was purely there for the business side of it, which we didn't know anything about. Later on in our career, we ended up having two managers, because the job had just got too big for one guy. So the original manager was looking after the business side of things, and the new manager was looking after the live side. Which I think started turning a bit sour, because he'd be like, "You should play that song twice as long, and you should have a drum solo there....." Comment from audience: They just sound as if they know best. Paul: You've got to again think, without sounding arrogant when you're talking to managers, you've got to go, "Look, how many Top Tens have you wrote? Well leave that to us then, and you sort out the gig and do what you're there for." Because at the end of the day, a manager is working for you. You're paying his wages, and a lot of bands lose sight of that and let the manager take control. It doesn't work like that. Chris: It's a very strange relationship, isn't it. Paul: Once you start making money, it is technically a business. If there's four of you in the band, you're the directors of that business. Managers tend to forget that sometimes. Chris: It's really weird, though, because the management are telling you what you're doing from day to day. "You've got to get up and do this interview here and do this gig there," they're actually telling you, and if you don't do it, they'll play hell with you. They'll kick you out of bed, or whatever it takes to get you out of bed. They're kind of telling you what to do, but you're their boss. It's really strange. Paul: Our manager, our live manager, left the bass player at a gig once, because ... Chris: He forgot about him. Paul: No, he didn't forget. We were at a festival at Bristol, and he'd already told him, "Look, the coach is leaving," I think the manager wanted to get home, back to York. After half an hour he asked him again to leave, he was chatting some girls up or something was the bass player, and the next minute he'd just gone, he'd left him in Bristol. And I remember thinking, "That's not your decision at the end of the day". So you've got to be careful, you've got to have a working relationship without them getting too big for their boots. Because they do try it, they do try it. But that's again, it's something you have to be careful about. Chris: Are there any managers in here, by the way? You're a manager for a band? How do you find the relationship, the power struggle between musicians and management? Elaine: It's probably just kicking them out of bed every morning. Isn't it Gary? Paul: There's always one in every band though, that's always late. We tell our bass player now that the soundcheck's at four when it's really at five. Elaine: Yeah, we've had to put Gary's bed in the office, because he's our webmaster as well, and he keeps really strange hours. It got so that he was rolling out of bed in the middle of the night, and setting about the website, so we just put his bed in there in the end. I was going to say, back when you signed your record deal, companies were willing to take on bands and develop them, weren't they. They don't do that any more, do they? Paul: Well, I'd just like to say that the reason we signed to Polydor, there was a guy called Paul Adam, and he was the sole reason that we ... because we did feel like we'd sold out a little bit. We'd had six months of press interest, and people were saying we were an indie band, and really we should have gone with an indie label. We had this guy, Paul Adam, and he was giving this whole, "We're going to develop ... we want to turn Polydor back to what it was in the sixties when we had Jimi Hendrix, and then through the seventies with The Who, and blah de blah de blah". And we believed him. And he was alright for a couple of years, then he started changing, and lo and behold, after I'd left the Sheds, I watched the first series of Pop Stars, and he was one of the bloody judges on that. You know? Getting them to dance and things. But we were fortunate enough that at that time, they were allowing you to develop a little bit. Comment from audience: They expect you to do all the work yourself now. They take you on once you've already done the developing. _____________ Paul: It's a fine line, because they expect you to do it all, but then if you send them a demo tape that's too polished, then they're like, "Well, there's nothing left for us to do here." Chris: They want it on a plate, basically, but they want to add a bit of salt on it as well, add a bit of pepper on it. So you've got to make it sound rough enough for ... Pete: ... them to add a bit. Chris: ... them to swallow. Paul: Yeah. There's stories we heard about ..... I was working with a producer once that said he was in a studio with a band, and the A&R man would come in and listen to the songs, and say, "You should turn the guitars down." And they'd be pulling their hair out. And then eventually they twigged that this guy just wanted to be able to go home on a night and think that he was having some control over his band. So when he came into the studio the next time, and he was going, "Turn the drums down, turn the tambourine up," they'd set aside some tracks on the mixing desk that didn't have anything on it, and they were going "Okay," and changing it. He was going, "That sounds fantastic." And it was the same mix. And that shows what A&R men know about music. They've just got pound signs in their eyes. Audience: That's what it's all about now though, isn't it. Paul: It is, yeah. Chris: But it's for them to keep their jobs. If they aren't making the money for the record companies, they're going to get fired. The actual staff turnover in record companies, it just spins around. Paul: If I walked back into Polydor now, three years after, I probably wouldn't know anybody that works there. Pete: So they're all watching their backs as well, as they make decisions. There's that element as well. Chris: But it's a fickle business. It's fashion orientated and everything as well, and it moves really fast. I think the best way that anyone's ever going to probably be happy in music is if they just do what they would think is right, and carry on doing it. If you think someone's talking a load of crap, don't listen to them. Just think, "Well, what do you know." That's the only way you can ever be true to yourself. It might take a lot longer or whatever, because you're not kissing any arses along the way, but they say that good will out and all the rest of it, and I think it is true. Bands like Nirvana and stuff like that would never have got anywhere if they'd pandered to what some A&R man had said to them, or what the manager had said to them - "You should be a bit more like this, or like that". The whole essence of rock and roll music is that you can be yourself, but more so. You can spot a plastic band a mile off - usually they're the ones selling records because of the press machine behind them, and everything like that. I mean, look at Nickleback for instance. They're not really ... I don't know. Does anybody like Nickleback in here? Audience: No. Chris: Good. I rest my case. Does anybody like Nirvana in here? Audience: Yes. Paul: There you go. Pete: Charlie said, Charlie Daykin, there was a comment he made, Paul, which was ........when you guys were taking off he could tell you were going to make it. It was something to do with your presence and stuff like that. Paul: Are you talking to him or me? Oh, me. Pete: And the same applied to you, Chris. But there are some bands who in a way have some sort of fear of success. What do you think the difference is in personal attitude? Paul: I certainly think that the other guys I was in the band with had this fear of success. Once they'd got what they always wanted, it was trying to pull back off it - "We don't want to leave York. We have to go on stage and we have to play the songs exactly the same as they are on the record." Chris: You don't really know what it is though, until you get it. The idea of success that you have - Paul: But it's quite scary. Chris: - what you see on TV, other people being successful. They're putting forward this persona and image of what success is, when you don't know what's going on behind it all. Paul: You've just got to try and remain true to yourself. Chris: If you don't pretend to be anything, then I'm sure that you'll be very happy for a very long time. It's like you lot, when you were in the Sheds ..... everyone used to take the piss out of these lot, because they used to dress like a band, and they used to wander round in a group like a band. And people who weren't in bands would be thinking, "Who do they think they are?" But that was the way that you were. Paul: But that again, that comes from probably living in York. Chris: Yeah, it was a bit of a small town mentality there. Paul: Everybody don't see you for six months, and suddenly you mooch back in the pub with your new Henry Lloyd jacket on. It don't go down too well I suppose. But we were young. Chris: I think that's one of the reasons why you did well, though, because you looked the part as well. Paul: Why thank you. Chris: That's alright. Not that I fancied you. It does help to look the part. We need to sort that out. Paul: Yeah, we do, I'm just realising that. (laughs) Pete: Can you tell us, subsequently then from that episode, I know that you worked solo for some time, didn't you Chris ... Chris: Yeah, I did, yeah. Pete: ... and then brought forward a band that's developed over, what, two years or so? Couple of formats as well. Chris: Since The Seahorses split up really. I've had a few people playing with us in bands and stuff, changing drummers and guitarists and stuff. But the way that it's formed with The Yards is that I've ended up always asking the same people to come back if they're available to do stuff. Paul: Didn't ask me, though, did you? Chris: I didn't ask you, no. Because I was so sick ... I was fed up with guitarists at the time. Paul: That play too loud. Chris: But it turned out I asked you and it was great. It was just weird finding the right people, and it took me about four years or something to actually settle down with the band that we've got. It was purely by accident that we all came together as a band. Paul: I'm sure most of you that are in bands now have been through a couple of bands, there's always something that maybe don't click. When I left the Sheds, that was mainly because it wasn't clicking any more. I tried to put another band together, and they were all ... funnily enough, it was the bass player we got out of The Sea Horses, and the drummer from Audioweb, and Ian Brown's drummer. And we got what we thought at the time ....... he was a Scottish guy, a singer, who had the voice, and we thought he had everything. But there was something that just didn't feel right. When you're in your band, whether it be four or ten of you, it's got to feel right. You've got to imagine yourself on tour sixty years down the line. Chris: Sixty years! Paul: Six years. And if it don't click ... And that feels right with what we're doing now. I tried that for a year, and it just all fell apart. We had the songs, and probably even the image, but it was just ... that bit of magic that it needs. Pete: And you can't define it, but when it's there ... With the Sheds, you'd already kicked Polydor into touch, hadn't you, some time, and gone back indie with, what was the label? Paul: I'd left then. Pete: Oh did you? By then? Paul: Yeah. The last straw was the Greatest Hits album. It was like, three albums and you want us to release a Greatest Hits. I can honestly say that I sold myself short for the last six months, I was purely in it for the money. But that was me thinking, "I'll go with this album, I'll make the money, and that will give me enough to put another band together, something that I really really want to do." I couldn't be bothered. I really had believed that ... we were signed for eight years. I thought, "That's a good run." I thought it was better to just stop it and move on. _____________ Pete: Now Chris, are you looking for a record company, or are you just letting the record company come to you? Chris: Well, at the moment, I don't know. It would be nice to get a deal and everything like that, but I'm not prepared to ... I don't know what you think either. Paul: I'm kind of the same. I think we've both been burnt, haven't we? We've both been really burnt, and I think the main thing at the minute is just enjoying playing again. I love rehearsing again. Chris: Trying too hard for a deal tends to distract from why you're actually doing it. Paul: Getting back to the band I put together after the Sheds it was purely, "Must get a deal, must get a deal", and that's probably why it fell apart. So I've entered into this with more of a, "If it happens, it happens," because that is really what it's like. Chris: Well, I find it really difficult to write songs for A&R men or industry people. Songs that people want to hear. I won't do it. I can do it, I can physically write a song, but I won't like singing it, and I won't like playing it, because it's not real, it's not a proper song to me. It's just a vehicle to make money. I'm not happy doing that. I'd rather do the route of just record our own stuff and put them on the internet, and if people like them and hear them, and then there's a buzz going round about it, it's actually doing it in a really honest way. People are liking you for who you are. And it makes life a lot easier, because you don't have to keep remembering who you're trying to pretend to be, and all the rest of it. Paul: I think that is the big revolution anyway, the internet. It wasn't around when we were getting deals, and I do think some of the big companies are getting scared by the internet. I don't know if any of you were listening to Radio One the other day ........ they're going to start doing a new thing where you can send your demo in to the Radio One website, and people can download the songs and vote for their favourite band, I think it's every month. And then the four or three bands at the top will get played on Radio One, next to such great hits as Shaggy and things like that. But that's obviously a route that's now there for bands that wasn't there before, and I think that's because people happen to be more open to the idea of the internet. Pete: It's great isn't it, it's great. Paul: And I think we now would rather record stuff at our own pace, and just bang it out on the internet for free, and the deal will come later if enough people get into it. And that's what happened with The Stone Roses as well. They didn't have the internet, but they didn't bother ... Chris: They had a massive following, didn't they. Paul: They were playing to two, three thousand people in Manchester when no one had even heard of them in London. Then suddenly you go down to London, and all the scallys come with you, and it's like, woah. The record companies are falling over themselves. Can I have a cig? Cheers, ta. I need a light. Pete: Have you got a question? Question: Do you find that the more successful you get, whatever band you're in, and as record sales are on the increase all the time, do you find that you have a lot of other companies knocking on your door on a regular basis? Chris: It depends what sort of companies you mean. Question: Do you find you're poached by another record company, bigger, brighter ... Chris: Not really, once you've signed the deal it's pretty much written in stone that you have to stick with them, unless you want to spend all the money you've made on lawsuits. Paul: And the thing about record deals as well ... we signed a six album record deal, so you think, "Wow, six albums, this is amazing." And when they take you into the office the first time, we were totally wined and dined .... the guy was like a comedy character, he had the big cigar, Jewish fellow, "I'm gonna make you a star". And he sits there and he's going, "Your first album, you're going to get two hundred and fifty thousand. You're next album, it'll go up to three hundred," and you're thinking, "Bloody hell, by the time we get to the sixth album I'm going to be dating Jo Guest in a Ferrari!" But what they don't tell you is that once you've signed that contract, you're committed to making them six albums ..... but they don't tell that the little clause that they can drop you after any one of those albums, and they can change it whenever they feel like. So it does stop you getting poached by other record companies, but it doesn't stop the record company getting rid of you. So it's all in their favour. That's with the majors anyway, that's from my experience. Which is why they managed to change the goalposts with us - three albums in, suddenly there's a Best Of album coming out, and it's suddenly like, "See you later". Well they didn't actually do that, they said we could make a fifth album, but it was like .... for a bag of crisps and a Mars bar. Pete: Really? As much as that? Paul: Yeah. So it was just not worth it, so we went, "See you later." Chris: But all they are, record companies are banks at the end of the day. They give you loads of money so you can actually make a record and put it out, and do what you are supposed to want to do. Which is nice, but they tend to tell you ... it's like buying a house, isn't it, except they can just repossess it at any time. Even though you've been keeping up the payments. Paul: Yeah, the chips are definitely stacked in their favour. Chris: But that's the way it works, it's business, it's money. The thing that I find, the reason why I'm probably a lot happier without a deal, is because I can concentrate on doing music. For what it actually is, and the very first reason why I started doing it in the first place. So for the sake of the music, it's a lot easier for me to write, and write better songs, I think, because I don't have anyone to pander to. If people like them they like them, and if they don't they don't, and I don't have to worry about it. They're not big bad demons, record companies, are they. Paul: No, they're not. Chris: If they truly like you as an artist ... Paul: ... they'll look after you. Chris: They'll look after you. But if you're going to go in and do the old pop stars things, you're going to have a rough ride. Question: If you've signed up with them, and then they drop you, do they have to give you an amount of money then? Paul: No. Well, it depends. That's why they drop you after you've made an album. If they drop you while you're making an album, then you're entitled to the advance. Chris: I think it depends on what sort of deal you've got. Mariah Carey - Mariah Carey? Paul: Yeah, that's right. Chris: She got paid off, what was it, fifty million dollars, or something. Paul: Yeah, crazy. However, I did know a band at the time, the guy that was managing us, he signed another band to Mercury Records, and they'd signed this guaranteed two-album deal. Which was different from ours, ours was six, but it wasn't guaranteed. But this band had got a guaranteed deal, "We're going to make two albums". And they made the first album, and it completely and utterly flopped. So it was cheaper for the record company to buy them out of the deal. So in that instance, I think ... because I remember being really pissed off, because we'd had four singles out that had done really well, and there was this band that had sold like three records, and they all ended up with about thirty thousand pound each. Just to leave without saying anything. But if they'd made both of them albums, the record company could have just gone, "See you later." It all depends on what kind of contract you get. Pete: You were talking about songwriting, Chris, there. One thing Tony K said last week, he was saying about that thing, A&R, grab them in the first twenty seconds, or it's a frisbee across the office. When you send the demo in. Chris: I would have loved to have been there. Pete: He was talking really broadly, and he reminded people that that's what he was doing. And there was the other thing, which is that technique where you write the chorus first, then the verse, so that by the time people hear the chorus they already know it, because it's up at the head. Do you write in any way, do you bear any of those formulas in mind? Chris: No. Not at all. I think that's a very ... Paul: I would struggle. If I'm trying to write a song, and I have that in my head, then I don't write one. If I have to sit down and write a song, then it doesn't happen. Chris: You start from the start, and finish it when you finish it. Paul: There is a lot of truth in that some of the best songs - well, some of the best songs that I've wrote have happened in about five minutes, from beginning to ... Chris: Usually the ones that are the most memorable are the ones that it takes you the length of time to write it as the actual length of the song is. It just writes itself. I don't know, it's almost like letting it happen. Paul: I get pissed off if we labour over something for weeks. We've had a couple of songs where ... Chris: You get bored of it before you've even finished it. Paul: And you change it so much that you lose what the thing was at the start. Chris: You don't bother putting it in the set, because it's not fun to play. I don't know, it depends what sort of music you're writing as well. The sort of music that we write lends itself better to ..... you can just sort of write it and that's it, just start at the beginning. But, say if you're a band like Muse or something like that, where your music's very dynamic, there's all these progressive rock bits in it where you have to be very very precise and everything like that. That must take a lot of rehearsing, that. I don't know if I could handle that. Paul: Because we tend to find that them type of bits, we'll kind of come up with the song, and all the little bits will just happen through playing it again and again and again. But we don't ever sit down and go, "That bit, we want to play that bit three times," ....... It just comes about. Pete: You don't do verse, chorus, verse, lead break ... Chris: But I don't think it's right to say that there's any real proper way to write songs, or of doing anything really. You do it in the way that you see fit, and what suits you best. Pete: As long as you're true to yourself. Chris: We've got a couple of classically ... well, there's three composers in our band that are classically trained. One of them's going to be a doctor in about six months, of music, a doctor of music ....... whatever that's supposed to be. Pete: A real healer. Chris: And he finds it really strange playing with us, because we just jam, don't we ....... that's how we do stuff. Paul: And we find it really strange playing with him. Chris: But he's like, he theorises about stuff. We call a gig a gig, and he calls it a realisation of his ...... what was it? .... his composition. This is the strange thing ........ But we love that, because we're both from different sides of the scale, but at the same time he can jam as well when he wants, and he likes doing that. He writes music as well, and he'll be there with his string arrangement and everything, or whatever it is, keyboard arrangement and whatever, and I find it mad that he can just play something amazingly every time, cock on every time. Whereas we're kind of susceptible to mood changes, aren't we? .... Depending on how we're feeling at the time. So there's benefits in every single way of doing it, I think. Paul: But songwriting for me changed when we had the record deal, though. It was like two albums in, and suddenly your whole outlook ... once you've had a couple of hits, you do start getting really stressed about it. And the songwriting I'm doing now is the same as what it was when I was eighteen. Chris: Same here. Paul: But two albums in, it was totally totally different. It was a lonely experience, because Rick was so busy being a singer that I was ... Chris [laughs]: What's that supposed to mean? Paul: I didn't want to say dick. But I'd find myself in my own studio, just writing backing tracks, almost to a formula. So I did kind of get into that for a couple of years. I remember one Christmas, again with the Best Of album, the record company wanted to put out a lead single for it. And we'd wrote a couple of songs in a more "This is what we want to do" type of way, and the record company got all "Oh no, there's nothing to go with that". So I spent about two weeks, and I wrote a song called "Disco Down", that was just complete to a formula. "Right, that'll do, there's your single." And the record company creamed themselves when they heard it. It was like, "I can't do this any more." I was writing it, and I could see the video, and I could see the front cover of the single, and it was just complete formula. There was no soul in it .... I didn't feel. There wasn't that thing of a band in a sweaty rehearsal room, just buzzing off each other. It lacked that something, which you can't ... Pete: Spirit. Paul: Yeah. You can't put a price on that. [Comment from audience about songwriting] Paul: Hmm. I think the best example of that, personally, has got to be Oasis. I think that first Oasis album connected with so many people, because it was what it was. It was a bunch of young guys wanting to make it, and you could tell that in the songs. And the second album, yeah, yeah, ..... it was an album by a band that were like, "Bloody hell, we've made it." But then the third album stinks of money to me, and the fourth album got even worse. And I think they've maybe pulled it back around a little bit now, but it's that thing of ... Pete: Well, suddenly you've got to write on demand, haven't you. How can you do that? Paul: Well, there's that thing as well, some of you guys here, once you get a record deal, you've probably wrote your first album over a period of four years. But then that's going to get released and you're going to be on tour, you're going to be doing this, you're going to be doing that, and your record company are going to want you in the studio within six months. So suddenly you've had four years to write your first album, six months to write your second album. Chris: I found it was weird trying to write the second Seahorses album, because you don't have anything to write about. All you've been doing for the last eighteen months is touring. Unless you want to be writing about your experiences on the road, man, and all this kind of thing, which we weren't particularly into, because it's hotel rooms and aeroplanes. So we were touring for ... some guy who was doing the advertising for the NME said we probably played more than any other band did, in that period of eighteen months. Because our manager was a promoter, so he was making money off us in every single direction possible. And when we actually came to do the second album, John was there, John Squire, and he was like, "Well, I haven't got any songs to do." And I was like, "Well, I haven't written one for ages," because we were too busy doing everything else ........ press, and everything else. Audience: Well it's harder to write music now, than say 1997, '95, when music in the Top 40 was being manufactured. Paul: I find it easier. Chris: I find it easier. Audience: Like S Club 7 ... Chris: Do I find it harder to write, do you mean? Do I find it harder to write? Audience: Do you find it harder to write, to get into composition? When only forty or fifty people are actually writing stuff .....? Chris: We just write what we write and that's it. I don't worry about the charts, because it's kind of like ... Paul: I think the charts go in cycles anyway, I really do. I think ..... you look at what we're going through now, it reminds me quite a lot of after .... you'd just had the big Madchester scene, and it was like, "Woah, bands again," and then it died off and it went a bit naff again for a couple of years. But then music started coming back with Nirvana and things, and I think we're getting to that, I think people are getting a bit bored. Chris: Now you've got The Strokes and The White Stripes, where it goes from ... Paul: But when we go into these dips, we do tend to look to America, I think. We go, "Oh, it's alright to get into real bands again". And I think there'll be a big push over there in a couple of years. Chris: If you look at the charts in America though, they've got a chart for every single style of music that there is. So it's a lot easier for bands to get signed and make money, because for one thing it's a bigger country and everything. You can play the music that you want to play because there's always going to be a market for it somewhere, because there's enough people to buy it. Whereas in England, it's really really trend-orientated. The press are the worse press in the world for building things up and smashing them down or whatever, and then building them up again and smashing them back down. It's because we're a little island. We've got this attitude in England I think of being... Paul: But even the music press have almost destructed themselves as well haven't they, by doing that type of thing. Chris: But I suppose it just has to be, because we're a little island and that's the way it is. It's always been like that I think, ever since The Beatles and stuff like that ..... it's always been like that. Pete: For a long time though, the Americans looked to us, didn't they. Whereas The Beatles, they brought American r&b over here and re-interpreted it, and slung it back at them, better. Has that changed? Why do you think it has? Chris: I don't think it's changed, because I think when it all turns tits up here we look to America, as Paul said. And because there's a wealth of bands over there that are playing the sort of music that they want to play, apart from Nickleback who are playing what they think they should be playing. I don't know, it's confusing. If you haven't got discipline ... Paul: Yeah, I'm really confused. (laughs) Pete: You've got to do a fair bit of work haven't you, like scales, sitting there, doing this, that and the other, just practising, haven't you. But if you're on the blower, Chris, trying to get your ... and I know you're not fishing for gigs every five minutes, you would seem to be really selective on the places that you're playing. Chris: There are seven of us, so we need the money. We can only do it if the money's right, otherwise we can't afford to play. Pete: Good point, okay. But at the same time, you must spend a fair amount of time, as you're self-managing, on the phone. Do you find that an uneasy balance? How do you cope with that? Chris: Yeah, it is difficult, but I'd rather I were doing it than some ... I've had about four managers since The Seahorses split up. And I didn't know any of them before they started managing us. All I could do was trust my gut feelings and stuff. And this is probably one of the reasons why we haven't got a manager now, because me and Paul are being very selective over managers. Because you have to have someone who believes in what you're doing, and who will listen to you when you're telling them that this is what you're doing. Some of them, the ones that I had, had pretty much the sort of plan of, "Oh, you used to be in The Seahorses, so I know what we can do, we can cash in on that." Which is completely the wrong thing - I didn't want that at all. I wanted to get as far away from that as possible. So it's quite difficult, really. I've forgotten what the question was. Pete: Just the balance between production and artistic ... Paul: If we're totally honest, it's something that we've just come to ... we were just talking about this in the car, here, because we have totally .... ninety-five percent of our time's been solely on writing songs. And it's only now, in the last four weeks, we've done three or four gigs, and we've realised, "Oh, there's quite a lot of people turning up, aren't there. Maybe we should try and capitalise on it." Because what we tend to do, we book four concerts, get really excited about it, and go, "Right, this is it, we'll build on it," and then we're so lazy that by the time we've done the fourth gig we'll go, "Have we got any more concerts?" "No, we've not got any at all." Chris: We haven't pulled our fingers out. It's difficult, we are learning how to do it, and we do appreciate what managers do do. They do do an awful lot. Paul: So we're going to have to now set a day aside, solely to forget the songwriting and get on the phone, get them CDs made. Chris: It's very time consuming, but at least we know what's going on. Even though we're going to make a few mistakes, but ... Paul: At least we can shout at each other now. Chris: I've had four managers make a lot of mistakes in the past, so I'm not going to repeat the ones that they've made. Pete: Well that's cool. Any other questions? Audience: So do you think ... James, he's basically got his home studio set up, and he's got a CD ready to go, but he hasn't actually got a deal yet. That's what he's hoping to do with the one he's made. Are you saying it's probably best to move to a big city, go down to London, test it out? Chris: No, not at all. Paul: No. I think that was the right thing for us, because we were a young band that was gigging anyway, and we were always better live than in the studio at that time. If you're writing songs that are there, it's got to be a different approach to how we did it. I think it's got to be more down to hitting management companies and radio stations. There's so many people you can hit with that CD. Get it up on the website, there's loads of websites that you can get your music on, and for you that will probably be better. Chris: If somebody likes what you've got, they're going to pay for the band to move on anyway. Paul: You'll find a manager who'll come on and go, "Right, you need to do some shows now, and I'll get you a session player in," or what have you. Audience: Is it necessary to play London? Paul: I think it probably is, yeah. I mean we're going to do a bit of that. It was different, don't forget, 1993 was a different type of time when there were a lot more live venues, and it was the done thing to hit London. We've not actually played in London yet, because we're kind of thinking ... A&R men at that time would go to gigs, I'm not so sure that they do now. Because the type of deal that you're probably looking for would come out of getting a decent manager and a couple of little shows here and there. Carefully selected, probably. Chris: I mean, Colour of Fire - there's a band in York called Colour of Fire, I don't know if anyone's heard of them - they just knocked together a demo, didn't they, at their own studio, and they sent it off to Steve Lamacq, on the radio. He played it, and Mary Anne Hobbs heard it as well, and she was wetting herself about it, and she played it and played it and played it, and I think she got in touch with some management company that managed Placebo, and that's it. Paul: They didn't even leave York. Chris: They didn't even leave York, they just sent one CD off in the right direction. So if you send loads ... Audience: That's what the demo's for ..........? Chris: Yeah. And they do listen to them, as well. At the end of the day, they're DJs that love music. Regardless what you think ... Audience: The ones that don't have a playlist, that is. Chris: They just play what they want, yeah. Pete: Robbie? Robbie: You know when you get an idea for a song, does the song just come naturally or do you have to work to get the rest of the song sorted out? Chris: It depends how much you want to write it, really. If you've just come up with an idea, and ... what I tend to do is, I record everything that I do, onto a multi-track or even onto a dictaphone or whatever, and then I listen back to it maybe the next day, or maybe sometimes ... I've got like, Christ, ninety mini-discs with little ideas on. And sometimes they keep popping up. So the more ideas you get down ... you don't have to finish the song off there and then. Little bits will start coming back to you again, and it'll all come together. If you start trying really hard to finish a tune, it's not going to happen and you're not going to be happy with it, I don't think. Paul: I just write music really, I tend to just have loads of different things kicking about. I don't put anything down on tape, or write anything, I'm really bad for that. I just tend to trust my own mind ...... if I remember a riff then it must mean it's quite memorable I suppose, I use that kind of theory on it. But I do get really confused, because it's like a big jigsaw in my head, and sometimes I'll put something on the back burner, and then six months later I'll get the other bit, and I'll put them together and then go, "Hey, what do you think of this?" Chris is different in the way he can sit down and write a song. Whereas because I just write music, I tend to try and create as much as I can before presenting it, and then let it pass over to Chris and everybody else. Chris: It's quite good fun just starting ... I used to just finish the songs in their entirety and then pass them to the band, but now I just, if I come up with a nice little idea, because of the nature of the band everyone starts jamming anyway and before you know it you've got pretty much the song. All you need to do is shove some words on it, and there it is. So if you've got an idea for a tune, and you've got stuck ... Robbie: We just write the music first, and put the words on top. Chris: Yeah, that's what we do. Paul: That's what we do. Chris: I don't think I used to do that, but I think that's the way I find easier now. Paul: I've still got ... sitting here now, I can think of three, yeah three riffs that I've had kicking about since 1996, and they're still to this day driving me insane because I can't find anything that fits with them. So they're just these weird things. But I still play them quite a lot, and I'm still looking for the chorus. Chris: And he puts them in every song. Paul: Yeah, I don't realise it, I slip them in ... Chris: "Wrong key, Paul!" Pete: But you remember that, Paul, you've remembered them. Paul: I've still remembered them. Pete: What Chris just said there, get everything down, even on a little cassette player ... Paul: Yeah, don't use my theory, for God's sake. I've probably forgotten more than I've wrote. Pete: Because it's that, middle of the night, and you're playing that little bit, and you think, "Oh yeah!" And then you go to sleep. And then it's, "What was it?" And you can't, you might remember the chords, but the emphasis is just ... if you get it on tape, it's really handy. Like a notebook isn't it, like your sketchbook. Paul: Yeah, that's true. Audience: Like when you record something, you can forget it for a while ... Paul: I'm really bad for switching the ... we've got the same machine as what's down the front here, for doing ideas on, and I'm really bad for spending three weeks recording something, and then switching it off and not saving it, aren't I? Which I have done three times. But it's the same thing. Once we go back and do it again it's not the same. It tends to be ... Chris: It tends to be a little more rehearsed the second time around. I found as well .... it used to amaze me. You go round to someone's house, they're in a band or whatever, they've got absolutely loads and loads of gear. Like, "This is what I use to write on" and they've got a big twenty-four channel desk, samplers and computers, la la la la la, six guitars on the wall and all this kind of thing. When all you need is a dictaphone and a guitar, or whatever your instrument is. Because the core of the song is just a few notes and a rhythm, and that's it. You can build on that in any way that you want. I found that I didn't write a note when I started surrounding myself with loads of crap that I didn't need. I was too busy reading manuals and stuff ... (laughs)( Paul: Yeah. You can get sidetracked really easily. When I was working with Maxy, Ian Brown's drummer guy ..... he's a programmer as well. It was a learning curve for me, because like ..... you know, I'm used to just writing things on my own, doing it in a band ..... But Maxy wanted to ..... he'd hear a riff, and he'd be quick enough to jump on it, but then he'd spend six days creating a lavish drum thing, and by that time I'd just lost the will to live. I'd actually lost what it was I was buzzing off, because he was too busy creating "Wooo" noises and things. So you can surround yourself with too much stuff, I think. Chris: But there are people that do write stuff like that. It depends what sort of music it is as well. It don't suit us, I don't think, but I think we're wrong to say it is wrong to do that. I mean, you've got bands that ... Paul: Yeah, I'm talking about from a guitar band point of view. If you're Moby, then, yeah. Chris: Or The Chemical Brothers, then that's all you do, and you love it. You probably get off on doing that sort of stuff .......... Pete: We'll wrap it up there and have some lunch, and like I say, I'm sure if there's something that occurs to you and you'd rather talk direct then Chris and Paul aren't going for a while .... are going to do a bit of jamming later on. Just to conclude ...... because we'll have some lunch and then, like we normally do, we'll play a bit. _____________ It's been great seeing you all over this last month, excellent, I think we've all had a good time, and hopefully people have learned a bit and it's been useful and so on and so forth. One thing I wanted to remind you, though, is ...... us lot, Cultural Foundation, we're not going away, you know? We're still here. And you should all have our phone number, you should all have our website and stuff. Make sure that Karen has your e-mail address if you have it, so we can keep in touch directly with you all. And if there's things that occur to you, I don't know, like contracts or ... you know ....... We organise a few gigs, we have one here every fortnight. We're developping an acoustic gig down at the New Inn, which is the home of Cropton Brewery, which is a great plus for the gig. Blakey up the top, we helped them for a couple of years, we helped Paul Crossland get that one going, and it's now established as one of the best gigs around I would think, it's a really nice one to play, and Paul is now running that himself. If you need help locating gigs, get in touch with us. We're organising a roadshow, a collection of bands coming from here, this neck of the woods. And we've already done a deal with the studio up at Hartlepool, we're going up there once a month. We're talking to places like Fibbers, to do similar things in commercial venues. We're a recording company, we have some albums out, so if you'd all buy them it would really help. I'd really like to thank Paul and Chris for coming up today, it's been excellent. We could speak all afternoon, we could chat all afternoon, I'm sure. But .... show our appreciation of Paul and Chris. [applause] Chris: Thanks very much. Paul: Boo! Chris: Boo! Hiss! Paul: Where do we get dinner?
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