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interviews
Duo Sonique
Interview originally done in french. Translated by Lawrence Koch
Les Inrockuptibles
by Bates
1992-07-00
For a record industry that is once again nauseating, a little of Stereolab's spontaneity and ingenuity couldn't do any harm. After the preprogrammed death of McCarthy, Tim Gane tells us why it is necessary to stay entirely at the service of independent music. For that he has assembled his new musical toy, "more concerned with quantity than quality". The Stereolab building kit has no instruction manual, using some mean melodies and playful refrains.
"After McCarthy split, I took time off to live. There were a few months of laziness, I'm afraid. I was going to Paris almost every month, where I had met Seaya, and I began to write a lot of songs, without taking them up when we started Stereolab. A lot were thrown out. It wasn't until we recorded the first single that I isolated the types of sounds that I definitely wanted as colouring for the group".
So did you question your music inbetween the two groups?
"Yes. At the end of McCarthy, I wanted to take the music to where we hadn't been. I wanted there to be pop songs with verses and choruses, less arranged. Even if the group had continued, I think we would have gone in a much less poppy direction. Because the kinds of music I love most of all - Can, Neu, Faust, the Beach Boys - I wanted those to be the most obvious influences in what we were doing. I liked the ideas, the very strange experimentation those German bands got into, as well as their fundamental newness. It's very difficult to relate them to anything in rock history. And the Beach Boys for their exemplary melodies. Nowadays, with Stereolab, I don't do any more pop songs in the traditional sense of the word since I've taken the music more towards minimalism, using a minimum of chords and removing the flowing guitar lines. We prefer to work on vocal melodies, combining three or four over one chord".
There's a lot of experimentation on _Peng!_, by the way.
"Because I think there should be variation on an album. Six very direct pop songs, six singles don't make an interesting album. There should be longer songs, different moods to make a whole. But in my opinion, there's nothing experimental on _Peng!_ - it's all very pop. There are melodies on every track. Some don't have drums but that's only because Joe Dilworth couldn't come to the recording sessions. Without a rhythmic reference, we would sometimes play for six minutes on the basis of the guitar chords. Everything was done very quickly without dissecting every take."
The long songs are actually very reminiscent of the Velvets, although they've never been listed among your influences.
"The Velvet Underground is probably the best band of all time. If they've influenced me, it's been in their simplicity: each song is based on two or three chords, it remained minimal, direct and simple. With McCarthy, I would write three different parts for each song, whereas now I write three different parts while adding a few ideas to that simplicity. I like that kind of restriction, adding a few ideas to an existing base, rather than changing everything after thirty seconds. That's what the Velvets did, so that might be where the similarity comes from. I have to say that bands all refer to the end of the Velvets, to the third and fourth albums which are more pop, whereas I refer more to the second. If you like someone, I don't see how you can avoid incorporating some of their ideas in your own music. However, I've never consciously said to myself, 'Now we're going to copy this song'. To put it simply, I really like to go up and down on the strings, instead of having a lead guitar - that's what the Velvets did. We also have the Farfisa organ sound, which is very important in our music".
In the time between your two groups, did you also discover another side to pop music?
"I buy records and listen to music non-stop. The format of McCarthy didn't allow me to include everything I liked because there were four of us. Now that there are more than two of us at the core, it gives me more freedom to incorporate what I want in the songs".
Isn't it a question of maturity as well? Doesn't one have very different tastes when approaching 30 than ten years before?
"Absolutely - you become more stable. You don't feel the need to hammer everything in. On the other hand, I'm 27 but I've liked Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra since I was 20. The sheer excitement of playing music certainly doesn't interest me in the same way. With McCarthy, we sometimes wanted to become popular; nowadays I concentrate only on the music and I hardly worry about the rest. I'm not interested in the music industry at all anymore. That's why we started our own label, Duophonic, to put out our records. That way, we can enjoy real freedom and enjoy ourselves the way you intend to with music, rather than undergoing the inevitable pressures of a major. We control absolutely everything: the sleeves, the production, etc. I couldn't stand to be told how to arrange a single or to make a cover now. So we're not so concerned with the consequences, things fall into place naturally, people come round to our simplicity little by little. I'm not a fan of technology at all - it's never made music interesting. I'm not tempted by having more time, more money and more facilities to record our next album. The two weeks for Peng! were enough for me - I need the pressure, I need to hurry or leave ideas by the wayside. The next album will be finished by the end of the year, as well as some other singles which will appear on our label. Groups like Ocean Colour Scene and My Jealous God signed with majors and they haven't been heard from for two years. But I'm not indie by nature: if a major leaves you absolutely total control, like with the Wedding Present, then okay. With Too Pure (the label that released PJ Harvey's Dry), we have that total control, we give them the songs, they release them. The three shareholders - Paul, Richard and Ivo (of 4AD) understand that you have to be trusted by the bands they sign. Besides, Ivo's not trying to make Too Pure a springboard to 4AD - he's aware that his label has an image and that the Too Pure groups don't fit that. We're simply profiting from his economic power to release our records. There couldn't have been so many copies pressed of PJ Harvey's album without 4AD. The label is much more preferable to fake indies financed by majors, such as Dedicated".
Don't you dream of some success?
"I'm not opposed to that happening, but I'm not a careerist. Making good music is the most difficult thing to achieve. We're very much amateurs - it's obvious when we play live that we haven't rehearsed enough - we let things be very spontaneous and sometimes it works brilliantly and sometimes it doesn't. It's a lesson I've learned from groups like Gallon Drunk: despite their attitude, they've become very popular. Why not us? I'm not looking for the same kind of success as Lush because I won't allow us to be exposed as they are, that each decision is thought out, to put out such-and-such a single at such-and-such a point, to wait for an album. I want to be left with the right not to think, to obey impulses without thinking if they're good for our career or not. Those questions shouldn't become important, because they aren't. If we continue to improve solely from the point of view of the songs, I don't see why we couldn't increase our audience. And again, I'm not being narrow-minded. I like bubblegum pop like Lush, I like the idea of a hit single and even though I'm not thinking about it now, maybe I'll write one later. The crucial question has to do with the possibility of having your music heard. I'm still convinced that if people had access to our records, a large portion of them would like us. And besides, we don't have much in common with other groups at the moment, except some American bands with similar ideas and the same motivation, such as Pavement or Beat Happening".
Is the simplicity also a way of battling the rock 'n' roll myth?
"I have no sympathy for rock and its mythology at all. We have nothing to do with that. Fortunately, things are looser these days. The myth of rock 'n' roll doesn't concern us - we just want the excitement of the music while ignoring the extras that are just hot air. They're cliches like the groups that play on them. I've always hated bands that were purely rock, that's why I like the Beach Boys. Are they rock, the band that explored everything that could be done with melodies? Okay, so they were manipulated puppets, a product of the entertainment industry, but all the groups of early sixties were. They were also melodic geniuses, brilliant singers. Brian Wilson is the best songwriter of the last fifty years. His music has always been exciting and inventive by nature - that's what I aspire to, that people are touched by my music as I was by his. In the case of the Beach Boys, their music is enough for me - I don't care about their political opinions, their mysteries and the myth, if there is one. What I hate most of all is the Doors type of myth which uses an old trick: getting a conditioned response from people. The way groups like Verve do it: a bit of Jim Morrison and a bit of Mick Jagger in the leader's attitude and you manipulate the public. Everything's prefabricated, the music is made to correspond to a stereotype. I don't want that with Stereolab - I don't want to calculate the impact of our music".
Malcolm was a marxist
"I've always gone to gigs since I was 14. The first was the Buzzcocks. That gave me a passion for records and music. That was in '78, you had the Buzzcocks and the punk explosion. I was attracted by records as objects and I bought tons of them. That first step logically pushed me towards playing myself. So I began by collecting records before learning to play guitar with friends at school. We couldn't be happy anymore just listening to music passively, we had to make our own to recreate the excitement, the emotion we got from records by the Swell Maps, Throbbing Gristle and the first Rough Trade singles".
Weren't you too shy as a teenager to have that social behaviour?
"Not particularly. Well, I was a bit more shy than now, but we had a little group of good friends at that school with the same musical tastes. On the other hand, we didn't socialise with kids who didn't like the same music as us - music organised our affinities. It's true that I lacked sociability towards people, but with my real friends I was very sociable. With Malcolm Eden, we discovered our areas of common interest and then our differences: he liked the Sex Pistols and the Clash; with me it was more the Buzzcocks. Our friendship was sealed through music. He decided to start a band and I was the drummer at first but he very quickly asked me to play guitar and taught me a few chords. In the beginning it was his group. We played covers, the first few Buzzcocks singles and the whole first album by the Clash, except for "Police and Thieves" because we couldn't manage to imitate the reggae tempo (laughs)...That lasted a few years, then Malcolm went to university. Then I started a cassette label and I began to write my own music. When he came back in '85, we really began McCarthy".
What was the role of political motivation in creating the group?
"That came from Malcolm. He's always been attracted to political battles, but when he came back from university it had become hardcore. Right from the start of McCarthy, the songs were very political. We didn't begin by writing about subjects appropriate to our age such as relationships between boys and girls. Malcolm had political ideals and he influenced me quite a bit. but since he wrote all the lyrics, he was the only one who put the political commitment into the band. I wrote the music and it was only through that that I was interested in rebellion, which had been revealed to me by the punk movement, by the first Clash album, by Crass and Flux of Pink Indians. Malcolm was a Marxist whereas I was just a plain old rebel, a slightly anarchistic teenager and not a communist at all".
Were the politics too hard for the other band members to stand?
"It was natural for us. Even though punk had ended long ago when we began, it hung around like a scent. I think that at the beginning, we weren't really understood and most people who liked us weren't interested in what we were saying, even though that changed a bit after that. They just liked our pop music. As for the papers, they didn't pay the slightest attention to what we were saying. It was a bit difficult being judged by people who thought we were fun and poppy without bothering with the words and the details. We were put in the same basket as Billy Bragg and the Redskins whereas we had nothing in common with them. That bothered us and we were frustrated at being misunderstood, but it was never cause for weariness when it came to playing our music".
The image of McCarthy that remains is really one of a band for students.
"That wasn't entirely the case. We had a lot of students in our audience, but also younger people. The fact that we never had a hit or any airplay, except from John Peel, means that a lot of people didn't have the chance to hear us. At the same time, a lot of bands that weren't as good, on a strictly musical level, had a share of success that we didn't deserve, probably because they were thoughtless and dull. We were also condemned for making bad punk and shouting our political points of view instead of singing them to real melodies. But we wanted to make interesting music with a bit of spirit and depth. Our formula was unheard of - it wasn't the Redskins' shouting or Billy Bragg's manifestos at the time. And we weren't singing to the converted - a lot of people only came to our shows because they liked pop and could have a critical point of view on Malcolm's lyrics. That's what we wanted, what encouraged us".
What caused the band to split in '89 then?
"When the last album came out, Malcolm told us he didn't want to make any more music because the record was brilliant. Which was the best thing we did, so it was the right time to stop. He also hated gigs, life on tour - he only enjoyed the studio and he wanted to write. The song format was no longer enough for him. I thought it was a good decision since I wanted to express my ideas in a different way. We'd begun to have a good fan base, but in Malcolm's view especially, the misunderstanding of the press, and therefore of a section of the public, was very frustrating. He was disillusioned, perhaps because he thought the music was too important, or that it was listened to more than his lyrics in any case. How many interviews did we give without our political point of view and our lyrics being raised? How many did we refuse or cut short because the conversation kept turning to stupid generalities? Everything was brought down to a distressing level, as if people thought pop music should be reduced to trivial things".
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