At a time when most of their mid-90's British peers (Oasis, Blur, the Verve) have splintered or diminished, Supergrass have persevered with their original lineup still intact, and released a new record, Life On Other Planets -- again displaying the deceptively casual virtuosity and endearing charm that has pushed their previous records, I Should Coco, In It For the Money, and their eponymous third album, to platinum status. Life On Other Planets finds Supergrass, consisting of vocalist and lead guitarist Gaz Coombes, bassist and backup-vocalist Mickey Quinn, drummer Danny Goffey, and new member, keyboardist Robert Coombes, returning to a more whimsical feel, showing echoes of the Kinks, T.Rex, and the Rolling Stones, after the often weary and introspective Supergrass album. While they have always worn their influences proudly, it would be a mistake to dismiss Supergrass as mere purveyors of the recycled glories of greater bands past; for their songwriting reveals a subtle understanding of the makings of good pop music, and above all, the sheer joy of playing it.
Mickey was an hour and a half late calling the Friday afternoon we spoke, but when he did he introduced himself politely:
Mickey Quinn: Keith, it's Mickey. I'm from Supergrass.
Keith Daniels: Hey man! How long do you have?
MQ: About half an hour.
KD: You guys have been at South by Southwest. Seen anybody good?
MQ: No, we're off to South by Southwest tomorrow, yeah. Today we're in Dallas.
KD: I noticed that you thank Carl Sagan in the liner notes on this record.
MQ: Oh yeah.
KD: Did he inspire the title or the vibe of the album?
MQ: Yeah, I think to an extent. We managed to get 'hold of a Carl Sagan Cosmos series while we were making the record and we sortof put an hour in, in the morning, watching an episode of Carl Sagan. It did have an influence on the album. I think we're all interested in space exploration, because it's sortof the last thing of hope that the human race has got in a lot of ways isn't it? There's a lot of hope in the space race.
KD: Where were you when you found out about the Columbia?
MQ: I was actually in an electrical shop, a lot of TVs in front of me, like about fifty TVs with the Columbia disaster happening, but there was no sound. It took me about five minutes to work out what was going on. It's pretty shocking, I mean, I can remember the Challenger blowing up as well, years ago, and I can even remember the first shuttle launch really well. I can remember running in from the garden and seeing the countdown for the first shuttle launch. So I've always had me eye on it basically.
KD: Did you read a lot of science-fiction when you were growing up?
MQ: Not particularly, no. I'm sortof less interested in science-fiction, because I think the real thing's a lot weirder, basically. When you realize that you can actually bend time and space when you enter a black hole, for real, that's probably more head-fuckin' than readin' science fiction. Know what I mean?
KD: Why did you guys make the switch from Capitol to Island?
MQ: I dunno, I guess we just weren't happy with Capitol. I don't think they were interested in our band from the start. We basically got signed onto that label as a default, because that was just the English record label. I don't think they were ever really interested in our band, or what we were about, or promoting us in any way. They were sortof wasting our time completely, so we thought we'd just sign to a label that would perhaps appreciate us a bit more and try and promote us.
KD: Has it been working out that way for you?
MQ: Entirely. I think the fact that on the last record, the first time we come out to America we did four TV appearances, and we'd never been on TV in America before. We'd done about ten tours before on Capitol and they'd never secured one TV spot. Sortof said it all really. They could be working a lot harder for us, basically.
KD: You guys were on Conan O'Brien the other night.
MQ: Yeah, that's the second time we've done it, and we were missing out all those slots when we were signed to Capitol. Y'know, it's just good fun doing a TV program. People get to see what we're like live and lots of people in America [don't] get to see that very often from our band.
KD: What do you think about the The Stone Roses getting back together?
MQ: Ooh, that's the first I've heard of it. Is this new news?
KD: Well, I was reading it in New Music Express. I was really surprised.
MQ: I dunno, it'll be interesting to see what happens. I'm not sure that they'll be able to touch that first record again, but they're still interesting individuals.
KD: I think Ian's up to something.
MQ: Ian Brown? Yeah, I think they're all interesting people and they've all done really good stuff in the meantime, Reni has just disappeared I guess, but they're all interesting people in their own right. They're a hell of a lot more interesting than a lot of other bands out there, so whatever they do's gotta be good really.
KD: This album, not necessarily the music, but lyrically, is a lot more upbeat than your previous record. What has changed for you since the last one?
MQ: I dunno if it's all changed since the last one. I think it's, I dunno, a bit more optimistic I guess, or more outward looking. I dunno if since the last record was more pessimistic, I think that we just... It's just a personal thing I guess. It's all sorts of things that get you into that head state. I couldn't put my finger on why this one's more outward looking, or the last one was more introverted. It might be that having a producer allowed us to sortof relax and look outward more, or it could be we're just better off. We're in a more happy position with our record company. All sorts of things, I dunno.
KD: That's right, you produced the last one yourselves. What was different about working with somebody else?
MQ: Yeah. Well, like I said it allows you to relax a bit more since you don't have to concentrate. In other ways it made more tense, I mean, we had to sortof explain or justify a lot of the stuff that we did in the studio. I guess what we were looking for was a change in environment, or a change of formulas for making a record. We'd basically done the previous two and fallen into a very comfortable routine. Getting a new producer sortof shook it up a bit, and that's what we were after. Y'know, you gain and you lose I guess.
KD: What I'd like to do next is go track by track on the new album, and if you could talk a little bit about each song: what the influences were, what the recording process was, how you wrote it. Do you have time for that?
MQ: Yeah I could go for that.
KD: "Za"
MQ: It started off as a little riff that Danny had on the piano, and I wrote that driving in from Gallatown one day listening to it, and just hearing this riff. It just occurred to me that it was completely a circular riff; as the keyboard was ascending the bass was rising and then [they'd] swap over and create a perfect circle, basically. I guess the influences on it were more electronic. It gets quoted a lot that it sounds a lot like T.Rex, but the influences on it were more Brian Eno and Kraftwerk, electronic stuff. We were under a lot of pressure when we put down the backing track for that track to just cover it in vocal lines and make it a proper song. We really had to resist it quite heavily 'cuz we really wanted to make it a semi-instrumental to open the record with, and to make it more of a statement, or an art piece, than another hit single, which is what they wanted to turn it into.
KD: The structure of that song is unusual because it doesn't really have a chorus.
MQ: Well they were desperate to turn that into a chorus, and sortof make it a big hit pop song. It was about the only time I remember our management started thinking they were o'er it, basically, and at the end of the day we had to tell 'em to fuck off. ((laughs))
KD: "Rush Hour Soul"
MQ: This is probably the canon of... this is more Gaz's song than anyone else's I think. I remember he went off and did a bedroom demo of it, just on his own on a four-track, which he does quite a lot. Just came in with it one day and we all sortof worked it all out. I think the breakdown section in the middle of it just came right off the floor, basically, which is what happens when we all play it together. I kindof liked it. I like the guitar riff at the front of it, it reminds me of early '50s rock'n'roll. Really straight ((imitates the main riff)), like an old surf song or something, and we just tried to heavy it up a bit. It turned it into a sortof '50s rockabilly meets the Stooges. Also it's got tons of Led Zeppelin in the choruses, quite transcendent, almost folky, but lyrically it could be anyone. I don't know what Gaz is on about there.
KD: That one has the surprise, where you think it's over and then...
MQ: I guess it's just a reprise, really, you have to come back out of the spacey section. In formal structure, the breakdown bit would be our middle eight, and you'd need to come back to another chorus, but it ended up as a reprise.
KD: "Seen the Light"
MQ: "Seen the Light" probably started off as one of Danny's songs, and again it's a huge T.Rex quote at the top of that, but I think the original influence to Danny on writin' that was Bob Dylan. You sortof heard much more of a Bob Dylan feel to it. A lot of influences went into it; playing it as a band. Bass line is quite souly, or R&B.
KD: Yeah. I was thinking "They owe T.Rex some royalties for this one."
MQ: Yeah, Tony Hoffer was definitely playing Electric Warrior while we were actually producing this track, and that's one of the points that I don't really like doing. We were vaguely aware that there was a T.Rex feel to it, in terms of influences when we were actually writing it, but I never really like pushing those buttons too far because it's completely pointless. I think that's maybe one of the times when Tony could've pushed it a bit too far, and it's down to basically the vocal sound. There's two points where Gaz holds 'em out and wobbles it, and that to me just gives the game away. It says T.Rex, instantly, but it's a lot more of an interesting song than that for me. There were elements to it... it's got some 'Stones on it as well... We used very strange electronic sounds on the chorus to sortof modernize it, and there's all these elements that are kindof lost in the production because you've instantly got this T.Rex sound on the vocals.
KD: ...and the guitar following the melody. The kindof buzz ((imitates))...
MQ: Yeah, I think I'd left the studio at that stage ((laughs)), but I really don't like pushin' it on one influence. There's a website [ed.--no clue] we've got where the demos are available, and in it's pure form it's a lot more interesting and varied in influence.
KD: "Brecon Beacons"
MQ: Who wrote this...? I can't remember. I know for sure that this is one of the tracks where me and Gaz swapped on bass and guitar. So the beautiful bass line on it is all Gaz's work, and I did the chopping sortof Talking Heads guitar on it. Lyrically, that was probably the one that came out the most interesting, the most accomplished, and it all evolved from Danny nicking down to the pub at lunchtime and getting completely smashed with Reese Evans, which is one of his mates. They came up with this incredibly convoluted story about a coven of witches in the Brecon Beacons whose daughter's been murdered. One of the witches' daughter's been murdered by a policeman who consequently covered it up, and the coven of witches were gonna get retribution on this policeman and all the people in her village knew that it was going on and that something really shit was going to happen. So Danny came back from the pub with this incredibly convoluted story, and me and Gaz actually got it all to work in the song, and managed to fit in every single convoluted detail that Danny had come up with within the lyrics, and got it to rhyme and everything; so we were all quite chuffed at the end of the day.
KD: "Can't Get Up"
MQ: This probably actually came from Robert, Robert Coombes, Gaz's keyboard-playing brother and new member of Supergrass. He'd basically been kicking around these chords for about four or five years, and I think I sat at home one day and just came up with the melody line to the main chorus bit, and just banged it together from there. I think Danny probably come up with the chords for the verse. This is probably one of the few tracks that's a real hark back to the previous album. We were listening to a lot more soul records when we did the previous record, a lot of Curtis Mayfield and stuff like that. It's definitely a nod back towards that kind of stuff on the record.
KD: That's one of the things I miss. There's no good soul music anymore.
MQ: Yeah, what can you do? I think people had to have a lot of talent to put those soul records out, and talent gets left by the wayside a lot nowadays. Particularly in soul. Y'know, they're just after a different thing. There doesn't seem to be that purity in people who are now there to perform, but yeah, it's kindof sad.
KD: "Evening of the Day"
MQ: This is one of my little babies. I guess it's a real throwaway song. To me it's just a souped-up B-side really. It's one of those songs that was written completely in France on the period when we went off to write. I just had some nice chords, basically, and I was out looking over the Mediterranean and kindof missin' me girlfriend a little bit, and just wrote it in about two minutes. That's about it, really.
KD: Was that one part from "Spinal Tap"?
MQ: Partly, yeah, part of the lyrics were inspired by it. That's why it's so throwaway. Again, if I was expecting it to be more than a B-side I probably would've sat down and done the lyrics properly, but as it happened they wanted to track it on in the album order so I was bound to it. When I was writing it I was definitely thinking "Oh this is just a throwaway B-side" so I didn't spend that long getting the lyrics really good. So yeah, sadly it is.
KD: How accurate is that movie?
MQ: It's pretty fucking right a lot of the time. In fact yesterday we were in Memphis and we went to see the king ((laughs)), and we were sitting 'round the grave and Gaz was looking really miserable and I was just laughin' at 'em, thinking "When are you going to start breaking out into song?" Pretty much every day I can see something very Spinal Tap ((laughs)).
KD: It'd be weird to have your dad buried in the backyard.
MQ: Yeah, I guess so, but I suppose if you were dead as well it wouldn't matter would it really? ((laughs))
KD: "Never Done Nothing Like That Before"
MQ: This is a really old riff that I'd written maybe about five or six years ago. It was one when we were in the last stages of pre-production before the record, and again I saw it as a sortof souped-up B-side or whatever, and we banged it down in a day and it just all worked beautifully. I remember we pretty much wrote the middle eight on the spot that day. I think I semi-borrowed the chords from "Funniest Thing" for the middle eight. It was just like a perfect track to bang it down really quickly, expecting it to be a B-side, and it ended up a lot better than you thought it would. It's my favorite track on the album.
KD: That one has the most overt punk influence on it.
MQ: Yeah. That's kindof right up my alley. That's what I'm into.
KD: What are some of your favorite punk records?
MQ: I dunno, punk bands I think... it's pretty loose really. I'm quite into the Stranglers. I obviously like the Buzzcocks, Sex Pistols, it's just a bit pretty much all of them. Whether you actually enjoy sitting down and listening to it ((laughs)) is up to you, but I dunno, there's so many good records out there. I really like the looseness to it. It's just a good short record.
KD: "Funniest Thing"
MQ: This is another one of Gaz's four-track bedroom demos, where he pretty much came out with this track fully formed. We always give him a hand with the lyrics, but musically he's great at going off and creating sortof pocket symphonies on his four-track. We just basically worked out his parts and put them down again. I couldn't say where it's coming from. There's a term that we all use, it's a really obscure one, but it's "Hitchhiker's Guide". The theme music to the "Hitchhiker's Guide [To the Galaxy]" TV series has got this particular emotiveness that me and Gaz really understand that's within this track. It was also on the title track to In It For Money. It's really difficult to describe, but it contains this emotion that me and Gaz've got no other way of describing, but we always know what we're on about. ((laughs)) As soon as he said it I knew what he was after.
KD: I'll have to look that up, because I can't think of that theme.
MQ: I can't explain it, and you probably won't get it even if you saw the bit of music, but it's this weird acoustic electricness to it. Sortof electronic but with a folk influence to it, it's very odd, but it always got shivers up our spines.
KD: "Grace" That's the single right now?
MQ: This is the single that came out in England--the first single we put out there. It's kindof, again this is a throwaway track from Danny. I think he'd just been banging around with these chords or whatever, and it's probably the demo that I'm least involved in. I was away for the day when they did it, but I remember coming back and tracking the bass on it - playing on the fifth on the bass to make it a bit more interesting. Lyrically it's pretty throwaway, which is sad, the music's quite dark, reminds me of the Stranglers, it's quite a dark track, and the lyrics are a throwaway about Chris Difford -- who owns the studio we were working in. His daughter used to come home from school and mess around the studio; so I guess the lyrics are about her. I always get disappointed that our lyrics could be a bit darker and sum up the music a bit better I guess.
KD: "LA Song"
MQ: Again, there's quite a Stranglers influence on this. I sortof went to town a bit on the lyrics. If I went into it they'd come across as highly pretentious. There's a lot of weird left and right references. The Tower of Babel and Armageddon I guess. There's all sorts of weird stuff on it. Musically it's, again, quite punky when we play it live. Really sortof thrashing. I like the parts on it. There's good keyboard influences from Tony there, in the keyboard solo. [He] definitely went to town and tried to make the keyboard as wicked as possible.
KD: "Prophet 15"
MQ: This is probably the biggest Pink Floyd track on our album. There's also a lot of Can in there, because I'd been listening to a lot of Can when we were making the record. It's one that we actually wrote with Rob playing the bass and me playing the drums, and Danny and Gaz playing keyboard at the same time -- which is quite a nice combination. When we went into the studio Danny seemed to think my drumming wasn't good enough, so he kicked me off the drums so I winded up playing acoustic guitar on the track. Everyone else was playing what they wrote in, basically. It was just a really floating track, and we don't normally write tracks in that tempo with that sortof speed, and Danny doesn't normally play like that. That's my cheeky influence coming there on the drums. We had this sound on this Prophet keyboard, this floating, circular sound, and we just wanted the whole track to float around that sound, and I think we managed to do it. Lyrically, we wanted to get the same sort of feeling as the music. Basically, it's kindof a Jacob's Ladder concept to the lyrics, being dead but not actually realizing that you're dead, and you're actually meeting strange people wherever people go when they die, and being freaked out by it - not realizing that you were actually dead.
KD: "Run"
MQ: I think Gaz came up with the first section of the song, it's very Beach Boys, like a harmonium sound on it, which again he'd done on his four-track on his own and worked it all out. The second section, they were my chords or whatever, but they more influenced by stuff like Air and a sortof '50s French-pop sensibility. It ended up very Pink Floyd, in the end, through no choice of my own. It just seemed like a really good way of ending the record. It was one of the first that we recorded.
KD: How much care do you take with sequencing the tracks?
MQ: Oh one Hell of a lot of care. I think we ended up with about three short lists of the track order. There were some really obvious ones, like "Run" had to finish the record, and I really pushed for "Never Done Nothing" opening at first, because we still programmed and sequenced it throwing away a B-side, so the second side had to open with "Never Done Nothing Like That Before". We really spend a lot of time working out the track order and how that's going to affect people emotionally. Technically, we're playing two songs in the same key after one another. I think "LA Song" is in a C Sharp key, which is very unusual, takes a lot of messing around to put that track next to something else without it sounding very odd.
KD: The end of "Run" and the beginning of "Za" have the same chord progression...
MQ: Yeah. Well, there's two pieces, one at the end and one at the beginning, and they're basically the same piece of music. That piece of music was called "Life on Other Planets" which was one of the jam sessions that existed from a demo session we did and that's what gave the name to the album. We wanted to bookend our record with the two halves of "Life on Other Planets".
KD: If they X-rayed your skull today, what would they see?
MQ: Probably pretty much the same as the last album cover. That was only three years ago I think. I guess it's got a little bit bigger. ((laughs))
KD: This is your fourth album. Some people might think you were trying to make a career out of this sortof thing.
MQ: Yeah, I guess we are. I think, I dunno, we just haven't lost interest, yet, enough to not make any more. I think when we do we'll start making really bad records and then we'll just give up. I think as long we've still got enough enthusiasm to make good records we'll keep makin' 'em.
For more information visit the Supergrass site Strangeones.com.
by Keith Daniels
Mickey was an hour and a half late calling the Friday afternoon we spoke, but when he did he introduced himself politely:
Mickey Quinn: Keith, it's Mickey. I'm from Supergrass.
Keith Daniels: Hey man! How long do you have?
MQ: About half an hour.
KD: You guys have been at South by Southwest. Seen anybody good?
MQ: No, we're off to South by Southwest tomorrow, yeah. Today we're in Dallas.
KD: I noticed that you thank Carl Sagan in the liner notes on this record.
MQ: Oh yeah.
KD: Did he inspire the title or the vibe of the album?
MQ: Yeah, I think to an extent. We managed to get 'hold of a Carl Sagan Cosmos series while we were making the record and we sortof put an hour in, in the morning, watching an episode of Carl Sagan. It did have an influence on the album. I think we're all interested in space exploration, because it's sortof the last thing of hope that the human race has got in a lot of ways isn't it? There's a lot of hope in the space race.
KD: Where were you when you found out about the Columbia?
MQ: I was actually in an electrical shop, a lot of TVs in front of me, like about fifty TVs with the Columbia disaster happening, but there was no sound. It took me about five minutes to work out what was going on. It's pretty shocking, I mean, I can remember the Challenger blowing up as well, years ago, and I can even remember the first shuttle launch really well. I can remember running in from the garden and seeing the countdown for the first shuttle launch. So I've always had me eye on it basically.
KD: Did you read a lot of science-fiction when you were growing up?
MQ: Not particularly, no. I'm sortof less interested in science-fiction, because I think the real thing's a lot weirder, basically. When you realize that you can actually bend time and space when you enter a black hole, for real, that's probably more head-fuckin' than readin' science fiction. Know what I mean?
KD: Why did you guys make the switch from Capitol to Island?
MQ: I dunno, I guess we just weren't happy with Capitol. I don't think they were interested in our band from the start. We basically got signed onto that label as a default, because that was just the English record label. I don't think they were ever really interested in our band, or what we were about, or promoting us in any way. They were sortof wasting our time completely, so we thought we'd just sign to a label that would perhaps appreciate us a bit more and try and promote us.
KD: Has it been working out that way for you?
MQ: Entirely. I think the fact that on the last record, the first time we come out to America we did four TV appearances, and we'd never been on TV in America before. We'd done about ten tours before on Capitol and they'd never secured one TV spot. Sortof said it all really. They could be working a lot harder for us, basically.
KD: You guys were on Conan O'Brien the other night.
MQ: Yeah, that's the second time we've done it, and we were missing out all those slots when we were signed to Capitol. Y'know, it's just good fun doing a TV program. People get to see what we're like live and lots of people in America [don't] get to see that very often from our band.
KD: What do you think about the The Stone Roses getting back together?
MQ: Ooh, that's the first I've heard of it. Is this new news?
KD: Well, I was reading it in New Music Express. I was really surprised.
MQ: I dunno, it'll be interesting to see what happens. I'm not sure that they'll be able to touch that first record again, but they're still interesting individuals.
KD: I think Ian's up to something.
MQ: Ian Brown? Yeah, I think they're all interesting people and they've all done really good stuff in the meantime, Reni has just disappeared I guess, but they're all interesting people in their own right. They're a hell of a lot more interesting than a lot of other bands out there, so whatever they do's gotta be good really.
KD: This album, not necessarily the music, but lyrically, is a lot more upbeat than your previous record. What has changed for you since the last one?
MQ: I dunno if it's all changed since the last one. I think it's, I dunno, a bit more optimistic I guess, or more outward looking. I dunno if since the last record was more pessimistic, I think that we just... It's just a personal thing I guess. It's all sorts of things that get you into that head state. I couldn't put my finger on why this one's more outward looking, or the last one was more introverted. It might be that having a producer allowed us to sortof relax and look outward more, or it could be we're just better off. We're in a more happy position with our record company. All sorts of things, I dunno.
KD: That's right, you produced the last one yourselves. What was different about working with somebody else?
MQ: Yeah. Well, like I said it allows you to relax a bit more since you don't have to concentrate. In other ways it made more tense, I mean, we had to sortof explain or justify a lot of the stuff that we did in the studio. I guess what we were looking for was a change in environment, or a change of formulas for making a record. We'd basically done the previous two and fallen into a very comfortable routine. Getting a new producer sortof shook it up a bit, and that's what we were after. Y'know, you gain and you lose I guess.
KD: What I'd like to do next is go track by track on the new album, and if you could talk a little bit about each song: what the influences were, what the recording process was, how you wrote it. Do you have time for that?
MQ: Yeah I could go for that.
KD: "Za"
MQ: It started off as a little riff that Danny had on the piano, and I wrote that driving in from Gallatown one day listening to it, and just hearing this riff. It just occurred to me that it was completely a circular riff; as the keyboard was ascending the bass was rising and then [they'd] swap over and create a perfect circle, basically. I guess the influences on it were more electronic. It gets quoted a lot that it sounds a lot like T.Rex, but the influences on it were more Brian Eno and Kraftwerk, electronic stuff. We were under a lot of pressure when we put down the backing track for that track to just cover it in vocal lines and make it a proper song. We really had to resist it quite heavily 'cuz we really wanted to make it a semi-instrumental to open the record with, and to make it more of a statement, or an art piece, than another hit single, which is what they wanted to turn it into.
KD: The structure of that song is unusual because it doesn't really have a chorus.
MQ: Well they were desperate to turn that into a chorus, and sortof make it a big hit pop song. It was about the only time I remember our management started thinking they were o'er it, basically, and at the end of the day we had to tell 'em to fuck off. ((laughs))
KD: "Rush Hour Soul"
MQ: This is probably the canon of... this is more Gaz's song than anyone else's I think. I remember he went off and did a bedroom demo of it, just on his own on a four-track, which he does quite a lot. Just came in with it one day and we all sortof worked it all out. I think the breakdown section in the middle of it just came right off the floor, basically, which is what happens when we all play it together. I kindof liked it. I like the guitar riff at the front of it, it reminds me of early '50s rock'n'roll. Really straight ((imitates the main riff)), like an old surf song or something, and we just tried to heavy it up a bit. It turned it into a sortof '50s rockabilly meets the Stooges. Also it's got tons of Led Zeppelin in the choruses, quite transcendent, almost folky, but lyrically it could be anyone. I don't know what Gaz is on about there.
KD: That one has the surprise, where you think it's over and then...
MQ: I guess it's just a reprise, really, you have to come back out of the spacey section. In formal structure, the breakdown bit would be our middle eight, and you'd need to come back to another chorus, but it ended up as a reprise.
KD: "Seen the Light"
MQ: "Seen the Light" probably started off as one of Danny's songs, and again it's a huge T.Rex quote at the top of that, but I think the original influence to Danny on writin' that was Bob Dylan. You sortof heard much more of a Bob Dylan feel to it. A lot of influences went into it; playing it as a band. Bass line is quite souly, or R&B.
KD: Yeah. I was thinking "They owe T.Rex some royalties for this one."
MQ: Yeah, Tony Hoffer was definitely playing Electric Warrior while we were actually producing this track, and that's one of the points that I don't really like doing. We were vaguely aware that there was a T.Rex feel to it, in terms of influences when we were actually writing it, but I never really like pushing those buttons too far because it's completely pointless. I think that's maybe one of the times when Tony could've pushed it a bit too far, and it's down to basically the vocal sound. There's two points where Gaz holds 'em out and wobbles it, and that to me just gives the game away. It says T.Rex, instantly, but it's a lot more of an interesting song than that for me. There were elements to it... it's got some 'Stones on it as well... We used very strange electronic sounds on the chorus to sortof modernize it, and there's all these elements that are kindof lost in the production because you've instantly got this T.Rex sound on the vocals.
KD: ...and the guitar following the melody. The kindof buzz ((imitates))...
MQ: Yeah, I think I'd left the studio at that stage ((laughs)), but I really don't like pushin' it on one influence. There's a website [ed.--no clue] we've got where the demos are available, and in it's pure form it's a lot more interesting and varied in influence.
KD: "Brecon Beacons"
MQ: Who wrote this...? I can't remember. I know for sure that this is one of the tracks where me and Gaz swapped on bass and guitar. So the beautiful bass line on it is all Gaz's work, and I did the chopping sortof Talking Heads guitar on it. Lyrically, that was probably the one that came out the most interesting, the most accomplished, and it all evolved from Danny nicking down to the pub at lunchtime and getting completely smashed with Reese Evans, which is one of his mates. They came up with this incredibly convoluted story about a coven of witches in the Brecon Beacons whose daughter's been murdered. One of the witches' daughter's been murdered by a policeman who consequently covered it up, and the coven of witches were gonna get retribution on this policeman and all the people in her village knew that it was going on and that something really shit was going to happen. So Danny came back from the pub with this incredibly convoluted story, and me and Gaz actually got it all to work in the song, and managed to fit in every single convoluted detail that Danny had come up with within the lyrics, and got it to rhyme and everything; so we were all quite chuffed at the end of the day.
KD: "Can't Get Up"
MQ: This probably actually came from Robert, Robert Coombes, Gaz's keyboard-playing brother and new member of Supergrass. He'd basically been kicking around these chords for about four or five years, and I think I sat at home one day and just came up with the melody line to the main chorus bit, and just banged it together from there. I think Danny probably come up with the chords for the verse. This is probably one of the few tracks that's a real hark back to the previous album. We were listening to a lot more soul records when we did the previous record, a lot of Curtis Mayfield and stuff like that. It's definitely a nod back towards that kind of stuff on the record.
KD: That's one of the things I miss. There's no good soul music anymore.
MQ: Yeah, what can you do? I think people had to have a lot of talent to put those soul records out, and talent gets left by the wayside a lot nowadays. Particularly in soul. Y'know, they're just after a different thing. There doesn't seem to be that purity in people who are now there to perform, but yeah, it's kindof sad.
KD: "Evening of the Day"
MQ: This is one of my little babies. I guess it's a real throwaway song. To me it's just a souped-up B-side really. It's one of those songs that was written completely in France on the period when we went off to write. I just had some nice chords, basically, and I was out looking over the Mediterranean and kindof missin' me girlfriend a little bit, and just wrote it in about two minutes. That's about it, really.
KD: Was that one part from "Spinal Tap"?
MQ: Partly, yeah, part of the lyrics were inspired by it. That's why it's so throwaway. Again, if I was expecting it to be more than a B-side I probably would've sat down and done the lyrics properly, but as it happened they wanted to track it on in the album order so I was bound to it. When I was writing it I was definitely thinking "Oh this is just a throwaway B-side" so I didn't spend that long getting the lyrics really good. So yeah, sadly it is.
KD: How accurate is that movie?
MQ: It's pretty fucking right a lot of the time. In fact yesterday we were in Memphis and we went to see the king ((laughs)), and we were sitting 'round the grave and Gaz was looking really miserable and I was just laughin' at 'em, thinking "When are you going to start breaking out into song?" Pretty much every day I can see something very Spinal Tap ((laughs)).
KD: It'd be weird to have your dad buried in the backyard.
MQ: Yeah, I guess so, but I suppose if you were dead as well it wouldn't matter would it really? ((laughs))
KD: "Never Done Nothing Like That Before"
MQ: This is a really old riff that I'd written maybe about five or six years ago. It was one when we were in the last stages of pre-production before the record, and again I saw it as a sortof souped-up B-side or whatever, and we banged it down in a day and it just all worked beautifully. I remember we pretty much wrote the middle eight on the spot that day. I think I semi-borrowed the chords from "Funniest Thing" for the middle eight. It was just like a perfect track to bang it down really quickly, expecting it to be a B-side, and it ended up a lot better than you thought it would. It's my favorite track on the album.
KD: That one has the most overt punk influence on it.
MQ: Yeah. That's kindof right up my alley. That's what I'm into.
KD: What are some of your favorite punk records?
MQ: I dunno, punk bands I think... it's pretty loose really. I'm quite into the Stranglers. I obviously like the Buzzcocks, Sex Pistols, it's just a bit pretty much all of them. Whether you actually enjoy sitting down and listening to it ((laughs)) is up to you, but I dunno, there's so many good records out there. I really like the looseness to it. It's just a good short record.
KD: "Funniest Thing"
MQ: This is another one of Gaz's four-track bedroom demos, where he pretty much came out with this track fully formed. We always give him a hand with the lyrics, but musically he's great at going off and creating sortof pocket symphonies on his four-track. We just basically worked out his parts and put them down again. I couldn't say where it's coming from. There's a term that we all use, it's a really obscure one, but it's "Hitchhiker's Guide". The theme music to the "Hitchhiker's Guide [To the Galaxy]" TV series has got this particular emotiveness that me and Gaz really understand that's within this track. It was also on the title track to In It For Money. It's really difficult to describe, but it contains this emotion that me and Gaz've got no other way of describing, but we always know what we're on about. ((laughs)) As soon as he said it I knew what he was after.
KD: I'll have to look that up, because I can't think of that theme.
MQ: I can't explain it, and you probably won't get it even if you saw the bit of music, but it's this weird acoustic electricness to it. Sortof electronic but with a folk influence to it, it's very odd, but it always got shivers up our spines.
KD: "Grace" That's the single right now?
MQ: This is the single that came out in England--the first single we put out there. It's kindof, again this is a throwaway track from Danny. I think he'd just been banging around with these chords or whatever, and it's probably the demo that I'm least involved in. I was away for the day when they did it, but I remember coming back and tracking the bass on it - playing on the fifth on the bass to make it a bit more interesting. Lyrically it's pretty throwaway, which is sad, the music's quite dark, reminds me of the Stranglers, it's quite a dark track, and the lyrics are a throwaway about Chris Difford -- who owns the studio we were working in. His daughter used to come home from school and mess around the studio; so I guess the lyrics are about her. I always get disappointed that our lyrics could be a bit darker and sum up the music a bit better I guess.
KD: "LA Song"
MQ: Again, there's quite a Stranglers influence on this. I sortof went to town a bit on the lyrics. If I went into it they'd come across as highly pretentious. There's a lot of weird left and right references. The Tower of Babel and Armageddon I guess. There's all sorts of weird stuff on it. Musically it's, again, quite punky when we play it live. Really sortof thrashing. I like the parts on it. There's good keyboard influences from Tony there, in the keyboard solo. [He] definitely went to town and tried to make the keyboard as wicked as possible.
KD: "Prophet 15"
MQ: This is probably the biggest Pink Floyd track on our album. There's also a lot of Can in there, because I'd been listening to a lot of Can when we were making the record. It's one that we actually wrote with Rob playing the bass and me playing the drums, and Danny and Gaz playing keyboard at the same time -- which is quite a nice combination. When we went into the studio Danny seemed to think my drumming wasn't good enough, so he kicked me off the drums so I winded up playing acoustic guitar on the track. Everyone else was playing what they wrote in, basically. It was just a really floating track, and we don't normally write tracks in that tempo with that sortof speed, and Danny doesn't normally play like that. That's my cheeky influence coming there on the drums. We had this sound on this Prophet keyboard, this floating, circular sound, and we just wanted the whole track to float around that sound, and I think we managed to do it. Lyrically, we wanted to get the same sort of feeling as the music. Basically, it's kindof a Jacob's Ladder concept to the lyrics, being dead but not actually realizing that you're dead, and you're actually meeting strange people wherever people go when they die, and being freaked out by it - not realizing that you were actually dead.
KD: "Run"
MQ: I think Gaz came up with the first section of the song, it's very Beach Boys, like a harmonium sound on it, which again he'd done on his four-track on his own and worked it all out. The second section, they were my chords or whatever, but they more influenced by stuff like Air and a sortof '50s French-pop sensibility. It ended up very Pink Floyd, in the end, through no choice of my own. It just seemed like a really good way of ending the record. It was one of the first that we recorded.
KD: How much care do you take with sequencing the tracks?
MQ: Oh one Hell of a lot of care. I think we ended up with about three short lists of the track order. There were some really obvious ones, like "Run" had to finish the record, and I really pushed for "Never Done Nothing" opening at first, because we still programmed and sequenced it throwing away a B-side, so the second side had to open with "Never Done Nothing Like That Before". We really spend a lot of time working out the track order and how that's going to affect people emotionally. Technically, we're playing two songs in the same key after one another. I think "LA Song" is in a C Sharp key, which is very unusual, takes a lot of messing around to put that track next to something else without it sounding very odd.
KD: The end of "Run" and the beginning of "Za" have the same chord progression...
MQ: Yeah. Well, there's two pieces, one at the end and one at the beginning, and they're basically the same piece of music. That piece of music was called "Life on Other Planets" which was one of the jam sessions that existed from a demo session we did and that's what gave the name to the album. We wanted to bookend our record with the two halves of "Life on Other Planets".
KD: If they X-rayed your skull today, what would they see?
MQ: Probably pretty much the same as the last album cover. That was only three years ago I think. I guess it's got a little bit bigger. ((laughs))
KD: This is your fourth album. Some people might think you were trying to make a career out of this sortof thing.
MQ: Yeah, I guess we are. I think, I dunno, we just haven't lost interest, yet, enough to not make any more. I think when we do we'll start making really bad records and then we'll just give up. I think as long we've still got enough enthusiasm to make good records we'll keep makin' 'em.
For more information visit the Supergrass site Strangeones.com.
by Keith Daniels
VIEW 16 of 16 COMMENTS
lotus11:
one of the top bands, no question
hellocupcake:
they were on the clueless soundtrack, so this makes me happy 