Thursday,
5th June, 2002 10:00
The Bees buzz at Rock Island |
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| Paul
Butler of The Bees |
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The
Isle of Wight festival was a gig on home ground for The Bees. BBC
Southampton's Stephen Stafford caught up with lead singer Paul Butler
in the hospitality tent shortly after their Rock Island appearance. |
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Well
Paul, how was it?
I really enjoyed it today - it was the first festival we've done.
I think it went alright - it's funny on stage because it's so quick
on and off, but I enjoyed it.
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| The Bees |
What
does it mean to you to be playing at the Isle of Wight festival?
It's the first one in 32 years, although it's not like the old festivals.
The last one was at Afton Down in front of 100,000 people and this
is in the middle of Newport, so it's slightly different, but it's
still good.
How important for the Island's music scene is the festival?
You can't say it's not good. Hopefully it'll happen next year and
hopefully we'll start being more on the music tour 'cos no other bands
normally come down here. So it's got to be a good thing, it's got
to be positive.
As a band you've stayed on the Isle of Wight, why have you not
moved to London or one of the other 'music' cities?
Well that's where a thousand other bands are trying to make it as
well. It doesn't really matter where you are to write music which
is the important bit, and the Isle of Wight's a very nice place to
write music.
What do you like about it?
It's really peaceful, it's just a really mellow place with not a lot
going on. If we want to go out for a night, we go up to London. It's
home isn't it?- I love it.
Tell
us a bit about the evolution of the band over the years.
Well, the first thing was New Riff, which was just me. Then Exploding
Thumbs which was me and Aaron, and then we started recruiting a bigger
band. It was a 12-piece doing Afrobeat, funk and that kind of thing
and then we started writing vocal music. That's where we're at now
with The Bees which have been going for two or three years.
Where do you get your ideas from?
Just quality music from the 70s and before. Because we don't have
bands coming down here, we're totally separated from it, so we just
pick and choose what we want to listen to - soul, reggae, old funk
- that's the kind of music that we're totally into.
Do you do much traveling, because there are quite a lot of 'world'
influences in there?
No, I never have really. We just find these bands that we're really
into - little funk sevens and loads of reggae, jazz and allsorts really
- we just pick out the best music.
How pleased are you about the reaction to 'Sunshine Hit Me'?
Yeah, pretty pleased, I don't really think about it much 'cos we've
got to write another one now. Mark and Lard were brilliant, the way
they raved about it - we like Mark and Lard!
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| The
Bees at Rock Island |
Is
writing the next album harder than doing the first one?
It could be, in some respects, you can't tell. Nothing is premeditated
in terms of what we do. We've just got a new studio so we're going
to set up in that and give it a crack. But there's lots of live gigging
throughout this year, then we'll knuckle down to some recording.
Who else are you looking forward to seeing here?
I'd like to see what The Coral are doing - they're a sound bunch of
people and have been good mates for about six years.
How do you keep yourselves amused on the tour bus?
We have a laugh with the bus drivers really. We had a really funny
guy on a week's tour in Germany recently!
What mobile phone ringtones do you have?
I don't have a mobile but Paul's got one that he put in which plays
along in time to any other tune.
And you're off supporting Macey Gray from tomorrow - looking forward
to that?
Eh..yeah...in a way...we're going to be playing at really big venues
and we've never done anything like that, I hope it goes ok.
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