Monday, 2 February, 2004 17:20
Jackson United interview |
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| Chris
Shiflett |
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Foo
Fighters guitarist, Chris Shiflett brought his side project Jackson
United to The Joiners on Friday - BBC Southampton's Indy Almroth-Wright
caught up with him before the gig. |
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Why
did you decide to branch out from The Foo Fighters?
I just had a bunch of song ideas that I wanted to record and I had
the opportunity to do it.
Why Jackson?
It's an old nickname of mine. When I started it was just me and I
didn't want to call it something like The Shiflett Experience! I had
to give it some kind of name. Actually we're not going to be called
Jackson anymore, we're going to be called Jackson United because we
couldn't copyright Jackson.
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| Cary
Lascalla |
Did
you find that people had an expectation of you?
Yeah, people that either knew me from bands before may have thought
it would be more punk rock and people who know me from The Foo Fighters
probably thought it would be heavier. A lot of people have come up
to me on this tour and said: " I didn't know what to expect,
I didn't think I was gonna like it but I had a really good time."
So that's cool.
It must be hard to be starting out again on your own...
It seems like everything we've done - like a tour like this is the
whole opposite experience to touring with The Foo Fighters, it's totally
different. But most of the kids that are coming to see us haven't
even heard our music and are only coming out of their interest in
The Foo Fighters, so in that sense it's intertwined.
It must be a bit strange playing at small venues like The Joiners
again...
I played places like this for years, it's been kind of surprising
how easy it's been for me to fall back into touring around in a van,
staying in crap hotels and playing at little places like this, it's
fun.
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| Doug
Sangalang |
Was
your first gig as Jackson scary?
Yeah! It was terrifying because that was in L.A. at this little bar
and all my friends showed up, some of my family showed up, Dave (Grohl)
and Nate (Mendel) from The Foos and our manager showed up. There was
a lot of friends in a little bar and we were so horrendous too, it
was really bad! It was a fun way to do it, but I hate playing in L.A.
I live there so it's the worst place for me to play, you know all
your friends are going to be there so it's just embarrassing. It's
so much easier to just come out and be on the road.
Is it harder playing a massive stadium or a small gig like this where
you can see the audience?
It makes me more nervous playing shows like this because you're so
much closer to people and when you **** up it's a lot more noticeable.
When you're playing a gig in a huge venue nobody knows what you're
actually doing, I could be playing the wrong chords half the time
and could get away with it!
How would you describe Jackson United's sound?
I'm never very good at describing our music, we're basically a rock
n' roll band with influences of punk, but I wouldn't call us a punk
rock band by any stretch of the imagination.
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| Chris
in action |
I
noticed that the Jackson United logo is similar to Arsenal Football
Club's...
Yeah, I like Arsenal, so I stole the logo but it's really funny because
we get more comments about that over here. In the States nobody has
any idea, but over here people think it's either the greatest thing
or they hate it.
Where do you see Jackson going?
We have a whole record ready to go - right now we're trying to figure
out who's going to put it out, so that's the short-term goal and I'd
like to just keep touring. I want to tour with this up until I go
on tour with The Foo Fighters which won't be won't be until next year
because it'll be a while before we get a new Foo Fighters record together. |
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BBC Southampton Website
Broadcasting House,
Havelock Road,
Southampton
SO14 7PU
(+44) 023 80 374370/1/2
southampton@bbc.co.uk
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