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What
has taken up your time in between the last album, 'No More Shall We
Part', and this one?
Well, I wrote the new one - that's basically what I do. I mean, I
dream a lot, I go into my office and sit around. I just keep writing
all the time. I keep going into this place, this little room I have
and writing all the time. I'm kind of afraid to stop, really. To stop,
it takes such an effort to get going again - it's not really worth
it, I find. And I'm not one to reflect, so I just barrel onwards,
really. And I do hope that other things come my way in that time,
which they do - people ask me to do things and sometimes they're kind
of interesting, so I do them.
You've done some songs for movies, haven't you?
There was a song for a very beautiful French film called 'Travelling
Birds' - I don't know what it was called in French; that was a nice
song and an amazing film. I've done some others as well.
Two albums in less than three years suggests that at the moment
there is a healthy creative flow. Does it seem like that to you?
No, it never seems like that. It always feels really difficult - it
never feels very healthy. It's a lot of sitting around and hoping
something will come. I'm in that stage again of starting a new thing
and things are coming, but it's always really difficult
How did you record this album?
We recorded in seven days or something like that; learnt it and recorded
it and that was that, really. I think the idea was to take some of
the preciousness about the making of a record away and possibly create
records more like they did in the old days, which was a faster turnaround.
The process of making a record and promoting it and touring it is
so incredibly slow till it gets around to the next one, that I find
there's just too much time on my hands, really. The way I wrote this
record was to basically get the musical idea down and a set of lyrics,
then I threw it to the side of the piano and started a new one. and
I didn't really reflect on the songs at all, or bring them up again
or play them again. Once they were written, that was it., whereas
the record before - 'No More Shall We Part' - I had highly arranged
the whole thing before I went in, which inhibits the band. If something's
already kind of already complete and all they have to do is play the
parts, it doesn't give them much breathing space and with this record
we arranged the songs together and they had a lot more scope and room
to play and I think it's a better record for it.
'Nocturama' is co-produced by Nick Launay. How did you meet him?
He did 'Release the Bats', a Birthday Party single, many years ago.
And his name just came up - I think Mick Harvey ran into him and asked
him to do it. He was really good. really good. We'll probably use
him again, I think.
You seem to be playing more piano on the last few albums. Is the
way you play influenced by any particular people or is it just a completely
natural style?
I just play as best I can. If I could play better, I would probably
play differently. But I do try to keep it as economical as possible
and as simple as possible. But I'd like that aspect to go from the
music. There seems to be a lot of emphasis on it. I write everything
on the piano, so the songs all grow out of the piano and sometimes
I'd like to do it differently than that.
You recorded this album in Melbourne. Does the location affect
the way an album comes out?
No, I don't think so. We all happened to be in Melbourne doing some
kind of tour. I think I was just going to bring the band in and try
a few songs with them, but we just happened to record. You know, we
had a few days and we just recorded the whole thing. It sounded really
good, so that's what we've got, really. I don't think we actually
went in with the intention of recording an album. I think we just
had a bit of free time and we thought we'd play together a bit and
the album kind of came out of it, I think.
Is the balance of contributions of each member of the band pretty
much the same with each album or did particular members do more?
It varies from album to album and how each particular member is feeling.
We've been together for a long time and I think each person goes through
periods of high creativity and highs and lows and that always changes.
Are there any recent musical discoveries or obsessions that have
brought to bear on this record?
No. I think the people that I was listening to a lot around this album
was probably Bob Marley and Neil Young. I was listening to a lot of
them - early Wailers and Neil Young. I don't even know if any of that
kind of leaked into the writing of the record, but I was certainly
really impressed - or reimpressed - by Bob Marley's lightness of touch
on some of the early recordings and, of course, Neil Young's - I guess
middle period records - where there was just a real freedom of sound
and rawness and that things seem to have been recorded quite quickly
and to me that's always very impressive.
The album title 'Nocturama' is not from one of the songs - where
did it come from?
It is actually - a song that didn't make it onto the record. There
was a song called 'Nocturama', which will probably end up as a B-side
or something like that. It is a failed song, but a nice title. It
was a nice song, actually. I don't know why that didn't work, but
there you go.
When you were writing the album, was there an attempt to connect
the songs in any way?
There certainly isn't an attempt at a theme to connect these songs
- they are just the songs I wrote. They've all infected each other
in some kind of way, as they always do. For me, rather than a lyrical
thing - what impressed me about the record was that there was a real
strength of sound to it and a strength of purpose. even in the more
quiet songs. I really like that about it. And there was also a freedom
- much more freedom to roam around musically and instrumentally. And
I really liked that. You know, when we would record one of these songs,
no one had any idea of how long it was or really how many verses it
had and so forth. It was just something that we played along to and
there were just kind of nods. You'd play something here and all of
that sort of stuff and that's pretty much the way it ended up, really.
So if it just felt at the time like a long instrumental section was
needed, then someone could be free to do that.
The first single, 'Bring it On', is the first time on the album
the band really comes out loudly on the record. Is that led by the
lyric at all?
I think the song is kind of, "I'm here babe, I'll be your rock". I
write thousands of these songs - "Bring all your sorrow, I'll be here
to help you out. Stand by me," or one of those kind of things. But
the music took off beautifully in that, and of course it has Chris
Bailey singing - the singer of The Saints - and he was in Melbourne
at the time and I called him up and he came in and sang that and he
sang that beautifully and really lifted that song. I mean, he's just
an unbelievably wonderful singer and it's a great pop song, really.
Chris Bailey shared vocal duties with you on 'Bring It On'. Is
he someone you've known from the early punk days in Australia?
He was in a band called The Saints and it was a band that would come
to Melbourne and that we would see religiously - I mean everything
and they were godlike to me and my colleagues. They were always so
much better than everybody else. They're an extraordinary band. So
it was amazing for him to come and sing with us. He's a great guy
and a great singer. You know, he can actually sing - it was extraordinary
to go and see a band that were so anarchic and violent with a singer
that could actually sing. It was really amazing.
Where did the idea for the video for 'Bring It On' come from?
I actually had the idea for that video, in the sense that the video
maker Johnny Hillcoat said, "What do you want to make a video about?"
and I asked him, "What do videos looks like on MTV these days?" and
he said, "They look like a lot of black girls wiggling their arses
at the camera," so this is basically what we ended up doing, really.
The video for 'Babe I'm on Fire' is more illustrative of the song,
in the way it has the Bad Seeds playing the characters. Was that just
a casual decision to do that?
We had this song - this very long song. It's sixteen minutes long
and we said we'd just kind of do a re-enactment of the song, as a
kind of give-away thing, because you can't put a record out anymore
without giving something away, or having a bonus this, or a bonus
that. Anyway, it was extremely enjoyable doing that video.
'Dead Man in My Bed' is probably the most raucous song on the album.
Do you feel a need to do that much these days?
Well, I enjoy it. We all enjoy making a noise. They're just difficult
to write on the piano, songs like that, or I would write more and
with this new record, I mean, not this one, but the next one, pushing
myself to do that, to do that more; to remain a bit more. to groove
more with what I'm doing; because it's so enjoyable doing it. I mean
there's nothing like plugging in and making a noise.
It's kind of unusual to have a female protagonist in a song. Most
of the characters in your songs seem to be male. Am I right about
that?
No, not really. I write songs about men and I write songs about women
and from women's point of views, but usually from my own point of
view and I'm a man, so there does tend to be a pre-dominance of male
orientated songs, I guess; but I liked the title 'Dead Man in My Bed'
and I didn't want to put it from a male point of view, if you know
what I mean; I didn't want to say there's a dead man in my bed. I
wouldn't have much authority about that. So I put it from a woman's
point of view.
Tell us about 'There Is A Town'.
It's a very simple - well, at least, it's very lyrically simple -
the music's quite complicated. The music has a reasonably complicated
chord progression, if I remember rightly, but yeah, it's a very simple
sentiment of longing for the place where you grew up in. I think that's
what it's about.
The lyric to a song like 'Rock of Gibraltar' sounds like you're
having a lot of fun with the metaphor in the song. Is doing something
like that a way of throwing off the shackles of being a serious lyricist?
I think that's a very serious lyric. I was very pleased with that
lyric. And why would I want to throw off the shackles of being a serious
lyricist? I put a lot of effort and energy into these lyrics. I did
write that very quickly, I must say, that one. But, I really love
this record, I'm really proud of this record. I think it's a really
good record, but to talk about the lyrics in this way - it always
feels it's kind of demeans them in some way. A lot of the time writing
lyrics is spent thinking about how much information I want to give
in a song, so that it maintains some mystery, that it is to a degree
ambiguous and it doesn't kind of beat people or bludgeon people over
the heads. Talking about the lyrics, it's like gossip or something,
you know, it's kind of demeaning.
Do you study the way other people write songs?
I do look at the way other people write songs - and poetry. I read
a lot of poetry and I'm always very excited by a lyric, if I find
it exciting, and occasionally that still happens, which is good. But
I don't try and write lyrics like other people really. I steal lines
from people occasionally, more by accident, really, than design, but
I don't study other writers in order to write like them. I mean, there
are poets that I think have had a profound effect on the way I write.
Auden, for example, and Hardy's poetry, definitely. My lyric writing
wouldn't be at all the same if it wasn't for them and I guess there's
certain songwriters that have had that kind of effect as well. Early
Van Morrison, probably, and Bob Dylan. So I am influenced by these
people.
'Babe 'I'm On Fire' is spectacular in many ways, but basically
it is a huge, long song containing over forty verses. Did you have
that intention at the beginning?
No. It was just an idea that kind of steamrolled and it was something
you could just sit around and think up new verses to and it was quite
enjoyable doing that. It was like 'O'Malley's Bar' or something like
that, which was another very long song that we did off the 'Murder
Ballads' record. It just became the song that I wrote when I wasn't
writing songs, if you know what I mean. You know, and there's always
more, there were way more verses than that, but it had to end some
time. But it's a good song. Actually, I don't think it was ever supposed
to be on the record, really, but it ended up there.
How did you record 'Babe I'm On Fire' in the studio? Did you do
it in one take?
Yeah, I think we've only played the song once, well, one and half
times. I think we played it for six minutes and decided that we knew
it. You know, learnt it and played it and then put it down, but I
mean, most of the songs are like that. We go into the studio and no-one
knows anything about the songs at all. I just bring the songs, present
them to them, sit at the piano, go through one song. It takes us half
an hour to work out what we're going to play, then we just play it
and we put it down, pretty much. Then we mix it - mixing it, you can
do a lot of different things in the mixing.
Johnny Cash recently recorded a version of 'The Mercy Seat'. What
did you think of that?
I loved it. I actually sang with him on his new record. I sang a song
with him. I sang "I Feel So Lonesome I Could Cry" by Hank Williams
with Johnny Cash, a duet and it's beautiful.
You once said, talking about the Bad Seeds, "I think our music
has been very much a search of some sort." If so, where do you think
you've got to with that search?
It's just a matter of getting into the studio together and trying
to make some music that excites everybody and we seem to be able to
do that. I don't know if it's so much a search, really. I wouldn't
know what we were looking for. Except, I think, a sense of immediacy
about what we're doing and a kind of freedom. That would be, I think,
what we're kind moving towards or what we have been slowly moving
towards. And that requires a huge amount of confidence to be able
to do that and that's something we get, I think, more and more with
each record. You know, because it's a big thing to make a record.
It's what we do. And to be able to come into the studio kind of unprepared,
or at least to be able to have some kind of faith that things are
going to go all right in the studio, is a difficult thing to do. So
we've kind of moved towards that sort of thing.
One thing that's been very present in the last year is all the
global conflict that has happened around the world. Has anything like
that ever influenced your way of thinking about the music or what
you're doing within music?
Only in so far as I have to. the more intense it becomes, the more
intense my fight feels to remain separate from it and it's extremely
difficult to do. It's extremely difficult for me to not have my lyrics
and my music corrupted by the outside world, in a way. I've had to
set myself up in such a way that I feel I'm not affected by it, creatively.
That's not to say I'm not affected by it in my life in the world,
but I have a profound distaste for the world and the way it's going
politically and within society and it's been really important for
me to lock myself away from it, and create an alternate world with
what I do musically, for myself. A world that's away from that world.
It does leak into what I write, but I have no interest in reporting
on the world, of going out there and letting people know about it.
You've lived in a few different cities. I assume you're living
in London. Is that working for you or do you feel any need to live
elsewhere?
I've moved out of London, actually. I moved again, but yeah, I do
find that I don't live in one place for very long. There's no plan
about that. I can't bear living in the same place for too long after
a while, but I have the same set up wherever I live, so it doesn't
really make that much difference actually; you know. I'm married and
marriage is kind of a hunkering down and locking of the doors, to
some degree and I have my office where I work, which is certainly
like that. For me, those two areas are authentic in some way - there
is some authenticity in those areas which I don't find out in the
world - which I find has become irrevocably corrupt, but I take these
two worlds with me wherever I go anyway, so it doesn't make much difference
where I live.
Are there other projects you're working on, either of a musical
or written prose nature?
Well, I finished a film script. It looks like it's gonna get made.
I had to kind of do some new drafts of that. I was doing that last
year, I think. That's finished. And I do all sorts of other things,
really, what, I can't really recall right now, but I'm always doing
stuff, you know. Lots of films music, I seem to be doing a lot of
film music.
Finally, what are the Bad Seeds' aims for the next few years?
I think we feel we're in a position to pick and choose what we actually
want from this business and I think the thing that we enjoy the most
is recording. Of course, recording a record, there's a whole lot of
other stuff that goes with it, you know, there's the promotion of
it and all that sort of stuff, which is tedious - it can be tedious.
We just want to make lots of music.
Hugh McLeod |
