Celebrity interview, celebrity gossip, exclusive interview, bare all interview, band interviews, rock music interviews, hip hop interviews, band writeups.
Funeral For A Friend – 2nd June –
You received Gold for your debut album, that’s a great achievement, how did it make you feel?
Gareth: It’s nice to have a record at all, to have a Gold record is humbling. Me and Ryan were in tears, like ‘oh my God’ it’s amazing. It was a pipe dream back then, we appreciate everything we have.
What does it feel like when it comes to an album release, knowing something you’ve spent so long working on is going to be judged on one weeks sales, is it quite nerve-wracking?
Darren: It kind of is in a way but it’s not as well, we don’t necessarily take it too much to heart, as long as we’re happy and believe in what we’ve recorded, sales aren’t the most important thing in the world.
Do you think music can be used to manipulate the media and the public these days?
Gareth: I wouldn’t say manipulate is the word, it’s there to inspire people maybe. I’m a fan of music because it speaks to me, something I can relate to and I’m sure it’s the same for everyone else.
Rock music has definitely changed a lot over the years, do you feel it’s a lot more concerned with image and identity at the moment, rather than sound?
Gareth: Partially, a lot of bands doing it look like shit – I mean look at us, we look like shit! But there are a lot of bands that get attention because of the way they look and it’s a little bit fickle to be honest. It kind of fries my piss a little. They get an easier path because they look a certain way.
I guess it’s a bit like the ‘emo’ image. It’s in fashion at the moment and seems that people take on the appearance before getting into the music. You’ve said a few times you don’t like your music to be labelled Emo, and call yourself rock which is a much broader term. Do you think people are just labelling bands too narrowly?
Gareth: It’s getting too tight, at the end of the day it all boils down to the same thing, everyone’s a guitar band and a guitar band is normally rock.
Darren: I think it’s a case of journalists looking for something new to label, pretend they’ve invented a genre, gain some sort of respect from that but I think it’s a case of keeping music journalism exciting, even though we prefer to be called a rock band we understand journalists tend to describe music and put bands in categories. We accept that happens, it doesn’t necessarily piss us off, but we don’t necessarily agree with a particular description. We’ve been called extreme-o, screamo, emo!
Gareth: I’ve been called a lot worse!! (Laughs)
Do you think it’s easier or bands in the industry now, than say twenty years ago? For example with reality TV and how the industry is changing etc:
Gareth: With things like The X factor it’s a case of they get it but how long do they stay there. The music industry is still about grass roots, touring your asses off and building up a core fan base. There’s countless bands that still remain one hit wonders. It’s hard to get there but even harder to stay there, you have to keep their attention, it’s about timing and a lot of politics.
Darren: I think the way the music industry has changed now anyway from how it was in the 70s, where it was so much more natural building careers for band, there was a lot more longevity involved, bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. It wasn’t the case of ‘you did bad on the first record, lets get rid of you’. The industry’s driven a lot more by money. It makes it in some ways perhaps easier, but like Gareth says staying there – some bands don’t even have the option, they’re dropped.
Gareth: We don’t have legends anymore, name a band in the 90s other than Oasis that will be remembered in 25 years time.
True. This decade has The Arctic Monkeys though. They’re pretty huge. They rose to fame through the wonders of the internet and Myspace. That’s another way the music industry is changing, do you think these online promotion websites will change the industry for good?
Darren: Yeah I think it already has, there’s not one band I can think of that doesn’t have a Myspace page.
Gareth: I think Franz Ferdinand did it the same way as the Arctic Monkeys, generated through Friendster – a pre Myspace site. It is going to change the way the music industry works, it’s death to the A&R man, because any head of the record label can just look on the internet, check out 4 or 5 songs, if he likes it check it.
Darren: I know our A&R man uses the Internet a lot.
Gareth: He sits on his ass online all day basically. What are we paying you for Joel, come on!
Darren: What an easy job! It’s cool though, it’s definitely changing the way the industry works, every band can get their music out there and anyone that visits their website can check their music out.
There’s a lot of negative press surrounding rock bands today, even though bands are a lot tamer now than they were in the 80s. Do you think this is just because it’s easier to blame bands rather than looking into the real issues?
Gareth. Yeah definitely. There’s a huge rant about alternative bands being devil worshipers, things like that, we just get accused. People just look for something to blame, and I suppose as music is so popular they use music.
Do you think music and bands can be a bad influence on kids today then? Like, what do you think about Pete Docherty, he’s a huge idol to a lot of youngsters but he’s always in trouble with the law, do you think he’s a bad influence?
Gareth: I don’t think he’s a bad influence….I just think he’s a prick.
Darren: He’s not even worth talking about, he’s making fame out of drug abuse.
Gareth: he’s just another junkie, but he happened to play guitar in a band that were cool once. The bit that’s going to annoy me, is that when he does eventually kill himself he’ll be classed as an artistic hero. It’s going to go one of two ways, he’ll die a hero or a laughing stock… and I hate to sound like a dick but I pray for the later.
Regarding performance, do you prefer small intimate gigs or larger scale ones such as at festivals? I ask because I’ve seen you at both a festival and the intimate gig at the Kerrang studios, and both were very different.
Darren: I don’t really like festivals, I don’t mind big shows not too far from the crowd. But at Reading/Leeds the main stage is about 50 feet from the audience.
Gareth: You could have built a small block of apartments in between! It’s like I can see the audience but I can’t hear you.
Darren: It’s hard to get that vibe. I still love the intimacy of small clubs, but at the same time the stage size can be a bit awkward at those sort of shows (laughs). 2,000 capacity are my favourite type of events.
And finally, what was it like touring the states? How does it compare to
Darren: It’s just a lot bigger, everything in
Gareth: Yeah it’s a challenge over there, it’s a situation where our profile is a lot smaller, we’re having to gradually build up a fan base there, obviously we can’t go over there as much as we can here, so it’s a case because of the size of it we do as many shows as we can and every time we go back there’s more people interested, so it’s building up slowly over there. What Gareth said the vastness of that country is what makes it so hard to make an impact. American bands are in the position where they can tour 12 months of the year if they want to going round and round, whereas as we’re a UK band and it costs us a lot of money, so we can only go there so many months of the year.
Boy Kill Boy – Shaz, Kev, Chris and Pete.
Interviewed – Shaz and Kev.
Firstly, how did you come up with the name Boy Kill Boy?
Shaz - Erm..we sat around for ages thinking of names and then Chris decided to call the band Boy Kill Boy cos he liked the sound of it.
I actually read on your forum that there’s a story saying when you look in a mirror and say Boy Kill Boy it looks like you’re blowing kisses.
Shaz - That’s exactly right.
What kind of bands are you influenced by?
Kev - There’s all sorts of stuff, we’ve all got different influences. I think Chris loves a bit of Prince and people like Smashing Pumpkins. I quite like the early Supergrass stuff, and bands from that kind of era. What about you Shaz?
Shaz - I’m a pure Britpop boy, I grew up on Sleeper and Suede and Blur and actually, These Animal Men. If anyone out there wants a great band to listen to These Animal Men are amazing. But yeah we’ve all got different influences really. Chris has always been into more rockier, darker music, and I was always more into poppier stuff as was Kev and Pete. It all comes together in this weird kind of dark pop.
So who don’t you like then? There’s got to be someone you really dislike, spill the beans…
Kev - I’m not a fan of the music of James Blunt, but he’s quite an easy target isn’t he?
Shaz - I quite like James Blunt actually.
Kev – I’m sure he’s a good bloke… I have to say that cos he was in the army and he can look after himself.
Shaz - we were in a taxi on the way to somewhere this morning and the guy was playing house music on the CD player, it wasn’t helping that I was very hungover. I wasn’t enjoying that music at all.
You played Top of the Pops recently and CD UK , what’s it like playing shows like that?
Shaz - It’s pretty amazing that we got offered any of that stuff at such an early stage, we got offered all that before our first single was released, which is quite strange. CD UK was very bizarre cos it was very early in the morning, and we had to stand on a stage in between Westlife and The Sugababes at about 7 in the morning so it was very strange, but by the time we did Top of the Pops we were kind of used to doing TV stuff so were just like ‘yeah whatever’. But it’s obviously amazing, and the best thing about them is that they actually go out live as you perform, so I think that gives you the buzz.
Kev - And also going on Top of the Pops is a good thing cos it means elderly relatives can start understanding that you’re not just messing about, that it’s a real band and stuff.
What do you think of all ‘Indie’ music being quite mainstream now, are you quite against that?
Shaz - What do you mean by it all being mainstream?
Well it’s like when suddenly your music is played on Hollyoaks as the intro..
Kev - We actually have been played on Hollyoaks, and Coronation street!
When that happened did you think, right, we’ve now made it quite big?
Kev - Well we actually missed it, but we knew that we made it ages ago, we’re big time! *Laughs*
So where’s your favourite place to play and your worst?
Kev – The best is always the next venue we play so Birmingham Barfly tonight!
Good answer, so what’s the best band you’ve played with?
Kev - Who have we played with Shaz?
Shaz - We’ve done loads of gigs with Hard Fi actually, and they’re a pretty good band. We went on tour with them for a bit. We’ve played with Maximo Park and The Rakes as well. Kev - Actually there was a really good one we played at Reading and Leeds festival. Alan from The Rakes was ill, so they got like Maximo Park and Bloc Party and Towers of London who did a whole set of songs.
Did you play a gig last night then?
Shaz - No, we just went to the NME awards and met every band…ever
Did you meet any heroes?
Shaz - I met all of my heroes. Well…not all of them, but some of them. The people I really wanted to meet I met them all last night. Jo Wiley, Arctic Monkeys, Razorlight, Jarvis Cocker and the Magic Numbers.
How do you feel about Arctic Monkeys pretty much winning every award?
Shaz - I think they’re really cool actually, I met them and they were cool guys.
Kev - I think they were a bit weird-ed out that The Sugababes went on and played their song.
What did you think of that? I actually thought it was pretty bad.
Shaz - Yeah it was terrible, although The Sugababes are very lovely ladies, but that performance was a bit…um…weird.
Do you check your myspace page now and again?
Kev - Yeah, we’re always messing around on it.
Out of your 8852 friends on there, how many of them do you actually know?
Kev - On this tour we’ve met quite a few people from myspace which is always quite interesting. But there’s a few of our actual mates who are on it, and made quite a few new friends on it.
Would you appear on Celebrity Big brother?
Kev - No chance!
Not even if you were struggling?
Kev - I’m struggling right now and I don’t want to do it *laughs* but I think Preston came out quite well. He played the game really well and still is.
How do you feel about your chart position?
Kev - Really, really happy about that, it’s a good place to be
Shaz - It’s pretty amazing for a first single to go at 26. ‘They’, being the record company and all the other people involved in the band haven’t really started pushing that much yet, so that chart position has come from genuine fans who are into the music and who found out about it through gigs and myspace, it hasn’t been shoved down anyone’s throat or anything yet, so it’s pretty good.
Out of all the bands in the history of pop/rock, who would you most like to play with?
Kev - I really want to do a gig with Ronan Keating and meet him just so I can keep calling him Roland and as much as he corrects me I want to keep calling him Roland cos I think that’d really wind him up, and I don’t think he could take a joke.
Shaz - I would like to play with the Foo Fighters cos I might get to go in their plane.
What new and upcoming bands do you recommend?
Kev - There’s a band in Stoke called Spectrum Fires who are very good, a band in Glasgow called Stop Starts, there’s a guy in London called Tim Tenyen, they’ve all got Myspace pages I think. And Apartment who are going to do about five gigs with us are really good too.
And finally, what’s coming next for you guys?
Kev - We’re doing this tour then going to America and Canada as well we’ve just heard. Then we’re coming back and we’ll probably go on another tour round the UK again, and in May there’s an NME tour where we’re headlining.
Boy Kill Boy’s new single Suzie is out 8th of May, their forthcoming album is out 22nd of May.
Interview by- Leanne Taylor.
 |
Yellowcard are a band that formed nearly ten years ago when they were at high school in
Hi Ryan! You’ve been together as Yellowcard for quite a while now, since 1997, why do you think it’s taken so long for you to get well known in
Well, at the start the record label was small and had no influence over in the UK, so it was a matter of sitting here waiting until we had more exposure, and now we’re able to come over more often and promote ourselves here, so we’re getting better known over here as well.
You started as a band back when you were in high school, did you ever do any school gigs?
Well actually I joined the band later, there’s been a few changes in the band, but the others did, definitely. And at parties and clubs, Sean and Ben were friends and used to hang out all the time.
I see, so like you said, a couple of band members have left the original line up, how did this affect the band, was it in a positive way?
Some people may so no, but I think yes it did. The singer now was not in the band from the start, so after he joined obviously there was a change in style and songs and this was when the band really started to hit off, and around that time I also joined, replacing Ben the old guitarist.
You have a violin player in the band. This is quite unusual for a rock band, did you intentionally want to break from the boundaries of what is considered rock or did it just fit?
He was in the studio hanging out with the band one day and they started messing around and his violin worked really well on a song, so he used to go on stage with the band for that one song, and then it kind of stuck. But he’s not there just for the sake of being different.
You teamed up with ‘
It was fairly planned. We wanted to record with Natalie on the
You recently toured with Fightstar. Had you ever heard of Charlie’s first band Busted?
Erm… I’m not sure. I don’t think so.
Well, he’s been known to have said he hated all of his time whilst in Busted, which was a pop/rock band aimed at the younger audience really. What do you think of people doing that, being in a band they don’t like, just to promote themselves so they can move on to better things?
Hmm..I think it depends. People do things like that for different reasoning. If what they’re doing makes them happy then that’s all that matters. But yeah it’s a bummer when you hear that they weren’t really into what they were doing, but whatever works for them…
So who’s been your favourite band you’ve played with?
Acceptance, they were amazing opening for us in the states. Less Than Jake were an honour to support as well.
Has there been a particular highlight to your career so far?
Well to the other guys obviously winning awards and stuff, but as I’ve not been in the band as long I remember watching ‘Jeopardy’ an American television question show, and one of the questions was about Yellowcard, it said something like which band have had a platinum record, and the answer was us. That was cool!
Yeah I bet! So does Yellowcard promote a certain message out there? What do you try and get across?
Nothing specific really. The vibe changed on the new album, it has a wider sound. But the more we get out there and experience new things the more we get to write about.
Rock music, especially here in
Yeah, I mean bands today are so tame compared to rock bands in the 80s! I grew up listening to Nirvana and Greenday, trying to work out the songs and play along on guitar, and now I’m in this band so that’s a good thing to show kids.
‘Lights and Sounds’ is the bands 3rd album how do you feel your music and also band as a whole has progressed since the first album?
The latest album is our second album through a major label, the first one ‘We Are For The Kids’ was on an independent label. And yeah the music and bands progressed without a doubt. We have matured, we’re 26 now not 21 anymore!
Before writing ‘Lights and Sounds’ you toured for nearly two years without releasing an album, was this a conscious decision, so you’d have more content for the album?
Hmm..it kind of depends on how the record is going, and we’ll still tour if the record is doing well. Two years is a long time but it’s a good amount of time.
The latest album is more about serious issues and less about break ups, was this a way of separating the band from the other ‘Emo’ bands who are all put into one box?
Yeah that’s definitely a part of it, I don’t know whether it was consciously done, but it just naturally comes out from our bigger life experiences. I mean we were touring for two years and we got older so some of our views are more mature as well.
On the album there’s this character “Holly Wood” who plays different roles on the album. Who came up with this idea?
Holly Wood is Ryan Key’s character… we see her as a navigational tool, using her to portray the bands experiences, what they’ve gone through, she shows a love / hate relationship really.
The album received a 5/5 rating in the 'Alternative Press Magazine.' How does it make you feel when you get such a good response like that?
Yeah, it’s great! That was very flattering, they compared it to Greenday’s ‘Dookie,’ a monumental album. We were very pleased.
What’s the most extravagant thing you’ve bought from your earnings from the band?
I’m not really there yet, not been in the band a long time but others have bought cars and houses. Nothing extravagant really!
Would you want to try acting or run a record label, or stick to what you know?
Ryan Key is interested in acting, and he plans to pursue it. Ben, the old guitarist now has his own record label, but I’m not really sure about me. I’ll stick with the music for now at least.
You’ve played
Well I’ll say The Police, Foo Fighters and 1980s Metallica. How long do headlining acts stay on stage for at these festivals?
About an hour or so…
Well I’d just have those three on and have each of them play for three hours or something!!
So you’re obviously a fan of those three bands, but what band would you love to play or record with?
I’ve never seen Metallica live but I would love to play live or record with them, Greenday too, and any bands who have set the stage for rock music really.
So you’ve obviously performed a lot as Yellowcard, has anything embarrassing ever happened to you on stage?
There’s been the occasional fall, a few nights ago Ryan slipped on some water on the stage, but nothing too crazy has happened for me.