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| Cold-hard-cash. That is it. There really is no other reason to be on a major these days, unless they're offering you a boatload of money, upfront. | |
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Now he's back with Peeping Tom, an album he's been working on for years, and after all the experimental outings and groundbreaking oddness, he's calling this "my version of pop music". He wrote the songs then sent them to various musicians to work on, bagging cameos from the likes of Norah Jones, ex-Roots MC and beatboxing phenomenon Rahzel, and Massive Attack. With this being the most overtly accessible record he's done in years, we spoke to him about pop, fame and Britney Spears.
So, six years, this took, Peeping Tom?
That's not quite accurate, whoever wrote... you know...
It was on your website.
...whoever decided, whoever wrote this little bio, put it on the site, I mean... These fuckin' people. Whatever. It sounds sensational, so there you go. I guess I should just go with it, huh?
Well I know it's been on and off and you've been doing lots of stuff in between, but it has been a good two or three years since you started on it.
Yeah, yeah.
Why do you think it was this one out of everything that kept getting shoved to the side?
Well because it wasn't a living breathing band. It wasn't a bunch of people that I hired that were on the clock, you know, it was something that I was really working on on my computer at home. The other people that were involved were out of sight and out of mind, which made for an incredible, you know, to do list, like I was constantly writing down, 'Check in on Amon Tobin', 'Check in on this guy', 'Check in on that guy'. I mean it was like a gigantic babysitting job, when you send files through the mail to people, even if you put a deadline on it, you know, everyone else's desktop piles up as well. Anyway, that really added to the extra, um, drama, I would say. If a lot of these people were in the room with me I think we would have banged it out a lot quicker.
You've said you maybe have two or three albums worth of this stuff, is that right?
Yeah! I dunno, 30-something tunes, in various states. Some are done, some are almost done, some are in bits and pieces. But yeah, I would say that there's 30-something, all in all. I mean one of the reasons that is, is that since I was working on it, you know, literally in my spare time, waiting for other people to get back to me and complete their parts, and/or major label hassles, blah blah blah, all of those things, I had so much time on my hands, I actually kept writing shit. So I was able to stockpile a bunch of tunes, which is good.
So you had no desire to do a double album or something like that.
No. No no no, I like to have little aces in my back pocket. I'd rather save them.
So how does it feel to spew it out now after all this time, do you feel removed from it, or are you still into it?
No, it feels good. You know, the cover came out great, I mean really the whole experience, I'm really happy with. I hope people enjoy it, and yeah, time to move on. There's not a lot of time to reflect, I'm already in the middle of four or five other things right now, so... And really, sooner, rather than later, I'm gonna have to, before the end of the year, pick up the pieces and put the second one together, cos I want that to come out next year.
Good. This, as I'm sure you're aware, has been one of the most eagerly awaited projects you've ever done. Certainly the last two or three years a lot of people have been talking about it, since you've been mentioning it, and I think even the sticker on the CD says 'Finally'.
Yeah, yeah, that was one of my little jokes, 'Finally', heh.
Why do you think it is there's been so much interest in this one? I guess it has something to do with there being a big appeal in your softer, poppier side.
Yeah, I think people will hopefully swallow this a little easier than some of my other stuff! And, you know, I think maybe because I've also talked about it being that way, being a little bit easier to listen to and being my version of a pop record.
So do you want more people to listen to this, have you got more commercial aspirations for it? Because you've said you courted, and had offers from, major record labels, and in this country at least you've got different, bigger PR people doing this one.
Well, yeah, yeah. By the same token I'm not fooling myself. Even though this sounds like pop music to me, I've learned over the years that my ears are not exactly normal. I want, as with any of my projects, as many people to listen to it as possible. I think this one has a nice chance, because it's unlike really anything I've done, not even similar to anything I've done in many years, so... But it feels good to... I've had this kind of a record in me for a long time, it's been brewing for quite a while and I feel like the important thing is to maintain a little bit of balance, and this record will do this for me, at least for a little while.
But what motivated you to speak to major labels? Obviously you've got your own label, is it just because you want more people to hear it, or you want more promotional money, or-
Cold... three things: cold-hard-cash. Hahahaha. That is it. I mean there really is no other reason to be on a major these days, unless they're offering you a boatload of money, upfront. Because you're never gonna see it in royalties... And the other vague sort of aspiration would be fame (laughs), which I'm not really, that's not really high on my list of things to do, so basically, there were a couple of decent offers on the table, I felt that it was smart to entertain them, and once I realised what I'd be giving up for that money, the control, you know, not owning the music, and really the backbreaker for me was exclusivity. I just couldn't do it. I'm involved in too many things that are too important to me, I've got my own label for god's sake, and a lightbulb went off in my head and said "What the fuck am I doing, it's not worth it."
It wasn't, it's the kind of money to make it worth it, and I don't even know what kind of money that would be, to tell you the truth, so... But it wasn't even close, and that combined with the fact that literally there was one... The way these major labels are, I'm sure you have a clue to this as well, there's basically, the best you can hope for is one guy, who 'understands' you and might go to bat for you. And usually what happens is you sign somewhere and those people within several weeks are all fired. You've got a whole regime of strangers who don't know you, aren't in your corner whatsoever, and you're just a number to them. And basically, for one of the labels that was sort of courting this project, yeah there was one guy that I knew, and before I even signed he was fired, and that was quite an omen to me.
Right. You say this is your version of pop music, and you've said a lot of people always said you had a pop record in you and this is it. But you've done a lot straighter and poppier stuff than this in the past.
Yeah. Sure! Yeah, absolutely. I think pop music and that kind of structure, and songs with lyrics and whatnot, has been in me all this time. I think that it seeped out in various different formats and I think you can hear a little bit in everything that I do. A little bit of that colour in Mr Bungle, even in Fantômas if you really listen. Certainly in Tomahawk. It's crept its way out. But I've never really done a record on my own of my own music that slanted in that direction and followed it, and really stuck to those parameters. Three to four minute tunes, verse chorus bridge verse chorus, and you know, I've always been fascinated with pop music, it's such a broad stroke of the brush that I feel there's a lot you can do in there, and I think this record is neat, it's a fun listen, it's a nice little journey, it's kind of challenging and dense and there's a lot of shit going on. But at the end of the day you don't feel like you've been hit by a tractor truck after listening to it, you can listen to it two or three times in a row. Which is not like a lot of my music.
And do you think that you needed the amount of time you've had since Faith No More disbanded to get your head around doing something more conventional like this again?
Not... I wouldn't say... not necessarily. I think that... You know. It took me a while to take it seriously. Cos I would say that I started writing some of these tunes that even made it on this record back in '99 or 2000, so... I think that it's just been gestating for a while, but I've had too much on my table, and whose fault is that, mine. No one's put a gun to my head, but basically, I probably could have, if I would have really concentrated on it, and said no to a lot of other things, I could have got this out properly a couple of years ago. There was no internal struggles, or me wrestling with any kind of musical ethics or otherwise, this is part of my language, and sure it may sound like a bit of a departure, or a return, depending on how you look at it, but to me it's another project of mine, it's just a fun and light one, and I think a lot of my music in recent years has been anything but fun and light.
Were you always uncomfortable with fame, particularly the level of fame you got 16 years ago?
No. I think it took me a little while to make sense of it, maybe a couple of years, but I would say that maybe by Angel Dust, and I think you can hear it on the record, we, me and the band, we'd come to terms with it and knew exactly what we wanted to do.
Yeah.
On a lot of levels. Musically, how we were going to deal with the press, when we wanted to work and how... We weren't going to overwork ourselves and do things we didn't want to do. And I think up to that point, that whole first record and that explosion that it created, during that process we were learning on the job.
The Real Thing album, to me is a different band to the three that came after that. But you did write that first one really quickly didn't you.
Yeah, you know, I'd just joined the band and two or three weeks later, yeah, they had all the music written, and I came in more so, I guess, like a guest vocalist and laid my stuff down and that was it. And I was happy to do so! You know, it was the first I'd ever made, and I had no idea what I was doing.
That as well, the stuff you were doing with Mr Bungle before that, you did a few demos but the first one was practically death metal. Then it got funkier, but you had started off really hard, but by the time you did The Real Thing it was a lot more conventional, and you went the other way again after that.
Yeah, I grew up being into hardcore and death metal and more extreme stuff, so for me... I was familiar with Faith No More and I liked them... But being in a band like that was kind of exotic, in a way... Kind of straight rock songs with pop hooks seemed like a challenge to me, and at that point I wasn't doing a lot of singing, I wasn't a singer. I mean if you heard those demos, I was screaming my head off. So I thought of it as, ha, as a bit of an exercise, and... I think, without that record, I wouldn't have known that I could sing. So it's true, it was I would say a fruitful experiment.
Did you enjoy the success that came with it? All the MTV stuff, the videos, posters of you on the wall. You say you weren't uncomfortable with it but in my mind, tell me if I'm wrong, but it seemed like a lot of things you would do were an attempt to sabotage that, or just to give it the finger.
Well, you know. More so than that I think we were... It was a bit of self-parody. I think everyone's supposed to bask in the glow, and lick each other's asses, I'm great, you're great, we're all successful celebrities, and let's ride off into the sunset together. And our way of dealing with that was by making fun of it, and making fun of ourselves. Not really by saying "You're a bunch of idiots", I think everyone knows that, that doesn't need to be said. But I think by making fun of the whole thing made us feel more human. And, you know, when you're having success like that it's anything but. It is a bit dehumanising, and that was our way of bringing ourselves back to Earth a bit.
There must have been times when you literally couldn't face going out and singing 'Epic' for the millionth time.
There were moments! Heh. But that's not just when you're successful, it's when you're overdoing it, it's when you're milking it. And you know, I've done that since. There are times towards the end of every tour when you kind of feel like, Here we go again. But the difference now is I feel like I have a tighter rein on what I'm doing. I can put the brakes on when I want, and accelerate when I want. And to me that's... having control of your own pace is really important.
You've done loads of things in between, bringing this back up to Peeping Tom, how did that form in your own head as its own entity, did you have a particular vision for it.
Well, I started writing, I think it was right around... Goddamn, I think I even played a couple of these songs for one of the Faith No More guys when we were writing our last record, believe it or not. So this stuff's been kicking around for quite a while.
It's not as stripped down as I thought it might be. It's got quite a complex, more contemporary direction than I thought it might have. You always seemed to get a kick out of doing the lounge music and Burt Bacharach covers, which you did with Faith No More and Mr Bungle, loads of that stuff, and I thought maybe this might go in that direction.
To be continued. I mean this record is really, like I said, pop is a really broad stroke, but mostly it's a groove record, I wanted to make a record that just bounced. Like I said, you could listen to it and it brought a smile to your face. There's electronic stuff in there, there's hip-hop leanings, there's a bit of rock stuff, but it's all pretty streamlined, I think. You're right, it has its dense, complex moments, but all in all I keep the detours to a minimum and I thought that that was really important. Unless you set parameters when you're doing things, everything's gonna sound the same. When I make records I try and make each one have its own language and live in its own universe.
But when I started out with this thing, as with a lot of projects, you don't really know where it's going or what it is. All of a sudden you realise, I've got five or six tunes and I've got them laying on this side of the shelf and they're gathering dust, and that's interesting, that might make a nice project. And all of a sudden you work on a little bit more and you find your path, a door opens up. And that happens a lot with me, I don't sit there and go, "OK. It's time to write pop music. This is what it's going to be called..." Eventually it does get to that and you figure it out, but a lot of it is, you're kind of just exploring and waiting for a lightbulb to go off.
A couple of the songs on there, actually the ones I like the most, which are probably the more obviously catchy commercial ones, 'Mojo' and 'Don't Even Trip', sound to me, and don't take this the wrong way, but someone else here at work mentioned that when the X-Ecutioners album came out, a couple of songs on there sounded almost like Britney Spears.
Hahaha! I take that as a compliment, are you kidding?
I think you can easily picture her singing these songs and getting away with it, and they'd probably be massive if she did.
Ha! Alright... you're the doctor. I don't know, like I said...
You sing at the end of 'Mojo' "Oops, I did it again"-
I do, I do, that's true!
Is that a direct reference or a coincidence?
No, it's a direct little nod, a little jab, a goof. That's all. I think I was doing the chorus... I record a lot of stuff by myself, and I remember singing it and I was punching myself in and I think I made a mistake and I think I said "Oops." And it made me think, "Jesus, I'm redoing a Britney Spears song, listen to this, oh god!" And then I was like, "Oh, I gotta say it then. I gotta go all the way!"
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