At the moment, I haven’t slept for 27 hours – I’m
depriving myself of sleep to write a feature on it. What’s the longest you’ve
ever gone without sleep?
Wow, well I’ve never tried it. Maybe I should give it a go at some point but I’ve never really done any long periods without sleep. Suppose if you go to a club, take some drugs you probably stay awake, but the farthest I’ve gone is probably 12 o’clock the next day. After the drugs have worn off you feel like sleeping so…I travel a lot on tour so, I have a jet lag problem. I’ve fifty now and have been n the road for the good part of the last 20 years. And obviously I drink as well, and try to keep it going but I don’t want to drop dead. So sleep’s quite important to me. I live a fairly irregular life so even if it’s difficult I still try to go to sleep. My energy levels started to drop 10-15 years ago.
You tend to just call it a night these days?
Sometimes I do just go back to the hotel. Have you heard that apparently a third of our lives are spent sleeping?
I hadn’t heard that, but it doesn’t surprise me…
Yeah, it’s not surprising really. But I must say I find life gets a bit boring and sleep is a nice release. I quite like a break.
It’s interesting because there’s such a huge industry not built around getting people to stay awake. There’s so many drugs people can buy…
It is funny. We have a song called QRV, it’s all about pharmaceuticals. When we play it live our drummer stands on a stool and announces that QRV may have the following side effects, and then launches into a whole list of nasty things – insomnia, impotence etc. It’s really quite amusing but it’s based on all those advertisements. I actually take melatonin to help me with jet lag, I’ve been buying it for years. It resets the body clock and really helps when you travel but it can’t be bought in pharmacies in England. Maybe it’s part of this whole nanny state thing going on, ‘don’t take that, don’t do that,’ – all that sort of thing. I’ve also heard of a drug that helps you keep going with very little sleep. When you take it it’s like actually having a sleep.
I think it’s called Modafanil. It’s freely available in the US. Although no one’s quite sure about the side effects
Well no one ever does!
Anyway let’s get on to the Tiger Lillies. What are you guys up to currently?
We’re in Paris, on tour, and we’re pretty much on tour all year round. We don’t really function like a traditional rock band.
Most rock star complain about never getting to see the country they’re touring. Do you get to do much sightseeing?
Oh yeah we get to see loads of the country. The difference between us and a typical rock band is they go in a your bus and bring everything with them, a whole entourage with a caterer and others. But we travel and stay in hotels – sometimes we even have days off! So we get to see loads of where we are. We once did the tour bus thing but I hated it. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. It actually made me feel quite sorry for rock bands.
So how do you guys manage to have all this time to spare?
When we do shows we tend to stick around for a long time, a month maybe. For instance we’re doing six weeks in Salzburg, four weeks in Berlin, two months in Thessalonica. So we do these long runs in places, and then we’ll fit in breaks of two or three weeks in between.
What are your favourite places to visit?
I like Eastern places – Russia, Greece, Czech Republic. Also like going to Australia and San Francisco. But it’s great wherever we go. The band has developed this cult fan base and it’s just fantastic. I know we’re really lucky to have had the success we’ve hard, because we have the best of both worlds. We get to please our fans while pleasing ourselves, doing our own thing.
Do you feel the Tiger Lillies can go on to greater success or is this as big as it’s going to get?
I’m really happy the way things are but the funny thing about success is there’s always a bit more – you do think: “wouldn’t it be nice to be playing Madison Square Garden,” or whatever. And I wouldn’t mind if did, and I’d hope we could have a bit more success. But the important thing is we’re doing it on our own terms. It’s great. When I want to make a record I just make a record. We’re not on a record label, not on a contract and we don’t have to worry about being radio friendly. If we can do that and be successful, that’s absolutely fine with me.
Matt Groening recently added the Tiger Lillies to his All Tomorrow’s Parties line-up in May. How’s that come about?
Matt’s a big fan. He always comes to our gigs in LA and we’re looking forward to being a part of ATP.
The Tiger Lillies are touring ‘Songs of Shockheaded Peter and Other Gory Verses’ across the UK from 3rd March.
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