DragonNinjaDotCom

Author: Jamie
Date: 31st October 2003
Link: Empathy Promotions

Jamie Oliver (backing vocals, keys, samples, turntables): Smells on here.
Stuart Richardson(bass): Piss. It’s piss.

The process of writing and recording this album was a whole lot different from the process of creating “thefakesoundofprogress” because when you were writing the first album you must have been working jobs and going to school.
Mike Lewis (guitar): The last record was written in our spare time when we practised and just jammed and stuff over like a period of a year. This one was full time-
Jamie: -Lockdown studio-
Mike: -Hundred percent.
Lee Gaze (guitars): It wasn’t that different really. It was the same studio, still at home except we had better equipment to do it with and a lot more time to do it in.
Mike: Yeah, we were kinda more focused.
Stuart: We crammed the year into three months. It was the same amount of time wasn’t it but we crammed it all in, a lovely job.
[all laugh]

When you were in California for six months the label would have had to put you up in apartments.
Mike: We had to apartments.
Jamie: Four and Two.
Lee: State of the awkard apartments.
Jamie: Which was nice.

Any good stories from there?
Stuart: Too many.
Mike: Hanging out by the pool and taking the piss out of the little kid actors who were staying their.
Stuart: Imagine what we got up to and that’s what we got up to basically.
Mike: Just arsing around on Sunset [Boulevard].
Jamie: Take every bands story multiply it by ten.
Stuart: Every cliché, we did it.
Jamie: Hookers, drugs-
Stuart: -Yeah-
Jamie: -sex,
[laughs]
Jamie: sex with drugs-
Mike: -Murder she wrote-
Stuart: - sex with drugged up hookers,
Jamie: Sex with-
Stuart: -dead hookers-
Jamie: -stolen cars.
Mike: We all became scientologists. We loved it.
Stuart: I got plastic surgery so I could look more like Tom Cruise, but, it didn’t work.
Jamie: I think we started the war as well which was pretty good. We, we instigated Iraq, the Iraq War.

What about commuting? Was it easy? I mean practically everything is thirty, forty five minutes away from everything else.
Jamie: We would parachute to the studio-
Lee: -we had cars. It was fifteen minutes on the 101 from the hotel. The best Ford Foccus’s and we smashed ‘em right up.

Did you make any new friends, band friends?
Jamie: Loads.
Mike and Stuart: LOADS!
Lee: We met a lot of cool people. Jam[ie], you were the fucking friendly git.
Jamie: We were friends with-
Stuart: -like Puff Daddy-
Jamie: P Diddy, Ice Cube was cool, the guys from Trust Company. We are all good friend with Hoobastank, from out MTV tour. Blindside were their. You know, so many bands go through LA so we saw a lot of old friends,
Mike: The Used, H2O, [the]Movielife.

Was this like the best experience for you guys, recording like an album properly.
Lee: Best experience I’ve ever had. Totally.
Jamie: I mean we, we never worked with a producer before. The last album was just engineered. Like we actually took time over things, working with someone so amazing as Eric Valentine was just incredible.

How was Ozzfest for you?
Jamie: Uh. Um-
Lee: Amazing!
Jamie: -I don’t remember, did we-
[giggles by all]
Jamie: – I was pretty drunk. Ozzfest was like one big day.
Lee: We met a lot of bands who we are friends with. It was like one big travelling barbecue.

Were you shocked after Dave Williams [vocals - Drowning Pool] passed away?
Jamie: Yeah. He died like a couple of feet away from us.

Well after he died people said it might be because of how much he drank; people were linking it with Jagermeister. Were you surprised how after they stopped serving it the day he died the tent was back up again the next day?
ALL: YEAH!
Lee: I made that statement on an interview on the tour.
Jamie: There were a lot of rumours about it. I mean, he did like to get a bit drunk. It was even worse. I mean the bus was parked next to ours in the hotel we were staying at. We were in the pool like ten feet away from him when they found him.
Jamie: It was fucking crazy shit..

Jamie, why did you feel the need to change from turntables to keyboards?
Jamie: I didn’t feel like I NEEDED TO but-
ALL: [laugh]
Jamie: -I mean I wanted to be a more integral part of the band. Not so much the band, but the writing process and-
Lee: -It was kind the plan on the first record, that he wasn’t part of the band at that time.
Jamie: It’s more creative, what I’m doing now. It tends to be like a guitar solo, you know what I mean. The band do their thing, the spotlight goes on the DJ and he goes “whiky-wah” for like ten seconds and then doesn’t do anything for the rest of the song. It was kind of irritating, seeing as I wasn’t really a DJ, par sais, but this time around is more sample based. It’s not like straight up keyboard, hello, Andrew W.K. piano style, it’s more like sample based. I get to play with the band for the whole song. It fills out choruses, instead of layering and layering guitars Eric decided he’d use my role to fatten out the sound.
Mike: There are still turntables on the album, it’s not like they’ve been ditched totally.
Jamie: Its turntables but not really scratching. At the end of the day scratching sounds like scratching. And bands have done it and they’ve done it good. You can’t really do it with out sounding like them and Eric was pushing for a record that didn’t sound like them.
Stuart: We tried a lot of samples; we took of records and pitched things up and down. We like that DJ Shadow mentality where he doesn’t use any keyboards for his sound. He uses just samples.
Jamie: That’s what we did on the album. It is turntables through a sample medium not scratching like solo effect.
Stuart: That’s where the breakbeat comes in.

Well you guys have been saying that it is going to be a big shock to people, the new album.
Jamie: Its not going to be a shock because it is different. It is going to be a shock because it is so FUCKING AWESOME. Its still us, its not going to be “Oh my god, this doesn’t sound like the same band! Oh I’m shocked.”, its going to be “FUCK ME! How could they step up as far as they have?”. In our eyes there is a big major step up from the last one.
Mike: I mean there are things on this record which sound different from the last record but that is the way we have naturally progressed. But “Burn Burn” is probably what is the most different, so we got that out of the way.
Jamie: People are quick to judge an album on one track and for anybody who knows us, you couldn’t take a track off the last album and say it reflected all of the rest of the songs on it. That’s the common thread, we’re not predictable.
[Mike gets up and leaves]

Sticking on the idea of judgement. When you just signed with Visible Noise and released “thefakesoundofprogress” the first time you were a pretty big underground band and you started to get a following. And as soon as you signed with Columbia people started to judge you all left, right and centre. Trying to put you down as much as they could, and you know, they could have been those people at the small shows.
Jamie: It probably was.
ALL: [laugh]
Jamie: It is inevitable. It is always the same. If you discover a band and they’re yours and people ask you about it your like, “This is my band. It is important. I found them and I’m telling people about them.” But as soon as they become available for everyone else which some people see that being on a major label becomes that, you tend to disown them. I’ve done it in the past. It wasn’t expected in our eyes but it doesn’t fucking change a thing. We stayed the same; the album stayed the same, those people changed.
[Mike re-enters]
Mike: Sorry.
Jamie: We just became more accessible; you know what I mean, more…um…-
Mike: -mainstream.
Jamie: Mainstream. Thanks mate.
Mike: S’alright.
Jamie: I kind was just like-
Mike: Hang in there, I didn’t enjoy seeing you struggle.
Jamie: [points at bottom of trousers] I thought that was a rip. So I lost focus…You know what, they can’t-
Stuart: -They can all suck my balls the fucking shitheads. Die in hell you fucking cunts.
Jamie: If they have a problem they should come and tell us not-
Stuart: -don’t tell it to your magical interweb computer.
Jamie, Lee and Mike: [laugh]Magical interweb.

What do you guys enjoy the most about being in a band? The touring, writing, recording?
Jamie: All of it.
Stuart: All of it.
Mike: All of it.
Lee: At the moment touring but in six months time, not touring.
Mike: It varies. After writing and recording you wanna tour but after two years of touring its like “Later on touring”.
Jamie: You won’t find us complaining because this is our dream since we were kids. I mean if we were working in a factory then we’d be complaining. Were happy doing anything as long as its this.

Do you have any problems with the touring lifestyle?
Jamie: Well, we’ve been doing this for while haven’t we? So no. It seems to get more luxurious.
Lee: No showers can be a bummer sometimes though but then that’s life isn’t it?

What items of clothing do you always have to bring on tour?
Jamie: Earplugs-
ALL: [laughs]
Jamie: -because [Mike] Chiplin [drums] snores.
Mike: As long as I have my I-Pod I am generally sorted. I can just chill and listen to music.
Jamie: Oh [gets excited]! And bringing my own pillow. I like bringing my own pillow. I love having my own one. Because in a bunk you only get one pillow and your head is like [tilts head towards his shoulder and sticks his tongue out and gags] waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
Stuart: My butler. If I have my butler then everything is cool. My butler takes care of my business.
Jamie: We got our horses in the trailer as well. Its fucking wicked.
Lee: When we get in we ride around town, have some fun. And you thought their was equipment in the trailor!
Stuart: We also have this big transportation thing that carries all our Porches around. You know I’m going to start bringing my castle with me next time.
Jamie: And you thought this was our bus. We got our portable castles!
Stuart: This is just for other people to see and think that we are down and crap like that. We have money bags and pools of money.
Mike: We go swimming in the money like Screws McDuck.
Stuart: Were each earning two hundred, fifty thousand tonight for playing this show.
Lee: This joke can go on forever.
Stuart: Shall we go on forever because I can!

Some of the band are straight edge-
Stuart: -Its that fucking question again. Yes. Some of us are. Correct. Next question.

Have you guys ever actually listened to the other Lostprophets? The country family folk band!
Mike: Yeah, they ain’t straight edge though. I wish they were. Like Minor Threat meats Garth Brooks.
Lee: Minor Brooks!
ALL: [laugh]
Lee: Garth Threat.
Mike and Lee: [laugh].