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He leads me over to the sofa located in the lounge and delicately places his bottle of water on a coaster in the table, he twists the bottle around so that the front of the label is facing him, “So is that like an OCD problem you have there.” I ask, he quickly replies with “Not really, like not crazy obsessively as OCD I just like things the way I like them. It’s not like I think I’ll die if I don’t have the label facing me but I dunno.” he stops and then asks if I’d like a drink.
He wanders into the bar briefly and returns with another bottle of water and hands it to me. “Don’t say I’m not hospitable.” he smiles and then settle’s himself on the sofa.
We begin talking about the weather and the topic quickly turns to childhood, “Whenever the sun is beating down, My mind always takes me back to this gig. I guess it was in 2006, I was 17 years old and me and a few friends decided to take a little trip to the Coachella festival. We managed to convince a friend of a friend to let us borrow his car and we headed off, roof down, in the blazing sun, blasting out incredible music and all set for two of the greatest days of our life, we got there and had an incredible time, we saw acts like Animal Collective, Daft Punk, Imogen Heap, My Morning Jacket, Youth Group, Bloc Party, Phoenix, and Depeche Mode, they headlined the first day and it was just out of this world, an experience that I’ll never wanna forget, we drank, danced, rocked, fucked and just had the greatest two days of my young life. And afterwards I was like I wanna be the guy headlining and I wanna look out into the crowd and see people enjoying themselves the way I did. It was something special.”
Clearly passionate about music and obvious avant garde influences are evident not just in his appearance but when talking about music, it appears that when he goes to a show, he expects the act to put on a show. “I’ve seen gigs by these bands fronted by these self righteous mopey “Rockstars” and they literally stand still for the whole show and just mumble into the microphone, and then I’ve seen gigs by people who have quite clearly put effort into entertaining the fans, I prefer the whole razzle dazzle/glam element of gigs.”
The conversation moved to his influences, “Well I was initially brought up on classic rock bands and that’s where I found that interest to have some sort of career in music but as I got older I started to broaden my horizons. I’d always be looking for something different and something that made me feel like I was hearing music for the first time again and although that early rock influence is still heavily embedded into me I started to find myself listening to more adventurous music, Obviously Miss Vanity came along and I don’t think anyone stood a chance of stopping her doing what she wanted to do, there wasn’t anyone who was gonna attempt to tame her, she seemed like this crazy hit monster, almost machine like and that kind of consistency made me sit up and take notice. She’s never basic that’s what I fell in love with about her and her music and that’s when I really looked beyond the rock genre.”
I find his eyes light up as he continues to talk about music and I push him further on particular influences, “Infinite came around when we needed them most, there was no rock band who saw what they wanted and they just went out and did it with ease. I think Eric is a god-like entity in my opinion as a songwriter he just blows my mind and then you put him together with Jason and it’s like even god’s looking at that combination and going, “Shit that’s good.” Then there’s Glamazon of course, Any woman who carry’s an axe around has got my attention and musically she’s phenomenal, she had this sort of instant buzz around her and yet people knew very little. That’s what kept me intrigued.”
And as I ask how different the last few weeks have been since he became famous his response seems rather unsure, “I guess the only real difference is that one or two more people on the street know my name. I don’t get mobbed by fans and that’s because I’m not famous. Well I’m not crazy famous. I may be able to afford to do things a little differently but I’m not particularly famous, most musicians probably haven’t heard of me and that’s kinda how I think you know if your famous but it’s not so important, I didn’t really get into music for the fame or money.”
And what would he have done if he hadn’t become a musician, “I honestly have no idea. I don’t think I’ve ever contemplated that question once in my life. And I’m not saying that as some sort of arrogant asshole who always knew he’d be a star I just guess I never had any interest to even contemplate it, I honestly don’t think I would have had a normal job when I left school and I always found a way of getting by, the guy I shared an apartment with was a drug dealer so there was never an issue over whether we’d be able to afford the rent and I played local clubs on the strip which gave me a little bit of money so I never had much of a need to get a real job.”
And did he ever get caught up in the drug scene, “No not so much, I mean I tried stuff and pretty swiftly decided that I didn’t wanna go down that route, I had seen what drugs can do to you and it always made me try to keep away from that but once or twice, I’d have been a little bit naïve and stuff but once those doors are open it’s tough to fight your way back to normality. And I was pretty fond of myself enough to not wanna go through all that and pretty quickly I decided that once is enough.”
And will 2011 be a big year for him, “I hope so, bigger than last year anyway. I’ve got support from a label who seem very keen to get my name out there. They’re keen to get me into the studio and start recording my debut album and I think that’s gonna be happening pretty soon. I think February will maybe see me heading into the studio to begin recording and then I’ll be supporting a record with gigs. Of course I’m no where near well known enough to do headline tours so it will all be support slots which is fine with me for now but I know they have a couple of one off headline shows lined up for me which is interesting but we’ll just have to see what happens.”
And a burning question that I’ve been keen to ask during the whole interview, does he think fellow musicians like him? “I think some people will like me. Not everyone maybe but I’d like to think that I don’t do enough to make people hate me. I think I’ve made a few friends and I’ve made a few enemies. I think that Matty kid for one doesn’t like me due to my friendship with Michelle, which in all honesty is a bit ridiculous but what can I do, she’s a cool girl and we’re friends. He’s the idiot who messed things up. But I’d like to think that the majority will find my interesting and fun and different and this may be hard to believe but I’m genuinely a nice guy.”
And with a smile from Edward we end the interview.Edited by user 17 January 2011 04:34:35(UTC)
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