INTERVIEWS

GONZO vs PEPE THE KING PRAWN

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:17:00 +0000

While Ms Piggy, Fozzie and Animal were in town rehearsing for their recent X Factor performance, Gonzo and his pal Pepe the King Prawn popped into Dazed’s Old Street HQ to grab some new looks, fix the office toilet and, in Pepe’s case, crack onto some leggy models. Things got out of hand quicker than anyone could have imagined, so we were forced to take the pair of Muppets around the corner to our favourite builder’s café to calm them down with a hot cuppa. As they guzzled back their brews, the old friends got chatting about Captain Beefheart, the economic crisis and their first film in 11 years, The Muppets.

Gonzo: We get along great, don’t we Pepe? You really understand me.

Pepe: (Slurps tea) Sí, I understand that you are crazy, okay.

G: See what I mean? You cut right to the core. You get my essence.

P: You’re dangerous. Never ever stand where your cannon is aimed. Dios mío! First time that happened, I almost lost my tail.

G: You have a tail? Y’know, in all these years we’ve known each other, I never knew you had a tail.

P: I don’t advertise it.

G: You really should.

P: Did I mention you’re weird?

G: Don’t you just love this guy?!

P: By the way, Gonzo, your trumpet playing is very funny, okay. Every time you blow into the trumpet something strange happens. I always laugh.

G: Thank you, Pepe. Does my trumpet make you shake  your tail?

P: You are really hung up on this tail thing, aren’t you? So, what is your favourite album?

G: Gee, I’m a big fan of Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits, Weird Al and any group that uses amplified power tools as instruments. It would be tough to narrow it down to just one.

P: What about The Green Album? The one where Weezer and OK Go record the songs made famous by the Muppets. It is fantastic, okay. Go out and get it now!

G: Pepe, we’re not here to promote our own album. That would be rude and self-serving.

P: Sí, this is what I do best, okay.

G: Hmm… You have a point. So, Pepe, you are something of a ladies man. What’s your  favourite pick-up line? The world wants to know.

P: Okay…. It is a tie between these two lines: ’Is it me, or are you hot in here?’, and ’Come to my place. I have a water bed and I float.’

G: Wow, you’re good. What tips have you got to get Camilla the Chicken to marry me?

P: Ask her.

G: You really think that would
work?

P: The worst she could say is ‘Baaaaawk!’

G: This guy is a genius.

P: It must be the tail. What’s the biggest misconception about you Gonzo? That you’re a turkey?

G: I am not a turkey, though some of my best friends are fowl. And I am also not a toaster oven, a Na’vi from Avatar or a form of sentient tapioca – although that last one is pretty close. How about you, Pepe? What kind of shrimp are you?

P: I am not a shrimp… I am a King Prawn!

G: I love it when you say that.

P: Haha! Gonzo, you’re a bit of daredevil – what’s the closest you’ve ever been to death?

G: Death and I are very close. Actually, I had dinner with him just last week.

P: You had dinner with Death? Unbelievable!

G: Great guy. Totally misunderstood. And he always picks up the cheque.

p: He picks up the cheque? You have to introduce me, okay.

G: What about you, Pepe? Being barbecued?

P: I’ll let you know after my dinner with Death.

G: So, did you enjoy filming our new movie, The Muppets? Our sets are always fun and friendly. Everyone gets along….

P: …At least until Miss Piggy shows up, okay. Then, dios mío! Stand back!

G: Piggy does tend to cause tension on the set. But as long as you don’t get between her and the camera it’s usually pretty safe.

P: Or between her and the  catering truck. Gonzo, do you have a philosophy to life? What is it?

G: My philosophy? ’That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger – but can hurt a lot.’

P: And my philosophy is: ‘If you believe in yourself, others will believe in you. And if they fall for that, you can sell them anything.’

G: Talking of cash, how would you go about solving the current global economic crisis?

P: I would have everyone send me lots of money.

G: How would that solve the global economic crisis?

P: It wouldn’t, but it would sure be good for me, okay.

G: Fair enough. As for me, I’d give everyone free donuts.

P: How would that help?

G: Who doesn’t like donuts?

P: You are starting to make sense to me… This is scary, okay. Who or what is the greatest love of your life?

G: I have only one true love and it is my dear and sweet Camilla, the most beautiful chicken in the world.

P: Wow, that is very romantic.

G: So, who’s the greatest love of your life?

P: Whoever I’m going out with tonight.

G: What’s your idea of happiness?

P: I’ll let you know after my date tonight.

G: Mine is spending time with Camilla… while balancing a piano on my nose, eating a steel-belted radial tire and humming ‘Flight of the Bumblebee‘ on rollerskates. That’s poultry in motion.

P: You have got to be kidding me, okay.

G: Okay, Pepe. What words of advice can you give Dazed’s readers?

P: Life is a party. Don’t be the piñata.

G: Yeah! When the going gets weird, get weirder.

Text © TIM NOAKES Photography © TOM KAVANAGH

NAME: Gonzo the Great
BORN: 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH: Unknown  (he’s an alien).
WHAT YOU KNOW: He’s dated Camilla the Chicken for years and has penchants for purple tuxedos and anything with chilli peppers on it.
WHAT YOU DIDN’T: John Cleese once referred to Gonzo as “the ugly, disgusting little blue creature who catches cannonballs”.
PREVIOUS: He has appeared in The Cosby Show and famously ended every episode of The Muppet Show playing his trumpet.

NAME: Pepino Rodrigo Serrano Gonzales
BORN: 1996
PLACE OF BIRTH: Off the coast of Spain
WHAT YOU KNOW: He fancies himself as a bit of a lothario.
WHAT YOU DIDN’T: He was once the spokesprawn for Long John Silver’s – a global seafood restaurant chain.
PREVIOUS: He trained to be a chef but after one too many close calls with the Thousand Island dressing became an actor.

OMAR SOULEYMAN

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:08:31 +0000

With over 600 albums to his name, wedding-singer extraordinaire Omar Souleyman is quite easily one of the most prolific artists in the world. A pioneer of dabke – a style of Arabic party music characterised by insanely fast keyboard riffs and emotive emceeing – the Syrian synth hero has spent the last 15 years hypnotising crowds from the Jazeera to Manhattan with his bushy tache and frenetic brand of folktronica. With political tensions back at home reaching boiling point, his label Sublime Frequencies lifted a nine-month media blackout for this interview under the strict understanding that no political questions would be asked in order to safeguard him, his wife and six children from any possible retribution back at home. With so much at stake, it’s refreshing to discover that Souleyman’s focus remains fixed on entertaining his legions of fans around the globe.

Was it a culture shock when you first saw club kids dancing to your music?

Omar Souleyman: Yeah, it was very strange at first because I didn’t know what was going to happen, I didn’t have a clue what to expect. With a wedding I know every single person, they’re from my tribe. When I come and play abroad I have to be on stage at a certain time, I have to give a certain result by a certain time – it’s more demanding in that sense. When I play a wedding we can go on for three hours.

What’s the longest song in your repertoire?

Twenty minutes. They’re all new words too. I have a poet that’s with me at the weddings and he gives me new words to sing. If I don’t agree with it I’ll ask him to change it.

After so many years performing, why do you still need the poet?

There are certain people who have that ability and it’s a gift given to them. I don’t. So that’s why I use a poet. I’d like to be able to write these words but I don’t have the ability to sing and to come up with the words – it’s a little bit tricky. I can make up some stuff but not so readily, not so fast.

Is there a lyric that touches you every time you sing it?

Yes, this lyric – ‘I gave you my heart, I gave my heart to your hand / And then you mistrusted it, you threw it out’. It’s like, you gave me £20 to give to someone else, but I just spent it on food. A lot of the words have meaning and make me feel deeply. It’s a very universal thing, and it’s one of the reasons why I’ve become popular very quickly, because I sing about the things people experience. If my words didn’t have meaning then the songs wouldn’t have meaning.

What does a typical day back at home consist of?

If I don’t have a show on I either have dinner with friends or I hang out at home and watch TV with my kids, playing around with them, joking and eating.

What kind of TV shows do you like?

I like the news.

What do you make of what you see on the news?

The world is changing bit by bit.

Do you like the way it’s changing?

It’s changing because of our mistakes.

How has global recognition changed you?

It has changed me. If you think that you’re successful, if you think that you’ve made it, you set boundaries for yourself. But because I’ve travelled and gone to all of these places – Australia, Canada, and all that – in a sense I feel that I’ve become smaller because the boundaries for me are open. My personality hasn’t changed or the way I treat people. I’m the same person that I was when I started. Fame hasn’t made me egotistical. So, personality-wise, I haven’t changed, I’m the same person. I feel like I’ve grown smaller in the sense of my outlook because of the endless possibilities.

When you travel, is there anything that you see in the west that you wish you could get at home in Syria?

Yes! Chips!

So Omar Souleyman likes fish and chips?!

(laughs) Sorry I mean crisps, not chips. I like the tomato flavour and the vinegar flavour.

Good choice. So a lot of people have come across you thanks to your remix of Björk’s ‘Crystalline’. What did the experience teach you?

I didn’t learn anything new. I only heard her voice. It’s my music that we used. For me it was normal. I was told that she was a very famous lady. She’s popular, and I’m popular. I wasn’t surprised she came to me.

You have made over six hundred albums. Do you think music is all about capturing the moment and then moving on?

These six hundred tapes – they’re really recordings of weddings. So when I do a wedding it gets recorded, and then it goes onto tape, and that’s why there’s six hundred of them. But I don’t think of songs as disposable. I can’t even count how many songs I’ve got.  I can’t even remember them.

Do you think much of your popularity in the west comes down to the way you look?

It could be the clothes, it could be the fast music, it could be the way that I encourage them. I can’t tell you exactly. I don’t want to make myself stand out except when I’m on stage. I like being on stage a lot and sometimes I don’t want to stop.

Would you say that you’re addicted to being in the spotlight?

Fame is one of the most important things in my life. I want longevity as well, I don’t want to get a flash of celebrity and then be a flop. I love music. But I also like to be popular.

Was there ever a time when you weren’t popular? What spurred you on to greater things?

In the beginning I was really poor, a common worker, just like everyone else. I worked really hard. Music was a way to get me out of being poor. I was a plasterer,  I built buildings.

Have you ever played in a building that you helped build?

Yes.

What did that feel like?

I would remember and say to myself, I hope those days don’t get repeated, the labour days.

A lot of people see you as a mysterious person. Are you happy with that perception?

Yeah, I like that. I like people to say, ‘Who is this Omar Souleyman?’

And who is Omar Souleyman?

I don’t know. (laughs)

Text © Tim Noakes 2012
Photography © Jamie Hawksworth

DAVID FINCHER

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:10:47 +0000

After the huge success of The Social Network, director David Fincher discusses why he’s decided to dip back into darker waters with his interpretation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

When it was announced that David Fincher would be making an English version of Steig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, it came as a shock to many cinephiles. After all, the books had already been made into a hugely successful Swedish film franchise, and since 2007’s Zodiac, the director had moved aay from thrillers and serial killers with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and last year’s Facebook drama, The Social Network. I was granted a rare interview with the 49-year-old auteur to find out what provoked him to put his own spin on the trials and tribulations of Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, and why, after all this time, he felt inclined to revisit the dark side of mankind.

Do you think Hollywood found it hard to pluck up the courage to invest in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo without seeing the success of the books and original film trilogy?

David Fincher: I was given this book right in the middle of Benjamin Button, which had taken 6 years to get off the ground. I said to the producer, “I’ve got be honest with you, I can’t push a rock up a hill. I think you’ve got to shoot it in a foreign location, it’s going to be expensive, I don’t see anybody spending the kind of money it’s going to take us to make this together and I’m too exhausted.” Then, of course, it came back around about 5 years later as a gigantic hit book and a hit movie and at that point the rock was already up the hill, so I just had to push it over. That’s partly my fault for not having wherewithal to imagine that this could be something a big studio would ultimately go for.

Is this one of the biggest challenges to your career so far, because the stories have already been so widely seen and read?

Doing it differently doesn’t seem to be an issue, improving it is a wholly subjective thing. You give 5 directors the same script and you get 5 different movies. That’s just the reality. You take a camera out of the case and you set it up and you have a different cast, you have a different vibe, people stage things differently. Things are amped up that are more important to one person than they would be to another; I don’t think it’s possible to make something the same.

Did you have to compromise over anything? What about the brutal rape scene?

No. The idea is not to actually film somebody being raped. The idea is to put the audience in a position where they will understand what that means to that character. There is nothing real about movies, they’re designed to feel real, but they’re also designed to give you the emotional protection of not having to witness something that’s real. I’m interested in the drama of Lisbeth. It’s the whole chronology of events and how it hooks you and how it makes you feel. We’re not just recording depravity. The Exorcist is not a film about a 12-year-old girl masturbating with a crucifix, that’s what happens in it, but that’s not what the movie’s about. It’s about faith and it’s about mothers and daughters and the loss of control. It can be a parable about drug abuse, when you lose someone to addiction or a force that’s bigger than the whole relationship. It’s a bigger context than just ‘we’ve got to do this, we’re going to order up some sex toys and he’s going to have a smoking jacket.’ It’s not dotting the I’s and crossing the t’s. It’s about the engagement.

Do you think cinema is still as powerful a medium as it was when you first started?

Less and less so. I think we’re most responsive to movies in our teens and preteens. When we’re sort of figuring out what the language of that is, and you haven’t seen 5000 versions of the same eight stories. You’re much more susceptible to a story taking you to this place or that place, and as you get older and as you’ve seen more iterations of the same kind of plot machination you become more jaded. I also think that cinema has become more hyperbolic and I think that a lot of movies bludgeon you with, if not simplistic, but simple ideas.

Why did you think that is?

Part of not having money to make movies is you don’t have as a big of a consensus to how it’s being spent. When you’re making a movie like Taxi Driver for $3 million, that’s a much purer form of communication because it didn’t require an entire boardroom to agree that that was a good expenditure. Everybody sort of went: ‘Who wants to make this? What’s his name? Who’s going to be in it? He’s going to shave his head? Alright, fuck it’. I’m sure more thought went into it than that, but, when you’re making something that costs $80-100 million there’s a bigger risk and so there’s a lot more anxiety.

How did filming in Sweden affect your style of directing?

On location it was 20 below. I’ve never worked in that kind of cold. It was unbelievable. At night, when there’s sleet, it’s like being frozen sandblasted, it’s truly exhausting. It’s one of those things that you can’t prepare yourself for. Being in Sweden changes the way you feel about those books. When I read those books I saw them in a completely different context to when I was in southern California. When you go to Sweden you see a whole different take on it. It’s not just the cold, it’s not just snow, it’s that for 6 months out of the year the world is a completely different place. The sun doesn’t come out until 9 in the morning and it’s gone after lunch.

Apart from the books, how did Swedish folklore influence your creative process?

When we started to look for tag-lines for the posters we found these very, very bizarre but interesting Swedish proverbs, like, ‘What’s hidden in snow comes forth from afar’ or ‘He who challenges evil shall expel’. It’s like when somebody actually explains to you what ‘Ashes to ashes, we all fall down’ means you’re like, ‘Really? How did this become a nursery rhyme? I would think you want to protect children from this’. But, if you’re talking about the Bubonic plague and – I don’t think anyone ever wanted to make the bubonic plague palatable – but if you’re trying to make it something other than this horrible thing that children have no control over, then you might come up with something like Ashes to Ashes.

Have you always been fascinated by dark tales since you were a child?

I don’t know. I had a pretty good upbringing. I remember being 10 or 11 years old and seeing Rear Window and the moment when Lars Thorwald brings that suitcase down in the middle of the night and there’s the look on Jimmy Stuart’s face and I remember thinking ‘Ah, he cut her up and he put her in the suitcase.’ I don’t know where that idea came from. It was not something that happened in our neighbourhood; I think I’ve always been interested in what’s going on in the house next door.

Once a film is wrapped and printed, do you find it easy to let go? Or do you always yearn to improve it?

I don’t watch my movies. I see them so much that by the time it gets to a theatre I’ve seen it 300 times. You probably watch it once in the theatre with an audience and then go home and throw up repeatedly. I would never want to revisit something. I’ve done sort of high definition reclamations and new transfers and things like that. But I’m not the kind of person who wants to go back. I think movies are a by-product of the time they were made and I think if you go back and revisit them, and re-do the visual effects and whatever you may be missing the point. I think movies are a document of where you were in a certain time, where technology was in a certain time, where acting was at a certain time.

Which film taught you the most about your strengths and weaknesses as a director?

Every experience teaches. It’s just another lap. Managing expectation is a huge part of what you do as a director. You have to do it in every department. From having been put through the wringer on Alien 3, what I learnt and what I brought to Seven was ‘I’m going to make my own mistakes, and I’m going to take the fall. Any mistakes that I make are going to be mine.’

When was the last time you had to make a huge, artistic compromise?

You make artistic compromises everyday. Some of them are human, some of them are based on wishing I could get a performance to be a little bit more of what I had in my mind, but I can see that the actors are bruised and battered and exhausted. I’ve hurt people before, I know what that’s like to ask for one more and people come up to you with a dislocated finger or a broken rib or a hyper-extended knee. You just go ‘is it worth it?’ No. You can call that an artistic compromise because you really wanted that shot, but you have to manage the assets, it’s also really important that these people realise that I’m not squeezing them like tubes of toothpaste. That I’m not wringing them out and bringing in another one. We’re in this together.

Who stops you from burning out?

Nobody really. I’m in charge of that. On The Social Network we probably shot more days than any of the cast had ever shot before, and it was half as much as we shot on Dragon Tattoo.

Have you always been a natural leader or have you had to fake it to make it?

There are definitely times when you’re faking it.

Which film of yours comes closest to what you envisioned in your head?

Zodiac was a movie where I knew what that place smelt like. I knew that park at the beginning where those kids got shot. I knew that stuff, I knew 1969 in San Francisco. Fight Club was a feeling about disenfranchisement and I felt particularly susceptible to Chuck Palahniuk’s manifesto; I felt like I could be easily swept away by it.

Why, because of the age you were when you read it?

Yeah, it was like, ‘I’ve said this shit to myself before, I’ve had this dialogue and been too afraid to ever act on it and I know exactly what this guy is going through.’ There were definitely aspects of Mark Zuckerberg as he was imagined by Aaron Sorkin where I was like, ‘I know what it’s like to be in a room with a bunch of adults going ‘oh, your little start up, that’s so cute.’ I know what it’s like to go ‘oh man, what smug bastards’.

Do you think that any of your films haven’t aged as well as you’d hoped they would?

None of them age as well as you hope they will. I don’t know, I really couldn’t comment.

Are you worried about what the cast and crew of the Swedish films are going to think about your version?

I want Noomi Rapace to like it. I’m very curious to see what Stieg Larsson’s estate thinks. I’m very curious to see what the people who made the original think, and I do consider it the original. But they’re very different movies because of the amount of money spent on them. I’m sure that if I had killed myself to make a movie for $15 million and then Niels Arden Oplev got to do a $90 million version of the same thing in Sweden 2 years later, it would make me uncomfortable. By the same token, I hope he likes what we did. I don’t think what we’re doing is in any way denigrating to what came before it. I think it can only add. There was a time and place when these books became very, very successful and not completely in spite of the success of the Swedish movies, though I’m sure it had something to do with it. And now we’re picking up where they left off. And we’re doing it in English and hopefully people will like our version, which is a very different version. I’m thinking of it in terms that I think of every movie. I desperately want to take it in, and I’m happy for there to be discussion about it. I don’t like all this ‘that one will never be as good’ nor do I like ‘well, look how much money they’re spending, it’s going to be better’. All this message board nonsense to me is counter to what I think filmmakers think. We’re all in the circus.

Do you, for want of a better phrase, feel trapped in the serial killers box?

(Laughs) I never loved being pigeon holed. But I didn’t do this movie because there was a serial killer in it, I did it because I loved the relationship between this younger woman and older man and what they eventually mean to one another. I love the two characters. We couldn’t even pretend to do the Agatha Christie walk-through mystery. Once you pair that back you ultimately get to what is compelling about the story, which is both those two people, and how human and frail and strong and interesting they are. What interested me was them.

You’ve been linked to Disney’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea project. Is that happening?

We’re trying to get a script that we all believe in. Verne was an interesting guy, there’s some interesting stuff in there that needs to be looked at. I love the idea of a big 3D extravaganza, and I love the idea of doing it dry from wet water stuff. And I like the idea of science fiction after the Civil War; what does that world look like? We’re talking about a guy that’s 200 years ahead of his time. It could be interesting, but by the same token it’s an expensive proposition, and I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of ideas about what’s comfortable family entertainment.

Do you ever resent having to justify your creative decisions to the financiers?

It’s a difficult environment, but we’re not talking about fucking watercolours, man. We’re talking about $100 million, we’re talking about GNP for a small country. If you spend $100 million you’d better make $2-300 million because, otherwise, it’s not going to happen again. The fact of the matter is no one’s forcing me to play on this kind of wire from these kinds of heights. If you want to make a movie for $400,000 I’m sure that I could go out and raise $400,000 to make a movie. But, I don’t have any $400,000 movies in me right now.

What still fascinates you about making films?

I think that movies are unbelievably powerful and I love the immersive nature of them as a storytelling form, and as an art form, and as an alternate reality form. I’m not bored by movies yet. I think that they’re a very young form of communication and there’s still a lot left to do. I desperately enjoy watching an audience watch a movie. One of the greatest things we got to do was turn an infrared camera on the audience as they watched this movie. It' date movie, and as Lisbeth is going into this house, the women are going, ‘What is she doing there?’ And the guys are going, ‘I thought this was a chick movie? There’s certainly a lot of sodomy.’ It was fun. And that’s what you’re doing it for. There’s a part of being a director that’s a little bit of the trained dog. You want, when you do a back flip, for everybody to give you a clap. But that’s not the only reason you do it.

After the trilogy, are you going to give the serial killers a rest?

I don’t believe in making specific plans, because something will change and I’ll embarrass myself. I don’t want to do that.

© TIM NOAKES 2011

GHOSTFACE KILLAH

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:58:35 +0100

The Wallabee champ and his Wu Tang brethren bring da ruckus to Staten Island once again

Situated a few blocks away from Don Corleone’s compound, the Eve Ultra Lounge in Staten Island is in the business of keeping things gangsta. Sandwiched between an Italian sausage wholesaler and a shop called Crazy Goat Feed, the club sits on the corner of Arthur Kill Road protected by an army of Greco Roman statues. Renowned for throwing the borough’s wildest foam parties, inside it looks like a strip joint designed by Tony Montana after a particular heavy night on the sherbet. White drapes, a bored looking bosomy angel mannequin, and beach style cabanas frame the dancefloor while the staff keep themselves busy topping up the urinals with fresh ice cubes. Today this little slice of Miami circa 1985 is playing host to hometown heroes the Wu Tang Clan, who are here to play an intimate show and to take part in a Red Bull Music Academy Q&A about the making of their classic album, Return to the 36 Chambers and Raekwon’s Only Built For Cuban Links. All the killa bees are here apart from Method Man and Clan kingpin RZA, who is currently shooting a flick with his BFF, Russell Crowe. After an hour of insights into their verbal gymnastics, drug habits, fashion choices, and recording processes – most memorably an amazing analogy about Wu’s takeover of the music industry (“it’s like we ran over a deer and spread deer snot over the windscreen… we killed it”) – Ghostface Killah checked his pager and invited Dazed Digital backstage for a quick chat as his crew prepared for their raucously sweaty Shaolin throwdown...

Hi Ghost.

What’s good baby? Yeah.

Does it feel good to be back on the Island?

It always feels good to be back on the island. I’m looking forward to whatever man, that’s how it is. That’s how we do it. It’s aiiight. It’s good to be infront of your people, you know?

How has it changed since you released 36 Chambers?

The streets is more contained but brothers still be getting they game on. You know what it is, it’s like any other place, things change nothing ever stays the same.

How did Wu Tang affect the local community?

We put it on the map, yo. Thieves put it on the map first, Wu Tang put it on second and blew it out the frame. We letting niggas know like yo, Staten Island motherfuckers are doing it over there. That’s the kind of effect we had on this shit.

Are they going to erect a statue of Wu Tang here?

I don’t know, but they should, yo. Don’t praise it though, you’ve got to give praise to God first. We not here to worship anything but the father. After that they can do whatever they wanna do.

We’ve just been walking around the neighbourhood…

This is not our neighbourhood, this is the nice neighbourhood.

This is the nice neighbourhood?

Yeah, this ain’t where you get your head blown off at. That’s 10, 15 minutes from here. This is good.

*Inspectah Deck walks backstage*

Good to see you man. You know the Rebel INS, right? Inspectah Deck.

Inspectah Deck: Yeah.

*Inspectah Deck walks off*

Does it feel special to have the Clan back here?

Always, most definitely.

When you play the old songs now, do any of them take on a new significance as you’ve all got older?

Ghostface: Yeah, it just brings back memories. I embrace it, B. I thank God for a lot. We did what we were supposed to do and everything is good. But the darkness is still there and the struggle is still there. I don’t enjoy the darkness but I respect it. It lurks everywhere man. Just coz you see me doing this don’t mean that there’s not a dark spot in my life, yo. But I’m blessed, na mean? From Staten Island, Stapleton, to the rest of the world, they love us. Australia, New Zealand, Russia, everywhere! We’re men now, we’re older, we’ve got babies, we’re mature, into our Islam real good, still trying to stay away from the wrong foods. It’s like, yo, we’re here man.

Why do so many rappers embrace Islam?

Ghostface: Because Islam is about peace, man. It brings you more in tune with yourself, that why I read the Koran because it brings you more into yourself. It brings together all the prophets but it’s a book of warnings at the same time. I can’t speak for every Muslim, but Islam means peace to me. God brings peace to you when you find love, peace and happiness. It’s not peace, love, happiness, it’s love, peace, and happiness. One you’ve got peace you’re happy.

Right. Are you happy now Ghost?

To a degree I am happy.

What do you think the legacy of 36 Chambers has been on wider pop culture?

Ghostface: The influence has been marvellous man. People embraced us. I can’t say like no other rapper… fuck rap… they embraced us with they hearts, B. They grabbed us and held us like we was their children and I respect that,. When they did that we gave it back to them, because the energy you give to me I’m going give right back to you. We just wanted to be respected at the end of the day, that’s it. Aiight cool, B.

SLICK RICK

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:10:20 +0100

The old skool hip hop legend holds court in the belly of The Paradise Theatre

In the middle of the Bronx lies The Paradise Theatre, a vision of beautiful weirdness packed to the rafters with gurning gargoyles, cheeky cherubs, terracotta vases and prancing statues. Built in 1929 to give the inhabitants of one of NYC’s poorest boroughs a fantastical escape from reality, the former cinema was designed to look like an Italian villa twinkling under a night sky. 82 years after it opened its doors with a screening of The Mysterious Dr Fu Manchu, its ambience is still breathtaking. So it was a bit of shock to find out that our interview with local hip hop legend, Slick Rick was scheduled to take underground in the belly of Paradise – aka a whitewashed room that looked more like a prison cell. We were going to point this out to MC Ricky D, but thought better of it considering his long running battles with America’s judicial system. Instead, we decided to ask South Wimbledon’s most famous rap export about growing up in the Bronx and how he regards his classic album, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick…

How would you introduce yourself to someone who has never heard of you before?

Hi, my name is Slick Rick, Ricky Walters, hip-hop rap star, icon, legend, whatever, a man who once represented the hip hop hits.

Dazed Digital: I see you wear less jewellery today than in your heyday. How did your image come about – the jewels, the eye patch, the Kangol hats?

The fashion came from the neighbourhood. Each one teach one, you learn from everybody, you see what looks good on everybody who has the same complexion as you, and you incorporate it in yourself. It’s like harvesting; you harvest everything. The patch was a handicap: I had a bad eye, so I guess that was a nice way to address it.

Dazed Digital: You were born in Britain. What was it like coming from Wimbledon and relocating to the Bronx as a kid?

It was rough and a little tough so I had to fit in like a glasshouse. I’d fit in as best as possible and incorporated everything they had to teach me, blending it with my Englishness. I started hip-hop in like 1980, before that it was just playing around with the kids in school. I was accepted for that, there was no major big failure.

Dazed Digital: You’re renowned as a storyteller – how did the bleakness of the streets and the Bronx in particular influenced your narratives?

It didn’t really impact on my writing; if I admired something, it inspired me and stimulated me to put it into a record. I liked the tough kids, the clothes, the slang, the lingo, the segregated environment, the whole US lifestyle, the whole New York lifestyle, the whole Downtown versus Uptown, the whole Brooklyn versus the Bronx and Queens and Manhattan, everything. What I did was incorporate it all with stimulation, shock value, and humour.

Dazed Digital: You started your classic album The Great Adventures of Slick Rick with the song “Treat Her Like A Prostitute” which was very provocative in 1988. Have you always seen yourself as a provocateur?

Well I was like eighteen or nineteen at the time, so it was really just playing around, child shock stimulation mixed with humour, it wasn’t really to cause no philosophers controversy. It was just really having fun as a young adult, shock value, humour, with a little touch of reality too. If you just come out and say whatever you want to say, nobody’s going to pay you that much attention, they know where you’re coming from.

Dazed Digital: Are you nostalgic about that era?

If you look at the glass half-empty I was very thin at the time, very nerdy and not getting girls. But if you look at the glass half-full, well I went from being a nobody to being a celebrity, which makes good my finance, I got to meet lots of famous people and travel the world, have nice things… I guess you can look at it both ways.

Dazed Digital: It’s been 23 years since the album came out – do you still like it?

Well I like the songs Children’s Story, Mona Lisa, Hey Young World and a couple more, cause they have eternal modern value. The music is still relevant, still strong, and it still moves you in your soul. It still gives off good vibes.

Dazed Digital: What do you make of the state of hip-hop right now?

I’ve been in the game since 1985 – everything has to grow, you can’t be thirty years old and still wearing Pampers. But this industry appears to be controlled; the youth is just caught up with sex, and usual puberty stuff, so it recycles itself like that. It’s not going to have any political value like Woodstock’s generation. As a person who’s been in hip-hop for thirty years I don’t want to have to go through all the puberty stuff I went through thirty years ago.

Dazed Digital: Do you still have a connection with what’s going on in the streets of the Bronx?

Yeah, pretty much, I believe that, it’s like harvest; you harvest everything that this culture has to offer, what America has to offer, what New York has to offer, what hip-hop has to offer. You harvest all the beauty, all the essence and you incorporate it in your life. I still think that I carry a lot of relevance and there’s a lot of things that people aren’t doing anymore, fashion wise. They don’t have that richness I do.

MOBB DEEP

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 15:39:13 +0100

Prodigy and Havoc talk about the long lasting appeal of their classic album, The Infamous
Back in 1995, Mobb Deep, two 21-year-old stick up kids from Queensbridge, created The Infamous, a bleak rap masterpiece that detailed the daily struggle of living in one of America’s roughest housing projects. Likening the 41st Side of Queens to a war zone, the album weaved together a hellish cast of corrupt cops, crack fiends and shady drug dealers against a back drop of hard knocking eerie beats chopped together from old jazz and soul records by Herbie Hancock, Patrice Rushen, and Teddy Pendegrass. Featuring anthems such as “Shook Ones Pt II”, “Give Up the Goods” and “Eye for an Eye”, Havoc and Prodigy laid their lives open in the most brutal fashion possible, and in the process became flag bearers for the East Coast rap scene. As part of Red Bull Music Academy’s Five Out of Five tour, a series of hip hop gigs and seminars taking place this week around NYC’s five boroughs, the Mobbsters took over Webster Hall on Sunday night to talk about their classic record, followed by a show packed full of their greatest hits. I caughtup with P and Hav before they hit the stage to find out why The Infamous still packs a punch, 17 years after its release.
On The Infamous you rhyme about the bleakness of your situation; what did you find inspiring about that environment?
Havoc: The tenacity of the people in the neighborhood, people who don’t have a lot of money, and they still survive and have a smile on their face. That’s inspiring in itself. Some people from different walks of life would probably see the way that we were living and hang themselves. We had to face a challenge, face death. This inspires me, knowing that we’re strong enough to make it through.
Prodigy: We were just in it and living it. It was fun. A lot of people might have seen it as dangerous, they would not take those types of risks, but we were just having fun. Everything was fun, that’s the way we looked at it. You know you get older and you look back like, wow!
Were you really that bad?
Prodigy: Yeah, we were troublemakers!
Havoc: Yeah, for sure! We put in the record so many things we were going through, it was drama everyday.
When you look back at this record now in your mid-thirties, why do you think The Infamous caught so many people off guard?
Prodigy: At that time there was nothing like it at all, it was in a class of its own. It stood out from everything else that was out yet, we definitely were something new that the world never heard or seen before. It was attractive to people: the life style, the style of the beats, the style of the lyrics, the dress code, slang, everything that we did was really attractive to people because a lot of that stuff they had never seen before.
Havoc: I believe that they were attracted to the honesty, more than anything. You felt the honesty from the music, so naturally people are going to be attracted to something that is honest.
Was writing these hardcore experiences down your way of escaping the craziness of your situation?
Prodigy: Yeah it’s definitely good way to vent, using lyrics and music to get a lot of your frustration and pain out. Actually doing a song, going to the studio and just getting out on paper your anger makes you feel a little better sometimes. It’s like punching the heavy bag in the gym to get your frustration out instead of punching someone’s face.
Is ever be the time when you think that the music you made could get you killed?
Havoc: Everyday going out there performing, you might run into someone who’s at your show just because they don’t like you, so everyday we were performing we were always taking the chance! That’s what we signed up for. It’s all good.
Prodigy: Word.
On the record you liken your neighbourhood to a war zone. Was that what it was really like?
Prodigy: I would say it’s actually worse than the record because there is a lot of things you cannot put on the record, a lot that you cannot talk about. Violence, certain things that actually happened, murder…
Havoc: Shootouts… it’s like you may be cool with two different people but if they have beef with each other and you’re hanging around with one of them you could catch the shots too regardless, andvice versa.
How does that affect you as people?
Prodigy: It can turn you into a cold person.
Havoc: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say.
Prodigy: It can make you cold hearted and antisocial because your mind is always on animal mode because that’s the environment we come from. We’re stuck in that animal mode, and you’ve got to learn to adjust once you step outside of that world to the different platforms where the music takes us.
How do you stay tied into the Trife Life as you put it on the record, are you still into the kind of stuff that you are writing about in 1995?
Havoc: We’re going to be forever connected to it. We’re always will be from the streets, we’re in the streets; our studio’s in the hood. You have business, the music business, you have the real life and you have got to balance the two.
How do you think you changed from the kids who made this record, to where you are now?
Prodigy: We definitely are more business-oriented. In the beginning, we might have been focused on totally just music and being famous, just wanting to have fame and make hot music, but as we got older we had to understand that this is a business and that our moves need to be calculated. It’s like a chess game, you have got to make sure you make the right music, so that the business continues to be successful. I guess that is how we changed most. Our first name was the Poetical Prophets, before we changed it to Mobb Deep, and when I look back on it now that was like a ill name for us because that is what we really were. A lot of things that we were saying, the success that we wanted and that didn’t have at the time when we wrote the songs, but we made it come true, we prophesized what it was going to be for us.
Prodigy, you came out of prison earlier this year, was it strange to come out and witness all this renewed interest in your music?
Prodigy: Not so much strange but definitely I feel blessed, the success that we have and for the people to love what we do so much, and they are still be interested in what we are doing, I definitely feel blessed. But before I went in, I had already seen the effect that our music had on people and I saw it, it is powerful. That is one of the things that keep us doing what we are doing, that keep us together and focused on doing it because we know how powerful our music is.
What do you think the legacy of this record has been on the wider popular culture?
Havoc: I think the legacy is that it’s a real honest record from the streets – two brothers trying to make it out, describing stories of what we have been through. The music is immaculate, people just love it. It’s like classic material and there will never be another like it. It only could be made once, at one time. People will never hear an album like that again.
Has it been hard to live up to?
Havoc: I do not try to live up to it, I just keep it going. If you don’t do that you’re setting yourself up for failure. That was one baby, now you have to have another baby – you are not going to make the same baby twice.

PJ HARVEY

Thu, 8 Sep 2011 15:47:39 +0100

Winning the 2011 Mercury Music Prize for Let England Shake may have cemented PJ Harvey’s reputation as one of Britain’s most influential songwriters of the last twenty years, but her approach to storytelling and musical innovation remains firmly focused on the future. I met her the day after her win to discuss her evolution as an artist over the 20 years...

Have you become more impassioned as an artist over the years?

As I’ve got older I’ve become much more aware of what’s going on around me, and, yes, more passionately wanting to put words around that. I certainly felt a greater sense of urgency to try and deal with some of these things on this new record. That’s how Let England Shake come about, because I felt quite impotent in not being able to say or do anything and this was the only way that I could think of to try and put some feeling around what was happening around me. Through song.

Why did you feel that now was the right time to become vocal about war and politics?

The reason that it’s only been in the last couple of years that I’ve started to write about what’s going on in the wider world rather the interior monologue is because I knew instinctively that I wasn’t ready as a writer. War and nationhood; that’s weighty subject matter. I would have to do it very well or don’t do it at all, and I knew that I wasn’t ready in terms of my skills with language up until a couple of years ago to even begin to try and write about these things.

What was the change in you as an artist, as a lyricist?

The change in me really was through hard work. And I work everyday at my writing and I just try and improve and study. I write, and rewrite, and rewrite again. That’s the only way to improve at something. And so the reason that I felt that I might be in a position to try and write about these things now is just through the experience that I’ve gained through a lot of practice.

You once said in Dazed & Confused, “Sometimes I wish I didn’t feel so deeply. I wish I could let things ride a bit more.” Do you still feel that way?

As an artist, no matter what field of work you’re in or medium, you have to feel things deeply in order to then process that and turn it around and put it out someway in whatever art form you are using. So it’s a mixed blessing. Obviously, you need to be extremely sensitive as a person in order to absorb all of these feelings and in order to process them and that has its downsides. It can be extremely draining, but at the same time if I didn’t have those qualities myself, if I wasn’t able to feel these things on a very deep level, I couldn’t write about them and I feel very lucky to be able to do the work I do and I really enjoy doing it.

How do you think you’ve evolved as a writer over the last 20 years?

Well I always want to keep experimenting. I think the ways that I’ve evolved as an artist come about because of my desire to keep learning. Always, every day, I want to learn something new, whether it’s a new word or whatever. I want to learn something and that is why my work changes in mood, it’s because I’m moving on to what I can learn next. It’s not actually so pre-planned as to think of it about in terms of image change or implied direction, it’s actually quite a natural process for me to reach for something new; reach for a new instrument; reach for a way of writing I haven’t tried before. And that’s how the music evolves in the way it does.

So you’re always on a quest for the new?

It’s very interesting what there is to learn from our lives and I would like to know as much as I possibly can during this relatively short amount of time that we have here. That’s what keeps driving me.

What did you learn from making Let England Shake?

The thing that I learned the most from all of the research that I did was really that the language that is used to describe human suffering is and has stayed the same for hundreds and hundreds of years. When I looked back 200-300 years and I was reading about what happened in these lands before Afghanistan, Iraq, the language that was used then, or even the earliest forms 2000 years ago, it’s still the same to describe warfare, to describe suffering, to describe bloodshed. That really struck me - the great waste of it all and this feeling that nothing is going to change, it’s always been like this, it always will be. Such huge loss of life - but also just accepting that, ok, that’s how things are. But I did feel that it was something that I wanted to write about and make other people aware of.

Your songs are like condensed novels. Do they come from a visual idea to begin with?

Yeah, I come from a visual arts background and I would have gone to art school had I not moved into music. So it’s very natural for me to think in visual terms. Very often a song will actually begin as something that I can see. It’s more as if I can see a scene from a film; I can see the colour, I can see the setting, the light, the character or characters involved, the time of day that it is, and I just describe that picture that I can see. And that picture, that image, would have first been generated by a general train of thought or something I know I want to explore within lyrics, within writing. And I usually at this stage tend to work on lyrics purely alone first of all so it’s just a matter of documenting the visual image that I can see.

Do you ever regret not going to Central Saint Martins to study sculpture?

Part of me would have loved to have gone to Central Saint Martins and done a fine art degree. I would have loved that time of being around like-minded souls and at that sort of age, at that young age, and being in London. Just to have had that experience I think would have been wonderful. So I do feel sad sometimes that that didn’t happen, but then I only measure it by what has happened to me and in some ways I’ve received a wonderful education, I’ve seen many places throughout the world and I’ve got to play my music in front of hundreds and hundreds of people, you know? So I can’t regret it as well because I wouldn’t have missed what has happened to me for anything.

What were you like 20 years ago?

Well, yeah, 20 years ago in ’91 I wasn’t much different to how I am now. In terms of my work, whatever I was working on at art school I wanted it to be the best it could possibly be and I wanted it to be unusual and to be coming from a different angle to what had happened before. I wanted to almost shock people into having to pay attention. I could remember a lot of my art school projects were very large and would be hung from ceilings or hidden in places that you wouldn’t expect in order to try and get people to look at something differently; I mean literally to look up in an uncomfortable position. I think in some ways I’ve continued to do that. I’m always interested in uncovering something new or trying to find a new way of articulation and therefore get people to listen as if for the first time, to see something as if for the first time. Which is what I try and do myself, I always try and approach everything as if I hadn’t seen it before, and describe it in that way, and that helps me as a writer too.

How important has fashion been to your career?

Well, it’s always been very natural for me to consider the visuals, I mean obviously going back to my art-school days. The way I present my work is as important to me to do well visually as it is to do it musically. So I’ve always been extremely interested in the way I present myself; what I’m wearing, the way I present myself on stage, the way the stage looks, the way it’s lit, everything. Because if it’s going to represent the music it has to feel right for that body of work. So that’s how I’ve always operated. I treat each album, each song, individually and look at what would feel right to present that. So if I’m making a video for one song, again I just think about what feels right to present this song, what should I be wearing, what is going on in this song, what are the lyrics dealing with, and work with it in that way.

How do you think relationship with your body image has changed?

Ah, I think as anyone grows older you… worry less about things actually. I don’t know what your experience is.

Definitely. Well you see the state of me today so…

(Laughs) As you get older, different things take on a greater importance than how you’re looking that day, you know? Other things become much more important than that, and I really welcome that as a part of the process of getting older. I think it’s wonderful to stop worrying about how you look or what you’re wearing or what other people think of you. You get to the point were you actually just don’t care ‘cos there are so many other things that seem much more urgent and pressing to deal with.

Do you feel indifferent to what’s coming out now or do you feel it’s getting exciting again?

I don’t feel indifferent to what is happening in pop culture but I can’t say that I feel it’s getting better. When I first came out in the early ‘90s, I can remember that time as feeling very vibrant and very exciting. There was a lot of new styles of music emerging and some great, great writers. You had people like Nirvana first taking off which I think took everybody by surprise. People like the Pixies were an astonishing band – still are. And everything felt very new and very experimental. I feel now, and it’s a difficult one to answer, because I also wonder if what is happening now doesn’t seem exciting to me particularly because I’ve already lived through that. If I was 14 now, what was happening right now musically would seem very exciting to me ‘cos I wouldn’t know of everything that had gone before. So I question myself on that. To me, now being 41, there doesn’t seem to be that much that’s interesting me because most of it I feel like I’ve heard before, and done better before.

How do you stay creatively inspired, then?

I just keep my eyes open every day to be inspired by what is happening around me, both in a very near level and a great level in terms of what’s happening in the news, what’s happening in the world. And I think the key is just to be alive to that; to listen, to look, and to process it all. Just to be alive to the moment that we’re living in, that’s where my greatest inspiration comes from. In terms of other arts, I actually find my greatest inspiration through theatre. I think there is some great theatre productions going on in the most recent years, and some great writers. Jez Butterworth being one example with Jerusalem, which I’ve seen twice now and would love to see again. Directors like Ian Rickson, those people I find extremely inspiring to be around.

How do you see yourself developing as an artist over the next 20 years?

It’s very hard to answer where I see myself going in the next 20 years, it’s a long time and I do take each day as it comes. I always follow my instincts creatively and I’m never ever really sure where that will take me. I don’t know whether it’s going to take me into theatre music more or whether it’s going to take me into becoming a painter. I’ll just have to see what happens.

TEXT © TIM NOAKES 2011

THUNDERCAT

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:21:05 +0100

Thundercat is a true bass warrior. Since picking up his stringy axe at the age of four, his frantic fingers have walked all over Snoop Dogg’s Blue Carpet Treatment, Flying Lotus’s Cosmogramma, Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah Part One, and everything that thrash icons Suicidal Tendencies have done since 2002. In short, the 26-year-old Los Angelino is a funkdafied, musical renaissance man like no other. This month he shakes his funky feathers into the solo spotlight with The Golden Age of the Apocalypse, a Brainfeeder record that showcases his smoother, electronic side. We caught a moment with the cool cat to talk cartoons, metal, jazz funk, and, a whole lotta slap bass…

Hello Thundercat. Your album is called The Golden Age Of The Apocalypse. What exactly does that mean?

The Golden Age Of Apocalypse?

Mhmm.

It just feels like the beginning of the end times. It feels like the end is near.

That’s quite a downbeat, almost depressing way of looking at things, would you say you are a depressive character?

No, not at all. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. I mean it’s just kind of apocalyptic a little bit, but not so much as scary.

When the apocalypse comes what would you ideally like to be doing?

Playing a bass solo, watching cartoons.

Cool. What is it about the Thundercats cartoon that you felt an affinity with?

As a kid, it was very inspirational for me. I felt very connected to Lion-O, the guy with huge flaming red hair and his amazing sword of omens. I connected to all the colours. I would sit the toys in front of me and draw a picture, not of the toys but I would just use them for inspiration.

Which Thundercat is a secret electro jazz funk fan?

Panthro.

Not Mumm-Ra?

Nah, it would be Panthro because he was the black guy. I reckon inside the Battlecat tank he was listening to jazz. I think Mumm-Ra would be listening to Metallica’s Master of Puppets.

Yeah, I was thinking that.

People sometimes do.

It seems like you’re a mix of them both – on the one side you’re this super laid back jazz dude who funks out with Flying Lotus, and then on the other hand you play bass for Suicidal Tendencies. Are you a musical schizophrenic?

A lot of the time my friends depict me as crazy, but I’m not. Metal has influenced my character definitely – all the fast playing and solo-ing and the different ways to play things gave me an open mind, but so did jazz; it’s so open-minded.

You’re fond of the ol’ slap bass technique. Why do you think that it comes in for a lot of stick?

I think it gets thrown around sometimes because it’s such an outstanding thing, for an instrument to do. You know, not everybody’s mama can slap something (laughs). They can make a joke about it but they can’t really connect with it because they don’t know where it came from. It would surprise somebody if you did slap something in the middle of a song these days. People get scared of it, because it takes on its own life.

Do you think Seinfeld is responsible for people’s fear of slap bass?

No, I think Seinfeld actually makes it a connecting point for people because they hear the slap bass and associate it with funny. A lot of people ask me to play that bass line, which is cool. I think slap bass got played too much and became a gimmick. At one point a lot of black people had Jerry Curls, it was sexy. But then that got a little out of hand too.

Okay, let’s readdress the balance and school Dazed readers on art of slap bass. Who are your top five slappers?

Top 5?! Goodness. Okay, I’m going to start with Larry Graham. There’s been people that were funky, but no one has been able to apply something that great, something so simple and complex to music, and for it to make sense like he did.

Apart from Prince, Larry’s probably the funkiest Jehovah’s Witness ever.

(laughs) Oh man, you’re telling me. And, the funny thing is even Prince was influenced by Larry Graham. Anytime he heard Larry Graham’s music, it pulled out his heart. It was that serious.

Did you know that Larry Graham is actually Drake’s uncle?

Are you serious?

Mhmm.

You can’t be serious right now?!

My head was blown wide open when I heard that too.

Whoa! Drake is.. Wow! Wow man, that explains it! Man!

I know! So who’s your second slap bass icon?

I’m gonna jumble it up a bit. Flea.

Who would win a slap down between Thundercat and Flea?

His Fleaness, hands down. There’s some heart behind that man. Some serious heart behind what he plays. I wouldn’t wanna have a slap down with him! Flea’s like a musical butterfly.

Definitely. Who’s next?

Bootsy, naturally. His breathing is probably funky. But here’s the thing – he wouldn’t always slapping. Slapping came as a by-product of what I think was going on at the time, but Bootsy is just someone that embodied the funk.

Are Level 42 going to be inducted into the slap bass hall of fame too?

Oh man that would be beautiful!

They had that machine gun style going on. A lot of semi quavers, a lot of 16th notes. A lot of slap.

You listen to their synthesising lines and the arpeggios and it’s the same thing as what these guys did with the funk box. They sounded like a train. You don’t get a chance to really sit and appreciate that music because it’s from an era that is either getting shoved down your throat or not getting played at all.

So we’ve got 4, what’s the last one?

I feel like this isn’t fair.

Slap bass isn’t fair.

Ahh, man! Well, to me, Stanley Clarke is like the slap punk. That’s my hero right there. That’s the guy that made me understand that I can be who I am. It’s funny because people have always had different opinions about it. You get the guys that listen to Stanley and can hear it’s genius. Then you got guys that go ‘man I don’t like Stanley’s slap it’s just too weird!’ And I’m sitting here going like you gotta be kidding me! He’s my hero.

Finally, you’re rather fond of wearing an Indian headdress. If I could get you, Jamiroquai, and the guy out the Village People together for a pop jazz disco tour, would you do it?

Oh man that would be hilarious; I think it’d be awesome. The slaptastic voyage!

Text © Tim Noakes

MICHAEL RAPAPORT

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 17:49:39 +0100

The actor turned director talks about his critically acclaimed documentary on A Tribe Called Quest

New York hip hop standard bearers since 1989, A Tribe Called Quest’s back catalogue is the definition of musical innovation. Comprising of rappers Q-Tip and Phife Dawg, DJ/producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and long time collaborator Jarobi White, the group’s five albums genuinely re-wrote the hip hop rule book. Placing emphasis on socially conscious lyrics and Afro-centric style, they took an influential approach to sampling that recontextualized everyone from the Velvet Underground to Minnie Riperton. After calling it a day in 1998 with the release of The Love Movement, the members have spent the last 13 years pursuing solo projects, with Q Tip working with Mark Ronson and the Chemical Brothers, Ali Shaheed Muhammad forming Lucy Pearl, and Phife becoming a well respected sports pundit. When they reunited in 2008 for the influential Rock The Bells tour, first time director Michael Rapaport saw the opportunity to tell their story. Filmed over the intervening three years, the native New Yorker’s ensuing documentary, Beats, Rhymes and Life, tells their legacy in uncompromising fashion. Dramatic and heart warming in equal measure, the evolution of the group’s friendship set this year’s Sundance Film Festival ablaze. As Phife, who had a kidney operation during its filming, says, “We’re human. Things happen. From health, to beef, to loving each other, it’s all a part of our life – you can’t have beats and rhymes without life, and through all of our travels in A Tribe Called Quest, we’ve had some bumps in the road, adversities and things of that nature, but we found a way to overcome them. The title fits our story perfectly.” Below, Rapaport, an acting veteran with over 40 movies to his name, talks exclusively about his experiences filming the story of four rap Kings from inner city Queens.

You’ve said that A Tribe Called Quest are as important as the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. Why are they such a seminal act?

Michael Rapaport: I think their importance is down to their musicality. Their first three albums were all classics and they were ground breaking for the way they presented themselves, what they talked about, and how they talked about it. There was always a mystique about A Tribe Called Quest. When they broke up when I was really curious to see if they would ever get back together again. I thought that there was something there and obviously there was – the way that the movie turned out was a lot more dramatic. It’s emotionally charged.

Were you nervous about going this deep into hip hop world?

I wasn’t nervous at all. One of the things I felt very confident about was that this was the movie I had to direct. I was the first one to tell the story and I was comfortable with the world and comfortable with the whole idea of taking this on.

That must have been a massive step, because you could have chosen any story, any group.

It was definitely intimidating because of the work-overload and because of what they mean to the fans, but I’ve been wanting to make a film for ten years, so this was the one I was the most compelled to do and I did it. You know, it was something that my curiosity a out them never waned over the years and I was in a place you know where I had the resources to start the film, and I did it. There was no hesitation once they gave me the okay to do it.

So was this a labour of love? Did you finance this completely yourself?

Completely a labour of love. I financed it for about a year and then I got some other producers and investors, but it was a total labour of love.

Did you have to give them any advice drawing from your background as an actor?

With the interviews I just tried to make them relax and feel comfortable, and not manipulate the situation. I just tried to create a relaxed atmosphere, which is the most important thing to do when you’re getting a performance of any kind. For the Cinéma vérité stuff I just made sure that everything was in focus and I was shooting it the way I wanted to. They never put on any airs or graces when the cameras were around; I always felt that they were being themselves, which I appreciated as film-maker.

Is there a moment that sticks out as kind of being a high point view in the journey of making this film?

I think starting it and being on stage with them while they were performing and shooting all of that was a real high point. Getting access to really exciting other musicians (including Pharrell Williams and Questlove) who talked about A Tribe Called Quest with the same passion that had made me want to make the movie in the first place. And when you’re finally in the editing room, which was the most overwhelming and intimidating thing, and you piece together a scene, that makes sense, that’s exciting, informative and story driven, that’s really exciting.

Why do you think ATCQ still inspire so much fanaticism around the world?

It’s the music! It’s the timelessness of the music and that’s why people still talk about them and people are still excited about them and people still discover them – it’s all the music.

It’s over 20 years since they first formed. What was your first exposure to them?

The first time I heard them was Q Tip’s voice on the radio in NYC with DJ Red Alert. His voice stuck out, the name of the group stuck out, and his flow. I was just like, ‘What is this?!’ I loved his name, Q-Tip – this wasn’t a time when rapper’s names were like Big Daddy Kane, Ice T, and Biz Markie. It just felt the complete opposite of what you expect and what was going on in Hip Hop at the time. But the music itself was right on point.

Did you have a favourite track that you really loved as a kid?

I’d say “Footprints”. I really love all the stuff off the first album but “Footprints”, that song I really love. I was 18 years old.

What was the vibe around New York at that time about ATCQ and this new form of hip hop?

It was exciting, they were New York, they were youthful. They spoke about things in a very humble, everyday way. The song “Bonita Applebum” is equivalent to Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”, Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” and the Rolling Stones’ “Angie”. The thing about the song that was different was that it wasn’t the stereotypes that rappers would usually talk about women. It wasn’t derogatory, it was very humble, like “I wanna be with you, I wanna hug you, I wanna dance with you”. It was very youthful.

What lessons has hip hop taught you that has reverberated through your life?

It took me all over the city, It took me to the hood. We’d go to clubs and we’d go to different places. It took me all over New York City to places I never would’ve been to. It exposed me to the violence that was around at the time. It changed the way I looked at the world. It didn’t inspire me to be a performer, but I wouldn’t have done the movie Zebrahead if it wasn’t for my upbringing in NY and my love of hip hop, for sure. That movie changed my life. I guess in a way it did do that, but that was just a coincidence, that was meant to be.

How has your relationship with Tribe’s music changed over the years now you’ve become an adult?  I still love and get excited by the music. It’s changed but it’s still part of my everyday life.

What did you learn about yourself from making this film? Is there anything you would’ve changed?

The biggest thing that I learned about myself is that it gave me the confidence to know I can direct a film and trust myself as a director. That’s the most important thing you have to feel at some point – make the decisions. That was the biggest part of the process. I was really challenged to trust myself and I did.

People who have seen it have said it’s the hip hop’s equivalent of Metallica’s Some Kind of Monster documentary. Do you agree?

That’s really flattering. I love that movie, I think it’s a huge compliment. I absolutely see the comparison. I’ll take that.

Was it difficult for you as a director to put in some of the rawest scenes? Such as the scenes about with Phife and his diabetes, and the arguments between the band members.

It wasn’t difficult at all, it made the movie more dynamic and relatable, and at the end of the day it makes for a better, more informative, interesting and honest look at the group, which is what I wanted to do in the first place. When you are making a documentary you can’t contrive that stuff. You can’t manipulate it. I wanted to try to make the purest form of a documentary that I could. I didn’t impose myself, I didn’t put myself in the movie. I really wanted to keep it about the group and my time around them.

What do you think the heart of this movie is? Has it got appeal outside of the hip hop world?

The heart of the movie is the friendships and the relationships and struggling at times to keep your friendships intact and coming out on the other side. The guy across the street from me who’s the straightest, whitest guy you could ever meet heard I was doing this movie. You wouldn’t think this guy would know A Tribe Called Quest from a frickin’ hole in the wall. He was like, “I can’t wait to see your movie, dude! I’ve loved their music since the first year I was in college!” And I said, “I can’t believe you know about it let alone that you’re excited to see it!” I’ve got that so many times from people you never would’ve thought even knew A Tribe Called Quest – that’s the beauty of the music. The movie has a broader appeal than just the music, it’s the same thing A Tribe Called Quest has always had. The appeal of this movie is because of them, nothing to do with me. Well, a little bit to do with me, but mostly them.

AZIZ ANSARI

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 12:00:04 +0100

The day we spoke to one of America’s funniest comedians, Aziz Ansari, he topped one million followers on Twitter. In the style of his gangsta rap alter ego Raaaaaaaandy, we were ready to crack open the Cristal, get a gang of strippers, jump in the jacuzzi and shoot semi-automatic weapons at the moon in celebration. But no, the 28-year-old star of Parks and Recreation was feeling more reserved and fancied a chat about how he’s gone from doing open mics in New York to selling out Carnegie Hall and hosting the MTV Awards in less than five years. He also wanted to intellectually marinate on his new bank heist flick with Jesse Eisenberg and Danny McBride called 30 Minutes Or Less. Luckily we managed to squeeze in some hot talk about R.Kelly, Waka Flocka Flame, Justin Bieber, Jason Statham and, err, Ellen DeGeneres...

How do you think your comedy has evolved? Did you suck at the beginning?  Yeah, I think everyone is terrible for the first few years, but I was comfortable on stage and had a good stage presence. I just hit ten years and I feel like I’m way better than I’ve been before.   What subjects were you were talking about when you first came out?   Random things, like I did one about gay marriage – about how this guy who was a senator somewhere said something like, ‘If your neighbour marries a box turtle that doesn’t affect your everyday life, but that doesn’t mean it’s right.’ I thought it was so weird that he would use this image of a box turtle for his analogy and what that says about him and his own personal sexual preferences. The stuff I’m writing now is like how a lot of my friends are having babies, and why that’s terrifying to me. I couldn’t imagine having a baby in my life right now! I’m also terrified of marriage.  Talking of marriage, traditionally a lot of your comedy has been about your inability to score. Surely fame has helped on that front?  I’m not going to be like, ‘Oh man I’m getting laid all the time!’ because I’d sound like a douchebag. In my stand-up I focus on the negatives but that doesn’t mean I’m like this sad, lonely guy or something. I’m doing fine. I’m fine. But stand-up is much more interesting to talk about when things don’t go well.   A critic once called you ruthlessly efficient. Have you always taken a nerd’s approach to comedy?  I don’t think it’s a nerd’s approach, anyone I know that’s successful in their field is a workaholic, they love what they do and they do it all the time. You can be a stand-up and do stand-up twice a week, and you could be fine, or you could be out there doing several sets a night and you’re going to be better if you do that. I don’t see any reason to be lazy about it if it’s something I enjoy doing.  You’re very serious about comedy. Do you see comedy as pure business? Has that taking the joy out of it for you?   No, because I still drop in to comedy clubs. I don’t do any of the business end. I’ll go to a comedy club and it’s an audience of 800-or-so and then I tour theatres with 2000-or-so people and that’s so much fun. It’s a great luxury to be able to tour in that way now. When I did my last tour I got to do Carnegie Hall – that was pretty amazing. I started off doing stand-up at open mics in New York and all these terrible things, and then one day you sell out Carnegie Hall. It felt amazing to able to do that. I could really feel a sense of progress in what I’d done. It meant a lot to me to be able to do that.

Surely appearing on Ellen’s chat show was the real high point for you?  I don’t know if that was a high point but she’s nice. Being on Letterman was another high point. I watched him as a kid, so being on his show definitely meant a lot to me.  
Have you ever gone on a chat show and felt like not talking?
 If you do that you don’t get booked again. You’ll have failed as a comedian. It’s not that much of a reserve, it’d be pretty lazy to go, ‘Thanks for having me on David Letterman but I’m kinda tired and don’t wanna talk right now.’ If you don’t have that much discipline then I don’t know if you should be in the business.  A lot of people call you the ‘hipster’s comedian.’ Is that good or bad?  I don’t really think that means anything. I do my shows and I don’t see just a bunch of kids with glasses and Belle And Sebastian CDs. I’d rather just be thought of as a good, smart comedian rather than something like a hipster comedian.   Obviously shows like Parks And Recreation and Eastbound And Down came out of the leftfield, do you think American comedy has gone through a resurgence in the last few years?   I think it’s kind of amazing that shows like Parks, Eastbound, Tim And Eric and 30 Rock are able to exist. I think people’s immediate reaction is that, ‘It’s garbage, it’s not good!’ I would say the fact that shows like Parks and 30 Rock are popular is testament to the fact that people like smart comedy. I don’t think it’s that people are opening up to it more but there’s a big difference between there being three major networks and 300 channels – there’s way more content.   30 Minutes Or Less is your first starring role. Out of all the stories that you could have chosen, what was it about this one that really grabbed your goat?   When you get all these comedy scripts, most of them are pretty terrible. This was one of the few I read that I thought was really funny, I thought that the director, Ruben Fleischer, the guy who did Zombieland was good. All the factors that you can control when you’re doing a movie were in a good spot for this, so I felt pretty good about it and that’s why I did it.   I love that Danny’s ringtone in the film is Slayer’s ‘Angel of Death’. What’s your ringtone of choice?  Anything by Waka Flocka Flame.  Waka! You’re also a massive fan of R Kelly. Is ‘Real Talk’ the best song ever?
 That is a pretty amazing song. Number One: John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. Number Two: R Kelly’s ‘Real Talk’.

This issue is part of our 20th Birthday celebrations. I’m going to read out a few names from the last 20 years and you’ve got to describe how they make you feel. First up, Nirvana.  Love Nirvana. My favourite band ever. My favourite Nirvana song is probably ‘Drain You’.   Jason Statham.  Jason Statham! I was meeting with some writers the other day and they said, ‘What kind of movie do you want to do?’ I was like, ‘Come up with an idea for me and Statham. That’s what I want to do. Let’s do a Statham movie right now!’ He’s probably got to drive somewhere really fast and beat someone up and I’m for some reason driving with him and annoying him. That would probably be the movie.  Justin Bieber.  Whenever I think about him I think about riots and things like that. I just think about kids jumping on him and beating him up because they’re going so crazy with excitement. It’s scary to think about Bieber and what he has to go through every day.   Metallica.  Probably my favourite band when I was in my early teens. I used to play the guitar all the time. The albums I listened to most were Ride The Lightning, Master of Puppets, and Justice For All. I can still play some of those guitar solos now. I can play the solo to ‘One’.  So if you were at a party and you had to impress someone and there’s a guitar lying there would you do ‘Nothing Else Matters’?  I could do that, but I think the only people I would impress would be some weird 23-year-old kid wearing black who has smelly hair.   They’re pretty hard to impress to be honest!

True.
 What were you doing in 1991?  In 1991 I was eight years old and I was living in South Carolina. I was probably dancing around to ‘Beat It’ by Michael Jackson.  
Do you ever feel star struck by any of the people that you meet?  Every now and then you meet someone like Jay Z and you can’t help but freak out a little bit. But eventually you realise he’s just a guy.

What do you think your folks back in South Carolina make of this success? The joker that’s now playing Carnegie Hall, hosting MTV award shows, starring in movies next to Jesse Eisenberg.   I don’t know what anyone else makes of it but I guess you don’t expect someone from a small town in South Carolina to do those things. I guess it’s kind of surprising in that regard. I’m just happy that I’ve been able to maintain a career that I really enjoy and hope I can continue to maintain it.  
Text © Tim Noakes
Photography © Michael Hauptman

SPIKE JONZE VS WIN BUTLER

Fri, 20 May 2011 18:17:38 +0100

The Hollywood director and Arcade Fire frontman talk teenage nostalgia and dystopian suburban warfare

Scenes From The Suburbs tells the story of two teenage boys as they come of age in the middle of a bloody war between two feuding communities. Inspired and scored by Arcade Fire's Grammy award-winning album, The Suburbs, the Spike Jonze directed 30-minute film is an exquisitely realised exploration of youthful alienation and teenage nostalgia in a world gone mad. As his band made final preparations for this month’s huge Hyde Park gig, singer and co-writer Win Butler took a break to ring up Jonze and discuss the origins of their dystopian drama.

Spike Jonze: The idea for this film started when you were recording the album and we started talking about an idea that was actually for a video. Was it ‘Suburban War’ or ‘The Suburbs’ we started with?

Win Butler: Yeah, I guess those were the two you would have heard us working on in New York.

Spike: As soon as I heard The Suburbs all these images came to mind, like Bill Owens’s Suburbia. I remember telling you and the guys about the images I was thinking about and you had already some of them on your laptop, the exact same images! Then it was just a case of adapting the album into a film and adapting the short story into a movie.

Win: When we usually make a record the songs always connect to each other in weird ways, not that there is an over arching plot but I think that a song like ‘Suburban War’ there is a lot going on, and you can kind of imagine a whole world out of it. I was trying to write about what I know and document the emotional realities. I wanted to write about some of that stuff while I still remembered it, as a lot of the small details fade as you get older.

Spike: I think 10 minutes after we talked about it being a video, it pretty quickly evolved into something else. We started writing the story, then I went to visit you in Montreal when you had more songs and we went out to a little cabin in the woods in the snow and thrashed out a bit more of the story.

Win: We thought it would be interesting to have this big conflict happening but have the movie be focused on these kids and their friendship. I think the conflict is more about how kids are able to absorb that that sort of thing is happening in the greater world. When you’re younger there’s a lot of bigger forces in the world and in your family that you can’t quite understand. There are lots of things happening right on your doorstep that you’re not even noticing.

Spike: Growing up in the suburbs outside of DC, we had our own world. I was really into BMX and skating so California was definitely a magical world that existed I wanted to get to, but at the same time, I wasn’t really into the big city.

Win: I had kind of a weird but typical childhood in a lot of ways because I was born in Northern California in a really rural area and then my family uprooted to Houston. It was one of those things where we thought we would be moving every two years but we ended up staying there for my whole childhood, so there was always this sense that, ‘We’re from here but we’re not from here’. I had a lot of really great friends but I could tell my parents didn’t really feel at home there. Everyone had southern accents so we felt a little bit like tourists.

Spike: I had my friends and we had our own world, so I couldn’t really feel alienated because we had that. When I heard your music, the thoughts and feelings that it stirred up brought me back to certain images from my teenage years.

Win: I think an interesting feature of the film was that we cast kids who had never acted before. When we were writing the script we hung out with them for a few days and ended up tweaking the script around the actors and a lot of the lines came out through them just dorking around hanging out with each other. We filtered what they related to about the music in the script with their own experiences. It was kind of shocking how easy it was to relate to that age group now. Behind the scenes we were all just fucking around with each other around, I think part of that feeling is in the film too.

Spike: It was like a poor man’s Mike Leigh process – what he does for like, eight months we did for a week. We wanted these kids to bring a lot of themselves to the movie.

Win: I can’t speak for you, but it seemed like part of the reason for wanting to make a longer formed thing was to be able to really get in there as a filmmaker and actually tell more of a story. Its kind of an interesting time now because no one really plays music videos anymore. I think whenever one door closes there is some other opportunity to tell stories.

Spike: I think for me it always comes from the idea. I always try to let the idea drive the form, and as the story grew it didn’t appear that it could be scored to just one song. I remember you would send me songs as you were making them and there were so many colours that I thought it seemed more interesting to be able to work with a lot of scenes. There is more of an opportunity for short films or longer form videos because the internet doesn’t have any format limitations.

Win: I think the whole way we made the film was part of the idea of doing something loose. The inspiration behind The Suburbs was from a film that my friend Josh and I wanted to make when we were younger called The Suburbs. It was less about the idea that one day we would make a movie, but more something we would do to pass the time. We would hang out and discuss visuals, talking about this film we were never going to make.

Spike: I guess I still have some of those teenage anxieties inside me when I do something new, you know, like self-doubt and fear of what everyone is going to say.

Win: It was nerve-racking playing a soldier for you. I never want to be an actor. You’re so mean as a director. It’s like you’re always mad at me. You know Spike, if you don’t go to college you’re never going to make it! It’s the window of opportunity! You won’t ever win an Oscar like we won a Grammy!

Spike: (Laughs) So your diploma is what made you win a Grammy?!

Win: Yeah! Because my Diploma gave me the self-confidence to be like, I’m going to do it the best!

Spike: (Laughs) Yeah, I still have to go at some point. But I don’t know what I’m going to go for.

Text © Tim Noakes

Spike Jonze

Age: 41
Born: October 21, 1969
What You Know: After directing skate films and music videos for artists like Daft Punk and Björk he moved into feature films.
What You Didn’t: His birth name is Adam Spiegel.
Previous: Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002) and Where The Wild Things Are (2009).

Win Butler

Age: 31
Born: April 14, 1980
What You Know: Arcade Fire won a Grammy for Album Of The Year for The Suburbs and are playing the biggest gig of their lives at Hyde Park on June 30th.
What You Didn’t: He’s the grandson of jazz steel guitarist Alvino Rey. Win’s teenage self would be “stoked” that he gets paid to play rock’n’roll.
Previous: Funeral (2004), Neon Bible (2008), The Suburbs (2010).

DANNY MCBRIDE

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:30:30 +0100

The Kenny Powers legend talks about swordplay, one-eyed monsters, snogging Natalie Portman and getting crunk with the Beastie Boys

Cameo roles in Pineapple Express, Super Bad, Tropic Thunder and Hot Rod may have hinted at Danny McBride’s comedy chops, but it’s his portrayal of washed up baseball star Kenny Powers in HBO’s Eastbound & Down that has cemented the 34-year-old’s reputation as one of the world’s most hilarious actors and screenwriters. Recently commissioned for a third series, Eastbound & Down has been called the funniest show on TV due to Kenny Powers’s inane observations on life, drug huffing womanising ways, and general dumbass behaviour. This month, the North Carolina native makes the leap into Hollywood’s major league with his first leading role in Your Highness – a medieval fantasy romp in which he plays Prince Thadeous, a weed-toting loser who undergoes a perilous quest. Along the way he chops off a monster’s schlong and makes out with Natalie Portman, which basically makes him our hero.

Christian Bale starved himself to win an Oscar for The Fighter – how did you prepare for Your Highness? Did you play with your sword a lot?

DANNY McBRIDE: (Laughs) I played with my sword tons. The beauty of writing it was anything I felt uncomfortable with or was too lazy to do, I could just write out of the script. I went to the first few days of sword training and I was like, ‘This is kind of a drag, all this shit, I don’t really dig it’, so we decided that Thadeous would be the worse sword fighter that has ever lived, just so I didn’t have to go through sword training. At one point, there were horses throughout the entire script, and I had never been on a horse before. I went to horse training, rode one and was terrified by it. So that night I went home and got rid of the horses right out of the fucking gate.

Was this film just a big excuse for you and your friends to run around Ireland dressed as knights?

That wasn’t the only thing we wanted to do, but it definitely didn’t hurt the idea doing it either. David (Gordon Green) and myself are still tripped out by the fact that we have careers where anything like this is even possible. We’ve known each other since film school when we were 18 years old and making short films on video, so the idea of making a movie first of all is mind-boggling. But making a film on this scale where we’re in another country acting opposite Natalie Portman with me dressed as a knight constantly cracks us up. The first day of filming we are doing this scene on the beach and I’m wearing armour, the waves are crashing down behind me, and there’s my old buddy David Green sitting Indian style underneath the camera directing me how to kiss Natalie Portman – at that moment I thought, ‘What the fuck is going on? How did this happen?’ That’s when it set in that this shit was real.

Now you’re a movie star do you get your own trailer and dancing girls on demand?

I get my own trailer, but no dancing girls yet – that’s something I should put in my next contract, that’s a wise choice. It’s just nuts. I’ve been trying to write and get stuff going since I was in college. I moved out to Los Angeles and was writing screenplays in the night and then working as a desk clerk in a hotel and waiting tables, just trying to do whatever I could to sustain myself and to keep the creativity going. I don’t romanticise those days at all. I mean it’s easier to look back and think things were so much simpler then, but, come on, give me a fucking break.

You’re best known for playing Kenny Powers in Eastbound & Down. What do you think it is about Kenny – apart from his awesome mullet – that people identify with?

I think there’s something about that kind of jock who talks a lot but has no fucking game to back it up that we find interesting. It’s just funny to deal with a character that has confidence, but when you look at him you’re like, ‘I don’t get why that dude is confident.’

Will you ever release Kenny’s self-motivational tapes as an audio book?

They do exist, and we would love to release those. When we did all those audio books, we basically wrote a real book by spitting out all of this shit that went to the ‘The Best Of’. That was actually one of the best parts about writing Eastbound & Down. We have so much shit that we never got into the show, so we have been collecting them all and it is something we want to put out there.

Why are you attracted to playing anti-heroes?

For Kenny Powers, the excitement was creating a main character that wasn’t conventionally likable, and finding humour in that. We took a lot of inspiration from British comedies such as Alan Partridge, The Office, and even Fawlty Towers. With Eastbound it was figuring out a way to get people to invest in this bad guy, and to follow him. Kenny Powers is a racist and he says some of the most fucked up stuff, but yet there’s still a weird likeability to him. We tried to make him as human as we possibly could so that when you hear his crazy shit you can find humor in it, as opposed to it causing offense.

Your comedy seems very natural. Is there a lot of pressure involved with improv acting?

Not really, because a lot of the stuff we do, we do among friends. We don’t like improv where guys are standing around basically spitting off stand-up to each other, so we try to take that pressure off by disguising how you’re trying to get the humour. David does that all the time when he gives direction, like, ‘Say it again as if you have to take a shit, or like you just fucked a chicken.’ You should have seen it when he pulled that on Charles Dance, it was pretty funny.

What’s the worst pitch you’ve ever tried to sell that no one picked up?

There was this guy who I was trying to develop something with when I was first getting going, and his ideas were fucking terrible. I was having a miserable time working with him and got so fed up that I pitched him this movie to see how fucking retarded he was. On the spot, I made up a movie called The Fancies about an elite platoon of gays in the military. The Fancies were like a gay Dirty Dozen that the military wanted to get rid of, so they send them on a deadly mission that no one could survive. It was basically a movie about a bunch of gay guys with machine guns fighting for their lives. This guy’s eyes went wide and was like, ‘There’s something here! This is good!!!’ I was like, ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, man! I’m outta here.’

Thadeous starts off as a coward and then grows some balls. Have you always been confident in your own skin?

I don’t really get caught up with what everyone’s wearing, or what everyone else is into, I march to my own drum. I think I have a certain level of confidence to step in front of a camera and do fucking lame stuff and make myself look like an idiot. I think I have more confidence when it comes to being in front of a camera than I probably do in real life. But I’m not crippled by my lack of confidence in real life.

Kenny Powers says that his Achilles heel is his tireless work ethic. Is that something you have in common?

Yes, that is perhaps the one thing I share with Kenny Powers.

Are you worried about being typecast as the go-to-guy to play washed up stoners?

If I didn’t write, I would be nervous about that, like ‘Am I just going to be Kenny Powers for the rest of my life?’ Right now people see me as Kenny Powers, and that’s cool because that means people are identifying with the show. As a writer, it’s up to me to find a character that I can reinvent myself with and show people that I can do more than just be Kenny Powers, or expand upon it. But that’s going to be up to me, to make the right choices. I haven’t felt the need to suddenly take on some crazy serious dark role.

So you’re not tempted to do a Jim Carey any time soon?

Ah, no. I mean I can totally understand why comedians do that, and I’m not saying that I’m not going to do that at some point, but I’m still having fun with the shit I’m doing now. As an artist, you never want to do the same thing for too long, because it just gets boring. There’s always that hunt for what else is out there that’s different, and maybe I’ll find that in something that’s serious, or maybe it’ll just be in finding something that works a little bit differently comedically.

Do you get a lot of Kenny Powers groupies?

Yeah! A lot of bands watch Eastbound on their tour buses. That’s been the coolest thing, getting to meet different rock stars that I fucking love. When we were casting for Your Highness, I flew into London and the Beastie Boys were on my flight and invited me out to a bar. So I went for a drink and the Dead Weather rolled in and Jack White told me he was a fan of Eastbound, which was insane. Then the Beastie Boys asked me to be in their video re-visit of ‘Fight For Your Right to Party’ with Seth Rogan and Elijah Wood. That was one of the most surreal things in the world. I clearly remember being a kid and copying License to Ill on my tape recorder by putting it next to my friend’s tape recorder. It’s nuts how far things have come since then, crazy.

It sounds like you have a lot in common, particularly since you chop off a monster’s cock in Your Highness and The Beastie Boys once took a big inflatable dick on their 1987 License To Ill tour…

Yeah, we like dick.

Whatever happened to that monster’s cock anyway?

David gave me that cock in a little glass chamber as a wrap gift. It’s so disgusting, I have no purpose or need for a humongous cock – outside of the one I have between my legs. But this one is all bloody and there’s veins hanging out of it and shit. I left it in the trunk of my car and one day I was at the store trying to throw all the shit into the trunk of my car, and the valet guy is trying to help me out, and we pop the trunk open, and there in the back is this severed dick. The dude just looked at me like, ‘What the fuck?’ I was like, ‘It’s not mine, I don’t know what that is.’ Now it sits in the back of my truck underneath the spare tire.

You must be used to extreme reactions though. For example, when you write a scene where Kenny Powers says that he likes to fuck prostitutes with a Scream mask on, does your wife think, ‘Oh, so this is how Danny likes to get down?’

I constantly wonder what she thinks, I mean, she doesn’t bat an eye at any of it, which is very suspicious, because it makes me wonder what kind of dark things are lurking around in her head.

So what is your advice for people who want to become a ladies man like Kenny?

You’ve got to eat three square meals a day, stay in school, study hard… and wear a Scream mask when you’re shagging a prostitute from behind. That’s the trick.

Your mullet also has a lot of fans. How do you keep it so silky and soft?

It’s all an extension – you just plug that bitch in, and let them shampoo it the night before, then clip it in, then suddenly there is a major transformation that’s happened.

Finally, seeing as you’re so good at improv, who would win in a three way freestyle battle between Lil’ Wayne, Kayne and Kenny Powers?

I mean I respect the hell out of both those guys, but Kenny Powers would stomp the shit out of both of those dudes. Obviously.

Text © TimNoakes

LYKKE LI

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 10:59:58 +0000

Bored of being stereotyped as a cute indie pop pin up, Lykke Li is back with a new sound inspired by voodoo, sex and heartbreak. Tim Noakes met her to find out why she’s gone over to the dark side

Rebelling against the twee indie electro pop with which she made her name, Lykke Li’s forthcoming album, Wounded Rhymes, shows a darker side to the Swedish singer’s personality. Tired of the baby-come-hither vocals and Lolita comparisons that followed in the wake of Youth Novels, the 24-year-old’s new sound owes more to The Shangri Las than it does The Sugababes.

Recorded earlier this year in a cabin high above Silverlake, it’s the culmination of 36 long months spent touring the world, dealing with the pressures of fame, isolation, and another heartbreaking relationship. Inspired by The Moving Star Hall Singers, Cocteau Twins, Link Wray, Leonard Cohen, Alan Lomax, and a nomadic desert tribe she met in the Californian desert, the songs on Wounded Rhymes are Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson’s most primal to date. From the provocative first single “Get Some”, in which she likens herself to a prostitute, to the tender acoustic guitar gospel of “I Know Places” and the alienated disaffection of “Rich Kids”, the album shows a rawness that few artists would be comfortable sharing with their public, let alone one with 22 million MySpace plays to her name.

On your first album, many critics wrote about you as this Swedish Lolita figure, due to your looks and cute singing voice. Did you feel inhibited by that perception?

Lykke Li: I felt very much like that. I was pissed off because they didn’t listen to my lyrics at all. We worked so hard on that record and did it all acoustically, yet people still talk about it as an electro house album. I was like, 'Fuck, they don't understand me. I'm not the person they think I am'. It was sincere and minimal and sparse, but the problem was I had no experience in the studio because it was expensive, so I sang like I was a child. When it was released all the articles were about that and how I looked. I had so much baby fat on me, I felt like everything was wrong. It's hard when you have a very strong vision and you don't sound or look the way you feel. I was a young person but felt like such an old soul. I can’t listen to it these days.

How has that experience changed you as an artist?

On the first record I didn't have a choice, I only did what I could at that moment in time, but now I have a choice. If I sing that way it's because I chose to do it not because I'm restrained. I’ve been working on my craft. My life has changed so much as well. I was really sad for a while, but you have to experience certain things to give life a flavour. If you don't go through all those emotions you could never write about them honestly.

You’ve toured so much over the last three years, how has life on the road affected you?

It's so extreme and depressing staying in all these hotel rooms. You go on stage and make love to a lot of people and then you go home, alone. So I was like, ‘Everything has changed but I still feel the same as I did when I was 17, what the fuck?!’ I needed to change some things because I didn’t want to be that clichéd artist going to rehab.

Did you fall for all the usual rock n’ roll vices?

Yeah of course, but it didn't help. There’s a black hole that you feel after you play, you feel terrible, so I think that's how a lot of artists fill a void. For some it works but it didn't really work for me. I realised that I had to dig deeper than that. I was touring for so long that by the time I felt like it was time to make a record I was completely exhausted. So I went to California and rented this cabin in Echo Park.

Did you write on the road?

I hadn't really been able to write when I was on tour, so it all built up inside me. I was digging deep for 2 years while I was on tour. I had all this heartbreak in me, so I started to write what was on my mind. When you're so jet-lagged out of your brain because you've been travelling so much, you can't relate to anybody. You can't explain to anybody how it feels or what you've been through. So when I met up with Bjorn again we began pouring it out, it all really flowed. But it was a long and bumpy ride.

What other experiences influenced the recording of Wounded Rhymes?

I've been really drawn into hypnosis and cults, where you get into this alternative mind frame. I've been involved in some fucking strange things.

Like what?

I've been out in the Californian desert a lot, staying in this tribe. Everyone thinks that we're so ahead of the game, but we’re all so basic, everything is the same really. These people have values and beliefs other than money. I just hung out and watched them. I felt like I was the wounded healer waiting to be healed. It made me want to make something more hypnotic with my music.

This is the second time that you're putting your heart out there for people to dissect, so to speak. Are you comfortable with laying yourself out there like that?

Definitely not. I'm not comfortable at all. But some things are not a choice.
The problem with me is that I'm always going through so many emotional traumas. I fell in love again and I got my heart broken again. How can I be heartbroken twice really, really badly?! Some people don't ever get to experience that.

Maybe you just fall deeper in love than other people?

I think it's not that I feel deeper, it's just that… maybe I do actually.

Did the double heartbreak inspire you to be more provocative this time around? The lyrics and video for “Get Some” are pretty explicit compared to what you’ve done in the past.

I don't think so. I mean I listen to Rick Ross. I don't think it's that explicit at all. It’s just me doing what men are doing. I find it very entertaining that people get shocked just because it's me saying it. It's not really about sex; it's more about pussy power. About women taking the power back and being in control. Some of my new songs are about sex but it's not about me being an object. I would never allow myself to be that.

Do you feel like you've become more of a woman in the last few years?

Definitely. I’ve had more sex since then (laughs). But for me I feel like I have sex on stage. Sex is a connection, when it's the best of you, when you're more than what you are and what you look like and what you're saying. It clicks. It could be Jimi Hendrix and his guitar. Sex is such an over used word, it's lost a lot of it's meaning. I don't want to know a lot about people's sex lives, I’m just interested in making a connection.

The album is quite retro. Do you think that pop music today is bullshit?

Yeah of course. Yes I do. I really do.

Why?

I don't want to throw stones in the greenhouse but it's a fucking joke. I get depressed about it and refuse to be a part of it. To me, pop music are bands like the Shangri-Las. They write real stories. Most pop music today is shit, yeah. The problem is that you see artists standing on stage in some weird outfit, there's nothing about the song or the outfit or the performance that tells you anything about who they are. I don't know anything about them, but when I listen to Neil Young I feel like he's telling me a secret. It’s all about secrets.

In the past you’ve worked with Bon Iver, Kings of Leon and Kanye, were you ever tempted to work with them on Wounded Rhymes?

I would love to work with Bon Iver, but he was kind of tired so he couldn't do it. I don't necessarily feel that the other things were my strongest work, so I wasn't really tempted at all. If Lee Hazelwood was still alive and was like 'do you wanna write a song with me' I would be like 'Yes!!' but not so much with the other people.

How is your relationship with your voice these days?

It's getting better because I'm getting better. I feel like I'm being more me.

So you didn’t feel like yourself on Youth Novels?

I didn't want to wail, I was kinda taking the easy route. I always felt like I was standing on this cliff and one day I was going to be free, but I'm still not free in my voice at all, it's very restrained. I wish I could sing like a man. What would happen if Johnny Cash sang ‘Dance Dance Dance’? People would be like, 'wow, cool song'. I had no experience before, I was fresh from the street and straight into the studio. If people want some childlike voice again I'm like, 'That's disgusting!' I'm never going to say I like my voice, but I have to get it out there because this is what I want you to hear. My voice is just a tool, it's not Mariah Carey, but I feel like it's not for me to enjoy. As an artist, you nurture your talent, you write it down and then you have to let it go. Maybe in 20 years I'll have the voice I dream of. I’ve just gotta keep on smoking and drinking.

Are you a dark soul?

I think we are all dark, aren't we? In this day and age when pop culture is shit you have to remind people about what is good. They may not know about it now, but they’ll understand eventually. It’s kinda like preaching.

Do you feel like a preacher?

(laughs) I'm here save you all! I mean what's wrong with that? It’s like The Smiths – how many lives did they save, you know?

Do you think you can actually change people’s lives with your music?

I mean it sounds a bit cocky if I say 'yes', but 'yes'. I've seen it happen.

TEXT © TIM NOAKES
PHOTOGRAPHY © COLIN DODGSON

DARREN ARONOFSKY & BENJAMIN MILLEPIED

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:56:48 +0000

The director and choreographer of Black Swan discuss  their masterful danse macabre

As physically brutal and emotively raw as The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky’s follow up, Black Swan, tells the story of Nina (Natalie Portman), an idealistic prima ballerina in the New York City Ballet who becomes consumed with jealousy, dark desires, and delusional visions as she prepares for her first performance as The Swan Queen in Swan Lake. As beautiful as it is shocking, Aronofsky’s paranoid, shadowy depiction of the classical dance world is unlike any other that has been brought to the cinema before, with critics lining up to declare it a modern masterpiece.

In order for Portman and co-stars Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassell to transform into world-class dancers in six months, Aronofsky hired choreographer Benjamin Millepied, the principal dancer for the actual New York City Ballet company, to take control of their bodies. Regarded as one of ballet’s finest performers Millepied leapt at the chance to work on the 41-year old director’s first psychological thriller, and ended up in front of the camera himself in the role of The Prince. Dazed brought the pair back together to talk about the challenges involved in bringing their danse macabre to the big screen.

Darren Aronofsky: Being somewhat of an outsider to the ballet, I hadn’t figured out ways to transcend ballet to an audience who had very little exposure to it. The thing that was most important to me was to break through this incredible product of ballet, that’s it’s effortless. When you’re back stage and get closer to the dancers, you get to see how much work and effort actually goes in to creating such transience, and as a film maker it was really exciting to see that contrast. I wanted to show audiences that it’s really tough to do what these people do.

Benjamin Millpied: I thought your direction was really clear. I wanted to serve the film with my work. That was what was interesting about the collaboration, because I would make up some steps and then you would point out that it didn’t read, that the audience wouldn’t understand. You had a very clear vision of what you wanted and the restriction was really interesting for me, to work in a very specific direction. I think that the ballet world is very excited about it, because it is going to reach out to so many people who would never go to the ballet in the first place. It pays tribute to the difficulties of it and it shows it beautifully.

DA: I think they finally feel like there’s a film that’s not just a romantic vision of the ballet world, or a documentary. I think it’s not really about ballet; it’s more of a fairytale of a film set around the ballet world. And I think the darkness that is in the film is in all of those fairytales, and a lot of the dancers are excited at that kind of intensity is finally being represented. If you make a film about construction workers, there is going to be people upset about it. Even in the Wrestler there were wrestlers upset about it, one of the Hearts came out saying they didn’t like it. So everyone is always going to have an opinion, but I think there is an excitement that is clear.

BM: Obviously this is a movie so things are exaggerated at times, but there is definitely a sense of authenticity to it all.

DA: I think it’s mixed; there are very healthy people that are ballet dancers. I mean Mila Kunis’s character is totally healthy in the film. And actually Vincent Cassell’s character is an artist doing what he’s doing, I mean he’s manipulative, but he’s a director trying to create something. I wish I could be as manipulative as his character, I mean I could actually use it. I’m really straightforward. I have probably scared away so many A-list actors because I tell them how hard it’s going to be. The only actors that work with me are ones like Natalie and Mila, who are up for the challenge. I think a lot of directors sell actors the Tower Bridge and you end up with the London Bridge. It’s funny though, when Vincent’s asked whether he based his character on me, he always says he based it on you.

BM: [laughs] That’s true. He’s a mimic, so he got a lot of gestures from me. He was brilliant at that.

DA: He’s got an incredible physicality. I don’t think that’s the way you work at all. You are strict and he’s passionate. But it helped that Vincent was a former dancer. I think he picked out his grace. Do you remember how worried I was about Mila and Natalie becoming good enough dancers to pull it off?

BM: What, the phone calls I got all the time? The ones where you said, ‘Is this really going to work?!?’

DA: (Laughs) I was very scared! It’s a tall order to ask any actress to become a prima ballerina, because they train for twenty-years to get to that stage.

BM: Yeah it was an impossible challenge.

DA: Also genetically they have to be one-in a million to become a ballerina like that. But luckily we have the magic cinema to bend and fake things, and focus on the right things, and we really worked hard at that bit to create the right dance. I think ballet people are impressed, but of course they know what’s going on.

BM: But they’re clearly impressed.

DA: I think for normal people the illusion will work, but I think for ballet people they think ‘wow, those two women are working really freaking hard’, and they are impressed by that. Most prima ballerinas are 6ft tall, and Natalie and Mila are 5’3”/5’4”. There is very few dancers built like that.

BM: I can relate to the rivalry between them in the film. It keeps you on the edge for sure. I remember when I was 19-years old and in the Swan Lake company for the first time, I wasn’t taught the principle dance in the first year. I was really pissed off, so I went to talk to the director about it.

DA: Did you really?

BM: Yeah of course!

DA: Just like in the movie!

BM: Just like the movie in fact!

BM: Well we didn’t kiss, it was more like a hug. But those are the things you get really focused on in a ballet company - how many shows you get, if you’re first cast, if you get the roles you want. I would say 90% of the dancers who get into the company think they should become principle dancers, and that’s not the case obviously. Everyone has that same dream.

DA: Just to get into the company they have to be the best of the best of the best, and then they get into the company and some turn out to be the best and some don’t. It’s a tragedy, because that’s their whole life. You need to have a lot of maturity to get over that.

BM: A lot of the women don’t last. A lot of girls stay a few years and they lose their excitement, their passion.

DA: Probably because the reality is too had.

BM: Yeah. I mean the amount of women that have left is insane.

DA: There are a lot of stories of people mentally unravelling, but you find those stories in every industry. Doing Swan Lake is the Othello role of dance; it’s extremely difficult and challenging. Things get pretty intense out there. Personally I had a lot of stress on this film; it was a really hard one. There just wasn’t enough money. Everyone there was doing it for way less they’ve ever made with way less resources than they’ve ever had. It’s very important to have a tight box to work in because you create a creative vision out of that, but this box was really too small, and we spent a lot of time struggling with the different financial ends of film making. It wasted a lot of time unfortunately but we got through it. It’s unfortunate but it’s become really ridiculously hard to make these films. I’ve had this back to back – The Wrestler was a nightmare to raise money for, but it did pretty well. And then I got a big movie star – Natalie Portman – but we still couldn’t get the money, which was weird. That’s why I’m making Wolverine now (laughs).

BM: It was the first film I’ve ever worked on.

DA: So it probably seemed big for you. I guess it was impressive; we had trucks. I remember the first film I went on and it was impressive.

BM: I wish we could do it all over again; it was such a great learning experience. I really enjoyed watching you work.

DA: I didn’t know what a hyper-extended limb was before till halfway through the shoot. I knew what it was like when you hyper-extend your leg, but I’d never seen it on a dancer, and you’re like ‘wow it’s bending the wrong way, that’s amazing!’ There are all these things you need a trained eye for. I think it’s important to expose it all, as it shows the sacrifice these dancers make to do their art. When you understand the effort that’s when you can really appreciate something. When someone goes to the ballet the work is really foreign. This film shows people somewhat about how much work goes into it, and it doesn’t even touch the tip of the iceberg of these dancers, but at least is hints at what they are willing to do to create their art.

BM: I think the physical pain people put themselves through is totally crazy. The things I have done in my own career are totally insane. When you’re injured and you have to give up your role, you just won’t, you will go out on stage. I’ve danced with torn abs. Even when I went back to Swan Lake after the movie, I hadn’t danced that much, and I hurt my knee, and I couldn’t walk. But we just have to do it. If I didn’t perform then I didn’t perform at all. And you have to go to your director, and you’re always looked down at when you’re injured. It’s a very tricky thing.

DA: You have to hide your injuries. I’ve heard how dancers cut holes in their ballet shoes to collect the pooling blood from their injuries just so they could dance. But that’s what it is. I think it’s interesting, and there’s a beauty to that.

BM: And by the time you’re 33/34 years old it’s over.

DA: I think all careers have ageism, and it happens to be the most extreme in the ballet world. By the time you’re 34 if you’re a jumper you start to become more of a technician. You get a few more years of that to try and reinvent yourself.

BM: In fact there’s only really one period where you’re really it, and then you get promoted, and then the director pays attention to someone else. You’re the flavour of the month for only a little while.

DA: So much attention is attributed to this idea of perfection. It is a concept in the ballet world because it is classical ballet, and classical has this concept of perfection, it’s kind of implied. To enter that pure state of being in the moment is something that happens for performers and you try to do it as someone who is trying to construct something like that. But it’s really hard to get there. The biggest fear I have is of losing how to feel the right decisions, how you feel the passion. You see it with so many artists – they kind of lose touch with how to communicate with audiences, and that’s the danger. How do you keep reinventing yourself and keep challenging yourself so that you are connected to audiences and entertaining them.

BM: I think it’s about being present. Always enriching your life. I try to be relentless about the way I work. To always keep having ideas.

TEXT © TIM NOAKES
CONTACT SHEET PHOTOGRAPHY © JONATHAN HALLAM

FOOTNOTES

Darren Aronofsky
Age: 41
Born: Brooklyn, New York.
What You Know: Film director responsible for Pi, Requiem for a Dream, Below, The Fountain, The Wrestler and the forthcoming Wolverine.
What You Didn’t: He once turned down the opportunity to direct Batman Begins.
Previous: His debut film, Pi, was financed entirely from $100 donations from his friends and family. It grossed over $3 million.

Benjamin Millepied
Age: 33
Born: Bordeaux, France
What You Know: Principal dancer at the New York City Ballet and choreographer of Danses Concertantes. Recently co-directed the film Time Doesn’t Stand Still with Asa Mader.
What You Didn’t: He and Natalie Portman started dating after meeting on the set of Black Swan.
Previous: He started dancing at the age of eight, trained by his mother, a former ballet dancer.

HURTS

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 12:16:35 +0000

It’s a wonderful life, apparently

MNDR vs NICK RHODES

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 11:31:54 +0100

Noise pop princess MNDR and Duran Duran legend Nick Rhodes may not appear together on Mark Ronson’s Record Collection, but they have something in common apart from their musical relationship with the producer – their love of analogue synthesisers…

Nick Rhodes: Amanda, where did your love of synthesizers start?

MNDR: I was a classical concert pianist and then a double bass player in an orchestra, but I was interested in Stockhausen and experimental music…

N: The noise mongers!

M: Yeah, and I’ve always been very involved in noise to this day in electronic experimental music. Europe is very supportive of that, the Governments spend money on it. It’s awesome. You can go to Switzerland and play noise music and stay at a hotel and it’s wonderful. It’s rare, that doesn’t happen in the States.

N: I must remember that next time I’m in one of those moods!

M: I then got interested in David Bowie and I Brian Eno. I’d read all about how he produced all the records, and then I got into Neu! and Can and La Düsseldorf and all the krautrock stuff. And Duran Duran, Human League and OMD of course! I loved how in your early days you guys experimented with projections and tried different things. You really fostered an art form.

N: I think things were very different then when we formed a band. In the 70s I was a teenager, so we experienced glam rock, electronic music, disco, funk, punk, which was extraordinary, that’s the thing that really showed us we could do it. I remember the first day I saw someone on stage at Birmingham Barbarella's playing guitar and I was watching their hands thinking, “I can play that song,” I know those four chords and I went home and I played this thing and I thought, “Wow!” It was an opening for the first time because there was a lot of prog rock at the time, things like Pink Floyd, Genesis, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, that all seemed so complicated. I hadn’t had any formal music education at all, so I started out with punk synthesis. It was really, “Okay, what kind of noise can I make with this thing? Now how do I work that into a song?” And it sort of went that way around.

M: Yeah, look at what Suicide did

N: I loved them. “Frankie Teardrop”. I saw them live. They supported The Clash actually. They got bottled off in Birmingham.

M: They were hated! That’s what people don’t understand about Suicide, people literally hated them. They would get bottles and broken glass flying at them and they were so ahead of their time.

N: Amazing. I can remember being so disappointed because they never played the end of the set. They literally hung out for as long as they could and then there was just this shower of glass.

M: That’s crazy.

N: Insane. But that first Suicide album was really a masterpiece.

M: Literally a masterpiece. Why do you think synth music has become popular again?

N: I suppose, the one thing Mark and us definitely have in common is that we believe that synthesizers can create something unique and beautiful that other instruments can’t. To me that’s the realization that a lot of people are starting to have now, maybe through soft synths and computers, but those that really do fiddle around with analogue gear and get to grips with it discover something incredibly special. I don’t think it’s necessarily a backlash against the guitar thing, it’s more of a realization that these instruments really do something different.

M: With synthesizers there’s something immediate about them, that naivety. You can just get on it and make something cool right away. I’m really excited about it, especially women getting more involved with recording. Bringing a punk spirit or even a krautrock spirit back to music. Playing the same thing over and over again and just watching how that forms a psychedelic sound that moves and changes. With synths today, people can do that easily and record it. So there’s going to be a new take on it and you’re already seeing that with people like Ariel Pink. People are taking ideas and the immediacy and the naivety and making new music in the spirit of Brian Eno and those sorts of producers.

N: I think if you have a creative mind, it’s the best toy box. Once we started recording with Mark, he became transfixed with these keyboards. He asked me if I would get out all of the analogue keyboards and I said, “well, we can’t get them all out because I’ve got storage rooms full of them, but we can start somewhere” and then everyday he would say, “Can we get another one today,” until literally the room was stacked with these things. He literally went and bought all the analogue synths that we used on the album, he bought them himself for his first session. So he bought a Prophet-5, the Alger synth deck, Jupiter-8, all those things. I think when he started writing with the same musicians he used on the last album, they all walked in and thought he’d gone mad. “What the hell, what’s all this gear doing in here?” They were expecting the normal set up but he said, “No, we can play it all on this” which I guess was a pretty interesting concept. It’s worked out really well.

M: I love analogue synths because someone was in there with a soldering iron and there’s air, because it’s just a series of components. There is air in digital because somebody had to program it, but there’s less air. In any art, it’s the air that makes it beautiful and with synths and drum machines and early sequencers, anything, they all have their own personality, they’re all made for a reason.

N: Completely, I find myself with digital things, if I ever use them, adding noise. I put it through an amp, do something to it because its not really alive, it’s like a clone.

M: Yeah, you need to dirty it up a little bit! By the way, how important is fashion to you Nick?

N: Is there anything more important than fashion other then music? I think you know when you’re in a band, or when you want to be in a band, if you don’t care about the styling of it, something’s wrong. It was so instant to me, when we went through glam rock and punk rock, things like that, they were such stylish movements then that there was no way that we were ever going to go on stage wearing jeans and a grubby old t-shirt, it just wasn’t going to happen. I’m always attracted to things that are more stylish. We always end up working with people we think are more stylish, whether it’s Mark, or Grace Jones or whoever, through Timbaland in his own way. The two are absolutely, completely interlinked.

M: You can kind of tell when it’s too conscious and that it’s kind of drab, you’re like, “Ok, whatever”. It should be an extension of how you’re viewing the world and how you’re making music.

N: I think that’s the big difference between fashion and style I suppose.

M: Yeah, exactly, that’s a really good way of wording it.

N: If you’re not comfortable, you’re going to look uncomfortable in it. When we were growing up it always seemed so much more exciting to see the people who had the stuff together, like David Bowie and Roxy Music and Kraftwerk. They were always so much more interesting to me than the duller looking folk things and the people who play too many notes really.

M: Yeah, the too many noters, I hate those guys!

TOP 3 SYNTH HEROES

MNDR
Cybotron Enter
Brian Eno’s Another Green World
Talking Heads, Speaking in Tongues.

Nick Rhodes
Kraftwerk, Trans-Europe Express
Brian Eno, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)
Wendy Carlos, A Clockwork Orange OST

TOBACCO

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 15:41:13 +0100

Beck’s favourite beat butcher serves up a meaty second album   If you thought the abrasive distorto-beats and chainsaw synths of Tobacco’s Fucked Up Friends pushed the limits of musical sanity, just wait till you get a load of Maniac Meat. Ripping out the soul of hip hop and stamping on its diamond-encrusted skull, the Pittsburgh producer’s new album perfects the art of brutal beat butchery, with 16 tracks of psychedelic noise, pitch shifted vocoders and ungodly sonic wobbles. With Beck joining the meat feast for two tracks, the erstwhile frontman of Black Moth Super Rainbow explains how his beefy stew came to the boil.   Maniac Meat is truly mental. Where did its craziness originate?   Tobacco: While I was writing the last Black Moth Super Rainbow record I became so bored of it all. The concept of the band got really tired for me. There was pressure because people wanted one thing and I wasn’t really into it anymore. A lot of my new music sounds kinda dark, but to me it’s just about having fun. I’m not sure what that says about me.   There is definitely a sense of mischief, especially with song titles like “Lick the Witch” and “Motorlicker”. There’s a lot of licking going on.  A lot of it was about going back to a point in my childhood where gross shit was kinda cool. I was a little kid in the 80s and early 90s, we had Garbage Pail Kids and MAD. It was cool to be gross. In Black Moth I tried to hide how much of an idiot I am. But with this stuff there’s no hiding – it is what it is.   Are you trying to scare people?   To me it’s not scary and I’m not like those guys in metal bands who sing about death and mutilation. When I sing about mutilation it’s more like I’m laughing at it. I’m not trying to be so direct about it or scare people. I’m just trying to work their imaginations more.  
The album is called Maniac Meat. What’s the worst piece of meat you’ve ever eaten?   I think hot dogs are pretty disgusting. But the worst thing I ever had was this thing my mum tried to feed to me – beef stroganoff. I hate that stuff. There’s a company called Hamburger Helper that give you the kit to make that shit. You add oil and beef and it becomes beef stroganoff.   So Maniac Meat is basically all about your mum’s ropey beef stroganoff ?   I hadn’t thought of it till right now but that might have something to do with it.   How do you like your meat to be cooked?   There’s a place an hour north of where I live and they make burgers that are one step rarer than rare. They call it mean. That’s how I like it. It’s blackened on the outside and cold and awesome on the inside. It’s a bit like beef sushi. I only trust them because they have a farm about a mile away from the restaurant. It’s really fucking good and easy to digest. 
I was hoping for a song about mad cows. You let me down.   I’m sorry! If mad cow disease starts making its way over here, then I’ll probably be pretty fucked because of the way I eat my burgers.   Would you eat sheep’s testicles?   No I wouldn’t. I’d just think about how much it would hurt if someone did that to me.

GASPAR NOE

Wed, 8 Sep 2010 08:08:07 +0100

A psychedelic melodrama about a young soul floating in purgatory above Tokyo’s vice dens, Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void is one of the most visually stunning and viscerally brutal films of recent times. Shot entirely from the point of view of Oscar, a young drug dealer who gets killed at the start of the film, Noé’s camera flies around the neon city’s tarnished maze of love hotels, strip clubs and crack dens, following his mourning sister, Linda, as she tries to escape her shattered reality. Like his 2002 film Irreversible, which featured the infamous nine-minute subway rape scene, Noé actively challenges his audience at every turn, alternating between blinding them with strobe lighting, CGI visualisations of DMT hallucinations, and some of the most insane sex scenes ever committed to celluloid. Written over the past 15 years, Enter the Void is Noé’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, a trippy masterpiece that confronts the meaning of life in uncompromising fashion.

Enter the Void is an amazing film, I loved it. It’s been described as the ‘ultimate death trip’.
Gaspar Noe: It seems to me that people should watch stoned. In the 70s would take LSD to go and see 2001: A Space Odyssey or Jonathon Livingstone or 200 Miles by Frank Zappa, but do you think people should watch this movie on drugs?

No I don’t think they should. I think if you watch this movie on drugs, I’m not sure you’d ever come back from it. Have you ever watched it on drugs?

No. I knew some people watched Irreversible who said they were scared by the movie. But no I’ve never. Also, I might get bored by my own movie but I was just wondering the perception of people who watched this movie on acid or mushrooms or whatever.

That’s the thing, are you worried that it will become one of these classic stoner movies because of all the visual effects.

I think mostly so many people who saw the movie made comments about how close it was to a drug trip. For example those who have experienced mushrooms or acid said “oh it reminded me of my trips as a teenager and now I want to try again” and some other people who never never smoked a joint or took acid said “thank you so much for the movie because I have never tried anything and now I feel like I’ve had a drug experience and now for sure I’d never do a real one”. I think people were control freaks might enjoy a safe experience and I think people who were decontrol freaks might enjoy this as a memory of their discontrol.

What about you?

I’ve tried lots of things.

If you were a stoned kid again, what do you think you impression of this film would be?

I think I would like it, I’ve dreamt of this movie for many years so I guess I would really like the movie. Also the thing that was not in the original idea at this point was that the movie would be located in Japan. Nowadays the new generation dreams of Japan much more than of any other country. Like in the 70s kids would dream of New York, or LA or San Francisco or going to Woodstock, but nowadays most kids don’t give a shit about America. They all dream of Japan or Hong Kong.

I was thinking it was maybe quite an obvious thing to locate this in Las Vegas because of the parallels with all the neon and the kind of super surreal environment. Why didn’t you film it somewhere like that? Was it a kind of leap of faith to go to the Far East and shoot a film like this?

Yeah, and Las Vegas is a kind of gambling city or a mafia city, the energy is very different, it’s all about money money money. But it’s true that visually Las Vegas looks like the movie Tron, and that’s what I also liked in Tokyo, or what I could have like in Hong Kong if I had decided to shoot in Hong Kong is that the neighborhoods look like images going out from Tron. For example when you do hallucinogenics like DMT or Ayahuasca the drink that contains DMT, you have lots of visions that are made of very bright landscapes like neon tubes on background. By choosing a city full of neon lights then you bring a hallucinogenic layer to the story.

Was it difficult shooting in Japan in terms of the limitations of the city, were you quite free to roam and do what you wanted?

Yeah but then when we were shooting in Tokyo there are some neighborhoods that are easy to shoot in but then there are some neighborhoods I picked, the one in which we shot most of the movie that is called Shinjuku, that is run by the local mafias. That’s where you have all the love hotels and all the gambling rooms, casinos and massage parlors. There is prostitution there so at a point you have to have someone in the crew dealing with these people because they are annoyed by film crews, they lose the privacy in the streets, many people who are there don’t want to see people with cameras, especially a foreign crew with cameras so you have to negotiate with them.

Did you come across any barriers to realise your artistic vision?

No I didn’t have any problem with financers or the producers. Mostly the things that when you try to do a movie that tries hard to be hallucinogenic you need to work on the visual effects with people who sometimes haven’t done drugs or plants so you have to explain what it would look like and be full of references. The other thing is that you don’t know how long it is going to take them to do those visuals and by you not knowing how much time and how many computers you need to do those visuals you don’t know how much its going to cost. So at a point you are throwing some people one way or the other way and the company that did all the visual effects could suddenly tell me no that thing is not going to be possible because you are not taking too much people for too much time. So you don’t know exactly how to make those visions happen on the screen with the amount of time and the amount of technicians that we have. Hopefully I had the very best people from that company working on the movie. The job they did made it look amazing.

I think that’s one of the most riveting parts of the film, is actually how you managed to create these wonderful camera movements

You have a dream and then you try to find the tools that can make that dream you have in your mind take place on a flat screen. I didn’t know how I was going to shoot the aerial city shots before we started working on the pre-production. I thought I could do it with very small tiny hand made cranes in a real location, but actually we had to rebuild all the locations in a studio and use a real crane above. It was more expensive that way but it looks much better than I thought.

So did you actually reconstruct a whole city block?

All the visions you have inside all the interiors, yeah those interiors like most of the apartments you see from above were real locations that were reconstructed in the studio so we could shoot with a crane above so we took all the furniture out of the real location where we filmed the flashbacks and then we had the same worlds reconstructed in the studio and we put all the furniture inside and we shot from above. Sometimes the actors or the non-professional actors were complaining that I was too far from them and I was playing with my own toy and they felt alone on the set.

How high were you?

Always it was at least 5 feet above the heads of the actors.

It must be quite disconcerting as an actor with this guy just over you. Did they find it…

Yeah but they feel the presence. At the beginning some of the actors would watch the camera and I said, “no please don’t watch it” but its true that at the point where I know where the camera is. But you get used to it and you feel the shadow over your head and you know where it is. In a few scenes Paz would stare at the camera and I would say “hey pansy you stare at the camera” and she’d say “no not the camera, I’m just thinking of Oscar so I’m staring at his soul”. And actually we kept some of those takes, for example when she is stripping at the club she is starring at the camera, and its true, really you feel like she is thinking of her brother because you know she is starring at what you know as the pure v of the ghost. So actually at the end we had some other shots without her starring at the camera but I thought that was the best thing to do for that particular thing because it feels like she is thinking of him.

It is basically a ghost story, are you a big believer of humans having a soul or is this just a dramatic construct for making a film?

I believe there’s something called a soul that is far more powerful than we think but I think the soul is connected to the flesh, I don’t think the soul can survive the decomposition of the flesh or the matter. I believe that once you are dead, you know your brain falls down and your memories disappear and life keeps on going without you. You melt with the ground and then your done, but I believe in the soul. If there was no soul how could you take the shape you take while you grow up, but no I don’t believe in all those stories that religions tell you about life after death or a future life where you will be rewarded for everything you did in this life. Those are brainwashing tools that religions built up to control people. That’s why at the end of the movie, I’m not Buddhist at all, I’m an Atheist, but at the end of the movie when you think that the soul reincarnated, you see the face of the mother and you don’t see the face of the sister. That means that the best case its going back to a loop and started its life again from the beginning.

What’s the closest you’ve come to death?

(Long pause). Something to do with avoiding accidents, motorbike accidents, I avoided a few. Once I could of ended in prison, once I put myself in a very strange situation where I could be shot, erm but that’s just accidental one day then nothing happens. But I think the closest thing to what I think is the experience of dying was doing Ayahuasca. At a point you don’t know where the fuck you are, in which world you are, if you’re human or inhuman or if your even in a planet or whatever, then your head goes somewhere else where you don’t even remember your breathing or you have a soul or personality, you’re just surrounded by visions, then slowly you come back to the idea that somebody is perceiving those visions, or something is perceiving those visions. Then you remember you have a human form and you remember there is a planet with humans inside, then you don’t know why you’re stuck in time. That’s not an experience close to death but it’s an experience that is very far from your everyday experience of life.

So did your experience with Ayahuasca directly influence Enter the Void? The outer-body experience?

Yeah but it is not out of my body it was out of my...somewhere, I was in my mind but it was…it never came out of my body like it was in the movie like where a bird could see me. I totally forgot that I was living in a world or it had a living film or whatever. Sometimes it happens when you dream. When you wake up in the morning, while you are sleeping you forget we have a human form or even live on a planet. Its weird how strong dreams are because when you wake up sometimes you’ve killed someone and when you can’t wake up you’ve really felt you’ve killed someone. You feel safer because you know your not going to go to prison because it was a dream. At the same time the feeling of having killed someone is still there and it feels real. They say that when you dream you dream because your brain releases natural DMT in small amounts. So for some reason always linked to the survival of the species you need to clean your brain every night of all the events of the previous week and DMT is in your brain to make you dream and make your brain get rid of all those memories. Ayahuasca is full of DMT, you can smoke DMT, but yeah, so at the end the hallucinations we have are just enhanced dreams if you smoke DMT or drink it.

A lot of people have said that your films are quite nihilistic and quite depressing.

They are not, I am not. Just to make a movie you have to be hyper optimistic to try to create a rollercoaster ride like this next movie. If you are nihilistic that means you are kind of pessimistic too, you’d rather sit at home. You need to try to make movies; mental strength not physical strength but you hereto be very optimistic. Also the way the movies are written are very joyful. For a film director watching, movies are… there are some camera skills and it’s a joyful experience. So whether the subject matter or the story is sad, the filmmaker is not sad. A pessimistic movie would be where the story is very sad and there is no way out. Movies like Scum, those movies are pessimistic, Straw Dogs is not flashy, that’s a pessimistic movie. But in my movie there are too many visual effects to call my movie pessimistic.

Talking of which, you’ve got the infamous shot of the penis ejaculating over the screen at the end. Is that your way of saying that everyone is fucked in this film, even the audience?

That was supposed to be a serious scene. When I wrote the script I really cared about that scene, I never saw that people would laugh in the audience. It wasn’t supposed to be a joke it was suppose to be like the climax of the whole trip. You get into the testicles of the guy, then the sperm comes out and here we get into another dimension. I don’t know, maybe there is something I missed, when we were doing the special effects I thought it was funny but I didn’t think people would laugh in the audience. I think it is just because people are surprised, when you are surprised you can laugh. One day it was a very rainy night in Paris and I was in the bus stop and I was all alone and it was raining and it was cold. I was kind of asleep, I closed my eyes then suddenly I felt the presence of someone. I opened my eyes and there was a guy checking the map of the bus just next to me and the guy had all his face burnt like Freddie from the movie. I didn’t expect to see the face of somebody so close and certainly not a guy with his face burnt, and the surprise of seeing that, I started laughing. It was all I could do. The emotional shock I just stood up and escaped because the shame of laughing. Things that make you laugh are often things that surprise you.

At the end of the screening that I was in, there was someone at the back who said “thank god” and it seemed like there was a palpable sense of relief. Do you see cinema as a way of really pushing what people can take as entertainment?

Yeah but for example in life some people like getting drunk, some people don’t like getting drunk, some people haven’t even tried alcohol, some people tried all kinds of drugs. Film critics are paid; their job is to go to see movies and comment them, write about them. Certainly amongst the viewers, in press screenings or even in the normal ones there are many people who don’t like losing their perception of real life. So if you are put in a rollercoaster that doesn’t fit with your normal desires, for sure the longer the movie is, the more they will dislike the experience. Also I really hate all these new 3D animation movies, just the idea of getting there I suffer just before I get into the cinema. But I went to see Toy Story 3 and I really enjoyed it and even cried at the end, but mostly if I go to see those movies I feel like I’ve been out in a jail for 90 minutes. So for somebody who doesn’t naturally like this kind of experience the fact that it’s 2 hours and a half it’s going to be even more painful.

© TIM NOAKES 2010

JOSH HOMME

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 11:05:41 +0100

For the tenth anniversary of their breakthrough album, Rated R, Queens of the Stone Age leader Josh Homme talks about how nicotine, valium, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy, alcohol, cocaine, and Janet Jackson shaped their sound

Just over a decade ago, when Disney factory produced pop was in its brutal ascendancy and the world quivered in fear of a millennium bug meltdown, Josh Homme and his band Queens of the Stone Age were holed up in a smoky Californian studio recording Rated R, an album that would drastically alter the direction of modern rock. An attack on censorship and mankind’s sheep mentality, it gave Homme his first crossover hit (“The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret”) and triggered the stoner rock tsunami the band have ridden across the world ever since. Re-released this month for its tenth birthday plus a second disc of B-sides and live performances, Homme invited Dazed into his LA lair, Pink Duck Studios, to look back at its creation and cultural impact.

Rated R was recorded at the turn of the century. Did you make it as an antidote to everything else that was out there?

Josh Homme: In hindsight I think that music was very healthy, but in terms of what was going on it seemed that we were very much on the outside. It felt like we were doing something different. But now when I look back to the scene I see that it was quite healthy… compared to what it is now.

How do you think you’ve changed, or evolved as a songwriter?

To me, that’s the second record of a three record plan. Queens are supposed to be a mix tape. It’s supposed to be whatever you think is good, without respect to genre. We can play whatever we’d like to play, and it took three records to do it. Our first record was very succinct, and Rated R was expansive, it’s kind of all over the place.

Where was your head at?

We’d never done well, so we never thought we would do well. It’s not like we were trying to fail, or believing we were failures, it’s just success wasn’t necessarily quantified in terms of how many people bought our records. We were always a band of the people – we played more for respect. We were out of the loop, basically. But I think if we would have known what the loop was we would have tried to destroy the loop.

There was a lot of bad pop music at the time, like N*Sync…

And Westlife and Boys Only… or was it Girls Only?

Girls Aloud?

Girls Aloud and Boys Only.

Boyzone.

(laughs) Boyzone!

But then you guys came along and hit the charts with ‘The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret’. Did you think it would crossover?

Well, you write something, and you go ‘oh that’s, that’s catchy!’, and applaud yourself, and then go ‘wow’. But I’m used to some of the best stuff never getting heard. Like The Stooges, people didn’t understand them for 30 years. I always wished that we could be good enough that we would be misunderstood or be ahead of our time. I always had a fear of the mob, in particular on Rated R.

The mob?

I’m inherently against any group of more than 5 people. I’ve always been into infiltration and I think that stuff seeps through the music. Things like ‘Better Living Through Chemistry’ and ‘I Think I Lost My Headache’ were about trying to dismantle the mob.

Have you always kicked against the wave?

I remember being in second grade looking over at everybody writing down their homework and thinking to myself ‘why the fuck do I need to write this down, this is a waste of time’ and ever since then I’ve always had this real aversion to it. It certainly hasn’t always helped me out, having this sort of attitude. I’d love to push more for common sense more. I’d like to see a little more allowance for people to let their hair down and get loose. I guess I don’t like rules that much.

Rated R got you onto the Ozzfest bill. How did you adapt to that massive audience?

We played the Ozzfest because we really didn’t have anything to do in the summer time in the States and there were a few good bands on there that we liked. But, what’s strange is that I liked the Oz-fest audience, because they’re jean shorts and drinking beer out of a can kind of people like me. I’ve had a mullet 5 or 6 times, and almost all the times, except for maybe one, I’ve been like ‘well this looks awesome’. We were going after the audience and trying to show a different side of music.

Was it received well?

No, not really. The amount of times I walked out and they’d be like ‘nice shirt, faggot!’ and we hadn’t even played a note. But frankly, that’s what made me enjoy Ozzfest – the insurmountable odds. Sometimes, turning some people off is how you attract the people you most want to attract. Someone who is willing to watch you walk through the flames. If we’re going to be rock and roll, let’s be rock and roll. And during that Rated R period, in a lot of ways, we were looking for trouble. If you look for trouble you’ll always find it. Since then I’ve maybe realized that that’s not, maybe, the best way to go about your Friday. But it was fun, too, for a while.

Was it this anarchic streak that made you kick off the album with “Feel Good Hit of the Summer”? What made you choose those particular drugs?

It was New Years Eve in Joshua Tree and I was walking through the desert back to the hotel from the Rancho, which was the studio we record at and where we had this party. I was maybe 200 yards away and couldn’t see where I was going, I was falling over, then getting up, then falling over again a few times. I was basically recounting what I’d done, and that was the order I listed them in – nicotine, valium, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy, alcohol, and cocaine. I don’t know if I did all those things or not.

Oh really? Is this the disclaimer?

No, I did. Who cares, yeah! I was young, I tried.

Rob Halford from Judas Priest made an appearance on that track too. Why?

He was recording in the studio we were also recording in. We got to talking and I said ‘would you sing on the song that we’re doing right here?’ and he said ‘yeah, well, what’s it like?’ I handed him the lyrics, hit play and he opened them up right as the song started. He just got the biggest smile on his face, and said ‘rock and roll cocktail, I think I invented this’ and that was it.

Did you always like Judas Priest?

I had only recently gotten into them at the time, because I was always into punk rock music, I was always into Black Flag, so I never really listened to much metal as a kid. But if there’s a song called ‘Breaking the Law’, it’s like ‘fuck forever, I’m in’. You don’t need to convince me.

Why did you choose to confront censorship?

There were certain places in the States that were putting warning stickers on everything, and that really hit me at my core, although if kids saw a warning label they knew they were in the right place. Our first record had been refused in a couple of areas, and not wanting to be stickered, we decided to call the record Rated R. The idea was that it was pre-censored, for your pleasure. And it actually worked. It didn’t get stickered anywhere in the world.

How do you think Rated R lead to the work that you’ve done subsequently.

Well, Rated R was very on purpose. Just like Songs for the Deaf was, and just like the first record was. They were all part of a plan to be able to get to the spot where you can do anything. What I’ve always tried to do is to make it sweet enough for the gals and tough enough for the guys. I don’t listen to much heavy music, because I play it, and I play it the way I really like it, and I listen to our records a lot actually.

A lot of artists don’t like to admit to that, do they?

I realize that there is a line there, where it’s like jerking off or something, but I never thought of it in that way. Music has always been my religion, I’ve always played my favourite music that no one else played and I listen to all kinds of stuff. I listen to our stuff because I love it, and I don’t feel like I over-do that, I just don’t see anything wrong with it.

Some musicians can fall into a trap and actually stop enjoying making music.

I love making music so much. I love it so much. I do. All the time. It’s the only thing that’s ever saved me. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but music’s the only thing that’s pushed over those mistakes. Music, and my family and friends, I don’t ever want to lose any of those things. I’ve never really taken myself that seriously, because what’s the point in that? But the work is very serious. Try hard. I’m not a perfectionist, because, frankly, I’m just not a good enough musician to even wage that war.

Since Rated R, the band has gone through numerous line-up changes, but you’re the only constant. Was that always the intention?

No, it would be awesome to be in U2 where it’s the same four guys, but I think we’ve always had a volatility that maybe U2 don’t have to worry about (laughs). I’ve always felt like we’re dangling on the edge, because the view is fucking amazing. And when that happens, you always lose somebody. The music comes first. If one person doesn’t like it we don’t do it. And if that’s not the way it’s going to be, then someone’s got to go, and if it’s got to be me that goes then fine, do. I want to try to skip the ego part of it as much as humanly possible.

How possible is that? You’ve sold millions of records, tour around the world playing massive shows...

Yeah, but it doesn’t mean that you’re a cool guy. It doesn’t mean that you’re a cool guy. There’s a Janet Jackson song called “What Have You Done For Me Lately”.

I love that tune.

I do too. It’s awesome. And it’s very true, like, what’s done is done, it doesn’t mean you’re great, it just means they like the music for that moment in time. You have to earn it every time. Every time. That’s what’s so great about music, if you write a song that really does something to your guts, or you just get that feeling, you have to find it and chase that feeling again, and it never ends. I think whoever hasn’t understood that attitude in Queens is not here anymore. And if I ever think the fisherman’s better than the fish, I hope someone fucking fires me too.

But how could they do that, it’s your band.

Troy, Joey, Dean, Nicky, we’re all really honest together and say point blank stuff to each other. Unless you’re calling them pussies. Don’t do that.

I won’t. Do you still like playing these songs?

I love it.

Do you?

I love it.

Text and photography © Tim Noakes

DOMINIQUE YOUNG UNIQUE

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:06:20 +0100

With the sexy swagger of Lil Kim, the ghetto credibility of Trina and the spitting skills of Nicki Minaj, it’s impossible to ignore Tampa electro rap queen, Dominique Young Unique. Since releasing last year’s demented Hot Girl EP, the 19-year-old Robles Park princess has twisted necks from Austin to Old Street with her crazy mix of Miami bass, French house and 80s boogie. Dominque and Yo Majesty producer David Alexander have just dropped Domination, a summer freakout of a mixtape that will make even the shyest wallflower shake their ass. Possibly even your granny.   So, Ms Unique, how did you get into music?

Dominique young unique: My cousin and I started doing music when I was 12. I tried to sing but it didn’t work out, so we started rapping. Our group was called The Young Stunnas. I was Hot Girl and she was Stunna Girl, but when she turned 15 she got a baby in her stomach, so I carried on doing it on my own.   How did you avoid a similar fate to Stunna Girl?

I didn’t let nobody get between my legs. I’m a lady and I treat myself as a lady. I was like, “Man, fuck it. This is my career and I want to get my family out of the struggle.”

M.I.A

Thu, 20 May 2010 15:40:45 +0100

SEAN METELERKAMP

Mon, 10 May 2010 10:59:29 +0100

Laidback 26-year old video director Sean Metelerkamp was given some sage advice by his parents when growing up – “Do whatever you want, just make sure you’re good at it”. Since deciding to sell his car for a camera, Sean’s got very good at creating hyper real portraits of South African musical culture, shooting everyone from Sweat X to directing Die Antwoord’s viral video smash “Zef Side”. I tracked him down to the Rondebosch apartment he shares with fellow filmmakers Be Phat Motel, as he prepared to smuggle himself into the World Cup.

You’re most renowned for directing “Zef Side”. How did its massive success affect you?

Sean Metelerkamp: I’m stoked I did it. It’s helped me a lot. It’s mad. My analytics graph on my website went ‘bluegh’ and I was like ‘holy shit’. But I always like to move onto the next thing. I love the process of making it and being involved but once it’s done, it’s done for me. I haven’t watched that in forever. But it’s really cool to get a nice response.

Do you want to get into directing feature films?

All I really want to do is take photos and make really cool motion shit. I don’t really want to make feature films; I don’t think I’m a good enough storyteller. Short films and music videos are better for me. A lot of dudes say, ‘Oh you’re the David LaChapelle of South Africa’, and I’m like, ‘Oh, man’. I don’t really want that. I just want to be me.

 Do you do anything else outside of your photo and music video work?

I’ve got a T-shirt company called Fuhrer.

As in Hitler? So you want to be the dictator of SA’s T-shirt industry?

Ja! (laughs)

Do you think South Africa youth culture is coming into its own?

I think so. When I was 17 I was not inspired by anything in SA. There was nothing here. We listened to overseas music, we looked at overseas artists, but in the last three years I really dig what’s going on in here, especially the music. I’m super-amped about what’s going on and the people I’m working with.

© TIM NOAKES 2010

OLIVER STONE

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:57:42 +0100

Late one night in the summer of 2008, I found what turned out to be a stockbroker’s iPhone in the back of a NYC taxi. Turning it on in order to contact the owner, I noticed that among the stock-watch apps and currency converters was an icon of Gordon Gekko, the corrupt market raider immortalised by Michael Douglas in Wall Street, Oliver Stone’s 1987 tale of insider trading and corporate excess. Intrigued, I hit Gekko’s pixelated face (it felt good) and a website flashed up with an entire transcription of his infamous “Greed is good” speech – one of Hollywood’s most iconic parables about the pursuit of unrestrained avarice. Whoever owned the phone found those words as important as checking Facebook or texting his girlfriend. Gekko was his hero, his daily inspiration.   Watching Wall Street again a few weeks later as news of the Lehman Brothers collapse and global recession spread, it struck me that a whole generation of financiers must have grown up, like Charlie Sheen’s character Bud Fox, yearning to be Gekko. He was the business equivalent of a rapper wanting to become Tony Montana, another Stone creation. And some of these brokers, as we’ve all since discovered, were willing to trade money that didn’t exist in pursuit of pin-stripe suits, corner offices, penthouses, speed boats, fast women and stacks of cash. Perhaps the perks made the 22-year prison stretch Gekko received at the end of the film seem like a viable risk.   This September, inspired by financial fiends like Bernie Madoff, Stone has decided to spring Gekko out of prison for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Set in 2008, he is a reformed character that tries, and fails, to warn business leaders of the impending credit crunch. Many fans are understandably nervous about Douglas reprising his Oscar-winning role, especially since he’s had his brick phone put into storage. Stone, who only agreed to direct the film because he felt that the current financial climate lent itself to a sequel, understandably feels that it’s time for bankers to grow up. As the director of Natural Born Killers, JFK,Nixon and Platoon, he’s used to Marmite reactions. But, after giving Dubya an easy ride in W, will Gordon 2.0 be one step too far? Is the world ready for goody Gekko two shoes? Or will traders across Wall Street be deleting their “Greed is good” iPhone shortcuts forever?

The world’s moved on since Wall Street. Were you apprehensive about creating a sequel?   OLIVER STONE: Apprehensive? No. I’d have had more apprehensions if I’d had to do it in 1990. Twenty-two years is a long time to call it a sequel. I think of it more as a bookend. We’re not going back into that period. The beauty of this thing is that there’s a new period upon us, which is quite different, technically. It’s a different kind of Wall Street. It’s no longer 1987. It’s really a computer game now. The money has accelerated at a square root that is beyond belief, from millions to billions. Hedge funds invest 30-40 billion dollars. Even to have one billion dollars is an enormous amount of money. When you hear these guys say, ‘Oh, it’s just a billion dollar hedge fund,’ it’s unbelievable arrogance. The heights are dizzying, and the losses are dizzying. It’s just unbelievable what happened. By all accounts, it was a near-fatal heart attack.   Is Gordon Gekko in danger of becoming a pastiche?   I feared that. That’s why we approached it in a wholly different way. Michael has changed in that interim. He was a charming rogue, certainly, in the 80s. You saw a lot of Gekko in his later films, so I think it was smart to move away from that pastiche, as you call it, because it would have been boring after a while. There are flashes of the old Gekko, which I love, but it’s not like the charming reptile, so to speak. It’s a different man now. I’m not saying that he’s a wholly reformed figure looking for martyrdom, but what’s interesting is how he’s going to play the game to get back. He has suffered extensively in prison, his family has fallen apart; his eldest son has committed suicide. It’s very tough on him.   How did you persuade Michael Douglas to get back on board?   Frankly, I didn’t convince anybody. I passed on the script in 2006. It wasn’t important for me to make it. I felt, what was the need to make this movie if it was going to glorify the pigs on Wall Street? They were really making money and it was ugly. I passed and moved on with life. I did W and World Trade Centre. Then there was this crash. That changed the equation.   Do you think the original message of Wall Street failed because young traders ended up idolising Gordon Gekko?   That’s a very good question. Frankly, I wondered at times. The original Wall Street came about because of my experiences on Scarface. I was living in New York and I was hanging out with the dealers and the mob. That whole scene in Miami was a very shocking thing in 1982-3. Wall Street was like Scarface north. I was suddenly seeing people my age, in their 20s, making millions of dollars, so easily, so quickly. They were also snorting and drinking. The partying scene had really kicked in big time in the 80s. It was new to me, so that’s how it was born. Then it went to excess. But I was very clear that Gekko was the antagonist in the movie. However, a lot of young people caught on to him. Perhaps I’m retrograde, but to me the anchor of the first movie is Charlie Sheen.   But no one wanted to be Bud Fox.   Well, that’s the movies. They want to be heroes. They want to make money. I’ve met a lot of people in their 40s who said, ‘When I saw Wall Street I was studying history or medicine or law but then I saw your movie and I moved to Wall Street for that reason.’ The kicker was that some of them were multi-millionaires, and one of them was a billionaire, and they had moved to Wall Street because of the movie. I said, ‘Oh boy, I wish I had a royalty on that.’ These guys are really rich.   I find that quite worrying.   I gave birth to some rich people. But some of them did good. Some of them created something. That was the whole point of the original. Not to shit on Wall Street but to basically say, ‘Look, this is an engine of capitalism. This can work.’ It still does, by the way, but it’s been buried in the greater picture of making bigger profits and more greed, but it’s still there. Wall Street is a good thing. It was a good thing and it can be a good thing.   When you were 18, your father got you to work on a financial exchange in France. How did that influence Wall Street?   My father was always into the stock market, into numbers. He loved that world in New York and I grew up on the fringes of it, but I wasn’t particularly attuned to it. It was a chance to see it first hand but I didn’t do very well as a trader. It was violent and busy. They used to elbow each other to get into the inner circle, like matadors. It was a real crush. You couldn’t screw up. A lot of money was involved. I was a little too ambitious for my own good.   Your father died before you made Wall Street. What do you think he would have made of it?   I think he would have appreciated that I had done a business movie. We always talked about it. Hollywood was not into the business movie concept. I can understand why. It’s all financial talk, it’s not interesting to most people and it lacks those human emotions. Money is an interesting subject, however, for America. That’s why I addressed it in 1987. I thought, ‘Americans love money’ and the lengths they go to get it is what that movie is about. Coming off Platoon, I was trying to prove that I could do something domestic.   Michael Douglas once said that your style of directing is like taking people into the trenches. What did he mean by that?   He makes it sound like I dress him up in uniform. Maybe Michael, because he hasn’t been in the military, would regard it as a military experience. I didn’t think of it that way. At the end of the day, if you look back at the – what is it? 19, 20 films – that I’ve directed, it’s a mix of styles. Sometimes it really works with people. It clicks. I think Michael did great work on both films, so I’m very pleased with his result. My style might not have been good for him, but it works for other people.   Do you see yourself as a hard taskmaster or a disciplinarian?   No, I’m not a disciplinarian. I’m disciplined with myself and I try to lead by example not by imposition of my will. My approach is that we’re all in this together. The idea is king. Not the director. The idea. I serve the idea.   How do you balance the production logistics with trying to create a lasting piece of art?   Oh boy, if I didn’t tell you I wasn’t humbled so many times, you would not believe it. It’s a very humbling experience to make a movie, because you’re at the mercy of the elements. The editing room is another humiliation. All your mistakes are thrown back in your face. I find it a very difficult position. I don’t think I enjoy it. I think I’m more experienced at it but I don’t think I completely enjoy it. Sometimes it’s so painful you want to scream bloody murder and run somewhere else.   What’s the cut-off point? How do you stop?   How do you stop? A famous director once said that every film is abandoned, never finished.   So you just let it go?   Some people won’t, but I do let it go. I’m not looking for perfection. I don’t believe in it. I believe that a film is many things to many people and it changes over time.   Your critics have said you shouldn’t glamorise the people you put on the big screen. Do you like to provoke that reaction?   No, I like to make bigger-than-life characters but then again, World Trade Centre is about two very ordinary men who were real heroes. On WI guess you could say I supped with the devil and brought out all the reasons I thought why people voted for the guy. There is this fundamental thing that Americans like in him, and I was trying to root that out, and how he became President.   You were criticised for making him too likeable.   You can fault that, but he was re-elected. I didn’t like him. I was very clear – I empathised. Empathy means I walked in his shoes, or tried to. As opposed to sympathised. I don’t agree with anything he said. Anything. I think he was a disaster. It was a nightmare eight years.   Do you think you were too soft?   No. I wish I’d done it a year earlier and it would have been timelier.   Why are you drawn to these anti-heroes?   They don’t do me any good. Nixon, too.   I see a lot of similarities between Tony Montana and Gordon Gekko. In Scarface, Tony says, “You need people like me to point the finger at and say, ‘That’s the bad guy.’” Do you think film critics see you in that light?   I think you’re right. I think film critics have me as a punch-ball. It’s an easy target, I guess. I think that it’s hurt my career as well as some of the political statements I’ve made and positions I’ve taken in documentaries I’ve made. They’ve hurt me too and they’ve given me a profile that’s not necessarily me, it’s just a profile. Absolutely.   Are you really going to attempt to humanise Hitler, Stalin and Mao Zedong in a new series of documentaries?   I think it’s out of context. I did use the word ‘scapegoat’ and I think that was an unfortunate word, but frankly it’s a very interesting history that we’re putting together. We’re using the facts that we have; that are known but have been forgotten. There’s no question that Hitler had a big hand up the ladder. He didn’t come out of nowhere. He is a Frankenstein, he is a monster and I have no sympathy for him, but he was created by a Dr Frankenstein. That Dr Frankenstein is a very interesting mixture and you have to study cause and effect to understand history, otherwise you don’t learn anything from it. It’s my fault because I’m interested in the world, and I’m willing to go out there. I’m not trying to provoke, I’m trying to look for the truth. I’m trying to shine a light. For Christ’s sake, I feel like we’ve become so politically correct that you can’t do shit any more. You’re not supposed to turn around.   In 1987 Gordon Gekko said, “Every dream has its price.” What is the biggest price you’ve paid to get to where you are?   I’d have to talk to my psychotherapist, who I haven’t seen in ages. I suppose the price is that you have long absences from home and normal quotidian values, at times. Your children grow up and you have to readapt to the fact that you haven’t been the attentive father. That’s a big issue, but I have been as attentive as I can be in taking care of them. Still, there are gaps there. Divorces have happened. Those things.   Wall Street epitomised the ruthlessness of the 80s. During that era did you find yourself being a slave to success?   Yeah, I suppose everybody can become a mental slave to the need to produce. I was on a roll in the sense that I had to get financing for very complicated movies. I felt like I had a mission. To get JFK made in that era was very tough. You need heat. To make that movie after The Doors, you need to keep rolling. In a sense, I worked very fast and hard, but I knew that I could get things done. Platoon was impossible to get made. So was Salvador and The Doors. Every single fucking one. There were always problems. You asked what the price is? The price was to keep going fast, before they change their mind. The idea was to wrap it up and get another one done. Nixon was sort of the end of the line. I was exhausted. Frankly, I needed to take a break.   In the Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps trailer Shia LaBeouf says, “No matter how much money you make, you’ll never be rich.” Do you empathise with that sentiment?   Of course I do. I don’t think money is the solution to happiness. Life is complicated, but certainly money can have the opposite effect. It can make you unsatisfied with life, and make life harder for you. There are two effects of it. One is that it leaves you unsatisfied, you always want more, as we see from these billionaires. Two, it leaves you falsely content and over-satisfied.   And you’re not either?   I don’t feel that way, no. I feel like I’m one trade away from disaster.   Your film is called Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. What gets you off to sleep?   What gets me off to sleep? Sonata. Medication. I’m just joking. The best solution for sleep is having lived a full day and tried hard to live life fully. That makes you feel the reward of sleep.

© TIM NOAKES 2010

SALT-N-PEPA

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:41:00 +0000

Salt n’ Pepa’s ability to transcend generations has made them one of the most enduring and influential pop acts of the last 30 years, with over 15 million album sales to their name, and a renegade fashion style that has influenced everyone from Mary J Blige to Rihanna. And, while the hip hop Queens from Queens may no longer be the young street-savvy sistas who gatecrashed the 80s macho rap party with “Push It”, they’ve still got a lot to say for themselves…

SALT: We’ve may have had a lot of bad looks over the years, but we've also been trendsetters – especially our asymmetrical haircuts. But that was really Pep’s original style. A lot of women imitated that look.

PEPA: Yeah definitely, a lot of people compare that haircut with what Rihanna is doing these days. They put my picture and hers side by side in a lot of articles. It’s funny because that hairstyle was an accident. My sister was perming my hair one day and she kind of burnt me on one side of my head. She tried to fix it by giving me a back cut but just made it worse and worse on one side, so I was like ‘just cut it off!’ Didn't you put some lines in my hair too?

SALT: Yeah!

PEPA: (laughs) And I used a brown pencil to cover up the little bald spots. I even tried ashes from a cigarette! I tried everything to cover it up!

SALT: You were crying! Do you remember that?

PEPA: Yeahhh (laughs)

SALT: I felt so bad for you, but look what came of it – one of the most popular hairstyles in hip-hop culture. I ended up cutting my hair in the same style to make it ‘our look’. I was always end up following you with the looks. A lot of that stuff came from your Jamaican culture.

PEPA: I’m definitely into fashion – I think I spend too much on stuff. I go through all these different phases. I once went through a punk rock phase.

SALT: Our friends always say we know who you’re dating because if you’re dating a cowboy, you’re gonna have the boots, the spurs, the hat, the horse...

PEPA: (laughs) When I meet someone a bit more conservative, I'll start wearing something a bit more covered up...

SALT: A business suit...

PEPA: The girls won’t be out as much (laughs).

SALT: If you dated a vicar I'd have to get you a church hat.

PEPA: But I would definitely have some thigh highs and garters on under the gowns. Some sexy stockings underneath.

Cheryl “Salt” James

Age: 46
Born: Brooklyn, New York
What You Knew:
Salt n’ Pepa just headlined the UK’s BLOC festival infront of a crowd of fancy dress brides, gurning grooms and pilling pageboys.
What You Didn’t:
She once dated the duo’s producer, Hurby "Luv Bug" Azor. These days she prefers God to Gucci Mane.
Previous: Met Pepa while studying to be a nurse at Queensborough Community College.SALT: Oh Lord. (laughs)

PEPA: When we first come out, the few female rappers that were on the scene felt like they needed to be hard like the men and dress like the men. We didn’t. We were women, we felt like women, we dressed like women. We took a different approach. It was alright to be yourself.

SALT: We broke in at a time when it was male dominated. There were no models before us in terms of our commercial success, and people immediately related to us as those round the way girls. It’s like Lady Gaga today. No-one is going to top her.

PEPA: Not with the clothes for sure!

SALT: I hope not! (laughs). We were just girls from Queens who were a part of the block party era – hooking up turntables to the lampposts and all that. We were used to rocking out on the street, but we were also feminine women and liked to dress that way. Sometimes we went hard, but we also had some softer songs. We got flak for being poppy but we didn't care. We had chemistry. I guess the fact that we had opposing personalities helped make us so popular. I was pretty quiet and conservative, while you were the outrageous one.

PEPA: I was the one dying my hair blonde before anybody else. I had all these people saying 'What?! A black girl with blonde hair!? What the hell!?' I was very loud and boisterous.

SALT: I think we were destined to do this. I always knew this was going to be big and that's what drove me to really keep pushing forward because it was hard breaking into this industry and having to prove ourselves as females in hip hop. It was our destiny.

PEPA: It was different for me when we started. I was still in school and remember my Mom saying 'what the heck is this, you better not quit school', because all my family did well at school. It was scary for me. I didn't think that I was going to end up this well known. I was scared stiffed doing my first shows but then I started seeing the audience’s reaction and the buzz on the streets. It wasn't until later on that I realized, ‘oh my god, we've got something here'. I think it helped that we were already friends before the music.

SALT: It’s funny looking back; we worked at Sears part time after school as telephone solicitors selling maintenance agreements on appliances. Kid n’ Play, Hurby Luv Bug our producer, and Martin Lawrence also worked there. And everybody went and did what we all set out to do, which is amazing. Although if we had stuck to our original name (Supernature) it would have buried us.

Sandra “Pepa” Denton

Age: How dare you
Born: Kingston, Jamaica
What You Knew: She’s the star of Let’s Talk About Pep, her own dating reality TV show.
What You Didn’t: She was once celibate for four years, and doesn't really dig the death metal cover of “Push It” by Ten Masked Men.
Previous: She was once married to Naughty By Nature muscle man, Treach. They divorced in 2001.PEPA: Yeah. Hurby gave that name to us before Salt n’ Pepa. We didn't like it.

SALT: Yeah Salt n’ Pepa fit us better. It was a verse in a freestyle where we said "We go together like Salt n’ Pepa" and people started taking to that name, so we just kept it. You became Pepa because you’re fiery and I became Salt because I'm more conservative and subdued.

PEPA: And cool...

SALT: Ha! Over the years we've had some lyrical debates on what we want to say on records, because we're so different. When we made "Push It", and no one ever believes us, in our minds it was about dancing. Of course, when the record came out, we realised that was not what people thought, especially men. Our debate was, what is our perception of the song? To me the song is the song is mostly perceived as about sex. And you thought that the song was mostly perceived as being about dancing. It doesn't really matter, people listen to the music and they get different messages from the same song, so it's all good.

PEPA: I give a lot of credit to Hurby for that song because we weren’t really feeling it 100%. I was just thinking to myself, "Oh God, they call us pop now, wait until this one comes out! Everyone is really going to get us!’”

SALT: Crucify them! They're not hip hop! (laughs) I remember making "Push It" in this little tiny bathroom at Fresh Gordon's house in Brooklyn. Hurby fed us the lyrics as we went along because we quickly had to make a B-side to "Tramp". We didn't like it, but were like, ‘whatever, it's only a B-side, who cares'.

PEPA: Hurby did not care! He was like, ‘Trust me on this!’

SALT: And then we started going on the road, doing our shows and getting requests to do "Push It". It took on a life of its own. To this day I say that song is possessed! The fact that after all these years, even after taking a hiatus for as long as we did, we can still go and sell out shows makes me spin out sometimes. It's crazy to me. But these days we're pushing it for different reasons. You say you’re pushing it for all the single mums out there, and I say I'm pushing it to end gang violence. We use it as an opportunity to make a statement.

PEPA: It's been a long time, when we first started out in the business our shows used to be very edgy, very raunchy, we used to do a lot of cursing and everything like that (laughs). I remember seeing kids in our shows, and I'm thinking 'get outta here, I'm about to give this guy a lapdance! I don’t want you to see that! Leave the kids at home!'

SALT: But now our show is very clean and uplifting and fun! I appreciate that you worked with me and understood where I am now, as a born again Christian. I think we're kind of in the same place right now, which is really beautiful.

PEPA: It works for us now, we've got a great understanding and our show is very good. And positive. I still bring that sexiness to it and you bring that Godly sexiness to it.

SALT: Godly sexiness?!

PEPA: (laughs) Yeah! We should dress as each other on stage…

SALT: Okay, I'm going to wear the sexy devil outfit then! A red-hot number!

© TIM NOAKES 2010

WALLZO

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:30:14 +0000

Hot Chip’s One Life Stand is the band’s latest collaboration with London graphic designer Wallzo (aka Darren Wall), who has worked with them since their 2003 single “Down With Prince”. Dazed met Wallzo to discuss the creative process behind the newest addition to the Hot Chip album art gallery.  
How does the artistic process change from album to album?   Wallzo: The cover for The Warning began with making physical sculptures, Made In The Dark was based on lots of experiments with pencil drawings, and this time we created imagery with a montage/print-making style. They all feature ‘mysterious’ objects that encourage interpretation.   Why go for a suspended marble head?   Owen found pictures of a marble bust of Emperor Hadrian being installed at the British Museum (below). It was tied up with coloured fabric straps to lower it in place. We liked the way the bold stripes reinvented the object as something unusual. We wanted it to have a sense of permanence and gentility.   What other concepts did you have for One Life Stand?   For a long time, we were trying to cover our head sculpture with a marbled pattern, as if ‘marking’ something classical to reinvent it as a new object. Technically, it didn’t work, as the pattern was too complex to leave the head recognisable. We also spent a long time looking at Roman pillars suspended from straps, but it felt a bit cold and abstract – the head had a human touch that we hadn’t had on previous covers.   What was the point of the over-head projection?   Owen began playing with the idea of a ‘floor’ with the OHP. The head wasn’t enough on its own to carry the cover so we investigated making it into more of a scene. Eventually, we ended up with both the floor and the crystals to flesh out the cover in the vein of a surrealist composition.   You also made a card mock-up of the background  Again, this was a quick way to look at composition and texture, the feeling from this experiment was that although the composition was intriguing, the rock was a bit dull as a focal point. From there, we started to draw up the idea for a massive quartz crystal suspended by the straps.   With their other albums, the singles continue the LP cover theme – what’s next?  ‘I Feel Better’ should be out in April, and I’m currently working on a concept involving a boat trapped in ice, being lifted with the straps.   Hot Chip on working with Wallzo:   Owen Clarke: “I hadn’t thought of the covers as surreal. I don’t generally recognise surrealism as it’s so commonplace, unless it’s overt. Then I dislike it. I like banal and dumb juxtapositions. We did a cover for an EP that had a T-Rex and a polyfilla gun on it. I didn’t think that was surreal. The starting point for the head was cutting up 1970s editions of guides to the British Isles. We got lost and found a big head. There was a want for something less abstract and clean than Made In The Dark, and also something more figurative, based around a central icon rather than multiples as in The Warning. And there were lots of discussions about the shade of blue. And it being yellow.”

MARK LINKOUS R.I.P

Sat, 6 Mar 2010 18:32:38 +0000

Ten months ago I did a story for Dazed on Dark Night of the Soul, the noir audiovisual album created by Danger Mouse, David Lynch and Sparklehorse. Out of the trio, Mark Linkous, the man behind Sparklehorse, was the least known to me. I had heard the stories of his near fatal overdose on the 1996 Radiohead European tour, and of course was familiar with songs like “Someday I Will Treat You Good”, “Heart of Darkness” and “Don’t Take My Sunshine Away” but in comparison to Lynch and DM, he was very much an enigma. After all, this was a man who shunned the spotlight, rarely gave interviews, wore a horse’s head on stage and recorded surreal alternative rock music out in the Virginian countryside, on his own.  On the day of our interview he cancelled on me. Or rather overslept because it was his day off. When I did get him on the phone the following day I found a sweet, laid back, Southern gent on the other end of the line, who was quick to apologise for missing the first interview – not typical rock star behaviour. For an hour Mark talked about Dark Night of the Soul, how working with Danger Mouse had brought him out of a creative rut, his love of Twin Peaks and hip hop, and also what a pleasure it had been to record with heroes like Lynch and Iggy Pop. He called the sessions “a happy time” in his life, and appeared to have used the project’s dark subject matter as a cathartic counter balance for his own personal demons. He had a voice and easy manner I immediately warmed to, trusted and wanted to get to know better.  Sadly, that conversation was destined to be our first and last, as on Saturday March 6th 2010, Mark committed suicide, just days after Dark Night of the Soul was finally given the go ahead for a physical CD release. A few hours after hearing the news, I listened to our interview again and thought that it would be a fitting tribute to publish a longer edit than the version that made it into print.  So here it is – Mark Linkous talking straight from the Horse’s mouth about Dark Night of the Soul, one last time. Our thoughts, prayers and love go out to all of his family and friends. Rest in peace, Mark.   What drew you both to create this multi layered conceptual project? Mark Linkous: Brian (Burton, Danger Mouse) and me knew that we had more in us that we wanted to do more work together. I like everything Brian does, but the first thing I heard was The Grey Album, and I was in a slump for long time, not being able to write much, which was why Dreams For Light Years took so long. I started listening to new CDs to inspire me. I saw the name Danger Mouse and liked the name and thought it was some band from North Carolina or something. So I finally played it without knowing what it was and was so excited about what I heard because I'm a huge Beatles fan and I love Jay Z as well. I love the music in hip-hop songs, it's the most cutting edge, and cool sounds you'll ever hear if you really break it down.  This project has surreal twists – did you want to continue to confound people’s expectations? Mark Linkous: Lyrically? I guess I don't really consider it as surreal. I just consider it all as imagery, whether it's aurally or ocular, it's all… what am I trying to say... it's not meant to be surreal or confounding in any way, it's just meant to be working on all these different levels, something that's never been done before. One of the things I really wanted to do with Brian was meld… I'm sure he's going to hate me talking about the Grey Album so much… but I really wanted to meld pop with hip-hop in some way.  What was it like working with someone like Iggy? Mark Linkous: I couldn't believe it when I heard his voice on the track. It's still hard to believe some of this stuff actually happened. After having such a hard time for quite a while writing and doing music, it's done a lot for me to work with Brian and friends. Working with David Lynch, another total hero of mine, I still can't believe that actually happened.  What is it about Lynch that inspires you?  Mark Linkous: The stream of consciousness thing – how to perceive music in so many different ways. There's this theory about music, that the quiet parts are just as important as the musical parts, I really applied that to my music and that came from the influence of David Lynch's films – some of the quiet parts would be foreboding but in another context they could be beautiful. The music would compliment that dark part, you know?  Is Dark Night of the Soul all about a nightmare? Mark Linkous: Personally it's been a good dream, because working with your heroes makes you feel great. It's no different really to what David does when he goes to different countries to teach transcendental meditation to kids in schools who can't speak English in an attempt to reduce the crime rate. In his life, he's not a guy who lives in a surreal world with flashing red lights, velvet curtains and midgets talking backwards, he seems like a pretty active guy who enjoys life. It was a good thing for all of us. I don't know if we all look to the darkness to stop our heads from exploding or what...  You've obviously had some real dark moments in your life; did you see this as a way of addressing some things that had happened in your past? Mark Linkous: Well I don't think it's going to change my life in a drastic way, I'm just glad I've been involved in this thing while I'm still here on earth.  Did it transform you as a musician? Mark Linkous: Things that aren't very interesting to read I assume, but I liked the way people would phrase a line or something, to see how far we could push the music to be interesting. I've been working alone for a long time. I'm my own engineer. It's really hard to make records that really have elements that I want in them just because of the constraints I have. I don’t have any interns or engineers so if I wanted the glockenspiel to sound like there's ants following it across the track panning then I'm the one who has to do that. It's not that easy, and it doesn't happen quickly as I use quite antiquated equipment. I learn something new all the time.  How did the lyrics come about – did you all trade bleak nightmares? Mark Linkous: No one was given any direction whatsoever for the songs or the lyrical content. It was never discussed that it would be character or narrative driven, or that it would be about darkness and pain. That was never discussed or intended really. I don't know why it came out like that (laughs).   Was this a cathartic way of clearing your ego? Mark Linkous: I really enjoyed just playing guitar and writing songs, chord structures and stuff and not having to sing. I was so relieved when I told Brian I didn't want to sing.  How did he take that news? Mark Linkous: He was into it, he said he'd like me to sing one and I did, and that's about it. I've forgotten what the question was.... it was just a relief not to be in the forefront trying to sing because I can't really sing in the first place (laughs). It freaked me out at times. Doing a lot of it in California where Brian is lucky enough, well he's earned it, to have engineers and people to help so it wasn't just him and me in a room. Even the mixing process wasn't so laborious because one of the fellows who engineered it knew the music so well would get it mixed up for us and we would just tweak it for a day. I usually spend four or five days mixing a song of mine.  How did working with other people in the studio affect you? Mark Linkous: It was more spontaneous, he would put an organ part down and then if I had a guitar part in mind he would just say “Put it down" and it went on like that, it wasn't any hassle. I didn't have to drag the synth out of the corner and see if it still worked like I would if it was at my place. It was great to be relaxed about the whole thing, and not being under my console that was made in 1969 with red hot solder dripping on my face, I could just listen and play music and concentrate on nothing else. There was nothing to technically distract me at all.  If it was so easy and you were recording in sunny LA surely it should have been a fun record? (laughs) Mark Linkous: I didn't know how that happened! I was enjoying myself, it was something that I wasn't used, a different world. It was very pleasant. All I could think about was music. It just seemed like a happy time in my life. I didn't get into my brain too much because I didn't have time to like I usually do when I make music in solitary situations.  Is it important to get away from your own head to make music like this? Mark Linkous: Yeah. If I had done it in my studio or even in the South it would have been a lot different. Not that I have a love affair with Los Angeles, I lived there for a couple of years but moved back to the South. I don't know what else to say really.  In a traditional sense the Dark Night of the Soul is a metaphor for loneliness and desolation. How have you experienced that since becoming a performer? Mark Linkous: I don't produce much material because I do have problems with the darkness in my head that can debilitate me, that's why I'm much more productive around other people I would say. Everybody has their little devils. Maybe we all felt it was a chance to bring out some of the darker aspects of our lives and express them.  Are you and David Lynch kindred spirits? Mark Linkous: I don't think I could be so pretentious to compare myself to him. I don't understand every scene in his movies but I love everything he does, so I guess we're kindred spirits in that way.  Will this album be a downer for anyone? Mark Linkous: The mood changed throughout the songs. Some of it is very hopeful. A song like "Jaykub" is about the people who don’t get to stand on stage in front of 300 people or 10,000 people and they never will. They'll be dishwashers, the guys who drive trucks back and forth. That song is a dichotomy. You recognise that those people are out there and you love em for it. You don't love that they have to wash dishes for a living, you hope that things could be better for them, and maybe inside their heads they dream that they're on a stage in front of many people.  Being one of those people that actually get to be on the stage, would you want to trade places with someone like Jaykub? Mark Linkous: I don't know. On my last album I was having such a hard time making it that a lot of the songs came out to be hopeful songs, like "Mountains". My music isn't all depressing, most of it is about hope. That's what I wanted to do with my last record, I wanted to write hopeful songs because I didn't know if I was going to make another record again, so I thought I'd at least try and cheer some people up.  So personally, do you see this as all therapeutic? Mark Linkous: Oh yeah. It's something that will be out there forever and no one can take it away. I've collaborated with two great people that I have such admiration for and am friends with, and I hope it will always be that way. It will always be a gift; the whole thing was a beautiful gift for me.   Some people think it's going to be called either Sparklemouse of Dangerhorse. Obviously it's not, but which do you prefer? Mark Linkous: Dangerhorse. I hated Sparklemouse. Brian liked it but I didn't. I think he was just trying me nice. It sounds like a brightly lit British children's television show.  Why is he attracted to working with people who name themselves after animals? Mark Linkous: I don't know. Maybe it's the same anonymity thing that I have. I got away with refusing to show my actual face in any of the ads for this, I just wore my horse head.  I've got one more question Mark. Would you advise people to listen to this album before they go to sleep or will it give them nightmares?  Mark Linkous: (laughs) Oh.... I think both really. I think some of em I really like to listen to in the daytime, but I guess on the whole it's probably best absorbed late in the evening hours. Not that I wish to give people nightmares, but sometimes they can be good. Sometimes you wake up and you realise it was just a nightmare.  R.I.P. MARK LINKOUS, September 9, 1962 – March 6, 2010

© TIM NOAKES 2010

SNOOP DOGG

Mon, 7 Dec 2009 13:10:28 +0000

In 1992, after being released from prison on a cocaine possession charge, the fortunes of Cordazar Calvin Broadus started to turn around. Nicknamed Snoop by his parents, the laid back 19-year-old recorded a freestyle over En Vogue’s “Hold On”, which made its way into the hands of N.W.A producer Dr.Dre. Impressed by the young pup’s laidback drawl and hardcore lyrics, Dre featured the young Crip member on his solo album, The Chronic, turning him into an overnight celebrity thanks to his turn on “Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang”. Over 30 million solo album sales later, Snoop Dogg is one of the few gangsta rappers still thriving in a hip hop industry that has changed beyond recognition. Equally at home directing porn films and dropping cameos in Entourage as he is rapping on stages around the world, next month he releases his tenth solo album, Malice In Wonderland.

What's the shizzle Snoop?

Snoop Dogg: All good man. I'm in LA riding on the freeway

When I was in LA I went to one of your favourite food spots, Roscoes Chicken n’ Waffles.

Was it good?

Yeah. I got the quarter chix n waffles. What do you order?

I always get three wings, two drumsticks, gravy and corn bread.

Do you reckon you could sort me out with a discount?

I got a gold card there myself so I never have to pay.

Do you have to sell 30 million records to get the gold card?

Nah, I brought Larry King and David Beckham there. I brought two superstars to their restaurant. That got me my gold card.

Could you get me a gold card? I’ll swap you my Nandos card.

I'll probably get you a silver card. We'll step you down then step you up.

Great stuff. So the big news is that you're going to be the Creative Chairman of Priority Records. How did that come about?

It seemed like no record label would believe in me to give me that position so I went to Priority, which was the home of West Coast gangsta rap. I felt that I could bring their catalogue back to life and put my twist back on it and make Priority what it used to be.

Will you be actually working behind a desk?

I never work behind a desk, I work in the streets. That's why I've managed to stay relevant for so many years. Desk work is cool but you've got to be in the field dealing with the people that really make it happen if you really want to know what's happening. That’s what I add to the table that the other executives don't.

If you could choose one celebrity to be your secretary who would it be

Halle Berry. She'd be one hell of a secretary.

Would you get her to do a lot of dictating?

Oh she'd be doing a lot of dictating and would look after my dictionaries, definitely.

I thought it was interesting that Priority Records have employed a notorious weed smoker to be the boss, whereas in any other company they'd get fired. Do you feel above the law?

Nah, because that don't have nothing to do with the job that I'm performing. I'm on medical marijuana so it's not like they're dealing with some drug addict who doesn't know what he's doing. You're dealing with a professional who's been on top of the hip hop game since he came into the game. It never affected my business life, I've always been the greatest of what I do no matter how I do it.

What's the deal with medical marijuana?

Some people need it, some people have problems. I don't like medication, this is just what I've been prescribed. It's keeping me healthy. I'm still looking good, I'm still feeling good. I'm still able to dance around and make good music and still be relevant for so many years. Look at the people who came before me, look at those who started with me, look at those who came after me, some of them aren't around at all. And some of them look horrible.

Lee Scratch Perry told me he used to be on 70 spilffs a day, are you on that level?

Nah, don't nuthin’ dictate my life but my life. Anyone who has something to say about someone else should hold up a mirror to themselves. We've all got skeletons in our closet, whether you do porno, whether you do drugs, everybody has something that isn't acceptable in the world's eyes. It just so happens that successful people are under a microscope and everything that they do is in the public eye so people have a chance to analyze and criticize it, but we don't have a chance to critique the public, but if they were exposed like we are there would be a lot less negative comments about us doing things that isn't perceived as being acceptable.

On the campaign trail Obama danced on stage to “Drop It Like It's Hot”. Is he the first President to embrace hip hop successfully?

He's a President of our time. It just so happens that our President is a black man who was a youngster when hip hop was created and that's the music he probably listens to that's a part of him, so it's only right for that to be expressed. It's like when Clinton was in office we felt like that he was a hip hop President because he was so connected to black people. Not because he listened to hip hop music, but because he was connected to our roots and the origins of who we are.

Do you think Obama deserved the Nobel Peace prize?

Hell yeah he deserved it, and there's a lot of other people who have done great things for the world who also eserve it. He deserved it because of the work it took for him to become the President, for the lives that he had changed, the eyes that he opened up, the people he got to believe in him. That's what I think the Nobel peace prize is all about; humanity and be able to make a difference in this world.

What do you think it is about your songs and personality that Presidents, suburban kids, gang bangers can all tap into?

It's up close and personal, it's not behind the wall. Snopp Dogg is right in your face, you can touch him, he's not a star that's in the sky, he's the star that's in your eye

Okay. But you seem to be a man of many paradoxes – is Calvin Broadhus the family man and Snopp Dogg the pimp? How do you differentiate between the two?

Ain't no different, it's all the same. It's like Clark Kent is also Superman, he's the same person. There are certain scenarios that call on me to be one of those characters, but it's all the same person.

Don't you feel a bit hypocritical sometimes?

Like I say, all I know how to do is me. I don’t know how to do shit for entertainment. I don’t know nothing about Hollywood and acting. Everything that I do is me. It's natural, that's why you'll never see two of me. You'll never see motherfuckers do what I do because I don't do what they do, I do me.

Most celebrities are scared to say the wrong thing but it seems like you don’t care what other people think.

That's the way I was raised. I was brought up that way. All the people I looked up to never cut corners, they always said what was on their minds, what they felt was best for them. I don't know how to do it the way it was supposed to be done, I'm going to do it the way I want to do it.

You used to be even angrier, what was the moment you decided to chill out from the gang banging?

When I was younger I didn't give a fuck about having a purpose because my purpose was to be the dopest rapper in the world and fuck everybody that didn't like it. But as I got older I had to think about what my kids felt and what my position was in life and my position I had been given as a role model. I had to step into that role, and handle my position with class.

What does your wife think about your porno-directing career?

It was brief and it was profitable. If the roles were reversed I could do nothing but respect the fact that my wife was going out getting money and taking care of me and my kids. It wasn't like I was in there fucking. I directed a porno and showed my vision so that Hollywood could respect me, because I wanted to direct some real movies but I couldn't get the look that I wanted. I brought a creative twist to that industry to where it ain’t be the same since. Everybody took my formula and started shooting pornos the way I shot mine with great music drops, not just regular fuck sex music. Mine felt like a fucking real movie.

Do you think popular culture has become too sexualised?

I feel like everybody has got to understand that sex is a part of life. How many people do you know that haven't seen a porno? It's just a part of life. There's nothing wrong with seeing that type of action. Some people get off on seeing big explosions in action movies, others get off on seeing porno.

Don't you think hip hop has got a bit embarrassing?

I just feel like people are expecting too much from hip hop. It's not your music, it's our music. It's going to go through a drought season. People don't give a fuck about lyrics no more, all they care about is singing along with a catchy song that they can learn. I ain't got time to be learning all these complex assed lyrics that you trying to teach me. The rappers who don't shift and move will be gone. You've got to roll with the times.

Do you think you've rolled with the times better than your peers?

I feel that I remain dominant on a grown ass G level, but at the same time I've managed to stay rooted in youth culture to where the young rappers still respect and love me and don't mind me being on their songs. They don't feel like I'm an old motherfucker that's cutting they shit in half. They love and respect me like an uncle. They call me uncle Snoop because of the way I treat everybody in the rap game.

Do you miss the G Funk Era?

I really do miss the G Funk Era but I feel like it had its run and it did what it was supposed to do. It's just like any other great era of music, like Motown and P Funk. Those eras may be gone but they never die. Those records keep you alive because they take you back to a time when you were really enjoying life.
How important has controversy been to your career?
Controversy was never important, it was just another form of publicity. I never used controversy to sell records, I never used it to make people believe in me. Controversy can get people to look, but if you don't have no good material they're going to look away.

Is it true Lindesy Lohan is recording with you?

Yeah we had a record together once upon a time.

Is it any good?

Shit, I don't know what happened to it.

You were one of the first rappers to embrace autotuning on Sexual Eruption. Do you think it's dead?

I think T Pain did a brilliant job of bringing it to life but I feel like too many people are doing it now and it's lost its touch. It's become a gimmick to the point where radio is only playing records that have that shit in it. I feel like the Jay-Z record was called for and was needed.

You've just released an iPhone app, the iFizzle. Is there any word in the English language that you can't izzle?

(laughs) You know what, I don't know.

Malice in Wonderland is released December 7th

CHRIS BAKER

Tue, 1 Dec 2009 17:47:46 +0000

As a major A.I retrospective gets published, conceptual artist Chris Baker talks about working with Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg on the film...
If you get an invite to Stanley Kubrick’s house, never refuse. I was fortunate enough to be invited by the University of Arts and the Kubrick family to an intimate evening in Harpenden to celebrate the launch of Thames & Hudson’s book Artificial Intelligence: The Vision Behind The Film. Stepping into the manor’s reception room, the Venetian masks from the infamous Eyes Wide Shut orgy peered down from the walls. I went to take a picture but was swiftly reprimanded. “No cameras allowed”. Oh, the irony of being in the house of one of cinema’s greatest directors but unable to take a photo – Kubrick may be dead, but the air of secrecy still lingers thick. I grabbed a quick shot anyway...
I then made my way down a grand, glass-floored corridor and entered his red walled library, packed full of medical tomes, history books, sci fi novels and a smattering of awards. I was told later that he used to keep his Special FX Oscar on the kitchen table. On a shelf just out of reach, his copy of Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 stood gathering dust next to a comprehensive collection of J.G.Ballard novels. A dystopian fetishist’s wet dream...
Amongst the guests of Kubrick’s widow Christiane and her brother Jan Harlan, Kubrick’s longtime producer, were sci fi novelists Ian Watson and Brian Aldiss, whose book Super Toys Last All Summer Long inspired the film. But the star of the evening was Brummie conceptual artist Chris Baker, whose futuristic sketches dominate the A.I book. I sat down with Baker to talk about his work on A.I, his relationship with Kubrick, and how his sketches were re-interpreted by Steven Spielberg after the director’s passing in 1999.
How did you get involved with Stanley Kubrick?
Chris Baker: Stanley had no idea what I did, he just happened to see the first graphic novel I had done, which was based on a book called Legend by David Gemmell. It was a bizarre chain of events really. He saw the graphic novel, really liked something about it and tracked me down through Ken Slater who was a book dealer. I started work on A.I in 94. The weirdest thing was when I was 15 years old and it was my final year of school and instead of doing art, for the whole year all I did was a graphic novel adaptation of 2001.
So you were always inspired by Kubrick’s work?
CB: Yeah but I hadn’t seen the movie. I bought the book, The Making of 2001 which I was mesmerized by for years. It came out in the 70s and I just wore it out, read it cover to cover and was just totally mesmerised by the images. I hadn’t seen the movie because in those days you only saw an old movie if it was re-released in the cinema, so I’d never seen 2001 and I didn’t get to see it till quite some years later. I did read the book and I also read The Lost Worlds of 2001 and I just started to adapt it to my own comic book version. It’s a really weird kismet of doing that and finally meeting Stanley and doing A.I.
What was it like for you to not only to be asked to come and meet him but get asked to come and work with him?
CB: Well initially meeting him for the first time was slightly intimidating but it was very relaxed. We met at Jan Harlan’s house and we just chatted in the kitchen about my work and other movies, we didn’t really discuss A.I. Once we started working I would be on the phone to Stanley faxing him stuff every day and getting his feedback. It worked really well because I think I kind of got Stan. It’s easy for me to say I got him and understood him but it was a really good working relationship and it’s a shame that we didn’t get an opportunity to work together again but it’s fate, if you call it that.
And that led to you working with Steven Spielberg
CB: Yes, I got to work with Spielberg. It was just a great time to work with him, because not many people have. When I went out to Hollywood to work with Spielberg the name Kubrick brought with it a lot of Kudos. Fans of his, people that wanted to work with him in the industry gave me a lot of respect, which I didn’t really deserve to be honest, I just did this one little thing.
So how would it work, would he fax you over ideas?
CB: No, we had an outlay, a treatment, and I worked from the treatment and just doodled. In a way it was almost a process of elimination. With Stanley he would know what he wanted when he saw it so I would just keep throwing ideas and images at him. Each day he would come back to me and say if he liked something that he saw maybe push it in a direction slightly different. It is an artist’s dream to just keep doing that every day, sketching out ideas. I spent a year 2 years working like that.
Then the project crumbled apart. What happened?
CB: He gave it to Steven to direct but he had Eyes Wide Shut on the go and decided to go and direct that. I guess the plan would have been, after Eyes Wide Shut, he would have done A.I.
The popular reason that is cited is that Kubrick didn’t think visual technology had caught up to speed with what you were designing.
CB: But it had caught up but then. Because originally he had the idea that you might be able to create a robotic boy with a robotic puppet or whatever but Christiana his wife still thinks the Stanley would have come back to A.I after Eyes Wide Shut. Even the people who made it, even Steven and those people, the other producers though ‘we’d still love to see Stanley’s version’.
Being someone who has worked so lose to the project and has seen Stanley and Spielberg’s version as well, and the differences, what do you think would have changed if Kubrick had done it?
CB: You are not going to get me on that! It’s hard to tell. A lot of stuff that’s in the Spielberg version is in Stanley’s original take on it. I think probably what Steven did was make a story that was filmable on a budget. The film he could produce efficiently. It could easily be a film that would spend years in development and go over budget as many films do these days. I think what Steven did do is pay homage to what Stanley wanted to do but at the same time Stanley wanted Steven to do it and he did it.
Some of the cityscapes are quite similar to the Allen Jones human tables in A Clockwork Orange.
CB: Yeah, but it was things like that Steven wasn’t happy with.
What, big fallaces and suggestive holes?
CB: Yeah. If I designed Rogue City now I would have been a little bit more subtle. I would have stopped it from being overly feminine as well because it’s one sided, It’s very female oriented. I would have intertwined it so you were not quite sure what’s male and what’s female. I have always thought of it as being the sexual equivalent of Las Vegas.
It must have been amazing going from your drawing board to the finished thing.
CB: Yeah it was amazing. It just came from sketching things like this. It was great to have little sketches lie this become finished images in the movie. We had a good time.
A.I: The Vision Behind the Film is published by Thames & Hudson

ICE CUBE

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:04:13 +0000

I recently found this interview I did with Ice Cube in 2006 just before he released Laugh Now, Cry Later. Thought you’d like to check it out. I love the picture (above) my buddy Joshua Wildman took of him for the interview. We went to the pub and watched the World Cup afterwards. Me and Josh that is, not Cube.

TERRY GILLIAM

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:40:18 +0100

Since first emerging from the Monty Python ranks as a visual auteur with a flair for hallucinogenic satire, Terry Gilliam has carved out a reputation as a cinematic outsider who revels in adversity. Known as much for his creative brilliance as he is for being plagued with production nightmares, his latest film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus got derailed half way through shooting by the sudden death of its leading man Heath Ledger. A bitter reminder of ten years previous when The Man Who Killed Don Quixote set collapsed in its first week due to a series of natural disasters, Gilliam managed to rescue Ledger’s cinematic swan song by tweaking the screenplay and casting Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law to fill in for their late friend. With Lily Cole, Andrew Garfield, Tom Waits and Christopher Plummer rounding out the cast, Gilliam’s latest celluloid phantasm is not only one of his best films, it’s a fitting epitaph for one of our generation’s finest actors.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is about the dying art of story-telling and the lengths that some people go to preserve it. Is that a metaphor for your career?

Terry Gilliam: In a way. I want to break up the normal rhythms of films, I want people to be genuinely surprised. So far, most people who have seen Doctor Parnassus are. Sometimes people are critical because my films don’t go in the same beats and rhythms that most films do now. With most modern films I know what’s going to happen, there’s the big action moment, a massive explosion and then it ends. It’s almost musical, it’s like a pop video.

Do you think Hollywood has lost its ability to tell a good story?

I don’t know. Do people really want to watch interesting stories or do they just want to watch something like Transformers, which is huge and unbelievable. The majority of people go and see that thing. And it’s not good – it’s just bang, crash, whallop. There’s no thought in it, there’s no ideas in it. It’s just sheer energy, violence, destruction and basically I find that very negative. Technically they’re phenomenal, but where are the ideas, where are the things that make you think, that wake you up, that keep you going?

So, has modern life lost its sense of romance?

People don’t read, and television is just numbing. I’ve always thought that the role of television, or whatever form of art, is to constantly surprise and wake people up. It’s here to make you look at the world with fresh eyes, but people are running too fast, they’re not paying attention, they’re not slowing down, they’re not reading enough, they’re watching Big Brother… don’t you have your own life? I mean why are you watching somebody else’s fake life?! It makes me crazy.

The way you portray London in Doctor Parnassus is very Dickensian, is this in a way slightly because you didn’t get to make A Tale of Two Cities?

(Laughs) No, I just choose the bits that interest me – it’s as simple as that. I think the Tourist Board should be giving us some money because there are some lovely shots of Tower Bridge, Battersea Power Station in there. I suppose it’s the London that I still love. When I came here, I was totally Dickensian in my approach to London. I just found all the interesting places and used to hang out there all the time because I’d grown up with those books. Now, London for me is a different place – I’m not sure what it is, I don’t know it very well. I just look at people getting pissed and going to discos and not paying attention to the wonders that are in this city. I have a real love/ hate relationship with this place.

One thing that has remained in your work since your Monty Python days is your appropriation of Victorian art. Why do you like messing with that antiquated view of the world?

I’ve always thought that the past was more interesting than the present – that may or not be so but I just accept what’s out there. I think life can be really tedious. I was always looking for an escape. I think it’s more interesting to escape into a Dickensian book full of characters in another world. I think that’s what happened when I first hitchhiked around Europe –it wasn’t Disneyland, it was real.

Your films are famously hallucinogenic. Did drugs pay a big part in your life?

No! That’s the joke!

Really?!

I know! I said at the end of making Fear and Loathing that I was going to take acid, because I’d never taken it. I was always frightened of taking it because all my friends were taking it and half the things they were talking about were things that I already saw. If I had taken anything I would have flown out my bedroom windows and died horribly. When we were doing Python, they always used to write about us as a bunch of druggies – we weren’t.

None of you?

No, a minor amount of pot was smoked – but very minor and there was probably a couple of snorts of cocaine along the way. I mean very quickly…the cocaine hangover was just not worth the speed I got when I snorted it. I just looked at the downside of all of them and they weren’t as good as the upside. So, I thought, ‘okay, enough of that, I’ll get on without it’. I think one of the funniest things people said when they were coming out of this film, was ‘oh my god, we’re still tripping!’ I thought, well, that’s pretty good for a film to have that effect on people, that’s great.

Some of your critics say that your mis-en-scene is the star of the show and that actors fill in the gaps. What do you make of that kind of observation?

Well it’s one person’s reading. It’s not my attitude to it. I mean the characters are what it’s about, ultimately. Whatever I’m doing, whatever world we’re putting the film in, it’s a character driven piece. Now, what I don’t do is spend a lot of time wallowing in mediocre bullshit – we’re telling a story in a very, as far as I’m concerned, traditional way. Fairy Tales don’t spend hours looking at somebody smoking a cigarette, watching the ashes fall and the person shifting in their seat. I don’t need to know exactly what Heath’s character was like ten years before. There are films that have almost no story and it’s almost all character-driven and there are films that look visually amazing. I’m trying to do both things at the same time. They all think it’s about visuals and it’s not.

Your films are fascinated with characters that have a lot of internal struggles. Why are you drawn to these figures?

I don’t know why, but in my films I tend to punish the main character – they all have to suffer. I think that’s what’s interesting about life –the internal struggle. I’m intrigued with the people that are close to madness. They’re people that don’t have a very structured view of what reality is. Most people just accept reality but they can create their own reality if they choose to, it’s just that most people don’t do it. So I like people that are questing, that are trying to understand and some of them go crazy, some die – all sorts of things happen. But at least they’re not cattle just happily being moved around by various media and marketing operations.

Do you sometimes feel imprisoned in your own imaginarium?

No, not really, my imagination is the thing that frees me. All the mundane things in life do that, like dusting your house. That’s the trap. I hope everybody tries to create their own worlds. My problem is that most people are happy to accept the worlds that are created for them. That’s what, I suppose, I’m fighting against.

You find yourself fighting against adversity quite a lot. It seems that with the majority of your films something goes wrong along the way. Do you feel blessed or cursed?

I feel blessed actually because I’ve been able to make less bad films than other people (laughs). If more films had been able to get off the ground, there probably would have been more turkeys along the way. But as I get older and older, it gets really boring. It’s like, ‘C’mon, cut this shit out, I’ve made some rather good films, why can’t I get the money with a little bit more ease?!’ My problem is, I don’t work the system. I don’t hang out at the right places. I don’t meet the right people. I just can’t be bothered. Whereas other people work it better and I don’t. When the film’s finished, I just walk away from this world and get on with whatever else is happening and then I come back into it. It’s time it’s like I’m coming back as a novice. That’s what it feels like.

So you still see yourself as an outsider?

I want to sell out but I’ve made it very difficult for myself to do so.

You like doing that! After all, the first time the audience see Heath’s character he’s hanging from a noose. After his death did you have any doubts about introducing him like that?

No. That’s the film Heath and I set out to make and that’s the film that’s going to be made. I know it’s going to shock people. The first time I saw it, it was like, fuck! You can’t help but gasp. But I said, I’m not going to change this film. He wouldn’t have wanted it otherwise. That’s what was great about him, that’s why I loved being around Heath because he was fearless. I’ve always been pretty fearless and that’s what we shared in common. I wasn’t about to betray that.

Was it hard to stay objective in the aftermath of his death?

It was difficult to stay awake. I just wanted to go to sleep and hope it never happened. No, it was very difficult. We just had to go to work every day. We didn’t know if any of it was going to work. That fact with Johnny, Colin and Jude coming in, there was no time to rehearse. They just turned up and did it. I think it was unbelievably brave for them as actors to come in to step into that role. They could have just fallen on their face, but that’s why I chose people who were friends with Heath. His posthumous influence was incredible, it was like he was always there. I used to say, ‘fuck you man, you’ve ruined my film!’, but he created a situation where we had to make all these adjustments, which at the time I didn’t think were even going to be possible, but in fact it all worked out for the better. He forced me into things and I thought, ‘fuck he’s co-directing this thing posthumously!’ Heath’s spirit was, and still is, powerful – what anybody who was ever close to him reverberates. This was a truly special human being.

Do you find talking about him while publicizing your movie uncomfortable?

Yeah, it’s hard. When someone asks the question ‘what did you feel like the day you found out he was dead?’ Well, I’ve said it enough times, I’m not going to say it again. It really is tiresome but at the same time it’s not difficult talking about Heath, it’s very easy talking about him, it’s just that I’ve never experienced a kind of loss like that. He was family and my family are all alive.

Finally, on your Dr Parnassus Twitter it says, “Immortality is not as difficult as people think”. Are you constantly striving for immortality?

Oh no, I’m not striving for it. I think when I was younger I thought if I could just get my name carved in something that could last I would have succeeded. I don’t think about that now really.

© TIM NOAKES 2009

www.terrygilliam.com