After what seems like a million emails, txts and phone calls I finally got confirmation of this interview yesterday dinnertime. It's a good thing. Less time to be nervous. I ran the risk of the 'I love you' type interview again cos I do love The Vaccines. Two albums without a single weak track and live performances that leave you breathless make for a pretty awesome band in my book. So here goes:
SS: So I'm backstage at The Dome with Justin and Arni from The Vaccines. Thanks for chatting to me lads.
Justin: Thank you
SS: You've got 6 more UK dates left on this tour?
Justin: Yeah it's quite sad actually, not many left.
SS: Then off to Europe.
Justin and Arni: Yeah, Portugal, Spain, Italy,Switzerland as well then finished for Christmas.
SS: Then your back next year Australia, USA, Canada.
Arni: Yeah we leave on Boxing day
Justin: No rest for the wicked.
SS: So Christmas wont be much fun?
Justin: I'm sure it'll be fun, might just lack a bit of rest
SS: It's quite an extensive tour. Is playing live what The Vaccines are all about?
Justin: I think we're a better live band then we are on record at the moment. We try and recreate what we do live on record. I guess the aim was always to match one with the other. It's something we thrive on and take very seriously. We wanna be as entertaining as we are artistic.
Arni: We put a lot of emphasis on trying to be a better live band.
Justin: Giving people everything we have.
SS: I caught you at Leeds Festival this year.
Justin: That was an amazing gig for us.
SS: You were superb, for me up with Foos, Gaslight Anthem and Black Keys as the set of the weekend.
Arni: That's great to hear.
SS: You're kinda becoming an ultimate festival band. Is that something you were aiming for?
Justin: We never aimed for it but it's weird cos we do seem to do really well at festivals.
SS: I think something like Wetsuit as well, possibly cos of the video, is just a brilliant festival song.
Justin: Exactly. I think too we're kinda no bullshit. It's about good fun, easy to dance to. It's a no brainer when you're drunk!
SS: Back in the UK next year, 5 arena dates. Gonna be doing festivals again?
Justin: Yeah.
Arni: Probably not as many.
SS: Was it year before last you did 45 festivals?
Justin: And this year we did something like 36.
Arni: We've done about 80 festivals in 2 summers. That's pretty crazy.
SS: Festival headline slot soon?
Arni: I don't know about that!
SS: Do you prefer doing festivals or do you miss the intimate gigs from when you first started?
Justin: I think the one good thing about being in a band, certainly a band like ours, is the variety of what we do. There's no greater buzz than walking out at say Leeds Festival and seeing however many thousand people waiting for you to play but then equally there's nothing quite like the intensity you get from playing 20 minutes pop/punk in a 150 venue. There both as intense as each other but in different ways. I like the fact we're lucky enough to do both.
SS: So it was August 2010 when If You Wanna was first put on youtube. 2 top 5 albums since then. A lot of people talk about the meteoric rise of The Vaccines but you've been doing it for some time, Justin you had Jay Jay Pistolet of course.
Justin: I did and Arni played in that project as well. And even a year before we put If You wanna up on line we were writing songs for the band so were a year older than people think we are. I did my first tour 7 years before The Vaccines. It certainly wasn't meteoric for us as individuals but as a band the stars just aligned and everything fell into place but that's cos of the hard work and the lessons that had been learned proceeding that.
SS: There is some backlash about the quickness of it all but the quality of the music stands there on it's own.
Arni: That's were we got lucky because there's no story attached. There's no mystery about us. It was just people talking about the actual music.
Justin: I think the music just speaks for itself. Thankfully we've got this kind of sound that speaks to enough people and connects to enough people that it doesn't really matter, it's funny cos I don't think there are any more people who dislike The Vaccines than any other band I just think they felt they had to be more vocal because of the way we came about. We survived that and there are always gonna be people who dislike what you do. The more people that like you the more people will dislike you.
SS: Speaking of the feel and the sound of the band, there seems to be kinda a fifties feel to what you do. Stuff like Teenage Icon obviously with the Frankie Avalon reference, but new single I Always Knew could be a fifties song. The guitar in it has that feel.
Justin: It's the embodiment of everything we like about music. The directness, the simplicity, the naivety, the youthfulness, the rebellion.
SS: Like Eddie Cochrane.
Justin: Exactly. It's pop music and rock n roll music in it's purest sense. I mean that in terms of the music and the people that were playing it. That's were it all starts, bastardised along the way, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Arni: Exactly. That's were it starts. That's the birth of pop.I think any musical genre is most interesting in it's primal state.
SS: I think it was you Justin said in a recent interview you're not a big fan of collaborations, certainly in the studio, but you do have quite a few people join you live on stage. Ryan from the Cribs, members of The Savages, Franz Ferdinand, of course The Horrors, Tom Being Freddie's brother. Would you ever collaborate in the studio or is it just something that doesn't appeal?
Justin: It's certainly something we'd consider. People often ask us who's our ideal collaboration and despite how often I spend listening to music, and the amount of people I admire, I don't think there's anyone I've ever thought I'd love to collaborate with. I think until the opportunity arises, for example, I never would've thought I'd love to collaborate with Albert Hammond Jr but then when he said let's do a song in the studio of course we were like yeah, definitely cos were massive fans. It's just not something I really think about. When you start a band you pick the people you want to collaborate with really.
SS: I saw a review when you first hit the scene that called you The UK Strokes. That's just lazy though.
Justin: Yeah we got a few of those.
SS: You're doing a dj set at Social Bar later. Is that all 4 of you? Freddie and Pete as well?
Justin: We're all coming down.
Arni: We haven't worked out who's djing yet.
SS: On your website you've posted tracks by people like Richard Hell and Jonathan Richman. Can we expect that tonight? Have you got a setlist sorted?
Justin: We normally just wing it. Maybe Freddie was working on it earlier. It's a fun way to meet people and see the town. You can learn a lot more about a place by immersing yourself in it.
Arni: It's a Friday night. Anything could happen.
My daughter, George, and Justin than spoke at length about Frank Turner while I eyed up the roast chicken.
And we said are goodbyes. The Vaccines went on to do what they do best and turned The Dome into one big mosh pit. I went home sweaty, broken and very happy. And deaf!
The Vaccines Setlist
No Hope
Wreckin' Bar
Tiger Blood
A Lack of Understanding
Wetsuit
Change Of Heart
Teenage Icon
Under Your Thumb
Ghost Town
Post Break Up Sex
All In White
Aftershave Ocean
Blow It Up
I Always Knew
If You Wanna
Bad Mood
Wolf Pack
Norgaard
No comments:
Post a Comment