Interview - Kooks

Written by The Dish | Monday, May 22, 2006 |

On their first rounds of the country supporting The Subways and on the verge of success, the Kooks landed at Norwich Arts Centre in June 2005, just after finishing the debut Inside In/Inside Out.

They played their hearts out and in return won ours with their soulful, summery pop ditties. Since then they’ve played another Subways support slot at the Waterfront and a sell out headline gig at The Arts Centre. After postponing the date, they were back in Norwich for the fourth time, just under a year since we first spoke to them on that glorious June evening. A lot has changed since then so we felt it only fitting that we caught up with guitarist Hugh and drum-stick-wielding Paul to find out just how much…

You’ve had such a phenomenal rise since we last spoke, how does it feel?

P - Things haven’t really changed a lot. We’re still doing our thing. I think we’ve probably just got a bit better at playing maybe, we’ve played to more people.

H - Looking from the outside in it’s amazing, like when you hear these things (the tour selling out in an hour and a half for example) and our album’s selling really well. But at the moment I just feel really tired and really drained. We’ve been on tour for a long time, pretty much three years solid

And you’ve been playing with the same material too

H - We play a new song in the set, we try and chop and change as much as possible. But the set we have works at the moment pretty well.

P - But it’s the sort of thing you have to do though. Every band’s been through it who’s released an album, they’ve been playing that album for so long, and yet just when you’re ready to move on everyone’s just discovered you so you have to do it for a while longer.

How do you manage to keep that energy going onstage?

P - By writing new songs in between.

What about when you play the same song you’ve been doing for three years?

H - We have different things that make it different over time really. Different crowds. You feel different each day; sometimes you’ll be bored of it. But when it does come to the show, I still get an adrenaline rush and we still get nervous. We enjoy playing with each other, we enjoying playing the songs as well and that will never change. Well, not in the near future.

P - Today was nice because we’re not really on tour, this is a date we’ve had to move and we were mainly just sound checking new stuff and jamming really.

H - It’s going to be good from here on. This it our last tour date, we’ve just got festivals now, which are the funnest part of all this. Festivals are just the shit.

Well you’ve just got back from The Great Escape, how was that?

P - Yeah, that was interesting. It wasn’t very well organised. I was reading somewhere that there was loads of record company big wigs and people who bought tickets couldn’t get into gigs…It was a bit of a shambles really

H - It was weird, we played the Astoria the previous night which was about 2,000 capacity right,

P - We went from 2,000 to 200!

H - Yeah, to a 400 capacity tent and there wasn’t even 400 people in there because they didn’t let everyone in. It was stupid because it was an industry thing and was just a guest list gig pretty much. The hardcore fans who had been waiting for a long time, some of them couldn’t get in which was terrible because it was such a good vibe. I really think it’s going to kick off if they rearrange how they do it.

There’s loads of bands coming out from Brighton at the minute, what’s your opinion on that?

P - What’s our opinion on that?

Yeah

P - It’s quite a cool thing about Brighton, its different to anywhere else, its quite multicultural so you’re going to get loads of different styles of music as apposed to having like two styles and loads of bands copying each other. You end up going to some random shows where its just a guy and a girl playing a xylophone and a kazoo, stuff like that; Here Comes The Darts. Or something really awful like that.

H - There are some nutters

P - But then you occasionally see the right old gem don’t you?

H - Monster Bobby

P - Monster Bobby! Classic! He forgot the words didn’t he?

H - I love him

P - We played an acoustic gig with a guy called Monster Bobby

H - I love him

P - And had has this moog thing that he balanced on a bar stool and it fell off halfway through the song!

H - He’s a bit of a spazzer

P - What was the song? It was something like ‘Here comes a car’ *trumpet noise*

H - Yeah. Brilliant.

P - Yeah, so, we came out of that scene.

Was the Pav Tav a particular favourite whilst in Brighton, especially on a Thursday?

H - It’s a filthy night

P - Thursday night at the Pav Tav! That is…

H - It’s just a classic

P - Pretty classic. It’s one of those places students go.

H - And get fucked. It’s a lot better than London.

Was there a particular point in your career when you realised you’d gone from being this underground support act to big album-selling band?

H - I think when I took the silver disk home to my mum, it was an amazing feeling.

P - It was wasn’t it? Just walking back when we got them we stopped and had this little sneaky peak because it was in this big cardboard box. 60,00 (albums sold) at the time.

H - Honestly I wasn’t sure how it was going to do, I was really really nervous about it, and I was like, ‘If we can do 20,000 copies then I will be so happy.’ But it’s done more than that. And every time it sells more you’re always like ‘ I wonder how we do that.’ Thing is we don’t get carried away with it. We focus on writing new songs and enjoying the fact that it’s doing well. But we’re always looking towards the future.

P - Always.

The thing about the album is that it opens up so many other leeway’s because you don’t confine yourselves to one genre

P - That’s because we didn’t really know where we were at the time.

Do you ever feel restricted about going down any of those leeway’s?

H - We’ll never be restricted. It’s part of our ethic. We write songs because we enjoy song writing. We never pigeonhole ourselves because that’s what we don’t like about other bands, they pigeonhole themselves and they just play the same song over and over again and then their set gets boring. That’s not what we’re about,

P - We’ve got really short attention spans as well. Even when it comes to songs, we’ll play the same part twice and think, ‘Mmm, I’m a bit bored of that. Shall we do something different?’

H - It’s the lack of being settled, you get bored really easily as musicians.

P - In My Opinion is a good one isn’t it? It’s like this lovely subtle song and then after a while (when playing it live) me and Hugh were like ‘ I’m bored of this, lets do a little 5 second…’ No no! It was 1984 wasn’t it?

H - …And we did this groove jazz breakdown,

P - And just went straight back into the groove again!

H - Yeah. Well that’s where our style comes from.

When we first met you had nothing to lose, but now, is there more pressure on you?

H - It’s more pressure from ourselves I think. We didn’t have anything to lose then yeah, and in a way now, we still don’t. We’re still making music. I feel like it’s taken off a bit because when you first start out you really want to prove yourself to a crowd and now because they know your songs you can have some fun with it and play around a bit.

P - I agree, you can relax with it and actually fulfil what you think you can do. They always say breaking a band is the hardest part. And now we can chill out and write some songs and enjoy what we’re doing, we’ve got plenty of songs left in us. Completely. We’re not like one-album-wonders.

H - We hope

P - Well, we’ve got another album coming up haven’t we? But there’s so many bands who just haven’t progressed and that’s not what we’re about, we’re always going to progress. And the day we stop progressing is the day we should stop playing music.

H - And go work in Co-op

P - Exactly!

H - It’s so weird talking about yourself like this.

Has that changed your aspect? Having to explain yourselves so much?

H - Yeah totally. You’ve got to be really careful when talking about yourself and analysing things too much because you get far too into it and you over judge yourself and get worried about it and that destroys yourself creatively. Once you start thinking about things too much you get paranoid, your conscious mind take over your unconscious mind which is where all your creativity comes from. So we try and keep in our own little bubble of music, it’s just us, it’s quite a sacred thing, quite spiritual.

Do you stand in a corner and pray before you go onstage?

H - Fuck yeah. We pray to Allah. ALLAAAAH ALLAAAAAH.

What’s your favourite song to play live at the moment?

P- Matchbox

H- Time awaits

P - Actually…No, Time Awaits. It’s a challenge. There’s a couple of songs that are a challenge because you always forget how to play them.

After three years?

H - Yeah!

P - Well sometimes you speed up a bit and I’m too slow

H - So you improvise a bit…

P - Yeah I know. I’ve been improvising for the last three years! It’s just lucky it’s been the same every week.

There was a point from the audience/fan point of view where the future of The Kooks was looking slightly dubious…

P - Really? Oh, ok. Max just took a bit of time off. He just wasn’t having a good time, but he’s got back and we’ve just carried on. It was never really a question, and we wanted to keep the ball rolling.

H - It has been a bit of a rocky road.

P - It’s been fortunate. But it has been rocky.

H - I found it pretty hard when he left the scenes but Pete came along at the perfect time and brightened things up. We’re so lucky to be in this position and Pete saw that and brought it home to us a bit more. You get so into it on the tour bus and he brightened it all up a bit, made us really realise why we’re doing this.

P - Made us realise things ain’t so bad and that we should enjoy it.

Speaking of having a good time and in my defence I did not buy it, it was at the house I stayed at last night…

H - Crack?

Funnily enough no

P - NME you’re on about aren’t you? What is that all about eh? Prefabricated nonsense…

Yeah, the write up for you video shoot.

P - Oh, no, I mean well, that…That was fun. Very very fun…It wasn’t completely accurate.

H - (whilst raising an eyebrow) Well, what do you want to know…You’ve thrown something at the table, hit me!

P - There were a few embellishments let’s say and, half the stuff we didn’t even capture! And there were two of us in the Jacuzzi, not one… I think it would have been easy to just do a video like all the others..

H - There’s a girl,

P - And a boy,

Both - And a bar,

H - At a gig, yeah.

P - And it would have been what the song’s about because all our songs involve girls, that’s where our anger comes from. But for this song we were dead cert on doing something random. A kind of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas style. Which I think we did quite well…We just hadn’t had a day off in a while.

Does it all feel more like a job now?

P - There are days when it does feel like a job and that’s just part of it.

H - It’s like, ‘You’ve got to be up at six in the morning for a photo shoot then you’ve got an interview, and then and then and then and then oh and by the way, you got a gig.’ And you think, aren’t we supposed to enjoy ourselves?

P - Some days are like that but then there’s others when you just get the perks of having fun so it’s cool. It works both ways, but to me, nothings better than playing a gig or jamming in the studio. That’s the best bit.

And to wrap things up, how do you feel about llamas?

H - they’re fake camels man.

P - llamas?

H - They’re just forgeries. Screw ‘em. I don’t like llamas man, they’re rude. They spit, they think they’re cool but they’re just trying to be camels, fuck ‘em. They should all burn in zoo hell.

In conclusion? The Kooks aren’t going to implode into a drunken mess of tangled ego’s and self destruction. They’ve no desire to wear out what they’ve already written and attack the good public with the same hooks until we become immune to them. In fact they’ve barely changed. Hugh chain smokes throughout the entire interview and Paul cannot sit still for half of it. They both grin endlessly and are as friendly as if we went back years, to be fair I have spoken to Paul a couple of times since then but Hugh, who I hadn’t spoken to since June recognises me within 30 seconds of speaking. Their easy going manner and sense of humour makes a welcome change to the endless amounts of bands who shun you and your attempts to strike up a conversation. I’ve got a feeling that no matter how many records they sell it’s not going to penetrate that bubble. God forbid if it does though.

Interview with the Kooks May 22nd @ Norwich Waterfront

Like this article? Why not use the ShareThis Button at the top of the page to Digg this article or send it to a friend!

• No Related Post

Post A Comment

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website