SPECJALNE - Wywiad

Wywiad z Clearlake
z dnia 16 marca 2005
autorzy: Sophie Thun, Jędrzej Michalak & Michał Zagroba

Na wieść o warszawskim gigu Clearlake największy redakcyjny fan Cedars postanowił zaproponować grupie obszerny wywiad, na co czwórka sympatycznych Anglików chętnie przystała. Skrzyknęliśmy posiłki w osobie Sophie, naszej znajomej "fluent speaker" (przy okazji znającej każdy tekst Pegga na pamięć) i umówiliśmy się na rozmowę przed koncertem w Pałacu Kultury. Ze względu na hałasujący support konieczny był transfer do PRLowskiego kibelka o powierzchni około trzech metrów kwadratowych. Podobno w Chinach niektórzy tak żyją, nam jednak wygodnie nie było, co wpłynęło prawdopodobnie na niezbyt uroczysty ton wywiadu. By jak najwierniej zachować jego atmosferę postanowiliśmy zaprezentować wersję oryginalną. Enjoy.

Jędrzej: How did it happen you're playing in Poland? We were surprised when we heard the news.

Woody: So were we. I think it was the British Council. They were looking for a British band to play in Poland.

Jędrzej: So it wasn't your idea, ha?

Woody: But if we planned a European tour, we would certainly like to visit Poland.

Jędrzej: What's the story behind your name? I mean Clearlake.

Woody: Do you want the real answer or the beautiful one? There was this horrible, run-down hotel in London. It's got this lovely name, Clearlake. It sounds really beautiful but when you see it it's like the most horrible, dirty building.

Jason: [to Sophie] Are you from Poland?

Sophie: I'm half Polish, half German.

Jason: You sound American.

Sophie: I went to an American school.

Toby: In America, right?

Sophie: No, in Nepal.

Toby: Wow!

Sophie: Then in Warsaw. I've never been to America. But you've been to America! How was America.

Jędrzej: Yeah, how did you enjoy the States?

Woody: It was just a dream!

Toby: Um, there were two days when we didn't have a gig.

Sam : And there were two days we had three gigs a day.

Sophie: Three gigs a day?

Woody: Yup, a couple of times. In South-West we had to do lots of shows. America's great.

Michał: Did you play in New York?

Woody: We played lots of venues there. Bowling Plaza, Bowery Ballroom, Irving Plaza and Don Hill's.

Sophie: How long were you there?

Woody: For six weeks. We did two tours, we supported two bands (Stereolab and The Decemberists).

Sophie: Do you prefer European audience or the American?

Woody: Both are great, but we haven't played a lot in Europe. We did a few gigs in Spain, a couple of gigs in France, Holland. Never Germany.

Jędrzej: It took you quite a lot of time to record Cedars, almost two years. With Amber it went faster, didn't it?

Jason: I wouldn't agree. Amber has been recorded in seven different studios.

[There was some heavy drumming going on in the club as the support band was rehearsing. We decided to take a risk and continue our talk in a small loo.]

Jędrzej: Now, that's pure indie.

[Jason enters]

Toby: Yeah. Look, there’s a little surprise for us left in the toilet. [flushing] Bye!

[casual conversation]

Jason: [confused, to Sophie]: Are you American?

Woody: We've been asking this question.

Sophie: No, though everybody thinks I am.

Jason: Did you go to an American school?

Toby: Yes she did. In Nepal.

Jędrzej: Could you point some similarities and differences between Cedars and Amber?

Woody: So you want the differences or the similarities?

Jędrzej: Both.

Woody: Toby wasn't the drummer on Cedars. So that's new.

Sam: That was the main difference.

Jędrzej: Cedars was a rather dark album, I've read that it's different with Amber.

Toby: I think Amber lyrically has its dark moments. Definetely.

Sophie: But lyrically only? Musically it's…

Toby: Well there are some dark moments musically, but I'd say much less than on Cedars, personally.

Sophie: When you think about a new record do you see it in general and then compose the songs or do you just compose a lot of songs and then put them together on a record?

Jason: I write the words and then we kinda compile the music together.

Sophie: But is it like you write a book, do you have the whole concept of the record?

Woody: Yeah, sort of.

Jason: At the moment we're at the point where we try to do just more stuff for a record. For this one and all the ones we've done before there's been an idea of a record having certain number of moods on it.

Sophie: On Cedars it fits perfectly.

Sam: I think Amber is optimistic in a way.

Sophie: Will people dance to Amber?

Jason: They will, they will! It's something we've discussed.

Sophie 'Cause you can't dance to Cedars. Is the new album gonna be totally different?

Jason: It's much more like a rock record and it's much more of a pop and dance-sort-of record. There's a song "Amber" on the record, well you can't dance to that.

Woody: You could!

Sophie: Can I ask you about the lyrics of one song? In the song "The Mind Is Evil" you separate the mind from the heart. In Europe people mainly identify themselves with the brain, when there's an earthquake everybody grab their head. In Asia people grab their hearts. And you seperate your heart and your brain and "the I".

Jason: There's one spiritual teacher whom I quite like, I find him quite funny, he's dead now. He was from India, he was called Osha.(?) One of the things he was saying was that in the East, and it's generalising, people are much more connected with the heart, and they are lacking, cause India is poverty stricken and technology and stuff like that is kind a backwards. Umm it's a huge generalisation, and he taught this in the 60's, now it's probably shifted. Anyway in the West people are really unconnected with their heart, but I'm a little bit of a cynic myself, cause I'm in my head. But that's where I would like to get to.

Sophie: To the heart?

Jason: Yeah, something like that.

Sophie: In the lyrics you seem outside both. It's like you're beside both.

Sam: His is the third position and he's observing both.

Jason: I think that is the reality of existing. You are in the body and you have a mind that takes over, especially in the West mind takes over, we must have an answer, we must "solve this problem like this", we must "do this". And you have a heart that connects more emotionally and more with the rest of your body. That's why people make themselves ill because they don't connect with their bodies. They don't feel how their body's going. I'm kind of feeling ill now and my mind is going "you can't do that cause we've got to go out tonight, we've got to work hard, we've got to work all these hours, we've got to make money and stuff". That that song was written is the extreme, because I'm from the West. Actually the idea was to be in both. You use your mind as an amazing tool but you're still unable to drop it and connect with your body. But you're still observing it maybe from somewhere else…umm I don't know exactly though.

Sophie: Where did you start, with writing lyrics or with writing songs?

Jason: Both. We're all musicians, we all dig music. With this band I had the idea about wanting to get words to that.

Sophie: Did you all want to be musicians when you grew up? Who did you want to be?

Woody: I wanted to be someone like an architect or a white collar.

Toby: I'm from a family of three brothers. We all wanted to have cars, we loved cars.

Woody: That's why you drive this old tractor?

[laugh]

Sophie: You drive a tractor?

Toby: Um... Nah. I dug it up on a farm but... I lost that car a while ago and now it's just been sort of with me for such a long time. I just never thought anything else would be.

Sam: And I wanted to be a painter.

Woody: I wanted to be a dustman.

Sophie: No!

Woody: I wanted to collect rubbish.

Sophie: Seriously?

Woody: When I was at a nursery school, people used to throw away all good toys in the bins at the back. The broken ones, you know. To me that was good. And I thought a dustman had the best job since he could go and throw them in the back of the truck or … keep them. Fix them.

Jędrzej: And you Jason?

Woody: Yeah, Jason, who do you want to be when you grow up?

Jason: A man. I wanted to be a musician, somewhere. I wanted to be a painter at some point, I wanted to be an architect…

Jędrzej & Sophie: And a dustman.

Jason: The best thing ever that happened to me when I was a kid: one of the dustmen dropped a dustmans cap and then my mom washed it and I wore it for years. Do you remember that cap?

Woody: Yeah!

Sophie: Since when do you guys know each other?

Woody: I've known these two [Jason and Sam] for about eight years.

Sam: Jesus how long do I know you?

Jason: 15 years. Now is the year 2005 and I reckon we came to college in the year 1990?

Sam: Yep.

Sophie: So you met in the college and decided to form a band together?

Sam: Nah, wish it was that simple.

Jason: We did college, we were friends, we fell out, we were friends, Sam left.

Sam: Actually did we fall out?

Jason: I remember at one point we fell out. I just remember being kind of heartless. I remember having a tough time.

Sam: Oh, I don't remember that! Or maybe… Oh I remember falling out, cause we lived together for a while. It was like too much doing the band and... you know.

Jason: Yeah, we were both very angry people.

Jędrzej: Which bands had the biggest influence on your decision to become "rock stars"?

Woody: At the time when I wanted to become a rock star I was listening to punk stuff. Also some ska and some reggae.

Toby: Since the highschool age I was involved in classical music, I played percussion in an orchestra. I didn't really wanna be in a band.

Jędrzej: Do you still listen to classical music nowadays?

Toby: From time to time.

Sophie: [to Jason] Do you know the Rachmaninov concert, the second one?

Jason: I'm not that into it these days [laughs].

Sophie: You went to a classical music school and you played the percussion?

Jason: Yeah, I could do best behind the drumkit.

Jason [to Sophie]: Can I ask you a question? Do you know about classical music in this area?

Sophie: In this area?

Jason: You're on the border with Russia and this links with Stalin. This building was built by Stalin, yeah?

Sophie: Yeah, it was a gift.

Jędrzej: Poles had to choose (in the 50s) whether they wanted to have the underground or this building. Of course their choice was stupid.

Jason: There's a story I know, I don't know if it's Stalin, I think it is. Stalin persecuted lots of artsist. And he had a composer that he employed, he didn't really like him. And he wrote a piece that was banned, Stalin banned it and...

Sophie: Shostakovich?

Jason: Shostakovich, yes. It might have been him. That's a great story.

Michał: Could you tell us something more about Amber?

Sophie: When it’s gonna be out?

Sam: Well, next month?

Jason: No, two months. It will be mixed by the end of this week. It will be mastered in a couple of weeks. And then two months after that it will be out. You need two months to go to press.

Sophie: C'mon, we need something interesting about the album.

Jason: It's got a string quintet on it and a train.

Michał: Who's responsible for the string arrangements?

Jason: I wrote them.

Michał: Is it basically similar to Cedars?

Jason: Some strings turned up here, the next album is not gonna have any strings on it.

Michał: Why?

Jason: Cause it's expensive. Now we happened to have a lot of money. We can have a couple of rehearsals With Cedars it was different, we didn't have that much money.

Michał: I'm also curious about the reception of Clearlake in Britain. Are you tagged as another brit-rock band like Travis or Coldplay?

Woody: At its worst, yeah.

Jason : At best it's all sorts of things, Radiohead or all kind of intelligent bands that spend a lot of time to push it a bit. Who we've been called? I remember being called, I didn't like it that much, The Divine Comedy. He's a good writer, but I just find his personality, as I’ve seen him on the telly, a bit arrogant.

Sam: That guy who saw us said we like My Bloody Valentine fifteen years ago.

Jason: That’s good. Do you know My Bloody Valentine?

[laugh]

Jason: We have to try harder because we aim to get there.

Michał: MBV is like a bible for us.

Jason: The same here. One day, we'll do the new Loveless. And we'll spend slightly less money.

Toby: And we'll call it Lovely.

Sophie: Is Amber better than Cedars?

Jason: Yeah.

Sophie: Really? No way!

Sam: Different.

Jason: Yes, it's better.

Sophie: Will we be able to get it in Poland?

Jason: Is Cedars on sale in Poland?

Jędrzej: Yes

Jason: Then it should be.

Sophie: Tell me, do you think you're getting better musicians?

Jason: Definitely. That's one of the reasons why this new record is better. We're better on every single level. I definitely think this record is better as we were more self-conscious.

Sophie: How many more records you'll put out before you get to the big albums you want to record?

Jason: I don't know. I thought Amber was going to be the one.

Sophie: Is it?

Jason: No. [laughs]

Sophie: That's good, you'll keep on playing.

Woody: It's close though.

Jason: Yeah and it also became the step further.

Toby: We've already started writing the next one, we're jamming ideas, the album isn't finished yet but we're doing stuff for the next one, yeah. We keep puking out songs.

Jędrzej: Pick you three favourite non-Beatles records.

Jason: Are you anti-Beatles or everyone talks only about them?

Jędrzej: They're out of the competition.

Jason: I've just bought a Kris Kristofferson record. I believe it might come up as my favourite, it's great.

Michał: And your other favourites?

Toby: Stories From The City?

Jason: Kid A.

Woody: Super Trouper Abba, After The Gold Rush. It kinda changes, doesn't it?

Toby: I've really liked this band Figure Of Hate. And what are your favourite albums?

Michał: Kid A, Loveless.

Jędrzej: The Glow Pt. 2 by The Microphones. Do you know The Microphones?

Jason: No.

Toby: Oh I forgot. Pavement is one of my favorite bands. Crooked Rain is outstanding.

Sophie: Slanted And Enchanted.

Toby: Umm that's pretty far away from me, it's a little bit crazy.

Sophie: What did you grow up on?

Jason: Abba.

Woody: Queen.

Jason: Boney M.

Toby: Ah, Bowie, right.

Jason: I said BONEY M.

[laughs]

Woody: Roxy Music, Rod Stewart.

Sam: Eagles, Joni Mitchell.


W tym miejscu kaseta się co prawda nie skończyła, ale wszyscy zaczęli gadać pierdoły i dalsze ich spisywanie mija się z celem. Wspólnie próbowaliśmy przypomnieć sobie kto śpiewa w duecie z Dolly Parton, następnie Toby stwierdził, że jest mu gorąco, na co Jason spytał czy czuje się "sexy". Pegg wymieniał ulubionych autorów tekstów, wśród których znaleźli się Morrissey, Randy Newman, a także Dolly Parton. Po paru minutach stwierdzono obopólną wolę zakończenia konwersacji.