Clash Cover Stars 2008

Clash has spent much of 2008 in pursuit of the most-exclusive interviews the music world has to offer, travelling the world to meet up with modern rock’s greats and greaters.

Our cover stars have been many, and hugely varied, beginning with Hot Chip in January (pictured) and ending with the current Kanye West-starring issue, on shelves now. And we’re about to present just as much quality to the fore in 2009, with world exclusive content with Pete Doherty in our next issue. And the issue after that? Let’s just say we’re stoked to have truly legendary cover stars.

So keep your eyes peeled, or better still click HERE to get yourself a Christmas pressie in the shape of a Clash magazine subscription. See you on the other side.

And before then, here’s just a small selection of bite-size snippet fixes of what you may have missed…

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OASIS

What’s the vibe like in the band just now? What’s the energy like - all good?
Liam Gallagher: It’s always good musically. It’s fuckin’ having it as far as I’m concerned, but we’re always gonna say that. People are gonna have to wait and see, aren’t they? But I think it’s having it big style. You’ll need dental treatment at the end of it, man. It’s fuckin’ full on. Personally? We’re always the same; we don’t really speak. We don’t really say much; there’s not much to say is there? We just get on with making the music talk, man.

So when the band get together to play it just kicks off?
LG: Oh yeah, it doesn’t take much to kick off. I don’t think it’s the people. Oasis is a spirit anyway; it goes where it wants, and if you want to be a part of it or not it drags you fuckin’ in. It soon wakes you up if you’re half asleep.

What’s the meaning behind the album title, ‘Dig Out Your Soul’?
Noel Gallagher: It’s a lyric in one of Gem’s songs. Now, depending on what part of the world you come from - the Japanese see it as very mystical - but it’s about DJing when you’re at a party. It’s about putting soul music on. But I guess it’s kind of got a dual meaning. And how that came about was… do you know the artist Ralph Steadman? He was gonna do the artwork for the album, and we didn’t have a title for it. So we gave him the album, he listened to it and we gave him the lyrics, and he listed all these things that he thought he could do a painting about. I had no ideas about the album title - I was like, “As long as we don’t call it ‘Oasis’ I don’t give a fuck”. He came back with a list of titles and one of them was ‘Dig Out Your Soul’, and I was kinda like, “It’s as good as any I guess”. We were gonna call it ‘Shock Of The Lightning’ but I don’t like naming albums after songs - I think that’s a bit pony. But it’s got a dual meaning I guess, because the album’s got a lot of religious references in it...

Yeah, I was gonna ask about that.
NG: That just happened. Well, for my own part, songs that I wrote... I mean, we don’t write together as a team, or none of us say, ‘What are you writing about?’ When everybody’s songs came back, I was listening to the words and they were all mentioning the light or the rapture or the Devil and God and fuckin’ this, that and the other, and I was a bit like, ‘Wow! It’s fuckin’ heavy, man!’ I’m always interested in the imagery of things in the Bible, and the guy who’s eventually ended up doing the artwork, when we gave it to him, he said, “There’s a lot of fuckin’ religious Armageddon in the album,” and I was like, “What?” And he said, “Religious Armageddon”. I was like, “I fuckin’ love it, man! That’s what we should have called the fuckin’ album!” But that’s all happened by accident. I don’t know where it fuckin’ came from. We must be subconsciously looking over our shoulders I guess.

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PRIMAL SCREAM

Where is the worse place you have ever woken up?

Mani: We’ve woken up in some bad fucking states and with people you shouldn’t have been with. That’s what happened when you take fucking drugs and you get pissed up. You’re a fool to yourself. Mind you its all part of life’s rich tapestry.

Bobby: It is self-induced psychosis; anywhere where I have woken up in a state of psychosis is not good. Even now you can find something to learn about yourself so it’s not bad. Nothing is that bad.

What is the most shameful thing that has ever happened to you in the last year?

Bobby: Shameful? These are negative questions, man.

Mani: I got arrested just before we played the Leeds Festival after being on the piss for two days. I put the gig and the band in jeopardy, which is pretty shameful. It was disgusting of me, but then again I’m over it. They let me back out just in time for the gig, nice little lie down in the afternoon and an eighty pound fine. Thanks lads.

When was the last time you pinched yourself in disbelief?

Mani: Mostly on a daily basis. ‘How the fuck am I still here, man? Why am I still here?’ For a reason: to be with these guys. Daily.

What have you still got to prove?

Mani: Fuck all. That we can still cut it at the highest level I suppose and that we are still relevant. Only to ourselves really.

Bobby: It’s like Ian Curtis. The best thing I ever read, I don’t think you can say he did many interviews right, but I remember this before I was ever in a band and I remember this thing that Ian Curtis said… They were asking him about what Joy Division songs meant and obviously they are pretty heavy songs and really personal and the journalist asks, “Do you worry about the future?” and he says about his band: “You’re always looking towards the next song.” That’s good, I like that. He’s right: before you can even finish an album we’re thinking about the next because you still have that energy and the joy of creating something.

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Caleb, last time we spoke, you quoted a song by Roger Miller, who was an inspiration on the last album, and you’re also a fan of Bob Dylan. Do you think you’re in that school of storytellers?

Caleb: Fuck no. I wish. I mean, that’s the people I listen to. Roger Miller and Bob Dylan and Townes Van Zandt – that’s what I listen to. And literally, as soon as I listen to it I have to drink whisky. The whole time I’m thinking, ‘You’re not good enough. You can never do that’. But, you know, I don’t consider myself that person. I wish I was that good. Slowly but surely… I think the more you take yourself out of the song, the better a storyteller you become. So a lot of these songwriters that write about their lives and themselves, it just turns into the same song over and over and nobody wants to hear that shit. Very few people write about the bad parts of relationships. It’s always like, ‘I’m gonna write a song for my girlfriend, and here it is…’ That’s bullshit. That’s like a portion of your relationship.

Nathan: Everyone that’s in a relationship can see that. It’s like, ‘Okay, yeah, that’s one good day out of twenty bad days’. Of course, if you wanted to only write about the gold, that’s easy to do, the good times. But you gotta write about the shit every now and then to make you a normal person.

Caleb: At this point, and hopefully at every point in my life, I want to write songs that are relatable to people. If I’d sold a billion records and I wasn’t trying to give two shits what people thought, maybe I would write a record about my relationship and make it sound candy-coated and only pull out the best parts, but I’ve always been in love with the dirty parts of songs and the worst parts. Songs that make you go, ‘Whoa, that was very honest of that person. They made themselves look like they were that big’. That’s why the song ‘Soft’ came about. Like, you can’t always write about the best sex you ever had – write about when you can’t get it up. Write about the times that everyone experiences but no one ever talks about.

Do you have a clear idea who it is that’s listening to your music? Do you have anyone in mind? Are you writing for fifteen-year-old kids that you want to pick up a guitar?

Caleb: Well, you know, we don’t realise it, it’s getting to a level where things are changing, but fifteen-year-old kids are the ones that are commenting [on the Internet]. ‘That fucking sucks’, or ‘I can’t wait to marry him’ – it’s like all these things, but then you have the older fans, which are just fans of rock ‘n’ roll, fans of music; they’re usually the ones that point out every great thing about your music, and when the younger kids don’t realise what’s going on, they’re like, ‘Well hey, I’ve been listening to this kind of music for generations. You can’t come in here and hear one thing and dismiss the band because you don’t like what they’re saying or you can’t relate to what they’re saying’.

There are a couple of songs on this album that sound like lost ’80s power anthems, one being ‘Be Somebody’.

Caleb: That was one that we had been messing around with for a bit. It sounded really dark. I wrote that song about – actually speaking about what you just said – we had a couple of fans that were getting online that were crazy. They were talkin’ so much shit about us, but at the same time they were talkin’ about how we were the love of their lives, and we live together; they had all these weird, fucked up fantasies. So I kinda wrote these verses about life as we see it, and then in the chorus I’d switch scenes to them. It’s like, (sings) “Given a chance I’m gonna be somebody / If for one day I’m gonna be somebody / So open the door, I’m gonna make you love me / I’m facing the floor, I’m gonna be somebody”. It’s about someone really taking it to the next level. I’ve always said, from day one, no matter how many fans we get, if one of us ever died from a fan, it would be a girl. There’s no guy that would wanna kill us. There are girls that get so obsessed they would want to kill us. They wanna shoot us, they wanna do whatever. It’s always scared me, but I thought if it’s a fear of mine I should write a song about it, maybe I can stop it from happening.

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THE KILLERS

Who were your influences when growing up? Whose albums did you hang on for their release?

Brandon: Honestly, by the time I was really listening to music most of the stuff I was interested in was already out. Say when I was thirteen, I didn’t really like the music that was around then – I can’t think of anyone I would have been waiting for a new album to come out from. It would have already have been made. I suppose the exception would be Morrissey and The Cure who might make one every four years or so, something like that. I remember buying Morrissey’s ‘Southpaw Grammar’ when it came out and that record really freaked me out. (Laughs) We had to wait for a long time to hear that album so when it arrived… Wow! It was a long wait after that till ‘Maladjusted’. I was fifteen when ‘Maladjusted’ came out and I went to see him in concert the year after when I was sixteen on Halloween night. I can still say it was one of the best nights of my life. The songs on that album are wonderful… But that is pretty much all I would have been waiting for. I just didn’t enjoy what was going on when I was growing up with rap-metal and heavier music. I lacked the angst! And I guess I still do. Sometimes I think there must be something wrong with me; I must not be real… I struggle to identify my angst. I suppose I just can’t help that.

Was it important for you to be accepted in the UK?

Dave: It’s still important to us now, and we’d be really disappointed if the UK didn’t like us. It’s probably our favourite country and we’re doing well there. It just seems that England is more in touch with music on a general level and that makes it more satisfying I suppose. It’s humbling and kind of nice to go to places where we’re not so accepted and play smaller shows. I think one country we’d like to be bigger is in Japan. We can still only sell out 500-2,000 venues – we love it there, but it’s an unpredictable country.

Brandon: Yeah, I used to think about Britain a lot. I didn’t understand it and I’m still trying to learn, but I’m getting there now. I spend maybe a month out of every year over there so we’re becoming more acquainted with you guys and that’s great. I think we all feel very comfortable and it’s just so wonderful the reception we get. It would have been a massive let down not to have been liked over there, as the British opinion is extremely important to us. As a country you have the best track record with music… of anywhere!

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KANYE WEST

Who did you look up to in terms of artists when growing up?
A Tribe Called Quest, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, George Michael. I’m thinking about when I was a little kid… LL Cool J… People don’t ever take it back to when we were just kids. Then you get Madonna and Phil Collins.

So a lot of that is pop music, which often gets a bad name…
Yeah, but when you’re a little kid you don’t listen to underground music - you listen to what your parents play and shit that’s on the radio. Like when you’re five… I mean this is before the Internet. Back then you had a choice of, like, two big songs. The problem was when people started to process pop music. I mean there were once real pop artists: Phil Collins, Madonna, Michael Jackson. No underground artist has been able to compete with what they did and I think people cop out by not wanting to be pop.

Are you happy to be considered pop music?
I am pop music.

So it’s not something that you consider a negative term?
Yeah, it’s a complete negative term. But being black was a negative term in America for a long time.

So there’s no reason to avoid it?
You can’t avoid it! But that doesn’t mean that I’m negative. In fact, that’s why I embraced the concept of pop! I’ve said through the years that man, I want to be pop. But I’ve invented my own genre of music now called pop art, because it’s pop that has all the sensibilities of art. And it needed to be separated because of all these engineered boy bands with all these different people writing songs for them. I mean, I’m a true singer, songwriter, producer, director, stylist… Basically think of every aspect and I’m that type of artist. And I think that it’s great for me to take everything that someone thinks is negative - Auto-Tune, the term ‘pop’, whatever it is that you might think is not keeping it real - and show that you can make really good songs with this. I mean, I’ve had some hip-hop songs that I’ve loved in my lifetime, but they are not as good as Phil Collins’ ‘In The Air Tonight’. They’re just not as good! They’re just not as good as ‘I Wanna Rock With You’ by Michael Jackson. Matter of fact, with rap and shit there are very few rappers who can write raps that are entertaining and important enough to hold your attention. I mean, I started running into that problem when I was working on ‘Graduation’. Songs like ‘Good Life’ and ‘Stronger’… those tracks took a long time to write. You couldn’t just say anything! A lot of the time with rappers you just say anything. I mean right now I could completely freestyle for you, but that doesn’t mean it’s good enough to perform in front of a hundred-thousand people. But now I’m getting to the point where I can say things that are just that strong and that big. And travelling the world, you know... people just get caught up too much in the language they use. That’s what’s great about Barack Obama: he can speak in a way that allows a lot of people to understand him and that’s what I want, for people to understand what I’m saying across the board.

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Oasis and Kings of Leon interviewed by Simon Harper
Primal Scream interviewed by Matthew Bennett
Kanye West and The Killers interviewed by Adam Park