Tom Clarke On The End Of The Enemy

Looking back on a decade of music, mayhem, and controversy...

Let's get this out the way first: The Enemy were never a fashionable band.

A trio from Coventry making anthemic indie rock, the band weren't set to re-arrange the zeitgeist or uncover a previously hidden chord that could shift music forever.

Rather, what they made were songs that would punch people in the gut, that would connect with a crowd of thousands upon thousands of people.

And for a while there, they did just that. Debut album 'We'll Live And Die In These Towns' was an astonishing success, yet the sheer scale of those sales figures proved impossible to live down.

The band's major label home seemed to shift from under them, and they never again quite scaled those dramatic heights.

Self-releasing their fourth album, The Enemy faced an uphill battle in a music industry that had turned defiantly away from the arena-filling guitar anthems that propelled them to fame.

So, they've decided to split while still on good company, and in high spirits. With The Enemy set to kick off their final ever leg of British shows next week Clash got on the phone to frontman Tom Clarke for a quick Q&A.

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So, this is it Tom… the end of The Enemy!
Yeah! Mixed emotions… it’s obviously the end of a chapter, and it has been an amazing chapter – I think if ten years ago you said to us before this all happened that this is what the next ten years is going to be like we’d have all gone… nah, you’re mad! But also, it’s kind of bittersweet… it’s also a relief to be honest with you because it’s been a struggle the past few years. I know that we’re not the only band that has struggled with that, and I think that every band deals with it in their own way, and some sort of manage to keep going, but it’s very difficult to keep financing records in a world where there’s no real market.

Do you feel that the tide has just shifted a little bit in British music away from bands?
No I don’t. I think the desire and the demand is still there from the public – I don’t think the old aged rock 'n 'roll will ever die. I think it’s true, if you want evidence of it look how strong the ticket sales are for this tour: we sold out some of the gigs in under 60 seconds. There’s definitely a demand out there and people definitely want it the problem is that there’s no way to get it to them.

I know a lot of people will go 'you’ve got online, you’re got more access to people than ever', but it’s not that simple. I actually temporarily ran an online marketing company at some point over the last ten years and it’s just not that simple – Facebook algorithms change. There is no clear route to directly get to people that is equivalent to or better than national radio stations, which means that all bands and all types of music are subject to this ridiculous competition where every month about a thousand artists compete for eight playlist spots. Which is not a workable model for most artists unless you’ve got some other way of funding it because you need that exposure to help drive record sales to be able to keep funding it.

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All types of music are subject to this ridiculous competition…

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Do you think there’s a bottleneck in British radio, then?
That’s exactly how I’d describe it. I don’t want to get into having a pop at radio stations but the system at the moment isn’t working and if you want evidence of that you only need to look at the playlist where you’ve got this perpetual renewal of the same artists being playlisted over and over again. The reason for that is because a large part of the playlisting is decided upon online stats, YouTube views things like that and obviously if you were playlisted last week your online stats are going to be far better than someone who hasn’t been playlisted last week, so you get this perpetual cycle of the same artists. It’s bad for radio. You know, I love music and sometimes when I take my 'being in a band' cap off it just frustrates me listening to the radio because I want to hear something new and there isn’t that route to it.

Do you think it’s one of these things that you love music but you’ve become a little bit tired by the mechanisms of the industry that surrounds you just now?
To an extent. But also, I hate to whittle down art to business but there is a crossover and you get to a point where you go" this isn’t a business any more, it’s not financially viable to keep doing this. And none of us made enough money that we could go, 'oh well it’s fine, we’ll just keep making records and we’ll pay'. For us, this is what pays the bills. If you’re going to devote that much time of your life to something then it has to work.

The frustrating part is I fully believe that the last album we made is right up there with 'We’ll Live And Die In These Towns' – aspects of it are better I think – and for me, it’s my favourite album we’ve made. But I knew as we were making it that it didn’t stand a chance, and that’s quite a depressing place to be when you’re in the studio making some of your greatest work yet hardly anyone’s going to hear it because it’s not going to get on radio.

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I try and approach everything positively… and normally fail!

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It's easy to see see the conundrum you’re in but to take a positive note these shows are going to be a fond farewell, a triumphant farewell to that chapter in your life.
I try and approach everything positively… and normally fail! I am actually going to really, really enjoy this because a lot of times you’re doing a tour and you’ve got one eye on a chart position, or an album release, or singles, and this is literally just us going and doing what we do really, really well with a bunch of people who appreciate that and it’s just going to be amazing. I am the most excited about this tour than I’ve been for any tour ever because there’s no pressure – this is just The Enemy live.

It's not just about the end, though – we should talk about the beginning, and the extraordinary success of your debut album 'We'll Lie And Die In These Towns'.
It’s the way bands nowadays seem to be: you have this massive wave of hype on your first album, the industry really puts you out there and hangs you out to dry, in a sense, and tests you… and if you’re not good enough then you don’t make it and if you are good enough then you do. I don’t know if it’s a healthy way of doing it, obviously bands used to mature over the course of albums and you’d have bands like U2 breaking on their sixth or seventh album, but in terms of a life-changing experience the drama of that couldn't have been much more stark… going from what we were doing to all of a sudden what we’ve done for a long time now.

That debut album was quite a moment…
It was massive! And it still is! Every now and then I check in and see sort of how many copies we’ve sold and it still goes up… so people somewhere are still buying it. To an extent I think that album it made it extremely difficult to make a second album, because there are songs on there that genuinely mean the world to people. The amount of people I meet at gigs who have got We’ll Live And Die In These Towns tattooed on them somewhere… that blows my mind.

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From an outside perspective until recently I kind of viewed that process as being this effortless thing, but then you've also been very open, and very brave, about your battle with depression. Did that period take its toll on you?
I don’t think that the success or even the band were a cause or factor for my health issues but I do think it does make it very difficult because you do have to put up a brave face on it… especially with our band. There’s a lot of bands where you could go out on stage and you can be a bit moody, our band is about going out and just delivering an onslaught of loud and emotive music. It’s very hard to go: right, well, I’m having a really tough day, so maybe we could sing 'Away From Here' a bit slower tonight. But sometimes it’s the release that you need, so at times it’s also really helped. It’s like any illness you just crack on, you do what you’ve got to do.

Do you think the music industry can be quite a tough place, mentally speaking?
Yeah. It’s the Wild West but I like it for that… it’s charming for that – there are no rules and everyone’s a chancer even at the most professional level in this industry. We’re unregulated, it’s the gold rush! It’s a hilarious industry at times it frustrates me and I want to pull my hair out, but we love it because it’s ludicrous. It is absolutely crazy. When I first watched the Wolf of Wall Street I was like: they’ve got nothing on the music industry, absolutely nothing!

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It’s like any illness you just crack on, you do what you’ve got to do.

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You were fond of some blunt statements early in your career, do you feel elements of the industry egged you on, in that regard?
Definitely. A lot of the things that I said I stand by, and other things I think are regrettable. I think when we started there were people who were aware that if you have a pop at a band that’s slightly bigger there are magazines out there that just love that – they just want to get their teeth into it, and that would just blow it up. You get a lot of column inches and that sells records but I regret it because it didn’t accurately represent my personality… it was the people behind the scenes.

And you’ve got to remember we were kids, as well – we were literally just kids playing pub gigs. We were like four or five gigs in and then Warner Bros turned up and signed us, so you’ve got to adjust very quickly, and you’ve got to mature very quickly… and maybe we didn’t mature quite as quickly as I’d like but I also think it’s easy to look back with hindsight. I think if everyone looks back at their life and things they did when they were 20 there’s probably things they regret.

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That, for me, is the legacy of this band… that our fans have made those songs their own.

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To finish, with this chapter drawing to an end what do you think the legacy of the band will be?
For me this band has always been a live band rather than a recording band because we are ten times better live than we can ever get across on record. We really struggle to capture the essence of an Enemy show and get it recorded but for me it will be about those moments shared between us and the fans… because our fans are mental! They’re the most insane crowd I’ve ever seen – you can go and watch a metal gig but I guarantee you their fans don’t go as mad as ours. I’ve seen people in the front row lose teeth and then carry on singing, I’ve seen everything! That, for me, is the legacy of this band… that our fans have made those songs their own. They haven’t belonged to us for a very long time – we wrote them, we went into a recording studio, we recorded them, and then the fans just completely took ownership.

After the London show on the last tour I saw a video of about fifty people on the tube going home from the gig all singing 'This Song’s About You' all together, all the way down the escalators, and then onto the tube itself – they just kept singing the chorus to 'This Song’s About You'. I think it’s kind of a good metaphor… after the band finishes making music I know that they’ll keep on singing.

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The Enemy's final ever shows run as follows:

September
24 Newcastle O2 Academy
25 Leeds O2 Academy
26 Glasgow O2 ABC

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