Primal Scream grace the cover of Issue 29 of Clash, here we present part 2 from the full version of the interview.
Read more about the issue here.
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Clash: So who is the daddy of the band then these days?
BOBBY: We don’t have any daddies.
Clash: Who is the mummy then?
We are great music fans. Sometimes we enjoy sound checks as much as gigs. It’s fucking brilliant.
/blockquote>BOBBY: I know who Dracula, Frankenstein and the werewolf are
MANI: We are orphans man., you gotta be in the work house, you know what I mean? It is egoless and pretty democratic they way we are. At the end of the day Bob is a great lyricist, Andrew he is the best at technology, he walks in and chucks the bits in and…
BOBBY: We are a band you know, we are a real band.
Clash: Who is the Fleetwood Mac fan?
BOBBY: Me. All of us are actually.
MANI: Yeah.
BOBBY: We all love the ‘Rumours’ period. When we were like teenagers, even when we in the time of punk, all those songs from ‘Rumours’ were on the radio at the time. It was great pop, they are just great records, ‘Don’t Stop’ and ‘Dreams’ and ‘Go Your Own Way’. Actually Martin Duffy our keyboard player flew over to Japan five or six or seven years ago and said ‘listen to this Bob, this album is great, it is the follow up to Rumours’ and I remember the single that came out and I remember thinking that’s quite magic, that’s quite strange. Duff said ‘listen to this, there is a fucking weird chant, there is some weird music in this album’. Anyways I always remember that the first song he played me I thought ‘this is a fucking good song’ it was almost depressed. Anyways, stuck in my mind that song. But with ‘Riot City Blues’ they reissued ‘Rumours’ and Duffy played me that album and so I bought it and ‘Over and Over’ was the first song and it was even better then I remembered it. So, that’s how we came to record ‘Over and Over’. It is almost like a Primal Scream song, people are surprised when you tell them it is a Fleetwood Mac song.
MANI: I was surprised, I never knew it was a Fleetwood Mac song.
It didn’t stand out at all until I read the press release.
BOBBY: I know, what a stupid press release.
That’s they main information isn’t it?
BOBBY: I know, a lot of people don’t believe that it is a Fleetwood Mac song until you tell them.
Clash: Are there any other covers that you are toying with?
MANI: If you come to any of our sound checks at any of our gigs and we are always fucking playing stuff from Bowie to The Birds to Elton John. We love it, you know, let your hair down.
Clash: What is your favourite Elton John song?
BOBBY: ‘Your Song’. We’ve also recorded some cover songs as B-sides. ‘I Call My Baby Pussycat’ by Parliament and ‘Urban Gorillla’ by Hawkwind…The Pussycat song is incredible. And ‘I want you’ by the Troggs. So this kind of tells you where our heads at.
MANI: We can always pull them out for playing live if we wanted to you know. We are great music fans. Sometimes we enjoy sound checks as much as gigs. It’s fucking brilliant.
Clash: So tour plans. There doesn’t seem to be doing many festivals this year. Is that because you have a massive tour planned?
MANI: I think that we are cherry picking ones that appeal.
BOBBY: It is so we can play more next year. And also a couple of years ago we did Reading,
MANI: The V’s and all that kind of stuff
BOBBY: We done V and Reading the year before so I think you have to wait a few years before you go back. I don’t think you can go back every year. I think it is better like that as well. Mabye T in the Park this year and if the record does well then we will do bigger festivals next year.
MANI: Places like Serbia and Finland and stuff.
Clash: How was Lovefoxx to work with? How did that hook up?
BOBBY: How did it happen? Well years ago we met CSS, we never knew they were CSS, at a big festival in Brazil and they were really great fun. Sao Paolo was brilliant. And next thing, you know, they are famous in Britain. I think I went to see them play, I bought their record and I seen them in the press and thought ‘hey that’s those girls we met in Sao Paolo’, really lovely, sat up all night chatting, playing music and stuff. And I listened to their album and thought ‘they are great’, I loved it. I thought it was Blondie or something. We went to see them play, went backstage, they were really nice to us, had a few drinks and I said to Lovefox ‘do you want to sing in one of our records’, that simple. She went ‘id love to’, but I don’t think she thought I was being serious, just kinda humouring a drunk guy, you know. Once we had written the song and recorded most of it, we sent her the track via email and she was really into it so went into the studio and sang in it so. We thought that her voice would go well, and she sang well in it. In her album, her voice sounds good against electronics. And this track is just purely electronic. I mean, it is a production choice you know. I was great, it is almost like an anti love song, it is from a girls point of view, a feminine voice in it. We asked her to write a verse, there was already three verses in it, she was going to sing in it so she would have to write what she felt, so you know, she wrote something. And I think it turned out good.
Clash: What advice would you give them, I heard they have turned into quite a party band, so what advice would you give them?
MANI: Keep partying! Just enjoy it man.
BOBBY: They seem to know what they are doing I think. They are intelligent young people you know. I don’t think that they are going to be a bunch of smackheads soon.
MANI: Just keep enjoying it.
BOBBY: It is just like young people having a good time, it’s great. I don’t think there is any darkness in that band.
Clash: Is ‘Can’t Go Back’ about just never doing smack again?
BOBBY: No, no, no. Not at all. It is more of a psychotic hallucination. So I guess it is more making fun of a hallucination. An hallucination that becomes real. It is just like making fun of that really.
Clash: It’s not about not going back to darkness?
BOBBY: Nah, its always going to be there isn’t it? it is more about making fun of paranoia, psychoses and hallucinations that become real. I think it kind of like a fun song. It is not really that serious. It is not an anti drug song if that’s what you mean. No I could never write one of those. Never say never to always – charles manson,
Clash: Do you think it is too easy to be in a band and find success these days?
MANI: There seems to be a lot more support and a more direct route. A lot more direct…to find these scumbag shite tv shows. But the thing is it is all disposable and throw away these days. People get there very quickly and it is all just they are forgotten about very quickly. There is no substance about it. I still believe in the old traditional way of going playing toilets for fucking six years and earn it. Off the back of playing music than playing any other game.
BOBBY: I think it has always been the same, because of the age we are at we have always been, even before we were in bands, if we looked at the charts right from 72,73 all the way through the seventies and the eighties, and spot picked a couple of weeks in those years we would say ‘oh yeah, do you remember them?’, you know, one hit wonders, a banf that was around for six months that have got really, really fucking big and then they have disappeared. There are hundreds of bands like that. I think even in retrospect they may have been manufactured.
MANI: They are not going to be big, but they still might be doing gigs in ten years let alone twenty. And maybe not a lot or records with a lot of substance like we have talked about…like a stone roses or a screamdelica – not in their bones fopr 20 years – it’s all to immediate and all too disposable. It is strange you know.
Clash: It is all about the internet. You can come from out of nowhere and go back to nowhere.
MANI: It can completely bypass the traditional system and break the shackles of the traditional music industry. If you can do it for yourself, then fucking great, then the internet is a wonderful tale.
BOBBY: I dunno, I dunno what’s inside the heads of twenty year olds that are in bands now. I’m sure people still go into the studio they way we did and the way we still do, and you think I’ve got this great song and I am going to make the greatest record ever made. I’m going to make a fucking classic national anthem. Surely there has got to be people still doing that, even if you don’t hear about it. Surely there has got to be people out there with that hunger, that want to make a great statement.
MANI: But then again there are a lot of people out there who just plod along, play the game and make music to get paid for, not to change anything, anything controversial. It might make you some money. There are two distinct paths out there now, I’d prefer to taking the road traditionally, fucking offending people and doing it edgy and a bit dangerous you know.
BOBBY: I mean there are people still making good music, that’s the thing.
MANI: I see Alex Turner still being talked about in twenty fucking years time out of the new crop. I think he is fucking brilliant man.
BOBBY: The only thing that I would say right is that if you look at music as a cultural thing. When we were doing ‘Exterminator’ and ‘Evil Heat’ (2001) which was the start if this decade, 2001 The Strokes and The White Stripes came through, both good bands, both bands I respect and I admire. I’ve seen The Strokes live and they were fucking great, i’ve not seen The White Stripes live but that guy is a fucking brilliant guitarist, so I respect him. But it seems to me that after those two bands came through they inspired millions of kids to pick up guitars and buy leather jackets and wear ripped jeans and be in a band which is fantastic. But the music that has came out since then which is, you know, alternative, independent, young peoples rock music. None of it seems to try to experiment or go onto areas where they have never went before. It just seems to be the blue print is garage, rock and that is as far as peoples music ambitions go and its not further than that. No one is doing anything new or trying to pretend to do anything new. It seems to me that people just kind of think well this is as far as it goes and we are happy about this. If anything I feel that this is the way things have gone, it is like a full stop, a dead end
Clash: Do you feel responsible for that a little bit?
BOBBY: No, because we made ‘Exterminator’ and ‘Evil Heat’, two pretty fucked up records and they are pretty experimental
I think it was a reaction to what had gone before and also a reaction to the west of Scotland drinking, working class drinking yourself to death culture.
Clash: No I mean – Do you feel responsible in that respect because you have taken it that far and it hard for people to elevate over the top?
BOBBY: No, not at all. I think about that sometimes coz there was a period when, I don’t watch it anymore, but we would out on MTV2 at seven at night and it would be the NME chart rundown and the amount of bands that would try to look like, try to sound like…You would say ‘Has Pete Docherty got a new record out?’ and it would be some non descript band sounding like The Libertines, you know kinda dressing like that, fuck sake why have people not got any imagination. I don’t want to be hard on twenty year olds but there is a point when I just couldn’t watch it anymore, nobody was trying to do anything different or even look different. It just seemed to be a fast track. I don’t wan to slag The Kooks off but know ???
MANI: Those awards were fucking bang out, you look at the copycats. There are already copycat Amy Winehouses, copycat Lily Allen, and a copycat Duffy probably on the way. People are getting force-fed bollokcs and swallowing it. I’m not having it man. I’mm not having it at all.
BOBBY: It seem that once, as a prototype the prototype would be, The Strokes then The Libertines then The White Stripes, but what The White Stripes do is kinda bluesy so its hard, these guys can’t play like that. But they can do an approximation of The Libertines, a bad one though, The Libertines are a good band, I think The Libertines are great. You know, you just want people to be a bit more adventurous but in saying that I don’t want to stop anybody from having a good time in their twenties, fuck it they are having a great time. Do you know what? Great I am happy for them but it seem to me that culture, rock and roll people, there is nobody that wants to push it a bit further or even make it a bit darker. It’s all a bit too Freddy and the Dreamers to me.
MANI: It is all a bit inoffensive, ergo – forgettable.
Bobby: what does ergo mean?
MANI: “Therefore”
Clash: So with all the technology available now, would you rather have come through in the late eighties?
BOBBY: No way! No I’m glad we are living now, doing what we are doing now.
If you had the choice coming through now with all yuour ideas now?
MANI: We came from that era as a reaction to what we had to grow up with. If youb had to grow up with all that bland shite. It mirrors what you have lived through. We had to deal with growing up with Thatcher put up with We had to grow up in the mid eighties and write about it and live it. No wonder the music is so bland shite. It’s what you’ve lived, it’s what you’ve felt, it’s what you’ve been through…Gone to war against your people. No wonder people are making bland fucking music now coz they have live bland fucking lives.
BOBBY: But in saying that some people have came out of that making good rock and roll music…that kinda thing, Jesus and Mary Chain, Nick Cave4 and Bad Seeds, The Smiths. I guess then as well that what they were doing was so brave and out there, they were so different to everything else that was going on you know, the 80s was men without hearts, you know, Howard Jones. Your man Phil Collins and Sting, Dire Straits. Alternative music was bad as well, it was really bland you know. No I’m glad were going what we are doing now.
Clash: You say that if you had the choice you would like to come through now, would forgo the acid house explosion and ignore the privilege of all those drugs?
MANI: That is in part what has made us what he fucking are. That’s one of the building blocks of life for us, punk rock then acid house. Absolutely some of the best fucking times ever man. Unreal.
Clash: You are very privileged to have that intersection of bland rock and drugs to react against
MANI: In a way it saved music and got people thinking in a way that they could go and create music with knowledge, with a guitar and the old school and melding with the new thing with the beats to make something completely fucking wonderful.
Clash: Coz kids these days don’t have that. They don’t have a new drug.
BOBBY: They have different stuff. Now they are smarter, maybe they have seen the state that we are in and its made them more the wiser.
You’re not in a state though.
BOBBY: Not today. But the thing is right, when we were young punks we never took drugs as a reaction against hippies. The guy across the road from me used to smoke dope and I would think ‘you disgusting cunt, you fucking coward running away from reality’, I was like ‘face up to reality, we live in a fucking shithole, get used to it or do something about it.’ That was my attitude. I think it was a reaction to what had gone before and also a reaction to the west of Scotland drinking, working class drinking yourself to death culture. I remember thinking ‘I’m not having that’
MANI: That’s probably what they wanted you to think. The late eighties thing, taking drugs was a mind expanding thing. With the Tories when they didn’t want people coming together with the working class, the acid house movement brought people all together, having ragves… they didn’t like it at all, they tried to stop it. With people coming together they could only spell one thing…trouble.
BOBBY: I think newspapers, tv, the way news is manipulated right, the manufacturing consent, so to create a climate of fear to control the population. Distrust, also distrusting foreigners and outsiders, easily manipulated you know. And the newspapers, there’s never any good news on the radio or tv or newspapers, it’s streamlined so that it is always bad, it’s bad energy, bad news. Right now they create this hysteria about the stabbings, I’m sure there are this many stabbings every year but they decided to make a news story so that everyone is scared, you know, paranoid and don’t talk to other people. Lock your doors. Somebody says hello to you in the street and they are a stranger you just keep your head down and you think ‘oh no, they might stab me’ but it really is just another guy saying hiya. Which is just normal. They create a climate of fear. I think that half the time Margaret Thatcher was in the politics of division, she wanted to divide people, she did divide people very successfully and I think acid house, it wasn’t consciously political but it was political in the sense that it did bring people together, even though they might have been together because they were taking ecstasy and dancing to electronic disco music from Chicago and Detroit. The thing was that they were together and they were forging new relationships, maybe learning something about themselves that they could be a creative person. They could be a photographer, musician, DJ, tv presenter, make a fanzine, run a club or run the door on a club or do the back drops or projections. Anything that encourages people to be creative and interact with other people is a great thing. When you are creative and you interact with other people you feel a sense of usefulness and you are not on your own and you don’t feel useless. If your unemployed, skint and on your own you’re going to feel like a piece of shit, right, but anything that makes you feel useful, the camaraderie that you get, self respect and stuff that you get then you’re invincible, nobody can beat you. That’s one thing that I think the trade union movement was good about was for working class people to feel good about themselves coz they had a place in the community or society where they were good at their job. And they knew that they were good at their job or you knew, you know when you are good at your job. It is a good strong sense of self. It is formidable and it is unbeatable. The thing she really went for that and divided people and stuff, making council houses, selling them off so that people suddenly were like ‘he’s got a different coloured door from me, what does that mean?’ When people bought a council house the first thing they done was paint the door a different colour to say this is mines. I think that acid house in that climate was political, it brings people together and you know a lot of people found themselves in acid house, just like Punk
Clash: Would you say you found yourself in that?
BOBBY? No, I found myself in punk and post punk. But I think that I was really well formed by the time, I had a pretty good idea of who I was before acid house. But the friendships I made during that time are…you know. Mani, Weatherall, Jaggsy, people I am always going to be friends with and people I made good work with. It all phases back into feeling good, you get camaraderie in it so if acid house hadn’t of happened I don’t think that I would have met…I don’t think we would have played together. I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you. I know that for a fact. If I hadn’t of heard Andy dj-ing, I wouldn’t have became friends with him, I would never have done the remix for Loaded and we would never have had a hit record, I wouldn’t even be alive right now. So it has been like a fantastic thing in my life, I can honestly say that. I’m sure my story is the same for thousands of others, millions that formed new friendships. It sounds quite idealistic but it’s the truth.
Clash: Where is the worse place you have ever woken up?
MANI: We’ve woken up in some bad fucking states and with people you should 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 its not bad. Nothing is that bad.
MANI: I’ve woken up in police stations and things like that man. That’s never nice.
Clash: What is the most shameful thing that has ever happened to you in the last year?
BOBBY: Shameful?
MANI: I got pinched, 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 jeapordy which is pretty shameful. It was disgusting of me but then again I’m over it. The let me back out just in time for the gig, nice little lie down in the afternoon and an eighty pound fine. Thanks lads.
Clash: Why should a sixteen year who is not familiar with Primal Scream go out and by the new album?
MANI: Consider it to be an educational tour. You could learn from it, philosophically and musically.
BOBBY: It’s a great sequence of songs, its great ideas, there are a lot of great ideas. It’s a great musical experience, that’s why. And it might make them feel good.
MANI: It’s true and it’s not from some fucking manipulated tv show genre
BOBBY: It’s soulful music.
MANI: It’s from the heart and from the groin. Good music should always come from the groin. Never the brain. Good music is about fucking. Good music is about good sex isn’t it?
Clash: 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.
Clash: What have you still got to prove?
MANI: Fuck all really. 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 it 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 realy personal and he says ‘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 coz you still have that energy and the joy of creating something. When we were in Stockholm with Bjorn and on our last day there I was thinking ‘oh man, I wish we had another 5,6 songs so we could stay for another week and just keep going.’ The rooms amazing, the sounds amazing, the producers amazing, I wanna keep going but we didn’t have any songs left.
MANI: I remember I was gutted.
BOBBY: I was sad
MANI: You’re like, after gigs, man I wish I could do some more.
BOBBY: I was sad on the last day, I was happy but a wee bit sad. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, they had been on tour for a while and he said to me that the best fun he had ever had was on tour, he’s loving it. He sends a text every odd day saying he’s still on the road, three gigs to go and the withdrawls are beginning to kick in. He wants to see his kids but he still wants to stay with it.
MANI: I feel like a spare prick when I get home sometimes, fucking useless and whats my function in life.
BOBBY: The week before you’ve been playing to sell out crowds and you’ve been playing great music with your mates and it has been fantastic. Only other musicians with know.
MANI: I think I have taught myself how to swich it off now. I have lleant how to stop being on tour when I am at home.. I used to come home and still be on tour.
Have you been married?
MANI: Yeah, I am married now. Yeah when a line becomes blurred and you come home and you’re still snorting coke and getting pissed up, it’s like ‘wait a minute, you’re not on tour, go sort your neck out’ and now I’ve taught myself to do that.
BOBBY: It’s quite hard to go from that to that. It’s a fact, its hard to go from that to, people that are straight tell me that its hard for the first couple of weeks when you get home.
MANI: it’s difficult. It’s like having a split personality. You’ve got to have a different head on from what you do at home. It’s like Wuzel Gummage.
BOBBY: It’s hard getting the balance but you can do it. It’s as Mani says, we’ve all done this one. It’s like when you get off tour, your at home but you still feel you are still on tour. It’s okay when you live on your own and your 25.
MANI: It’s not very respectful to your loved ones. I’m sure they know what they are getting themselves into when they start dating you.
BOBBY: They should ask for that backstage pass then should they.
Clash: If you could savour one Primal Scream memory what would it be?
MANI: It would be this. It’s all going live now, on tour. You never know what is going to happen.
BOBBY: This week we are doing press, then the following Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday we start rehearsing. We’ve got a gig that Saturday. We’ve got tv that Friday then we’ve got a gig on Saturday then…I cannot wait to do it. I thought it was four weeks away the first gig but it’s only two weeks away.
MANI: It’ll be over before you know it man.
