Two artists, one conversation. Personality Clash: bringing like minds together since 2004.
THE DRUMS vs EDWYN COLLINS
Jonathan Pierce (The Drums)
Current US indie favourites The Drums can’t get enough of our Brit-led beats and rhymes – the allure of the post-punk guitar is a powerful thing, and The Drums make no secret of their love affair with the genre’s main players.
Edwyn Collins
Fusing synths and guitars, Orange Juice channeled that classic post-punk sound, with a huge dose of jangly tweeness thrown in for good measure. Since the split in 1985, Edwyn has been riding high on the waves of solo success and still performs live to this day.
Jon: Hello, Edwyn, how are you?
Edwyn: Good thanks, how are you?
Jon: Am good too, excited to do this.
Edwyn: So, how’s it all going?
Jon: Pretty much everything that has been happening with The Drums is new and exciting for us. We started this band just a year ago so it’s a really cool thing to be able to go over to the UK and be embraced because our heroes, one of them being you Edwyn, all come from this place.
Edwyn: The early days of Orange Juice were characterised by enormous amounts of fighting inside the band – we spent a lot of time and energy putting each other down. The bassist and drummer (not James the guitarist) didn’t really like each other and used to argue and fight a lot. Do you do that with the rest of The Drums, or are you pretty nice to each other?
Jon: Every day is a little bit different and it just shows where we are right now – we haven’t had the chance to really relax enough to start thinking about how much we don’t like each other. We’ve just been so busy and I guess it’s funny because we’re all just starting to realise that we do need some time apart because we work together and we also live together – both on and off the road – and it’s been pretty tough but we all just try to stay focused and we’re all pretty happy and excited right now; we don’t seem to have much to complain about but I can see it starting to go wrong…
Edwyn: It’s nice when people can get along because with us we fought so much it eventually split the band up.
Jon: There are differences here and there, but as far as The Drums, we believe in what we’re doing. We wanna change things – we wanna turn on the radio and hear stuff that’s reminiscent of Orange Juice and those wonderful bands that came into our lives. Did you start as a singer?
Edwyn: I didn’t sing originally, and in my schoolboy band the drummer Nicky was the singer. And then I took over. Some of the other members of the band were not convinced that I had the best voice! (Laughs)
Jon: Edwyn, I have to be completely honest: when I first heard Orange Juice your voice sort of rubbed me the wrong way, and…(Both laugh) it took me a little while to adjust to the timbre of your voice, but as soon as I did it became one of my very favourite voices. That unconventional beauty in your voice is what I like. You were such a handsome young man and that funny voice coming out was just a crazy combination. I wanted to ask you about Orange Juice – it seemed very stylized – were you a control freak or did other people do these things?
Edwyn: I used to go to bed and be dreaming of ideas for the next day, and couldn’t wait for the next day to come so I could implement them. It was to do with every aspect of making the record, the manifestos that we’d put out, the clothes that we wore, the songs we were writing, I would be completely involved.
Jon: I love the fact that you knew what you wanted to do but still come across as really clueless. It seemed like you didn’t actually know how good it all was.
Interview by April Welsh
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Clash Magazine Issue 50
This is an excerpt from an article that appears in the 50th issue of Clash Magazine. Pick it up in stores from May 7th. |
