Music > Interviews

Interview with Skunk Anansie - March 13

04/03/13

“My body says go to bed. My brain says play guitar.” That was a throwaway comment, a Facebook status update from one of the members of Skunk Anansie, but in one sentence they encapsulate the motivation behind their 2009 reformation. They could have rested up, floated aloft on the success of their first three, faultless albums – can you tell? I’m a fan – but there’s an inherent desire in Skin, Cass, Ace and Mark to express, to create, and that’s seen them release a further two albums. The last of which pissed all over the idea of them coming back for a greatest hits, trading-on-the-name quickie backstage by being a full-length studio release. They came back, and now their intentions are clear – they’re here to stay.

How are you doing this morning, Skin?Erm, I’m good thanks, yeah, very good.

That was tentative, are you sure? Yeah, yeah; sorry, I was reading an email and now I’m turning myself away and looking out the window. No, I’m good; I got up early this morning and went for a run, so that’s always a good way to start the day. 

Yeah, are you getting into pre-tour fitness or something? Well I went travelling for two months and I just got back two days ago, so I’ve got to get back into it – I always run anyway, I was running on holiday, but I’ve got to get back to super fitness.

No way, you went for two months? That sounds pretty good going. Yeah, I went to New Zealand – started off in Dallas, New Zealand, Los Angeles, Brazil - went to a bunch of places in Brazil, mainly Brazil.

That’s not too shabby at all! Not too shabby, no, but I did get held up at gunpoint though! [LAUGHS]

Wha….?! No, where at?! In a place called Maceió, which is in northern Brazil, just on the beach, walking down the beach, this guy starts waving his gun at us, you know. Luckily if you go to Brazil, everybody knows where the dangerous places are, so they tell you no jewellery, no expensive shit, just carry some money so you can give that, but we were on the beach, so we were literally in bikinis and shorts! I just said to the guy, ‘you know what, we ain’t got nothing fuckin’ on us, we ain’t got nothing!’

[LAUGHS] And when you come out with that Brixton accent, I imagine he just backed off, did he? He just cooled it, quit, backed off, ran away! You know what I mean?! I think you know, they try it ‘cause they just see what they can get really quickly, but they’re not really gonna just shoot you in the middle of the beach. Not in that part anyway! In other parts they’ll shoot you for fun and in other parts of the world definitely. But yeah, bit dramatic.

Was it a life flashing before your eyes moment? No…

No deers running through fields or anything? No, do you know, I strongly suspected that he had a fake gun anyway so I wasn’t so scared. I’ve been in situations that I felt quite scared and that wasn’t one of them.

Christ alive, that’s an interesting line to put on your postcard home, ‘Lovely time. Got held up at gunpoint. Wish you were here…’ Broke down in the sea, yeah! But it’s all good, I enjoyed myself! [LAUGHS]

I would have actually shat myself, no question. Now you came to the UEA back in 2010 and it went off, it was awesome. Do you remember much of that gig? Yeah, it was great; that was a really good one. It was a really good tour and it’s great being back with a brand new album, but yeah, it was brilliant… and we’re better now. We’re better!

I can attest to that actually; I’ve seen you many times live, but having seen you last year at the Village Underground, I can agree that you get even better. That was an explosive, intimate gig… God, was that last year? Woah, well we’re another level better now. I think that with the first album, we were really getting ourselves back together again and the tour that we did, the European Tour last year saw us go to another level. But that Village Underground gig was great – did you see the photo that came from that of me jumping off a drum kit?

No, I don’t think I did. Oh my God, one of the best – probably the best live photo anyone’s ever taken by a guy called Morgan and he took a photo of me jumping off the drum kit, mid-air in my batwing outfit. It was a classic picture. I’m pretty sure it’s on the Skunk Facebook page or something. We used it on the tour poster.

That night we got to hear the new material for the first time and it’s fair to say that it was accepted brilliantly, we seemed to adopt it instantly. Oh, you like the new album?

Very much, yeah! I always play your albums in the car and I have to watch my speed limit with the new one. Yeah, it is a bit like that, yeah.

But there was a really great reaction to the new material, wasn’t there? Yeah! And that’s what’s really lovely, you know, because I don’t know what it is, but I think that every band has a good amount of insecurity in them and for me I always think that nobody cares what we’ve done, they just care about the new songs and I know it’s not true, but I’m always kind of a bit like, ‘what have you done for me lately?!’, you know. I’m always worried that people aren’t gonna like the new songs as much as the old ones. You know, my fear is that everyone’s gonna like the old songs more than they like the new songs and they really just come to see the old songs. Then that’s just like ‘oh, that’s so heartbreaking!’ Our band needs new blood and new stuff and exciting new things.

You’ve set your intentions out clearly now though – you’re back, you’re properly back and these songs will bed in and become part of our lives like the old material. They punctuate times in your life and act as sonic indicators of those moments… Yeah, exactly, you know the old stuff definitely reminds people of certain parts of their youth but I think that with the new stuff, people have been saying, ‘oh, I love it because it reminds me of your first album’ and they’ve said that so much in interviews that I actually went back and listened to the first album again, which I haven’t done in years, and I was like, ‘what the fuck are they talking about?!’ The first album is actually very, very bluesy, you know; there’s lots of riffage and singing-wise it’s like, [Skin bursts out a slick, groove-filled vocal riff…]

Yeah, like on a song like ‘Charity’ – Yeah, very bluesy, you know and I don’t think this album is bluesy at all, it’s more electronic and so that was like, ‘OK, they’re all wrong!’ D’you know what I mean?!

But I can see it, because there’s a certain bite to it – - Yeah, there’s a bite to the first album and a bite to this one and that’s kind of like it, that’s it! But the new songs have been going down extremely well and people are loving it and very excited about it and that’s great, because we’ve got a brand new show that we’ve never done before live, we’ve got projections going on and some special tricks going on. We designed them for the arena shows that we’ve been doing in Europe, so I’m not sure how much of it we’re gonna have to scale down for the shows that we’re doing, but hopefully we’re gonna be able to show most of our tricks at most of our gigs.

Yeah, that sounds good. Now, I saw Ace’s hand being slashed by his acoustic guitar strings, which looked bloody painful – you had two power cuts at the Village Underground gig – is Ace practising acoustic as back up? No, actually we’re doing a Skunk Anansie Unplugged, a very special show at Cadogan Hall in April and it’s a special, intimate show with a lot of different musicians, and instruments like strings and backing singers, and we’re reworking some of the Skunk Anansie songs acoustically.

That sounds amazing! Yeah, we’ve got two guitarists and stuff – it’s very special, so that’s why he’s playing acoustic guitar like a mother.

At the Village Underground gig, I got talking to a nice Italian lady who explained that back home in Italy, you’re ubiquitous, like, you’re absolutely huge. Obviously you’ve got a major following here anyway, but what’s it like when you go to Europe? Is it quite a different thing? It is, you know! In Europe there are some places where it’s really difficult to even walk down the street and that’s not so much fun, you know - I like my freedom. But you know, Skunk Anansie’s been a band on YouTube the whole time we weren’t around so we have a lot of new fans in Europe because over there it was this legendary thing. For them it’s like Nirvana coming back or somebody, you know, and it’s been fantastic; we’ve been doing a lot of really big shows there and it’s been really cool to have that loyalty, you know, because the English industry – not the English fans, because the fans are really loyal – but the industry, they’re so obsessed with new music, or not even new music, but new bands. They’re obsessed with every band’s first album, then when they bring out a second album, they’re not interested anymore. With Arctic Monkeys, everyone loved them when they brought out their first album, now everyone’s like, ‘uh, Arctic Monkeys’, even though they’re still making good music. In England, everyone’s just obsessed with the latest new thing, what the kids are doing, you know, the kids, the kids, the kids. And the kids don’t always do great music; sometimes they’re just jumping on the bandwagon and doing what other kids are doing. Some of them are doing brilliant stuff and some of them aren’t, and then some bands who have been around a long time are just coming in to their own and making fantastic music, but just being ignored. I think that’s the problem with the English market, is they’re obsessed with youth and obsessed with the latest, latest, latest, trendiest thing. I think as a consequence, new music comes from older bands as well, new music comes from everywhere; to be obsessed with new music is great, but to be obsessed with new bands is a bit limiting, you know! [LAUGHS]

It’s impossible to keep up with that – - Well it’s kinda like very Japanese; they like the latest new thing, then they’re on to the next one and on to the next one. And I think that music is something you can do for a lifetime; it’s a career you can do for a lifetime and great bands need to be supported. I think with rock bands as well – when you’re doing pop stuff, you can put out new stuff, new stuff, new stuff but rock bands need money and development and a bit more time, you know. They’re not given that time any more, which is why you don’t see that much rock music in the charts any more.

I was speaking to Funeral for a Friend last week – - Great band -

Yeah, and I felt sorry for them for all the shit they got when they approached anything towards commercial sounding music, but they were on Atlantic Records at the time, so that’s what was expected from them from a label perspective. Now they’ve reclaimed their hardcore background on this new album and it’s great. It’s often down to the record label though and you’re having a good experience at the moment, aren’t you? Well we are our own label now, we are a label.

Is it 100%? No, we licence 100% and our label is Boogooyamma Records and we licence our music to various labels around the world now. And I think the thing about being in a rock band now is like, we really are the originators because we really now just do our own thing, you know; we’re not gonna be on the radio, we’re not gonna be lauded by the press, you know, we’re not gonna have that level of success in that way, but do what you wanna do! When we did ‘Black Traffic’, I was like, ‘I don’t give a fuck about anything anymore! I’m just gonna make the music that I want to make; I don’t care what anyone thinks about it, or says about it, I’m just gonna do what I want to do and people can like it, or not like it, you know. Because you can’t make music for other people because they’re not gonna play Skunk Anansie on the radio anyway, so why try and make a radio friendly album? You know, woo hoo! I think with rock bands, most of the good music – and I was just listening to Young Guns when I was running this morning and that album should be massive. It should be huge! Biffy Clyro, for me did a fantastic last album and they should be massive all over the world; they did a tour with Muse and they should have been massive in Europe but it didn’t happen because they don’t get the radio play. What a crime against music that is.

But their shows sell out, both Young Guns and Biffy Clyro, so it shows we don’t all use radio as a medium for discovering music.Yeah, they do get a bit of radio play as well, and in England they’re massive, but then you step outside of England and some of these great big, massive bands in England go outside of England and can’t get a look in. 

Do you ever think we’ll ever produce a world-scale act – not a pop act – but do you think we’ll ever produce a Rolling Stones again? Are there the right vehicles for pushing it out anymore?I think Muse are the new Rolling Stones and the reality is that Coldplay are absolutely massive worldwide – massive, massive worldwide. But these bands get a slagging! You step out of England and these bands are absolutely huge, but the slagging they get in England does affect them though, you know. They’re not perceived as cool any more, but Muse play bigger gigs than the Rolling Stones ever did, and so do Coldplay. They play bigger gigs and they’re the new rock bands. Oasis would be if they hadn’t had the problems with the brothers –

- The internal meltdown, yeah.Yeah, the internal meltdown, I mean poor Noel being in a band where you just argue all the time – I don’t know how he did it for so long.

Yeah, I would’ve killed Liam - - But was it Liam? I don’t know, I hear different stories you know, but the fact is that they argued all the time. Whose fault was it? We don’t really know -

- It’s probably because Liam always presents himself as the most petulant.Yeah, but I’ve heard stories that say the opposite, that Noel was… who knows, but the point is you can’t be in a band and argue all the time. It’s just not worth it – it’s not worth, is it? I don’t know, will we ever produce a new rock band? For a minute, I thought that Band of Skulls were gonna do that, but then their new album was a bit mellow.

I love ‘Sweet Sour’ though and I heard an acoustic version of that recently – - ‘Sweet Sour’s fantastic. She’s amazing and he’s amazing; I think they’re a really interesting band. Do you know, one of the biggest perceived rock bands when we tour – and we tour a lot – is the XX. The XX are massive now.

Elsewhere? Are they?Absolutely massive! They’re like an arena band now.

That’s crazy – and they didn’t do a lot to court the press either, did they?They’re just über cool.

Because you don’t see radio as a viable medium for your music, do you think it helps that magazines like Kerrang! have maintained a strong relationship with you?It really does help because the thing about Kerrang! is that they support rock music, good rock music and it’s important that they’re one of the only magazines in England that actually do that. For them, they’re rock fans; it’s about the music, it’s not about being trendy or cool or all that shit. They’ve supported bands who’ve been around for 30, 40 years, you know – they support Iron Maiden, they support AC/DC – because they support rock music in the industry. Without them, they’re one of the few people standing alone with their hand in the air going, ‘we wanna rock!’, you know. The support we’ve had is amazing, but I just feel that they’re these lone wolves that are just standing there, like big and muscular, like ‘we’re gonna stay here’, we’re supporting our rock music, and it’s fantastic. They have a huge readership because people like rock music!

Yeah, we had two years of Sonisphere – and it’s a shame that that’s fallen away – but we had Sonisphere and we have Download, so it shows there’s a massive audience to sustain it –- Yeah, what happened to Sonisphere then? Was it that they couldn’t get the headline bands that they wanted to?

Yeah, I think because they can’t have the same headliners as Download, it left them a bit stumped. Because Sonisphere has survived everywhere else in the world.You know, I don’t know why they can’t have the same headliners – mind you, if they’re the only two – but Reading is the same as bloody Glastonbury anyway! I think it’s great that rock bands had at least two festivals they could go and see, but it’s a shame; it’s a crying shame. It’s a great festival and we need more heavy rock festivals. In Europe there’s loads of them.

Maybe Kerrang! should do one, but they’re possibly not the size. I was explaining to a work experience girl that when I was about 14, I had to collect tokens from Kerrang! and then send them off – with a stamp – in order to come and see your gig at The Waterfront! She looked incredulous when I said “stamp.”[LAUGHS] Yeah, I was playing a record and had to turn it over and my niece was like, “oh my God! You have to turn the record over?!” I was like, “oh, you do not know you’re born!” She was like, “I can’t believe it, you have to turn it over! Urgh!”

Now before I leave you, I just wanted to ask you about a couple of songs from the album, as it’s always good to ask the songwriter themselves. A song that had a resonance with me is the song, ‘I Hope You Get to Meet Your Hero’, because last time we spoke, I explained you’d been my musical idol for a long time, and you told me not to put anyone on a pedestal. It’s an idea that’s been echoed here…The funny thing is that song is about anti-heroes and it’s actually quite venomous; the chorus line is “I hope you get to meet your hero, I hope she never lets you down. I hope she never tears your heart out, or runs away without a sound. I hope you get to choose your weapons and fire first without recourse, I hope you get to meet your hero; I hope she’s what you’re waiting for.” It’s sung with gritted teeth and is about being let down by your hero and saying, ‘well, I hope you get to meet your hero and I hope she treats you better than you treated me.’

To talk about a couple of other songs as well – ‘This is Not a Game’ and ‘Sticky Fingers in Your Honey’, they’re the ones where people hear echoes of the first album because they’re political, they’re cheeky – you’re not worried about alienating people, but how conscious is it when you write in a political theme?I think that writing political songs is a bit of a minefield, you know, because I think what’s really important for us is to stay away from the clichés, and what I found a long time ago is that if you personalise it – if you’re writing for a whole group of people, it’s very difficult to stay away from the clichés if you’re trying to sum up the feeling of a generation. But if you can find something that actually affected you personally, and talk about it in that way, then you touch more people because you’re not talking about something that happens to everybody, to a bunch of people. For me, if I say, ‘I Hope You Get to Meet Your Hero’, or ‘This is Not a Game’, or ‘I Believed in You’, I’m talking about things that happened to me, so I can talk about that with full knowledge, and full confidence, you know, these are things that happened to me. That makes it work for me, and work for a lot of people. Political songs – you don’t go to write them, they just happen. It’s like songwriting; go and try and write a song like this, or like that and it always fails. We still learn that lesson now – we learn it with every album.

So Skin, you’re gonna bring us a kick-arse show - no doubt – so what, as an audience, can we do for you?I think, you know, a packed house, full of people coming to see a good show. Have a couple of drinks and just go for it. Just dance your arses off… And look after me when I come into the audience because I have a new trick – that’s all I’m gonna say…

Emma Garwood

Don’t miss Skunk Anansie when they return to the UEA on March 14th. For tickets, go towww.ueaticketbookings.co.uk.