An Interview with White Lies
You’re in Holland at the moment is that right?
Yes, we’re in Rotterdam at the moment.
Well how’s Rotterdam treating you?
Very well actually; we’ve only been here a few hours, you know, just got off the bus and into the venue, but well so far.
I’ve actually had the pleasure of interviewing Jack before, last year, so I thought it’d be good to catch up on everything you’ve done since then… Last time I spoke to Jack, you were on the brink of your first UK headline tour, so with that a memory in the distance, what did that experience mean to you?
You know, that was a real learning curve for us; it was the first proper tour we’d done like that, I guess; it was small venues and stuff, but it really did teach us a lot. Since then, we really have continued to grow as a band and we kinda get better and better, so it’s really great. But yeah, that’s what started us off I suppose.
Were there any highlights of that tour, do you remember?
I remember the show in Norwich – we had a power cut in the middle of the show!
Yes, I was there – I felt for you at the time…
It was all good and all those shows were great; I have very fond memories of them all and it was great to have such a strong start. I remember the Manchester and London shows being great – London obviously being our home town and Manchester being a great music city. All the shows on that tour were really good.
Jack said previously that as a band, you had your own personal goals and targets – do you think you’ve achieved most of those yet?
Erm, yeah, I think so… we’ve certainly come a long way in the last year. We’ve travelled the world; I mean, we’ve gone round the world three or four times now, so we’ve definitely exceeded anything we expected to do when we were starting the band and I guess when we were in school playing music together, what we’ve done now would only be in our wildest dreams. I suppose the next step is just to continue into our second album and hopefully build a career – that’s the ultimate dream I think.
Yeah, you’ve got to be happy with your global domination! Looking at it, you’re still a relatively new band in this guise, with your first gig being only in February last year, so do you think your live show has improved and expanded with your subsequent experience?
Yes definitely, I mean, we’ve really noticed that even in our last couple of shows because obviously this is the start of our biggest headline tour to date, of Europe and the UK, so we have a few extra crew and a few extra lights and a lot of extra equipment, so it’s looking and sounding great at the moment and it’s only gonna get better, so by the time we hit the UK in November, it’s gonna be really fantastic, I think.
It must be strange, because you presumably went from being in a tiny van one day, to big tour buses with a huge crew.
Well we were in a tiny van for a long time; we didn’t get in the bus for ages – we must have been in the same van for over a year at the beginning of touring as White Lies. It was fun though, I mean, that whole tour of the UK that last time you spoke to Jack was all in a van and it was great, y’know, it’s good times – we enjoyed that… maybe one day we can do it again! The thing with touring in a van is that you tend to get a lot better night’s sleep, as you stay in hotels rather than in the bus.
Well we’ve got an old white Transit if you want to borrow it to convince them that you should stay in a hotel…
We might just sit in the back of it for a while…
You underplayed yourselves when you first formed by posting just one track on MySpace with no pictures or anything, but as you’ve grown in popularity, has it been hard to retain that level of anonymity that you always strived for?
No, not really, I think it depends on what you do with your personal time, I guess and we don’t get stopped in the street, or recognised, and that’s the way we’d like to keep it I think. Our music’s still much more famous than we are, and that’s the way I’d like to keep it, so no, we haven’t had much trouble with that.
Well it’s strange, because I’ve heard you described as a ladies man, yet as much as I’ve tried to dig some gossip up about you, I haven’t found any!
I actually have a girlfriend of five years, so I am a ladies man, but only one lady!
Oh, I don’t think that gives you ladies man status at all, I’m sorry to say!
No, not really!
I’ve been lucky enough to see you five times I think –
Wow –
I know, you’re everywhere! Once was at the UEA as part of the NME Shockwaves Tour where you got Florence on stage with you, which was great, so I wondered if any more collaborations had been considered?
Erm, you know, it’s never impossible, but we’re not really thinking anything at the moment because we’re not really writing anything; we haven’t been in the studio because we’ve been touring, but I don’t know, we’ll see what happens. There’s some people that we’d like to collaborate with that are sort of unreachable goals, people like Bjork and I dunno, it’d be great to do something with say, Scott Walker, but that would be a crazy dream. I think on some levels, you collaborate with everyone you work with; you collaborate with your producer, with all the musicians you have on your album, so we’re just looking forward to working on the next album and although we haven’t thought about it very much yet, maybe working with a producer right from the beginning of the project all the way through.
Looking towards the future, you’ve hinted that ‘Nothing to Give’ and ‘The Price of Love’, the album closers from your debut are an indication of what’s to come, but can you elaborate on any new material you have in the bag?
Well I’d love to, but we don’t have any unfortunately; we’ve been touring constantly for a year and a half now, so it’s not really the environment that we feel comfortable writing in, so we’re gonna wait ‘til we have a bit of time off before we start working on that. Having said that, we’re very, very excited about working on that and getting back in the studio to start writing again. We’ve definitely got ideas, but no solid songwriting time and no tracks yet.
There was a moment at Latitude Festival where you were looking out at the crowd and seemed quite humbled and overwhelmed – do you ever feel surprised by what you’ve become?
When you have a good crowd it’s always overwhelming; Latitude was a good show, but I think Reading and Leeds were perhaps our highlights of the UK festivals – Glastonbury as well, but I think Reading especially is a homecoming festival for us because that’s the one we went to when we were younger, so that was a great moment. I get that feeling all the time though, like last night in Amsterdam, we had an amazing crowd who were very vocal and very noisy and it’s always amazing when you have an experience like that.
I read that you write the songs first, then learn to play them to record them, but has there ever been a track that’s been hard to grapple in the learning process?
Oh yeah, certainly – quite a few actually; ‘Nothing to Give’ has a very complicated string arrangement, so it’s quite hard to figure out how to do that – the same with ‘The Price of Love’, but y’know, we got there in the end, but it took us quite a while.
Do you ever have a moment where you fall out of love with them because they’re taxing you a bit?
Well a few of them are quite taxing to sing, but I’ve managed to keep on top of that over the last year; sometimes it’s hard because of the schedule, maintaining your voice – I can feel it going a bit now actually, but we have a couple of days off coming up, so I should be alright, but it’s good when you have to put a lot of work into performing the songs – it really gets the adrenaline going and makes the performance more exciting.
I read that you and Charles share the songwriting – is it Charles on the lyrics and yourself on the music, or more of a collaboration?
It’s more of a collaboration between all of us really, I mean, it starts off with Charles writing the lyrics and then we start writing the music together, then quite shortly after, we go into the rehearsal studio and start working on it with Jack as well. Charles does take on all of the songwriting duties, because obviously he’s the best lyricist in the band – that’s the pure reason; neither me nor Jack can write lyrics and Charles is very good at it, but apart from that we all collaborate.
Brilliantly and deservedly, your debut album went to Number One, but does that create pressure when approaching your new material?
People always ask whether it put the pressure on, but I think it did the opposite and took the pressure off, because it opened up a lot of opportunities and doors that we wouldn’t have had, had it not been for the album going to number one. We’ve had a very busy year, we’ve played some of the biggest festivals in the world and now we’re about to go into a European and UK Tour that is, for the most part, completely sold out, so if we hadn’t that, we wouldn’t be in the position we are now, so it takes the pressure off I think.
You’ve done us proud by representing the UK all over the world, but has the reaction been the same everywhere?
The crowd varies from place to place, but on the whole I think we’ve had a good reaction everywhere – some places are better than others, but hopefully we’re gonna build on the start that we’ve made everywhere in the world and into the next record until we start touring again; we’ll certainly have a big head-start compared to where other bands are at, I suppose.
I meant to ask, but how did you celebrate when you heard the news that you’d gone to Number One?
Erm, well we didn’t really to be honest – we were in Russia at the time shooting the video to ‘Farewell to the Fairground’ and we were just very cold and… well, not miserable, but just very, very cold, so we couldn’t think about anything else other than being very cold! You know, we had a swig of vodka and patted ourselves on the back – it was a good moment, definitely.
I read that one of the things you wished you’d have known prior to your success was that as a successful band, you get homesick, but I wondered what things you miss the most?
I miss having a bath and it’s probably the first thing I’ll do when I get back from here to the UK!
With your rubber ducky?
Erm, no, I like to keep it very simple when I have a bath – no bubbles, just nice hot water. I don’t know, I suppose going to my favourite pubs is one thing I really miss, nice home cooked food… Y’know, making food for yourself is one thing that is really lacking when you’re on tour as you tend to rely on what’s in the dressing room, which tends to be sandwiches, so that’s something I’ll look forward to when I get home, cooking food for myself –
Having food that doesn’t have bread wrapped round it?
Exactly, yeah!
We interviewed Chase and Status this week who obviously did a cracking remix of your track, ‘Death’ and I wondered whether you had much say in who remixes your work?
I guess we do, but we try and keep it open, I mean, we’re more than happy – in fact, it’s really exciting to hear a remix from anybody; it’s something we enjoy so I hope we can continue it in the future. In fact, if anyone reads the interview and wants to have a go, just send an email to our label and we’ll send the parts over, because it’s always good to hear from anyone really.
Finally, you mentioned the gig you did in the Arts Centre where you had a power cut, but do you have any other memories from your times in Norwich?
Erm, I think my lasting memory was of that show actually, because even with the power cutting out, it was a very good show and it was in a very cool venue – we really enjoyed that show. I remember when we played on the NME Tour, it did snow very heavily after our show, which was quite good fun. It’s always nice when it snows in the UK!
Emma Roberts
White Lies return to Norwich on the 23rd November for their sold out show. For more information, go to www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk
