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Have you been to Amsterdam a lot in the past?
"No, but we've done a few shows. The first time I came was on a holiday, and it was with student
friends. We stayed in a sort of student hostel thing, just right at the edge of the red light
district on the gay street. It was a very, very interesting experience. I was quite young then, and
it must have been about seven years ago. It was very eye-opening, I have to say. My first experience
of Amsterdam wasn't really that pleasant, because when you looked out of the window you could see
into the brothels, and I saw a guy getting wanked off. I opened the window, and I was like: "Wait a
fucking minute!" So that was quite interesting..."
I hope you weren't brushing your teeth or anything.
"No, there wasn't a sink in the room, so I had to go somewhere else for that! Also, there was
this Scottish homeless guy, who immediately clicked on to us the minute we got off the train and were
walking down the main street. The first day he saw us, and then every day after that, when he saw us,
he would annoy us. He was fucking... ugh. He was horrendous. The last day was the only day we never
saw him, because he knew we were leaving. Malcolm [Middleton, Arab Strap] went to go find him and
kick his head in! It never happened though, because we couldn't find him."
Malcolm doesn't strike me as that sort of person.
"Well, when you've been spat at by a Scottish guy, you can get quite upset."
Oh OK, so it wasn't like: "Hey guys! Oh, you're Scottish too."
"No, it was nothing like that. He presumed, because we were Scottish as well, that we'd take his
abuse and give him all our money. He spat at us one day... So that was my first impression of
glorious Amsterdam!"
On more than one occasion, you've talked about what a bore it is to give interviews all day long.
It must be horrible having to talk to people like me about your latest record, your personal lyrics,
all day.
"It's not been so bad recently. It depends. This is the first time I've done promotion days on
my own, in foreign countries, and I'm starting to get quite used to them. I quite enjoy them,
actually. This has been much better than it used to be. I really don't like doing it on tour, because
you don't get much time to yourself anyway. The last thing you want, when you've been driving all day
and you've just done a soundcheck, is to sit and talk about yourself. But I've been quite enjoying
these wee trips, actually. There's a magazine today, taking me to a shop nearby that specializes in
rare sci-fi toys, Star Wars especially, and the magazine's giving me some money to go spend in the
shop."
Sorry, but our budget doesn't quite stretch that far! You once said: "I don't care about what I
do. All I care about is beer, sex, and pies." Is that still the case?
"No! I quite obviously care about what I do as well. Beer, sex, and pies... that's probably
about it. I didn't mention drugs in that one, bizarrely. It's not like me. Usually, I would've gotten
drugs in there somewhere! Beer, sex, and pies pretty much sums it up. I'm a big fan of cheese. I like
cheese as well."
A while ago, in 1999, you moved from Falkirk to Glasgow. Why did you decide to do that?
"I'd lived in Falkirk all my life, and it just wasn't that interesting a place to stay
anymore. There was nothing that interesting to do. I wanted a bit of social life, and my girlfriend
and I had planned to get somewhere to live anyway. The natural thing to do was just to move to
Glasgow. I mean, it's not that far from Falkirk anyway, 30 miles or something. It seems like a world
away when you live there though. Glasgow's a good place to be, and there's a lot more to do. Our
social lives are a lot better than they used to be."
Bars like Nice'n'Sleazy or the 13th Note?
"Things like that... Sleazy's is the pub I go to most, and I go to a club called Optimal every
Sunday, which is good. I don't see much of my girlfriend, because she's got a job at a restaurant as
well as going to college. She goes out with lots of friends to different places. We barely see each
other, and I'm away all the time as well. Still... It's good fun."
Do you ever tire of being thrown in with the rest of the Glasgow music scene? I'm talking about
Chemikal Underground records, the Delgados, Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai... stuff like that.
"I don't mind it. I think it's only natural, when one place has a wealth of good bands, that
they talk about us all in the same sentence. I don't mind it at all, no. I'm very fond of Mogwai and
obviously the Delgados as well. I've got issues with Belle & Sebastian though..."
Hmm, that's one of my questions, and it might be a good time to bring that up right now. What did
you feel about 'The Boy with the Arab Strap' as a Belle & Sebastian song and album title?
"Ah right, the album title... I'm in no position to judge people for writing songs, people I
know. The reason I was upset about the song and the title... Well, first of all I was upset about the
album title because "Arab Strap" is in big letters on the front, much bigger than "Belle &
Sebastian", and the first time I saw a poster for their album, I thought it was for one of our shows,
because we were on tour at the time. That was quite upsetting. Secondly, the song that he [Stuart
Murdoch, Belle & Sebastian] wrote about me as well was based on a story that was in the tabloid press
about an ex-girlfriend of mine. You can say what you want about me, but there was just no reason to
involve her in the song at all. Ah well... I speak to them now and again. Richard [Colburn], the
drummer, is a good guy. I see him sometimes. Chris [Geddes] is nice as well, but I don't really see
Stuart at all. I don't know what he does now. I don't think I've ever seen him in Glasgow in years.
I don't know where he is."
You're back on the Chemikal Underground label now, after 'Mad for Sadness' and 'Elephant Shoe'
came out on Go!Beat. Happy to be back?
"It's the greatest decision I have ever made! The whole thing with Go!Beat was a complete mess,
and to go back to Chemikal Underground was all we ever really wanted to do. If we hadn't gone back to
Chemikal Underground I'm not sure there would be an album. I think we probably would've waited, found
other careers, and perhaps made our own record at some point. We didn't want to go through courting a
label again and trying from scratch. Chemikal Underground was the only thing we really wanted, and we
were very happy to go back. It's the greatest label in the world. Well... certainly the greatest
label for us."
Your texts are extremely realistic snapshots of the whole love experience. How important to you is
directness and honesty in your lyrics?
"The thing with the honesty... I never really think about it. It comes to me naturally, and
then, when we record, it will just be Malcolm in the studio and the engineer. The engineers we use
now are people we've known and who have worked with us since 'Philophobia'."
Geoff Allan?
"Yeah, Geoff, Calum MacLean, Andy [Miller] at Chem 19 [recording studios], and Paul [Savage, the
Delgados] as well. It's very easy to do it in the studio. I used to get quite upset about it live,
but it's easy to turn off, I think. It's easy to just concentrate on performing."
Do you mean when people talk incessantly while you're on-stage?
"No, it's part that and part of actually having problems performing the songs. There's a song on
the new album about my brother, which I thought I'd never be able to do live, but we've been
rehearsing it. To get over it we've started doing an acoustic version as well. I deliberately did the
acoustic one, so I could get it out of my system, and when it comes to performing the real version
we'll do it OK. The reason I'm so honest is that there are always things I should've said at the time
and I never did! They're afterthoughts, I think."
Some people claim that you're only always on about cocks and cunts in your songs. What do you say
to people that reduce your music to that lyrical element?
"I don't even waste my time with that sort of thing. There's always the other thing as well.
This was in the NME recently, this Irvine Welsh comparison thing. He must be the only Scottish writer
people have heard of. He got brought up in a recent NME review of 'Love Detective', and it's just...
The people who are that narrow-minded about things don't concern me. There's no point in wasting my
time."
Lazy journalism...
"Yes, very lazy journalism. And as for the cocks and the cunts... Well, that's what they're
called! If that's their names, that's what they'll be called."
How different is your method of working live, as opposed to being in the studio?
"It's much more difficult obviously to translate a song live in the way that we do. They often
take on a new life. We've got a new keyboard player now, who's going to be touring with us. It's a
guy from the Delgados, Colin [McPherson], and he's been filling out a lot of stuff, playing the
mellotron parts. I think it will be a much fuller sound. I think by the time we've finished three
weeks of touring, the songs will probably be better live than they are on the record, because of the
way we work. You can control the atmosphere on a record. You're creating something, and people are
going to sit there and listen to it. Very rarely people are going to listen to our records if they're
not on their own. Everybody who listens to Arab Strap does it, I imagine, when they're alone. You can
control the environment that they're listening to, but live you obviously have to think of something
a bit more spectacular a lot of the time, to grab people's attention. A lot of the songs tend to be
louder or just a bit fuller, and they take on new forms. That's why we did the 'Mad for Sadness'
record. A lot of the songs ended up sounding better than they had previously on records, and at that
point as well we had a very bad reputation for being very shambolic live. Our first year of gigs was
terrible, so when we put that record out we were very proud of how we had progressed and developed. I
hope to do that again. I was thinking about that this morning, actually, on the plane. I was thinking
about maybe doing another live album."
Luckily, even if it was on Go!Beat, a good album came out of the whole thing.
"I was very pleased with that, yeah. It was good to get Geoff to mix it and record it as well.
I think it was very expensive to do! If we can get the money together, I think we'll do it again."
Your artwork is always a cut above the average album packaging, and you often get personally
involved with the art. How important is the whole package - music plus artwork - to you?
"To me it's very important. Malcolm doesn't give a fuck! From the first time we started, I
always thought that the packaging was very important. With the first three albums, the idea was
always to make them look like a product. We always used the same typeface. The new ones have been a
bit more adventurous, and I'm very fond of the new ones. I'm very fond of the art for the 'Love
Detective' single. I'm also very pleased with the new album art. Get a vinyl version... The packaging
on the vinyl is fantastic. I think the first step on a new record is looking the right way, and I
can't understand how noone would be interested in how the record looks. I think it's a very, very
important part of it. 'The Red Thread' had to look like it was The Red Thread. It had to have an
image on it that not necessarily illustrated it, but fit in with it. Why I've got horses jumping
through flames on the front of it, I'm not entirely sure!"
On 'Philophobia' the liner notes were printed like a book.
"The reason for that was that the original cover for 'Philophobia' was going to be a Mills &
Boon-style painting, and we were going to make it look like a book. As time progressed, the girl who
we got to do the paintings [Marianne Greated] had a better idea, so my girlfriend and I did the two
nude paintings. We kept the book idea, because it just looked fantastic. You take it out, and it
looks like one story. I think it worked very well. It's something I wish I hadn't done though,
because I think it would've been a much better idea for the new album! It would've been fantastic.
I'm very proud of the sleeves."
Were there great albums in your youth that you really liked in terms of total packaging, with
great artwork and all?
"Actually, I don't think there were. I'm trying to think of albums with good artwork... I always
liked the first Tindersticks album, with that nice painting. That was very nice. That worked very
well. They've always had covers that've worked really well with their records. I've always liked very
minimal packages as well, the sort of handmade-style, with stickers and things. Hmm, but consistently
the Tindersticks albums have always looked very good."
How would you describe the new album compared to the others?
"Better! I think it's a much more approachable record than 'Elephant Shoe'. I don't think it's
quite as demanding on the listener. I think it's got more depth to it as well. It's difficult to say.
It's hard to be objective about your own record."
That's my job, I guess.
"Exactly! You should be describing it!"
Whatever happened to your planned cover of Belinda Carlisle's 'I Get Weak'?
"Oh! That never happened... You know, that would've been quite good! I've been thinking about a
good cover version to do recently. Have you heard of the Sugababes over here?"
Oh yes.
"We did a cover for Radio 1. It was their second single 'New Year', and I actually really like
them. It's like the only intelligent pop band the UK's got, and they're all only 15 and 16! It really
is a very good record. We had to do a session at Christmas for Radio 1. Steve Lamacq [Evening
Session DJ, Radio 1] has this rule now: You have to do one cover version, so we did the Sugababes
single at New Year. We did another as well, because it was Christmas. We did 'Christmas (Baby Please
Come Home)' by Darlene Love, off of that Phil Spector album ['A Christmas Gift to You', 1963]. I
think maybe we'll record those two in some way. It was interestingÉ Cover versions are a funny
business. There isn't really much of a point unless you can make it your own. I'm very fond of the
Black Sabbath song ['Changes'] we did. That's one of my proudest moments, to take that song and do it
in a way that completely made it ours in a sense. Very few people would ever have guessed that that
was a Black Sabbath song had we not told them on the sleeve notes of the record ['The Carve Up',
2000]! I've always been very proud of that. Not that there's anything wrong with the original; it's
fantastic. There just isn't a point in making a song the same if you're going to cover it."
No, I'm just asking, as the Go-Go's were the first band I ever saw live in 1984.
"Oh, was it? You're lying! I was a huge Belinda Carlisle fan for obvious reasons when I was
young."
http://www.kindamuzik.net/interview/arab-strap/arab-strap/351/
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