Interview: Frank Turner
Artist profile:
Frank Turner
Traditionally, Sunday is the day of rest, but for Frank Turner and his band, tonight is another work night. They rested last night – after a gruelling nineteen shows on the trot without a break. Luckily, Frank makes a habit of touring as much as he possibly can (think black flag), but it’s a weary Turner that sits down with Rocklouder to discuss his latest album, his next album and freeloading fans.
Hi Frank, How are you today?
Good. Well, bit better for a day off, put it that way. It’s been a long tour so we’re not in the craziest, rock’n’roll mode, but it’s good.
Love Ire & Song has been out just under a month now, how do you feel it’s been received?
Pretty well. Reviews have been generally good. I continue to be a little marmite in my music if you see what I mean. But people seem to be into it. And [then there’s] the simple fact it’s already outsold Sleep Is For The Week in under a month, selling technically on paper fourteen times faster than the first record. And I think it’s a better record than the first one, anyway. So I’m very pleased with that.
How did putting this album together compare to making Sleep Is For The Week?
Well in terms of writing it was more concise. But also, it’s not just the... what on earth is the noun for the word concise? Concisity? (Laughs) It’s not just the concision, it’s the fact that I’ve got better as a songwriter, I’ve had practice if nothing else, so from a writing point of view it felt kind of shorter and a more confident process. Recording-wise, we went away to the Hampshire hills and that was really nice actually, to be away from it all, just me and Ben our producer – we were on a farm that was very near where I grew up as well, so I felt like I was home.
What tracks from Love Ire & Song really stand out to you?
That’s like asking me to choose between my children! (Laughs) ‘I knew Prufrock’ is a big favourite of mine, because it says something I’ve been trying to say for a while and I think it says it as well as I’m ever going to say it. ‘Jet Lag’ I was really surprised with: A) That I like how it came out, and B) That a lot of other people seem to as well.
It’s a bit different for you, just you and the old Joanna...
Yeah. That song was originally a rock song but it didn’t work as a rock song so we stripped it down to the bare essentials. To my ears it sounds achingly, crushingly sad, and that was the idea so I was pleased with how that came out. I’m generally happy with all the tunes on the record; the only song that I have reservations about is ‘To Take You Home’. Simply because the girl that it was written about decided to dump me the day after the album was finished, so my sincerity in singing the lyrics kind of disappeared before it was even cold on the record.
‘Long Live The Queen’ is a pretty powerful song, how did you approach writing a song like that?
Er... ‘Nervously’ is the answer to that. When my friend passed away... writing songs is kind of how I respond to stimuli in my life, so I thought it was pretty obvious I was going to write one, but whether or not I was going to share it with anybody or get it right or anything else, and I was pretty happy with it when it was done, it took me quite a long time. And then the big thing for me was playing it to – we’re quite a close-knit group of friends – and playing it around friends was the test for me. So I had a demo and it got the thumbs-up, so it got recorded and it got put on the record, and I wouldn’t have done it otherwise. And it’s been amazing on this tour. Every night there’s people with stories to tell from people who knew Lex – she used to travel round the country to see shows and stuff, so a lot of people knew her. Hopefully it’s a fitting memorial.
You seem to have a quick turnover of material from EPs to album to the new album, are the songs still coming thick and fast?
Yeah. I’ve started working on new stuff. But with the inherent delay that’s built into the music industry, we finished recording the album in December, which means I finished writing it around October. So it’s been a while. When I write songs, it’s not something I turn on and off; they arrive when they choose to arrive. I’ve been working on bits and bobs, [but] to be honest I’ve been really fucking busy of late.
I’ve heard you do a few gigs from time to time
Yeah. But I’m pretty sure I know what the next record’s going to be called. I’m tempted by the idea of the Hold Steady style concept album, like having a set of characters - but I’m not sure if I’m good enough to do that lyrically. We’ll see.
Anything you can give away?
Yeah. I think the next record is probably going to be called Poetry Of The Deed, which is a reference to [Mikhail] Bakunin, who had this concept of ‘Propaganda Of The Deed’ which is essentially that the best kind of political advertisement was to actually do what you were talking about rather than writing about it. And I’m also working on a song called ‘Try This At Home’, which is a slight dig at Billy Bragg’s ‘Don’t Try This At Home’.
On to the tour – how’s it been going so far?
Really good. The shows have been packed out, the crowds have been awesome, and the band I’m playing with right now is exquisite.
A full band for this tour.
Fuller than ever before. We’ve had Ciara Haidar, who’s been opening the tour and playing keys in the band and she’s fantastic, and tonight’s actually her last night and then we’ve got the wonderful, inestimable Chris T-T, who’s gonna be playing keys in the band from this show forth, which is amazing for me. So I’m really blessed with the people I get to play with musically. We’ve had Andy Yorke [supporting] on the tour as well, it’s a pleasure and a privilege to play shows with Andy and to have him play before me. The one complaint I think we’ve all got is the schedule – we’ve just done nineteen shows in a row with no days off. We had a day off yesterday and my throat is still a bit shit, so we’re a little tired. But at the moment the shows have been selling out – the venues I’ve played before in Cardiff have been half full – we’re now playing sold out venues. I’m always a bit defensive about these things because what must go up must come down, but tentatively I can say things are shifting on.
You think this might be the last time you play this kind of smaller venue?
Yeah, probably the last time for a while. I’m sure I’ll be back when I’m old and no one cares. I would say old and unfashionable, but the best thing anyone’s said about me by miles was the NME called me ‘resolutely unfashionable’ and that just made my fucking day! It gave it good marks but it’s just, what a poor quote.
As he was here a second ago - You went to America with Chris T-T recently, how was that?
It was great; I was there for the whole of February, basically. It has to be said, by the end of it I was ready to come home, but playing with Chris was a pleasure, and we got lots done in a business sense, I’m flying back there on Friday and hopefully closing a deal, so fingers crossed.
You mentioned Andy Yorke, can you tell us why it’s such a sin more people don’t know about him?
Well the thing about that is that some people know one piece of information about him that isn’t even the one that’s important. He was in Unbelievable Truth [this isn’t the unimportant bit] who were just a fucking magnificent band, as was Nigel [Powell] my drummer. I never saw them live, which is a shame, because on record they were superb. Andy’s stuff on this tour is actually not far off a reunion, because the backing band is basically Unbelievable Truth with one extra guy. The Oxford show was the first time I got to watch his set fully, and it was just sublime. It’s just nice to have a real fucking challenge to follow, to stand there and go “Jesus Christ, that was something else!”
What’s next, tour-wise?
I’m going to the states at the end of this week, and then from there I’m going to come back and go straight out with The Holloways, which is a bit drastic, and then the festival season kicks in, and hopefully we’ll have another single, ‘Reasons Not To Be An Idiot’ for Glastonbury weekend.
Which festivals are you playing this year?
Glastonbury and Cambridge Folk are the two big ones that are confirmed that I’m really excited about. Two Thousand Trees is going to be great. There’s others that aren’t confirmed yet, so I can’t really talk about them, but there will be more. But basically, after that there’ll be another UK tour after that around October time, and probably most of the rest of the year in the States.
How frustrating do you find this kind of phrase: “Frank Turner’s political music.”
I’d... I’d say it’s more boring than anything else. It’s still amazing how often people describe me as a ‘protest singer’. I mean; it’s just factually incorrect at this stage of the game. It’s not because I think that’s a bad thing, it’s just not what I do. One of the dangers of getting into ‘protest’ music is that they won’t listen to your music any more; they just listen to your politics. I don’t want to be tarred with that kind of brush. And that makes it all the more ironic that that’s what people call me. At the end of the day it means people are still talking about me so I’m not going to complain, but it’s just a little tiresome that people pull that out of the bag.
Okay, what’s your view on the way bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have left their labels to release material on their own?
Well my gut reaction is ‘it’s alright for some’. I love Radiohead dearly, but it must be said they’re able to do what they do because they’ve had ten years of major label marketing and untold millions spent on promoting them around the world, but I’d do what they’d do if I was in their shoes. Though I might also add that they’re putting records out through XL again, so the whole sell it online thing was – as far as I can tell – a disaster because they’ve gone straight back to the conventional model again. I think they’re ahead of their time. I think we’ll reach a time where that kind of thing happens more, but I think they jumped ahead a little bit. We’re clearly at an interesting time, the music industry’s in a flux right now, and the way that we produce and consume and pay for music is changing, but it changed in the fifties, and arguably it changed in the eighties as well, and I don’t think we need to panic as some people are. The fact is that some people want to make music, and an awful lot of people want to listen to it, so we’ll figure out a way.
(When Turner hits his stride like this, you don’t cut him off, so we sit back and let him explain)
The deep underlying concern is that we’re breeding a generation of kids that don’t understand about putting money into the equation. You get kids who come to shows who download the album for free, they hit me up trying to scam guestlists, and then they come to the merch stand and ask if they can get anything for free. You reach a point where it’s just like “Listen, this all costs money”. The people who really fucking make me want to stab everyone in a ten mile radius is the people who try and ideologize Bit Torrent and go on about how music should be free, my fucking reply to that is “Do you want to make recording studios and instruments and strings and session musicians and fucking petrol for our van and van hire and tour manager fees and venue hire free, then yeah, then we’ll talk. But in the mean time, fuck you.” It’s not just that I put my time and my whole fucking life into this, I put a lot of money into this as well, and it’s not fucking unreasonable of me to expect to earn a living.
(We know there’s more...)
I’m sorry, I’m ranting here, but I could earn four times as much with my fucking eyes closed. Musicians can scrape by, they always have, but it’s getting harder. All this shit about how “we’re trying to hit the major labels” It doesn’t hit the major labels; they just don’t pay artists as much. But like I say, everything’s changing and it’ll be interesting, but that’s the thing that really f#cks me off. I saw a kid today wearing a t-shirt that said ‘Steal Music’ and I just wanted to go and punch him out. Billy Bragg put it very well, he said “I could go round your house and nick your stuff; it doesn’t make it right, does it?”
And with that he’s off on the hunt for Honey and lemon, there’s barely an hour until doors open and his voice is still ropey. However, moments into his set later that night it’s clear it wouldn’t matter if he were whispering, as he is continually drowned out by the packed venue singing back every single word. It’s an encouraging sight, the last time he was here the venue was half-full. Tonight is just one of a tour that has sold out a lot of dates and if you haven’t checked a Frank Turner show yet, you really should. Just don’t ask for free stuff.
Phillip May
Frank Turner Official Site
Frank Turner Myspace
Buy Frank Turner CDs | Buy Frank Turner mp3s | Buy Frank Turner Tickets | Buy Frank Turner Merch
Traditionally, Sunday is the day of rest, but for Frank Turner and his band, tonight is another work night. They rested last night – after a gruelling nineteen shows on the trot without a break. Luckily, Frank makes a habit of touring as much as he possibly can (think black flag), but it’s a weary Turner that sits down with Rocklouder to discuss his latest album, his next album and freeloading fans.
Hi Frank, How are you today?
Good. Well, bit better for a day off, put it that way. It’s been a long tour so we’re not in the craziest, rock’n’roll mode, but it’s good.
Love Ire & Song has been out just under a month now, how do you feel it’s been received?
Pretty well. Reviews have been generally good. I continue to be a little marmite in my music if you see what I mean. But people seem to be into it. And [then there’s] the simple fact it’s already outsold Sleep Is For The Week in under a month, selling technically on paper fourteen times faster than the first record. And I think it’s a better record than the first one, anyway. So I’m very pleased with that.
How did putting this album together compare to making Sleep Is For The Week?
Well in terms of writing it was more concise. But also, it’s not just the... what on earth is the noun for the word concise? Concisity? (Laughs) It’s not just the concision, it’s the fact that I’ve got better as a songwriter, I’ve had practice if nothing else, so from a writing point of view it felt kind of shorter and a more confident process. Recording-wise, we went away to the Hampshire hills and that was really nice actually, to be away from it all, just me and Ben our producer – we were on a farm that was very near where I grew up as well, so I felt like I was home.
What tracks from Love Ire & Song really stand out to you?
That’s like asking me to choose between my children! (Laughs) ‘I knew Prufrock’ is a big favourite of mine, because it says something I’ve been trying to say for a while and I think it says it as well as I’m ever going to say it. ‘Jet Lag’ I was really surprised with: A) That I like how it came out, and B) That a lot of other people seem to as well.
It’s a bit different for you, just you and the old Joanna...
Yeah. That song was originally a rock song but it didn’t work as a rock song so we stripped it down to the bare essentials. To my ears it sounds achingly, crushingly sad, and that was the idea so I was pleased with how that came out. I’m generally happy with all the tunes on the record; the only song that I have reservations about is ‘To Take You Home’. Simply because the girl that it was written about decided to dump me the day after the album was finished, so my sincerity in singing the lyrics kind of disappeared before it was even cold on the record.
‘Long Live The Queen’ is a pretty powerful song, how did you approach writing a song like that?
Er... ‘Nervously’ is the answer to that. When my friend passed away... writing songs is kind of how I respond to stimuli in my life, so I thought it was pretty obvious I was going to write one, but whether or not I was going to share it with anybody or get it right or anything else, and I was pretty happy with it when it was done, it took me quite a long time. And then the big thing for me was playing it to – we’re quite a close-knit group of friends – and playing it around friends was the test for me. So I had a demo and it got the thumbs-up, so it got recorded and it got put on the record, and I wouldn’t have done it otherwise. And it’s been amazing on this tour. Every night there’s people with stories to tell from people who knew Lex – she used to travel round the country to see shows and stuff, so a lot of people knew her. Hopefully it’s a fitting memorial.
You seem to have a quick turnover of material from EPs to album to the new album, are the songs still coming thick and fast?
Yeah. I’ve started working on new stuff. But with the inherent delay that’s built into the music industry, we finished recording the album in December, which means I finished writing it around October. So it’s been a while. When I write songs, it’s not something I turn on and off; they arrive when they choose to arrive. I’ve been working on bits and bobs, [but] to be honest I’ve been really fucking busy of late.
I’ve heard you do a few gigs from time to time
Yeah. But I’m pretty sure I know what the next record’s going to be called. I’m tempted by the idea of the Hold Steady style concept album, like having a set of characters - but I’m not sure if I’m good enough to do that lyrically. We’ll see.
Anything you can give away?
Yeah. I think the next record is probably going to be called Poetry Of The Deed, which is a reference to [Mikhail] Bakunin, who had this concept of ‘Propaganda Of The Deed’ which is essentially that the best kind of political advertisement was to actually do what you were talking about rather than writing about it. And I’m also working on a song called ‘Try This At Home’, which is a slight dig at Billy Bragg’s ‘Don’t Try This At Home’.
On to the tour – how’s it been going so far?
Really good. The shows have been packed out, the crowds have been awesome, and the band I’m playing with right now is exquisite.
A full band for this tour.
Fuller than ever before. We’ve had Ciara Haidar, who’s been opening the tour and playing keys in the band and she’s fantastic, and tonight’s actually her last night and then we’ve got the wonderful, inestimable Chris T-T, who’s gonna be playing keys in the band from this show forth, which is amazing for me. So I’m really blessed with the people I get to play with musically. We’ve had Andy Yorke [supporting] on the tour as well, it’s a pleasure and a privilege to play shows with Andy and to have him play before me. The one complaint I think we’ve all got is the schedule – we’ve just done nineteen shows in a row with no days off. We had a day off yesterday and my throat is still a bit shit, so we’re a little tired. But at the moment the shows have been selling out – the venues I’ve played before in Cardiff have been half full – we’re now playing sold out venues. I’m always a bit defensive about these things because what must go up must come down, but tentatively I can say things are shifting on.
You think this might be the last time you play this kind of smaller venue?
Yeah, probably the last time for a while. I’m sure I’ll be back when I’m old and no one cares. I would say old and unfashionable, but the best thing anyone’s said about me by miles was the NME called me ‘resolutely unfashionable’ and that just made my fucking day! It gave it good marks but it’s just, what a poor quote.
As he was here a second ago - You went to America with Chris T-T recently, how was that?
It was great; I was there for the whole of February, basically. It has to be said, by the end of it I was ready to come home, but playing with Chris was a pleasure, and we got lots done in a business sense, I’m flying back there on Friday and hopefully closing a deal, so fingers crossed.
You mentioned Andy Yorke, can you tell us why it’s such a sin more people don’t know about him?
Well the thing about that is that some people know one piece of information about him that isn’t even the one that’s important. He was in Unbelievable Truth [this isn’t the unimportant bit] who were just a fucking magnificent band, as was Nigel [Powell] my drummer. I never saw them live, which is a shame, because on record they were superb. Andy’s stuff on this tour is actually not far off a reunion, because the backing band is basically Unbelievable Truth with one extra guy. The Oxford show was the first time I got to watch his set fully, and it was just sublime. It’s just nice to have a real fucking challenge to follow, to stand there and go “Jesus Christ, that was something else!”
What’s next, tour-wise?
I’m going to the states at the end of this week, and then from there I’m going to come back and go straight out with The Holloways, which is a bit drastic, and then the festival season kicks in, and hopefully we’ll have another single, ‘Reasons Not To Be An Idiot’ for Glastonbury weekend.
Which festivals are you playing this year?
Glastonbury and Cambridge Folk are the two big ones that are confirmed that I’m really excited about. Two Thousand Trees is going to be great. There’s others that aren’t confirmed yet, so I can’t really talk about them, but there will be more. But basically, after that there’ll be another UK tour after that around October time, and probably most of the rest of the year in the States.
How frustrating do you find this kind of phrase: “Frank Turner’s political music.”
I’d... I’d say it’s more boring than anything else. It’s still amazing how often people describe me as a ‘protest singer’. I mean; it’s just factually incorrect at this stage of the game. It’s not because I think that’s a bad thing, it’s just not what I do. One of the dangers of getting into ‘protest’ music is that they won’t listen to your music any more; they just listen to your politics. I don’t want to be tarred with that kind of brush. And that makes it all the more ironic that that’s what people call me. At the end of the day it means people are still talking about me so I’m not going to complain, but it’s just a little tiresome that people pull that out of the bag.
Okay, what’s your view on the way bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have left their labels to release material on their own?
Well my gut reaction is ‘it’s alright for some’. I love Radiohead dearly, but it must be said they’re able to do what they do because they’ve had ten years of major label marketing and untold millions spent on promoting them around the world, but I’d do what they’d do if I was in their shoes. Though I might also add that they’re putting records out through XL again, so the whole sell it online thing was – as far as I can tell – a disaster because they’ve gone straight back to the conventional model again. I think they’re ahead of their time. I think we’ll reach a time where that kind of thing happens more, but I think they jumped ahead a little bit. We’re clearly at an interesting time, the music industry’s in a flux right now, and the way that we produce and consume and pay for music is changing, but it changed in the fifties, and arguably it changed in the eighties as well, and I don’t think we need to panic as some people are. The fact is that some people want to make music, and an awful lot of people want to listen to it, so we’ll figure out a way.
(When Turner hits his stride like this, you don’t cut him off, so we sit back and let him explain)
The deep underlying concern is that we’re breeding a generation of kids that don’t understand about putting money into the equation. You get kids who come to shows who download the album for free, they hit me up trying to scam guestlists, and then they come to the merch stand and ask if they can get anything for free. You reach a point where it’s just like “Listen, this all costs money”. The people who really fucking make me want to stab everyone in a ten mile radius is the people who try and ideologize Bit Torrent and go on about how music should be free, my fucking reply to that is “Do you want to make recording studios and instruments and strings and session musicians and fucking petrol for our van and van hire and tour manager fees and venue hire free, then yeah, then we’ll talk. But in the mean time, fuck you.” It’s not just that I put my time and my whole fucking life into this, I put a lot of money into this as well, and it’s not fucking unreasonable of me to expect to earn a living.
(We know there’s more...)
I’m sorry, I’m ranting here, but I could earn four times as much with my fucking eyes closed. Musicians can scrape by, they always have, but it’s getting harder. All this shit about how “we’re trying to hit the major labels” It doesn’t hit the major labels; they just don’t pay artists as much. But like I say, everything’s changing and it’ll be interesting, but that’s the thing that really f#cks me off. I saw a kid today wearing a t-shirt that said ‘Steal Music’ and I just wanted to go and punch him out. Billy Bragg put it very well, he said “I could go round your house and nick your stuff; it doesn’t make it right, does it?”
And with that he’s off on the hunt for Honey and lemon, there’s barely an hour until doors open and his voice is still ropey. However, moments into his set later that night it’s clear it wouldn’t matter if he were whispering, as he is continually drowned out by the packed venue singing back every single word. It’s an encouraging sight, the last time he was here the venue was half-full. Tonight is just one of a tour that has sold out a lot of dates and if you haven’t checked a Frank Turner show yet, you really should. Just don’t ask for free stuff.
Phillip May
Frank Turner Official Site
Frank Turner Myspace
Buy Frank Turner CDs | Buy Frank Turner mp3s | Buy Frank Turner Tickets | Buy Frank Turner Merch
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