Biffy Clyro
We caught up with drummer Ben Johnston for a wee chat before their sold out Glasgow show on the Kerrang! Tour.
Biffy Clyro have been slaving away on the live circuit for the last few years, taking the odd day to record an album in between! Now their fourth album 'Puzzle' is set to be unleashed. We caught up with drummer Ben Johnston for a wee chat before their sold out Glasgow show on the Kerrang! Tour.
First of all, how are you? Did you have a good Christmas and New Year?
Very much so, spent it with family and friends as always. We were away up until Christmas doing the album, so it was really good to get back and see all our families and friends and reflect on what we'd done.
Did you make any New Year's resolutions, as a group or as an individual?
Not as a group or as an individual. It's weird, I usually think about it, but this year I didn't even think about it until after New Year when I was asked in an interview, and I thought 'fuck I better get one!' But I can't think of one really, we always say we'll give up smoking, but we've all ruined that one! And I don't want to really! Maybe next year!
You're coming towards the end of the tour, how's it been going?
Really, really good. Definitely one of our favourite tours we've ever done. We've been massive fans of The Bronx since we first heard them, TheAudition and I Am Ghost are good bands too, it's good to tour with up and coming bands. But, yeah, it's pretty much been the best tour we've ever done.
You mentioned the other bands, there's a few different genre's and styles amongst the bands, and they're maybe not bands you'd usually tour with. Is there a kind of festival vibe on tour as a result?
Yeah. Well because it's the Kerrang! tour, they're trying to promote a few of their favourite bands and give the kids a bit of value for money, but yeah it is a really diverse line-up, I Am Ghost have their gothy punk, TheAudition more emo punk and The Bronx are punk rock! And us, which is a bit of everything!
I imagine the reaction to the new material has been pretty good, especially as many fans will know some of it already as you've been playing it for ages now?
Yeah it has. It's ridiculous how long we've had these tunes for now, but the legalities of changing labels takes a long time for it to get sorted out. So we've had the songs kicking around for a long time. 'Semi-Mental' has been around for ages, so that's why we made it the download only single. But it's been so good to get out and play the new stuff.
As you mentioned to switch of labels took a long time so finally getting into the studio must have been such a relief?
It was amazing, I'd been waiting for so long, and I remember the day I was about to start recording drums and I was jumping up and down and our producer Garth was saying, 'are you nervous, are you nervous?', I was just so excited and dying to record it! I'd been waiting for so long, I was so up for it.
Do you think that now you're on a major label and there's been such a long wait, that the expectations will be high, and there's any pressure to sell records and be more commercial in you're song writing?
I think the only pressure we have is the pressure we put on ourselves really, there's nobody providing pressure from anywhere else. And although you said it's a major label, it's funded by Warners, but it is run ethically as an independent label and there's only five or so acts on it. So it's pretty independent minded, and the album we've done is the album we would have written anyway, and they think it's choc-full of singles anyway which is great. It's naturally how our music has evolved and we feel our songs have become a lot stronger.
You've been used to releasing albums every year or so, do you think that had you been able to go and record the album when you had first hoped, would there have been songs on it that have since been thrown out?
Yes. Absolutely. There was a pool of about 35-40 songs when actually went in to do the album and probably about six of those ended up on the album, so only about half of the album was actually songs from when we were back on Beggar's Banquet, and we were ready to do an album at the point. But we demoed all the songs anyway, and they'll all be released as b-sides. So Biffy fans can collect the singles and the b-sides and have that 'lost' Biffy album. And that will sort of be the album we would have done back then.
Obviously you've had a much bigger budget and time to play with, but being used to recording an album in a matter of days or weeks, did it feel strange to be able to take your time and really polish everything up?
It did feel weird, yeah. It wasn't just being able to, it was like being forced to take our time at points, and being forced to being lazy, and we didn't like it. It takes a lot of getting used to, and we butted heads with the guys that did the album a few times because they seemed a bit lax towards it. But in retrospect it really wasn't, that's just the way they do albums. And they've serious pedigree so we couldn't argue! And we wanted to find out how these big albums are made and learn to be lazy!
You've now got four albums, b-sides etc, loads of material to pick from. Are you finding it difficult to decide what to play?
Oh yeah, it's pretty much the hardest part of our job, ha, 'job'! But yeah it's a complete nightmare, because we always get shit from someone after the show saying 'why didn't you play this, or play that'.
You've a lot of die hard fans that have been there from the beginning, and they will want to hear things like 'Hope For An Angel' and 'Scissorkick'
Yeah that's just not going to happen, we almost didn't put '57' in the set this time!
So no surprises for Glasgow, given that it's the only Scottish date?!
No, I don't think so. We messed around with a few things in sound check thinking of something cool to do. We've only got 50 minutes which is poor. But it's not our tour at the end of the day. But if all the die hard Biffy fans want to hear some old tunes then that'll be when the album comes out and we do our own headline tour and we'd hopefully play for about 2 hours and we'll get in some serious tune-age!
Are then any songs you get fed up of playing every night?
Yeah sometimes, but there's different things that make it exciting to play them. Like on this tour we've got a cool lighting thing for when '57' kicks in, so that makes it interesting for us again.
You mentioned your own tour, have you any plans to play the festivals this year?
Well, they're all on the horizon for us, we're not going to turn down any festivals, we want to do them all this year, including Glastonbury which we haven't done before, and a few European ones, but it's a bit early to be getting bookings for festivals for a band of our size. We'd love to do T In The Park again too.
I interviewed Brigade last year, and Will Simpson said how much he'd loved touring with you. Are then any bands that would be a dream to support?
That actually happened at this very venue, when we got to support Weezer, which was always as a school boy band the holy grail, and everything we worked towards was to play with them and it happened in here. I remember getting the call and I was in tears, I couldn't believe we were actually doing it. We love Deftones and we got play with them, we would have loved to support Nirvana but that obviously isn't going to happen. There's two bands we'd love to play with and that's Foo Fighters and Muse. We have such respect for Muse, they're such good players, they are a three piece and such good players.
The four shows at King Tut's last Christmas were amazing. We've already heard a few songs on myspace, are there any plans to release the footage or a live cd?
I don't even know what's happened to that footage to be honest, I know it was all filmed and there were loads of cameras flying about, I heard that it was really dark and might be unusable. But if there's anything we can salvage I'd love to get it mixed up and released.
Finally, where do you see Biffy in 12 months?
I don't see us doing anything crazy, we're still going to keep being Biffy and keep the build as steady as possible, we don't want to go crazy at the moment. We obviously want to be as successful as possible, but that doesn't necessarily mean selling loads of records. We want to keep touring and reaching as many people as possible. We'd like to crack Europe a bit and maybe start on America.
RSS Feed
