Run With The Torch

The Launch Pad (TLP) Tina: Describe your music in three words?

Frank Turner (FT): Can I use the word rock ‘n’ roll as one word,do you know what I mean? Rocknroll, with no spaces?

TLP Tina: Yeah

FT: Good Time Rocknroll.

TLP Tina: Cool. OK, your first major musical influence?

FT: My first major musical influence? Well the honest answer to that question is Iron Maiden. I think I must have been about ten, and I was at a friend of mine’s house and his older brother had, are you a Maiden fan? You know the ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ poster? He had this poster up on his wall which is basically a zombie futuristic cowboy and I saw that and I thought that, that is cool. And then someone was like, “that’s a band” and my mind fell apart and I went out and got all their albums on cassette, saved up all my pocket money and brought them. I definitely want to be buried in an Iron Maiden coffin. Absolutely, definitely, I’d love that.

TLP Xander: Do they exist?

FT: If they don’t yet, they will. You can get Kiss coffins, I know that.

TLP Xander: That doesn’t surprise me.

FT: Yeah, there’s no limit to their merchandising power. But yeah, I guess that was the first band I fell head over heels in love with. So, I’m not sure how much influence they have on my music at this point in time, other than, I’m not really a fan of having kind of pre-gig rituals or anything like that, but in recent years, basically when I’m doing shows with my band like tonight, pretty much the last thing we do before we go on stage is me and Nigel, the drummer, who’s also a massive Iron Maiden fan, sing Iron Maiden songs at the rest of the band who laugh, and it’s quite good for warming up my voice and it makes everybody laugh their arse off. [Singing] “White men came…across the sea” and everyone falls about laughing, so…next question.

TLP Tina: Obviously you tour a lot, so what is it about touring that you love so much? What is it that appeals to you?

FT: Well, one way of putting it would be to say every now and again I try and stop and think about what I was doing two weeks ago, and everytime I do that I go, that was two weeks ago, it feels like a lifetime, and everytime I think that, I think right, we’re doing this right, do you know what I mean? And that’s a good way to be, for me. I mean, being on tour is like being a pirate, I think is the closest way of putting it, in all seriousness, because you basically arrive, destroy everything and then leave, and you’re getting a different town each day. Particularly when you’re on a bus, because on tour buses you drive while you sleep so last time I was awake, I was in Newcastle, hammered, then I got into my bunk and I woke up and got out in Nottingham. And I’ll do the same thing tonight, I’m going to go to bed and I’m going to wake up in Wolverhampton. But you know it’s sort of like being a pirate. I’ve always wanted to be a pirate.

TLP Xander: What’s your best pirate ‘Arrrrrrr’?

FT: Arrrrrrrrrr. You know what, this has completely got nothing to do with anything, but here’s your piece of trivia for today. Pirates truly did wear eye-patches but they had two eyes. What it is, you have an eye-patch over this eye – they have one eye for above deck, and one eye for below deck – so that basically if you’re in the middle of a fight, you go below deck and it’s really dark, you switch your eye-patch over and you can see straight away.

TLP Xander: Wow.

FT: You don’t have to adjust, and that’s why pirates had eye-patches.

TLP Tina: That’s really clever! How many shows have you done to date?

FT: Well solo shows, I could tell you if you let me have my laptop exactly, but it’s somewhere around 720 in the last four years but we did 300 odd shows in Million Dead, and I’d done a couple of hundred shows in other bands as well when I was a young, spritely, jack-the-lad. I did my first tour eleven years ago, so I’ve been, erm, quite busy essentially. Many, I think is the answer to your question.

TLP Tina: Yes! Inside ‘Poetry of the Deed’ there’s a Jack Kerouac quote. I wondered if that was purely because it ties in with your lifestyle or whether you’re an actual fan?

FT: No, I’m a huge Kerouac fan. I guess I’ve always loved that little quote and that’s kind of what I was thinking about, particularly for the song ‘Poetry of the Deed’ at the beginning of the song it sort of describes a group of people, coming out of the walls, coming through the streets, and I kind of wanted to sound like Sal Paradise when I was writing that lyric and the other little time for that is that Dan, of ‘Dan’s Song’ has that, or some of that quote tattooed down his forearm so it just made sense.

TLP Tina: So what’s your favourite Kerouac book?

FT: ‘On The Road’, definitely. ‘Big Sur’ is pretty awesome as well and I’m definitely a fan, but you know that’s just something that I found captured something about life on the move.

TLP Tina: What’s your greatest achievement so far musically?

FT: Hmmm,that’s a good question. You know, I would just probably say there’s a couple of songs that I’d pick which personally, and I hope I can say this without sounding up my own arse, I just think are really good songs, and I listen to them and think, you know if I heard that, I’d be really impressed with it if I hadn’t written it, and I don’t think that about all my songs by any stretch, but like, the song ‘Poetry of the Deed’, the song ‘Journey of the Magi’, the song ‘I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous’, those are some, and a couple of others as well, but it’s just I’m really proud of those songs, you know and that to me is kind of more of an achievement than a certain venue or you know any of that kind of stuff.

TLP Tina: Greatest memory associated with playing music?

FT: That’s tough because it’s essentially what I do all the time. I dunno, I wasn’t into kind of country and folk music when I was a kid, but what I did do, I learnt to play the guitar with Counting Crows because my older sister was really, really into them, and I actually still think ‘August and Everything After’ is one of the finest records ever made, but she wanted to sing those songs so she made me learn how to play them on guitar and they’re all pretty simple songs, pretty simple over chords, so that’s basically how I learnt to play guitar was playing along with that album, and just me and my sister and kind of a couple of my old really close childhood friends, sitting around a kitchen table at midnight with a guitar and a bottle of wine playing songs to each other, and like we’d all do the harmonies. We’d play Counting Crows, we’d play The Levellers and we’d play, you know like we’d play The Offspring and NoFX songs and shit and like James, we’d play a lot of James songs and you know, it was that feeling of communality with music is definitely something I’m trying to do now, with what I do now, as opposed to the old band I was in. I want that feeling. That vibe is 100% what I want to come out of my music now. So I guess that one.

TLP Tina: Your house is on fire, what one item would you save and why?

FT: My guitar. It’s the most amazing guitar in the world. It was built for me by Patrick Eggle out of a tree in the village I grew up in, so it is an incredibly important piece of wood. To be honest, beyond that, for the sake of saving me a lot of fucking extra admin work I’d take my laptop as well but aside from those two things, burn the rest for all I care, I’m not really a possession’s person.

TLP Tina: Aside from being musically talented, do you have any other skills/quirky talents?

FT: Well, I’m a history geek, as you may have just noticed. I did history at university and stuff, I’m just really, really pro-history. And I know how to say “I am constantly vomiting” in Khmer. It’s Cambodian.

TLP Tina: Go for it then

FT: (Frank speaks in Khmer) – I am constantly vomiting. Which I’ve always thought was hilarious because if you were you wouldn’t be able to say that because you would be throwing up, so it’s a lovely, nonsensical sentence.

TLP Tina: Do you have any phobias?

FT: I’ll give you a serious one and a non-serious one, well no, they’re both serious, but one of my phobias is ever having to go back to the telesales job that I had which is the last job I had before I became a full-time musician. Save me. And wasps. I cannot stand wasps. I hate them. I’m not just scared of them, I hate them. I want to kill them all. If I was given the task by the powers that be of sitting in a room wearing protective clothing, killing individual wasps with a hammer for the rest of my life, I would be content with my lot.

TLP Xander: That’s quite evil!

FT: I just hate them. They are the nazis of the animal world!

TLP Xander: What about bees? Same category?

FT: Yes! Yes, right, and people are apologists for bees, kind of like, for me, that’s like people who are kind of like, I don’t know, alright with kind of Socialist parties in Europe and anti-communism, it’s kind of like the same ball park man, do you know what I mean? And they’re like “oh, they die when they sting you” so do kamikaze pilots! It’s just flying, stinging, away. You know how everyone goes on about oh the insect world’s really important, I think it’s propaganda. Get rid of them all, kill them all! No, actually that’s perhaps an exaggeration, but I don’t like things that fly and sting, they make me very scared.

TLP Xander: Have you been stung?

FT: Yes, many times, I’m not one of them! Do you know what I mean, I’ve been stung plenty of times, and I didn’t enjoy the experience once.

TLP Xander: Where?

FT: I got stung on my foot once, on my arm, the other day actually. They know I hate them.

TLP Tina: They can sense the fear!

FT: My skin’s crawling! Anyway…

TLP Tina: Right, you’ve got the European tour coming up, and a UK tour early next year, what else can we expect from you over the next 12 months?

FT: A lot more touring. I’m going to be in the States again in November, and again in January, February and again in April. I’m going to be in Australia in April, hopefully Japan in May. Maybe Hawaii as well. I really want to go to Hawaii. It’s really not a normal gig stop and most people say you shouldn’t bother going out there, but I’m ticking off the American States one by one and Hawaii I haven’t done that one yet. I don’t know when I’m going to be doing my next kind of proper studio album, I’m thinking about doing a stop-gap record of traditional English songs because I’m about as English as is genetically possible to be. And I am interested in my own culture, and I get furious with people who say things like “oh there’s no such thing as an English culture”, it’s just like no, you just don’t know about it because you’re ignorant, and it saddens me because I didn’t know about the canon of traditional English stuff until I started researching it, and most people don’t. And I think that’s really sad. First of all I think it’s sad because there’s some songs that survived in some cases, 800 years, and they’re the songs of our communities, of our ancestors, of our culture, of our society, and it’s sad that no one really knows them anymore. But also because they’re great songs, there’s funny songs, heartbreaking songs, most of them are about sex and death. There’s a lot of songs about sex and death. I just think it would be, erm, because I’m not from the traditional folk ‘scene’ as it were, I think it would be kind of cool to do a record of traditional songs because I think that would spread the word a bit further than if June Tabor does another record of traditional English songs because, generally speaking, the only people who buy June Tabor records know all that stuff anyway, so yeah it would be kind of fun to spread the word a bit more.

TLP Tina: Cool. You’ve often joked about dying in your 27th year like other rockstars, obviously that year is coming to an end, have you had any close calls?

FT: Not really, no, let me think, not really. I had a really funny time with my friend Dave last year. It was the day before his 28th birthday and it was coming up to midnight and he was pretty high, but he was basically just sat in this room being like “I’ve only gotta make it through another four hours” and like any time anyone came into the room he’d be like “arghhhh” and just climbing up the walls, it was very, very funny. I think I’ll do alright, the next milestone to look out for is 52 because that’s when Townes Van Zandt died. You know Townes Van Zandt is one of my all time favourite songwriters, he was from Texas, he was just an incredible song-writer and he died at 52 and his last words were “I made it to a full deck” but then popped his clogs.

TLP Tina: You’ve covered quite a few different songs, ‘Dancing Queen’ by Abba, Take That, NoFX, Queen, The Lemonheads. What has been your favourite to cover and what makes you choose a song to cover it?

FT: Well, in terms of choosing a song, I would describe my taste in music as I’m just a fan of songwriting, do you know what I mean? I just like well-constructed songs, and well-constructed songs can come from anywhere. I think Queen, are easily, probably the most highest concentration of incredible songwriters in one place ever, they’re the only band where all four of the band members have written a number one single. Can you tell I’m a big Queen fan? You know, Abba were just phenomenal songwriters, but then also obviously Bob Dylan, so yeah I don’t know, I just like listening out for kind of that but I also think that when you cover a song you should at least try and do something slightly different with it you know, so I’m kind of listening out for that as well. Favourite one to cover, I don’t know, ‘Dancing Queen’ has been fun to play over the years and the Take That song was pretty good fun, I don’t know, there’s a lot of songs, that I’m not really sure if this counts as covering, that I’ll play to myself, but I won’t generally play at shows simply because I don’t really change them and I don’t see the point, do you know what I mean? I have quite a large catalogue of songs that I know how to play and there’s nothing that makes me happier than to just sit down on my own with my guitar and strum, Ryan Adams, or Bob Dylan or Townes Van Zandt, Gram Parsons, just kind of brush my way through a song, you know it’s a nice way to start the day.

TLP Tina: Personally, you’re one of my favourite lyricists, what are your favourite lyrics of your own that you’ve written?

FT: Wow, tough question, this week, I’m going to pick the lyrics to the song ‘Poetry of the Deed’, I’m just really happy with how they came out. What I’m actually thinking about for the next tour is running a t-shirt design that just says “put your art where your mouth is”, I think that’s a nice line. I like the idea of grabbing life by the throat and living it to pieces, it’s a nice turn of phrase. I don’t really spend too much time thinking about which of my lyrics are the best this week, I usually just concentrate on remembering them all. I did a show in Middlesborough, this summer, Middlesborough Music Live, and I was playing ‘The Real Damage’ and I have played that song a billion times and I got half way through the first verse and just…nothing. I just couldn’t remember, and sometimes, I have a line coming up and I don’t know what it is, but it’s almost like muscle memory and you remember what it is come the time, and I could see there was a gap in my mind and then the part was coming up and I was like I’ll remember what it is by the time it gets here, and then just the moment came and went and I was just still playing and the crowd were were just like…”what?!” And I stopped and I was like, I’ve just got no idea what the lyrics are, so I was just like, “CHORUS!” That was pretty bad.

TLP Tina: Ok, in ‘Try This At Home’ your lyrics go: “not thinking that you’re better because you’re stood up on a stage, if you’re oh so fucking different then who cares what you have to say, and there’s no such thing as rockstars….” and so on, was there a particular situation that triggered that or is it just an attitude that you’ve always had?

FT: Ok, a couple of anecdotes to illustrate. The first time I went to a hardcore show, was at The Garage, the old Garage and I remember I’d never really been to a show like that before and when the first band finished, they packed up their instruments and then just jumped off the front of the stage and the guys in the next band just jumped out of the crowd, there was like 400 people at the show, and I remember being totally blown away by that fact, that I’d been stood next to the bass player from the second band and the only shows I’ve been to, you know big fucking Astoria and all that kind of shit, and just that kind of iconicalising that it’s not some fucking alien breed who kind of descend upon us to grace us with their presence and their music. It’s people like us, people like me. That is still just such an incredible feeling and such a powerful moment seeing that and all of my involvement in the underground hardcore scene in the late 90’s, which was kind of my home for a long time, it was all that kind of sense of community and sense that it was, instead of being one class of people talking to another class, talking at another class of people, it was a group of equals communicating with each other and incidentally I’d say that’s what’s interesting about folk music and what folk and punk have in common as well, is that it’s more about dialogue than it is about monologue. That was hugely important for me. The other thing was, I just remember being a kid, after that, I went to see The Vandals. Every pop punk band from the mid 90’s, I saw them, I used to live in The Garage. I went to see The Vandals at LA2 as it was then called and a friend of mine, as people often used to do at the time, just chucked a demo tape onto the stage during a song, and the singer of The Vandals, allegedly a punk band, after that song, picked it up and went “what am I, a fucking A&R guy?” stamped on it and threw it back into the crowd. And I’ve always just thought to myself, I never want to be like that guy, because he’s a fucking dickhead. I just thought it was such an awful thing to do. And so yeah music’s just boring to me if it’s these superior beings talking down to their audience, it’s tedious, I don’t care, I mean I guess that’s what the lyrics translate as, I’m just not interested. If David Bowie’s really from Mars then I don’t give a shit you know, then he just has nothing to say to me essentially.

TLP Xander: World’s going to end in ten minutes, what’s the last thing you’re going to do?

FT: Hmm, it’s a toss up between get laid and have a nice shower. I love showering.

TLP Xander: Or both, at the same time!

FT: Yep. There we go. Thankyou. Done. Yeah…nice, I like that.

TLP Xander: What’s your favourite cheesecake?

FT: A friend of mine’s mum makes this famous chocolate cheesecake. Well, famous amongst my family and circle of friends that she calls ‘Chocolate Death’ and it’s just insane amounts of chocolate and it’s one of those things where you eat one bite and then you’re just full, do you know what I mean? It’s like “Oh God, sugar, too much sugar…” but it’s pretty good. So chocolate cheesecake.

Pt.1 – The Rescue Rooms, Nottingham, 15/10/09

Unfortunately, I thought the show started at 9pm, I was wrong! So I missed the support band, which turned out to be a band I have been supporting for over a year now, Haken, gutted! The room was a far cry from two weeks ago when i saw Skindred, I felt embarrassed for the band, thankfully though, a crowd of middle aged men gradually filtered in.
Although the band are no stranger to touring Europe, this is actually their first tour in the UK, though lack of advertising at the venue, in fact of any band, doesn’t exactly help.
So, Bigelf, for those who don’t know, are a progressive band. But not your typical progressive rock or metal band. The instant the band strike their first chord, a wall of sound hits you, a demonic chord, haunting and thrilling, sure makes you pay attention and this is the case for many of their tracks on the set tonight. I think I can sum them up well by saying ‘a demonic circus of psychedelic progressive rock’. Hints of Pink Floyd, The Beatles and Black Sabbath can be heard throughout the set showing the bands roots lay in Britain in terms of musical inspiration. The show tonight was full of plenty of sound problems, typical for the venue, but all brushed off and joked about with this intimate crowd. This audience may have been small, but that didn’t keep them from making noise, even the old couple were having a dance! Bigelf’s performance was something magical and captivating, give them the chance and they will perform The Greatest Show On Earth.

Pt.II – Camden Barfly, London, 16/10/09

So my journey down didn’t start so well, I accidentally topped up with £20 of petrol instead of diesel, so the next 3 hours were spent finding someone to help me, waiting for back up, pushing my car from the fuel station across the main road to the opposite pub car park, and draining the fuel tank and lines, which was down by squeezing it out. But this was a far better option than paying a cowboy £150 to do it!

But all was fixed and I got to London in plenty of time for the gig. Missed the name of the first act, but they reminded me of your typical gloomy stoner band. Musically very well written and performed but vocally quite poor. Finally I get to hear a band I have supported for a year now. Recently I’ve not listened to them so it was great to hear their sound again, and live, simply to be described as a metal Zapper, i.e, those great Zappa scales, played alongside some loud chuggy riffs. The sound wasn’t quite mixed right meaning I couldn’t hear one of the guitars and the vocals so well, however, the vocals were iffy with the higher notes and probably worked in Ross’ favour.
So, Bigelf, last night was great, tonight, even greater! A change in one of the organs and a change in audience, there was one! Full of cheers and sing alongs, and drummer Froth even got his own chant!
I’ve noticed that in both sets that they tend to start off lots of demonic cirque sounding songs, using the diminished 7th chord, and songs in the latter half of the set are more hard rock sounding, I’ve also noticed more influence from The Doors. There was less talking tonight, concentrating more on playing through the songs, and before we knew it, it was the end of the set. This, however, led to the greatest cover I’ve heard live, Pink Floyd’s Have A Cigar. Instantly they gave me goosebumps, I don’t think that’s ever happened to me in a live situation. If a band can give some one goosebumps – they must be worth checking out!

Xander