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PLACEBO WORDZ Placebo Songs commented by Brian, Steve and Stefan
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Placebo, In conversation with Sally Stratton, août 1998 PLACEBO  Sally Stratton: So, you've been very busy over the last few weeks. What's it like to be back on the treadmill?Brian: It's horrible, let me go home please (laughs). I want to sleep for a week. We haven't been sleeping at all. Steve: It's been full on. It's been mad. I mean it's been the usual run around the world on planes and doing interviews and stuff like that but you know it's good for us. SS: It's good to be in demand... Steve: It's definitely good to be in demand. It seems safer this time round, people want to come to us more, we're getting that kind of feeling. It's just daunting looking at your schedules every day thinking 'I'm never going to sleep again'. It's very weird. SS: Where is home now Brian? Brian: West London, where we are now as we speak. SS: Is that home for good now do you think? Brian: I don't know. Last night I wanted to get on a plane and move to New York. London's too small, it's a bit too incestuous. I don't know, you can't seem to go out with anybody without finding out they've sort of been out with a hundred people that you've been out with. It's a bit weird really. That's the music business for you, you know, it's all a bit tight. SS: Maybe the secret is to not go out with anybody in the music business... Steve: West London is the Utah of Britain! (laughs) SS: Stefan, where are you based? Stefan: West London as well, but you know for the next couple of years ahead I don't think we're going to be seeing much of it actually. We're just going to be touring now until the end of the millennium, I think so we'll see you in...... Steve: See you later! (laughter) SS: As the native Englishman in the group Steve, can you be different and not live in west London? Steve: Yes, I live in north London (laughter) 'cos I've got to keep north because I used to be north but now I'm south but in a north way! So I'm north London and I think west London's too poncy anyway. SS: Where up north are you from originally? Steve: Manchester. SS: And how did you meet up with these guys? Steve: I used to have a girlfriend who went to Goldsmiths College about eight and a half years ago and I used to come down from Manchester to London to see her and she knew Brian and that's how I met Brian. I met him in Burger King in Lewisham and they were knocking around together so she introduced me to him and we've been mates ever since. SS: When did you start making music together? Steve: I used to be in bands. He used to come down and see me play, we used to knock around in stairways and weird rooms playing bongos and guitars, just really jamming along really. Turning each other on to different records, bands, stuff like that but never actually thought about getting a band together. SS: Stefan, you've known Brian for even longer haven't you? Stefan: Yes we go back years, years and years to a tiny little place called Luxembourg where we attended an American international school. We were forcibly dragged there by our parents who were in banking in the eighties and we were in the same school but we never really hung out. Two completely different social circles. But about four and a half years ago we met up again in London. So yes, we have known each other for a long time, we've been in each other's presence. Me and Steve don't go back that far, it's been about two years now, although Steve played on our very first demo about five years ago, a long time ago. And basically when Steve joined the band we'd had two very brief meetings and then one and a half days of rehearsals and then we've been married ever since! SS: Where are you from originally? Stefan: I'm Swedish by birth SS: So was what you're doing now something of a rebellion against being brought up in a banking household? Brian: I was always the black sheep of the family really, raised by a born-again Christian mother and a kind of social misfit businessman so I was always the little weird kid basically. I was always going to go against the grain really so it's not surprising that I've ended up here. SS: What did they think of you going into this: Brian: They hate it. They hated it you know. To them it's all sex, drugs and butt fucking so you know, that's all, they don't see beyond it, they don't see the art of it and they don't really sort of understand the basic need for creative expression like eating and breathing really which is the way that I see it. Yes, it's a generation thing definitely so I think they're just very opposed to the concept of it really. But I've managed through sheer determination and ambition to sort of make it work. I've proved them right. SS: Does that need to rebel somehow fuel what you're doing creatively? Brian: I don't know if I'm rebelling against anything really, you know, just trying to find my voice and trying to find my way through life really. Trying to be happy in the best way that I see possible really. You know, it seems that rock and roll is less and less about rebelling these days you know. Maybe it shouldn't be any more. SS: Where are you from originally? Brian: I'm a fake American. I'm a sort of expatriate, born and brought up in Europe. SS: Do you feel at all American? Brian: No, not really. It just kind of... I feel very European and this band feels very European as well. You know we're not really concerned with sort of any particular country's national heritage. We're not going to put Union Jacks on our guitar like certain other people do and you know we just... we've travelled a lot and you know we feel quite cosmopolitan and very European. We feel at home when we travel in Europe, it's good. America seems a bit of an alien country to us. SS: Have you done much in America so far? Stefan: No, we ended up with the wrong record company for the first album who didn't put in the hours and we haven't really put in the touring hours over there either. I mean it's such a huge place that it's going to require a lot of touring basically. Us sort of in essence moving over there for a couple of months just to tour the vast amounts of areas. SS: I notice you laugh a lot together... Brian: We laugh all the time you know. I think people think that we're really quite miserable and that we're very tortured and maybe when we're on our own maybe we are a bit like that but you know together it's really a lot of fun you know. I guess that we've been laughing together for about two years now so our laughs have sort of become synchronised kind of thing. There's a lot of laughing. Going on Top of the Pops and saying 'A Friend With Weed is Better' is a laugh. You know that's quite a coup being able to subvert that set-up in that way you know. It means that we're never going to compromise ourselves lyrically you know in order to have a hit, we don't need to. SS: So they didn't try and take out the subversive bits when it was edited for radio... Brian: The radio edit's only about... it's about 10 seconds shorter, it just kind of cuts out a bit of the intro but that line is still there. SS: Anybody who can get "weed" and "breasts" and "dressed in leather" into one chorus is definitely challenging the world out there... Brian: We did it once before you know when 'Nancy Boy' went to number four we were on Top of the Pops and we did it twice and I managed to get 'What a gas, what a beautiful arse' on national TV. So it seems to be the Placebo tradition you know. SS: Several songs on this album have got words in them that would probably make the powers that be shiver... Brian: Such as? SS: In 'My Sweet Prince' you've got fuck, you're singing about masturbation in another song... Brian: Yes, I'm very proud of 'My Sweet Prince' because I managed to get... I've never used the word baby in a song before and I managed to get fuck and baby in the same verse and I'm very, very proud of that. You know, it's kind of funny you know we can sort of like follow a song called 'Pure Morning' on our album with 'Brick Shithouse' you know so it seems to me it's not a desire to shock, it's a desire to get a point across basically you know, and to not mince words really, you know. SS: Inevitably though you are going to get censored because of that. How do you feel about being censored? Steve: That's red tape isn't it, corporate bullshit really. I mean it's always been a fight, always will be I suppose so you just keep fighting it really so keep knocking out, keep swearing! Brian: People have really skewed ideas when they start to censor things, like for the video of 'Nancy Boy' we have all these people in a bath of milk and at one point there's this massive splash and you see this huge kind of like come-shot sort of fly across the screen into somebody's mouth. And the Americans didn't even notice that, what they wanted, they wanted somebody's plastic bum taken out, you know what I mean, it's like they seem to miss the whole point and I think that's one of the beauties of Placebo, you know, it's that we manage to get these things across without people seeing them, without people noticing them. And sometimes the melodies are just too infectious you know, like 'Pure Morning'. SS: What's 'Pure Morning' all about and who are the people who inspired it? Brian: The people who inspired it are a couple of friends of mine, you know it's kind of like a celebration of a friendship with women. It's also a song about coming down, ending the day, as everybody else's day is sort of starting and feeling dislocated from the world really and kind of like yearning for a friend to put their arms around you to make the come down easier. SS: The "Skin Crawling" lyric is very effective because it's that awful feeling that you get when you've been up all night... Brian: Yes, my skin's crawling a bit right now actually. (laughs) SS: Were you up all night? Brian: Pretty late yes, we were celebrating, we were at the BBC studios and we were celebrating our chart entry, our chart rear-entry, and yes then we went off to a party with Baby Bird after that so yes, we were on quite a high last night. SS: It sounds like you're into this rock and roll lifestyle, is that true Stefan? Stefan: Well I think that if we look back to these past two years since the first album came out, since Steve joined, we really have... I think we really did push the boat out quite far in a lot of metaphorical senses of the word. We came in though without any schooling and no one prepares you for what lies ahead when you're in a band and when you do have a big hit like we did with 'Nancy Boy' there were a lot of opportunities and a lot of trappings that we sort of found ourselves in. And we probably didn't sort of feel that great doing it but came out the other side thinking 'we've come together a lot more as a band' and I think we need to be just a bit more wary of what's out there this time around. SS: Did you find that going away to the rural hideaway of Real World studios to record your album was a chance to get all that in perspective and rethink how you were going to go on from here on in? Steve: I think it needed to be done. We had to keep away from distraction. I mean we went down there to track and we were desperate to get it right and get it down as soon as possible really. We felt like, I don't know, after two months you suddenly feel... because there's no drinking, hardly any drinking going on, and no parties or any clubs - it's like three vicars, you know what I mean? Yes, in Box. (Box is the name of the place where Real World is located) SS: Real World is Peter Gabriel's studio, did you see him at all while you were down there? Brian: Yes, we hung out with Peter, who's very cool. We'd like have dinner and then sort of like finish off our bottle of vintage wine in front of the telly and discuss the Millennium Dome and things like that, it was very very civilised you know. And the funny thing that Peter Gabriel said to us as we were leaving on the last day, he said 'In two months you've recorded an album, in two months I've recorded one verse'. (laughs) He was cool, he had his birthday actually, he had a little birthday party when we were there which was cool. Steve: Just to notch up against all our other celebrity birthday parties! (laughter) SS: But you didn't have to perform at this one? Brian: No, no, we just had a slice of cake. SS: This mixing with stars is something you've been known for, like the much publicised performance you did for David Bowie's birthday party. How did you get invited to do that? Stefan: Well this happened even before we actually recorded the first album. Morrissey was supporting David Bowie on his European tour for his previous album and we were asked if we... well David Bowie got hold of our demo and we got a call asking 'do you want to come and support me?' and it was like 'yes!' You know, you couldn't say no. Yes, that's when I met David. SS: And became friendly with him on tour? Was he sociable? Brian: Very much so, you know he's a big fan of the band and it took us... you're always a bit scared of somebody who's so legendary you know, so it took us like a few weeks or something to kind of really relax in his presence but you know once we did we found that there's a lot of knowledge and a lot of wisdom to be gleaned from him. And he's a very giving person and he's very, very fascinating to speak to. And so whenever we could, you know when he wasn't surrounded by loads of people, and usually when Iman wasn't there, we'd kind of hang and just chat for a while, you know. We got to know his band really well as well, so it was a really good atmosphere you know and they didn't have any kind of like headline band/support band sort of attitude you know, they were very, very sort of happy and willing to mix with us and obviously we felt very privileged and the friendship kind of developed out of that. SS: People might think that you've modelled yourself to a great extend on Bowie the icon, Brian... Brian: Yes, perhaps, you know but I think that Bowie's motivation for you know for 'Ziggy' and 'Aladdin Sane' was very, very much like adopting a character whereas kind of like the way that I look is just a very natural expression of my inner self. SS: Did you admire him when you were younger? Brian: Absolutely, you know that period from 'Hunky Dory' to 'Aladdin Sane' is sort of like it's an absolute wonderful period and my favourite Bowie period, yes. SS: How old were you then? Brian: I think I must have been one when 'Ziggy Stardust' came out so it took me maybe until I was about 14 to actually get into it you know! SS: You worked with the producer Steve Osborne on this album. Why did you choose him? Steve: There was nobody else! That was our choice, that was our top list, our top three was Steve Osborne. It nearly went mad because we were on tour with U2, we'd finished and we'd meant to come off touring and then go straight in the studio and his wife was having another baby and we hadn't finished writing the album and stuff like that, but we took a little break then finally got it together, and went in January with him. We wanted to bring in a bit of technology with the new music and Steve's one half of the Perfecto team with Paul Oakenfold and he's got his foot in the dance camp and the rock camp which suited us. He's a funny old cookie, Steve Osborne, he's a really lovely guy, he's very quiet. SS: He must have been terrified by the three of you then, especially when you started laughing. Steve: There wasn't as much laughing going on in Real World actually, I think we were concentrating on pulling our hair out I think! SS: Is the idea of friendship and relationships what's inspired the title of this album, 'Without You I'm Nothing'? Brian: It's a very romantic title and when we were demoing the album it seemed to sort of emerge as something that... a way of getting the theme of the record across. You know the record's like sort of primarily about an ever-pervading loneliness and heartbreak really and you know there's quite a few relationship songs in there so on one level it's kind of like us... it's a message for us, from us to ourselves, to each other in the band. It's a message to our fans and it's also sort of something that's universal in the way that most people have felt that at least once in their lives. SS: There's also a song on the album called 'Without You I'm Nothing'...did the idea for the title predate the song? Brian: No, it just emerged as we were demoing the songs in London before Christmas basically. We're always looking around you know trying to pull things together you know at every stage so at that point we were already talking about what to call the record you know, because we were going to call it Placebo 2. We couldn't think of anything to call the first one and we couldn't think of anything better to call this one. It would have been nice to call the album something that wasn't a song title but whenever we came up with things it always seemed to be a bit too pretentious. SS: There's a more reflective feel to this album. Everybody said that 'Placebo' the first album was about sex, sex, and more sex. This is a bit more like the morning after or maybe the month after... Brian: This is kind of like the post-coital depression album really and I think it really reflects what we've been through emotionally over the past sort of like year and a half and kind of how we spun ourselves out emotionally. A lot of it was kind of our own fault and how in many ways our worlds kind of like fell apart around us as we were getting more successful - on an emotional level definitely and on a relationship level. So in that way it's been sort of like a tough couple of years you know but you can't really have it all. There always seem to be things that are sort of inversely proportional to each other you know. As you kind of like get more successful so your personal life has a tendency to suffer. We're very emotional people and very sensitive to things like that so I think we have a tendency to beat ourselves up about it which is maybe why it came out on the album in that way. But sure we have... the reason that we're so reflective at the moment is 'cos you know we went sort of so mad for a while that there's a lot to think about now. And there's a lot to be careful about and there's a lot of you know bullshit that we don't want to repeat and we don't want to create our own suffering any more like we used to. SS: That whole thing of having it all very fast, did you ever feel it was likely to get out of control? Brian: Yes. I think it did get out of control for a little while you know. People had to pull us... well pull me back anyway, you know, keep my feet on the ground, stop me from walking round like a primadonna all the time, you know. SS: Stefan, you strike me as quite a solid sort of guy. Were you pulling Brian back as well or were you all pulling in three different directions? Stefan: Well there was one part of the tour that I think none of us can really forget is when we'd just played Manchester and we had a gig in Sheffield the next day and we woke up and me and Steve were there and the whole crew's there and we went on the tour bus and like 'where's Brian?' We couldn't get hold of him anywhere so we ended up driving off to the gig because we had to be there, and it was like 'fucking hell he's walked out on us now.' And it just ended up that he'd fallen asleep at somebody else's house and he ended up getting a cab driver to drive him to Sheffield and having to stop off at a newsagents to pick up the NME to see where we were playing. I mean that's sort of how out of hand it got a bit, but apart from that we kept it together reasonably well and I think this time we're going to keep it together a lot more. SS: Musically how have got yourselves together and forged a new path for yourselves? Steve: Well it's a completely new band. More energy than any band around actually I think and it's... when it comes down to live situations it's just so massive. We did some gigs at the weekend and it's just... it's fierce, it's a completely new thing, it's changed so much, it's so confident, it's so, you know, big and feisty. SS: When you're playing live, Brian walks out and tends to become the focus of attention - does that bother you? Stefan: Well yes that happens but I don't know how anyone can miss a six foot four person walking on stage - it probably makes me look 20 feet tall you know. SS: You're at the back Steve, you're probably the least visible of all aren't you? Steve: I ain't got time for all that crap, I've got too much to do, definitely! SS: Brian are you very aware that you're the centre of attention? Brian: Yes I am, and you know it's not necessarily something I feel incredibly comfortable with. It's sort of... you know people must know and they have to know that this is a band, that these two are not my backing band and that this is a complete three piece. And that's why I don't do interviews on my own any more. People used to have a tendency to sort of like focus on my life and my personality and sort of try to psychoanalyse me in some armchair fashion and it stopped being about the music really. And I think we're coming across more and more as a unit you know and these two have so much to say and I talk so much bullshit, that it's probably a good thing! SS: But people will always be fascinated by the element of sexual ambiguity you bring to your stage performance... Brian: I guess so, I mean I guess I look like a girl but I kind of rock like a boy when we're on stage. I don't know what it is about a boy in make-up which really freaks people out you know. Most of the time I just wear it for the same reason that you're wearing make-up, you know, just to try and make yourself look a little bit more attractive. SS: How important is that to your act and also the fact that you've got a drama school background. How much of it is role playing? Brian: It's not an act, you know, it real, it's just a sort of you know an expression of who we are. It's our three personalities crammed into the music, it's not an act at all. It's not some sort of Ziggy-like attempt to create a character. I believe in honesty and nakedness and vulnerability in music, not acting in music, I leave that for Kylie. SS: What sort of an audience do you have? Is it skewed either way sexually? Brian: I hope so! SS: I mean do you get more boys or more girls! Steve: A good balance I'd say. I think there's an increase in boy clones but then you can't tell anyway if it's a boy or a girl anyway, it's weird. (laughter) The audience is changing as well, I think we're getting across to an older audience, I think people can relate to it because maybe the punk element you know and people who are slightly older can relate to it and are quite into it but yes it's getting bigger and more varied. SS: There's a lot of drama on the album, changes in atmosphere and highs and lows of emotion - like for instance when you go from 'Summer's Gone' to 'Scared of Girls'... Brian: Yes, that's what we've always tried to do you know. We've always tried to follow one extreme emotion with the other extreme in order to sort of like keep your attention continually and to take you on a kind of emotional roller coaster ride you know, so that also reflects kind of who we are as people really. We're not very stable in the way that our highs are very high and our lows are very low, there's not very much in between. So it's kind of natural that the music will kind of come out that way. SS: It's like music for the drug-fuelled generation, perhaps you have to have such highs and such lows to get your kicks... Steve: It's the second Prodigy album isn't it? 'Music for the drug-fuelled generation'. SS: Does that have anything to do with it, do you think people just expect so much these days? Steve: Definitely, definitely. You take an audience in Britain, take an audience in France. I mean to impress an audience in France, even if they are your fans they'll buy your records, turn up to your gig, but you know you've got to do it right and do it the best you can otherwise you know they just won't stand for it. And it becomes more pressured as a performer, you know being in a band, to get it right, and stuff like that. It's weird, different attitudes in different parts of the world I think, within their youth. SS: Which is the hardest place to play? Brian: London. Stefan: Yes, England. Yes England can be quite cynical and sort of arms across chests. You know, 'we've seen it all before, I'm not very impressed, I'm bored,' you know. Brian: Nobody cares at gigs in London anyway. They're all standing at the bar talking all the way through your gig you know, they're just there for the free lig and the free beer you know. Everybody's so sort of like jilted and it's just you know industry schmooze fests. You never really enjoy London gigs you know unless it's at the (Brixton) Academy you know 'cos like I mean that's the sort of dream place to play but... Steve: We played Shepherds Bush Empire as part of the MTV five-night thing, that was really good. It was the first gig of the year actually, it was cool. SS: Where would you say was your best place to play, the most exciting, the most responsive audience? Steve: Espana, Viva Espana. We've just come back from Spain, it was cool there. Portugal was cool, it's just going off all over the world at the moment, it's fantastic. We've played Portugal once and we turned up at this festival in the middle of nowhere and there were 30,000 people screaming your name, absolutely going mental, mad for it, and it's... to actually to be blown away by the audience, still be shocked, and you know get excited by it and just thinking 'God, what's going on?' is cool. SS: How well does the stuff on this album translate live? Stefan: We don't know yet really. We've played a couple of tracks that we actually wrote when Steve first joined the band that have been in our repertoire for the last two years but most part of the album we haven't played live yet. So we're just going away to rehearse for a long time to sort of make sure we can play them. SS: So when are you expecting to play this live? Brian: October for the first time, yes. SS: Which is about when the album comes out? Brian: Yes, absolutely. SS: In the meantime you've got another single which is...? Brian: 'You Don't Care About Us' SS: Why is that going to be the second single? Brian: Because it's Uber-pop. It's the poppiest that we've ever been in our lives, it's sort of... it's got a really cheerful melody but it's quite a disturbing song. SS: Disturbing in what way? Brian: Well it's kind of... it's sort of somebody ranting at me basically, it's sort of like an ex kind of telling me I'm crap at relationships really which is what all the mental masturbation's about in that song. But it has a total, total pop edge to it, it's kind of got that punk pop thing that 'Nancy Boy' had. Stefan: Yeah, a three-chord wonder! SS: Easy to play then is it? Stefan: Well sort of it's not super-simple but it's just sort of really stripped down to the essential changes which in this case become very pop and which makes a very good single. SS: Is 'Pure Morning' still on the radio despite people being nervous of the weed and the breasts and everything else? Brian: I don't know if they're nervous, nobody's nervous about it, nobody's nervous. We were A listed on Radio 1 with it. Nobody said a word. No, now they're playing the remix, you know, our 'Pure Morning' dropped out of the A list and bang in comes like you know the remix so it's cool. Pete Tong playing it on Kiss, it's all over the place. SS: And who did the remix? Brian: Le Rhythm Digital, Jacques le Comte. I met him at V97 last year and actually hadn't really heard anything by him and just kind of asked him to do it on the strength of him being such a nice bloke really. SS: It also helps to make sure you have a foot in both camps, rock and dance. Is it important for you to keep both sides of your audience happy? Steve: I don't think it's a conscious decision actually. I think it just happens. I mean we've all come from different musical backgrounds, I used to play in dance bands and stuff like that. I think 'cos people are so mixed up with... their choice of music crosses over in so many different ways anyway that it's a natural thing.  PART 2Brian Molko, Stefan Olsdal, Steve Hewitt, In conversation with Sally Stratton août 1998 Source : placeboworld.co.uk PLACEBO WORDZ HOME |
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