As regular readers of my interviews will know, I am forever bitching about the Melbourne chill. Which is ironic, since I hate summer. The best thing about summer, as we all know, is the music festivals.
Speaking to Barry Hyde – vocalist and guitarist for The Futureheads –at the starting post for Europe’s summer festival season, he agrees wholeheartedly. “Absolutely,” he intones, his accent thick and somehow familiar. “We’re so happy to be alive and kicking on the festival circuit this year. Festivals are kind of the pay off I guess, for your shows that you do in clubs and that. Festivals have such an amazing atmosphere and they’re a real challenge. It’s a true test for a band to be able to try and control the chaos that is a festival audience you know? It takes great skill, I think, and we’ve always considered ourselves to be quite a strong festival band.”
Trying to describe Barry’s manner is tricky. On one hand, there is a sense of relief and gratitude that The Futureheads are still even in existence after their unceremonious dropping from their major label. On the other, he can skirt arrogance since they have dusted themselves off and made what they consider to be their best record yet. There is a defiance is Barry’s voice that says, “See! We knew we were fucking good enough to invest in.” The difference now is that they are the ones investing. Completely. I get the impression this is both amazingly liberating and borderline frightening.
While I had hoped to veer away from label gossip and industry indignation to talk of music and art and stuff, it is a subject that is still a bit raw for Barry, and one he can’t help but refer to.
‘I think that every band needs a bit of trauma, a bit of a challenge essentially, to make a band prove to their fans and to each other that they really want to do this. And I think if a band can get dropped by a major label and come back with a strong record on their own label then, you know, all credit to that band. So we feel like all the bad experiences we had with Warner Brothers have made us a better band.” He pauses, as if realising he is leaning precariously close to ‘soap-box’ territory. Lightening up a bit, he laughs, “And I’m really very pleased about that.”
I have a sinking feeling that Barry almost considers me part of ‘the machine’; that he needs to defend himself about what I might write. The gossip I might be sniffing for. I like music. Creativity. You had said you wanted this album to be direct, more cerebral, I venture. Did you make the record you wanted to?
“Yeah,” he affirms. “We talked about this album quite a lot before we made it and the one thing that we all agreed that it had to be a very powerful album that worked really well live and was a lot of fun to play.”
Perhaps now that The Futureheads are the real masters of their own domain, it seems that Barry has more on his mind than just writing good tunes. The whole shebang – media, expectations, sales – is utterly important. I wonder what an interview with him would have been like prior to their independence from ‘the majors.’
Case in point: “We’ve made an album that is filled with potential singles and songs that really kick the shit out of a live audience and it feels fantastic to have these new songs in our arsenal to make the live shows better. We’ve been getting great feedback from the radio, you know, and it’s all good.”
What was happening when you were writing it? I wonder. Hard To Bear, a track from new release This Is Not The World seems a departure from what I would expect from you guys…
Barry agrees. “It’s a new flavour on a Futureheads record. We wanted for their to be at least one song on the album that wasn’t like two hundred beats per minute, a little bit more space in it to give the album a greater selection of musical textures. That’s been an important song for us.” How come?
“I wrote that song for my best friend the day after he got dumped by his girlfriend. It’s an emotional song, but it’s not, I don’t think, a whingey song. It’s about getting your life together. You get dumped by your boyfriend or girlfriend it doesn’t mean you’re never gonna meet someone else, you just feel like shit cos you’ve had a massive blow to your ego. But all you have to do is go out and meet some new people, get on with your life, enjoy your independence…a bit like us,” he says, as I talk over him, remarking, ‘It’s a metaphor for the whole label debacle.’
“Yeah, yeah, indeed,” Barry agrees enthusiastically. “There are always metaphors in our music for what’s happening in our personal lives. On this album we may have been more honest and upfront about it – the lyrics are more straightforward and as a result of that, are having a great effect on the people who are hearing it because it communicates something to them. It’s not like on the second album – an album filled with riddles and musical murder mysteries. This is like getting a bit size eleven Doctor Martin boot right in your face.”
Presumably then the album’s title, This Is Not The World, will have some metaphorical connotations?
Barry begins wistfully, “On a non-metaphorical level it’s about the human being. The human being, who is slowly destroying the world and making it unrecognisable. We’ve kind of cemented the world over with roads and building and we’re polluting the air.” We share a thoughtful pause, knowing we’re not going to be able to solve this one in the twelve minutes we have left to talk.
He continues, “On another level it’s a comment about the music business – it’s far too hysterical and there’s far too much hype. People think that music is better than it is and more important than it is. I’m glad to see the major label music business slowly dissolve. It’s about times bands were independent, held copyright ownership of their music and got paid properly for their efforts and not exploited by major labels who really couldn’t give a shit about creativity and art.”
Barry is dangerously close to ranting at this point, “All they care about honestly is the dollar. Or the pound. Or the yen. Or whatever.”
With each denomination he seethes vitriol. This is a not a conversation that a young Barry Hyde, who dreamt of making music, would ever imagined he’d have to have. “Money has nothing to do with art. The payment for being a musician is not money.” I would interrupt here if I could get a word in but he addresses my objection anyway. “We get paid and we get paid well,” he says, “but the actual payment is artistic satisfaction development. People need to remember that.”
Seems time to realign myself with artists, I think, just in case he remembers I work for the ‘media’. I bring up a Frank Zappa interview where Frank discusses leaving a label due to a lack of artistic freedom – whether that means selecting the artwork or whatever.
Barry eases up. A comparison to Frank Zappa will do that. “Every step of the way – every creative element that it takes to make an album – it’s all in our hands. We’ve always maintained a lot of control, but when you’re with a major every aspect that you have to finalise becomes more and more difficult to attain because there’s so many opinions floating about.
We’re now free to do whatever we want because there’s not a hundred people in the line of opinions, things get done more quickly and more efficiently. Because of that everything seems a lot fresher and more modern and more original.
People don’t take risks in the major label world at all and I think there needs to be a certain element of gambling and risk taking in music to keep it fresh and to keep it interesting.”
I remark that everyone I speak to in the industry now is facing the reality that the majors are disappearing; that nobody really needs them any more. Everyone’s doing everything themselves – this one’s girlfriend does the artwork, and so on. It seems like more of a community effort amongst artists who appreciate what you’re trying to do. It’s a lot nicer.
“Yeah,” enthuses Barry (oh how I want to call him Baz), “and it’s a lot more punk rock. We’re accountable for any mistakes, even though we’re still learning, I’m sure we’ll make mistakes along the way, but at least they’ll be our mistakes and we can deal with that.” With that threat though, comes a luxury, “We are the masters now so, you know, we satisfy ourselves.”
What a great place to be, I happily state. It is, says Barry. “Oh, it’s fantastic. The contrast between our experiences…It’s just wonderful and we feel like it’s obvious when people hear the album that that’s the position we’re in. That people are getting it. People are hearing the vitality and the independence that we’ve been given by this opportunity.”
We’ll be hearing it in Australia “by the end of the year,” promises Barry. “The schedule is getting more and more terrifying as the album gets more and more credit around the world. Radio Heart has been put straight to the high rotation on Triple J – that’s the first time that’s happened, so you know…’
They’ve only been here once. “That time we actually did a support gig for Queens Of The Stone Age. That was amazing, but their crowd was predominantly tough-looking men with tattoos on their faces and I must admit, they weren’t all that warm to us four skinny, smartly dressed punk rockers. It was tough, but it allowed us to play Splendour, which is one of the more memorable festival gigs we’ve ever done because the crowd were just fantastic for us and we loved it. It made us very keen to come back.”
It can be very difficult for European bands to get down to Australia though, says Barry, “It’s a lot more expensive for starters…” I suggest that they might have to look into a couch surfing tour of Australia if things are a bit tight, which prompts a laugh and a promise, “We’ve got plenty of coin to be spending on flights!” It’s not all bad then.
Click here for FasterLouder’s exclusive album stream of The Futureheads’ This Is Not The World.
