The Vaccines

Wed 3rd Aug, 2011 in Features

Fresh from appearance at Splendour In The Grass, Freddie Cowan, guitarist of The Vaccines joins us to talk ahead of their first Australian headline shows. Having already toured much of the globe successfully Cowan is particularly happy about the latest leg of the tour.

So first time in Australia, how are you finding it?
I love it, its unbelievable I just went for a run on the Rushcutters Bay, its absolutely beautiful here, the people are lovely, the foods incredible, I’ve found my home.

How was your Splendour in The Grass experience? I bet you guys are pretty tired by now…
Yeah we’re tired, but we’re used to it you know. We’re tired, but we’re never tired of what we do. I mean Splendour was great, it was the furthest from home we’d ever been and the audience was huge, and had a great response, it’s kind of a mind-fuck sometimes when you go to the other side of the world and people are singing your songs and wearing your t-shirts. Yeah it was just a real beautiful day.

How does your experience with our festivals and crowds compare to that with some of Europe’s larger ones like, Glastonbury and T in the Park?
Well I always kind of like to think, well not like to think, but realistically we are a few months behind here, six months or more in terms of familiarity with the band. People don’t know us as well as they do back in the UK, so it’s difficult to compare the two. Especially the audience reaction, you know T in The Park was just madness, I don’t know… I think festivals all over the world are kind of very similar, same sort of mentality, but its much more relaxed down here than in the UK.

Did you get amongst the crowd and watch or were you more behind the scenes?
No we always get amongst the crowd, I think it’s nice before we play anywhere we like to watch a few bands, have a look around and get a feel of the festival.

So who was your favourite act from Splendour?
Umm… Elbow were really good, I’ve seen them many times. I’m just trying to think of the name of this Australia band I saw… Cloud Control. Who else… The Vines, I’ve been a big Vines fan for a while, they were really good. I’m just trying to think of the name of this one band I saw, that I cant remember the name of they played the main stage a couple of acts before us but they were really good… anyway Kaiser Chiefs were great, I mean we saw loads of great acts, funny enough I didn’t make it to the other stage because it’s miles away, its really odd isn’t it? Takes like half an hour to really get over there!

Now I can imagine there were quite a lot of ego’s at Splendour, with the likes of Kanye and Chris Martin – even though they were there at different times. Was there any sort standoffs that you guys witnessed, any sort of diva drama, or was everyone just generally happy to be in each other’s company?
[Laughs]… I’m a massive fan so I kind of feel bad, but there were some problems with the catering, and I saw Jarvis Cocker looking quite unhappy because he didn’t have his dinner on time, but I’m a huge fan, so he can’t really do anything wrong in my eyes.

How did you find Pulp?
Oh they were great, I can safely say they were the band of the summer, all over the world you know, the put on the best performances in the UK, they were the band of Glastonbury, and they were the band of T in The Park.

You haven’t really been around all that long, having only formed last year, how does it feel to have experienced such a meteoric rise in a short amount of time?
It feels quite strange, we don’t really think about it too much, we have enough to really occupy our minds day to day and we try not to think about the past. We just try to think about the present and think forward.

The Vaccines seem to be the ‘it’ band on everyone’s lips this year, the next Strokes or Arctic Monkeys were the labels being thrown around. You gained quite a lot of hype, even before your album had been released, particularly from the NME, which can be a double-sided sword, does it ever get to the point where its just like “shut up and let us play”? Did it ever put unnecessary pressure on you?
Umm… no because we always had the attitude of just shut up and play, we never really thought about that stuff , we never read it, we never payed any attention to it, it was just something that happened in a world we didn’t really exist in you know? People were talking about us being this next thing and we were in the back of a car and playing shitty venues, so it was like it was happening in something we weren’t really in… While we were a benefactor of it to some extent, we’re kind of passed that now, the album is out and people can make their own minds up.

You have recently been on tour with the Arctic Monkeys They seem like they’d be fun to be around, can you give me an insight on what it was like to tour with such a well known group?
Well they were the first band we ever supported so we went and we’d kind of just finished a really successful headline tour in the UK and we kind of a bit cocky, a bit on top of it. And we went and did our first gig with them and they came on stage and just blew us out the water. It was a real schooling you know? You see a band that’s done it for that long and it was a real education, and by the end of the tour we learnt so much from watching them every night, just the mentality of that band and how they go out together every night, they’re all best friends, they’re just a great band to tour with and they taught us really valuable lessons about what it means to be a band, and how to survive as a band.

Now they were in a similar position to you in terms of “this band is the next big thing” did they offer you any wise words?
Well it wasn’t so much as wise words about that initial period because I don’t think they payed any more attention to it than we did. They were consciously working against it, where as are we just nonchalant about it. But I think it was just the attitude within a team of people that’s what’s important, from the singer to the drummer, from the drummer to the guitar tech. It’s about everyone just having a really good mentality and having a good work ethic and just being cool people really.