Becoming More Keen On Keane...
There's a saying in showbiz, that you should never meet your heroes in case they let you down. Well, I'd like to add that the opposite is also true. Never meet people whose work you're not that bothered about, because they might win you over in other ways.
I mean, how am I supposed to maintain a good head of steam about Keane and their posh-boy pianola guffola, if a brief telephone call is all it takes to convince me that drummer Richard is as thoroughly pleasant and decent a fella as you'd ever hope to clap ears on.
All I had to do was talk to him for a short while about the re-release of their debut album 'Hopes And Fears' and how the past five years in the public eye has changed the band. Surely my mild prejudices and not-that-deeply-held ambivalence wouldn't collapse in such a short time? Surely I could keep my inner snarky blogmonster alive, even if he does reveal a huge admiration for my beloved Ting Tings?
Well, it seems not, as this interview transcript clearly demonstrates...
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ChartBlog: When was the last time you listened to 'Hopes And Fears' all the way through?
Richard: Actually, I haven't listened to the whole thing straight through for a very long time. But we did listen to a few tracks a bit on the tourbus. The last thing we did was a tour of North America and Canada and Tim played a couple of songs on the back of the bus, late one drunken night, and I was amazed at how fresh it sounded. I think I had in my head an idea of how it sounds and it was a little bit better!
ChartBlog: You didn't listen back appalled and thinking "I had no idea I was doing that, and I have no idea why I was doing that..."
Richard: To be honest, when you listen back to it compared to the way we play now, I think we've played something like 500 gigs in the intervening period between now and when it came out, and the way you play songs changes over the course of that length of time. But it sounds relatively politely played, rather than us hammering the songs as loud as we can in the studio or whatever. But I guess that's the way a band develops, so I guess that's pretty interesting...
ChartBlog: [long pause] ...er, yeah! Sorry, I was just...did you say you've done 500 gigs in five years? That's an average of 100 gigs a year...one every three days...or thereabouts. That's quite busy, isn't it?
Richard: Yeah, that's about right. I only know this because we've got an archive of all the gigs we've done on our website, and I was ichatting with the guy who runs our website recently and he said "yeah, you've got 570 gigs in our archive". So I'm guessing that 70 or more of them will have been done before we released 'Hopes And Fears'.
ChartBlog: Sheesh! Could you be the only band in the history of popular music to have a band member collapse with ACTUAL nervous exhaustion?
Richard: It is a lot of gigs but...we like playing live. Which I guess is a good job.
ChartBlog: And you can afford a bass player now...
Richard: Well yeah! For the last year we've had a guy called Jesse Quin with us. He's been with us since before we started 'Perfect Symmetry'. He's a lovely man, I actually play the drums in his band sometimes.
ChartBlog: Yeah, cos what you need is more gigs! Still, he must take the pressure off Tim's right hand...
Richard: Yeah, that's the thing about the development of the band, you try new things.
ChartBlog: There was never any suggestion that you would take up a multitude of simultaneous instruments to try and lend Tim a hand?
Richard: Erm...we have talked about it! [laughs] I think my total lack of musicianship probably counts in my favour there.
ChartBlog: So you escaped Tim pointing at the Ting Tings and yelling "SEE? HE controls the loops and keeps the drums going, now HELP ME OUT HERE!"
Richard: I did go and see them, and I've got to say Jules is pretty impressive the way he does all that. I'm in awe of the way they run their show. I love that there's this two-piece band who do all this stuff on loops and it is actually live. Cos so many people would just press the space bar on iTunes.
ChartBlog: That's what made their first Jools Holland appearance so amazing, cos it's Jools Holland, it has to have been live. They don't let people sing along to backing tapes...
Richard: Exactly. I've seen them a few times. In fact while we were mixing the record Tim and I went along to see them in LA. Cos Tim had been banging on about how great he thought that album was. And I was saying "I like it, but I can't quite get my teeth into it", and then I saw it live and it just clicked. For the entirety of the 'Perfect Symmetry' tour, we used 'That's Not My Name' as the song that we had played on the PA just before we came on.
ChartBlog: Ahh...that kind of works for Keane, doesn't it? Cos that song is all about people feeling misrepresented and devalued, and you've had that ride with the critics and people like me. Do you ever crave a bit more respect?
Richard: I think it took us a long time to get used to the idea that we were never going to be critical darlings. In fact our most recent album got much better reviews that we were expecting, and in a way, at that point it was a shame because we had finally reached the point where we didn't care!
I don't think you can ever claim that it has no effect on you, but definitely I would never have it round the other way. We have fans that travel around the world with us. We got to Australia, there were some British fans that travelled there, and then they showed up in Moscow!
ChartBlog: Just to hear you play the drums, Richard.
Richard: I should probably give the other two a little bit of credit.
ChartBlog: They're not here, they'll never know.
Richard: No...where are they? What are they doing?
ChartBlog: Well Tim's a busy man.
Richard: Yes.
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Comment number 1.
At 10th Nov 2009, Jerry wrote:I dont care what the critics say! Great band! Their videos are awesome as well. They did two verisons for their debut single . Always thought the first version was the best video for that song.
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Comment number 2.
At 10th Nov 2009, flatknees wrote:well hopes and fears is brilliant and i am a big fan of under the iron sea.. but perfect symmetry, while catchy had no staying power with me..
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Comment number 3.
At 10th Nov 2009, Tony Gee wrote:Personally I've never been much of a Keane fan, although I admire some of their songs. But Richard sounds like a thoroughly decent chap and clearly appreciates the support of his fans. Working as a teacher I've had several pupils ask me to teach them to play Keane tunes so they are obviously very influential.
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Comment number 4.
At 10th Nov 2009, BCingU wrote:For me Keane are an interesting group, which is more then I can say for Coldplay or Snow Patrol, by the way can anyone remember the last good song any of these two bands have written?. Keane's last two albums have been quite dark especially Under The Iron Sea which sounded like a contemporary version of the Beach Boys Surf's Up, compared to similar type bands.
But even if you don't like Keane one thing you can't knock them for is playing LIVE, which surprises most people, they have a certain energy about them. With the last album which again is musically great, I think they may get dropped as sales were not too high, which is a shame as their were some memorable songs, but in some ways the new album is a cross breed between Duran Duran and Aha from the 80's.
If you like that kinda thing!
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