Don’t like us? You’ll have to lump us
CHRIS EDWARDS doesn’t care what the haters think. In fact, Kasabian’s bass player rather enjoys splitting opinion down the middle. “We don’t want to be Coldplay, one of those bands that make elevator music. If we wanted everyone to like us we’d be writing songs like Chris Martin does — they’re not going to change the world. You can’t hate ’em, can’t love ’em. We would rather push boundaries.”
Debate has raged since Kasabian were unveiled as headliners of this year’s Glastonbury festival in the UK. To detractors they’re one of the worst things to befall rock and roll in the past decade: Oasis minus the wit and fractious comedy. Billy Bragg, the laureate of British protest folk, spoke for many recently in dismissing Kasabian as the real life equivalent of spoof headbangers Spinal Tap.
“They have an important role to play: they are there to remind us how true Spinal Tap was,” he said. “I’m not a fan, but if you read their interviews as if it was dialogue from Spinal Tap, it’s very entertaining.”
To devotees, these perceived weaknesses are in fact Edwards’ and co’s greatest strength. Kasabian — named after Charles Manson acolyte Linda Kasabian — are ridiculous in just the way stadium rock bands are supposed to be ridiculous. They write songs about Vlad the Impaler, mad monk Rasputin and the scary dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. You can be humourless and roll your eyes — or you can buy into the swaggering silliness.
You certainly can’t fault their ambition: their Mercury nominated 2009 LP West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum was a meditation on the relationship between art and madness: the cover art featured band members dressed variously as Napoleon and Vasco de Gama. As Edwards says, you don’t get that with Coldplay.
“It’s like that scene in Back to the Future where Michael J Fox rocks out and the crowd is just staring,” he continues. “He looks at the crowd and says ‘I guess you guys aren’t ready for that. The people who don’t get what we do — maybe, in five years’ time, they’ll pick up one of our albums and go, ‘Oh yeah, that was really good’.”
Still, Edwards doesn’t exactly debunk Billy Bragg’s Spinal Tap comparison as he reaches for another metaphor. “We’re like those geniuses back in the day — you have this idea about gravity, everyone is going ‘What are you about out?’ he says. Later, they realise he was one of the smartest guys around. We’d rather be the mad scientist rather than the people who go to work every day and believe the world is flat.”
The Glastonbury headliner is part of the campaign promoting new record 48:13 (named for the LP’s running time). The first public airing of the new songs was in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Derry, which the band visited on a short tour in May. They’d love to say they fell in love with Ireland— in fact, they were in and out of the venues so quickly they had little chance to appreciate the surroundings.
“We did like, four gigs in a week. You’re in, soundcheck, a few hours off — then on stage and back to the tour bus. We had half a day in Limerick — the rest of the shows were a case of the next one, then the next one... We were excited to play though — man, the Irish people didn’t let us down.”
It’s rumoured they brought with them a sound rig worth £1m. “Well I wouldn’t say a million. But yeah we brought over a truck with our own speakers. No disrespect to the smaller venues — we like to make an impact on our shows. When the audiences come we want them to know that it was just the best gig ever in that room.”
One wonders what Kasabian thought of Cork Opera House, a relatively genteel spot not renowned for its roof shaking rock shows.
“Actually playing those sort of spaces isn’t a big novelty. If we tour America, that’s the scale of venue we tend to be booked into. We’ve gone beyond that level in the UK. In a lot of other places, it’s where we are still at. It’s fantastic — the intimacy is wonderful. Tickets are probably hard to come by, so you get a crowd who is really happy to be there. Everyone is up for it.”
On the subject of America, a lengthy trek to the US promoting their last album, 2011’s Velociraptor! reportedly brought Kasabian to the verge of blows. Singer Tom Meighan has described their (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to break the US as the unhappiest period in the history of the band. Edwards sort of agrees.
“The first three or four weeks were great. The thing is, we all have families now. We were thrown on a bus and sent around America for seven weeks. Tom had made some comments… what I will say is we hardly ever have arguments in this band. In our 12 years you can count on one hand the number of rows. Nonetheless, to spend that much time together is testing — we were tired, some of us were eager to go home.
“I think it will stand for us. Come on, we got through two months in America — what else can they throw at us?”
In recent interviews the band have made much of their family-friendly new image. Once renowned for Gallagher-levels of scrapping and hedonism, nowadays Kasabian are all fathers and in long term relationships. Smiling, Edwards points out that this doesn’t mean they have calmed down completely. When left off the leash, they still have their moments of mayhem.
“I don’t want to say too much — but we have that desire to go out and have fun. Fair enough we’re older — the energy levels dwindle.
“That said, we make a point of enjoying life. This job is difficult and if the only moment of entertainment is your hour and a half on stage at night, it would be very hard. If you don’t make room for fun, touring will beat you down.”
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