Here Come The Drones (Interview)

Australian band The Drones will be in New Zealand for their first tour this month. The 13th Floor tracked down lead singer and guitarist Gareth Liddiard (aka Gaz) for a chat. He talked about touring with Neil Young, recording their new album, I See Seaweed and his hero, Johnny Thunders.

You can listen to the conversation here:

Or, you can read a transcription of the interview here:

MD: So you’re on your way for your way for your first full length New Zealand tour?

Gaz: Yeah.

MD: I saw you guys open for Neil Young & Crazy Horse. What was that like opening for Neil young and getting your first taste of a New Zealand audience?

Gaz: Um,It was amazing. It was totally surreal really. We’d done four shows on the east coast of Australia and yeah touring New Zealand was fucking weird. And then it sort of got weird because it got normal. It was like we’d do our show, pack up, head off and then we go watch Neil .

MD: Another day, another Neil Young show.

Gaz: Yeah, that’s what it was like, it was weird.

MD: To be perfectly honest the first time I really listened to you guys was seeing you open for Neil. When I got the album I See Seaweed I was very surprised at what I heard. There seemed to be a big difference between what I heard when you opened for Neil and what I heard on record. So I was hoping you could possibly address that because I was stunned.

Gaz: I think we only played one song off the new album. I think the new album had been released but we just hadn’t rehearsed and learned any of the songs. The Neil Young thing was such last minute. The Neil Young thing we go it at last minute at like the day before the gig or the tour we got the word that we could be on it so we hadn’t rehearsed. I mean but we’ve got about 80 songs and someone says “What do you sound like?” it’s like c’mon who fucking knows. It could be anything from perverted country and western to most messed up noise, experimental music. And that was only a half hour set before Neil so it was hard to get everything in there.

MD: I know you guys have been around a while. When you come here this will be the first time you guys are doing your own shosw in New Zealand, do you guys tailor or change anything about your live show? I know you were playing in Australia over the last few months and now you’re coming to New Zealand. Do you pretty much do the same thing.

Gaz: Yeah we will. The New Zealand thing will be at the end of the Australian tour so whatever we’re doing we’ll be good at it by then. (laughs)

MD: I was reading some of the reviews of the shows you did in Australia and words like menacing and confronting and brutal and cathartic were used. I was wondering if you felt that way about the way you deal with an audience and what your shows are like for you.

Gaz: Um, well yeah. I mean once upon a time it was worse. I mean in our 20’s we were a lot more scary. If we were scary, we were scary as. The scary or confronting thing like, when I grew up, that’s kinda what rock n roll was. It’s not like that for me, it’s just sort of normal. Now rock n roll has been so castrated and it’s so goody goody two shoes. Once upon the time it was like The Stooges or it you know it was like a hostile act, you know…Ramones.

MD: I know what you mean. I kind of detected a bit of New York Dolls sound in A Moat You Can Stand In. Is that a band you listened to at all?

Listen to A Moat You Can Stand In from I See Seaweed here:

Gaz: Yea, I have listened to all the New York Dolls stuff but the Johnny Thunders album, So Alone, and all that, that’s some of my favourite stuff.

MD: Do you draw upon that stuff when you’re playing live? Do you think about that, think I’ve gota do something different?

Gaz: Um, well not really. You’ve gotta try and do your own thing but you shouldn’t overdo it. It’s impossible to be completely original. But you’ve gotta let you try. But then say like the Johnny Thunders thing, the main thing you would take from that and you put it across your whole thing. His voice, he sounds quite vulnerable but at the same time he sounds kinda scary. And that’s the attraction of Johnny Thunders. If he was only one of those things he wouldn’t be timeless you know, and that goes for all sorts of different stuff. There’s always a duality and that’s the main thing you take, rather than say try and emulate his guitar playing or yeah you know what I mean like it’s just a duality.

MD: So how do you get that across when you’re in the recording studio? It’s one thing to be in front of people live, screaming your guts out. When you’re recording is it more difficult to get that across?

Gaz: Yeah I mean it is it’s kind of…it’s not black magic but yeah there is an element, it’s hard to explain and it’s impossible to know what you’re doing while you’re doing it. You’ve gotta keep trying it and eventually it’ll happen. It’s not a cut and dry process but yeah it’s a, um I don’t know what the word is. It’s it’s…

MD: Well say with a track like the title track, I See Seaweed, were there a lot of takes? Did you spend a lot of time recording that? It’s a pretty incredible track but I’d be curious as to how it got to be to the point where it was on the record.

Gaz: Um now that didn’t take that long. I mean that was pretty much written, you know, that was the first time I had written and it was pretty much together. It was just a matter of showing everyone which bits go where and then yeah so that was quite easy. That was the first song we did.

MD: It’s a good way to start.

Gaz: Yeah it was. And then it ended up then first song on the album. And then the last song on the album was the last song we recorded.

MD: Okay, and you got a new keyboard player Steve Hesketh. How has the band changed or evolved with him being a part of it.

Gaz: Uh, well it sorts of makes it easier, it’s easier for me because I’ve been writing for this band forever and its two guitars bass and drums which is like the most stock standard boring set up in musical history. So just to add someone different is nice for me because it gives me a lot of leeway. And then you can kinda, I really like 20^th century classical because it is so truly modern music even though its 100 years old now. So you can kinda of fit elements of that in with the stranger, more weirder chords and progressions and scales. You can do it with the piano because if you do it with the guitar you end up sounding like Yngwie Malmsteen or Joe Satriani. But you can make a piano do that and it sounds perfectly good. So yeah, Stevie was good for me to go into that territory.

MD: Speaking of guitar playing, I was reading someone who was commenting about your particular guitar technique. I haven’t seen you play so I’d be interested on your take on how you approach the instrument. Do you consider yourself somewhat unique in the way you play?

Gaz: Again, to a degree. I wouldn’t say I’m some sort of iconoclast or something like that. I do sound like a bunch of different people but then I guess they sound like a bunch of different people too.

MD: Right

Gaz: It’s just uh, I always thought guitar is a really, it’s loud to begin with. And rock n roll, it’s kind of, if it’s about one thing, it’s about power. And not power as in I want to be the King, but power as in, just fuckin’ raw power, really loud, really brutal. You know that’s what it’s got over all other forms of music, it’s 400 times louder, it’s nastier and it sounds like the street kind of thing. So you know I didn’t pretend that wasn’t happening when I was playing guitar and yeah, just smashing the hell out of it. You know and then sort of juxtapose that with the quite pretty you know Michael Shane kind of bits just because you can do pretty stuff as well. But it’s one of those instruments because it’s like a sax or a piano or a violin. It just sounds good no matter what you do on it. You don’t have to try that hard. It will all kinda do half the work if you let it.

MD: Right. And your lyrics, I mean you’ve got songs with 12 verses on them that go on and on. Do you write a lot? Are you writing all the time? Does it come easily for you? Does it just kind of flow? Do you spend a lot of time on it crafting them?

Gaz: Uh, well I don’t write all the time. I mean I used to sort of write whenever inspiration or whatever you called it popped up. But now I guess the older you kind of get busier so you’ve gotta compartmentalize these things. Like I used to hear Nick Cave saying “Oh I got an office now, I gotta go down there.” I use hear that ten years ago and go what a fucking pussy. But know I do that and I gota like a little space like a bus we have on our property. It’s quite cool. We can go and sit in the bus and write songs. So yeah I do that all the time. But yeah it’s hard. It’s time on your arse. That’s all it is. You just gotta sit there and just nut things out. It’s really, really, really fucking hard. You start with nothing. There’s no song, let alone a good one and you’ve gotta will it into existence. It’s like, it’s fucked.

MD: And I assume it doesn’t get any easier the older you get.

Gaz: No because you get more picky.

MD: And is there a problem with repeating yourself as well?

Gaz: Um you can get that yeah. There’s so much stuff out there in the world. These days it’s even easier to get to it all by the internet. But you don’t only have to read bloody crime novels. You can read about physics. You can read anything or you can read Clue magazine or some garbage celebrity rag or anything. There’s so much different stuff. So you shouldn’t be running out of ideas.

MD: And I get the feeling even though there is a certainly a darker element as to what you write about and how you play, there is also humour injected in a lot of what you do. How important is that? Do you use that to offset the other stuff that’s going on?

Gaz: Yeah, I mean it’s as important as it is in I dunno songs or as it is in real life. Like I don’t walk around moping all day.

MD: That’s good.

Gaz: But yeah I’ve had my ups and downs; everyone has. It’s a weird thing. Life is about denial mainly. If you admitted where your belt came from or where your sneakers came from you’d weep. If you were there seeing them being made you’d go, ‘fuck life is fucked’. If you’re not denying it, the best way to face it is with a bit of laughter so that works the same way in songs. You don’t want sound like fuck ing Bauhaus where it’s just even though I met that guy from Bauhaus and he’s really funny.

MD: Is that Peter Murphy?

Gaz: Yeah, yeah. I was in Austin, Texas sitting outside a hotel. He comes up to me. I’ve heard them but I don’t know what they looked like. Yeah he just bummed a smoke and sat down. And we just yacked, we got on on like a house on fire. He was talking for about an hour and we had some beers. And I said what are you doing here, what do you do? He says “I’m in a band.” I said who with? He said “Bauhaus.” I usually hate you guys but now you rule.

MD: It does make a difference sometimes when you meet somebody and the way you were thinking about it, there’s another way of approaching it I guess.

Gaz: Oh totally,totally…and we’re all on the same team.

MD: That’s the spirit.

Gaz: Yeah, a bit of humour in the mix is good.

MD: Excellent. Alright well thank you for taking time to talk with me.

Click here to watch The Drones’ Mike Noga performing at The 13th Floor.

The Drones will perform live at Auckland’s Kings Arms on Friday, October 4th and at Wellington’s Bar Bodega on Saturday, October 5th. Click here for more details and ticket info.