Interview
with Chris Hawkins on BBC 6, 18th March 2016
Thank you to Laura Meneghetti for this great job to write down the interview!
Chris. And
it’s Chris Hawkins, good afternoon,
Infra-red met this afternoon here on 6 Music and I’m delighted to
welcome our guest this afternoon to the show. Now: 20 years since the release
of Placebo’s debut album: good afternoon Brian Molko!
Brian. Hi
Chris!
C. How are
you doing?
B.I was
perfectly fine and then I heard the news and now I’m a little bit depressed!
Uhuhuh
C. Do you
avoid the news when you can?
B. Well... I used to be a news junkie but I
found that it just made me..angry...and I was being really affected by it, so I
thought I tried an experiment and cut the news out of my life and subsequently
I’ve noticed that I’ve been happier!
C. How long
has that experiment been going on for, then?
B. oh, a
couple of years now...
C. And you
go on successfully in your mission?
B. I do
scan the front page of The Guardian online, probably, Y’know ..and that’s
about it, really. I use it more for the
culture section.
C. I think
you’re living in a better world as a result!
B. Ahahah
C. Right in
from of me I’ve got a pile of your vinyl here, it’s beautiful, every Placebo
has been reissued to celebrate the Twenty years anniversary of the band. We
should start at the beginning, and, in fact, to the period before your first record
came out, and how you came you go to school to Luxembourg? Why?
B. Because
my father had a job there!
C. As
simple as that?!
B. Yeah!
C.When did
the band start to take shake? I think it was a couple of years before the
record, wasn’t it?
B. Yeah, it
was in 1994..Uhm...I can’t remember the exact day but I bumped into an old
schoolmate who wasn’t actually a friend of mine at school, but I recognized him,
in a tube station and he had a guitar strapped to his back. I called out his
name and it was Stefan Olsdal, my partner in the band and we didn’t know at the
time but it was the day that our lives changed forever.
C. Yeah,
absolutely, your life...Do you think this was what you were always meant to do?
B.Probably..Uhm...
Well, I was very interested in the dramatic arts, Y’know, since I was a young
child and I came to London at 17 to study that at university but by the time I
graduated ..I went... I had a sort of epiphany, I just sort of went, Y’know,
“Man! All I wanna do is play in a band!” so I decided to do everything I could
to not get a job until I got a record deal and two and a half years later of
living on the dole which I consider my artistic grant which I have paid back
many times over in taxes, yup...I don’t know if it’s manifest destiny or it was
my fate or whatever...We got a record deal and off we went. But our career in
the music scene happened...was already happening in 1995, early 1996, we were
already touring...Uhm...And, for example, opening for the dearly departed David
Bowie, for example, before we’d released our first album.
C.
Yeah..How did that happen, Brian?
B.
Well...It’s all down to Morrissey. I got Morrissey to thank for that!
C. Uhm..Ok...Explain
B. Well,
Morrissey was opening for David Bowie...Uhm...and one day he decided that he
wanted to go home and see his mum, so he got on the tour bus, told the driver
to drive to his mum’s house and left all his band behind and left Bowie without
a support act and recently we had the same agent at that time and he had played
him our demo tape and Bowie liked the song Nancy Boy and he told his agent
“What about those Nancy Boys? Those Nancy Boys over there. They do it!”. And we
jumped at the chance. We learnt a great deal. We went from playing a couple of
hundred people to play arenas... Y’know...Before we even released our first
album...He was very much a mentor and offered this tremendous opportunity very early
on.
C. What was
your relationship with him like?
B. Well..
Y’know... we hung out, we spent time with each other, he always had time for
me...Uhm..Y’know... once you get over...Once I got over the initial state of
being star-struck, he was very good at making you comfortable around him...and
Y’know... Just sit around and have a chat and I just tried to glean as much wisdom by osmosis from him.
C. What do
you think you did learn from him?
B.
Well..Y’know... I learnt...He was a very early champion of
technology...Uhm...so I learned not to be afraid of that, he was a great
reader. He advised me to how I was to make sure I had plenty of books with me
on tour......and...
c. What
about in terms of performance?
B. Well.. I
got to watch him every night..Y’know... and it was truly magnificent. There
were times when, literally, I would sincerely break down into tears. On one
tour he was doing a cover of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” and playing the saxophone
and..yeah..that would usually reduce me to tears...Uhm... and he do out-of-the-box
things with his performances and he’s very famous for it. When we were on tour
then, he had people side stage translating the lyrics into sign language, for
example...So yeah... Never a dull moment...
C. A true
inspiration, of course. What would you remember then..That was around the time your
first album coming out. What do you remember about that time, 1996, other than being
David Bowie, who probably overshadowed most of the rest of your life of that
time...
B. I just
remember a kind...a sense of naivetรฉ mixed with bravado and supreme confidence,
Y’know. But also this kind of feeling that, Y’know, that we sort of tricked
somebody into giving us a record deal and we were gonna get found out any
minute but looks like we never did, so...
C. Still
not been found, are you?! You’ve inspired stories about the Mid-nineties on the
show here and of course this was the time of feel-good of guitar of Brit Pop,
but you were something a bit different,
weren’t you?
B. We stuck
out like a sore thumb!
C. I was
trying to be polite, to put it mildly...
B. Which
was great!I mean, I supposed we garnered a lot of attention as a consequence of
that but..yeah... I mean.. we were..very... the polar opposite, end-of-spectrum
to the kind of laddishness and
football-cheering kind of feel of Brit Pop. We were doing a lot of
cross-dressing at the time and I became very much a political statement for us
and so..yeah... we were very different and...
C. Did you
like any of the Brit Pop sounds that you were hearing?
B. Not
really, to be honest! Uhm... It’s a ...But... In all Blur-versus-Oasis thing I was
always definitely on Blur side...If I
had to choose a side...Uhm...
C. You’ve
picked a track for me to play now, we’ll talk some more in a few moments, you’ve picked for me Pure Morning, which is a
great favour. Why would you go for this one in particular, Brian?
B.
Wel..uhm...Because it’s probably gonna be the second time I’ve heard it in
about seven or eight years...Uhm.. And we’re doing a tour, in the Uk, this
winter, this December, and we’re gonna be playing a lot of...well...let me put
it this way: we’re quite well-known for not playing our more commercially successful
materials of which Pure Morning and Nancy Boy are, Y’know, two examples. And
because it’s our 20-year anniversary we’re going out with, Y’know, the modus
operandi of just basically pleasing the fans and kind of giving them what they
want... So we’re gonna be playing songs that we basically swore we never we’re
gonna play again.
C.Is that
because you take you’re growing not to like the two in particular image?
B. Well, in
Pure Morning’s case I like the music but I don’t really like the lyrics. I
think I could have done better...Uhm...And Nancy Boy...It just... For me, now I
guess, I feel I sort of got out of it...out of that sentiment, that hedonistic
abandon that Nancy Boy is about. I find it a little embarrassing... Really...well..But
it’s gonna be fresh for us, because we haven’t played this song so long and the
fans are helper ...are gonna love it...
 |
| Picture by Rox |
PURE
MORNING
C. Brian
Molko is my guest this afternoon. Brian, let’s get your immediate reaction to
hearing that for the first time, you think,
in a good few years, Pure Morning, how did that feel?
B. It felt
pretty good...Uhm...It’s... I was a little bit surprised by how modern it
sounds...I mean, it’s 18 years old.
C. That’s
incredible. That could be released now and sound current...
B.
Yeah...that’s encouraging!
C. The
reactions to it this afternoon! My computer is gonna melt up! “Nancy Boy, Pure morning – says Robe here - for any misunderstood alternative kid growing
up in the mid 90s”... I guess Brian that was something of the point
B. Well...I
mean those are the people we identified with because those are the people that
we were...uhm... as adolescents. So..I
think we ended up being a band, Y’know, the band for outsiders by outsiders.
C. Max here
says “loving hearing Brian Molko this afternoon!”; Kevin “He’s saying a lot of
interesting things. I didn’t know about their starts so thank you for sharing
this, Brian”. Here’s Ken who says “ Placebo have been a constant in my life
since their first release. There are very few bands who you feel write songs
just for you. Placebo are that for me even now aged 40” says Ken. And it would be diminishing not to mention
PlaceboFans Uk: you’ve been very busy this afternoon on Twitter and I know it
would mean a whole full lot for them, Brian, if you said a little hello to
them.
B. Ok, Yeah,
Sure!
C. It’s all
Placebo fans and particularly the Manchester branch, this is, of PlaceboFans Uk.
B. My
sincerest greetings and salutations to the Manchester branch of PlaceboFans,
blah blah blah....
C. Pure
Morning was from Without you I’m nothing, Brian, and it’s one of the complete
set of Placebo albums that had been reissued for the band’s twentieth
anniversary and when that album came out you really..you were riding hype. How
did you enjoy your success through the years. Have you been able to make the
most of it?
B. Yeah, absolutely,
I mean... from completely embracing the lifestyle to, Y’know, suffering from it
and coming up the other side, really, I mean we have accumulated so many
rock&roll clichรฉs you just have to watch Spinal Tap and y’know... It’s all
real, Y’know.
C. Would
you say you had tough times along the way, despite the success?
B. Yeah!
The band was a band that sort of run on tension... Y’know...between the
members...and that started off very very early on. We’re presently on our
fourth drummer, for example! So...Yeah... it’s sometimes been quite difficult
really...but Y’know, you can only do that for so long and I guess about 20
years, we had enough of just like the
struggle really.
C. If you
could do it all over again, would you?
B. Oh,
absolutely!
C. Would
you do it the same way?
B. Uhm...I
don’t know, I don’t know, I really don’t. Because, I mean, that was the
knowledge I had at the time, that was the influences that I had, at the time...
If I was to go back in time, it would probably end up being the same; if I was
to do it now, it would probably be different.
C. Sure.
Thanks for being so honest this afternoon, Brian.
B. No
problem! I’m trying to be pathologically honest!
C. The tour
starts on October 13th: this is a big tour, you’re gonna need to get
in shape for this, Brian, not that you’re not, by the way! But on October 13th
this Placebo tour to mark 20 years of first album coming out starts in Denmark
and then it climaxes on a number of dates in the UK: Wembley Arena on December
15Th. And all of Placebo’s albums have been reissued. All of them,
Meds is out now and Meds comes out the 8th of next month and from
that album I got Broken promise which features Michael Stipe. Before we say
goodbye, how did you hook up with Michael Stipe?
B. Well, we
knew him from playing festivals with REM and I think the idea came up when we
were slightly inebriated and thought “Yeeeeh, Let’s get Michael Stipe” thing
and fully expected him to say no and he said yes and then we started shivering
in our boots, basically, but he was extremely gracious and made us feel very
comfortable. These are very lovely men.
C. As are
you! Thanks Brian, thank you very much for sparing the time this afternoon:
it’s been a real pleasure, thank you.
B. Thank
you Chris!
C. Brian
Molko from Placebo and here they are now: Broken Promise.
