⭐𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐀𝐍 𝐌𝐎𝐋𝐊𝐎 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐖 𝐨𝐧 𝐁𝐁𝐂 𝟔 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐂 𝐑𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐎 𝟐𝟎𝟎𝟗 (𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝟐)⭐

Here’s the second part of Brian's interview with Steve Lamacq from May 2009 (you may remember the first one I shared in my last Thursday post). Besides discussing then new 𝑩𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒍𝒆 𝑭𝒐𝒓 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒖𝒏 album, Steve offered Brian kind of a game regarding some of the festivals Placebo used to perform. Again, the conversation turned to be deeply meaningful yet absolutely relaxed and funny at times.

Photo credit: Rock for People Festival, Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic, July 6, 2009

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: Saturday night in Sheffield! Absolutely loved the new stuff, it sounded really vital. Thank you for a great night!
And Zoe from Liverpool says ‘I have a question for Brian, do you know the future setlist of the tour? Will you be playing the songs off the first album as well as this new album?’
It must be quite a challenge now - isn't it? – to try to fit all these pieces of the puzzle together into a coherent setlist?
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: It is, it is, and we've always had a very kind of love-hate relationship with our back catalogue. It’s always been kind of a struggle to get a set together of the tunes of our own that we actually like enough to play on an evening. Now, there’s an album six, we’ve got enough material that we can kind of keep everybody happy, I suppose, ourselves and the audience too. But we will be playing the stuff from the first album.

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: So, material from the new album… there’s a track on the album which is called The Never-Ending Why which is a really rallying cry! It’s like a rebel song, it’s like really big, almost old-fashioned new wave song in the song.
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Yeah, I mean…

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: Is it in the list?
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Yeah, it’s definitely in the list! I mean it’s a song I guess about the questions that we all have that never get answered. ‘Why there’s so much pain, suffering, and tragedy in the world?’ I guess the message of that song is that ‘Well, you can spend an entire life looking for those answers and you may never get them… And then it’s gone… and isn’t that better just accept that and go on with your life?’

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: Are you too analytical at times in yourself, about certain things? Is there a slight OCD [Obsessive-compulsive disorder]?
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Absolutely, I am a complete mental masturbator, you know, I’m somebody who has too much to think. It kind of describes me very well. (𝑙𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑠)

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: Because it’s another song, Devil In The Details, which makes me think about that.
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Yes, absolutely, that’s the voices in your head. I have a joke about, like some people have a little angel and a demon on a shoulder where I have two demons and there’s some shouting match going on.

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: Bickering demons!
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Yeah, yeah!

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: Would be nice to spend a week in your head. (𝑙𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑠)
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐 𝑙𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑠

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: You’ve just mentioned live gigs. This is very important point about the band, I mean the popularity of the group through various different countries all around, particularly all around Europe. You often do a myriad of festivals, again, to a lot of which I’ve been. So can I try out this?
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Go for it!

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: I'm just going to give you a list, some of the names of the festivals you're doing.
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Ok.

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: What’s one sentence which describes these festivals? As I mentioned you’ve probably done some of these before. So, off the top of your head, what do you think of when I say ‘May 30th, Pinkpop’?
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Pinkpop… it’s always a very eclectic bill at Pinkpop, it’s in Holland and it’s strange because it’s a mixture of bands that you'd never find anywhere else.

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: Okay, Rock am Ring?
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Oh, big German behemoth of a festival! (𝑙𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑠)

Photo credit: Ullstein Bild

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: Nova Rock? What is, where’s Nova Rock?
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Nova Rock is in Austria and that's a heavy rock festival. That’s like a festival that Metallica - I don’t know if Slipknot are playing this year – it’s that stuff kind of festival.

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: How do you get those festivals right now?
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Those festivals scare me, absolutely scare me. I always feel like the gay one in a class at a festival like that.

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: Do you have crew envy? Because I measured that Metallica come along with fourteen buses of people, do they?!
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Well, they do. They also come along with these sort of invisible barriers that nobody’s allowed to cross, that kind of thing! They have like a force field around them wherever they go, so you never get close enough to Metallica to sort of get envious. (𝑙𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑠)

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: Rock Wave?
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Rock Wave is in Athens.

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: Wow, sounds good!
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Yeah, and that’s a fantastic festival. We always have a great time there, it’s really warm and the Greek audience is a very demonstrative.

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: And so, one more I think. I like the way that most, nearly all, of these festivals apart from Reading which is used to be called Reading Rock over here, we don’t have ‘rock’ in a title of any our festivals. But anywhere else you go in Europe, ‘rock’ has to be a simplicity part of the title.
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Absolutely!

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: So, Rock for People?
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Ah I knew you’re going to choose that one! I think that one is in Czechoslovakia, isn’t it? I think that we haven't played that yet but, you know, much more has been heard with the relation to the title: ‘Rock for People? Like Rock for Cows or Rock for Pigs?’ (𝑙𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑠)

Photo credit: Petrklappercom 

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: Anyways, you’re playing soon Rock for People, you might be listening online, you might get to know the festival, do you drop us a line? [𝐼𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑒𝑑, 𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑏𝑜 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑒𝑑 𝑅𝑜𝑐𝑘 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑃𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑠𝑜𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝ℎ𝑜𝑡𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑠𝑒𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑜𝑤 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑛 𝑒𝑥𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑓𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑎𝑙]
Highlights of your own and highlights of this new album: because I prefer this record to Meds, this latest record maybe because it’s more…
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: That’s ok.

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: …a coherent type of record. And also maybe just because there’s like a glimmer of sunshine.
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Absolutely! We have a tendency not to take a lot of decisions before we go into the studio. But this time around, Stefan and I did have a discussion about the fact that we felt that Meds was perhaps, at least emotionally, one of our darkest records and it didn’t offer a great deal of hope and was perhaps misrepresenting us as people. We really thought that this time around we really wanted to do something that did offer a glimmer of hope, a little bit more upbeat and optimistic because of that.

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: As soon as you’re saying this, it seems to be it poses some questions, it’s kind of reflective in places that you seem to come with some sort of conclusion ‘I don’t want to be over here, I don’t know where I want to be’ and it finishes with the track called Kings Of Medicine. But as a whole, if there’s one thing that ties it all together, it’s almost like an old saying ‘What doesn’t kill you, can only make you stronger’. That’s what this record feels like.
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Yes, I feel very much like a bit of a survivor I guess, within the industry and also as a human being, having what I’ve been through the past 15 years which have been kind of crazy and quite aborted for the band. And I think that will to survive, that will to carry on, is what’s important and significant.

𝑺𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒒: It’s a great place to finish it! [...] Thank you so much Brian!
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒐: Thank you Steve!
(𝐵𝐵𝐶 6 𝑀𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑅𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑜, 𝑀𝑎𝑦 11𝑡ℎ, 2009)

Transcription by Olga
Post by Olga