Today I'm really glad to share with you the interview Brian and Stefan did with the italian journalist Massimo Cotto of Virgin Radio Italia on the occasion of the release of Never Let Me Go.
It was recorded at the Strongroom Studios in London by the end of February, and was broadcasted last March 24th on Virgin Radio Italia, the night before the release of the new album.
Before leaving you to the pleasure of this interview, please allow me to thank Massimo Cotto, on behalf of all of us in Placebo Anyway, as he is not only a great music journalist, with a considerable professional experience like few others, but also a kind, helpful human being.
So, enjoy the reading!
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| Photo Credit: Screenshot from the interview (Virgin Radio TV) |
Massimo: Thank you so much for being with us. I'm so happy to have you here and talk about this new beautiful record.
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Brian/Stefan: Thank you.
Massimo: The first question is for Brian: has your approach to your songwriting changed for this record and in general for all the years?
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Brian: I think particularly with this record. I was a little bit worried about going back to our classic tried and tested ways of songwriting, which kind of involved spending three months in a rehearsal room jamming...uhm...you know, a lot of kind of not making decisions, and just kind of seeing what happened, and a bit more kind of less affair but you know, sort of writing something a bit like...like a band in a room, you know.
This time around I kind of.. I wanted to mess with the process. I wanted to kind of...I was afraid of...you know... I needed something new, a new challenge. I was afraid of not being able to engage with the old process, because we had done it so much before. So the first thing that kind of came to my mind was "Why not do everything backwards!" you know "Why not take the last creative decisions first, and see where that takes us? Why not just invert everything just to push, push me as a writer, and hopefully as a band out of our...our comfort zone, and to try and find a new vitality for us, and a kind of a reason for continuing to do what we do?" And that is to feel I suppose like you are progressing, like you are improving, like you are evolving.
And for me the process is often more enjoyable than the result, so I needed, I needed to put like a kind of...an alienation effect inside, inside the process: make it difficult, make it uncomfortable, make it new so that I wouldn't just kind of fall back on things that I had done before that. And that it would hopefully propel us into...into new sonic territories you know! Naturally as the recording progresses you know these kind of limitations that you put upon yourself you know they as more people get involved, you know, it kind of falls away! But I think this record does remain kind of the one, the most studio creation that we've ever done. Because I'd say for about 70 percent of the time it was just me and Stef, you know.
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| Photo credit: Stromgroom Studios |
Massimo: This record is a great balance between hope and grief, happiness and sorrow...uhm...the necessity of being alone but also stay with other people...at least to me...very powerful but at the same time a little melancholic. Does it make sense to you or?
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Brian: I'd, I'd say a little melancholic is quite an understatement! (Brian laughs, while Stef chuckling) I think there's a great sadness in this record you know, uhm...and there's anger as well you know. But they're very, they're much more connected than, you know, these emotions are much more connected than we think on the surface. Often sadness is anger turned inward, towards yourself, you know.
So, what's important for me is that each song is told from a human perspective, from the emotional perspective. Otherwise especially if you're writing about things like CCTV, surveillance, the environment, freedom, claustrophobia, it runs the risk of becoming polemical or a diatribe, you know. And nobody really wants, I don't think, wants to listen to music you know to be educated. They want to engage and, you know, and have an emotional experience. So for me no matter how political a song may appear on the surface, it needs to be told from a human perspective, the emotion needs to go into it. And because it's told from the point of view of a character, like almost like a charachter in a book or something, you have a freedom with reality, you know, you can create different realities in order to communicate that emotion...but as long as there's a human perspective there, as long as it feels like it's coming from a human place.
Massimo: I always thought that Placebo was not just a band, I mean, not just music, it's just, it's also a band who try to, through music, motivate people to push them to be free, to allow to express themselves, which is something more than music. Do you agree?
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Brian: I would describe those as being side effects, you know (Brian laughs while Stef chuckling), because we never, we never set out to do that. That wasn't our modus operandi at the beginning, you know "let's form a band and try and change people's lives". No, let's form a band and try and change ours, you know. Let's write music that feels vital to us, about what we feel absolutely necessary to express. Now I guess the kind of the repression that we felt as we were kind of growing up, because it was ours, was very very personal. And then when we met again, we realized that we had that feeling of being, being an outsider in common, you know, and so there was two of us. I mean we didn't expect that, that there were hundreds of thousands of other people who had grown up feeling like outsiders as we had, you know. That wasn't a strategy, it was, it was about being given the opportunity to express yourself truthfully, it was about a necessity, a kind of a do or die. If somebody's going to give you a stage, are you going to be your authentic self or are you going to be something else that you think people are looking for? (Stefan nods)
I think it was impossible for us to not be our authentic selves at that point, you know. We needed to express ourselves that way, uhm...but we didn't...we set out to change our lives, not other people's.
I still find it very humbling to think that, that's possible, that a song that we come up with, you know the two of us, can have such an emotional effect on people. It's, it's an extremely privileged position to be in I think, you know, but it's something that we discovered after the fact.
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Photo credit: Stromgroom Studios
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Massimo: But did some way Placebo helped you to find a place in the world, apart from the musical side?
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Stefan: Yeah, I think we were trying to find a place where we belonged, you know. And I don't think we could, we couldn't really find it for a long time, but I think with Placebo we've given ourselves that opportunity to create, to create that place, a place where we can express ourselves, a place where we can kind of be ourselves. And you know, I think that's kind of what we've held on to over all these years and to react to it in a very emotional way: if it feels right then, then it is Placebo, you know. And I think that's kind of with the way we approach making music as well a lot of times, like if we respond to it an emotional way where it feels right then, then it's Placebo.
So there's all these kind of elements, that kind of, you know, makes makes this little world that's that's kind of our world, where you know where else I feel a lot of times where sort of life makes sense.
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Brian: I think, I also think that this on a human level there is enormous value in finding a purpose, in feeling that you have a purpose, you know, and also in feeling understood. Even just by feeling understood by your family or by a small circle of friends but, to create a piece of music or a piece of art, and then to understand that there are thousands of people out there who also understand is an incredible revelation, you know, and it also feeds into your sense your sense of purpose, because then you feel like, well, "I'm achieving something on a human level", you know. And if it's just communicating an emotion which makes one person feel a little bit less alone because they feel like somebody else understands at a time in their lives where they feel the most misunderstood I think there's a great value in that, you know but again a side effect, you know? It's kind of "shall we start a band to go out there and find all the people who feel misunderstood like us?" You know, that wasn't really a strategy, it was just like "should we start a band and make some noise!" you know (laughs).
Massimo: What's more important, the meaning of a song to you or what people think of it? I think of 'Beautiful James' where everyone can have his own opinion.
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Brian: Well, hopefully everyone can have their own opinion for every single song on this record, that's why I'm really reluctant to explain what it means to me. Because I feel that what it means to me would get in the way of meaning for the listener, you know. If there's enough ambiguity in the song for the person to make an emotional connection to it, then they're able to create their own personal story wrapped around that song. Because once you put it out there, it doesn't belong to you anymore, it's not yours, you know. It's it's alive in the hearts of others and it has, you know, significance in the hearts of others. And if, like when you go to see a Steven Spielberg movie, you're being told how to feel all the time, you know, especially with the music, I really don't want to do that. I want to leave enough space for each individual to connect to it personally, and then to live our their own story. So when people say ask "Who is Beautiful James?", It's just like "Well, who is it to you? What does it mean to you?". And that's becoming much much more important to me, as we continue to make music.
Massimo: How did that song come out? Is it true that the first title was "Bad Piano"?
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Brian: Yeah, because it was, I played it really badly on a piano at 5 am during a kind of a period, a prolonged period of insomnia where I was kind of delirious, you know...you know like when you get a bad fever and sometimes you hallucinate, you know? If you don't sleep for two months that that starts that, those kind of hallucinations or deliriousness kind of start to happen. And melodies were just kind of dropping into my head, and phrases were just kind of dropping into my head, and normally in the hours when everybody else is asleep. So, it that kind of happened with Sad White Reggae and happened with Beautiful James. It's just, you know, crawling to the piano with your telephone, to just too badly play something you know just so it's captured, so I don't forget it, so that in a couple of days I can give it to Stefan and go "Could you please sort this out? Could you please do something with this? There's something in here, you know, but c'mon you're the musician! I'm the bad piano player, you know, you're the good one!".
So yes, it was called "Bad Piano".
Massimo: Good. This is a stupid question, uhm...two songs, "This Is What You Wanted" and "Went Missing" remind me someway Leonard Cohen and Neil Young, even though there's nothing in common in the musical style. Don't you think that there's a sort of emotional geography that goes over the styles and the similarities?
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Brian: Oh, absolutely! Oh totally! You know...I mean, it's interesting that you mentioned Leonard Cohen and Neil Young because they're both complete heroes of mine, so that's like an amazing compliment you know....
Yeah, I mean, I'll give you an example, you know. I mean, when I was in my 20s, every now and again I would go to a concert, and this concert would be so near to perfection that it would make me cry. But I remember the two times, the reason I remember these is cause these two bands are so different. I remember going to see Pulp in a theatre at their, you know, at the height of their fame, when different class came out, and it was such perfect pop music that it made me cry. And then when I went to see Shellac, which is Steve Albini's band, you know, which is just brutal industrial aggressive noise, but there was something about this band that was so perfect. Even though such a completely different style that it also made me cry, you know.
I don't know if that answered to your question.
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| Photo Credit: Screenshot from the interview (Virgin Radio TV |
Massimo: Yes, it does (laughs).
Are you excited by the idea of coming on tour again?
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Brian: I think we're afraid honestly, more than anything (laughs while turning to look at Stefan)
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Stefan: (laughing) Yeah, but keep up the courage!
Massimo: Why do you say that?
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Brian: Well, I think if, well, I think because of the enforced sabbatical. I think that's been... something that's never really happened to us before. Up until the point of lockdown, you know, we'd been on a kind of a momentum of like 25 years. So we kind of got, gotten used to doing so many things like they were kind of second nature you know. And then, when lockdown happened and then we had to take a two-year kind of enforced sabbatical, we lost our momentum. We fell off the treadmill that we'd been on for 25 years, and then we had all of this time to catastrophize, disaster (bait), think and overthink about everything that being in a band meant. And we'd never really kind of had that opportunity before!
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Stefan: No
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Brian: And this might be, this would be an example of how thinking, a little bit too much thinking, is not good for your health, that kind of thing (laughs).
So we've maybe had too much time to think about what being in a band is, because we have a lot of experience from that and how it affects us emotionally and, you know, just as human beings.
And we probably had a little bit too much time to consider all of these things.
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Stefan: Yeah, I think the sort of the balance has been thrown out of whack. Before we were trying to slot our personal lives into the Placebo schedule, and all of a sudden we get kind of a personal life back.
And now to try to put Placebo back into that. It's the first time since the band started, really.
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Brian: So it's, you know, it's an odd time in history and an odd time, I think, for musicians like us who have a tendency to overthink (laughs). So perhaps that's where a certain shyness comes or a certain apprehension, trepidation, a little bit of fear.
Massimo: What's your biggest fear?
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Brian: Well, I mean what we do is very strange. We put ourselves, even though we are shy people, we put ourselves in a place where we're just completely exposed! Yeah, yeah, so it's an odd psychology. One has to wonder why uhm...why we feel it necessary to seek such validation from so many people in such an odd, contrived context.
And we've had too much time to think about that as well, you know. I think that you can think yourself into any kind of fear if you have too much time, too many possibilities, too many...you know! If you just do something, and you just keep doing it, then you don't really have time to sort of pause!
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Stefan: Yeah, action is the enemy of thought.
Massimo: So we have to think less!
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Brian: We (looking at Stefan) have to think less! Definitely, yeah.
Massimo: Italian people love you. You have so many fans, so many fan clubs. What's Italy to you? Do you have a particular feeling towards Italian people?
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Brian: I have Italian blood so, you know, my grandmother was from Bologna, so maybe that has something to do with that!
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Photo credit: Stromgroom Studios
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Massimo: and what about you (Stefan)?
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Stefan: I don't know, I always, I think I'm drawn to, coming from the north of Europe, I think I'm kind of drawn to, drawn south, you know, where Italy is.
Massimo: One last question: in Sourrounded By Spies you use the William Borroughs' cut up technique. Is it also because in these days we are all just a little piece of the global communication? Apart from the fact that David Bowie used it and it's a good technique...but does it have a symbolic meaning?
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Brian: No no, it was just, it seemed appropriate for me, to take all of these pages of words and to just kind of like mix them up, you know.
I couldn't form, I knew kind of what I wanted to do, but I couldn't form a classical narrative, a straightforward narrative with the material that I wanted to use. So it seemed, it just seemed evident for me to kind of to William Borroughs to David Bowie and to Jackson Pollock, to John Cage, to take it and throw it up in the air, see where it lands, and then get a new perspective that way.
But there was something about, I think the mood of the track, which also kind of pushed me in that direction. I had pages and pages of lines, and some of them, I was never going to make a story, you know, so I had to find another way.
Massimo: Is there anything that you would like to wish to Italian people?
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Stefan: Live long and prosper! (smiles)
Massimo: Thank you so much!
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Brian/Stefan: Thank you!
Original Interview:
https://bit.ly/3jitKYd Interview by Massimo Cotto - Virgin Radio Italia
Transcript by Emanuela
Post by Emanuela
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