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| Photo credit: Mads Perch (magazine cover) |
In order to keep talking about him, and thank him for everything he’s given us through his words and his music, both as a human being and as part of Placebo, I'll offer you a recent interview Stefan did with Martina Guaccio, a talented and young journalist of the Italian Magazine Hey Jude (but above all a compulsive collector of vinyl, cd or any other musical stand, how she defines herself).
The interview was done just three days before the release of the new album: not many words, but absolutely significant, as it is in Stefan's style.
I translated it for all of us here on Placebo Anyway. Enjoy the reading!
๐ WITH 'NEVER LET ME GO' PLACEBO STOPPED LOOKING BACK๐
It's a Sunday like many others, gloomy at twilight, impatient to turn into yet another exhausting working Monday.
I pull out of the library the heavy volume of the Treccani encyclopedia: I browse the pages that had not been browsed in twenty years and so I reach the letter P – Placebo: 'a substance with no effects that a doctor gives to a patient instead of a drug. Placebos are used when testing new drugs or sometimes when a patient has imagined their illness'.
Through headphones, the voice of Stefan Olsdan resonates in my ears.
He has a reassuring and human attitude, not only the tone of his voice but his words above all.
His words do not hide the ups and downs and everything that comes with it: the same ups and downs that have always haunted him in the role he finds himself playing intermittently, between uncertainties and confirmations.
Stefan is half of one of the most unmistakable rock bands from the 90s to today.
It’s been almost ten endless years since the last time Placebo have trod the big stages with unreleased material.
The long career of Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal, former 19-year-old guys who met at the South Kensington subway station at the peak of the Britpop era, was abruptly interrupted.
Away from the stage, away from the screens, even the social media ones,
we saw them last time on the occasion of the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of their debut album that took them, or better to say dragged them, around the world making a recap of what they were and what was left of the duo in 2017.
“Being part of Placebo for 25 years without a break has never been easy. Many times I thought the band had no future. Emotionally we had so many ups and downs (drummer Steve Forrest left the band in 2015).
But at 51% I always look at the glass as half full. I am grateful to that 1% that keeps me going”.
With the disarming sincerity that distinguishes him, Olsdal takes us on a cathartic journey that takes the name of Never Let Me Go, the album that marks and formalizes the long-awaited return of Placebo. A journey where he found himself again as a person and as proud half of a band.
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| Photo credit: Romain Massola |
“I felt pretty disillusioned with the identity and name of Placebo. I had lost a bit of focus on what it meant. I couldn’t see a future, a new project ahead of me”.
Accomplice to - explains Stefan - Brian Molko's recklessness, the lockdown and the empty pages of his agenda, without any appointment, no tour marked.
At some point of a listless period in his life, Molko – the 'cheeky one', the face of Glam Rock post David Bowie, the face of a fluid new wave version - took matters into his own hands, gave Stefan an appointment at a coffee shop, showed him a photo and said: “We have to start from here”.
Placebo then went to a recording studio in the East End and wrote Never Let Me Go.
“Making this album meant never looking back anymore” says Stefan today.
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| Photo credit: Romain Massola |
“The ocean is the place par excellence to dream and reflect, but at the same time it is what brings back memories and objects from another life and this makes you realize how humanity is ruining everything”.
The profound thoughts scattered in the thirteen tracks of Never Let Me Go were born initially from an individual work, forced by times of pandemic lockdown, and only later were reworked face to face.
The result is a pure concentration of emotions without filters, straight guitars, drum beats and backing vocals, hypnotic intros and strings.
All this is topped by Brian’s vocal magnetism.
A mature and compelling heartfelt album, like a circle that closes itself after some 'career fillers'.
“Compared to our last album, during the recording phase I got a little hectic 'Where is the bass? Where is the drum beat?'- he says -
Music is sound but also silence. Silence allows you to create spaces, it allows the music to breathe but also the words. And this time we let the words breathe”.
And the messages in the lyrics, in fact, arrive strong and clear: from the powerful and electrified intro of Forever Chemicals, to the dreamless, genderless love of Beautiful James; from the poignant Happy Birthday in the Sky, dedicated to those who are no longer here, to the crazy and obsessive loop with which Surrounded By Spies drags the laziest ears of society. From the true Pearl of the album, The Prodigal, to the ultimate exhortation of Fix Yourself (“Go fix yourself/Instead of someone else”, this is what Molko sings in the chorus).
So it ends what Stefan Olsdal has defined as a real «cathartic journey». A long-awaited up in the duo’s long career.
If the tour of the twenty-year anniversary, according to Stefan
“has lasted a bit too much damaging the health of the band” and its own intention, the prospect of coming back on tour was initially discouraging.
“But being a part of all this is in my DNA, I’ve known Brian since we were 19, I love the band too much and it would be impossible to stop. If we survived Siberia, the 40 degrees of Cambodia and Morocco, we can face this too”.
And so Placebo, after nine years away from compulsive posts, private stories and social screens, give us the best picture of what they are now, for an administration of about an hour of straight guitars and adhesive voice, for relevant psychological effects from autosuggestion.
Original Interview:
https://bit.ly/3qQBhBq
Interview by Martina Guaccio - HEYJUDE Magazine
Translated by Emanuela
Post byEmanuela
