The interview entitled Treasure Chest was published in Kerrang! in July 2009. While promoting Placebo’s sixth studio album Battle For The Sun, Brian commented on their older records. It’s good to remember his thoughts on them when the long-awaited Never Let Me Go is finally here.
AN INTIMATE PORTRAIT OF A LIFE IN ROCK
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| Photo credit: Laetizia Forget |
When they emerged, all eye shadow, fluttering lashes and gender-bending, Placebo immediately found themselves the irritant in Britpop’s culture of beer, posturing and machismo. It was something for which they – and in particular, androgynous frontman Brian Molko – were loved and loathed in equal measure. His sleazy glam charm and the fact that no-one could quite put their finger on his sexuality, identity or even, for that matter, where the band came from – Molko was born in Brussels and bassist Stefan Olsdal is Swedish – created both intrigue and revolt, much to the band’s delight. Their first two albums blended garish rock with glitter-ball punk before a foray into dance music with their third and, in parts, their fourth. Recently, their songwriting has become marked by maturity on the dark Meds and current album Battle For The Sun. It’s perhaps no wonder that they’ve calmly racked up well over 10 million albums sales.
๐ฟTHE KILLER DEBUT
Placebo “Placebo” (Virgin, 1996)
Brian: “We wrote most of the album in a council flat in Deptford. The way we sounded and looked was a reaction against the place. But also a lot of our cross-dressing and transvesticism was a political statement against the music scene at the time which was very laddish and macho. We wanted to stand up and be counted. There’s no better way to do that than by putting a bunch of slap on, wearing a skirt and fucking with people’s heads. People hated us for it and I adored that. Not getting a reaction was anathema to me at the time. When I look back at the album I see naivety, missed opportunities and mistakes. But you can get your knickers in a twist about it or you can just accept they’re part of you. I view Nancy Boy in a similar way that I imagine Radiohead look at Creep. I just wish the song that propelled us into the limelight had been a little bit better written. It’s the lyrics that make me cringe the most. They’re me trying to find my feet. You have to listen to the album tracks to find where I really was.”
DID YOU KNOW: The director of the video that accompanied single 36 Degrees, Chris Cunningham, claims to have made Molko cry during the shoot by forcing the singer to stand in freezing cold water on hours on end while filming.
๐ฟTHE BREAKTHROUGH
Placebo “Without You I’m Nothing” (Virgin, 1998)
Brian: “At that point we felt that the power trio format we’d explored on the first album was too limiting for us. We wanted to make a record that was more complex in terms of arrangements and instrumentation. In a way, the first album was the blueprint and this was the sound of Placebo beginning to blossom. It was a record born out of great difficulty, though. We had a very fractious relationship with our producer [Steve Osborne, Thrice, Elbow, Suede] so there was a lot of frustration and depression there. Having said that, we’re a band that does need a certain amount of friction on which to thrive.”
DID YOU KNOW: Brian Molko’s most hated song in the Placebo back catalogue is Without You I’m Nothing’s opener Pure Morning. “We will never, ever play that song again,” he admits.
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| Photo credit: Trip Fontaine, edit by Olga |
Placebo “Black Market Music” (Virgin, 2000)
Brian: “We had a real swagger and bravado when we went into the studio for this one. We had just come off a really successful tour and felt we’d really exploded. We felt like cowboys of rock! We were also heavily medicated and beginning to get quite deep into drugs. That’s probably why it took nine months to make an album. The drugs also contributed to a certain amount of arrogance. At least that’s what I remember from the time. I think we had a desire to write about the world we saw around us. We thought it was cool that, though other people were a little afraid to get deep down and dirty, we could take it on ourselves to write about those things. I think that album was the start of us trying to mix genres. We had so much hatred for rap-rock, bands like Limp Bizkit and all they represented – misogyny, homophobia, and commercialism – that we wanted to do our own version of it.”
DID YOU KNOW: Placebo and Fred Durst had a row in New York that led to the Limp Bizkit singer being ejected from the venue. “He was MCing an evening we were playing and said some pretty horrible things about us onstage,” remembers Molko. “He got chased out of the building by our manager. He’s a bit of a pussy really. My manager’s a woman. He got chased out of the building by a girl.”
๐ฟTHE DRUGS ALBUM
Placebo “Meds” (Virgin, 2006)
Brian: “This was the beginning of the band falling apart [drummer Steve Hewitt left after its release] and the way we dealt with that was by anaesthetising ourselves to the max. When Stef and I hear tracks from the album we look at each other and go, ‘Erm… who played what on this song?’ There are moments on there, like [In The} Cold Light Of Morning, that are painful to listen to now. I don’t know that we’ve ever been that down before. I think it’s a very powerful record, emotionally, and despite the circumstamces under which it was made, it’s quite perfectly executed. It’s just very dark and doesn’t offer very much hope.”
DID YOU KNOW: Molko’s therapist loves Meds as a means with which to analyse the singer. “It’s a complete open window into my fucking head,” says Molko. “I should have sent him a copy earlier and saved on some bills!”
(Kerrang!, Jul'09)
ESSENTIAL BRIAN MOLKO TRACKS!
Teenage angst
Nancy Boy
Bruise Pristine
Pure Morning
Special K
Taste In Men
Every You Every Me
36 Degrees
Post by Olga
