He’s no Pete Doherty, but Stars mainman Torquil Campbell isn’t without his past druggy misdemeanors.
“We were supporting a favourite band of mine, Trashcan Sinatras, in New York City and nearly missed the show because three of us had been arrested in Central Park smoking a joint,” he explains. “Not being as alert as we would’ve been if we hadn’t been smoking pot, we didn’t realise this fucking kid in a back-pack was an undercover cop. The judge only released us two hours before the show, so we were able to go on and say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we just got out of jail!’ It was our first and last Motley Crue moment!”
Pressed further, Campbell admits that this wasn’t the first time he’d had his fingerprints taken.
“As a teenager I was arrested for buying what turned out to be Darjeeling tea, which I guess puts me on one-and-a-half strikes! The cops aside, the reason I left New York for Canada is that I didn’t want to watch the city being bled dry anymore. The days of it being a truly bacchanalian, bohemian place were coming to an end and as an artist that saddened me. It felt like New York had reached a point of no return and, sure enough, three months later 9/11 happened. While you can never excuse or rationalise those deaths, it has to be said that New York now is a far more humane place than it was pre-the Twin Towers.”
As well as leaving his old musical haunts behind, Campbell’s move to Canada also brought the curtain down on his bit-parting for TV shows like Sex And The City and Law & Order: SVU.
“If waiting eight hours in a windowless trailer for a 10 second walk-on is your idea of glamour then, yes, it was glamorous,” he laughs. “I tended to focus on the $900 a day that was going to get me out of my rent arrears. Of the two, Law & Order was the more fun because the show had just started and everybody from Christopher Meloni (Detective Elliot Stabler) and Mariska Hargitay (Detective Olivia Benson) down really wanted to make it work. There was also a social agenda to the scripts that you don’t get on a lot of programmes, so it wasn’t just punch-in, punch-off.”
Were there signs when Torquil arrived there that the Montreal music scene was about to explode?
“There was a lot of talent but, no, none of us thought that the Arcade Fire would be hanging out with Gwyneth and Chris at their ranch. I don’t know Win that well, but Chris (Seligman, Stars guitarist) plays a lot of basketball with him and says he’s a really serious, intense and driven guy who accepts stardom as an occupational hazard. If it’s not possible to make the music in a vacuum then, hell, why not go for it!”
So there’s no sitting on the sidelines going, “Bastards, that should be us!”
“No, I’m one of the cheerleaders,” he chuckles again. “I’m amazed by the Arcade Fire’s beauty, they’re the new U2 and 2006 will see them get everything they're due. The fact they’re so bemused by their success makes them all the more deserving of it!”
A serial collaborator, Campbell is one of the 17 Toronto and Montreal musicians who feature on Broken Social Scene’s eponymous new record, and is currently in Vancouver where he’s assembling a second Memphis album with long-time buddy Chris Dumont.
“It’s just an excuse for not doing my tax returns! Bands in Montreal work harder than they do in New York, which could have something to do with it being fucking cold all the time. Memphis is an insane – as in we don’t sell any records – labour of love while Broken Social Scene is fun. I just turn up and play what Kevin (Drew) and Charles (Spearin) tell me to. It’s the same sort of deal as the Reindeer Section where Gary Lightbody writes the songs and then attributes various parts to his friends. I won’t be there for Broken Social Scene’s show in the Temple Bar Music Centre on February 11, but I urge you to go along because they’re awesome”
“Awesome” is also a word that applies to Set Yourself On Fire, Stars’ second full-length album which could prove to be as big a sleeper hit this year as Funeral was last.
“I’d love to be able to agree with you, but I’ve always known that Stars are The Go-Betweens of our generation,” Torquil says with nary a trace of false modesty. “We’ll never get our propers, but we don’t care because we’re loving every moment of it!”