An air of friendly professionalism greets me as I sit down to interview Billy McGuinness, Christy Dignam and Andy Downey of Aslan. The band are chilling out backstage, just half an hour before the second of their run of sell-out gigs in Dublin s Vicar Street.
These five nights showcasing their unplugged acoustic set (quite different to Aslan electric, and featuring a string quartet, percussion player and extra keyboard player) are testimony to the continuing appeal of this northside Dublin band. Seasoned musicians, Aslan have climbed, plummeted, broken up, and come back together to soar again. As Christy notes, Aslan s best-of album called It s a Shame about Lucy Moonhead sold 30,000 copies when it was released in Ireland last year. Compare this to the 50,000 copies which Pulp s last album sold in the UK, and you get a good idea of the staggering success that Aslan have had in this country. The forthcoming release of It s a Shame about Lucy Moonhead in Britain, Spain and elsewhere this year not to mention the live video being made in Vicar Street and destined for Cannes should land the band firmly in the international arena.
Aslan are about the most down-to-earth people you could meet. At the end of the day, says bass player Andy, to still be in a band and do a job that you really enjoy is the best feeling. We all love what we re doing, and we re privileged to be doing it. And the more people we can play to and the more records we sell will be a bonus from here on in.
We know how lucky we are to be doing it, adds Christy, and the whole fame thing is not something we re mad chasing.
Though years ago, admits Andy, we were chasing it too much, and that became the focus, and was one of the many things that fucked us up! Chasing those fucking stars!
Because we believed in all the myths, notes Christy enigmatically.
We tripped up, adds Billy, Aslan s guitarist and harmonica player, but we re only human. If you look at The Verve, there s a band that broke up and came back and have had, Jesus, one of the best albums of last year. And we can still do that, know what I mean? If it happens it happens, but at the moment we re working on our next studio album, we re recording the five nights here in Vicar Street, so we ve two albums on the go, and for a band like us to still be doing that, it s great.
It s nice being appreciated again, observes Christy. You want as many people as possible to hear your music.
It s not a commercial thing, he continues. Like, I don t give a shit if they take our music down off the internet. If you look at it from an artistic point of view, your music is going to get out to a lot more people, so it makes a lot of sense. If you can make a living at doing it here, and get people to be downloading around the world, you can develop a fan-base without having to rely on some guy sitting in an office in New York deciding on giving you #80,000 to go over and do a tour. So the internet s opening up a whole new vibe.
Aslan are well-known for encouraging young bands in very direct ways. Why do they feel that it s important to give younger bands a break?
Andy takes up the question. You can rehearse til you re blue in the face, but one gig is like twenty rehearsals. From one gig supporting us, or supporting anybody, from the experience of just getting on that mike . . .
You re talking, interjects Christy, about kids that are sitting in a garage eight to twelve months a year. And they re taken from that and brought into somewhere like the Olympia, or here, where it s a sold-out gig, just to give them that opportunity.
When you get into music, you lose sight of why you started off. You start off to make good music, right? And then you look around and you see people are selling more records, like you want to be selling as many records as The Corrs. And then you get to The Corrs and you start looking at U2, so you chase that fame thing. So what we wanted to do was to take it as far as we could, and show any band coming behind us that we could get this far, and if we could get that far, then maybe they could get a little bit further, and then maybe the next band could get a little bit further.
We can save young bands a lot of time, continues Andy. Some bands over the last four years would ve gigged maybe thirty or forty nights with us. And by speaking to each individual member of Aslan, and ringing us as well, you can give them so much advice that is so valuable to young people, really helping them out in a lot more ways than one.
We like to tell these bands to believe in themselves, Christy concludes. Never let anybody tell you that you can t do it. If you believe you can do it, you can do it. n