Into the Bell X1 off the beast

Having conquered Ireland, Bell X1 have trained their sights on the US. Hot Press joins the band in sun-bleached LA, where they talk about the fire that destroyed their tour bus, a random encounter with Jeffrey Archer and explain why they couldn't say "shite" on David Letterman. And below we talk to fans who flocked to the group's debut Boston show.

Bell X1’s Paul Noonan and Dave Geraghty walk into the lobby of the Grafton on Sunset, a funky rock ‘n’ roll hotel bang in the middle of Sunset Boulevard, looking red-faced, flustered and uncomfortable.

“We forgot how fucking hot LA gets,” Noonan complains, wiping some sweat from his brow. “We’re all burning up here again like typical Irish Paddies in the sun – we’ve been using all these salves and ointments over the last couple of days.”
As it happens, the guys are lucky they’re only suffering burns from the sunshine. Last week, just days into a four-week promotional tour of the States, their tour bus went up in flames in the car park of the Boston Medford Hyatt Hotel.
“Yeah, our bus went on fire,” Noonan laughs. “It was a pretty old bus. There was all kinds of dodgy electrics going on even when we were driving it. The lights would dim dramatically, like there was some kind of ghost in the machine.”
The bus was a big old Silver Eagle, which used to belong to country and western singer Tim McGraw: “There was this big framed picture of him on the bus, resplendent in his denims and Stetson hat. We tried to salvage the picture but, alas, it was gone. I went into the hotel and grabbed a fire extinguisher, but it wasn’t really up to much. Eventually I had to step away because we literally thought the bus was gonna blow at any minute.”
Fortunately, the band’s equipment survived the blaze (more than can be said for the bus, which has since been scrapped): “We were very lucky that we didn’t lose anything but clothes and an iPod. The most horrific thing about it was the time between when we discovered the fire and when the fire brigade came. We were just watching it slowly go up and all of our gear was in the bays.”
This is actually the band’s second Stateside trip of 2008. They played some shows back in January but, with their third album Flock having been released here on February 19, they’re currently in the midst of almost a solid month of gigging and promo.
It’s all go. Last night they were in Minneapolis. Tonight they’re playing a sold-out gig in nearby venue The Troubadour. Tomorrow they’re off to San Francisco and, beyond that, to Portland.
In addition to the shows, they’re also doing an impressive amount of press, radio and TV. On Patrick’s Day, they performed ‘Rocky Took A Lover’ on Letterman. To their great amusement, the band were handed a lengthy list of swearwords they weren’t allowed to use (to those unfamiliar with that particular song, it features ‘asshole’, ‘arse’ and ‘shite’).
“There’s a very specific list you have to adhere to,” Noonan explains. “You’re not even allowed to say ‘Dick’ – unless it’s referring to someone’s name. But we’d done Conan O’Brien before and were told that you can’t say ‘asshole’ but you can say ‘shite’. And then in the broadcast, they dipped both words. But on Letterman I was asked not to sing ‘asshole’ so I didn’t.
“Actually there was a dude we met after that show who’d come specifically to see us play. I don’t know how he got the tickets, but he was a retired NASA engineer, who had worked on the Bell X projects [the band are named after the first jet plane to break the speed of sound]. He was fascinating.”
Somebody else the band encountered on their recent travels was none other than disgraced-Tory-peer-turned-disgraceful-author Jeffrey Archer.
“Yeah, he was a guest on this Chicago radio show we did called the Mancow Show,” Noonan says. “I told him that I loved his books.”
And have you actually read any of them?
“I haven’t,” he says, shaking his head sorrowfully. “I really don’t know what came over me. I guess I was briefly starstruck.”
Obviously enough, they’re not organising all of this themselves. Although, following their departure from Island, they’re on their own Belly Up label in Ireland, in the US they’re signed to a new record label and management company.

“The guys at our American record company YepRoc and at Intrigue Management seem to know what they’re at,” Geraghty enthuses. “It’s a very well-oiled machine. It’s sometimes hard for us to know what’s worth doing, because there are so many different platforms over here. Like, we’re doing Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show tomorrow night. We hadn’t heard of it before, but apparently it’s as big as Conan and Letterman.”
“He’s actually Scottish,” Noonan interjects. “I watched it the other night.”
“Was he any good?” Geraghty asks, interested.
“Yeah. Very well-scripted humour.”
Although they don’t write new songs while touring, they’d been busy working on their long-awaited fourth album prior to coming over.
“We don’t really write on the road, but we’d done quite a bit before we set out on this trip,” says Noonan. “We did quite a lot before Christmas and then again in February. We’ve recorded about 12 or 14 songs – which are now all in various states of undress. So the new album is definitely shaping up.”
“We’ve got this massive big house in Ballycumber in Offaly – actually it’s called Ballycumber House,” explains Geraghty. “Ballycumber is just a crossroads with three pubs and that’s about it. We brought down a mobile studio and were there for two weeks initially, and then we did another week. I’m actually really looking forward to going back to work on them. It’s nice to give it a break, go touring, and then go back to them.”
What’s more important to you? Making the albums or touring them?
Noonan shrugs, “We all kind of differ on that one.”
“For me it’s about making the albums,” says Geraghty. “I find touring very hard. It’s really hard to be living out of a bag. Fortunately we’ve been on a bus for most of this tour – we’ve obviously had to hire a new one - but going through an airport with 30 pieces of baggage is just ridiculous. Nightmare! We’ve all this crap around us when we’re checking in.”
Needless to say, they’re not travelling with a huge road crew. “These shows are small – all between 500 and 1,000 people – and it’ll just end up costing us a lot of money if we take the kind of production crew that we’re used to back home on the road,” Noonan explains. “So it’s definitely a kind of step-down in that sense. Having said that, I much prefer playing to smaller rooms than, say, somewhere like The Point. A lot of the subtleties can be lost when you have to telegraph these huge gestures to a crowd.”
Although Flock was first released in Ireland in October 2005, they say they’re still enjoying playing the old songs.
“Obviously the thinking would be that we’d be bored playing a record that’s two-and-a-half-years old to us,” says Noonan. “But I think because everything is fresh here, and the show’s are a kind of a two-way interaction, it gives it a freshness to us, too. Because the record’s only been released here and the promotional cycle is just beginning, it doesn’t feel like we’re cheating.”
Irish fans, however, will have to wait a while before their next live fix of Bell X1.
“We’re not gonna play another show at home without releasing a new record,” he says. “That would be taking the piss.”