Men Behaving Radley

It s Friday lunchtime in the lobby of Bloom s Hotel, Dublin central. Sice and Martin Carr, the public faces of The Boo Radleys, are sitting in front of me sipping their assorted tasty beverages. Though it s far from cold in here, both are wearing heavy jackets zipped up to their Adam s apples and woolly caps pulled down to the eyebrows. This makes me feel like I m about to interrogate two bashful furry animals that have just been hauled out of hibernation. Still, it s not as bad as trying to penetrate the psyche of some pampered, journophobic megastar who won t remove his shades no matter how dim the light is.
Quieter than your average frontman, Sice often finds himself jousting for tape-space with his guitar-playing, songwriting partner. A droll troll blessed with requisite Liverpool wit, Martin is quite possibly as mad as a March hare (check out the lyrics of Meltin s Worm or indeed the production on the last album if you don t believe me). He s also considerably more robust-looking than you d guess from the Boos videos or band photographs. I interviewed him over the phone once, prior to the release of their fifth album C Mon Kids last September, but this is the first time I ve met either him or Sice face to face.
Ah yes, the album. I ve waxed platitudinal about said platter in these pages before, so you don t need to hear any further harping on about its hallucinogenic properties, suffice to say that the record has only improved with age. Unfortunately, in the rush to heap (well-deserved) garlands on Suede, the Manics and Beck at the end of year polls, C Mon Kids was mostly forgotten by the critics, or worse, damned with faint praise, a fact that wasn t lost on such Boo-loving luminaries as Nicky Wire.
Today the band s itinerary leaves little room for idling. As soon as this interview finishes, the pair will pop around the corner to their soundcheck for tonight s gig in the Olympia (the last date of a month long French, British and Irish tour that has left the band knackered and relishing their three weeks off), after which they ll be dispatched to Montrose to appear on both Dave Fanning s radio programme and then The Late Late Show to promote their current single, the ballad-tastic Ride The Tiger . With time being of the essence, I press the Record button and begin my line of enquiry.
C Mon Kids got great praise from the critics when it was released, but come the end-of-year accolades everyone seemed to forget about it. How did you feel about that?
I was a bit disappointed, but then when you do see the rest of the albums around it, part of me thinks it did really well to get there, Martin concedes. I mean, it is out of step with whatever else is going on, so even though I am disappointed, I kind of feel that we were kind of fortunate as well.
I think that s the huge difference in the way things are, y know? Sice reflects. When Giant Steps won all these awards and was hugely praised, it was the aesthetics of the thing that mattered. Now it s all talk about how many millions it shifted. I was surprised we did so well considering.
Martin takes up the thread. It s so much more about sales now and profile than it was when we started. They re going to put people on the front of the papers who are going to sell the papers and we re not good at selling papers. That s the way it is now and we ve got to contend with that.
Also, Britain is very much a pop culture and that s all about change and new faces, Sice reasons And last year when Wake Up! was released we were kind of new faces on the pop scene so it was like, that was really The Big Push. But y know, an album down the line people aren t interested, they re always interested in the next new thing which is good in a way . . .
It would ve been interesting if we d done like Dodgy or The Lightning Seeds and just made the same record every time, interjects the guitarist. But we ve always made it difficult for ourselves in that way, we ve never made music that you could grasp onto or recognise, like loads of bands do cos they re scared of losing the success that they ve gained with that particular sound.
How s the health holding up on this tour? You ve been known to come undone on these jaunts before. Does touring screw up your private life?
I screw up my private life when I m at home! laughs Martin. No, cos we did fuck-all last year it was really boring. I did go out and drink too much. When you go out on tour you feel like you re achieving something worthwhile, same as you do in the studio.
Touring s kind of the only time when you feel like you re actually working, Sice agrees. You feel like you re actually earning your pay. Other times you feel like a fraud cos you re not doing anything for it, you re not suffering for it, you feel like you should be earning a crust.
Martin continues: I don t know whether it s the way we were brought up or anything, but even though I hated working I kind of miss doing something where, even though I was getting paid hardly anything, you could see why you were getting paid. Now I m getting paid lots and you don t see why and you feel kind of guilty about it. And I miss the routine as well. But when we are working we work twice as hard as we ever did in our jobs.
Sometimes it can be very frustrating because when we release an album, all we want to do is go out and play every single night, admits Sice. It s always Get us out there, get us out there, get us out there! But you have wait for the right time, promotionally you have to wait for your next single, and y know, there s this two month gap where you re not doing anything, just sitting there waiting for your next single to come out and then it s like Right! You ve something to promote, go out there and tour! Whereas you should be out there all the time, really. It s trying to align the two, what we do, which we see as an artistic thing, and also the fact that it s involved in a business situation.
So Martin, as an occasional dabbler in the devil s snuffbox, what do you make of the Brian Harvey/Noel Gallagher drugs debate?
I don t think Brian Harvey achieved anything, scowls the woolly-headed guitarist. I don t think he s incredibly intelligent for a start, and he just got caught. I think he s probably a bad advert for drugs! But Noel, I think, was right when he said that there needs to be an open debate, though I think his cup of tea comment was a bit flippant. I think there needs to be a few separate debates, not just debating drugs as one thing and putting heroin in with marijuana.
This is the thing information on drugs needs to go to the anti-drugs people, stresses Sice. They need to understand the difference between cannabis and heroin. They really need to understand that, because as far as they re concerned all those things are the same, and that s just misinformed. You cannot argue from that standpoint because it s just completely wrong. I think one side is very closed about it. You will not drag the anti-drugs side out into the open to give any sort of concession whatsoever.
You need to get some better adverts for the pro-drugs side as well, adds Martin. You can t have Liam Gallagher, because it just lets the side down somewhat if you want to get some intelligent, informed debate up there. There was this woman on telly the other night God, she was horrible who was anti-drugs, and then this bloke who was pro-drugs, he was a professor at Liverpool University, he d landed a few drugs in his time, his fucking face man! Could hardly open his eyes! But he was brilliant, he knew everything, he d studied the whole sociological side of it and stuff.
But it s not a reasoned debate, is it, because there s absolutely as far as I can tell no reason why cannabis should be illegal. There s no logic in the fact that alcohol and cigarettes are legal and cannabis is illegal. So the whole debate is in essence illogical, Sice concludes with a Vulcan-esque flourish.
I would talk openly and in public about cannabis and risk getting arrested for it, because I do believe really strongly that it s beneficial and is something that should be definitely legal, states Martin, but there s no other drugs that I d say should be legal really. I take other drugs but I don t think they should be available.
While we re on the subject of expensive thrills, I ask about the hi-tech computer-animated video for the new single Ride The Tiger . So guys, what s with all the cyberbolics?
Martin douses my curiosity in one fell swoop. We said we don t wanna be in a video and that (computer animation) is the only way to do it. We fucking hate doing videos. We don t care if the video s good or not or if it s relevant to the song because I don t believe in it as an artform.
It s far too expensive, Sice pipes up. It s a real shame because it s always seen as a band thing and videos are normally the most un-band thing about a record, the thing that the band literally has no control over. And it s very difficult to know what the band wants. We kind of get into it at the start of every album. There s always one video where you come up with an idea for it and it s like We really would like to do this . Straight away all you get into is like Oh that d cost far too much, how about this? There s no point in us applying our creative side to it because it just gets watered down.
In the studio there s no-one there to stop us, that s why we don t work with producers. It s just you going straight to the tape. There s nobody else there to say Ooh you can t do this and you can t do that . I m really sort of anti-producer because they just water people s visions down and they don t have to live with it, they move onto the next project and the artists are the ones who have to live with it for the rest of their lives.
See, we say that, but then most of the bands that I know, if you put them in the studio without a producer, they wouldn t have the first clue what to do, claims Martin. I think we re quite unique in that fact cos hardly anyone produces themselves. I think Supergrass did it.
I think it just seems the thing to do for bands and it isn t, sighs Sice. The important thing is to have an engineer. It s a strange thing, though, isn t it? You ve got two different types of producer. You have your Flood and your Alan Moulder whose actual production capacities are just being very good engineers, they ll just sit at the desk, twiddle the knobs and get all the right sounds and everything but they re given credits as producers. And you have other people who sit at the back of the studio and never go near the desk, they have their own engineer, and they sit there and say Play this, play that, change that even to the extent of changing songs and writing their own verses and middle-eights and stuff.
Stephen Street, Martin interjects. He s got writing credits on some of his stuff.
You started out being heavily indebted to Dinosaur Jr. and My Bloody Valentine, but as you progressed you managed to warp those influences into something unrecognisable. But what do you think of the current epidemic of retro-bands mindlessly aping everyone from Weller to The Beatles to The Stone Roses?
Martin takes up the cudgels: Because it s applauded and welcomed, people go for the easiest option every time.
The public or the musicians?
Both. We knew ages ago we were fighting a losing battle, and you just kind of accept it and enjoy it. There is a remarkable lack of vision and imagination.
The problem is that those with the genuine vision are never rewarded, or seen to be rewarded, Sice adds. It s very rare that those people are rewarded in their lifetime. They re always the people who are looked upon twenty years later like Brilliant records. Pity he died penniless isn t it? And all the fucking chancers are always the ones with the money.
Martin goes on to slam Dodgy for their note-for-note reconstructions of Beach Boys harmonies. We ve tried to copy stuff and fucked up so bad no-one would ever know, he ruminates.
If we try and approximate something it gets so far from the original cos we re so cack-handed! admits Sice.
It s like we ve beaten the face up so badly that no-one recognises it Martin laughs. The songs go Not the face! Not the face! .
What s your opinion of established artists getting in on the dance act, be it Bowie going jungle or U2 incorporating a lot of techno/trip-hop stuff into their new record? You ve done dance mixes of your songs and the new album does utilise the odd polyrhythm or two.
Well, we re not like Everything But The Girl who just write the same old shite and then put a different drumbeat that s trendy at the time behind it, answers Martin. Y know, when the old Funky Drummer thing came in in the early 90s everyone had to make a record out of it, from The Wonder Stuff to The Chapterhouse. We never went for it so much that we d be disappointed if we were left out of anything. It s not like the album was written and then we thought we d try and make it sound a bit modern. If you like something it doesn t matter. It s not written in stone what kind of band we are. We don t have to just use bass, drums and whatever. There s only been about five remixes out of the 20-odd that we ve had done that I ve really liked.
You seemed to be in quite a positive state of mind during and after the making of C Mon Kids. Has that endured over the tour?
It s got better, affirms Martin. We re playing better than we ve ever played before. Occasionally you get days where you think you could break up there and then and nobody would even wave goodbye. But most days, when we re together and when we re playing together it s amazing.
So is inactivity your worst enemy?
No, it s when you make the mistake of picking up the paper. Music papers are very depressing. And even if they like you normally they re just so way off the mark about what you are. Someone called this album miserablism the other day. I just don t understand it. I thought the songs were all about optimism and positivity and just living for life and stuff. And then I get called a miserablist.
I thought Wake Up Boo! was a pretty miserable song even though it sounded completely the opposite.
That album is fucking Slash your wrists ! the guitarist laughs.
That s the perverse nature of Bollocks here, observes his partner.
So after tonight s Olympia gig, how will you utilise your newfound energy?
We ve got America looming, Sice deadpans. There s going to be a lot of time out there. I m quite excited. We ve been before but this is the first time we re going with a serious push. But I m also going with a realistic head on. I just want to play to some fans out there.
Do you find American audiences any different to play to?
I think once you re inside that hall and the door s locked and you re onstage, I don t think there s any difference. I think a gig s a gig pretty much worldwide.
It s been suggested that bands like Pulp and Blur will never break America because their songs are too parochial and too English.
That s the thing that Martin always says, he responds. It s only by writing about yourself that you can truly speak to other people. If you say I feel like this then people are immediately going to identify with it.
I think the thing with Pulp though is that they do use British reference points so they don t just talk about direct emotions, that s why they don t make it in America, muses Martin. Same as Blur. Actually Blur don t write about anything. There s some great songs on the new album though. The best one is Graham s. But that s why they don t make it in America. Oasis ll sing about . . . well that s pretty much universal. Even though it s bollocks. But that s why the kids love it.
But how come the reverse won t work? How come an American band can sing about Detroit or Michigan or Route 66 and make it sound like poetry?
I was thinking about this the other day. It s just the names. Y know, you can sing about a Wichita Lineman but you couldn t sing about a Blackburn Lineman .
But the words are not that different. Blackburn could be almost gothic. Maybe it s the connotations that go with the place names.
It probably is, isn t it? Or Hartlepool. But Wichita is such a beautiful name, though.
You come across in interviews as quite normal. But I was reading a quote where, I think it was you Sice, who professed an intense dislike for rock stars who try to project this fake mystique about them.
That s just my personal thing, like. I was thinking the other day that it s quite unusual for me, the position I m in, singer in a band that s been going for five years and no-one knows fuck-all about me and that s really good. I m really pleased. I do think that basically everyone is normal. One example is Suede who are really, really, really nice blokes but it seemed like a job to be Suede 24 hours a day. They had to be Suede with the cigarette . . .
But isn t that kind of bullshit integral to the rock n roll myth?
I think it s good if people wanna dress up and pretend to be someone else, proclaims Martin. That s what it s all about, it s one big panto!
Oh no it isn t! yell the purists. Oh yes it is! answer the populists. Ah, the dichotomies of rock n roll! n