Power & Glory

JOHN POWER is nothing if not a bundle of energy. First of all it takes him a couple of minutes to get comfortable in the lounge of the Royal Dublin Hotel, where he and the rest of Cast have just arrived. He tries three different seats before finally settling on a standard armchair, and looks alive, attentive and ready to go. And why shouldn t he?
His band, Cast, have seen their latest release, Free Me , become their sixth hit single in a row. Their debut album, All Change, has gone multi-platinum, and the follow-up, Mother Nature Calls, is ready for release. So how happy is he with the new album?
I m happy, like, he affirms with a broad Scouse accent, grinning broadly, arms waving and head moving to emphasise his every syllable. We didn t want to repeat what we did on the first one, which was 12 like da-na-na-na (makes energetic guitar strumming motions). The thing is, I m happy with it in that it s much more diverse. It has a song for everyone. I think it s much more of a grower than the first album.
I didn t want to repeat the first one. We can t stay in this indie bracket all our lives. We were never really in it anyway, but people couldn t pigeonhole us. We weren t U2 and we weren t some quirky indie band. We re just doing our thing and people seem to dig it and like it.
At this stage, it seems pretty obvious that Power is a happy (and, indeed, hyper) camper. Even in the course of a half-hour interview, where he never actually leaves his chair, he seems to get through as much physical exercise as Ray Houghton circa 89. He is enthusiastic in his response to every question, sometimes his thoughts carrying him so far away that he forgets what query he is supposed to be answering in the first place.

Even a cursory listen to Cast s new LP, Mother Nature Calls, reveals that while Power s helter-skelter conversation may not spill over into his songs, his exuberance does. This time round, though, he has broadened his songwriting somewhat. The album has all the trademark catchiness that made Cast a success in the first place, but there are also slower, more melancholy affairs which display a new depth to the penmanship of the affable Liverpudlian.
We don t want to be limited straight away, he explains. I could have made the album a lot more rocky, but I really wanted to separate Cast from the indie/Britpop/zingy scene. There s an awful lot of zingy bands knocking around now, y know. I just wanted to try some ideas out.
There s a different vibe. I just wanted to slow it down, widen it out. I went with less is more on this album, leaving the space in. I could have riffed it all up to death. Once a song is written, you can do it any way you like. You can stick hip-hop beats behind it if you want.
Mother Nature Calls took three months to record, and indeed three studios, including a stint at the famous Abbey Road.
Abbey Road s a cool place. It s got a lot of history, like, Power says. That was the place I enjoyed most because of the canteen. It was like school, see, and we got on with the dinner ladies. Sometimes, in other places, when the food is cooked you either eat it or starve. If I m in the middle of something, I don t eat. But with the canteen, you could go down and get something whenever you want. You should record in Abbey Road cos the canteen s great (laughs).
The end result of their school dinners is a well-rounded LP, which is, as ever, high on the happy side. With All Change becoming Polydor s best-selling album ever (albeit for a short time), expectations are extremely high for Mother Nature Calls. I wondered what exactly Power himself expects from the album.
I expect what s coming my way. I expect it to do what it s gonna do, he offers non-committally. I think it ll do better than the first album. All Change got panned by the critics, and then it did what it did.
A lot of people have got preconceived ideas of what Cast are about anyway. They go in with a specific idea of what they re going to say about us, because it s easier to do that. It s lazy journalism in a sense. They read what someone else has said and write something similar. We write our music for the people, and if they like it they like it, if they don t, they don t. I like it. I like it more than I liked the first one . . . What was the fucking question?
Er, your expectations for the album?
I m expectin everything and nothing, he says.
But you wouldn t be surprised if it made you international superstars?
Well, fuckin hell, that s a nice thought. But we re not international superstars, are we? We re just starting off and we ve got our foot in the door, and we ve had consistent hits. So we re doing alright. Slowly and surely, people are starting to get into it.
One song that people won t be getting into on Mother Nature Calls is Flying , the band s biggest hit single so far, which is not on the album. Why not?
I don t know, he admits. I had the idea of Flying ages ago, but I actually got the (sings) You ve got to fly bit in about a month, a week before going to America on tour. Even though it was our biggest hit in chart positioning, I don t know if it was our biggest hit with people. We thought, at least we can have four new singles off this album. If we put that on, it s starting to be a bit of a rip-off. We also have confidence that we re going to write better tunes.
Power is one of the most upbeat songwriters around at the moment: while almost all his contemporaries are bemoaning their lot and contemplating suicide, Power tends to concentrate on being Alright . Why so?
The songs are positive because they re aware of negative, he explains. If your back s against the wall, there s no further back you can go. You can only take a step forward towards it. So the songs are positive in a negative vibe, in the sense that sometimes you have to taste the negative to recognise that you can only make it positive because you can t go any further down that route.
We try to inject a bit of hope into the songs, but I suppose it s about people relating to them. If people feel that they re a part of something then it becomes a part of them.
From the very beginning, Cast s music has made that important connection with people. In fact, over a million souls related to the songs that made up All Change, a fact which didn t surprise Power.
Not at all, and that s not meant to sound strange, he smiles. Before we got signed, as the band was getting together, I thought that these songs were going to do this. You have to have the faith in that when times are hard. It s easy to listen to some fucking tosser whose job is to find holes in things. Our job is to give holes and let people fill them with a bit of imagination . . . what was the question again?
All Change?
Oh yeah, I m not expecting things to just happen for a reason, but if you meet your aspiration half way, most of the time you either learn something or you actually achieve it. I know how good the songs are, regardless of what anyone else wants to say. And I know where they re going, regardless of anyone who wants to put a different direction forward. They re going wide and far, and they re going to reach people, if they re reachable. We don t expect things, but we believe anything is possible.
It is not surprising that the chirpy Scouser has confidence by the bucketload. He joined his first band at a particularly tender age, and instantly tasted the fruits of success. Prior to forming Cast, John Power was bass player with The La s, before the band seemed to implode amid a stream of musical differences , mainly between Power and singer Lee Mavers, who almost came to blows on stage more than once.
Looking back on it all now, Power feels that nothing went wrong with The La s as such, but that it was simply time to move on. However, his words, usually shot out with the speed and accuracy of a semi-automatic assault rifle, are slower and somewhat strained.
It was getting to a point where I d been in the band from a very young age. You either move on or you don t, he avers. At the time, I wasn t a songwriter or anything. I just had a couple of ideas for songs. I thought, if I don t try, I ll never know. And I had this horrible feeling nagging me, and I felt that it was time to go.
Did he learn a lot from his time with the band?
Of course I did, he insists, but I learnt a lot since getting out of nappies, and that s the truth of the matter. I learn from every situation I ve been in. But musically, of course I learned a lot from The La s. You ve got to remember, I was a great musical listener. I knew the power. I didn t know what it was, but I knew there was magic involved in music, because it took you somewhere special, man: the strength of the music. If music was an opiate, you would be aware of it. In its field it is as strong as that.
Meeting and forming The La s was great for me. I was learning to play. I was submerged in The La s, and it was a good time. But before it became stagnant I got off.
Power has no contact with Lee Mavers now, saying only that Sometimes, you have to leave people to their own devices, because there s nothing else you can do.
The former La s bassist has certainly found his spiritual home with Cast now, but it took a while to get the line-up absolutely right. Cast underwent a number of personnel changes before settling on their present incarnation, with Power, Peter Wilkinson (bass), Liam Skin Tyson (guitar) and Keith O Neill (drums).
When Keith and Skin joined, it was a whole new vibe, Power recalls. We thought, now we re going to do it, no more fucking about. We were very serious about it. Starting the band, I thought if I could just get a little thing moving I d be all right. Then you start aspiring to certain wants. But you ve gotta keep checking those wants. You can t be in a band for the wrong reasons. Well, you can, but it won t get you very far. At the end of the day it has to fundamentally come down to music and the sheerability of it, if there is such a word as sheerability.
If I wasn t a strong believer in what I was and in what I was going to do, I could have easily decided that we were shit and packed it in.
Cast soon proved their sheerability in full, signing a major label deal with Polydor, only after Power had sat down with the head of A&R (who is now the MD) and explained how he saw the future of Cast.
I think he d probably heard it all before, he admits now. I just said, Look man, you treat us like a shitty band and that s all you re

going to get. If you get behind us and put the weight behind us, we ll do it. I know the band has the dynamics to perform brilliantly live. I know I ve got the songs to record. And we ve got our own style and swagger. We don t need styling, we don t need an angle. The angle is the music.
I told him how it was going to be and he said, Well, you think you re a fucking star and that s a start. I don t think I m a star, I just knew what I wanted.
John Power is currently in the process of getting just what he wants: chart success and critical adoration in spades. He is also materially much better off since forming Cast, insisting that This is the first time in my life that I ve earned some money and paid the bills . But being financially stable doesn t make the music come any easier.
It s never easy to write a song, he says. I don t know how to write a song. What I mean by that is that there is no formula I can give you. Half the talent is having the will power. The other half is being prepared to meet it head on: it comes to you if you go to it. Like attracts like. That s physics, innit? I ve always got the fear of never writing another song, so maybe that keeps me on me toes, y know.
In his spare time, which doesn t amount to much these days, John Power has always been an ardent supporter of smoking weed, and, as such, advocates the decriminalisation of cannabis.
We re wasting our time and money with it not being decriminalised. Too many people smoke dope anyway, and the things is, la, he offers beseechingly, there s fucking worse things going down than having a spliff. I m not on about legalising jacking up in criches. What I m saying is that people are having a smoke anyway. I just think that things should be brought out into the open, rather than hidden under a layer of hypocrisy, shallowness and deceit.
Surely, we re trying to form something of an honest world, he expounds, warming to the topic now. Things that we call taboo subjects, they aren t going away. Sexuality, drugs, music, things in general. You can be obese, gluttonous and fat on anything, can t ya? Too much of anything is gonna kill ya, but, yeah, I smoke a draw, yeah.
What about harder drugs?
All I can say is that I ve probably bathed in everything at one time in my life, he admits. But I m probably now more together than I ve every been. All I m saying is that drugs are out there and we all know that.
Power is quick to point out that he is not ignorant of the harmful and destructive side of drug (ab)use.
I ve seen the bad side of it. I ve seen people lose the fucking plot. I m not saying it s all great: everything s great in moderation. I ve seen people lose the plot and never come home. And it isn t a nice experience to see a friend or an acquaintance going down that road. Drugs can fuck you up, mate, like anything. At the end of the day, you ve got to feel good: drugs only exaggerate the way you are.
But I m no expert. No-one should look to me for advice, unless of course they buy me a pint. Then I ll give them all the advice they want, he laughs.
Cast themselves have a reputation for knowing how to party. It was only last year that Power and Keith O Neill were arrested in France. I was only doing me laundry, he deadpans, and it all went off its head.
It was a day off, he remembers, and there s nothing to do on days off. These were in our younger, wilder days. Now I m married. I m expecting a child in a couple of weeks.
Now and then we do hit that (makes a sound like a rising trumpet) and need to go all the way, but I m just trying to chill a bit now. You can t live your life all the time out of your face, cos you re not seeing anything. I want to be clear, especially this month, to see the baby coming and all.
So how does he think being a father will change him?
The thing with me and Belinda (his wife), or anyone else for that matter, is that I ve got a life and I know what I m doing. I know too that it can be taken away as quickly as it s given, just like that (makes a noise that resembles a fart). So I m humble, in the sense that the universe is reflecting my aspirations to myself at the moment.
I ve got my life, I know what I m doing, and this is an additive. It s not something to live for, it s an additive. I ve never experienced it before, and it s gonna be new to me, but I m gonna try and be cool about it. I think on the day it comes, then something s gonna hit, something will change in my life. It s a bump that s moving at the moment, but soon there will be something there that is depending on us. It is a responsibility.
Some people have a kid like they were going to Tesco s or buying a pint. They should really think. You see people walking down the street, who obviously don t think, and what are they passing on? I m gonna hopefully try to . . . fuck me, it could turn out to be a tearaway. Who knows? I ll live as it comes and try to surf it all the way into me shoreline.
It s gonna be an experience for everyone. But it s nothing new, is it? It s been going on for thousands of years. I suppose the time is right or it wouldn t be happening, that s the way I look at life.
Well, like it or not, this particular kid is going to have a famous daddy. Power himself has to accept fame and all that comes with it, but he seems to cope with it in his usual, down-to-earth manner.
Now and again it s nice: now and again it s a pain in the arse, he admits. But most of the time I m just going wherever I m going. We re not in it for the vanity but it s nice when people dig your music. Some people come up and apologise, like, Sorry, but can you sign this? I always say to them, Don t apologise to me for asking for an autograph: it s the least I can do for anyone in the world. If you can make someone smile . . . if you can inspire someone, somehow, in some way to achieve something that they want, it s worth it, he offers, obviously not big into specifics.
I always said, if just one person in the world loves the music, and gets off on a song that I write like I got off on a song that someone else wrote, it will be worth it because it will have been passed on, he muses.
But you keep wanting more and you have to watch yourself. You have to take it as it comes and not get too hung up on it, cos as I say, For He giveth and He taketh away , la, and that s the truth of the matter. It s nice to think that this thing can go further than where we are, and I believe it can.
I can t say that I ll be here for 10 years but it s nice to think that we can keep bettering ourselves. Anyway, life goes on, la.

Mother Nature Calls is out now on Polydor.