Saints And Sinners

FORGET THE Gallaghers, if it s drug-snorting, journalist-thumping, model-bonking rock n roll debauchery you re after, Orbital mainman and Grant Mitchell doppelganger Phil Hartnoll s your man.
I fucking wish, he snorts. The Missus has got me looking after the kids at the moment, so the most outrageous thing I m likely to be doing today s the washing-up.
I tell you something, you can make a wicked bucket-bong out of an empty Fairy Liquid bottle. Adding to Hartnoll s Cinderella complex is that having organised babysitters and generally bust a gut to record the theme for The Saint in double-quick time, Orbital won t be getting dickie-bowed-up for the film s Hollywood premiere.
Yeah, continues Disgusted of Sevenoaks. We were half thinking of going over but the tight sods won t pay our air fares. I bet no one said to Adam Clayton or Larry Mullen, the Mission:Impossible premiere? Call Pan-Am and they ll sort you out for five hundred quid . I wouldn t mind but we had this soundtrack organiser we know, George, onto us screaming, Help! The film s supposed to be finished next week and we haven t got a theme tune! The people making it didn t have a fucking clue what they wanted. They d tried a 40-piece orchestra which was a complete disaster, right down to them leaving the doo-doo-doo-doo out at the start.
As anyone who s old and grizzled enough to remember the original will tell you, The Saint theme without a doo-doo-doo-doo at the start is like Ant without Dec, Morecambe without Wise or Radio Ireland without a technical cock-up every five minutes.
To be fair, he admits, they did give us #30,000 for our trouble which isn t bad for a week s work. Not that we ll see any of it. We re still unrecouped with the record company which means that 12% of our sales and the money we get from stuff like soundtracks goes to paying off our advance. I don t want to be a whingey git but, financially, this is a tough old business to be in. If you make a video, for instance, half the cost goes onto your unrecouped advance which means it s almost impossible to get out of the red.
Ah, this explains why most of Orbital s promo clips look like they ve been shot by the pupils of St. Francis The Bewildered s Remedial School as part of their audio-visual therapy class.
You re confusing arty with cheap , Hartnoll insists. There is a difference. Not in price, maybe, but I think all of our videos have been pretty good in a Francis Ford Coppola-with-a-Camcorder sort of a way.
The one for The Saint will obviously be different because, being a Hollywood job, they ll want to chuck in loads of explosions and running around from the film. That s what pisses me off. They can spend whatever on the video, no problem, yet when it comes to flying us over for the premiere it s, sorry, can t afford it. Not that we particularly wanted to but, y know, it s the principle.
It s a testament to Orbital s unashamed film soundtrack fetish that their update of The Saint bears a striking resemblance to The Box , last year s big breakthrough single which demonstrated that there s no need for two baldy blokes with synthesisers to keep making cults of themselves.
Indeed, an internal memo procured by Hot Press Covert Operations team talks of the duo being a huge priority for London Records and we hope that with all the tools you now have, you can at long last break this band in your market.
These tools include some rather nifty 6ft tall neon Saint stickmen which, as we speak, are on their way to a megastore near you complete with a set of those increasingly famous Orbital glasses.
Yeah, I m trying to get one of them for my living-room but knowing that lot, they ll try and charge me for it, he laughs. What you ve got at the moment is a general nostalgia for the late 60s/early 70s which takes in not just music, but all forms of popular culture. Portishead, for instance, are big into that Michael Caine British spy movie vibe and, yeah, I ve got a few Ennio Morricone and John Barry records which get taken out from time to time for inspiration. Joe 90, The Persuaders, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) they all had wicked theme tunes.
As someone who takes their gogglebox-related activities seriously, Hartnoll is concerned that our Hollywood chums may be missing the point when they take Ye Olde English TV shows and tart them up for American consumption.
I dunno how The Saint s going to work out, he reflects. I ve always thought of it as being a very British sort of a thing but they ve got Val Kilmer playing Simon Templar. It s like when they cast Kevin Costner as Robin Hood he couldn t even say Nottingham properly. Perhaps I m over-reacting but I think that s taking the piss a bit.
Thankfully, no such liberties have been taken as a result of Uncle Sam s current infatuation with all things British and dance. Helped initially by the Oasis connection, the Chemical Brothers have now taken up residence in over 300,000 American homes; Breathe took The Prodigy to the dizzy heights of number 75 on the Billboard Hot 100; and The Orb are currently outselling such Apple-pie-and-Mom acts as Journey, Heart and Richard Marx.
When we first went over in 1992 the scene was completely underground but, bit by bit, it s been infiltrating the mainstream and before long I can see one of us making the top 10. My money d be on The Prodigy because they ve got Keith as a visual focus. They re more open-minded than they used to be but the Americans still like their bands to have a frontman.
We had a lot of fun before Christmas, he continues, doing these radio station day outs . You had kids as young as 12 and 13 turning up, not knowing you from Adam and having an absolute ball. I like playing to the unconverted because, well, it s more of a challenge.
So, would Phil concur with Liam Howlett when he says he doesn t want to play to ravers because you could sample a fart, loop it and they d still dance?
I know that s The Prodigy s attitude but, nah, I don t agree. I think it s very unfair to suggest that the only reason people leap around at gigs is because they re E ng off their faces. That s doing a grave disservice to not just their fans, but their own music.
Having said that, he qualifies, I d far rather have The Prodigy taking dance music to the masses than U2. It really annoys me when they go on about how in tune they are with dance culture. They weren t very in tune when Negativland sampled one of their songs.
Okay, that s two less for the PopMart guest-list at Wembley Stadium. In between bouts of house-husbandry, Phil has been turning his attentions to the next Orbital album which writer s or should that be programmer s? block will be in the shops before Christmas.
Actually, he rues, we could do with a bit less attention-turning and more recording. Nah, I ve got my own little set-up downstairs, so what I ll do is lock myself away for a few weeks and see what I can come up with. What normally happens is I get a doodle of an idea which myself and Paul muck around with until it develops into something more substantial. Suffice to say, we don t have a clue what the record s going to sound like yet!
We did The Saint and there s another little project we ve been working on with this filmmaker who goes into disadvantaged areas and sets up workshops. We ve just recorded the soundtrack for a short he s done with a group of prisoners in Hull nick. I know a lot of people would say, they ve broken the law, let em rot , but some of these guys are as young as 16 and 17 and the least they deserve is a bit of compassion.
Does Hartnoll have any prior offences that he d like taken into consideration?
Well, he considers, we used to open up old houses and have parties in them but that was more a squatting-type thing. I did get done once when I was at school. A copper discovered me and my mate playing football with a squashed-flat road-lamp we d found, wouldn t believe a car or something had run over it and nicked us for criminal damage. I was so angry I wanted to hit him which, in the circumstances, wouldn t have been a good idea!
In addition to their wanton lawbreaking, Phil and his spawn-of-Beelzebub brother have been offending Christian sensibilities with their cloven hooved caterwaulings.
Yeah, someone wrote to one of these Right To Reply-style programmes on the BBC complaining that Satan was inciting young children to dabble in witchcraft. I only heard about it afterwards which is a shame because I d love to have gone on and told him what an idiot he is.
Then there are the people who come up to you and go, hey man, why are you putting out all those negative vibes. That s not what it s about. Actually, it d be great if we pissed the God Squad off so badly that they started burning our records. Y know, to burn em, you ve got to buy em.
Anyway, back to more pressing matters. Does Phil Hartnoll s washing-up liquid get his dishes squeaky-clean.
I can t believe you ve just asked me that but, yeah, I don t think Nanette Newman would have any complaints.
What did I tell you? The man s a fucking rock n roll animal! n