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09 October 2010
Initially inspired by Classic 60’s pop, like The Beatles and The Byrds, Glasgow band Teenage Fanclub (www.teenagefanclub.com) have, in turn, been hugely influential themselves, including people like Kurt Cobain in the list of many admirers. After some sixteen years in the business they have recently left Sony and formed their own label to release their album, Man-Made, which exudes all the quality we have come to expect. Songwriting talent abounds, with Gerard Love, Raymond McGinley and Norman Blake all contributing material, and on their recent UK tour Barry Jones met up with Norman, and in the historic surroundings of Ma Egerton’s pub, in Liverpool, they chatted about the band’s career and future plans.
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Norman, the new album “Man-Made” is released on your own label. How much of a difference do you expect? How will it be different? When I spoke to Paul (Quinn-ex TF drummer) he was quite keen that his next album might be released by somebody else, because he’d released it on his own label; it must mean quite a lot of hard work? The other thing, which probably just shows my ignorance of the distribution of record deals is that Francis Macdonald (Current and original TF drummer) has Spit & Polish, Shoeshine, why would you not use that or is it a different distribution area? You seem to have operated quite well as a democracy so you don’t anticipate any business problems? Talking influences seems fairly inappropriate for a band that’s been going for some sixteen years, but there was a discussion on our own forum, which said that you weren’t particularly influenced by The Byrds. I think the influences seem fairly apparent really, but who do you feel currently offers something? Do you still get influences from other people? That Bill Callahan album got 10 out of 10 on Americana UK. Once it does the danger is that people go off them. KT Tunstall’s getting a bit of bad press, because she gets major label backing and some of the people who liked her before go off her. I was interested to hear about The Teenage Fanclub tribute, What A Concept, which seemed to be well received, although I have to admit, to my shame, that there were only about three acts that I recognised. How do you view the album and the versions of the songs on them? I think it’s the Japanese one. (Still not quite sure! Ed.) Did you know all the bands? Is it likely to make you any money? Maybe the royalty cheques will turn up one day? Paul Quinn said that you’d produced some tracks for him. Have you got any other production roles planned? For the latest album you actually brought in John McIntyre to produce. What was the philosophy behind that then considering you’re interested in production yourself? How long did you stay there? I noticed that you’ve got a single and the b-side of that has been recorded somewhere else since. Presumably that work was all done last year; have you now got stuff written which you’re looking to record? I know the new album’s not long out, and talking about something beyond that is probably a bit premature, but with it having been done and recorded last year and you do have other material, have you any plans for another album? And would you go back to Chicago again or would you do something different maybe? You’ve been prone to the odd cover versions; any new ones that you have in mind that you’ve included in the set list at the moment? You probably don’t need reminding about this, but I believe you’re going to be 40 in October. Are you going kicking and screaming or are you resigned to it? Have you got any major ambitions for the band? Major highlights. It’s a big deal for my son that Kurt Cobain thought you were great. What are the major highlights for you? And many more to come. What happens next? A tour of this country and then you’re going to Japan and Australia? Will that be headlining? What have you been listening to? They’ve been getting a bit of bad press as well, people saying that they’re not significant. I love that song. Well Norman, thank you very much indeed.
Well I guess one of the main aspects of it… advantages of being on our own label is, we have control over every aspect of what happens with the record, be that artwork, or marketing, or people doing press for it, y’know we’re appointing all these people to do these jobs, or whatever. So I think just the fact that we don’t have to answer to anyone, y’know, doing everything on our own terms is what makes it different. And it’s been going well… since it’s been released, but I think it’s selling pretty well so we’re really happy with that. The people that distribute the record distribute labels like Mute and big labels too, so that stuff is exactly the same as it would have been with Sony. Sony use the same distributors, other big labels use the same distributors y’know, so… I think our problem with Sony was that they weren’t really that interested in the band, but we know that the people at this label like the band y’know?
There’s a lot of hard work setting up, and we had… before we decided to go alone there was the possibility that we were going to release it on Domino records in the UK; we know those guys pretty well. After speaking to Jeff Travis and Alan McGee, and the guys at Domino, we decided to go it alone and they were cool about that; we went with their blessing y’know. But yeah there’s a lot of work in the initial set up of the label and the administrative stuff that you have to do, y’know there’s quite a bit of paperwork, you have to sign up to a number of organisations in the UK too, but that’s fine, once you do that it’s kind of plain sailing in a way, as long as you keep on top of it you’re fine.
Yeah he’s a... that’s a different thing and he also… I guess that’s been set up and in house for quite a long time, yeah, and I guess he’s got his own thing going there, and it would just really over-complicate things. But for us too we just wanted to establish our own label so that maybe in the future we can license our older albums from different places, so it just made more sense to start something new that didn’t have any history at all. That was more appealing to us.
No, that’s right, we all get on pretty well. If we’re still together after all this amount of time so… Actually, with Francis having the labels in the past it’s actually been pretty helpful with us setting this up, because he knows a lot of people. He’s had that label for over ten years, so he’s had quite a lot of experience …
Absolutely, I suppose the thing is we do like The Byrds records and The Beatles records, and y’know, classic 60’s guitar music, we are fans of that, but I think what I was trying to say was we also do like contemporary music. People have this idea that we don’t go beyond 1970 or something like that. That’s not true at all. I like Lou Barlow as a songwriter quite a bit, I think he’s great songwriter. I like Bill Callahan, Smog, I like Stereolab, and I went to see… the best gig I saw last year was Kraftwerk, so... most people have kinda diverse tastes, and everything you listen to will influence what you do in some way. But yeah, originally, classic pop music or whatever there’s no doubt about that. I think I was just trying to say… I’d been asked recently to take part in a documentary with The Byrds, for Radio 2, and I was kinda thinking, “I don’t really know if I’m qualified to take part in that.” I know quite a fair amount about The Byrds, but I don’t know… well, maybe I do… maybe I’d have been ok, but I wouldn’t have wanted to go on there… and I’m sure that there are people who know a lot about the Byrds and obsess about them. I just like them.
Yeah, but that’s great isn’t it? That just shows you how people are listening to lots of contemporary stuff. There is a lot of good contemporary music out there. Unfortunately, most of it doesn’t make the charts or get a lot of exposure. Some of it does though, but not a great deal.
Yeah, that kind a thing happens. That’s a crazy thing that people do. I would love to see someone like Gorky’s Zycotic Mynci get 10 out of 10, and being really successful, I would certainly still like them I’m sure.
Do y’know there’s two albums, there’s What a Concept and then there’s another tribute album that was a Japanese one… Is What a Concept the American one?
Right well there’s an American one as well and it’s great, it’s really nice, and it’s kind of flattering that people would want to do the songs.
No I didn’t know all of the bands, but I knew some of them though. Yeah it’s really flattering. It’s interesting to hear people’s interpretation. I mean very often they’re pretty faithful, but it’s always good to hear someone doing a different take on it. On the other compilation tribute record is a Spanish group, and I wish I could remember what they’re called, they do a version of our song Mellow Doubt, y’know like a rock version, it’s almost like Bon Jovi or something like that. It was weird hearing it done in that style. It kinda worked actually y’know, in that style. But it’s flattering if people want to cover songs, y’know, it’s great.
I’d imagine not, but it’s nice that people have made the record. It was fun for us to listen to y’know.
You never know, maybe the group that’s done the Bon Jovi… they’ll have a big hit in Spain, who knows?
Well I’ve been working with a group in Glasgow called the Red Bee Society (www.redbeesociety.co.uk) and I’m possibly going to be working with a couple of other bands in Glasgow. Yeah I’m interested in getting involved doing that. I worked with a band called V-Twin recently, they’re a Glasgow group. Yeah, it’s something I’m interested in doing more of, I enjoy sitting behind the desk, and producing in the old sense of the word, y’know actually getting involved.
Right, well I think we were initially looking for someone who is a good engineer, and John is that, a very good engineer. And I guess that was our … for us making this record we wanted to really be more involved in the arrangements, and getting that right, and I think you need really need someone to be there, and recording things, and getting the sounds. There’s too much to do yourselves I think. It’s too time consuming, and, obviously, it’s John’s studio, so he knows all the equipment. So that was really the main decision; we liked the work that John had done in the past with his own bands, and other records that he’d made. We liked the way they sounded, and Gerry had worked with John making a Pastels (www.sheepish.org/pastels/main.html) record, the soundtrack for a movie called The Last Great Wilderness, a Scottish movie, and we’d liked that so we got in touch with him. He suggested that we come to Chicago, and initially we thought that would be pricey, but he did us a really great deal on it, and it worked out about the same, roughly about the same as it would to make the record here.
We were there for about five weeks; it wasn’t a long time. Well, actually, we did five weeks recording and then went back for two weeks mixing in the summer. Recorded in February and then back in summer.
We tend to record things when we need to y’know. We did need b-sides recently and we recorded those. We did a cover mount for a Scottish newspaper; Scotland on Sunday did a cover mount CD, which was great, so we had to record some new things for that, and alternative versions of things, and we recorded the b-side which is going to be the first single’s b-side in that session, but if we … y’know we’ll have to record some more things before the end of the year and what’ll happen is we’ll book a studio, and a few days before we’ll get together, and we’ll each come in with a number of songs, and we’ll maybe record three or four of those so… we’re not constantly working at things, we just bring them in before we record them really.
I think we’ll probably do something different. I think we’ve realised, in the past, when we’ve gone back to the same places, you can never really capture the same sort of atmosphere, or whatever, it’s never the same twice so…I think we’ll try and do something different every time. I can’t imagine... obviously this one’s only just come out, but I can’t imagine we’ll be recording for at least a year. A new album anyway, but we are toying with the idea of releasing a compilation of b-sides, we’ve had loads of those; that would be a nice thing to do if we can license all those tracks. So we’ll possibly do that.
Yeah, well we’ve been doing He’d Be A Diamond by the Bevis Frond. We’ve been doing that recently, that is the only one we’ve been doing recently; we’ve cut right back on those. We love the song, and it’s great fun to play, but I’m sure we’ll do some more at some point. If we need some more b-sides I’m sure that we’ll do a couple of covers.
I’m happy; I wasn’t the first to cross the threshold. Raymond’s been there for a year or so, he seems ok, so… but I’m quite happy with my age, I’ve never really worried about that. We’ve never been a vain band in that way anyway, so I’m quite happy. Hopefully I’m growing old gracefully.
I would like us to sell more records than we did with Sony, that’s kind of the main ambition at the moment, because we had an unhappy time there. If we can do that we’ll be really happy, but no, I think we’ve been pretty lucky as it goes, really y’know, we’ve been together quite a long time; we’ve had great reviews generally throughout our career and that’s tough to do. I’m quite happy with what we’ve done. To sell more records would help our credit card bills y’know, pay some of those off.
Yeah I guess touring with Nirvana was one of them. That was amazing; it was just as Nevermind happened, and we’d known them before that. We’d known those guys when they made Bleach, and stuff, when they were a small band, but it was great just being there, and seeing that all happen. You kinda don’t forget these things. We’ve been lucky, we played with loads… played with REM a few times, and they were really cool, and The Pixies were great, and Radiohead. We toured America with Radiohead, and they were brilliant, really nice guys, and we had a great time. So all of these things are highlights, there’s been many, many highlights. Seeing Sonic Youth supporting Neil Young at the Madison Square Garden. That was amazing y’know? So lots and lots of things, good experiences.
And then after that we’re off to America and we’re just putting the final finishing touches to that tour. We’re going all across America. We’re releasing the record through Merge in America so… and that’s been great.
Yeah, oh yeah. We were asked by Keane to play with them in America, but the last couple of tours that we’ve done in America have been supporting bands, so we thanked them, but we said, “No, we need a club tour.” It would have been great I’m sure, and I’m sure they’re really cool guys, but we decided it would be better for us to do our own club tour, so that’s what we’re doing. Sleeper bus and off we go y’know?
It’s always a tough one to answer. I was listening to some Serge Gainsbourg recently and I thought what an amazing song, absolutely brilliant record, fantastic. All sorts of stuff, Lou Barlow’s new record’s really good… Y’know I go totally blank when people ask this question. I tell you one record that I love, it’s a guy called Joe Bussard a guy in America He didn’t make the record; he’s got the biggest collection of 78’s in the world, and it’s called Down In The Basement by Joe Bussard, and what it is, he’s just selected tracks from his collection of 78’s. And he’s amazing this guy. He’s got a website (www.vintage78.com) and it’s amazing because you can send requests, he’ll make a compilation cassette from these 78’s, you’ll just pay a few dollars for it. But it’s a great compilation it’s fantastic. He’s got records that there are only one copy of in the world, only one known copy of, and stuff like that, and they’re amazing records, like they call them race records, and whatever, and there’s just hundreds of them all over America, and he goes around and collects them all. He drives into little towns, and says, “Do you know anybody with old records?” And they go, “Oh yeah, there’s a guy down there with some…”, but this is great because it’s got a great booklet, with little stories in it, so that’s worth listening to. And what else have I been listening to? Can, I like a lot of Can, y’know. Since we’re in Liverpool I should pick a Beatles record, The Beatles, The White Album it’s fucking unbelievable.
I can’t understand that. I don’t understand that at all. One thing that really gets my goat is people having a go at Paul McCartney, they should really get off his case, he’s a genius. Something like I Will, it’s amazing.
I meant to send him, I’ve never done it, but I need to, at some point, to send him some of our records. Who knows if he’ll ever hear them, but I just feel like I have to do that y’know.
An absolute pleasure.