Idlewild Feature - 09/09/03
Idlewild
“You wonder, ‘how the hell did we get here?’”
So speaks Idlewild bass player, Bob Fairfoull.
Indeed.
And actually, were it not for new wave icon and ex – Patti Smith Group co-founder and Idlewild fan Lenny Kaye who picked them up after a bruisingly ineffective album session with Stephen Street and dusted them down, showing them a few tricks along the way, they may well not have got there at all.
According to Fairfoull, the album, which we now know as “The Remote Part”, would not be what it is without Kaye’s assistance, despite none of their collaborations making the final cut. “[Working with Kaye] was a massively important part of making the record. We realised that we had been rushing ourselves; that there was too much pressure and a rushed job can never be a good job. He made us look at the way we were writing songs and taught us to persevere with songs we thought weren’t good enough.”
And he also credits Kaye with adding more than a little of his magic to their most successful single to date...
“We had an acoustic song. Before we always left songs as they were written. The song with the piano in would end up as the piano song. [Kaye] showed us that we could start with an acoustic song, and build it from there – make it rock a bit. We worked on that song and pretty much wrote it with Lenny, and that song became "American English".”
Singer Roddy Woomble stated in a previous interview that Idlewild possesses an “anti confidence”, which Fairfoull agrees Kaye had to work on to get the supreme confidence present on the album. “We’d write good vocals and harmonies and then feel a bit exposed, so we’d add distorted guitars over the top to hide it. Lenny’s a typical New Yorker – he doesn’t care about what people think. It’s a very British thing to be so aware of people’s perception of yourself, and he helped us to ignore that a bit.” He’s pleased when I tell him that I think this approach gives the album a subtler, more delicate feel to the previous records, whilst still remaining true to their sound.
Everything going so well? The backlash surely has to start here.
As with every band that have been going for a while, with a solid and faithful fan base, and who suddenly become successful in the mainstream, Idlewild find themselves on the wrong end of criticism from their own message board. A quick glance will show you fans (the old ones, you understand, the ones who bought the first record and who have been to every gig ever and you’ll never like them so much as me, so there) who disagree with the band’s decision to tour with Coldplay and who disagree with the choice of “Live in a Hiding Place” as the album’s third single. They think it shows a softening, and a betrayal of their back catalogue.
But Bob’s not altogether sympathetic to these folk, “There are always those fans who think that they own the band. Which they don’t. They resent it when the band gets new fans. It’s a shame they feel that way, but they still buy the records. [The Coldplay tour] is the only opportunity we’ll get to play to that many people. Of course we’d love to have their fans buy our records. We knew that would happen. There were those that said we’d sold out when we released "Hope is Important" because some thought it wasn’t as fast as "Captain". It is a shame they feel that way, but then "A Modern Way Of Letting Go" is one of the heaviest songs we have ever written. But “Live in a Hiding Place” is a beautiful song.”
It is. And as such, required a very special video. Lucky then, that they have another useful fan in the guise of Wim Wenders, ultra cool cult director of films such as Buena Vista Social Club, and he added a touch of Hollywood to it.
“We were really flattered that he wanted to work with us. He has a strange, abstract way of looking at things. It looks really good though. There’s a real difference between films and music videos and this is very cinematic. We’d be in the Californian desert at 5-30am dying of heat, dressed as cowboys in black and white, and then there’d be all these fat American tourists behind us in really vibrant colours.”
Which is, of course, where we arrived...
“You wonder, ‘how the hell did we get here?’”
So speaks Idlewild bass player, Bob Fairfoull.
Indeed.
And actually, were it not for new wave icon and ex – Patti Smith Group co-founder and Idlewild fan Lenny Kaye who picked them up after a bruisingly ineffective album session with Stephen Street and dusted them down, showing them a few tricks along the way, they may well not have got there at all.
According to Fairfoull, the album, which we now know as “The Remote Part”, would not be what it is without Kaye’s assistance, despite none of their collaborations making the final cut. “[Working with Kaye] was a massively important part of making the record. We realised that we had been rushing ourselves; that there was too much pressure and a rushed job can never be a good job. He made us look at the way we were writing songs and taught us to persevere with songs we thought weren’t good enough.”
And he also credits Kaye with adding more than a little of his magic to their most successful single to date...
“We had an acoustic song. Before we always left songs as they were written. The song with the piano in would end up as the piano song. [Kaye] showed us that we could start with an acoustic song, and build it from there – make it rock a bit. We worked on that song and pretty much wrote it with Lenny, and that song became "American English".”
Singer Roddy Woomble stated in a previous interview that Idlewild possesses an “anti confidence”, which Fairfoull agrees Kaye had to work on to get the supreme confidence present on the album. “We’d write good vocals and harmonies and then feel a bit exposed, so we’d add distorted guitars over the top to hide it. Lenny’s a typical New Yorker – he doesn’t care about what people think. It’s a very British thing to be so aware of people’s perception of yourself, and he helped us to ignore that a bit.” He’s pleased when I tell him that I think this approach gives the album a subtler, more delicate feel to the previous records, whilst still remaining true to their sound.
Everything going so well? The backlash surely has to start here.
As with every band that have been going for a while, with a solid and faithful fan base, and who suddenly become successful in the mainstream, Idlewild find themselves on the wrong end of criticism from their own message board. A quick glance will show you fans (the old ones, you understand, the ones who bought the first record and who have been to every gig ever and you’ll never like them so much as me, so there) who disagree with the band’s decision to tour with Coldplay and who disagree with the choice of “Live in a Hiding Place” as the album’s third single. They think it shows a softening, and a betrayal of their back catalogue.
But Bob’s not altogether sympathetic to these folk, “There are always those fans who think that they own the band. Which they don’t. They resent it when the band gets new fans. It’s a shame they feel that way, but they still buy the records. [The Coldplay tour] is the only opportunity we’ll get to play to that many people. Of course we’d love to have their fans buy our records. We knew that would happen. There were those that said we’d sold out when we released "Hope is Important" because some thought it wasn’t as fast as "Captain". It is a shame they feel that way, but then "A Modern Way Of Letting Go" is one of the heaviest songs we have ever written. But “Live in a Hiding Place” is a beautiful song.”
It is. And as such, required a very special video. Lucky then, that they have another useful fan in the guise of Wim Wenders, ultra cool cult director of films such as Buena Vista Social Club, and he added a touch of Hollywood to it.
“We were really flattered that he wanted to work with us. He has a strange, abstract way of looking at things. It looks really good though. There’s a real difference between films and music videos and this is very cinematic. We’d be in the Californian desert at 5-30am dying of heat, dressed as cowboys in black and white, and then there’d be all these fat American tourists behind us in really vibrant colours.”
Which is, of course, where we arrived...
posted by Luci @ 7:48 AM
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