#Melody Maker Stage

[sweetdreamsjeff]

Reading Festival, Melody Maker Stage

Dave Simpson, Melody Maker, 3 September 1994

SO HERE I am, it's 12.15pm, the f***ing cab driver's turfed me out onto the street. I've got miles to walk to the flamin' festival and it's started to pour down. The last thing I need in my life right now is a bunch of Pearl Jam wannabes fronted by Ian Astbury's dustman, but, lo and behold, CANDLEBOX are here with their low-rent Marquee metal, guitar solos that seem to last several centuries and a "love song" that includes the words "f***in'" and "bullshit". No, really.

What quirk of fate or nature has brought these people together with us? Did they actually sit down and arrange to produce the most appalling, indulgent fret-wanking cover of 'Voodoo Chile' imaginable? "We are from Seattle, Washington," they chirp. In the real world, this gross display of geographical misfortune and mind-boggling cheesiness would be met with a firm "Get outta here" and a handful of shotguns, but this is not the real world. This is Reading. People clap more forcefully, they pogo harder, they do everything they can to do my bleedin' head in.

I need a break already but instead I get Andrew Mueller ranting on about the Chelsea result (while it lasts, mate, while it lasts). Oh and DIG, whose punky-spirited rock metal comes as a refreshing surprise after all the posturing of the previous act. Mueller, that is. Lordy, they've even got some Good Songs. Dig, that is. But hold on... those rousing chords, those earnest political lyrics, that walloping drumbeat. They've turned into Simple Minds! Which makes the fact that they have a "song about loving relationships" called, impeccably, "F*** You" all the more confusing.

Hardly anybody watches SCRAWL, probably cos they coincide with a rare burst of sunshine and the appearance of Whitesnake or somebody on the Main Stage. A shame, cos their delicate but punchy blend of Muses, Au Pairs, tight red mini-skirts and way, way soulful vocals is most palatable. Something's gotta give and JEFF BUCKLEY gives it loads. 'Grace' is much rawer than usual, 'Kangaroo' is simply lust-crazed. "When I first saw you" — he sounds almost disgusted with himself — "you had on blue jeans". He spits out the line as if blue jeans were the utmost in degradation. I swear the sky's turning red and molten electricity is swirling around our ears. And is that really Liz Fraser jumping up and down in the front row or am I finally succumbing to Festivalitis? I dunno, my hangover's turned into nervous exhaustion, someone's given me a strange pill and there's a champagne cork popping inside my stomach.

Now here come MORPHINE with their dark and haunting "lo-rock". Outside, the sun's shining and a girl has some kind of metal ring in her arse. But in here we're in a late-night bar. Orson Welles fronts an avant-jazz, two-string-bass Birthday Party, Sherlock Holmes sips quietly in a corner and the smells are of fast sex and slow Gauloises. 'Thursday' plagiarises 'TV Eye' (cool) and the melancholy vibe of 'Candy' suggests they've got more strings to their bow. If not their bass.

About now I fall asleep. I dream that THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS are onstage and that Carl Puttnam has left the floundering CUD and embarked on a solo career as a Las Vegas entertainer and is being taken seriously but I am dreaming. Aren't I?!

There's a delay before ECHOBELLY cos they've forgotten the chords to 'There Is A Light...' When they finally appear, there are two Echobellys. (That's just the echo — Sonics Ed) The first are great. They have a warm, charismatic singer and stirring, intelligent songs about drugs and abortions and ego. But the second, f***. Scrape away the veneer of the first and you get a hoary rock beast with interminable solos and boots on monitors and meetings with poets forsaken in favour of lunches with A&R men. Songs that could be written by Battle Of The Bands entrants from say, Derby, but seem destined for America and a vocalist like Toyah Wilcox on helium. They're muso but they can't play 'Bellyache'. They're popular but a section of the crowd thins. I wait patiently for the reappearance of the first Echobelly of the first four numbers. They never return.

Instead, Mark Eitzel of AMERICAN MUSIC CLUB gives the most committed performance of the festival. His songs are peppered with words like "phony" and "charade" and they cut through rock's pretensions like a knife through shit. The intensity of Eitzel's performance is remarkable. One minute he's all deadpan, the next joking with the crowd, the next hurling down his guitar lead and exiting the stage because some security guy looked at him funny. Psychiatrists call them mood swings; I call it the sincere temperament of a genius. 'Firefly' fizzes and crackles, 'Western Sky' is gorgeously poised and they do this odd punk song that could be Johnny Thunders. I could die listening to this group.

But here we are, light years away from the bad HM of the opening acts and listening to TINDERSTICKS: music played by men in suits which owes as much to old music hall, working men's clubs, Scott Walker and Jacques Brel as it does to rock music. Sadly, no 'City Sickness', no 'Marbles', but still I marvel at Stuart Staples' voice, which sounds like the last 10 per cent of all his syllables have been surgically removed, giving him an intoxicating, clipped croon. Of course, some of the time he does sound worryingly like Steve Wright's Pub Singer and has an awkward, hunchback posture that certainly wasn't the result of a childhood footballing injury, but what the heck. A new ballad called 'No More Affairs' (right!) is well storming and although they bore me by playing too long, they bore me with style...

Can I go to bed now?

© Dave Simpson, 1994

[lovecomedy]

If you need any convincing that Noel and Liam Gallagher are incestuous freaks (affectionate), here's the basic information you need

First of all. The kisses

Loch Lomond kiss, where they just... made out on stage in front of cameras. Cool. There's a gif with every photo from every angle.

Another kiss, this time in Japan. Here's the actual video.

And here's the same video but together with nice quotes from their 2016 documentary:

Here's a 2005 award event where they kiss again and also look quite in love

And here's Liam straight up groping Noel during concerts:

General stage antics and more groping:

Just one more groping

Ok. Let's talk about the music, then

Oasis has a song that Noel wrote called "My Sister Lover". The title speaks for itself, really. It includes amazing lyrics such as "You're my lover, I'm your brother"

But there's more! Noel used the same chorus of this song (with different lyrics) for a song he released in his solo album, 20 years later. It's called "Lock All the Doors". The very first line says: "She wore a star-shaped tambourine, prettiest girl I’d ever seen". And guess... guess who famously played a star-shaped tambourine? Liam! And Noel was the one that gifted him the fucking tambourine!!

Liam wrote a song for Oasis called Guess God Thinks I'm Abel

I'll just link everything that's been said about this song, because it really is batshit insane that this song exists

(It's common in the north of England to refer to things and people as "our". When either Liam or Noel say "our kid", they're talking about each other)

Liam has the tendency of thinking every song Noel writes is about him, including the love songs

Here he says "I'm his muse", along with some other interesting quotes

Ok, now we're on to suspicious quotes!

They had sex last night, according to Liam

This one is my favorite:

Of course this one is just all the weird quotes jammed in one post, you can feel yourself going crazy as you read it

Noel assures us that Liam knows about his arse

Other people confirming that they act like a couple

This one has Noel saying Liam is deeply in love with him. At the bottom, Liam's tweet.

Actually Liam always tweets things that basically confirm they're relationship. Like when somebody asked him if he ever rimmed Noel. Yeah.

This radio interview is where the most lovely quotes come from. Only Noel was supposed to be interviewed but then they both showed up PISSED DRUNK. Transcription in the same post

Even More weird quotes

This one involves the word impregnate

Noel making a suspicious comment about his daughter and son, Anais and Donovan

I think to be convinced you really just need that, but I'd like to add some niceties.

Just genuinely enjoying each other’s company

This is from the Oasis; 10 Minutes Of Noise and Confusion documentary. As Noel is kissing Liam's cheek, Liam is saying "He’s a fucking cunt and I hate him and I love him and he twists my melon, man. He’s the best songwriter in the fucking world.”

Some sweet quotes, and some less sweet ones as well

From the Supersonic documentary

Hugging after playing football

Just being silly

To finish off, two wonderful video edits with endearing moments

[jmdbjk]

The Drama. It's Jimin.

We don't know yet how Jimin will tie together that sheet of music La Lettra (The Letter), containing the music of The Truth Untold and the Legend of the Smeraldo flower in this album but he's named the album MUSE.

The Truth Untold lyrics

You know that I can’t Show you ME Give you ME I can’t show you my miserable self, so, yet again, I wear a mask and go to meet you But I still want you

A flower that looks like you bloomed in the garden of loneliness I wanted to give it to you after taking off this silly mask But I know that I can’t never ever do so

And the story it is based on, The legend of 'Smeraldo' about a flower created just for the girl the man couldn't reveal himself to.

Here is an excerpt from this link:

The man wanted to help the girl. He wanted to teach her every method of growing flowers he knew, he wanted to teach her how to grow beautiful flowers. But he couldn’t come forward to the girl. She would be scared of him, she wouldn’t love his grotesque appearance. In the end, the only thing he could do was to grow and take care of the flowers so she could keep coming to his garden.

The vibe of The Truth Untold is yearning, desperation, unfulfilled and unrequited love due to one's own inner turmoil holding them back.

The gist of the Legend of the Smeraldo is that you cannot remain withdrawn if you are to achieve the thing you desire most. If you wait too long it will be too late. You must overcome the negative perceptions of yourself in order to reach for the thing you desire.

"Muse" can mean what Jimin is to others and what Army is to Jimin, but Jimin's muse is most likely an element of his inner persona that he keeps to himself, that he draws on for his creativity.

It could also be the stage, the desire to visually express his creativity. I have heard music artists claim their muse or mistress is the stage, they cannot stay away from it, their passion, their obsession, their life's blood and breath to the point everything else is secondary.

The definition for the word muse is:

a person or personified force who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist.

Muse is also related to Greek mythology. From wikipedia:

The Muses are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric songs, and myths that were related orally for centuries in ancient Greek culture.

Where have we seen this inspiration before in Jimin's creativity? I wrote about his Artemis/Apollo concept for his photo folio here.

I know too often Jimin is reduced down to his visuals and his singing...he is a walking melody-maker after all. But he's much deeper than that. He is well-read, he excels at math and science, he understands the human condition better than anyone else around him.

Perhaps in this project, he will explore something that expresses these concepts more deeply.

Motifs he's using in the album's concepts:

Blooming: ME

Serenade: US

A field of flowers, not just any flower, a simple small white flower. Thousands of them. Do the flowers represent us?

I wonder what the blurred out center image of the album covers will reveal.

In his Sept. 1 live last year, among the things he spoke about (besides his Jungkookie's birthday) Jimin told us he was doing things differently, like starting from scratch.

During this live, commenters kept asking about his beat up knuckles and he said just wait and we will find out. He also showed us his workout room in his house.

He also showed us his solar system mood light casting images across the ceiling of his bedroom. He says he falls asleep with it on.

Yet he's an expert at talking to us for a great length of time without really telling us anything. Masterful in fact. He rarely reveals anything personal. We were astonished when he walked through his own home and showed us various rooms in it.

But he wasn't always like this. Whatever circumstances, whether it be outside forces or his own inner growth and maturity, he's changed over the years. He's an expert at hiding parts of himself and his life from us.

How difficult is it for any of us to be our REAL selves in front of anyone? How many of us hide the fact we are Army from our friends, family and co-workers? How many of us behave a certain way in certain situations in order to hide what we perceive are our weaknesses? How many of us are reluctant to speak out, even about frivolous things or dress a certain way or avoid wearing certain colors because what people might think or perceive about us?

Now imagine that you make your living by putting yourself on stage and in front of cameras for millions of prying eyes.

I do think Jimin loves the drama of it all, the mystique. I believe Jimin loves sensuality and provocation. And I think he loves creating visual expressions of all of it.

Many of us share the same inner muse but few of us possess the tools like Jimin does to express these inner musings outwardly. But if we did too, could we? Do we have the fortitude to put ourselves out there? Sure, it's easy to say "if I had a body like Jimin's I would walk around naked all the time." Would you really? Would you really invite the eyes to look and pry and critique? Would you welcome the amount of judgement that would take place? Because it never stops at just one thing. Offering yourself up invites judgement about everything, even things you don't have any control over, from the shape of your fingers to the tone of your voice.

Over the years, Jimin has shown how self-critical he is, constantly wanting to improve himself, always seeming determined to take it to the next level. Determined to show us another side of himself. Brave enough to keep revealing what he draws from his own muse.

MusE... blooming... ME

mUSe... serenade... US

Jimin's blooming and in this record, he will serenade us with his love. He really didn't want to leave us. Perhaps he felt he was just hitting his stride. I felt it.

[harrisonarchive]

Footage filmed on May 25, 1964, presumably in Los Angeles, en route to London. (If anyone knows who this lucky fan is, please get in touch.)

“George Harrison is the reluctant Beatle. He did not expect fame. When it came, he was bewildered. He is the most affable of the four — instantly friendly, talkative and frank. Like John, George detests star treatment. […] Some say his image has not taken off in the 'solo star' sense as it has for, say, Paul or Ringo. The truth is that, with less fuss and adulation than has surrounded the other three, Harrison has built up a vast following. Adults seem to gravitate to ‘I like George the best’ because they think he is the quietest and most ‘respectable’ Beatle. Young girls want to mother him. He is probably the most conscientious autograph-signer of them all. He believes in fair play for the fans: if he hears of someone who has waited at the stage door for an autograph, he goes to enormous lengths to ensure they are rewarded. He is starkly honest.” - Melody Maker, November 7, 1964 (x)

[ourshadowstallerthanoursoul]

On this day... - June 28th

On this day Led Zeppelin performed:

+ 1969 : Bath Festival in Bath, UK

+ 1970 : Bath Festival in Shepton Mallet, UK

“By 8pm, it was estimated that a quarter of a million people – roughly the population of the city of Leeds – were champing at the bit awaiting Led Zeppelin. Half-an-hour to set up – then the members of THE definitive ‘heavy’ band strode on stage. […] They kicked off with a new riff from their next album called “Immigrant Song”. They actually took some time to warm up the crowd, but this may have been intentional as they built up to a fantastic climax with an act lasting over three hours.” (Melody Maker)

+ 1972 : Tucson Community Center in Tucson, Arizona, USA

[freddiemercurylegendabovelegends]

Today - March 6th, 1977 - Queen Story!

San Francisco, CA, USA, Winterland Ballroom

'A Day At The Races' tour

Freddie Mercury interview extract 1981

05-02-1981 – Melody Maker

🔸Do you ever leave a stage feeling you’ve done a really bad gig?

Freddie Mercury: "Yes, sometimes. We all scream and shout at each other and destroy the dressing room and release our energy. We set ourselves a very high standard and 99 per cent of the audience wouldn’t agree with our assessment of a bad gig. In San Francisco I lost my voice and it was awful, my register was limited to virtually a monotone. I still gave it my all but I knew it was a bad performance. They had to reschedule the tour and take three or four shows off the tour. I have nodules on my vocal chords and most tours are now scheduled around my voice.

🔸"Freddie's voice gets a real beating on a tour like that, especially if you're doing five nights in a row, which sometimes we were. So towards the end he was having a lot of trouble and he was going to great length to keep it in trim, to the length of not talking on tour between gigs and taking all kinds of medications.

We lost a couple gigs due to that, but all in all we did very well, I think."

- Brian May

Interview with Capitol Radio

📸 Photo by Chris Bradford

[cherrylng]

Matthew Bellamy & Dominic Howard & Chris Wolstenholme interview - Muse [ROCKIN'ON (May 2000)]

"I think we're more honest about the times we live in than Radiohead."

Face this irreverent ‘beautiful mess’! While roaring demons and falsetto angels make a secret pact, Muse recaptures the physicality of rock with their superb technique and excessive staging, and even celebrates despair with all their might. There is no blind spot for these guys!!

Interview: Naoya Kida / Interpretation: Noboru Takami / Photography: DAISKE

Muse's showcase in Japan was a spectacular show that relentlessly hit the ‘sound of the times’. Matthew Bellamy's vocals, which utilise an idea that no one had thought of before - alternating between an effects-processed microphone and a normal microphone - attempt to represent all inner "voices" such as sadness, loneliness, joy, and madness, as well as his excessive performance in which he wields a modified guitar like a sword and his insane, virtuoso technique. He stepped through the dirt board that was placed on top of progressive rock and stole the techniques, mastered the sad melodies and flamenco rhythms in Spain, and possessed the "miraculous falsetto" of Jeff Buckley, who was supposed to be dead - I could only laugh and surrender to the possibilities of such outrageous rock.

Far from the objectivity of Radiohead, who reflect the world as it is, Muse lives in chaos. Now they stand on stage as if they are celebrating the story of despair that once ended with the death of Kurt Cobain. There is nothing to fear, despair openly, and cry out. If there is no hope in reality, you are the one who is beautiful and interesting, and that is the kind of fresh courage that resides in them. They have the overwhelming power to do justice to the jokey band name ‘Goddess’. In the 90s, rock music has been reduced to a struggle with self-consciousness, but these guys easily love and release their confused selves, and say that they are the right ones. And the moment this becomes possible, all hatred of the world, despair and everything else vanishes. Muse is a reckless narcissist who is heading for the extreme value of such catharsis.

In Melody Maker magazine, Matthew told us that his mother was a medium, that he too was interested in ouija boards as a child (his distrust of religion probably developed after he realised their falsehood), and the disappointment of his parents' divorce. I found their upbringing enigmatic and interesting, but this interview focused on what they wanted to achieve and how they wanted to provoke the world. Matthew's soul despairs of society (‘showbiz’) and religion, where even death is commodified in the capitalist system. I want you to feel the passion of his ascension with no place to go.

"Bands that used to be involved in the evolution of rock have been derailed into an ideological dimension. We're trying to get it back on track."

● I saw you live last night and thought your technique was so incredible that it was going to be amazing. Do you have any ambitions to drag down other British bands who can't even play rock music? M (Matthew, Vo&G): 「(laughs). I mean, in terms of the amount of touring we do and the quality of the music we make, I think Muse are better than most of the UK bands right now. For example, Senseless Things…… Sultans of Ping FC, ehehe.」

● (laughs) Don't be shy, but who would be your ideal artist, for example? M: ‘For me personally, the Tom Waits concert I saw in New York was the best concert of my life. There's no other show where you can experience so many different moods. It was like watching a play, there was so much atmosphere, I'd never seen anything like it. I'm not sure if that influence shows up in our live shows though. Also, the best rock band for me is probably Rage Against The Machine. That release of energy is extraordinary. It never stops from the beginning to the end.」 D (Dominic, Dr): 「Yeah, I guess so. Come to think of it, we used to like dressing up like girls too (laughs). I mean when we were much younger.」 M: 「We still do that sometimes. We didn't do it yesterday in Tokyo, but it happens sometimes. We started out under the name Muse when we were 16, and then we changed it to Rocket Baby Dolls for a couple of weeks, but then we put on a lot of make-up and we were like, ‘Oh my god’ (laughs).」

● Hahaha. M: 「I've always had this side to me. Deep down inside, I have a desire to be a 'whore', and that desire sometimes comes out (laughs).」

● (laughs) I see. What you said earlier about Tom Waits, Matthew used to do theatre. You did some weird pantomime-like moves on stage sometimes, but dare I say what do you think you're performing on stage? M: 「Hmmm, well…… It's like an excuse to let myself go (laughs). On stage, I can dress up like a twat and sing and express myself freely. In fact, if I started doing the same thing on the street, people would look at me with a scowl and say, "What's wrong with this guy?" But if you put a band together and do it on stage, they'll let you do it. It's like I'm going back and forth between two personalities, depending on the song. Some songs are so personal that you have to close your eyes to play them because you can't stand the way the audience looks at you, while others are the complete opposite, where you stare at the audience and point and make silly gestures. It's like, "Look at me!" I guess I go back and forth between the two during the gig.」

● Including this kind of live movement, I thought that you were conscious of wanting to restore something like human physicality in your music. I think guitar bands, especially after Radiohead, tend to go in an idealistic direction, but Muse are moving in a more physical direction, which I felt was very new. Is that something you are conscious of? C (Chris, B): 「No, it just happens naturally while we play. The way you express a song, the way you sing it, comes naturally as you play it.」 D: 「In fact, if you saw us at a gig, you wouldn't think there was any reasoning going on on stage. It doesn't seem like we're playing with anything in mind. It's like when you're reading a porno magazine, if you think too much you can't even stand up (laughs).」

● Hahaha. Well, that's true. M: 「But yeah, I've always tried to be physical. Not only live, but also on the album. In fact, a lot of people marvel at it. They expect it to be conceptual, as you say, but it's because our music is heavier, more direct, more open, more physical than you'd expect. But I think people are starting to realise, "This is what rock music has evolved into". "This is what rock music is like now". I think some of the bands that used to be involved in the ‘evolution’ of rock music, like Radiohead and Metallica*, have somehow strayed from the heavy, straight rock of Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins to a more conceptual, abstract dimension. We've (and then he wiggles his hand) - yeah, we've got it back on track.」

● I see. Did you have this vision from when you started the band? On the other hand, were there any frustrations, such as being in a very tight situation in real life? M: 「First of all, there was nothing else to do in the town where we grew up. Everyone who grew up in towns away from the big cities like London and Manchester is like that to some extent. So anyway, the main reason we started the band was to find something to do. And not something negative, but something positive. In fact, in a town like that, a lot of young people are going in a negative direction. They're so bored that they end up committing crimes. Drugs and things like that, even when they're just kids. There's really nothing to do. That's why for us the band is…… It was a prescription for not turning to crime.」

● So you were inspired by rock music in the first place because you were driven by the environment rather than the music itself? M: 「Yeah, I suppose it was the environment. But it's true that I started playing music because I was bored, but it wasn't because I was bored that I continued to pursue music without quitting. I think that's the biggest difference between me and the rest of the gang…… Hmmm…… I guess you could say that…… There's more than one reason why we started the band in the first place. There are so many reasons. So you have to be very careful when you use just one example. Because people might assume, "Oh, that's the reason?" For example, "When I was 17, just looking at all the people around me playing on computers all day and not doing anything else was enough to make me want to quit school", or "There's nothing more embarrassing than the apathy technology brings to people"……」 C&D: 「What's that (laughs)?」 M: 「But that's just one of the problems. There were also questions about the school education system itself…… The system says that "the schooling system makes the state as an organisation more powerful", but in my opinion it only makes the country richer, takes our eyes off the problems of the third world and makes the world a worse place. That's why I rejected schooling. So that was one of the issues that turned me towards rock music. The other issue is, yes, women. There are endless problems with women (laughs). So there are all sorts of reasons. And as I got older, I started expressing different feelings about different issues in my songs.」

● I think there are very few bands in the UK that have a critical perspective on society, do you have that kind of conviction? D: 「Certainly, I don't think there are many British bands doing the kind of music we do. We're often compared to Radiohead.」

● But when I saw you live, I thought that your guitar phrasing was completely different from Radiohead's. Why do you think people compare you to them? D: 「I mean, I think Radiohead are the only band other than us who are honest about the current situation in the UK. We and Radiohead are very much influenced by the country where we were born and raised. A lot of the negativity in our music comes from our feelings about the UK we grew up in. I can't think of many British bands that are doing anything remotely substantial.」 M: 「If you're talking about veterans as well as new bands, I think U2 are unique. I don't know about it musically, but in terms of the concept of the band and the way they look at things, I think they have a lot in common with what we're trying to say. But, for example, what Radiohead is doing now and what we're doing are completely different. They're about ten years older than us and I think the times themselves have changed since they were our age. So I guess you could say we're similar in the sense that Muse are doing music that's as much about ‘now’ as Radiohead were ten years ago, but these days Radiohead are making music about what's happening now for a 30-year-old, and we're making music about what's happening now for a 24-year-old. So in that sense we're different from them. I think we're more of a band of the current era, in the sense that we're honest about the times we're living in. But when I say ‘singing about the times’, I don't pretend to be singing about other people's relationships to the times. I'm just singing about our own relationship with our times. When you go into it and in the process of growing up, you create your own world, your own reality. You learn things, you experience things, and you form your own worldview that you think, "This is the world". It's completely different from what other people think of the world. So I'm just singing about the world I've shaped. It's my own view of the world, my own view of the times, and no one else is singing it. The other people are singing their own view of the times.」

● Yes. But you could say that although the perspective of the era they're singing about is different, they're targeting the same era. M: 「Oh, I see, yes, yes.」

● So, do you take pride in being a pioneering artist who correctly understands the ‘now’ and expresses it in your music? M: 「I'd like to be by the time we release our third album, though. I don't know. We've only released our first album. It's still more of a ‘goal’ at the moment. So we might fail.」

"I think life is a journey to find the right equilibrium of things. But I'm oscillating between two extremes. On the one hand I hate society and reject my audience, and on the other hand I embrace them."

● No, I'm hoping, really. So are there any bands or artists in the US that you feel empathy for? There are a lot of bands, including Rage, that use social stress as a source of energy. D: 「In America, it's…… Slipknot!」 C: 「(laughs)」 M: 「No, I seriously think so. I can relate to their music and I think they are similar to us in the way they focus on the zeitgeist. I mean, I think both Muse and Slipknot express honestly in their music how they relate to the times we're living in right now.」

● In the case of Slipknot, one of their messages is that they live in an era that has the potential for extreme and excessive heaviness, and they do it in a very pop way, which I think applies to you as well. Is it something you can relate to? M: 「Yes. So the problem is that I could easily go for the kind of music they're doing. But I think life is a journey of finding the right equilibrium of things. I'm only about 20 years old and I'm constantly going back and forth between the two extremes. I'm on a journey. It's hard to find a place of balance. So it's easy to settle on one extreme or the other. And the extreme point is Slipknot. So if you're not careful, you can easily end up with extremely reactionary music that's all about hate and anger. I think that side of me is always there. I feel like I'm always oscillating between the two extremes. On the one hand, you have bands that hate and reject society and reject their audience, or are almost hostile to them. And on the other side is a band that shares with the audience, loves and embraces the audience. And we're the ones who move back and forth between the two.」

● Indeed. So, you said before that you wanted to leave a mark that you are here, but behind such thoughts, is there an obsession that you might be an invisible man? M: 「No, I don't think there is such a thing as an invisible man. I think all human beings are equal. In the sense that we are all part of one big system that binds us all together. Whether you are a scientist trying to invent something for the future or just an office worker, you are all important. Because we all function together…… Hopefully.」

● That's a slightly cynical view of humanity. M: 「…… And I personally don't find it hard to be in a situation where I'm an invisible man. That's why I've always wanted to do music, and I have the most fun when I'm doing it, that's all. I think I'm basically very adaptable to different situations. I've been in a lot of different situations myself. For example, before I started this band I was doing manual labour, painting, and decorating. I've had some pretty hard jobs. But my workmates were all good guys and I adapted to the situation. And then all of a sudden this band started. So I think it's fair to say I didn't feel any fear at all.」

● So you were quite happy with the situation at that time? M: 「Um…… Well…… I wasn't (laughs).」

● Right? There was a kind of frustration, wasn't there? M: 「But even now, I'm not satisfied with it. I'm not sitting back and thinking, "We did it!" I still feel the same dissatisfaction as I did when I was doing that kind of work. I think all sorts of mental problems prevalent in western society contribute to my dissatisfaction.」

● David Bowie, for example, has said that he switched between different personas because he wanted to prove to himself that he wasn't invisible, but you don't make music out of that distorted impulse. If that's the case, what do you think fuels your work? M: 「……Because we're a three-piece band.」

● Hey. M: 「No, seriously, it's because we're just three people. I mean, with three people, there's a lot of room left for each of us to do what we want. The proof is that the music we make is just as powerful and loud as music made by bigger bands, like a five-piece band. Do you understand what I mean? I don't know how to explain it, but I was in four bands before Muse, and when I was in the first one, I felt like I lost myself, like I was lost, like I was just a part of something bigger. But now I'm completely guaranteed room to do whatever I want to do. There's room in the band now for my ‘whole personality’ on stage, not just on guitar. There's no one to clash with me.」 C: 「There's no chance of anyone being swallowed up by anyone else.」

● In other words, you've created this band form in order to fully open yourself up to the fact that you're not invisible, whether that's sad or melancholic. M: 「Yeah. For the time being we'll stay like this. I'm not going to say we're going to stay a three-piece band forever. You never know what the future holds.」

"I think we want to speak for the emotions of people in the social system. We're also emotionally driven and we're still confused."

● Understood. You said that "'Sunburn' is about a moth that hits a lightbulb when it thinks it's flying towards the sun", but I think a lot of your lyrics are about the disillusionment that comes when ideals are betrayed. Is this a reflection of your attitude towards the times you grew up in, your view of the times and the world that you talked about earlier? M: 「You're saying that 'Sunburn' sums up the era I live in?」

● Yes. I was wondering if it was a metaphor for how you feel, that your ideals have been betrayed. M: 「Yeah. But there were never any ideals to begin with. Ideals get broken as you get older, you know. That's why most people try to live a safe life, to stop their ideals from being destroyed. They fear the truth and want to turn away from it. And so they live a modest life in a modest town, in a modest family. They don't want to look at what's happening on the other side of it, they don't try hard to learn. Well, a lot of people don't want to talk about issues that challenge their reality…… People only want to talk about things that they feel comfortable talking about - things they don't want to destroy, things they've built up, and things they believe in. Anyway, I think I'm at the stage now where I'm trying to be as objective about things as possible. Because I think that's the best solution.」

● Do you think young British people of your generation are basically similarly disillusioned? M: 「I think they might hold it, yes. I think it's the same in a lot of countries, not just in the UK. I think people don't think about things as much as they used to. I mean, I suppose in terms of technology we're more advanced now than we were a few hundred years ago, but I think that a few hundred years ago people were thinking about a lot more things. About religion, about people. But these days, people think mostly about wasting money. They rarely think about anything else. I think that the media, especially television, has largely fostered this generation. For example, by the time I was born, computers were already part of the social system that brought me up. But as I've grown older, I've come to realise that these things are not really made for people's benefit. We humans have been bought up by these luxuries. I think that's where the disillusionment came from. In short, we don't feel a spiritual connection with other people anymore. It's called ‘apathy’ or ‘not feeling anything’. At least I think that's how I was brought up. And now that I'm doing music, I'm able to detach myself from those feelings, and I'm able to look at things and think about things objectively, and I think that's a big thing.」

● Radiohead's 'OK Computer', for example, was an album that played the role of a cold-hearted portrait of the modern social system itself. Do you want Muse to be a mirror to portray society in the same way? Or is it to liberate the emotions of the people in it? M: 「'OK Computer' is certainly that…… Hmmm…… I think it's an album that ‘describes’ things in detail. But the music we make is not that clear-cut. It's obviously the difference in age (laughs). So it's more like the inhabitants depicted in 'OK Computer'.」

● If 'OK Computer' was an album that objectively observed a certain system, then you guys are actually living in that system, feeling various things and expressing those feelings? M: 「Yes.」

● So, do you think it is your mission to break within the social system, or to be a voice for those who are going through similar experiences, or to speak for them and liberate them? M: 「Ah, yeah, I think I want to speak for them. At the moment, yes. I think we still tend to get carried away with our emotions, and I think we're still confused in many areas. I mean I always take the stance that "I don't really know". I haven't reached the point where I can express in my music what is right and what is wrong, or what this is all about. I'm not confident enough yet to sing something so direct, so black and white. I'm still confused.」

● I see. Now for the last question. From the passion and almost perfectionist performance you showed at last night's show, I felt your determination that if there is no ideal in the world and there is only confusion, then you have to create your own ideal world. What are your last remaining ideals, if any? M: 「Ideals……. I don't know, I don't know. I mean, isn't it the job of scientists to prove that the ideals we humans create are wrong? It's like no matter how idealistic we are, scientists will disprove everything one after another…… In the end, people either repeat the usual pattern of having their ideals shattered, meeting tragedy and dying (laughs), or they get through it, trying to keep the balance in their boring lives. So the most important thing is…… is to not be afraid of anything. I think if you accept fear, you can leave this world and move on to the next stage of your existence. It's fear that stops us from moving forward. Fear that you will lose everything you have built up in your life, all your ideals. So, on the other hand, you have to try not to create too many different ideals. I think it's important to always be aware that everything is just a figment of your imagination, an illusion. You have to accept that fact. And physical pain is one of the causes of imagination. So I think if you're willing to accept death, you're not afraid of it. No matter how you die. Then everyone will realise that death is only one step. Why should we be hesitant or afraid, if we're not going to move on anyway?」

Translator’s Note: Hey, Matt from the year 2000, what do you mean by that you still sometimes dress up like a girl? What do you mean you have a desire to be a ‘whore’ deep down??? Hello??????

Given that quote alone, even though this is an in-depth interview, I think this interview will be remembered in another way thanks to the “I have a desire to be a 'whore'” quote alone.

* For this part, admittedly I had no idea which band had the short form named of Medaru/メダル, as no band had such a name. The closest that I could guess, based on reading up on rock music history, is that this could be Metallica that Matt was referring to.

[gardenschedule]

Decision making within the Beatles

So the re-formation suggestions were never convincing enough. They were kind of nice when they happened – ‘That would be good, yeah’ – but then one of us would always not fancy it. And that was enough, because we were the ultimate democracy. If one of us didn’t like a tune, we didn’t play it. We had some very close shaves. ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ was a pretty close shave.”

“Paul McCartney’s New Album, New Life and How the Beatles Almost Reunited” by Brian Hiatt for Rolling Stone (1 March 2012).

"Well, say if George was the only one who didn't like a certain script but we were all mad about it, then we would try everything we could to change his mind, persuade him," he joked, as he raised his fist menacingly. "But if he just didn't want to do it, that would be it. We just wouldn't do it. We've always got to be in complete agreement on things as important as this, otherwise, later on it just wouldn't work out."

Paul McCartney interviewed by Maureen O’Grady for Rave, December 1965

“If they are asked to do something as a group and any one of them doesn’t want to take part, then the scheme is dropped,”

Norrie Drummond’s 1967 Melody Maker interview with McCartney

“We had a democratic thing going between us. Everyone had to agree with everything that was done, whether it was a concert in Liverpool or to go to Hamburg”

Harrison’s May 1998 testimony to the London High Court regarding the Star Club Tapes

Paul was the only thorn in his side. Paul refused to sign the contract and walked out of the offices. This left things in limbo, since according to the terms of the Beatles’ partnership agreement, all their business decisions had to be agreed by quorum. It might seem remarkable that Klein so quickly acquired this degree of power over the Beatles’ affairs. But bizarre at it might seem, the matter of the quorum was totally ignored. It might even have been that none of the Beatles were really aware that this clause had been written into their partnership contract by Brian. I doubt if at that stage any of them even had a copy.

Magical Mystery Tours My Life with The Beatles by Tony Bramwell

GEORGE: But it’s more of a personal thing. That’s down to the management situation. You know, with Apple. Because Paul, really, it was his idea to do Apple, and once it started going, Paul was very active in there. And then it got really chaotic and we had to do something about it. When we started doing something about it, obviously Paul didn’t have as much say in the matter, and then he decided – because he wanted Lee Eastman – you know, his in-laws – to run it, and we didn’t. Then that’s the only reason, you know. That’s the whole basis. But that’s only a personal problem that he’ll have to get over because that’s the reality. [It’s] that he’s out-voted, and we’re a partnership; we’ve got these companies which we all own 25 percent of each, and if there’s a decision to be made, then like in any other business or group you have a vote, you know. And he was out-voted three to one. And if he doesn’t like it, it’s really a pity. Because we’re trying to do what’s best for the Beatles as a group, or best for Apple as a company. We’re not trying to do what’s best for Paul and his in-laws, you know?

May 1st, 1970 (New York): George

It was true, that when the group was touring, their work and social relationships were close, but there had been a lot of arguing, mainly about musical and artistic matters. I suppose Paul and George were the main offenders in this respect, but from time to time we all gave displays of temperament and threatened to ‘walk out’. Of necessity, we developed a pattern for sorting out our differences, by doing what any three of us decided. It sometimes took a long time and sometimes there was deadlock and nothing was done, but generally that was the rule we followed and, until recent events, it worked quite well.

John Lennon’s affidavit – From “The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After The Break-Up 1970-2001” by Keith Badman

“I kept saying [to the other Beatles], ‘Don’t give Allen Klein 20 per cent, give him 15, we’re a big act!’ And everyone’s going, ‘No, no, he wants 20 per cent.’ I say, ‘Of course he does, he wants 30, really, but give him 15. It’s like buying a car. You don’t give the guy what he asks for.’ But it was impossible in the end, because it became three to one and I was like the idiot in the corner – trying, I thought, to save the situation. And to Klein it looked like I was trying to screw the situation. He used to call me the Reluctant Virgin. I said, ‘Fuck off, I don’t want to fucking marry you, that’s all.’ he’s going, ‘Oh, you know, he may, maybe he will, will he, won’t he, that’s a definite maybe.’ It was really difficult.”

Paul McCartney, interview w/ Paul Du Noyer for The Word: Let it be… naked. (December, 2003)

“On the way in which the four of us had sorted out our differences in the past, I deny that it had been on a three-to-one basis. If one disagreed, we discussed the problem until we reached agreement or let the matter drop. I know of no decision taken on a three-to-one basis”

Paul Mccartney - Keith Badman, The Beatles After the Breakup

John was a very forceful personality. Mostly – I mean, if we had arguments within the group, I remember George would turn to us, “Oh, he’s won again. John’s won again.” Just because he shouted loudest. And that often used to happen. “Ah, I’m not bloody doing that—” “Alright then, alright alright.” So there was a lot of that going on. So you do tend to get forced into another position, you know, if somebody’s very loud and very – I mean, I’m not saying he was just loud, he was a wit. He was a funny man, John, he was a clever guy, I loved him, you know. But somehow we got this anti position.

November 26th, 1984 (Soho Square, London): On British television show The Tube

“It’s not like we spend our time wrestling in the studio trying to get our own songs on. We all do it the same way… we take it in turns to record a track. It’s just that usually in the past, George lost out because Paul and I are tougher. “It’s nothing new, the way things are. It’s human. We’ve always said we’ve had fights. It’s no news that we argue. I’m more interested in my songs. Paul’s more interested in his, and George is more interested in his. That’s always been.”

John Lennon Interview: New Musical Express 12/13/1969

GEORGE: "Yeah, well, I wrote some songs -- in fact some songs which I feel are quite nice which I'll use on this album -- I wrote about four years ago. But, uhh, it was more difficult for me then to, you know, get in there to do it. It was the way the Beatles took off with Paul and John's songs, and it made it very difficult for me get in. And also, I suppose at that time I didn't have as much confidence when it came down to pushing my own material as I have now. So it took a while. You know, I think the first... I did write one song on about the second album, and I left it and didn't write any more. That was just an exercise to see if I could write. About two years later I recorded a couple more songs -- I think 'Rubber Soul.' And then I've had one or two songs on each album. Well, there are four songs of mine on the double White Album. But now, uhh, the output of songs is too much to be able to just sit around, you know, waiting to put two songs on an album. I've got to get 'em out, you know." "Yeah. It's always... it was whoever would be the heaviest would get the most songs done. So consequently, I couldn't be bothered pushing, like, that much. You know, even on 'Abbey Road' for instance, we'd record about eight tracks before I got 'round to doing one of mine. Because uhh, you know, you say 'Well, I've got a song,' and then with Paul -- 'Well I've got a song as well and mine goes like this -- diddle-diddle-diddle-duh,' and away you go! You know, it was just difficult to get in there, and I wasn't gonna push and shout. But it was just over the last year or so we worked something out, which is still a joke really -- Three songs for me, three songs for Paul, three songs for John, and two for Ringo."

George Harrison Interview: Howard Smith, WABC-FM New York 5/1/1970

GEORGE: To get it straight, if I hadn’t been with John and Paul I probably wouldn’t have thought about writing a song, at least not until much later. They were writing all these songs, many of which I thought were great. Some were just average, but, obviously, a high percentage were quality material. I thought to myself, If they can do it, I’m going to have a go. But it’s true: it wasn’t easy in those days getting up enthusiasm for my songs. We’d be in a recording situation, churning through all this Lennon-McCartney, Lennon-McCartney, Lennon-McCartney! Then I’d say, [meekly] “Can we do one of these?”

George Harrison, Guitar World: When we was fab. (1992)

John: Well, I’m saying that “Dear Prudence” is arranged. Can’t you hear [John vocalizes part of the song]. That is the arrangement, you know? But I’m too frightened to say “This is it.” I just sit there and say, “Look, if you don’t come along and play your bit, I won’t do the song,” you know? I can’t do any better than that. Don’t ask me for what movie* you’re gonna play on it. Because apart from not knowing, I can’t tell you better than you have, what grooves you can play on it. You know, I just can’t work. I can’t do it like that. I never could, you know. But when you think of the other half of it, just think, how much more have I done towards helping you write? I’ve never told you what to sing or what to play. You know, I’ve always done the numbers like that. Now, the only regret, just the past numbers, is when because I’ve been so frightened, that I’ve allowed you to take it somewhere where I didn’t want

...

John: And that’s all I did on the last album was say, “OK, Paul, you’re out to decide [how] my songs [are] concerned, arrangement-wise.” … I’d sooner just sing them, than have them turn into, into ‘[Being For the Benefit of] Mr. Kite,’ or anything else, where I’ve accepted the problem from you that it needs arrangement. … I don’t see any further than the guitar, and the drums, and, and George Martin doing the … I don’t hear any of the flutes playing, you know? I suppose I could hear ‘em if I [spoken as if straining] sat down and worked very hard! You know, I could turn out a mathematical drawing, if you like …

Jan. 13: The Lunchroom Tape

PAUL: You see the thing is also, I, I get to a bit where I just sort of push all my ideas, you know, and I know that my ideas aren’t the best, you know. They are [mechanical voice] “good, good, good” but they’re not the best, you know. We can improve on it. Because we write songs good, and we improve on it. [to Ringo] And you can improve on your drumming like it is, if you get into it. If you don’t, you know, then okay, I have better ideas, but if you get into it, you’re better! You know. It’s like that.

Twickenham, January 6th

I wasn’t surprised that Paul disliked “Revolution 9” as much as he did. Although he was well versed in all musical genres—in fact, he’d been into avant-garde well before John—he simply didn’t see it as Beatles music, and he certainly didn’t agree that it was the direction that the Beatles should go in. Later on, when they were sequencing the White Album, I heard through the grapevine that John and Paul ultimately had a huge row over “Revolution 9.” Paul absolutely did not want it on the album, and John was just as adamant that it would be on there. In the end, of course, he got his way.

Here, There and Everywhere, Geoff Emerick

I was more ready for the drink or a little bit of pot or something. I’d not wanted to do it, I’d held off like a lot of people were trying to, but there was massive peer pressure. And within a band, it’s more than peer pressure, it’s fear pressure. It becomes trebled, more than just your mates, it’s, 'Hey, man, this whole band’s had acid, why are you holding out? What’s the reason, what is it about you?’ So I knew I would have to out of peer pressure alone. And that night I thought, well, this is as good a time as any, so I said, 'Go on then, fine.�� So we all did it.

Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now by Barry Miles

"John's fellow student Helen Anderson remembers him ushering Paul in, with George, their tag-along junior, usually following a little later. The three would go into the cafeteria for a cheap lunch of chips then take their guitars into an empty life-drawing room, which tended to be more spacious than the others. Helen, being extraordinarily beautiful, was among the very few they allowed to watch while they rehearsed. 'Paul would have a school notebook and he'd be scribbling down words,' she says. 'Those sessions could be intense because John was used to getting his way by being aggressive---but Paul would stand his ground. Paul seemed to make John come alive when they were together.”

Paul McCartney: The Life - Philip Norman.

“I don’t know about being in a band with him, how that would work out,” he told Rolling Stone in 1979. “It’s like, we all have our own tunes to do. And my problem was that it would always be very difficult to get in on the act, because Paul was very pushy in that respect. When he succumbed to playing on one of your tunes, he’d always do good. But you’d have to do fifty-nine of Paul’s songs before he’d even listen to one of yours. So, in that respect, it would be very difficult to ever play with him.”

A Conversation With George Harrison

What was clear from the start was that writing would be a matter of Lennon and McCartney. “I remember walking through Woolton, the village where John was from, and saying to John, ‘Look, you know, it should just be you and me who are the writers,’ ” McCartney recalled. “We never said, ‘Let’s keep George out of it,’ but it was implied.”

In “Paul McCartney Doesn’t Really Want to Stop the Show” by David Remnick for The New Yorker (11 October 2021).

“I do stand back at times, unlike John. I look ahead. I’m careful. John would go for the free guitar and just accept it straight away, in a mad rush. I would stand back and think, but what’s this bloke really after, what will it mean? I was always the one that told Klein to put money away for tax. “I don’t LIKE being the careful one. I’d rather be immediate like John. He was all action. John was always the loudest in any crowd. He had the loudest voice. He was the cock who crowed the loudest. Me and George used to call him the cockerel in the studio.

Paul and Hunter Davies, 1981

George “I’ve got about forty tunes which I haven’t recorded, and some of them I think are quite good. I wrote one called ‘The Art Of Dying’ three years ago, and at that time I thought it was too far out. But I’m going to record it. I used to have a hang-up about telling John, Paul and Ringo I had a song for the albums, because I felt mentally, at that time, as if I was trying to compete. And, in a way, the standard of the songs had to be good, because theirs were very good. Another thing is I didn’t want The Beatles to be recording rubbish for my sake, just because I wrote it. On the other hand, I don’t want to record rubbish just because they wrote it. The group comes first. It took time for me to get more confidence as a songwriter, and now I don’t care if they don’t like it. I can shrug it off. Another thing with The Beatles is it’s sometimes a matter of whoever pushes the hardest gets the most tunes on the album, then it’s down to personalities, as to whoever is going to push. And more often, I just leave it until somebody says that they would like to do one of my tunes.”

The Beatles Off the Record (Keith Badman)

Paul came across in 1963 as a fun-loving, footloose bachelor who turned on his charm to devastating effect when he wanted to manipulate rivals, colleagues or women he fancied. (...) He had enormous powers of persuasion within The Beatles. He would get his own way by subtlety and suaveness where John resorted to shouting and bullying. John may have been the loudest Beatle but Paul was the shrewdest. I watched him twist the others round to his point of view in all sorts of contentious situations, some trivial, some more significant, some administrative, some creative.

John, Paul, George, Ringo & Me: The Real Beatles Story, Tony Barrow (2005)

[simstopiaa]

Simstopia Legacy Challenge

🌟 Introducing the Simstopia Legacy Challenge! 🌟

Embark on a remarkable journey through generations in The Sims 4. In this legacy, you'll craft a family saga filled with triumphs, trials, and the pursuit of dreams in just 5 generations.

From the humble beginnings of a wallflower's aspirations to the dazzling heights of fame, experience the intricate tapestry of lives interwoven by destiny. Generations will rise and fall, each bearing the mark of the stars and their unique aspirations.

You'll navigate through triumphs and tribulations, building a legacy that echoes through time. Will you nurture relationships, celebrate fame, or find solace in a quieter life? The choices you make will shape the legacy that unfolds.

Starting Out:

Create a new household with a female sim and male sweetheart for Generation 1 (You may begin the challenge as teens if you prefer!)

Place them on a 20x20 lot or smaller in the Copperdale neighborhood

Set their starting funds to $3000

Play at whatever lifespan you prefer for your gameplay

Only have to finish or max a requirement if specifically stated

Only have to move or stay put, if explicitly stated

Get Famous, High School Years, Parenthood, and Spa Day are required for the challenge

Tag #SIMSTOPIALEGACY so we can enjoy your gameplay!

**Generation 1** The Resilient Vintner

In the shadows of high school hallways, you were a wallflower with dreams as vibrant as the grapes that would one day fill your winery. The quiet corridors couldn't contain your aspirations, nor could they mask the spark within. A nice boy, a rarity in your world of introverted thoughts, shattered your timid facade, and together you danced through the corridors of your dreams.

Life spun its web, and as young adults, a surprise awaited in the form of impending parenthood. Two heartbeats echoed in your third trimester, a symphony of life that harmonized with your fears and hopes. But then, like a cruel twist of fate, the same boy who had chipped away your shyness disappeared, leaving you heartbroken and resolute.

Determination carved its path through your life like vines in a well-tended garden. You donned the role of both gardener and parent, nurturing both flora and fledgling hearts. Your hands learned the craft of winemaking, turning grapes into bottled poetry. With few friends, you showered your twins with all the love life could muster, becoming both their guardian and guiding star.

Nectar Maker Aspiration

Socially Awkward Trait

Perfectionist Trait

Good trait

Fall in love with high school sweetheart

Master gardening, nectar making, cooking & comedy

Accidentally fall pregnant with twins before adulthood (may cheat to achieve)

HS sweetheart dumps you and never meets your kids

Master gardening career

Never marry until your kids move out

Never have more children

**Generation 2**The Bartender's Sanctuary

In the shadow of a single mother's devotion, you and your twin were raised. But as your sibling basked in maternal admiration, you found solace in the independence born from abandonment. Academia was a breeze you barely entertained, for you knew you held an unspoken ticket to leniency. Graduation opened a door into the world of cocktails, a bartender's stage where you mixed spirits and stories, all while never leaving the refuge of your childhood haven.

Mixology became your symphony, crafting concoctions that spoke volumes in each glass. Charisma oiled the gears of social interaction, while video gaming and comedy painted your private world with laughter. Romantic dalliances played like fleeting melodies, each a brief verse before the chorus of commitment. And as the years unfolded, you embraced marriage and parenthood, your own family story beginning within the walls that sheltered your formative years.

Mixology Aspiration

Bro trait

Non-Committal Trait

Lazy Trait

Master mixology, charisma, video gaming & comedy

Don’t move out of your childhood home until marriage

Date at least 4 sims before marrying in adulthood

No children until you are married

Have at least 1 child

**Generation 3** The Musical Prodigy

The pulse of music coursed through your veins, setting your heart ablaze. From childhood, you were drawn to the siren call of melodies, a passion that flourished into an early graduation and an unswerving march into the arms of a musician's destiny. As an independent composer, the spotlight danced upon your creations, but it was a hit song that thrust you fully into its radiant embrace. An agent's proposition introduced you to a world of artificial romance, but destiny had other plans.

In a whirlwind of notes and heartbeats, careers and affections intertwined. Love bloomed like a wildflower in Del Sol Valley's fast lane, and soon your family mirrored the crescendo of your professional success. Your children would someday hear your music and know the rhythm of love that had brought them into the world.

Musical Genius Aspiration

Music Lover Trait

Outgoing Trait

Any Trait

Graduate HS early

Master violin, piano, singing & guitar

Become at least a 4 star celebrity

Reach level 5 musician career (may continue)

Marry someone famous & have a big wedding

Have 3 kids with spouse

Move to Del Sol Valley

License at least 6 songs at mailbox

**Generation 4** The Spoiled Celebrity

Fame wrapped its opulent arms around you from birth, a glittering cocoon that promised adoration at every turn. Spoils of privilege were your birthright, a captivating narrative spun from the union of famous souls. The camera's eye adored you, and the silver screen beckoned, a realm where you aimed to eclipse the legendary Judith Ward herself.

With the world as your stage, you carved your own narrative, masterfully delivering lines that echoed across generations. But amid the applause, the applause that never seemed to wane, love remained an elusive muse. The script of your life took an unexpected twist—an autonomous child conceived in a laboratory of scientific wonder. Yet, parenting was a role you played only in name, leaving the care of your creation to others while you reveled in the indulgences fame offered.

Actor or World Famous Celebrity Aspiration

Self Absorbed Trait

High Maintenance Trait

Materialistic Trait

Become a global superstar and earn a celebrity tile

Reach level 10 of acting career

Master acting, charisma, wellness, and singing

Earn a celebrity tile

Never marry, only date

Have a science baby alone as an adult

Have a very low relationship with your child

Hire a butler and keep a butler until you die

Throw many parties

**Generation 5** The Pursuit of Normalcy

A legacy of luminance cast long shadows, the weight of expectations heavy upon your shoulders. The camaraderie of fame beckoned, but your heart yearned for anonymity. Escaping the glare of Del Sol Valley's spotlight, you took flight to a new life, shedding the name that was once synonymous with stardom. In a tranquil town, you forged a life as a teacher, and love blossomed in the form of a local soul.

The bonds you nurtured were ones unshackled by fame's chains, each affectionate gesture a testament to your commitment to create a family in the purity of love, devoid of the opulence that once enshrouded you. Children filled your days with laughter, their lives woven into the tapestry of your own. The wounds of a past lived beneath the glare of the camera began to heal, and as the years flowed like a gentle stream, you found solace in the embrace of a life truly lived.

Big Happy Family Aspiration (Do NOT have to finish)

Family Oriented Trait

Bookworm Trait

Romantic Trait

Quit the spot light when you age up to a young adult

Move out of del sol valley as a young adult (may leave with $40,000)

Don’t have any good friends until you move out of del sol valley

Join the education career

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[aeolianblues]

Jarvis Cocker: At the end of 1996, I had “a nervous breakdown”

Kate Mossman of The New Statesman talks to Jarvis Cocker, September 2021

The singer on nostalgia, hating David Cameron, and how crashing a Michael Jackson performance had “a toxic effect” on him.

Jarvis Cocker leans on a table in the courtyard of the House of St Barnabas, a members’ club and homeless charity, and one of the only bits of London’s Soho that does not bear the marks of the interminable Crossrail project. Cocker says he’s not one for conspiracy theories, “but there’s a lot of dark mutterings about what has happened while everybody’s been locked away. You can see it in Soho, where loads of building work’s gone on. They took an opportunity. Cement’s gone up in price because there’s none left.”

He’s not as tall as he is in your mind’s eye – a solid 6ft 1 – but he cuts a stately figure in green cords and a high-quality lilac shirt. Here, in a moccasin-style shoe, is the foot that was broken, along with his pelvis and ankle, when he fell out of a window in Sheffield pretending to be Spiderman. (He spent months as a young man gigging from a wheelchair.) Here is the rear that was waved at Michael Jackson, in a life-changing moment it still upsets him to talk about. Here are the long legs that bent like those of a freshly born foal on stage, and here are the glasses that were held on his face with an elastic band so he could execute his moves. These long, smooth fingers would frame his face, or flick his “V” signs. As sombre as he is, seating himself on a bench alongside the New Statesman, he is the only pop star that most people under 80, regardless of their artistic ability, could have a crack at drawing.

You feel wary of going straight in on “the Nineties” – it must be such a bore – yet Cocker brings them up right away, talking about a song called “Cocaine Socialism” which he wrote for his band Pulp in 1996, at their commercial and critical height. It was all about New Labour’s courtship of pop stars. The title was ironic he explains, because “cocaine will make you not give a fuck about any other member of the human race”. Cocker shelved the song because he thought it might actually stop the people of Britain voting Labour – a sign, he says, of his overweening ego at the time.

When I was 14, a friend gave me a perfectly executed cartoon of Cocker, drawn on squared paper in a maths lesson and titled “My future husband”. It is often a source of frustration for musicians when their biggest audience proves to be teenage girls, but this is to overlook the power of teenage girls – and teenagers in general – to work up an intensity of feeling that all but creates a career. Cocker should know, because he conceived of his future – conceived of Pulp, “planned my whole life out” – at the age of 14 in an economics lesson, writing it all down in exercise books which he recently unearthed in an attic. 

He had a written manifesto, “very earnest, about how we’re going to get famous, have our own record label and radio station, and help other bands, and break the tyranny of the major labels”. And he’d drawn pictures, too, of an arm, with “major record company” tattooed on it and a meat cleaver saying “Pulp Incorporated”, ready to chop off the hand.

“It was supposed to be some socialist empowerment of the people. It wasn’t just: ‘I’m going to buy a big house in Barbados and have a jet ski’.”

Cocker’s proudest moment in a 30-year career was when Martin Amis agreed with something he’d said, when they appeared together on a TV talkshow approaching the millennium. Jarvis had stated that, in the 20th century, fame had replaced heaven as our ultimate goal, our way of cheating death. His own moment of fame, when it came, was sizeable, but it took him 15 years to get there: Pulp formed in 1981 – they should have been a post-punk band rather than a Britpop one.

In 1996 Melody Maker judged Cocker the fifth most famous man in Britain – after John Major, Frank Bruno, Will Carling and Michael Barrymore. Two years later, the novelist Nick Hornby reflected, “Jarvis Cocker is an acute and amusing chronicler of our life and times… but sometimes… you wish he’d communicate via chat show or letter rather than song.” This he has done, and often. Jarvis has been Jarvis for the last 25 years, in radio, TV, the written word – and perhaps less so in music, in the popular imagination. When you have lingered so long outside fame’s door, fully formed and ready to go, you must be loath to make an exit. Only in the garden of a private members’ club can he go about peacefully; he cycles in London, without a helmet, so you suspect he is recognised often, moving at speed.

Cocker shows me photos of his new bike on an old iPhone – a Moulton small-wheeled cycle, described by Norman Foster as the greatest work of 20th century British design. There are racks back and front, “to put yer bag on”. “I have spent a lot of time on quite random, trivial things,” he tells me. When his beloved 1970 Hillman Imp car finally gave up the ghost, he had it crushed into a cube and gave it away to a fan.

Cocker was in the Paramount Hotel on West 46th Street, New York, in December 1996 when a girl called Imogen called from the New Labour office and asked for his endorsement. 

“I’d been to some event down Whitehall,” he recalls. “A kind of wooing event, and I’d felt really weird about that. It’s hard to imagine now. I was 16-17 when Thatcher got in, and a Labour government seemed like a fantasy. I felt very conflicted, because I really wanted it to happen but something just seemed wrong. Even at that time – a quarter of a century ago – I thought, ‘You should be doing politics, not trying to get some endorsements from some people in bands’. There was a desire for it to happen, and then this disease. It felt like getting chatted up.”

Imogen had tracked Cocker down during what he calls, perhaps surprisingly, a “severely traumatic part of my life”. At the end of 1996 he was having what he refers to today as a nervous breakdown. When the telephone rang in his hotel room, he assumed the suite was bugged. He’d gone to New York around Christmas time and, alone and anxious, found himself unable to face the crowds. But he also struggled to stay indoors, tormented by the aesthetics of his hotel room – “super designed, with a giant picture of a Vermeer painting, a woman pouring some milk out of a blue jug. You walked in to an art installation, and I was in a fragile state of mind.” 

Cocker’s descent – which seems to merge with the ascent of New Labour in a lurid kind of fever dream – began with his trespassing the Brit Awards stage in February 1996 during Michael Jackson’s performance of “Earth Song”. “I don’t really like talking about that particular incident,” he says, looking down at his knees. “People said at the time that it was a publicity stunt but it wasn’t really like that. It had a toxic effect on my life.”

There is a considerable mismatch between the folk memory of the moment, and the memory held by the perpetrator himself. To most, Cocker’s actions look more heroic as the years go by: the last cry of a bloated Eighties megastar defeated by British indie, or something to that effect. Jackson’s pageantry seems worse now than it did at the time: the white messiah robes and outstretched arms; the children lining up to embrace him; the rabbi bowing his head for a kiss. The pipe cleaner figure of Cocker floats on stage looking puzzled, wafts an imaginary fart at the audience (with his bottom clothed) and briefly raises his T-shirt. Hardly something to be arrested for (as he was, before being released without charge) but the 1990s are a draconian place, when you travel back in time.

[see also: Bridget Jones and the Blair years]

Cocker was represented, in his assault charge, by the comedian Bob Mortimer, a former solicitor. David Bowie’s personal film crew were able to provide tapes shot from a certain angle to prove that he had not, in fact, knocked into any children when taking the stage. But there was condemnation from Damon Albarn (“he’s got some very odd ideas about reality”) and Jackson (“sickened, saddened, shocked, upset, cheated and angry”).

The tabloids subjected him to feverish attention. Cocker had always talked about drugs – the liner notes of Pulp’s single “Sorted For E’s & Wizz” showed you how to make a drugs wrap (“Ban This Sick Stunt” said the Daily Mirror). And he’d always talked about sex – he watched a lot of porn in hotel rooms on tour. Now, there were kiss and tells, and an attempt by the Sun to engineer a meeting between Cocker and his estranged father in Australia.

What thoughts were passing through his mind when he stood up and walked towards Jackson’s stage? He won’t say. “One thing I will say is that people are still convinced that I pulled my trousers down and showed my bottom. And it’s really not true. That’s when I realised what a c*** David Cameron was.”

In November 2011, he explains, the Observer put celebrities’ questions to the new prime minister of the coalition. Cocker asked Cameron whether he really understood the phrases “futures” and “derivatives”. Cameron gave a long answer to prove that he did and added: “I was there that night, at the Brit Awards. I saw him led away. I saw his bum.”

Cocker stirs his Americano.

“I just thought, ‘OK, you are a liar. You’ve just shown yourself to be a liar and a complete twat’.”

In the New Statesman that year, Cocker wrote a reflection on hangovers, inspired by the one he had the day after Tony Blair was elected. The hangover lingered, as he criticised New Labour’s treatment of single mothers, students and the disabled. It lasted 13 years, he said. It ended when Cameron got in – not because things were better, but because that’s when he started drinking again.

There is a photograph of Cocker as a long-legged child pictured with his mother, granny, sister and aunties outside their terraced house in Intake, a suburb of Sheffield. With her red pixie haircut and large specs, his mother, an art student, looks just like an indie girl from the 1990s – or a member of Pulp – in a strange cultural collision of the original hippies and the Sixties revival decades later.

Cocker lived on the dole in the Eighties trying to get his band off the ground. During the Britpop era, Labour’s Welfare To Work scheme made such a life much trickier, inspiring a campaign by Oasis’ manager Alan McGee. The dole must have had a huge impact on people’s ability to pursue creative work?

“Probably for six months, and then you get lazy,” Cocker says. “Not wanting to sound like Norman Tebbit, but you do, and that’s what drove me away from Sheffield – people were dropping like flies, having drug overdoses or losing it, and I thought, ‘It’s only a matter of time before I end up there’. So that’s when I started hatching my escape plan.”

His ticket out – a place to study film at Central Saint Martins in London – produced “Common People”, one of the most famous songs of the 20th century. Pulp were more refined, classy, slippery and sardonic than other Britpop bands. The image of working-class life as seen through the eyes of the song’s Greek art student gets to the heart of Cocker’s use of irony: he was interested in perceptions of class difference, perceptions of the north-south divide, as much as the real thing.

Having lived in the south for 35 years, he tells me the BBC’s insistence on using regional accents for announcers is a patronising attempt to keep people in their place. His mother became a Tory parish councillor for the village of Carlton in Lindrick, Nottinghamshire. In 1998 she told the Mirror, in an embarrassing interview, that she admired Thatcher – until the third term, when the prime minister became a megalomaniac. “I raised Jarvis on Tory values that if you’ve worked hard all your life, you want to keep what you’ve earned,” she said. Her son tells me he doesn’t agree with his mother’s support of Brexit – “but you won’t find many people who are going to say that everything’s going to plan. We’re on the downhill, and everybody’s got their own theories of why that is.”

Unlike his mother, Cocker has voted Labour since he was old enough to vote. “I can’t imagine voting for any other party,” he says, but that doesn’t mean he’s excited by the current one. “Corbyn I was excited about. But having spent a lot of time moving between France and here, his inability to come to any position on Brexit finished it for me.” Keir Starmer’s Labour, he says, “feels like the politics of opposition. It’s happening to the left all over the world, isn’t it? People have started wondering what level of dictatorship would be OK.”

A few years ago he visited the Magna Science Adventure Centre in Rotherham which recreates the world of the steel mills. Watching the installation of a “big melt” – when molten steel was poured into giant electric arc furnaces – made him strangely emotional. “It must be some kind of folk memory,” he says. “It was awful work, and loads of people got f***ed by the time they were 40. But there was some result and that’s what people miss – that there isn’t anything to glue people together in that way. Imagine working in a shipyard. After six months, suddenly there’s this big, massive f***-off ship and you’ve been part of that.

“There is a nostalgia, not for vibration white finger or lung disease, but for times when people worked together and there would be a result. I’m not an authority. It’s not for me to tell the Labour Party what to do, but I think – well, I thought I stumbled on something.”

He still praises the Sheffield city council, once nicknamed the “Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire”, which allowed children to travel for 2p on buses. He once said that when things took off for Britpop, he thought he was going to be part of something that changed society, like punk did, but it just turned out to be showbusiness.

Of all the extra-curricular jobs Cocker has done, the one the public took to most, which really seemed to fit him, was his gig as a DJ on BBC Radio 6 Music, running his Sunday Service show. His voice was as much a part of his sex appeal for teenage girls as his looks had been. The show explored a mundane but deeply nostalgic aspect of British culture: that time on a Sunday afternoon when everyone felt flat because it was nearly time for the week to start again, and you hadn’t done your homework. 

He’d resisted radio for a long time because of his father. Mac Cocker walked out in 1970, when Jarvis was seven, leaving Sheffield for Sydney, where he began a 33-year career with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. His gentle Yorkshire accent was appreciated on the airwaves. He had a show called The Night Train on Saturdays (Jarvis has a Radio 4 show for insomniacs called Wireless Nights); and a show called The Globetrotter on Sunday afternoons, and another called Vinyl Museum. High of forehead with long hair and large National Health-style specs, Mac wore a tank top not unlike those his son wore in Pulp. He sang with a band called Life On Mars.

Traditionally, Cocker doesn’t talk much about his father. As we begin to do so, a very tiny and very hairy caterpillar makes its way along the edge of the table in front of him. It is barely a centimetre long, with legs so fine they move in little ripples of dark and light. Cocker does what all humans do when faced with a caterpillar and tries to persuade it to clamber aboard the nail on his index finger. After two or three refusals, it does so.

Mac Cocker left his son with small bits of information about himself, like a copy of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party on the shelf. When Jarvis was 12, he came to visit, bringing records with him.

“That’s when I found out he was a DJ. He’d obviously just gone into some record label and picked up some records and gave me them. I ascribed a real meaning to them, but it was just promos. They were wank. They were just these really shit records! Anyway…”

Cocker wonders if he was propelled into music because of his father, but explains that any biological imperative, if it comes from an absent parent, remains a mysterious thing. “I know it must come from him, because my mother is so tone-deaf. But if you don’t know him, it’s like it’s come from somewhere supernatural.”

His family would say, you’re just like your father – “but usually as a negative thing. It was strange to be brought up with this cloudy non-presence.” Cocker and his father struck up a form of relationship eventually, whenever Pulp toured in Australia.

“You’re telling yourself that you sprang from the loins of this person, but if you don’t know the person, that disconnect is really uncomfortable. What used to drive me mad was having really inconsequential conversations. When you tried and go on to the deeper stuff, it was just words… I could tell he was always very uncomfortable, and I’m not exactly the world’s best person for talking about emotions, so I was always terrified that an awkward silence was going to descend.”

Did they at least share music? What kind was Mac into? “Jazz,” he says, in disbelief. His father left a record behind in the Sheffield house – an EP by the Sixties French singer Gilbert Bécaud. “You know when singles have those big centres? He’d made a centre for it by cutting a bit out of a Player’s cigarette packet. That had always been in the house. I knew it was his, because his name was written on the back of it.”

When Mac was dying, Cocker visited him in Australia and took the Bécaud EP with him.

“I just Blu-Tacked it on his wall. It was the only thing I had of his. I just thought, because he went a bit away with the fairies before he died, I thought, that’s something from his past. I just stuck it on there.”

And left it?

“Yeah.”

In October this year, Cocker will release his own album of French music – songs originally sung by Françoise Hardy, Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Dutronc – to accompany the forthcoming Wes Anderson film The French Dispatch, which is set in the 1960s. It features a fictional pop star called Tip Top who is modelled partly on Cocker. Anderson directed his intonation, his delivery, in the studio. Cocker’s French, he says, is “something I should be ashamed and embarrassed about”, despite the fact he got to A-level standard, was married for six years to the French stylist Camille Bidault-Waddington, lived in Paris, and has a French son. He regularly travels to France to visit Albert, now 18, and stays in an apartment backing on to the Hotel Amour. Albert looks just like him. During the pandemic he got around the social distancing rules by hugging him through a bed sheet.

In 1998 Cocker told the Sydney Morning Herald “I just want to find a way of being an adult without it being boring.” Does he feel he’s achieved this? “I know I’m still slightly immature,” he says. “I mistrusted adults as a child. But there’s something really grotesque about people who refuse to grow up. When I became a father, people were always saying [he whines] ‘You’re going to change’. But actually it doesn’t change you, it just opens up a new bit of you. It was a real revelation to me, to realise I had that instinct. I found it liberating. As you move through life, these little doors open. The other ones are still open as well.”

He thinks all human beings believe they just missed a golden age. For him it was the Sixties, the decade in which he was born, “when the Beatles were still a group. They came to an end as the Seventies came, and I was six or seven. That’s the same year that me dad left. It felt like, OK, you’ve had your fun.

“When you’re a kid and you’re looking at the adult world,” he ponders, “you’re only looking at what’s current at that time. Like me wanting to be a pop star. By the time it happened, pop stars were on their way out. By the time you’re old enough to be part of it, it’s gone. So in a funny way, kids live in the past.

“I think that’s the fatal flaw in the whole Britpop thing. I don’t like to say that word, because it was an invented label – but that was the fatal flaw, and it takes us back to the fatal flaw of electing a Labour government and believing it would be the same as it used to be. Let’s make the Beatles again… Oasis really tried to do that, but you can’t make a period in history happen again.”

As a songwriter, Cocker telescoped himself into the future with “Disco 2000” and “Help The Aged”. The former felt open-hearted but the latter, intended as a kiss-off to youth-obsessed politics, sounded sour at the time.

“It always used to drive me mad, people going on about, ‘Oh, you’re so ironic’,” he says. “It would be rubbish to devote your life to doing something that was insincere. I guess I’ll often undercut what I’m singing about as I’m doing it – and that’s just because of the way my mind works. As I think one thing, I’ll think the opposite as well. Later in life, you discover that you are allowed to have two thoughts: it’s a natural function of the way your mind works.”

Some would say that, as you progress through life, you get better at trusting your instincts?

“I think if you just follow your instincts your whole life, you’ll be a monster.”

Cocker brightens, perhaps because our interview is ending. When he talks about his hobbies, he gives a big leonine flash, raising his silvery eyebrows above the frames of his glasses.

I phoned him a few weeks later, after the summer, to see what he’d been up to. He was at a secret location in Spain, making a movie he wasn’t allowed to talk about. A pandemic spent going through his loft, and noticing priceless keepsakes among the rubbish, has inspired him to write a book about pop and nostalgia – Good Pop, Bad Pop – to be published next year.

He is dying to be back on stage after two years off it. “I’m touching a wooden table now. We’ve already had to postpone this tour twice.” And he talks about Labour again – he really seems to care! You think back to his manifesto, his teenage sketch of a meat cleaver chopping off a hand. Then you look at a life lived gently, moving between projects, ponderings and “random trivial things” – and you wonder what his revolution would look like.

Jarvis Cocker’s new album “Tip Top: Chansons d’Ennui” is released on 22 October.

[freakingoutthesquares]

Poptastic Words: Alexis, Portraits: Pulp Interviewed back-stage at the Highbury Garage, 15 May 1993 Catharsis Fanzine, Issue 4 Transcription: Acrylic Afternoons

"I'm Candida. Hello. I play keyboards." "I'm Jarvis. I'm the singer." "I'm Steve. I play bass." "I'm Russell. I play guitar and violin." "Therefore Nick's the drummer." sums up Candida.

And there you have Pulp - the world's greatest pop band. A band who have "been in Smash Hits" and have even had the honour of having one of that magazine's "Single of the Fortnight". Not that Jarvis can see the band ever being as big as, say, Take That or East 17.

"I can't see too many posters going up."

Pulp were formed by Jarvis whilst at school and the current line up has been together for about five years. But why did they all want to be in a band in the first place?

"I think we wanted to frustrate ourselves," says Candida.

"We're complete sado-masochists," backs up Nick.

Is it what you all always wanted to do?

"Yeah," confirms Jarvis. "I, kind of, wanted to do it at school. I used to imagine, when I was in the school's dinner queue, that I wouldn't have to queue up if I was famous. It's not particularly true. That's what I thought it would be like but it's not."

So, after deciding he wanted to be a pop star, Jarvis went to film school. Why?

"That was after we'd been doing the band for a while but I was disillusioned. We'd been messed around by loads of record companies and the final straw was when the bass player became a born again Christian and left the band. It all seemed a big mess. We didn't actually split the band up but I thought I ought to do something else cos it's all I'd been doing since I left school and I thought my brain was drying up. I thought I ought to do something else to keep it alive a bit."

Now it's 1993 and it's going to be a good year for Pulp. Their records are being picked up on - their last single 'Razzmatazz' got Single of the Week in Melody Maker - and it is rumoured that they have signed to Island Records.

"We're with them spiritually..."

"I don't think we've signed or anything," says Jarvis over Nick.

"...we're, kind of, engaged. It's been a long engagement."

"But long engagements are the best," stresses Russell.

Why do you think it's taken so long for Pulp to be appreciated (Pulp has been around in various forms for about fifteen years)?

Steve: "It's our turn."

Jarvis: "We've been waiting in queue for a long time."

Steve: "It's like when you go to the Post Office and you want a stamp but you'll wait for everyone else to go."

Jarvis: "We're very polite y'see so we didn't push in."

Nick: "We wouldn't have that."

Jarvis: "So we waited our turn."

Did it get depressing in the meantime? "No," continues Jarvis. "There's always other things to do. If you choose to sit at home thinking, "Why aren't I famous?", then you would be quite a sad character. You can always ride your bike or something."

Did you think you'd be doing it this long when you first started?

"No. I would've been horrified. I always thought pop music was supposed to be quite instant. You didn't hang around for a decade. To be doing it for so long is very strange."

How did Pulp sound when you started?

"Awful."

"It was all feedback," explains Steve.

"Yeah," recalls Jarvis. "It was a noise. Not on purpose, or anything. It was just ineptitude. I started when I was young and we just couldn't play. We still can't play very well but I don't think that matters."

What does matter then?

"It's not what you can play, it's what you can say."

And what are Pulp saying?

"That's put you on the spot," cries Nick gleefully.

"Well, it's not that we've got something to say as in there's a big message for the world. U2 are trying to shake off that image now but before they were always doing the chest beating and coming up with their big slogans. It's not like that. Hopefully it's an accurate reflection of our lives."

In that case Pulp must lead very strange lives. The opening lines of 'Razzmatazz' were, "The trouble with your brother/he's always sleeping with your mother/and I know that your sister's missed her time again this month".

"I don't think they're seedy," states Jarvis. "They're just true to life. I think they're deadpan and down to earth. I don't think they're strange. Razzmatazz is a bit sad. Babies (the single before Razzmatazz... sample lyric: I wanna take you home/I wanna give you children) is just a thing you get up to when you are fourteen and certain things are still still taboo and you get into situations because of curiosity."

What does your mother think about your lyrics?

"I don't think she's bothered. She's not made any detrimental comments. She thinks the songs should be happier. I'd rather her take no notice actually because once I went round there at Christmas and she insisted on playing the record all the time when my relatives were there. It was embarrassing. Everyone comes up and pats you which isn't very good. Also, if you're on TV or radio at your mothers then it's very embarrassing."

"Shouldn't have your hair like that."

"Smile a bit more."

"Why don't you play some happy ones."

To get to know Pulp a little better we decided to ask each member of the band to describe the others. We allotted them one word per person. Below are the results.

Nick: Candida... petite. For Jarvis I'd say dishevelled. Steve is organised and Russ is er... too tough sometimes.

Candida: Nick's loud. Jarvis is temperamental. Steve is organised and Russell is good at business.

Jarvis: For Nick I would say... high. Candida is fluorescent. Steve is clean. Russell... I'd say feedback.

Steve: Nick is too loud. Candida is calm. Jarvis is unique and that's not a compliment. Ha Ha Ha. Russell is manic.

Russell: Nick is Jean Paul. Candida is toys. For Jarvis I'd say praying mantis and Steve I would say is a cigar.

During this game several compliments and disparaging remarks were handed out and taken with apparent ease and false stroppiness in turn. Pulp complimenting each other makes them happy, but what is the nicest thing an outsider could say about them?

"I don't know. I get embarrassed if people are nice to me," says Jarvis whilst Russell lines up the butts of his cigarettes in size order. "l find it hard to accept people being nice. I always think they' re after something."

"You're paranoid," offers Steve as an explanation. "l don't know why it is. It's like when you eat out at a restaurant, not that I do very often, but when I do I don't like the waiters always coming over and supposedly being nice. (Adopts slimey voice.) "Is everything O.K. for you sir?". I find that makes my flesh crawl. I'd rather they just give it to you and then let you eat and talk to whoever you're with."

"The nicest thing someone could do to you is put a plate of food down and walk away?" asks Russell incredulously.

"I don't mean just slap it down. Put it down, then go away. I don't want them hanging around with the violin in your ear. The niceness is a bit like that."

Do you also hate it when people are horrible to you Jarvis?

"Oh yeah. I like general blandness. Ha Ha Ha. If somebody comes up to you and says "You're great", it's nice but it's also..."

"...a conversation killer," finishes Russell.

"It's a northern thing as well," observes Steve. "In Sheffield no one Would ever go up and say, "I think you're great"."

"That's why," confirms Russell, "it's uncool. It's us that's wrong but..."

"The best compliment we get is if someone says we're alright. It's good to know that other people like you but you'd rather hear it second hand," explains Jarvis.

"The first time someone said it to us we thought we'd misheard them," says Nick.

"Do you know who we are?" adds Russell.

"Yeah," continues Nick. "l thought they'd got the wrong band."

You said earlier that you don't like people being mean to you - does criticism upset you?

"Well" says Jarvis with a pained expression, "if somebody writes something like, "He's a tall, lanky streak of piss with no discernible talent. How has he managed to delude himself for so many years?" you can't just go, "Oh, yeah. Fair enough, everybody's entitled to their own opinion"."

"Truth hurts. Ha Ha Ha." comments Steve.

"It's too bad they were right," agrees Russell rubbing more salt into Jarvis's wounds. "We do like people to like us. We're not just doing this for ourselves. We want people to like it."

"But we don't pander," warns Jarvis.

What do you think about the "Crimplene scene" which is the current press play thing? Does it bother you that you've been lumped into that?

"We started it," boasts Steve jokingly.

"I don't think it exists. It's not healthy," complains Jarvis. "No. Crimplene makes you sweat. We'd rather be the British cotton scene."

"It's true," supports Nick. "Avoid Crimplene at all costs."

"I like seventies bands like Denim. Is that the Crimplene scene?" asks Russell.

From what I've read, it's you, Suede, Saint Etienne etc.

"We used to get compared to Marc Almond and World Of Twist so..."

"If I was going to chose a scene to be associated with," remarks Steve, "it would be that one but it's not like we meet at Oxfam on a Saturday afternoon and fight over classic Crimplene. None of us like it."

"I still don't think it exists," says Jarvis persistently.

If there is a scene then Pulp are the leaders of the pack. They might not be the biggest, but they are the best. In terms of sex, glamour and everything that counts they are the only band you need to know. They leave the rest of their ilk in a trail of dust. The songs are gorgeous uplifting affairs with secret tales of suburban life as lyrics. It is pure genius.

"A lot of sexual perverts like us," offers Russell helpfully. "They write us strange letters. Post grunge and post shoe gazing there is a new sort of person on the streets and they like us. People in stripey tops quite like us."

"French people like us," announces Candida.

Do any of you ever get recognised in the streets?

"Yeah," states Jarvis. "I was saying to Russell the other day, that I've always had people taking notice of me in the streets in Sheffield - usually in a bad way. They called me names and things. It does still happen. In fact I nearly had a fight yesterday 'cos this boy decided to push me. But people have started to recognize me and be a bit more friendly now. It's strange 'cos I'm always getting ready to flinch when they come up and then they say something nice and catch me off guard."

What names did they call you?

"Because I've always worn glasses it just used to be someone famous with glasses. Elvis Costello, Buddy Holly. Just anybody who wore glasses. I used to have a beard for a bit and then I was called Rolf Harris all the time. They weren't very imaginative."

Well, those people were obviously mad. Jarvis is, without a doubt, a sex symbol for the nineties along with all the others in the band. At the gig that took place after this interview Jarvis was practically pulled off the stage by adoring females. O.K. - so we know they are attractive, but how sexy out of ten does each member of the band think he/she is?

"We're all going to say ten aren't we?" asks Candida.

"You might, but I wouldn't," retorts Steve.

"I think it changes during the day," decides Nick. "When you get up in the morning you're probably a minus. The later it gets the better it gets. If it's a good day you might peak at two."

"You just about make a two, Steve," jokes Jarvis.

"Anyone who says above seven has problems," says Steve wisely.

"You'd catch them playing with themselves in front of a mirror when you came in here," suggests Jarvis.

"That means you were about a nine in the van today, then, when we set off," says Steve whilst trying to wind up Jarvis.

"Yeah?"

"I didn't think you were a nine, you thought you were."

"Self-masturbation," adds Nick helpfully.

"That's another thing that other people have to decide upon," Jarvis remarks sensibly.

"Obviously it's nice if people do find you that way."

At this point Nick's brother enters the room and Russell starts loudly announcing that "this one goes up to eleven" if you twist the nipple and put a little shilling in the slot. Everyone has hysterics.

But, don't get me wrong, Pulp take what they do incredibly seriously. They are a deadly serious band. I know this because Nick told me four times. They are funny, the music is not. Pulp are also clever, sexy, glamorous, beautiful, talented, strange, normal, erotic, under-famous, unique, sleazy, stylish and every other compliment ever. If you feel the need to check out the high life or if you just need that extra sparkle - look no further than Pulp. They're the most fun you'll ever have.

You can write to Pulp at P.O. Box 87, Sheffield, S6 2YZ and you can become a Pulp person by sending £3 to the same address.

[suedesongs]

These Are The Suede Songs 003: The Drowners

1991. The University of London Union Ticket Office. Enter one Simon Gilbert, stage right. Gilbert, a twenty-five year old punk from Stratford-Upon-Avon, has just heard a demo tape from a band, supposedly one managed by, among a couple of other characters, his colleague Ricky Gervais. Gervais was, at this point, working at ULU and moonlighting in a band, as Brett Anderson recalls, called Son Of Bleeper. This was long before he would become better known for his “comedy” - and troubling views on transgender rights.

Gilbert asked Gervais if he could join, to which he was told he couldn’t “because he didn’t have flares and he didn’t have a fringe”.

Thank goodness, he would go on to ask another of Suede’s managers and secured a rehearsal. It would take six months of Gilbert believing he was on a trial period to realise he was officially in the band.

This was monumental in Suede’s musical journey. Gone was the faulty drum machine which would constantly break down, and here was a proper full-time drummer, and the final push to shake off the unpleasant spectre of Baggy forever, and to comfortably slide into something tighter, more violent, sexier. Gilbert’s drumming is melodic and calculated, whilst at the same time booming and tribal. It’s the kind of drumming that fills stadiums, and what a better way to introduce Suede to the world at large than with his iconic drum fill on ‘The Drowners’.

It was around this time, too, that Justine Frischmann would depart the band. Anderson recalls to Dave Thompson that, as Butler was increasingly developing his playing to incorporate both lead and rhythm at the same time, this, sadly, made her feel her place in the band was becoming somewhat redundant. Frischmann herself remarks that it was “better to be Pete Best than Linda McCartney.”

Another reason for her exit was the shift in the band’s musical direction. Frischmann increasingly felt that songs were becoming too long and overwrought. Though she would, fantastically, go on to create short, spiky post-punk with Elastica later in the decade.

On January 2nd 1992, Suede attracted the attention of Saul Galpern, the operator of Nude Records, whilst playing at The Venue in New Cross in a show under the name “On For ‘92”. He offered them £3,132 for a two single deal.

In April of that year, Melody Maker made the bold choice to place Suede on their front cover, proclaiming them the “Best New Band in Britain”. This cover has gone on to gain an almost infamy amongst Suede and their fans. Anderson, in the 2022 BBC Documentary Rock Family Trees: The Birth of Cool Britannia, refers to it in disparaging terms, likening it to winning a competition in school as a child.

However less discussed is the contents of the article itself. Not only were Suede described as ‘The Best New Band in Britain’, but as “the most audacious, mysterious, sexy, absurd, perverse, glamorous, hilarious, honest, cocky, melodramatic, mesmerising band you’re ever likely to fall in love with.”

And this leads us back, finally, to The Drowners.

Released on May 11th 1992 as a double A Side with To The Birds, The Drowners peaked at a not insignificant number 49 on the UK charts at the time of release, however it would later go on to hit an impressive Number 17 in July 2023 for one week as a thirtieth anniversary reissue, albeit in a time when chart positions don’t mean all that much.

Suede would often be touted as some kind of antithesis to the Grunge which dominated the airwaves in the early 1990s, however, The Drowners’ opening chords could, in some sense, be described as “grungy”. They’re hard and powerful and dirty. Not dirty in the greasy-haired grunge sense, but in a way that oozes sex. This is what truly sets Suede apart.

In the Channel 4 Documentary Opening Shot, Everett True, at the time assistant editor at Melody Maker, explains: “the critics loved them [Suede] (...) because they are exactly the same as everything they grew up with. They hark back to an era of rock and roll that critics understand, 1993 down the front at the Hammersmith Odeon watching David Bowie.” I feel that this perspective, whilst it may have some truth to it, is rather an oversimplification and focuses primarily on Suede’s image (cobbled together from charity shops and largely consisting of whatever they could find). Suede only have as much in common with Bowie as any of their contemporaries, it feels like a rather lazy comparison.

Anderson’s vocals have once again assumed new inflections and has a great deal more character, not to mention confidence. Listening to the Rocking Horse Demo, which is a much rawer, grittier take, the first thing that sticks out are, indeed, the vocals. They’re sung in near falsetto, they’re a little girlish and coquettish. Inviting, sexy. If there’s one way that The Drowners can be described, it’s certainly sexy. The rhythm of the guitar line, the pounding drums, the pleading of Anderson’s vocals.

There’s the ambiguity of it all, too, as Anderson describes how “we kiss in his room”. Is this the room of a third party? A male partner? Or is he singing from a woman’s perspective? It’s kept completely open, and this ambiguity is something that will become a theme throughout Suede’s catalogue.

Interestingly, two music videos were shot. One for the UK market by Lindy Heymann, which depicts the band flouncing around a white soundstage intercut with footage of Anderson and an unnamed girl walking around a manky railway bridge in Camden (now a pilgrimage spot for avid Suede fans, complete with an unofficial blue plaque), and another for the US market, depicting a kind of frantic gig scene with fans, real fans, clamoring for a piece of the boys on the stage, before it devolves into a foam party. I feel the latter captures the song considerably better. It's so thrilling, sexy, dirty and primal. It's everything Suede are, and everything that drew me to them.

At the time of writing, this is the song that Anderson uses as his excuse to do his crowd walk, wading through a sea of adoring fans. It's fitting, with the use of the “we” pronoun (another characteristic of Suede lyrics), creating a convivial experience. Whilst the power dynamic between band and crowd will always place the band upon a higher footing, oftentimes literally, at this moment he becomes one with his audience. It's also a chance for Mat Osman and Richard Oakes to really shine.

Although, the production on The Drowners, and Suede’s back catalogue as a whole, I feel does Osman rather poorly. He's a truly accomplished bass player who creates some truly incredible baselines which compliment and tie together the songs so perfectly, and combined with Gilbert’s ferocious drumming, it's truly a match made in rhythm section heaven. The bass, though is so often disappointingly low in the mix, and so can only be heard with the highest quality headphones.

Anderson admits part of this would likely be due to how he listened to music throughout his adolescence, on a cheap sound system which cut out the low tones. The recent remasters rectify this somewhat, but it still rather feels a shame.

All in all, The Drowners is a delightful, sleazy, beautiful introduction to the world of a band who still aren't given the credit they're due.

If you enjoy what I write, please consider buying me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/suedesongs

[death-by-mercury]

Another shot of Rory at the Tavern in Toronto 🎸🍁

Rory on stage at the Colonial Tavern in Toronto during his week of shows in March 1973. Photo taken by John Rowlands and Shared by Paul Fenton. Below is Paul's story about seeing Rory at the Colonial Tavern in ‘73:

I first heard about Rory in the summer of 1972, while I was living (briefly) in England. We hadn’t heard of Rory in Canada, and the first time I saw anything in print about him was in a review, of his (just released), "Live in Europe "in Melody Maker" magazine. It was a great review, and I rushed out to buy the album and a cassette of it, at HMV. records, on Oxford street in London. In the store, there was a cool, retro, plexiglass, 'cone of silence' listening booth, my friend and I asked to listen to the Live In Europe album. At the first listen, I found Messin with Kid and Laundromat a bit heavy, but as soon as I heard the first notes (of slide) on I Could've had Religion, I was spellbound!

When I returned to my home in Canada , turned all my friends on to Rory and we bought all his other albums. Later, In March 1973, a friend of mine saw an ad in the Globe and Mail (a Toronto newspaper) the ad said that Rory was going to play at the Colonial Tavern in Toronto !! We saved up our money and took the train to Toronto from Ottawa and slept on my friend's brother's apartment floor for the week. The first day of the gig, we got to the Colonial tavern early - 5 pm!! The tickets were $2.50... Not bad, for a whole night of Rory Gallagher and a great opening band -King Biscuit Boy with the legendary Canadian blues band, "Mckenna Mendelson Mainline' backing up Biscuit Boy!

We got the best seats in the house -right in front of the stage and drank beer that we'd snuck into the tavern.yeah,we were broke!! King Biscuit Boy and Co. were great ,but Rory just blew them away. He walked on stage and launched right in to "Messin with the Kid".

I had a small Sony cassette recorder on my lap and recorded every night. Later, when I got home, I wore those cassette tapes out trying to learn how to play slide. Years later, I told Rory about that.. and it pleased him!

Between sets, we were astonished when Rory walked down from his dressing room and had a beer at the bar,no one bothered him.., the club on the first few nights was only half full. We did walk up to him and ask for an autograph,he was so nice and laid back,very humble and sweet!

Rory and his band played a great mixture of songs that week. all of, Live In Europe', some stuff from

"Deuce' (only about a year and a half old at that time), and songs from the newly released 'Blueprint"

The Colonial tavern had great acoustics and it was a perfect venue for Rory! We noticed that Rory and Gerry McAvoy used' Stramp' amplifiers and P.A../ vowed that I would find a Stramp amplifier like Rory's, and I later acquired one just like his, though it took me 50 Years to find his model, a Stramp "Power Baby". VERY rare!!

At the end of each night at the Colonial, we'd take the subway back to our apartment, our ears were ringing..Rory played loud!!

I didn't see Rory again until 1982 when we played with him in Montreal at "The Spectrum". I told him that we'd seen him at the Colonial Tavern in 73, then he told me, in his beautiful Irish lilt.: "Ah, the good old days"!

[ourshadowstallerthanoursoul]

On this day... - June 14th

On this day Led Zeppelin performed:

+ 1972 : Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York, USA

“The noise cajunked, and beefed outwards, filling each comer of the circular, space-aged Nassau Coliseum, Long Island, New York State. Sixteen thousand people didn't know whether they were coming or going. Many danced, crazily, while others just stood, stared and smiled. […] It was one of the most amazing concerts I'd seen from any band, at any time. Nothing had gone missing, it had been the complete act. There had been power, climax after climax, beauty, funk, rock, boogie, totally freaked passages, and such constant, snarling energy that on this evening Led Zep could have provided enough human electricity to light half of America. […] They are playing better than they've ever played in their lives. The people know it. […] Led Zep are delivering the coup-de-grace. […] The excitement just round the corner was thick as 16,000 people made ready. There was that hum, that frightening hum. An electrical tone was started. It sounded like the rising drone of a bomber. It got louder, louder, till it filled the whole place, and the tone, the band walked onto the stage. The place collapsed, and the band, without hesitation kicked into rock.” by Roy Hollingworth (Melody Maker)

+ 1977 : Madison Square Garden in New York, New York, USA

“This was the best Led Zeppelin show this observer has ever heard, and that includes the sound track from the group's recent concert film. It was certainly superior to the 1975 Garden shows, the last the band had given in New York. […] This tour amounts to a re-assertion of the band's pre-eminence in the fickle youth market of America, and on its own terms the opening show was certainly a triumphant reassertion. It lasted three hours and included some 18 songs, depending on how you count […] The mood of the Garden concert, offstage and on, seemed fresher and less hostile than some Led Zeppelin concerts and crowds of yore. The audience waited more or less docilely for 70 minutes past the scheduled starting time before the band appeared. When it did so, the mood of the musicians was good-natured and almost puckish. […] This was a first-class Led Zeppelin performance on several objective criteria.” – ‘Led Zeppelin’s British rock quartet shows sell-out at Madison Square Gardens’ by J. Rockwell

[freddiemercurylegendabovelegends]

March 1970, High Street, Leatherhead, Surrey, UK - Freddie Bulsara auditioned for Sour Milk Sea band, after seeing a ‘vocalist wanted’ in the ‘Melody Maker, Freddie accompanied by 'roadies' Roger Taylor and John Harris

Rob Tyrell recalls seeing him for the first time: “Freddie auditioned with us in a youth club in crypt of a church in Dorking. We were all blown away. He was very confident. I don’t think it was any great surprise to him when we offered him the job.” Jeremy Gallop agrees: “He had an immense amount of charisma, which is why we chose him. Although, we were actually spoilt for choice that day. Normally at auditions, you’d get four or five guys who were rubbish, but we had two other strong contenders. One was a black guy, who had the voice of God, but he didn’t have the looks of Fred, and the other person was Bridget St. John.

Chris Chesney: “I remember Freddie being really energetic and moving around a lot at the audition, coming up and flashing the mike at me during guitar solos. He was impressive. There was an immediate vibe. He had a great vocal range. He sang falsetto; nobody else had the bottle to do that. He said ‘Do your own songs and I’ll make up my own words’ It was very clever and very good.”

“When Freddie joined,” Chris continues, “We were on a roll. We were in the habit of playing two or three gigs a week and we continued to do so. I think we played down at the Temple in Lower Wardour Street with Freddie, the Oxford gig, and a few others.”

The Oxford gig was in the ballroom at the Randolph Hotel, one of the grandest in the city, “It was like a society-type bash, debs in frocks and all that,” recalls Chris. “I remember our sound wasn’t great.” Jeremy Gallop adds: “Freddie definitely managed to get what people were there in the palm of his hand, just by sheer aggression and his good looks. He was very posy, very camp, and quite vain. I remember him coming to my house and looking in the mirror, poking his long hair. He said ‘I look good today. Don’t you think Rubber?’ I thought, ‘Fuck Off!’ I was only eighteen at the time, and didn’t think it was funny, Now It’s hilarious.”

The only other gig featuring Freddie which the other members of Sour Milk Sea are certain about was a benefit for the homeless charity ‘Shelter’, staged at the Highfield Parish hall in Headington, Oxford, on 20th March 1970 – just weeks before Freddie teamed up with Brian May and Roger Taylor in a new group. “That was probably the last gig we played with him,” remarks Chris Chesney.

Surprisingly enough for such a low-key gig, just like Ibex’s Bolton show, Sour Milk Sea’s appearance at Headington, also made the local paper. This time it was the ‘Oxford Mail’ and incredibly, the paper also included a photograph of the group complete with Freddie – the only known shot to exist of him with Sour Milk Sea. Typically Freddie is the only one looking at the camera.

The article included an interview with the band on account of Chris Chesney’s parents being minor celebrities. It also remarked that vocalist Freddie Bulsara had only arrived ‘a couple of weeks ago’, and quoted form his song ‘Lover’. More importantly, as Chris told the paper at the time: “I don’t feel we are like any other group. Our approach is based on our relationships with one another.”

These relationships held much promise, but were fraught with danger, as Chris soon discovered. “I was staying with ‘Rubber’ at the time.” He recounts. “Then Freddie asked me to stay with him in Barnes. So I did, and we started songwriting together, getting into each other’s heads. His chords were kind of weird. They broke all the rules. F-Sharp minor to F back to A. That was totally new for me. I thought it was all very current and that we could blend our two approaches together.”

Chris continues: “We did two or three of Freddie’s songs. He had some material from the Ibex days, including ‘Lover’, ‘Blag’ and ‘FEWA’ He was good at lyrics and we wrote a couple of numbers, some big, operatic pieces. Operatic in the sense that they broke down into solo guitar parts, then built up again vocally. I can’t for the life of me remember what they were called. He also introduced weird covers like ‘Jailhouse Rock’. We’d never considered playing Elvis, or Little Richard’s ‘Lucille’. Then he had his little rock ‘n’ roll medley, which pushed the band into a showbiz direction, which I liked. He also had a lot of stagecraft going. I had a good relationship with Freddie and he liked the way I moved on stage. We were like Bowie and Ronson, where we related physically to each other on stage”.

No one in Ibex, Wreckage or Sour Milk Sea had suspected that Freddie was gay. Indeed Mike Bersin has pointed out; “Freddie had a girlfriend, Mary Austin at the time”. “Ambiguous sexuality was par for the course then.” Recalls Chris Chesney. “You didn’t question it. Anybody who did was totally unhip.” Chris and Freddie’s friendship was platonic, but close: “He wanted to style me, give me some clothes to wear, and the relationship between us got quite strong. ‘Rubber’ soon realised there was nothing in it for him.”

(➡️ source: http://www.queenpedia.com/index.php?title=Sour_Milk_Sea)

[cherrylng]

Coldplay Live Reviews - 11th February, 2009 - Saitama Super Arena [ROCKIN'ON (April 2009)]

11th FEBRUARY SAITAMA SUPER ARENA

Life in Technicolor

Violet Hill

Clocks

In My Place

Speed of Sound

Yellow

Chinese Sleep Chant

42

Fix You

Strawberry Swing

God Put A Smile Upon Your Face

Talk

The Hardest Part

Postcards From Far Away

Viva La Vida

Lost!

Green Eyes

Death Will Never Conquer Viva La Vida Remix

Politik

Lovers In Japan

Death And All His Friends (encore)

The Scientist

Life In Technicolor II

One of the biggest bands of the 21st century, after all

"I'm so happy to be here in Tokyo. Last time we were in Los Angeles, we were at the Grammys (enjoying the cheers with satisfaction) and it's great to be here in Tokyo after winning the Grammy!" Chris Martin blurted this out as part of his MC rather early in the show. It's so blatant. But the charm of Chris Martin is that this doesn't come across as sarcastic at all. And that was the reason Coldplay won that day. Martin, you have become a star in my mind at this moment.

The four members of Coldplay took to the stage in the darkness, each holding a firework. Like the album, ‘Life in Technicolor’ and ‘Violet Hill’, the forgotten first single from ‘Viva La Vida’, started the show in the same hard-hitting manner as at Summer Sonic. But then Martin sat down at the piano and played the intro to ‘Clocks’. Gee, isn't that too early? Neither the band nor the audience had fully warmed up yet. However, even though the performance was a little rough, reflecting this, the beautiful melody that made Martin one of the best melody makers in the world completely captivated my body and soul. Ah, just when I thought my personal climax had already come, there was a raging hit parade of ‘In My Place’, ‘Speed of Sound’ and ‘Yellow’. The aforementioned lines were also released during this period, and during ‘Yellow’, balloons filled with confetti descended on the standing zone of the arena (Martin was smiling during the song when he ordered the audience to send one of them flying onto the stage and then popped it with the head of his guitar, eliciting a huge cheer). The band had only just begun, but they seemed to be running amok, as if they were about to come to a grand finale.

But, after all, the star of the day is not Coldplay's past, but the Grammy-winning hocus-pocus present of "Viva La Vida". The audience intends to do the same. The song selection from "Viva La Vida" was strong. The audience was still in a frenzy for the climax of the show, from the chorus of ‘Viva La Vida’ (Will's work on the drums made me cry) to ‘Lost’, which the band themselves had likely prepared as the climax of the main show, but it was striking that the relatively low-key '42' and 'Strawberry Swing' were more well-received than the inevitable singalong 'Fix You'. Among these, ‘Lovers in Japan’ performed towards the end of the show was a highlight. When "HAIKU" was suddenly projected on the big screen, the whole audience was stunned, but I doubt anyone was not moved by the fantastic vibrancy of this song, which stands out on the album. The beautiful ensemble, together with the huge amount of confetti that fell so thickly that it obscured the stage, covered the venue with a great deal of happiness (no band is more suited to confetti).

Martin's behaviour is amusing, by the way. He sprinkles in confusing Japanese phrases like "Awesome / Subarashii" or "Are you having fun?/ Tanoshinderu?" at various parts in the songs, dances like a marionette with its strings all tangled up, plays the piano wrong in 'The Hardest Part' and repeatedly says "fuck" (is this a joke based on the song title?), and acts all naive from beginning to end, as if he's just looking for someone to point it out. But it's amazing that such inexplicable behaviour is always so well defined. A star indeed. Even when he's blurting it out, it doesn't leave a gap. Martin and Coldplay, who never show any signs of hesitation or worry, are truly one of the greatest acts of the 21st century. It was a show where I could finally realise this. (Ryo Uchida)

Rock far beyond ‘rock or no rock’

There were ramps on either side of the stage, which led down to floor level. A small sub-stage was set up at the back of the floor (where the acoustic part was performed) and a huge spherical screen hung from the ceiling. Shortly after 6pm, the background music inside Saitama Super Arena suddenly switched from hip-hop to classical music. It was Johann Strauss' ‘The Blue Danube’. I wondered what was going on, but it turned out to be the band's opening number. The four members appeared with torch-like fireworks in their hands. The opening song was ‘Life in Technicolor’, which is the same setlist as Summer Sonic. Of course, the show was also developed in the worldview of "Viva La Vida" as a whole, but compared to the Summer Sonic set where they had Alicia Keys play piano in ‘Clocks’ and even performed a cover of [SMAP's] ‘世界に一つだけの花/Sekai ni Hitotsu Dake no Hana’, this show was of course a vivid presentation of the "Viva La Vida" mode—or rather, it was a live performance that told the story of how far the band Coldplay had risen thanks to "Viva La Vida". The part that symbolised this was the rapid succession of ‘Clocks’, ‘In My Place’, ‘Speed ​​of Sound’, and "Yellow" from the third song onwards.

Needless to say, all of these were single hits that have been representative of Coldplay's career to date. I thought it sounded like a stock clearance sale, but that's exactly what it was. Above all, the reaction of the crowd was magnificent, and apart from the core fans at the front of the arena, there was a clear difference in excitement between ‘Yellow’, ‘In My Place’, and ‘Viva La Vida’. In other words, this was a concert by "Coldplay of ‘Viva La Vida’", not by "one of the leading rock bands of the 2000s with four albums under their belt". So there was no need for a hot rock groove, and of course the band understood that. That is Coldplay's destiny, and the very difficult and complex balancing game they are forced to play as a rock band.

It is interesting to note, however, that while the atmosphere of this show was naturally quite different from Radiohead's show that I saw at the same Saitama Super Arena, it was not dissimilar to that of U2's. While Radiohead were quite a stoic rock show, and U2 seemed to fulfil their ‘role’ more convincingly and without failure, Chris Martin is a man who is inherently strange and far from the stability of a so-called pop star. He moves restlessly around the stage, sometimes singing and thrashing about, and even doing a few last minute antics at the end of each song. But at the same time, he can shout "I came here straight after winning a Grammy!" or scattering yellow balloons during the song ‘Yellow’, and handling detailed operations such as "moving to the sub-stage in 30 seconds, and then returning to our usual position on the main stage while the lights are out." And it's not that either one is essential, but both are very serious. This is reflected in the ambivalent title and theme of the latest show, which is stranger every time I see it. Despite being such a big and accomplished show, watching Chris is thrilling. The thrill is definitely that of rock ‘n’ roll. Such inconsistency is what makes Coldplay so interesting and why they continue to be one of a kind. (Tomohiro Ogawa)

Translator's Note: This is quite the amusing read of the live reviews by the journalists who saw that concert. Compared to reading the live reviews talking about Muse's concerts -which they're used to Matt's eccentricities and expect his awesome guitar playing- this felt as though they didn't expect Chris to be far more eccentric than they anticipated LMAO

I tried to find if there were any live video recordings of the Feb 11th show, but unfortunately there wasn't any. However, an audio recording of the whole concert is now available on YouTube... that came from Guy Berryman's In-ear monitor, for some reason. Quite an interesting way to listen to the whole concert.

There's also the video version that was recorded for MTV, but it was for February 12th, and cut down to only 40 minutes of content.

Good news is that full audio recording of it from the audience's perspective is available for listening too.