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The Vaccines Interview
Indie | Tuesday 28th August 2012 | Osh
The Guestlist Network catches up with the Vaccines.
It has been a massive year for you guys. How was it releasing your debut album to such critical approval, for instance the NME claiming that it brought ‘the return of great British guitar music’?
It was a massive relief to finally release it and people started buying it, and talking about it, and it’s just amazing.
So is that why you named the album What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? Was it because of the expectation?
Well it was, sort of; there’s all sorts of reasons for it. It’s a lyric from ‘Post Break Up Sex’ and it also sounded like one of those “Here Come The..”, an introducing and all of that.
So your latest single from the album is called ‘Norgaar’, I don’t really know how to pronounce it!
I don’t think anybody does, but yeah, that’s ‘Norgaard’, yeah.
What is the song about?
It’s about a Danish model and the story goes that Justin [singer] went on a double date with a friend and another girl and Justin ended up going home alone and the other one got off with both of the girls. He got a little bit of noise and wrote a song about her. But we actually have a bit of a relationship with her now because she went to one of our concerts when we were in New York or something. She came over and did the video with us as well for the single. So that’s Norgaard.
So this year it seems like you have been non-stop touring. How was the NME Awards tour with Crystal Castles, Magnetic Man and Everything, Everything?
It was the first major and proper tour. Like we did some small club shows and we’d gone up and down the country a few times. We were playing to rooms that are like 5 times the size of anything we’d ever done before and it was a massive learning curve for us. We made some friends you know, like we hung out a lot with Magnetic Man and we sat around talking jazz with them until 5 o’clock in the morning.
Amazing, so do you have any funny backstage stories?
Yeah, I think to be completely honest it’s probably best to keep them to the backstage.
Haha, sounds madness.
It was really a lot of fun!
You’ve played loads of festivals this year like Glastonbury, Reading & Leeds, T In The Park. What’s been one of your favourite?
Reading & Leeds felt like an end of a festival run, obviously it was the end of the festival run. It felt like it all came together and we had accomplished something. I think Reading & Leeds stands out but to be honest all of the English festivals have been incredible. Like English festival goers really know how to have fun and it’s sort of carefree and the environment is just amazing. So all of them have had their perks. Glastonbury was the biggest thing we’ve ever done. Reading & Leeds was the last festival we did, which was amazing. I know everybody says this, because its true, but the Scottish crowd, such as T In The Park are mental so it’s always amazing to play Scotland.
Really? Is the reception next level?
Yeah, well Scottish people are, yeah, so up for it.
Brilliant, so what has been your oddest gig so far?
Well the weirdest gig we have done was probably the second gig we ever did. There was literally not one paying customer. We played in Nottingham in a place called… I think it’s called Rescue Rooms. We played to the driver, the guy who drove us up there, we played to our manager, his wife and er a bartender who left halfway through.
Really? Well you’ve come a long way from that haven’t you?
(Laughs) Yeah, it feels like a long time ago anyway. I hope we never have to do that again.
So what has been your overall highlight of the year so far?
I think 2011 is just going to be a year of highlights. Like it started off with highlights when we went to the States for the first time and we played. There was like a milestone gig for us because it was the first time we went that far away and half of us had never been to that place and it is like the cradle of rock’n’roll music and we sold out. Bowery Ballroom and Debby Harry came backstage and it was just mental, it was so unreal. That was like at the start of the year, so since then there has been a lot of highlights, every single day, every single week at least. Something new, something more exciting than last week. We did four continents in a week so we went to Japan and Australia. So there have been a lot of highlights.
That’s amazing. It sounds like you’re living the life to be honest.
Theres a lot of airports mate, a lot of airports.
A lot of waiting around?
A lot of waiting around, yeah. When people think about the rock’n’roll lifestyle they don’t think about the airports and excess baggage do they.
Haha brilliant! Talking about continents and on a less positive note you have had to cancel shows in Europe, the US and Japan. Is it something to do with Justin’s throat?
That’s exactly what it is, yes. He’s having an operation on Monday. So yes, that’s exactly the reason we did it but I think in the long run Justin’s vocal health is going to be more important than a few shows, unfortunately. It’s always completely devastating to have to cancel shows especially in places like America because touring America is like always a dream and we’ve done it twice this year and its always been amazing. So it’s good to go over and experience what the States are about if you know what I mean?
What are the American crowds like?
It depends what State actually, it depends where you are. It’s sort of like, people tend to think about either the West Coast or the East Coast when they think about the States but everything in between is the States, do you know what I mean? So like all of those ridiculous places like Minneapolis or Denver or Columbus or you know, all of those are the real sort of thick of it so it just depends, but its amazing.
So your comeback gig will probably be the ones supporting the Arctic Monkeys?
That’s exactly what we are going to do. We are playing one show in Paris and then we are gonna play that tour, yeah.
Brilliant, so are you excited to play with them?
We’ve done it before actually, we’ve played with them quite a lot. We did a whole 4 week tour in the States with the Monkeys and then we did the Sheffield homecoming gigs with them.
Don Valley?
Yeah, Don Valley, yeah. They’re an amazing group of people to tour with they are really inspirational, a really inspirational band. They’re a fucking great live band. They’re a lot of fun and I was talking to Jamie the other day and he was saying “yeah we are going to have riot guns and mini motorbikes”. I was like “what the fuck are you going to do?” It’ll be interesting to do an arena tour with them.
So were you a big fan or the Arctic’s before you started touring with them?
No, I wasn’t actually. Me personally, I wasn’t because I didn’t really know them. The Monkeys was a very sort of English phenomenon and I obviously moved over here only 3 years ago so I was always aware of them but I never knew anything except the massive hits, do you know what I mean? But they’re a great band, a fucking great band.
Yeah, they’re one of my favourites. I’ll be at the 02 in October. As soon as I heard the lineup I was like tickets! Got em!
It should be fun definitely.
So is that going to be one of your biggest shows?
Indoors, yeah of course, it’s an arena. But we’ve got our own headline UK tour booked after that and in less than a we’re doing the arena and doing the Brixton Academy on our own, which will be quite an interesting time.
Yeah, I was just about to ask you about that actually. The last time you played Brixton Academy you obviously opened the NME Awards tour so are you excited to now be, within the year, headlining it?
Yeah less than a year later, it’s quite weird. Last time we played Brixton Academy we played a half hour set and then we just fucked off. This is going to be fairly different. We are going to have to somehow come up with some material to fill up the slot right.
So can you actually believe how far you have come this year?
No, but I try not to think about it. I think you’ll become really self-obsessed if you start thinking to much about anything apart from delivering the best show and the best music you can possibly do at a given point. You have to focus on the task at hand and not worry about the sort of the press or anything. A bit of focus you know.
Yeah, keeping your feet on the ground basically?
Exactly, exactly, I think its very important otherwise we will all have massive drug addictions. You know what I mean. It’s easy to see how people fall into that trap.
Yeah completely. So is there going to be a second album in the process soon?
Yeah of course, yeah that’s generally what bands do, they generally try to release a second record so we are going to try and do this as well.
Haha
Yeah of course we’ve already started writing and we are sort of bouncing ideas back and forwards and trying to find our feet on what we want to develop on, what we have already got, what the character of The Vaccines is and how we want to develop on that.
Do you want it to be as short as the first one? Because, it was only what 30 minutes long?
Hey mate, it was like 36, don’t shave off the 6 minutes.
Important 6 minutes?
(Laughs) Important 6 minutes. To be honest we haven’t really figured it out yet you know, we are a rock’n’roll band, we will always be a rock’n’roll band and that’s gonna be the reality of the 2nd record, whether the record will be littered with 2 minute long songs or not, but we’ll find out.
So do you have any plans for 2012 or are you just going to continue doing what you’re doing?
We’ve got touring plans up until like the first 3 or 4 months of 2012 and then we will hopefully be able to release a record. It’s possible but then it means getting time to go to a studio, which is not a lot of these days.
If you could fill a swimming pool with anything what would it be?
Errr…ping pong balls.
(Laughing) Why?
I have no idea. It just sounds really fun.
Diving into..
A pool of ping pong balls.
So if you were invisible for a day what would you do?
Err. Well. That’s a good question. I’d probably hm, if I was invisible for a day.
Yeaahhh…
Errrrm. I dunno, I’d just pull pranks on people. I’d probably scare the shit out of Justin by moving things around in his bedroom just to speed up his nervous breakdown.
Pranks and fun! So have you done anything random recently? Any random acts?
Any random acts?
Yeah like have you done anything random? First thing that pops into your head!
Yeah, quite a few, I do random things a lot of the time. I walked into Bungalow 8 the other day and ceremoniously melted down my membership card just to protest Bungalow 8.
Really?
Yeah, I sort of burned it on a candle ceremoniously in Bungalow 8. I don’t think I’ll get another membership card.
That’s definitely a very random thing to do. That’s the rock’n’roll coming out in you there!
Hahahahaha! One day when I’m old and grey I’ll think back and say “I was once a member of Bungalow 8.” I’ll regret it one day!
It’s Bungalow 8, it’s alright, there are plenty more places to go.
Yeah exactly!
Can you give us any exclusive news on The Vaccines that you can tell our readers?
Wow…OK…erm…I dunno, sorry it’s sort of difficult.
It’s fine, take your time.
It’s sort of difficult to realise what you are allowed to say and what you aren’t allowed to say.
Yeah, course.
I dunno, erm, we can say that… at the moment we are working on a little fanzine where we go around interviewing our heroes and hopefully we will get a chance to talk to most of them. That’s our sort of immediate project at the moment so one day you might see a Vaccines fanzine when we actually compile shit from people we like.
What that sounds really cool man. That’s a really cool exclusive.
Yeah hopefully, if we get away with it you know, if the right people want to talk to us you know what I mean.
Amazing, well I’d talk to The Vaccines. Thank you and enjoy your shows with the Arctics and at Brixton.
