Kasabian

October 2011

ONE of their roadies is looking worse for wear and it’s noted by Serge Pizzorno when he walks in the room. He delivers a rally of expletives to describe his appearance to me. To paraphrase, he had a skin-full last night.
That’s not the case for Serge, now a father of a one-year-old boy. He’s toned down his rock’n’roll hedonism.
Or not.
“There are no rules on tour,” says the Kasabian guitarist and songwriter.
“At home I’m a pillar of society. I look after that little lad as well as I can.”
It’s been the case since Ennio, named after composer Ennio Morricone, was born last summer.
“When you’re getting up to do the milk in the morning, you don’t want to be out of your mind, do you? I’m not going to be doing that around a little boy. There’s more at stake than music.”
Then adds: “But when I’m on tour... and we’re on tour now so...”
And the missus accepts that?
“Absolutely! Well we’ve been together all these years...”
He and Amy were childhood sweethearts.
“We used to go down the park on our BMXs, yeah,” laughs the 30-year-old.
Has fatherhood changed him?
“Yeah massively I think,” he admits, although he struggles to explain how exactly.
There are grunts and pauses and the occasional “erm” before he settles on: “All the things people tell you about being a dad, you’ve no idea what they’re talking about until it happens.”
All of Kasabian are fathers. The band have been together for 14 years and despite four No. 1 albums and sell-out tours, they remain in Leicester.
“We didn’t escape down the M1 like most bands,” he says.
So who has the biggest house? You’re the songwriter so will have the most money – it must be you?
“Yeah, I suppose,” laughs Pizzorno, who, it turns out, lives in a farmhouse.
Unlike during the last few years of Oasis, there has been no sign of the rest of the band wanting to contribute to the songwriting process.
“That’s how it’s been from the start,” he insists. “And it’s worked.”
Indeed it has. Their album and ticket sales qualify Kasabian as one of Britain’s biggest bands, picking up the gong for Best British Band at last year’s Brit Awards.
The current tour, which comes to the Capital FM Arena for two shows in December, follows the success of their fourth album, Velociraptor!
“Velociraptors used to hunt in packs of four,” he says of the title.
“They stuck together, they were the rock’n’roll band of the dinosaurs. There is something about the power of four – if you stick together, it’s unity.”
The idea must have come to him a while ago as the four-piece became five when Jay Mehler, the band’s former touring guitarist, became a full-time member late last year.
When their self-titled debut was released in 2004, many accused them of making thuggish music for loutish fans.
“It was annoying,” admits Pizzorno, whose influences have always been more avant-garde.
“Even when we were talking about Tangerine Dream and Silver Apples, people kept banging on about how we were inspired by Happy Mondays. We love Happy Mondays, but it’s easier for people to put you in the box they want, than for them to listen to what you’re actually saying.”
He adds: “Anyone who has ever written us off, even with the first record, looks a bit silly now.”
That said, it was only after the release of their second album, Empire, in 2006, that the band started to take things seriously and ease off on the drugs and alcohol.
“With the first two albums, it was the most exciting time,” he says.
“We didn’t know what was going on. We were just young and crazy. It was when we were starting (third album) West Ryder, that we thought about it seriously. What we were doing was amazing and I didn’t want to mess it all up. I wanted to get to work.
He adds: “As for the drugs thing, well that got taken out of context.”
He wrote the latest album in between paternal duties at home.
“I was writing when I was doing night feeds,” he explains. “I thought I’d just be writing lullabies or maybe be too tired to write at all but it focused me. I didn’t have a lot of time to myself so I’d think ‘I’ve got three hours, let’s get back in the cupboard and knock some tunes out’.”
The cupboard, as he calls it, is his home studio where Velociraptor! was recorded.
“It’s just a bedroom with a load of synths and beat-up amps. I kind of like it that way, so I feel like I’m not at work. I’ve always been like that.”
Not always but since he was turned on to the idea of becoming a rock’n’roll star in his teens – just after he’d quit football.
Between 11 and 13 he was a Forest Junior, alongside Jermaine Jenas and Andy Reid.
“I always dreamt of playing for Leicester but it never happened,” he recalls.
“I had a trial at Forest and did pretty well so I got signed up. Frank Clark was the manager at the time.”
And he’s back again as chairman.
“Is he? He’s a nice chap.”
Although Pizzorno never met him, he later admits. And he just missed Brian Clough.
“Clough had just left but there were some amazing stories still lingering on about how he used to run the team. He was such a legend of a bloke, man.”
The stories that Pizzorno used to play with his Leicester City socks under his Forest kit? They’re true.
“I had to. You know what it’s like. And no one ever noticed.”
But he fell out of love with the game while at Forest.
“I remember in one of the games toe-poking a goal and I got a right (telling off). As far as I was concerned a goal’s a goal. As soon as the manager said ‘don’t do that’ I thought ‘this is not for me – how are you ever going to breed creative players?’ They just wanted tanks who’d run through brick walls.”
The incident signaled the end of his football dream.
“That was it for me,” he says.
“One day I just stopped. I thought ‘I can’t handle that.’ One morning I decided I wasn’t going training. I just played with my mates after that. I had some good times there, though.”
He adds: “So it was a case of ‘OK, I can’t be a footballer, all right I’ll be a rock’n’roll star.’ The fear of having to get a proper job drove me.
“I remember getting a guitar and I felt like this was what I wanted to do. It changed my life.”


Kasabian play the Capital FM Arena on December 2 and 3, supported by Miles Kane. Tickets are £30 from the venue. Call 08444 124624 or go to www.capitalfmarena.com.

Brendan O'Carroll (Mrs Brown)

May 2011

Brian Clough was the Mrs Brown of football

THAT his mother died when he was just 28 did Brendan O’Carroll a favour, he says. It’s a surprisingly dark moment in an otherwise bright chat with the comedy star, who is taking a break at his holiday home in Florida when we catch up.

“I never failed when she was alive,” says the 55-year-old Dubliner, the youngest of 11 children.

“And to learn you need to fail. Between the age of 28 and 35 everything I touched turned to cr*p. I failed a lot and I learned a lot. So, as much as I loved her and I adored the ground she walked on, probably the best thing she ever did for me was to die.”

He believes she would have enjoyed his success.

“I was a waiter when she died. She would have absolutely loved this.”

It was more than 20 years ago that his comedy career turned around, when Irish radio station RTE commissioned him to write a series of short stories based on his character, Agnes Brown, the loud-mouthed widow, whose favourite pastime is meddling in the lives of her six children.

The series ran for three years. O’Carroll followed that with a series of bestselling Mrs Brown books, sell-out stage tours, nine DVDs and even a movie, starring Angelica Huston, called Agnes Brown.

But he’s only really become a household name in Britain in the past few months with the BBC TV series Mrs Brown’s Boys.

It’s riddled with expletives, so did he have trouble getting them past BBC censors.

“I expected them to say there’d be none but they took the opposite view,” he says. “Bizarrely, the first script meeting I had with them, they said ‘We want you to do the show exactly as you would on stage, then all we have to think about is what time we put it on at’.”

He adds: “I don’t know if you noticed but as the series went on I cut them down. That first episode had 34 effs in it and I thought that’s too many. So if there was any editing it was done by me, not them.”

Mrs Brown was a success for O’Carroll, whose wife Jenny plays Cathy in the series, long before he reached British TV, to the extent that he’s able to work for only six months of the year.

“The BBC get six weeks of my time and that leaves me 20 weeks to tour, which I spend across the United States, Ireland and the UK. And then I take off on holiday for 26 weeks.”

“Way back, when I’d only been doing stand-up for a year or so, I got a call from a guy who wanted me to do a date. I’d already booked a caravan holiday, so I said ‘Sorry, I can’t’. He said ‘OK, I’ll give you £500’. I said ‘No, I’m actually not working that weekend.’ He rang me back later: ‘£750 and that’s me last offer.’ I said ‘look, I’m not working’ and he said ‘You’ve some cheek.... £1,500 and that’s it.’”

He laughs: “I said ‘What date did you want me to do? I’ll be there!’. I learnt a lesson. The scarcer you are, the more valuable you are.”

As well as his home in Dublin, he has another in Orlando where he spends a lot of the winter. It’s where he’s been holed up ahead of next month’s UK tour of Good Mourning Mrs Brown.

“It’s 84 degrees and glorious. It’s only now that I realise what people mean by seasonally affected disorder. The feeling of getting up in the morning to a blue sky is amazing. It really does cheers you up.”

He adds: “The BBC are under the impression that I’m actually writing the next series for them but I haven’t a clue what to write. We start recording in September. And there’s a possibility of us doing a Christmas special.”

Before that he’ll shoot new ITV sitcom The Security Men, written by Caroline Aherne.

“It’s set in a shopping centre and I’m working opposite Bobby Ball, which I’ve wanted to do for years. I’m looking forward to that because it’s not my script. I just do my piece then go.”

O’Carroll spent his teenage years doing odd jobs as a waiter, milkman, pirate radio DJ and painter and decorator, even running his own bar and cabaret lounge.

“I still have to pinch myself,” he admits.

He’ll be bringing his show to Nottingham for the first time, with six dates from June 28.

“I have never set foot in Nottingham in my life and I am so looking forward to it because I was a Nottingham Forest fan during the Cloughie years and I loved that man. I thought he was so brash.

“He was the Mrs Brown of football. He said what he liked and he was prepared to accept the consequences.”

Good Mourning Mrs Brown at the Royal Concert Hall, June 28-July 3. Tickets £19.50-£27.50, 0115 989 5555, www.gigsandtours.com

Johnny Marr

May 2007



WHEN Brian Clough’s scouts arrived at Johnny Marr’s home in Manchester and his mum led them into the lounge, they hadn’t expected the sight that greeted them.
“I looked like one of the New York Dolls,” remembers Johnny Marr.
“I think that scared them off.”
This was in the late 70s and on the cusp of Forest’s two triumphs in the European Cup. So, he could have been playing for one of the world’s greatest club sides of that era.
But he chose music.
“They followed me around for a few games,” says Marr, who was playing for Manchester City’s junior side.
“They invited me up there [down here, he means]. I was really flattered and it was super tempting but I always wanted to be a guitar player. I remember telling my parents that I was not going to be anything other than a guitar player.”
He adds: “I was literally on my way to rehearse with my little band of mates when they came to visit.
“It’s something to tell the grandchildren about, along with a few guitar stories.”
The band of mates wasn’t The Smiths. The infamous visit to Morrissey’s house was still a couple of years away.
Marr is in Los Angeles when we speak, en route to a show in San Jose with Modest Mouse, the band’s 52nd since last October.
Initially Marr and Mouse were to be connected for just over a week at the beginning 2006. The band’s frontman Isaac Brock had called to ask if he wanted to write with him for a new album.
“It sounded like an intriguing way of spending ten days,” says Marr, 43, who lives between Manchester and the band’s base in Portland, Oregon.
“I already liked the group and liked how unusual their songs were. I hadn’t committed to anything but when we started writing we clicked straight away.”
As a result he became a permanent member, putting his own project The Healers on hold.
“I’m always led by the music. And I got really passionate about the record and I’m very proud of it.”
The album was We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank, which topped the US chart on its release in March.
The current tour finds them playing to crowds of 5,000-15,000 people every night in the US. Unlike the rest of Modest Mouse, he’s well used to it.
“At the end of The Smiths in some places we were playing as big and bigger places. And with The Pretenders I played to much bigger crowds. I’m not blase about it, though.”
He adds: “My favourite gigs are to about 1,200 people. Little clubs, they’re without doubt the best shows. I’d prefer to do 15 of those on the run.”
So he’ll enjoy Rock City on Monday, which has a 1,750 capacity.
“Yes. It’s been a long time since I played there. The Smiths played there in ’85. Though I did play in Nottingham with Neil Finn maybe two years ago.”
That was October 2004 at the Royal Concert Hall and Marr joined Finn for a rendition of The Smiths’ There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, as a tribute to the late John Peel, whose death had been announced the previous day.
“I’ve also got a couple of mates there who I visit now and again so I’ve been to Nottingham quite a few times.”
And the reaction in the street — not just here but in the US?
“If people do stop me, particularly in America, they thank me for having some sort of impact on them, which is always a pretty humbling experience.
“The English are more likely to tell you to ‘sod off!’”
He’s happy not to have the same attention as Morrissey or any of the singers he’s worked alongside, which also includes Bernard Butler (in Electronic), Neil Tennant (Pet Shop Boys), Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders), David Byrne (Talking Heads), Bryan Ferry and Beck.
“The recognition I have is for being a musician. Singers often get recognised for their face and as a celebrity. I couldn’t really handle that, people going nuts just because they’ve seen your face on the telly.”
His current leading man, Isaac Brock, is again soaking up the majority of the attention, not simply as the band’s frontman but also because he’s the one with the drug and prison stories.
“It’s all an act,” says Marr, who comes across as a regular 40something. Though he’s not sure he is so normal.
“The track record of the people I’ve worked with has to say something about me. I’m not interested in working with people who are run-of-the-mill. I don’t know what that says about me.
“Well-balanced insanity is fine. I think I’ve probably got lots of that.”
And Brock?
“Well, I wouldn’t say he was normal but he’s a beautiful guy and super intelligent and the best writer around at the moment, without a doubt.”
Damn. There was the perfect lead-in to asking him about Morrissey but I miss it. I try another angle, that of how his role in Modest Mouse compares to The Smiths.
With the latter he was carrying the songs, his dexterous fingerwork as essential as Morrissey’s words. With Modest Mouse he is one of six and his distinctive playing style isn’t evident. So it must be a lot easier?
“It’s not any easier because it’s not any less intense when I play. And from a technical point of view I’m always trying to walk a high wire and keep myself interested, be it through a gig or while recording. So I’m glad to say my fingers are as busy as they’ve ever been.”
But is it a superior band? Has anything he’s done these past 20 years bettered The Smiths?
“I’m always going to be known for being in The Smiths because it was so successful and has meant so much to so many people and I would never complain about that and I’m fiercely proud of it. But running alongside that I’ve been lucky enough to have some moments that I’ve felt were artistically just as good. Whether it was with The The or on a couple of Electronic singles. Or with this new Modest Mouse record.”
When was the last time he spoke to Morrissey and what was it about?
“It’s been in the past couple of years about this Smiths box set I’m trying to get together.”
It will feature remastered tracks including rarities. But he’s not sure it will happen.
“The record company are in disarray about it. They appear to be treating The Smiths like something that they found in their attic. Like an inconvenience.”
And Morrissey was behind the project?
“He was at the time but there’s all kinds of politics going on behind the scenes now so I’m staying out of it until I get the green light.”
The question of a reunion of The Smiths has been put to Marr more often than any other. So let’s try a different tack. Let’s give him three choices: You either join a Smiths reunion, go on Celebrity Big Brother or appear as a judge on American Idol...
After a little hesitation he replies:
“Right midfield for Nottingham Forest dressed as one of the New York Dolls.”

Modest Mouse appear at Rock City on Monday May 28.