Fifteen minutes with: Adam Franklin, Swervedriver

yourGigs (yG): Swervedriver have just got back from your shows in Norway and Denmark – how did they go?

Adam Franklin (AF): They were great actually, the band hasn’t played in Scandinavia for 15 years, and it was fun actually, just played Oslo and Copenhagen, it was good.

yG: Do you find different parts of the world react differently to different parts of the music?

AF: Well, I mean possibly, I think the grass is always greener in some ways, I think bands always do better away from their own country in some ways. You hear that sometimes in England when American bands come over and everyone’s going crazy about it and back home they are not that revered. It is an interesting thing though there are different counties that have different tastes in music. You can be touring around in Europe, and be playing somewhere in Germany it’s a packed house and the next night you may be in France and it’s a totally different response for whatever reason that may be.

yG: How has the band been selecting where you would be playing on this reformation tour?

AF: It’s really just been if offers have come in really.  Initially we were did the whole American tour, then it’s just been a couple of British dates we did last year, and a couple the year before and then if offers come in we consider them, and sometimes certain offers don’t make sense. There was an offer to play in Finland then the logistics of getting to Finland and what you can do around those dates.   As far as the Australian tour is concerned it seems Adelaide has fallen off the map, and we have friends in Adelaide and they are saying why aren’t you playing Adelaide and I said ‘well I don’t know but we’ve heard that people don’t really play there so much and I went back to the promoter and mentioned Adelaide and you just have to put yourself in the promoters hands, they are used to dealing with shows in Australia and to a degree you have to just put your faith in the promoter.

yG: Did you have any reservations in ending your tour in Western Australia again?

AF: [Laughs] Yes I suppose, but I haven’t really thought about it but now that you mention it I’ve suddenly got cold feet about ending up there again. What happened last time was just the way the tour panned out and there was just a point where we decided would just knock it on the head, at least temporarily, it wasn’t like we suddenly found ourselves in Western Australia and suddenly everything imploded. That was just the last leg of that tour and just happened to be the last Swervedriver show for ten years.

yG: Was it a case of just the circumstances and the right offer that saw you get back together?

AF: Yeah I think so, the band was sort of put on hiatus and at first nobody had any intention of going back to it. We were all just sick of it for whatever reason and bored of it and just wanted to try something new.  A couple of years go by and peoples start saying what’s going on ‘are the band still together are you going to tour’ and a few offers would come in but the time was never right we were just like I don’t really feel like that right now. Eventually in 2007 it cropped up again and someone offered the idea of playing again and for whatever reason it was just the right time and suddenly everyone was ‘I’m up for it’ and the next thing you know we’re playing again.

yG: Did you consider at all the other big bands getting back together to compare to your own situation?

AF: Yeah to a degree. I think actually at that point in 2007 not that many bands had got back together. Certainly I remember going to see Pixies in New York in 2005. A friend of mine said Pixies had got back together and asked if I wanted to go. I saw them back in the day and thought it would be fun to see them again but then actually being at the show it kind of blew me away all the anticipation and people getting genuinely excited. Then the band came on stage and there was this huge roar of warmth and the band seemed genuinely humbled, and it was quite a moving experience in a way. A little bit later on the word came out that Iggy & the Stooges were back together and this was genuinely exciting as it was a band that we all loved when we were kids, but of course we never got to see them play because we are kids when they were around the first time. I remember seeing them in New York and being completely excited thinking I can’t believe I’m going to see the Stooges and hoping they would deliver. Then they come out and rip in to their tunes and they even have Steve McKay playing the sax and you are like ‘wow this is quite something’. Then of course the seed was planted. You get people saying I wish Swervedriver would get back together so you get to see the other side of it. And its people that never got to see the band the first time around so it’s a really exciting thing. Sure enough that tour that we did each night there were a number of younger kids that hadn’t seen the band the first time around so you could feel the excitement of people finally seeing you for the first time.

yG: Do you remember what it felt like when you did first play together again?

AF: It was actually just incredibly quite loud and fast. We got together, but didn’t go into one of the old rehearsal studios we used to use, it was just a cheap little rehearsal studio, we didn’t bring all our pedals or anything just used the amps that were there and the drum kid, we just wanted a rougher, knock the songs around in a more punk rock manner. We clicked in, decided what song to play, and it was ‘Sandblasted’ and it felt great. One of the funny things is you end up doing the same sort of moves as there are certain moves you make when you are playing certain chords or put your foot on the wah pedal, it was the proverbial getting back on a bicycle. But it was really fast and loud. I’ve been playing in the interim with my bands, and was thinking it’s not that dissimilar to Swervedriver, but when we did plug in as Swervedriver I was surprised at how loud and fast everything was and we had to get back up to speed a little bit.

yG: Did you all assume the same roles in the band in the way you interacted and personality wise was it comfortable to slide back into?

AF: Yes, one of the things you learn over time is that people don’t really change. You might meet somebody that you first met 20 years before and really they are the same kind of person they don’t kind of change. That does help with bands when they get back together because you can just fall back into it.

yG: You mentioned in a recent interview that you are a better guitar player now than you were then – have you found that has affected how you play Swervedriver songs now – and have you noticed the difference in any of the other band members?

AF: The songs end up being more streamlined in a way, back in the day there might be little sections where you would be eager to do this little fiddly bit, which ultimately didn’t really achieve anything. So you get back together and go ‘oh this is where the fiddly bit comes in, should we just do that or should we make it a bit more direct. I think you learn things like that, ways of making it more effective. One of the things we’ve been working on is some new backing vocals. Steve is singing new harmonies. Over time singing is one of the things that you master a bit better as well. At the same time of course – if the band started out totally punk rock and then all became musos in the interim and three years in between they become completely different and you then get really muso versions of the songs – you still have to be true to the spirit of the song. So luckily none of us are that good to be musos.

yG: Are there some sections of the songs or even lyrics that resonate with you differently now as opposed to then?

AF: People have mentioned at our shows in Europe and a journalist in London also said it seems to make more sense now from the standpoint of coming from a bunch of older guys. The songs are all just naive young wanderlust about wanting to get out and hit the road, but at the same time there was always a kind of world weariness to the lyrics. A songs like ‘Duress’ had the lyric about ‘are you really going old’. And now there are no dreadlocks and there’s this big beard there so this band kind of suits being a more mature version of what they were. I guess if we were peddling teen angst it might be a bit strange if you reappear twenty years later.

yG: Do you think this will lead to recording any new material together?

AF: It could do – it would have to be a natural thing. The debate about it is if you are going to appear 20 years later what would your next album be? Will it be the album that would come out one year after your last album in a way or would you act as if you haven’t been active for the last twenty years and do something that will be too far ahead of the game. You might attempt to double guess yourself, do you think of what a crowd would want to hear. I’ve recorded four albums now post Swervedriver – I could do something that could be too developed in a way. If Radiohead had’ve stopped playing in 1998 and then got back together in 2008 would they have done in Rainbows or would they have carried on from the point they would have been at? It sounds very confusing and not something I want to think about too much. But at the same time if we are just playing around in the studio and rehearsing for these shows and some sort of tune comes up and a riffs cranks into gear it would just be a natural thing to record it. People discussed whether bands tarnish their reputations or discographies by putting out new albums. The album the Stooges did wasn’t particularly up to scratch, and Dinosaur Jr have released a new album – but it would have to be a natural thing as opposed to going out trying to make a Swervedriver record.

yG: Do you think the record label troubles you had through your career that this is a second change for the band?

AF: Not really, we may have had various well documented label issues, but the problems we had were nothing compared to problems other bands have had. We’ve never had songs rejected, we’ve never had a label say ‘these songs aren’t commercial enough’ all of the Swervedriver records were recorded on our own terms.  So there’s no scores to settle there. If it made sense to do it and we had a bunch of songs that we thought people should hear then we’d just do it.

yG: Have you found having the first three albums now available again as reissues has helped people have a better understanding of the legacy of what you are about now?

AF: Well certainly when we got back together in 2008 it made more sense than in 1998, obviously there had been a ten year period in between. I think bands can be forgotten. Bands can break up and ten years later people have just forgotten about them. But for some reason with us and a couple of other band the interest was still there bubbling under. It’s certainly great having the records out again as they weren’t available for a few years and the band wasn’t playing live so it was almost like we’d disappeared for a while. For us we are thrilled that people actually people are still appreciative of what the band has done and how we play live. Just playing the other week in Oslo and we hadn’t played or done any promotion or anything for a long time and yet we still had a full room of people up for a good time. It was almost as if a few years ago we were outside the record industry as we didn’t have a label and we didn’t have all that kind of stuff. It was just us heading out and we had a publicist telling people we were playing, so it was as if we’d sidestepped the industry side of it to a degree.

yG: Swervedriver have been featured in lots of documentaries, such as the recent Anyone Can Play Guitar, describing your place and level of influence in the scheme of music and the effect that you have had, is that something that you enjoy being recognised and is it something you appreciate talking about?

AF: Yeah I think so. I personally haven’t spent too much time listening to Swervedriver albums or anything to thinking about your place in the scheme of things; it’s always about doing the next thing. I’ve out  four albums in the last three years and I am most excited about the album I am writing at the moment that I’m hoping will come out next year. So you are always pushing forward. That film was great,  I actually went to the premiere in Oxford, and it was great sitting on the cinema watching yourself on the big screen it had Swervedriver as well as the band before that Shake Appeal and even the band before that, so my side of things were overly covered in that film. But it’s nice that people recognise what you do and the fact that I am still doing solo stuff and the fact I am still doing it is good to be recognised.

YG: Do you remember your first time on stage?

AF: It was the Jerica Tavern in Oxford in 1982, I was playing in a band called the suspects, and I remember I had this little 5 watt fender amp in my practice room at home and I hadn’t really considered that it wasn’t going to be loud enough to be heard on stage, and the sound man said ‘are you playing through that thing? And apparently I couldn’t even be heard, which probably is not such a bad thing.

YG: Worst ever moment on stage?

AF: There is a moment about five years that was almost the most terrible moment. I was playing solo in London and it was a club night and I was just playing an acoustic guitar just playing these songs and people were all rowdy and wasted and someone shouted out ‘get off’, ‘I could play better than you’ and I said do you want to have a go, so I held my guitar up. And he clamoured up on stage and he started playing one song and everyone started cheering, and he goes oh do you have a pick and I said oh no, I don’t have a pick, and luckily his girlfriend was as drunk as he was and clambered up on stage and started playing drums and she was so drunk she couldn’t play and it was clearly shit and everyone was booing, so that was my opportunity to take the guitar back and save things. A bit later someone said do you know who that is? And it turned out it was the bass player for The Fall.