Hi Frank, How are you?
I’m good – I’m currently having my ass kicked in pool by my tour manager. I was expecting this to happen. I’m really not very good at pool so I have only myself to blame for getting into the game in the first place.
You’re not just hustling them?
No, it really is just not my forte in life.
Singer / songwriter Frank Turner, upset that you used all his plates and haven't washed any of them
“English Curse” – is that song based on a traditional English song, or did it require a little historical research on your part about William The Conqueror?
Stylistically, it’s very much written to sound like a traditional. But it isn’t one – I wrote the melody myself. But then, at the same time, it’s using a scale that a lot of traditional English songs do use, and then just little things like repeating the first verse at the end like pretty much all traditional songs use. It’s kind of written to sound like that.
I’m from near the New Forest, that’s kind of where I grew up and, because I’m literally the coolest person you’ve ever met, I was reading up on some books about local folk lore and myths and legend and that kind of thing and I found this story about ‘The Blacksmith’s Curse’ and the death of King William II. It was just one of those things that the minute I read it I was just like ‘man, I am going to use that in a song’. Then it just sort of came together, so, there it is.
The cover of William the Conqueror's second LP, Norman Rocks Well
Can you describe that story, as you understand it?
Basically, King William II was killed in a hunting accident in New Forest. His father William the Conqueror, King William I, was a Norman king who invaded England in 1066. In the aftermath of the invasion, an awful lot of normal people’s land was confiscated by the crown and turned into royal hunting grounds and it caused a lot of resentment. There’s basically a local legend that the reason William II was killed in some of those hunting grounds was because locals had placed a curse on him for stealing their land in the first place.
I saw a video of you performing “Glory Hallelujah” online, and I was wondering do you give a sort of disclaimer before you play it each night? – where you remind people that you’re giving your own opinions
I don’t think that I have to, in the sense that I could quite happily not, but I definitely choose to. That’s a song that I felt like I had to write but, at the same time, I spent an awfully long time working on the words to make sure that the tone of it was right and the message of it was clear. I think the important thing is that it’s not supposed to be mean or vicious in any way. It’s not supposed to be “I’m right, and if you disagree with me you’re an idiot” It’s not supposed to have that feel to it. I don’t want to be jamming my finger into the chest of anybody who is religious in any way. That’s not the idea. Hopefully that comes across in the song. It’s supposed to be a joyous song and a celebration. At the same time, it does piss people off and I’ve had some pretty stern email correspondence about it and I’ve seen people leaving shows where I’ve played it. Obviously it’s going to be a touchy subject for some people but at the same time I feel like if I’d written something and then didn’t play it that would be a little cowardly.
Not a pub menu
I like how that song sort of complements the single “I Still Believe” which is almost like a gospel for the history of rock. Is rock, with its legends and apostles, a surrogate for religion, is it a religion itself?
Yeah it can be. I don’t try to deny that there’s a religious impulse in people and I certainly understand that. I’m not even necessarily talking about the desire to kind of come up with a salve for the essential blackness of impending death and non-existence. There’s also the need to be joyous and celebrate. And I guess, yeah, rock and roll fills that hole in my life. The other thing too about that song is that, when I was on tour in China actually, and the rock and roll scene over there is very young and new. The kids involved in it were so excited about rock and roll in and of itself; about playing three chords and playing loud and fast and shouting and jumping up and down – all the things that are essential to rock and roll and all the things that we take for granted because we live in a culture that is so saturated with rock and roll. It was so exciting to see people be so stoked about the whole thing, basically. It really made me think that it doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves, every now and again, how lucky we are to have this incredible cultural thing in our lives.
I love the concept of your video for “The Road” – playing 24 shows in 24 hours. When did the shoot for that video take place and how far did you end up travelling for it?
The video shoot was in the summer of 2009, I believe. Basically, all the shoots took place in the greater London area and we had a schedule mapped out and everything. We did actually do it. We didn’t cheat. It was 24 performances in 24 hours. It was the kind of thing that was a great idea on paper, and also, it came out to be a great video that I’m very proud of. I think it’s a cool video. At the same time, there was a long period of time about halfway through the shoot, where it really wasn’t any fun at all. It was just dragging ourselves around and me saying ‘who fucking came up with this idea?’, then remembering of course, that I did. So, my fault. But there was definitely some moments where it was like ‘I don’t ever want to do this again’.
Did it take some convincing to get friends to let you play at their houses in the wee hours of the morning?
No, not at all. That was probably almost the easiest part. I put something out on my blog on the run up to shooting the video and said, ‘look, we need people who live in the Greater London Area who want me to come around their house. You tell me what time to come around, and also we’re going to need people to let me come around in the small hours of the morning’. We got hundreds of people. In a way, the hardest part was choosing the right ones to go to, because we had to sort of route things in a way that made geographical sense as well.
Do you relate differently to your material that has been released on splits compared to songs that get put on EPs or LPs?
Not particularly. To be honest, most of the time it’s more the case that the split comes together after the songs have been recorded. It’s like, ‘shall we with so and so?’, ‘Let’s choose a song to go with it.’ That kind of thing. It’s a cool thing to do. I certainly feel very happy to have my name on the same piece of vinyl as Tim Barry, for example, but it doesn’t change my attitude towards the songs.
Frank, yawning mid G# chord. It's a toughy.
“Live Fast, Die Old” off Poetry of the Deed – is that a twist on the common punk rock phrase, or is it a reference to David Brent in The Office?
Kind of both at the same time, I would say. I like to add at least a little twist of wry humour to what I do. I think that music that doesn’t have a little bit of a sense of humour to it is like people who don’t have a sense of humour – otherwise known as tedious arseholes. It’s kind of fun to have the David Brent thing there as well.
I think sometimes people overlook that folk music is often passed down, and some of the most successful folk musicians had their biggest hits by doing covers. What are some of your favourite songs to cover?
I absolutely love doing covers. I have a little bit of an encyclopedic brain for playing songs by other people. I know how to play an awful lot of songs, but the ones I quite often don’t bother playing are the ones where my version of it would be sort of the same as the original. So if I’m actually going to do a cover at a show, rather than just playing it for my own enjoyment for a bunch of friends, then I want to come up with a twist on it; do something slightly different. So yeah, I’ll cover anything really. I like covering Tori Amos, I like covering Regina Spektor, I like covering the Police, whatever you want really.
Have you found that becoming a solo musician, and touring with different groups than you ever did with Million Dead, has opened you up to a different type of fan?
Yeah, definitely. In a way, that’s something I’m quite consciously in favour of, and proud of having achieved to the extent that I have. Without for a minute wanting to be disrespectful in what I’m about to say, Million Dead’s fanbase was kind of like angry 18 to 21-year-old kids in black jeans and Against Me! T-shirts, you know what I mean? I think I was actually one of those people whilst in that band, and that’s fine and there’s nothing wrong with that sort of approach to life, but I love the fact that these days at my shows you’ll get old folkies, young punk kids, you’ll get metal kids, skate kids, and normal mainstream kids or whatever – all together in the same place. It’s a really wide variety of people. I think people who wouldn’t otherwise encounter each other at a show will be next to one another at my shows, and that’s something I’m definitely proud of.
Just glad as hell to have found that hat
Is there a sub-grouping of your fans who haven’t heard anything you recorded, say, before 2005?
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I would say the majority of people in the UK now have reached a point where they don’t know who Million Dead are. Which is to say, they may know the name, but they may not know the records. I mean, just in terms of number of records sold or anything like that. If all of them have heard, they haven’t all paid for it, let’s put it that way.
