Gomez – Interview [1999]

Come with me as i go one on one with drummer Olly Peacock!

Hello. How’s it going?

Not too bad.

How’s hanging in New York?

Yeah. I’m only here for today and tomorrow. It’s kind of hectic. We were in the islands yesterday morning, and then we had to go back to London, and then we flew here.

It’s a pretty crappy day.

Yeah, I know, it’s pretty cold and gloomy for summer.

So what are your tour plans?

I think we are coming back early next year to do some shows. We are also going to be doing some recording in San Francisco.

It wasn’t long ago that you guys were promoting your first album, Bring It On.

Yeah, I know. We’ve been doing more gigs over here than in England. I mean, in April we were still promoting the first one. But with the new one coming out we’ve gotta get on with it. The American release was delayed and the England release was in May ’98.

Where did the album title, Liquid Skin , come from?

You can get this stuff that Tom (Gray) and Blackie (Paul Blackburn) were using, because they were playing bass a lot, and their fingers would just wear away into blisters. So they got this liquid that you put on your fingers to kind of repair them temporarily. So we just started referring to it as ‘liquid skin’ and at every gig the fumes would get us high, by accident because of the small dingy dressing rooms, and as we went onstage we’d be like, ‘Yeah, we’re high on liquid skin.’

Is there a song on the album that you particularly enjoy?

Um, it’s hard to say really. Songs like “Hangover” and “Las Vegas Deal” are great because they are over a year old now and they still sound good to us. They are really great to play live. “Las Vegas Deal” is not the easiest song to play live, but it’s good to combat it and pull it off. But I also like “California”; it’s one of the newest songs we’ve recorded. That was a bit of a bitch to get that song together, but it came together just in time.

“Devil Will Ride” is a pretty new song too?

That is fairly recent as well. We had to rework that song a load of times. When we first recorded, it was ten minutes long. It had this eclectic ending that was pure chaos. We re-mixed it, because there were so many instruments on there, it was too full, so when we mixed it down it actually gave it a fuller sound. So then we did the ending recently. It came together after the third time we reworked it.

How do you guys write tracks?

Well, it is always a different way. Sometimes someone will have a chorus and a verse and then we’ll jump in and play around with it. Sometimes songs come out with jamming it out. Essentially, there is kind of a guitar line that suggests to everybody how it is going to go.

Do you guys work the vocal parts out or do they just happen through jams?

A lot of the time, once we have the melody constructed and on tape, the harmonies will come from there. Everybody listens to the playback and goes, ‘There is another one there. I can get a third harmony in there.’ Then it’ll be like, ‘How about a forth one?’ And it goes on until you can’t get anymore harmonies in there.

Where did you record the album?

We recorded the majority of it where we recorded the last album. We did it in Liverpool and we did a week’s worth of recording at Abbey Road where we did a lot of string parts. We also rented out a mansion in Hastings and we got an 8-track recorder down there, with the freedom to record all night long. And with the 8-track it was more self-impulsive instead of recording in a studio where everything goes slower. And then we went to a couple other studios in London and in a house where we used to live. So we’ve been all over the place and it’s like a year and a half worth of different recordings.

Did you guys produce this one too?

Yeah.

Does that give you more freedom to do what you like?

Yeah, it’s just that we are creating the song and you know how it should sound or how you want it to sound, and I don’t think we could work with someone who would want to start manipulating and arranging things.

Or they’d break it down to three and a half minutes and make it a pop song.

(laughs) Yeah. Exactly. They’d be like, ‘You have this song and it needs to be three minutes and thirty seconds. We’ve got to add solo here and this there.’ I just don’t think it’d be good. It just wouldn’t work out at all because we’ve been doing our own recordings for so long now and everyone is confident in us doing it this way. As producers, we’ve improved a lot in the last year and a half.

Has anyone come to you guys to produce them?

No, not so far. But that would be nice. It would be good to handle some other people’s stuff. I think it’d be a real casual approach that we’d have with them and they’d get a chance to give a lot of input and we’d want to hear their input. We’d rather get their input and do it like that, rather than walk in and go, ‘We’re mister producer and we’re going to make you sound like this.’ Maybe that would crop up.

Do you think that you may set a precedent for upcoming artists to realize you can do it yourself without spending a fortune in a studio with a fancy producer?

I think a lot of people should, if the label doesn’t restrain them, do their own sounds and get on with it. I think a lot of people’s albums would be more original and more creative, instead of this simple little formula.

Are you tired of trying to label your sound?

We’re not tired of it, but we are tired of everyone else labeling it. I think we got to the point now where we said, ‘Fuck it.’ We needed to come up with something, so we came up with blues, swamp rock, Tom Waits-inspired, young twenty-year-old guys from England. It would just be loads of adjectives. The swamp rock thing is quite favorable at the moment.

I read you used a couple odd things for different sounds.

We always use different things. When we were in Abbey Road we needed different percussion sounds so I grabbed some fire extinguishers and started hitting them with forks. And other people were just hitting anything they could find. Blackie had this cymbal he was playing with his foot, he was sort of just stomping on it. That kind of happens now and again.

Okay, I read this gossip and wanted to see if it were true. It sounds really bizarre so I thought I’d ask. Is it true you are doing a video with Hype Williams?

(laughs) No.

I thought it sounded weird.

It sounds like a good idea actually. Maybe we’ll do it.

Yeah, the thing said it was going to be some rap spoof.

(laughing hysterically) I’ll see what everyone thinks about that one.

What could a person expect from a Gomez show?

First you’d have to realize that every song from Bring It On has been reworked. There are only about four songs that are similar to the album version. Most have grown on their own. We put some cover versions in the middle of songs. The shows are usually more powerful than the records. We just have a good time, a lot of surprise. Don’t expect the album.

Is there anyone in music that you really admire?

I admire Tom Waits. His personality and the way he is great. He is one of the few artists that actually survived the ’80’s. He’s always so original.

Are there any trends in music today that you like or dislike?

Trends come around so quickly; it’s hard to keep up. A lot of the contemporary R&B things are comical to me. Like on our track, “Rhythm & Blues Alibi”, there is a whole reference to what the meaning of the word R&B is. And the whole videos that are all polished and shine that go along with it are silly. I can’t get with that. The current trend I dig is dance music. They are using more acoustic sounds and more contemporary structures. They are getting on top of things.

What would you hope listeners would get out of your music?

I don’t know really. I never thought of it. I don’t think about what people get out of it, as long as they like it. I just hope they can stick it on and have a few friends over and have wine and get cane together. And then the album works where people can just put on headphones and have a spliff and lay down and enjoy it as much as going to a gig. I don’t know. That is a really hard question. I just hope it spurs creativity in people. It’s just to have fun, really.

+ charlie craine