The Verve Pipe – Interview with Brian

So how was the club tour?

It was great. We did six weeks and we just wrapped it up and it went really well. We haven’t been playing for a year and a half, so it really felt good to get at it again and get back to the crowd. Just playing live, man, I missed it. You get so wrapped up in being in the studio, but when you are playing live you are totally wrapped up with that. Now we are getting our little rest and then we are back out when the album comes out.

What made you decide to do the club tour?

Realistically, we just wanted to get back to the club level again. You can’t expect that after being off the road for a year and a half and not having a new record out in over three years, to just come out and say, ‘Hey, here we are. Come see us.’ We wanted to reintroduce ourselves to people. The club level was a really great way to go. Plus, you can’t help but feeling nice and grimy and sweaty. I love that.

Did it feel good to have that intimacy with the fans again?

Yeah, it really did. It put it all back into perspective.

I guess you need that perspective after “The Freshman” blew up. Did you feel pressure to take it to another level on this record?

I think there was definitely a high level of stress, but we are feeling really good about the process. Even when we got off the road and were doing the album we had some ups and downs. But we always wanted to make a record that we really could be happy with and when we look back we can say that we did this together. [Record producer] Michael Beinhorn surely helped because he threw us different angles that we might not have gotten anywhere else. So, through him and his whole process and head-trip and the way that he thinks sonically really opened doors for us. As a band, I think that after all the extensive touring that we are a better band. I think this is one of those records where people go, ‘Didn’t the label have any input on what you should sound like?’ Really, they didn’t. We wanted to do pop/rock songs and come away with the feeling of an album that has a strong musical journey to it.

I feel good about it because the record has a lot of tones, colors, and nuances to it. I think for the listener it is intriguing because you’ll always find something new.

Do you guys feel like you have something to prove?

I think so. We’ve always been telling people that we are such huge XTC and Beatles fans and that everybody writes in the band, and now we have the opportunity to show that. Brian wrote some of the tracks on the record, and A.J. and Brian collaborated on a song and Donny wrote three tracks. It was really good for us as a band because everyone stepped up to the plate in different ways. Now I feel like it is a very credible album, to me personally, I feel good about it. I do have that feeling that we have something to prove and, yeah, I feel that we are a really good band. I have to believe that, and I do, but I’m tired of so many comparisons where people, like select journalism would compare us to such idiot things like Dave Matthews. I mean, it’s like, ‘Come on.’ The only comparison is that we are on the same label. Dave Matthews is a great band, but we don’t sound like them at all. Also, stuff like Live. We don’t sound nothing like Live. I get so sick of that. I feel like after a while I get tired of it and now its like, ‘Here it is.’

Did Michael Beinhorn have a lot of impact on the fact that the record at times is a lot heavier, but yet still poppy?

Yeah, it is heavier. Michael is the kind of guy that is quirky in the way that he approaches things. The fact that he can sit and hear something for hours that you are sitting going, ‘What are you going for?’ And he is looking for a cymbal that took him three days to find because the dogs were going crazy, and, for me, I don’t hear it, but in the end you are like, ‘Oh, I understand what you are going for.’ He was interesting and really has an analog approach to all of his keyboards, and we were running the guitars through keyboards and old analog boards. Michael did a lot of loops. He programmed all of the loops on the record as far drum loops. That was a new approach to us too. We never really felt comfortable doing the whole loop thing only because loops can really get old.

They sort of get monotonous.

Yeah. Sometimes they can be really great, but loops to me hinder the flexibility of the song. But we were able to find space for Donny’s drums to be on top of that. So, on this album the loops were more of a percussive device to keep the momentum going. We approached it that way, so you will hear a loop here and there, but not throughout the whole song. We tried to do that with a pop sensibility. Here is another Beatles idea, but we sort of twisted it.

I love the Beatles.

What an amazing time. To have four guys come in that had it all. They had the humor element, they talked about world events, and they were very political. And don’t forget they wrote great songs.

I know. I was just talking to someone about the greatest bands of all time and it’s like, okay, the members of Rolling Stones survived, but the Beatles only recorded for only so many years yet made some of the greatest albums of all time.

(laughs) I know. It is incredible.

Back to back they were just making some of the most phenomenal albums.

I know. It’s crazy.

Well, on your latest album are there any songs that you particularly enjoy?

“Kiss Me Idle”. It is one of my favorite songs because through Michael Beinhorn’s direction it was realized. It had a lot of potential in the beginning, but it didn’t have a mood that was very interesting to me. But in the end it had a mood that reminded me of the way Peter Gabriel would have such moods on like the Us record. It is just a like a song that brings me out of my shell and puts you in a mood, into a dark place that I’ve always been attracted to. That is one of my favorites and “La La” is also one of my favorites.

I love “La La”. What I like most about the album is that it doesn’t tail off. I also like “Generations”.

Thanks man. I love “Generations” too. I should have said that. That is also one of my favorite songs. That chorus is really strong. A.J. wrote that song, Brian wrote the lyrics for it.

Is “Supergig” autobiographical?

Yeah. It is about the band. It’s about how the band was rising and falling and how we were almost ready to say, ‘Fuck it.’ But we got our wits and personal shit together and came back. That is why it starts of the record, “turn the cushions over/ tonight we are coming over.” It is like, ‘You know what? We are fucking back.’

How was “Hero” chosen as the first single?

That is a good question. It was just a song that had a really strong beginning to us. We aren’t going to start off with a ballad because people think, ‘Those are the guys that sing “The Freshman”.’ So we wanted to do something in-between that and “Television”. “Television” is too balls out and it might scare people a little bit. “Hero” is down the middle like “Photograph”. Then we can take a left or a right on the next single.

Is “Hero” about the everyday person?

I think that, well, I can’t speak for Brian, but I think he got tired of being the guy who everyone lived through vicariously. He was like, ‘I’ve got to live my life and I’m just a jerk, and a hero’s what I want to be.’ I guess we all feel like that at moments. There is also a humor element to it that I don’t think people have seen from us. I get tired of that too. I get tired of bands that have a lot of angst. It’s like, ‘Come on.’

I think people want to be a bit happier now.

Yeah. I hope it goes back to the songs. I get tired of all the hype and look. It’s like show me the proof in the songs.

I’m getting scared that the ’80’s are coming back. Like all the metal bands on VH1 and touring.

(laughs) Yeah, you are right about all those metal bands coming back.

Like Poison.

Poison and Ratt are touring together. And Great White is on tour.

Oh no.

Yeah, I know. I see bands like Kiss and they have their thing, but I see so many older bands that want that same thing and get that feeling back. Maybe they need that for the longevity of it, but why can’t they just give it up? Like Flock Of Seagulls. Why do they keep their name? Why do they have to come back and still sing “and I ran so far away”?

Especially when they live through one tune. How many songs did you guys end up with for this record?

We wrote forty to forty-five songs. I wrote some songs with Brian and it was really strong, but in the end it was like, ‘Well, we have seven mid-tempo songs.’ So, it is about pacing and you have to give it up. In the end you have a record that will flow.

Will you just take those songs and work on them more?

Yeah. And we will probably just use some of them for soundtracks and b-sides.

Do you think it is impossible now to do what the Beatles had done and crank out albums every few months?

Man, if I could have one iota of the energy that they did, I have energy, but I don’t have energy like they did, had just flowing out of their orifices. If I could just have a little piece of that, I would be happy. You know what blows my mind is songwriting. It is not an easy thing. Those guys were just cranking songs out.

I think it was the competition between themselves too.

I give them credit because lyrics are the hardest part for me to hurdle.

How do you guys write?

When we write, everybody in the band will write full arrangements. So you come in and have your drum machine parts and bass tones and guitar parts. “She Has Faces”, for example, is the song that Donny wrote and he wrote the same thing. He did everything from the string arrangements to the bass drum to the guitar. But there are things you have to give up on a song because everyone of us are strong players too. And we trust each other enough that we can breath a little bit and do their own thing. But Donny played it up right and it was his own song.

Did you make a video for “Hero” yet?

We actually wrapped it up two days ago and now I’m in Chicago chilling out. We used director Gregory Dark. I think he did that Orgy video, [“Blue Monday”]. The concept is that Brian is the hero in a non-participation setting. And there is one scene where he is walking down the street and there is this woman and she has a dog on a leash. And these movers, which is A.J. and Donny’s cameo, and they are hoisting up this piano. Brian kicks this rock and the dog chases the rock and pulls the woman out of the way. Then, at the same time, the piano’s rope breaks and it falls, crashes and she survives. It is different scenes like that. It has a humorous element to it.

Did that humor element also help to take away that previous thought of The Verve Pipe as this ballad, darker kind of band?

Yeah. There are different characteristics of the band that no one has seen and one of them is a dark, sarcastic, dry sense of humor. People don’t see that a lot. We want people to know that there is more to us than sad ballads.

How do you guys get along on the road?

That is a tough one. We get along by, well, I’ll promote the JuiceMan II, I just bought that thing from the infomercial. The guy is like seventy-five and he looks great. I’m like, ‘Man, I want that guy’s skin.’ So I take that on the road and make juice. It keeps me in a better frame of mind rather than drinking New Castle every night. But right now, the first six weeks have been good, but I need to get myself on a set workout schedule, like I had been. After a year and a half of touring, I was so stressed out that the shows were working that I had no time to exercise or keep my head together. I think the older we get, the better we get along. I think this record was really good for us. We had a lot of shit that went down, a lot of technical problems, and we had to move from the Hit Factory to Right Tracks Studios. On top of that, Michael was having personal problems with his marriage, and a lot of other shit was going down, so the only ones we could rely on was ourselves. I think as a result we are getting along really well.

Is touring tougher physically or mentally?

I think it is a little bit of both. Mentally, I forgot how draining it can be, because you have so many people wanting something all of the time. I have to get used to only giving out so much because I get exhausted from that. I want to be cool to everybody, but it is just nuts and exhausting. It is weird because I’ve been in like a cave for eight months, programming and processing and doing keyboard layers and stuff. So, I go to the bar over on Broadway in New York and have a drink and go to bed. That would be my day. Now it is like, ‘Wow. Hi guys, I’m a teenager and I’ve got a tattoo of you guys on my butt. Can you sign it?’ I was like, ‘What happens when we break up?’ And she was like, ‘You can’t break up!’ Where is my reality?

How hard is it being away from home when on tour?

You know what? Being away from home has been easy for me because I’ve been living out of a storage unit for like four or five years. I have an apartment in Chicago now and I’m seeing someone new, so now I’m just beginning to realize that I really like her and I like this apartment. It’s like, ‘What the fuck?’ So that is a good sign, but it is nice to get back and just chill.

What is your plan for touring after the album is released?

We are going to start at the end of July doing some Michigan shows and after that we are going to kick out and do shows in early August. We are trying to line someone else up to tour with us, but the problem is that most tours have already begun for the summer.

Was the album supposed to have been done sooner, like June 15th?

Yeah, but shit just keep getting pushed back. We started mixing the record in Florida with a different person and then fired that person. Then we had to wait three weeks to get the studio that we wanted in L.A. It was like, ‘Fuck.’ But we made the right decisions, despite the time.

The thing I enjoy most about the album is that it has a lot of different thoughts and tempos. One minute you are slowing down and then the next you are getting kicked in the ass by a song like “Television”.

The thing about “Television” is that there are mellotron sounds on there, like choirs and stuff that I was processing through Michael’s gear. It reminds me of Marilyn Manson and the attitude of Korn. Not that I’m a huge fan of Korn, but I really like elements of Korn. And what they do, they do well. I guess that is the thing that I like about pop music so much is that I can get influenced by people like Marilyn Manson. So why not take some of those ingredients and add them to your stuff?

Well, Manson is totally pop. A lot of people don’t realize it.

Right.

I mean, Manson and Korn get their influences from like Ozzy and Sabbath. And Ozzy wanted to be the Beatles. So I guess it all goes back to the Beatles.

You are so right.

Lastly, I was wondering if you feel like you are living a dream?

(pauses) Um, yeah. I think so. It is something I always wanted to do when I was a kid. I mean, you are asking me while I’m living it, so I’m trying to be objective, but it kind of spins me around sometimes. Sometimes I’m just like, ‘How in the hell did I get here?’ Because when you are a kid you think it is such a long shot. And it is, because there is so much competition out there. I would say that I am.

+ charlie craine