Superheroes
With the successful release of their magnificent (and arguably best yet) fourth album Getaway, two top twenty singles, an accompanying UK Tour and an impressed media branding them as 'the saviours of rock' courtesy of their ten date tour around schools earlier this year, Andy Law caught up with ultra polite and mega talented vocalist / frontman Gary Stringer at Sheffield's Octagon to set the record straight on all things Reef.
ANDY: How's the knee? We take it you won't be up for any bungee jumping or crowd diving just yet then?
GARY: Well, I jumped into the crowd at Leeds - a bit half hearted, actually, but it was quite funny because they started putting my legs up like this (You'd have to have being there, Andy!) I could have being ripped in half! Though I was doing some exercises recently and I hurt my groin quite badly, so it's quite painful.
ANDY: Getaway sounds like a classic rock meets bubbly pop album in vintage Reef heritage. How would you like your album to be seen as or yourselvesportrayed from this record?
GARY: Just however people see it - we don't hand out any propaganda leaflets or anything on how people should think of us! We make the record, sell it,get people to listen to it, and however it sounds to peoples ears (within reason) is fine by me.
ANDY: Didn't you feel an element of risk following your decision to draft in a new producer (Al Clay) for the album? What impact do you think Al has had on the album?
GARY: No, I didn't feel any Risk. Working with Al, we did some B-Sides with him, and they worked so well that it was never not going to work. Al's the best producer I've ever worked with. He's enthusiastic, he's got good musical knowledge and he knows how to mike up instruments and put records together - he's a brilliant mixer, too. Besides that, he's a good people manager - he gets us together in the same room, which is a hard job, gets everyone ready to play, keeps everyone happy.he's got a lot of skills and I consider him a good friend.
ANDY: Given the strength and variation of material on Getaway, how many tracks from the album do you intend on playing live? Will you vary the setlist per night?
GARY: We played eight out of the eleven tracks from the new album on the first night of the tour, and we'll play around that number of songs each gig, but we'll be doing a different set each night in regard to material from Getaway. We won't be omitting any over the period of the tour, and we've got about 35 to 38 songs that we can play off each record that we still enjoy playing, but you just can't play that many songs in one night (We wouldn't argue, Andy!) - half the audience would be like, 'I'm going home!
ANDY: With the social divisions between most bands and ordinary folk come stardom, your ten date tours around schools proved quite an inspiration. Are your intentions to musically re-educate the corrupt sonic tastes of the Britney Spears and Westlife liking youth?
GARY: (Laughs) No, I don't think so. a lot of people have said that since we did the schools tour. The press we're trying to say you're the saviours of rock and you' re trying to re-educate the youth away from horrible Britney Spears, but that's half the point of being young, liking what you like and sod what anyone else thinks, really, so Britney Spears is fine. A lot of the time, with like the Spice Girls, Mum buys son or daughter the record from down Tesco's as a present, and then it comes to the point where that kid thinks, 'hold on a minute, my mum also puts my clothes out' and they get to a point where they want to forge their own independence, and that's when they maybe get into rock music, and if that happens, great. But we didn't go into the schools with the idea of trying to change peoples minds about what they like in any way, just to show them what we're about. We did workshops with them, questions and answers, and half of it was just to say we're just normal people, we went to the same schools as you, we managed to do it, and if one of them manages to become a poet or a musician - something a bit left of centre - then we've played our part.
ANDY: You've always had hints of hard rock creeping into your songs, right from the days of your debut, Replenish. Getaway's heavier hitting numbers such as I Don't Know What They Will Do continue this. Are such moment's statements of intent to scare away the pigeonholers?
GARY: No, I don't think so. usually, if we write songs that are a bit louder or more aggressive, like guitar music, when you hear that, that makes me want to write something of that nature - and the loads of things that wind you up in life are always good for such moments. Take I Don't Know What They Will Do - that's a conversation between our manager and the record company. Some of the conversations that came about before this record were just plain crazy, so that's a dig at the record company really. Pretenders is a dig at bands who don't believe in what they do, who are insincere. One thing, for good or bad, is that Reef believe in every note they're playing and every word they're singing - that's the sort of band we are and always have being. They're outbursts, if you like - fuck you's I suppose. It's good to have certain songs to express those feelings in - you feel a whole lot better afterwards.
ANDY: Do you ever intend on stretching your boundaries further in the future - E.g., reinventing yourself on the next album Led Zep style, or will you stick with your winning formula?
GARY: I think with the four records we've made, they've being different, in which I think there's being a progression, that progression being melody and songwriting, which have come into Reefs music a lot more since the first record. I think I'd like to do something different with the next record. But we've being doing this for seven years - there's talk at the moment of taking a break and maybe going off and doing other things for a while, but I think it's just a matter of wait and see. We've always being a band that'll wake up in the morning and ask 'do I still enjoy this', and if we do, we'll carry on making music and playing live. Though often we'll be like 'I'm tired of touring, I'm tired of this now' then someone will come up with the riff work and you go 'oh, that's cool', and before you know it your exciting about touring again and making records.
ANDY: From a storming gig at Glastonbury to a death shaken live set at Rosklide, how will these mixed emotions affect your future decisions on whether or not to play at festivals?
GARY: We played at Rosklide before and it's a well run festival, I don't believe that any of the blame for those deaths has come against the promoters of that show - it was just a tragedy. You'll have people who will say if fans have died in these circumstances you should ban festivals, or the band will say I'm not playing because people have died. I take a slightly different view - I don't think that there's ever anything that anyone can ever say to the parents of those kids or adults who have come home, there's nothing that anyone can say. Stopping festivals isn't going to change the loss of their loved ones. For my money, you have to look at it like this - more people die on the roads and we don't ever talk about stopping cars. Similarly, Hillsborough was a horrific disaster, and whether banning standing on the terraces was the right answer, I don't know, but they didn't say, 'let's ban football'. Events like music just seem to suffer at the hands of the regulators. The World's becoming more and more sanitised -- I've heard the argument 'if there's one death, it's one death to many'. There's also an argument that you've got to live life as well, and experience humanity, like bumping into some sweaty person at a gig who you don't know!
ANDY: You're fairly unique from your contemporaries in how some of your tunes, notably Saturday and Pretenders on this release, feature rip roaring lead guitar solos. Do you feel this gives the band an extra edge?
GARY: I think it's in the Reef armoury. with Ken (House, guitarist) we've got who I'd call the best guitarist in the UK, full stop, if not the World - I don't know anyone who's better than him, he's just fucking fantastic. You just have to listen to him, look what he does on stage or hear him in rehearsal rooms to know how good it is. Whether that turns people on or not is another matter. We haven't shied away from solos, but with the things becoming so cliched, when we write a song we don't think 'this is where the guitar solos going to go' - that's the trouble with a lot of rock and metal acts, it becomes obvious and boring. Ken's solos of choice are pulled out at times when you want to hear them, like on Saturday. You can go back to the earlier records like Loose, you want a guitar solo on that song. It's a rock song, the guitar solo on it works, but we wouldn't just put one in for the sake of it.
ANDY: Given the amount of melancholy present in the World of music, it's refreshing to have such a lively, Andying and melodic band as yourselves. How do you pull this off?
GARY: I think people who write melancholic music are melancholic, and people who write happy music are happy. I've had a good upbringing, I've got a stable family - I had a very lucky life, I feel good, and I think that shines through as of a result in the music. I think it's so patronising to pretend just for credibility (Nu metal acts, anyone? Andy) that they've had hard time when they haven't, you should be true to yourself. To counter that, there's always being the songs that are more aggressive like those you mentioned earlier - Funny feeling, Undone and Sober, the lyrics don't reflect a very happy, go lucky song there, although I suppose there's a rainbow at the end knowing you've got people around you. Although Put Your Hands On was never meant to be a happy song - it makes you smile when you listen to it, but the lyric is asking for help, asking for a hug. The song was about the death of my Grandfather, so there's loads of stuff in there about the downsides, too. If I start being too moany, I write songs about feeling lucky - if there's some shit head today, some bloke speaking to me in a nasty tone, I'm just like, 'oh, pull yourself together!' I just feel so lucky.
ANDY: Who are your main influences? Do you have any more recent influences?
GARY: Besides the ones you're heard such as AC-DC, Janes Addiction and Massive Attack, I'm pretty fond of The Foo Fighters The Colour And The Shape. I haven't heard there new one (There Is Nothing Left To Lose, Andy) but The Colour. is one of my favourite records.
ANDY: What do you think of the current climate of music today?
GARY: I think its fine. I like Lowgold, Coldplay, and I'm very fond of the last record from the Charlatans.
ANDY: When do you intend on touring the likes of Europe, USA or elsewhere on foreign soil?
GARY: We'll go to those places maybe sometime after we've toured Australia and Japan - I think it's a case of suck it and see really. I'd prefer to go to America than Europe this time. We went to Europe last time and it was kind of hard - but in the US, with them speaking the same language and everything, it makes things a whole lot easier for us.
|And Finally|
ANDY: We saw you quoting AC-DC in NME magazine as 'your heroes'. Your support act Crashland have also stated them as influences, along with countless others, such as The Stereophonics. What would you say to the Andy magazine entertainment staff at my College who denied us tickets to see and review AC-DC at Sheffield because they claim they are out of fashion?
GARY: (Long sigh!) Out Of fashion? Music isn't about fashion. Take a look around, there's loads of catwalk girls walking around with Motorhead and Iron Maiden T-shirts on. So you say to your entertainment's staff, 'fuck you'. Rock music's for us, we go to rock gigs, we listen to rock music. This is something you'll wear for six months then move onto the next thing. This is music that means something to us, that's why we're into it - 'don't fuck about with us, let us go to the gig you slag's!
By Andrew Law and Matthew Roberts. Big thanks to Gary Stringer, Chris Mills, Polly Cairns from Sony and Andy Wright from Buzz Magazine for all their help and support in making this interview possible.
With the successful release of their magnificent (and arguably best yet) fourth album Getaway, two top twenty singles, an accompanying UK Tour and an impressed media branding them as 'the saviours of rock' courtesy of their ten date tour around schools earlier this year, Andy Law caught up with ultra polite and mega talented vocalist / frontman Gary Stringer at Sheffield's Octagon to set the record straight on all things Reef.
ANDY: How's the knee? We take it you won't be up for any bungee jumping or crowd diving just yet then?
GARY: Well, I jumped into the crowd at Leeds - a bit half hearted, actually, but it was quite funny because they started putting my legs up like this (You'd have to have being there, Andy!) I could have being ripped in half! Though I was doing some exercises recently and I hurt my groin quite badly, so it's quite painful.
ANDY: Getaway sounds like a classic rock meets bubbly pop album in vintage Reef heritage. How would you like your album to be seen as or yourselvesportrayed from this record?
GARY: Just however people see it - we don't hand out any propaganda leaflets or anything on how people should think of us! We make the record, sell it,get people to listen to it, and however it sounds to peoples ears (within reason) is fine by me.
ANDY: Didn't you feel an element of risk following your decision to draft in a new producer (Al Clay) for the album? What impact do you think Al has had on the album?
GARY: No, I didn't feel any Risk. Working with Al, we did some B-Sides with him, and they worked so well that it was never not going to work. Al's the best producer I've ever worked with. He's enthusiastic, he's got good musical knowledge and he knows how to mike up instruments and put records together - he's a brilliant mixer, too. Besides that, he's a good people manager - he gets us together in the same room, which is a hard job, gets everyone ready to play, keeps everyone happy.he's got a lot of skills and I consider him a good friend.
ANDY: Given the strength and variation of material on Getaway, how many tracks from the album do you intend on playing live? Will you vary the setlist per night?
GARY: We played eight out of the eleven tracks from the new album on the first night of the tour, and we'll play around that number of songs each gig, but we'll be doing a different set each night in regard to material from Getaway. We won't be omitting any over the period of the tour, and we've got about 35 to 38 songs that we can play off each record that we still enjoy playing, but you just can't play that many songs in one night (We wouldn't argue, Andy!) - half the audience would be like, 'I'm going home!
ANDY: With the social divisions between most bands and ordinary folk come stardom, your ten date tours around schools proved quite an inspiration. Are your intentions to musically re-educate the corrupt sonic tastes of the Britney Spears and Westlife liking youth?
GARY: (Laughs) No, I don't think so. a lot of people have said that since we did the schools tour. The press we're trying to say you're the saviours of rock and you' re trying to re-educate the youth away from horrible Britney Spears, but that's half the point of being young, liking what you like and sod what anyone else thinks, really, so Britney Spears is fine. A lot of the time, with like the Spice Girls, Mum buys son or daughter the record from down Tesco's as a present, and then it comes to the point where that kid thinks, 'hold on a minute, my mum also puts my clothes out' and they get to a point where they want to forge their own independence, and that's when they maybe get into rock music, and if that happens, great. But we didn't go into the schools with the idea of trying to change peoples minds about what they like in any way, just to show them what we're about. We did workshops with them, questions and answers, and half of it was just to say we're just normal people, we went to the same schools as you, we managed to do it, and if one of them manages to become a poet or a musician - something a bit left of centre - then we've played our part.
ANDY: You've always had hints of hard rock creeping into your songs, right from the days of your debut, Replenish. Getaway's heavier hitting numbers such as I Don't Know What They Will Do continue this. Are such moment's statements of intent to scare away the pigeonholers?
GARY: No, I don't think so. usually, if we write songs that are a bit louder or more aggressive, like guitar music, when you hear that, that makes me want to write something of that nature - and the loads of things that wind you up in life are always good for such moments. Take I Don't Know What They Will Do - that's a conversation between our manager and the record company. Some of the conversations that came about before this record were just plain crazy, so that's a dig at the record company really. Pretenders is a dig at bands who don't believe in what they do, who are insincere. One thing, for good or bad, is that Reef believe in every note they're playing and every word they're singing - that's the sort of band we are and always have being. They're outbursts, if you like - fuck you's I suppose. It's good to have certain songs to express those feelings in - you feel a whole lot better afterwards.
ANDY: Do you ever intend on stretching your boundaries further in the future - E.g., reinventing yourself on the next album Led Zep style, or will you stick with your winning formula?
GARY: I think with the four records we've made, they've being different, in which I think there's being a progression, that progression being melody and songwriting, which have come into Reefs music a lot more since the first record. I think I'd like to do something different with the next record. But we've being doing this for seven years - there's talk at the moment of taking a break and maybe going off and doing other things for a while, but I think it's just a matter of wait and see. We've always being a band that'll wake up in the morning and ask 'do I still enjoy this', and if we do, we'll carry on making music and playing live. Though often we'll be like 'I'm tired of touring, I'm tired of this now' then someone will come up with the riff work and you go 'oh, that's cool', and before you know it your exciting about touring again and making records.
ANDY: From a storming gig at Glastonbury to a death shaken live set at Rosklide, how will these mixed emotions affect your future decisions on whether or not to play at festivals?
GARY: We played at Rosklide before and it's a well run festival, I don't believe that any of the blame for those deaths has come against the promoters of that show - it was just a tragedy. You'll have people who will say if fans have died in these circumstances you should ban festivals, or the band will say I'm not playing because people have died. I take a slightly different view - I don't think that there's ever anything that anyone can ever say to the parents of those kids or adults who have come home, there's nothing that anyone can say. Stopping festivals isn't going to change the loss of their loved ones. For my money, you have to look at it like this - more people die on the roads and we don't ever talk about stopping cars. Similarly, Hillsborough was a horrific disaster, and whether banning standing on the terraces was the right answer, I don't know, but they didn't say, 'let's ban football'. Events like music just seem to suffer at the hands of the regulators. The World's becoming more and more sanitised -- I've heard the argument 'if there's one death, it's one death to many'. There's also an argument that you've got to live life as well, and experience humanity, like bumping into some sweaty person at a gig who you don't know!
ANDY: You're fairly unique from your contemporaries in how some of your tunes, notably Saturday and Pretenders on this release, feature rip roaring lead guitar solos. Do you feel this gives the band an extra edge?
GARY: I think it's in the Reef armoury. with Ken (House, guitarist) we've got who I'd call the best guitarist in the UK, full stop, if not the World - I don't know anyone who's better than him, he's just fucking fantastic. You just have to listen to him, look what he does on stage or hear him in rehearsal rooms to know how good it is. Whether that turns people on or not is another matter. We haven't shied away from solos, but with the things becoming so cliched, when we write a song we don't think 'this is where the guitar solos going to go' - that's the trouble with a lot of rock and metal acts, it becomes obvious and boring. Ken's solos of choice are pulled out at times when you want to hear them, like on Saturday. You can go back to the earlier records like Loose, you want a guitar solo on that song. It's a rock song, the guitar solo on it works, but we wouldn't just put one in for the sake of it.
ANDY: Given the amount of melancholy present in the World of music, it's refreshing to have such a lively, Andying and melodic band as yourselves. How do you pull this off?
GARY: I think people who write melancholic music are melancholic, and people who write happy music are happy. I've had a good upbringing, I've got a stable family - I had a very lucky life, I feel good, and I think that shines through as of a result in the music. I think it's so patronising to pretend just for credibility (Nu metal acts, anyone? Andy) that they've had hard time when they haven't, you should be true to yourself. To counter that, there's always being the songs that are more aggressive like those you mentioned earlier - Funny feeling, Undone and Sober, the lyrics don't reflect a very happy, go lucky song there, although I suppose there's a rainbow at the end knowing you've got people around you. Although Put Your Hands On was never meant to be a happy song - it makes you smile when you listen to it, but the lyric is asking for help, asking for a hug. The song was about the death of my Grandfather, so there's loads of stuff in there about the downsides, too. If I start being too moany, I write songs about feeling lucky - if there's some shit head today, some bloke speaking to me in a nasty tone, I'm just like, 'oh, pull yourself together!' I just feel so lucky.
ANDY: Who are your main influences? Do you have any more recent influences?
GARY: Besides the ones you're heard such as AC-DC, Janes Addiction and Massive Attack, I'm pretty fond of The Foo Fighters The Colour And The Shape. I haven't heard there new one (There Is Nothing Left To Lose, Andy) but The Colour. is one of my favourite records.
ANDY: What do you think of the current climate of music today?
GARY: I think its fine. I like Lowgold, Coldplay, and I'm very fond of the last record from the Charlatans.
ANDY: When do you intend on touring the likes of Europe, USA or elsewhere on foreign soil?
GARY: We'll go to those places maybe sometime after we've toured Australia and Japan - I think it's a case of suck it and see really. I'd prefer to go to America than Europe this time. We went to Europe last time and it was kind of hard - but in the US, with them speaking the same language and everything, it makes things a whole lot easier for us.
|And Finally|
ANDY: We saw you quoting AC-DC in NME magazine as 'your heroes'. Your support act Crashland have also stated them as influences, along with countless others, such as The Stereophonics. What would you say to the Andy magazine entertainment staff at my College who denied us tickets to see and review AC-DC at Sheffield because they claim they are out of fashion?
GARY: (Long sigh!) Out Of fashion? Music isn't about fashion. Take a look around, there's loads of catwalk girls walking around with Motorhead and Iron Maiden T-shirts on. So you say to your entertainment's staff, 'fuck you'. Rock music's for us, we go to rock gigs, we listen to rock music. This is something you'll wear for six months then move onto the next thing. This is music that means something to us, that's why we're into it - 'don't fuck about with us, let us go to the gig you slag's!
By Andrew Law and Matthew Roberts. Big thanks to Gary Stringer, Chris Mills, Polly Cairns from Sony and Andy Wright from Buzz Magazine for all their help and support in making this interview possible.
