|
|
After two
quite successful and highly acclaimed albums, as well as a split CD with their
label-mates Bloodthorn, the Finnish guys from And Oceans are finally on tour
for the first time in France. I couldn’t miss that at all! Which is why I
interviewed the nice K2T4S in Strasbourg’s ‘La Laiterie’, as usual. Let’s see
if they’re as weird as it is said…
Best sales for a first album
in the history of Roadrunner, Slipknot is a band with a very special look, and
huge sales. But it looks like success isn’t easy to go through, and a behaviour
of rock star appeared quickly, at least for Shawn, the clown (percussions), who
answered the questions of this press meeting. Not an event that will stay in my
mind, though I have to admit that this guy is very professional when it comes
to answer…
First of all, how would you
explain the success of the band?
The success of the band just
comes out because of our hard work ethic, we work really hard to tour all the
time, that’s what we wanna do more than anything else, just keep on playing
live, over and over. And we have very dedicated fans, who we pay a lot of
respect to (ndr: when I see how you acted the whole evening, I strongly
doubt it). We try to sign as many autographs and do as many in-stores as
possible for the fans, we wouldn’t have the honour to go on tour and do this
without them.
And how do you live that
success between the moment you were unknown, and now?
The success was coming every
day, because we kept on playing every day, going on tour… Our album, instead of
going down in sales, in going up in sales, because we are constantly in the
public sight, we’ve been on tour since May! I think that the success is getting
bigger and bigger every day because we are working and will keep on working
very hard.
When I see the way you act on
stage, and some of the riffs you use, I feel like you had to be playing death
metal at the beginning of the band. Is that right?
Well, basically, we don’t have
influences as far as musicians and bands go, but we have influences on genres
of music. And death metal is one of these influences, like grindcore, hardcore,
industrial, noisy stuff. A couple of the guys played in other bands, and we
played together on week-ends, and a couple of the guys were in a death metal
band. But that’s a really hard market, and when we got together, we didn’t want
to give that up, but we didn’t want to be a death metal band. We wanted to have
a little bit of everything, and we continue to tour because all the songs are
different. It’s like life, every minute of the day is different…
Isn’t too difficult to have a
line-up with nine members? You can have different musical points of view for
example…
No! We get that question a
lot, but it’s pretty easy, because we all know what we want to be. We’re like a
wheel, when it’s inflated, it’s rolling. While deflated, it’s not rolling. We
all know what we have to bring to the table, we give everything a chance, but
we know in our hearts what it takes to work. It’s really easy actually.
With the name of the band, and
the way you’re dressed on stage, we can’t help but think of death penalty… What
do you think about that?
Yeah, well… I won’t tell you
what the name of the band means, but as far as the way we are dressed is
concerned, it does look a bit like prison maybe, but that was never thought. I
don’t know… We don’t wear orange, because orange looks too much like prison, so
that’s why we never wear orange. I shouldn’t say ‘never’, but that’s why we’re
not wearing orange now. (ndr: but you still sell orange clothes!)
With the way you look, and the
fact that you are like a tribe, do you think it is a part of your success?
Yeah. I mean, we are pretty
much like an army. If you screw with us, you’re gonna go down, especially on
our stage. It’s the war up there, and we stick together. We are very good
friends, we just know where we need to be, so we all work very hard towards
that goal. That’s the one thing we know, we have to stick together and
concentrate on what the fans want and what we need to do.
Concerning this tour, how did
you choose the bands you tour with?
You know, we have a personal
view in everything that we do, and as far as the fans are concerned. We have
asked One Minute Silence…I had never heard them, I didn’t know, but they just
kept on calling, so we took them out. Kill II This, they played with us before,
and they also called us, so we put them on. We have to be good friends, and
that’s why we gave them a few more shows. We try to help American bands who are
on the rise, or bands whose management calls us. But for Will Haven, we asked
them to go with us, because we like them. In the future, there will be more
bands that we want to be with us, and I don’t give a fuck what people say about
it. If a band tours with us, it’s only because I like it, I won’t matter if you
don’t! But that’s our way of relationships, we rarely talk to the bands, we are
quiet people. If I had known there were twenty people in here, I wouldn’t be
here… But Kill II This are friends, so…
What about your second record?
It’s coming soon. It’s gonna
be heavier than this album, and better. We have a world domination plan, and we
are strictly against things like Roadrunner and MTV… All that shit is gonna
die, all those people are gonna answer to us! I’m thirty years old, I’m
married, I got kids, I could care less. If labels want to make money, I just
want to see them fail; I wanna make what our fans want us to make, that’s all
we care about. That’s the most important thing to us. As long as our fans are
happy, as long as we are happy, then everything else can go away. But the new
record is coming pretty soon, probably before 2001, and it will be a kick-ass
album. You don’t have to worry about that! It won’t be made for bullshit stuff
like MTV, it’s gonna be made for the hardcore fans who want to keep it real.
Still about tours, you have
toured with Coal Chamber and Amen. What did you learn from this experience?
I’ve learnt a lot actually. I
have a lot of respect for Coal Chamber, because they work very very hard. Those
guys want to play seven days a week, if they can, so we were on tour with them
for four months, we played a lot of shows, and that was awesome. Amen are
personally great friends of ours too. So, we have learnt everything, our band
mates, the tour, the road, how to do your laundry, how to eat, where to eat,
what to eat, those kind of things. But when it comes about playing on stage, we
pretty much know what we are doing, we don’t have to learn anything about that.
Three days ago, you played for
the second time on the French TV show ‘Nulle Part Ailleurs’. How were those two
experiences?
I don’t know, it was alright. But
French people need to relax a little bit more. It was cool, they let us play
‘(Sic)’, and on all the TV shows we’ve done, people wanted to hear ‘Wait And
Bleed’ or ‘Spit It Out’, the band doesn’t mind, we wrote those songs, we love
those songs, but the label, the medias feel they are commercial songs… So, the
Canal + director let us play ‘(Sic)’, so that was definitely cheers to him. He’s
a big fan of the band. And that was also cool, because the first time we played
there, there were a lot of people who didn’t know what the fuck was going on,
but this time, I don’t know if they sell tickets or what, but when we walked
in, there were at least sixty kids with Slipknot shirts, so that was a good
feeling to us. We don’t like to play for stuffy asses, people who don’t
understand the band, I prefer to play for my fans.
Have you played for an
American talk-show?
We played on one, Conan
O’Brian. We were probably the heaviest band ever who played on a late night
show, it was a giant honour, because I think it was a success for heavy music. I
personally talked to Conan after the show, and I let him know that he had done
something very important. And I think he has thought about it, I don’t know if
they’ll play other heavy bands, that’s up to them, but at least, they accepted
us, and that was a giant victory. We’ll do all those things, that can make
things change. We went in there, we played our song, and we left, and we did a
very good job. And the whole America got to see us. We have blown things up and
kicked ass.
With the fact that you are
often on TV and sell a lot of records, aren’t you afraid to be called or
compared to commercial bands?
Well, a lot of people have to
understand that we have been fighting constantly. That’s an educational
problem! A lot of people wanna bitch about the bands that are on MTV, and they
wanna bitch about the bands who are on the radio. And those people have to understand
that those bands are on MTV and on the radio because they sell lots and lots of
albums. So as long as those bands keep on selling so much albums, and keep
selling videos, for example, when Britney Spears is on the TV and on the radio
every hour, she will get more money in order to get more shows, more
merchandise, to make more people like her! So when you have a band like
Slipknot, which gets on MTV, you have to understand that we want to change
that, we want to open the door for heavy music. If you wanna be able to turn on
the TV and say ‘hey, I like to watch MTV because they play the music I like’,
then you have to get credit to the bands like Slipknot, and not start to point
the finger and say we are a commercial band. I don’t give a fuck to hear that,
I’m not a commercial soul, I play my music, I play it for myself, I don’t give
a shit what anybody thinks, but it’s all education. People think we are making
a lot of money because we are on MTV and stuff, but I don’t make any money at
all! If people want to get rid of the crap on MTV, they have to give Slipknot a
chance. We won’t let you down. We’ll go there and tell to those guys how stupid
MTV is, we’ll be like ‘we make the rules’, we want to pick every video for the
shows. It’s like, for the video ‘Spit It Out’, it has been banned, but we
didn’t do anything to change it. What can I do? It’s been banned, forget it. You
have abandoned us, we’re not gonna change a few things for you! You’ve had your
chance, you banned it, now that’s it! We are gonna change the rules, and take
the shit out of them. I want everyone in the world to have the chance to see
us, I wanna touch as many people as possible. We have to change that!!
Could you explain the meaning
of ‘People = Shit’?
You know, people are shit! Is
that the Earth’s fault there is pollution? No! That’s man’s fault. Is it the
building’s fault there are bombs in it? No, that’s man’s fault! Anything that
is wrong in this world, you can blame man of it! All the oil poured in the
ocean… Who made the fucking oil? Who dug it out? People equal shit. People have
the possibility to change everything, but most of you guys take it easy. Men
have the answers to change the whole world, but until people change everything,
people equal fucking shit!
Well, on stage, you wear
masks… Before you chose to do that, haven’t you thought of the possibility to
wear make-up like black metal bands? You wouldn’t be recognised either!
I’m not into fucking make-up! I
don’t wanna be another Kiss. That’s a whole different world that I don’t want
to know. The masks are just a way to privilege the music, we all came from big
bands, and we didn’t want to hear ‘oh my god, this is coming from this band,
this one is coming from that band…’. So, we just said, ‘fuck that shit’, we
don’t care who’s in that band, masks! I’m the clown, that’s all you need to
know! There is the clown, cool, that’s it! You don’t have to care about my
hair, my piercing, the shoes I’m wearing or whatever… Just focus on the music,
that’s why I’m here talking to you guys. It’s not because I’m ugly or good
looking, it’s just because I’m in Slipknot, playing heavy music that
people buy.
What about the history of the
band?
Well, I started the band in
1995, and there were two rules. We had to play what we wanted to play, and
doesn’t matter what we play, how we play, how much it cost to see us play… And
the second rule was that I wanted to have three drummers. At the beginning,
when I started the band with the bass player, I was the drummer, but I didn’t
want to play drums anymore. And then we got Joey in the band… We just got
really serious shit, we worked very very hard, to get the band work! No one
even knows how much, I don’t even think the other guys in the band know how
much I’ve worked for the band! It was very difficult, and it still is. We
played our first shows in the Midwest, as it’s quite expensive to get nine guys
play a show, but when we came back, we were the kings. That’s really the
history…
And how would you imagine your
life in ten years? Will you still play music?
No! Negative. I’ll be out. This
band is not going to last. I have three kids and a wife, and I don’t want to
leave them. That would be against what we are. We have plenty of years left in
us, we have plenty albums out there, plenty good shows and songs, but the
minute the whole world gets Slipknot, then we’re done. I wanna be with my kids,
I wanna be with my wife, I don’t wanna ever see guys like you, I don’t wanna do
anymore fucking interviews, I just want to be left alone for the rest of my
life, with the people that I love the most. I wanna fish and grow tomatoes, and
watch my grand kids! And sometimes sit with the guys of the band, and talk
about these old good times. Because they are good times, I love them all, it’s
a surreal dream that surrounds us, and it’s going faster than we can do it, and
there is a time when we’ll have to put an end to it. And by now, I don’t look
forward to that day, I don’t know where it is. But I won’t play music anymore…