Speaker 1: I have a joke with my way from a week
Speaker 1: up in the morning that's gonna say off two questions,
Speaker 1: what would Create do and what would Freddy do? For
Speaker 1: freda we mayericy That gets me through the day.
Speaker 2: Evening.
Speaker 3: Everyone, Greg here, Welcome to Midnight Chats. Unfortunately, that's the
Speaker 3: last time I'm going to be able to say that
Speaker 3: on this current series. When we kick off this run
Speaker 3: of new conversations back at the start of March, our
Speaker 3: plan was to bring you ten new podcasts. We're a
Speaker 3: touch shigher that we've only managed eight. But for the moment,
Speaker 3: with everything going on and just being totally honest, we
Speaker 3: can't afford to keep on making them, as we've had
Speaker 3: to prioritize other things. But very soon we're going to
Speaker 3: be announcing news about the future of Loud and Quiet
Speaker 3: and what comes next. So that means this podcast, the
Speaker 3: other podcast we make, the magazine we do, the website
Speaker 3: and everything else, and how you can get involved and
Speaker 3: how you can help with that. We'll be making sure
Speaker 3: you hear about that too. But a word on series
Speaker 3: nine though the ones we have managed to bring you
Speaker 3: are reckoning the best we've ever done. Stewart and I
Speaker 3: want to say a huge thanks to all our guests
Speaker 3: on this run. That's been tam I Parlor, Kylie ra Jepson, Caribou,
Speaker 3: Kim Gordon, LaRue, Ed O'Brien, James Acaster, and of course
Speaker 3: tonight's guest, the charming and conscientious Simon Neil, singer and
Speaker 3: guitarist with one of Britain's biggest rock bands, Biffy Cairo.
Speaker 3: Like almost all of our recent chats, I should intro
Speaker 3: this by saying the episode was recorded before the mass measures,
Speaker 3: with the pandemic lockdown and everything else. It was in
Speaker 3: the middle of February, in fact, the day of the
Speaker 3: twenty twenty brit Awards. Since then, like so many other artists,
Speaker 3: Biffy Cairo have had their plans upended this year due
Speaker 3: to everything happening with coronavirus. Their new album, A Celebration
Speaker 3: of Endings, their ninth album, has been bumped back and
Speaker 3: he scheduled now to come out in August. In terms
Speaker 3: of this podcast, this maybe more than any other midnight
Speaker 3: chats I've ever recorded, was very natural the way we
Speaker 3: always intended it, or hope that.
Speaker 4: It would be.
Speaker 3: I went in with plans to talk to Simon about
Speaker 3: the new album the Brits and hear some stories from
Speaker 3: Biffy Clio's twenty five years together, but we didn't do
Speaker 3: any of that. Instead, it turned into a passionate chat
Speaker 3: about well the state of the world between two frustrated
Speaker 3: but ultimately optimistic and hopeful people.
Speaker 4: At least I like to think.
Speaker 3: If you notice a change in the audio about halfway
Speaker 3: through your ears aren't playing up, that's down to good
Speaker 3: old fashioned technical difficulties during the recording. I had to
Speaker 3: swiftly move to Plan B when the equipment had a meltdown.
Speaker 3: But hopefully it doesn't spoil your enjoyment too much. And yeah,
Speaker 3: thank you to you for listening to this episode of
Speaker 3: the podcast and this series. Go check out the others
Speaker 3: you haven't caught up with, and hopefully, fingers crossed, we
Speaker 3: will see you again on the other side. Until then,
Speaker 3: this is episode ninety three of Midnight Chats with Simon
Speaker 3: Neil from Biffy Clyira.
Speaker 2: That's my new career, man, I'm slowly.
Speaker 1: The only reason I'm in a band is so I
Speaker 1: can move into a voiceover career and just sit at
Speaker 1: home and just do my work.
Speaker 2: Should they you should do audiobooks. Oh hey, I'd love to.
Speaker 1: You've got the voice for audiobooks though, that's very kind
Speaker 1: of you to say. I was at my friend's wading
Speaker 1: in London sometime and I get asked if I would
Speaker 1: be their new spokesperson because the guy loved my voice
Speaker 1: so much. And I was completely taken aback. I was like,
Speaker 1: what do you want me to do?
Speaker 2: All?
Speaker 1: You know that, everything, every kind of tanna, every speech
Speaker 1: or whatever that was happening. You know, I was like,
Speaker 1: and it almost just jacked in the music. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, I was so flattered. But no, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe I will maybe I'll need to write a book.
Speaker 3: Do you ever use any of those like meditation apps,
Speaker 3: because like, I feel like you've got the calm voice that.
Speaker 2: Could adapt to it. Actually I do.
Speaker 1: I struggle with sleeping greg, So yeah, I've tried it
Speaker 1: or tried all the meditative apps.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Actually I've got a few tricks up my sleeve to
Speaker 1: help myself sleep. But yeah, I mean I do transcendental
Speaker 1: meditation a couple of times a day, which really helps
Speaker 1: a lot. But yeah, I don't really I'm a podcast
Speaker 1: guy when I'm going to my sleep which probably doesn't
Speaker 1: help me drift off.
Speaker 3: But I've got a friend who uses podcast to help
Speaker 3: himself sleep. But his trick is that he listens to
Speaker 3: the same podcast over and over so that it's a
Speaker 3: totally familiar thing. It's a Stephen fry Pogas al right, Okay,
Speaker 3: So he doesn't like stimulate his brain with new ideas. Effectively,
Speaker 3: he sort of uses just something familiar that isn't music
Speaker 3: but is speech to help him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, you mean, it's it's that fine line
Speaker 1: if because if even you start to learn the pod,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to the same podcast, you maybe start
Speaker 1: to learn it, and then I would end up preempting
Speaker 1: what the next line would be. So yet it's that
Speaker 1: fine fine line. But I tend to sleep, which it's
Speaker 1: now no surprise that I don't sleep well because I
Speaker 1: go to sleep listen to crime podcasts, which bizarre I
Speaker 1: find quite relaxing, you know, and not in a twisted way.
Speaker 2: Just it is something about the tone of voice. I've
Speaker 2: got a couple.
Speaker 1: There's this Australian one called case File and the guy
Speaker 1: who's got a wonderful Australian accent. So it's not really
Speaker 1: about the content. I think your friend right, it's probably
Speaker 1: just the rhythm of his speech, and that there's a
Speaker 1: comfort to me, like I feel relaxed. I know I'm
Speaker 1: about to go to sleep with if he's on. So
Speaker 1: but then sometimes I make it through three podcasts and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, no they.
Speaker 3: Didn't where I am and I've got a gap a
Speaker 3: seven oh not for me? Man, true true, yeah exactly
Speaker 3: light a co yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Mid days early for me, mid days early for me.
Speaker 3: Did you go through a cycle? Did you try all
Speaker 3: those different things? Because it's like, I know some people
Speaker 3: that use podcasts. I know some people that use you
Speaker 3: can just get kind of nature sound effects and people
Speaker 3: want to hear like the sound of the sea or
Speaker 3: the sound of like a haunted woodland or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it blew me away when when I went on
Speaker 1: YouTube and everything, there's like six hours or just woodland
Speaker 1: sounds or self drained.
Speaker 2: So I've tried all that.
Speaker 1: James tries this Buddha kind of thing that just go,
Speaker 1: which I think works a treat for him.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean I've kind of tried it all.
Speaker 1: I sometimes wonder if the act of thinking about how
Speaker 1: you're sleeping negates your sleep so much. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: now so preoccupied with how well I'm sleeping or how
Speaker 1: I'm going to get to sleep tonight. And I think
Speaker 1: because we travel a lot, great, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: thing that apparently when you stay in bed one night,
Speaker 1: you're in a thing called surveillance mode. So you can
Speaker 1: never truly have a good night's sleep. If you're like
Speaker 1: going to State, your friends are staying at hotel the
Speaker 1: first night, you don't sleep that your body just sits
Speaker 1: at a certain level. Yeah, yeah, exactly, you know, And
Speaker 1: for us when we're on tour, that's I think that's
Speaker 1: when my sleep problems kind of started because you just
Speaker 1: you just don't hit a routine. You maybe sleep if
Speaker 1: you're exhausted. You know, your body's telling you, right, you
Speaker 1: need rest. But yeah, I really struggle with that and tour,
Speaker 1: And I think anyone that's kind of creative, you know,
Speaker 1: like yourself and things, when you've got your brain, is
Speaker 1: your is your AMMO, you know, like like without your brain,
Speaker 1: you're you don't create anything. So so I find it
Speaker 1: really hard to switch that off, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: it's not it's not matter. It's a first world problem,
Speaker 1: isn't it. You know, didn't quite get my seven hours,
Speaker 1: you know, true.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's all about that, you say, it's being
Speaker 3: able to function, and it's such an important part of that.
Speaker 3: What about life on the bus. There's this sort of
Speaker 3: like romanticized view of what it's like traveling around being
Speaker 3: on a tour bus. But the very practical, very unrock
Speaker 3: and roll reality is that you're sleeping in kind of
Speaker 3: bunk beds and your and and you're being transported. It's
Speaker 3: it's not something that everybody experiences, like if you've got
Speaker 3: you to that over the years, does it because some
Speaker 3: people say it's like, you know, they find it easy
Speaker 3: falling asleep in the back of a car or something.
Speaker 4: What how has that been?
Speaker 2: It's weird.
Speaker 1: It's probably just like being a baby, you know how
Speaker 1: some parents they take their kid out in the car
Speaker 1: to let it drift off. They're just drive around for
Speaker 1: four hours in the middle of the night. I think
Speaker 1: that's probably what bands are like, or people that are
Speaker 1: into your bus.
Speaker 2: You get used to being rocked to sleep.
Speaker 1: But it's definitely sometimes you get a snapshot when you're
Speaker 1: in the middle of it. You know, you kind of
Speaker 1: take a view from the outside and you're like you
Speaker 1: think about you're hurtling along and more of the autoban
Speaker 1: at eighty miles an hour and you're just in this
Speaker 1: big metallic coffin basically, you know, And and it can
Speaker 1: be a right freak out if you almost need to
Speaker 1: switch your brain off because it is pretty unusual and
Speaker 1: it's and it's a weird existence. Once you've been in
Speaker 1: tour for like a month, that throb of the engine
Speaker 1: becomes like.
Speaker 2: A part of who you are.
Speaker 1: And bizarrely, when you get home it's it can be
Speaker 1: a real struggle, like you know, not just sleep, just
Speaker 1: a sense of not being in motion all the time.
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to talk about something other than
Speaker 1: the traveling, but it gets your mind and your body
Speaker 1: is just used to the propulsion of being on tour
Speaker 1: doing shows, moving all the time. And then when you
Speaker 1: get home it can be such a shock to the
Speaker 1: system and it's like you've lost your purpose, you know.
Speaker 2: And so so being on tour and being in that.
Speaker 1: Bus ends up you equate it with with having purpose
Speaker 1: and doing something, you know, So then when you don't
Speaker 1: have that, you're kind of like you're almost like wandering
Speaker 1: kind of you don't have an anchor almost you know,
Speaker 1: it's a strange.
Speaker 3: A completely different line of work. But like I've had
Speaker 3: conversations with people in the past whose job involves them
Speaker 3: going away. Maybe they're in like one of the military services,
Speaker 3: or you know, maybe their job is to go and
Speaker 3: work on an oil rig or something somewhere where you
Speaker 3: go away for long extended periods of time, where you
Speaker 3: live your life to like a set routine, as in,
Speaker 3: you get up, you have you're moving around, you're living
Speaker 3: your life to a schedule, and you come home and
Speaker 3: you're stationary and you're self sufficient again and you have
Speaker 3: to think about the shopping list or those types of things.
Speaker 3: Do you still feel this sense of coming out of
Speaker 3: this sort of decompression when you get off the road.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, definitely. I Mean you're used to kind of
Speaker 1: a lot of decisions being made for you. So it's
Speaker 1: it's almost like the das are series of check you know,
Speaker 1: boxes to take where you have to be somewhere at
Speaker 1: a certain team and do you think so, but you're
Speaker 1: not actually making any conscious decisions, and everything becomes there's
Speaker 1: a comfort in the repetition of that, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's like that I'm not sure what the name of
Speaker 1: it is, but the Japanese art of doing mastering one
Speaker 1: thing your entire life, you know, I love. That's always
Speaker 1: really appealed to me. And that's what it feels like.
Speaker 1: You do and tour, you just become this highly tuned thing,
Speaker 1: not even a person, you know, where you're like you
Speaker 1: can perform, you can do interviews and you can engage
Speaker 1: with people, but like the most basic decisions are you
Speaker 1: can't do. Like if I was to decide when to go,
Speaker 1: you know, when my day should start, I wouldn't know,
Speaker 1: you know. So when you get home and you have
Speaker 1: that freedom, it doesn't feel like a freedom.
Speaker 2: It feels like a restriction, you know. And it's the
Speaker 2: one thing.
Speaker 1: That after having done this band for so long, myself,
Speaker 1: Ben and James, we're still not quite sure how we've
Speaker 1: managed to not lose our minds. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people have traveled and toured less than us and
Speaker 1: they hit that wall of oh my god, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't do it, nothing makes sense anymore. And part
Speaker 1: of it, I think for us is that we still
Speaker 1: live in the same part of Scotland that we've always
Speaker 1: been in and I think that connection snaps as a
Speaker 1: little back more into reality. But it's it's still a
Speaker 1: real problem, and I still haven't found a way to
Speaker 1: truly combat it, you know, even coming home from the record.
Speaker 1: When you're making a record, you're in one place for
Speaker 1: a while. But but again, I feel, I feel like
Speaker 1: I on ever have purpose when I'm when I'm either
Speaker 1: making a record or going into her and playing. And
Speaker 1: that's that's a weird kind of place to be in
Speaker 1: because I can't relax. My wife always complains to me
Speaker 1: because when I'm home and I have some time off,
Speaker 1: I'm always desperate for time off to chill. And then
Speaker 1: when I have time off, at the opposite of chill,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm on edge, and I'm and I'm rudderless
Speaker 1: and and I'm and I'm dying to dive straight back
Speaker 1: into work. And so it's a it's a strange it's
Speaker 1: a strange kind of I don't know if it's in
Speaker 1: in an alarm clock I have or something, or purpose
Speaker 1: is the best word, you know, not to keep mentioning
Speaker 1: justin Bieber's best album, but but he's but you know,
Speaker 1: it is a sense, it is a sense of purpose,
Speaker 1: and and I think That's probably why we've made so
Speaker 1: much music over the years, because you know, my family,
Speaker 1: they were you know, my dad worked his entire life.
Speaker 1: He's now retired, but he still he runs a bowling green.
Speaker 1: You know, my dad was a bowler, Scottish international bowler,
Speaker 1: and he runs a bowling green. He's still working like
Speaker 1: sixties a week and it's seventy And actually, I've got this.
Speaker 1: This sums up probably my dad and my family more
Speaker 1: than anything. My dad had had a wee fall not
Speaker 1: long ago and he busted his face open and broke
Speaker 1: his nose, and then on the ambulance and the way
Speaker 1: to the hospital, he got the ambulance to take him
Speaker 1: past my brother's house so he could give him the
Speaker 1: keys for the bowling so that my brother could still
Speaker 1: open the bawling and my brother, you know, my dad
Speaker 1: was at the door, like completely disfigured. My brother almost
Speaker 1: had a heart attack. You know, I think when I
Speaker 1: see how hard people working in real jobs, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm blessed to this.
Speaker 2: I do consider it real what I do.
Speaker 1: But in terms of real working, real job, I feel
Speaker 1: the guilt when I'm at home if I'm twiddling my fingers.
Speaker 1: You know, twiddling my thumbs for more than a week
Speaker 1: or even a few days, I'm like, oh, I need
Speaker 1: to get in and get my thumb out of Marcy here.
Speaker 1: You know that this is I'm lazy.
Speaker 3: There's that temptation, isn't there to look at the I
Speaker 3: totally feel what you've just said there, Like there's that
Speaker 3: temptation to sort of look at the older generation and
Speaker 3: you're like, why aren't you just sort of slowing down? White,
Speaker 3: Why haven't you You could have retired by now. It's
Speaker 3: all fine, But then you do realize that, yeah, it's
Speaker 3: such an important part of things. Is like having that
Speaker 3: reason you get up in the morning. I'm sure your
Speaker 3: dad has a great community of friends and like his responsibilities,
Speaker 3: and he feels a commitment to the community and the
Speaker 3: framework of everything that he works with day to day,
Speaker 3: and that's the thing that keeps him going and he
Speaker 3: enjoys it.
Speaker 1: You hear about people that when they stop working and
Speaker 1: all that, and then you're just kind of without saying,
Speaker 1: bleaking and waiting around to die at that point.
Speaker 2: And I truly believe that the.
Speaker 1: Thing about my dad's generation as well, you know, and
Speaker 1: my dad said something that made me so proud of him.
Speaker 1: After the breaks a voting things, he said, my generation
Speaker 1: shouldn't be allowed to vote for this because it will
Speaker 1: not affect is it. You know, it was the proudest
Speaker 1: I'd ever you know, because me and my dad's politics
Speaker 1: are kind of a little bit different.
Speaker 2: My dad is more old school.
Speaker 1: But when he said that, I thought, you're so right,
Speaker 1: and you know, we can take a lot from the
Speaker 1: previous genet, from our parents and things. You know, I
Speaker 1: really want to take the best of everything that that
Speaker 1: generation has taught us, because at the moment I feel
Speaker 1: that there's a bit of a revolt against it, thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, okay, boomer and all this and that, and
Speaker 1: I think that's fine, but it is dismissive. And I
Speaker 1: don't think we can dismiss any generation the same way
Speaker 1: that that generation should not be dismissing this young generation
Speaker 1: who are caring about the future of the planet and everything.
Speaker 1: I think that disconnected. Really, I find a problem with that.
Speaker 1: I have a problem with that both ways. But I
Speaker 1: have to say when I look at seventy year old
Speaker 1: men bullying like Greta Threnburger's nineteen or something, because oh god,
Speaker 1: she cares about the planet.
Speaker 2: She cares about our generation.
Speaker 1: I've kind of twisted this round from admiring my dad's
Speaker 1: now going that generation needs to fuck off.
Speaker 4: Some of that generation, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And it's like I think, I mean, I can that
Speaker 3: are somewhere in the middle, basically like and our generation
Speaker 3: has responsibilities on both sides as well. But what has
Speaker 3: been interesting is basically the Internet came along and supplied
Speaker 3: us all with every piece of information that has ever existed,
Speaker 3: and I think there was maybe I may may or
Speaker 3: may not be right about this. This is just maybe
Speaker 3: to personal observation, but previously, like there was a very
Speaker 3: kind of defined like hierarchy within generations where it was
Speaker 3: always felt that the generations above you had a greater
Speaker 3: store of information and wisdom and experience, which they still do.
Speaker 3: But if you're part of the younger generation, you've been
Speaker 3: used to having all of this stuff at your fingertips immediately,
Speaker 3: and so you feel you've got access and so basically
Speaker 3: somewhere in the middle, there's become this clash of being like, hey,
Speaker 3: we've got all this lived experience, and just because you've
Speaker 3: got all of this information at your fingertips and vice versa.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true friction, It's true, you've nieled it absolutely perfect.
Speaker 1: But the thing is that the wisdom that the kids
Speaker 1: have from being able to take the technology for granted,
Speaker 1: I think is underrated. You know, kids are coming of
Speaker 1: age just now. They're not impressed by the fact it's
Speaker 1: a shiny thing and all the connectivity. Like they're trying
Speaker 1: to navigate how to make the best out of everything
Speaker 1: that's been invented and brought to the surface in the
Speaker 1: last fifteen twenty years. And I think that's they're a
Speaker 1: lot smarter about it than our generation in a way.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm older than you, Greg, but you know,
Speaker 1: magic generation in ten years younger, we were the ones
Speaker 1: that kind of fucked it up a bit, you know.
Speaker 1: We were the ones that were straight away like dick pics,
Speaker 1: fucking all the worst kind of aspects of what like
Speaker 1: how do I get drugs?
Speaker 2: You know, and things like that.
Speaker 1: And when I look at my extended family and I've
Speaker 1: got nieces that are like, you know, the oldest ones
Speaker 1: sixteen in the youngest is twelve, and they're they're really
Speaker 1: very very smart about it all. They know what it is,
Speaker 1: they know what level it's operating on, whereas I think
Speaker 1: our generation is certainly olded, we.
Speaker 2: Take it so so so seriously.
Speaker 1: Or I certainly do, and actually that's not that's not
Speaker 1: the way it's intended. It's another outlet. It's it's not
Speaker 1: everything yet you are, you know, And I think that's
Speaker 1: what kids they're just learning how to master, master what's
Speaker 1: been invented, and whereas we're still trying to kind of
Speaker 1: understand what's been invented.
Speaker 3: Do you see them sort of moderating the influence that
Speaker 3: it has on y day today? Which is the one
Speaker 3: thing that I'd say that we and then again I'm
Speaker 3: using an absolute debt people of some people of our
Speaker 3: generation and above and all generations really haven't potentially recognized
Speaker 3: or mastered is this fact that this maybe this thing
Speaker 3: has become very all consuming and controlling, and it's affected
Speaker 3: our behaviors in certain in ways. And it would be
Speaker 3: great to think that the next generation recognize a lot
Speaker 3: of these things what they are, which are fantastic, almost
Speaker 3: limitlessly seen as limitless. Yeah, but they recognize that, and
Speaker 3: they can they can put their phone down, or they
Speaker 3: can live offline, or they can recognize basically the balance
Speaker 3: between nice things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they'll have been able to see. Also there
Speaker 1: are were more of the negative aspects of it, whereas
Speaker 1: we've just you know, I mean I I was twenty
Speaker 1: in the millennium and things, you know, so we were
Speaker 1: all walking in wide eyed, you know, go you know,
Speaker 1: like not seeing the dark, shadowy corners of it and everything.
Speaker 1: And I think everyone's eyes they're aware of every corner
Speaker 1: of the room now, you know. And I do think
Speaker 1: that's a wonderful thing moving forward, and I think it's
Speaker 1: necessary and because there's so much, there's so much at
Speaker 1: the moment to be scared of. But I have to say,
Speaker 1: I haven't ever felt this optimistic. I feel I feel
Speaker 1: that this century is only really beginning now. So I
Speaker 1: know we're going macro now, you know, but I feel
Speaker 1: that this century, every century takes ten or twenty years
Speaker 1: to get going. You look at industrial revolutions, all of
Speaker 1: them happened at the tail end of one century into
Speaker 1: the next, but they only really have took effect and
Speaker 1: really had the pois you know, there was it was
Speaker 1: allatives to start. If you look at the automobile revolution,
Speaker 1: people were just talking about o other people with horse
Speaker 1: and carts, arout the job, you know, not, you know,
Speaker 1: and then it moved forward and suddenly it's it's just
Speaker 1: this wonderful thing. And I feel like it's the same
Speaker 1: with this with this century. This is us now realizing
Speaker 1: where we want this, this century to go. We've realized
Speaker 1: what the hangovers from last century are that we want
Speaker 1: to actually get rid of. And again, not to sound
Speaker 1: too rude, but there's a certain certain people in a
Speaker 1: certain generation. I can't wait till they shuffle off this
Speaker 1: mortal coil so that we can actually focus on the
Speaker 1: job at hand. I almost feel that the most comparable
Speaker 1: time to just now is basically the sixties, you know,
Speaker 1: and and and it's obviously I wasn't there.
Speaker 2: I was there in spirit, you know.
Speaker 1: But I feel like that's the only other time where
Speaker 1: there was there was such a such a difference in
Speaker 1: the generations, like the post war and the fifties. Folk
Speaker 1: could not understand these long hairs and these people they
Speaker 1: wanted to fucking make love with everyone and just be
Speaker 1: open and loving. And I feel that that's probably the
Speaker 1: only other time in history that I can remember where
Speaker 1: that there's been such a separation. And if you look
Speaker 1: back to the commie which hunts of the sixties and
Speaker 1: all that. We all look at it now and go,
Speaker 1: what and that was awful, all this stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: they were just blacklisting to any creative, anyone who had
Speaker 1: anyone who was just slightly left of center was getting
Speaker 1: was trying to get put in prison. And it's kind
Speaker 1: of like the same now that those people that were
Speaker 1: trying to just in prison folk for thinking in a
Speaker 1: different way.
Speaker 2: You look back and you go, they were so wrong.
Speaker 2: They were. Yeah, they were the idiots.
Speaker 1: And I feel like when people look back and now
Speaker 1: we'll look back and say, Trump and Boris Johnson, all
Speaker 1: these folks, they were the idiots. You know, I truly
Speaker 1: believe that. I don't think anyone moving forward is going
Speaker 1: to be looked back and oh, you know, but they
Speaker 1: had a few good points. Really they don't. They have
Speaker 1: nothing to offer other than than to cultivate that fear.
Speaker 1: The sad thing about fear is it's it's easy. It's
Speaker 1: easier to pray and people that maybe don't have the
Speaker 1: same the same opportunities. You know, I think it's easy
Speaker 1: to present a perfect little message and you know, with
Speaker 1: a bowl wrapped around it, that's a lot easier to
Speaker 1: do than to actually express the different layers of nuance
Speaker 1: to things. And I think nuanced is what's going to
Speaker 1: come back. I think we're really at the lowest point
Speaker 1: of what I think. I mean, this goes against me
Speaker 1: seeing how positive, but I feel that we are the
Speaker 1: lowest point. Now we have to bounce back up from
Speaker 1: you know, you're reading you know muchure exactly when this
Speaker 1: comes out. With this week, there's been someone fired from
Speaker 1: the government because he believes in.
Speaker 2: Eugenics, and it's like, what is happening? Where are we?
Speaker 1: You know, I think goodness has been thrown out, but
Speaker 1: how does it even reach that stage? And this is
Speaker 1: it's almost so absurd, the bottom of the barrel that
Speaker 1: we're at that really there's no there's no way low,
Speaker 1: you know, the only way is up. And the next
Speaker 1: keep saying the next generation. I just think they're going
Speaker 1: to wipe the slate clean and it'll be a restart.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately we're still just kind of pottering around in
Speaker 1: the shitty bottoms of the barrel at the moment. But
Speaker 1: is going to change, And A feel like twenty twenty
Speaker 1: is a year for it to start to change. And
Speaker 1: I know we're tied into borders for another fucking few
Speaker 1: years and all that. But you know, I'm talking big
Speaker 1: picture of stuff. It's like, this is a law point
Speaker 1: and we're going to bouce back.
Speaker 3: A conversation that we've had on quite a few of
Speaker 3: the episodes that we've done for this series already, Ed
Speaker 3: O'Brien from Radiohead, Caribou a couple of the names of
Speaker 3: people that've had on the podcast this series, and often
Speaker 3: the conversation has gotten onto the climate crisis, sustainability, personal
Speaker 3: and professional accountability on that subject of just being like,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm waking up. I'm feeling like I
Speaker 3: can have a conversation about this, and I'm being guided
Speaker 3: by other people that aren't even maybe within the music industry,
Speaker 3: people like Gretitenberg, where I'm like, you know what, she's aspirational,
Speaker 3: Like she might be twenty five years younger than me
Speaker 3: or twenty years younger, mean, but you know, I feel connected.
Speaker 4: To that message.
Speaker 3: You know, you said there you feel really optimistic about
Speaker 3: the next generation or the younger generations. But she acted
Speaker 3: as a bit of a guidance staff for that optimism.
Speaker 3: Is that fed into that, is that part of that.
Speaker 1: Yes it is, and it almost feels sad that there's
Speaker 1: so much pressure been putting great. You know, people at
Speaker 1: me saying, oh, yeah, she's you know, she's inspired me,
Speaker 1: But she hasn't. It's the simplicity of what she's done
Speaker 1: as well. Just take a Friday off and then suddenly
Speaker 1: the whole world's fallen suit and she's put her money
Speaker 1: where her mouth is. She's sailed all the way to
Speaker 1: South America, you know, for three weeks like this. This
Speaker 1: girl is an absolute inspiration. You know, I have a
Speaker 1: joke with my wife when I wake up in the morning,
Speaker 1: I've asked myself two questions, what would Greta do and
Speaker 1: what would Freddy do for Fredda with mercury? And that's
Speaker 1: that's that gets me through the day. We need to
Speaker 1: take personal ownership of how we live. But the slow
Speaker 1: moving nature of the government and how they like they're
Speaker 1: still just trying to keep a hold of this this
Speaker 1: kind of system that is in place that is not
Speaker 1: going to be there in ten fucking years and fifteen years,
Speaker 1: and it's so pointless what they're trying to hold on to.
Speaker 1: Reality has just changed, you know, It's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of things that we need to address when we when
Speaker 1: we look at even the coronavus iris and things, it's
Speaker 1: like the way things are operating in this world things
Speaker 1: need to change. That the institutions and that do need
Speaker 1: to take responsibility for things that have happened to the
Speaker 1: people and the way we're going. And it's not good
Speaker 1: enough to say by about twenty five years, take these
Speaker 1: abstract numbers that don't really mean much. It's like, let's
Speaker 1: put things actually in place now. As human as people,
Speaker 1: we can't always just expect other people to do things
Speaker 1: for us. And I think that's what Great has showed
Speaker 1: me and showed everyone that actually see the little bit
Speaker 1: you do. If we all do a little bit, the
Speaker 1: change is massive. But if we don't start to make
Speaker 1: those changes, and nothing's going to happen. And I think
Speaker 1: what Great has done is a safe from starting from
Speaker 1: like just a day off school to protest like that
Speaker 1: shows that's that's quite a small thing to begin with.
Speaker 1: And think about what that has done globally and the
Speaker 1: awareness and everything and the I mean it's pleased to
Speaker 1: see the government putting a billion quid into the Met
Speaker 1: Office to try and predict you know, these goddamn floods
Speaker 1: that poor people's We need to take it seriously. People's
Speaker 1: levels are being ruined Australia. Who knows what the fuck
Speaker 1: is is the result of all that or those wal
Speaker 1: the wild life and you know crops. I mean, we
Speaker 1: cannot figure out what the result and that's going to be.
Speaker 1: It'll be five ten years before we even have an idea.
Speaker 3: And I think it's interesting to talk about the responsibility
Speaker 3: of the government and the and the big business as well,
Speaker 3: like we can all we can all take responsibility for
Speaker 3: our personal contributions to sustainability. But I thought it was
Speaker 3: interested this morning just on the on the sort of
Speaker 3: education front, Like I feel like we've already talked about
Speaker 3: the younger generations being really savvy and really informed about
Speaker 3: this stuff, and to give like concrete examples that this morning.
Speaker 3: You know, literally walked in to meet you today and
Speaker 3: a friend of mine lives in rural Herefordshire and he's
Speaker 3: sending me photos of like him and his neighbors houses
Speaker 3: surrounded by water because of the floods. And I was
Speaker 3: listening to the radio this morning and there was a
Speaker 3: local landlord who's talking about his pub. It's been flooded
Speaker 3: and they asked him on the radio the direct question
Speaker 3: of like, what what do you think it is? They said, oh,
Speaker 3: do you think it's climate change? And he said, I
Speaker 3: don't know whether it's climate change or that we're just
Speaker 3: getting more rain. And I was like, this just shows that,
Speaker 3: like that people need to understand all of these things
Speaker 3: that we're seeing around the world. The localized flooding in
Speaker 3: different all across the UK, these extreme weather conditions in Australia,
Speaker 3: the world fast these are all connected. These are these
Speaker 3: these like indisputable stuff and like you just want government
Speaker 3: education systems to take responsibility and be like this is happening.
Speaker 3: These are all coming from there's all a consequence there,
Speaker 3: we all joined up. They're not like it's not we're
Speaker 3: having more rain or it's climate change.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly together, it's the one thing.
Speaker 1: And a Stewary's a great example because their their government
Speaker 1: is is like Scott Morrison is it and has reaction
Speaker 1: to what has been going on, and there's been just
Speaker 1: absolutely disgusting and you see the reaction of the Istralian
Speaker 1: people who they're now not standing for it, you know,
Speaker 1: they now want they want change. You know, of course
Speaker 1: if your entire land is burning, your entire country is burning,
Speaker 1: you know, imagine it gets to that stage and you're
Speaker 1: still having to convince your prime minister that that's something
Speaker 1: to take seriously.
Speaker 3: You know, we're in the middle of just talking about
Speaker 3: governments and accountability and big business and some of the
Speaker 3: attitudes that we've seen around some of the huge climate
Speaker 3: crisis news stories over the last months and years, and
Speaker 3: that the Australian wildfires and the localized flooding in the UK,
Speaker 3: and yeah, just just seeing how the lack of reaction
Speaker 3: really around some of those things, and just how you know,
Speaker 3: education plays a part in this wile lack of education
Speaker 3: and just how I suppose it's important just to see
Speaker 3: some a lot more action on that front.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again, my my nieces and my nephews when they're at school,
Speaker 1: they're getting taught about this from the various and I
Speaker 1: think that's a wonderful thing. It needs to be like
Speaker 1: second nature to people. The thing I don't understand is
Speaker 1: how the government governments like the Australian government, with the
Speaker 1: coal industry and things, what do they think the money
Speaker 1: is going to do for them in ten or twenty
Speaker 1: years when all around them is burning and flooding and dying,
Speaker 1: and like that's what really baffles me, and I imagine
Speaker 1: it baffles the generation below me a hell of a
Speaker 1: lot more.
Speaker 2: But that's valueless. That stuff is actually valueless.
Speaker 1: You know, we can't buy shit when everything's burning and
Speaker 1: everything's dead. So that lack of engagement and to keep
Speaker 1: going back. I think I heard the other day that
Speaker 1: right the punk band Rise Against a song called the
Speaker 1: Great Die Off and it's talking about that generation just
Speaker 1: going away, and I just thought that was like a
Speaker 1: really lovely, quite hilarious way to put it. But it
Speaker 1: is if you think that money in any way is
Speaker 1: going to like balance up what is happening to our
Speaker 1: lives or you know, like a st I think eighty
Speaker 1: percent Australia had smoke people who had or it was
Speaker 1: eighty percent poor quality air and like Sydney for like
Speaker 1: a month or something, you know, and it's like, and
Speaker 1: this is effecting. There's babies and shit that are breathing
Speaker 1: this stuff in. You know, it's going to affect people
Speaker 1: in ways that this old school just cannot possibly understand.
Speaker 1: And it is the great you know, it's been talked
Speaker 1: about so much, but it is the most important thing
Speaker 1: of this century. Everything else fades into the background really
Speaker 1: when you think about it. But unfortunately, the governments are
Speaker 1: still trying to pull fast ones. I feel that, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got people that like that. There's some journal that
Speaker 1: keeps tweeting that great to thimber going.
Speaker 2: Me and my.
Speaker 1: Family are going on holiday and we're going to really
Speaker 1: enjoy going in the jumbo jet. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: give that journal say her name, because they're not even
Speaker 1: worth it.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's like you're trolling.
Speaker 1: Not only are you fucking your own kids over, you're
Speaker 1: trolling a seventeen year old girl or she was seventeen
Speaker 1: at that point. Maybe I think she's nineteen now greted,
Speaker 1: but you're trolling a nineteen year old girl. You're basically
Speaker 1: trolling your own fucking kids because you just don't get it.
Speaker 1: And it's like the thought of being smart and correcting
Speaker 1: you it's so important to these people that actually in
Speaker 1: the ignorance of that, I cannot comprehend the ignorance of
Speaker 1: that of for a start, thumb in your nose, a kid,
Speaker 1: you know, like you know, if you know, no, nineteen
Speaker 1: is not a child, but you know, I'm your thumb
Speaker 1: and your nose a kid, and it's like, what is
Speaker 1: there to be proud of? What exactly are you trying
Speaker 1: to teach your kids by doing that, by saying I
Speaker 1: have no responsibility towards anything for the next generation. And
Speaker 1: it's like, no, wonder the okay boomer is a fucking
Speaker 1: phrase now, you know. It's like because it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you don't get it, so I tell you what you
Speaker 1: should just piss off back into the shadows. You know,
Speaker 1: there's such a consciousness. I've got theory that when the
Speaker 1: Mayans talked about the end of the world in twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like the end of the world as we thought,
Speaker 1: like in terms of that we're going to be hit
Speaker 1: by a meteor, asteroids or whatever. There's been a consciousness shift.
Speaker 1: The consciousness that we had before twenty twelve. It was
Speaker 1: a different, different world in different reality. We have different issues.
Speaker 1: Now we have different needs, you know, like really Twitter
Speaker 1: and Facebook and all that.
Speaker 2: I think they all started, like, you know, Twitter, I
Speaker 2: think it was two thousand and seven and eight.
Speaker 1: It probably became an omnipresent around about that time, Around
Speaker 1: about twenty living twelve, was when suddenly everyone's on it
Speaker 1: and everyone's living, and I think actually the minds where right.
Speaker 1: There's been a consciousness shift, the death of a certain consciousness,
Speaker 1: and we've shifted into this different reality, and we need
Speaker 1: to wake up to that reality.
Speaker 2: It's been exploited by.
Speaker 1: Dark forces, I think, who have prayed in people's fears
Speaker 1: in other ways. And then what annoys me is these
Speaker 1: same people who will say is people are coming to
Speaker 1: jobs and this and that, they then try and kind
Speaker 1: of use the same fear with the climate change, like
Speaker 1: oh no, that's just fear mongering. It's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is reality. People can look out their door and
Speaker 1: actually see the result of climate change. You know, this
Speaker 1: is not some extasy, you know, some fucking you know,
Speaker 1: abstract thought. You know, you know, I'm kind of talking
Speaker 1: myself a little ren I've got I'm sounding more frustrated
Speaker 1: than optimistic.
Speaker 3: But it's the frame of it is that you're feeling
Speaker 3: optimistic that there are there's an energy, there's a group
Speaker 3: of people who are educated about this stuff, who will
Speaker 3: be our world leaders in fifteen twenty times, in fifteen
Speaker 3: twenty years. And therefore you know that maybe that we're
Speaker 3: about to set ourselves on the right track, on.
Speaker 1: The right track, and I think we've being in the
Speaker 1: wrong track for a wee while.
Speaker 2: But I think that's right.
Speaker 1: I do genuinely like I'm quind of convinced by this
Speaker 1: Mane theory that I do think there's been a death
Speaker 1: of a certain reality and we've had to wake up
Speaker 1: and smell the coffee. And I think that's what we're
Speaker 1: doing now. I think that is what we're doing. I
Speaker 1: think the next generation will just be second nature. For
Speaker 1: my generation. We need to adapt. We've grown up. I
Speaker 1: feel like someone described my generation as being born in
Speaker 1: the pause, and it feels like, to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: were the things we got to worry about as a
Speaker 1: British person. Work actually quite shallow. When I think back now,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, you know, we're basic. They weren't these
Speaker 1: massive things that we had to problems we had to solve.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh, yeah, I may go to UNI,
Speaker 1: you may do this, and you know, just like I
Speaker 1: almost feel like it was a different reality. When I
Speaker 1: see footage even of like Barack Obama and like two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, I'm like, oh, remember those simpler times,
Speaker 1: you know, and to be fair climate change with you know,
Speaker 1: we should we should have been a lot more engaged earlier,
Speaker 1: but you know, maybe ignorance was bliss at that point,
Speaker 1: but we really there was a simpler time and it
Speaker 1: just feels if I see, like things have changed a lot,
Speaker 1: not for the best, but we need to fucking wake
Speaker 1: up to it. That that's basically what it is, you know,
Speaker 1: And I think our generation takes a big responsibility. I've
Speaker 1: got a lot of friends who kind of float through
Speaker 1: life and kind of not in a bad way, but
Speaker 1: just the kind of just floating through life going hey,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not worked out for me, you know,
Speaker 1: it just taking the perhaps a kind of easy way out.
Speaker 1: And I think that my generation, to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: we had so much at our fingertips and so many
Speaker 1: opportunities and things that actually potentially we dropped the ball
Speaker 1: a little bit. You know, we were kind of you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm Generation X or millennial. I
Speaker 1: think I'm somewhere in the middle. I find it hard
Speaker 1: to believe I'm a millennial. But but you know, it's
Speaker 1: like that way just we just landed in this kind
Speaker 1: of nonchalant and like the nineties were a wonderful time,
Speaker 1: very optimistic, but actually, what did we do with that optimism?
Speaker 2: What really do we do well?
Speaker 1: You know, fucking britpop great well, or they all took
Speaker 1: loads of coke, you know whatever.
Speaker 2: Great?
Speaker 1: You know's what's really the legacy of that, you know,
Speaker 1: other than great music, which is which is enough, But
Speaker 1: that's our that was our great you know offering to
Speaker 1: the world. And I think that's not enough to offer
Speaker 1: people now. And I think people that greater are becoming.
Speaker 1: You know, this is she's a new Mick Jagger, you know,
Speaker 1: but but it is it's a different type of icon,
Speaker 1: meaning it's a different type of leader, different type of person,
Speaker 1: and the cultural impact she has is in a different.
Speaker 2: Way than than it used to to be for music
Speaker 2: or movies and things.
Speaker 1: I think everything the consciousness has shifted so much that
Speaker 1: we need a new type of hero, and that's great
Speaker 1: as the first new hero, I think, you know.
Speaker 3: It's this kind of big existential issue that affects absolutely
Speaker 3: every single one of this and our one planet. Just
Speaker 3: to zone a bit back on the sort of the individual,
Speaker 3: how is that? I mean, your band is your job,
Speaker 3: music is your job. So how is that has that
Speaker 3: made you think differently about anything that you do day
Speaker 3: to day with that stuff, or are you out there
Speaker 3: kind of like listening and learning and trying to trying
Speaker 3: to navigate that side of things as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've we've always tried to do I mean it's
Speaker 1: very little, but we've always tried to say things as
Speaker 1: much as we can. What I when I look back
Speaker 1: to tours and I think about the amount of single
Speaker 1: use plastic bottles of water and things, you know, from
Speaker 1: fifteen years of two and like it, it makes me
Speaker 1: embarrassed to macore when I think about stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and these are simple changes things like that and tour
Speaker 1: you know, it's like one war source everyone gets give
Speaker 1: a boat told the start of the tear, and we
Speaker 1: should we need to do so much more.
Speaker 2: I wish I was I wish we.
Speaker 1: Were the size of cold Play, that we could actually
Speaker 1: decide that until we find a way to off set
Speaker 1: what we're doing, we're not going to tour.
Speaker 3: Like that had a big it was a huge news story,
Speaker 3: and I must admit, regardless of where what you think
Speaker 3: of that band or their music, but Chris Martin using
Speaker 3: his platform to say we're going to hold this until
Speaker 3: I can learn more, until I can understand more, until
Speaker 3: we can be in a position where we feel like
Speaker 3: we're positively going.
Speaker 4: About our day job. We're not going to do it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know he's in a position where he
Speaker 3: can do that, but still it was a kind of
Speaker 3: for somebody to go out there and put.
Speaker 4: That out there.
Speaker 1: It's inspiring and as that's what every turn band I
Speaker 1: think should aspire to that. You know, Unfortunately, the reality
Speaker 1: for a lot of bands is you don't have this.
Speaker 1: The thing is, I'm about to say something that I'm
Speaker 1: going to discuss myself with we do you don't have
Speaker 1: the luxury to do that, But that's the world isn't
Speaker 1: a luxury. The world's on necessity. So that's even the
Speaker 1: point perspective I need to change. I was about to say,
Speaker 1: we don't have the luxury to not tour or not
Speaker 1: fly places because we have to play shows. That is
Speaker 1: the wrong attitude.
Speaker 2: We need.
Speaker 1: Me and my band need to figure out ways to
Speaker 1: make sure that we are not contributing anything to that.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not touring to we'll get an album
Speaker 1: coming out since so we're going to be touring later
Speaker 1: in the year. We are going to do everything we
Speaker 1: can to make sure that every part of that is
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know how we're going to make
Speaker 1: it carbon neutral. I don't think we'll quite be able
Speaker 1: to achieve that, but we're going to get as close
Speaker 1: to that as we possibly can. When someone like Chris
Speaker 1: Martin says that you've got to pay attention, it's a
Speaker 1: shame because because he's made the comment when he was
Speaker 1: in Jordan and a blitz of media, which is a
Speaker 1: world tour, it was very easy for people to dismiss it.
Speaker 1: People that don't agree to just dismiss it. Goh, that's
Speaker 1: rich coming from you, but come on the sentiments and
Speaker 1: then make a change trying to you know, they'd go
Speaker 1: out and to it for two years and make fucking
Speaker 1: one hundred million dollars. Of course he doesn't need another
Speaker 1: one hundred million dollars, but that's that's the slight sacrifice
Speaker 1: that people do have to make. That's what I'm talking
Speaker 1: about with governments and stuff. We need to just to say,
Speaker 1: let's not make that fucking huge portion of money because
Speaker 1: it's not as important actually as this over here.
Speaker 2: And I do think it's great.
Speaker 1: No Radiohead, they've been inspiring for about fifteen years. I'm
Speaker 1: sure even back in like two thousand and five they
Speaker 1: did a tour of intense and like the Big Top
Speaker 1: Tour I think it was called, And I'm sure all
Speaker 1: the lightning they had was used from reusable plastic and things,
Speaker 1: so that there's ways when we did some shows last year,
Speaker 1: everything we used was was recycled. It was we usually
Speaker 1: water ballasts and things we used. You know, we're trying
Speaker 1: not to use bring anything new. When we use put
Speaker 1: a production together, it's pre existing things we want. And
Speaker 1: again it's such a small thing, but we're we're trying
Speaker 1: to move in that way and it's it's essentially it's
Speaker 1: our responsible to do that. The flying thing, for me,
Speaker 1: that's that's what I struggle with because I mean, I
Speaker 1: hate flying anyway.
Speaker 2: I would rather not fly.
Speaker 1: I don't know how how there's certain places we can
Speaker 1: go without flying, and I know that my carbon footprint
Speaker 1: from what a fly is unacceptable.
Speaker 2: That's the one part of that.
Speaker 1: I feel like I want to be able to make
Speaker 1: a difference, and I'm not making a difference, you know,
Speaker 1: because it is really when you look at the stats,
Speaker 1: is it's air travel is what is really fucking the planet,
Speaker 1: you know, in a big, big, big level. If you
Speaker 1: I think, if you fly to return flights a year,
Speaker 1: it's the same as your entire footprint and every other
Speaker 1: aspect of your life. That's the part that I'm that
Speaker 1: I'm a hypocrite about, and I don't know how I can't.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to where to move with that,
Speaker 1: because I you know, as I say, we have to tour,
Speaker 1: you know, we have to tour to kind of exist
Speaker 1: as a band. You know, we should not be touring
Speaker 1: to exist as a humanity as a people, you know.
Speaker 1: But so that's the thing I still and that's why
Speaker 1: I do admire what Chris Martin's saying. You know, I
Speaker 1: think you get an awful lot of criticism for something
Speaker 1: which is a truly an honest and beautiful sentiment. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I don't know, because we all can't just stop,
Speaker 1: you know, But about what I.
Speaker 3: Would say to you is like I can see it
Speaker 3: in your face that it's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 3: it's a real it's a challenge and it's a conundrum,
Speaker 3: and it's puts you in a place.
Speaker 4: Where you, yeah, you feel caught.
Speaker 3: Between those two things and your responsibility but also your
Speaker 3: necessity because.
Speaker 1: Also I do want to encourage, but you know, like
Speaker 1: that's the thing I want to talk about, encourage people.
Speaker 1: And then I catch myself and go, oh, yeah, but
Speaker 1: you fly a lot, So who am I to say, Oh,
Speaker 1: we need to all do this and that, and it
Speaker 1: kind of puts in a catch twenty two. I mean,
Speaker 1: even with our new album, this is the new album
Speaker 1: we're bringing it, it's the first time that I've kind of
Speaker 1: written songs sparked from the outside, and it's because I
Speaker 1: didn't change the nature of things. Normally, I write songs
Speaker 1: from a very personal perspective. It's about love or loss
Speaker 1: or grief or things, and this album is about a
Speaker 1: kind of grief about about not society. But basically the
Speaker 1: spark came from outside. For the first time ever, I
Speaker 1: realized I was writing songs about things I'm seeing in
Speaker 1: the television, about the way we're being made to feel
Speaker 1: for us having a certain perspective on life and being
Speaker 1: made to think that somehow compassion, loyalty, honesty, or like
Speaker 1: it's like an old fashioned trait, things like that things
Speaker 1: that we should just take for granted are being kind
Speaker 1: of questioned and then that's where the album's kind of
Speaker 1: the spark of this album has come from the outside
Speaker 1: because it is something I'm battling with myself and I
Speaker 1: just don't know what to do, just not quite sure
Speaker 1: how to do it. And I feel like that's why,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to put pressure in gret it.
Speaker 1: But it's like, we'll folly you, Greta. You know, we'll fall,
Speaker 1: We'll folly you know. Everyone wants wants to do. You
Speaker 1: know what you're telling us to do. You know that
Speaker 1: we believe in you, you know, But ye as I
Speaker 1: say it as a constant battle. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: live in London. I flew down here a couple of
Speaker 1: days ago. I could probably have taken the fucking train.
Speaker 1: These are things that I need to now actually decide
Speaker 1: about doing and not just talking about it. It's like
Speaker 1: we'll not make it. Actually fucking suck it up and
Speaker 1: do it, you know. I mean there's a flooding that
Speaker 1: it wasn't actually know, I'm trying to excuse myself going
Speaker 1: with those flood that trains couldn't actually make it, so
Speaker 1: I had to take a plight you know, that's ballots
Speaker 1: as the same catching myself and thinking, oh, that's that's
Speaker 1: the role that you're saying, you're disgusting yourself.
Speaker 3: As I said before, I think like if you're thinking
Speaker 3: about these things and you're striving to try and find resolutions,
Speaker 3: and I think that's really important, and like that's a
Speaker 3: conversation that we're having more and more and it's only
Speaker 3: going to have positive outcomes. It's the people that sort
Speaker 3: of say the deniers or the people that just don't
Speaker 3: acknowledge it or don't or have just persistently kind of
Speaker 3: like no, no, no ah, it's not my responsibility or
Speaker 3: I'd rather have you sat here saying like I'm acknowledging
Speaker 3: this is something important, Like I'm trying to find solutions,
Speaker 3: but admit that I'm contributing to myself as we all do.
Speaker 4: That's a better place to be than Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then, I mean see the denial climate change and now
Speaker 1: what a fucking joke. See three, watching some some news
Speaker 1: channels and you've got people like this is in the
Speaker 1: last maybe eighteen months ago, it's recently is eighteen months ago.
Speaker 1: You love people on news channels who are like talking
Speaker 1: about climate change, and then you get someone who disagrees
Speaker 1: with climate change, Like, I know, you have to get
Speaker 1: different perspectives on all things.
Speaker 2: That is not a perspective.
Speaker 1: That is just an untruth that you can't deny climate change.
Speaker 2: It's like fucking holocaust and that it.
Speaker 1: Is absolutely lowest low and it is so nonsense that
Speaker 1: it's not. You can't give a platform to people that
Speaker 1: talk shit. You know, let's let's be honest. So little
Speaker 1: things like that that you see and I see a
Speaker 1: change now, I don't think that would happen now in
Speaker 1: news shows, but I remember myself and Frankie watching I
Speaker 1: think it was maybe even Channel four, you know, and
Speaker 1: it was climate change activist and then a climate change
Speaker 1: deniw and you're like, don't give a climate change DENI
Speaker 1: our platform.
Speaker 2: That's not that's not a perspective. You know.
Speaker 4: That wouldn't have even been that long ago, maybe a
Speaker 4: couple of years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it really wasn't long ago, you know.
Speaker 1: But hopefully I feel like maybe maybe now that wouldn't
Speaker 1: that wouldn't happen. But you know, it's tough people, can
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I can't believe about to fucking
Speaker 1: watch the show last night about the Holocaust denial, and
Speaker 1: it's the same thing. These deniers, they're they're rooting it,
Speaker 1: basing it and absolutely fuck all. And really they're just trolls.
Speaker 1: They just want to be contradictory. They just want to
Speaker 1: hurt people, and I cannot understand it. But it's not
Speaker 1: a it's not a viable viewpoint in any way. I
Speaker 1: even think people that fucking talk about flat earth, it's like,
Speaker 1: that's that's a bit that's a bit more harmless. You know, Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: the Earth isn't flat. You're fucking idiot, But by all means,
Speaker 1: tell me why you think it is. But there's no
Speaker 1: grand conspiracy. But these are other things when you're denying
Speaker 1: things that are you know, actually, you know, maybe that's
Speaker 1: that's the wrong attitude as well. Maybe maybe the view
Speaker 1: people just talking absolute shit needs to be kind of outlawed,
Speaker 1: you know. And there was a Facebook guy on talking
Speaker 1: about this, the Holocaust denial thing. I'm so sorry we're
Speaker 1: talking about such, and he's said, you know, and BI
Speaker 1: deal with they would be deals on it. And he's saying,
Speaker 1: you know, so why isn't this removed? And it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's just someone's opinion is wrong. They think that the
Speaker 1: Holocaust didn't happen, and it's like, so that's acceptable. You can't,
Speaker 1: you know, and they're like, you can't have a hate
Speaker 1: filled post. But you know, maybe this person just got
Speaker 1: it wrong. And it's like, see anyone that's that's a
Speaker 1: denier of that or deny a climate change. They've not
Speaker 1: just got it wrong. They're not blindly, you know, ignorant
Speaker 1: to what is going on. They are provoking, being provocative.
Speaker 1: They've been deliberately obstinate, and they're just trolling the rest
Speaker 1: of us for no apparent reasons. So let's let's stop
Speaker 1: giving these people a voice in a platform because it's
Speaker 1: not a valid perspective. And and I think the world
Speaker 1: is waking up, and I think that is it's not
Speaker 1: entirely a generational thing, because there are young people who
Speaker 1: have these ridiculous viewpoints as well. But we need to
Speaker 1: just fucking get on with it, grow up and just
Speaker 1: realize that that is not you know, and now I'm
Speaker 1: now about to move into free speech.
Speaker 2: You know, this is the thing.
Speaker 3: Now you can kind of do what you do a
Speaker 3: podcast on each of these exactly, sadly, and that's.
Speaker 1: Why we're in such an important part of this century.
Speaker 1: And because everything is at the moment feeding into everything
Speaker 1: else where. It's such a crisis point of values that
Speaker 1: we actually everything does lead into everything else. And I
Speaker 1: just I just want us all to as much as
Speaker 1: possible getting the same page and start just like, let's
Speaker 1: be honest, let's be sincere about things that are important,
Speaker 1: and let's just have compassion for each other. Let's have empathy,
Speaker 1: but let's try and fix things. Let's not just just
Speaker 1: point blame as well, you know, like you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm laying into governments and stuff, but also I'm taking
Speaker 1: my responsibility. But we need to just fucking do something
Speaker 1: about We need to pull together. The right people need
Speaker 1: to get together, and that is what's happening. I feel
Speaker 1: like there's just wrong. People are shuffling away, and I
Speaker 1: think that's fine. I think that's sorry.
Speaker 2: I'm going to ending in a weird perspective.
Speaker 4: It's fine.
Speaker 3: It's important to say. We never really talked about music.
Speaker 3: We never really talked about loads of stuff that you've
Speaker 3: been doing in the last few years. But what I
Speaker 3: feel like is that what we said has been really
Speaker 3: really interesting, how people have been enjoying listening.
Speaker 1: So I feel that, yeah, I mean, we've just kind
Speaker 1: of scratched the surface today. And I mean because we
Speaker 1: discover about ourselves and when we're talking about this, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a great thing process for me as well
Speaker 1: to talk about. And I think for me when when
Speaker 1: I'm talking about music all the time, there are some
Speaker 1: points where in this day and age, I think, fuck,
Speaker 1: all I do is is play a couple of tunes.
Speaker 1: And I do want to contribute more to you know,
Speaker 1: and I feel very blessed to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: But as I get older, I do realize, actually, you
Speaker 1: know what, there's so much more in this world. It's
Speaker 1: so much more important, and music is always going to
Speaker 1: be so important to me. But that shift had a
Speaker 1: slight shifting consciousness that I would almost rather sit that
Speaker 1: we talk about things that are on our doorstep right now,
Speaker 1: and and entertainment kind of as I say that the
Speaker 1: cultural icons that we grew up knowing about, it's going
Speaker 1: to be a different set of icons in a completely
Speaker 1: different field. And I think that's necessary. I think that
Speaker 1: is necessary. The art and everything's still so so so valuable,
Speaker 1: but we need to have life alongside it, or else
Speaker 1: nothing's going to feed the art, you know, or else
Speaker 1: everything just fucking dies, you know. Anyway, noted