Interview: Blue Aeroplanes

The Blue Aeroplanes will be playing at the Fleece on Friday 4th December so be sure to bring your dancin’ feet and be prepared to enjoy guitars by the yard and a career spanning set list. Gerard Langley took a break from preparations to answer a few questions for us.

How different is it being in a band in the 21st Century compared to the 20th Century?

People buy more vinyl now. Otherwise, it’s much the same. Record songs, play gigs. The record companies earn less from record sales, but most of that didn’t filter down to us musicians anyway. Audiences have started to jump around more again, which is good.

The NME, Kerrang!, Mojo, Classic Rock – how important is print media to a working band in the digital age?

Well, I think the fact that the online magazine Louder Than War has just started a print edition is interesting. Print media is very important, but it’s just as much The Guardian, The Times, The Independent as any music monthly.

You’ve an extensive back catalogue of singles, EPs and LPs – any recordings that you regard as the runt of the litter, and would perhaps like to re-visit/ re-record or change?

There’s a couple of drum sounds that could be consigned to the dustbin of history, but mostly we always recorded the same way, even in the Nineties, which was the whole band live in the studio. Used to cause a lot of problems because they never had enough microphones, or space. We had to record guitars in the toilet sometimes. There’s a few songs recorded entirely on cassette, but I like those better than the big drum sound ones.

Social media is alive with criticism of Sim*n C*well and his talent programming, with claims that he is destroying music as we know & love it…what’s your take? Is he the devil incarnate or totally irrelevant to music outside of the mainstream pop world?

Simon Cowell recognised that there was a large audience for unfashionable music, music that none of the UK record companies would sign because it wasn’t cool enough. So he bypassed them by going straight to TV and the music business ended up making £50,000,000 from Susan Boyle, an act it wouldn’t have touched with a barge pole. That also inadvertently created the all-ages audience responsible for Adele’s sales. I’ve got no problem with Simon Cowell.

Prog metal titans Dream Theater regularly perform other bands’ LPs in their entirety – would you ever consider doing so, and if you did, what would you cover? (Could you all even agree on a single LP?)

I’d really like to do Island’s 1971 sampler El Pea in its entirety. Mountain, Sandy Denny, Free, Nick Drake, ELP. In fact, we have already discussed this. Don’t know if we’d agree on a single album, though. It would have to be better than the original. Maybe if it was a semi-piss-take like Camper Van Beethoven’s version of Tusk.

Everyone has an opinion on the way downloading is affecting the pop business model, what’s yours?

Well, it makes music more readily available, which is good in that you can find most things you want. But it also devalues it, which is why people are buying more vinyl now. For bands that want to make a living, it means that merchandising starts to be more significant than the music. So you get better vids and t-shirts and more boring albums.

During their time Elvis, the Stones, the Pistols, NWA, Lady Gaga and others have all shocked the mainstream and their fans’ parents…is there any way that a mere band can cause the same level of outrage and shock in the 21st century – especially given what can be found on the internet?

People’s parents were ready to be shocked by those artists (though did Lady Gaga actually shock anybody apart from some tabloid journalists pretending?). Most of these artists were banned by radio at the time, but there were other avenues of publicity. I’m sure there are bands out there that would be shocking to Adele fans, but they’re not going to hear them. Most of the media is self-censoring now.

In fact, should rock bands even be deliberately trying to shock anymore? If not, what is their purpose…?

Their purpose is to be transcendent, obviously. Failing that, to be entertaining, or at least not boring.

Would you care to estimate what proportion of people who wear Ramones and/or Misfits tee-shirts actually own any of said bands’ recordings?

Very few, probably. But they might have streamed them.

Ever considered buying the Bomber lighting rig from Motörhead, painting it blue and incorporating it in to your show?

Sure. You sponsor us to pay for it and we’ll stick your logo on it.

Oh, almost forgot, we’re compelled to ask you what you think of Jeremy Corbyn (who currently seems more at risk from fellow party members rather than the Government and the tabloids)?

Jeremy Corbyn makes a lot of sense on an individual level, and on a global or moral level (who isn’t for peace as a concept?), but at a national level it’s always going to be tricky to activate people’s consciences. He’d be great working in the Hydra bookshop, though, if he doesn’t make the Westminster thing work.