Från Fozzie 11, december 2006:
There’s lots of good music. But for a band to really mean something it has to have something that has the ability to seize me and to stay with me.
In Snow Patrol’s case this something is Gary Lightbody (singer and guitarist). For me it is his voice and his lyrics that have lifted Snow Patrol from being just a good band to becoming the very best in my world right now. His voice captured me for the first time three and a half years ago, then in the project The Reindeer Section, where his angelically clear voice presented a collection of fantastically beautiful ballads. Snow Patrol covers a broader spectrum, but the voice is the same.
Naturally, a voice can be interpreted differently by different people; to me Gary’s voice is simply incredibly beautiful, but I’ve also managed to locate three things that are the most special to me: Gary’s way of describing feelings, his way of pronouncing the word “here” and his frequent use of the word “dear”. Little things, but very important.
This introduction might shed some light over the enormous range of emotions that I went through on July 10th and 11th 2006, the days before the Swedish Arvika festival. On July 10th I got a “yes” to my request for a Snow Patrol interview at the festival, and that made me so happy that I ran straight through our office (which is rather big) to my colleagues that I was going to the festival with, and bounced up and down for several minutes, smiling from ear to ear. A few hours of foolish smiling later the realization hit me that I hadn’t gotten to know which members of the band I was to meet, and when the confirmation of my suspicions came in an email the following day my eyes actually teared up: Gary, who had just recovered from a throat infection, didn’t do any interviews at all. I know, it’s really silly. But for some reason Gary’s voice touches me so deeply, and I really really wanted to talk to him. Partly to get the chance to ask about his lyrics, partly to hear his voice. His voice, talking to me.
Two days later me and my colleague Olle (who was filming the part of the interview that I was doing for my job, Musicbrigade) walked onto the backstage area to the Andromeda stage. I had pulled myself together and was happy that I was going to meet Jonny Quinn (drummer and founding member) and the relatively new bassist Paul Wilson - hey, even if they don’t sing they are still two important parts of my favourite band (yes, Snow Patrol have taken over the role as the biggest band in my life, after I finally gave up hope about Eggstone).
If this wasn’t evident by now: I’m apparently still 13 on the inside, even though I’ve passed 30. Right after we came out onto the grass behind the stage building I caught sight of Gary, who was unloading the van about ten metres away, and my heart started pounding and I didn’t hear a word of what Lee and Martin from the record company said to me. There he was. So close but still so far away. But after all, I have met the man before, and I wasn’t giving up easily: I wasn’t going to leave the festival without having said hello to him. But first, it was time for an interview.
Snow Patrol started in 1994 when the Irish students Gary and Mark McClelland met at Dundee University, Scotland. Together with Jonny they formed Polar Bear, which later changed names to Snow Patrol after a lawsuit threat from another band with the same name. They released the debut album “Songs For Polarbears” in 1998 and three years later “When It’s All Over We Still Have To Clear Up”. When 2003 came the guitarist Nathan Connolly had joined the band, and Snow Patrol released their third album, “Final Straw”. The single “Run” opened the big audience’s eyes to the band, and since then they have sold a couple of million albums, toured some rounds around the world, exchanged Mark McClelland for Paul Wilson and let Tom Simpson, who had been playing keyboards with the band for about seven years, become a full member. Paul used to play in the band Terra Diablo, and when touring “Final Straw” Snow Patrol needed someone to add some more keyboards and extra guitar sounds live, and hired Paul as a session musician. And when they needed a new bass player they asked Paul, who was already “in the family”. This spring the fourth album came: “Eyes Open”.
Jonny and Paul were shown to the white plastic chairs we had put in front of the camer, greeted us amiably and sat down. I was a bit nervous, but managed to chat a little while Olle did some camera adjustments, and told them that I had interviewed Gary and Nathan for Fozzie two years ago, and that I think “Eyes Open” is fantastic.
I feel that “Eyes Open” is quite consistent with “Final Straw” - do you think so as well, or do you think that you’ve changed or evolved somehow?
Jonny: - Yeah, I think it is quite consistent with “Final Straw”, and I think it wasn’t really our time after Final Straw to do a sort of Radiohead on it and really turn it upside down. I think we as well… we wanted to get into a bigger studio and have more time, so we just wanted to do something that was similar to Final Straw but make it a lot heavier and a lot of bigger signs and… and just not be rushing it, which we had to do the first time, we have always sort of been under pressure timewise, so we wanted to spend a wee more time on the details, you know.
It’s a bit more epic.
Jonny: - Yeah. It is, yeah. I think we’ve left more space in certain points and then, when it does come in, it really comes in very large.
“Eyes Open” was produced by Jacknife Lee, who also did “Final Straw”. Jonny commented:
- He’s definitely been great in shaping the whole kind of sound of it really, and just been able to be the person to stand back and tell us an overview of what’s happened, as opposed to when you’re inside it, it’s hard to know what the overall picture’s gonna be, but he can tell that early on.
How do you write your music?
Jonny cleared his throat, and Paul stepped in: - People come up with ideas to start off with - Gary writes all the lyrics obviously, but Nathan and I have written a couple of songs on the album, but we just start off with like a small idea and once we’re in the studio it’s like building blocks and just see how that goes in there, that kind of thing. We had about 25-30 songs, and we’d see which ones were the best, which ones we liked.
There is kind of a theme to the titles and lyrics on “Eyes Open”, with songs named “Hands Open”, “Shut Your Eyes” and “Open Your Eyes”. But since it’s Gary who writes the lyrics, Jonny couldn’t give me any details:
- I think the theme’s the same as most of the albums, it’s really Gary writing about heartache and loss, with moments of optimism and happiness.
Does he ever use your lives as inspiration for his lyrics, or is it all his own heartbreaks?
Jonny: - I don’t know… I know he wrote one song about my situation on a Reindeer Section song, which he told me about. The other ones I don’t really know… a lot of times we kind of know exactly what it’s about, because he kind of wears his heart on his sleeve, you know, he’s very brave that way, being able to say a lot of things that maybe the rest of us don’t - but he may do, but he just hasn’t told me yet you know! (laughed a little)
The Reindeer Section is a kind of Scottish all-star band, with somewhere around 20 members collected by Gary Lightbody, who has made two albums: “Y’all Get Scared Now, Ya Hear!” (2001) and “Son of Evil Reindeer” (2002). The Reindeer Section is actually how I discovered Snow Patrol; a friend recommended “Son of Evil Reindeer” and that led me forward to Snow Patrol. Jonny is also in The Reindeer Section, and commented:
- It’s funny, a lot of people find out about us, you know, the main band, through the side project.
Is there going to be another Reindeer Section album?
Jonny: - There will be hopefully, whenever we get the time. It’s just we don’t want to be distracted by doing it - although it’s very quick to do it still takes a lot of organising and you’ve got to kind of tour it as well. I don’t think anyone was going to sign it unless we do some gigs, but then the gigs are really expensive because there’s twenty people and it just costs so much money that you can’t really tour with it. It’s an awkward one you know, I think maybe when we get a proper break maybe we can do it again, maybe with a lot of different people, might be interesting.
The album, back to the theme part - I also read that there’s kind of a theme of magnitude, because of where you recorded in Dingle.
Jonny: - Yeah, it was very dramatic, especially in the winter it can be a really wild sea, crashing waves off of rocks and winds that are really ferocious - people live on the edge of Europe there, and they drink like it as well! (giggled) It was great - in the winter time it’s very… it’s a big tourism place in the summer, it’s a lot of people around, but in the winter there’s no one there, so it’s kind of the right environment to get away and really concentrate on anything you do, a lot of artists around there and they go there because of the solitude, you know. And there’s a lot to look at, mountains, beautiful beaches and things.
One of the things I like most about your music is the dynamics, it can start slow and then there’s this really big sound wall almost. What do you think is the most important thing in a song?
Paul: - In a song? I think dynamics is definitely really important. Melody. (laughed) I don’t know. I think you shouldn’t really restrict that, because you should be open-minded at the start of a song, anything can happen, you know. The dynamics, I think that’s a really important thing about Snow Patrol, dynamics - I never start playing until at least halfway through most songs! (he laughed and illustrated that he has time to look around, have a fag and do a little dance before he even starts playing) But it’s good, the dynamic is much more dramatic when that happens.
Like “Open Your Eyes” and “Make This Go On Forever”, they start off quite slowly and then…
Jonny: - Yeah, there’s no panic to get started, for everyone to jump in together, but that creates a tension which is really good, especially live.
Paul: - The best thing about being a good musician is knowing when not to play! (laughed) That’s the most important thing.
What are your influences, or musical heroes?
Jonny: - All over the place. You know, everyone’s into so much different things. For me, it started out with listening to a lot of like… The Police was the first thing I got into, and then got into things like Zeppelin and then after that a lot of Velvet Underground and things like Stereolab and Sonic Youth…
Paul: - Zoot Woman.
Jonny: - Just like a whole array of stuff.
There are two quite prominent guests on the album: Ken Stringfellow (from The Posies), who plays Rhodes and piano on the two bonus tracks on the album (”In My Arms” and “Warmer Climate”), and Martha Wainwright, who sings a duet with Gary on “Set the Fire to the Third Bar”. Jonny told me that Ken Stringfellow is a fan, so when they asked him to play he said yes. Martha Wainwright happened to be in Ireland when Snow Patrol were recording the album, and agreed to come and sing a song that Gary wrote especially for her.
You’ve done some covers, like “Crazy In Love”, the Beyonce song - how do you choose covers, or why?
Jonny: - Just the ones that people think we wouldn’t do (laughed), so it’s easy. The most far away as possible from us, you know. I don’t think us doing a Foo Fighters song would be that interesting, taking on something which is just completely out of your field, that makes it interesting, you know.
Paul: - Songs like that have such good melodies, pop songs, anyway it’s really easy to turn it into something different because it’s so strong anyway.
The album cover and artwork, were you involved in that?
Jonny laughed a little: - No, we didn’t really like it..! We had an idea of getting artwork from Silas, you know, who makes t-shirts, but things got complicated, and his manager got involved and it got expensive, and we just sort of had to rush around last minute and get someone to do it, and we weren’t really happy, but it was kind of we had to do something, or else the album would have been put back and all sorts of things.
I got the cd plus dvd limited version and there was a lot of photos in that one - didn’t you want to put photos in the ordinary one?
Jonny: - Mm, no. I think it was okay for the limited edition one, I’m quite happy with that. We’d really liked the limited edition box actually, that’s what we wanted the original to go, just black and silver, just be really simple, but everyone said “Well, you can’t do that”, so we went “Okay”.
Snow Patrol had to cancel quite a lot of shows in the late spring of 2006 because Gary got a serious vocal chord infection. The gig at Arvika the same evening was the first after a nearly six weeks long break.
Were you ever worried that Gary’s throat problems might cause some serious problems for you?
Jonny: - Yeah, definitely. It’s one of these things you can’t really get anyone else in to do, you know. It’s so important. And I don’t think we’d even really thought of how important it is, in terms of… when that stops that’s it, we can’t do anything. But I think that he’s learning as well, by doing a lot of vocal techniques before and after the shows, he needs to warm down as well as warm up, the warming down apparently is as important as the warming up. But the management has gotten him the best doctors you can get, like Celine Dion’s vocal coach and stuff, so it should be okay now. But it was pretty bad, I’ve never seen him… he actually went to sing and nothing came out one time, and it’s a terrible thing to have, and I think it’s a big responsibility to feel that you’re holding everyone back, you know. It’s not something I would like for myself, you know. But I think now he’s on the right path, just doing all the exercises, he should be okay.
What’s the best thing about Snow Patrol?
Paul laughed: - Me! And Jonny.
Jonny laughed too and continued: - I think the best thing is that we’ve been around a long time, so it feels quite secure, the position we’re in now, we feel like we’ve got fans that will stick with us for a long time. I don’t feel that if suddenly the fashion changes that we will lose anybody, because we weren’t really on the back of any scene, you know; we weren’t britpop, we haven’t been in the brit rocks, we’ve never sort of been caught up with that, so… it’s great, we sort of exist on the periphery, but in the mainstream, but then you know… it’s just great to know that we’ll have people be around for a long time
Are there any bad things?
Jonny: - No. It’s the best band to be in, really.
Paul: - It’s the best job in the world!
They both laughed, and Jonny agreed: - It is. I wouldn’t want to be in any other band.
Besides the fact that you’re obviously bloody good at it: why do you make music?
Paul: - Ehmm… it’s the only thing we can do. (laughter)
Jonny: - Yeah… I suppose, yeah. I’d be really unhappy doing anything else. I mean, I know a lot of better musicians who don’t do it, but I think we’re pretty good at it by now.
The second single off “Eyes Open” is “Chasing Cars”, which has been featured in the American tv show “Grey’s Anatomy”. Jonny told me that tv shows are a good way of getting attention in the US. In the UK radio is the best way to get people to hear about a band, but in America radio is so fragmented, and it’s in tv shows like “OC” and “Grey’s Anatomy” where young listeners seem to find new bands nowadays.
You haven’t really hit big in Sweden - is there something you’d like to say to the Swedish audience to make them discover you?
Jonny: - Yeah! Well, you know, you just need to catch up with everyone else. (laughter) Well, we’re here today to try and change that, so… a few people today might go and tell their friends that we’re really good. We haven’t played here that much, that’s part of the problem, we played the Hultsfred two years ago, but we haven’t done a lot here, so I think maybe if we tour a bit more and maybe radio picks it up, maybe “Chasing Cars” will be of help to change that.
And now a question that I always ask for my fanzine, but people always have a hard time answering: Which question would you most of all like to answer?
They both laughed, and Jonny said: - And then you’re gonna ask me, is that what it is? Ha ha ha!
Yes, you’re supposed to want to answer it…
Jonny, pensively: - What question… That’s a strange one.
Paul: - “What’s the meaning of life?”
Okay, now you have to answer it! What’s the meaning of life?
Jonny: - Look it up on Google.
Paul: - Music.
Jonny: - There you go.
Paul: - Like one vibration. (laughed)
Jonny, do you have one?
Jonny: - Another question? I think the question is actually “Why is Snow Patrol a really good band, and why do you like being in it?”, but we’ve already answered that one! (laughed a little)
Wohoo, I hit the best question! But is there something more you’d like to add to it?
Jonny: - I just think that we’re a lot different than a lot of other bands - we’ve been on tour for ten years now and we’ve met a lot of other bands, and just in the way that they work, we work in a quite different way, in terms of being a democracy and terms of the way we look after our crew and the way we just like to… basically make sure that we don’t act like rock stars. And that’s kind of rare in this business, and that’s why I really love being in this band. I don’t know if I could deal with any other situation. Most other bands I think at least they have to portray a huge ego if they don’t have it, and I don’t think we ever have. And we laugh, like so hard, sometimes, still, we laugh, we really do. And I don’t see too many bands going ten years that are really laughing as much as we do.
That sounds great. And then the last question: which is your favourite Muppet?
Jonny: - Animal of course. (laughed)
Paul: - Beaker. (they laughed more, and said “Mi mi mi”) Is he Swedish?
No, that’s the Swedish chef, Beaker just can’t speak, I think.
We wrapped up, I gave them the issue of Fozzie that has the interview with Gary and Nathan, and I asked if it would be okay if I joined them to go and say hello to the two of them. Jonny said of course, and we walked towards the stage building. We met Nathan, Jonny gave him the Fozzie, and Nathan remembered me, so we exchanged some words, while Jonny went asking for Gary. Unfortunately he was away doing his vocal warm ups, but Nathan told me to come back after the gig to meet him.
The gig was great, Gary’s voice was back to normal, and they all looked very happy to be back on stage. A little while later I went back backstage in the hopes of meeting Gary at last. I first met Nathan and Paul, and congratulated them on the fantastic gig, but Gary was nowhere to be seen. I was just about to give up my slightly childish idol quest and leave when I met the record company guys Lee and Martin, and stopped to talk to them. Just one minute later Gary exited the stage building and headed straight to us, holding a plate of food. He stopped right next to me, said hi to Lee and Martin, and introduced himself to me, and I noticed that the leg that I didn’t have my weight on actually started shaking! I felt completely ridiculous, but tried not to show it. (I’m not sure why I’m admitting to all of this, but let’s just finish the path I’ve already started…) I told Gary that I thought the gig was fantastic and that I also love the new album. He thanked me, and then looked closely at me and said:
- Didn’t we see each other last time we were here? At the other festival?
My heart just jumped, and I said:
- Yes, I interviewed you for my fanzine, Fozzie.
To which Gary, who has been touring pretty much constantly for the two years that have passed since, and met dozens of journalists, replied: - I apologise for not recognising you immediately!
I couldn’t believe that he recognised me at all, so I was just extremely happy. But things were about to get even better: we talked some more and after I’d told him that I’m just such a big fan and given him some more compliments about their music, he actually asked me for a hug..! Then Lee took two photos of us together, and when I was about to leave, Gary said that it was lovely to see me again, and finished with the words:
- Goodbye my dear!
Remember what I wrote in the beginning of this article? There are three things I love the most about Gary’s lyrics and voice, and the third point was: him using the word “dear”. He called me “dear”. I don’t need to write anything more.
/Pop-Sara
Kristian Anttila var på Debaser Malmö i torsdag. Det var i och för sig inte den bästa spelning jag sett med honom - volymen var lite låg och ljudet lite murrigt och han var lite sjuk - men jag gillar alltid att se honom.
