Interview: Editors [Part I: Touring]

by Mick Lewis
20 March 2006

Tomorrow, U.K. buzz band EDITORS will be releasing their debut LP The Back Room in the U.S. (it had previously been available only on import). Next week they will be in town to play a sold-out show at Webster Hall. They had previously played New York City for the first time in January, with one show at Mercury Lounge and another at Rothko. A couple of days later, BT Editor JACK RABID and I headed over to the groundfloor lounge of the Lower East Side’s uber-modern Hotel Rivington and sat down with the boys to chat about their rapid rise to success. The interview will be prominently featured in upcoming BT Issue 58 (due out in May), but there are some good leftover bits that I will be posting in the upcoming weeks. My thanks to BT Staffer BILLY GOODMAN for the transcription.

Editors (pictured above from L-R):

RUSSELL LEETCH—Bass

CHRIS URBANOWICZ—Guitar

TOM SMITH—Vocals, Guitar, Keyboard

ED LAY—Drums

PART I: TOURING

JR: You’ve got another big tour of the continent coming up I see…

ED: Straightaway, yeah.

CHRIS: We go tomorrow or the day after.

ED: Apparently we got a new bus though, different color and everything…

ML: And what do you do on these long bus rides, lots of video games?

CHRIS: Yeah. Soccer games.

ML: Anyone get the Xbox 360?

CHRIS: No, Playstations all the way, we’re on Sony [for distribution] man, ya know!

ML: So is there an Editors video game coming out?

CHRIS: Yeah, yeah.

ML: Do you watch a lot of films on the road?

ED: Series comedies. Plus we just bought the whole set of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

JR: Oh you’re watching American TV?

CHRIS: Yeah, we like Family Guy as well, we are massive fans.

JR: Well America is just discovering [the U.S. version of] The Office.

ML: The American version is actually pretty good this year. The first season wasn’t that good but this season is good.

CHRIS: At first I thought it sucked really badly, having watched the English one, but I’m actually quite enjoying it now, some great bits in it.

ML: This year’s different, they adjusted the characters… And there is this show called Arrested Development, it’s the best show on TV – naturally they are canceling it! (pause) What were your parents’ reactions to, first of all, leaving behind your degrees and…

CHRIS: They were very supportive. They kind of saw straight away that we weren’t going to get a career out of what we had been doing in our course.

ML: And they grew to accept music as the career?

CHRIS: They just thought, you know, we were young at the time, 22-23…

ML: That was two years ago!

CHRIS: Well, we’re still young.

JR: (kids) You could have made such good civil servants!

CHRIS: Yeah, exactly. They have always kind of supported us in what we’ve wanted to do.

ML: Do any of them have backgrounds in music.

CHRIS: No.

ML: So it’s a totally foreign world.

CHRIS: My granddad played accordion.

ML: Will that make an appearance on a future record?

TOM: Definitely.

CHRIS: You’d be surprised.

ML: Your granddad (beat) playing accordion (laughter all around). THE FIERY FURNACES made a whole album last year revolving around their grandmother.

CHRIS: I did play accordion on one of our demos.

ML: Which one was that? I’ve downloaded some of the demos…

CHRIS: I don’t think these have seen the light of day. The accordion was very low in the mix. (laughter)

JR: (kids) To my great surprise!

CHRIS: I was actually playing the notes and everything.

ML: You would never get JOY DIVISION comparisons again if you come out on the stage with an accordion.

CHRIS: Why not [do it]? (laughter)

JR: All the more reason to do it.

CHRIS: Exactly.

JR: You use a lot of minor chords don’t you?!

TOM: Yeah.

JR: You just favor darker, brooding sounds. I always love that…

TOM: It’s hard to write and make happy music and make it credible. It’s hard to do. As much as the chords are minor, I think there is a lot of melody in there as well—I don’t think we’re scared of melody.

JR: Right, you’re not a doomy band; you’re not ready for the Goth scene.

TOM: People have called us New Goth before.

ML: The black clothing.

JR: (pointing to Russell) He’s wearing blue!

ML: We’ll document that.

TOM: I’ve got a yellow t-shirt under this!

CHRIS: I was going to wear a pink t-shirt today.

ML: Soon you’ll be dressing in Day-Glo colors!

CHRIS: Exactly—since we’re writing new stuff, it’s starting us out a bit more cheery.

ML: Have you been playing any of those songs live yet?

CHRIS: No, not yet. We’re still working on them. By the time we come back definitely.

JR: Some of the lyrics on the LP are not so dark; some of them are very blunt and not necessarily very nice!

TOM: There are some lyrics that are about the darker side of things and the things that aren’t so nice about life. There are also lyrics that are openly romantic. But to the casual observer we get labeled as a bunch of moody bastards. But for people that actually get us, I think they see more than that.

JR: I wrote down one that was on the nicer side to give you ammunition for your next interview. “These dark pubs somehow light up, when I’m with you/I wanted to see that for myself.”

TOM: That’s a romantic lyric!

JR: I give it to you free of charge! Your own lyric.

CHRIS: I’ll tell you something, I don’t play guitar in that line, and I always get paranoid. Because when I’m not playing guitar, I like to have a sip of my beer. And I always get really paranoid because people are thinking, “Oh, he is drinking that because of the line that he is singing”! Every gig for the last year! Even in soundcheck, I think about it…

ML: It’s not a bad idea to coordinate some stage moves around the lyrics. You could tell the audience: “You should have your camera ready for ‘Camera!’”

JR: So everyone should raise their glass really high and spill beer around his head!

CHRIS: So I stop myself during that period and drink during the other bits.

TOM: (cracking up) I love the way that you think, that people are actually thinking that!

CHRIS: Yeah, I got a strange head! (laughter)

JR: Are you ever going to write more slow songs just for a change of pace?

TOM: I think so; we did a bit more writing over Christmas, about five or six songs. And the one closest to being played on stage, it’s another ballad. It has me on keyboards and it sounds kind of like a Motown hymn. We definitely want to push ourselves instrumentally.

CHRIS: It’s like Motown meets VELVET UNDERGROUND—we’re kind of going backward. We are supposed to be Joy Division!

JR: Pretty soon you’ll be doing rockabilly! Then polka. Then jazz and ragtime.

CHRIS: Polish folk.

JR: THE WEDDING PRESENT did something like that.

ML: Yeah! Members of the band are also in a group called THE UKRAINIANS, and released an EP of four SMITHS covers in Ukrainian, which is actually great because the guitar playing is amazing. [For more on The Ukrainians, go here and click on History. -ed.]

CHRIS: There is no limit to where we can go.

[Parts II, III, IV, V, and VI to follow]

Filed under britpop post-punk