Infernal Combustion

by Gibson Keddie for Bassist (1995)

Winners of the ‘what kind of music is it?’ question of the year, Therapy? go their own way regardless, Michael McKeegan tells Gibson Keddie.

“We could have jumped on the Good Ship Grunge, but it kind of ran aground a few years ago, unfortunately!” laughs Michael McKeegan. “It’s the easy thing to say that as a three piece, we write melodic songs and we’ve got noisy guitars so it’s Nirvana, it’s Mudhoney, it’s Pearl Jam, whatever. But I don’t really see it as that; those bands, to me, just write heavy pop songs, whereas I think there’s maybe more of an experimental edge in Therapy?, with time signatures, unusual arrangements, even instrumentation. I would say those other bands have more in common with classic rock like Journey or Boston but with a 90s sounds, maybe heavier and dirtier. I think our influences are much wider.”

I would love to be sitting in the office of the managing director of A&M in Los Angeles when he hears Infernal Love. We don’t make it easy for ourselves, sometimes!

Now that Therapy? are enjoying serious mainstream success, the search for the band’s peer group seems to be intensifying, not least on the part of the US market. With an almost ironic relish, Therapy? indicate that they know exactly how to get rid of the rough edges and really clean up worldwide, but to them it’s the rough edges that make Therapy? what it is and keeps the whole thing interesting for them, too.

“Look at Green Day,” Michael continues, “if you took all the original punk bands who had all the ideas but were too ‘dirty’ for the mass market, bands like Green Day have pooled all those bits together, but added a glossy sheen to the production which sounds great on radio and MTV, real mass appeal. And obviously there are loads of young people who weren’t around at the time of punk, so they hear that and it’s exciting for them now. But I think the way we do things is…” he hesitates “…this sounds really wanky, but more…European.” Quirky, even.

“Yeah, quirky. I would love to be sitting in the office of the managing director of A&M in Los Angeles when he hears Infernal Love. We don’t make it easy for ourselves, sometimes!” he grins mischievously, before offering a more considered look at the situation. “I think it would be really easy for us to go down that road, to take out certain swear words and not make the music or lyrics too difficult for people, but that’s not what we feel comfortable doing. I think we’ve got where we are without having to do it,” he emphasises, “and so many people have actually come round to appreciating what we do, and liking our point of view. To grab the Yankee dollar now would be really stupid because we’d blow any respect that we have for ourselves, and certainly any respect the fans had for us.”

Group Therapy?

Perhaps this pachyderm enjoyment of the conscious outsider began in the band’s early days, with the Larne boys playing around the Belfast scene as the roaring 90s arrived. They were always as determined as their aggressive records made them sound, often taking the more established local bands by surprise.

I remember the first set very well; we played ten songs, 25 minutes straight through. Every song ran into the next then we went off, leaving everyone going “What the fuck was that?”

“We were three weirdos from the country compared to the rockers and the punks who lived in Belfast; we didn’t look like a band. Unfortunately in Belfast there’s a bad habit of bands adopting the look and hanging out in the right bars before they’ve written any songs or anything, which always amused me. When we started, we rehearsed for about eight months playing these songs that we thought were great. We never even thought to play a gig, and then a friend of ours heard the first demo cassette that we’d recorded and he said, “Oh, we’re doing a punk gig, come along and play,” so we turned up and it was classic; green Mohicans, crusties, dreads, the lot. I remember the first set very well; we played ten songs, 25 minutes straight through. Every song ran into the next then we went off, leaving everyone going “What the fuck was that?” It took a lot of people by surprise! But we were always considered the outsiders in Belfast, and more so in Dublin, which has a much bigger music scene with all the U2 mafia. We weren’t managed by the ‘right’ people, didn’t rehearse in the ‘right’ places and weren’t signed to Mother Records or Ireland Records, and that used to really wind people up!”

The Therapy? Guide To Doing The (Record) Business

A message of hope from a band out of nowhere who forged their own largely self-promoted path… “We were definitely the ones least likely to,” Michael considers. “We were the underdogs for so many years and we were screwed over live so many times, not by bigger bands as such but usually by their crews or sound engineers, mainly because we played loud and didn’t fit. We learned to do things our own way; we would drive ourselves, and we were really good at setting up our own gear and looking after everything. I would do all the tour managing and all the money, and Andy would drive. That’s where we got such a good DIY approach to things. We put out a record on our own label, and it is quite easy to do, if you really want to do it. We all saved up, went into the studio and got it pressed. I got ripped off and the pressing was shit, but at least we did it. You learn from these things, and that’s surely the point.”

A lot of bands in Northern Ireland get to a certain point, a demo, a record, even an international deal, only to seemingly peter out. “Maybe the music infrastructure there isn’t strong enough. Many bands seem to come up to London just to fall out with each other and split up. We were lucky that we didn’t have to do that, and didn’t end up like Stiff Little Fingers either; an influential band that didn’t sell that many records. That’s an awful pity, because they were brilliant.

We were playing this sold out thousand capacity theatre and he thought we’d be playing to about ten people in a pub! Needless to say, we were signed.

We just gigged anywhere, with everyone. Mostly rock bands, I suppose, but we really got a name as a good live band. When we had those independent singles out on our own label, we were playing to 1000 people a gig in Ireland, really big for there.”

Indie Progress

Original own-label early releases from Therapy? are currently attracting serious collector interest (1992’s 12″ Pleasure Death EP which featured Skinning Pit/Fantasy Boy (sic)/ Prison Breaker/Potato Junkie now fetches around £100, but it was only on white label and only ten copies were ever made!). Early self financed, self promoted cassettes, Thirty Seconds Of Silence and Meat Abstract, were sent to record companies and sold at gigs before local indie label Wiiija heard about the band. Michael continues the Therapy? story. “Wiiija got our tape. They’d obviously heard about us so the guy that ran it came over to a gig. We were playing this sold out thousand capacity theatre and he thought we’d be playing to about ten people in a pub! Needless to say, we were signed. When I think of it now, the way it took off was quite outrageous because Babyteeth, the first independent went to Number 1 in the indie charts, the second to 52 in the national charts. We just could not believe it! I think it was because we’d toured so much round the UK with basically any American band that came over. The grunge thing was kicking off, so these bands were pulling big crowds and we rode on that. At a Manchester gig where we supported Hole all these interested record company execs were there so we got signed up to A&M.”

Live Therapy?

“To help the live sound we’ve got a cello player and a saxophone player with us. We’ve also got a sampler programmed in to trigger little sound effects, so it makes it a bigger sound. The first show was quite nerve racking, I must admit, but it worked out great.” Therapy? aren’t making any bones about their use of samples on the tour. “There are no vocals sampled or anything like that; it’s just little guitar part bits, noises or percussive sounds. It’s all triggered live, too—we don’t play very well to clicks—and tend to move the songs around a lot, like speeding up when we go into a chorus, but I just think it’s natural. We don’t use clicks in the studio, either.”

Album Therapy?

“Six of the songs we’d played live anyway, before we started recording Infernal Love, and in playing them live we realised what bits worked and what didn’t, plus we also did a week of pre-production and demos in November of last year before recording. We could play the songs really well as a three piece when we went in, and it was just a matter of changing arrangements. That was good; usually in the studio it’s the first time Fyfe (Ewing) and I will have heard some of the songs so it’s like, shit, let’s sort some parts to record this. In the past we’d had trouble laying down the drum tracks and the producer would be shouting down the headphones ‘Right, middle eight now’, which is ridiculous. You can really tell if the band isn’t confident on songs when you go into changes, or someone’s counting you through with a recording light on.”

Recording Therapy?

“We could have taken a lot more time of after Troublegum but we were on a roll so we thought why don’t we go into the studio and record it and see what happens. There was no pressure from the record company or our manager to do anything; we just thought we’d take the bull by the horns and do it ourselves. We told them to keep away, and they’re very good like that. It was cool, they just let us tear away.

After the drums and bass and guitars are done, we pretty much do anything when it feels right. If someone wants to do some singing at four in the morning, we’ll do it.

Usually we do all the drum tracks first, and we actually record them at a different studio, because the sound was better. We’ll do the bass next, and that’s good because Fyfe is one of those drummers that, every time he plays a track, his fills are different or he does something unusual, bits that we’ll make a feature of and write a little bass or guitar part round. We were able to record the drums and have a week of where I took the tracks with me, then we started doing the bass, then the guitars, then the vocals on top. After the drums and bass and guitars are done, we pretty much do anything when it feels right. If someone wants to do some singing at four in the morning, we’ll do it.”

Does Fyfe’s always different approach make it difficult to work with at times? “I’d be a liar if I said it didn’t; it does, because sometimes I’m like, here comes my big accent, I’m on it, nah missed… It’s funny because sometimes it’s me keeping it together, and he’s playing around it. I can hear my bass line clanging away and the drummer going all over the shop behind it…”

Favourite Bits Therapy?

“I like A Moment Of Clarity, Me Vs You, Bowels Of Love and Epilepsy. I like those first three because they’re slower songs, and they’re more dynamic, like nothing we’d done before. I was really surprised by them. I think a lot of people were surprised, a lot of people who’d maybe written us off as three chords and a lot of shouting. Then you have Epilepsy and Thirty Seconds, which could easily have been just more Therapy? songs, but because of the time signature in Epilepsy and on Thirty Seconds some of the guitar sounds and arrangements are really good, really unusual for us. But I’m still too close to it. We only recorded it in February so I’m still ‘Ah, I love this number, no I love this…’ It changes, but I think those are the three that I like playing most, live.”

Learning Therapy?

“We did a tour of the States as support with Helmet, and they were brilliant. We’d go on with this huge flair of aggression and adrenalin but half way through we’d lose the plot a bit. Watching Helmet, they would start off with the third song from side two, mid-paced, and they’d build it up and build it up and every now and then they’d play one of their hits; the pacing of their set was immaculate. So we learned that off them—don’t blow all your cookies. Don’t start off with something paced at the speed of light because for most people then the sound is just getting together out front, and people are rushing in from the bar.

I’ve got myself an old Precision now too, and that’s here on the tour. … It’s from 1962, so it’s probably on records way before I was born, which is quite amazing when I think about it.

Also, I’ve been to gigs where there are only a couple of hundred people and you can tell the band are in a really bad mood because it’s not the turnout they expected. What do they do? They start taking it out on the people that are there. Well, hold on a minute, I’d say it’s the people who are at home watching TV they should be angry with, not the people that actually came along. You just think, fuck it, I’ll not come next time.”

Therapy? Live Bass

Aka Mole’s World, the murky twilight depths of a group’s guitar tech… “Michael uses a really straightforward bass setup,” explains Mole, the man who makes it all happen onstage for Therapy? “We use two radio transmitter systems where one is on standby. Assuming the ultimate happens and they both go down, a not unknown event, especially live in front of a big crowd, I’ve got a guitar lead plugged in ready too.

We use some effect pedals in the front end. A Boss compressor, particularly useful on the harmonics in Knives. A Boss Overdrive pedal is next, then there’s a flanger pedal—that’s used for full-on end of set craziness!” laughs Mole.

“The signal runs into a Mesa Boogie 400+ amp head, and again we’ve got an ordinary Boogie 400 head right behind it, as Michael’s failsafe. We take two outs from this setup, one clean and one dirty. The clean and dirty are mixed and sent to the front of house sound and to the Ampeg 8x10 that Michael’s got on stage behind him. We’ll also keep the dedicated clean signal to send to Fyfe for his drum monitor, it makes it easier for him to hear what’s actually happening bass-wise in the song.

Because we use the Boogie amps, we’ve tried to get them to give us some, but they insist we have to use their cabs as well, not the Ampeg, so it’s a no go at the moment! We’ll occasionally use Ampeg SVTs, they’re great amps and that’s what you’re almost always given to use in the States, but the bloody fuses keep going on them. Maybe it’s us, but if it’s not the fuses, it’s the valve seats frying themselves and so on…”

Bass Therapy?

“I’m not exactly Geddie Lee, put it that way” Michael smiles, “But I like that ‘nang-nang-nang’ sound from my Status basses. In the sound we have, with just one guitar, there’s a high end/low end bass thing, and the guitar’s in the middle. Our sound guy’s really good because he accentuates both of those elements during solos and so on. And the Status basses can sound quite dirty too because of the strings banging on to the graphite neck; that clangy, percussive thing which fits in well with the drumming.

I’m really laid back now, but there was a time when I was so wound up, it would always come out on stage. If something was going wrong I would kick monitors over and smash things up and destroy the drum kit …

But I’ve got myself an old Precision now too, and that’s here on the tour. I’ve always pooh-poohed classic guitars or bases in the past; I’d played quite a few and they always seemed to sound shit. But the one I’ve got is brilliant, really amazing. The neck, you can feel where it’s been worn in. It’s from 1962, so it’s probably on records way before I was born, which is quite amazing when I think about it. It’s a great bass, but I only use it for a couple of songs just now.”

Stress And Strain Therapy?

“Yeah, there’s some cracks and scratches and wounds on the basses now but my tech’s pretty good at glueing things back together. I’ve seen quite a few of Andy’s SGs go flying, too, in annoyance. It’s quite funny, you’re playing and all of a sudden this guitar flies across the stage and bounces of the side. But we’ve all gotten that out of our systems. I’m really laid back now, but there was a time when I was so wound up, it would always come out on stage. If something was going wrong I would kick monitors over and smash things up and destroy the drum kit; then I thought, hold on a minute, everyone’s trying their best, because we’ve got the best crew in the world, I think. So now if something fucks up, I just laugh about it. But that destructive element was before the A&M record company days, when we were all really frustrated because we’d all these, in our minds, brilliant ideas and we couldn’t do them because we’d no money, and we felt we were getting short changed all the time. Or we’d come to a venue and be treated badly, and everyone would fuck us about, and we’d just go on and destroy the place. Our destruction is a bit more thoughtful these days! If it goes off, it really goes off, you know? And anyway, see The Who for details, they did it all 30 years ago…

I just like the aggression and the power of what we do, and it doesn’t mean you have to have ten Marshall stacks and wear spandex trousers. There’s a bad and good side to everything; if you can keep it out of parody, it’s a really exciting form of music. Problem is, it’s so easy to tip it over…”

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