Get In The Van—Interview with Andy Cairns

by Valerie Potter for Metal Hammer (March 2000)

Near orgies, gigs with Duran Duran, living on Pot Noodles and chickens on the backstage rider. All this and more is part of the Therapy? touring experience. Valerie Potter speaks to Andy Cairns.

Metal Hammer: When was the first ever Therapy? tour?

“It was the in the summer of ’90 when we had our own single and our own label. We had hooked up with The Beyond and we did six gigs with them in the UK.”

“We bought an old orange van with the heating broken down which cost us £200, and we organised to stay at various friends’ houses throughout England. We lived on Pot Noodles, and some nights we were playing warm-up sets to 25 people.”

The most unusual thing we ever got backstage was a chicken in Madrid. We’d put a whole chicken on the rider, meaning a roasted one, but when we walked into the dressing room there was a chicken in a cage!

“Two days after we came home the van packed up, I’d been given the final, final warning from work about taking time off, and Fyfe [Ewing—drums] and Michael [McKeegan—bass] had been given a lot of warnings about not attending college, but by that point we had realised that we loved touring and that was that.”

Metal Hammer: What’s the weirdest bill you’ve ever played on?

“It was when we were in San Francisco promoting the Troublegum album. A radio station was doing a big promotion for the opening of a new shopping mall. The bill was Duran Duran, the Cranberries, us, Urge Overkill and Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine.”

“They’d set up a P.A. beside the fountain in the shopping mall, and we went on at seven o’clock on a Friday night to around 2,000 American shoppers going, ‘What the fuck is this?’ When we got upstairs afterwards, a bottle of champagne arrived from Duran Duran—I think they felt sorry for us.”

Metal Hammer: What’s the weirdest venue you’ve played?

“I think we were only the second band to play a gig in Belarus, and they set up an articulated truck in the supermarket car park with a P.A. and a drum kit on it. But it was fantastic—there were 5,000 people in a supermarket car park on a Saturday night, and they were really up for it.”

Metal Hammer: What do you insist is on your backstage rider?

“We went through a phase of getting Subbuteo teams and football jerseys, and then we went through a phase of getting socks, because on tour you get through so many pairs of socks and also postcards.”

“The most unusual thing we ever got backstage was a chicken in Madrid. We’d put a whole chicken on the rider, meaning a roasted one, but when we walked into the dressing room there was a chicken in a cage!”

“The promoter obviously didn’t understand that we wanted to eat it; he must have thought it was for some bizarre Satanic ritual!”

Metal Hammer: What’s the most money you’ve been paid for playing a gig?

“I think we got a hell of a lot of money for T In The Park in ’95—it was five figures. But we don’t actually charge that much; usually our tickets are slightly less expensive than other bands and we sell a lot of merchandise. That comes from the way we did it when we organised it all ourselves.”

We smashed up a lot of gear, and it ended up with me, Fyfe and Michael having a Tarantino-esque stand-off, with Fyfe brandishing a drum, I had a guitar and Michael had a bass with the three of us standing there going, ‘I hate you!’

Metal Hammer: Tell us about the tour when you almost broke up.

“We did a massive world tour with Troublegum, had two weeks off, recorded the Infernal Love album and then went straight off to Asia, LA, South America and Europe twice. I went mad and partied every single night, Fyfe seemed to get more quiet and withdrawn, and Michael drank two-and-a-half litres of water a day and worked out to keep himself sane. By the end of that year none of us were speaking to each other. We didn’t nearly break up, but we got to the point where we got home and went our separate ways.”

Metal Hammer: Which band have you least enjoyed actually being on tour with?

“Not anybody really. In the early days we’d do shows with indie bands like Spiritualised, which wasn’t too great but it wasn’t usually the band, it was the crew.”

Metal Hammer: Have you ever punched out another member of your band?

“No, never. We tend to be more big girls; one of us tends to take the hump, and go off and be silent for an hour. In 1992 when we were recording Nurse, we hired this massive mansion in Ireland to rehearse where there was no phone or hot water. We didn’t go out for the first week until we ran out of food, so we decided to go out for a couple of pints and a takeaway and then it all went off—all of the things that had been getting on our nerves.”

“We smashed up a lot of gear, and it ended up with me, Fyfe and Michael having a Tarantino-esque stand-off, with Fyfe brandishing a drum, I had a guitar and Michael had a bass with the three of us standing there going, ‘I hate you!’ Not one of us touched each other and we made up, but the next day we found our little voice-activated Walkman had recorded our entire argument.”

Metal Hammer: What’s the nastiest practical joke you’ve played on a band member?

“It’s the crew who tend to play them on us! Sometimes you go back into the dressing room and your shoes will be filled with ham, mustard and mayonnaise! We tend not to play them on each other, because when we’re on tour everyone’s mind is fragile enough, and all it takes is one backfiring practical joke to send somebody over the edge!”

Metal Hammer: Tell us your most outrageous groupie story.

“Michael’s the one to ask about that—no comment!”

Metal Hammer: Has there ever been an orgy on the tour bus?

“Very close to it! We went to Canada in ’96, and I was behaving myself because I had just met my future wife. Once I had made that decision it went off for everybody else. We destroyed a bus in Toronto one night—we had 22 people crammed into the back lounge, dancing!”

I got a letter from a girl in Japan in 1993 saying if I didn’t write back she’d kill herself. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t write back—sorry, but it wasn’t my problem!

“The driver was really cool about it—but about five days later we did the same thing again! I’d crashed out in the lounge with various cans and substances lying around, and this guy walked in, took one look at me and went, ‘Fucking animals’. I felt so fucking bad.”

Metal Hammer: What’s your favorite present a fan has given to you?

“Probably the stuff I got last year, because we had our little son, Jonah. At nearly every single gig in Europe and the UK someone gave me a little piece of clothing or comforters or colouring books, and I had a lot of really lovely letters of congratulations which was really the sweetest thing. That meant a lot to me, actually.”

Metal Hammer: What is the most bizarre thing a fan has asked you to do?

“I got a letter from a girl in Japan in 1993 saying if I didn’t write back she’d kill herself. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t write back—sorry, but it wasn’t my problem! And I got a letter from a girl in France around 1995 who had been committed to a mental health clinic. She sent me a brochure on the clinic with directions of where her room was and she wanted to know if I would come and help her get out! I thought it was a wind-up, and then I got a letter a couple of months later with a picture of the girl with her sister, who was visiting her…”

Metal Hammer: Have you ever undergone a cavity search at customs?

“No, I’ve never had the full strip search—thank God! The closest I’ve come is my shoes being searched and all my toothpaste squeezed out of the tube.”

“The weirdest one we had was after we’d had a party one night and these girls dared us to wander down the main street at 12 o’clock on a Saturday night dressed in drag! We did it and someone took loads of Polaroids of Michael in a negligée. Then we went to Japan to play a couple of gigs, and they gave Michael a drug search at the airport and found a bag with photographs in it. They were all pissing themselves laughing!”

Metal Hammer: What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve done on tour whilst being drunk?

“In 1994, we played Rock Am Ring in Germany, and then we played Pink Pop in Holland, which goes out live on Dutch and Belgium television, so they reckon the audience is about two or three million.”

“We’d been up all night and I’d only drunk two or three beers before we went onstage in Holland, but I think there was still loads in my system from the night before. So I walk onstage at the Pink Pop and go, ‘Good evening, Rock Am Ring!’ I thought, ‘Ah, they probably didn’t understand my accent’, but afterwards, it was all, ‘Hey Andy—Hello, Rock Am Ring’—huh, huh, huh, huh!”

Metal Hammer: Who has got the worst body odour on the bus?

“Nobody, really—we’re quite a clean band. I think it’s because the very first tour we did with the Nurse album we were like kids in a toy shop, and there were cans of beer and magazines at the end of our bunks, and our clothes were left all over the floor, and somebody in the band got a rash from not changing their trousers for two weeks!”

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