PIXELSURGEON: Therapy? have registered on the radar of every hyped-fuelled rock press scene going over the last decade, and you’ve enjoyed your period of big-league fame, but although you are, at heart, a rock ‘n’ roll band, you’ve always transcended convenient categorisation. Has sticking to your guns and evolving and diversifying on *your* terms, made you stronger as a band; more able to simply knuckle down and deliver the goods?
ANDY CAIRNS: For nearly eleven years now, since our beginnings in County Antrim, Ulster, Therapy? have always been first and foremost, fans of music. This has meant that we play whatever the fuck we like regardless of surrounding trends. This has always been exciting for us in whatever incarnation of the band (we started as a trio, lost and gained a drummer and eventually morphed into a quartet) but frustrating for other people in these branded times, who like their cherished ‘products’ to do exactly what they say on the tin.
Our biggest commercial success was in 93/94. Around that time the music influencing us was our old punk and post punk records. The EPs, singles and Troublegum album released in this era sold by the truck full, got us on TV, magazine covers and radio. Post Nirvana, this blend of melodic punk rock and hi-energy aggression couldn’t really fail, however many hardcore punk fans saw this as too much of a departure from our roots. These same idiots would later go on to buy albums by Green Day and Offspring a year later.
Originally, our early records (Babyteeth, Pleasure Death and Nurse) had fused punk, noise-rock and techno/new-beat sounds, and at that time the ‘dance elements’ of these albums annoyed the punks who thought that we weren’t hardcore enough. These same “irritating bloody dance beats” can be heard everywhere today from Slipknot, Limp Bizkit etc, to The Prodigy and beyond.
95’s Infernal Love was released after Troublegum, when the band was fed up with working in the ‘rage-rock for rage-rock’s sake’ scene. We’d been listening to This Mortal Coil, Birthday Party and Big Stars third album. The album was brooding, dark and romantic and spawned the single Diane, a cover version of an old Husker Du tune arranged for just strings and voice.
Although the single was a success in most of Europe; in Britain, in the clutches of Britpop, it wasn’t received very well. One magazine commented on the ludicrousness of a rock band releasing a single driven by a string quartet. About a year later, Verve topped the charts with Bitter Sweet Symphony.
Anyway, I don’t want this to sound like a biography! The next records we subsequently released have been two of our best! 98’s Semi-detached (emotional rock without the angst) and 99’s Suicide Pact…You First (blackly-humourous rifferama with extra distortion).
We’ve gone through a lot as a band but our attitude is simple, if there ever comes a day when we aren’t enjoying it, then it stops. To a degree, the early commercial success of the band means that we can afford to still tour and record, and our live reputation and history of a hard working touring band means that we have a good fanbase world-wide, and because we’ve stuck to our guns it’s a fanbase that’s ready for any artistic diversions we throw at them.
How did you find working with Anton Corbijn for the Infernal Love shoots? Was there a particular reason for choosing him, or was it an A&M suggestion; like, hey guys, you’re big league now, let’s get some classy monochrome shots in the bag?
Anton Corbijn was easy to work with, very relaxed, no fussy lights (he only used natural light) and a gorgeous location (Portugal).
It was strange how we ended up working with him. when A&M asked us who we’d like to work with for the album photos, we jokingly replied “Anton Corbijn!!” knowing that he had previously worked with world famous acts.
However, it transpired that the then managing director of A&M, Osmond Ertegun, knew him from his previous job at mute records where Corbijn had worked with two of his artists, Nick Cave and Depeche Mode. Osmond phoned him up and before you could say “The Joshua Tree” we had a photo session booked!
We went along with it because at that point, things were getting more and more hectic and surreal and the band more and more out of our depth, we just thought, fuck it, in for a penny…
I’m pretty pleased with the results, I think you can tell that we were having fun, which is what we needed at that point, as the previous six weeks had been spent living out of each others egos in the studio.
An interesting footnote to all this was the price… thirty five thousand pounds! Osmond loved the record and believed in it. It was no problem, he said. Spending more money than we were used to (coming from our punk background) was ok as it would add to the atmosphere and feel of the album.
As for the album itself, we normally worked in modest studios, simply out of habit. Before recording, our A&R guy persuaded us that it was appropriate to take “a step up” and booked us into the luxurious (and very expensive) Real World Studios in Bath.
With the album and photo shoot out of the way, it was time to shoot a couple of videos.
We suggested an Irish friend of ours who had done some cool stuff. In stepped the video department to tell us that no matter how “cool” our friends video might look, it wouldn’t get played on MTV, so they spent nearly two hundred thousand pounds on a ‘known’ director to ensure that it would.
Anyway, fast forward to 1998. A&M is announced as finished within the Polygram Group. Our A&R department contacted us to tell us everything was ok, they’d be going to Mercury Records (another label within the Polygram Group) and taking us with them. Our album Semi-Detached had only just been released and although initial sales were slow, with a European tour and word of mouth they were finally beginning to pick up. To seize on this opportunity, we went to our supposedly new label to ask for support for another four month tour of Europe.
Not only did our old A&R ‘friends’ not give us any funding, they also told us we would not be going to Mercury Records. Despite at this point having sold over two million records for the Polygram Group, it was deemed that they had already spent way too much money on the band for what they were getting back. When we asked “what money?” they replied, “well…there was the Corbijn photo shoot, Real World Studios, a couple of flashy videos…”
By all accounts, Infernal Love seems to be the album you’d rather forget for various reasons, and you’re often quick to dismiss it as the drug-fuelled, pretentious song writer phase. Now you’ve had time, I assume, to reflect on that period, are there any songs in particular that you’ve grown to love again?
Only recently have I begun to like Infernal love. At the time, because of all the pressure that was involved with making it, I found it hard to listen to. On reflection though, it was the only time I hadn’t tried to lace the songs with as much black humour as before.
I was dealing with genuinely uncomfortable feelings and a sense of alienation and loss which people found hard to take seriously. After all, I wasn’t a shrinking wallflower like Kurt Cobain, a crippled everyman like Eddie Vedder or a super sensitive romantic like Richey Manic. I was Andy Cairns, the happy-go-lucky gurning punk-metal loon who liked a drink or two, didn’t act like a spoilt rock star and turned up for his interviews on time. Not a good role model for the dispossessed!
My favourite tracks on the album are probably Jude The Obscene and Bowels of Love. I also like the tone of the album now. Listening to it is almost as if I’ve accidentally stumbled across a private radio broadcast.
Strangely enough, despite the panning it received at the time from critics and fans alike, people I’ve recently been meeting at gigs (especially our recent US tour where the album was hardly pushed at all) have been telling me that it’s one of their favourite Therapy? records. Better late than never I suppose.
Posted on Tue, 23 April 2002 at 21:45
