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_Stuart Richardson - Lostprophets (21/01/2012)

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_ We caught up with Stuart Richardson, bassist for Lostprophets, to discuss their latest album ‘Weapons’, their long awaited return to Australia for Soundwave, playing clubs in the nude and how there is always one guy in the doghouse.


Hey Stuart, how are you doing!
I’m doing awesome!

 
That’s good! Where at you at the moment?
I’m in my house in LA right now.


The band have made the single ‘Better off Dead’ available for free download on their site before the release of the new album’ Weapons’. Can you shed some light on why that decision was made?
Yeah well basically we just wanted to fucking pick shit up straight away! It’s like a lot of bands there’s this big fanfare about stuff and we just wanted to just come out and just give it to everyone for free, we were like let’s fucking do this! We picked one of the songs off our record, which is probably one of the most provocative songs on our record, as in it’s probably one of the most divisive songs on our record, we said fuck it, let’s just put it out and see what happens.

You know in the past we would overanalyse things, we’d be scared to do things because ‘maybe this person won’t like it or may this person won’t like it’, I don’t give a fuck anymore. Any of the songs on the record because we wrote them all we love them all so we just wanted to give one away for free. That’s the way it is and the good thing about this song, is that it completely came out of nowhere. We were jamming in the studio one day, we practically wrote that song in like an hour and then recorded it straight away and then we went home that night to put the vocals on it and when we came back in the morning it was mixed. We did that song in February last year, second day in the studio.

We’re the kind of band that will go in the studio and we’re not afraid to try different things out and I would say ‘Better Off Dead’ was kind of out of our comfort zone because we didn’t know if Ian’s delivery in the verse was too uncharacteristic, so for the longest time we were like oh don’t know bout that song, and then we listened to them all in a row and were like, that song is fucking awesome! So we just put it up and that was that!


Leading off on that question, ‘Better off Dead’ reflects some strong sentiments with a lot of key words like freedom, justice, revolution and religion in the lyrics. What was the inspiration behind this track?
Well obviously you’d have to ask Ian about that, because he wrote the lyrics.


Well what does that song mean to you then?
To me well, basically summed up, I think the line is ‘I’d rather…’ I can’t remember what the lyrics are! We’ve been mastering the record for days so I have like every song in my brain right now. The line where he’s like ‘I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees’, which is basically how everyone in the band feels about the record, and about our future as a band as well.

 At this moment in time there are so many bands who are just coasting, there are so many bands that are doing things for the wrong reasons. You should almost be privileged to have another shot these days you know what I mean, to have another shot at a record, to have another shot to go on tour. As in you can’t take things for granted like it was a couple of years ago. I don’t want to go into this whole spiel about the music business, but you know times are tough these days for everybody. This record, the whole song to me, the lyrics in the verse are more personal to Ian but to me and my mission statement for the record, is real honesty, and I would rather go out fighting than passive and just take shit off people. That’s basically what the song is all about.

I never actually thought about it too hard before until now, but that’s what I took from it. You know what they changed the title right at the end because it was always called  ‘Better Off Dead’ as a working title but it never actually said ‘Better Off Dead’ in the song and they wanted to change it to something ridiculous near the end. We were like ‘Better Off Dead’ is a fucking slogan, better off to be dead than to fucking live your life in misery, trying to compete with other people or trying to do what people want.


Your fifth studio album ‘Weapons’ is due for release in April and was recorded in LA. What was the writing / recording process like, and has it differed much from your previous albums?
Umm no, it was pretty much the same except, ummm no it was pretty much the same! We all collaborate even if it’s just sitting on a computer or a little laptop or something, and we all collect riffs over a couple of years, in between every record we’ll write ten songs, half a song, two seconds of a song, a lyric. At one point before we start the record we’ll pool them all together and we sift through them before we sit down and write and that’s phase one. Then phase two is everybody gets into a room and we usually write songs straight away from like nervous energy.

Then you go into a studio and you write more songs again, then you sit around for fucking two years waiting for Ian to put lyrics on again and that’s the way it is, every record. I love it! He’s a fucking such a lead singer though, all singers are the same ‘I’m just gonna sit around and take my time’

 
That’s all right; let him do all the work!
Oh c’mon all he needs to do is write some fucking lyrics!


Lostprophets have a huge following all over the world and you’ve played some massive venues. Does it feel strange switching between playing arenas and clubs? Which do you prefer?
It’s cool because whenever you tour you’re always playing at different places so one minute you’d be playing in the middle of Germany to like two people because you haven’t been there before, the next day you’ll be playing an arena somewhere else and the next day you’ll be playing a festival where nobody’s heard of you in the middle of Hungary. You never really become complacent or bored, because every day is a different experience basically so to have a favourite is really, you know, but playing small shows is always great.

You’re not afraid to let yourself go at those shows because it’s kind of like being around your family, you’re not afraid to be yourself in front of your family, whereas when you play festivals, you gotta try a little bit harder, you got to be on your best behaviour. You do a small show you’re like ‘Ah whatever, you seen me naked before its fine’ you just get your dick out and have fun. So basically we’re nude at our club shows, so look out for that.


So you’re set to play Soundwave in February, it’s turning out to be a pretty epic line up, is there anyone you’re looking forward to seeing?
Ahhh refresh my memory of who’s playing I will tell you, you have it in front of you, if not I’ll look it up right now.


We’ve got System of a Down, Marilyn Manson, Trivium, Lamb of God, Mastodon, Limp Bizkit, its endless…
Everybody! A couple of our friends band’s are playing, from Wales, people we grew up with, it’s gonna be awesome, I haven’t seen some of these guys for a long time. I’ve seen System of a Down too many times because I’m a bit obsessed with them, so I’m not really too excited to see them anymore, because I’ve already seen them like a fucking bajillion times. Marilyn Manson is always cool to see, Mastodon are awesome. I’m just excited to just get out there and play, it’s going to be the first time we’ve toured in a year and a half.

I’m just really excited to get to Australia basically, because I fucking love Australia.


Yeah you have only been out here a few times and it’s been a while, so you’re looking forward to it?
Yeah it sucks we were over like two years ago I think, and then we were over like six years before that, so we never got a chance to come over because we were told nobody cared about us over there and then we came over like two years ago and we got a thousand to two thousand people tearing it up and we’re like ‘really?’ This is pretty good to me; it may not be arenas but fuck me there are fucking two thousand people here and that’s enough. It’s good to be able to tear it up you know for us it’s like really? People are here for us?


What can festival goers expect from your performance at Soundwave this year, any surprises?
We’re not really one to like pull out the inflatable dragon, we’re not on of those kind of band, you’re not gonna seeing anything crazy like that. You’re just gonna see a band that gives a shit and a band as I said it becomes more and more a privilege to play shows. You’re going to see a band that actually loves to play shows and has a great time playing shows and knows how to do a fucking show as well. We’ve been touring for fifteen years now; we kind of know what we’re doing. Ah I sound like a dick when I say that, ah you know we’re seasoned enough, we’re seasoned pros darling.


It’s been mentioned that this new album is a return to the early / classic Lost Prophets sound, did you set out to get back to your roots or was it something that just happened organically?
The way I like to think about this record is it’s like an AC/DC record where you kind of strip back all the bullshit, you’ve got to, not to keep fucking bang on about it, I didn’t realise what a big deal it was until I’d done a couple of the interviews today and I realised how much it affected me. Like I already said, the music industry is really fucked right now and more than ever you have to care about what you’re doing.

If you’re going to open your mouth you should fucking say something with it you know what I mean? You should take every opportunity to put out I don’t know, positivity and you should mean everything you say. This whole record for us and to me was trying to be as honest as possible in what Lostprophets is. So if that means we went back to basics and we went back to our old records that’s because that’s where we are and that’s who we are. It’s that simple, it wasn’t like ‘Well maybe this record sold more and this record sold this many, so if we combine each record.’ you can see lots of bands thinking like that, it wasn’t like that with us. It was more like get into the studio and does it make you fucking feel good when you play this song. We had a bunch of good songs that we recorded which we hadn’t used. We like them and they’re good, they just don’t kick our asses enough, so every song on here is honest and we believe in it a hundred percent.

I always thought the last record was the honest record, the last record was the bruised and broken record, you could see our fucking bones on the last record, it was almost like you know the part every Rocky movie where he’s beat down to the floor, that’s ‘The Betrayed’. It’s like we could barely stand when we wrote that record. I didn’t realise it at the time but looking back on it, we had so many knock backs and we had such a hard time personally and our personal lives and everything was just fucking falling apart, everybody was having a hard time. This time I feel like we’ve got back up on our feet and realised what we want to do, and that’s not taking anything away from ‘The Betrayed’ I produced that record, so I think it’s fucking amazing, I love that record. I feel like maybe we perverted ourselves a little bit on the last record to make it even more abrasive than we needed to, it’s almost like we were trying to prove a point on our last record whereas this time we kind of realised what we’re trying to say again, if that makes any sense.


The new album gave you a chance to collaborate with producer Ken Andrews who’s worked with bands like ‘A Perfect Circle’ and ‘Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’. What was it like working with him and how did you get together?
 Well I started to produce this record myself, and then somewhere along the line my bad memories from the last record flooded back. Seriously it sounded too easy, we started writing the songs, and it felt like it was just too easy writing the songs and I was getting scared that maybe we weren’t pushing ourselves hard enough. So when it come to looking at new producers, I looked at all the guys that who were out right now and I wasn’t really excited by anybody.

So I dug a little deeper and I was listening to Failure, which is a band I just love, this is a long story, so I’m gonna tell it anyway, I ended up looking them up and realising the singer for Failure was now a producer. So I got my manager to call him up and ended up going out to lunch with him and he was a cool guy and he’s a song writing guy. My biggest thing was we can produce the album ourselves; I just wanted meet someone who could push us song writing wise and that’s why I picked him. Like I said I was a big fan and I think it’s kind of an unorthodox choice for a band like us, he’d never worked with a band like us before and it wasn’t a safe choice either. You kind of know when you go with this hot producer you’re going have this kind of record, but we didn’t know what kind of record we were going to have with Ken and that’s really what excited me.


There seems to be some big personalities in the band, do you all get along, especially on tour?
Umm there’s always one guy who’s in the doghouse, you know what I mean, there’s always one guy who’s a prick. There has to be because it gives us nothing else to talk about otherwise. On tour you can get into a bubble, unless you can fucking say ‘oh fucking Jamie’s a prick or Ian’s a prick or Mike’s a prick’, there’s always one guy who’s in the doghouse, it makes for some interesting times and some aggressive conversations.

Not to fucking sound smart, but we’ve known each other for fifteen years, unlike some other guys who’ve known each other like fuck, Mike and Ian have known each other since they were four years old. So that’s like almost thirty years, like you said we are all strong, it does cause a lot of friction, it isn’t always fun, but it’s always interesting.

 
I don’t know if you’re aware but there’s been a lot of tweets from Mike and Luke, about all the interviews they’re doing today, its about two hours of solid interviews.
Yeah I didn’t know, not to use a bad pun but I’m part of the anti-social network you know what I’m saying? I’m not really like a big social networking guy; I don’t really tweet or really much of that stuff. When I’ve got something good to say I’ll say it, but for the most part its like ‘Eh today I got up and went to the studio’. I almost think if you’re in a band you should be mysterious.

When I was a kid I was like ‘I wonder what David Bowie is doing right now, or whoever my favourite person was at the time, I wonder what they’re doing right now’.  Now you’re like, I wonder what Lady Gaga is doing right now, oh actually she’s doing her nails, or I wonder what this person is doing, oh they’re just taking a shit. It’s too much information; I don’t regard myself as in celebrity like David Bowie or something, but let’s keep some fucking mystery!


Can you give me any details on what future plans there are for the band regarding tours and single releases, besides Soundwave and the sideshows that you’re doing here?
Well you know right now we’re mastering our record, actually today, I’ve just come off the last couple of days of just nailing everything down. So right now we’re picking the first single, we’re going to be shooting the video for it over the next week or so, we’ve narrowed it down to three songs. I have no answer on what it is right now, we’re hoping to have a new single out in like three weeks four weeks.

My big thing with this, as I told you with ‘The Betrayed’ we’ve had some hard fucking times in this band. The last couple of records we haven’t had a chance to tour them properly, for many different reasons, and this time we want to get out there and we want to actually tour long enough to state our fucking claim. I always feel like just as we’re starting to get warmed up, the rug is pulled away from under us. Whereas this time round I want to go out and I want to tour the ass off this record and show everybody what we’re made of.


Nazia Hafiz


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Lostprophets will also play two exclusive sidewaves with Kids In Glass Houses and Versaemerge.
TUESDAY 28TH FEBRUARY - SYDNEY, THE METRO- LICENSED ALL AGES
www.ticketek.com.au

THURSDAY 1ST MARCH - MELBOURNE, BILLBOARD- 18+
www.oztix.com.au
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