[Transcript]
ANDREW JOHNSTONE
Q&A WITH SAM SCOTT OF THE PHOENIX FOUNDATION
THE PHOENIX FOUNDATION ARE BACK WITH A NEW ALBUM GIVE UP YOUR DREAMS. FOUNDING MEMBER SAM SCOTT TALKS ABOUT LIFE, MUSIC AND THE ALBUM.
1. You are the offspring of legendary satirist Tom Scott. Please tell us something about growing up in the Scott household.
Well in the 80s especially I remember a lot of interesting characters coming through our house. People like David Lange, Sam Hunt or Dun Mihaka. I don’t know if that had any effect on who I am as a musician, but it’s good to know that activists are usually pretty nice and also famous or exceptional people are actual just as faulty and human as everyone else. My mum was the one who actually pushed me to play instruments but it was my dad who played loud classic rock records on Saturday mornings.
2. When did you first start realising that music was going to be your thing? What was the first music you remember hearing and the first songs and artists you fell in love with?
It was definitely The Beatles. Beatles cassettes in the car stereo. I think around the age of8 I heard a few hip-hop records and I remember being mesmerised by the attitude. Public Enemy, Grandmaster Flash; it was the way they dressed as much as anything else. Grandmaster Flash and Furious five looked like punk rock super heroes. I don’t think I realised I could actually be a musician in real life until I met Conrad and Luke. They knew they were going to be musicians and they seemed to think I was going to be one too. So being asked to be the singer in a heavy metal band when I was 15 is probably what tipped the balance from being a chef into being a musician.
3. What instruments do you play and please tell us a little about your relationship with your instruments?
I probably mostly see myself as a guitarist but I do like to dabble on whatever keyboard instrument is at hand. I like machines, I like to fiddle with synths and pedals and samples and recording devices. Changing the way things sound is as exciting as playing well and that is probably more important to this band than having classic instruments and classy tones; having gadgets to make things sound new and exciting. I do feel very close to my Yamaha acoustic. l’ve had since I was 15, it’s not fancy but it plays real easy and sounds great. I’ve written a lot of songs on it, taken it on countless tours. I occasionally try to convince myself l need a 50s Gibson or Martin acoustic but in reality I am very happy with the guitar that I know really well. I have quite a thing for Japanese Teisco guitars. They sound great and are pretty cheap, plus they look like spaceships.
4. Please explain your personal creative process and then enlarge on the theme by explaining how the Phoenix Foundation works as a creative unit.
Well this is a very interesting topic in relation to this album as my creative process, in TPF at least, had to change to fit in with the way GUYD was made. Usually I write (or half write) a song and bring that to the band who then mangle and wrestle it into something we like. But on this record a lot of the tracks started as midi demos (or beatbox iPhone recordings) of Luke’s. He was seeking out new rhythm worlds and was determined to make this album a completely new sound for us. So in order to fit in with that I had to make myself useful and try and find the pop songs within the mangled beats. So it was upside down for us, but that’s what you have to do to not fall into the same easy patterns. In the end every record ends up being a collaboration that centres around the producer songwriter side (Luke, Conrad and me) and then how that is realised by the dudes who can play music really, really well (Will, Chris and Tom).
5. The evolution of the Phoenix Foundation. How did it all come about?
In some ways it feels like three or different bands that just all happen to have the same name and most of the same dudes. We have been doing it for so long that when I listen to the music we made 15+ years ago it’s hard to connect with all of it. That doesn’t really answer your question though! It all came about because Conrad, Luke and I were the three people who really wanted to be in a good band in our 5th form music class. It wasn’t so much shared taste as a shared desire to actually be good. We’ve been trying to get good ever since.
6. You have been together for 21 years. You have toured the world and have recorded 6 Albums. How have you maintained this startling longevity?
I dunno, everyone expects bands to breakup but we just haven’t really had any good reasons to. We’ve talked, as friends about how we can make ends meet as we get older and you know need to feed our kids, but Luke has said, “I have no idea what to do if l don’t make music.” It’s like we have gone past the point of no return. It’s all outlined in the song ‘Give Up Your Dreams’, it’s a nice idea but it’s actually kind of impossible to not want to be successful.
7. The new album is called ‘Give Up Your Dreams’ and the title track (on high rotate on Rip It Up Radio), tells us that you guys are giving up on your dreams of making it through to the big time. Please explain.
We felt like things didn’t go as well with Fandango as expected. I don’t know what we expected really, but Buffalo had been a real breakthrough for us and maybe Fandango was a slight backwards step career wise. But career is just about the grossest word in the world so ignore that last sentence. So yeah, we were extravagantly bumming out that the singles from Fandango weren’t getting great airplay, that sort of boring stuff, and we were on tour with Lawrence Arabia (James Milne). I think he’d already talked to Luke about his GUYD attitude, but he explained to me, at least, in Manchester before a gig. His vibe was that the only way to protect yourself from anxious self-destruction was to stop believing you would ever be successful.
It’s a defensive wall of acceptance in your own faulty, flailing humanity. It definitely struck a chord with me. I wanted to believe it. I needed to give up my dreams. I haven’t of course; I’m watching the progress of the new album with as much self-doubt and hope as always. But at least we got a really great song and album title out of it! And the gig after James’ GUYD sermon was awesome, a really cool venue, James played great; the crowd was very warm to him and us. It was a bunch of friends playing a really cool show on the other side of the world to NZ and I felt like I just had to let myself enjoy these moments. So for me GUYD is about ignoring excessive aspirations so one can enjoy realistic achievements.
8. I would argue that while big time success remains elusive you are actually extremely successful. You are all making a living from music. Who could ask for more?
Well exactly, and that’s a big problem for me with the album title; I do not want people to think it’s a whinge. We are doing fine. We just want to be sustainable and this point we sort of are. If I can spout some cheese it is truly the love we get from our NZ audiences that makes our lives possible. We wouldn’t be touring Europe or mixing with Dave Friddmann or playing on ‘Later. . .With Jools Holland’ if our NZ universe wasn’t backing that all up. I also think a reason we are still around and still doing Ok is because it’s been such a slow burn towards success for us. We were never the cool new band, and we certainly won’t be now! So we’ve never had to come down from that high.
9. The Phoenix Foundation is often referred to as an Alt-Rock band. When I listen to your music I hear an extraordinarily adept pop band whose sound incorporates elements as diverse as The Beatles, Hip Hop. Disco, EDM and Rock while maintaining a unique integrity. You sound very ‘New Zealand’ and by that I mean: quirky, melodic, introverted and inventive. Your thoughts on my analysis and some thoughts on what you think the NZ sound is.
Ha-ha, did I mention EDM to you the other day? We do seem to be using more side-chain compression than we used to but I’m not sure if we really have any Guetta influences. I don’t think there is any such thing as the ‘NZ sound’. There are a lot of New Zealand musicians who support each other and lend each other gear we tour, and promote each other. That’s what makes NZ special, that we don’t have an exclusive scene where genre defines who you’re friend with. I am always super stoked to bump into bands at music festivals from all corners of the musical spectrum. It could be Voom or Ladi 6 and Parks, or Neil Finn, Dave Dobbyn or Shapeshifter or The Clean. . .bands that sound nothing like each other, nothing like us, but these are people who we share the bond of isolation with. That’s what ties NZ bands to each other, we’ve done our thing at the edge of planet earth. Our manager looks after The Black Seeds and us, two completely different bands but we are great ‘band-friends’ and so we should be. We are in a great position in TPF in that we have changed so much over the years that we can really do whatever we want. We are pretty wonky at making hip-hop but we do it. And why shouldn’t we? It may not be our best work, but we’ll get something out of it and so will a few listeners maybe. When we dabble with afro-beat or house or metal we are only doing it out of an honest love for music in all its forms.
I0. Tell us about some of the places you have played around the world and where are you most popular on the international stage?
Most of our touring has been the UK and Northern Europe. We certainly have small followings in a few towns, mostly the places you’d expect; London, Berlin, Amsterdam. It’s nothing huge, but it’s enough to go there and have a great time and enjoy playing music in a new place. I love how with twitter now you get tagged in by little radio stations around the world. We seem to get played a bit on indie stations in Central America. Maybe we’d only get three people to a gig in San Salvador, but man that would be fun.
11. The future for the band, and dreams of the future.
We have some great stuff lined up for the GUYD tour and release. Some of it sounds a bit Spinal Tap….like a tiny G U Y D stone henge. I really hope we pull that off, so silly. We’ll be touring this album for a while and I think the band is all so excited about how far we took the album that we want to go there with the live shows too. And then Luke already has another concept for the next album. I can’t go into details but I think it’s going to require some serious hard drive space.
12. Please Samuel, a difficult question but one I ask often. What does being a New Zealander mean to you personally?
I would like to the John Lennon fifth amendment on this one. I’m not big fan of full-blown patriotism and if anything I’d rather be known as a Pakeha dude from Newtown. If I have to say something then I’ll go back to my point about NZ band; I think being a New Zealander means that I am part of an isolated community that has to stick together or we’ll all fall off the end of the earth.
‘O&A With Sam Scott’ sourced from Rip It Up No. 376, Sept. 2015. Used with permission.