I had the great privilege of chatting with them just before their first UK show supporting Airbourne at the Pyramids in Portsmouth and the outcome was pretty damn hilarious. They were down to earth and easy to talk to, I had a blast interviewing them and hopefully you will all enjoy what you are about to read. If you didn't manage to see them on this tour you can always catch them next year at Graspop Metal Meeting in Dessel, Belgium as they have just been confirmed along with Carcass, Black Sabbath, Soundgarden, Paradise Lost and many many more!
This evening I
have the great pleasure of talking with the lovely guys from Orange Goblin, how
are you all?
Ben: Very well
thanks.
Joe: Good.
Martyn: You say lovely…
Chris: You spelt ugly wrong!
I can change my
mind by the end of the interview! You’re here for the start of your UK tour and
you’re supporting Airbourne, but that’s by no means the start of your tour
overall is it?
B: Tonight is the
151st show of the year, and we’re at the stage now where ‘just kill
us’ please.
Where have you
been so far, any countries you’ve not been too before?
B: We started the
year with the UK tour, 16 shows I think in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, all over
England. Then we went straight over to Australia for the very first time, did
five dates of the Soundwave tour and 2 side shows there with Kyuss Lives! and
Red Fang, which were amazing shows. From there we went straight across to the
USA and did 7 weeks in North America with Clutch, came home had a little bit of
respite, and then went out and did 3 months in Europe on and off which was
plagued with problems to say the least.
We got through it…
J: I didn’t.
B: No Joe didn’t, Joe came home
because he ruptured his achilles…
J: My leg fell off.
B: Then we had a short break before
going back to the USA and doing another 8 week headline tour over there, trying
to follow up on the Clutch tour sort of thing. Came home, had 48 hours in our
own beds, then went out to Greece and did some shows over there, we’ve had a
week off since that and now here we are. It has been a very hectic year.
And London is
going to mark 160, how do you manage to do that many shows and not go insane?
Or are you already?
C: Insane before
we started.
M: Insane by day 1.
C: I think what does help is that we
do know each other, VERY well so you know.
B: You can make a halo out of his
hair, he’s like Bill Murray.
J: It also helps that I’m an angel.
C: Because we’ve
been doing it for 18, 19 years now so it’s not as though we’re doing anything
new. We’ve been doing it so long that doing shows and touring is part of the
norm. We’ve only ever done, the longest
gig before was 6 weeks but you know, we’re used to it.
B: It’s been a
real step up because as Chris said, in the past I think the most shows we ever
did in a year was like 70 or 80 back in 2002 after Coup de grace did a European
tour, went straight over to America to do a tour and then that was it, died out
a little bit but this year its just been nonstop. But, on the flip side of the
coin we kind of expected this, it was what we wanted, made the decision to do
this band as a profession at the start of the year, we knew it was gonna be
hard work, involve a lot of shows, and luckily we’re nearly at the end of it
and we’re all still vaguely friends. We’re all still in pretty good health, its
been an eye opener this year, a real learning curve as to how rock and roll
works when you do it for a living. It’s a lot different to how people think.
J: That sounds
weird, because we have been doing it for 18 years but it actually has been.
B: There’s this
fairy tale that it’s the greatest job in the world; getting drunk and doing
drugs every night, staying in fancy hotels and touring the world, and getting
to see all these amazing places but you don’t. You’re stuck in a van
C: I think this
year’s probably the least we’ve done of any of that, doing the rock and roll
lifestyle. We’ve done hardly any of it. Unless you’re in a hotel every night,
with luxurious surroundings then you *could*.
M: We’ve been
sleeping on floors…
C: Yeah, we’ve
been crashing on people’s floors and that.
J: But I mean,
saying that, when we were in Australia we were staying in flash hotels, we did
have it good. It’s like a rollercoaster, you go up and down and then you end up
sleeping on someone’s floor at 3 O’clock and there’s cockroaches crawling all
over your face but then the next night you’re in a lovely hotel, so you take
the good with the bad. I think that’s what’s kept us going.
B: Certainly
keeps you grounded.
You’ve touched
slightly on the fact you’ve had a lot of things go wrong, do you want to go
into some more detail…
B: Wait, hang on,
how long have you got? I mean we’ve been going 18 years, we’ve had shit going
wrong since day 1.
J: I guess you
have to remember that all bands have things going wrong, we know we’re not the
only ones.
M: We had a lot
go wrong in a short space of time.
B: Like we said,
Joe snapped his Achilles and had to go home, luckily our guitar tech stepped in
and was able to play a set.
C: It could have
been a lot worse we could have been not able to do the tour, two blow outs on
the autobahn.
M: Not just
punctures, they were real blow outs.
B: Airlines lost our merch, airlines
lost our cymbals, shows getting cancelled, venues burning down.
C: Equipment
failures, hotels not getting booked at 3am, it just went on and on and on.
M: All in two
weeks is insane.
B: That was a
very testing period for all of us…come on let’s just go home.
J: In the middle
of a heat wave in Germany, hottest summer for 30 years.
C: Not only not
having a guitarist but the van had blown up so many times that the driver gave
up and went home and left us. Having
just a few days to find a van from somewhere, with a driver to get us around
the rest of the European tour. We had like four days to do it, [B: We flew to
Portugal to do a festival] we got a van from Czechoslovakia with a German
driver who met us in Norway.
B: It was a German driver who had got a van and
some backline from Czech Republic, and met us in Norway while we’d been to
Portugal, London and Oslo. The logistics were a nightmare.
M: He didn’t stop
fucking eating.
When things go
wrong like that, how do you manage to keep your momentum?
B: (Pointing at
J) He makes us laugh.
J: I weren’t
there, that’s why they were so miserable.
C: You’ve just
got to get on with it, the thing is..[B: It’s your job] because it’s not a
hobby.
B: Everybody has
a bad day at the office, no matter what job you do.
C: If we don’t do
shows, then we don’t get paid and then my kids don’t go to school so you’ve got
to go on, you’ve got to carry on.
You’re supporting
Airbourne, I’d like to know how that happened. I don’t necessarily associate
you with them.
B: Our agent said
we’d been offered the tour…did we want to do it? We’d just missed out on the Motorhead
tour, so we said yeah alright. I don’t think there’s much difference between
Airbourne’s crowd and our crowd, they are a great rock band and we like to
think we’re a rock band.
M: Their tour
manager used to be our tour manager and their sound man.
J: and the fact that they’re a
little bit AC/DC, I guess we’re more Motorheady, Black Sabbath. You never know,
some of their fans might even like us.
B: It gives us
the opportunity to play to a crowd that might have never seen us before.
C: That’s what
it’s about, that’s what this year’s been all about, reaching out new countries.
B: We noticed
that in North America on the Clutch tour, we were playing to 1500, 2000 people
a night over there and the amount of people that we found who had never heard
of Orange Goblin before, even though us and Clutch aren’t dissimilar. Despite
the amount of time we’ve been going, we’re still reasonably underground. It’s
been a year of just trying to put ourselves in front of as many faces as
possible and hoping that someone don’t end up in tears at the end of the night.
C: Hopefully they
do. If you’re a fan of Airbourne, you’re a fan of classic rock and our roots
are firmly in classic rock. We’re in the same pile, and in the past Sabbath and
Motorhead…it’s all the same thing.
Airbourne are much
younger, so there are a lot of younger fans out there …hopefully you can teach
them something.
J: Oh no chance,
we won’t be able to teach them anything. It will be the other way around. They
don’t need us teaching them anything, they are doing alright.
B: We can teach
them how to play spoof.
M: It’s a new
game.
If someone has
never heard of you before, what tracks would you point them towards first?
B: Probably Black
Sabbath. I guess it would be anything on the set list tonight, we’ve tried to
condense 7 albums into a 40 minute set…a little bit of every album, encompasses
our whole career. Red Tide Rising off the last album is obviously our most
successful single to date, I think. We did a video for it and its had over
300,000 hits on YouTube.
C: If you listen
to the latest album, that’s the culmination of where we’ve come so far and it
kind of gives you an idea of where we’re at and what’s made us.
B: If you speak
to hardened Orange Goblin fans across the board, you get a lot of different
reactions to what’s our best album. A lot of people like Time Travelling Blues,
a lot of people like The Big Black so it’s hard to pinpoint.
J: It does seem
that when we do these types of shows it seems to be the title track, first
tracks of the album that people know.
C: That’s because
they don’t listen to the rest of the album.
[All naming tracks] Scorpionica, Time Travelling Blues…
B: Neither of
those are first songs on the album.
Non Orange
Gobliny, if we were to go into your tour van and press play what would you be
listening to?
B: A little bit
of everything really, we’ve all got open minds and eclectic tastes, ranging
from [C: It goes from Jazz to Grindcore] yeah anything from Miles Davis right
through to Pig Destroyer. [C: Dolly Parton] Norwegian black metal. We all grew
up listening to different things; Chris came from a more Punk hardcore
background, me and Martin we were into thrash and death metal, Joe was from a
blues and 70s rock and we put it all into a mixing pot and the result is Orange
Goblin. We’ve always said we’ve ripped off so many bands that we’ve created
something quite unique.
Question courtesy
of my 6 year old: If you had a super power, whether you used it for good or
evil what would it be?
C: Be invisible
B: Mine would be
being able to shit money.
M: Is that a
super power? Or a condition?
B: Yes, coz I
shit a lot! Yeah I’d like to be invisible.
J: It’s an
obvious one, but flying would be the best one.
B: I’d like to be Batman. [C: Batman
doesn’t have superpowers] Batman doesn’t need super powers. [C: He wasn’t a
superhero] He’s hard as nails, he’s a dark knight. [C: It’s a point but it’s
true]. What about you Martin?
M: I couldn’t
care less.
Slowly coming up
to Christmas, [J: Very quickly coming up to Christmas] do you have any fantabulous plans, are
you Christmassy people or are you in the humbug category?
B: I hate it, I’m
in the humbug category, the only reason I bother with it is because I have a
son and if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t bother.
M: I don’t hate
it, I just find it massively frustrating because everyone’s struggling for
money you cannot get what you want for your loved ones because you haven’t got
the money and it becomes like a really infuriating time of year for me.
[B referring to The Treatment’s sound check in the
background: They’re playing rock and roll is my business.]
C: I don’t mind
it, this year’s gonna be nice because I haven’t got to work over Christmas.
It’s nice when you can get all that stuff done and sit down with the kids, open
the presents…Christmas day is good, it’s the lead up to Christmas day that’s so
stressful.
B: I like the
eating and drinking bit.
J: Christmas Day
and Boxing Day, that bit’s great, it’s just the pressure leading up to it. It’s
like getting married. Too much pressure to get the right stuff.
M: Christmas Eve
is nice, because it’s too late then. Sorry, I didn’t get you anything!
Christmas Eve is a nice time and then everything after that is just bollocks.
B: Mulled wine…
J: I had some
mulled wine in John Lewis, it was really nice. [M: Ooo look at him!] I had
cheese and chili popcorn, [B: The upper crust him] [M: He’s drinking mulled
wine in John Lewis] [B: I had a vimto in T.K Maxx] they were giving them away,
8 or 9 samples.
Quick fire round
next, don’t think about the answers too much just respond.
Snakes or Spiders?
[All] Snakes
Trains or Planes
J & C: Planes
B: Trains
M: Trains, anytime.
Tall or Short?
C & B: Tall
J: SHORT!!
M: …Medium.
Europe or USA?
All: Europe
B: I mean I love the USA but we get
treated a lot better in Europe.
J: As a band you get treated a lot
better, yeah.
M: Europe’s not so far away.
C: You’re not so far from home and
the gigs are a lot closer together.
B: I love the USA, we come from a
generation who grew up watching Jonathan King, and entertainment USA and always
thought I want to go there. I wanna go to New York, I wanna go to New Orleans,
I wanna go to LA…done all that, rubbish. [J: It’s not by the way, sorry] Give
me Leamington Spa any day.
Splitter or Tour
Bus?
All: Tour Bus
M: No brainer
Nigella Lawson or
Miley Cyrus?
J & B:
Nigella!
C: Nigella, you have a good meal and
get off your fucking tits!
B: Is that icing on the top of that
cake there, Nigella?
J: Ah ha, ha ha ha.
Red or Blue?
B: Red
M: Blue
J: Are we talking about wine here?
B: Red, definitely red.
J: I’ll have to go for red.
C: I’ll have red as well.
J: Oh no, I’ll go blue for QPR. [B:
He loves red and blue.] Purple!
Heathrow or Gatwick?
Heathrow or Gatwick?
J: Heathrow
B: Gatwick
M: Gatwick village
C: Stansted
J: Heathrow’s closer.
M: Stansted’s a shithole!
J: Too many planes.
Scotch or bourbon?
Scotch or bourbon?
B & C: Bourbon
J: Neither
B: I mean I like Scotch, you can’t
beat a good aged scotch [J: I might go with scotch just to be different] but we
have a bottle (points to Jim Bean) on our rider every night and we’re quite
acquainted with bourbon.
What other things do you have on your rider?
J: Kinder eggs.
M: We’ve got a box of Jagermeister.
B: Vodka, wine, lager, cider,
Guinness
M: We get a box a day
C: We still have like socks and
cigarettes on our rider.
Last one…if you
had to lose one which would you chose? Big toe or little finger?
B: Can’t walk with a big toe missing. [C: Yeah you can]
M: I don’t really use my little finger.
J: Are we talking right hand or left hand? [B: I don’t think I’ve ever used my little finger for anything] I don’t even like my little finger.
B: You can take them now. (Offers little fingers) They are useless.
C: Fixie [sic] gets by without his big toe, I’m sure it’s fine. [J: Yeah but that’s because it’s him]
M: Our friend shot his big toe off. With a gun.
B: He was cleaning his shotgun and blew his big toe off. He still wears the same shoes.
J: He wore those shoes for about 3 years.
B: With a hole in.
That brings me to an end, thank you very much for answering all my questions. I’ll leave you to get ready in your tiny box of a dressing room. Have a good show.
B: Which involves us just sitting here drinking.
J: Getting ready, as opposed to getting drunk.
All: Thanks very much.
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