Saint Etienne – Interview – October 2010 [PART 2]
RFB: What’s the easiest song you have written, or the hardest?
PW: Hardest was ‘How we Used to Live’, as it’s so long, and we ended up farting around on different parts of it. That was first time we’d had the opportunity to record digitally, and if you’re not careful it encourages farting around. But I preferred the live version, particularly the end section, Normally I prefer recorded versions but sometimes you end up doing something a little different live, it can feel better,
RFB: Do live versions feed into studio versions?
PW: Well no, that’s usually how bands work, but not us. I wish we did! But we came from a different place. We had a motto, or maxim, that if we spent more than 2 days on a song that meant it wasn’t good enough. We hated the idea of spending days on getting a snare sound right. It can take the fun out of it.
RFB: Now, the reissues…
PW: Well it’s through not finishing stuff that we end up with loads on the archives that when we go back to, sometimes sound pretty good, and they end up as b-sides. For the reissues we found loads of stuff that was unreleased,
RFB: Let’s talk about ‘Side Streets’…
PW: I wrote that one, it’s a good song!
RFB: Each album seems to have a particular shade…
PW: Funny you should say colour, because when I think of the albums I do get a colour in my mind, a kind of stamp. Of what I was doing at that time, that may not come across, but it does to me, right up to the last one, Tales from Turnpike House.
RFB: Have things changed?
PW: Well yes, I’m in Brighton, Bob’s still up in London, while Sarah is in Oxford, so we are deliberately working on things separately, to then come together, to see what each have got. I have a studio at home, well, hold on, I call it a studio, it’s actually just a computer and keyboards, but it does have its own room!
RFB: ‘This is Tomorrow’, one of your best things?
(Phone rings, its Bob, he’s coming down tomorrow,)
PW: It stands on its own, it’s from the film we did at South Bank, and Richard X reworked it and we thought it could be a hit…
RFB: Do you get frustrated when they’re not?
PW: Well it’s all about radio play, luckily we have a fan club and often we release a single and the sales figures tally up almost exactly to the numbers in the fan club (laughs). Actually, radio is such a closed shop; it only takes 1 or 2 people to decide the playlists. It’s what makes 6music so good, it steps off the playlists. I bought a DAB radio just to listen to it,
RFB: I really enjoyed the Richard X Foxbase Alpha…
PW: Yes, Foxbase Beta, he remixed the whole album. It came about when we met doing ‘This is Tomorrow’ and he said how much he liked the album and would like to do a mix of one of the songs. He actually went back to the original tapes and did the whole thing. He’s got a great production flare and we knew he’d do a good job. It was like doing it again but with a big budget! He added loads of things, like getting a real string section in, on ‘Carnt Sleep’, and the kids choir on ‘Like the Swallow’, which is gorgeous.
We based ‘Girl V11’ on Madonna’s ‘Vogue’, and when we did the album live shows last year we had a picture for each of the words, some of which were complete nonsense, but we like putting band names and things into lyrics, like in ‘Finisterre’, we mention (Brighton band) Electralane, and Good Humor’s ‘Bad Photographer’ mentions Ride it dates songs quite nicely. I think World of Twist get a mention on Foxbase Alpha.
We also sampled the drum loop for ‘She’s the One’ from Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Being Boring’, and discovered that Neil Tennant knew about it, Jon Savage told him, and I think he was quite flattered, at least he didn’t get the lawyers in!
RFB: And Richard X left it in…
PW: He did, just at the end, for those worried it had been left out!
RFB: So are you still on Heavenly records?
PW: We are, them and Universal, who’ve been brilliant, but we’ve always been closely affiliated with them, and I hope they’ll be putting out the new one, and the reissues look great!
RFB: Did you write Foxbase as a classic come down record?
PW: Is there such a thing? But no! If we did, that’s the only one.
RFB: How did David Essex appear on Tales…?
PW: Oh, I like that song, ‘Relocate’, no one likes it…
RFB: I do, it’s a couple having an argument about moving to the countryside set to pop music,
PW: The American version of the album replaced it, as they wouldn’t get it. I remember David Essex turning up at my parents house in Coulsdon where I was living at the time. It’s not exactly Hollywood was the first thing he said!
RFB: So what else have you been doing?
PW: Well it’s been 5 years since Tales, and we’ve been sound-tracking a cartoon, 52 episodes, so that was hectic, but it’s not come out yet,
RFB: Is it coming out?
PW: I don’t know! It’s coming out in Singapore. (Laughs). We have also done soundtracks for the BFI DVDs Design for Today (1965), and Designed in Britain (1959), which come out under the radar, they were films made by the Central Office of information to sell Britain abroad in the 1960s its brilliantly shot stuff and we turned the sound down to write new soundtracks. Bob and I did one each. Look out for them!
Saint Etienne’s deluxe editions of Tales from Turnpike House and Good Humour are out now.
[CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE OF THE INTERVIEW]
Artists in this article: Saint Etienne