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Rockbites: Where does Freeheat call home?
Jim Reid: We’ve been in London for about, I don’t know, for at least 12 years or more.
Ben Lurie: Feels like a million. We’ve been in London for the past 15 years, actually.
Jim Reid: Around about the time of the last band’s first album I moved to London because in Scotland there was just nothing happening.
Rockbites: When the Jesus And Mary Chain disbanded a couple of years ago did it ever cross your minds to give up rock and roll?
Ben Lurie: Yeah.
Jim Reid: Yeah. I mean, we did for a while. We spent about a year doing absolutely nothing. Sitting around in my living room watching Jerry Springer in the afternoon.
Rockbites: That must have been depressing.
Jim Reid: What was really depressing about it was that we identified with the losers on [the show], you know, sort of white trash... (laughs)
Rockbites: Was it hard in any way coming back to Los Angeles?
Ben Lurie: No, it was quite satisfying to come back and not fuck it up this time. To come back with a new group and play good gigs.
Jim Reid: It was kinda weird. I mean we considered going down to the House Of Blues with a sledge hammer and fucking the place up, smashing it to smithereens. We behaved badly that night, but so did those fucking idiots at that club.
Ben Lurie: One of their mottos is 'Unity In Diversity.' We tried to have a bit of fucking diversity and they suddenly became all unified against us.
Jim Reid: Can you believe that their guys actually put a padlock on the refrigerator where the beers were? What kind of sick thing is that?
Ben Lurie: (laughs) I know! When it was quite obvious that we were in need of more beer!
“We considered going down to the House Of Blues with a sledge hammer and fucking the place up, smashing it to smithereens.”
Rockbites: Sounds like a rough time. (laughs) So I’ve been a fan of your band since Psychocandy...
Ben Lurie: That was our last band. We have a new band now.
Rockbites: Right! OK. Well, I’ve been a fan of your music. Let’s put it that way.
Ben Lurie: Well phrased!
Rockbites: Some of the Mary Chain interviews and reviews that I’ve read have seemed very harsh. Do you have any advice to young bands that are confronted with impossible expectations after they have a certain amount of success?
Jim Reid: My advice is 'Don’t listen to anybody but yourself.' But that advice is useless, because you’re not going to listen to it!
Ben Lurie: Basically, everybody’s got an opinion on what a band should be.
Jim Reid: It’s too easy to lose confidence and to doubt yourself because, like, there’s always people around you telling you how you should be making the records. There’s only one person that knows and that’s you, you and the band.
Ben Lurie: It’s too easy to sort of get caught up in it and think, 'Oh God, I don’t know about this, maybe these people know....' But nobody knows, and so the only thing to do is go with what you’re comfortable with and what you think is right.
Rockbites: Well, I think that’s the only attitude that can endure.
Jim Reid: (some silence on the phone) Sorry, I just poured a glass of water over Ben’s cigarette and he’s pissed off.
Rockbites: (laughs) Oh well... don’t start throwing food or anything. Ben, is it true that you were working at Rough Trade records before meeting Jim?
Ben Lurie: Yeah, that’s how I met Jim. I was working in my capacity as receptionist at Rough Trade, and someone told me about this audition for the Mary Chain, so I auditioned. They auditioned two people, so I had a 50% chance right from the start. And I got the job. And then the other person who auditioned when I did was Phil King, who ended up joining Lush and then later on joined the Mary Chain on bass on the last album.
Rockbites: Where you in a band before that?
Ben Lurie: Only in Australia.
Jim Reid: Which doesn’t really count.
Ben Lurie: Yeah. I won’t mention the name. It was terrible, and we only sold about 93 records—which was quite amazing since we didn’t have 93 friends and family.
“It’s too easy to lose confidence and to doubt yourself because, like, there’s always people around you telling you how you should be making the records.”
Rockbites: So Australia is where you’re from?
Ben Lurie: Sort of. Born in England, brought up in Australia.
Rockbites: Can you describe the connection between The Gun Club and The Mary Chain?
Romi Mori: The connection between Mary Chain and The Gun Club is that Nick played drums for Mary Chain.
Rockbites: Right...
Romi Mori: That’s it.
Rockbites: And he was also in The Gun Club, right?
Romi Mori: Yeah.
Rockbites: I know you wrote Blue Monsoons for The Gun Club. What other songs did you write?
Romi Mori: I wrote them all, or co-wrote them with Jeffrey.
“We’re all going to write for Freeheat.”
Rockbites: Are you writing for Freeheat?
Ben Lurie: Not yet, but she’s going to. We’re going to make her. We’re all going to write for Freeheat.
Rockbites: Oh, excellent. What was the name of the song that Romi sang up in San Francisco?
Ben Lurie: It’s called The Two Of Us.
Rockbites: I understand that Jeffrey Lee Pierce [of The Gun Club] was a Buddhist, and that he had a Buddhist funeral.
Romi Mori: That’s right.
Rockbites: Are you a Buddhist as well?
Romi Mori: Well, we all are in Japan, really. Well not all, but most of us are. But we don’t really take it seriously. He was really into it and, uh, he studied Japanese language and manners and he was just really into Japanese culture and girls, I think. (laughs)
Rockbites: OK. (laughs) And what is the Silverlake Gun Club?
Ben Lurie: Basically, there’s no such thing. That was just what the promoter said. We weren’t allowed to advertise this show [tonight] because of the Troubadour show [last night]. So for some reason he advertised us as The Silverlake Gun Club... it was supposed to be an obscure tip off to people.
Rockbites: I see! So the name really refers to you.
Ben Lurie: Basically the promoter made it up. We had nothing to do with it. It’s really kind of embarrassing.
Rockbites: You’ve said that you all share a common dissatisfaction with music on the radio. Could you talk about that?
Ben Lurie: Well, there’s not many good records out there. There never have been. Basically, if you can’t find good records to listen to the only option is to go and make ’em yourself, which is what we’re doing. And that’s kind of always been what we’ve done in all our bands.
Rockbites: Right. Well, I guess it’s part of pleasing yourself and not pleasing critics or expectations.
Ben Lurie: Yeah, well, you have to please yourself first, and then if you’re lucky it also pleases others. But you gotta set out trying to please yourself. Otherwise you couldn’t stand there on stage and do it. It’d be too embarrassing. You’d be sort of faking it. So, yeah, you please yourself, and if you’re lucky someone else finds it pleasing also.
“[The Gun Club’s Jeffrey Lee Pierce] was just really into Japanese culture and girls, I think.”
Rockbites: With all of what’s going on in the entertainment industry in terms of Napster and MP3 and the mergers such as Vivendi buying Seagrams and so on, do you think the industry is broken in some way, or is it just going through a phase, or what?
Ben Lurie: I think it’s just a great big money making machine that just sort of developed and different people find different ways of making money out of it. But it’s always been this big kind of corporate structure and, uh, you know, that’s just the way it is. All this Napster stuff, yeah, it’s a phase. The Web’s just changing the way the music’s distributed, really. It’s not really changing anything else I don’t think. Ultimately there still has to be people making music. And that’s the bottom line.
Rockbites: What was TV69 all about?
Ben Lurie: TV69 was Freeheat. Basically we just couldn’t decide on a name. We were gonna call it TV69. Then we just felt that it was too obvious, too Stooges related. Basically we decided we didn’t like it and wished we hadn’t told anybody about it. So TV69 is Freeheat.
Rockbites: I see. So was it the four of you all together back then as well?
Ben Lurie: Well, it started as me and Jim, and then Romi joined us, and then we needed a drummer and we thought 'I wonder who do we know that plays drums?' And then we were in the pub and there was Nick!
Romi: (laughs)
“Basically, if you can’t find good records to listen to the only option is to go and make ’em yourself, which is what we’re doing.”
Rockbites: Cool. And what is Nick’s band, Earl Brutus, about?
Ben Lurie: Earl Brutus is probably the greatest band to come along in the last 25 years.
Rockbites: Is Earl Brutus still active?
Nick Sanderson: It’s sort of in a coma at the moment.
Rockbites: (laughs) Is it hopeful?
Nick Sanderson: Yeah, it’s gonna be resuscitated at some point. We ran out of ideas. And if you run out of ideas you don’t do anything, you know, rather than force it. You know what I mean? You just wait and if you have ideas you start again. If you don’t, you don’t bother.
Rockbites: Sounds good. Have you released anything under that name?
Nick Sanderson: Did two albums.
Rockbites: Oh really!
Nick Sanderson: There are a few Earl Brutus tracks you can find through Napster. We did two albums in a really, really short period of time... for us, you know. And we pretty much exhausted it. We’ll be back.
Rockbites: Who else is in the band?
Nick Sanderson: Jamie Fry, Gordon King, and Shin-yu, a Japanese vaudeville entertainer. [note: Martin Wright used to be in the band as well.]
Ben, Jim, Romi: (laughs)
“The Web’s just changing the way the music’s distributed, really... Ultimately there still has to be people making music. And that’s the bottom line.”
Ben Lurie: That’s a pretty accurate description.
Nick Sanderson: You’ll like it, I know.
Ben Lurie: If you like Freeheat and The Mary Chain, you’ll like Earl Brutus.
Rockbites: So besides Earl Brutus, what other bands do you guys listen to these days?
Ben Lurie: I’ve been listening to The Eels new album... that’s a tricky one. I wish there were stacks of fantastic, exciting records but...
Linda: Graham Coxon.
Ben Lurie: That’s Jim’s wee sister Linda who’s got a crush on Graham Coxon from Blur.
Romi, Linda: (laughs)
Rockbites: You’ve said that you’re shunning technology for the most part in Freeheat, getting down to basics. Someone who goes by the name Jimmy-Too Bad in the Digital Hardcore/Fatal band Lolita Storm recently told me that in his view it’s no longer possible to make good rock music with guitars—that guitar music died in the ’70s.
Ben Lurie: Well, that means they’ve got no imagination. You can make music any way you want to. We’re where we’re at at the moment... you can do whatever. The great thing about music is that there’s no rules.
Rockbites: Are you planning to come back to the United States in October or November, as suggested on your Web site?
Ben Lurie: End of October, start of November, we’re doing another short little tour. Pretty much the same places: east coast, west coast, and maybe a bit in the midwest as well.
Rockbites: Are you close to a record deal, or not looking into that yet?
Ben Lurie: We haven’t tried yet. We figure that we’ll go out, play some gigs, and hopefully people will come to us.
Rockbites: What are you looking for in a deal with a record label?
Ben Lurie: We’re looking for a label that’s gonna allow us to develop. We’re not looking for a label that’s going to throw millions of dollars at us and expect us to have a number one hit album immediately. We’re looking for a record label that understands you gotta work on stuff.
Rockbites: Excellent. Well, I hope you find it.
Ben Lurie: Me too.
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Freeheat
