Frank Turner - Interview

Pure Groove Records

Frank Turner is one of those multifaceted type artists, in that I mean his musical achievements and experiences have been born out of completely differing styles of music. 

Starting his career in his late teens his first real break came from punk band Million Dead, which he fronted and whom released 2 albums to ‘critical acclaim’, during the 4 or so years they were together. 

Towards the end of this time Frank found himself rediscovering the music he grew up with, and started finding a resonance within the world of country and folk. This and the little factor of personal change and maturity, pushed him further away from the politically fuelled hardcore elements that Million Dead essentially stood for.  Shortly after, the band split ironically due to internal politics, thus propelling Frank Turner from hardcore frontman to the folk troubadour he is now famous for.

3 years later and with album number 2, 'Love, Ire & Song', under his belt he is set to continue his relentless touring schedule through 2008 and this summer sees him hit up most of the bigger festivals and some of the smaller ones appropriately nicknaming himself a ‘festival slut’.    

We caught up with him on a very rainy day in July just before his instore set at a packed out Pure Groove Records.

4ortherecord - Frank, you went from front man in a punk band to solo artist, what inspired you to make such a change?

Frank Turner - Well, there were some logistical factors that pushed me into what I am doing now. I wanted to keep touring and I wanted to start touring right away.   Band politics differ in all bands so the idea of putting a new band together just sickened me to my very core.  The whole idea of going out on my own with just my guitar made loads of sense, it just ticked all the right boxes, and stylistically that pushes you in a certain direction. 

4TR - Was it an easy transition?

Frank Turner - Hmmm, you know I have been thinking alot about this recently.  It’s interesting because it’s been quite a long and not always easy journey from my old band and the level of success we achieved, to where I am now.  I am now basically just starting to play bigger venues than we did in my old band and it’s been 3 years with some serious lows in that time.  The question I do ask myself though is that if I had continued playing the same kind of music would it have been easier and I don’t actually know. I suspect maybe a little. 

I’m always amazed at the number of people who say ‘oh I didn’t realize you were doing anything after your old band’, and it’s like I have been on tour solidly for 3 years, I have played absolutely everywhere in this country, I have had magazine features, radio, all that kind of stuff and still some people are very hard to reach in that sense. 

4TR - Like you said you have been touring for 3 years and you have made a big impact as a solo artist so do you get sick of people harping back to your career with Million Dead?

Frank Turner - Yeah, well it’s a weird one because on the one hand I am very proud of everything we did with that band.  Dare I say it and I say it as 1 out of 4 people, I think that we were unlike all the other bands that were around at the time, and I think we made really, really good music that was very original.  I think to be honest we would piss all over a lot of the hardcore bands that are around at the moment and I am prepared to say that. 

But then at the same time, especially with the first record we did, which I think in retrospect is probably the better of the 2 albums we released, that was written when I was like 19 years old and I am 26 now so obviously I have changed as a person.  Especially in terms of lyrics and political statements because we were quite a political band, so it does occasionally get a little tiring being judged on brash kind of statements I made when I was much younger.  Do you know what I mean?  People change in that period of time.

4TR - Do you regret the political associations you had with Million Dead?

Frank Turner – No, I’m not saying all this to disown everything that I said or believed in the past but it’s just people have a habit of kind of pulling quotes out of their ass from years ago. I have been constantly plastered with this tag of protesting despite only having ever written 3 songs about politics out of about 50.  I suppose it's partly because I wrote a song with the word Thatcher in the title and partly because I used to be in a very political band, therefore everyone makes the assumption that I must still be like that.  The band was very much about me shouting at people about what they should and shouldn’t do with their lives and then taking my shirt off and rolling around in broken glass, but those days are gone [laughing]. 

It’s also a double-edged sword and I always remember reading interviews with like Dennis Lyxzen from Refused or Cedric Bixler-Zavala from At The Drive In where they would slag off their old bands and those are 2 of my favourite bands.  That always really pissed me off because it seemed kind of disrespectful and you know I am proud of everything we did with a Million Dead, it doesn’t matter how it ended. When people come up to me and go, even if they say something completely crass and insensitive as “I really loved your old band, but what you are doing now is shit”, which people do on occasion….

4TR - How nice!

Frank Turner - [laughing] Yeah well they are generally like 15 or retarded, or both in fact, but the thing is even though its kind of annoying for me there is still the kernel of a compliment in there I suppose and I guess I will take that.

4TR - In that case would you quite like for in a few years time Million Dead to be this cultish band that people remember. This is happening more and more lately just look at how people are suddenly talking about Test Icicles again because of Dev Hynes and his reincarnation as Lightspeed Champion.

Frank Turner - Yeah right, old Dev. I met Dev ‘cause I found him under my bed unconscious once, now there is a story for you haha!  

4TR – Sounds interesting, tell me more. Is this a recent event?

Frank Turner - I probably shouldn’t go into details actually, no this is years ago but he is a lovely, lovely man. But anyway personally this might sound a little pretentious to say this but someone like Nick Cave and The Birthday Party I think is a cool kind of paradigm.  Most people just know the name The Birthday Party as the band Nick Cave used to be in and the people who are really into that stuff can go and find their records still and as a band they were pretty good at what they did.  But it’s not the same as what Nick Cave does, and I think that’s the nice thing you know.  I don’t ever want to stop people listening to Million Dead if they want to but I just think now I have released more music and written more songs than a Million Dead ever did, and I’m a year away from having been around longer as a solo artist.  So I think it’s not unreasonable of me to start kind of not having very much to say about the band anymore.

4TR - So with the new album, ‘Love, Ire and Song‘ released earlier this year would you say career wise and musically you are more in tune now with something that suits you as an artist?

Frank Turner - Yeah, my best friend actually said to me when I did the very first demos of the solo stuff I did just before the band broke up, that he thought this music was much more suited to my personality and that was a big encouragement for me.  Again I think that’s just to do with the fact that Million Dead was formed and it’s first principles about what we were going to be like were laid when I was about 19. I’ve grown up and changed and musically I have changed as well. I am now much more interested in Neil Young and Ryan Adams and you know artists and music like that. 

4TR - Do you think when writing the new album you achieved what you set out to do?

Frank Turner - Yeah well this is the thing, the question always is what direction is the new album going to take and the answer is simply it will be no different from the first one, because I have already just taken this massive left hand turn in my music career.  I’m really pleased with the new album, and I’m pleased with it because I just think it’s better quality song writing, it’s better production and it’s better playing. It’s not a radical departure; just a better attempt at saying what I was trying to say in the first album. 

4TR – Your 1^st album ‘Sleep is for the Week’ received critical acclaim, have you had the same kind of impact with ‘Love, Ire & Song’?

Frank Turner – Well I seem to be reasonably marmite as far as critics go!  People either go “this is the best thing ever”, which it clearly isn’t, or “this is the biggest pile of shit I have ever heard in my life”, which it clearly isn’t because ‘Fieldy’s Dreams’, Fieldy from Korn’s solo album exists [laughing].  But err I don’t really know, I try not to get involved in critical reaction. People who are paid to have an opinion about music I find slightly suspect, because that opinion is in the grand scheme of things no more valuable than anybody else’s!  What matters to me is that people are coming to the shows and now there’s more and more people coming and they know the words to the new songs as well. That’s the best validation of what I’m doing.

4TR - You have talked a bit in the past about breaking down the barriers between artists and their fans.  How would you say you have tried to make that happen?

Frank Turner - The sing along is the obvious kind of musical way of doing that ‘cos then everyone is involved in making the noise that they are listening to and that’s collectivisation of the musical experience.  Again, the thing is that was an idea I first encountered whilst being into anarchist politics, the idea of rejecting hierarchy and one person being the leader and others the follower.  There’s always going to be an element of that in music because there are always going to be some people who are onstage and some people who aren’t.  I think that the main way you can break that down is to not be a dick, and that really shouldn’t be such a radical statement but it is. There are so many people who see being in a band or having attention paid to them as a license to be an arsehole.  That has just always been a non sequitur to me, and the more of it that I directly experience the more ridiculous it becomes.  What I mean is there are so many people, especially kids and younger bands who are just in a hurry to be dicks to everybody and I just don’t think its anymore socially acceptable to be rude and unkind and unpleasant just because you are a musician, than if you are an accountant.  What’s the difference?

4TR - There is a lot of pretention associated with the music industry and a lot is built around scenes, trends and image.  What do you think of the industry at the moment?

Frank Turner - I try not to think about it is the answer to that!  I think that one can get over analytical about these kinds of things and try and look too hard at musical trends and what’s going to be big and stuff. The bottom line is I have never been particularly fashionable both in my old band and now, and I don’t think I ever will be.  I’m proud to say through hard work I have achieved a following and people come to the shows.  I mean there are people upstairs now (Pure Groove Records) and I think that is solely because I have worked hard and ‘cos people like the songs that I write and its not because the NME told them to be here. 

4TR - You also interact quite extensively with your fans through your blogging.  Is it important to you to keep people updated with what’s going on with Frank Turner?

Frank Turner - Yeah well it’s not quite so conscious as that, it’s just what I do because I enjoy it. There is also a message board on my site which I contribute to, probably for the same reason that everyone else on there does because it’s kind of fun.  I don’t know, with the exception of Iron Maiden who are obviously a different matter entirely, I just never wanted the people who make the music I liked to be aloof and on a pedestal and I never want to be that person either particularly.

4TR – Are there any new artists or any particular music at the moment that you are listening to?

Frank Turner - Yeah loads, absolutely loads!  In terms of stuff in the UK right now The Dawn Chorus are my new favourite band.  Jay Jay Pistolet is amazing, he is a friend of mine; Kid Harpoon is the best song writer in the UK right now; I have got a cd from a band called Team A vs Team B which I have been listening to a lot because it’s really good; I am taking Emily Barker on tour with me, she is amazing; Chris T.T, who is actually in my band today and one of my favourite song writers is coming on tour as well.  It’s not some sort of massively conscious thing I am trying to do, but I generally do have an ear out for new stuff, especially if its got any kind of country or folk element to it, then I am a sucker for it.

4TR - Do you think its an exciting time for new music, because of the uncertainty surrounding the major labels and more people going the DIY or independent label route, therefore giving more people a chance to get heard?

Frank Turner - We were actually talking about this over supper today and I think the answer is both yes and no. I think there is always a bunch of new stuff around that is cool, and I think the Internet helps with distributing and getting new bands out there.  But I often think that things haven’t changed as much yet from the old paradigms as people think they have; they will but we are not quite there yet.  I think that Radioheads’ kind of mess up was that they attempted to go way ahead of the curve with ‘In Rainbows’ but personally I think they were too early. 

www.myspace.com/frankturner

You can catch Frank at Reading and Leeds Festival in August and the album ‘Love, Ire and Song’ is out now on Xtra Mile Records.

Interview by Francesca Strange

Photography by Gareth Jackson – www.myspace.com/jacksonfoto

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