Intervju - Aaron Aedy, Paradise Lost Paradise Lost har i mitt tycke, ett av 90-talets starkaste album i bagaget, nämligen "Draconian times". Det var med denna milstolpe jag upptäckte bandet och jag är evigt tacksam till en gammal lumparpolare som spelade plattan om och om igen på sitt logement och därmed fick mig upplyst. För fyra år sedan hade jag nöjet att sitta ner med bandets ena gitarrist, Aaron Aedy, i samband med att de besökte Stockholm på sin "Symbol of life"-turné. Han visade sig vara en trevlig britt och när nu senaste alstret "In requiem" har sett dagens ljus, tyckte jag att det kunde vara läge för en ny pratstund. Aaron ringde upp från London och samtalet kom bl a att handla om nya plattan, som är något av det bästa de presterat, kommande dokumentärfilmen, arbetet med producenten Rhys Fulber och hur illa det kan gå när människor väljer att ladda ner istället för att köpa. Hi Aaron! This is actually the second time I talk to you. We talked in Stockholm when you guys were here for the "Symbol of life" tour. AA: Was that in the café? Yeah, the café just outside of the venue. AA: Yeah, I remember. About the new album? It´s heavier than hell I must say. AA: Have you heard it all? Yes I have. It sounds brilliant. I´m wondering, did you all decide to write heavier stuff or was that just the way it developed? AA: The thing is that we´ve never ever planned an album, really. There´s not like a board meeting and we go "Ok, this is the masterplan for the next record!". We don´t really do that, we just see what happens. We´ve been enjoying how much energy and more powerful the songs, that we´ve been recording lately, have been sounding live. I think we´ve been trying for a few years really. With "Symbol of life" we were trying to get what "Believe in nothing" sounded like and it sounded so much better live than it did on the record. Every album we seem to have been trying to recapturing it. Using Rhys this time again has been great and Jeff is a fulltime..., well, he´s actually been in the band for two years now. Whereas when we did the last record, he had only been in the band for a couple of weeks before we started going into production. He´s managed to get his own sort of stamp on it. Getting Mike Frazer to mix it was a big step. I was really excited when I heard we got him. He´s done AC/DC, Metallica, Slayer, The Cult! Loads of people and I was really excited when I found out we had him to mix it. I think it´s just we´ve been really enjoying playing live and the feeling of the energy on stage. I think the new record, and I am seriously bias, but I think it´s really good. We´re all very pleased with it. It´s cool. We´re just looking forward to playing it live. A guy like Rhys Fulber, who you´ve worked with before, what does he bring to the process of working on the new album? AA: Rhys likes to be very involved. The thing with Rhys is that before we used him on "Symbol of life", he had been nagging us since about "Draconian times" to work with him, because he´s a big fan of the band. His ambition is to make the ultimate Paradise Lost album. That´s what he wants to do. And he isn´t just a producer, he´s actually somebody who cares a lot about the music and not just about the paycheck. He actually wants the best for the band and having that sort of input, you know, sometimes we can be rehearsing things and we´ll send them to Rhys and if he´s like "Mmm, you know what? Maybe you should try this or that´s cool" and that´s good. To have an outside, sort of perspective while you´re doing it. He´s got good visions and a good ear for a good tune. He´s a good friend and he´s really fun to spend time with in the studio. He really does help you to do the best you can for the band. It´s just a great working relationship. When it comes to the next album, would you consider working with him again? Turn it into a Bob Rock/Metallica kind of thing? AA: (laughs) To tell you the truth and I can only speak for myself, but me and Nick had this chat the other week, and if there´s nothing too wrong with it, why do you need to fix it? He really is good to work with and it might come to a point where he might get sick of us (laughs). But you can´t predict the future and you just know when you´re writing the record if it´s right or not. I like Rhys a lot and I really like working with him, so I can´t see myself not doing it in the future, but the future is there to happen. Concentrate on the day. When did you start working on the new album? AA: We started, probably in spring last year, but we were doing a lot of....man I got sick of flying last year. I think we did something like 100 -150 flights. We just seemed to be flying all the time. From Mexico to Brazil to Chile to Argentina and we just seemed to be going all over the place last year and we always had to get up at 3 o´clock in the morning to go to the airport. So it was quite a tiring year, the first six or seven months of last year and then we really got down to it from September and onwards. Rhys came over and actually it might´ve been August, because he was over here working with another band. It might have been Mortiis or something and he said "How you doing?" and we said that we only had about three or four songs and he just went "Great, I'll come up and have a listen.". Now he lives in Canada, on the west coast of Canada, so it´s a long way, but he was in the country and we did a bit of pre production in about August or something. Then we started piling into work seriously in October. We had to stop for a couple of weeks for the Opeth tour, which we'd promised to do in advance and it turned out to be really good fun. I mean, the Opeth guys are great guys and we´ve known them for quite a while. Then we just started knuckle down really and started recording in December. I did all the rhythm guitars and Jeff did his drums and Steve did his bass before Christmas in England. For a vocalist, you can only spend so many hours a day singing or the throat will close up and you lose days anyway. You can only get two or three hours out of a singer, so Nick and Greg, to save money, they flew to Canada for a couple of weeks and sort of swapped. When Nick couldn´t sing anymore, Greg recorded his solos basically. Pretty much the way we normally work, but it just worked out cheaper than having to rent a studio. We only needed the accommodation of the real studio the first couple of weeks or so, because everyone needs to be there when you´re lying down the guide tracks for everyone to record and stuff like that. But then after that, Greg and Nick can be on their own somewhere. Do you remember the first song you wrote for this album? AA: I think it´s one of the b-sides. We have like rough names for all the songs while we´re writing them, because Nick writes melodies before lyrics most of the time. They´re called concrete lyrics. It´s probably...I think it´s called "Morbid" as a rough track. It´s one of the b-sides anyway. Is that when you felt that this is the direction we´re going in? AA: No, I don´t suppose by the first one. I think about the time we got to the third track it was seeming like it was all getting pretty heavy. The first couple are probably the ones that ended up as b-sides to be honest. Songs like "Never for the damned", the first track, that was about the fourth one we did and it was about then that we went "Yeah, that sounds pretty cool!". It´s a great opening track and it really hits you. And I gotta say that Holmes sounds just like Hetfield. AA: He wouldn´t thank you for that! (laughs) Well, if anybody tries to growl in tune, I suppose. I think that´s what Hetfield said, "Shouting in tune!". He got compared to him years ago, around "Icon" and yeah, he wouldn´t thank you for that. (laughs) Well, he sounds a bit more aggressive. AA: That´s thye nthing. Nick´s voice has improved so much over the years and especially since he stopped smoking a couple of years ago, his voice has gotten a lot stronger. To be honest, now that we´ve been going on longer and we´re all a little bit older, he understands that he hast to take care of it a bit more. I think he excersises it properly, warms up properly before a gig and just generally takes more care of himself. And for that reason it has improved massively. He takes it more seriously than he used to do. About the title of the album? Was that just a thing that popped up or did you have different ones that you were thinking on calling the album? AA: It´s horrible naming an album! That´s why we just called the last one "Paradise Lost". (laughs). But really, Nick hade the name for a song "In requiem" and then we just thought "Why don´t we just call it that?". It sounds right for Paradise Lost, so that was it really. It just sounded pretty cool! A guy like Mike Frazer? When that happens and you´re about to mix the album, is it you guys that decide who you want to do it or the label gives you a couple of names to choose from? AA: It´s all down to us. Totally. I think it was Nick or Rhys´ suggestion. He lives in the same town as Rhys, but Rhys had never met him and I´m not sure if it was Rhys or Nick, because they talk quite a lot on the phone. I remember Nick telling me about him and showing his website and I was like "Hey, I know this guy! Awesome!". We´ve been really lucky all the way through our career, really. Except for "Believe in nothing". That one got remixed because the record company, EMI, wasn´t happy with and to tell you the truth it wasn´t recorded the best really, because it wasn´t the best vibe when we did it. Record companies have always let us do what we want. We´ve been really fortunate. I think, when we did "Host", EMI wanted a heavy record and I think they were a bit surprised. (laughs) People said "Oh, you´re on EMI! You went commercial!". EMI meant to do it but they didn´t. I think they were hoping for a heavier record. When we did "Believe in nothing"...we normally record in the countryside and we all live together for the vibe. For that one, we recorded it in central London and we just recorded one by one on our own, so there was no vibe and your on your own all the time and it just wasn´t any vibe, so it just didn´t feel right when we recorded it. That one got remixed because it didn´t have the same vibe as the others. I think that´s where we learned well, why we always go away together. We´re really good friend and we actually enjoy each other´s company. We´re probably better friends now than we´ve ever been. We´re very fortunate. Cool! About the recording of the album and all the stuff you can do in the studio, does it ever get to the point where you say that ytoui have to stop adding stuff, mixing it or whatever? AA: I think we certainly got a bit like that when we were doing "Host" especially. Even "Symbol of life" to a degree. But I think with the last to albums it has been more organic band wise. It´s more about the band, atmosphere and so on. So for this album, no not so much. Especially this one probably. It was more going into the studio and rocking it out really. I mean, I did half as many rhythms as I normally do. I mean, ever since "Shades of God" and onwards, all the rhythm guitars was me and Greg always does the solos. It just seems to work that way, but normally I do four tracks of rhythm and on this new one I´ve only done two, so it just got a really cool sound or what we thought was a really cool sound. And I said that just in case we don´t like the sound, let's do a DI version as well, so we can re-amp it and then they went over to Canada and Rhys called me up and said "Aaron, I´ve found this tube amp over here and it sounds phenomenal. We´re just putting the re-amp of your guitar through it!". So, it´s like I´m playing it and I´m glad I had the idea because the guitar sound is so much better. It worked out really cool, so I´m really pleased that I thought of that, to be honest. Nice! I´ve got ask you about this documentary "Over the madness" done by Diran Noubar? Did you approach him or did he come to you? AA: He came to us. To be honest, he´s an old fan of the band and even said that he used to have a poster of Greg on the wall. He is a documentarist and he did a... Yeah, the documentary about Armenia. AA: Yeah, about the Turkish blockade of Armenia. I don´t know much about it, but there´s a lot of bad blood there. It got brushed under the carpet. But he´s also done one on Castro and he´s doing another one on a Formula 1 driver at the moment. So it´s very much his thing, but Paradise Lost was his favourite band while growing up, so he approached us and he flew himself all over the world to meet us and interviewed us in different places and we didn´t see a reason why not. I think it´ll probably be something for the fans more than the casual documentary fan. It´s not Spinal Tap! It´s litterary the band going through the history. I suppose for a fan it would be quite interesting to hear how our memories of it all are. It´s quite funny. There are some funny bits, because the band are all seriously funny guys and a good sense of humour. The trailer was quite funny, because it showed four of us saying a different version of what happened at our third ever gig. (laughs). I said we got paid £1.25 and I think Nick said we got paid in chips and Greg said we got paid with beer. It´s interesting. I don´t know whether it´ll do anything to be honest, because even fans of the band might get bored watching it. But I found it quite interesting watching it because we were all interviewed totally separately, so it´s quite interesting in that way. I think some of the stuff he recorded when we were backstage and bored and just doing jokes on each other, I think that´s probably funnier and a lot of that is in the short version. He´s about to do a long version, which probably will be very boring to most people. It´s neither official nor not, it´s just something we allowed him to do. It was all on his own. When was it done? Last year? AA: Yeah, it was last year. He´s got some other people from other bands talking about us as well and what they think of us. Some really nice comments by people which is really nice. Ok. Other things. You´re playing in Israel! AA: That´s right! Is that a first time for you? AA: No, it´s probably about the fourth time. We haven´t been there since ´96, I think. The first time we went was in September ´92 and still to this day it´s probably one of the best tour/holiday we´ve ever had. The guy flew us out there for five days and it was nice and hot and we only had three shows, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, but they were all within a two hour drive from the hotel and the hotel was right by the beach in Tel Aviv, which was glorious. What the guy did was he got us up at 10.30 every day and took us sightseeing, so we went to float in the Dead sea, went to the Wailing wall, Jerusalem and all the markets. It was like a holiday with a few gigs around it. That was the first time we´d ever done anything like that. We´d only just started touring a lot then. Are you nervous about going there? I mean, there´s a lot of stuff happening there. AA: I check with my wife. She deals with a lot of foreign countries, the X-Box market, so I always ask her "Do you send your people there?". And I always look at the foreign offices advice and they say that if you´re up by the Gaza strip, be careful, but Tel Aviv is far away from any trouble. I don´t know. You´re always worried. But I´ve been more worried about the plane falling out of the sky. But it´s like a friend says, because I live in London, he says "You´ve got more chance of getting bombed in London probably!". It´s like "Thanks Steve!". (laughs) You´re heading out for the US with Nightwish in October? Are you into their music? AA: No, not really. It´s not really my kind of thing. I like the people in the band. I´ve never talked to the old singer, but the guys in the band are all really cool. To tell you the truth, we supported at a London show about a year and a half ago and watching them live, it sounded infinitely better live and I could see why they do really well. They´re really good at what they´re doing, you know. They´re the best band I´ve heard of that sort of thing. I do appreciate them, but to be honest I haven´t listened to a great deal of material, so I can´t really say without listening to a lot of it. It wouldn´t be fair! You just can´t listen to everybody. And sometimes, especially if you´re touring, the last thing you want to listen to is more heavy metal. And you´re playing with Type O Negative in the UK. AA: Yeah, that´s about a month and a half away (19-21 June). That´s a nice package! AA: Yeah,, they´re really...well, I only know Josh and Pete to be honest. I´ve met them before. I mean, Pete´s a star! He´s so funny and I like the guy a lot. He´s got a great sense of humour, but I haven´t seen him for a long time. I actually interviewed him, not too long ago in Stockholm. AA: Oh yeah! He´s a funny guy! AA: He is. It´s like watching Jackie Mason on stage. Once you can understand his accent, he´s hilarious. I went to see them in London on their last tour about three years ago and there was loads of girls there because it was Pete Steele. I went to the bar around the corner after it was over and the girls went "Oh, why didn´t they play just the singles?", because they opened up with...from the first album "I know you´re fucking someone else" and they played the full song and that was the first song of the set and it´s so long and doomy. I thought it was ace, because that´s my favourite and the girls were just like "We want Black no 1". It was quite funny. But I thought it was great. He was hilarious between songs, so I´m quite looking forward to seeing him really. What about Sweden then? AA: Hopefully...well, I´m not sure about festivals at the minute, but that´s the weird thing with the album coming out in late May. Nobody books tours between May and September because it´s festival season and nobody will go because they´re to busy saving up for festivals. At the minute we´re looking to hopefully do some of a European tour because normally we go out for about 8 weeks and we´re looking at getting about three weeks, maybe four weeks before the Nightwish tour. Late September/October if we can fit it in and unless something else pops up. Then maybe, once we get back from Nightwish, we´ll finish up the rest of Europe, so hopefully we´ll be coming back to Sweden. It´s always been really cool. Yeah, I´m really looking forward to it. Do you have any plans for any future collaborations with anyone? Anything going on? AA: Me personally or the band? Well, the band or you personally. AA: Not at the moment no. I´ve done some bits over the years, session work or remixes for people. I´m totally up for doing that again, but it´s just when you have the time really. Rhys called me and he did an album with an Austrian band, L´ame Immortelle. They wanted some heavy guitars for some songs, so I went to the studio where they were doing it and I did about five rhythm tracks for five songs. It was quite fun though and I quite enjoyed doing it. Band wise...we´ve got the new album and that´s all at the moment really. We've got more festivals and more coming in now that the promoters know that the album is coming out. So touring this year and festivals and with a little bit of luck, some festivals next year as well. We´ll see how it goes. If they buy the album. If they don´t buy the album the promoters won´t book you. (laughs). But fingers crossed, it will do well. The whole thing with buying albums these days and downloading. Is that something you´re afraid of? How do you look upon it? We talked a bit about this before. AA: It´s really affected us in the past. The "Believe in nothing" album was supposed to be coming out in September 2001 and then it needed remixing and then it moved into what they called "superstar traffic", which is basically a Christmas release. So they decided to delay it until February, but they had already given out promos of the album and someone put it on the internet before it came out, so that really fucked that up to be honest. But what can you do? It´s really annoying. People think they´re sticking two fingers up to the record companies, but the record companies are the first people to be paid, it´s the artist that don´t get paid. And if we don´t get money we can´t...because the less money you get, the less you can afford to record in good quality. Some new bands have to hold jobs down. It´s very difficult. Do you have any thoughts on what will happen? The record companies have to come up with something. AA: I think the I-tunes and the downloading is just getting past that whole generation. There´s a whole of people and I think it´s gonna take another five years. A good five years now at least. There´s a whole generation of people that believe they have the right to get the albums for free. And then they go on blabbermouth.net about artists...and hang on a minute, I´ll come around to your house, take your telly, because I haven´t got one and then I´m gonna go to the bank and have them to let me off my mortgage, because I believe I should have a free mortgagee. (laughs) It´s interesting because I´m a teacher and I don´t think anyone of the kids I teach has ever bought or will ever buy a record. They just download, that´s all they do. AA: It´s difficult. When I was a twelve year old kid you had one guy on the street who bought an album and two of you taped it. But now only one person has to buy it in the world and everyone can get it. That´s the ridiculous thing. I think Linkin Park, in five or four years ago, had the biggest selling album of the year and they sold four and a half million. The biggest selling album ten years before that was Madonna and she sold forty. Now, bands are touring to make money and they lose money on albums. When we were touring "Draconian times", to make sure we had a top show, we took two trucks, a couple of buses and an eight week tour would cost us £300.000 and you sort of put that as a loss, a tax loss whereas now you don´t make anything like that. It´s very difficult. Now everyone is trying to make money on the tour and all the bands are touring, so the agency is paying less because there´s a larger selection. Then you´re trying to make money on t-shirts. It´s ridiculous! It is. But the new album sounds great and it´s really heavy. And I haven´t downloaded a song. I´m 36 and I know nothing about computers. I still buy records. AA: Right! Me and Nick are computer geeks and I actually don´t have anything illegal in computer software. There was a number of years ago when I did, but when everybody downloaded the "Believe in nothing album", that was the day that I went "That´s it!". Got rid of it. It was only a couple of bits of software, but that was it. But it´s nice to be a man of principles. Totally! I can´t wait to see you guys here in Sweden and I wish you all the best with the album and the Nightwish tour and hope to talk to you soon again. AA: Say hello when you see us in Sweden! Absolutely. Will do. AA: Alright! You take good care mate and have a good day! Bye!
|
|