Translation by Thomas Burgel
The following interview is translated from the American fanzine Puncture, issued
in April 91. But it was made at the end of the last year, when Ride had just finished
their 'Nowhere' tour in the UK and in continental Europe. Interesting, because
it's quite far from the usual sayings of the English press, Ride seems quite ' nude',
whithout being placed in any scene.
Q: On the first EP, the lyrics are often about roads, about car rides. Do they
reflect the band's name ?
Mark : they were referred to the life we were living at that time. This EP
seems so old for us, now... It was written in Banbury and it was our best cure
to escape from reality.
This original idea of evasion probably comes from here. That's how we were at
that time. The lyrics of the album are, in my opinion, very different.
Steve : They are much deeper, more personal.
Q: Is writing a group's work ?
Andy : Generally, one of us brings lyrics, and another the melodies.
Then we melt everything and remove some elements until we have a very different
song. In fact, at the end, we have all equally contributed to the song.
Mark : We often try different versions until we find one which pleases us.
Steve : Or it works at the very beginning. If we don't like the song, we
don't use it.
Mark : Some songs are also written in a very long period of time, starting
from melodies we work on sometimes and which are being created little by little
during months. But some other are written in a short time.
Andy : Some songs were written at the beginning of the tour, then we play
them at the soundchecks, and when we enter the studio, we finish them properly.
Q : How important are the lyrics ? Lots of bands don't really care.
Mark : The lyrics are linked with the music, they both have the same importance
for us. We try to give the same strength to the music and to the lyrics, we want
them to support each other to make something very powerful.
Laurence : The lyrics doesn't necessarily always have to be understood, they
are not mixed very loud.
Andy : They are melted with the song. We express the same thing with a guitar
or drums, but in a way more...
Laurence : more " drums " or more " guitar ".
More " taratatam ".
Andy : More distorded.
Q : There are lots of feelings in your music. It seems very personal.
Andy : We write with our hearts, but we protect people by attributing all
the songs to Ride. Like that, people cannot know who it is about.
Laurence : And also by playing very loud during the gigs.
Andy : Playing our songs live is a sort of therapy for our problems. We include
them in our songs, and when we play them, we are exorcised in some way.
Mark : We write on themes that seems obvious to us and understandable for
all the people. But lots of people can't understand them. If they seem so evident,
it's because we know where they're from, from inside, from what we feel. From
outside, it seems confused.
Q: What is your motivation for creating music ?
Laurence : The music itself.
Andy : The fact that we don't want to do anything else. We wake up each morning
wanting to play music.
Laurence : What's happening around us has no importance. We sometimes hear
brilliant songs, and we just want to do things as brilliant as those, and even
better.
Steve : It's particularly the feeling we have when we see good gigs. After
a good one, we just think ' I want to play'.
Laurence: Mmmm...Sonic Youth.
Andy : What we feel on stage with a guitar in our hands and a huge noise
coming from the speaker behind us is one of the nicest feelings.
Mark : Some people think that we have to be constantly depressed to have
the motivation for playing music. This is not right at all. The inspiration can
come from anything. But some compose more easily when they're getting mad, and
it's when they're getting better that they can write. I wrote lots of lyrics when
we begun and when our career was not at his best. Now things are much better,
and we still write.
Q: What did you see when you first entered a studio ?
Mark : There are lots of things to experiment.
Andy : A lot of these experiences are on the album, like the wave of the
crowd sound on 'Paralysed'.
Mark : On the first EP, we wanted to reproduce our live sound. With time,
we realised that it wasn't always good for a record. And the most important records
are the ones that are still there ten, twenty or thirty years after.
Andy : It was good to seek a live sound at the beginning, and it's always
right for some songs, but now we are exploring new ways. 'Decay' is a good example.
It's a very good live song because it's very noisy.
In the studio, we tried to play different versions, but none seemed as good as
the live one. Then, on the album, instead of insisting on its noisy side, we tried
to make it more original. We want to give their whole potential to the songs recorded
in studio but it's not necessarily by restituting them in a live version. We try
to give them something else, something they don't have on stage.
Laurence : We don't want to make songs that can only be played in studio.
Mark : In a studio, it's a matter of group. On stage, the concerts can be
very different because of the audience, the venue, the sound. I don't like these
doubts. I enjoy keeping the control, if something good is made in studio, it's
really Ride... But I think that if we listen to the tape of a very good gig, a
Sonic Youth one for example, the tape can be awful. Because when we're at a gig,
we can see everything. We do live it.
Andy : In gig, other elements than music are important. All our senses are
working.
Q : The security is very strict in the USA. We never see a member of a band
having a walk in the crowd.
Laurence : I'm looking foward to going in the USA. It's said to be quite
exciting.
Mark : A tour in our own country is more stressing. I feel much better outside
the UK, happier, more relaxed.
Andy : At the beginning, we were only worried about what Oxford thought about
us. Now we're leaving for foreign countries, we may see things in a more international
way.
Mark : We will reach a worldwide level. But in studio, there are only friends,
really.
Translation by Thomas Burgel
A few weeks before Pukkelpop, I told Steve Queralt, who plays the bass for Ride, about my wonder to see their name that low on the bill. But, modestly, he told me that it was alright like that because they could play, then drink, then see the other bands playing. When I saw them in Hasselt, at dinner time, I wondered if they had not begun to drink a bit too early. First Mark came, smiling to the audience, which made his reputation of shy young man wrong, and then, they accumulated mistakes ! But they still had their humour, and the more they made mistakes, the more they laughed. I did too. Especially when Andy replaced the lyrics of the superb and new " Include me out " (that shorltly after became Time Of Her Time) by those of " Vapour Trail ", you know La la la la... And Steve, laughing in his corner...
However, everything had started well, with a " B-song " (now called Leave Them All Behind) as exciting at noon as at midnight, the Slough festival still in our spirits. Some of you will confirm that by mail, Ride's power impressed a lot at Pukklepop, and particularly the new version of Nowhere, that let you all speechless.
The press was also congratulating, and even if the concert reviews were never
more than a few lines, the Oxfordians gave a very good impression, some journalists
even said that their reputation of static band was unjustified and that an encore
would have been normal.
For those who hadn't seen them since the VK (or even before), the evolution
was amazing. The first idea was four shy kids who didn't even dare to stare
the audience, but we're in front of four confident young men, for whom Pukklepop
is only one more festival – even if there were there Sonic Youth, Dinausaur
Jr and House of Love, favourite bands of Ride.
Even those who had been amazed by their skills at Slough couldn't help smiling when they compared the two gigs. As for the band, they just told " We did a bad concert ! ". Bad would probably be a strong word when a majority of the people and of the press were charmed, but, say, less well. The best moment was of course this final attempt of Mark, who tried to make Taste's remix, alone, on the chords of Seagull. He was probably very excited by seeing Sonic Youth !
But I still keep a very good souvenir of the concert because it proved that,
even veiled by some clouds, Ride's sun still heats strongly, and also because
it...amused me, which is essential and enough.
As for these mistakes, the fan I am found a very good excuse, because they were
back from the USA since the last thursday, and that the jet lag and fatigue
could explain those " absences ". But then I learned that
they hadn't left for Uncle Sam's country, and that they had been on holidays
for 15 days... But I found an other one : they had woken up at 4 in the
morning to come from Oxford in this lost city of Kiewit and to offer us these
45 minutes of musical delirium. So we can forgive them everything, can't we ?
During the festival of Hultsfred, organized in Sweden 15 days before the Pukkelpop,
Laurence, Mark and Steve had put their Ride sportswear equipment and, helped
by two Pale Saints and a Wonder Stuff, had been opposed to a swedish musicians
and journalists team. Unfortunately, if they always win when they have their
guitars in their hands, this is not always true with a ball between their feet.
Joined by others in their attempt to win, Ride & Co ended the match with 28
players, but lost 10-5 ! We're impatiently waiting for a match against
the Red Devils. Who will you bet on?
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Translation by Thomas Burgel
The Aeronef has a huge advantage : you are guaranteed to have a nice night even before getting in. Impeccable organization, no helter skelter when entering, and a security service deserving their jobs. How may of them do you know that wish you to have a good concert when tearing your ticket ? As for the place itself, Delveaux could have painted it. Its old iron columns, its " belle époque " balconies give it the dusty and nicely old charm of an old railway station. We were almost expecting to see an old train coming from the back of the stage and stopping, in a smog sigh, in front of the mixing desk.
This quick image of a forgotten past goes away when the first band of the night takes possession of the stage. Ocean Colour Scene and its 60's pop let us a " so and so " impression. The set begins with two good tracks, the excelent Fly Me for exemple, but then is engaged into tasteless melodies that the faked excitation of the singer cannot make attractive. As we're falling asleep thinking that we might have our dinner, the band wakes us up with three better constructed songs , including Yesterday Today and the new single, and finally lets us reasonnably satisfied. Can make better...
Even before appearing, World of Twist seems a complicated band considering the screen intalled on stage, the podium in the foreground, the drums on the ground level and the keyboards surmounting this strange scene. From the first electronic notes to the last cats mewing, the impression is confirmed and nothing in this high tech rock (?) of futurist supermarket allowed me to understand the (fortunately shy) appearance of the band. In its own style, WOT sounds more like Bronski Beat than like New Order. May these crazy guys go back to the world they come from.
Let's abandon these synthetic peanuts to see the principal meal. Some will say that I'm still fanatic, but after the semi-satisfaction of OCS and the total disillusion of WOT, Ride appears, once again this night, like the exception, the swan in the middle of the ducks, the Ferrari next to the Trabants, the Bresilian first league against Uganda's provincials.
In a word, to sum-up what's following, Ride's concert at the Aeronef was excellent. I won't add " of course " because Ride has, like any other band, its good and its bad moments - see Pukkelpop - but Lille was probably the crest of the wave, and the only audible mistake was a pure technical problem at the beginning of the gig while the tape giving the tempo to the B-song refused to work properly. Temporary amnesias and simple daydreams now belonging to the folklore, nobody seems to notice them ; as for the final destruction of the drums, I'd swear that the whole audience understood that as a brilliant final moment. And it was.
So, perfection of a powerful concert, which volume would have fit the Werchter plain, in front of an excellent audience who made the band smile by stage diving during Like a Daydream, Taste and Seagull. There was no surprise in the set list, which nearly perfectly followed the order chosen during the summer festivals. We could have hoped one or two unreleased songs, results of the hours passed in a studio during September, but the band prefered keeping them secret and just played the new but already heard Leave them all behind (B-song), Chrome Waves, and Time of her time (ex Include me out). However, the band offered a small flower to the franco-belgian audience, the superb Unfamiliar, not played a lot during the summer. The band admits that the track is hard to play live but...they play it so well.
Some titles, like Sennen or Today, are very difficult to play live, and we can understand their absences, but Unfamiliar doesn't loose any shade on stage, and allows us to realise how much Ride is a band, grouped, which can only be right when the four elements can merge. Steve and Loz begin posing the rythmical foundations, Andy comes making a wall of guitars, and Mark places, with his delicate chords, the top stone of this wonderful construction. Brilliant. In Paris, I could also use Unfamiliar to observe Laurence playing drums. Hard to stare anything else than the guitars, you'll think, but do it during a few minutes and concentrate on the drummer : he's incredible. His hits are powerful and quick, but also skillful and subtle, another proof that Ride is a complete band which four musicians have similar skills they all use in the same direction without trying to find any personal celebrity.
After Unfamiliar begins what I would call Ride's " forcing ". Preceded by the wonderful and very Cure sounding Time of her Time that we can already put among the perls of the next album, the trio Nowhere-Seagull-Drive Blind (this one made as an encore) can only let you speechless, amazed, stunned. The only things we can hear at the end of the concert, the band just leaving the stage, are " brilliant ", " excellent ", " the best "... Impossible to say more at this time, our thinking abilities being deeply hit. I won't describe Nowhere and its heavy atmosphere, or Seagull and its distortion crescendo, you know them as well as me. But Drive Blind deserve some lines thanks to... Loz and his glory hour!
The noisy moment everyone was waiting for just turned into a natural disaster, Loz loosing his drums one by one, Andy trying to place them back but only making things worse and finally giving up, letting the roadies in charge of the problem. Do you think that the other found themselves lost ? Not at all. While the roadies were on stage to take care of the drums, Andy and Steve, showing their backs to the audience, began creating sounds that any noisy fan wouldn't dare to dream of. The seconds are passing, sultry, noisy, deconstructing, but nobody gets fed up. When Loz finds his place back behind his drums, he joins for a short moment this happy mess and, as the guitars are slowly getting calmer, makes the signal of the end. Only remains the final lines of Drive Blind, which slowly extincts as the lights of the room are turned on. Quick " Good bye and thank you " by Mark. Ride is far, but the ears are still vibrating. The night will be painful.
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