RAGING SPEEDHORN : WILD BUNCH ON THE ROCKS !

-Tony : We just had a lot of confusing things with our management, didn’t know where we stood, it got very confusing, to the point where we didn’t know where we were as a band : it was a kind of struggle, but we did get through it, and now we have the best management we’ve ever had, best record we’ve ever had and as a band, we’re better than we’ve never been. Now it's a million times better for certain things.

-John : Really, really hard time to pull through, because at Christmas time, we had no money, no jobs, we couldn't do anything at all, we just had to try and pull through it.

-Tony : Now we’re stronger, more together and more focused as band. Before, we were just happy to plod along, but now we know that we want to put out good records, we know that we want every show to be great, before we had bad shows and we thought "well, whatever…", but this is our job now : we’re much more aware than we have ever been, because of everything that's gone on, probably more than we would like to, but enough to scare us into knowing that we've got to be good all the time, all our shows have to be, all our records have to be.

-So, you 2 are brothers, but can we say that Raging Speedhorn work like a family, a community which makes front together ?

-John : Yes, Tony and I are arguing all the time, but it is like the rest of the band, we all argue all the time with each other.

-Tony : We’ve been together so much, those past four years, so it’s like being in a band with five brothers : there’s so many stupid arguments that afterwards you think it doesn’t really matter.

Everyone is so close in this bunch but would probably hate to admit it everybody cares about each other like brothers, everybody does really really cares about each other in this band. The arguments we have aren’t serious arguments, they are stupid arguments : they seem huge at the time, but they’re not, and that’s exactly what happens in a family, even in an adopted family I suppose, even now it’s our job, and it's probably different from any job on earth, we’re so close to each other now.

-Tony lives in London and Gareth in Stockholm : is it less easy for Raging Speedhorn to reunite ?

-Tony : No, not at all.

-John : It takes a little more arranging.

-Tony : We hang out, but no more than we do now, we have to do our own things, because to see too much of each other is a bad thing, you just get sick of each other, and we don’t want it. It’s a good thing that people in a band see each other on tour, and you’re kind of, not excited to see each other, but when you see each other, it’s better.

-John : More things to talk about !

-Tony : It's like catching up with old friends again. But when you're together all the time, the last thing you wanna do is going to tour with the same people you’ve seen for the four past weeks. But it is not like we live a millions miles from each other, going from London to Stockholm doesn’t take long.

-Let’s talk about ‘We’ll be dead tomorrow’ : main difference with your first LP ?

-John : The sound is good !

-Tony : It sounds like a good, heavy album, and we’re very proud of it. Lyrically I think it’s more grown up, musically, I think it has definitely progressed and grown up, we've actually learned to play our instruments and we put a lot more thoughts on the sounds on the record : drums sound, guitar sound, bass, the vocals. Even the album sleeve is better.

-John: The first one was just our old manager's idea.

-Tony: Basically, we didn't care, we just didn't put any input into it. We just moaned about it when it was done.

-Considering the production, your first LP was produced by Nine Inch Nails’ John Fryer : how did it happen ?

-Tony : It’s a funny story: just 2 people that we knew at the time knew him as a producer. We thought he would be a good guy, he was what we needed at the time and stuff, so the first album was great at the time we did it, we were really proud of it, loved it, and for the second album, we needed to move on and we knew that. If you're always doing the same thing, there's no real point in doing it anyway.

The second album sounds different, not only because the producers are different but because we’re different as a band. This is progression.

-So we can talk about a personal evolution along with musical progression at the same time ?

-John : Since the first album came out, we toured about a year. This album was done with all this touring plus 2 and a half year on top of that. Every time you tour, you're with a new band and you learn new things from that band. Touring is just a learning experience.

-I saw you live with Amen in Paris, 2 years ago, and Raging Speedhorn was a fantastic fight machine : do you feel more at ease live on stage or in a studio ?

-Tony and John : Stage ! ! !

-Tony : Stage a hundred million times over.

-John : I fucking hate the studio !

-Tony : Studio is very hard because with the live thing, if you make mistakes when you’re playing live, it’s part of the live experience, but if you make mistakes in the studio, you’re putting down something that people will be listening to years after you’ve done it, so it has to be right. Like it or not, you have to do it again and again and again, and not just the band and the producer have to like it, so it’s a very long process in the studio, it’s very tiring, even though you’re not doing that much, but I much prefer the live thing. We’re a live band anyway, the sound of a band has a very spontaneous feel to it. I don’t think we’ll ever completely capture that on record, which isn’t a bad thing, because people come see our live shows.

-Do you like to meet people at gigs ?

-Tony : Yeah.

-John : When most bands sit in the dressing room after the show, we go out with people and talk and chat and laugh. Since the gig is finished, we go to sit backstage, chill out, have a drink, get a beer and then we go straight out.

-Tony : It’s not just locally, it’s all over the world ; when we go to Japan, people are so great and enthusiastic when we come over, they bring us presents. It's totally amazing and it feels great, it means a lot to us.

-John : It's great that people respect what you do.

-Tony : You feed off of that, and the more people are coming to our shows, the more we feed off of it, because there’s such an emotional thing, people really love your music that much and really get to us. We’re not the Beatles, we’re not Metallica, we’re not some huge band, and the fact that anybody cares about us is a really huge thing to us.

-John : I know it sounds like a cliché, but it’s like a fucking drug, you just can’t stay away from it.

-What do you think attracts people and makes them go to your gigs and buy your records ? Are they touched by your straight language and your simplicity, your lack of pose ?

-Tony : We’re pretty honest, to the point of being truly honest and offensive some of the time, not really offensive, but quite offensive, especially Franck can be very offensive without meaning to. He's a really nice guy deep down, but some kids take him the wrong way.

-John : Some of the kids go: "What did you mean when you said that?", and Franck says to calm down, we’re having fun !

-Tony : We only mean the best, we're only being us, if you're cheeky, I'll be cheeky, if you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you, we don’t mean any harm, because, as I said, we’re amazed by the fact that anybody wants to buy our album and comes to see our shows, and it still surprises me when sell out shows sometimes, and whether there’s ten people, hundred people, thousand people, that’s still a very very good feeling to play in front of people who stand there and want to hear your music.

-John : If you really an asshole, we’ll just tell you to fuck off !

-Tony : We just love the fact that people like our music.

-I’ve heard that you were collecting a lot of old vinyl records, Led Zep, Black Sab and other, and is rather surprising coming from young people today...

-Tony : I don’t collect vinyl half as much as Franck, Darren and Gareth do, they are huge on vinyls, I’m not half as much as them, but the thing that got me into listening to the older bands was reading reviews of bands like Nirvana, Guns 'n' roses, Pantera, bands like this, and reading their interviews, where they said they were hugely influenced by Black Flag, Husker Dü, The Pixies, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy, themselves influenced by bands that were around ten years before them, and that made me want to listen to those bands, and if it wasn’t for Nirvana mentioning in interviews the Pixies, Husker Du, Mudhoney and other, I would never have heard of those bands. Those bands led me on to love other bands just by mentioning them in saying that they were influenced by them.

-Could you say some records who changed your life ?

-Tony : Probably ‘Nevermind’ by Nirvana ; ‘Appetite for destruction’ by Guns’n’roses, Iron Monkey’s first album, AC/DC’s ‘Back in black’, that record as well : I love those records and I could listen to them back to back, over and over and over again, so when I can do that, I would say those records changed my life, I feel so strongly connected

to them.

-What do you listen to today ?

-John : Lot of different stuff: it could be Led Zeppelin’s first album, or Dangerous escape’s first album.

-Tony : I’m a huge Nirvana fan, I love Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, stuff like that, the old grunge scene, but not everybody in the band likes that : Darren is more into Judas Priest. Judas is cool, but I’m not that much into it. Everybody in the band has the same main four bands : Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy.

-John : James Brown, Barry White, Marvin Gaye and a lot of Motown’s stuff...

-And what about the English punk rock ?

-Tony : More American punk than English punk : Black Flag, Ramones, but I don’t like 999 or the Uk Sub and the oï scene, I prefer Bad Religion.

-Talking about Black Flag, do you know the ‘Rise above’ compilation with Black Flag covers ? Would you enjoy to participate to such an album ?

-Tony : Yes, about the West Memphis three... Well, in fact, we recorded a Black Flag track, ‘My war’, for this album but it’s gonna be used as a B side. It’s a really good album, and the Mike Patton’s track, ‘Six pack’, is particularly good. We’ve never met him but he seems a bit crazy !

-It’s too bad, because it’s on Sanctuary, but not imported in France...

-Tony : My girlfriend works in Sanctuary !

-John : It’s like in Japan, import records are cheaper than local, so that’s why you need extra tracks ! ‘My war’ is the extra track for Japan, but we’ve done it really as a B side, like ‘Gipsy’ by Uriah Heep.

-Do you intend to put your videos and maybe some live stuff on a dvd ?

-Tony : Hopefully, soon, we’ll issue a DVD, because we have got hours and hours of footage of us just messing around, breaking stuff and being us, but nothing like the Pantera videos : we’re not that rich, we don’t have much money, it's just us playing live. We wanna put out some stuff which is us. I don't know when it's gonna come out.

-If Raging Speedhorn were a movie ?

-Tony : Lord of the rings !

-John : Battle Royale ! I would be the last survivor !

-Tony : Do you know that film, ‘Scum’ ? That movie describes us. (laughs)

-Is the Website of the band important for you ?

-Tony : It’s gonna be soon : we wanna do an overhaul on the website. We started it a long time ago and we haven't updated it in a while, but very soon, it’s gonna have a lot more photos and be more interactive. There's a lot of suggestions from the fans, they could interact with us a lot more as a band, and things like that, it’s gonna be very soon, when we have all sorted out ; it’s ok now, it’s a good website, there's a very active message board and stuff like that. We want to get close to the people on the website because they put a lot of time into coming, arguing and talking about stuff on the website. It's hard for us to be really in touch with them when we’re on tour because we don’t always get time to be near a computer. Whenever we do, we do check out what's going on there. We want to keep it as up to date as possible.

-Are you yourselves big Internet users ?

-John : I use it quite a lot. I go in the Internet cafés, but it costs a lot of money !

-Tony : When I can go, I go, but I don't do it all the time.

-What’s better than music, beer and sex : Raging Speedhorn ?

-Tony : Raging Speedhorn is way better than beer. Sex comes close second. Raging Speedhorn is not better than sex, but better than masturbation !

-Next project ? Come to France ?

February 28th, with Ministry.

Something to add for French fans ?

-John : Come, we'll find you, we've got your addresses, better be there !

-Tony : I’ve big nasty dogs !

-John : I’ve got big nasty fists !

(Interview made in Paris, December 2002)

Trans : Jean Paul Coillard and Marie Lecocq)