Mark Ronson is one major go-to producer. After the release of two solo LPs, an album with Amy Winehouse, and the soundtrack for an ad campaign for Toohey’s beer, the man behind the music is back with his greatest challenge yet: creating the theme for London’s 2012 Olympic Games which will be used across Coca Cola advertisements sponsoring the event.

The song features samples of sounds of athletes performing the world over: from the slap of a gymnast landing on a mat to the popping of ping pong balls. The soundbytes have been layered over the commercial track and most of the recording was original. Ronson himself strapped microphones to athletes’ body parts, taking these bytes back to the studio and feeding them through synthesizers and such.

He’s also kept busy this past year touring with his band The Business International and working on the new album for Eighties stalwarts Duran Duran.

Antonino Tati speaks with Ronson about working with music veterans like Amy Winehouse while having a knack of spotting new talent, recording in the studio versus playing live, and lending his production skills to the ad world.

Does it matter where you are when you’re producing records and soundtracks?

Usually I like to be in my studio in New York; it’s quite comfortable there.

Since having had huge success with Amy Winehouse’s album all those years ago, has there been pressure to live up to it?

That record seemed to capture a moment really well. With Amy, we really had a bond over music so we just said, ‘Let’s make it sound like stuff that we like’… But all I can keep on doing is make music that I like, and hopefully someone else will share the same opinion.

You have a knack of picking up and exposing hot new talent and marrying this with quality veteran artists on your albums… 

Maybe I just have a certain taste, or maybe that’s a terrible insult; that my taste is so regular, so the common denominator, that I like the same things that other people like… Oh well, on my last record [Record Collection] it was really important not to go with the people banging down my door, like Robbie Williams and Amy Winehouse, when she was with us. Instead I opened the door for the next round of artists. I really enjoy working with young talent. There’s just an excitement and energy that comes with recording when someone is doing it for the first time.

But you did work with Duran Duran on their latest album…

I did. And I think it sounds like Duran Duran in a good way. It’s not like we’re rehashing anything. I love Duran Duran…

Do you meet these musicians at parties and liaise with them directly, or is it all done officially through record companies?

It’s never really about the record companies; it’s always through a friend. Lily [Allen], for example, I met one night when I was DJ’ing at a hip-hop club in London and she was there at the end of the night and we just started talking. Amy, we met through a friend of a friend back when.

Do you think that’s what keeps the music sounding so organic on your records?

I’m not sure if it contributes directly but it’s all part and parcel in a way. The same way I meet people organically, we also play organically live. Everybody I work with enjoys music naturally and making music for music’s sake. When I think about people who’ve been hooked up through record companies, they’re usually young pop stars who come into the studio and [the situation] is just blank. I’m not good at that; I don’t work well in that environment and that’s not how I like to create. The people I have worked with from their early days – like Daniel Merriweather or Amy Winehouse – they had a really strong vision of their own when they wrote, so all I had to do was be a great producer.

Santigold seems like another artist you’ve worked with sans major record company interruption.

True. I met Santi before she blew up big. I used to drop my dogs off at her apartment in Brooklyn on the way to the airport and she’d walk my dogs for a week.

What you just said actually sounds like a snippet from a Santigold record. So that is you having a conversation with her on the Diplo remix album?

Yep. John Taylor from Duran Duran actually asked ‘Are you offended?’ and I was like, ‘That’s my voice, moron’.

I find it quite ironic that John doesn’t drink anymore, yet the pair of you were pushing a beer campaign with a Toohey’s ad you created some time ago.

Basically the contact was to create a band and take them to New York and write. So one day I recorded with John, one day it was Santi and so on, and the best song, the one that we thought was the most appropriate and most awesome and exciting, was the one with John in it. He really loved it, he contributed the change and the bassline and three days later we recorded it.

The song also featured Sean Lennon. Who on earth was footing the bill there?

Tooheys, I think. But really everyone was doing it for the love of beer. Except for John, perhaps.

Do you find a common link to the artists you work with, or is it the diversity that makes an interesting project, be it an album or an ad soundtrack?

I think it’s the diversity. The thing I love most about treating first recordings as demos with artists is that you get the most out of each session.

When you’re touring, are you twiddling knobs on electronic gadgets or playing real instruments onstage?

The guitar is pretty much the only thing I would stand on stage and play in public.

Any last word on the Coca Cola ad campaign for the 2012 Olympics?

I’ve said it before but to me sport is music in the way that it has so many natural rhythms and when I was recording the athletes I wasn’t thinking of them as  performing a sport, I was thinking of them as people in an orchestra. I like the results.

Photography by Bryony Shearmur.

View the Coca Cola advert with music produced by Mark Ronson here.

Produced on the back of playing to sell-out festivals all over the world Velociraptor! is Kasabian’s fourth studio album. Beginning with a gong then launching into new territory on the Kasabian soundscape, it could be their best work yet. Already described by critics as “a cross between Smells Like Teen Spirit, the Prodigy and Tron” it covers their trademark sound of distorted guitars and wild west trumpets with dark, new techno influences. Patrick Lewis asks lead guitarist and some-time singer Sergio Pizzorno what inspired the eclectic new sound of Kasabian, catches a Spinal Tap reference, and learns why Crack Foxes are so important…

You had a great reception at last year’s Big Day Out festival. What was it like touring Australia?

Melbourne was incredible and Perth was amazing. Australia is just such a great place. Nothing is a hassle. You’ve got cities where everything just comes together. Everything works and at night everyone goes wild.

You’d been touring with Muse, Oasis and U2, playing big shows before you made your new record ‘Veloceraptor!’ Would you call it your ‘stadium rock’ album?

If it is then that would be up there as an incredible achievement. It would prove you don’t have to write shit music to become massive. You’ve got U2 and Coldplay, but apart from them the world is missing a big fucking rock band and if we can be that, it would be amazing.  

What did you learn touring with Muse and U2?

When you play those big places you have to put on a show. If you don’t, it doesn’t work but if you do and it’s not good, it’s horrendous. Stadiums are boring if there’s not a show but there’s got to be a balance. You don’t want to get the little Stonehenge out with dancing midgets. Muse and U2 were really cool guys. Matt Bellamy [Muse lead singer] is a funny character. He told me that when he was younger, growing up in Devon, he came up with a way to cheat the fruit machines at fairgrounds so he’d always win. I dig anyone who has got that about them. He wouldn’t tell me how he did it because he thinks some people still want to collar him.

On your last album, you cast Noel Fielding in your video clip for ‘Vlad The Impaler’. I know you’re all big fans of the ‘Mighty Boosh’, but what’s your favourite episode?

Who else could have done Vlad The Impaler? There’s no other person in the world like Noel Fielding. He’s an absolute genius: the kind of person who could walk into a room and people say, “Who the fuckin’ hell is that?” He’s like Mick Jagger. He’s a maverick and we should look after these people because there’s not many of them left. I’m am absolutely massive Boosh fan. I love ‘The Nightmare Of Milky Joe’, especially when the madness sets in from the coconuts, and ‘Killeroo’ from the first series when Noel fights the Kangaroo.

What about the Crack Fox from Series 3? When Cream interviewed Noel Fielding he told us that was his favorite episode. If you had to put him in one of your video clips what would he be best suited to?

I buzz off the Crack Fox. It’s genius how they get away with the voices. The Crack Fox would have to be in a clip for ‘Empire’ [the title track from Kasabian’s second album]. There’s like a renaissance vibe going on. The Crack Fox would do well in battles. You could put him on the front line and people would say “No way, we’re not fighting ’em.”

What music are you listening to now?

Beadyeye: the Oasis splinter group; they’re fantastic. Liam Gallagher will always be my hero. It was nice to grow up with a real official rock star you could believe in. He called our last album ‘majestic’ which is a really nice word. I listen to Miles Kane and I really like The Penguins and Perth band Tame Impala. I met them in Australia; in fact it was Noel Fielding who turned me onto them. They’re really nice, beautiful hippies. They’re incredible musicians.

Musically, ‘Velociraptor!’ is definitely a step in the different direction. How would you describe it and where did the title come from?

It’s nice to keep everyone on their toes. This album feels like the greatest of all. We’ve taken the best of all three previous LPs and taken the sound into the future. It’s epic; ambitious. It takes you on real journey. It’s gunslinger rock. We always thought ‘Velociraptor’ would be a great name for a band. It’s just a great sounding name. It sounds modern. Velociraptors hunt in packs of four [Kasabian are a band of four]. They were the only dinosaur that could defeat the T-Rex.

Favourite song on the album and Why?

‘Man Of Simple Pleasures’. It’s a country song but it’s ultra modern. I like the message. Technology is taking over in a lot of ways. It’s about turning those systems off. Climb the trees, talk to your friends, do those things.

Kasabian are headlining the Big Day Out along with Kanye West. The band also play at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney on Tuesday 24 January. Tickets available  through www.premier.ticketek.com.au and at the Festival Hall in Melbourne on Saturday 28 January. Tickets available through Ticketmaster.

‘Velociraptor!’ is out now through Sony Music.

Director Stephan Elliot chats to Cream about coaxing Olivia Newton John to ‘do coke’, why the wedding genre in film is so massively popular, and his continued success with a story about a busload of drag queens. Interview by Antonino Tati. 

A Few Best Men. It’s a clever title for your new film.

When we got to talking about the title, I said, “Do you know how many people are going to think they’re going to see a Tom Cruise movie?” At the last moment I was really pushing for a title change. But ultimately, I think it works.

It’s kind of a blessing for you, really. As though a little PR for it has already been paved.

But a lot of people are going online and searching ‘Good’ instead of ‘Best’.

The wedding genre is quite popular in cinema. You did realise that when going into this project?

The wedding genre has always been offered to me. Post-Priscilla [The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert] they took me to Hollywood and didn’t know what to do with me after a busload of drag queens. So the only genre they could find for me was the wedding genre. Every wedding film that’s been made in the past 20 years, trust me, I’ve been offered it. What they didn’t know was that I suffer from Wedding Syndrome, having been a videographer for weddings since I was 14 years old. I was doing two or three weddings every weekend most of my life.

I can certainly relate to that, having DJ-ed at weddings in the past. It’s kind of a silent torture you’ve got to go through; while the guests are enjoying themselves, you’ve seen and heard it all before a hundred times.

Well as a DJ so you’d understand; you’d have had to play those same tracks over and over again and it would have been hell for you. But on the videography side, in those early days, the invention of videotape really changed things. People just couldn’t believe that you could shoot for longer than four minutes. I’d actually be asked to shoot rehearsals a week before the wedding so I got to see stuff that I really shouldn’t have. Having so much access to the bridal party it got to the point where I could tell whether a marriage would work and how long it would last.

Wouldn’t the recording of rehearsals have defeated the point of capturing the perfect wedding on tape?

They were just so thrilled at the time; people would see a camera and they’d be beside themselves. I’d have the bride on the day, literally about to walk down the aisle, and she’d turn to me and ask, “Do I look fat?” and I’d say, “Well you could pull your tummy in a bit, and I wouldn’t mind going back and doing another take”. I think my record was 17 takes of a bride walking down the aisle. And nobody minded.

Would you say some of the bloopers caught on tape in those days have made their way into A Few Best Men?

Lots of them. One classic incident from the past was when the mother of the bride took control of the wedding and this poor girl, the bride, just hit breaking point. On the day before the wedding she fell to the floor and just screamed, “Mum, this is NOT your wedding!” That sentiment is very much in the film. And the mother had the final laugh on the day of the wedding. The daughter got out, dressed in this beautiful wedding dress, and the mother got out after her in the exact same dress.

That’s cruel. In your film, it looks like the mother, played by Olivia Newton John, is also having the last laugh. She’s having a better time than the daughter, anyway.

Pretty much. We decided to create the absolute mother-of-the-bride-from-hell. Or from heaven, depending on how you look at it.

I’d say Olivia was from heaven. Or indeed, Xanadu.

[Laughs].

Did you need to coax Olivia into the scenes where she’s racking up cocaine, or was she a good sport?

She needed a lot of coaxing. Everything you think Olivia is, she actually is. She is one of the most lovely, kind, caring, gentle human beings on earth. And she’s blissfully and wonderfully naïve, too. She was a big star when those Robert Stigwood films like ‘Saturday Night Fever’ were going off. That’s when cocaine really came into being. But back then she really had no idea why people were spending so much time in the bathrooms. She said it took her about a decade to work it out, and that was only because she started seeing the train-wrecks around her of people completely destroyed by coke. She said that by the time she’d worked it out she realised it was not a good thing. So when it came to her racking up for the film, she said, “This is just so not me” and I said, “Well it’s time to play a character outside of yourself”.

Do you think that character might be frowned upon by some conservatives who may go see the movie?

Very much so. This is a broad comedy. I set out to create a very big, dumb, laugh-out-loud comedy, and it is very silly and not to be taken seriously. There’ve been many films made like this; and I’m not pretending it to be anything else. There will be some people out there that will be a little disappointed over what Olivia did that but she got to say, “You know what? I got to act for once”. And she loved it.

There’s quite a bit of toilet humour in the film. Let’s just say, for those who have not seen it, and without giving too much away, it involves a sheep, some drugs and one of the character’s fists. I’m wondering if you thought about editing that back?

I think that humour is an imperative part of it. As we were saying, wedding films have been proven successes in Hollywood but I think things changed when ‘Wedding Crashers’ came along. Then I think they started making wedding movies for guys, too. They were still about love stories, so the girls went along to see them, but the boys got to enjoy seeing some terrible behaviour, too.

So you obviously want your films to appeal to both sexes?

Yes. You know I was speaking to the late Patrick Swayze when he turned up to a rehearsal one day, and he had two bodyguards with him, and I said, “Patrick, really, do you need the bodyguards today?” and he said, “You don’t understand; I can’t even walk through a shopping mall without some guy walking up and hitting me in the head from behind because his girlfriend made him watch Ghost five times. So it was a wonderful way to cross the genres over, to try and make a film that would appeal to both girls and boys. And kids and grownups. So there’s a bit of toilet humour in it; and the job was to make you feel uncomfortable. It may be a little excruciating for some people; other people think it’s hilarious.

Pardon me for bringing up another recent film in the wedding genre, but Bridesmaids got away with its bout of toilet humour because it was women delivering it for the first time, and you never actually saw the mess under all that lace… Do you think some people might wish you’d have covered it up in a similar manner?

Some people might and some people mightn’t but as far as I’m concerned the horse is out the door…

Let’s get to the actors. You’ve rounded a motley crew of them. Did you sit in on the casting sessions?

No, I picked my actors.

And they each jumped on-board readily?

Yes. The only character we didn’t have an actor secured for until the last minute was the lead, David. And Xavier Samuel was a real find. He’s the straight guy in the piece; it’s his wedding and it’s all going wrong; and that was a tough role to fill. We did see an awful lot of people and Xav had just come off Twilight. Personally I didn’t want to see him but he was absolutely adamant.

Having Kris Marshall in there was quite a coup.

Kris was in my last film Easy Virtue; he played the grumpy butler. And it was through working on Easy Virtue that we struck up a strong friendship. He’s a damn fine actor and a very, very funny man.

You had a major hit with The Adventures Of Priscilla: Queen Of The Desert. Do you realise what impact you’ve had with that film?

At the time we honestly didn’t realise it. I was a kid; I was 26 years old. I wrote the script in two weeks and honestly didn’t have any expectations, or particularly care. I just said, “You know what? It’s only costing a million dollars. Let’s have a really good time making it and the honest truth is, it will probably go straight to DVD”. I went forward with that attitude, thinking let’s just have fun. But then the complete opposite happened and we’d made one of the greatest cult films of all time. It’s very hard to live down. For years I was quite angry with it because all people kept asking me was, “Where’s the next Priscilla?” and it got to the point where I realised I’m never going to live up to it and I’ve got to stop bothering and just get on with making other movies.

I look at the film’s pop cultural and societal impact. We were brought up in a very ‘ocker’ society in Australia where if you didn’t talk about football or other butch subjects, you were left out of the conversation. And you managed to have a film that created a wave of deconstruction in gender so strong that we ended up having Footy Show hosts dressing up in drag a few months after its success…

Yeah, I remember the Wallabies all came on one year, just before an international match, and the whole lot of them were in drag. It was hysterical.

You do realise that you helped rip through the gender restrictions we used to have in Australia?

Well yeah; it was a good flip and an amazing flip. And the real fun part was that I really didn’t mean to. I still get 30 letters a week from people saying ‘thank you’; particularly parents of gay kids who say thank you for helping me understand. Now, the stage show has taken off internationally; we’ve just opened in Italy; we’re on Broadway; we’re in London. It’s turning into Mamma Mia.

When Priscilla is staged, do you get any royalties?

No. No-one pays me any royalties. A misconception about me is that I must be rolling in cash. I signed a table napkin at the start, and got a flat fee of $50,000 and that’s all I got. But there’s that great conception that I obviously must be rolling in it yet I never saw another cent. I was bitter about it at first, but you know what? I got a career out of it. But don’t ever get the idea that you get rich from filmmaking; very few people do.

Do you think critics have had too high expectations, in comedic terms at least, after the success of Priscilla; continue to use it as the litmus test?

Every single time.

Well you received a lot of negative feedback over its follow-up Welcome To Woop Woop.

I was crucified! No matter what I did afterwards I was going to get into trouble. Welcome To Woop Woop was picking up on some of the worst pieces of Australian [culture] back then: you know, bigotry, racism, I went after absolutely everything. In that instance it was quite a dangerous movie. I knew I was in trouble even with the cut-down version and when Pauline Hanson saw it and said she loved it – I said, “Oh no, this all going terribly wrong”. But let me tell you, Woop Woop was never completed. The film that I actually did make was so out there, and so anti-Priscilla that when MGM Studios bought it, they recut it into something else and didn’t really release it. So one of my plans one day is to get back in there, reconstruct it and put it back to what it would have been. And trust me, it’s a hundred times more dangerous than what’s there now.

No doubt you’re expecting a better reception for A Few Best Men…

The reviews have been pretty darn good. We’re in a recession at the moment and I’ve sat in on about five or six full-house screenings and watched people just laugh, so as far as I’m concerned: mission accomplished. We are really just making people hugely entertained for 90 minutes, and that’s all the film’s job is.

There’s quite a twist at the end, but I believe what we see is not the original ending. Can you tell us a bit about that?

We had an ending set in the tent [ie: the wedding marquee] and it just didn’t get a big enough laugh. It was interesting, sitting in on test screenings, realising you’ve got to go out with a bang. But at that point everyone had gone home or was working on other films so I had to recreate the ending using the most elaborate computer generation imagery I’ve ever done, and with no money. In the end it cost me $11. I literally shot each of the four main actors in different parts of the world and stitched them together in CGI just to give it a big bang ending. And it works; it gets a good laugh.

As a result, that post-production appears to pay homage to the glory days of Technicolor in film, would you agree?

Totally. I thought if we’re going to have this ending, let’s give that absolutely perfect, storyboard, picturesque, or what I like to call it ‘the chocolate box’ look. And then at the very last moment, just sabotage it.

On the subject of semantics; most auteurs have a signature trademark flowing through their filmography: Kurosawa with the colour red; Tarantino with his kitsch soundtracks. What would you say was the Stephan Elliot trademark?

It actually took a reviewer in Denver to point this out but he said, “All your films are about people who don’t fit in; they’re all fish-out-of-water comedies”. And he’s right. There’s a storyline through each of my films that’s pretty much about someone who doesn’t fit in. And there’s certainly a sense of mischief in all of them. Even in Easy Virtue, which is an English period piece, the sense of mischief is really naughty.

On a serious note, you had a major skiing accident a few years ago…

I had a corker, and I broke pretty much everything. It was pretty horrible. Thank God for morphine because it did help wipe out four or five very bad years. They told me I shouldn’t have lived. Then they told me I wasn’t going to walk. They had to teach me to re-walk again. What I learned after the accident was that life is very, very short and that you’ve got to get on with it. There’s too much fear in the world and my fear levels kind of disappeared. Once you’ve faced death, there’s not a lot worse in the world. The world’s a pretty fun place if you want to make it that.

Are you keeping away from adventure sports now?

Oh no, I’m right back in there again; don’t you worry.

‘A Few Best Men’ screens nationally. To view a trailer of the film, click on the image below.

I admit I’m quite the Duran Duran fan. I admit this without worrying about the status of, or lack thereof, my coolness. I still ponder the lyric “I smell like I sound” from Hungry Like The Wolf and love it even though I haven’t the faintest idea what it means. I think it’s cunning for a band of boys (well, men) to have attracted so many female fans while simultaneously praising female prowess and ripping it to shreds with a sexism that was – and still is in much of the band’s music – sexy enough to get away with. Think of the two busty babes primped and propped up as lust objects for the hetero male gaze in the Girls On Film clip along with its potentially offensive lyric “the crowd all love pulling dolly by the hair”. And if pulling dolly by the hair didn’t get feminist analysts in a state, the proclamation four years down the track that “in exploitation’s name, she must be working for the skin trade” ought to have. Or indeed a decade later’s vitriolic attack: “Lady Xanax, where were you last night? All the cracks in your makeup are starting to show” just might have.

But are Duran Duran deserved of thesis paper status? They are only an all-boy (man) pin-up band after all: one that may not be as commercially modified and MTV-ed now as it was 25 years ago but nonetheless still shoved into that box labelled ‘big pop’ which we’d never force the more ‘serious’ likes of Coldplay or U2 into.

Video clips cut with contrived smashing of vases against walls and melting of ice across stiff nipples, pretentious Polaroid collages (courtesy of Nick Rhodes), architecture and artifice, and inane lyrics about ragged tigers and a girl named Rio withstanding, Cream thinks Duran Duran warrant a statuette of respect in music’s hall of fame. Sure, Simon rarely sings with a golden set of tonsils. Fair enough, the band hasn’t maintained a regular contemporary presence in the charts. And obviously most of the original members stepped out of the limelight just as the grey fog started passing through it. But they’re back together now – well, Simon, John, Nick and Roger are – touring the world again like there’s no tomorrow, and knowing full well that fans are dying to relive those fabulous songs of yesterday. Mind you, most of the tracks on the boys’ new LP All You Need Is Now ain’t half bad, either.

Antonino Tati caught up with Simon Le Bon to discover a man who’s come somewhat closer down to Planet Earth than he appeared to be in the heady 1980s, but a diehard pop star just the same who talks of way-out lyrics, heady partying, sampling rappers, and still seeing girls walking hand in hand across the bridge at midnight…

Tell me, Simon, do the lyrics come first to you these days, or the music?

The music tends to be the first thing. I find it easier to write lyrics when I get a feeling from the music as to what theme to write about. Music is evocative; it creates a mood and it inspires the words.

The lyrics on your past couple of albums seem less obscure and ‘arty’ than on your earlier albums – where you used to sing about ‘union of the snakes’, ‘dancing on valentines’, and my favourite, ‘smelling’ like you ‘sound’. Was the fairly schizophrenic poetry back then part and parcel of the New Romantic thing?

I just felt back then that it was okay to create these kinds of impressions, and to use words at random but to create some kind of odd feeling. A lot of the time I didn’t really know what I was on about: I just liked the sounds of the words together. I mean, “I smell like I sound” felt like a really animal thing to be saying, and I often just let my instincts lead me there. These days I think the mood has generally changed. I don’t think you could get away with those kinds of lyrics, really.

That’s kind of ironic since society has gone into this state of, shall we say, split personality, what with the internet and the information overload we’re subjected to. You would think the timing was right for more of your old style of mixed-up lyricism to be appreciated; yet here you are writing songs with more narrative and sense.

Well you’ve hit on the whole on the whole idea of what the new music is about really: the mingling of art and commercialism.

Those old lyrics, coming from any other band, and listening to them in retrospect, would appear absolutely inane, but coming from Duran Duran, they seem somewhat profound and as though there was some message to have been found amid the miscellanea.

Some of those lyrics were bits coming from personal places, and some were just from my imagination. Union Of The Snake came from my reading this book about tantra and the whole idea of kundalini: the sleeping snake inside the man. Tantra’s a belief in the practice of kundalini yoga. As in tantric sex…

I must say, sex and a high level of decadence seem to be persistent themes in Duran Duran songs. Sometimes it sounds like you enjoy watching decadent sex to the point of seeing people, particularly women, faulting from it. Like the woman who asks for too much and gets it hard in the end of All She Wants Is, or the subject in Lady Xanax (from the Pop Trash album) who has stayed out all night and now has cracks in her makeup.

Well, Nick wrote the lyrics to Lady Xanax so it’s actually got a lot of him going on in it. I just kind of fine-tune the songs so that they ‘sing’ right. It’s interesting because Nick has a very different point of view to mine.

So ‘Lady Xanax’ could almost be a pseudonym itself of Mr Rhodes? Nick’s certainly brought a lot of ambiguity to the Duran table.

He has.

Back when there were five...

Do you look back over 25 years, ponder your juxtaposing relationship with Nick, and go, wow, that’s a long time for two very different pop players to be getting along?

We tend not to look back generally because it’s kind of sad to see how few of us are left now. There’s only us and Depeche Mode and U2 left from that whole time, really.

Interesting you should put U2 in that category and not acts like Pet Shop Boys or New Order, even while they’re in as different a genre to you as U2.

Well I always saw New Order as a carry-on from Joy Division, coming from an earlier, different period.

Initially, there was some industry backlash toward you, however a lot of contemporary music makers did grow up with your songs and appreciated them enough to have paid tribute to you by covering them later down the line. We’re talking Hole, Nine Inch Nails, and Smashing Pumpkins on stage. Kylie Minogue, Ben Lee, and Powderfinger on record. Surely it’s flattering to have these latter day artists giving the thumbs-up to you?

I always thought it was odd that Duran Duran were dissed so much by the serious music papers, particularly in the UK, because we were making good music, and when the people who really count, that is the record buyers, who then grow up and form bands of their own and cite us as influences, it feels right and makes sense to us that we’re not being ignored anymore. It’s in much the same way that we cited bands and artists as our influences like David Bowie, Sex Pistols, and Chic. Coincidentally, we ran into Kylie Minogue in New York recently after we were just talking about her. She did a very fine version of The Reflex with Ben Lee, didn’t she?

Indeed, although I’d like to have seen a waterfall cascade over our Kylie on video.

Wouldn’t we all have!

Your songs have gone beyond being covered by other artists, and have leaked into alternative genres: Notorious was sampled for P Diddy’s Born Again, and samples of Save A Prayer appeared throughout Shut Up And Dance’s Save It Til The Mourning After. Do you like all this cross-pollination of music that’s occurring more and more?

I’m pleased with it. One’s ultimate aim as an artist is to get into people’s consciousness by whatever means possible, and getting on the Diddy song and getting through to a whole bunch of people who may never have bought a Duran Duran album, getting it through their brains even if they don’t know it’s Duran Duran, is part of the equation for us. Music’s been getting more and more diverse over the past few years, and now it’s coming together again. When music’s very disparate and there’s different styles going on at the same time, there’s no one thing that really unites everybody, and it doesn’t seem to work so well for the general collective consciousness. But when you get something that everybody likes; that cuts through different groups of people, it focuses the culture just a little bit more at that time.

You’ve kept the release of original studio albums consistent, on average delivering a new one every two years…

I’m too lazy to actually figure out how many but [someone] said 13 the other day so I’m just repeating. There’s the first album. There’s Rio. There’s Seven And The Ragged Tiger. Notorious. Big Thing. The Wedding Album. Thank You. Meddazzaland, Pop Trash, Astronaut, Red Carpet Massacre, and the current one All You Need Is Now. That’s 12.

There are actually 13. You forgot Liberty.

It’s very easy to forget Liberty.

Forget one of your own albums? At least the creative on Liberty was lovely: lots of final genuine Eighties looks. Are you happy to see the Eighties come and go in fashion?

We’re a culture of revival anyway, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the same people who were doing it in the Eighties; kind of getting out the old gear and going, “Hey, those were the days”. This is a whole bunch of new people, who were two-years-old back then, thinking, “I want to try this too now”.

You’ve been quite fortunate having a close association to the fashion world via wife Yasmin. Do you talk business with each other; you about music; she about what’s happening on the catwalk?

No, actually.

I keep reading in the English press and online that ‘Simon and Yasmin are on the A-list again’. Do you still do a lot of the premiere and party thing?

We have a load of unopened mail. There is a fashion scene that we’re a part of, and there’s a music scene that we’re a part of, and yes we get invited to glittering openings and things like that. But we kind of ration it a little because if you go to too many of those things and you end up all over the pages of sodding Hello magazine, you feel like you don’t own yourself after a while. Also, I just don’t like to be portrayed that way all the time. I’d rather be thought of as a guy who goes up on stage, and writes and records music, than someone who goes to an endless list of parties. Don’t get me wrong. There’s a bunch of fun to be had. You’ve just got to find the right balance, because if all you want to do is go out and get trashed, it’s not a lot of fun after a while.

Did you get trashed too often in your headier days of fame?

Not really. I think we coped with the whole thing remarkably well. What we managed to keep together was our sense of humour. When you come from the background that we came from, which was working class to middle class, there’s a lot of guys around you, keeping your feet on the ground. As soon as you start losing your grip on reality, somebody somewhere starts taking the piss and it brings you back down to earth. With a bump.

One final question, Simon. Do you still see them walking hand in hand across the bridge at midnight?

You definitely do. On Putney Bridge, just close to where I live.

View the latest Duran Duran video ‘Girl Panic’ here starring an army of supermodels including Naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen, Eva Herzigova and Cindy Crawford.

Duran Duran tour Australia in March. Dates and venues as follows:

BRISBANE

Saturday 17 March 2012

Brisbane Entertainment Centre

www.ticketek.com.au 132 849

MELBOURNE

Monday 19 March 2012

Rod Laver Arena

www.ticketek.com.au 132 849

ADELAIDE

Tuesday 20 March 2012

Adelaide Entertainment Centre

www.ticketek.com.au 132 849

PERTH

Saturday 24 March 2012

Sandalford Estate, Swan Valley

www.ticketek.com.au 132 849

SYDNEY

Tuesday 27 March 2012

Sydney Entertainment Centre

www.ticketmaster.com.au 136 100

HUNTER VALLEY

Saturday 31 March 2012

Tempus Two Winery, Hunter Valley

www.ticketmaster.com.au 136 100

Go to www.duranduranmusic.com for exclusive pre-sale of tickets and VIP packages

for Duran Duran VIP members. 

When Cream featured the top albums from our first 50 issues 1997-2010 it was no surprise to find Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ (2006) sharing space with the stellar works of Muse, Kings Of Leon, Franz Ferdinand and Snow Patrol. It wasn’t just the pulsating raw sound of killer trackers like ‘I Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor’- the very release of the album itself was controversial: record company execs told singer Alex Turner not to release it online (he did – it became a best seller anyway). Even the cover art showing a friend of the band inhaling a cigarette was heavily criticised by the National Health Service, which inadvertently drew more publicity and, despite the controversy, boosted album sales. These days, Arctic Monkeys have four albums under their belts, and while fans and critics alike have noticed them considerably mature, the cheekiness has not been lost. Doing most of the interviews for the band and assuming the pivotal role of their new sound, accomplished drummer and back-up vocalist Matt Helders reveals why he is very much the driving force behind the outfit. Interview by Patrick Lewis

Your fast-playing, unpredictable beats and groove patterns means you’ve been widely heralded as a world-class drummer. There are parallels with Coldplay’s drummer Will Champion who sings on many of their tracks and also with Vampire Weekend’s Chris Tomson who, like you, didn’t play the drums until he joined the band. Are you a fan of their music?

None of us in the band really played instruments until we met. We all started from scratch and I think all of us add something. It wouldn’t work if one us weren’t there. I like Vampire Weekend. Coldplay? They’re good at what they do but it’s not my cup of tea. John Bonham and Mitch Mitchell were inspirational to me. My favourite drummers of all time? I saw Buddy Rich when I was young. He wasn’t just a drummer, he was an entertainer. I’m influenced by many drummers even though I don’t really sound like anything like them. I like watching Joey from Queens Of The Stone Age. He’s loads of fun to watch, and powerful and all that. As for my own songs? I like Pretty Visitors off Humbug. It’s impressive and looks good but it’s difficult to play. Brianstorming is another one.  If we haven’t played for a few weeks that one tends to be a challenge.  

It doesn’t seem like you’ll be changing drummers then, like so many other bands do.

I’m pretty confident my position is safe.

Have you seen YouTube sensation drummer Christian Allen [an American teenager who calls himself Ghost Soldier, posts clips of himself expertly playing over artists such as Arctic Monkeys]? Will you get him on stage to play drums when you tour the US like Foals did?

There are lots of covers and people drumming along to our songs. I think I have seen him. I think he’s a redhead. It’s definitely a possibility if he played with us on stage. Actually, maybe he’ll replace me!

Your third and fourth albums have taken a different direction from the first two albums. Arctic Monkeys have been accused of becoming mature but losing their angst and fire. Is that true?

We’re different ages from when we made that first album. We were 19 then; we’re 26 now. We haven’t lost the cheekiness or the humour which is still there on Suck It And See. We’ve always had integrity which is why we’ve stuck together so well and been so good at it. Although we’ve had lots of opportunities to make bad decisions; there are lots of regrets.

Such as…

titles. Album titles. I would change the name of Suck It And See to Black Treacle, one of the songs off the album. And those regrets include artwork choices.

Like the smoker on the cover of Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not?

No, that’s one of my favourites.

Even the best musicians make mistakes. Stuart Copeland, in his book Strange Things Happen talked about the problems of drumming with The Police again after such a long hiatus but he was able to conceal his mistakes. Do you make mistakes when you’re playing with the band?

It’s easier when you’re drumming than playing guitar because you can hide it better and even people who really know your music won’t recognise it but with guitar if you hit the wrong note everyone knows it. It can really put you off when you make a mistake and sometimes you feel bad for rest of the show. I once lost a stick which was really bad but you just have to be able to laugh it off. There was a festival in Switzerland where we couldn’t get our equipment, we had to hire it and that made us all a bit temperamental.

Oasis heavily endorsed Kasabian as a band that while they were heavily influenced by Noel, Liam and Co, they still had their own distinct sound. Has there been an Arctic Monkeys inspired band you can plug?

I’ve seen Beadyeye a lot [Liam Gallagher’ splinter group] and I’ve heard Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds quite a bit. They’re both really good. I love Oasis. They’ll always impress me. We grew up listening to them. They can do no wrong for us. There hasn’t been a band yet to have an overall sound like us but you can hear our influence in a lot of groups around today.

What else are you listening to coming out of England today?

Two bands from Sheffield that are really good and worth keeping an eye on are the Wet Nuns and Drenge. Good bluesy rock. Miles Kane is also really good.

After playing so many stadiums and festivals around the world, what stands out as your own personal best performances?

Glastonbury in 2007. There was lots of energy and all of us were in a really good mood. Playing at the Hollywood Bowl was also incredible. It was just our attitude. We were all relaxed and there was no pressure. The one in Melbourne we did last time was an amazing show. Every time we play in Australia, the crowd, it’s always buzzing. I think we play well together because going back to that question earlier, we all learned instruments at the same time.

So aside from performing, what are you really looking forward to doing in Australia?

Surfing. I’ve never done it and I’m keen to try it. I think that’s going to be my next big thing that I’ll be into. I love the beaches in Australia. Byron Bay is my favourite.

If there is an ‘I’ve arrived’ moment for any designer in this country, then winning ‘Belle Coco Republics Interior Designer Of The Year award in 2011 would have to be it. Not surprisingly it has been the pinnacle career ‘tick’ for Australian interior design maestro, Greg Natale, who also celebrated a milestone 10 years of design service in November. Whilst to some it may feel his success has been an almost meteoric rise to public recognition, the man is quick to point out that his success has been a lifetime in the making. From moments of moody,edgy contemporary chic switching disparately to the unashamed opulence of his now almost signature Hollywood Regency style, Natale presents an impressive portfolio revered by many. Adam Scougall speaks with the designer about his first 10 years.

2011 marks a decade in design for you. Your profile has expanded rapidly to major success. Are you pinching yourself right now?

I am so happy for all the success [but] it means we have work. Before starting Greg Natale Design 10 years ago, I worked for five years in private practices, and before that studied four years at university. But I’ve always loved technical drawings and art, even as a kid. I was one of those weird kinds that new what I wanted to do from the age of 10.
  
 

How have things changed in essence over the last few years in your business? And what lessons have you learnt in recent uncertain economic times?

I work with bigger budgets than when I started and I have more staff, but the change has been very organic. Usually, I am a very impatient person and always want things to happen more rapidly! During uncertain economic times I always had the philosophy that if I kept the work diverse and mixed up commercial and residential work, we would be recession-proof, and to some extent I was right as the residential work has been consistent. The crash in 2008 has seen the commercial work go up and down, so what I have learnt is that if I keep the work diverse and not specialise in one area – but always specialise in good quality design – people will remember that.

You won interior designer of the year for Belle Coco Republic which was a huge accolade, including a trip to the UK to meet design diva Kelly Hoppen. We hear you got along famously. Has she inspired you to build on your brand to even greater proportions?

Kelly was great. I went there with a photographer and thought we would get the shots and be out of there, but she was so lovely, she took me to her lounge and we sat for an hour and talked about our businesses, and she did inspire me to do more with products and licensing. I am currently working on a furniture collection for Studio Mobilia in Perth and another collection for Designer Rugs. Also – fingers crossed – I am talking to a top fabric supplier about doing a fabric collection.

How important is advertising for your business and do you proactively advertise now? I don’t advertise, I only do editorial. Editorial is very important because it gets the work out to tens of thousands of people. It helps build our profile and the phone calls usually follow.

We hear you are about to move into new digs after a number of years living in a one-bedroom loft. What the new abode like?

The new place is in Harry Siedler’s Horizon [apartment building in Sydney], I am a huge Harry fan so I take inspiration from his work. The apartment will be black and white with touches of camel and gold. It will feature granite, Poplar Burl and geometric carpet. It won’t be eclectic like my current place. My personal taste does change and you can judge when you see it if I have matured.
  
 

We keep seeing more of you on television, most recently on Channel 10′s ‘The Renovators’. How do you feel about the small screen and marketing yourself in this way? Will we see more of you on TV?

I like doing TV and it is another medium to help create a greater public profile, I used to think I wanted to be a compare or something, but after doing some TV I have to realise it’s a hard job and I don’t want to be taken away from the design business. I love doing guest spots and would love to be in an Australian ‘Million Dollar Decorators’ if it is ever made. The last month would have been the perfect time leading up to the 10^th anniversary. We have had five houses to finish before Christmas and not without a couple of disasters [incidentally, Natale means Christmas in Italian - Ed]. That period would have made very funny television. 

Finally, what advice would you give to anybody contemplating interior design as a career? Some key things to take into account?

1.     A natural good eye.

2.     Interior design is very technical, a logical understanding of construction.

3.     A good sense of one’s personal style.

4.     Persistence – you need to fight for your designs like it’s your child.

5.     At the end of the day, it takes hard work. Hard work and talent will see you succeed.

It has been over a decade since The Whitlams told us to Blow Up The Pokies ­– at a time when they were famously known as the ‘hardest working band in Australia’. Now, with the torching of poker machines more relevant than ever, Whitlams front-man Tim Freedman has come out with a solo album that seems to break away from his band’s hardworking image: entitled Australian Idle. Indeed, Freedman admits he hadn’t written a song for three years. “I certainly did relax a lot more than I used to. I sort of gave myself long service leave,” he tells Cream.

The album cover image – a close-up of Freedman lounging in a crystal-clear pool, looking very much the ‘idle’ rock star – makes us question whether he is having a go at the glitz and glamour lifestyle propagated by certain reality television and talent shows.  But Freedman explains the pun is intended to be light-hearted: “It’s more to do with that suburban dream of having a pool – that great Aussie dream of having somewhere of your own to swim,” he says. Asking him how he feels about the Idol television series proves that its part in the pun is a small one: “I always think the kids are great singers. I don’t think it’s on anymore, I think it’s called X Factor…”

Freedman’s solo album is full of his signature storytelling charm. However, this time around the stories are decidedly not based on his own experiences, but on the lives of others. Twenty years in the spotlight has taught him that opening your whole world to the public is not always desirable.

“I think that as you get better known around the joint, you feel like revealing less of yourself, because privacy is a good thing,” he says. “I reckon the best lives are lived under the radar.”

On Australian Idle there are problem drinkers and ageing romantics, there are fathers and daughters and ex-girlfriends. There are also characters that are very much real and remain close to Tim’s heart – such as an old friend who has been recovering from cancer “in lots of places”, and a wedding speech from Tim’s best friend from kindergarten.

“Most of the people I write songs about I’ve known for years and years and years, so it takes a while for me to know enough about them,” he explains. “I mean, on the album in the first five songs there’s Ken and Max and Peter Brown, and I’ve known these guys for 20 years, so you know, it’s good to put them down into stone.”

Idle clearly features a strong sense of reflection on the past, but Tim is reluctant to call the album ‘nostalgic’. “Nostalgia, they say, is the pain of returning – and I’m not having any pain,” he says. But he also admits there are darker elements to the album: “The sounds are happy, but the lyrics are adult, and they do talk about it all – the journey through life – so it’s not all peaches and apples. But I’m not depressed, I’m just telling a story about some brave people.”

Along with the storytelling gems, Freedman covers three songs on the album: a folk song he fell in love with in a New York bar, a Matraca Berg classic about growing old but staying beautiful, and Billy Fields’ 1979 hit “You Weren’t In Love With Me”. The entire album is soaked in the sounds of the late 1970s and early ’80s: a decade of influence that Freedman is happy to acknowledge. “It’s when I was a teenager, you know? And the music you listen to as a teenager is the stuff that really gets into your bones. And so I thought I’d have fun trying to play music that was influenced by the stuff I loved when I was 14.”

Driving from Brisbane to Toowoomba for his first show as Tim Freedman: solo artist, it is clear that he is happy to be back on the road. With a new band and a new set of material, the artist feels that even after 20 years of playing shows, “it’s all a fresh challenge”. And surely he is relieved to be able to refuse a request to play Blow Up The Pokies for the millionth time? “Yeah, but it’s so topical, I might actually throw it in for once!” Tim laughs.

‘Australian Idle’ is out now through Sony Music Australia. Click on the album art below for a link to the ‘You Weren’t In Love With Me’ video.

Like all the best stories, this one begins in a bar. Small-town sweetheart Felicity Groom gave her music career a kick-start when she accidentally charmed a promoter in a London pub into giving her a gig. For a girl who has grown up in Perth, Felicity has seen a lot of the world since: gracing stages all across Europe before even releasing an album back home. That debut has finally arrived, however, and she’s enlisted some of the best musos from her hometown to help her out. On the eve of the release of her album Gossamer which recently made Triple J’s ‘Album Of The Week’, Felicity talked to Cream about the romance of travel, being mates with Tame Impala, and how sweet it is to be making music in the most isolated (and beautiful) city in the world. Interview by Beth Dalgleish.

First things first: when did you decide to make music your career?

The way this musical career has come about for me was in the most unusual yet serendipitous fashion. It was a kind of ‘one thing led to another’ scenario whereby I had a couple of songs by 2004 and that year I moved to London to travel and possibly get some work in the media industry. Then, within days of me being in Clapham, I was in a bar and this guy asked me what I did. I replied, “I’m a musician”, and he replied, “I’m a promoter; I will give you a gig,” to which I replied, “But you haven’t heard me… what if you don’t like it?” And he said, “I have a good feeling about it. And if you’re shit, I’ll just pull you off early”. And so began the career after that first show at the 12 Bar Club on Denmark Street in London.

You’ve spent a few years overseas – as a new artist on the scene, what struck you as the biggest difference between live music in Europe and in Oz?

Well don’t tell the Brits this, but the music coming out of Perth alone is towering in great variation and talent. The London music scene has some incredible bands, but there are a lot who also feel as if they need to emulate the popular sound to get by. I was around in the electro disco scene and there were heaps of bands doing that. I suppose you get that anywhere… but coming back to Perth I was amazed at how comfortable everyone was doing their own thing, creating their own scene and being supported in that scene. 

Coming from a reasonably small community like Perth, how did you go about tackling the big cities like London and Paris?

I love travel. All the new input I am receiving from just walking around on the streets swirls around my head in a big hurricane of thought. I get deeply inspired by the history, the reality, the romantic conjurings of these cities. London is a tough place to live, but that age-old saying is true that whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger… so for every reason, I had a brilliant time in my two years away from Perth, and London isn’t too big if you start hanging around the same places. So if you want that old familiar feeling of knowing everyone you see that you get in Perth, you find a spot and keep revisiting it… but if you want to be truly a small fish in a big pond, you change your hangout and all of a sudden you are alone again.

Rumour has it that you have a pretty sweet group of friends who often join you onstage (Tame Impala here; Jebediah there). How did you all meet?

Well, if you find you can run into the same people in a city like London, it is easy to understand that in a city like Perth, just about everyone knows everyone. I think it’s probably been various house parties dating back far where I have met most of the lovely people I work with… but I suppose our friendships were brought closer with the link of manager Jodie Regan who was first a friend. 

With that local community surrounding you, do you feel the Perth music scene has begun to develop its own sound?

I do believe environment impacts the sound that people create, just like it impacts the person. We all make generalisations about people from a certain place… how they might all have a common way of behaving…. So it shapes the music too. For this reason there is probably a strong Australian thread that runs through most music coming out of this big island, but I am still blown away by the variance of styles in this city.

Any chance of a best-of-the-West, ‘Tame & Groom’ super-group in the future?

Well that’d mean Kevin (Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker) would have to move back from Paris… and though we’d all enjoy that, he seems pretty content there for the meantime. But anything’s possible. I did do some recording with Pond at one stage, played some saw. I think as long as we’re all making music – which will be for a long time yet –there are possibilities for all sorts of musical endeavors. Kevin did write some songs for me. We were going to do a project together, but he was on tour so much we didn’t really get to work on it together before he moved counties. Maybe that project will happen again one day.

Having travelled around Australia and overseas, who has been your favourite artist to play with so far?

It was really nice going on tour with Katy Steel. Years ago we were quite good friends and hung out together. We even tried starting a band where I was playing bass and she was playing guitar. Then I moved to Sydney and stopped music and she started Little Birdy. So when we got to tour together it was a rekindling of a good friendship. Plus, Oh Mercy were on that tour, and those guys are great.

Names like PJ Harvey and Nick Cave pop up often in your reviews – who are the biggest influences on your songwriting?

I love both of those artists. They are both such strong songwriters… but there are so many areas and genres that I draw inspiration from. Every time I see something that I love, it propels me into songwriting. Many times I have walked away from a concert or an exhibition… or a conversation… trying desperately to keep the silence around me until I reach an instrument or recording implement to capture an idea. It’s moments like these that I must look like I am some kind of zombie, but it’s like running home with a goldfish in your hands that has to get to a place for it to swim.

The video for Siren Song shows off a darker, sultrier side to you compared with last year’s Finders And Keepers. Is that an indication of what we will find on Gossamer?

There are a few colours other than black that appear on the record. I often equate that darker sound with living in London, as it was pretty tough for me in those long winters, and Siren Song was written about the London bombings, which offered no colour at all. Finders And Keepers was written in Perth about my lovely friends, so it is a fluorescent song. Maybe the next album, having all been written in Perth, will be more on the whiter side of the colour spectrum, but then again, I have always loved a melancholic optimistic song. So maybe the darkness is just innate.  Beth Dalgleish

‘Gossamer’ is out now on Spinning Top through Inertia.

Photography by L. Businovski.

Sam de Brito has been a journalist for the Murdoch press, and with the recent ‘News Of The World’ scandals, admits he’s seen a few dirty tricks take place up in them ivory towers. His recent novel ‘Hello Darkness’ follows the crusades of a 39-year-old writer, Ned Jelli, who is facing depression, insecurity, failed relationships, and a rocky career. Antonino Tati aims to discover is much of it autobiographical.

Right from the beginning of your latest novel ‘Hello Darkness’, I’m thinking you’re like Australia’s answer to Bret Easton Ellis. Do you get that a lot?

No one’s ever said that to me, but I’d be quite humbled if I could sell just one-tenth of the amount of books he sells!

There’s plenty of cursing, drug abuse and sexism in the book. Did you set out to be controversial?

Not at all. Basically I just wanted to reflect the world as I see it around me. I could have written something called ‘Hello Sunlight’ but I have a pretty black nature, and I’m attracted to dark characters and dysfunctional scenes. That’s what I enjoy reading, and it’s what I enjoy writing. Maybe it’s because I’ve had my fair share of dysfunction in my life… Really, I just write about whatever is consuming me or concerning me.

Do your friends and associates influence the characters in your stories, and how do you avoid these similarities coming back and biting you?

I’ve had the experience with this book of three people contacting me and telling me what an arsehole I am for ripping off their life. If a character is identifiable to a large group of people, and can be proven to be the inspiration behind a character, then you’re open to defamation. A lot of my characters do rather unpleasant things, so I’m wary of libel situations. So I tend to take one trait from one person, and another trait from another person, and mix the two. Or more.

Well it worked for Jackie Collins, who merely just changed characters names but kept their sinister personalities intact… Are Australia’s defamation laws more stringent to America’s?

I don’t really know the history of our defamation laws. But they tend to be a good thing. You look at what people can write and say about other people in the US, and it’s out of control. When I write, I always wonder, ‘How is this going to impact the person who I’ve taken inspiration from?’ and I did that with pretty much all the characters in ‘Hello Darkness’. I used to write for television, and we’d often base a character in a soap opera on somebody we knew, but to play it safe a good thing to do is to simply change the sex of the character. If you change enough identifiable features – religion, hair colour, weight – you don’t tend to lose much of the character’s essence, and you don’t tend to get caught out.

Well if the book is partly autobiographical, it reads as though you lead quite a rollercoaster rock’n’roll lifestyle.

I’ve obviously taken a lot of liberties. I tend to express of a lot different experiences into one time-frame. Things that happened over a period of 10 years, I crowd into a month. I’m a single father now; I’ve got a little girl; and the last thing on my mind are fuckin’ drugs. I go and probably drink too much at times, but I find it counterproductive to my creativity. I don’t know how people like Hemingway – these famous heavyweight drinkers – managed to produce their work with all that boozing. I mean, did they start writing as they started drinking? Certainly not towards the end of their careers when they were alcoholics…

But William Burroughs managed to continue writing til 83, and he was on heroin!

Yeah but I can’t fuckin’ read William Burroughs! The only Burroughs I could read was ‘Cities Of The Red Night’. I’m not sure if it was before or after the impact of HIV but it was really interesting. It’s basically a satire of this disease that was killing homosexuals. Not that he was laughing at that. Being gay himself, he was writing from a sympathetic perspective. But it was a very clever book, I thought. But again, I’m not a massive Burroughs fan.

Ultimately, even with all the corruption and cursing, your book ‘Hello Darkness’ could read as a lesson in morals.

Basically it’s about a character coming to terms with himself. It’s a book about depression, and there’s no getting away from that. That’s disastrous for him, but it’s also disastrous for the people he invites into his life. There’s probably a lot of people in Ned’s position who aren’t feeling that great about themselves and they go into this vicious cycle of self-medicating. With Ned it’s all cigarettes and booze, cocaine and one-night-stands. But he’s got to come to terms with that. It’s one thing knowing what your nature is, but another thing to realise your nature is not that pleasant.

If you find your protagonist is self-referential to a certain degree, is that like expunging your demons when you’re putting it down on paper.

Kind of. But Ned is not me. Ned is the worst of me. He’s my ugly thoughts. And that’s why he’s fun to write.

You worked at News Limited. Did you find you were encouraged to use tactics like Ned does to obtain information for controversial stories?

I was never encouraged to but the powers that be know how certain information is guarded. It’s a nudge-nudge, wink-wink culture. And it’s no different than at any other big company. People don’t go to work one day saying, ‘I want to lose my integrity’. Nobody says they want to serve six-day-old chicken to customers but you know that if you say something to the chef or your boss, you’re gonna get the arse or you’ll be the next out the door. I think in every profession, you’re not so much forced to do things but there’s this culture of omission where if you’re not doing what everyone else is doing, you’re not going to be able to get in front of them. There are clean tricks and there are dirty tricks, and a lot of people don’t see the difference between them.

Some dirty tricks ultimately get found out; just look at the News Of The World saga…

We’ve all seen people doing ethically questionable things in newsrooms. I’ve been a little embarrassed for some journalists with the way they’ve gone about [obtaining information]. You’re crossing the line as soon as you do it. As soon as you start listening in to someone’s voicemails, that’s breach of privacy. That to me is a very clear-cut case. When it was public figures, people seemed to be ambivalent about it. It was only when it became clear that journalists had tapped into the phones of private citizens that the condemnation and the revulsion really started.

What do you think of the state of journalism at the moment, how a lot of writing is now in the hands of bloggers?

The nature of journalism is changing rapidly and you can’t hold the ocean back with a broom. Journalism bemoaning the state of journalism, well, what are you going to do about it? The only thing you can do about it is respond with your own work. Many people would look at my writing style as a symptom of the dumbing-down of journalism, but at the same time, on matters of principle, they say, stand like a stone; on matters of fashion, go with the flow. Ultimately, though, readers still reward great writing. You return to blogs and websites where the writing is great. Where you are informed and entertained. The internet is the revenge of the writer. You used to write an article for a newspaper and you didn’t know actually how many eyes were reading that story. Now you write something for a website or for a blog and you can actually quantify your work. In the end, if you’ve got something to say and you can engage and audience, you’re going to find a readership. If anything, I think the new era is probably scaring people who are really fuckin’ boring.

‘Hello Darkness’ is published through Picador / Pan Macmillan Australia.

Sneaky Sound System are back with a third album and new lease on life. Now down to two members, ‘Black’ Angus McDonald and Miss Connie make the coolest duo on the Australian dance music circuit. Interview with Angus by Antonino Tati.

Congratulations on an excellent new album: clean, fun and instantly infectious. What would you say is the main point of difference between ‘From Here To Anywhere’ and your first two LPs?

Well thank you very much. It was a totally different approach on this record, we wrote and recorded on the fly – just the two of us… in hotel rooms, planes and studios in Sydney, London, Paris, Moscow, and Ibiza – it’s almost like a postcard from various dance floors around the globe. The original plan was to collaborate with lots of people but the ideas were flowing so freely we ended up writing it all in a few months. I tried to keep the production as simple as possible and let Connie’s vocals shine. And while it’s a record for the dance floor, the lyrical content is quite emotional at times. We spent a lot longer living with the songs and letting them take their natural course. It’s a proper collaboration and we really enjoyed making it. It’s the start of a new chapter for us.

Could you enlighten Cream readers on why it was that Daimon left the group? Some of our contributing journos have assumed it was because he partied too hard? Is this true?

Hahaha… not quite, no. We returned from a long patch overseas and he told us he wanted out, that he wanted to pursue his art career, that he was sick of living out of a suitcase. It was a testing time for all of us, but I was still surprised he quit. We’re still mates and life goes on. I mean some people get freaked out if they can’t keep the status quo, but change can lead to all sorts of new opportunities – and that’s how we dealt with it: as a great opportunity to freshen things up.

Is the dynamic rather different with Daimon gone?
Absolutely, like chalk and cheese as my mother would say. We took six months off to clear our heads and when Connie and I got together again we found ourselves full of ideas and [feeling] reinvigorated. Our friendship has grown a lot deeper, as you would expect when you’re living in each other’s pockets, and Connie’s confidence has grown enormously. It’s a very clear relationship now… Connie is the voice, ‘the star’ and I am the music, ‘the machine’. There is no confusion whatsoever and we have total trust in each other.

Your videos are always a little risqué. We love the innuendo in ‘We Love’. I don’t think Freudian symbolism has ever gone that far in music video. How important is the selling of sex in the music business?

I think you’ll find we’ve done just the one risque video. The so-called raunchy bits were shot after we left the shoot in London, so it was a bit of a surprise when we got the first edit. However, if commercial television can give it a G rating then it’s pretty safe to say it ain’t exactly scandalous. It’s very hard to get noticed these days so every little bit counts, and that video got tongues wagging so… mission accomplished!
 
 

The new album, in title alone, connotes a sonic adventure / getaway. Do you consider your music a primary source of escapism for listeners?
That’s what music is all about, isn’t it? When I’m absorbed in music I don’t have a care in the world and I hope when people put on this new record it does take them somewhere else; that would be a good result.

Where did the ‘Black’ in Black Angus come from?

Bill Hunter played Angus McDonald, the dodgy police commissioner in ‘Blue Murder’, and his nickname was Black Angus. Well my name is Angus McDonald so you can follow the bouncing ball here. That was 10 years ago before McDonalds burgers were using my name… Bastards.

Any interesting gigs / tours / festivals coming up that Cream readers should know about?
The record is just out in Australia and out October 17 around the world, so the plan is to spread the word far and wide around the globe over the next two years. There are going to be gigs galore so best to head to www.sneakysoundsystem.com to get the lowdown.

‘From Here To Anywhere’ is out through Modular / Universal Music.