The Early Years: Q&A

<img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/earlyyearsinterview.jpg" alt=" " />Right before their first appearance in the states, three-fourths of The Early Years (guitarist/singer Dave Malkinson, drummer Phil Raines, and brand-new bassist Brendan Kersey) sat...

 Right before their first appearance in the states, three-fourths of The Early Years (guitarist/singer Dave Malkinson, drummer Phil Raines, and brand-new bassist Brendan Kersey) sat down with QRO.  Already, guitarist Roger Mackin had gotten lost in Manhattan, the band discovered they were missing a pedal and a drum key (in Raines’ own words, “a school boy error”), and Mackin’s amp had blown a fuse, all proving Raines’ proclamation, “Whenever you play a gig, it’s fucking always stressful – Always.”  However, the band was still able to discuss the American release of their self-titled debut (QRO review), their new EP, Great Awakening (QRO reviewQRO review), finally getting a bass player, playing with their icon Damo Suzuki, living & working in "the worst place in Britain," and why The Early Years is the only band they’ve played in that isn’t shit.

QRO: How do you guys like being in America?  This is your first American show.

PR: This is our first time out of Britain [as a band].  We’ve been really trying to work on the UK.  We’re still a relatively new band.

DM: We’re gotta go back because we gotta do a tour.

QRO: Because of the new EP, Great Awakening.

PR: Yeah.  We’re here because in the US, the album is coming out on the 30th.  We just came across to show our faces, "Hello, this is The Early Years, this is our album."

QRO: If you didn’t have Great Awakening, would you be trying to do more in America?

PR: To be quite honest, the record label’s got a lot to do with this.  They said, "Would you like to go out to the states and do a few shows?"

QRO: Is the EP all finished?

DM: The EP’s totally finished.  It’s been for some time; even the videos, in the bag.  We’re just waiting for it to be released.  See what happens; see if it makes any waves.  Probably won’t do, but hey.

QRO: When did you get a bassist?

DM: We found him – by the side of the street.  We thought, "He’ll be cheap.  And you know, he can be the butt of the majority of our jokes."  In all seriousness, Brendan can answer that.

BK: I’ve known Roger for about twelve years.  We’ve played in loads of bands together.  Dave, I met, we were put in a band together about five years ago.

DM: And I met Roger through Brendan.

QRO: Oh wow, so in some ways-

PR: Oh, it all works.

DM: If you think about it, Brendan was the key link between all of us.  When we started the band together, we said, "Well, if we get a bass player, it’s going to be you [Brendan]." He was in another band at the time; he said he couldn’t.  Therefore, we didn’t have a bass player.  Later, he became semi-available, and here he is.

PR: It all ties together.

QRO: You’ve cited a lot of your influences from krautrock and psychedelic rock, but you guys don’t exactly sound like that.

DM: It’s only one part of the influence, really.  When we started writing songs, it took us away from that.  We started off being a big psychedelic sort of thing, really, and then we started writing songs.

QRO: Recently you played with Damo Suzuki [lead singer of seminal krautrock band Can].  What was that like?

DM: It was totally improvised – for us and him.  Brilliant, really brilliant.

PR: Probably the best we’ve done.

QRO: And you’d done your own set first.

PR: Yeah, then we had about a fifteen-minute break, and we came back on, with Damo.

DM: Probably one of the most daring things we’ve ever done.

PR: The band started off improvising.  Our first shows were improvised.  And then, as Dave said, we started writing songs, and became more… basically more of a band, really.  We worked up our sets, we knew what we were going to play; it sort of evolved that way.  This was going back to a totally improvised gig, letting your guard down.

QRO: With [Can’s] "Hallogallo", I could definitely see the similarities.

DM: "All Ones and Zeroes" started off being a jam with "Hallogallo" in the rehearsal room, and then it became "All Ones and Zeroes".  We can’t do covers very well.

QRO: You’re from Hackney, London?

DM: I live in Hackney, and our rehearsal room’s in Hackney.  That’s where all the music is gestated.

QRO: Are you trying to bring Hackney back?  It doesn’t exactly have the best reputation.

PR: It’s beyond help, actually.  There’s no bringing that place back.

DM: Well I live there, and I love it.

PR: ‘Nuf said.

QRO: [UK broadcaster] Channel Four, last October, said that Hackney was the worst place in Britain to live.

DM:

Fuck Channel Four and that stupid, fucking, fucking shit!  They don’t know what the fuck they’re on about.  Kirstie [Allsop] and Phil [Spencer, hosts of the program] can kiss my ass, and you can print that!

  It winds me right up: "Channel Four, what’s the best thing to annoy a cross-section of our audience?  I know, we’ll make The Ten Worst Places to Live in Britain!"  Use some fucking bullshit statistics based on the crime; course there’s going to be more crime – more people live there, don’t they?  Of course!  Well, I live there and I love it.

PR: I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve got to go meet the missus.

DM: Go on.

QRO: Did she come with you guys?

DM: His wife, my sister, yeah.

QRO: So that’s how Phil-

DM: That’s how Phil’s in the band, completely.  It started off: I moved down to London (I’m from Manchester), put an ad in the newspaper, "Guitarist Available".  Brendan phoned me up – a lot of people phoned me up – Brendan phoned me, "Oh yeah, I’m into the same music tastes," so I thought, "Well, that’s alright, that’s good."  And then he never rung me back for ages, so I had to track him down on the internet, found him, rang him up again.  Then we did some jamming for a while, didn’t really do anything.

BK: It petered.

DM: Yeah, it petered before we even did a gig.  So then I went, did some jamming with Roger; again, that petered out.  So then I did this thing on my own.  Then, if that worked, we already had a bassist on board.

BK: I think the idea of the band came before.  There wasn’t really a sodding idea when we were flying around with different people.

DM: "If we ever get there."

BK: It was a concept, really.

QRO: So then you’ve all been playing separately for a long time?

DM: I’ve been in bands for years, Roger’s been in bands for years, Brendan’s been in bands for years, and Phil’s been in bands for years.  You know, when pick up the guitar, what do you want to do?  You want to be in band.  So you abandon your shit for years until you actually, finally, work out a sort of way of doing it.  For some fuck reason, this particular band actually works – all the other ones were shit!

BK: It’s still you, playing the same instrument.

DM: Even the same riffs!

BK: Even the same riffs.  For some reason, something happens, and it works.

DM: An idea sort of forms around it, and it works.  I’ve been in loads of shit bands for years; nobody cares.  Every single one, I didn’t think was that shit.  Roger will tell you differently, "Oh, I knew that band was shit."  But at the time, I thought, "Oh, this one’s alright", but it was shit, in retrospect.  There you go. 

You know what helped with this one?  I stopped giving a fucking shit what anybody thought.

  I stopped giving a shit what anybody thought!

BK: Stopped worrying about the audience.

DM: Stopped wondering, "Is this right thing to do?"  Stopped thinking, "Just ‘cause other people do that, and they’re successful, therefore, that’s the sort of template to repeat."  Bugger all that, abandon everybody and everything, put on your favorite record, do whatever you want, and it seems to work.  It’s weird that, for the first time…  With other bands, I’ve been in the studio, and you’re a bit nervous, "Oh, can I play the guitar overdub?  Shit, I hope this sounds proper."  You’re a bit embarrassed ‘cause you’re on the spot.  This time, I thought, "Well, I’m paying, bollocks, I’ll do whatever weird noises I wanna."

QRO: You had a song, ‘Music der Fruhen Jahre’ – ‘Music of the Early Years.’

DM: Caught that.

QRO: Yeah.  Calling it German, is that a kind of tip of the hat to krautrock?

DM: Completely.  That was all Phil, actually.  He’s pretty talented, is Phil.  He went away, and just on his laptop and 8-track, came up with that tune completely.  We just got all the feeds out of the 8-track, put it into the studio, put in a few guitar overdubs, and it was done.  It was great.  Because of that, it should be called, "Music der Phil Raines"; it’s what we still call it to ourselves.  "Music der Fruhen Jahre" was nearly the name of the album, but it was too much of a nod, so we thought, "We’ll just call that track that."

QRO: Like the Myspace page: You had to call yourself www.myspace.com/thesoundoftheearlyyears ‘cause there was an emo band called www.myspace.com/earlyyears.

DM: Adam, at Beggars, said, "Do you want www.myspace.com/theearlyyears?" and I went, "No, I like www.myspace.com/thesoundoftheearlyyears."

BK: If you want to find it, you have to hunt for it.

DM: And you’re more special if you do.  But if you put "The Early Years" into Google, we’re fucking number one!  That was a good day.  On google.co.uk, we were on like page fifteen, and then one day, after the album came out, I was googling, and I thought, "What the hell?"  We were number one!  Out of nowhere…

BK: ‘Cause the album came out.

QRO: It seems like you guys split up songs.

DM: No, it’s all done between the three of us.

QRO: But you said one’s a Roger tune ["Song for Elizabeth"], one’s a Phil tune…

DM: He sort of came up with the original gestation of the idea, but, like "Brown Hearts", I wrote, but it wouldn’t be the song it is now without input from the other two guys.

On literally the first rehearsal I said, "Right, everyone, this is a three-way thing.  There’s no you, there’s no you, and there’s no me – this is a collective thing."  It can sometimes make the process a bit torturous, but in the long run, it increases the music – it’s worthwhile.  And now Brendan’s in here as well.  We’ve just had two solid weeks in rehearsal, and he’s on the opening song on the EP.  All the other songs were recorded at the same time as the album.

QRO: The American release has bonus tracks…

DM: The bonus tracks are, well one of them again is another Phil tune he did on his own, another one is the b-side – I don’t think you guys got the singles – the b-side to "All Ones and Zeroes".  It’s a beautiful song, I love it.  It’s got lots of drones underneath it.  If you stripped away all the vocals and all the guitars from it, and just left the drones underneath it, it plays forwards for six minutes, then backwards for six minutes.  There’s no better music to fall asleep to.  You sort of bliss out.  A lot of people say they get so bored they want to tear their eyeballs out, but that’s their business.  I love it.

BK: It was just the other day, was the first time I heard it.  It’s fucking brilliant.

DM: I love it, I absolutely love it.  That’s why, in the middle of the album, there’s this great big drone section.  I just love that headspace you get into when you do that.

BK: We’ve got to piss off; we’re on in like five minutes.

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