CityLife

Arena return for old friends Kasabian

CROWD-PLEASERS: Kasabian

TOM Meighan – motor-mouth and rent-a-quote frontman with big beat rock ’n’ rollers Kasabian – is laying claim to a title. And it’s not a little one, either.

“I think we’re the Midlands’ greatest export. Not Leicester’s greatest export – the Midlands’ greatest export,” he insists.

“Nothing’s come out of the Midlands as big as us in ******* years, has it? Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Slade, you know – that’s the line. I’m ******* all over them bands.”

The conviction of Tom’s argument (if not altogether watertight) is certainly infectious.

He’s an endearing dichotomy – a ragamuffin with salon-straight hair, a raucous spokesman and a private individual who tenderly calls you ‘sweetheart’ and ‘darling’ like he’s known you all his life.

Take more of the Leicester lad’s words for it and you’d also believe that his group has just completed a feat barely achieved in rock ’n’ roll – a third album that doesn’t put a foot wrong.

And in a way, you’d be right to buy into that argument, too. Because West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum is – from it’s Sgt Pepper’s-style title to its distinctly grown-up mood – a far more complete album that anyone expected from Kasabian after three years out of the studio.

But it is that downtime, says Tom, that has made West Ryder the album it is.

“We’d been on the road for four years (touring their first two albums, Kasabian and Empire), so I think it was important we didn’t go straight back out and rush a record either,” he remembers.

“Most bands that have made third albums have bombed, and they’ve been flushed down the toilet ’cos they’ve rushed it and they’ve wanted to make a quick buck out of it. We took our time and thank God we’ve got the luxury to do it, you know?

“We stopped touring in October 2007, but we started writing the album in, like, January 2008. We took some time out, just doing things, just going back to normality.

“The first two albums went crazy, we didn’t stop. I think we were pretty beat down and we were tired, you know. 

“For me being out of the game was hard because, you know, when you take time out and you reflect on what you’ve done, you wanna get back to it – even though you know you need the break.

“As soon as you’ve got your head round it all, you wanna go straight back out again.”

The creative spark needed came from Sergio Pizzorno, the band’s guitarist and chief songwriter.

Sitting watching the TV one day, he stumbled upon a documentary about a Victorian mental institution for the sick and destitute called West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum. It switched on a lightbulb.

Closed down in 2003, the asylum inspired the linguistic and emotional mood of the record that Serge sat down to write.

No songs about electro-shock therapy, then, but there is a disconcerting energy in the record’s 12 tracks that leaps between two engulfing states of bliss and madness.

Or, as Serge put it when he was told Harry Potter (AKA actor Daniel Radcliffe) had been spotted buying a copy, ‘It’s the sort of album a wizard can appreciate’.

Schizophrenic

“One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” Tom blurts. “That was the theme. The album and the songs themselves are all schizophrenic.

“In that break, we thought about things a lot more and, you know, it gave us time to reflect on what had happened and what kind of music we were gonna make for our new album, and what kind of state we were going to go into for it.

“The state of mind was to make a psychedelic, old fashioned Sixties LP: an old front cover with us dressed up how bands used to dress up, give it a crazy title, you know? The old English heritage, that was our idea on it.”

So, by how much will it outstrip our expectations. “A million?” laughs Tom. “Nah, our expectation is that, you know, we’re coming back with an album that no one’s really got the balls to make or do, or to even think about doing, and people will recognise that. (They did – the album went No.1 on release.)

“On third albums, bands usually kind of sell themselves down the river and we haven’t done that with this – we’ve really took a different route. I think it’s a really grown up, mature Kasabian record, and I think there’s beautiful highlights on it.”

On this occasion, Tom is definitely not wrong. Darkness and euphoria have always been a vital mix on any Kasabian record; that, and a unique ear for making their block rockin’ beats swagger like a bunch of Liam Gallagher impersonators at an Oasis convention.

So enamoured is he with his own work that if you give Tom an inch he’ll talk you through every song. “Songs like Fire,” he starts, “where you’ve got like the calm then it goes mental, which probably reflects what people are like – they snap easy. 

“And Swarfiga, which is just lunacy drum’n’bass and rock ’n’ roll, and, you know, Fast Fuse is like an angry mod song about young men in England and how angry they are.

“There’s beautiful bits like Underdog and Take Aim – that’s really dark. Thick As Thieves, about when you’re a young boy growing up and things don’t frighten you in the wild, and you get cuts and scars and you don’t care about anything.

“And West Ryder Silver Bullet is like a Mickey-Mallory (fatally attracted in Natural Born Killers) kind of thing, you know, a romantic thing. Vlad The Impaler is like our Sabotage – we wanted to do a Beastie Boys tune – and Ladies And Gentlemen is just a really intense, ‘I’ve made mistakes’ kind of song. 

“And Secret Alphabets,” he continues, breathlessly, “is just... can you imagine a poor guy on opium getting his worse fears out? And then Happiness is probably just after you’ve had sex, or maybe just a warm hug and you know everything’s gonna be all right.

Conscious album

“So, it’s a very state of mind, conscious album. It’s just really a well thought out album, to be honest with you.”

If CityLife could pick an adage that Tom lives by, we’d scratch our chins and pull out Nelson Mandela inaugural speech back in 1994, in which he observed, ‘Playing small does not serve the world; there is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you’. 

It’s 10 years since Tom first put together Kasabian, but he’s clearly not tired of the opportunity to talk his band up. And why should he?

When Noel Gallagher reckons you’re good enough to warm up nearly a million people before he takes the stage, who wouldn’t believe they’re in one of the best bands on the planet?

Noel, says Tom, is one of the old guard of rock ’n’ roll icons – a musician that people genuinely look up to and idolise (“I think music’s lost that now,” he maligns) – and he stands firm in the belief that Oasis continue to set the bar.

“We’re nothing like Oasis, never have been, but I think we’ve got the same star qualities and we share the same beliefs in enigma,” he enthuses.

But being in Kasabian hasn’t all been Oasis stadium gigs and cocktails with Noel. After the band put out Empire in 2006, founder member Chris Karloff quit the band. The music press quoted ‘creative differences’, and three years later, Tom is in no mood to set the record straight.

“Yeah, it wasn’t very nice, you know,” he offers, gingerly. “He was one of us, and it’s not very nice losing someone in a band, just like losing a relationship with a girl isn’t nice.

“But I think we got over it and we fought. And we’re still here ain’t we? We weren’t out to prove anything to anyone with this record. The thing is, we already proved whatever ‘it’ is to ourselves.”

Guarded? A little. But it seems to be his way – get too close and Tom goes... vague. Consequently, he’s no more lyrical about Jay Mehler, Karloff’s replacement, who he describes as ‘a great sessionist (who) has added bits and bobs’ to the record.

“They’re both as amazing as each other,” he finally concedes.

‘Amazing’ is Tom’s favourite word, and it’s one he uses a lot when CityLife asks about the band’s forthcoming gig in Manchester – part of Kasabian’s endless summer tour schedule.
 

“We’re gonna get right back into the groove,” he promises. “But we’re used to playing live, we did something like 500 shows in those four years. It’s ******* ridiculous how many shows we’ve done.

“I dunno what we’re doing right on stage, but we must be doing something right. I just think it’s this feeling we get, you know, this thing we give off, the realism of us as a band.

"I think the enigma we got and the characteristics we got, it’s like the great bands of the last 30 or 40 years, like maybe we’re looked upon by ’em,” he muses.

Then he smiles. “We know how to do it, how to win it, how to portray it and how to kill it.”

The king of the soundbite is truly back when he belongs.

Kasabian play the M.E.N. Arena on Friday, November 20. £25. Call 0844 847 8000.

*YOU can also read a review of their recent Academy date to the right.