links

so who the hell are they?

quotes

images

news

me

webrings

guest book

Good old Brian Molko. He likes a bit of a dress up and having a good time with it. And why not? Placebo's second album, Without You I'm Nothing, has seen the band stretch their profile even further across the world, led by the infectiously seductive single, Pure Morning. While the band's self-titled first album and single breakthrough, Nancy Boy, propelled them to immediate rock stardom across the UK and Europe in 1997, Without You I'm Nothing has proved that the trio have the goods to go ballistic and they pretty much haven't been off the road since the album's release in the UK last October.

They're an enticing entity. Molko was born in the US, raised in Luxembourg, where he met co-founding member, Stefan Olsdal, and has lived in the UK since his late teens. As such his accent is a cocktail of all these places and added to this is a bisexual flamboyancy that has proved both a blessing and a curse in interviews with the UK music press. Molko's 1998 comment about a tour 'we left a trail of blood and spunk all over the country' has already gone down in NME folklore.

While Molko often states that he wishes the media's focus would be on the music of Placebo, he often can't help himself once he gets going and this week's X-Press Interview - conducted last week as the band wrapped up their latest round of US touring - bears testament to that fact.

Placebo play at Metropolis City on Tuesday week, May 4, supported by Brisbane outfit, Lavish.

You're in Portland, Oregon, as we speak. Is it a rock capital?

I don't know. The only thing about Portland that I know is that Gus Van Zant comes from here and it's where some of the movie, My Own Private Idaho, takes place. But so far, to my great disappointment, I haven't seen any rent boys (laughs).

You've toured a lot since the album was released in the UK late last year. This stint alone in the US has been two months, how are you all feeling at this stage?

We're feeling surprisingly good. It's really tightened us up. We've practically been touring since October, so at the moment we're on a real roll. The set and our playing is, as we like to say, as tight as a vicar's dirtbox (laughs).

So we were already a very well oiled machine but by the time we get to Australia, we'll be even better lubricated.

Part of your present US tour was with Stabbing Westward, what was that combination like?

We're still, actually... for our sins we're still playing with Stabbing Westward every night. It's a strange bill. In America you often take what you can get. We're not in a position to custom design our tours just yet. If we were in a better position I don't think we would have toured with this band.

In a recent issue of Q Magazine there was a tour diary published of when Placebo were last in the US back in November/December. How have things changed for you in the States since that visit?

It's all gone up a notch, basically. We're continually surprised by the amount of fans that we have here. At first when we did that tour in December it was around the success of Pure Morning. I think that's kinda developed now into people actually having both albums. We seem to have a hardcore loyal following of fans here. They're all freaks, but that's how I like it.

Finish this sentence - Trying to break America is like...

... trying to put your finger in a vicar's dirtbox (laughs).

Has Without You I'm Nothing been a good album to take on the road? Has it flexed well in the live scenario?

Yeah, well what we do is that the set is a mixture of both albums, basically. Because of the nature of the American market and also because there's a lot of Stabbing Westward fans that we're playing to we play primarily the punk stuff. Primarily the hard edged stuff. When we come to Australia we'll be doing our full hour and a half show, which is kind of an emotional rollercoaster. There'll be a lot of punk, but there'll be a lot of tenderness and a lot of balance as well, which we excel at. You'll be getting the variety, America's getting the slap across the face.

You've previously described Without You I'm Nothing, emotion-wise, as being the come-down album following the debut...

Yeah, it's a hangover album. It's when everything that you've taken starts to wear off and you start to look around. It's kind of looking around at your situation. It's kind of a post-coital depression album, really. It deals with the disintergration of relationships. It's a very broken-hearted album. There's a strain of melancholy that runs through the whole thing. It's primarily about the loss and impossibility of love.

As a producer was Steve Osborne suitably post-coital?

Well we worked with Steve 'cause he had one foot in the dance camp and one foot in the rock camp. He's one half of Perfecto with Paul Oakenfield. We think that in order for music to be progressive that genres have to kind of like, fuse. We didn't want to make a straightforward rock album, we wanted to make a rock album that was textured with a certain amount of electronics.

On the first album we used a lot of toy instruments. On this album we used a lot more expensive toys which relate to dance music machines. Often my guitars would go through keyboards and filter banks and things like that. We were just trying to move guitar sounds onwards, from being classic rock. I think that's why we wanted to work with an Englishman as opposed to an American on this album, but I think that maybe on the next one we might want to work with an American.

From what I've heard that's primarily because of the tensions that arose in the studio?

Well, you know, I think it was the first time we'd encountered a kind of band/producer divide. We don't really enjoy working like that. We're very kind of demonstrative people. We're quite over the top and Steve's very quiet.Sometimes it was quite difficult to make a connection, but he's incredibly good at what he does. Sometimes I just think we wish that he would have spoken to us more (laughs).

Speaking of divides it's said that when Robert (Schultzberg, ex-drummer) was in Placebo that the band was somewhat dysfunctional. Did you ever feel that Placebo would implode before you even got to a second album?

Well, yeah. There was a point when we were on tour with David Bowie where I had to take my manger aside and I said to him 'I can't be in a band with Robert anymore. I'm not enjoying myself. I might as well work in a bank every day, hate my boss, go home, fall in front of the TV and dry-fuck my wife, as opposed to being in a band'. We were really not getting on at all. When you're at such an emotional lowpoint you consider lots of things - you consider leaving the music business, you consider going solo.

But the thing was that Stefan (Olsdal, bass/guitar/keyboards) and I had such a close relationship and such a creative bond that in effect we couldn't really do it without each other. Stefan and I had to have a really long conversation about what was going to happen and eventually Robert was asked to leave. Neither of us was happy and it was just kind of obvious that we couldn't do this anymore. I wasn't prepared to sacrifice my friendship and creative relationship with Stefan with someone who didn't like me and was taking all his frustrations out on me and who didn't actually seem to want to be in the band.

So things have changed. We were a band that was fuelled by tension and when Steve (Hewitt) joined, finally friendship came to the band. Harmony came to the band. We're alternative family now, you know what I mean? That is why I got into music, to escape the mundanity of everyday life and McJobs and to create a lifestyle on your own terms.

If music is an escape from the mundanities of life what are the emotions you like to provoke in people through Placebo's music?

I was just trying to describe this to someone... you know when you listen to music - especially if it's Billie Holiday or something - it's so sad but it's so beautiful? It fills you with life. It's very life-affirming. That's the kind of music that I like the best. That's why I was always a very big PJ Harvey fan, she was a great inspiration to me. I think that music is a universal language, really, it's the universal communicator of emotion. It goes beyond language. the most important thing, for me, is to make an emotional connection.

Is it more gratifying to play to a room that loves you from the start or to have them hate you but to then win them over?

Both situations are good and you encounter that wherever you go because you can't conquer the world all at once. You have to go to new territories and you have to start again. What's so good about that is that it makes you not rest on your laurels. It keeps you hungry. It keeps you working. Most places that you go to you have to start again, no matter how famous you are in England or Europe. You have to start from the bottom and start the building blocks all over again. That's really important and it stops you from being complacent.

We like playing to 6000 people in Paris but yesterday we played to 500 people in Seattle. I mean Seattle was a bit scary 'cause of the history of the place, you know what I mean? I thought people would be jaded but it was an incredibly successful gig. We like both things, we like cooking it up in small clubs yet we loved playing Barcelona Olympic Stadium with U2, do you know what I mean?

You studied acting (Molko had a significant role in Velvet Goldmine) and I believe you've dabbled in modelling, most recently for Calvin Klein. Was it the instant gratification of rock'n'roll that has stolen you away, for the most part from those other things?

Absolutely. You've hit the nail on the head. With Velvet Goldmine, we did it, then two years later it came out. I can imagine that as an artist that must be incredibly frustrating, to have to sit around and wait all that time. The thing about music that is so significant is the instant gratification. You strap on a guitar, hit a distortion pedal and there you go. Particularly playing live, you get an instant response from your public. That is why Placebo will remain my number one priority.

Acting was my first love. I studied it, I'd been doing it since I was 11. I always knew that being in a band, if we became successful it might be an in-road to it and I intend to do more. And modelling is fun, you know? Especially if you get to keep the clothes. I got a lot of free Calvin Klein stuff (laughs). That was great.

X-Press Magazine interviewed (director) Todd Haynes last year when Velvet Goldmine was released. He seemed to have quite a vision of what glam was then and what it is now. The film, however, seemed misunderstood by a good majority of the people who saw it...

It suffered from the fact that it was a bit too hyped.Because it took so long to come out, people were waiting for something. The longer that you wait for something the more absolutely mind-blowing you expect it to be. I also know that the film suffered a great deal from budget cuts. That was very frustrating.

But the main thing as far as the film was concerned is that I think people expected it to be a kind of docu-drama about glam, which it isn't, really. It's a fantasy and a love story. That's how you have to look at it and I think a lot of people who remembered glam from the first time round, including David Bowie, didn't like the film. That was basically because they were coming at it from the wrong angle. I mean David obviously has a different point of view on it because it's kind of about him. So he's allowed to think what he likes about it.

Speaking of which, Placebo have played with David Bowie quite a few times in recent years, you seem to have hit it off with him...

Oh yeah, he's an absolute darling. He's a true gentleman and a fantastic person. He's a very close friend of the band's. We're very lucky to have a legend like him as a friend, really. He's a fascinating character, there is so much wisdom to glean from him. He's just such a pleasure to be around. He's kind of like a rock uncle (laughs).

Has he taught you anything about fame?

I think David wrote a very good song about it, he almost said it all in that one.

Have you found fame to be intoxicating, a pain in the arse or an intoxicating pain in the arse?

It's an intoxicating pain in the arse (laughs). Basically. There are certain aspects of it which are fantastic, the opportunities that it brings and the people that you get to meet. Like Velvet Goldmine was an opportunity which wouldn't have happened had we not had success.

Going out in public becomes more difficult. Psychologically, a couple of years ago, the Placebo explosion to fame sort of led on to a kind of identity crisis that I had. I started having a relationship with myself through my own press. I found there was a great chasm between who I believed myself to be andwho other people believed myself to be. Now if you can imagine, for a few minutes, what it would be like to have tens of thousands of people, who you've never met, have an opinion about you. Whether it's a positive or a negative. That can do your fucking brain in. It's a very strange beast, fame.

At that time it seemed as though your press started getting press.

Absolutely.

The weird thing is that you were being penalised in the UK for being flamboyant in interviews when that's what the music press there has hankered for people to be like all along...

Exactly. It's a magnificent double standard. I think it's quite negative when your press starts getting its own press. When you go to a new territory you really want to start over. What you have to understand, though, is that, press-wise, it all happens in London, basically. The London music scene is incredibly small, incredibly incestuous and incredibly bitchy. All you have to do is spill a journalist's pint at a gig and he'll write negative things about you for 10 years. All that needs to happen is for a journalist's girlfriend to think you're quite cute for them to fucking hate you for the rest of their lives. It's a very bitchy environment. It's the only country where I've encountered journalists who actually believe that they are more intelligent and more important than musicians themselves. They get very irritated when they're confronted with intelligent, verbose, well educated musicians who can take them on board and who aren't going to bow down.

The other thing is that the backlash always kicks in when you become established, when they don't have the power to make or break you anymore. So it's a strange one, but we've always had a global view for the band. If you go to France and Belgium, they're countries which consider comic books to be works of art. High art, not low brow. You encounter proper music criticism. To them, music criticism is literature. In England it's incredibly sensationalist and incredibly tabloid. That's my take on it.

What do you make of it when you see Brian Molko clones in the audience? Is that flattering or annoying?

Well imitation's the highest form of flattery, really. But sometimes I think clones can get it a bit wrong. One of the things this band is promoting is individuality. What we're saying is 'be yourself and be proud'. So cloning yourself after me is kind of missing the point a bit. But, if that's the way that people choose to express affection and loyalty, then there's really nothing bad I can say about it.

You have to stay one step ahead of your clones and one haircut ahead of your clones. When we started seeing thousands of people in London with my haircut, it was time for the Molko bob to go. So the Molko bob went and it's never coming back.

(X-Press, 22 April 1999)