| articles | Placebo covet the spotlight. Band frontman Brian Molko is forthright in his opinions and he's not shy of self-promotion.
"I just got back from Greece," Molko says from London. "We're huge in Greece and we've never played there before. It's nice to be able to go somewhere where you're already massive. "It was like when we went to Australia for the first time," he continues, referring to the very recent tour - which included a Perth gig in May. "It was such a successful tour that we're coming back. We played clubs last time so a lot of our fans couldn't see the gig." This time round Placebo are joining silverchair but tomorrow night Placebo will play their own gig at Metropolis Fremantle. "I think the silverchair audience is a good audience for us," Molko says. "They're young, they rock and that's definitely the kind of audience that will appreciate us. "It's a bit of a case of age before beauty - except that we're beautiful too." Beauty is central to the Placebo image and sound. Molko's androgyny and Placebo's lush, pop songs set the band apart from other UK chart-toppers like Oasis and Blur. In fact, Molko is brazen in his opposition to "lad culture". "Our personalities are very much anti-lad." He says they are not into football or big-bosomed blondes. "I guess that makes us non-lads. But, everyone's quite complex and if getting drunk and falling over is laddish behaviour, then we're completely responsible for doing that quite a bit." Coinciding with Placebo's tour of Australia is a special tour edition of Without You I'm Nothing, a two-CD set featuring Nancy Boy (a hit single from their 1996 self-titled debut), remixes and a special re-recording of the title track, featuring David Bowie. The tour CD was released last week and the Molko/Bowie duet will be released as a single next week. "It's very exciting," Molko begins. "It's something born out of friendship and a relationship that's about five years old. The time was right, because David really does love Without You I'm Nothing and went away and wrote his own harmony parts." The lead singer pre-empts suggestions Placebo are using Bowie to further their career, stating the band are established in their own right. "It's also quite a risky single," Molko says. "We wanted to put out a slower number and it doesn't have a chorus." By working with Bowie, Placebo have implanted themselves in the lineage of androgynous rock stars that can be traced beyond the Thin White Duke to Little Richard. "I've always said that Little Richard was the first punk," Molko explains. "He was a black man in the late 50s sleeping with white women and white boys, wearing make-up and dancing on the piano "I've always had huge amounts of admiration for Little Richard and without Little Richard there would have been no Iggy. "And without Iggy there would've been no punk. The whole world would've been different. He has a lot to answer for." |