forever delayed sean interviews
[scroll down to see all the quotes]
Interview translated by Pretty In Pink from Finland
Intro.de interview translated from German
Click here for NME Originals Quotes - including Sean's comments
from my Nicky website I Love Nichola a.k.a. Nickywire.co.uk
Sean quotes from the Radio 2 Documentary 12th October 2002
We just wanted to annoy people and then hopefully convince them afterwards. When we were young we sort of blatantly modelled ourselves on The Clash. We wanted to try and bring back a bit of the pizazz, a bit of the hollywood dreaming sort of idolised rock star type thing, that's what we were looking for ourselves.
Probably would have lasted about 2 seconds in Blackwood High Street but we wanted to annoy people, we wanted to rub people up the wrong way. We wanted to be the total opposite of everything. A lot of people sort of laughed at us and went "oh they're sort of provincial, they come from Wales", you know, "that's a joke place"
One of the things that we did try to create was that you either love us or you hate us but at the same time you still know what we're about. Whatever press there is, good press, bad press, it's still good press. So we tried to manipulate in a little way with the little power that we had.
[on their broader influences and the quotes they used] the fact that it was written down... we used to totally believe in everything that was in written print, it was like gospel to us. We just used it as reference and took from the past and tried to turn it into the future.
[on the knives given to Richey in Thailand] The knives, they came through as a present, we were all backstage, they came through, opened them up and looked at it. I think he took them out on stage if I remember it rightly, I think they were on the riser and maybe he took one of them and towards the end of the gig loosely cut across his chest but I mean nothing was too... even by that time Richey was still almost flippant in a way about it. He wasn't deadly deadly serious. He was still laughing, still joking, even about something like that.
[on Richey] That's when we had that feeling that he was drifting further and further away and there was nothing that we could do about it. I went to see him at Whitchurch and I said to him, I said "you don't belong here" and I said "look, this is no good for you, you're just going to end up like them"
The hopelessness really was the fact that there was no notes, there was no phonecalls, there was no leads, it was just completely empty, vacuous, there was just nowhere to go, until eventually they found the car.
[on the EMG era] There was that whole discovery then of working class struggle, that was our true identity, that we'd almost forgotten where we come from, you know we just found ourselves, every little reference and influence just felt like this is our life, we'd lived it now, whereas before other people had lived it and we'd sort of reflected it, we had a history then, whereas before we didn't, all we had was other peoples history.
It was just one of those albums where we had nothing to lose, we weren't aiming for greatness then, the music was the only thing that gave us release then.
[on Tolerate] We thought it was going to be a b-side, we thought it was going to be an extra track, we didn't know that it was going to be a number 1 single. I think we found out... we were in Dublin at the time. Then when we found out we just couldn't believe it and there was a great release of emotion because for us we'd always pushed... that was the one thing that we wanted more than anything was just a number 1 single. It seemed like the impossible task then, that was the holy grail. We still can't believe it now.
How can a song with a title as long as that, with a reference to the Spanish Civil War, get to number 1. I think, even to this day, it's probably one of the strangest number 1 singles there's ever been. Probably the only song [laughs] political song that we've ever written that wasn't overtly obvious but at the same time people just go "oh that's the Spanish Civil War song". Probably be the last political single ever.
[Manic Millennium] A totally unreal experience, I walked on stage and the stage was so big that it felt like a gig in itself. The people out there, it was so vast, I just didn't feel like it was myself, I was looking at something that was bigger than us. The fact that we were playing a concert was irrelevant almost in a way that we were like superfluous in a way.
[on Castro] This is a person that's almost like a fictitious character, it doesn't really exist, but then when you actually see a person that has created so much and has meant so much in history then the gravity does really take hold.
[on being political] I think if we were overly political then I think we would have turned people off straight away. I think they would've just slammed the door straight away and that would've been it. Whereas we've tried to change it from within. But even by doing that sometimes we were a little too obvious and people still didn't get it.
Everything that we were doing was a total kick against the way the world was becoming. We try to make a difference but I don't think one band can do it, it takes a whole generation.