Bleat and bitch about it all you want but the cold, hard fact is Placebo’s perfectly featured Brian Molko might be England’s last chance at a real rock star this century. He’s the only suitable applicant they’ve had in the past few years and he’s probably way overqualified for the job. Placebo’s second album, Without You I’m Nothing demonstrates a union symbolised the night a Ziggy Stardust Bowie leaned across a table at Max’s Kansas City in New York and kissed Lou Reed. Molko’s own touch stones aren’t quite as continentally polarised. “ The first time I heard Sonic Youth was a very, very important thing for me. It was my 16th birthday and I was very stoned and I’d never heard anything like it before in my life. That was the year I started playing guitar so that had a very, very big effect on me. After I moved to London I heard PJ Harvey for the first time and the emotional intensity and depth of the album Dry also had a very, very big effect on me. I guess when I went into the idea of a band I kind of wanted to marry the kind of dissonant, atonal beauty of Sonic Youth’s experimentalism with the kind of pained confessional and highly emotional quality of music the PJ Harvey has.” Unfortunately incidents such as death threats also came with the turf of the newly famous. The band were disturbed but Molko wasn’t exactly surprised. “I think we’ve always been a band that inspires extreme emotions in people. There doesn’t really seem to be a lot of indifference when it comes to Placebo. People either really love us or really hate us”. By Murray Engleheart
