Interview // Frank Turner

If you read the meticulous blogs of Mr Frank Turner from his recent trip to China, you can tell that here is a man who favours detail, honours his surroundings and their legacy, and likes to know where he’s going. It seemed an unexpected move when Frank left previous, and hugely popular band Million Dead as they split apart, in favour of a life less hardcore, but if we take what we’ve learnt from his writing style, we see had the insight, intelligence and sheer talent to take on the task. It’s a move that paid off as Frank continues to be one of the most celebrated UK solo artists currently on the circuit.

Hello Frank, how are you?

I have a hangover to be honest with you, but other than that I’m well.

You played a free gig last night didn’t you?

Yes, last night was wild and it was amazing; I mean, I kind of live for nights like that, but then I also pay for them the next day. I was just at the Flowerpot Bar that’s run by some friends of mine, and I was sat at the bar having a drink at about 5 o’clock yesterday and the band that were booked to play cancelled and I was just like “Will you give me free beer if I play a gig”, and Dave was like, “Definitely!” and then it almost became a game to find out how many people we could get to come down with just 3 and a half hours ntoice. We had a full room; we had 250 people in there and we were turning people away! We had people from Birmingham, Nottingham, Brighton and Bristol.

Wow, they got there that fast?

Yeah! That’s the power of Twitter I guess.

Well by the power of Twitter this morning I already knew you had a hangover, so I thought I’d be delicate with the questions…

No, I’m a robust soul, it’s fine! It was a fantastic evening just getting people in, and like I say, last minute stuff like that is just the essence of rock ‘n’ roll, y’know, like last minute sing-alongs and Jameson whiskey!

We’re doing this interview ahead of Latitude, where you’ll be performing, but are you looking forward to festival season?

Yeah, I am actually. It’s funny really because with festival season, I’m always really looking forward to it about this time of year, but then by about August, I’m thoroughly fed up of it and want to do normal gigs again. But now, I’m really excited and Latitude’s gonna be fantastic; it’s gonna be my first main stage slot at a major festival, so I’m really excited about that.

You’re well versed on the festival regime, so have you got any essentials at all?

Erm, well, boots generally go down well, but other than that – this is gonna sound terrible – but the days of me actually staying at festivals are well over now. I can’t be arsed with it, give me a hotel, you know what I mean?! I know that makes me sound terribly soft and weak, but I spent so many years sleeping on the ground, or not sleeping that I think I’ve earned myself a hotel room!

So a Premier Travel Inn room is your festival essential then?

Yeah, or a Travelodge! I’m not really fussy about my hotel as long as it has a roof. And you know, the whole tent and camping thing never really was my thing because I’ve always thought the building is an achievement of humanity that I’m quite in favour of and I quite like being in them.

You’ve recently been to China and New Zealand as I’ve read from your blog – did you get a good hotel or two there?

Erm I did actually; I stayed in a few of them and they were all fantastically cheap! One of the hotels we stayed in was something like £6 a night. I thought I might just move there! China in particular was amazing, crazy, wild.

A good time had by all?

Yeah. It was very kind of far out and not westernised, but it was an experience and there was something sort of deeply weird about being in Beijing and playing a gig with 300 people there.

I read that you had the jitters slightly because you were worried that people wouldn’t come and you didn’t know what the reaction would be like…

Yeah, I mean I don’t get nervous about playing shows for anything except the fact of if I don’t know what to expect; that’s the thing I get nervous about before a show. I didn’t know China and I didn’t know anyone that’d been to China, so I didn’t know what to expect.

Did you find that you had quite a fanbase there that you didn’t know about?

Yes, certainly in Beijing and Shanghai and also Wuhan. Some of the other cities we went to, it was literally like they’d only just started having gigs there, like two minutes ago, so it was a bit Wild West – or Wild East I should say. But it was very cool, especially in Beijing and Shanghai where people were singing along and that kind of thing. It was very unreal.

We were talking about Twitter and I also saw on your page that you’d replied to someone and said you’d be releasing some new material next January…

Well I’m gonna be recording then – well that’s the plan. I’ve got lots of new material coming at the moment and there’s lots of discussion going on at the moment about when we’ll be unleashing it upon the world, or indeed a microphone in the studio, but I’m hoping we’ll be recording at the beginning of next year with an eye to releasing just before next summer.

That’s good news and not too long to wait really, because you only brought your last album out last year and have treated us to a live DVD recently…

Right, and there’s kind of a live album in there too, so I feel like I’ve kind of got my record out for this year – I’m trying to get an record out every year – and then the next one will be next year. I’ve got a tonne of new stuff floating around, so it’ll be good to get some new material in the public domain.

Do you think it’ll be relentless touring for you then filling up the rest of this year?

Pretty much, yeah. I’ve got festivals all summer then I’ll be in the States for quite a while later this year, then Europe, then the UK again.

But hey, you’re opening for Green Day in June in Wembley – I guess whether you’re supporting or headlining, Wembley is still Wembley.

I know, I actually went and had my picture taken there yesterday and it was daunting, shall we say. It’s like 70,000 people or even more which is many in my book, so yeah, it’s slightly intimidating.

I read on your blog that you remembered watching Freddie Mercury on the TV playing a gig there. Can you feel the weight of heritage of previous shows in the grounds?

Erm, kind of; it hadn’t really occurred to me, but it wasn’t the original ground of course, but that only really struck me on the way there. I’m not really a football person at all, which is quite funny because I showed the photo yesterday to a couple of people who are actually losing their shit over the fact that I’m playing at Wembley. I’m like ‘yeah, whatever’, but you know, it’s cool. I’m really chuffed that I’m playing there and it should be really cool.

Overwhelming I imagine. Taking it back to the old school – quite literally – for anyone who’s first introduction to you this is, you were educated at Eton, Mr Turner…

I was; I got a scholarship there when I was 12 years old.

Was it a scholarship for music, or history?

An academic scholarship.

And did you get into music there, because the facilities there must be second to none?

Oh yeah, the facilities are incredible, but I got into punk rock there because I wasn’t particularly happy about my social situation there. I mean education wise, it’s incredible, but I wasn’t happy being surrounded by snobs; it was pretty tedious to me. It was great because punk rock was fantastic because it was sort of an answer to the question I was asking at the time, and all the rage and defiance and rebellion was exactly what I was looking for, so I don’t think I would have fallen quite so head over heels in love with punk rock when I did if I wasn’t where I was at school, I will say that.

And what do you think of the other Etonian very much in the news at the moment, Mr Cameron?

I don’t know; I’m not particularly a fan of his politics, because I think that he’s of centre-left status and I dislike that, and I don’t think he’s nearly enough of a change from Gordon Brown which is a disastrous awful car crash. He’s a media contrux, which annoys me and he’s trying to be all things to all people, which annoys me as well. But I have to say, particularly as I travel further and further out of the UK, that I get less and less tolerant with people who think it’s alright to say I’m an arsehole just because of where I went to school. You know, it’s kinda like “oh, old Etonian – must be an arsehole”. I find that increasingly boring. You know, there are many resaons to dislike David Cameron, but where he went to school is not one of them. It’s not even like it was my decision to go there; calling me a twat because of a decision my parents made when I was 12 strikes me as slightly unfair.

You followed the education path through and got a degree – you didn’t give that up for music?

Kind of; I’m deeply in love with academia and would like to go back to it one day because my deep passion is history and I’d like to go back to studying it, but my third year at uni was derailed by the fact that Million Dead, my old band kinda blew up while I was at uni, so tried to kick me out a few times for non-attendance. They’d say, “Where were you last week?”, and I would say, “Er, Belgium”. I wrote my dissertation on a tour bus, which was interesting! It was cool, but like I say, hopefully one day I’ll go back to doing that side of things.

You started off doing Kneejerk, didn’t you? But I wondered what that experience meant to you now? I mean, first bands are always quite a rite of passage, aren’t they?

Well, Kneejerk wasn’t actually my first band. There were loads of others before that; I started playing in bands when I was 13, but the first few bands I was in were so indescribably awful. That was the first kinda band I was in that toured. But you know, I’m always endlessly self-critical as a musician and I could pick enough holes in Kneejerk to keep me busy for the rest of my life, but and the end of the day, we were 16 when we did that, so part of me thinks we weren’t bad.

I just always think your formative bands are the most interesting; they’re the maturing of the man and musician.

I guess I sort of think of Million Dead as my formative band. I mean we did about 3 UK tours [as Kneejerk], so it wasn’t as sort of life defining as Million Dead, who I did 5 with I think.

I wanted to talk briefly about Million Dead, as even though you disbanded, which can often shroud the band in negativity, I imagine you’ve got more positive memories than negative that you like to remember…

Hmmm, it’s ending up that way. The ending of that band was not particularly pretty and for me I always felt there was a lot of negative feeling and resentment towards me, but I am and I always will be very proud of the music we made. I think we were a great band musically and we put on a great live show and all that kind of thing, but yeah, there was a lot of personal attention around it, but as time goes on I’m getting better and better at remembering the good times and not focusing on the arguing at the end of it.

With some perspective now, what can you say was the overall positive about being in Million Dead?

Like I say, I think we just made some really good records. I guess for me, I’ve never really wanted to be in, or been interested in ‘scene’ bands or bandwagon bands – bands that are part and parcel of the milieu that surrounds them, do you know what I mean? Like, I love Nirvana, but all the grunge bands that came after Nirvana weren’t for me. I was more into Jesus Lizard, who weren’t that bothered about what was going on around them. What I’m proud of with Million Dead is that I don’t think we were a part of any other bands who were around at the time. Not that I’m saying we were super original or anything, or we didn’t borrow heavily from whatever, but we weren’t part of any bandwagon, we were just really good at what we did.

You weren’t carried along by a wave of other artists…

Exactly, and I’m really proud of that.

It must have been quite a scary thing going solo after all those years being in bands. Did you feel like you were starting out again in a way?

Yeah, definitely; it’s funny because at the time it all felt OK, because I think I just carried myself forward on a wave of homicidal self confidence, but now I look back and think ‘Wow, that was actually quite weird as a decision of a path I should come down’… but it worked! No complaints.

It’s strange as well, because you’ve sort of gone on this journey with Million Dead, to setting off on your own and kind of being lumped into this New Folk genre, which I wouldn’t personally attribute you with…

Well again, I’m not really comfortable with scenes and that kind of thing, but there’s certain stuff that gets lumped together in this country. It’s funny, ‘cause I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out with Laura Marling and Jamie T and the Mumford boys and stuff like that, but musically we never really did anything together, we just drank at the same bars. In America now though, I’m sort of being lumped in with the whole Folk Punk scene and it’s like, I know Chuck Ragan quite well, but I’m not sure how much I want to be part of any particular sort of scene. I didn’t feel like I was on the same train as anybody else when I started off on this thing, and I still don’t now.

You played Norwich just a couple of months ago, but do you have any memories of the city?

I’ve played in Norwich more times than I can remember. The Ferryboat was like a second home to me; Kneejerk played there five or six times, Million Dead played there eight or nine times and the Norwich hardcore scene was very good to me as I used to hang out there a lot, so I’ve always enjoyed coming back.

Emma Roberts

Frank Turner appears as part of the line-up for this year’s highly anticipated Latitude Festival, which runs from the 15^th-18^th July. For tickets, go to www.latitudefestival.co.uk.