Taken from Q magazine March '10
A Round With...Stephen HollandQ finds himself sitting in a pub in suburban Melbourne. It is fairly typically Australian, a mostly middle-aged labourer clientele, most of whom don't seem to have showered after work and are therefore caked in dirt, stand at the bar and watch the Australians thrashing the West Indies in the cricket. Q is aware that interviewing Stephen Holland has the potential for controversy at the best of times, let alone itnerviewing him in a pub. Then Stephen Holland walks in wearing a navy wife-beater singlet, Ray Bans and a scarf (It's 36 degrees).
"You Q?" I nod, "Haha, hiya pal, pleashed to mee chu." Oh shit, he's already pissed.
It's Q's round, what are you having?Jack Daniels and Coke
You sound like you've been hitting it already?Nah mate, I just put that voice on as a joke. Well actually I had a few beers with lunch, and one or two by the pool this afternoon. I'm not pissed though.
You've been pretty critical of certain other stars recently. What's brought that on?A lot of people think it's a publicity thing. Like, because we've been away for a while we're trying to make a splash by getting in the papers. Fuck that! We're fucking Pilot mate, we could bugger off for 20 years and people would still know us. We've burnt ourselves in the international fucking psyche. It's been building up for a while really, and generally I'll hold my tongue. But something puts me over the edge, fucking watch out. Jonny Johnson claimed his band to be the best in the last 25 years. Whoa-ho, hang on. They might be a touch better than Crazy Frog at a stretch. From there, well, there's a lot built up as I said, it just opened the floodgates man.
What other artists are in that Stephen Holland pool of hate?Ha, no no. Don't try and make me run my mouth just so you can make a decent story out of this. I know what you're up to pal. And you're lucky I don't take offence to that, it just so happens I think 'pool of hate' is a fairly accurate description though, haha. Oh, fuck, I do wanna say that I've just been reading Ryan Ross Hernandez's interview in Rolling Stone. What the fuck's he on about? At first I loved what he was saying, but it's skin-fucking-deep man. If he doesn't want to be in the tabloids then don't date actresses, don't move to Hollywood, don't go to places that only celebrities go. (Pilot) all avoid the tabloids by living as normal a life as you can live making tens of millions of dollars a year. Then he's carrying on like he's the only one that's written a song that's meant something. Fuck off! Just coz you're the only fucking male artist that cries every night doesn't mean you're more of an artist. Also he's a Republican so he can fuck right off.
Shall we move on to the album?Shall we move on to a second drink?
You've finished already?(Presuming Q's getting the next round) Another JD and coke thanks.
(Returning with drinks) So what's your personal views on Pilot's upcoming album?Well I wrote a lot of the songs so I like it a lot. Do I think it's going to be as well received as The Leed Balloon or Inside Newtopia? Well now every fucking album we do gets compared to those two. To be honest I don't think it's up to their standard. But we're evolving all the time and it's the most different we've sounded without just completely ripping off The Mars Volta. I like that we're pissed off too. Being mopey didn't work on our second album (Love Is For Fools) but I've got a funny feeling being pissed off will work on this one. I've got a feeling people are tiring of us being fun and...well, fucking strange.
Why do you think the songs are pissed off on this record?Well I wrote a lot of them, ha. But the world's just decaying man, look around. In general we're (Pilot) pretty easy going guys. Not me so much, but the others. But things have got to a point where it's just like, 'what the fuck is going on?' This war's gust going on forever and no one even seems to notice it. My grandparents keep going on at me about what it was like growing up during a war. I'm like, 'so did I. It's just the most surreal war in history.'
Your new single, Sirens, seems to be pointing the finger at women...It's not all women, though it seems like it's most. Yeah, it's about the way they use sex as a trap to get their way and how they can wrap good men around their little finger. Using the Sirens myth from Greek mythology as a metaphor for that obviously. There's a lot of that 'Pussy Trap' bit from Eddie Murphy's Raw in the philosophy of that song.
I notice you're carrying on with the Sally songs on this record. Who's Sally based on?There's no one that Sally's actually based on, it was just an idea when we were writing our first record to write a song about a thirtysomething-year-old lady with kids who goes out drinking and dancing on the weekends (Sally Thirtysomething). The name Sally just fit with the song. Clint's got a cousin called Sally who thinks the song's about her. But she doesn't have any kids so her argument kind of falls down. We didn't think much of it at the time but the more we've grown the more we've felt it's an important song and now 'Sally' is a means of singing about the types of women who piss you off. So in Cash(ed Up) Cow she'd married a rich guy and is just spending all his money like there's no tomorrow. Now in Cigarettes For Sally the husband is just completely pussy-whipped and goes out to get her cigarettes with his money while she sits on her fat arse, all in the hope he can get a blowjob.
Finally, we've not heard any plans on a tour for this album. What's going on there?We're gonna delay the tour for a while after teh album is released. With the last one we finally started to bring a stadium show to our stadium gigs. We wanna develop the stadium show for this tour, and that's stretching our brains because in general we're not creative artistically. Except with music, hopefully we're ok at that.
Edited by user 18 February 2010 01:06:59(UTC)
| Reason: Not specified
