Taken from Q Magazine June 2010
An interview with Pilot's Stephen Holland is a difficult thing to prepare yourself for. It's impossible to know which Stephen Holland will turn up. The serious artist Stephen Holland, the disinterested Stephen Holland, the angry Stephen Holland, the playful Stephen Holland, the troublemaker? Q would just have to go into the Melbourne Kebab shop that had been set as the meeting place with an open mind.
Holland is instantly recognisable sitting alone in a booth near the counter, wearing a fedora, Ray Bans, skinny jeans, and a wifebeater singlet. Q approachs the booth. "You Q?" Q nods. "Gonna get a kebab." "No thanks." "Right, get your pen and paper out mate, I got some shit to say today." Oh good, it's gonna be the angry Stephen Holland.
How's work on the new album coming along?
It's smashing mate. The vibes back, we feel fucking invincible. We've made a conscious decision to go back to the mindset we had before we'd made an album so we feel fresh and young and the songs we're doing really reflect that.
How have you consciously changed your mindset? Doesn't that make it less natural?
If you don't put the effort in then yeah maybe. But it's not just us saying, 'let's try and think like we're younger,' we're living it mate. Boozey nights, crashing at each others places, spending more time together is the key I guess. Hypnosis too, we went at got hypnotised by this dude in Adelaide and we feel younger. It's weird, if it weren't for the mirror and my prior knowledge that I'm in my thirties, I'd swear I was a teenager after the session with that dude.
How close is the album to being ready?
We've got the ten songs we want on the album. We're gonna go into our studio in Nick's house and start doing the proper recordings this weekend. Won't take long, no kitchen sink with this record, in and out, so soon, it'll be out soon.
You've released 11 studio albums already. How do you get motivated for a new album after all this time?
We wanna put our songs out there man. There's a real feeling amongst us that a big part of the world needs our music. There's plenty of metal, pop divas and sullen, try-hard shitheads out there. Who's saying important shit in fun, danceable songs? We are and the more we can pump out the better. With this album we drew a lot of inspiration from Prodigy's Invaders Must Die record, in terms of being older but recapturing that youthful feeling of earlier works. And being awesome rather than sounding like shitty, deperate old codgers.
Clint and Nick seem to be embracing areas of the music scene that they rejected when they were younger. Are you doing the same?
Not really. I'm tolerating it being played but I still don't wanna listen to GirlSpice or PANIC! or assorted other people polluting the airwaves with music that would be much better off to never have been invented. They're also too supportive of new bands in my opinion. Too many young bands these days feel fucking entitled and Nick and Clint and other musical icons telling them they're exciting or whatever just feeds that feeling. When we started out hardly anyone gave a shit in the music industry, and that was after we'd been touring and writing and draining our expenses for about 3 years. These days you get bands saying, 'Hey, I just met a few other guys and we recorded some shitty songs the other night,' and people are crawling over themselves to welcome them to the scene and give their stamp of approval. Maybe they're keen to discover the next big band, but fuck it, bands like that need a swift kick in the nuts and an invitation to come back in a couple years when you've got some quality songs under your belt and some hair on your fucking balls.
You're last album was a pretty angry album, is there going to be a similar sentiment on this record?
Not overly. There's a song I wrote called Dig Deeper that's about exactly what I was just sounding off about. Otherwise the angry songs are done in a really playful way, like one called Class-A Pharmaceuticals that's a fucking cracker.
Can you give us some song titles to start getting excited over?
Well I just gave you two. Oh, also Devil's Daughter I guess coz we were playing that live and saying it'd be on the next record. So Devil's Daughter, Dig Deeper and Class-A Pharmaceuticals. There you go, there's 3 song titles you already knew that you can get excited about.
Thanks for your time Stephen
You too mate...You're gonna give me ten bucks for the kebab right?
