BEN JONES INTERVIEWS BEADY EYE
BJ: Ben Jones
BE:Members of Beady Eye
BJ: Alright, this is Ben Jones, it is Absolute Radio, and we're backstage at the Teenage Cancer Trust shows at the Royal Albert Hall, and I’m delighted to say that Beady Eye are here. Good to see you.
LG: Good to see you, mate.
BJ: Rare that you get the opportunity to talk to a band pre-show. Do you get nervous before shows like this?
LG: Not really, no, don’t get nervous at all, as long as the sound is alright everything is great, you know what I mean, its when the sound isn’t up to scratch, that when you kind of get the nerves set in because you think ‘Oh God, its going to be like this’, but if the sound’s good, we’re good.
BJ: And in terms of acoustics, you don’t get much better than the Royal Albert Hall do you.
LG: Yeah, so they say.
BJ: Now some people wanted this project to kind of maybe fail, and the success of the tour and the success of the album have, yet again, proved these people wrong. Thats a nice position to be in, a comfortable position to be in, that you proved the critics wrong maybe?
GA: Oh they of little faith. It’s not their job to have belief is it.
BJ: You had the belief, you knew it was going to be alright, yeah?
GA: Yeah, born with the belief.
BJ: Tell us a little bit about those early sessions when you went in, and it was only really a couple of weeks post the conception of the band that you decided you had a lot of songs and you wanted to get into a studio and record them, they came quite quickly, is that right?
GA: Yeah, I think the lads started demoing pretty much after all that happened, and sent me the tunes up and that, and I learned my part and they just kept on sending me tracks up, so yeah, it was pretty quick really, few weeks.
BJ: And tell us a little bit about the subject matter of the songs, where did the ideas for some of these tracks come from, or were they songs that had always been kicking around in various heads?
GA: The lyrics to the tunes were written over a long period of time I think, really. I mean, some of them go back a few years, some of them are brand new, but just basically the same way you always write songs, just personal, whatever, you know, things that rhyme.
BJ: Liam, tell us a little bit about that first show as Beady Eye, when you stepped out onto stage, what do you remember?
LG: It was great, man, but we’d been rehearsing for a couple of months before that so we knew what was going down, all we had to do, we’d done some great gigs in front of no one, you know what I mean, so we just had to put the kids in there. A bit of nerves and that, but a bit of relief that people seemed to take to us, you know what I mean, and it’s only going to get better. There’s no one screaming for Noel or Oasis or obscure songs, so that was nice.
BJ: You’ve played these gigs before as part of Oasis, and obviously Noel’s got a good history with the Teenage Cancer Trust shows as well. When you get that call from Roger Daltrey I guess its kind of difficult probably to say no isn’t it?
LG: Well I did last year, I said no last year, but only because my kids were going to Disney World and that. I don’t think he was too pleased, but there you go, man. I mean, how do you tell the kids that you’re not going to Disney Land, but here we go, forget that, we’re back here.
GA: You should do it like that advert, you know, ‘We’re not going to Disney World’.
BJ: Yeah, ‘We’re not going to Disney Land’.
BE: Yeah, so having to say no to him was a bit heavy, you know what I mean, I was sweating a lot that day.
BJ: He called you, he described you as ‘a sweetheart’ on the show to us not that long ago, and of all the phrases, of all the words that are often used to describe Liam Gallagher ‘sweetheart’ wouldn’t have been if I was on Family Fortunes it wouldn’t have been one of the ones that I’d necessarily gone for.
LG: Yeah.
BJ: What’s your relationship like with him?
BE: Me and Rog go way back, he’s a sweetheart too. We’re just two little sweethearts lost in this world of straights.
BJ: You started off on Twitter and you got like 190,000 followers in no time at all, and yet you haven’t Tweeted for a while. Have you got bored, have you moved on to something else, what’s the deal with that?
LG: I only Tweet when someone’s got it majorly wrong, you know what I mean, that’s the way I use it. If someone’s barking up the wrong tree I sort of point them in the right direction, but other than that I’m not into Tweeting, its rubbish.
BJ: Tell us a little bit about the clothing company. We are literally just around the corner, Absolute Radio is just around the corner from your store. Where do these ideas come from, do you actually design all the clothes yourself? Talk it through.
LG: Yeah, well its inspired by the 60s and that I suppose, that’s about it, bands and stuff. I’m not reinventing the wheel, I like that kind of style, you know what I mean, so that’s what we do. Me and Nick Holland, there’s a guy who does it with us, he just comes round and goes through our wardrobes, and anything that looks rubbish or a bit tired we sort of just breathe a bit of life into it.
BJ: Gem, one of the questions I wanted to ask you, there has been a lot of talk post the Oasis split that you guys were also going to be working with Noel and also working with Liam further down the line and following on from the success of Beady Eye, which is very much now a new band, what is the deal with you guys working on Noel’s projects?
GA: There’s always a lot of talk, so much myth and rumour and all that. We should have pulled up on this earlier, there’s no projects in our world, this is a band, so that I suppose informs this answer, there’s no projects going down, it’s a band, simple as, or, at a push, a group.
BJ: The live shows have been getting some tremendous reviews, and you’re doing this very special gig on April the 3rd for the Japan Tsunami Appeal.
GA: Yeah.
BJ: Tell us a little bit about that, because it kind of comes across as an ‘and friends’ gig when you look down the list of who’s playing.
GA: Well that’s exactly it. Liam came up with the idea because we are meant to be going I think in about three weeks, four weeks, and that all sold out in the blink of an eye. It’s a small club tour, but they were like bang on it, they stuck our album at number one, there’s a real long relationship. I mean, some of these Japanese fans are old friends now, let alone the people in the record companies and whoever else we’ve met, so then this idea came up of ‘Why don’t we just get something together and then give all the money to the Red Cross’. And you know what? It is possible, this took 10 days to bring together and it sold out in an hour.
BJ: It’s incredible how some of these gigs take months and months and months to organise.
GA: Well there you go.
BJ: And yet I got this email a few days after, and it was put together very, very quickly. Who organised it?
GA: Liam was sort of texting me everybody’s replies, like forwarding or whatever, you know, and it was all in the total spirit of it, like a wop bop a loo bop, that was from Bobby Gillespie, let’s have it.
LG: Everyone was buzzing, man. I mean, obviously there was a few people that couldn’t make it and that, but we let them off this time.
BJ: Well listen, have a tremendous show, and I know that there’s a lot of people outside desperate to see Beady Eye at the Royal Albert Hall. Congratulations on the success of this new band.
BE: Thank you.
Interview by Absolute Radio DJ Ben Jones TCT gig highlights can be heard on Absolute Radio.
Thanks to Jonny Silver for the transcript, listen to the interview here.
