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Q & A with SK -
Acoustic and Intimate
Bondi Beach Pavilion (pt. 2)
12/08/00
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STEVE KILBEY Faces the Audience.
(To Audience)
JOHN
So
if we can just focus on the songwriting aspects here...
AUDIENCE MEMBER
What was the inspiration behind "Destination"?
(from Starfish)
STEVE
Destination…yeah, I always had this idea I wanted
to make music about travel. I wanted to have this feeling of travelling,
like we did that with a song called Myrrh - this kind of idea
like you're travelling and there are things going past you. Then
the whole travelling thing was really exacerbated by the fact
that being in a band you're travelling all the time and you're
always thinking that you're one place and you're going to another
place. So this thing about destination started coming to my mind
all the time. I used to live in Rozelle and there was this path,
you could get right from were I lived down the bottom of Rozelle
up to the Balmain shops, and it was all between peoples houses.
There were all these like little pathways and you had to be a
resident to find them. It didn't look like there was a path there
but if you got the right angle you realised that went between
the two fences. And I remember I was walking along there and thinking
"in the space between the houses, bones had been discovered,"
and then this idea of spaces between things and travelling to
get towards somewhere… but I actually think that all the lyrics
took quite a time to all fall together.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
I'm sure you've been asked this lots of times
before but how does the actual process of songwriting work for
you? Do you write with a keyboard, a guitar, is it in your head?
STEVE
Millions of different ways…there's so many different
ways to write a song, you know. There's the way were you sit down
and go (strums guitar & sings) I miss my girl she's left me I
wish she fucking wouldn't stay wherever she is. You know like
that. Then there's the sort of thing - complete opposite of that
- where you sit down, you've got a drum machine going "boom boom
ki ka, boom boom ki ka" and then you get maybe a chord over the
top of it going "raaam" and then you get a bass line going, "errr
boom boom" and then you get a little guitar going "twang, twang"
and then another guitar going…and sooner or later you're building
up this picture… you know what I mean? Then right at the very
last moment you put the lyrics over the top…so there's a lot of
sitting down with another guy and going what do you think of this?
(strums guitar) So there's everything from that bolt of inspiration,
you're sitting there suddenly and this song appears complete,
to that thing were you're starting out and completely working
at it, like an additive process, putting things on top and on
top and on top….'til you've finally got a backing track and then
put the vocal on top of that.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Was Hologram of Baal developed like that? Because
it's got such a really dense kind of, lush, sound to it right
through and it travels the whole album. You sit and listen to
the whole album not tracks in the album. Was that built like that?
STEVE
Well, remember, you've got to differentiate between
songs and the way albums are put together, because once the songs
were all written and finished we had the idea of making it feel
like that, with all the noises and making it feel like a continuous
kind of trip. But most of the songs on Hologram of Baal, like
with most Church records, the four of us sit around and jam till
we get a piece of music and then we kind of knock it in to shape
and then after that's all finished I come along and put the lyrics
on top.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
It just works so beautifully as an album, a lot
more than other albums do as a collection of songs versus a…its
lovely
STEVE
Yeah thanks…yeah I reckon it does…thanks.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Has that always been the case with the band though?
STEVE
What's that?
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
Jamming songs.
STEVE
No…well in the beginning, I had a four track tape
recorder and I wrote all my songs on a four track tape recorder
and I'd come along and say this is the song, you play this, you
play this, you play this and this is how its going to end up.
Especially Séance, that became the epitome of that whole thing.
I figured it all out - of course it wasn't much fun for the other
guys having to do that… and then Remote Luxury was a bit like
that again. Then on Heyday it was like "I can't stand this anymore
'cause its all sounding mechanical and you guys think of much
better things than I would think of, so why don't we all write
our own parts and then I'll come along at the end and put the
lyrics on top." And that's really the way it's been ever since.
I mean, apart from certain songs which I have written on my own,
most of them are written like that.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Would it be fair to say that has been a saving
grace for The Church…as a unit, because its been a bit more of
a collaborative process?
STEVE
Oh yeah. I mean, I don't think it would have lasted
out the Eighties if it had been, "Here's my song; you do this!"
Those guys were just too good as players to do that with. You
know, I like the idea of just coming along with the bare bones
and people playing what they want on top, I think that's the best
thing rather than this "here's my demo you play it exactly as
it is". That whole syndrome I think has caused a lot of bands
to break up, because everybody's got one of those four track tape
recorders now, and everybody in the band comes along, "Here's
my song, here's the way you play it." Nobody wants to play every
note that somebody else has written. (strums away)
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Are you interested in writing for film at all?
STEVE
Yeah, got one?
Audience laughter
This has been the bane of my life… because I think
I do write… I think the one thing I would be best at in the whole
world would be to write soundtracks for film. And I go along and
I see so many films and the soundtrack is just bloody woeful.
It's a great film and they've done one of those things where they
just try and get all the pop songs into it. You know, so we can
buy the album, see the film, see the film, buy the album. So they
bung a whole lot of songs into the film, or they've just got some
old hack writer doing the soundtrack. I really want to write music
for films, I think that's really where I should be going, and
yet it's such a hard thing to break into…. I did that film Blackrock
and I thought we were writing some great music, and people were
coming and going "This is great, this music's fantastic." And
then the guys who were producing it and directing it would come
in and go "No, no. We can't have that. We're going to get a track
by Shihad in there, it's a top new band from New Zealand coming
out we've got to get them on the soundtrack." That's what gradually
happened, all our pieces were shunted out and whoever was - you
know Spiderbait, they're the new band we've gotta put their track
in here because we've got to fill up the thing so, all this really
evocative music that we'd written didn't really get used which
I thought was a real shame, but hopefully sooner or later someone's
going to come along and let me do it…the chap here.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
You've got to produce the film that's the answer.
STEVE
Produce the film?
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
Yeah you.
STEVE
Well I… see this is the thing with me I can't work
in visual… I don't work in visual at all. Every time we're going
to do a video, (well we don't do videos anymore, it was just horrible)
every time we'd go to make a video people would say "Well what
do you want in the video?" I never knew 'cause I just can't work
in those visual terms. I just hear things and feel the sound but
I just couldn't make a film for the life of me really…no couldn't
man, honestly.
Audience laughter
STEVE
If you've got a million dollars I'll have a go
at it though
Audience laughter
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Where did the name The Church come from?
STEVE
Oh God…(strums while he thinks)
JOHN
Is that question about songwriting?
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Spirituality?
STEVE
I don't know I just had this list of names, you
know and it seemed kind of a bit naughty back in 1980 or '79 it's
hard to believe…
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Steven, you were saying you don't make videos
anymore. There will probably be a time where you don't make a
collection of ten songs for a record anymore, you know - your
music's all sold over the net, and you can produce a song that's
no longer three minutes long it's ten minutes long. Do you just
want to be able to escape the confines of producing an album's
worth of tracks, or do you want to write a track and put it up
as soon as you've finished it?
STEVE
Well, I'm not really very up on what the net does
and all that, so I know that there are these bold new horizons
that the nets opening up but I'm still…I still really like the
idea of the album… you know, here's the new album. This lady over
here was saying the fact that an album flows really nicely, or
the fact that you've got ten completely different songs… I really
like that idea of the framework of the album and working within
that, so I hope things don't go too far the other way. But they
probably will.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
You want things to basically work as a collection,
where it has a start and a finish.
STEVE
Yeah, I like that idea
AUDIENCE MEMBER
You said you didn't contribute to any soundtrack,
but I seem to remember back in the nineties there was a track
you wrote especially for Tequila Sunrise …and it was very good.
STEVE
Yeah, but that's a different thing, contributing
a song to a film and doing the soundtrack, it's a whole different
ball game, 'cause one is just a song. Actually we just had that
song lying around and we gave it to them, that's a different thing
to making the music…
AUDIENCE MEMBER
So what have you done with that music that you
wrote for Blackrock?
STEVE
That's an interesting question, its on a DAT somewhere,
and I think we're going to try and get it out eventually, 'cause
it's really good. It was great, we were like, I thought it was
kind of revolutionary…
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Who's "we" by the way?
STEVE
Well, it was my brother Russell, who was engineering
it, and Tim from The Church was playing drums and I was playing
guitar and we put the film on the wall and look at it. And while
we were watching it I'm sort of playing the guitar and Tim's playing
the drums, and - there was a scene, I don't know if anybody's
seen that film, there's this scene were they're chasing the boy
up the hill and then he jumps over the cliff, and we were watching
it and playing as it happened, so we were really trying to eliminate
our minds from the procedure and just try and get the emotions
straight onto the instrument while the things were happening.
There was a lot of that and I thought it was really good. The
kids running up the hill and Tim's really belting the drums and
I'm pounding the guitar, stuff like that, and none of it ever
got used, but its still there we could use it.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
You were saying earlier, that you and Marty…writing
songs, do you think you could write a song this week ten years
ago if you were back then?
STEVE
No.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
Obviously years later, when you're playing live,
you tend to update songs or paint them in different shades, maybe
you were bored with them or you just want to change it around
- does that basically mean that any given song that you wrote
maybe just has a pair of brackets around it? And if anything,
goes on forever changing and it will never be finished.
STEVE
No, I don't look at them like that. I always
think the one on the record's a definitive version and you're
always trying to reproduce it actually.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
Every time I see you guys you always seem to be
evolving further and further so it's almost like a beginning instead
of an ending..
STEVE
Maybe that happens. I don't know what the others
are thinking about that… I don't know, I always see…I don't know.
I've never really thought about it before but I think I think
that the definitive version is on the album and we're trying to
reproduce that live, maybe a bit more noisily or exciting but
that's what we're trying to do.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
The Re:fomation album that you made - is it true
that you said after you made the album you're going to rip up
all the lyrics and rip up all the music and never reproduce it
again? I heard that said somewhere.
STEVE
Did I say that?
Audience laughter
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
I don't know. You know what journalists are like,
but I really enjoyed it and I thought that Tim had a really good
influence, you know he produced it and stuff, and it seemed to
have a really positive edge on everything that you guys have done
since then. It's like Tim… the drumming was something that was
in no mans land for the band for a little while and he's come
in and he's really made a good difference, a big difference to
the band.
STEVE
He has, he's the best drummer we ever had. So
what was the question?
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
I'm not sure exactly what the question is.
STEVE
You just wanted to say you thought Tim was good
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
I never…
Audience laughter
…It's just that I think he's made a big difference
to the band…
STEVE
Yeah, he has, he has.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
…and I think he understands you guys as individuals
in what you got that's good, that you guys do…I just find that
that album (Re:fomation) was quite different and I haven't heard
you guys play anything from it and I heard that you were never
going to play anything…
STEVE
I don't think we could, cause we all made it
up on the spot in kind of a haze. I don't think we could. I mean
I'd like to play some of that today maybe but I have no idea what
it was, how it was all put together. We just did it and never
thought about it.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Was there any difference because Peter had come
back into the band, Marty wasn't there and Peter just had full
open scope on what he wanted?
STEVE
Yeah. It is different. If there's just one of
them, they're completely different than if you've got both of
them there, it's completely different and they're both completely
different guitarists. You know, and they obviously affect each
other, so if you take one of them out of the equation the other
one just…
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Yeah, every album you make is always going to
be different, and one of the things I've enjoyed about buying
something either from Steve Kilbey or The Church or Re:fomation,
the different combinations, is that you always make things inherently
different, which is something I've always enjoyed. I went and
saw you guys on your last tour and one of the things I really
enjoyed about watching The Church, like I've only seen you guys
for the last ten years, cause I'm only young…
STEVE
Newcomer.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
Well, I'm only thirteen years old you know.
STEVE
Is that all you are?
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
Yeah…
Audience laughter
STEVE
Your blushing now, do thirteen year olds blush?
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
Apparently so.
STEVE
Right sorry, go on.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
That's all right, yeah, one of the things I really
enjoy is when you play songs that I've never heard live before.
A lot of bands that you see that have been around for a long time,
they're tempted or they think that fans want them to play their
greatest hits, and you go and see them and it's really boring
after a while.
STEVE
Well, we only had two hits, so when people say
why don't you do your greatest hits, it's like, well that won't
fucking last long will it, two songs.
Audience laughter
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
Yeah, but for someone like me, my experience
is that the ones I really enjoy are the ones that I least expect
to hear.
STEVE
Ah ha. Yeah. I like going back and finding a
few obscure songs. I like doing that.
JOHN
Are there any more questions about songwriting?
There's a troublemaker up the back there.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
What's your favorite chord?
Audience laughter
STEVE
This one (strums), cause its easier to play than
this one (strums). What is that, Fmajor7?
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
I don't know.
Audience laughter
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Do you think that your songwriting reflects Australian
themes at all?
STEVE
No.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
You said that with Blackrock for example, it was
visually inspired even if you didn't think of it in visual terms,
but not Australian inspired in sense of the Australian seaside,
any of those sorts of themes come through in your music?
STEVE
Ah… yeah I'm as inspired by the Australian seaside
as the next man and I imagine I could write a song that is about
or inspired by the Australian seaside, but I don't think that
Australia comes through in my songs, as a particular theme. You
know what I mean, like Billy Bragg, say if you take England out
of the equation, you know what I mean, or like Bruce Springsteen
is about America, but I don't think Australia has much to do with
it for me.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Do you feel Australian?
STEVE
Well, I don't know if you guys want to get into
this but I've had a funny life, because I was born in England
and my parents moved to Australia, and we were like a typical
migrant family except that we actually spoke English but apart
from that we were just the same as the Greeks or the Italians
or whatever. We were sort of like in a fortress of Englishness
and all my Mum and Dad's friends were English and all all the
food… My mother would go to a special shop were she could get,
what is it, Branston Pickle. So I was in this funny thing were
I'd go out into Australia in the daytime and at night I'd come
back to England, and when I go to England I don't feel English
but when I'm in Australia I don't feel Australian either. So I
think that has actually helped being a songwriter because you
feel that you're really not from anywhere and you don't have any
patriotism or any axe to grind, you feel disconnected from both
places. So I think that helps, not being from a particular place.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Steve, you now live in Stockholm, it's the complete
opposite of Sydney. How much of an influence has that had on your
writing?
STEVE
I'm not sure that geographical things do really
have… I know this is really strange to say but you think that
would change your songs wouldn't you, but it doesn't seem to for
me. I think I was born with these ingredients and I think I endlessly
recycle them. I think all of my ideas I had by the time I was
about fifteen and now I think I kind of endlessly recycle those
ideas. For example, I was telling my brother I saw this film when
I was about four years old about these two really ugly people
who fell in love with each other and as the film progressed the
man and the woman became more and more beautiful, 'til half way
through the film when their love was at the apex, the woman and
the man were really handsome beautiful people. Then they fell
out of love and then they slowly became ugly again. So that idea,
the effect that it had on me, that's something I come back to
for as long as I live, that idea of how did they do that, why
did that make me feel like that? So I think that the impressions
that you get in childhood are the strongest things and the things
that you come back to time after time. The fact that I live in
Stockholm and it's snowy and people are speaking Swedish and all
that, doesn't make me want to write songs, do you know what I
mean? What I'm still trying to do is explore these impressions
from… I don't know, you want to have this effect on your audience,
like that. You see a film or here a song and you feel the effect
that it has on you and then you think, "I want to have that effect
on other people but I'm going to do it my own way." I don't think
that there's anything in Stockholm that would make you be interested
in, you know what I mean… No seriously, if I thought there was
anything in Stockholm that I could milk for a song I'd be milking
it away.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
'Cause Marty did it for example.
STEVE
Well, Marty wrote a song about Stockholm… yeah…I
don't know.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
(something in Swedish)
STEVE
Ah you speak Swedish…cool.
Audience laughter
STEVE
Someone down the end.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
You mentioned before how you collaborate musically,
do you ever do that lyrically, if so how?
STEVE
The only person I ever collaborated with lyrically
was Grant McClennan, because I felt like I could with him, and
even then we didn't do it a real lot. I felt he was the only person
that would understand the way I get my ideas and I felt like if
I tried to collaborate lyrically with other people they wouldn't
understand, but with him I felt we could do that, but that's the
only time I've done that, yeah.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
So when you did that did you talk about lines
and discuss how they worked with each other and what your responses
were to the lines you each came up with.
STEVE
It usually worked like… he had a whole lot of
titles, he had all these titles and we would sit down and we'd
have a song and say… for example he had a title, Bird Owner, I
don't know what it meant and I don't know where he got it from
he kept saying Bird Owner we've got to write a song called Bird
Owner, so we sat down and we both developed this idea about this
women who when she gets tired of her husbands she turns them into
birds and keeps them all in the garden. So once we had that idea
it was just a matter of shaping it, you know what I mean and I
find if you get the title or the first line usually the rest will
flow on from that pretty easily. Chap up the back.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
You said earlier that some of the songs come to
you with great ease and others you agonize over, is there a sense
of knowing when a song is complete? Do you know when the song
is …
STEVE
Is finished, doesn't need anymore written? Yeah,
usually do. It's like cooking dinner, you know, no it is, you
cook your soup and stir it and put the ingredients in and after
a while you taste it and go that's it, to put anything else in
would ruin it, I think its like that.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
So have you learned to edit yourself?
STEVE
No, I'm really rotten at editing, I really am.
See, I'm having this fight with the rest of the band now, because
I want all the songs on the new album to be really long and they
want them to be four minutes, and I find myself saying over and
over "Why can't we have ten minute songs?" and they're like, "oh
there can't be."
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Can a song for you be complete in your mind without
even having played it.
STEVE
Very rarely, I think when that happens that's
divine. Well, I don't know about divine but that really is something
strange going on, 'cause that does a happen. I wrote a song called
Silvermine which is on an album I did called Hex and that happened
like that. The whole song just happened without being able to
figure out where any of it came from. The whole song just popped
into my mind and I don't know how that happens, I don't know what
that is.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Have you ever had writer's block, like a sustained
period of writer's block?
STEVE
No I haven't. No…'cause I've got too many ways
of writing songs for that to happen. If it won't work one way
then I can always do it the other. And even when I've thought
that I had writers block I've been able to kick start it by doing
something, whether it was working with someone I hadn't worked
with or getting a new piece of equipment or taking LSD or something.
Something will…if you keep trying to do it long enough something
will happen I think.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Is a keyboard player an option that you've never
really considered adding to The Church?
STEVE
Well, we had them in the eighties, we used to
have them. I always found that they were drowning out the guitarists,
and the guitarists were creating all this… The two guitars playing
against each other with all the echoes and reverb and the harmonics
and sub-harmonics floating around were creating these sounds,
discussions about this, and I don't even know what a hit is and
the couple of hits that I ever had were written by accident they
weren't written to be a hit.. but I really wish I could… its great
writing a hit 'cause you strike this universal note with people.
You do something that everybody can…Instead of appealing to a
very small clique of people you can suddenly appeal to millions
of people. I think that's great thing to do, I just don't know
how to do it.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
It's more of an allusive relationship you have
with it.
STEVE
Yeah, the more I try the worse…If I really sit
down and try and write a hit it's just hideous! It really is.
It's like it's really old fashioned, you know what I mean. Like
people who are trying to be modern. It's a funny thing in music
you can never try and be… The more you try to be whatever it is
your trying to be, the less your going to achieve it. So the more
you try to write a hit, the more you try and be modern, the more
you try and be young, the more you try and be whatever…sexy, I
find, the less you're achieving it. The people who really have
all those qualities, it's just something that comes to them naturally.
So in the end all you can really do is go fuck all that, this
is what I like to do and I hope somebody else likes it.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Do you consider yourself to be a luddite?
STEVE
Yes, maybe a lot of people here don't know what
a luddite is. A luddite is someone who's suspicious of technology
and new things, yeah I am a bit. Lady in the pink.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Yeah, I think there's a whole ocean of songs that
you've yet to write, I feel it's just sort of coming to you.
STEVE
I hope so.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
…and I think you're going to fly like Gabriel.
STEVE
Do you?
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
Yeah.
STEVE
Here Gabriel!
Audience laughter
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
Six hundred pairs of wings.
STEVE
I hope you're right, I'd like to tap into that
action.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
I'm sure you will.
STEVE
I hope so. This chap.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Can I ask you about the concept of Providence?
That song seems to be sort of special in the way that it narrows
itself down to this floating word.
STEVE
Yeah, well that was all written with Grant. He
was good at grabbing titles - and he was saying when we first
started - I think it was one of the first songs we wrote and he
was saying "Where are we going to get the lyrics from?" and I
was saying, "I don't fucking know, providence man!" You've just
got to hope they're going to come. So he sort of got that idea
and he wrote the first part of the song and he wrote the last
bit and I wrote the middle bit. And that's an idea I've explored
with Marty too, where you take your backing track and you divide
it up. In say Two Places at Once, where you get a backing track
and say I'm going to sing on this bit, you take your bit away
and you write your words and your thoughts and then we'll put
them together.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
So you cut it?
STEVE
Kind of, yeah, you don't have any input into
what they do, you just let them go away and do their thing. I
think it's an interesting thing.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Does the concept of good and bad stuff dissolve
when you're experimenting in that sort of way?
STEVE
Good and bad?
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
Yeah, in relation to… also something you said
about, the song will just come, whether I wrote it then…
STEVE
See, I reckon, and this is going to sound really
immodest, but whatever I do its going to be fairly good right.
It's like, OK The Church have been together twenty years, even
if we have a really bad night, it's still going to be OK. So I
figure if I write something, if I'm working on it, the fact that
I'm writing it, it's already up… See when I first started I was
always thinking, "Is this any good?" and after a while you get
a bit of confidence in yourself and you realise if you're doing
it, it must be OK because you're doing it after all, the way other…
AUDIENCE MEMBER (cont)
The structure is revealed more clearly. That can
be the interesting core in music.
STEVE
I guess so.... Well when our next album comes
out and its bad I'm going to say to the journalists, "Yeah, but
the structure's revealed more clearly." Audience laughter I like
little phrases like that because it doesn't fucking really…"structure's
revealed more clearly", it sounds really good doesn't it, I don't
know. Anymore, is that it? One more from this person.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
On Heyday there's a fantastic song called Happy
Hunting Ground. Was it always meant to be an instrumental?
STEVE Yeah, always. The idea for that…I wanted
to, this is hard for me to explain….
CUTS OUT
THE END.
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