Glen Johnson
interview by Peter Anjersson (Part email/part telephone)
Exclusive for Piano Magic website, December 2002 Part 3
(Writers Without Homes)

"Writers Without Homes" seems to be a return to the "revolving door" membership. As with 1998's "Low Birth Weight," there are core players and then guests drafted around them to fill the gaps. After "Artists' Rifles," why go back to this?

We actually started this record exactly as we started Artists' Rifles - same studio, same producer and only a few songs written. The idea was, again, to make the album up as we went along but it occurred to us very early that we were "sonically" in danger of repeating ourselves and so, decided to bring in more variety in the form of other singer and players.

You were saying that things got off to a false start with this record?

It was pretty evident within the first day of recording that our honeymoon with John Rivers was over. We'd already made two records with him and, I think, in retrospect, we should've drawn the line there. We'd booked 10 days or so with him but, after 2 or 3 days, we knew we wouldn't be finishing the record with him and so, resigned ourselves to finishing what we could as soon as we could and getting out of there. It was a very frustrating week for us. We were completely deflated by what happened and that "situation" set the tone for the next few months.

How did things get going again?

For one reason or another, it took a long time to get the Pro-Tools files from the John Rivers recording sessions and even then we had to convert them to a useable format which took longer than it should've. We asked another producer to have a go at remixing those songs but we weren't thinking along the same lines either. That was the second false start.
The remedy was to drop the producer idea altogether and just find an engineer who would mix the songs as we wanted them whilst we looked over this shoulder, guiding the process. This was Robinson Hughes at Subterfuge. He was totally patient and could instantly see what we were trying to get at. He undid all Rivers' production work and basically started from scratch. He rescued those songs - "The Season Is Long" and one that didn't make the album, "Blood & Snow."
We also worked with Gareth Parton at The Fortress Studios who helped us achieve our live sound in the studio for "Silence" and "Already Ghosts." "Silence" was almost a completely live take with very few overdubs.

Why does the duration of the album sleeve not tally with with the CD?

We put a secret track about 4 minutes after the end of "Shot Through The Fog" but it was "mislaid" in post-production. 4AD sent some of these out and realised too late that there was a track missing. So there are two versions out there - one with the secret track and one without.

There are a few Piano Magic first-timers on "Writers Without Homes." Tell me about Suzy Mangion.

We came across Suzy from a couple of singles by her band, George, on the Bad Jazz label and then, sometime in early 2001, we played a gig with them in Manchester. They were actually about the only people in the audience. I absolutely loved her voice. It reminded me of the ghostly voices on the This Mortal Coil stuff but she has a really strong, unique sound of her own. She's totally professional too. There was no 28th take of anything. Her voice is so good, everything for the three songs she sang on was down on tape within about 3 hours.

There are some other lovely voices on the album. John Grant from the Czars, Paul Anderson from Tram and Vashti Bunyan who hadn't sung on a record for 30 years! How did you attract these people?

Well, The Czars are signed to Simon Raymonde's label, Bella Union so, as Simon was already playing piano on a few tracks, he put John forward when we said we needed a singer for "The Season Is Long." The Czars were on tour in Europe at that point and John only had about 4 days with the words and a rough demo of the song but he was so brilliant in the studio. He turned up straight off a plane from Denmark, jet-lagged but his voice totally melted the room. He's just got it going on - again, no-one else sings like him.
We knew Paul Anderson from playing little festivals with his band, Tram, in Europe. I love the last Tram album, "Frequently Asked Questions." His voice has this edge-of-tears quality to it. A sort of resignedness. Is that a word? It's strange because whenever I see Paul he's smiling, totally happy-go-lucky. Tram split up recently but Paul told me he was going to do some solo shows, go it alone.
Paul Lambden, our publisher at Rykomusic, re-issued Vashti Bunyan's album, "Another Diamond Day" in 2000 on his own 'Spinney' label. It's a long-lost, quintessentially English folk classic which has a magical quality about it. Everyone I've ever played it to has pretty much thought it was the bees knees. Vashti was looking to get back into music and it was nothing ventured nothing gained - I wrote a song in about 3 hours and sent it to her the next day. She emailed me a few days later and said she'd love to sing it. She's absolutely lovely and her voice hasn't change one bit in 30 years - really fragile but perfect with it.

But you lost a member recently too?

Yes, Miguel Marin left the band not long after we'd completed the album. Basically, he felt it was time to go it alone and develop his own music. He has an album out on an electronica subsidiary of Rocket Girl, 'Indus Sonica,' under the name "Arbol." Suzy's on that as well as Paul Tornbohm, James Topham and John Cheves - all sometime Piano Magic members.

You've played on mainland Europe a lot this year. What kind of an experience has that been?

We toured France, Germany, Italy, Holland and Belgium earlier this year (2002) as well as a couple of one-offs. It's peaks and troughs, really - one night we're playing to 20 people in some backwater community centre and the next it's a fucking great Gothic chapel on a mountain in Perugia. Both can be amazing but for very different reasons.
It's interesting to see the people who are buying our records in these places, face to face. There's a real cross-section of fans and they're all coming at us from different perspectives. Some people have us down as some 80's Goth influenced bands like And Also The Trees and others think we're in with this whole Mogwai/Gospeed/Sigor Ros thing and then you get people who've never seen us before and are trying to get some kind of angle on it.
But it's the tours that keep us going - just visiting all these amazing places and meeting all these new people and playing every night, watching the songs mutate and evolve. And when it all comes together, when there are 500 people in some incredible venue going mad for it and the sound's good and we're playing really well, you know what all the rehearsals were for. It's the pay off that releasing a record can't give you. I like it when people cry.....I'm in it for the crying......(laughs)

What do you feel on the day one of your records is released?

I don't notice, invariably. It's much like any other day. We've released so many records in the past 6 years or so that you become desensitized to it. With your first record, you're like, "I wonder where it's going to go in the chart at?" but once you realise that you're only ever going to sell 20 copies or whatever the first week, your enthusiasm fades to a sort of "whatever." It's sad but true.

But it does wonders for the "cult of Piano Magic...."

To sell no records? Yes, it's great for the cult.....(laughs)

When I first heard "Writers Without Homes," I was convinced it was the one that would propel you into the limelight and effectively help you shed that "cult band" image. But, from the reviews I've read, most journalists have had problems with it. What's stopping this record connecting with some people?

Maybe it's too varied. Many it's not what people expected. Maybe it doesn't fit snugly into what's happening right now. I mean, we're not The Strokes or The White Stripes. We're not "now." We're definitely not now (laughs). We're "then."
I've said it before and sometimes it sounds mean but : we make music for ourselves foremost. You can't second guess what people want. It's not why we make music. We make music as self-expression, not to be a product that sells like tinned beans. There's heart in it. I can't make any apologies for any of our records. It's like, "Don't buy them, don't listen to them....." You have a choice.

That's not something you'd hear from, say, Coldplay.....

We're coldwave, not Coldplay.......(laughs)

You've recently parted company with 4AD. It seems to have been quite a short ride....

Well, we signed for two albums with an option on a third. We delivered the two albums, if you count "Son De Mar" as an album but when it came to the option on a third, 4AD didn't pick up the option.

Why do you think that is?

We were pulling in opposite directions and for us, the gap was getting wider and wider all the time. Even on "Writers Without Homes," we were at loggerheads over which tracks would go on the album and which would be left off. We aren't a particularly compromising band so that situation became quite uncomfortable on both sides. So, in the end, it was a very amicable split. A relief, truth be told. (Note : the 3 tracks submitted for but not included on "Writers Without Homes" were : "The 17th Time," "Blood & Snow" and "You've Found A Way To Hurt Me." "The 17th Time" later turned up on the cover mount CD of Spanish magazine Rockdelux for their 200th issue).

Doesn't that go against your "life-long dream" of being signed to 4AD? Wouldn't you have compromised to stay?

The reality and the dream proved incompatible. And you should never compromise your art. I have the utmost respect for 4AD but, at this point in time, we weren't the band to continue a working relationship with them.

So, where to now?

Back to being the band that just gets along. Make more records for more labels and selling one or two records as we go; playing whenever we can . Not compromising (laughs).