Page One:
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
Rising stars of the British music scene and keen partyheads Kasabian are proud of their rock heritage. The Brit-awards nominees tell Theo Hooper about their meteoric rise to fame and why great music puts a swagger in your step.
If prizes were being handed out at this year’s Brit Awards for understated charm, then the lads from Kasabian would surely receive a nomination. As it is, the band is up for three awards, and mention of the fact produces sniggering and plenty of wry smiles.
“It just makes me laugh,” says Sergio Pizzorno, the band’s 24-year-old guitarist. “There’s no bullshit surrounding us, and now we’re being invited to the Brits, with all the ceremony hoo-hah and the paparazzi. We’re just gonna sit on a table and throw food at people.”
Of course, the Brits would not be the Brits without a few high-spirited celebs forgetting their table manners; the 1996 event was particularly memorable, distinguished by Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker invading the stage to blow raspberries at Michael Jackson. In recent years the music industry’s annual ceremony may have courted more cool than controversy, but this week’s event – celebrating its 25th anniversary and hosted by radio’s red menace, Chris Evans – will undoubtedly go with some kind of bang.
Having something of a reputation for enjoying the odd night out, Kasabian will not find themselves out of place, but they are certainly not blasé about the invite. Along with the likes of Franz Ferdinand, Snow Patrol, and the Libertines, they have been nominated in the categories of Best British Group, Best British Rock Act, and Best British Live Act. Only Franz Ferdinand and Muse have more nominations, yet Kasabian only released their debut album last September. When the nominations are read out, even the most discerning of music fans may be forgiven for asking, ‘who?’
“We seem to have leap-frogged the Best New Band category,” says lead singer, Tom Meighan, squeezed in next to his band-mate in a tiny booth on the top floor of a London hotel. “It’s a bit crazy, but we’re up against good bands – we’re in that league, now.”
“Fair play to them for having the balls to do it,” adds Pizzorno. “It’s the awards ceremony you watch with your mum and dad, and for kids to see guys like us there, well, that’s got to be good for British music.”
“It would be great to win best British band,” Meighan says, “just to show all those sneering music snobs what a band from the Midlands can do. But it’s an achievement just to be there. From being stuck in his bedroom to the Brit awards in two years, that’s wonderful.”
Compared to the career trajectories of their fellow nominees, most of whom are on their second or third albums, Kasabian’s rise from obscurity to three-Brit contenders has indeed been swift.
Having met during their school days in Leicester, Pizzorno, Meighan, and Chris Edwards (bass) started a band in their late teens, inspired by an eclectic musical diet that included their parents’ 1960s records, Joy Division, and the mid-1990s rave and Britpop scenes.
Shaggy-haired, slightly demonic-looking guitarist Christopher Karloff was soon added (“we call him the Prince of Darkness” says Meighan), and the band found themselves moulding a dark yet melody-rich, beats-driven sound, that worked as well in the clubs as it did on the stereo.
With some prescience, major label RCA, signed the band in September 2002, and they scored their first top-20 hit, Club Foot, in May of last year. Despite three more top-ten singles in 2004 – perhaps unusual for a band named after Charles Manson’s getaway driver-they were still receiving limited radio airtime. However, their frequent touring had by then turned them into something of a cult phenomenon.
“At the start of last year, we were playing to as little as 20 people,” Pizzorno notes. “But we just visited as many cities as we could, and word-of-mouth spread. Not being shit also helped.”
Their self-titled debut album, which has since gone platinum (300,000 sold), received acclaim across the board, and the publicity drums started to beat, from photo shoots with David Bailey to the almost inevitable Kate Moss-romance stories (with Pizzorno, who does not like to elaborate). Their snow-balling success saw them not only sell-out 20,000 tickets for last December’s tour in just a week, but also play to thousands of rapturous fans in Japan, an experience that left the lads a little giddy.
“It was a bit mad,” says Pizzorno. “It’s almost like that joke: ‘We’re not big here, but we’re big in Japan’. The album was released early over there, because of the demand.”
Page four:
When asked why this should be so, the conversation veers towards a subject the boys are happy to wax lyrical about all day: rock ’n’ roll icons.
“In Japan, they love bands to look like proper bands,” Pizzorno explains. “We wanna look like the Rolling Stones, and they love all that shit.”
It does not take too much guess work to pick Pizzorno’s favourite Stone.
“Keith, man,” he says, without a moment’s hesitation. “Not so much musically, but just the way he was. He’s a massive influence.”
“For me, it would have to be… Charlie Watts!” Meighan laughs. “Nah, it’s got to be Jagger. The guy’s a legend. I was watching him on TV recently, and trying to work out what it is that he has. The women loved him, didn’t they? There’s something there, that sexy charisma.”
“Some women can’t stand the sight of him,” Pizzorno protests.
“That’s true, he’s too feminine for some.”
“You’re like Mick Jagger with a dick!”
Tom Meighan, an obviously skilled conversationalist, is lost for words.
Despite a heyday that belongs to a bygone era, it seems that rock’s eldest statesmen are still an influence. Kasabian not only list the likes of The Beatles and The Who as particular faves (they supported the latter at last summer’s Isle of Wight festival at the old mods’ personal request), but these young lads, who are all on the right side of 25, have also paid close attention to that definitive sixties swing.
“Listening to the Stones and the Beatles, I realised that they were making dance music,” says Pizzorno. “They made great tunes, but the clever bit was in the beat and the bass – there was a real groove. Our music has that classic formula. It’s made for you to feel good, to put on your Walkman, and walk to work with a swagger.” Sound familiar? In recent times, of course, the band that epitomises that ‘swagger’ is Oasis, a group whose rejuvenating impact upon tired old rock’n’roll will still be felt for many years to come. The immediacy of Kasabian’s rise, and their‘gang’ mentality, is drawing comparisons, and Oasis front man and king of swagger himself Liam Gallagher, has observed that Kasabian are “a band with bollocks”. The band, themselves, are only too willing to note how inspirational the Mancunians have been.
“They were heroes when we were young,” Meighan passionately confirms. “I’m not gonna sit here and name-check the fucking Ramones or the Buzzcocks. We loved Oasis, and there’s nowt wrong with that. People think that rock’n’roll is gonna fade away, but it keeps creating characters like Liam.”
“That has been lacking for so long,” Pizzorno agrees. “Characters. Those people who go against the grain, and who are not afraid to be themselves. We need that in any walk of life – music, comedy, football…”
Kasabian may share that ‘avin it’ attitude with the Gallagher brothers, but whereas the latter come from Manchester, a city with a long and proud musical history, Kasabian hail from Leicester, where the musical heritage is carried by failed R&B nutter Mark Morrison, and eighties jive-bunnies Showaddywaddy. Yet, the east-
Midlands city’s lack of a strong pop legacy proved to be a help, not a hindrance.
“We didn’t have that pressure of coming from Liverpool or Manchester or London,” says Pizzorno. “It helps us being in the middle of the country – we’ve got the arrogance of the north and the style of the south. But to be honest with you, it was the boredom of the place that really helped. Not much happens, so you have to do things your own way.”
Football was a significant past-time for the lads, and in their teens three of them passed through the books of Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Leicester City. As Pizzorno puts it, “beer and women destroyed those dreams,” but it’s a passion that has not dimmed; along with The Big Issue, football magazine FourFourTwo is one of the periodicals the band talks to today.
“It’s great being in a band, because you can play both music and football,” Pizzorno happily declares. “Footballers’ careers end in their mid-30s. Imagine if someone said to Bob Dylan, ‘sorry, mate, you’re 34 now, you’ve got to retire’! That would destroy me.
“But we still like to play. We’d like to get involved in the soccer six competition [the music industry’s annual six-a-side tournament]. The Darkness won it last year.”
Would you fancy your chances against them?
“Oh, easy.”
At last year’s Brits, The Darkness cleaned up, collecting three awards. Perhaps this year Kasabian will be the team to beat.
Kasabian’s self-titled album is out now on Arista. The Brits is showing on ITV1, Thursday, 8pm.