I have a joke with my way from a week up in the morning that's gonna say off two questions, what would Create do and what would Freddy do? For freda we mayericy That gets me through the day.
Evening.
Everyone, Greg here, Welcome to Midnight Chats. Unfortunately, that's the last time I'm going to be able to say that on this current series. When we kick off this run of new conversations back at the start of March, our plan was to bring you ten new podcasts. We're a touch shigher that we've only managed eight. But for the moment, with everything going on and just being totally honest, we can't afford to keep on making them, as we've had
to prioritize other things. But very soon we're going to be announcing news about the future of Loud and Quiet and what comes next. So that means this podcast, the other podcast we make, the magazine we do, the website and everything else, and how you can get involved and how you can help with that. We'll be making sure you hear about that too. But a word on series nine though the ones we have managed to bring you
are reckoning the best we've ever done. Stewart and I want to say a huge thanks to all our guests on this run. That's been tam I Parlor, Kylie ra Jepson, Caribou, Kim Gordon, LaRue, Ed O'Brien, James Acaster, and of course tonight's guest, the charming and conscientious Simon Neil, singer and guitarist with one of Britain's biggest rock bands, Biffy Cairo. Like almost all of our recent chats, I should intro this by saying the episode was recorded before the mass measures,
with the pandemic lockdown and everything else. It was in the middle of February, in fact, the day of the twenty twenty brit Awards. Since then, like so many other artists, Biffy Cairo have had their plans upended this year due to everything happening with coronavirus. Their new album, A Celebration of Endings, their ninth album, has been bumped back and
he scheduled now to come out in August. In terms of this podcast, this maybe more than any other midnight chats I've ever recorded, was very natural the way we always intended it, or hope that.
It would be.
I went in with plans to talk to Simon about the new album the Brits and hear some stories from Biffy Clio's twenty five years together, but we didn't do any of that. Instead, it turned into a passionate chat about well the state of the world between two frustrated but ultimately optimistic and hopeful people.
At least I like to think.
If you notice a change in the audio about halfway through your ears aren't playing up, that's down to good old fashioned technical difficulties during the recording. I had to swiftly move to Plan B when the equipment had a meltdown. But hopefully it doesn't spoil your enjoyment too much. And yeah, thank you to you for listening to this episode of the podcast and this series. Go check out the others you haven't caught up with, and hopefully, fingers crossed, we
will see you again on the other side. Until then, this is episode ninety three of Midnight Chats with Simon Neil from Biffy Clyira.
That's my new career, man, I'm slowly.
The only reason I'm in a band is so I can move into a voiceover career and just sit at home and just do my work.
Should they you should do audiobooks. Oh hey, I'd love to.
You've got the voice for audiobooks though, that's very kind of you to say. I was at my friend's wading in London sometime and I get asked if I would be their new spokesperson because the guy loved my voice so much. And I was completely taken aback. I was like, what do you want me to do?
All?
You know that, everything, every kind of tanna, every speech or whatever that was happening. You know, I was like, and it almost just jacked in the music. Honestly, I was like, Oh, I was so flattered. But no, maybe maybe I will maybe I'll need to write a book.
Do you ever use any of those like meditation apps, because like, I feel like you've got the calm voice that.
Could adapt to it. Actually I do.
I struggle with sleeping greg, So yeah, I've tried it or tried all the meditative apps.
You know.
Actually I've got a few tricks up my sleeve to help myself sleep. But yeah, I mean I do transcendental meditation a couple of times a day, which really helps a lot. But yeah, I don't really I'm a podcast guy when I'm going to my sleep which probably doesn't help me drift off.
But I've got a friend who uses podcast to help himself sleep. But his trick is that he listens to the same podcast over and over so that it's a totally familiar thing. It's a Stephen fry Pogas al right, Okay, So he doesn't like stimulate his brain with new ideas. Effectively, he sort of uses just something familiar that isn't music but is speech to help him.
Yeah, I know, you mean, it's it's that fine line if because if even you start to learn the pod, if you're listening to the same podcast, you maybe start to learn it, and then I would end up preempting what the next line would be. So yet it's that fine fine line. But I tend to sleep, which it's now no surprise that I don't sleep well because I go to sleep listen to crime podcasts, which bizarre I find quite relaxing, you know, and not in a twisted way.
Just it is something about the tone of voice. I've got a couple.
There's this Australian one called case File and the guy who's got a wonderful Australian accent. So it's not really about the content. I think your friend right, it's probably just the rhythm of his speech, and that there's a comfort to me, like I feel relaxed. I know I'm about to go to sleep with if he's on. So but then sometimes I make it through three podcasts and I'm like, oh, no they.
Didn't where I am and I've got a gap a seven oh not for me? Man, true true, yeah exactly light a co yeah, exactly.
Mid days early for me, mid days early for me.
Did you go through a cycle? Did you try all those different things? Because it's like, I know some people that use podcasts. I know some people that use you can just get kind of nature sound effects and people want to hear like the sound of the sea or the sound of like a haunted woodland or something.
Yeah, it blew me away when when I went on YouTube and everything, there's like six hours or just woodland sounds or self drained.
So I've tried all that.
James tries this Buddha kind of thing that just go, which I think works a treat for him.
But yeah, I mean I've kind of tried it all.
I sometimes wonder if the act of thinking about how you're sleeping negates your sleep so much. You know, I'm now so preoccupied with how well I'm sleeping or how I'm going to get to sleep tonight. And I think because we travel a lot, great, you know, there's a thing that apparently when you stay in bed one night, you're in a thing called surveillance mode. So you can
never truly have a good night's sleep. If you're like going to State, your friends are staying at hotel the first night, you don't sleep that your body just sits at a certain level. Yeah, yeah, exactly, you know, And for us when we're on tour, that's I think that's when my sleep problems kind of started because you just you just don't hit a routine. You maybe sleep if you're exhausted. You know, your body's telling you, right, you
need rest. But yeah, I really struggle with that and tour, And I think anyone that's kind of creative, you know, like yourself and things, when you've got your brain, is your is your AMMO, you know, like like without your brain, you're you don't create anything. So so I find it really hard to switch that off, you know. I mean it's not it's not matter. It's a first world problem, isn't it. You know, didn't quite get my seven hours, you know, true.
But yeah, it's all about that, you say, it's being able to function, and it's such an important part of that. What about life on the bus. There's this sort of like romanticized view of what it's like traveling around being on a tour bus. But the very practical, very unrock and roll reality is that you're sleeping in kind of
bunk beds and your and and you're being transported. It's it's not something that everybody experiences, like if you've got you to that over the years, does it because some people say it's like, you know, they find it easy falling asleep in the back of a car or something.
What how has that been?
It's weird.
It's probably just like being a baby, you know how some parents they take their kid out in the car to let it drift off. They're just drive around for four hours in the middle of the night. I think that's probably what bands are like, or people that are into your bus.
You get used to being rocked to sleep.
But it's definitely sometimes you get a snapshot when you're in the middle of it. You know, you kind of take a view from the outside and you're like you think about you're hurtling along and more of the autoban at eighty miles an hour and you're just in this big metallic coffin basically, you know, And and it can be a right freak out if you almost need to switch your brain off because it is pretty unusual and
it's and it's a weird existence. Once you've been in tour for like a month, that throb of the engine becomes like.
A part of who you are.
And bizarrely, when you get home it's it can be a real struggle, like you know, not just sleep, just a sense of not being in motion all the time. And I'm not going to talk about something other than the traveling, but it gets your mind and your body is just used to the propulsion of being on tour doing shows, moving all the time. And then when you get home it can be such a shock to the system and it's like you've lost your purpose, you know.
And so so being on tour and being in that.
Bus ends up you equate it with with having purpose and doing something, you know, So then when you don't have that, you're kind of like you're almost like wandering kind of you don't have an anchor almost you know, it's a strange.
A completely different line of work. But like I've had conversations with people in the past whose job involves them
going away. Maybe they're in like one of the military services, or you know, maybe their job is to go and work on an oil rig or something somewhere where you go away for long extended periods of time, where you live your life to like a set routine, as in, you get up, you have you're moving around, you're living your life to a schedule, and you come home and you're stationary and you're self sufficient again and you have to think about the shopping list or those types of things.
Do you still feel this sense of coming out of this sort of decompression when you get off the road.
Yeah, definitely, definitely. I Mean you're used to kind of a lot of decisions being made for you. So it's it's almost like the das are series of check you know, boxes to take where you have to be somewhere at a certain team and do you think so, but you're not actually making any conscious decisions, and everything becomes there's a comfort in the repetition of that, you know, and it's like that I'm not sure what the name of it is, but the Japanese art of doing mastering one
thing your entire life, you know, I love. That's always really appealed to me. And that's what it feels like. You do and tour, you just become this highly tuned thing, not even a person, you know, where you're like you can perform, you can do interviews and you can engage with people, but like the most basic decisions are you can't do. Like if I was to decide when to go, you know, when my day should start, I wouldn't know,
you know. So when you get home and you have that freedom, it doesn't feel like a freedom.
It feels like a restriction, you know. And it's the one thing.
That after having done this band for so long, myself, Ben and James, we're still not quite sure how we've managed to not lose our minds. You know, a lot of people have traveled and toured less than us and they hit that wall of oh my god, you know, I can't do it, nothing makes sense anymore. And part of it, I think for us is that we still live in the same part of Scotland that we've always been in and I think that connection snaps as a
little back more into reality. But it's it's still a real problem, and I still haven't found a way to truly combat it, you know, even coming home from the record. When you're making a record, you're in one place for a while. But but again, I feel, I feel like I on ever have purpose when I'm when I'm either making a record or going into her and playing. And that's that's a weird kind of place to be in
because I can't relax. My wife always complains to me because when I'm home and I have some time off, I'm always desperate for time off to chill. And then when I have time off, at the opposite of chill, you know, I'm on edge, and I'm and I'm rudderless and and I'm and I'm dying to dive straight back
into work. And so it's a it's a strange it's a strange kind of I don't know if it's in in an alarm clock I have or something, or purpose is the best word, you know, not to keep mentioning justin Bieber's best album, but but he's but you know, it is a sense, it is a sense of purpose, and and I think That's probably why we've made so much music over the years, because you know, my family, they were you know, my dad worked his entire life. He's now retired, but he still he runs a bowling green.
You know, my dad was a bowler, Scottish international bowler, and he runs a bowling green. He's still working like sixties a week and it's seventy And actually, I've got this. This sums up probably my dad and my family more
than anything. My dad had had a wee fall not long ago and he busted his face open and broke his nose, and then on the ambulance and the way to the hospital, he got the ambulance to take him past my brother's house so he could give him the keys for the bowling so that my brother could still open the bawling and my brother, you know, my dad was at the door, like completely disfigured. My brother almost
had a heart attack. You know, I think when I see how hard people working in real jobs, you know, and I'm blessed to this.
I do consider it real what I do.
But in terms of real working, real job, I feel the guilt when I'm at home if I'm twiddling my fingers. You know, twiddling my thumbs for more than a week or even a few days, I'm like, oh, I need to get in and get my thumb out of Marcy here. You know that this is I'm lazy.
There's that temptation, isn't there to look at the I totally feel what you've just said there, Like there's that temptation to sort of look at the older generation and you're like, why aren't you just sort of slowing down? White, Why haven't you You could have retired by now. It's all fine, But then you do realize that, yeah, it's such an important part of things. Is like having that
reason you get up in the morning. I'm sure your dad has a great community of friends and like his responsibilities, and he feels a commitment to the community and the framework of everything that he works with day to day, and that's the thing that keeps him going and he enjoys it.
You hear about people that when they stop working and all that, and then you're just kind of without saying, bleaking and waiting around to die at that point.
And I truly believe that the.
Thing about my dad's generation as well, you know, and my dad said something that made me so proud of him. After the breaks a voting things, he said, my generation shouldn't be allowed to vote for this because it will not affect is it. You know, it was the proudest I'd ever you know, because me and my dad's politics are kind of a little bit different.
My dad is more old school.
But when he said that, I thought, you're so right, and you know, we can take a lot from the previous genet, from our parents and things. You know, I really want to take the best of everything that that generation has taught us, because at the moment I feel that there's a bit of a revolt against it, thinking, oh, you know, okay, boomer and all this and that, and
I think that's fine, but it is dismissive. And I don't think we can dismiss any generation the same way that that generation should not be dismissing this young generation who are caring about the future of the planet and everything. I think that disconnected. Really, I find a problem with that. I have a problem with that both ways. But I have to say when I look at seventy year old men bullying like Greta Threnburger's nineteen or something, because oh god, she cares about the planet.
She cares about our generation.
I've kind of twisted this round from admiring my dad's now going that generation needs to fuck off.
Some of that generation, you know what I mean.
And it's like I think, I mean, I can that are somewhere in the middle, basically like and our generation has responsibilities on both sides as well. But what has been interesting is basically the Internet came along and supplied us all with every piece of information that has ever existed, and I think there was maybe I may may or
may not be right about this. This is just maybe to personal observation, but previously, like there was a very kind of defined like hierarchy within generations where it was always felt that the generations above you had a greater store of information and wisdom and experience, which they still do.
But if you're part of the younger generation, you've been used to having all of this stuff at your fingertips immediately, and so you feel you've got access and so basically somewhere in the middle, there's become this clash of being like, hey, we've got all this lived experience, and just because you've got all of this information at your fingertips and vice versa.
Yeah, it's true friction, It's true, you've nieled it absolutely perfect. But the thing is that the wisdom that the kids have from being able to take the technology for granted, I think is underrated. You know, kids are coming of age just now. They're not impressed by the fact it's a shiny thing and all the connectivity. Like they're trying to navigate how to make the best out of everything that's been invented and brought to the surface in the
last fifteen twenty years. And I think that's they're a lot smarter about it than our generation in a way.
It was.
I mean, I'm older than you, Greg, but you know, magic generation in ten years younger, we were the ones that kind of fucked it up a bit, you know. We were the ones that were straight away like dick pics, fucking all the worst kind of aspects of what like how do I get drugs?
You know, and things like that.
And when I look at my extended family and I've got nieces that are like, you know, the oldest ones sixteen in the youngest is twelve, and they're they're really very very smart about it all. They know what it is, they know what level it's operating on, whereas I think our generation is certainly olded, we.
Take it so so so seriously.
Or I certainly do, and actually that's not that's not the way it's intended. It's another outlet. It's it's not everything yet you are, you know, And I think that's what kids they're just learning how to master, master what's been invented, and whereas we're still trying to kind of understand what's been invented.
Do you see them sort of moderating the influence that it has on y day today? Which is the one thing that I'd say that we and then again I'm using an absolute debt people of some people of our generation and above and all generations really haven't potentially recognized or mastered is this fact that this maybe this thing has become very all consuming and controlling, and it's affected
our behaviors in certain in ways. And it would be great to think that the next generation recognize a lot of these things what they are, which are fantastic, almost limitlessly seen as limitless. Yeah, but they recognize that, and they can they can put their phone down, or they can live offline, or they can recognize basically the balance between nice things.
Yeah, and they'll have been able to see. Also there are were more of the negative aspects of it, whereas we've just you know, I mean I I was twenty in the millennium and things, you know, so we were all walking in wide eyed, you know, go you know, like not seeing the dark, shadowy corners of it and everything. And I think everyone's eyes they're aware of every corner
of the room now, you know. And I do think that's a wonderful thing moving forward, and I think it's necessary and because there's so much, there's so much at the moment to be scared of. But I have to say, I haven't ever felt this optimistic. I feel I feel that this century is only really beginning now. So I know we're going macro now, you know, but I feel that this century, every century takes ten or twenty years
to get going. You look at industrial revolutions, all of them happened at the tail end of one century into the next, but they only really have took effect and really had the pois you know, there was it was allatives to start. If you look at the automobile revolution, people were just talking about o other people with horse and carts, arout the job, you know, not, you know, and then it moved forward and suddenly it's it's just this wonderful thing. And I feel like it's the same
with this with this century. This is us now realizing where we want this, this century to go. We've realized what the hangovers from last century are that we want to actually get rid of. And again, not to sound too rude, but there's a certain certain people in a certain generation. I can't wait till they shuffle off this mortal coil so that we can actually focus on the
job at hand. I almost feel that the most comparable time to just now is basically the sixties, you know, and and and it's obviously I wasn't there.
I was there in spirit, you know.
But I feel like that's the only other time where there was there was such a such a difference in the generations, like the post war and the fifties. Folk could not understand these long hairs and these people they wanted to fucking make love with everyone and just be open and loving. And I feel that that's probably the only other time in history that I can remember where that there's been such a separation. And if you look back to the commie which hunts of the sixties and
all that. We all look at it now and go, what and that was awful, all this stuff. You know, they were just blacklisting to any creative, anyone who had anyone who was just slightly left of center was getting was trying to get put in prison. And it's kind of like the same now that those people that were trying to just in prison folk for thinking in a different way.
You look back and you go, they were so wrong. They were. Yeah, they were the idiots.
And I feel like when people look back and now we'll look back and say, Trump and Boris Johnson, all these folks, they were the idiots. You know, I truly believe that. I don't think anyone moving forward is going to be looked back and oh, you know, but they had a few good points. Really they don't. They have nothing to offer other than than to cultivate that fear. The sad thing about fear is it's it's easy. It's easier to pray and people that maybe don't have the
same the same opportunities. You know, I think it's easy to present a perfect little message and you know, with a bowl wrapped around it, that's a lot easier to do than to actually express the different layers of nuance to things. And I think nuanced is what's going to come back. I think we're really at the lowest point of what I think. I mean, this goes against me seeing how positive, but I feel that we are the
lowest point. Now we have to bounce back up from you know, you're reading you know muchure exactly when this comes out. With this week, there's been someone fired from the government because he believes in.
Eugenics, and it's like, what is happening? Where are we?
You know, I think goodness has been thrown out, but how does it even reach that stage? And this is it's almost so absurd, the bottom of the barrel that we're at that really there's no there's no way low, you know, the only way is up. And the next keep saying the next generation. I just think they're going to wipe the slate clean and it'll be a restart. But unfortunately we're still just kind of pottering around in
the shitty bottoms of the barrel at the moment. But is going to change, And A feel like twenty twenty is a year for it to start to change. And I know we're tied into borders for another fucking few years and all that. But you know, I'm talking big picture of stuff. It's like, this is a law point and we're going to bouce back.
A conversation that we've had on quite a few of the episodes that we've done for this series already, Ed O'Brien from Radiohead, Caribou a couple of the names of people that've had on the podcast this series, and often the conversation has gotten onto the climate crisis, sustainability, personal and professional accountability on that subject of just being like,
you know what, I'm waking up. I'm feeling like I can have a conversation about this, and I'm being guided by other people that aren't even maybe within the music industry, people like Gretitenberg, where I'm like, you know what, she's aspirational, Like she might be twenty five years younger than me or twenty years younger, mean, but you know, I feel connected.
To that message.
You know, you said there you feel really optimistic about the next generation or the younger generations. But she acted as a bit of a guidance staff for that optimism. Is that fed into that, is that part of that.
Yes it is, and it almost feels sad that there's so much pressure been putting great. You know, people at me saying, oh, yeah, she's you know, she's inspired me, But she hasn't. It's the simplicity of what she's done as well. Just take a Friday off and then suddenly the whole world's fallen suit and she's put her money where her mouth is. She's sailed all the way to South America, you know, for three weeks like this. This
girl is an absolute inspiration. You know, I have a joke with my wife when I wake up in the morning, I've asked myself two questions, what would Greta do and what would Freddy do for Fredda with mercury? And that's that's that gets me through the day. We need to
take personal ownership of how we live. But the slow moving nature of the government and how they like they're still just trying to keep a hold of this this kind of system that is in place that is not going to be there in ten fucking years and fifteen years, and it's so pointless what they're trying to hold on to.
Reality has just changed, you know, It's there's a lot of things that we need to address when we when we look at even the coronavus iris and things, it's like the way things are operating in this world things need to change. That the institutions and that do need to take responsibility for things that have happened to the people and the way we're going. And it's not good enough to say by about twenty five years, take these abstract numbers that don't really mean much. It's like, let's
put things actually in place now. As human as people, we can't always just expect other people to do things for us. And I think that's what Great has showed me and showed everyone that actually see the little bit you do. If we all do a little bit, the change is massive. But if we don't start to make
those changes, and nothing's going to happen. And I think what Great has done is a safe from starting from like just a day off school to protest like that shows that's that's quite a small thing to begin with. And think about what that has done globally and the awareness and everything and the I mean it's pleased to see the government putting a billion quid into the Met Office to try and predict you know, these goddamn floods that poor people's We need to take it seriously. People's
levels are being ruined Australia. Who knows what the fuck is is the result of all that or those wal the wild life and you know crops. I mean, we cannot figure out what the result and that's going to be. It'll be five ten years before we even have an idea.
And I think it's interesting to talk about the responsibility of the government and the and the big business as well, like we can all we can all take responsibility for our personal contributions to sustainability. But I thought it was interested this morning just on the on the sort of education front, Like I feel like we've already talked about the younger generations being really savvy and really informed about this stuff, and to give like concrete examples that this morning.
You know, literally walked in to meet you today and a friend of mine lives in rural Herefordshire and he's sending me photos of like him and his neighbors houses surrounded by water because of the floods. And I was listening to the radio this morning and there was a local landlord who's talking about his pub. It's been flooded and they asked him on the radio the direct question of like, what what do you think it is? They said, oh,
do you think it's climate change? And he said, I don't know whether it's climate change or that we're just getting more rain. And I was like, this just shows that, like that people need to understand all of these things that we're seeing around the world. The localized flooding in different all across the UK, these extreme weather conditions in Australia,
the world fast these are all connected. These are these these like indisputable stuff and like you just want government education systems to take responsibility and be like this is happening. These are all coming from there's all a consequence there, we all joined up. They're not like it's not we're having more rain or it's climate change.
Yeah, exactly together, it's the one thing.
And a Stewary's a great example because their their government is is like Scott Morrison is it and has reaction to what has been going on, and there's been just absolutely disgusting and you see the reaction of the Istralian people who they're now not standing for it, you know,
they now want they want change. You know, of course if your entire land is burning, your entire country is burning, you know, imagine it gets to that stage and you're still having to convince your prime minister that that's something to take seriously.
You know, we're in the middle of just talking about governments and accountability and big business and some of the attitudes that we've seen around some of the huge climate crisis news stories over the last months and years, and that the Australian wildfires and the localized flooding in the UK, and yeah, just just seeing how the lack of reaction really around some of those things, and just how you know, education plays a part in this wile lack of education
and just how I suppose it's important just to see some a lot more action on that front.
Yeah.
Again, my my nieces and my nephews when they're at school, they're getting taught about this from the various and I think that's a wonderful thing. It needs to be like
second nature to people. The thing I don't understand is how the government governments like the Australian government, with the coal industry and things, what do they think the money is going to do for them in ten or twenty years when all around them is burning and flooding and dying, and like that's what really baffles me, and I imagine it baffles the generation below me a hell of a lot more.
But that's valueless. That stuff is actually valueless.
You know, we can't buy shit when everything's burning and everything's dead. So that lack of engagement and to keep going back. I think I heard the other day that right the punk band Rise Against a song called the Great Die Off and it's talking about that generation just going away, and I just thought that was like a
really lovely, quite hilarious way to put it. But it is if you think that money in any way is going to like balance up what is happening to our lives or you know, like a st I think eighty percent Australia had smoke people who had or it was eighty percent poor quality air and like Sydney for like a month or something, you know, and it's like, and this is effecting. There's babies and shit that are breathing
this stuff in. You know, it's going to affect people in ways that this old school just cannot possibly understand. And it is the great you know, it's been talked about so much, but it is the most important thing of this century. Everything else fades into the background really when you think about it. But unfortunately, the governments are still trying to pull fast ones. I feel that, you know, you've got people that like that. There's some journal that keeps tweeting that great to thimber going.
Me and my.
Family are going on holiday and we're going to really enjoy going in the jumbo jet. I'm not going to give that journal say her name, because they're not even worth it.
But you know, it's like you're trolling.
Not only are you fucking your own kids over, you're trolling a seventeen year old girl or she was seventeen at that point. Maybe I think she's nineteen now greted, but you're trolling a nineteen year old girl. You're basically trolling your own fucking kids because you just don't get it.
And it's like the thought of being smart and correcting you it's so important to these people that actually in the ignorance of that, I cannot comprehend the ignorance of that of for a start, thumb in your nose, a kid, you know, like you know, if you know, no, nineteen is not a child, but you know, I'm your thumb and your nose a kid, and it's like, what is there to be proud of? What exactly are you trying to teach your kids by doing that, by saying I
have no responsibility towards anything for the next generation. And it's like, no, wonder the okay boomer is a fucking phrase now, you know. It's like because it's like, well, you don't get it, so I tell you what you should just piss off back into the shadows. You know, there's such a consciousness. I've got theory that when the Mayans talked about the end of the world in twenty twelve, it wasn't like the end of the world as we thought, like in terms of that we're going to be hit
by a meteor, asteroids or whatever. There's been a consciousness shift. The consciousness that we had before twenty twelve. It was a different, different world in different reality. We have different issues. Now we have different needs, you know, like really Twitter and Facebook and all that.
I think they all started, like, you know, Twitter, I think it was two thousand and seven and eight.
It probably became an omnipresent around about that time, Around about twenty living twelve, was when suddenly everyone's on it and everyone's living, and I think actually the minds where right. There's been a consciousness shift, the death of a certain consciousness, and we've shifted into this different reality, and we need to wake up to that reality.
It's been exploited by.
Dark forces, I think, who have prayed in people's fears in other ways. And then what annoys me is these same people who will say is people are coming to jobs and this and that, they then try and kind of use the same fear with the climate change, like oh no, that's just fear mongering. It's like, no, no, this is reality. People can look out their door and actually see the result of climate change. You know, this is not some extasy, you know, some fucking you know,
abstract thought. You know, you know, I'm kind of talking myself a little ren I've got I'm sounding more frustrated than optimistic.
But it's the frame of it is that you're feeling optimistic that there are there's an energy, there's a group of people who are educated about this stuff, who will be our world leaders in fifteen twenty times, in fifteen twenty years. And therefore you know that maybe that we're about to set ourselves on the right track, on.
The right track, and I think we've being in the wrong track for a wee while.
But I think that's right.
I do genuinely like I'm quind of convinced by this Mane theory that I do think there's been a death of a certain reality and we've had to wake up and smell the coffee. And I think that's what we're doing now. I think that is what we're doing. I think the next generation will just be second nature. For
my generation. We need to adapt. We've grown up. I feel like someone described my generation as being born in the pause, and it feels like, to a certain extent, were the things we got to worry about as a British person. Work actually quite shallow. When I think back now, it's like, oh, you know, we're basic. They weren't these massive things that we had to problems we had to solve. It was like, oh, yeah, I may go to UNI, you may do this, and you know, just like I
almost feel like it was a different reality. When I see footage even of like Barack Obama and like two thousand and eight, I'm like, oh, remember those simpler times, you know, and to be fair climate change with you know, we should we should have been a lot more engaged earlier, but you know, maybe ignorance was bliss at that point, but we really there was a simpler time and it just feels if I see, like things have changed a lot, not for the best, but we need to fucking wake
up to it. That that's basically what it is, you know, And I think our generation takes a big responsibility. I've got a lot of friends who kind of float through life and kind of not in a bad way, but just the kind of just floating through life going hey, you know, it's not worked out for me, you know, it just taking the perhaps a kind of easy way out.
And I think that my generation, to a certain extent, we had so much at our fingertips and so many opportunities and things that actually potentially we dropped the ball a little bit. You know, we were kind of you know, I don't know if I'm Generation X or millennial. I think I'm somewhere in the middle. I find it hard
to believe I'm a millennial. But but you know, it's like that way just we just landed in this kind of nonchalant and like the nineties were a wonderful time, very optimistic, but actually, what did we do with that optimism?
What really do we do well?
You know, fucking britpop great well, or they all took loads of coke, you know whatever.
Great?
You know's what's really the legacy of that, you know, other than great music, which is which is enough, But that's our that was our great you know offering to the world. And I think that's not enough to offer people now. And I think people that greater are becoming. You know, this is she's a new Mick Jagger, you know, but but it is it's a different type of icon, meaning it's a different type of leader, different type of person, and the cultural impact she has is in a different.
Way than than it used to to be for music or movies and things.
I think everything the consciousness has shifted so much that we need a new type of hero, and that's great as the first new hero, I think, you know.
It's this kind of big existential issue that affects absolutely every single one of this and our one planet. Just to zone a bit back on the sort of the individual, how is that? I mean, your band is your job, music is your job. So how is that has that made you think differently about anything that you do day to day with that stuff, or are you out there kind of like listening and learning and trying to trying to navigate that side of things as well.
Yeah, we've we've always tried to do I mean it's very little, but we've always tried to say things as
much as we can. What I when I look back to tours and I think about the amount of single use plastic bottles of water and things, you know, from fifteen years of two and like it, it makes me embarrassed to macore when I think about stuff like that, and these are simple changes things like that and tour you know, it's like one war source everyone gets give a boat told the start of the tear, and we should we need to do so much more.
I wish I was I wish we.
Were the size of cold Play, that we could actually decide that until we find a way to off set what we're doing, we're not going to tour.
Like that had a big it was a huge news story, and I must admit, regardless of where what you think of that band or their music, but Chris Martin using his platform to say we're going to hold this until I can learn more, until I can understand more, until we can be in a position where we feel like we're positively going.
About our day job. We're not going to do it.
I mean, I know he's in a position where he can do that, but still it was a kind of for somebody to go out there and put.
That out there.
It's inspiring and as that's what every turn band I think should aspire to that. You know, Unfortunately, the reality for a lot of bands is you don't have this. The thing is, I'm about to say something that I'm going to discuss myself with we do you don't have the luxury to do that, But that's the world isn't a luxury. The world's on necessity. So that's even the point perspective I need to change. I was about to say, we don't have the luxury to not tour or not
fly places because we have to play shows. That is the wrong attitude.
We need.
Me and my band need to figure out ways to make sure that we are not contributing anything to that. You know, we're not touring to we'll get an album coming out since so we're going to be touring later in the year. We are going to do everything we can to make sure that every part of that is you know, I don't know how we're going to make it carbon neutral. I don't think we'll quite be able to achieve that, but we're going to get as close
to that as we possibly can. When someone like Chris Martin says that you've got to pay attention, it's a shame because because he's made the comment when he was in Jordan and a blitz of media, which is a world tour, it was very easy for people to dismiss it. People that don't agree to just dismiss it. Goh, that's rich coming from you, but come on the sentiments and then make a change trying to you know, they'd go out and to it for two years and make fucking
one hundred million dollars. Of course he doesn't need another one hundred million dollars, but that's that's the slight sacrifice that people do have to make. That's what I'm talking about with governments and stuff. We need to just to say, let's not make that fucking huge portion of money because it's not as important actually as this over here.
And I do think it's great.
No Radiohead, they've been inspiring for about fifteen years. I'm sure even back in like two thousand and five they did a tour of intense and like the Big Top Tour I think it was called, And I'm sure all the lightning they had was used from reusable plastic and things, so that there's ways when we did some shows last year, everything we used was was recycled. It was we usually water ballasts and things we used. You know, we're trying not to use bring anything new. When we use put
a production together, it's pre existing things we want. And again it's such a small thing, but we're we're trying to move in that way and it's it's essentially it's our responsible to do that. The flying thing, for me, that's that's what I struggle with because I mean, I hate flying anyway.
I would rather not fly.
I don't know how how there's certain places we can go without flying, and I know that my carbon footprint from what a fly is unacceptable.
That's the one part of that.
I feel like I want to be able to make a difference, and I'm not making a difference, you know, because it is really when you look at the stats, is it's air travel is what is really fucking the planet, you know, in a big, big, big level. If you I think, if you fly to return flights a year, it's the same as your entire footprint and every other aspect of your life. That's the part that I'm that I'm a hypocrite about, and I don't know how I can't.
I don't know how to where to move with that, because I you know, as I say, we have to tour, you know, we have to tour to kind of exist as a band. You know, we should not be touring to exist as a humanity as a people, you know. But so that's the thing I still and that's why I do admire what Chris Martin's saying. You know, I think you get an awful lot of criticism for something
which is a truly an honest and beautiful sentiment. But yeah, I just I don't know, because we all can't just stop, you know, But about what I.
Would say to you is like I can see it in your face that it's kind of like, you know, it's a real it's a challenge and it's a conundrum, and it's puts you in a place.
Where you, yeah, you feel caught.
Between those two things and your responsibility but also your necessity because.
Also I do want to encourage, but you know, like that's the thing I want to talk about, encourage people. And then I catch myself and go, oh, yeah, but you fly a lot, So who am I to say, Oh, we need to all do this and that, and it kind of puts in a catch twenty two. I mean, even with our new album, this is the new album we're bringing it, it's the first time that I've kind of written songs sparked from the outside, and it's because I didn't change the nature of things. Normally, I write songs
from a very personal perspective. It's about love or loss or grief or things, and this album is about a kind of grief about about not society. But basically the
spark came from outside. For the first time ever, I realized I was writing songs about things I'm seeing in the television, about the way we're being made to feel for us having a certain perspective on life and being made to think that somehow compassion, loyalty, honesty, or like it's like an old fashioned trait, things like that things that we should just take for granted are being kind of questioned and then that's where the album's kind of the spark of this album has come from the outside
because it is something I'm battling with myself and I just don't know what to do, just not quite sure how to do it. And I feel like that's why, you know, I don't want to put pressure in gret it. But it's like, we'll folly you, Greta. You know, we'll fall, We'll folly you know. Everyone wants wants to do. You know what you're telling us to do. You know that we believe in you, you know, But ye as I say it as a constant battle. I mean, I don't live in London. I flew down here a couple of
days ago. I could probably have taken the fucking train. These are things that I need to now actually decide about doing and not just talking about it. It's like we'll not make it. Actually fucking suck it up and
do it, you know. I mean there's a flooding that it wasn't actually know, I'm trying to excuse myself going with those flood that trains couldn't actually make it, so I had to take a plight you know, that's ballots as the same catching myself and thinking, oh, that's that's the role that you're saying, you're disgusting yourself.
As I said before, I think like if you're thinking about these things and you're striving to try and find resolutions, and I think that's really important, and like that's a conversation that we're having more and more and it's only
going to have positive outcomes. It's the people that sort of say the deniers or the people that just don't acknowledge it or don't or have just persistently kind of like no, no, no ah, it's not my responsibility or I'd rather have you sat here saying like I'm acknowledging this is something important, Like I'm trying to find solutions, but admit that I'm contributing to myself as we all do.
That's a better place to be than Yeah.
Then, I mean see the denial climate change and now what a fucking joke. See three, watching some some news channels and you've got people like this is in the last maybe eighteen months ago, it's recently is eighteen months ago. You love people on news channels who are like talking about climate change, and then you get someone who disagrees with climate change, Like, I know, you have to get different perspectives on all things.
That is not a perspective.
That is just an untruth that you can't deny climate change.
It's like fucking holocaust and that it.
Is absolutely lowest low and it is so nonsense that it's not. You can't give a platform to people that talk shit. You know, let's let's be honest. So little things like that that you see and I see a change now, I don't think that would happen now in news shows, but I remember myself and Frankie watching I think it was maybe even Channel four, you know, and it was climate change activist and then a climate change deniw and you're like, don't give a climate change DENI our platform.
That's not that's not a perspective. You know.
That wouldn't have even been that long ago, maybe a couple of years.
Yeah, I mean, it really wasn't long ago, you know. But hopefully I feel like maybe maybe now that wouldn't that wouldn't happen. But you know, it's tough people, can you know, I mean, I can't believe about to fucking watch the show last night about the Holocaust denial, and it's the same thing. These deniers, they're they're rooting it, basing it and absolutely fuck all. And really they're just trolls. They just want to be contradictory. They just want to
hurt people, and I cannot understand it. But it's not a it's not a viable viewpoint in any way. I even think people that fucking talk about flat earth, it's like, that's that's a bit that's a bit more harmless. You know, Yeah, no, the Earth isn't flat. You're fucking idiot, But by all means, tell me why you think it is. But there's no grand conspiracy. But these are other things when you're denying things that are you know, actually, you know, maybe that's
that's the wrong attitude as well. Maybe maybe the view people just talking absolute shit needs to be kind of outlawed, you know. And there was a Facebook guy on talking about this, the Holocaust denial thing. I'm so sorry we're talking about such, and he's said, you know, and BI deal with they would be deals on it. And he's saying, you know, so why isn't this removed? And it's like, oh, well, that's just someone's opinion is wrong. They think that the
Holocaust didn't happen, and it's like, so that's acceptable. You can't, you know, and they're like, you can't have a hate filled post. But you know, maybe this person just got it wrong. And it's like, see anyone that's that's a denier of that or deny a climate change. They've not just got it wrong. They're not blindly, you know, ignorant to what is going on. They are provoking, being provocative. They've been deliberately obstinate, and they're just trolling the rest
of us for no apparent reasons. So let's let's stop giving these people a voice in a platform because it's not a valid perspective. And and I think the world is waking up, and I think that is it's not entirely a generational thing, because there are young people who have these ridiculous viewpoints as well. But we need to just fucking get on with it, grow up and just realize that that is not you know, and now I'm now about to move into free speech.
You know, this is the thing.
Now you can kind of do what you do a podcast on each of these exactly, sadly, and that's.
Why we're in such an important part of this century. And because everything is at the moment feeding into everything else where. It's such a crisis point of values that we actually everything does lead into everything else. And I just I just want us all to as much as possible getting the same page and start just like, let's be honest, let's be sincere about things that are important, and let's just have compassion for each other. Let's have empathy,
but let's try and fix things. Let's not just just point blame as well, you know, like you know, I mean, I'm laying into governments and stuff, but also I'm taking my responsibility. But we need to just fucking do something about We need to pull together. The right people need to get together, and that is what's happening. I feel like there's just wrong. People are shuffling away, and I think that's fine. I think that's sorry.
I'm going to ending in a weird perspective.
It's fine.
It's important to say. We never really talked about music. We never really talked about loads of stuff that you've been doing in the last few years. But what I feel like is that what we said has been really really interesting, how people have been enjoying listening.
So I feel that, yeah, I mean, we've just kind of scratched the surface today. And I mean because we discover about ourselves and when we're talking about this, you know, this is a great thing process for me as well to talk about. And I think for me when when I'm talking about music all the time, there are some points where in this day and age, I think, fuck, all I do is is play a couple of tunes. And I do want to contribute more to you know, and I feel very blessed to be able to do that.
But as I get older, I do realize, actually, you know what, there's so much more in this world. It's so much more important, and music is always going to be so important to me. But that shift had a slight shifting consciousness that I would almost rather sit that we talk about things that are on our doorstep right now, and and entertainment kind of as I say that the cultural icons that we grew up knowing about, it's going to be a different set of icons in a completely
different field. And I think that's necessary. I think that is necessary. The art and everything's still so so so valuable, but we need to have life alongside it, or else nothing's going to feed the art, you know, or else everything just fucking dies, you know. Anyway, noted