This episode I was joined by singer songwriter Frank Turner to talk about his first purchases, the best live albums and the albums that influenced him.
You can find Frank on Instagram @frankturner, Twitter @frankturner, and on Facebook by searching Frank Turner. OR just head to his website for links to everything www.frank-turner.com. (You can also find him on Tik-Tok)
We talked about:
You can find me on Instagram @Vinyl__Tap, on Twitter @ItsRecordTime and on Facebook by searching "It's Record Time Podcast". Or drop me a message at ItsRecordTimePodcast@gmail.com
I also shout out the Talking Records Podcast which can be found on all Podcast apps or on Instagram @talkingrecordspodcast
If you liked the episode, I would love it if you would subscribe, share, and rate us!
Photo credit for the thumbnail to Lukas Rauch as well
This episode I was joined by singer songwriter Frank Turner to talk about his first purchases, the best live albums and the albums that influenced him.
You can find Frank on Instagram @frankturner, Twitter @frankturner, and on Facebook by searching Frank Turner. OR just head to his website for links to everything www.frank-turner.com. (You can also find him on Tik-Tok)
We talked about:
You can find me on Instagram @Vinyl__Tap, on Twitter @ItsRecordTime and on Facebook by searching "It's Record Time Podcast". Or drop me a message at ItsRecordTimePodcast@gmail.com
I also shout out the Talking Records Podcast which can be found on all Podcast apps or on Instagram @talkingrecordspodcast
If you liked the episode, I would love it if you would subscribe, share, and rate us!
Photo credit for the thumbnail to Lukas Rauch as well
Alex 0:07
hello and welcome to the it's record time podcast i'm your host alex and this is the show where each week i'm joined by different guests talking about their favorite albums biggest influences and the bands that they love this week i was joined by english folk and punk singer frank turner i was absolutely over the moon to have frank on the show i've been a fan of his for a super long time going all the way back to when he was singing a million dads like 15 years ago however long ago that was so getting to have a chat with him was an absolute trip for me on top of that he was an absolutely great guest he was really friendly really engaged very knowledgeable very funny and made some brilliant recommendations for some albums i think you're going to really enjoy in amongst the albums we talked about a range of different things including frank joining tick tock playing games workshop as a kid and the eroticism of nick cave we also touched on the new effects split frank released last year as well as a bit of chatter around his old albums as well i'll be back at the end for a bit more chat but until then enjoy
Frank Turner 1:11
you know i mean it's always at the moment with the caveat that we're living in the middle of a puking pandemic i'm alright you know could be worse i moved house in the last year kind of a bit of a change of pace out to the coast and i'm loving it and i've built myself recordings here in which i'm currently sat and yeah yeah life could be worse
Alex 1:32
so obviously over like the last 15 years you've averaged something like 160 shows a year and you've spent the last 12 months in like one place how have you coped with that it's even the right word
Frank Turner 1:44
i cope is the right word i mean you know it the beginning of lockdown was really tough on a lot of levels i mean i've always been the guy who's on tour and i predictably was on tour when lockdown kicked in and so immediately it just sucked because we had to tell at all that i was on that was it was sold out and it was loads of fun i was on tour with my wife and one of my best friends and you know we're just having a blast and so that sucked and it sucks financially obviously that's usually how i make my living is touring but i think more than most things it was an identity thing for me i don't want to be too highfalutin about this but that's who i am i'm the guy who toes you know and like suddenly it's like well you can't do that now you've got to stay at home and something as simple as just the fact that i won't i've been waking up in the same bed every day for how long it's been really really odd for me and certainly i mean i kind of found my level with it after a while but there was definitely a period of time in the kind of spring and summer last year where i really struggle with that the other thing was you know contrary to popular belief touring is not some endless chaotic stag do it's actually quite a structured way of living and that's something that i personally find quite useful you know i know what i'm doing all day i know i'm doing in a week's time and all the rest of it and it means i can be more kind of focused and productive in my life and the unstructured parts of my life are those usually a day or two maybe three when you get back from tour and you just go blare on your sofa and watch netflix in your pants and i kind of did that for like the first month of lockdown and it's a shit way to live for a month and it's unhealthy and it's unproductive and all the rest of it and so i guess one of my major coping mechanisms has been trying to build structure and routine into a non tour life which was an interesting project i mean there were definitely days when i considered calling my tour manager and seeing if i could just hire her to tell me to do shit you give him moments of the day she told me to go fuck myself so that wasn't an option but um yeah you know it's definitely been a learning curve and it's funny because a lot there's a there is a cliche about being an authority man is like an extended adolescence and there's some truth to that and if there are parts of me that feel like i've kind of had to grow up quite a lot in the last in the last year which is a strange thing sabir district
Alex 4:10
has the extended break do you think the extended break will sort of influence the way that you tour in the future or you sort of like no i'm going to get back out on the same continuous level i was
Frank Turner 4:20
i think that it's certainly going to make me never ever take it for granted again that's certainly true you know in the last couple of years me and my band my touring family that so you have kind of we've eased off the gas a little bit because you know people got kids people got married people sat down a little bit more and i'm not saying that we're going to now abandon that and go straight back to how you store in like 2013 because jesus christ but you know i certainly think that like i mean if for no other reason than financial like as soon as possible so again i'm going to be do a fair amount of touring straight away simply because like help essentially but you know so there's that I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think that the effects of what we're currently living through will be long lasting in many ways across society. And I think that might well be true within the context of an industry that revolves around gathering people together in confined spaces, whether that's to do with people's comfort. Some people not wanting to come to gigs anymore, that I think that might well be a thing. I don't really know what it will mean, you know, maybe streaming will continue to be a part of things. I mean, I tend to be skeptical about that, but who knows. But yeah, so there's definitely I think there will be changes to it. But on the flip side, I think that for me, and for a lot of people, there's this like, ravenous hunger for live entertainment right now. Or at least a fucking hope there is. So, fingers crossed. Yeah, it'll be out on the road soon.
Alex 5:52
You're not going to pack it all in and become full time Tick Tock starlin.
Frank Turner 5:55
No, I don't really understand Tick tock, I've kind of got an account. Funny, you should mention that. Yeah. started doing bits and bobs on it. But it's entirely opaque to me what the point is, but I reckon they were very keen for me to get a Twitter account. Now,
Alex 6:11
I was very sadly scrolling through it every day, and you popped up on it. And I was quite shocked to see you on there. Oh, I tend to just sort of it's the perfect way to waste an hour of your life and not realize you've done it like it's an absolute time sink. It's really it's a really bizarre. Yeah.
Frank Turner 6:30
Well, this is the thing I've kind of I started by looking at other people's stuff to like, get some ideas and then I'm not gonna do a video of me appearing in my underwear halfway through and I don't really do dancing in public. And I don't really have any DIY, it's a little bit lost on that front. I didn't know I'll find my my eta at some point, I'm sure.
Alex 6:52
So obviously, you haven't just been on tik tok over lockdowns. Well, you've been doing all of your streams for the independent venues raising money for is about 21 different venues now,
Frank Turner 7:03
it was exactly 21 different venues. Yes. I also did some other ones for like my band and crew, one for my record label. I did one for my studio, actually. Because I think it was one of the Yeah, it's they've been fundraisers basically.
Alex 7:17
Yeah, you've raised what quarter million pound doing them, which is unbelievable.
Frank Turner 7:21
venue count. And it's, that's an estimate, because I tend to stop counting a day or two afterwards to kind of stop paying attention to the ticker because I feel like my work here is done. I fade into the background. But you know, I feel pretty good about that. I mean, I, you know, I haven't, I haven't donated quarter of a million pounds, because I don't fucking have a quarter of a million quid. I have facilitated that amount of money getting raised and thrown in what I can when I can afford it, and all the rest of it. And it feels like it's something for the last year, I can look back on with a degree of pride.
Alex 7:57
So you're, you're pausing those shows for a while or potentially, actually get back?
Frank Turner 8:03
Yeah, I post them once before I post them last summer when everything started kind of loosening up over here. And it's also it's just like there is a there is a certain fatigue that kicks in. After a while both in terms of me picking a setlist I think there's just a limited number of times anybody wants to see just to me with my guitar banging on the ground, and including myself. But also, you know, in terms of audience numbers and donation amounts, and all that kind of things, you know, I mean, there's it's it's not indefinitely, as as a methodology, and I'm particularly this time around, I want to go on a hike rather than letting it just kind of peter out. So we did a last one. And we actually got the massive to have that on, we did about 12 and a half grand for that one, which is awesome. But do you not? I mean, I'd rather kind of like, leave with a flourish.
Alex 8:52
So you also back in July, you were the first socially distant show to take place in the UK for a few months. Weren't you at the club? Yeah. indoors. Yeah. I was reading your blog post about that. Earlier today. And you talked about briefly mentioned a conversation you had with Jay, from beans on toast around the emotion of being on stage for the first time and how that hit you and being back in a venue and in sort of a changing room and all the rest of it. For anyone who's listening who's a performer or anyone who's just waiting to get back to shows Can you give like an idea of what being back on stage is going to feel like after all of this is done, whether it's in three months or a year?
Frank Turner 9:30
Yeah, I mean, the thing is like in life anything it doesn't matter how remarkable it is anything that you do over and over again is going to accrue a certain degree of like routine to it generally. I'm sure that Paul McCartney gets pretty bored of playing Hey, dude, sooner or later Jim. I mean, it's just unavoidable. It's the nature of human existence. But so but to have that taken away, like a not by choice, and then be able to go back to it was really quite something else. so having done for myself having done a lot of the live streaming thing one of the things weird about that and that obviously got use over time but it's like a finished song and essentially nothing happens i mean my wife applauds which is lovely and my cat looks disdainful that she always says that but you know it's an after right the beginning of the livestreams it made me realize quite how much the energy exchange between stage and audience is important to the show and then as time went on i sort of you know i don't wanna say forgot about it per se but just got used again to the current format of things and it was just that thing of finishing a song and getting this blast of like energy coming out of the room was indescribable it was amazing and it's it was so much better than like you know your first gig or whatever because it your first gig you're terrified you got nobody doing and he probably sucked and nobody knew who you were and nobody seminar and no one cared you know whereas in this instance it was just like it was kind of like the best first gig ever sort of thing you know i mean if you were somehow instantly famous and everyone needed songs or whatever it was it was emotional i'll say that and i think it was emotional for everyone in the room as well if i may be so bold it definitely there it was tangibly exciting
Alex 11:21
okay we're gonna go we're gonna talk about some other people's music not yours anymore so the first category to go for is the first album you ever purchased can you remember what it was and and where you got it and when you got it
Frank Turner 11:36
yes again the first album that i purchased as in with my money i mean with this one i was about 10 years old so it's pocket money so you can argue the tax on that that was actually number of the beast by iron maiden the first time i ever got was killers by made and which my dad got me my parents don't believe in modern music rock and roll certainly not heavy metal but i'd sort of i'd stumbled across the music of i made and expressed an interest and my dad picked up a cassette copy of killers from the artprice at waterloo station if you can imagine a world in which there was a record shop at a station anymore but anyway and he brought it home and he gave it to me and i lost my shit and my parents were extremely disappointed as his central parenting error in life was by an actor because it changed everything for me it was like a light switch going on and then you know i listened to it to death and then i think i kind of it took me like a couple of weeks to triangulate that there was more than one iron maiden album that existed i was like oh my god there are other ones like this so i went out and i got kit number the bass was the second one i got it i can't remember this specifically but it must have been from the oil price in winchester because that's where we were and yeah i remember loving it
Alex 12:56
so many people will ask that question they come back with something terrible for beans on toast is on here a couple of weeks ago and his was do the batman by the simpsons yes and he said that if anyone says that their first album is something called they're lying but i think you're the exception that just proved proven this rule
yes
i mean this is a great album
Frank Turner 13:16
it is a great it is i mean it's an arguably still my favorite main record funnily enough but um i mean i know exactly what jay is talking about i had an i had a long argument with some people a few years ago which was utterly pointless but i just got even trouble with certain denizens of the underground scenester punk rock internet presence because i made the point that nobody gets into black flag or you know tharsis or any whatever underground band you want to say just by randomly by one of the records everyday everybody gets into them via green day or offspring or bling one or two or whoever it might be and therefore gateway punk bands are an entirely reputable thing in life like you know good for them well they're fucking love green i'm playing when i do an offspring i don't care anyway so but yeah i mean it wasn't my my stomach was i mean was completely random i was playing games workshop yes that yes it's true with with a friend of mine his older brother had an iron maiden poster on the bedroom wall and i thought it was something to do with games workshop it looked like it was sort of in the main universe and said to my mate oh that's cool and he said oh it's a band and i said get out of here there's no band that was that cool how could a band be that cool i didn't really know any bands at that point in my life i think i've heard sergeant pepper by the beatles in the car and i was about it and then you know made this kind of random hail mary customer that so you know there were reasons for it and then the other moment in my own personal musical journey which was i so i went out and sort of gradually bought all the medium records that were out at the time on cassette this was up to and including no prep for the dying for those of you who want to be nerdy about this and then i remember i was lucky i was lucky Christmas family gathering and a distant cousin of mine, who's 10 years older than me was cracked up by the fact that I was this 10 year old who was like, and he sort of was like, you know, there are other bands like this as well. And I was like, no. What, what are you talking about? And he then gave me He made me a tape that had ACDC, thunderstruck on one side, and Judas Priest painkiller on the other side, and gave me that, and that was almost as big an explosion in my mind, because it was like, there are other bands, you know, and then, and then I got into Metallica, and Megadeth, and Slayer and pandaren everything else. But yeah, it was that that moment of realizing it wasn't, I mean, this kind of completely like, isolated event.
Alex 15:45
So presumably, you started so you say you were about 10? So this is early 90s?
Frank Turner 15:50
Yeah, this is sort of 92 ish.
Alex 15:53
So presumably, you must have started you started playing guitar? Not that long after this. Was it when you first started playing? Was it playing this sort of thrash metal stuff?
Frank Turner 16:01
you badly? Yes. I mean, the very first thing that happened, I think, I think it was my 11th birthday, I got the Argos starter kit, you know, where you get a black and white copy, which funnily enough, is over there currently. And like a 30 watt, and it comes with a strap and a lead, and all this. And, you know, cost like 80 quid or something, and my parents got it for me. Actually, my birthday is right next Christmas, and I figured out what around that age so that I could combine birthday and Christmas presents in order to up my sort of potential spend. as it were, so yeah, I got that for Christmas. And I don't know, it's, I guess it's just a facet of my personality. I'm quite participatory. I'd heard this thing. I loved it. It was like, cool. How do I do that? How do I get involved in doing and I got, I remember, actually, I got Bert Sweden's playing a day, which was useful. And I also got like the tab to Seventh Son of the seventh son or something, which was a fucking mystery to me. And I'm kind of still is because I'm nowhere near good enough to play any fucking names. But you know, that was Yeah. And like, actually, that was, that was a big part of where AC DC figured in my life is the AC DC riffs were kind of comparatively easy to play. And that was quite useful to me as a kid. And actually then my other massive, huge signpost moment at that point in my life, and it was actually probably only about two years later, obviously, when you're a kid, it feels like a lifetime was Nirvana. You know, I, you know, the kurang was a thing because I made more on the cover one time, so I started crying. Amazing. I see find out my parents banned me from buying crying magazine, because the first one I ever bought had a feature on Cannibal Corpse. And they were just like, so I used to have to like shoplift it or sneak off and buy it or whatever. But Nirvana and Korean quite a lot of this period of time. So night three, night four, and then I got back into the vibe, as you might do. And again, part of the reason for that, because by this point, I was sort of playing in the bedroom Bama to my best friends, was that, you know, we couldn't fucking play anything off justice for all Jesus Christ. Still, again, still can't. Whereas, you know, I remember when etoro came out, we got it. And we, we had a crap version of heart shaped box together, you know, a couple of weeks later, and I'm not saying it was any good, but we can at least sort of slaughter our way through it. And, and that was quite visit journey. I mean, almost in a way. That's a kind of punk rock moment, that moment when it's like, I can do this too.
Alex 18:32
So presumably, they're more of the, I guess, more like skate punk stuff, which came out around nightfallen 8586. You gradually moved into that sort of stuff as well?
Frank Turner 18:40
Yeah, definitely. Well, so then the next part of the story was that Kurt Cobain used to refer to himself as a punk quite often in interviews, and also instantly when he then died, I took that as a personal affront because I was a recent fan on it was like, what's going on? I was planning on seeing you live. But I mean, I don't mean to be disrespectful to the day, he was genius. But he used the word punk and like my, the two guys that was banned with our dramas uncle knew about music. And he was pretty much the only person we knew knew about. Like, I remember we said to him was punk, go Solomon or whatever. And he laughed. And he told us to go and get Never mind the bollocks and the first class record, which we did. And those are both pretty kind of life changing records. Incidentally, I love the class, but I'm definitely on Team pistols. As far as those first two go, Jesus fucking Christ. Never mind. The bollocks is one of the most this really brilliant records ever made. Anyway. So, you know, and kind of got into that kind of stuff. And then that then chimed with sort of just at that moment in time, Green Day sort of arrived. I'd like people I knew who hadn't been part of this little band that I was doing with my mates were suddenly into Green Day who were a punk band, and it was like, what you know, and then i suppose i've got an incentive and i went out with ian and got smashed both incredible records and then i don't know about you i still feel like i think this is probably true of any given sort of fad or explosion or how you want to put it in music but like for every 10 kids i knew who got into green day and offspring three would have another fax record maybe jeremy and then all those one would get a black flag record so there was a filtration process and i don't mean to kind of try and accrue any sort of like personal value in saying that but it just seemed to be how it worked you know and i got into that world what do i mean by we used to triangulate thanks lists memorize so what you do you'd have a copy you'd have like let's say you get three punk records so you've got like smash ducky and punk and drop like or something you know and all those bands always used to endlessly thank bands and they're thankless so you'd sit down and you'd look through and if there was one band that appeared and all three thanks for this it was like right we've got to fucking get into them next but then you add them to the pile and then you do it again and that was a way because this is pre the internet and there were no magazines i mean kurang would write about the top end of that scene but no one wrote about you know dag nasty or any of that kind of shit you know i mean so and for the most part that was a really cool way of getting into music because it was quite sort of you're kind of going in blind a lot of the time and a lot of these records we had to order from the record store actually the guy who works for the record store in the archives on which to go to the point where he put aside anything was on epitaph for me and my mates which was pretty cool do you know i mean and again nine times out of 10 that'd be fucking great i mean it did also mean that there were some moments here and there but you know and then there were the samplers fat rack and the fat music fat people and then all the epitaph punk aroma samplers and all that kind of shit so you know there were there were ways of kind of getting into stuff but it was it was a more sort of gradualist process i think back then than it is now
Alex 22:03
so out of those words you've just mentioned especially on the punk side there's no effects or in their offspring in their green day or in their you've played with or in some way zoom know pretty much all of those bands yes name checks
Frank Turner 22:17
yeah that was not delivered
Alex 22:22
have you just been the most prolific tour in the world frank you've just ended up playing everyone but do you ever get over that fact of being like shit this is the stuff i listened to my bedroom as a kid and now like i've just released a split with no facts like
Frank Turner 22:36
well i mean the short answer is fuck no they're not effects is a is a specific case which we'll come to in a minute but yeah you know i talked with social d and like white lie white white trash is one of my absolute fucking favorite records on as kid and one of the really i think almost one of the first records i bought when i went beyond green day and offspring you know i mean and you know we talked with him back in 2010 and funnily enough actually nobody in my band knew they were fucking idiots and i was extremely stoked about that talk to the offspring in 2009 at their request i mean fucking hell what do you say about things like that and i suppose what i should probably do is not say very much but i certainly don't want to come across like i'm not stoked by it you know i mean it's fucking amazing yeah it will always be amazing to me i hope i never lose a sense of wonder about that because that strikes me as a shitty kind of personality to go in the north facing in particular is crazy i mean i've been friends with mike for over a decade we met a running festival one year i ended up playing guitar with him that day funnily enough matt skiba was supposed to play guitar on the end of the decline he'd done a runner and there was a panic backstage and someone was like who knows how to play it matters like i knew we had mutual friends or whatever and it got sorted out but then you know and mike has always sort of said he was a fan of my stuff but that's what you say to your friend he's a musician he's that kind of person your musics rubbish so but so i've always taken it slightly with a pinch of salt and then summer 2019 he turned around and we were at a festival together and asleep both playing and he just said you want me to cover split and i was like yes i mean like you know pushing pushing down the kind of the euphoria a little bit to remain externally cool but i mean i think you know if i had to pick a list of things that i've done in my career that i would a top three or whatever are things that i consider the most impressive but that was definitely on that list unquestionably fuck me i did a split with no effect and it wins every stupid fucking internet argument about punk
Alex 24:47
just pull out the fat mike card every time you grab
Frank Turner 24:49
a blue tip on the pump while doing is flipping
Alex 24:55
okay the next category we're going to go for is favorite live album are you A big live album listener. Is there any that you sort of come back to a lot? Um,
Frank Turner 25:03
yeah, I mean, generally speaking, I'm I tend towards cynicism about live records for the simple reason that I think that live performance and recorded music are two separate kind of endeavors. I mean, a big part of the show is the, the, the ephemeral atmosphere in the room, you're there and it's one night and it happens. And if you weren't there, then go fuck yourself go another tournament or whatever. I mean, obviously, we're talking about older acts, or acts that predate me or whatever, that changes a little bit. And then, of course, you know, there are some absolute one thing is I mean, two of my favorite records ever actually. Live with the Old Quarter by Townes Van Zandt, which is a it's a recording of towns playing to about 30 people in a bar in 1972. And like, very audibly at the beginning, not that many people give a fuck. And by the end of it, it's pindrop. Quiet and he's just, I mean, he's one of my all time favorite songwriters. I have his initials tattooed on my wrist. And it's, you know, if you've not familiar with the work of Townes Van Zandt, I would heartily recommend starting with that live record because it's just a fucking masterclass one man with the guitar. Telling the truth Have you want to put it? So that's a big one. The other my other favorite live record is one nightstand at home square by Sam Cooke. Obviously, you know, there's no way I could have ever seen Sam Cooke play died in 1960s. But also just like there's something that I don't know if you know the backstory is that record is it's phenomenal. He was coming up in the world of being a kind of, you know, sort of Motown ish kind of pop, soul crooner sort of thing. And he did what everybody does, which is do a live record from the Copacabana. And it was a complete disaster because you have to use the house band at the Copa and it's very sort of stage generally speaking, even possibly at that point in time, it was white only audience and black performers on stage, which is fucked. And just so he did a live record from Copacabana, and it was terrible. And he was furious because he sort of said to people, this isn't what I want to do. And then it flops and then he took his own money and put it into recording himself playing at a black club that the Highland square club in New York with his band playing the way that he did the show. And it's it's it has what every live record once and not many of them have which is it's so it's just electrifying. And I love it the Sonics of it. This isn't an anachronistic word to use, but they're kind of punk, you know, like the fucking kick and snare sounded just like blown out. And he is just absolutely stunning as a performer. He's just all over the place. And yeah, it's a it's a very, very exciting record. And yeah, we've spent quite a lot of the last few years obsessed with our motion
Alex 27:46
set this sort of this you have that that relationship with live albums that's slightly different than the Live albums you've put out. What then made you go are
Frank Turner 27:58
you talking about? Yeah.
Alex 28:02
Let's apply a way of saying that. Yeah.
Frank Turner 28:06
That's a fair question. I mean, I off top my head I mean, we there's been a few here and there. We did we did. I mean generally speaking, the ones the live requisite. We don't do ones that have been unusual events, I guess is the way that Brian justify. The so we did live from union chapel, which this one off show that we never did before or since. And it just seemed like a moment to capture and it came out pretty well. So we put that out. We didn't show 2000 which obviously you know, it's a self created milestone, but it nevertheless it felt like a milestone. And as it happened, the audience that night is an audience that I would like to fucking keep in a box and take with me everywhere I go because God dammit. Like they sung along with the mandolin mandolin riff at the start of losing days, which no one does. And it was just like, I remember all of us on stage. Immediately when that because generally speaking, we were on in ear monitors, you know, we have a little bit of live sound kind of mixed into it as the show started. And we all turn to God on monitor engineering was like audience mics down Jesus Christ, that the loudest crowd in the fucking universe. And it was just an absolutely. Just there are nights when when when when the chips fall in the right places. You know, I mean?
Alex 29:18
Yeah, I listened to your live in Newcastle show today. And what I really liked about it was that it seemed like a way for you to talk about your career and your songwriting in sort of almost a one off show in the there's lots of stories between the songs. Yeah, there's lots of this as the motivation for this song as well. Yeah, I find it felt like a autobiographical way of doing a live show like that.
Frank Turner 29:41
Yeah, definitely. Well, so that was the that's the other one is and the reason we recorded the whole tour, actually, because the thing is, we did I think we did five weeks in the states and two weeks in the UK, and that's all we ever did in that format. We were sat down, the audience was sat down is not a thing I've ever done before. And I'm not saying I'll never do it again. But it's like it's not on my to do list anytime soon so i wanted to capture it because that's the thing like if somebody if i'm playing a quote unquote regular show and somebody messes it it's like well then just come to the next one which doesn't apply in that instance because as i say is the thing we're planning on doing once and did once and also like the presentation lead like if i may be allowed to have a controversial opinion briefly of course being live on broadway thing did nothing for me and i'm a huge springsteen fan and it just seemed tired to me and like if you've read his book and ever seen him live before it was all retired ground and it just seemed a bit kind of there's nothing new and i love springsteen pieces but it did that didn't do very much by contrast the loudon wainwright special that's on netflix which if you haven't seen it let's stop this interview now and you go and watch it is is stunning because it's got it's so revolutionary and it's so raw and and but it's also funny and i remember when we were planning that show obviously it wasn't a netflix special because that's not who i am but unfortunately but you know it had a kind of i remember thinking to myself well that's going to be the model for this rather than the broadway thing and obviously it was a bit more of a show than a talking thing although i do talk a fuck of a lot on that record let's be honest with each other you know it wanted to have that kind of narrative arc to it you know and as i say we did record the whole tour but i'm glad we picked one from the end of the tour because by that point more so than usual tours for me the setlist was set and indeed the the patter was because not not identical every night but there was just there were points i was trying to hit in between each song and stories to tell and all the rest of it and by that point they've become quite well oiled and it's theatrical to a degree but it also it achieved what i was trying to do so you said
Alex 31:55
at the beginning about the energy exchange and a live show i think you know anyone that's seen you live and i'm gonna presume a lot of people are listening to this have seen you live know that that saying that clearly you take very seriously the sake of a good at as well in that holding that room what other performance do you look at and think all that's something i'd like to be able to do or like you hold them in high regard for being able to do that
Frank Turner 32:22
well i mean john's the first part of that question everyone is the short answer i actually think that anybody i think this is true of slides of people many people may not admit it but if you're somebody who's remotely interested in or any good at playing live you are a note taker you don't see any fucking man including a bar band at your local pub or whatever there is a part of your brain that is taking notes and you're observing how they pulled that off and oh that was interesting oh that didn't work or that did work or whatever you know it's just the way that your mind works and i mean you know for me i remember the first kind of proper like big knot kind of diy underground tour i did was opening for pitch shifter in 2003 with million dead and i remember like watching jay s on the very first night and just going oh okay that's how you do being a front man because he just walked on like you like he walked on like you know he was doing your favor by letting you be in the room not in a shitty way it was just like oh yeah cool thanks for coming kind of thing but and just the room was his instantly and he's one of those specifically i remember like he sung at the crowd and at that point in time because we were used to playing like squats and stuff i used to sit on my shoes at the kick drum at the ceiling maybe the guitar player or something brave owner fucking look at the audience and you know he was straight out like ah in the front row and it was like okay yeah that's really good but you know and we've been fortunate to tour with dropkick murphy's amazing live band flogging molly not just headlines as well i mean one of my favorite favorite tools i've ever done was when we had a band called larian has flask open for us actually we did two tours we did the usa and uk in europe with them because they were so good that i had their records i like their records i thought were great i asked them to be on the tour but the first night of the tour was in boston and i watched their set as i always do and i went backstage and during changeover instead of the guys on my own like we have a fucking problem because i've just seen the best live band i've ever seen in my fucking life and they ended the show with the drummer stage diving into his drum kit which was in the crowd and like fuck you know and like it was just kind of i like that on a tour of having a band before us who gives us a run for our money you know it's a cool feeling but yeah so you're always kind of taking notes i mean in terms of like people i spend a lot of time i spend a lot of time thinking about springsteen i think he's a great performer and what i particularly like about springsteen is that he's not somebody who's hugely reliant on kind of light shows and stuff like that i don't have a problem with light shows and some bands it's totally what you want like radiohead slideshow is always phenomenal but like i just it just doesn't quite feel like it's me and like spring somehow manages to be a bar band at a stadium show and i fucking love that do you know what i mean and like it's just coolest shit so i spend a lot of time talking about that nick cave is a huge inspiration for me in every conceivable way really not least his performance you know he's an incredibly engaging dairy dare i say sexual performer there's something really kind of like kind of weirdly erotic about the way he plays live but yeah generally speaking like any fucking van that can tear it up it's like i'll be taking note
Alex 35:33
of what age then did you decide or what point in your life did you say that you wanted to be a performer and this is what it is that you wanted to do
Frank Turner 35:42
well i think the thing is like it's interesting as a performer though because there are different stages of realization for me from when i got intimate and i wanted to be in a band and as far as i was concerned when i was 11 years old that probably meant i had vhs as of like you know ac dc live in moscow and it was like cool i'll just do that as if that was just a thing you decided to do was wondering you know ended up playing to like 200,000 people or whatever the fuck it is you know and then then like a big moment for me was discovering the book get in the van by henry rollins i got into black flag and then i got that book which was kind of like a bible for me for a long time and i read it cover to cover many times and then you know also there are coloring books so that stuff like our band could be alive by michael heizer and which was a huge book for me and stuff like that so you know reading about underground touring i guess at that point it was still kind of academic to a degree in the sense that i was not aware of an underground scene exists in you know and then i came across the hardcore scene in in the kind of mid to late 90s the ukcc household records and there was kind of a circuit you could do that was like london leeds peterborough weirdly enough norwich cardiff was pretty good southampton and glasgow and so i did my first tour in 98 which we booked ourselves and no one gave a shit or came but it was a lot of fun and you know so i was then you know that every time i was in that kind of early against me record kind of view of like i'm just gonna talk squats for the rest of my life or whatever and you know and then over time that kind of went when i joined million dead the interesting about the drum from indebted then in knee jerk my previous band so we were on the same page but the bass player julia she days obviously worked for record label that she knew what a booking agent did and what a manager did and like things like this and indeed could get us gigs like opening for the echosign and it was like fuck like no venue and so that kind of broadened my horizon shall we say and you know it's early on i figured out something i loved and that i wanted to do a lot but i guess one of my kind of my revolutionary moments for me and i can't tell you exactly when this was but it's certainly during my solo career is that what i'm trying to do for job involves three separate disciplines the songwriting there's musicianship and there's performance and i think a lot of people recognize the first two as being separate entities but a lot of people particularly from a punk scene kind of almost kind of like philosophically refused to accept that performance is also an art form you know what i mean and like the act of engaging a crowd and putting on a good show because you can be one or two of those three good at one or two of those three things and not the other you can be a great songwriter and a great performer and terrible musician or a great performer and a great musician and terrible songwriter or whatever you know but yeah just sort of triangulating that that was also a thing that you could concentrate on on itself gentlemen and to be like okay how do i make it that when people come to my shows they have a good fucking time and they enjoy themselves when they're engaged with the show and if they're far away from the stage they don't feel left out there and all this kind of thing i couldn't tell you exactly when that was i guess it was when i started playing slightly bigger rooms but uh yeah it was definitely kind of that was a that was an aha moment for me of going on far cry okay
Alex 39:04
i think we've got time to do one more category so we can go for okay i'll leave it up to you it's your choice we can ever go for favorite album of all time already spoken about or we can go for album that had the biggest influence on you either personally as a songwriter or performer or
Frank Turner 39:20
as well i'm going to go for the second one so because i think favorite album of all time is a nebulous category and i reserve the right to find it halfway through answering the fucking question do you know i mean like it really depends what day of the week you asked me on that kind of thing i mean biggest our biggest impact again that's quite hard because it records have different impacts of different points of time you could make the argument that it was killers in the sense that it turned me on to rock music conceptually and that's enormous in utero was huge for me august everything after by counting crows as a contender for my answers this question actually it's like yeah i'm getting into Briefly, so obviously everything after I got into metal, I got into punk, all the things that we've talked about the brief sidebar going on. While I was there, my oldest sister was in stuff like Weezer Counting Crows and soul asylum. I sort of, not musically I took enormously seriously at the time because nobody has here. But at the same time, like, I had an acoustic guitar, or possibly my sister had an acoustic guitar. And I learned how to play cat and crow songs because I could play those ones when I couldn't play Megadeth. And I can tell you from experience, the Megadeth doesn't achieve anything at a beach party that a team knows that. So I kind of learned to play all the songs of vocals and everything after before becoming a fan, and then sort of became a fan in the process. And over time, I often sit down and realize quite how much the DNA of that record kind of still coursing through my veins. It's still important in my thinking about music, I mean, to be more specific, and possibly a little bit highfalutin. When I was learning those songs, those cannon crow songs, I was learning for a very specific purpose, which was to lead a sing along a kind of party or beach holiday or whatever. It wasn't a case of performing. It wasn't like everyone shut up and listen to me. It was like, I know the chords and we all know the words. And that way we can, I can, by learning these chords, I have facilitated a collective experience. And I think that there is still an element of that. And what I do, I mean, obviously, I write the songs that I play at my shows these days. But nevertheless, my favorite moment as a show is when it becomes that what me and the band are doing on stage is facilitating the mass collective event of singing, rather than wanting people to shut the fuck up. Do you I mean, it's like it becomes the fourth wall breaks down, have you want to put it like that becomes collective endeavor. And I think that that comes from being a quote unquote, feminized kid. So that's definitely that probably is the answer. But as a sidebar, bonus answer, I had a moment in about 2010. When I done a record copy of the deed that I wasn't super satisfied with afterwards, it had a couple of songs I loved and it felt like I was treading water on some of the other stuff. And I was just feeling a bit directionless, and it was my third record. And it's like, fuck have I run out of ideas? I've done three records. And that was it. And then I heard an album by a band called me without you. And the record is called, it's all crazy. It's all false. It's all the dream is all right. And I'm not sure if you're familiar with it.