Je vous parlais de the Walkmen tantôt, que diriez-vous d'une capsule temporelle, nous ramenant à leur première tournée européenne ? Novembre 2002, Paris, jour de leur première date parisienne... interview réalisée pour le compte de Radio Campus Paris, dont j'ai retrouvé la retranscription au hasard d'une séance de rangement.
Alors bien sûr, relire plus de 20 ans après une interview qu'on a conduite, c'est prendre le risque de voir tous les ratés vous sauter au visage : la trivialité de certaines questions, l'absence d'autres, et les relances qu'on n'a pas formulées. Mais on peut aussi y trouver fraîcheur et spontanéité. C'est la raison pour laquelle je vous livre ici en l'état ces propos recueillis de Paul Maroon, Matt Barrick, Hamilton Leithauser (et Walter Martin)
This is your first European tour and tonight is the third date of the tour. How are you feeling?
Hamilton : Tired! We didn't sleep very well for the first couple of days, but we're catching up. We have toured a lot in the US, and a little bit in the UK and have only been in Europe for three days.
How receptive has the European audience been to your music so far?
Hamilton : We can judge by tonight because last night was awful.
Matt : Actually we were rejected from the French festival going on at the moment [ndlr : Le Festival Inrocks] because there is a rumour that we travel with 20 people, so that's why they didn't want us to come.
Regarding your shows, can you easily adapt your songs for live performances?
Hamilton: The piano is a lead instrument in a lot of our songs. We don't have one for this tour so we cut out a lot of songs. We can't play the piano songs and changed several parts to adapt.
So you never use a piano on stage ?
Paul : No, we have one in the US and we bought one for the UK tour. But you know, a piano is a big instrument, hard to deal with on tour and you can't rent them really. The one we have in the US is a small one, a 5 octave piano so we can lift it, it's manageable.
You’re originally from Washington D.C., but you all live in New York now. Why did you move there, and do you feel more like New Yorkers or Washingtonians?
Paul : We moved for school almost entirely over, we went to College and formed the band after. We had the desire to start to play together when we moved there. Hamilton and Matt are cousins, once our own bands broke up, we were all there, so we just stuck it out. It's hard being a band in NY. It's also a terrible place to study, you go to NY and you just go bananas, at least I did! You can't go home, there's always so many things to do.
You bought your own studio in Harlem — what made you decide to do that?
Matt : Actually it was 3 years ago and we built it ourselves [ndlr : Paul, Matt and Walter : ex Jonathan Fire* Eater ]. We wanted to keep playing music together but we weren't signed and didn't have a singer so we decided for some reason to build a studio. And once we built it, Hamilton's band [The Recoys] broke up. We had a singer so we used it. But we're not the only ones. Other bands from NY come and record in our studio, the French Kicks, the Kills ... It's also a business for us.
People often point out that it’s a 24-track analogue studio. Did you choose that setup because it was cheaper, or to get a specific sound and stand out in New York?
Paul: There's not a single record that I like that's not recorded on anything but a 24-track analogue. We don't understand computers, we don't like using them to record music. We like old records so we want our record to sound like that.
We talked earlier about other New York bands — what do you think of the new rock scene emerging from the city?
Paul: We started it!
Matt : Mostly Paul did...
Paul : We really feel part of it. All the other young bands are almost all friends of ours, we know and play with them. Except for The Strokes or some others.
Are many new bands genuinely emerging from New York at the moment, or is it simply the music press creating the impression that everything is happening there?
Matt : There are a lot more bands now than five years ago when we started Jonathan Fire* Eater; back then there were two or three bands which were popular and that was it.
Paul : Music in general was worse than today. Everything was terrible. All the bands were worse than we were. "D generation" was the big band, which is just a bunch of assholes, there wasn't even anything remotely interesting, the situation is the complete opposite today.
Are you able to make a living from music full time now?
Hamilton: It's getting more that way, but we can't totally live from our music. We definitely make more money now. I have a part time job, I work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, everybody has part time jobs.
Walter: I work at the Medieval part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Matt: I work at the museum of sex.
Paul : I work in a pharmaceutical company.
Paul, you said, “We don't have the ridiculous hype of Jonathan Fire* Eater [JF*E], and for that we are glad.” Why do you think hype can be bad for a band?
Paul : It may be good. It depends on what you're trying to do I guess. Our problem with JF*E was that we had no idea that we were supposed to have high goals, because we didn't have any but apparently the record company had very high expectations from us. And all the magazines expect you to go ahead and make them proud after they write about you. Many bands get a lot of articles written about them before they ever do anything, that's bad. Because you really get punished when you don't actually succeed. I think many bands are going to be punished soon, there's gonna be a lot of New York punishment and we're looking forward to it.
Would you say the start of The Walkmen was different from or similar to the start of Jonathan Fire* Eater?
Matt : There was a lot more media hype about JF*E but a lot more people seem to like the Walkmen, we sold a lot more records. The problem with JF*E was that nobody really liked us, except the media, because nobody was buying our record, it was just magazines thinking we were good.
How did the gigs go?
Matt : The gigs were pretty bad, except in NY and in London. And a very good show in Paris as well.
Do you have any idea why JF*E ended prematurely?
Paul : I know exactly what it was. We were just not getting along anymore.
We've heard that you've been approached by major labels. Can you tell us more?
Hamilton: They keep coming up to see us play live and they go away, and they'll come back. I think they hear that... They hear the hype, they want to check you out. And they want to see what the ones think, they won't take a risk. They just pace back and forth.
Paul : I honestly don't think they like our shows, our record is slow, you need to listen to its several times before you might even possibly like it. And those guys will no way listen to it more than once. So I don't think it makes sense listening to them.
Concerning the future, what are the plans for the Walkmen?
Paul : The funeral?!
Second album planned?
Hamilton : We are maybe a third of the way down to the next album, maybe.
Concerning the Recoys album ? recorded before we broke up.
Hamilton : We have never released an album, we're just going to put out on a record all the songs we had
the Walkmen, interview enregistrée à la boule noire, le 12 novembre 2002,
pour Radio Campus Paris
