I got a chance to catch up with Scroobius Pip ahead of his gig at the Cockpit this week and talk about his new album, writing from experience, and selling his beard on eBay.
You’ve recently released your début solo album, Distraction Pieces. How’s that going?
It’s being going great – it’s the first solo record I’ve done properly on my own label. I’ve had a few records out with dan le sac in the past and I did a solo thing in the past but it was tiny. It’s been overwhelming, the reaction’s been great. It got in the top 40 and got to number 7 in the iTunes chart, which I didn’t expect from a little release on my own label with very little budget.
How is it being so hands-on, releasing the record on your own label and co-directing all your videos?
It’s been great – it’s knackering and it’s all been far more work that I was expecting, even, but I’m finding it’s the first year in ages I’m finally looking forward to Christmas. That’s gonna be the point when the album’s been out a while, the tour’s over, and I’ll be able to just sit back and go, right, there you go.
Yeah. So for the first time – me, B Dolan, who’s on tour with us, and Sage Francis, who runs Strange Famous [Records] in America, have always agreed that we have this thing where in December, that’s when we get tons of work done – ’cause generally, the music industry just goes to sleep from the first of December and just doesn’t do anything all at. It becomes the hardest time to get any response, so that’s why we’ve always used that time – we’ll get writing done, we’ll get artwork done, we’ll smash it. But this year I think I might just rest and play computer games.
A lot of what you write is very culturally relevant and of its time – I’m thinking particularly of ‘Death of the Journalist’. Did you have much of a backlash from that?
I think every interview I’ve done has brought it up, and some people have been quite angry about it. I just find it a fascinating subject, I mean in the song I never – and in life, I’ve not come to a conclusion on it yet: number one, if journalism is dead or dying, and number two, if that’s the case, if that’s a bad thing or a good thing – ’cause there is more openness on the internet for just freedom of writing, rather than under an editor’s watchful eye. That could be good, but then at the same time, you could have the best article in the world but no one would notice it, ’cause there’s a million articles about some celebrity thing that’s happened, and that’s what everyone will look at. But that’s part of human nature: everyone naturally does that. I do that – if I’m online and I’ve only got ten minutes of internet at a venue, and one person has sent me an in-depth article about the Occupy thing that’s going on at the moment, I’d probably open it in a window, but if there’s another email that’s just saying Scarlett Johansson has posted pictures of her bum, then you’ll click and look at that quickly, then you’ll be moving on. You’ll read the article at some point, but it’s human nature to go for the more – the easy, the quick fix first, then delve deeper when you get a chance.
Can you tell me about the video you originally had planned for ‘Let ‘Em Come’?
For ‘Let ‘Em Come’, yeah, it was gonna be all about riots: the video was gonna be – I bought riot gear and everything – it was gonna be the police protesting and the whole ‘who watches the watchmen’ idea, who polices the police. So if the police are protesting against cuts, who would police them? So it was then me and a group of others who were gonna turn up as the riot police to police the police, and it was all gonna kick off and we were gonna take someone away. But then, the week before we were shooting, the riots kicked off all over England and it felt inappropriate in a way. It felt like if we went ahead with that video we’d be a) cashing in on the shock of riots and things like that, and b) people would assume we were making some kind of point about the riots when the video wasn’t anything to do with them, so it would have felt that it was too – a blurred line. Particularly as at the time, I didn’t quite know what I felt about them, so I thought I can’t even tweak the video to make a point. I think a lot of it was poorly represented in the media – it’s all a bit messy really.
So where did the idea come from for the video you actually released for that song?
Well, basically Nina Kate and Carmen Pie who both ended up being in the final one, were gonna be part of my riot police in [the original video] – and the idea was, basically, there were two other MCs on the track who live in America, and I can’t be flying them over for the music video. So in the riot police one, they were gonna have their bits on a screen or something, it would have all made sense. But I had to come up with a way that it doesn’t seem obvious that I’m in the video and they’re not – so I came up with the idea of getting three girls to play each of the [male] MCs on the track for a more a traditional hip-hop video type of thing, but again, switching the sexes and go down a bit of your kind of lads’ night out, and a bit of your Jamie T type videos – and that’s not a diss on Jamie T at all, I think he’s wicked – but yeah, to go down that kind of route. It’s worked well, I was pleased – particularly when we had a week to plan it, and for everyone to learn their lines and all sorts.
That sounds manic!
Yeah, it was a bit stressful.
Other tracks on the album are more personal, such as ‘Broken Promises’ and ‘Domestic Silence’ – how much do you write from your own experience?
On the ones which are more story-based, I tend to draw from my own experiences but then write a new story, if you know what I mean. Or draw from my experience of people – the things that have happened close to me – but then I generally make a new story from it. Thinking about some of the stuff I’ve done with dan le sac, there’s some relationship stuff on there, there’s dark, self-harm type stuff, and I’d never wanna write about someone’s troubles or plight. You know, I can draw the emotions and experience from that, but I’d never wanna just go, “I saw that happen, I’m gonna write about it and make a living off of it”, kinda thing. I use a bit of artistic license on whether it’s actually autobiographical or it’s just telling stories.
“I saw a dead fish on the pavement and I thought, what did you expect? There’s no water round here, stupid, should have stayed where it was wet.”
What’s the meaning behind the first line of ‘Introdiction’ – so the first line on the record – about finding a dead fish on the pavement?
That was a tweet. I’m on Twitter all the time and, genuinely, I was walking round to my girlfriend’s house and I saw a dead fish on the pavement… I was walking along just thinking about it, and I liked the weirdness that it’s – although that’s strange, it’s also a hundred percent logical… a fish needs to be in the water – if it’s on the pavement it should be dead, therefore it’s completely logical for a fish on the pavement to be dead. I tried to word that in a tweet and sent it, and it ended up as the first line on the record. And it works, kind of, as a metaphor for loads of things – I’ve had people tweet me saying that they think it’s about us invading Iraq and Afghanistan and things like that ’cause that’s not where we’re meant to be, so we shouldn’t be shocked when we lose a lot of soldiers and British people, cause of course they shouldn’t be here. And it wasn’t that, but I had ideas that it can be used metaphorically for a lot of situations.
What do you make of it when people interpret your songs in a way that you didn’t necessarily mean them?
I think it’s fine, I love it. I think if you put your music out there for public consumption, then you can’t be annoyed that people don’t get it the way you meant it to be. That’s the beauty of it: it means to that person what it means to them. It’s more important for it to mean something to them, than for them to understand what I meant when I wrote it. It’s like you’re handing that over and it’s theirs now. So yeah, I’m always fine with that, I’m never one to try and explain all the lyrics. It is what you wish it to be.
Why did you decide to sell your beard on eBay a few weeks ago?
Well, in the video for ‘Introdiction’, it was the first track of this new record, and I was aware that a lot of le sac vs Pip fans might not like this new solo project because it’s not as dancey, it’s harder, it’s more guitar-led – but I thought, what could I do in the video to make sure all of them at least give it a look and make their own mind up? And I came up with just cutting off my beard in the video as the most logical thing, ’cause I’m known for having a big beard. So I did that, and it was just purely a marketing thing. Again, I’m doing it all on my own label, so I didn’t want to spend tons of money on marketing things, so I needed to come up with things that were creative… then that will get people talking for a bit, and then a week or so later I’ll announce that I’m putting it on eBay, and you can own my beard. And it was that kind of weird thing of, I’ve never heard that to happen. And I’m not putting myself up on any huge level at all, but things like Amy Winehouse’s beehive or Elvis’s quiff – and obviously this is many, many rungs down that ladder – but something that they’re so distinct and known for, and you can actually own it. It’s insane. I thought that was a nice, weird thing to do. It got people talking, that’s the point of it.
As you’ve said, this album is quite different to the music you’ve done with dan le sac – how’s that reflected in your live performances?
I’ve got a live band, and it’s all just got that – it’s weird, because one of the things that I wanted to get across with this was that, I’ve loved punk for years, and punk gradually went along the lines of, it’s gotta all be really fast, and it was never really about that. If you listen to the Sex Pistols or the Clash or Minor Threat – well, Minor Threat get fast sometimes, but – it doesn’t always have to be smashing it to get that energy and passion across; it can do that slowly, and I wanted to get that across on the record. And I’d forgotten about that until we started playing it live, and you realise that, again, a lot of our fans are used to our shows being very up-tempo, and this is far more a bop-your-head kind of tempo for a lot of it, so it’s still got that energy and passion but it’s not quite as screaming.
How’s the tour going then?
Yeah, I’m absolutely loving it so far, it’s been great. It’s all been going down amazingly well, and it’s amazing that they all seem to know the lyrics and have favourite songs and, I’m not doing any le sac vs Pip songs, so there’s always that nervousness of – “a lot of people aren’t gonna know this”, but they all seem to be getting it, so it’s going down well.
Image: Craig Thomas. Used with permission
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