Motherjane: An Indian Tale

Motherjane: An Indian Tale

How one band from the South, injected the East into the West, and then took it places

By Bobin James

I am a sucker for stories. And Motherjane (they prefer spelling it with a lower-case ‘m’) sure has a lot of them. There’s the one about guitarist Deepu Sasidharan walking – and occasionally running – the fifteen-odd kilometres back home everyday past midnight from the Kochi, Kerala, hotel he used to play at. Only so that he could save up the money to buy his first guitar unit. “The last bus would be at 9:30, and autos would be too expensive,” says Sasidharan. “And at night, the street dogs get really wild, chasing bikes and people. So I would collect small stones in my pocket to fling at them, and mark out spots on the road which had stones I could pick up the next day,” he says. “A true rock musician,” laughs vocalist Suraj Mani. Then there is the story about how lead guitarist, Baiju Dharmajan, used to keep his homemade guitar pedal from falling apart using cellotape. “Good equipment was not easy to come by in those days,” says the soft-spoken guitarist. And then there is the story of a young John Thomas seeing a drum kit for the first time in his life. “Pop used to take me The International Hotel [in Kochi] and 13AD [forerunners in the Eighties rock scene in Kerala] were playing. I was like 5-6, and when I saw this kit, I was awestruck,” says Thomas who started really playing the drums only years later in college.

The story of Motherjane itself begins back in 1996 when Thomas formed the band in 1996 alongwith bassist Clyde Rozario to stand in for another band that had backed out. “I was the cultural secretary at St Albert’s [college] in Ernakulam and had booked a professional act for a festival. At the last moment, they backed out because there was no cash for a performance – we had only enough to provide them good sound. So I had no other choice but to form a band and play,” reminisces Thomas. This hastily-put-together band lived on beyond the college festival and continued playing covers for the next four odd years, with a revolving door of members, which included at various times names like Deepak Dev, now a music director of some repute in the Malayalam film industry, and vocalist Biju Peter, who went on to join Dreadlocks, a Calicut progressive metal band that rose to prominence in the Nineties. It was when the latter moved out that the band – now a four-piece with Thomas, Rozario, and guitarists Baiju D and Mithun R - was left without a vocalist and started playing instrumentals at the Ancient Mariner, a restaurant on Kochi’s Marine Drive.

And the Ancient Mariner is where one of the most important chapters of Motherjane’s story began. Sometime in August 2000, an engineer running an airconditioning dealership in Kochi, stepped in for a cup of tea and to watch this bunch belt out instrumental covers. This engineer, Suraj Mani, had sung occasionally with bands in Bengaluru (from where he had moved in 1997), and in Kochi (where he had met some of the guys from Motherjane earlier). “Then one of my friends said, this guy sings. So I also got in,” as Mani puts it. After about a week, Thomas invited Mani to sing with Motherjane fulltime, which he did for about a month. (At around the same time, guitarist Rex Vijayan also joined the band.) But it wasn’t quite what Mani wanted to do – learning the lyrics to Metallica, Iron Maiden and Dream Theater songs and doing covers, while juggling a new marriage at home and growing pressures at work. “We had a band meeting and I remember saying, ‘There’s really no point in what we are doing because ten years from now, another bunch of young kids will sing Iron Maiden with more energy than we can. What will be our relevance at that time?’,” says Mani. “I said, ‘At least, if we are making our own music, then we are not replaceable.’ I was saying that as an exit line.” Little did he expect the band to take up the challenge: Baiju said, “Okay, let’s make a song.” And that’s how Motherjane sat down to craft their first original.

I have a dream that consumes me

I bring along a simple question

Can your perception be my reality

And mine become an intrusion?

- ‘Disillusioned’ (Insane Biography, 2002)

“The title came first. I had never written before and I was sitting there, when John comes and says, ‘Why don’t you write a song called ‘Disillusioned’? You look disillusioned, you know…’ ” says Suraj Mani of his personal introduction to the world of writing lyrics. And he believes ‘Disillusioned’ came from the personal dreams of each band member, of making music, in the most immediate context. “We realised that we were all singing about the same thing. When I am saying ‘sing,’ I am also talking about playing. So I sang ‘Disillusioned’ the way I felt it, John played the way he felt it, Clyde and Rex, the way they did.” And everyone brought in their personal influences: Thomas his death metal, Mani his classic rock, Baiju his progressive and Rozario his country music. “It didn’t matter what the style was. We met thematically. And that provided a good framework [of working] for us,” says Mani, the spokesperson for the band. The guys would come up with a general theme for a song and then jam about on it. “It’s almost like a conversation between friends. Sometimes one guy will talk a lot. Sometimes another guy won’t say much, but when he does want to say something, he will say something very forceful. Other times, another guy goes off on a tangent that is very valid and very relevant. It’s very liberating to make music like that,” he continues.

Work on the originals continued in the same manner for about six months. Then things took a detour: Suraj Mani had to move back to Bengaluru. But this didn’t stop the flow of music, it only changed the style of working a bit. “We had made five songs while I was in Kochi. Then I wrote four more songs and then we would meet at some gig and jam on ideas,” says Mani. “There were instances when I would be driving and an idea would strike me. I would call up Baiju and sing the entire thing to him over the phone because otherwise I would forget it.” This arrangement meant that Mani had the freedom to write lyrics independently. “I have written the third and fourth album already. So maybe, one day, we will do a double album or something,” Mani laughs.

*****

Insane Biography dropped in on the then-underground Indian originals scene in 2002 to receive great acclaim. It wasn’t everyday that Indian rock delivered such a well-produced album of originals. I remember getting introduced to this album by an excited friend in the university town of Vadodara, Gujarat, more than 1,700 kilometres away from Kochi, where this music was created. Suddenly, everyone around in the rock-listening fraternity there seemed to be speaking about one band – Motherjane. Nobody knew much about the band, only that it was from “down South.” Copies were made on cassette tapes and compact discs, and circulated. What perhaps struck a chord with these new-found fans was the fact that this was not just another band trying to ape a million other classic rock bands from the West. If you listened carefully enough, behind those walls of distortion and thundering drums, and ensconced among the progressive rock/metal guitarlines, you would hear little flourishes hinting at the direction that the band would be taking soon enough. “Among the last few songs we composed were ‘Maya’ and ‘Soul Corporations,’ and you will see the beginning of the Indian elements in those songs. I think that happened because we started getting more comfortable with what we were doing. When you first start composing, you are not really sure what is allowed and what is not allowed. But as we went on, we were more comfortable,” explains Mani. But it was not only in tiny university towns in India that Insane Biography was getting attention: ‘Soul Corporations,’ from the album, managed to make it onto Geki-Teki Metal, a compilation CD released in Japan in 2004.

The first album, was, in Suraj Mani’s words, “a lot about life.” “You know they say that when an author is writing something, the first one is easy, because he writes about his life till then. But what does he do for the second one?” he laughs. The nine tracks brought in a sound unheard from Indian bands, until then, backed by mature songwriting, too.

Mature songwriting as is evident in these lines of inspiration in ‘Walk On’: “I’ll trade all my footsteps for a shot at tomorrow/Tattoo my intentions across these streets of time/And fight till the future is once again mine.”

And the lines of observation in ‘Maya’: “Sold into a brothel/Girlchild is just fifteen/Maya the name suits her well/This little life has never been.”

And the meditative lines of ‘Questions’: “Will I ever burn these bridges/I’ve built so strong and so sure/Or bound by my need for them/Will I linger by these shores?”

*****

Motherjane began gigging extensively on the back of Insane Biography. But very soon, guitarist Rex Vijayan exited the line-up. “After the first album, Rex left because he wanted to pursue a different kind of music,” says Mani. But the success of the first album also meant that the band started gigging a lot. “We spent a few years with stand-in guitarists but didn’t have a permanent guy.” Until Deepu Sasidharan stepped into the picture. A guitarist who was playing with 13AD in Dubai, he had just got a job in Bengaluru and come back to India. “I was ready to leave music and all,” says Sasidharan. “So I went to John and said I wanted to sell my guitar and processors. But he held me back. He said, ‘Deepu, you’ve been playing for so long. Don’t leave music now,’ ” he continues. Further egged on by Baiju, Sasidharan decided to join Motherjane.

“Deepu came and did four-five gigs with us, and then we started feeling the vibe again, and started composing the second album,” recalls Mani. “Sometimes when a new person comes into the room, the vibe changes. A tough part of being in a band is opening yourself up and being vulnerable in front of four other people. You find opening up difficult in a marriage – imagine opening up in front of four others. Anyway, when that happened, the music started coming differently… and we liked it. So we just went on that trip,” he says. This second album turned out to be Maktub, which incidentally turned out tops on Rolling Stone India’s list of Best Indian Albums of 2008, and also saw Motherjane being nominated in virtually every possible category – seven in all - in the 4^th Annual Jack Daniel’s Indian Rock Awards, earlier this year.

Guitarist Baiju Dharmajan (who incidentally had won the Best Guitarist trophy at 3^rd Indian Rock Awards for ‘Broken’), had in a 2008 interview, told me that Insane Biography was the “white man’s music” and how this time around, they were trying to get the Indian sound into their music. And the band nailed it, most audibly courtesy his Carnatic guitarlines. Suraj Mani insists though that Maktub’s unique sound is “actually the five of us sounding like that.” Drummer Thomas plays the chenda, a South Indian drum, on the record, adding to the “Eastern sound.” Mani says, “I think what has happened to us is that we are becoming a progressive Carnatic rock band. The element of rock is very much there. Then there are these progressive bits of from rock. And there are definitely variations from the normal Carnatic style. All of it is brought together into a very rock format, so it works well.”

“We are all influenced to various degrees by Indian music. What’s important is how naturally it comes to us. If it happens by default, we keep it there,” says Mani. “The honesty is important. If you start using it unnecessarily, you will start hearing that it’s not coming from the inside,” he continues. “There are no blank moves happening here – there’s a lot of synchronicity happening on the record,” says Thomas.

While only Thomas and Suraj Mani eventually got their 2009 JD Rock Awards nominations traded in for wins, one thing was crystal clear – with Maktub, Motherjane’s time had come. Any college festival worth its salt had to have a headlining performance by this five-piece progressive rock/metal band. Over the course of the last couple of years, the band had gathered some very impressive feathers in their hat: An opening slot at the inaugural Rock in India concert in 2008 which was headlined by Megadeth and Machine Head. Then a couple of concerts opening for Opeth (one of Motherjane’s biggest idols) and Ensiferum at IIT-Madras and IIT-Bombay, respectively. The big one was when they got the Best International Rock Act of 2009 title at Malaysia’s Asian Voice Independent Music Awards (AVIMA) in March this year. “We were not expecting it, but everyone who we told were like, ‘Yeah, yeah, we were expecting it,’ ” says Mani. “It’s nice to be able to say that Motherjane is the best band in Asia,” he laughs.

*****

When I meet the band at their hotel the day after the MySpace Secret Show gig in Mumbai, in May, the guys are all lounging together in one room. It’s a Saturday and they have lots of time to kill before they head off to the airport to catch their respective flights - Suraj Mani to Bengaluru and the rest of the band to Kochi. They let me on the new chapters in Motherjane’s story. First up, there is their very own jam room that’s being built in Kochi. “This is a completely air-conditioned, acoustically treated jam room; a place where we can make music and probably do shoots,” says Mani. The band has also signed a five-year contract with their label, Aum-I Artistes, wherein they get a monthly salary (a rarity even today in the Indian rock scene) so that they can concentrate on producing the five albums they are committed to releasing in as many years. The first of these, due for release in 2010, is going to be called Grafitti Without Walls. “About 17 songs are lyrically ready. What we do is sit together and interpret it; so we are at that stage now,” Mani informs us. So, are they going to stick to their “Carnatic style?” “Well, let the songs decide that,” he smiles.

The band is looking relaxed but certainly high on the reception accorded to them the previous evening. When it comes to Mumbai rock audiences, there are two ways of looking at it – that they are too closeminded about the bands they like or that they are very finicky about their tastes. Either way, they are not particularly known for being very welcoming of bands from outside the city. Usually. But this gig – the first of MySpace India’s Secret Shows, also featuring local bands Black and Scribe – was perhaps the most packed that the Bandra Amphitheatre has ever been. Unverified reports put the attendance at 1,500. Amongst the audience were three winners of a contest run on the partnering radio station, who got a chance to meet the band and take home an autographed poster. One of these winners was a person who had never heard of Motherjane before and he was candid enough about that when he met the band for the signing, before the concert. Once the concert got over, though, the same person rushed backstage and told them that now, the signed poster was something he would treasure forever. Slipping into sensei mode, Suraj Mani explains this thus, “As a band we have noticed that it’s not about how many people will embrace you; it’s about how many people you embrace.”

© Bobin James/Rolling Stone India, 2009

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Michael Jackson

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Chris Cornell: The Rolling Stone Interview

Chris Cornell: The Rolling Stone Interview
Grunge icon and incorrigible experimentator on his latest collaboration
By Bobin James

Chris Cornell and his band Soundgarden, alongside Pearl Jam and Nirvana, pioneered the Seattle grunge movement in the mid-Eighties. He later went on to front Audioslave, a supergroup of sorts that emerged from the ashes of Rage Against the Machine. Timbaland has - since he began in the mid-Nineties - become one of the most wanted (and consequently, one of the highest paid) producers in rap/hip-hop/R&B, having produced for everyone from Nelly Furtado to Madonna to Justin Timberlake. (His collaborations with the latter won Grammys for Best Dance Recordings in 2007 and 2008.)

So, many an eyebrow was raised, and many snooks cocked last year, when the Rock Singer announced his intention of collaborating with the Super Producer on his next solo album, Scream (releasing March 9). The idea of these two dissimilar – in terms of their respective genres – musicians coming together struck many as indigestible and incomprehensible. “Sellout!” cried many. But then, Cornell’s been no stranger to that cry. 1989: Soundgarden sign on to a major label. Sellout! 1999: Cornell releases first solo album, Euphoria Morning, with a stripped-down sound. Sellout! 2001: He joins hands with the remaining members of Rage Against the Machine and forms Audioslave. You guessed it, sellout!

But what these critics failed to see was that Cornell was simply doing exactly what he wanted. He - being not one to hang on to his past legacy - made music that represented where he was at that point in time. (Now, if he were to continue in the Soundgarden vein, only to appease his legion of fans, that would have been a sellout.) And that’s what came across on that (very) early morning phone-call from Los Angeles: Chris Cornell had his boots firmly dug into the present and he was thoroughly enjoying the creative freedom that Scream offered him.

***

Chris, just how did this collaboration with Timbaland come about? It seems very unlikely, with you coming from the space that you do.
It was just an idea that started off with the thought of having a remix done for a song and then talking about doing a couple of original songs. Instead, then that grew into an entire album of those songs, which really, I thought, would be something that would be kind of a challenging and interesting thing to do.

Were you familiar with Timbaland’s music before this entire project started?
Yes, I had caught a bit from different artists over a period of different years. Some things that I didn’t know he did necessarily when I first heard them, but I was somewhat aware.

When I first heard the first track off the new album – ‘Part of Me’ – I will admit, I was shocked. I wasn’t quite expecting that kind of sound. But after a few listens, it’s grown on me and it now happens to be one of my favourite tracks on the album. When getting into this collaboration, did you walk in with the understanding that yes, there might be a lot of fans who would be put off by the fact that I am collaborating with Timbaland?
Oh yeah, I mean, that is kind of obvious, isn’t it. From the conception of even doing this - we’d only done one song - it was obvious that people would go on and make a decision about it. Even if they heard it, they wouldn’t necessarily be into some of the sounds on the album: The way the album is made, that’s kinda pretty obvious.

You have said in another earlier interview that you were very jealous when you heard a Missy Elliott track produced by Timbaland. You said, “Hip-hop is so trippy; why can’t rock be so trippy?”
Oh yeah. I was referring to an element of freedom in terms of what was inside the track - what was allowed to be part of the song. In a band environment, there’s really only that much you can do. You end up being confined to the basic instruments that everybody in the band plays and work with that. And you can kind of step outside of that, but depending on the band you’re in, it’s not always that easy to do. In the world of hip-hop, it’s emotion that matters first. While the worse that it could get would be kind of taking the hook from a song that was already a pop hit and rapping over that: To me that’s not freedom, that’s taking someone else’s song and giving it new life I suppose, but it’s not being creative. But there is an aspect of hip hop that is very creative, like making something new out of any sound or any loop or anything. And making songs out of anything that could generate a tone.

Yeah, and there’s a whole lot of that on this album. Chris, in your opinion, what makes for a good song? What makes for good music?
What makes any music good, you mean?

Yes, for you personally as a listener, or as a musician who’s making his music, what is it that you look for?
I don’t know if it’s something that can be described as necessarily tangible. I think… it’s something that hits me in the gut or makes me feel a particular way or something… I am not sure you can put words to that. That’s sort of, I suppose, the way one might describe genres. You know, like I like music that’s aggressive, or I like music that isn’t, or is melodic. With me, personally, I like all sorts of music. So I don’t know… it just has to somehow appeal to me, I think, on some gut level.

What was the process of songwriting for this album? Did you come in with lyrics, did Timbaland come in with sounds in mind? How did it work?
We really kind of just wrote it one song at a time. We wrote everything from scratch after the album started. So we didn’t really come in with [anything]. Tim didn’t come in with a bunch of beats and I didn’t come in with a lot of lyrics or riffs or anything like that. We just started from the first song which was basically a beat and then sort of created a song out of it. Then we would continue on and we ended up doing that over the course of the album – this sort of taking one song at a time, there [being] no conception from the beginning about what we would do, about making the album sound a particular way.

Would this be one of your fastest albums ever?
Maybe, in some ways. There were parts that we put together very quickly. But in terms of turning it into what it became - which is an hour of continuous music and the mixing and all that - that actually took quite a while. I think the writing of the basic songs was fairly quick, but overall it wasn’t one of my fastest albums.

You guys came out with some 20 songs or so in 4 or 5 weeks…
Yeah, I think in about 5 weeks, 6 weeks I think, we had about 20 songs.

Coming to the songs, ‘Ground Zero’ seems to be one of my favourites so far, especially the segue from ‘Get Up.’ You also seem to be having a blast on ‘Ground Zero.’ Would that be right?
Yeah, that song actually was… the lyrics were written and all of the vocals recorded to pretty much to nothing but a drum beat. There was nothing else there yet. So it ended up being a song that kind of took shape long after it was designed. But that was one of my early favourites: The tempo of that, the feeling of that which is very reminiscent to me of kind of R&B from the mid-Seventies, which was the music that I was really into.

Another couple of favourites for me would be ‘Long Gone’ and ‘Climbing Up the Walls’ – I really love the chorus in the latter. How did you come up with ‘Climbing Up the Walls?’
Well, it was a really pretty simple beat, and I just was kind of coming up with an idea of what the music may be if I were to go with some sort of lyrics. Which is pretty much how I came up with ideas for everything on this album. And usually if I don’t come up with an idea lyric, where I am looking for music for something, well, the feeling of the music will inspire the lyric idea. So this was something that had to be really fast, I started writing down ideas and it became the song as you hear it pretty quickly.

On ‘Watch Out,’ you’ve got this great guitar riff going, which could have been from an Audioslave song. I hear the guitar prominently in a couple of other tracks. So was that a conscious effort on your part to say, ‘Let me put in the guitar to acknowledge my rock history’?
No, I didn’t think about that on any of the songs. You know, each song was created as an individual song that should really sound good with whatever should sound good or whatever would be the best thing for the song, and I didn’t think about instrumentation too much. Obviously, we weren’t trying to do anything more than what the song seemed to require, what the song wanted. There were songs where [afterwards] I actually added instruments to or took away. There were a lot of instruments that I took away in mixing - I made choices. The song sounded better sometimes, more lush sometimes. Sometimes it sounded better with less - bare minimal - depending on the song…

You seemed to have worked with a lot of writers on this record, including Justine Timberlake and John Mayer. How different was it from your earlier experiences of one, with bands, and two, when you were doing solo albums like Carry On and Euphoria Morning?
Oh, I mean, it was different. It was more similar to working with someone in a band. But there really aren’t that many comparisons that I think I can make, because the recording of the album was so different. The recording happened simultaneously as the writing of the album, so there’s nothing I can compare it to. Usually, whether I was making a solo album, or it’s a band, I would be writing songs and demo-ing them first and then rehearsing them with a band… and then recording them after the fact that it’s been rehearsed and performed and I suppose arranged to refinement. In this particular way of recording albums, a lot of lyrics were written and the vocals were recorded before the song was even arranged. So it was very different that way. A lot of parts were added afterwards. The challenge of that I suppose is that it’s like a painting: When you are finished, somebody has to make decisions as to when the song is finished and what should be included on it and… On most of the songs, the arrangements are pretty obvious. But some of them – like the song ‘Long Gone’ – they weren’t defined until it got to mixing. When I realised that nobody had really thought it through the way that I thought it should go… and there was a lot of arranging happening at the last minute. And obviously you don’t do that in a band, where the arrangement happens even before you start recording…

Do you think you can pick three favourite songs of yours from this album?
I really wouldn’t… One – and I suppose I might be partial to this because it’s not one that people bring up - I really like ‘Time’ a lot. And ‘Never Far Away’ - I also think it’s very special. I think the moment of going into ‘Never Far Away’ is probably one of my favourite moments on the album. When I say that, I am speaking of it in terms of that the mood is going from one song to the next. And that which takes you out of ‘Ground Zero’ and into ‘Never Far Away’ is really a magical moment for me on the album. But also the album as a whole is something you should give yourself up to from beginning to end. Whether I am performing it or listening to it, it’s something that needs to be heard from beginning to end.

Chris, anybody else you would love to work with? Do you have a wish list of people you would like to work with in the future? Where do we see Chris Cornell going from here?
I mean, I don’t know… I’m sort of still in the middle of working on this project. And now I want to go out on tour and perform it. I have other things building up in my head, a lot of ideas about what I could do next, but I haven’t really thought about it so seriously.


(January 27, 2009)
© Bobin James/Rolling Stone India, 2009

AR Rahman interview

AR Rahman
The soft-spoken composer of Slumdog Millionaire’s soundtrack on the movie, the Golden Globes and the Oscars
By Bobin James


Congratulations! First the Golden Globe win, and now the Oscar nominations. When you first did the music, did you think it would be appreciated so much?
When I did the movie, I wasn’t even thinking about it. I was just concentrating on the work at hand.

Had you heard of Danny Boyle, seen his work, at that time?
I had heard the name, yes. I knew about Trainspotting, but hadn’t actually watched it. But when I met him, he came across as a really nice person, who respected the place, Mumbai. And who respected my music.

You’ve got two out of the three nominations in the Best Original Song category at the Oscars. Are you expecting to win?
I don’t know… [laughs]

What prompted you to take this project up, when it came to you?
I was very excited. I was excited by the story… and the collaborators like Gulzar and MIA…

I read somewhere that you finished the score in under four weeks. Would that make it one of your fastest projects ever?
I would say, the fastest. I did it in 2-3 weeks. It helped that Danny gave me very specific cues [individual pieces of music on the soundtrack] to score. So unlike working on say a hundred cues, I could work on those specific ones… I could focus.

Do you think these wins and all the attention will help other Indian artists break into the Western markets?
Big time! All of us have always felt that we make good music but there’s nobody out there who wants to listen to it. With this, I think I have broken those clichés… And there is also a certain respectability that’s been achieved…

What, about the movie and the music, do you think has suddenly captured the imagination of people across the world?
The important thing is that the intention is right - the intention of the movie, the intention of the music. The movie talks about optimism, the fact that life is worth living. All of us go through these phases of negativity, but what this tells us is to be optimistic. It’s about the victory of truth. It’s like our national motto, “Satyamev Jayate.” And we built in this subtle reference to that too, by making ‘Jai Ho.’

What’s your take on Slumdog Millionaire, the movie, purely as a viewer? If you were to disconnect yourself from being part of it.
I always see myself as a viewer… I only take up projects that appeal to me [at that level]. And I think that’s how I have established myself as a brand over the last 18 years. I would not take up anything that I am not convinced with.

What’s next on the anvil? Any more international projects?
As of right now, it’s only travelling and promotions [for Slumdog Millionaire]. Once things settle down, I will get back to work.


(January 27, 2009)
© Bobin James/Rolling Stone India, 2009

Nick Mason: Little Drummer Boy

Little Drummer Boy
Pink Floyd drummer speaks about everything from his Ferrari GTO, to the lasting relevance of The Dark Side of the Moon to the possibility of a Floyd reunion, in this exclusive Rolling Stone India interview
By Bobin James

The first weekend of November saw Nick Mason, of Pink Floyd, pay a visit to Mumbai. The drummer, who is also an avowed car enthusiast was here as one of the judges at Cartier’s International Concours d’Elegance, an exhibition of magnificent vintage automobiles. Mason took time off from his judging duties to sit down with Rolling Stone for a freewheeling chat on cars, superstars and music, of course.

***

Mr Mason, is this your first trip to India?
No, I was here last year, for a wedding...

And what brings you here, this time around?
This time, it’s an invitation from Cartier for the Concours d’Elegance. My great passion in life besides music is cars. So when they called, I readily agreed.

How did your love affair with cars begin?
My father was a film director. He made films about motor racing, about cars, motorsports, and he used to race a very old, vintage Bentley. So from when I was a kid, I was taken for motor racing.

And when did you first start to drive?
When I was seventeen. But I started to drive with an Austin 7 1927, so I was totally brought up with old cars.

You collect cars… How many cars do you have at last count?
About thirty-five [laughs]…

Any favourites?
Well, it’s always the GTO. The ultimate car is always the Ferrari GTO, mainly because you can do so many different things with it. You can race it, you can rally it, you can take the kids to school. It’s such a great allrounder, and it looks wonderful. And everyone thinks I’m incredibly clever because I bought one thirty years ago [laughs].

What are your preferred set of wheels now?
An Audi RS4.

That’s for your regular city driving?
Yeah, I mean, actually I ride a bike most of the times. I love bikes…

What bike do you have?
I’ve got a BMW 800… but, the great thing with the Audi RS4 is that you get sports car performance, yet you can put a drumkit in it.

Which brings me to the music part… are you still playing?
Am I still playing? Yeah, we are not touring… very bad. But I am still working. I play with Roger [Waters] occasionally. I play with David [Gilmour] occasionally.

Can we expect to hear something from you sometime soon?
Not until David and Roger want to work together, and I don’t think… I mean, I know Roger’s coming here in December for a Live Earth concert. But I don’t think I will play with him on that occasion.

But nothing outside of Pink Floyd? You never really felt the need to go out and do a solo project?
No, no. I mean, I like working with other people, and I’ve doing it with the Hollywood Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp, and I do production with other people. But I don’t particularly want to do a solo… I mean, I am not a solo performer.

When you all started Pink Floyd so many years back, what was it that you set out to do? I mean, did you actually tell yourselves that we are gonna be the biggest rock & roll band in the world?
Absolutely not. When we started, the Beatles were fairly recent as well. No one had any sort of concept of rock & roll being grown up. It was only by the time that we were doing our first album that the Beatles were doing Sgt Pepper’s. You know, Sgt Pepper’s was the first album where the album outsold the single. That was the beginning of the transformation and rock & roll being more grown up and…

There being superstars?
Not really so much the superstars, as having a longevity and being taken more seriously. I mean, Elvis was a superstar in 1950-whatever, and he continued to be so for a long time. It was more to do with the music being taken more seriously.

What was it like being in a band like Pink Floyd at the height of it all?
I think the trouble with being in a band is you take a lot of it for granted. You don’t think, “This is fantastic.” I mean, you tend to remember the shows that you were pleased with... the Dark Side shows in ’73… the Wall shows in ’79-’80… The thing is that people say “What was it like having a record like Dark Side.” Well, Dark Side [of the Moon] was a hit record long after we’d made it. So actually, the reality of it all was so spread across, it didn’t really… register.

Did you realise when you came out with Dark Side that it’s going to be a huge hit and it’s going to be on the charts for so many years?
No, because that was unheard of at that time. So it’s one of those rather odd things where… nothing like that had ever happened.

Looking back on it, how do you feel about it now? When you see that Dark Side is still bought by kids who were not even born when it first came out?
I think it’s interesting and obviously it’s something I am very pleased with. But I think the thing I realise about Dark Side now [is that] it’s actually less to do with 19-year-olds than it’s to do with the fact that the lyric content of the piece is as relevant to a 50-year-old as it’s to a 20-year-old. You know, when we made that record, we were in our early 20s… But actually a song like… well, a number of songs [on it] were related to growing old and money problems which is as relevant to a 50-year-old as it is to a 23-year-old. And I think that’s why it’s had a long run, because it has relevance to a number of different age groups.

Mr Mason, if we can go back all the way to the beginning. How did music first happen to you? Was yours particularly a musical family?
My mother was quite musical… but it was not a very important part. I think I was just turned on to rock & roll when I was a kid, as was most of the rest of the band.

Do you remember what you were listening to?
‘Rockin’ to Dreamland’ which was the one programme - once a week - on Radio Luxembourg. I’m hearing Elvis Presley for the first time… and Chuck Berry, Fats Domino. This black rock & roll, as well as Elvis Presley, and Bill Haley stuff… It was something we’d never heard before… it struck some chord…

And how did that interest graduate to a level where you actually said that I want to start playing?
I think at the time it didn’t happen. It sort of just got me interested in playing… and then…

So you started off on the drums?
Well, I actually began the guitar, but drums was where I suddenly got excited… but then I dropped it for three years. Then I was a student and I was earning when I was a student. And then I met Roger and Richard [Wright]… all of us were going to study architecture. And it was there that someone said, “Oh, I need a band to do something.” And I went, “Oh well, I just play the drums.” Roger said, “Oh well, I play the bass guitar…” And so that was the sort of start. But I don’t think any of us at that point were thinking it’s a career… you know, it was sort of quiet, gradual…

Mr Mason, who were you earliest idols? Anyone you looked up to?
Well, initially, lots of bebop drummers: Art Blakey, Kenny Clarke, people like that… But then when rock & roll really happened for us, it was Ginger Baker with Cream, Mitch Mitchell with Hendrix, people like Spencer Davis and ELP and Keith Moon… these were the people who were making a career when we were just students watching…

Why do you think Pink Floyd became such a huge phenomenon worldwide? What do you think it is that really made it so endearing?
The answer is I don’t really know but I suspect the answer is that it’s not just one thing. It’s a mixture of things that make up the brood. I think Roger’s lyrics, a lot of people relate to them… I think there is an element of romanticism to the music that triggers the imagination. There’s quite a lot of music that doesn’t even have lyrics, so people can actually allow their minds to wander, and they paint the pictures that are entirely different for everyone. But I think that’s what it is… inevitably, in our case, we perhaps have a bigger fanbase that’s male than female. And I think a lot of males who listen to music would like to do the same, would like to emulate, would like to play. And I think we are sort of an influence on some people who want to play music. They don’t necessarily want to play exactly like us, but I think what they like is the idea that there is an audience out there who don’t demand sex idols and who don’t demand just pounding rhythms. So the music can be a little bit more sophisticated…

Mr Mason, were you in touch with Richard Wright?
Yeah, yeah… he was ill for about 9 months, something like that… and he just didn’t want people to know about it…

So would it be safe to say that we won’t really be seeing a Pink Floyd reunion now?
Who knows… I mean, I think, because David and Rick have been working together, now David thinks without Rick, he really can’t see himself and Roger working together. But having said that, I have no idea. I would have thought that if there were the right occasion, a bit like Live 8, everyone would say, “Well, this is good reason to, even without Rick, to do something together…” But I can’t judge whether that will happen.


(November 1, 2008)
© Bobin James/Rolling Stone India, 2008