The Indie Dream: The Charlatans
Described as a ‘major force in the British music scene’, with nine Top 10 albums (including three Number Ones) and twenty-two Top 40 singles to date, The Charlatans are set to make their first trip to Australian shores in November this year.
“I know, I can’t believe its taken us 18 years to get there. I don’t know why it has taken us so long. For the first time we have people who are shouting our corner in Australia, it’s not that we are being rude and ignoring you, it’s just that no one has put an offer together for us to come out, but we’ve got one now and we’re coming,” Mark Collins, guitarist with The Charlatans say.
The Charlatans will play shows in both Melbourne and Sydney, at the Queensbridge Hotel and The Forum respectively. I ask Mark if he has ever been to Australia before.
“No never been on holiday to Oz. I can’t wait, we’ve only got a few days there even so I can’t wait. That’s the way it is at the moment (with only the two shows) but we would love to come back and do more dates.”
As The Charlatans approach their 20th anniversary as a group, they continue to delight their fans with the release of their 10th album You Cross My Path. The album was initially released for free via UK radio station Xfm, resulting in over 60,000 downloads which was the equivalent of a Number 2 UK chart position in sales.
So how does Mark feel about The Charlatans’ newest creation?
“We’re really enjoying playing it. We’ve been playing it live since the start of the year, it sounds really together, cohesive and it sounds fresh to me. We are really happy with the way its all been going,” he says.
“When we were first starting to make the record we found ourselves in a position where we’ve fulfilled our contracts with our old record label, they offered us a new deal but we owned our own studio but we thought we could go on our own for this record. When we decided we weren’t going to do it with a record company and we would do it ourselves, we thought how could we make this different,” Mark says.
“We hooked up with a radio station called Xfm and we made it really easy for people to download it onto their iPods. The idea being that we wanted to get the record out to as many people as possible and lets do it for free because we could, and within the first week it was in 100,000 people’s iPods and within a month it was in a million’s peoples. For us that is exactly what we wanted to do, the thought being the more people that have got the record, the more people that know about the record, the more people that will want to come and see us play. Record sales are very much on the decline and we didn’t want to have this record only be heard by like 100,000 people… it wasn’t the motivation (to sell the record). It would be nice if people would like to buy it as well.”
With this being the 10th album from the boys, did Mark find the process difficult?
“This one actually came together quite quickly. We probably had three or four quite intensive recording sessions and before we knew it we had an album. We started about 18 months ago, myself, Tony and Tim all met up in Los Angeles and had an apartment and got going on the initial demoing and recording and bought it back to the UK and took it off to Ireland and kept moving it around and doing a few gigs in between. It was great playing new stuff before we had finished recording it. It’s all been fantastic, the reactions to the new record has been fantastic. We are ecstatic,” he says.
“We spread it around the three areas. Its keeps it fresh it stops it from feeling it is too much hard work, allows you to enjoy it. We were in California for a month and I came back whiter than I went there, I don’t think I saw the sun once, we all have studio tans. We kind of produced it ourselves. We had the majority of it mixed by a guy called Alan Moulder (The Cure, Jesus & Mary Chain, NIN, Smashing Pumpkins) who is a fantastic mixer. But production wise we did it ourselves. We love having control and it’s something that we not always been able to have on some of the record labels we have been with and that is why we wanted to do it ourselves with this one so that we could regain some of the control that we had lost through a lot of corporate mentality from some of the labels we have been on,” Mark says.
“How do you think the idea of giving away a record for free would have gone done with a major record label? I don’ think they would of liked it very much. We can release when we want, how we want, it’s fantastic, and we’re free! It’s the ultimate Indie dream. Make all the mistakes yourself, that’s great.”
The Charlatans’ touring schedule has been hectic to say the least, with the band traveling across Europe recently and continuing to do so for the rest of the year before heading to New Zealand, Australia and then Japan.
“We’ll pretty much every weekend over the summer for us we have been doing festivals around Europe, I think we have our last festival of the summer the B side festival in Spain this weekend… I’m just looking forward to getting out there and getting away from the rain, then we hop on a bus and go around Europe.”
Does Mark still enjoy touring after all these years?
“Yeah it’s great. We haven’t been around Germany for ages. We enjoy getting out and doing the shows, that’s where the buzz is. We’re not bored of turning up and doing a hot and sweaty gig.”
Last year, 2007 saw some pretty impressive support gigs for The Charlatans, who supported both The Rolling Stones and The Who.
“They (The Rolling Stones) offered us some shows in Eastern Europe and we have never been out there before. And turning up and playing in places like Romania and Hungary and Czech Republic and playing these football stadiums with The Stones and we’re the opening act and thinking there’s going to be about 50 people in these huge stadiums and we walk out and the place is packed and we think ‘Yes’,” he says.
So does Mark find the big crowds intimidating?
“Its more intimidating if you are playing in front of 20 people in the clubs. The big ones are a piece of cake you can just get on and enjoy it. It’s only when you can see the whites of their eyes that it gets a bit nerve racking.”
Mark talks about the longevity of the group, explaining how the boys work together after all these years.
“We all live all over the place, none of us in the same town. Tim the singer lives in California, the keyboard player lives in Ireland and the three of us are spread around England and I think what makes us work is when we decide that we are going to record that’s when we meet up and that’s when really dedicate ourselves to the mission of writing and recording and then we don’t see each other until we go and play. That’s the thing that stops us from killing each other. If we saw each other every day I’m sure we would have split up 15 years ago.”
So have The Charlatans started thinking about album number 11?
“Not yet, we’re still in tour mode at the moment. We never plan the next album cause we are never sure if we are going to want to make one or not. When we have enough of playing on a record that’s when we say we are stopping touring and say right are we going to make a new record or not? We don’t know about record number 11, it might happen it might not, we are going to play it by ear at the moment we want to play live.”
So what’s next for The Charlatans? A holiday?
“It’s (touring) all one big holiday for us! That’s all that is in our diary at the moment, playing live.”
The Charlatans play:
Nov 13 @ Queensbridge Hotel- Melbourne
Nov 14 @ The Forum- Sydney
You Cross My Path out now on Cooking Vinyl through Shock.
