Royal Blood by Mads Perch
‘A lot of people have boxed us into the rock and roll thing, but Mike and I came from a pop background; pop and funk. This new record shows some of the other influences that we like in music.”
“Mike was always a fan of having an instrument and making it sound like another instrument; in the first band I was in with him, he had a keytar that he made sound like a bass. Then he had a bass that he made to sound like a guitar, and now he’s got it sounding like some keyboard.”
We don’t hear much about the keytar nowadays, so to hear it played a formative part in one of the biggest bands in the world is a surprise, but it shouldn’t be: Royal Blood defy expectations.
A duo consisting of bass and drums shouldn’t work, and yet the evidence suggest that it palpably does. After two wildly successful albums, Royal Blood have broadened their palette to incorporate French disco and The Bee Gees as influences (among many others) for new album Typhoons.
When Live4ever caught up with drummer Ben Thatcher for the second part of our Royal Blood double-header, he explained how the duo used the last year to their advantage.
“We were recording the album, or what we thought was the album, when we went into the first lockdown. Going back and being in isolation kind of made us even more creative.”
“Once we were able to go back to the studio we had another 4/5 songs to record that we’d written in that time. It really changed the course of it, and that pushed the album back, obviously, because we’d totally changed what we were going to put in. It wasn’t all bad for us.”
Time was a luxury well utilised in this instance, but this was no complete overhaul: “We spent some time tweaking and it gave us some perspective really, which you don’t normally get. We could go back and listen to what we’d recorded. It gave us some extra time to really evaluate and make sure what we were putting out was exactly what we wanted to put out.”
This embellishment of what was in danger of becoming The Royal Blood Sound was no impulsive flash in the pan, but the next step in their evolution as artists, as well as a journey that has been ongoing for over two years.
Before the luxury of travel was denied to us all, Thatcher and Mike Kerr were able to work in a variety of studios with a number of different collaborators, including no less a luminary than Josh Homme on latest track Boilermaker.
“That was done with Josh back in January 2019, at the beginning of the creative process. We did another one with Paul Epworth, but the whole record was produced by us and co-produced by some other guys.”
“Working with Josh was quite a natural thing for us as we’ve been on tour with Queens Of The Stone Age and become real good friends with those guys.”
“We’re big fans of Josh’s work and his production so it was quite an easy decision to try some stuff with him. We did a song called Space with him and there were some other ideas, but Boilermaker is the only thing on the record. Space is on the deluxe version of the album.”
Musically, Typhoons represents evolution not revolution, but on the lyrical side of things it is a foray into more personal territory for Kerr. After touring 2017’s How Did We Get So Dark? (the clues were there, it has to be said), he made the decision to stop drinking alcohol.
While reluctant to speak on behalf of his close friend, Thatcher is now able to see things in perspective, with the benefit of hindsight: “The second record was almost a nervous baby step out in the world, because we didn’t want to spoil anything that we’d already built or change things up too much.”
“Our first record went down so well and we didn’t expect so much success from that, we didn’t want to totally overstep the mark and go too far.”
“Mike went through a lot of things and he’s now sober, so I think the clarity of what he wanted to write the lyrics about, he’s only had that because he’s come out of the other side.”
“Musically, it’s also expressed in that way as well. It’s a fun, euphoric album and the music is quite upbeat. It makes you smile and makes you dance. That, with the lyrics coming together, makes it quite interesting. It has dark elements to it but also these euphoric moments.”
When Live4ever asks the question of how the experience of Kerr’s decision to go sober affected him, specifically how he approached the situation, Thatcher is admirably loyal to his old friend.
“It’s always friend first, bandmate second. What we went through was an acceleration of fun really. Getting to do the wildest things which we never thought we’d be able to do. What came with that was a lot of partying, which isn’t bad, we love doing that, but I guess when you’re doing it so much, and travelling to a new city every day, each day you’ve got someone there who’s wanting you to live that rock star life with them. It gets too much.”
“Obviously I was living the lifestyle with him, but it was only when he became sober that I realised we’re two very different people. I have quite a lot of security over me, with who I am and who my friends were.”
“I had a lovely girlfriend at home and a lovely house. Whereas Mike was just working himself out at that point, needed the clarity and decided to stop. It’s made him a much better person, to be honest. He realised that he was going down a road which was quite destructive.”
“I felt like I didn’t really help as much as I could have because I was in it with him. For me it wasn’t a problem, and why should it be? I’m not that type of person. I wouldn’t have said to him, ‘You’re going a bit wild here’.”
“That’s not our relationship, and we were both going through it. It’s not until you pull back that you see the destruction that was happening to him, and that destruction wasn’t happening to me.”
Their working relationship seems to operate in much the same way: when Live4ever spoke to Mike Kerr in December he told us that the only criteria the duo had for working on something together was that they both had to think it was ‘cool’.
Fully demonstrating their near-symbiotic relationship, Thatcher readily agrees: “We’ve worked together for so long that we know our expectations of each other, and of what we want to produce.”
“We both want to get to that finish line and we both know what that finish line is. If there’s something that’s not gelling, it’s quicker to be honest about it.”
“If I’m not feeling it then he’s probably feeling the same but he’s just trying to make it work. You’ve got to make those decisions, and we’ve never disagreed about any of things really.”
With the end of the pandemic in sight (we hope), musicians are starting to make plans for returning to the stage, with an arena tour for early 2022 already in the diary for Royal Blood.
However, the duo don’t plan to sit on their hands for the best part of a year: “We’ve got a new studio in Brighton so we’re really looking forward to going in and making some more music.”
“We’ve got some festival dates in the UK. We want to play really, but we want to wait for the right time to do those and come back bigger and better than ever. We thrive on live music and we can’t wait to be out there.”
“I think Typhoons lends itself to the live setting. Everything is in our heads at the moment, but we’re going to have more people on stage with us because we physically can’t do everything.”
“We don’t play to a click track as we love the live thing. We’ll bring in people to play those parts and just make it a real fun experience.”
And really, what more could we ask of a rock-pop band than that?
Typhoons is released on April 30th
