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Band of Skulls (Photo: Paul Bachmann)
Back with Live4ever in New York during a North American tour supporting Jet, Russell Marsden takes a comprehensive look at the new era for Band Of Skulls.
Chances are a variation on the age-old phrase, ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same’, can be found lurking somewhere in your favourite band’s back catalogue.
For Russell Marsden though, it’s a well-trodden cliche which has begun to define his musical path in a much more real way than when any and every songwriter has felt the need to go all deep and meaningful on the human condition.
We find Band Of Skulls at New York City’s Rooftop Pier in a period of very obvious flux, at a point in its existence when the past and how each of its chance encounters and split-second decisions have brought you to wherever the here and now is can be soaked up and reflected on.
Their first three albums – 2009’s Baby Darling Doll Face Honey, its 2012 follow-up Sweet Sour and 2014’s Himalayan – will very soon be reissued both separately and in box-set form, part of the super deluxe edition a coffee table book curated by Marsden which will look back at 15 years of the band’s history.
Those were albums recorded by what was then a core trio of Marsden, bass player Emma Richardson and drummer Matt Hayward.
Currently the sole survivor of that power three-piece which Live4ever first encountered in Austin, Texas over a decade ago, Marsden seemingly now operates in a very different world; one of wider collaboration, of fresh surroundings and of embracing the expert musicianship which only Nashville can provide.
Yet while the flashing neon guitars and ever-revolving doors of cosy studio rooms in Tennessee might at first appear to be a long way from the ethos of a band once nestled in the quiet drifting sea air of the English south coast, Marsden finds himself instead connected much closer to a past which goes further back even than blowing the heads off Fender amps at South By Southwest.
“Kurt Cobain passed away and then music had this gravitas of feeling important, and that’s when we were just thinking about starting bands,” Russell Marsden exclusively told Live4ever.
“And it was this rock hero who was on the news, and we learned Nirvana songs because we had the Unplugged film and we could see all the chords.”
“So we kind of learnt it back to front and I think the American connection is there from then on, it goes hand in hand.”
“That was me and Matt and our friends at school starting the band, and we went through to about the end of the 90s, ’99 when Emma first came along.”
“And even back then, the band was like a collective, a revolving door of musicians, and we’d all play, and it was always changing.”
“Then somebody would stay longer, and we was a band called Fleeing New York for a very long time.”
“That took us from Southampton, took us to London, took us to the whole of the UK. We actually played shows in Russia. We went to Japan. We came to LA as well, did some shows, and somewhere along the line we made some recordings and put records out, DIY style, had our own club night.”
“We did a song called Hollywood Bowl, about a fantasy of playing the Hollywood Bowl. This American theme is there from the very beginning.”
I’m very fortunate; like all musicians we get to play with other great, talented people. So the band has changed, but also it’s like the same as it was. It’s more like it was when we were all back at college than it ever was when we were starting our touring life. So of course, Matt and Emma are not playing at the moment in the band, but those songs are still there. Those records still exist.
Spencer Page (Photo: Paul Bachmann)
Things are staying the same then, but what is changing? With a new album in the works on bass is Spencer Page, whom you’ve probably seen going viral on YouTube performing the now-ubiquitous How You Like Me Now? over and over for an insatiable David Letterman as part of The Heavy.
On a more longer term basis, Marc MacNab-Jack remains behind the drums after Marsden also worked with Julian Dorio, described here as ‘the most in demand drummer’ coming out of a Nashville scene still thriving to the extent that Bonnie Prince Billy was recently inspired to write an entire album about it. All in all, credits should be expected from far and wide.
“I’ve been fortunate for other musicians to gather around and play in the band,” Marsden reflected.
“Now it’s kind of the skeleton crew of the Skulls if you will, because we’re just starting out and we wanted to really get in there and be live and small and make this tour happen.”
Marc MacNab-Jack (Photo: Paul Bachmann)
“Right now, it’s me doing what I’ve always done but just moved to the middle of the stage, which is voted by everyone else.”
“Iona, who I’ve been writing songs with in London, she’s Swedish and we’ve been writing songs and hanging out.”
“We’ve got a track on the album and I was like, ‘Do you want to go on the road?’, I was expecting she’d say, ‘No, hell no, I don’t want to do that’.”
“Beyond that in our studio album band, if you will, I’ve got another great guy, Tom, who normally plays keys for Paul Weller and then I’ve got Low Barnes, another incredibly talented female artist.”
“Our first band formed in a garage or, you know, in a small studio in Southampton. This version of the band essentially formed on the floor of Abbey Road Studio Two, that’s when we all were together for the first time.”
“We did a session there and finished the album, and I looked around and I was like, ‘Look at me here, like, this is insane’. We’ve had to work hard and grind up to this, but you pinch yourself.”
“I felt that the band is reformed. It’s formed again, me in the centre, but with all this talent and all these great people.”
“I love, love, being in a band so I didn’t want to just do a solo album with musicians. I’ve co-written songs with people and again, it feels more like it it always has, weirdly, and also I love being an equal in the band with male and female artists.”
It’s just that’s what I enjoy playing, and when it gets to the stage I’m in the middle and I’m the loudest, but when it comes to the creative process I just want to be in the team, in the band, right? And I think it’s really fortunate. It’s called Band Of Skulls. I think that lends itself very much to what this is: musical heads kicking together and coming up with something slightly different every time.
iönä (Photo: Paul Bachmann)
The more things change, the more they stay the same. How to reconcile that though with what is incontrovertibly a new set of musicians recording brand new music?
We might hear that phrase an awful lot, but rock fans are not necessarily famous for wanting their favourite band to evolve before their eyes and to do as they wish with songs from another lifetime whose ownership has long since been given up to the wider world.
It’s here perhaps where Russell Marsden has had to reflect the hardest; while he might be rolling to the same vibe he felt as a student watching The Man Who Sold The World all those years ago, can he convey that spirit to an audience whose favourite band now superficially at least appears to be very different?
“I think before I set out to do this I really had to ask that to myself,” he told Live4ever.
I don’t want to change what we did. I love what we did at the time. It’s a time capsule and the songs are getting just to that kind of vintage that they evoke a great memory or their time in your life, and so to have a song that is that to someone else is a privilege, so that’s the reason why I want to play them still.
“I have nothing but great memories from all of those times, then I think it’s almost like that’s the first era of the band. There’s a middle period where there’s lots of experimentation and different producers and different things, which I really wanted to do. I learned so much.”
“I make records myself with other bands, no rules, but now it feels like the new version of the band is closer to that original thing than anything.”
“Right now up there, like, roll my amps, dust off my amps, and play the guitar, and it’s kind of back to that purity, although there’s different faces there.”
“It is the journey of discovery and having an open mind to all those things. I love music, listening to everything, but people tend to like me playing that guitar really loud, so that’s fine.”
Russel Marsden (Photo: Paul Bachmann)
“My main wish is to keep those songs out there, keep those songs playing out loud, and we just did it on a rooftop in New York City. I could see the Statue Of Liberty, it felt symbolic to me to play those songs in a city that I’ve been to, been fortunate to play so many times, and in a country I’ve been fortunate to have my music played.”
“So I’m just with the songs. They’re like the babies. They’re the family and these core things are still existing throughout your music.”
Change truly has been the constant for Band Of Skulls then. In musicians, in direction, in location. And 15 years on from their debut album, it’s also led Russell Marsden to finally realise what has always stayed the same.
“Band Of Skulls is this purity and joy,” he concluded. “That’s what the Band Of Skulls’ sound is. I think I finally understand what it is.”
“It’s unbridled energy.”
Band Of Skulls play further shows this month with Jet in Philadelphia, Detroit, Columbus, Atlanta, Nashville, Louisville, Cleveland, Chicago, Minneapolis, West Hollywood and San Francisco