Live4ever Exclusive: 'The United States Of Kasabian'

Kasabian’s Tom Meighan (Photo: Paul Bachmann)

The biggest week of the biggest year in the decade since Kasabian released their eponymous full-length debut happened this past June, a week bookended by a massive hometown gig at Leicester’s Victoria Park and a triumphant headlining slot at Glastonbury.

They’ve since reduced their scope, playing a few weeks of shows in the United States ahead of the US release of their latest album 48:13′.

Victoria Park saw the band – singer Tom Meighan, guitarist Serge Pizzorno, bass guitarist Chris Edwards and drummer Ian Matthews – perform to 50,000 people; Glastonbury, including its live feed, was even larger. But as is often the case, a tidal wave which crushes the British Isles is often reduced to a ripple along the shores of America.

Oasis, who Kasabian have often lazily been compared to, were playing Madison Square Garden by the time they imploded in 2009. Arctic Monkeys have seen their stock rise over the past several years, playing large arenas in primarily support slots but looking like they belong there. Yet Kasabian, with their natural bluster and genre-mixing canon, should be even bigger. Instead, they’re selling out Boston’s Paradise Rock Club (capacity: 933) and New York City’s Terminal 5 (capacity: 3,000), and absolutely killing it.

View full gallery from Terminal 5 show

It’s been tough for Kasabian in America, an often deflating experience that’s had little to do with an inability to connect with the audience; the problem, as Meighan and Pizzorno see it, has been with the people in the States who they feel should have been working harder to get the word out.

“We’ve been really unfortunate, because the last two records, we were on a label that..,” Serge says, Tom adding “…didn’t give a shit,” during an exclusive interview with Live4ever.

The pair often finish one another’s thoughts or sentences, a trait shared by the best of friends, or at least bandmates who’ve been in the trenches and lived more moments together than one could imagine. They’re often on exactly the same page, especially when it comes to their former American label.

“They were quite honest about it, they just didn’t understand what we were trying to do,” said Pizzorno. “We didn’t come here for five years, which is a long-ass time. Now we’ve moved labels, and they’re hugely excited about the record and past works. The new album (’48:13′, out in the UK since June) will come out while we’re in the country. It’s way more exciting for us as well. First and foremost, you need a label to back you. Especially in a country this size.” “We’ve had shit luck in America, to be honest,” said Meighan, often the more concise of the two. “We were fucking screwed, weren’t we?”

And ultimately that screwing meant skipping America in favour of tours in other parts of the world where their fortunes were considerably greater. “Do you want to go play in a place where there’s not even a poster on the wall for your new album, or do you want to play to like 50,000 kids in Japan?” asked Serge. “Well, we’ll go there, where people want us. We had some lost years here. And now when you see us, imagine seeing that and not knowing it existed.”

The last time Kasabian played America was in support of their fourth album, ‘Velociraptor!’, and it was on that tour, in April 2012, when they realized they might be on to something in a country which had often proved maddeningly elusive in the past.

“When we did Coachella, that was a little glimpse,” said Pizzorno. “Half the kids there had probably never even heard of us, or had never seen us. And we got a glimpse it could actually happen. That tent was rammed. You couldn’t move, and the kids were going insane. We walked off from both those weekends going, ‘Okay, there’s definitely some unfinished business over here’.”

And if it’ll work almost anywhere else, why not the United States? “There’s no difference between any fans all over the world,” Pizzorno said. “People that like music like music, whether they’re from Tokyo or fucking Doncaster. If you’re making good rock & roll, people will like it. If it works in Mexico City, why won’t it work in Colorado? And it will.”

Serge Pizzorno, Kasabian (Photo: Paul Bachmann for Live4ever Media)

And so it is. It’s tempting to believe the crowd at the American shows is packed with British expats, and while there are undoubtedly homesick fans getting a taste of home at Terminal 5 on September 27th, there was also plenty of bona fide Yanks in the crowd, and everyone was going absolutely crazy from the moment the band strutted onto the stage like they owned the place.

And, as they proved with a monstrous career-spanning set, they did own the place, every bone-crushed inch of it. If there was any letdown playing a show to an audience considerably smaller in numbers than they’ve grown accustomed to in their native land, they showed no outward signs. Indeed, the United States are here to be conquered, inch by brutal inch; the people only need to turn up.

“We have no fear,” said Meighan. “All we’re doing is making music and taking people to another place. Escapism, that’s all it is. We wanted to be Elvis or Buddy Holly, fucking John and Paul, Mick and Keith, whatever it is. If people buy into it, they do, and if they don’t, they don’t. We’re 33. We can’t be arsed anymore. We’ve been ten years on the fucking road. I’ve got battle scars, man.”

Even if ten years on the road and a life outside of rock & roll as parents have added new dimensions to their focus, they’re still ready for another round in the ring. “Serge has got two boys, I’ve got a baby girl,” Meighan said. “There’s better things to worry about. If it catches, it catches, and we’ll gladly come back and fight for the cause, Kasabian. And something’s right this year.”

What’s right, among other things, is the new album. The minimalist title and sleeve graphics are less telling than the garish, hot pink color scheme: Kasabian are as big and brash as ever, and they’re doing it in technicolor, mixing genres like it’s the most perfectly natural thing in the world. Following an example set forth by Primal Scream’s groundbreaking 1991 album ‘Screamadelica‘, Kasabian have always had one eye on the dance floor and another on big fucking stacks of amps.

“Hip-hop has always been at the forefront of our thinking,” said Pizzorno. “Production-wise, it was always kind of the basis, to blend hip-hop production with hard-ass riffs and rock & roll. Like Cypress Hill, Wu-Tang. We were fans of theirs growing up.”

“If you hear (DJ Shadow’s) ‘Organ Donor’, there’s elements of that in fucking ‘Doomsday’ (off 48:13),” Meighan agreed. “Sometimes we get read really wrong. It’s really frustrating. We’re still angry.”

In the musical melting pot of America, where Kasabian aren’t operating under the British yoke of misdirected public impression, the new album and accompanying tour – beneath a massive banner which simply reads “48:13” – Pizzorno sees an opportunity to set the record straight. “Over ten years, you gather a shitload of baggage,” he said. “And so you come over to the States, and maybe someone’s read a few facts about you that are wrong and misunderstand what you’re trying to achieve. The great thing is that when we come here, it’s no bullshit. Come and see the gig and that’ll explain everything.”

It takes balls to bring Bo Ningen out on tour as support. The Japanese-by-way-of-London four piece, with waist-length hair and skin-tight dresses, look like extras in a mid-‘70s sci-fi novel, and in 30 minutes on stage their prog-psych wall of sound transports the hall to outer space and back. It’s rare a band can transfix a jaded, big city crowd ill-prepared for its fury and leave them wondering what they’d just witnessed. Bo Ningen did just that, and then Kasabian hit the stage a half hour later and had that same crowd eating out of the palm of their collective hand.

Kasabian live are augmented by a handful of side musicians, a necessary conceit to convey the full force of the sounds they put on record. In the studio is where all the subtle trickery of the beats and bleeps and whistles come to the fore, a sound akin to the fiery collapse of the technological age, but in a good way. A glorious way. Onstage, it’s all bluster, even Pizzorno’s charmingly gangly dance moves, a furry tail hanging from the back of his trousers. Opening with ’48:13’s second single, ‘bumblebeee‘, the night is theirs, Meighan prowling the stage like an animal, his presence falling somewhere between iconic British frontmen like Liam Gallagher and Ian Brown, but with a heavy dose of hip-hop bravado. The balconies in Terminal 5, when the right band is making the right noise, seem to stretch into the skies, rising further with each massive riff.

Something’s right this year, alright, and it’s Kasabian. “If it hits, we’ll be here,” Tom said. “If it hits here, we’ll fuck everything off and come straight here. If it catches a light, then we’ll come here and tour the fucking place.”

“It’s a battle,” Serge added.” You’ve got to win them over. You’ve got to work and sweat it off. We’ve been doing this a long time, but it takes time, especially live, which is a totally different environment. I think the show we’re bringing to America is pretty amazing to see in these little venues. If you are unsure, after you’ve seen the show it’s going to be okay.”

Creating music can often begin in the most humble of ways, rolling along like a snowball as it builds up listeners, moments, movements. Kasabian are a band of grand ideas, and those ideas can come fast and furious, but to dispel a rumor going round: Kasabian don’t have another album waiting in the wings. Not yet, anyway. “Someone asked me a question, and obviously we’re thinking about it,” Pizzorno said. “But there’s nothing done yet. It’s far from anything.”

“It was just talk,” Meighan agreed, before stoking the fires again, just a little bit more: “The thing is, with Serge, he’s a workaholic. Not an alcoholic, bless him, a workaholic. He’ll go home, and I know this for a fact, he’ll sit down and think about things and start being creative and getting things up and running. And that’s amazing, because if it was up to me, shit wouldn’t happen. Well, it would happen, but it would take a long fucking while. Serge is always thinking and inside himself.”

Kasabian (Photo: Paul Bachmann)

Meighan and Pizzorno reckon the band has only gotten better over the past decade, a build-up that not only prepared them for the biggest week in their biggest year, but also everything which lies ahead. And while it all began when Pizzorno started kicking around the kernels which eventually grew into ’48:13′, where it really began was the hometown gig in Leicester.

“Leicester was kind of like a happening, a proud moment in our lives, and the people in the city,” said Meighan. “And it had been building up for years and years and years. To see us on a platform that was that fucking big. I think Leicester was more emotional than Glastonbury. Leicester, we made it and we grew together, do you know what I mean? Leicester was a moment when, people who were at that gig will remember, ‘I was there.’ At Glastonbury, we had to go out and knock people out in the first round, which we did anyway. That was the difference between the shows in my opinion.”

“It’s left a huge, huge mark on the city,” Pizzorno said. “It’s still resonating. You obviously want to do these things, but you don’t really know what’s going to happen. There’s an energy, and I think it’s ignited. Kids are going, ‘Wow, we can do that. We can be a band, or an artist or a footballer, whatever’. And it’s shown people where we’re from that it actually can happen.”

“It was amazing,” said Meighan. “It was a whole experience. It was our Knebworth. It was our Spike Island. It was.”

“It was just perfect,” said Pizzorno. “We tried to do it before, and we couldn’t get permissions. And for some reason, whatever that is, whoever is looking down, that week changed our lives, Leicester homecoming and then Glastonbury. It’s taken us to a different place.”

While Leicester proved Kasabian were the pride of their hometown, the Glastonbury performance showed they belong to the rest of the world. “We changed,” Pizzorno remembered. “We became better. We became a new band in that hour-and-a-half. By the end, the place was just a sea of celebration, flares and mosh pits, people on shoulders singing. After that, you can do anything. Put you on any stage and it’s easy.”

It wasn’t just about winning over the crowd at a festival with a traditionally diverse lineup; it was also an opportunity to prove they deserved the headlining slot to anyone who may have dared feel otherwise. “The whole world is watching the BBC, Meighan said. “It’s all your peers sneering at you, looking down at you, ‘Why are they headlining?’. And we walked on there and said, ‘Yeah, great!, and we erupted that whole festival. We owned it. It was ours. I don’t think people had ever seen that before. It’s our time now. It was actually pretty simple, wasn’t it? It was wonderful.”

While Kasabian are far from winding down, they’re still hoping they can help inspire the next wave of rock & roll animals, though they’re still not completely sure where it’ll come from, or when.

“It’s like working class kids are going on X-Factor,” Pizzorno said. “Back in the day, working class kids would form bands, and that’s how you’d make it. Somehow, (Simon) Cowell has tapped into that stream of people where they think, we might as well do it on the X-Factor. It’s weird. I miss bands. I love bands. I love gangs. (Rock & roll) always needs a kick up the arse. I always believe it’s around the corner. I have to believe it’s going to happen. And it’s going to come around the corner, from nowhere.”

“Me and Serge are 33,” said Meighan. “We’ve done it, we’ve seen it, and watching the next generation is really spooky, because it seems like only yesterday when me and Serge were talking about being the next big thing, you know? It just goes (snaps fingers) like that.”

The setlist on the American tour reads like an introductory compilation album, with newer material – including ’48:13’s moroder-rolling opening single ‘eez-eh‘ – fitting in seamlessly alongside classic cuts like ‘Club Foot‘ and ‘Shoot The Runner‘, and with enough deep cuts (‘Take Aim‘, ‘Switchblade Smiles‘) to satisfy the obsessives. The sound – the raging guitars, the thundering drums, the layers of electronica – is meant to be felt at full force.

Now it’s just a matter of the United States audience, one of the most tantalizing realms left to fully conquer, to be won over.