Dead!Dead!Dead!
Interview
I caught up with Dead!Dead!Dead! for a chat before their recent gig at the Brook. Guitarists Matt and Neil,
bassist Bill and drummer Mark have just finished their second tour of the year. “It was just to get our name about really. I mean, we sold lots of EPs as well, but it was mainly just to play around the country,” Mark explained. So what’s next in the world of Dead? “We’ve planned our next tour for March and up until then I think the plan is to play out of town shows as much as possible. Just to keep the momentum up I suppose,” explains Matt. They’ve been all over the country during the past month, but their tour highlight was supporting Tom Vek at the Wedgewood Rooms in Portsmouth. “Tom actually hand-picked us to support him because Neil Bumped into him somewhere,” Bill explains. Matt takes up the story, “he put a knife to his throat – you will let us play! But he honoured it.” “he did honour it,” Neil nods, “then I gave him his wife and children back in one piece.” Despite family abductions, they always seem to get a favourable response from local and national press. What do they make of it all? “I tend to just ignore it,” says Mark. “It looks good on the website, it’s good to quote and stuff and it looks good to other people,” Matt adds. I get the feeling they don’t read too much into it and Neil confirms this, “You can’t believe your own hype, can you? Because then you just become a cock and you can’t write stuff any more.” “Yeah, stop
it Bill,” Mark snaps. Bill has become a cock? “Bill is just a big rolling ball of ego sliding down a fucking mountain of good press” Neil explains, “cascading into the band, who are sort of skittles at the bottom.” Piss-taking aside, they do seem to be very levelled, despite their ever-increasing fan base. “It's weird how people sing the words and stuff like that,” muses Matt. “I don’t hear them,” claims Neil, “I’m convinced it doesn’t happen. We did actually try to encourage people to bring instruments once, and play along - rather than just singing. I was at Glastonbury when G. Love was playing and the bass player fucked up the solo. This guy just pulled out a trumpet and got on his mate's shoulders and started playing. G. Love held the microphone out to him, so they just jammed the tune again but he played the bass solo on the trumpet. It’s like, what the fuck? He just turned up at a gig with a trumpet thinking ‘Well – never know!’ I thought that’s a nice touch – a bit inspirational.” Talking of inspiration, how do they go about writing songs? Neil explains, “You know those night goggles? We walk downstairs with night goggles on, naked, and just kind of walk into instruments and as we hit them sound starts and reverberates around the room and then Mark will be doing masturbating and…” he trails off, leaving a rather disturbing image lingering. Thankfully he returns to normality before they decide to demonstrate. “I think we’re getting more picky and more anal about writing stuff.” Neil continues. “It’s not really writer's block. All the ideas are still there. I just think if there’s any pressure it’s not from good reviews or anything, it’s more like ourselves thinking ‘how are we going to better what we’ve done?’”, he pauses, “That sounds really fucking arrogant doesn’t it? ‘How are we going to better what we’ve done already? Because it’s so good!’ I don’t mean that, I mean how are we going to shift our music forward?” They seem very aware that they need to keep evolving and not just sit back and wait for ‘it’ to happen, which is an admirable quality in a band. There's also a sense of self assuredness that, they may be pleased to hear, doesn’t come across as arrogance. They seem very self aware, both as a band and as individuals. Do they still get nervous? “A little,” Mark replies. I’m slightly sceptical since he’s sitting there with a smile on his face looking as relaxed as anything. 
“I think the only thing that makes me nervous is guitars falling apart.” Neil grumbles, “The only thing that ever fucks up a gig for us is equipment packing up. Our record was when we ran out of instruments at the Hobbit. We took three spare guitars, as well as the two we were playing, bass and drums, and we literally broke so many strings that we were just trying to muddle some shit together just to play something. Someone who didn’t know what they were doing was trying to restring a guitar at the front and fucking embedding strings into the wood. Not thinking ‘wait a minute – string into wood, tightening incredibly tight. Wait a minute – no. It won’t stay in tune’.” He continues, clearly agitated at the memory of it, “Yeah? I think you'll find it's about to pop though the front of the guitar and then you will have destroyed my guitar and that makes you a fucker,” he concludes. So, aside from trying to make sure their equipment doesn’t all fall apart, what are the plans for the future? “The next step is getting signed and world domination,” Neil grins, “but we haven’t done that one yet.”
