Grant from FEEDER gives KR the LD on grunge, fans, grunge-fans & their upcoming tour!

Posted on Jan 2, 2011 / Posted by Lily Howell /

With only 15 minutes up my sleeve I was able to talk with a very chatty Grant Nicholas, front man of British rock trio FEEDER. After several minutes discussing the ins and outs of the name “Grant”, he enlightened me on FEEDER fans, the grunge era and his worst fear…

Lily: You guys have been around the traps for quite a while now. Can you give me one of your favourite experiences with the band?

Grant: Oh, God, you know, there’s been so many, really. We’ve had some great times touring. You know, we spent almost a year in the States touring at the end of our first album. We had a great time just sort of going… you know… I think we played 42 states, which is pretty much the whole of America.

Lily: Great.

Grant: So, just sort of mad times just… ending up in little towns and crazy times on American tour buses and just meeting some crazy people. I mean that was a really good experience kind of looking back on that. Going to Japan for the first time, many years ago, that was a really great experience. It was a whole culture shock and just… just kind of really enjoyed that, you know, meeting all the sort of, crazy fans and stuff.

Lily: Are the fans different depending where you go?

Grant: Well you know, the Japanese fans tend to be… kind of really into their music, really into their bands, and they’re very respectful. You know, you don’t get a lot of heckle, you know… crowd heckling, in Japan.

Lily: Yeah.

Grant: And they really sort of, love the fact that you made the effort to go there and they buy you little presents and stuff. I mean they’re very sweet. And we’ve got quite a good fan base there because we go there quite regularly, and also our bass player is from Japan.

Lily: They’re polite aren’t they?

Grant: Yeah, they’re quite polite. It varies a little bit. I mean in Tokyo they’re a bit more… a little bit nearer to an audience in the UK. I mean they really like, get into the gigs. You get all mosh pits going and stuff. They’re pretty good. They don’t all just stand there, you do get some pretty wild little kids there. But they’re just really… up for it and interesting. It’s just weird in between songs because you get… they sort of clap and then it goes really quiet, you could hear a pin drop.

Lily: Oh, really?

Grant: It’s really bizarre, yeah. It’s quite… quite uncomfortable sometimes. But you kind of get used to it. That’s just the way it is, there.

Lily: Oh, quite a contrast.

Grant: It is, it is. It’s mad. They go mad and then suddenly the song finishes and it’s like “bing”. Oh. What should we do now?

Lily: Does the constant changing face of rock and alternative music keep you guys on your toes?

Grant: Yeah, it does. I mean, at the end of the day rock does change. You know, I think the label that comes with rock changes. There’s always little things that come out of it like, you know, you’ve got the grunge scene here, and you’ve got, you know, Brit rock thing over here then you had like the emo thing. But I mean, truly, at the end of the day, to me, it’s just rock. I grew up on a lot of pretty mixed music. I grew up with a lot of, you know, heavy metal, a lot of ’70s rock, a lot of, punk rock, that my older brother got me into and stuff. So I also listened to a lot of different types of music, although I just love guitar. You know, with bands like anything from Black Sabbath to sort of much lighter stuff like early Police, that kind of influenced me. So I’ve got a pretty varied sort of influence. But I think the music does change. I don’t think it changes as much as people think. I think the press just creates that, to be honest.

Lily: Yeah.

Grant: You know, people aren’t really doing anything that new. You know, the whole electronics fad that’s come in has kind of come from the whole, you know, ’80s new wave thing anyway, so, I think you do get some great new bands. I think that the bands, you know, like the Pixies and people like Nirvana were pretty influential as well. Because we started around the same time as those bands and, well, certainly around the same time as people like Nirvana, but they sort of, you know… to me… they made rock sort of a bit cooler again.

Lily: Yeah.

Grant: And it went pretty bad in the ’80s with the whole big hair thing and everything.

Lily: That’s when I got into heavy metal and I was slowly introduced with glam metal and then, really into it with Anthrax and Metallica.

Grant: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well… but there was…I think that…the early ’90s sort of…it started to appeal more to the kids again. Because I’m thinking it was less about the big showman thing and more about just taking it back to the sort of…back to the roots, really, and I think that that’s why that whole thing appealed to a lot of the youngsters. It was all very casual, you know, and it was… just a bit different, I think. I mean, yeah, it does change. Rock does change. And there’s some great bands out there but…and I’m always interested to hear new stuff. But I find I get influenced by listening to old stuff as, you know, as much as, new stuff. I mean I listen to a Black Sabbath album and you suddenly think, “God, there’s some great riffs on that.”

Lily: Yeah, yeah. And music is cyclic, isn’t it? And even though there is, kind of, an ’80s influence now, it’s not exactly the same. It’s, you know, ’80s with a modern twist.

Grant: Yeah, well yeah. I mean, you know, the ’80s gets a bad rap for sort of, the music in general, but there was some great stuff that came out of the ’80s. I mean you can hear a lot of ’80s influences in a lot of the young bands of today, you know? You can hear it all over now. You know, whether it’s the heavier bands or, you know, ’80s heavy metal, I’m sure is still very influential if you’re into heavy metal. You know, I mean especially in Japan. I mean, some of those bands from the ’80s are still like really popular in Japan with the young kids. Even some of the bands who are really old now, you know, they’re sort of seen as like cult bands, a lot of them, because there is quite a big market for heavy metal, as you know. You know, especially in Japan still.

Lily: Yeah.

Grant: Yeah, they love all that kind of thing, you know?

Lily: You write most of your music, have you started writing for your next album?

Grant: Yeah, we’ve been writing quite a bit actually. We work really… I mean most of the records, you know, you work as a band. So it’s not… I don’t sort of go in and play riffs on there. I mean, I write the songs at home and then we go in and see what happens with them. You know, demo some of them before and…You know, we’re a very small band so it’s the only way that it really needs to work. And, you know, we don’t all live next door to each other so, you’ve just got to keep things moving, really. But yeah, I’m actually in the process of recording now. We’re doing… we’re doing gigs and recording. Like, basically I was in the studio last week doing some vocals and stuff on some new tracks and we’re trying to get the next album finished before Christmas.

Lily: Oh, really?

Grant: Which will be a pretty fast turnaround. Because our plan was to release like a part two here to Renegades which was going to come out.

Lily: Yeah, I read that.

Grant: Well that was meant to happen. Because we’ve been so busy touring we felt as though there wouldn’t be enough time to, you know, to set it up properly and to do everything we needed to do. And also this album, we wouldn’t have really had a chance because, you know, we’re still obviously touring this one. We just did a UK tour that did really well, it was all sold out, so I’m really pleased about that.

Lily: Oh, brilliant.

Grant: We’re doing like a second half to that tour in February. We’re going to South Africa at the end of this week for two shows. And then we’ve got some European gigs and then the UK dates. So we’re hoping to try and get… I mean the plan was we kind of move the album back and we’re going to try and release it in March next year, if all goes well. Which is not far away. And that’s then a pretty fast turnaround. That will be what, June, July, yeah, that’s going to be about, you know, that will be eight months after this one. So if we manage that, then that’s a very fast turnaround.

Lily: Yeah. Well, I mean that’s fantastic, if you can do it.

Grant: Well we kind of wanted to do that. We just felt, you know, we really wanted to do a lot of touring next year, which is why we’re really keen to come to Australia again. You know, we haven’t been there for a long time.

Lily: When was the last time you were here?

Grant: Well I was there five years ago doing the promo and sort of radio things, acoustic things and all that on my own. So they flew me out to do the interviews. And then we were meant to go out to do a load of shows and then it all got sort of… I don’t know what happened, it just got cancelled for some reason. So I was pretty… we were pretty disappointed about that. We’ve been trying to get back there for so long. But it’s a difficult place to come because it’s very expensive to come there, you know, to tour and bring a crew where they do… it all… you know, unless you’re doing good sized venues which pay for everything, it’s quite difficult. Financially, it’s quite hard for any band, to be honest. But, you know, we’re really keen to come back there and do more stuff and, you know, we’ve got a little sort of fan base there but it sort of… it hasn’t got any bigger because we haven’t been there to build on it.

Lily: And we do love our concerts.

Grant: Yeah, I know, I know. I mean every time I’ve been out there I’ve been to see bands and stuff and obviously had a great time. There’s a great music scene there. But it’s been frustrating for us because I think that, you know, I know you’re into your rock music there and I think that, you know, I’m sure we could do okay if we keep working on it. So that’s why we’re very keen to come back, and that’s why we’re doing this festival and we’re going to come back and hopefully do some of our own shows.

Lily: Would you say is the best thing to happen in music in, say, the last decade?

Grant: If you ask me what the best thing was to happen since I started.

Lily: Yeah, all right, we’ll do that, since you started.

Grant: I would say the early ’90s because, you know, I’m not trying to live off, you know, kind of what we… you know, of past things, but I just think that was such an important time for rock music. And I think that that really needed to happen, that whole scene. And I hate the labelling, like the grunge thing was horrible, but there were a lot of… there was some great bands came out of that.

Lily: I loved the whole grunge thing.

Grant: Yeah, that was the best thing that has happened since I can remember, say, you know, I’m a little too young to know what happened with the real punk rock thing. I was alive, you know, I was just that little bit too young to really sort of know. But for me, that was just a really great time and I think it was… I think some great bands came through there. And there was, you know, there was some great bands in the UK as well at that time, it’s just that it was very much Brit pop.

Lily: Yeah.

Grant: So a lot of the so-called like rock bands, as I say, obviously took a long time to really get noticed. But I think if you lived over, you know, like lived maybe in the States, it probably would have been a bit easier at that time, you know, doing what we were doing. But for me, that for me was the best… that has been the best because there has been some other sort of scenes to come through, but for me that was the one that I feel had the most impact and certainly that I Felt. And, you know, we were part of that as well so it was, you know, we were sort of around at that time so it was quite nice.

Lily: Okay, if you could have lunch with anyone in the world, dead or alive, who would it be?

Grant: Oh, no, that’s a tough one. Well I can’t say one person. I would say, oh, it’s a mixture of people, really. John Lennon, I’d like to have lunch with John Lee, I don’t know, Marilyn Monroe, Kennedy, and my great grandfather, just because I’ve never met him and he sounds like a real character.

Lily: what do you fear most in the world?

Grant: Oh, gosh a tough one. What do I fear most? To be on a plane.

Lily: I’m with you there, brother.

Grant: Yeah, I’m not a big fan of flying. You know, air travel and terrorism I think, those two things really scare me.

Lily: Now the Soundwave festival is just around the corner. Are you pumped?

Grant: I’m really excited. I’m hoping that a lot of people dig what we do, because obviously we’re not the heaviest band on the bill, but we’ll come out there and give it our best shot. But I’ve been looking forward to it and, you know, to meet those… there’s some pretty cool bands in the line-up so it’s going to be great to get back there and show people what we can do, you know?

Lily: Yeah, I think it’s going to be brilliant. I’m excited to see you guys.

Grant: Well thanks a lot, cheers. We’ll have to make sure we’re heavy enough for that one.

Lily: All right. Well thanks so much, Grant. It was really good to talk to you.

Grant: Take care and hopefully I’ll see you there.

Catch Feeder at Soundwave Festival 2011.

Tags: feeder, interview, knobrock, soundwave festival