Steadman – Interview

Steadman isn’t in your ear? Singer/songwriter Simon Steadman will change that.

The first thing I think everyone notices in your press kit is the Paul McCartney quote about you guys being a good band.

It does get a lot of notice.

Yeah, I mean it is Paul McCartney.

(Laughs) It gets a lot of attention.

Is that something you brought to the label?

We knew it would open some doors for us lets put it that way. (Laughs)

Also you bummed equipment from the Bay City Rollers, was that your connection to Paul McCartney?

No, that is totally off that. It is a case where we were rehearsing in Hastings in these pig sheds and next door in another pig shed, these are high class pig sheds (We both laugh). Next door we found out was Eric Faulkner from the Bay City Rollers was practicing and we went over and said hi. He was such a nice guy. One day I went up to him and asked him if we could borrow his studio, he didn’t know us very well but I told him he could trust us, and he was just ‘oh sure’. So he was moving his studio to his house and we moved into his pig shed and put egg boxes around the walls and put a window in and recorded our debut album.

I know Paul wrote songs for them so it’s weird that you actually have met the two of them separately. That’s cool.

I know it is cool. (Laughs)

I have the four track ep. The first track your voice sounds crazy and the last one is very raw.

Is that a good thing?

Yeah.

Okay, good. (Laughs)

It’s really cool. I was just curious about how you got that spacy sound?

Which songs?

“No Big Deal” and “Carried”.

“No Big Deal” I recorded in my home studio.

That was raw.

Yeah real raw, it was just me and my guitar on that one.

“Carried”…

…Was recorded in a proper studio.

The vocals are crazy. You just get high.

It’s all real. There aren’t any camera tricks there.

When did you discover you could sing?

When my mom, who was a singer, forced me to go and do a song with her. My mom had a music club in London and I used to go there all the time. I used to get embarrassed to watch her sing all the time. But one night she forced me to go up on stage with her to sing and I realized ‘wow, this is quite good’. I sort of picked up a guitar and learned a few chords. Then in the following weeks I was up there doing my own songs on stage.

Is it being released in Europe?

Not yet, in the States first.

Is that weird?

Actually it’s kind of cool.

It seems a lot of good British artists music get lost in the shuffle in the U.S. do you worry about that?

I’m biased, but I don’t hear that much great music here. If everyone at Elektra does there job and we do our job on stage I think we’ll do well. People are waiting for good music. Radiohead gave up and decided they didn’t want to do music like that anymore. They decided they wanted to go to the left field. Travis and Coldplay have their own niche and aren’t pigeonholed. I think we have our own sound and there isn’t anyone like us out there.

I often wonder if people don’t care anymore for good music and just give into radio and MTV.

I think that nowadays music has been devalued. They see it on a video game or in a commercial. People seem to be easily pleased with what is out there. If you shove a Christina Aguilera song down their throat enough they’ll like it. Any sort of this pop stuff that is out at the moment people almost get brainwashed into liking it.

Do you think that bands like Radiohead and Oasis are almost bored of music? Because they sound like they are.

I think what happened with Radiohead is that they got bored with the direction they were going in. I think they did a smart thing for their sanity because they didn’t want to be the typical British sounding stadium act and wanted to take it into a new direction. I don’t like that direction, but I admire them for going for it because it was a huge risk. They could fart in a barrel and people would like it. (We both laugh)

I think it’s a good thing in a sense that Radiohead has decided to go off into another direction because people are now finding new artists, like they found Coldplay and will find Paloalto and your group. It opens that hunger for it.

A lot of bands have taken the reigns from Radiohead. I think Coldplay is different enough that they have their own style. I think there are a lot of copycat bands that can compare to early Radiohead.

Coldplay is somewhere between Radiohead and Travis so they fill a nice void.

Yeah, but they also have a bit of Echo and the Bunnymen about them.

I feel like a lot of awesome bands get lost like the Soundtrack Of Our Lives. It drives me crazy that people aren’t hearing this stuff.

Exactly. I love Soundtrack Of Our Lives. The reason they probably have trouble is because of their image. This is an image driven society and this isn’t that kind of band.

They don’t care about marketing, it’s about music. The singer Ebbott looks like Santa Claus when he was a young guy.

(Laughs) I know. I love their music. It’s absolutely brilliant.

I heard that record and it blew my mind.

I know. “Sister Surround” is such a great song.

It is because he’s a fat guy who is jolly, not skinny and pretty.

I know, I don’t think there is a big market for some cuddle Swede. (We both laugh)

Do you look at groups like Soundtrack and hear a song like “Sister Surround” and go “I want to write a song that is better than that” and up the ante because it touches you so much?

Of course. I’m often inspired by a song. If a song comes out I take that song and put my own spin on it and make it completely different. I wrote a song that was inspired by “Wonderwall” when that came out.

I think Travis wrote about an album from that one. They got a whole album off that.

(Laughs) I think so too. I heard a funny quote from Jim Carrey when he was talking about Dumb and Dumberer he said “imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism”. That is such a good quote.

You still can’t deny Travis even though they borrowed a lot from Oasis. Like your voice has a distinct quality about it.

Thank you. I think that is really important. If you think about the classic rock acts like Led Zeppelin no one copied them.

Like the Stones.

Exactly. Or the Beatles. You have to have a defined sound. As soon as you hear U2 you know it’s them.

On “No Big Deal” your voice sounds like you are killing yourself.

I do have a lot of peaks and valleys to my voice.

It sounded like you were pushing it hard.

I was screaming my head off.

It seems there are a lot of good singers who either downplay their singing or don’t push it.

Like Thom Yorke, who is one of my favorite singers, seems like he is whining through the songs now. I read an interview where he said he is sick of melody and you can see that.

People liked Radiohead because of the melody but now they push him so far down into the mix you can’t even hear him anymore. I thought I had damaged speakers.

I know. That’s true.

I don’t get why give up on what you are best at? Like Kurt Cobain said he wanted to try and write a song with no verse/chorus/verse but realized you just can’t do it.

When you decided you want to be in a band or a rockstar it’s like any other job and you have to do what you don’t like doing. If you don’t like doing what other people like then you’re fucked.

And you won’t have a career to worry about it. Paintings can be abstract, but it seems music doesn’t lend itself to that.

No. Music is about emotion and stirring your soul. That is what disappoints me so much about music today. It’s so by the numbers.

I think bands hear Pink Floyd and like Radiohead are dying to try and remake that, but they are going about it all wrong.

I don’t think there is anyway a band can do what Pink Floyd did today.

Is it good or bad that music is so structured?

For me I’m a song guy with verse/chorus/verse/bridge. I also tried to sprinkle our album with some left field stuff that isn’t so obviously structured. But it’s a good structure and I think people are in tuned to hear that. My mind is in tune to that road map.

What comes first, music or lyrics?

Lyrics always come last. I will find some nice chords on my guitar or I’ll be working on a song without any singing or lyrics. I’ll scat sing over it with nonsensical words and I’ll record it. What I find is that I’ll say a word in there and that will be the springboard for the lyrical content. Also the chords and drumbeat creates an atmosphere that inspires the mood and content.

Do you tinker with lyrics after you’ve written them?

Oh God I change it all the time. I’ll record a vocal and then I’ll be like ‘that lyric is shit’ and I’ll work on that line. It’s good in a way to have demos because you can record something. That’s not the end because you have rehearsals, preproduction, and finally go into record the album. With the amount of time you have to work with, you get it to something good.

Do you know right away that a song is good?

Yes and no. (We both laugh) Sometimes you can write something in ten minutes and realize it’s really special. Then you could spend a lot of time on it and it’s still a piece of shit.

Are you ready to fill the void in rock?

100% yes. Hopefully everyone is tired of the cookie monster rock and the new wave punk that has come in and 80’s electro-pop that has come. All these fads come and go but what always remain are good rock songs that have a classic appeal and timelessness. Who is going to be listening to Christina Aguilera in ten years? Who will be listening to Limp Bizkit going ‘rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ and still think it’s a great song? No one. But there are people who still say the Beatles are the best band ever. I want to have songs that are timeless like that and have a career.

+ Charlie Craine