2010年4月25日《Sunday Times》Keane声响大作

From The Sunday Times
April 25, 2010
The band’s lead singer Tom Chaplin on how they got huge without a fanfare. Now they’re making a noise people will notice
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article7104037.ece
Rob Fitzpatrick

Having driven up and down the long stretch of winding country lane that leads to the Keane singer Tom Chaplin’s house, I can guarantee you his place in rural Kent has a unique character. Everywhere there are tractors and 4WDs, fields and venerable old trees. But Chaplin’s is the only cottage on the road that has a sleek silver Ferrari in the drive.

When he opens the door, two things become obvious. First, Chaplin is extremely tall. His ceilings are so low and heavy with beams, he has to hunch over in the kitchen while making tea. Second, he is remarkably slim. It takes some nerve to wear a zipped-up, figure-hugging, silky tracksuit top, but Chaplin does. And comfortably gets away with it. He, perhaps more than any other pop star in recent times, has been pilloried for crimes of the magnitude of having slightly chubby cheeks. Well, the finger-pointers will need to look elsewhere, because Chaplin, rather like his band, has quietly reinvented himself. “Self-belief comes and goes for me,” he says, as we collapse onto antique, careworn sofas in front of a huge flatscreen television. “When we’re on stage and doing a great show with a new batch of songs, I feel great. But a lot of the rest of the time, I just don’t know. A lot of what you see is a show, really. It’s not just me — even the most confident-looking bands are riddled with anxiety.”

If you or I had sold somewhere north of 10m records, then we would, quite probably, choose to live in a house like this. There is a grand piano in the L-shaped front room, and the windows look out across an expanse of manicured garden. Nick Drake drifts melodiously from a large titanium Apple laptop. There is a bespoke sideboard filled with DVDs. And on the table behind us is a small black bell inscribed “Ring me for a drink”. To my left, two fabulously knackered old leather armchairs sit together, gazing at the huge open fireplace, in a scene that is oddly romantic, despite there being no actual people in it. Chaplin and his girlfriend, Nat, an art therapist, moved here from Rye. They “beetle” between this place and a flat in London, but he prefers it here as it’s so peaceful. The band’s pianist and songwriter, Tim Rice-Oxley, lives nearby in Lewes, East Sussex — “He built his studio before they’d even finished the house.” The drummer, Richard Hughes, keeps a place in London, but is more often than not hidden away in the Peak District. “We do see each other,” Chaplin says, “but mainly to make music.”

So much for that age-old “band as gang” myth. In fact, Keane are nothing like as regular as they first appear. While the world has never been short of pop groups made up of well-educated, middle-class white males, this one has some sizeable differences. For a start, there’s no guitarist or bass player, so they look less like everyone else. The classic dynamic is changed, making them more open. Basically, there’s nowhere for anyone to hide. “That’s what people identify with. We are very honest as a band — the songs don’t, we don’t, have any invisible barrier. We are very exposed.”
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In another break from routine, Keane are about to release not a new album, but an eight-track EP, where the sound developed over the past six years is broken down and rebuilt with new instruments and fairly radical new ideas — one of which is to bring in the Soma-lian musician K’naan to sing and rap on the EP’s standout, Stop for a Minute. “We had two songs we couldn’t finish,” Chaplin says. “It turned out K’naan had been a fan for years. He came to the studio, listened to the gaps in both songs and, a few hours later, presented us with fully formed ideas. We didn’t give ourselves time to navel-gaze.”

Has there been navel-gazing before? “Yes. But that’s not a Keane trait, that’s a band trait.”

Of the other new songs, Back in Time is noisier, more aggressive, than Keane have ever been; Ishin Denshin (with “the Japanese Lady Gaga”, Tigarah) is a pure, floaty pop confection; while Your Love is gorgeously melancholic disco. This is definitely not a more-of-the-same release. “We’ve become more confident about taking an idea and running with it. You have to do something radically different for people to even notice these days, and this EP is the high point of that spirit. I want people to listen to Keane and be bewildered. Some bands are so cynical in what they do — mentioning no names.”

Come on, I say, mention a name.

“I don’t want to say. [Thinks for a very long time.] No. It’ll be blown out of all proportion. But there are bands that go around slagging people off and that mentality is what I’m talking about.” But Oasis have split up, so why worry? “That’s the elephant in the room,” he says, laughter escaping.

Of course, there is another elephant in the room. A huge grey one with a billboard hung on its side reading: “Everything has been way too easy for this band.” After all, it seemed to take only five minutes for Keane to become the country’s biggest new band. “It was nothing like that,” he protests. “When I left university, our manager said we’d have a deal in six months. It took nearly five years. People were always measuring us by our success. Frankly, we weren’t having any.” Things moved rapidly when Steve Lamacq began playing their indie release of Everybody’s Changing on his Radio 1 show. Almost immediately, many of those same major-label people who had decided they didn’t like Keane realised that, actually, they liked them rather a lot. “Instead of going from crappy gig to crappy gig, we were travelling from record label to record label, and everyone was talking about the huge amount of money they were going to give us.”

The band exploded, going from bottom of the bill (beneath Ima Robot and Junior Senior) on an NME tour in 2004 to sharing a stage with Madonna and Coldplay at Live 8 little more than 12 months later, and their debut record, 2004’s Hopes and Fears, became one of the year’s best­selling British albums. They toured relentlessly, then, against all advice, went straight back into the studio to record its follow-up, Under the Iron Sea. “It was overpowering,” Chaplin says. “I became incapable of recognising what was a good thing because everything was a good thing. It was too much for me to cope with, and none of us was able to understand what was happening. In the summer of 2005, I started to nosedive. Success can be very disorientating when you’re so used to being a failure.”

Eager to prolong the buzz associated with touring — “that rush” as he describes it — his drinking and cocaine use spiralled. “I had this desire to escape,” he says, “and that was so destructive and dangerous.

I wouldn’t confront anything and kept pulling these disappearing acts. My ego was completely tied up with the great things people were saying about us, but then there was a part of me that was getting eaten away reading the terrible things someone had written on the internet. I began to focus on the bad.”

Five weeks in the Priory followed, and the tabloids had a field day. Serge from Kasabian began a rumour that Chaplin was addicted to port. The Sun’s Bizarre column ran a Liam Gallagher quote suggesting he was a “posh lightweight” who couldn’t handle his drugs.

“That’s an idiotic viewpoint,” he says. “Addiction doesn’t care who you are or what you do. That notion of rock’n’roll behaviour is such a terrible, worn-out hangover from a time long gone. I’m lucky — I had enough people who still loved me enough to want to help me. And they did. That’s it. I think there’s a line drawn under all that now. As much as you ever can.”

He calls for lunch at his local, so we drag ourselves off the sofas. The first three Keane albums all went to No1, so, you know, no pressure. He doesn’t seem in the slightest bit bothered. “Oh, I’m more than happy materialistically,” he says, climbing into his car. “I’m not looking to make more money. I just want us to do something special, that really lasts. I can’t wait to get started.”

And with that, he pulls the door shut and roars off, the Ferrari’s engine pulsing, its tyres throwing up great clouds of dust into the bright blue, perfect spring sky.

Night Train is out on Island, May 10