2009年1月News of the World采访Tom：Keane重新起步
2009-01-14 采访报道 enchinya
KEANE GETAWAY
Tom takes walk down memory lane
News Of The World
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/scottish/scottish_listings/scottish_music/116264/Keane-of-the-castle.html
By Tim Barr, 03/01/2009
HUDDLED inside his winter coat, Tom Chaplin desperately tried to keep out the biting northern chill.
But as he crossed Edinburgh’s Princes Street and headed up onto North Bridge, he began to feel the warm glow of a hundred different happy memories.
Starving, he stopped at a familiar takeaway, ordered a pizza and wolfed it down before heading back out into the deserted night-time streets and allowing himself a wry smile.
Just an hour or so earlier, Keane had launched their third consecutive No1 album — Perfect Symmetry — with a spectacular fans-only gig in the capital.
Now he’d left bandmates Tim Rice-Oxley and Richard Hughes behind in the dressing room, determined to revisit his past as a skint student in the city.
“I had to do it,” he says. “I had to get it out of my system.”
Eventually he ended up outside his old halls of residence, by the foot of Arthur’s Seat.
It was there, exactly ten years ago, that he decided to ditch his art history degree at Edinburgh University in favour of moving to London and trying to make a go of things with the band.
“Before that, it had been quite a part-time thing,” he explains. “At that point, I think we were all assuming that it would probably be a failure.
“But that was the moment when we thought, ‘This is it. If we’re going to go for it, then we’ve got to do it now’.
“So I moved to London and started taking the band a lot more seriously.
“It was a big decision for me to leave Edinburgh because I really loved it. I spent a very memorable year there. But it did pay off — three No1 albums is kind of a good return on that gamble.”
Tom, now 29, wasn’t the only member of the band facing a dilemma.
While he was in Edinburgh learning how to tell a Titian from a Velasquez, keyboards player and principal songwriter Tim was studying classics at University College, London.
He got friendly with Chris Martin, a student in the year below, who had enrolled to do Ancient World Studies but was actually more interested in the band he’d just formed.
Impressed by Tim’s playing, Chris invited him to join the newly-christened Coldplay too.
Luckily for Keane fans, he turned the offer down and opted to concentrate on his own music.
“We’ve had an incredible time together as a band,” says Tom. “There have been some bumps along the way but there have been some really great times.
“Not many bands can claim to have three No1s with their first three albums so we feel like we’re in exalted company. There’s a real sense of pride about it.” So Tim’s never been able to turn round in rehearsals and moan that he should have joined Coldplay instead?
“Ha ha. No. He’s definitely not allowed to say that. Nor would he want to.”
Perfect Symmetry — which draws its inspiration from the art-rock of David Bowie, Talking Heads and U2 — sees the Sussex three-piece back in rude health after the troubles that surrounded 2006’s Under The Iron Sea.
The runaway success of their six-million-selling debut Hopes & Fears proved more difficult to handle than they’d expected back in the days when playing gigs to more than 150 people at London’s tiny Bull & Gate pub seemed no more than a daydream.
Relationships in the band — particularly between Tim and Tom — fractured and the group came close to splitting up. The singer consoled himself with drink and drugs and ended up in rehab at London’s Priory Clinic.
“I didn’t feel very connected with music,” he explains. “I didn’t feel very connected with the others in the band.
“In fact, I didn’t really want to do it. And I think if you lose something like that, that’s such an integral part of who you are, then something must be going wrong in your head.”
The breakdown was already under way as the album was being written — Tim’s Hamburg Song, for example, included the line ‘Is it just a waste of time trying to be your friend?’ and the even harsher ‘Fool, I wonder if you know yourself at all’.
“There was definitely a time when we felt like things weren’t going forward,” admits Tom.
“It was all about regret and guilt and looking backwards and not really being able to go forward.”
Yet by the time the band finished their Under The Iron Sea tour at Glasgow’s SECC in March 2007, there were signs that things were improving.
So much so that, instead of going home, the trio agreed to play another intimate gig, this time at Edinburgh’s Liquid Room, the following night.
“Our relationships were really repaired during the second half of that tour,” confirms Tim, 32.
“For the first time in a long while, we were having a lot of fun.” At that stage, there was already an album’s worth of new material waiting to be recorded but after risking meltdown once, they agreed to have some time off.
“There must have been ten or 15 songs that we were considering getting under way with,” explains Tom. “But I think we all felt tired. Under The Iron Sea had been written in the back of a tour bus and I think we felt it’d be a shame to do it again on this album.
“The crux of it was trying to give Tim the opportunity to relax, so that instead of feeling pressurised, he had time to get the germs of the songs ready.
“He’s a workaholic. If we’d said, ‘There’s no time, you’ll have to write it in the back of the bus again’, he probably would have. But instead we just went away for six months, which I think was the right decision in this case.”
During the layoff, keen climber Richard, also 32, conquered a few peaks and Tom — who has an impressive handicap of just eight — squeezed in a few rounds of golf.
They rejoined Tim at his base in the band’s hometown of Battle towards the end of 2007.
“I went over to his house and started singing on a few of the songs,” recalls Tom. “It was great. We felt so inspired. The time off was just what we needed.”
Work continued at the plush Studio de la Grande Armee in Paris and then — following in the footsteps of Bowie and U2 — moved to Berlin, where they had Marlene Dietrich films projecting constantly in the studio.
“We were indulging our teenage dream of what it’s like to be in a rock band,” says Tim, “travelling somewhere to make an album.”
Bowie, who famously made three of his greatest LPs in the German capital, turned out to be a key influence on Perfect Symmetry — which had the working title of The Magnificent Keane.
From the cascading vocal line in Spiralling that echoes the Thin White Duke’s Fame to the wobbling Ashes To Ashes-style synth melody in Better Than This and the epic Playing Along, which recalls Hunky Dory, the pop chameleon is a constant point of reference. “We always aspired to be like people like Bowie,” muses Tim. “People who go against the grain and do things differently.” Tom adds: “Part of what makes us tick is that we’re all about change and evolution. That’s part of our psyche. We always want to switch things around and do something different.
“I think the people who have been with us since Hopes & Fears or Under The Iron Sea will get exactly what we’re doing on Perfect Symmetry but I hope this LP also shows a different side of us to those who have written us off or never really seen us for who we are.”
In just over two months since its release, the album has already clocked up an incredible half million sales and tickets for the band’s forthcoming world tour — which calls in at Glasgow’s SECC on January 29 — are flying out of the box office.
What’s more, it’s seen the band earn lavish praise from celebrity fans like Kanye West.
“He’s been a huge supporter,“ admits Tim. “I think he’s one of the greatest creative musicians on the planet at the moment, so it’s a great honour that he’s saying such great things about our music.”
In fact, the Gold Digger star recently collaborated on a new version of You Haven’t Told Me Anything, one of the highlights of Perfect Symmetry.
“I was in the studio with him all night until seven in the morning,” admits Tim. “We’ve got a bit more work to do,” reveals Tom. “But it’s an exciting collaboration.”
“I definitely feel this is the best record we’ve made,” confesses Tim. “We really can’t wait to tour it.”
He maintains that fans in Scotland will see the band at their very best. “We’re very proud of what our live show has become,” he says. “We’ve put a lot of work into it. It’s a fantastically impressive production.”
And he admits that, after checking out Coldplay’s pull-all-the-stops-out tour in support of Viva La Vida, his competitive streak has surfaced. “I think one of the things that makes bands great is when they have that little spirit of wanting to be the best,” he adds.
“Even back in the day, before we had a record deal, we’d sit around saying, ‘We’ve got to be making music as good as Radiohead’s OK Computer or Depeche Mode’s Violator’ or any of the other albums we really worshipped. You’ve got to aim high.
“We always want to try to be better and more innovative and more exciting than everyone else. And I know Chris feels the same. It’s a great thing. It reminds me of the spirit of bands in the 1960s when The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, were all trying to outdo each other all the time.”
“We just want to keep going forwards” adds Tom. “Right now Keane feels like a ship that’s sailing in a certain direction…and going there fast.”