2006年6月Blender.com：Tim在美国接受的采访

Blender.com

Keane: Interview
From the island that brought us the Anglican Church and the Sex Pistols, Keane crosses the pond with their sophomore effort, Under the Iron Sea. Keyboardist Tim Rice-Oxley filled us in.

By Mike Errico

Blender.com, June 2006

It’s World Cup fever here in America! OK, maybe not. But you guys must be big soccer fans. Right?
We are not big soccer fans in terms of going to games a lot, but I think we’re all sort of anticipating [England] getting knocked out in the later stages of the Cup on penalties — probably by Germany, because that’s what normally happens.

Speaking of optimism, what inspired the title, Under the Iron Sea?
It’s basically Tom [Chaplin]‘s description of the emotional state we found ourselves in. We toured for a very, very long time and I think we didn’t deal with it very well. Rather than talk about things and have them out with fistfights, we sort of did the opposite and just stopped talking about stuff and shut ourselves away. Tom’s description of that is sort of shutting yourself under this iron sea. It’s sort of an impenetrable barrier of noncommunication.

Just a guess: not fun?
Well, yeah. There were some very dark times. As a band we didn’t really know what we were doing anymore and what we were going to do and whether we were a band anymore. So, yeah, it was a very strange time, a very dark time for the band. We’ve been friends for so long, basically our whole lives. We went to school together and we’re basically like brothers. It’s weird to feel like you’re losing that connection that you always imagined would be there.

Did someone take someone’s girlfriend or something?
No, there was no specific moment. It was just a gradual sort of descent into oblivion and being weirded out by what weird lives we were leading.

So it’s nothing but a party in Keaneville.
For a while it wasn’t, but you know, now it is again.

How did your collaboration with Irvine Welsh come about?
We’d all obviously seen Trainspotting about as young guys going to the cinema, and we were amazed by this guy’s imagination. We heard he was interested in directing a video and we thought, “God, that would be amazing to get him involved.” So we got him down to the studio when it was about half done and we played him a few tracks and he got excited about “Atlantic” and wrote this short film and we loved it. It’s really amazing to feel like your music can inspire creative people like him to fire up their imaginations.

Are you using the film in your live show?
Right now, we haven’t had any visuals or anything, and we’re deliberately playing smaller, sweaty rooms. It’s just been us onstage and our instruments and a lot of noise. We wanted to get back and, you know, kind of build this up and play new songs to people and see how they reacted and really feel our way back into it.

We took an informal poll around the office, and it’s safe to say the ladies love Keane. It must be tedious having to deal with excessive female adulation every night.
I don’t know, but I see men and women at the shows. Maybe the guys go thinking their girlfriends will get all soppy and hug them or kiss them, but actually, I seem quite good at spotting the sort of burly, well-built guys who seem to suddenly, you know, be singing their hearts out, which I think is an amazing thing. I think there’s something quite sort of primal about going to a gig that, you know, gets everyone united and, you know, it really makes a good gig great when the crowd gets into it like that.

What’s some of the weirdest stuff fans have given you?
I got a teddy bear with a recorded message in it. If you pressed its foot, it talked to you or something, and someone had prerecorded a happy birthday message to me, which was, you know, very sweet actually, very kind. But you sort of say, “What am I gonna do with that?” I also seem to be getting lots of biscuits.

Biscuits?
I mentioned in an interview once that I liked a particular brand of biscuits — you know, cookies. And I get given them wherever I go around the world. If I ate all of the biscuits I was given, I would weigh several tons. That’s kind of strange, actually. Wherever I am in the world, I have a reliable supply of this particular type of biscuit.

What’s the brand?
They’re called Hobnobs, but don’t print that or I’ll just get more. I already got more than I could eat.

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