2006年8月Richard在美国内布拉斯加州本地电台接受的采访文本

Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska local station Q98.5
Aug 7

Marissa: We’re here with Richard, who is the drummer of the band Keane. You probably know their new song – it’s called Is It Any Wonder. They have a brand new CD in stores right now called Under the Iron Sea, and you guys are on tour right now, right?

Richard: Yeah, we’re doing a bit of a sort of bizarre around the world in 2 weeks trip, just playing a festival in Lawrence, Kansas, and then we’re going off to play a massive show in Bangkok, which is our, sort of a massive Keane show, then we’re playing at a festival called Summersonic in Japan, and then we go back in time for the V festival in the UK.

M: Wow, ‘cause I know you guys just released your big sophomore album, it’s called Under the Iron Sea, now you’re touring all over the world because of that. I was just looking at your tour dates a little while ago, and like you said, Japan, and like everywhere, right?

R: That’s right, it’s cool… it’s one of the great parts of being in a band. You get to sit in a dark room missing all the traveling and all the world you get to go and see, and then suddenly you release an album and you get to go out and play.

M: Oh yeah, definitely. You guys have been together forever. I mean, when did you start doing the band-related stuff?

R: Well, we played our first show in 1998. But I can remember sort of 20 years ago playing songs around a piano with the others, so, yeah, we go back a fairly long way.

M: Yeah, you guys all met in school, right?

R: Yeah, and Tom and Tim’s families met when the two mothers were having kids at the same time – one of the kids was Tom. So it’s – basically they’ve always…

M: Always been together?

R: Always been sort of friends. Yeah, I was a latecomer. I only really sort of joined the party age 10. The others have got an extra decade on me.

M: Well, you guys have been together for so long, getting signed must have felt absolutely amazing.

R: Yeah, well, it was a long sort of haul, but we’re from this little town where we don’t have – there’s no huge music scene, you know, it’s not somewhere where you go hang out with a thousand other bands or have some kind of big music collective that jams every night. It’s basically pretty small and pretty remote and pretty removed from everything – and so, yeah, we just had to learn as we went along ourselves, basically by listening to what other bands did, trying to work out why it sounded so good for them and so bad for us.

M: All right, so your first CD, Hopes and Fears, came out in 2004. You sold over 5 million copies, you’ve got your new CD out now, it’s called Under the Iron Sea. By the way, we’re talking to Richard, who is the drummer of the band Keane; now how was recording different for the new album?

I think with the first record, we basically had everything ready, we’d been rehearsing these songs and playing them live for a long time, whereas, with this one, it was definitely a lot more experimenting in the studio and writing as we went along and putting the songs together, so it was a very different process for the second album.

M: Yeah, I actually read that you guys – you kind of made yourselves confront your worst fears and really work hard at looking at your relationships with each other – how did that help your writing process?

Well, I mean, I think we toured for so long with Hopes and Fears that I think we kind of went a bit mad, and you know, stopped talking to each other and stopped kind of doing all the things – the sort of hanging out and having fun things that we’d done for so long, and eh…

M: You got a little sick of each other?

R: Well, you do, you know? It’s weird, you spend so much time in each other’s pockets, and, I don’t know, we didn’t deal with it very well. And it’s hard. When things really did start happening for us, they happened at sort of light speed, and it’s not something that’s easy to cope with. I think everyone is different and everyone sees it in different ways, and so, yeah, it was a very weird experience for us, and I think some of the way we dealt with it was by sort of switching ourselves off a little bit, and that didn’t help in our friendship. But it made for an inspiration for the new record.

But, at the same time, we’re living in a very sort of dark and weird world where, you know, a lot of bad things are done in the name of good, and I think that has informed the record as well.

M: It’s definitely awesome –I’m glad you guys are all good now, right?

R: Absolutely.

M: All right, good. I want to make sure the friendships are tight. (laughs)

(Richard laughs)

M: You said that everything kind of happened at light speed. What do you think is your biggest accomplishment so far?

R: I think, with the new record, having the guts to make the hard choices and really try and push ourselves, because on the back of a really successful record, I guess it’s tempting for a lot of bands to just try and recreate what they did the first time around. And we didn’t want to do that. We’ve always looked up to bands who challenge themselves and the people who listen to them and really try and push themselves, so that’s something we wanted to do, something we learned from having the Beatles’ entire back catalog, seeing the way they progressed as a band, from sort of a boy band into being like cultural revolutionaries, you know? So it’s something that we’ve always been aware of and that we’ve always admired and tried to do.

M: So you guys are on tour right now – any chance we’re gonna get you guys in Nebraska?

R: Eh, you know, this country is so huge.

M: What if I bribe you? What if I promise a whole full body massage?

R: Wow. Um… well, you know… um… that sounds nice?

M: Sounds tempting?

R: We’ve toured here – we’ve done like six tours out here, and we’ll be doing many more on this album, so I’m sure at some pint we’ll be heading your way.

M: Well, I’ll have my people talk to your people.

R: Ha ha. Wicked.

M: All right, Richard. Thank you very much for talking to me. I appreciate it.

R: Ok, thanks a lot.

M: Richard is the drummer for the band Keane and your brand new CD is actually in stores right now, called Under the Iron Sea. Thank you again Richard, have a great tour, and hopefully we’ll get you in Nebraska soon.

R: Thanks a lot. Thanks, Marissa.