PRISON GIGS, ELVIS AS A DIVINE BEING, AND JAMMING WITH STEPHEN KING. IT CAN ONLY BE ALABAMA 3...
We good folks at Whisperin & Hollerin are big fans of techno-country rockers Alabama 3… Huge. Big. Fans. So when we were offered the chance to catch up with front-man LARRY LOVE, we jumped straight out of our seats, whizzed around in circles, rode the chair like a bucking bronco and then sat down again.
Alamaba 3 have been around a while, and to celebrate their illustrious careers as the meanest cotton-pickin, thigh-slappin, buffalo-ridin’ techno-heads this side of Brixton, they’ve released their new retrospective album, “Hits and Exit Wounds”, which catalogues the mental and not-so-mental vibes over the past 10 years.
For those not in the know – Alabama 3 get down 'n' dirty pretty much all of the time, mixing techno with country and blues to create a blissful cacophony of chaos. Forget yer ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ bollocks, these guys have balls of steel, they don’t chew straw, and it’s doubtful you’d ever see them sporting dungarees.
In the beginning there was darkness, and Alabama 3 caused much confusion. According to Larry Love, the NME initially labelled them as "nothing but a novelty band", saying it was ridiculous mixing all the sounds together. This was probably because the unholy communion of Country and Techno didn't fit with their haircut-orientated editorial policy. But Alabama 3 stuck with it, and now as Larry Love explains to W&H, they're sending the love right out to the Brothers and the sisters and the non-believers. Read on, brothers, read on, and see the light...
W&H: HOW DID YOU SELECT THE TRACKS FOR YOUR NEW ALBUM?
Larry: "The record company wanted us to do it in chronological order, but we wanted to do it like an Alabama 3 gig – you know, it starts off a bit mental, then it goes mellow, and then it ends up half-mental and mellow at the end. Plus we embraced the B-sides."
W&H: TECHNO, COUNTRY, GOSPEL AND BLUES. WHOEVER HEARD OF SUCH A THING?
Larry: "I was brought up in the church. I’m the son of a preacher man so I used to listen to a lot of Gospel, Blues and Country when I was younger. But I’ve always liked Techno. I remember playing Detroit Techno in Italy, and we’d start singing Hank Williams songs over the top of it - it kinda worked. Or at least it worked in our heads."
W&: HOW CAN SOMETHING SO WRONG SOUND SO RIGHT?
Larry: "I dunno. It’s like: “Let’s go see this band – they’re catchy techno with American accents and they fucking dress stupid.” You’d say “No, I’ll give that a miss. It’s a stupid idea.” It kind of works after a while though, but it doesn’t make sense if you work at it."
W&H: YOU’VE DONE A LOT OF INTERESTING COLLABORATIONS OVER THE YEARS, HOW DID THESE COME ABOUT?
Larry: "When we work with people, it’s not so much about what genre of music they do, but what their attitude or vibe is - and whether they can stay up drinking whiskey with us, that would be a start. We’re all quite confident musicians so working with other people is quite natural. Alabama 3 is set up for collaborative purposes. We’ve got two techno people, three country players, heavy metal guitarists, so we’re used to it anyway.
We recently did a collaboration with Johnny Cash’s son. Basically, we sampled Johnny Cash’s voice and this was endorsed by his family. That was really interesting. Then again, with “MOR” that was totally different. We were recording, and there were some crack-heads on the street. Some of them started rapping at me cause they knew I was in Alabama 3. It was about four in the morning, and they were off their heads, but I took them back to the studio and we recorded them. They loved it, it was brilliant. I haven’t seen them since, but my mind is open to stuff like that – if you’ve got a microphone and a laptop you can work with anyone."
W&H: WHAT ARE THE PERSONAL HIGHLIGHTS OF YOUR CAREER? THE ONES YOU CAN REMEMBER, THAT IS…
Larry: "We were headlining a ‘Legalise Cannabis’ festival in Brockwell park in Brixton, and my daughter was about four months old. I’d dressed her in a God Save the Queen T-shirt and a little leopard-skin nappy. I had her on stage with me during ‘Mao Tse Tung Said’, and she stuck her left fist in the air, pretending she was a communist. It was a bit like when Michael Jackson was dangling his kid out of the window, but it was a beautiful moment – a four month old in a God Save the Queen T-shirt in a crowd full of Rastas. "
W&H: AWW. CUTE...
Larry: "Yeah. Then again, I remember playing a funeral for this guy called Jay who died. His mother wrote me a letter saying he was an Alabama 3 fan, he’d died at 26. I sang acapella at his funeral, and this white butterfly came out of his coffin. He was really into wearing white clothes and stuff, so this white butterfly flew up and everyone was crying. It was unbelievable.
So it’s the small things, you know? I mean, opening Glastonbury in front of 50,000 people on the Friday afternoon, that was good. But I like to think all gigs are special. I think every audience you play for, whether it’s five or 5000, you’ve got to give them what you can. And we're lucky to be able to do that."
|
W&H: IS IT TRUE THAT YOU ONCE JAMMED WITH STEPHEN KING?
Larry: "Yep. It was during a launch party for Lisey’s Story. There were all these literary types in the room, and we were playing nicely in the background. As soon as he got on stage all these intelligentsia bods were fucking bopping around to Stephen King singing blues. It was wicked."
W&H: ALAMABA 3 HAVE AN AFFINITY FOR PEOPLE WHO LIVE OUTSIDE THE LAW. WHY?
Larrry: "Bob Dylan said: “To live outside the law, you must be honest.” I mean, being a musician, skint and on the dole, you do hang out with men or women of an alternative financial persuasion.
I dunno, you can get your Chris Martins and your Gwyneth Paltrows buying organic baby food and calling children ‘Apple’ – which is all very nice, and the world needs their Coldplays – but Rock ‘n’ Roll has been associated with outsider mythology. Like selling your soul to the Devil at the crossroads.
I mean, you have your average gangsters, and then you get city bankers. These guys are rewarding themselves £2.5 million every year, whilst there’s some poor old Doris living in a one bedroom flat without a pension cause they’ve liquidated the company who provide the pension schemes, and there’s nothing she can do about it. They are the fucking criminals, it’s as much thieving as armed robbery."
W&H: YEP. THEY’RE TOTAL FUCKING BASTARDS.
Larry: "Well yeah. I think that as a songwriter it’s important to be aware of these issues. It’s all very well doing sex, drugs and rock n roll, but it’s good to get involved. We’re involved with organisations that work with domestic violence survivors, we do the prison gigs, stuff like that. It keeps us on our toes, you know? But I don’t want to do it in a ‘Bono’ kind of way. With him, and others like him it’s all about self-gratis and their own self-worth rather than tackling the fundamental issues that are there."
W&H: MAYBE BONO IS COMPENSATING FOR BEING SHORT?
Larry: "Exactly. Get those fucking platforms on baby!"
W&H: TELL US ABOUT YOUR PRISON GIGS.
Larry: "We do these gigs where we take instruments into prisons, so people can rehabilitate themselves for the better. We first did one about seven years ago, but this time round it’s a lot different. It’s not like playing to your normal foul-mouthed sex-drugs and rock ‘n’ roll rampage, the prison gigs are more serene, and they make for a really good vibe in the prison afterwards. At the end of the day, whether a man or a woman commits a crime there’s no harm in giving them music. And we get strength from it as well. It’s not being a charity, it’s what we need."
W&H: HOW DID A WELSHMAN LIVING IN BRIXTON END UP DOING THE SPORANOS THEME TUNE?
Larry: "David Chase heard our track [Woke Up this Morning] driving down the New Jersey Freeway, and he thought it was an American band. He went to San Fransisco to meet us, and he thought it would be some guys from Alabama, then he thought it would be three black kids from the Bronx, but then he found a Welshman and a Scotsman who lived in Brixton.
We're not glorifying gun culture with this song. I didn’t write it about gangsters, I wrote the song about a woman called Sarah Thornton, a woman who shot her abusive husband. Plus I’m really proud to be associated with the Sopranos, it’s not an albatross or anything like that. If we’d done the soundtrack to Friends it might be a bit different."
W&H: HOW WOULD YOU INTRODUCE A NEWCOMER TO YOUR MUSIC?
Larry: "They should start by recognising that Elvis is a divine being sent from God. If they believe that, then everything else falls into place."
W&H: ANY TAKE HOME MESSAGES FOR OUR READERS?
Larry: "Yeah. If you want to find peace in the valley, you gotta steal the keys to the mansion on the hill."
W&H: THANKS VERY MUCH.
Larry: "No worries. You behave yourself."
W&H: I WILL. I’M STAYING IN WITH MY CATS TONIGHT.
Larry: "Well don’t experiment on them."
(Check out the mad-ass exploits of Alabama 3 at www.myspace.com/alabama3)
|
