Photo by Steve Gullick
Post-rock slow burners MOGWAI have been around since 1996. Made up of Stuart Braithwaite (guitar, vocals), John Cummings (guitar, vocals), Barry Burns (guitar, piano, synthesizer, vocals), Dominic Aitchison (bass guitar), and Martin Bulloch (drums), the band is touring to support their 8th studio album Rave Tapes, recorded at their own Castle of Doom studios in Scotland.
NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION was lucky enough to sit down with guitarist John Cummings. We are at Berlin’s Tempodrom, a 3,800 person circus-tent-looking building that the band is going to play later that evening. It’s a big space, and MOGWAI is playing here for the first time. I noticed John has two small wounds over his left eye, and he begins the interview by apologizing. Read on to find out the source of the wounds, the name of the MOGWAI song titles, and how this band has stayed together for almost twenty years.
So this is the biggest venue in Berlin you’ve played. But MOGWAI has a special tie to Berlin because Barry lives here. Do you come here often?
I live in Glasgow, I don’t come too much. Barry is here and the rest of us are there in Scotland.
You’ve managed to stay together for a long time. Any special strategies?
Just…apologizing? [laughs]
Is it like blanket apologies or do you seek out certain people? Or do you just wake up everyday and say “I’m sorry”?
It depends. Today was a bit of a [motions to wounds] ‘Do I have to apologize to anybody?’ I was drinking too much, MOGWAI was here last night and we were out. I woke up this morning and [affects morning after voice] ‘Oh no…What happened? My face is sore.’ Turns out I fell over on the stairs.
So that wasn’t a bar fight?
Oh no, no. [laughs]
So you guys have crossed the fifteen-year mark?
Next year will be twenty years.
What’s it like being the old guard, the established band?
It’s pretty weird.
MOGWAI: ‘There was not any expectation that this would be a job.’
Did you expect that?
No. It was just nice that someone was letting us make seven inches and then an album. There was not any expectation that this would be a job.
What are your thoughts on the recent spate of reunions of bands from the ninedties? SOUNDGARDEN, PAVEMENT, and the PIXIES all went on tour and GRANDADDY reunited for a few shows? What are your thoughts on this?
Sometimes it’s great to see bands either we’ve never seen before or haven’t seen for a long time. It was great seeing PAVEMENT, and the PIXIES were just amazing. It’s a good thing if you’ve never seen the bands and you like their albums. I guess it’s because of the negotiating on the internet that bands aren’t making money from their back catalogue as much, so they have to earn their money to pay their bills. It seems a bit strange when bands come back and start releasing albums again, that seems pretty weird. But that’s what bands do: make albums.
As a band, MOGWAI curated an All Tomorrow’s Parties in 2009, and you recently created the soundtrack to the French TV program Les Revenants and the score to Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, about a French footballer. Barry co-owns a bar here that features music, art and films. Evidence suggests that MOGWAI is so much more than simply a band, but interested in other cultural arenas. Is that accurate?
It doesn’t seem like they’re different’ it’s just a natural extension of what we do. With the soundtrack stuff, it’s something that is quite easily thought of for instrumental music. But it not’s necessarily a straightforward as a lot of people just presume. When we are asked to do interesting things, we’re happy to go for it.
How is it different, doing a film or TV show score?
Well there’s a lot more collaboration, you have to do what your told. Certainly, historically we’ve been pretty bad at doing things other people tell us to do. [laughs] As we get older we are realizing that it’s just different from making a record.
So are you getting more docile or flexible as you get older?
A little bit more pragmatic. If we want to be involved in interesting projects like that, those projects only exist because someone else has created them.
How did you come up with your song and album titles? How related are they to the music? Tell me about the inspiration for Rave Tapes.
The song and album naming process is not …. difficult for us, but there’s just not really much to think about because it’s instrumental music. There’s not one person attaching literal or metaphoric meaning to things.
But there are some bands who just name their songs ‘Whatever,’ just to give it a title.
Yeah we kind of do that; usually it’s something that amuses us. Rave Tapes, just sounds kind of funny, referring to those cassette recordings of raves, DJ mixes that people would swap and you could go to shops and buy them.
There’s a nineties reference.
Yeah, it’s something from rave culture. It was from when we were all quiet young, to be involved in taping raves at the time. Just an amusing phrase.
Photo by Steve Gullick
So what I’m hearing you say is you name your songs or albums to give them titles; it’s not necessarily related to what the song or album sounds like. Then people can take those titles and really interpret them on his or her own. Have you ever heard anything that’s been completely off?
All the time. I think we made fun of people too much, no one tells us anymore [laughs]. I remember Christmas Steps, off our second album, named after a street in Bristol. It’s a street that has lots of steps in it. People thought it was about the build up to Christmas and the excitement of opening your presents and stuff like that. I mean, you call the songs something, and people expect it to have some attachment.
It’s the same way you name a child and then the child grows up and you’re like ‘They’re a bit of a Margaret or like a Robert.’ You just gave the child a name! You gave a child a name and it doesn’t have any bearing or any reflection of its character.
Yeah but I think you meet people and you think ‘You’re a ‘Chris,’ you could never be a ‘Steve’ or an ‘Edgar.’
Yeah, it seems that way, but that’s just a total nonsense that people think of.
You are from Glasgow, Scotland. How formative or important is the general vibe and history of Scotland in relation to your music?
I don’t think being from a place can have that much bearing on the music you make. Taking that to an extreme: every band from Glasgow would say the same. Glasgow enjoys a certain distance from London, and historically has been a bit more distant from the music business. If people want to be in a band, they do it because they want to be in a band. You don’t find people starting bands to get famous, which seems like more of a London-centric media thing.
Our magazine is called NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION. I want you to think about those two words: hope and passion and what they mean to you. I’ll give you a little bit of time to think about it.
Hope’s a good one: it’s a lovely and positive thought. There’s nothing bad about it. There’s a Sandman comic where the Sandman ends up in some duel with the Devil. It’s a battle of wills where the Sandman eventually wins by saying ‘I am hope’ and defeating whatever badness there was. That’s always stuck with me, doesn’t matter what terrible or horrible situation you are in but you can get out of it, if you have hope.
Passion: the British have a funny relationship with passion. We don’t like to be too passionate about things. People are a bit more restrained. It’s not like we don’t have any passions; we get excited about things. But to be going around passionate…seems a wee bit not right.
Is it seen like showing off?
Yeah, I think, British people, Scottish people certainly don’t like a show off. But obviously not having passions for things, not a lot would get done.
So it exists for you, but under a layer of restraint?
Yeah, that’s a good place for it.
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