Pulverising riffs, tender figures and howling dissonance, Mogwai have been doing it for me for nearly fifteen years now. One of two bands (SFA being the other one) that cause me to yearn for the laughs, closeness and camaraderie that come with being in a band. Funny, generous and fierce - check out ‘Batcat’. I caught up with Martin who, when his heart isn’t exploding or he’s not battering the shite out of Guitar Hero, plays the drums for the best Scottish band since The Jesus & Marychain.
1. Where are you? Describe your immediate surroundings.
We are playing a show in Denver CO tonight in a venue called the Bluebird. The gig is such a dirty, horrible, stinking hole that we have all decided to stay on the bus rather than spend any more time than needs be there. The venue also has a compressor on the PA system which they won’t turn off so the show tonight is going to sound fucking atrocious.
So, I’m sitting on our bus, the aircon isn’t cold enough, the tv doesn’t work and neither does the sound system. All in all it’s been quite an interesting day so far. Speed on the show!
2. I had a proper job once and I am highly offended by the suggestion that what
I do now isn’t considered as such. What’s your favourite thing about not having a proper job?
Well, before Mogwai started becoming our main source of income I used to work in a Cantonese restaurant. I worked there on average 70 hours a week, that included split shifts and weekends. It was pretty hard trying to combine shows and tours etc with that so I quit. Anyway, even although I get paid alot better being in the ‘Gwai, when you are on tour or in the studio the days can be just as long and tiring. I do think that most people back home think it’s all wild parties and snorting coke from bare breasted ladies but I’m sure you know very well that the Mogwai experience is one big sausage party.
Aye, so the best thing about not having a day job is that you get to sleep in as long as you want. I do really like the traveling aspect too.
3. How far is the moon from the earth? Don’t google it, I’ll know if you do. I will.
Stuart once told me it was “about 5miles” to the moon and he sincerely believed that. It must be mentioned that Stuart’s father, who is without doubt the cleverest person I have ever met, makes telescopes for a living.
4. ‘Does she go?’ You used to hear that question alot when I was younger, ‘Does she go?’ Meaning, obviously, ‘Does she go? I used to just say nothing. I thought they meant ‘does she urinate?’ and I would wonder why on earth anyone would want to know that. I also didn’t know that David Attenborough was Dickie Attenborough’s brother until last year. What hilarious misconceptions do you labour under?
My wife told me it’s thinking that I am going to be beheaded by Abu Siaf if I set foot in the Philippines. She has family there and keeps on at me to go over. I keep saying no.
5. Who is the funniest member of Mogwai? Please provide three examples of this.
This is a hard one. I think they are all funny in different ways. If you are talking about which member is always cracking jokes and making people/himself laugh then it would be Francis Barry Burns. Stuart is also extremely funny in that way and has very good patter. He’s really quick witted so can be a bit of a slayer when it comes to slanging matches. Dominic is usually very quiet but also very sarcastic. It’s actually hard to tell when he is being serious. He also has a tremendous knack of having a few whiskies and coming out with some of the best one-liners you’ll ever hear. We’ve got some great new potential song titles from him eg. “drunken horny rage” and “arrested in a bus full of friends” to name but a couple. I guess you had to be there though. And John, John is just funny.
6. People keep banging on about the complex and bewildering number of genres in music nowadays. Now you and I know that this is patent rubbish. There’s ‘Pop’, ‘Rock’ and ‘Electronic Folk Metal’. Now I’m not going tell you which one I think you are (no fear) but maybe you think you’re one of the other ones, ‘Pop’ say, or ‘Rock’. How would define what you do?
Avant hard with hard bits.
Shagging music.
7.New employment laws dictate that you must employ one more member. Who would it be?
Probably our old friend and collaborator Luke Sutherland although I’m sure he’d tell us to fuck off. Luke used to be in the amazing Long Fin Killie and now writes books for a living. He’s played violin and guitar on some of our records and is one of the best human beings I’ve met. He doesn’t drink but likes to stack the empty cans.
8. You can pass three laws that will make Britain a better place. What are they?
First one would be to make me dictator, I would in turn dissolve the Royal family. I would then split the UK into 3 countries, Wales, Scotland and England and give the 6 counties back to the Irish. You take charge of England, give Gruff his beloved Wales.
As dictator of Scotland all public services that were once State owned before that cunt Thatcher sold them off would once again be owned by the people, everyone would have a home. Scotland’s nuclear deterrent would be scrapped and I would give myself a nice country estate to run the country from in a Putin-esque style. Oh, and military service for neds. If they like fighting so much they can do it in the name of Scotland. Utopia, no?
9. What can you tell us about the genesis, writing and recording of the ‘The Precipice’?
We took 4 amps, a generator, a drumkit, several guitars and effects to the edge of a cliff. The very edge. Pressed play on the dictafone and that’s what came out. Sheer majestic majesty .
10. Dominic138 of Twitter writes.
“Minneapolis last night was a bit of a shambles, computer meltdowns, wrong tunings and inter-band onstage confusion. I was awesome though.”
What happened? Did you have a fight, a proper fight with big sticks and Glasgow kisses? Was anyone sacked? Should Dominick be now considered the true heart and ipso facto leader of Team Mogwai?
There was no violence whatsoever. We thought about it but Dom gave us one of his icy cold stares and we all ran like whimpering children. Since Mogwai’s inception in 1995, Dom has always been the cold and calculating evil genius pulling the strings. Stuart always comes across as being the public face of the ‘Gwai but in actual fact he is Dom’s bitch.
This weeks Ten Questions were thrown at Alan McGee. I first met Alan in 1991 in a pub in Hackney. He was seated at a table chatting with Lydia Lunch. I have no idea what we talked about but he put me up in a hotel that night as I had missed my train back up North. Over the years since we’ve had a up and down relationship but he remains, as the founder of my favourite Record Label, Creation Records, a big influence on my teenage years. Now retired, he looks after his daughter and, if his Tweets are to be believed, spends the rest of the time drinking coffee and giving the Finnish staff and assorted WAGs who frequent his pool inspirational talks on the benefits of Sushi.
1. Where are you? Describe your immediate surroundings.
on couch in london till i move to wales in july
2. Anybody following you on Twitter would think that you are a crass, rude, arrogant, money obsessed, caffeine fueled,
sushi gobbling bully, but in person you are a sensitive, generous and articulate man. Do you consciously adopt a public
persona or does it happen naturally after so many years of fighting your corner?
i agree on all points the thing is i truly don’t give a fuck
3. Which year at Creation Records do you feel was your best in terms of artistic/business satisfaction?
1991 1992 for the music we never got rich till 97 i liked the end bit best video ever is kevin rowland video we rocked
4. You once described ‘Wake Up Boo’ as an ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ which, as I’m sure readers will know, was the title of a J.G Ballard novel.
He’s dead now and, let’s be honest, you have to shoulder some of the blame for that. What other records (records, not bands) that came out on Creation would
you rather have come out on another label, if at all?
Loveless isn’t anything and soon I hate mbv I wish I had never signed them tuneless garbage
5. You’ve retired. Is that for good? C’mon you can’t sit around drinking coffee forever. What’s next?
the school run and the great thing is i don’t have to go in
6. If Creation had folded after a couple of singles what do you think you would be doing now?
on a park bench
7. The thing I most like about you is the fact that your interpretation of Rock’n'Roll is whatever you happen to be doing at any given time. Is the idea of
four-pale-young-things-with-guitars-as-rebellious-act redundant now?
no because glasvegas and the grants still make me believe it’s possible
8. I’ve noticed on your tweets that you regularly lambast LA and Shoreditch as being ’shitholes’ yet you live in St John’s Wood which is really just a Beatle-
themed graveyard. Where in the world do you feel most at home?
i actually live in primrose hill all the celebs moved into my road so i moved into another of my properies
9. How many readers of your guardian blog could you fight in one go?
i’m 48 martin then again probably so are they
10. “Fate is kind to me” exclaims Grigory Petrovitch Liharev in Chekov’s ‘On the Road’ ; “I am always meeting splendid people”
Which person were you most glad to meet?
dan treacy of tv personalities he is still a punk rocker and showed me even a twat like me could run a record company
This week I telekinetically winged ten questions over to the force of mouthture that is Caitlin Moran. Caitlin used to write for Melody Maker and now writes for The Times and appears on TV spouting rubbish about crap. I first met her in Dublin at the beginning of 1994; I was trying to eat my dinner without interrupting an almost perpetual influx of beer and cigarettes and she was standing on the table, on the table mind, shouting her damn fool head off. I thought she was a nob, Queen Nob, but within hours of that we were best friends and I love her to bits. She has done much for me and my family but despite earning over a million pounds a year and living in a castle she still can’t beat me in a Beatles quiz, not even the ones where she writes the questions (her favourite kind of quiz). She can talk on any subject for at least ten minutes, makes a mean Victoria Sponge and has trained her youngest child to torment me, possibly into an early grave. Beautiful, funny and clever, it’s the only thing we both agree on.
1. Where are you? Describe your surroundings.
I am in my kitchen, which is based around the themes of RED, CAFFIENE and ORANGES SLOWLY ROTTING IN THE FRUIT BOWL MAKING A BAD SMELL. On the fridge there’s a torn-out picture of Michael Sheen looking sexy as Brian Clough. All the women of the house are enjoying how confusing this is.
2. Which childhood experience has had the biggest effect on your writing?
At the age of thirteen, through long and tortuous events too tedious to go into, I believed that I had brought about the downfall of my family, who were very poor, and in a precarious situation. For the first month after my indiscretion, I would run an answer the doorbell whenever it rang, believing that if it were the bailiffs, I might be able to simply talk them out of it, using my considerable charm, before my parents found out. When I realised that I might occasionally have to leave the house – thus leaving the entire family in peril – I decided I would simply have to earn enough money to save us all, so I started writing a minimum of 2000 words every day, until I’d finished a book. I couldn’t believe I’d finished a book at the age of fourteen! And then, when it was accepted for publication, I couldn’t believe that my desperate desire to save my family with a humourous childrens’ novel had succeeded! Then they told me I’d only get £1600 for it, and I realised I might need to switch to Plan B. Ponzi schemes.
3. Yesterday, Sonny and I explored a few back alleys in Grangetown with my camera, looking for peeling paint and arcane graffiti.
On one wall somebody had sprayed, in blue paint, ‘1996 The Year of Progressive House’. Is that how you remember that year?
I spent all of 1996 extremely stoned, in the first year of the relationship with the man who is now my husband. We became so indolent with marijuana that we used to lower a basket out of the window when the pizza-man came, so we didn’t have to go down two flights of stairs. He would put the pizzas and the change from £20 in the basket, and we would haul it back up again. As a consequence, 1996 was the year I became so fat I spent all summer wearing a nightie and a pair of Nike hi-tops, because I thought a chunky shoe would make my legs look thinner, by contrast.
4. In the style of Twitter (104 words max). What are you most afraid of?
The kind of insanity where you become very fat and shit yrself every time you make a joke.
5. Cheese or Chocolate?
CHEESE. This week - Comte. Waxy yet slightly crunchy, with salt crystals. And a celery-salt biscuit on the side. The Moran family is famous for having invented the dish “Cheese on Cheese.” It even has a theme-song (singing the words “cheese on cheese” to the tune of “Girls On Film” by Duran Duran.)
6. “Man, these things are instant imagination” Says Winston in Paul Beatty’s ‘Tuff’ as he polishes his gun on the stoop
“It’s like having a good idea, but you don’t know exactly what it is yet”
Do you have a single muse or totem, an object/idea/memory/person that inspires all your work?
Yes. Russell Crowe in Master and Commander, shouting “Never mind the manouvres – just go straight at them!” Alan Coren’s advice: “The first idea that occurs to you, will have occurred to everyone. The second idea that occurs to you, will have already also occurred to the clever people. But your third idea – only you will have had that one.”
7. Your first book was published when you were only fifteen. You’re thirty four now , how is the second one coming on?
*pious face* I’ve written three of the most important stories of my life: my marriage, and the early years of my two children, Dora and Eavie. You cheeky fuck. Anyway I’m turning out pissing 5000 words a week for Rupert Murdoch – I haven’t got time to menstruate, let alone write a book. Get off my fucking back. Holy mother of God.
8. Ok, here’s your big shitty stick. Who you going to beat with it?
All the people Ben Goldacre is annoyed with in Bad Science. He seems to have researched their shitness very thoroughly.
9. What happens after we die?
When I was seven, I used to think you might get your own planet, and be God of it. Now I suspect you just rot in the ground like an old dog, but I haven’t told the kids yet. They think they’re off to Disneyland.
10. I think everybody is aware that it was totally your fault Kurt Cobain killed himself. What other pivotal roles have you played in era defining moments of popular culture?
I broke Brett Anderson’s toilet cistern.
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