HARD ROCK INTERVIEWS 2014 - STIFF LITTLE FINGERS JAKE BURNS
STIFF LITTLE FINGERS mainman Jake Burns from iconic Punk band SLF talks about coming to Australia, where it all started and the first new album in ten years ...
JANUARY 2014 |
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STIFF LITTLE FINGERS was always head and shoulders above every other Punk band for me, and these days it's hard to imagine bands like Green Day, Bad Religion or Therapy existing sounding like they do without SLF. A band that sounded like no other, a band that proved that you could sing about real life rather than cliche and make it vital. For me at least a band like no other, and one which has both a visit downunder set for SOUNDWAVE 2014 and a new album - the first in ten years about to drop off the back of an insanely successful Pledge Music campaign. Jake Burns is a guy I have laways wanted to speak to since first time I saw the band at a show that has perhaps stayed with me more than any other... |
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Mark: Hi, Jake, how are you?
Jake: That’s very kind of you, it’s been a while since we’ve been there, and we are very much looking forward to it.
Mark: My earliest memory of you guys, was when I was a kid, I had a ticket to see you at Nottingham, Rock City, it was 1987, The Reformation Tour, I wasn’t a fan of punk, I was strictly rock, but I was blown away and it opened up my eyes to a lot more music, and showed that a band can sing about real life and make it interesting. So, many years later, I just wanted to take the opportunity to say thanks you for that!! Jake: Thank you for being there! Mark: While you’re over for Soundwave, any chance of some solo shows, or are you just playing the festivals? Jake: We’re supposed to be playing shows on our own in Sydney and Melbourne, but we haven’t actually been told the venues yet, we’ve been told the dates, but not the venues! It’s kind of embarrassing because we have people writing to us and saying where are you playing, because we really want to come! It’s leaving it a little bit late to announce this, but that’s down to the promoters, not us! So, hopefully, yes, is the short answer to that long winded answer! Mark: SOUNDWAVE so tend to promote very well though, and I’m sure you’ll get a great crowd. There’s a big buzz here, as we have a lot of English and Irish ex pats over here in the west. After Australia, you are going over to Japan, and the UK tour kicks off, is this all part of the ‘Up a Gear’ Tour? Jake: No, at the moment, we’re actually in the recording studio, so we are hoping to have the album finished, before we head out. We are heading out to New Zealand, before we head out to you, so we’re hoping to have the album finished, and so I’m guessing whatever the album’s title, which is “No Going Back”, rather inappropriate, since we are going back to Australia, for the first time in 6 years!! But, you get the idea, so the tour will be themed on that, it is a long tour, at the moment we’ve only announced the dates, up to Portsmouth, which is April 1st, but then the tour goes over to Europe, and doesn’t actually finish until the last day of April, or something like that, so we are pretty much on the road up until May.
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Mark: The new album was launched by Pledge, and I believe you hit the target within a few hours, which is amazing!
Jake: Not really, I hit my 50th birthday, about 5 years ago, and at that point I’d written about 9 or 10 songs that were going to form the basis of the next album, and in that 5 year gap, I got divorced, moved out and met somebody else, fell in love, and then moved to America, so that kind of took a bit of my time up! When I hit 50, my wife decided to throw me a big party, and make a big fuss about it, but I really didn’t want the fuss making, I’m not the sort of person that pays much attention to birthdays. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I had to leave almost the day after this party that she had thrown. A lot of friends turned up, and it was great, some of them were people I’d known all my life, and so through the next tour, because of seeing all these guys, some of them I hadn’t seen in years, I was kind of taking stock of my life up until that point, does that make sense? I came back after the tour, and sat down and listened to the songs that I had, and thought it’s not really very good! It felt like I was writing by numbers, that’s the obvious middle section to put there, and the lyrics were a bit tired, and it felt like I was writing a Stiff Little Fingers record, because I had to, not because I wanted to. So, I phoned the band and said you know all those songs, I’m scrapping them, and so I wasn’t very popular! But, we kept the bones of a couple of them, and re wrote them, went back and I definitely think it was time well spent, because now, as I said, we are in the studio, and it’s shaping up to be a very good record, I don’t want to speak before we finish it, but we’re all getting very excited about it, it sounds a lot better than it really has any right to, at this stage in our career. |
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Mark: It sounds great, you’ve actually got the title now, “No Going Back”, you have the art work, and the full track listing, all the songs, and it’s just putting the finishing touches to them?
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Mark; Another song, that personally touches a lot of people is “My Dark Places”, hopefully that’s going to be on the record as well.
Mark: And the fact that’s it’s a really amazing song as well!
Jake: Well, if you do, please come and say hello, and we’ll have a beer or something.
Jake Burns spoke to Mark Diggins January 2014 |
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