Gaz Coombes turns the car around
As frontman of UK rockers Supergrass, Gaz Coombes was a pioneer of Britpop, a decade-defining musical movement of the nineties that shaped popular culture with millions of record sales and globetrotting tours. In the last ten years, since the band dissolved, Coombes’ has kept the music coming, with the release of four solo albums, including his latest LP Turn The Car Around. SHANNON FOX caught up with Gaz Coombes to find out more, starting with his opinion on the current state of music…
It depends how much I’m listening to for me to tell. I guess this last year or so I haven’t listened to an awful lot of new music but I’ve had previous years where I’ve been on the panel for the Mercury Prize for example and you get sent 250 records on an iPod and a month or so to go through them. I’ve done that a couple of times and that was really interesting. I was listening to stuff that I never would have found before. It’s sort of weird really, I haven’t been listening to an awful lot but you know I just go down rabbit holes online and find stuff, or a friend will tell me about a record. So, actually, recently I found some good stuff. It’s brilliant to see bands like Wet Leg doing so well.
We just had Wet Leg in Perth because they were on tour with Harry Styles. We’ve got all the big pop stars coming back to Perth. We’ve had Harry, we’ve had Ed Sheeran …
Brilliant, I need to get one of those support slots really don’t I? ‘I’m available!’
‘Harry I’m available’! You know what I like about those gigs is the teenage fandom. You’ve talked previously about music being quite a unifying experience and you can see it when you go to those gigs.
Well those guys are pros, they really know how to do it, and how to bring in the audience, especially in these times with social media when it’s all about that connection between fans and the artists.
I like to think you get that on any level. I played a show, a very small show, in London before Christmas where I was just trying out the new material, a bit of a showcase, and there was a vibe in the room that I hadn’t felt for a long time. I don’t know if it’s just random, if there was something in the air that night, but you feel that real togetherness with everybody and there’s just a swell of joy, or emotion and that’s the beautiful thing about live performance.
(Referring to a clip on Instagram where Gaz asks for a drink and it is crowd surfed from the bar to the stage) Is that the video where you get passed the cocktail on instagram?
(laughs) No that was just an in store actually! That was just me with my acoustics playing a few songs. But again that was even smaller, that was even more intimate. You get those moments where they’re just spontaneous and it’s just a room full of like minded people who are up for the same experience which I think is brilliant.
I thought that was really cool, I did like that.
That was a nice drink as well.
That’s good, as long as no one took a little sip.
Or just popped something in.
It might have been a very different gig then!
(laughs) Yeah!
Speaking of fandom, is there anyone that you would bother camping out for?
Ooh, these days, I don’t know! Unfortunately they’ve all died.
Who would it have been?
I mean I’d always camp out to see David Bowie, or to see Queen in their pomp, to see Freddy. But you know these days, I still think one of the best modern live shows I’ve been to was The White Stripes in Coney Island in I think 2008 or 2007 as far as modern artists go.
Well I’ll admit one of my favourite ever shows was seeing you guys play in Perth. It was the kind of show where it goes for a couple of hours but you feel like it’s only been ten minutes. I went to see Pavement recently, and I love Pavement, but a two hour show felt like a two hour show.
Yeah it’s always dodgy territory. I always think an hour and a half. I mean I can’t go longer than an hour and a half myself, even if I was watching Bowie. Even if it was Bowie, it’d be like (looks at watch) ‘hour and half Dave (cut off hand signal) zip it.’
‘Time for a kebab.’
Yeah!
You’ve been doing this for thirty years, how do you maintain a passion for it?
By creating new music. It’s never really something I was interested in, just playing through the old hits year after year, it doesn’t really excite me that much. As proud as I am of that whole period it’s just a different mindset. So it’s all about creating new work, new music to get excited about and then it just naturally follows that I’d like to play it and get this band together of all these cool like minded guys that I work with and who’ve now become really close friends. So for me it’s about that, about having a great experience and taking it out on the road and enjoying it and having fun together and enjoying music. As long as I keep creating I’ll have passion.
Would you say Supergrass fans are following you into your solo career or are you picking up new fans as well?
I think it’s a bit of both probably from what I can tell. Many times people would say to me that they hadn’t heard Supergrass stuff before and they uncovered it through hearing my stuff and it just obviously works both ways.
Thinking about single Long Live The Strange, do you think there are still outsiders (in the music scene)?
I would have thought so, I don’t see what would have changed particularly and I think in the times that we are living in maybe it’s even more highlighted. I think there’s so many ways to exist. Maybe for wrong or right reasons, I don’t know, but there’s maybe more spaces to get lost in, in a strange way. I still see it all the time and I feel it and I’m attracted to people who are unusual in some way. I’ve had an autistic daughter for 19 years and have got very used to seeing the world through her eyes a bit and how she processes life. I see it all around I guess.
It seems to me like genres and lines have blurred somewhat. And musicians are more contactable on social media and their lives are more out there …
Yeah I mean it’s a difficult one to know, I don’t know which works or what I prefer. I came from a time growing up where the artists I really love, I sometimes wouldn’t know what they were doing or if they were in the studio for six months. I thought they might have split up. You talk to your mates at school and it’s like ‘where’s The Cure gone?’ or ‘where are The Smiths? I haven’t heard anything…’ You kind of think they’ve split up and then it comes out in the NME that they’re recording a record.
There’s a mystery and an enigmatic feel to that I think. I’m not going to say it’s missing from music because it’s just where we’re at, and everything evolves and moves through phases, and at the moment we are at this very quite intense stage where everybody is on top of each other, but, you know, we’ll work through it. It makes for interesting stuff as well, at least it makes it all colourful. There’s loads of variety.
I guess it’s more egalitarian, anyone can access music, anyone can put their music out there. But you do lose, I think, that mystique of the untouchable rock persona, or being really excited when something new comes out, or even just reading street press.
Yep completely, completely, but you know I still think there’s room for all of that stuff. I don’t think anybody has to do anything, I don’t think anybody has to necessarily do social media. You’ll get talked into it if you’re a professional. They think you’re bonkers for not maximising every possible angle, but yeah, we’re still free to do what we want really if we don’t entertain all that.
I guess there’s pressure to be a content creator as well as a musician.
Yeah (laughs). I don’t know if I’ll ever crack that but it’s quite an interesting development.
You said you hadn’t been listening to much music this past year, do you listen to other music when you’re writing?
No, not really. I tend to find it distracts from being able to be instinctive and write something that’s happening subconsciously. I guess if I’m making something it might distract from my thought process or the focus that I’m on at that point. And then once I’ve started writing and recording I’m just fully immersed in the record. So I’ve kind of spent a year and a half or whatever just listening to and working on this record.
I’ve been listening to it and have already picked my favourites. I was ‘in my feelings’ today and a song caught me off guard and made me go ‘woah.’ The last track, Dance On, pulled me out of my head.
Oh cool, nice one! I’m very, very close to this record. It was written and recorded in a very unusual time and, not that it really refers to particularly much of that in terms of the pandemic, but yeah, recorded in a really odd time and it became sort of a close friend to me. I’d just come over here to the studio each day and visit and tinker away and work on it. So when I finished it I was a bit bereft for a few weeks. Kind of like ‘no! Where’s it gone?’ It’s a strange feeling.
I get that, you know when you finish a really good book or a good series and you’re like ‘now what?’
Yeah exactly, and it was a brilliant outlet as well. It was a really satisfying and rewarding experience because the album was coming together really well and I was just in a zone. I’m lucky to have had that over that period.
I wonder, with Covid, if that boredom breeds creativity for a lot of people?
It didn’t to begin with, I didn’t do anything for six months. From what I could gather from other friends and what I was reading it was just a little bit of a shell shocked feeling for a lot of people at the beginning. Then you get into a very small world where you’re taking care of your family and making sure the kids aren’t freaking out and stuff. So, my world became quite simple around that point and I didn’t want to do anything. But yeah, you’re right, as soon as you process everything I guess I was able to then move on with trying to create.
I get the feeling that then going and performing again is quite joyous because everyone is like ‘yes! We are out of the house, we’ve missed live music’ you know? It’s like everyone is just so happy to have something to look forward to and enjoy.
Do you feel it’s different to before? Like the crowd reaction or just the little dynamics within the audience? Because I feel that it’s different.
Yes, I feel like everyone is full of gratitude.
Yeah there’s a bit more intensity in the responses. This is what I had in London before Christmas, it took me aback really. It was like ‘wow, everyones really excited about this, this is brilliant!’