Interview Kula Shaker. Oor, 6 February, 1999.

by Oene Kummer (translated by Lady K)

(pictures by Niels Van Iperen)

On the album Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts, Kula Shaker seem to go on in the same line as its successful predecessor, K. However, these last two years certain things have happened -things like false accusations, difficult album recordings - which have affected the self-confidence of the British band. Especially the personal frustrations of frontman, Crispian Mills, who feels totally misunderstood, gives Kula Shaker a vulnerable impression. "To be part of the music business is an alienating experience."

I read the news but the news didn't fascinate
I stayed at home and watched the media retaliate
(from : S.O.S.)

When did it go wrong for Kula Shaker? It went wrong in 1997 when Crispian Mills gave the opportunity to those who hated the band to accuse him of having nazi-sympathies. In an interview, Mills had freely talked about his positive feelings for the Swastika, a symbol of peace in the Indian culture for thousands of years, before Hitler and co. abused it and it became a symbol of hatred in the Third Reich. If Mills had restricted himself to just these facts, then nothing had been the matter, but he also declared that still loved the swastika despite all the torture that is still nowadays associated with it. You can guess the results. The quote was taken out of its context and in no time you could read everywhere that Crispian Mills was a fan of the Swastika. (in Dutch you have the word 'Swastika' (which is more positive) and the word 'hakenkruis' (which is very negative) this last sentence is : ...was a fan of the [hakenkruis] - me)

The band quickly came with an explanation in which the misunderstanding was explained and Mills' good intentions were stressed, but the commotion only became bigger when an English newspaper printed a picture dating from the early 90s with a 19-year old Crispian Mills as a member of a band with a somewhat militaristic image, The Objects of Desire. One of the other bandmembers appears to be Marcus McLaine, a one time member of the British National Front and during that time also the lover of Crispian's mum, Hayley Mills.

From that moment on, Crispian's situation doesn't look good. In interviews, he had always presented himself as an idealist and a spiritual searcher. He was someone who wanted to change the world with his muziek. He had great stories about India, spirituality, buddhism, mysticism, white magic, flying saucers and the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. Mills never hesitated to give a juicy quote and by doing this, he had made friends and enemies. And now, he had given the people who didn't like them a stick to wag the dog. Other bands alienated themselves in public from the band, the reader's sections in British music magazines were full of angry letters directed at Kula Shaker and some journalists made the whole thing worse by pointing to the fact that Mills, who came from an artistic and was a 'bit out of this world', never had anything to complain about when it came to financial things and this made him already suspicious. In short, the level of the discussion got lower and lower, the facts got forgotten and the evil was done. Crispian Mills had become a suspect. From the moment Kula Shaker was done touring and the first demos for the next album were recorded, Mills went to India with his wife. To take a break from everything that happened and to get things in perspective for himself. And then it was 1998, the new single Sound of Drums was released and it was time for a new round of interviews. The storm around Kula Shaker had by this time calmed down and normal discussion was possible again. Crispian Mills was not a Nazi, that much was obvious. And Marcus McLaine was, when he was in the Objects of Desire together with Crispian, already more than 10 years gone from the National Front, so it wasn't all that bad. And well, there had been other popstars who had been fascinated by the Third Reich, from David Bowie to Spandau Ballet. And you don't hear anyone talking about that anymore?! And yet. Yet, Crispian Mills gives an uncertain, vulnerable impression in 1998. He is damaged. Hunted down. He will still have to read very often that he is not a nazi. And this is, for somebody who is so idealistic , already bad enough.

I'm just a man who is battling with his mind (from : 108 Battles)

And then it's time for 1999 and it becomes time for the new Kula Shaker album peasants, pigs & astronauts. So we find ourselves in a nice and cosy pub in Highgate, North-London, where the band has its homefront. A door away, is an Indian restaurant, so we immediately understand why the band feels at home here. We get a warm welcome from bassplayer Alonza Bevan, drummer Paul Winterhart and keyboard player Jay Darlington. Only Crispian doesn't seem to be very happy. He is extremely skinny, looks ill and avoids eye contact.

The first part of the photo shoot, on a close-by lane and in a muddy field, goes as desired. When the camera starts clicking, Crispian's face comes alive and we see a glimpse of that charisma that's certainly there. The fuss starts when Crispian doesn't feel like doing the second part of the session, on the pavement in front of the pub. As a compromise, they make a deal that later in that afternoon on another locations more pictures will be made. But now, the Kula Shakers want to do the interview. The four of them on a couch, the journalist in front of them. It's not really what we had expected but the band insists and what follows is a kind of interview-table tennis, during which the band tries to hit back the questions of the journalist as quick as possible. Frustrating, but after a while we get to know a couple of interesting things. The recording of Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts for instance, hasn't gone all that well. At first, the band left for LA to work with Rick Rubin and George Drakoulias. Those sessions resulted in the single Sound of Drums, but the collaboration stopped there. The reason : Kula Shaker wanted to record the rest of the album in London. Rubin & Drakoulias wanted to stay in LA. Neither wanted to compromise so there was no sign of real love. Mills : "It was just a hot date". Winterhart : "We went to LA. We drove around in a Lincoln Continental. We had fun. We went to the beach." Mills :"Rick Rubin had a new Bentley with black leather seats and black tinted windows. He had a miniature carillon hanging on his rear windown. He was some sort of new age-vampire."

The band arrived then with Bob Ezrin. An illustrious name from the past, who is known for his theatrical productions. In the past, he was the man behind albums by Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd, Kiss, Peter Gabriel and last but not least Berlin by Lou Reed. Winterhart : "We met him when we were in LA. His reputation went ahead of him. He has done Destroyer by Kiss. He was a member of Alice Cooper's band. He not only did the keyboards and singing, he also produced Alice Cooper and wrote songs with him. He has taken my girlfriend and I to a show by Alice Cooper a couple of months ago in London. That was real fun. We were treated like royalty." Darlington : "The chemistry was right from the beginning. He has a great sense of humour." Mills : "Alice Cooper?" Darlington : "He also understood that we wanted to make a new album that was one unity, no bits and pieces, no collection of singles, but really a unity." Bevan : "he's a musician himself, so he is also a musical producer and not just a sound engineer. When we wanted some strings or extra musicians, he was always very open to that." Mills : "We could argue with him without spoiling the whole session."

Kula Shaker then finished peasants, Pigs & astronauts with Ezrin. The place where they did it is quite remarkable : a big, as a studio rebuilt boat from the Victorian age, on the Thames. They stayed there the whole summer, so they had that well fixed. Winterhart : "Normally, you are in a recording studio with airconditioning, but without windows. The most exciting thing, when you're not recording, is playing a bit of pool. Here we didn't have a poolgame but we had windows that we could open. You could see the river, the swans and the ducks." We take Paul on his word. However, the 4 who are sitting so cosy together admit that they did worry in the beginning about their 'difficult' second album. Mills : "It was nice to have more time and more money at our disposal, but there was a lot of pressure on us to make the album sound good." Bevan : "We were worried." Mills : "You maybe." Bevan : "He didn't worry, he just blocked up. I worried. Paul always worries. Jay was indifferent." Winterhart : "But we always kept believing in ourselves."

The band found a way out when they were asked to compose the music for the re-released 60s cultfilm Reflections of Love by Joe Massot. Mills : "It was so different from what we were busy with at that moment. It worked so liberating." In the end, Radhe Radhe, written for the film and sounding very Indian, would make it on the new album. Mills : "All of a sudden, we were very creative. We didn't have any problems anymore with spiritual ballast. We just started playing and writing. Then we had fun again. We didn't need to force ourselves anymore."

On Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts, there are 3 songs that were written during the time before K : Golden Avatar, Shower your Love and the single Mystical Machine Gun. Mills : "Oh, it happens more often that artists go completely mad during making the second album and look into their old notes to see if there is something that can be used in there. Mystical Machine Gun was one of the texts I found. It's about 5 years old." Probably inspired by his own frankness, he continues : "Something that also happens is that a band flies to America, records with a famous American producer, notices that it doesn't work and flies back after spending thousands of pounds. And then in England, records with another American producer, spends too much time in the studio, writes arrangements that need big orchestras and spends too much money. That's what happens most of the time. Luckily, it didn't happen to us..."

This way, it may seem like Crispian is in a rather talkative mood, but after this cynical revival, he starts sitting further back on the coach and seems to sink away in a deep depression. When I ask him if he's OK, he asks me if I have enough. Not really, of course. Crispian seems to try to escape, but photographer Van Iperen has some more solo pictures to take of him. He takes a polaroid and shows it to Crispian who concludes that he looks too tired. Crispian takes his jacket, gives us a quick handshake and leaves, leaving the whole Kula Shaker entourage totally bewildered. Even the promotion woman of the British music company, who is used to quite a lot, looks like she is stunned. "We will make this up, even if it's only by telephone," is her comment a bit later on.

So, we continue a bit with the remaining trio and we find out that Crispian is suffering from insomnia and this is the reason why he wasn't himself. We also hear that the band, on top of everything else, has been caught up in a nasty case with their ex-manager, meaning there is less money available than there should have been after a successful album like K. We do understand very well that Kula Shaker haven't had just good times the last couple of years. And the fact that Crispian gives the impression that it's all getting a bit too much for him, we find that very human. But if the people around him talk about unprofessional behaviour, we can't disagree. The behaviour of the Kula Shaker frontman indeed gives a very strange impression.

This is the age of decay and hypocrisy
Sometimes I feel like the world isn't ready for me
(from : S.O.S.)

When we are phoned up by Crispian two weeks later, he sounds a lot more cheerful. "Sorry about last time, I was extremely tired and the coffee I was drinking didn't have any effect. I went home directly after I left and slept until 10am the next morning. Your visit was at the end of two weeks of interviews and I had lost the understanding of what I was doing exactly. You talk and talk on such days and it's not quality time, but maybe it will go much better like this, on the phone."

How are you doing now?

OK, we are now rehearsing for the last 3 weeks, only busy with music. When I can't be busy with music, I get frustrated very quickly. All that travelling and promoting, I get a bit down when I do that. I didn't become a musician to do that sort of thing. And if the coffee doesn't work, it's time to take a break. I could start taking hard drugs, but then I would go totally insane in the end. But, what did we miss out on in London?

Your vision on certain happenings. You had a lot of success with K, but you also got a lot of criticism. It seems like the Kula Shaker story has got a nasty side effect.

When you're successful, you have to be able to deal with that sort of thing. I don't feel that nasty side effect. There have been a couple of very nasty articles in the gossip papers and the music magazines and in the music world, there are a couple of people who don't like us and what to destroy us. It's part of it. To be part of the music business is an alienating experience. It's so extreme, you have to accept all sides of it. There's no point in complaining about it.

But is it worth it?

It depends on how much fun you think your work is. I want to be positive about 1999, about the new album. I had to bite through the sour apple and now I'm happy with where I am.

What would you like to achieve with your music?

I would like to enlighten myself as well, that's the main thing. The urge to enlighten the world goes nearly always together with a certain naivety. At the time of K, I was so enthusiastic that I wanted to share my ideas with everybody. But the more I was talking about it, about mantra's and peace concepts, the more I realised the importance to enlighten yourself first. All that stuff I was talking about is meaningless unless you talk from real experience. That's why I don't want to sound anymore like I have something to prove. I just want people to enjoy the music.

It seems like more feelings of doubt have creeped into the lyrics. Sentences like 'Sometimes I feel like the world isn't ready for me', or 'I'm just a man who is battling with his mind.'

On K there were also songs like Hey Dude and Grateful when you're dead that dealed with doubt, but, erm,...

Now you notice it more!

I think so. When we made K, we were in a big hurry, because the record company and our manager at the time had decided before when the recorde was going to be released. We were on tour and went into the studio in between. There are mistakes on that album, but I am proud of it, because for us it was a huge prestation. K really was the result of our live-work, very energetic and bubbly. This time, we had much more time to make something beautiful of it. We had the opportunity to invite amazing musicians and to play together with them. We have managed to express the mood of the lyrics in the music. But there is always a wink in the lyrics, like in S.O.S.. Sometimes you want to say something, but at the same time you have to laugh with it. If you try something the unconventional way, it doesn't matter, you will always have a couple of million of people who will say that you'd better stop it, or that you're crazy. That's life. You constantly have to battle your own doubts and battle the doubts of others. And sometimes you want to say to everyone, fuck you. That's what S.O.S. is about, be it in a funny way.

Could that be your problem, that people don't understand your sense of humour?

That will certainly have to do with it. In England, we have our allies who will always support us, but there are also people who intentionally don't want to understand that humour is an important thing for us. They want to portray us in a way of 'oh, Kula Shaker, they are just wacky kids who don't know what they are talking about. They have burnt too many joss sticks' We have always been able to laugh with ourselves, but that doesn't mean that there isn't any truth in our lyrics we sing or the subjects we talk about in interviews. But even when you're talking about the end of civilization, you have to be able to laugh with it. Because it's such an absurd situation.

You don't think, like you seem to suggest in Great Hosannah, that mankind will take the new millenium as a chance to create a new and better world?

I think that man has it in his nature to have certain problems that make this almost impossible. Greed, or the urge to destroy things that he has made himself first. We could work on this together but you can't force that kind of thing. People could work on themselves without waiting to see if the other does it too. It's a question of finding the right balans between worrying about the world and taking responsibility for yourself. The collective is more important, that should never be forgotten. In this also lies the force of music. Music 'sings' to the individual and therefore will always be popular. A lot of people feel alienated from each other and of society. But music tries to give people the feeling that they are being understood, that they can communicate with you on a personal level. That's what we try. That's our message for the new millenium.