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Milly Youngman

Pugwash New’s Marketing & Distribution Manager, Milly Youngman, interviews Luke Johnson, Lostprophets’ drummer.

PN: How is the tour going so far?
LJ: Good, really good; it’s nice to come back and do a tour that’s long! We’ve been doing little patches of three or four shows here and there towards the tail end of last year, but to put this tour on, which is actually the longest tour Lostprophets have ever done and have it all sell out is amazing.
PN: What do you do to occupy yourselves while touring?
LJ: A whole bunch of things. I’m actually taking on doing video blogs; I bought a little flip cam and have just put the first blog to the label yesterday, so I’m probably going to be doing a lot of that, five minute blogs throughout the tour, and usually filming and editing that takes up a lot of my time. Ian designed a lot of the album artwork – we did all the album artwork ourselves – and he’s designed a few t-shirts and the backdrop, so everyone’s always got something going on.
PN: Do you have any die-hard fans that follow you round to all the gigs?
LJ: I haven’t met any that follow us to ALL the gigs, but then we are doing a lot this time. I’d imagine if the ticket was around £20 doing 16 shows is a lot of money, plus your travel; you could probably spend a couple of thousand pounds doing the whole tour. I’ve met kids that have come to four or five shows, they’ll want pictures at each venue, but it’s no problem, it’s the least you can do when they’re spending so much money supporting the band. It’s interesting to see who’s coming where, the familiar faces…
PN: What about the people who sit outside the venue and queue all day long?
LJ: I think they’re bonkers! I went for a run and was keeping my body temperature up and it was still cold then. Those guys just sat outside the front of the venue for hours are bonkers, I could never have done that! My favourite band is the Smashing Pumpkins and I’m not sure I could sit outside a venue for hours in the freezing cold for them. [I mention that there’s a group already settled outside – the time is around 2.30 in the afternoon!] Is there? Oh my God… that’s dedication. I used to go to shows that my dad would work at – he was in the industry, so it wouldn’t have necessarily been bands I was into. I remember when I was 15, the first band that I ever went to see on my own was The Lemonheads, I remember going to the gig five minutes before doors opened and standing at the back of the queue, there’s no way I’d want to freeze my ass off outside! But I guess it’s those die hard kids we have to thank for the fact that the band is still relevant today.
PN: Quite a few rock bands have done collaborations with artists from different genres, like rap and hip hop, who would you like to collaborate with that people might not expect?
LJ: We did a funny little thing on Radio 1 the other day, on the Live Lounge, we were told a week before that we had to cover a song that was currently in the Top 20. Unless we wanted to cover something like Biffy Clyro, which would be a bit weird, it doesn’t really leave many options, so we ended up covering Jay-Z’s ‘Empire State Of Mind’. We had LMFAO, they’re on tour with Black Eyed Peas at the moment, they’re basically like this rap clan and they did all the rapping on the song. I think it would be awesome to do a collaboration with Jay-Z, but he’s done a lot of collaborations with Linkin Park. Everybody in the band has a different taste, we all love our rock music, but then Ian does his DJing with L’Amour La Morgue [Watkins’ side project] and he’s into some heavy dance stuff. The one thing we’ve talked about which I would love to make happen is to do a split 7 inch with The Prodigy, basically they write a song and we write a song, and then we cover their song and they cover ours. I’d class The Prodigy as a rock band despite the fact they’re known as a dance act, they’re one of the greatest things about UK music at the moment.
PN: Does anyone else in the band have any side projects?
LJ: There’s not really any real musical side projects as such. Me and Stu have talked about making an EP because we both love Smashing Pumpkins and we’ve got some songs that sound similar to their early stuff. Mike has started up a clothing label called Dead Heroes Clothing [deadheroesclothing.com], and Stuart produces for bands. Jamie’s very active, snowboarding and surfing and I’m really into tattooing. Everyone’s got their own focus outside of the band. It’s like when you’re painting a big picture, you can become so obsessed with getting the eyes right that you don’t even look at the whole face, you sometimes have to step back and see the whole picture. I think it’s healthy to have something else to focus on.
PN: How do you think the fans have responded to the new album?
LJ: Amazing, going back to the whole pop music thing in the charts, all that kind of stuff like JLS, X Factor, is just horrible. So for us to come back and do a record that gets into the Top 3 is pretty impressive, and I think a large part of that is to do with our awesome fanbase.
PN: Do you think rock music is becoming more accessible to the mainstream?
LJ: I think it is, I remember around 2001 when Limp Bizkit got to number one in the charts, there was nothing but crap in the charts at that time. Looking at the chart recently, you’ve got YouMeAtSix and Biffy Clyro in there. These bands that make real music and play and write their own songs, for them to get top ten, I think that’s important. There’s a lack of integrity and creativity out there at the moment, dudes sat in their offices writing songs for some girl that looks pretty or some guy with a ripped torso.
PN: Back to the new album, do you think it’s different from previous albums you’ve put out?
LJ: I wasn’t actually around when the album was done [Luke joined the band in June 2009], but I think it is, purely in the fact that it’s been so DIY; it was recorded once before the version you know as The Betrayed now. If you’ve recorded an album, spent a lot of money on it and its not right, you can’t really place the blame anywhere, you just know it isn’t what you want to put out. They then went on to re-record the album themselves, which is a huge step, it could completely backfire. But Stu produced it, and he’s done a fantastic job. Everything has been done pretty much by the band itself, artwork, merchandise designs, I think the album is the most honest, true view of Lostprophets you’ll get. I definitely hope the kids love the record.
Doing everything yourselves does have its fallbacks, a band has a certain amount of things to do anyway, press, writing… when you add more stuff into it, some of the stuff you’re supposed to be concentrating on might get diluted. It’s been hard work, but the payoff is coming out to a sold out tour, having a fanbase, I just hope the record shows the hard work that’s gone into it.
PN: What was the best moment as a band in 2009?
LJ: Well, I joined the band in June, so the best moment for me was definitely Reading and Leeds festival – to come and headline the second stage was phenomenal. But just everything’s been great, all the shows and fan responses, just being busy and doing my dream job.
PN: What does the rest of 2010 hold for Lostprophets?
LJ: A lot of touring, a lot of press and promo! There’s quite a few dads in the band now, four in fact, so they’ve all got a lot of work with their kids and families, hopefully there’ll be some patches off for those guys. This tour goes right through into March, we have a couple of weeks off and then we go to Japan and Australia, come back and do Europe. We’ve got a big show at the Cardiff Arena, the first arena show since about 2006 or 2007, which will be awesome, then probably festivals in the summer – I’ve definitely got my fingers crossed that we get a slot at Reading again this year!
Find Luke’s video blogs of the tour at blogs.myspace.com/lostprophets

Ссылка: http://www.upsumedia.com/pugwash/2010/03/interviews-lostprophets/