02/12/2009
at
11:22
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And as I promised here goes the interview with Chris:
JET. For serious.
I must have caught Chris Cester in a philosophical mood. The Jet drummer hadn’t left his hotel in Raleigh, North Carolina, for 24 hours - “Some cities are better left unexplored". Since the Australian rockers’ 2003 debut 'Get Born' tore the rock world a new A-hole, the band has been proud exports; travelling the globe in full excess. Six years, a virtual Pacific Ocean of vodka and some painful epiphanies later, the band transformed their battle wounds into their most eclectic record yet; the psychedelic 'Shaka Rock'. Cester’s older, wiser and a bit sober now; promising a world-class show for Big Day Out 2010, and a good dose of insight into a band that managed to escape the industry machine with their bloody souls intact.
COUP DE MAIN: How does it feel to be in America?
JET- CHRIS CESTER: You know, it’s a very interesting experience for me this time round because I haven’t had a drink in about 6 weeks – it’s been interesting looking at this country through sober eyes... It’s a much bigger country than what I remember from when I was drunk every day.
CDM: Jet has had a lot of success in the States from a few years back – is it a better trip this time round? Sober eyes and all that?
CHRIS: Well, you know, there’s really no way to compare the first time to the fifth or sixth time you do it. There’s a different kind of energy and excitement around the time of your first record. What I remember form those tours, is that we didn’t really play all that well... we didn’t really string a sentence together, let alone put an hour and twenty minutes down. Now, we want to put on the show we didn’t all those years ago – now we’ve got three records... it’s much more entertaining. I look forward to the show every night, rather than the party, which is what I used to look forward to.
CDM: Were you caught unawares on that first tour? Were you ready for it?
CHRIS: Technically, not ready for it. I suppose we all thought we were. When you’re 21 years old and all your fantasies come true, there’s no other way to look at it other than “here we go – let’s do it, let’s live it up” – we sorta did it like that. We didn’t know what were doing, or what we had achieved until three years later when our father passed away and we just went crashing back down to earth, took stock in what we’d done and thought “well, shit. Maybe we’ve blown right out of the gun, gone for two years and haven’t even realized it". It’s interesting. Now I’m just concentrating on the music. I know it sounds bizarre to say this, but even though that first record came out in 2003, it’s taken us until 2009 to really buckle down. I mean, every tour means something, every tour is great, but we’re finally on top of our game I would say.
CDM: You’ve said that recording the new album 'Shaka Rock', was one of your more pleasurable recording experiences – why is that?
CHRIS: Well, the first two records we made with a producer, Dave Sardy [ The Dandy Warhols, Marilyn Manson ]. The first record – we did it so quickly, I think the whole thing was done in about six weeks. To be honest with you, I don’t really remember much of that experience because, well... I was hugging the vodka bottle most of the time – I don’t really know about the other guys, but I was enjoying myself. On the second record an interesting thing happened which we didn’t expect – we’d sold a lot of records and then all of a sudden there was a thousand extra people who all had opinions about what we do and what we did, which is a bizarre concept when you think about the fact that we were the ones who came to them with the songs in the first place... the songs that did well in the first place – all of a sudden the record label, the management, they all have opinions about how to hang on to that success that you’ve created. I mean, ultimately, no-one knows better than yourself what you should be doing musically. I remember during the second record feeling really stifled and feeling like it was more like a circus than a creative experience. On the third record we decided to clean house. We got rid of our management – not because anyone was doing wrong necessarily, but just because it was time for some spring-cleaning. That’s one way in which this album was more pleasurable.
CDM: So it was a new beginning of sorts – I imagine your family tragedy [ Nic and Chris Cester’s father’s death in 2004 ] would have shaken things up too?
CHRIS: Yeah. It was a difficult year. It was a good twelve months before anyone started feeling normal again. At the same time as our father passing away at 46 years old, we were coming down as well; from all the hype we experienced from the first record. That was basically a 2-year, no hold-barred party. It takes a while to come down from that – it was accelerated by his passing. It was a very sobering experience, the whole thing. It’s funny, it was just a reality check for us I suppose. What have you got left? Who is left? That kind of thing. For quite a while it was like a “who knows if the next album’s actually gonna happen” kinda thing, which I never thought I’d end up thinking.
CDM: So now, we do have the new album. It’s quite eclectic in relation to the other ones – were you guys quite deliberate about that?
CHRIS: See, that’s one of the perks of taking the reins and saying - “We’re gonna have control of this”. The situation then is that you don’t have anyone sitting there telling you who your fans are. That was something we had to deal with – it was a big pain in the arse. For example, with the first album we leaned quite heavily on our influences – as we grew up we wanted to steer away from that, but we found it more difficult because our producer would sit there and tell us: “Well, you know, you’ve got this song but you need that to sound like 'Let It Be'. You need to make it sound like this and that". It just got really tiring. So when it came time to produce 'Shaka Rock', we did it ourselves and decided we were gonna try everything – all our ideas, really try and be more adventurous and find our own swing. I think this record is the first step in that direction. I think our next record will be our best record yet... we’ve lost a whole lot of our baggage – we’ve got a good momentum going on right now.
CDM: The new record sees Jet joining a long and illustrious line of bands who have sung songs about seventeen year-olds. [ ‘Seventeen’ – “I get back home at a quarter to four, what you doing with your keys inside my door? Seventeen and you never been here before...” ] – Was there an actual seventeen-year-old involved?
CHRIS: Yeah, but...
CDM: It’s not what you think?...
CHRIS: ...Not as naughty as it sounds. A friend of mine was renting an apartment in New York. He’s a director for a massive film company out there. They gave him this huge apartment that he couldn’t be in anymore because it was too noisy for him. He said “look, you’re here in New York, why don’t you move out of that hotel and come live in my apartment?” – I don’t think he told the landlady, because I went out for a pack of smokes really early one morning – I was halfway through writing this song. When I came back, there was this young girl and her boyfriend at my door with a pair of keys trying to get in to the place... she must have heard the other guy had moved out and she was trying to get in there and get up to something; I don’t know what. Basically, it just started my imagination going – I started thinking of myself at seventeen; it’s not so much about a seventeen year-old girl, it’s just about being seventeen – you’re somewhere in between being self-righteous and having no idea. It’s just such an interesting time in your life – there I was at 27, ten years later thinking about whether I had turned out the way I thought I was going to – it’s about that question I suppose.
CDM: Well. No scandalous tales there.
CHRIS: No scandalous tales.
CDM: Whose van are you burning on the cover of the 'Shaka Rock'?
CHRIS: That’s ours. We bought it and then blew it up.
CDM: Perfect.
CHRIS: It was just an idea. We’d gone and met this photographer and we were talking about putting ourselves on the cover again, and we just thought that was really boring – we’d done everything else differently. We were standing on a corner in New York and one of those trucks drove past, the ones with all the graffiti on it, and Cam just said - “Why don’t we just get a truck like that, write shit on it, blow it up and be done with it?” He was kinda joking, but we loved it. Funnily enough we thought; “yeah, let’s just make it cheap and nasty and make it a statement in that way" – and then it turned out to be the most expensive album cover we’ve ever shot.
CDM: You’ve got to afford yourself some excesses...
CHRIS: The idea of it, was to do it guerrilla-style. The van only cost us a thousand bucks. We had to pay fire marshals and stuff. You can’t just set a truck on fire in the middle of town and expect to get away with it. We had a graffiti crew paint it up and then set it on fire. Bizarrely, this one website that had always trashed our band loved the record – but they laughed at the cover, saying we’d photo-shopped it, and shit! We’d spent all this money...
Source: CDM Magazine
JET. For serious.
I must have caught Chris Cester in a philosophical mood. The Jet drummer hadn’t left his hotel in Raleigh, North Carolina, for 24 hours - “Some cities are better left unexplored". Since the Australian rockers’ 2003 debut 'Get Born' tore the rock world a new A-hole, the band has been proud exports; travelling the globe in full excess. Six years, a virtual Pacific Ocean of vodka and some painful epiphanies later, the band transformed their battle wounds into their most eclectic record yet; the psychedelic 'Shaka Rock'. Cester’s older, wiser and a bit sober now; promising a world-class show for Big Day Out 2010, and a good dose of insight into a band that managed to escape the industry machine with their bloody souls intact.
COUP DE MAIN: How does it feel to be in America?
JET- CHRIS CESTER: You know, it’s a very interesting experience for me this time round because I haven’t had a drink in about 6 weeks – it’s been interesting looking at this country through sober eyes... It’s a much bigger country than what I remember from when I was drunk every day.
CDM: Jet has had a lot of success in the States from a few years back – is it a better trip this time round? Sober eyes and all that?
CHRIS: Well, you know, there’s really no way to compare the first time to the fifth or sixth time you do it. There’s a different kind of energy and excitement around the time of your first record. What I remember form those tours, is that we didn’t really play all that well... we didn’t really string a sentence together, let alone put an hour and twenty minutes down. Now, we want to put on the show we didn’t all those years ago – now we’ve got three records... it’s much more entertaining. I look forward to the show every night, rather than the party, which is what I used to look forward to.
CDM: Were you caught unawares on that first tour? Were you ready for it?
CHRIS: Technically, not ready for it. I suppose we all thought we were. When you’re 21 years old and all your fantasies come true, there’s no other way to look at it other than “here we go – let’s do it, let’s live it up” – we sorta did it like that. We didn’t know what were doing, or what we had achieved until three years later when our father passed away and we just went crashing back down to earth, took stock in what we’d done and thought “well, shit. Maybe we’ve blown right out of the gun, gone for two years and haven’t even realized it". It’s interesting. Now I’m just concentrating on the music. I know it sounds bizarre to say this, but even though that first record came out in 2003, it’s taken us until 2009 to really buckle down. I mean, every tour means something, every tour is great, but we’re finally on top of our game I would say.
CDM: You’ve said that recording the new album 'Shaka Rock', was one of your more pleasurable recording experiences – why is that?
CHRIS: Well, the first two records we made with a producer, Dave Sardy [ The Dandy Warhols, Marilyn Manson ]. The first record – we did it so quickly, I think the whole thing was done in about six weeks. To be honest with you, I don’t really remember much of that experience because, well... I was hugging the vodka bottle most of the time – I don’t really know about the other guys, but I was enjoying myself. On the second record an interesting thing happened which we didn’t expect – we’d sold a lot of records and then all of a sudden there was a thousand extra people who all had opinions about what we do and what we did, which is a bizarre concept when you think about the fact that we were the ones who came to them with the songs in the first place... the songs that did well in the first place – all of a sudden the record label, the management, they all have opinions about how to hang on to that success that you’ve created. I mean, ultimately, no-one knows better than yourself what you should be doing musically. I remember during the second record feeling really stifled and feeling like it was more like a circus than a creative experience. On the third record we decided to clean house. We got rid of our management – not because anyone was doing wrong necessarily, but just because it was time for some spring-cleaning. That’s one way in which this album was more pleasurable.
CDM: So it was a new beginning of sorts – I imagine your family tragedy [ Nic and Chris Cester’s father’s death in 2004 ] would have shaken things up too?
CHRIS: Yeah. It was a difficult year. It was a good twelve months before anyone started feeling normal again. At the same time as our father passing away at 46 years old, we were coming down as well; from all the hype we experienced from the first record. That was basically a 2-year, no hold-barred party. It takes a while to come down from that – it was accelerated by his passing. It was a very sobering experience, the whole thing. It’s funny, it was just a reality check for us I suppose. What have you got left? Who is left? That kind of thing. For quite a while it was like a “who knows if the next album’s actually gonna happen” kinda thing, which I never thought I’d end up thinking.
CDM: So now, we do have the new album. It’s quite eclectic in relation to the other ones – were you guys quite deliberate about that?
CHRIS: See, that’s one of the perks of taking the reins and saying - “We’re gonna have control of this”. The situation then is that you don’t have anyone sitting there telling you who your fans are. That was something we had to deal with – it was a big pain in the arse. For example, with the first album we leaned quite heavily on our influences – as we grew up we wanted to steer away from that, but we found it more difficult because our producer would sit there and tell us: “Well, you know, you’ve got this song but you need that to sound like 'Let It Be'. You need to make it sound like this and that". It just got really tiring. So when it came time to produce 'Shaka Rock', we did it ourselves and decided we were gonna try everything – all our ideas, really try and be more adventurous and find our own swing. I think this record is the first step in that direction. I think our next record will be our best record yet... we’ve lost a whole lot of our baggage – we’ve got a good momentum going on right now.
CDM: The new record sees Jet joining a long and illustrious line of bands who have sung songs about seventeen year-olds. [ ‘Seventeen’ – “I get back home at a quarter to four, what you doing with your keys inside my door? Seventeen and you never been here before...” ] – Was there an actual seventeen-year-old involved?
CHRIS: Yeah, but...
CDM: It’s not what you think?...
CHRIS: ...Not as naughty as it sounds. A friend of mine was renting an apartment in New York. He’s a director for a massive film company out there. They gave him this huge apartment that he couldn’t be in anymore because it was too noisy for him. He said “look, you’re here in New York, why don’t you move out of that hotel and come live in my apartment?” – I don’t think he told the landlady, because I went out for a pack of smokes really early one morning – I was halfway through writing this song. When I came back, there was this young girl and her boyfriend at my door with a pair of keys trying to get in to the place... she must have heard the other guy had moved out and she was trying to get in there and get up to something; I don’t know what. Basically, it just started my imagination going – I started thinking of myself at seventeen; it’s not so much about a seventeen year-old girl, it’s just about being seventeen – you’re somewhere in between being self-righteous and having no idea. It’s just such an interesting time in your life – there I was at 27, ten years later thinking about whether I had turned out the way I thought I was going to – it’s about that question I suppose.
CDM: Well. No scandalous tales there.
CHRIS: No scandalous tales.
CDM: Whose van are you burning on the cover of the 'Shaka Rock'?
CHRIS: That’s ours. We bought it and then blew it up.
CDM: Perfect.
CHRIS: It was just an idea. We’d gone and met this photographer and we were talking about putting ourselves on the cover again, and we just thought that was really boring – we’d done everything else differently. We were standing on a corner in New York and one of those trucks drove past, the ones with all the graffiti on it, and Cam just said - “Why don’t we just get a truck like that, write shit on it, blow it up and be done with it?” He was kinda joking, but we loved it. Funnily enough we thought; “yeah, let’s just make it cheap and nasty and make it a statement in that way" – and then it turned out to be the most expensive album cover we’ve ever shot.
CDM: You’ve got to afford yourself some excesses...
CHRIS: The idea of it, was to do it guerrilla-style. The van only cost us a thousand bucks. We had to pay fire marshals and stuff. You can’t just set a truck on fire in the middle of town and expect to get away with it. We had a graffiti crew paint it up and then set it on fire. Bizarrely, this one website that had always trashed our band loved the record – but they laughed at the cover, saying we’d photo-shopped it, and shit! We’d spent all this money...
Source: CDM Magazine
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