Coventry Telegraph Interview by Les Reid
THE ENEMY are back with a new mature sound and worldly experience. In an exclusive interview, Coventry’s biggest and best band for a generation talk about music, the recession, politics and their families.
THE ENEMY frontman Tom Clarke this week drove his 1972 E-type Jag up to Jaguar’s Browns Lane plant - returning the glorious machine to its birthplace where his grandad Fred had worked on it.
It led to both narrow and broad reflections on families and the state of the world which have made this always impressive and thoughtful 21-year-old one of the most quotable figures in music.
Since the three unlikely striplings exploded into the nation’s consciousness two years ago with the number 1 album We’ll Live And Die In These Towns - with songs exploring both the mundanity and celebration of ordinary lives - the singer and guitarist has demonstrated a canny refusal to be pigeon-holed into being an overtly political voice or the spokesperson for a generation.
Yet his reflections on jobs, governments, the economy and humanity continue on the long-awaited second album, Music For The People, out on April 27, the first single from which was released this week – No Time For Tears.
Those reflections remain grounded in personal experiences, those of his family and friends back home, and his deep sense of community.
But they are also now infused with a broader perspective, partly inspired by worldwide touring which recently took them to America in the run-up to Barrack Obama’s historic election victory.
As Tom, drummer Liam Watts and bassist Andy Hopkins belted out the new single at Coventry’s HMV store on Wednesday – accompanied by keyboard and female backing singer – the musical progression was immediately apparent.
The new material is substantial. More mature and layered with more instrumentation, yet still direct and anthemic.
Lyrically, the first album’s protest against manufacturing decline, dead-end jobs and getting wasted on Saturday night is replaced with a greater acceptance of the changing economy.
One song – Nation of Checkout Girls – speaks of the dominance of the service sector and the uniformity of British high streets.
Be Somebody is a pastiche of post-punk/new wave band XTC’s 1979 hit Making Plans for Nigel.
Nigel’s stifling parents then wanted his future to be in British Steel. The Enemy’s Nigel now works in a department store. Yet it is not a criticism, more an accepting reflection on the changing face of Britain.
Which is where Tom’s trip to Browns Lane comes in, and tales of his grandad Fred O’Gara, father of Tom’s uncle Mick O’Gara, once a miners’ union rep at Keresley Colliery who is pictured with then miners’ leader Arthur Scargill in 1984 on the cover of the single You’re Not Alone.
Tom told the Telegraph: “I took the car up there on a day off. We drove it up there and parked it next to the plant, or what was the plant. It was quite weird. My grandad used to live in Sheldon.
"When it snowed at Browns Lane and the coach back to Sheldon didn’t turn up, he used to walk home in the snow from Browns Lane.
“He was just an amazing bloke. He passed away a few years ago now. My memories of him are as an old man looking after me as his grandson, cutting trees down with me and moaning about petrol.
"He used to do the piecework at Browns Lane. He did all the chrome. So I wanted a car I know he would have worked on, and it’s got Jaguar Coventry on the steering wheel so I know it’s one from there.
“I think the whole family throughout the 1980s and the difficult times were all deeply affected by them. I think it’s something that reverberated through the generations of the family.
"But at the same time I’m not an old industrial romantic. I like my old stuff, I love my old Jag, it’s a beautiful symbol of what Coventry can do when it puts its mind to it, that it produces a machine as amazing as that.
“But at the same time I’m also acutely aware that where jobs are lost in the manufacturing industry they’ll be replaced within the service industry. It’s important to put a balanced view out there, otherwise you end up really being quite negative about change.
“We can’t be this great manufacturing nation forever. There are other nations out there that will do it better than us, there are others that will do it cheaper than us. You’ve got to be open and say, ‘OK, what are we going to do then to look after our workers’?
"If we can’t compete with the manufacturing process, what areas of industry can we compete with?”
He said families and friends had been hit by the current recession. “It hits everyone. The whole thing of uncertainty in families throughout recessions and people being uncertain about their jobs – that’s the main thing, it’s the not knowing.
"Once a job’s gone, it’s traumatic but families pull together and they have done through some of the most difficult times in the 60s, the late 70s and 80s through to the miners.”
Andy and Liam say their families were less political. Liam, who has moved out of the Holbrooks family home to Coundon, says: “My mum and dad were very young when they had kids. They were a bit preoccupied with bringing me and my brother up. That shaped their lives before they were even 18.
“My dad played drums in loads of different Cov bands. There was always drum kits. I always remember mum and dad going off and me going to my nan’s while he played gigs.
"So it was something I inherited and my grandad was a drummer on my mum’s side, so there was a whole family tapping on things.”
Andy says: “My uncle played guitar and my dad played drums a bit. He took me to an ACDC concert and Status Quo. That’s how I got my musical influences.”
Tom says one of the most visible manifestations of the recession is one of his favourite haunts – the “curry mile” in Birmingham – which he says is now reduced to just one “old school” curry house.
He said media reports that The Enemy’s first album had forecasted the recession have been slightly exaggerated since, but he adds: “Coventry was hit a long time before anyone else. There are industries that will never recover that have now disappeared out of Coventry. Peugeot axed 3,000 jobs. It’s been visible for quite a few years which is what we were inadvertently writing about on the first album.
“I don’t think we are qualified enough to have predicted a recession. I think that world leading economists will tell you that any economy that rises and rises will crash.
"From the legacy years of Blair that was obviously his intention. To take the economy as high as it could go so that he could go out with a bang in the same way that Bush managed to do in the States and then leave everyone else to clean up after him.
“But its not our business. There are big issues that are the politicians’ responsibility to tackle rather than musicians. It does help with musicians talking about it, but ultimately we’re here to make music.”
The new album belts out lyrics including “Labour’s a joke” and “the morning after the revolution”.
But Tom believes in democracy. He says: “If you’re truly going to exist in a democratic society then people deserve choice. Politically at the moment people don’t really have a choice. We’ve got two main parties that are so close in the majority of their policies it doesn’t excite young people.
"When they don’t think they’ve got a clear choice, they won’t vote, and that’s when elections stop making sense.
“That’s the problem with British politics. And that’s why the reform in America is so important, because they were offered a clear-cut choice – we can go this way as a nation or go this way – and people got excited.
"We went over and toured America in the middle of all that pre-election excitement, and everyone you spoke to had a political opinion. More people turned up to vote than they had in years.”
The new album’s messages are essentially the same as the debut album says Tom, adding: “It’s probably less pop and more proper music.
"We just had these songs at the end of a two-year tour. We went into the studio and did what we do and it sounds that size because that’s the size the band has grown into over two years.
“The reason so many people relate to us is because we are actually just three typical lads.
"There’s nothing extraordinary about any of us or our backgrounds or our families. That’s why they relate to us. That and good music.
“I think the focus a lot of the time is shifted away from the fact that we made a great musical record, and it takes a backseat – probably because of my big mouth,” he jokes.
Source: Coventry Telegraph
THE ENEMY frontman Tom Clarke this week drove his 1972 E-type Jag up to Jaguar’s Browns Lane plant - returning the glorious machine to its birthplace where his grandad Fred had worked on it.
It led to both narrow and broad reflections on families and the state of the world which have made this always impressive and thoughtful 21-year-old one of the most quotable figures in music.
Since the three unlikely striplings exploded into the nation’s consciousness two years ago with the number 1 album We’ll Live And Die In These Towns - with songs exploring both the mundanity and celebration of ordinary lives - the singer and guitarist has demonstrated a canny refusal to be pigeon-holed into being an overtly political voice or the spokesperson for a generation.
Yet his reflections on jobs, governments, the economy and humanity continue on the long-awaited second album, Music For The People, out on April 27, the first single from which was released this week – No Time For Tears.
Those reflections remain grounded in personal experiences, those of his family and friends back home, and his deep sense of community.
But they are also now infused with a broader perspective, partly inspired by worldwide touring which recently took them to America in the run-up to Barrack Obama’s historic election victory.
As Tom, drummer Liam Watts and bassist Andy Hopkins belted out the new single at Coventry’s HMV store on Wednesday – accompanied by keyboard and female backing singer – the musical progression was immediately apparent.
The new material is substantial. More mature and layered with more instrumentation, yet still direct and anthemic.
Lyrically, the first album’s protest against manufacturing decline, dead-end jobs and getting wasted on Saturday night is replaced with a greater acceptance of the changing economy.
One song – Nation of Checkout Girls – speaks of the dominance of the service sector and the uniformity of British high streets.
Be Somebody is a pastiche of post-punk/new wave band XTC’s 1979 hit Making Plans for Nigel.
Nigel’s stifling parents then wanted his future to be in British Steel. The Enemy’s Nigel now works in a department store. Yet it is not a criticism, more an accepting reflection on the changing face of Britain.
Which is where Tom’s trip to Browns Lane comes in, and tales of his grandad Fred O’Gara, father of Tom’s uncle Mick O’Gara, once a miners’ union rep at Keresley Colliery who is pictured with then miners’ leader Arthur Scargill in 1984 on the cover of the single You’re Not Alone.
Tom told the Telegraph: “I took the car up there on a day off. We drove it up there and parked it next to the plant, or what was the plant. It was quite weird. My grandad used to live in Sheldon.
"When it snowed at Browns Lane and the coach back to Sheldon didn’t turn up, he used to walk home in the snow from Browns Lane.
“He was just an amazing bloke. He passed away a few years ago now. My memories of him are as an old man looking after me as his grandson, cutting trees down with me and moaning about petrol.
"He used to do the piecework at Browns Lane. He did all the chrome. So I wanted a car I know he would have worked on, and it’s got Jaguar Coventry on the steering wheel so I know it’s one from there.
“I think the whole family throughout the 1980s and the difficult times were all deeply affected by them. I think it’s something that reverberated through the generations of the family.
"But at the same time I’m not an old industrial romantic. I like my old stuff, I love my old Jag, it’s a beautiful symbol of what Coventry can do when it puts its mind to it, that it produces a machine as amazing as that.
“But at the same time I’m also acutely aware that where jobs are lost in the manufacturing industry they’ll be replaced within the service industry. It’s important to put a balanced view out there, otherwise you end up really being quite negative about change.
“We can’t be this great manufacturing nation forever. There are other nations out there that will do it better than us, there are others that will do it cheaper than us. You’ve got to be open and say, ‘OK, what are we going to do then to look after our workers’?
"If we can’t compete with the manufacturing process, what areas of industry can we compete with?”
He said families and friends had been hit by the current recession. “It hits everyone. The whole thing of uncertainty in families throughout recessions and people being uncertain about their jobs – that’s the main thing, it’s the not knowing.
"Once a job’s gone, it’s traumatic but families pull together and they have done through some of the most difficult times in the 60s, the late 70s and 80s through to the miners.”
Andy and Liam say their families were less political. Liam, who has moved out of the Holbrooks family home to Coundon, says: “My mum and dad were very young when they had kids. They were a bit preoccupied with bringing me and my brother up. That shaped their lives before they were even 18.
“My dad played drums in loads of different Cov bands. There was always drum kits. I always remember mum and dad going off and me going to my nan’s while he played gigs.
"So it was something I inherited and my grandad was a drummer on my mum’s side, so there was a whole family tapping on things.”
Andy says: “My uncle played guitar and my dad played drums a bit. He took me to an ACDC concert and Status Quo. That’s how I got my musical influences.”
Tom says one of the most visible manifestations of the recession is one of his favourite haunts – the “curry mile” in Birmingham – which he says is now reduced to just one “old school” curry house.
He said media reports that The Enemy’s first album had forecasted the recession have been slightly exaggerated since, but he adds: “Coventry was hit a long time before anyone else. There are industries that will never recover that have now disappeared out of Coventry. Peugeot axed 3,000 jobs. It’s been visible for quite a few years which is what we were inadvertently writing about on the first album.
“I don’t think we are qualified enough to have predicted a recession. I think that world leading economists will tell you that any economy that rises and rises will crash.
"From the legacy years of Blair that was obviously his intention. To take the economy as high as it could go so that he could go out with a bang in the same way that Bush managed to do in the States and then leave everyone else to clean up after him.
“But its not our business. There are big issues that are the politicians’ responsibility to tackle rather than musicians. It does help with musicians talking about it, but ultimately we’re here to make music.”
The new album belts out lyrics including “Labour’s a joke” and “the morning after the revolution”.
But Tom believes in democracy. He says: “If you’re truly going to exist in a democratic society then people deserve choice. Politically at the moment people don’t really have a choice. We’ve got two main parties that are so close in the majority of their policies it doesn’t excite young people.
"When they don’t think they’ve got a clear choice, they won’t vote, and that’s when elections stop making sense.
“That’s the problem with British politics. And that’s why the reform in America is so important, because they were offered a clear-cut choice – we can go this way as a nation or go this way – and people got excited.
"We went over and toured America in the middle of all that pre-election excitement, and everyone you spoke to had a political opinion. More people turned up to vote than they had in years.”
The new album’s messages are essentially the same as the debut album says Tom, adding: “It’s probably less pop and more proper music.
"We just had these songs at the end of a two-year tour. We went into the studio and did what we do and it sounds that size because that’s the size the band has grown into over two years.
“The reason so many people relate to us is because we are actually just three typical lads.
"There’s nothing extraordinary about any of us or our backgrounds or our families. That’s why they relate to us. That and good music.
“I think the focus a lot of the time is shifted away from the fact that we made a great musical record, and it takes a backseat – probably because of my big mouth,” he jokes.
Source: Coventry Telegraph
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* OFFICIAL Enemy website: http://theenemy.com
