Grinderman: Jim Sclavunos

After a few failed attempts at getting through, the phone is eventualy answered. It's Jim.

Did you try to get through earlier? There was an interloper on the line, we had to execute him. Apologies for that. Anyway?

Well, thank you for the consideration, I'm fine thanks. How are you?

I'm a bit frazzled. Too much coffee, so if I come on too strong put it down to the Colombian bean.

Do you want to talk about your self-confessed dependence on Colombian produce?

Aha, I see what you did there. Well, I can pontificate on a myriad of things but I think the focus is meant to be Grinderman, which does remind me that there is a Grinderman coffee company out in Hawaii, but we've very benignly decided not to sue their asses.

I assumed your name was all about the coffee beans anyway when I heard it first, no?

(laughs) Well, it's what keeps me going, so maybe there is some truth in that.

So you can pontificate on anything? I've seen evidence to suggest that this is indeed the case.

I am a man of letters as well as being a beast of stickitude [delivered with suitably OTT Brooklyn-accented dramatics...BEAST of Stickitoooood].

Nice. Well, if we're staying on topic, you guys have a pretty hectic tour schedule coming up?

Well, we didn't get a chance to tour the last one properly, so we're going to make it up to y'all by playing two albums.

Where do you all find the time, you all have so much going on?

Last year was a particularly busy year. Nick had his book;  Nick and Warren did a soundtrack and I was doing loads of production. One album I produced by the Jim Jones Revue is coming out round about now. Martyn was doing The Triffids which explains why the record was a little longer than usual in coming. We usually hit the ground running and get the albums done very fast. The sessions this time were more intermittent which is a good thing in a way because we got to approach the album making process slightly differently this time around. We were able to sit back and listen to stuff for a little bit longer than we normally do. We reassessed a few things, and were still doing overdubs as recently as February of this year. We mixed it not that long ago so it's still quite fresh to us.

From what I've gauged from Martyn and Warren, things in Grinderman seem a lot more chilled out than in The Bad Seeds. The dynamic being more relaxed because you don't have to bear in mind the long-standing legacy of that band. Is this true from your perspective?

Yeah, I guess, in a way. It's actually probably more of an issue for Nick than anyone else, because Nick is very much in the foreground in The Bad Seeds and that's one of the advantages of Grinderman in that he can allow himself to be subsumed by the Grinderman machine. He can go to the studio with a different attitude and that's a luxury for a guy who's been the front man of a band for over 15 years now. It's great to have a new role in a band with people that you're comfortable with. I think the whole legacy thing; it doesn't matter to me personally. It maybe matters a lot to the fans because fans have expectations and there's a history. I guess what Grinderman does allow us to do is be rather experimental at the end of the day. There's no problem, for example, if Grinderman does remixes, or allow other artists to do remixes of our stuff or if we do a collaboration with Robert Fripp or what have you; that's not an issue at all. Whereas, there's no precedent with the Bad Seeds. They, to my knowledge have never done a remix in the whole life of the band. So, Grinderman, because it's a new band and we're not beholden to anyone, and we're certainly not ourselves even...we can do as we like without fear of confusing people. The whole point of Grinderman is to confuse people. If we didn't create disruption, there'd be no point to the band.

What do you mean when you say you're not yourselves?

(laughs) Oh I didn't really mean it that way, it's not like a fucking transcendental experience or anything. I am very much myself at all times, in fact I can't get away from myself, woe is me! There's a public schizophrenia but the truth of the matter is it is the same people and we're just presenting a different facet of our musicianship. The fact that we have to call it two different things is more of a convenience for the fans, the press and the label than it is for us, because those boundaries aren't really that relevant when it comes down to it. It's mainly about making music. But whereas we thought we were defining something we've just created a lot of head scratching and confusion and it's like 'Why are there two bands, how are there two bands?'. I don't know if Jack White gets the same kind of questions when people try to grapple with his myriad undertakings. It's confusing, but not really. The same musicians making a different kind of music.

It is a different era of making music and people have to be a lot more flexible these days. We're not talking the 70s or 80s anymore. the targets in music are changing all the time and the structure of the music industry is changing. Why shouldn't the structure of musical 'units' be fluid and allowed to grow into the 21st century gracefully rather than sticking to rigid structures that don't really suit the world we live in any more? Whatshisface from the Arctic Monkeys, [Eh, Alex Turner?] he's got another band, so I suppose it's fair enough to ask the question but the answer might be a little disappointing. A musician has more than one side to them and these different musical outfits give you more than one way of expressing yourselves.

Do you chase a particular type of sound or is it, as Warren suggested, the avoidance of anything that make Grinderman sound too much like The Bad Seeds? Is this something you all agree on in advance of making the record?

There are things like that verbalised but for me the essence of the difference between the two things is not so much in what's forbidden or the arbitrary rules that we set up momentarily and then dispense with; it's more about the numbers. There are four people in Grinderman, The Bad Seeds is traditionally a larger ensemble. That four piece structure allows us to interact in a very immediate, direct and spontaneous way. It's much easier to telegraph an impulse to four people on stage or in a recording studio than it is to six or seven or more. It's easier for people to follow each other and go off on tangents and pursue the unpredictable in a more compact combo. A smaller band lends itself to impulsive, instantaneous responses. A larger band lends itself more to orchestration and arrangement.

The other key difference is that, whereas the Bad Seeds has traditionally been an outlet for Nick's song writing (although there are exceptions to that because there are a number of songs in the past couple of records in which the same foursome of Grinderman have also co-written some Bad Seeds), but traditionally it's primarily an outlet for Nick to write the songs whereas in Grinderman everyone is in there together. We go into the studio, there's nothing pre-written, nothing which has been rehearsed or compositions to learn, we're making it up on the spot and that allows Nick to explore another side of himself as a songwriter, because he doesn't feel that need to control every aspect at the stage of birth, and it allows for a more free-wheeling array of possibilities because any member of Grinderman at any given point can guide the band into some kind of musical realm which has been hitherto unforeseen. It's a lot more expansive in the styles and eclecticism that the band are capable of.

Martyn, and I were discussing the sexually suggestive/explicit nature of the lyrics. I say discuss, really he intimated that they had nothing to do with him and that really I should be asking Nick if there are any issues with his sex life. Do you think this is wise?

(bursts out laughing) Well...of course it's fine to ask him, you won't necessarily get a straight answer. You might as well go for it though; just ask him man to man, 'So Nick, what's up with your groin?'