Grinderman: Warren Ellis

How are you today then sir?
I'm alright, I've just come from Paris. We've got to rehearse for a while and then we're out and about in Europe and America.

That all sounds very exciting, no?
(laughs wryly) That's one way of looking at it.

You make it sound like a torture of some kind?
Oh no, it's good. The concerts are always great and I'm really looking forward to it. We haven't played together for a while. We recorded the album last summer. We decided to release it later on because Nick had put a book out in September and it just felt like if we put it out just after it would possibly be missed. We revisited it a bit this year and remixed some stuff. It was probably a good thing we sat on it because it gave us a bit longer than usual to think about things and change it a little.

With all the work you guys seem to get through how on earth does Grinderman find the time to exist? In fact, why does it exist since you all play together anyway?
It was a way of downsizing the band because The Bad Seeds is really big. We'd been out playing with Nick doing his solo shows in a smaller formation and found that we were able to get a different sound going on and we wanted to see where we could go with that. Around the same time, Nick and I had been doing soundtrack work and realised there was music we could create that was different to what we were doing, and we wanted to see if we could do that in a band context. The Bad Seeds has a very long history and it felt easy to try something like this with a group that didn't have a name at the time. I guess psychologically it was good to go in there. For Nick it was a case of him being able to let go of, to a certain degree, a lot of the responsibility he feels with The Bad Seeds. With this, it's a group effort and everybody is taking the risk collectively. On paper it might not seem like a big deal or so different but they were really important things for the project. I think it's great playing in a lot of bands because you get to experiment and put out a lot of different stuff.

Martyn also alluded to the fact that you guys might feel the weight of history with The Bad Seeds, that there is a certain formula there that can't be tinkered with too much. Is this something you think might be the case?
The Bad Seeds is something Nick takes a lot of care with and feels responsibility for. With bands who have been together a long time, whether you like it or not, certain ways of operating get developed. You might play something and then think it's just not appropriate for that scenario. I guess we wanted to create a place which was fresh and new and didn't have any of that. In fact, originally we wanted people to have different names so that it was completely unconnected to us. Then of course, we realised that as soon as Nick opened his mouth and sang there really wasn't much point. Of course we realised that this concept was silly but the discussions about it were important to try and make some kind of blueprint for it.

So there is a blueprint? What does it entail?
Nick and I had spoke about it quite a bit before it happened about the idea of doing this thing. When we started messing around in the studio, Nick sat down on the piano and started playing a certain kind of song, so we were like 'OK, you're not playing the piano, play the guitar'. I didn't play the violin, because as soon as I start it sounds like The Bad Seeds. I also said to Nick 'Let's not have any songs about love or God', just to try and get a different sound going. And he was like 'Well what do I write about then?'

So we did a lot of messing around , writing lots of stuff but as soon as we heard anything that sounded like it could be a Bad Seeds thing we were like 'OK, let's not go down that path'. There wasn't a structure as such or a master plan but I guess there were certain guidelines to stop us going to places whereby we knew what would happen if we went there. These are just decisions you make all through your creative life. If you look at someone like Lars Von Trier, he uses film to push boundaries and questions what he's giving the viewer. Whether you like his stuff or not it doesn't matter because even with the stuff you don't like you can see he's making some kind of attempt to change the rules, or make rules so that you 've got to work within a context. There's something that's really interesting about that.

Do you find it easy to adapt your style across all the bands you play in and on the soundtrack work you do?
My interest in music always came from being a listener and finding stuff that would enter my world and change my life - particularly stuff that was really challenging and boundary pushing. When I started playing, that was at the back of my mind. I guess I wanted to play music that would be as liberating for the person listening to it as what I got from music. So I guess I'm trying to put back in (even if it's a small bit) some of what I've taken, because I've taken a lot. It would seem to me that this is what most people are doing in the context of creating things.

Marty went so far as to suggest playing in Grinderman is more fun, more liberating?
Jesus, he was very chatty this morning was Marty. I've only been in The Bad Seeds for fifteen years so I can't speak about before that, but the last two albums seemed to open up a little. Nick had gotten to a point where he was writing a certain kind of song on his own in a room with a piano but around the time of Abattoir Blues he wanted to get some different musical ideas going on so he could put lyrics on it. That idea was developed then into Grinderman. It was like a new group where everybody is in there trying to make the ideas together.

The last Bad Seeds albums have enjoyed a really good reception, what do you personally think of the records you're making?
There comes a point when making any record when you fall in love with it and want to let it go, or start thinking 'this is crap, let's not put it out'. I think the answer is that everybody decides collectively that it has moved somewhere, and the proof is the fact that it's out there and you get to hear it. So it would imply that everybody was at least happy in some respect with it. I don't listen to Bad Seeds records though. I used to, before I joined and I thought they were some of the most wonderful records I'd ever heard at the time (Your Funeral My Trial etc.). Each time you go in you try to make something that's better than what you did the last time.

Do you guys not get tired of each other's company?
I'm always happy to see the other guys. They are the people that I play with but it just so happens that I like them as well and I trust what they're going to do. I think we all seriously still enjoy music for the same reasons that we did when we started playing. When I meet up with the Dirty Three [another brilliant band of Ellis's] to play some shows at the end of the year it still feels exciting and vibrant and I look forward to that. Once you've developed this language together it sort of goes beyond a regular life. Even if you can't stand each other it takes over.

Given that you perform in some mightily successful acts, have you gotten used to adulation and acclaim that inevitably goes with that?
I probably sound like a knob for saying this but I don't really pay much attention. Obviously you're aware of it but to me it doesn't indicate that you've made something that's good. I guess if I know deep down that what we're putting out continues to be up to scratch then I feel fine with it. That's the most important thing to me. - and the opinion of a select few people who'll tell me straight up, that's important too.

That's very grounded of you?
I guess it is. I think so much of this [music] world is not grounded so it's good to get the balance in there. There's a point where it's fun not to be grounded though, where you need to be misled, to take chances to throw yourself open to whatever it is and make something new. As I said, it's all about the balance.

Sounds like you've cracked it?
That's very kind of you.

Do you have any questions for Nick that you might not ask him to his face? Martyn suggests we ask him how his sex life is?
(laughs) Really? I don't know what else to say. You should hit him with Marty's question.