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Interview with Funeral For A Friend, by Cherry Pullinger
Your latest release is a best of / greatest hits compilation, was it difficult to choose the tracks to include?
Darran: Not really, no. I think it is a bit of a singles package apart from the four new songs on it. It was farely easy, we all made lists and most of them corresponded apart from the odd track.
Gavin: You can tell which songs kind of go better and which songs people want to hear so it was easy in that respect. It came down to a couple of decisions between some tracks but on the most part it was easy.
Were there any tracks you wish you could have included but didnt?
Darran: As Gavin said, there were a couple of decisions to be made, one was whether to put Monsters on there or Walk Away. Monsters would be one of them we wish we’d included.
You’ve included B-Sides, demos and rare tracks aswell, why did you decide to include them and not save them for future releases?
Darran: We saw the release as an end of a chapter really, our old record company wanted to do a ‘best of’ so we could have either of got involved and made it the best it could be or just let them do it and maybe fuck it up, so it was a case of if we’re going to call it an end of a chapter then lets put pretty much everything on up to that point, all the unreleased stuff and rare stuff.
Gavin: There was loads of stuff, like sixty or seventy songs, some of them were the same songs but different versions, demo versions and it’s kind of cool just to be like ‘here’s all of it, here’s everything.’
Darran: You’ve got that bonus disc on the two disc version but you can also go online and download more tracks.
Staying on the ‘best of’ theme, what have been the best moment of your career so far?
Darran (to Gavin): Whats the best one of yours?
Gavin: Joining the band!
Darran: Mines having Gav join the band.
Gavin: Sleeping with Darran every night!
And what have been the worst moments?
Darran: I dunno really. Last night, too hot! I suppose theres elements of low points where you miss people or if you’re away for a long time and thats probably the hardest part, not to complain “oh you know, this is so tough to do,” but it’s not, it’s an amazing thing to do and beable to live your life in that way and experience some of the stuff that we have, but there are times when you feel a bit lonely and miss your mates but it’s one of the small downsides of what we do.
What is different about touring on and promoting an album where the fans already know the songs?
Gavin: Well we’ve only done one show so far, last night.
How was that show?
Gavin: Awesome. Hot!
Darran: Hardgoing.
Gavin: We’re playing a little bit longer than we usually do aswell to try and fit in as many songs as people want so that was a challenge. We were all at deaths door after the first show.
Darran: We’re not gig fit! With the heat and the length of the set we were all just dropping.
Gavin: It was cool, the crowd reaction to every song was positive, everyone knew all the songs.
Darran: Previous to it we put up a voting system where people could go on the Myspace and vote for their favourite tracks and the top fifteen were made into the setlist, plus four new tracks. So altogether nineteen songs, which is the longest we’ve ever played. It was quite hardcore. It’s quite exciting seeing everyones reaction so the album is a greatest hits package also in a live environment.
Your new single ‘Wrench’ is also on the album alongside three other new tracks, can you tell us a bit about the new tracks?
Darran: I think they have a more aggressive attitude to them.
Gavin: They are kind of leaning a little bit more towards the energy and the power of the first two albums but it’s not that we’ve taken a step back, we’ve kind of tried to develop the sound a little bit more. Theres 3 vocals in some parts and we’ve just improved upon them.
Darran: We’ve sort of improved upon what we were doing on those first couple of albums and having written and recorded more stuff since those, we’ve learnt to write songs a bit better and developed it so it’s got that energy and attitude of the first two albums but even better I think.
You’ve recently gained a new member in the form of Gavin, what was it like working together for the first time?
Darran: Terrible!
Gavin: Rubbish!
Darran: He’s just really difficult, diva-esque.
Gavin: He just throws his guitar down, “I’m not doing anymore,” he says.
Darran: At least on guitar every week I do!
Gavin: Nah, it’s all kind of easy because before Funeral even became a band I was in a band with Ryan the drummer for a good year or two and I’ve always known the guys ever since.
Darran: We all played in different bands on the South Wales circuit so we all knew eachother and were friends.
So was Gavin your first choise of bassist to replace Gareth?
Darran: He was, yea! Not sure if he’s the right choice! (laughing)
Did Gavin joining change the dynamics of the band?
Darran: Definitely yea, I mean Gav normally plays guitar, he doesn’t play bass. He can write songs, great songs, and he’s a really good singer whereas Gareth was purely a bass player and didn’t have much confidence in his voice really and didn’t think he was a good singer whereas Gavin is quite confident with his voice so it brought more to the band infact. One of the new songs of the four was pretty much Gav’s idea in total, so it’s definitely changed the dynamic and made it stronger and brought more avenues for people kind of bringing things to the melting pot.
Was it difficult losing a member of the band?
Darran: Yea it was a bit weird when Gareth announced that he had decided to leave because he’d married a girl in America and pretty much made a life over there and it was just difficult for him to fly back and forth constantly if we needed to do something quickly.
It meant he’d have to organise flights and obviously he wanted to spend as much time as possible over there so he was sort of having it twice as bad as us really. He’d be over here when we were rehearsing and when we’d go on tour he’d still be away from his family whereas we could do the whole rehearsing thing and still be close to our families.
It made it quite difficult for him really and he just felt he had enough of doing that, so we respected that and understood. It was a bit of a shock but thats what he decided to do.
How did you cope with it?
Darran: Big party!
I don’t mean that! Nah, we never thought for one second that it could be difficult or the end of the band, nothing as drastic as that. We instantly thought we’d get someone else.
Gavin: I’d been trying to join their band for years!
Darran: Yea, begging!
Gavin: “Go on, let me join your band, I’ll do anything!”
Darran: I had to shoo him away. He was drunk, knocking at my door begging me to let him join the band.
(laughing)
It was just a case of we’ll get Gav to come in and we’d go forwards even stronger.
You’ve recently set up your own label, Join Us, how does it feel having a label?
Darran: It’s not really having a label in the truer sense, as far as we don’t sell anybody elses music. It was mainly set up just to release our music and we’d have to see how well that would go to see whether or not we’d branch out to signing other bands.
It’s alot more difficult than people imagine, when you’re used to working with budgets on a vast scale with a major label like Atlantic, it was quite difficult then to get used to having the marketing angle of things on a much smaller scale. So it’s not as easy as we thought it might be and it kind of didn’t pan out as amazing as we t hought it would, but it was still an interesting thing and a bit of an experiement.
Why did you decide to do it in the first place?
Darran: Well, we decided to leave Atlantic because they wanted to renegotiate the deal with us to do the next record with them and what they wanted us to do, we didn’t want to do so we decided to part company amicably and just thought instantly, what about setting up our own label and putting our own record out, which gives us a lot more control over everything. Our management and their contacts had a big part in helping us set it up.
The new album looks back at your career so far, so looking into the future, whats next for Funeral For A Friend?
Gavin: After this tour we go to Japan for a little bit and then after Christmas, writing a new record. We’ll be in the studio at the end of January for two weeks and we’ll try to get as much done as we can in two weeks and then more touring next year and hopefully an album out in the summer.
Have you been writing new material already? What is it like?
Gavin: Awesome! Amazing! Best songs ever.
Is the new material very different from your previous work?
Darran: Do you know what, it’s kind of keeping a theme with these four new songs really.
Gavin: I think it’s all about energy really and getting that excitement back into it, which I think we have done with the four new ones, and just trying to encapture what people loved about the band in the first place.
Darran: I think thats what Gav brought with him to the band, he had been an outside spectator for a while and he had his views on what we did well and where he thought we lost our way a bit with doing certain records and doing different styles of songwriting or whatever. He was quite honest and straight about where we went wrong, he said “you went wrong here, or you should have kept going where you were there and develop that side of it moreso than branching out and trying these other things.” So I thinks thats what bought the focus back to that and as Gav said, we’re going to concentrate more on that because it seems that’s what people enjoy about our stuff in the past and these new songs.
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